“Why don’t you slow down for a second and face the facts,” he says. “I know that you’re naive, but I didn’t think you were this delusional - especially when all the facts are right there in front of your face!” He walks towards me. “Haven’t you been doing research all this time? Haven’t you been connecting the dots? I thought after what we saw on the cave walls, you would see reason. It’s not the aliens who brought the Vestige here. Nobody knows where this medallion came from - not even the ancient people who drew those pictures. They were trying to get an entirely different message across - that these aliens are looking for the medallion. They have been drawn to this planet by the Vestige’s power - and they will come to claim it for themselves. That’s why we have to fight.”
I shake my head.
“No,” I mutter. “That’s not possible.”
“Isn’t it?” Austin continues walking towards me, closing the gap. “You find hints of alien life hidden in your father’s work. Characters debating whether or not there are other forms of intelligent life in the universe, seeking out the most powerful forces to add to their arsenal. You even take pictures of cave drawings depicting UFO encounters between the Native Americans and strange, disc-like objects - and you have the audacity to deny everything?”
I hear the words that Austin says, but none of them really stick in my head. To me, he’s not a sane person any more. He’s a conspiracy theorist of the most dangerous order.
“Even if you told everyone that an alien attack was imminent,” I say, “nobody would believe you. There would be chaos. Everyone would fight for themselves.”
“You’re not wrong about that,” Austin replies. “But, the joke is on them. Humanity is no match for an alien attack, but that’s where we come in.”
“We?” I say.
Austin nods. “We will be the ones who take down the alien threats. You, me, and The Drone. Together we will be a force to be reckoned with. And once the aliens are taken down, the world leaders will be replaced by us, and nobody will be able to stop us. They will owe us. We will be kings for the rest of our lives!”
“You really think that people are just going to make way for you?” I ask, clenching my fists. “Even with Aberrant powers, you will have to take out every one of the world leaders - and those who want to claim their spots. It’s an endless cycle.”
Austin’s plan sounds like ludicrous talk from a crazy man. But, Austin goes on anyway.
He smirks knowingly at me.
“You think that you really saw your father at the state park the other day?” he asks.
I blink. “How do you know about that?” I demand. “I never told you about that vision. Only Mae knows about that.”
“The answer to that is simple. I created him - or rather, your memories did. I just made the hallucinogen that attached to your skin.”
I reach over my shoulder and practically feel the pain of the tiny dot that Mae extracted from the surface of my skin back at the caves. My eyes lock onto Austin.
“You’re the one responsible for that?” I say.
Austin holds out his arms.
“Such a fine detective,” he says. “You’re finally figuring things out. If you join me and The Drone, we will have complete control over everybody on the planet. Between you and me, we both know that the rest of humanity can’t compare to our intelligence, or our physical abilities. They need to be put in their rightful place. Each person will get their own dot, embedded in their skin. They won’t even know it’s there. You know that it feels like nothing more than a mosquito bite after a while. Once the dots are in place, we will manipulate these people’s reality and reap the rewards. They will do whatever we say - and they won’t even realize that they have no choice. Imagine it. Ultimate devotion. With the world at our disposal, we’ll never have to work again for a day of our lives.”
“At the expense of everyone else’s freedom,” I say, wanting more than anything to spit at the man’s feet. I guess my furious look doesn’t come across to Austin because he reaches out a hand to me.
“So, do you join us?”
I look down at the hand, swirling with cloaked energy. He honestly thinks that his argument is justified.
I shake my head.
“It doesn’t matter what you offer me,” I tell him. “My father’s work is fiction - the same way that your hallucinations are fiction. There is nothing that will convince me that there are aliens floating out there, hunting the Vestige - and I won’t be a part of enslaving humanity.”
Austin’s expression darkens, with the colors of his shifting costume becoming deeper.
“Even if the aliens don’t show up,” he says, “you’re turning down the fortune of a lifetime. We can control the population with or without a war against the aliens. If there’s no way to get you on our side, then there’s no point in me wasting my breath. I had hoped that you would join our cause, but it seems like you’re taking the road of the savior. But, you will fail. When the aliens arrive and come for the Vestige - its power, and everyone else - don’t come crying to us.”
I grit my teeth.
“You think you’re walking away from this,” I mutter, raising my hands in preparation to use my energy blasts. “The police know you’re here, and they should be storming the building any minute. I’m handing you over.”
Austin scoffs, then says, “I don’t think so.”
Afraid that Austin is going to bolt for the door, I lash out to grab him. But, to my shock, instead of closing around his arm, my hand goes right through Austin as if he is just a ghost.
“What…?” I start to say, but even as I stare at the tips of my fingers as they slice through Austin’s apparent body, a buzzing electronic noise emanates from the man and a sharp pain clamps down onto my hand. It’s as if a bed of needles has slammed into my flesh and the tingling pain moves up my arm and spreads through my shoulder.
I double over, gripped by the same pain I felt when I was attacked by the shape-shifting version of Austin in the woods of Maine. I try to fight the pain, to gain control over my body again, but the pain has the same effects as being tasered. I can’t move an inch.
