We pulled into the imitation burger joint and decided that it would be easier to all go inside instead of the drive thru.
Altogether we had nine trays of food and we picked a couple of tables in the back. Ronnie, Kenny and Rachel sat with me at one table. Sandy was ok to sit with Mike and Mary.
“So I think that we should put all of our abilities, or whatever you want to call what they did to us, on the table.” Ronnie took the words out of my mouth, “I think we all have an idea as to what Grace can do.”
“I have telekinetics and telepathy.” Rachel’s voice issued from inside all of our heads.
“They decided to call my thing Chronokinetics, which is the ability to manipulate time with my mind. Dr. Cid told one of the guys watching that they had never seen the ability before.” Kenny held up his hands where a golden ball of energy appeared, “That’s all that I can do to demonstrate. They put a clock in and watched it tick backwards.”
“They called mine Electrokinetics. I’m surprised that I’m not constantly magnetized.” Ronnie held out his hand and showed me the veins on the back of his hand that pulsated with electricity with his heart beat.
Sandy came over to the table and knelt down beside me, "Metamorphosis.” her hair grew three inches and turned from brown to black, to an unreal green.
“Now that’s amazing.” I took a bite of my second burger.
“Those two both have the ability to control water in different states. Mike is better with the liquid form and Mary is better with ice. They also have a constant telepathic link to each other, like a supercharged version of link that normal twins have.” Rachel explained.
Once we had all finished eating, we took turns in the bathroom, before getting back onto the highway. The sun had gone down and there were far fewer cars on the road.
“I have another question. How long were we in there?” I looked back to Rachel.
She shrugged, "I was in there several years.”
I turned on the GPS that was built into the dashboard of the truck. I flipped through the settings looking for the date and time, but the thing wouldn’t tell me anything until I put in a destination. So I entered the address of the orphanage.
“You will arrive at your destination at four a.m.” the GPS announced with a British accent. Up in the corner of the GPS the date was 7/6/2063.
I looked up at Ronnie, "We were there a month.”
“More than a month actually.”
I sat back in the seat and rubbed my palms into my eyes, feeling a head ache was coming on quickly. Our incarceration had lasted longer than I could have dreamed.
All I wanted was to be home in my basement bed.
Chapter 7: Home
We arrived in the small town of Greencrest as the sun was starting to come up over the nearby trees. The town was empty, the streets void of life, but that was completely normal for our home town. There were maybe a total of twenty thousand people in the whole town, and most of those people had to drive to neighboring cities for work.
We pulled up to the lot where the orphanage used to be located and Ronnie cut the trucks engine.
We all climbed out and stretched.
Ronnie and I stared at the lot in an awestruck state. Not only was the house gone, but it looked as if it had never been there to begin with. There was not a spot of evidence, nothing at all, just an empty plot of grass. The gravel driveway and the shed were both gone as well.
“How can this even be possible?” I asked Ronnie who was knelt down beside where the front door would have been.
He reached out and felt the grass.
“I don’t know but I don’t think we need to hang around here too long.” He stood and rubbed his hands together.
We all agreed.
“Let’s go down to the diner and see about some breakfast. I am already hungry again.” I rubbed my stomach absent mindedly.
“Me too.” Kenny chimed in.
“I overheard, one of the scientists talking about that once. He said that our metabolisms are amped up to like ten times their normal rate to compensate for the extra energy needed to use the abilities.” Rachel recalled.
“Over heard, or were you in his head?” I hated the idea that she could freely walk around people’s minds.
“Grace, please, I am really sorry about invading your mind.” She pleaded.
I considered for a moment and decided to let it go, “Forget it. So, how long were you locked up?”
“Now that I know the date I have a better idea. Something like ten years.” she looked away and pushing away a tear that cropped up around her eye.
“You would have had to been what six or seven when they took you? What about your parents?” We all walked down the side walk. Greencrest was a small town, anyone could walk to anywhere in the town, if need be. The diner was only a couple of blocks away from the orphanage. Sandy was going to apply for a job there over the summer.
“Seven.” she said quietly, “My parents were killed in the same accident that landed me in the ICU.
“Where did you come from?” Kenny asked.
“I couldn’t tell you, I’m not sure. I was in and out of it so much while I was there that my memories before that place are all munched up. I can only remember flashes. The twins were only five when we were abducted from the hospital. They know nothing before their abduction.”
We went into the diner and sat in the corner booth at the back; it was bigger so we could all seven sit around one table. Ronnie counted the cash that we had left and decided that we still had enough for us all to go ahead and get whatever we wanted.
“We were locked away in that place for more than a month, and I can only remember eating a dozen or so of those nasty protein bars.” I wanted real food more than anything.
“The caretakers had two ways of dealing with our nutrition. First, there was the protein bars but when I refused to eat, they would fight me to the ground and inject me with something. I don’t know what was in the needle but I was never hungry after a round with that stuff.” Rachel remembered.
“They hurt.” Mike sat across from me at the far end of the table.
Mary nodded.
“I must have been unconscious for a lot more time than I had realized.” I was having the hardest time adjusting to the time gap.
The waitress came over to our table and started to take everyone’s orders. I ordered a stack of waffles, three eggs, sausage, bacon, toast, and orange juice. Everyone else ordered about the same amount of food.
“It’s going to take a while; the griddle is just now heating up.” The waitress smiled a fake smile and took all of our menus.
We all smiled back as she walked away.
“So what are we going to do next?” Ronnie asked as soon as the waitress was out of earshot.
“I’m not sure, I think that you and me should go up to the school and see if we are missing, but beyond that I’ve got nothing.” I played with my napkin, it was a habit that I had had since I was a small child.
“Why just the two of you?” Kenny was upset at being left out.
“Rachel isn’t from around here like we are and things would go smoother at the school if there were fewer of us poking around. You guys can all go to the store and get some food that we can keep in the truck, maybe some other things that you come across. Some better pants, perhaps.” I pulled on the enormous waist of the men’s pants I was wearing.
The food arrived in a grand fashion; the waitress had to get the cook’s assistance to carry it all out from the back, and she demanded that we pay for the meal before we ate a single bite.
Ronnie shelled out the hundred bucks and even though she was rude he gave her a twenty dollar tip. She took the money happily and went along her way.