Family Reunion: Father, Part 1

With only six surviving threats to the Protectors, Felix and Naomi had begun to work overtime. With the overtime finally paying off once they had located their fathers. Naomi had double, triple and quadruple checked the information to ensure that it was right, unable to believe that the two men would willing be locked up in a mental asylum.

            “Well…” Naomi stated calmly. “I guess we’re going to a mental asylum.”

            “They belong in a mental asylum,” Felix laughed. “But I can’t believe that either of them would stay there willingly.”

            “It’s worth a look,” Naomi shrugged as she scanned back over the map that they used to track their parents’ whereabouts. “They go there and then the trail stops. There is nothing that points to them leaving.”

            “Let’s go then,” Felix agreed.

Arriving at Coombeshead Mental Asylum in North Devon at around eleven O’clock at night, Naomi hacked into the Asylum’s server in order to potentially obtain the room number that Matt and Kelvin were being housed in, despite knowing that if they were there, they were likely listed one of the numerous “John Smith”s that were housed within the facility.

Scanning over patient names, she eventually focused on two names which surprised her merely because they were actually listed by name.

            “Room 15 and Room 18,” Naomi stated to Felix, pointing at their names on the IPad.

            “This is just getting weird,” Felix whined. “If they are in their rooms then they aren’t our parents…Surely?”

            “I guess we’re about to find out,” Naomi chuckled cautiously as she approached the corner leading to the main entrance. Looking in, she could see the guard sat at his desk watching cat videos on YouTube.

Breathing in, Naomi began to remove the air in the room while Felix moved forwards to a bush closer to the door. As the guard fell unconscious, she gestured for Felix to move forwards and pick the lock while she released the air back into the room.

Felix managed to get the door open and Naomi approached him.

            “Which way?” he asked Naomi as she studied the floor plans.

            “Staircase to the right should take us to the second floor,” she explained, pointing right. “We shouldn’t do this…”

            “What? Why not? We need to take them out before they attack us,” Felix countered.

            “Except they are in a mental hospital, with no obvious plan to try and kill us again,” Naomi elaborated. “If we do this, then how are we any different to them?”

            “We need to do this because of who they are,” Felix replied. “Think about them, are you really willing to risk Emma’s life because you think that they will stay here until they die?”

            “Point taken,” Naomi sighed as she reached the top of the stairs, only to be greeted by a blinding light.

Felix reacted faster than Naomi did and rendered the torch bearing guard unconscious against the wall before he could sound the alarm.

“Which room is Matt in?” Felix asked.

“18,” Naomi stated as she continued along the corridor to Room 15. “Will you be okay by yourself?”

“Screams are the vibrations of the air molecules,” Felix smiled. “They’re kinetic.”

“Good luck,” Naomi stated as she twisted the door handle to her dad’s apparent room.

“You came,” he sighed, laid on his bed. “We were starting to think that you’d never find us here.”

            “You wanted us to find you?” Naomi questioned, more confused by the fact that her father was there than by what he was saying.

            “Everything comes down to them,” he complained, staring up at the ceiling. “From the moment he was born, he was the centre of the Universe, and he didn’t even know it.”

            “Who are you talking about?”

            “You know who,” Kelvin stated as he sat up. “You have always known.”

            “Why not just tell me?” Naomi growled.

            “You’ll know soon enough,” Kelvin sighed. “I’m sorry for what I’m about to make you do…but I no longer dictate my actions. Not since…not since she unlocked what should have remained hidden.”

            “Why so cryptic?”

            “Because she wired my brain to be cryptic,” Kelvin smiled sweetly. “Now daughter, kill or be killed.”

The weird conversation had caused Naomi to let her guard down slightly, allowing her father the launch a fireball at her which Naomi only just managed to protect herself from with a small vacuum in front of her. However, her father suddenly detonated the half of the ball of fire that hadn’t been extinighed, launching her backwards and into Felix who had been flying down the corridor after he was hit with a metal pole.

            “Hey,” Naomi groaned. “You okay?”

            “Oh, definitely,” he smiled as he got to his feet and aimed his hands at his father.

            “You don’t scare me Felix,” Matt snarled as he walked slowly towards them.

            “Well I should,” Felix smirked as he pushed all of the kinetic energy that he had absorbed into his hands and then out in a powerful blast of energy that launched his father backwards into a wall.

            “Deal with him,” Naomi stated, giving Felix her pocket knife.

            “Thanks,” Felix smiled before running off down the corridor while Kelvin casually strolled out of his room.

            “Matt dead yet?” he asked calmly. “Doesn’t matter.”

Naomi stared at her father, trying to figure out why he was acting so weird, before coming to the conclusion that he really did deserve to be in the Asylum.

As he attempted to light yet another ball of fire, she cut off the air supply around his hands causing it to instantly disappear as it lost the Oxygen it needed to breathe. Ignoring his smile, she used her telekinetic abilities to draw the pole that Felix had been hit with to her, catching it with her left hand.

And then she swung. As hard as she could, knocking her father to the ground before bring the pole into stabbing position above his chest. And then it fell, piercing his chest until it his the floor.

            “Thank you, Naomi,” he groaned. “Thank you for freeing me from that witch’s control.”

            “What?” she asked, the wording he had used worrying her deeply. “Wait. You said she unlocked something hidden. Does she have a second ability that was buried or something?”

            “Yes,” he replied as his legs and arms went numb. “When she was fifteen she began experimenting with her DNA and discovered another ability that had been locked away. She theorised that it was a suppressed ability, and that everyone had some kind of suppressed ability which represented an ability that was deemed to strong but what was also too strong to remove. So they buried them and made everyone think that they had been removed from the power pool completely.”

            “And she found this ability?” Naomi questioned.

            “And took control of everything…” Kelvin sighed. “She led Geoff’s father to his death, and took control of everyone who opposed her.”

            “But not Tom or Lizzy?” Naomi asked, confused as to why Jackie’s greatest threats were allowed to roam free.

            “Without knowing it, they each resisted the mind control. So did you and Felix,” he elaborated. “You can’t control someone who doesn’t want to be. So she let them win in the hopes that by turning others against them, she would be able to take back control.”

            “But it didn’t work…because by that point they had already taken control of us the old fashioned way,” Naomi smiled. “Through sheer respect, they had something that she never had.”

            “She never had people who were that loyal – she never had anyone who were loyal at all – she couldn’t over ride the loyalty…” Matt explained as he felt his lungs collapse, causing him to begin gasping for breath.

In his breathless state, he pointed towards the pool and gestured for Naomi to pull it out, which she compliantly did. However, since he had lost all feeling in his body, he simply felt a slightly tingle around the wound before the life left his body completely.

Naomi stared down at her father’s body, tears streaming down her face as the strange mix of red and black aura rose from his body and engulfed her causing the end of her hair to turn a fire-like red while for about two millimeters of length the hair turned black. Felix rushed back up from the corpse of his dad to see Naomi crying.

            “They’re dead,” Felix stated. “What did he say?”

            “Jackie can control people’s minds,” Naomi cried. “They had no say in their actions. It was all her.”

In the distance, police sirens sounded causing Naomi to turn to her right to see that the torch guard had disappeared. “We should go,” Naomi decided. “I’ll explain the mind control later.”

            “Okay,” Felix agreed as the two of them rushed for the stairs and out the back door before the police arrived.