The Gifted

  “Is that what that is?” said Guido.

  “No,” said Brock with another smile, “this would eat a .50 caliber for breakfast. This is a .65 caliber. The guy who invented it tested it only once. Blew his thumb clean off. Luckily he had it sewn back on. He promptly threw it away and I kindly volunteered to take out the trash that night. You'll sleep safer knowing this is under my pillow.” He kissed his gun and smiled.

  “We’ll take him,” said Guido.

  Chapter 8: I hit a brick wall

  We walked back to our rooms without talking. When you know you may not live much longer, what can you say? “Hi, nice knowing you. I sure hope we don't all get shot today!”

  On our way to the hangar, the general came up alongside me, and in a stern voice said, “follow me.” I followed, feeling like I was in trouble with the principal.

  He took me out to a small office down the hall. I thought maybe it was his, but didn’t want to ask.

  He turned to me once I closed the door. “Now, let me explain some things to you before you go and get everyone killed. Brock is the leader here. Your gift means nothing other than it’s a way to get you accepted by the other gifted kids. I know you are used to people looking to you for advice. You are used to being the leader, but that’s because people feel you can lead. That’s your gift, but you are no leader. Try that on this mission and you will likely get people killed. Hear that, killed! Now you have no training in leadership, you do not know combat tactics or even how to negotiate. You are in essence, useless on this mission except to do what Brock tells you to do. Do you understand?”

  I felt numb, like I was detached from my body. “Yes, sir,” I said. “M-may I leave now?” I didn’t know what else to say.

  “Yes,” he said. “The others will be getting suited up so you can join them.”

  “Thank you,” I said. I left and walked toward the hangar where the others waited for me. I felt awkward, like I had lost connection with my body.

  ***

  When I got to the hangar, I saw the others standing next to some lockers. They were talking and putting on their wetsuits. I found a locker with my name on it and started getting ready.

  “You alright?” asked Han.

  “Sure,” I said.

  I could tell he was worried. I wanted to hide. “Are you sure?” he said.

  “Yeah, you look like someone stepped on your kitten,” said Guido.

  “I said I’m fine!” I yelled. Everyone stopped talking.

  “Just asking,” he said. He moved away from me.

  “Hey, what’s wrong with you?” said Tracy.

  “Didn’t you hear?” said Guido. “He’s fine. Let’s leave him alone.”

  “Okay,” said Tracy. “I hear you.”

  Once we were suited up and ready, we walked outside the hangar and found our transportation.

  The plane was a Rickshaw V-68. Nicknamed “Wyvern”. It had been experimental. I read about it in that book in my room. It was sleek, black, and beautiful, but at the time, I didn’t care. Inside, it was a tight fit. I sat down and put on my harness. I could hear what people were saying, but it was like I was hearing it from a long ways away. I couldn’t seem to focus.

  “Sorry about the squeeze everyone,” said the pilot. “This plane has been modified a little to make it possible to transport you all. Usually it only fits four, but we’re trying to accommodate all five. . .” Brock crouched down while turning sideways in order to move past the pilot. “Make that five and a half of you.”

  “Funny,” said Brock, who wasn’t laughing. Neither was I.

  Once we squeezed together and strapped in, I heard Guido ask the pilot, “How fast does this plane go?”

  “We should pass Mach 3 without much difficulty,” he said. I just stared across the plane to the opposite wall. What was wrong with me?

  “Anything in case of missiles?” asked Han.

  “No worries there,” said the pilot. “This thing outruns them. Since its deployment, the Wyvern has never been shot down.”

  “Good to hear,” said Guido. “How long ago was this plane first deployed?”

  “Last week,” said the pilot.

  “Great!” Guido said, “So we’re guinea pigs. We’re gonna die!”

  “Once we get in the air,” said the pilot, “I will have to turn on the inertial dampers. I just want to warn you that it might make you feel pretty weird when that happens, but it’s better than being crushed by the acceleration. People respond differently to it, so I can’t tell you exactly what will happen. At worst, you’ll feel sick.”

