“Just a second, Dad,” Donna told him as she went to the sink and washed her face. She felt the water fill her pores, going inside of her; stopping her flesh from wanting to buzz and become electric and alive.
She figured it had to be Spencer or Rebecca when she answered the phone, instead she was surprised.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Donna, it’s Cody.”
Donna felt all the water on her forehead disintegrate as her heart began to speed up. Holy crap, was she dreaming?
“Cody Lighter?” she asked, even though she knew no other Cody, and knew without a doubt it had to be him. Right away, she could see his smooth, hot country boy face in her mind as every part of her began to flush.
“Yeah, I hope you don’t mind, but I got your number from your receipt when you were in my family’s store.”
Donna had no idea what to say. “No … I mean … I don’t mind. Um, Merry Christmas.” Gosh, she was such a dork.
She heard his voice chuckle. “Merry Christmas, East Applegate girl.” Somehow he sounded so cool when he said that, unlike Donna.
“Me and the guys are actually having another special holiday bond fire in a few days and I was wondering if you wanted to come with me?”
Come with him, like a date? Donna’s heart rate doubled as she felt live electricity suddenly everywhere in the room. Her vision changed as she saw electric particles bouncing around in the phone she was holding, and before she could even think about what she was doing, they slithered into her hand, becoming a part of her. And then the phone sparked, breaking as the line went dead.
“Oh crap!” Donna screamed. Her uncontrollable powers had just hung up on Cody and ruined everything. I don’t even have his number to call him back!
“Donna, what’s wrong,” her dad came into the room and spotted the sparked out phone.
“The phone, um, broke.”
Her dad looked at the fried wire. “Wow, how did that happen?” he asked her in puzzlement.
Donna ignored him, going to every other phone in the house and checking them. None of them had a signal; she’d short circuited everything. Great! How could Cody ever call her back now? She felt devastated. No, I have to fix this …
“Dad, do you think you can fix this, today?” she asked. Surely he could get this done.
“I think I could if I had some electrical wire.” Her dad scratched his head as he spoke, still trying to figure out why all the phones had sparked.
“Do you think any store in town would be open today that would have it?”
“Well it is Christmas morning, honey, but … Maybe the Gilbert’s store would be open today.”
Yes! Donna thought as she dashed outside like a crazy person, without saying another word. Of course, the Gilbert’s shop would probably be open for a few hours at least. They were their town’s only hardcore atheists and the kind of people, like Randy, whose faces soured upon the mention of Christmas.
Donna couldn’t believe she was heading to their store with such quick walking and determination, but for God’s sake Cody Lighter may have just been asking her out. Something about that made Donna feel so normal and far removed from her current real life. Could he seriously be interested in her? Why? More importantly, would he call again or even want to talk after she had caused her phone to hang up on him?
Donna breathed a big sigh of relief as she walked through the Gilbert’s chiming doors fifteen minutes later. Their store was an undecorated, dusty little hardware place. Not a single holiday tune played on the radio as Mrs. Gilbert lifted her head from the paper she was reading. Without even saying hi, her eyes returned to reading the news.
Wasting no time, Donna mouthed a silent hello and then headed toward the wiring section. She knew from her dad’s instructions what to buy, and her eyes searched as she looked for it fast. It wasn’t until she heard some kind of pop to her right that her vision went to what had appeared beside her, further down the hall.
There was a little boy, she didn’t know how old he was, maybe twelve. His face was dirty, and he was wearing a big brown coat as he fussed with something. Donna looked back to the shelves fast as the boy made eye contact with her. For some reason Donna’s instincts told her she was intruding, yet her mind told her to get a closer look at this kid, so she looked again.
She didn’t know if it was his urgency that held her eyes, or the fact that she had never seen him before in a town where everyone knew everyone, or at least they thought they did. Donna felt her feet actually move a step closer to him. What am I doing? she wondered. That’s when she looked down and saw what he was fussing with in his over sized coat. His hands had grabbed a pair of sharp pliers and he was trying to cut something off his wrist. Oh, my God! It was a set of weird looking handcuffs. A deadly chill went up Donna’s spine and all the stored up electricity in her body started to churn.
