Kinetics: In Search of Willow (19 page)

"Not bad." Nick said with
pride.

***

The bus station was full of people.
Conversation was loud in the crowded terminals as people
transferred buses, reached their final destination or started their
trips. The clicks and clacks of the buses gearing up and gearing
down filled the void between the conversing public. We dropped what
little luggage we had at the bus destined for
Cincinnati.

"Be right
back, 
Toshi
." Harry chuckled, using the fake name on my new ID, and dug
through his bag for something. "I have to go pick up the
tickets."

"Alright, 
Oliver
. I think I'm going to head
over to that convenience store next door and buy something for
lunch." I pointed at the crowded store off in the
corner.

"Okay. We'll meet back here in a few
minutes?"

"Yeah." Absently, I rubbed my temple
where the glasses had been rubbing against the skin. The glasses
felt obnoxious and ungainly. I browsed the convenience store for a
second or two and finally grabbed some chips and a couple small
bottles of soda. Not long after that, I was back in the station and
walking toward our bus terminal.

Then, I saw him. He stood not a
hundred feet away holding a map up to his eyes as if he were any
other tourist. But his gaze was anywhere but at the map. He was
scanning the crowd with a sharp predatory stare, pausing on a
person, blinking, then moving on to the next and repeating the
process all over again. I started to back up and get away from him,
but his gaze found me quicker than if I had a bright orange banner
above my head pointing out my exact position.

Napoli Stewart was an average looking
man with pale skin and didn't have any remarkable features other
than a pair of piercing blue eyes.

Split seconds after I saw him we made
eye contact. He grinned maliciously and started walking toward me.
The crowded station seemed to part before him as he glided smoothly
over to me. I did not have the same skills to part the crowd, so I
bumped into people and got yelled at multiple times in a matter of
seconds. Once I was clear of the crowd, I took off at a run. I knew
he was following me. I could hear the shouts behind me as his
uncanny skill to part crowds failed him as he ran not far
behind.

Napoli was one of my brother's best
friends. Nick had already told me that my brother's other two
friends were also Kinetics. Part of the Military Corps just like
Jacob. Nick had gone ahead and told me their powers, too. Napoli
had some kind of copying power called Mirror that let him mimic
anyone’s power for about an hour or two. Joe was something called a
Solid Shifter. He could literally break apart the atoms in his body
and move through solid objects.

I had to find Harry. It looked like we
wouldn't be leaving Columbus unhindered. I skidded around a corner
but found myself trapped in an alcove with a dozen or so pay
phones.

"Trapped yourself, Eugene?" Napoli
chuckled from behind me.

I turned and backed up a few steps. He
stood in the center of the opening to the rest of the station with
a grin on his face and peered over his glasses.

"You should just give yourself up.
There is no point in running."

I chose not to answer and instead
looked around the small alcove and the spaces between Napoli and
the wall and backed up a step more.

"Your brother wants to talk to you,
Eugene. Why don't you come with me without argument and we can get
this whole thing resolved like rational human beings." He took a
step forward to compensate for the increasing distance between
us.

"Back off," I snarled.

"Tsk tsk, is that how you treat an old
friend?"

"You're not my friend!" I had reached
the wall and bumped up against the long metal table sticking out of
the wall. My hand found the spine of a phone book and I flung it at
Napoli, aiming for his face. He tried to duck under it and grab me,
but I dove out of the way and scrambled toward the exit. The phone
book only clipped his shoulder and Napoli recovered faster than I
was able to escape. He seized my arm and held on tight.

He grinned viciously and I felt my
skin tingle unpleasantly where his fingernails dug into my
skin.

"Let go!" I shouted.

Napoli laughed and shouted back, “Got
it!”

He let go.

His hand burst into flames and he
lunged at me. I tripped over my feet and fell to the
ground.

“
Never seen my powers
before, have you?” Napoli’s fiery hand got close to my face. “I can
copy any power I want and now yours is mine.”

I rolled away, more afraid of the fire
than of him.

Before Napoli could readjust to my new
position, a speeding ball of water came from behind me and slammed
into his face, knocking him against the wall and unhinging the
phones from their rests. He slumped to the ground,
unconscious.

A fire alarm started to go off and I
flipped around to see someone in a blue hoodie surrounded by
streams of water. The water was flowing out of a fountain that had
been violently ripped from the wall. It was then that I heard the
screams and shouts of the other patrons in the station. Most were
running away from the hoodie person as the water flowed in elegant
circles around him to reenter the pipes of the water fountain.
Others were standing in shock around him. He flicked his wrists and
fingers and the water froze in a cap around the
fountain.

"GO!" he called and sprinted into the
muddled crowd. I lurched to my feet, uncertain. Harry peeked his
head out from behind an arrivals bulletin board just as the blue
hoodie and its wearer disappeared into the crowd.

