“So what is this brilliant plan, Amber?” Quint asked as he drove.
“It was actually my dad’s plan all along,” Amber said, needing to give credit where it was due. “He created a virus. That SubPre group does have a website. They have fans. They are not shy about what they are doing. Probably because they are dismissed a lot as whackos and kooks and conspiracy theorists. They have a lot of pro-big-government stuff on their website. They think everyone under the sun is going to try to take down the government or kill the president or whatever. Most of what I read looked like a bunch of idiocy. But there’s lots of idiots in this world who believe that kind of stuff.”
Quint nodded. “Very true.”
“So I’m hoping to be able to get into the mainframe of the conspiracy website and implant a virus.”
“Why didn’t you do that from your dad’s computer? I know he had to have some pretty sophisticated internet capabilities.”
She shook her head. “I want to install it on the main headquarters computer.”
“But how do you know where that will be?”
“From what I read, the family that your parents were talking about are a part of that group. I think they are actually members of the SubPre group that infiltrated the Parents Coalition, and they discovered what my parents were doing. They must have. They must have talked to my parents and my parents trusted them.”
“Makes you wish your parents could have had your abilities just for a time, doesn’t it?”
Amber nodded sadly. “It sure does.”
“Well, we are about to take vengeance on these people. We don’t have to kill them. We just have to stop them. They might even rebuild their website. But it won’t be for a while. And then maybe we’ll have time to fight back even more.”
“Yes. I sure do hope so.”
“Do you think you will ever want to get rid of your abilities? Like your parents were working on that serum for?”
Amber thought about it for a moment. “No. At one point, I really would have wanted to be without it. But I just need to learn to control it. Once I’m at that point, I will be able to use it for my good. I’ll know who to trust and who not to trust. I’ll know who’s being genuine and who isn’t.”
“You’ll never get taken advantage of again.”
“That’s right.”
“I definitely don’t want to get rid of my power. I may only be able to throw a blanket over someone to protect them from emotional pain, and I can block my senses so that I don’t have to feel anything, but I want to keep my power. I like it.”
“I like it, too. I’m glad you are with me.”
He smiled at her. “Me too. It’s almost like we were meant to be together. I mean, you’re so overly sensitive, and I can completely block it all out. How wild that we’re complete opposites.”
She gave him a warm returning grin. “Yeah.”
He reached across the seat and took her hand, squeezing it tightly. “We oughta go out after this.”
She laughed softly. “I would love to go out with you, Quint.”
He grinned at her.
“So when we find this house, what are we gonna do?”
“Let’s decide when we get there. From what I read of my dad’s notes, I don’t think someone in the SubPre group talked to them. I think they are the SubPre group, or at least they were already members. I think their home is the headquarters.”
He nodded. “Okay, I’ve got an idea.”
When they were close to the house, Quint parked the car down the street. They both got out, and Amber looked at him questioningly. He leaned close to her and murmured, “Okay, it’s pretty early in the morning, but they might have already gone out to work. If these people are here, we’ll tell them we have a car problem and ask to use the phone.”
She shook her head. “No teenager today is not going to have a cell phone, Quint. We gotta think of something else.”
“Cell phone dead. We fell asleep parking and don’t have a car charger. Kids these days are bound not to have a car charger, right?”
Amber laughed softly as they walked to the house down the street. The lights were all off and there seemed to be no movement. The garage door was closed, and there was no car in the driveway or parked on the street.
“It doesn’t look like anyone’s here.” She whispered. “And if the kid is, doesn’t that mean he can read our minds?”
“He won’t read mine,” Quint responded. And I’ll block him from reading yours.”
“Can you do that?”
“I think so.”
“You think so?”
He looked at her. “I’ve never had to do that before, Amber. I think so.”
She fell quiet. He took her hand again, and they moved quietly down the street, going up the walk to the house in silence.
Before he knocked, Amber stopped his hand. Without a word, she reached down and turned the knob. The door was unlocked. Quint gave her a shocked look.
“How did you know it was going to be unlocked?” He asked incredulously.
She shook her head. “I didn’t.”
