Kinetics: In Search of Willow (15 page)

I didn't stop for anyone or anything.
My body and my lungs burned and my heart hammered through my chest.
I pushed until my eyes burned. I pushed until my hands stung from
blasting through doors and slamming into walls. My shirt was torn
from slipping through the hands of guards.

I rolled into an open room, a storage
room of some kind, and saw my way out. It was nighttime, dark, and
raining but it was freedom. Pure unadulterated freedom. I jumped
out of a trailer port and twisted my ankle on the pavement. I
didn't let that stop me as voices and shouts punctured the hallways
behind me. I limped into the rain and didn't stop until I was
surrounded by people. Within seconds I was soaked head to
toe.

I wrapped my arms around my chest and
stared at the people running through the rain, fleeing to their
homes and cars, to their safe places. They were running from the
rain and cold. I was running from pursuers who I couldn’t even see
anymore.

The sky that had been threatening rain
for days had finally followed through on its threat and had opened
up a torrent of bitter cold droplets on the whole city.

At first my only thought was to run. I
didn't think about where I was going, taking random turns down
streets I only vaguely knew, trying to lose myself more than to
lose my pursuers. Down every turn, past every streetlight, a
realization was dawning on me. I didn't know what I was doing. I
didn't know where I was going. I didn't know who to trust. I didn't
know where Willow was. I didn't know how to find her. I didn't even
know how or where to begin.

I let the rain soak through my skin
and willed it to cool the burn in my body. Other than a small
glimpse of his face, that was all I had on my best friend's
kidnapper. The sound of rain pouring down from the sky in torrents
filled the world around me with static. But his name reverberated
through my skull like a drum. The rain was white sound blotting out
the city streets around me while I ran with soaked shoes toward
some uncertain future. Streetlights and passerby tried to escape
the clouds cracking open with bright lightning to pour its
harvested moisture everywhere.

Marcus Grey.

This name was the one thing keeping me
going despite the cold water seeping up my legs. I repeated it over
and over in my head, in time with the unsteady beat of my footfalls
on wet sidewalk.

Marcus Grey.

A fire was building in my chest. A
fire that was sure to fuel a rage for months to come. At this point
in time I didn't think about the future beyond finding Willow. I
didn't think about what I would do when I found Marcus Grey. I
didn't think about what he would have in store for me when I
finally came face to face. Every thought was consumed with the
hunt, the hunt for the man who had stolen the love of my
life.

The steady drizzle of the rain chilled
my mind and I reached out with my mind trying to tap the telepathy
that I knew was in there somewhere. I called out to Willow. I
called out to my parents.

No one answered back.

No one answered...

No one…

It wasn't long before I had run out of
breath. I was athletic, but not enough to maintain a constant run,
especially with a twisted ankle, for as long as I was trying. I
stumbled through a small park with a fountain and fell to a seat on
the edge of the fountain. The drone of the rain and the loud
bubbling of the fountain that that gushed brown water, bloated with
rainwater drowned out my raging confused thoughts for a few
blissful moments.

I opened my eyes, only to get my eyes
full of rain- irrigated sweat. I wiped at my eyes and squinted
through the rain at the passing headlights. There was one person
and one person alone who I could possibly trust. Nick. He was the
person who became my surrogate brother after Jacob had left. He was
the one who taught me how to ride a bike. He was the person who
stuck with me when I was sick with appendicitis. In the absence of
Willow, the first person I would have gone to in this situation,
Nick was all I had. I didn't know if Harry was safe or not, I
didn't know if our plan was completely bust. My parents were at the
whim of these Alliance people, I had a few other friends, but they
were so far away from any of this. They were normal students,
probably sleeping by now, getting ready for another day.

Nick was the only hope I had left if I
was to even begin to know how to save Willow from whatever fate
these "Isiroans" have in store for her. He was probably still out
of town, but I knew where he kept the spare key to his
house.

I picked myself up and shook off the
chill that had settled over my skin and sunk deep into my bones.
Nick's house was far, but not far enough that I couldn't make it.
And so I walked.

People ran in slick coats, trying to
escape from the rain under awnings and umbrellas. Cars passed,
sloshing water out of the ditches and potholes. It was all so
ordinary in contrast to the things I had seen in the past week.
They were enough to make anyone question reality and normality. All
these things that people were doing, something as ordinary as
protecting themselves from rain, made me ache with a strange
nostalgia. What I was seeing now was the end of my normal life.
Whatever I did from here on out was the beginning of a new
life.

I let the rain wash away my regrets. I
had to be strong, strong for Willow and myself. Once I had
everything explained to Nick, I'm sure he would have some kind of
plan.

It was five A.M. by the time I reached
Nick's place. I shuffled up to his doorstep, soaked through, cold
and utterly worn out. I didn't see him open the door. I didn't hear
him call my name. I didn't really experience much of anything after
that. For four days I slept, and it was the best peace I would have
for months.

***

I should have been feeling Deja Vu by
now. Blacking out and waking up again in unfamiliar places. But I
was too tired to protest this new place. It was quiet, and faint
sunlight lit the room from thin curtains.

I didn't recognize it, but I was
feeling better than anything. My heart ached but didn't pound. My
body tingled but didn't burn. More than anything, I felt weak. I
touched my chest where I thought I could feel the strange little
metallic ball residing, but it was just a phantom feeling that
passed as soon as I paid attention to it.

I didn't move for a while but listened
to the sounds of the house, and I was fairly positive that it was a
house. I could hear the subtle sounds of a neighborhood. Children
laughing. Dogs barking. Cars driving past.

