The Riser Saga

by Becca C. Smith

  Hopefully, the team was at Nancy’s and we could rescue Ryan together. I needed all the help I could get.

  As the car followed the holo-GPS’s directions, I tried not to think about what I just went through. I needed to keep focused on saving Ryan. I had absolutely no idea how that was going to happen and frankly, I was secretly hoping that the team would have some suggestions. At full speed the car landed in front of Nancy’s house in about twenty minutes.

  I flew out of the vehicle and ran to the front door and stopped dead in my tracks.

  The steel door was off its hinges and laying inside the house.

  This was where they kidnapped Ryan.

  I ran inside the house.

  “Hello?!” I called out, hoping to hear anyones voice.

  Silence.

  The house looked like it had been hit by a hurricane. The couch was flipped over, glass and wood splinters everywhere.Please let everyone be okay. If my adrenaline hadn’t been at full throttle I would have broken down right there.

  “Hello?! George! Vianne!” I called out again, frantic for any response.

  “Chelsan?” It was George and he sounded like he was in the kitchen.

  I hurried as fast as I could and practically fell into George on his way out to find me. He embraced me in a desperate hug. “Thanks goodness you’re all right. They told us…” His voice started to break up, “They told us you were dead.”

  I pulled away and wiped the tears from my face I hadn’t even noticed were there.

  “I almost was,” I admitted with a lump in my throat. “What happened? Turner said they took Ryan.”

  Vianne came hurrying out of the kitchen and nearly toppled me over as she drew me in for another embrace. “Oh Chelsan, we were so worried.” She let go of me to inspect me thoroughly. “Any injuries?”

  That’s when I finally noticed the two of them. They were covered in small cuts and bruises. I held my hand to mouth in shock. “Forget me, are you guys okay?”

  Vianne held my hand warmly. “We’re fine, dear, nothing that won’t heal, but Ryan… he put up such a fight.” Tears came to Vianne’s eyes. “They took us by surprise. The man who said he was here to offer Ryan a job turned out to be one of Turner’s soldiers. He had a whole team with him. We made Jason take Nancy out the back before things got too ugly. He has the tornado footage, Chelsan, he’s on his way now to get it on the air. Bill’s been hysterical trying to find you, he’s pretty beat up as well. You should have seen him trying to protect Ryan…” She trailed off, trying to hide her emotion.

  “I need to call Bill.” I was trying to keep my head clear.

  George handed me the phone almost immediately after the words came out of my mouth.

  I dialed quickly.

  Bill picked up before the first ring had finished its chorus. “George? I’m going to Jill’s to see where she dropped Chelsan off.” Bill’s voice sounded determined through the phone.

  “Bill, it’s me,” I said before he could continue.

  “CHELSAN!!! Where are you? Are you okay? Tell me where you are, I’m coming!” Bill went from composed to frantic in about a millisecond.

  “Bill, calm down. I’m at Nancy’s, come pick me up. We’ll go to Jill’s together. I think I have a plan.” The seeds of an idea were starting to form in my brain.

  “Okay, I’m on my way.” Bill sounded elated to hear from me.

  I hung up the phone and handed it to George. “He’s on his way.”

  “Why Jill? Do you think she knows something?” Vianne asked as she touched up one of George’s wounds with a damp cloth.

  “No, it’s her dad I’m interested in.” Man, if this plan was going to work, Jill would hate me forever. But, there was nothing for it.

  The whirling fans of Bill’s hover-car were louder than normal since the front door no longer existed. I turned to George and Vianne. “Are you guys going to be okay?”

  “We’re fine, just go. Get Ryan back.” Vianne kissed my cheek and sent me on my way.

  I ran out to greet Bill and slammed into his six-foot frame like I smacked into a tree. A tree that grabbed me and squeezed me in a bear hug that nearly popped my lungs. I hugged him back with just as much force; we nearly killed each other from affection.

  Bill drew away first and his eyes were watery, but sparkling at seeing me. He kissed my forehead. “We all thought…” He trailed off, not able to finish the sentence that ended with me dead.

  His lip was cut pretty bad and his eye was black. “Oh Bill.”

  He shrugged his wounds off like a badge of courage. “It’s nothing.”

  “It’s not nothing. This is all my fault.”

  “Chelsan, we have to get Ryan back,” he said as he took my hand and yanked me to his hover-car.

  We were in the air faster than I could think. He kept on looking over at me, relief etched in every feature. “I tried to stop them, but they eventually had to stun me,” Bill said, and I could tell it was hard for him to admit.

  “Stunners only?” I asked, trying to get a better idea of what we were up against. I just hoped Jason and Nancy’s mission would prove successful. It was our only bargaining chip for long-term safety. Without that footage, rescuing Ryan would be a futile effort since they could simply re-take him again. We needed to take Turner out of power or at least bump him down a notch. Enough where it would make it difficult for him to target us. Us. Ryan and me. Somehow we both ended up being Gram’s and Gramp’s obsession. It was difficult enough when they were after me, but now they were after my boyfriend, in fact, it seemed like they wanted Ryan a lot more than they wanted me. I didn’t know if I should be offended or not.

