PRL Serials

The PRL Event: CZS 4

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“What’s up with your girlfriend?” Conner asks Kevin.

“She’s usually right about these sorts of things, man.” Kevin says. He looks to Alia.

“I think…no, I’m pretty sure that there is something bad growing inside of you.” Alia says. “Not like a baby, but something else. And other people have it now.”

The three are still on the beach. There is no more crowd, no more spectacle.

“It was nice doing business with you all. Thanks for the show. Elroy, I will be in touch.” Conner says and he turns to leave. 

“Do we follow him?” Kevin asks.

“There’s no point. I have him now.” Alia says, pointing to her temple.

Later that night at their home, Alia is laughing at a game show on TV and Kevin is still uneasy. She had dropped a lot on him just before the show started and now it seems that the gravity of the situation had somehow been relieved and he was not caught up on why.

“Alia,” he says as he turns off the TV.

“Kevin, there’s nothing to do just yet.” she says. “We have to talk to him again, both of us. You have to convince him to trust me if I’m going to figure out more.”

“What’s in him? A parasite?”

“It really seems that way. It’s like if you could read an ant’s mind. Who knows how an ant brain works or sounds, so there’s no reference for it, and then it’s so small that the scale of everything is smaller. Like a spot on a windshield. There’s something there though, and it’s bad. The bigger it gets, the badder it will get.”

“How did he get it? How can we help him?”

“We convince him to trust us and then to get medical help. But this is tricky Kevin. There’s something else, its shadowy and its looming just outside my mind’s eye. That thing you drew, that flier, I’ve been trying so hard to understand it, why it feels so strange. I think that it might be a piece of something else and if I can complete that picture, we can really help Conner. Maybe I can figure out what’s inside of him.”

Kevin shakes his head. “That picture was nothing Alia, I promise. I didn’t copy it from anywhere. I can’t remember anything similar to it that I saw. Maybe it was something on the drive from Washington? We saw a lot of stuff.”

“I don’t know. But all we can do now is wait until tomorrow, when you will talk to Conner and convince him that we should all spend time together.”

“Will do,” he says and returns the TV remote to Alia, who continues enjoying the game show. 

She had told him that he would have to be amazing soon. That they would have to be crime fighters again. Kevin wakes up early; in all honesty, he had barely slept at all. Alia’s premonition, or whatever she would call it, had him worried about threats that he had driven across the country to escape. He had been ok as a secret agent of the CIA. He’d learned discipline and he could fight with the best of them thanks to his old sparring partner, Anish. But this threat wasn’t something he could punch. And he would have to be able to see it to use his preternatural ability to neutralize it. He knew that Alia was determined to help Conner and that he was indeed in need of real help, only he could not understand his role in the saving.  

Kevin sits on the picnic table in the yard and he decides to see if he can do what the Alia does. Maybe he can find the powers that she accesses to be useful. But he doesn’t know how she does it; his eyes burn immediately and he looks away, blinking the spot from his field of vision.

He turns his attention to the empty backyard. The two mostly used the space to practice their show, but Kevin wants to buy a grill and patio furniture; the things normal people have. They could have guests over. Nice brunches or casual late night get together. And Alia could forget about her possible futures, they would be too busy having fun. Eventually.

Kevin decides to test his preternatural ability on a small scale because the threat they are facing may be tiny parasites. But how can he see that it’s working if he has to create something microscopic? He doesn’t know. 

There was one exercise he remembered from his time with the CIA, just before he left the facility with Alia. The scientist that he had been working with, a man named Fritz Parsons, had pushed him to test the limits of his abilities, and thanks to his guidance, Kevin can create things in spaces that he has visited before even if he is not physically there, he can hold things in reality longer than the usual fifteen minutes, and it seemed that he was capable of creating functional replicas of living things. He had not been able to verify that last thing because of the long term nature of the experiments. Kevin had extensively studied the structure of an apple seed and he would work to recreate the seed with all of its intricate components and structures. Parsons would do detailed comparisons and give Kevin notes to improve his replica, until the day that Parsons said he couldn’t tell the difference between the real seed and the fake. Parsons planted the seed in his lab and the two moved on to other things. Kevin left before he could see if the seed sprouted. 

He does it again. He recalls all the intricacies of an apple seed and one appears in his hand, and unbeknownst to him, it is bigger than a normal seed. He smiled at it, then planted it at the back of his yard. When he held things in reality, they had to occupy his mind and he had learned from Parsons how to bury his creations deep in his subconscious so that he could free his consciousness of the burden. And just as the seed nestled in the ground, the thought of it was tucked into the spaces between his dreams. 

“Conner’s on the phone!” Alia yells from the house. The two do not have cell phones and their land-line is under a fake name. 

Inside the house, Kevin answers the phone.

“We should set up a second show date. People are already begging me for the password.” Conner explains. 

“Yeah,” Kevin says, waving at Alia to leave him alone. She is mouthing that they should all meet soon, but he does not understand. “Let’s have coffee later, at that place we went to last time…your house…sure. I can be there in an hour. See you soon.”

“Why an hour?” Alia asks.

“We have to work on our nonverbal communication.” Kevin says. 

At Conner’s house, as the two stand at his door, Kevin notices that Alia is collecting herself. 

“That feeling washed over me again. I’m ready.” she says. 

Kevin knocks and Conner answers. He looks disappointed to see Alia. 

“Hi!” She says excitedly. “Elroy told me you are an artist.”

