 
## Power Trilogy Book One: An Ancient Power

Written By Ethan Ransom Becker

Copyright 2012 by Ethan Ransom Becker

Cover Art by Ashley Brown

Smashwords Edition

# After the Beginning

When the universe began, it was just a jumbled mixture of pure and uncontained energy. It was chaos; chaos beyond the comprehension of human kind, or that of any mortal race that has ever existed or will ever exist. It was shapeless and violent, and basically anything that could possibly happen was possible. There were no rules, no order, and no balance to this young universe.

However, when the universe was created, two incredible energies were also produced alongside the chaos. These incredible energies were so condensed and complex they began to have semi-conscious thought processes. These energies were similar, yet as different from each other as night and day. These energies being opposites began affecting the chaos around them, and slowly, as if taking their example, the rest of the universe fell into some semblance of order. After an immeasurable amount of time, the infinite power of the universe calmed enough to be molded.

These two beings began shaping the universe as we come to be a part of, creating the stars in the sky and the infinite amount of planets that orbit them. Through their efforts, destructive energies older than time were effectively sealed away, allowing relative peace to rule the universe.

These beings, composed of pure energy, govern the universe, maintaining the rules that they together composed. As eons passed, they shaped millions of wonders that we now see in the night sky. Many of the planets of relatively younger stars sprouted with life, but these were of little concern to these beings, for the existence of these worlds lasted about as long to them as a flash of lightning would to us.

Stars and planets died, and their remains reformed into new stars and planets. Thus, the endless cycle of the life of the universe began. The great Chaos was over; the universe had been tamed.

However, these energies were old, comprised of the violent energies that at one time reigned supreme in the universe. They had successfully brought an end to the most violent time of the universe, except for themselves. The last remnants of the violent time were now housed in these colossus energies. And since the only thing left for them to tame were each other, they began warring with each other. In essence, there had been a war since the beginning; it was the conflict that created balance, but energy cannot be destroyed, only transferred. They essentially drew the most destructive and violent energies into themselves, and there it would stay for eternity, to be stored for all time or unleashed on each other.

For all time after the great Chaos, this war went on. To this day it goes on. In its history, this war has almost created as much chaos as it has prevented. Countless planets teeming with life have been destroyed by the war of these primal forces. However, this war has also led to some of the most beautiful and wondrous forms ever documented.

Yet despite the conflict, and through the destruction and creation of countless billions of stars and planets, it is all one immense power, for it all came from one source. This is a power that mortals were never supposed to have access to. Unfortunately though, this is an infinite universe, with infinite possibilities. The universe is home to many displays of incredible power. How would it be if just a portion of this power was granted to one person? Is it possible to control the energy that can as easily destroy a world as it could save one from destruction? Can a mortal race learn to use such a power before it destroys itself? Can a mortal race be wise enough to use such a power properly?

# Chapter One

Final's week sucked. There was no other way to put it. If anyone was unlucky enough to even have to take any finals. Most were qualified to exempt all of theirs, and if not, a deal could be made to take it early, so kids could spend the week with friends.

Kyle Foster, on the other hand, was not so lucky. He just didn't have the capacity to get commended on the state's stupid standardized tests. It wasn't that he wasn't smart, but he just wasn't much of a great test taker. He had no problem passing assignments and had been described as an excellent note taker, but when it came to tests, he usually only passed by the skin of his teeth.

The one bit of luck he had was that the only final he had to take was geography, which was one of his favorite classes this year. The teacher, Mr. Rivet, was absolutely amazing: he was funny when he wanted to be, had a great taste for music, and he loved the subject he taught. He was originally from California, and this would be his sixteenth year teaching at Permian, although no one could guess why he would want to leave California in the first place. One thing that everyone did know was that he could be a hard teacher if he wanted to be, and Kyle was thinking that he had decided to be one when he made this test. Kyle and the other three people in their taking the test had talked him into letting them use whatever notes that they had on them as they walked into the room, but they weren't allowed to go to their lockers if they had notes there.

Kyle was bent over his test, speedily filling in blanks. He had already filled in the sections he felt the best about, and now he was going through the more tough sections. Vocabulary was easy, but anything with a map, especially if it was a map of Europe, gave him a headache. Anything to do with the North American continent was great, except for states and capitals. Africa was just terrible, while South America Kyle found to be pretty easy. It was a good thing Mr. Rivet was such a good teacher.

With a sigh of relief, Kyle had finished the last section, which was over the states and their capitals. He walked to the front of the room, feeling very confident of the test he was about to turn in. He could feel the other two students in the room watch as he passed them, one a boy who would be taking this same test for the third time, and a girl who had instantly returned her nose into her giant binder for this class. Mr. Rivet watched Kyle as he walked up the aisle and put his test on the top of the third person's test that had already left on the corner of his desk marked "Turn in Assignments." When he checked that Kyle's name was on it, he turned back to his computer, saying, "Have a good summer, Mr. Foster."

"You, too, sir," Kyle said quietly, then turned and left the room. It was hard to tell if Mr. Rivet liked any of his students, or even if he didn't like them for that matter. Kyle, however, got the sense that Rivet liked him, maybe because Kyle managed to get stuff in on time, and if not, to at least get it in as soon as possible.

Kyle let out a sigh of relief upon leaving the room. The halls were completely deserted; you could probably hear Kyle's light footsteps throughout the entire building. The first thing Kyle did was go to the bathroom, for he had been sitting in Rivet's room for about an hour and a half. Rivet would probably have let him go to the bathroom during the test, but Kyle didn't want to stay in the building or have a test to worry about for that long. After that, he went by his locker to pick up his bag and lock. The school allowed for the students to use their lockers up to the last day, but any locks found after five in the afternoon would be cut, and any contents were either trashed or donated. Kyle only had a shoulder bag with a book, his new iPhone, three-dollar sunglasses and hat in it.

He looked over both shoulders before checking the phone. His friend Justin had tried to call him only minutes before. He must have forgotten Kyle thought. Justin Slade and his twin sister Julianne, who usually went by Jules, had been his neighbors and friends since they were in second grade. Justin and Julianne were as opposite as twins could possibly be in Kyle's eyes; if you didn't know them, you probably wouldn't even had guessed that they were related. Their family had moved to Odessa to be closer to their grandparents. The Slades had originally lived in Odessa, but Thomas, the twin's father, had gone to college in Florida. There, he met who was to be his future wife, Kerri. They got married and lived in Florida, but decided to move to Odessa when Kerri's parents passed away within two years of each other. So now, the Slades live just next door to the Fosters. Kyle was only eight when he met the twins. As they got to know each other, Kyle became jealous of them. As twins, they would always have someone to hang out with, while Kyle only had a little sister. However, as the years went by, they became as much like siblings as his little sister and best friends.

Kyle was putting his phone in his pocket and wasn't looking when he turned the corner and bumped into someone. He felt a head bounce off of his boney chest.

"Oh, sorry," he said quickly, and looked up to see who it was.

Emma Ocean was rubbing her forehead with the hand not holding a large book. Her long blonde hair was put into a pony tail, and she wore jeans and a faded AC/DC t-shirt (it looked authentic to Kyle).

She shook her head apologetically, saying "No, no; that was my fault. I'm sorry. Oh, hi Kyle," she said when she saw who it was.

"Hey, Emma. I thought you didn't have any finals?" he asked, remembering her gloating from the week before.

"Oh, I don't. I just had to return this book to the library," she said, indicating the book under her arm. "I've had it for nearly two weeks, and I just found it this morning. I was using it for that research paper and just kept procrastinating about taking it back. So, I talked my mom into dropping me off so I could return it. Better late than never," she joked. "How was your final?"

Kyle shrugged, saying, "It wasn't that bad. I had about half of it in the bag. Some of it I can truly say is going to be a toss-up, but overall fine."

"Well, that's good," she replied. After a second of silence, she said, "I better get going; my mom is waiting on me."

"Oh, yeah. Sure. See you later?" he asked.

"Bye," was her response as she walked past Kyle. Kyle continued on his way, his day just having become much better.

Kyle exited the front door and was greeted by a bright and very hot sun. He quickly pulled out his hat and glasses and put them on. West Texas at the beginning of summer was excruciatingly hot, and it only got hotter from this point. Kyle had lived in Odessa his whole life, so he was quite used to the heat of what many consider to be a dessert. But Kyle liked it here. It was nice and open area; you could see the stars clearly at night. Nighttime was also one of the few times it felt comfortable enough to go outside in summer.

Luckily though, Kyle's Mom was waiting for him in the parking lot in front of the school. She waved to him when she saw the door opening. She had a wide brimmed hat and sunglasses shielding her thin face, and a floral sun dress almost reaching the ground. Kyle always felt that his mother tried maybe a little too hard at trying to look stylish when she knew no one was around to admire her outfit. She was a teacher at a close by elementary school, and although Kyle never had his mother as a teacher, he knew that she was very well liked by her students and respected by the other teachers (of whom she was the youngest by far, which she would point out often). As he walked over to her, she scuffled over to the other side of the car to greet him, taking about two times more steps than necessary, and put her arms around his shoulders, smiling.

"You okay, Mom?" Kyle asked, surprised by this greeting.

"I'm terrific," she said bubbly. She continued to talk to his ear. "How was your day? Glad you're not a freshman anymore?"

"Yeah," Kyle said, glad that he wasn't a freshman anymore and that they were the only ones in sight at the moment.

Finally, she let go and talked to his face. Still beaming, she added, "I went by Bush's Chicken and got you some sweet tea."

"Thanks," he said, trying to figure out if the heat had finally gotten to his mother. He got into the passenger side of the silver Ford Focus, where the drink was waiting for him in the cup holder. He took a sip of the drink as his mother stepped into the driver's side door and started the car.

About five minutes later, they pulled into their family's two story house at the end of a cul-de-sac. The house to the left of theirs was the Slade's house, while the one to the right was owned by an older man who used to work for the post office. According to Kyle's parents, he used to be the mail carrier for their street, but an injury while working on his house forced him to get a more stationary job then eventually retirement, but he still goes by the old "neither rain nor sleet nor snow nor hail" mindset.

It was only two in the afternoon, so when Kyle and his mother walked in the front door, the house was quiet except for the refreshing sound of air conditioning. Sarah wouldn't be home for another hour and a half, so Kyle decided to get a nap while it would still be quiet. Sarah had just finished the sixth grade, so she would now be going into junior-high. She had already been talking about it for three weeks now, planning her new style and attitude for next year. Kyle liked his sister most of the time, but there were times when he wished she would keep some of her thoughts to herself.

He had walked up the stairs and into his room when he remembered he was going to call back Justin. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and scrolled down to select Justin from speed dial. It rang only once when it was answered.

"Hey, Kyle," Justin said, somewhat drowsily, like he had just woken up. "I tried to call you earlier. What happened?"

"Dude, I was at school. I told you yesterday to not call me until this afternoon, man." Justin's apparent unwillingness to listen had annoyed teachers for years, but only just started to get under Kyle's nerves. "You were lucky my phone was on silent; it's been in my locker all morning."

There was a pause before he answered, "Oh, yeah."

Kyle rolled his eyes before continuing. "So what's up?"

Another pause. "Oh, it was because Emma and Jules talked yesterday. Jules managed to get you invited to Emma's birthday party this weekend."

"Well, tell her thanks but I can't go. I'm leaving to go see my Granma in Colorado tomorrow." Another thing he chose to forget. "And why didn't Julianne tell me herself if she got me in?"

"I don't know, man." That was Justin's usual response to most questions.

Kyle groaned. "Well, tell Jules that I appreciate it, but I can't. I'll talk to you later. Also, you really should start listening better, or get a note pad or something."

Kyle hung up, and before he had a chance to set the phone on his dresser, it started to vibrate. He checked and saw that Jules was calling him. He answered the phone.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Kyle," Jules said. Kyle noted that it was the same response, although Jules sounded much more excited. "I've got good news. You know, Emma's part..."

"Yeah, Emma's birthday party is this weekend and you talked to Emma about letting me come," Kyle interrupted.

"Huh?" was the response. "How did you..." she started to say, but Kyle heard her door opening through the phone. Justin had come into Jules' room from the sound of it. Kyle couldn't hear exactly what was being said, but it sounded as if Justin was admitting to telling Kyle about the party. Jules must have then put her phone down, because now her voice sounded as if from a distance. Again, Kyle couldn't tell what was being said, but he could tell that they were arguing. Kyle always thought it was funny how much they argued and fought despite being twins. The fight lasted for a minute before Jules came back to her phone.

"I'm so sorry about my idiot brother. I wanted to be the one to tell you."

Kyle couldn't help but laugh into the phone. "Thanks for thinking of me, but I can't go. I'm leaving to go see my Granma in Colorado. I meant to tell you earlier, but I've been busy with studying and Sarah's voice has a way of getting into your head that makes you forget everything."

"Oh, I'm sorry," she apologized. Then, quieter, she added, "I know how you feel about Emma. I was just trying to..." she trailed off.

Kyle knew what she was trying to do. Kyle had had a crush on Emma Ocean ever since he met her. His heart fluttered when he saw her. He liked the way her long blonde hair fell to about the small of her back, and that she somehow made simple, modest clothes look really attractive, at least to Kyle. She hardly wore makeup, but to Kyle, she didn't need it. He had been meaning to ask her out for months, but he could never get the courage to go up to her, especially since she was always surrounded by girls. Yet, hope remained, because he had never seen her with another guy. She was on the video crew, whose job it was to film all of the sports games and major activities. Justin was on the football and basketball teams, so Kyle had a reason to go to many games anyway, but he liked talking to Emma as she worked her camera. Although she was busy, Kyle really liked the times when he could just watch her watch the game through her camera. Kyle had tried being on the video crew just to be with her more often, but during a game he got so excited, he forgot to turn his camera on at the beginning of the game. He didn't last very long in that club. Emma thankfully thought that that was just funny. It was that incident that furthered them to become friends, which was what Kyle was after in the first place.

As time went on, Kyle and Emma found that they had a few things in common. The big thing was that they had a similar sense of humor. Emma liked reading, while Kyle sometimes wrote stories for the school's paper. They both liked to see comedy movies, especially Jack Black movies. Yet, for all that they had in common (and not in common, for that matter), Kyle was still nervous about trying to take it further and ask her out. Emma seemed to like hanging out with Kyle, but never made plans to hang out with him specifically; it was always almost accidental when they hung out together.

Kyle thought fondly of Emma before returning to Jules. Jules was the only person to date who knew anything about his feelings for Emma. "Thanks, Julianne. Wish her a happy birthday for me."

"Sure thing, Kyle. Have a good trip," she said, and then she hung up. Kyle and Jules had a more understanding relationship than Kyle had with Justin. Justin was cool, no doubt, but Kyle wouldn't go to him to talk or for advice. For that, Jules was better to talk to. Kyle and Jules had a very deep relationship, so deep that Kyle was one of the few people that she would allow to call to call her Julianne.

Kyle put his phone on his dresser, set to "silent," closed the blinds to his window, and went to sleep, happy that one year of high school was over.

As sure as the sunset and Old Faithful, Sarah Foster's voice preceded her presence. Kyle heard his little sister from his room before she was even in the front door. It was hard to decipher her specific words, but she was most likely talking about what her friends were doing this weekend, who likes who, who hates who, among other pointless things twelve year olds talk about. Many people say that Sarah could talk for both her and Kyle and both of their parents joke that Kyle was born without talking genes, while Sarah took both her and Kyle's talking genes.

Well, Kyle thought, no more use trying to sleep. Grunting, he got up from his bed and looked to his clock. He had gotten a good forty-five minute nap, but he had a feeling that later he's going to wish he had gotten more time.

He rubbed his eyes and walked toward the high voice of his little sister. Downstairs and into the kitchen he found his sister ranting to their mother, who seemed to be more or less trying to listen as she opened the refrigerator in search of some tea. Kyle leaned against the archway to the kitchen and began listening.

"...she's all excited because she got a place in the band. I'm, like, 'whatever, band is for losers.' But she ignores me, and, oh, get this: she tries to get me to join the band. (Snort) 'Like that's going to happen in a million and one years' I told her. Then I said 'you're just jealous that I managed to get in student council.' Oh, and that got to her, because she was all like..."

It continued like that for about twenty more minutes. During that time, Kyle never learned the girl's name, Sarah snorted five more times (she always snorts when she rants, but doesn't believe it when she is told), and their Mom finished her glass of tea and began pulling out stuff to make homemade hamburgers.

Sarah's rant would have gone on longer, but their mother caught her at a breath. "Sarah, honey, why don't you go up and start packing? Dinner will be ready by the time your father gets here."

Sarah opened her mouth as if to continue her story, but a statement like that is a sign that someone has other stuff to do. Sarah must have caught her mother's meaning, because she turned and left without another word. When Kyle heard her door close and her radio turn up, he asked, "So did she have a good day?"

"Relatively good," she said without looking up. "You should start packing, too. Your father will be here shortly."

"Yes, ma'am," Kyle said as he left the room.

Back in his room, Kyle pulled his duffel bag out of his closet and laid it open on his bed. He packed whatever clothes he had for cooler weather in it: long sleeved shirts, jeans, something warm to sleep in, a jacket and a toboggan. Kyle's grandmother didn't have enough space for all four of them, mostly since both Kyle and Sarah were too big to be sharing a room. So, Kyle decided to camp out in a tent in their grandmother's back yard. Kyle could hardly wait, and the weather was supposed to be really nice.

When Kyle was done packing, he noticed the sun starting to set. He decided to go see Justin and Jules. He put his shoes back on and walked downstairs, yelling to tell where he was going. It felt wonderful to be outside; a comfortable eighty degrees drew almost everyone on the street to be outside, including Justin, who spotted Kyle walking over to him. Justin was about half a foot taller than Kyle, and broader in the shoulders. He was playing basketball by himself, but Kyle noticed that Jules was watching from the front porch. In contrast with her twin brother, Jules was Kyle's height and had black hair that just reached her shoulders.

"Hey guys," Kyle called out.

"Hey, Kyle," they said in unison. Jules then stared at Justin like he did something disgusting.

Justin noticed this. "What?" he asked, laughing.

"Why did you do that?" she asked accusingly.

"I can't help it if we talk at the same time. We are twins, in case you keep forgetting, and that's what twins do."

"It just sounds weird."

"I think it's funny," Kyle put in.

"See," Justin said. Turning to where he is standing next to Kyle, facing Jules, he said, "Someone else thinks it's funny. It's not just me." He puts his hand up to high-five Kyle, who slaps his hand to Justin's.

Jules rolled her eyes and said, "Whatever." She then turned to Kyle and asked, "When are you leaving for your trip?"

"Tomorrow morning. My Dad should be getting here shortly; he wants us all in bed early tonight. He wants to leave here early and see if he can get there in one day."

"Wow. Tell us how it goes when you get there," Justin said, somewhat amazed.

"Be careful," warned Jules. "Don't get yourself mauled by a bear or a pack of wolves or anything that might be lurking in the woods."

"Don't worry, Jules," Kyle reassures her. "Granma has been living alone for almost six years now, and she's seen nothing bigger than a bird out there." He studied her for a second before adding, "I'll come back in one piece, I promise."

A truck turned down their street, which Kyle recognized as his dad's. After a quick round of "see you later" and "good bye", Kyle rushed over just as his dad pulled up into their driveway. "Hey, dad," Kyle said as his father turned the truck off and stepped out of it at the same time.

"Hello, Kyle," his dad said. "How was your last day?"

"Fine, and how was yours?" Kyle asked.

"Uneventful. How's dinner going? We've got to get up early tomorrow."

"Smelled good last I checked," Kyle said. "I couldn't find the tent."

"It's in the garage, underneath the work table," his dad said.

"Thanks," Kyle said. At that, they split, Kyle heading into the garage while his dad headed inside. Sure enough, the tent was right where Kyle's dad said it would be.

Mr. Foster was a person who liked to plan things. Every facet of every trip they ever took was carefully planned beforehand. Most of the time everything went according to plan, but it was agreed that the best trips they ever took were the ones that didn't.

Dinner was pretty normal. Everyone took about five minutes to talk about their day (except for Sarah, who took about half an hour). Immediately after they finished, Kyle and Sarah were sent to bed. Kyle gladly followed the order, for he had had a long day, and the only thing he needed now was a vacation.

# Chapter Two

Kyle's alarm went off at five thirty that morning, but he had already been up for five minutes before then (which he always did, and it really annoyed him), but instead of getting up, he allowed himself to lie there awake with his eyes closed in a vain attempt to catch more sleep. So, he jumped up right as the alarm went off. He got out of bed, stumbled over to turn the light on (what he needed was an alarm that turned the light on as it went off), and found the clothes he had set out to wear last night after dinner. He pulled the worn jeans on and a t-shirt. He looked into the mirror on the inside of his door to check his appearance. His hair was a mess. Using his fingers, he manipulated his hair (it was getting close to being time to get a haircut, for it came down just too where he could see it) into a more presentable mess. He would've used his comb, but it was in his bag, which was already downstairs, and it wasn't worth the trouble.

Downstairs, his parents were already up and moving around. Kyle's father was busy making breakfast for everyone: toast, but you got to choose what you put on it, as long as they had it in the kitchen.

"Good morning, Kyle," his father said, sounding much more awake than Kyle felt.

"Morning, Dad," Kyle yawned. Kyle's Dad was a police officer for the University of Texas of the Permian Basin, and very proud of it, so he was fairly used to getting up early. Kyle hardly got to say good bye to him most mornings.

Kyle took his piece of toast and slathered honey on it. He also poured himself a glass of milk and sat at the island in the kitchen to eat. He was halfway through the piece of toast when Sarah walked in and prepared her toast, preferring jelly and butter on hers. After they ate, all of them brought the stuff they would take with them into Dad's old Ford pickup truck. In total, they were taking four bags, plus a cooler of drinks, so the only stops would be for lunch and gas, and the tent Kyle would be using.

It was quiet when they left. The only other person up on their street at this time was a man who lived down their road a few houses who liked to run in the mornings when it was still cool. Sarah fell back to sleep instantly when the truck started to move. Kyle waited until they left Odessa city limits until he fell asleep.

