Psych Investigation Episodes: Episode 1 (A Young Adult Scifi / Fantasy) (43 page)

Jack roared at the two.
“I am not your damn
brother! I will never be your brother!”
He forced calm into
his voice. “I don’t know what happened to you two, but I wish I
did, really, I do. Whatever the reason though, you two can’t be
allowed to walk free anymore, same goes for Andy.”

He gently put the rabbit on the ground and
allowed himself to draw from the disgusting, vile source of power
he had come to hate. He did not close the ‘door’ right away, he
allowed it to pour into him a moment longer.

He was almost unable to close it off as the
torrent of wild power rushed into him.

“
Ruin, Darling, the Harris-boy is
drawing quite a bit of power, almost as much as
you’re
capable of.”

Ruin spat on the ground. “I guess you were
right, Brother Andy, we can’t make Jack Harris our family after
all.”

“
Please,” Andy begged, “let me kill
him.”

Ruin and Requiem answered at the same
time.

“
No!” Requiem shouted.

“
Go ahead, Andy,” Ruin said. He
looked to his sister. “We must face the facts, dearest Sister. The
Harris-boy will never be ours.”

She turned around to face away from them. “I
will not watch this.”

Jack saw Andy raise his arms, a look of hatred
and disgust shining through his once youthful-looking eyes. Now
they were hardened, and the twisted man who stood before him
replaced any trace of the boy Jack knew.

Jack began to sweat, and his face began to heat
up. He wasn’t sure how he knew, but somehow he realized what Andy
intended to do. Fear bubbled in his heart, as he realized he was
going to meet the same fate as Richard and his family.

The heat grew, and in an instant it went from
being a mild discomfort into a burning sensation. In another second
it would become agony, and Jack had no idea how to stop it. “Andy,
please,” Jack begged.

Andy ignored him, a sadistic smile on his face.
There was no breaking through to him, the time for that had passed.
He was going to kill Jack.

Jack closed his eyes and prepared for the
worst. After a few moments, when the pain didn’t increase, he
opened them again. Not only had the pain not increased, but now,
about a foot in front of him he saw a puff of smoke. All three of
the Psychs seemed confused.

“
Sister, why is our brother’s
ability failing?” Ruin asked.

Requiem turned back around to face them, and of
all things, she held a look of relief. “There is a Telepath
somewhere around here, and he … no she, is interfering.”

Jack’s eyes widened. He was being saved, but by
who? Andy and Ruin frowned at something in the distance and Jack
spun around. Walking toward them were the five people in the world
Jack had come to trust implicitly.

“
Jack, are you okay?” Sarah asked,
sprinting towards him. She ran in an odd, off-balance way. Her head
was staring at the ground. “I got to you just in time,” she panted.
She was out of breath.

Michael, Paro, and Kazou came close behind her.
To Jack’s left, he could see Melissa charging from the side of his
house with worry on her face.
“Jack!”
she called. For some
reason Paro frowned at her, and Melissa returned a guilty look.
Ruin grabbed Requiem by the arm and backed up, followed closely by
Andy.

“
I don’t reckon I’ll let you get
away this time,” Michael spat. Two lampposts ripped free of the
ground, which cast darkness on the area they’d once lit, and sped
towards the three fleeing Psychs. Ruin made a chopping gesture in
the air, swinging his stiffened hand downward. Another two
lampposts ripped free, colliding with the first two and causing all
four to fall to the ground with a tremendous crash. Every neighbor
on the street opened their doors, each looking to find out what had
been causing the commotion all night.

“
Not here,” Paro growled.
“Definitely not here. Besides, we couldn’t pursue these three even
if we wanted to. We’ve got everything from serious, to critically
injured in Alana’s home, including Alana herself.”

“
Not this again,” Michael moaned.
“I’m not letting these fellas get away a second time just cause of
some protocol or another.”

The three Psychs broke into a sprint, darting
away from Paro and his team. Jack didn’t care much for protocol
either. This had gone on for far too long. He was damned if he was
going to allow there to be another Jonathan, or Richard, or whoever
else lost their lives to the three Psychs.

Jack was still filled with the power he’d
drawn. It began to hurt—he knew he’d need to either let it go or
use it, and he had no idea how to let it go. He stepped forward
away from the team. Paro gave him a warning glance.

“
What do you think you’re doing,
Jack?” Paro said.

Jack looked at him. “What you signed me up to
do.”

In what was perhaps one of the riskiest things
Jack had ever attempted, he once again tried to find a trigger.
Only, this time it was one he didn’t have a clue how to find. If he
thought about what he wanted to do, many of them felt right, but
even narrowing it down there were still so many possibilities. Once
again, Jack guessed.

“
Paro, I think Jack’s using
Reinforcement,” Sarah said. Both concern and amazement filled her
voice.

As the power rushed into Jack’s legs, he
couldn’t help but feel elated. Never had he felt so much strength
within himself.

So, this is what it feels like to be like
Kazou or Melissa.

Jack squeezed and wiggled his toes then looked
ahead of him. He crouched to the ground like an Olympian at the
start of a race, and with warning shouts and threats coming from
Paro behind him, he ran off.

“
That’s my boy!” Michael shouted,
running after him.

“
Foolish children!” Kazou yelled,
following behind Michael.

“
You have just earned eight slaps!”
Melissa added, running swiftly on her feet, faster than all of
them.

