Salvation City: Exposed

Chapter Six (Part Two)

2006-07-10T19:28:00.000+08:00

Taylor

‘Remember, Taylor, this is not a practice duel of any kind. You have to be very careful.’

Taylor nodded patiently at Forbes’ cautioning. It was the fourth time in the last few minutes he had warned her how Matt wasn’t to be treated like a normal dueling opponent, and that she just had to simulate attacking him – not really go all out to attack him.

Because Matt Peters hasn’t found his own powers to play defense yet. Forbes’ words echoed in her head.
What she had to do now was to pretend to fight Matt; shock and push his system into believing that it was under perilous situations, so as to induce the hidden ability out from within.

Forbes was standing with his arms crossed at the side of the dueling square, his eyebrows pulled together into a concerned frown. Meghan, fidgeting anxiously beside Forbes, gave Taylor a small smile when she met her eyes. Taylor knew they were both worried Matt might get hurt, and she wished they had trusted her a little more.

Climbing the small steps leading up to the dueling square, Taylor’s focus landed on Matt – a tall, athletic figure on the opposite side of the arena. He was rubbing his palms anxiously up and down either sides of his pants.

‘Hey, relax a little,’ Taylor called out. ‘I’m not going to kill you, or anything like that.’

Matt smiled back at her – a nervous grin – though the rubbing of palms stopped immediately.

In the right corner on Matt’s side stood Talan, positioned there by Forbes as a safety precaution in case things went wrong. He gave Taylor a thumbs up when he caught her eye.

‘Okay,’ Taylor warned, bunching her hair hastily into a ponytail as she locked eyes with Matt, ‘I’m gonna start now.’

A few meters away, Matt nodded, apprehension and determination scrawled all over his face.

Alright then, Taylor told herself, to begin, something small, and light. Her agile eyes swept the acres of the training room for her first assail object, and they landed upon a broomstick leaning against a dusty corner.
Centering her eyes on the object, she lifted it up easily and arrowed it at Matt’s direction. The broomstick lunged towards Matt’s chest, his blue eyes widening in a moment of astonishment, before he raised both arms out in an attempt to will the broomstick to stop in its tracks.
That didn’t happen, of course.
The wooden rod of the broomstick rammed against his arms, falling to the ground with a hollow clatter.
A grimace spread over Matt’s features.

Uh-oh. Taylor thought. He was worse than she had expected him to be.

‘Matt? You okay?’ Talan asked urgently, approaching him from his own corner.

Opening his eyes, Matt rubbed the sore spot on his right arm where the impact from the broomstick had landed, a crimson blush creeping over his face and neck.

‘Yeah, I’m fine. It was nothing. Just thought for a moment I might be able to do what you can do.’

‘It’s alright, man.’ Talan said gently, clapping Matt a couple of times on his back. ‘I’m sure there’s something unique inside you just waiting to be discovered.’

Matt nodded, taking his position for another try.

Seeing Talan taking his cue to retreat back into the corner, Taylor glanced towards Forbes questioningly. The old mentor nodded, signaling for her to continue.

Alright then, maybe something more realistically intimidating this time.

Her roaming eyes fell instantly upon the daggers hanging on the walls, their sheen blades reflecting under the fluorescent lighting. Picking two up quickly with her focus, she directed the flying blades in Matt’s direction once more.

If he seemed scared before, it was terror flashing through Matt’s eyes now, his frantic gaze leaden upon the approaching blades. He gasp, staggering backwards blindly in face of the whizzing daggers.
Matt didn’t do anything but to stare, his eyebrows scrunched into deep concentration as his pupils lock themselves upon the impending daggers.

From the corners of her eyes, Taylor saw her brother taking a few quick strides forward, his instinct kicking in. Before Talan could raise his hands and interfere however, she narrowed her concentration through the speeding pair of daggers, sending them splitting from their original paths, whisking narrowly past either sides of Matt’s head before dropping to the ground behind him.

Matt’s contorted face instantly relaxed, washed over by a wave of pure disappointment.
‘Guess I hadn’t had your power for telekinesis either, huh? I focused all my concentration on those dagger till my eyes almost popped, but it still didn’t do any good,’ he said to Taylor, trying on a weak laugh to cover over his disappointment. ‘Oh well.’

Talan, however, didn’t quite take things as calmly. ‘That was really dangerous, Taylor!’ he said, eyes shining ominously. ‘Do you know what could have happened if you lost control? You should have known better than that!’
He stared at Taylor harshly, even though Matt Peters was just standing a few feet away from him, perfectly safe and unharmed.

‘I didn’t mean to…’ Taylor retorted, before losing interest in even starting an argument with her brother. ‘Oh just forget it,’ she muttered. Ignoring both Talan and Matt, she strode past them to where the two fallen daggers were lying.

Forbes and Meghan were already making their way up to the dueling square.

‘You did fine,’ Forbes told her quietly when they crossed path. ‘I’m just not sure if Matt’s ready yet.’

‘I didn’t mean to scare him,’ Taylor explained. ‘I had the daggers under control all along, I really did.’

With a small, unreadable smile, Forbes nodded again, patting Taylor on the arm before heading over to Matt.

Honestly speaking, looking at how everybody was all concerned and fussing over Matt Peters sent a jealous streak down Taylor’s blood. She used to be the youngest here; the baby whom everyone fawned and took care of, especially by Forbes.

It so seemed like Matt’s appearance had changed everything. Sighing again, Taylor bent down to retrieve the fallen daggers. Sourness was hoarding all of her thoughts that she hadn’t even noticed the thin layer of ice that now encrusted the silver lengths on both blades.

*
(to be continued)

Chapter Six (Part One)

2006-06-24T19:53:00.000+08:00

BRAND NEW CHAPTER - POSTED 24th JUNE

Meghan

‘So how did you realize you can like, electrocute people with just your bare hands?’

The corners of Meghan’s lips twitched involuntarily into a small smile. Normally, she wouldn’t have liked it a single bit when the limelight was on her hands, but it was the way Matt had asked the question – as if they were having the most normal conversation. He made her feel comfortable discussing about her… uniqueness.

Maybe because she knew he was just like her.

‘Oh, things just became weird, you know, people’s shocked responses whenever I touched them,’ Meghan replied casually, cringing a little at the old memories. ‘And then the doctors confirmed it. They told me my body could produce an abnormal amount of electricity, and my palms would conduct the voltages to whatever things I lay my hands on. Upon further tests, they realized that there are presence of electroplaque cells –’

‘What are electroplaque cells?’ Matt interrupted, his face full of sudden curiosity.

‘Electroplaque cells are these disk-like cells present in electric fishes like stingrays or electric eels, which can actually generate electricity like how a battery cell would,’ Meghan explained. ‘These cells cannot be found in human beings, but well, I have them. The doctors believed that a huge amount of normal muscle cells in my body had somehow mutated into electroplaque cells over time.’

Matt nodded slowly at the information, his eyes glazing over the television neither of them was watching. It was already past midnight. Everybody else but them had retired back into their own private corners.

‘So there you go,’ Meghan said, a wistful smile on her face. ‘You’re looking at electric-eel woman, or electric-lady, whatever... I’ve heard tons of names before, and trust me when I say some can come across as being very hurting.’

Though not as hurting as the way Jack looked at me after I was diagnose with this queer disease, Meghan thought sadly to herself.

She didn’t like night-time very much, especially in this big warehouse she now called home. It can be so quiet; so empty. It reminded her of the painful days where she felt so alone at home, being locked forcibly out of Jack and Ethan’s lives.

She was glad for Matt’s company tonight. It had been four whole days since he had been here now, and although he had been foul-mouthed and temperamental three quarters of the time, Meghan knew it was just adolescence and hormones – Matt was behaving just like a normal teenager would.

He could be like the son Meghan had, but would never get to know.

‘Still worried about that hidden ability of yours that hasn’t quite reared its head yet?’ she asked lightly.

Matt turned and stared at Meghan for a second, dissolving into a sigh, ‘Yeah, like what else could it be? All of you – everybody in here has something special. You and your cool electricity hands…’

Meghan glanced down at her suede-covered palms. I would gladly exchange them for something normal, she disagreed quickly to herself.

‘…Taylor and her telekinesis, Talan and molecular inhibition. Even Forbes has something! He could see future happenings! That’s so fuckin awesome. And I have nothing. I wonder why I’m even here in the first place. Maybe Forbes had made a mistake. I might never be anything like you guys.’

Meghan reached over and patted Matt, with her gloves on, of course.

‘That’s not true’ she said. ‘Forbes placed both Talan and Taylor’s lives on the line to bring you back here from Salvation City. He must have done that for a reason.’

Matt nodded, but said nothing. Meghan knew he still wasn’t convinced.
Honestly though, it was beyond her why Matt would yearn so badly for something weird to happen in his body.

After countless talks with Forbes, about how their superhuman abilities doesn’t make them freaks, but rather made them special, Meghan still had her doubts.

If given a choice, she would willingly give up her abilities and return to her family.

To be able to watch Ethan grow up, that’s what she really wanted.

‘I’ve been nothing but ordinary all eighteen years of my life,’ Matt explained, as though reading Meghan’s thoughts, ‘with a family that’s so screwed up I dreaded going back each day. I would always return only past midnight when my parents are already asleep.’

Meghan remained silent; surprised to see this softer, vulnerable side of Matt she never knew existed.

‘My dad,’ he continued, glancing up at Meghan – who nodded reassuringly for him to go on. ‘He was an alcoholic, a gambler, a wife-beater. He was an asshole.’

Though taken aback by the knowledge that the boy had a father like that, Meghan kept her expression unreadable, hoping he would continue.

‘He hits my mum, and he hits me, occasionally. I talked to her, my mum. I told her she didn’t have to put up with all these shit, that there are people out there who could help her, help us. But she wouldn’t listen. Said it isn’t worth going to such extent.’

Meghan noticed Matt fiddling with the hem of his shirt, slowly at first, and then more urgently.

‘She put up with everything ‘cos she felt like she didn’t have the power to change things.’ Matt continued, his voice with a tinge of quiver in it now. ‘I couldn’t be like her. I couldn’t stand putting up with all the crap, but yet, I don’t have the power to stop and change things either.’

Blinking back tears that clouded his vision furiously, Matt clenched and unclenched his fists in a bid to regain his dignity. ‘I trained my ass off for basketball; I do everything I could to be the most popular kid at school, thinking that having all those would make me feel better, make me feel more empowered. But it still didn’t change things at home.’

He looked up at Meghan, eyes dry, but red-rimmed nonetheless. ‘And that’s why I want so badly something that would set me different from the rest. Something that would make me feel like I could actually overpower all the mistakes in my life. Mistakes like my dad.’

Meghan stared straight back into Matt’s eyes – the blueness of his pupils gleaming with such fierce intensity she felt an unnatural blanket of coldness shroud over the atmosphere.

The boy is of a good nature deep inside. She thought to herself, sympathy getting the better of her. He doesn’t deserve to have to a useless father like the one he has.

‘How would you like it,’ Meghan contemplated aloud, after a few seconds of silence, ‘if I went to Forbes and ask him if he could help you find your uniqueness… help you find your own power?’

For a while, Matt said nothing. Then, he looked up at Meghan with what she could only describe as gratitude. ‘Yeah,’ he said, a faint smile crossing his face.
‘I would like that very much.’

*

(to be continued)

Chapter Five (Part Three)

2006-06-12T23:48:00.000+08:00

(continued)

Year 1999:
The crowd gathered on the green-acres before Royston Academy was slowly dispersing. The excited graduates and their parents were leaving, perhaps for a cozy familial celebration dinner.

