A Few More Days

The majority of Sunday was spent in boredom. With nothing to do and nowhere to go, their options were quite limited. Erick’s energy was returning, but they both agreed that it would be best to wait until he had a larger store built up.

“I feel like I’m in prison,” Sarah remarked when the suffocating boredom reached its peak.

The only respite was found in a couple of old books Sarah had in her car.

“I was supposed to read them for my English class,” she explained after bringing them in and tossing one into Erick’s lap. None of them was particularly interesting and all of them were long. That night they found it difficult to sleep. Regardless, they awoke early Monday morning with sunlight streaming in through the windows. There were no blinds and the blankets they’d tried to use as drapes lay crumpled on the floor where they had fallen during the night.

“I’m going shopping,” Sarah announced as soon as she finished checking her hair.

“Can I come?” Erick asked in jest.

Sarah viewed me narrowly.

“No,” she said. “People will be looking for you more than me. Besides,” she added, “you need to get practicing.”

Erick slumped back down to the floor in the middle of his blankets.

“There are plenty of people in the park,” Sarah said without giving Erick the satisfaction of looking at his sulky expression, “Plenty of minds to read,” and she walked out of the apartment.

Erick sat down at the window and began to concentrate.

What was it like before? he asked himself.

He remembered his head tingling when he heard Special Agent Reese’s thoughts. Without anything else to go on, he gave his store of energy a prod and began to feel around until his head began to tingle like it did before. Light and sound burst upon Erick with such intensity that his head threatened to burst. He fell back, tipping the chair and hitting the floor. Agony drove his groans into a scream and smacked his head against the floor in the hopes of stopping the pain.

It ended as suddenly as it began. Erick laid panting on the floor, beads of sweat rolling off his face. At last the final remnants of the throbbing faded and he climbed back onto the chair.

“That was less than fun,” Erick said aloud to steady his nerves.

A few minutes of slow breathing calmed him down and Erick began again. This time he narrowed his focus to a single jogger instead of just opening his mind to everyone around him. Bit by bit, Erick poured more energy into the jogger. All at once Erick was in two places. Music played in ears that weren’t his and a voice counted steps in his head. Erick’s chest burned but he, the jogger, pushed through. Erick reached a little deeper in the jogger’s mind and found himself back in the apartment.

She’s cute, the jogger’s voice said in Erick’s mind as he, the jogger, passed a woman going in the opposite direction.

Erick took a risk and focused on them both.

I bet he’s still watching me, she thought and glanced over her shoulder at him.

He was and she laughed when she caught him. He immediately looked away and she resumed her jogging.

She was totally checking me out, he thought and puffed out his chest a bit more.

Idiot, she thought, and switched to another jogging path.

Their minds went back to counting steps and breathing patterns. Erick let go of them and sat back to rub his newly aching temples.

Fifteen minutes, he told himself and got up to take a break. A drink of water seemed like a good diversion from the mild headache.

Feeling better, Erick returned to his seat and picked another person. This time it was a homeless man; the park was never without a few vagrants. He had been sleeping on a bench the young woman ran by but was now stretching and rifling through his bag for something. Erick began to focus. Immediately Erick’s back kinked painfully and his mouth turned dry, regardless of the water he had just drunk. The bag was dark inside and the morning wasn’t bright enough yet to see what he needed. His hand closed on it a couple of times but his fingers didn’t work too well. They hadn’t worked well for some time. Erick pushed deeper into the old man’s mind and Erick’s body was his own once more.

Where is it? The old man thought. He went on fumbling in his bag.

It can’t be gone!

Erick pushed deeper. The man’s voice became muffled and Erick missed his next thought. No matter, Erick continued to push until he hit a wall. He continued to push, straining against the barrier and felt the wall bend a little. The old man set his bag down with care and sat up straight. He looked around for a minute before shaking his head and going back to his search.

He can sense me, Erick thought and put all of his remaining strength into breaking passed the old man’s mental barrier.

The wall folded, at the same time the old man lifted a bottle triumphantly from the bag. Memories of a lifetime flooded Erick’s mind and the old man paused before he could take a drink.

He was moving from place to place, trying to stay warm, so many fights his hands don’t work anymore. He was a husband. He and his wife had two daughters. He was a business man, moving to the city.

The old man left the bottle untasted and began searching for something else. Erick sped up time in his memory and found him sitting at the train station. He waited all day. Their train never came in.

