Ultraviolet Gene book 1: The Lost Children

  "Yup," said his father. "I'm free through Tuesday night. It's too bad your mom and sister won't be back until then, but in the meantime, we should do something fun."

  "I guess," Jet said. He looked his father in the eyes. People might have often told Jet how much he resembled his father, if they were ever seen together. While his father's hair had darkened with age and his freckles had faded some, they had the same blue eyes, the same high cheekbones, the same narrow dimpled chin.

  His father smiled, though this one was less genuine. Jet knew he wasn't giving his father much to work with. "I was thinking that tomorrow you could finish up your homework, and then maybe on Monday you could skip school – we could go out, see a movie. Have some guy time."

  It was the most awkward request for time together his father had ever given to him – but it was also the first in years that seemed like it wouldn't get canceled at the last minute, not counting things like holidays where they had to see other relatives and put up with aunts and uncles arguing over what year Jet and Violet were in now (eighth and tenth if they were still in America) and which of the two was older (Violet). And he was in no position to be picky about his hangout time as of late. Who knew when Casey would show up again, if he showed up again. And going to a movie with his dad would at least be better than being at school.

  "Yeah, okay," Jet said. "Whatever you'd like."

  "Or whatever you'd like," his father said, and when Jet didn't answer, added "I know I'm not around very much, so..."

  Jet chewed some food, pensively, then swallowed. "That's putting it generously," he mumbled. He knew he was being rotten, but couldn't bring himself to care.

  His father gave him a long look. "You doing all right, JT?"

  "I..." Jet began. Where could he begin? He'd moved overseas away from his few remaining friends, none of whom could understand even the most basic tenets of instant messaging; when Violet was around she made him miserable both because she was a bitch and because she was better than he was at just about everything; and most notably his one new friend over here was a ten-year-old psychic who had now vanished, and who knew how long it would be before Casey’s parents got suspicious and phoned.

  But if he said anything of that, all he'd hear was some people have better things to do than sit at the computer all the time, or you and your sister just need to make more of an effort to get along, or don't make up stories, tell me what really happened.

  So as much as he wanted to confide in his father, at least about Casey, all he said was "Yeah."

  "I know it's been tough," his father said. "We're kind of a complicated family."

  Jet stabbed a piece of chicken with his fork a little too hard. "Yeah."

  "I want your mom to be happy," his father said, "as much as I want your sister to be happy, and I want you to be happy."

  "Maybe it's impossible for so many people to be happy at once," Jet said darkly. "Maybe this is just how it is, we need to take turns." He looked up at his father's face and regretted it instantly. The man didn't often show emotion, but Jet knew by the way his father’s lips had tightened he'd struck a nerve. "I didn't mean..."

  "It's all right."

  "I'll look at the paper and see what movies are playing, and I can pick one for Monday. Or you can pick."

  His father smiled. "Anything you like is fine."

  After the dishes were done and the leftovers put away, Jet trudged upstairs, and as he entered his room it struck him that when his father had mentioned wanting the family happy, he had neglected to mention himself.

  * * *

  As if getting abducted by the Men In Black wasn't weird enough, Ellie thought, being brought out of there into what appeared to be a boarded-up church was over-the-top. An older guy helped her lie down on one of the pews and the little kid who'd rescued her gave her his sweater as a pillow.

  Looking up at the ceiling, most of the bulbs in the light fixtures were broken or had gone dark; only one still provided light – but that didn't explain the weird pink glow coming from towards the doors. She tried to raise an arm to shield her eyes, but her limbs felt like they belonged to a rag doll stuffed with iron pellets, so she simply shut her eyes as tightly as she could. Her heart pounded like a big bass drum; it echoed in her head, her throat, her arms.

  She managed to open her mouth and wheeze "Where am I?"

  "We're not really sure," said the guy who'd helped her onto the pew, "but I'm pretty convinced it's safe. I'm Matty, by the way."

  "Ellie," she croaked in response.

  "And Casey rescued you," Matty added.

  She took a breath through her nose and the air seemed to burn against her parched throat. "Thank you," she said. "Um... do you have anything I could drink?"

