CHAPTER NINE
Kane leaned his chair back against the cabin, his feet crossed at the ankles on the railing of the front porch. The sun was peeking out from behind a mountain range, its soft glow filtering across the valley below and sending light to the once darkened world. A soft fog covered the valley floor, the glistening of a light frost shimmering in the morning light.
He sipped his coffee, wrapping his hands around the mug for warmth. He heard the sound of the zipper on Flip’s tent open and then close as the big man unfolded himself and rose from the ground. He stretched, and Kane could hear the popping of bones as he realigned his large body.
“Morning,” he said softly to Kane. “You getting old, or is that my own bones I’m hearing creaking?”
“Morning, brother,” he said, shoving a cup of coffee at him. “Fuck you. We’re both getting old, and that tent is not made for my body.”
“What’s on the agenda today?”
Kane, you copy me? The voice of Ben Rollins came through loud and clear in his earpiece.
“I hear you, Ben. What’s up?”
I’m coming in and I’m not alone.
“Hostiles?” asked Kane, standing.
Flip immediately turned and set his coffee on the railing. He opened the door to the living room and saw Spook and Adam already moving toward the front door. The four men stood on the porch waiting for Ben’s response. Behind them, Uri stood with a rifle, waiting, Juan on the other side of the porch railing, hands at his sides.
I don’t think they’re hostiles. But it’s a whole bunch of ‘em. They look kinda… I don’t know, kinda lost and some of them look sick.
“What do you want us to do?” asked Adam.
“We wait. If Ben doesn’t think they’re hostiles, we wait. I trust his instincts.”
The men waited for what seemed an eternity until Ben walked up the dusty driveway. Beside him was a woman in her late forties or early fifties, pretty and yet plain at the same time, with short red hair. Her blue jeans had definitely seen better days, her plaid shirt tied at the waist, a white t-shirt peeking from beneath.
Behind her were at least a dozen young men and women. Kane let out a long slow breath, his palms tingled, and his back went rigid. He didn’t suspect evil, but he also couldn’t get a read on about half of them, and that worried him.
“Morning,” he said calmly. “Ben, you made some friends I see. Nice to see you playing well with others.”
“Bite me, asshole. This is Mary Clark. Mary, this is Kane Jackson.” The older man looked down at the woman and smiled. Kane couldn’t help but grin back at him.
“Yes, I know who you are,” she said, extending her hand. “It’s why I’m here. Why we’re all here. We’ve been trying to find you all, trying to catch up to you for a while now.”
Mary’s hand lingered in Kane’s for a few moments. She knew of him and wanted him to feel secure in the fact that she was friend, not foe.
“Is that right?” said Kane suspiciously, still holding her hand in his own. “Can you tell me what brings you to me?”
“I think you know the answer to that, Mr. Jackson.” The woman stared directly at Kane, her gaze never wavering as if knowing that he needed to look into her eyes.
“Kane, it’s just Kane. And please, details are important, Ms. Clark,” he replied in an equally unwavering voice.
“Mary. It’s just Mary. I… we,” she said, waving a hand around at the others, “are all children of the pink dust. I believe I was lucky enough to be the first.” She chuckled sardonically and then looked back at the rag-tag group of her fellow pink dusters.
Kane’s gaze scanned the group of people. They looked tired and worn, their clothes tattered and old. Two looked sick, but he couldn’t be sure, and they all looked hungry.
“You all look like you could use a hot meal. I’ll go make some breakfast,” said Spook, turning to enter the house. Kane nodded, and Mary mouthed a thank you to the younger man.
“They’re tired, Kane,” she said, taking a tentative step forward. “I’m not sure what your skill is…”
“He’s a reader,” said a small voice in the back. The young man stepped out from behind a bigger man and walked to stand by Mary. “He’s a reader. He touches you and knows whether you are good or evil. He hasn’t refined his skill, but he’s good. He doesn’t know how good he really is. He doesn’t know what all he can do, what he’s capable of.”
Kane eyed the young man and then the woman Mary. He looked at each of the faces as they stared back at him.
“Perhaps introductions would help,” said Flip, calmly stepping forward to stand next to Kane.
“Right, sorry,” said Mary. “As I said, I’m Mary Clark. I believe I was the first if not one of the first children Moore used. I’m an empath. I can feel when others are happy, sad, troubled, all of it. And I can either emphasize it or take it away.”
“That must be exhausting,” said Adam, cocking an eyebrow at the woman. He couldn’t imagine feeling everyone’s sorrows or pain.