Campbell looked around, trying to spot Landon amongst the few still scattered across the lawn. His son was nowhere to be found.
It had been at least a half an hour since he and Jason went off to find a few other of their friends.
Landon said he would take five to ten minutes. Only five to ten minutes. If he doesn’t show up anytime soon, he would miss the congratulatory dinner Campbell had booked for them at the Grand Hotel.
Walking slowly up the front lawn, Campbell glanced around for Landon once more. Perhaps he’s in the main building. He thought, heading for the flight of stoned steps which would take him up to the main entrance.
Walking through the quiet foyer, the tall glass shelves displaying numerous trophies and plaques stroke a familiar chord in Campbell. The wooden paneling, the carpet, the smell of the school – it hadn’t changed much since his school days.

It was still good old Royston Academy.

Campbell walked through the corridors, his footsteps echoing loudly behind him. There seemed to be not a single soul in the building. He wondered where Landon had disappeared to.

And then he heard it: the unmistaken clanging of locker doors. Somebody was in the lockers area, tucked into a corner located towards the end of the corridor.
Must be Landon, Campbell thought affectionately. He must have left something behind in his locker and went to collect it, probably like a school certificate commending him for his sportsmanship or something. A small smile widen over Campbell’s face at his own thoughts.

‘Landon?’ Campbell called, turning into the corner. His smile froze, then vanished instantaneously. It was Landon alright – locked into an embrace with Jason, their lips pressing wildly against each other’s faces.

‘Father!’ Landon shouted, pulling away from his friend when he saw Campbell standing before him. ‘It wasn’t – We’re not –’

He didn’t have to explain any further; Campbell had already turned to go, his frenzied footsteps pattering noisily down the hallway. He could hear Landon calling after him, but he didn’t care.

The scene just now – everything – just reminded Campbell of his ex-wife. His deceased ex-wife.

Landon wasn’t that different from his freak of a mother after all.

*
This was the only way he could save his son.

Until he finds the perfect cure to correct Landon’s defective genes – ones he must have inherited from his mother – he would have to keep him cataleptic.
He couldn’t take any more chances. The last time he had tried the cure on Landon; the one which wasn’t completely perfect, he had turned his son to be an ever bigger monster.

To the very extent he now had to stay comatose and strapped down, so the beast in him couldn’t be unleashed.

It wouldn’t be long now, Campbell thought, stroking Landon’s cheek with his finger. I’ll cure you soon enough, son, and return you the normal life you deserved.

Campbell’s cell phone rang, jerking him out of his thoughts and emotions.

‘Hello? Campbell speaking,’

‘Doctor Campbell? It’s David. Is everything okay back there?’

Campbell walked to the nearest bin and disposed of the used syringe, together with the empty glass bottles. ‘Yeah, everything’s fine. I’m done in here.’

‘That’s good. You’d better come back to your office then. The journalist’s already here.’

‘Alright, humor her will you, David? I’m on my way back now.’

‘Sure.’

Campbell snapped his phone shut and placed it back into his pockets. Fishing out the magnetic-strip card, he left the room, swiping it twice again on the slot. The green light above the box flickered on.

Assured that the room was securely locked, Campbell hurried towards the stairs, the wheels in his head already turning at full-speed. He had to handle the interview later flawlessly and turn the tables back in favor of the hospital.
Truthfully, it didn’t bother him much. He has had such interviews before, and there wasn’t once he had screwed up.

Charisma and sleekness – those were things Campbell never lacked.

Entering back into main hospital premises, Campbell waited for the lift, checking his reflection against the sliver doors. He looked smart enough.

The elevator hit basement one, its doors pulling open with a slight whirl.

‘Hey there, Doctor Campbell.’

Campbell looked up. ‘Oh hello, Isaiah.’

The young security guard stepped out from the lift, his left hand holding a wrapped sandwich. He was the vigilant one who had alerted him about Matt’s disappearance minutes after it’d happened. Though young and new, Isaiah was certainly not a novice at the job, compared to the old dogs who could take up to a full day, before they noticed a disappearance in the special wards.

‘My lunch,’ he laughed, waving his sandwich around when he saw Campbell looking at it.

Campbell smiled. ‘No time for even a proper lunch at the cafeteria? I hadn’t been working you too hard, have I?’

‘Oh, no, definitely not. Stepping up on the watch is the right thing to do, especially after that blonde-haired patient’s disappearance.’

‘I’m glad we share the same sentiments.’

‘Yep, guess we do share the same interests. I’ve to get back to the security office now, Doctor Campbell.’

‘By all means,’ Campbell replied, stepping aside as he pressed the lift doors opened.

Exchanging goodbyes with the young guard, Campbell stepped into the empty lift, hitting the ‘5th floor’ button that would bring him to his office.

They certainly needed more security guards like Isaiah on the team.

Perhaps then, would his special patients stop going missing once and for all. For the sake of his son, all the missing ones had to be located and brought under control, just in case they screw things up for him before Landon could have the perfect cure.

Chapter Five (Part Two)

2006-06-12T23:30:00.000+08:00

(continued)

Snapping the folder shut, Campbell threw it back onto the table and massaged his temples. He was having a slight headache from the lack of sleep. Taking a sip of water from the mug on his desk, he reached for another file and flipped it open.
The first patient information listed was one he had reread countless times. He stared at the picture stapled on the top corner, and the name typed underneath it:

Landon Campbell.

Campbell’s eyes shifted to the silver-framed photograph sitting on his desk. Landon, then sixteen, was smiling brightly at the photographer, the graduation cap sitting smartly on his head. Landon's arm was draped across a younger-looking Campbell, trying on an unsuccessfully taut smile.
Smiling has never been one of his passions.
Still, he remembered that behind the rigid smile that faithful day was a very proud father – a father proud of his valedictorian son who had just graduated.

The pride was short-lived, though.

Year 1999:
He remembered vividly that warm afternoon: a special day for the graduating class of 1999 from Royston Academy – alma mater of which Campbell was alumni to.
Like him, Landon had emerged the top student of his year. Campbell had a pretty strong hunch Landon wouldn’t have been the high-flyer he was, if his freak of a mother had been around him longer.
He was glad she was gone from both their lives, for good.

‘Mr. Campbell, would you like me to help take a picture of you and Landon together?’

It was Jason, Landon’s good buddy from school. Campbell recognized him easily. The toned, brown-haired teenager often came over to the Campbell’s residence for homework and basketball sessions with Landon.

‘Why, thank you.’ Campbell had obliged agreeably, passing his camera over to Jason, before taking a spot beside his son.
The shot of father and son was taken.

‘Hey dad,’ Landon said after the picture, his eyes sparkling brightly. ‘Jason and I are gonna go over to say hi to a few other buddies. Alright with you if you wait here for a minute or two?’

Campbell nodded. ‘Sure thing, son.’

Landon followed after Jason, turning back to smile at his father.

He looked exactly like me when I was sixteen. Campbell thought to himself.

He was relieved that Landon looked more like him than his mother. It would be damned if he’d gotten her genes. Landon was going to make it big one day, most likely become a good surgeon, like him. He was going to be successful.

It was nothing he could have achieved if he was anything like his mother.

*

Somebody rapped loudly on the office door.

‘Who is it?’ Campbell asked aloud. He reached over and turned the picture of Landon and him face-down on the desk. Looking at it and remembering everything was too painful.

‘Doctor Campbell, its David. Have you forgotten? It’s time for the check.’

Campbell glanced down at his watch. Of course, it was already ten past three. Ten minutes behind schedule. Campbell picked up the confidential folders scattered on his desk and placed them into a drawer, locking it after he was done. Striding towards the door, he unbolted it and met David’s curious eyes immediately.

‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

Campbell sighed and nodded. ‘Just lost track of time for a while. Thanks for the reminder.’

‘No problem. You’d better hurry. He’s requiring a higher dosage more so each day. The last one might be wearing off very soon.’

‘Alright then. I’ll catch up with you later.’

‘Sure.’

Campbell adjusting the stethoscope around his neck as he made his way briskly to the independent block connected to the main premises by a passageway – the hospital mortuary. The small building was eerily serene. Campbell nodded to a couple of nurses that passed his way. Drawing closer to the single flight of stairs leading to the basement, he turned to check if they were anybody behind him. The corridor was empty; the chattering nurses’ back views disappearing into the passageway linked to the main blocks.
Campbell jogged down the stairs, heading straight for the double doors located right at the end of the badly lit hallway.
Reaching for the magnetic-strip card in his coat pocket, Campbell swiped it twice on the card-slot. The double doors swung opened, before closing themselves automatically behind him.

The inside of the room was larger than one would expect from its exterior. Once a storage room for highly-radioactive drugs, the room was left desolated after the management built a more secured and facilitated room in the main building itself.

Of course, this was now Campbell’s personal room. Nobody but himself and David knew of this.

The mounted tabletops around the four walls of the room were scattered with chemicals and apparatus: beakers, test-tubes, microscopes…
It could easily be mistaken for a mad scientist’s dwelling. This was where Campbell did all his research and formulation for the solution.

In the middle of the area stood a mattress, backed by thick boarding, inclining 45 degrees to the ground. The young man lying on it had to be strapped down by three padded steel flaps, just so he wouldn’t slide off.
And also that he wouldn’t break free and escape.

Campbell reached for a cabinet and retrieved two glass-bottles the size of his thumb. Straightening up, he picked up a new packet of syringe, tearing it open as he walked to the middle of the room.

Machines of various shapes and sizes surrounded the inclined mattress, their snaking nodes attached complicatedly to the man secured under the locked steel flaps. An adjustable LCD screen hung down from the ceiling, its blinking monitor poised in front of the unconscious man strapped down against the padded plank.

Campbell took a long look at the young man. His bald scalp gleamed under the light; head once full of black hair shaved for all those operations. Week-old stubble was forming on his coffee-colored skin, and the slightest tinge of grayish grime was beginning to gather on his face.

I should clean him up again. Campbell thought, sudden sourness wrenching its way through his heart. A stereo headphone attached to the LCD screen covered the young man’s ears, and even from where he stood, Campbell could hear the muffled sounds escaping from beneath the headphones.

A sudden series of movement from under the young man’s closed eyelids snapped Campbell back to reality. The young man was starting to gain consciousness.

Plunging the needle swiftly into one of the two bottles, Campbell drew the transparent liquid up into the barrier, before bringing the full syringe down onto the crook of the man’s left arm. He repeated the process with the second bottle of liquid.

The sudden movements under the man’s eyelids went as abruptly as they came. He had fallen back into deep sleep.

Campbell felt his own eyes moistened; something he rarely experienced. Tears are useless. They never help alleviate any problems.
But seeing the young man before him seep back into unconsciousness; taking away his own son’s consciousness with strong anesthetic dosages – that pained him.

Campbell knew he had no other choice, however. This was the only way to stop Landon from destroying his own life.

*
(to be continued)

Chapter Five (Part One)

2006-06-12T22:45:00.000+08:00

Campbell

Campbell stepped out of the operating theatre and headed habitually for the row of sinks. Pulling off his gloves, he tossed them into the bin and scrubbed his hands clean with soap and water.

‘Congratulations once again Doctor Campbell,’ said a stocky young man with a head full of blonde curls. He turned on the tap beside Campbell’s and began washing his hands. ‘That was another good save.’

Smiling, Campbell turned off his trickling faucet and grabbed a few paper towels from the nearby dispenser. ‘Thanks, but it was nothing I couldn’t handle.’

Operations such as the one he did earlier on were beginning to be old news to him. He had performed many of such incredible saves before, saves which earned him both respect and reputation inside and out of the hospital.

Chucking the used paper towels into the trash bin, Campbell gave his tired limbs a slight stretch. ‘There’s something I want you to do for me, David.’

The stocky doctor’s focus snapped immediately to attention. ‘Sure. Anything for you.’

The guy would gladly lick my toes if I ask him too.

