Alan groaned and handed the watch to Marshall. Marshall looked at the face, the cracked glass. The hands were forever stuck at one point in time.
2:37. The box showed AM.
“It was late. We were driving home from a party. Raining cats and dogs. Low visibility.”
✽✽✽
Alan smiled at Molly, a fleeting glance away from the road as their car made its way through the torrential downpour. They were supposed to leave the party hours ago, but it was two in the morning, and they were out in the middle of it. Molly smiled uneasily, a tense feeling rattling throughout her body.
“I know, I know. We should’ve left earlier.”
“I didn’t say anything,” Molly said, a faint veneer of humor laid over her uneasiness.
“Yeah, but you were thinking it,” Alan joked, his eyes staring intensely through the windshield.
The wipers were trying their hardest, but there was too much rain. The road was covered in a layer of water, and any little change of the steering wheel created in a volatile movement one way or the other across the road.
Alan tried to fix the defroster on his dashboard. He hadn’t noticed the lights growing larger up ahead. Molly sucked in a panicked breath, and Alan looked up. The car was spinning out of control, hydroplaning toward them, and there was no time to respond. Alan threw his hands on the dashboard as a snap reaction. Their car wrenched to the left. The other vehicle smashed into the passenger side of their car, and Alan’s head smacked into the steering wheel. Everything went black.
The world was blurry when Alan came to. Alan lifted his head, a nauseous feeling slowly fermenting in his gut. He was on a red stretcher, elevated over the deluge. Flashlights kept dancing over his field of view, and emergency workers passed over him as they worked. Alan couldn’t move his head, so his eyes tracked as far to his right as he could. He could see Molly in her own stretcher, as one of the emergency workers zipped her up into a black bag.
Alan couldn’t tell if it was the rain in his face or not, but he could feel warm tears trailing down his face as he looked back up into the blinding flashlights.
“Get him to the hospital, the crew will handle the rest of the cleanup. The other driver is paralyzed. Code the woman.”
✽✽✽
“Damn, kid.”
Alan took the watch back and held it to his ear. “Hasn’t worked ever since.”
“You know it’s not your fault she died, right?”
“Oh, I know… ‘it was an accident’, ‘you didn’t mean to’…,” Alan trailed off, his face disgusted. “It happened, and if I had just let that stupid idiot hit me, Molly would be alive, and I wouldn’t be lifting metal beams in this chain gang for the rest of my life.”
“Maybe, but you weren’t the one who caused the accident. You just had to react. That’s all we can do: react.”
“Is that why you ended up in here? You reacted?”
“I was worried about my family,” Marshall replied in defense, “It was the best I could do in the situation. If I gave myself up, they had no reason to look for them. You do crazy things for your family.”
“That’s funny: my folks sold me out,” Alan said with a wry smile. “Came home one day from my job, and there was a squad car in our driveway. Parents were standing out on the porch with the officers. No real sense of loss for them. I guess I wasn’t lucky enough to have a Marshall in the family.”
The room was silent for a few moments. Marshall wasn’t sure how much more he wanted to share with Alan. He decided to go for it.
“My siblings are special like us. When the government started rounding us up, we went into hiding, but it didn’t last long. We slipped up, and the Board tracked us down to a remote location. If I didn’t turn myself in, they would’ve found my family. It’s worth it just knowing they’re safe now.”
“I was an only child. I guess if I had siblings, I would understand.”
“You understand, kid. It’s why you wanted to take Molly’s place. It’s love. Maybe not the same kind of love, but still love.”
eight
The next day at the construction site was strange for Alan. Everyone knew that he stopped the bus from smashing into the tree, and they were all alive because he did. Even Castor was on his best behavior. He still jeered at Alan from time to time, but it had less bite to it than usual. Castor handed Alan a warm cup of coffee.
“Here you go, kid. Don’t say I never gave you nothin’,” Castor cleared his throat, and Alan started walking away. “Now get to work, hero. This doesn’t mean I like you!”
The comment felt nice enough - if not for Castor’s sarcastic ‘hero’ quip - so Alan took a sip of coffee and enjoyed what seemed like a luxury around the construction site.
“Nice. Coffee,” Marshall said as Alan came up to the crowd waiting for work. “Enjoying the hero perks, I see.”
Alan shrugged. “I didn’t do anything you guys wouldn’t have.”
“But you did do it. That takes guts…”
“Or - you know - a lot of stupidity,” Athena joked, as she walked past them to the food truck. She called out to Alan, “But we’re thankful all the same.”
Work seemed to fly by. Everything was blurry and loud, beams being welded into place and slamming into place with ferocity.
A supervisor’s whistle sounded in the site, and everyone stopped working. At first Alan though maybe someone had gotten hurt, so he looked around with piercing eyes for the source of trouble. But the real reason for the stoppage was much worse.
