Open Your Eyes (Book 2): Blink

by H. J. Rethuan

  “You sound like Yoda.”

  “Just hit the damn coconuts.” he sneers.

  Lily rolls up her sleeves, digs her feet into the sand. She winds up, and throws a bolt.

  The coconut on the far left bursts open in an explosion of milk and pulp.

  “Try again.”

  The man in the bucket hat leaves Lily to train. He returns later only to find a scene of smashed coconuts, broken poles and a generally frustrated student.

  Still, she keeps trying.

  “Motherfucker!” she shouts after she cracks open another nut.

  “How’s progress?”

  “I can’t do it.” she replies. “I just can’t dial back far enough.”

  “You can do it.” he tells her.

  “I’m shooting fireballs out of my hands. There’s no such thing as a light touch!”

  Doug walks over to a still intact coconut lying in the sand. Picking it up, he balances it on the open palm of his right hand.

  “Do it.”

  “You’re going to get fried.”

  “A dragon once set my hat on fire. I’m not scared of anything.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Do you want my help or not? Or do you just want to run away again? Do it.”

  Lily takes a deep breath. Calming down, she concentrates. The bolt of energy charges up in her hand. She throws it.

  It streaks quickly towards Doug, who stands there unmoved. Only inches from impact, the bolt suddenly dissolves, its remnant pressure creating enough force to gently tip the coconut out of his hand and softly onto the sand.

  He picks it up again.

  “Do it again.”

  She repeats the gesture. Coconut in the sand.

  “Again, again.”

  She does it, over and over. He picks it up again.

  “Again.”

  This time he throws the coconut at her. She launches a bolt. Knocks it clean out of the air.

  Feeling accomplished, Lily smiles only to get smacked in the face with another coconut.

  “Again.”

  Lily continues her training under the tutelage of the man with the bucket hat. She works on tuning her level of skill, her finesse and control, learning to dial the level of power she puts out. Mastering it. She’s a quick study, impressing Doug with her drive, her determination.

  She even learns how to fly with those hand jets of hers. It’s not easy, but it’s doable.

  This morning it was a run through the jungle. No shooting things or blowing things up, just a run. To reflect, to think. She’s been doing a lot of that during these past few days.

  She finds a fallen tree blocking her way. Immediately Lily starts to climb over it.

  “Think you can blow that thing away?” the voice says from out of the jungle.

  “I thought you wanted me to focus on control and finesse?”

  “I know what I said.” Doug tells her as he steps out into the open. “But you have that control now, that knowledge now. And one day you’ll need to know how to push that. Blow that mother up.”

  She concentrates. She raises her hand, building up a charge. She fires.

  The tree is no more.

  That night, as they do most nights, Lily and Doug find themselves on the beach, sitting in front of a fire. Again it was time for Lily to think, contemplate. She asked her mentor questions; sometimes he was forthcoming, or times cryptic.

  Still, she asked them.

  “You said you know about others. Do you know about Seth?”

  “Yes. Good guy. I’m proud of what he has become.”

  “I wish I could do what he does. You know he saved a whole train full of people?”

  “I know. I also know that your time will come soon too.”

  “Maybe...” she answers wistfully.

  “Definitely.”

  He pauses.

  “Have you heard about The Pool, Lily?”

  She raises an eyebrow.

  “There’s a pool here? Where?”

  Doug laughs.

  “You’ve still got a lot to learn Earthling. A lot to learn.”

  Eleven

  Routine. A new routine for new circumstances.

  Seth would wake, down his medication as usual. Take a jog around the rig, work out at the gym. Go get some breakfast.

  Salt would expect him to come to her office for the daily briefing. Sometimes there was nothing much to say. Other times there was something new. Someone new.

  “We’ve been alerted to another person of interest.” she tells him, curt as usual. “Apparently made a mess of things at a resort town.”

  “Is this another one of your experiments?”

  “No. We don’t know who this person is, but it looks like she’s a vigilante, just like you...”

  She slides the file across her desk.

  “She’s been on our radar for the past few months, before you came in.” Salt tells him as he peruses the file, opening it to the first page. “We have attempted to capture... recruit her ourselves, but she never keeps still long enough to do so. Only now have we got a lock on her general location.”

  Seth stares at the photo on the first page. A familiar face...

  Lily.

  “We’d like you to bring her in.” Salt tells him. “Do you think you can do that?”

  “I’ll try.” he replies. “Alive of course.”

  “Obviously.”

  “No, I’m telling that to you.”

  The waves gently crashed against Lily’s legs. It was a quite nice sensation.

  She threw her line out. Let it sink underneath the waves. It was not long until she got a bite. Just a small one. She let it go.

  “You seem to know what you’re doing.” Doug tells her as he cast his own line next to her.

  “Yeah, well my dad liked to fish on his days off. Took me and mom out to the canal quite a few times, just a cheap pole and some bait. It was fun. Fun times.”

  “So is that why you left Port City? Because they died there?”

  She hesitates. She sighs.

  “Yeah.”

