Psych Investigation Episodes: Episode 1 (A Young Adult Scifi / Fantasy) (12 page)

“
The Harris-kid, his
emotions—they’re gone. I can only feel emptiness.”

“
Hmm, what’s he up to anyway? He’s
just standing there. Hey, what’s wrong with his eyes?”

Jack walked at a sedate pace towards the two.
All of his passion, fear, rage, it had vanished. Somehow, in the
back of his mind, he remembered feeling this way before, but he
couldn’t place it. A single thought emerged within him, a single
reality made bright.

I would never allow Melissa to be
harmed
.

The phrase at once meant both something and
nothing—it was both understandable and inconceivable. Yet he
understood it, while at the same time it remained a
mystery.

He squinted at Melissa.
How did I not see
it before
?

It was around her neck, the projection from the
tall man to her, such a trivial, simple thing. It was much like a
child’s knot of a shoelace—if he would only just give it a small
tug …

Melissa fell to the floor, gasping for breath.
Ruin’s eyes widened in surprise, as did Requiem’s.

“
Incredible!” Ruin said. “That’s
never happened to me before. How did you do that?”

Jack spoke. His voice was calm, his emotions
nonexistent. He passively looked at Requiem. Seeing her maddened
face, he felt nothing.

“
I don’t believe we’ve met. My name
is Jack Harris. I’m sixteen years old, and I attend Elms High. My
favorite movie is ‘Back to the Future’, and I love popcorn. Oh, and
could you please do me a favor and leave?”

Ruin opened his mouth to respond and then cried
out as he was lifted a dozen feet into the air and sent soaring
through the brush where he’d first appeared. Melissa, now in a
crouched position nearby, looked on with amazement.

“
Brother!” Requiem shouted. “You
monster, what have you do—”

“
Goodbye,” Jack said with a soft,
uncaring voice. She looked like she had more to say, but Jack
didn’t give her the chance. She too was hit with the same force. An
invisible wall slammed into her, flinging her back a dozen paces.
There was a crash as she collided with a tree-trunk, and she cried
out in pain.

“
Now I’m the one that wants to know
what’s going on.” It was Melissa’s voice. Looking over, Jack saw
she was back on her feet. She was clutching her left
side.

“
Where did you learn to do that?”
she asked.

“
Do what?” Jack had the feeling he’d
forgotten something important, but at the very least, he was glad
to see Melissa was unharmed.

“
Don’t you remember? You just sent
those two guys flying.”

Jack shrugged. “Not really.”

Melissa ignored the reply. “Listen, I think
they’re getting back up. Can you do that again? If you can hold
them still for just a second, I can knock them out
cold.”

“
Are you crazy? You want me to hold
them down? They’ve got like, powers and stuff. How would you like
me to fight against them?”

“
Jack, who do you think just knocked
them off their feet? It was you.”

“
That’s impossible, Melissa. I don’t
even know how to fight.”

Jack and Melissa watched in horror as the two
rose back to their feet. They did not look happy. Worse, they
looked more or less unharmed.

“
That was not nice, Brother.”
Requiem said. “You’re going to learn to be nice to your sister or
you’ll be punished.”

Ruin nodded. “After we kill the woman, I’m
going to break in the new guy. He’s going to learn not to raise a
hand to his new family.”

“
I’m not your family!” Jack was
going to make sure Melissa explained everything to him when this
was over. She looked like she knew what all this was
about.

“
Can you really not do that again?”
Now there was a sound of morbid fear in her voice, and Jack
wondered if the two crazies were going to resume where they left
off. Would they re-grab her by the neck again and try to slice out
her heart?

“
I don’t even know what I’m supposed
to have done.”

The two approached, confirming Jack’s earlier
fears. They were very much unharmed. To make matters worse, they
seemed to be enjoying themselves.

“
That was a really impressive burst
from the Harris-kid, wouldn’t you say, Requiem?” Ruin licked his
upper lip.

Requiem nodded. “Did you see the way he tried
to protect his pig-faced lady friend? Oh, I want him even more now!
I can’t wait to see him weep over his first kill. Maybe he’ll cry
himself to sleep like our new brother.”

New brother? What’s a ‘new
brother’?

The two approached, and Melissa stepped
protectively in front of Jack with her hands balled into
fists.

“
Jack, I’m sorry if I hurt you
earlier, but I was so sure that you were this ‘brother’ they keep
going on about.”

“
I still have no idea what any of
this is about, but it’s okay. I forgive you.”

Ruin was now only a footstep away from them,
and Jack could see that behind his smile, there was a deep sadness,
but it was downplayed by an overwhelming evil. Requiem stood to his
side. There was no sadness in her, just a bottomless pit of madness
and despair.

“
Oh, Ruin, how sweet. Maybe we
should just leave them alone after all?”

“
Don’t tease them, sister. Let’s
kill the girl and take the Harris-boy.”

Melissa did not wait idly for her death. Again,
she charged forward, and again she collided into an unseen barrier.
Her fist was stopped mid-punch, and she struggled against a force
that Jack had no understanding of.

“
You’re nothing, child,” Ruin said.
“You’re a lifetime too early to take me on.”

Melissa looked up into the murderous, smiling
face that would send her to the death, and Jack realized he was
powerless to do anything to help her.

“
What about me? Am I too
early?”

