“Kimberly Parker,” Kimberly replies, not holding out her hand to shake, understandably, since we’re all swimming. “Did Mr. Boding tell you how to get to my place?”
Mae shrugs. “It wasn’t too hard. I could hear you all from the road, actually, so I partially just followed the sound of your messing around.” She looks around. “This is a really nice place. We don’t have nice open areas in Boston. You’re really lucky.”
“Well,” I say, not wanting to give the impression that we weren’t lucky in the city. “We have the ocean, but that’s not the same thing.”
“I’m glad you made it,” says Kimberly, putting on the air of a gracious host. “We’re probably getting out in a bit, though.”
“Fine with me,” Mae replies. “Shaun and I have some work to get done anyway.”
Again, there’s that bite in her voice.
We all continue to hang in the water for a while longer than expected until one by one we each get out. I’m glad to be out of the water now since my skin is now wrinkly and my hands are pretty sore from all the cold.
Robby heads over to the stack of towels and hands one to Kimberly. Then he goes to hand one to me and looks at Mae.
“Whoops,” he says. “We only grabbed three towels.”
I go to hand my towel to Mae, but she walks past me.
“That’s okay,” she says, reaching down to take my t-shirt off the bench. She pulls it on and shrugs. “I’ll be fine with this.”
I am still holding the towel out to her, but she doesn’t take it. This is seriously a side of Mae that I have never seen before. What has gotten into her?
When she doesn’t take the towel, I use it to dry my hair and drape it over my shoulders.
“I guess we should probably get going,” I say to Robby and Kimberly.
“Hey, it was fun,” says Robby, drying off his arms. “It was really cool to meet you, Mae.”
“It was nice meeting you, too,” says Mae. “Both of you.”
Then she motions for me to follow her up the steps. She grabs the shoes off the bench and we head out for my grandparents’s house.
29
Break-In
“The last place I expected to find you was at the lake,” says Mae as we both dry off with fresh towels from Grandma’s bathroom cabinet.
“Yeah, well…” I say, finishing off my damp hair. “Grandpa sort of forced me to go.”
Mae folds her towel and drops it in the hamper.
“I can’t exactly blame you, considering how attractive your swim instructor was.”
She gives me a look, and I feel my face and neck turn red.
“It was nothing,” I say.
Mae grabs her spare change of clothes and walks past me, using my bedroom to change.
“Sure it was,” she says, then closes the door.
I throw my own fresh clothes on while I wait for her to be done. At last she opens the door and emerges with my new shoes in hand. She tosses them to me and I catch them, nearly fumbling.
“Try these on and tell me how they feel,” she says, giving me a smile. I can feel the tension in the room subsiding and I head for my bed, sitting down and trying on the new shoes. Mae watches me from the doorway.
“They feel great,” I say. I tie the laces and they fit snug against my feet. I have plenty of toe room - perhaps more than normal, and they are very roomy. I tilt my foot up to see the bottom of the soles. “And they have airways for my flight energy?” I ask.
“Check it out,” she says and crouches in front of me. She takes my foot in her hand and runs her fingers along the shoe, starting at the toe and ending at the heel. “There are three sets of openings on each shoe. Two at the toe, two in the arch, and then two at the heel. There are flaps that will open and close automatically depending on how much energy you use. I tested it with some hair dryers. Give it a shot.”
She gets to her feet and steps back a few paces.
I hesitate, not sure how this will go over indoors, but I end up obeying and take the Vestige out of my bedside drawer, string it around my neck, and stand in the center of the room. Focusing my energy I manage to lift a few inches off the floor and feel the flaps open on my shoes. The energy escapes smoothly and I hold my hands out to steady myself. Then, when I release the energy, the flaps close and I return back to the floor.
“Wow,” I say. “That is amazing!”
“You’re not so bad yourself,” says Mae with a wink. “I see you’ve gotten much better at controlling your flying ability.”
“Yes, actually,” I say and walk over to my night stand and retrieve the visor. “I had a lot of help from this.” I click it on and show it to her. “I know you already saw it last week, but I did some tests and saw that it monitors the energy coming out of my hands and feet. I can control how much pressure I use, and have gotten pretty good at navigating myself around in the air because of it.”
“Not bad,” says Mae. “We make a pretty good team.” She sits on my bed and sets her bag in her lap. “Besides working on the shoes,” she goes on, rummaging through her bag until she takes out her phone. “I did some compiling of the research we did last week and managed to put together some theories when it comes to The Drone, or, if you like, our good friend Bill Flagrant.”
“Really?” I say, taking a seat beside her. She nods.
“Indeed. Take a look. I went back through your father’s notes and saw that while he didn’t spell it out completely, it’s clear that there’s a connection between himself and The Drone. Even when I read through the origin issues where The Drone is first introduced, it’s clear that there are undertones that Super Guy knows The Drone before he’s a super villain.”
She pulls up her own spreadsheet of notes and shows it to me. It has a list of all the pages of information my father wrote in his files, and then connects them all together. She has also made note of each issue number of the comic and typed out different bits of information that were revealed about The Drone in each.
