Fear Power

by C. C. Bolick

  I cringed at the thought of people who might be in danger. “How many people are there?”

  Angel took a deep breath. “That arena can seat seventy thousand.”

  “Louis is trying to draw you out,” Travis said. “Body count is just a bonus.”

  I shivered. “If it’s a nuclear bomb, can’t the destruction travel for miles?”

  “Not if you disarm the bomb.” Travis glanced over his shoulder, but I couldn’t see his eyes through his dark sunglasses.

  We sped down the exit and across the short distance to the arena in silence. At a back entrance to the parking lot, a team of agents prepared to enter the building. They waved us through and Skip parked near one of the doors.

  “No power-mode this time,” I said nervously. “No reason for me to feel sick.”

  Angel climbed from the SUV and pulled me up to stand on the pavement. “You’ll get the chance to see Skip in action again. Did you know Sylvia has the same power?”

  “And Dr. Greene?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Nope. Missed a generation.”

  “Enough talk,” Travis said as he opened the door for Rachelle and walked around the vehicle. “Time is short today.”

  “Are they going to evacuate the building?” I asked.

  “Sylvia wants to keep this quiet.” Travis opened a door for me and Angel to walk inside the building. Rachelle followed and then Skip.

  “That’s putting lives at risk,” I said.

  “The agency conducts operations in plain sight daily,” Skip said. “If you knew how many times a day, you’d really be sick.”

  “We don’t have time to evacuate,” Travis said. “Even if we did, a nuclear bomb going off will effect a good chunk of town. Maybe all of it. Best focus on disarming the bomb.”

  “And how do we get through security?”

  “I do my agent routine while you find something to fear. Don’t force me to put a gun in your face.”

  “Find something to fear. Got it, double-oh-seven.”

  He raised his sunglasses and gave me a serious look. His gloves felt warm despite the cold air. “This isn’t play time, Miss Science.”

  When he slid his sunglasses down, I felt a sudden loss at not being able to see his eyes. With a squeeze of his hand, I felt his support. Travis wasn’t leaving until everyone was safe.

  “Let’s find this bomb,” I said.

  * * * * *

  After an hour, no one had located the bomb. A team of more than fifty agents combed the arena, garnering looks from fear to indignation from the spectators. I stood on the ground level next to the makeshift command post that consisted of a folding table Travis set up in a corner, out of the main flow of traffic.

  Skip found a chair and opened his laptop, connecting us to the agency’s servers. One of the agents placed a box of football-shaped hats on the table. To anyone walking by, Skip was a vendor hard at work. Three agents kept the arena security from walking in our direction.

  “What’s with the hats?” I asked.

  “They’re left over from a party,” Skip said without looking up. “Give Agent Dallas some credit. It was a great idea.”

  Agent Dallas was the last name I wanted to hear. She’d probably demand another debriefing in the morning.

  “I’m going to the bathroom.” Rachelle walked away before anyone could respond.

  “I’ll go with her,” I said.

  Angel pointed to the bathroom across the walkway. “Go there but nowhere else. I can see you enter and exit from here.”

  I nodded and ran after Rachelle. Inside the bathroom, I found a stall and listened as several drunk women talked about how one of the players was now single. Then they laughed about their chances of landing a pro-football player. I’d never understood why people needed alcohol to have fun. I stayed in the stall until the laughter faded.

  When I opened the door, the woman from the warehouse stood in front of me. I stumbled backward and almost fell into the toilet.

  “Regina,” she said.

  I opened my mouth to scream but no sound emerged. My whole body froze.

  She reached for my arm and pulled me from the stall. Her movements felt like a robot. Near the sinks stood Louis and two men about Dad’s age. They stood taller than Louis, with beards to match their black hair and guns hanging from their shoulders.

  Identical twins. They looked so much alike I couldn’t tell them apart. My heart raced as I stood dumbfounded. The woman shoved me closer to Louis.

  He stepped forward. “Regina, finally. I apologize for having to meet like this.”

