“What people? Who were they?” Alicia asked.
“They were goons for that anti-metahuman alliance thing. Harrison’s goons. About half of them must have been wearing those weird helmets, but the rest of them were easy enough to read. They were hunting us. Harrison must have a way to track us. How is he doing it?”
Alicia thought on that, then replied, “Well how did you find me? With your voodoo powers, that’s how. Same with him, I’m sure.“
Frustration swelled in my chest like heartburn. How can we hope to rescue Kate when Harrison seems to anticipate my every move? Thoughts of giving up were so tempting at that moment. We tried, right? We gave it a shot. No one could blame us if we threw in the towel. It would be insane to go back there. Right?
When the adrenaline wore off I began to yawn, which made Alicia yawn and stretch in sympathetic response. When we re-entered the bridge tunnel the bright lights were welcome, but didn’t quite dispel my fatigue.
In fact, I was so tired that at first I hardly noticed the man standing in the middle of the tunnel far ahead of me, wearing an all too familiar black and gray camouflage jumpsuit. My foot slammed on the brake, sending the rear of the car skidding forward to the right. Flooding out my senses I became aware of the ambush, the Hummer-like trucks blocking the entrance and exit, and the men with guns. Lots of them. This was very, very bad.
“How the hell did they get here so quickly?” I asked.
“It was a setup, Adam. Who knows, maybe they are psychic,” Alicia answered with the deadpan delivery she does so well. “Psionic…” I muttered, then threw open my door and crawled out on my hands and knees, with Alicia right behind. Immediately the tunnel erupted with automatic gunfire, which was deafening in the enclosed space. Bullets thudded against the open car door. I refocused the light to bend around us as we lunged to the side, and we disappeared.
Two more soldiers then joined in, bullets flying everywhere. Along with the light I tried to bend the path of the bullets to curve around us. It would not be long before the whole gang arrived. We crept along the edge of the tunnel toward our attackers, who were firing bursts down the length of the tunnel. They stopped for a moment, then pulled small gas masks over their heads before hurling canisters into the confined space. Thick, yellow smoke began pouring out of the canisters.
Leaving Alicia behind, I dropped my invisibility and sprinted toward the gunmen, accelerating my nervous system and my body to its limits. The world slowed down around me enough to see the flying bullets spin. This was the first test of my new physique, and I pushed it hard for speed. Bullets glided all around me in deadly precision and for the first time I was almost moving as fast as they were. Alicia and the soldiers looked eerily stationary, like wax statues.
The first soldier to see me was a stocky blond woman with a scar on her cheek. Her pupils widened at the sight of me materializing out of thin air. What did I look like to her, moving that fast? Although her body moved so slowly that it looked frozen, her thought processes roared to life. She decided to shoot at me before she even realized who or what I was. In her mind she began shouting to her companions, but the only visible sign of it was a slight parting of her lips. All three rifles continued to fire and I pushed even harder, ducking under the steady flow of bullets emerging from the barrels. I spread my arms wide and grabbed the pant legs of the outer two men. My head and shoulders barreled into the legs of the woman, which responded with a sickeningly slow series of cracks. At that speed the horrible sound seemed to stretch out forever, sounding like a giant tree limb that had grown too heavy, slowly splintering away from its source. Two wrenching pops emanated from the hips of the men. There were no screams, no cries of agony as their brains struggled to cope with the onslaught of trauma messages from their nerves. I allowed my perceptions to drift back to normal speed, and was assaulted by terrible screams and the much worse empathic waves of pain. The suffering that I had caused rolled over me and through me. Oh, the pain. This is why I hate violence. The feeling overpowered me, erasing me, and it was all I could do not to cry out. Maybe I actually did scream, since Alicia ran up and slapped me so hard that I saw stars. Not an expression, by the way. Those little swirling specks of light in my vision were real, and by God, they looked like stars.
