The Gifted (11 page)

The small dog whimpered, panted and looked up
while wagging his tail.

“Han?” I said before we opened the door. I
leaned down and instantly the dog was under my hand. I stroked him
a few times. “We have to give this little guy a name.”

“Hayasa,” said Han.

“Gazuntite.”

“What?”

“You sneezed,” I said.

He looked confused. “No, his name should be
Hayasa.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It's the Japanese word for speed,” said
Han.

“Good name. What do you think Hayasa?” He
panted happily at my side.

I turned to Han. “Han, I just realized I’ve
been trying to lead again. I’m not really a leader though. The
general made sure I knew that before we left.”

“Andy,” said Han. “I trust you. Everything is
good so far.”

“But I don’t really know what I’m doing. I
have no training.”

“Hey, we’re in a place we’ve never been,
surrounded by kids with gifts no one has ever heard of. I will
follow you.”

I didn’t know how to argue with this. “Okay,”
I said and straightened up. “Here we go.”

I opened the door, which squeaked as it
opened, and paused, noticing how quiet it was. I remembered Abe
mentioning this would be the first executions. Maybe they didn't
usually have prisoners either. But then I remembered that they did
have Brock recently. Maybe there were others down here too. We
stopped for a few seconds and listened. Just the sound of soft paws
racing back and forth as Hayasa scurried here and there.

I heard someone talking, a girl’s voice.
Walking cautiously in that direction, I noticed the dark, dingy
looking stonework of the walls. It looked very old. I thought,
How could this place be that old?
I thought the school
was relatively new.

As we neared the sound, the talking stopped.
It was dead silent, but we crept nearer to where I now saw was the
door to a cell. At the top of the door was a small window with
bars. I whispered, “Tracy?”

“It's them!” she said excitedly.

“Tracy,” I said. “Is Guido with you?”

“He's right here!” she said, “We’ve just been
talking about what to do.”

“Great,” I said. “Now if we can only get you
out of there!” The door looked to be made of solid steel.
Impossible to break down.

A loud bang rang out! I hit the floor,
thankful they missed with their first bullet. Looking up, I saw a
dog-sized hole in front of me through the door and Tracy was
petting Hayasa. It occurred to me that Hayasa had again run right
through a door. I was liking our new dog more and more.

“Okay,” I said. “Problem solved. I hope no
one heard that.”

Tracy and Guido crawled through the door,
careful to keep away from the sharp jagged pieces of metal that
stuck out here and there. “Some dog,” said Tracy.

“Yeah,” I said. “Some dog.”

“Where can I get me one of those?” said
Guido.

“Now what do we do?” Tracy asked me. Of
course, they always asked me.

“Let's go back the way we came.” Everyone
followed me back to the stairs when I realized maybe they shouldn’t
be following me. Maybe I was endangering them. When we got to the
door of the stairs I heard people running down on the other
side.

I started to panic. “There’s another door
over there!” said Tracy. “But I don’t know where it goes.”

“Away from them!” I yelled as we raced down
the hall and opened the door. Inside was another good-sized room.
When I opened the door at first I couldn't see because it was so
bright.

“What's all this light for?” I said.

“The better to shoot you with,” said a
commanding voice. It was the voice of Abe. “We have been waiting
for you.” As soon as I could see, it was clear there were about a
dozen men and all of them with guns.

“I'm having a bad day,” I said. “I want to go
back to bed.”

I had no heart to fight. They led us back
through the hall, up the stairs and down another corridor. I felt
like giving up, walking alongside the soldiers when I smelled
smoke. Then I saw it curl up one of the soldier’s legs. Several of
the men with guns started looking around, confused. The soldier’s
pant leg caught fire, soon the same thing happened to another guy
near him. Both dropped to the ground trying to smother the fire by
rolling around. Soon eight men began to dance around, trying to put
out their pants as they caught on fire while others tried to help
their comrades.

“Run!” said Tracy. She led the way as we ran
for the far door at the end of the hall. When we got through the
door, we saw that we had entered part of the robotic assembly area
again. This time instead of coming out on the balcony, we were on
the ground level. The noise was horrendous. A series of conveyors
moved quickly in front of us.

