Chapter 16
Kelley had been shaken awake by a man dressed in black. After apparently crashing through the window, he shook glass from his body and pointed an assault rifle right in her face as she sat up.
“Stay there Miss Anderson.” He warned in a controlled voice.
Kelly did as she was told. In her clearing sleep fog, she began to wonder where Caleb was. He was sleeping right there next to her, wasn't he? She heard more crashes and commotion downstairs. After some muffled speaking, she turned to see Caleb standing at the door way. He gave her the same look that she remembered from the first time seeing him in real life.
She knew she would be safe. She didn't know how, but she felt it. Caleb would protect her in ways no other man ever could. It was then that she saw him turn around and run down the stairs. There was a loud crack, and she could hear Caleb speaking in strained, muted tones. The man who was pointing a gun at her went to the doorway to yell down the stairs. She felt a small ember of anger growing in her. She knew by what was going on downstairs that Yukio was dead. She could almost feel it like Caleb would.
All that she had been through these last few days had made her almost numb. She didn't feel the same anxiety and inadequacy that she used to before. She was no longer a victim of her own sabotage like she once thought. Kelley now looked at herself in the small mirror on the wall by the bed. She saw her jaw set, and the look in her eyes turned to focused rage.
When she heard Caleb coming up the stairs, she sprang into action. Sitting by the doorway was an ornate soapstone carving of the sitting Buddha. Kelley grabbed it and lunged toward the man as he turned to point the gun at Caleb. She cocked her arm, and reached back to give the full force of her stroke. The statue hit him right in the back of his head with a dull, unsettling noise. He fell face down on the stairs just in time for Caleb to jump over him on his way to Kelly. The man twitched a few times before going still.
“Wow! Nice toss Kell!” Caleb said en route to grabbing her into a tight embrace.
Kelley buried her face in his bare shoulder. Her previous bravado drained from her with every heaving sob. “Do you think he's dead?” She queried timidly.
“Oh yeah, he's dead alright. If that statue didn't hit him, it would have ended up somewhere in the pacific. Where did you learn to throw like that?” Caleb spoke while he pulled on a t-shirt and sweater.
“I didn't wanna kill him. I just wanted to stop him from hurting you.” She said in defense. Kelley was having a hard time coming to grips with the fact that she just killed a man.
“Well, it was him or us. We have to go. Something weird was happening right before those guys got the jump on us. The new colors that I see just disappeared and I don't know why.”
Kelly pondered what he said while he led her down the stairs. “The colors?”
He paused in the rushed confusion to give a low, formal bow to the body of Yukio. Kelley felt like she was watching a Karate student and his master. Caleb stood up from the bow and turned to her. He grabbed the rifle that was propped against the wall and slung it over his shoulder.
You can never be too careful...
“That's right, I never told you. I see these colors now. It's hard to describe, but it reminds me of fractal rainbows. They seem to be the way my mind translates all of this data. Before we were attacked, the colors just went away. I don't really know why.” He motioned for Kelley to follow him out the side door to the garden.
“Where are we gonna go?” She asked.
“We're going to leave here and get a cab. From there, I can read what's going on with Ivanna and her team.”
They both stepped out into the rising sun of the quiet neighborhood. After the little garden gate shut behind him, Caleb turned to see Kelley looking to the street with fear in her eyes.
Standing between them and the street were Ivanna, Charlie, Evan, and the man he knew as Boone. The trio looked confident in a way that had him worried. Without giving it another thought, Caleb un slung the rifle, lined up the sights, and put a bullet right into Evan's chest with lightning speed. A single brass shell casing fell to the ground while the rapport from the gunshot echoed through the sitrring neighborhood. The group held their stance as Evan fell to the ground and gasped. Caleb tossed the gun and pushed Kelley behind him. Every thought in his head revolved around keeping her safe. They would never harm him, he was too valuable. But, they could use her to get what they wanted.
He walked up to them with his head held high. He felt strong and confident above and beyond his abilities. Caleb had managed to become a human being. He developed entirely new branches of science that mankind could benefit from. He did it all for her. Kelley was the one and only reason he chose to become a real person. With that, he would bring untold new methods for treating disease and other misfortunes.
