by R S Penney
Squeezing his eyes shut, Danny threw his head back and screamed. He dropped to his knees, pawing at himself as if his clothes had suddenly burst into flame. God help me. What have I done?
Brian came at him.
Kevin raised a hand, and the air in front of his palm began to ripple, distorting their images as if they stood behind a curtain of falling water. Both boys stopped short. Kevin's reaction was instantaneous.
The shimmering curtain sped forward and hit the dumbfounded teens, knocking them flat on their asses. Somehow, he knew it was only a fraction of the device's power. If he had wanted, he could have killed them.
Click.
He turned to find a man in a denim jacket standing by the driver's side door of the big blue van, holding a revolver in one hand. “Now, that's enough, son,” he said, pointing the gun at Kevin. “Drop whatever you've got there.”
Kevin shut his eyes, sweat oozing from his pours. It washed over his face in waves. “I don't want to hurt you,” he said, backing up until he was pressed to the window of the convenience store.
“Drop your weapon.”
“Drop yours.”
The man was flushed, his face scrunched up as if he had just eaten some very bad chili. “I'm not gonna tell you again,” he said, gesturing with the gun. “Drop your weapon and get on your knees.”
Kevin raised a hand, and the shimmering curtain reappeared. A barrier that would protect him from his enemies. Half a second later, the air was split by a vicious CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!
Bullets slammed into the rippling energy field, crumpled and dropped uselessly to the ground. Each mangled slug made a soft pinging noise that was distinct to his ears. Through the haze, Kevin saw the blurry image of one very frightened man.
He thrust a hand out.
The energy field sped forward with the momentum of a freight train, slamming into the man and sending him flying backward like a plastic bag in a gale-force wind. He went all the way to the edge of the parking lot before landing on his ass.
“Help!” someone shouted.
A quick scan of his surroundings revealed Brian Robitaille crawling on his belly with a cell phone pressed to his ear. “Send help! 1409 New Sycamore Drive!” He gasped a few times. “We've got a guy with a crazy weapon!”
Kevin turned to run.
Danny slammed into him from behind, wrapping both arms around Kevin's belly. “Come on, you mother fucker,” he whispered in Kevin's ear. “You think you can just do that to me?”
The other boy's weight threw Kevin down on his belly, driving the air from his lungs when his body his the concrete. He struggled and squirmed, trying to force Danny off him. “Let go.”
Kevin still had a free hand. He reached around behind himself, clamping his fingers around Danny's wrist. That was all it took: flesh to flesh contact with the device between them. He was able to map Danny's nervous system.
The human brain was a simple thing, really. A little oxytocin to make Danny bond with him, a little adrenaline to drown out the pain and leave the poor boy with an intense desire to do something. Stimulate the fight or flight response.
Danny stood.
When Kevin rolled onto his back, the kid who had wanted to knock him senseless just a few seconds earlier now stared down at him with perfect adulation. It was obvious that Danny was seething with rage, but he would never – not in a million years – direct it toward Kevin.
Danny spun around and stalked over to his trembling friend, growling like an angry tiger. “Put the phone down!” he shouted at Brian. “Put the fucking phone down before I bash your skull in!”
Danny squatted down and seized Brian's shirt. He then delivered a fierce punch to the other boy's face. Then another. Then another. The sight of it made Kevin nauseous. What had he done? It had been pure instinct: self-preservation fueled by knowledge he had gained with the device. He hadn't really been thinking about what he was doing. He never wanted this!
I have to get this thing off me.
Before he could even think, the harsh wail of sirens filled the air and two cop cars pulled into the lot, forming a makeshift barricade. There was no way out now. He could feel the urge to run and – if necessary – to fight for his life. You can't let the damn thing control you, he thought as he cowered against the window.
What was he going to do.
Anger flared up inside Anna, but she managed to keep it at a low simmer. Calling her had been something of an afterthought for the officers who had decided that the best way to handle a boy with an alien device was to corner him and point weapons at him. So far as she knew, the police had only been on scene for about five minutes before someone was wise enough to involve the Justice Keepers, but the status report she had been given suggested that they had the boy surrounded but were afraid to close in. Jack would call this a…something. Spanish Standoff?
Through the taxi cab's windshield, she saw a narrow suburban street with small houses on either side. Everything looked quiet and peaceful on a sunny afternoon. You would never have expected a life or death situation to break out.
The convenience store's parking lot was just a short ways off on her left, and she could already see two police cruisers blocking the entrance. Four uniformed men were using them as cover, aiming guns over the hood of each vehicle.
Anna winced, pinching the bridge of her nose with thumb and forefinger. “You can stop here,” she muttered, trying to ignore the throbbing pain in her head. “Let me out by the curb and then get out of here.”
The driver twisted in his seat to glare at her over his shoulder. “The fare is fourteen dollars,” he said with a thick southern accent. “You ain't going nowhere until you pay for the service, little lady.”
She handed him a bill.
His face twisted into something haggard, and she heard the soft sound of a hiss pass through his lips. “What the hell is this?” he asked, shaking the money at her. “God damn Canadian currency? Do I look like a bank?”