Conner smiles. “Come in, I’ll get you guys some drinks.” Conner’s house is close to the beach. It is two stories and they follow him up the stairs inside and out to the patio that looks out onto the coast. Conner has the nice patio furniture that makes Kevin jealous. He probably has casual parties all the time. They all sit and Conner does his best to ignore Alia. 

“So I already have people confirmed for the next show, you thought about a date?”

“Well…” Kevin starts before Alia interrupts. 

“Can I see some of your work?” she asks and Kevin apologies for her. 

“You don’t have to do that, Conner…”

Conner smiles and looks at Alia intently. 

“Do you have a problem with me or something? I’m doing my best to make you all money, but it feels like you’re fucking with me.”

Alia decides to match his tone. “I’m trying to save fucking lives. And I’m not messing with you, I’m just intrigued. You guys talk business and I’ll go look in your studio.” she gets up and leaves. 

“It’s downstairs,” Conner called after her, but she was already on her way down. “Is something wrong with her? What is she talking about?”

“I don’t know. But she likes you, I think. We don’t have to talk about that. How about we do the show in a month?”

Conner shakes his head. “You gotta do it sooner while there’s still so much buzz. We can double what we did last time.”

“But then, will we be drawing too much attention?”

“I don’t know…” Conner starts before their conversation is interrupted by Alia inside the house. 

“Come look at this!” she yells and both men rush down to Conner’s studio that is filled with works of art at different stages of completion. Alia stands in front of the portrait Conner is working on. “That’s from the flier right?” Alia asks referring to the background of the portrait. 

“It is,” Kevin says. He’d seen Conner working on it before but he didn’t want to mention it to Alia. Conner had even asked his permission to use the background. 

“Who is he? He kind of looks like you.” Alia asked studying the face. It was an older man and even though it was not complete, he appeared to have a scowl and hard look in his face.

“Yes, that is my father.” Conner explained. “I don’t know, something about that background made me want to paint him. I’m sure he’ll think it’s crap, but I don’t know, something in me had to see this done.”

Alia is silent now and her eyes are closed. 

“What is she doing now?” Conner asks. 

Alia opens her eyes again. “We have to find this man. He can tell us what’s inside of Conner. I know it.”

Conner shakes his head. “That man is in Durham cooking up something in his lab. And I haven’t seen him in while. We don’t have a good relationship…why am I telling you this. Elroy, you all should do the show in two weeks. Decide on a date and get back me. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some work to do. Thanks for coming over.”

Conner doesn’t say much else and soon Alia and Kevin are driving back home. 

“Where are you going?” Alia asks as they near their house. 

“Home. Where else would I be going?”

“We’re going to Durham, Kevin. To meet Conner’s father.”

Kevin is surprised. “Why would we do that?”

“Because he’s the only man with answers. Well, that alien in GA could help too I think, but we’re still avoiding him right?”

“Alia, what is going on”

“We have a long road trip to review all that. Let’s go.”

She is insistent and Kevin obeys. 

On the road to Durham, Alia admits, “I didn’t want to say this before, but Conner’s dad is a bad man.”

“What does that mean,” Kevin asks. He is annoyed at the sun through the windshield. Even with his visor down, Kevin struggles to see the road.

“He’s the bad guy. I think he put that thing in Conner, which is why I know he will know what it is.”

“Why would a father do that to his own son?” Kevin occasionally eyes the map in his lap and compares it to the street signs at the intersection he approaches. 

“We will find out soon enough.” Alia says. “We should definitely be careful with this Kevin. I know more now than I did before, but not this future, not these people. It may not seem this way, but I’m scared.” Alia is looking into the sun as she says it. 

Kevin had no idea. “I’ve never seen you like this before. You’re so sure of everything we’re doing. You don’t seem afraid at all.”

“Well, I am. I just have a lot of faith in you. I know what you’re capable of.” Alia looks at him long enough to smile, then back to the sun. 

“I haven’t had time to think about this long enough to be scared.” Kevin says. “I’m just following you.” It frustrates him that he has little control over his situation. He could ignore Alia when she said things that had no physical proof, but when he did that in the past, bad things happen. Like the time he was almost caught by the CIA as they drove across the US. The two had stopped at a convenience store so that Kevin could use the bathroom. Alia begged him not to stop at the store, to just pull over but he wanted to get gas. And when they had stopped and he was returning to the car from the bathroom, he saw men in shades who looked suspicious. He had to camouflage himself to avoid detection. Alia didn’t gloat or anything, Kevin just learned his lesson, and when he feels like he does now, doing things to achieve a goal that is not his own, he thinks back to that time when he didn’t listen. 

The drive was about three hours long and when they arrive in the city, Alia asks to be dropped off at Duke University.

“OK,” she says. “Tell your family I said hi, I’ll see you in a couple of days.”

Kevin has expended so much disbelief and confusion that he has none left. He just asks her calmly, “What are you talking about?”

“Go home. They need you there. I’ll handle things here.” Alia says and she kisses him through his window. 

Kevin wants to protest, but knows there is little need. “My family needs me? What about you? What if the alien’s here?”

“He isn’t. And someone needs you. When you get there, find Ivan and send him to me.”

Kevin remembers his friend Ivan from all those years ago when he was still in high school. He hasn’t talked to him in years. “Where will I find him?”

“Not sure about that, but tell him to get here as soon as possible,” Alia says.

Kevin scribbles a number on a piece of paper and gives it to her. “That’s for my family’s house. I guess you can reach me there.”

“Great. Now get back and don’t worry about me.”

Kevin had already learned that lesson.