The first time I ever met Tempest, it was a complete accident. The only reason our paths ever crossed was because of my horrible nanny, Ethel. Yes, despite the fact that I am sixteen years old, I have a nanny. My father would say that she wasn’t a nanny; she was a ‘supervisor.’ She would make sure I was coming home at the appropriate time, and being fed, and getting to school. She had to manage these things because my father was “too busy” and my stepmom didn’t care. Honestly, I didn’t care if they didn’t care not only because I could do all those things myself, but also because I was no fan of my fathers. With my father’s business finally ‘taking off’ for the 4th time that year, he had to be places, managing it from the closest cell phone tower. He hadn’t remembered he had a daughter for years. As for my stepmom, well, she was my third stepmom. I didn’t really expect her to come home and be all, “So, honey, how was your day?” She was barely older than me anywho.
So I was stuck with Ethel, and let me say, she took her job way too seriously on the watch Alice part, and way not too seriously on the ‘Alice is not your personal slave’ part. I found myself being drilled about where I was at 4:30, yelled at for being at play practice, yelled at for lying about where I was (which was indeed play practice), yelled at for sneaking off with my “secret boyfriend or other some such,” (I didn’t have one), yelled at for not having a secret boyfriend to sneak off with, and then ordered to go down to the store and buy several packs of Big Red chewing gum, the latest issue of People, and two decaf coffees. Sometimes Ethel sent me other places for various things, like Publix brand marshmallows and Raisin Bran cereal. Other times she simply told me to go buy her something. Needless to say, it wasn’t unusual when she told me to go to the newsstand at the corner three blocks down and buy an issue of the New York Times for her to read. I did as she asked and headed down there to buy what she wanted. I was handing the guy sitting there a five-dollar bill when this girl comes tearing down the street and whacks right into me, knocking me to the pavement.
“Hey!” I yelled, grumbling and struggling to get up. When I looked up, I expected the girl to be long gone, but she was just sitting there, staring at me with big, frightened gray eyes. As I studied her, I noticed that she was tiny. She looked maybe twelve, and so thin I thought that if she turned sideways, she would disappear. She had long, black hair, and vampire worthy pale skin.

