Kinetics: In Search of Willow (9 page)

After he had introduced himself and
the topics for the conference, Jon Perry motioned for the next
person to come up. It was an elderly man with enough hair on his
face to make a blanket.

-That's the Chief of War,
Idelfons Heilbronner.-
 Willow nodded
her head in the direction of the man sauntering onto
stage. -
Your brother is his second in
command.-

The man spoke for a while with a
painfully thick German accent about something called the Pendulum
Initiative. I understood nothing of what he was saying about it, so
I stopped listening. I felt Willow's link at the back of my mind,
and I tried grasping at it. She must have sensed it and
responded.

-Want to
practice?-

I nodded my head.

-Okay, can you find my
link?-

I nodded again.

-Alright, try to imagine
your thoughts as a stream and push that stream to my link. Think of
the stream going between speech and thought.-

I tried as she said, but I felt no
response from her.

-Remember, try to find the
in-between. If you have to, close your eyes and
visualize.-

I did as she instructed and closed my
eyes. How do I find the place, the idea between thought and speech?
I tried to think about speaking, but I got no response. I tried to
speak without moving my mouth, but still nothing.

I went back and forth for a little bit
with myself. I thought about Willow and what she had meant to me my
whole life. We had been the best of buds for longer than I could
even recall. I don't think I had spent more than a month outside
her company. As I felt around in my head for the intangible link
between our minds, I envisioned her face, her hair, and the little
blue hairpins she always wore. I reached for that image, the sound
her voice, the way her hair looked in the sun, the touch of her
fingertips on my face.

Can you hear
me?

-Oh, look. It's
Jacob!-
 Willow said without
answering.

Jacob stepped out onto the stage. He
stood out like a sore thumb with no suit jacket, no tie and rolled
up sleeves. His mentor stood next to him on the stage and patted
his back encouragingly. I was still grappling with the link from
Willow, so I almost didn't catch that he was getting ready to
speak.

I shook my head, as though that would
get rid of a mind link.

Jacob took the podium and cleared his
throat.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I am here to
present to you a new plan that my mentor and I are developing. If
you look here," Jacob pointed a clicker at the projector, and the
screen behind him changed from a rotating Alliance Insignia to a
map of the world, "you can see the clear territories between
Anyan's Alliance and the Isiroan Legion. Over the course of the
last hundred years, they have taken territories in the mountainous
regions in nearly every continent. In the past two years they have
begun taking over well-forested regions."

He changed the screen again. This time
to a grainy picture of a compound filled with oddly shaped
buildings. The picture showed some kind of construction work around
a circular building.

"It has become clear to me and the
Chief of War, Idelfons Heilbronner," he pointed to his mentor,
"that the Legion is taking key territories around the planet. As
you all should know, Isiro is a very old being. His access to vast
banks of alien technology is becoming increasingly used in Isiroan
defenses. This is clear because sensory-field Kinetics cannot
penetrate the electromagnetic barriers set up around each and every
one of the Isiroan Legion bases. Our researchers have no idea what
kind of technology he is using or even how to begin
reverse-engineering it."

I glanced back at Willow who was
staring at Jacob. She wasn't blinking. Her face was so still as she
concentrated on his words that I felt a little
uncomfortable.

I turned around and crossed my arms. I
wondered if she was still holding a torch for him. Could she not
decide between my brother and Harry? I suddenly hoped Willow's link
didn't pick up on my train of thought. I wasn't sure if it could
work like that. I tried to imagine a brick wall and only a brick
wall, willing the disappointment to go away.

My brother went on to talk
about changing key policies in the Alliance laws. I stopped
listening and doodled basketball defenses on the back of my hand,
covering up the red 
X
 with little circles and
smaller 
X
s.

Dad raised his eyebrows at me.
"Eugene."

I clicked the pen and shoved it into
my coat pocket.

Another hour passed and then the large
group of adults split off into smaller groups and went to different
specialized sessions. Dad went off with the Intelligence people.
They didn't have a non-Kinetic room, so Mom sat with Willow and I
at a table near the back of the large conference room with all the
other under-sixteen Kinetics. Mom stood out, and sometimes the
others stared at her, but she ignored them with patient
indifference.

Mom smiled at Willow. "Just think,
next year you'll be joining the Healers."

Willow stretched her arms and grinned.
"I knoooow. I can't wait to find out what they all do."

I laughed. "Heal people?"

She frowned at me. "Well obviously,
but I'm talking about the kind of training and stuff. You know, I'm
only a Level One right now and I heard that they try to get you up
to Level Three in under two years."

"Levels?" I asked.

"I'll explain later." Willow waved her
hand nonchalantly.

"On top of everything else you said
you would explain," I said, annoyed.

“
Fine. Here’s the skinny
of it. There are three levels of Kinetics. Each level is kind of a
milestone for your sphere of influence. Your Sphere is what you can
affect with your powers. In my case, Level One is direct contact. I
have to actually touch someone to heal them. Level Two would be a
small extended sphere that doesn’t require contact but is limited
by distance. Level Three would be the ability to directly target
individuals at long distance. Within reason, of course.”

