by Lisa Beeson
He looked surprised at first, but then he put on a cocky smile. “You don’t have to tell me…I know.”
Ari threw up her hands. “And then, you gotta ruin it.” She laughed.
Cam playfully pushed her away, and that’s when someone came up from behind and threaded their arm through hers, taking her completely by surprise. She looked over to see a boy about Cam’s age, but only around her height. He had ash-blonde hair that reminded her of old dirty dishwater, and kept falling into his pale blue eyes. He had a shifty look about him, but what unnerved her the most was that he was a Progeny... and his radiant light was brighter than Cam’s – the brighter the light, the more powerful the ability.
He quickly guided her down an alleyway that was directly to their left. “I’ve been sent here to fetch you, Ariana Reyes.”
Cam ran after them and shoved the creep away from Ari. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, guy?”
The kid looked like he was about to fight back, but when he saw that he was no match against Cam physically he backed down. Ari figured he was wearing the dark clothes and a trench coat – despite the summer heat – to hide how scrawny he really was.
He stood up straight to try to look more intimidating. “She’s coming with me.”
“The hell she is,” Cam said, moving in threateningly.
“Who sent you to fetch me?” Ari asked, trying to step in between them.
“Mr. Reinhold has been expecting you, and he’s tired of waiting. So he sent me to bring you to him,” the kid said in a self-important way.
“How did he know where to find me?”
The kid smirked and raised an eyebrow. “Mr. Reinhold has many powerful friends.”
The way he said the word “powerful”, made her nervous. If all his friends were like this kid maybe going to this Reinhold guy wasn’t the best idea after all. She wasn’t getting a good vibe from him at all. He was just a little too eager to prove himself, and he was willing to do anything to get the job done.
“Well, you can tell Mr. Reinhold thanks, but I changed my mind. I’d rather stay here.”
The kid looked disgusted and angry at her refusal. “No one says no to Mr. Reinhold. You’re coming with me whether you like it or not.” He grabbed her arm roughly and started to drag her away.
Just like Adam had taught her to, Ari pulled her arm out of the kid’s grasp and stepped back into a fighting stance.
Cam picked the kid up by grabbing the front of his shirt and trench coat, and slammed him up against the brick wall. “She’s not going anywhere with you. And if you lay a hand on her again, I’ll break it. You got that, asshat?”
The kid, struggling in Cam’s grasp, shouted over at Ari, “Tell your stupid boyfriend to get off me, or you’ll both be sorry!”
Cam slammed him against the wall again. “First off… gross. She’s not my girlfriend. I prefer women, not girls.” He glanced over at Ari. “No offense, Pipes.”
“None taken,” she assured him.
“Second…,” he slammed him again. “Who do you think you are, pushing little girls around and threatening people?”
The kid glared at Cam, seething with anger. “I’m your worst nightmare,” he said through clenched teeth.
Cam dropped him and busted out laughing. “Did you seriously just say that? Good Lord, that’s hilarious.” He laughed some more, then straightened his face and said in a gravelly voice, “Are you Batman?” He doubled over, laughing even harder.
The kid got up and glared at Cam, circling around them and blocking off the exit to the street. He had the damaged look of a kid who had been bullied most of his life. Looking into his eyes, Ari saw that it had warped him into something twisted and dangerous.
Cam was still laughing, but Ari was worried and her scalp started to tingle. This kid had a powerful ability and he looked like he was about to use it. Ari tugged on the sleeve of Cam’s shirt. “Um… Cam,” she said, trying to get his attention, while keeping her eyes on the kid.
“You won’t be laughing when I burn your face off, douchebag!” the kid warned, the color rising in his face.
Cam stopped laughing and looked up. “…What was that?”
The kid held out his hand in front of him. A blue ball of flame appeared above his palm.
Cam and Ari gasped and stepped back.
“Dude… Calm down,” Cam said as he put his arm in front of Ari to shield her.
The kid had an evil grin that reminded Ari of the Grinch. “Not such a big hero now, are you?”