‘Remember the new nurse I told you about, the one who’s in charge of patient Matt Peters… Paige, if I remembered her name correctly.’ Campbell said aloud instead.

David nodded earnestly. ‘Of course I do.’

‘I want you to remove her from the special patients’ cases. Transfer her to another department, another unit. Whatever you do, I want this seen to as soon as possible.’

‘You can consider it done, Doctor Campbell.’

‘Good. I also want you to keep a closer watch on those patients from this day on. We can’t afford for another to go missing like that.’

While David responded with a series of ‘sure’ and ‘of course’, Campbell drifted off for a moment. He wondered where those missing ‘special patients’ went, and who took them away. Matt Peters was the most recent to join the others. It was very worrying, especially after news had gotten out, creating a spate of discussion. The hospital management wasn’t too happy to learn about that.

It was dirty laundry meant to be kept from the public – patients going without a trace from a reputable hospital isn’t exactly something glorifying.

Campbell knew the top management has a threshold for this absurdity. It was only a matter a time before they start conducting internal raids and investigations, all to solve this ‘disappearing mystery’ once and for all.
Campbell can’t blow his cover, not when he knew he was getting closer to the success he had been working painstakingly towards for years.

‘Doctor Campbell?’ David’s nasal voice piped back up amidst Campbell’s thoughts, ‘the confidential files you’ve requested earlier this morning are already on your desk.’

‘Good.’

‘And don’t forget you have an appointment at 4 today with the journalist from Newsweek.’

‘Will do, thanks.’

Giving David a pat on his shoulders, Campbell left the washroom for the privacy of his own office. Sure, his eager understudy Doctor David Hartman had been more than a capable assistant, but there had been times where Campbell suspected his enthusiasm to be driven by personal agendas.

You had better not want to play me out, David. The black doctor thought to himself. I’m a lot smarter than that.

Locking the office door behind him, Campbell strode to his desk chair and sank into the fine cushioning. All these research for the cure; all these constant guardedness, it was taking a toll on him.

The whitewashed walls of his office interiors were lined with framed articles – all snipped out carefully from various newspapers and magazines.

Doctor from Salvation City salvages victim of car accident… The doctor with the miraculous healing hands… Salvation City Hospital: Outstanding Doctor of the year – Doctor A. Campbell…Miracle neurosurgeon Campbell saves again.

It was undisputable that Campbell was the most renowned neurosurgeon in the entire state.
Reaching for the small stack of confidential files David had piled neatly upon his desk, Campbell opened the oldest one from the lot.
Crisp pages of his ex-patients details were turned. His ex- special patients that had gone without a trace.

Meghan Jones…Talan Adams…Taylor Adams…
These were the few that had inexplicably gone missing during, or shortly after their stay in the hospital.

It seemed simple enough: a patient in critical conditions is rushed into the hospital. The hospital management, aware of Campbell’s reputation as the miracle healer, would alert him of the case.
With David Hartman and a few other trusted helpers, Campbell would gear up for the operation, employing his specially formulated techniques on the dying patient.

In its primitive stages, his techniques didn’t work quite as well.

But as of late, with constant research and improvements, it has brought even the most hopeless patients sputtering back to life.

The technique – or the solution – was working.

The only loophole now was that these patients Campbell saved with the solution all suffered bizarre side-effects.
Their body could do things normal human beings couldn’t. It was as though they were mutants created by the solution.
Campbell certainly couldn’t let the management or the rest of the world know about the patients and their side-effects; or the fact that they had all been subjected unknowingly as white mice to test out the workability of the solution.

He could be sued; jailed. It was not legal.

And so he concocted reasons for patients subjected with the solution to return constantly for follow-up appointments: if they show signs of the side-effects, he would re-admit them into the hospital and engage them in phase two immediately.
And until he save his first patient with the solution, without him developing any side-effects thereafter, would he then achieve the perfect cure he was after.

He knew he was getting close.

It so seemed like Campbell had everything under control, until some of his special patients began to disappear mysteriously: either vanishing from their wards shortly after their operations, or not turning up ever again for their follow-up appointments.

Matt Peters was the latest to join the group.

Campbell swore to himself he wouldn’t give up the search for these runaways. He would get them someday.

Matthew Forbes.

Torrents of emotions surged through Campbell’s head when his name reached the last on the ‘missing patients’ list. Forbes was once his best friend in the hospital, and also his very first test subject. He had then ran away and remained in hiding after realizing the whole of Campbell’s agenda.
Campbell had tried, but had gotten no news of Matthew Forbes ever since.
As long as news of his decease has yet to reach Campbell’s ears, he knew Forbes and what he knew could be his greatest danger.

He has to find Forbes and kill him.

(to be continued)

Chapter Four (Part Two)

2006-06-03T12:12:00.000+08:00

(continued)

Taylor closed the glass door behind her. Everybody was already seated around the oval conference table, listening intently as Forbes gave a blow-by-blow account of the latest duel between the siblings - no doubt for Meghan’s benefit. Matt sat back in his chair, trying hard to mirror the idea that he had absolutely no interest in anything being said.

The poor boy looked more tense than conceited.

Taylor settled herself into the leather chair beside Meghan, studying Matt’s edgy composure in slight amusement. It was normal. It’ll take newcomers a while before they can get in touch with the new realities; their new lives. Taylor knew that well enough. After all, she had been there, done that, and had turned out just fine.

‘Talan did a great job,’ Forbes said. ‘I dare say his reactions had transcended that of what I’d expected.’

It was hard for Taylor to not feel sour upon hearing Forbes complimenting Talan, even if he was her own biological brother. After all, she came here first. She had gotten her powers first, not Talan. Back in her old life, ever since they were little kids, the Adams had always pitted one child over the other, and Talan always won.

‘Talan is the smarter one, the one with the straight academic record.’
‘Talan is the athletic one, the one always bringing home trophies and medals.’

Talan was the son their up-tight parents loved, or that was how it felt like to Taylor. After the incident she mistakenly thought would end her sad life for good, she had came back home from the hospital to parents that never spoke another word to her.

What she did embarrassed and ridiculed the family a great deal, Taylor knew that. But to be on the fair side, she hadn’t expected to be rushed into the hospital after what she did; she hadn’t expected to be saved.

And as though life hadn’t had enough screwing her over, the weirdness started to show from within her, after her return from the hospital. During that quiet family dinner where cutleries sailed into the air before clanging back down onto the table, Taylor’s parents finally uttered their first two words to her.

‘You freak!’ They shouted at her over and over again. Needless to say, she was disowned - sent out into the cold night with a warning never to return again.

Not unless she was cured of her abnormality in being able to move things with just a mind alone.

Talan never actually followed their parents in belittling Taylor, but he didn’t stop them either. Most of the time, he just stood behind silently, staring at his feet. Talan always pretended things were still fine and dandy, talking to Taylor as if she was still normal, and things hadn’t changed a single bit ever since she returned from the hospital.

Taylor hadn't told him before, but she hated it deeply whenever Talan did that.

*

‘Taylor, are you alright?’ Meghan asked.

Though still forlorn looking, Taylor realized Meghan looked much better than she had the past few days. At the very least, her eyes didn’t look as sad and as worried as before.
Taylor knew that unlike her, Meghan was constantly thinking about her family, and even thought about going back to them. Forbes wouldn’t allow her to, though. Not yet anyway.

‘Ahem,’ the old mentor cleared his throat, a bid at slight formality. ‘Everyone, this is Matt. He’ll be one of us from now on.’

The lanky teenager flushed, embarrassed at being made focus point among a group of strangers.
Taylor caught his eyes, and she was once again mesmerized by their intensity of blueness. It reminded her of her ex-boyfriend. He too, had the most beautiful pair of blue eyes.

‘Matt, there is something I have to tell you.’ The solemnity of Forbes’ voice broke the two’s gaze, as they both turned to look at him.

‘What landed you into Salvation City Hospital and your life before that isn’t mine to know, and it isn’t my concern. What I have to tell you is that during your stay at the hospital, you underwent a genetic restructuring program you weren’t told about.’

Matt looked lost.

‘Do you have any recollections of your stay at Salvation City?’ Forbes asked gently.

The eighteen-year-old shook his head. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Forbes took in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. ‘Do you remember the night at Lake Candlelight, then?’

An instant wave of panic swept across Matt’s features. The answer was obvious. He remembered.

‘Yes, Matt,’ Forbes started again, ‘you almost drowned at Lake Candlelight two nights ago. Somebody then saved you and sent you to Salvation City Hospital. That’s a reputable hospital in the state, as I’m sure you’d heard before. Their renowned neurosurgeon, Doctor Campbell, was chief surgeon in your case. He brought you back to life – ’
Forbes gestured to Matt, now full of vitality. ‘– but he also gave you a little something extra.’

The indifferent façade Matt wore previously had disintegrated by then. He hung on to Forbes’ every word, a deep frown indented on his forehead. ‘And what exactly do you mean by that?’

‘During the midst, or may I say under the pretense of resuscitating you, as he did for his many other patients,’ Forbes continued, ‘Campbell engaged you involuntarily as a test subject in a genetic restructuring program. One which he had been carrying out secretly, unknown to the majority of the hospital management, unknown to the public and unknown even to most of his ex-test subjects.’

Except us. Taylor thought to herself. We are the ex-test subjects which learnt of Campbell’s doings. All thanks to Forbes and his tutelage.

‘Most of these patients Campbell saved,’ Forbes said, bracketing air quotations around the word “saved”, ‘they never were quite the same after their operations. They all had something extra in them. Something in the likes of a superhuman ability.'

Mines telekinesis. Taylor thought proudly. The ability to move things with my concentration alone.

‘Though I still hadn’t found out what is Campbell’s true objective behind the program, I know for sure creating mutant human species isn’t what he’s after. The superhuman abilities are restructuring programs gone wrong. Afraid that his underground curriculum might go public, Campbell then tried to detain these failed test-subjects, suppressing them from going back out into the world.’

Forbes paused and looked into Matt’s eyes. ‘All of them here are victims of Campbell’s genetic restructuring program, Talan… Taylor… Susan,’ the old mentor motioned to each one around the table, with Matt’s eyes following obediently. ‘They all have a superhuman ability, and while in here, we’re all safe from Campbell’s intentions. You’re here now, because of the same reason.’

Forbes words lingered in the air, awaiting its turn to be absorbed into Matt’s understanding.

‘You mean I have a superhuman ability too?’ Matt asked with a quizzical frown.

Forbes nodded and smiled. ‘It’s a good thing, but it’s also a bad one at the same time, as do most things in this world usually are.’

Matt’s eyes grew wider, the blueness reflected under the fluorescent ceiling lightings. ‘So if what you say is true…then what kind of superhuman ability do I possess?’

For a few seconds, Forbes said nothing, clasping and unclasping his fingers routinely. ‘That, I’m afraid, we hadn’t found out yet.’

*

Chapter Four (Part One)

2006-06-02T00:39:00.000+08:00

Authors' note: Because of an error in the posting of chapters, this current chapter below is the accurate CHAPTER FOUR (PART ONE). The chapter about Doctor Campbell only comes after this two-part chapter. We apologise for any confusion created.

Taylor Adams

‘Taylor, concentrate harder!’ Forbes hollered at the top of his lungs. His voice was practically made insignificant next to the loud music booming over the speakers. It was the siblings’ habit to have a blasting soundtrack in the background, accompanying each of their dueling sessions.

It keeps the adrenaline pumping! Taylor would retort back cheekily, whenever Forbes complained that the din gave his ‘muddled old brain a headache’.

‘Taylor, focus!’ Forbes yelled again. He was always telling Taylor that the one single barrier between her and true greatness was her easiness to be distracted.

Taylor had promised her mentor she’d work hard on that, but so far, she has yet to fulfill this promise she’d made.