There was a chiming sound that echoed through the store as both Donna and the boy heard someone else enter. Then there was this strange current in the room, like something was going down. The boy looked Donna straight in the eyes. There was something off about him, something about his face that seemed older, wiser even though Donna could have been his babysitter. He continued to fuss with his cuffs, and that’s when he finally spoke, “Better hurry up and hide,” he told Donna matter-a-factly, as if he had serious business to do. “They’re coming.”
Donna’s heart accelerated as she continued to stare at him dumbfounded. What is happening here? And then the sound of a loud pop, like a microwave explosion erupted all around the boy’s skin, filling Donna’s ears as she forced herself to close her eyes. She found her electric body bracing itself, as if it understood more what was about to happen than her actual human brain.
In an instant, somehow, within the explosion the boy was gone. Pop! One second he was there and real, the next moment he had disappeared. It was like he’d been sucked out of reality.
Before Donna could even fight to process what she’d just seen, panic seeped into her skin like darts as she heard the sound of not one, but many people coming. Oh God, someone’s coming right now!
Mrs. Gilbert’s crackled voice was angry. “What do you mean leave?”
“It will just be for a moment, ma’am. The boy stole something from the plant, something that could be radioactive.” Oh Jesus, the plant? The power plant agents are here? How, how did I walk into this?
“Well, I never!” Donna heard Mrs. Gilbert hiss, not convinced. “There’s nothing but children in my shop, not criminals!” Her voice faded, as if someone had pushed her out of the store. Donna’s mind became disoriented, like she was in the eye of a storm that was about to cave in. She heard footsteps all around her, getting closer and closer. She didn’t know where to go, or how to hide. The little boy’s instructions seemed useless. “Better hurry up and hide, they’re coming.”
“That Bio kid is in here.” It was upon hearing Randy’s voice that her electric consciousness took over, forcing her to react in ways she didn’t even want to remember she could. She watched as the outline of her hands went completely see-through. She felt the familiar feeling of her molecules bouncing around. The next second her skin was filling with light and going completely transparent, all traces of being a human girl in her appearance left behind.
“Even if he tries to teleport out, those tracker cuffs will throw off his ability and bring him right back. Cover every inch of this store and we’ll find him!” Randy was instructing from around the corner. Donna’s time had run out.
Petrified, she took a step back, going through the wall of the store that she’d forgotten was behind her. She stopped somewhere in-between the wall as she felt the electric wires in it feed energy into her soul and pop as they short-circuited.
She pushed so her vision would stay normal as she stood like an electric ghost, hidden within the wall, as she witnessed the inside of the store go completely black. Randy pretty much jumped out of his skin at the sudden loss of power. Anything he and the o
ther men were saying went through Donna’s one ear and out the other as she watched Randy quickly respond. He held up his hands as live sparks of fire appeared hovering above his flesh. They danced around his fingers as he formed a deadly fireball he was no doubt ready to throw the minute Donna so much as breathed.
That’s when the popping sound returned. A few men shook and braced themselves as if they were crowding away from the microwavable noise. Suddenly, as if he had been slammed back into reality, the boy reappeared as he continued to shake and fuss with his cuffs, trying to get them off. It was like he had never really been gone. The air around his skin still seemed shaky, like a bomb had gone off around him and he’d survived.
“Get him quick before he has enough energy to try and teleport again!” Randy yelled at the men as they stared dumbfounded for a moment. Donna found herself staring dumbfounded, too. Where in the world had the boy just come from? It’s one thing to see people appear and disappear in movies, in reality it was the kind of thing the mind didn’t want to swallow and gave an instant headache.
The little boy looked right up at Randy as the men started moving toward him. “You know I’m not going to make this easy!” he said to Randy as if he knew him, though Randy’s face didn’t show any signs of personal recognition.