“Hey man, we can talk this out…,” Cam said, walking backwards and pulling Ari with him by the back of her tank top.
The kid shook his head. “Too late for that, hot shot… You should have just let me take her.” He launched the fireball at Cam like a baseball.
Cam ducked just in time for it to miss and hit the pavement behind him, setting some trash on fire. He looked at the kid in shock. “You just threw a fireball at my head…at my HEAD!”
The kid nodded. “And I’ll do it again if you don’t hand the girl over to me, now.” He made another blue fireball appear in his hand.
Ari looked into his eyes and saw that he had every intention of killing Cam. “Run!” she screamed as she pushed Cam out of the way of the next fireball. She saw the path they needed to take to get them out of there the fastest. She told Cam to follow her, then took three running steps and leaped up onto the top of the dumpster sitting against the building to their left. She then jumped across the alley to the fire escape on the other side. Quickly, she swung herself up and flipped over to the rooftop of the previous building. Cam followed her, barely missing another fireball. He jumped from the fire escape and somersaulted as he landed on the roof.
They heard the kid scream from below, “This isn’t over!”
Cam and Ari ran and jumped from rooftop to rooftop until they felt they had put enough distance between themselves and the psycho fireball kid. They found a drainpipe that they could climb down on the backside of a building, then jumped down onto a ledge, walked to the corner, climbed down to the top of a cement wall, and jumped down to the sidewalk. As they stood there, leaning against the wall catching their breaths, they looked over at each other in disbelief.
“Did that really just happen?” Ari asked. “I had no idea that fire manipulation was a possible Progeny ability. That’s mind-blowing. Who knows what other kinds of bizarre abilities are out there?”
Cam shrugged his shoulders as he pulled his hair back in that samurai look of his. “I don’t know, but Pyro Joe looked like he really wanted to fry me.”
“He did,” Ari answered gravely. “He wanted to kill you.”
Cam shook his head in disgust. “That kid has problems. I don’t know who this Mr. Reinhold guy is, but I think you’d better stay as far away from him as you can.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” Ari responded. Cass had told her that some things she saw didn’t always happen, so maybe Canada was one of them. “Looks like I’ll be crashing with you for awhile then…”
Cam ruffled her hair. “That’s fine with me, Pipes. You saved my hide back there. The least I can do is put up with your stinkin’ face for a while longer.”
She laughed and knocked his hand away. “Speaking of home, let’s go before Pyro Joe finds us again.”
He chuckled. “The name fits him, doesn’t it?”
She nodded in agreement, and they started walking towards the nearest L train stop. They made it just in time for the next train, but they had to hurry in order to get on before the doors closed. Just as they were about to get on the train, Ari saw some men in dark suits coming up the stairs to the platform, briskly walking towards them. Ari pushed Cam through the train doors and jumped on just as the doors were closing behind them. The Suits stopped short and looked at her through the windows on the door. Her scalp was tingling so bad it hurt.
The train pulled away and she turned around to face Cam. His face was pale as he held onto the hand rail. “Were those guys the
Suits you were talking about?”
Ari nodded slowly. “I’m so sorry I dragged you into this, Cam. Now they’ll be after you, too.” She felt tears of frustration prickle behind her eyes. She looked down at her shoes. How could she have done this to him? She selfishly put someone she cared for in danger again.
When will I learn?
Cam tilted her head up with his finger in an attempt to make her look at him. “Hey, let’s get this straight. I’m the one that dragged you kicking and screaming into my world, not the other way around.” He let go of her chin and scanned the train car. “Now we just need to figure out how to get out of this predicament.”
Ari thought about what to do next. “They’ll be waiting for us at the next stop.”
Cam rubbed at the back of his head, looking towards the back of the train car. “Then I guess we get off before the next stop,” he said with a devilish smile. He jogged to the back of the train towards the door to the space that led to the next car. Ari followed him, dodging people’s legs and personal belongings. No one on the train was paying attention to them as they passed by; they were too engrossed in their own lives.
