I glanced at the place he pointed to and imagined sinking into the seat and having someone bring me a cold drink of water. Maybe they could direct me to the restroom, where I could splash some water on my face before my trip home. For just a few minutes it would be nice to put my head back and rest my eyes. I braced myself against the counter, vacillating. I wanted this to be over in the worst way. It would have been easy to give in, but then I remembered something: Carly’s gum. In an act of defiance she’d stuck it under the counter when I’d picked up the ticket.
I took a step back to look underneath. I clearly remembered seeing her two fingers press a pink glob of gum to the white underside of the counter. But it wasn’t there now. No gum, and no sign there ever had been. Not only that, but the underside of the counter was dark gray, not white. This place came close, but it wasn’t exactly the same. I was sure of it now. I straightened up and looked him square in the eye.
“Look,” I said. “If the challenge was for me to see through this charade, it’s over. I don’t, for one instant, believe I’m in the Milwaukee Intermodal Station. Earlier today, I saw you, or a man who looked exactly like you, in the station in Milwaukee, but that’s not where we are now. That tree is different,” I said and pointed, “and this counter is different.” I knocked on it for emphasis. “And the sun should be lower in the sky by now. You can make any changes you want and say what you want, but I know what I know. I’m not in the Milwaukee Intermodal Station. You can’t mess with my head this way.”
He stared at me unblinking. “Is that your final answer?”
“Damn straight it is.”
“Well done, Mr. Becker,” he said, nodding approvingly.
Over the loudspeaker, a loud tone chimed. As if on cue, everyone in the terminal stopped what they were doing. The maintenance man set down his mop, the people sitting in chairs closed their magazines and laptops, and the people walking through stopped in their tracks.
And then, spontaneously, every person in the terminal began clapping. A slow clap. Each and every one of them clapping and walking toward me. The employees and the travelers, along with a crowd of others who materialized seemingly out of nowhere. They gravitated in my direction, all the while cheering like they’d witnessed a winning touchdown at Lambeau Field. And all of the attention was aimed at me.
Tim appeared at my side and pulled my arm up in the air. Around me people were high-fiving and talking excitedly. When the crowd finally settled down, Tim released my arm to announce, “Forty-eight minutes and fifty-three seconds,” which set them off again. I caught bits and pieces:
“Unbelievable!”
“Can you even imagine everything we’ll be able to do now that we have this guy?”
“So that’s what a second gen is like!”
Tim turned to me. “Your powers are most impressive. Is there anything I can get for you—something to drink, some fresh clothes?”
I said, “I want my nephew.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Frank Shrapnel sat on a couch in front of a TV, barely looking up when I walked through the door. The room consisted solely of a couch, a television, and a side table covered by an assortment of salty snacks and a half mug of root beer with a bendy straw in it. “Hey, buddy,” I said, something that normally would have made him light up with happiness, but this time the only reaction was the brief flick of his eyes darting my way.
I knelt down in front of him. “Are you ready to go home?”
“Okay,” he said noncommittally. There was no expression on his face, no smile of recognition. All of his usual energy was gone, just a shell of a boy left behind.
I choked back my outrage to confront Tim. “What have you done to him?”
“What do you mean?” Tim said, innocently. “He’s right there in front of you, fine and happy. Look him over. You won’t find a mark on him. And I think if you’ll ask him, he’ll tell you he had a good time visiting us here at the testing center. Isn’t that right, Frank?”
“I had a good time at the testing center with Russ,” he said, his eyes still on the screen.
“You used mind control on him?” I said, incredulous.
“Would you have preferred he be frightened and hysterical?”
I got right in Tim’s face. “I would have preferred that he be safe at home where he belongs.”
“Please calm down.”
“Calm down? I don’t think so. You people are monsters. First you abduct Frank and then you mess with his mind. He’s just a kid.” I wished I could scoop Frank up and carry him out, the way I used to when he was little.
“No need to overreact,” Tim said. “He’s fine. He’ll go home and have happy memories of his visit at the video game testing station with Uncle Russ.”
“He thinks he’s at a video game testing station?”
Tim nodded. “He’s sure of it. In his mind the two of you have been testing video games for a big company. He won’t be sure of the name of the company. We left that ambiguous, but he’ll certainly remember the fun he had and how special it made him feel to spend an evening with Uncle Russ.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Not kidding at all. Years from now, he’ll still be talking about it, and what’s wrong with that?”
“What’s wrong with that is that it’s not real,” I said. “It never happened.”
“As far as he’ll be concerned it happened. Really, how do you know that all of your memories are factual? We create the reality we want to believe. One child thinks they have the meanest parents in the world. His brother thinks they’re strict but fair. Which one is right? Is the second one downplaying it or is the first one a whiner? So much of life depends on your perspective.”
