Kinetics (14 page)

A pause, “I can’t take her back to that
orphanage.  A man tried to kill her.  I assume that he was very susceptible to
the girl’s ability and couldn’t take it anymore.  He may try to hurt her
again.”

“Yes sir, I will have him terminated.”
She said after a final pause then hung up the phone.

She threw it through me and sighed
loudly.  She slammed her hands on the steering wheel and pulled the car over to
the side of the road.  She looked around for a few seconds then she looked up
into the rearview mirror, and smiled as I slept in the back seat.

~//~

I woke with steam rising from my skin. 
I was sweating; it was from my nerves.  The sweat was evaporating almost
instantly.

I climbed out of bed, in the hallway I
could see that the sun was still down.  I slowly shambled down to the first
level and into the bathroom.  I turned the water on full blast, cold, and
stepped into the stream still fully clothed. 

The water evaporated like my sweat had,
billowing in the air of the small bathroom.  The thick white cloud of vapor
made it hard to breath.

I just stood there until the steaming
stopped and I actually felt the cold chill me.  I turned off the water.  I
climbed out of the shower grabbing a towel.

I dried what I could and left the
bathroom. 

I took the steps one at a time. 

It took me a few moments to find clean,
dry clothes, and get dressed.  My head was killing me and I didn’t want to turn
on the light.  I laid back down in my bed and stared at the ceiling.  I saw
nothing but darkness but could feel the memories of that man’s hands around my
neck. 

I played the parts of the dream that I
could remember in my head over and over again. 

I wondered what it all meant.  I had
caused a man so much sorrow that he tried to kill me and I was only eleven
years old.  Rebecca had told the person on the phone that I had used emotional
projection.  I couldn’t remember ever seeing Rebecca again after that incident
or the man for that matter.  

I had to find out what exactly emotional
projection meant and if I was still able to do that.  I have to keep myself
from torturing anyone else with my emotions; I hardly understood what was going
on in my head.  I didn’t need anyone else to suffer because of me.

There was a soft knock on my door. 

"Yeah." I turned my head over
to look at whoever opened the door.

Kenny leaned against the door frame with
his arms crossed, "Hey, was that you that got up and took a shower?"

"It was." I sat up.

"Are you sick?" He looked
worried, "I was watching TV and you walked by like a zombie and ignored
me."

"I guess you could call it
that." I smiled.  "I didn't mean to ignore you."

"Don't worry about it; most people
are zombies this time of night.  You want to talk about what’s on your
mind?"

"I wouldn’t know what to talk about
if I wanted to." I sighed.

"Come on, you used to talk to me
all the time.  You know that I won't say anything to anybody." he was
right.  There weren’t many secrets among the four of us, but if there was ever
something, Kenny was my go to guy.

"What about Sandy, you two don't
keep secrets." I picked at him.

"We don't keep secrets from each
other that pertain to the two of us but this is your thing and that doesn't
count." he remained perfectly cool.

"I don't think that I have told
anyone about what happened to me before I came to Hillside, partly because I
didn’t remember most of my past." I laid back down onto my side.

"Nope, I figured it was a touchy
subject."

"Well, I had blocked most of it
out.  What I could remember back then was pretty rough." I took a deep
breath.  "I was having problems with my abilities and Doctor Z thought
that it was linked to a mental block.  He gave me a drug that he created to get
rid of blocks, but it got rid of them all.  I just relived a memory that I wish
I never had.  I should have listened to Sam.”

"What happened?" he listened
closely.

"At this old orphanage that I used
to live at there was a male caretaker.  His name was George.  He tried to kill
me." I forced the tears away.

"Why?"

I contemplated telling him everything
that I had remembered but decided against it.  "I don't know why.  I went
to therapy for a while before moving to Hillside.  George was let go, or
terminated was the word they used, and I never saw him again.  Didn't bother me."

"Wow, no wonder you got sick."
he sat down on the floor next to my bed and leaned back. 

"Yeah." I chuckled, "I
think that other than a therapist, you are the only person that I have told any
of this to."

“You want to know something?”

“What’s that?” I let my hand fall off
the side.  He took it and held it like I imagined a brother would.

“I had abilities before we were
abducted.”

“What do you mean?” I knew exactly what
he meant.

“From as far back as I can remember I
have been able to heal things.”

“Like how?”

He let go of my hand and reached into
his pocket.  He took out a pocket knife and opened the blade.

“Whoa, wait, what are you doing?” I
grabbed his hand.

“Just watch.” He placed the blade to the
skin of his arm.  He gently applied pressure and slid the blade slowly down his
flesh.  Blood began to slide out from the split skin.  He cleaned the blade and
closed it swiftly returning the knife to his pocket while his arm bled.

“For God’s sake!” I got up to go for the
light but he grabbed my pants, stopping me. 

With his other hand, he ran his index
finger over the wound.  As the blood pooled under his finger the cut vanished
leaving no sign of a scar at all. 

“Don’t ever do that again.”

“No one else knows that I can do that.”
He cleaned up the remaining blood with his shirt. 

“Your secret is safe with me.” I got
back into my bed.

"I'm here with an ear." he stood
from his spot on the floor, "Feel better?"

I thought for a moment and realized that
I did feel better, "Yeah, I'm going to try and sleep the rest of the
night." I smiled.

"Alright, well let me know anytime
you want to talk." He left the room closing the door. 

