“I needed you on my side,” said Ralph. “I needed to take you in quietly. I didn’t want you worrying about your sister when we had to get moving. I’m not like that berserker, lad. I wanted you alive.”
“I need to find my sister, Ralph. I need to know she’s okay!” I sat up on the bed, keeping my eyes on the window, steeling myself for what I was about to do. “And Ralph?” I said, steadying my breathing.
“What is it, lad?”
“I’m not going to fight in your stupid war.”
I turned swiftly, just enough to get a quick glimpse of about where Ralph was sitting. But even as I extended my arm out toward him, I already felt a wave of calm creeping over me. I heard my bedside lamp shatter as the room was suddenly alive with churning air, and the blankets whipped up around me. Still, I was ready, and I released my blast a moment later. I heard Ralph grunt in pain, and my calm vanished. The wind was weaker too, but I knew Ralph wasn’t badly hurt. I had only knocked him off his bed and onto the floor, and in a moment he would pick himself up.
I stretched my other arm toward the window and blasted it out. Ralph would just have to get over his disappointment.
I jumped out, planning to make a telekinetically controlled descent to the street below, but suddenly a powerful rush of air pushed me right back into the room! I hit the floor hard, barely able to keep my eyes open because of the wind, which was stronger than ever. I groped around the floor until my right hand found the small, broken lamp. Squinting, I could see Ralph standing over me, and I tried to throw the lamp at him, but my arm stopped mid-swing. I couldn’t do it. He was just an innocent old man.
“Oh, you’re a tough one, my little destroyer,” said Ralph, smirking. “You almost got away. But you aren’t going to do that again, are you?”
“No, Ralph, I won’t,” I answered. And I meant it too. I felt really ashamed of what I had done. How could I have thought of running away when Ralph needed me so much?
Ralph gently pulled me to my feet, saying, “No you won’t, lad. Not till you learn to block it, anyway.”
We went downstairs and apologized to the hotel management. Ralph, pretending to be my grandfather, told them that I had accidentally knocked the lamp over and that it had hit the window. They gave us another room after Ralph agreed to pay for the damages.
That night, Ralph told me that he was going to tie me to the bed. He said it was for my own safety. Though I didn’t know what danger I was in that required me to be tied down, nevertheless I was sure Ralph knew best. I removed my shoes and socks, but didn’t bother going back to the car for my pajamas, preferring to sleep in the clothes Ralph had bought for me.
Ralph took a sturdy iron chain he had brought from his car and secured one end to the headboard of the bed. Then he wrapped the other end around my neck once, pulling it tight enough so that it wouldn’t come off over my head, and locked it in place with a small padlock through the links. I was basically a dog on a leash, but I didn’t mind it at all because I knew Ralph was my friend. I did feel a touch of fear when he put the chain on me, but soon I felt calm again. The chain drained my strength and made me drowsy.
I lay there staring up at the ceiling until I could hear Ralph’s quiet snores from the other bed. I still felt extremely weak because of the chain, but my mind was much clearer now. It was easier to return to my real self this time, knowing what it was supposed to feel like. I kicked myself for not running away when I could, before Ralph had come back. I had wanted to confront him and make sure he really was a controller. I realized that even when he wasn’t directly controlling me, he had manipulated my actions through my fears and my curiosity. It was stupid of me. My escape plan had been foolhardy at best. Ralph wasn’t just some crazy old man. He was a powerful psionic. He had killed the berserker. He was a fighter.
I tugged at the chain, but it was futile. Drained of my powers, I was not even as strong as a normal twelve-year-old boy. The chain felt increasingly heavy around my neck.
Ralph had said that the “gathering” was in two days, so we would probably be staying another night here. When Ralph woke up, I would be put back under his control, which meant I wouldn’t try to escape even if I had the chance. Ralph had done enough shopping already. He wouldn’t leave me alone again.