“I-I’m sorry,” she stuttered as she scrambled up. I was about to give a haughty watch where you’re going, but when I saw her face, I stopped. She honestly looked like she was about to cry, and her face was bracing, like she was scared I would hit her or something. Thunder rumbled in the sky and I looked up to find gray clouds sliding into place. It was going to rain soon. I sighed, “It’s okay.” The girl didn’t say anything at first, just stared at my five-dollar bill. Then, suddenly, she whipped out her hand, grabbed the money, and raced down the street again. I didn’t stop to think, I just hiked my bag higher on my shoulder and sprinted after her.
Okay, so with how much money my dad makes in an hour and with what percentage of that wage goes into my allowance, five bucks was next to nothing. I should have just let her take it. But I really didn’t like that I had been stupid enough to get robbed in the middle of broad daylight on a busy street. I set my mind to getting that money back. I may be really clumsy, but when I wanted to, I could run. I started gaining on the girl quickly. She glanced back at me with a terrified look on her face, and that’s when it began to rain. It came really suddenly, and really heavily. I could barely see a thing. I focused on the black shape that must have been the girl. She had gained some ground, I observed, as the rain didn’t seem to hinder her at all. I saw her shape veer into a convenience store, and I went in after her, ducking through the doors out of the rain. I whipped my head left and right, and spotted a blur as she slipped behind one of the displays.
I didn’t bother to run this time because I now stood between her and the exit. I was just rounding the corner to confront her when a white hand shot out and pulled me down into a shadowy corner. I found myself once more staring into the gray eyes of the girl. She wasn’t sniffling anymore, but she gave me such a look of pure terror that I didn’t even cry out. “Please girl, don’t say anything,” she said. I don’t know why I was suddenly taking orders from a weird, tiny girl that robbed me in the street, but something made me nod. I saw that she still had my five dollars clutched tightly in her hand, but she was also holding a thick folder. Kinda like what you would find if you looked into one of my dad’s filing cabinets.
I heard the door chime go off as someone else entered the store. The girl peeked around our hiding place then gasped and tried to make herself squeeze farther back into the wall. Her eyes had gotten as big as saucers. I felt my body vibrating, and I realized it was her. She was trembling. Well, whoever could make this girl so scared was certainly someone I wanted to see for myself. I tried to peer discreetly over my shoulder, while the girl hugged her folder to her chest. I saw two big, dark, and wide men with hats and sunglasses covering their faces. They looked comical, not scary, to me. They reminded me of the secret service guys in those lame spy movies Hollywood kept churning out. I heard them speak. “We are looking for a young girl. Black hair, gray eyes. Maybe about five feet tall. You seen her? Her father is so worried, he had us searching all night,” the first one said to the man behind the counter. His voice was impossibly deep. And menacing. He might have used the same tone to threaten to rob the store. I found myself chanting silently, please say you haven’t seen her, please say you haven’t seen her. If I wasn’t trying to be silent, I would have said a nasty word when the jerk behind the counter gestured towards the back of the store. The men headed, of course, straight for our hiding place. Once again, an unexplained and irrational thought of, whatever happens, don’t let them have her, flitted through my mind. No time to wonder why the sudden desire to protect his random girl had gripped me, but my best guess is simply because of the look she gave me. She was so scared. I hated bullies, and from where I stood, these guys definitely fit the profile. I held my breath as they walked by our spot, but exhaled slowly when they didn’t even pause.
I closed my eyes to still my racing heart. Then I heard the girl scream. My eyes shot open as I was hauled to my feet by one the men. The girl struggled in Ugly 1’s grasp, while Ugly 2 held me fast. He didn’t suspect something was wrong until my fist connected with his nose. He gave a surprised grunt and let me go. I ran and gave everything I had into Ugly 1. The girl took the opportunity to start backing away. Unfortunately, while I was busy with Ugly 1, Ugly 2 had the foresight to grab the girl again and drag her out the door. Even more unfortunately, being distracted by that, it became easy for the man I was fighting to punch me in the ribs. The force of it sent me flying out the doors and crashing to the pavement. I groaned as I made myself get on my feet again. I watched helplessly through the pelting rain, as the girl was forced towards a waiting van, too dazed to do anything.
The girl screamed again, but it was different this time. Her scream, instead of dying out, seemed to grow and intensify until it was echoed from all directions, reflected from every raindrop. It reminded me of the calm before a storm. And to my shock, the storm responded. Thunder rumbled so loudly that the very ground seemed to shake. Lightning flashed across the sky, and every hair on my body stood on end. The air grew thick with static, and the sky went black. I looked up in time to see a new batch of rain falling with renewed vigor. But something was different about this rain. It almost looked like… it was! Not rain at all, but a solid wall of water, careening down from the heavens. I only just in time had the brains to duck back into the store before I heard a pounding as the wave hit. I saw the girl had managed to free herself from her captor during the deluge. She was running down the street again, almost around the corner. I looked at the two groaning men on the ground, and the cowering sales guy behind the counter. I heard my phone ringing and pulled it out to see Ethel’s face under caller ID. Then I ran after the girl once more.

I found her in an alley sheltered behind some recycling bins. The rain had since died down, and I reasoned that might be because of her. When I started towards her, my feet scraped on the pavement a bit, and she looked up at me. She had her now drenched folder in her hand, and I noticed for the first time that she wasn’t wearing clothes. She was in what looked like a hospital gown, except it buttoned in the front and was made of slightly thicker material. Actually, now that I saw it, I marveled at how I could have missed it. She spoke then, “Aren’t you going to do something?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything. I thought this was going to be easy. But I don’t know anything about people, do I?” I got the feeling she was talking more to herself than to me. She looked down into her left hand, where my money was still clutched, wonder of wonders, and then held it out to me. “Why are you giving it back?” I asked, incredulous.

“Well, it’s yours, right?”

“Well, yeah. But you stole it, so I thought you might want to keep it. When people steal things, they usually don’t plan on giving it back,” I said, feeling like Captain Obvious. But the girl shrugged. “Five dollars won’t get me very far. At least, I don’t think it will. I just was so hungry, so I took it. I’m sorry. Especially about… Oh! I dragged you into that fight with me, didn’t I?” She looked stricken. “I didn’t even think about that until now! Are you hurt?”

“I’ve had worse. What were they chasing you for?” I asked, certain I already knew the answer. The girl opened her mouth. “It’s because you started that storm, didn’t you?” I answered for her. She closed her mouth, and then nodded. “That’s my abnormality. I cause storms. Wherever I go, it storms. It usually depends on my mood for how bad the storm is, but I never really got to test it out before. The government wants us as unnoticeable as possible. They told me I was the most dangerous one at the facility. Where’d you learn to fight like that?” she asked suddenly.
“Self defense classes. They told me I was the most dangerous one in the classroom,” I joked a little. Frankly, I couldn’t believe I was joking around when I had just discovered that people who had a superpower such as drastically changing the weather existed, and the government knew about it. “Why were those men after you? I take it they weren’t really agents of your fathers,” I asked.

