The Loop

July 30th

“You’re suggesting we get the police involved, Adam? Really? The police?” I truly couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

“It was just a suggestion,” Adam shot back defensively.

“Guys …” Lincoln was looking around at all of us with a level of bewilderment that made his normally intelligent face look foolish. “We have to do something. If what you’re telling me is real …” He gulped, took a deep breath. “This is Shannon we’re talking about. It’s my girlfriend.”

When he’d arrived at the restaurant and met us in the back storeroom we had crammed ourselves into, he had wasted no time at all in making contact with the orb. It was like he’d made up his mind to touch one long before we’d even contacted him. We’d waited until afterwards to tell him about Jaleel’s prophecy. He’d presented a surprisingly calm demeanor in light of the news, and I—who had only met him a handful of times before—had to hand it to him that he was every bit as logical and cold as Adam had described him. But with all the circular discussion and debate that had happened since he had been informed, his composure was starting to crack.

“Right,” said Adam. “But even if this wasn’t somebody we knew, we’d have to do something. No one is debating that. I just think we let the professionals handle this one. I mean, what are we? A bunch of college and high school students with no real skills outside of making pizzas and—” he gestured toward Lincoln “—hacking computers—”

“—I’m also a pretty fast runner,” interjected Harper with a small smile. She kept trying to interject levity into the situation, which I found somewhat inappropriate, but it seemed to have a calming effect on both Lincoln and Adam, so I kept my mouth shut.

“Sure,” Adam continued, “and Harper can run fast. And Christine’s the most driven person I know, and both Jaleel and Lincoln are basically super geniuses … Doesn’t fucking matter. You think the cops don’t have smart people who can run fast?” He paused for a second as if trying to find the words to end the debate. “We don’t know what the fuck we’re doing. We don’t even know what we’re getting ourselves into. We know from a news program from the future that Jaleel saw in a hallucination that police will find Shannon’s body two days from now. How did her body get there? Was she murdered? By whom?” As he spoke, he had a mushroom and a piece of green pepper floating in circles around his right hand, like an unpowered person might have a stress ball they kept squeezing or a rubber band they kept snapping. I would have found it incredible, or at least amusing, if I hadn’t been so mad at him.

“That’s what we figure out,” I said, exasperated, peeling my eyes away from his hand and looking him in the eyes.

“Plus, I think you’re ignoring something kind of important,” said Jaleel. “We have all the skills you listed. We also have superpowers. The cops don’t have that.”

I nodded vigorously and thought about clapping.

“Finally, someone who fuckin’ gets it. And by the way, why are we talking out loud?”

“How else would we talk?” asked Lincoln, looking at me with an odd mix of perplexion and fear on his face.

Like this, thought Adam. I wasn’t sure how ready Linc was for the big reveal.

What the actual fuck? The thought came from Lincoln, but it was relayed to us through Adam, and it had a sort of muffled quality to it as a result. It was how we had been communicating since the rest of us had touched the orb, and I wondered why we’d stopped when Lincoln had shown up, but now I had an idea. Two ideas, actually.

I get it, I thought. Either you wanted to appear less powerful than you are to strengthen your argument about why we should do nothing to help this poor woman.

Adam shot me a reproachful look but I continued on before he could deny it.

Or you don’t trust Lincoln enough to reveal your power to him. I bet it’s eating you up inside that you had to call him in here, isn’t it? I bet it’s killing you that it had to be his girlfriend Jaleel saw in that vision.

Lincoln gave me a curious look, then turned it toward Adam. I was confused, but then I realized what was happening. Adam wasn’t relaying my thoughts to the others.

You’re wrong, he said. I love Lincoln like a brother. And I want to help Shannon. I’m just afraid that if we try, we’ll fail, and he’ll never forgive me for that.

Back up a second, Lincoln thought, and Adam went back to relaying everyone’s thoughts to everyone else. I was under the impression you could just move stuff with your mind. You can talk with your mind, too? What about the rest of you guys? Harper? Jaleel?

In our rush to get him up to speed we hadn’t really given him a proper primer on what we could all do. Come to think of it, I thought, we hadn’t really bothered to explore what he could do now.

We gave him a quick rundown on our powers.

So if I’ve got this right … You, Adam, have telekinesis and telepathy. Useful combo. Jaleel obviously can see the future, which I’ve known from the start, but it seems to have some caveats.

Right, thought Jaleel. I saw that one vision of two nights from now, according to the date in the bottom of the screen on the T.V. And now, try as I might, I can’t see anything else but that same exact moment. And I didn’t choose that time, it’s just what my power happened to show me. And, as far as I can tell, all I can see is whatever I myself will be seeing at that exact point in the future.

Okay, thought Harper. I don’t think we needed that much of a technical rundown right now, Jaleel. But loving your enthusiasm.

