Amped: A Kid Sensation Companion Novel (6 page)

It wasn’t until we were back in Li’s room that the butterflies I was feeling started to die down. (To be honest, I had been so amped over what we were doing that I hadn’t even noticed their presence earlier.) That said, I still felt somewhat euphoric over what we had accomplished.

“So what now?” asked Smokey, and then he gestured towards the data tape. “How do we get what we need off that thing?”

Li seemed to examine the tape for a moment. “Data extraction is usually not difficult. However, this appears to be an older tape format, which means that the data recovery may take longer than anticipated.”

That took some of the air out of my sails. “How long?” I asked nervously, afraid of what the answer might be.

“There could be terabytes of data on here,” Li replied. “Still, I think I may have something by” – he seemed to spend a moment calculating internally – “tomorrow?”

I blinked in surprise, and then grinned, so happy I could kiss him.

“Tomorrow’s absolutely fine,” I said, suddenly giddy again.

*****

Everything’s relative, as they say, and the truth of those words hit me the next day as I waited to hear what Li had discovered on the data tape. Although it had sounded like a very short turnaround the previous night, spending the next day biding my time was absolute torture.

It was a school day, but I could barely focus on anything my teachers said, and for the first few hours I wandered around like a zombie, almost completely oblivious of what was going on around me.

For the moment, I was attending public school, as were most teen supers following the destruction of the Academy. That said, we were fairly spread out; for instance, I didn’t attend the same high school as either Smokey or Jim. (There was allegedly a plan being put into place to bring us teens back together, academically, under one roof, but no word yet on when or how it would be implemented.)

It wasn’t until the bell rang for lunch that I fully came back to the real world. Li was supposed to be meeting me and sharing the preliminary results of what he’d found out.

He was waiting for me when I stepped out of class. He wasn’t a student here, but looked to be in the appropriate age bracket, so he had probably made it onto campus without any issues. Truth be told, Li wasn’t enrolled in school anywhere. However, bearing in mind that he had doctorate-level expertise in a dozen subjects, he really didn’t need to be – not for academics, anyway. For Li, enrollment in school would be more about the social aspects, such as learning to integrate with normal teens.

Rather than talk in the hallways or in the cafeteria, we headed out to my car, which was parked in the student lot. It was pretty chilly and I shuddered slightly as we stepped outside, letting out a breath that was immediately visible in the winter air. In all honesty, I have the ability to keep myself warm with the internal electricity I generate, but I rarely use it that way – mostly because it’s too easy to forget I’m doing it, and end up giving someone a nasty shock, shorting out an appliance, or something along those lines.

“I think you’ll be pleased with what I’ve found so far,” Li said. Almost in surprise, I noted that his breath didn’t become perceptible like mine – and then I remembered that Li didn’t breathe. There weren’t many people outside (I think I saw one or two small groups having snowball fights), but I was suddenly in a rush to get to my car, before someone observed that Li’s mouth and nose weren’t puffing out little clouds like everyone else.

Once at my car, we got inside and I turned on the engine before cranking up the heat.

“Okay,” I said. “What did you find out?”

“A fair amount,” Li replied. “But first, there is a bit of bad news.”

I sighed in exasperation. “Of course. Why wouldn’t there be?”

“There has been some physical degradation of the tape, resulting in a loss of integrity with respect to the stored data.”

“Wait a minute. The tape’s broken?”

“Not exactly, but physically, tapes such as these can be exposed to elements that harm them, such as temperature and humidity outside of recommended tolerances.”

“But I assume, since you said I’d be pleased, that you were able to recover
some
thing.”

“Indeed. Moreover, I think that I can repair the tape to an extent that will allow us to retrieve the information on the damaged portion.”

“Li, that’s great!”

“Thank you. Just be aware that it will take even longer than anticipated to examine everything on the tape – perhaps another day?”

I grinned. “That’s fine with me.”

“Excellent. Now, with respect to what I have learned so far, I was able to find records showing when the requests were made for the replacement ultrasound machine and fetal heart monitor. The requests were made on the same day – which lends credence to our earlier theory about your power affecting them – so I limited the search parameters to within three days of the request date.”

“Why three days?”

“First of all, to account for human error. People will often get dates confused or will simply misremember what the actual date is. Then there is also the fact that the request might not have been made on the date that the equipment malfunctioned. It may have happened a day or two later.”

