• CHAPTER 9
    I lay in my bed, staring at the ceiling. It has been really easy, living in hiding. Maybe we didn’t need to hide? I don’t know…
    Just then I heard a crash, toward the front of the house. I was out of bed and against the wall so quick it would have startled me if I hadn’t been on red alert.
    “GO, GO, GO!” an unfamiliar voice sounded. As I stood, frozen as the cup of water beside me, I heard the pounding of many footsteps, checking all the rooms.
    Government! I was out my bedroom door and running down the hall when I caught up to Ian and Max, who, I might add, were trapped where they stood. I stumbled to a stop, and stared the man in front in the eye. Ian tried to shove me behind him but I stayed put.
    “Miss, Shepards, Mr. Stelps,” the man said in a grumbley voice. He was trying to sound soothing, I could tell, but he was also holding a gun at his side. “We aren’t going to hurt you.”
    “Yeah, right” I muttered, and Ian slapped a hand on my mouth. I bit him and he slid it off, wincing. I needed my mouth right now. The man with the gun shifted his gaze from Ian to me. He had deep blue eyes, and they were all business.
    “I give you my word, Molly-“
    “That’s Miss to you” I snapped.
    “Er, right. Miss Shepards, I give you my word, we mean you no harm” he said, and really descreatly, brought up the gun towards me. It was a tranqerlizer gun, and I would have no chance with that. “We just want you to come with us, and there will be no trouble.” Someone grabed me and held me against them, so quick I didn’t have a chance to stop him. I screamed and thrashed, but the agents had already grabbed Ian and Max. The agent with the gun walked up to Max, and lifted his chin.
    “And who are you?” he asked. Max frantically looked at me, and I shook my head. Max took a deep breath and looked up.
    “Um, hello, officer,” he said in a small voice. “My name is Josh, I was w-welcoming them to the neiborhood, Mr.” and then, “I didn’t know they were criminals”. He put on a puppy dog face. I sighed with relief, he couldn’t get caught up in this just yet. Ian and I could handle this, but he couldn’t. Agent Gun grabbed him by the t-shirt, and I snapped.
    I felt a tug in my gut, and I saw the water in the vace on the stand next to me. I willed it to grow, expand. Then I felt the pipes that carried water to the house expload, and the water come toward me. Just as Agent Gun was about to sock Max in the mouth, the room exploaded with water, giving me just enough time to yell “Ian, grab Max!”.
    Ian tore free of the surprised agent and picked Max up. I willed a bubble around us as the agents were doused with water. Then it calmed down, and ice began to sneak away from my shoes, freezing everything with water on it. The agents began to back up.
    “This isn’t over” Agent Gun said as he ran from the killer ice. A few were not as lucky as the others. We had three or four frozen men in the house. Ian unfroze them and gave them burns, to boot. They scuttled out of there and we dropped to the floor. We had to move. I got up and walked to my bedroom. I opened the window and jumped out, willing the others to follow.
    Then, out of nowhere, I couldn’t see and I was out.

    I woke up slowly. Something was on my head, probably a pillow case, and I was in a pretty encased area. Another thing my groggy brain noticed was that the area was bouncing, so I must be in a car. I reached up and tugged the stupid pillow case off, and looked around. I couldn’t see a thing. Where was I?
    I tried to stretch out, but couldn’t. Wherever I was, I didn’t have much room. And I was on my side, which was acutely uncomfortable, so I turned onto my back. I wonder why I was in a trunk of a car, if that was where I was. Huh, maybe I’ll take a nap…
    My eyes snapped open as everything flooded back; the agents, the water, the ice, the running, the guns, the window… and then nothing. Chloraform? Whatever. How could I get out of here? Wait…if it’s a trunk… then there must be one of those latches that you can open it from the inside with. I felt around for it. I found it. A-ha! Excitedly, I pulled on it… and nothing happened. I made a distressed noise and felt around.
    The wires had been snipped. I screamed in frustration and started banging around. I had to go pee REALLY bad, on top of it all. With one last burst of energy, I slammed my fist into the trunk side, and heard a crunch.
    “OWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!” I burst into tears, holding my fist to my chest, cradling it. It hurt so bad! I was sobbing really loud, and I wasn’t sure if my kidnappers could hear me or not. I didn’t care. All that mattered was that my hand hurt like hell and I was pretty sure it was broken. After maybe five minutes, I guess I had started to annoy the car driver because the car seemed to pull over and stop.
