Kinetics: In Search of Willow (14 page)

"Wha? What are you—what are you
doing?" I gasped out.

Before the Ashwater could
answer I felt the heat from earlier begin to take hold again. My
body warmed slowly and I stayed an exhausted heap on the floor. The
man pushed back and sat against the wall, tinkering with what
looked like a paper airplane. 
Crazy
old man
, was my last thought before I
passed out.

I woke up later with a pounding
headache. An unfamiliar man stood over me and grabbed my shirt
almost as soon as my eyes opened. He pulled me out of the cell and
dragged me down an unfamiliar hall.

He pushed me into a well adorned
room.

"Sit and do not move." He frowned at
me, and shut the door firmly behind him. I tested the door, but it
didn't budge, so I did the only thing that my throbbing head wanted
to do and that was sit down for a bit.

The hands on the clock at the back of
the room ticked by slowly. Seconds were passing like hours, minutes
like days. I picked at a loose thread in the armrest of my chair
and tried to not go crazy as my muscles burned.

Stuck in this room I knew I was
probably going to some kind of prison for Kinetics. I highly
doubted that they were going to let me and Harry's attempt at
information theft go unpunished. Speaking of Harry, I hadn't seen
him at all. Had he escaped?

The door opened and three people
entered. The man who had dragged me in here came in first followed
by Lancaster and Carmichael. Lancaster took a seat across from me
and smiled.

"You caused a bit of trouble." She
shook her head.

"Sorry," I replied,
flippantly.

"Hmm, I wonder. We couldn't tell what
you and your friend were looking up. Would you mind telling
me?"

"We were looking up information on how
to save Willow."

She sat back and smiled. "You are
looking for information that doesn't exist."

I ground my teeth together and
narrowed my eyes at her. "I refuse to believe that you people can't
save her."

"I told you once before that we have
had people in her situation before. It is not possible to save her.
The people who have taken her are not to be messed with. They are
evil people with nothing but harm to cause. She is lost, and we
cannot let someone like you endanger our society with delusions of
heroism. You must think of her as dead, because the girl you knew a
few days ago is gone."

I shook my head. "I can't… I
can't."

"Listen." Her voice softened. "You
have an opportunity to get trained, right here, right now. You
could be like your brother, powerful, respected in our community.
Don't you want to be respected?"

"I want Willow saved!" I
shouted.

"Then get trained." Her voice was
stern again. "Then you can go after the Isiroans who took her. She
may be gone to us now, but you can get the retribution you want
with a little patience."

I didn't want retribution. I didn't
want to get trained. I REALLY didn't want to be like my brother. I
barely knew what he did except kill. I shuddered away the memory of
his kill at the Conference.

"Let me…add to my argument." She said
slowly and pulled a large photo out of an envelope in her hands.
She slid the photo across the table and smiled warmly when I made
brief eye-contact over the glossy picture of a man.

"Is this the man you saw at the
convention center?"

I studied the image. He had greasy
dark hair, with a few grey streaks running along his temples and
out over his forehead. I didn't have to look at it long before I
saw the very clear resemblance to the man who had grabbed Willow.
That moment was seared onto the back of my eyeballs.
"Yes."

"His name is Marcus Grey. He's a
former, high-ranking admiral in the Isiroan ranks and now teaches
their new recruits. He's very close to Isiro himself, so it's no
surprise that he was the one tasked with capturing your friend to
be his new host."

I swallowed, a lump forming in my
throat.

"He was in charge of their special
operations around the world and was a major force behind the Second
Great Kinetic War. He was Reginald Cook's adviser!" Lancaster sat
back and studied me. "Although you likely have no knowledge of Cook
and his war… a part of history that has eluded you due to your
"disability."

"I don't really..."

"This," she interrupted, "is the
caliber of man they have capturing a little girl from her home. A
girl who couldn't hurt them if she tried. I don't think you realize
the gravity of what we are facing if we even try to attempt a
rescue. Now: training. If you are trained by the best of the best
in the Alliance then you can be powerful, and someday great. If
your brother is any indication of what you could be, then I think
we could easily win this war."

"But if I go through the training
then..."

"You have to let Willow be
taken."

"No thanks." I shook my head
vehemently.

Lancaster shrugged and looked at me
with an intense gaze. "Your loss, my dear boy. Do you feel your
abilities are where they need to be? You seem relatively well
trained."

I was confused. "I… haven't been
trained?" It came out more a question than a statement.

"You display abilities beyond what
someone in your position should have." Lancaster eyed me with what
could only have been suspicion. "You must have been trained a
little."

"I mean… Willow tried to show me how
to use telepathy, but… I don't even know what my other power is
supposed to be."

Her eyes narrowed, "I don't like being
lied to. We will talk later when you feel like being more
truthful."

She waved her hand and the guy from
before grabbed my shirt and pushed me toward the door.

