Chapter 17: Rick's new power

Sept. 20th, 2015

West stormed up the steps to his friends’ house and didn’t even bother knocking. Instead, he barged in to find Harry and Emille sitting at a desk taking some notes.

“West?” Harry asked in surprise.

“Welcome to our home…” Emille said, sounding mildly annoyed at an unwanted visitor.

“Please tell me you two aren’t behind this whole kidnapping business.”

“What are talking about?” Emille asked, even more annoyed. “Why would we kidnap anyone?”

West would have believed her, but he noticed that Harry was avoiding eye contact. He narrowed his eyes.

“I’m talking about Rick and Cadi Wille. Rick suddenly disappeared while I was talking to him this afternoon.”

Emille rolled her eyes.

“Well he’s obviously not here.”

Well, if he wasn’t here, then they should have no problem if he checked?

“RICK! CADI!” he suddenly yelled, causing Harry and Emille to jump.

There was a moment of silence, and then he heard a muffled, “Mr. Johnston!!”

“I knew it!” he exclaimed, running down the hall. Harry and Emille ran after him.

“Wait! West! You don’t understand!” Harry called out desperately. He jumped and tackled him.

“What don’t I understand?” the teacher asked, extremely angry. “This is kidnapping, and it’s wrong.”

“But West-these kids are dangerous.” Emille explained. “We’ve checked. They’ve got parts of the time stream in their system. Not only could it kill them, but if something were to happen… it could tear apart the fabric of space time.”

“We’re only trying to help them.”

West stared at them, and then pushed Harry off of him and calmly stood up.

“Well I at least want to see them.”

“Fine.” Emille said steadily, pushing past him.

She led them down the hallway and then angrily opened the door.

“See? They’re just fine.” she told him.

Cadi and Rick shrank back in response, and West could immediately tell that they were not fine. He couldn’t necessarily see any physical injuries or anything, but they looked absolutely miserable. He stood there for a moment, staring at his students and trying to comprehend the fact that some of his best friends had gotten themselves involved in a kidnapping. What was the right thing to do in this situation? Should he listen to Harry and Emille?

He continued to stand there frozen as his thoughts raced through his mind.

He knew Harry and Emille. They were good people.

But then why had Rick said that they threatened him? Was it an empty threat?

After all, West sometimes struggled to tell if Emille was joking sometimes or not.

He stood there struggling with this for another moment, and then he made eye contact with Cadi. Her big green eyes looked up at him pleadingly as she peeked out from behind her brother’s leg.

How could someone say no to those eyes?

Resolutely, he made a decision.

“Fine.” he said steadily. “Just-make sure to do what you have to do quickly. These kids need to get home.”

Harry and Emille let out a sigh of relief.

“Thank you for understanding West.” Harry said with a clap on his back. West glanced back at the children behind him as they left the room.

Rick and Cadi looked crestfallen.

Don’t worry. He thought to himself. I’m not going to just leave you here.

I’m going to the cops.

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Rick still felt betrayed by Mr. Johnston. They could have really used his help, and he decided to go with his friends…

About an hour later, the door opened again.

“Alright Rick. Time to come with us. We need to test some things.” Emille said coldly.

Rick did not like the sound of this…

“Cadi’s coming with me.” he told her, trying to keep his voice from wavering. Emille rolled her eyes.

“Fine. Hurry up.”

Cadi held on tightly to her older brother’s hand as they were pushed out of the room and into the the large room with all of the circular machines that they had seen during their little investigation when Cadi had paused time.

“Ok. Harry-with the two of them, do you think we might be able to access the time stream?” Emille asked excitedly. Harry simply shrugged.

“I mean, we might need to tweak some things, but I would say it’s a very large possibility.”

Emille looked extremely elated for all this, and then as a spur of the moment type thing, skipped up to him and kissed him. For a moment, Rick thought for a second that maybe Harry would be surprised enough to accidentally let go of his arm, but alas, the man did not falter. He suddenly pushed Emille away.

“Peach? Did you hear something?” he asked. She looked at him confused, and then stopped to listen.

The next few seconds, things happened very fast.

Emille’s eyes grew wide, and she dove for her gun and some of her remotes without any warning. She then grabbed Cadi as a bunch of cops broke through the door. Harry stood there frozen with Rick, unsure of what to do, and Emille was now pointing the gun at Cadi’s head.

“If-if you don’t back up, I won’t hesitate to end this little girl!!” she yelled shrilly. Rick looked over to her in horror. Cadi stood there stiffly, starting to cry again. The cops hesitated. This was probably supposed to be a retrieval of two children, but now it was a straight up hostage situation.

“We have you surrounded. You have nowhere else to go. Please don’t let this escalate.” one of the policemen said with a kind voice.

“Emille-pause time!!” Harry whispered. Emille grit her teeth.

“I can’t. I was tweaking that part of her remote. We only have the other controls right now.”

Rick wanted so badly to fight back and to break free, but he couldn’t help but think of his sister, who was being forced to her knees with a gun to her head. If he tried anything, would Emille actually shoot her? Would she shoot him? He couldn’t be sure…

The two parties stood there frozen for what seemed to Rick like hours. He could feel Harry’s sweat dripping onto his arm, and he could hear the static buzz of the policemen’s walkie talkies as they talked to their superiors.