Everyone paused and looked at me. I didn’t
lecture them about not being able to lead. “This would be a good
room to hide,” I yelled. “Any ideas?”

“How about that?” said Guido. He found an
equipment closet that was mostly empty. There was only one machine
part inside, square with knobs all over it. I had no idea what it
did.

“We can all fit,” said Tracy.

We followed her inside and I wondered where
Hayasa was, so I reached down my hand and instantly he was there. I
gave him a pat on the head while crouching. Han closed the large
metal door, and we waited silently, still breathing hard.

Soldiers came running through the door
outside. I could smell the smoke. “They could have run or they
might have hidden,” said Abe. “You and you, search this room. The
rest of us will move on.”

“But that girl just sizzled the pants off of
me!” whined a voice.

“Go,” said Abe. “You'll have to get new pants
later.”

“In my boxers?”

“Yes, just go.”

“Oh, alright,” he said. “Let's go Joe!”

“I’m going back to the training facility,”
said Abe. “The next session is about to start.”

That meant only two men would be searching
for us. But I remembered, they had guns. An advantage we didn't
have.

We could hear the two men moving equipment
around. Even over the sound of the machinery, they were talking
loudly. “Can you believe it Roy! Three kids escaped! And did you
see the hole in that door? How did they do that?”

I thought about this. There were four of us.
Why. . .

“It's me,” I heard a voice whisper. Guido
touched my shoulder and I could see him in the shadows. “They don't
know I'm with you. Maybe this gift isn’t so bad after all.”

“If they get us,” I whispered, “you have to
get out. Get away and tell the general what we've found.”

“Okay, but I'll bring someone back for you,”
he said.

“Sure thing,” I said, knowing if we got
caught, we’d probably be dead.

Again we listened to the two men outside.
“Sizzled my pants right off me,” said Roy. “The burns will probably
take weeks to heal! It hurts to even walk.”

“Just be careful that she doesn't sizzle more
than that,” said Joe.

“These kids creep me out,” said Roy.
“Everyone with these crazy powers.”

“Yeah, but we have guns,” said Joe. “We'll
get them. Then we'll lock them up. Or maybe we'll shoot them and
say it was by mistake.”

“Hey, that's an idea,” said Roy. “One good
turn deserves another, right?”

Their voices were getting louder. I heard
them open up a locker nearby and slam it closed again.

“No one can pants me and get away with it,”
said Roy. “Shooting them would be justice.”

“Yeah, I was just kidding Roy,” said Joe.
“You don’t want to shoot them. Let Abe take care of them.”

“Yeah, but. Well, you’re probably right,”
said Roy. “Anyway, I can't do it here. I don't have any good place
to put the bodies. Unless one of these lockers would work.”

“Hey, there's an idea,” said Joe. “A
bad
idea. Do you want to get yourself killed? You know what
they do around here for disobeying orders?”

“Right,” said Roy. “Hey, Let's look over
here.”

“Okay Roy,” said Joe. We heard our locker
door squeak on its hinges as an orange light entered slowly.
“Hello, hello!” he said. He had his gun trained on us. We couldn’t
see him too well since the light was behind him, but I could smell
the smoke from his burned pants and we saw that they were just
tatters.

“Hey Joe, I found them!” he yelled.

Joe came up to the locker next to Roy.
“Great, Roy. I’ll just call the boss.” Joe reached for his
radio.

“Hey, what’s that over there?” yelled
Roy.

Joe turned to look and as he did we heard
Thump! Clang!
as Joe was hit on the head with Roy’s gun.
“Yeah, Joe, nothing personal, but I have a score to settle
here.”

Turning back to us, he said, “Now don't you
move. And if I feel any heat on any part of my body, I'm going to
start shooting people. You understand?”

We were quiet. A sense of dread crept over my
whole body. I saw in his eyes he looked more than ready to open
fire, and at his feet lay Joe.

“I said, do you understand?” he shouted
louder.

“Yes,” we all responded.

Roy smiled. Seeing him in the orange light
with the conveyors behind him was eerie.

