Kinetics: In Search of Willow (10 page)

"Why are they fighting?" I asked as a
large chunk of wall blasted across the room hitting the opposing
wall.

"I don't know." Willow looked back and
forth across the room, her eyes searching for something.

"What is it?"

"Where are our parents?"

I shook my head. I didn't see them
anywhere either. All the faces in the sudden battlefield were
unfamiliar to me. But one face in particular drew me in, even
though I didn't know who it was. A man was standing just on the
outside of the chaos, watching with an expressionless face. He had
the orange armband of the attackers, but he was different somehow.
His long hair hung down his face and across his shoulders in grimy
clumps and dreads. His skin was a sickly yellow color that looked
like it hadn't seen a decent dose of sun in ages. Veins on his face
and neck protruded, purple and blue.

In the middle of all the people
fighting, he was calm. His eyes were the only thing that moved;
they were tracking from person to person and barely
blinked.

Then, I saw my brother. He stood back
a ways and watched everything with a cool gaze and crossed arms. I
almost sat back to speak to Willow but my brother moved from his
spot and ran through the crowd. I watched him move like a serpent
through the fray and target a woman who was standing stationary
inside of a brilliant circular forcefield. Every object or power
thrown at it ricocheted away at sharp angles.

The surrealism that made up this
entire event didn't come close to making what I saw next any
easier. The woman was deflecting so many blows that the inelegant
ballet of destruction swirled around her, but as my brother ran at
her it seemed as if he was spearing through it all, avoiding
objects and powers effortlessly.

Jacob skidded to a stop in front of
the woman and held out his hands. Her eyes widened and she exploded
from an inner fire. The forcefield collapsed and Jacob slipped
away. The attackers saw the woman fall and the frenzy
intensified.

I blinked, unsure of what I had just
witnessed. It replayed in my head, skipping back and forth like a
corrupted video file. Jacob stopping, hands held high. The woman's
face revealed seconds of abject terror just before her entire body
went supernova.

I think my brother had just killed
someone.

That's when the entire fight degraded.
There was no order, no elegance left to the fight at all. Instead I
saw raw, chaotic, adrenaline-driven battle of wills. Two men, not
far from us traded blows, one was throwing objects with what I
assumed was telekinesis and the other I wasn't sure. He melted into
the walls or into the floor and would appear behind the telekinetic
and swing at him with a strange looking blade holstered at his
back.

Others threw impossibly immense waves
of energy at each other, causing the air around us to scream with
sound. Shockwaves rattled everything and everyone around us. I held
tight to Willow's arm, readying myself in the event that we would
have to start running.

I searched the beaten and bloody faces
of the fighters for my father and mother. I saw neither of them,
only people and faces racked with anger and pain as they
desperately tried to tear each other apart.

The greasy haired man, still standing
in one place, reached a hand out toward the crowd and let out a
bellow. Jacob was running through the fighters again, this time
toward the man. "Grey!" He shouted. "You'll pay for
this!"

"Yoshida! You will die!" The man
clenched his fists and two bolts of highly charged electricity
sprang from the ground and arced over the other fighters toward my
brother. Jacob jumped out of the way and waved his hand at the man.
Around him, dozens of chunks of wall, glass, tables, and chairs
began exploding with brilliant light.

The man was unfazed. From the lights
and a power socket on a pole near him he pulled massive branches of
electricity that crackled and blinded like lightning. Each one was
thrown at my brother, but he dodged and sprang away with
ease.

"Eugene," Willow grasped my hand,
startling me for a moment. She pulled me away from the battle. "I
have something I need to show you. I know you don't understand much
about Kinetic culture right now, but one day you will."

I stumbled after her. The screams and
cries around me tore through my ears and I blinked away the dust
that was thick in the air. What the heck was going on?

She ran through the room, between
fighters on either side until we burst through a set of double
doors into an untouched hallway. The lights had gone out and we
moved by the dim light of tinted windows. Only the muffled screams
and cries of the people beyond could be heard in the
distance.

Willow took my head in her
hands and rested her forehead to mine. She closed her eyes and
breathed. I felt something open inside my mind. The link. I
concentrated like Willow taught me and grasped at it. Like a river
flowing through a backed up dam I found myself drowned in thoughts,
emotions, ideas, convictions, colors, images, imagination, and
above all else the sense that I should
know something.

I couldn't figure out what that thing
was, as I reached for it, Willow's head and hands pulled away
abruptly. I hadn't been aware that I had closed my eyes, but when
she was gone I was surrounded by the darkness of my eyelids. I
opened them only to see the greasy haired man from earlier with an
arm around Willow's neck. His other hand was a rolling ball of
compressed electricity.

"Willow!" I stepped forward ready to--
to do what? My hands shook and even though these people said
somewhere under my skin was a power; I didn't know what it was or
even how to begin to use it.

"Move and she loses her pretty face."
The man smirked and dragged Willow back a few more
steps.

"Eugene, don't worry." Willow said.
Her face was going red, and tears were starting to leak from her
eyes. Her link was wide open, filling me with reassurance. I
brushed it aside.

