Chapter Nine

A balding man with a rotund body and beady eyes entered the room and introduced himself as Dr. Richard Hu. "Travis, I'm sure you have questions, but--"

"Doc, I thought we agreed not to tell him about you know what?" The suited man that Travis assumed was Agent Anderson asked. 

Oblivion was right. What else are they hiding from me?

A cobra of anger reared up inside him. "No! I want to know what's going on." The windows rattled, and the adults turned to him with concerned expressions.

Jenny approached him, speaking in a babyish voice. "Travis, calm down, or we'll have to sedate you again."

Glaring, he balled his fists. "Tell me about Project Hellfire, or I'll burn this place to the ground." As he spoke, his clothes smoldered. The adults looked at each other before nodding their heads.

Agent Anderson took the lead. "Project Hellfire was a clandestine operation that studied your abilities after they manifested when you were two years old."

Travis's mind reeled. "You mean to tell me I had powers as a baby?"

Agent Anderson shook his head. "From what I've gathered, your powers activated following a traumatic event of which I'm not sure. But afterward, the military got involved and . . . experimented on you, for lack of a better term."

How can this be true? I would have remembered it.

Travis wracked his brain, recalling his earliest memories, but everything before The Fire was hazy. He remembered the first time he met his grandparents and going to Sunday School, but not much else.

Could this be true? And if so, how could my parents have allowed this? No. They have to be gaslighting me.

However, part of him knew that was a lie. 

"What did they do to me?" he said, a tinge of fear creeping into his voice.

Agent Anderson scratched his head. "Doc knows more about that than me."

Dr, Hu, face red and eyes watery, stepped forward and sighed. "We tested your abilities by having you incinerate various materials . . ."

Travis saw a flash of woodchips bursting into flames. He shook his head. "What else did you do to me?"

"We . . ." Dr. Hu cleared his throat. "We tested your healing powers, first by shocking you with cattle prods. Next, we stabbed you. Then we shot you with rubber bullets before graduating to regular ammunition."

Jenny whacked Dr. Hu. "You monster. He was just a child!"

"I was only following orders."

An argument broke out between Jenny and Dr. Hu that stopped when Travis asked them about The Fire. "Did that happen the way I remember it or . . ." He let his unspoken question hang in the air.

"I think Travis has had enough excitement for one day. How 'bout we let him rest?" Agent Anderson said. Dr. Hu concurred, but Jenny insisted they uncuff Travis first. Agent Anderson looked at her sideways a moment before handing her the keys. 

Once he was free, Travis worked the kinks out of his arms and legs. "By the way, what's that clear crud you got me hooked up to?"

Jenny hesitated a moment before saying, "It's something to calm you down."

"Does it have a name?" he said, rolling his eyes.

"Ketamine."

"You put me on horse tranquilizer?"

Worrying her bottom lip, she nodded. "It was the fastest way to keep you calm while we figured out what to do with you."

He side-eyed her hard. "And what are you going to do with me?" He'd be damned if he let them turn him into some science project again.

"We're still working out the details. Why don't you go explore outside while we talk?"

He folded his arms, scowling as his anger threatened to boil over. "Don't you think I should get a say in what happens to me?"

Jenny ran her hand through her messy brunette hair, sighing. "Just do what I said, okay?"

"Fine."

She capped off his IV and showed him the way out.

***

The outside of Dr. Hu's cabin was decorated with topiary shrubs shaped like bears and other circus animals, along with a rock garden with black, white, and silver stones. The cabin sat on twenty acres and had a pier that led right onto Otter Lake. Travis walked to the edge of the pier, took off his shoes and socks, and dangled his feet in the water, cringing at the shock of the cold.

As he acclimated to the water, He thought back to his conversation with Oblivion. He'd been straight with Travis, but could Travis trust him? Then again, could he trust his parents or Grams? What else might they be hiding from him? And for that matter, what was Prometheus hiding from him?

He nearly jumped out of his skin when Jenny called him in for dinner. After washing up, he joined them at the dinner table, where they had grilled burgers and bratwursts. As he ate, Travis noticed Jenny and Agent Anderson sneaking glances at him.

"You decide what you're going to do with me?" he said, and all eyes turned to him.  

"We'll discuss that after dinner. Pass the ketchup," she said.

Travis grumbled under his breath. Why do adults treat me like a kid when I'm smarter than eighty percent of them?

He finished dinner in silence, not letting on how shocked he was at picking up snippets of their thoughts. Jenny was nervous and scared for and of him while Agent Anderson thought Travis would be his ticket to a corner office. As for Dr. Hu, his mind was abuzz with fears of something called "Day Zero" and the location of guns he'd cached around the cabin.

Initially, it was cool being able to read people's thoughts, but then things turned awkward when he picked up on Agent Anderson's salacious thoughts toward Jenny, and when he attempted to shut out those thoughts, he found himself trapped in Agent Anderson's mind.

"Something the matter, sweetie?" Jenny said to him.

