by Jalex Hansen
Now the gun looked more like a joke than a threat.
Hikari looked up at the approaching helicopter, in just a second its search lights would flush them out. “Stay together,” she said. Her voice had an authority that made them listen. In moments she had passed from uncertain leader, to commander. “Where’s Dave?”
Just then a van came roaring out of the parking garage scattering them. The driver’s door opened and Dave leaned out. “I knew you needed me here for more than a look out, get in.”
They scrambled to get in the van. He took the corners with a sharp twist of the wheel sending them sliding into each other. They thought they might just make it out before they were cornered. They screeched out of the parking garage and came face to face with a blockade of cars. The headlights lit their faces, scared and young in the bright light. Hikari didn’t know how to tell them that it was over, that they’d tried, but now they were caught.
They sat in stalemate facing the blockade. “There’s nothing we can do,” she said.
“Kari,” Yerik started, “Back there, with the guard... you did something.”
“I just used my authority.”
“Uh, you made that guy’s gun hot. And... you were glowing.”
“The stress is getting to you, Yerik, my boy.”
“I saw it too,” Kym said, her voice uncharacteristically quiet. They were all looking at Hikari with a strange expression.
“I.Was. Not. Glowing.” Hikari insisted.
“Were too.” Yerik said with a six-year-old’s conviction.
“Was not.”
“Can you do it again?” Kym asked.
“I never did it in the first place.” Outside the doors were opening and the occupants of the cars were getting out, and they were armed.
“Now would be a good time,” Yerik prompted.
Hikari looked at all of them, trying to wither them with the only super power she really had, defiance. “For the last time, I didn’t do anything.”
Dimitri looked out at the approaching men. “Then we’re all screwed,” he said.
They sat waiting for what would happen, feeling like just what they were, young people that had done a very bad thing that had sounded good at the time.
The armed men were wearing flak jackets and helmets, their weapons were automatic and leveled right at them. It seemed like overkill for a car full of teenagers and it drove home to Hikari just how dangerous the information they had stolen was. She wondered if her father knew that she was here.
“Open the doors and step out of the car,” one of the men ordered. His voice was muffled by his faceplate, but deep and strong, not the kind of voice you messed with.
“What do we do?” Shake asked.
“Whatever they say,” Hikari answered, “I’m going.”
Yerik held out his arm and stopped her from opening the door. “No, I’ll go first.” He opened the doors and stepped out, blinking in the glare of the halogen headlights. The men moved to push Yerik onto the ground, and when he protested he was given a sharp crack on the back of the head dropping him with a sick floppy sound onto the concrete where he struggled to get back up on his feet.
“Hey!” Kym shot out of the car, “You didn’t have to do that!” She ran toward the men and they shot at the ground in front of her feet, freezing her. She too lay down on the ground.
“Oh my God,” Shake was trembling beside Hikari. “This is so, so bad.”
Hikari moved toward the door. “You guys stay in the van,” she ordered and climbed out.
The men took a step back when they saw her. “Are you Hikari Suzuki?”
“Yes, and I demand to see my father.”
Helmet Number One motioned to his buddy. “Take her into custody.”
The man approached her cautiously. Overhead the helicopter hovered, casting them all in the ghoulish blue of its searchlight. The man started to lead her away. “Wait, what about my friends? Where are you taking them? Wait!” Her guard hesitated and turned back to Helmet One. “Sir, what about the others?”
Helmet One glanced at the kids on the ground and back over to the van. “He told us to kill them.”
“NO!” Hikari whipped her head around frantically meeting the eyes of her terrified friends. “No, no! They’re here because of me, you have to talk to my father! Let me go!”
“Shoot them,” Helmet repeated and the other men raised their weapons. Inside the van Shake screamed and they all glanced up at the sound, except Yerik. He locked his gaze with Hikari.
It happened quickly. One minute they were all caught on the edge of Shake’s scream, waiting to die, and then the guards were stepping away from Hikari, holding their hands to their heads dropping their weapons, and then suddenly, the guns, the cars, were just gone.
The men retreated a few steps back, their eyes trained on Hikari’s friends, just as the guns had been before.
“Get back in the van,” Yerik ordered, his voice shaking. He staggered to his feet and hurried over to Hikari who stood unmoving, filmed by a silvery white glow. He reached out carefully to touch the film of light and when he felt nothing but a pleasant warmth, he reached his arms around her and picked her up, carrying her in a full run back to the van. “Hurry,” she whispered against his neck, “I can’t hold it much longer.”
“Drive!” Yerik shouted, slamming the door behind him “Now!”
“Where did the cars go? And the guns?” Kym was looking out the windows at the back. “Oh my God.” Everyone crowded around the window trying to see. Yerik stayed on the floor of the van with Hikari who looked like she had fallen asleep.
From somewhere just below consciousness Hikari could see through their eyes, see what she had done, though she wouldn’t remember it later. Particles were raining down from the sky, shiny fragments that had been the guns and cars. The men stood rooted to the spot staring up into the night sky, shielding their eyes.