Ruin howled in pain as an enormous fist crashed
into his temple, bringing him to his knees. Blood dripped from his
nose and mouth as a kick met him in his jaw, sending him scrambling
backward.

Standing before them, with a look of outrage on
his face, was a large, muscular Japanese man. Tears fell from
Melissa’s eyes. “Kazou, you came! You finally came!”

Ruin, losing all composure, screamed at what
Jack suspected was the top of his lungs. “
Another one comes to
die! I’ve had enough of this. I will kill you all and take the
Harris-boy.”

Kazou went in for a second attack but stopped
in his tracks the moment Requiem placed a hand on his
shoulder.

“
Did you forget about me? I’m a
Telepath, Darling. Right now, you should be losing your will to go
on, and fatigue should be filling your muscles.”

Kazou grunted and struggled, but it seemed to
be useless. He halted in his tracks and showed no indication of
moving again anytime soon.

“
Do it now, Ruin.”

Jack stared in horror as a four-foot bar of
metal from the jungle gym snapped free of its hinges and sped
straight towards the Japanese man. Jack was no metal-scientist, but
he didn’t have to be one to know that at the rate it was traveling
it would surely kill the man.

Maybe I should be a
metal-scientist. At least then, I’d get free metal.

“
Kazou, no!” Melissa yelled. She
struggled to break free but was still pinned by whatever force Ruin
had used against her.

From somewhere out of sight, an even faster
piece of a metal, which on closer inspection appeared to be a lead
pipe, collided with the first broken piece of jungle gym, and in a
shower of sparks both fell lifelessly to the ground.

“
Well, well, I reckon things have
finally gotten interesting around here. Hey, who is that hotty? She
available?” Standing on top of the giant fountain, a man in a
cowboy hat waved at the Japanese man.

Where did these guys come from?
Jack
wondered.
And how many of them are
metal-scientists?

Ruin and Requiem looked around frantically. The
odds were no longer in their favor. With an exhausted grunt,
Melissa ripped free of whatever constraints had been holding her
and stood up. The Japanese man, too, seemed to be
recovering.

Ruin took a few steps back and frowned.
“Requiem, we need to leave. We can get the Harris-boy another
time.”

The man in the cowboy hat jumped down from the
fountain, a distance of at least ten feet, and yet he landed with
ease. “Like hell I’m letting them get away.” Both the broken piece
of jungle gym and the lead pipe glided along the grass, over
Melissa’s broken concrete and into each hand of the man as if
pulled by a hidden string. “I’ll bash them over the head until they
see stars.”

Ruin and Requiem turned to flee, and the man
chased after them.

“
Michael, stop this instant!” There
was yet another new voice. Jack looked over his shoulder and saw a
man with short black hair approach with a woman by his side. They
both appeared to be in their mid-twenties.

“
We have injured. Do
not
pursue.”

Michael spat and dropped the two pieces of
metal. Appearing to regain himself, he faced Melissa, almost diving
to her side.

“
You okay, sweetie?”

“
Yeah.” She winced as she
spoke.

Jack decided to slip away while he had the
chance. He got as far as stepping on the nearest twig. The man they
called Michael set his gaze upon him.

“
And what about you?”

“
Umm, I’m just the local
metal-scientist. I’m not involved in whatever’s going on here, so
if you’ll please just excuse me, I’ll be on my way.”

Michael, the Japanese man, and the two
newcomers all shot a look of amazement at Jack and then in unison
turned to face Melissa.

“
You guys, meet Jack Harris. You
know, the boy I’ve been telling you all about?”

As all five people converged on him, one
thought stuck out in Jack’s mind.

Well, at least I remembered to TiVo the new
episode of Dexter.

 “
Just relax, Jack. You’re
making this so much more difficult than it really has to
be.”

It was a struggle for Paro to keep frustration
out of his voice. The Harris-kid was impossible to deal with, and
while Paro was known for a great many things, patience did not
number among them.

Jack retreated a few steps and had his back to
the now broken jungle gym. Kazou and Michael had backed off as a
gesture of goodwill, while Sarah and Melissa tried to speak to him
gently in an attempt to calm him down.

“
I don’t care what you guys are.
Honestly, I don’t. I won’t say anything to anyone. I’m too lazy to
even bother. But there’s no way I’m going anywhere with you
people.”

He’s gonna make this hard for us, isn’t
he?

“
Jack, listen to me. In this world,
there are laws, and there are rules. Often people break them
without even knowing they exist, but the penalty is nonetheless
enforced. Whether you’re involved or not, you may have valuable
information that can save lives. More than that, you have to answer
for some other things as well—namely an incident in your school
that took place earlier this morning.”

Paro winced as Jack lifted up his chin in
defiance, an age-inappropriate gesture expected of a
four-year-old.

“
I don’t know what any of that
means. Why don’t you guys tell me what’s been going on around here.
I wanna know why Melissa beat me up, and then just when I was
feeling better two weird, crazy people came and said all kinds of
weird stuff. Then they tried to beat me up again. Then everyone
started punching each other and things started flying, and then
more weird stuff was said. Oh, I also wanna know why they called me
‘brother.’ Wait a minute.” Jack paused and his mouth gaped. “Are
they my illegitimate …? But surely mom would have told me. Ah
Jeeze, they’re my siblings, aren’t they?”