Kinetics: In Search of Willow (32 page)

A shaft of fire exploded inwards and a
figure burst through.

I sat up in my makeshift bed and
shakily wiped the sweat from my brow. I kicked away the blanket and
sat with my head cradled in trembling fingers. My heart arched its
way through my chest rapidly. I closed my eyes against bright
sunlight spearing through the window and opened them only to find
myself not in the room anymore. I was outside.

The sky was dark but filled to the
brim with countless stars arcing across the sky. I sucked in a
breath and stumbled backward. "What?"

My voice felt strange and cottony like
I wasn't entirely here.

"You're not supposed to be here
yet."

I turned sharply and saw a man with a
flashlight in hand. The light from his flashlight was so bright
under the dark sky I couldn't see his face.

"I… what?" I asked, shielding my eyes
from the searing bright light.

"You aren't completely here yet.
You're not ready." He said.

"Ready for what?"

I felt something tug at the back of my
head. I look back and saw a girl with ratty dreads perched on a
rock next to me.

"What is your name?" she
asked.

I turned back to the man. Confusion
and the odd rumble of my heartbeat jittered my thoughts.

"Where am I?"

"That's not important now. You need to
go back," he said.

"Wha?" The man took a huge step
forward and touched my forehead. I felt something blossom inside me
like a mushroom cloud, filling me with an inner fire.

I closed my eyes, and when his touch
on my forehead was gone, I opened them. I was back in the room with
my blanket underfoot. I shook away the strange feelings. With
little more than a quick glance I remembered all the shit that had
gone down yesterday. Harry a betrayer and me alone.

My brother had whisked me away to this
tall nearly windowless building with little more than a word and
left with even fewer. The room was adorned with a picture of a
lotus and a single window that looked out on the cityscape of
Denver, Colorado. A desk and leather loveseat sat up against the
wall. I plopped down with a sigh onto the loveseat and shivered at
the cold leather. Whatever heat I had left behind before being
teleported away was now gone.

As if my life wasn't complicated
enough, first there was the dream and then that stupid teleporting
thing. I stood next to the window and watched the sun peak over the
buildings. Dawn was here, the start of a new day, the continuation
of me going after Willow. But instead I was stuck here, waiting for
Jacob to get back.

"Wait" he had said. And wait I did
like some kind of bozo. I dug my nails into my arm out of
self-punishment for even agreeing to halt my progress toward
Willow. She was the important thing here, not whatever B.S. that
Jacob was playing with.

I paced at the door that led out into
the dark hallway. It was empty but for a few fake plants. I growled
under my breath, halting profanities before they could emerge into
real words. I didn't want to wait here. Wait for my best friend to
be taken from my permanently. Turned into some breathing vessel for
whatever the hell Isiro really was.

I stopped mid-pace and looked at the
door. It would be easy to leave. Easy to find the elevator and
enter this unfamiliar city. But would it be easy to get out. Would
it be easy to hitchhike across the state to some virtually unknown
place? There was only one way to find out.

I gave into the twitching urge to open
the door and stepped out into the hallway. It was still dark with
only the emergency lights illuminating everything. Just as it had
been when Jacob first brought me here.

I looked both ways, expecting for some
reason that Jacob would be waiting for me outside. But he wasn't
there. I sighed and jogged toward the elevator.

The silver doors remained shut even
after jamming my thumb into the down arrow almost a hundred times.
I looked around for an answer to the inactive elevators but none
were around. At the other end of the hall I saw an Exit sign and a
stairwell sign lighting the wall in red and green.

The stairwell was darker than the
hallway. The light from the signs above my head only reached so far
and the stairs descended into a darker-than-black nothingness. I
looked back at the door for a split second before plunging myself
in.

Sight became nothing when the door
closed behind me, and I could only feel the wall and the stair
rail. Fingers touched chilled concrete and cold steel rails, and
feet touched rough steps.

You never really understand the
concept of blindness until all light is gone. I felt my eyes
straining to find light, but there was none and I was literally
blind. My sight was now through my hands, the little grooves in the
concrete wall and the smooth texture of the rail were huge. My only
existence was through those and the vague feeling of the floor
though my shoes. I moved quickly, trying to find escape from this
unnerving blindness.

I made my way down one whole flight
and then felt along the wall. My palm touched the handle of a door
and I pushed it open. I hoped this was the ground floor. To be
honest I didn't really know how high up the building I was. I
didn't know what I was walking into, but I really wanted it to be
an easy way out.

I stepped out into a large room. The
windows were heavily tinted over and only vague shapes could be
seen. The room was as dark as everything else in the whole building
that I'd seen. But this room was also different. A dozen or so
desks were scattered loosely around the room. Each desk had a
computer with a brightly lit monitor.

At first glance most of the monitors
held information about things and people I didn't know. There were
a few monitors with images casually scrolling across the screen. I
walked across the room past little glass doors that lined the wall
toward the elevator. Each step I took felt more dangerous than the
last. My shoes squeaked loudly on the floor, and I couldn't help
but flinch every time I could hear it echo around the
room.

The glass doors along the walls led to
more dark places. I couldn't see much from my vantage point, but
from what I could tell in the dim light they were only small rooms.
Probably offices.

I reached the elevator and punched the
down arrow. But the result was the same as the floor above. Nothing
and no answer as to why the elevator was down. It's almost like
Jacob left me in an abandoned building. I squinted at the little
number above the elevator door. It was a three. There wasn't one on
the floor above, leaving me with little knowledge about where I was
or how far up. Now I knew that there were two more floors below me.
I would just have to take the stairs the whole way.

