Chp. 10 "Good Guys and Bad Guys"
We were currently hauling ass to the football stadium where we knew we would be safe from any eavesdroppers because Blaine was a bit sketched out. I figured he would be excited to see people that also had powers like Max and I were but apparently I had assumed wrong.
Finally we made it and he immediately questioned, “What do you guys want? This is dangerous for me…”
I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about but I rolled my eyes, “Blaine, we’re like you, we have powers.”
He sighed, “I obviously know that, but that doesn’t explain why you guy assaulted me and then drug me out here.”
I rolled my eyes, this guy just didn’t get it. I held out my hand to Max, “Give me the razor.”
I felt the cold metal in my hand soon enough and brought it to my sensitive skin, running it across and opening up a wound just like Blaine’s. His eyes watched me in shock and soon enough I felt the familiar tingling that came along whenever my body began to heal itself.
He gasped, “Wait… you’re a Healer too…”
I threw the razor into a trash can and sighed, “Not quite, but close. See Max and I have this theory-“
“You have two powers?” He cut me off quickly, already seeming to know the true motive behind this confrontation.
“Yes, but we think I have this sort of… power absorption? Have you heard anything of that?”
His eyes widened, “You think that’s what you have?”
I nodded, “I’m about 99 percent sure that’s what I have, your little wound back there proved my theory right.”
“Andy… have you ever heard of the P.B.S.B.?”
It didn’t sound familiar so I just shrugged it off, “No? Why?”
“It’s an agency, sort of like a witness protection program for people like us… people who are running and trying to stay hidden.”
I squinted, “Wait… why are you trying to stay hidden?”
He looked around warily, and I could tell her was still a bit freaked out and a little scared to be talking to us. He sighed, “Because… there are people out there looking for people like us… kidnapping us and torturing us…”
He sounded crazy, absolutely out of his mind, “Wait… there’s people out there trying to get you?”
He ran his hand roughly through his hair, “Andy… I’ve been kidnapped by the bad agency, I was lucky enough to be rescued just in time before they…”
He trailed off then, leaving me and Max on the edge of our seats, “Who is the bad agency?”
Blaine looked at Max and debated internally whether or not he should tell us, but eventually broke under our stares. “Ok, there’s a bad agency run by the government, Federal Protection and Security, the F.P.S. Then there is the P.B.S.B, Protection Bureau for Supernatural Beings. They come to the rescue whenever one of us are in trouble and need to get out of sight again. There’s this sort of war between the two, a secret war… Have you heard about the Sanguinea Influenza?”
I suddenly felt a bit confused, “The what?”
“The BD3 disease?”
Max seemed to tune back into the conversation, “Yes, the disease they haven’t found a cure for… what’s that have to do with the agencies?”
Blaine regained his breath before continuing, “The good agency, P.B.S.B., they’re searching for a cure, a real cure. I was lucky enough to help them gain a lot of ground in the search for one… problem is they can’t find another Healer.”
I nodded, “But technically I am one now, because of you.”
He nodded in agreement, “Yes, and if you find them Andy you can save a lot of lives, but the journey is a dangerous path to follow.” Max and I were hanging onto every word that came out of his mouth, too afraid to miss anything. He continued, “There are Snitches, people who are acting as if they are searching for the P.B.S.B. when in reality they’re working for the corrupted government agency, the F.P.S.”
I sighed heavily, feeling a bit overwhelmed with all of this information that I was currently gathering. I pressed forward, “Ok, so what’s the big deal with the F.P.S. people?”
“They’re frauds, pretending to be with the P.B.S.B. when in reality they’re trying to kidnap healers and try to find a way to give any person the Healing ability… Do you know how dangerous that is?”
I took in the information and tried to process. There were people out there trying to save the world and then there were people out there trying to continue to corrupt it… and there seemed to be a fine line between them. The P.B.S.B, or the Good guys, are trying to find a cure for this disease and protect super beings like Max, Blaine, and I. Then there were the Bad guys, F.P.S., who were trying to kidnap the Healers so they could mutilate our DNA and possibly be able to give the ability to anyone who wants it…
Everything was so confusing.
“Ok, so you said you were captured?”
He sucked in a sharp breath and nodded, “Yea… by the F.P.S.”
He seemed as if he really didn’t want to talk about it but I needed to know what the big deal with this agency was. I questioned, “What exactly did they… do?”
His eyes glazed over as if he was in a completely different place, his eye twitching either from pain or some bad memories. He began to speak, “They tortured me, put me through every kind of test they could possibly think of… I’m a Healer, I can heal from any wound, and they wanted to make sure I would survive everything.”
“Why did they want to make sure you could survive anything?”
He looked at Max who had asked the previous question and laughed almost sarcastically, “Because… they want to make super soldiers. Soldiers who won’t die in battle, soldiers who can simply take over an entire country without one casualty… They want to control the world.”
This conversation was getting scarier and scarier the more we talked about it but I couldn’t stop listening.
“Luckily I was rescued by the P.B.S.B. before the F.P.S found a way to make the super soldiers. They had been having my back for several years so when they saw my credit card usages stop and nothing was going on they became suspicious…”
Wait… did he say several years? I looked at Blaine, realizing that he talked a lot more fluently and had an adult aura about him… could it be…?
I questioned, “Blaine… how old are you?”
His eyes snapped to me, knowing that I had hit the nail on the head, “Well, I’m 40 years old but my powers emerged when I was 17.”
I felt my heart begin to hammer in my chest, knowing that what I was looking at now was a man much older than he looked. “So you don’t age.”
He shrugged, “No, I have rapid cell regeneration, just like you. Our bodies repair themselves every time something inside dies or gets damaged… so you’ll technically never grow old.”
I felt as if I had been kicked in the stomach, like the world form under my feet had been ripped out from under me. I slumped over next to Blaine feeling as if I was about to throw up, knowing now that I would watch everyone I love waste away and die while I stayed young.
It wasn’t fair.
I shook my head, “This… this isn’t real… I didn’t ask for this…”
I looked up at Max who looked even more shocked than me as he stared at me in wonderment. All along he had thought that him and I would be best friends forever and share the same ability. Then come to find out there was a much bigger plan coming into view that I wasn’t sure we were ready for.
There was a war out there, a disease that was making its way through the U.S., and they needed me to find them.
Then I thought about my parents, wondering how and if they knew about this and who I was going to be whenever I grew up. Did they know I was going to be different? Did they have super powers like me and just hid them from me?
Or was there a bigger picture about my family as well?
The thoughts of my parents lying to me scared me, making me think that maybe they weren’t my real parents after all.
Was it possible that I was adopted? Or possible that my real parents put me into the custody of the P.B.S.B. who gave me to the Brocks so I could be safe?
Or could my real parents already be dead?
There was so much shit going through my mind I couldn’t even think straight, and then I remembered I needed to head to Avery’s to finish the stupid project. I looked at Blaine who was standing and facing us, looking as if he was ready to head out.
I shook my head, “I don’t know what to do.”
Blaine looked at me and sighed, “Look, I’ll contact one of my friends from the P.B.S.B. and give them your name, they’ll find you if they need you. Besides… I need to… renew my visitation.”
I looked at him in confusion, “What do I do until then?”
He looked at me long and hard before responding, “Stay hidden, don’t show anyone who you really are Andy, you’re too important to lose to the F.P.S.”
I shook my head, “Why’s that?”
“Because Andy, you’re the Catalyst.”