Jaden Baker

by Courtney Kirchoff

  Holding his towel to his waist, Jaden left the bathroom and made his way into the garage. He padded across the cold concrete floor to a wall with a hammer hanging from it. Here were screwdrivers, measuring tape, a saw, wrenches of all sizes, and, at last, a pair of rubber-handled wire cutters.

  Back in the master bathroom, Jaden leaned against the sink. He worked the clipper under one of the three wires holding the collar to his neck. He tightened his grip and worked the clippers up and down, using both hands to grasp the handles. The blades cut through the outer rubber sheath, and Jaden pulled the clippers away, looking closer.

  The rubber concealed not a wire, but a cable. Jaden cut away the two other sheaths and touched the silver cables with his fingers. If he had to stand here all day and cut until he got the collar off, he would. He started with the bottom, cutting through the steel fibers until they frayed and one cable snapped. Then he cut through the two remaining cables, ignoring his weak and tired hands. At last, after much struggling and fighting, the final cable broke.

  The collar did not fall to the floor like he expected. Jaden took the three strands of frayed cable in both his hands and tried unwrapping it from around his neck. The disks detached themselves easily from his skin, but he met resistance when trying to pull the collar off the back of his neck.

  Then he remembered what Joseph said two years ago, that this collar tapped into his central nervous system. What did that mean?

  After some searching he found a vanity mirror. It hovered around to the back of his head, adjusting and tilting so he could see the back of his neck through double reflections. The part fixed to his neck was larger than the rectangular disks. Jaden put his fingers on it and tried pulling gently.

  “Try at an angle,” Seth suggested. “Pull up and out, not just back. Carefully.”

  He did so, pulling along his neckline then out and away. The box lifted and two thin, short needles came with it. Jaden clapped his other hand to the back of his neck and dropped the collar with a clatter into the sink.

  The inside of the collar was much different than the outside. Small, flat metal circles, the size of dimes, came out of each disk. Those had to be the conductors, the things that jolted him. There was no blood on the needles.

  Jaden swallowed. His throat felt loose and liberated without the collar. His skin showed red where the collar had been, circular burns around his neck. Eventually, he thought and hoped, the circular marks would fade and disappear as his skin healed. He shut his eyes and sighed as he felt the bare skin of his neck.

  Then he took the bolt cutters to the protective cuffs on his wrists. These clipped away easily, and when they fell to the sink, Jaden rubbed away years of dead skin, scratching and washing his wrists until he saw the horizontal scars where he’d slit them with the broken mirror, and the smaller scars below his palms where he’d cut himself trying to get out of restraints.

  Jaden gathered the tools of his imprisonment, dropped them on top of his dirty clothes, and left the room.

  Portraits of the house’s family showed overweight occupants. The mother and father were in their early forties, judging by a photo on a chest of drawers in their bedroom. Both had round faces and double chins.

  They had two children, both boys. Jaden left the master bedroom in search of the sons’ rooms.

  The first room he found belonged to the younger son, who was probably seven or eight. He had posters of sports teams and movies on his wall, and his room was relatively neat.

  When Jaden popped his head into the second boy’s room, he knew he’d hit the jackpot. This boy was probably younger than Jaden was, and his clothes were strewn all over the room. Jaden explored the closet and pulled on a t-shirt and what he hoped was clean underwear. Everything was too big for him, but at least clean. He put on a pair of jeans and rolled the legs up a few times, then punched new holes in a belt to keep the them from falling. It would do for now.

  Opened envelopes on the boy’s dresser were addressed to Aaron. The shoes Aaron wore were thankfully Jaden’s size. He grabbed a pair of hiking boots and took them downstairs, though he wasn’t leaving yet. Overweight people must have a well stocked kitchen, and as Jaden opened the refrigerator, he wasn’t disappointed.

  The shelves held juice and sodas, three different cheeses, roast beef and pastrami, pickles, olives, and peppers, eggs, tortillas, shredded steak, and a whole ham. The freezer contained so much more: pizza and hamburger patties, two half gallons of ice cream, cream puffs, whole chickens, and pre-cooked buffalo wings.