It felt good to let things out.  I knew
telling him about the other ability that I may or may not have was a bad idea, but
knowing that he had a second ability made me think that our ending up at that
orphanage was not a coincidence. 

I wondered if any of the others had
abilities as I began to get drowsy and fall asleep. 

The next morning Sam took us to his
office; one of the buildings that I had thought was abandoned.  They hadn’t
gotten around to doing any maintenance. 

"What is on the agenda for
today?" I looked like hell from my rough night.

"Today we are going to figure out your
government approved education level." Sam stood at the front of the room,
while the rest of us sat behind a long table spaced evenly apart.   

"And how are we going to do
that?" Ronnie leaned back in his chair and crossed his arm.  He looked
bored.

"With the ELAT." Sam smiled.

"What is the ELAT?" I asked.

"The E.L.A.T. Education Level
Assessment Test." He paced a few steps in either direction.

We all groaned in unison at the prospect
of a test.  School was something that we were all ready to leave in the past.

"I know.  I know.  Its two hundred
and fifty questions and you have three hours to finish.  We will go over the
results together when everyone is finished."  He passed out the tests to
everyone.  Each packet had a different designation on the front page making it
clear that each one was very different. 

Once everyone had a test, pencil, and a
calculator he sat down behind a desk at the edge of the room, "Get
started." He pressed the start button on a timer.

The test was simple, but it did get
harder as I went deeper into the pages.  All of the questions were based on
information that we had seen dozens of times. 

I breezed through the material in about
two hours.  I closed the booklet and set back in my chair.  I started to draw
some lines on the corner of a scrap sheet of paper.

Sam came over and took my packet without
saying a word. He returned to his desk to grade my work.

Everyone finished well before time was
up, and we all sat quietly while Sam graded the tests.  After he finished he
passed them back out.

"Here is how this works." He
clapped his hands together and looked around the room, "The grade that you
have determines your average education level.  If you score high enough, we,
and the government, will consider you a graduate and issue you a diploma.  We
have no way to pinpoint where you need to start without the test.  Let’s just
say that Aurora did not think your education was a priority.”

"Alrighty then, I like the sound of
that." Kenny blurted out. 

"Two hundred and ten points plus
tells us that you are of high school graduate level education, 250 is a perfect
score." Sam pointed to the tests.

I opened my packet and turned to the
front page.  In thick black numbers two-two-nine was scrawled across the page. 
I breathed a sigh of relief.

We all scored high enough to be done
with school.  Rachel had been the closest; she had been held for so long.  When
we asked how she could have known all the information she said that they were
teaching her, but she left it at that, and didn't want to elaborate.

Ryder met me outside of Sam's office. 
He seemed excited about talking to me.  We walked along in quiet for a few
minutes past the house and just kept walking.

"I had a word with Sam." he
broke the silence finally.

"Really, was it just one, or was
there an entire conversation?" I laughed at my own joke then felt stupid
for being so self centered.  He was kind of acting awkward, but happy.

"Yeah, we think that it would be
great if you wanted to work up in the observatory.  Fade tried to teach a few
people to care for it, but no one was as interested in it as she was." He
kept his eyes averted. 

"Really?  That's cool."

"Well, you seemed so interested the
other day.  A hobby would be good we think.  I’ve seen some downward spirals
from a user getting too bored."

"When can we get started?" I
squinted up to the top of the mountain.  I could just make out the sparkle of
the landing at the mountain’s highest point.

"We?" he seemed surprised that
I'd want his help.

"I assume that you would want to
come up and help, given that it used to be Fade's project." I didn’t care
if he wanted to help or not, I really didn’t want to be alone on the top of a
mountain.

"How, um..." he looked in the
air around my head for the word.

"Presumptuous." I said.

"Not what I was going to say, but I
guess that works." he scratched his head awkwardly; "I don't know if
I'll be much help."

"To be honest I don't care how much
help you'll be." I said bluntly, "I don't want to be in a new place on
top of a mountain alone."

"I don't think that I can go up
tonight.  How about tomorrow?" He checked the time on his smart phone.

"Yeah, that sounds good." I
was disappointed that I couldn't get started immediately, but I hadn’t even
opened my new laptop yet, and I would want to use it to keep up with my work.

We looped back around and returned to
the house.  The whole group was home either watching TV or using the computer
in the den.

I went up to my room and grabbed my new
computer.  I opened up the box, took out all of the packaging, and tossed it
into the trash.  I plugged the charger into the wall, and into the computer. 
When I opened the lid and pressed the power button it didn't take long to boot
up. 

The computer asked me a few questions
about where I was and what the current time was.  When it booted to the desktop
it notified me that there were wifi networks available.  I connected to the one
with the strongest signal that didn’t require a password.

I opened internet explorer, I hadn't
been online in over a month.  I tried to check my e-mail, but the account was gone. 
Every account that I had had was gone.  I searched for myself on Google, but
only found pictures of the girl who had replaced me.

Even my Facebook page was changed to
reflect the replacement’s life, which was better than mine according to her
page.  More power to her.

I was happy to leave it all behind.

I remembered that Sam wanted us to come
up with code names that we could use when we went on missions.  I went to back
Google, and typed
synonyms for fire
in the search bar, and hit enter. I
clicked on a link and read the page.  There were dozens of words and one the
stuck out was Sear.  It was kind of plain, but it was quick to say, and easy to
remember.