I’d have to learn to block it. That’s what Ralph had said. He said anyone could block controllers, but that it took time and practice. I already knew I could block Ralph by not looking into his eyes, but that was just the nature of Ralph’s power. He could block the berserker completely. How did he do it? The obvious answer was to simply stay focused. But how?
Ralph’s power as a controller wasn’t at all like the berserker’s. The berserker could cause pain and make people angry. Ralph did the opposite. He made me calm and trusting, and made the world seem peaceful and dull. How could I fight that?
I didn’t know how to block it, nor could I hope to learn in one night, but there was another way that was much simpler. And I already knew the answer because it was around my neck! The difference between Ralph’s control and the berserker’s didn’t matter at all. It was how they were similar. Metal drained my powers, but it also drained my emotions, which, just like my physical strength, were tied to my powers now. Draining broke the connection. Ralph’s control over me had weakened when he put the chain on me. The only reason his control didn’t break then and there was because Ralph was still looking into my eyes. As soon as Ralph lay on his bed and well before he fell asleep, the metal had drained my emotions and the control was broken.
When Ralph talked to me, that is, when he looked at me, he was using his power to suppress my feelings, but he didn’t do it continuously. He just did it often enough so that I wouldn’t come back to being myself. If I could drain myself when he wasn’t looking, I’d snap out of his control, and then… Well, I’d have to think of that later.
I was getting very sleepy now. The chain felt heavier than ever.
I looked at the bedside table and saw what I wanted: a cheap plastic ballpoint hotel pen lying next to the lamp. The metal tip would be too small to affect me very much, but maybe, just maybe, it would keep me sane. I reached over and picked it up, feeling nauseous from even such little movement. Slowly pulling the cap off, I slipped the pen deep into my sweatpants pocket with the tip pointing outwards.
Unable to keep my eyes open any longer, I desperately prayed that I wouldn’t die in my sleep. A moment later, I woke up.
Ralph was leaning over me, unlocking the chain. The sunlight streaming in through the curtains was horribly cold, but I felt my strength return and looked up at Ralph, who peered into my eyes and smiled.
“Did you have a good night’s sleep, lad?” he asked pleasantly.
“Actually, I think I had a strange dream,” I told him.
“I’ll make us some breakfast. You go wash up now.”
“Okay,” I said, going into the bathroom and closing the door.
The faucet handle was made of metal. Not wanting to be drained, I wrapped it in toilet paper before turning on the water. After splashing some cold water onto my face, I looked at my reflection in the mirror. I could hear Ralph humming to himself outside and thought, under the circumstances, how lucky I was to have him taking care of me. Ralph was a good guy, always on my side. He would keep me safe.
I was about to go back into the bedroom when I noticed that there was something in my pocket. What was it? I reached in. Suddenly I felt a little dizzy. I pulled out a ballpoint pen and wondered how it had gotten there.
Slowly, my memories from last night were coming back to me. It hadn’t been a dream after all. I had put the pen in my pocket to trick myself into touching it. But why would I do such a thing? Why did I want to drain myself? Why had I thought that Ralph was a bad guy? Why did I want to run away from him?
It didn’t make any sense. I certainly had no desire to run from Ralph. Ralph was my friend. He needed me, and he was one of the good guys.
No, said that small voice aga
in.
No what? I thought.
Just… no.
Not even sure exactly why I was doing it, I touched the tip of the pen again, and a minute later, my mind cleared.
All of my previous questions answered, now I was faced with the one question that I had failed to answer last night: What next? I was trapped in a bathroom. The moment I stepped out, I would be put right back under Ralph’s control.
I turned the faucet to hot water only and touched the stream with one finger. It was scalding. After filling a plastic drinking cup with the steaming water, I stepped back into the bedroom.
“What’s that you got there, lad?” asked Ralph.
I didn’t answer, and I made sure not to look into his eyes. There’d be no building up to this fight. I couldn’t let him see it coming. I threw the water at him and, before he could even scream, I blasted him backwards with both arms stretched out. He fell flat on his back, winded by the impact and blinded by the water that had, miraculously, splashed onto his face.
