It may not be possible. Are you prepared for that?
We will do it, Grace.
I wanted to ask your permission before I did something.
What do you mean? The blood had returned to my leg and I was able to shift myself to a more comfortable position, waking Dorian. She nodded as she wiped the sleep out of her eyes, smearing a bit of her eyeliner.
I want to transfer my power to you.
“You want to do what?” I asked aloud.
It would be temporary, but before I did it, I wanted to ask your permission.
“Why would you want to do that?”
Dorian looked at me this time, realizing almost immediately who I was talking to.
Please be prepared for what I’m about to tell you, Gideon.
What do you mean?
I know the picture you found on my drive has been on your mind.
Yes, you never told me what that was about.
A series of flashes came to me. I saw myself going to the Rose-Lyle facility, my parents dropping me off, being led down a hallway, staying overnight in a sterile room …
I gasped. Are you serious?
Yes, it’s really what happened.
More images, these containing my parents picking me up from the facility, a discharge letter handed to my mother, payment, looking over my shoulder at the place one last time.
They tested local children to see if Mother could give her power to anyone else, aside from me.
Aside from you?
It’s how Mother gave me my abilities.
You weren’t born with superpowers?
No, I was the only one in my batch who didn’t have a power. So, Mother gave me some of hers, as she was the only telepath at the time. Like Dorian’s teleportation, the shifting part of my abilities grew later.
I looked from Grace to Dorian, who had no idea of the drama playing out in my head.
You were one of the children they tested, around the time you and your family moved to Hamden. You made it to the second round; only a few others made it that far.
So, I’m a mutant?
No, but you aren’t far off. They actually stopped testing the children who made it to the second round; they were more susceptible to the procedure, and there’s no way of telling if it would have actually worked for them if they had continued. This is why I believe I can give my power to you. I’m almost certain, and I also believe it’s why I found you that first night. It wasn’t just fate; some part of me sensed you.
This is a lot to process …
There’s no time. They are coming. They activated tracking devices in our drives.
“Come again?” I asked aloud.
Grace repeated the thought in my head.
“Shit, shit, shit! Dorian, tell Veronique to expect company. They’re tracking us!”
“How soon?” she asked.
“No telling, but we should … Fuck, okay, I’ll handle what I can. Shit! We’ve wasted hours. My fault, totally my fault.”
Writer Gideon, I will give you my power.
“You can’t do that,” I told Grace, confusion setting in. Would my parents really do this to me?
It was a long time ago. We’re your family now, and Grace and Dorian will need you.
A thousand thoughts came to me and I compartmentalized them all. Panic rose in my chest and I forced that shit down.
Now was the time to act.
The first person I needed to talk to was Dr. Kim. He’d know how to disable the GPS tracking. I scrambled to get out of the bathtub so I could get my phone, which was in the pocket of my pants that I’d tossed haphazardly on the floor.
You haven’t given me permission about transferring my psychic powers.
“You have my permission, but I only want you to do it if we’re attacked.”
There may not be much time.
“Just let me get things in order first,” I said. I scrolled to my inbox and fired off a message to Ken Kim telling him to call me immediately.
There were also messages from Luke. While I waited for Kim to call, I read through them and started to reply.
Luke: Update me. I haven’t heard from you.
Me: I’m in the southwestern part of America. We have Grace. She’s comatose. I’m preparing for an attack. I may be a mutant.
Luke: WTF.
Me: WTF X 2.
Luke: You never get a chance to rest, do you? Well, I don’t know what to say. I’ll be honest, I haven’t known how to respond to any of this since I realized the truth. I hope that’s okay.
I put on my shirt, slipped into my jeans, and returned to our conversation. “Come on, Kim,” I whispered as I looked back at my phone.
Me: I’ll be able to talk about it more later. It’s just too much right now.
Luke: Let me know if there’s anything I can do. Sounds dumb to say, but you know what I mean.
Me: Thanks, man.
Luke: Update me once all this settles down. You really need to set up a file of info I can publish or get to the Canadian authorities if something happens.
Me: Seriously.
My phone rang, and I answered it immediately.
“Ken, they’re tracking us, and I need a way to stop them from doing that. Now. Actually, yesterday. I needed this yesterday. They’re probably on their way here now. Fuck! Sorry, it’s been a long thirty-six hours, and for at least …” I checked the time on my phone. “For at least seven of those hours, I was sleeping. I just found out I was tested on and almost became a mutant.”
“What? You’re talking too fast. Calm down and tell me what happened.”
I repeated pretty much the same thing but slower this time.
“Damn, okay, so they’ve activated their GPS locators. And you’re just now figuring that out.”
“Why weren’t they active all the time?”
“Because the girls weren’t supposed to escape; Dorian and Veronique were part of the team that existed for real-world extractions. I don’t think you realize how uncanny it is that you were able to convince them to join you.”
“It wasn’t as hard as it sounds. We can discuss that later.” I glanced over at Grace’s melted form. “I need to handle this now. And something is wrong with Grace, but I’ll get to that later too.”