Then the kid was taking off, and boy could he move. He dove under one of his attacker’s legs, running straight forward. One power plant agent came toward his left. He grabbed for the kid but missed him as the little one easily jumped around shelves; he could pivot over obstacles like a gymnast. He seemed to turn this into a game as tons of suited power plant agents pursued him. Donna, on the other hand, was trembling. She had a power and had faced these people before, yet now she was alone and felt helpless, visions of tinted gray crashed into her head, paralyzing her as she was seconds away from getting caught herself.
Randy actually was chuckling as he watched the boy in the dark manage to elude every single agent. For a moment it was almost as if Randy was rooting silently for the tyke to escape. All the while, Donna was sure Randy was somehow aware of her presence. As if any moment he’d reach through the wall and choke her. Yet he didn’t turn around, he only looked to the left and then the right. Seconds felt like minutes as Donna waited, and the little boy was almost to the door. He was going to escape, like Donna had the day she broke into the plant, only this time no one was going to die.
For a moment, she actually felt real hope, until suddenly Randy had had enough. As the boy was about to turn the handle on the door, with one wave of Randy’s hand a wall of fire shot out of the ground and rose up, covering the door like a furnace sheet. The boy’s path was blocked and he had to jump back to stop from being burned. Unfortunately he jumped back right into the agent’s hands.
“It’s not over!” the little one screamed as the men grabbed at his cuffs. They had some kind of computer code on the side of them and when the agents pushed it, they tightened around the boy’s wrists, causing him to flinch. Then they pulled out some kind of liquid medicine inject. They shoved it into the boy’s shoulder, as sweat dripped down their foreheads from being so close to the wall of flames. The faster they worked, the quicker the fire inched toward them.
“They’re going to escape you know. All the kids and Bio soldiers you’ve locked in that compound, that your father keeps taking. They are going to be let loose. No one can stop it. Hundreds of people will get hurt if you don’t act!” the boy spat at Randy as he looked him dead in the eye. It was like the growing fire and being caught and injected was the least of the boy’s problems.
Another deadly tremble went down Donna’s spine as she grasped what she was seeing and hearing, and what was about to go down. Move, help him! a part of her conscience commanded. Yet she was still, her mind seeing everything in partial gray. She was petrified. If she had been in her human body she was sure she wouldn’t have even been able to scream. And what did that little boy mean about Randy’s father taking all the children?
The lights in the room sparked and began to flicker on and off. Somehow she knew her body standing in the wall was doing this. She needed to go now if she was going to live through the end of this day, yet she stared at the whole scene like a prisoner. She could see the little boy’s eyes more vividly now as he and the agents were lit up in the dark room with a fire wall behind them. They were so blue they looked almost purple, the color very familiar in Donna’s mind.
He looked right toward the wall were she was hiding, face strong as he breathed, “Escape!” She realized with growing horror the little one knew that she was there, watching, and had no idea how to stop this. Donna was a failure. Another person was being taken by these monsters.
The boy’s eyes finally fluttered shut and he passed out, then Randy and the men were moving quickly. One man was fussing with the boy’s cuffs, trying to make them go even tighter around the small wrists.
“Lay off,” Randy snapped at him as the fire wall behind them finally ceased and died down, leaving the smell of rotting smoke around them. The whole room went dark again.
“The tighter they are the further they’ll throw off his teleporting abilities when he wakes. It’s your father’s orders,” the man tried to say as Randy took a deadly step closer to the agent.
“I said, lay off. This kid’s not going anywhere.” Randy’s eyes sparked with flames inside his irises; making him look more powerful and even more life threatening. It was like he had been made in the image of a living god. Donna couldn’t imagine, even completely electric and lit up, that she could ever look so paramount. The agents seemed as afraid of him as Donna was, yet they were all grown men twice Donna and Randy’s age. One more tense breath and the agent loosened the cuffs around the boy’s skin. Then they carried him off as quickly as they could. Randy made a disgusted face and pulled out his phone.
