Kinetics: In Search of Willow (33 page)

Plan was a failure … no
safe way to infiltrate … suicide mission.

I frowned at that. Suicide mission?
What the heck was Jacob getting me into?

The map was much bigger than the one
Nick had given me and Harry. But most of the major aspects of it
were the same. I even saw the place that Harry had pointed out as a
good place to get in. A service road.

I dropped my finger from the point on
the map and sighed. Harry had given me the idea, so did that mean
it was a bad idea? I'm sure he would have tipped someone off that
the service road entrance was a possible target. I stared down at
the map and traced my finger all around it. I guess I wouldn't know
what to really expect until I got there.

I was going to be fine. I knew it. I
had to know it. I couldn't go into this place, BY MYSELF, without
some kind of confidence. I just had be smart.

I studied the clearly hand-drawn map
more and tried to figure out what everything was. Some things were
marked with obvious names but other things, like the five buildings
named 'Ar,' pointed at the center of the map where a spiral was at
the top of a hill.

Unfortunately, the only entrance was
through the service road. And seeing as I was not a teleporter, and
from the sound of the failed plan that came with the map I wouldn't
have been able to anyway. So my way in was set for me. But the
place that Jacob wanted me to go was marked with a star, and the
place where I was supposed to find out about Willow-- well I didn't
know that. I guess I would have to ask around, but that would raise
suspicion.

I dropped the papers to the desk and
rubbed my eyes. I would have to ask what Jacob wanted me to do
about Willow if he was sending me off on some potential suicide
mission.

I read over the plan a few more times
over the course of the day, expecting Jacob to come swooping in
with some fantastic plans and gear me up to be a superhero. But
none of that came, and entertaining silly fantasies was just idle
thought to fill the emptiness.

"If you think I'm just going to sit
here and wait, then you underestimate me." I said to the door. I
imagined my brother's face on the door. But even my imagined
brother mocked me. I slapped my palm on the door and looked away. I
trailed my hand down the door and grasped the door handle. A tug of
the handle and I was squeezing out into the ever dark hallway.
Jacob thought he could distract me with papers and plans. Failed
plans no less. What kind of magic did he expect to get out of me
from all of this?

I was downstairs again. The door on
the bottom floor was still locked and the room beyond was
inaccessible. No surprise there. I didn't feel entirely comfortable
going back onto the third floor. The dark room with dozens of
flickering monitors felt wrong somehow. But up there was the only
other access to the elevator.

It seemed to me that my brother was
less than happy to have found me there. But looking at the locked
door now, I couldn't see any other choice but to try the room
again. I dragged my feet up the stairs to the point where I was in
front of the third floor doorway. I didn't move past it more than
to put my hand on the door and listen to the sounds beyond. It felt
quieter. I pushed open the door and peeked inside.

The room was empty.

The computers were gone. The lights
were all on.

I stepped inside and frowned. The only
thing left beyond the glass doors lining the walls were patchy
spots on the linoleum where desks used to be and dust never
touched. I made my way down to the elevator, passing the glass
doors as I walked… and stopped. The door somewhere in the middle of
all the others was covered in greenish black grime from the inside.
I stopped at a room that wasn't lit up. The florescent lights were
broken and the walls...the walls were covered in greenish black
grime. It was smeared in angry swaths across the wall. I tapped the
glass with my finger and the grime shuddered into sliding further
down the glass. I backed up a step. On the far wall the grime
spelled out

M. GREY

…
And underneath that was a
set of slimy handprints.

"What the hell?" I asked aloud. ?
Marcus Grey? Why was that written here?

I gulped and looked around for any
explanation. There were none and I didn't want to stay around here
anymore. I didn't know what my brother was doing here, and I really
didn't want to find out. I jogged the last few feet to the elevator
and didn't look back at the gunk covered door. I pressed a finger
to the down arrow on the elevator and my heart skipped a few beats
as silence resounded.

A ding of the elevator made my heart
start beating normally again.

"Hell, yes," I crowed, and jumped into
the elevator as the doors skimmed open. The doors closed firmly
behind me and I triumphantly pressed the button for the first
floor.

Nothing happened.

"PASSWORD?" A huge voice asked through
a fist sized speaker above the door.

"A password… to go down?" I asked,
incredulous.

"INCORRECT. PLEASE TRY AGAIN. FOUR OF
SIX."

"Uh…" I searched all my memories for
some kind of password my brother might have used, but I couldn't
think of anything. "Alliance?"

"INCORRECT. PLEASE TRY AGAIN. THREE OF
SIX."

"Shi…" I closed my mouth not daring to
speak. The whatever of six had to be the number of tries I got
before it exploded or something. Anything I said the speaker might
pick up.

"PLEASE TRY AGAIN."

I wracked my brain but the more and
more I thought the more and more I realized that I didn't really
know my brother or the people he worked with. There would be no way
for me to even think about what the password was.

I pushed the open door button and
stepped out in the room. The elevator closed behind me and I kicked
the metal door. It buzzed at me angrily and I stepped away. Machine
or not I didn't know what would happen if it decided to blow
up.

