Prologue

The young pines swaying in the breeze of a fine summer day rustled back and forth along a fenced perimeter, marking the boundary between public ground and Quantico Marine Corps Base, one of the most well-known military reservations in the United States of America. On that base were logistical and command centers for Marine operations, the training academy for the agents of the F.B.I., and numerous "black ops" compounds and buildings, places where having a top secret clearance wasn't enough to get within a quarter of a mile of the buildings that housed their dark secrets. They were scattered all over the vast expanse of Quantico, hidden within the mixed pine and hardwood forest of north-central Virginia, surrounded by fences and patrolled by guards who would shoot to kill anyone they found trying to break in. There were several of these ultra-high security compounds on the base, and in true secretive fashion, there was nothing to distinguish one from the other to those who even knew they were there. Each was protected by a measure of anonymity, for each compound was little more than a single lane paved road guarded by a guardhouse and armed guards, meandering into the protective cover of the forest which concealed them. One might know that a road led to a black ops compound, but unless one had prior knowledge, he wouldn't know which one led to which compound. And not knowing could get one shot, if he got too curious.

Each compound was unique. Some were but a single shack, nothing but decoys to throw off would-be invaders. Some were single small buildings surrounded by electrified fences, some were multi-building compounds enclosing yards, testing ranges, and occasionally even greenhouses or gardens. But there was one particular compound hidden in the expanses of Quantico that was unique among all of them, for it was the only compound that enclosed a playground for children.

It didn't have a name. None of them did. But because of the multiple buildings of different sizes and architectural styles scattered willy-nilly across the grounds, the residents of that compound had nicknamed it "the rabbit warren," or simply "the warren." The people who worked there called it Site Alpha, its official government designation, turning it into a name, but not officially acknowledging that it even had one. Nobody ever visited Site Alpha. Supplies were brought in by workers, and nobody even got within a mile of the compound's perimeter fence that wasn't supposed to be there. It was defended by more than roving patrols of soldiers who belonged to no officially recognized governmental organization, it was defended by an armada of motion sensors, cameras, thermal detectors, land mines, limpets, ambush zones for automated machine guns, three separate electric fences, high-powered lasers for blinding reconnaisance aircraft and satellites, white noise fields to defeat sound surveillance, and Phalanx anti-projectile systems, which used a massive barrage of .50 caliber rounds that saturated the air around what they defended with a layer of flying steel, to strike and destroy any oncoming missles, aircraft, skydivers, or drones.

Site Alpha was more heavily defended than the White House, and it was one of the most closely guarded secrets that the government had managed to keep.

Site Alpha didn't house ultra-high tech research or weaponry. It wasn't the storage and test sites for wreckage of alien spacecraft. It was actually a rather mundane and unassuming place, with its playground and little schoolhouse. It was the occupants of Site Alpha which were why it was so heavily guarded. There were seventeen people who lived at Site Alpha, ranging in age from nine to twenty-four, remarkably unassuming children and young men and women who shared a singular trait that invariably brought them together, and made them America's most precious and guarded asset.

They were all psyhic.

That, of course, was a very crude term. The technical jargon that the scientists and researchers used was psionic. "Psychic" abilities were actually a subset of psionic ability, a part of a greater whole. Seventeen young boys and girls who the researchers had started to call Alphas, after the site itself, and the nickname had stuck. Those in this most inner of inner loops always referred to these gifted boys and girls as the Alphas. And in a way, it was an eminently suitable monicker. They were the first human beings to display psionic ability to any great degree. There had been people with true talent before, but never of a level to make it worth the government's while. But these seventeen, these Alphas, these had powers and abilities that were formidable, to the extent where the government had seen the incredible value of having them working for it. They were seventeen, but they were only the seventeen Americans who had displayed talent, and other governments were seeking out and collecting up their own citizens who were starting to develop psionic ability.

Nobody was sure yet why these powers were expressing themselves now. Pollution, climatic change, evolution, racial progression, no one was certain, and there were no hard scientific answers. They only knew that they were, and because of that, it was of the most vital importance to the security and prosperity of the United States that those people out there with psionic talent be located and recruited.

