Ken rolled into school a bit slowly that Monday. The school’s metal detectors were acting screwy, so it took a couple tries to over-ride them. He still had his arm bandaged, and was preparing to get bombared with the questions of what happened to it when he went down the hallway, to his locker.
“Holy crap man, what the hell happened to your arm?” Came from Steve.
“You think this’s bad? You should’ve seen the other guy.” Ken grinned. He’d practised this in his head a few times during the weekend, “Cobblestone. You’d think they’d have been replaced years ago, but no…”
“Ouch, man. How’d it go with Alex on Sunday?” Steve bought it. And of course, had no reason not to. He asked quietly, because Alex was just down the hall.
“Dude, we-“ Ken was cut off by a loud noise about five feet away from him. At first, it sounded like cherry bombs going off in somebody’s locker, but even before he looked, he knew better.
One gunshot later, the first body hit the floor.
“Oh my god…” I don’t know who said it, and it doesn’t really matter, either, because every single person near that hallway was at least thinking it.
Steve could have rushed at him, and pushed the gun out of his hand easily. It was all his fault, letting those people die just to cover his abilities. Well, not really, but that was all he could think afterwards. Steve was parylized with fear, Ken was merely parylized below his upper legs, and four more gunshots after, ‘most everyone there was dead.
Including the shooter.
Ken looked up at Steve. It might be a bit pointless to describe his expression, but I can say he was at least slightly wide eyed. To say that either were surprised would be an incredible understatement.
“Holy…” Ken said something that I couldn’t possibly get away with saying here. Steve’s response was similar.
**
“He’s Jake Powell.” Ken stammered to the police who arrived five minutes later. By then, everyone who hadn’t ran out of the school after hearing the news had crowded around the crime scene tape. “Didn’t know him well. Er, w-wasn’t too popular.”
“Man… why the hell does somebody take down so many innocent people?” Muttered the police officer Ken was talking to.
“I wouldn’t say that they were completely innocent… sure’n hell didn’t deserve this. I, I think those people that he shot down were constantly giving him shit… for about two years now. E-except for Alex… the girl who got hit in the shoulder…” Steve put in, still incredibly scared by it all.
“It just doesn’t make any damn sense… four perfect shots through the hearts, but two are terribly off?” The police detective speculated.
“Man… is that all? I wanna go see Alex now…” Ken asked the detective.
“Yeah, go ahead. I doubt there’re gonna be anymore classes today. Give her our best wishes?” The detecive sighed, hoping that Ken’s girlfriend would make it. He certainly didn’t want for another person to die.
Steve followed Ken out of the school.
“Will you get those-” Ken added a colourful adjective to his yell at the guards at the entrance “-metal detectors fixed?”
About fifteen minutes later, they arrived at Ottawa General Hospital.
**
Steve doodled on the paper, not really drawing anything. The shooting that had occurred the day before was only now starting to sink in. School that day had been canceled for some pretty obvious reasons, so Steve was at his mother’s desk. The other people who were left alive in that hallway weren’t as “lucky” - as Steve’s mom said, he disagreed - as he was, because Steve’s mother was a police officer, and therefore able to afford counselling for her son outside of the school. Steve wasn’t incredibly thrilled, because even though he still was frightened, and his drawing wasn’t turning out even remotely well because he was still shaking, he insisted that he didn’t need it.
Steve sighed, and pushed his paper away. He picked up the phone, and dialed Ken’s number.
“’ello?” Came the voice at the other end.
“Hey… it’s Steve. I’m stuck at my Mom’s work… so I thought I’d call you.”
“Oh, hey.” Ken hit the volume up bottom on his phone a few times. Steve was talking rather softly, although he didn’t realize it.
“So… how’s Alex doing? Sorry that I left after you met her parents… but, well, y’know how it was.”
“That’s alright. She’s still recovering, but they think she’s going to be alright. Thank god, the bullet missed anything important by about a foot; the doctors say that she should be back to normal health in a few days.” Ken was almost able to grin a bit, “I think that just might be the most awkward introduction to the parents of one’s girlfriend possible, though.”
“Heh. Well, that’s good to hear.”
“Man, I still can’t believe that happened… if he didn’t shoot himself, I’d love to get my hands on him now. Almost killed her… and could have killed me, or you, too.”
Steve had plenty of time to think about that idea, which probably wasn’t the best thing to distract himself with. He just blamed himself for not jumping out. Certainly, even without the amplifiers, he could have slowed down the bullets enough, or knocked the gun out of Jake’s hand. Of course, it wasn’t, but he’d blame himself for a while after that. He was about to say something, when he was interrupted.
“Lock the place down, right now!” Somebody who Steve didn’t recognize had yelled out. “Someone’s just gone off with a body!”
Moments later, an alarm went off, and somebody who was probably a captain was yelling out instructions to the officers in the building. Then, somebody who Steve was able to recognize ran by.
