Kinetics: In Search of Willow (43 page)

Y
ou know the time that we ran across the fields as children?
We were carefree and full of joy. I can't say that we aren't like
that now, but back then, didn't things seem
lighter?
 Willow danced in a circle
around an old well. 
I know I keep
talking about the past… but for some reason it's hard to look
forward anymore.

She stopped and looked into the
well.

Eugene… I'm
afraid.

***

Jack dropped a stack of books on top
of the bed I was sitting on. I looked up from a sports magazine
that I had found lying in the room. Jack grinned.

"Hoooomewoooork!" He said in a
sing-song voice.

"What is it?" I closed the article on
the rise in tennis fans among preteens and picked up the nearest
book. It looked like it had been read through one too many times
and then rebound sloppily.

"These are just a few of the books on
Kinetic Power Theory." Jack waggled his eyebrows. "This is
everything you'd ever want to know about powers, how they work, why
they work, etcetera, etcetera."

The book I
held, 
Fundamental Theories of
Pyrokinetic Energies
, was the smallest of
the bunch and it was well over 200 pages.

"Erm, where do I start?"

Jack shrugged. "Choose
something! Though personally I would pick
the 
General Practices of Kinetic
Combat. 
That one was always a good
read." Jack grabbed a small box out of his closet and waved. "I'll
see you later. If you get hungry, the cafeteria on the second floor
is open till ten tonight."

He slipped out of the room, saying
hello to someone he saw in the hall.

I put down the book I was
holding and grabbed the one that Jack had suggested. It had a ton
of pictures in it that looked like a cross between martial arts and
dance moves. Some of the figures wielded weapons like swords and
bows. I read the caption of one.
"Through
the weapon, the powers are directed toward the intended target,
increasing accuracy."

My mind and my eyes drifted from there
and I spent the next hour flipping through the books.

One of them talked about how powers
were oftentimes based on a wielder's environmental and
psychological surroundings. Powers were also often need based. In
some places where droughts were common there was usually an
increase in Aquakinetics.

Another spoke of ways of utilizing
words in conjunction with powers in order to make those powers more
effective for users.

And finally, one of the
most interesting, called 
Upajigratiosus Mythos,
 discussed old mythologies and how Kinetics of old had
taken it upon themselves to become gods to non-Kinetics and had
forever marked the history and mythology of non-Kinetic
literature.

Unfortunately, none of the
books could hold my interest for very long, and I fell asleep
with 
Upajigratiosus Mythos
splayed across my chest. I fell asleep thinking
of Willow. Her vibrant green eyes telling stories to me in my
dreams.

I woke up staring into a pair of angry
brown eyes. I nearly jumped out of my skin. Roy was standing over
my bed and glaring down at me. I sat up slowly and eyed the other
guy warily. "Hey," I said softly.

"Watch yourself." Roy's eyes narrowed
and he took a few steps backward before leaving the room talking
all his electrified hostility with him.

A shiver coursed through my arms and
into my back. More and more Roy was disturbing me. He had to know
me than I had told them. Jack didn't seem at all bothered by me,
but Roy--he was outright mean. He glared at me more than anything.
Something didn't quite seem right in the way he watched
me.

But if they truly knew who I really
was, why hadn't I been imprisoned? Why had I been welcomed with
open arms? I chewed the inside of my mouth and shook off the
unwarranted paranoia. These Isiroans would never accept an Alliance
member into their ranks like this. So unless I was part of some
elaborate double-cross game played by all of these Isiroans, I
should be safe.

I shook off the last of the shivers
and picked up one of the books still sprawled all over my bed. The
random choice was able to keep my attention, and it oddly felt good
to think of other things.

The book,
entitled 
Fire in the Mountain, Fire
in the Sky
, was a treatise on Pyrokinetic
powers. It read:

Pyrokinesis is the direct
manipulation of energy in anything, including the air, people and
physical inanimate objects. Energy flows through everything and
everyone. A typical wielder of Pyrokinesis is usually only able to
create and manipulate fire on a small scale. As opposed to setting
on fire an entire building, they can only set fire to a small
object and merely help it along. This means coaxing the energy in
the direction the wielder wants it to go. If a wielder is able to
receive the right training, he or she can expand the sphere of
influence he or she can have. This means that the wielder is able
to not only control the energy in the immediate area but also to
control the energy in an increasingly wider area. One of the
benefits of this teaching is not only gaining a wider influence
over ones environment but also on a more microscopic
level.

Jack returned an hour later and
dragged me out of the room to go visit the training field. I
watched as nearly fifty new recruits tested out their powers and
were oriented to the training regimens that would dictate the rest
of their lives.

Jack stopped in front of three girls
and four boys starting and stopping small flames. They were in a
semi-circle passing a small fireball back and forth, laughing and
talking. I looked away from the glimmering flames and watched an
almost identical display between a dozen Aquakinetics playing with
water. Other, less flashy powers were worked on in the
fringes.

I allowed myself to be dragged from
one display of powers to the next for the rest of the day, and when
Jack was finally worn out with talking and pointing out everything
that he thought was interesting, we had an early dinner at the
cafeteria with Roy and a couple other people who I didn't know
yet.

Finally, Jack took me to see Marcus
Grey.

Most of the adults on base lived in a
small area just off the side of the base. There were small houses
and a couple strips of apartments. Grey lived in one of the
apartments by himself.