  In a strange place like this it seemed like a miracle, but there was water. Casey brought the bottle to Matty, who raised it to Ellie's lips. She drained it of its contents quickly.

  A few minutes later she regretted it as her stomach churned. She leaned over the side of the wooden bench upon which she was resting and retched up all the water. Luckily it didn't smell too bad. The rush from throwing up helped to distract her from the pain in her skull, but not from the sharp tube still jammed into her arm, the chills that ran all up and down her body.

  "Try to get some sleep," Matty said, and he and Casey walked away from her and began to confer quietly. She wrapped her arms around her chest and shivered. Eventually she must have slept, as for awhile she found she could forget the cold, but not the pain, which penetrated her psyche and inserted itself into strange dreams she couldn't make heads or tails of. At the same time, though, panic's grip on her mind loosened. Whatever had happened earlier – she still could barely comprehend it – Matty and Casey were friends. Or at least, friendly. She didn't care about the impossible way that Casey had removed her from the hospital room. It wasn't any more impossible than the rest of this mess.

  Hours must have passed before her stomach rolled and churned again, and she awoke and heaved. There was nothing left in her belly, but still she lay there, gasping and choking, and even drooling a bit. Disgusted, she spat acid and spittle from her mouth. The adrenaline from the heaving had relieved the pain in her head a bit, at least.

  She jumped when she felt a hand on her back and sat back up, slowly, to see Matty there.

  "Hey," he said, holding out another bottle of water. She tried to take it, but her hands were still shaking too much, so he raised it to her mouth. She took a small sip.

  "Thanks." She looked around the church again. Casey was asleep on a pew across the aisle.

  Matty smiled. His dark brown skin, shoulder-length hair, and hemp necklace suggested to Ellie that he was the surfer type. "You want some more?" he asked.

  She did, but her stomach didn't, so she shook her head.

  "All right," he said.

  Ellie swallowed. Her throat was still pretty raw, especially given the vomiting. "Where are we? Did I already ask you that?"

  Matty smiled again, this time a little lopsided. "Yeah, you did. It's... a place that draws people like us to it, I think. I don't really get it myself."

  "People like us?" asked Ellie.

  Matty hesitated. "People with... special powers." His brown eyes probed her for a response.

  Ellie took a deep breath before she spoke again. "I think I can move things with my mind." She reached out for the water bottle, to prove it, but her headache made her lose focus and she only succeeded in knocking it to the floor, where the rest of its contents spilled. "Oh no," she said, as Matty scooped it up. "I'm sorry. Ugh."

  "It's cool," said Matty. "Um. Someone like us built this place, anyway. Me and Casey, we can't do that, but we can teleport, and when we did, we came here. She told me this place would protect us, and that..." he stopped, and looked away.

  "What?"

  "She told us to stay put here, that hopefully they would catch a non-teleporter and leave us alone."

  Ellie rubbed her eyes, processing that. The idea
that a stranger wanted her abandoned to torment was insulting. "Oh."

  "But I think you... called Casey to your side. He said he didn't teleport to you on purpose."

  "How'd I manage that?" Ellie asked.

  "You got me," Matty said, shrugging. "I don't understand any of this better than you. Casey's a pretty exceptional kid, though, even compared to us."

  Ellie smiled, but then suddenly she felt faint, and scrunched up her face.

  Matty touched her cheeks and forehead with the back of his hand. "You're really warm," he said.

  "Maybe," said Ellie. She rubbed her eyes. "It's so cold in here." Or maybe it was from the drugs wearing off. She felt feverish, but doubted she'd caught the flu in that awful, sterile room.

  "Yeah, I feel you," said Matty. "I'm from Hawaii. This is like, the Arctic compared to there."

  Ellie laughed a little. "I'm from Southern California. So, same idea." She reached out for the water bottle and this time her fingers wrapped around it securely. After draining the last of the liquid she felt a little bit better.

  "There you go," said Matty. He touched her forehead again. "I don't think you're gonna die or nothin', but I think it'd be good if we could get you some medicine. We sure don't have any here, though."