‘Okay, here goes nothing,’ Taylor thought to herself, her entire weight suspended two feet above ground purely by summoned energy. Focusing in on a chair near the dueling square, Taylor rallied the remaining strength in her onto the piece of furniture. The chair immediately lifted off the ground, streaking forward threateningly in Talan’s direction.

Like a seasoned pro with lightning reactions, Talan threw out his hands, freezing Taylor’s hurtling chair in midair. The slightest trace of fear didn’t even cross his features. Leaping forward, he reached out and pushed the motionless chair to the side. It landed far left to the practice area with a loud crash.

‘Come on!’ Talan shouted, a triumphant grin spreading across his face. ‘You can do better than that!’

Furrowing her brows, Taylor lowered herself swiftly back into the dueling square, her shirt completely drenched in perspiration. The moment her feet landed upon the padded grounds, she closed her eyes, flaring them open again a second later. A new surge of energy charged out from her body, lifting the three daggers off from the wall behind her. The weapons, razor-sharp blades aimed to the front, hurtled forward like minute nuclear heads out to destroy.

With an agile nip to his left, Talan shot his hand out once more, solidifying the whizzing daggers mid-flight. He plucked the middle blade off from its stunned position, whilst allowing the other two regained motion.

The daggers whipped past his shoulders, landing straight into the wall behind him in a neat row.

Seeing another of her attacks turn futile, Taylor retracted her diverged attention from the daggers, her eyes sweeping the sides of the square anxiously for a possible assail object.

Helpless, her eyes landed back upon the chair discarded by Talan earlier on. The garnered telekinetic energy repelled off her pupils once more, lifting the fallen chair up for another desperate attack. She was about to swerve her channel of energy – and the hovering chair – towards Talan, when she felt a sudden impact pushing her backwards, pinning her down against the wall. She soon realized the heaving form before her was Talan. He had a dagger pointed triumphantly to the skin of her neck.

‘What the…?’ Taylor muttered to herself disbelievingly. How on earth had Talan managed to move in on her in that split second, without her even noticing it? A crash erupted nearby, and Taylor realized it was caused by the chair she’d originally picked up. It clattered loudly to the ground from the height she had held it by previously, the wood splintering upon impact.

‘Concede, little sister,’ Talan said, a smile spreading over his face.

And then Taylor realized.

Talan must have immobilized both her and the chair in time during her moment of distraction; only to unfreeze them when he had her pinned safely under his wings.

Taylor had lost again.

‘Shit,’ she cursed under her breath, closing her eyes in defeat as she took in a deep breath. She felt her brother retract the dagger pointed inches away from the skin of her neck.

‘Great fight, though its time for some new moves, don’t you agree?’

Taylor offered a weak smile as she pushed her brother away lightheartedly. ‘I’ll beat you, soon. One day.’

‘There was a good job, Talan.’ Forbes deep voice piped up behind them, this time clearer with the speakers muted. ‘And you, Taylor, your vulnerability to distraction had, once again, killed you.’

Taylor nodded. Now would be the lecture, all over again, about her being too easily tempted into diversion.

She was wrong.

Forbes turned away from the both of them and motioned something – or someone – out from behind the huge marble pillar, ‘Come on out here,’ he said gently. ‘Don’t worry. We’re not going to hurt you.’

A handsome, albeit a tad too skinny, teenager stepped out apprehensively, his oceanic-blue eyes swimming in confusion as he stared at Taylor and Talan. It was Matt Peters, their latest safe from Salvation City.

Taylor realized instantly he looked even better, now that he was without the head bandages.

‘Who the fuck are you guys?’

Forbes laughed heartily, ‘No vulgarities please, Matt. I promised you I would tell you more about us, about why you’re here. Would you now give me the opportunity to explain?’

Matt folded his arms, evidently more so in defense then in defiance, though the latter would be what he wanted the rest to believe. ‘Whatever. It’s not like I could escape now, right? I don’t even know where the hell this place is.’

Forbes smiled. ‘Wise observation there. Come along now, you need to take a seat before I begin. It’s going to be a really long story.’

Draping an arm round his shoulders, he turned and steered Matt lightly towards the conference room tucked to the left of the warehouse. The blonde-haired teenager scowled and struggled out from under him immediately, though continuing to follow one step behind the old man.

‘And you two,’ Forbes called out, addressing both Taylor and Talan. ‘Come join us in conference room after freshening up. We have a whole lot of information to clue our newest here in about.’

‘Oh, and Talan?’ he added as an afterthought. ‘Get Meghan to join us, will you? Its time to introduce Matt to the whole of his new family.’

(to be continued)

Chapter Three (Part Two)

2006-04-23T21:37:00.000+08:00

The boys moved on far left into the acres of Candlelight Woods, the moonlight being their only source of illumination. They had no problem finding their way around though. It wasn’t their first time to the lake.

Matt could see his hazy breath rise and fall before him as he paced on with the guys in silence. It had stopped snowing that afternoon, but the temperature was enough to make him feel like a living snowman.

Finally, they reached the lake.

It was a small giant by itself, both width and depth-wise. Under a starless night sky, the otherwise clear waters would reflect the color of concentrated venom.
But because of the consecutive days of snowing, sub-zero temperatures had frozen the lake into a mass of black solid.
Matt felt the eyes of Shafer and the guys lingering expectedly on his back.

‘Yo, Peters.’

Matt turned. The ex-captain threw the Spalding in his direction. Even without warning, it was a perfect catch on Matt’s part.

‘Do it.’ Marcus said.

Matt took in a deep breath, turning back to face the lake. The sudden charge of chilled air gushing through his lungs pinched tiny goose pimples upon his flesh. He allowed his fingers a moment to seek solace within the familiar feel of the rubber Spalding.
Usually, the ball in his hands empowered him.
Matt was a good player; one of the best in the entire state to say the least. He was not going to chicken out on this petty task.

Putting both feet upon the frozen lake, Matt glazed his sight across the distance and fixated his focus on the heart of the lake. It was an estimated 50meters from where he was standing at.
He could do this. It looked simple enough.
Clutching the ball firmly with both hands, Matt walked briskly across the solidified lake. The sub-zero air whisked through his hair along with movement, and Matt felt his body contorting rigidly in protest.
He continued, however, until he reached the center spot.
He could hear washed-out murmurings coming from the guys, but they weren’t his prime focus now.

Bounce a Spalding on the middle of the frozen lake seven times, if it’s the seventh consecutive state title Gexcell’s heading for this year.

Shafer’s words echoed through Matt’s head, as he steadied the orange Spalding with his fingertips.

Trust me, Peters. It’s a Gexcell custom. All past five state title captains did the same. I did too, six times on the ice, and there came our sixth consecutive title. You’d better not break the custom.

Okay, Shafer. Matt thought determinedly to himself. The hell I am continuing the fuckin’ Gencell tradition.

Matt’s eyes zeroed in on the ball in his hands.

‘One,’ he announced to the air through gritted teeth, bouncing the ball down hard upon the ice before grasping it back during its rebound. It was an effortless feat.

‘Two,’ he continued. ‘Three.’

With each throw and rebound, Matt felt an incredulous course of adrenaline within his system. It was as though the state title with its matching trophy were already in his pockets. He knew he would own the game tomorrow.

‘Four.’

‘Five.’

‘Six.’

The last one. Matt thought, readying the Spalding for his last and final throw. For Shafer’s riddance once and for all.
He felt his fingertips ease their ways off the rough, rubbery texture, as the force from his arms imparted its way off his palms and pushed itself against the ball.

‘Seven!’ Matt yelled as the ball hit the ice, his fingers already curled into a position for the rebound catch.

The orange Spalding never came back up.
With a sickening split rumbling from under his Nikes, Matt felt the world quiver underneath.
The seventh impact of the landing ball had proved too much for the frozen lake, causing a winding hairline split which quickly multiplied to the neighboring ice.

Matt didn’t have much time to register what was happening. Like a carpet being pulled rudely from under his feet, he found himself plunging into the deathly-cold waters, the broken pieces of estranged ice floating mockingly around him.

He could hear anxious shouts and hollers from the boys, but they sounded distant and diluted, like insignificant white noise from a lazy dream.

Matt struggled, wild hands thrashing about for anything they could lay on. The floating Spalding came close, but got repelled away soon after by the moving waters. There was nothing for him to hold on to for dear life.

Matt’s weight pulled his head underwater several times; the entering icy liquid burning down his nostrils and airways. He came back up, gasping and choking, willing his feet to continue kicking so he could remain afloat.
It was getting incredibly cold, and it was as though his muscles had been stupefied into disobedience by the frosty temperature.

Feeling his right leg stiffen oddly under him, a new surge of panic consumed Matt’s senses. The left leg alone was not enough to hold him above the waters.

‘Help!’ Matt screamed. He sputtered and felt his head being drawn under once more.

Searing cold liquid traveled up with his unregulated breathing, and he could feel them all lodged up at the entrance to his throat.

He couldn’t breathe. Matt was drowning.

Feeling as though his limbs weighed a ton, Matt slowly gave up the idea of struggling. He was getting tired.
The stinging eyes initially flushed with panic fluttered to a close, as the last of the air in Matt Peter’s lungs were used up by his asphyxiated system.

*
The icy water continued racing up his airways, despite the fact that he was holding his breath desperately. The raw sensation of the liquid in the wrong places felt cynically familiar.
‘I knew you couldn’t do this. You’re not fit to be captain!’
Marcus Shafer’s broad face appeared suddenly in the water, his eyes burning with contemptuous pleasure at seeing Matt’s suffering.
‘I’m captain! I was, and I still am!’

Matt’s eyelids jerked opened; his pupils’ abrupt contact with an overhead light source causing him to shut them again instinctively.
He realized he was holding his breath.
Relaxing his muscles, he inhaled slowly through his mouth, the tasteful oxygen imposing an instant calming effect upon his nerves.
Counting to ten, Matt opened his eyes once more – this time warily slower. With his pupils attuned and in peace with the light, Matt pulled his body up into a sitting position. His tender muscles ached with every movement.
Matt glanced down at himself: dressed only in a pair of unfamiliar blue trousers, he could see the vague contours of his ribcage protruding out from his chest. He had certainly lost much weight. All the training and torture he had committed his body into had completely gone down the drain.
Matt wondered if he had enough time to whip his body back into shape before the game season begins.
The game season.
He hadn’t had the slightest idea what day it was. The last thing Matt avidly remembered was the nightmare episode at Lake Candlelight. The one where he thought he was going to die.

Feeling the sudden vulnerability of a lost sheep estranged from his herd, Matt hoisted himself out of the bed and surveyed the sparsely furnished room. Apart from the bed and a writing table, there was nothing else to boast about. Matt picked up a black woolen jacket draped across the desk chair and shrouded it over his body. Loud music was blasting off from somewhere in the building, audible even behind the closed door. Quietly, Matt tiptoed out of the room, and down the empty corridor lit by cheap fluorescent lightings. The place looked bare, but tidy. Sort of like a monochrome hospital, only without the strong odor of sterile.
Matt stole past a couple of closed doors, and came to a clear landing.
All pressing thoughts of remaining hidden and well-covered spurted out of his mind when he saw what was in front of him.

A girl, probably around his age, was hovering in midair, her eyes narrowed in full focus at whatever was below him on the first level.
A loud crash erupted suddenly on the ground floor.

Taken aback by the sudden volume, Matt stumbled backwards, backing up onto something solid. He spun around and saw that it was an old man he was stepping upon.

Bounding to the side, Matt raised both hands protectively before his chest, taking a few blind steps backwards from the stranger. ‘Who are you? What do you want from me?!’

The old man remained where he was, lifting both arms, palms-out, in a sign of benign surrender. ‘Calm down, Matt. I’m not going to hurt you.’