Jack knocked on his door, and we could
hear Grey shout from inside for us to enter.

He sat at his table with some papers
in front of him and waved us in. Jack took a seat right across from
Grey, which left me with the seat in between them. I sat and dared
not look up at him.

"Kouric tells me that you are a
Vunjika," Grey said without looking up. He reached out for a cup
sitting on the table and took a drink.

"Uh, yeah."

It was only then that Grey looked at
me. He really was nothing like how I had remembered him. He looked
far less rough around the edges, less haggard. The image of the man
that had stolen away Willow was burned into my mind, but this man
barely fit the image. His hair was close cropped, with that little
gray streak. The man from my memory had long, disheveled hair. "But
you want training," he said.

"Yeah." I said, but it came out
quieter than I had intended.

"Do you know just how difficult it
would be to get to the level of your peers?"

I looked down at my hands. "Not
easy."

"Not at all. You would have been
better off staying home. You're opening a box that shouldn't be
opened by the weak hearted."

"I can do it," I said, trying to
inject strength into the words.

"Can you?" Grey sighed and sat back,
crossing his arms. "You very likely aren't prepared for the pain
and the agony of first few months of training you will have to
undergo. Have you heard of the EOS? It is one of the worst
conditions any Kinetic can go through and still come out alive.
There are even a few who haven't survived and have been killed in
the mere effort of breaking free from the bounds of the
Vunjika."

"I'm ready," I said, biting my lip
against the anger that was bubbling up. "I've already had the EOS
once."

"You have?" Jack stared at
me.

"Yeah, I had an incident before I
headed out here."

Grey was looking at me with curiosity.
"How long did the fever last?"

I tried to think back, it was so long
ago. "A few days I think."

Grey's eyes narrowed and then he
nodded. "Good, then you've already taken the first step of many. Do
you know what caused your condition?"

"You mean, why did I become a
Vunjika?"

"Yes."

"I don't really know. My parents said
it happened when I was a kid."

Grey's hand shot out, grabbing my arm
and I felt a tingle shoot through my body. He frowned. "Hmm, it's
more than just Vunjika. Something is acting on your
abilities--something not natural."

He let go and sat back again. "Come
see me tomorrow and we will look into this further."

We left and Jack gushed about how
awesome it will be to be personally trained by Marcus Grey. "He
does a lot of theoretical classes and stuff, but he doesn't really
do a lot of Pyro stuff anymore. He'll do a lecture every now and
then but that's it."

"That's great," I said, not even
trying to sound interested.

The Records room where I had seen
Willow's video was calling to me again. I didn't know for a fact
that I would find Willow's current location there, but I would at
least be able to start tracking her. I had seen at least the past
three months' worth of records. Something had to tell me where she
was.

Once we got back to the dorm, I curled
under the blankets of my bed and waited until both Jack and Roy's
breathing from their own beds was level and quiet. I slipped out of
the covers fully dressed and escaped out of the room as quietly as
possible.

The journey to the Records room was
much easier than it had been the night before. I started where I
left off the previous night and began fast forwarding thorough all
of the video reports. Eventually, I had to delve into the written
records, which, fortunately, were all digitized back at least four
years. I only needed the last month.

I was starting to doze off when I hit
gold.

Host
transference…

I scrambled to sit up and reread the
entire sentence of what appeared to be an outline of security
duties.

Those participating in the
security for the host transference will be required to arrive at
the Aconcagua Base three days prior to the actual transference. A
list of these arrival times will be provided in your weekly
info-packet provided by the Isiroan Affairs sector of the Security
Offices.

Isiroan Affairs? I looked around the
Records room scanning any of the shelves for the name. If this was
as concise a records room as it had been, then they should have
those info-packets as well. I left the comfort of the chair and
rifled through the shelves looking for the Isiroan Affairs
shelf.

I found financial transcripts and just
about ignored them except that they listed off important members of
the Isiroan ranks and detailed spending audits for each of them.
One of the people on the list was Marcus Grey. I started reading
through the records and laughed when I found the date just before
Willow's kidnapping.

Through the records I was able to
follow his stay in Ohio and then his departure from Ohio across the
States. He bought gas, food and lodging the whole way and it was
apparently on the Isiroan payroll.

Once he got into Laramie the records
stopped. I rifled through them more and more, but there were only
other people and no more of Grey. Laramie was a dead end once
again. Where had they gone from here? Where was she now?

I was about to give up when I saw a
page from the financials with no name listed. But it still gave the
locations of things that had been bought. I looked for one with
dates close to Grey's arrival at Laramie.

Then I saw it. But my discovery was
cut short. A light shined through the window and I heard voices
coming closer. I ducked down out of the view of the window and
half-crawled, half-ran toward the exit. That turned out the be a
stupid move, because only seconds before I would have been in sight
of the door, it banged open and four men with offensively bright
flashlights burst into the room. The lights scanned the room,
coming closer and closer. Sweat trickled down my temple cooling
even more the ice water that was replacing my blood.

I quieted my breathing as much I could
while at the same time attempting to stuff myself into an empty
section of the shelf. I paused for a moment, and, hearing the men
get closer, I moved some boxes to obscure their view of me and then
wrapped my arms around my head and buried my face into my scrunched
up knees. I was thankful, then, that I had the foresight to wear a
black turtleneck. The dark fabric would hide the damning paleness
of my skin against the darkness of the shelves.