Kinetics: In Search of Willow (30 page)

The sound in itself was enough to
bring someone out. I saw the shoes before I saw the person. But the
shoes were enough for me to identify him. Two laceless, black
loafers with red lining. I felt the cold concrete floor under me
all that much more sinking into my bones.

"Hello, Eugene." My brother smiled
down at me in what could at one time have been a happy smile, but
the expression never reached his eyes.

PART 3:

BEHIND ENEMY LINES

CHAPTER 22

"…The attitude is not to
withdraw from the world when you realize how horrible it is, but to
realize that this horror is simply the foreground of a wonder and
to come back and participate in it. "All life is sorrowful" is the
first Buddhist saying, and it is. It wouldn't be life if there were
not temporality involved which is sorrow. Loss, loss,
loss."
~ Joseph Campbell

Jacob smiled warmly at me.
Unfortunately, I knew that warmth was nothing more than a facade.
Any niceness or warmth that he had ever put out had always been
fake, and a means to an end. I didn't trust this mask of brotherly
kindness any more than I trusted that he was going to sit me down
and offer me a cup of cocoa.

I was caught. The overwhelming
exhaustion eating at my consciousness didn't help the dread from
seeping through my skin. I tried to loosen the ropes but they were
too tight. I don't know why Jacob had me hogtied and I couldn't see
Harry or Laura in the room. I was alone with the one person I
didn't want to be around right now.

"Jacob," I coughed. My position on the
floor made it hard to breathe right.

"Eugene." He knelt down and touched my
arm in a strangely sympathetic move. "I'm sorry we had to have this
reunion. But we had to be sure."

"Sure?" I gasped. "Sure of
what?"

He sat back on his heels. "Sure that
you weren't going to do yourself or anyone else harm."

"How would I do that?" I tried sucking
in a deep breath.

Jacob stood and pulled me up with him,
un-constricting my lungs. He pushed me into a straight-backed chair
and undid the knots of the ropes around my arms.

"Some believed that you had fully
trained powers, despite what I told them." Jacob said quietly and
pulled the ropes off, coiling them neatly at his feet.

I glared up at him, my mouth
involuntarily twitching into a scowl.

Jacob saw the scowl and grinned. "You
always were naive, Eugene."

"What's that supposed to mean," I
rasped.

"You're so unaware of what's going on
around you. It's irrational the way you've hidden the truth from
yourself."

I took a breath, readying myself to
argue, but the door opened and a man in a discreet Alliance
uniform—a tan blazer with a half-dollar sized Alliance symbol
emblazoned on the front breast—hurried across the concrete floor
toward my brother. I let my retort die on my lips and listened
intently to Jacob's conversation with the Alliance
officer.

"They have the spy contained," the man
said, glancing at me only briefly.

"Any trouble?" My brother asked,
nonchalantly looking at his fingernails.

"None."

"And the extra?" Jacob leaned back on
the table and with a disinterested gaze studied the
room.

"Contained as well."

"What of abilities?"

"Dr. Faulkner got a report from the
InfoCon. He believes that they may be an asset to us."

My brother nodded and waved the
officer away and turned back to me with a strange, thoughtful look
on his face.

The conversation had made no sense at
all. 'Extra?' 'Spy?'

Jacob grabbed my shoulder and
squeezed. "Eugene, I want you to know that I didn't want to harm
you with any of this."

"That's a bunch of crap, and you know
it. If you didn't want to harm me or anyone else why did you sic
your friends on us?"

"It wasn't you they were after. It was
your spy friend."

Spy friend? Who was he talking
about?

"Who?"

"Harry Gleeson."

I shook my head, at a loss for words.
That didn't make any sense.

Jacob slammed his palm down on one of
the crates, the sound echoing deftly through the building. "You
were deceived, Eugene. Harry was a spy! He worked directly for the
Isiroans."

"That's a lie." I shook my head
again.

"How do you know?" Jacob quirked an
eyebrow.

I looked down at my hands. "I...He's
my friend! He's not even a Kinetic." I insisted.

"Being your friend didn't stop Willow
from switching sides either, did it?" He sneered.

I jolted to my feet and stuck my
finger in his face. "Don't you dare! Willow was
kidnapped."

He raised an eyebrow. "Was she
now?"

I wanted to scream and yell at him but
nothing coherent was forming in my mouth. It all halted before I
could say it. "She..."

Jacob shrugged and smiled
condescendingly. "Whatever you think, Eugene."