  Although after showing Turner that I could control dead plants may have put me back on the top of their list.

  “Yeah, just the stunners.” Bill answered my previous question. “I don’t think they thought we’d fight as hard as we did. If you think we look bad.” He actually smiled and then it quickly turned to a frown. “When I woke up, Ryan was gone. I’m really sorry, Chelsan. I did everything I could to save him.”

  “I would never blame you for that. Don’t ever think that.” I wanted re-assure him.

  “You think Jill had something to do with all this? Where did she drop you off anyway?” Bill changed the subject after a moment of quiet.

  “She dropped me off at Nancy’s. I don’t think she knows anything,” I said.

  “Then why are we going to her house?” Bill asked.

  “For her dad.”

  “Oh boy.” Bill swallowed hard figuring out my intent. “Is she going to find out? Or… are you…?” he asked as if wanting to know but not really wanting to know.

  “Hopefully, she won’t know a thing, but Mr. Owen Forester is coming with us. He’s our only way in.” I tried to muster as much confidence in my plan as possible for Bill’s sake, but I secretly worried that making Jill’s dad come with us might backfire if Turner warned Roberta that I’d escaped. I was going in blind. I had no idea what to expect of Jill’s dad. Did he have thoughts of his own? Was he constantly controlled by Turner and his people? Would they know that I had taken over? I just didn’t know, but he was literally it, in terms of a plan. I couldn’t show up at Roberta’s mansion, I’d be taken immediately. Mr. Forester was going in and he was going in alone. Worse case scenario, they break their ties with him and he’d finally die his proper death instead of this half-life he was living. Which was for the best, I knew, but Jill wouldn’t see it that way. I’d always be the person who killed her father even though I had nothing to do with it.

  “We’re here,” Bill announced as we landed in front of the most stunning mansion I’d ever seen. Architecture dating back to the early two-thousands it was made mostly of metal and glass. The five solar panels that made up the roof were curved like walnut shells reaching up to the sun. They were gigantic, at least two-hundred feet tall and a hundred feet across. The base of the house was bright silver metal and sparkled in the fading daylight. In startling
contrast of the metal base, the trim of the house was all colored glass from the doorknobs, to the window frames, to the sculptures on the bright green lawn. It was like a museum or spectacle, I couldn’t decide which.

  The hover-landing pad was encircled by the most amazing collection of rose bushes I’d ever seen. Every color imaginable in perfect bloom reaching out to greet you as you exited your vehicle. It was extremely unfair that someone like Jill lived in such a castle, but then again Jill had other disadvantages that I didn’t envy. Like her dad.

  Bill and I left the car and walked up the marble steps that led to the front door.

  Jill opened it in a fury. Apparently, she saw us coming. “What on earth are you two doing at my house?!” She could barely talk she was so angry.

  “Is your dad here?” Bill asked, knowing that anything that came out of my mouth would be met by rage.

  “My dad?” This threw Jill off completely. “Why?”

  “Is he here or not, Jill?” Bill said brusquely.

  “He’s here,” I said seeing his swirling black hole in the back of the house. “He’s in the back of the house.”

  “How did you…?” Jill went from fury to shock to suspicion all in a span of a second.

  “It doesn’t matter, Jill, the less you know the better.” I tried to be as nice as was humanly possible.

  “GET OFF MY PROPERTY!” Jill slammed the door in our faces.

  “That went well.” Bill rolled his eyes. “You shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’ll get him myself.” I closed my eyes and slammed through the barrier that kept me from Mr. Forester’s black hole. He was mine now. And I knew as soon as I connected to him that he was just like anything else dead. Nothing upstairs. Just an empty shell for me to puppeteer. “Just a few seconds.” I made him walk to the front door and open it.

  Jill was standing next to him, terror, suspicion, fury and sadness all rolled into one heartbreaking expression. She wasn’t stupid, she knew something was going on, and she knew I had something to do with it.

  I tried to smooth the situation and made her dad speak. “It’s okay, Jill, I’m just going to go with your friends for a bit.”

  And instead of making things better, it seemed to make them a whole lot worse. Jill started to cry hysterically. I made her dad touch her shoulder to comfort her, but she flinched and pulled away, wiping away her tears. She stared at me with resentment and revulsion. “He hasn’t spoken to me except to give me orders from the Vice President in three years.”

  Ooops. And ouch. I couldn’t control how awful I actually felt for Jill in that moment.

  “I’m sorry, Jill, but Ryan’s in trouble.” I couldn’t begin to explain everything to her now and I didn’t know if she was ready yet anyway.

  Jill didn’t know how to respond, so she fell back to her usual annoying self. “You’re an evil disgusting excuse for a human being, Chelsan Derée, and I hope you die. If my father doesn’t come back, I’m holding you fully responsible and if you think your life was torture before, you haven’t seen anything yet.” And with that she stalked off leaving Bill and I alone with Mr. Forester.