  “So now you’re moving from place to place, like you’re looking for a new home...”

  “You could say that. I just can’t go back there.”

  She cast her line out again, let the lure sink.

  “It wasn’t just their lives lost there.” she lamented. “With them, my old life ended there too.”

  “But it’s also where your new life began.”

  “Yeah.” she whispers.

  For a while they continue to stand there and fish, the waves lapping up to their feet. This time, Lily breaks the silence.

  “I think I’m going to head off soon.” she admits to Doug. “Continue on my journey. If that’s fine with you?”

  “I’ve taught you all you need for now. You can go as you wish Lily.”

  “Thank you.”

  “So you gonna take off tonight?” he grins.

  She smiles. Got that joke.

  “Nah. Tomorrow maybe. I want to enjoy that slow boat ride back to civilization.”

  Her line tugs. Another bite. She reels it in.

  It’s a good sized fish.

  “Nice.” he says.

  “Yeah. Very nice.”

  Lily never thought she’d be back at Seahorse Cove so soon. And yet, something felt different here. People seemed more relaxed, relieved. Like there was an air of optimism here.

  Like she did make a change...

  At the bus station Lily brought a one way ticket for travel further up the coast. She did consider going back to Port City, but no. No. She wasn’t ready just yet.

  She pulled the hood of her newly bought jacket down over her head. Red, her favourite colour. Despite all the time that had passed, the police were still after her for what she did here. But while someone was looking out for her, it certainly wasn’t the police...

  “Lily.” whispered the man in the grey hoodie behind her. She turned, coming face to face with familiar eyes.<
br />
  “Seth?”

  “Blink.” he tells her.

  “I can’t.”

  “What do you mean, you can’t?”

  The men with firearms suddenly burst into the station. Without hesitation Lily throws out her hands, launching bolt after bolt at them. They go down, stunned.

  More appear and they begin to fire. Seth raises his hands, telling them to stop as Lily dashes towards the exit. He chases after her, grabbing her and teleporting her away.

  They land in a heap inside an abandoned store. Lily pushes away from him. Raising her hand, she primes a bolt in her hand.

  “What the fuck man!” she yells as Seth raises his hands.

  “I’m sorry. I tried to warn you.” He pauses. “You can’t blink?”

  “No, I can’t. Not anymore. I can do this instead.”

  She waves her hand, dissipating the bolt. Seth nods. The thoughts of the man in the forest linger in his mind.

  “Okay.” he says.

  “Who were those guys?” she asks him.

  “They’re forcing me to work with them. They’re looking for you.”

  “I can see that.” She looks to him. “Come with me Seth.”

  “I can’t. I’m being tracked right now. You don’t have much time. Go.”

  “They’ll know you let me escape.”

  He thinks.

  “Do that thing. Blast me.”

  “No.”

  “Do it, it’ll look like you fought me off.”

  “No!”

  “Do it Lily. I’ll find you again...”

  She suddenly blasts him in the chest, knocking him off his feet.

  “Son of a bitch...” he mumbles.

  “Sorry.”

  Sounds from outside. The noise of cars pulling up, doors being swung open. Boots. Lily escapes out the back mere seconds before they burst in.

  “Clear!” a man dressed for confrontation shouts, as Salt steps into the room, finding Seth still on the floor, still aching from his injuries.

  “She got away.” he mutters to her, trying to affect enough pain in his voice. She just snorts.

  “I find that hard to believe.” she tells him, before leaving him once more.

  A day passes. Lily waits. She didn’t tell him where she’d be - it didn’t matter. For Seth it’s all just a matter of closing your eyes and thinking about where you needed to go...

  “How’d you get away?” he asks her, appearing from seemingly out of nowhere.

  “Conveniently passing truck. Like in the movies.”

  Coffee in a truck stop diner, only a family on a road trip and a tired looking waitress for company. A grizzled looking trucker comes in; he pays them no attention.

  “So you’re working with the Feds now?” she asks him.

  “No. They’re not the Feds. I’m not really working for them.”

  He pauses.

  “I don’t know what they really want. But they’re dangerous people.”

  She nods. “Okay. Understood.”

  A moment.

  “You shoot energy out of your hands now?”

  She breaks into a smile. “Yeah. A thing I picked up.”

  “It’s cool.”

  “We’re both doing good Seth.” she says to him. “Helping people, trying to help people. I feel empowered.”

  “That’s good. I’m happy for you.”

  “I couldn’t have done it without meeting you.”

  “I think you would have gotten there eventually. You didn’t need my help.”

  “You’re too modest.”

  A bus pulls up outside, unloading a group of weary looking travellers. They file in, ringing the bell hanging above the entrance to the diner as they do so.

  “I guess there’s my ride...”

  “Where are you going?” he asks her.

  “I’d rather not say.”

  “Yeah. Fair enough. It’s good to see you doing well Lily.”

  “You too Seth.”

  She stands to leave. “Hey.” he calls out to her again.

  “Yeah?”