The wind was beginning to pick up. My first instinct was to run, but I knew Ralph would catch me. I grabbed one of the wooden dining chairs by its back and brought it down on him as hard as I could. I didn’t actually want to kill him, but I didn’t not want to either. I didn’t care at all. All I cared about was stopping him. One of the chair legs hit his head, and the wind stopped. I didn’t know if Ralph was alive or dead, but I wasn’t about to find out.
I grabbed Ralph’s black leather wallet, which was sitting on the little dining table, and ran from the room. When my feet touched the cold concrete of the outside corridor, I realized that I wasn’t even wearing socks, but I didn’t stop. I jumped both flights of stairs, hardly bothering to soften my impact at the bottom of either. Bursting through the back door of the hotel into the early morning light, I just kept on running.
Chapter 4: Night Heights
I didn’t care where I was going. I just had to go as fast and as far as I could. I sprinted down the sidewalk, past little shuttered shops and cheap-looking apartment buildings, and dipped into an alleyway where a squawking murder of crows had to take evasive maneuvers to keep from being trampled on as I darted through them. I came out the other side to another wide road where I saw a group of people, mostly dark-suited businessmen with leather briefcases, filing onto a commuter bus. They stared as I rushed aboard at the last second, barefoot, out of breath and clutching a stitch in my side, but I didn’t care.
I had to pay my fare in coins taken from Ralph’s wallet, but I didn’t want to touch the metal money. This drew even more awkward looks from the passengers because I asked the bus driver to pick out the correct amount directly from the coin pocket. The driver must have thought I was crazy, but he didn’t comment as he took the coins.
I kept looking back as the bus started to move, expecting Ralph to come running after me at any moment, maybe sending a tornado at me. The bus crawled along its morning route altogether oblivious to my impatience. At every stop, I was torn between the need to get farther away from the hotel and a panicked desire to get off the bus and find a place to hide. In the end, I rode the bus to the end of its line, which turned out to be a large city square surrounded by a shopping center, some tall office buildings, and a giant train station.
I first ran into the shopping center, which had just opened its doors for the day. I bought a new pair of shoes, socks, and thin gloves. Then I headed to the train station where I got a ticket to a neighboring city.
At the time, it didn’t matter to me where I went, as long as it was far away. Ralph had said he wasn’t much of a “finder,” but that he could find power. Whose power? Mine or the berserker’s? Ralph had shown up a moment after the berserker. Perhaps Ralph couldn’t find me. Perhaps he had been following the berserker, and that’s how he found me. As my train pulled out of the station, I didn’t quite breathe a sigh of relief, but I felt that, for the moment, I was probably safe.
Nevertheless, when I got off the train a little before noon, I immediately started looking for a way to get even farther away. I was inwardly hoping that a chair to the head would have convinced Ralph that he really didn’t want me in his group, especially since Ralph himself had said that I wasn’t much more than cannon fodder anyway. But I didn’t want to take any chances. I guessed that Ralph’s “gathering” would include many other people with powers that could find me from a great distance away. I had to keep moving.
After a fast-food lunch, I took a two-hour bus ride to yet another city. Even though I was calmer and dressed properly this time, some of the passengers still looked at me curiously. An elderly woman who had the seat next to mine asked me where my parents were, so I told her that I had been visiting my relatives and I was going home before school started. I had always been a little small for my age, and the woman didn’t seem to believe me when I told her that I was twelve years old.
As I got off the bus in the early afternoon, I discovered that Ralph’s wallet was already running on empty. Now I was faced with questions of survival. I’d be thirteen in another month and a half, but that was a long way off from being an adult. I knew I couldn’t find work, and it was only a matter of time before I got picked up by the police. As soon as the new school year started, which I realized was now only two days away, I would look out of place on the streets in the daytime. Even if I had the money, I couldn’t just check into a hotel, either. The world simply wasn’t designed to accommodate children on the run.
