Kinetics (10 page)

I stood by the door chewing on my thumb
nail.  I tried to hear what was being said but Silence was very good at keeping
his voice down.

He pressed a button on the screen of his
phone and put it back in his pocket, "Sam will be up here to get you
shortly.  He would like the rest of you to continue to practice with your
abilities."

I opened the cooler that Sam had
unloaded from his SUV and took a bottle of water.  Everyone followed my lead. 
Silence instructed everyone to return to practice.  I sat down in a canvas
folding chair and rested my head on my fist.  I was so mad that my abilities
weren’t working.

Sandy was holding back from the rest. 
She hadn't done anything to attack any of the targets, "Sandy, why are you
hesitating?" Silence asked.

"I'm not sure how I would use my
ability to attack people." she scratched her head.

"Well you possess the ability of
metamorphosis, correct?"

"Yeah, how am I supposed to use
that?" She said impatiently.

"I'm sure we can think of
something." he stopped for a minute.  "Try turning your hand into a
knife or some kind of blunt object or something."

Sandy thought for a moment then closed
her eyes.  It took a few seconds, but her fingers started to close, and then
mold together into a point.  Her hands began to stretch out and flatten; they
changed from flesh to what looked like metal.  She opened her eyes surprised at
how her arms and hands now looked. 

"Very good." Silence patted
her on the back, "Now, test them out."

Sandy ran as fast as she could swinging
her arms at the head of a nearby target.  She swiped it clean off.  She turned
back and smiled proud of what she had done.

"I wonder if I can use electrical
power to form different objects." Ronnie looked at his hands.

"You'll never know until you
try." Silence smiled.

Ronnie concentrated, as moments passed
nothing happened.  He got frustrated and sent a bolt smashing into the closest
target.

"Don't get angry you may just have
to practice.  Just keep at it." Silence laughed.

~//~

"How do you feel?" Sam asked. 
We were heading back to the clinic. 

"I feel fine." I put emphasis
on the word
fine
.

"I understand that you feel fine
compared to how you were before, but Aurora, they changed your body, and you
may not be able to tell if there is something wrong on some of the new
levels." he explained.

"What if I'm just normal now?"
I turned to look out of the window, “What if I, like, used up my abilities? My
eyes burned, but I forced my composure. 

"It's not that easy.  I know that
you would like for things to return to normal but there is really no turning
back now."

I smiled, and then flashed with
embarrassment and the depression flooded in quickly.

"What?" he asked.

"You misunderstand.  I don't want
to be normal.  I think that being here is a definite plus in my life, in all of
ours.  We have a chance at fitting in.  I don't want to have to leave." I
explained.

"Grace," He paused, "even
if your abilities vanished, which I'm sure hasn't happened, we wouldn't just
send you away."

I breathed a sigh of relief.

"It really is magnificent."
Sam said.

We pulled into the clinic parking lot
and parked near the front.

"We have a small medical staff
here; at another facility, we keep more on standby.  We have never had a need
for a large staff." Sam said as we got out of the truck.  I followed him
into the building.  We walked right past the waiting room into an exam room.

"Have a seat." he motioned to
a table.  He left me alone in the room and closed the door as he left.

It was cold, steel.

It reminded me of being back at Aurora. 

Sam returned with two men in toe, he
pointed to a tall man with blond hair that brushed his shoulders and thin lined
glasses, "this is Doctor Timothy."

"Nice to meet you." Doctor
Timothy spoke in a heavy English accent.

"And this is Doctor Ziefer."
Sam pointed to the other man who was my height, messy hair, and glasses on the
top of his head.

"You hit level six, right?" he
asked extremely excited.

"Um, yeah." I leaned back on
my hands.

"You'll have to forgive Ziefer, he
loves his work.  He is our expert on Kinetic brainwaves and mental
health." Sam explained.

"He is your expert on mental
health." I said bewildered.

"You'll learn to like him." Sam
left the room to give us privacy.

"So, Grace, how do you feel?"
Dr. Timothy asked.

"I feel fine.  I'm always
hungry."

"Does your head hurt a lot?"
Ziefer asked.

"Sometimes." I said,
"What was your name?"

"Ziefer, call me Z though."

"Well, let's do a physical work up,
then a mental." Dr. Timothy said.

"Sounds good."Dr. Z said.  He
turned and joined Sam in the small waiting room outside of the exam room.

Doctor Timothy gave me the same exact
exams that I had had the last time I went to the doctors before we had been
abducted.  I always felt extremely self-conscious but he made it as easy as
possible.  He was a hundred times more personable than my last doctor; who had
acted like a car that was in for a tune up.

Doctor Timothy left the room with two
samples of my blood that he had taken.  The room was cold and the table was
incredibly uncomfortable.  I looked around at the posters on the walls.  They
were all the normal posters, except one. 
Mental health is key.

Doctor Timothy returned with a chart in
his hands, "Well Grace, everything checks out perfect."

"Like I said, I feel fine."

"Maybe Doctor Z will be able to
help you more." He shrugged.  He left the room again.  I was starting to
think that they should have installed a revolving door. 

Doctor Z came in and was very difficult
to read as a person.  He was a short slightly overweight man who was in love
with his work.  That much I could tell.

"I'm going to attach a brain wave
monitor that we stole from Aurora and modified." Dr. Z jumped right into
the subject without any small talk.