"Just a little tired. I think I'll go have a nap," he said, rushing back to his room. Distance helped, but he still had Agent Anderson's thoughts in his head. As quickly as his fingers would go, he grabbed the book on meditation and looked up how to shut out thoughts.

He skimmed the section, ready to hurl at Agent Anderson's thoughts, and paused when he came to a bit about warding your mind to others. It was a lot of New Age word salad, but he had nothing to lose. Closing his eyes, he saw through Agent Anderson's eyes. Before he was carried deeper into Agent Anderson's mind, he pictured a door leading back to his own mind and walked through it, locking it behind himself. 

While he could still hear Agent Anderson's thoughts, they weren't as loud. Travis next imagined walls surrounding his mind from others, and bit by bit, the voices in his head disappeared. When he was done, he could barely keep his eyes open, so he crawled into bed and fell asleep.

Travis awoke the next morning to Jenny and Dr. Hu standing over him. They spent the next several hours drawing blood samples and running tests on him. Dr. Hu said his colleagues at a lab he used for cases like Travis's were discrete and would keep the results secret. Meanwhile, Jenny told him they'd come to a decision.

Agent Anderson would feed his superiors false information to buy them time while they worked out a long-term solution. The preliminary test results revealed several anomalies, such as the lack of key amino acids and enzymes, and the presence of an unknown substance in his blood, prompting further testing. While they waited for the results, Jenny and Dr. Hu monitored his condition and give him injections for the enzymes and amino acids he lacked.

No stranger to injections and hospitals in general, Travis took in this information with detached interest. He did ask them what they would tell the police and his parents.

"The incident at St. Michael's will be treated as a terrorist attack. This way, no one knows the real reason, and the police can save face. As for your parents, Jenny suggested we tell them you have a novel genetic disorder, and Dr. Hu, being the world's foremost expert on such disorders, has agreed to treat you pro bono."

He nodded, not paying attention until Agent Anderson mentioned his hair and eyes. "What about them?"

"Apparently, when you get mad or excited, your hair turns red and gray, and your eyes turn red and green. We'll try getting you colored contacts to hide them and dying your hair. But you gotta be careful. Just to be on the safe side, you should start wearing these." He handed Travis a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses. "One slipup, and it's game over for all of us."

Letting out a big sigh through his nose, Travis said, "Why are you helping me? I get you're sprung over Jenny, but still--"

"How do you know about that?" he whispered.

Rolling his eyes, Travis tapped his head. "Duh. I'm telepathic."

"Stay out of my head."

Travis gave him a dirty look. "It wasn't by choice." 

They parted ways, and Travis sat on the pier meditating. Then he tried to use his powers until Dr. Hu called him in for breakfast. After he ate and did the dishes, it was time for another round of tests, starting with his vitals followed by testing his reflexes, recall, and other mental faculties, then his stamina and strength by timing his laps around the cabin and how many times he could lift a three-gallon jug of water over his head.

This continued for a week until they sat him down and told him they had something serious to discuss with him.

The way they're acting, you'd think I was dying or something.

Dr. Hu breathed on his glasses and cleaned them. "There's no easy way to same this, so I'll just dive right in. Your latest test results arrived today, and after speaking with my colleagues, we all agree you have a severe case of genetic instability. What this means in layman's terms is, if you don't develop several forms of cancer first, your body will shut down due to being unable to produce the enzymes and amino acids it needs to function. Furthermore, we were unable to identify the substance in your blood, though we think it might have something to do with the extra DNA we found in your genome . . ."

The rest of Dr. Hu's words were lost as Travis shut down. I'm dying? Why me? What did I do to deserve this? I haven't even lost my virginity--hell, I've never kissed anyone. Ugh. Fuck my life!

Glass shattering broke him out of his pity party. In his angst, he'd inadvertently broken one of the windows with a telekinetic blast.

"I know now it's the best time for this, but that's coming out of your pocket," Dr. Hu said.

"Yeah. Whatever," he said, trudging away to the pier, where he sat watching the water until the sunset, and Jenny called him in for dinner. 

He picked at his plate, moving around the food until he asked to be excused.

***

The next morning, he returned home and sulked in his room for two weeks, only leaving to use the restroom and shower. It rained every day those two weeks, adding to the malaise that hung over Travis. He barely ate or slept, and when his parents asked what the problem was, he told them it was his genetic disorder acting up. 

He would've stayed brooding in his fortress of depression had Jenny not shipped him off to Dr. Hu's cabin. He humored her, going through the motions as she and Dr. Hu ran more tests on him.

They were moving into May, and warm weather was on the horizon. Though, he didn't see much cause for celebration. He was dying and knew it may well be his last summer.

Little did he know that summer would change his life forever.

 

Author's Note: Since last chapter was so short, I figured I'd post this one right away. I hope ya'll enjoy it.

Next chapter finds JJ going to court and learning his punishment for starting the brawl that injured Travis.

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