I nodded. “Okay, a three-day margin sounds like a reasonable assumption.”

“Next, not counting the physicians on staff at the hospital itself, there were over two dozen obstetrician-gynecologists in the city who had privileges at Sisters of Mercy, meaning that they could use hospital facilities and equipment.”

I pursed my lips and groaned softly. “There must have been hundreds of patients who came through their doors during the time in question.”

“True, but – focusing only on those patients who received a prescription for Gross Meta prenatal vitamins – I was able to pare the list down to one hundred nine.”

“That’s good. I’d almost forgotten about the Gross Meta connection.”

“Next, bearing in mind your estimated date of birth, I was able to cut the list down further by eliminating women who were not in the appropriate trimester of pregnancy.”

“So how many were left?”

“Forty-seven. Of those, however, approximately fifty-one percent were positively identified by sonogram as carrying male fetuses. That left twenty-three.”

I nodded, thinking how the numbers were getting down into what I would consider a manageable range. “Go on.”

“Of those, seventeen were live births that occurred at Sisters of Mercy. Based on hospital records, none of them are you.”

“How can you be sure?”

“There are distinguishing characteristics that do not match – eye color, birthmarks, and so on. Most telling, of course, is the blood work. None had the excessively high levels of Vitamin A that you did. Last but not least, the mothers in those instances continued to be treated by the indicated obstetrician-gynecologists well after the time you were found.”

In other words, they were still alive at a juncture when my birth mother was presumed to be dead. “Okay. So that drops us down to what – six?”

“Yes. As I mentioned, none appear to have been born at Sisters of Mercy, so I do not have any of their birth records. However, I was able to take information regarding the expectant mothers – Social Security number, address, etcetera – and cross-reference it with other databases, such as census records, school registrations, and the like.”

“You were able to get school records for these kids? Since when is that information in the public domain?”

Li surprised me by giving me a sheepish expression. “The information is generally available to anyone who knows how to ask the proper questions of the system housing it.”

“In other words, you hacked into a bunch of sites to get what you needed.”

“I merely discovered what could be termed a non-standard approach to researching certain issues. The end result, however, is that I was able to confirm that three of the remaining six children were still living with their parents – at least at the time when you were found. That narrows the list down to three.”

He produced a sheet of paper from somewhere on his person and handed it to me. On it were listed three names, addresses, and phone numbers.

I stared at the names excitedly. “So one of these women is my mother?”

“If all of our assumptions thus far are correct, then there is the
possibility
that one of them is your mother. Remember, there is still the corrupted data to review, which might reveal more names.”

“Okay, just get them to me as soon as you can,” I said.

Li nodded. “I anticipate having them for you by tomorrow.”

He was reaching for the door handle, obviously preparing to leave, when I grabbed his arm.

“Thank you, Li,” I said, my voice filled with more sentiment than I’d intended. I then leaned over to give him a hug of profound gratitude. “You have no idea what this means to me.”

Li gently returned my hug, patting me softly on the back. When I drew back a moment later, he smiled.

“Good luck,” he said, and then stepped out of the car, leaving me alone with my thoughts.

The rest of the school day was a blur. If I had been a zombie before, then I had to be a ghost now, an apparition haunting the hallways and classrooms with a form that could be seen while not truly being present.

When the last bell of the day rang, I found myself, oddly enough, of two frames of mind as I walked to my car. On the one hand, I wanted to start investigating Li’s list of names as soon as possible; on the other, I dreaded what I might find out.

I got inside, tossed my book bag into the backseat and started the engine. I pulled out Li’s list and just stared at it. I was nervous, no doubt about it. I mean, my parents were presumably dead, so I wasn’t sure what I expected to find out with this information. (There was always the possibility, I suppose, that my birth mother had given me up or abandoned me, so in theory she
could
be one of these women.) Oh well, sometimes you just have to jump into the deep end of the pool.

I pulled out my cell phone and started dialing.

*****

Turns out that making calls wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Part of the reason was the first name on my list, Tina Barrett.

Frankly speaking, when I dialed her number, I didn’t really expect to reach her. After all, my information was almost twenty years old. Nevertheless, the phone was answered after the second ring by someone I pegged as a young child based on their voice, although I couldn’t discern if it was a boy or a girl. When I asked if this was the residence of Tina Barrett, I heard the child yell, “Mom! Phone!” A few moments later, I was speaking with Mrs. Barrett herself.

