Invictus

chapter 20: Apologies

I tried to get out of Trenton what he meant by the whole "apologies" thing, but he wouldn't budge. Just kept telling me that I'd know once we got there.

It was a three hour drive back to Antioch. Trenton constantly stopped at random gas stations, rest stops, and even a MCDonald's along the way.

We never got out of the car when we made the stops though. That told me the reasoning for it all was to keep us off the main road and out of sight.

We were being watched. Worse yet, we didn't know "who" was watching us. Yeah Ori-gen, but who were they? Some shadowy organization that was hunting down Freak kids with special abilities? What did they want with us? To kill us? To use our abilities for good? For evil?

When I asked Trenton, he said he wasn't sure either. In his visions he only saw the organization's name. The details of who Ori-gen was were unknown to him too.

I had learned over the course of those three hours that Kya's boyfriend Jacob, the one I had killed, was also a Freak. He was able to move at the speed of sound. I guess he had the same idea I did when he joined his school's football team. Looks like that didn't turn out too well for him. Oops.

They had met on a sub Reddit page called about superpowers. What started off as a joke blossomed into an all out infatuation after a month or so. Kya even moved from her Ohio home to Illinois just to be close to him, enrolling at Wendell Phillips shortly after. The nitty gritty details of her life were vague though. I got the impression that it wasn't just Jacob that made her want to leave everything in Ohio behind, but neither Trenton or I pressed that issue.

I learned Trenton's story too. He began seeing visions two years ago of other Freaks and started communicating with them through both snail mail and e-mail, as well as through various social media channels. That was how Kya and Trenton had gotten to know each other. It made sense now why she see seemed too take to trusting him almost instantly.

Trenton left his brother Damian behind in California, a man he called "the most vile human being he knew", and went looking for others like himself. Apparently, there were a few others out there. A girl in Kansas City who could speak to animals who worked at a zoo, another kid in Miami Florida who used his teleportation abilities to smuggle cocaine in from South America. There was even a dude in New York City who could read minds. He worked as a "prodigy" psychologist at the tender age of twenty-two. He'd gotten his masters and doctorate in two years, Trenton told us. I had no idea what a master's or doctorate was, so I pretended to be impressed.

Those were just the one's he'd met online. There were others too... but they were all dead. At least, that's what Trenton believed. He could no longer see their "life threads" as he called it. The visions of them had disappeared around eight months ago. Right around the time when my own abilities had begun to manifest themselves.

The "V" on my right hand I realized was not a birth mark after all. Kya had an "X" on her own and Trenton had a "VII" on his. They were Roman numerals, Trenton and Kya had agreed. Other than for numbering purposes however, their significance was unknown to us.

We pulled up to Tia's apartment right around dinner. Tia's car was still in the driveway and the lights were on inside. The door to the garage was still open too. She must have just gotten in.

I sat in the driveway fiddling with my hands nervously.

"What now?" I asked Trenton.

Her royal highness was asleep in the passenger seat. Too much activity over the past few days must have made the Ice Queen tired. I was exhausted too, I just couldn't get my heart to beat steady enough for me to doze off. Knowing we were headed to see Tia only made it worse.