Fire and Thunder

by Bowen Greenwood

  Before he could connect, Sebastian appeared again. He grabbed Connor’s back leg and pulled him to the ground.

  Connor grunted as he hit the hard asphalt, but then sprang back to his feet and threw a backfist at his old enemy. Sebastian blocked it.

  The two traded punches as Fireball came around the left to attack Connor from the rear. He got a heel kick in the gut for his trouble. The man doubled over in pain, temporarily out of the fight.

  No sooner had his foot returned to the ground than Sebastian disappeared again. Even as Connor scanned the area frantically, the new guy recovered and sent another sizzling orb of flame about the size of a basketball right at his head. Connor ducked down into a crouch and felt a few ends of his hair sizzle as it went overhead.

  Connor jumped at him to kick him in the ribs, taking the wind out of him.

  That’s when Sebastian reappeared behind him. He wrapped his arm around Connor’s throat.

  Connor felt the instant panic that comes from having the windpipe compressed. He and Sebastian had figured this out the first time they fought. You couldn’t hurt Connor by shooting him or hitting him, but you could still do damage without breaking the skin: joint locks and pressure points on muscles were vulnerabilities. It was possible to break his bones. There were a lot of ways to cause pain to the human body without breaking the skin.

  Choke holds, for example, worked.

  Keeping a level head while he couldn’t breathe required every drop of Connor’s self-control. But he had trained for this; he knew how to deal with it.

  He picked up his right foot as high as he could, then shifted it slightly back until it came into contact with Sebastian’s lower leg. He shoved his foot down as hard as he could, raking the heel of his shoe over his opponent’s shin.

  Sebastian let him go and cried out in pain. Connor turned to face him but once again, Sebastian disappeared.

  This time, though, he made a noise. Connor’s head whipped to the left, trying to pinpoint Sebastian as the latter shouted, “Now, Drake!”

  The young man who called down fire stood on his feet once again. He extended his hand in Connor’s direction.

  A ball of fire the size of a melon flew from the man’s hand right at Connor. It hit him in the chest, and his cotton shirt instantly caught fire. His chest hair sizzled away at once, and all the nerve endings in his upper body shrieked in pain.

  Connor cried out at the intense burning agony. Anguish filled up his entire consciousness. He began to slap his chest and stomach, trying to put out the fire. The old grade school advice about stop, drop, and roll came into his head. Connor threw himself to the ground. He rolled around wildly as the fire burned.

  Sebastian had found yet another way to hurt someone without having to actually penetrate the skin.

  Less than a second later, a girl materialized out of thin air. Even on fire, Connor’s eyes still went instinctively to her. In an instant, he took in the picture of glowing red hair, emerald eyes, and a tiny nose and felt the slightest easing of his pain that came from seeing a familiar face that could help.

  Anna — his friend who could teleport — picked a very timely moment to exercise her gift.

  She laid her hands on Connor’s shoulders and said, “Lord–”

  Before she could say anything else, another hand came down on Connor. For the tiniest moment, Connor’s muscles tensed, thinking it was Sebastian. But he had forgotten all about the young woman he’d saved from the mugging.

  Now, she put her hands on him and cried out, “Are you OK? He’s burned bad! Someone call 911!”

  Anna looked uncertain. She glanced back and forth between the stranger and Connor. Sebastian could reappear at any moment.

  “Take her with us and let’s get out of here,” Connor got out through clenched teeth.

  “Lord,” the girl began again. “We’d really like to be back in our headquarters.”

  They winked away without a trace.

  Chapter 3

  Maven Flake’s work clothes fit poorly. Her boxy, square-ish body defied typical conventions of beauty. The mind inside it, though, crackled with energy at the start of another work day. She occupied the most interesting post in federal law enforcement, and it left her very little time to care about looks.

  Once a Special Agent in Charge in a field office for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, she’d filed the first reports about possible unexplainable phenomena happening among young people. Initially, it drew her scorn from the higher ups; however, when it became obvious that something really was happening, that report made her seem like an expert. She began to draw the assignments to investigate new occurrences. When the Department of Homeland Security created a new agency to handle the situation, she received a promotion and a new title: Director of the Abnormal Abilities Agency (AAA).

  Now, she breezed past the office coffee machine without a glance. Flake objected to artificial stimulants of any kind. The sweat of her morning free-weight workout still lingered on her brow; that fired up her metabolism more than enough to compensate for the lack of coffee. Flake bounced on the balls of her feet as she walked to her desk, wide awake and ready to face a new day.

  Which was fortunate because one of her administrators waited outside the office, nervously tapping his foot.

  “Problem, Jason?” she asked, waving for him to follow her as she walked past him to her desk.

  “Agent Jackson hasn’t checked in,” he replied. “She was on watch last night and caught a sniff of that possible new case we’ve been tracking — the radioactive one. I sent her to investigate because we finally found a real location. She hasn’t checked in since I sent her.”

  Flake lifted an eyebrow. “You sent the rookie after the most important new case we’ve ever had?”