It was several hours later when Kyle woke up suddenly as the car pulled into a Dairy Queen. The surrounding landscape didn't look any different from that in Odessa, so Kyle figured they were somewhere in New Mexico. Sarah had to be shaken to wake up (Kyle was all for leaving her in the truck to sleep some more). If anything, their father was good at keeping a schedule. He said that they could stay for an hour and fifteen minutes if they were going to get there before dark. Everyone was able to eat their meal, go to the bathroom, and get back to the truck in fifty minutes. They were back on the road in another two.

When they got back on the road, the first thing Kyle did was check his cell phone. Of course, he had very spotty service out in the middle of nowhere. That couldn't stop him from checking his text messages, of which he had none. But it was only noon, Kyle reasoned, and most of the people who would text him would be just now waking up themselves.

Kyle's afternoon was filled with the book he was reading. For the trip, he had brought the first three books in the Alex Rider series, and he fully intended to finish them on this trip. Sarah was, amazingly, quiet for the majority of the trip, either involved with her iPod or playing on her Nintendo DS. Road trips were the few occasions when she was quiet for more than half an hour. When they stopped for gas about fifty miles south of New Mexico's border with Colorado, Kyle texted Julianne where they were, but even at that gas station, service was sketchy at best.

It was about three o'clock when they were surrounded by towering, beautiful mountains. Kyle liked visiting his Granma in Colorado, but mountains just weren't for him. He had spent his entire life in Odessa; he was more accustomed to flatter terrain. They stopped only one more time in Colorado to relieve bladders before they pulled into Granma Foster's driveway.

The house was basically a two story log cabin that Grandpa and Granma Foster had built together. They had lived there the majority of their adult lives, and had raised Kyle's Dad and his sister Diana here, as well.

Granma Foster was just shorter than Kyle, but if anything, was still just as energetic. Her silver hair was cut shorter than Kyle's (further proof that Kyle needed a haircut). Her attitude toward life was much like her son's: that life is just a competition that needs to be won at all costs.

When Kyle got out, the first thing his father did was laugh, saying, "I told you I could do it in less than a day."

She only laughed and said, "I didn't say it wasn't possible."

"Yeah, you only said that you didn't think I could do it," Kyle's father returned. Then they both laughed and hugged.

"It's good to see you, Robert. And hello Kyle," she said, hugging Kyle tightly. "My, you're getting tall."

"Thanks, Granma," Kyle said, thinking if only he had a dollar for every time someone said that to him.

She kissed his cheek and said, "You're lucky. Sometimes it is good to be tall." With a final slap on his shoulder, she moved on to Sarah, commenting on her hair and how pretty she was getting.

After the initial greetings, Kyle and his father worked on unpacking and bringing stuff in while the ladies went inside to recover from the trip (Kyle could hear Sarah talking from the yard).

Kyle took his tent to the backyard, where he was going to sleep for the weekend. He unpacked the tent, laid out the material on a flat space with relatively few rocks and sticks, kicking out any that might be uncomfortable. He laid the three poles that formed the skeleton of the tent out in a separate pile outside of the circle Kyle just cleared. Kyle grabbed the first pole, unfolded it completely, and tried to thread it through the loops of the tent. It had been the first time Kyle tried to set this tent up by himself. He managed to get it through the first sleeve just fine, but when he tried to pull it through the second sleeve, he pulled it through the wrong one. When he tried to backtrack, the pole came apart and got itself caught in the sleeve. When he finally freed it, he made sure to slide the pole into the correct sleeve. It was frustrating, but at least the other two poles managed to slide in place without any problems.

Now that he had the tent together, all he had to do was make it three dimensional. Kyle had one end of the first pole attached and was having much difficulty getting the opposite side of the same pole to attach. After a while of struggling and cursing to himself, he finally managed to get the pole attached.

"Want some help?" said a voice from the back door. Kyle looked up to see his Granma watching him with interest. Kyle had a feeling she had been there for a while, watching him work.

Kyle considered it for a second before saying, "Yeah that would be great."

Granma Foster's help speeded things up greatly. Together, they were able to get the other two poles in place in no time at all. Kyle then moved his things inside, and Granma Foster brought out one of her sleeping bags, explaining why this particular one would be perfect for the temperature tonight: thick enough to keep one warm, yet it could breathe, as well. When Kyle was situated for the weekend, Granma Foster told him to go in and clean up for dinner.

Dinner consisted of chicken, mashed potatoes, fresh baked bread rolls, and cooked carrots. It was simple and fast, but very good after a day of traveling. Dinner conversations consisted of what Granma Foster had been doing these days, Sarah's friends, Kyle's writing for the school paper, Sarah's opinions, how the weather had been lately both back home in Odessa and here in Colorado, and Sarah's decisions on how the world should run. Sarah had a way of controlling a conversation.

After dinner, there was nothing else to do but talk. Granma didn't watch any TV, saying that it was a huge waste of time. Instead, what she usually did was go into town with friends, or she stayed in and read. With family there, they all stayed in to catch up.

Kyle sat with his family, but didn't really contribute to conversation unless directly spoken to. Kyle was just happy to finally be on vacation, relishing the fact that he had only three years left until he was out of school completely. As of that point, however, he hadn't really considered colleges, but he figured he still had plenty of time before he had to worry about that.

At half past eight, Kyle went to get a shower. Then he went out to the backyard, into his tent, where he stayed up reading till ten and fell asleep.

Kyle woke up to his tent shaking. It didn't sound windy and he saw recognized a shadow next to the tent.

"Kyle, get up," he heard his sister's voice say. She still sounded asleep herself. She kept shaking the tent even after speaking.

"Alright, I'm up," Kyle snapped, annoyed. Sarah finally stopped shaking the tent and walked away, allowing Kyle to get dressed and fix his hair. It was just a little chilly, so Kyle wore a long sleeved shirt and fresh jeans. He opened the tent, stepped out, and stretched to his full height. He stretched his arms out to their full length and rolled his shoulders and his neck in circles. Inside, bacon, eggs and toast were cooking; Kyle could smell them as he walked in the backdoor, which led to the kitchen. Granma Foster was at the stove flipping bacon while Dad and Sarah were sitting at the table, Dad with a cup of coffee in front of him, but otherwise awake. Granma Foster was perfectly awake, humming a little tune as she cooked. Kyle had always suspected certain behaviors were inherited.

"Good morning, Kyle," Granma Foster said.

"Morning, Granma," Kyle said as he sat at the table.

"Sleep well? It got a little chillier out last night than usual for this time of year."

"I slept alright. That sleeping bag worked great."

"Good," she said, and handed him a plate loaded with food. When Mom came out of the bathroom and everyone was sitting, plans were made for what would be done for the day.

For the morning, there was basically free reign for whatever you wanted to do. Kyle wanted to explore the area around the house that Granma Foster owned. She agreed, only telling him not to jump any fences that he may come across. Granma Foster's property went over part of a small wood going up the side of a mountain. Just past the edge of the backyard was the edge of the wood. Carrying only a bottle of water, Kyle entered the wood. Kyle was out for nearly two hours exploring the landscape. He checked under rocks, broke sticks off of trees that were in his way, and even crept up on a doe that was grazing in a small clearing. The forest was mostly oak trees, but of all sizes. Saplings dotted the ground, while there were some large ones that if Kyle could climb to their tops, he could probably see for miles around. Once Kyle found what he believed to be the largest tree in the forest, he sat under it to where it was blocking the breeze. He just listened to the forest. It was a little windy, but Kyle suspected that since was at a higher elevation from when he first set out this morning, but his jacket helped keep him warm. He heard birds singing and squirrels scampering through the trees and brush. It was amazingly easy to clear your mind with so much noise around you. He subconsciously decided to live out here once he had a chance. After about half an hour, he decided to head back before he fell asleep.

Mom and Dad wanted to treat Granma Foster to lunch in town. There was a Chili's that Dad remembered passing on their way through town. Granma's car, though, was not made for five people, so they were forced to take Dad's truck, which could barely fit five people. Sarah had to sit in the middle, since she was the littlest person in the vehicle, but even she had to slouch if Dad wanted to see out of the back window. It was a good thing they decided to have late lunch, because the Chili's was practically empty. Everyone got the signature ribs. They stayed there about an hour talking and eating.

They got home and just relaxed either reading or talking. That night however, was clear, and you could see all of the stars. After a while, the adults, too tired to stay up any longer, went inside to turn in, leaving Sarah and Kyle alone outside. It was the first time Kyle and Sarah had been alone together all weekend.

At first, they just sat in silence for a while, both looking at the sky as if hoping the other would become too tired to stay up any longer. Kyle stared at the sky, studying the stars and making his own little pictures in his mind. To him, they made the Apple logo, a hand, a bird and other random shapes he could think of.

Kyle could see out of the corner of his eye that Sarah was now looking down at her shoes. She had a look about her as if she was considering saying something. Kyle had a feeling that a conversation was just on the tip of her tongue, itching to get itself out. Truly, Kyle was surprised that Sarah had managed to hold the silence for as long as she had.

"Kyle?" her voice came, quieter than Kyle expected. Kyle could remember a time when Sarah hardly talked without asking questions only. She spoke with the same voice now that she had back then, when she would follow Kyle wherever he went. They were both little kids, and her tone brought back all of those memories. It brought back memories of them playing together in their backyard back home. They would ride their bikes up and down the street, read together and generally get along better than they did now. Sometimes Kyle missed those times, and wondered what happened to his relationship with his sister. He always reasoned that no matter what, he would have her back.

"Yeah, Sarah," he said, turning to look at her. She looked uncomfortable with what she was about to say.

"What's junior-high like?"

That wasn't the first question Kyle was expecting to hear, but for that matter, he had no idea what he was supposed to expect.

"Well," he answered, "It is a little different from elementary school, but what exactly do you mean?"

Her answer came out in record speed.

"Well, what's it like? What are the teachers like? What will my friends be like? Will everything change? If not everything, what will change? Are eighth graders mean? Are the teachers mean? What is the cafeteria like? Do you have assigned seating or can you sit wherever you want in the classrooms? What happens when..."

"Whoa, slow down," Kyle stopped her. When she finally took a breath, he looked her straight in the eye and said, "Slow down, calm down, and one at a time."

When she finally calmed down, Kyle explained, "Junior-high is not that big of a deal. Yes, it is different, but it's not the end of the world. The teachers aren't 'mean,' but you have to pay attention more in classes. Also, you'll have a teacher for each course, not one teacher that can somewhat teach all of them. Keep your friends close, too. Good friends are what you're going to need if you want to survive. And I'll tell you, if I didn't have the twins by my side all of the time, I would probably be a very different person. Also, if you're in an extracurricular activity, stick to it. It'll give you friends even after junior-high. It'll be fun, and you'll do fine. It's easier to get to know teachers. And in high school, there are teachers that you can get to know as friends, just as much as the upper classmen and the people in your own class. Oh, and some more advise, don't bother trying to be a couple with someone while in junior-high. I've seen a lot of boys and girls who were best friends before seventh grade, and now they either don't speak to each other or even hate each other. Junior-high is just a dirty mix of hormones."

"Did you ever think about asking Julianne out then?" she asked.

Of all of the things people have ever asked Kyle, that one right there just became a contender for the top hardest question ever asked. He considered for a minute before saying, "I never thought about asking Jules out. I already see her and Justin as my family, and I always considered what Jules and I have to be as good as it gets."

"You two do hang out a lot together," she pointed out.

"We're just friends, and her brother is my best friend. It'd be awkward," he reasoned.

The conversation died after that, but Kyle couldn't help but consider what his position with Jules was. She is Kyle's closest friend, and he did care about her, but then Justin was her twin brother. What would he think about them getting together? Kyle had known Justin quite literally as long as he had known Jules. But, Kyle was one of the few people Jules liked enough for him to call her by her full name, not that he did on a day to day basis. Kyle decided to drop the subject, and just in time for Sarah's next question.

"What's that?"

Kyle looked back to her and said, "What's what?" She was looking back over the top of the house. Kyle followed her gaze until he saw something unusual.

Kyle had never seen a blue star before. It also seemed to constantly get brighter and brighter. Then, he heard a faint sound, like the sound of a supersonic Jet that's far off but sounds as if it's getting closer...

"GET DOWN," he yelled. He yanked Sarah out of her chair and covered her with his as the sound grew louder and louder very fast. Sarah's protests were drowned out by the sound, and she struggled a little bit. It also suddenly grew really bright, as if some giant blue sun illuminated the world. Kyle closed his eyes. The ground was shaking terribly; Kyle could feel his insides vibrate almost to the point of internal damage. He could feel something fly just above the house and with a deafening crash, it impacted the side of the mountain, probably not two miles from where they lay. Adding to that, a wall of air smacked into them. Kyle's tent was sent flying, and since the door was open, its contents were scattered; his flashlight smacking him hard in the arm. If they hadn't been lying on the ground, they probably would have been no better off than the tent. The patio furniture smacked into the side of the house, and Kyle heard all of the windows shatter on this side of the building.

And it was all over. As fast as it had all happened, it was done. From the time Kyle first spotted the thing in the sky to the aftermath of the impact, had lasted not even half a minute. Kyle looked up to see a light giant light coming from the impact mountain. Kyle jumped on the first thing that came to his mind, and picked up the flashlight that landed beside his hand.

# Chapter Three

"What happened? What was that?" Sarah asked as Kyle got off of her. Kyle looked around himself. The patio furniture and Kyle's tent were both gone, and all of the windows had been busted in by the blast of air. Kyle's hearing was all but gone. Then, he looked to the direction the thing landed.

A blue light illuminated the impact zone like giant spotlights calling him to go see.

"Sarah, stay here," he said, his eyes glued to the light. He began to hear a commotion from inside the house, so he figured the adults were awakened by the meteor, or whatever it was. As he walked into the forest, he heard Sarah follow him, trying and saying anything she could to try to get him to stop.

"Kyle, come back. This is stupid, even for you. What are you thinking? This is dangerous!"

"Go back, Sarah," he said louder. He turned the flashlight on to see where he was stepping, but the light from the impact could probably be seen from miles around.

After about fifteen minutes of walking, Sarah behind him the whole time, signs of the things landing were starting to show. Kyle could see the trees shaved from when the thing skimmed over them.

As they got closer to the thing, the ring of damage became more severe. It went from Kyle stepping over thousands of broken limbs to hundreds of dead tree trunks. Also, as they got closer, the light grew brighter and brighter. Kyle hardly needed the flashlight anymore. Sarah was still behind him, but he hardly noticed her pleads and yells to go back to the house. She, however, seemed to be immune to the fascination the light gave Kyle. It was drawing him to it, and he just wanted to see what it was.

Finally, Kyle came across a large clearing, created by the landing of the large object. From the shape of the clearing, the thing had a short slide to where it now lay, at the far edge of a clearing of flattened trees.

He had figured it must have been some sort of glowing meteor, but what he came across instead was something even more mysterious. It was as long as a football field, and it wasn't just a shapeless rock. This thing appeared deliberately but naturally formed. It also looked alive; it was moving around weakly, but it appeared to not have noticed its visitors. Its body shape resembled something like a fish. It had two pairs of structures jutting out from the side that resembled either wings or fins, but not exactly either of the two, specifically. They were straight and pointed sharply, bending at a joint in the middle of each, and maybe a foot in diameter at their widest. The front pair of these structures was bigger, probably thirty feet long to the back pair probably more like twenty feet, and positioned about two feet higher on the body than the back pair. The round body tapered down the tail where it ended in another structure that reminded Kyle of the tail fluke of a whale or dolphin, but also resembled the front limbs of the creature. The main color of the creature was a bright energetic blue, adorned with white vein-like markings running the whole length of the body, and Kyle could see a black mark, almost like a burn, on the thing's belly. What Kyle guessed to be the front end of the creature had no facial features of any kind, other than ending in a small point. Covering the point of the thing's "head" was a blotch of white from which all of the things white veins sprouted.

Sarah pulled at Kyle's jacket. "Kyle, leave it alone," she whispered, "I'm hearing sirens. Please, other people are coming to deal with it, so can we go back?"

Kyle ignored her pleading and walked slowly closer. She was probably right about it being dangerous, but it was acting like it was hurt, and had not hinted that it had detected their presence. Sarah stayed at their edge of the clearing as Kyle moved toward it.

"Kyle," she said quietly yet sounding angry, "get away from that thing! You don't know what it is!"

For the first time, Kyle looked back to her. "I'm just taking a look. Go on back to the house and I'll be right behind you."

She, of course, didn't move, but it didn't matter what she did to Kyle at this point. He turned back to the space thing, almost expecting it to have moved since he took his eyes off of it, but it was where it had always been. It still did not notice Kyle, who was now within ten feet of the thing. Kyle was now hearing the sirens that Sarah had mentioned, but he had been the first to see it, and for some reason had a sudden sense of claiming, that whatever it was, it belonged to him. Kyle was now steps away from being able to touch it, and noticed that although it gave off tons of light, Kyle felt no heat. Very peculiar, Kyle thought, but did not press the matter.

Kyle stopped. He was now close enough to reach out and touch the thing, but it still did not react to his presence. The creature obviously had no eyes, but Kyle was now wondering if it had any senses at all. Anticipation of what would happen next caused Kyle to start to sweat, so he took his jacket off, despite it being about fifty degrees that night. Finally, as if his life were drawing down to it, he reached out a hand and felt the blue skin.

It was smooth and hard like a rock, yet it didn't feel like anything Kyle had ever encountered before. Kyle could feel nothing underneath the hard surface, and the skin didn't move when he tried pushing on it. It was warm, and vibrated. It was sort of soothing, and Kyle felt his body begin to react to its vibrations, yet he would never be able to describe how exactly. It felt like something completely natural, like something he always knew but forgot, and still completely alien to anything he had ever experienced before. However, the creature still didn't seem to notice his presence; it was like Kyle didn't even matter to it.

Kyle was about to leave when he noticed a segment of a white vein was just below where his hand was. Curious, Kyle let his right hand slide down over it. The white part felt different, although it was completely flush with the blue. Kyle felt what he guessed to be a sort of pulse. It was strong yet slow, but when he laid his hand on the mark, the pulses began to speed up. It was the first sense that Kyle received that the creature even had noticed Kyle. Faster and faster it pulsed, but Kyle held his ground, for some reason completely unafraid of the alien, when Sarah seemed completely terrified by it. Kyle had closed his eyes, feeling some sort of energy flowing into him from the alien.

Then Kyle did feel something. A jolt of energy violently shot up Kyle's arm. Kyle's eyes were blasted open from the inside as he felt something flowing into his hand, up his arm, and seemed to collect in his chest. Kyle looked down at his hand. The area outlining where his hand was seemed to ripple toward the hand. As he felt energy pour into him, he saw blue veins similar to the creature's white ones, crawl slowly up his arm. He tried to pull away, but his hand was stuck to the creature like a powerful magnet. He slapped at the strange markings with his other hand like he would if a bug was on him, but they ignored the blows and continued up his arm and eventually down his shirt. Then, Kyle tried to push himself off of the creature with his left hand. The only thing this accomplished was getting the same treatment for his other arm. With the second jolt up his left arm, Kyle was effectively paralyzed.

Sarah was at his side now, screaming for help and pulling at Kyle's arms. Then suddenly, the segment of white between his hands glowed brighter and appeared to leak something. The substance at first appeared to be liquid, but didn't fall to the ground. Instead, it hung in the air between Kyle's hands collecting into an orb. The orb grew to the size of a baseball until it just exploded. Kyle and Sarah were sent flying all the way back to the other side of the clearing. It was when Kyle hit the ground that he felt the searing pain in his arms. It hurt so badly, he couldn't scream out. It took so much to raise his arms to see what was happening to them. The veins shrunk until they coalesced in the middle of his hands and glowed like the creature. He closed his eyes for the pain, wondering if it would drive him insane. Still in extreme pain, eventually, he fell into unconsciousness.

Nothing. It was all Kyle could see, or couldn't see, or couldn't sense in any way for that matter. But there had to be something, because he was there, and he knew that he was real. He was floating (or was he?) for what seemed to be an endless amount of time, if time even existed wherever this was.

Suddenly, though, a small light, like a star, appeared. Kyle couldn't tell if it was close or very far off. Either way, it grew and grew. Kyle began to think that he must've died, but suddenly he realized it was an explosion of some kind, and there was nothing he could do to escape it. It got closer and closer, until Kyle realized it wasn't expanding, he was getting closer to it. It was more like some kind of portal to a different dimension, one from nothingness to light.

Finally, he passed through it. The difference was more opposite than night from day, for all Kyle knew. Only a few seconds ago he was in nothing, and now he looked around to the best definition of pure chaos. Light and darkness mixed with power and anything conceivable and inconceivable was happening. Solids, liquids and plasmas were formed and destroyed by this awesome energy. It was completely unpredictable what would happen next.

But what happened next was extraordinary. From all of the chaos, before Kyle's very eyes, two clouds separated themselves from the mess around themselves. One was red like old wine; the other matched the color of the sky. Unlike the mess of energy around them, these two seemed different. They moved of what seemed to be their own accord, possibly free thinking to a degree. They moved with a purpose and dignity, elegant and radiating with some sort of conscious power.

They were about the same size, but neither had a specific shape. They seemed to contour to the mess around them. They also seemed to change the space around them, as if they were leaving some kind of residue on the environment they touch. They moved about, churning and mixing the energy around them. They sucked it all into the circle that they had made. Their environment began to change; their actions were slowing down the storm of chaos.

Kyle watched all of this from a distance. This went on for what felt like hours, until Kyle noticed something about the energy the two energies were mixing. It was forming into balls of various sizes and colors. Kyle was watching the birth of stars and planets. The laps were going faster and faster; anything not molded into stars was being added to the two energies, changing them. The red one became laced with black throughout, while the blue one laced with white. Faster and faster they spun; the two energies becoming nothing more than a blurred ring of red and blue. For a second, it seemed as if they were one, until the ring broke, releasing everything inside. All of the stars and loose matter was shot out into space. Most of the stars clustered into groups of millions of galaxies. The small clumps of what was left over seemed to dry up and turn hard, and were scattered farther apart.

Kyle still watched from what felt like miles off. As for the two energies responsible, they continued their circling around what is now just an expanse of open space. Then, they began a synchronized flashing. Then, something began to churn within both energies. Tendrils of energy branched out in sinister forms. Each grew to nearly double their original size within seconds. Then they struck out at each other with bolts of their respective colors. The bolts met in the middle of their circle, creating a flash of light that blinded Kyle.

Kyle's eyes were forced open; he jolted and almost screamed. Something was holding him down, and he almost panicked, but he noticed how soft it was. It was a familiar softness. Finally, his brain began working normally and started processing what he was looking at.

