It has been a week since mom told me the truth about why I’m almost always in the house, her words about me being considered dangerous if the wrong people found out echoed in my head for a few days. By now I realized a way to block it out is to distract myself from the truth. In school I paid attention to the lesson and thought about something else on the side. Now it seemed I was back to normal.

My school got out early today, so I walked home without picking up Tony. A few minutes after I arrived home and opened the door, surprised to my mom was doing dishes. Dad must have come home for lunch.

“Hey.” I said startling her. I was taller than her now. I guess I never really had the chance to realize that till now because one of us was sitting every time we talked. Then again when I measured myself a few days ago I was about five foot nine. Almost as tall as dad who is six foot. Mom was about five foot five. Tony is pretty small compared to us. He is four foot two according to his measurement last week.

“Hey.” She replied. “Was today an early day for you?”

“Yeah,” I answered. “Can I ask a question about…?”

“What makes you different?” She asked. I nodded. “Sure, as long as it isn’t what the name of it is. Sadly, I don’t have the answer to that.”

“No it wasn’t that. I was wondering if fast, creative thinking was an ability that came with… it.” I asked.

“Yes it is. Some of the abilities came when you were young. The not so obvious ones like fast and creative thinking. You are good at problem solving which is another trait of it. I’ve seen it when you play video games. Video games might have actually enhanced that trait for you because you use it so often.” She explained.

“What about the more obvious ones?” I ask.

“Well, unlike the less obvious ones that can come at any given moment, the more obvious ones come all at once. The more obvious ones vary from person to person, so I can’t help you with those much except tell you that it’s impossible to tell when they will come, but you will know when they come.”

The explanation mom gave me was easy to figure out. I leaned on the counter further evaluating what she said. As I did I realized why I would be considered dangerous to some people. Coming to terms with it also seemed to get that thought out of my head. Well, I was less panicked about it at least.

School was let out early for the rest of the week. The principle said we would also be let out early next week because they were doing an experiment to see which way was better for homework completion. Of course some kids who never did their homework started doing it because they wanted to be let out early. I found myself using that time outside wondering around our city. Since my parents didn’t know that my school was letting out early, they just assumed that I was in school. I liked being outside by myself for more than just the walk to my little brother Tony’s school to pick him up, but being outside that long was big mistake.

In the middle of the night I hear a bang like someone hitting the wall or a door being slammed open. The next thing I hear is the screams of pain from my parents and the sound of them falling to the floor.

“NO!” Tony screams before I hear the thump of his body hitting the floor. At that point I did the most logical thing I could think of: I opened the window and jumped out onto the yard a floor and a half below me. I landed with a thud in the grass. My feet crushed a bunch of fallen leaves as they hit the ground. I quickly got up and started to quietly try to sneak away from my house.

“What was that?” Someone asked in my front yard. I quickly ran in the other direction zigzagging through the dark, empty streets my bare feet complaining as they hit the uneven gravel and sharp pieces of glass, the leaves crunching as I trampled over them. At this point I was thinking that super speed would be useful right now.

A couple hours later the sun started to rise over the wall that surrounded our city. I stared at the wall as I remembered something my mom said:

“They say the wall is to protect us from what’s outside, but they are really just to keep us in. It’s hard to get out, but if they really don’t want you to get out it will be nearly impossible.”

As I walked back I realized the ‘they’ she was speaking of was the people who are now after me. My feet ache from the glass cuts on them. When I got to my house I closed the door behind me staying on the small square of tile that was behind the door. It was cold and flat which relaxed my feet a little making the pain more bearable. At this point I wanted to fall over just to get off my feet, but I couldn't just yet. After a few minutes of standing there, I picked up one of my feet and saw a small puddle of blood. I sighed and jumped onto the tile floor of the kitchen. The pain from the landing almost made me fall down, but I recovered quick enough not to. Another thing that was because I was different I guess, because with this much pain a ‘normal’ person would be lying on the floor right now and they would probably be crying at least, if not howling in pain. That I learned from school. I walked over to the paper towel rack, grabbed four, then opened the top drawer under the counter and found the tape. After that I quickly put the paper towels under my feet and wrapped the tape once around each foot. I didn’t want to get blood on the carpet, even though I wasn’t going to live here anymore. After my feet where covered I quickly cleaned up the blood, even though anybody with a UV light would be able to see it.