“It has nothing to do with perspective,” I pointed out. “What we’re talking about is—”
At that very moment, Carly rushed into the room, interrupting the debate. “Frank!” she cried, joining him on the couch and crushing him into a hug. Normally he would have wriggled out of her grasp, but now, docile as a teddy bear, he accepted it. Like me, she soon realized this was not the Frank we knew. She looked up, outraged. “What’s wrong with him?” she demanded.
“They used mind control on him,” I said bitterly. “They implanted false memories. He’s going to think he and I spent the evening at a video game testing station.”
Frank gave Carly a blank look. “Russ and I have been testing new games. It was really cool.” His voice had a prerecorded quality to it.
Carly said, “Snap out of it, Frank. Look at me, look at me right now.” She took him by the shoulders and gave a little shake. Even though he stared straight at her, nothing registered. His enlarged pupils gave him the odd look of one who was hypnotized.
“There’s no point in doing that,” Tim said. “It will wear off soon enough, probably by the time you get home, in fact.”
But Carly wasn’t listening. She snapped her fingers in front of his face. “Frank, answer me. Do you know where you are?”
“At the video game testing station,” Frank said, each word as monotone as the next. “Russ and I played some really cool new games. I can’t wait until they’re available for preorder.”
“Oh, Frank.” Her eyes filled up with tears. She turned to me. “Do something, Russ.”
Tim said, “He’s fine, just fine.”
“He’s under some kind of spell. Where are you, Frank?” she asked, tracing the side of his face with her fingertips. “I never should have left you alone. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, Mom,” Frank said, his gaze back now on the TV screen. “Russ and I had fun.”
Carly took his hand between hers and curved her body protectively around Frank. “I want to go home,” she said, her voice sounding much younger, as if she were a child instead of an adult woman.
I wanted to go home, too, but going now would mean leaving things unfinished. I didn’t want to live my life looking over my shoulder, wondering when the Associates would be coming for me
. Because they would be coming for me. Getting through these challenges wasn’t the end of it, I knew. It was just the beginning, and I needed to know more. “Just hang in there, Carly,” I said, and to Tim: “I don’t want to go until I talk to whoever’s in charge.”
“You’re in luck,” Tim said. “He wants to talk to you too.”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
We encountered locked doors along the way. Tim leaned over and had his eyeball scanned, which gave us access to the corridor leading to our destination. The actual room required a punch code and a reading of his handprint before we were allowed entry. A woman’s voice said, “Access is granted,” and then double doors slid open to each side, revealing what looked like a war room. Or at least what I knew of war rooms from the movies. Several people worked behind computers set up on a boomerang-shaped counter. One man stood off to the side, his arms folded. All of them wore business-type clothing—dress shirts and dark pants.
They didn’t notice us entering the room because their attention was on a large screen covering the far wall. On either side of the main screen were two smaller screens. The configuration reminded me of mirrors in the changing rooms at Kohl’s department stores. I hated trying on clothes in stores, but if my mother was with me she always insisted. The worst thing about it was coming out to stand for inspection while she assessed shoulder fit and took a mortifyingly long time determining whether or not there was enough extra growing length in the pants. Not my favorite form of humiliation. This view was equally embarrassing because the images on the screen were of me battling Snake Boy and Wavy Hair. Or maybe battling wasn’t quite accurate. In this particular clip, Snake Boy and Wavy Hair were giving me a pounding like I was meat that needed tenderizing.
Standing at the back of the room, I winced with each blow, remembering how it felt at the time. Since then, I’d healed considerably, which was good. By the time I got home there would be nothing I’d have to explain to my parents.
During the incident with the two thugs, Snake Boy and Wavy Hair, there was a moment when I’d realized I could summon my strength using the electrical energy inside of me, and that exact moment was visible on the video. My face changed expression, and I leaped off the ground in an almost superhuman way. The Associates in the room made approving noises at this part, and the man standing off to one side said, “Go back about five seconds and replay that frame by frame.” And frame by frame, they studied and discussed the angle of my body from prone to upright and the speed at which I’d jumped.
I’d known of course, that I had been watched, but seeing this footage and knowing it was being analyzed was another thing entirely. These people had no boundaries. I was a monkey in the zoo being put through an obstacle course to get a banana, the banana being Frank.
The next scene they viewed and discussed involved the two goons attempting to abduct Mallory the night we’d driven home from Mr. Specter’s house. One of the two men apparently had a hidden camera on his person because they had a record of all of it: me hitting them with lightning bolts, and then healing them, and Mallory using mind control to persuade them that the kids in Edgewood hadn’t been affected by the light particles. So much for that. And I’d thought it was such a good idea at the time.
I glanced over at Tim to see if he’d interrupt and let them know we were there, but he stood quietly and shook his head when I made a gesture asking if we should step forward.
Finally, I’d had enough. “Excuse me,” I called out. “Who’s in charge here?” Tim looked horrified that I’d interrupted, but I didn’t care. I figured that if they were going to kill me, they’d have done it already.
***
Five minutes later, the room had been cleared; the only ones left were me and the man in charge, the one who’d been standing with his arms folded. I’d been granted a private interview.