“Well, people like me aren’t really supposed to exist, right? So they built a gigantic facility to hold all of us in and keep us from the outside world. I lived there my whole life and never left, always just stayed in my room while men with big noses and three inch thick glasses stared at me and recorded everything I did. I always dreamed of getting out, of finding a better place to be. It was horrible in there. I managed to make a few friends on the inside, and they helped me escape. But they weren’t just going to let me go. I wasn’t a person to them. Just an investment and an experiment. They may as well just have kept me in a dog crate. That was how they treated me. I told myself when I escaped I wouldn’t ever go back, but they’ve already sent out tons of people to find me. I’m surprised I made it this far. I can’t really fight.” I listened to all this with undying interest. Then I realized something. “I don’t even know your name!” I exclaimed. “I’m Alice, by the way,” I said. The girl thought for a moment, and then said, “I’m Tempest. I think.”

“Don’t you know your own name?”

“I never really had one. But that’s what the scientists called me when they came to stare. The Tempest Project. I kinda like the sound of it.”

“Tempest. That’s kinda long. Can I call you Tem?” I asked. She made a face. “How about Pest?” I made a face for that one. “Oh, I know! What about Em?” I exclaimed, excited to have come up with it. The girl smiled. “Em,” she said. “Okay.”

“Hey Em? What are you going to do now? You need to find somewhere safe, right?” I asked. I had an idea forming in my mind, but I kept trying to drown it in excuses. Why it wouldn’t work, why it couldn’t happen, but it kept cropping up.
“Well, I guess I didn’t think about it,” Em answered. “Maybe I could find a way to go south. I want to go somewhere warmer. I don’t have any money.”
“Not to mention you can’t go around in those clothes without freezing to death,” I added. “You need some money, and you need help.” I took a deep breath before I proposed my idea to her. “How about I come with you?” I said boldly. Em looked shocked for a second, then she said, “But don’t you have family that would want you back home?” My phone vibrated to signal a text message. I looked at the screen. It was Ethel. She was demanding to know what happened to me and she also wanted to tell me that my dad wasn’t going to make it to dinner. Again. My dad hadn’t had dinner with me in eight years. I snapped the phone shut. “You know what? I’m coming with you whether you like it or not. I’m going to help you find somewhere safe, and we’re gonna be best friends. And that is that,” I said. Em hesitated, then smiled. “Okay,” she said.