Site Alpha was commanded by Marine Corps Major General Jackson Briggs, who was sitting behind his desk in his surprisingly small office on the third floor of the Nest, the central building on the compound, where the vast majority of testing, experimentation, and training was conducted. Jackson Briggs was the absolute soul of a Marine. He was in his late fifties, but was still in such shape that he could run men a third of his age into the ground without breaking a sweat. He was very tall, six and a half feet tall, and had pattern features for a black man; full lips, a rather broad nose, a stocky, burly body, a cap of curly black hair cut into a flat-top (yet still within Marine regulations for size and appearance), and piercing brown eyes that intimidated anyone who looked into them for any amount of time. He was decisive, calculating, observant, intelligent, and methodical. He had amazing attention to detail, and he could bring out the absolute best in every man and woman that served under him. He was a born leader, and he was what the Marine Corps envisioned in an officer. And that was why he was in command of the government's most important and secret project. He sat at his antique mahogany desk, a desk that had moved with him from assignment to assignment for nearly ten years, chomping at the end of a pencil as he studied pictures and bits of data on pieces of paper laid out on his desk. He was in his Class A uniform, the tan-brown and green dress uniform of the Marines, the creases of his pants and short-sleeved shirt so sharp that one could cut paper along the edges of them, a shirt on which he used Scotch-Guard on the inside so it never appeared that he ever sweated, a Drill Instructor trick he picked up when he commanded Parris Island.

Sitting on the edge of his large, beloved desk was a young woman who obviously was no Marine. She was a tall, athletically fit young woman wearing a black jumpsuit, the clothing that identied her as a resident, as an Alpha. She was a rather pretty woman in her early twenties, with curly hair that was black as midnight, tumbling over her shoulders and down her back in raven waves. Gray eyes so light that they almost looked white regarded those pictures laid out on Briggs' desk. Her name was Jessica Sheffield, or Jess, and she was the oldest of all the Alphas. She was a telepath, and quite a strong one at that, the most powerful of the five telepathic Alphas in the warren. She was leaning on one hand that was set on the desk, brushing her thick hair out of her face absently every time it slipped down over her eye. Jessica was a girl that Jackson Briggs would very much have liked to have met if he were thirty years younger. She was very pretty, she was built like a brick house, and she was very, very smart. He appreciated her beauty and her mind, but Mrs. Briggs would hit him over the head with a chair if she ever found that out. Mrs. Briggs was a very jealous woman.

"So, this is the one Alex keeps seeing," he said in his growling voice, putting the pencil down. Alex was the reason they had a Site Alpha. He was both a clairvoyant and a precognate, with a unique ability to see images of distant places and things that had an impact on the future. His power seemed strangely geared towards other Alphas, and for five years they'd had him searching for them. Alex was fifteen years old, a frail young man with a documented case of schizophrenia and a very fragile mind, so they had to be very careful with him, never push him too hard. He had his good days and his bad days, but he had led them to fourteen of the seventeen Alphas on the compound. But he had not led them to Jess. Jess was the first Alpha, who they had found as a terrified and nearly insane young girl ten years ago in a mental hospital, who they had realized was truly telepathic. Her powers had driven her to the brink of insanity, and they'd kept her controlled with massive doses of drugs that made her nearly comatose most of the time. They kept her like that because when she was not drugged, she terrified the institution's workers. She could hear the thoughts of others, and when she was greatly agitated, she could use her power to attack others, invading their minds and able to take any information within them that she pleased, among other, less pleasant things. The discovery of Jess had awakened the government to the existence of the Alphas, and her rehabilitation by the scientists who studied her gifts and trained her in their use were why the Alpha Project had been instituted. Site Alpha was a place where the Alphas could be taught how to use their gifts, a place where they would be understood and accepted, and all they had to do in return was perform occasional work for the government that had pulled them out of mental hospitals, homeless shelters, and the streets. All seventeen were so grateful to discover they weren't going insane, so happy to be among people who accepted them, that they all willingly agreed to become a part of Project Alpha on a permanent basis.

"It took them a while to find him," she affirmed in her low, throaty voice. "This one's different, Jack. He's not like the others."

