Chaos (Book 4) (The Omega Group) (2 page)

Orano did as instructed. When his mother finally joined him,
he was pacing their living room—staring at his hands in disbelief and shaking
his head to rid himself of the images crowding his brain. The explosion of
light. The fire. His mother’s unconscious body.

There are things you don’t know.

“Tell me,” he said. “Everything.”

 A tear trickled down his mother’s cheek. Wiping it away, she
took a quick breath, then motioned for him to sit next to her on the couch.
When he did, she grabbed his hand and squeezed.

“Some members of your family are … different. Special. They
have the ability to create energy inside themselves and discharge it through
their hands.” She paused with a faraway look in her eyes. “It’s actually quite
beautiful.”

“Beautiful? Are you kidding? I just burned down a barn with
us inside.” Orano’s temper flared again, and his breathing quickened.

“Sweetheart, I need you to listen to me very carefully.” His
mother placed her hands on either side of his face and held him until he
focused on her, and her alone. “Now that your gift has activated, controlling
your emotions is even more important. Your anger will escalate to epic
proportions, and you won’t be able to control the energy you create. You need
to calm down.”

Rage percolated inside him, but Orano saw it coming and took
control. Without taking his eyes off his mother, he drew in a deep breath. With
each exhale, he felt his temper recede until his emotions quieted completely.

“That’s good,” his mother said. “Focus on your breathing
exercises whenever you feel the anger rise. In time, your control will be
absolute, and you’ll be able to call on your gift whenever you want. For now,
you must be exceedingly careful.”

“I don’t understand. You knew this would happen? Why didn’t
you warn me?” Although Orano felt he had every right to be angry, he continued
his deep breathing to stay calm.

“It’s not like that, sweetheart. There was a very small
chance you would develop this ability. Less than ten percent of your family does,
and since your father did, I figured you couldn’t.”

“My dad had it?” His mother never spoke of the man, and
Orano never asked. Now, though, he thought he deserved some answers.

“Yes, he did. He was the first of his generation to develop
it. As far as he knew, it didn’t get passed down directly from parent to child,
so we thought you would be safe.” She rubbed her face with her hands and closed
her eyes. “We were wrong, and now you face the same danger as your father.”

“What danger? As long as I can keep my anger under control
there won’t be any danger. You’ve been teaching me that stuff my whole life.”
The truth of that statement struck him. “You were preparing me, weren’t you?
Just in case.”

“Yes, my darling. I hoped you wouldn’t be burdened with
this, but I wanted to give you the best chance to remain undetected if you
were.”

“Undetected? By who?” Orano saw something in his mother’s
eyes that he rarely saw. Fear.

“This gift isn’t seen as such by some members of your
father’s family. Generations ago, a small group of them decided to fight against
the mutation they believed came straight from the devil. They called themselves
Ọ
w
ọ
ti
Ọ
l
ọ
run
—Hand of God—and t
hey believed anyone developing
this ability needed to be … removed from the family.”

“You mean they killed us.” He hadn’t posed it as a question.
The look on his mother’s face told him what he needed to know. “And they’re still
out there?”

She grabbed his hand with both of hers. “I’m afraid so. Each
generation bears members of both groups. The only way to stay safe is to keep
your ability hidden from them.”

“Is that what happened to Dad?” Orano figured he already knew
the answer, but he needed to hear the words.

“Yes. He’d kept the secret for over five years, even though
the brotherhood tormented and tested him at every opportunity until he turned
sixteen. They never succeeded in making him lose control. So, they counted him as
untouched and left him alone.” The tears began to flow in earnest as she told
him the story. “On the day you were born, your father chose to use his gift to
save my life. You were a difficult birth, my son, and the ordeal proved too
much for me. My heart stopped shortly after you were born. Your father didn’t
have another option, as our midwife wasn’t equipped for such a situation. He
used his energy to shock my heart, saving me.