  And with that we were in the air. He was right about the inertial dampers. It felt really weird. Kind of like when my brother and I spun around in circles until we fell down. We would spin until we felt like barfing, then fall down and get back up and try to walk. The plane was like that for me. Only add to that being punched in the stomach. Tracy actually had to grab a plastic bag and throw up. It made me feel sick too, but I didn’t throw up. After that, I closed my eyes. I imagined I was back home.

  The trip took a couple of hours. The others talked, especially Tracy who didn’t seem to stop talking except for when she barfed. I think the others were pretty nervous, so they were much quieter. Later, Tracy and Guido got talking and kept at it for the rest of the trip. No one bothered me.

  I think I fell asleep for a few minutes. Of all the strange places to take a nap. Just then, someone hit my arm and I heard the pilot. “We’re going to lower our altitude so we can skim just above the water. You should get ready.” We put on our scuba tanks and fins.

  “This is where you get out,” he said a few minutes later. “Ready to jump?”

  “What?” I said. “This is a V-68. V is for vertical landing, right? Can’t it stop?”

  “Not this time,” he said. “No place to land and I need to get out of this airspace before we get shot down. I'm sorry you weren't briefed on this.”

  A door opened at the side of the plane and the sound of rushing air was loud.

  Water was speeding by and I saw a seagull go by like a bullet. “Are you nuts?” I yelled. I would either be killed or crippled for life!

  The plane slowed down more, but it was still going fast. My heart started to beat faster. I was about to jump out of a moving plane!

  “Jump facing forward with your arms tucked!” yelled Brock. We all nodded.

  Before anything else was said, Tracy grabbed my arm, turned to me and yelled with a smile, “Well, no time like the present!” She took two steps and jumped out. That girl was crazy! I didn’t want to look more afraid than a girl, so I jumped after her.

  As I fell I think I saw Han jump after me right before I hit a brick wall with my face!

  Chapter 9: What we discover

  Well, maybe I didn’t really hit a brick wall, but it felt like it. I was convinced I was dead. There was a bright light and voices. I thought I must be in heaven until I heard the others calling my name. “You okay, Andy?” I opened my eyes. I knew the voice belonged to Guido but I still couldn't locate him until he touched my arm. It was always weird when he did that. It's like he just came out of nowhere, but at the same time I know he was always there.

  “Yeah, I'm just trying to find the rest of me,” I said. “Anybody seen my brain?”

  “Now you sound like yourself,” said Guido.

  I could see Brock swimming past us, big as a tanker. “Now let's get going,” he said in his deep voice. “We can’t stay out in the open for long. We might get spotted.”

  Just before we started to follow him, I heard Guido. “Brock, what would have happened if we jumped so our backs hit the water instead?”

  “I was thinking of doing that as well,” said Tracy. “Maybe the tanks would have cushioned the fall.”

  Brock answered, “Maybe your tanks would have ripped your arms out of their sockets. Or better yet, your head.”

  “There’s a fun thought,” I said. We all started following Brock.

&n
bsp; It took maybe twenty minutes of steady swimming before we approached land. There was an enormous building not far from shore and I wondered if that was where we were going to be if all this went well.

  Brock motioned with two fingers that he wanted all of us to follow him and then he dove under the water. I shrugged and followed. Brock was diving deep, which scared me. The water got a lot colder and darker as we dove. The practice tank never prepared me for this! Brock headed toward a rock face and disappeared into it. I could only guess there must be a cave. Still unable to see it, I followed him anyway.

  Darkness surrounded me for half a minute until I saw light above us. I thought about swimming for it, but remembered that we were diving so no one up top would see us.

  We swam on and it got dark again. Before I had time to get fully scared, Brock took out a glow stick and broke it. We all followed suit. Behind Brock was Tracy, then Guido and Han, and me at the end.

