Kinetics (5 page)

"Don't forget my clothes." The
fresh air felt freeing on my face; the truck was kind of stuffy. 

"Rachel and Sandy are on it."
He flipped up the lever on the pump.  The gas started to flow and the smell
started to waft to the front of the truck.  I sat back and rolled up my
window.  I reached over and turned on the radio, the silence was like a knife
cutting into my head.

I surfed a few stations before I came to
one claiming to be Las Vegas News XM.  I turned it up and listened to the
reporter, "The explosion that rocked Las Vegas last night went unexplained
for almost fifteen hours as Aurora Corporation representatives declined
interviews.  Many people witnessed the enormous pillar of flame that blasted
into the sky.  We spoke to a paramedic who was reluctant to comment, but came
forward in the end.  He reported that there were four deaths and over a hundred
injuries reported on site, however, Aurora refused paramedic assistance stating
that it was in each employee's contract to receive any, and all medical care
from Aurora medical personnel." She stopped for a breath.

"I am here now with Aurora
Representative Rebecca Scott.  Mrs. Scott, is Aurora ready to explain what
happened here last night?" The reporter waited. 

"Well at approximately fifteen
after two in the morning, an experimental reactor, that has been contracted by
the Nevada government to subsidize The Hoover Dam in power generation, went
critical because of a minor malfunction in a piece of hardware created outside
of the Aurora corporation.  We have already assessed the issued, and the
company that built the component has been dealt with and an alternative has
been located and repair of the reactor will begin within two days." The
representative explained.  It sounded like she was reading from a script.

"Are there any fears of radiation
or any type of health concerns from the explosion?" the reporter asked.

"Fortunately the reactor that we
are constructing is completely environmentally friendly and there is zero risk
to anyone who lives near the reactor.  As a matter of fact, a majority of the
onsite workers that were not critically injured in the explosion have opted to
return to work immediately."

Someone knocked on my window, and when I
turned to look, Rachel stood outside of my door holding up a shopping bag.  I
opened the door and made sure the lab coat was covering my body.

"There wasn't a lot to choose
from." Rachel held the bag open. 

"I don't care, I just need some
clothes." I snatched the bag.  We walked over to the bathrooms that were
on the outside of the building.  Rachel and Sandy tried their best to block me
from the view of onlookers, but I still got dirty looks from all directions.  I
had a flash of frustration wondering why people couldn't mind their own
business.  I opened the door and held my nose walking into the small bathroom,
and locked the door behind me.

I opened the bag and took out the pants
and underwear.  The pants were blue jeans, but they were men's and at least
three sizes too large.  They did, however, have the foresight to get me a
belt.  I had to pull it all the way to the last notch folding the waist of the
pants as I went.

The shirt was obnoxiously red and on the
front in gold glittery lettering it read,
Hope you enjoyed the Slots!
 
It fit better than the pants.  I thanked God that there was a hoodie at the
bottom of the bag that I could wear over the ugly shirt.  I put it on and
shoved the lab coat into the bag. 

I stopped before I left the bathroom;
the mirror had rust cracks all around the edges and was missing a corner.  I
washed my face and took a look at myself in the mirror.  My eyes had changed
color.  Before all of this they where a dark green but now they were so blue
that they were almost glowing.  My hair was longer and had changed color to a
darker maroon.

I opened the door stopping in front of
Rachel and opening the hoodie, "What the hell were you thinking?"

"Only ladies shirt in the whole
place." she shrugged.

"I'm sorry Grace." Sandy stood
behind me.  I turned around and wrapped my arms around her in a hug.  I
squeezed as hard as I could.

"It's good to see that you are
ok." I let go of her. 

We all walked back to the truck where
everyone had already loaded up and were ready to hit the road.  I hopped back
into the passenger seat and put on my seat belt.

Ronnie joined the line of vehicles
leaving the truck stop.  He then pulled back onto the highway making sure to go
the opposite way we had come. 

"So did you find out where we
are?" I adjusted the sun visor. 

"We are an eight hour drive from
home." He looked over at me while we were stopped at a traffic light.

"Let's do it." I nodded.

"Alright." He merged into the
lane that would take us home. 

"I don't think that this is a good
idea." Rachel chimed from the back seat.

"I'm sure that it is a horrible
idea, but I would like to see what is left of the orphanage and there are a few
people in the town besides the woman who took care of us that we could
contact."  I looked back over the seat again.

"So what is your story
Rachel?" Kenny turned to look at her as well.  Sandy followed suit.

"Well it is similar to yours; this
is Mike and Mary by the way." She said pointing to the two others in the
back seat.  They looked like they were a few years younger than the rest of us.

"Thank you for freeing us."
Mike said, "My sister hasn't spoken since they gave her, her
abilities."

"We were all at a hospital in the
intensive care unit, and then we awoke in the Aurora facility." Rachel
tried to recall her abduction. 

"Aurora, wait a minute I just heard
on the radio that one of their experimental power generators had exploded, you
mean that was me?" I had never thought about putting the accident together
with my losing control. 

"Yeah." Rachel nodded. 

"They said that four people were
killed and over a hundred were injured." I turned around and sat back into
my seat.  I thought about Zach, who wasn’t here with us; I couldn't help but
think that he was one of the people that I had killed.

"He wasn't killed." Rachel
said quietly.

"Ok, ground rule, stay out of my
head." I looked out of the window.

"Message received." she sat
back looking hurt. 