“Now that I have your attention, I think you
guys are about to get dead. I'll tell them you were trying to
overpower me and I shot you before you escaped. Joe wouldn't
understand it, but no one frizzles my pants and embarrasses me like
that. I'll shoot each and every one of you, but first off I'll
begin with the girl because I think she did it to me. She’s the
only one I saw with her eyes closed, concentrating.”

“Okay girl, come forward unless you want your
friends killed first.” Tracy took a trembling step forward.

He brought up the gun and leveled it at her
head, almost touching it. We braced ourselves for the shot and
heard a loud bang. But it didn’t sound quite right; not loud
enough. I opened my eyes and there lay Roy crumpled on the ground
and a bloody spot was forming under his head. A dented oil can lay
next to his body, now leaking as well. “What?” I said.

“It's me,” said the familiar voice of Guido.
“Nobody ever notices me, and I think I’m starting to like that
fact. Sorry, it took me awhile to find a weapon.”

“Thank you,” said Tracy with tears in her
eyes. “Where are you?”

“Right here,” he said next to Tracy.

She gave him a big bear hug. She held him so
long I started to get embarrassed.

“Must. . .breathe.” he said.

“Oh, sorry,” said Tracy, letting go.

“Thanks,” said Guido. “Now we need to get out
of here before Roy comes back.”

Everyone was looking at me again. I started
feeling upset about this. Who did they think I was? “Ask Guido this
time! I didn’t save you guys.” I knew this wasn’t the right place
to lose my temper, but I was sick and tired of others expecting me
to have the answers.

“Really,” I said louder, “ask him!”

Tracy looked at me as if she was going to say
something but then changed her mind. “Okay, Guido, where do we go?”
she asked.

“How about the way we came in,” he said.
“They won't expect it because they’ve already been there.” They all
nodded their heads. “Let's go,” he said. Guido was smart. Probably
smarter than me anyways.

We took off through the door and beyond the
next room with Hayasa running alongside us. We went back down to
the dungeon area, and ran down one of the corridors. The rooms were
dimly lit again. Running down the hallway, I was surprised at how
quiet everything was, with no buzz of machinery, and no one in any
of the training rooms. We came to a left turn in the tunnel and it
suddenly got very dark. You could see a few feet and then nothing.
“Tracy?” I said.

“Sure thing, I was already thinking about
this. Han, do you have any paper? I need an airplane.”

Han smiled, “Would you like a Flying Fish,
Sabertooth, Paper Crane. . .”

“Anything,” she said. “Anything quick!”

“In that case,” he pulled out a ready made
paper crane out of his back pocket. “I just happen to have this on
hand. “He breathed on it and I heard the rustle of paper, but it
was too dark to see much. Suddenly the back end caught on fire, and
it began flapping its wings quickly. This looked more like magic
than anything I had ever seen; like in the books you read. Hayasa
barked as it flew forward, and we had to run alongside it to keep
up. The corridor, now well illuminated, was long and kept sloping
downward, but the crane flew steady as it burned. Hayasa ran under
it, staring up and barking, and making short leaps from time to
time.

“Shhh, quiet boy,” I said to Hayasa as we
ran. “We don’t know who may be around.” He seemed to understand and
whined back at me.

The back half of the crane was gone now, and
the flapping was getting more frantic. We came to a right corner
and the crane actually turned right, like it was alive. With us
running along the corridor it began to flap more erratically as it
burned down, dying to a flicker by the end of the next stretch.
Another right turn and then fluorescent lights began to show up on
the walls. The crane burned out in a spray of ash.

“Now that was cool,” said Guido.

“Yes it was,” said Tracy. “Thanks Han.”

Han smiled, “like magic.”

The corridor sloped downward more steeply as
we approached an iron door. It was unlocked, but it was so rusted
it took all four of us to push it open. Once on the other side, we
found we were in a large cavern which no longer felt like the
school, but like a great underground cave. Like its own world.

A dull red glow revealed walls that were made
of rock, and I could tell the floor fell away after a few steps so
I walked forward cautiously as the others waited for their eyes to
adjust. I peered over the edge to the left. “Yup,” I said.