Amped: A Kid Sensation Companion Novel (9 page)

The next day, Wednesday, was aptly nicknamed “hump day” in my book because it felt like I might finally get over the obstacles in my path. I might finally get some notion of who I was.

Needless to say, I tried to get the school day to end faster by sheer strength of will. When it finally did, I dashed to my car and raced to a local diner called Jackman’s to meet Li and Smokey.

The diner was actually one of our favorite hangout spots, and was somewhat centrally located for our current purposes. Li was already there when I arrived, so we went inside and grabbed a booth. Smokey arrived a few minutes later.

We had about an hour to kill, so we used the time to go over our itinerary again. In addition to my anticipated visit with Mrs. Gutierrez, we had also decided that it was time to return the data tape to Locke Infinite. To that end, I had worn my stealth suit under my clothes all day – a decision that had presented me with several challenges in terms of both comfort and utility. In all honesty, however, I still had mixed emotions about taking the tape back. On the one hand, I hadn’t obtained it through the proper channels and didn’t have a legal right to it. On the flip side, it had provided such a wealth of information that I worried I’d be giving something up by returning it (despite the fact that Li assured me that he had copied it in its entirety).

I was still dealing with my internal tug-of-war when the time came for us to leave. I paid our tab (Smokey and I had shared an order of chili-cheese fries), and then we headed outside. Since we only needed one vehicle for our schedule of events, it was decided that Smokey would drive. Ergo, we piled into his car and hit the road.

*****

Ms. Gutierrez lived in a quiet residential area, in an aging but well-kept ranch-style home. As we pulled up in front of her house, Smokey – as he had during the entire drive here – once again tried to convince me not to go in by myself.

“This could be a setup,” he said. “Remember what happened yesterday at Riley’s.”

“Well, she’s only expecting
me
,” I said defensively. “I think three strangers showing up, barging into her home, and then drilling her with questions is not really going to put her at ease.”

Smokey snorted derisively. “And how at ease will you be if you step inside and there’s a dozen guys standing around with blackjacks, brass knuckles, and lead pipes?”

I held up a hand and let electricity visibly arc across my fingertips. “In that case, I guess we’ll find out how well brass and lead conduct electricity.” With that, I got out of the car and walked to the door.

I pressed the doorbell and heard a two-tone note sound inside the house. Scant seconds later, Mrs. Gutierrez opened the door.

She was an attractive woman who appeared to be in her early fifties. She had a few wisps of gray in her otherwise dark hair that hung down to her shoulders, but carried herself with a youthful vigor. She also had a gentle smile and – most of all – extremely kind eyes.

“You must be Alexis,” she said, smiling brightly. “Please, come in.”

“Thank you,” I said, and went inside.

She closed the door and offered to take my coat. As she went to hang it up, I took a quick look around, noting that the entry of the home opened up into a sizeable family room. The space seemed to center on a large, sectional couch that was covered with plush-looking pillows. From what I could see, Mrs. Gutierrez seemed to keep an exceptionally neat and tidy home. The only thing that struck me as a little odd was the photos.

Simply put, there were framed photos everywhere, from the coffee table to the end table to the built-in bookshelves along one wall. Almost every flat, level surface had at least one photo on it.

Noting a photo on the fireplace mantel in a much larger frame than the others, I walked over and took a look at it. It showed Mrs. Gutierrez in her much-younger years and looking very beautiful in a gorgeous wedding dress. Next to her was an extraordinarily handsome man in a tuxedo.

“Ah,” she said, coming up behind me. “Look how handsome my Esteban was back then.”

“Your husband?” I asked.

“Yes. He passed away about ten years ago. Cancer.”

“I’m sorry,” I said sincerely.

“Don’t be,” she said with a smile, and then began guiding me towards the couch. “He lived a full life, we had three beautiful children, and he left us well taken care of.”

She tossed some of the pillows aside and then sat down on the couch. I followed her lead, sitting down next to her. Unsure of how to begin the conversation, I glanced around nervously for a moment.

“Oh, I know how it must look,” she said, gesturing at the photos all around. “That I have some weird obsession.”

“No, not at all,” I insisted.

“It’s okay. I’m used to it,” she said. “The truth, however, is that Esteban and I, we loved our children. We went to all their events – plays, musicals, recitals. My husband was a photographer, and a very good one. He had the ability to capture the entire essence of a moment in a single shot, so that he could preserve for posterity everything that our kids were involved in.”

“He did a very good job,” I said, pointing at one of the photos on the coffee table.

