Edgewood Series: Books 1 - 3 (31 page)

Finally, I’d had enough. “Excuse me,” I called out. “Who’s in charge here?” Tim looked horrified that I’d interrupted, but I didn’t care. I figured that if they were going to kill me, they’d have done it already.

***

Five minutes later, the room had been cleared; the only ones left were me and the man in charge, the one who’d been standing with his arms folded. I’d been granted a private interview.

“So, we finally meet,” he said with a warm smile as if we’d been introduced at a social function. He could have been any one of the men Carly dated and brought to the house to meet the family. He had the pleasantries down, anyway. His appearance, though, was better than most of her boyfriends. He was clean cut, with good teeth, a wrinkle-free shirt, and pressed pants. A young executive, probably an overachiever in his school days. I’d seen his type before. He was much older than me, but I wasn’t intimidated.

“Yeah, I’m thinking we haven’t officially met since I don’t know your name,” I said. He sat in a chair and indicated I should do the same, but instead I leaned my butt back against the countertop holding the computers. My psychology teacher told us that towering above someone establishes dominancy. The whole alpha male thing. I wasn’t sure about that, but at least I didn’t look afraid, which is what I was going for. She also said that the correct thing to say when you don’t know what to say is, “Really.” The things you learn in school.

“Oh, sorry about that,” he said, standing to clasp my hand. “The name’s Miller.”

“Are you the commander I keep hearing about?”

“Me, the commander?” He chuckled. “No, I’m the division leader. No one gets to just meet the commander. He wouldn’t be here today for something like this.” He sat back in his chair, clearly amused.

“So the commander is the Wizard of Oz of your organization?”

“Excuse me?”

“You know—‘nobody sees the wizard, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain,’ that kind of thing?” He didn’t seem to get the reference, so I let it go and went on. “Never mind. I have a few questions for you.”

“Certainly. Ask away.”

“Why me?”

“Why not you?” he asked.

Okay, this was seriously frustrating. I said, “Look, I don’t want to play games. I just want answers. Why was I put through these challenges? Clearly you know that I’m not the only one who was exposed to the light particles.”

Miller said, “No, you’re not the only one who was exposed. Let me show you something.” He sat at a computer terminal and clicked on a few things on the keyboard. On the large screen in the front of the room popped up a still photo of Jameson along with a list of stats—his name, age, address, and at the top: Power: Telekinesis, Low. “You know him?” he said, pointing.

A rhetorical question, but I answered it anyway. “Yes.”

“But you don’t like him.” A statement.

“He’s okay,” I said.

“Here’s one you know, and you like her a whole lot better than the first guy.” Miller clicked and up came a screenshot of Mallory alongside a listing of her information. “Mallory Nassif, a very talented young lady. Not as talented as you, but then, nobody is.” He glanced to get my reaction, but when I didn’t comment, he continued. “And finally, the fourth Edgewood teen.” The screen image showed Nadia in her usual dark jeans, her upper half embedded in her hoodie. Only her small hands and the tip of her nose were visible in the photo. Her stats were also listed along with her power. “All three have what we call low to medium powers. Jameson is the least impressive of the bunch. I can’t tell you the number of people on the planet who can do what he does. Most of them work as magicians until their powers start to fail them in their thirties. Yes, your friends’ abilities are marginal. You, on the other hand, have something very unusual.”

“Really.”

“Yes.”

“So if you already know so much about me, why bring me here? Why the big subterfuge with kidnapping my nephew and sending messages with a voice changer? What was the point of putting us through this whole ordeal?”

“To see how you’d react under pressure,” he said. “To test how you conduct yourself. You’re very brave and you think quickly. Those are things we didn’t know until we put you through the obstacles. You’ve exceeded our expectations every step of the way.”

“But I didn’t cure Clarice’s cancer.”

“Clarice didn’t have cancer. That was the test. The baby, on the other hand, had been screaming nonstop for three days. Damn molars.” Miller shook his head and sort of tsked-tsked. “The baby was the only one in the room in pain. You gravitated right to him and immediately fixed the problem.”