The next few months were a whirlwind of being chased, fighting, laughing, and learning more about Em. She was quiet and sweet. She really liked cinnamon rolls. Of course, there were the ever-present storm clouds that followed her everywhere. During all that time, we became best friends. It was just me and Em, on the run from the government. And being completely and totally honest, I was having the time of my life. Like I said, just me and Em. Until that day we met Tony. We were never going to hurt him. We just wanted his car. When we first set out, Em and I had a goal of making it to Florida, where it was warm, and according to Em, where she was born. By the sea, that is. That part of her always remained a mystery to me, but from what I could gather, Em had been born in a cottage by the sea with her mother. She lived there until she was four years old when her mother had disappeared suddenly. Em told me that she had been taken to an orphanage when her powers suddenly started to emerge. She was six years old when they came and took her away.
Anyways, during our time together, we had slowly made our way south, and when we finally saw the sign that told us we had entered Florida, we were both really excited. Needless to say a big clap of thunder made several of the people in the same bus as us yelp. I told Em she should tone it down a bit. We finally made it to Miami. The minute I stepped off the bus, I looked at a newspaper stand and gasped. “Hey, my birthday was two days ago!” I was seventeen. I looked down at myself to find that I looked absolutely no different. Em laughed, “That means my birthday is in four weeks.” Despite how small she was, Em was sixteen. A thought flitted across my mind, and I frowned. “What is it?” Em asked, sensing my sudden distress. “My dad promised he would buy me a car when I was seventeen,” I answered. Em’s face crumpled, “Well, I guess we could….” Her voice trailed off. I quickly blew away her discomfort, “If we had a car, we could have been here a lot sooner. Not to mention we could have a getaway car.” Her face cleared and took on a new look. She had an evil glint in her eye. “If you want a car, then we’ll get a car,” she said. I picked up on the threads from her thought and I imagined my face mirroring hers. “Bubble Gun?” I asked. “Bubble Gun,” she confirmed.
We’d done this one before to steal food from a grocery store in Alabama. Yes, stealing was a crime. Yes, we really had needed the food. I pulled around my slightly battered backpack and rooted around until I found and lifted out two guns. I gave one to Em and we started walking down the street, looking for the right car. I touched Em’s arm lightly when I caught sight of a small Jeep that was a bit rough looking, but also sturdy. She nodded and we followed the Jeep until it came to a stoplight. Our eyes met, and with a nod we ran quickly to the Jeep, opened the doors, and jumped in. The guy behind the wheel jumped and gave us a startled look. When he saw it was just two girls, and one of them was small enough to still need a booster seat, he relaxed a little. “What the heck are you chicks doin’?” he said. “Get out of the car,” I said as I raised my gun level with his face. “Yes. Or we will be forced to shoot you,” Tempest said, doing the same. I almost laughed at the thought of Em actually hurting somebody. She wouldn’t even send down lightning bolts to fry the bad guys chasing us, like I had suggested once. The guy looked flabbergasted. I guess he wasn’t expecting us to be packing. Sheepishly, I thought to myself, he’s kinda cute. But just a little. He had a tanned face, dark brown hair, and brown eyes. Mentally shaking myself, I countered my thought with; we need his car so snap out of it. “Get out of the car,” I said again. Whoever it was, he had guts. Not moving an inch, he said, “Why do you want it?” “That is none of your concern. Now do as Alice says,” Em said. I winced at the same time as she did. Thanks for telling him my name, Em. Of course, the guy was smart enough to pick up the slip. “Alice, huh? And what’s your name, sweetie?” he asked. Uh oh. I looked over to see Em turning red as a tomato. She hated it when people mistook her for some little kid. Thunder rumbled in the sky, and I peered out the window to see the sunny sky turning black with clouds. “Don’t. You. Dare. Call. Me. Sweetie!” Em shouted the last word, and lightning flashed. “Easy, Tempest,” I cautioned. I only used her full name when trying to calm her down. Too late I realized my mistake. “Tempest. That’s an unusual name for a little girl,” the guy said, and I gave a sharp intake of breath. He still thought she was a little girl, huh? Well, it was his funeral. Em took deep breaths and I for the fleetest of moments I thought she was trying to calm down. Wishful thinking. This guy had crossed some line. I gave another glance out the window in time to see the clouds swirling slowly. Uh oh. There had only been one other time when Tempest made a tornado, and the result had not been pretty. She didn’t seem to notice the weather, though. She jabbed her gun into the guy’s cheek, and I saw him lose his careful mask of indifference for just a second. This boy was really scared of us. Cars behind us honked. The light had turned green.
“Get out of the car now!” Em screamed. The guy hesitated, and then said, “If you wanted to take my car, you shouldn’t have told me your names.” So now he held all the cards. Or so he thought. I looked in the back of the car, where two boogie boards rested, and was graced with an idea. Two minutes later, we were speeding away, with a guy in the back seat who happened to be tied and gagged with his own boogie board leashes.
“What are we going to do about him?” I started to confer with Em. “Who cares?” she answered, obviously still annoyed with the little girl comment. “Um, Em? You think you could tone the twister a bit?” I said. Em seemed to snap back to reality for a second. “What? Oh yes, right, sorry. Hang on.” She closed her eyes, concentrated for a little bit. The clouds kept swirling. “Uh, Em? Nothing’s happening,” an edge of worry crept into my voice. When we were passing through Atlanta, Em had lost control of one of her storms and couldn’t make it go down. Luckily, the only thing that happened was nonstop rain for a couple days, but if she lost control of a tornado? No telling what could happen. She started singing, “The sun’ll come out… tomorrow. Bet your bottom dollar that, tomorrow, there’ll be sun.” It was the only song she knew, and she sung it all the time. Right now, it seemed oddly appropriate. I gave a big sigh of relief as the clouds disappeared. Em glanced back at the guy tied in the back. “Awwwwwww man,” she drawled out. I’d only recently taught her when it was the right time to say different slang phrases she didn’t know. Right now, we were working on ‘whatever’. I turned to Em and said; “You don’t say it when something goes right.” I stopped to look where she was pointing. The boy had gotten his gag off, but wasn’t saying anything coherent, just, “She… storm… stopped… because of her…” He was staring at Tempest like she had four eyes and two noses. I gave my best dramatic sigh. “Aww, perfect.” Now he knew both our names, both our descriptions, and Em’s little ‘magic trick.’ We might as well just give the guy our phone numbers and emails, and tell him to come to this address whenever he wanted baseball practice to get rained out. Not that we had a phone, an email, or an address.
We drove for a while until it started to get dark. Em pointed out an empty parking lot and we stopped and after a small debate, decided that waiting till the morning to deal with the boy seemed like the best option. We hadn’t bothered to redo his gag because he hadn’t said a word the entire trip. Our fatal mistake was not staying up to watch him. We both made ourselves comfortable. I was just dozing off when Em’s voice pierced the darkness, “Alice, do you think my mother’s still alive?” I paused, trying to choose my words carefully. “Ummm… well… I’m sure she’s okay,” even I could hear the lie in my voice. Em waited. I backtracked quickly, “That is… it’s just… To tell you the truth, Em, after all this time, she might not be coming back.” I could have slapped myself. Nobody wanted to hear that. I thought about when my father told me my mom was not coming back. I only stopped crying to sleep and go to the bathroom. To my great surprise, Em gave a relieved sigh. “That’s what I love about you Alice. You never try to sugarcoat things. If I want to know the truth, I can just ask you.” She was silent a moment, then said, “It’s been almost twelve years since I’ve been at that cottage. I was only five when I left you know.” I could hear the exhaustion in her voice, but I answered her anyway, even though I knew she would be asleep soon. “I know.”

