Keep Running

Chapter 2 - Ben

I first met my father when he came home from the war. And out of the hospital. I was five years old. I didn't recognize him but I clung to my mother's hand. And he looked at me. With sharp grey eyes.
"I'm your father, 'course you wouldn't know that. I'm not mad," he said, but his voice sounded mad. "I'm not."
"He's little," my mother said, clutching my hand tighter.
"I'm not scaring him. He's not scared," my father said.
He never properly told me he could read my mind. It just became, second nature sort of. Nothing in my head was off limits. I could be across the house and he'd know I was thinking of running down the stairs.
Never mean, never cruel. Just omniscient. And people were always after us. Of course I believed him. Why wouldn't I? He knew my thoughts as soon as I did. When I was four I thought that was just how things worked. I didn't know why my mother didn't. Maybe that was how fathers were. I didn't go to school. I had my books in my room. And of course he knew if I hadn't been reading them. He knew everything.
Then Caroline was born. My first job was to stand watch outside her room. If my father had to go out. That was what I did. And he'd know if I hadn't been loyal to my post.
'You don't have to do that," my mother sighed.
I nodded, "Yes I do." I didn't know how she could think that he wouldn't find out. He found out everything. I wasn't afraid. I knew we had to hide. I always knew we had to hide.
"People will come. The Americans will come. They will cut me and your sister open. Do things to see why we're like this. Do you understand me? They will cut us apart," he showed me the scar at the base of his skull, "You ever going to let them do that to your sister?"
"No sir," I said, and of course I meant it.
Caroline was like him. Psychic I began to think of it. How they were different from me. She wasn't in my head like he was. But she was still special. When she was two she learned how to scoot her toys across the floor, using only her mind.  Soon that turned into tugging anything off the counters. She only minded our father. Even then she knew he was in her head too. He'd snap his fingers and she'd stop her mutant baby games. Only him though. Not me. Not our mother.
Our mother left by the time Caroline was three. I was eight. She just left one morning. Said she was going out to the store. Never saw her again. She'd call but I was eight and angry. I'd refuse to talk to her. I didn't see why she got to leave and we were still barricaded in the house. Why she got to be free whatever free was.
"Your mother's not strong enough. You're strong enough," was the only explanation my father had for me. It didn't satisfy me but he didn't change it.
Caroline didn't know anything else, our father's omniscience, my loyal protection. She was secure, and happy enough. But we didn't talk.
"Can't you do that?" I asked, as we watched Caroline try to make her fork and knife stand up.
"Eat your food," my father said, flatly.
"You can," I frowned. I knew he could. Once he'd stopped her from getting her hands on a knife. Once he'd stopped me from tripping down the stairs. But we didn't talk about it.
"Eat your dinner, Ben," my father said, flatly.
Caroline sighed, frustrated when she couldn't get them to dance as she wished. He never chastised her. But he also didn't teach her.
Life had to change somehow. We just didn't know how. Or why.
Helicopters came. They were hunting us. It was unspoken. Of course they'd finally caught up with us.
"Run. Just keep running. And never look back. Take care of your sister," he shoved bags into our arms. Passports. Money. A change of clothes. Food. Of course weapons. All packed and ready to go. Had been for years. But now it was finally time.
"Take care of your sister, go," he kissed both of our foreheads, then pushed us down the tunnel. It led to the local church.
And for the last time I left that house. They killed him I was sure. And my sister and I were alone.
I was ten. She was five.
Within a week I had proved to be a smooth and capable liar. For someone who'd never gotten away with a falsehood in his life. Perhaps that's why. It was liberating. Our parents? Always somewhere else. Meeting us at the train station. Already on the train. In the market. Caroline followed my lead. The odd psychic antic to occasionally speed our escape, and we survived quite well on the streets. I had no morals and was content to lie cheat and steal our way into a bed for the night, or dinner. Motel rooms proved easy to break into. Pockets easy to pick.
