Kinetics: In Search of Willow (7 page)

"Sorry, Mom, just a bit of brotherly
humor." He grinned. The grin never quite reached his
eyes.

My brother hadn't visited us in almost
six months. He talked to my mother on the phone every few days or
so, and I'm sure that he conversed with Dad over email, but I
hadn't actually talked to him since he left for some university in
Switzerland last November, a few days after my fifteenth
birthday.

"So I take it you're a Kinetic, too?"
I asked.

"Of course," Jacob said, and laughed
as if I had just asked the stupidest question of all
time.

He looked menacing in what looked like
a military suit. He had three silver triangles on his left breast
above a circular crest that I vaguely recognized and a black line
on his collar. The crest was a framed picture of the Earth with an
upside down triangle underneath it. I’m pretty sure I’d seen the
crest on some of my dad’s paperwork before.

Jacob was seven years older and was
always considerably taller than I was. But I think the last six
months had given him a few more inches and the height of his
closely cropped hair only added to it.

When did he enter the military? Or was
it some version of the Swiss ROTC? Or was it something to do with
the Alliance my parents were a part of? Was he part of it
too?

I don't recall Mom or Dad talking
about it, and usually they were pretty open about what Jake was up
to, besides the whole Kinetic thing, of course. But now that I
think about it, I had heard nothing about his activities or
academics in months.

My brother still hadn't made eye
contact with me. Like Dad, it always seemed like he was perpetually
disappointed in me. He had never let me play with him and his
friends when we were younger. Mom always claimed it was because
there was such an age difference between us. I always assumed it
was because he hated me.

I was not looking forward to this
sudden visit.

"Sorry to be so…impromptu. I figured
the sooner the better." Jacob yanked on his tie, loosening it. He
slid into the seat across from me at the table.

"It's alright," Dad said. "I can
understand the need for brevity."

"Hello, Willow," Jacob said pointedly.
He still hadn't even looked at me.

"Jacob." She smiled at him and a tinge
of red stained her cheeks. I bit the inside of my cheek. This
again. At least I had been given six clean months of no flowery
looks from her to him.

I sighed behind my hand and glared
between the two of them. First it was Jacob and then Harry and now
my brother again. I wasn't ever going to escape the fact that I
wasn't on Willow's radar in the slightest.

I tried to ignore them both and
watched as Mom put a glass of water in front of my brother. He
sipped it without looking at anyone. The atmosphere had completely
changed with him in the kitchen. Whatever tenseness had been
building up was now focused through Jacob. My mother stood in front
of the sink, wringing her hands. Whatever worries she had couldn't
be washed down the sink. Dad stood at the kitchen door. He clutched
the edges of the door; a frown pierced his face, and he stared only
at my brother's back.

This silence, while my brother took in
deep breaths, preparing to speak, was frightening. The only time
this had ever happened was when my brother had been tasked with
telling me that my dog had been hit by a car when I was ten. Our
parents had been out of town at the time and he was the only one
who could relay the terrible news to me.

Back then he hadn't seemed to know
what to say. He stumbled over his words, and when I broke down over
the death of my dog, he had to call Mom to figure out how to calm
me down. But now he sat with a straight back and a chin held high,
boasting a solid confidence that had developed since he had left
home. If his height made me feel dwarfed, his confidence made me
feel like a grain of sand in front of a tsunami.

Jacob looked at Dad and nodded his
head. Dad left and returned moments later with his laptop. He set
it on the table. Jacob opened it up and slipped a disk into the CD
drive. He tapped an icon on the desktop and a video file started to
play. Jacob turned the screen all the way in my
direction.

"Hello, citizen. For the
first time, you are entering a part of human society little seen by
most people. In the upcoming days after your sixteenth birthday you
will be introduced to various concepts and ideas that may be hard
to handle. If at any time you are confused or stressed by what you
are seeing, there will always be someone around to help you
understand. The first thing you will do is read the contract of
Anyan. "

Jacob opened the Manila envelope and
pulled out five slips of paper. He pushed them toward me and
finally looked me in the eye. The intensity there shook me. I
paused and then took a gulp of air.

The video
continued: 
"Next you will be taken to
a facility where Kinetics are trained, and there you will be paired
with a mentor who can train you in your specific
abilities.

At the age of seven, your
memories were suppressed because of your inability to develop
properly during the Prime. According to Anyan Alliance Codes, this
means that the last opportunity for you to fulfill your proper
heritage as a Kinetic and as a functioning member of Kinetic
society will be presented to you upon your sixteenth
birthday.

Upon review of the
corresponding letter, you must agree to Anyan's Contract to serve
and support the cause of Anyan's Mission (see Page 2) and protect
the Honored People against enemies of the Mission. Else, you must
agree to a full wipe of your mind.

In Respect and Loyalty for
the Cause of Anyan."

The video flickered off, and Jacob
snapped the laptop closed.

"Eugene, in these papers you will find
a choice. What choice you make will determine the rest of your
life. I hope you choose the right one, because you will be needed."
Jacob stared at me as he crossed his arms over his
chest.

I grasped the papers and let my eyes
slide down to the words at the top of the page.

The Contract with Anyan's
Alliance.

Re: Eugene P.
Yoshida

DOB: November 10,
1998

Mr. Yoshida, this letter
is a notification of your current status. Please read the following
information carefully. After signing the Contract your status as a
Vunjika will change to Initiate. You will be given a mentor and
tasked with remedial training. If you do not sign this contract you
will have to submit to a mandatory mind wipe, memory alteration and
ability augmentation in the form of medication.