  We swam for a while this way and I wondered how far under the island we were traveling. I was impressed with the size of this cave. A wall skirted my left side, but the right was empty blackness.

  Something bumped me from behind. How could that be, I thought? I was the last one. I felt it again. It felt like someone hitting me with their fist. I turned and looked behind and in the eerie light of the glow stick I saw a great white shark grinning at me, its long teeth shining in the dark. I screamed. Have you ever tried to scream underwater? It comes out something like “bebub bb b barbbb.” The shark nudged my feet with its nose and kept following me. I tried to scream again and swam as fast as I could, but the shark just followed close at my feet.

  That's when it hit me. I knew what this shark was doing. I didn't need to fear for my life. My gift was causing the shark to like me. Not for dinner, but to want to be around me. To play with me perhaps. I often had this effect on neighborhood dogs. At that moment I was more thankful for my gift than I have ever been in my life. I said a silent prayer of thanks, glad that I could be the shark’s friend instead of his lunch. He never went after the others, but was content to stay at my heels for the rest of the journey until we came to a brightly lit area where it turned and left me. This was where we stopped.

  Brock gave a signal for all of us to stay in one place. I realized this was where Guido was supposed to do his stuff. I felt something brush by me and for just an instant I saw Guido swimming to the top wearing nothing but his underwear. They were white boxers with a red waistband. I turned away, embarrassed for him. But when I turned back I couldn't find him anymore. Weird how that happened, he might as well be invisible.

  We waited for a long time. There was nothing to do but tread water just below the surface. We couldn't really talk to each other so I played a few rounds of roshambo with Tracy while Brock just shook his head. After a long while I saw a hand reach down through the water and touch my head. “It’s Guido,” I said, which came out like “brib bribbbo.” We came up out of the water and saw him smiling at us.

  Guido was wearing the top part of one of the guard’s uniforms. It was very loose on him, but at least we didn’t see his chonies. “It took you long enough,” said Brock.

  “How did you do it?” I asked.

  “I came out of the water easily enough and no one saw me,” he said. “Then I slowly crept to the top up there where I saw two guards. They were carrying M16’s, so I took my time. But when I got there, I just froze. I stood there just watching these guys with their guns. Did I mention they had M16’s? Then I wondered how I could do it without getting killed. Since there were two of them I figured that if I hit one over the head with a rock or something, then the other would see where I was. What I finally did was wait until one had walked over close to the edge over there where the rock slopes downward. Then I pushed him so the other one would think he had just stumbled and fell. When his friend looked after him, I took a large rock and I hit him sideways over the head with it, the way I was taught.” I saw the rock and there was some blood and hair stuck to it. “That was it for him, for now.”

  “I grabbed his large, metal flashlight, and when the other guy climbed back up, I was waiting for him. I clubbed him hard.”

  “Good job,” said Brock.

  Brock was carrying our clothes in a small watertight bag. First Tracy changed out of her wetsuit and we turned around. Then the guys changed. Now we had on regular clothes.

  “This way,” said Brock and we followed him. Ahead we could see the beginning of a tunnel of rock but it was a quick dead end. We walked to the end of the tunnel and took a rusted metal ladder attached to the wall.

  We climbed up, coming out in a cavern so large I could barely see the top. It reminded me of a cave I once took a tour of back home: tan colored stone with stalactites making the whole thing feel ominous. There were lights here and there along the wall, which made it eerie.

  We all stood huddled together. “Okay, let’s quietly and carefully explore this cave,” said Brock. Since lights were placed far apart, it was difficult to see very far. Eventually we found the cave to be mostly bare except for some tall steel lockers along one side. On each one was a lock.

  “There must be a reason for these locks,” he said. “It makes me want to get into them all the more. Does anyone have a way to get into these?” Then looking at us thoughtfully he said, “Tracy, can you heat up one of these enough to melt the lock off?”

  “I've never tried something like that,” she said. “It would take a lot of heat.”

