The Powers That Flee

Prologue

Rachel Winters didn’t mind having the house all to herself. Thursdays, her mom worked a double shift and wouldn’t be home until well after ten. She’d finished her Physics homework and completed most of her required reading for English; two chapters of Hester Prynne’s dismal trials and tribulations was enough for one night. A quick shower and she could submerge herself in one of her dad’s tattered paperbacks. She glanced over at the box of books, recalling the last time they’d seen each other. August 2nd, 1985, a day that would live in infamy as far as her family was concerned. Only two months since they’d packed up and left him. It felt much longer.

Since that day, her dad had gone radio silent.

She surveyed the tiny ranch home her mom had rented. They now resided in Middletown Valley, allowing her to go to a great school, according to her mom. It was much more rural than she was used to, having relocated from Rockville just outside the Beltway.

Rachel hadn’t disturbed the taped-shut box since they’d moved in. She swallowed and clawed at the wide packing tape, removing it after two tries. The cardboard flaps popped open, and she examined the collection he’d bequeathed her: a fair share of his science fiction novels. Although, he’d always branded them as a mutual treasure, a library for just the two of them since her mom didn’t have time for ‘futuristic gobbledygook.’ No longer organized on the two bottom shelves of her dad’s home office, they looked less impressive. Rachel knew that wasn’t true. Within were worlds of possibility and endless adventure, time warps and savage wasteland mutants.

He’d always encouraged her to borrow the books, painstakingly having taped a small pocket to the inside back cover along with a checkout card nestled within each so she’d have to officially sign them out. A cute touch she, as an avid bookworm, appreciated. Rachel remembered the first novel she’d borrowed, Have Space Suit―Will Travel, and wondered if he’d packed it for her. Highly likely since he knew full well which were her favorites.

She sifted through the books, quickly determining she’d read more than half of them. Inheriting her dad’s scientific curiosity and sense of wonder about the future had earned her the playful title of Mad Scientist Supreme at her old school.

Rachel snatched up The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and walked into the kitchen. Clutching the book she’d read three time before, she fetched an RC Cola from the fridge and plopped down on the sofa. Read first and shower later, she thought. Several chapters of Arthur Dent’s escapades would help her relax.

Five minutes into her book, in the middle of Arthur’s confrontation with Mister Prosser and an imminent bulldozing, the doorbell rang.

She tensed, letting a wave of fear overtake her. Who could possibly be at the door? It was dark out, and she shivered at the possibility someone lurked on the other side wishing her harm. Her logic and determination reasserted itself, and she stowed deep her apprehension.

It’s nothing.

Could be their next door neighbor, Mrs. Wilkinson, bringing over mail delivered to her address by mistake. That had happened twice before, but always when Rachel’s mom had been home. Mister Sullivan, who lived in the split-level to their right, was a kind, retired police officer with two rambunctious German Shepherds. Maybe he was just checking in on her.

Buoyed by the fact that she was effectively surrounded by neighbors keen on looking out for her, Rachel bolted to her feet and strode toward the door. Not going to catch me shrinking back.

Just the same, she snatched an umbrella from the coat closet and held it at the ready. A quick peek out the peephole revealed no one on the doorstep. Rachel harrumphed in frustration. A prank?

She couldn’t quite see down to the porch to check if anyone had left something. She sniffed, foolishly thinking one of the Broxton twins had deposited a paper bag filled with dog poop on their doorstep, something they’d been caught doing to a neighbor down the street almost a week ago.

She shook her head and opened the door. The makeshift checkout card from Have Space Suit―Will Travel was wedged halfway under their welcome mat. She could make out the four dates she’d written on it. In addition, there was writing plastered across it in blue pen, neither hers nor her father’s cursive. That’s weird.

She could only read the first line: Meet your father― The rest was hidden by the doormat.

Rachel scanned the bushes on either side of the entrance and the front yard in its entirety to make sure no one lay in waiting.

She swung open the screen door and held the umbrella out. I called 911. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll scram.

No one fled from a hiding spot nor did anyone charge at her from out of nowhere. She snatched up the note and retreated back into her house. She locked the front door and unfolded the note. The message was written in blue pen and hastily scrawled.

Meet your father at your high school’s football field at 8:00 tonight. Don’t be late. He’s in trouble.

Rachel rolled her eyes. Not at all what she’d expected. Would’ve been nicer to have been left a delivery by the troublesome twins.

It was altogether weird that the note had been written on the checkout card. Had it been stolen out from under her father’s nose? Why?

Curious, she dug her copy of the book out of the packed box, expecting to see the checkout card missing. She located the novel and flipped to the back. The checkout card sat in its pocket, the same dates written on it as the one she held in her right hand.

She nearly dropped both cards. Her hands shook a little. Why go to the trouble of duplicating the card? She inspected it more closely. Both had a slight tear in the lower right corner. An identical pizza sauce fingerprint existed on the back of each card smack dab in the center.

She tried to ignore her elevated heart rate.

