The Break (The Aesir Saga Book 1) (13 page)

              After Madison and Gabriel got back with the food, the team briefed Caleb on the warehouse mission. They talked about how the building was mostly empty, but they burned everything to the ground. The next day it was all over the news, blaming the fire on faulty wiring.

A slow boring week had passed. As Gabriel sat down with his microwave burrito dinner, Caleb called everyone into his office.

“Alright everybody, I just got a message from Ma’at.” Caleb looked around the room, his face giving nothing away. 

“The reason there wasn’t much in the warehouse is because there is an active team in our area. What does this mean? It means that if we do have a mission that starts to go bad, it can go to fucking terrible real quick. With that being said, he was able to give us an extremely high value target. One that we don’t want to miss, even if the threat is greater than before. The target is a government storage facility of sorts. The Agency is making a large move of information from the area, clearly afraid they will lose it like that last building. This gives us an opportunity to destroy those documents, and deal a huge setback to the Agency. Now, if we pull this off, we will be helping everyone, not just our little group here. It might even allow some of us to return to a normal life if they wanted to.”

              The excitement in the room was easily seen. A few smiled, while Brock nodded his head slowly. I guess I’m not the only one who would rather live a normal life, Gabriel thought, than run around being the hero.

“Now for the sort of bad news. We have two days until it’s the right time for us to hit the site.” Caleb continued, “This mission will be an all hands mission. With the possibility of an Agency team in the area we need everyone to help, even me. Be prepared to do whatever it takes to make this happen.”

              This time was different than the other post mission briefs. Normally people were excited to get to the mission, but with two days till then everyone just left quietly. Gabriel began walking outside, unsure of how to feel about the possibility of leaving this place. He had only been here a little over a month, but he felt like he had some friends here. Brock seemed to like him, and Stephen was pretty cool. Even Madison had started to warm up to him since they had the talk in the car. 

              As Gabriel walked out the front door, he saw Madison sitting on the porch swing by herself. She wasn’t doing anything, just rocking and looking out toward the barn. Gabriel could tell she was thinking about the mission, so he decided to walk over and sit down next to her. “So, you excited to be able to go home?” he spit out when she didn’t say anything after he sat down.

“I can’t.” she said, looking out into the distance again. 

Gabriel looked at her puzzled, “What do you mean you can’t?” 

“I can’t go home Gabriel. I’ve been gone for two years. My family has long since disowned me. If I did show up they would just turn me in. Besides, everyone here is like my family now. If we do this and everyone leaves I’ll be alone, and I don’t know if I can handle that.”

              Gabriel could see that she was starting to tear up, her eyes blinking hard. 

“Hey hey hey,” He said, wrapping his arm around her shoulder. “I’m not going anywhere. You think I can go home after what happened? I’d be arrested in like ten minutes. This place is all I have now, and if we do pull it off, it doesn’t mean that people will stop trying to hunt down people like us. Tell you what,” Gabriel turned his body to face Madison, “when we pull this off, and if everyone decides to go home, how about you and me stay here. We can be like the seniors for the other people who come here. Try and help them with their powers.” Gabriel waited for any kind of response from her.  

“You’d stay here with me?” She asked looking up at him, the tears from earlier gone.  

“I mean if you wanted me to.”

              She didn’t say a word; instead she scooted close to him, hugging him. Gabriel sat there, not wanting to ruin the moment. And when she didn’t break the hug, Gabriel put his arms around her and sat there. It was the first time someone had shown him any affection since he found his power. Gabriel sat back and enjoyed the feeling, glad he had made Madison a little happier by talking to her. Neither of them said anything as the night came in, cooling the air with a light breeze. Gabriel was the first one to talk, “Maybe we should head inside, it’s starting to get cold out.” 

Madison didn’t move, and Gabriel could see that her eyes were shut. “It’s ok, you’re really warm. Can I ask you something?”

“Sure, what’s up?”

“Did you really like your girlfriend? I mean, was it something serious?”

              Gabriel took a deep breath, unsure how to answer the question. “Well……honestly, I don’t know. I mean, I liked her, and I thought she liked me, but that was before I developed this power. She made her views pretty clear on what she thought about people like us.  She was out of my league, so I think I liked having that sort of status at school, you know?” He felt Madison nod her head against his chest. “And after a while I think I convinced myself that that’s what love is like. She really was a bitch deep down, I see that now. It’s just, I don’t know. When she saw me use my power, she called me a freak. If you really love someone, you love them no matter what. You love them with their flaws.”

“I’m sorry you had to go through all that.” she said, still resting on him. 

“I’m not; if that wouldn’t have happened I’d still be there, thinking I was in love. I never would have met people like me. I’m glad it happened.”