“I know what you want, and you can't have it. What I am, and the knowledge I possess, belongs to the entire world. It does not belong to a corrupt corporation.” I was then that Caleb noticed the small box in Ivanna's hand.
“Tisk tisk, Caleb. I thought that little wakeup call would have got your attention.” Ivanna held out the white, rectangular box and gingerly placed her thumb and index finger on the knob. “I was able to turn down your abilities with this little toy, and it was only set to level one. Let’s see what happens when I turn it up to five.” A glimmer in her little eyes foretold what was about to befall him With a flick of her wrist, Caleb's blended digital and real world became his own private hell.
He fell to the ground and clutched his head in his hands. The colors were now nothing more than shards of broken glass in his blood stream. Every noise, sight and smell was muted by his pain. He could distantly make out Kelley's protests, and he saw Boone hold her back from attacking Ivanna through his pain fog.
“You see Caleb; I don't need to take you with me. All I have to do is get enough of a head start with your girl here in my keeping. Instead of destroying a whole city to get what you want, you will have to negotiate with me. So, we'll be taking Miss Anderson, and you can have fun with this.” She reached down and slowly turned the knob all the way up to the max. She set the box on the ground and admired the strife that was befalling her stubborn target.
In their smug state, the group of assailants didn’t notice the slight tremor in the ground. When Ivanna maxed out the little white box, Caleb's tortured state transcended into a sort of internal calm. His mind and body equalized. Like the eye of a hurricane, a new and eerie calm overcame him. Clarity washed over like never before. His adrenaline trigger was still active, and the torturous box may as well have been the switch to turn up his powers to the max. The colors were now so thick that he couldn't see through them. There was no more pain, and he sensed his surroundings by the data coming in. He almost didn't need his body; he was so in tune with the information coming into him.
As he crouched on the small lawn in front of Yukio's house, he extended his fingers and shoved his hands into the soft, wet soil. In the wet earth, he could feel everything. The colors were so thick, that he could touch the data like never before. As he stood, he motioned his hands like a true Tai Chi master. With the wet, grassy soil still in his hands, he stood up straight and gave the group a malicious smile.
“It looks like your lab guys need to work on your toy some more.” He growled at them.
When he jutted his outstretched hands above his head, the entire block shook with a thunderous tumult. A gas line ruptured right behind them. The explosive force caused the ground to unzip like some kind of volcanic event. A bevy of small cars were tossed about as the fire and debris carved a slot into the street. The remaining street lights in the area exploded and fell to the ground, while the power lines arced and spat fire down upon them.
Yukio's house imploded, as the collective power of Caleb's abilities eclipsed it like a large sun. The structure simply fell into a hole in the earth like it never existed, the combined destruction from the house’s electrical and gas lines spread des
truction out onto the small yard by way of continuous explosions.
Ivanna was amazed at this show of power, but she held firm to her plan. Wind and debris swirled around her. Reaching for her chrome Desert Eagle, she pulled back the slide to chamber a round. After leveling the gun at Kelley's head, she called to Caleb over the racket.
“Oh dear, I don't think you want anything bad to happen to your creator do you?” She sang to him among the chaos. To further emphasize her point, she cocked back the hammer as well. “Why don't you stop your little floor show so we can take you and your girl somewhere to talk?”
Kelley struggled against Boone's iron grip on her arm. Her chest jutted out as she struggled to free herself. Caleb summoned the remaining utility wires into a sort of kinetic animation. The arching wires spat more acrid sparks over the destroyed street, tossing out random jolts of electricity that were tracking closer to the group of assailants.
It was then that a hole erupted in Boone's chest, the wires finally finding a deserving target. Charlie was content on cowering behind the scary man to hide from Caleb's wrath, but when Boone’s scorched body fell on him, he stood for the first time. Kelley finally shook herself out of the dead man's grasp while Ivanna looked on with stark terror.
Electricity licked out from the hanging power lines like a cracking bullwhip. Each flick controlled by Caleb's hand as if he were some kind of conductor waving a wand. Charlie moved to grab Boone's gun from his hand, only to be burned by an errant bolt of electricity. The electrified gun fell from his hand while he winced in pain.