The strange message was only on the one from the porch. Someone had gone to great lengths to make such a convincing copy of a dumb scrap of paper. Why? Rachel frowned. What was going on? She shoved both checkout cards in her front pocket.

The clock above the television let her know the rendezvous was less than half an hour away. Her mom had the car; she’d have to bike it. She grabbed her light denim jacket and returned the umbrella to its hook.

She walked her ten-speed out of the garage and closed the big door. She took off, hoping this was all a stupid prank but fearing it wasn’t.

****

Rachel arrived with five minutes to spare. This late, the campus was empty except for the two or three cars parked in the upper lot along the side of the high school, the cleaning staff working after hours. She scanned the grounds, searching for any employees standing outside taking a smoke break but spotting no one.

She propped her bike against the chain-link fencing. Only two of the four parking lights were on, both far from the football field. It was dark.

Rachel again looked at the two checkout cards. She couldn’t tell them apart other than the note written across the front of the porch copy. Was her dad playing some sort of game with her? A scavenger hunt?

She fidgeted with the cards, really at a loss. Her father was quirky but not this weird. While his jobs had him working in corporate labs and government installations over the past two decades, he’d always made time for Rachel. Shame he hadn’t done the same for Mom. They’d moved to Maryland so he could work with an up-and-coming government contractor, lots of genetic research. It was six months ago, when he’d been transferred to a lab that did super-secret work for the local army base, Fort Detrick in Frederick, that he’d grown distant to both of them.

Suddenly, a blinding light flared twenty feet above the football field. For a second, she thought one of the big lights had blown a bulb, but that wasn’t the case.

She shielded her eyes and stared at what could only be described as a pulsing rift forty feet across floating above the ten-yard line, its edges giving off the most intense blue light.

An honest-to-gosh portal. What was her dad caught up in?

What the heck? she whispered.

Her dad’s red Ford Fairmont rocketed out of the portal, dropping down hard onto the ground and skidding to a stop just inches from the goal post. Black smoke funneled upward from two spots along the vehicle’s trunk.

The hole in the air imploded, taking the light show with it.

Rachel blinked, trying to adjust to the sudden darkness. She zeroed in on the car.

Her dad stared out the driver’s window at her as another person jumped out of the front passenger’s seat and tore off toward the opposite side of the field. Rachel didn’t get a good look at the escapee other than to see he was tall and scrawny with brown hair.

Her dad shoved open his door and staggered out. Something was off about his right arm. He held it away from her, but she could tell it appeared mangled, maybe even missing. What?

Dad! she screamed and clawed at the fence. She tried to climb but gave up after two weak attempts. She rattled the fence in frustration.

He reached out with his left hand, his lab coat waving in the cool night breeze. Rachel, stay right there. Not sure what to expect. He stood up straighter and attempted to stride toward her with more confidence. It was clear he wanted to put her at ease, demonstrate that he was fine.

What just happened? You just . . . She waved vaguely at the space where his car had just flown out of.

He drew up to about thirty feet and stopped. He looked back at his car. Bit of a letdown seeing my clunker make the trip and not a DeLorean, huh?

What are you talking about? Her gaze strayed to the two points on the Fairmont’s trunk. Two distinct smoke trails issued from what looked like sputtering black clouds of dark energy eating away at the trunk.

That’s dark matter, honey. Boyce’s doing. He shifted position, letting her get a good look at his right arm, or at least the space where his right arm should’ve been. Afraid it’s eating away at more than just a bad paint job.

A black cloud of the same dark matter clung to her dad’s right shoulder. His appendage was missing. Your arm . . .

It’s gone. He pulled a six-inch-long silver cylinder from his left pocket and held it out to her. These are for you. Well, you and an acquaintance of yours.

Dad, we’ve got to get you to the hospital. She scrambled halfway up the fence.

The back of the Fairmont exploded, sending fiery debris raining down around her dad. Luckily, nothing hit him.

He produced a weak smile. Expected that. Darin told me to keep you well away from the explosion.

Darin who? Dad, this is crazy. She clawed her way to the top of the ten-foot-high fence and eyed the drop with apprehension.

Honey, get down from there. He winced and shuddered. I don’t have much time and I must adhere to my exact part in these proceedings. It’s the only way to successfully close the loop.

She felt tears welling up. Something about his demeanor unnerved her. Dad, what’s going on?

I can’t tell you much. More info will come later. He approached and slid the cylinder through the fence. Take this and use only one. Find out what you can do with your token and then enlist Darin.

She awkwardly crawled down her side of the fence and put her hand on the cylinder. The dark matter had traveled closer to his neck.

He sobbed. So much went wrong. Such horrible things. You and Darin have to stop him. He’s going to come for you both. You have to figure out your powers quickly. Boyce thinks he has the upper hand.

Dad, you’re scaring me. Please stop. Her gaze darted to the front of the school, to the pay phone mounted outside the gym. Let me call for help.

