Chapter twenty seven

Chapter 27
Ares
The recliner I was sitting on was red. Not just any red, but blood red. Was this really necessary? The lady that was at a desk in the corner of the small room was tap-tap-tapping away on her keyboard, oblivious to my annoyance. I was waiting to talk with my father, was there really something more important than me? She looked over at me and sighed, “Hon, is there something stuck in my teeth? Is my hair messed up?” I was bewildered, “n-no.” I stammered.
“Then please,” She continued omnipotently “stop your staring.” I got a bit angry then. I stood up, and walked past her desk.
“Where do you think your going?!?” She said darkly, she stood up so she occupied all of the vertical space possible. I think she was standing on her toes trying to intimidate me. I rolled my eyes, “In.” With that I pushed open the steel door effortlessly. My father looked up; he was sitting on a loveseat, drinking soda! I had waited that long for my father to finish drinking his soda!?!
“Father we need to talk.” He looked a bit surprised at my demanding tone of voice, “Sure, son, sit down.” He patted the seat beside him. I took the wooden chair in front of him instead. He ignored my protest and said innocently “Something seems to be troubling you.” No duh, I wanted to shout. Something has been troubling me ever since you took the mutants hostage. But instead I screamed “why!!! Why to many, many things! What is hurting Stor-Alina supposed to accomplice? Why does Kichi have to help? It hurts her enough to my betrayal! That day, the day I betrayed them, I was fueled only by hatred! You made me believe that bringing them back her, locking them up, would do them good!” My father stood up.
“Silence! I command you to…” He said calmly, I interrupted his sentence. “No! You cannot keep me in the dark and longer! I demand to know! I demand time to tell you what is running through my mind! You cannot…” At this time we were both standing, yelling into each others face. It was his turn to interrupt me.
“SHUT UP!” He spoke harshly, with a menacing undertone. I closed my mouth, shocked. He had never scolded me so angrily. “You want to know everything?!? Fine. Waste my time!” He stopped, as if waiting for me to back down. I squared my shoulders instinctively. He sighed, “Elizabeth!” The woman from outside opened the door meekly. When she saw us both standing (and red in the face) she gasped. “Oh sir, is he giving you troubles? I could go get security.” My father laughed as if she had just told him there was a ghost behind him. “No, no. That is fine; please get me and my son a milkshake. A sugar-free one for him.” The last insult didn’t bother me, what bothered me was the way he spat out son. As if he had just smelled something horrid. Elizabeth scuttled off, and she left the door ajar. A small face was peeking around the corner. “Eva!” I murmured surprised. She edged in carefully. I had grown increasingly fond of the little girl, innocent, compliant, kind, forgiving, ignorant. She was the type of little sister Kichi couldn’t have been. My fathers face lighted up when he saw her; apparently he was attached to her as well. “Ah Eva.” He spoke softly and tenderly with her. Why couldn’t he talk like that with me? I was his only son, his only child if it came down to that.
“Now,” he turned back to me “We have a witness. May we both take a seat and talk about this like civilized men?” I sat back in the chair. My father scooted over like he was expecting Eva to take the seat next to him. Eva jumped onto my lap. I smiled triumphantly, father shot me a warning glance.
“Ares, lets start with your feelings.” I had a feeling he was trying to put off the explanation, which meant that he would rather me not know.
“Father, with all due respect. I feel that you should go first.” He sighed again, this time like a small child giving in to chores. “Alright. But I will forewarn you, it isn’t a cheery bedtime story. Lately, new and improved jobs have needed more abilities to work. More abilities than the average adult required. So, the lab and I have decided to enhance the abilities of people, so sometime in the future we may be able to occupy these jobs.” He took a break to sip his milkshake, which Elizabeth must have slipped in without me noticing. Many questions were swirling around in my head. Why test on teenagers if adults were the targets? How could the abilities given to my friends, morphing, look changing, time warping, and mind reading, help people accomplice jobs? What were these jobs? My father didn’t appear to be about to explain further. Instead he was preoccupied with his milkshake.
“Elizabeth! Is there Hershey’s chocolate syrup in here?!? You know I only eat expensive chocolate! Never mind, I will go fix myself another one! Excuse me Ares, I will be back.” I knew what he was trying to do, leave then come back and by then have me forgotten what we were talking about. Once he left the room I pounced on the privacy. “Eva, I need you to go into his mind. Take note of everything. I need to know the truth about this.” She nodded her head vigorously; finally able to use her powers for something she wanted to know, also. It was a few minutes wait, a lot longer than it should take to make a milkshake, for my father to return. He sat down and drank (what looked like the same milkshake) and looked at me blankly. Exactly what I thought, he was thinking I had forgotten. “So, what is the rest of the story? Where does torturing Storm come into play?” I didn’t bother to correct Storm’s name. He looked taken aback, the stifled his third sigh.
“Of course, of course. Well before we could start issuing these powers to normal people we had to test it. So gathering up children, we tested them. We had to be sure that no side effects occurred. It just so happens that little Alina was one of the guinea pigs. Now she was a very stubborn one. And of course, these powers cost much money to make, and when she escaped we couldn’t let her take off with millions of dollars in superpowers. Over the years we have been testing many have escaped, but none that had so many powers as Alina. So when we traced her collecting so many runaways, we had to capture them. Meanwhile, Kichi the runaway mutant I sent you to recover joined them. And you know the rest.” I made an oh sound and acted relieved.
“That makes so much sense now! Thank you father, I understand. Well I will be on my way, not going to take any more of your time away!” With that Eva and I slipped out the door and down the hallway. We entered an elevator; as soon as the door closed Eva started talking. “I know everything! It was so easy to find…” I shushed her, and then pointed up. She smiled, zippered her lips with an invisible zipper, and then giggled. I had to be in the privacy of my room when this mystery unfurled.
Once we were both in the safe space of my room with the door locked and the sound proof walls intact, Eva started again.
“He and the agency are gathering mutants! They are making an army. The goal is to over throw the governments, and ultimately take over the world! They give powers to teenagers and kid because they think the governments would fight back against children! He wants to scare Storm into behaving. He wants to show her who is boss, and break her. He is probably doing that with many other rebels too! So when the time comes he and the scientists can climb up to power easily. It has been a big effort from the beginning. Power makes people hungry, and ruthless.” I was shocked; I hadn’t realized the magnitude of this until now! I was about to say something when Eva went on, “And that’s not it. Once they have complete control. They are going to steal away your powers, and kill all mutants. So that way there will be not threats. Don’t think you will be spared because you are his son, you dad was thinking as merciless about you as he would be any other mutant. Conquer or die, it is inscribed on his desk in small letters towards the bottom, I passed his desk on the way in.” This shocked me. It was the shocker of all shocks. Anger, no fury, stirred up inside of me. I made an uncivilized guttural sound and stood.
“We need to find Storm, your sister, and the rest of the mutants. We all need to escape, not just our crew, all of the mutant children the institute has control over. Every mutant needs to flee. And after everyone is out of harms way, there needs to be a full-scale rebellion!!!” I was a bit ahead of myself but I didn’t care. If the agency had enough kids to take over the world, they had to have enough kid to overthrow the agency. This new information gave me hope; there was a way to get rid of our powers. After all of this was over, the rebellion and all, we could de-muntanify ourselves. I swung Eva onto my back.
“I need to find Storm and the gang. I need to Kichi and apologize. Not just Kichi, Storm, Ethan, Fire, Adara, especially Adara.