Kinetics: In Search of Willow (37 page)

Liquid warmth spread out from my very
core just as the pill entered my system. I breathed in and out
slowly, and with what little room I had, I flexed my sore and still
muscles.

I was in.

I laughed to myself through sore vocal
chords and pulled out of the space between the boards. The truck
pulled to a stop and I heard more voices. Quickly I returned to my
hiding spot and waited for the doors to open.

One minute.

Two minutes.

Five minutes.

Ten minutes.

Nothing was happening. The voices
disappeared and I was left alone with the eerie noises of the cargo
settling into place after its journey.

I waited in a tense silence for almost
thirty minutes more. My only indication of passing time was the
slow ticking of my watch.

After the pain of the Cold Pill, I
wanted to find a bed and sleep. The warmth from the Hot Pill did
little for me after it digested into my system, and the real cold
of the night and the cramped trailer took hold. I don't know where
I would be able to hide around the Isiroan base without attracting
unwanted attention, but my main priority now was to get out and
assess my next move. I shimmied out of the hiding spot and examined
the locking mechanism of the trailer doors. It looked fairly simple
enough. The manufacturers had obviously made it in mind with people
being trapped on the inside.

I grabbed the rusty pin and pulled up
slightly so as to not make any loud noises. The thing screeched
loudly anyway. I cringed with every single creak and squeak of the
pin and eventually got it all the way out. I had to undo the other
one as well because one door wouldn't open without the other being
unlocked. After both locking pins had been pulled up, I waited and
listened for any sounds of people. Hearing nothing, I pushed open
the doors and leapt out.

The truck had been parked behind one
of the Aztec-styled buildings and nothing was around to indicate
any more people. In the distance I saw a really tall building with
lots of lights on.

I shook off all of my stiffness and
crept around the truck to inch toward the backside of the Aztec
building. The windows lining the side of the building were dark
with only a few specks of light to be seen through the void. In one
I could see through an open door that illuminated the inside of
what looked to be an ordinary office.

The facsimile of normal life hurt like
a brand. It was no wonder that they were able to pull so many
innocents into their fold. It was also painful to know that all the
people, the ones delivering the supplies like that truck driver and
the ones who ran this base, were being horribly lied to. I
shuddered with the thought that Isiro must be really powerful to
have so many bend to his will like that.

Light flashed across the ground and I
heard intense voices talking.

"I thought I heard something!" someone
shouted.

"What did...? Hey! This thing is
open!" another one yelled out.

I cursed under my breath and dove
behind a large metal box behind the Aztec building. I had forgotten
to close the trailer doors. Stupid! The air conditioning fan hummed
loudly, blocking out the sound of my adrenaline-driven breathing. I
made myself into the smallest ball that I could and
waited.

"Jack probably forgot to
close them all the way. It 
was 
his first time inspecting,"
one said.

"Yeah, but notify Mr. Nakhimov
anyway," the other replied.

"Right."

The doors slammed closed and I heard
the pins being pushed back into place.

I didn't let myself breathe normally
until I was sure that the two people had left.

I stood up, brushed myself off and
began looking for a place to hide out until I had a chance to catch
my breath and try to ascertain where they had put Willow. This had
been her last known location. For all I knew she could be halfway
across the world by now.

The grounds surrounding the tall Aztec
buildings were peppered with randomly placed flora. It was like
they just built this place around a normal piece of forest and
didn't think to remove the surrounding trees. Not that I had a
problem with it. It afforded me a bunch more cover than what I had
first hoped. I found my resting spot under a thick, thorny bush
that grew from two sets of roots around a big enough crevice to
squeeze into and see the layout of the base from the eye level of a
mouse.

I searched through my pockets and
pulled out the wad of papers that had all the information on them
about the base. I sifted through the random maps and found a small
list of the buildings. The tall one I had seen far off in the
distance was unnamed. We didn't know what it was for. The Aztec
buildings were all labeled as 'Administration.'

Administration usually meant files.
Files meant information. And to me, information meant finding
Willow.

I dug out the rest of my pockets and
pulled out everything that could identify me as part of the
Alliance. The maps for the base were pretty much useless. I could
see everything around and everything was labeled with what we
thought the purpose of the building or structure was.

I inspected the uniform I was wearing,
it was missing many of the sewed on patches that I had seen others
wearing. Apparently all Field Ops wore them. I had really only
listened with half an ear as Jacob had described its
purpose.

Finally I took out the beacon Jacob
had given me and shoved it and everything else into a hastily dug
hole. I shouldn't have anything on me that could indicate where I
was from.

The branches of the bush around me
scraped on my face as I wiggled out of the stranglehold of leaves
and began making my way toward the Aztec buildings. I figured my
best bet would be to infiltrate one of them and see what kinds of
files they might have.

I was careful to avoid any of the
patrolling guards as I pushed and pulled on every door that I came
across. None of them gave way. Every single Aztec building was
locked up tighter than a bank vault. Even forcing a window or a
door open proved to be impossible.

