55
Mark's pace quickened, his anger rising as the front door slammed behind him. As he stepped out onto the street, he broke into a ground-burning jog, nothing fast enough to attract attention, just enough to burn off some of the energy building up within him.
He could feel his heart thundering in his chest, pumping blood through his body in massive pulses, which only fed his need to hit someone. Mark knew something was wrong with him. He had known it since their last experience in the alien ship. Ever since that day, his emotions had been jacked up, leaving him feeling stretched taught, a pinprick away from an explosion.
It wasn't just anger either. Every emotion had been amplified so heavily that he felt like someone had shot him with an elephant-sized dose of adrenaline. Right now, the only thing he knew to control it was to get away from everyone.
In addition to his becoming an adrenaline junky, there were other changes going on with his body. For one thing, Mark wasn't sleeping. He just didn't feel the need. That was one change that didn't bother him. Although he had to stay in his room so that his parents wouldn't discover his sleepless nights, he had used the time to practice his speed reading. The only problem he had run into with that practice was difficulty in turning the pages fast enough.
Another nighttime activity he had taken to was meditation. He had thought that if he could improve his already considerable meditation skills, then perhaps he could get control of the emotional thunderstorms that raged through his brain and body. However, when the adrenaline rushes hit, he had no time to begin a meditation, and once he was in thrall to the attack, it took several minutes of concentration to restore a quiet to his mind.
His workouts helped, so he had thrown himself into a routine that even an Olympian would have found exhausting. Now, as Mark turned off the street, cutting out onto a bike trail into the woods, he could feel the muscles rippling beneath his skin. He had certainly put on some more muscle mass, but he wasn't bulked out. Ripped was the word that popped into his mind.
A stiff breeze had sprung up, carrying with it eddies of coolness that hinted at a coming storm. As the trail opened out onto the ridgeline, Mark could see the line of thunderheads in the distance, dark streaks of rain hanging like a curtain below them.
Good. Let the rain come. Maybe it would cool his overheated brain.
Mark increased his pace. It felt good to stretch out into a real run. His sister's angry face swam into his mind. Shit, after the way he had treated her, Jen had a right to be angry. Mark knew he should already be over his own anger at what she had done. Shutting down the ship had probably been what they would have done even if they had talked it over first. He should have already forgiven her, but he just couldn't.
The first drop of rain smacked him in the face, the big, fat globule splattering on his forehead as twin forks of lightning split the sky across the canyon. Mark's eyes focused on the scene ahead. Christ. He didn't think he had been running that long.
Half a mile ahead, the finger of land they called The Mesa came to a point, below which the Second Ship rested in its cave. But the spot no longer resembled the place they had come to know so well.
Military vehicles had been parked in precisely aligned rows just inside a newly erected chain-link fence topped with concertina razor wire. A guard bunker abutted the gate, and though he could imagine guards with machine guns pointed outward, Mark was unable to see them in the gathering darkness of the storm.
Another gust of wind brought a swarm of droplets splashing down, a swarm that was followed by a downpour as the sky opened up. There at the edge of the wood line, as bolt after bolt of lightning ripped the black clouds, Mark stared in the direction of their lost ship, his tears washed from his cheeks by the rain.