I heard Ken typing on a keyboard. “Shit, just what I expected,” he finally said after a few bated breaths.
Veronique and Dorian came into the bathroom wearing their bulletproof vests, fanny packs, and helmets. Dorian handed me my gear, and I put Ken on speakerphone.
“Getting dressed,” I told him as I slipped into the vest. “What’s going on?”
“The GPS fix can only be done with a manual override.”
“How do I do that?”
“I’ll need to plug into one of their ports and do it. It requires a special key, and you don’t have the key.”
I looked at Dorian, who also wore the backpack we’d purchased back in Austin. “How long do you think it would take you to get to New Haven from here?”
“Alone?”
I nodded.
“How far is it?” she asked.
“Ken, how far is it from New Mexico to Connecticut?”
“Over two thousand miles. And she can move in increments of about twelve hundred miles a pop.”
Dorian crossed her arms. She looked concerned. “I’ll have to recharge,” she said after a moment. “And eat something. It’ll take me a moment to figure out a spawning location. Two thousand miles there and back. About an hour. I think it will take me about an hour.”
Ken’s voice piped out of the phone. “Have her go to Memphis or possibly Nashville. Teleport out from there. Come back the same way. I’ll give her photos of my apartment. We can make the exchange here. The problem is: if they come for you while she’s gone, you’re down a member.”
“We may have a solution for that,” I said, thinking about Grace’s request to transfer some of her power to me. “These keys, are they simply USB drives?”
<
br /> “Something like that. I’ll set this key to override GPS signaling upon manual reboot.”
“Got it. Forward the photos to my email. I’m sending Dorian to you with my smartphone and then she’ll come right back to us. I have a burner phone just in case.”
Dorian nodded. “And I’ll be able to find you because of what you’ve done with my teleportation abilities.”
“That’s right, Empathetic Teleportation. Please don’t take long; I have a feeling we’re going to need you.”
I heard something land on the roof. Then another thump, followed by a much louder sound.
“We’ve got to go,” I told Ken. “They’re here.”
“How did you find this place?” I asked Dorian as soon as our bodies took shape, Grace in my arms, Veronique and Dorian triangled in front of me.
We were on a cliffside near an abandoned Pueblo-styled house that looked like it had been decades since it was someone’s home.
“I saw it when we drove into Santa Fe,” she told me.
“And why did you choose this place exactly?” Veronique asked.
Dorian indicated the road below us. “I believe we’re about twenty to thirty miles outside of town. There’s only one way to get here, and it’s on that road; the same road that we drove on yesterday – or was it today? It was today.”
I had to laugh. “Fuck, do I feel you there, I don’t know what day it is.”
“Anyway, you’ll be able to see them coming. And …” she looked around. “Yep, over there’s a pile of scrap metal. I saw that too.”
“How did you have time to see all this stuff?” I asked. “I don’t even remember driving on that road.”
“It was the first house I saw that was shaped in this style of architecture they have here. And there was that metal trash heap next to it. Use it to your advantage.” Dorian looked at Veronique. “I’ll return as fast as I can, you have my word.”
“We’ll hold them off, isn’t that right, Gideon?” Veronique asked me.
“Before you leave, there’s something you two should know,” I said suddenly. “Grace has asked if she could give me some of her power. Apparently, I was once tested for susceptibility to whatever superhero gene you three have. I believe it’s only the psychic powers, not her shifting abilities, but it could be handy. Especially her Omnikinesis. So I’m going to say yes.”
Dorian smirked. “Welcome to the club.”
“The club?”
“You always wanted to be a superhero, didn’t you?”
“I guess that’s right,” I said and handed her my smartphone.
Dorian disappeared, leaving me with Grace and Veronique. It was a cool evening, and as I carried Grace over to the shadows provided by the abandoned house, she spoke to me again inside my head.
Are you ready, Writer Gideon?
Will you lose any of your abilities by giving some to me? I thought back to her.
I don’t think so, and I don’t plan to give them to you permanently. Once I’m better, I will take them back.
I heard the clink of metal behind me as Veronique used her ability to move some of the metal around, so they faced in the direction of the road below.
Okay, if you say so, Grace; I trust you.
I trust you too.
As soon as she said that, a strange sensation moved up my body, stopping at the center of my skull. It felt like someone had constructed a pillar made of light inside me. My surroundings became clearer to me, the feeling in my hands lightened, my chest lost its heaviness … it was almost what floating might feel like.
I realized that my eyes were closed and that the luminous landscape I saw before me was my consciousness expanding.
I opened my eyes with a gasp and saw Veronique continuing to use her powers to move metal.
There was something different about me.
I looked at a piece of metal and thrust my hand out like I was auditioning for a role in Star Wars. To my surprise, the metal lifted, twisted once, and fell back to the ground.
Veronique stopped what she was doing and looked at me. I could see her aura in the form of a strange, shadowy darkness hovering over her. I could see in her eyes that … she really liked me.
She averted her gaze. “Do not use her abilities on me.”