  “Well, she was available. All the other agents—”

  “There is a human nuclear bomb walking around Las Vegas! They’re teenagers, Mason! These abilities almost always occur in teenagers. So we’ve got some poor kid whose life is nothing but a bundle of hormones and emotions and all of a sudden he’s got the ability to go up in a mushroom cloud out there? You cannot send the bloody rookie!”

  “She’s the one who was recommended to us by the CIA who wanted to work in finding evidence of nuclear treaty violations. She has a degree in physics. She’s qualified.”

  “Don’t argue with me; you’ll spoil my morning. You should have sent someone with experience. You should have gone yourself.”

  “Look, we don’t even know this is a kid with abnormal abilities. It could be a new shipment of radioactive dye for medical testing. All we know is the satellite radiation sensors went off, and that they point to an area on the strip. It could be innocent or it could be ordinary old-fashioned terrorists. It doesn’t have to be a new kid with abnormal abilities.”

  “And she hasn’t checked in since you sent her out?” Flake shot back with a raised eyebrow.

  “No.”

  “That’s some awful dangerous radioactive dye she got a hold of there, Jason. I warned you before I left last night: This is the most dangerous case the AAA has ever faced. I don’t know if it’s ‘just’ an old-fashioned nuclear bomb or if it’s another teenager with abnormal abilities, but this time nuclear. Either way, two million people could be incinerated at any moment, and now we’ve got an agent missing on the scene. Call people in from other assignments. We need to go find her.”

  ***

  They reappeared not even a second later but in a completely different location. Before anyone could do anything, the red-haired girl who teleported them ran off shouting, “Renee!” at the top of her lungs.

  They materialized in a luxuriant conference room with floor-to-ceiling glass windows looking out over the city of Las Vegas. A long table behind them dominated the room, hewn out of dark wood and gleaming with polish. Swivel chairs of rich dark leather nestled around it. The marble floor looked and felt almost like glass. The same wood as the table also paneled the walls.

&nbs
p; Connor pushed some chairs out of the way as he collapsed backward until his rear came to rest on the table. He rested there, panting, eyes watering with the pain. The muscles of his face ached from clenching his jaw to keep from screaming. The fire was out, but the pain of his burned skin felt worse, not better.

  The young woman he had saved from the mugging staggered. She blinked, blinked again, and almost fell down. She put a hand out looking for something on which to prop herself up. She almost looked at Connor, but then squeezed her eyes shut and looked away.

  He saw the motion and wondered whether he could bear the sight of what his body might look like. He squeezed his eyes shut to avoid looking. Suffering stretched his entire consciousness already; he didn’t think he could stand to add anything more to it. Somehow, it seemed like actually seeing the injury would make it worse.

  And then, in an instant, the suffering evaporated.

  Where fire and torment had overwhelmed his mind, now there was a feeling like lying on a beach where the water was a degree or two cooler than the air, and letting the tide wash over him. The sensation came with emotions and thoughts as well: certainty that he was in good hands, peace like one feels when floating down a slow river in an inner tube, and an unmistakable consciousness that he was safe.

  He was Healed.

  He experienced this once before, when he’d been hurt too badly to carry on in a fight. Thus, when he opened his eyes, it surprised him not at all to see Renee Wales standing in front of him.

  Her disheveled morning hair was red but slightly lighter than her sister’s. Connor knew her to be a few years older than he and Anna. A pastel T-shirt and sweats decorated her slender frame, and wire-rimmed glasses hung askew on her nose.

  She hugged Connor and asked, “Everything better?”

  Renee’s Gift was healing. The most common miracle in the New Testament, healing was something Jesus did over and over. Consequently, the Wales family had been perfectly comfortable with her Gift. Anna’s had been a little harder to take.

  Many uses had bred familiarity in Renee. When Connor nodded that he was OK, she eased into a chair at the table as if nothing had happened. Even having experienced it once before, though, Connor couldn’t be quite as calm as she. He stood there with his jaw hanging down, savoring the feeling of his skin being completely restored.

  For a moment, he stared at Renee in awe before remembering they had a guest.

  The newcomer’s delicate jawline and high cheekbones called attention to her big, round eyes – although that might have been simply the effect of her staring in wonder at her surroundings. A small bun pulled her black hair tight against her scalp. She wore a crisp, clean, white, button-down shirt, dark gray dress slacks, and a suit jacket. Between the professional clothes and her face, she gave the appearance of having five years or so on Connor.

  “What’s going on here? Where am I?”

  Another man stepped into the room through the heavy double doors. The lines on his face placed him at about 50 years old, and gray streaks shot through his black hair. He wore a perfect navy blue suit: solid-colored, double-breasted, and with a gleaming pink tie right in the middle. All this despite the fact it was barely dawn.

  “Welcome,” the older man said. “I’m Ethan Moses, and you’re in my home. Our home. This is the Tower of the Son, and we’re the Sons of Thunder.”

  A broad smile spread across Connor’s face, and he stepped over to hug Mr. Moses. The older man returned the embrace, then turned and did the same for the red-haired girl.

  “Every time any of you go out, I worry until you come back. I’m so glad to see you safe.”

  Anna “tsked” at him and said, “You know what it says about worrying.”