"Who was that?" he shouted at me over
the fire alarm.

"I don't know!" The floor quaked and I
saw two Kinetics teleport in. They split off into different
directions and I heard a huge tone sound over the crowd.

Harry grabbed my shirt and yanked me
into the crowd. Everyone around us stopped and with glazed eyes
looked up. Harry didn't stop pulling until we exited through a
service door where we passed through some kind of barrier made with
thick air.

Behind us was a slight
shimmer, only there if you were really looking for it. And,
impossibly we had just walked through a sign that
said: 
Sorry for the inconvenience.
Under Renovations.

Through the doors it just looked like
a building under construction. I moved forward a bit till my head
passed the threshold of the door and the sign and the people still
staring at the ceiling reappeared.

Harry looked too and sighed. "An
illusion. That's amazing. Is this the InfoCon?"

"Yeah. I think so."

"Then we better move quick. We don't
want to cause any suspicion."

Only a small portion of the bus
station was shut down because of "renovations." Even though it had
just happened, everyone believed it to be truth. Compared to the
chaos that had destroyed part of the bus station, the Nons that
wandered the station went about their business with no
worries.

We found our bus and crouched down in
the seats when people passed by the windows, some of whom were
looking for someone. Me. I didn't let myself breathe any relief
until the bus roared to a start and rolled out of the garage.
Sunlight hit my face and I sat back with a sigh.

CHAPTER 15

“
As a
single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single
thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep
physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path,
we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to
dominate our lives.”
- Henry David
Thoreau.

"—That, anyway?" Harry's voice pierced
through my thoughts.

"What?" I asked, turning away from the
window. I was so zoned out I didn't realize that Harry was talking
to me.

"I was just wondering who that guy
was. The one who attacked you." Harry flipped through a notebook of
his own writing. They looked like dozens of math
equations.

"Oh. That was Napoli." I
said.

"Who?" He tilted his head to the side,
looking at me.

"Napoli Stewart. He's one of my
brother's best friends. He's in the Alliance, too. Nick told me
that he and Joe, the other guy, all joined the Corps
together."

"Oh." Harry looked slightly disturbed.
"I wonder..." He started to say something but stopped
mid-sentence.

"What? What do you wonder?"

He just shook his head. "Never
mind."

"No, what?"

"Well, that guy, the one with the
water powers. Who do you think he was?"

"I don't know. I saw him once
before...back at the school, when Laura went crazy, he was there
too. I don't know who he is. He's not anyone I recognize from
school."

"That's really odd." Harry frowned.
"At least he's helping us."

"Yeah."

"But how did he know we were
there?"

I just shrugged and turned my head to
watch the wavelengths of the power lines go up and down as they
passed. "What are we going to do about transportation after St.
Louis?" I asked.

"I say we cross that bridge when we
get to it. But I'm confident that we'll be okay. What all did Nick
give you?"

I reached into my pack and pulled out
the zippered binder. Inside was a cellphone and copied files of
information about the Laramie compound. Among them were some maps
and diagrams of the Laramie base, all of which had been updated
almost 8 years before.

"They're old." Nick had said. "We
haven't been able to take any pictures of the place because of
their new securities."

There were also some small reports of
possible entries into the compound. However, all the reports said
that entry was inadvisable. The location was considered a Level Two
area, whatever that meant. But I assumed that Level Two was
supposed to be dangerous.

Whatever the heck we were going into
was dangerous either way. At least I wasn't going in
alone.

I glanced at Harry who was reading
what I had opened. "Level Two, huh?" I was happy that I wasn't
alone on this mission, but part of me was also worried that we
wouldn't be enough to save Willow.

"I don't know what that means." I
said, shrugging.

"Beats me." Harry pinched a map from
my hands and looked over it with a keen eye. "Old maps,
huh?"

"Yeah. Nick said that the place has
got some serious safeguards against photos and
snoopers."

"Then I guess we are going in
half-blind."

"Better than nothing." I grinned at
him.

"Yup." Harry moved his finger around
the map and then tapped at a small road labeled "service." "This
will probably be our way in. I guarantee you it will be guarded,
but they will have shipments or something coming in. Why else would
they have a service road?" Harry marked the place on the map with a
blue pen.

"Where do you think they would keep
Willow?"

He looked over the map. "I don't see
anything labeled lockdown or prisons."

"Huh."

"Look at this though." Harry pointed
at a small building on the map. "It says records. That's probably
your best bet for more up-to-date information."

He marked that too and then we spent
the rest of the journey going over all the other information. When
I was putting it all back in the binder I saw a small Ziploc bag
with four nearly fluorescent pills inside. There was a small folded
note on the inside. I pulled it out to see a hand written note from
Nick.