After what seemed an eternity lying
prone, I pushed myself out of the bed. Actually I fell out, but
fortunately no one witnessed the embarrassing fall. I desperately
wanted to laugh about it, but the second that laughter climbed up
my throat, Willow's face flashed in my mind.

How could I laugh when she was out
there? Under the hands of some enemy I had only just found out
about. How could I allow myself to rest when her future was still
uncertain? I pushed myself up, no-- FORCED myself up and dared my
legs to buckle under me.

Something in the force of standing up
triggered a flaring burn in my body again. I collapsed. "Dammit...
Dammit," I said under my breath and pounded my fist on the
ground.

I tried again and again, but my body
wouldn't cooperate. I sat back against the bed and tugged at my
hair. It was only then that I gave the room a second look, and I
realized I was in Nick's house. Nick's guest room to be exact. The
walls were bare, but I would recognize those New Orleans Saints
curtains anywhere.

The door opened and I looked up the
see Nick standing at the threshold. "Hey, how are you
feeling?"

"Like boiled shit." I said into my
hands.

"Heh, creative," he said. He looked
much the same as he had the last time I'd seen him face to face a
month ago. Hipster glasses with dishwater blond hair sticking in
all directions and a stupid cockeyed smile on his face.

I pushed myself up as much as I dared
and groaned under the sudden strain my muscles were feeling. "Oh,
god, Nick, I'm in a lot of pain. I don't know what I did. How long
have I been asleep?"

"About four days, I think. Haven't
really been keeping track." He stepped into the room and sat on the
bed patting my shoulder.

I nearly choked. "Four
days?"

"You really needed sleep, so I didn't
bug you. The EOS will do that to you."

I wanted to stand and pace, or move or
something, but my body was perfectly content to let me do none of
them. "Willow's been gone for almost a whole week and a half." I
rubbed my face and searched every corner of my brain for an answer
or a way.

I didn't know anything. I didn't even
know where she was, where to find her or how to start.

"Hey, you okay?"

I pinched my nose, trying to get the
pain that was quickly rising in all my limbs and organs to go away
with the willpower of my mind alone. I was not
successful.

"EOS?" I asked, trying to not think
about the fact that Willow was one week in on some hellish
kidnapping. It hurt my mind to think about what she was probably
going through. "You said earlier, 'The EOS will do that to you.'
What's the EOS?"

"Energy Overload Syndrome. It's most
common in people who are learning their powers. Seeing how you used
your powers in such an explosive way, it's not unusual that you got
it."

Powers…?

"You're a Kinetic, too?" I gasped,
forgetting for a moment that my lungs hurt like I'd been inhaling
glass.

"Yeah." Nick grinned.

I tried to wrap my brain around that.
How many of the people I knew were going to turn out to be
Kinetics?

"Yeah, jeez, it was hard
not talking or doing things around you when you were little. Your
Dad threatened to turn me and Jacob over to the InfoCon if we ever
revealed ourselves to
you. I'm glad you
know now, kind of lets a little stress off the old shoulders. What
all have they told you?"

"A little bit here and there.
Vunjikas, powers," I swallowed. "The war."

"Ah, yeah. The war. Isiro,
too?"

I nodded. The effort for that alone
was enough to cut off the desire to field anymore
questions.

Nick started chatting about random
things while I pushed myself into my own head and tried to come to
terms with the burn shuddering through my limbs.

"When Jacob and I were training we had
all these big dreams of being bigger than the system, of finding a
way to end the war. We thought we knew it all." Nick sighed
wistfully, "It's funny how things change. Jacob and I had a falling
out not long after we graduated high school. I guess you could say
that we disagreed on certain vital points. He went to work for
Heilbronner in Switzerland and I joined Intel in Paris. Actually
came back because your dad picked me up to work under
him."

I remembered Nick's brief vacation to
Paris. He had returned with a thumb sized replica of the Eiffel
Tower and it still sat on my desk at home. I didn't let myself
dwell much on home. I wanted nothing more than to be back in my own
room, my own bed, not dealing with this crazy… but Willow was worth
it.

Putting Nick's version of the story in
context was strange but the more he talked, the more things made
sense. Jacob and Nick used to hang out all the time, back when
Jacob seemed like a semi-normal teenager.

Jacob's other two friends Napoli and
Joe I never really connected with. They wanted nothing to do with a
pipsqueak like me. Nick on the other hand took to me like double
sided tape.

He even came to my fourteenth birthday
party and gave me a present not long after my brother went to
Switzerland. But then he left for France and I hadn't expected to
ever see him again.

When he returned and inserted himself
in my life, even without Jake being around, it was like I had
acquired a new brother. He came over almost every weekend and
played video games with me, talked me through my troubles and
frustrations.

I should have gone to Nick first. Nick
was one of the few people I should have considered first. Not that
Harry—jeez, as soon as I could move without feeling my muscles burn
with pain, I was going to have to find him and get the information
he had gathered on Marcus Grey.

"Hey, you said you worked for my dad
in Intel?"

"Still do, actually."

"Do you know anything about
Harry?"

"Harry? The nerdy
footballer?"

"Yeah."

"Was he the one with you the other
night?"

I nodded.

"They weren't able to get any
information about him, none of the cameras or guys were able to
catch a glimpse of his face."

"Good, then whatever info he got is
safe."

"What did you guys find?"

"Stuff on Marcus Grey. He's the one
who took Willow."

"Marcus Grey?"