When I woke up to find it was still dark outside, I thought something might be wrong. When I gained enough consciousness to realize there was a gun pointed in my face, I knew something was wrong. It was the guy we stole the car from. He’d wriggled out of the boogie board ties and had grabbed one of our guns while we were sleeping. His eyes were wide behind the barrel of the gun, and I got the feeling that he was uncomfortable holding it. “Wake up your friend,” he said. Despite the story his eyes told, his voice was steady. Good actor. I reached over and nudged Tempest. She shot up so fast I was surprised she didn’t get whiplash. Thunder boomed overhead, and the boy flinched. “What?! What is it!?” she shouted.
“Em, don’t look now, but we’ve got a problem.” Of course, upon saying that, she looked. Taking in the situation, she said, much more calmly, “Now Tony, let’s be reasonable about this.” The boy, Tony, was taken aback, “How do you know my name?”
“In the glove compartment, there’s a piece of paper. It has your full name on it. Tony B-plus. That’s his name.” She looked proud of herself, but I was confused. Tony laughed bitterly, “Knew that thing would come back to haunt me. Worst grade I ever received.” Something clicked in my brain. “Your worst grade was a B+?” I said, incredulous. I decided right then that I didn’t like this guy.
Now it was Em’s turn to be confused. “But… Oh! Yes! The grade as in school! I knew that!” I turned to Em, “You didn’t go to school? Did they home school you?”
“Well, yes, but the grading system was different. You pass or you fail. There was no in between.” Sometimes I wondered how a person couldn’t understand the concept of grades, but knew the Latin name for almost every species of shark in the ocean. “What are you talking about?” the boy demanded. He lowered the gun a fraction, and that was all I needed. He was out cold in two minutes. “You broke your record,” Em said, retrieving the gun. “Yeah, but your distraction was good. You know, for a dollar each, these things really come in handy.” I took the gun from her, and pulled the trigger. “And look! Instant entertainment!” Em laughed and started popping the bubbles coming from the end of the gun. “What about him?” she said. ‘Him’ was currently lying flat on his face; sprawled in such a way that it was a pity I didn’t have a camera. And I thought baby photos were embarrassing. “Well, we could just dump him somewhere,” I suggested. Em nodded, looking a little sad. “I thought he was funny,” she said. “He kept things interesting.”
“We have all the creepy trench coat people to do that for us,” I replied. I heard a groan, whipping my head around to see that Tony was waking up. “Awww man!” Em groaned. I almost laughed. Almost. Tony looked around, caught sight of us, and put his hands up. “Okay, okay. You got me! You are clearly the better criminals here.” “’Better’ criminals?” I repeated, puzzled for the moment. Suddenly, a light bulb painfully flashed in my brain. “You! You’re the criminal!” He shrugged as an answer. Em caught on quickly, “This isn’t your car, is it?” He shrugged again. I thought about the paper in the glove compartment. “And Tony isn’t your name, huh?” He said quickly, “No, Tony is my name. I stuffed that in there when I stole the car. That’s why I stole the car, actually. A guy I know got a better grade than me. This is his car.” “Anger management, much?” I giggled. I don’t know why, but I found the whole situation to be hilarious. Apparently, Em did too because she was suppressing laughter when she said, “That’s why you looked so funny when we got in! We were stealing a stolen car!” She seemingly couldn’t hold it in anymore, and she burst out laughing. That set me off, and my donkey bray filled the car alongside Em’s tinkling giggles. Tony couldn’t help but crack a smile. Em stopped laughing, and with a solemn face, said, “Do you want to come with us?” Tony just stared. I nudged her. “Stop it, Alice!” she said. “He knows!” I drew in a sharp breath at that. I had completely forgotten. Apparently so had Tony, as his eyes widened, remembering. “Yeah, well, nobody will believe him! They’ll just lock him in some padded room someplace!” Em recoiled at that. I groaned internally. She knew just what it was like to be in a padded room, and I knew that she would be even more adamant about this random dude going with us now that I had mentioned it. “Yes, but they will believe him. They are already on our trail, and even if they only catch a whisper about what he’s seen, they’ll follow our trail even more! We have to take him!” she argued. I had to admit, it was a good point, but I wasn’t done arguing. Tony interrupted, “Wait, who is ‘they’?” I turned and snapped, “The government facility people Tempest escaped from!” I rotated back to Em, already inhaling to go at it once more, when he interrupted again. “Whoa! You guys are on the run from the government? That’s sweet! Why?” Em sighed, giving me her best pitiful look. “Go on, tell him,” I huffed. She grinned, faced Tony, and told him everything. I was still sulking when she was finished, and ready to kick him out and drive off, but wouldn’t you know it? He said he would go with us. And so our twosome became a threesome.