  "You guys can teleport," Ellie pointed out.

  "Yeah, but..." Matty began, and hesitated. He seemed to be choosing his words very carefully. "I'm getting the idea it isn't safe to go just anywhere. I went back home, just for a second, and I got a pretty bad feeling. And you already got snatched."

  "What about Casey?" Ellie asked. "Has he been back?"

  "I don't think so," said Matty.

  "But he's so little." She hadn't asked his age, but he had to be in elementary school. "Someone might get worried that he's missing." She neglected to mention herself; her relationship with her parents was so strained that the idea of them worrying about her made her stomach get all weird again.

  "Yeah, I know," said Matty. They were quiet for awhile. "Hey, you think you can stand?"

  "Why?" asked Ellie.

  Matty pointed behind them, to the glowing rocks. Ellie had noticed them, of course, but her headache had taken higher priority. "When Casey and I touched those, we... got the ability to talk to each other with telepathy."

  Ellie looked at them again. The red and blue rocks together flooded the church with a pink light. "So I should do one too? Is that a good idea?" Abilities she had naturally were one thing, but through touching a stone?

  "We gotta get you some medicine," said Matty. "And until we figure out who's after us, we're in this together, so in case we get separated, I'll still be able to talk to you."

  "Well, that makes sense," said Ellie. She stood up, on wobbly knees... and then bent over and threw up the few sips of water she'd managed to swallow since she woke up. "Fucking," she muttered, in too much pain to choose a noun to complete her epithet.

  With Matty's arm bracing her under her shoulders, she made it over to the rocks. There were six, and the red and the blue had one between them, so it seemed right to pick the rock that was one away from each of them. When she pressed her hand to it, it lit up, green – alien green, that was what Ellie liked to call that color – and her headache went away for several glorious seconds before it began to creep back in.

  There you go, said Matty's voice in her head.

  It's that easy, I guess, said Ellie, just before her right knee buckled. I need to sit back down.

  Yeah, said Matty. Okay. You're really flushed. We gotta do something.

  What are we going to do? asked Ellie, as Matty helped her back to a bench.

  Dunno, Matty said, but I'll wake Casey. Maybe he disappeared from somewhere a little safer than I did.

  * * *

  Bicontinental Scientific Union: London Headquarters

  The black, otherwise nondescript phone on Ashby's desk rang four times. He ignored it. The paperwork in front of him was more important – not that the printouts meant much to him by themselves, he needed the doctor for that. They'd been delayed; though they'd encouraged Dr. Cooper to take some time off – after all, he almost never saw his family these days – they'd forgotten that they needed a lab authorization, and apparently once in vacation mode Dr. Cooper was loath to leave it. Ashby had managed to get him on the phone and coax him into sending over the auth code, but that left them behind schedule.

  Finally they had the results of the blood work.

  Ashby picked up his receiver and pressed the intercom button. "Dr. Casteris, paging Dr. Casteris."

  He lifted the papers once more, tapped them on his desk to line them up, and then placed them down again. Though his various degrees more than qualified him for his job with the BSU, he often wished he'd studied medicine, at least enough that he didn't have to call Dr. Casteris – that nitwit – to read bloodwork charts to him.

  When Dr. Casteris finally arrived at his desk, Ashby stood up, ready to read the man the riot act. But before he could open his mouth, Dr. Casteris was rambling.

  "Ashby," he said. "The girl is gone."

  Ashby's stomach tightened. "What do you mean, she's gone?"

  The doctor shook his head. "The straps are on the floor, the IV was unscrewed, and she just isn't there."

  "How is that possible?" demanded Ashby. "We upped her dosage to prevent her using telekinesis, and we've never seen compounding this quickly, even in the most talented subjects."

  "It is possible," said a third voice, striding into the office, "because there was a second person in the room."

  Ashby gulped. "Jester."

  "Ashby," he sneered. "Our research so far suggests that Ms. Shiflett is not a teleporter, merely a telekinetic..." he laughed, then. "I say 'merely' as if it's a trifle. But for a room with only one door, with a silent alarm on said door and monitors hooked up to the patient to alert us should she utilize our talents, along with security cameras that will tell us if one of our own had brought her out... it's really the only reasonable solution."

