Kinetics (6 page)

"The caretakers had two ways of
dealing with our nutrition.  First, there was the protein bars but when I
refused to eat, they would fight me to the ground and inject me with
something.  I don’t know what was in the needle but I was never hungry after a
round with that stuff.” Rachel remembered.

"They hurt." Mike sat across
from me at the far end of the table. 

Mary nodded.

"I must have been unconscious for a
lot more time than I had realized." I was having the hardest time
adjusting to the time gap. 

The waitress came over to our table and
started to take everyone's orders.  I ordered a stack of waffles, three eggs,
sausage, bacon, toast, and orange juice.  Everyone else ordered about the same
amount of food. 

"It's going to take a while; the
griddle is just now heating up." The waitress smiled a fake smile and took
all of our menus.

We all smiled back as she walked away.

"So what are we going to do
next?" Ronnie asked as soon as the waitress was out of earshot.

"I'm not sure, I think that you and
me should go up to the school and see if we are missing, but beyond that I've
got nothing." I played with my napkin, it was a habit that I had had since
I was a small child. 

"Why just the two of you?"
Kenny was upset at being left out.

"Rachel isn't from around here like
we are and things would go smoother at the school if there were fewer of us
poking around.  You guys can all go to the store and get some food that we can
keep in the truck, maybe some other things that you come across.  Some better
pants, perhaps." I pulled on the enormous waist of the men’s pants I was
wearing. 

The food arrived in a grand fashion; the
waitress had to get the cook’s assistance to carry it all out from the back,
and she demanded that we pay for the meal before we ate a single bite.

Ronnie shelled out the hundred bucks and
even though she was rude he gave her a twenty dollar tip.  She took the money
happily and went along her way.

We ate in almost complete silence as
everyone devoured every bite of food on the table.  Normally after eating a
meal half that size I would feel sick to my stomach for a few hours, but it all
felt just right.

We left the diner and headed in
different directions. 

A small shop that we passed had pay as
you go cell phones in the window.  Ronnie bought two of them and paid in cash. 
He opened the packaging and turned on the phone, it had half a battery.

"To keep up with the time and next
time we have to separate, each group can take one." He set the phone's
clock with the shop's clock. 

The school was a whole six block walk
from the diner.  We arrived just a few moments after roll would have been
submitted for the first class.  We walked up the grass to the front entrance of
the school.

Every morning, the first class of the
day took roll call and sent it down to the front office.  This file would be on
the receptionist's computer and she would have to input the information into
each student's personal file.  I spent a semester working in the office, for
credit.  The principal thought that it would be good for me to be away from
other students and working with adults.  He thought that I was mature for my
age and that is why I didn't have many friends outside of the other orphans.

"Check the file." Ronnie
whispered as he walked up to the receptionist and started to talk to her about
something I couldn't quite hear, and then she escorted him to the back to where
the principal's office was, I took my chance.

I opened the file on the computer and
searched for room two ninety nine.  When I found it, I searched for my name.  I
slid my finger down the screen and there I was.  I moved my finger over to
status.

Present

I had been present every day that week, according
to the file, Monday through Friday.  I closed the file, logged off of the
computer, and left the office. 

I snuck down the hallway trying my best
to avoid the cameras.  I went up the stairwell and into the second floor
hallway.  I slowly raised my eyes to the bottom level of the window on the
classroom's door.

Some girl was sitting in my spot.  I had
never seen her before in my life.  She was similar to me but there were some
differences.  Her hair was shorter, for one.  She could have been a cousin of
mine.

I went back downstairs where Ronnie waited
outside pacing around the entrance.

"The principal wasn't in." He
said as I walked up.

"Yeah, well I was." I said in
a huff.

"What do you mean?"

"I was counted present in the
system, so I went up stairs, and sure enough there was some girl sitting in my
seat." I ran my fingers through my hair.

"Did she look like you?" He placed
a sturdy hand on my shoulder.

"Not really, I don’t know, Kind
of." I was really starting to freak out.

We waited around for gym classes to
start.  Ronnie's second class was in gym, with me and Josh.  Josh always gave
me a hard time in that class.

We snuck in and hid under the
bleachers.  The class filled in from the showers; the students wore uniforms. 
A guy that looked similar to Ronnie came from the locker room followed by
Josh. 

"Hey Ronnie!" Josh acted as if
he were friends with Ronnie.  They gave each other a friendly man hug. 

The other me came out of the girl’s
locker room and met Josh halfway across the gym.  Josh wrapped his arm around
her waist. 

“Show some self-respect and get away
from that pig.” I growled through my teeth.

She didn't, she pulled herself closer
and she kissed him, and not a friendly kiss either a loving embrace. 

The coach had to break them apart.

I wanted to puke.

I held my stomach and turned to Ronnie,
"Let's get out of this twilight zone hell before I vomit." I hissed.

He nodded and we slipped out through the
back door.  I couldn't believe what I had just seen.  It was horrible.  It was
awful.  Above all it was WRONG.

We hightailed it back to where the
orphanage was but we stopped before we got there.  We ducked into a bookstore
and acted like we were browsing.  There were two cops checking out the truck
that we had left parked on the curb next to the empty plot of land.  One of the
cops was a state trooper. 

"What the hell are we going to do
now?"

"I don't know." Ronnie opened
a book on how to hypnotize women.  I gave him a nasty look.  "I just picked
up a random book."