              Madison sat up and looked at him, “Thanks for talking with me. You really are different from what I thought. I’m going to head to my room, so I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” With that she got up and went inside, leaving Gabriel alone on the swing.

              Once Madison was gone, Gabriel let out a long sigh. He liked talking to her, and he felt he was on the edge of making a connection with her that was more than just friends. “Great job man, way to sound like a loser.” He snapped his finger, and the porch lit up as sparks jumped from between his fingers and thumb. Gabriel looked down into his cupped hand. 

              There resting in his palm was a small fireball, burning brightly. He opened his hand slowly, and the fireball grew larger. It was roughly the size of a baseball when he stopped. Looking it over, Gabriel could put his fingers on the edges of the fireball. It felt like a solid ball of fire, but when he squeezed his hand back into a fist, the ball squished between his fingers, shattering and igniting his fist. Gabriel looked at his hand and focused on trying to stop the fire like he did when he was using his power. The flames died, and the darkness came back to the porch. 

              He snapped his fingers again, and the small ball of fire was back, waiting in his palm. “This could be fun.” He said as he closed his hand, and the fireball died out. Seeing how late it was, Gabriel decided that tomorrow might be a better time to try out this new discovery. He got up from the swing, taking a minute to look out into the dark night, thinking about the possibilities a few days would bring, before walking into the house and heading up to his room.  

              Gabriel woke up early, eager to work on his latest discovery. As soon as he was out the door, he snapped his fingers, the small fireball resting in his palm. He would snap the fireball into his palm, make it grow, then crush it before extinguishing his hand and starting over. He continued his play as he made his way to the wood pile. Grabbing a few pieces, he carried them to a patch of dirt in the middle of the grass. 

              Gabriel set one round flat cut log on the ground, acting as his base. He then stacked the other tall piece on top. Using this as his target he took a couple of steps back. He looked at the log for a minute, trying to get a good idea of what he was about to do. Snapping his fingers, he sized up his fireball to roughly that of a baseball. He tried passing the ball from one hand to the other, then tossing it easily. The fireball seemed to stay together as he moved it. Finally he looked back to his makeshift target; he pulled his arm back, then let the fireball go. He only gave it enough power for the ball to make it to his target, but he missed wide to the left. The fire ball bounced a few times, every place it landed it left a small ring of burning grass. 

              “Oh shit!” Gabriel yelled as he saw fire spread on the grass, sending small tendrils of smoke into the air. He ran over, stamping out the fires before they were able to spread. When he got to the still burning fire ball, it had shrunk in size, and looked to be shrinking still. Picking it up stabilized the ball, which now sat burning in his hand.  He crushed it, extinguished the flames. He was getting good at performing those actions quickly, so it appeared to be one movement. Gabriel looked around at the small black spots the fire had left. He stamped them out again, just to be sure they were out completely. Just as he finished the last patch, Madison came walking toward him from around the barn. 

“What are you doing up so early?” she asked as she came to stand next to him.  

“Oh, just working on something new,” he said as he snapped his fingers, the fireball bursting to life in his hand. He tossed it in the air, from one hand to the other. “What do you think?” he asked, the fireball falling to the ground. 

“Have you always been able to do that?” Madison asked, turning her head to the side.  

              He picked the fireball off the ground, crushing it in his palm and stamping out the small fire left behind. “Nope, just discovered it last night, why, what’s up?”

“That doesn’t make any sense. Whenever someone manifests a power its always just one thing. Like if you are strong, you’re just strong, you don’t get these other aspects that go along with strength.”

“Maybe I’m just special, I don’t know. But hey, I wanted to talk to you about last night.” He had been thinking about it a lot since last night. 

“What about?” S0he asked, brushing her hair out of her face. 

“The whole you not going home thing, I was thinking that….”

“Just stop,” she said, cutting him off with a wave of her hand. “That was a slip on my part, I got all caught up in the emotion of everything and we need to actually get this thing done first before I, or any of us start talking about being done with it. So till then can we just leave it?”

Gabriel looked down at his feet, feeling like maybe he read more into it then was actually there.  “Yeah, sorry.” 

“Hey” she said waiting for him to pick up his head, “a few more days, then we can talk about it. So” she gave him a playful grin, “Want to show me your fireballs?” 

              Gabriel perked up, a smile creeping out of the corner of his mouth. “I’d thought you never ask. So far this is what I’ve figured out.” With that he snapped his fingers, the sparks joining into the fireball in his hand. “So it’s really tiny right now, no laughing, but if I do this.” Gabriel said as he opened up his hand, the fireball growing in the space it was given. Once it was the size of a baseball he tossed it from one hand to the other before finally crushing the ball. He let his hand burn for a while before putting it out.  

“Gabriel that’s awesome” She said, a genuine look of amazement on her face. 