  The newcomer asked, “Seriously. None of that made any sense to me. Sons of who? Tower of Sunlight? If somebody doesn’t tell me what’s going on, I’ll freak out.”

  Connor said, “You saw how we got here. We were in the parking garage at the old Star of Fortune casino and then boom, we’re here. Well, that explains who we are, really. Anna, Ethan, Renee, and I have gifts. God gives us the ability to do special things. We’re not sure how many people are out there like us, but we’re trying to find them all.

  “When Mr. Moses says Sons of Thunder, that’s what we call ourselves. We took the name from the Bible. A couple of the Disciples once wanted to call down fire from the sky, and Jesus called them Sons of Thunder. We figured it was a pretty good comparison to the things we’re learning how to do.”

  “Wait, are you saying those things I saw in the parking garage, like fireballs, and you and I just disappearing from one place and appearing in another – are you saying those are like miracles or something?”

  Connor nodded and said, “The Bible’s filled with stuff like that. Things like walking on water and the dead coming back to life and more. God did those things once. He can do it again.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Why not?”

  The woman said, “My dad’s a preacher. I’ve gone to his church pretty much every Sunday of my life. I’ve been saved since I turned 16, and I’ve never seen anything like that. Nothing.”

  “Look, I didn’t believe it either at first. Heck, until about a month ago, I didn’t even go to church except maybe at Christmas. Then I walked out into a place people were shooting and saw the bullets hitting me and falling to the ground. You saw that this morning, too.”

  The woman said, “I’m not denying I saw it. I saw fireballs and teleporting, and you get shot without getting hurt, but I’m not ready to say it came from God yet.”

  ***

  The newcomer watched as other young people straggled into the conference room. Of them all, only the one in the double-breasted suit with the pink tie — Moses, she thought his name was — was older than their early 20’s. As the clock rolled over to six in the morning, she noticed a stocky young man with light brown hair. He went to the far end of the table and sat away from everyone else.

  She thought about going over to sit next to him; he looked like he could use someone to talk to.

  Before she could, a waiter and waitress in elegant black and white formal attire brought up stainless steel carafes of coffee, plates of scrambled eggs and bacon, and the rest of a very generous breakfast.

  Ethan Moses sat at the head of the table, and Connor took the chair to his right. The teleporting girl sat across from him. A few other young people came in and sat down. Moses prayed, and then they all dug into the food.

  The two at the head of the table traded a significant glance. She wondered what they were communicating to each other, but there was no way to know.

  The older one spoke. “I told Connor last night: God gave me a prophecy while we were sleeping. We had to find a woman named Terri Jackson. Connor and Anna went out to do that this morning. The Legion was there, and Connor got into a bit of a fight, but Renee healed him.”

  Ripples of curiosity spread through the rest of the group. Before any of them could swallow their food and ask for more information, he looked directly at the newcomer and went on.

  “Why don’t you introduce yourself to the group?”

  She gave her name: Terri Jackson. She was 23. She skimmed over what she’d been doing in that parking lot in the early hours of the morning and went straight to repeating the story of being confronted by a man with a gun and meeting Connor and Anna.

  “We’re delighted you’re here, Ms. Jackson,” Moses said. “Thank you for joining us. I think you already know Connor and Anna. Let me introduce everyone else.”

  Names like Kila and Spark went in her ears and came right back out. Terri had a hard time keeping up, and a lot of them weren’t proper names anyway, like Pitch.

  “Some time ago, I realized something unusual. I began to have visions, and they always came true.” Moses addressed the whole group, rather than just Terri, but it was obvious he spoke mostly for her benefit.

  He went on, “Not long after that, I met the younger Ms.
Wales. She told a tale even more unusual than mine: when she prayed, she moved from place to place instantaneously — she could teleport. After the two of us teamed up, God led us to Connor and the trend of unusual abilities continued: his skin stopped bullets.

  “The government perceives our abilities as an epidemic. Every day, a new abnormal ability pops up in one of America’s young people. Is it genetic? Is it a disease? No one knows, but we know something the government refuses to acknowledge: every one of these ‘abnormal abilities’ that we’ve seen so far duplicates a miracle from the Bible.”

  Mr. Moses’ eyes moved around the table, lighting on people as he named them. “Anna can move instantaneously from one location to another, just as Phillip once moved instantaneously from city to city after baptizing someone. Renee heals people by laying her hands on them and praying for them, just as Jesus and his disciples once did. I see visions of the future, just as many prophets in the Bible once did.

  “So while the government is mystified by this phenomenon, we are not. God is at work. He’s reviving the gifts that he’s always used to help his people. We formed the Sons of Thunder to figure out how to use those gifts. Sadly, we’re not alone. There’s a competing group — people who don’t see their power as a gift from God but rather something they earned for themselves. That’s who we encountered when we were trying to settle the dispute between you and the mugger this morning, Ms. Jackson.”

  Moses concluded with a smile. “We’re delighted to have you here. Please let us show you around our home. Pitch, would you do that? Everyone else, you’ve got morning classes. You’d better get going.”

  Chapter 4