A yell jolted Erick from his memories. The old man was kneeling on the ground, the contents of his bag scattered around him. Joggers on the path leading up to him turned off to avoid going by. At last the man found what he was looking for. The piece of paper was scratched and the edges were torn but the picture of his wife and daughters was still visible. Erick felt that he’d overstepped his bounds and was now looking in on something private that he had no right to see and pulled his mind back from the old man. As he left Erick heard one last thought.

Happy anniversary.

The old man gathered his belongings shortly afterward and shuffled away.

Sarah came in a little while later and began organizing the groceries in the kitchen. The old man passed out of sight.

“Poor guy,” Erick muttered

Sarah poked her head out of the kitchen. “Any luck?” she asked.

“For me, yeah,” Erick was still looking at where the man use to be.

“So does that mean you did or didn’t earn a treat?” Sarah asked, having disappeared back into the kitchen. A thought occurred to Erick and he slid his mind into Sarah’s.

“Yes or no, Erick?”

Yes.

She jumped when she heard Erick’s voice in her mind.

“Off limits!” Sarah called out and a mental wall shot up in front of him.

“I’m not reading your thoughts,” he said. “I have to go deeper for that.”

“My head still tingles,”she warned and Erick left her mind. “Thank you.”

Sarah emerged soon after carrying two plastic forks and a paper plate with Twinkies and strawberries. If she was still upset, she didn’t show it.

“Congratulations on your second power,” Sarah said and handed him a fork.

For a moment they ate in silence.

“The strawberries are really good,” Erick said. “How much were they?”

Sarah gave a sideways look before saying, “They were free.”

“You stole them?”

Sarah shrugged and took a big bite.

“I’m going to eat it all,” Sarah managed to say through a stuffed mouth, “if you don’t hurry up.”

“But you stole them?”

Sarah laughed messily and swallowed her last mouthful before she could spew more pound cake and strawberry on Erick’s face.

“There’s a small patch growing in the courtyard. I noticed them when we got here,” she said.

Erick wiped his face on his sleeve and took the plate from Sarah. She had already eaten over half of his treat.

“What should I learn next?” he asked when he’d finished eating.

“Hmm,” Sarah pulled out the list and looked it over. “Flying’s next. I imagine it would come in handy.”

Sarah exuded utter confidence in Erick’s ability to learn to fly. Erick, on the other hand, hesitated.

“Couldn’t we build up to that?” Erick asked. “You know, work on some of the easier ones first?”

She leaned forward and for the second time she gave him a kiss, this time on the cheek.

“If that’s what you want,” she said. “I’m going to take a nap,” and buried herself in her blankets.

Erick’s mind, of course, was blank. He sat in a happy daze and fantasized about reading her mind.

She knows when I’m there, he thought.

I could tell her mind I wasn’t there. Instinctively he knew that he would be able to.

It would be wrong. Erick told himself. She made it clear she didn’t want me to.

Maybe just a few—

“No.” Erick didn’t mean to speak out loud. Sarah poked her head out from under her blankets, a puzzled look on her face.

“Need something?” Erick asked, pretending like he hadn’t said anything.

Sarah shrugged and disappeared once more. Erick’s stomach growled and reminded him of the breakfast, and now lunch, that he had, for the most part, missed. Careful to avoid the boards that squeaked, he made his way to the kitchen and surveyed the options. They’d agreed the night before that peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were not enough.

“What did you buy?” Erick said to himself when he saw what she’d bought.

Half of the counter was covered in hot dogs, cookie dough, cans of uncooked dinner rolls and a bag of raw chicken strips. The rest of the counter had boxes of donuts, Twinkies and candy. Erick made a sandwich and went back to his usual place beside the window. Mothers with young children were taking advantage of the afternoon before the older kids got out of school. The women chatted as the kids crawled, walked and rolled around in the grass. Erick tried to read some of their minds but couldn’t manage it. He was running on empty again.

Sarah was right when she said Erick needed time to recharge, but that took a lot of time. He doubted sticking his finger in an electric socket would speed things up.

But what if there were a way, a power source that he could tap into?

The sensation of energy flowing out was becoming a familiar one by now. Maybe there was a way to reverse it and draw energy from others.

The mother nearest Erick seemed as good a place to start as any. As he concentrated he saw her energy. It flowed in every direction as she thought, spoke and moved, shimmering like a rainbow as it amplified the colors around her. Erick concentrated harder, trying to siphon off some energy and both the woman and her energy swayed uneasily. He would have to spend more energy than it was worth before he got anything from her, and judging by the way she was behaving it looked like the process might hurt her.