A flash of red caught the corner of my
eye. I stopped and stared at the source. One of the monitors was
scrolling images of a girl. Willow. My heart quickened and I
stumbled over wires to reach the monitor with Willow's face in it.
They were pictures of everyday life. I recognized them as the few
days leading up to her kidnapping. I was even in a few of them. But
the real kicker was pictures of her after her kidnapping. There she
was in the towns and places that Harry and I visited not long after
her. Even after her kidnapping the Alliance had still been watching
her? I know that we had gotten reports of their locations, but
these images were close and numerous.

A sigh somewhere in the direction of
the offices made me look up, distracting me from the questions
rising in my mind.

I saw no one.

"Hello?" I asked
cautiously.

A vent on the ceiling started blowing
chilled air, and I let out a breath. Just the AC. I shook off the
spooked feeling and tapped the keyboard connected to the monitor
and computer. The screen flickered and Willow's face
disappeared.

Words filled the screen. Reports,
statuses, monitoring. I sat down in the chair and began to read.
The Alliance had been keeping tabs on Willow for weeks prior to her
kidnapping. Did they know that she was going to be taken? I moved,
unfamiliar with the layout of the files, through the reports
looking for answers.

…
targeted by
Isiro...matched as a host...is unaware of Isiroan
intentions...

I stopped breathing at the next words
I saw.

We have made the
determination to let her be taken as a host.

I shuddered and stood up, my knees
trembling. Some sanity was left so I could see that that last
statement had been an order from 'The Council.'

…
trying to determine who
the Isiroan contact is…not the usual methods at play...no known
Isiroans have made contact with the target….

"You're not supposed to be here." A
voice rang out in the quiet room.

I jumped back from the computer and
slammed into the one behind me. My throat clenched against a cry.
Jacob was standing next to me. It took one look at the screen with
Willow's information on it and then I felt fury.

"What the FUCK, Jacob! YOU KNEW. You
knew they were going to take her and you just let them!" I grasped
the screen and chucked it. It didn't go far, but it caused a lot of
sparks. I kicked the desk and then fought Jacob's attempts to hold
me back.

"Stop."

"Why should I? Huh? WHY SHOULD I!" The
next nearest computer got the same fate as the first and then I
stopped and sank to the ground in the middle of the chaos I had
just caused. "Why should I?" I whispered.

"Look," Jacob began.

"I don't want to. You... everybody,
you're all bullshitters." I leaned over my hands and pulled at the
strands of hair caught in my fingers. The heel of my palm pushed
the unneeded glasses against my face and I tore them off. Nick's
fake glasses. I wanted to throw them. I wanted to remove the last
of Nick's new image of me from my mind. But I couldn't. I pushed
them back onto my face and pinched the bridge of my nose. I
couldn't let go of the hope that new image had instilled in
me.

"I'm sorry that you had to see that,
Eugene." Jacob knelt next to me and patted my shoulder. "But that
wasn't my doing. It was the Alliance. The Alliance Council and
Miriam Lancaster."

"You work for them," I accused,
glaring at him.

"Yes... and no." He smiled.

"What do you mean?"

"That's for another day, Eugene." He
stood and stepped back.

"Not later. Now!" I stood up and
challenged the height difference between us. "I'm tired of all this
smoke and mirrors shit you all seem way too fond of. I want
answers, Jake, not these... these... lies."

"I have never lied to you,
Eugene."

"Haven't you?" I refused to look up. I
didn't want to see his mocking face, or even a stoic face--whatever
incarnation my brother was putting on today.

"No. And it's unfortunate that it has
to be now."

"What?" I peered up finally, and saw
only concern. Genuine concern.

"That you realize that you can't trust
anyone but yourself." He smiled at me, almost sadly.

"What about you? Should I trust
you?"

"Yes. Because I am not just anyone,
Eugene, I'm your blood. We stick together no matter what. I would
only do what's best for you."

I lightly touched a fallen keyboard
and looked up at my brother. He offered a hand to me. I clenched my
fists and stood up on my own. "If you say so."

"Come on. You should rest some more.
You have a long day ahead of you tomorrow."

As we left, I heard a sigh coming from
the offices again. I looked back and a trick of the light made it
look like a bent-over man peered at us from behind one of the glass
doors.

Jacob dropped me off at the room with
the lotus flower picture. My blanket was still strewn across the
floor. I grabbed it and wrapped it around my shoulders. Jacob
placed a folder on the desk and looked down his nose at
me.

"Learn these. Don't leave this floor
again." He left me alone then and I sank to the seat of the couch.
I was exhausted all over again. I let myself doze off, fitfully
dreaming of far off things. I don't think I ever really slept. It
was just a feeble escape from reality while my body fought to stave
off the rising exhaustion.

It was about mid-day, with the sun so
high in the sky I couldn't see it through the window. I shook off
the blanket and stared groggily at the wall. The lotus flower
picture had faded reflections of the room. I could see my face very
vaguely in the after image. My hair stuck out all over the place
and my eyes seemed sunken in. I rubbed the crusty seeds out of the
corner of my eyes.

I opened the folder that
Jacob had left me and found information. A huge map of the Laramie
base and a thick stack of papers clipped together. The first page
of the papers said: 
Classified.

The papers were a plan. Apparently a
failed plan. The first page was a summary of the plan and why it
had failed.

… 
infiltrate the base
… set beacon … specialized artillery will hit the spot … take out
the emitter.