Mrs. Gutierrez laughed heartily, catching me somewhat by surprise. “It’s kind of you to say, but that picture is
my
work, and I know that it’s mediocre, at best. You see, after my husband passed on, I took on the job of family photographer. However, I was nowhere near his skill level, and I learned very quickly that I just didn’t have the eye to do what he did. However, what I lacked in skill, I decided to make up for in volume. Maybe I couldn’t capture the moment in a single frame, but I could damn sure capture it in ten!”

Now it was my turn to laugh. “Thank you,” I said, chortling. “I think I understand. By the way, where are your children now?”

Suddenly, Mrs. Gutierrez was beaming with pride. “My oldest – the new mom – is a guidance counselor on the West Coast. My son is an officer in the Army. And my youngest is in undergrad, following in my footsteps and studying to be a nurse.”

“You must be very proud.”

“I am. But enough about me – we’re supposed to be talking about you.” She took a moment to look me over, eyeing me almost critically. “So, you’re Mary Jones’ daughter.”

“Yes,” I said. “I mean, maybe. I don’t know.” I took a deep breath. “What can you tell me about her?”

A wistful expression crossed Mrs. Gutierrez’s face. “She was a beautiful girl. Flawless skin; fashion-model features; lustrous, dark hair… In that way, you’re very much like her.”

“Thank you,” I mumbled, somewhat embarrassed by the compliment. “But you must have seen thousands of patients over the years. How is that you remember her after all this time?”

Suddenly my host’s demeanor changed, becoming more somber. “Are you sure you want to know about this?” she asked. “You’re not going to like what you hear.”

I swallowed and nodded. “It’s fine. Just tell me.”

Mrs. Gutierrez let out a deep breath, then looked down at her hands for a moment, as if what she was about to say pained her. “Over the years, I’ve seen countless expectant mothers – even been one myself – and one thing almost all of them have in common is an all-encompassing love for their child. There’s almost nothing they won’t do for the baby they’re carrying. In fact, I can count on one hand the number of times I saw a pregnant woman who expressed anything
less
than undying affection for her baby. But Mary Jones? She was in a class by herself.”

“Go on,” I said, knowing exactly what I was about to hear.

“Mary acted like she hated that baby. She had no qualms about mentioning how she wanted absolutely nothing to do with it. And she would say it in a matter-of-fact tone, like she was simply commenting on the weather.”

I blinked, trying to find something to soften the blow of the words I was hearing. “Maybe…maybe it had something to do with the father. Maybe he abandoned her, or…”

Mrs. Gutierrez shrugged. “Maybe, but I don’t think so. She mentioned him once or twice, stating how she dreaded having to tell him that she’d felt the baby move or things of that nature, because then he’d get all sentimental. Truth be told, it sounded like she despised him almost as much as she detested the baby and reviled being pregnant.”

“So why’d she even bother with prenatal care if that’s how she felt?”

“I don’t know, but it seemed like she used the office visits – the things she learned when she came in – as a way to try to
harm
the baby.”

My brow wrinkled in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“It’s not anything I could ever prove, but just little things that happened. Take the Gross Meta recall, for example. There was a recall of prena–”

“I know about Gross Meta,” I said, cutting her off.

“Well, we told Mary about the recall – about the danger of excess Vitamin A. But when she came in for her next visit, her vitamin levels were even higher. It was as if, once she found out it could harm the baby, she doubled down on the dosage she took.”

I was having trouble concentrating. This wasn’t anything at all like I expected to hear. I mean, I’d always understood there was a possibility that my birth mother had willingly given me up for adoption or something. But learning that she may have tried to kill me in the womb? It was too much.

I licked my lips, trying to focus on my next question. “What, uh, what happened to her?”

Mrs. Gutierrez shrugged. “Don’t know. We got to her final trimester – at which point she would have started coming in every two weeks instead of every month, like before – and she just vanished. Never showed up again. When we tried to call her, we discovered that the phone number that we had for her was disconnected, and she didn’t respond to any of the letters we sent to her address after that. We just assumed that she simply moved away.”

I nodded in understanding, but something about what she’d just said was tickling my brain. Then it came to me.

“A moment ago, you mentioned that Mary Jones didn’t respond to your letters ‘after that,’” I said. “Was she responding to mail –
postal
mail – that you sent her
before
she vanished?”

Mrs. Gutierrez seemed to reflect for a moment before answering. “If I remember correctly, yes. I think there were a couple of times we sent her some forms to complete and she’d always show up with them filled out at the next visit.”

“And you sent them to her home address?”