Alan could see some commotion at the front gate. A couple of Board operators were talking with one of the supervisors, then the supervisor pointed at Alan. Alan felt the blood in his veins run cold, a hard pit in his stomach.
“Alan Mitchell, stand down,” one of the operators shouted, his finger pointing through the crowd, and it parted as he walked to clear the distance.
Everyone parted. Everyone except for Castor. Castor was cleaning up the picnic tables where people had left their snacks and had stopped when all the commotion had interrupted his work. He was livid with the operator.
“What the hell do you think you're doing?” Castor asked as loudly as he could, his voice echoing across the construction site. It filled the deathly silence being created by everyone else. Alan could’ve sworn he heard hundreds of nervous heartbeats.
“Alan Mitchell, come with us immediately.”
“Are you punishing him for saving us? That’s messed up, man,” Castor replied, his arms folded over his chest. “Says a lot about what you think of us. You know you’re one of us, right? You’ll never be one of them by selling us out.”
The operator looked past Castor, his jaw clenching in an effort to keep his composure.
“Alan Mitchell, stand down,” the operator replied, “Don’t make me say it again.”
“Castor, it’s okay,” Alan called out and started walking forward, but Castor wasn’t having any of it.
“I’m not moving, man. This is stupid, and you know it,” Castor said in an antagonistic tone. The operator rolled his eyes, and shoved Castor out of the way with a flick of his hand and a thought in his telekinetic head. Castor slammed into the half-constructed building, and his body slumped to the concrete floor.
“Come with me, Mr. Mitchell,” the operator said calmly, and then turned to his partner. “Gerry, grab the other one. Insubordination to an operator. Automatic three strikes.”
The other operator, Gerry, picked up Castor in one hand, and the four of them walked back to a young woman waiting at the gate.
“Prepare for exfiltration,” the operator ordered in his calm tone.
There was another operator at the gate, a woman. She nodded, and held a hand out in front of them. A blue pool of energy spiraled into being, and the operators pushed Alan into it.
Alan felt like he was being stretched apart at his extremities, his arms and legs pulled to their farthest reaches. Then it all imploded, scrunching together at the center of himse
lf.
Alan was blinded by a white light, but, as he acclimated, he realized he was kneeling in a white room. The room appeared almost seamless, a round structure with no corner and no visible door. The operator picked him up by the arm and pulled Alan into a standing position.
“Move,” the operator commanded forcefully, wrenching Alan forward and onto his feet.
A doorway appeared in the white room, a piece of the wall sliding away, disappearing into the curve of the round space. They entered a hallway, with metal grated floors and solid white walls. Alan looked up at the ceilings, which were long light panels illuminating the bright hall.
“Tax dollars at work, I see,” Alan said sarcastically, and the operator shoved him forward.
“Shut up.”
Alan looked over and saw Castor was still knocked out, his body slumped over and bobbing in Gerry’s arms as they walked. He recalled how intimidated he was of Castor at the beginning, and to see him carried like a child was chilling.
“I’ll take this one to the holding area. Don’t wait on me for the Board meeting.”
The operator acknowledged Gerry, and pressed Alan further down the hall, as Gerry branched off to the left with Castor’s limp body in tow. Alan looked up and committed Castor’s hallway number to memory: A5.
A dark amusement came over Alan as he realized that memorizing a hallway number wouldn’t mean much since he would never escape. He heard the stories. No one ever came back from the Board meeting. Now he knew where they went, and it was still as mysterious as it had been before. White halls with metal floors. Seamless disappearing doorways. Long hallways filled with light. No shadows to retreat into. Cameras everywhere, no doubt. Alan’s scattered mind catalogued all of these observations for a future opportunity that would never come.
The hallway appeared to end in nothing, but Alan soon realized that a doorway would present itself with proximity to the operators’ footsteps. Perhaps the operator wore something that alerted the doors to part? Alan shook his head at the sheer lunacy of his thoughts. What good would it do him to figure out their systems? He was, now more than ever, a prisoner.
As if on cue, the doorway opened itself in front of them in the hall, and they entered in an expansive round room yet again. There was a small table before them with a single chair, and beyond it was an elevated crescent-shaped desk with five chairs where his tribunal would sit and cast judgment.
“Sit down.”
“But where will you sit?” Alan joked as he motioned to the empty space around his chair. The operator slammed Alan down onto the chair.
“Shut. up.”
“Touchy,” Alan replied under his breath, his eyes rolling in their place. Yet another room without doorways, curved in porcelain majesty. Alan would’ve guessed they were in heaven, if not for the stark lighting and the clear sense that he was about to be punished judiciously and without mercy.
