11/21/13

Thirty One

The General was furious.  He raged in his office, throwing things against the wall and tipping over tables.  He had broken several glass panes out of an interior window, leaving shards of glass strewn across the floor.

No one attempted to stop him.  Many had run out of the office and headed home as soon as the rage started.  They did not want to get caught in the crossfire of whatever was upsetting the man in charge.  It had to be something big this time.

They had all seen him get angry.  Several had seen him in a rage before.  But no one had seen anything like this before.  He was destroying the office, literally throwing computers around. 

Marshal sat as his desk and watched.  He had not moved since the rage had started.  He wasn’t startled by the reaction, he had expected it to happen. In fact he had expected it to start much sooner than it actually had.  But it had taken the General some time to get to the messages that were left for him.  It had taken him much longer to comprehend what those messages said.

His star pupil had flown the coop. 

John had been the General’s favorite.  So much a favorite that the General had not stripped John of all of his powers.  John was only partially hooked up to machines, only losing a bit of himself and not all of himself.  The General wanted it this way so that he could still take advantage of what John had to offer.  His abilities were worth more than the power they gained from his spirit. 

Now the General had lost him completely. Marshal chuckled to himself as he heard more glass shatter in the background.  He knew this day would come.  With John only halfway separated from himself, it would be easy for the rebels to reattach him once they had the power to.  The girl who had just come into her power was more than enough to reattach him, to break the spiritual contracts that were in place.

Marshal pulled up the reports that had just been filed by the other goons they had sent as back up.  Apparently they had just gotten to the building where John was staying when they were waylaid by a RA.  They were told to check in at the main campus building and, stupidly, left John to comply.  John must have snuck out just behind them.  By the time they got back to John’s room he was gone.  Just as the goons were deciding what to do next they got the alert that John was off the grid.  Moments after that they got the alert that the bubble had been breached.

The goons had attempted to find the breach, but were unable to ascertain exactly where it had happened.  Marshal shook his head.  The bubble they had placed had very specific markings just for that reason.  They should have been able to find where the girl had gotten through with their eyes shut. 

Instead they had gotten away.  There was no trace of them.  Their energy was entirely hidden from the corporation.

Where could the girl have gone?  Who would have tipped her off and gotten her to safety so quickly?  These were questions Marshal knew the General would want answers to as soon as he calmed down.  He heard more glass shatter and knew he had time to keep researching.

Marshal started flipping through all the reports that had been filed in the last forty eight hours.  There had to be a clue somewhere.  A tip.  He had been looking through the reports for hours, but still had seen nothing.  No correlation of movement.

Then he saw it.  The one report that he had not thought to look at.  The Planetary Lightworker Organization is what they called themselves.  A bunch of crazies, he thought, people that got together to cause trouble for him and his coworkers. 

The report was interesting.  It showed that there was a large movement of members from their home base in California to Colorado.  

Marshal read the report closer.  Not just anywhere in Colorado, but the town where the girl was attending college. 

“They went to get her.” Marshal said aloud.

“Who went to get her?” Boomed a voice behind him.

“General! I didn’t know you were behind me.”

“I wouldn’t think so, the way you were chattering to yourself.  I’m doubtful that you would have heard a tornado screaming around your head.  Who went to get her?”

“Sir, I’m fairly certain the Planetary Lightworker Organization sent people to get her.”

“No.”

“Yes Sir.  I’m reading the report right now, it’s up on my screen.”

“Print it out.  I don’t do screens.”

“Yes Sir.”

Marshal hit print on the report and then stepped around the General to go and pick up the papers from the nearby printer.  If he was correct, he had just solved the first part of the mystery.  If the PLO was behind the girl escaping, they had a good idea on where they were going.

“Here you are Sir.”

“Thanks.” The General stood at Marshal’s desk and read through the papers.  As he did that, Marshal continued to read through the report as well as look at some maps he had pulled up.

“They are base in California?”

“Yes Sir.”

“How much do we know about them.”

“Just the basics Sir.  How many members, location, general attitudes about things.”

“How could they have found her?”

“I don’t know Sir.  They don’t seem to have the extensive tracking equipment that we have.  I don’t know how they would have known to go to such a small town for one person.”

“Are there more that we didn’t see?”

“Not at first, though the girl seems to have opened up several people to their hidden gifts.”

“Have the goons bring those people in.”

“Sir…”

“Are you questioning me?  If we can’t have her then we will have the next best thing.  Besides, maybe she will feel what we are doing and try to rescue them or something stupid.”

“Right.  I understand Sir.”

“Good.  Get on it.”

Marshal watched the General walk away and then turned back to his desk.  He would inform the goons tomorrow of the change in plans.  Until then, he had research to do.  The PLO was headed somewhere and he wanted to know where.

Thirty Two

John watched the road roll by in the darkness.  There were no street lights, so he couldn’t make out too much definition past the car, but he could at least see the edge of the road.  He listened to Tiana and Larissa talk.  He heard Tiana’s story and realized that it was so close to so many that he had heard.  He wondered just how many people actually had the powers that they all had.  It felt as though there were many more of them than there were members in the corporation.