He was in his room back in his room in Odessa; back in his own bed. He laid there for a second, feeling the soft blanket and sheets. He looked outside. It was bright outside his window, probably around noon, and he heard a light breeze ruffle up the leaves on the tree he could see.

His surroundings comforted him, but also confused him. How did he get back to Odessa? It didn't feel as if he could have been asleep for more than a day. He felt fresh, albeit a little stiff. He pushed himself to a sitting position on the bed, but when he pushed off, he got a little light-headed. It cleared almost instantly, and he stepped outside his room.

Once he opened his door, he heard voices from downstairs. From his door, there was a view of the front door, and from that vantage point, he could see that his parents were gone. He silently walked down the stairs to the living room, where the voices were coming from. Once he was downstairs, he could tell what they were saying.

"We aren't here to play videogames," one voice, a female's, said sternly.

"Oh, come on. Kyle wouldn't mind," the other, a male's, said.

"Would you just help me with the chores first? Those things are always the first thing you jump on."

"We have all day to do the chores. Relax, Jules."

Jules? Once again, Kyle's brain was kicked back into working. He recognized the voices of the twins, his best friends, Julianne and Justin Slade, from next door. They must be watching over the house while Kyle's parents were out doing their respective responsibilities (his mother usually got a job over the summer to keep from being bored).

Julianne was standing facing the couch; her hair looking like it had been cut since Kyle had last seen. She was also wearing it differently; it was sort of done up instead of her usual straight hair style. He could see the top of Justin's head as he sat on the couch, playing Kyle's Playstation 3. He couldn't see Justin's face, but he could tell from hers that he was being impossible about this. Neither of them seemed to have noticed Kyle just at the foot of the stairs.

"Besides, Kyle would never mind me playing his video games," he reasoned. "What are you worried about?"

She sighed and shook her head. "Whatever; do what you want. I'm going to check on him." That was when she saw him for the first time.

Her eyes grew wider than Kyle thought he had ever seen them. She looked like she was about to faint if she wasn't glued frozen to the spot. Justin noticed that she hadn't moved yet and said "What?" and looked over his shoulder. Justin's eyes succumbed to the same look as Jules'.

It was awkward for five seconds before Kyle said "Hey, guys."

Jules ran and hugged Kyle so fast that Kyle flinched. Her arms were a vice, restricting Kyle's breathing. "Hi, Jules," he gasped. Reaching back to fight with her hands around the middle of his back, he said "May I breathe, please?"

"Oh, sorry," she said and let him go quickly. By this time, Justin had paused his game and stood up to get a better look. "I told you opening his window blinds would be a good idea," he said as he walked over to stand next to his sister, who smacked him in the gut for the comment.

"Are you alright?" she asked, stepping back.

Kyle watched them both as they looked him over. They were acting like he had a disease no one knew about. "Yeah," he said confused. "Yeah, I'm fine. I'm just going to get a snack." And he left the room. He could tell that they were following him.

He pretended not to notice them hovering three feet away from him at all times. Right before opening the refrigerator door, he turned, raised his hand, and said "Ok, why are you guys acting so..." he began, until he looked at the back of his hand.

There was a large discolored spot, about the size of a half-dollar coin, on the back of his hand, a sort of mottled blue. It appeared to be below the skin, like there was something inside his hand. Slowly, shaking, his breathing getting faster, he turned the hand over so that his palm was facing him. Taking up most of his palm was a large blotchy blue mark and glowing softly. Kyle's knees buckled and he slid to the floor, staring at his hand. Justin and Julianne were on him instantly, picking him up gently and leading him over to the couch. Kyle's eyes were locked on the hand, until as Justin grabbed his other arm; he caught a glimpse of the same condition on his left hand as well.

They set him down on the couch and sat in the two chairs on either side of it. Their eyes never left him, while his never left his hands.

Kyle didn't know what to think. Even as he was staring at them, they didn't feel different. He flexed them into fists, and they did so normally. He didn't think they were scars, and they didn't feel like burns. With his left index finger, he prodded his right hand. The skin felt harder, like a callous, but no pain resulted. Whatever these markings were, one thing Kyle knew to be obvious was that this wasn't human.

# Chapter Four

Reluctantly, Kyle took his eyes off of his hands and up to Jules.

"Do you know what happened?" he asked her, because he honestly was having a hard time remembering himself. His brain wouldn't work for him at the speed he needed it to.

She looked to Justin before speaking. "We've only heard about what happened from your parents, who say that they weren't there when it actually happened. They saw you and Sarah running off into the woods after some kind of explosion took place, and..."

"It was a meteor," Kyle corrected her, as once again, his brain began remembering and the whole series of events came back to him. "Or, it wasn't exactly a meteor. I think it was alive," he said to himself in confusion. He never really had time to figure out what it was, but it seemed alive, he remembered. Pictures were the only thing coming to his mind at the moment. Shaking his head, he continued. "Whatever it was, I went up to touch it, and it shocked me or something, which is probably what these things came from," he said, showing them his hands.

Jules continued. "Well, no one else touched the thing, according to your mother. When the police got there, they evacuated everyone in that town; I guess after seeing what it did to you, they were afraid it was radioactive or something."

Justin took over from there. "Your family didn't much care except about getting you to a hospital as soon as possible. They took you to one in Colorado, and then you were transferred to one in El Paso, so you would be somewhat closer to home. From what your parents say, they couldn't figure out what happened to you, and you didn't seem to be in a lot of pain from what they could tell. They just thought that you had fallen into some kind of coma, and you were sent home. You've been here sleeping for two weeks now, and I guess we should call your mother to tell her you woke up."

Justin left the room dialing Kyle's mother's phone number into his cell. To Julianne, Kyle seemed to take it all in stride what he just heard. Kyle, as usual for today seemed, didn't know what to think. It was all still muddled, but the basic picture was clear to him.

So he decided to eat. He hadn't eaten anything for two weeks according to Justin, and that thought only increased Kyle's appetite. He walked back into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. There, he found some leftover meatballs, so he pulled them out and made two sandwiches with the rest of them. Along with a Coke, he sat down to eat. The first bite he took slowly, enjoying it, then, he ate the rest of the two sandwiches in record time, not caring about tasting them as much as just getting something in his stomach. After ten minutes, and with Jules and Justin watching, he had completely devoured the two sandwiches and chugged the Coke. Incredibly, he was still hungry. Finding no more leftovers, he grabbed a bag of chips from the pantry when he heard his mother's car pull into the driveway.

She walked in saw Kyle sitting on the couch with an open bag of chips, which on a normal day would drive her up the wall. Instead, she squeezed him and kissed him and petted his hair and made him talk so she could just hear his voice again. She asked if he had eaten; Kyle answered by pointing to the sink, where the dish where the meatballs was sitting, along with the knife he had used to cut the bread. He almost had to peel his mother off of him to ask her what had been going on for two weeks. She went on a rant about incompetent doctors saying different things, and they prescribe different medicines and wanted to study Kyle like some kind of lab rat.

Finally, she was able to let go enough to go clean up after Kyle. Kyle, meanwhile, left with Justin and Julianne over to their house next door. It was already triple digit weather outside, and very bright with no sign of clouds, so all three of them rushed inside.

Their house was the same basic layout as his, although theirs had a little different flavor in colors and decoration. The Slades were travel agents, so this was their busiest time of the year. Kyle sat down on the bright couch while Jules went into the kitchen to pour some lemonade for the three of them.

When they were all sitting down, Kyle asked, "So what all did I miss in the last two weeks?"

"Well," Justin started, putting his feet up on the coffee table. "We went to Emma's party, and that was really fun. She had about twenty people there. You know how she is; she likes things to be simple. We watched a movie, had some popcorn, she ordered a few pizzas; we were out of there by like ten-thirty."

"Oh," Kyle said. He had forgotten about Emma's party, and about Emma in general, and he suddenly wondered if she had found about what happened to him.

"Does Emma know about..." he asked while flipping his hands over.

"Yeah, she knows," Jules said, suddenly joining them. Sitting on the couch beside him, she continued. "She came by to see you three days ago. A lot of people have come. I think the entire school newspaper crew came to see you."

"Plenty of people you came to see you, and many left the candy and cards and stuff at the end of your bed," Justin added.

"Well," Kyle began. "I guess I better start..."

His words were cut off by a large, slow throbbing pain coming from his hands that somehow resonated throughout his entire body. Justin and Jules were staring at him with confusion, but it hurt too much to try to speak. His eyes began to water; his whole body was tightening up. With much difficulty, he opened his fists to see what was happening. His palms were glowing like lanterns. He saw Justin and Jules each back as far away as they could without getting out of their seats. Kyle just looked at his hands. The marks on his hands spread as the pain continued. From their perimeters, Kyle watches several small tendrils of the same color substance, five on his left hand and six on his right, crawl through his skin like worms. The light they produced was tremendous; it was blinding, even though it already very bright in the room. When the marks stops growing, Kyle felt a larger surge of power course through him without breaking, then, it was all gone as soon as it had started.

Kyle was left with his breath and heart racing. He was covered in a film of sweat, and somehow exhausted. He went limp, and all he could do to keep from falling asleep right there. After a few moments, he began to feel better. He managed to get his breathing under control, and his heart slowed down as a result. When he tried to stand up, however, he immediately felt light-headed, and fell back to the couch.

Jules was the first to say anything after Kyle's episode. "Are you alright," she asked cautiously.

Kyle thought about it for a second before nodding his head.

Jules got up, saying, "I'll get you a towel," and she left.

When she was gone, Justin asked, "What was that?"

"I don't know," Kyle answered. "I think this is spreading," he said, showing Justin his hands. As Justin studied his hands with the marking's new extensions, Kyle silently hoped that it also wasn't contagious, but Justin seemed fine when he touched Kyle's skin. Jules came back with a towel and handed it to Kyle.

"We should get you back home," she said as Kyle covered his face with the towel.

"Yeah, sure," Kyle said. He tried to stand again, with more success. When Jules and Justin stood up with him, he waved them down, saying, "I'm alright. I can get back by myself."

"Okay," Jules said, sounding a little bit doubtful. "Try to get some more rest." She wasn't much of a doctor, but this wasn't exactly an everyday case of a stomach bug. He didn't answer back, just wanting to get back to his room and his bed.

He managed the walk from their house back to his alright, and even the trip past his mother, explaining that he was tired and wanted to get back to bed. She reluctantly didn't stop him from continuing his journey back upstairs, only calling out that dinner would be ready when his father came home. He didn't answer back, or say anything else as he closed his door behind him.

The first thing he did was rush to turn the blinds on his window closed. He ran to push a towel under the door, trying to make it as dark as possible in his room. All of this was to get a better sense of his markings, or scars, or burns, or whatever they were. Whatever they were, they glowed softly in the near darkness of his room. He studied them intently, getting to know every curve and every facet of their form. He felt the new parts that just grew earlier. The extensions felt just like the original marks on his palm, so it all must be the same substance.

Then, he felt the same pain he did earlier, although it was less intense. The markings glowed again in rhythm with the pain. It wasn't as blinding, but it was enough to completely enlighten his small room. He was able to keep his eyes open, allowing him to watch as they grew again. The glowing tendrils wormed through the surface of his skin in organic curves like a snake slithering. They were now two inches long, and turned to travel up his arms, except for one on his right hand that began curling around his middle finger. And they didn't stop there. When all was said and done, they were well past his wrists, and appeared around their entire circumferences.

Kyle fell back into his bed, unable to support his weight in a sitting position anymore. He was sore walking from the twin's house to his room, and this second episode in less than two hours from the first didn't help with that. It was the struggle of his life to remain awake, so he stopped trying and fell into his pain induced sleep.

Meanwhile, several hundred miles away, at an observatory run by NASA, a scientific team took turns looking into the lens of a giant telescope. They spent their nights looking for basically anything.

The man currently looking up at the stars was an intern for the group. Having only arrived to this observatory about a few weeks before, he loved looking at the universe through the telescope. Its infinite depths held so many secrets, and he knew humans were just barely scratching the surface in discovery. Who knew what was out there? Was there life on other planets? What was it like at the beginning of time? These were questions that drove the entire team to search. And the most wonderful thing about it was that who could possibly predict what they would find next. It could be the perfect twin of Earth, or a planet with life.

Or something else entirely, and that was what the man was looking at that very moment. He stared at it intently as it appeared to be coming closer. He called the head of their team to come and look at whatever it was he was looking at. The team's leader put his eye to the lens to have a look.

He confirmed that whatever it was, it was getting closer. Keeping his eye on the mysterious object, he told the intern to mark its position so they could keep an eye on it.

At first, it looked like a comet, but no one had ever documented a comet with a red tail before. But the tail was shaped differently; it was much too big. And whatever the thing was, it was surrounded by a large field of energy that seemed to radiate from it.

This was something no one had ever seen before. He had to call this in.

He practically leapt out of the chair behind the lens to see all of the total ten people waiting to hear about what he saw. He didn't bother with them except to push his way through them as they scrambled to see through the telescope. He went straight over to the desk where he knew he had left his phone, but it was covered in papers. Maps and graphs were strewn across the floor without a care while he searched for the phone.

This was important. He had received a letter from his superior explaining for them to immediately call in if they see anything strange. The letter didn't explain why or what brought on this sudden and strange order, but he would do what he was told.

He finally found the phone and called the number specified in the letter. That was another strange thing. He wasn't calling NASA that much he knew. The letter told him to specifically call a certain number alone. Again, the letter didn't specify why.

The phone rang once before answered by a man's voice. "Yes?"

"Yes, I was told to call this number should my team..."

"What is its position," the voice interrupted. After telling him the position of the object, the voice had just hung up.

# Chapter Five

Morning again.

It always seemed to be morning. Kyle always woke up in the mornings. He wasn't up for very long, but he was up for mornings. They all seemed to be exactly the same.

A sort of routine seemed to have developed since Kyle had awakened from his coma. At six or seven in the morning, Kyle woke up for a shower and breakfast consisting mostly of toast. There were other things in the house to have, but for some reason, nothing appealed to him, and he ate at least toast to get his mother off of his back about not eating. After breakfast, he went back up into his room and read a book for several hours. He never thought he would spend his summer rereading every book he owned, but that was how it was looking. Or, he would do his homework assignment he had for the summer, but that only took three days to do, start to finish (it's amazing what one can do when one has nothing else to do). Afterwards, he would just take a nap at about five, which turned out to be him going to bed for the day. If Jules and Justin came over, he would stay up and enjoy their company while they were there, and then go to sleep. Two weeks had passed in this manner.

He was always tired. Probably because every day there was another episode with his marks, which he decided to call them energy vessels. He called them this because that's what they did. The name fit them. Somehow or another, he was carrying and radiating some kind of energy. Glasses and metals began to vibrate when he reached out for them; lights would flicker slightly when he got close enough, and they perpetually glowed softly; it may not always be noticeable, but they never stopped glowing. There was no other explanation for it.

But he still couldn't figure out why did they grew, and why it caused him pain when they did. Three different doctors in two weeks, one actually coming to their house, had no answers, so, to Kyle's great relief, his mother stopped taking him to them, and probably lost her trust of them altogether.

But the vessels continued to grow, and now, two weeks after he had woken from his coma and four after the incident that gave them to him, they were now close to reaching his elbow. They wrapped all the way around his arms like snakes strangling their prey, crossing paths as they moved. No new ones sprouted from the original vessels on his palms. He had only felt one episode like the first after the first one in front of the twins, and that happened to be in the middle of the night five nights ago. It woke him up, which is what annoyed him the most, and right after a great dream. He was so exhausted from the spasm that he didn't wake up until one in the afternoon the next day.

But the little ones came daily, yet there was no way to predict when they would strike. Sometimes it would be right as he woke up, right before he went to bed, or even during meal times. He could always count on having at least one every day, but how many he would have in a day was impossible to tell. The record so far was four in one day, and he was so sore he didn't leave his room that day at all, except to relieve his bladder when needed. For the first few days, he tried to keep count of them all, but soon gave that up after the first week. They never lasted more than a minute, though, and for the most part, he could just shrug them off and go on with his day.

Kyle didn't know how to think about all of this. It was scary to think about what all of this could mean. All of this happened just because he touched that alien. Justin was able to touch him without being hurt, but what if he started hurting people by just being around them? He had no idea what was now inside him, and a part of him just wanted to hide until he figured that out. What if he would eventually need to be quarantined? Worse, what if he needed to be quarantined for hurting someone he cared about? So he stayed away from people. He avoided going out. He wouldn't talk to his family or friends.

So it was morning again. Kyle dragged himself out of bed, grabbed something to wear for the day, as well as a fresh towel from the heap on his floor, which had become a mess the like of which was unheard of in Kyle's room, and headed for the bathroom he and Sarah shared. Thankfully, no one answered when he knocked, so Kyle let himself in and locked the door behind him. As he did so, he noticed that the vessels were longer than he remembered when he went to sleep, their erratic yet organic paths now reaching just past his elbows. He realized he must have had another growth in the night; this had happened before, being part of the reason he stopped trying to keep track of how many spasms he was having. He didn't bother turning the light on, but undressed and started to bathe. This was about the only practical use he could find for these vessels, that he would never need a flashlight ever again.

When he was dry and dressed, he went downstairs to get some breakfast. His parents were already gone for their respective jobs, his father policing the students who stayed at the university for the summer and his mother doing whatever summer jobs she had managed to procure for herself. Kyle's mother stayed home from work for the first three days after Kyle woke from his coma, but after Kyle convinced her that he was going to be fine, she went back to work, but reassured that she was never more than a phone call away. If Kyle had told her about the spasms he was having, she'd probably never be three feet away from him. The one episode that she did witness at dinner one night Kyle was able to convince that it was him just being full, and quickly left the table; she never pursued the incident.

He ate his toast alone and in silence. Sarah was on the couch with her Nintendo DS. In a minute, he was done, cleared his space on the table, and sat down next to her on the couch.

It was the first time they had been alone together in four weeks, and hopefully nothing would go wrong like last time. She noticed him, and went back to her game as if it all was normal, except right as he sat down, her device started acting funny, flickering on and off.

"Sorry," he said simply.

She looked at him in amazement for a second before saying "You're doing all of it? All of the lights acting funny are because of you?"

He sighed, saying "Yeah, it's all me. I can't control it." He raised his hand to eye level and inspected the vessels, now almost four inches long. "There is something funny about these things. They somehow affect everything they get close to."

Without any warning, Sarah grabbed his left arm and jerked it toward her. Kyle nearly pulled back out of reflex, but his reflexes had dulled in the last few weeks due to his lack of activity and she had a tight grip on him.

She turned his arm over and back again several times, studying the vessels crawling up his arm. She ran her fingers across each of the extensions, all the way from his palm to where they stopped past his elbow.

"Whoa," she said to herself quietly. "They hum, too."

"They do what?" Kyle asked.

"I said hum. Check your ears," she replied. She seemed to be hooked on this fact, since she still had a grip on his hand, and made no sign of letting go. "It's like really soft; you can barely hear it."

"Well," Kyle said, "I'm happy you've found something about this to like. Can I have my arm back?"

She quickly released his arm, looking embarrassed. Kyle ignored it, though.

"So, is that all they do? Glow, hum, and ruin my game?" she asked.

"That's about it," Kyle said simply.

Sarah didn't pursue the subject, and Kyle left to go to his room.

About an hour later, Kyle was upstairs reading a book and listening to his IPod when his door was suddenly thrown open. He looked up and over his shoulder to see Justin standing in his doorway.

He pulled his headphones off of his head and said, "Hey, Justin." This was strange, considering Justin wasn't the person to show up unexpected. And if Justin was here, that meant Julianne was probably there, too.

Justin's usual greeting was traded in for, "Get your helmet. Jules has decided that you need to get out."

Kyle looked at Justin, considering the implications of that statement. "What?" he said.

Justin replied, "We're taking you to the mall. You need to get out of the house."

Kyle nodded, saying, "Ummm, no. I don't think that's such a good idea."

"Oh, come on," he said. "You haven't been out of this house in weeks. You're looking as white as milk."

"Hello," Kyle said, now standing. "What about these," he said holding his arms out, their soft luminescence showing in the darkened room.

"Well...," Justin said, obviously thinking. Snapping his fingers, he said, "Put a long sleeved shirt on. That'll hide them."

Letting his arms drop, Kyle returned sarcastically, "Sure, I'll put on a long shirt in the middle of summer in west Texas."

"Oh, come on. I bet you won't be the only one there wearing too much stuff."

Kyle sighed. Justin wasn't going to give up easily, and Jules probably wasn't going to either. "Fine," he said. "Just give me a minute."

Justin pumped his fist in the air as he closed the door behind him. Kyle quickly dug out the lightest long shirt he had, a simple gray one. He slipped it on over his head. It would hide his arms well, but he would just have to be careful with his hands. He also dug his helmet out from under his bed, where it had developed a fine layer of dust. If this had been any other summer, Kyle would be out riding his bike every day, despite the heat. He had grown up in Texas; he was used to hot summers. You just learn to drink a lot of water. A lot. But Justin was right; Kyle hadn't been out in weeks, and while wearing clothes clearly not for this type of weather, he would just have to be very careful. It wouldn't be a long ride; Kyle had been riding his bike to the mall since he was twelve, always with someone else, of course.

He left his room and went downstairs, where Jules was waiting with Justin, both with helmets in their hands. Kyle held up his to show Jules, saying, "You win. Let's go."

Their bikes were left right by the door, while Kyle's was in the back yard. They waited for him to go around to the back of the house, unlock it from the back porch and get back. After securing his own helmet, filling water bottles, and sending a text to Kyle's mom telling her where they were going, they were off.

From Twin Oaks, the road they lived on, they turned left on Lynbrook, and a right when Lynbrook met Tanglewood. It was a long ride on Tanglewood, and Kyle had to stop twice to get a drink. Jules and Justin were very understanding, and Kyle was now figuring out just how blessed he was to have such good friends.

They rode Tanglewood until it met 42nd street, of which the Music City Mall was just across from them. Since it was the middle of the day, the road was relatively clear, but Kyle still pushed the button on the traffic light pole for it to change. When the red hand changed to green, they quickly rode across six lanes of open road to the mall.

They crossed the parking lot until they were in front the door with the neon MGM Ice sign over it. They chained their bikes to the bench next to the door and walked in.