“Exchange it!”
She got out of the car with a sigh, reaching up with one hand to scrub a palm over her face. Idiot man, she thought, marching over to the scene. People's lives hang in the balance, and he quibbles over minutiae.
One of the officers turned as she approached. He frowned, then looked her up and down. “You're the Justice Keeper?” he asked. “'Bout time you got here. The situation's spinning out of control.”
Craning her neck, Anna squinted at him. “Yeah, that's me,” she said with a curt nod. “Next time, I'll try to be more punctual after you fail to call me before charging headlong into an unknown scenario.”
“Listen-”
“What's the situation?”
As she approached the side of the police cruiser, she saw a young man standing in front of a window that looked in on the convenience store. He was tall and slim with a dark complexion, and even from this distance, she could tell that he felt cornered. “We asked him to let us tend the wounded,” the cop said.
She noticed another pair of teenagers in front of the laundromat. One was lying flat on his back with a blood-stained face. The other was on his knees a few feet away, hiding his face in his hands.
The officer who had decided to take on the role of her liaison stood behind her. “The kid wouldn't let us approach,” he said. “We tried anyway, and he threw up some energy field. Bullets won't pierce it.”
“You tried to shoot him?”
“He left us no choice.”
Clenching her teeth, Anna shut her eyes tight. She tossed her head about in disgust. “Of course you did,” she said, leaning over the hood of the car. “From now on, you don't make a move without my say-so.”
Kevin was still cowering in front of the window, staring into his palms as though he couldn't believe what he saw there. The kid was on edge, frightened. There was no telling how the Overseer device might have messed with his brain chemistry.
“Kevin?” she called out.
He looked up.
“I know you'
re frightened,” Anna began. “It's okay; no one's going to hurt you. The device you're carrying is dangerous. We just want to help.”
“You can't take it.”
“Kevin, we-”
The kid thrust his palm out, pointing the strange Overseer device at her, and she had to admit that it was difficult to ignore the urge to draw her weapon. “It's mine!” he said. “I won't let you have it.”
Anna sucked on her lower lip, then bowed her head to him. Thin strands of red hair dangled over her cheeks. “Sweetie, that device is going to kill you. It's already started to affect your mind.”
Kevin tossed his head back, then covered his face with both hands. “I know, but…” The words came out in a harsh squeak. “I don't know why, but…I have to hang on to it. I feel it in my head.”
“I'm going to come closer now.”
“No!”
In the blink of an eye, he had a hand pointed toward her, and she almost expected to see the rippling energy of a force-field. Luckily, he was still able to control himself. “No one with weapons gets anywhere near me.”
Anna drew her pistol from the holster on her hip. She set it down on the hood of the police car. “No one's going to hurt you, Kevin,” she assured him. “We're all going to put our weapons down, aren't we?”
The four men who stood on either side of her remained perfectly still, each aiming his weapon over the top of one of the vehicles. Not one was willing to follow her lead. Companion be praised this was a small town; a larger city would have had SWAT teams here by now.
Anna felt her cheeks burn with furious heat. She took a deep breath to calm herself. “Put your weapons down,” she muttered under her breath. “The kid is only a danger if we threaten him.”
The officer who had greeted her – a tall, well-muscled man who now stood on her immediate left – eyed her before speaking. “With all due respect, ma'am, we do that, and he might decide to flatten us.”
Tossing her head back, Anna rolled her eyes at the clear blue sky. “Oh yes, because your bullets have been so effective thus far.” She hissed like a steaming tea kettle. “Put your guns down; I'm not going to say it again.”
One by one, the four officers lowered their weapons to point at the ground. Anna heard the odd muttered complaint, but they were wise enough to take direction when she forced the issue.
Kevin seemed to relax, lowering his hands. He stood there, hunched over, refusing to look up at her. “They need help,” he said, gesturing to the other two boys. “I swear to god I didn't mean to hurt them.”
Anna glanced over her shoulder.
The two men on her right holstered their weapons and made their way around the police car. In a few seconds, they were trotting across the parking lot, crouching down in front of the fallen boys.
Anna maneuvered through the narrow gap between both cars, and when Kevin did nothing to object, she started a slow march forward. With any luck, she would be able to defuse this situation before it got any worse.
Anna licked her lips, then lowered her eyes to the ground. “It's okay, Kevin,” she said, moving forward with her hands in the air. “I won't hurt you. We're gonna take you up to Station Twelve and-”
She sensed someone on the store's roof.
The officer who had greeted her suddenly pointed his gun upward and fired with a CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! Just like that, the delicate cease fire that she had worked so hard to build fell apart.
Kevin raised a hand, and the air before him started to shimmer like ripples flowing across the surface of a pond. The two cops who were tending to the wounded boy looked up and reached for their weapons. “No!” Anna screamed. In her mind's eye, she saw the cop behind her aim for Kevin.
She threw herself down on her belly just before the gun went off with a thunderous roar. Bullets slammed into the force-field, but instead of bouncing off, they just hovered there. She had never anything like it.
