Chapter 2

Flashback…

Bay lived on the South Side of Freeland, almost in the next town over, and away from the main city. He stood approximately six-foot-two-inches tall and kept his hair pretty wild. He talked with a country accent, and when he wasn't running with Reese, he spent most of his time working the farm. A day prior to the kidnapping, he woke up his little brother, Freddie, around five-o'clock in the morning, slew the wild boar that rubbed the tree bark off the old maple, and cleaned it. Quickly, he put it in the freezer, and he did this all before class started at Garfield High. The boar menaced the farm for over three months, but he knew it liked to rub against the old maple tree every other morning, and he caught it exactly at the right time. With his old Winchester Rifle, he sniped it at three hundred yards.

Bay was only sixteen and Freddie recently turned thirteen, but due to punching his gym teacher in the groin, the Freeland Middle School expelled him. Bay's Mama, Tiana suffered from a fast-growing cervical cancer due to her years of work at Downing. She was a chemist for a number of years and specialized in growing crops impervious to disease. They lived a middle-class lifestyle until cancer hit, and after all the test, surgeries and extraneous treatments, her savings were depleted. Bay's father died when he was twelve of lung cancer, and he didn't smoke a day in his life. Ray Nelson worked in the testing lab, spraying, testing, and working on different strains of corn impervious to the elements. He watched his father cough up blood on the daily from the ages of ten to twelve, and when his father died, he was by his bedside.

Due to the chemical plant, the soil bled death, and anybody who fed on the contaminated earth changed on a cellular level including Bay and his brother Freddie. Bay's strength was far beyond any normal teen's, and it was evident when he swung his heavy hammer while fixing several of the fence posts that the boar destroyed. In one full swing, the fence post went halfway into the earth, and then he laughed. What killed his father and caused cancer in his mama transformed him into a metahuman, but most of the time, he kept quiet about his extraordinary abilities.

Freddie-on the other hand-had the ability to cloak himself. When he turned invisible, nobody could see him physically, but empaths could detect his emotions. Often, if another teenager tried to fight the young man, he would run away, turn invisible, and walk home. He never engaged in combat with another teenager because he didn't have any fighting skills like his older brother. That was the reason his actions against Mister Anderson shocked Bay. He couldn't believe his brother actually punched another human being.

Freddie walked up to him, and said, "The only reason I punched Mister Anderson was that he touched Miss Jenkins inappropriately."

Bay sucked on his front teeth, leaned against the hammer, and then said, "Mama's getting sicker by the day, Freddie." He looked over at the house and shook his head in the negative. The morning breeze brushed past him, and it felt pretty good. "There's no more money for her treatments. I really can't have you causing any more trouble at school."

"You would've done the same thing if you saw what I saw. He shoved her into the bathroom, covered her mouth, and tried to rape her."

"Then why didn't she take up for you when the school's administration expelled you? You'll end up repeating the seventh grade because of this."

Quickly, he came to his instructor's defense when Bay accused her of not helping him. "She was scared," Freddie said with a grimace. "Fear makes people do crazy things. You know that."

"We need to get you back in school," he said, "Mama didn't work hard all her life just to have us poor and destitute."

End of Flashback

Bay paced the floor while Reese looked out the window in the front room. Jennifer sat with her back against the wall, and her hands and feet were bound with duct tape. They spent two hours watching the streets-ensuring nobody saw them pick the young teen off the roadway. The teenage farm boy looked over at Jennifer and saw the stress in her eyes. If his Mama knew what he had done, she'd not approve of kidnapping a young woman for money. He knew it was an idiotic plan, but he followed Reese down a rabbit hole, and now wanted out of it.

"We probably should let her go," he said as he looked at the young woman fidgeting on the floor. "My Mama wouldn't approve of this." He looked up at his partner and watched the anger in his eyes and scowl on his face.

"I'm not doing this for your mama," Reese snapped. His voice was full of base and resentment-and anger. Bay realized immediately what he was trying to do, but he wasn't scared of the fake toughness. He knew what kind of powers he possessed, and some lowly hoodlum didn't scare him. "I'm trying to get paid."

Jennifer cleared her throat, shook her head in the negative, and then said, "My father doesn't have the kind of money you need, Bay." She brought her knees up to her chest, and said, "I'm sorry your family is going through another battle with cancer, but my own family would suffer financially if cancer struck any of us. Listen, we shouldn't be this close to Downing. This whole area is supposed to be off-limits." He looked at her like she had an angelic aura about her.

"I can't do it, man," Bay said with a scowl on his face. He walked over to Jennifer, and said, "I'm letting her go. It's the right thing to do."

Suddenly, Reese pulled out a handgun and pointed it directly at Bay's head. The farm boy looked directly at the barrel of the gun, and it enraged him. "Try it, and I'll put a bullet in your head, Bay. I'm serious."

"You don't want to do that," Jennifer said. "Nobody has to know about this…"

"You won't be the first fool I've killed, son," Reese said.

Slowly, Bay raised his hands over his head. He wondered if Reese was just saying a bunch of words to sound hard, but at the same time, he did have a weapon pointed at his head. When his partner looked over at Jennifer, he hit him with a quick uppercut, and due to the fact he put so much energy into the punch, it caused Reese to bounce off the ceiling. When he looked down at his partner, the young man moaned in pain. Picking the gun off the floor, he bent it in half with his bare hands and then threw it back on the ground.

Later in the day…

The aroma from Jennifer's Mama's spaghetti permeated the house. Lynn, her mother, had just put the food in the refrigerator, and the scent continued to bounce off the walls. She came home late, so she missed dinner with the family. Her father often instilled in her that a family should always eat together. Due to the harsh world of being a teenager in Freeland, she often found it difficult to be at home by seven o'clock for dinner. She still had things she wanted to do, and people she needed to see. She warmed up some of the food in the microwave. Feeling uneasy, she thought for a minute as her food heated about Bay's strength, and the way he bent the pistol with his bare hands. It was obvious that he had abilities beyond the normal, and if he didn't point them in the right direction, he could be extremely dangerous. But at the same time, he wasn't really her concern. When she sat down at the dining room table, Anissa-her older sister-sat across from her.

Anissa stood a few inches taller than Jennifer and didn't smile near as much. Most of the kids referred to her as Harriet Tubman, and she didn't let it bother her too much. "Where have you been?"

"Hanging with friends," she said. "I went skating."

She tapped her hands on the dinner table, and then said, "Be careful in the mean streets of Freeland. These fools out here trying to pimp out girls."

Jennifer looked down at her food for a moment and then replied, "I know. I ran into Bay Nelson today." She paused for a moment, and then said, "His mama is terminal. She's not going to make it."

"Didn't she work in Downing Chemical?" Anissa asked.

"Yeah," she said.

"Higher rates of cancers in all the people who worked and lived around that evil place," she said, "Personally, I think the whole town is infected with carcinogens because of that place."

She listened to her sister for a moment, and then asked, "What's the possibility that the waste from the plant has changed some people?"

Anissa looked at her for a moment, and then asked, "Like how?"

"Super strength," she said calmly.

She laughed at her little sister, and then asked, "You feeling strong or something?"

After her sister made fun of her, she left. Jennifer finished up her meal, rinsed off her plate, and then placed it in the dishwasher. She ran upstairs to her bedroom and tried to push the kidnapping out of her mind, but it was hard to do. She took a warm, relaxing bath, but still couldn't focus because so many unfettered thoughts raced through her mind. Despite the class action lawsuit against Downing Chemical, she knew it wasn't enough medical care in the package to take care of the sick. And from what she knew about Freeland, a lot of people who lived next to the plant suffered from some form of cancer.