“Really.”

There was a long silence; Miller broke it. “You, Mr. Becker, not only have powers in the high range, but you have multiple abilities and you seem to be accruing more and more as time goes on.”

“And that’s because I’m a second gen?”

“Yes!” he said. “That’s been our theory. Can you confirm that?”

“I have no idea what that means. I’ve just been hearing it all day.”

“Oh.” Miller’s face fell in disappointment. “Well, that means that you’d be the second generation to acquire these powers. We have a theory, not yet proven, that DNA can store, if not the actual abilities, the memory of the abilities. And the resulting offspring, if exposed to the particles, builds from there. It would certainly account for you.”

“Are you saying that one of my parents had powers? Because I hate to contradict you, but I’m pretty sure you’re wrong.” I thought of my dad snoozing in his recliner and my mom, bone-weary after a day at work. If they’d ever gone through a period where their life had been exceptional, you couldn’t tell it by me.

“It’s a theory,” Miller said firmly. “And if anyone has the answer it would be Carly.”

“Carly? My sister, Carly?”

He nodded. “Our information doesn’t go back far enough, but we know she knows. You’d need to ask her.”

“Why don’t you ask her yourself?”

“Believe me, we’ve tried. She won’t talk to us.”

A sick feeling came over me, and all at once things made sense. Carly had been dealing with this for the past sixteen years and my parents and I never knew. All the times she’d been incommunicado or flaked out on us and missed family gatherings, she’d probably had a good reason. Maybe she’d been protecting us by not saying anything. It was like the planet shifted and revealed itself to me. I’d been thinking trash about my sister, when really she was a hero.

“You might be thinking, Russ, that our tactics are extreme,” Miller said. “And I would agree that on the surface, it looks that way. But if you knew more about our organization, I think you’d understand.” He turned back to the computer and started an actual PowerPoint slideshow. Despite myself, I listened and watched. The first screenshot was a map of the world covered in dots. “We’re international and have headquarters in all the major cities. The official group name is the Associates, although you won’t find us listed that way anywhere. Instead, our members are present in government and business, anywhere structure and stability are needed.”

He clicked to the next image—an old painting of a serious man, the kind you see in museums. “We’ve been around for centuries. Our founder, Matthew Bradford, was one of the first to be exposed to the light particles, as you call them. He recruited others with powers with the idea that collectively they could make a difference. And they did.”

“Eventually,” Miller said, clicking to an image of the light particles on a field, not my field though, “the group figured out that these fragments fell periodically in various spots around the country. They also realized that the people coming into contact with them were teenagers, all of whom had insomnia and felt compelled to walk outdoors prior to and on the night of the event.” He turned to me. “What was it like, Russ? Was it as incredible as they say?” His voice had a wistful tone.

“Incredible, yes,” I said. “There’s really no way to describe it. And nothing in the world comes close, at least not that I know of.”

He sighed. “That’s what I hear.” We both stared at the photo of the light particles configured in a perfect spiral on the field. The photo had captured the shape and glow, but it lacked the glittering magic of the real thing. A picture couldn’t possibly convey the feeling the lights gave off—like the first day of summer vacation times a thousand. Miller moved forward in the PowerPoint, and we found ourselves looking at a timeline. “Although some of the initial groups were found out and condemned, the Salem witch trials being an example, those in our organization became good at covering their tracks. Using our talents, we’ve made improvements in the quality of life for Americans and others around the planet.”

“What kinds of improvements?”

“Thousands of improvements, mostly of the preventative kind. How do you think the United States became a supreme power with so much material wealth? Just between us, there have been Hitler types who have tried to seize power and who
would
have taken over, if not for us. While the citizens of our country sleep, we’re quietly working behind the scenes to do everything we can to keep the economy from collapsing and to keep order in our cities.”

It was a hyped-up sales pitch, but I didn’t challenge him. Instead I asked, “So not everyone in the Associates has powers?”