He knew my name. Matt could feel his heart thumping wildly against his chest. The old man looked safe: Tall and thin with a head full of silver hair, he looked more like a brittle bamboo pole than a threat.
But he is living together with that girl, the girl who could jet around in midair. Who knew what he was capable of?

‘Matt, I would explain everything you want to know later, if you would come downstairs with me now.’

The old man sounded even and calm. Definitely not like he had something up his sleeves. He could read Matt’s hesitant eyes.

‘After everything, if you still want to leave this place –’ the old man shrugged his shoulders, emphasizing that Matt had the last decision.

Folding his arms, Matt took in a deep breath. It was not as though he could leave this place by his own if he wanted to. ‘Okay,’ he said finally. ‘Deal.’

The old man smiled. ‘Good. My name’s Forbes. Nice to meet you, Matt Peters.’

Chapter Three (Part One)

2006-04-19T10:59:00.000+08:00

Matt Peters

A silver Lexus rumbled into the woods, the swanky vehicle being pulled to a stop among the array of vehicles parked scrappily in between the lofty oak trees.

Eighteen year old Matt Peters emerged from the vehicle seconds later. A half-smile began shaping over his features when he noticed the familiar silhouette slouched against the trees.

‘Dude,’ Simon Nichols said, acknowledging the captain’s arrival with a raised palm; one that was returned instinctively with a high-five. It was an ingrained lingo of the team. ‘You’re late. Everyone’s waiting for you, hotshot.’

‘I know. Let them wait. Good stuff’s worth waiting for.’

Simon guffawed, throwing a light punch at the captain’s shoulders.

Matt shoved his friend back playfully, as the two began rambled up the dirty trail leading to the cabin. Over time, the route had been seasoned into a well-worn path by the footsteps treading upon it every year.
Before each annual basketball season, it was a Gexcell High tradition to throw a wild party in desolated Candlelight Woods.
The location promised no interferences from the authorities, and only the elites of Gexcell High – the jocks and the cheerleaders – are invitees to this exclusive bash.

This year’s pre-season party was different from the others Matt had attended the past few years.
This year he was the limelight. He was captain of the basketball team.

Matt’s shining blue eyes sped up the moonlight-illuminated path, landing upon the wooden cabin reverberating with pure adrenaline.
Against the tranquility of the off-city milieu, the loudness and light from within stuck out most condescendingly.
Even at their distance, the two could make out the wild hollers, punctuated occasionally by high-pitched girly shrieks.

‘Looks like even the entire pep squad has turned up before you,’ Simon commented, a smirk forming on his face as the two guys stopped before the wooden doors.

Matt smiled and ran a hand through his honey-blonde hair. He knew without validations from a mirror that he was looking way past fine.
The girls were going to have the hell of a trouble keeping their hands off him tonight.

‘Here we go,’ Simon announced, reaching for the rusty doorknob on the wooden door.

Throwing it opened in a gaudy fashion, he cleared his throat dramatically, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you captain of Gexcell High basketball team, Matt Peters!’

At Simon’s loud call, the entire party turned their heads in unison towards the latecomers. It took them barely a second before they registered the information, erupting into deafening cheers and wolf-whistles. The volume was so high Matt thought for a second the entire wooden structure would fall through and collapse under its intensity.

It didn’t, of course.

It was his big night after all. The night before the first game of the season – one which everybody was confident would land Gexcell High into their undefeated seventh consecutive state title.
And as captain of the team this year, Matt was going to be the one who would receive the grand trophy from the mayor.
He couldn’t wait for that moment.

‘Matt! Matt! Matt! Matt!’ The crowd chanted; eyes glued adoringly upon their handsome captain.
Matt felt like a god as he scanned the crowd hustled before him.
There were his fellow team mates – all donning the same blue-and-white varsity jacket with the school’s initials emblazoned proudly across their left chests.
There were the cheerleaders – pretty faces that shone brightly with admiration and desire at the sight of their number one jock.
It certainly felt good to be so popular.
Hell, this was everything he’d wanted.

Raising both his arms in acknowledgement, Matt walked slowly into the heart of the pulsating crowd. Somebody pressed an opened bottle of Vodka into his hand along the way.
Hoisting the full bottle up with his left hand, the captain fisted his right and thumped it twice heartily upon his chest, where the initials of Gexcell High were embellished upon the fabric.

‘Gexcell High, Seventh state basketball title!’ He hollered, before downing the alcohol in a drawn-out gulp.
The crowd echoed his actions amidst muddled but thunderous cheers.
When their mouths and clothing reeked of the same stench of alcohol, the pre-game party fever raged back out.
Matt danced and drank like everybody else.
He mingled with the cheerleaders; flirted with leggy head cheerleader Shayna Bern, of whom he had a crush on for quite some time now.
If she weren’t seeing Simon, Shayna would definitely be his to call now.
Not that Matt had totally eliminated the idea of hooking up with her behind his friend’s back: he’ll just have to wait for the season trophy to be secured before pulling such a team-breaking stint.

It was a sinful thought.
But then again, Matt was never an angel. Angels and good intentions would never bring a person far.
Though useless, his family had taught him this much.

Matt didn’t spend much time that night thinking about his family. They were the last thing he’d enjoyed musing about.
Besides, he had something important to do. Besides partying and getting wasted, that is.

He checked the time on his wrist watch: 11.30pm. It was getting late.
Time for the Gexcell ritual.

*
Flanked by the usual handful – ex-captain Marcus Shafer included – Matt exited the cabin, having to tear himself away most unwillingly from the booze and the partying.
The chilled air outside hit his senses almost immediately, mocking the unwise decision to leave the warmth and body heat raging back in the small hut.

‘Come on, Peters,’ Shafer interjected impatiently. ‘We don’t have all night to do this.’

Matt nodded, slightly soured, wrapping his jacket tighter around his trembling body. He stepped ahead and took the lead down the trail to his parked Lexus.
Personally, he didn’t like Marcus very much. Yes, he respected him as the captain of the team during Shafer’s reign.
But he was captain now, not Shafer.
Marcus Shafer has had his own share of glorious days, but they were now overdue.
Matt loathed the way he sometimes throws his weight around, acting like he was still captain of the team. He loathed the way his team mate obliged Shafer’s words – almost as if respectfully – even more.

But after tonight; after the proceeding of the Gencell basketball tradition at Candlelight Lake, Marcus Shafer would have to step away from Matt’s limelight once and for all.
An announcement from the coach made Matt captain of the team.
The continuation of the tradition would make him full-fledged captain in his team mates’ eyes.
Shafer wouldn’t have any more reasons to stay on and meddle in the team’s affairs after tonight.
This bit, Matt was looking forward to.

‘Remembered the ball?’ Marcus asked, slicing through Matt’s thoughts with an invisible blade.

The boot to the Lexus flew open automatically at the car key’s bidding. Reaching in, Matt pulled out an orange Spalding and threw it in at Marcus’s chest.
The ex-captain reacted swiftly with a flawless catch, sandwiching the ball steadily between both his palms.

‘Okay, Peters. No time to show off your throwing skills. Let’s go do this.’

Matt slammed his car boot down hard, before jogging ahead to keep apace with Marcus and the guys. He can’t wait to do this either, if it means he won’t have to behave like Marcus’s lackey anymore.

(to be continued)

Chapter Two (Part Two)

2006-04-14T11:10:00.000+08:00

(continued)

Stepping in, the pair did a swift survey of the scene before them.
It was good. There wasn’t even a single doctor or nurse to be seen.

Taylor nodded knowingly at her brother, motioning for him to follow her. She knew the way to the patient’s ward. Forbes had shown her the layout of the hospital once, and she had gotten the entire structure memorized inside out.
Just in case. Taylor always said.
Talan just thought she was plain crazy. Like the times she told them she thought their powers were cool.

Following closely behind his sister, Talan felt an uncanny sense of déjà vu settling uncomfortably in the pit of his stomach. The corridors, the colors… it all still looked so familiar.

‘Shit,’ Taylor muttered suddenly under bated breath.

Talan knew immediately what she was referring to. A young nurse decked primly in Salvation City’s uniform was making her way over to them.

‘Just ignore her,’ he mumbled back to his sister, as they strode on past the nurse.

The young nurse stopped in her tracks, and Talan could feel her eyes on them. ‘Excuse me, but visiting hours are…’ she began, rather meekly.

Despite better judgment, Talan found his eyes traveling up for a closer look at her face. He wanted to see if it would register in his memories. He wanted to see if she was one of the beasts who aided in holding him captive here, two months ago.
She wasn’t.
Talan let his head drop to his chest immediately, as though it was a basic reflex.
As they rounded the corner towards their destination, he wondered for a second if the young nurse would persist after them.
She didn’t.
Talan smiled to himself sourly. Of course, he thought. She’s new here.
The vile claws of Salvation City obviously hadn’t reached her yet. It hadn’t transformed her, but it would, soon. Just like how it had for the others.

‘We’re here,’ Taylor announced softly. They were standing outside Ward number 50.

Talan looked at his sister. ‘You know what to do with the camera, right? That’s the first thing you’ve got to handle.’

The special patients at Salvation City were being monitored by hawk-eyed security guards 24/7, through the aid of the surveillance cameras located on the top right-corner of their wards. Talan should know. He was once one of those patients.

Taylor nodded vigorously, her eager hand already reaching for the door knob. ‘I know that.’

‘Okay, then. Let’s do it.’

At Talan’s signal, Taylor opened the door and stepped a half-inch into the ward guardedly, her face and eyes craned towards the top-right corner of the ceiling.
Talan heard the slight whirling of the surveillance camera, as it was being turned away from the patient’s bed and towards the ceiling.

‘Done,’ Taylor announced, making her way briskly over to the patient lying unconscious on the bed.

Talan followed in after her, closing the door to the ward behind them softly. ‘Get him out from all the things they had inserted on him, quick. We’ve only got a minute before the camera would auto-regulate back to its original position.’

Taylor let her vision narrow in upon the limp body under the hospital sheets and closed her eyes, taking in a deep breath to steady herself. She felt the concentration intensifying under her eyelids.
When her eyes fluttered opened again, Taylor channeled the burning energy from her gaze to the nodes and needles inserted into the patient’s body.
In orchestrated synchrony, they dislodged themselves and flew out from his skin, hovering in the air for a second before Taylor let her gaze descend, sending them scattered messily upon the bed.

Now for the second part of her mission.
Clenching her fist in deep concentration, Taylor roamed her smoldering pupils over the length of the patient’s body. Hurling out the remainder of her energy, she lifted the patient off his bed effortlessly, the hospital sheets sailing to the ground soundlessly. Taylor held and steadied her gaze, so the patient would be trapped securely in the invisible blanket of energy suspending him in mid-air.
‘Great job,’ Talan muttered, turning his attention from his sister to the corridor outside the ward. He heard the faint echoes of footsteps coming their way. Throwing open the door, Talan stepped out from the ward and threw his right arm out.
Holding his position rigidly, Talan spread opened his fingers, awaiting the surge of energy coursing through the veins in his hand to project and amplify across the area before him.
The footsteps stopped. Talan withdrew his hand and turned to face the ward urgently. ‘It’s safe now. Let’s go.’

With the patient balanced in thin air between them, under Taylor’s telekinetic hold, the duo hurried down the corridor and down the block of stairs, with Talan leading the way.
Pushing opened the door leading to the main lobby on the ground floor of Salvation City; Talan hurled both hands out, shaking erratically from the immense power leaving his body at the command of his hands.
The entire lobby full of people froze in their tracks; completely unaware that this moment would befall upon them.
Struggling as fast as they could out of the hospital premises and into the open car park, Taylor willed the Porsche door open for their newest save – patient Matt Peters.
Beside her, Talan sank to his knees, leaning against the freezing body of the automobile. His body was still shaking from the exertion needed to freeze the motion out of an entire lobby-full of people.