Cam opened the back door and raised his voice so he could be heard over the outside noise. “Okay, this is going to be tricky, but you’re going to have to trust me and jump exactly when I tell you to. Got it?”
Ari nodded, not quite sure what he was thinking.
They moved out between the cars, and Cam closed the door behind them. Ari quickly stuck her head out between the cars to look ahead and she saw that the train was moving towards an elevated bridge that went over a road full of cars.
“We’re going to jump onto that,” Cam yelled, while pointing to a small maintenance platform on the side of the bridge.
The train was rapidly approaching the platform. “Alright, jump when I say!” he yelled into her ear, and she nodded. “…3,2,1, now!” They both jumped before the train reached the platform, letting the train’s momentum fling them forward. Ari barely made it and started to fall backwards, but Cam grabbed her and pulled her onto the platform.
After the train passed, they both nervously laughed in relief that they had just pulled that off.
“C’mon,” Cam said as he jumped down and grabbed one of the girders under the bridge. He moved hand over hand towards one of the posts holding the bridge up, and swung over. Like a monkey, he climbed with his hands and feet down the iron post, all the way to the sidewalk below.
Ari watched him maneuver the trusses and decided to climb down the lamp post that was connected to the platform. When she jumped down beside him, he shrugged. “Well, if you want to do it the easy way…”
Ari smirked and rolled her eyes. They ran down the sidewalk in the general direction of Hawk’s store. That’s when Ari saw a black sedan coming down the road towards them. She stopped and clutched onto Cam’s arm. She turned around and saw another sedan coming from the opposite way. “Cam, the black sedans, they’re the Suits. They’re closing in on us!”
Cam looked around, then took her hand and led them down a side street. The sun was setting behind the buildings, making the shadows elongate and darken. They ran a few blocks, then cut across to a residential street full of small trees and townhouses. A police car was coming down the street in their direction. The flashers beamed when the headlights shone on Cam and Ari.
“Are you kidding me, the cops are after us too?” Cam exclaimed in disbelief.
Ari’s scalp was tingling nonstop now. “I told you the Suits were connected. They’re not messing around now.”
“Follow me…,” he said, and quickly hurdled over a fence into someone’s side yard. “We need to get out of Chicago!” he yelled over his shoulder as they ran as fast as they could through the yard towards a back alley. They jumped onto some trash cans and vaulted over a brick wall and onto the road on the other side.
“Cam, wait!” Ari yelled before he started to run again. “We need to go back to the apartment. I can’t leave without my bag.”
Cam turned back. “No effin’ way, are you crazy? You know that place is going to be swarming with Suits and their cop friends by now!”
“We have to! My bag has my passport, Cass’ ring, and all of my money. We can’t go anywhere without money!”
Cam puffed out a frustrated breath. “Fine!” he said, and then tried to get his bearings. “…This way.” They ran off down another side street.
They were about halfway back to the store when another black sedan started to follow them again. Ari wanted to go into hyper speed mode, but she couldn’t leave Cam behind.
“How the hell do they keep finding us?” Cam yelled.
Ari only had to think about it for a second. “Your cell phone! Cam, get rid of it.”
A pained look flashed across his face, but he quickly pulled it out of his pocket and threw it in the open window of a passing car.
The black sedan was gaining on them. “Don’t let them get close! They have guns!” Ari warned.
“Screw that!” Cam yelled as he leaped onto a parked car, and then jumped and swung himself up onto the cross bar of a traffic light that was connected to a lamp post. He stood up and balanced his way towards the second story of a building, then jumped off the edge and clung to the window ledge. He climbed his way up to the third story, then up to the roof.
This kid’s like freakin’ Spiderman.
Ari did exactly what Cam did, and he helped pull her on to the roof. They ran and jumped from rooftop to rooftop. When the available rooftops ran out, they got down and ran through the back alleys until they were about a block away from the store.