“Our midwife swore she would tell no one what she’d seen
but, three days later,
Ọ
w
ọ
ti
Ọ
l
ọ
run
came to our home
in Osogbo and took your father. I begged them to leave us be. He’d never hurt
anyone, and we had our newborn son. But they didn’t care, and your father
refused to fight. He said that resisting would only bring more of them. He
agreed to go peacefully in order to keep us safe. I never saw him again.”

 Orano’s head spun with this new information. “Why did you
lie to me?” He’d always known his father died, but he’d been told a heart
attack killed him.

“He made me promise to not burden you with the truth. We
felt sure you would be unaffected by all of this, so there wasn’t any reason to
bring it into your life.”

The sheer number of questions running through Orano’s mind
sent him reeling. He didn’t know where to begin. “Did he have an accident on
his sixteenth birthday, too? Is that why you tried to keep me home today? Is
that when it happens?”

“No, and yes. He did have an accident, albeit not quite as
dramatic as yours, but it happened six weeks before his birthday. There is no definite
time when the ability manifests, although never after a child turns sixteen. Of
the cases your father knew about, all occurred in the last three months of
their fifteenth year.”

“Which is why you became crazy protective the last few
months and went off the deep end today,” Orano said.

Orano’s mother let a small laugh break the tension. “I guess
so, yeah. Sorry about that. I just wanted to keep you close on the last day the
ability could develop. Speaking of which, where did you go tonight?”

A corner of his mouth rose before Orano could stop it, and heat
bloomed in his cheeks as he remembered the kiss. “Nowhere special.”

With her eyebrow raised—an expression all mothers wore when
they knew their children were lying—she kindly changed the subject. “We have
work to do, Orano. There is a lot you need to learn in order to—”

A knock on the door interrupted their conversation. The
police were probably questioning all of the neighbors about the fire. “Am I
going to go to jail?” Orano asked.

“Of course not,” she said. “Just follow my lead.”

When she opened the door, a tall man in a rumpled suit
stepped forward. “I’m Detective Ritchie. I need to ask you some questions about
the fire.”

“Of course. We didn’t even know anything happened until we
heard the sirens. What a shame.” Orano’s mother played the role perfectly.

The detective nodded. “Is there anyone else in the house
that may have seen or heard anything?”

“No, sir. Just my son and I.”

Without hesitation, the man pulled out an odd-looking gun,
aimed it at Orano’s heart, and pulled the trigger. His mother’s scream bellowed
above the sound of the sirens, while Orano tried to put the pieces of what was
happening together in his mind. A silver and blue dart stuck straight out of
his chest, glinting as he swayed back and forth under the foyer light. Out of
the corner of his eye he glimpsed his mother charge the detective, but Orano
lost sight of both of them as his body collapsed to the floor.

Gripped by fear, Orano tried desperately to move, but his
body felt disconnected from his brain. He couldn’t even scream. He’d obviously
been drugged, but whatever that dart held didn’t render him unconscious, just
immobile.

The sounds of a struggle came from behind where he lay on
the floor. Although he couldn’t see the fight, he had a good idea what was
happening. His mother’s scream became muffled almost immediately, probably by
the man’s hand. The front door slammed shut and uneven footfalls clumsily made
their way back toward the living room. A loud grunt from the intruder was
immediately followed by an ear-shattering scream from his mother. Her call for
help quickly terminated after another soft click and short whoosh of air.

Tears obscured Orano’s vision, flowing across his face onto
the hard floor. He tried to blink them away, but found not even his eyelids
would move. Fear grew, and then terror gripped him as realization set in. He’d
been rendered helpless with no chance to defend himself or his mother, yet he
remained fully conscious and aware. He could only imagine the coming horrors.

Strong arms came from behind him and jerked him to a seated
position, then wrapped around his chest. Orano’s head rolled forward giving him
a perfect view of the intruder’s hands. As the man dragged him backward, Orano
did the only thing he could. He tried to memorize the tattoos covering the
man’s forearms and hands. If by some miracle he survived this home invasion,
Orano wanted to be able to identify the guy to police.

