Morning Sun

by Jeremy Flagg

  Her foot rose up in the air and she kicked hard, pushing off from the wall with her hands, bringing the heel of her foot down on the soldier. To him, an unseen force slammed against his back. His shots fired, missing their mark. Gretchen’s anger percolated underneath the surface. She hated being a helpless victim to the insanity brought on by the government.

  With another kick, the toe of her boot landed on the side of the guy’s helmet. He spun about on the floor. To any onlooker he’d appear possessed. She wanted to continue, take out her fury until he lay bleeding, but she didn’t dare risk bringing attention to her location.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  As she pulled at Jed’s arm, they climbed the staircase. “Don’t let them touch your skin. My thing happens from skin contact.”

  “Your thing?”

  “Invisibility sounds dumb,” she said.

  The military ducked behind metal poles and used ravers as human shields. The bile in her stomach threatened to creep up her esophagus. It took effort to repress her disgust at the very people supposedly trying to protect society from these terrorists.

  They reached the first landing, halfway up the stairs. A single soldier waited at the top. She slinked upward against the wall, careful to not brush against the man. In only a few feet they would be through the door and on their way to freedom. In only a few feet they would be alive for another day. In only a few feet she wouldn’t witness Needles die.

  The soldier raised his gun, taking shots at the people below. If she ever got the chance she’d take more self-defense classes at the school. Participating in women’s self-defense did not prepare her for this. If she had the skill, she’d take on the man in hand-to-hand combat. Fortunately for her, she didn’t have to.

  Jed let go of her hand and the color raced into the world around them. He reached down behind the soldier, grabbing his legs, and lifted. The man cried out as he soared into the air past the railing. His arms flailed as he tried to catch on to something to stop his fall toward the pavement. Gretchen didn’t dare look down; she had to believe she didn’t just help kill a man.

  Needles gave her a slight wave. She returned the gesture. Reaching out, palm up, Jed grabbed her hand and they vanished from sight again. They sped through the boiler room and up to the front door. Marines waited, idly standing about as if inconvenienced by the length of time their peers were taking underground.

  They worked their way out of the alley and onto the main road. It was the time between late night and early morning, the two hours where the entire world seemed to be sleeping. As they continued at a brisk walk, leaving the scene behind them, Jed broke the silence.

  “I think I owe you.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  They reached an intersection. He pointed down the street opposite of the way she had to walk to reach her apartment. He pulled out a card from his pocket and handed it to her. “If you need somebody to talk to.”

  “Yeah, you too.” She took the cap off a pen and scribbled her number on a strip of white skin on his arm.

  She couldn’t help it, she laughed. The sight of his stained skin, the absurdity of it all, she couldn’t stop. If she didn’t laugh, she’d cry. Nothing that happened tonight would reach the newspapers or be found on the web. They had witnessed the virus spreading through the city, infecting its streets and its inhabitants.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “I thought being able to go invisible was lame.”

  He gave her a slight push and started heading down the street. She eyed the card. “Painter,” was listed under occupation. If the city was infected, there were still those few who rallied, and tried to bring light into the world.

  “Our paths will cross again, Mr. Zappens.”

  Dav5d

  February 13, 1992

  My Dearest Dav5d,

  Yes. To answer the question burning in the back of your mind, this letter is for you. You recognize my name, I can see endless possible futures and in each of them, I am led to you, the most perplexing of my Children. You, Dav5d, are like no other in more ways than you ever imagined.

  It will not make sense just yet, but this letter could not reach you after the Nostradamus Effect. Of all the strings of fate I have pulled at, you are the only person who may comprehend. I hope you do, because you shall act as a counterbalance to rampant emotions, and with this, I hope your future brings success.

  You are about to be swept away by a swift current of logic and bits and bytes. Before you find yourself incapable, you must embrace beauty. Breathe deeply and let the world grace each of your senses. Know pleasure and let it burn in you so brightly that never a day passes where you forget these exquisite sensations.

  Do not create a prison in which you lock away your heart. Edward Hopper once said, “No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination.” Never forget, David.

  Ariel is where your path begins.

  With Regards,

  Eleanor P. Valentine

  November 1, 2012

  The building had been a YMCA decades ago; the faded paint above the double doors was barley legible through the expanding spray paint decorations. David expected Ned, the older of the two, to argue, to plead with him to not go in. Seven steps to the door and he pulled at the door. Its lock smashed and removed, it opened with a screech.

  The inside of the ragged property reflected the exterior. Paint flaked from the wall, falling to the ground like lives in autumn. He clutched the straps of his backpack, finding comfort in the familiar habit. The small lobby only held a chair and a cork board lying on the floor.

  “I hear voices,” Ned whispered.

  David crossed the room and reached for the doors leading further into the abandoned property. Ned grabbed his hand as he reached for the door. David pulled back quickly, cradling his hand as if Ned had shocked him.

  “Are you sure?”