  "You say this as if it's not a problem," Ashby said, surprised.

  Jester's expression grew stormy once more. "Of course it's a problem," he said. The event we triggered isn't likely to only have awoken her, and teleporters are so difficult to pin down – that's why we chose her, after all – but there is someone out there who might easily have chosen to muck with our plans."

  "You mean..." Ashby began.

  "I mean," growled Jester. "We've precious little time to carry out the testing plan, so I suggest you look at the readings from yesterday and double- and triple-check everything you can."

  * * *

  The evening was typical – after his father went to bed and he got bored with television, Jet brushed his teeth, changed into an old pair of sweatpants and oversized sweatshirt, took his pill, grabbed a book, and crawled under the covers – and then three minutes later Casey and two other people he'd never seen before appeared at the foot of his bed.

  Jet threw his book in the air and it landed several feet away. "Jesus," he exclaimed, and then lowered his voice, lest he wake his father. He sat up. "Case, where the fuck have you been? I have been going out of my shit since you disappeared, wondering what the hell to tell your parents." Casey winced, but Jet was having a hard time feeling bad about his choice of language, given the unease Casey had put him through in the past day – intentionally or not.

  The first stranger was an older guy, maybe late teens or early twenties, dark-skinned, in a shredded t-shirt. In his arms he held a blond girl, pale save for the dark circles under her eyes and flushed cheeks. She was wearing a t-shirt and jeans, but her feet were bare.

  Casey, to his credit, looked sobered by Jet's outburst. He was still in the clothes he'd worn over yesterday. "Jet," he said, "We need your help."

  Jet counted to ten in his head, taking deep breaths, and shoved his covers away. He looked Casey in the eye. "Okay. Talk."

  Casey took a deep breath and launched into an explanation of what had hap
pened and where he'd been since he disappeared. As the details became more and more fantastic, Jet's stomach knotted up. This was too damn crazy, all of it. Kidnappings and druggings? Much as he'd ever dreamed of stuff like this being real – teleporting, telepathy – this was the wrong way for it to happen. All wrong. This wasn't exciting at all, it was scary.

  While Casey was talking, the older guy propped the girl against the wall opposite Jet's bed. He wouldn't have believed that Casey had ripped her from a hospital gurney and teleported her away, but she still had the remains of an IV in her arm.

  "Anyway..." said Casey. "This is Matty, and Ellie."

  Jet stood up and walked around the front of his bed to shake Matty's hand.

  "Hi," said Matty. "Matty Okada."

  "Ellie," the girl croaked, raising one hand halfheartedly.

  "Ellie's pretty sick," Matty said. "I know it's crazy, dropping in on you like this, but Casey says we can trust you, and she needs somewhere better to rest."

  Better than where? Jet thought, but maybe it was best not to ask. Wondering what the hell he was getting himself into, Jet nodded. "Yeah," he said. "Um. My sister isn't in town, so I guess she could sleep in her room. But keep quiet, for once my dad's home." He pressed a hand to his forehead and smoothed his bangs backwards, as if it would help him think, or at least subside the lightheadedness threatening to set in. "There's ibuprofen in the bathroom. Just tell me what all else you need."

  Matty held up the water bottle. "Any chance we could get some cold water?"

  "I'll do it," said Casey, who looked anxious to escape his friend's anger. He took the bottle from Matty and headed for the door.

  "Okay," Jet said. "Just be quiet."

  "I will," Casey promised. Despite the fact that Casey was one of the least loud children Jet had ever known, he couldn’t quell his nerves.

  "Anything else?" Jet said.

  "Probably we get that out of her arm," said Matty.

  "Yeah, okay," said Jet. "Follow me." He turned off his bedside lamp, then headed out into the hall and into the bathroom. He got the pills from the medicine cabinet, as well as a box of adhesive bandages and cotton balls. They shut the door and turned on the light.

  "I don't have a clue what I'm doing," Matty warned Ellie, examining her IV. "But we'll patch it up if it bleeds."