Kinetics: In Search of Willow (29 page)

CHAPTER 21

I never really thought
about destiny catching up with me. I feel though that my destiny
was less like a hound making its way noisily towards me, but like
an agile cat, stalking me in the jungle of my own decisions. I
never really thought about it until destiny tore out my soul’s
jugular.
– Rei Akito. From her treatise on
being a soldier in the Second Great Kinetic War

We drove until we got to a gas station
in Roswell and Laura stopped to put gas in the truck. She had been
crying in silence the whole way, looking more and more like a shell
shock victim than someone who should be driving.

The fact that a senseless death had
just taken place made me feel like one too, even though I knew I
would never get close to what Laura must be feeling. With her
losing her whole family in the split seconds that she did, I could
only cup my forehead in my hands and listen to the storm that
ravaged the windshield for too short a time. We left the wall of
rain and entered sunlight only a few miles from the interstate. The
small isolated storm behind us looked even more unnatural in the
dawn sunlight. It was no more than seven in the morning when we
stopped for gas, but it felt unfair that such a beautiful day
should meet us now. The storm had come and gone but left far too
much destruction in its path.

Harry was sure the Alliance wouldn't
be caught off guard like that for long. I had few doubts that
reinforcements had come in not long after we had left. And to top
it all off, Laura was stuck with us now. There was little doubt
that by now her brother was most likely dead. She was now alone in
the world. She told us she had no extended family, both of her
parents had been only children and their parents were already long
gone from this world.

While she refilled the truck with a
tear-streaked stoic mask, Harry and I stepped out, he to call his
dad and I to find something to take the edge off the burning
headache building between my eyes.

I browsed the aisles in the truck stop
where we had stopped and found only overpriced aspirin. I frowned
at the fist-sized package and put it back where I had found it. I
let loose a curse, startling the sleepy-looking cashier.

"Sorry," I muttered, left the
building, and went and sat in the cab of the truck. Laura was done
pumping gas and was sitting in the seat quietly gripping the
steering wheel with white knuckles. She stared intensely forward,
her eyes in some far off place.

I let my gaze travel around to where I
could see Harry having a heated conversation on the phone inside.
His face was flushed and he was waving his one free hand in
dramatic gestures. I had rarely seen Harry angry, but whatever he
was talking about on the phone with his Dad was more than making
him angry. I closed my eyes and let myself drift into a thoughtless
state. It was like meditation in a way, breathing in and out,
letting every thought flow out with each exhale. I opened my eyes
when Laura shifted in her seat.

"What does it mean to be a Kinetic?"
She asked quietly, never moving her eyes from some point in the
distance.

"What do you mean?" I glanced at her,
surprised that she was being talkative.

"Is it always hard?"

"No… I don't think so. We've just
gotten ourselves caught, you know. Rock-and-a-hard-place kinda
stuff." I pinched the cloth of my jeans near my knee
absently.

"I don't like it." She buried her face
in her hands. "It's the worst thing in the world."

"How so?" I can't say that I've had
the best experience with Kinetics and powers and stuff. But Willow
was worth jumping in head first.

"Did I ever tell you why we moved to
Ohio?" She wiped at her eyes and shook the loose hair out of her
eyes.

"No." I searched my memory, but most
of what I knew about her before now had been from
Willow.

"We used to live in Chicago. We went
to this high school out a little past the suburbs. The sort of
place where you kinda know everyone. Logan and I were in different
classes most of the day except for biology. This one day, he and I
were working on a group project when this stupid kid named Henry
started teasing Logan about his obsession with plants, and I don't
know how but they started fighting with each other and Henry was
winning." She grasped the steering wheel again and her eyes glazed
over.

"I thought that Henry was going to
kill him!" she choked. "I felt his mind. I felt Henry's mind and I
saw his nightmares. I did the only thing that I knew to do. I made
him… I made him see his nightmares. He was screaming and screaming
and no one could make him stop. I couldn't make it
stop."

She gulped in air and her eyes welled
up. "I didn't want to stop. Logan was bleeding so badly, I wanted
revenge. I found out later that Logan had powers too. He was
perfectly fine with not defending himself. He was so mad at me for
endangering us. Some people came. They called themselves the
Informational Control. They wiped all the memories of the people in
school about me. My entire existence was purged from my friend's
minds. They told us to leave town no matter what it took, or else
they would wipe our memories too. I hadn't realized until then that
there were more people out there like us. They said I had to wait
until I was sixteen to apply for training."

She fell silent.

"What happened to him? The kid you
attacked?"

She looked at me with such a haunted
look in her eyes. "He died. His brain shut down."

I saw Harry put the phone away and
head back toward us. His face was red. I didn't prompt Laura any
further.

He opened the driver side door and
waved Laura to move over. He saw my gaze and smiled. "Parents,
huh?" I smiled back, but let the smile fall the second I remembered
Laura and Logan's parents. Laura was now an orphan.

I shuddered on the inside and felt my
headache come back full force. I sighed as Harry started the truck
and began our journey northward to Albuquerque.