“Oh my…” Steve added language that fell under the category of ‘not polite’ in the blank, “…God. I think I just saw…”
Steve took a couple breaths, and spoke to a confused Ken.
“You just might have that chance…” Steve stammered, and hung up the phone. He was shaking more than he thought, and took a couple tries to connect the handset to the base.
“What the hell just happened?” Steve’s question didn’t fall on many ears. Almost all the officers in the building chased after the runner.
“I-I don’t know.” responded the captain, whose name was Blake. “It can’t possibly be what it looks like… but Jake Powell’s body disappeared from the Coroner before he got a chance to examine the body.”
“But…” was all Steve could say.
“We have an officer down, I repeat, officer down. Suspect is heading nort-south, heading south to Riverdale. Suspect seems posses soldier traits, and is incredibly dangerous.” came over somebody’s radio.
Somebody else had also heard that, tipped off to turning the radio on by Steve’s cryptic statement.
“Holy crap…” Ken had little to say in response to that. His mother wasn’t home with him, so he headed over to the closet, moved a box out of the way, and removed some of the loose floorboards. Ken popped the police radio into its slot in the helmet.
“Computer, radio on.” Ken held down a button in the helmet, “What does he look like?” Ken went back to putting the armour on, boots next, so he could stand up.
Some officer had a sense of humour, though. “Just follow the trail of sirens!”
**
He was right, too. Ken got the whole story in a couple minutes, along with everyone else, because the police radio was being abused with explanations, and everyone wanted to catch him.
So it didn’t take long, especially with his almost birds eye view of the city, to find about twenty police cars chasing a single grey stationwagon.
“Computer, target grey car. Repeat speed.” Ken told the computer.
“Target is traveling at 200 km/h.”
“Oh, great, a speed maniac and a cop killer.” Ken muttered, “Computer, match target speed and increase speed to intercept in 15 seconds. Load right arm, bullets.”
Almost fifteen seconds later, the car started to swerve out of control, due to the shot out tires. The police cars came screeching to a halt, almost everybody stepping out of their cars with guns raised. The person came out of the stationwagon, a body falling out of the door as it was opened.
Not only was he a killer and a car thief, but he was also guilty of driving without a liscence. Too young to have one; in fact, he was the same age as Ken.
If Ken had a smartass comment to make, it probably would have been something about seeing ghosts. Except, Ken was too distracted trying to pump as many bullets as possible into the appearently alive Jake Powell.
**
If Steve had been any less than unbelievable frightened, then he would have been out there with the rest of the cops. But instead, he was occupying himself with studying the history textbook for the test in three days. Well, it was probably going to be dealyed, but it sure didn’t hurt.
After the final American altered soldier was brought into the war, it ended in about two weeks. It was no wonder; the soldier had been in design since before the war had even started, and many considered the creation of him an atrocity in the long run. The textbook explained. The soldier was altered, even at the sub-atomic level, so that the atoms that composed him had a unique particle that would pull to itself, stopping the molecules it formed from seperating far, even in a gaseous state. But the soldier could also control the speed of this single particle, thus controlling his body temperature completely.
It took nearly ten years to design this soldier, and even then he was incredibly flawed, but was released when it seemed that America and its allies would have lost the war for sure. This soldier could change the temperature of himself so radically, he could not only change his body to a gaseous form, but heat up anything around him, so it would evaporate. He was even more unkillable than the magnet soldiers, and could literally walk through walls, and bullets would simply go right through him.
**
And unfortunately, Ken hadn’t read those paragraphs in the books yet, so he didn’t understand why Jake had been thought dead, or why a collective 200 rounds of bullets seemed to pass right through him with no effective, short of anything supernatural.
**
The war was easily won with him, but he didn’t last very long. Because of his incredible power, he was poisoned. A conclusion to his killer was never reached, but many believe that it was either terrorists, or the American government itself, to stop him from getting power hungry, and potentially harming the already almost destroyed world. The book continued to ask questions about opinions about the morality of his killing, or even creation.
**
“Ammunition at critical level.” The computer informed Ken.
“Bloody hell.” Ken stopped firing, “Clearly, this isn’t working. Dammit!” That was about the only thing that was clear to Ken, though.
“You disgusting, piece of…” Ken said with the voice synth loud.
Powell just looked at him. The stare he gave certainly didn’t look like what he normally saw of Jake. Of course, he never really knew him well.
“Shut up. Shut up.” Jake said, a power to his voice, “What does it feel like, to not be in control? It’s about time somebody taught you.” He looked back at the rest, “All of you!
“This isn’t over, you know. This is just the beginning. And I’m gonna show you…” He turned, and walked away. He put his hand against the stationwagon, and the part under his hand started to melt, showing off. Nobody dared to follow him.
No, thought Ken, it’s not over. Now, it’s personal.