“I don't think so Charlie!” Caleb shouted in an even tone of voice.
Ivanna puzzled over what to do. She saw her iron grip of control slipping out of her hands. The calm breathing that she had managed up to this point had regressed into ragged gasps as the world around her erupted in chaos. The streets were torn asunder, and fires from the gas main rupture burned up and down the idyllic little street. Her policy on fasting during a mission became a regretful practice. Her mind clouded and her hands trembled while she pondered her ability to get a shot off at Caleb. She knew she was jeopardizing the goal of the entire mission, but she felt now as if it was truly her life on the line.
With shaky hands, she pointed the giant Desert Eagle semi auto. The large frame of the behemoth gave her solace and comfort, and she leveled the gun at Caleb's tall frame as best as she could. Thinking back on all of the marks, all the men and women that she had put a bullet in, she lined his head up in the sights and controlled her breathing.“One...two...three!”
One loud pop echoed out over the orchestra of chaos around them. A single brass shell casing fell to the ground, and the remaining members of this bizarre encounter stood in shock while they looked to one another. Caleb felt his chest and around the rest of his body, and he looked to Kelley to see if she was alright as well.
Kelley held the black semi auto that Charlie had dropped. The gun had kicked back and cut her hand when she aimed it at Ivanna. She wasn't expecting the rapport to be so loud, and she dropped it immediately to cup her hands to her aching head. While her eardrums rang in a deep hum, she saw Caleb rush over and place a flying kick right into the middle of Charlie's chest. The be-suited goon fell back and writhed on the ground while she and Caleb looked at Ivanna.
She stumbled around, and if it were not for the dire circumstances surrounding them, they might have mistaken her for some kind of melodramatic actress. In her chest, a massive wound trailed blood down the front of her white silk top. Her own mortality was realized by her hand, as it came back from the wound wet and bloody. Her knees failed, and she collapsed on the fractured ground. The large gun had fallen from her other hand, and she fought with everything she had to crawl over to it for one more chance. In her mind's eye, she did not see herself as dying; she was just inconvenienced by this small turn of events. She knew that the oncoming shock from her organs shutting down would put her in a state of temporary bliss. Until then, she still wanted on more shot at this synthetic man known as Caleb.
Kelley walked over to Ivanna's crawling frame and placed her foot right on Ivanna's hand as it reached for the gun.
“Not today, sweetheart.” She said in a quiet, calm voice.
The small woman looked up at her and seemed to smile faintly before her eyes went blank, and her body went limp.
Kelley turned to see Caleb standing over Charlie's crumpled posture. The man was wheezing and coughing while Caleb pulled him into a sitting position.
“Where's the rest of the team?” He said to Charlie in a commanding voice.
“What 'team'? This was everybody! Ivanna decided to call everyone off at the last minute. She wanted a crack at you personally. I told her not to do it, but she has a way of getting what she wants.” He said with a resigned laugh.
“You think this is funny!?” Caleb shouted at him. His rage was building again, and he wasn't really sure what would happen if his temper got away from him.
“Please! Do you know what they're gonna do to me when they find out what happened here today? The only funny part will be who gets to mop up what's left of my body.” He finished with a dark chuckle.
Caleb gritted his teeth and pulled Kelley aside to talk with her.
“We still have to get out of here. I don't still don't know how many guys Ivanna had on this, but it feels like a lot.”
“I have a roommate who lives in London now, maybe we can escape there for a bit?” She said in a confidential tone. She looked over her shoulder to see Charlie trying to stand up.
“That might work.” Caleb pondered. “My pilot is still at the airport trying to get clearance for takeoff. The officials are hassling him about flying in with such a small plane.”
Charlie cleared his throat and said, “Hey since you're not gonna kill me, you might want to get a move on.” He joked in a nonchalant tone of voice. “I don't think you wanna run into your twin brother. If only those fools at Allied Biotech knew…” he chided musically.
Kelley slowly turned to him as the words sank in. “What do you mean?”
After another bout of coughing Charlie stood up and said, “What? Do you think you were the only one that Evan grew? There was a French company that Evan was working with too. I don’t know how far they got, but then again, I don’t really care anymore either.”
End of book 1
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