“I suppose. It would have been whatever address we had on file for her. Whether it was her home address or not, I really couldn’t say.”

I absentmindedly ran my fingers through my hair, thinking on what that meant. Knowing that Mary Jones’ “home” address was Riley’s shop clearly indicated at least one fact: Riley had certainly known something. Unfortunately, there was no getting any information from him now.

“Well, I’ve been trying to track her down,” I said. “From what I’ve been able to find out, it doesn’t look like she ever gave you guys her real address. The phone number was probably bogus as well. And the name – Mary Jones?”

“Let me guess,” my host said. “That’s fake, too.”

“Most likely.”

She sighed. “That’s going to make it hard to find her.”

“Well, do you recall anything about her that might help locate her? Did she ever mention any relatives or where she was from?”

Mrs. Gutierrez shook her head. “Not that I recall, but she wasn’t really one for small talk. Plus, it was almost twenty years ago.”

“How about distinguishing features or characteristics”

“No…”

“A birthmark? A scar?”

“No, I’m sorry. It’s just been too lo–”

Mrs. Gutierrez stopped mid-sentence and frowned; her eyes shifted back and forth quickly, as if she was trying to work out a difficult math problem in her head. I kept silent, not wanting to break her concentration. However, after maybe thirty seconds had gone by and she still hadn’t said anything, my curiosity got the better of me.

“What is it?” I asked.

My question seemed to startle Mrs. Gutierrez slightly; she had clearly been in her own world for a few moments there.

“A tattoo,” she finally said. “Mary had a tattoo.”

“What did it look like?”

She made a vague gesture with her hands. “I don’t remember exactly. It was a small thing, on her wrist – something like a funny-looking snake wrapped around a ball or something, with the snake’s head sticking up on top.”

“Anything else?”

She shook her head. “No, I’m sorry.”

“No, no, no. This is extremely helpful.”

We spent a few more minutes talking, but it was clear that I had gotten as much useful information as possible from Mrs. Gutierrez, and it had been far more than I ever anticipated. I thanked her for her time and left.

I filled my companions in on my conversation with Mrs. Gutierrez as we drove to Locke Infinite (or rather, the lot where we’d parked the last time). Smokey gave me a sympathetic glance when I mentioned Mary Jones’ attitude towards her baby, but he didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to dwell on it anyway; we were about to head back into Locke Infinite, and I needed to get my game face on, not spend time fretting about how a woman who may or may not have been my mother had treated her unborn child.

Getting inside the storage facility was essentially a repeat of our antics from a few nights before. From hiding our clothes by the tree to shutting off the power to slipping into the vault wearing our stealth suits and night vision goggles, it was as if some celestial being had hit the “Replay” button on a cosmic remote. In short, within just a few minutes of entering the place, we had returned the data tape to the box we’d found it in and were on our way out. We were just about to exit the building when something akin to an air raid siren sounded from outside for about ten seconds.

Hand on the door, Smokey turned to me and Li in alarm. “What the hell was that?”

“Judging from the decibel range and the sound wave produced, I would surmise it was an air horn,” Li said.

Even with the goggles on, Smokey appeared confused. “Why would anybody be sounding an air horn at this place?”

“Because the security system is down!” I whispered fiercely. When Smokey still didn’t seem to understand, I hissed, “It’s a makeshift alarm, you idiot! They know someone’s here! We gotta go!”

As if to give credence to my words, we heard footsteps coming from the nearby interior, and a second later, the wandering beams of flashlights came into view.

Taking the initiative, I pushed the door open and dashed outside. Smokey, remembering his role on this mission, immediately began blanketing the area, surrounding us with mist. (As far as I knew, all the cameras were still off, but it didn’t hurt to take extra precautions.)

I was about to start running towards the tree where our street clothes were hidden when I felt a couple of familiar bioelectric fields nearby. Looking in their direction, I heard a grunt of pain and saw a man in the uniform of a security guard flop onto the frost-covered ground about twenty feet from us. Lying next to him was another fellow – unconscious – dressed in a similar uniform, as well as a couple of flashlights and, presumably, the air horn we’d just heard.

Standing over the unconscious guards were two people I knew – the sources of the bioelectric fields I had recognized a few seconds earlier: Whipcord and Smiley.

They were dressed somewhat similar to us, although they wore black bodysuits that probably didn’t have a stealth design (and made them look more like burglars). From the way they looked in our direction, however, it seemed that the goggles they wore allowed them to see as well as us. (And if there was any doubt on the subject, it was cleared up when a Cockney accent cut through the night air a moment later.)