“It is. Adam Thorn, right?” she said. He nodded, staring at the woman. “It can leave me completely debilitated for days if it’s really bad. It’s more difficult to take on the feelings, but to give them is easy. I try to take the evil or sad and give it to those that, well, those that deserve less happiness.” The others nodded, raising an eyebrow at the sweet woman, and she looked away for a moment, turning back to her group.
“These two are the youngest of our troupe. Ashley and Akin are twins, twenty-four years old. They don’t have a power individually, but together they have the ability to cover sound, blocking all noise for a radius of up to five miles. They’ve been able to block out everything from our footsteps to the sounds of a jet engine.”
Adam looked at Kane and raised an eyebrow. This was amazing and disturbing all at the same time.
“David and Griffin are both twenty-nine but not related. They were at Sierra during roughly the same time. They both have the same physical anomaly, which we’ve discovered is pretty rare. No other pair that we’ve discovered anyway has possessed the same abilities. They’re able to run at speeds that would kill most men. We’ve clocked them at fifty-two miles per hour.”
“I’m faster,” said David, smiling.
“Like hell you are,” said Griffin, nudging him.
“Jesus!” exclaimed Adam. “And their bodies didn’t suffer? No broken bones? Dislocated joints?”
“No. Nothing. They’re barely breathing heavily when they return. Garrett is thirty; he’s able to create wind at hurricane strengths . He’s created up to a category three. Gable is thirty-one; he speaks to animals. Literally a Doctor Doolittle sort of thing. Griffin, Garrett, and Gable are brothers.” She smiled at the tall handsome young man, and he smiled back.
“That must come in handy,” said Flip speaking to Gable.
“We’ve definitely used it while on the run. On more than a few occasions, he was able to call up a bear or wolf, and they came. Even the best-trained canines aren’t able to refuse him, which allowed us to get food or clothing when we desperately needed it. We made every effort to never steal, but sometimes, well, sometimes, necessity is a bitch.”
Kane nodded, impressed at the team’s abilities. He motioned for Mary to continue but didn’t fail to notice that Ben never took his eyes off of her.
“This is Hawke. He’s thirty-eight. The oldest of my group besides me. Hawke is, well, a hawk.”
“Wait! He can transform…” said Adam, his mouth dropping in astonishment.
“No, not like that. He’s able to place himself basically in the brain of a hawk or an eagle, but hawks work best and then fly overhead and see what the bird sees.” This was getting more and more interesting by the moment.
“Nash is thirty-seven. He, Hawke, and Ivy came to me together. Nash is able to control water. He can create a flood, a drought, make it rain, anything . Ivy is thirty-five. She has the ability to make any plant grow on demand. You want someone lifted into a tree? She can make the acorn grow and lift the person at the same time . You want an English garden; it’s done.” Mary smiled at the young woman as she beamed proudly.
“Her skills have definitely helped when we’re hungry, but she needs something to start with. A seed, even a dead plant can be revived. But if there’s nothing, if it’s desert, she can’t create what was never there.”
“Regan is thirty. He is able to process vast amounts of information quickly and retain it. He would be classified as a human computer , I suppose.”
“Ah, I see you’ve read my file,” said Kane. The young man nodded and grinned up at him. “Did you read all of the files?”
“Yes, sir. I was able to get into the Copper Canyon home before it burned and read everything on all of us.”
Kane was definitely intrigued with the young man. He could be the clue they needed to find all of them.
“How many more are there? Besides the six of us already here, how many more are there?” Kane asked inquisitively.
“Us thirteen,” said Regan, looking around, “and another eight still alive.”
“That’s all?” said Kane. His mouth opened in shock, and he stared at their merry band of misfits. He hoped there were more. He prayed there were more that could give them answers.
“That’s all unless some of the eight have died since I saw the records. The others all either killed themselves or were killed.” Kane nodded and looked away for a moment and nodded at Mary to continue.
“ Valentina is thirty-two. She has the ability to make anyone fall in love, or hate . And last, but certainly not least, is Isobel .” Kane looked at the tiny dark-haired woman huddled against the man called Garrett. Large sunglasses covered her eyes. “Isobel’s family didn’t know how to handle her, so they removed her eyes as a child.”
“Christ! Why would they do that?” asked Flip.