He widened his brown eyes and shook his head in response. He stopped her from going in and poked his head through the door. “Hello?” he said in a very soft voice. When he got no response, the two of them slipped in, hoping no neighbors were watching.
The house was quiet. Amber took the time to wonder what day job could take the parents away from their precious conspiracies the day after they had murdered two people. She and Quint roamed around, trying to find the room with the main computers.
“You don’t think it’s all on some laptop, do you? They probably carry that around with them everywhere they go.”
“No,” Amber said, unconvincingly. “No way. That’s not gonna happen.”
They didn’t see anything on the bottom floor and slowly took the stairs up to the second floor. They stopped abruptly when they heard a sound coming from one of the rooms. They both pressed against the wall behind them for a moment and then took the remaining carpeted stairs in a hurry, sliding against the wall to get closer to the door of the room the noise came from.
It sounded like sniffling as if someone had a cold. The door was slightly cracked. Amber peered through to see a young man sitting on the edge of a big bed. She touched the door with her hand, ignoring Quint’s terrified expression and his gestures for her to stop. She pushed the door open.
The young man didn’t look up. His parents were laying in the bed motionless, and he was holding his mother’s hand to his chest.
“Zach?” Amber said quietly.
The boy sniffed but still didn’t look up.
“I didn’t want them to kill your parents, Amber.” He said, his voice cracking. He cleared his throat and finally looked up, and she and Quint came in the room. “I really didn’t.”
Quint moved quickly to the bed and checked the parents for pulses, but they were obviously gone. “What happened here?” He asked, a stunned expression on his face.
Zach shook his head, directing his words to Amber. “When they…came home yesterday, they couldn’t hide…what they’d done from me. I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t know what they were doing. I’ve been cursed. I know you know about me. I could hear you two as soon as you parked the car down the street.”
“But I…”
“No, you can’t block out a mind reader, Quint.”
Quint looked dismayed and gave Amber a sorrowful look. She shook her head at him.
Zach continued to look at Amber. “You have the serum, Amber. Please let me use it. I don’t want to do this anymore. I can’t control it. I don’t want to hear other people’s thoughts. I don’t want to read minds. Please help me, Amber. I know you have the serum on you. I know you brought it with you in case you could inject me without me knowing it. Please. Please help me.”
“I don’t know if it will work.” Amber sat across from him, ignoring the fact that she was sitting next to the dead murderer of her parents. “What if it harms you?
What if it kills you?”
Zach squeezed his mother’s hand to his chest. “I don’t care. I really don’t care anymore, Amber. I’m all alone now. I’ve killed my parents. I’ll go to jail anyway.” He nodded with his head to the computer desk behind him. “That’s the computer. I’ve set it up so you can put the virus on there and destroy my parents’ files. The whole system. I don’t care if it gets into other people’s computers. If they’ve downloaded stuff from my parents’ website, it serves them right.”
Amber pulled the flash drive from her pocket and handed it over the dead people to Quint, who was staring at them both in disbelief. He took it from her and moved to the computer without another word.
She pulled a covered syringe from her jacket pocket and showed it to Zach. “Are you sure?”
Zach looked at it, horrified but determined. He nodded and began to roll up his sleeve.
“I hope it works.” He said.
“I hope it doesn’t kill you,” Amber responded. She injected the serum directly into his vein. After only a few seconds, he fell over onto the legs of his parents, unconscious. Quint looked back at them.
“Is he dead?” he asked.
She shook her head, stood up and went to stand next to him with one hand on his shoulder, staring at the computer screen. “No. I mixed the serum with a knock-out drug. He will be unconscious until we leave.”
“Do you want to call the cops when we leave?”
She shook her head again. “Let’s let him deal with this. The cops will catch up after a while anyway. Is the virus in?”
“Yep.”
She leaned down and put her arms around his shoulders, pressing her cheek against his. He lifted one hand and squeezed her arm.
“I’m so glad to have you, Quint.”
“Let’s get out of here, babe.”
Amber and Quint left the house in silence, hand in hand. They walked back to the car, at peace, knowing they would never be alone again.
*****
THE END
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