Kei

  “There is a storm inside me, and sometimes it comes out.”

  --The Journals of Kei Kimura

  If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.

  --Sun Tzu

  Haley keeps staring at me, and I meet her gaze. Thinking.

  She has a right to know. Her whole family does, if there’s this much stirring around us even when my Gift is dormant.

  Though I’m not sure how much I should be telling Anya and Joe right now, and Joey’s too young to lay this on him. And Emily and Tam… I need to be cautious around them for the same reason we haven’t shared Tim’s files.

  I don’t know how they’ll react, or who they’ll tell.

  Haley draws in a deep breath, about to launch into some argument or plea or tirade, I’m sure, but I raise a hand.

  “Okay.” I draw in a breath of my own. “So, you know I’m Enhanced, too, just like Tim’s files say. But… those records don’t tell everything.” I shift slightly, the gravel crunching beneath my feet, as I search for solid ground in my head. “Here’s what I remember.”

  Haley tilts her head, still watching me closely, but says nothing. Apparently two can play that game.

  “Normally I’m just a smart teenager.” I shrug. “Pretty athletic, too. But if my emotions get too intense, or I get too focused, my Gift starts kicking in.” I pause again, searching for words.

  And, of course, quelling my own emotions. As much as I can.

  “Which is?” Haley prompts.

  I think Haley can take the truth, and even survive what I can do if I don’t lose control. The forest around us? Maybe not.

  “My Gift is like an invisible wind. It sweeps through the world and stirs up everything it touches. But some things flow easily – like water, or, better still, energy and air. And ideas and dreams. And anything… strange.” I spread my hands. “I’m a vortex for the unpredictable and the unreal.”

  Haley is studying my face carefully. “That’s…”

  “Only part of it,” I continue. “The stronger it becomes, the stronger I become. I get smarter, but my strength, speed and stamina all spike as well. To something superhuman, if I let it go that far. But the storm becomes unstoppable if I do.” I shiver. “So I run.”

  “You… run?”

  “If I lose control, it’s the one trick I have left. I’m the heart of the vortex, the eye of the storm. All my Gift does is draw everything close, or whatever can be moved, and spins it around me. Like a hurricane of possibilities. Dangerous possibilities.” I shrug. “And that’s all it is. But if there’s enough loose around me – energy, ideas, winds, madness, whatever – then that’s it needs.”

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  “Okay.” Haley thinks. “You say you’ve got it under control?”

  “Better than I remember ever having it before, though obviously…” I shrug. The problem with my memory goes without saying. “But mostly I don’t have it completely shut down all the time. Just turned down. Almost muted.” Here’s the catch. “So there’s a trickle of the power flowing through me and through my environment all the time.”

  “Making you a weirdness magnet,” Haley observes.

  “And a little smarter, stronger, faster and tougher than I would be otherwise. But not so much that you’d notice, when most of the people around you are superhuman in one way or another.”

  “How powerful can you get?” Haley asks. “Compared to me?” She says it casually, but we both know she’s wondering if she can take me and how easily. “Or compared to anyone else? You’ve seen the data.” She flips an acorn into the branches of a tree, and I hear the clatter of it bouncing down from limb to limb until it hits the leaf-strewn ground.

  This is one time I can’t set her mind at rest, or even try. “I’m not sure. But I don’t think those studies show the full extent of everyone’s abilities. Not for the most-powerful of us, anyway.”

  Haley nods slowly, looking thoughtful. “Okay, then. How do you stack up next to the version of me the reports describe, then?”

  “Right now?” I ask. “I couldn’t hold a candle to her. At full power?” I shift uncomfortably in the rustling leaves. “I’d crush her like an eggshell.”

  Haley blinks. “You’re sure about that?”

  I sigh. “The Gift changes me somehow. It’s not like I’m myself, only better. When it gets strong enough, I go from being an optimized Kei to…” I shrug. “The Gift flips a switch and it’s almost like I’m operating on completely different hardware. My brain, my nerves, my muscles – either they’re getting bypassed somehow or something else is supercharging them.”

  Haley tilts her head. I think she’s still trying to ‘read’ me. Which is fine. Since I’m coming clean, I have no reason to lie. The only people I have to fear are the ones who made me. And whatever this thing is they put inside me.

  “Supercharging them,” Haley repeats.

  “It’s hard to describe,” I admit. “I remember just enough to know there’s probably more than just genetics involved. But I’ve also done things that simply aren’t possible for something flesh and blood. Or purely flesh and blood.”

  “And you didn’t think you needed to tell us this?” Haley asks.

  “I didn’t think I’d be staying that long,” I tell her. “But I was living in a children’s hospital. Moving anywhere seemed like the safest choice. And I haven’t sensed her Hounds anywhere, and…” My words fail me. “And I’m out of ideas. Once I leave Waycross, I need a direction, and I need to be ready to fight. She’ll find me eventually, out there.”

  “Who is ‘She’?”

  “Her name,” I say, “is Kestrel.”

  Haley starts and blinks at me. “The one from the reports? The one with the child soldiers?”

  “Same one. So you can imagine what she wanted me for.”

  “So she’s chasing you because she needs you as a soldier?”

  I snort, but my face turns grim, as I recall my father’s words to her. The last words I ever heard him speak.

  “She’s after me because she couldn’t replicate me. And she’s been trying. Dad wouldn’t help her, and she may have killed him anyway.” The thought of that turns my stomach, so I bury the thought and keep talking. “And she couldn’t capture me. And Dad torched his original notes. So she’s got no way of making more of me, even if she has time to raise a whole new batch of clones.”

  “Unless she can capture you.”

  I stare off into the forest. “I can’t even think of how that could help, even if I were willing to cooperate, which I’m not. She might think she can brainwash me, though. That’s all I can think of. My Dad was the critical element in raising me, and he did it himself.”

  Haley uncoils her arm and wrist and snaps off another acorn, overhand, to send it whistling into the brush. “Then we—”

  A yelp from the bushes interrupts us.

  We turn as one, and Haley shoots forward as my heart, and my blood, turn ice cold.

  I yank a figure out of the undergrowth in an explosion of leaves and twigs. And almost before I realize I’ve moved, Haley rushing up behind me.

  My prey squeaks a protest, and I loosen the iron grip I have on her upper arm, just as I identify her.

  “Tam.” Haley and I speak simultaneously.

  She stares back at us, eyes wide and wild. For a frozen moment, no one says anything.

  “How much of that,” Haley begins carefully, “did you hear?”

  Tam’s gaze shifts from her sister to – slowly, unwillingly – me. And I remember, offhandedly, that I have a little more presence when the full force of the Gift is rushing through me like an icy river. I’m not at full strength, but Tam looks at me as if I’m an avenging angel. Or maybe the grim reaper.

  She gives a long, slow gulp.

  Her voice is a whisper.

  “All of it.”

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