Kinetics (7 page)

"I don't know how long she can keep
this up." Kenny and Sandy were helping Rachel stay on her feet.

A flash of bright blue light blinded us
from the sky.  Four people appeared from nothing between us and the Aurora
Soldiers.

"Vanish, get ready for the return
trip. Hothead and Silence take out the Sabers." One of the men ordered.

Silence moved in a blur cutting through
the Sabers.  Hothead had taken out two massive blades and began cutting down
the Sabers in a blind furry.  Quickly the enemy soldiers fell and before long
only the leader stood chuckling.

"Sam it's been too long." the
leader said.

“Richard, it seems that you have moved
up in the ranks.” Sam, the man leading the newly arrived group yelled at the
leader of the Aurora soldiers. 

“Funny you should call me that.  It’s
not my name anymore.  Call me Jolt.”

"Who the hell are you?" I yelled. 
I was completely lost in the situation with no idea of what to do.

"I'm a friend." Sam said.

Jolt began to laugh as Silence and Hothead
finished taking out the Sabers.

"What is so funny?" Silence
yelled.

"These Sabers have had an upgrade. 
Something new the doctors have cooked up, over active production of a
supercharged adrenaline.  They won’t be stopped that easily.” Jolt held up the
head of one of the downed Sabers.  They all started to get up off the ground.

"That's definitely something
new." Sam started to show a little nervousness. 

I ran over to Rachel who let the force
field fall. She was on her knees holding her head in her hands, "if you
want to help, now would be a good time."

Silence and Hothead were thrust right
back into fighting off the wild Sabers.  The Sabers moved faster and were
predicting their movements. 

Silence was grabbed around the neck and
tossed like a rag doll.  Hothead swept the legs out from under the Saber, his
torso falling to the ground, but it didn’t stop.  The torso pulled itself
across the ground with its arms to attack Hothead’s legs.  Two other Sabers
jumped onto Hothead’s back and wrestled him to the ground. 

"I think it's time to go, Vanish."
Sam said.

"I'm not ready yet." She rubbed
her hands together.

"Well you need to get ready.  Hothead,
Silence, time to wrap things up."  Sam yelled to the two fighting the
crowd of soldiers who kept standing back up after getting knocked down. 

Hothead stood with all of the Sabers on
his back.  He got a hold of one of his blades and swung it blindly.  He took
out most of them that clung onto his back.  Silence slipped out and reappeared
behind Sam.

I stood there helplessly frozen with
fear, unable to act.  I tried to tap into the power that I had used to break us
free, but I couldn't find it.  Not only that, I couldn't find any power at
all. 

I was useless.

 Hothead grabbed the leg of one of the
soldiers and stepped on his head, then used him as a sort of bowling ball chucking
the limp body to knock down the others around him.  He stormed back where we
all stood.

The same bright blue light filled the
air and the ground left my feet.  All I could see was blue, I could feel everyone
around me, but I couldn't see any of them.  I couldn't see anything.

The ground was soft and cold.

"Where are we?" I looked
around in darkness.

"Alaska." Sam’s voice came
from my left, "Everyone ok? Silence, Hothead, Vanish?" He dug through
his pockets.

"Hey guys, there's something wrong
with Vanish." Silence stood beside where the girl laid on the ground, red
snow surrounding her body. 

"LIZ!" Hothead yelled running
to her, knocking silence out of his path and skidding to a stop on his knees
beside where she lay.

"Hothead remember your training."
Sam held a cell phone to his ear.  He rushed to her side as well, but wasn't
quite as panicked as Hothead, "We're back.  Send a truck, and prep a med
team." He put the phone back into his pocket and knelt down beside the
girl's head.  He looked at her face tilting her head side to side very gently.

"Sam?" Hothead growled at him.

"The blood is coming from her eyes
and mouth.  It has to be from overuse of her abilities.  She should be alright
Hothead." Sam explained, "Are the rest of you alright?" He asked
looking at me, then looking to the rest of the group.

I checked everyone and we were all
alive, very shaken but fine all the same.  Ronnie was up and moving around
slowly.  Rachel was wiping blood from her face with the sleeve of her shirt. 

A large vehicle with tracks instead of
wheels came barreling over a nearby hill of snow.  We carefully lifted Vanish
into the back of the truck and the rest of us piled in around her.  We sat on
cold metal seats that were around the edge of the inside of the back of the
vehicle.

"So which one of you is the tier six?"
Silence glanced around at us.

"What do you mean?" I was
sitting directly across from him.  I couldn't read his expression because his
face was covered.  I was suddenly aware that it was freezing and the back of
the truck was open.

"When you use your abilities you
give off kinetic brain waves, they can be measured in levels based on how
powerful the abilities are.  We got a hit in Las Vegas that registered as a
six, and that's rare." he was extremely excited.

"Silence, you need to keep quiet
until they have been debriefed, we have rules for a reason." Sam chimed in
from the front of the truck.

"Yes, Sir." Silence hung his
head.

No one spoke as the vehicle heaved up
and down over the dunes of snow that went on forever in every direction.  As we
came close to a building that was tucked into the side of one of the dunes, a
garage door opened spilling light onto the white ground.  The driver pulled
into the doorway and the door closed behind us.

Vanish was rushed off on a stretcher and
we were shown into a sitting room.

A strange rush came over us as we all
sat uncomfortably.  Ronnie sat next to me, having trouble keeping his eyes open. 
He let his head fall back on the couch.  I felt his irregular breaths turn into
a more steady rhythm as he leaned against me on the small couch.