  “Give it a shot,” said Brock.

  “Okay.” She walked up to the first cabinet and closed her eyes furling her brow. We all remained silent. After a couple of minutes, which seemed like forever, there was a smell like someone’s car brakes burning up. Black smoke drifted up from the lock and now there was a dark red glow to it, which grew to a lighter red. The lock melted off and fell apart.

  “Wow,” said Brock. He looked shocked. “Do you know the melting point of carbide steel? I didn’t think you could do it.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Brock” said Tracy.

  “Good work,” he said.

  I elbowed Han. “She’s even scary to Brock,” I said.

  Tracy looked at me angrily and I shut up so I didn’t get punched in the mouth.

  Brock opened the locker. “Jackpot,” he said. There before us was an arsenal of guns, mostly M16’s, lined up along two rows with boxes of ammo just beneath. “Now why would they need all these?” said Brock. He took out his own massive gun, I think he just liked to hold it, and looked back in the locker. “Let's go,” he said, closing the cabinet and we followed him.

  We walked further along the wall of the cavern and found a door on one side. It was hidden from view by a shelf of rock unless you came from a certain angle. The door was unlocked, so Brock opened it. We came out in a hallway that led to several flights of cement stairs, which in turn led to a brick tunnel. Brock looked both ways and whispered, “all clear.” As we walked on, the tunnel had other hallways that split off of it, but always to the right. We kept to the main tunnel until we came to a branch on the right where we could hear machinery. We took that one. The sound got louder and louder the farther we went. Eventually it sounded quite clearly like the machinery was coming through a door on the left. Brock tried to open it, but it was locked. Then he pulled out a knife from one of his many pockets and inserted the blade between the door jamb and the door. Immediately the door creaked open and we crept inside. The room was loud and busy. It was also stiflingly hot. Machines that were painted yellow were working in a long line: an assembly line. It reminded me of a car manufacturing plant, but these were no cars.

  “What is this all for?” Tracy yelled above the noise.

  “I'm not sure,” yelled Brock. “But it appears to be completely automated.” As we walked along the assembly line we saw the progress of what was being built. It was Han who first said, “Robots!”

  “What?” I said.

  “He's right,” yelled Tracy.
Up ahead I could see the machines were attaching arms to a central hub and then later some kind of round part that could only be a head. Then came the legs. Only they didn’t attach just two, but four. “Maybe they walk like spiders,” said Tracy loudly. “Creepy!” She sounded excited.

  Brock made a sour mouth. “I don't like spiders,” he said.

  Brock surveyed the room. “We never saw this coming,” he yelled above the noise. “It was just supposed to be a training facility for kids. Nothing about guns or robots.”

  We went to the far end of the factory until we came to a door which led to the hallway again. We walked a bit further until we heard someone coming, so we took the first room on the left. Brock quickly opened the door and peered through before we all followed him. It might have been a place where training or teaching happened because it was huge and there were chairs all in rows. We were on a second floor balcony so we could see down into the room. Red emergency lights ran along the walls. A sudden voice broke out. “I told you I felt something up here.”

  Four men with guns trained on us stood along the back wall. The lights came on and a man with a thick mustache stood forward. “So you did. Very good work.” He had a gun to Brock’s head and three other men had similar weapons trained on us. A boy, maybe my age, was standing against the wall behind them. “Why don’t you come with us,” said the man with the mustache. It was not a request.

  They took us back out the door we had come through and down some different tunnels, the whole time keeping the gun pointed at Brock. When we came to a small, well-lit room, there were several other men standing by a desk. A red-haired man whose face was scratched up with large purplish bruises on both cheeks whispered something to another, who until that moment had his head down and was carefully reading papers at his desk. When he looked up, I recognized him at once. His nose was bent to the right: the guy who had kidnapped me from school. He had a grim smile that looked forced, but I knew he couldn’t help it. “Check him for weapons, and check the kids too.”