  “We’re in a woman’s bathroom,” I managed to say.

  “The agency is keeping you closely guarded. I promise I would have come for you by now if I could have.” He put his hands on my upper arms. “It’s good to see you.”

  Rachelle. Where was Rachelle? I glanced around the bathroom but no one was entering or leaving. The room had been packed with noisy women only moments before.

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  “You.” Louis nodded to the men. “Grab her.”

  From the corner of my eye, I noticed a movement, seconds before Rachelle pushed me out of Louis’s grip. I stumbled back and one of the twins grabbed her. He disappeared with Rachelle and a few seconds later he reappeared.

  Teleported. Just like Travis.

  The fear that Angel felt poking around my head chose that moment to emerge. Blue sparkled along my palms as I backed away from them. “Where did she go?”

  “That’s it,” Louis said. “Fear us and let your power grow.”

  “Where’s the bomb?” I asked, covering my face with the backs of my hands.

  “You are the bomb,” he said.

  “Louis,” Travis yelled.

  I lowered my hands. Travis and Angel ran at us from the entrance.

  “Get us out of here,” Louis said.

  One of the twins reached for me and I ducked under his arms. Travis fired his gun and the man yelped while grabbing his leg. Louis glared at his employee doubled over in pain.

  “Time to go,” the woman said.

  Louis shot her a look of indecision. “Not without Regina.”

  She stepped closer to the man in pain. “You’ll get another chance.” With a glance at me, she grabbed his arm and they both disappeared.

  The remaining twin grabbed Louis’s arm and they disappeared. Travis stared at the empty space where they’d stood, his gun trembling in his hands.

  “They teleported,” he finally said. “Louis has someone helping him that can…” His eyes met Angel’s. “This isn’t good.”

  Angel looked around the empty room. “Where is Rachelle?”

  * * * * *

  Angel spent the entire ride back to the base blaming herself for Rachelle’s disappearance. Travis didn’t say a word.

  After entering the base, we went straight to the largest meeting room. A team of agents were assembled around the long table. Sylvia sat in her usual seat at the end.

  “Rachelle,” Angel began.

  “She’s been found,” Sylvia said. “They dropped her at a train station a few blocks away. Two agents are checking her for any devices that could compromise security before she enters the base.”

  My sigh of relief was almost as loud as Angel’s.

  “Agent Payne, Agent Greene, join us at the table.”

  Skip smiled at Angel. “Which one of us?”

  “Both. Get some rest, Miss Mason. When we have more information, we’ll call.”

  * * * * *

  Getting up at three-thirty a.m. meant I actually slept that night. Travis knocked on my door at six the next morning and led me to the meeting room where I’d stood only hours before. My stomach rumbled as he rolled a chair away from the table and motioned for me to sit, about halfway down the table. I felt brief satisfaction at getting to sit with the senior agents instead of in a metal folding chair along the wall.

  Across from me, Skip sat with his laptop open. H
e scrolled through video clips on a screen that covered most of the far wall. The clips were images of the arena including a video showing Louis from inside the bathroom.

  “Where did you get that footage?” I asked.

  Travis sat beside me and pulled his sunglasses from his inner suit pocket. He handed them to me. “These record video of everything I see. Why do you think I insisted on keeping them on for the entire trip?”

  “You have a recording of everything we said?”

  “I scrubbed the funny parts,” Skip said. “He can tease you with those later.”

  Angel walked around the table and dropped into the chair at Skip’s side. “Are you ready?” she asked him.

  “Almost. I have ten clips in the queue and backgrounds on everyone ready to go.”

  “You figured out who was with Louis?” I asked.

  Skip nodded. “I searched the databases myself. That’s one advantage of having a photographic memory.”

  “Tell us their names,” Angel said.

  “You can wait and find out with the rest of us,” Travis said.

  She rolled her eyes and I felt the tension between them. Were they still arguing because of me?

  Other agents filtered in and took a seat, including Dad and Agent Lockhart. Agent Lockhart sat to Angel’s other side and dropped a stack of folders on the table before him.