"I can see that," he grunted. "Twenty-two years old, and he's been living on the streets since he was twelve. The local police suspect him for all kinds of shit, I can see," he said, flipping a piece of paper over to read the one beneath. "Burglary, extortion, arson, mob ties, even suspicion of killing a cop. They have quite a file on him, but they've never arrested him. Looks like a punk to me."

"That's why he's so dangerous," she said. "This one's not a scared kid, Jack. This one knows what the hell he's doing, and if even half of all this shit is true, he's going to be dangerous."

"What did Maggie say about him?" he asked. Maggie was a medium, who had connections to spirits and forces beyond human comprehension. They gave her information of all kinds, and when asked specific questions, sometimes she gave them informative answers. Sometimes she didn't. It seemed completely random.

"He's a telekinetic," she answered. "And he's a strong one. She hinted that he can do things that Pete and Lucy have never even thought of."

General Briggs was quiet a moment. "That makes a kind of sense," he announced. "The police down there has been watching him since he was seventeen, and they've never caught him doing anything illegal, or caught him using his power. If he's been surviving by using his power, then he's got about five years of practice on Petey. And when it comes down to doing something or dying, it tends to make a person pick up tricks." He held up a picture. "What's with the white hair?"

"We don't know," she answered, tapping the image and the jagged streak of white hair that marred the dark auburn color of the rest of the man's hair, with a hint of a scar on the forehead leading up to that white streak. "That scar there hints that it's a remnant of an old injury. But it does make him very easy to identify in a crowd."

"That'll make it easy," Briggs grunted.

"How are we going to do this?"

"I'm not sending you, Jess," he said immediately. "This one is dangerous. You said so yourself."

"I'm not a child anymore, Jack," she flared. "I don't need to hide behind your stars. I'm the best telepath you have. You should let me try to recruit him first."

"I'm sending Barry."

"Barry? Barry's too stupid," she said gratingly. "And he has a temper. You send Barry when you're going to abduct someone. We should try to recruit him first. If he's as strong as Maggie's hinting, we don't want to piss him off. How are we going to deal with him when we get him up here?"

"We've handled combative Alphas before."

"You've handled inexperienced Alphas, frightened children who didn't know what they were doing," she said quickly. "This one is not a child, Jack! He's probably already well versed in his power, and we don't know what he can do! Send me, Jack. Let me try to recruit him before we send in an abduction team."

General Briggs glared shortly at her. He'd considered that, but her reasons to send her were the same reasons he'd decided on Barry. This one was an unknown, and he had ten years--at least--to hone his telekinetic ability. Add the fact that he was a punk, a street hustler with quite a bad record, and it made it too dangerous to send in a single Alpha to try to persuade him to join the project. Jess was stronger than Barry, but Barry was a six foot tall hulking bull of a young man who could take care of himself physically as well as mentally. If this street punk fought back, Barry would be much better equipped to deal with it.

He had to take those kinds of precautions. Even if this street punk wasn't a telepath, their research had shown that if he'd become proficient with his own powers, that mental training would help him resist a telepathic attack. If he could fight off Jess's telepathic attack, she'd have no physical defense against him.

"Oh please!" she snapped. "I wouldn't be going down there to pick a fight with him in the first place! We need to woo this one, Jack, not kidnap him! And I'd be better at that than Barry any day."

Briggs suppressed a smile as he glowered at her. "Keep yourself out my head, young lady," he warned.

"I didn't do a thing," she protested. "I don't need telepathy to see it in your eyes, Jack. Send me. Let me try to persuade him. I'm better equipped to try that with him anyway," she concluded, passing a hand over her chest meaningfully to draw his attention to her breasts, a formidable piece of equipment when a woman was trying to persuade a man to do something.

Briggs did chuckle then. Jess was a rather bold young lady, and he always appreciated her sense of humor. "Sorry, Jess, not this time," he told her. "I'm sending Barry, Petey, and Michelle. Barry'll try to talk to him first, but if that fails, he'll be better equipped to handle him afterwards. Besides, I don't want you to be there. You're my best telepath, and you might need to try to persuade him after he gets here. I don't want his opinion of you tainted if we have to volunteer him to join."

She frowned, but said nothing more. Briggs looked at the picture, taken of him on a sidewalk from a car across a busy street, and he could do nothing but frown. Briggs had a bad feeling about this one. He didn't need to be an Alpha to trust those hunches, and those hunches were why he was sending Barry instead of Jess.

