Chapter Four
Reluctantly, Kyle took his eyes off of his hands and up to Jules.
“Do you know what happened?” he asked her, because he honestly was having a hard time remembering himself. His brain wouldn’t work for him at the speed he needed it to.
She looked to Justin before speaking. “We’ve only heard about what happened from your parents, who say that they weren’t there when it actually happened. They saw you and Sarah running off into the woods after some kind of explosion took place, and…”
“It was a meteor,” Kyle corrected her, as once again, his brain began remembering and the whole series of events came back to him. “Or, it wasn’t exactly a meteor. I think it was alive,” he said to himself in confusion. He never really had time to figure out what it was, but it seemed alive, he remembered. Pictures were the only thing coming to his mind at the moment. Shaking his head, he continued. “Whatever it was, I went up to touch it, and it shocked me or something, which is probably what these things came from,” he said, showing them his hands.
Jules continued. “Well, no one else touched the thing, according to your mother. When the police got there, they evacuated everyone in that town; I guess after seeing what it did to you, they were afraid it was radioactive or something.”
Justin took over from there. “Your family didn’t much care except about getting you to a hospital as soon as possible. They took you to one in Colorado, and then you were transferred to one in El Paso, so you would be somewhat closer to home. From what your parents say, they couldn’t figure out what happened to you, and you didn’t seem to be in a lot of pain from what they could tell. They just thought that you had fallen into some kind of coma, and you were sent home. You’ve been here sleeping for two weeks now, and I guess we should call your mother to tell her you woke up.”
Justin left the room dialing Kyle’s mother’s phone number into his cell. To Julianne, Kyle seemed to take it all in stride what he just heard. Kyle, as usual for today seemed, didn’t know what to think. It was all still muddled, but the basic picture was clear to him.
So he decided to eat. He hadn’t eaten anything for two weeks according to Justin, and that thought only increased Kyle’s appetite. He walked back into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. There, he found some leftover meatballs, so he pulled them out and made two sandwiches with the rest of them. Along with a Coke, he sat down to eat. The first bite he took slowly, enjoying it, then, he ate the rest of the two sandwiches in record time, not caring about tasting them as much as just getting something in his stomach. After ten minutes, and with Jules and Justin watching, he had completely devoured the two sandwiches and chugged the Coke. Incredibly, he was still hungry. Finding no more leftovers, he grabbed a bag of chips from the pantry when he heard his mother’s car pull into the driveway.
She walked in saw Kyle sitting on the couch with an open bag of chips, which on a normal day would drive her up the wall. Instead, she squeezed him and kissed him and petted his hair and made him talk so she could just hear his voice again. She asked if he had eaten; Kyle answered by pointing to the sink, where the dish where the meatballs was sitting, along with the knife he had used to cut the bread. He almost had to peel his mother off of him to ask her what had been going on for two weeks. She went on a rant about incompetent doctors saying different things, and they prescribe different medicines and wanted to study Kyle like some kind of lab rat.
Finally, she was able to let go enough to go clean up after Kyle. Kyle, meanwhile, left with Justin and Julianne over to their house next door. It was already triple digit weather outside, and very bright with no sign of clouds, so all three of them rushed inside.
Their house was the same basic layout as his, although theirs had a little different flavor in colors and decoration. The Slades were travel agents, so this was their busiest time of the year. Kyle sat down on the bright couch while Jules went into the kitchen to pour some lemonade for the three of them.
When they were all sitting down, Kyle asked, “So what all did I miss in the last two weeks?”
“Well,” Justin started, putting his feet up on the coffee table. “We went to Emma’s party, and that was really fun. She had about twenty people there. You know how she is; she likes things to be simple. We watched a movie, had some popcorn, she ordered a few pizzas; we were out of there by like ten-thirty.”
“Oh,” Kyle said. He had forgotten about Emma’s party, and about Emma in general, and he suddenly wondered if she had found about what happened to him.
“Does Emma know about…” he asked while flipping his hands over.
“Yeah, she knows,” Jules said, suddenly joining them. Sitting on the couch beside him, she continued. “She came by to see you three days ago. A lot of people have come. I think the entire school newspaper crew came to see you.”
“Plenty of people you came to see you, and many left the candy and cards and stuff at the end of your bed,” Justin added.
“Well,” Kyle began. “I guess I better start…”
His words were cut off by a large, slow throbbing pain coming from his hands that somehow resonated throughout his entire body. Justin and Jules were staring at him with confusion, but it hurt too much to try to speak. His eyes began to water; his whole body was tightening up. With much difficulty, he opened his fists to see what was happening. His palms were glowing like lanterns. He saw Justin and Jules each back as far away as they could without getting out of their seats. Kyle just looked at his hands. The marks on his hands spread as the pain continued. From their perimeters, Kyle watches several small tendrils of the same color substance, five on his left hand and six on his right, crawl through his skin like worms. The light they produced was tremendous; it was blinding, even though it already very bright in the room. When the marks stops growing, Kyle felt a larger surge of power course through him without breaking, then, it was all gone as soon as it had started.