“How did the police know we…” Harry murmured. Emille stiffened as a familiar face walked into the room followed by a couple more policemen.

“West?! You did this didn’t you?!” she yelled. West hardened his face, and for a second, Rick took all the bad feelings he had harbored towards his teacher back. He hadn’t abandoned them after all.

“Please guys. Don’t make this worse.” West said bitterly.

“But… West… we told you that…” Harry said, betrayed.

“Harry-look at what you two are doing! Not only is this illegal, but it’s morally wrong! You aren’t doing this for those kids. You’re doing it for yourselves. You two are obsessed!”

At this, Emille glared at him and cocked the gun aiming at Cadi’s head. Rick breathed in sharply. West put his hands up.

“Please-at least-at least let their parents talk to them.”

Rick’s hopes went up at this. Mr. Johnston was probably trying to soften up their captors. If their parents came in, then maybe… just maybe… they would feel something enough to let them go.

In response, Emille and Harry looked at each other, trying to silently figure out what to do. West cleared his throat, and then went over to one of the policemen.

“Go ahead and tell them to bring in the parents.”

Rick had never been so glad to see his own parents in the entirety of his teenage life. He’d also never seen them so worried.

“R-Rick, Cadi, it-it’s ok. We’re here.” their father stammered. Their mother opened her mouth to say something to them, but then choked on a sob. Their father squeezed her hand.

“Can we- can we please work out something?” she asked. “Mr. Johnston here says you’re good people. Please-our children…”

Emille swallowed, the tension thick in the air.

“Then maybe we can-.”

BANG!

Rick involuntarily let out a scream, as well as several other people. For a split second, he thought it was all over and that Cadi was dead. But then, he realized that Emille had never fired the gun. It had been one of the policemen. Had one of them accidentally fired? He looked around, trying to figure out who had been shot, when he saw Emille pointing the remote to Cadi’s ankle bracelet at Harry’s face.

In front of her boyfriend’s face, was a bullet-frozen inches away from his nose. The policemen in the room couldn’t seem to believe this as they stood there with their mouths agape. Slowly, Harry reached up and plucked the bullet out of the air and dropped it to the ground with a shaky hand. Emille turned angrily to the policeman who had fired.

“Big mistake.” she growled, pointing the remote at him.

Rick’s head suddenly burst into pain, causing him to cry out and fall to his knees. He clutched his head, trying to see what was happening-trying to see through the pain.

Cadi was screaming.

He looked over to see that she had her hands to her head in utter agony, blood dripping out of her nose. Was this a connection pain? What were they making her do?

That’s when he noticed the policeman.

Everyone stood there mortified as the officer started to change. His black hair gradually whitened, and the smooth young skin he had wrinkled and spotted with old age. The thirty year old now looked eighty.

But much to Rick’s horror, it didn’t stop there. The man continued to age, a look of shock on his face as he dropped his gun and looked down at his hands. The skin hugged his skeleton and the hair grew-making him more dead than alive. Screams sounded as his skin withered away to a decaying skeleton and the man collapsed into dust.

The pain in Rick’s head stopped, and he looked over to his sister to see how she was handling all of this.

“Cadi?”

His sister swayed, her eyes unfocused, blood trickling out of her nose.

Then she fell to the ground and didn’t move.

“CADI!!” Rick yelled, forgetting that his captors had a gun. All he could think about was his sister and how she didn’t seem to be breathing. He grabbed her by the shoulders and rolled her over onto her back, tears stinging his eyes.

“Cadi!! Wake up!! Wake up!!” he cried desperately, holding the eight year old close to him. After all of this, she couldn’t die...she just couldn’t…

“E-Emille-did-did you just…” Harry gaped in horror, staring at the pile of dust that used to be a person.

“We’re going to have to use the boy.” she whispered, grabbing another remote from the table.

“Wait-but-.” Harry started to say.

Rick didn’t get to hear what the scientist was going to say, for the pain in his head suddenly came back with a vengeance. He was barely aware that people were running-unsure of what was happening now-or who was going to die. Rick screamed and clutched his head, feeling like it was going to split open like an ax in a melon.

They were trying to use him to pause time.

He couldn’t pause time! That’s what Cadi did! Rick couldn’t use any of those powers!! He just had a connection with his little sister!

“I-I c-can’t-pause t-time!!” he anguished, sinking to the ground, blood trickling down out of his nose.

He didn’t hear what his captors told him-for he had curled up into a ball, his face against the cold wooden floor.

Then suddenly, the pain stopped, leaving him with an ache and a quietness that was unsettling.

“I knew he could do it.” Emille said smugly.

Rick struggled to hold his head up to see that time had frozen.

No…

They had been so close…

He could see the frozen images of his parents a few feet away, his mother reaching out for them in tears, and their father horrified. Rick let his head fall down to the ground again in exhaustion, looking at the crumpled girl on the ground next to him.

At any other time, he might have been so excited to find out that he could actually do things too. He would have loved to see the look on his sister’s face had she known that they both had powers.

But now, he only lay there in misery.

“Cadi…” he croaked, trying to reach out for her, the tears still streaming down his face.

His shaking arm dropped to the ground and everything went black.