Okay, okay. Here's the thing: this isn't an entire chapter because I stopped in the middle and started writing the story over again. I have ten chapters and a prologue in the new version, although it's taken me about a year to write that much. It really is a lot better, and I hope to occasionally update until, one day, there's a beginning, middle and END! So if anyone feels real interest in this story anymore (uu) please see A Sense of Dark. It's just better that way.
--PenguinKye
July 2, 2005
Midnight Garden
Chapter 15
by Kye Syr
It was silence in the car, which I supposed was good. Knowing one is on something akin to a suicide mission is rather detrimental to one's ability to focus, and considering my currently erratic ability to See, I needed all of the focus that could possibly be procured.
If Nagi had, like me, been focused, instead of twitching like the recently deceased, then perhaps my focus would have been stronger than it was.
"Nagi," I said, swerving to avoid an irritatingly law-abiding car.
"What?" said Nagi, looking straight ahead as his knee jumped frenetically.
"Stop twitching," I said.
"What?" said Nagi. He looked down at his leaping leg in surprise. "Oh," he said. He stopped twitching. "Sorry," he said.
"Thank you."
We were on course for the truck first. Caught far enough from its destination and with its communications destroyed, it could be some time before anyone realized that something was not as it was intended to be. We would, therefore, be meeting Tokyo Police Van 145 (from a safe distance) in the next five minutes, while the van was still twenty miles from police headquarters.
In the meantime, I was looking out for a vision. There seemed to be none.
"Nagi," I said, "Do you know where the truck is?" The convenience of a really good telekinetic was that it could feel the object before seeing it—in Nagi's case, long before.
Nagi concentrated, and finally he nodded. I saw from the side that his eyes were reddening, the blood rushing to them as he focused on what could not be seen.
"Give me a mile. Thirty seconds with both us moving." He squinted and added, "And slow down so I can aim." I drove on; Nagi leaned forward in his seat, his hands gripping his knees, his eyes on nothing like a fox's on a bird.
"Slow!" he said suddenly. My foot shot to the brake.
"Turn, turn," whispered Nagi, no longer talking to me.
Twelve miles away, Tokyo Police Van 145 was indubidably defying its driver's commands.
"Speed up," said Nagi.
Third gear, fourth gear, fifth—I saw Nagi mark them off with taut fingers. He was beginning to breathe hard.
"To the left, over, over, over," he commanded through gritted teeth. He was tense, so concentrated that he seemed little more than nerves, muscles, and enormous wrong-colored eyes. I sympathized: it couldn't be easy to send an unwilling truck over a bridge from a dozen miles away.
"FALL," ordered Nagi harshly, and after a moment of absolute concentration it was done. Nagi's tension fell out of him, and he slumped against his seat, a quivering, gasping, jello-y marathoner.
"Finished," he said in a clear voice that belied the expense of the endeavor.
"Don't wear yourself out, Nagi," I said. "We're not nearly through."
"Know," he said. Or maybe 'no'; I couldn't tell which. It didn't seem to matter either way.
"You're certain that it's done for all?" Nagi nodded shakily.
"It started burning," he said, sounding pleased, and a moment later added, "Exploded." Exploded, at the bottom of a sixy-foot ravine after losing control and jumping the railing. What a pity. Such fine officers lost.
"Good," I said. "On to the station."
The benefit of a mysterious dive-bombing truck, particularly a police truck, was that many police would follow out to help. And many firemen. And many paramedics.
"How will we take the station, Brad?" asked Nagi. He seemed apprehensive; perhaps the long-distance use of his power had worn him out some. I hoped not, for we had much to do yet. Van 145 was only the first stop.