At least it brought me back to reality. Alicia pulled the assault rifle off of one moaning soldier, then kicked him hard in the face. The other man pulled a handgun and fired wide before I could react but Alicia dropped to one knee and shot him with a three-round burst. He slumped to the ground and to my horror I could feel his life departing from his body. It felt wrong the way that it feels on an airplane when the altitude sharply plummets. His last thoughts were of Erica, the stocky blond soldier. He loved her, but never had the courage to ask her out. Now he never would. Alicia handed me a gasmask and frowned when she saw the look on my face. “I’m okay,” I rasped, sounding weak and asthmatic. The noxious gas had finally reached us and we struggled to put on the masks in time. My eyes and throat burned, but by the time the mask was on tight I could still see and breathe. We climbed into their truck and there was no ignition key, just a push button, so I pushed it. The engine roared to life and I put it into gear then floored the accelerator, driving up the rise of the tunnel as fast as it would go.
The gunshots started out in sporadic bursts, but when we burst free from the toxic smoke, the bullets pelted the truck like a hailstorm from hell.
Alicia curled herself up far under the seat when a spray of bullets put a half dozen holes in the windshield. I felt a couple of hard impacts in my chest and shoulder, which must have caused me to jerk the steering wheel because the truck swerved and seemed on the verge of rolling. I just barely recovered from the skid and continued barreling toward the exit. Seconds before impact we could see the roadblock of about six more Hummers. Steadying my breathing, I added psychokinetic power to the momentum of the truck just before it slammed into the roadblock. The impact was not as loud as I expected, but my upper body slammed painfully into the steering wheel. Alicia let out a scream, but in the heat of the moment I didn’t know how badly she was hurt. For some reason my shirt was soaking wet, and two holes in it oozed blood. Damn. That can’t be good.
“Alicia, are you okay?” I asked in a panic and looked over to see her smash the side window with the butt of her assault rifle and lean out the windows with her whole upper body to aim the rifle at our pursuers. Keeping my left hand on the steering wheel, I extended my right arm to grab the top of her jeans and keep her from falling out of the speeding vehicle. She didn’t seem to notice as she fired repeatedly, and I could hear that at least one of the Hummers skidded and crashed behind us.
“Oh yeah,” Alicia gloated, “that’s what I’m talking about!”
I could not suppress a smile, which soon turned into giddy, maniacal laughter. For no reason at all I was positively elated, maybe the happiest I had ever been. It was a vicious and vengeful kind of joy. Suddenly I wanted nothing more than to defeat them all, right here and right now. They threatened me and mine, and it was time to take the offensive. I slammed on the brakes and swung the truck around into a U-turn.
“What are you doing?” Alicia cried as she slid back into her seat.
Barely able to speak through the giggling I responded, “Payback. You drive.”
With more agility than I ought to have, I pulled myself out the window far enough to sit on the open frame. Alicia spat out a string of expletives as she scooted over to take control of the car.
Our vehicle was descending a hill facing the pursuers head-on, so from my new vantage point it was clear that there were still five trucks coming at top speed. I couldn’t have been more pleased.
“This little piggy went to market,” I screamed as I extended my mind into the cab of the first pursuer and used an image of invisible hands to pull the wheel out of the driver’s hands and spinning to the right. The big SUV careened off into a ditch as I continued, ”This little piggy stayed home. This little piggy
had roast beef, but this little piggy had none.” With each verse of the stupid rhyme, each truck was thrown off the highway as easily as the first, but the last truck gunned its engine forward toward us in a kamikaze game of chicken. It was three seconds to impact before I shrieked, “And this little piggy went wee, wee, wee all the way home!!!!!” and threw my hands to the sky. Just before the imminent collision the truck flipped into the air, just as if Godzilla had given it a good kick. It sailed over our heads and smashed into the asphalt behind us. I was still laughing and shrieking when the bridge tunnel came back into sight, this time lit up with the flashing blue and red lights of emergency vehicles. That cured me of my manic state and snapped me back to reality. Alicia swung the truck around in a tight U-turn. We drove on without talking, the adrenaline dissipating. She took one random turn after the other, leaving behind the more populated areas for what passes for rural in this part of Virginia. We approached a small covered bridge constructed from thick wooden beams, which ran over a small creek. As soon as we were past the bridge, Alicia swung the truck sharply to the right into a dense sea of tall, reedy cattails.
