Chapter 4: Retaliation

On the way home from the quarry Sandi said, "I can't believe you've never had a girlfriend."

"No girls found me attractive." I said.

"Their loss and my gain." she said as she snuggled up to me. This was the best day of my life. Isn't it funny how fate likes to give you some candy just before it kicks you in the head?

As soon as I pulled up to my house I knew something was wrong. There were three cop cars, a fire truck and two ambulances in front of my house. The car was barely stopped before I was out and halfway to the front door. Three policemen tried to stop me but I had charged my body without even thinking about it as I left the car. I ran though them knocking them flat.

When I got inside, what I saw made me sick.

Someone had used rail spikes to nail my mom to the living room wall. My sisters had been tied up on the couch. The house had been doused with gasoline and set aflame. The paramedics told me that Lisa was on her way to the hospital and he was taking Kate and Debbie there now. I asked about my mom but he just shook his head and told me she was most likely dead before the fire started.

I rode with Kate to the hospital. I was in shock. I couldn't even think straight. I was crying when I herd the whisper from Kate. I looked up at her and said, "what?"

"I'm sorry." she choked out.

"It's not your fault, don't try and talk. You're going to be fine." I said as I took her hand and held it.

My eyes were so blurry with tears that I didn't notice the burns covering 90% of her body had started to heal. It wasn't till they took her into the ER and they couldn't find any burns that I realized I had another power and this one would save my family.

I raced down the hall to find Debbie and Lisa. I found Debbie in the next room but the doctors would not let me in. So, I reached into their minds and made them believe I was a burn specialist. Once they let me into the room I took Debbie's hand and started the process of healing her. It took almost five minutes. Now I had to find Lisa. It took 10 minutes to find a nurse that knew were she was, the burn ICU.

When I found Lisa, I saw she had been burned the worst. She had 3rd degree burns over 100% of her body. She had tried to roll the fire out with her body in order to protect her sisters. It took me over an hour to heal her and it took all my strength to do it. When she sat up and looked at me, I saw her image get blurry and every thing went black as I just slumped over.

The next thing I saw was a popcorn ceiling and a god-awful wagon wheel chandelier. I tried to sit up but the explosion of pain in my skull stopped that from happening. Lisa was looking down at me. "You're awake. Thank god. You have been out for two days."

"Where am I?" I asked.

"The Best Western Inn." Lisa answered.

"Where are Debbie and Kate?" I asked.

"They are at the restaurant next door with Sandi." she replied.

"Is everyone ok?" I inquired.

"Yeah," she said, "but the twins started asking question about how when you touched them they healed without so much as a scar."

"Oh shit!" I said to myself. "what did you say?" I asked Lisa.

"I told them the truth. That you had special powers. Then they helped me sneak you out of the hospital."

"Thanks but I'm going back to sleep now." as I closed my eyes and passed out again.

When I woke up again my sisters told me what had happened. They told me about the men who showed up and broke into the house and tied everyone up. They searched the house and then demanded to know where Tanna was. When we said we didn't know who they were talking about they started to torture mom. At this point in the story Sandi started to cry. My sisters told me that the more they said they didn't know any Tanna the more they tortured mom until she just died. Then they poured gas everywhere and lit it as they left.

Sandi was crying as she opened her mouth to ask. "Did they wear black suits with a yellow sun-shaped pin on the lapel?"

Lisa stared at her and said, "Yeah?"

Then Sandi said. "I'm sorry... I'm so sorry... "

I looked at her and asked what she had to be sorry about. She looked at me and said, "Don't you get it? They were after me... when I was at the house of light school I was called Tanna... the men that came to your house were enforcers and they were looking for me."

I looked at her tear stained face. "If they are tels why didn't they just take the info they wanted from the girls minds?"

"They aren't tels. They are men that the tels have made into their own private security force. Their minds have been molded in to very loyal psychopaths."

"Well no matter what they are its their fault not yours." I said but she just shook her head and cried even more. So I took her into my arms and whispered into her ear. "You have to stop crying because if we are going to track them down and kill every last one of them I'm going to need your help."

At that she looked up at me with scared eyes and saw the determination in my face. That's when she stopped crying and asked. "Do you think we can do it?"

"Hell yes and we start in the morning." I growled.

"Where?" she asked.

"You said it your self they were from the house of light, so we start there." I said.

"Okay... how?" she inquired.

"I have an idea about that, but you need to tell me every thing you know about them."

That's just what she did and by midnight we had a working plan of attack. The next morning we left for a small town called Kahlotus. It was somewhere up the Snake River and in the middle of nowhere. According to Sandi's info they had a compound 20 miles north of there.

Before we left town I called work and told them that I would need a few days off to make arrangements for my mother's funeral, they agreed and gave me a week off. I took my sisters to my aunt in Vancouver WA. Then Sandi and I headed east for some retribution.

Seven hours later we had reached our destination. It was more of a wide spot in the road than a town. There were fifteen houses, one store, one café and a building that was both the post office and city hall. The Mayor had to pull double duty as the postmaster, school superintendent and the trash man. We stopped to get some thing to eat and some gas from the store, which doubled as a gas station.

An hour later we were sitting in some bushes near a ten-foot chain-link fence. Beyond the fence there was a very large house surrounded by about a hundred yards of lawn. There was no cover and according to Sandi there were motion detectors about every twenty yards. The plan was to wait til night and use the darkness to my advantage. About an hour before sunset we got a break, the wind started to blow as is common for this area. My plan had been to trip the motion detectors with my TK until they shut them off thinking there was a bug in the system. The wind worked out much better as they would not even turn it on and work solely from the video cameras mounted on the house. These I was going to beat by moving so fast that they would not even see me.

When it was totally dark, I made my move. I had been charging my body steadily for the last fifteen minutes and was ready to go in. I walked up to the fence and jumped, but never having charged my body for so long before I was not prepared for the strength they had and was surprised when I cleared the fence not by five feet as I had intended but thirty feet. When I landed inside the fence, I turned to look at Sandi and said "oops" as I shrugged my shoulders. I then turned and ran to the house. I was at the house 3/4 of a second later. I probed inside and found fourteen minds inside, seven were in the room on the other side of the wall I was facing. I used my TK as a wrecking ball and crushed the wall in front of me. As I stepped into the room I saw seven young people huddled in the corner from me. "must be the students," I thought to my self then I yelled, "get out, get out NOW!"

They bolted for the hole in the wall as I made my way to the door. When I opened it, I saw four men in black suits and they were trying to rush me. Well nobody said they were smart... heh heh.

I reached out with four giant TK hands that grabbed the four men and squeezed the four men until they exploded like over ripe tomatoes. I probed again and found the other three minds up stairs. I moved up the staircase until I reached the second floor. They had just come into the hall and then they saw me.

They attacked me with three very powerful knife like probes. They almost got through my shield before I put up a different one. As the wall I had built started to fall I built another one but instead of building a wall I built a flowing curtain of pain so whenever they touched it with their mind I would induce agony in them. Then I reached out to the men on the left and right and used my TK as an axe cleaving them in half. Then I grabbed the man in the middle so he could not run. After I broke down his shield, I blocked his telepathy and his ability to speak. I then sent Sandi the message that it was safe to come in.

When she arrived, I removed his gag and asked if he knew who Sandi was.

"Yes I know her... the filthy traitor... what have you done to me?" He spat.

"I'm asking the question here, not you... now, who sent the enforcers after her?" I said calmly.

"I won't tell you!" He spat.

"Don't make me rip your arms off." For emphasis I pulled his arms strait out from his sides with my TK.