As I head up the stairs I hear a small, painful cough. I silently get on my hands and knees, staying low as I continued up the stairs. I reach the top of the stairs and hear another cough then a string of them. I peek my over the top stair slowly. When I see Tony lying on the floor I instantly ran to him, tripping over the last stair, and falling back on my hands and knees. I crawled over to him.

“Tony.” I say gently as I stop beside him. He did a few more painful coughs before looking at me.

“It’s my fault. They're dead because of me. It’s all my fault.” He said weakly, his eyes watering.

“It’s not completely your fault. It’s my fault too.” I tell him running my hand over his short, dirty blonde hair. It’s then I look down. There was a knife cut in his shirt, and he’s bleeding slowly. Out of the corner of my eye I see his gaze fallowing mine.

“I’ll be fine.” He said weakly.

“You should be dead.” I reply.

“I know.” He said.

“Wait here.” I say getting up.

“Not like I was going to go anywhere.” Was his response. I walked into the bathroom, got out the first aid kit and went back to Tony’s side. I helped him sit up then started tending to his wound.

“I thought you weren’t going to come back.” Tony said as I was putting the bandage on his side. He hissed at the sting of the anti-bacterial I put on the bandage.

“Well I need shoes don’t I?” I asked jokingly. He gave a small laugh.

“I guess so.” He replied. That's when he looked at my feet. Blood had started to seep through the paper towels. “What happened to your feet anyways?”

“Oh, I was running on glass last night. Didn't realize it was so bad until the adrenaline wore off.”

“Oh, are you going to be ok?”

“Yeah. I'll be fine. I just need to make sure there's no more glass in my feet and bandage it up properly.”

“So what do we do now?”

“We pack up. Get only what you need. Try to keep it to one backpack each.” I said. Tony got up slowly then looked around.

“Will we ever be coming back?” He asked.

“Probably not.” I replied. With that we went to go pack up.

An hour later I found myself in my parent’s room. I still haven't done anything with my feet yet, and the pain was killing me. I walked over to my mom and knelt beside her.

“I’m sorry.” I whispered quietly dropping my head. Looked over at where my dad was. Only his thick but short black hair that was peppered with gray was in sight. I looked back down at mom and that’s when I saw that there was a piece of paper crumpled in her closed hand. I carefully took it out of her hand and straightened it out. It read:

Jordan,

If you are reading this I’m probably dead. You need to leave the city, now. Take Tony with you. You have to protect him. He has most of his abilities already, but that means he is not as strong as you. I trust you to be brave enough for the both of you. You have to trust yourself. I know you are probably really confused and I’m sorry I can’t explain why. Just know you have to get out of this city and over the wall. Good luck.

-Mom

Attached to the note was a sticky note that read:

Closet shelf right side: 1582

After taking the sticky note off the paper I folded the paper and put it in my pocket. I walked over to the right side of the closet and opened it. On the shelf was a box. I took it down, walked over to the bed, sat down and unlocked the box. I flipped open the box and found another note:

Jordan,

The stuff in this box is for you. Take what you think you need. If you don’t take all of it that’s fine, just make sure you don’t need it if you leave it.