‘C’mon Talan,’ Taylor urged softly. ‘We’ve gotta go.’

Panting heavily, Talan nodded, drawing slowly to full height. Before he slid into his seat next to Taylor, he found his eyes traveling back to the lighted-windows mounted to the white-slab building.
Patients, nurses, doctors, visitors – everybody were moving about lively back in the hospital lobby, completely unaware that they had been solidified momentarily for two minutes, just a while ago.
Solidified momentarily by him, Talan Adams.

Freak. Talan thought bitterly to himself, eyeing his trembling hands in disgust. Freak.

Chapter Two (Part One)

2006-04-11T13:18:00.000+08:00

Talan Adams

Talan Adams drummed his fingers restlessly upon the steering wheel of the black Porsche. The screen wipers swerved back and forth across the windshield routinely, injecting an atmosphere of rested calmness that Talan obviously hadn’t picked up on.
Taylor was taking an even longer time then he’d expected.
He wondered if she was encountering any mishaps. After all, if he hadn’t reached her quicker on their last mission together, Taylor would have probably died in the hands of that mysterious smoke-monster.

This heavy snowfall isn’t going to make her mission any easier. He thought to himself, screwing his thick eyebrows together till they formed a conjoined line in the middle of his forehead.
Talan had perfect vision, but with weather like this, he might as well be likened to a partially blind.
He kept his eyes – and whatever scope of vision he had left – nailed upon the automated main doors to the white-slab building.
A rare hiatus between the cascading snowflakes gave Talan a glimpse of the signboard tacked patently over the giant building.
Salvation City Hospital.
The white fonts stood out starkly from its black background, momentarily blemished by traces of fallen snowflakes.

It had barely been two months since his stay at Salvation City. It certainly felt much longer since then.
In every sense, Talan hadn’t had an enjoyable stay at this hospital. It was, on the contrary, an absolute nightmare.
He wished Taylor and Forbes had came for him earlier.
Perhaps then, he wouldn’t have been the freak he was now.
Perhaps then, she would have been still alive.

Talan’s fingers froze in motion upon the steering wheel for a few seconds. Anguish hot thoughts escaped from his head to form traces of fresh tears in the corners of his eyes.
He stared at his hands, now gripping the steering wheel so harshly his knuckles had turned ivory-white.

These disgusting hands of his were responsible for her death.

It didn’t matter what Taylor or Forbes said. They hadn’t been there to witness the incident. Sometimes, Talan wished they had.
Perhaps then they would finally come to terms with the fact that he was a murderer, and quit telling him it wasn’t his fault.
Because it was. He knew that.

An unidentified entity began fidgeting about in his coat pocket at that moment, jerking Talan out of his habitual emergence in guilt. It was his mobile phone.

‘Hello? Taylor?’

‘Talan? Are you okay? You sound a bit off.’ It wasn’t Taylor on the other line. It was Forbes.

Talan closed his eyes and massaged the bridge of his nose. ‘Yeah, I’m fine. How’s Meghan doing?’

‘She’s okay. A bit lost, she’s only been here for two days, but she’ll adapt soon, you know… the same old routine. How long has Taylor been gone?’

Talan opened his eyes and glanced at the digital numerals on his watch. It was 8.20 p.m.
‘Probably about twenty minutes… Should I go look for her?’

There was a slight pause on the other line. Forbes’ curt, gritty voice came on soon again.
‘You’d better. The snowstorm might be giving her some unwanted problems.’

Talan nodded. ‘Okay, I’ll call you back once it’s done then.’

‘Good.’

‘See you in a while.’

‘Be careful out there, Talan’

Talan killed the car engine and snapped his mobile phone shut, sliding it back into his pocket.
A strong gust of callous wind attacked his warm body the moment he opened the car door.
If it wasn’t for Taylor; if it wasn’t for Forbes, he would never be stepping away from the car radiator and into a hell of this weather.

Talan owed his life to Forbes. Both him and Taylor owed their lives to the man. He had been the only one who took them in when nobody else would – not even their own parents, after they knew how abnormal their flesh and bloods were.

Talan hadn’t had many choices. Forbes was the only who could help them.

Buttoning up his trench coat, Talan hunched his tall frame up in defense against the wind, before making his way briskly towards the hospital entrance.

‘Talan, over here!”

Jerking his head up at the familiar voice, Talan spotted his sister moving towards him from around the corner.

‘You took long enough,’ he said, eyeing Taylor’s rosy cheek and the beads of perspiration on her forehead. ‘Looks like you just went for a jog.’

Taylor rolled her eyes, and pulled her brother by his freezing arm towards the automated sliding doors of the hospital.

‘Try levitating back there for twenty minutes,’ she retorted. ‘Maybe then you won’t be this cold.’

*

The hospital was brightly lit and coated in a false aura of warmth and recovery. Talan knew otherwise. Behind its clean slate reputation as the nation’s best hospital, Salvation City held more skeletons in its secret closets than they would let on, literally.
However, this wasn’t what bothered Talan most at the moment.
It was the bright illuminations; the throngs of people.
He tucked his head as close down to the lapels of his coat as possible, avoiding eye contact with anybody as the both of them strode across the busy waiting room.

‘How’s the patient?’ He asked quietly, not looking up at Taylor.

‘He’s okay, I guess. I couldn’t really see him, so I had to gauge from the nurse’s expression.’

Talan nodded. ‘The nurse, is she gone now? The patient’s alone, right?’

‘Yeah, there weren’t any visitors, and the nurse left his ward not too long ago. God, she almost saw me through the windows,’ Taylor replied. ‘Thank goodness for the weather.’

‘I choose to disagree on the weather part.’

Taylor laughed.
Beside her, Talan’s pace dwindled as they closed in on the block of stairs located on the hospital’s right wing.
The area was deserted.
Talan relaxed his tense shoulders instantly, leaning against the walls for a quick breather. He was really afraid of being identified minutes ago.
After all, it hadn’t really been that long since his last stay at Salvation City. They might still recognize him.

‘Let’s go,’ Taylor interjected, fidgeting about restlessly. Talan let out a disapproving grunt at his sister’s impatience, but he knew she was right.
They hadn’t got much time.

Bounding up the flights of stairs stealthily, the pair stepped onto the landing on level three, only to find the door leading out to the corridors locked.
‘Only one official entrance to this level, that’s the one in front of the administration desk filled with nurses,’ Taylor explained. Stepping back to allow for more space, a moment of silence fell upon them, as she concentrated on the huge, rusty bolt on the door.
Then, with a long-drawn creak, the stubborn bolt flew opened.
Talan studied his sister with astounded awe drawn all over his features. ‘I didn’t know your telekinesis had grown so strong.’

Taylor grinned and reached over to open the door. ‘One way lock; easily opened from the inside. I’m not as strong as you think I am.’

(to be continued)

Chapter One (Part Two)

2006-04-05T21:46:00.000+08:00

Taylor Adams

Now. Taylor Adams thought to herself, leaving her hiding spot behind the pillar and sprinting the remaining distance up towards the target.
Her nimble feet pounded the cemented basement floor soundlessly. Fixating her eyes squarely on the crown of wiry black hair fanned out over her target’s shoulders, Taylor narrowed her eyes and channeled her concentration and bidding into the imaginary streak connecting her focus to the woman’s back.
Halfway through, she heard a thud, and realized that Meghan had already been knocked unconscious onto the ground.
There was no time to lose.
Focusing fiercely on the subject, Taylor stopped in her tracks and felt the familiar surge of incredulous energy leave her body, before hustling forward along her line of concentration.

‘Arggghh!’ The target screamed in shock, as she got lifted off the ground by the invisible force, being hurled backwards against a huge pillar.
Taylor cringed, expecting to hear the shattering of skull and bone when the impact was due.
To her complete disbelief, the woman evaporated into a cloud of grey smoke upon immediate contact with the solid wall. Then, as though it had a life of its own, the patch of smoke hovered around a singular spot for a split second.
Taylor wasn’t really sure about it, but she thought she saw, within the grayness, a rough outline wrought in the shape of the woman’s face.
She had no time to think about it – the hovering smoke was now gliding sinuously in her direction.
Closing her eyes in ardent concentration, Taylor took in a deep breath for composure. She flashed opened her eyes again, willing, with her heart and soul, for the sinister whirlpool of thick grayness to stop in its track.
It didn’t work.
Telekinesis had failed her, and that’s the only defense she had against this smoke-monster. She was going to wound on the floor beside Meghan, defeated.
Garnering all her willpower and focus, Taylor arrowed her burning gaze through the impending fog desperately.
It continued slithering, like a deadly grey serpent, up towards her face.
Sensing the smoke ready to mask itself around her face, Taylor held her breath, her body contorted rigidly in fear.
The malice grey fingers were a few perilous centimeters away from her, when it stopped in its track, losing all its fluidity of movement.
Taylor turned behind and gasped.

With an outstretched hand and his fingers curled like he was holding an invisible sphere, Talan Adams smiled at his sister.

‘Thank me later,’ he said, withdrawing the hand that was born with the ability to deprive the motion out of anything.

Taking huge, purposive strides forward, he lifted the unconscious Meghan off the ground and draped her effortlessly over his broad shoulders.
Taylor sighed in relief. It had been a close call.
She took a step backwards from her alleged murderer and studied the queer form she was stuck into by Talan.
And then she saw it. The face of the woman she thought she saw minutes ago – it was right there, in the middle of the smoke.
Her eyes were now, of course, frozen into a penetratingly vicious stare.
It sent a disturbing chill down Taylor’s spine.
Turning around, she sprinted ahead to keep apace with her elder brother. ‘She’s okay, right?’ She asked, jutting her head towards Meghan, who was lying lifelessly on Talan’s shoulders.

‘Yeah, probably just unconscious,’ he replied. ‘But Forbes will get her fixed soon enough.’

Taylor nodded, her eyes traveling from Meghan’s strangely peaceful face to the black Porsche parked before them.
The car doors flew open immediately upon her gaze.

‘Thanks,’ Talan said, laying Meghan carefully in the back of the car before sliding into the passenger seat beside Taylor, whose eager fingers were already circled around the steering wheel, almost possessively.
The car doors slammed itself shut.

‘You’re really eager to put your new driver’s license to good use, aren’t you?’ Talan asked, a bemused smile forming upon his face.

Taylor grinned and blasted the car radio on.

Ramming the accelerator vice backwards, she sped the black Porsche away from the dingy basement lot; far away from the frozen smoke-woman who was going to be in a terribly foul mood, when she finally thawed and see Meghan gone.

Chapter One (Part One)

2006-04-05T00:33:00.000+08:00

Meghan Jones

Meghan Jones rubbed her padded palms together absently, staring at the circular wall clock hanging upon the office wall.
Floor-length window panels lined the perimeters generously, and although it was barely 5 in the evening, there wasn’t much sunlight or warmth to boast about.
It had been a really long day.
She didn’t want to stay in this office for another minute, but neither was she exactly thrilled about having to go home to her husband and their one-year-old son.
Her eyes traveled begrudgingly from the crawling hands of the clock to the gloominess weathering outside the building: it was like eyeing one picture of desolation to the next.
Winter had never been her favorite season. With the sky palettes painted in ominous shades of gray; unwelcoming sub-zero temperatures to match, Meghan had dreaded each coming of the bitter season ever since she was a little girl.

Of course, there was one good thing she liked about winter now.

Glancing down at the suede gloves that fitted over both her hands, the shadow of a wistful smile crossed Meghan’s face.
Made of expensive leather, the thick material wrapped safely over her fingertips and reached all the way up to her elbows.