For the rest of the day, I wandered the streets alone, resting on park benches from time to time. At night, finding nowhere better to go, I snuck under some bushes in a public park. The night air was chilly, and I hugged myself to keep warm.
My parents had been killed just two days ago, and here I was shivering under a bush with nowhere to turn and, for all I knew, being hunted by people who had powers I couldn’t even begin to imagine. It was a while before I realized that I was crying.
I wondered if perhaps I should just turn myself in to the police and explain, or at least try to explain, what was going on. But I remembered what Ralph had said to me on our first night in the car: “Governments know.” What did that mean? How would they treat me? Somehow, I felt that I didn’t want to find out.
I was still very worried about Cat, but even if I had the money for the return journey, which I didn’t, I was deathly afraid that there might be a trap waiting for me back home. I managed to convince myself that Ralph was probably right about my sister. The police would have found her by now and perhaps sent her to my uncle’s place. I wanted to call my uncle and check, but I didn’t know his phone number or exact street address. I forced myself to push aside my fears about Cat. I had to concentrate on taking care of myself.
The next morning, tired and stiff from my night in the park, I made my way to a nearby supermarket. There were still a handful of coins left to me, and I was hungry. But when that food was gone, I would have to choose my next move. I remembered my PE teacher’s favorite saying: “Either you get up and face your problems, or you wait around until your problems are facing you.” That day, I chose the latter.
At night, after another full day’s aimless wandering, I was once again sitting under the bush in the park. Not having eaten any lunch or dinner, I felt weak and even colder than the night before. There was nothing for it: I would eventually have to steal something, either tonight or the next day when I was even hungrier than I was now. To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t all too bothered by the moral side of that. I was merely trying to survive. If someone was going to give me a job, or any “right” way to make it out here, I’d take it. I knew that was true, and so I felt it wasn’t a real crime to steal when there weren’t any other options. The real question was how to do it.
I got up and walked toward the downtown area. It was about 11pm, and many of the shops and office buildings were closed. But there were still plenty of cars on the streets, and people were strolling or just milling about on the sidewalks. As I trudged along, I rea
lized that I had no idea where to start. All I knew was that crime was best committed at night, when it was dark. For adults, anyway.
“Hey, kid, where are you going?” a young woman in a sparkly green dress called out to me from across the street. I ignored her and kept my pace, bringing my head down a notch. A child alone on the streets at this time of night drew too much attention. This wasn’t going to be easy.
I ducked into a narrow alleyway between two buildings. The alley was dimly lit, with only two neon tube lights attached to the sides of the buildings. One of them was buzzing and flickering feebly. This was exactly the kind of place your gut warns you about, saying, Stay away from there. That’s where bad things happen. But I had been through a good deal of fear these last few days and I knew that there were much scarier things in the world than dark alleyways.
I looked up at the fire escape on one of the buildings. The rusty iron staircase extended from the top of the building down to the second floor, where it stopped. There was a ladder that could be extended from there down to the ground, but of course it was lifted up so that burglars couldn’t climb it.
No matter. I stood there and calmed myself for a few seconds, gathering my focus before levitating myself up onto the stairs. Once I landed on the staircase, I felt my power drain just a little from being surrounded by all the metal, but it was no big deal. My new shoes kept me from touching the fire escape directly. Though I was wearing my gloves, I didn’t use the railing as I quietly climbed the steps.
The problem was that at each floor, there was a locked steel door, but no windows to look in from. I couldn’t tell what kind of building this was, whether it was an apartment or an office or a hospital or what. I climbed to the top and stood on the asphalt roof. I hadn’t been counting, but I must have been about ten stories up.
I looked at the other buildings around me. Many of them were about the same height. Peering over the edge of the roof, I saw the people far below me walking this way and that, minding their own business. I looked up at the night sky. A thick layer of dark clouds slowly slid over the waning moon, and suddenly, my hunger temporarily forgotten, I was seized with a reckless desire… to fly!
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