“
So… you could heal
someone across the room at Level Three?”

“
Exactly.”

Mom smiled at the two of
us. "I remember how excited Jacob was when he had his initiation. I
couldn't even imagine—" Mom's cell phone rang. I cringed at
the 
Walk Like an
Egyptian
 ringtone. She was not
bashful about letting everyone know about her love of 80s
music.

"Yes? Yes. Ok. The usual place. See
you soon. Love you." She flipped the cell phone closed and smiled.
"Jacob's on his way. He wants to talk to you."

"Me?" I asked. The last time he wanted
to talk to me, he told me about that stupid contract. What other
mind-blowing things did he still have to shove me into?

Willow cupped her hands around her
face and grinned impishly at me. "I think I know what he's gonna
say."

"What?"

"He's going to say that he's sorry for
being a jerk and that you're the best brother in the
world."

"As if," I said out of the corner of
my mouth.

Jacob stepped into the hall and
approached the table.

"Hey, Mom." He pecked her cheek. He
was always so affectionate toward Mom. Compared to the very
not-gonna-take-your-shit attitude that he saved for everyone else,
he was downright cuddly.

"Eugene." Jacob nodded at
me.

"Hey, Jake." I unenthusiastically
waved.

"Come with me." He jerked his chin
toward the foyer. I hesitated enough to see Willow give me a
thumbs-up sign and grin impishly. I shook my head at her and
followed my brother out.

Jacob stepped into a small room off
the side of the larger conference room. The wall was lined with
tall ceiling to floor windows. The light outside was beginning to
dim into late afternoon.

"Eugene, do you know what you are
planning to do yet?"

"With what?"

"The contract."

"Oh. I don't know." I looked away
suddenly, wanting to be very far away from here.

"I want an answer." He crossed his
arms and stared down at me. I hated that he had almost four inches
over me and could stare down at me condescendingly.

"I don't know yet, Jacob." I shrugged.
"Up until yesterday, I was planning to go to college to be a… a
mathematician." I wasn't too sure about the mathematician part, but
it was better than telling him I didn't know what the heck I was
doing with myself. "You can't expect me to flip my life around on a
dime."

"Unfortunately, Eugene,
you don't have much time to be indecisive. If you don't make a
choice soon 
they
 will make the choice for you." Jacob leaned in close,
glaring down at me.

I frowned. "Who will?"

"The Council of Anyan. There are so
few people like you that the Council deals with it directly. So
unless you want to end up a useless peon of non-Kinetic society,
you'd better make a decision before the day is out." Jacob turned
on his heel and swept out of the room.

I growled under my breath and went
back to where Mom and Willow were sitting. Jacob thought he could
order me around, but I wasn't going to be bullied into making a
decision.

I got back to the table, but Willow
was sitting by herself drawing on a napkin with a permanent
marker.

"Hey." I said when I sat
down.

Her mouth opened to speak, but before
she made a sound, a rumble shook the building.

Everyone in the building went silent
and looked around for the source of the sound.

KrrrrrrraaaBOOM!

Screams rose as debris began to fall
from a shattering ceiling. Shafts of light broke through the
falling roof. The building was caving in around us.

CHAPTER 7

"We never understand how little we
need in this world until we know the loss of it"
~ James Matthew Barrie. Scottish
Novelist.

Large chunks of ceiling, glass, and
insulation rained down around us, hitting people too stunned to
move out of the way.

Willow stepped back, but it wasn't
enough. I grabbed her arm and pulled her back just as a large piece
of metal broke free from above us and hit the floor.

I heard the crackle of energy before I
saw it. Lightning shot down from the new skylight and hit dead
center in the middle of a crowd. The people scattered like dominoes
as more bolts shot down, charring and shattering everything in
their paths.

A series of popping noises filled the
room. Dozens of men and women appeared in the middle of the rising
tide of voices crying out in shock and anger. They looked like any
other men or women on the street, except they were wearing orange
armbands with a strange symbol.

"Isiroans!" someone shouted. "Isiroans
are attacking!"

The crowd dispersed toward the walls,
leaving the Isiroans in the center, exposed among the debris.
Orders were quickly called out, and Kinetics lined up around the
intruders. In the chaos it was hard to distinguish who or what was
fighting. Brilliant lights, colors, energy and chunks of building
shot back and forth around the conference room. The sound of
screams and shouts and crackling power deafened my ears.

Willow tugged my shirt and led me to a
large piece of wall that had fallen over. She motioned for me to
get down next to her. I knelt just enough that I could still look
over the wall and watch the unfolding disaster. The fight, while
scary, was amazing to behold.

The Alliance fighters moved in
elegantly coordinated groups. They kept a tight perimeter around
the attackers, blocking and deflecting anything that came their
way. The attackers--the 'Isiroans,'—were less organized, splitting
off from each other and running in chaotic circles around the
groups of Alliance. They didn't seem fazed by the ease with which
the Alliance rebuffed their attacks.