It was cool enough that Kyle might have needed the longer shirt. The MGM Ice maintained an ice rink all year long, keeping this part of the building close to seventy degrees for the most part of the year, although no one was using it as they were there. There were bleachers next to the rink, and many small restaurants lined the opposite wall, and small tables around all of them.

They all went to one that specialized in massive corndogs. Kyle and Jules each got one corndog while Justin got two for himself, and they ordered two big things of fries, but unlike traditional fries, these were cut to the thickness of potato chips. It took only a minute for the food to be ready. They sat at one of the tables and ate their food.

Jules was the first to break the ice. "So how are you holding up, Kyle?"

Kyle thought for a minute before speaking. "I guess I'm alright. It hurts when they... uh... grow. But otherwise, I guess I'm alright."

Justin asked, "So is that all they do?"

It was so much like Sarah's question this morning; Kyle repeated his answer from when she asked.

"No, they don't do anything else."

"Oh, come on," Justin said. "That can't be it."

"Oh, yeah," Kyle said, getting annoyed with all of the questions about the vessels. "They also screw around with all of the electronics in our house. I'm in pain for most of the day, I hardly eat anymore, and I'm obviously very much out of shape, more so than I was originally. Also, I... and here we...go...a-...g......."

He was having another episode, but this one was different. Instead of a throbbing pain, it was longer and continuous, and much more intense. Kyle slipped out of his chair and started to scream. He had no idea what was going on around him, only that he was on the floor and no one was trying to get close to him. The vessels were glowing brighter than they ever had. Brighter and brighter they grew, and with them the pain; pain beyond anything Kyle had felt since the incident. His body twisted and bent in very uncomfortable positions, but he was unable to control himself; His throat hurt for how much he screamed. Then, it started to die down. Slowly, but surely, Kyle regained his senses back.

The first thing he noticed was that a crowd had begun to gather around them. Several people were on cell phones, but all of them were staring at him unblinking. Then, Jules got into his main field of vision. Her mouth was moving, but Kyle couldn't hear a word. His arms hurt, but that didn't stop him from pushing the sleeve of his right arm as far as it would go. His hearing was coming back as he heard the distant sound of sirens coming. Someone had called an ambulance, but doctors weren't any good in Kyle's situation.

He couldn't believe that had just happened. The one time he goes out, and he can't just have a good time with his friends without having a seizure in public. He was embarrassed and angry. How could this have happened? Why, of all people, him? What did he do to deserve this? And why did people have to gather to watch him writhe on the floor?

The crowd was dead silent as they all watched him push his sleeve up. Past his elbow, the vessels had grown probably three inches. Great, he thought to himself. He quickly pulled the sleeve back down before the crowd could close in, and got up and started walking to the door before anyone could stop him.

People got out of his way as he made a bee-line for the door. Good, because he felt like going off on the first person who got in his way. He almost prayed for someone to try to stop him, just so he could lose control. He could feel that someone was following him, but he didn't stop to see who it was. He quickened his pace as the last person between him and the door wisely changed course to avoid him. Once outside, he put his helmet back on and was unlocking his bike when he heard Jules and Justin try to get his attention.

"Wait," Jules pleaded. "Where are you going?"

"Home," Kyle answered simply without even turning around to face her.

"Home?" Justin said. "After all of that?"

He turned on them, and Kyle saw them jump. Annoyed, and without blinking he said, "Yes, home. Where I will likely rot away or this alien infection will just kill me. I hope it does before I'm given another opportunity to go off in front of people again. I've been in pain ever since I woke up from that coma. What do you know? Obviously no one has any idea what is going on, and it's not like that thing I touched is coming here to explain itself, and I bet that a doctor is on that ambulance coming, and I'll further bet that after looking at me, he'll have nothing close to an idea of what is wrong with me! So, yeah! I'm going home; I'm going back to my room, and I'll probably die in there, so unless you have some other way to humiliate me in a public place again, good bye, and just leave me alone forever!!"

They were hurt; Kyle could see that as he turned away. Justin was more of a surprised hurt, while Jules seemed to be on the verge of tears. Neither of them moved until Kyle rode off.

# Chapter Six

Anger kept Kyle going all the way back to his house. Anger kept him from going back, because there was no going back. He saw no fathomable reason for him to go back. He had every right to be angry in his mind. How could they have done this to him? So what if the twins were still standing where he left them confused and hurt; they would get over it. Or they wouldn't; Kyle could honestly care less at this point.

He made the trip from the mall back to his house in record time. His whole body was sore, which made him angry, both from the episode at the mall and the nonstop ride back to his house. When he got there, the first thing he did was basically throw his bike and helmet over the fence. He threw the front door open and slammed it behind him with deliberate force that startled Sarah on the couch.

"What's up with you," she said snobbishly. Kyle ignored her, she wasn't worth the time, and stalked upstairs to his room. Again, he threw the door open, letting it crash into the wall, and slammed it hard behind him. He shut the window and closed the blinds. He kicked his shoes off with enough force that they bounced off the wall, tore his socks off and tossed them with the shoes. Then he tore his shirt off and threw it at the wall with everything else.

He started pacing the room, broiling with anger. How could they do this to him? His own supposed "friends". They couldn't understand.

Finally, his legs hurt so much he had to sit down. He plopped down onto his bed and fell lying down with his feet still touching the floor. The bed was comfortable. He always loved his bed. It was the first thing he went to everyday after school. He had been on vacations where he just couldn't sleep because it wasn't his bed that he was sleeping in. There were lots of comfortable beds in the world, but this one was his, and that just made it special. This was where he could sleep perfectly and clear his mind.

And just like magic, he began to think clearly again. Why was he angry? He looked down toward his arms. The glow of the vessels was as soft as ever. Why? What are they, and why him?

All of the questions were agitating him again. He closed his eyes and counted slowly to ten. This trick always worked for Kyle when he needed to calm down. By the time he reached ten, his mind was clear; no thoughts, no emotions, just breathing.

And something else. Something new. Something coming from the vessels. Puzzled, Kyle sat up, propping himself on the wall behind him, and examined his arms. The vessels didn't look any different, but he could feel something. Maybe they always felt like this, and he just never noticed. They didn't feel like an add-on to his body. Quite the contrary, they felt a part of it, like a limb that had always been there.

For the first time, Kyle truly focused on them. As he did so, he noticed that they flared; a slow wave starting from his upper arm all the way down to his hands. Experimentally, he tried again, with the same result. For the first time since he had them, they were doing something other than make his life miserable. They were finally a curiosity. He could engage them like any other muscle in his body.

The next thing he tried was a constant engagement; to see if he could hold them. When he tried, though, they only stayed active for a few seconds. When he tried again, he managed to last longer. Over and over again he engaged the vessels, and each time he was able to keep them glowing brighter for longer.

By now he was standing, and feeling very excited by this new discovery. Soon he was able to keep them glowing for two minutes straight. Feeling ambitious, he wondered how bright he could get them. He cleared his mind, took a deep breath, and turned the vessels on. He then began pushing them to be brighter. The dull blue glow they usually had quickly became a bright electric blue. Brighter and brighter they grew; Kyle was starting to give off more light than a floodlight. It excited him to know he could more or less exercise like this.

But Kyle soon realized he was starting to give off more than just light. He noticed that things on his dresser and around his room started to shake. This only intrigued Kyle to continue pushing his limit. It was getting harder, and he had to fight for every iota of energy. His arms were feeling as if they were stuffed with some, but not something solid or liquid.

Then it started to hurt, but Kyle couldn't stop. Then, a realization hit Kyle straight in the face. He wasn't expelling energy. He was gathering it, and soon couldn't hold it.

And with that realization came the fact that he couldn't stop the flow; the energy kept building and building, and he knew he was about to burst. His mind and heart started racing, and he couldn't figure out which was faster. His arms were glowing like someone had stuffed a star underneath his skin, and were shaking violently. Then one thought shot through his brain like a freight train, drowning out all of the others: he had to get outside.

It took him three tried to grab his own door knob, his hands were so shaky. He didn't bother closing it behind him, only worried about getting out of the house as fast as he could. He nearly tripped on his way down the stairs.

"What is that?!" he heard Sarah yell. Kyle didn't stop to answer, only ran for the back door.

He slammed through the back door and into the back yard. Except for his glowing blue arms, he was really pale. Sarah followed him outside, complaining until she saw him. Kyle took several deep breaths, trying to release the energy building up.

It was a struggle to unclench his entire body, but it worked somewhat. A blue substance began falling out of his arms like snowflakes. At first, Kyle thought that the vessels were flaking off, but the vessels weren't shrinking in any way. They were dulling, though. It appeared that whatever energy he had put in them was falling out. When the "flakes" hit the ground, they just kind of dissipated, and some didn't even get to touch the ground before they just disappeared.

After a while, the slow leaking stopped, but Kyle's arms were still significantly brighter than (relatively) natural. He realized then that he was still clenched up tight. After a few more deep breaths, he dropped his arms loosely to his sides.

Before he knew it, he felt energy rushing out of his arms. It was a bitter-sweet relief; nice, but for some reason he had a feeling something else strange was about to happen. Sure enough, as he looked down, he saw that the energy wasn't just falling to the ground like it did before. It poured out, but then it traveled up his arms and formed a rough bubble around his entire body. It took less than half a minute to completely cover him head to toe. But for some reason, he wasn't panicking. The release stopped when he was completely covered.

From inside his little bubble, the world looked much different. For one thing, it looked as if he was wearing really dark sunglasses. Everything was distorted, as if he was looking at the bottom of a shallow lake. He looked up toward Sarah, who had something like an aurora outlining her, while the house behind her was dark. Kyle looked up toward the sky, where it was mostly dark, except for the sun, which appeared to have lost its rays and was just a single disk of light. Kyle figured that this must be some kind of heat vision. He also didn't feel any heat, in spite of it being close to triple digit weather at the time.

He moved around, and the bubble moved with him. He felt lighter, and it felt easier to move. He started laughing for some reason; this felt purely amazing. He felt free of everything holding him down.

"Are you okay?" Sarah asked.

Kyle had almost forgotten that she was there. He looked over to see that she was slowly inching toward him.

"Yeah," he said. "I feel great; better than I have felt in a while."

"What's happening?" she asked.

Her caution was warranted, seeing that Kyle had no idea what was going on, but it felt good. He shrugged, saying, "I have no idea."

He took an experimental step. Again, he had the amazing sensation that his body was lighter than it originally was. He put his foot down and felt it could just bounce back up like a ball. He took a few more steps, finding it incredible how easy it was to move like this. It was like gravity didn't have as much of an effect on him anymore.

He jumped two feet off of the ground just bouncing on his heels. "Whoa," he said when he landed. Usually a jump that small would've just gotten him an inch in the air. He jumped again, just a little harder. He easily got six feet off the ground. When he landed, he then crouched low to the ground, and with all of the strength he had, he jumped again.

He left the ground far below him. He flew above his house and kept going. He saw his street, then his neighborhood, and the college in the distance. Soon, all of Odessa was laid out before him, then the airport and Midland. Amazingly, he could still hear and breathe normally; he felt the force of the wind, but it wasn't blowing him around; he remained upright throughout. His eyes weren't being affected either, and he felt no change in temperature as he kept going; it was like his little bubble of energy was protecting him from the elements. He was probably a thousand feet in the air when he first started to slow down. He began whooping and laughing, realizing gravity must not work on him anymore.

But he thought too soon. Before he was able to touch a cloud he was heading toward, he stopped ascending. He stopped moving at all, neither going up or down, for several seconds before gravity did take over. Head down, he headed back toward earth. It was then that he realized that he was heading back to earth. Solid, unyielding earth laid beneath him that would destroy him upon impact. He had no parachute, no padding, not even a shirt on. He didn't know if this bubble could protect him from falling to his very certain death, but something told him it probably wouldn't.

For one whole minute he fell, his mind racing and the whole "his life flashed before his eyes" thing. Finally, his mind just went blank and he just fell. Of all ways, this was the least he ever expected to die. How could this be it? He almost found this scene ironic since he had never flown before.

Kyle found it almost funny some of the stuff that went through his mind as he fell. His mind went to the fact that he did all of that homework and would never have the chance to turn it in. He thought about that last story he wrote to the school newspaper about the wolf puppy and bear cub that become friends despite differences. He thought about that time he and the twins had ice-cream and while Jules was in the bathroom, Kyle and Justin put salt and sugar in hers. Kyle and Justin nearly blew it as she came back, but she licked her cone, immediately made a face and dropped it in the back yard. Kyle and Justin were laughing so hard they couldn't hear her yell at them. That was the weekend before finals week; the last time they truly hung out before all of this happened.

It was a happy memory, much better than earlier that day. That couldn't be it. How could he let the last thing he said to his best friends was to leave him alone forever? He couldn't have meant that. He should've apologized. No. He will apologize. In person.

His mind was made, and his arms began to itch with more power. More energy was being manipulated, and this time it acted differently. His little bubble began flaring around him. He watched and beheld that he was slowing down. He began spinning end over end. When he stopped, he was upside down and falling again, this time faster, and he continued to accelerate. Puzzled, he looked up toward his feet, and saw that the energy was forming a tail stretching about six feet behind him, like the tail of a comet. He realized he was being propelled down. He was flying. Down.

Without thinking, he angled his body up to fly level. He watched as his angle of descent change until he was flying parallel to the ground, heading in an easterly direction. He was moving fast, requiring him to think fast if he wasn't going to get lost.

He was twitchy and jerky at first, but he soon found that it was easy to control; he could change direction with the slightest movement or thought. He soared over Odessa like a jet. He thought he would feel something like wind resistance, but once again the elements outside of his bubble didn't affect him. His bubble had taken on a new shape; it was much more streamlined, more like a spearhead, coming to a fine point in front of him.

He didn't notice as he was getting a little too close to a huge air plane coming from the north. He twisted to his right, ducking just underneath the plane. He could've reached up and touched the belly of the huge machine, which went on like nothing had happened. Laughing, he twisted again to the left. He could move around with little more than a thought; it was like he had been flying his whole life, and was now rediscovering this skill. He used his arms a lot to navigate and change direction, too, so it was almost like swimming as much as it was flying. And changing speed was simply adding or taking away power.

Then he angled up. Soon he was pointed straight up and getting higher and higher above the Earth. Again, Kyle was amazed at how easy it was. He was well aware that planes worked with air resistance, lift and drag, but he didn't feel anything against him. He flew through a cloud and didn't even get wet. His bubble must somehow block natural forces around him. When he could no longer see clouds above him, he got scared. He looked down to see an entire continent. He could see from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean. He couldn't even see any cities from his point of view. The realization that he could leave the planet on his own scared him, so he turned around and headed back down.

After a while, Kyle was getting tired, he looked toward the west to see that the sun was getting close to touching the horizon, so it must be getting late. He angled himself toward the ground. After another minute of flying around, he found the Music City Mall, and from there he was able to find his way back to his home on Twin Oaks. There was a truck Kyle recognized as his father's halfway up the road. Kyle soared over it and over the house and tried to stop. Stopping took four more flyovers to figure out. On the fifth try, he managed to finally stop by throwing his arms out in front of him before he wanted to land. This action now left him hovering about thirty feet over his back yard. Slowly, he decreased the amount of energy he was using, causing him to slowly fall to the ground.

When he was about six feet in the air, Sarah and his parents were in the backyard watching him with the same looks Sarah had when Kyle first took off. With a deep breath, he released what was left of his energy, causing his bubble to disappear and he to fall what was left to the ground. He landed a little harder than what he anticipated; he nearly stumbled forward as his feet hit the ground. He was a little disoriented; his body felt heavy, like he was wearing a suit made with metal. He felt hands, strong but gentle, lead him into the house and in a chair. He sat there looking at the dark wood of the table.

When he was sitting down, he heard his mother's voice ask, "Are you alright?"

He looked up to her face, full of concern as it was, and smiled. "Better than I've felt all summer.

# Chapter Seven

Before Kyle knew it, one and a half months of summer were gone. Kyle could hear the Fourth of July fireworks going off from his room, which he had hardly left since his experience of flying; only to relieve himself and eat did he leave his room. Something in the back of his mind just told him that using his powers again would be a bad idea at the time.

It had been three days since Kyle had last seen Justin and Julianne. They had made no attempt to contact him in any way. Kyle tried texting and emailing them, but he never heard back from them; they didn't even answer or return his calls. He figured that they were mad at him attacking them for no reason. A part of Kyle didn't blame them. He was acting like a jerk, and they were the last people he wanted to hurt.

Kyle paced his room with his phone to his ear. It was a cloudy morning, and the sun had yet to come up. It was probably going to rain later in the day, but for now it was pretty quiet. The lights were off, but Kyle's vessels were creating enough light for what he was doing. The phone rang and rang until Kyle got the message.

"Hi! You reached Jules Slade, but I don't have my phone on me at the moment. If you'll leave your name and number at the beep, I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Have a wonderful day!!"

Kyle listened to her message with annoyance. It was the fifth time in three days he was listening to it. Why didn't she just pick up? Kyle knew why she wouldn't, but after this long he hoped she would just hear him out. When the recording beep sounded, Kyle spoke.

"Hi. It's Kyle. Again." He signed, continuing, "Listen. I don't want to do this over a phone. I need to talk to you and Justin. Please contact me in some way." He paused for a few seconds before adding, "I know you know my number by heart, so please call. Bye." Any other thing he could think of he had said in previous messages on their phones.

He sat down in the chair at his desk, tossing his phone onto his bed. He sat there, staring at the phone where it landed right next to his pillow with the room completely illuminated by the soft light that shown from his vessels at all times.

After an hour of the phone doing nothing, Kyle left the room, his need for food finally overriding all other desires. He scooped the phone and slid it into his pocket as he left the room.

He walked into the kitchen and pulled out a box of cereal from the drawer next to the refrigerator. He was the only one in the kitchen at the time, so he just prepared and ate his breakfast on the kitchen island. It took him five minutes to finish his meal; the whole time is mind was in his pocket, waiting for his cell phone to do something.

His entire morning was spent waiting with one hand on his phone, hoping it would ring or vibrate, or relay any message to him that Jules had listened to his. He truly hoped it would do something. He felt terrible for what he did to them at the mall. He wanted to apologize, but they were obviously mad at him for it. Kyle didn't want to lose his best friends, and he would do anything to keep that from happening. If he had to camp in front of their house to apologize to them, he would.

It was lightly raining outside. Kyle did what he could to keep busy. He read books, he watched TV, and he even played video games.

Finally, at just after one in the afternoon, there was a knock on the front door. Kyle was in his room, checking the homework he had over summer for the tenth time. He heard Sarah answer the door, but he couldn't hear who it was. He had just gotten up from his desk when his door opened. Sarah pocked her head into the room.

"Emma's out here," she said. "She wants to talk to you." Her head disappeared.

Kyle was surprised. Emma was there? He hadn't seen Emma since school ended. He panicked for a second. Emma didn't know about the vessels. He rushed to his closet and slipped a sweatshirt over his head to hide them.

Kyle went downstairs to find Emma and Sarah sitting on the couch. Neither of them talking, Kyle guessed that they were waiting on him. He recognized Emma's long blonde hair immediately, still wet from the light rain.

"Hey, Emma," Kyle called when he was at the foot of the stairs. Emma turned her head to see him, and then she stood up. She was wearing jeans and a button up blouse. A rain coat hung over the couch next to where she was sitting.

"Hey, Kyle," she answered. He saw her eyes run over him before she said, "What's with the layers? I thought it was kind of warm in here."

Kyle didn't answer. He thought about a response to the question, but in the end he just shrugged, sticking his hands into his pockets. He wasn't sure whether or not she knew about his condition. Emma and Jules were friends, so he knew that they talked to each other quite often. But did Jules ever talk to Emma about what was happening to Kyle?

Sarah suddenly stood up, saying, "Well, I'll leave you two alone." She turned to Emma and said, "Kyle really doesn't like it when I talk about him to his friends."

"Really?" Emma asked sarcastically. "Wonder what that could be about?"

"Why aren't you gone yet?" Kyle asked Sarah while giving her a look that basically said "get out." Sarah left the room with a smile on her face and a spring in her step.

Once Kyle heard her door close, he slowly walked over to the couch and sat at the end Sarah just vacated. Emma sat down after he had. She sat there just watching him, while Kyle looked down at his feet. Both were quiet for about a minute.

Finally, Kyle couldn't stand the silence. "So," he said, "Sarah said you wanted to talk?"

"Yeah," she replied. "I heard about what happened at the mall."

Kyle swallowed. He kept his eyes on his feet. "You did?" he said.

"From Julianne," she explained. Kyle noticed that she used Jules' full name. There were very few people Jules would allow to call her by her full name; she reserved that honor for those she really trusted.

"So, what did you think?" he asked.

"Well," she began, "I think I needed to hear the other side of the story. Jules is pretty upset right now. That's why she hasn't been talking to you."

"I've been trying to apologize," Kyle explained. "That's why I've been calling her. I didn't mean it."

"If you didn't mean it, why did you do it?"

"I don't know," he said, almost exploding from his seat. "I don't know why I snapped at them. It just happened; I couldn't control myself."

She didn't talk for a minute before saying, "Can I see them?"

Kyle knew what she was talking about, but was hesitant to show her. He still really liked Emma, and he didn't want to scare her off. He knew she had been there when he was in his coma, but the vessels were only on his hands at that point. Now, they were nearly up to his shoulders. But, what harm could it do to show her? It was obvious by now that the only person they truly affected was him.

He took a deep breath, and slowly pulled the sleeve of his left hand up past his elbow. Emma's eyes grew wider as he twisted his left arm around to show her all of it. She kept a respectful distance, but after a minute, she reached out for his arm, asking, "May I?" Kyle nodded.

Unlike when Sarah examined his vessels, Emma lightly tugged on his arm very gently. She scooted close to him. Like Sarah, she traced the tendrils with her fingers, but something was different this time. Kyle's heart started to race, and his arm felt tingly where she touched it. The feel of her skin touching his excited him. And she was very gentle as she turned his arm over. She moved from the arm to his hand, continuing to study the alien mark that nearly filled his entire palm. Kyle was fully aware of how close she was sitting next to him; he could rest his head on her shoulder if he wanted to.

She lightly pulled his hand up to her eye level, palm facing her. "Wow," she said.

"What?" Kyle asked.

"They hum," she said, not taking her eyes off of his hand.