  “Homework?” she asked.

  He chuckled and opened the top folder. Dad sat closer to Sylvia’s end of the table, nodding to me as he walked by.

  “Back already?” I asked above the rising noise.

  “When we heard about Louis, I cleared the building as fast as possible. No one was hurt and our plane landed in Atlanta with an hour to spare.”

  “We weren’t leaving you here alone,” Agent Lockhart said.

  Travis squeezed my hand under the table. “She was never alone.”

  As Sylvia entered and took her seat at the head of the table, the noise dissipated.

  Agent Lockhart handed Angel a folder from his stack. “Check out pages four, six, and fifteen.” As the remaining agents rushed in and found seats, most holding a cup of coffee, she leaned back and thumbed through the pages.

  “Shall we begin?” Sylvia waved to Skip. “The meeting is yours Agent Greene.”

  Skip brought up a picture of two men who looked identical.

  “The Thompson Twins,” an agent to Sylvia’s right said. “They haven’t been seen since that incident in Australia with the kangaroos… You know. I really don’t want to repeat the details here.”

  “Kangaroos?” I whispered.

  “Something about smuggling high-dollar drugs,” Travis whispered.

  “Anything we need to know, Agent Payne?” Sylvia asked.

  Every eye turned to us and a trail of red crawled up my cheeks.

  “No ma’am.” Travis released my hand and leaned back in his seat.

  “They’ve teamed up with Louis?” Sylvia glanced around the table. “That almost makes me feel sorry for him. Those men have a way of botching every illegal activity they attempt.”

  I raised a hand and everyone stared as if I’d lost my mind. “Why do you call them the Thompson Twins?” Someone laughed from the other end of the table, which made my cheeks flush brighter.

  “Because they’re twins and their last name is Thompson,” said the man laughing. “Cale and Horace Thompson.”

  Next Skip pulled up a picture of the woman. “Bethany Kruger, age thirty-one.”

  “That’s her.” I pointed at the screen. “She’s the woman we met at the warehouse.”

  “She also mentioned being a former agent,” Travis said.

  “There’s no record of Bethany Kruger ever having contact with this agency.” Skip turned in Sylvia’s direction. “Unless you know something we don’t.”

  Sylvia shook her head. “I’ve never seen her before. You have her bio?”

  Skip clicked and a younger picture of the woman appeared. Her hair was longer and she didn’t have the glasses. A smile crossed her lips; like me she wore no makeup.

  “Miss Kruger was hit by a drunk driver on the way to her twenty-first birthday party. Her sister died in the crash. No one believed Bethany would ever wake up from the coma.”

  Across from me, Dad’s eyes seemed to water as he watched the screen. Or maybe I imagined he might be thinking of my mother. “Hit and run?” he asked.

  “The man who hit her was Jackson Lloyd.”

  Dad sat straight up in his chair. “Jackson Lloyd?” He stared down the table at Sylvia. “The same Jackson Lloyd who killed my wife? I thought you said he was dead.”

  “You knew who he was?” I asked. “I thought you said it was a hit and run.” Jackson Lloyd… I’d never heard his name before. Now Dad was saying he was the one who wrecked us that night three years ago? Broke my hip and sent my mother to an early grave?

  “Lloyd died a month after Rosanna,” Sylvia said.

  Dad slammed a hand down on the table. “You’re saying that the same man who killed Rosanna put this woman in a coma?”

  “Ten years ago,” Sylvia said. “This happened a long time before your accident.”

  Skip cleared his throat. “Until six weeks ago, Bethany Kruger lived in a long-term care facility outside of Boston. She spent ten years there after the wreck. Jackson Lloyd never served a day in prison after he fled the state.”

  Dad pushed his chair back from the table. He covered his face and I wondered if he’d lose control in front of the other agents. I didn’t feel far from a breakdown myself. “If he’d been arrested,” Dad said. “If… if someone had locked that monster away, Rosanna wouldn’t have died.”

