Burned Out [Completed]

Martin's Friend

We resumed our trek, riding another three hours and making meaningless conversation before deciding to stop for a few minutes.

It was almost 5:30 now and the alternating crop fields and forests were slowly turning into larger and larger towns, which meant we were almost to Green Bay, much to the relief of my screaming legs.

The town we stopped at was quite bigger than our hometown. We found a small park that was almost deserted, except for a few middle schoolers that stayed away from us.

Martin handed me a granola bar and a bottle of water. "I'm going to try to find more info on the college."

"Good idea." I watched as he walked to a pavilion, but I didn't follow him. I had an idea of my own to work on.

Every time I tried to use my abilities I ended up completely drained. I didn't know what the future held, but I was sure that single fireballs weren't going to solve all of my fights. I'd been lucky so far, but now I needed to work on improving my power.

I held out my hand and let a spark ignite in my palm. I remembered when I first started running track back in middle school. My fastest mile time had been twelve minutes. After months of training and building endurance, I halved that time. How different could this be?

I sat down with my legs crossed and cupped my hands in my lap, nursing the flame. I steadied my breathing and meditated with the fire, increasing its size a little every minute. The spark slowly grew, flooding over my hands like water. I felt a drop of sweat slide down the side of my face.

"Hey, Oli." Martin's voiced shocked me out of my concentration and the flames extinguished.

I swiped one hand across my forehead. "What did you find?"

"Well apparently Jin is really Jin Jr.," Mart said, plopping down in the grass next to me. He handed me his phone, which displayed a picture of two men smiling and shaking hands.

The one on the left had the same eye shape and small nose that Jin had. He was clearly Jin's father.

The man on the right also looked familiar. He had narrow-rimmed glasses that framed his shining hazel eyes. His light brown hair looked like it hadn't seen a comb in a week and his tie was crooked, but he was undeniably good looking in a nerdy way.

Then my eyes caught the caption below the photo.

Professor Ridgley welcomes the newest member of Winston College, Professor Jin Rho.

He looked familiar because he looked exactly like me. I know this is stupid, but I had never seen my father before. Mom never kept any pictures and I'd never asked to see one. Why would I? I always thought he was a deadbeat.

"...worked with your dad," Martin was saying.

"Sorry, what?" I had a hard time taking my eyes off the image.

"Of course Jin's dad worked with your dad," he repeated. "It's not exactly new information, but now we know his name."

"Yeah." I said, still a little distracted.

Mart gave me a weird look. "Are you okay? You aren't going to start throwing up again, are you?"

I gave a weak laugh. "Yeah it's just..." I glanced at the phone one last time, then handed it back to Martin. "It's nothing, I'm fine."

He caught on to the obvious I don't want to talk about it tone in my voice.

"Okay...So two men join up and start some sketchy research and fifteen years later both of their children have superpowers. I'm starting to think that's not a coincidence."