Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ Friendship Runs Thicker than Blood ❯ Trouble ( Chapter 6 )

CHAPTER SIX: TROUBLE

The novelty of living on their own wore off for the teens after the first few days. Email, IM, or even their school website was off-limits, so they couldn't be tracked. However, they could still use the Internet for games or fanfiction, something all three friends enjoyed. The three TVs in the house provided sufficient entertainment for a while, and they swapped books with each other.

In some ways, the three found it liberating to live according to their own schedule. They all frequently slept in until noon or later, and lights stayed on well past midnight.

Daily life fell into a pattern almost immediately. They would all sleep in as late as possible, and breakfast was an independent meal. There were only two computers; whoever got there first got to use the computer for as long as they wanted. Whoever didn't get a computer would watch TV. If they felt like it, sometimes two of them would play on one of the game tables. Leo would sometimes wake up to the slamming of plastic objects and the cursing and shouts of his friends. Dinner was the one meal that they all ate at the same time. Seda was in charge, even if it was just microwaving the food. They would usually eat in front of the TV.

They all liked their alone time. Leo had the whole basement to himself most of the time, except when one of the girls wanted to watch the big screen TV. Seda often retreated to her room and closed the door; her friends sometimes heard music if they were on the top floor. They had quickly established that the top floor was restricted to the girls, and Leo was allowed up only if he was invited. Leo could shut a door to keep the hallway his room and bathroom were located on, off limits to his friends if they were in the basement.

After the first week, they really started to miss their parents. Sira heard Seda crying almost every night. They had had to leave their cell phones behind, but Seda had the idea of teleporting to a pay phone in Phoenix, Arizona and calling their parents from there. They did that on their eighth day on the run, at a time when they knew no one would be home. They all left messages for their respective families.

On their tenth night in Williamsburg, a surge of panic woke Seda up. For a moment she remained disoriented, thinking that the fear was part of dream. Then she heard muffled noises from Sira's room.

Seda focused there with her mind. There were two strange men in her friend's room. In the time it took to blink, Seda found out that they were trying to capture her for a reward. She leapt to her feet and appeared in Sira's room.

“No!” Sira shouted. “Run!” Seda whirled; one of the men was closing in on her from behind. She disappeared again and reappeared with her back against a wall.

“Seda, go!” Sira yelled. The other man had an arm around her waist, pinning her arms, and a gun to her head.

“I suggest you play nice now, or your friend won't be with us for much longer,” said the man who had tried to attack her. His gun was pointed straight at Seda's heart.

There was a scuffle outside, and two more thugs, a man and a young woman, dragged Leo in. When he saw the position Sira and Seda were in, he stopped struggling at once. The woman pulled a gun form inside her jacket and put it against Leo's temple.

“Now you're going to turn around, nice and slow, and walk out the door,” said the man with his gun on Seda, who appeared to be the leader.

“Only if you tell your lackeys to take their guns off my friends,” Seda spat, buying time. She racked the man's thoughts; he didn't know about her powers. All her knew was that she could disappear and reappear. He thought he had her outsmarted. He smiled slowly.

“I don't think so,” he sneered. “In fact, I think we'll let them taste the barrels.” The two holding the guns shoved them into Seda's friends' mouths.

Seda caught Sira's pleading, fear-filled green eyes. Sira nodded slightly, and Seda caught her thoughts:

Don't let them take you! Use your powers! Don't worry about us. Seda nodded to her friend and looked at Leo. He was wearing only a pair of jeans; she could see a bruise already forming on his shoulder. His navy eyes pleaded with her, and she caught some of his thoughts, too: he was scared, but not for himself. For Seda.

She shook herself; she did not want to hear the direction his thoughts were headed in. She looked instead at the man who was still pointing a gun at her. Her observations had taken only a few seconds. Now it was time to act.

“I don't think any of us will be going with you,” she said. She looked at the guns in her friends' mouths; they flew out of their owners' hands and disappeared. The gun trained on her got the same treatment. The fourth thug struggled to pull his gun out without letting go of Leo; Seda yanked this gun away as well and made it vanished. The four would-be kidnappers suddenly hovered a yard above the floor, upside-down.

“I don't know how you found us, but rest assured I will find out,” said Seda. A quick glance in the leader's mind was all it took; he was already thinking about it. He had been in Phoenix on some other unlawful errand, and had seen her face on the news, along with Sira's and Leo's and the reward offered. He had sent the pictures to his colleagues; one of them had seen Seda and Sira in the grocery store. The man and his three lackeys had come to Williamsburg, found Leo in the 7-Eleven, and tailed him to the house. They had waited until there were no lights on, and then broken in. Seda knew the rest.

She had learned all that in less than five seconds. “A cunning plan,” she told the leader. “But it failed, and you and your friends will remember nothing about me.” She wiped their minds at the same time as throwing them out the window. The window repaired itself after the last man had passed through it. Only after taking care of that business did she look at her friends.

Sira had fallen backwards onto her bed, spitting out the taste of the gun. Leo was slumped against the wall. They were both looking at Seda nervously. She looked at the floor, suddenly ashamed of her display of power and afraid that she'd completely freaked out her friends.

“You know, I don't think I've ever seen you that pissed,” Leo remarked finally.

“My friends have never been held at gunpoint before,” Seda replied. “I'm sorry if I scared you.”

“I think you're forgiven, as you did do it to save our lives,” Sira told her. “Still, remind me never to get on your bad side.”