    Then I heard car doors opening and closing, and footsteps coming toward the trunk. The next minute sunshine was blinding me.
    “What’s wrong, punk?” a gruff voice asked. I couldn’t see him, because the sun was still blinding me, but I held out my mangled hand. It looked discusting. It was swelling up and a little disconfigured. The man swore.
    “The girl broke her hand,” I heard someone murmer to the man in front of me, “We got to get that fixed, Harris said he needed her in one peace” he might of said something else, but I was still crying and couldn’t hear much. All of a sudden arms were coming under me and lifting me up. I was being carried in the arms on a complete stranger.
    “We gotta get her to a hospital, Jake, it looks pretty bad,” the man holding me said to another of the people.
    “She’ll be fine, as long as she doesn’t move it” a womans voice said. Then I heard an impatient noise, and she continued. “Fine! We’ll take her to the hospital around the corner, but she better not say anything about us kidnapping her or she’s not getting any medical help at all.”
    “I promise I’ll keep silent! Just get me to the damn hos-hospital!” I said through tears, and I felt the man laugh, and shift me in his hands so I wasn’t slipping anymore.
    “She’s feisty, this one,” he said to no one in particular, and then we were getting in the car. The pain was getting excruciating. I had stopped crying but was breathing really fast, trying to keep from making a pained sound. It seemed like forever before we got to the hospital, but finally I saw the emergency sign out the window, and then I was being pulled from the car.
    “Hey kid-“ my escort began, “Wait, never picked up your name from Harris, just where you were and what you looked like, what is your name?” he asked politely. I had the urge to spit on him, but he’d been pretty nice so far, so I thought I owed him my name.
    “Molly.”
    “Nice name, Molly. Well, can you walk? Because if I carry you in there, with only a broken hand, they are going to think you have a broken leg or something” and with that he smiled. I looked at him for the first time, through the pain. He was blonde, and was clean-shaven. He had bright blue eyes and an overall friendly face. He was maybe… 21 years old. No idea how he was able to carry me.
    “Yeah, I can” I said, but he made no move to put me down. I waited a few more seconds, and then said, “You can, uh, put me down now” and gave him a small smile with my tear stained face.
    “Ha, right. So your sure?” He asked as we walked up to the ER door. I noticed he was the only one coming. That was good. I didn’t like the other two. This one was okay. We were nearing the door when I thought of something.
    “Hey, I didn’t catch your name, you know, in the excitement of the kidnapping and all,” I said, and heard him laugh. I looked over and he seamed a tad embarrassed.
    “Alec,” he said. I smiled. I had never heard that name. But just then I accidentally hit my hand on my side, and screamed, bursting into tears again. Alec hurried me into the ER and up to the front desk. While he got the paperwork and began to fill it out (no idea how he was going to fill in the questions like my birthday), a nurse ushered me through another set of doors and into an X-ray room.
    The next few hours past in a blur, and finally I was back in the lobby, a brand new cast on my arm, which was in a sling. I had two broken knuckles, and a broken finger. Not bad, I thought. Alec came over and looked at my hot pink cast and blue sling. I laughed; I did like the bright colors. Man was I thirsty. I looked around and spotted a water fountain.
    I walked over to it and stood in front. I’d always hated these things, because they were filled with other people’s germs, and never seemed to get into your mouth. But now that I had these ability’s, I could control the stupid thing. The water cam out in a clean stream and then I guided it into my mouth. Then made it go back to normal. I wiped my mouth and turned to Alec.
    Alec had his mouth open. We walked back outside and as soon as we got outside he pulled me behind a pillar, out of the view of the car. I was confused and turned to look at him.
    “It’s true” was all he said.
    “What’s true?”
    “You.”
    “Well yes, it’s true. I am true.” I was just fooling with him. He made an impatient noise.
    “Funny,” he said. “You know what I’m talking about” he said and started walking back to the car. I followed, silently applauding myself. It seemed that I was in charge here. He opened the door for me and I slid in, but wondered why I wasn’t being shoved into the trunk again. I figured that now that I was fine, they would just put me back there.
    He got in on the other side. I looked out my window, thinking that I could never jump out of a moving chair and live. I sighed. In my pocket were my pain pills, which I was supposed to take every 6 hours with water. I took them out and handed them to Alec, who read the directions and nodded.