"Is it going to hurt?" I recalled
the Kinetic brain wave inducer.

"Nope, the modifications that I
made make the process completely painless and the device is much more accurate
now."

He placed a black plastic case on the
table.  Inside was a device that looked like a crown of the electronic junk
king.  He put it on my head, and then took out a tablet computer.

He activated the crown.

"This tablet will allow me to
monitor everything that goes on in there in real time." he pointed to my
head.

"Alright." I am at a loss for
words.

He tapped on the screen a few times. 
"Alright, now try and use your abilities."

I closed my eyes and told myself that I
wanted to light my hands on fire.  I concentrated with everything that I had. 

As with every other time, nothing
happened.

"This is very interesting." he
said.

"What?" I said.

"Do you mind if I ask Sam to come
in here?" he asked.

"Sure, I guess."

He opened the door and motioned for Sam
to come into the room.

"So, what's going on?" Sam
looked from the doctor, to me, then back again.

Doctor Z pressed a button on the side of
a monitor that hung on the wall.  He pressed another button on the screen of
the tablet.  The picture was projected onto the monitor.  Green lines on a
graph shot all over the place. 

"Explain this Doctor Z,
please." Sam pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Moving from left to right is the
time spent on the machine.  Over here on the left is no Kinetic brain
activity.  Here is where I told you to use your ability." he pointed to a
spot where the green line spiked from top to bottom.  "It’s in the level
five ranges.  But this black area." he pointed to the area after the
spike, "It is something new.  So new, as a matter of fact, that the
machine cannot read it.  That is why it's just blank." 

"So what do you think it is?"
Sam asked.

Doctor Z pondered for a few moments
chewing on the end of a pen.

"I think, and my theory is
preliminary, that this is a mental block.  Until she gets through whatever
could be causing it, she may never be able to use her abilities again." He
turned off the monitor.

"How can I have a mental
block?"

"We have seen that in times of great
distress one's abilities can be empowered, but we have never really dealt with
someone that has had a distress caused by one's own abilities." Doctor Z
said, “You can see that your brain waves do spike, but something stops the
result from forming.  I could be wrong but it would be the first time.”

Dr. Z wanted to look over the test
results more so Sam took me back to the house.    

"Do you think it's because I
reached level six?"

"I can't pretend to know, but that
could have something to do with it.  I have only met one other person that had
reached that level of power.  His mind was stressed but for other reasons.  He
also had natural abilities not modifications like yours.”

"I wonder if it has to do with the
people I killed when I destroyed the Aurora facility.  I found out afterward
from a report on the radio." I looked out of the window.  I didn’t like
thinking about what the reporter said, but the memory didn’t cause any
significant pain.

"Don't worry about it.  I'm sure
that we can work through what is going on." He pulled into the driveway
and stopped the truck for me to get out. 

"Are the others back?”

"No, not yet.  They should be back
soon.  If you need anything hit one on the speed dial, the phone is by the fridge."

I got out of the truck and walked to the
front door.  I placed my hand on the pad next to the door.  It clicked and I
pushed it open.  The lights came on automatically brightening the room. 

In the kitchen I found something to eat,
cooked it, and sat down on the couch in the living room, alone to enjoy the
quiet.

I turned on the TV.  It was tuned onto a
news channel but there was nothing of interest, so I changed it to a music
channel, and dug into my food trying not to spill anything on the clean
furniture. 

After a few music videos, the front door
opened and the others filed into the house.  They were so loud that I could not
hear myself think.  They attacked the kitchen like a herd of wild animals
leaving nothing but disaster in their wake.

Ronnie came into the living room and sat
down next to me, "So, what is the diagnosis?" He turned the channel
on the TV without even asking if I was watching.

"Apparently what is going on in my
head is something that they have never seen before." I picked up my empty
bowl up off the table.

"And what's that?" He stopped
me.

"They seem to think that it is some
kind of mental block."  I said simply.  I wasn't really in the mood to
talk about what had happened at the clinic. 

Everyone piled into the living room and
started to flip through the channels, so I decided that it was time for me to
relinquish the room.  I took my dishes to the kitchen, cleaned them, and then I
went up to my bedroom.

I sat down on the bed.  I was so bored
and I didn’t want to just watch TV.  Someone knocked on my doorway. 

It was Rachel.

"How do you feel?"

"I'm tired and bored."

"Do you want to talk?" she
seemed very concerned.

"I'm sorry, but I'd rather not
right now."

"Alright, let me know if there is
anything that I can get for you." She left letting the door shut as she
walked away.

I felt alone and I didn't know who I
wanted to talk to about it.  I felt like I used to feel before we had been
abducted.  No one at the orphanage could relate because they all had groups
that they could belong to and I was alone. 

And now I was right back in that
situation.
I listened for everyone to go to bed.  I heard Ronnie stand outside of my door
for a few moments, but I'm sure Rachel told everyone that I didn't want to talk. 
After a few seconds he left.  I heard his hand slide off my door as he walked
away.

I got up and left my room.  After a
quick stop off at the bathroom I left the house.  It was dark out, the roads were
empty, and I decided to just wander around the town.  Walking through the downtown
area, I just got the feeling that the place was so cookie cutter.  The
buildings were all built out of the same material; same basic shapes went into
the design.