Her dad coughed and wiped the sweat from his forehead. Listen to me. You have to close the loop exactly the way I tell you to. Give Darin Forrester his token at 8:00 sharp in Aladdin’s Castle this Saturday night. Darin won’t know what’s going on yet. The both of you will have to ask Craig Jenkins to fill you in on everything else. You must see Darin first. The order is important.

Dad, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Darin’s some guy at my school. I barely know him. I have no idea who the other guy is.

He shot her a wild, unhinged look. Don’t talk to them before Saturday. Promise me that. You can’t deviate.

Dad, I―

He smacked the fence hard. Promise me!

Okay, I will, I will.

He gawked at the dark matter only inches from his head. So numb . . . He stared off into the night sky for a few seconds.

She transferred the cylinder to her other hand and poked her fingers through the fence to brush against the back of his still outstretched hand. Dad, no. Please don’t . . .

He walked backwards, the dark matter now encroaching on his neck and lower jaw. I can’t stay. You can’t witness this. His eyelids drooped.

Dad! Rachel screamed.

His eyes opened wide, and he declared, I love you, Rachel. You have to stop Boyce. I’m so sorry to involve you in this. He spun around and sprinted away.

No! she screamed and pawed at the fence.

Midway across the field, her dad collapsed to the ground. She watched the cloud of dark matter grow as it consumed the rest of his body. It was over in a matter of seconds.

She dropped to her knees and emptied her stomach. She shook and couldn’t stop her midsection from clenching and unclenching for the longest time.

Distant sirens shook her out of her daze. She scrambled to her feet, shoved the cylinder in her back pocket, and hopped onto her bike.

Rachel pedaled down the main campus road for a hundred feet before taking a sharp right onto the gravel side road that was the secondary exit from the school grounds. She finally stopped at the top of the hill to look back at the football field. She could make out the still-burning shell of the car and a vague dark smudge close to the fifty-yard line where her dad had fallen. Two police cars raced onto campus and toward the football field. They stopped close to the fence, angling their headlights to better reveal the crime scene.

Rachel gagged and sobbed. She closed her eyes, willing this whole night to disappear from her memory but failing miserably.

Chapter 1

So Sucked In

Darin Forrester stepped off the bus and trudged toward the steps. Another school day, another chance for him to fade into obscurity. Eleventh grade was supposed to have been a step up, a guaranteed chance to shake his dismal ranking as an underclassman, but he hadn’t encountered any perks or elevation in his social status so far. He was still the comic book nerd to most.

Mike Randolph almost sideswiped Darin, but swerved his brand-new Trans Am at the last moment. Darin jumped back, fearing the rear bumper might clip him as the jock eased into his unofficial parking space near the front. The star quarterback got out, grinned sheepishly, and mouthed an apology before merging with a crowd of the beautiful people. Mike Randolph was a big deal, but he also never let it go to his head. Ever since middle school, he’d always been easy going to creatures both big and small. Darin never resented the jock’s popularity because he didn’t wave it in everyone’s face.

Darin eyed the front of his high school, hating how exposed trekking up the three sets of steps made him feel. Classmates clustered on either side of the steps, hanging outside for the last possible moment, delaying their perceived incarceration in this place of higher learning.

He gravitated to the steps on the right. They would grant him a path to the front doors farthest from where his longtime nemesis, Eric Siegel, held court. The bleach-blond bully straddled his usual spot along the low wall closest to the gym, likely jawing about some sort of play he’d executed at practice based on the sweeping arm gestures he was demonstrating.

His crowd consisted of mostly jocks and cheerleaders. Darin was disappointed to see his ninth grade crush, Mandy Roberson, laughing at the bully’s antics. Back then, he’d helped Mandy a lot in Spanish class. When Darin had sent her a carnation midway through freshman year, he’d received the nice-guy-but speech from the cheerleader. Despite being shot down, she still held a special spot in his lusty heart, cute freckles and all.

He had at least one thing to look forward to: the new girl, Rachel Winters. She had kept to herself since starting the school year, something he actually admired. She hadn’t gotten sucked into any of the social cliques that he could tell. Maybe he’d see her before the first bell. Not that he’d approached her or engaged in anything resembling a conversation. That would evaporate the possibility he clung to that she even deemed him worthy. Better to cling to what could be and avoid the reality of crashing and burning. Tongue-tied didn’t even begin to describe what happened to him when faced with a pretty girl. He was pretty much George McFly from Back to The Future, the film he’d seen three times over the summer, in terms of the level of jaw-dropping awkwardness he achieved when he interacted with the fairer sex.

Darin trudged up the steps, desperate to get to his locker and grab his books for the day.

Mandy called out to him, Darin, over here! She waved and smiled at him, her permed bob-haircut bouncing oh so playfully as she hopped up and down to get his attention.

Eric stopped talking to his friends and stared Darin’s way.

He had no clue why the boy had it in for him. Ever since ninth grade, when they’d had the same gym period, the second-string football player