Thunder and Storm

Long Beach Port

SALLY.

I woke up to someone shaking me. I got off the floor and stretched my limbs. My muscles were sore from sleeping on the gym floor.

“Wake up, Sally. I need your help with something,” said Cameron.

I groaned. “It’s so early in the morning.”

“It’s two in the afternoon, Sally. I’ve been waiting for you to wake up all day.”

“What!” My eyes widened. “I’ve been asleep for that long? Why didn’t you wake me?”

“It doesn’t matter, I’m waking you now. Come on, get up. We have to go somewhere.”

“Where are we going?” I got off the floor and stretched. I knew he said I’d been asleep for most of the day but it felt like I’d only gone to sleep two hours ago. I felt tired.

“We’re going to pick up Hiro,” he said as he pushed the door open and walked out of the gym.

“And where is Hiro?” I asked.

He took his phone out of his pocket and showed me the message Hiro had sent to him. He was at Long Beach Port.

I frowned. “That’s like 359 miles away from here.”

“Yes and that’s why I need you to get me there.”

I rolled my eyes at him. “How convenient for you. I don’t have a compass in my head, Cameron. I can’t go to places I’ve not seen or been to before.”

“Can’t you at least try?”

I gave him a look. He sighed. “Okay. What happens if you try to open a portal to a place you’ve never been before?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know, I’ve never tried it.”

“Fine. Let’s try something else.” He started typing on his phone. While he did that, I looked around. The sun was shining brightly now, most of the snow had already melted away. I took a deep breath. It would soon be time for spring.

My stomach grumbled and I groaned. It reminded me I’d not eaten a thing yesterday. With all this running around, I had not had time to grab a bite.

“Here.” He handed me his phone, showing a picture of Long Beach Port. “Does that help?”

“Yes but can’t we go sometime later? I’m really hungry and I’m tired. This is going to take a lot of energy and I don’t have that right now.”

He groaned. “There’s no food, Sally. We don’t have anything to eat.”

“Aww! I can’t do this.” I moved back and rested my back on the wall. He looked confused and helpless. He grabbed his hair and pulled, letting out a breath. The glare of the sun made his blond hair glow. He looked like a beautiful angel.

My cheeks reddened and I looked away. I did not just think he was an angel. What was wrong with me? It must be the hunger.

“Okay, let’s do this,” he said and I looked up at him. “You’ll try to open the portal and I promise we’ll get something to eat before coming back. There’s gotta be a store or something around there.”

“I don’t know, Cameron. I only saw water. There’d probably be lots of fishes there to eat,” I joked and he glared at me.

“Come on, let’s go.”

I pulled away from the wall reluctantly and caught him trying to hide a smile. He did get my joke after all. I shook my head at him. I pictured the port and I opened the portal.

“See? That was easy,” he said and went through it.

“That was easy,” I mimicked. Easy for him to say. I could’ve opened a portal to Siberia for all he knew. I went through the portal and closed it.

He was waiting by the gate to the port staring at his phone. The port was just like I’d seen in the picture, with lots of containers and ships in the water. I didn’t understand what Hiro would be doing at a port. Cameron had said he was running an errand for him a few days ago but it couldn’t be to ship something.

“What are we doing here?”

“We’re here to get Hiro,” he said like it should’ve been obvious.

“Of course I know that. Why is Hiro at a shipping port?”

He didn’t answer. Unbelievable. He’d woken me up and dragged me here with barely anything in my stomach and he refused to tell me why we were here in the first place?

“Why are we here, Cameron? I didn’t just risk my life opening a portal to an unknown place for you to withhold details from me.”

“He’s on his way.” He looked up from his phone.

“Seriously, Cameron?” I couldn’t believe him.

“Fine. It’s not like you’ve been entirely truthful about a lot of things either.” I gritted my teeth. I was too hungry to be doing this right now.

“I and the others used to stay in one of the safe houses at Los Angeles with a man named Jeff. He was one of the doctors at the safe house and he had his doubts about what caused the outbreak. He was trying to convince everyone the outbreak was just part of Medex’s plan to destroy the world,” he said and I scoffed. 

“Yeah, exactly what everyone thought. Hell, even I thought Jeff was crazy but some of the guards found out that we were enhanced and locked us up. They were going to sell us out and Jeff helped us escape.”