I set the note beside me and looked at the content in the box. There was a gun, ammo, and smoke bombs. The only reason I knew they were smoke bombs were from the video games I played. Good thing to because if I thought they were regular bombs I would have decided to leave them. I found a knife under all of the other things. After taking it out I realized it was the knife mom showed me when I was young. She said it was an heirloom. I turned it in my hand twice before putting it back in the box. All the stuff in the box I could use, so I figured it would be best to bring them. I tilted the box up a little and noticed it seemed to have more depth in it then it had. Curiously, I ran my fingers along the slight lip on the bottom of the box. My fingers ran over a slight bump. Putting my fingers on the bump, I pushed hard. There was a click, and then a small drawer opened slightly. I slowly opened the drawer to find another note. This one had a sketch of my parent’s bed room. In the closet there was an ‘x’ on the wall behind where the box was. I walked over to the closet and felt the wall. It felt normal until I ran my hand toward the right to the other wall. The wall gave in slightly as I pressed my hand to it, after that the wall went back to its normal thickness. I pushed my fingers into the weak part of the wall. It made a slight tear. After that I looked at the map to see there was an arrow pointing to the left. I grabbed on to the piece of wall I just ripped and pulled it to the left. It tore easily to reveal a black surface I came to realize was a case for something. After I got the case completely uncovered I got it out, brought it to the bed, set it down, un-clicked the two locks, and opened it to find a bow and several quivers full of arrows. I learned in gym class that I could shoot an arrow and hit the target, if it wasn’t moving that is. Now that there was nothing left to be found in my parent’s room, I took the box and the case into my room and continued packing.  After we assessed all that we needed I sat down on the couch in the living room and took a look at my feet.  Turns out I still had a few small shards that where now imbedded in my feet because I’ve been walking.  My feet stopped bleeding, but I knew they would start bleeding again as soon as I started removing the glass.  I got a pair of tweezers and started trying to take the glass out of my foot.  Tony walked into the kitchen and came back with a small plate to put the glass on and cleared a spot for me because the table had all of the stuff we were bringing with us.

“I’ll go make sure nothing was missed.” Tony said as he started for the stairs.

“Ok.” I said.  “I think there’s a few more first aid kits in the bathroom.”

“I’ll get them.” Tony said before heading up the stairs.

I carefully tried to align the tweezers with the glass.  The cold metal stung on my fresh skin that was still red and irritated.  Once I got a hold on the glass I started to pull it out.  There was a thunk that startled me and caused my hand to jerk and re-embed the glass at a different angle.  I bit my tongue, which wasn’t a good idea because I made that bleed too.

“I’m fine.” Tony called from upstairs.  I sat there trying not to howl in pain.  My eyes watered a bit as I heard Tony’s footsteps coming down the stairs.  He set the other first aid kits on the table then looked at me.  “You ok?”

I nodded because that’s all I could really do.  That’s when I realized I was still biting my tongue.  I set the tweezers down on the small plate and covered my mouth with one hand before speaking.  “Can I have a towel?” I asked.  Tony rushed off to the closet in the hallway, opened the door, got a hand towel, and rushed back.

“Here.” He said holding out the towel.  I took it with my other hand.

“Thanks.” I said.  A bit of blood spilled out of my mouth, but I quickly wiped it up.

“Sorry.” He said seemingly realizing that this was because I was startled by the sudden thud.

“It wasn’t on purpose.” I replied covering my mouth with the towel.  After I finished talking I put part of the towel in my mouth and applied pressure with my teeth.  The towel felt weird, but I was more concerned about trying to stop the bleeding.  I picked the tweezers again and went for the same piece of glass, wincing through the towel as I pulled it out.  I went to the next piece of glass, then the next, until every piece was out of my foot before switching over to the other foot.  Once all the glass was out Tony helped my wrap my feet up before we started assessing the supplies we had and in which backpack each item was going into.          

After all was said and done I had all the items in the box, two arrow quivers, a first aid kit packed with all we could possibly need and more and food that wouldn’t dry out. The water would also go in my backpack. Tony had the lighter load. All he has was spare clothes for both of us and my laptop with this little drive that let me go online without it being tracked. That I also found in the box after examining it further. Tony wanted to say good bye to all his friends at school. I wanted to say good bye to my only known cousin, Tevan, so we agreed to stay for one more day. That night I looked on the school website to see that my math and science teachers where sick and that there classes would be canceled. That meant I only had gym tomorrow. I had no problem with that considering Tevan was in that class and we were doing archery.  Too bad my feet where killing me.  I honestly don’t think I’ll be able to stand long enough to do archery.