Canada had the loosest mutant laws so we tried to go there. Never got past customs. America was easier to get into. My long term plan was to cross into America from Mexico, and make our way north towards Canada. Cars were too risky to steal. We were either walking, or lying our way onto a car or bus.
We didn't make it through Mexico. Twelve years since our original flight. Caroline was seventeen and I was twenty two. We weren't children who needed to claim our parents were waiting on the other side of the next security check point. We were young adults who had a series of smooth lies as covers, and a reasonable amount of spare cash on hand from our various cons. Canada was an eventuality. We were living a decent life on the streets.
I came home one night. Home was a hotel room. Late. I'd go alone sometimes if it was too late I figured, or if she complained and wanted to do her own job. That night she'd said she didn't feel well. I genuinely assumed she was planning to go sneak out and hadn't gone far. But when I got back she was sitting on her bed, just crying.
"What happened?" I was instantly suspicious.
She looked up at me with red rimmed eyes. Afraid. "I think I'm pregnant."
That was not what I expected nor did I react very well. I knew it was in my face that I didn't need another hungry mouth to feed. I had nothing good to say. It was stupid.
"I know okay? I know," she said, tears running down her face.
She was three months gone. Denial plus stupid, on both of our parts, I guess. Too late to do anything about it. And I knew we wouldn't make it to Canada in time. And the last place I wanted her to give birth was the US. But. Time wasn't on our side. Moving with a baby was one thing. But I wasn't about to risk her like that.
Our best and only bet was for me to deliver the child in a hotel bathroom.
"No hospitals," Caroline said, "I don't want them taking him."
We knew it was a boy. A cheap clinic scan confirmed that and that her swollen belly was in fact a pregnancy neither of us wanted to exist.
"Rum and coke might beat the family chaos gene and be bit subtle for a minute," I said, as she put my hand on her shifting belly.
But we knew the odds were against us. Our father a mutant, and Caroline both? We didn't know the genetics but we knew the odds were high the child would have some mutation.
By the time she was six months gone I was having headaches every day. I knew damn well what a psychic in your head feels like. Caroline remembered less. We didn't talk about it. But we both guessed.
"If I have to take you in then we just leave before blood tests come back," I reasoned, as she paced, early labor pains started in the middle of the night waking us both up.
"Just get us out of there," she said, sweat soaking her face.
After twelve hours of labor we were giving up. The baby wasn't coming. Everything I had read was telling me the baby was breech. And I was not going to be able to deliver it. Caroline was passing out from exhaustion and the pain.
And I had to save her life. I had no way of knowing if the baby was still alive. But I knew I was losing her.
I caved. I took her to a hospital. She was rushed back for an immediate c-section. I never bothered to clarify that I wasn't the father so they let me in. Caroline's vitals were good. I was holding her hand and ignoring my splitting headache. I didn't want it to be true.
Little Rowan entered the world amid pure chaos, of his own design. The doctors were no sooner were lifting the baby free than they were collapsing in seizures. I dove, barely able to rescue the slippery, bloody infant, still tangled in his own umbilical cord.
"Shh, shhh, I got you, I got you, we're good," I said, cradling the tiny baby in my arms, wrapping him as best I could in my own t-shirt. The doctors twisting on the floor. Alarms were going off someone hit a panic alarm.
The baby was still sobbing miserably, and while my head split with pain I was better than the others. I knew fully well how to sooth a telepath.  Calm, pleasant thoughts at the front of my mind. Going home. Safe. No fear. Nothing bad is going to happen.
"Beautiful boy," I whispered.
Caroline mumbled, incoherent mostly from the drugs, "Let me hold him."
"Here, here, nurse him, we need to go," I threw blankets over her, nestling her baby as securely as I could in her arms. Little Rowan stopped his crying, happy to be with his mother.
I tried to keep the panic from my brain, lifting my sister into my arms, one arm under her legs, that one had a gun in it, the other holding her and the baby to my chest.