The man dropped him on the recliner at the far end of the
living room before stepping out the front door. Orano’s body slumped over the
armrest but, from that position, he could at least see his mother. She’d been
laid out on the couch with a pillow placed under head, as though the freak
wanted her to be comfortable. Orano watched her chest rise and fall, silently
praying she would somehow come out of this craziness unhurt.

That’s not going to happen unless you do something,
Orano thought.

But what could he do? He didn’t even have the ability to
blink his eyes, which now watered ferociously. Through his blurred vision, he
watched the intruder return carrying a small duffle bag. The man dropped it on
the floor in front of the couch, reached inside, and pulled out several dark
objects. Orano wanted desperately to wipe the tears from his eyes so he might
at least see what this monster had planned, but he couldn’t. The objects
remained hazy blobs on the floor.

The man picked up one of them and stepped behind the
recliner. A second later, Orano’s body jerked upright, his head flopping around
until his chin settled on his chest. The tattooed arms wrapped duct tape around
his torso, then pulled his head up and wrapped it to the chair, as well.

Orano felt sure the man wasn’t trying to restrain him. What
would have been the point? Instead, he seemed more intent on positioning Orano
in a way that forced him to look straight forward. Why the guy would care about
that remained a mystery. But Orano knew this was no regular home invasion. Petty
criminals didn’t use paralytics. The guy had to be part of the brotherhood that
had murdered his father.

While Orano watched, the man placed the objects he’d pulled
from the bag onto the floor. A moment later, flames flickered from half a dozen
candles dispersed throughout the pattern he’d created. When the man stood,
Orano’s breath hitched. He knew the real horror would begin soon, and there
would be nothing he could do to stop it. He had no control.

Except that wasn’t entirely true. He didn’t have control
over his body movements, sure, but he still breathed. And just a moment before,
his fear caused his breath to quicken. At the very least, Orano could control
his breathing, which is how his mother taught him to control his emotions. He
didn’t know much about the strange ability he’d developed, but he knew all he
needed to. His emotions were key to controlling it.

Orano focused on his breathing, willing himself to fill his
lungs before expelling the air slowly. Deep, chest-expanding breaths weren’t
possible in his paralyzed state, but that didn’t matter. His mother had trained
him well, and his focus was absolute.

Until the chanting started.

Orano refocused on the man kneeling in front of him. He held
something silver in his left hand—
is that a cross?
—and spoke words in
some unknown language. Latin, maybe. After each rhythmic phrase, the man kissed
the item in his hand, then pressed it to Orano’s chest, before beginning the
next verse. Time seemed to be running out.

Blocking out the sights and sounds around him would be next
to impossible so, instead, Orano used the man’s rhythmic chant and repetitive
movements as his metronome. He breathed in through one verse, held it when the
man touched the cross to his chest, then exhaled through the next verse. With
each breath, Orano brought forth the memory of vibrant heat flowing through his
body. He imagined his heart pumping lava through his veins, filling every cell
with energy.

Although he couldn’t feel any physical effects, he instinctively
knew the warmth he’d created in his mind would slowly become a reality in his
body. The same power that engulfed him earlier in the barn once again coursed
through him. This time, however, Orano had control.

His hands still sat limp on his lap—left hand facing down,
right facing to his left. In that position, any energy he released would hit
either the wall beside him or his own nether regions. He needed to be able to
move just a little to direct the blast at the freak show in front of him, but his
muscles refused to cooperate. He couldn’t break through the effects of the paralytic
no matter how hard he tried.

If he remembered his television medical lessons correctly,
sedated patients could become conscious again with a shot of Adrenalin. And,
since Adrenalin was pretty much just a massive boost of energy, maybe his power
could do the same thing. He just needed to increase its potency.