“She is able to send a laser-like pulse that can literally rip holes through ten-inch-thick steel . The problem is it wasn’t her eyes. It’s her ability to hear and sense the danger that was her gift. It’s as if she sees and hears it and then can focus on whatever it is that needs to be her target. I suppose, in your terms, the eyes act like a surface-to-air missile. Although I don’t really understand that either. The eyes were just the tool. Despite her parents’ actions, her eyes actually still function; she can see. She has glass eyes in but can still see even without the optic nerves or vessels.”
“Fascinating,” said Adam and immediately regretted it. The young woman smiled. “I’m sorry, Isobel. That was cruel of me, and I didn’t mean to be cruel. It’s just, well…”
“It’s okay, Doc. I know you meant it from a medical point of view. Maybe you can find a way to tell me why these still work,” she said, removing her sunglasses. Adam smiled at her and nodded.
“That’s our little band of misfits.” Mary stepped closer to Kane. “We’re tired of running, Kane. We heard that you took out Moore, and we’re more than grateful, but we need a place to rest, recover, and hopefully regroup to hunt down the woman.”
“You know about her?” asked Kane.
“We do. We all do. At one time or another, she was hunting all of us and trying to experiment on us. We want her taken out. We’ll do whatever you ask. We need a leader.”
“You look like you’ve done okay on your own, Mary,” said Kane admirably.
“She’s done an amazing job,” said Gable. “She’s the strongest woman I know, and not once did any of us ever try to take her place. That should speak volumes to you, sir.”
“We really are a band of misfits, aren’t we?” said Adam, grinning at the group before them.
“How long have you all been running?” asked Kane. Aislinn, Fiona, Melanie, and Nat all were moving around the yard now, handing out plates of food and hot coffee.
“I’ve been running for almost thirty years. The others? Anywhere from ten to twenty years. All were children at the Depot at one time or another.”
“I know you,” said Nat, staring at David and then Griffin, “and you.”
“We were older than you,” said Griffin. “I didn’t think you’d remember. But yes, we were there at the same time. Obviously, so were Garrett and Gable, but they pretty much stuck together. We remember Fiona was there as well.”
“She was?” said Nat, scrunching her nose. “I don’t remember seeing Fiona,” said Nat.
“She was gone before you arrived, Nadine,” said David. “It was almost like they didn’t want more than three or four kids there at any one time. We all overlapped at some point, but I don’t think they could control more than a few at a time.”
“We’ve also discovered that the girls typically identified their gifts earlier than the boys. Most of the boys didn’t see the gifts until puberty. The girls usually as young as five or six.”
Mary took a sip of coffee, and Ben reached out to hold her plate for her. She smiled up at the ruggedly handsome guard who escorted them in. She could sense that he was not ‘one of them,’ yet something about him was pulling her in.
“How do we know you aren’t working for Karena?” asked Adam.
“I guess you don’t, except that if we wanted you dead, with our abilities, you’d all be dead,” said Mary. “Just know that we all want what you want; we want her gone as well. All of the men here served in the military, Kane. Every one of them. Some were even Special Forces but had to hide their gifts. I would think they possess skills you can use. We know about Moore’s desire to create an army, and we want to be a part of the right army. An army that will put our gifts to good use. We’ve been waiting for a true leader, and I think you’re it, Kane.”
Kane nodded and paced back and forth in front of the rag-tag group. He couldn’t turn them away. They were all like him, like them. Now faced with so many, where would they stay? How would they feed them all? As if knowing his thoughts, Spook walked up to him.
“Remember, we have all that money I transferred,” he said with a smile. “Everyone here can still have their place. We have plenty of money for food and clothing. We could use tents as temporary housing until the cabins are constructed. I don’t mind bunking with others until it can all be done.” Kane nodded at his friend, appreciating the advice and the selfless actions.
“Alright, everyone can stay. Mary? I want to meet with you, Hawke, and Nash since you’re the oldest of the group. We’ll figure out where everyone sleeps later. Ashley and Isobel? You go into town with Nat and Fiona. Get whatever clothing you all need. We have an account big enough for everyone. If anyone needs medical treatment, let Doc know.”
“Only Regan and Ivy need assistance. Regan has been getting severe headaches since absorbing the data from the ranch, and Ivy has a terrible rash on her back.” Doc nodded and pointed the way inside the cabin.
Kane stared at the group of people standing around the cabin. The sun was up behind them, the crisp air starting to warm a little. All these years, he’d thought he was the only one. Then he met Adam, Flip, and Spook and knew there were at least a few more. When Aislinn fell into his lap, he couldn’t believe there were still more. Then it was Fiona and Kat. So many children, now adults.
“Okay, let’s figure this out.”