Sarah rolled over and Erick turned to look at her. Iridescent hair fell over her sleeping face. Her expression was so peaceful she almost glowed. Erick did a double take. She was, in fact, glowing. Sarah had drawn his attention and Erick, without thinking, glimpsed her energy. It was calm. Potential Energy, as his old science teachers would have said. Erick smiled with mixed emotions, remembering all those hours in science class thinking how pointless it all was only now to find he was wrong.

Erick spun back around to the window. There were a few sleeping children here and there. He picked the one that shone the brightest and began pulling, ready to let go at the slightest sign that it might be hurting the child.

It worked, the child’s energy dimmed and Erick felt himself getting stronger. Erick moved on to another child before he took very much as he had no idea how much he could drain from a person without inducing a coma or something.

Half an hour passed before Erick perfected his technique to the point where he could siphon off a persons excess energy in a matter of seconds. Finished, Erick sat down in his nest of blankets.

A new sense of control came over him as he thought back on how much his understanding of energy, and how to manipulate it, had grown in the last few days. Erick looked across the room to the other window and saw the tops of distant skyscrapers. His curiosity peaked and he willed himself to see them closer, in greater detail. At first nothing changed, then a slight magnification, and then Erick’s vision zoomed forward. The windows were streaked, a few people sat at their desks, and of course, there were countless birds on the buildings ledges.

I could really do this. I could fight them. I could be ready by the end of this week.

The thought came unbidden to Erick’s mind and his vision snapped back to normal. He wobbled with vertigo for a few moments after. Certainly he knew this apartment was only a brief stopping point between destinations. Where they would go or what they would do once they were safe, if Erick succeeded, were things he hadn’t put much thought into. Moments ago he’d been contemplating taking a nap like Sarah, but now all thoughts of sleep were driven from him and he laid curled on his bed of blankets, fearful of the uncertain future.

The shadows grew longer across the room and eventually Sarah got up from her nap.

“So, you want a hot meal tonight?” she called from across the room.

Erick tried to smile but must not have been very convincing because Sarah’s excitement faded.

“How?” he asked.

Sarah’s smile faltered. “All the power in the world and you can’t even think of a way to cook a few hot dogs.”

“Oh, well—

Sarah laughed and waved me off. “I’m only teasing,” she said. “You’re drained, I get it.”

With that she turned and walked out of the apartment, leaving Erick rooted to the spot for a moment.

“Where are you going?” Erick called after.

“To find someone who can cook us some hotdogs!”

He wanted to follow her, to tell her about his new discoveries and that he could, probably, cook their dinner. Instead he watched from the window as she walked to the park. With his enhanced vision he followed her easily. She came to a group of what appeared to be college students. They were finishing setting up a grill when she reached them. Sarah smiled and laughed and before long her hotdogs were cooking right next to their burgers. After a while they all sat down and appeared to be chatting.

Erick yearned to be there with them, laughing and talking and being utterly normal. The room was growing darker by the minute as the sun continued to set and he suddenly became aware of something glowing in Sarah’s blanket pile. He thought it might be one of her flashlights and went to dig it out before it ran down the batteries. When Erick pulled back the blankets, however, he saw not a flashlight, but a cell phone. The glow was from a blinking notification that she had a new message.

Erick’s heart seemed to have relocated to his throat as he reached out and picked up the cell phone. The message opened at his touch.

We need an update on Erick, the message read, and what powers he’s working on. We must know what he’s capable of if we’re going to be able to contain him.

Erick stared at the message for a long while, unwilling to believe the consequences it brought with it. When he looked at who the message was from Erick thought his chest would explode, his heart was beating so hard: Dr Spielman.

The screen blinked with another message.

Also, your phone’s tracker still isn’t working. Send us your address so we can set up surveillance and station a strike team just in case.

It couldn’t be true. There had to be some mistake, but the phone in his hand defeated every argument Erik could think of. Bit by bit, the pieces fell into place; Sarah encouraging him to learn his powers, Sarah repeatedly wanting to go to the police and defending the government’s actions, Sarah all but admitting that her parents were involved, Sarah at the theater. It all made sense. The entire thing had been orchestrated from the beginning. A part of him wondered how much his friends knew, if they were in on it too. Anger broiled inside of him and he turned to gaze back out the window toward the park. His enhanced vision made every detail clear as Sarah laughed at something one of the guys said.