Finally, he had to pull his arm away, remembering Sarah's comment. As soon as he did, the tingly feeling left. "They do a lot of things," Kyle explained, "and very little of it seems to make any sense."

She turned her head to look out the window. Kyle followed her gaze and noticed that the sun was just now starting to poke through the clouds.

"C'mon," Emma said, turning back to Kyle. "Walk me home."

Kyle was surprised by her request, but decided to go along with it. "Alright," he said as he pulled his sleeve back down. They stepped outside, and Kyle closed the door behind them. The sun was warm, but the air was still cool from the rain, and everything was shiny outside.

They were silent as they walked off of Twin Oaks. Emma lived a few streets over on Monclair Avenue. When they turned off onto Lynbrook, Kyle asked, "So, how has your summer been?"

"Oh," she began, "I can't complain. My family had to cancel our vacation last month. It was supposed to be their birthday present to me, since I always wanted to see the Grand Canyon. But then we heard about what happened to you, and I just didn't feel like going."

"I'm sorry," Kyle said.

"It's not your fault what happened to you."

"Yes it is," Kyle said. He looked down, saying, "I went out to find it. Again, I don't even know why I did it. Something just drew me toward it. Sarah was with me when the whole time, begging me to stop and go back, but I wasn't listening."

"You can't blame yourself for that."

"Why not," Kyle said, his voice rose somewhat. He stopped, almost furious, continuing, "I've been doing it all summer. Why should I stop now? My best friends want nothing to do with me anymore. Everything that has happened was because of one bad decision."

Emma didn't react to Kyle's abrupt confrontation. She only stopped ahead of him saying, "Because I believe everything happens for a reason. Every choice we make makes us who we are."

"So you're saying this is who I am now? Some kind of half alien freak?"

"If you let it be."

Kyle was about to say something when what Emma said hit him like a truck, stopping all of his thoughts. Emma continued, saying, "Life hands us things every day, but it is up to us what we do with what life gives us. You've been given something no one else on Earth has, and now you get to work with it."

"So I'm privileged to have this?"

"It's all about how you see things. If you only want to see the negative, that's all you will see."

They stood there facing each other in silence for a few minutes before continuing on to Emma's house. For the most part, it was a silent walk as Kyle mulled over what Emma was talking about.

When they turned onto Emma's driveway, Kyle noticed a bald kid at Emma's front door. He knocked on the door three times and waited patiently for someone to open it.

Emma spoke out to the boy. "No one's home. Come back later."

The kid turned, startled. Emma laughed at the kid's expense. They were now walking toward each other. Now that they were closer, Kyle could see that the kid was not bald; he had blonde hair, and then he kept it very short.

"Kyle, this is Tony," Emma explained. "He moved in next door last month from across town. He's going to be a freshman this year. Tony, this is my friend Kyle."

Tony extended his hand to Kyle. "It's nice to meet you," he said. Kyle shook his hand, being careful not to let his sleeve slip up. Turning to Emma, he said, "Hey, can I borrow an egg? Trying to bake a cake, but we're an egg short."

"Sure," Emma said. "Of course. Let me just go get it for you." She walked past both of them to the door. Kyle watched Tony watch Emma as she past him, fumbling with some keys she pulled out of her pocket. Tony then turned back to Kyle.

"What's the cake for?" Kyle asked, trying to make conversation.

Tony looked over his shoulder before leaning in to say, "Just a cake."

He didn't say anything else, leaving an awkward silence. Then he suddenly asked "Hey, man, how long have you known Emma?"

"For about a year, I guess. Why?" Kyle asked.

"She's kind of cute, don't you think?"

Kyle slid his hands into his pockets, studying this boy. He could tell where this was going. Tony was reminding Kyle of a puppy that just found a new favorite toy.

Kyle didn't answer the question, but it didn't seem to bother Tony. "I was thinking of asking her to be my girlfriend. I never see her with any guys, except for you just now, and you're just her friend. I'm planning to ask her out at her party. What do you think? Dude, are you okay? You're shaking like crazy."

Kyle hadn't even noticed, bewildered by the audacity of this new kid to just come in and talk about asking Emma out like this. Sure enough, his arms were shaking, but not because it was cold. He had somehow drawn energy into the vessels without meaning to. It wasn't an incredible amount of power, but as Kyle had already learned, once it is in the vessels, the only way to get it out is the flashy way, which he was avoiding.

"I'm fine," Kyle said. "Emma," he called out. Emma had just gotten the door open when she turned back. "I have to get back. I'll talk to you later."

"Okay," she said, a little confused. Then, she said, "Oh, hey. I'm having a party next weekend. You want to come?"

"Yeah, sure," he said. "Just send me the info, okay?"

"Sure. Come on, Tony. I'll get that egg for you."

Kyle turned to go back home as Tony disappeared into Emma's house. Kyle dropped his hands out of his pocket and let all of the power in the vessels out, leaving long black marks in the pavement behind him.

# Chapter Eight

Kyle walked home in a mix of emotions. He was confused by what Emma talked about all of this happening for a reason. Kyle had never truly believed in "fate", but what were the chances of this happening randomly? He still felt guilty about his last encounter with Jules and Justin. He checked his phone and saw that neither Jules nor Justin had yet to respond to his messages. Also, he had no idea what to feel about Tony's revelation about Emma. The kid was new, so he most likely didn't know Kyle's feelings toward Emma (not that Emma knew about them, either).

Yet despite all of this, Kyle noticed that his power was increasing. He had just drawn a significant amount of power while just listening to Tony talk about Emma. What truly scared him about it was the fact that he didn't even notice he was doing it. If Tony hadn't said anything, who knows how much energy he would have evoked before noticing; it might not have been enough to control. Luckily though, he was able to release it all quietly, but people were bound to notice the two streaks of blackened asphalt.

There were many things that Kyle still had no idea about this power, but two things were certain at this point. One was that it grew stronger every day, with every little growth of the vessels. The other was that the power was dangerous.

When he turned the corner and was back on Twin Oaks, Kyle felt his cell phone begin to vibrate from inside his jean pocket. He pulled it out and checked the caller ID. He was immediately hoping it was either Jules or Justin, but sighed when he saw that it was Sarah who was calling. He hit the answer button and said, "Hello?"

"Kyle," he heard Sarah's voice say, "Where are you?"

"I'm just down the road. I'll be home in a minute. What do you want?" he asked blankly.

"Oh. Testy today," she said in an undertone. "Mom's going to order pizza tonight; said she didn't feel like cooking. She texted me to ask you what you wanted, which is weird, because why wouldn't she just ask you. I mean, you have a phone, and you know how to use it, hence our conversation. Why does she always have to..."

"Pepperoni," Kyle finally said before she could give him a headache. "Tell her I want pepperoni."

"Oh," she said. Kyle still figured that she had no idea when she was about to go on ranting.

"Sarah," Kyle continued. "We need to talk about your ranting. It's......it's......ge-...getting..."

It was happening again. A big one. Kyle could feel it. His arms shook violently, and his legs had failed him. He somehow kept his phone up to his ear long enough to hear Sarah ask his name twice before his fingers just failed to keep a grip on it. His knees hit the sidewalk after the phone did. His breathing was shallow and raspy. His hands were clenched so hard they hurt, and the same for his arms. He managed to stay propped up on his knees, but the pain was so much his senses hardly worked. He had very little perception on what was going on around him. All he felt was the pain. The deep, throbbing pain; the pain of power growing. It hurt so much he couldn't even make a sound, not even a whimper. The vessels were glowing so bright even his dark blue sweatshirt couldn't hide them.

Yet, there was something else this time. He felt a feeling of dread, that something was just beyond the horizon, waiting for him. He had no idea what it was, yet somehow had the feeling that he had been expecting it for a while now.

Someone had run up to him, but he couldn't tell who it was. They were talking, too. Kyle could tell it was a girl's voice, but whose? They were rubbing his back gently and speaking his name in his ear. It hurt too much to turn his head to see who it was. He couldn't show it, but Kyle started to panic in his head. Was this the one who he was waiting for?

The pain was starting to fade. His entire body relaxed and just slumped forward. He would have hit the ground if someone hadn't been propping him up with their arms.

"Kyle?" the voice said quietly. "Kyle, are you okay?"

It took a few seconds for Kyle to recognize the voice as Sarah's. He started to relax. His breathing and heart slowed significantly.

He coughed, saying, "Yeah, I think I'm good."

He attempted to stand up by himself, which didn't work, and he was back on his knees. The second time Sarah held on to his arm, and was able to get up. Sarah scooped up his phone and helped him get home.

Once they got back inside, Kyle immediately went over to the couch and just collapsed. Sarah took one of the chairs next to it. Kyle closed his eyes, but he could tell Sarah was just watching him. He would have fallen asleep if Sarah didn't say something.

"You are not okay," she said.

Without opening his eyes, he said, "I told you. I'm fine."

"Then why do you look terrible, beyond the usual?" she asked.

Kyle felt his temper start to rise, but didn't have the energy to be angry at her jab. He repositioned himself to where he was sitting up properly on the couch.

Sarah continued. "Since the day you touched that alien, you've only gotten worse and worse."

"I'm fine," Kyle repeated.

"You don't look fine," Sarah said.

"You don't understand," Kyle said.

"Neither do you, probably," Sarah pointed out.

"Yeah, but what doesn't kill you makes you stronger," Kyle said. "I am getting better. Every day I get more control over this energy. I feel it."

"Then what were you mumbling out there?"

Kyle looked up at her in confusion. "Mumbling?"

"Yeah," she said. "You were mumbling something about 'it's coming', and how you need more power. What was all of that about?"

Kyle wasn't even aware that he was mumbling. He did remember feeling fear earlier for no specific reason. Something had to be coming; it was the only explanation for that fear and his supposed mumbling to himself. But what? He couldn't remember. It was like trying to remember a dream after waking up. Whenever he thought he was close to what it was, it slipped away.

When he didn't answer, Sarah handed him his phone and went upstairs. He just twisted the phone around in his hands before he noticed the vessels on his hands. They were bigger; now most of his palms were covered by them. He pushed his sleeves up to see that the vessels were wider now. More of his arms were blue now than they were their original tone.

All of this was both terrible and amazing. Amazing because it meant he was more powerful every day. Terrible because he knew that before this was over, he probably wasn't even going to look human. All he wished was that there was a way to just let it all go, to get it all out of his body.

His temper was rising, and so was the energy stored up in the vessels. He couldn't stand it anymore. He shoved his phone into his pocket and went out to the back yard.

It was raining lightly, but was still cold. Kyle just paced the perimeter of the yard, his shoes making squishy noises as he walked through the wet ground. He just walked. He couldn't think; his brain refused to work for him. He couldn't think about anything. All he wanted was for it all to be over, for it to have all been a dream, for the energy currently coursing through him to just leave. He prayed for it to leave; he willed for it to leave. It was all he ever wanted all summer. But every morning, he woke up and the vessels were still there. This wasn't a dream; this was real. They had ruined his friendships and his life.

He was so angry, he punched the fence. When he did, he felt energy shoot through his arm and split the piece of fence he had just punched into three pieces.

He felt his phone vibrate once, signaling that he received a text message. He pulled it out of his pocket and checked the caller ID. The text came from Justin.

They were answering. Kyle got excited. The first sign of forgiveness he had gotten. It at least meant that they had read his messages. No matter what the message said, this was a step in the right direction. He almost thought they hated him now, but this changed everything. It was a step toward going back to how things used to be.

In his excitement, he almost didn't read the message. He opened it and read Jules wants to talk to you. Can we come over? Kyle quickly looked over his shoulder to Julianne's window. Her blinds were closed, but Kyle had a feeling she was just there watching him.

Kyle opened a new message on his phone and typed out Yeah, come on over. I'm in the back yard.

That probably would give Kyle just a couple of minutes to get ready. He leaned against the gate to the yard, waiting for them to show up.

Sure enough, Kyle heard the promising sounds of a door being closed and squishy footsteps coming his way. When he guessed that they were close enough, he opened the gate. Jules and Justin were whispering among themselves until they saw Kyle waiting for them. All three of them just stood where they were for several minutes in silence.

Kyle stared at his shoes until he said, "hey."

Justin spoke first. "Hey, Kyle," he said. "How are you doing?"

Kyle lied, saying, "I'm doing better. I'm glad you guys finally wanted to talk to me."

"It was mostly Jules," Justin said, nudging his sister playfully. "You know I couldn't hold a grudge to save my life."

Kyle snickered at that response, since it was so true. Justin was trying to make the moment as light as possible, which Kyle really appreciated. Afterwards, though, it was really quiet until Kyle said, "Well, I guess come on in," and beckoned them into the backyard.

Jules and Justin entered the back yard and immediately turned back to Kyle, who closed the gate to the fence behind him. Jules was watching him expectantly. Kyle knew what she was wanting, and didn't wait another second to give it to her.

"I am so sorry about what I said to you a few days ago," he said. "You were trying to help me feel better, and I lost my temper and took it out on you, and you don't deserve that."

Jules looked around everywhere except at Kyle, and said, "That's a good start."

Kyle thought about his next response. When nothing good came to mind, he said, "What do you mean by that? What do you want?"

She locked on to him with deadly eyes. "All you're sorry about is what happened a few days ago?" she said. "What about the rest of the summer? Granted, you spent two weeks in a coma that wasn't your fault, but you haven't been out all summer. You haven't been with anyone but us and Emma."

Kyle was taken aback by that last part. "Wait, how did you know I was out with Emma?"

"Dude, she texted us after you left her at her house," Justin explained.

"Okay," Kyle said, "then what do you mean about 'the rest of summer?'"

"You gave up on life," Jules said. "I couldn't believe it at first, but it was obvious when you left us at the mall in a storm that you had. You've left your house twice now since summer began, and now all we have is a few weeks until school starts again. You gave up on life," she said, tears forming around her eyes, "and you gave up on your friends."

Kyle couldn't remember the last time he saw Jules crying for real. Seeing her tears opened Kyle's eyes to what he had really done to her. He figuratively snapped their friendship apart when he left her at the mall.

"Julianne," he began, much more sincerely, "I am so sorry. I'm so sorry I don't even think I could begin to explain how sorry I am. Can you ever forgive me?"

Julianne stared into his face. After a few seconds, she walked over and hugged him tightly. Kyle dropped his hands onto her shoulders. She didn't say anything, so Kyle asked, "Is this forgiveness?"

"Yes," she said from in his arms. "Don't you ever do that again. You aren't alone; me, Justin, Emma, and everyone you know cares about you. Never forget that."

"I promise," Kyle said.

"Good," she said, patting his back and finally letting go. "So," she said, "are you going to Emma's party?"

Kyle shrugged and said, "I got nothing better to do. I finished all of my homework weeks ago."

"Really?" Justin asked.

"Yeah," Kyle said. "What do you think I've been doing inside all summer?"

"Dude, you've been holding out on me. Help me out, man," Justin said.

"Sure," Kyle agreed. "Let me just go get my stuff and I'll meet you at your room."

"Awesome," Justin said, pumping his fist. "I owe you for this, man. C'mon, let's go, Jules."

They left the back yard as Kyle went back into his house. He couldn't help but smile. He had his friends back, he had a party coming up, and life wasn't looking so dreary from here on out. He had a plan now, and he had friends to back him up.

# Chapter Nine

Things were starting to turn around for Kyle. He was back to just hanging out with Jules and Justin every day. For the next few days, they just sat around, since Kyle was still cautious about going out in public. The twins didn't seem to mind; they were just happy Kyle was spending time with them. So, they played video games, watched movies, and helped Justin finish his homework.

Kyle opened up more to his two best friends than he ever had before. He told them all about what he had learned about his powers in the last few days. However, he refused to show them when they asked. It just didn't feel like a good idea at the time to use them.

He also told them about his meeting with Tony, and what he learned about his intentions with Emma.

"Dude, just ask her out first," was Justin's suggestion. It didn't seem that simple, yet neither Jules nor Kyle could come up with a better solution. Kyle would just have to get Emma first. He could do it at her party coming up. But he remembered Tony saying that was what he was planning to do.

"You just have to impress her, man," Justin said.

"Yeah," Jules added. "You can do it." Then she got a weird look in her eye, and said, "And I'll tell you what. We're going to help you do it."

Kyle and Justin spoke at the same time; Kyle saying "You are?" and Justin "We are?"

"Be back here tomorrow morning at ten," she said, and wouldn't explain further than that. Kyle finally headed back to his house around ten o'clock, took a shower, and went to bed.

Kyle woke up suddenly. It was still dark; Kyle looked over to his clock. It was two in the morning. Why was he up? He never woke up this early by himself.

Then it hit him like a truck. He felt the pain again. His vessels began to throb and glow in a painfully slow rhythm and his heart rate went up painfully fast. He kept clenched and stiff, hoping for it to end soon. He would have yelled in pain if his jaw wasn't stuck. He just laid there, still and silent, until he passed out from the pain.

He woke again, except this time he wasn't in his room. He wasn't anywhere, for that matter. From the look of things, he was standing in a blue cloud. He didn't feel pain anymore, though. His vessels were still glowing bright, but instead of a pulse, they were glowing continuously, and very intensely. He realized that this must be a dream, and began wondering how he was supposed to wake up.

Then he heard a voice, yet it wasn't exactly a voice. It would be best described as an impression of some kind of emotion. To Kyle, it felt like a warning.

Kyle circled around, trying to find whatever the source was. Truthfully, it felt as if it was coming from the mist and from inside him, yet for all he knew, he was alone. "Who are you?" he asked. Whatever it was, it didn't answer, but continued pushing its warning. Confused, Kyle asked, "What is it?"

The warning, which was at first very general, then changed. Again, no words were said, but Kyle received the feeling of something coming. "What's coming?" Kyle asked.

This question brought a completely new response. The cloud he was standing in suddenly started to collect around him. It condensed and thickened to where it was just a plane of blue. Then Kyle could just barely see through it. Some distance in front of him floated a dark red cloud that was very similar to Kyle's blue cloud. Both clouds didn't d anything for several minutes, always keeping the same distance from each other. Then the red cloud started to behave differently, and for some reason, Kyle found this behavior threatening. It had started to churn within itself, and grew to an enormous size. Kyle's own cloud started to do the same, and suddenly both clouds were twice their original size. Kyle watched as red tendrils from the red cloud whip out and strike his cloud, not ten feet from where he was within it. Automatically, Kyle directed his cloud to attack. Blue tendrils invaded the other cloud as more red whips struck. The two clouds fought furiously; Kyle flinched when a red whip landed right on Kyle's chest. It was so fast, Kyle couldn't have done anything.

Everything went dark. Kyle jerked around when he felt something on top of him. He almost yelled before he realized his eyes were still closed. When he opened them again, he was back in his room. The sun was half up and light other than his was pouring into the room. Kyle took a deep breath. It was just a dream. Or was it a dream? It seemed realer than any dream Kyle ever had. Even as he recalled it, it slipped from his memories to where ever it is dreams go when they are done.

He was soaked with sweat and his heart was still racing. He grabbed his towel and crossed the hall to the bathroom. A shower helped calm him down and clean him off.

It also helped him to think. He tried to remember all that he could from the dream. The first thing that came to mind was the overwhelming sense that he was being warned that something was coming. But what was coming? Then he remembered what the dream showed him. Two cloud-like things were battling each other. One was blue, like Kyle's vessels. The other was a dark red color. Was that what was coming?

Kyle decided not to worry about it at the moment. After all, how did he know that it wasn't just a dream? He put it away from his mind and went on with his day.

He got dressed and ate some cereal for breakfast. He had just cleaned his bowl and spoon when he received a text from Jules. It was a reminder about meeting them today in an hour. It also said to bring money, but not why he should.

It wasn't cold, but it was quite windy outside. Kyle grabbed a light jacket, mainly to hide the vessels a little bit, but it being windy would be a good excuse to keep one on. He walked over to the twin's house and knocked on the door. Jules answered and ushered him inside. He didn't even get a chance to sit down, for within five minutes, they were heading back outside and climbed into Mrs. Slade's car.

It was a five minute drive to the mall. As they pulled into the parking lot, Kyle asked, "What are we doing here?"

Jules and Justin exchanged a glance, and then Justin said, "You'll see. Just don't have a spasm and we'll have a good time this time." That remark immediately gave him a punch to the shoulder from Jules. Kyle laughed to show that he wasn't offended, but silently hoped the same thing.

Mrs. Slade left them in front of the Sears' interior entrance, claiming that she needed to get the twins' birthday present, get it back home to hide it, and be back, telling them not to leave the mall while she was gone. When she left them, Jules turned toward Kyle and explained their purpose for being there.

"Kyle," she said, "we are going to get you a new outfit for Emma's party."

Kyle looked at her for a second in confusion before asking, "What's wrong with my style?"

"Nothing's wrong with it," Jules answered. "It's just that Emma has seen it all by now. You have to show her something new every once in a while. Tony is new to her, and he'll probably play on that."

"Yeah," Justin said. "If you're going to get Emma, you gotta show Tony up, you know?"

"Okay," Kyle said. "Thanks for helping, I guess. So what did you have in mind? I only brought forty with me."

"We brought money, too, man," Justin said. "Only, you put more into this than we did; we brought thirty dollars each."

"I didn't even know what was going on," Kyle complained. Shaking his head, he said, "Anyway, that's only a hundred dollars. What kind of new outfit could we possibly get for a hundred dollars?"

"Well," Jules said, "We aren't going to find out standing here, are we?" she skipped (actually skipped, which neither Kyle nor Justin had ever seen her do) into the store, with Justin and Kyle behind her.

If Jules had anything in common with what Kyle called a "normal" girl, it was that she liked to shop. She was good at it, too. She could bargain hunt like a pro, and could see a sale coming from a mile away. Kyle always knew she was good at shopping, yet he had never seen her in action before. To Kyle, she would always just show up one day with new clothes and no explanation. But watching her shop was seeing a side to her that Kyle didn't even know existed. Her eyes and hands found their targets like guided missiles. Kyle and Justin soon just established a central location, since they just kept getting in the way and obviously didn't know what they were doing, pointing out shirts that made them laugh. They just talked while Jules went back and forth with various sets of shirts and jeans. Kyle learned to stand when he saw her coming, and she would see how the outfit looked, and decide whether or not she liked a part or all of it.

After her sixth trip back, they had a look for Kyle. New Levi's jeans, plus a black tee shirt underneath an Air Walk brand button down shirt left open. Mrs. Slade caught them as they were paying, only having four dollars left over from their combined total, and inspected their findings.

