If I’m not mistaken I’d say that the face belongs to an older version of The Drone. Taking a second pass, the resemblance is uncanny. His hair is longer, yes. But, the features are nearly unmistakable.
I shudder.
No, I think. That’s just in your head. There’s no such person as The Drone. He’s a made up character from your father’s imagination.
But, then a second voice nags at me, fighting the first one.
Yeah, but up until a week ago you thought that the Vestige was just a made up object from your father’s imagination. Now it’s hanging around your neck.
The Vestige is cold against my chest. I’m thankful that it’s tucked beneath my shirt where nobody can see it.
Mae notices how long I’ve been silent and she reaches out a hand and takes mine.
“Are you alright?” she asks in a soft voice.
I steel myself and continue to confront the crazed man. If the elevators being locked down is any sign, authorities must be on their way. Perhaps I can distract this man until the police get here.
“You look like you’re going through a rough time,” I say, hoping to tug at the man’s sympathies. “What’s your name?”
“You don’t know who I am,” the man says as he closes the gap between us. “But, you will. Soon nobody will forget my name. In fact, they will tremble in fear when it is uttered.”
His monologue is making me cringe. I can’t say I haven’t given long-winded speeches when I’m emotional, but never in public. Still, he does have a gun aimed at my chest, so I can only stand there and entertain him.
I glance at the phone on the floor. The call is still connected to the police. I need to get this guy’s name so that the authorities can hunt him down.
“What is that name that I will remember?” I ask. It’s a long shot, but maybe I’ll get lucky.
The man hasn’t noticed that the phone is capturing everything that we say, and I want to cheer when he does give up his identity.
“Bill Flagrant,” he says, only twelve inches from me. “That’s my name. And I will get what I want if I have to kill every last person in this building.”
Alright, police, I think. We’re waiting patiently. Any time now…
To my relief there is some movement at the revolving doors. A man steps through wearing a black and white uniform. I groan when I realize that the man, while armed, isn’t the police. He’s just a security guard.
The guard readies his gun at his side and calls out to Flagrant.
“Just take it easy, son,” he says. “Nobody has to get hurt here. Just put the gun down.”
Flagrant laughs and looks over his shoulder at the guard.
“You’re a fool if you think that I’ve come this far just to surrender.”
“What do you want?” Mae asks, speaking up for the first time.
I’m curious about this as well.
“If it’s money you want,” I start, “I’m sure that I can arrange for some to be given to you - if you don’t shoot anybody.”
“And what gives you the authority to dole out cash so freely?” Flagrant focuses his attention on me. “You’re just a kid.”
“Not just any kid,” I say, despite my better judgment. “I’m Jeff Boding’s son.”
Flagrant’s eyes widen. He takes a small step back and his jaw goes slack.
“Boding…” he says. The word is soft, almost barely heard in the massive lobby.
I nod.
“That’s right,” I reply. “I’m sure that something can be arranged. Tell me how much you’re after, and nobody needs to get hurt.”
Flagrant snaps out of his awe - if that’s what it is - and points the gun at me once more. He bares his teeth like an animal, his voice catching deep in his throat.
“It’s not money I’m after. I’m after something much more valuable, and you can help me to get it.”
He lashes out with his free hand and grabs me by the collar of my shirt. The fabric pulls against my neck and I feel my wind-pipe closing. I gasp.
The pressure builds as Flagrant turns me so that he is clutching me in front of him, using me as a shield.
“Such a valuable father,” says Flagrant in my ear. “I bet he didn’t tell you, did he?”
I grunt, struggling to get free.
“Tell me what?” I manage to say.
Flagrant lets out a single laugh. Then, softly in my ear, he mutters, “About me.”
Suddenly things start to come together in my mind. I realize now where I’ve seen Flagrant’s features. They were on the sketch of The Drone in my father’s files. The heavy eyebrows, sunken eyes, and the dark hair.
A chill runs down my neck and it continues until it reaches The Vestige against my chest. The sharp points jab me in the chest and I cringe.
I need to get free from this maniac. If he truly did know my father, and I am correct in him being the inspiration for The Drone, then there’s no telling what could happen. Whatever it is, it won’t be good.
I turn and try to break free, pushing against the man. But, his grip is tight on my shirt and he doesn’t let go.
Still, I fight back, pulling as hard as I can.
Flagrant intensifies his grip.
“Stop your struggling!” he says.
I make one last twists, but it doesn’t free me from his hand. Instead it rips a large gash in my collar and out of my shirt tumbles The Vestige.
To my horror, Flagrant looks down at the damage and his eyes widen. They look surprised at first. Then they look hungry.
“The Vestige!” he says.
The look on his face confirms that he knows a lot more than he’s letting on, and I need to get away as quickly as possible.
There is no other choice but to do the thing I told myself I wouldn’t do.
Glancing over at Mae, I steel myself to the inevitable, and lay my hands against Flagrant’s chest. With my palms flat, I flex my muscles and a pulse of energy erupts from each hand, ripping Flagrant away from my shirt and sending him flying across the lobby. He crashes into one of the red chairs and becomes a tangle of human and chair limbs. His grip on his gun tightens and a shot fires off into the ceiling.