They were usually right.

He'd much rather leave him alone, not worry about it, but if he didn't come to Alpha, then some other government's psionics might discover him and try to recruit him. That could not be allowed to happen. If this MacKenzie didn't work for America...then he wouldn't work for anyone.

Briggs had orders about those situations.

He frowned again, studying the picture, feeling that bad feeling only get worse.

This Terrence Agamemnon MacKenzie was going to be a real problem.

Chapter 1

Fifteen minutes. That's what he had left before he had to go back inside.

It was just too nice to move quite yet. Summers in New Orleans could be rather brutal, and that July day had been like any other, up until the thunderstorm rolled in. Storms in New Orleans were unpredictable in nature as a whole, but each different kind of storm had certain kinds of patterns that the residents understood. This one was an isolated storm, small but powerful, and they could all clearly see that it wasn’t going to reach the UNO campus for another twenty minutes.

Like many of the students on campus, the tall, leanly built young man sitting on the ground with his back against a live oak wasn’t all that worried about the storm quite yet, and was willing to enjoy the sudden cooling wave of air that preceded such storms before running for cover when the deluge reached them. But this young man was unlike any other on campus, and quite possibly was unlike any other young man in all of southeastern Louisiana. It wasn’t his piercing blue eyes, or his dark auburn-red hair with the white patch just over his left eye, or even the way his eyes seemed to both read from the book in his lap and scan everything around him at the same time, like some kind of wary, caged wild animal.

His name was Terrence MacKenzie, and he was very, very special, for Terrence MacKenzie--Terry or “Kit” to most who knew him--was a telekinetic. He had been so since he was twelve, and his telekinetic abilities were the only reason he was still alive.

Nobody would be able to guess at his amazing talent simply by looking at him, for he looked quite plain, utterly ordinary. And he worked very hard to remain so. He wore a ragged old pair of jeans with both knees torn out of them, and it was by no means a fashion statement, for many in the school had noticed, with quite a bit of snobbish delight, that he wore those same jeans every single day. His Reebok sneakers had a hole in the side, the soles were nearly worn all the way to his feet, and his tee shirt was very old and fraying on the left sleeve. He was the appearance of a desperately poor young man who shouldn’t have a hundred dollar computer programming textbook spread out on his lap, and shouldn’t be able to afford tuition at a university. It was merely one of many mysteries, misdirections, and lies that surrounded him, for he actually had quite a large sum of money at his disposal. The only problem was that that money was gained through crime, and to spend it would draw attention to himself.

He certainly didn’t look like a criminal, but Terrence MacKenzie was one of the most prolific criminals in New Orleans. On the street, he was known as the Fox, one of the most cunning and successful cat burglars in the city. He had quite a career behind him, and had managed to amass a sizable sum of money during the course of it, the fruits of ten long and hard years living on the streets. He had quite a few scars to show how hard it had been, and the white patch of hair over his eye--the result of having a section of his scalp literally slashed off by a knife--was merely the most visible. When the hair grew back after he healed, it came back in white. He had managed to avoid getting caught by never getting greedy, hitting a large number of small targets and taking modest amounts, instead of risking hitting a big target for a large amount. That was much more dangerous, and even if one did get a big score, spending that money and having to account for it could be something of a problem.

Well, it wasn’t easy, even for him. Being in one place for years, and the fact that he had to deal with fences for the jewelry and other very small and valuable objects he stole when he was younger and engaged in house burglary, gave him a reputation. That reputation had reached the police, and that meant that they watched him. Or, more to the point, one man watched him. Detective Sergeant Michael Lange, to be precise, the one cop on the NOPD that had decided to turn Kit into his personal crusade. He was watching him right now, from that unmarked unit sitting in the parking lot, watching and waiting. Lange probably thought he’d enrolled to case the registrar’s office and rip the place off. He could do it, but he was here to leave his criminal past behind him and get an education, try to do more than live off his wits and his power until that day he dropped his guard and ended up dead in a gutter. That was the fate that awaited all people like him, even if they did get rich and successful. But few of the rowdies or the mob bothered him. He was small time, was well known to be small time, and had declined numerous offers to join this gang or that crime family to provide them his formidable skill as a thief.