“Holy crap,” Dave said turning back to Yerik and Hikari. “I saw that, but I don’t believe it. Did she do that? Did she just-- holy crap.”
They all threw their hands up over their eyes as outside the night filled with the harsh red and white glare of flak as the helicopter took aim and strafed the men, cutting them down in seconds.
“Drive faster,” Kym shouted to Dave, but the helicopter was already banking, turning back the way it had come, leaving them untouched. They sank down with their backs against the side of the van, stunned and silent. Yerik looked down at Hikari who appeared completely oblivious. For once, he had no idea what to say.
Chapter
Thirteen
The metal rod lay on the table. One inch in diameter, eight inches long. He could have lifted it with one finger.
It wasn’t moving.
Connor had actually been glad to see the black dude that morning. Joanne had been gone for two weeks, two weeks of wandering three rooms with nothing but his own head for company. If he really had super powers he would be Boredom Man, able to break out of any mind numbing situation whenever he wanted. He had beaten both Call of Duty and Halo ten times each.
He almost missed his fans, right now even screaming thirteen-year-olds would be good company.
So when Angine appeared at the foot of his bed and commanded him to shower and pull himself together, Connor complied.
This time he even actually made an effort. He studied the rod, noticed the small imperfections in its surface, the almost invisible lines crosshatching its cut ends. He pictured what it would look like lifting, settling in the air, rotating in a circle.
It was a no go.
Angine walked in circles around him like a shark scoping prey, breaking his concentration.
“Back off!” Con snapped. “You’re making it harder.”
“Try something different this time,” the Senator said. “Try making it hot.”
Sighing, Con imagined it growing red hot. He thought he remembered something about molecules going faster and faster to generate heat. He tried to see this.
What did a molecule look like anyway? Was it like a cell, round and sloppy, star shaped? His science teacher had been a man with a monotone voice and a huge sloping belly, like a cartoon bear. In fact his name was something bear-like too... Ursa? Grizzle? Baloo!
“Stop.” The Senator’s voice lashed whip-like from his mouth. He had been unpleasant all morning, compact and dense and urgent. “Connor, this isn’t a child’s game.”
“I know that. Look, I’m trying, but I really don’t think--”
“You are pretending. Imagining what you want to happen is just fantasizing. You must make it happen. Believe it is happening.”
“I don’t think I’m your man,” Connor said.
The Senator’s smile was a disturbing thing; it didn’t fit on his face the right way at all, it kind of slid around trying to find a place to fix. “Oh, I am quite sure you are,” Angine said. “But I don’t believe you’re your own man and therein lies the problem. You don’t like yourself very much do you?”
Connor’s reaction was reflexive. “Why wouldn’t I like myself? Everybody wants to be me. I’m hot and talented and famous and rich.”
“None of those things do you any good now. Those things people think are a form of power, but they are nothing. Illusory. The only real power is being able to control everything around you, not to be a well-paid puppet on a string.” Angine was standing over him now looking down with flat gray eyes the color of a frog’s underbelly. “Anyway, you’re not so hot now are you? You’ve let yourself go. You’ve got a gut, and you smell bad. You’ve washed up on my beach, Connor, and I am trying to help you get back in the ocean, but you’re just sitting in that apartment getting fat and stupid.” He leaned down, his eyes on level with Con’s. “Your time is passing.”
Con rubbed his jawline, felt the stubble there, reminding him of the scrubbie his mother had kept to clean the sink. He could picture her clearly, a woman that had never been in the right time. She would have been happy living forty years earlier, baking cookies, attending church socials. She had always felt removed. There was a strange sadness about her, and now he knew why.
Angine had told him in the first meeting that they weren’t his real parents, but they had never spoken of it again. What was there to say really? Connor knew in his heart that Angine was telling the truth. He had always missed some vital connection with them, and in a way it was a relief. He was able to let go of all the guilt he carried for not loving them enough. But then, who was he really? How had he ended up here cosseted by a mad man that insisted on impossible parlor tricks? He had given away everything that had defined him and now he was nothing, just a young man that was already growing old, hiding under the streets of a city that pretended to adore him.
“Who were my real parents?” he asked suddenly. “You know everything else, you have to know that.”
Angine’s lips twisted. “Trash. Worthless people that didn’t know what to do with you.”
“Like what, homeless people, druggies?”
“Worse.” Angine shook his head affecting pity, “They just didn’t care. They didn’t want you. They abandoned you, left you in the trash where Social Services found you.”
A sickening horror and sadness clawed at Connor’s heart, tightened his lungs, but underneath all that a small, still voice said, He’s lying.
Angine flinched as though he had heard it.
“I don’t believe you,” Connor said.
“Of course you don’t. The golden boy can’t possibly believe he started as a piece of garbage. And if you don’t accomplish what I am requesting that’s where you’ll end your life too.”
“You’re going to kick me out.”
Angine tsk tsked. “I’m afraid I can’t do that, so don’t look so hopeful. I know everything you think, Con, it’s impossible for you to lie to me. No. If you can’t deliver, then you will simply go away.” He looked almost forlorn. “Your fans will be shocked to discover that you’ve been suffering from depression for years. That’s why you started drinking. And in rehab you found out about your parents, and well, it was all too much for you.” He smoothed his hand over Connor’s hair with cold affection. “It will be convincing,” Angine said. “Suicide is one of my specialties.”
