Kinetics: In Search of Willow (34 page)

EUGENE YOSHIDA

I walked down a main road
in the heart of Denver, rubbing at the little scratches on my arms.
Cars and buses passed at a dizzying pace. A few of the people I
passed stared at me but most went about their business without
giving me more than a second glance. I'm pretty sure I looked like
some kind of crack addict with my ripped clothes covered in dust
and my shoes looking dog-eared.

I peered at myself in the reflection
of a window and shook my head. My hair was disheveled and sticking
to the sweat on my forehead. The glasses that Nick had given me
were blurry and covered with fingerprints. My clothes looked even
worse in my reflection than they had when I looked over myself
without it. My shirt was torn in a half dozen locations and my
jeans had rips up and down my legs. How was I going to get to
Laramie now, looking like a dusty street rat?

I shook off some of the dust and tried
to make my hair not look like a birds nest. I cleaned the glasses
with the corner of my shirt but the cloth was dirty enough that it
didn't make the glass any better. I shrugged and put the glasses in
my pocket. My reflection looked a little more like me, but not. My
eyes were sunken in, and my cheeks looked like they had lost some
roundness.

I pressed my hand to the glass and
blocked my view. It didn't matter anymore.

I set off at a walk again wandering
the streets trying to figure out what to do. I had been in this
position before. But back then I had been wandering the streets of
my own city, and I had ended up at the house of one of my friends.
Here I had no friends, and my brother was not going to do me any
favors.

I watched my feet walk but I didn't
really pay attention to where I was going. The streets were filled
with people and cars going about routines and fulfilling plans with
their friends, family, coworkers. It wasn't enough that I was lost
and alone. I was lost and alone surrounded by people with plans and
destinations. I had a destination. But how to get there?

Up ahead I saw a man leaning on the
hood of a yellow minivan. Thick black letters spelled out "TAXI" on
the hood and the doors. The man was chewing on a well-worn cigar
and flipping through a magazine. An idea began to form in my
mind.

"Hey!" I called out the
man.

He looked up and peered at me over his
glasses. "Hey, yourself. Need a lift?"

"Yeah. How far north can you take
me?"

He glanced at his watch. "I can get
you as far as Fort Collins. But the real question is, can you
pay?"

"Yup," I lied, and patted my empty
back pocket.

He jerked his head at the cab and
grinned. "Get in."

I looked around for a moment, feeling
the hair rising on the back of my neck. No one was looking at me,
but the sudden feeling of being watched didn't go away. I took a
deep breath and followed the guy into the cab. We drove through the
streets, and I avoided looking at the meter ticking upwards.
Whenever we got to Fort Collins, I was going to have to make a run
for it, so I had to know where I was going. In the mean time I
could rest a bit. It gave me time to plan.

After I was out of the cab, I would
probably have to hitchhike the rest of the way into Wyoming. I'd
never done anything like it without Harry, but really it couldn't
be harder than sticking my thumb out, right? I know I didn't want
to repeat the mistake with the RV dude back in Roswell, but without
any money it was going to be hard to—

I saw only a single headlight as the
truck blindsided the cab. I wasn't wearing a seatbelt so I hit the
other side of the car with a resounding crash. Glass clawed through
my arm and a corner of the metal from the top of the cab speared
downwards and sliced a huge gash along my temple. I groaned and
tried to find my bearings. Everything was upside down, and I could
see the cabbie latched in his seatbelt, hanging awkwardly. I saw
pavement at the top of the windshield.

"Oh, God," I croaked.

The cab shook and I felt hands pulling
me out. My eyes closed and I was left with blackness.

V
ery few times did I realize that by the time I was 15 I would
be part of a world falling apart.
 Willow walked on the edge of the rhythmic waves from
the sea. I walked beside her and felt the grains of sand tickle my
toes. 
I think I hoped to be part of
something beautiful and growing. But things are neglected and I'm
uncertain now… can I raise a sapling into a
redwood? 
She stopped and picked up a
small shell in the sand and then put it into my
palm. 
They say you have to be careful
what you wish for.

I smelled medical alcohol. But the
sharp smell was only an annoyance. There was something I wanted to
go back to. A dream I wanted to dream. There was softness and
warmth that brushed away the pain and the sadness, the fear and the
loneliness. The sharp smell stung my nostrils. I felt a resounding
ache everywhere, deep into my bones, deeper into my soul. I sucked
in a breath and let it out.

"It's about time you woke up, Eugene."
a voice said.

I rolled over and opened my eyes to
see Jacob sitting on a white wicker chair. "What?" I asked. I was
lying in a bed, in a sterile white room with few
decorations.

"You were in an accident," Jacob
continued. "You should have been wearing a seatbelt. This wouldn't
have happened."

It wasn't clicking in my head.
"What?"

"I had some of my men wreck the cab
you were in. You should know better than to have run off. I was
going to help you," he smiled.

"Not fast enough," I whispered. The
fog over my mind was lifting. My chest hurt.

"These things require patience." Jacob
leaned over his knees and rested his elbows on them.

"I don't have time to be patient." I
tried to stretch out my legs but felt a constriction.

"If you don't have time, then you
should have stayed home," he grinned, shaking his head.

"Stop it!" I screamed and tried to
left hook him in the face. I only fell out of the bed, twisting my
wrist in an odd angle.