    “Jesus, Alec, could you have taken any longer to get that girl’s hand fixed?” she sounded quite irritated. I saw her glaring at me, and I looked back at her, without any expression on my face. She had bright red hair, with brown eyes, which was odd. My blank expression seemed to piss her off even more. “Why is she in the car, Alec? I said she was riding in the trunk,” she snarled.
    “Oh, come one, Mary! If she wanted to rat us out she would have done it when she was in the ER. Plus, she’s way to sweet and delicate to go jumping out windows or something” and he smiled like it was an inside joke. Whatever it was, it made mean Mary smile just a tad. I looked back out the window as we got onto the highway.
    They should probably be blindfolding me or something, or maybe I was just being dramatic and thinking of books and movies. I smiled and thought of the books I used to loose myself in. Mysteries, romances… but never action. I hadn’t even liked action movies, so I guess I had absolutely no idea what to do in theses situations. Without thinking, I put my feet up on the seat in front of me (the drivers seat) so my legs were bent in front of me, like I always did at home when I was forced to sit in the back of a car.
    “Hey! Get your feet off of the seat!” Marry screamed at me. Startled, I dropped my feet, and realized I was chewing on my nails. I stopped and looked at my hands.
    “Hey, Alec, you want to play chopsticks?” I asked, because I was extremely bored. He looked over at me, surprised.
    “What?” he asked.
    “It’s this game you play with your hands, like this” I showed him how to play the game. He was trying not to laugh, I could tell.
    “Alright” he said. It was so not fair! He won almost every game, and every time he would look all superior and say “That’s right, hail to the king of chopsticks!” and I had to scowl to keep from laughing. We played eye spy for a while but neither of us was any good at that game. Up front, Mary and Jake were talking quietly.
    Just when I was beginning to wonder why they were allowing me to have fun, Mary started talking to us again.
    “Damn it, Alec, your making this fun for her,” Mean Mary said. Alec rolled his eyes.
    “What do you want us to do, tie her up and put her on a railroad track till Harris picks her up?” I looked out the window while they were talking, and saw that we had reached our destination. It was a very large black building with words in a different language that I couldn’t read. The windows were boarded up, like those old buildings in ally’s that were never used anymore. Why were we here? Was this their hide out?
    I only understood a very few things about my situation. Obviously they didn’t mean to hurt me. I also knew that someone had told them what I could do, and on some level they hadn’t believed them. I only had a few guesses as to why they had kidnapped me, but I wasn’t going to jinx myself.
    “We’re here,” Jake said, in that gruff voice that I was sure I’d heard before. Wait a minute.
    “Mr. Sullavin?” He turned around and grinned at me. I hadn’t had a good look at him before, but now I was sure. He looked so much like Matt it scared me silly.
    “Good Job, Molly! Your smarter then I thought you were,” Matt’s father said.
    “Is M-Matt here?”
    “Yeah, he’s inside, waiting to go home because we had to pick you up, you little brat,” he said bitterly. Alec looked stunned that we knew each other, and Mary was trying not to smile. I could feel the blood leave my face. I was reliving that night, that horrible night. I felt myself begin to shake as I was ushered out of the car by Mary. She slapped some handcuffs on me and shoved me toward the door. I had receded into my self so far that I didn’t notice how hard I was being shoved, or how much that hurt.
    All of a sudden a burst of air woke me up from my reverie. I was now being held to the chest of Alec and he was standing still, so I stopped moving. Mary and Mr. Sullavin were talking to a group of men in black suits. I frantically looked around for any source of water. None in sight. Not even a cup of water or even any type of liquid. I closed my eyes and tried to feel if I was missing something, or if there were any water pipes underground. None! I slouched into Alec unthinkingly, and didn’t notice when he turned me around so he could hold me up better. I couldn’t get myself out of this yet.
    “You okay, down there?” Alec asked me, and I smiled through my despair at his short joke.
    “I’m not that short,” I muttered, knowing full well that I was about as short as an 18 year old could be.
    “Sure your not, shorty.”
    “Hey!” I jumped back and whacked him playfully with my chained hands.
    “Hey, hey, hey! You little brat! Don’t you hurt Alec!”, and then I was grabbed from behind by Jake. I wrenched myself from his grasp with help from Alec.
    “It’s okay, Jake. For one, we were just playing, and two, I don’t think she likes you very much” and Alec tugged me over to his side. I glared at Jake, and his skin started to flake, because all of the moister was leaving it. I smiled. I didn’t know I could do that.
