The Awakening

Chapter Two - Thomas

The hour-long trip seemed to be taking forever. I was starting to get agitated. I really did not like being inside such a small space as a car for any extended period of time. It made me feel trapped. I did not feel all that different from a cornered animal, instantly defensive. There was no way I could really doze at the moment, but I would let the other two men assume I was asleep. I kept my breathing even while still having irregularity in it, most of my breathing coming from my mouth and going into my stomach, the diaphragm acting as a roof. I forced my jaw to stay relaxed along with shoulders, my head still leaning against the window of the vehicle, rattling with every bump that we encountered.

“What are we going to do with her?” It was the voice of the young man, the first time I had heard him speak. The two men had been silent since I had decided to take a “nap.” His voice was a little higher than what I would have thought, almost pretty sounding.

“Didn’t I tell you?” The gruffer voice spoke this time, a hushed tone, a bit of a growl of anger tainting the voice. There was a little bit of a pause before I heard the older man exhale in a bit of frustration, I could almost hear the frown in his voice as he spoke again. “I thought I had. Simple, we are going to steal her powers. She doesn’t seem to be...able to use her abilities yet, so we will have to fix that first, but that shouldn’t take too long, by the end of the week we’ll have her powers. Too bad that doing so would result in leaving her an empty husk.”

My heart seemed to skip a bit as my brain buzzed with somewhat scattered thoughts running through them. Powers? She seemed to be perfectly human. Another surprise. I really, really hated surprises. At least she couldn’t use them yet, or at least I thought that was a good thing, I didn’t know. Or maybe she couldn’t use them. What were her abilities, if she really had them? Wait! They were going to kill her!

I knew then and there what I needed to do, what was going to be the right thing to do. I had to find a way to get her out of the car and to the safe house, and I had to do it when the car stopped. I could get away from rolling out of a moving vehicle with hardly a scratch, though she probably couldn’t, and I couldn’t do it while carrying her. I really did not like working with other people because then I had to put what they could do in the equation, and right then all she was good for was to be dead weight.

The next half-hour was agonizing, pretending to be asleep, making the occasional movement where it would be deemed a good time to move while sleeping, It wasn’t as if I could just start thrashing around in my sleep, that wouldn’t do, one had to be consistent when pretending to be asleep. The father and son didn’t speak at all for the rest of the ride, though I heard the occasional turn of a page, the groan of a leather seat as weight was shifted, the sound of the tires rumbling against the asphalt underneath it, until it jostled, starting to roll on a smoother surface, maybe cement. I was starting to get agitated, I also hated waiting. My survival instincts told me to run, get away, that I too was in danger, whether I tried to take the girl or not.

I was relieved when the car slowed down to a complete stop, feeling the gearshift move to park right before the car turned off. I waited, just a little longer, I had to wait until just the right moment otherwise everything could go extremely wrong. I could feel the slight shift in the vehicle as the younger man leaned across the space to unbuckle her seatbelt, the other two’s seat belts already undone. I heard the older man tell the driver to drop me off somewhere, that he knew I could easily find my way back where I needed to go no matter where I was. I parted my eyes slightly as the younger man pulled her out of the vehicle, the older man coming out on the other side.

I let my hand fall to the clip of the seat belt, tensing my leg muscles. Now was time. I added light pressure to the button, then heard the click and felt the release. Like a runner after the sound of the gunshot, I quickly leaped out of the vehicle, planting a prompt kick to the boy’s stomach, catching the girl as I started to run toward the tree line. I was expecting to hear screaming, yelling, cursing, but there was no sound. I listened closely, but the only noise that my abnormally sensitive hearing picked up was a quiet noise, something that was almost like a hum and the sound of grass being kicked. I looked back, not sure what was making that kind of noise. At first I didn’t see anything, but then I caught sight of what I could only call a minor disturbance in the light. It was slightly twisted, almost like a bubble, but it was nowhere near as noticeable. I attempted to judge how far away it was, but it was faster and larger than what I had thought it was.