I found a fairly out-of-the-way place
near the furthest of the office buildings and sat in the quiet for
a few minutes. My options were getting smaller and
smaller.

It was only a matter of time before
they discovered me anyway. I had nowhere decent to hide. Light from
the flashlights of the Isiroan patrol scanned the ground and I
quickly ducked my head behind the side of the building.

There were two of them and they were
talking. "...coming in a few hours. It's going to get really busy,"
one of them said. She didn't sound happy about whatever was coming
in.

"Great," the other one said. He didn't
sound happy either.

"I don't know how we are going to
contain this breach the boss was talking about if we have to deal
with a hundred teenagers wandering around breaking things," the
woman scoffed.

"I still say we have nothing to worry
abo..." The man's voice faded and I was alone again. I let myself
breathe and stealthily made my way back to the bush where I'd
buried all my papers.

HARRY GLEESON

I don’t know when they
stopped coming for me, but I probably went unbothered for almost
two days.
At some point they stopped
feeling the need to shackle my hands so I was free to move about
the cell.
In that time I slept and tried
to not think about the pain my body was in. Some part of my brain
that wasn’t fried yet was trying to formulate a plan to escape.
What little of the facility I had seen wasn’t enough to make a full
picture of different routes in and out but it was a
start.

One morning—or was it afternoon?—I sat
up to the guards noisily entering the room with a greasy haired man
in tow. He wasn’t shackled like I was but held his head low like he
was the most beaten and degraded man in the universe.

But under the mop of hair I could see
a toothy grin. The guards popped open the cell next to mine and
pushed the man inside. He stumbled to a stop and then turned to the
men as they hastily closed the cell door and retreated out of the
room.

He stood still for the longest time
and it was only when I looked away from him did I hear him turn.
When I looked back he was staring through the bars at me. The hair
around his face was pushed back and I could see his
face.

“
M—Marcus Grey?” I asked.
I had seen the man a few times in person, and of course in the
pictures that Eugene and Nick had brought out. But this couldn’t be
him. The glint in his eye was a terrible thing to
behold.

He grinned, black slime filled the
tops of his gums making the otherwise white teeth look like they
were rotting.

“
I am not called Grey
anymore. I am called Krino, ” he laughed and with every name he
shouted louder. “I am called Thomas Reddinger, I am called Rainey
Grey, I am called Idelfons Heilbronner... And most importantly I
will be called Willow Patterson! And I am not my brother.” The last
he said at nearly a whisper.

As soon as he said that he
wasn’t his brother, I knew who this Marcus Grey lookalike
was.
Matthew
Grey
was the twin brother of the man that Eugene and I had been pursuing
across the states.

Last I’d heard of his name, though,
supposedly he had been killed at the facility where the Alliance
Chief Thomas Reddinger had died. Any Kinetic up on their history
knew the names of the people involved in that incident. It was the
day that peace was supposed to bloom between the Anyan’s Alliance
and the Isiroan Legion.

But Matthew Grey, Thomas Reddinger and
a handful of others had perished that day in a meaningless attack
that to this day no one really knew the instigators of. Alliance
blamed Isiroan and vice versa. At least, they were supposed to have
perished. But here, living and breathing was Matthew Grey, calling
himself ‘Krino.’

I tried to not stare at him too much,
but a realization was dawning on me. Eugene had said that the man
who had taken Willow had long greasy hair. But the Marcus Grey I
had always known of kept his hair cropped short to his head. I
wasn’t too sure about what Eugene had seen until now. Eugene hadn’t
seen Marcus Grey take Willow, he had seen this man, this Matthew
Grey. At some point after Willow had been taken by Matthew
Grey—Krino—there must have been a hand off or somehow Willow ended
up with Marcus Grey.

I frowned as I tried to
take in this new information. How did he fit into all this?
If
Matthew
Grey
took Willow and we’ve been following
Marcus
Grey across the States— There
was more going on here than any of these little clues were letting
on and it wasn’t adding up.

When I got out of here—If I got out of
here, I was going to have to investigate this further. More to
satisfy my curiosity than anything. For now, I studied the openings
on the bars and the various ways I could get out.

Krino ignored me for the most part and
sat in a corner of his cell. He appeared to be counting the
wrinkles in his hands.

I shook off the uncanny resemblance to
one of the Isiroan Legion’s most respected Kinetics and tried to
figure out what to do next. Looking at the cell, escape might be
easier than I first thought. In fact I could probably use that to
my advantage.

It might be time for some
reconnaissance.

CHAPTER 27

“
To know your Enemy, you
must

become your
Enemy.”

~ Sun Tzu

EUGENE YOSHIDA

Wrapped up in a tight ball beneath
some tall bushes, I barely slept. The place was strange and there
were too many noises in the deep shadows cast by the bright lights
surrounding the base.