I smirked, both at her sarcasm and at Jaleel’s scowl.

And you, Harp? You can, like, mimic other people’s appearances? asked Lincoln.

Not just their appearances, she said. If they’re strong, I get strong. If they’re agile, I get agile. To accentuate her point, she moved rapidly through appearances, taking on the face and a facsimile of the body of each member of our gathered group. I get their bodies with everything that entails.

Everything? asked Lincoln with mock dismay.

Everything, she shot back, winking at him. But only as far as my body has enough mass to recreate theirs, she finished.

“Ugh,” he groaned. Okay, and Christine, you can … what? Convert heat into light, light into heat? That sort of thing?

I wasn’t sure what to say. We hadn’t had long enough to practice and experiment with our powers to really figure them out before this crisis had come along and interrupted what we were doing. I had a feeling it was more than what he was saying though.

I think—and bear in mind I’m not sure of any of this—that I’m like a battery, and that I can also convert any type of energy into any other. Or … like, if you punched me in the face, my body would just absorb the kinetic energy without me getting hurt. And I could store that energy to be released later.

I’d gotten this idea when I’d whacked my elbow off the doorframe trying to squeeze into this closet, and instead of feeling pain had felt a sort of subtle swelling of energy.

That seems incredibly useful. So what do we need the cops for, again?

“Because,” said Adam, a note of finality in his voice, “we’re not heroes. We’re not vigilantes. We’re not investigators. We’re just a bunch of … I want to say young adults, but two of us aren’t even that; Harper and Jaleel are literally children. Guess what? We have superpowers. Guess what? We already used them to help Shannon. If not for Jaleel here, we wouldn’t even know that anything bad was going to happen to her. We need to take what we know to the police, and let them handle this. It’s too big for us. We’d fuck it up.”

“Then what the fuck was the point in touching that stupid thing?” I asked, pointing toward the orb. “Why did you make us touch it? Why did you touch it in the first place? Why not just bring it to the police and let them have it?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe I should’ve done that.”

Adam, I said, hoping that he wouldn’t broadcast what I was about to say to the others. You have to understand … If this is how you’re going to be, then I don’t think I want to be with you.

It was only partly true, but it felt like exactly the sort of thing that would persuade him. It hurt me to say it, and if he cared to look into my mind, he would’ve seen that. I trusted him when he said he wouldn’t do that.

Please don’t do that. We just got this off the ground. Do you know how long I’ve wanted to kiss you? To hold you? And I know you’ve wanted those things, too. Don’t throw it away just because we don’t see eye-to-eye on this one thing.

This one thing is everything. I took a deep breath and looked at him pleadingly before plowing forward. I see now that it’s the exact reason why you never asked me out, even though you obviously wanted to. It’s the reason why you didn’t even bother applying to University of Houston, even thought that used to be your dream school. You don’t take chances. You don’t do anything that could possibly result in failure. I can’t understand what I ever saw in you.

I knew those words would sting to hear. They stung for me to say. Or, well … think.

Before our emotional shit could turn this debate into something uglier than it had to be, I continued out loud, “I’m going to try to help Shannon however I can. I’ll do that on my own if I have to. I hope some of you will join me.”

“Obviously I’m in,” said Lincoln.

“I’m with my brother,” said Harper.

“I’m not certain my power can help any more than it already has, but I would also like to help,” said Jaleel.

Everyone was looking at Adam now. They weren’t accusatory looks. They were sad, and pitying, and maybe a tiny bit hopeful. Maybe that was just me; I couldn’t really see the others’ faces.

“Guys … I want to help. I just …”

“We get it, Adam.” Lincoln leveled a gracious smile at his old friend, even clapped him on the shoulder. “Thanks for at least getting me here and letting me know what was up. Thanks for picking me to touch the orb. I—we can take it from here.”

We filed out of the room, leaving Adam behind. Without discussing it, we all walked out of the building, leaving our manager, Derek, looking dumbfounded, as if he wasn’t quite sure if we were pulling some sort of prank on him.

“We’ll rendezvous at our place,” said Harper. “You guys know the way?” She looked at me and Jaleel.

“I’ve been there once with Adam,” I said, remembering when he’d taken me there to get high with his ‘totally awesome friend, Linc’. I had a sad, nostalgic smile on my face thinking about it.

“I’ll just follow you guys,” said Jaleel.

“By the way, Lincoln, what is your power?” I asked, suddenly realizing we hadn’t figured it out yet.

“I wasn’t sure at first, but I think I get it now,” he said. “It’ll be easier to just show you when we get to my place.”

We set out in our cars, kicking up dust from the gravel parking lot as we went. I glanced in the rearview to see if Adam had come outside to watch us off. He hadn’t.

But as the restaurant grew smaller in the window, I could almost have sworn I heard a voice in my head that wasn’t my own. It spoke only two words: good luck.