Sam walked into the room and clapped his
hands together, "Here in a minute we are going to begin debriefing you
all.  I'm sure you have a lot of questions, but I am obligated to not answer
any of them until after the debriefing has finished." he explained.  We
all wanted answers, but we were tired from what had gone down and tired of
getting pulled around.

"Grace, do you want to go
first?"

"Sure, why not." I stood and
followed him out of the room.

Sam showed me out into the hallway and
to a room labeled “Debriefing.”  He opened the door to a small room with a bay
window the size of the outer wall. 

There were two chairs looking out of a
bay window, "Have a seat." Sam said pointing to one of the chairs. 

A fire burned in a fire place on the
wall opposite side of the room. 

I sat down.

"So I will make this as quick as
possible." He picked up a tablet computer that was resting in his chair
and began to fill in some information, "So how long were you inside of the
Aurora facility?"

"We checked the date a few hours
after our escape.  Best we can tell we were there for around thirty or so
days." I rubbed my face feeling a head ache coming on, "Events
shortly after we were taken is a little fuzzy.  It's all a little fuzzy."

"What is your ability?" He
wasn’t typing, but allowing the computer to do the typing.

I wasn’t sure how to describe the
ability so I just held out my hand and snapped my fingers making a flame about
the size of a lighter’s flame hovered over my skin.

"PyroKinetics, we have only found
one other with that ability." Sam said, "And were you the person that
caused the explosion at the facility?"

"I was the explosion." I
shifted in my seat and let the flame die.

"Alright, well I think that is
about all I need for now." he looked over the computer screen.

"What was it that you were calling
each other?" I asked.

"We have call-signs, if the public
were to overhear us speaking for any reason, they will only have our nicknames. 
One of our founders came up with the idea from old comic books and it stuck."
Sam put the computer on the floor next to his chair.

"Why did you get upset when Hothead
said Liz’s name once we reappeared?"

"It is a layer of defense we use. 
They have to follow the rules regardless of present company.  Every person has
to be cleared.”

"That word you used mod?  What does
that mean?" I wanted to understand this new world that I had become a part
of. 

"It's short for modification.  That
is what we refer to someone who was modified from their original DNA makeup in
order to gain any number of abilities.  Nat's, or naturals, are people who gain
their abilities naturally, and Reg's are normal people." he scratched his
head, "You'll learn as you go along."

“You recorded the Tier six spike at Las
Vegas, how did you know we had gone to the orphanage?”

“Shortly after the spike, we were
contacted by a shadow agent, someone we’ve smuggled within Aurora, that there
were new recruits.  We started scanning for unregistered users, when Ronnie
performed his first attack we honed in and Vanish took us there.” He explained
like it was standard daily activity. 

"My head is killing me." I rubbed
my eyes that began to burn from the stress. 

Sam and I returned to the waiting room. 
He took Kenny next.  I assured him that there was nothing to worry about and
that I would watch after Sandy while he was gone. 

I sat down next to Ronnie who was fast
asleep crumpled over to one side.  His eyes were racing around behind his
closed eyelids. 

I pushed him up and took my seat back. 
He didn't wake at all.

Rachel sat down in the chair next to me.

"So, who are these people?"
she tucked her feet underneath her on the chair for warmth. 

"I don't know.  But things here
seem much more copasetic." I rubbed my eyes.  I was feeling very tired
myself.

Silence walked into the room.  He looked
underamazed by what was happening.  He grabbed another chair and drug it to
where we sat and joined our conversation.  He wore all black clothes and his
face was wrapped to just below his eyes with a black cloth.  When he sat down
he took off the face wrap.

"How are you guys doing?" He
had a long scar on the left side of his neck that went up behind his ear and
into his short messy black hair.

"I'm fine; I think Ronnie should
see a doctor or something though.  He was hit really hard.  I'm surprised he
got back up and started walking around."

"He will get looked over just before
his debriefing.  Unfortunately the medical staff are all tied up with Vanish
right now."

"Is she going to be alright?"
Rachel asked.

"I think so, Hothead is torn up,
it's been a long time since we have seen an overuse. Truth be told it's been
six months or so since we have been on a mission.  When we got the message from
Zach, we jumped on the chance for new recruits."

I shook my head, my mouth hanging open,
it was like he was speaking another language altogether.  I kept looking at the
scar on his neck and wondered if that could have been one of us if Rachel
hadn't been there to stop the bullets.

"Awesome force field by the
way." I turned to look at her.

"Thanks.  I was kind of surprised
myself that I was able to do it.  I had only done it once before."

"We have found that in times of
dire need one's abilities tend to work better.  Not to say that someone who
spends time learning to control their ability can't do better." Silence
explained.

"Where do we go from here?"

"After Sam finishes all of the
interviews he will gather you all together and kind of explain things to you,
like some of the rules.  He won't be able to get them all and you will have a
lot of questions I'm sure, but we will do our best to teach you as things come
up."

"Is this what you went through when
you came here?" Rachel asked.

"Sort of, but I was only six when I
arrived." he counted on his fingers as if coming to this place would have been
forgettable.

"What happened?" I wanted to
know everything that I could, everything that he would tell me.  I wanted to
know if his story was like ours.

"My parents were fleeing from
another branch of Aurora.  We were all naturals and my father was informed that
we were wanted for study.  We got cornered in a small town in northern
California.  My father took on twenty sabers, and two Mods.  Unfortunately, he
was killed and my mother as well.  He was just not powerful enough.  The Mod
tried to kill me.  He was a telekinetic and he bombarded me with debris from
the building that my father and the Sabers had torn to pieces.”  He stopped for
a moment, remembering.