The good thing was that she has to endure neither questions nor queer stares at these huge brown gloves – one which she wore regardless if it was winter or spring.

She had became accustomed to explaining to inquisitors that the gloves were on for ‘a rare allergic skin condition’; one that isn’t contagious at all so people shouldn’t have to worry about it.

Most people, on knowing about Meghan’s condition, preferred to keep a polite distance away from her.
That included her husband.
And in winter, people assumed that she wore it because of the cold, and not because she was the weird gloves lady with the weird disease.

Even so, that wasn’t much consolation.

She might as well be a leper trying to live with society.

*
Things had not always been this way. Three years ago, Meghan’s life was still perfect. She had a loving husband – Jack – wedded together for six years, and they lived comfortably in an estate on the better-off neighborhoods.

When news of her pregnancy came, she thought it was the perfect way to complete her wonderful life.
Everything went smoothly, until the day Meghan thought the beloved entity struggling within her was about to kick a hole through her stomach walls.
She was being rushed to the hospital with a frenzied Jack by her side, soothing her repeatedly that he won’t ever leave her, no matter what happens.

The gynecologists at Salvation City Hospital geared Meghan up promptly for the operating theatre, informing them that their son would have to separate from his mother’s womb that very day, or both lives would be gravely endangered.

That was two whole months before the baby’s due date.
It was certainly not normal.

The doctors, sterilized and all, offered Jack no promises as they made their way into the operating theatre, except that they would ‘try their very best to save both lives.’

For four whole hours, the anxious husband paced the length of the hospital corridor. He didn’t expect very much for his premature baby, but his wife, he knew he could count on.
Meghan was a tough one.
She would fight tooth and nail to live on.

The doors to the ward swung open after four insane hours, and out came two nurses wheeling a small gurney between them.

‘Congratulations, Mr. Jones. Here’s your baby boy.’

Folded and lying in the thick blue blanket held on the plastic gurney was the crinkliest, smallest living thing Jack had ever saw. With numerous nodes attached and a respiratory mask covering his minuscule face, the baby looked more like an alien than a son.

‘He’s going to be okay,’ the nurses told him, sensing his apprehensiveness. ‘We’ll just have to keep tab on this little one much more often than we do for the others.’

The nurses smiled warmly at Jack.

‘But it’s going to be fine. He’s gonna grow up into a healthy, beautiful boy.’

Jack smiled back weakly. ‘Thanks.’

The doors to the operating theatre swung open once more, and for the second time in the last few minutes, Jack felt his heart lurched precariously to the opening of his throat.

‘Mr. Jones?’ the emerged young, female doctor begun.

Jack nodded clammily, not even noticing when the nurses had wheeled his newborn son away.

‘About your wife… We did the best we could.’

That was the universal hospital language everybody understood – the mother of all taboo words an awaiting person doesn’t want to hear from the doctor.

‘Excuse me… what?’ Jack muttered softly, his hands shaking uncontrollably in his trousers pockets. He did not understand what the doctor had just said.

‘Your wife, we’re still not quite sure of the reason why, but it so seemed like the trauma of the unnaturally early labor led to immense blood loss from her body system, sending her brain into shock and then auto-shutoff.’

The doctor paused and took in a deep breath. ‘We’re trying everything we can to resuscitate her. Her heart is still fighting on, but her brain… I can’t lie to you Mr. Jones. Things aren’t too optimistic.’

Jack remained silent, his eyes fixated on a spot between the doctor’s shoes.

‘The best case scenario is that she’ll become a vegetable, for life. And that’s the best case. You have to be prepared for the worse to come.’

And then, as though the heaviness of the message had turned physical and finally sunk into his head, Jack dropped into the nearest bench and held his head between his quaking palms.
The sobs came; slowly but strongly, searing up his chest before bursting into raw flames at his throat.

‘Mr. Jones,’ the doctor repeated softly, placing a hand tentatively on his heaving shoulders. ‘I’m really sorry.’

Jack ignored her. Honestly, he blamed her; he blamed the entire hospital for what was happening to Meghan. The last thing he wanted at this moment would be to look into the doctor’s eyes and tell her that it’s okay, that he would be fine.
Because he won’t.

Like a mosquito droning on gallingly beside his ear, the young female doctor offered a series of empty reassurances, sandwiched by countless sporadic awkwardness.
Just when Jack had been pushed to his limits and was about to serve out some loutish remarks, thundering footsteps pulsated down the empty hallway, making him jerk his head up, surprised towards the distraction.

A lanky black doctor clad in scrubs pelted down the corridor and past Jack, his hands busily adjusting the surgical mask over his face.

‘I can’t believe nobody paged me about this earlier,’ he snapped, turning back and giving the stuttering doctor a censorious glare, before he disappeared behind the swinging doors of the operating theatre.

‘Who is that?’ Jack asked, forgetting his resentment against the female doctor for one second.

The young doctor stood up hastily, looking slightly flustered as she pulled the surgical mask over her head back across her mouth.
‘That’s Doctor Campbell, chief of neurology here at Salvation City. And I thought somebody had already informed him about the case just now…It wasn’t me…I thought…’

Her mutterings became doubly muffled with the fabric over her mouth, but it didn’t matter. The top neurosurgeon was now in the operating theatre with Meghan.
She might live after all.
Jack shot to his feet and looked apprehensively at the doctor.

‘So he’s going to save Meghan, is that it? He’s going to be able to revive her brain, right?’

‘I’m sorry Mr. Jones but I have to go back inside now.’

Jack took a few steps ahead and held the doctor’s arm, unwilling to let her go without some explanations as to what was going to happen to his wife.

‘Mr. Jones, I have to go back in. Now.’

Her cold, harsh tone slapped a sudden wave of consciousness into Jack. He dropped her arm and nodded his head, shuffling slowly back to the bench he had been waiting upon since forever.

‘Mr. Jones?’

Jack turned his head at the sound of his name. He locked eyes with the female doctor.

‘We’ll do our best, I promise. Your wife, with Doctor Campbell and a little luck, she might just be able to lead a normal life again.’

Jack smiled and nodded his head, appreciative of the hope she had given him. Those words were his prayers as well.

*

Jack got what he wanted. Meghan was brought back to life.

Miraculously, barely upon twenty-minutes from his arrival, Doctor Campbell had managed to stir Meghan’s brain back into alertness. Though her brain wasn’t very stable at that moment, it was enough for her system to reconcile with its revival and be on a slow, recovery track back.
The doctors did a final round of stitching and cleaning up, under the orders of Doctor Campbell, before Meghan was wheeled out of the operating theatre and into an intensive care unit.
She had to be on close alert monitoring until her vital status proved stability.
Jack was simply elated.
He couldn’t thank Doctor Campbell enough, and promised a generous donation to the hospital, the neurology department under the doctor to be exact. Campbell had saved his wife.
After three weeks of stern monitoring and recovery treatment, Meghan, full of life again, was discharged from the hospital.
She could finally go home to her husband and their son, who was now a healthy, chubby baby boy.
Ethan – the happy couple named their newest family inclusion Ethan.

After her near-death experience, the couple treasured each other more than ever. The little family was feeling so happy and blessed after the ordeal that neither Meghan nor Jack had even noticed the beginning signs of abnormality within Meghan, until it was too late.

It began when they realized little Ethan would often cry and squirm uncomfortably when his mother held him. At first, Jack dismissed Meghan’s remark that their son doesn’t like her very much, telling her she was being silly for having such thoughts.
He told her Ethan probably hadn’t gotten familiar to her presence yet. After all, she hadn’t been at home with the baby for the first month.
But things didn’t change as time past, like he predicted would.
In fact, it had gotten worst. Ethan would wail so loudly when Meghan touched him that the neighbors had called a couple of times to make sure their baby was fine.
Nothing would happen when Jack held him. He gurgled and smiled adoringly up at his father – something he never did for Meghan.
Meghan ended up not laying her fingers on his son anymore. It saddened her greatly, as would with any mother, at the ridiculous inability to touch her own son.
Jack couldn’t think of a logical explanation for the baby’s queer behavior as well.
The pediatricians the couple consulted declared their son to be in the pink of health.

It so seemed like Ethan really didn’t like his mother very much.

A few months later, things got even weirder.
Jack would jerk his arm away involuntarily whenever Meghan laid her hands on him. He complained of a ‘sudden buzz of stinging electricity’ at the point where he had contact with her.
Jack wasn’t the only one.
Meghan could lay her fingers as gently as possible on another, and the person would retaliate against her touch in shock.
After several futile consultations with renowned skin doctors, Meghan found herself dangling perilously off the cliff on a mental breakdown. For a couple who couldn’t even have the slightest form of physical intimacy, Meghan and Jack had become a really abnormal couple.
The doctors were all puzzled at her condition, and after a thousand and one forms of diagnosis, they all came to a united conclusion that somehow, Meghan’s body were constantly producing electrical impulses of a stronger voltage than a normal body should.
As though her palms were the nodes of conduction, the electrical impulses travel along her neurons and nervous system, only to be released from her palms. The strongest point of conduction was discovered to be her fingertips.
On learning that she had, at home, an infant, the doctors advised her to be extremely cautious against touching the fragile baby. The impulses might be extremely dangerous to such a fragile life.
The realization shocked both Meghan and Jack.
All the specialists knew and suggested of no known cure to her rare condition. But they all offered to take her under their wings as a breakthrough research case for a cure.
Meghan declined. She wasn’t ready to be ridiculed as a test subject of guinea pig experimentations.
They told her the choice was hers to make, but she have to be warned that the impulses generated by her body seemed to be growing stronger in voltage, along with time.
She might become really dangerous.

Meghan stuck to her decision.
As a desperate resort, she spent a ridiculous amount of money on a pair of high-quality gloves, made from insulating suede material.
And that was how her nickname – the weird gloves lady with the weird disease – originated from.

She stopped looking for leads on her condition online and on medical journals after a while. It so seemed like there were no cures for her.
And for her family-life as well.
She can’t remember when exactly, but somewhere along the way since the realization of her abnormality, Meghan and Jack had encountered numerous disagreements.

For one, Jack felt strongly about her going for the treatments offered by the specialists they consulted. It didn’t seem to matter to him that they were more experiments than treatments.

The couple stopped speaking to each other altogether after a while. Jack refused to allow Meghan to touch Ethan, even with her suede gloves on.

He came home from work one day to find Meghan cradling their baby within her insulated hands. Although Ethan wasn’t crying at all, Jack flew into an extreme rage and accused Meghan of endangering their son’s life.
Starting from the very next day, he sent Ethan to his mother’s place for care in the day, and would only bring him home after he finishes work each day, only to disappear with their son into the guest bedroom for the bulk of the night.

Meghan was made a stranger in her own house.
Jack just didn’t understand what she was going through, but neither does she, herself.
Her supernatural ability to conduct electricity was kept as a skeleton in the family’s closet. Neither of them wanted to talk about it.

Indeed, Jack’s prayers at the hospital had been answered. His wife had been brought back from the claws of death, to him.
It’s just that the part about her leading a normal life hadn’t been heard.

It was just a wicked twist of fate.

*

‘Aren’t you leaving, Meghan? Its past five already, you know.’

Reality, in the form of her colleague’s voice, sunk its jagged jaws back upon Meghan, though it didn’t bite her that hard this time. At the very least, it brought her back from a torrent of painful recollections.
The bitter memories that defined her life now.

‘Oh, I drifted off a bit and didn’t even see the time,’ she responded casually, smoothing her suede gloves up her arms even though it hadn’t even slip off an inch. That had become an old habit of hers – to smooth up the material in case it exposed to the world her fingers that kill.

Her colleague laughed. ‘Aren’t we all drifting away at our own desks? God, I miss my husband and kids already, and it’s barely nine hours since I’ve last seen them and told them they were pain in my ass.’