After giving my name and explaining that I was an orphan trying to get information about my birth mother (for medical reasons, among other things), I asked if she’d be willing to answer a few questions about herself. I was somewhat surprised when she agreed to do so.

Oddly enough, Ms. Barrett not only had the same phone number as on my list, she also lived at the same address, which was in a rural suburb outside the city. She was a stay-at-home mom who homeschooled her children (hence the lack of school records), and – in addition to the daughter who was about my age, Anka – had gone on to have three more kids. When I noted that there wasn’t a record of her giving birth at the hospital, she laughed.

“We embrace a holistic lifestyle in our family,” she said. “We take a more natural approach to things like medical care. However, when my husband and I found out we were going to have Anka, our oldest, we wanted to make sure that we got the best care for her. That being the case, I started going to see a doctor, taking prenatal vitamins, and so on. However, after the Gross Meta scare, we figured our holistic approach was the right one. So we eighty-sixed the doctor, hired a midwife, and I gave birth at home.”

That certainly explained a lot. Grateful for the time she’d given and her willingness to help a stranger, I thanked her profusely. Ms. Barrett pooh-poohed my thanks and wished me luck in my search.

Needless to say, that first call put me greatly at ease. Mrs. Barrett’s warm and friendly demeanor gave me a certain degree of comfort, and greatly diminished the sense of dread I had regarding the other two calls on my list.

The next person on my list was Ms. Eunice Stawicki. The conversation with her did not go quite as smoothly as the call to Mrs. Barrett.

First of all, although she still had the same phone number, Ms. Stawicki had moved several times in the past seventeen years. (Keeping the same number apparently gave her a sense of stability.) The daughter she had given birth to all those years ago – Rosalyn – was, in Ms. Stawicki’s own words, a “holy terror” who was currently in juvie for stealing the neighbor’s car.

I spent the next forty-five minutes hearing all about Ms. Stawicki’s life, from her three marriages to her uber-critical mother to her lousy job as a waitress at a late-night diner (which she believed contributed to her poor health). And, although I introduced myself, I’m not sure if she ever really understood who I was. (In fact, she seemed to somehow become convinced that I was a social worker of some sort, because she kept asking if I needed to check on her two younger kids, who were the complete opposites of their older sister.) Or maybe she just needed a sympathetic ear, which I could completely understand.

After finally getting off the phone with Ms. Stawicki, I called the number of the last name on my list, Lynn Fraleigh. A gruff, male voice answered, and – after hearing who I was calling for – quickly informed me that I had the wrong number. His tone gave the impression that he didn’t want to be bothered, but he extended me the courtesy of telling me that the address I had for Mrs. Fraleigh was not the one associated with the number I had dialed. And then he hung up.

I spent a moment contemplating what the last call meant. The phone number was no longer valid for Mrs. Fraleigh, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything; people changed numbers all the time. It was possible that she was still living at the address Li had given me for her. With nothing to lose, I decided to make a house call. After looking up the address on my cell phone’s map, I shifted my car into “Drive” and headed out, noting to myself that my auto had actually served as a nice office for my phone calls.

*****

The address for Mrs. Fraleigh turned out to be a high-end bakery that specialized in wedding cakes. It seemed like a dead end, but I had come this far. I parked the car and went inside.

The interior was what you’d expect: lots of multi-layered wedding cakes of all sizes, as well as cake pops, donuts, and other treats. I asked to speak to the manager and a few minutes later was introduced to a jovial, middle-aged fellow by the name of Huxley, who also happened to be the owner. He was a third-generation baker and had been at this location for over twenty-five years. Bearing that in mind, it seemed like a long shot, but I asked him if he knew anyone named Lynn Fraleigh. As luck would have it, he not only knew Lynn – she was his niece.

“Her husband was an engineer working overseas,” Huxley explained. “She stayed here with us – in a room we have over the shop – so she’d have family support until his project ended. Out of the blue, he got an amazing job offer in Europe, and they essentially had to move in like two weeks. They’ve been there ever since.”

Huxley shared a little more information, including a picture of his niece and her family. (The girl she’d given birth to around the time I was born was her second child.)

I bought a couple of cake pops to thank him for his time, and promised to give him a shot at my business whenever I decided to get married. I got back in my car and drove off with mixed emotions: happy that I could eliminate names from my short list, but frustrated at my lack of real progress.