They threw me back in the cell. I hit
the floor hard and didn't try to pick myself up as he closed the
door. But there was no Ashwater. The old man was gone.

I clutched my arms as the spasms
returned and I felt only pain coursing through my whole body. What
was happening to me? Why was this hurting so much? I opened my eyes
only to see Ashwater sitting cross-legged on the floor flipping
through a magazine. If I hadn't been in so much pain I would have
been a little more surprised. A second ago I was alone in this
cell.

I pushed myself up. "What
the heck is going on?" The ball that Ashwater had…
had 
pulled
 out of my chest was clutched tightly in my
palm.

Ashwater put the magazine down and
walked over to me. "It's almost time."

"What?"

He plucked the ball from my fingers
and examined it. His fingers nimbly moved the pieces, too fast for
me to follow, and then closed his hand around it. I saw an intense
orange glow come from the ball and then without warning Ashwater
punched out--fast for an old man--and hit my chest. The little ball
had vanished from his palm.

I doubled over and coughed. "What the
heck, man!"

He smiled, pleased with himself.
"That's much better."

I wanted to ask what was better, but I
felt my heart shudder and had to stop. My hands shook as I reached
through my shirt to feel my heart beating. I had never before felt
my heart like this. If I had been running at a full sprint for five
minutes I would not have felt this much intense beating. At first I
thought that I was having a heart attack, but then I felt something
not unlike cool water streaming from my heart all the way through
my extremities.

"What...did... you do?" I grasped my
chest where it felt like a weight was on my heart. What did he do
with that ball?

"What needed to be done." He began to
back up, watching me intently. He pressed his back to the wall but
the wall didn't stop him. It gave way and he melted into the wall,
disappearing, leaving no trace that he had ever been pressed up
against it.

The door to the cell opened, and as I
turned around to see who had entered, the entire world around me
bleached white. I felt my body disintegrating. I was
dying!

I wanted to close my eyes, but they no
longer existed. All that 'was' was bright white mist. Cold to the
point of being hot, stuffy to the point of drowning.

The brightness receded and I found
myself staring up at the sky. Clouds moved across the sun, lazily
strolling across the sky on a warm midday. I pushed on my bruised
fingers and stumbled to my feet.

I'm not in Kansas anymore,
Toto.

For miles around me all I saw was sand
and tiny dry bushes that probably needed more rain than sun. The
horizon line shimmered with heatwaves blurring my view of anything
more than a few hundred feet out from me. I turned around in a
circle but the only thing I could see was a small structure,
distorted by the heat in the distance.

I touched my chest where there was no
more pain and gasped. "What the..."

CHAPTER 11

People can surprise you.
But it's not because we aren't observant enough or even lacking as
people. It's because there's more to a person than can be seen by
the naked eye. You can't know your friend or neighbor like they
know themselves. You can't know when a person will be a Healer or a
murderer. You can't know when your own children will choose to take
or leave your advice. You can't know when the person you share your
home will turn to darkness.
- Mavis Day.
Alliance Politician. On the rise of Reginald Cook.

I started walking toward the
structure. Nothing was familiar. Whatever Ashwater had done with
that ball it had sent me to another place. I wondered, briefly, if
it was an illusion. My experience with the things hadn't been too
good so far, but the further I walked the more I was becoming
certain I was not in an illusion. "Hello?" I called out, even
though there were no people to be seen at all. My limbs were still
trembling from whatever it was that was burning my body. The heat
had subsided but the sun that was now beating down on me from the
sparsely clouded sky more than compensated.

I reached the structure only to see
that it was a building made of wood and concrete bricks. There was
a door and a couple windows but I didn't see any immediate signs of
life.

"Hello?" I called out
again.

No answer. I stumbled around the
building looking for anyone who could help me. I called out a
couple more times to the same lack of answer. There was a
clothesline out back with a few shirts hanging off it, twisting in
the light wind, the only sure sign I had that someone inhabited
this place.

Around the side of the building I
found an old bathtub filled with dirty water and some clothes that
had seen better days. I touched the edge of the tub and looked over
at my reflection in the water. My hair was stringy and damp with
sweat. My face was weird. My eyes were sunken in, and they looked
like I felt: that I hadn't slept in days. I splashed my hand into
my reflection and kept walking.

I got around to the front of the
building again and stood in front of the door. I raised my fist to
knock on the door when I heard a shout behind me. I turned just in
time to see an Asian girl with ripped and scuffed jeans heading
toward me. She spoke in quick Chinese and I shook my head. "I don't
understand."

The ground beneath me flashed and
everything went white. In seconds I found myself back in the cell.
A klaxon was going off and there was a man unconscious on the
floor. I gasped for air and then saw the door open. I took one look
at it, one look at the man and then sprinted for the door. I
skidded out past two guards who yelled in surprise at me, and I
didn't dare think about where I was going. I had a fifty-fifty
chance of going deeper into the compound or finding a way
out.