The hotdogs were almost finished cooking when the same guy who’d made Sarah laugh spoke again, this time wiping the smile off her face. Erick couldn’t be sure but he thought Sarah glanced his way. If only he could read lips, Erick would know what they were saying, because whatever it was, it was making Sarah more and more uncomfortable.

Good, Erick thought. They were probably getting a little too friendly with Sarah. She wasn’t in any real sort of danger, the park was still fairly busy and Erick doubted the guys would try anything with so many people around. Even so, it would only encourage Sarah to return to the apartment sooner and he didn’t want to be around when she arrived.

He wasn’t too worried about where he would hide, trusting to the amount of condemned buildings throughout the city, but food was another matter. Erick spread his nest of blankets out on the floor and then piled up their food, stacking it so it would fit together and still allow for him to tie the corners of the blankets up, converting the whole thing into a makeshift food sack. For a moment Erick considered leaving the frozen and raw meats, uncertain that he would be able to do anything with them. And then Sarah’s words sounded in his ears, “All the power in the world and you can’t even think of a way to cook a few hotdogs?”

Erick had gone too far, with learning to control his powers, to stop now. The chances of him having to fight them at some point in time were too great, as much as he dreaded that thought. He gave the knot a final tug and slung the entire thing over his shoulder.

Outside, the gate creaked: Sarah was back and he gripped the cell phone all the tighter in his hand. All of the things he wanted to say to her, all of his anger at her betrayal, swelled inside of him as he strode over the window overlooking the courtyard. He couldn’t wait for her to get into the apartment to begin disgorging his hatred.

Soldiers stood down below, filing into the courtyard and taking their positions. Tracker or no tracker, they’d found Erick. From the hallway, he heard the door open and he braced himself for the worst. He had only a couple of seconds before they came down the hallway and into the living room where he stood. A pulsing within told him he had a decent amount of energy stored up, but he wasn’t ready to fight them. Three or four energy blasts would not be enough against so many.

“On the ground!” a soldier shouted.

Erick turned slowly on the spot, instinctively raising his hands above his head. For a moment he considered blasting them but the soldiers were already fanning out inside the apartment. There were too many of them and they were too spread out for him to effectively blast them. His heart pounded painfully in his chest as he began counting the assault rifles pointed at him.

“I said get on the ground,” the soldier repeated.

Erick knelt slowly, his knees threatening to buckle beneath him, he was shaking so badly. Sarah poked her head into the room, her face ashen and scared looking. Why she should be worried, Erick didn’t know. She was on their side, after all.

The soldier in command, the one who’d ordered Erick to the ground, motioned for another soldier to step forward. The man obeyed, stowing his rifle and withdrawing zip ties from a pouch on his belt.

“You so much as flinch and you’re dead,” the man warned as he tied Erick’s hands tightly behind his back. The plastic ties cut painfully into Erick’s wrists but he didn’t dare voice his discomfort.

“What’s she doing in here?” the soldier in command barked, finally spotting Sarah.

Sarah froze, she’d been slowly making her way further into the room ever since her arrival.

“Sorry,” she said, “but I…”

The soldier frowned and was clearly upset by her sudden appearance.

“I thought you were suppose to wait outside,” he said.

“Yes,” Sarah murmured, “I just wanted to see…”

“See what?” the soldier was growing impatient with Sarah’s mumblings and he fingered his rifle as though he were considering shooting her and being done with it.

“It’s just that I forgot to tell you guys that Erick has been working on becoming invisible, and I thought you should know.”

Sarah stared hard at Erick, an unreadable expression on her face, before she was ordered back outside. Whether she meant to or not, Sarah had given Erick an idea. There was a way he could escape without having to fight. The trouble was, he only had a few moments to figure out this power. Already, another of the soldiers was measuring out a syringe of some clear substance that Erick suspected would render him unconscious as soon as it was administered.

Becoming invisible was not going to be easy. Bending light was something he’d only ever heard of when his science teacher taught them about black holes and Erick doubted that his abilities could replicate those kinds of forces. Even if he managed to become invisible, he was still tied up and surrounded. He’d have to find some way to distract the soldiers long enough for him to get himself free and…

Acting on a sudden burst of inspiration, Erick forced his mind into those of the soldiers around him. He pushed passed the dizzying overload of senses and then began pushing passed the surface thoughts and into their subconscious, just like he had done with the old vagrant. Their minds were strong and they all put up mental barriers, but Erick was desperate and he slammed his mind against theirs with the fury of a cornered animal. Their mental defenses crumbled and Erick told them all that he wasn’t there.