He couldn’t join them because they’d learn his secret, that his skill came from his power, not his training. Kit’s telekinetic gifts made theft a nearly ridiculously easy profession. With his power, he could unlock windows, had learned to unlock doors, and could retrieve all manner of small, valuable objects from a room without ever having to set foot in it. He’d kept his secret for ten years, through those terrible first years after his parents had thrown him out of the house for having “power given by the devil,” he’d managed to keep it as he floundered with his unusual gift, learned how it worked, even mastered its basic function and began exploring just what he could do with it. He had kept it a secret long after his need to steal passed, when he started living off the money he’d saved up over six years, when he’d learned many, many clever and formidable tricks regarding his telekinetic abilities, some learned to make stealing easier, some learned simply to see if he could do it. His parents had thrown a twelve year old boy out of the house because of his power, and he wasn’t about to let anyone else know about what he could do. He didn’t want to end up on some government dissection table, because he knew that’s exactly where he’d end up if his secret ever got out.

Well, this was unusual. Lange was getting out of his car and walking over. Lange rarely bothered to speak to him, and when he did, it was nothing but a string of curses and profanities and promises to throw him under the jail and lose the key. He marched right up and stood over him, but he didn’t bother to look up.

“You’re not getting away with it,” Lange said in his gravelly voice, a voice damaged by too many years of yelling and smoking.

“I dinna' ken what yuir talkin' about, man," Kit said casually. It was one of his more clever tricks. He grew up with Scot parents and had spoken with brogue until he'd been teased so badly by other kids that he learned the American accent, but he never spoke to others in any other way than brogue. That established a unique method of speaking that identified him, and also allowed a fellow that looked a lot like him that always wore a hat that didn't speak like that to not be connected with him. He already had a patch of white hair that made him easy to identify. Adding the brogue wasn't much extra. "And yuir using up what little time we have til yon storm gets here."

"I've got a new bitch down in the parish jail," he said with a grim smile. "Vinny Gold."

Vinny Gold was one of Kit's fences at one time, back when he used to steal from houses. But that was years ago. He didn’t do that anymore. Kit glanced up at the unpleasant face of the detective, minor irritation dancing through his blue eyes. "So?"

"So, as soon as I put the screws on him, he'll turn evidence."

"I dinna' see a pair o' handcuffs, so beg yuir pardon if yuir threats don' bother me 'tall," he said in a mild tone, putting his book back in his pack. "Now, if yui'll excuse me, I'll be needin' ta' get inside before the rain hits." He stood up, and Lange gave a little ground to allow him to do so, leaving his pack and umbrella on the ground. "Asides, yuir D.A.'ll put you under yon jail 'afore he lets ye put a finger on me," he said in a serious tone, but with a slight, malicious smile. "Connick, he's not the squeaky-clean figure he's duped the voters into seein'." He slung his pack over his shoulder and regarded the detective with amusement. "You see, I have a wee bit o' somethin' that Connick would kill ta’ keep from being made public, an' he knows I have it."

Lange frowned.

"If yuir goin' ta' be a thief, man, ye have to know what ta' steal," he said with a wicked smirk. "So go ahead, Lange. Get yuir evidence, and then just try to get a warrant. I'll be puttin' a bet on the table here an' now that Connick calls ye to his office, and tells ye no himself. Care ta' cover?" He reached into his pocket and waved a twenty dollar bill in Lange's face.

Lange gave him a dirty look. "I'll settle for your ass," he growled.

"That, ye willna' get," he said evenly.

Lange looked around, then took a step back. "I'll find somethin'," he announced. He took one more step back, then went for the weapon holstered under his arm. He pulled it out and pointed it at him. "You're under arrest!" he barked in a loud voice, attracting quite a bit of attention from the other students. "Hands on your head! Turn around!"