Jacob sighed and stood up. "You're
much too volatile, Eugene. But you're fortunate that I can help you
now. If only you would have waited. Involving unnecessary people
gets them killed."

I pushed up off the ground. "What do
you mean?"

"Your cab driver was killed in the
crash." Jacob looked down at me and smiled.

I gulped. "You killed him! You caused
the crash!"

"Nope. It was you. Your fault." He
stepped over me and out the door.

I slammed my fist into the floor.
"Shit…no."

Jacob poked his head back through the
door. "By the way, I was on my way to tell you before you pulled a
Houdini that you got your wish. You're going to go in. But you go
alone."

"Whatever," I said, pushing myself
up.

He smiled and twinkled his fingers at
me. "Rest up!"

***

E
very day I hope that things will get better. That we will
recover from this horrible place that we’ve been placed in. It
wasn’t us who put us here. It was the ones who came before. The
fools of the human race who dared to allow themselves to be drawn
in with honey laced words of false promise.

Willow stood on the edge
of a boat staring out at an endless sea, the water reflected her
amber eyes. The only thing beside the boat was a barren island. The
boat was heading right for it.
Eugene… You
must help us…

Help me…

HARRY GLEESON

The men came for me the next morning.
I had expected this. Part of me was ready for whatever torture
tactics they might use, even though I had only read about
Alliance-specific tactics in my dad's books. But another part was
frightened. I latched onto that fear, and for the sake of what
little information I had about my people, I was ready to use that
fear as a shield.

When the men grabbed me and roughly
woke me from sleep, I was disoriented. I couldn't remember where I
was, and it took me a second to remember my game plan. My thoughts
were slow and chaotic. I knew from the chill in the room that I was
probably starting to get hypothermia. I had to make this quick or I
would probably die here.

I screamed and shouted, and after a
minute of debate with myself while they dragged me kicking and
screaming past the empty cells and into a hallway off to the side,
I emptied my bladder. My stomach was happy about it, but my dignity
in front of my would-be torturers was now at an all-time low. I
just gave them ammunition that would have no real effect against me
while I diverted attention away the real issue.

I shook my head to try and clear away
the leftover grogginess and tried to make sense of the twisting and
turning hallways that the two men were dragging me through. Vaguely
I heard them already berating me about peeing on myself. I shrugged
off their words and tried to concentrate only on my
surroundings.

One of the men was looking at me with
suspicion in his eyes, so I let out a wail that would probably make
a police siren jealous. The guy pulled back his arm and smacked me
across the face. The sting resonated through my whole body,
shocking me into silence.

"Shut up if you don't want
to die!" he said, and pulled me the last few steps into a room that
was as hot as the room with cells was cold. They shoved me down on
a stool in front of a table and took my hands out of the shackles.
They weren't free for long. One of the men took
one of my hands and pressed it down to the table. He flicked
his fingers and the metal of the table sprang up around my wrist.
They left the room. I swallowed and shuddered even though it wasn't
cold anymore.

"What do you know about Willow
Patterson?" a male voice rang out across the room. I looked around.
There was no mirror to indicate a hidden room with a one-way
window, and there weren't any cameras. I was at a loss at how they
could see me, but I guess that wasn't important.

I let out what I hoped was a
convincing sob and through it I said, "She's a
classmate."

"What else?" the voice
demanded.

I glanced around again, but there was
still no way to tell how he could see me. "She was
kidnapped!"

"What is she to you?" At first the
voice had seemed to come from the front center of the room right in
front of me, but now it was off to the left. It then dawned on me
that the interrogator was not in another room but in the same room
with me.

Invisibility.

Of course.

Something slammed into the table and
suddenly I felt a jolt run through my whole body. On the table I
could see sparks dancing across the table around the distinct shape
of a hand.

Electrokinesis too?

The hand and the jolt disappeared. I
could still feel the electricity running through my system. I
didn't like where this was going. The two men who dragged me in
here came back with what looked like a zombified
defibrillator.

I sucked in a breath. "You don't need
to do this! I'll talk!"

They laughed and the real torture
began. The invisible man didn't speak again, and the other two
never spoke. They didn't ask me any questions. Instead they walked
in circles around me, ridiculing me on everything from peeing my
pants to my appearance to my mother's bedroom activities. And when
they didn't get a response from me, the guy with the defibrillator
would press it to the table, electrifying the table and me with
it.

I don't know when my fake tears turned
real. I don't know when I actually started pleading with them that
I would tell them everything I knew. I don't know when it finally
ended, but forever would not have lasted as long.

They dragged me back through the halls
that I didn't pay attention to anymore, back into the super chilled
cell room and threw me into a heap on the floor of my cell. They
never put the shackles back on, but at this point I didn't care
anymore. My game plan to act weak became a reality all too soon. I
couldn't even think about escaping anymore. It took too much energy
to even blink. An escape would take years with what little I was
running on.

How much time has passed? The second
day went much like the first. The third like the second. And on and
on. They never asked any questions. I was only vaguely aware of the
hunger pains in my stomach. When was the last time I ate or drank?
They never let me near any water, and even now the cold seeping
through my bones in the cell room and the overwhelming heat in the
interrogation room was too much to keep up with.

It was just another sensation, I told
myself.

CHAPTER 25