Flint could feel his face turning red as he screamed his head off at the poor assistant who was given the task of informing him the bad news. “HOW HARD IS IT TO FIND ONE GIRL!!!??? ONE!!! SHE’S MAKING STORMS AS SHE GOES ALONG!!! ARE YOU LETTING HER GO ON PURPOSE???!!! AND WHAT’S THIS CRAP ABOUT THREE KIDS???!!! SO TURNS OUT YOU’RE NOT LOOKING FOR ONE!!! YOU’RE LOOKING FOR THREE!!! AND TWO OF THEM HAVE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING EXTRAORDINARY ABOUT THEM AT ALL!!!”
“Actually, s-sir… the blonde girl w-with the short h-hair? S-she’s supplying the m-money. Her father is v-very w-wealthy, sir. And the b-b-boy? He’s s-smart, sir. He’s the one who’s b-been c-covering their tracks, s-sir,” the man stammered. Flint took a deep breath, rubbing his temples. Every minute the prisoner was loose was millions of dollars lost to the facility. Not to mention if the girl got hurt. These creatures didn’t exactly have insurance. Through clenched teeth he said slowly, “I don’t care how you do it. Just. Find. Her.” Flint was still concerned about the current financial state of the facility, but the girl was the sweetest inmate there. Much better to be around than the monster in Level C, with its constant screeching and demands for bloodier meat rations. He would be truly sorry if something happened to her. He watched the rat like assistant scurry out of his office. Something must be done about this, he thought, and we need something more than probationaries and computer geeks going after the girl. Flint didn’t know whether to sigh or grin. “Looks like I’m goin’ back in the field,” he said.