I kept reading, but the more I read,
the more distressed I felt. I glanced up at Willow then and back at
the page. Her gaze was locked on me. It was like she was trying to
read my mind. If she hadn't already told me she was a Healer I
would have thought she was succeeding.

I know my parents had mentioned that
something big was going to happen on my sixteenth birthday, but
this wasn't it. I expected a big party or maybe my first car. Even
sending me to a boarding school in England would have made more
sense than the straight-up insane letter I was reading. What the
heck kind of fantasy was my family bringing me into?

If I hadn't watched my whole school go
batshit crazy, I would probably have thrown the papers back at my
brother and demanded they not make a fool of me. Part of me wanted
to believe that this was some kind of elaborate joke they were
playing.

But Jacob wasn't a joker. Jacob wasn't
much fun at all, actually.

My hands were shaking by the time I
read the last page. I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. It
was absurd. Everything from the last day was sinking in and hitting
me like a ton of bricks.

"What's this 'Isiro' it talks about?
Who was Anyan?" I started parroting back the strange words in the
document at Jacob.

"There will be time to explain all
that later, Eugene. But first we need to talk about the contract."
Jacob sat up even straighter. If he went much further, I'd start to
think he was going to shoot through the roof.

I looked down at the papers in my
hands. The last page was a contract.

"It's a standard contract with Anyan's
Alliance." Jacob said when he saw the page. "All Alliance Kinetics
sign these when they start training."

"Even I will when I start official
training in the summer." Willow said.

I read over the contract. And then I
read over it again.

I looked to Willow for some
support.

Her eyes dilated for a
split second and her voice filled the inside of my head.
-
Just sign it.-

I fell out of my seat as a confusing
swath of emotions and whispering thoughts trailed with the loud
words in my head. "What the..."

"Eugene!" Mom reached out for me and
grasped my arm. I saw so much concern there it almost
hurt.

"Sorry, I 'Pathed him." Willow tapped
her head.

Mom clutched her chest. "A little
warning next time, Willow."

"Sorry, Mrs. Y." She
smiled at me bashfully. 
Don't worry,
this is natural.

"I, you, how, what..." I stared at the
four of them. These people were suddenly strangers. I knew my
family was strange, but I'd thought maybe they were illegal aliens
or secret government spies or something else a little less crazy.
This science fiction crap coming out of left-field...What the
hell?

My brother looked back at my dad.
Something passed between them, an unsaid agreement or
acknowledgment.

This was insane. My family was pulling
something out of their asses, and Willow was happily playing along.
It had to be that. I couldn't really be this...this Kinetic thing.
I would know if I had ESP or whatever these abilities were called.
Wouldn't I?

"You guys are making a fool out of
me," I said. I tried to ignore the soundless words that Willow kept
throwing at me. I was going batshit. I was going certifiable, and
they were not helping. "I need...I... Fuck it."

I stood up and walked out
the kitchen door into the backyard. I didn't stop when Mom called
out to me frantically or when my dad ordered me back into the
kitchen. I did stop when I heard Willow's voice in my mind.
-
Please, come back.-

Under the words filling my head, there
was an emotion that I can only describe as abject pleading. These
were Willow's emotions; she was calling me back. Honestly, I didn't
know where I was going when I headed out the door, but I knew that
I needed to get away and think. Willow and her pleading emotions
turned me around.

She spoke to my father and then walked
toward me. She grabbed my arm and led me out into the alleyway
behind our house.

We walked arm-in-arm past my neighbors
and their neighbors until we were almost three blocks away. Willow
turned to me then and grasped my fingers.

"Your dad and Jacob were probably
hoping that you would react better than that." Her gentle smile
stirred the butterflies in my stomach.

"How can you handle all this?" I let
go of her fingers and trapped my hands behind my back to hide the
cold sweat breaking out there.

"It was just the way cards fell, I
guess. You would know, too, if you hadn't turned into a
Vunjika."

"I still don't understand this Vunjika
thing."

Her grin got impossibly wider. "Let's
keep walking."

We walked, this time at arm's length,
down the street toward the high school. "So you know we're called
Kinetics, right?"

I nodded. "Weird word for people, but
I got it."

"Kinetic is a term given
to us…there's some history behind the word, but you don't need to
know that. A Vunjika is a Kinetic who can't use his or her powers.
Each Kinetic is born with two powers. The first is always the
ability to talk through the mind." She took a deep
breath. 
Like this.

In the words, I saw and felt
undercurrents of ideas and emotions. These were strong and
intentional, unlike before. She sent me confidence and happiness in
her words.

"The second power varies from person
to person. I am a healer." She touched the slight scabbed-over cut
on my arm where I had hit the bleachers in basketball practice two
days before. It swelled with a strange inner light and then faded
to nothing but a clean layer of skin.

"Each person develops his or her
abilities around the age of five or six. Vunjika, which is what you
are, never develop their abilities, either from lack of training or
from lack of will to train. I don't know the circumstances of your
situation, but usually when no powers manifest by the age of seven,
the child is labeled a risk and their memory of ever having powers
is suppressed until a later date, when the child is old enough to
accept remedial training. Usually that happens when the child is
sixteen. At that point, they are given the contract and they have
two options: train or..."