She got out without looking back and disappeared into the cattails. Confused, I got out of the car to follow her, each step sinking a bit into the soft muddy earth. Not wanting to call attention to us, I didn’t call out, but simply followed Alicia through the marsh and into the adjacent forest.
After a few minutes, a blanket of weariness settled over me and I fought the irrational urge to just lie down and fall asleep. Additionally, my familiar headache returned in full force, one of the worst so far. At a small, natural clearing, which allowed in a bit more of the early sunrise, Alicia fell in a heap. My pain and weariness vanishing, I rushed to help her, only to find her on her knees, face down in a small spring, slurping noisily. I was about to tease her about it when a thought struck me; I made her like this when I replaced her drug addiction with a need for water. Lots of it, apparently.
The clear water trickled out from the earth between some rocks and ran downhill towards the larger creek that we had just passed. It seemed like a natural source of water, but for all I knew it sprang from a broken sewer pipe underground. I knelt down beside her, scooped the water to my mouth and took a hesitant sip. It tasted clean enough, despite a slight metallic aftertaste. After a few minutes Alicia took a moment to catch her breath and looked at me hard. “We are done,” she said, her voice shaking, still out of breath. ”Done doing things your way. What the hell was that back there? You completely lost it.”
“I…don’t know,“ I stammered, “It just happened. I went a little…” Crazy was the first word to come to mind, but there was no way I would admit to that. “…out of control. It seems to me like a reasonable reaction, given what we just went through. Besides,” I added with a grin, “It was fun.”
“You see,” Alicia replied, “That’s exactly what I’m talking about. You’re reckless and impulsive. Combine that with those talents of yours, and that makes you dangerous, Adam—practically a menace to society. You’re like Superman flying around Metropolis while jacked up on Ritalin. Scary.”
Anticipating an accusation of insanity coming on, I retorted, “We’re still alive, aren’t we?”
With a sigh, Alicia calmly answered, “Yes, but answer me this: How did they know we’d be crossing the tunnel at that moment?”
“Uh…”
“And what does this Harrison person have against Kate and her partners?”
“Well, um…”
“And now that he’s captured them, what does he plan to do with them? What is this ‘Alliance for Metahuman Threat Management’ anyway? And what does that have to do with the Program, of which Harrison was the prize specimen and Stuart the rising star? And who is the girl that Stuart called a slut, that made Harrison so angry? And most importantly, what the hell is going on with you, flipping big cars around with your mind? Are you really like Stuart and Kate? Because if you asked me, it seems like you’re a lot more like Harrison.”
That stung. Hard. My first impulse was to lash out in anger. I swallowed it, hard. Frowning with frustration, I had no answers for her, none at all.
Taking on a softer tone, Alicia took my hand and continued, “Adam, I’m sorry for being so hard on you. You’re doing the best you can. I understand. So here is what we do. First, I wipe down and get rid of this machine gun. Then we investigate. We find out the answers to these questions, one by one. We keep around other people as much as possible, prevent Harrison from mounting a full-scale ambush like in the tunnel. Mainly, though, you need to shake off your guilt and think clearly about this. Kate had her troubles long before you came along, so stop blaming yourself.”
In the moonlight, her amber eyes gleamed dark and intense, and I could not help but admire this incredible person formerly trapped under the yoke of her addiction. I held her gaze as I stepped toward her. Her full lips parted as her eyes drifted down to my mouth. My chest pressed against hers as I leaned in to kiss her, and her lips just barely brushed against mine when she jerked back. She lightly swiped her fingertips along my chest, then retracted them. They were shiny with dark blood. She leaned in and got a better look at my injuries. “Oh my God, Adam, you were shot!”