“And let me guess, Jeff was caught but you guys escaped, isn’t it?” I said making quotes in the air and he nodded. “That’s just a made up story, Cameron. You really expect me to believe that?”

“You think it’s made up? I can create a storm with my bare hands, Sally and you can do whatever it is you did at the cave the other day and an organization trying to destroy the world is made up?”

Well, when he put it like that I supposed he did make sense. “What proof do you have that it was really Medex who created the virus?”

“They created us, didn’t they? And I found the cure too. We just need to get the cure and take it back to Los Angeles then things can go back to the way it was.”

“That’s what you were looking for at the Underground.”

“Yes. We’ve been hitting every Medex facility since we escaped in search of the cure and we found kids in some and others empty. We had been camping out at the cave when I saw trucks driving towards the military base and we found you guys.”

I mulled it over. His plan did make sense. If we could prove the atrocities that organization had done to us, I could finally stop running.

Footsteps approached us and Hiro came out from behind a container. He had an opened bag of chips in his hands. My stomach rumbled, reminding me that I still hadn’t eaten anything. I grabbed the bag from his hands immediately he made it to us.
He glared at me and I smiled with a mouth full of chips. It was junk food but then that was all I’d been eating for the past few weeks.

“Where is it?” Cameron asked.

“I saw them move it into that ship.” He pointed to the biggest ship in the harbor.

“You did good. This makes it easier for us to attack. We just have to think of the best strategy.”

“We have to do it soon. The ice is thawing really fast, in a few days they’ll be able to move it out and then it’s gone.”

I finished the chips and still felt hungry. “Hiro, do you happen to have more?” I shook the empty bag and he gave me a nasty look. He dipped his hand in his pocket and brought out a chocolate bar, I grabbed it and tore it open greedily.

“That’s the only one I have so we’ll have to share it...” he trailed off as I took a huge bite out of it.

I moaned as I chewed. “This is really good, Hiro. This is so good,” I said while chewing and took another bite.

His left eye twitched and he glared at me. “I hate you.”

“Sorry, I’m just so hungry.”

“Let’s go guys before they notice we’re here,” Cameron said.

“Right.” I handed Hiro the little bit of chocolate left. “I saved you some.”

I could swear steam flew out of his ears as he glared down at the wrapper in his hand. Cameron snickered.

I created a portal back to the school and closed it as they stepped through. Hiro stormed off, refusing to spare me another glance.

“I think you made him mad,” Cameron laughed.

“I was really hungry. It’s not easy to tear a space through time and teleport you know.”

He smiled and shook his head at me then walked off. I smiled. Hiro wasn’t so bad. I could picture us becoming friends with time. A thought occurred to me and I called after Cameron. He stopped and turned.

“What did...What did you guys decide about me staying?”

“Oh!” he said. Oh? That wasn’t good.

“Ah!” he rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m not going to lie to you, the others don’t want you here. They’ve taken a vote and they think you’re dangerous. I’m still trying to convince them.”

What? “They can’t kick me out, right? You’re the leader, aren’t you? You can tell them not to kick me out.”

“Yes, I can tell them not to but I can’t make them not to. They don’t feel safe around you.”

“What about you? Do you not feel safe around me?” I asked. He was taken aback by my question. He stared at me and I held my breath. His opinion about me was the most important. If he didn’t feel safe around me there was no way the others would too.

His eyes softened. “Of course I feel safe around you, Sally.”

That was a relief. “Then you can tell them not to kick me out, they’ll listen to you. You said it yourself, Cameron, there are hunters out there. They have a bounty on my head. Where do you want me to go?”

“I know but it’s not that easy.” He seemed frustrated that I wasn’t getting his point. There was nothing to get. After everything I had done for them, they voted to kick me out.

“You lied to us from the beginning. Some of us might be able to forget that but not everyone is so forgiving. The foundation of any relationship is based on trust and you broke that trust,” he said.

He was such an hypocrite. “You’ve lied to me about the real reason you were at the Underground in the first place. You don’t have any right to complain about me not telling you the truth about my power.”

“I never lied to you, I just never told you about it because I didn’t trust you. There’s a difference.”

“Right. The difference between right and wrong can be twisted to suit you but not for me. I’ll go pack up.” I stormed off. It hurt that he would hold on to that little white lie when he also lied to me from the start. I didn’t know where to go but anywhere was better than where I wasn’t wanted.