It was a split second to decide what to do, but it was all he needed. He swept out with his power, waves of it, emanations of telekinetic force that both partially reflected off solid matter and also penetrated it, a trick he called sounding. It was a form of telekinetic sonar or radar, but it allowed him to look past solid objects, even inside of them, to see the internal workings of a device or the contents of a cabinet or safe, for example. He could only sense shapes, not see in any way, so he couldn't read writing or see colors, but he could tell by how a material responded to his sweep, sensing its texture, what kind of material it was. He could tell paper from steel, plastic from wood, cloth from living tissue, leather from vinyl, by the texture of the matter that comprised it. In that split second, he sounded Lange and found two guns on him, one in the holder under his arm and another hidden in the pocket of his coat, a small .25 caliber "streetline special." A drop piece. Lange was going to cuff him, put him in his car, drive him out into the Ninth Ward, then shoot him, leaving that gun in his dead hand.

Lange was going to kill him.

Moving with the speed of thought, Kit sent his power into the nine millimeter in his hand. He had learned to sound because he could only affect objects he could see with his power, or things he knew beyond any doubt where they were. By learning how to sound, he had learned how to look inside solid objects and affect them. The combination of sounding and his telekinetic power allowed him to pick locks, defeat magnetic reed switches, turn off security systems, even crack a safe's combination lock, without having to be anywhere near the item in question. He was intimately familiar with the internal mechanisms of all kinds of weapons, but especially police guns and weapons favored by gangbangers and thugs. Just for such emergencies as this one. By the time Lange had the weapon free of its holster, he had already disabled it, breaking the pin that connected the trigger to the linkage that actuated the hammer. He could pull the trigger, but it wouldn't do anything at all..

Kit gave him a steady, sober look, unmoving as students stopped where they were, staring in macabre fascination at the drama unfolding. "Och. It seems ta' me that yuir not tellin' the whole tale. An' where will we be goin', Lange? Downtown? Storyville? Tremè? The Ninth Ward, maybe? The little Colt ye have in yuir pocket sings a different song, ye ken. If I get in that car with ye, I willna' live ta' see the station."

Lange gave him a startled look, then his face hardened. "Stop blowing smoke. Now hands on your head! Turn around!"

Kit crossed his arms and gave him a steady look. "Nay."

"No?" he repeated in a strangled, unbelieving tone.

"I said nay," he repeated. "If ye want ta' shoot me out here in front o' all these witnesses, be my guest. I dinna' think their statements will be matchin' yuir report. Yui'll lose yuir badge at the very least, or maybe end up in Angola at the very worst. I ken that cons aren't ta' be likin' ex-cops all that much."

Lange's fingers were trembling on his weapon. Obviously, he was debating the very thing himself. Or perhaps he was rattled by Kit's observations. "You are going to put your hands on your head and turn around, or I will shoot you here and now," he said in a slow, deliberate voice.

"An' how are ye goin' ta' explain how all these students saw ye cuff me and put me in yuir car after they find me dead in some empty lot?"

"Who said they'd ever find you?" he hissed in a very low tone that the ring of students, some twenty feet away, would not hear.

And there it was. That was the confession he was digging for. Now he had no reservations for what was about to happen. It was clearly a case of self defense.

"I have a little secret for ye," Kit said in an equally low tone, slowly starting to put his hands on his head. "Ye'll never get me in yuir car."

"And what's going to stop me?" he asked in a dreadfully eager tone once Kit had his hands on top of his head.

"The fact that you're about to die," he answered in perfect, unaccented English. He sounded Lange one more time to find his heart, then wrapped his power around it and locked it in place. Lange's heart found itself unable to expand, unable to complete a rhythm, and that caused his heart to register shock, which his body translated into pain.

Lange gave him a startled stare, and then gurgled out something like "grrbbbkk" and clutched his chest with his free hand. He dropped his gun and staggered backwards, putting both hands on his chest, then toppled over on his back, convulsing violently. Kit jumped back in feigned surprise, watching the man thrash on the ground as he kept his power around his heart, freezing it in place, killing him in a slow and painful manner that was absolutely essential to reinforce his alibi. He didn't relish killing a man like this. When he killed with his power, he usually ruptured a choice artery in the brain that caused nearly instantaneous death, what doctors called an aneurysm. But to solidify the illusion of it, he had to make it look like a heart attack.

"Someone call 911!" Kit screamed in brogue, then he lunged over to where Lange was thrashing and tried to hold him down. Lange's eyes were wild, bulging out as he stared at him, as Kit held him down by his shoulders. "You should never have admitted it," he whispered without brogue. "I don't like to kill. It cheapens my gift. But you made it clear that it's either you or me. I don't like killing, but I will to protect myself."