“I don’t know how to turn them off,” I said as I approached the edge of the cliff. I guess calling it a cliff was overselling it a bit, as it was more of a ridge, but that did give us a vantage point.
Plus, I was a writer. Everything I thought or experienced was cast through the gaze of hyperbole.
“I’ll help you move metal,” I told Veronique. “I need to practice this.”
Veronique nodded, but she refused to look back in my direction.
The strange thing about the power Grace had transferred to me was that I could sense more than just humans. I sensed everything around me – blades of grass beating in the cool evening wind, a rabbit not far away burrowing into its hole, the life of the city miles away.
It was an entirely psychedelic experience.
I practiced swinging the metal bars, and as I got the hang of it, I heard Grace in my head again, only this time it was as if she’d descended from heaven and pressed her ethereal body into mine.
It was different than before, not just a voice … almost as if I were speaking it to myself, almost as if we suddenly had a hive mind.
Do you like it, Writer Gideon?
I think? It’s just so powerful. I feel like I’ve always existed and that everyone has always been here, that our stories are all intertwined and replicas of each other. I’m sorry, it’s just so strong.
You’ll get used to it. They’re coming soon, and you need to focus on getting ready.
Please come out of whatever coma you’re in, Grace. This power belongs to you. We need you here, I need you here.
I can’t yet. There’s something stopping me. I can hear you, I can sense you … I can almost feel you, and I can speak to you, but my body is not mine right now.
I continued to practice my abilities.
One of the first things I noticed was that I didn’t need to make any cool Bruce Lee hand gestures to move things and that some of the changes happened almost before I could complete their thought.
Case in point: a partially crumbled brick wall. I walked toward it, focusing on it, wanting it to collapse, but it was only when it fell that I realized my desire for it to fall had come after the action.
It was entirely bizarre.
There had been vehicles traveling on the highway below us the whole time we were here, but the way some of the latest ones moved told me that we were about to get some company. The odd part about this assumption was that I intuited it when the vehicles were just specks on the horizon.
And as I watched, I felt them approach, sensed their impending arrival. I turned toward Veronique and told her this was it.
“Good luck,” she said.
“Same to you,” was the only comeback I could muster.
Veronique launched her first attack the moment the SUVs and Humvees started turning onto the dirt road that led to the house. Bars of metal rocketed down the hillside, straight into the windows, killing the drivers of the first three vehicles.
By this point, the vehicles had stopped and people were piling out. I didn’t know the range of Grace’s ability, and rather than test it, I held back, waiting to handle those who actually breached the barrier.
I recalled one of Grace’s abilities that I hadn’t had a chance to practice yet, mostly because I didn’t have a target.
This was another reason to hold back, because if it worked …
The first two soldiers breached the front of the property, and as soon as I saw them, I took control of their minds.
Is this what it feels like?
Yes, Grace answered.
I smiled as the two men’s consciousness appeared in my pane of vision. It wasn’t like a video game with multiple perspectives, it was more like a dream in whi
ch I was someone else, yet also myself, our experiences playing out at the same time.
I imagined myself as the men, pointing their guns at each other and shooting.
Pop! Pop!
They fell.
“Holy shit …” I whispered.
I heard a swoosh behind me. Angel had landed on the roof of the house.
“Angel!” I shouted to Veronique, telling her of his location with a thought that she clearly received.
She struck him with another metal bar just as he reached the ground. He flew to the right, smashed into a fucking cactus, and tumbled in the dirt.
“Bullets!” I warned Veronique, foreshadowing their arrival.
Bullets came, and she quickly stopped them, turning them back on the men moving up the hill.
Dorian had chosen an incredibly good spot to leave us, as the men could only fight going up. Even Angel was now standing on a slope.
I kept listening for helicopters, and sure enough, I heard some.
No matter, as long as I could see the pilot …
That’s right, Writer Gideon, you can do this! Grace’s voice rang out in my head.
“I’ve got Angel,” I told Veronique.
His hair in his face, the superpowered mommy humper stomped over to me, ready to put an end to this. “Something has changed about you,” he growled, likely noticing the color of my eyes.
I could see Angel’s aura, and I could see there was no way I would be able to overpower him and take over his psyche. Forcing him to do something like shit his pants and perform the chicken dance wasn’t going to be an option.
I had to act fast.
I used my mind to swing one of the steel bars at Angel, bitch-slapping the hell out of him and dislocating his jaw.
Blood dripping from his chin, Angel wiped his face and prepared to fly into me. Just then a soldier came up around the bend. I took over his psyche and instructed him to fire his weapon at my adversary.
It was that fluid. Everything moved fast, but somehow, Grace’s ability slowed things down. It gave me time to think, to move, to orchestrate an attack from the soldier, who began firing quick blasts at Angel as the superpowered man charged him.
Brrrrrat! Brrrrrat! Brrrrrat!
Rather than slamming into me, Angel smacked into the guy, grabbed him by the neck and threw him over the side of the ridge. Meanwhile, Veronique busied herself gathering a wall of bullets with one hand – which she turned toward Angel – while collecting more with her other hand.
Cherry Blossom Girls Box Set Page 41