“That’s right. In fact, most of us don’t,” he said. “Some of us are scientists or politicians or handle the day-to-day operations. The ones with the powers, they’re sort of the James Bonds of our group. Well regarded and vital to our cause.”

“You send people on missions.”

“That and more. The Associates with powers are well provided for. When you join our organization, you’ll never have to worry about anything again. We can arrange anything for a young guy such as yourself. We make things happen.”

“What kind of things?”

“Anything you want. You want to graduate from high school early? We can arrange that. You want to own a certain car, maybe something sporty that will get the right kind of attention from girls? Amazingly, you’ll win one in a contest you don’t even remember entering. You want to go to Harvard? We can arrange a full scholarship and make sure you’re on the honor roll every semester until graduation. And the best part, my friend? You don’t have to do any of the course work if you don’t want to. In the meantime, of course, you’ll be working for us, here and there as time allows, and when you graduate, we’ll offer you a lucrative position working for any company in any city you’re interested in.”

“But I won’t really be working for them because it will be a cover. I’ll actually be working for you.”

“Bingo,” he said, pleased I was getting it. “You’ll be paid well, of course. Very well. And the benefits are endless. Best of all, my friend, you’ll know you’re making the world a better place. We would love to have someone with your talents on board. So,” he said, standing up, so that now he towered over me, “what would you say to that?”

“I’d say I’m not your friend.” I hadn’t planned on blurting it out in such a mean voice, it just came out that way.

A thin smile spread across his face, like he’d been expecting this reaction. “Fair enough.” He shrugged. “We’ll check back with you later this summer. I have a feeling you’ll be changing your mind.”

By the time they returned us to the parking lot across the street from the real Milwaukee Intermodal Station, Carly, Frank, and I were exhausted. Frank, in fact, fell asleep in the van during the drive back. We were in a different van this time around, but again, we were in a windowless back area. Our driver seemed to loop around endlessly, but there was no way to know if he did that on purpose or if we were on a direct route that just happened to be circuitous. You could have paid me a million dollars and I couldn’t have retraced our drive back to the building where I’d gone through the obstacle course.

Carly and I didn’t talk in the van. Both of us were emotionally spent, and we also knew the Associates were watching and listening. I’d gotten past it being creepy. It just was the way things were.

When we arrived at the lot in Milwaukee, the back doors of the van popped open. We climbed out disoriented, me half-carrying Frank, who moved sluggishly as if drugged. Carly got her spark back and angrily slammed the van doors to make a statement, but I don’t think it made an impression. The driver of the van didn’t get out or speak to us, just waited until we were in Carly’s car and then sped off, tires squealing.

After I got Frank situated in the back seat, Carly arranged his feet and buckled him in like he was a small child. With his eyes closed and his hair in his face, he looked young and innocent. I was glad he wouldn’t remember getting forcibly kidnapped from his home, but there was no erasing the fact that he’d been a victim.

Once we’d returned to their apartment and Frank had been settled into bed, Carly opened a bottle of red wine and poured herself a glass. “I’d offer you one, but I feel badly enough that I’ve exposed you to all of this. I’m not going to be the one to start you drinking too,” she said, sinking into a chair and setting the bottle on the end table. She had both hands around the glass like it was a lifeline. “Help yourself to a Coke. They’re in the fridge.”

“No thanks.” I was on the couch, appropriate since it was going to be my bed soon if we were going to perpetuate the lie I had told my parents—that I was sleeping overnight because I was staying to help Frank with a science project. Carly had discovered that Mom had left voice mail saying it was fine that I’d be at her place for the night. In fact, my parents were taking advantage of my absence by driving up to Door County for an impromptu overnight at their favorite bed-and-breakfast. So much for them being worried about me. I said, “I don’t know why you’d say you exposed me to this. I was the one who went out walking and saw the lights. You had nothing to do with it.”

“I should have paid attention,” she said. “If I had known Mom and Dad were taking you to Dr. Anton for sleep problems, I could have prevented everything.”