“The sun’ll come out, tomorrow. So you gotta hang on till tomorrow. Come what may…” Em’s voice rang softly throughout the car, letting Tony and I know that she was nervous. I could see why. We were driving down a dirt lane. The dirt lane. Em could hardly contain her excitement, or hide her jittering nerves. Rain fell steadily and gently on the roof of the car. Tony joined in with her singing, which annoyed me because his rickety voice killed the peaceful movie moment of Em’s song. To me, he sounded like a giant bulldozer running over the Empire State Building. It was all screeching metal and screaming civilians. “Shut up B+, before you break a window,” I said. Tony glared, but thankfully, he closed his mouth. Now we were both annoyed with each other, which was the norm. Tony and I had had an interesting relationship over the past few weeks. The only reason he didn’t give me a smart retort was because he knew I would knock him out for it, and he was the one driving. Em sighed, “Can’t you two get along for just a moment, so I can worry about something important for a change?” Thunder rumbled in the distance. The rain fell a little harder. I raised my eyebrows. That was the meanest thing Em had ever said to us. Either of us. Of course, she couldn’t take it, and quickly said, “I’m sorry. It’s just that I haven’t been back here for so long. I’m just a little…” “Spastic?” I tried. “Freakin’ out?” Tony supplied. Em gave a halfhearted glare, but after a few seconds, she let it fall from her face. “Something like that.” I didn’t reply, staring at what lay ahead, but Tony said, “We’re here.” Em opened the car door slowly. She stepped out onto white sand, and walked up to the little screened in porch. I jumped out quickly and followed her. Tony scrambled, tripped over his feet, fell on his face, jumped up, and proceeded to stumble his way towards the door. I remembered a time when I thought I was clumsy, but that was before I met Tony. Next to him, someone with four left feet would look graceful. I entered the kitchen, watching Em run her hands over everything. The kitchen looked like someone was still living there. Utensils and pans were hanging from the ceiling, and a dishrag was thrown carelessly on the counter. When I voiced my observations aloud though, Tony, using the know-it-all voice that I hated, said, “If you look closely, you’ll find that there is a layer of dust over everything, suggesting that no one has been here in some time.” I stuck my tongue out at him. Em ignored both of us, moving on to the next room. When I tried to follow her, I felt a hand on my arm. “Let her go. She needs to be alone,” Tony said. I stayed in the kitchen. Tony sat in one of the little chairs at the counter, and I did the same. We sat in silence. Tony cleared his throat loudly. “You sick or something?” I smirked. Tony pressed his mouth in a line, “Alice, you are absolutely impossible sometimes.” “Yes I am, and you are such an annoying weirdo.” “And you’re just a spoiled rich kid,” he countered. My face screwed up and I felt like curling up into a ball. Tony backed tracked, realizing he’d gone too far, “Alice I’m sorry, I just-wait, did you hear that?” He tensed, straining his ears to pick up some obscure sound. “Don’t pull that one,” I said. He was momentarily distracted, “Pull what?” “You know, act like there’s something wrong just to cover up what you said,” I was angry now. “I’m not stupid, Tony!” We stood glaring at each other until we both heard it. Thunder. Not the annoyed, rumbly kind, but the angry, frightened kind. It cracked like gunshots around us. We took one look at each other’s scared faces, and ran. I raced through the house like one of Em’s tornadoes, leaving destruction in my path. I screamed her name, and heard Tony echoing me. Then another sound pierced the sudden darkness over the cottage. A car. It was loud, hurting my ears at first, but to my dismay, it started to fade. I tore back the way I had come, not bothering to look at Tony as I passed him. I went through the front door because it was the closest exit. The sky was black, the ocean was churning and clouds swirled dangerously. Around the house, but all I could see was a speck as the van that had taken her drove away. I was halfway to the Jeep before I noticed the four flat tires and the puddle of foul smelling gas that was pooling on the ground underneath the car. I ran back to the front of the house and screamed into the sky. The sky screamed back, flashing lightning and drenching me with a wave of rain. I noticed a strange string of clouds that were lighter than the rest. They were swirling strangely, weaving into what looked almost like… I gasped. The words ‘gas stop’ were written in the sky. It would’ve been the coolest thing I’ve ever seen if the situation weren’t so horrible. I shivered in the rain. Tony came up beside me. “They’re stopping for gas,” he said, acting like sky messages were a daily occurrence. I looked at him. My brain had shut down. He grabbed my shoulders and shook me, “Snap out of it Alice! There’s still hope! She wants us to come save her, not sit around and shiver!” “It was my fault,” I whispered. “You heard them taking her, and I blew it off. It’s my fault.” I almost didn’t feel the slap. Almost. I yelped and grabbed Tony’s hand before he slapped me again. “Do you want to save her or not?” he yelled in my face. I yelled back, now that he had jump-started my brain, “Uh, guess what genius? We don’t have a car!” “What was I doing when you first met me?” he said. “Let’s go before we miss ‘em.” He ran down the path. I didn’t think, just wrapped my soaking jacket closer around myself and ran after him.

Flint couldn’t believe his luck. He had the girl. And it had only taken him a plane ride and a little bit of stealth. He believed that the best way to track down something was to start at the roots. The girl hadn’t been back to her home in a long time, but if he studied where she had lived, he might be able to reason where she would be going.
When his team drove up the lane to the cottage, low and behold! Another car was sitting by the back porch. He had the driver park a ways back, then took two men and snuck around to the front. It was beautifully executed. The girl had been in the front room, reading the titles of the books on the shelves. He’d managed to put his hand over her mouth before she could scream, but she was smart. She kicked out with her feet and knocked a couple of books to the ground. He had one of his men tie her and carry her out the door.
Thunder boomed loud enough to make him cover his ears and he looked up to see lightning start flashing. Enormous waves flung themselves against the sandy shore. “Hurry,” he snapped to the man holding her. “Those two friends of hers are bound to be around someplace.” The man nodded and hurried off, Flint close behind. He heard the other girl screaming, “Em!!! Tempest!!! EEEEMMMMM!!!! Where are you????!!!!!” Huh, he thought, didn’t know she’d given herself a name.
The van was already pulled up close to the house and running when they threw the girl in the back. Flint hesitated, and then pulled out his knife. He made sure the other car would be less than serviceable, then jumped in the passenger side. They raced away, the girl banging around in the back and rain attempting to hammer through the roof. After a couple of minutes, the noise fell silent. Flint looked back at the girl to see she had closed her eyes. Accepting her fate, he assumed. It made him a little sad to see her just lying there, eyes shut and every muscle in her tiny body tensed. He shook himself away from those thoughts and told the driver, “First gas station you see, stop. We have a long drive to the airport.”