And I headed for the door. By now alarms were going off. Two security guards took shots at me. Caroline tipped her head, deflecting them even drugged out as she was. I took them out with a shot each. I wasn't about to get in an elevator so I headed for the stairs.
I made it out onto the street. Farther than I probably should have. A sniper's bullet got me in the shoulder. I never saw the guy. I returned fire and tried to run. But they surrounded me. It was risk getting Caroline shot or stop. I stopped.
And they took Rowan away. He'd passed out asleep. Never realized he was being taken from his mother's arms. Caroline tried to fight them and they tased her. Two hours after she gave birth they tased her in my arms.
Rowan had committed a triple homicide in his first few hours of life. Later research would tell me, a common crime for powerful telepaths. Most telepaths wind up causing minor headaches or seizures, but the dangerously powerful? Of which there are only a few in the world? Murder. They don't know any better.
We pleaded. We had false IDs that we gave them, I said I was the father. They let us see him a couple of times after that. Only because he was dying. He wouldn't eat for them. He wanted his mother.
I still imagined my father could read my thoughts. After they took Rowan I prayed the same for him. That he could feel at least his mother somehow. She would sing to him every night, sobbing, holding the precious baby blankets she had ready to wrap him in.
When I last saw him he was dying of malnutrition, stank of crotch rot, and had bed sores because no one dared pick up and move him. Dying slowly in a steel cage they could shock him in. They had tried twice to kill him. Shocks didn't do it he'd turn off the electricity. And it was against the Mutant Protection Act to use starvation but in the end I don't know if that stopped them.
We didn't give up. I cleaned up my act. Drank less. We went into the US, that was where we thought they'd sold Rowan anyway, if he lived, he went to a bigger facility.
We started crashing at colleges. It was easy enough to lie my way into dorms, and sit in classes. My skills at forgery improved. I learned, slowly, about computers, and programming. A way to make money without actual physical theft was highly appealing. And Caroline finally got a taste of normal life. Real friends. We never stayed anywhere too long. But with enough classes we could both get real jobs, under false identities. We made it to Canada. Finally, we moved to Vancouver, close enough we could back into the states if we got a lead on Rowan, and eventually that translated to any other mutant that might need a ride across the boarder, or advice on how to disappear.
"Ben, Ben, you know that mutant we were following? The one who saved the senator's daughter?" Caroline asks, coming down the stairs to the basement, followed by a couple of dogs.
I minimize a few tabs the contents of which would derail this entire conversation, "The one that we thought may have escaped?"
"Yeah," Caroline says, looking at her laptop.
I turn around in my chair, "And—?"
"A woman contacted me through the website, she recognized him," she says.
"Family?" I ask. That would mean he's not our Rowan. But we think he had birthmarks that Rowan didn't anyway.
"Basically. She said she met him over ten years ago, when he was out doing field work well she doesn't say it like that but that's what it was," Caroline says.
"Name?" I ask.
"No name, but she thinks she can find him again if he got loose, be willing to help him escape," Caroline frowns.
"Bit suspicious," I say, "Why so eager if you just saw him?"
"If he saved her life," Caroline shrugs.
"Why not say that?" I frown.
"Maybe it's personal and he saved a family member's life?" Caroline shrugs.
"It's not new information though," I sigh, rubbing my face with one hand, "All right."
"I got another hit too. This one you should enjoy. Woman claims to know who he is, wants a phone call," Caroline says.
"You know I love being assholish to people over the phone, what's the number?" I ask, logging onto one of my location protected google voice numbers.
"I know you do, and I was going to call myself then I remembered you haven't had the chance to be a dick lately, so," she says, "Texting you the number."
"Thank you," I say, typing it into the computer, "You know it's probably not Rowan with those birth marks?"
"He's someone's Rowan," Caroline sighs.
"Just don't want your hopes up," I say.
"It's been thirty five years, this is as good as I'm going to get," she says.
"Sorry," I sigh. I know I'm saying it as much myself as for her.
"Hello—?" A woman's voice answers on the other end.