"Don't patronize me,
Jacob."

"I'm not trying. You're refusing to
see logic."

"Logic?" I snorted. "Willow would
never join them. That's logic! You didn't know her like I
did!"

"No? Eugene she is like
many other idealistic girls her age. She's been pulled in by
flowery words and the promise of saving millions.
She's 
weak. 
That kind of ignorance is hard to work with,
Eugene."

I turned away and leaned into one of
the crates. "What do you want with me, Jacob?"

"I want to help you."

I didn't look up but instead took a
breath before responding. My parents had always told me I needed to
get a handle on my temper. But before now I had never really
considered how to control the emotions boiling under the surface of
my thoughts. "What do you mean by 'help me'?" I pinched the wood of
the crate, forcibly squeezing the wood slivers into my fingers. The
pain brought with it a focus. I looked over at Jacob.

"I mean," Jacob crossed his arms over
his chest. "I want to help you infiltrate Isiro's base. I was
really proud, Eugene. When I heard that you broke into Alliance
Headquarters, I knew that you were ready."

I glanced up at him. He was smiling as
usual but his eyes finally conveyed something other than that
severe coldness that he always had when dealing with people. I felt
my chest constrict. It was too good to be true. But his expression
was so honest.

My brother was proud of me.

In all the years that I
had lived around my brother he had always seemed disappointed with
me. Never had he uttered the words "I'm proud" in reference to me;
or anyone for that matter. All it took was aggressive actions and
he was 
proud
 of 
me
.

"You were deceived, Eugene." Jacob
pushed off the table and walked a slow circle around me and the
table. "Harry was working for the Isiroans all this time. He's been
calling in reports on your location ever since you left Columbus."
Jacob spoke in a soft, conciliatory voice.

I started to shake my head to deny his
words, but he grabbed my collar and pulled me over to the table. He
opened up a laptop laid out on the table and showed me a grainy
photo of someone leaving through a set of double doors, the same
doors that belonged to my high school.

"How about this...” Jacob pointed to
the picture. "Back when Miss Laura Jordan inflicted your whole
school with nightmares, he was the only one in your school not
accounted for by the InfoCon. If he was a non-Kinetic he would have
had his memory wiped like the rest of them. If he was an Alliance
Kinetic he would be safely with the others in the auditorium. But
no, he was an Isiroan. He didn't want to get caught, so he slipped
away before anyone knew the wiser." He showed me another picture,
closer in from another angle. It was Harry the day that Laura had
brought our school to its knees. He was looking back at the school,
hiding behind a parked school bus.

"Or when inexplicably your friend knew
how to work his way through highly classified Alliance databases."
He clicked to another photo, this one of me and him sitting in
front of a computer in the Alliance Headquarters. "What normal 16
year old knows how to do that?"

I shook my head, feeling my chin
tremble, and a hot lump in the back of my throat.

"While you traveled his calls to his
father were reports on your location and the information he was
gathering on you." Jacob pulled a small handheld recording device
and hit the play button.

"Hey,
Dad."
 It was Harry's
voice.

"Harry. How is the
mission?"
 It was Harry's
dad.

"Oh, it's going great.
I've been meeting so many new people."
 Harry's voice stayed conversational.

"Have there been any
complications?"

"Not really. We got in a
few scuffles with some guys from another camp."

"The Alliance?"

"Yeah. I'll be okay. I've
got lots of back up." Laughter.

"You haven't been found
out yet?"

"Nope. I've been
careful."

"Anything
else?"

"Eugene was saying that he
might need to go see the doctor, because he has a huge cut on his
arm from the wall climbing we were doing."

"We'll send in a team
immediately."

"Alright. I'll see you
later, Dad. Love you."

The tape clicked off. I didn't
understand that conversation at all.

"That was the last conversation we
were able to record off his cellphone. This was a strike on
Hooverville. A strike that killed over a dozen Alliance men, women,
and children."

"That's not possi...." I started to
say.

"Also we have video that you need to
see." He tapped the laptop on the table and turned it to show me
video from inside the bus station the first day. I could see myself
and Napoli. I could also see jets of water attacking Napoli. But
there was something missing.

Hoodie wasn't there. I asked Jacob to
play it over again, ignoring the smile on his face, and looked
again. There was no Hoodie. But I could distinctly remember him
being there.

Jacob tapped at the computer again and
showed me another video. It was the car chase. Where Hoodie should
have been on the roof of the car directing the waves of water there
was no one.