We drove the station wagon like we were trying to outrun a nuclear bomb. We didn’t say much, except things like, “Take the next right turn, that’s where the gas station is. No, don’t SLOW DOWN!!! GO GO GO!!!” Even though we had sprinted up the road until I had almost collapsed from exhaustion, and Tony had hotwired the car in record timing, I still felt like it wasn’t good enough. We wouldn’t get there fast enough. Needless to say, I’d chewed an inch off my hair before we pulled up to a gas station. I was frantic, looking around for the car, until Tony tapped my arm and pointed. A black van with no markings.
“How do we signal to Tempest that we’re here?” I said. Tony thought for a moment, and then said, “Quick, do you still have those sunglasses from Jacksonville?” I pulled them out of my pocket, and gave them to him.
“What about a hat or something?” I rooted around in the back of the station wagon before pulling out a fake mullet hat. I pinched it between two fingers and dropped it in his lap.
“Perfect.” He put the ensemble on and said, “Get down and wait for the signal.”
“What’s the signal?”
“You’ll know it when you hear it.” I hunkered down below the dash to wait.

The girl had already asked to be untied twice when Flint finally agreed. She couldn’t get out of the van, it was locked. What was the harm? Flint was tapping his fingers, wishing his team would hurry up and go to the restroom when he heard a knock on the window. He looked over to see an old hillbilly looking character gesturing for him to roll it down.
“Excuse me, but do you know the best way to Rescue Street?” the man asked. He had a bit of a twang and his mullet was so greasy it almost looked like plastic. Flint answered, “No, I don’t. You could go ask the man in the store. He might know.” Flint was rolling up the window when the man said, “Pretty weird weather, we’re a-havin’, huh?”
“Yes, very weird,” Flint tried to roll the window up again, but the man kept going. “Figure I’ve seen just about everything now. I wouldn’t be surprised if it started hailing.” Almost immediately after he said it, hail pounded the van. The man yelped, and covered his head, trying to create some cover. Thankfully, he started to back away. Flint looked back at the girl, positive she was the reason for the sudden change in weather. She was leaning against the back door of the van, staring off into space. Flint turned back around and watched the mullet man run towards a beat up station wagon. A woman was getting out. She had short, blonde hair that looked like it had been cut with a weed whacker. Flint saw a child running towards them. It was a whole family. He squinted, trying to see better through the pounding rain and hail. They looked awfully familiar. He was trying to place them, when he knew. One look into the back of the van confirmed it. He shouted into the walkie-talkie at his waist. “Alpha Team! Get out here now! The girl is escaping! Repeat! THE GIRL IS ESCAPING!!!”

As soon as I saw Tempest running towards us, I felt so relieved I staggered. We hugged and I said, “How did you get out of the van?”
“I picked the lock from the inside.” I looked at her with shock written on my face. “You don’t think I just opened the door and walked out of my cell at the facility, did you?” I laughed.
“Uh, people? I can’t get the car started,” Tony interrupted. We ran around to see if we could help, but neither one of us knew anything about cars. It was then I heard a sound that made my blood turn to icicles in my veins. Men’s voices rang out all around us, and we looked up just in time to see black clad officials running towards us. They were upon us in an instant. I immediately busied myself with fighting them off, but it was hard when I had it four against one, and they were on the offensive. The hail level increased, and I realized that it was my greatest advantage in the fight. Em was protecting me, and not a single hailstone touched me. As for my opponents, they weren’t so lucky. They flinched as each stone hit them, and I smiled at the thought. I was starting to gain an upper hand when I heard a shriek. One of them had gotten a hold on Tempest and was dragging her towards the van. I tried to get to her but the men blocked me, seeing that they were going to win. I watched helplessly as Em was dragged away, but then something changed. The rain and hail stopped for an instant, and I saw Em’s face. She was genuinely angry. I had never seen her like that before. She locked her feet, making it harder for the man to drag her, but that wasn’t the only thing she had in mind. I heard a horrible roaring, and looked up to see three tornadoes drop from the sky. I luckily had the sense to get down before two of the men fighting me were lifted off their feet, and propelled into the sky. Thunder snarled and lightning arced down, striking not a few feet from Em and her captor. The man gave a yell, throwing up his hands and letting her go.
She ran towards the station wagon, the tornadoes snaking back into the clouds, the darkness receding. She made it, and I cheered. Unfortunately, Tony still couldn’t start the car. We were looking around for a better escape option when Em tensed beside me.
The last man, who had previously just been standing dazed while we worked, had grabbed her arm. He looked a lot older than the others, and he had been a better fighter too, landing a few good punches on me. He looked at Em, then at us and muttered, “Your a lot better than Level C, huh?” He pulled out a key fob, and tossed it to Tony. Then he ambled over to the remains of the store, where the clerk was cowering behind some rubble. Em sighed, and said, “He was always a little nicer than the others.” Then she headed towards the black van, not looking back. Tony and I didn’t hesitate this time. We just followed her.