“This is intense,” I say, scrolling through the information. “Where did you have the time to put all of this together?”
“Study hall,” she says simply. “So, the real question is this: Did your father completely make up The Drone, or is he based on Bill Flagrant? If he is based on Flagrant, how deep does their history go?”
I shrug.
“It couldn’t have gone too far because I never once heard my father mention Bill Flagrant.”
Mae takes back her phone and turns it off.
“Don’t be so quick to jump to conclusions,” she says.
I make a mental note not to.
Then I pick up the visor once more and turn it on.
“I’ll do my best,” I say. “But, I have been meaning to ask you what you make of this.”
I hand her the visor and tell her to put it on.
“Alright,” she says, securing the visor on her face. “What am I supposed to be seeing?”
We both get up off the bed and I stand in front of her.
“When you look at me, do you see anything? A glowing symbol with text?”
“Yeah,” she says. “I can see your name and your outline is glowing. Does this show people’s heat signatures or something?”
“I think it can sense energy,” I reply. “If you look downstairs do you see signatures for my grandparents?”
Mae glances around, her gaze aimed at the floor.
“I do,” she says. “Your grandmother is in the living room, and your grandfather is out in the garage working on his truck some more.” She looks back at me. “What’s so special about this other than that it can do this sort of thing?”
“Well,” I say, taking her by the arm. I guide her into the hallway and down to the spare bedroom. “I was experimenting with this thing the other night and saw a signature without a name inside this bedroom wall.”
We both stare at it. Mae’s mouth opens and she walks around the wall a few times, reaching out to feel it.
“Do
you see it?” I ask.
She nods.
“What is it?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. I thought it might have been a mouse or something, but if it hasn’t moved at all, that means it might be something stationary. I thought the visor could only detect living energy signatures. But, this one could be inanimate.”
Mae looks back at me and suddenly points at my chest.
“Whoa, hold on a second.”
She steps towards me and reaches for my neck.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
She suddenly reaches out and takes the chain around my neck, tugging the Vestige out from beneath my shirt.
“The Vestige,” she says. “It’s glowing like crazy when I look at it through the visor.”
She lowers the visor from her eyes and hands it to me.
“See?”
I try on the visor and look down at the Vestige in my hand. She’s right. It’s glowing just like a living person does. Still, there is no name on the signature. It’s just a bunch of x marks.
“Bizarre,” I say. Then I take the visor off and my eyes widen. “You don’t think that the shard of the Vestige is hidden inside this wall, do you?”
Mae is about to answer when suddenly we hear a scream come from downstairs.
We both stare at each other. The scream unmistakably came from my grandmother.
I throw the visor back on and look down at the floor.
The signature for my grandfather is still in the garage, though he’s now hurrying out the door and heading for the house. Down in the living room I can see my grandmother. However, there’s another signature down there and the name on it makes my blood run cold.
Bill Flagrant.
30
Hide
I hurry to the top of the stairs with Mae close behind me. As we get closer we can hear voices, but I strain to hear what’s being said. They are too far away to make out the actual words. Bill Flagrant is yelling at Grandma, demanding something. Grandma sounds terrified.
“We need to go do something!” Mae whispers in my ear.
I agree, but as we creep further down the stairs I peer around the corner and get a glimpse into the living room. Grandma is cornered against the far wall and Bill Flagrant is standing with his back to us, but I can clearly see him brandishing a gun - the same one he used at the publishing house.
It feels like I am paralyzed.
“Nobody caught him…” I mutter under my breath. He escaped the police after we flew away.
Mae grabs me by the shoulder and shakes me.
“Shaun!” she says. “You have to do something! You have powers, for goodness sake. Use them!”
The fear has settled into my stomach, making me feel sick. But, I know that Mae is right. I need courage.
I go to walk down the steps when suddenly I’m stopped by the sound of the front door opening. In walks Grandpa and he steps between us and the living room.
I was going to use my blasting powers before, but now I don’t have a clear shot. It’s too dangerous to even try maneuvering a ball of energy past Grandpa, so I stand down while Grandpa starts to confront Flagrant.
Mae and I listen intently as heated words are exchanged.
I can’t imagine what’s going through Grandpa’s mind right now - or even Grandma’s. I would be terrified if a random man came into my house and terrorized me with a gun. How did he even find me here, I wonder?
But, suddenly I hear Grandpa say something that I would have never expected.
“What are you doing here, Bill?”
I fall back a little on the stairs.
Bill? I think. He’s talking as if he knows Bill Flagrant.
Then another thought crosses my mind.
Maybe he does know the man. It isn’t something I would have guessed, since Mom didn’t know Flagrant at all. But, Grandpa confirms it by the way he’s speaking.
Flagrant turns and aims the gun at Grandpa’s chest, though he stands sideways so that he can keep an eye on both Grandpa and Grandma at the same time.
“Surprised to see me?” he says with a smile. “They let me out of prison early. On good behavior.”
“It looks like you’re keeping up with that standing,” says Grandpa, motioning to the gun. But, Flagrant holds the gun higher.