Cam stopped. “Wait, I have an idea. We can’t go running in there, guns a-blazing. We need to scope out the situation first…follow me.”
He led her back onto the main sidewalk and quickly went through the doors of Hawk’s apartment building. Ari ran over to the elevator and pushed the button to go up. The lights over the doors indicated that the elevator was on the nineteenth floor.
“That’ll take too long, come on,” Cam said as he ran over to the door that led to the stairs.
Ari followed him. “But isn’t going up the stairs is going to take just as long?”
He opened the door to the stairwell and they went through. “Not the way I do it,” Cam said with a smirk. He ran up a couple steps, then climbed up onto the hand rail, stood up, and jumped onto the rail on the next flight up, skipping the stairs all together. He quickly jumped back and forth up the center of the stairs, moving up flight by flight. Ari shook her head and then followed his lead. When they got up to the tenth floor Cam climbed over the rail and ran up the last couple steps to open the door to Hawk’s floor. “Hawk lives in apartment #1005.” They ran down the hallway, and Cam knocked on the door and waited, but no one answered. “Screw it…I really hope Hawk doesn’t have an alarm system.” He pulled out his wallet and took out what looked like lock picks. He inserted them into the lock and started fiddling around.
Ari’s mouth fell open in shock.
Cam glanced over and chuckled. “Pick your jaw up, Pipes. I’m not a burglar. I was just bored one day and Googled how to pick a lock, thinking it might come in handy one day…” The lock clicked, and Cam grinned. “…and I was right.” He turned the knob, opening the door. They waited a second, making sure no blaring alarms were going to go off, and when they were met with silence they quickly ducked inside. It was getting dark out, but they didn’t turn on any lights that would announce they were there.
“Oooo swanky… Hawk’s got style, or at least Marissa does,” Cam said as he looked around.
The apartment was large and tastefully decorated. Everything was high-end and looked expensive. “What are we doing here, Cam? Especially with no one home…” Ari didn’t feel right breaking into Hawk’s apartment. She saw a family portrait on the wall; it was weird to see Hawk away from the store environment. His wife was a pretty, blue-eyed blond and little Lucy looked just like her, but with Hawk’s darker co
loring.
“We’re here because of this…,” he said opening a sliding door that led out to a balcony. He motioned for her to come over, then ducked down below a railing that had large rectangles of metal grating which they could hide behind. Ari followed his example and they peeked through the gaps. Her stomach dropped; Cam was right. The store was surrounded by black sedans and cop cars.
How are we going to do this?
“Sweet baby Jesus, the FBI is down there too! What do they think we did, kill the President?” Cam scanned around, focusing in on various spots. “They have guys staked out all over the place. Ari, this is impossible. Let’s just scrap it and get out of here.”
“I can’t, Cam. I need my bag,” she said simply, then turned and leaned against the metal and tried to think. How could they possibly do this without getting caught?
Then she had it.
What if I went into hyper speed and pushed myself to go as fast as I possibly could? Then maybe I’d be going so fast that no one would be able to see me...It’s the only way…
“Cam, I have an idea. Is there anything you want me to get for you from the apartment?”
“Ari, are you crazy? There’s no way I’m going to let you go over there. Its suicide.”
She grabbed his shoulders and looked him in the eyes. “I need you to trust me on this. Stop wasting time and tell me what you want.”
He looked like he was about to protest, but he saw the intensity in her eyes and relented. “I have a stash of cash in the back left corner of my sock drawer.”
“Is that it?”
“Oh, and there’s a knife that should be right next to the cash. It was my Grandpa’s old army knife.”
Ari nodded. “Alright, if I’m not back in five minutes go on without me.”
“Ari, how are you-”
She cut him off by punching his arm. “Just trust me. I’m a superhero, remember?”
He smiled and nodded reluctantly. “Yeah, I remember…”
Ari took a deep breath. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” she said squeezing his hand. Then she tapped into her inner energy and tried to go faster than she ever had before.