  Ned, only three-hundred-sixty-one days older than David, served as the protector in their friendship. He frequently reminded David to ease up, or not be so literal. The two high school seniors eyed one another while David followed his mother’s advice: think, wait, act.

  David broke eye contact as he closed his eyes, attempting to ignore the growing headache. He pulled a couple aspirin from his pocket. The pain had reached a tipping point and he wasn’t far from telling his mom so he could see a doctor.

  “I saw it in the code,” he said. “I’m sure.” He tried to understand Ned’s nervousness as well as his urgency about this.

  Winter had descended upon the city, the cold strangling its citizens, causing the world to move in slow motion. The lobby was significantly warmer than outside, but the biting chill clung to his face, refusing to relent. A breeze moved through the room and David paused with his hand on the door, trying to find the source of the disturbance.

  The double doors flew open, knocking them onto their backs. Ned rolled over, running his hands down his torso, checking for broken bones. David sat upright, propping himself on one hand, curious what caused such a strong gust of wind.

  “Oh shit.”

  In the doorway, with toes hovering two feet off the ground, a woman hung in the air, floating as if suspended from a wire. The straps of her leather jacket along with her hair, the unshaven side, swirled as if she might be underwater. Even her black t-shirt, shredded within an inch of modesty, moved in a liquid fashion.

  It was hard to discern the woman’s age as she approached them. Each inch forward brought her lower until her boots rested on the uneven floorboards. It felt like a dozen hands rested against David’s back and helped lift him to his feet. Ned followed suit, rising in an awkward fashion, his face giving away his confusion.

  “What brings you?” asked the woman.

  “The code.” David said as if it explained everything.

  “He hacked your code. He saw the message,” Ned filled in.

  David averted his eyes at her gaze, scared she would find him admiring her. Ned, h
owever, didn’t have any problem speaking up. “What do you want with us?”

  “Us?” Her tone was soft, not delicate or fragile, but gentle. The question hung in the air, waiting for either of them to answer.

  “I’m just as good as David.”

  “Is he?”

  David shook his head. “He’s good. But I’m better.”

  During the school day, David rarely paid attention, his mind busy trying to dissect the world around him. It wasn’t until his modern history teacher spoke about people with abilities that his ears perked up. In 1992, the idea of a psychic attempting to kill the president sounded like one of his science fiction novels. However, that was exactly what happened. The woman, driven mad by her own powers, attempted to assassinate President Cecilia Joyce.

  “I thought they killed all the mentalists?” asked David.

  “I got away.”

  “But they said...”

  “They lied.”

  Associating with an unsanctioned mentalist allowed the government to skip judicial proceedings and eradicate all parties. Standing here, he wondered if this conversation was enough to have him killed.

  Ned tried to convince his friend. “David, we should be going.”

  “No.”

  “We could get killed, David.”

  As she floated backward, she gestured for him to follow.

  “I can do this.” He said it out loud for himself, but also to inform Ned. Folded neatly in half in his front right pocket rested a letter he received only days after his teacher lectured on the dangers of mentalists in modern society. She referred to the Nostradamus Effect, something he had yet to figure out.

  “Welcome to the resistance.”

  The basketball court housed dozens of people working at computers. Resting in his backpack was the computer he built from scratch, one of the most advanced pieces of technology available with consumer parts. Seeing the towers resting on the plastic folding tables made him feel inferior. The electronics were military grade.

  A woman with long braided pink hair gave him a nod with her chin. The voice of his mother reminded him to smile back. One second, two seconds, slight nod. He admired the tattoo stretching up her neck to the bottom of her lower lip. It took a moment before he realized the breaks in the ink were Morse code. He would have to look up what it meant when he had free time.

  “What are they doing?”

  “It’s a good ol’ fashioned hack-a-thon.”

  “No,” he corrected, “it is not. This hardware is from the military.”

  “They stole it?” Ned’s voice continued to get shakier as they walked by the tables. “What could you be hacking with this much tech?”

  “I’m not sure you can handle this.”

  David stopped walking and grabbed the back of an old wooden chair. His eyes watered as a stabbing pain erupted behind them. A soft sensation spread along his skin, helping him maintain his balance. The mentalist made no move to reach out and touch him, instead letting her gifts do their job.

  “Are you okay?”

  “The headache, it comes and goes.”

  His eyes narrowed as the room turned bright. Thirty seven people moved about the room, twenty females, seventeen males, plus the three of them made forty. The mentalist, her feet three point seven inches off the ground, held her hips at a slight angle that gave away her right handedness. Her eyes darted back and forth, taking him in, analyzing him. Military.

  “You were in the military...” The words drifted off into nothingness.

  The migraine vanished, his eyes aching from the residual pain. The chair creaked as he sat. Taking a moment to breathe in and out, he tried to remind his body the pain had stopped. The floor hadn’t been waxed in a decade. He continued to stare at the misaligned floorboards while she studied him.

  “You can set up here. We have a couple minutes before we announce the challenge.”

  “Who’s we?” asked Ned.

  She didn’t answer as she moved away from them.