“I don't think you'll have a problem there,” Seda said. “I owe you guys about a million times over.”

“For what?” Leo asked.

“For sticking with me through all this,” Seda said simply. There was a pause in which they all looked at each other and came to the realization that they'd just survived a life-or-death situation together. No one could think of what to say. “I'm going back to bed,” Seda said into the silence. “Goodnight.” She went across the hall to her own room and closed the door.

“Good idea,” said Leo. “'Night, Sira.” He left and went back down to his basement room. Sira closed her door and lay back down on her bed. She was still getting over the double shock of being threatened with death and seeing Seda's explosion of wrath. Sira knew her friend was changing under the pressure of staying hidden, and she hoped Seda would be all right.

 

Except for that one night, their routine didn't change much in three weeks. During the third week, though, Sira and Leo began to notice that Seda was beginning to act strangely again. She would forget things, or get her words mixed up, or stop doing something halfway through. The occurrences of such lapses began so gradually that neither Leo nor Sira could actually pinpoint when they began.

“Are you okay?” Leo asked her finally, a week after he had become aware of this behavior. She had been talking to him about a book, but had stopped abruptly mid-word.

“Yeah, fine,” she responded, a knee-jerk reaction. “Sorry, what were you saying?”

After another few days of Seda's apparent absent-mindedness, Leo and Sira talked to each other about it while Seda was out getting food.

“Seda's been acting weird lately,” Leo began, sitting in the chair across from Sira's place on the sofa. She clicked the TV off.

“I've noticed,” she said dryly. “You don't think it has anything to do with her powers, do you?”

“I hope not,” said Leo. “I don't want to wake up invisible if I can help it.”

“Should we talk to her?” Sira wondered.

“She'll just dismiss it as being nothing,” Leo reminded her unhappily but honestly. “We should wait for when she can't deny it anymore.”

“But by then in might be too late,” Sira protested.

“We don't even know what's wrong,” Leo pointed out. “She won't tell us anything. We'll wait for the opportune moment.” Sira had to agree that it was best to wait.

Suddenly, a huge crash came from the kitchen. The two of them leapt up and ran to see what had happened. Seda was standing in the epicenter of a collection of grocery bags on the floor, their contents exploded around her feet.

“What happened?” Leo and Sira demanded together.

“I don't know—I was levitating them and suddenly they fell,” said Seda. She was swaying where she stood. Leo noticed and had just enough time to leap to her side and catch her as she collapsed in a dead faint. He looked up at Sira.

“This is bad,” he stated.

“No, ya think?” Sira responded. “Guess we didn't have to wait long, did we? Take her upstairs. I'll start cleaning.” Leo carefully picked Seda up completely and carried her up to her bedroom, where he laid her gently on the bed. She was much lighter than she had been when he had first tried to pick her up a few months before. He looked at her face; there were faint lines around her eyes and mouth that had not been there before she got her powers. Also, the dark circles under her eyes had returned, the skin around her eyes and nose slightly baggy. But, unconscious, some of the care and worry that had hovered on her face since they ran away wasn't there, and she looked peaceful. Leo shook his head to rid it of these thoughts; he reminded himself that he shouldn't be thinking of romance while hiding out from the Feds. He turned and walked out of Seda's room, thinking to go help Sira clean up.

As he reached the door, Seda said something. He whirled to look at her.

“What was that?” he asked. She didn't respond; her eyes were still closed. She had talked in her unconscious state. As he walked down the stairs, it occurred to him what she'd said:

“I'm scared. Help me.”

 

Meanwhile: Part Two

Seda Volind, Nasira Heath, and Leo Jemp had been missing for a month. Federal agents had all the phones and computers in the Volind, Heath, and Jemp households bugged for the duration in case of contact from the three runaways, but so far, the only lead had been one call per household from a pay phone in Phoenix. There had been flyers posted and handed out in that city, but not one person could remember seeing any of the three teens. There had also been agents and photos sent to hospitals in the Ellicott City, Columbia, and Phoenix regions, because Agent Smethwyk had pulled a weapon, and she and Agent Parce had seen Leo Jemp stumble and fall. As he had called his family, he was known to be alive.

All three families called the Federal office daily, to check for updates on the status of their children. One of the biggest searches in recent memory was conducted to look for the girl with strange brain patterns and her two friends. Family members for all three kids were contacted; The Volind beach house was searched, and a broken lamp was found. DNA testing found that both Seda and Nasira had been cut by one of the shards, but no evidence of first aid was discovered.

The faces of the three missing teenagers were broadcasted on Maryland news, and in the home states of all the kids' family members. Not one person called the hotline. The three families were desperate for news of their missing children, but the Federal agents were stymied. They didn't know what to do next. There was a big meeting of all the agents who had been put on the case.

“They must know we're looking for them,” said Agent Parce, the youngest of them, fresh out of the training school. He was also a certified psychologist, and so his opinion was listened to more than it would have been if he had not had his degree. “We should call off the search. They might come home if they knew we weren't looking for them. They're probably scared.”

“But we want this girl, this Seda Volind,” said Agent Zenel, the agent in charge of the operation. “Her brain waves are like nothing we've ever seen before, but Dr. Smith has theorized that her brain is operating at one hundred percent capacity. The power that would result from such operation must be observed.”

“That's exactly what she's probably afraid of,” said Agent Parce. Zenel waved a hand, dismissing his concerns, and the meeting continued. They didn't know that they had a listener, one in a suburban house in Williamsburg, who was semi-conscious and scared to death of what they would do if they found her.