Kyle was left with his breath and heart racing. He was covered in a film of sweat, and somehow exhausted. He went limp, and all he could do to keep from falling asleep right there. After a few moments, he began to feel better. He managed to get his breathing under control, and his heart slowed down as a result. When he tried to stand up, however, he immediately felt light-headed, and fell back to the couch.
Jules was the first to say anything after Kyle’s episode. “Are you alright,” she asked cautiously.
Kyle thought about it for a second before nodding his head.
Jules got up, saying, “I’ll get you a towel,” and she left.
When she was gone, Justin asked, “What was that?”
“I don’t know,” Kyle answered. “I think this is spreading,” he said, showing Justin his hands. As Justin studied his hands with the marking’s new extensions, Kyle silently hoped that it also wasn’t contagious, but Justin seemed fine when he touched Kyle’s skin. Jules came back with a towel and handed it to Kyle.
“We should get you back home,” she said as Kyle covered his face with the towel.
“Yeah, sure,” Kyle said. He tried to stand again, with more success. When Jules and Justin stood up with him, he waved them down, saying, “I’m alright. I can get back by myself.”
“Okay,” Jules said, sounding a little bit doubtful. “Try to get some more rest.” She wasn’t much of a doctor, but this wasn’t exactly an everyday case of a stomach bug. He didn’t answer back, just wanting to get back to his room and his bed.
He managed the walk from their house back to his alright, and even the trip past his mother, explaining that he was tired and wanted to get back to bed. She reluctantly didn’t stop him from continuing his journey back upstairs, only calling out that dinner would be ready when his father came home. He didn’t answer back, or say anything else as he closed his door behind him.
The first thing he did was rush to turn the blinds on his window closed. He ran to push a towel under the door, trying to make it as dark as possible in his room. All of this was to ge
t a better sense of his markings, or scars, or burns, or whatever they were. Whatever they were, they glowed softly in the near darkness of his room. He studied them intently, getting to know every curve and every facet of their form. He felt the new parts that just grew earlier. The extensions felt just like the original marks on his palm, so it all must be the same substance.
Then, he felt the same pain he did earlier, although it was less intense. The markings glowed again in rhythm with the pain. It wasn’t as blinding, but it was enough to completely enlighten his small room. He was able to keep his eyes open, allowing him to watch as they grew again. The glowing tendrils wormed through the surface of his skin in organic curves like a snake slithering. They were now two inches long, and turned to travel up his arms, except for one on his right hand that began curling around his middle finger. And they didn’t stop there. When all was said and done, they were well past his wrists, and appeared around their entire circumferences.
Kyle fell back into his bed, unable to support his weight in a sitting position anymore. He was sore walking from the twin’s house to his room, and this second episode in less than two hours from the first didn’t help with that. It was the struggle of his life to remain awake, so he stopped trying and fell into his pain induced sleep.
Meanwhile, several hundred miles away, at an observatory run by NASA, a scientific team took turns looking into the lens of a giant telescope. They spent their nights looking for basically anything.
The man currently looking up at the stars was an intern for the group. Having only arrived to this observatory about a few weeks before, he loved looking at the universe through the telescope. Its infinite depths held so many secrets, and he knew humans were just barely scratching the surface in discovery. Who knew what was out there? Was there life on other planets? What was it like at the beginning of time? These were questions that drove the entire team to search. And the most wonderful thing about it was that who could possibly predict what they would find next. It could be the perfect twin of Earth, or a planet with life.
Or something else entirely, and that was what the man was looking at that very moment. He stared at it intently as it appeared to be coming closer. He called the head of their team to come and look at whatever it was he was looking at. The team’s leader put his eye to the lens to have a look.
He confirmed that whatever it was, it was getting closer. Keeping his eye on the mysterious object, he told the intern to mark its position so they could keep an eye on it.
At first, it looked like a comet, but no one had ever documented a comet with a red tail before. But the tail was shaped differently; it was much too big. And whatever the thing was, it was surrounded by a large field of energy that seemed to radiate from it.
This was something no one had ever seen before. He had to call this in.
He practically leapt out of the chair behind the lens to see all of the total ten people waiting to hear about what he saw. He didn’t bother with them except to push his way through them as they scrambled to see through the telescope. He went straight over to the desk where he knew he had left his phone, but it was covered in papers. Maps and graphs were strewn across the floor without a care while he searched for the phone.
This was important. He had received a letter from his superior explaining for them to immediately call in if they see anything strange. The letter didn’t explain why or what brought on this sudden and strange order, but he would do what he was told.
He finally found the phone and called the number specified in the letter. That was another strange thing. He wasn’t calling NASA that much he knew. The letter told him to specifically call a certain number alone. Again, the letter didn’t specify why.
The phone rang once before answered by a man’s voice. “Yes?”
“Yes, I was told to call this number should my team…”
“What is its position,” the voice interrupted. After telling him the position of the object, the voice had just hung up.
Power Trilogy Book One: An Ancient Power Page 4