The Touch

Chapter 9 - The Plan

Blind Bird had shown me the school, the date and the time and now I had worked out a plan.

Two black cars with Watchers inside would be parked outside the school car park at 10am. I knew there was the big burly Watcher inside one car plus a Watcher who would talk to the teacher, but my focus was on how to disarm them and get the girl to safety

Usually Blind Bird's visions showed more details of the event and the target, but this one was only a short snapshot. I knew that the girl was standing with her school friend when it happened and that she had dark black hair, brown eyes and she wore her hair in pigtails. Apart from that there didn't seem to be anything else that I could discern as being different.

I played the vision over and over in my mind. I saw the teacher telling the Watcher that there were no children at their school who had the Touch. They argue for a bit then the door of the car opens and a male Watcher comes out of the black SUV. He is not as big as the Watcher talking to the teacher and his head was bald or very closely shaven. I remember the girl screams and reaches for her friends hand and that is when her eyes light up. The Watcher then turns and runs straight for her and then the vision stops.

The clue has to be the teacher. If I can find him, then I can find her.

I look over the street maps of where I have to go and estimate the time, plus a little extra for any delays. I would have to take the subway and get off at Liverpool station then walk a few blocks to the school. Then I would have to locate the teacher, convince him that I should be trusted, find the child and get the child out of the school. Convincing him was going to be hard, but maybe I could show him who I was and it may register that I am there to help. I also had to watch out for the Watchers as they may arrive early.

Timing was going to be everything and I was not likely to hear from Blind Bird before then, so everything would have to be based on the memory of the vision.

Walking out of the closet door and into my apartment, I can see I still had the package on the table along with the empty tin to give back to Mrs Darion.

I open the package to discover it is another camera I ordered online last week. This one was tiny and would fit onto my clothing like a pin. I had chosen a design of a butterfly as it brought back fond memories of the farm where I had grown up and the beautiful butterflies that would arrive every spring.

I set the pin up to a recording devise in the safe room as I wanted to make sure that I recorded all the details on camera such as the faces of the people who were the Watchers and anything else of interest that I could use later to locate them such as license plate numbers and name identification tags. Although I knew most of their license plates were government owned and registered to a government office, I hoped that one day a license plate would turn up that was owned by one of the insititutes, which were largely hidden in secret locations.

It only took a few minutes to get it installed and working and I decided to place it on the shirt I would be wearing. I would make my way to the shopping mall and get dressed in the toilets. The Mall was a safer place where people are not really taking much notice of their surrounding as they were only interested in what shop they were heading to more than the people coming in and out of the doors.

The reason I couldn't get dressed at my apartment was because I would have to wear a wig and some contacts lenses to disguise myself. If Mrs Darion saw me dressed like that then it would lead to too many questions and suspicions, and I wanted to keep the suspicions minimal around where I lived.

Leaving the apartment block at 7am, I walk the two blocks to the Hillgate Mall. Built in 2026 this mall was probably one of the older malls when it came to security and set-up. Not so popular with the young hip teens it was mostly for middle class and elderly people. I knew I wouldn't look out of placer though as there were a few teens that were obviously dragged along by their parents or grandparents.