  “Hope to see you in again Port City some day.” he says to her.

  “Maybe.” she replies. “We’ll see.”

  And like that, she’s gone once again.

  Seth steps outside. He briefly considers blinking, to make his escape - thoughts cut short as the black SUV pulls up in front of him, the back door swinging open.

  He climbs in, closes the door. Salt stares at him.

  “You know her.” she says to him.

  “Yeah, I do. She’s a good kid; you don’t need to fear her.”

  “You lied to me.”

  “Yeah, kinda sucks being on the receiving end of that, don’t you think?”

  She glances out the window as the vehicle pulls out on to the highway.

  “Yeah, it does.”

  She sighs.

  “She single-handedly brought down five of my men. She tore apart a gang on her own. She set their leader on fire. She’s dangerous Seth. But... I’m going to let this go for now.”

  She looks to him.

  “Suit up Seth, we have bigger fish to fry today.”

  The man in the bucket hat ended up spending some more time on that island, again fishing once more. It was a nice place, unspoilt unlike many of the places the Earthlings have done to their world.

  Still, despite the calm he still had doubts on his mind about this new recruit of his. Lily.

  He did not expect those new powers to manifest inside of her like that. It was rare for a human to evolve, change their abilities once given to them. It was an aberration. And yet, she did, out of her own free will. Maybe the rumours were true; something was going on with The Pool. Something they had not encountered before, something they’ve yet to fully understand even after all this time...

  How will this affect their plan in the long term? Even now they were losing full control over it, with people like The Toy Shop and their experiments running amok. As a whole the Earthlings will not be ready for what they must face, for what is to come...

  No, they will be, Doug thought to himself. They have to be.

  A tug. A bite. No, it’s gone.

  He sighs.

  As he packed up Doug decided it was best to put all his worries behind him for now. There was still one more person he had to visit, one more person he had to talk to.

  And he was to face his biggest challenge yet.

  Twelve

  The shell of a man once known as The Scimitar had managed to keep the pain, the immense power inside of him hidden, stable. His skin, once burnt and blackened by the fire had now healed, letting him pass for human once more.

  But still, at times it had threatened to come out, it must come out. When it will, there will be destruction. Because of this he continued to refer to himself as Jahannam. An Islamic term he had learnt as he became more devout, it meant hell, a place of untold suffering, of everlasting fire. It was appropriate, for it was what toiled him. But it was also a place known for infinite punishment...

  He will punish the hooded man, the man who did this to him, and everyone else responsible for his current agony. He will do this by destroying his city; the city the man had called his home, violating it like he did his own. They will all suffer for what he did to him.

  He will find this place. He will find it soon. It was only a matter of time.

  Before he was Jahannam, before he was the terrorist once known as The Scimitar, long ago he went by the more mundane name of Daniel Asha.

  An orphan, distant relatives rescued him and brought him to live a better life in the United States. There he was given a loving home, an education. He grew up in wealth and privilege. He loved his new country, and all the opportunities it gave him.

  At law school he met the woman that would be the love of his life. Their relationship was known to be sweet and loving, very much that of a happy couple destined to have a long, fruitful marriage. Alas, as fate would have it, it would not end like a fair
y tale.

  Socially conscious, the pair joined the protest movement early, demanding justice for the increasingly common deaths of minorities by an authority they saw as corrupt in their city: the police. It was during one of these protests this same authority became heavy handed in handling the passionate masses that confronted them. In the front line, Daniel and his fiancée were caught up in the wave that broke against them, for which they could not escape...

  They were not sure how she died that night, but to Daniel the blame lay in the callous hands of a few men that were supposed to make this country safe.

  They did it.

  There was no trial, for the grand jury did not believe there was the evidence for one. It was chaotic that evening, and they were all just following their orders. The men who were responsible for her death, as well as those of several others that night, were let go to return to their jobs, to live out their lives without guilt, without remorse.

  Needless to say, this injustice destroyed Daniel.

  Distraught and disillusioned, Daniel ran, fleeing the country that for so long he had considered his permanent home. Haunted by her pointless death, he began to see his former hosts as the bane of his existence, the ones that ruined his life. He found and joined those who felt the same: they. That they had too much power, too much control. They became the enemy.

  They.

  He sought revenge on them all: the police, the soldiers, the men in the suits above them all. He planned to do so without reason, without compromise. Without mercy. A monster he became, filled with fervour, with an infinite grasp for violence. He attacked their soldiers, he attacked their bases. He burnt their embassies and had put into motion a plan to attack their very homes on their own soil. He was so merciless, so driven that even his fellow fighters began to fear him, but others continued to join his side...

  By now the young man named Daniel had all but disappeared, and the terrorist took his place instead.

  He has never left.

  He had found refuge in a small town. He was forced to hide, forced to squat in an abandoned farm left in ruins by the war they had brought upon this country.

  He wrapped himself in rags, to hide both his deformities and his face. He was deep in enemy territory; the people here would not hesitate to turn him into to the occupying forces, especially with such a large bounty on his head.