  Jaden pulled out a frozen pizza and read the instructions on the box. He played with the oven to get the right settings, then popped it in. From the pantry he grabbed an already opened bag of Cheetos, and threw himself on the couch.

  “No television,” Seth said, sitting next to Jaden.

  “I won’t,” Jaden said, getting up again. He sifted through the DVD collection and made his pick. It took him twenty minutes to figure out how to turn the television on and then the DVD player, but he finally figured it out.

  Lounging on a couch, eating junk food, watching a movie, waiting for a pizza to bake, should have been a normal activity. It was relaxing, it made him feel like how he thought a teenager should, yet it was surreal. People were out there looking for him, and here he lounged, hiding in someone else’s home.

  One whole combination pizza, half a bag of Cheetos, and two bowls of ice cream later, Jaden was satisfied. He and Seth watched the rest of the movie together, keeping the volume low so no one would know he was here. Then Jaden decided to make it an early night, seeing as how he’d hardly slept at all this morning in San Francisco.

  He plodded upstairs into the master bedroom and lay on the bed, his head deep in the pillows. After tossing and turning, Jaden gave up. The bed was too soft. He was used to the floor, and as much as he wanted to sleep in this bed, he knew he’d have to transition gradually. Jaden took a pillow to the floor and lay down.

  Reality was still beyond his reach. That he slept in a house, after eating a proper meal, showering in privacy, his body free of any restraining devices, astounded him. At the same time it didn’t. It was hard for him to fully understand, and tonight was not the time to analyze it.

  twenty

  Not a sound was heard in this room full of usually active people. Two of them stood quietly before him, neither could look him in the eye. Cell phones were silenced, hard lines didn’t ring. Laptop screens dimmed due to inactivity, some were powered off.

  Joseph Madrid rolled his chair from his desk. He rubbed his chin, the rough scratching of fingers against stubble the only sound in the crowded room. He paced, his hands in his pockets, as fifteen pairs of eyes followed his movements. When he spoke it was soft, almost a whisper.

  “The hardest part for me to understand,” he said, his eyes resting on each of them for a few moments, “is how this happened.” He chewed his bottom lip and looked at the ceiling then shrugged. “It’s almost comical.” Madrid chuckled under his breath, then scratched his eyebrow with his thumb. “Someone forgot to change the batteries.” He laughed. No one else smiled or joined in his laughter. “Someone forgot to change the batteries,” he laughed again. “My multimillion-dollar project got away because someone neglected their job. My unique and powerful project is out on the loose because someone didn’t change the batteries. Six of my people are dead because my RPI is out in the world, wreaking havoc and causing paranormal scenes, risking our exposure, because someone didn’t change his batteries.” Madrid leaned on his desk and crossed his arms, surveying his team of people. “Why, it makes me laugh.”

  “What’s our next move, sir?” Loren Dillard asked, the first to speak.

  “Our next move?” Madrid said, grinning. “That is a fine question. You ask because your idea of recovering a psychokinetic was sending a helicopter and a ground team. A plan which worked brilliantly. I told all of you when I took him as a project that he was a cunning thing, and you should never underestimate what he was capable
of. I instructed every one of you to always follow protocol. I said the smallest mistake would be disastrous. Now we have to recapture a trained kinetic. This boy has the power of a god, as he showed us all today.

  “Our next move? How do we recapture him? Our next move has to be smart.”

  “Should I inform the police?” Dillard asked. “Put out wanted photos of him, so if he’s spotted we can send a team to retrieve him?”

  “If that boy is cornered he’ll attack with all his claws and fangs bared. We’d have a slew of dead cops and even more ready to get revenge. No cops.”

  Madrid sauntered to a window and watched the setting San Francisco sun. “He has to come to us, it’s the only way we can get him.”

  “How are we going to do that?” Sofia Burgen asked in her husky voice. “He’s done everything possible to throw us off his track.”

