Sapience (25 page)

The hour hand on the clock began to fly but the party raged on. I’m not sure who was the first to leave but somewhere around four in the morning the people began to thin. At around five Neal was sound asleep on the couch, his face covered in marker, everyone else was gone.

I got up and killed the music along with lights. Brianna waited for me by the stairs, we had to be the only two still up.

“I’ll see you in the morning.” I said and turned for bed.

She caught my hand. “I had a great time tonight.” She said, turning me around.

Both of my hands were now in hers. “Goodnight Brianna.” I said, leaning forward to give her a small kiss on the lips.

When we parted I could only stare into her blue eyes. Her cheeks dimpled as she smiled.

“Night.” She said and went into her room.

As her door clicked shut I glanced back into the game room, It looked like a hurricane had gone through it, the entire place was trashed. I had to watch my step as I went up the stairs, lest I trip on all the garbage scattered all over it. My room, being behind a locked door, was the only place in the house still not trashed it seemed. My eyes grew heavy as I slipped into bed, it was late and I was exhausted.

At first all I wanted to do was sleep, but then I started to think about the football game, those thoughts soon shifted to Brianna, standing in the driveway watching me, the rain pouring down. It was still raining outside, every now and again you could hear thunder booming in the distance. Raindrops pounded soothingly against the roof. I fought sleep for as long as I could, playing today over and over in my head. It’s hard to say when exhaustion finally took over and I succumbed to sleep, but eventually it did.

The house was still a mess in the morning. Lillie was in a rampage. Even with her frantically cleaning, the house looked like it had been toilet papered from the inside out. You would have thought there had been a bull fight rather than a party. She had me scrubbing floors before I could even finish my breakfast.

When things were semi-clean Brianna and I started a movie marathon. It felt good having her curled up against me under a blanket all day. We only got up for food and bathroom breaks. Even then we were running to get back to the couch.
 In the afternoon Lillie talked us all into playing the board game monopoly, she had found it in the attic of the mansion earlier in the day. Everyone agreed to play but Adrian, even he watched for a good ten minutes before heading out the back door. As we played we could hear him shooting off guns. It wasn’t all that long before Lillie had us all broke. Josh and Rachel complained about her being a mental user, saying she would be disqualified the next time we played. Spencer just laughed it off, Brianna and I slipped a few fake dollars back and forth under the table, Lillie noticed but didn’t rat us out.

When the game was over we met Adrian out back and had a big barbecue on the new patio. There were no chairs yet so Adrian and Lillie sat on the wall whilst the rest of us ate our food sitting Indian style on the ground. Spencer turned on the back speakers so the radio was playing as we ate. We laughed and poked fun at each other, most of our conversations circulated either the party or the football game. At the end of dinner Adrian pulled out a slip of paper that contained a list of people to avoid at school, it was a compilation of all his spying the night before.

Sunday came packing with a temperature drop. It looked like the strange bout of warm weather had finally given way to fall. Light snow floated down from the sky, it wasn’t quite enough to stick and soon turned into rain. I had once read a quote saying that Michigan was a place where you could get both sun burned and frost bitten in the same day. I was beginning to understand this a little more personally, the weather seemed to change drastically in such short periods of time around here.

Josh, Rachel, Spencer, Brianna and I spent a lot of the afternoon relaxing in the hot tub.

“What did you do with all that garbage Lillie gave you?” Spencer asked, turning to Josh. “I saw you carrying it out back.”

“Torched it.” Josh said “Felt good to stretch and use my powers. Still, all that ability and I’m stuck burning trash.”

“Awe you poor baby.” Rachel said, patting him on the cheek.

“I’m serious, I can’t stand sitting idle anymore.”

I wrapped my arms around Brianna’s waste as she floated onto my lap, her hair smelled like coconut.

“I think I know how to fix that.” Spencer said “We could start sabotaging the armory here in town.”

“No!” Brianna and I said at the same time.

“Did you forget what we are doing here?” I went on. “We are in hiding. To capture unnecessary attention would be the worst thing we could do.”

“I don’t ever want to be sent back.” Brianna added.

“I know, I know.” Spencer said “It’s just fun to think about you know?”

“I wouldn’t mind torching a few of the Kingdom's soldiers.” Josh said.

Rachel snapped her fingers and an ice spear began to grow over her hand. “I want to freeze an agent.”

“An agent?” Brianna said. “I didn’t know they could be frozen.”

“Anything can be frozen.” Spencer said.

“Yea, but not without raising suspicion.” I hated being a downer, but the way they were talking was dangerous.

I watched as Brianna froze a hand full of water. She touched the ice to her face, I could feel her shiver against my skin. “It would be nice to use our power for what it was created.” She said.

“Our powers were created to scare innocent people into submission…” I said.

She shook her head “No, they were created for waging war.”

Josh slapped the water “Yea! If only we had all the users. We could march right through President Mead’s front door and no one could do a thing about it.”

“Could you imagine?” Rachel said “I would spank him on live television.”

“Spank him?” Spencer asked.

“Yea, let the whole world see that he is nothing more than a spoiled child.”

I jumped as Brianna pressed her ice chunk to my chest. She laughed as I struggled to wrestle her hands away. Had she not been a good fighter it would have been easier.

“On that note I think I have had enough hot tubbing for one night.” Josh said and started to climb out. Rachel and Spencer followed.