“So, we finally meet,” he said with a warm smile as if we’d been introduced at a social function. He could have been any one of the men Carly dated and brought to the house to meet the family. He had the pleasantries down, anyway. His appearance, though, was better than most of her boyfriends. He was clean cut, with good teeth, a wrinkle-free shirt, and pressed pants. A young executive, probably an overachiever in his school days. I’d seen his type before. He was much older than me, but I wasn’t intimidated.
“Yeah, I’m thinking we haven’t officially met since I don’t know your name,” I said. He sat in a chair and indicated I should do the same, but instead I leaned my butt back against the countertop holding the computers. My psychology teacher told us that towering above someone establishes dominancy. The whole alpha male thing. I wasn’t sure about that, but at least I didn’t look afraid, which is what I was going for. She also said that the correct thing to say when you don’t know what to say is, “Really.” The things you learn in school.
“Oh, sorry about that,” he said, standing to clasp my hand. “The name’s Miller.”
“Are you the commander I keep hearing about?”
“Me, the commander?” He chuckled. “No, I’m the division leader. No one gets to just meet the commander. He wouldn’t be here today for something like this.” He sat back in his chair, clearly amused.
“So the commander is the Wizard of Oz of your organization?”
“Excuse me?”
“You know—‘nobody sees the wizard, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain,’ that kind of thing?” He didn’t seem to get the reference, so I let it go and went on. “Never mind. I have a few questions for you.”
“Certainly. Ask away.”
“Why me?”
“Why not you?” he asked.
Okay, this was seriously frustrating. I said, “Look, I don’t want to play games. I just want answers. Why was I put through these challenges? Clearly you know that I’m not the only one who was exposed to the light particles.”
Miller said, “No, you’re not the only one who was exposed. Let me show you something.” He sat at a computer terminal and clicked on a few things on the keyboard. On the large screen in the front of the room popped up a still photo of Jameson along with a list of stats—his name, age, address, and at the top: Power: Telekinesis, Low. “You know him?” he said, pointing.
A rhetorical question, but I answered it anyway. “Yes.”
“But you don’t like him.” A statement.
“He’s okay,” I said.
“Here’s one you know, and you like her a whole lot better than the first guy.” Miller clicked and up came a screenshot of Mallory alongside a listing of her information. “Mallory Nassif, a very talented young lady. Not as talented as you, but then, nobody is.” He glanced to get my reaction, but when I didn’t comment, he continued. “And finally, the fourth Edgewood teen.” The screen image showed Nadia in her usual dark jeans, her upper half embedded in her hoodie. Only her small hands and the tip of her nose were visible in the photo. Her stats were also listed along with her power. “All three have what we call low to medium powers. Jameson is the least impressive of the bunch. I can’t tell you the number of people on the planet who can do what he does. Most of them work as magicians until their powers start to fail them in their thirties. Yes, your friends’ abilities are marginal. You, on the other hand, have something very unusual.”
“Really.”
“Yes.”
“So if you already know so much about me, why bring me here? Why the big subterfuge with kidnapping my nephew and sending messages with a voice changer? What was the point of putting us through this whole ordeal?”
“To see how you’d react under pressure,” he said. “To test how you conduct yourself. You’re very brave and you think quickly. Those are things we didn’t know until we put you through the obstacles. You’ve exceeded our expectations every step of the way.”
“But I didn’t cure Clarice’s cancer.”
“Clarice didn’t have cancer. That was the test. The baby, on the other hand, had been screaming nonstop for three days. Damn molars.” Mill
er shook his head and sort of tsked-tsked. “The baby was the only one in the room in pain. You gravitated right to him and immediately fixed the problem.”
“Really.”
There was a long silence; Miller broke it. “You, Mr. Becker, not only have powers in the high range, but you have multiple abilities and you seem to be accruing more and more as time goes on.”
“And that’s because I’m a second gen?”
“Yes!” he said. “That’s been our theory. Can you confirm that?”
“I have no idea what that means. I’ve just been hearing it all day.”
“Oh.” Miller’s face fell in disappointment. “Well, that means that you’d be the second generation to acquire these powers. We have a theory, not yet proven, that DNA can store, if not the actual abilities, the memory of the abilities. And the resulting offspring, if exposed to the particles, builds from there. It would certainly account for you.”
“Are you saying that one of my parents had powers? Because I hate to contradict you, but I’m pretty sure you’re wrong.” I thought of my dad snoozing in his recliner and my mom, bone-weary after a day at work. If they’d ever gone through a period where their life had been exceptional, you couldn’t tell it by me.
“It’s a theory,” Miller said firmly. “And if anyone has the answer it would be Carly.”
“Carly? My sister, Carly?”
He nodded. “Our information doesn’t go back far enough, but we know she knows. You’d need to ask her.”
“Why don’t you ask her yourself?”
“Believe me, we’ve tried. She won’t talk to us.”
Edgewood Series: Books 1 - 3 Page 24