  “Bye Jill, see you at school.” Bill tried to lighten the moment.

  “I don’t really care what Jill thinks right now, let’s just get Ryan,” I said and made Jill’s dad follow us to the hover-car.

  I had him sit in back and we were off toward Turner’s house. We only had my dream to go by so I made him drive to Nancy’s house since that was my starting point in my vision. I closed my eyes and visualized the landscape in front of me and instructed Bill where to go.

  “I think we’re here. That’s got to be it,” Bill said.

  I opened my eyes and looked down. “That’s it.” There it was in the flesh. My grandparent’s house. The house where my mom rescued my dad, where they came back when she was pregnant with me, where my dad lived for over a hundred years, and where Ryan was now held captive. Hundreds of years of my own family history in that house. It almost took my breath away with the enormity of it. The house, the property was ginormous, all twenty acres of it. It was a classic Victorian, brick and wooden trim, ivy growing up the sides. It looked like a mansion version of my High School and Turner’s namesake. He must love that era of architecture.

  “Park here, away from the house,” I told Bill and he quickly landed on a grass street a block away from the house.

  I made Mr. Forester step out of the car. “Okay, here comes the hard part. I have to really concentrate here, so keep an eye out for any trouble,” I told Bill, and he was more than up for the task. His eyes were still filled with wonder as he watched me make Jill’s dad move. I kept on forgetting how new my power was to everyone. I held my secret in for so long, and to find out I could have confided in Bill and Nancy from the beginning without judgment, made me wish I’d shared my burden earlier.

  I closed my eyes and concentrated…

  …And I was in. I was seeing through Mr. Forester’s eyes now. I made sure I could move all of his limbs by doing a quick shake down. This made Bill cringe a little, but I couldn’t help that now, I needed Mr. Forester to be as fluid as possible when entering the house. I knew that as soon as Roberta saw him the jig was up, but I was more concerned about the guards and making a route for Bill and I to break in.

  Through his body, I made my way across the grass-covered road and through someone’s lawn to reach my grandparent’s house. The gate and fencing surrounding the mansion was black wrought iron and loomed before Mr. Forester like the bars of a prison. Ryan’s prison. My father’s prison. Soon to be my prison if this didn’t turn out okay. (That’s if I was lucky, knowing Gramps, he was still on his “murder Chelsan” mission.) I erased those thoughts from my mind as they were making it difficult for me to maintain my control over Mr. Forester. Directly to the left of the two-way gate was a small guard station with two men on duty. One was sitting next to a screen that had hundreds of camera angles from inside the house, while the other was leaning against the wall, bored. I made Jill’s dad walk up to them.

  “Evening. I’m here to see the Vice President. He’s expecting me.” I tried to sound as monotone as possible taking a few cues from Jill’s comment about how her dad had only given her orders over the last two years. If Turner’s people were used to Mr. Forester a certain way, I didn’t want to act differently than what they expected. I figured neutral was my best course of action.

  “Of course, Mr. Forester. Word was just sent that he’s on his way.” The guard sitting at the monitor screen smiled up at him. “I’ll let the doorman know.”

  I tried to keep Mr. Forester’s face as cool as possible, but it was a hopeless undertaking. I could never tell what my face looked like, so how was I supposed to know his looked like? “Sounds good. Tell him I’ll wait for him in the study when he arrives.” I seriously hoped there was a study in that house.

  “Will do. Good day.” The guard nodded in a friendly manner.

  “We’re through,” I told Bill, though my eyes were still closed. I couldn’t quite master the art of seeing two different perspectives at once so it was just easier to keep my lids shut. I hoped I would never have to do this again! Keeping Bruce alive was one thing, but controlling my enemy’s father and sneaking into my grandparent’s lair was another.

  The guard sitting inside the booth hit the button for the intercom. “Mr. Forester is here to wait for the Vice President.”

  “Copy. We’ll have refreshments ready,” came a friendly voice through the speaker above the guard’s head.

  “Thank you,” the guard responded then turned to me. “You’re all set, Mr. Forester.”

  “Thank….” I started to make him say.

  BBBBZZZZT!

  BBBZZZZTT!

  Out of nowhere Bill was there with a stun club and both guards were down.

  He turned to Mr. Forester with a smile, but his eyes were full of determination and bravery. “Get your butt up here. We’re getting Ryan t
ogether.”

  I opened my eyes and it took me a second to make my own perspective the more dominant one. I couldn’t believe Bill! I was shocked, proud, scared and little excited by his aggression. He was right of course; three was better than one dead guy. Once we were in, who knew how many dead servants they employed that I could use to my advantage. Spiders and flies would work too in a pinch.

  I followed the same route I made Jill’s dad travel and was next to Bill and Mr. Forester within seconds. I disconnected from Mr. Forester’s eyes, but remained linked to the rest of his body.

  “Get that stun club ready,” I advised Bill.

  Bill actually grinned at me.

  I looked up at his bruised, cut face and his silly smile and I couldn’t help myself. I hugged him. “Thank you, Bill.”