I looked back out of the window, as a
tow truck backed up to the stolen truck.  The guy that was hooking our truck up,
furious, he knew that the owner wasn't going to show up to pay the tow bill.  Town
policy was if you get towed you pay.

"Are you two going to buy anything
or are you just going to stare out of my window?" a woman asked as she
sorted through books on her counter.

Ronnie purchased a guide book on the
area and as soon as the cops were gone, we bolted from the store to find the
others.

~//~

We met the others at the diner.  Kenny’s
hands were full of groceries.  They were heading back from the market. 

We walked back to the empty plot.  We
took cover in the woods behind where the house used to sit.

"Where is the truck?" Rachel noticed
it was gone first.

"It got towed.”

We sat in quiet and then it hit me like
a ton of bricks. 

I jumped up and ran off into the woods. 

I ran deeper into the woods.  Ronnie
followed yelling for me to come back but I couldn't. I knew this was the last
thing left to prove that we had been here.

I looked for the clearing and there it
was, small with a huge oak growing at the center.  The leaves made a perfect
roof to keep the weather at bay.  When we had our first real summer here after
all four of us had arrived we had spent hours in this clearing. 

The old woman never came out here.  I
looked at the trunk closely and it looked just as it had when we had all carved
our names into the bark all those years ago.

Our names;
Ronnie, Kenny, Sandy,
Grace
around the word
Friends

I ran my fingers across the grooves that
we had made with Ronnie's pocket knife; a small relief flooded over my body. 
Some point in the reality that I could remember, still existed and it made a
world of difference.

There was something I could now ground
myself to.

"What the hell are you doing?"
Ronnie was out of breath.  He leaned on his knees.

"Finding proof I was not losing my
mind.  I had to know that it had been real." I said turning away from the
tree.

"Give me one of the phones." I
asked holding out my hand.

Ronnie took the phone from his pocket
and handed it over.  I opened the camera application and snapped a picture of
the carving.  With a smile, I turned to leave the clearing wiping a tear of joy
from my eye. 

When we returned to the others, I showed
them the picture Sandy and Kenny both smiled, as happy as I had been to see the
old tree.

"We need to come up with a
plan." I opened my mouth to continue but the old oak in the woods was
blown to pieces.  The aircraft responsible slowly hovered around where we
stood.  Spot lights switched on and shown into our faces. 

"I wonder who this
could be." Ronnie said sarcastically as we all grouped closer together.

The aircraft, the likes of which I’d
never seen before, touched down in front of where we stood. Just behind the
cockpit window was an unmistakable Aurora Corporation logo pressed into the
metal hull.  The side door slid open with a pneumatic hiss.  A dozen armed
guards marched from the passenger compartment and surrounded our group.

Two other men walked out onto the grass,
one wearing camouflage pants, and a bullet proof vest.  The other, a perfectly
pressed suit, his hair was slicked black, the grease shown in the moonlight. 
It was the man that had spoken up the second time Dr. Cid forced me to use my
abilities.

"Who are you?" I asked as pushed
my way to the front of the group.

The man in the suit stepped forward.  He
adjusted his tie, "Oh, how sorry I am that we have to meet this way,
Grace" He looked at his hand as if thinking about an offer to shake, but
changed his mind.  "My name is James Scott.  I am the CEO of the Aurora
Corporation."

"Good for you." Ronnie yelled.

"Now, now there is no need to act
that way, I come offering you open arms to come back, and we will forgive and forget
this little indiscretion." James took another step forward. 

"Forget about it.” I yelled.

"We gave you so much." James
said as if we owed him.

"We are not going with you." I
looked to everyone for support.

They all nodded. 

"Have it your way," he turned
to the man beside him, "Kill them, and recover the bodies, we don't need
any of them alive."

"Sir." the man nodded then
turned the face of his watch like a dial.  James vanished in blurry blue lines.

"So you're going to kill us?"
Rachel moved up to get a better view.

"You heard him, we don’t need you
alive." he held up his fist.  All of the soldiers around us held up their
rifles aiming at us. 

He dropped his hand, pointing at us.

In unison, all of the men began firing
their fully automatic rifles.  The bullets flew in all directions but no one
was hit.  I turned around to see Rachel with her arms out beside her, palms
out, her eyes rolled into the back of her head.  The bullets were ricocheting
off of some kind of force field. 

All of the men began to reload at the
same exact moment.

Ronnie pushed me back and put his hands
together.  Lightening started to arch between them forming a ball of energy. 
He threw the ball at one of the men surrounding us, but before it made contact,
the leader of the group appeared in front of the energy ball in a blur. He
absorbed the blast.  He then increased the size of the energy ball and threw it
back at Ronnie.

Ronnie tried to jump out of the way but
he wasn’t fast enough.  The ball of energy crashed into his side sending him
skidding across the grass.  Every muscle in his body was contracting at the
same time.    

"Hmm... I haven’t met another
Electrokinetic with this much power since I killed the last one." the man laughed,
"but I have more."

"What did you do to him?" I
yelled as Ronnie groaned on the ground.

"Resume firing!” he ordered his
troops.

The bullets began to rain again.

I turned to look at Rachel.  She was trying
not to drop to her knees and slowly her eyes were starting to bleed.  The force
field began to shrink quickly.