“
Damn everyone with a Telekinetic
affinity, Unrestricted or not!” came the voice of Paro from behind
them, as he too took up the charge.

“
Wait up, you guys!” Sarah
laughed.

“
Alright, rest time,” Jack called
out, panting and struggling not to double over. They’d run almost
three miles, and now they were making their way through a shopping
district, with stores on both sides of the street. It was just
before ten p.m. so activity was dying down. There were still quite
a few parked cars pulled up to various Delis, video stores, and
laundromats, though far less than there would’ve been an hour
earlier.

“
M-maybe this … maybe, maybe this
was a bad … bad idea,” Jack panted. He gasped for breath. “You know
what? It totally was.” He stopped running and leaned over, sucking
in air through giant breaths. Jack hoped they’d catch the criminals
within a few blocks, yet here they were, three miles away and still
in pursuit.

Jack yelped as Melissa unexpectedly kicked him
in his butt. “This was
your
idea, Jack,
you
made
us
chase after you, and now you just want to give up? No
way—you picked your poison, now drink it.”

Paro nodded in approval. “We’ve already broken
protocol by leaving the scene of a crime with injured to pursue
hostile Psychs, so now we’re making the best of it. Jack, we’re
here because of you, got it?
Now
move it,
Harris!
”

Jack inhaled one more giant lungful of air,
enjoying his brief respite, before he forced himself to charge
forward yet again. At first, he had outrun all of them except
Melissa, his legs fueled by his use of Reinforcement. It lasted for
a good mile, but when the power ran out, he found that he couldn’t
draw more of it while running, like everyone else seemed to be able
to do. Also, unless it was an emergency death situation, Jack
needed to “work” himself up to the draw. It was because of that
awful feeling, forcing him to mentally prepare himself for the
inevitable discomfort. The team wasn’t giving him the time to work
up to it, and so now they were practically dragging him
along.

They ran through the shopping district, making
an echoing, clicking sound as six sets of feet kicked down on the
concrete. It was now the only thing that could be heard besides the
occasional passing of a car. Sarah claimed to be following the
trail of the three Psychs, but Jack could see no sign of them. She
was sweating profusely with her face turned downward to stare at
the ground.

“
Left,” she breathed.

Paro had once again taken charge, now in the
lead of all of them. He directed them to the left, across a narrow
one-way street. The rest followed close behind. Jack wasn’t the
sharpest tool in the shed, but seeing the way Paro was so quick to
take command, Jack was coming to realize that Paro had intended
this all along.

A team-leader, or captain, or whatever Paro
was, wouldn’t be able to order his team to pursue fleeing
criminals, not when there were injured around, that much Jack had
gathered from listening to their conversations. But when Jack had
started running away, Paro had more than enough power to stop him
in his tracks. However, when Jack ran off he had only sighed and
followed along. Paro needed an excuse, a reason to disobey
protocol, and Jack had given it to him. Once again, Paro had
outsmarted Jack, and now he couldn’t even complain about the
exhausting run. He had basically asked for it.

Down the narrow street, Paro led them through
yet another narrow street with three-story apartment complexes on
both sides. The street was empty, save for an old homeless man
wheeling a cart. He stopped wheeling for a moment and looked at
them, before deciding that Paro and the gang were of no interest to
him, returning to once again wheel along.

“
Wait!” Sarah yelled. “Down
there.”

Paro stopped short, causing Jack to almost bump
into him. “Down where, Sarah?”

She pointed to a manhole cover that Paro was
standing on. “They went into the sewers.”

Jack looked at the manhole cover under Paro’s
foot. Even from where he was standing, he could smell the stench of
raw sewage seeping out of it.

“
Well,” Jack began, “I guess we’ll
just have to let them get away this time.”

Melissa glared at him. “Don’t even start, Jack.
You know damned well we’re going after them.”

Jack tensed. “Melissa, don’t be ridiculous.
There’s peepee and poopoo and bacteria, and God knows what else
flowing down there. I’d rather die than have to walk through
that.”

She rolled up her sleeve and made a fist.
“Well, you’re in luck, because I might just take you up on that
offer.”

Kazou shook his head. “Jack, do you remember
why we’re doing this? Keep that in the front of your mind at all
times and the sewage will not bother you. Try and remember the
faces of all the people those three have killed.”

Jack thought on it and found that in some way,
Kazou was right. Thinking of Jonathan’s ruined dreams, the
slaughter of an entire family, even the children … it was almost
enough to make Jack leap down there ahead of
everyone—almost.

Paro backed up. Michael made a squeezing
gesture with his hand, and the manhole cover was ripped off, flying
into the air and landing several feet away from them.

“
Do all Psychs have their own like,
thing they do?” Jack asked. “Like, Michael squeezes his hand into a
fist, Sarah looks down, and that one guy …
damn!
I just
knew his name like, two minutes go. Was it Rembrant? Whatever, that
guy makes it look like he’s karate chopping the air. Do a lot of
Psychs do this?”

Paro answered, “I never thought I’d say this to
you, Jack, but you truly are very astute. In fact, it’s almost hard
to believe, considering how … lacking you are in other areas. Yes,
many Psychs, myself included—but not all—have their own little
quirks. It helps them focus.”

Jack didn’t seem to have any quirks, but he
knew he wanted one. His mind raced with ideas. Maybe he would do a
back flip before using Telekinesis?