Kinetics - By Andrew Peed Page 0,20

their ability can't do better." Silence explained.

"Where do we go from here?"

"After Sam finishes all of the interviews he will gather you all together and kind of explain things to you, like some of the rules. He won't be able to get them all and you will have a lot of questions I'm sure, but we will do our best to teach you as things come up."

"Is this what you went through when you came here?" Rachel asked.

"Sort of, but I was only six when I arrived." he counted on his fingers as if coming to this place would have been forgettable.

"What happened?" I wanted to know everything that I could, everything that he would tell me. I wanted to know if his story was like ours.

"My parents were fleeing from another branch of Aurora. We were all naturals and my father was informed that we were wanted for study. We got cornered in a small town in northern California. My father took on twenty sabers, and two Mods. Unfortunately, he was killed and my mother as well. He was just not powerful enough. The Mod tried to kill me. He was a telekinetic and he bombarded me with debris from the building that my father and the Sabers had torn to pieces.” He stopped for a moment, remembering.

“He would have succeeded if not for Acumen and Fade. Acumen is Sam's code name. Fade is another teleporter, but she has been gone for some time now. I don't think you'll meet her. They killed the Mod and brought me here. Fade raised me until she left."

"Why did she leave?" I sat on the edge of my seat hanging on every word.

"No one knows. It was about a year ago, she was just gone one night." He looked devastated.

Sam returned with Kenny and swapped him for Rachel. Before long he had brought her back and with the help of a male nurse, carried Ronnie out of the room.

"He seems nice enough." He sat with Sandy, who would be next.

"Acumen is like a father to a lot of us." Silence smiled.

We all sat quietly and waited for the next step. Ronnie looked like a million bucks when he came back and Sam brought a shirt for Rachel to change into, hers being covered in blood.

Sandy didn't take long. Lastly Sam took the twins together.

~//~

Sam came back to the room after a short while; the twins however didn't return.

"Where are Mike and Mary?" Rachel demanded.

"They are on a flight to New York City. There is a family there that wanted to adopt a child and they were ecstatic to be able to adopt twins." Sam looked sorry, but confident.

"Wait, you just sent them away?" I protested.

"Don’t worry; they will be taken care of. If we hadn’t sent them now it would have been just that much longer before we can leave for a warmer climate."

"But we didn't even get to say goodbye." Rachel was very upset.

"Don't worry Rachel, this is not goodbye. They are in good hands and you will see them again. I promise." He stopped and took a breath.

"But!" Rachel pleaded.

"I'm sorry. I am very sorry that it had to be this way. I promise that you will see them again, soon." he looked genuinely sorry.

Sam paced, gathering his thoughts for a few moments.

"Care to explain what's going on?" I started.

He took a deep breath. "Well, let me start by saying that it's nice to meet all of you. We call ourselves The Last Line. As far back as the Salem Witch Trials we have been here to protect users from humans and humans from users in one form or another."

"Are you with the government or what?" Kenny, the ever paranoid, asked.

"No, we are affiliated with the government and we do get some funding from them, but otherwise no. We found that with the government, no matter how hard they try, there always seems to be a few corrupted politicians. After a few incidents where they tried to use us as an end to their means, we decided that it would not have a place in our organization."

"We work together trying to make the world a safer place for people like us. Look, I'll be honest with you; we have never rescued more than two people at one time. We are not really prepared. We didn’t get a whole lot of notice from Zach."

"What is going to happen to us?" Rachel asked.

“We have a complex in North America where we have