“What just happened?” asks Mae, her eyes wide and her face pale. But, there’s no time to explain.
I grab her by the arm and yell, “Run!”
20
Lift Off
We both turn on our heels and dash for the exit. Mae scoops up her phone from the carpet and shoves it in her pocket. The security guard is hurrying forward, his gun aimed at Flagrant. The rest of the people in the lobby are screaming, ducking for cover at the sound of the gun shot.
I need to get Mae and myself out of here, as fast as possible.
I take one last look over my shoulder before running through the revolving doors and I see Flagrant getting to his feet, his arms thrashing about. The security guard tries to hold him off, but Flagrant aims the gun at the man’s leg and shoots. The guard’s gun goes tumbling to the floor as he doubles over in pain.
I shove Mae through the door and we rush out onto the stone steps.
“Where are we going?” she asks.
“Anywhere but here!” I say and take the lead.
The sidewalks and streets are busy with people on their lunch break. Lines of cars zip by. I wish we could cross the street, but there’s no time to wait, and it would be pointless to escape Flagrant only to be run over by a man on his phone.
I grab Mae’s hand and pull her down the sidewalk. We press between groups of people talking nonchalantly. I nearly barrel over a few, barely having time to mutter a quick, “Sorry!” before continuing the sprint.
We need to get away from here. We need to lose Flagrant. If he catches us, there’s no doubt that he’s after the Vestige. If he knows that it exists, there’s no doubt that he knows how to use it. I’m not going to let it slip out of my grasp.
We rush past some food carts and I hear the sound of sirens coming towards the publishing buildin
g. The cops at last, I think. Soon things will be under control.
But, as I glance over my shoulder I see that Flagrant has escaped the lobby and is following us, running pretty fast with his long legs.
“He’s gaining on us!” yells Mae.
I look around frantically for somewhere to hide. There is too much open space. We can be seen from all around. That means that we’re targets for Flagrant’s gun.
I spot a corner up ahead. Maybe we can duck around some of the walking people and lose Flagrant that way.
“Over here!” I say, and Mae comes with me as we pound across the walkway, taking a sharp left and down an alleyway.
We get about halfway down the alleyway when something makes my blood run cold.
The alley doesn’t open up onto the other side of the block like I had hoped. Instead there is a dead end, and the wall is too tall to climb over. It’s all brick and stonework. I try one of the doors to my right, but it’s locked tight.
Mae lets out a cry as Flagrant enters the alley, completely cornering us.
There are no words to say. We are caught.
Flagrant lets out a growl.
“Give up the Vestige, and I’ll let you live,” he says.
I hardly believe that. He is way too trigger happy with that gun.
But, what choice do I have? The cops aren’t here yet, though the sirens are blaring. Did they even see where Flagrant went? If not, they will get to the lobby of the publishing house and find out the details they need. By then it will be too late to help us.
We are on our own.
Mae raises her phone and begins to type a text message, probably to her mother, letting her know what is happening and that she tried to run away.
I try my energy blasts again, but this time Flagrant side-steps them with a grin.
“I learn pretty quick,” he says. “I wouldn’t try that again. You’re caught. Just give up.”
My mind races. What would Super Guy have done? I’m wearing his Vestige, aren’t I? There has to be something I can do.
Then it comes to me.
“Mae!” I say, stopping her in mid-text. “Grab onto me.”
She lowers her phone.
“What?” she says.
“Grab onto me,” I repeat myself. “Hold onto my shoulders.”
She hesitates, but I make the demand once more in a firm voice.
“Do it, now!”
Mae shoves her phone into her pocket and wraps her arms around my shoulders, holding tight. At the same time, I aim my hands palm-down at the tar beneath our feet.
I’m not even sure if this will work, but it’s my only option.
Focusing all my energy on my hands, I flex my muscles and hold them in a tensile position. Two streams of energy are forced from the lines of my palms and flutter against the ground. Slow at first my feet begin to leave the asphalt and Mae’s arms become heavy as her weight is dangling from my shoulders. She tightens her grip on me, and her feet leave the ground as well. She rests her feet on top of mine to keep from slipping off.
Flagrant doesn’t look surprised. Instead his expression reads to me as defeated.
He tries to threaten us with the gun again, but it’s too late for that.
I tense up my palms even more, widening my fingers as far as they will go. I do the same thing to my feet until it becomes painful, and suddenly the two of us shoot into the air, headed for the clouds.
21
Crash Landing
The buildings on either side of us rush past and become smaller and smaller as we soar straight up to the sky. The energy that’s flowing from my feet is so powerful that the soles on my shoes are blasted apart. Bits of rubber fall back towards the ground.
My ears pop as we reach a higher altitude and Mae’s must have as well because she cries out, pressing her head against my chest.
The air is rushing past us and the wind threatens to blow me off course. I hold out my hands to correct my trajectory and level us out as we reach the clouds.
It’s at this point that I need to slow us down. I don’t know how high I can go without passing out, and honestly, this is the first time that I’ve actually achieved true flight while being conscious. I relax my hands a bit and our ascent slows until finally I reach that sweet spot where we are simply levitating above the clouds. The air is damp up here and we both shiver.