But my legs were frozen. Even as the
building rocked from explosions and screams, I couldn't move. I
didn't know what to do. My mind was a roaring chasm of nothingness.
The link that Willow had worked hard to teach me was the only thing
I could sense. Her mind was terrified, but she didn't want me to
get hurt, and she wanted me to not worry.

A woman appeared with whoosh of
outward air out of nowhere and sprinted toward the man. "Grey!" She
screamed. At first I thought she was going to attack him, but she
leaped onto his back and wrapped her arms around his neck. Instead,
as her grip on him tightened, they literally vanished with a snap
of inward rushing air and a rapidly fading glow.

"No!" I cried out and stumbled
forward. The instant that Willow disappeared I felt her
ever-present link get ripped away. It hadn't been there just from
when she started to teach me this link; it had been there with
every laugh and every dream. She had always been there for me in
the silent dark nights when I thought I was alone. I had never
noticed before just how present in my mind she had been. And now
that it was gone, there was a hole, a jagged, biting hole in the
fabric of my mind.

I rushed to where they had vanished,
but it was no use. They were gone. The questions running through my
head outnumbered the answers. Why her? Why take Willow? As little
as I understood about this place and these people, why take
her?

I knelt to the ground where one of
Willow's hairclips had fallen and picked it up. The little blue
flower shook with my hand. I clasped my fist around it and searched
the room frantically for an answer. This quiet hallway had been a
sanctuary for whatever Willow had impressed on my mind through the
link, but she was now gone and I couldn't save her.

But I wasn't alone. I jolted up to my
feet and sprinted out of the empty hall. Mom, Dad, they would help
me. They would help Willow.

I stumbled out the door, stepping on
something soft. A body. I lurched back and stared into the lifeless
eyes of an old man. Blood covered his face and back where slender
gashes made crisscrossed markings all over.

I coughed and looked up to see people
limp on the floor or crawling over debris. The hole in the ceiling
let in the false joy of a sunny day.

"Willow!" I heard someone scream.
Willow's mother came running through the bleeding and sobbing
throng with tears rolling down her red face. "Eugene! My baby, have
you seen my baby?"

Words lodged in my throat and I
couldn't speak. She grasped my arms and squeezed till it hurt.
"Where is she?"

"They took her." I croaked.

Mrs. Patterson wailed and fell to the
ground. "No! No!"

I shuddered and knelt next to her.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry." I said, as she weakly pounded her fists on
my chest. I felt my insides crumbling. Willow was gone. Gone
because of who?

Because of me, whispered some angry
part of my mind.

"Eugene!" Mom screamed and skidded to
the floor next to me. She pulled me into her arms and kissed my
head and my forehead. "You're safe. Oh, you're safe. My boy, my
little boy."

"Mom. Mom. Mom." I could barely speak.
"They took her Mom. They took Willow."

Mrs. Patterson was still on the floor
sobbing. Mom took one look at her and then held onto her like she
was a child. Moira Patterson's cries took over my entire world,
mimicking the raging battle inside my own soul.

Mom, Dad, Mr. and Mrs. Patterson and I
sat together at the back of the destroyed conference center. Jacob
had left with few words to our parents. As he left, the image of
the woman exploding under whatever power my brother had shook me. I
didn't dare look him in the eye.

Through a window I saw a line of
InfoCon officers surrounding the conference center. "They're going
to remove the memories of this incident from the minds of the Non's
before it gets out." He said, following my gaze and came to sit
next to me at the table, pulling his chair close.

Willow's mom was leaning against her
husband's shoulder with his arm around her. Her eyes were closed
and she shook with silent hiccups.

"Dad, what was that? Who were
they?"

Mom, Dad and Mr. Patterson exchanged
unreadable looks.

"Eugene," Mom started. "There's
something we didn't tell you."

Dad crossed his fingers, and held my
gaze. "We are in the middle of a war."

CHAPTER 8

"I don't mind living with
Kinetics. They're human after all. And, yes: sometimes I get
jealous that I can't do what my wife or my children can do, but I
love them, so it's easy to forget that I'm
different."
 ~ George Matheson. A
34-year-old non-Kinetic who married a Kinetic. How Nons Live with
Kinetics by Ralph Legend. 1992.

"A war?" I asked.

"Yes." Dad's face held no emotion. He
was watching for my response, I guess.

I felt a headache forming. "With
who?"

"Not a who, Eugene, but a what." He
loosened his hands and splayed them flat on the table. He seemed
deep in thought, and stared down at his hands. He swallowed as if
unsure that the words that wanted to come out of his mouth were the
right ones.

"A...what?" I asked.

"We, that is, our people,
have been involved in a war longer than humanity has been recording
history." Dad sat back and watched my face. I couldn't tell you
what was on my face because of all the absurd things I had
experienced in the past couple days. This was just the cherry on
top. "We are the Anyan's Alliance. They are the
Isiroan
 Legion. We have been fighting
for humanity's future."

I glanced between my Dad and Mom's
faces. Dad was serious. Mom was biting her bottom lip and rubbing
her arms like she was cold.