  Madrid nodded to himself then faced his room of people. “Cast the lures,” he said, looking past everyone and into the eyes of Dr. Sam Hull. “Radio, television, newspapers, the internet, anything. I want lures on everything relating to his mother’s current whereabouts, or to that family he stayed with briefly. He’s been away for six years, he’ll want to know what’s going on in the world.”

  “That’s a tall order, it’s going to take time to integrate a lure into everything. Our contacts are considerable but still limited,” Sam said.

  “It’s the only chance of getting him back,” Madrid said. “Target the predictable areas first. Put surveillance teams on the foster parents and the mother, in case he tries contacting them. The rest of you are on damage control. Everyone on East 580 is spreading rumors and some are getting too close, and now the motor-cop is corroborating. There’s a lot of work to do, so get to it.”

  As the room cleared, only one man remained. Sam poured himself a tall glass of ice water and sat on the stiff black sofa.

  “He had help,” Madrid said.

  “Or he’s just smart,” Sam replied. The ice in his glass tinkled. “We were careful. We did everything by the book. There’s a chance we can get him back if the conditioning worked. The only reason he got out was because one of our people made a mistake.”

  “And now he’s hiding somewhere and we have no way of tracking him.”

  Sam joined Madrid at the window. “Try smoking him out then leave him alone. The fox will emerge only when he feels safe. He’s human just like the rest of us. One day he’ll make a mistake, too.”

  twenty-one

  Soft bird chirps drifted through the window and stirred Jaden out of his sleep. He rolled to his other side and looked out the window. Dawn crept over the rolling hills. A clock on the bed stand indicated it was just before eight a.m. Jaden pushed himself off the floor, used the bathroom, then trudged downstairs for breakfast. Different brands of cereal were stacked in the pantry, and Jaden had a bowl of each. He figured as long as he didn’t take anything valuable, maybe the family wouldn’t notice a portion of their food was missing.

  The blinds were drawn shut, Jaden opened them enough to see outside as he ate his cereal. He watched people walking their dogs or their small children and driving to work or school. They all had regular lives with routines...

  Now that he was free, a new thought occurred to him, one he had not contemplated while locked away. Dreams of freedom had so consumed him, he had never considered what he would do if he ever escaped. Thinking about it made him nervous and excited all at once. He had a lot of limitations, his age and no identity being the biggest obstacles. What was a fifteen year old supposed to do except go to school? With no parents to look after or vouch for him, making any progress in society would be challenging.

  Joseph and San Francisco were too close. Jaden would have to abandon Livermore and probably the State of California forever—but where should he go, and what would he do once he got there? He had not even five years of formal education. Courtesy of Dr. Dalton, he was educated in the sciences. Basic chemistry, physics, and anatomy were all cataloged in his brain, and though he had not read a book in two years, he had devoured many of Molly’s.

  He cleaned his cereal bowl and went through the house wiping any surface he’d touched with a damp paper towel. He collected his pile of dirty clothes and control devices and took them into the garage, where he dumped them in the trash can underneath a bag of garbage. With luck, the clothes and collar would vanish into a pile of rubbish and never be seen again.

  In Aaron’s room, Jaden rummaged under the bed and deep into the closet looking for some kind of bag. He found a dusty backpack heavy with something inside. When he unzipped it and dumped the contents on the bed, Jaden’s eyes widened and a heat flushed his face.

  Aaron had hidden a stash of magazines in the backpack buried in the closet. Jaden sat on the bed and flipped through one of them. As he unfolded a three page spread of a redheaded woman wearing nothing but a coy smile, he decided the magazines would go with him. Aaron would have a tough time explaining to his parents that his special magazines were missing.

  In addition to the magazines, Jaden took a new toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste, a comb, bar of soap, and a change of clothes from Aaron’s dresser. In the kitchen, he made himself a few sandwiches and stashed a bag of cookies and two water bottles into the full pack, which he slung on his back.