“Hello, love,” Whipcord said, somehow recognizing me. “Fancy meeting you here.”

My companions and I turned to face the two men, fanning out as we did so. At the same time, another air horn sounded off to our right; taking a moment to glance in that direction, I saw multiple flashlight beams heading swiftly in our direction.

We didn’t have time to play around; we needed to leave, and fast. With that in mind, I suddenly sent two powerful arcs of electricity, one from each hand, hurtling towards the two men facing us.

Displaying cat-like reflexes, both of my targets dove away, causing me to miss. Whipcord hit the ground and rolled, coming up with his whip in his hand. He flicked his wrist, and the lash came sailing out – far longer than I thought it could – and struck me in the side. I gasped in pain and dropped down to one knee, feeling as though a knife had just sliced me open and someone had stuck a red-hot poker inside.

Whipcord grinned evilly. “Stings a little, don’t it, love?” He drew back his hand to strike again. At the same time, Smiley rushed towards me.

I tried to pull myself together, but the pain in my side was too much. I couldn’t focus enough to bring my power to bear. All I could do was stare as the lash of Whipcord’s weapon headed for me again, while Smiley charged.

All of a sudden, something slammed into Smiley like a freight train, ramming him aside. Before I could get a sense of what it was, however, I received a forceful shove that sent me sprawling onto the ground. Still clutching my side in pain, I rolled over and looked around, trying to get a sense of what was going on.

It wasn’t clear whether Smiley and Whipcord had simply failed to notice my friends or had dismissed them as non-threats. Whatever the reason, they had obviously misjudged the situation, as Li was now wrangling with Smiley, while Smokey – holding the lash of the whip – was in a tug-of-war with Whipcord for the weapon.

It only took a second for me to realize what had happened: Li had obviously been the object that had tackled Smiley. Smokey, on his part, had apparently pushed me out of the way and then – showing more dexterity than I would have given him credit for – caught the lash of the whip as it struck. (The only thing that probably saved his hands was the fact that we were all wearing gloves. Still, judging from the number the whip had done on me, it had to have hurt like the devil.)

I started sending electricity, internally, to the area hit by the whip. (This is a pain management technique, as electricity interferes with the signals sent from nerves to the brain. If the brain doesn’t get the signal, it doesn’t know to tell you that you’re hurt.) Almost immediately, the pain started to diminish.

Still holding my side, I struggled to get to my feet. Without warning, I saw Smokey arch his back and let out a painful scream as his body seemed to tremble almost spasmodically. I realized then that Whipcord was zapping my friend through the whip as he had tried to do to me at Riley’s shop. Before I could do anything, however, Smokey’s body seemed to vanish in a puff of…well, smoke. His empty stealth suit and goggles flopped to the ground.

“Glory be!” said Whipcord, plainly surprised at what had happened. “Never had one disintegrate on me before.”

He gave me his sinister grin again, apparently failing to notice that the puff of smoke from my companion’s “disintegrated” body had moved towards him. Before he could do anything, it swirled up around him, and I saw a pair of mist-like hands rip his goggles off. The next second, Whipcord began screaming. He dropped his weapon and began rubbing his eyes fiercely, wailing in anguish.

The cloud moved over to where Li and Smiley were locked in hand-to-hand combat, with the latter plainly disturbed by the fact that this pipsqueak of a kid was able to go toe-to-toe with him. A moment later, Smiley’s goggles were abruptly removed and he, too, began clutching his eyes and howling in pain.

Another air horn sounded, this one very close to us. When I looked in the direction that the sound had come from, I saw that several guards with flashlights were almost on us.

I looked to where Smokey’s suit was and noticed that his body was once again in it. He stood up and dusted his hands.

“That’ll take care of those two for a while,” he whispered, smiling. In his vaporous form, Smokey’s effect on people could be as mild as a summer mist or as caustic as a vat of acid. In dealing with our two assailants, he had seemingly chosen something near the category of the latter, as they looked as though someone had burned their eyes out.

“It is probably advisable that we now resume our original plan and depart the premises,” Li said.

Neither I nor Smokey needed to be told twice. Still, Smokey took a second to grab the air horn I had seen on the ground earlier. He raised it up into the air and squeezed the trigger, causing a short but deafening burst of sound that made me cover my ears.

“Over here!” Smokey shouted in the direction of the approaching guards, who altered course slightly towards the sound of his voice.

Confident that Smokey’s antics would lead the guards right to my new BFFs, we hightailed it back the way we had come, with Smokey again providing smog-like cover.