“On that note you’re staying.” Brianna said, grabbing my bathing suit before I could hop out.

“Oh I am, am I, and who is going to stop me?” I asked.

“Me.” She said and kicked out the back of my legs.

I tumbled backwards into the hot water, for a moment, as I went under, all I could hear was the rumble of the jets. She had been so swift with her attack, I hadn’t stood a chance of keeping my balance. When I was back up she gave me a kiss on the cheek and floated back onto my lap.

“I guess you can go if you really want.” She said, wrapping her arms around my shoulders.

“I think I might stay for a bit.” I said.

She turned so that she was facing me. “What are we going to do about Blake?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“If he doesn’t leave he is going to want revenge.”

“There isn’t much I can do about that.”

She kissed me softly on the lips “If he tries to push you around I swear I’m going to beat him up.” She made it seem like she was joking, though I sensed some truth behind her words.

“That might be fun to watch.”

She was so close, her bright blue eyes were staring deep and curiously into mine. I slid my hands down her hips and pulled her tighter toward my waist.

“I find it hard to be mad at him.” I said.

She looked taken back. “Hard to be mad at him?”

“Yea, I’m the one that got you.”

“That is a load of crap. That doesn’t even make sense.”

“In a way, for me it does.” I said.

She thought about it for a moment. “I’m still going to kill him if he comes near us.” she teased.

I shrugged “Can’t argue with that.”

By the time we climbed out of the hot tub our hands were all pruny and the heat from the water had gotten uncomfortable. It was pretty late so I kissed Brianna goodnight and we headed our separate ways to bed.

That night I laid wide awake staring at the ceiling, deep in thought.

How had I come so far from my days in the government buildings? It was like I had won the lottery or something. Nothing could go wrong… if only I had known how wrong things would get.

Chapter 16

            
 
Outside the world was covered in snow. I could hardly believe it, the temperature had plummeted so much. I dreaded stepping out of the warm house. Sure the snow wasn’t all that thick, but that didn’t stop it from painting everything white.

I was up early, I had awoken nearly an hour before normal and couldn’t fall back asleep. Lillie was the only one up, she took one look at me and said she was going to make me eggs and bacon. The smell of the bacon being cooked made my mouth water as I stared out the front window.

“That storm this weekend brought with it a cold front.” She said as she handed me a plate of food.

I sat down and started poking at it with a fork. “I was hoping the warm weather would last a lot longer.”

“I told you we should have picked a warmer state to hide in.” She said. “But you insisted we find the others.”

“Really?” I asked. “I can’t remember. This can be so frustrating sometimes.”

“Yes, well that and you wanted to be close to the border.” She looked at me thoughtfully. “Adrian and I have been discussing a theory.”

A mental users theory, I half expected her to say that she had figured out a way to predict the weather.

“Adrian and I have been dealing with an anomaly ever since the day you were shot. I thought it best to tell you right away but Adrian, well he thought you knowing would only make it harder for us to study you.”

Study me? I didn’t like where this was going.

“You have become unpredictable William. As you probably remember, we can predict the choices a person is going to make, this works with every person we have ever met, but not with you. We think you will turn left and you go right, it is very unnerving.”

“You can’t predict my movements at all?” I asked, leaning in.

She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples as if she had a head ache. When she opened them she almost looked angry. “It comes and goes, there doesn’t seem to be any pattern to it. Your interactions with people can change it too. We predict people to go down one path and then they interact with you, sending them down another. From our perspective it can feel like chaos. It makes our hideout significantly less secure.”

At first I felt worried, but the more it sank in the better I felt. I know we were all on the same side and that my little “anomaly” was probably a bad thing, but I felt relieved to know Adrian had no control over me. “Have you figured out why this is happening?”

“We believe that part of your old self is still in there. Fragments of it must be breaking through causing you to make unconscious decisions that you otherwise might never make.”

She grabbed my empty breakfast plate and went to the kitchen to wash it. Even after everybody else was up and we were on our way to school I was still caught up thinking about what she had told me.

I still had my ability, well parts of it at least. The idea made me feel more secure than I had in a long time.

“Time to go receive some praise for throwing the best party ever.” Spencer said as I parked the car. He hopped out and ran to go meet up with his friends while Brianna and I lagged behind.

“You have been awfully quiet this morning.” Brianna said when we were a little closer to the school.

“Lillie thinks fragments of my old mind are slipping through. She says that she and Adrian are having trouble predicting my movements.”

“Really?” She asked. “Does that mean your body is healing itself?”

“No. She says it has been like this from the beginning.” I stopped dead in my tracks, my mouth going dry.

Blake was standing in between two of the Kingdom's soldiers up close to the school. He lifted his arm to point in our direction.

It felt like my heart had jumped into my throat. I tried to reason with the panic that was instantly cascading inside. Blake knew nothing of who I really was, whatever he had told the soldiers, it probably wasn’t as bad as any conclusion I was jumping to. What could he have possibly told them? He might have created a lie.

I locked eyes with one of the soldiers for only a second before grabbing Brianna by the arm and turning back the way we had come. My first instinct was to walk slowly, but that was soon out of the question as three more soldiers came bursting out from the school.

From where I was standing it looked like we only had three option, we could cooperate, we could fight, or we could flee. I couldn’t risk cooperating, if these soldiers knew something I didn’t, it could mean the end for us. If we fought, it would only be a matter of time before the bullets started flying.