Fiction Friday: Chapter 17

When Sarah woke up, she was in the passenger seat of the Flex traveling at seventy miles an hour going west in I-94.  A summer landscape rushed by her.  The driver, the large man who had said he meant her no harm drove the vehicle.  He smelled of a hint of musky cologne, like she imagined a police officer would wear.  Her cousins were not in the car and she could not see the black vehicle these guys had arrived in.

The man's head moved just slightly in her direction, but he did not look at her.  "The rest of the kids are being transported separately.". He paused waiting for Sarah to say something.  She didn't, her head hurt and she was trying to plan.  "We didn't know of anyway to shut down your power before we moved you.  So, we made sure you were discouraged from shocking any of us."

"What are you going to do?" Sarah croaked, her voice sounding pained.

"That's up to Mr. Li.  For now I'm just delivering you."

"Where are my cousins?"

"They left about fifteen ahead of us.  Once you were down it wasn't hard to get the to cooperate."

In the black SUV the four sisters were very quiet.  Savannah and Sierra sat in the way back.  It an act that virtually never happened anymore, they held hands.  In front of them sat Shelby and Sienna.  The men had assured them they were going to their parents, but they were terrified.  

Savannah used her power to locate her mom and dad.  They were headed in the right direction.  She was going to whisper this fact to Sierra, but the man, who had now been shocked twice, was looking back at them from the passenger seat.  For some reason, she didn't want him to see them talking.

Shelby looked behind her, stripping car after car off the road in her mind's eye, but she could not see Sarah.  They were too far behind them.  Sienna could no longer make money, she didn't want that power anymore anyways.  If she got the feather again, she would wish for something else, something that would help her fight these guys.  It was hard to draw joy even from that thought.

In about forty five minutes they pulled off the expressway and entered a manufacturing area.  Savannah saw they were close to her parents.  A gated warehouse with a simple sign, Li Manufacturing stood before them like a looming shadow.  The driver, the man in the Blink 182 shirt, pushed a code into a numbered keypad and the gate rolled back.  The SUV pulled through the gate and into an open orange garage door, where they stopped in the first floor of the warehouse.

An Asian man in black suit stood waiting for them.  On either side of him were cold looking women with machine guns slung over their shoulders.  Mr. Li was ready to be done with this business.