"You contacted the Mutant Freedom Society?" I ask. I wanted to call it the Brotherhood of Evil Gay Psychics and for some reason got overruled. Whatever I stand by all my decisions while drunk.
"Yes um—my name's Gwen—-,".
"I'm not giving you my real name I don't recommend you do," I say.
"Oh um, right. Look I don't know if you're the right people to call or anything like that but I'm trying to track down the family of a mutant who—recently died," she says, "And I think I met, well I did meet and talk to the one who you posted."
"Do you have their names?" I ask, twirling a pen in my hand.
"Sort of um—all right this is going to sound weird but for sake of time. A few weeks ago I met a man who turned out to be a mutant who—I don't know what they did to him exactly but they'd covered up all of his memories. They were housing him with the younger man, who was in your photograph. They weren't related. But the man who I met was trying to find out who his family was and he—well they'd —he died, a few days, ago, at least free, and I think the other one escaped," she sighs.
"Okay," I say. Mutant escapes are fairly common hence the website I didn't get to name for some reason. "And? Do you have ID numbers then? Anything?"
"The younger man—the one in the picture, they called him Dano, but that was what his handlers had called him I don't know if that was his birth name. He was a telepath. We think they both were," she says.
"Think?" I ask.
Caroline frowns. Telepaths are rare, one in a hundred.
"Oh Dano was definitely he could —he was. Anyway, the man who died they call were calling a number like he was some sort of experiment, 29, he got back his memories mostly in the end and realized he was a mutant he hadn't known that but he never figured out his real name. He remembered his kid's names and I'm trying to find them for him so at least—they know what happened to him," she sighs.
"All right," I sigh.
"He said he told them to use fake names the girl was a mutant too, but their real names were Benjamin and Caroline—,"
"What?" I breath. No. No. You're dead. Please don't be dead. But you died.
Caroline stares at me.
"He called them that anyway but they like, had fake names going on after that he doesn't know if Hagen was their real last name but it could have been a cover," she says.
"I need to know everything. This case is—known to us—," that was good when I'm struggling to think coherently, "—where is he?"
"I buried him. I didn't want them finding him. He thought that he was caught or whatever at least forty or fifty years ago, if not longer," she says, sighing, "If you have any way to find them I'd like to at least tell them what I know of what happened to him."
"No, no I can find them. Yes—um, I'm going to send you a secure email where we can meet—,"
"I didn't give you my email—?"
"Oh I know. You're going to meet and tell us everything you know," I say, typing rapidly.
"Do you know where the younger man went?" Caroline whispers to me.
"Ah—do you know anything about the whereabouts of the younger mutant housed with him? Dano you said they called him?" I ask.
"No, he expected to die getting, well 29, out, but some, well friends contacted me. His old handlers. They can't do anything they'd get in trouble but the implied that he'd likely survived."
"Okay, thank you, I will meet you at that address, in three days, thank you," I say.
"Thank you. I really do want to help."
"You have," I breath.
We both hang up.
"Shit shit shit," I breath.
"He—you said he was dead," Caroline says.
"He stopped talking to me in my head. I felt him go," I say, head down on the desk, "Carrie it was over forty years ago. Forty three years ago, he was thirty when he died maybe, he'd be in his seventies?"
"So?"
"So how many mutants live that long?"
"They said they did something to him," she says.
"I know," I nod, "Okay—ah we're going to find out. And our mysterious Dano likely knows more than this Gwen."
"I've never heard that name," she says.
"Shortening of Daniel, it's from Hawaii five 0 which I used to watch for some reason," I say, dryly, "Probably the kid was watching it or something so they called him that they don't name mutants."
"We need to find him, not the least because he knows something but also if he is on the run help him get an ID and out of the US," Caroline says,
"Agreed. I'll make him up an ID we'll take it when we go. There's not a lot to do now but hope he finds one of the websites and realizes he's got some protection," I say.
"Logically he should, right?"
"Yeah, I mean what else would he be doing he has nowhere to go?"