“Did I forget to mention it?”
I gently touched the bullet hole in my shoulder and something solid brushed against my fingertips. I probed a bit, which hurts, by the way, and pulled the foreign object out of me. It was a badly deformed bullet that somehow lodged underneath my skin without going much deeper. The wound in my chest was the same, maybe even more superficial. Not as bulletproof as I would like to be, but I’ll take it. Lots of bruising, though. “I’ll be fine.”
Alicia retorted, “I’ll be the judge of that. Take off your shirt and lets take a look at it.”
Grinning, I replied, “I thought you’d never ask.” I removed my bloodied shirt and handed it to her. She knelt down to rinse it in the cool stream. Using my shirt as a washcloth, Alicia then began to gently clean the blood off of my chest. Then she used her long, miraculously intact fingernails to extract the remaining bullets. Wow, did it hurt. Just when I thought it would never end, she was wiping me down again.
“The bullets are out, but you need stitches or something. The bleeding hasn’t stopped.”
“Don’t worry about that. If we rest here for a while then I’ll be fine. So tell me, boss,” I asked softly, “where do we start our investigation?”
Alicia looked up and flashed a wicked smile, “Where every story starts, silly boy. At the beginning.”
“Okay,” I said, “I don’t get it.”
“It’s simple,” Alicia explained patiently, “When you told me what happened at Stuart’s house, what were you and Kate about to do?”
I thought back then answered, “We were going to try to contact the doctor who was once in charge of the program, Dr. Kildare.”
“And did you ever find out where he lived?”
“Yes, Kate looked it up on her phone. Ocean View something or other. Back in Norfolk.”
“Then that’s where we’ll go first thing in the morning. Now you rest up.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Remote viewing is not like GPS. If Harrison had been tracking us using remote viewing, he would be relying on external cues such as landmarks and street signs to figure out exactly where to find us. So long as we stayed in the woods, he would have no way to know in which forest we were hiding. This was what I told myself while Alicia took her time cleaning the blood off of me. I settled down on the ground seated in lotus position, and allowed myself to become fully aware of my body. It always fills me with awe to experience the miraculous collaboration of cells genetically programmed to keep the complex system of my body alive and well. Deep in my chest wounds, platoons of white blood cells battled bacterial invaders. The bacteria multiplied faster than my overwhelmed immune system could repel. Usually the inner workings of the body were best left to their own devices, but sometimes they benefited
from a helping hand. Settling deep into my trance, I connected to the crude bacterial life forms. Single-celled organisms have no minds to control by most definitions. There are no thoughts to change. However, they do have something that I can use. They have purpose. They are motivated to survive. Touching upon every member of the infectious clan, I latched upon their sense of purpose…and crushed it. My immune system rallied against the now helpless invaders.
I meditated on the healing processes of my body for so long that by the time my eyes opened it was sunrise. Alicia slept curled on her side with her head on my lap, breathing softly. The peaceful moment filled my heart with a serenity that I had never known before. After a long series of perfect moments, Alicia rolled onto her back, arching it into a stretch. Her eyes opened and looked into mine, pleased, then suddenly troubled. She sat up, then turned to me with that questioning look that a child gives her father when she needs his forgiveness.
“Adam, are you sure that I actually killed that soldier? Maybe he survived.”
Stroking her hair, I answered, “You did what you had to do to. Those guys were trying to kill us.”
“It was so easy, Adam. That is what scares me. I didn’t think twice about it. It didn’t seem to bother me at all until just now.”
Now it was my turn to feel guilty.
“Alicia, you didn’t ask for any of this to happen. I’m the one who brought you into this. It’s my fault that you were put in that position.”
With a flash of anger in her eyes, she replied, “No. Stop that. You blame yourself for everything. That’s such a load of bull. You’re not responsible for the things that I do, ever. Got it? It’s pathetic to hear you carrying on like that. You were roped into this just like me. If you want to blame someone, blame Kate.”
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