The interstate was not very busy. It
seemed odd that a massive causeway would be sparsely populated but
I didn't question it because it meant we had little to deal with.
Harry quietly drove, and Laura and I sat quietly next
him.

Soon, however, Laura seemed to grow
uncomfortable with the silence and began talking. Harry didn't
respond to anything she said but I tried to at least give some
occasional murmur of acknowledgment.

I didn't start really listening until
she said something about powers. "—hurt so much. I didn't mean to
bring out my powers again. I didn't mean to endanger our lives
again. The InfoCon said that if I screwed up again I wouldn't be
able to receive training until I was eighteen. That's why we were
sent to Hooverville after I… well, you know what happened in
Columbus."

I frowned, remembering the nightmare
at school. "Yeah."

"Then when we moved, it was like I
didn't have..."

I zoned out again after that and
considered things. The InfoCon really was scary. I was glad that I
never had to deal with them directly. But now, if I did come into
contact with them-- well, I hope that didn't ever
happen.

"Where are you going, anyway?" She
asked out of the blue.

I hesitated. What do I say?

"It's not that I want to go with you,
anymore. I'm just curious." Her eyes looked honest, but her tone of
voice betrayed far too much insecurity. We had no place to leave
her, no one to leave her with. Who's to say she wouldn't follow us
anyway?

I had never had much trouble with
lying, not that I was an incessant liar, but usually I only lied
when I really needed to. Need being a very subjective factor, of
course. But lying to someone when they were in an obviously
desperate place was something I had always felt uncomfortable with.
But if I wanted to get to Wyoming without a hitch, I couldn't have
an emotionally unstable person like her the rest of the
way.

"We're going into hiding." I started
slowly. "We're both actually going to split up once we get to a big
city so that we can't be tracked." This seemed to be the best thing
to say. She would most likely want to stay with people who were
"like her." I should probably call Nick and see if there was a safe
place to send her.

Her eyes widened in front of a glint
of curiosity. "You're on the run?"

I took in a breath. "Yeah."

"From?"

I really didn't want to get into
everything but I had to say something. "From the government of our
people. The people who run the InfoCon."

Her gaze became even more
curious, even excited. "Our… 
our
 people?"

I nodded.

"Is it part of the United States
Government?"

"No," I shook my head. "Not that I
know of anyway. From what I've gathered, it's more of an
international alliance than anything else."

"International? Tell me about it? Are
there lots of us?" She grabbed my arm and leaned into my shoulder.
I cringed a bit and saw Harry rolling his eyes out of the corner of
my eye.

I had probably just jumped into a
whole other can of worms, but there was no stopping now. I
explained to the best of my ability everything that I had learned
so far.

She nodded slowly to each thing I
said. The curious spark turned to something entirely different that
I didn't understand. I definitely didn't like it. It was like a
hunger for more. After her remarks about not liking her powers, the
need to know more about our people was strange.

"The people who attacked
us, 
they
 were the Alliance?"

I hesitated before nodding.
"Yeah."

She stood up and stared at me. "This
Lancaster woman you told me about--she gave the orders to
attack?"

I really didn't like where this was
going, so I lied. "I don't know." In truth, she probably did give
the orders.

Laura's mouth was set in a grim line.
She had already made up her mind about who was responsible. "Thank
you, Eugene."

Troubled, I looked outside the window
and promised myself to talk to Harry when we were alone.

We were on the freeway about halfway
between Albuquerque and Trinidad, Colorado when we ran into a rough
patch of traffic. From what we could tell the road was backed up
for miles.

"What's going on?" I asked.

"An accident, I guess?" Harry said,
trying to look between the cars at whatever was holding the traffic
in place.

We didn't have much time to sit
watching the traffic move at a crawl. Laura leaned forward and
gasped. There were people running through the cars from all sides.
They were running toward us.

A car in front of us lifted up,
defying gravity, and slammed into the front of our
truck.

I don't remember what happened after
that.

L
ong ago, I felt the need to run away.
 Willow leaned against the edge of a tree staring deep
into a forest.

It wasn't because I was
angry or sad about anything, really. I wanted to explore. I wanted
to find out what was missing. 
She
reached her hand into the darkness and smiled sadly.

There's something missing,
Eugene. Can you feel it?
 Her hand and
eyes dropped to stare at the forest floor. 
I'm missing… something.

It was becoming a repeating cycle.
Losing consciousness and then waking up in a strange place. This
time I wasn't in a small room with some old man with cryptic smiles
and vague statements. Instead I was in a large room, a warehouse it
seemed, and there were no other people that I could see from my
tied down state. I was literally tied down. Ropes, or rather a type
of metallic cord, bound my arms to my sides and my legs were
locked. I squirmed as much as the ropes would allow and turned
myself onto my side. The warehouse housed nothing but a tan
military Hummer and at least a dozen tall wooden crates. I turned
to the other side but there was nothing there either. Just a chair
and a ratty, black suitcase. I closed my eyes and tried to not feel
the stinging pinpricks behind my eyes. I felt like my entire brain
had just been torn up, shredded in a blender and mashed up with a
large pile of gravel. A strangled sound escaped my mouth before I
could stop it.