Nebulous (violin) watch?v=QGsG-NtMX2c
After a fitful night of sleep, Angela woke up late the next morning. Her housemate had already left for her first job at six in the morning. She didn't have any classes today, and absentmindedly flipped open the news on her phone. The top stories took a while to load due to their cheap internet connection. For the last year checking the news had become a daily, sometimes hourly routine. It was something constant that she could check into to distract herself.
The headline on BBC's first Top Stories read, "Recent murders and bombings linked to 'new telekinetic teens' in Seattle."
Her hand went numb and the phone dropped to the hardwood floor with a dull clunk. She took several deep breaths, trying to clear the hallucination. The news surely didn't say that. She wasn't getting worse. She just needed to relax, and these things wouldn't happen so often. The phone still glowed from between her feet. Cautiously, she picked it up with shaky hands. The title had not changed. No matter how long she stared at it, the words glared up at her with the same conviction.
Angela tapped on the image to pull up the news story. She skimmed it and then reread it more slowly. There had been a recent rise in murders and bombings in Washington, and it had only this morning been linked to two young telekinetic criminals. They had murdered eight people just this morning, then flown to the top of the Space Needle with their bodies in tow. With their blood, they had written for all to see "True power belongs to those who can control it. Release the others you have in captivity or the chaos will continue." It appeared to be a boy and girl, though it was reported that any camera footage was grainy and caught by bystanders in the dark hours of the morning.
She couldn't wrap her mind around it. How many others were there? And how were they still alive? Release the others... had other people that gained powers been taken forcefully for study? As far as she knew Matt hadn't been. There was no reason for the exception except that the public would notice if he went missing. Perhaps it was a coverup for their actual motive. To her they seemed like two insane young adults trying to play God.
Eventually the numbness and confusion was replaced by a feeling of clarity she had not felt since before The Incident. There was no more pushing everything to the back of her mind. Anyone with abilities had a responsibility to stop these people now.
Are you going to save these poor souls too? What makes them any different than Andrew? He killed more people than you could count in a day. What justice did saving his life do? You don't have the guts to kill them.
Maybe she didn't. But she knew someone who did. Stacy wasn't home, so she could have a conversation in private. It would be the first time she told someone. A little shiver crawled down her spine. What had happened to her was nothing compared to what Matt had been through. She had no right to have these nightmares if Matt had managed to pull through. As much as she had tried to move on, would it have been better to contact him? To use her powers? The last time she had tried they were shaky, like a muscle that had not been used in months. The nosebleed came before she could even drop the pencil she was lifting.
It wasn't right to let Matt go through this alone. She had been so selfish. So afraid of journalists banging on her door and interrogating her if she spilled the truth.
Stop the self-pity and just call him. Or did you finally delete his number?
Actually she had. It had been leaked by a classmate and she copied it in case of an emergency. A few months later she deleted it, assuming he would have changed it to avoid all the calls. She knew where his house was, though.
She dialed up Stacy as she threw a few things into a backpack. Truthfully, she wasn't even aware what or why she was packing. Just that she needed to. It went to voicemail.
"Hey, um. Stacy I feel like someday I owe it to you for all you've done for me to explain this to you. I don't have time right now to tell you everything, but, I'm uh... I'm going to see Matt. Matt Garretty," she recorded as she threw some clothes on top of her phone charger. "You need to read the news. There's others. And they're killing people, and... I have to go. I was there that day and I need to find him or else this chaos isn't going to stop. You've always been like a sister to me, and thank you for everything. I hope you're okay. You probably just turned your phone off for work, I'm worrying over nothing. Don't snoop in my room while I'm gone! I should be back later today I think. 'kay, bye."
A few minutes later she was ready to go. All she could think of was how much saying she would return today felt like a lie. If she was really going to bring these people down, it was going to take more than a day. All she could hope was that Matt would believe her story.