Mrs. Slade had to go back to their house to drop off the twins' birthday present, so she gave them thirty dollars to stay at the mall until she was ready to pick them up. They spent the money at the Fuddruckers restaurant in the mall for lunch. Kyle was barely paying attention to the conversation; he would fade in and out, and whenever he came back in, the twins were talking about something new. Kyle's mind kept falling back into the dream he had last night.

"What's up, Kyle?" he heard. He had zoned out for the fifth time that day, and this time Jules finally noticed.

He hesitated. Should he tell them? They were his friends, but something in the back of his head told him that this was way too big for them to help.

But they were his friends. They are his friends, and no matter what the problem, he could trust them.

"I had a weird dream last night," he began. "I'm just trying to make sense of it."

"What was the dream?" Jules asked. Kyle gave them the best description he could, which was another thing that just didn't make sense. Kyle rarely remembered his dreams, but this one was so vivid it just stuck to his mind.

After his description, the twins were silent for a moment. Justin finally said, "Dude that is just weird."

"Tell me about it," Kyle said.

"Clouds don't fight, man," Justin pointed out.

"I didn't know that, Justin," Kyle remarked sarcastically. "But I'm starting to think it wasn't just a dream. I never remember dreams, at least not this perfectly. It's just stuck in my head and I can't get it out."

"Are you saying you had a vision?" Jules asked.

"Maybe," Kyle said. "It was more like a warning, then I saw the memory I described."

"You mean the two cloud things?" Justin asked.

"Yeah, except I don't think they were just clouds. But I don't know what..." Kyle trailed off.

Kyle shook his head, not wanting to think about it right now. They decided to wait outside for Mrs. Slade to return for them. It was windier than it had been that morning.

A huge gust of wind hit them just as they walked outside. They all managed to hold onto the bags they were carrying, but Jules didn't have a hand on the hat she was wearing. The hat was blown off her head and within a few seconds was out in the middle of the street.

Jules sighed, saying, "Just wonderful." She handed Justin the bags she was carrying and walked out to retrieve her hat.

At that same moment, a truck turned onto the road from the parking lot, but the driver was distracted by something on the floor of his truck. He was moving way too fast to have noticed Jules as she stepped off the curb and into his path. Jules didn't even see him coming...

But Kyle did. A split second before Jules was about to be hit, Kyle jumped. Energy poured into from his body from his vessels. He rushed forward and scooped Jules up before she took a second step on the road. Momentum kept them going in the same direction, but they more or less glided in front of the truck. To Kyle, it felt as if everything was in slow motion. They flew past the truck and kept going for about fifteen feet, during which Kyle twisted over to where he would land on his back instead of landing on Jules. However, they ended up bouncing and rolling another five feet after landing. When they all stopped, Kyle ended up on top. All of this lasted about five seconds.

Jules looked confused and wide-eyed. "What... was... that?" she asked, taking a breath in between each word.

Kyle was equally out of breath. "Truck," he breathed out, "Almost... hit..."

Just then, Justin ran up to them, holding all of the sacks and Jules' hat. "What was that?" he asked.

Kyle just backed off of Jules and helped her up.

# Chapter Ten

Kyle walked back into his house with the two bags of clothes that were bought for him after what must have been the most awkward car ride of his life. Jules was in shock the entire time, Kyle felt scared for some reason, and Justin was just quiet for some strange reason. They told Mrs. Slade what happened, while leaving out the details about Kyle's condition. After that, even Mrs. Slade was quiet. As the car came to a stop, Kyle scooped up the bags, opened the door, and walked to his house before Mrs. Slade could begin further questions.

Kyle sighed as he shut the door behind him. The clock showed that he had only been out for three hours, and yet he was exhausted. The television was on, but he went upstairs to put his bags in his room. Afterwards, he walked back downstairs and joined Sarah in front of the TV. The weatherman was currently explaining that it should warm up a little more in the next few days when Sarah spoke.

"Where did you go?" she asked, not even looking at him.

Kyle answered, "Mall," without turning his head either.

"What did you buy?" Sarah asked, again without turning her head.

"Clothes, mostly," Kyle answered.

"Have a nice time?" she asked.

Kyle considered before saying, "It was interesting." Sarah didn't ask any more questions as the news station turned onto a developing story.

The news anchor was talking about a large object that seemed to have found itself in Earth's orbit. They had a picture of it from a telescope. Kyle was only half listening until the picture showed up on the screen. It was very streamlined, almost like a fish. It didn't have a face, but Kyle could guess which end was the front. One end ended in a single point, while the other branched off into three ends, and the thing had two large structures that looked a little like wings. The whole thing was a dark red color.

Kyle studied the picture for a minute before something started churning in his gut. At first, he couldn't understand what it was. Then he remembered his dream last night, and his warning. The sight of the picture brought up a feeling of dread. This was what he had to worry about.

"What is that?" Kyle asked, pointing at the screen.

Sarah shrugged, saying, "I don't know. It's been on the news all morning; someone found looking through a telescope and told all of the news stations. They think it's some sort of asteroid. I think it's an alien; it looks like that thing that you touched in Colorado, doesn't it?"

"Yeah," Kyle said, "it looks a lot like that thing in Colorado."

"You okay?" Sarah asked, although she didn't sound at all interested.

Kyle's eyes were glued to the screen until they took the picture off. When they did, Kyle noticed his heart was racing. Quickly, he ran upstairs and to the bathroom. He flipped the nozzle on the sink on and splashed cold water on his face. The shock actually calmed him down, as if he had just woken up from another dream. That thing looked almost exactly like the thing that landed in Colorado. That thing was the red cloud in his dream. He had never felt this sure about anything else in his life.

He walked out of the bathroom and headed to the backyard. It was still pretty bright outside. Kyle closed his eyes and focused on turning on his energy powers. He felt power pour from his vessels and forming a bubble around his body. When he opened his eyes, his vision was different. Again, his vision was distorted as if he were lying at the bottom of a lake and looking up. Yet, he could see auras around everything. He scoured the sky. Finally, he found the alien's aura. It was brighter than what he thought it would be, almost rivaling the sun in brightness, only bright red.

He stood there staring at it for several minutes. It didn't do anything other than float exactly where it was. When he was convinced that it wasn't going to fly at him in the next minute, he released his energy bubble and went back inside.

A whole week went by without any incident with the alien. Every morning for the last week, Kyle checked the sky for the alien. Strangely, it never changed position; it was always in the same place on the horizon. Kyle would watch it for close to an hour every day.

Finally, it was the day of the party. It was early in the afternoon, and Kyle was sitting on the back porch, watching the alien through his energy enhanced vision and drinking a coke. He hadn't even changed out of his pajamas yet.

What was it doing? If it was going to attack him, why wait this long? Kyle considered flying out and inspecting it, but it was in low orbit around the Earth, much higher than Kyle had flown. But was that what it was waiting for? It wanted Kyle to make the first move? Well, Kyle wouldn't, and so it was a standoff.

He heard a knock on the back patio door. He turned to see Sarah on the other side of the door. She beckoned for him to come inside, and then left and went into the living room.

Intrigued, Kyle took one last look at the alien in the sky, sighed, turned his powers off, and went inside.

Inside, Justin and Jules were waiting for him. "Dude," Justin said, "Where've you been all week?"

"Backyard," Sarah answered for him.

Kyle gave Sarah a look that she took to mean 'get out', so she left. When she was upstairs, Kyle said, "Yeah, I've been back there."

"What's up? You're still coming tonight, right?" Justin asked, noticing he was still in pajamas.

"What?" Kyle asked. Then he remembered it was the night of Emma's party. "Yeah, I'm going."

"Great," Jules said. "So what were you doing back there?"

"Oh," Kyle flustered. "I was, uh, just watching something."

Jules crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow. "What?" she pressed.

Kyle was silent for a second and said and said, "The alien."

Justin and Jules looked confused. Kyle explained, "Remember; my little energy bubble thing does some strange things to my vision, and I see things differently, and it's like I see auras or something. Well, I can see the alien's; it's bright red, and almost as bright as the sun's."

"Well, forget about it," Justin said. "Haven't you been watching the news? NASA has been studying it all week. It hasn't moved at all. They don't even think it's alive."

"Well, they're wrong about one thing," Kyle said. "It may not be alive, but something is telling me that that thing is dangerous. It has something to do with that dream I had last week. I just know it."

"Well," Jules said, "don't worry about it. If the alien was going to attack you, it would've done so by now. Come to the party tonight, it's not going anywhere."

Kyle thought for a second. She was right; why would the alien wait so long to do something? Now that he thought about it, he didn't know what it was going to do even if it did do something. His dream showed both blue and red aliens attacking each other, but why would they fight?

"Alright," Kyle said. "I'll put it out of my mind, and try to have a good time tonight."

Jules' face lit up. "Good," she piped. "We'll be back at about sevenish to leave together. See you later."

"Yeah," Kyle said. The twins left after Jules got a quick hug from Kyle. When they were gone, Kyle sat on the couch. After five minutes of twiddling his thumbs, he grabbed an X-box controller and played Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 for the first time that summer. Fondly, he remembered that last summer he made it his mission to get good enough to play at the veteran difficulty settings, yet now his skills had gotten a bit rusty. He played for two hours, both the campaign and a few zombie rounds. He always preferred the campaign then killing zombies; he could never take time to aim for the heads, so most of his kills were either luck or he managed to get a shotgun at close range.

A voice to his left said, "Shouldn't you be getting ready to go?"

Kyle looked over to see Sarah sitting and watching him play. Kyle pulled out his phone and discovered that it was close to six-thirty, and he still needed to shower and get ready.

Kyle groaned and said, "Why didn't you get my attention earlier? And how long have you been sitting there anyway?"

Sarah answered, "Because a girl has to have some fun every once in a while, and for about fifteen minutes." She met Kyle's glare with a smile.

Kyle didn't have time to deal with her. He rushed upstairs as fast as he could to shower. It was probably one of the quickest showers he had ever taken, but he made sure to wash every inch of his body. He stepped out of the shower so fast he almost slipped on the wet tiles. He got dressed in a flash, combed his hair, made sure he smelled good, slipped his watch on, and was all done by two minutes after seven.

He rushed back downstairs, saying, "I'm sorry. I was playing video games and I lost tra..."

He paused because no one was waiting for him. Kyle thought to himself how they could be late. Jules was a stickler for being on time, so being even just two and a half minutes late was weird for her. But just that second, there was a knock at the front door.

Kyle went to open it, saying, "Wow, guys. This isn't like you to be la..."

He opened the door, but Justin and Jules weren't standing there. Instead, Emma stood at his doorstep. She wore a strapless dark blue party dress, black leggings and boots that came up to just below her knees.

Kyle stood there, silent, for several awkward seconds before Emma said, "Hey, Kyle."

"Hi," Kyle said slowly. Another awkward silence before he said, "Where's Justin and Jules? The three of us were heading there together."

"They went ahead to the party," Emma explained.

"They went ahead to your party, you mean?" Kyle asked.

"Yeah," Emma said.

"So, not to be rude, then why are you here? Kyle asked. Checking his watch, he added, "I'm running late as it is, but now you'll be late to your own party."

She shrugged, saying, "I thought we could walk together. You don't mind, do you?"

"No," Kyle said. "No, I don't mind at all. But you walked all the way over here just to walk back with me?"

"You don't mind, do you?" she repeated.

"No," Kyle said. "Well, come in and sit down for a second before we head out." He moved so she could walk past him. Kyle couldn't help but notice how good she smelled as she walked past him into his house.

They sat together on the couch, and Kyle asked, "Can I get you something to drink?"

"Water would be nice, thank you," she replied.

"Alright," Kyle said. He got off of the couch, went to the refrigerator, grabbed a water bottle off of the bottom shelf, and walked back into the living room. He handed her the water bottle. The skin of their hands brushed against each other as he handed her the bottle. The contact made a tingly shiver run up his arm and down his spine.

"So what's up?" Emma asked.

"Well," Kyle started, "it's been an interesting couple of weeks, with several events I really don't feel comfortable talking about."

"Have your... markings been bothered you?" she asked in a quieter tone.

"Not any more than they used to, but I guess I'm just getting used to them," he replied.

"Well, I'm sure everything will work out," she said.

"Why do you say that?" Kyle asked.

"Because I'm an optimist," she answered simply. "You can't focus on the downside of life; if you want to be happy, think about what makes you happy."

"Yeah," Kyle said. "It's just been a stressful summer." He raised his arms to eye level, examining his vessels. "And these are the main cause of it all."

"I don't know," Emma said. "I think they're kind of pretty."

Kyle looked at her, then back to the vessels, then back to her, and said, "Really?"

"Yeah," she said. "May I?" she asked, gesturing to his arm. Kyle gave it to her, and like before, she gently traced the individual tendrils up to his elbow. Kyle's skin tingled like before as she touched it.

For several minutes she did this, neither of them moving from the couch. Suddenly, she stopped. Kyle looked up to her and said, "Don't stop."

"Why?" she asked.

"That tickles a little; it feels good," Kyle answered.

"Kyle, we should go. I don't want to be late for my own party," she said.

"Oh," Kyle said. "Right, sure. Let's go."

They both got off the couch, Emma scooping up her water bottle off from the coffee table as they did. Together, they walked to the front door. Kyle opened it and let Emma go out first. He then closed the door after himself and they left in the evening light.

# Chapter Eleven

Kyle closed the door behind him and they started walking together down the street. It was a warm evening and very comfortable. It was perfect weather for a walk, especially since they weren't going very far.

They walked in silence for a few seconds before Kyle asked, "Did you have any homework over the summer?"

"Yeah," she groaned. "History; blaaa," she said, making a disgusted face.

Kyle laughed, saying, "Yeah, that wasn't very fun. Did you finish it?"

"Not yet," she said. "I think the book is dumb, and Andrew Jackson was a jerk, wasn't he?"

"I didn't think so," Kyle said. "He did what he needed to."

"Did he need to start the trail of tears?" she asked.

"Okay, that's his one bad thing," Kyle agreed.

"His one?" she said in bewilderment. "What about what he did to the bank system? He could've ruined the nation."

"He thought they were corrupt," Kyle explained. "He just did what he thought needed to happen. He was the president and he thought it was a threat to the nation."

"You think?" she asked.

"Yeah," Kyle said. "I think he was overall a good president. His decisions may not have been the most popular, yet he was determined to see them through. When was the last time we had a president like that?"

"Not since, and Jackson had to be censored, remember?" Emma pointed out.

"Well, if Congress was going to be so difficult about it..." Kyle said.

Emma laughed, and the sound was music to Kyle's ears. "So," she continued, "I had this idea."

"What is it?" Kyle asked, intrigued.

"I'm signing up for a dance class this year," she explained. "And I was thinking it would be fun to do it with a partner, and I thought it would be cool if you were my partner for the class. Would you be willing to do it?"

"Really?" Kyle asked. "No offence, but why do you want me to be your partner?"

"I was just thinking," she said. "If you don't want to..."

"Oh, no. I'd love to do it with you," he assured her, only realizing after saying so what he had just committed to.

"Really? You would?" she said, excited.

Kyle decided to go with it. Dance classes could be fun; Kyle could be optimistic. "Yeah, sure. Sounds fun."

"Great! Thank you so much, Kyle," she said. After a lull in the conversation, she said, "I'll get you more information about the classes when I get them."

"Yeah, thanks," Kyle said.

Another silence before Emma said, "So, I talked to Jules earlier today. She told me what happened last weekend at the mall."

Kyle felt awkward for some reason. "She did?" he asked.

"Yeah," she said. "Jules said that you saved her."

"She did?" Kyle said. "I just did what anyone else would've done."

"According to her and Justin, it wasn't that simple. That truck was moving really fast, and you kind of flew into Jules."

"I just reacted, which is starting to scare me," Kyle said concerned.

"Why? You saved her," she pointed out.

"It's not just that incident. Every time I act out, my powers do, too. It's like my powers are connected to my reflexes or emotions," he explained.

"Your emotions?" she mimicked. "When did you learn that?"

Kyle was about to explain the moment he met Tony, and the conversation they had alone together, and how it felt afterward, yet he didn't. Telling her about that might lead to a more awkward conversation. To avert, he said, "On several occasions."

Emma didn't seem to buy it, but didn't press the matter.

This time Kyle chose the subject. "So how is your new neighbor?"

"Tony," Emma began with a sigh, "is very polite and energetic."

"Oh," Kyle said.

"He's nice, but doesn't like being short. I tell him to embrace his shortness, but he just wants to be taller."

"Really," Kyle said with a snicker.

"Yeah," Emma said. "He'll hit a growth spurt sooner or later."

"Will he be at the party tonight?" Kyle asked.

"Sure; he's actually been helping me set up all afternoon," she stated.

"I think he likes you," Kyle blurted out.

"Yeah, I picked up on that," she said.

Kyle took a double take at that comment. "You did?" Kyle asked.

"Oh, it was obvious," she explained. "He would hardly leave me alone all afternoon, and was all chatty and nervous he nearly hurt himself a couple of times today. I almost had to sneak out of my own house just to walk over to your house tonight."

"Huh," Kyle said.

"How did you figure he liked me? You only met him the one time," she asked.

Kyle hesitated before telling her. "He told me that one time we met," he explained.

It was silent for another few seconds. Emma's house was in sight. The sounds of a party were already reaching them. "Why are you interested in Tony's feelings for me?" she asked.

Kyle was completely unprepared for that question. He walked, stuttered and panicked until they were at Emma's front door. Now they just stood there, facing each other for several seconds. Emma seemed to be giving Kyle time to think, even though she probably knew what Kyle was trying to think. Kyle, on the other hand, was dumbstruck and had a blank mind. He knew what he wanted to say, but his mind and his feelings were having a hard time telling his mouth what to actually say.

His vessels, on the other hand, started to glow softly, and hum very audibly. Both Kyle and Emma were surprised, but Kyle probably more so. For some reason, his powers turning on cleared his mind long enough for an actual thought process to enter his mind.

"Emma," Kyle said, "I really like you. I've had a crush on you since the moment I first met you. What I wanted to say was would you be my girlfriend?"

They stood in silence once again. Kyle was fairly used to awkward silences, but this one was different. Kyle at first couldn't believe he had just asked Emma the question. He almost just blurted it out; Kyle almost thought he had scared her. It felt like hours of silence, and the anticipation brewing in Kyle was building with each passing moment.

Emma took a single breath and said, "No."

Kyle's vessels suddenly grew dark. Was that it? No. One word. One syllable. One sound. One small word, yet with so much power behind it.

One word and Kyle was thrown back into reality. "No?" he repeated.

Emma just seemed to wilt right in front of him. The sounds of the party seemed to be miles away at this point. Emma's eyes started to water, which she quickly tried to hide by wiping her face. She wouldn't look at him for almost a minute; Kyle just stood there feeling like an idiot, wondering if he did something wrong.

It was still very awkward; Emma looked to her door and back to Kyle and said, "I'm sorry," and she went inside.

Kyle didn't follow her in. No. That is what she said. It wasn't even close to what Kyle wanted to hear, but that was the answer he got. He suddenly felt very cold and alone. He thought for a second about just going home, getting back in his pajamas, and going to bed hoping this was a bad dream he just needed to wake up from.

But he was here, this was real, and he received his answer. And he was still alive, so it wasn't all bad. He was still standing and the world hadn't ended.

Also, since she turned him down, she was also likely to turn Tony down tonight, too, if she hadn't already. In some way, Kyle could count that as a win.

But how was he supposed to face Emma again? How could he, after putting her on the spot like that at her own party? Now he felt terrible for what he did to Emma. What was he supposed to do now?

He had just turned his back to the door when two things happen. The first thing was that his vessels again glowed. It was three pulses, evenly spaced, and surprisingly soothing. It was like his powers were not only reacting from his emotions, they were responding to them. It was like they were actually trying to make him feel better, as if they could understand what was going on.

Whatever that alien did to Kyle, it was truly amazing, scary, and confusing all at the same time. Just when he thought he had a good handle on what his powers were, they act on their own, like they literally have a mind of their own. He could fly and see energy coming off of things; gravity no longer had an effect on him and now they could act as little counselors. Kyle finally truly realized that this was so much more complex than a couple of strange burns from touching a space creature.

The second thing that happened was that someone came around the corner of the house from Emma's back yard. He first saw him in his peripheral vision, but he turned his head to see Justin coming around the corner.

Justin's face lit up when he saw Kyle. "Hey, man!" he said, coming up to Kyle. "Are you just getting here?"

"Hey, Justin," Kyle said, gladder than he thought he had ever been to see Justin the entire time they had known each other. "Yeah, I just got here."

Justin practically dragged Kyle around the house and into the back yard. Emma had all kinds of lights hung around the fence and in the trees; a mix of light bulbs of all sizes and colors. The back patio had two tables pushed together, and each was filled with all kinds of snack foods. Next to the tables were three large coolers with cans of soda and bottles of water. Another table off to the side of the patio had an iPod that was hooked up to two large speakers.

About twenty people were in the backyard when Kyle arrived, and he recognized the majority of the group. People were mostly gathered around the snack table, yet there were other conversations in smaller groups around the entire yard.

Kyle was initially very uncomfortable, being well aware that his vessels were in full view. When he got dressed for the party, he didn't care, but now that he was surrounded by people he had not seen since school ended, anxieties started to manifest. Kyle started to back out of the yard until Justin grabbed his arm, saying, "Oh no you don't."

"I can't do this. What would they say?" Kyle said worried.

"Who cares?" was Justin's answer. "But you aren't leaving. Jules would smack my head till I got brain damage if she heard I let you go home. You are staying," he said with finality.

"I'll visit you in the hospital," Kyle promised and quickly turned around. However, Justin dug his feet in the ground and held on tighter to Kyle's arm with both hands. They scuffled for a bit as Kyle tried to leave the back yard and Justin tried to drag him further in. The whole time, Kyle kept saying "No," which Justin would answer with "Yes." This went on for about four minutes until Jules showed up.

"Kyle, you made it," she said, excited.

Both Kyle and Justin froze where they stood. The brief pause was enough for Kyle to break Justin's grip, but he didn't leave. "Yeah," he said, "I made it."

Jules hugged him and said, "We saw you leave with Emma, and when I saw Emma inside just now, I knew you had to be around here somewhere."