Austin leans towards me until his glitchy, half-visible face fills my vision and he sneers.
“You think that because you wear a medallion that you’re immune to me?” he asks. He raises a flickering hand to my neck and clenches his fingers in a choking motion. Even though he is not physically in the room, he’s just a hologram or illusion, my neck is pressed under a strong dose of pressure. The breath is forced from my mouth and I gasp as my windpipe closes. Austin gives me a dead expression, then says, “I have news for you. Superpowers don’t make you invincible. Not even to a normal person like me. You can’t hurt me right now, but I can hurt you. Your little Vestige isn’t so special any more. Don’t doubt that I want it - but, I don’t have to chase you down for it. Soon you will be handing over that medallion to me and The Drone, on your own.”
He releases my neck and I crumple to the floor, gasping for sweet breath. My vision is hazy from lack of oxygen, and I glare at Austin. It’s all I can do.
He takes this opportunity while I’m down to add one more ounce of insult to injury.
“I will turn everyone against you,” Austin says. Then, in a great blur that stretches vertically up to the ceiling, Austin disappears.
I regain control of my limbs and blast two balls of energy at the ceiling where the blur disappeared. This does no good. Instead of hitting Austin, who is truly gone, the energy ripples out, seeming to melt the ceiling tiles. Great rings of purple fan out from the impact point and begin to roll down the walls, revealing not the clean facility I saw only moments ago, but a stripped down, rusty and neglected warehouse.
I blast the walls with everything I’ve got until at last there is nothing left of the sterilized visage of Austin’s laboratory. Only the rusted, weathered and neglected walls of an abandoned warehouse remain. Even the glass door in front of me, the one with the Spire Tech l
ogo emblazoned in the middle, has given way for a steel emergency exit that ironically has been chained shut with a padlock.
“I can’t believe this…” I say under my breath, my voice hoarse from being choked. This entire place was an illusion. Even Austin - The Cloak - was all in my head.
Whatever hallucinogen was injected into my skin by that tiny dot back in the mountains must still be lingering in my system. But, how is The Cloak manipulating my visions when he isn’t even nearby? How long does the chemical remain in my system, and can The Cloak still manipulate what I’m seeing now?
I stumble over to the wall and brush my fingers against the cold rust. Bits of copper dust fall to the floor at my feet.
This is not an illusion any more. I’m really standing in a random warehouse that looks as if it hasn’t been used in years.
I’m about to turn and hurry back the way I came in, anxious to tell Mae what happened, when the sound of shattered glass echoes around the corner, followed by two officers with guns drawn who storm into the doorway.
“Freeze!” they yell. “Put your hands on your head!”
My hands go up, but not because of their orders. I’m prepared to use my powers if I need to.
“Wait -” I say, trying to get my voice back to normal. “I’m not the one you want. My name is Fallout. The suspect isn’t here -”
I take a few steps forward out of habit when one of the officers gets spooked and his gun goes off.
Thankfully he’s not such a great shot and the bullet goes whizzing past my leg and embeds itself into the wall with a cloud of dust.
There’s no reasoning with the officers. No matter what I say, they think that I’m the guy keeping people hostage. I don’t blame them. I’m wearing a disguise, which is never a good thing. At least they don’t know who I really am.
I need to get out of here. Turning, I aim my hands at the emergency exit and blast a massive ball of pulse energy at the chains, smashing them into bits that clink on the floor like spare change. Another bullet is fired, but I’m already shoving the door open and pushing my way into a short hallway and out a second door leading into the back of the warehouse exterior.
There is a mere fifteen second gap between me and the officers and I spring around the corner of the building, looking for Mae. I let out a cry as I practically barrel her over.
She grabs me by the shoulders, her eyes wide.
“The cops are here,” she says. “Where’s The Drone?”
“He’s not here!” I say. “We need to get out of here. Now! The cops think that I’m the villain.”
On cue, the two cops come around the corner and start yelling in our direction. But, they barely have a glimpse of us before we both shoot up into the air and disappear into the night sky.
30
The New Guard
“I don’t even know what to say,” says Mae as we sit in her family’s library only twenty minutes later. The room usually feels comfortable - even cozy - with bookcases lining two walls, and a large mahogany desk with a Mac setup in front of the large window overlooking the street. But, tonight, after everything that has happened, the bookcases feel like prison walls.
I walk over to the window and reach around the desk to pull the large curtain shut.
“I don’t know what to say either,” I reply, crossing my arms as I stand there, staring at the floor. “My mind was manipulated. It was as if I was on some sort of vision-altering drugs.”
“Well, you were, weren’t you?” asks Mae from her seat in the office chair. “That dot that we pulled off your shoulder in Sebago National Park was coated with some sort of chemical that caused you to see visions of your father. Now there’s this.” She shakes her head, her lips now a thin line. She holds her face-mask in her hands and throws it onto the desk with a clatter. “Are you sure that it was really Austin who was behind the camouflage?”
“There’s no doubt about that,” I reply. “I saw his face. I spoke with him. He actually wanted me to know that it was him.” I let out a single laugh. “It’s as if he thought I would be more comfortable coming to his side if I knew it was him. I barely knew him.”