Kevin gestured, and the force-field…pulsed, flinging each slug back in the direction it had come from. There were screams from behind her, the sound of shattered glass. Oh, Bleakness take her! This had been going so well!
Kevin spun on his heel and ran around the side of the convenience store. Before she could even raise her voice, he was gone. Damn it! Rage flared within her. Couldn't those idiots keep their trigger fingers still for one fucking minute?
Anna got up.
She ran back to the police car, jumping to land on the roof. Crouched down upon the steel, she inspected her surroundings. One of the cops – the one who had greeted her – had taken a wound to the shoulder. A second officer was tending to him.
Anna winced, sweat rolling over her face. She shook her head and let out a heavy sigh. “Get him medical attention,” she ordered. “Stay with him until the ambulance gets here, then follow me in the cruiser.”
The other officer looked over his shoulder, frowning at her. “There's not much back there,” he said, gesturing in the direction Kevin had fled. “Some woods and then the high school, but that's it.”
“That's where he'll go,” Anna muttered. “He'll know the area. Right now, his self-preservation instincts are nearly impossible to ignore. There have been cases like this one before. If we can keep him calm, he'll be all right, but spook him and the instinct to use the device kicks in.”
The wounded cop was staring up at the sky with tears glistening on his face. “The woman…” he said, tossing his head from side to side. “On the roof…I saw her…A woman in a ski-mask.”
In the calamity, Anna had almost forgotten. She'd had the briefest glimpse of a tall figure standing on the roof just before the Bleakness took everything. Where that person had gone was a mystery to her, but it was hardly her primary concern. Someone had to get to Kevin before he did any more damage.
Anna slapped a hand over her face, groaning into her own palm. She ran her fingers through her hair. “So you're first instinct was to shoot at her? What part of 'don't frighten the boy' was so hard to understand?”
The man grunted.
“Never mind,” she said, hopping off the cop car and turning away from them. “Get him help. I'll go after Kevin. Back me up as soon as you're able, but for the Companion's Blessed Love, learn to restrain yourselves.”
Kevin would have a significant lead on her by now; she was going to have to rely on a little creativity if she wanted to close the distance. Anna took a second to survey her surroundings. There was a large blue van parked right in front of the convenience store. That would do nicely.
Anna ran toward it at full speed, then jumped and – with Keeper strength – easily crested the back end. She landed crouched on the top. Then she was charging headlong for the strip mall.
Anna leaped, somersaulting in mid-air. “Keeper girl!” She landed on the rooftop and resumed her frantic sprint. “Able to leap modestly-sized buildings with the aid of conveniently-positioned props!”
Behind the store, a small yard was surrounded by a chain-link fence that had been mangled. There was a great big hole in the mesh; Kevin had gone this way. A single elm tree stood tall and proud with branches that had sprouted green leaves.
Anna threw herself from the rooftop.
With a little help from Seth, she twisted gravity so that 'down' was now a horizontal line that would carry her across the yard. She flew with her arms outstretched, releasing the Bending as she neared the tree.
Catching a branch with both hands, Anna swung back and forth like a pendulum. Have to maximize the arc, she thought. The motion left a wonderful lurching sensation in her belly. She reached the peak of her swing and released the branch.
Tucking her knees into her chest, Anna back-flipped over the chain-link fence and landed poised on the other side. Dozens of trees rose up in front of her, packed so closely together they provided adequate shade from the sun.
She ran into the woodland.
In the distance, she could see a shadowy figure moving among the trees, following a twisting path as it snaked through the fo
rest. “Kevin!” she shouted. He paused for half a moment. Then he was gone again.
Keepers were several times stronger than the average human being, which meant they could run like a demon when the need arose. She raced down the path at a speed that would leave most people gasping after thirty seconds.
On the far side of the woods, the trees gave way to a small field where she found yet another mangled fence. Beyond that, the red-bricked wall of James Polk high school stood with windows in all three stories.
She saw a door that had been ripped off its hinges, its frame mangled – Kevin was really racking up some impressive property damage – and beyond that, a wide hallway with yellow lockers in each wall stretched on to a distant stairwell.
Anna resumed her sprint.
Cool air slammed into her as soon as she passed through the door – the people were already using their air-conditioning system – and then she was running down the hallway. There was no sign of Kevin. He must have turned a corner or…
When she paused to catch her breath, she noticed something odd. The door to every classroom was shut except for the last one on her left. Her instincts said that something about that was a little too convenient, but if the kid was running on adrenaline, he likely wouldn't be thinking about concealing his trail.
She reached for the gun on her hip and found nothing.
Baring her teeth in a snarl, Anna let out a growl. “Of course,” she said, starting down the hallway. “You left it on the hood of a police car! Jena catches word of this, and I might not be keeping that shiny new promotion.”
She approached the door.
Inside, she saw nothing but an empty classroom with desks arranged in neat rows and a bulletin board on the back wall. There were pictures of this world's great literary figures – she recognized Shakespeare but none of the others – along with motivational posters proclaiming the same slogans that had annoyed the crap out of her as a teenager. Attitude was the key to success and all that. “Kevin?” Anna called out.