“Don’t try anything,” he says. “You know what I’ve come to get.”
Grandpa shakes his head.
“You’re not going to find it because the Vestige is long gone.”
Mae grips my arm tightly.
“The Vestige?” she whispers to me. “Your grandfather knows about the Vestige?”
I don’t say anything back. I’m too busy listening to what’s being said and trying to process it as quickly as possible.
“You’re lying to me,” says Flagrant. “The Vestige is here. I know it is because I can feel it. Turn it over to me now.”
Grandpa lets out a laugh.
“I’m telling you the truth,” he says. “The Vestige is not here. I haven’t seen it since Jeff was in high school. Whatever he did with it, it isn’t here.” He holds up a hand, slowly moving it towards the gun. “Come on, now. You don’t need that gun. Listen to me, Bill. You’re better than this. Don’t you want your freedom? Don’t you want to start over?”
“I am starting over,” says Flagrant, practically spitting the words at Grandpa. “I’m starting by taking what I should have been given twenty years ago. Now, either you hand it over willingly, or I will take it by force.”
Whatever Flagrant might be thinking, I know for a fact that Grandpa is telling the truth. He doesn’t know where the Vestige is because if he did know, he would have talked to me about it. I’m the only one in this house besides Mae who knows that the Vestige is hanging around my neck.
I need to do something.
I man up, put the visor on, and come the rest of the way down the stairs, announcing myself.
“Point that gun away from my grandparents,” I demand.
When Grandpa turns to me his eyes widen.
“Shaun?” he says. “Get out of here!”
“It’s okay, Grandpa,” I say, holding up my hands. “I’m armed.”
I flex my fingers in front of me and Flagrant gives me a wry smile.
“And here I thought I was going to have to work for it,” he says. “Instead you come right to me.”
“And you came right to me,” I say. “How did you find me?”
“I knew there were only two place you could be,” Flagrant replies. “Your mother’s house, or your grandparents’s house. Last time I checked, you haven’t lived at your mother’s house for weeks.”
My eyes widen.
“How did you know that?”
Flagrant scoffs at me.
“It’s amazing what constant use of the internet can do to dull the senses,” he says. “The first place I stopped when I was released from prison was the library. I had a lot of news to catch up on. Imagine my surprise when I run into you at the publishing house, complete with the Vestige. I would have completed my quest right then and there, but you knew how to fly.” He glares at me. “So, I went back to the news and found an article listing you as one of a handful of students who were suspended. From there I found your home address and paid your mother a visit.”
I practically yell at the man.
“If you did anything to hurt my mother -” I start, but Flagrant laughs.
“Don’t worry. She’s fine. I merely slipped in and out. No need to sound the alarm…until I have my powers back. By then I will be unstoppable. Now, hand me the Vestige and I will let you all live.”
He pulls back the hammer on the gun and aims it at Grandpa once more. Behind Flagrant, Grandma is crying silently, her hands gripped together tightly.
While Flagrant’s eyes are locked on me, I can see Grandpa moving his hands into place. Before I can stop him, he makes a grab for the gun and manages to wrap his hands around it.
“Shaun, duck!” he says, and
he tries to wrestle the gun from Flagrant.
I crouch to the ground just as the sound of a bullet being fired fills the living room, and then I hear a scream behind me.
“Mae!” I yell, turning to look back at the staircase.
There is a smoking bullet hole in the wall that Mae is hiding behind.
I’m torn. Do I check on Mae, or do I help Grandpa?
It’s killing me inside, but I turn back to help Grandpa. If we can stop Flagrant, then we can put an end to this once and for all.
However, when I go to help, I see Flagrant yank his gun out of Grandpa’s grasp, and he slashes the gun sideways. The handle of the gun strikes Grandpa in the side of the head and splits open his skin. Crimson blood begins to pour down the side of his face and he falls backwards, reaching up to the wound.
“Ed!” yells Grandma. She pushes past Flagrant to crouch beside Grandpa.
Flagrant doesn’t even notice. He stares me dead in the eye and glares.
“I heard a scream,” he says. “You’ve got a friend back there, don’t you?”
“If you hurt Mae…” I say.
Then I shoot a blast of energy at Flagrant. I don’t even care about doing damage to the house or being in an enclosed space. I need to put this guy down, right now.
The blast of energy zips through the air, making a screeching noise, and it strikes Flagrant in the shoulder. He cries out and his hand lets go of the gun. The energy pulls the gun backwards and it skitters under the couch.
Now that he’s unarmed, I go and make a dive for him. My arms catch him around the waist like a football player and I tackle him to the ground. It takes him a moment after being stunned by the energy before he truly puts up a fight. I almost thought it was going to be an easy takedown.
But, Flagrant starts to wrestle me back and I realize quickly that he is much stronger at hand-to-hand than he looks.
I have him by the wrists, pinning him down, but he is able to lift his arms back up and shoves me backwards. I am only crouching on my toes, so I lose my balance and fall on my back.
Aberrant Trilogy 1: Super Charged Page 14