“You can say that again,” Mae says as she slumps in her seat. “What I want to know is, how can he manipulate your vision like that? There is some element of control that only he has the power to use. How does it work?”
“Why are you asking?” I say with a sarcastic expression. “Are you going to go to the metal workshop at school and make your own counter-control device?”
The expression that Mae fixes on me is dead serious.
“Don’t joke about stuff like that,” she says. “I’m only wondering if there’s some sort of defense that we can put up that will stop The Cloak from being able to get at you.” She pauses as I rest my hand against the wall, my head hung low. “Do you think that he can still get to you?”
I grit my teeth.
“I have no idea,” I reply. “I don’t know when this chemical will wear off - if it ever wears off at all.” I turn to look at her, my eyes stinging. “What if I’m going to be under his control for the rest of my life?”
Mae gets to her feet and comes over to me.
“That’s not going to happen,” she says, reaching out to take my hand. “I won’t let that happen.” Her eyes are locked on mine. If she feels any fear, her gaze doesn’t betray it. Then she says softly, “Maybe your father’s notes have something that can help us.”
I close my eyes and squeeze Mae’s hand.
“I’m done with the past,” I say, opening my eyes again. “The past is the past, and even though it’s gotten me this far, it won’t help me to win this war. My father lived his story. He even wrote down more pages of it than anyone can count, but it’s time for me to live my own story. I’m calling the shots from this point forward. It’s the only way that I - that we - can survive. There’s only one last bit of advice that my father wrote down that I will put into practice. After that, the path I choose is up to me.”
Mae’s eyes soften and her hand loosens around mine.
“And what was that advice?” she asks.
I take my hand away and pull the armband with the Vestige from my upper arm. I hold it between us, folding it in two.
“My father wanted to hide the Vestige so that nobody else could abuse its power. He was afraid of men like Austin challenging him, men who will use its power to manipulate everyone to their own ends.” My hand clenches the armband. “The Cloak says that I will hand over the Vestige willingly in the months to come. I’m not going to do that.”
“What if he makes you do it?” asks Mae. “If he can still manipulate your visions? He might just force you to hand it over, and you just think you did it willingly.”
I steel my jaw and continue to clench my hand around the armband, feeling the cold imprint of the Vestige beneath the cloth.
“I can’t hand over something that I don’t have,” I reply. “Grandpa might have been right a few weeks ago that the safest place for the Vestige was on our bodies. But, things have changed. What’s stopping someone like The Drone or The Cloak from just showing up randomly and taking the medallion from us when we least expect it? It’s not like we can send the police to go and detain them. We still don’t even know where their base is.”
“So, you’re saying that we hide the medallion?” says Mae. “All of it?”
I nod.
“We should only hold it when we absolutely need to use it. It’s safer that way. I’m done with everyone I know and love being targets. Nobody else is going to get hurt because they’re around me. It’s time for me to be normal again. As normal as I can be…”
Mae takes her hand back.
“It’s a good plan,” she says. “You’re protecting your mother. Your grandparents.”
“And you.”
There’s a pause while Mae and I just look at each other. She blinks, her cheeks flushing a bit, and looks away. I know that she thinks that she can handle herself, but there’s
only so far that she can go with her Aberrant abilities before someone like The Drone or The Cloak wins.
I look away as well, shuffling my foot on the hardwood floor, breathing in the smell of paper and old binding glue and heated computer memory.
“I just need to find a place to hide the medallion,” I say. “I don’t know where the best place is yet.”
Mae presses her lips together for a moment then reaches out and takes the armband from my hands.
“I know the perfect place,” she says.
I smile slightly.
“Show me.”
___
Mae leads me down a rickety flight of wooden steps, leading into the basement of her family’s house. The walls are straight concrete, and the only light comes from a single hanging lightbulb with a pull chain. There’s a damp smell of must and dirt everywhere. Cobwebs with dead spiders drape across any sharp corner. Their legs are tangled in their own designs, their own traps.
Along the wall is a row of plastic storage shelves, the kind that snap together. They were once white, but now dust and time have muddied their color so that they now appear gray. On these shelves are cardboard boxes filled with odds and ends, black trash bags containing Halloween and Christmas decorations, and plastic storage bins with locking mechanisms on their handles.
At the far end of the basement is the last storage shelf. Mae stops here and crouches down. She pulls a tiny plastic bin off the lowest shelf and hands it to me.
“This is a bucket of old clothes,” she says. “I think I’m the only one who remembers that it’s here. None of these things fit me any more.” She opens the top of the bucket and sets the lid down on the shelf. Then she removes her armband and adds it to mine, folding the two together.
“We’ll put the Vestige in here,” she says. “In the very bottom. Nobody will be able to find it, and nobody will know that it’s here.”
She tucks the armbands into the bottom of the bucket, placing the stacks of folded T-shirts on top of them for good measure. Then she replaces the lid and takes the bucket from me.
The Aberrant Series (Book 2): Super Vision Page 17