    He didn’t notice, but the years were leaving him by the second. Now he looked about 70 years old instead of 50. Ha. Alec was looking at me, then to Jake, then to me. I thought I saw him move slightly away from me, and tried not to look hurt.
    “Harris will be here shortly, and you’ll be off our hands,” he said dryly. Literally. He sounded parched. “Man I wish they had some water around here!” and with that, he stomped off. I knew why there was no water. It was to keep me from being able to escape. I sat down on the bench behind me and focused on the water particles in the air. I tried to pull them together to use as a weapon, but just couldn’t. The best I could muster was a thin sheen of water between me and everyone else. It wasn’t a shield or anything, but at least I couldn’t see everyone else as well.
    My wall was disturbed.
    “May I?” Alec asked, sticking his face through my wall. I nodded, sighing. My wall was about six feet high, and went all the way around the bench. It was so flimsy that I couldn’t even make it into anything else. I had my own personal see through room. Fabulous. Alec sat beside me, poking his finger through the wall.
    “They told me to watch you, make sure you weren’t causing any mischief,” he said, shaking his head. “I wonder why, because you seem like no trouble at all.” I closed my eyes and smiled. He didn’t know.
    “Do you know what they are going to do with me?” I whispered. I was near tears. Since my eyes were closed, I couldn’t see his expression, which was good.
    “Um…?” he ended in a question. I was loosing control. I would not cry in front of these people. Although the tears were not here yet, I was sure he could hear them in my voice.
    “There gonna lock me up, or use me as a weapon,” I whispered brokenly. One tear escaped, and rolled down my cheek. It had been so long since I had felt tears, because Ian was always so quick to wipe them away. It felt almost good to cry. “I’ll either never see daylight again, never be near water again, or be used to overtake enemy’s,” Alec listened in silence. More followed the single tear. “Right before you people took me away, we were attacked and the only reason we got away from these agents is because I flooded them out. I felt so bad,” my voice broke. I took a deep breath and began again, this time I sounded close to sobbing. “I felt so bad, and now I may have to do that over and over. All because of you and your friends. You insured my capture.”
    I broke into silent crying, opening my eyes. Alec was still silent. I looked up and noticed that since I had lost my concentration, my wall was gone. I looked right into the eyes of Matt Sullavin. I had expected a glare, a hateful glare. That’s not what I got. What I got was the look of a scared little boy. I looked away, not wanting to look at a traitor anymore. I got up, trying to get away from everybody. Alec had been nice, sure, but he still had been apart of making sure I was never happy again. He couldn’t be trusted. I went over to the corner of the room farthest away from people as I could, and sat down, facing the wall like a sulking child.
    Alec didn’t come after me, not that I’d expect my capture to. That’s what he was. He was my captor. He may seem nice, but it was all just a show. I began to sob quietly, and I knew everyone could hear it. I didn’t care. Someone walked up behind me, and sat down just behind my back, and began playing with my hair. I shook away, and the hands dropped. I turned around, expecting Alec, and looked into the face of Matt.
    He looked sad. Not the kind of sad that little kids get when they loose a toy, but adult sad. It startled me, because he had a very boyish face. Anger tried to ignite itself in me, but was doused by the tears.
    “I’m sorry,” he said. I don’t know why I did what I did next. Maybe I was just so confused and emotional that I didn’t understand what I was doing. Despite everything that boy had done to me, despite that I hated him, I leaned into him and cried as his arms wrapped around me. I tried not to draw the attention from anyone else. “I’m so sorry, Molly, so sorry,” and he hugged me tightly.
    “You’d better be, Mister,” I whispered when the tears had run their course. I pulled back and gave him a watery smile. I still hated him; I just needed a shoulder to cry on. He smiled, weakly, back. He leaned forward, and I was so dazed by the crying that the only thing I thought of was that his eyes were green. Then he kissed me, just a gentle peck, but I jumped back against the wall. “Don’t,” was all I said. He couldn’t touch me. Never again. He looked confused, but then slowly, realization registered on his face.
    “Molly…” he began, and trailed off. “You don’t know how sorry I am.”
    “That’s because you aren’t.”
    “No, really, I am sorry, Moll’s.” He said it as he picked up my hand. “I was drunk, can you forgive me?” he asked.
    “Never,” I said simply. He nodded, dropping my hand. He got up and walked over to his dad, who was talking to another man. Just then, Agent Gun walked through the door.