A doorway to his right appeared, and four individuals entered. Two men and two women. They were older, possibly in their late thirties or early forties. One man wore a military uniform while the rest were dressed in business attire, no doubt politicians of some sort. They all carried themselves with a sense of complete boredom. The women had tense faces and tightened lips. The men clenched their jaws and fidgeted with their jackets as they walked. Alan imagined he had pulled a number at the supermarket and was just another number for them to serve a sentence.
The man in the military outfit, sat first and fixed his puffing green uniform. As the others sat down, the military man handed down file folders to the woman next to him, a blonde woman who then handed the leftover papers to the man next to her on the other side of the empty center seat. The spectacled Black man passed the last file to a Latina woman with black hair and deep-set eyes. The four shuffled the papers in unison and looked down at Alan’s file.
“Alan Mitchell,” the military officer said Alan’s name as if seeing it for the first time. His eyes scanned the paper in front of him. He cleared his throat and looked up at Alan. “You are charged with reckless endangerment of the public, destruction of government property, genetic perjury, insubordination, and cross-contamination of a crime scene. How do you plea?”
“Genetic perjury - wha-?” Alan looked around, but no member of the Board seemed to be giving his response much notice, and they continued the process.
“How do you plea?” the blonde woman asked again impatiently, her tightly pulled-back ponytail waving behind her head. Alan swallowed the lump in his throat and looked at the other members of the Board. The center chair was mysteriously empty.
“Mr. Mitchell, this is really more of a formality,” the man in the glasses spoke up, moving his glasses back up onto the bridge of his nose. “We have evidence of these crimes. Therefore, we have no need for the Director to attend this ruling. If you would plea so that we may move along.”
“Not guilty,” Alan snapped out of spite. “I don’t understand half of the charges, so…”
A small screen rose up out of the floor, positioned at an angle so that the accused and the Board could view it. Footage began playing back from the bus accident.
“The accused registers a plea of not guilty,” the Latina woman sighed, her short black hair forming around her face with a sharp line between her caramel skin. “Charge number one: reckless endangerment of the public. The accused is seen in vehicle surveillance tampering with the motor vehicle above, clearly causing disruption of the vehicle, the surrounding area, the second vehicle, and the passengers aboard said-vehicle.”
“I was reacting to -,” Alan tried to speak up. The woman looked up with unblinking, fiery eyes.
“The Board finds you guilty. The second charge: destruction of government property. As we can see in the playback, you clearly warp and manipulate government property, causing its full and ultimate destruction. The Board finds you guilty.”
Alan decided he wouldn’t speak up again. The dark-haired woman continued the sentencing.
“Charge number three: genetic perjury.”
The charge amused Alan because it seemed like a strange way to talk about his ability. He also couldn’t understand what they meant by perjury.
“Exhibit B of photographic evidence provided by satellite imagery, shows the crash scene in full detail. It clearly shows that the tree is pushed by its roots backward before the bus could make contact with it. This clearly demonstrates that the accused has lied under oath about his genetic deviation. He can not only manipulate magnetic fields, but, in fact, is capable of telekinetic episodes. We find the accused guilty of lying under oath under the Genetic Deviations Act.”
Alan sat in wide-eyed confusion. It never occurred to him that he could move other objects. He always assumed that since he moved metal materials that he was a Magnet.
“Wait, I didn’t know I -,” Alan started, but was quickly rebuffed by the dark-haired woman.
“The fourth charge: insubordination. As our operator has disclosed, Alan Mitchell and Castor Baynes did not come cooperatively before this tribunal. Therefore, they have been found guilty.
“And the final charge: cross-contamination of a crime scene. As shown in Exhibit A and B, the accused knowingly exited the vehicle after the incident and interacted with the civilian’s car, thus contaminating the crime scene as a known genetic deviation.”
The military officer then spoke up, “This Board finds you guilty of all crimes as laid out by the Department for Mutated Persons investigation unit. Under section 28a of the Genetic Deviations Act, you are hereby taken into the complete and direct custody and care of the Board for such a time as is deemed necessary for full rehabilitation. Appeal is not granted. Dismissed for further questioning.”
The Boar shut their files in unison, and the operator picked Alan back up at his shoulders and took him out of the room. Alan was dragged through a new hall with labels of B numbers and thrown into a concrete cell.
“You will be retrieved when we have further questions. Your abilities h
ave very little use here, and we have 24/7 monitoring, so don’t make me return.”
Alan looked down at his cloth cot, and then caught something out of the corner of his eye. He stared at the wall across from him. Someone had scrawled in small, jagged letters.
“Hotel California.”
nine
Hours. Days. Alan couldn’t tell anymore. He was now clad in a white jumpsuit that had appeared during one of his short naps. When he changed into the jumpsuit, his street clothes disappeared during another subsequent nap. Alan could feel his personality ebbing away. Not a soul had come by since the operator had thrown him into his cell.
The Department for Mutated Persons (Book 1): The Department for Mutated Persons Page 6