Meghan faked a chortle. ‘Yeah, I miss my husband and son too,’ she lied.

Exchanging goodbyes to a few others of her colleagues, Meghan picked up her briefcase and left the company she was working at. She groaned inwardly when she remembered that she had parked her car on the basement two parking lot today.
It was a big company. The majority of its employees owned cars, and it was known that only the few unlucky latecomers have to leave theirs on the estranged lot at basement two each day.
She had to take the lift down to basement one – the normal parking lot – before heading far left for the separate and only flight of stairs leading down to basement two.

Her body certainly didn’t feel up to walking such a treacherously long distance, especially in the freezing cold weather today.

Thinking piteously about everything that was wrong with her life, Meghan clambered down the steel steps and pushed open the door to a desolated parking lot. Apart from her white mini-cooper, there were barely five more other cars parked in the depressing lot.

Opening her briefcase, Meghan began digging for her car keys stashed somewhere underneath the crumpled papers. Those thick gloves of hers were definitely not making her job easier.
She felt a sudden swift presence catching up with her from the right. Abandoning the search for her keys, she looked up, surprised. She had definitely not heard any footsteps.
Everything after that moment happened quickly.
A svelte woman loomed into Meghan’s focal point – those wavy black hair of hers accentuated distinctly against a small, pale face.
Meghan found herself locked into an intense gaze with a most shocking pair of compelling grey eyes.
The woman brought a lithe palm up to her mouth and parted her thin lips. With the slightest blow, an orb of thick grey smoke manifested from her palm before engulfing Meghan’s head within it in a split second.

Meghan felt the energy seeping off her pores instantly, and with a single flutter of her eyelids, she closed her eyes and fell onto the ground limply, the consciousness being knocked out of her like a wind.

Prologue

2006-04-03T15:52:00.000+08:00

Paige walked into ward number 50, and a shudder of chilled air ambushed her senses immediately.
I gotta remember to ask somebody to adjust the temperature in this ward.
She thought to herself, picking up the clipboard hanging at the foot of the bed.
It’s freaking cold in here.
Scrolling her eyes down the front of the page, Paige cross-checked the patient’s vital status with the digits flashing upon the machine. The machine that was keeping this comatose patient alive.
She nodded with the details, satisfied.
Placing the clipboard back where it belonged, Paige found her eyes traveling back to the heavily bandaged young man, lying motionlessly under the pale green hospital sheets.
The sleeping beauty.
That was the informal address the doctors and nurses had referred to this patient affectionately by.
He was indeed good-looking.
Even under a thick head bandage and covered with swelling bruises, Paige had a pretty strong hunch the patient had with him a breath-taking face.
She wondered if those blue-eyes registered under the ‘patient’s information’ column were as captivating as she’d imagined it to be.

Secretly, she prayed he would open his eyes soon enough to prove her right.

Eighteen year old Matt Peters had been rushed into Salvation City Hospital four days ago, flanked by anxious paramedics all working to sustain the life fleeting dangerously off his badly injured body.

The patch of medical personnel who overtook the paramedics spent hours in the operating theatre, attempting a chained series of complicated procedures to stow the patient past the critical stage, despite obvious odds against them.
They succeeded.
It was a rare miracle, some said.

Matt Peters had fallen into a frozen lake that gave way, suffered a lethal gash to his head amidst other severe injuries, and he had survived.
His heart was believed to have stopped functioning for a total of twenty minutes – being solidified motionless by the sub-zero temperature in the frozen lake.
In those twenty-minutes, Matt Peters had died.
And then, assisted by Salvation City’s surgeons, he had come back to life again.
He was however still unconscious.
It would take more than a miracle this time for him to arouse from the deep slumber.

The police had been informed, but neither the authorities nor the hospital could locate any family or relatives of Matt Peters.
For the four days that he had laid unconscious in the intensive ward, Matt had received neither a single visitor nor a bouquet of get-well flowers.
It was as though nobody knew him.

This made the doctors and nurses on close watch all the more sympathetic towards their young patient.

As she stood in the quiet room, staring at Matt’s unflinchingly form, Paige had a sudden sensation that she was being watched.

It was a ludicrous thought. Besides her and the comatose patient, there was nobody else in ward number 50. The door behind her was closed.
Feeling the skin on her bare arms rising up into tiny goose pimples, the young nurse walked briskly over to the windows and gazed outside.
There wasn’t much to be seen: it had been snowing heavily since the afternoon, and everything was now marred and concealed under a blanket of white.
Paige could see her breath form and disappear before her in little white mists, and she wondered for a moment if it was as cold in the room as it was outside.
Drawing the blinds, she turned her head and surveyed the room once more.
The illogical sensation of being scrutinized by a pair of invisible eyes was still nagging at her.

She surveyed the room slowly, determined to prove the uncomfortable thought in her head wrong.
That’s when her sight fell upon the surveillance camera suspending from the right corner of the ceiling.
She knew that a special number of wards in Salvation City had with them security cameras.
She never knew why, though.
Personally, she thought the cameras’ presence infringed upon the privacy of the patients and their visitors, but it was never the position of a new nurse to question the hospital management.

At least now she knew why she felt like she was being under watch.

Turning her heels quickly, Paige strode back to the door, rubbing her hands back and forth her arms to keep herself warm.
This ward was certainly much colder than the others.
Glancing back one last time to make sure the patient was fine, Paige exited the freezing cell gladly and closed the door behind her.
A cup of hot coffee and a short break in the restroom sounded really welcoming to her now.
Making her way down the empty hall, Paige was surprised to see a couple clad in civilians’ clothing hurrying past her. It was definitely way past visiting hours.

‘Excuse me, but visiting hours are…’

The man – tall, dark-haired and dashing – merely glanced up at Paige for a split second, before bowing his head down once more, never once losing his hastened pace.
The attractive woman beside him didn’t even seem to register Paige’s protest.
The nurse noticed faint traces of semi-white snow flakes sprinkled across both their coats, and realized that they couldn’t have been in the hospital for too long.
The flakes would have otherwise dissolved into damp patches by then.

The handsome couple rounded a corner and disappeared from the stuttering nurse’s view.
Shaking her head at their incivility, Paige sighed and continued her way back to the restroom. She still hadn’t quite worked up the courage to being firm with visitors that hanged around past standard visiting hours.
She was just too nice for her own good sometimes.
With a cup of brewing coffee in her hands and her tired legs rested on a couch, Paige decided she felt much better immediately.
I would learn the ropes to being a good nurse one day.
She comforted herself, closing her eyes for a quick rest.

It had barely been two minutes of shuteye for the exhausted nurse, when the emergency alarm fixated in the restroom wailed into live.
‘Code blue, code blue, ward number 50, code blue,’ the digitally formatted voice repeated over and over again urgently.
At that moment, Paige’s beeper began making impatient noises as well, awaking her frantically.
It was her patient who was in trouble this time.
It didn’t take her long to realize it was that Matt Peters in ward number 50.
Placing her coffee down hastily, Paige dashed down the hall way in the direction of the intensive ward.
She wasn’t exactly the first one who responded to code blue – a crowd consisting of doctors and nurses alike were already packed at the entrance to the room.

‘Excuse me… Excuse me…’ Paige muttered, trying to inch her way through the frenzied medical personnel for a closer look at the situation.

It wasn’t long before she saw what everybody was gaping at.
It was an empty bed, with all the tubes and drips detached and strewn haphazardly across the sheets.
The unconscious patient had disappeared.

*

‘You were the last to see him, Paige?’ Doctor Campbell asked, flipping through the pages in the patient’s clipboard chart.
‘Yes I was,’ Paige nodded. ‘Barely twenty minutes ago.’
The tall black doctor fell into silence, his eyes traveling back and forth between the papers in his hands and the empty bed.
‘Did the patient show any unusual sign that hinted he might be regaining conscious?’
Paige shook her head.
The anticipating crowd gathered at the entrance to the ward fell into a unison hush, each clueless to what had, and was going to happen.
‘The way the drips and the monitoring nodes were removed from the patient, it wasn’t done by a medical professional.’
Doctor Campbell paused, eyeing the dislocated tubes disapprovingly.
‘I had reason to believe the patient had been taken away hastily by untrained hands.’
Paige frowned. ‘We have to find him back as soon as possible, Doctor. He could die out there.’
The doctor snapped the clipboard chart shut and eyed the anxious nurse. ‘Don’t you think I know that, Ms. Smith?’
Craning his head towards the top right corner of the ward, the doctor motioned to the camera blinking away at them.
‘Follow me to the security department, Ms. Smith. We shall find out who took our patient away.’

Paige had never been in the security room before, but then again, her scope as a nurse never required her to.
Until now, that is.
The darkened room twice the size of a small ward was filled with TV screens, each showing a different part of the hospital premises.
The young security guard on duty, Isaiah, greeted them at the door.

Doctor Campbell nodded at him. ‘Good job there. You alerted us of the missing patient pretty quickly.’

Isaiah scratched his chin and grinned at the compliment. ‘Thanks,’ he replied.

‘You’re certainly better at the job than some of your predecessors.’

‘Nah, it was nothing.’

‘Could you now show us the footages from that ward, please?’

Isaiah nodded eagerly and obliged. The man was behaving like he was bursting with admiration for the senior doctor.

‘Ward 50… Here it is,’ he motioned to a particular screen – camera 46.

It now showed an empty ward, with a few remaining doctor and nurses still left discussing about the missing comatose patient.
The security guard selected the particular screen number on the prime computer and rewound the archived clip.
Images on the screen moved comically backwards, and after a few moments, Paige recognized herself moving alongside everything else on the screen.

‘Here, stop here,’ Doctor Campbell instructed.

The security guard stopped the clip and pressed the ‘play’ button.
Matt Peters was back in his bed, under the sheets with all the nodes attached securely to his body.
Paige watched herself entering the room, checked his status, draw the blinds, even looked up at the camera… Everything was exactly how she had remembered it to be.
Matt Peters didn’t even stir nor show the slightest muscle movement.

They saw her stepping out of the ward and closing the door.
The patient remained motionlessly on the bed; beeping from the machines giving the droning backdrop a boring effect.
It didn’t seem like anything was about to happen.

They were wrong.
Paige gasped suddenly, her eyes widening. She felt Doctor Campbell stiffened beside her.
The TV screen they were looking at now showed the speckled ceiling of the ward.

Someone or something had shifted the surveillance camera in ward 50 so that it faced the top-right corner of the ward.

They could no longer see what was happening at the patient’s bed.
The three souls in the security room stood in appalled silence.
Images on the TV screen began flickering about unstably, and then as subtly as it had happened just now, the focal point was back where it belonged – the patient’s bed.
Only now, it was empty, the sheets tasseled and the patient gone.

‘What the…’ the security guard exclaimed under bated breath.

Reaching forward, he rewound and played the video clip once more.
The entire sequence of happenings replayed itself on the screen, the camera being turned out of focus and all.

‘This couldn’t be possible! The camera’s way too high for hands to reach it,’ the brown-haired security guard mulled out loud, more to himself than to the others.

Paige stood rooted to the ground, her heart thumping wildly within her. Conversations and gossips from her nursing school days suddenly came gushing back into her head.
‘The urban legends…’ she began, her eyes wide opened. ‘All those stories about missing patients! About people with magical powers! Everything is true, isn’t it?!’
For a second, a flash of fear streaked across Doctor Campbell’s dark eyes.
He cleared his throat quickly, and his usual solemnity reappeared.
‘You’re exhausted, Paige. Go take a rest.’
Doctor Campbell paused, waiting for the confused young nurse to leave the room.
Facing her retreating figure, he cleared his throat again.
‘And might I add you have no further business to do with this case anymore.’