Mae looks up at me now that she’s gotten over the shock of what just happened - both the power blasts and the flying.
“How are you doing this?” she asks, shouting the words to be heard over the sound of the wind.
I nod to the medallion around my neck.
“The Vestige,” I say.
Though I can tell that Mae is scared out of her wits to be up so high, she still manages to fix an are-you-serious stare on me.
“Say that again?” she says. “Because, I don’t think I heard you correctly.”
“It’s the Vestige!” I say, going to lift the medallion off my chest with my fingers, but as I lift my hand, we begin to teeter in the air. Mae nearly loses her grip and has to hold onto me now so tight that it hurts my shoulders. Her nails are practically breaking through my shirt and digging into the soft spots beneath my shoulder blades.
“Can we get down now?” she asks. There are tears brimming in her eyes as the wind whips at us.
I return my hand to its spot at my side and we balance back out.
I nod nervously.
“Yeah,” I say. “That sounds like a good idea. If I can figure out how to land without splattering us on the pavement…”
“What?” Mae shoots daggers at me. “You mean this is the first time you’ve done this?”
A wave of self-consciousness sweeps over me and that wringing feeling returns to my gut.
“Something like that,” I say, and when she goes to yell more terrified things at me, I cut her off. “Don’t worry! We will be fine. I just need to find a nice, clear area for us to touch down.”
Of course, I’m just making this all up as I go, but common sense says that if I don’t want to be spotted and completely blow my cover, I need to get us to an area where there aren’t a lot of people. This is kind of hard in a bustling city like Boston.
I look down and try not to feel dizzy.
I can’t tell Mae that I haven’t actually landed before. Looking around I notice a small park to the north, complete with a duck pond. If push comes to shove, I’ll aim for the pond so that we don’t get hurt.
“Alright,” I say. “Hold on tight!”
Then I relax my hands and feet slightly. This does what I expect it to do, albeit to a much greater degree than I had hoped. We drop about twenty feet and my stomach leaps up into my throat. Mae screams and her grip becomes tighter around my neck. I feel my windpipe starting to get crushed.
“Careful!” I say, my voice strained.
I need to land us, quickly, before I lose control and we drop even more, or before I am suffocated by Mae and we fall from the sky anyway.
I use a particularly strong gust of wind at my back to propel us forward and I constantly flex my hands, letting out bursts of energy to the right and left to keep us upright. Then I squeeze my feet until we slowly descend to the grassy knoll away from onlookers at the tiny park.
Nobody saw us, so I let out a huge sigh of relief as Mae releases me from her grasp and collapses onto the grass. I go falling onto my butt as I lose control of my stability. We both are gasping for breath.
“Never - do - that - again!” says Mae, jabbing a finger at me. “You know I hate heights!”
“I’ll try to remember that,” I say, not telling her that I nearly wet my own pants.
22
Explanations
“So, start from the beginning.”
Mae sits me down in a secluded area of the park. The bench is comfortable enough, but I sit rigidly as I tell her about how I was nearly drowned and then woke up clutching the Vestige. From there, I recount how I blasted Tyson across the cafe
teria, and then the levitating.
“And, now I can fly completely,” I say.
Mae smirks at me.
“Well, almost completely,” she says, and I laugh. It releases some of the pressure that’s built up in my chest.
“The whole maneuvering around will take some practice,” I mutter.
“I’m just glad we didn’t fall from the sky,” says Mae. We chuckle for a few moments, then it goes quiet between us. “It all makes sense to me now,” she says. “The reason you wanted to go and look through the archives. You were looking for instructions on how to use these powers.”
“Inquisitive as always,” I say, giving her a slight smile. “Looks like I ended up finding more than I bargained for.” I’m thinking of that man we just escaped from - Bill Flagrant. Mae is on the same wavelength as me because she speaks up as well.
“Who was that guy?” she asks. “You didn’t know him, did you?”
I shake my head. “That’s the first time I’ve seen or heard of him.” I go back over the blur of events in my head. The one thing that sticks out the most is the way his eyes widened at the sight of the Vestige around my neck. I glance over at Mae. “Do you think he already knew about the Vestige?” I ask.
She shrugs. “It sure seemed like he already knew about it. I get the feeling that he was looking for the Vestige to begin with. Maybe he was hoping that it was in your father’s files. He was definitely surprised when we took off like that.” She looks over at me, her hands clutched together in her lap. “Am I the first person you’ve told about your powers?” she asks.
I nod.
“If I was going to tell anyone, it was going to be you,” I reply.
“I’m flattered,” says Mae, releasing her hands to brush her hair out of her face. “But, don’t you want to tell your grandparents? Or even your mom? Maybe they can help somehow.”
“Mom?” I say in an amused tone. “She just sent me away to the country because I climbed up on the roof of the school. How do you think she’ll react if I tell her that I somehow managed to find the Vestige and can now fly around the sky - not to mention blast energy from my hands?”
Aberrant Trilogy 1: Super Charged Page 10