"Oh, I've been back here with Justin," he said, patting Justin on the back that looked friendly enough, but harder than just a slap.

At that point, Jules grabbed Kyle's arm and started to drag him into the backyard herself. Kyle didn't fight her, but allowed himself to be led straight to the snack table, where she loaded him a plate of chips, dip and a hotdog, as well as handing him a cold soda from one of the coolers. With a plate in one hand and a drink in the other, Jules also straightened his shirt and even ran her fingers through her hair, saying, "You need a haircut, but you look fine. Just relax and have a good time."

# Chapter Twelve

So Kyle stayed, yet for the first half hour, he was very uncomfortable. Whenever he worked up the courage to try to walk into a conversation, someone in the group would notice and the whole group would stare at the vessels. For the first half hour he was there all he did was basically walk around the yard and the house.

Also, he did his best to avoid Emma. Whenever they would catch a glimpse of each other from across the room or yard, their eyes would lock for a split second. In that split second, Kyle would try to look apologetic at her, but Emma would only avert her eyes and quickly disappear into a crowd of people. This happened several times, yet in none of them did Kyle try to seek her out afterward.

Finally, he managed to find some of his journalist friends. Kyle had known these people for the whole school year, and surely they would have missed him. When he walked up to their circle, they greeted him in kind. If they noticed his vessels, which would have been impossible to not have, they kept any comments or looks to themselves. Kyle, very much appreciative, soon relaxed enough to freely talk. After a few minutes, the other kids seemed to relax around him, too; Kyle was still the same person; he just had blue alien markings all over his arms.

Soon, he was laughing and listening to stories like everyone else. Evan talked about a vacation to Hawaii, where he had an interesting time learning to surf, and deciding that maybe surfing wasn't his thing. Ashley spent part of her summer in New York, where she did a lot of shopping, sightseeing, and even watching a few Broadway shows.

Kyle was starting to feel good about being there. People were starting to warm up to him again, yet no one asked him what the markings on his arms were out of some unspoken respect. However, Kyle insisted on several occasions that it was safe to be around him.

The vessels weren't bothering him at all. After the experience when he first arrived, they went dormant again. However, throughout the night, a part of his mind was always thinking about them.

Kyle was at the snack table when Jules came up to him, saying, "What did you do?"

Kyle froze for a second, wondering whether they were thinking about the same incident. Jules didn't give him time to answer her, though.

"What did you say to her?" she asked.

"Emma?" he asked cautiously. She didn't even blink as he thought about what to tell her. Finally, he sighed, saying, "How I felt about her, basically."

Jules smacked him on the arm. "What did you say exactly?" she said angrily.

"I don't know," Kyle said, turning to look at her. "I just asked her out and she said no and it got very awkward and she left. That's all that happened."

She stared at him for a minute as if she didn't believe that was what he actually said. Finally, she said, "You just asked her out?"

"I promise," he said. "I don't know what happened after that. My vessels acted up; maybe that freaked her out or something, but I don't know."

Jules was silent for another minute before saying, "Have you talked to her since?"

"No," Kyle answered. "I think she's avoiding me. Whenever I see her, she disappears before I can take a step toward her."

"You need to talk to her," Jules told him.

Kyle sighed. "Why do I need to talk to her?"

"Because you need to apologize," she told him.

"Why? What did I do?" He asked defensively.

"You obviously upset her, Kyle," she said.

Instead of listening to her explain why he might have upset her, he said, "Fine. I'll try to talk to her again. But what should I say?"

"Keep it simple," she advised. "Just say that you didn't mean to make her feel they way you did and that you still want to be friends."

Kyle nodded, and Jules finally left him.

Kyle turned around and saw Emma. She was standing next to the sound table, messing with a microphone. Kyle took two steps toward her before she began speaking.

"Hello, everyone! Hope you're having a great time. First of all, thank you all for showing up. If you brought a CD for the music table, just leave it by the CD player and hopefully it will be heard before the night ends. If anything on the snack table runs out, please let me know so I can fill it back up, but please limit your intake, especially on the drinks. This is not a grocery store. The bathroom is the first door on the left side of the hallway. In just a minute, we'll be starting the limbo line, and if you need anything else, come talk to me."

She turned the microphone off, and ducked into the house before Kyle had time to take two more steps toward her. He followed her into the house, but she somehow disappeared. Kyle checked the main room, the kitchen, the hallway, and the back yard, in case she had somehow slipped outside behind him.

When he stepped back outside, the limbo bar was set up and the music started. The giant line started moving toward it, the people at the front bending slightly backward to walk under it. Kyle noticed that Emma was one of the first five people to go under the bar, currently about five feet above the ground. The line picked up speed before Kyle had the forethought to jump in behind her. He hastily jumped in after a large group of girls.

It was obvious that Kyle wouldn't be able to talk to Emma until they were both eliminated from the game. So Kyle played along, bending over backwards when his turn was up. After he straightened up, the line quickly twisted back to where he was again walking toward the bar again. As usual, no one was eliminated from the first round. The game kept going; no one was eliminated until three rounds later, when the bar dropped almost a full foot. After two more rounds, only half of the people at the party were still in the game, including Kyle and Emma.

At this point, each round was knocking out people. Kyle came up to the bar after nine rounds, which was about three feet off of the ground, about half of his actual height. He paused for a second before he started to inch under the bar, bending as far back as he could. Lower and lower he went, and one step at a time, managed to make it under and past the bar. Whooping, he jumped to the back of the line.

Soon after he went, the bar dropped another few inches. Emma's turn came up, and she used about the same strategy that Kyle used. She was about half a foot shorter than Kyle, yet, as she went under, she lost her balance and fell over.

"Awwwwwww," said the crowd as Emma got up and joined the rest of the audience, cheering on the last of the participants.

Two more people were eliminated, leaving five players playing, before Kyle was up again. He decided to stick to his previous strategy, and began to inch his way under the bar. He bent as low as he possibly could without falling over, yet he knew that this was probably it. His legs started to shake underneath him, and each tiny step only made them shake more. His stomach had just past underneath when he knew he was going to fall. He managed to make two more steps before he was just too far back, and his back hit the ground.

"Awwwwwww," the crowd said as he crawled out from under the bar. Kyle looked up to see Emma just push her way through everyone and head inside. Kyle quickly got up to his feet and followed her.

"Emma," he called out when he was inside. Luckily, everyone was outside, so they could talk alone. Emma didn't answer, but Kyle quickly found her in the kitchen organizing and filling some bowls of chips. Kyle stood in the doorway of the kitchen, blocking Emma's only way out of the room, unless she decided to jump out the window.

When she still didn't acknowledge Kyle, he began to speak. "Emma, I'm sorry for putting you on the spot like that; I didn't mean to hurt your feelings, but it just came out." She still wasn't responding; Kyle was hesitant to approach her. He continued, "I'm sorry for whatever it is I did. And I would really like for us to stay friends, but if you don't, that's..."

"No," she finally said, looking up at Kyle with eyes that looked to have been crying several times this night already. "I love you as a friend, Kyle. But I can't be your boyfriend."

Kyle hesitantly asked, "Okay, but may I know why?"

"Ummmm," she said. She shifted her weight a lot while staring at the ceiling. Kyle couldn't help but laugh in his mind at what she was doing, but he managed to keep his face from showing. "Okay," she said. "I'll tell you. But," she looked past him quickly, "please try to keep an open mind."

"Okay," Kyle said sincerely.

Emma stepped around the kitchen island and walked toward Kyle, again peered over his shoulders, and pulled him further into the kitchen. When they were both standing next to the island, Emma once again checked over Kyle's shoulder. Kyle looked himself to see if anyone was there; it sounded like everyone was still outside.

Emma sighed, saying, "Okay, and you can't tell anyone this, please?"

"I promise," Kyle said.

"Okay," she said again. She looked down at the floor for a second, then took a deep breath, and said, "I think I'm gay."

Kyle's initial reaction was nothing, since he didn't know how to react to something like that. He looked at her, confused, and said, "What do you mean?"

She started to walk laps around the island and said, "I've just been so confused the last few months. It wasn't like I just woke up one morning and discovered this; it feels like a part of me has always known, but another part of me tells me that it's wrong."

Kyle stayed where he was standing and just watched her. Suddenly, a thought came to mind, "Have you been... experimenting?"

Emma smacked his arm as she walked past him, much like Jules does, and said, "No, I have not!"

"Okay," Kyle said, throwing his arms up. "Does anyone else know?" he asked.

"My parents," she said. "They say they try to keep an open mind, but you should have seen the way they looked at me when I told them." She made a sound like a mix of a chuckle and a scoff, saying, "I don't think anyone in this house slept that night. It took weeks to work up the courage to tell them."

Kyle was still unsure what to do. Emma kept doing laps around the island until she just broke into tears and sort of fell into Kyle's arms. She sobbed and sucked in air and Kyle felt his shirt get wet very quickly. He awkwardly put his arms around her, patting her on the shoulder comfortingly. He didn't know anything else to do.

Then his vessels glowed again. Emma's crying seemed to subside at this point, and something came to Kyle's mind. A thought, an epiphany, and he felt that, in some deep way, what he was about to say would apply to both of their predicaments.

"You know, there's a point where other people don't matter. What they say, what they think, and what they feel don't matter. Life isn't about pleasing others, it's about finding out who we are. It isn't important what people think, because ultimately they can't decide who you are. The best person we can be in this life is who we really are, not what other people see as perfect."

Emma's crying came to a complete halt, and now she was just standing there with her face buried in Kyle's undershirt. After a few seconds, she slipped out of Kyle's arms and leaned against the island, wiping stray tears off her face. They were silent for a few minutes before she said, "Sorry about your shirt."

"Don't be," Kyle reassured her. "At least don't apologize to me; apologize to Jules. Else she'll blame me for spilling something on it or something."

Emma laughed, and it was good to hear her laugh. "Your markings glowed again," she pointed out.

"Yeah," Kyle said. He looked at them as he would his sister if she had said something annoying, and said "They're getting pretty annoying about that."

She hugged him again, without crying this time. "Thank you," she said.

"No problem," he answered. "I promise not to tell anyone."

"Thank you," she repeated.

The sound of the patio door opening forced them to end their conversation. People started to file back into the house, and Emma walked toward the living room, wiping her eyes of any sign that she had been crying. She had barely crossed the threshold when Tony suddenly appeared.

"Emma," he said excitedly, his face lighting up with a huge grin. He took two steps toward her and said, "Hey, can we talk?"

Emma sighed, saying, "Can we talk later, Tony?"

She began to step around him, but he blocked her, saying, "This will just take a second, I promise." He took a single deep breath and said, "Emma, would you be my girlfriend. I know we haven't known each other very long, but..."

"No, Tony," Emma said.

Tony froze for a minute while Emma said, "I can't right now; it's just a bad time."

"Bad time?" he repeated. At that moment he noticed Kyle, and he went back to Emma, saying, "What's going on?"

"Tony," Emma continued, "you're a very nice guy, but I just..."

"Did he ask you out?" he asked. "Did you say yes to him? What makes him better than me?"

"Hey," Kyle intervened, stepping in between the two of them. "She gave you her answer, now go."

"Don't tell me what to do," he said, getting in Kyle's face.

"Guys, stop this," Emma pleaded. "Fighting isn't going to help."

Neither Kyle nor Tony backed down, though. "She gave you her answer," Kyle repeated, "now go."

"I believe I have a right to know why," Tony said. The statement was directed at Emma, yet he didn't take his eyes off of Kyle.

"She doesn't have to tell you anything," Kyle said before Emma could speak. His temper started to rise.

"Stop it guys," Emma pleaded.

"Why don't you leave us alone you freak," Tony said.

Emma finally had enough. She pushed her way in between Kyle and Tony, and, facing Tony, said, "Tony, leave now." It wasn't a request.

"Why are you protecting him?" Tony said, finally taking his eyes off of Kyle and moving to Emma.

"Go, Tony," Emma said. She stared at him with unblinking and unwavering eyes.

Tony looked from Emma to Kyle and said, "Fine. Why would I want to be around some kind of fre...."

Kyle had heard enough. Before Tony finished his sentence, Kyle raised his arm and shot a small bolt of energy at Tony. It smacked him in his chest, doing nothing more than shoving him out the door and knocking the wind out of him.

Kyle was just as surprised as everyone else who just saw that. He had never done anything like that.

Emma spun on him, saying, "What did you do?"

Kyle didn't answer. Something was wrong; he only used a small amount of power, but his vessels weren't turning off. On the contrary, they were getting brighter. Emma took a step back, Tony watched in disbelief, and other people who had probably heard the commotion were starting to gather.

Kyle stumbled over to the window over the sink. He didn't need to enhance his vision to see a red star grow brighter. But Kyle knew it wasn't a star; it was much more dangerous.

Kyle turned toward the crowd, saying, "Its coming."

# Chapter Thirteen

Questions came at Kyle like a flood as he pushed his way through the crowd, which was getting bigger, since everyone was coming inside as he was going outside. Phones were being pulled out, and everyone was texting, calling, or receiving a text or call. Kyle ignored his own phone as it vibrated in his pocket. Everyone was talking at once, but Kyle didn't answer anyone.

He knew he had to face this. No reason or why came to mind, just that he had to do this.

"Kyle, where are you going?"

He recognized the voice as Jules'. He didn't stop to acknowledge or answer her. He kept walking until he had passed the entire crowd.

He stood outside by himself and watched as what appeared to be a huge red star came toward him. The incident reminded him of when he watched the blue being crash land in Colorado, except this time, he knew that this one was flying under its own power. This alien was flying directly toward him to face him.

Kyle didn't move. The sky was lighting up as if it were day, except from a red sun. As it got closer and closer, objects around the yard started to move. Discarded trash was being blown around as if by the wind, and the tables and branches of the tree started to shake as well. Kyle could see the actual body of the alien, red veins like the light shown against a shiny black body. As it got closer, Kyle could see much more detail to it.

It was very similar to the blue being that landed in Colorado. It had the same basic body shape; very streamlined, with the front coming down to a point, and three ends to the tail. However, instead of four simple projections from the sides, this one had two giant wing-looking structures with a span probably more than twice the length of the creature's body. It was still far off, but Kyle guessed that it would be close to the size of the blue alien, if not a little bigger.

Everything was shaking now. All of the tables were blown over, and debris was spinning around the yard as if in a vortex. Kyle stayed glued to his spot, not moving, not even blinking as the alien got closer and closer. He couldn't move even if he wanted to.

Kyle felt someone pull on his arm. "C'mon, man, this isn't funny," the voice said. Kyle immediately recognized it as Justin's. He tugged harder, slowly pulling Kyle inside.

"I have to do this," Kyle said, struggling against Justin. His voice sounded as if he were in a trance.

"No you don't, dude. Let's just get out of here," Justin insisted.

"I have to do this. I have to fight it," Kyle explained.

"Why do you have to fight it?" Justin asked.

"Because I have to," Kyle said.

"Not a good enough answer, dude. We're going," Justin said. He then wrapped his arms around Kyle's waste, picked him up and began carrying him inside. The alien got closer and closer the whole while.

"Put me down," Kyle said, completely devoid of emotion. Instead of waiting for an answer, he spread his arms and shot energy straight backwards. The force of the energy was like a Jet thruster pushing them away from the house and into the yard. Then he angled his hands straight down. Justin held on as Kyle lifted off.

"Uh, Kyle," Justin said. Kyle ignored him as they slowly flew ten, twenty, forty, until they were sixty feet into the air. "Kyle, I'm slipping," Justin said.

Kyle was hearing him, but his body was doing its own thing. "Kyle, I'm slipping," Justin said again, only louder. Kyle could feel him slipping, but he couldn't wake up from his current state.

"Kyle," Justin yelled as he let go.

Finally, Kyle looked down. He saw Justin falling toward the ground. Then he looked back up to see the red thing coming toward him.

And his brain started working a hundred times faster. Within a split second, this was what he thought.

It's coming. I have to fight it. I have to; it's the only way. I have to fight. Wait. What? Why? Why do I have to fight? Why can't I run? What am I thinking? I can't fight that. What am I doing? Justin. I have to save him; he's falling, and he can't fly. Justin. Justin. JUSTIN.

"JUSTIN," Kyle yelled. He let go of all the energy he had into one bolt fired directly at the alien. Kyle didn't pay attention to whether that bolt hit or not. Without that energy, Kyle began to fall. Justin was about fifteen feet below him. Kyle drew more power and accelerated enough to catch up to him. However, he misjudged his speed, and ended up colliding into Justin. Tangled up in each other's arms, Kyle tried to realign with the ground, but they were spinning on several axes. Kyle created his energy bubble in an attempt to slow them down, but he couldn't find the ground.

Then an idea came to mind. A part of his mind for some reason was involuntarily always aware of where the red alien was. Using the alien's location as a reference, he could determine which way was up and down, and thus where the ground was. It wasn't hard to then find the source of the red light, line up with it, and see that they were probably only ten feet from the ground, and still falling fast. Kyle was forced to draw more energy so they wouldn't hit the ground hard enough to break more than bones. Again, Kyle misjudged his own power, and instead of lightly landing, they stopped four feet above it, Kyle perfectly parallel. Good enough, Kyle thought to himself.

Justin and Kyle let go of each other, and Justin fell the last four feet, landing flat on his back. From that position, he said, "Don't ever do that again."

"I should say the same," Kyle returned, still hovering. Then, he noticed that the world was still bathed in red light. Twisting, he lined up his body perpendicular to the ground, still hovering a few feet above the ground, and faced the red alien.

The majority of its body was jet black; if it wasn't for the red vessels and its veil of red light, it would've been invisible against the night sky. It had come to a complete stop only fifty feet from where Kyle was hovering. If Kyle's bolt had hit it, it showed no sign of damage either on its body or in its behavior. Kyle had a feeling that it was looking at him, although it nothing of a face for all he knew.

Then, without any warning or preamble, its vessels flashed. Kyle's vessels flashed in sync with the alien's, completely on their own. From the tip of the alien's front, a huge red bolt of energy was shot toward Kyle. It was the size of a car, and its color made it look like a ball of lava.

Immediately, Kyle shot a blue bolt at the red bolt. He would've dodged it, except a bolt of that size would've wiped Emma's house, and everyone inside, off the face of the planet. Kyle's bolt appeared to be nothing compared to the red missile barreling toward him; yet, he luckily struck the underside of the bolt, deflecting it, sending it flying harmlessly above the neighborhood into the distance.

Kyle flew up to where he was level with the red primal, shooting three more bolts at it as he did so. Two of the three connected, although the red alien didn't seem to notice. Once he started hovering at the alien's elevation, it shot another large bolt at Kyle. Kyle swiftly dodged it and answered with four bolts of his own. This time, all four hit their target, knocking the alien away, but they didn't appear to do anything else.

Kyle began to realize that he was at a major disadvantage. His power didn't seem to be enough to hurt the alien, yet he dared not let one of its giant bolts hit him.

He tried a different strategy. He flew about a hundred feet above the alien, turned, and fired four more bolts. However, two of the bolts were spent neutralizing a red bolt that had been shot at him. The other two hit the alien, which was now flying up to meet him. The bolts did nothing to slow its progress.

Kyle panicked as the red alien barreled toward him like a freight train. He raised both hands and shot a flurry of bolts, not worrying to make them uniform in size. The alien used a large sweeping red laser to neutralize every single bolt Kyle shot. When all of the bolts were gone, the laser came at Kyle. Kyle dodged the first sweep, narrowly, by shoving himself backwards out of its way. However, Kyle didn't expect the laser to turn around so quickly, and the second time the laser brushed his right side.

The blow was like being smacked aside by a bus. Kyle was knocked out of the air. He tried his best to once again slow his descent, but he was tired from the fighting; he had never used so much power so quickly before. However, he was able to coax energy out of his vessels, at least enough to not die when he hit the ground.

It wasn't a soft landing to say the least; He hit, bounced, hit and rolled three times before coming to a stop. He staggered to his feet to find that he was standing in the middle of a street. People were running along the sidewalks around him, all going in one direction. Some of them were calling his name, and he recognized some of their voices. He looked in the general direction everyone was running from and confirmed his suspicion. This was the road he walked down to Emma's party. The people around him must have been at the party, too.

Once he got a feeling for where he was, he began to check himself out. The right side of his shirt was smoking and black as if it had been on fire. He tore what remained of it off to see that he was bruised and bleeding from a gash on his head and his right arm. Warm blood ran into his right eye, causing him to wipe it constantly, and down his right arm, covering the blue vessels. Blood fell down his face and into his mouth. Nothing felt broken, but he was utterly exhausted.

And from the sky came the alien, which looked as fresh as when it had first appeared. Nothing Kyle had done had even scratched it.

How could he win? The thought didn't come out of despair, but more like a challenge. A straight on attack obviously wasn't working; he just wasn't strong enough to last any longer doing that. But what could Kyle do? He drew as much power into his vessels as he could, which wasn't very much to say the least; barely enough to keep him in the air for very long, but he had to do something.

A new thought came to Kyle. It was obvious that his powers had been spent up for the most part, due to the amount he had used in such a short time. If he could run out, maybe the alien could as well. From what Kyle had seen, it was already using so much more energy than Kyle probably ever could in just their short battle. Maybe he could force it to use most, if not all, of its powers.

Kyle once again took to the air. This time, he flew at the alien. He didn't fire any bolts at it, yet dodged the car sized bolts that headed his way. He got within ten feet before he veered out of the way of another bolt and flew over the smooth surface of the alien. Once he was completely cleared the alien, it began to twist to its left in order to face him again. Kyle began to circle around again to his right, deliberately to where he would soon pass in front of the alien. The second the alien and Kyle were aligned, it fired. Kyle simply moved faster to dodge the bolt. Now that the alien found him again, it was following him as kept flying straight, and fired again. This time, however, Kyle dodged it by stopping quickly, letting the large bolt fly harmlessly ahead of him. Once the bolt was completely clear of Kyle, he flew underneath the alien, and this flew counterclockwise to the alien. They repeated the process, but Kyle was getting even more tired than when he started, and the alien didn't appear any different. Whatever Kyle did, it seemed indifferent except for the fact that it was trying to kill him.