“So that’s your plan?” Connor was surprised to find he wasn’t really scared. “Threaten to kill me and then hope I’ll perform?”
Angine raised an eyebrow and sighed. “I know something that will motivate you.” He steepled his fingers together thoughtfully, a vaudevillian parody. “The other night I was fortunate enough to see a most spectacular display, and it gave me an idea.”
Connor was very, very nervous. He didn’t like the tone in Angine’s voice. Something bad was about to go down.
He tried. He tried so hard he thought his head would explode. He tried because he knew that this time was for real. If he couldn’t find some way to make that damn rod do something, anything at all, something was going to happen to make the rest of his stay here look like the best vacation he’d ever had.
Just breathe. You can do this. You can do this. It’s rising, it’s rising. I see it in the air and ... I can do this. I--
And unbelievably, it was rising, lifting off the table, the metal glowing faintly silver.
“I did it!” Connor shouted. He had broken his concentration, but somehow the rod stayed in the air. It rose higher, floating in his direction. It was then that Connor saw the Senator’s face, the malicious smile, the brow furrowed in concentration.
Connor wasn’t lifting it. Angine was.
It hovered over his head and Connor saw what was going to happen. “Stop, no-- I--”
The rod struck downward with incredible force, hitting Connor on the shoulder. The sound was like a stone smacking mud. He crumpled to the ground staring up at Angine with wide shocked eyes. The pain was excruciating, a white hot blossom of pain, but already it was dissipating, fading into the rage that overcame him.
“You son of a--!” He leapt over the coffee table for Angine, but something was in his way, some sort of force or energy that would not allow him to come any closer. The rod came down again connecting with his forearm, and Connor went back to his knees.
The rod changed trajectory, targeting the soft bend at the back of his neck. The next blow would leave him paralyzed or probably dead, and all Connor could do was watch. He saw everything focused through a narrow lens, Angine, his face lit with an unearthly glow, the devils own minion enjoying his game.
“NO!” Connor shouted. The heat ripped through him, shook his bones, razed his flesh, poured forth from somewhere in the back of his brain. He felt the rod come firmly into his power, gripped in the hand of his mind.
He wielded the weapon now.
He turned the rod back toward Angine, his only thought, a thought that ran somehow into the rod itself, was to kill the Senator, to beat him bloody and senseless. As soon as his intention to do that was clear, he felt the rod torn from him. It hovered in the air in front of Angine, under his command.
Connor’s breath was fast and ragged, his skin tingled in a million places, he felt husked and empty.
The rod slowly settled back to the table, and Angine nodded, smiling his approval. “Well done, Con. I knew you had it in you.”
Chapter
Fourteen
Lissa stood on top of a rock with her eyes closed, trying to lift one leg and balance on the other one without falling off. She had already done that three times and had a scraped arm and a bloody lip to show for it. That gray-eyed sadist hadn’t even batted an eyelash before demanding that she get up and try again. This, after running three miles, and jumping up and down like a whacked out jack in-the-box for twenty minutes. Even on two legs she wasn’t so sure about stability.
“I’m just going to fall again,” she called down to him.
“Are you sure about that?”
“Yes. And you’re going to feel really bad when I break my leg.”
“What makes you think you’ll fall?”
“I’m exhausted, and hot, and the top of that, this rock is slanted, and I’ve already fallen twice.” She rubbed at her lip, checking her fingers to see if it was still bleeding. It wasn’t. “And what’s the point of this anyway? When I see Angine am I going to scare him away by standing on one leg?”
“You spend a lot of time thinking about limitations.”
“Because they exist. It’s just the way it is. That ground is real, gravity is real, my own limits are real.”
“Are they?”
Exasperated, Lissa sat down on the rock, straddling her legs to get her balance. Even sitting on this thing was difficult. She glared down at him refusing to answer.
“Lissa. All of this is real because of the way we perceive it, but we only see a little bit of that reality. If you’re a fish and all you ever see is the inside of a pond, you’re never going to believe that there are creatures that walk instead of swim, or that breathe with lungs instead of gills. That would seem ridiculous to you, impossible. But if you could get out of the pond, rise above it, even for just a few minutes than you would see things you never imagined. Your entire perception would change.”
“But you’d still be a fish and you wouldn’t be able to walk, or breathe on land, or any of the things you now know about.”
“True enough, but awareness is the first step. And say you were a special fish, one with the Lux marker for instance--”
“Gideon, please just talk to me like a person, stop playing the Zen master or whatever. Why will standing on one leg with my eyes closed change the way I see things?”
Gideon looked up to the sky then, as though he could see past it, into space, the darkest part of the ocean. “To know what you can do, first you have to know your limits and push past them.”
With a groan Lissa got up, got her balance, closed her eyes, and then lifted one leg up, she lasted to the count of five before she fell off, but this time she was shocked to be caught.