  “David, you’re not looking too good. I get it, you want to help protect the world, but I have to protect you or your mom will kill me. We should leave.”

  “I’m supposed to be here.”

  “Dude.” Ned dragged over a chair and sat across from David. “You have been acting seriously weird for a while, even for you. What has gotten into you?”

  David dug into his pocket and handed Ned the envelope. Scanning the paper, he let out a series of sounds giving away his disbelief. “Dude, you’ve been had.” A pause. Even David noticed his friend tense up as he finished reading the letter.

  “It can’t be real. I mean, really, can it?”

  “Ariel,” shouted another woman, waving her hands. “We’re just about ready to go live.”

  Ned’s hand rested on David’s knee. His grip tightened at the name. The mentalist, the woman running the hack-a-thon, her name—Ariel. The world closed in about them and if it had been in question before, both of them now believed a psychic had penned the note.

  “We’re supposed to be here,” Ned admitted, handing the letter back to his friend.

  Instead of replying, David reached into his backpack and pulled out his laptop, setting it on the table. The machine weighed almost ten pounds, by far the beefiest piece of equipment he had ever built. With a click of the power button it started up instantly. He pulled out his second cell phone, wiring it into the computer.

  “You build that?” A man with huge bone earrings gave a chin nod to his laptop. David tried to hide his discomfort. It dawned on him he might not be the best hacker in the room. The man gave him a smile. “Pretty mod box, must weigh a ton.”

  “Thank you.” His mother would be proud of him for remembering his manners. She’d be thrilled he was meeting more people. She might even be okay with his sneaking out at night. Her approval would turn to anger the moment she realized he was using his computer to hack. The last time the school caught him, he spent a month grounded, forced to volunteer at the public library.

  The mentalist, Ariel, lifted into the air. Ten feet above them, her hair waved in the wind despite there being no breeze. She commanded the attention of every person in the room. What did she do with her powers? What about when nobody was looking? Did she use them to change the channel on the TV or to grab a soda from the fridge?

  “You are the liberators of information. Some are veterans and others are novices, but tonight we’re working toward a common goal. The government has been hiding the truth, and like sheep the public follows blindly. Tonight we will shake their very foundation.”

  “What is she talking about?” whispered Ned.

  “Tonight we are looking for the original camera footage from the Oval Office on February 13th, 1992.”

  Ned turned to David confused. “Why would they—”

  David recognized the date. “Eleanor. It’s the day Eleanor Valentine was killed.”

  The expressions on Ned’s face were difficult to interpret. David couldn’t be sure if his friend was scared, confused, or bewildered. When Ned reached into his backpack and pulled out his laptop, complete with the homemade bumper sticker reading “Needles,” David understood his friend stood by him.

  “If you’re caught up in some crazy shit from a dead psychic, you’ll need me to bail your ass out.”

  His mom often reminded him, “You don’t need a lot of friends, you just need one good one.” David smiled. Not a manufactured smile required to be pleasant, but a genuine smile.

  Ariel continued speaking. “You are the elite. I don’t need to warn you about the security. I don’t need to explain what will happen if they discover you. I can keep you safe tonight, but you’re about to begin something that will alter the course of mankind. Tonight we are the rebellion.”

  Cheers.

  She called it a rebellion, but they would be labelled terrorists. Since President Joyce demanded an end to domestic terrorism following the nuclear explosions, the rebellion had vanished. Yet now they cheered, the
hackers rallied behind her. He believed in the freedom of information, and if he could liberate this footage—

  David grabbed the sides of his head. The fire returned, one brief flashing, searing bolt of pain behind his eyes. Eyes clamped shut, he tried steadying his breath. Somebody nearby coughed. 340.29 m/s. The cougher sat thirteen point two meters away. The sound echoed off the bare walls. He could see the entire layout of the room from the echoes.

  The pain held on longer than before, determined to force his entire body to tighten. Through barely opened lids he focused on Ariel. The world around him presented a moment of perfect clarity, as if he held the answers to every one of life’s mysteries. Ariel, however, hovering in the air like a graceful angel, her ability to defy the gravitational pull of the Earth, perplexed him.

  “Together we atone for the sins of our past.” Her teeth clenched at the end, adding a bite to the last syllable. “Give them hell.”

  Thirty-nine hackers assaulting the Whitehouse. Even assuming they were the most talented bunch, he saw the likelihood of their victory being less than ideal. “Seventeen percent.”

  “What?”

  “You have a seventeen percent chance of succeeding.”

  “How could you possibly know that?”

  “I just do.” David tried to think of how many variables were involved. Between the number of hackers, their hardware, their skill level, he couldn’t begin to imagine the complex math needed to quantify it all. Math always came easy to him, and he was already taking college level calculus, but his mind refused to budge.

  He reached for his keyboard and started plugging away. If the cameras recorded everything that happened, he assumed there’d be a location receiving the footage. If he could track the current feeds, the destination would be traceable.

  “I’m in,” a man yelled out. A box appeared on David’s screen with an IP address. His own computer had been hacked by the man.