Kyle figured his constant movement would cause the alien to make a mistake. However, he was the one who made the mistake. At Kyle's fourth attempt to confuse the alien by flying over it, the alien responded by going straight up. It was little more than a bump, but when Kyle touched the alien's smooth body, all of the energy he had left him. Kyle slid down the side of the alien, his hands scrambling around for a handhold that just didn't exist. Once he was free of the alien, he was able to summon power to slow his fall. It was a miniscule amount, but enough for him to not die when he smacked the ground flat on his back.

Grass. At least he landed on grass. If he was about to die, he was glad he would have this one small comfort. He looked around to see that he had landed in a front yard, but he didn't know who lived in the house. The door was left open, but that was understandable, as closing doors behind themselves is one of the last things people think about when a giant alien battle is going on over their heads.

Kyle just laid there for a few seconds, resting and waiting. He had nothing left; it would probably be a miracle if he were able to get back up on his feet. To his left he watched as the red alien turn toward him, when at the same time Emma came into his field of vision.

She was tugging on his arm, crying, "Kyle, please get up."

Kyle was flattered that Emma was there. Emma was there; right beside him. And the alien was going to fire the bolt that would finish him off any second now. Emma wouldn't have time to get away.

At that moment, the alien fired its laser. In a split second, Kyle reacted by twisting and flipping over Emma's shoulder, going from under her on his back to standing with her kneeling behind him. Energy poured into Kyle; energy he didn't know he had. He quickly unleashed his own laser of blue energy, which met the red energy only feet away from where he stood.

Kyle felt the strength of the stream of energy like a tidal wave; it was like holding back a fast moving river. The initial shock of the two blasts almost blew Kyle's arms out. He held on, though, but he wouldn't be able to for long. The red stream of energy almost completely dominated Kyle's blue energy.

Slowly but surely, Kyle's power diminished. The only thing keeping him up was his will to protect Emma, who was frozen in fear on the ground behind him. Kyle could hardly stand himself dying at this point, but he couldn't allow one of his friends to get hurt. If something happened to Emma and he survived, he would never be able to live with himself. If it was to be the last thing he did, he would protect Emma.

Then something started to happen; something Kyle could neither understand nor explain. His vessels, which were very dim, started glowing brighter. Brighter and brighter until Kyle could hardly see anything other than blue light. Kyle's entire body ached, yet all of this energy was coming to him from an unknown source. It was so much energy, it was leaking out.

The red alien's attack was drowned out by this new found power. The river of red energy was being shoved back at its alien with no effort what so ever from Kyle.

Kyle had no idea what was happening, but somehow power had returned to him, and more than he thought he ever had. The vessels glowed bright, so bright you could see them through his shirt, and strong, and started to spread and cover his entire chest and even a little on his face. To his amazement, he watched the gash on his arm just vanish, and blood stopped flowing into his eye.

Kyle was laughing for some reason. He couldn't help it; it felt great. He looked up at the red alien in a new light. Nothing in its composure suggested that it had even noticed a change in Kyle. Kyle, on the other hand, felt like he had just been dealt a new hand.

Kyle couldn't help it, but he spoke to the alien. "Now you're going to get it."

He let loose a single bolt at the alien, but it was unlike any bolt he had shot before. He put the force of his full power behind it. And it not only hit the mark, it blew it out. The bolt knocked the alien back as if it had been hit by a truck. Kyle shot two more bolts, ending with the same effect. He then jumped into the air, an energy bubble forming around him instantly.

The alien recovered enough to start firing a volley of giant red bolts at Kyle. Kyle ducked and weaved all around them, still laughing at how easy this was becoming, until a red bolt hit him straight on.

Kyle was surrounded by red energy, but his thin layer of blue energy kept it at bay until it dissipated.

Finally, Kyle had had enough. He changed direction and flew straight for the alien. It was still firing a storm of bolts in order to stop Kyle, but it never backed down. Kyle drew all the energy he had in him, and yelling the whole time, he flew straight into the red alien.

A flash of heat was all he felt as punched a hole right through the middle of it, from the tip of its front to the tip of its middle tail. Kyle landed and slid several feet afterward. Once he came to a stop, he immediately turned to see about the alien.

First of all, Kyle could see straight through the hole he had made with his body. The alien was also twitching violently, and its vessels were flashing wildly. Kyle was scared for a minute that it might explode. After a few seconds, it started to break up as if it were withering away. Pieces of it would break off, but they would dissipate before they hit the ground. The whole mass started to sink and its light faded to complete darkness. It did this for about a minute before the entire thing just disappeared as if it had never been there at all. Kyle's strength finally left him and he let himself go.

# Chapter Fourteen

Kyle felt a questioning presence around him. He opened his eyes.

He felt clean and well rested. He looked down at his arm, which wasn't covered in blood anymore. He felt his head, with the same result. His vessels were glowing steadily, which for some reason no longer concerned him.

He wasn't where he remembered being. He was surrounded by a thick blue mist, but he could feel someone or something around him. He got to his feet and spun around, but no one was there.

"Hello," he said. He spun around on the spot several more times before he was answered.

"What are you?"

The voice was like nothing Kyle heard before. First of all, it wasn't even a voice; everything the presence said was more of a feeling or a sensation then actually saying words. From the speech, Kyle couldn't tell anything about whatever said it. It didn't sound like a girl's or a boy's voice. It came from all around, so neither could he tell where it exactly came from. The only thing he could discern from it was that it was a question.

But Kyle didn't understand. "What do you mean?" he asked.

The voice continued. "Throughout all time, we have witnessed and developed the Laws of Being. All matter is composed of pure energy, yet you are beyond energy in the regular physical form. What are you?"

"I should ask the same question," Kyle said. "From my point of view, you, whatever you are, and that alien started this. Why are you here, and what did you do to me?"

It was silent before the voice spoke again. "We will tell you, but know this before we begin. We have no language of our own. Much of this explanation will fail to grasp the true concept of its content, for it is beyond your ability to comprehend."

"We are what you call energy, neither in a physical nor in a pure state of being. We began with the universe, which in its beginning was shapeless, both creative and destructive, and possessed no balance; a perfect chaos in every aspect. Events came to be and ended without any sense of purpose. We are a collection of some of the more violent energies that were bound together in order to create balance and tame the wild energy that was the universe. With these violent powers locked away within two separate vessels, the rest of the universe fell into a peaceful enough state of being to be shaped as it would. The destructive forces of the universe became dormant, but were still present. Forms that you call stars, planets, and galaxies took shape. We are those violent powers that were the beginnings of the universe it their original, primal form. The easiest thing to call us in a spoken language is "Primal".

"Primal," Kyle repeated. "You keep saying 'we' and 'us'. What do you mean?"

"We are the original balance. Separate and yet the same."

Kyle thought for a second, and asked, "You mean you and that red alien?"

"Yes, but we are not what you claim we are. We do not hail from a planet as much as planets hail from us."

"But if you are the same, why are you fighting?" Kyle asked.

"Balance in itself is conflict," the voice said.

"Okay, then what did you do to me?" Kyle asked.

"That has puzzled us more than it has you. What happened was not our doing specifically. What happened to you was not supposed to happen at all."

"Well that's not a very helpful point at this juncture," Kyle commented.

"Nonetheless, it has happened. The form you touched could have been rendered unstable, or it could be something in you that caused this happening."

"Are you saying that this is my fault?" Kyle asked accusingly, frustrated that whatever he was talking to didn't have a voice.

The voice spoke again without a hint of remorse. "Throughout all time, nothing like this has happened; it is unnatural."

"Okay, again, not helping," Kyle stated. "But why did the other Primal come after me and not the Primal I met first?"

"You possess the only active portion of the energy in that form," the voice explained. "After your connection with the Primal ended, the power left went dormant, so the other Primal that you fought couldn't detect it."

"If I had only a portion of your power, how was I able to kill that Primal?"

"We cannot die. The two forms you encountered are nothing more than a representative of something larger that will never end."

"Something larger?" Kyle repeated.

"It would be impossible for you to comprehend the magnitude of it. As we said, the two forms mean nothing, for they are energy, which cannot be destroyed."

"Still, if what you said is true, and I only have a portion of the blue Primal's power, how could I have defeated the red Primal?" Kyle asked.

"We do not know. However, something strange happened right before the sudden growth in strength. We received visions of another being like yourself, but different. Your thoughts were foreign to us. What were they?"

"What are you...?" Kyle said before realizing what the voice meant. He started to remember what was going through his mind at the time. He was thinking about Emma, about protecting her. "I remember. Emma was in danger and I had to protect her. I would never be able to live with myself if something happened to her."

"Why protect this Emma?" the voice asked.

"Because I care about her," Kyle said.

It was silent for a minute. Then the voice returned saying, "Forgive us. We have no concept of emotions."

"You don't?" Kyle asked.

"We are as old as time, itself," the voice said. "Emotions are not a part of what we are. Such concepts are not functional for us to have."

"Huh," Kyle said.

"However, they appear to have had some affect on the Primal energy you absorbed. The strength of your will and the power you possess seem to have been enough to bend the universe to your favor. The power you possess plus the strength of your desire to win was more than the Primal could withstand."

"Wow," Kyle said. He took a minute to take that in before continuing. "So, what now? Will that Primal come back?"

"What you just experienced hasn't happened since the birth of this galaxy, and probably won't again in the lifetime of another. It will take the Primal a long time to reform its body, and that will likely not take place anywhere near here."

"Good," Kyle said, breathing a sigh of relief.

"However," the voice said, "There is a matter of great importance that must be done."

"What?" Kyle asked.

"Your possession of even just a fraction of our power has given us much insight into the workings of how your body is accepting this power. We are afraid that this physical form is incapable to sustain our power for very long. The power inside of you is only a fragment, and thus much more unstable than if you were to possess all of the Primal's power."

"What do you mean?" Kyle asked.

"We mean that the small amount of power that you took from us is deteriorating the very fabric of your form."

Kyle thought for a second before saying, "You mean that this power I have is going to kill me."

"Again, we have no concept of the term 'death', but you will cease being."

Kyle didn't speak. He couldn't believe it. He was dying, but he was still just a kid. Hesitantly, he asked, "How long do I have left."

"Our best estimate is the corruption of your body will be complete in around three years. The power you hold within you is a fragment of our power, a fragment of the chaos that used to control the universe when time began. When your body is no more, those energies will be released. Even though it would only be a fraction of what it used to be, that power will grow, absorbing all that it can. Planets, stars, entire galaxies would be consumed until the power reaches its limits, leaving nothing behind when it does."

Three years. That was all Kyle had left. That was all the world had left, for that matter. Then what was the point of trying to save everyone, if he was just going to be the destroyer of himself. He looked down at the vessels on his arms, again cursing himself for touching the Primal and starting all of this. And just when he was starting to feel good about himself again, he learns this.

The voice continued, "In order to stop this from happening, there is something you must do."

Kyle looked up from his arms and said, "What?"

"There is a way to reverse this. You must reunite with the Primal you got your power from, and return it."

Hope suddenly filled Kyle. "That's it? All I got to do is touch that Primal again, and this'll all go away."

"It should work. You must find the Primal again," It said. It sounded different, though. The voice was fading. It continued, saying, "We cannot hold this connection much longer; you will be waking up soon."The voice continued, but it was barely audible. "Find the blue Primal and return its power." The voice faded to nothing, the blue mist dissipated, and Kyle was left in the darkness.

Kyle could see light through his closed eyes, but was too tired to open them. It felt like he was sleeping in a bed; the sheets were soft and warm, and the blanket over him was a comfortable weight. It felt familiar though.

Kyle finally opened his eyes a crack. He was lying in his own bed in his room. He reluctantly pushed himself up to where he was leaning against the frame of his bed. Even this action left him dizzy. He felt his head to find a small bandage there. The same went for his right arm. He was puzzled for a second before he remembered his battle with the Primal, and the outcome of that battle.

Then his dream. Was it a dream? It seemed real enough, but it definitely did not take place here. He remembered what the Primal told him. About him dying, and what he had to do to prevent that from happening. He had to find the Primal he touched and somehow give back what it gave to him.

But first, he was hungry. He stood up, but did so too fast, so he slumped back down on the bed. He waited a few minutes for the dizzy spell to subside before trying again, deliberately slowly. This time he was able to stay on his feet, but decided it would be best not to move faster than necessary.

He got dressed, combed his hair with his fingers in the mirror on his door and tried to make himself smell as good as possible, for his smell pointed out that it had probably been more than a day since he last showered.

He stepped out of his room quietly. The first thing he heard was the sound of someone playing his video games and people talking. He walked down the stairs to see Justin and Jules. Justin was playing video games while Jules stood behind the couch talking to him, but he wasn't paying attention.

"Why do you always want to play that stupid game while you're here?" she asked him annoyed.

"Because Kyle has better games than we do," Justin said.

"Then just buy this game for yourself," Jules suggested.

"Why would I do that? Kyle's got the game already," Justin pointed out as if that point was obvious.

"We come here to watch the house while everyone is out, not to play games all day," Jules said.

"And we're taking turns. You watch the house now, and I'll watch it the next time Mrs. Foster asks us to watch it," Justin said.

Jules groaned, turned, and jumped when she saw Kyle standing there. Her startled gasp forces Justin to pause his game and turn. Both of them froze when they saw Kyle standing there.

# Chapter Fifteen

The campus of the University of Texas of the Permian Basin was one of the smallest college campuses Kyle had ever visited, but he always liked it. He used to visit it often since his dad worked for the police force on campus. He especially liked being on campus on the weekends. The campus was usually pretty empty on weekends.

Kyle was currently walking up to the campus's scale replica of Stonehenge, toward specifically the blonde haired girl sitting on one of the benches around the sculpture. Kyle immediately recognized her as Emma. She had wanted to meet with him once she heard he was okay, so she sent him an email, telling him when and where to meet her. As he did, he couldn't get out of his head all that he now knew.

His conversation with the Primal was nothing compared to having to explain it all to Justin and Julianne. First of all, it appeared that he had been asleep for three days after the battle with the Primal. He told them most of what the Primal had told him over a lunch of two sandwiches, a whole bag of chips, and two cans of coke. They barely understood most of it, which was okay, since Kyle had barely understood it himself. However, they did understand that the only way he could solve his dilemma by simply touching the Primal again.

The one thing he didn't tell them was the part where he was going to die. He couldn't find the heart to tell them. He could hardly believe it himself. Other than the sporadic spasms that tell him that the vessels are growing, he felt fine. But, it was the Primal who told him, and it was the Primal's power, so Kyle would guess that it would know what its own power can do. Of all of the things he learned from the Primal, the prediction of his death was the one thing he would try to not think about. He could accept that he possessed an ancient power of the universe, and even the potential destruction of everything he knew, but his death being the cause of that destruction was too much to take. Whenever he started thinking about it, he put it aside, and ended up resolving to find the Primal's body before his time was up.

Although, how he planned to do that exactly was still beyond him. He hadn't seen or heard of the body since he touched it. There had been nothing on the news; he couldn't even find anything on the internet about it.

His battle with the other Primal, however, had made the news. Kyle realized that the battle was probably visible for miles around. News programs showed the battle from the ground from a distance, and others even showed the fight from a helicopter. Kyle could hardly believe the coverage the battle got. One station showed footage of when Kyle kept flying around the Primal, ending in the Primal nudging him. Through the whole battle, Kyle didn't even remember hearing helicopters. Luckily though, none of the news cameras caught a good enough view of him, other than when he was just zipping through the air. The cameras made the Primal seem bigger; Kyle looked like a fly bugging an eagle, especially since the Primal seemingly had no reaction to such a close proximity to Kyle.

Yet, no news organization tried to find him, but how much longer could that last? Kyle figured they would eventually find him. His days of hiding his powers from the world were probably numbered.

However, today was not about thinking about those things. He walked up to the Stonehenge replica, slipping his hands in his pockets. It was a warm day, but relatively cool compared to how the rest of the summer had been; a sign that fall was on its way.

Emma noticed him when he was just a few yards away from her. She cocked her head over her shoulder, and then stood to face Kyle. Kyle smiled when he saw that she didn't appear hurt. Justin and Jules had told him that everyone, luckily, was able to get away without more than a couple of bruises, but it was good to see it for himself. When Kyle was only three feet away from her, she rushed the last yard and hugged him. Kyle would've hugged her back, but his hands were in his pockets and his arms were pinned.

"Good to see you," Kyle said.

"You, too," Emma said. "Thanks for coming."

"No problem. I needed to get out of the house, anyway," Kyle said jokingly. "Can I have my arms back?"

"Oh," she said, and quickly let go and backed off.

"Are you okay?" Kyle asked. He knew that she hadn't gotten hurt, but it still seemed impertinent to ask.

"Yeah. A little shaken, but fine," she reassured. "I guess everyone was just a little shaken."

"That's probably an understatement," Kyle said, "but I'm glad everyone's alright."

They both nodded. Then it was silent before Kyle said, "You didn't ask to meet me here to tell me what I already knew, did you?" He had seen the news. Somehow no one other than Kyle had received any injuries from the incident, and there was hardly any property damage either.

"No," she said. "I asked you here so I could thank you for saving my life personally."

"Anyone would've done the same thing," Kyle said humbly.

"Yes, but that 'anyone' was you, so I'm thanking you," she said.

Kyle silently accepted her thanks. They started walking the sidewalk circling the Stonehenge. They did a full lap in silence before Emma spoke again.

"Ready for school in the next few weeks?"

"Yep," Kyle answered. "As ready as I could possibly be."

"How do you feel about it?" she asked.

"There's no more point in trying to hide what I can do anymore," Kyle figured. "People watch the news, and they'll find out who I am eventually, so why should I hide?"

"How will you deal with it?" she inquired.

"I'll take the hits as they come. If I can survive a fight with an immortal intergalactic creature, surely I can survive school," he said. "I honestly don't know how people would react to me from now on, but I guess at some point I'm going to have to just come out and tell everyone what I am now."

"Well," she began, "just remember that there are people here who care about you no matter what you are."

"Thanks," he said. "I have to find that Primal body again."

She looked at him confused. "Primal?" she asked.

"That's what that alien I killed was called. Although I didn't actually kill it, but that would take too long to explain."

"Promise to try later?" she asked.

"Sure," Kyle promised.

"I'll keep you to that," she said. "Why do you have to find the Primal?"

Instead of the truth, Kyle went with the first alternative reason that came to his mind. "I don't know. It's just something I have to do."

"You know," she said, stopping to look at him, "there are two reasons why people do what they do. There's a good reason and the real reason."

Her comment made Kyle think that she didn't buy what he said. But she continued. "Remember what you told me, but let me add this: do what you need to do. Don't let others make your decisions for you."

"Thanks," Kyle said. They did two more laps around the Stonehenge talking about other, less depressing, things, enjoying each other's company.

Meanwhile, about a thousand miles away, close to a town called Amargosa Valley in southern Nevada, west of the Death Valley National Park, a man in an office sat watching the now week old news story of the happening in Odessa.

He was an older gentleman, his hair now more grey than it was its original black, but still in a regulation crew cut. His build suggested that he had been in the military for a good portion of his adult life. He was of average height, and slightly stocky, further suggesting that he was starting the later part of his life. His face was hard and unemotional, right down to his cold ice blue eyes.

The only light in the room came from the large window to the right of the desk and the desktop sitting on it. The desk was pretty empty; except for the computer, the only items on the desk were a cup of pens and pencils, and an unloaded handgun the man was taking apart and putting back together without even looking at what he was doing.

The video ended, and the man considered playing it again. He had listened to it enough to know it word for word and the battle play by play. It was all he had thought about for a whole week.

Instead, he decided to get out of his office. Only a few years ago, he would hardly be able to just sit in a chair all day, preferring to keep moving; another sign that he was getting older. But exercise was important, so he switched the computer off and left the small office.

The building he entered was just an old hanger with makeshift walls. A large portion of the building was left open; only two areas were actually isolated in opposite corners of each other in the main building. The rest of the hanger was filled with jeeps, vans, motorcycles, and an armory along the opposite wall of the man. People filled about their various duties, checking out the vehicles, running tests or just moving paperwork around. However, everyone stopped to acknowledge him, either with a curt nod or a crisp salute; the man answered both in kind. This wasn't exactly a military operation, but most of the men did have military experience like him. He would say that the ratio of solders to civilians was three to one. Occasionally, one would stop him to ask a question or to check something out. He would always stop to help if he could. It made him feel more useful than just the one ordering people around.

He eventually made it outside. The sun was bright and hot; it forced the man to put sunglasses on. His destination was another building already directly facing him with a twenty foot space in between, so most vehicles could easily drive right into either. It was the exact same size as the building he just left, and there was another smaller building to his right, and the whole complex was surrounded by a fifteen foot tall fence topped with razor wire.

The other building was much more divided than the one he just came from. All along the walls were dozens of small doors, several of them were the sleeping quarters for the men. In the middle were two long tables that stretched most of the length of the building. At the far end of the tables was where the cooks made meals for the entire complex. And behind the kitchen was a back room that he was heading for.

This room was all computers and prototype weapons, most of which were still having bugs worked out. He stepped in and everyone automatically got to their feet.

"As you were," he said, and most of them returned to what they were doing. He beckoned to one man who had remained standing to come with him. The other man was younger by about ten years, and although he was taller, he was definitely much more out of shape.

The man gave walked out of the room with him and said, "How are we today, Mr. Fox?"

"Itching for some information, Geoff," Fox said.

"Then you came at the right time," Geoff said. "The operation was a success; the package is on its way here as we speak."

Fox nodded, not really surprised that the mission was successful as much as he was annoyed that it took so long. Geoff spoke again. "Sir, if I may, why are you so interested in this?"

Fox turned to Geoff, saying, "We have a golden opportunity here, my friend. With this, we will usher in a new age, and maybe finally put this country not only back on its feet, but back on top." He put a hand on Geoff's shoulder, saying, "When the package gets here, I want you to next discover the identity of the boy in that story."

"The boy, sir?" Geoff asked.

"Yes, the boy, Mr. Geoff," Fox said. "That boy is the key; he is the one who somehow took power from that space creature. In order for our plan to work, we have to figure out how he did it."

"Yes, sir," Geoff replied.

Fox nodded, and then continued. "My friend, we are going to usher in a new age. An age where this great country is back in its rightful place in this world. It was by design that that space creature landed on our soil, and so it our right to use it as we see fit. And that boy is the beginning. We could have entire armies of men doing what he just did in just a few years, Geoff. We have reached a new generation of weapons and technologies, and that boy is the pioneer for all of it. We need to find this boy and convince him to help us, by any means necessary."

End of book one...