What would I do now? The door wouldn't
open below and the elevator needed a flippin' password to go down.
I searched the empty room, stepping over dusty runs in the floor.
With nothing in the room, other than the creepy slime covered room,
I had nothing to go on.

I kicked a pile of dust and it plumed
into my face. Coughing, I stumbled toward the window and pushed it
open. I sucked in a lung full of clean air and coughed out the bad.
And then I saw my way out. A tree that grew alongside the building
arched past the windows and a few thick branches reached close. I
shook some dust out of my hair and vaulted up to the windowsill. I
stood on the precipice and found my target.

I jumped and fell gracelessly onto a
hard tree branch. The leaves scattered and trailed to the ground
below. It was only then, with my arms and legs wrapped awkwardly
around the branch, that I questioned my suicidal
decision.

"Bad idea, Eugene." I said to myself
and squirmed upwards toward the trunk of the tree. My arm scraped
branch shoots, and with every spine scratching through my shirt, I
let out a silent curse.

"Really, the things I have to
do."

I reached the trunk with an exhale of
relief. Sliding down was easier from there and within seconds I was
hitting the ground at a sprint. I was out in the dry, warm air of
the Denver metropolis before I realized it. I started down a cross
street, and then zigzagged from one block to another. I felt like I
was probably being followed, so I didn't stop running until I was
so confused about where I was that I was sure anyone else would be
too. I had to stop only when my lungs protested and I had to halt
in the shade of a tree some dozen or so blocks away. I watched
behind me, expecting my brother or one of his goons to come after
me.

I found a small grassy area in-between
two buildings and fell into an exhausted heap. I told myself to not
fall asleep, but I was tired. I had done so much running. Running
after Willow and running away from others. I closed my eyes against
the tart sleepiness behind my eyes.

I felt my body finally shaking. I
shook my head against the weariness and pushed myself to my feet. I
had to keep moving. Even a few minutes of rest would lead to
recapture. My brother's promises of help were not any consolation
to me. He seemed no more willing to help than Lancaster had been.
No more than Harry turned out to be.

I was on my own and I was not
afraid.

HARRY GLEESON

Was it minutes? Or was it hours later?
Either way, they dragged me out of the van once we reached their
intended destination but didn't take the hood off. It was
disorienting and I kept tripping over my feet, but I used that to
my advantage and bawled like a baby when I fell to the ground for
the fifth time. I had managed to work myself up enough that tears
were actually beginning to leak out of my eyes. The men kicked at
me and shouted for me to get up, but I curled in on myself and let
them drag me to my feet.

"Please don't kill me! I'll tell you
whatever you want!" I shouted. The sack around my head got
plastered to my face and I had to shake it to get it out of my
mouth and nostrils. It was a struggle to breathe through the thick
fabric.

"Ha ha, easy pickings!" one of them
said. A hand grabbed a whole handful of my shirt and dragged me
into a building. The grabbing hand also got part of the hood
choking me as my captor dragged me along.

I could only really tell we went from
outside to inside because of the ambient noises. Outside there were
birds and inside there was the sound of doors opening and closing.
I couldn't tell how far or in what directions we went, but
eventually they threw me to a cold concrete floor and ripped the
hood away, taking a few strands of hair with it. The bright lights
seared my eyes for all of a minute, but by then my escorts had shut
the door on the cell. The cage stood in the center of a huge room
the size of a warehouse. Another cell was connected to mine but
separated by bars. There were other cells, double cells scattered
throughout the room. But it appeared that I was the only occupant.
I let out a deep breath and saw it puff in front of my face. The
room was frigid. I shuddered and desperately wanted to wrap my arms
around my chest.

I heard my escorts leaving, laughing
the whole way out. Once they disappeared through a small door along
the wall, I was left with the echoes of my footsteps and the subtle
creaks of the structures around me. They had left my hands in
shackles, so any hope of using my powers to escape went away in a
split second.

Kinetics more advanced than I could
pull the moisture out of the air, without the use of hands to
direct, but that level of mastery was a little beyond me. I still
needed a reservoir and they had probably picked the driest place in
the facility. There wasn't a sink or toilet in the cell and no
drains nearby either. What little I would be able to pool from my
own sweat wouldn't be enough to do the kind of damage I would need
to break free, much less to get these shackles off.

I took the following few minutes to
study the bars of my cell. There was a bit of frost collected on
the bars, but again, it wasn't significant enough to create the
kind of water reservoir I would need.

There was a wiring box on one corner
of the cell that led me to believe that the cells could be
electrified. I didn't like the implications of electrified cells. I
had some slim chance of jimmying the locks, but if I screwed that
up even once and got caught they could electrify the cell and
remove any chance of escape.

It was go big or go home. I sat down
in the middle of the room and tried to adjust my shackled hands in
such a way that wouldn't hurt. My arms were well past sore from
being pulled behind my back for so long. I shivered the first of
many and settled in for a long night.

CHAPTER 24

“
I feel as if I were a
piece in a game of chess, when my opponent says of it: That piece
cannot be moved.”

―
Søren
Kierkegaard