“Lynn, are you with my brother?” he barked as Donna found herself staying majorly still and listening to every word as her heart raced. “Yeah, I got the kid, crisis adverted on my end, of course. Now please tell me you idiots found his sister before all hell brakes loose on the one holiday everyone is home and could see something.” Randy continued to talk as he walked out of the store’s doors.
Donna stood waiting in the wall for several minutes. Her heart was beating so fast that it actually hurt as everything sunk in. She felt like the most small, useless, helpless person. Here she had a power, and yet she was too lost and afraid to move, and her dumb mind was seeing gray again like it had when she was a child, after she had come home from New York for the first time. When her whole world had been crushed.
Never wanting to remember that past, she finally took a step out of the wall of the store, when she was sure everyone was gone; and into the stinging cold air outside. Once she was sure that the coast was clear, she dropped to her knees as more gray pressure pushed through her mind and she tried to understand everything she’d just somehow witnessed. Get a grip, she tried to order herself, but she couldn’t.
A short time later, Donna was knocking on Rebecca’s door. Her hands trembled. She knew Rebecca probably wouldn’t be strong enough to handle this, but where else could Donna go? Rebecca’s mom answered the door with a plate full of sprinkled Christmas and Chanukah cookies in one hand, and Rebecca’s three-year-old cousin Millie, in the other. Rebecca’s extended family always visited over the winter holidays because it was the only time her parents weren’t traveling or out on digs. Millie was stuffing her pale face with cookies as she smiled at Donna.
“Merry Christmas, Donna, so great to see you,” Rebecca’s mom said with a tired smile.
“Hi,” Rebecca’s little cousin tried to mouth as she gobbled down more sweets. Her tight, curly red hair was just like Rebecca’s. This three-year-old was so happy and innocent, at home in the hands of a loved one, Donna had never envied a toddler so much in her life, and she knew that captured boy today would have envied this little girl also.
“Merry Christmas, is Rebecca here?” Donna sta
rted to ask as Rebecca’s mom’s eyes were adverted. Donna turned around and saw Spencer was jumping out of a car in the driveway and walking up to them.
“Hey, Spencer,” Rebecca’s mom waved and Millie imitated with a miniature wave, too. “Looks like the whole gang’s here. Let me go grab Rebecca.”
Donna had so much to say and yet all her and Spencer could do was stare at each other awkwardly as Millie, Rebecca’s cousin, stood in the doorway looking at them. Millie smiled and giggled as her body danced to the holiday music Rebecca’s dad was playing in the background. Then little Millie pointed up to show Donna and Spencer what was above them: a piece of mistletoe.
“Ki … kiss,” Rebecca’s cousin spit out as she laughed.
Donna and Spencer seemed to both be in the same state of fear and panic somehow, their bodies both tired, yet leave it to Spencer to entertain this. “Wow, this just got awkward.”
They both stuck their hands in their pockets in sync, stepping away from the mistletoe and ignoring the strangeness of the moment as Rebecca made it to the door, computer tablet squeezed tightly in her arms. She was ready to go.
When the door was closed behind them, Rebecca was moving the fastest, like she was on a mission. Could it be she actually had news that could top Donna’s, and whatever Spencer was trying to say? It seemed so, as they rushed away from her house and into the woods.
“We need to be far away from my house where no one could be hiding any bugs,” Rebecca informed them in a rush. She was referring to before Paul’s death when apparently he’d told Rebecca he found a listening device hidden in his house.
“Didn’t Paul build a bug detecting gizmo to help us with that?” Spencer asked her.
“There are over a thousand different types of listening devices on the internet alone, you think we should chance something like that on a device that can detect maybe ten types?” Rebecca snapped at him.
“Good point,” Spencer’s voice rolled on as he began to say what he needed to get out. “So I got myself a car for Christmas, and I took off with it, breathing in one moment of teenage male freedom. As I passed the power plant on way home, something happened. I saw something!” Spencer started to tell them.