  Watching the window carefully, Jaden slid out the front door when he was sure no one was looking at the house, then meandered down the sidewalk.

  It was a brisk, cool morning. The sun had risen a little higher into the sky. Jaden watched as crows hopped along the street, gathering bits of trash, hunting for morsels of food. People walked their dogs past him on the sidewalk. Such an average morning.

  Stealing another car would be risky. He fancied a walk anyway; he longed to be outside in the sun.

  The sidewalk led to a busy road, which he walked along at a casual pace, observing the vineyards and the crows that cawed from telephone wires. When the road teed into another, Jaden headed east toward the hills, thinking he would go cross country today and leave the road behind.

  In the early afternoon, Jaden found a gate leading him into open country. It was harder to walk on the rugged ground, but trudging through tall dry grass and avoiding large holes was satisfying in its own way. He wiped sweat off his forehead as he climbed to the top of a high hill, picking leaves from a scrub oak tree and watching two squirrels chitter at each other.

  The view from the top was amazing. It was quiet here and shadows of the clouds passing overhead left dark patches that seemed to glide across the hills. Livermore was behind him now, a small, flat city tucked away in the hills. He saw another city ahead of him, far away to the east. He sat on the top of that hill to rest, eating a sandwich and drinking his water, remembering he had limited supplies and funds.

  “Where will I go?” he asked Seth, who sat next to him.

  “Wherever,” Seth replied. “You already know you have to leave the state.”

  “Yes,” Jaden said sadly.

  “You can’t go back to any of them,” Seth said. “Joseph will be watching.”

  For a fleeting second he thought about returning to Napa, then remembered what Dalton had told him, that the Kauffmans had adopted a little baby and probably wouldn’t miss him. Jaden would be intruding. The baby was older now, probably in school. What would they want with him? And Seth was right, Joseph would watch for him there.

  Then there was Lynn Baker, his mother. Jaden didn’t know where she was now, if she was even out, or alive. Maybe she was on parole, or perhaps she was still inside. He couldn’t help but wonder about her, and if she would recognize him and he her.

  “You can’t go and find her,” Seth said.

  “She doesn’t want me to find her,” Jaden said, throwing a rock over the hill. He finally rose and started down the hill, away from where he’d come, towards something new. The last person he thought about as he carefully tread downhill, was the one person he didn’t know, had never met. Molly was somewhere behin
d him. It was silly, he knew, to think about a young girl he wouldn’t recognize, a girl who didn’t know him. But she had been with him in some way, keeping him company before Seth had.

  “When we get to the next city,” Seth said, “you’ll need a map.”

  The two of them walked on, mostly in silence.

  It was dark by the time Jaden crossed the hills and saw the city before him. He followed the freeway, allowing the headlights of passing cars to illuminate parts of the landscape, until he came to a road that passed under the freeway.

  The road led to an industrial park, full of containers and pallets stacked in high piles. Jaden wasn’t sure how many miles he had traveled today, all he knew was how exhausted and sore he felt. He ate his last sandwich and bag of cookies as he looked for a safe place to hide. Seth pointed to a wide crevice between two containers. Jaden climbed on top of a crate to get to the nook, then sat cross-legged inside it, looking out to the lights of the city. The city was for tomorrow. Now was time to sleep. His backpack doubled for a pillow. Despite his stomach aching in hunger (dissatisfied with the small meal) Jaden drifted to sleep.

  But his rumbling stomach woke him well before dawn. He left the industrial park tired and hungry; even Seth yawned. It was safer to leave the park at this hour anyway, as workers would be here soon. Jaden and Seth followed the road past a Safeway trucking center, a ranch, and many farm plots before entering town.

  The sun rose as Jaden came to a road paralleling train tracks.

  “A train—perfect!” Seth said and he and Jaden followed the tracks, walking briskly for a few miles. After passing through more farmland, the tracks led them through town. He heard trains in the distance and knew the station was not far ahead. But his stomach rumbled angrily at him. Jaden left the tracks and wandered into a small shopping center where a general store sat at the center.