John thought about his first days there, when he was just getting to know the rules and regulations.  He had been taking a tour with all the new recruits and they had been taken into a large room.  The room was filled with computers, maps and various tracking devices.  John had watched as they pinpointed a person for capture. 

It had been a tense moment in the room, there were several high ranking people gathered around a screen.  They were watching the person run from the corporate goons.  The person did not understand that they never had a chance.  At some point they had been fed a tracking device that had imbedded itself into the lining of their stomach.  It would eventually kill them, if it wasn’t removed, but until that time they knew exactly where the person was.  A little red dot on a big screen.

They chased the person, it turned out to be a man, through several houses before they finally got him.  They had audio piped in at this point and John could hear him asking why, why were they after him?  What had he done?  The man was terrified.  John saw the man’s energy exploding off of him. 

They stuffed him into a van and brought him to an auxiliary office.   John had not known at the time, but the corporation operated offices all over the world.  They were spread out more densely than any other branch of the government. 

John later read the reports on the man.  He knew the day he was captured and once John had his clearance it was easy for him to find the report.  He read how they tortured the man to get his agreement.  How they threatened his wife and children.  The man agreed, what choice did he have? 

John knew what would happen next.  They would hook the man up to a machine that would separate him from the rest of himself, leaving only the shell of the man to walk the earth.  He would be returned to his family with some shill story provided.  Told that he was mistaken for someone else, that he had been taken in accidently, but look, here he was all released and everything was fine.

The man had only signed because the corporation had agreed to leave his wife and children alone.  Little did he know that would never happen.  As soon as his children displayed any talent for energy work they would be picked up.  They were marked now, because of the man, and they would be watched carefully.  They would be accosted in the parking lot of the school or on a field trip.  They would be coerced into signing some papers, they would have no idea what the papers where, and then they would be released.  They would be too afraid to tell their parents. 

Not that it mattered.  The father would never see the difference in the children.  He would never really see anything again.  The mother would notice the change, but she would be unable to explain it.  She might blame what happened to the father, they might get a divorce.  Start living separate lives.  She would try to coax the children into some semblance of their former selves but it would never happen.  Eventually they would want to live with their father full time, it was easier then living with the mother.

And that would be the end of that family line.  Any children born into the family would be devoid of the connections that the parents had and lost.  They would bear drones instead of magical connected human beings. 

That was ultimately what the corporation was after.  They wanted to populate the earth with drones.  Drones are easy to manipulate, they don’t request much of anything, they don’t expect much.  They would work hard, harder than any generation before them.  They would get paid less and be thankful for it.  They would be treated badly by the corporation and would in turn support the agenda of the corporation because that is what they were told to do.

John had almost become one of them.  For some reason the General had spared a part of him so that he did not lose all of himself. 

The man who was the head of the operation to dominate and destroy the human race as it has been known for hundreds of years spared him. 

John didn’t know why he had been spared.  But he was thankful for it.  And he was even more thankful to the young woman who sat in the back of the car next to him.  She had restored him to himself.  She had set him free from the life the corporation had set in front of him.  He wondered if she would be able to do the same for others.  He wondered if she would be able to provide connections where there were none. 

Was it even possible?  Could she create connections for the people who were born drones? 

John turned his head to look at her.  She was sleeping again, this time she looked peaceful.  He hoped her dreams would not turn dark again.  He did not like the way she cried in her sleep, whimpering. 

“Do you know where we are headed?” Tiana asked him.

“I do not.”

“No idea at all?”

“I think we are headed North.  That is not what I expected, but I think that I’m right.”

“You are correct.  We are headed North.  Northwest to be precise, at least as precise as I am willing to get at the moment. Where did you think we would go?”

“I thought your people were located in Southern California.  I figured we would be heading there.”

“Good guess.  No, I would not take you to the center of my tribe, as I call them.  I would keep them safer than that.  Even with all of our abilities it is likely the corporation will find us.  I will not have all of our chances destroyed.”

“So where are we headed then?”

“I was thinking maybe Portland.  Maybe Seattle.  I can’t cross the border with you all because I know you all don’t have passports.  Otherwise I would take you into Canada.”

“What about Alaska?”

“I don’t know that I have the money to get us there on a private jet.  I know that if I try to take you all through the normal channels we are sure to get picked up.  Especially you.  They will be keeping an eye out for one that they lost.”

 “You would not have to take me with you.  You and the other two could go on ahead.  I could stay put in Portland or even travel East to put them off the trail.”

“You would have them find you?”

“No, I would prefer that they did not find me.”

“Then staying with us is the only way to be sure that they will not find you.  As long as you are covered by my shield you are safe.”

“How long can you keep us covered?”

“As long as it takes for us to come up with a truly viable plan.”

Tiana fell silent.  John followed suit and looked out the window again.  Northwest was not what he was expecting, but it was smart of her to travel in that direction.  He wondered how long it would take the corporation to realize that she had not run home but had instead run away from it.