“Thanks, in all honesty I’m still not very good at the throwing it part, but hey, it’s a fireball.”

“Well, just keep working on it, and it will come. Do me a favor though, and just don’t burn the house down yet, ok? See you later.” With that she turned and started jogging out into the woods.

Gabriel watched her disappear and thought that it was weird that she was going out there, but he figured there was no reason not to. He turned back to his homemade target, and with a snap the fireball was alive in his hand. This time he squared himself up to his target, and took a deep breath. He raised his arm up, feeling the heat of the fire on his cheek. As he moved his arm forward, he moved his opposite leg, giving balance to his stance. When he released the ball of flame he could see the heat from it distort the air around it, making everything look like a mirage. The ball made contact with the log, exploding in a splash of flames, covering the log and setting it ablaze. Gabriel watched as the fire burned away at the log, thinking of the splash of fire it made when it hit. To him it looked like a water balloon filled with gas hitting an already lit log. 

              The fire seemed to be burning faster than a normal campfire, he wondered if there was a way to find out how hot his fire actually was. As he thought about this and watched the flames consume the log, it split in two, each side completely ablaze as they fell to the ground on opposite sides, starting the grass on fire around them.

“Oh Fuck!” Gabriel ran into the barn, looking for water or anything to put the fire out. Finding nothing, he ran back outside, taking his shirt off to beat at the flames that were spreading. Beating at the flames, he was finally able to get them under control. Once the fire burned itself out, it left a larger grassless area than he had started, and holding up his shirt he could see some burn holes. After putting the burned wood in a nearby fire pit, which he should have used in the first place, Gabriel decided that was enough for today, heading back to the house.

              The rest of that day and the next were boring in comparison. Gabriel would eat, practice throwing his fireballs into the fire pit, and hang out with Brock, Stephan, and Madison. He was really starting to like his life at the farm, and he knew that after tomorrow it could be all over.

This was like the best summer camp you could think of, and tomorrow everyone would split up, and you might not ever see them again. On the night before the mission Gabriel laid flat on his bed as he stared at the ceiling. He hoped that tomorrow would go well, but as he fell asleep, he had to admit the farm had so far been the best part of his life.  

Gabriel awoke to the sound of someone knocking on his door. “It’s open” he said raising himself onto his elbows as he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. Caleb walked into the room and stood at the foot of Gabriel's bed.

“Listen, I know you have been doing pretty good with the missions you have been on. But tonight is really important, and a lot could happen. So I want you to do what you’re told, even if you don’t like it.”

“What do you mean?” Gabriel said, sitting up and paying more attention to what Caleb was saying.  

“I'm saying do what you’re told. I know you’re new, but on missions like this there might come a point where you can't save someone, no matter how hard you try. So if I or anyone tells you to leave them, to run or anything like that, do it." His voice had taken on the serious tone. 

"No problem, if someone says run, I'll be gone.”

“Good, now let’s hope it doesn’t come down to that. I'll see you later tonight.” With that he shut the door and Gabriel flopped back onto his bed.  

              As the afternoon got closer to night, Gabriel was in his bedroom, changing into the clothes he was going to wear that night. He had put on his favorite hoodie, the one thing that really reminded him of his life before his power. He felt like it was keeping him tethered to his old life, and maybe after tonight he would be closer to coming back to that sort of life. As he tied his sneakers he heard a knock come from his door. When he turned to say come in, Madison was already standing at the edge of his door. She had knocked just to get his attention. 

“Glad to see you’re already ready. Caleb wants everyone downstairs.”

"Just give me a minute and I’ll be there."

              He finished tying his shoes, and was out of his room, shutting the door behind him. Gabriel headed to the meeting room, walking in and seeing that he was the last to arrive. Caleb was at his usual spot, looking over a map and pictures on the desk.

“Alright guys, we all know what is at stake here. The warehouse is surprisingly simple. It’s just that, a big warehouse. But what we want isn't something that is going to be displayed on the main floor. There are elevators that lead down into the basement level. Down there we need to hit it quick and get out. Brock, Olivia, Gabriel, Madison, and Kevin will be on the team going down. Stephen and I will stay topside to hold the elevator with Kevin to let you know if anything is going on. We take the entrance, clear the building, destroy what we can, and we leave. Worst case scenario, the top side team gets taken out, trapping you guys below. Do what you can, but I know I wouldn't go out without a fight. That is our mission tonight. Any questions?” No one said anything, all eyes looking at the map of the warehouse. 

“Ok, let’s go then.” 

Everyone headed outside, going to the cars. Like last time Stephen took off, preferring to run than ride. Gabriel climbed into the back of the red Honda with Madison, Olivia in the front with Brock driving. The ride was uneventful; Madison just stared out the window the whole trip, and Gabriel not knowing what to say.