The Acolytes of Crane (Theodore Crane, #1)(23)

He paused, with a solemn expression on his face. ‘We have to make a pact. If either one of us speaks of this to anyone, we risk great danger.’

‘And if you say anything, Lincoln, I will tell everyone about your crush on Samantha Xiong,’ I said after a few giggles.

‘Fine, I will tell them about your life-long crush on Mariah Espinosa,’ Lincoln sang out in a taunting voice.

We simultaneously agreed with a secret handshake, invented right there in the mall. We glanced over our shoulder: the rent-a-cops of the mall were staying behind a certain distance away, intently watching us.

Word had gotten around. Our disturbance back at the skateboard store made us a concern for mall staff. To shake them off, we shopped around like the rest of the mall zombies, and we bought some orange drinks. While we sat sipping on our drinks, Lincoln told me that if the security guards gave us a hard time, he would use Aikido on them.

Lincoln had an orange belt in Aikido. He told me that in Aikido, one was taught to return their enemy’s force against them. Ultimately, a person could manipulate the force of their enemy to advance his own position, or defeat them entirely.

“After we ditched the teen-monster-building mall guards, we darted to our next target. It was a sporting goods store.”

“Do you need something, prisoner?” the guard asks.

I wasn’t sure why he was asking me. Days would usually go by without interactions. Then I realize, I said, mall guards, when speaking to the tablet. He must have overheard what he thought to be “guard.”

“No, nothing sir,” I responded. After he grunted and walked off, I continued the account: “The second test was to find out whether or not The Intervention could control an object with accuracy. This would be so cool, as perhaps we could use The Intervention as a means of exercising great power at our command. The object needed to be set into motion by me, and I had to want to hurt someone with it...”

To ensure success, we practiced in my backyard with a football the day before. I would throw the football straight at Lincoln’s face. With his excellent reflexes, he would catch it just before it hit him. We weren’t ready to engage The Intervention just yet, thus Lincoln always held his hands up near his face, to signal to any omnipresent force that nothing would happen. The aim was to wear down my reluctance to throw that object straight at his face.

We spent a whole day practicing. My grandparents must have thought we were bonkers while watching me practically attempting to maim Lincoln with a football, and seeing Lincoln repeatedly dodge disaster with a wide grin on his face.

There were to be two parts for the new trial, in which Lincoln would not defend himself at all. For the first part, I was to be provoked into throwing the ball straight against Lincoln. If The Intervention allowed my toss to hit Lincoln squarely in the face, it would have meant that my actions were warranted. In part two, I would chuck at Lincoln for no reason at all, and see if The Intervention would halt the ball. If nothing happened both times, Lincoln would be badly wounded, and we would be at square one. That would really stink. What a brave guy.

We talked about The Intervention as if it was a beast. We found that the physical energy that we were toying with was not only intelligent, but was also much more powerful than any beast.

We entered the sports apparel store. It was lightly occupied with customers, which allowed us to have witnesses around. My stomach churned in this public environment. I felt this might be a bad idea, because I did not want to harm my best friend. As I was about to turn to Lincoln to suggest canceling our trial, he let loose the trigger statement:

‘You are a loser, just like your dad!’

Memories of my kid-beating dad flooded me, triggering vitriol throughout my veins. I grabbed a baseball and spun around with fury.

I was like a wild behemoth on the mound of a baseball diamond, ready to beam the batter for angering me at the plate. I blasted off the ball straight at the forehead of the mocking Lincoln, who kept his hands at his waist this time. I then recoiled at what I had done, covering my mouth. Shock finally registering within Lincoln, he grew bug-eyed and attempted to duck, but was too late to avoid the ball’s blazing path.

Then, the ball froze in mid-air.

Our eyes bulged and our jaws dropped.

The rapidly spinning ball was like a yo-yo that went to sleep and never came back. It sat rotating in front of Linc’s face for about a second-and-a-half, then fell to the checkered floor.

We both gaped at each other in awe.

Shaken and excited at the same time, I suddenly recalled I had to complete the second part of the trial. Quickly, I picked up another baseball, and fired it straight at Lincoln. This time, he merely stood, jaw wide open, transfixed by the spectacle of impending doom.

The second ball did something I would never forget. Just as it was about to rearrange Lincoln’s nose, it hovered. There was a localized burst of light enveloping the ball, and then it vanished.

An elderly lady, attired in a floral-themed blouse and beige pants, clucked at us, and shakily walked ahead, muttering to herself as she did so.

“That ball just went gone!” a child’s voice rang out behind us. We turned.

A little girl, about six years old, tugged at the pants of her father, a middle-aged spectacled man who appeared to be a bit of a jock, with a tight-fitting T-shirt. They both stared at us, with jaws open.

The man blinked in shock. He rubbed his eyes. “No, no… it didn’t,” he told his daughter. He, too, was shaking his head in amazement.