“There’s no point in waiting.” Kevin is standing in the conference room, practically frantic as he watches the hostage situation unfolding on TV with the colonel. “Tell me what to do! Give me orders or something.
“We can’t just act Kevin.” The colonel says. “This thing is happening all the way on the other side of the country. We don’t know what law enforcement is on the scene. We can’t risk putting first responders in harm’s way.”
“So why are we watching it? Obviously we’re going to do something. Do we know anything?”
The colonel converses with aides that tell him more about what they know of the situation on the ground.
One of the aids tells the colonel that “He’s a lone shooter, there’s not a lot of responders no the scene, but they have him surrounded. They’re waiting for the best shot. That’s all we were able to find out.”
“If there’s just the one shooter, I can do something to secure the police and take him out at the same time.” Kevin says.
“Not now, not ‘til we know more. And they probably got it handled on the ground.”
Jamal is confident that he will not survive this encounter and he fine to die tonight. At least he will have made his point, that if the world was hard for some, then it would be hard for everyone. He figures that the police have surrounded him and any minute a sniper would take him out and he figures that it’s about time that he reveal his secret weapon. He’d almost forgotten about the pipe bombs he had made in the excitement of the shooting. He had rigged an electronic trigger that ran his arm underneath his long sleeves so that he could detonate the bombs without having to reveal them.
“How do we resolve this? How can we get you to let that little boy go?” One of the officers asks.
“Just stay where you are.” Jamal says. “This will be over soon.”
Kevin eyes the screen and he thinks that if he is fast enough, he can get the boy out of danger and leave the shooter open for apprehension. The colonel is distracted with his aide and Kevin decides to act. He imagines a robot with a jetpack to allow for quick escape and it appears before the shooter on the TV.
Jamal decides that he can probably do more damage with the bombs in police custody, so he makes the decision to let the boy go. But before a can, a robot appears in front of him and he aims his gun at it. The robot grabs the boy before Jamal can shoot and flies away, leaving him without his hostage and completely clueless about what has happened. He assumes that it was some sort of police gambit and he opens fire on the officers in front of him, killing one and wounding another; they were both distracted by the sudden appearance of the robot. Jamal is shot and he falls to the ground, loses his gun and waits to die.
When three officers surround Jamal, he triggers the bombs in his pockets and it is the last thing he does.
“You disobeyed an order son! This whole thing is a mess, a bigger mess than it had to be.” The colonel is yelling and Kevin is sitting silent, not looking at anything. They had watched the chain reaction of events that started with Kevin’s intervention and resulted in the death of an officer and the wounding of four others. Kevin had managed to get the young boy to safety, but no one was aware of the bomb the shooter had.
“This is why we don’t act until we have as much information as possible. This is why we follow orders!” The colonel continues to yell and Kevin mostly tunes him out. There is nothing that he can say that will make Kevin feel worse than already does.
Kevin is already essentially detained at the facility, so his punishment is increased physical training. His trainer is replaced by a man who isn’t as nice as Anish. He sees her one afternoon after a particularly grueling training session. They sit in the cafeteria of the facility where the kitchen staff give him vitamin enriched gruel on orders of the colonel.
“I really pissed him off.” Kevin says as Anish sits.
“You really put a lot of people in danger. I thought you would be more cautious with everything you told me about your past.”
“Yea, well, I told you and I told everyone else here that I’m not cut out for this. This is why I don’t use my ability.”
Anish pushes his tray of food away from him and forces him to look at her. “You can’t blame this on your ability. This was just you making the wrong decision. No one’s mad at you for wanting to help. Everyone wishes they could do what you do. You saved a kid. But you have to think more strategically in a sensitive situation like that one. Now there are questions about what happened that night, where that disappearing robot came from. This is why strategy is important. If you want to avoid unnecessary detection, you have to think things through before they even happen. That’s what this training is all about.” She leaves Kevin at the table.
The science division of the CIA facility where Kevin is held has extremely sophisticated equipment that is used to analyze the complex device in Kevin’s head that is the source of his abilities. There is a team of scientists who are so fascinated by the technology that they choose to work around the clock to study the device because of its sophisticated engineering that is well beyond the technology of humans on Earth. One recent arrival to the facility is the doctor known as Thomas Eakran, who has a permanent position at the Institute for Brain Function, or IBF, in Georgia, where he is renowned for his breakthroughs in all fields of science related to the human brain. After Kevin was recovered, the colonel in charge of the base contacted Eakran immediately because of his reputation as the preeminent expert on all things related to the brain and Eakran has spearheaded CIA research into the mysterious device that gives Kevin his powers.
Of course Eakran has not met Kevin in the facility, he specifically asked not to be introduced to the young man. The two have met before. You see, Eakran is an alien from a planet known as Druont and he has lived life as a human on Earth for many years, learning and gathering information about humans that he reports back to his planet that is an unfathomable distance from Earth. Among the supplies that Eakran brought with him to Earth is a beacon device that allows him to track down technology that is manufactured on his home planet in the event that he loses anything while on Earth. This beacon device detected the mysterious device in Kevin’s brain that allows him to make real his imagination and he set out to find Kevin. During their first encounter, Eakran had killed a human and Kevin managed to break his beacon device, so Eakran’s search for Kevin had come to a stop while he repaired it. But now Kevin is being held at the CIA facility and Eakran has been flown in as an expert to find out exactly what the device is that allows him to do such amazing things.
Eakran knows what the device is once he sees it. He did not know that the device was ever completed by his former partner, Belfrat, on his home planet, but Eakran knew that Belfrat was working very hard to complete a device just like it. A device that could manipulate matter itself to create anything that the user could imagine. Belfrat’s work on Druont had produced very unstable matter that resulted in an explosion that killed Belfrat and wiped out all of his research, but Eakran was stunned to see it realized on the fairly primitive planet where he found himself. When he saw it, Eakran wondered if Belfrat had kept his completion of the device secret from him, or if the technology had been completed in the time that he had been away from Druont and that other Druintes had traveled to Earth. He was never made aware of any other Druintes on Earth, though it was possible that there could be others here on official government business that did not concern his official mission that was sponsored mostly by the Interstellar Panel that is made up of other sentient civilizations along with his own. Eakran did not divulge any of this information to the CIA and he mostly feigned wonder at the devices properties along with the other scientists. He had to decide what to do about Kevin, though. This was the first Eakran knew of human interaction with Druinte technology and though human science was not sophisticated enough to understand the device, human physiology was compatible with the technology and Eakran was compelled to act to secure it. It was protocol to keep Druinte technology out of the hands of other sentient beings in the universe to avoid advancing other sentient populations beyond their capacity for understanding of the technology. The Druinte civilization is believed to be the oldest and most scientifically advanced in the universe and as they have evolved with their technology over time they believed that they alone have the capacity to appreciate the awesome powers that come along with unlocking the secrets of the universe.
Eakran knows that he must retrieve the device in Kevin’s head, even though it means that Kevin himself will die because over the time that it has been inside of Kevin’s body, it has wired itself and made itself integral to the basic function of Kevin’s brain. But as a scientist, Eakran has decided to watch the effects of Druinte technology on a human. He does love to experiment after all and this would be the most fascinating thing he has observed since arriving on Earth.
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