 "She did get us out of
there." Ronnie whispered from the corner of his mouth. 

"I'm glad, but she convinced me to
kill people, and I am not happy about that." I hissed.

“Grace, she didn’t know you were going
to kill anyone.” Ronnie tried to calm me down.

“You know what…” I almost yelled, but I
could see tears welling in her eyes in the mirror, “I don’t want to talk about
it.”

“Alright, alright.  I’m hungry, let’s
get something to eat.” Kenny’s stomach growl was audible from the front seat. 

~//~

We pulled into the imitation burger
joint and decided that it would be easier to all go inside instead of the drive
thru.

Altogether we had nine trays of food and
we picked a couple of tables in the back.  Ronnie, Kenny and Rachel sat with me
at one table.  Sandy was ok to sit with Mike and Mary.

"So I think that we should put all
of our abilities, or whatever you want to call what they did to us, on the
table.”  Ronnie took the words out of my mouth, “I think we all have an idea as
to what Grace can do."

"I have telekinetics and
telepathy." Rachel’s voice issued from inside all of our heads.

"They decided to call my thing
Chronokinetics, which is the ability to manipulate time with my mind.  Dr. Cid
told one of the guys watching that they had never seen the ability
before." Kenny held up his hands where a golden ball of energy appeared,
“That’s all that I can do to demonstrate.  They put a clock in and watched it
tick backwards.”

"They called mine Electrokinetics. 
I'm surprised that I'm not constantly magnetized." Ronnie held out his
hand and showed me the veins on the back of his hand that pulsated with
electricity with his heart beat.

Sandy came over to the table and knelt
down beside me, "Metamorphosis." her hair grew three inches and
turned from brown to black, to an unreal green. 

"Now that's amazing." I took a
bite of my second burger.

"Those two both have the ability to
control water in different states.  Mike is better with the liquid form and
Mary is better with ice.  They also have a constant telepathic link to each
other, like a supercharged version of link that normal twins have." 
Rachel explained. 

Once we had all finished eating, we took
turns in the bathroom, before getting back onto the highway.  The sun had gone down
and there were far fewer cars on the road. 

"I have another question. How long
were we in there?" I looked back to Rachel. 

She shrugged, "I was in there
several years."

I turned on the GPS that was built into
the dashboard of the truck.  I flipped through the settings looking for the
date and time, but the thing wouldn't tell me anything until I put in a
destination.  So I entered the address of the orphanage. 

"You will arrive at your
destination at four a.m.” the GPS announced with a British accent.  Up in the
corner of the GPS the date was
7/6/2063
.

I looked up at Ronnie, "We were
there a month."

"More than a month actually."

I sat back in the seat and rubbed my
palms into my eyes, feeling a head ache was coming on quickly. Our
incarceration had lasted longer than I could have dreamed.

All I wanted was to be home in my
basement bed. 

We arrived in the small town of
Greencrest as the sun was starting to come up over the nearby trees.  The town
was empty, the streets void of life, but that was completely normal for our
home town.  There were maybe a total of twenty thousand people in the whole
town, and most of those people had to drive to neighboring cities for work. 

We pulled up to the lot where the
orphanage used to be located and Ronnie cut the trucks engine. 

We all climbed out and stretched. 

Ronnie and I stared at the lot in an
awestruck state.  Not only was the house gone, but it looked as if it had never
been there to begin with.  There was not a spot of evidence, nothing at all,
just an empty plot of grass.  The gravel driveway and the shed were both gone
as well. 

"How can this even be possible?"
I asked Ronnie who was knelt down beside where the front door would have been. 

He reached out and felt the grass.

"I don't know but I don't think we
need to hang around here too long." He stood and rubbed his hands
together.

We all agreed. 

"Let's go down to the diner and see
about some breakfast.  I am already hungry again." I rubbed my stomach
absent mindedly.

"Me too." Kenny chimed in.   

"I overheard, one of the scientists
talking about that once.  He said that our metabolisms are amped up to like ten
times their normal rate to compensate for the extra energy needed to use the
abilities." Rachel recalled.

"Over heard, or were you in his
head?" I hated the idea that she could freely walk around people’s minds. 

“Grace, please, I am really sorry about
invading your mind.” She pleaded.

I considered for a moment and decided to
let it go, “Forget it.  So, how long were you locked up?”

"Now that I know the date I have a
better idea. Something like ten years." she looked away and pushing away a
tear that cropped up around her eye.

"You would have had to been what
six or seven when they took you?  What about your parents?" We all walked
down the side walk.  Greencrest was a small town, anyone could walk to anywhere
in the town, if need be. The diner was only a couple of blocks away from the
orphanage.  Sandy was going to apply for a job there over the summer.

"Seven." she said quietly, “My
parents were killed in the same accident that landed me in the ICU.

"Where did you come from?"
Kenny asked.

"I couldn't tell you, I'm not
sure.  I was in and out of it so much while I was there that my memories before
that place are all munched up.  I can only remember flashes.  The twins were
only five when we were abducted from the hospital.  They know nothing before
their abduction.”

We went into the diner and sat in the
corner booth at the back; it was bigger so we could all seven sit around one
table.  Ronnie counted the cash that we had left and decided that we still had
enough for us all to go ahead and get whatever we wanted.

"We were locked away in that place
for more than a month, and I can only remember eating a dozen or so of those
nasty protein bars." I wanted real food more than anything.