“Both you and Farrow have you’re your work cut out for you. Call to keep me posted,” he said with an air of effortlessness that left Creed feeling nauseous and uneasy.
Creed put his phone back in his pocket and picked up his binoculars. There she was. Her dark hair pulled back in a pony. Her long strides were graceful and poetic in their strength. She looked so hurt and angry. And then she wasn’t running anymore, she was spinning in the air and landing with a sick whack against a tree trunk.
“Farrow!” he yelled.
Farrow was positioned about ten meters to his right. She had been following Meg through a scope of a long-range, sniper rifle.
“Oh, calm down, lover boy,” she said snidely. “I just did you a favor by getting it over with.” She was already packing her gear.
Creed picked up his binoculars again and found Meg motionless on the ground. He was so struck by what just happened that he couldn’t breathe.
“I got her in the neck, so you may want to go remove the ‘gift’ before you knight-in-shining-armor her back to her precious family,” Farrow was already walking away, rifle disassembled and inconspicuously set inside her hiker’s backpack. “See you back at the hotel. Oh, and you’re welcome!”
Creed was torn between chasing Farrow down to have it out with her and running down to check on Meg and carry her to safety. Since he couldn’t take his eyes off her, he opted to go to Meg.
Back in Dr. Williams’ darkened video viewing room, the images on the screen came back to life and he watched with horrified amusement as the child disappears under the bed, the lab coat walks in and shakes his head confused at the seemingly empty room and walks out. Williams watched the child’s face carefully when she climbed out from under the bed. She looked pleased with herself and relieved. She hugged her rag doll tightly and commenced her imaginative play. But what happened with the lab worker wasn’t in her imagination, or was it?
The old man sat in his chair and rewound the scene. This time he not only rolled the metallic orbs in his hand, but he worked his lips tight then puckered, tight then puckered, over and over. This little quirk of his he only showed during his most pensive, stress-filled moments. Yes, he thought to himself, this meta may very well be the most dangerous of them all.
She is my masterpiece—simply magnificent, he thought, applauding himself.
22 Alik’s “Time Sense”
He was laying on his back, muscles taught and skin glistening with sweat. He was slowly lowering a bar to his chest with hundreds of pounds of weight draped on either side. His crisp blue eyes were steeped in worry and concentration, not for the eight-hundred pounds he shouldered, but for all the responsibility he felt for his family.
At fifteen, Alik looked more like an adult than he should. He had lost any hint of a baby face years ago and instead, wore his broodingly handsome worry lines casually, as though it had never occurred to him that life held anything less than one battle after another with brief interludes of reprieve between; a reprieve that was always more like the calm before another storm.
And though he loved life and felt an obligation to appreciate every moment of it, his intense ability to recollect even the smallest detail of every day since the beginning of his time had turned him in to a soul that knew how precious life was. Alik understood life was fleeting because he’d already lived through so much.
He had a “time sense” almost like a gymnast had “air sense.” His awareness of past and present moments were as clear to him as a gymnast was aware of ceiling and floor even as he spun in mid air. Life was pulsing ahead and he knew his reprieve was nearly over. A battle was fast approaching.
Alik was in Paulie’s gym, a smaller building separate from the house. He was pumping iron and pushing himself to feel his muscles strain so he could live in the moment, even if it was just for a few hours. He allowed himself to focus on the feel of the metal in his hands, the scent of salt from the ocean, the tightness in his muscles as they were forced to exert themselves against gravity.
And in his mind, he heard his brother’s voice explaining what he and Paulie and Theo had discovered through the research of their meta blood. He wished to God he could stop replaying the conversation, but there it was. Again and again, the strain in his brother’s voice carried through, crystal clear through Alik’s videographic memory.