Erick waited, still crouched down on the floor, as one by one the soldiers blinked or shook their heads as they began looking around the room. Looks of confusion, followed by concern, filled their faces. He may not be truly invisible, but what did it matter at this point as long as they couldn’t see him.

The commanding soldier swore and rushed to where he’d last seen Erick. Erick dove out of the way, the sound of his fall shaking his admittedly weak hold over the soldiers minds.

“Did you hear that?” the soldier asked and a few of the others nodded, looking towards the direction Erick had landed in.

Moving more cautiously, Erick began to make his way toward the exit but it appeared as though the soldiers were thinking along the same lines and they moved to block the hallway. Inherently he knew that physical contact would break whatever fragile hold he had over the soldiers minds. Even his close proximity to them was threatening to break his hold, but that couldn’t be avoided.

“Spread out,” the soldier in command ordered and the men obeyed, forcing Erick to flatten himself against the wall to keep from getting run into.

Soldiers swept passed and marched from room to room, searching for him. Through the window he could see that there were quite a few more soldiers outside and Erick thought his head would explode from having to concentrate on them all at the same time. The pulsing inside his chest was weakening and he knew he didn’t have much time. Rather than waiting around and hoping for an opening to sneak out to the balcony and then to the spiral stairs that would take him down to the courtyard, Erick decided to skip all of that and he jumped out the unguarded window that faced the courtyard. His bundle of blankets and food turned and twisted in the air behind him as he fell but the knot he’d tied held true and nothing was lost in the descent. Erick landed in the tall grass, his feet meeting uneven ground, and his left foot twisted with a sickening crunch. Pain shot through his left leg as he felt something snap.

Despite himself, Erick cried out and the sound of his cry broke his mental hold on the soldiers. Thankfully, he was sprawled on the ground and surrounded by the tall grass so none of the guards on the ground saw him and the guards above were still busy searching the apartment. Erick lay as still as possible, clutching his leg and biting his tongue to prevent him from making more noise. The pain was ebbing away slightly and began to localize around his ankle. The fall wasn’t that far, but the tall grass had hidden how uneven the ground was.

After a few tense moments, Erick reasserted his mental block on the soldiers and began to make his way toward the gate, crawling on all fours. It was excruciating work. Every little movement was like re-breaking his ankle all over again. Even if he made it out of the courtyard, then what? Crawl his way down the sidewalk? At the edge of the grass Erick rolled back over onto his back to rest. Beside him were the strawberry plants Sarah had found. He was surprised to see a couple of finches hopping up and down from one plant to the next, merrily pecking away at the ripe berries. It didn’t take long, however, for the finches to notice Erick and fly away.

A brief burst of inspiration struck Erick and he tapped into the pulsing in his chest, channeling it down toward the ground. What felt like a cushion of air formed beneath him and he bobbed up a couple inches off the ground. Making sure that his hold over the soldiers was firmly in place, Erick pushed hard against the ground and he shot into the air. Sarah would be pleased with how quickly he was learning these new powers. Apparently all it took was a life threatening situation to spur him into action.

His body turned and tumbled through the air as he bobbed level with the rooftop. Grace and control would come later, for now he was happy just to have what he could get. For a few moments, Erick flailed his arms trying to get himself to move to the side, briefly looking like an inexperienced swimmer. Nothing happened and the floating, as wondrous and new as it was, had the unpleasant side effect of leaving his broken ankle unsupported and dangling at odd angles from his leg. The pain was excruciating and he wasn’t the least bit surprised when hot tears began streaming down his face.

The pulsing in his chest was weakening by the second and so, in an act of desperation, Erick shifted his downward force into a slant and pushed even harder off the ground. In a flash, he cleared the rooftop and rocketed over the neighboring buildings. The pulsing faded almost at once and Erick began to drop. With his last remaining ounce of energy, Erick pushed off the ground right before he collided with it and softened his crash landing as best he could.

Erick rolled and tumbled, eventually skidding to a halt, food and blankets scattered about him in every direction. Slowly, Erick gathered it all back up and retied his makeshift sack and then slumped into a nearby alley. The pain and shock from the last few minutes swept over him and he retched, thankful for the storm grate that caught most of his vomit.

Sunset wasn’t far away and the alley was already growing dark and chill. He had nothing to make a splint out of for his ankle and so he wrapped one of the smaller blankets around it and used the rest for his bed. What he would do once the sun rose again, he didn’t know. His world had been turned upside down yet again and his brain couldn’t handle it, instead filling all of his thoughts with fuzzy numbness that held him stupefied until he fell asleep.