  “You can’t rewrite the past,” Sylvia said in a firm voice. “Donald, we all have regrets. Wishing for what could have been won’t help us with this case.”

  Dad’s voice came back to reality. “What was this woman doing with Louis Castillo?”

  “Now you’re starting to see the issue,” Agent Lockhart said.

  Angel looked up from the folder she held. “Bethany Kruger woke up six weeks ago. She opened her eyes and within twenty-four hours walked out of that facility. The doctors called it a bona-fide miracle.”

  “There are no miracles,” Sylvia said. “Only people making the system work for once. Others have awakened from comas.”

  My hands shook under the table. Dad looked in my direction, but I couldn’t meet his eyes. I felt a mountain of anger toward the man they called Lloyd. How could he take Mama away?

  But Dad had drank for three years afterward. If he’d driven under the influence, he could have killed someone just as easy. One wrong move and a fifteen-year-old like me could have ended up in a hospital with a dead mother. Tears welled in my eyes and I wiped them away.

  “Rena,” Dad said. “I know what you’re feeling, but you’ve got to stay calm. It’s been three years.”

  Was he really giving me advice after looking like he might come apart himself? “I just need a moment.”

  “Is Miss Kruger working with Louis a coincidence?”

  I glared down the table at the owner of that voice, Agent Dallas.

  “There’s no such thing,” another agent said.

  “Can we move on from Miss Kruger?” Sylvia said. “This meeting was about Louis Castillo.”

  Hearing that name made my insides burn. He had no right to keep coming after me.

  “We’ve got one more thing on Lloyd,” Skip said.

  Sylvia glared at her grandson. “Keep this on a short leash, Agent Greene.”

  “We have a surveillance video from a bank the day Lloyd died. This video has been re-imaged using the latest technology.”

  “A quarter of a million dollars is a hefty price tag for you to clean up You-Tube videos,” Sylvia said. “Hopefully that money was well spent.”

  “I think you’ll be pleased.” Skip clicked on a file and the video buffered. He adjusted the speed until the car crawled slower than an ant. The man I hated most sat behin
d the wheel. The car started to swerve left and then it cut right… a flash appeared in the front seat next to him. Skip paused the video.

  “What was that flash?” Dad asked. “Was someone in the car with Lloyd when he died?”

  Angel closed her folder. “The police report states he was alone.”

  “Can you make out a face?” Travis asked.

  “That’s the best I’ve got for now,” Skip said. “I’ll work on cleaning up that image more.”

  I thought of the pictures the agency had of my mother, taken months ago. Her face was grainy in the shots, but it looked like her. The pictures had prompted the agency to open an investigation into her death. Although I’d been out cold at the hospital, Dad insisted Mama died that night. He had her cremated a few days later.

  People spoke in low voices around me. Travis reached for my hand, but I held back. “How is talking about him helping us find Louis?”

  “We have to investigate every possibility,” Agent Dallas said, “however painful it might be.”

  Painful, yes. At least I didn’t have to fear facing Lloyd. He died a month after Mama, which meant he’d never rip another person’s heart out like he had mine.

  “What about Louis?” I asked. “What about the twins who are helping him? How were they able to teleport?”

  The voices around me stopped. Like the calm before a storm, I waited for the violence that would soon follow. The longer the silence lasted, the faster my heart thudded.

  Finally, a nervous laugh came from somewhere down the table.

  I turned to Travis. “Other people have the power to teleport like you.”

  “I’ve met others with the same power,” he said.

  “How many people can teleport?”

  “I don’t have an exact number for you.”

  I looked at Skip and Angel who watched with huge eyes. Dad’s grief had disappeared, and now he watched as if I might self-implode at any moment. I checked my palms. Good, no blue. I hadn’t reached blowing up stage yet.

  From the silence came the last voice I wanted to hear. “We’ve discussed this, Miss Mason. There’s another planet with technology more advanced than ours. Some of their people have visited Earth.”