Another student joined him, holding down Lange's legs, then a group of them joined them to try to hold him down as someone started yelling that they had to see if he was breathing. Kit slowly allowed them to take over, pulling back, retrieving his golf umbrella from the ground, then standing over the scene with his pack over his shoulder. He kept his power on Lange the entire time, well after the four minutes necessary to cause brain death, making sure that the frenzied CPR that some of the students were performing wouldn't revive him. He kept his heart locked for ten minutes, then released his power to see if Lange's brain restarted his heart.

It didn't. Lange was dead.

He didn't like to do that. Killing was wrong. He stole out of necessity, and when he killed, it was out of necessity. He didn't relish it, and he certainly didn't enjoy slowly smothering the life out of a man and have to stand there and watch. But Lange had made it very clear that only one of them was going to survive this little encounter, and Kit simply took steps to make sure it was him.

He didn't feel mournful for very long. After all, Lange did intend to kill him. He simply mourned having to kill him the way he did.

Kit watched as an ambulance came, and a team of paramedics took over. He stayed back as they loaded him onto a gurney and piled him into the ambulance, making sure to collect his weapon, then he turned and walked back towards the building as he noted that the rain line was almost on them. He made it just in time. He and the other students watched as one of the paramedics slammed the doors on the ambulance and rushed through the sudden heavy downpour to the driver's side door. And then the ambulance screamed away with its lights and sirens blaring.

"Well, that's one way to get out of being arrested," a blond girl he didn't know told him with a sudden sly smile, who was standing beside him. She was short, thin, and built like a soccer player, with powerful legs that filled in the pant legs of her jeans. She had no backpack, but she did have a fairly large golf umbrella. She wore a simple black Korn tee shirt and a pair of old jeans, with Air Jordans on her feet. Her hair was very short, in a pixie style, and she had a pierced nose, with a little diamond stud in it. Despite the pierced nose, she was a moderately attractive young woman. A little too heavy of a chin for him, and her eyes were a tad too large and doe-like, but still attractive.

"Och, not one anyone would enjoy," he replied evenly. "Not even me."

"What was he arresting you for, anyway?" she asked.

"I dinna' have a clue," he answered. "I dinna' think I ever will."

"Hi, I'm Michelle," she introduced herself, holding out her hand.

"Terrence, but everyone calls me Kit," he responded, taking her hand. She had a firm grip, and her blue eyes seemed strangely intent for some reason.

"Why do they call you Kit?" she asked.

"Ta' be honest, I dinna' have any idea," he answered, which made her laugh. "They just do, an' I've gotten used ta' it over the years."

"Weird weather."

"Normal for here," he said. "I take it yuir not from here?"

She shook her head. "Visiting my brother. I just dropped him off for classes, and I don't have to pick him up. That means I'm free for the rest of the day," she said in a suggestive manner.

"Well, that's nice for ye," he told her evenly. "I suggest ye go an' visit the French Quarter during the day, so ye can see it when people dinna' act so daft."

"Geez, you're dense!" she laughed. "Want to go with me?"

"It's a temptin' offer, lass, but I canna' go. I have ta' go ta' work."

"Oh? Where do you work?"

"A tee shirt shop in the French Quarter," he answered honestly. He hated that job, but he needed it to maintain the subterfuge that he was a struggling student. But at least he wasn't always busy, so he had time to study before it got late and the tourists really started hitting the French Quarter. “Och, I guess they didna’ call the police, so I may as well go,” he said. “I was waitin’ around ta’ see if they were goin’ ta’ come, but it doesna’ look like they will. I guess the paramedics didna’ say anythin’.”

“Why wait?” she asked.

“`Cause I didna’ do anythin’ wrong,” he answered in an honest-sounding voice. “An honest man doesna’ fear the police.”

“You’re a trusting sort,” she chuckled.

“A man has ta’ trust somethin’,” he shrugged. “Have a good day, lassie.”

“Hey, it’s raining, and I have nothing to do. Want a ride?”

“Ye dinna’ think I have a ride of me own?” he asked with a smile.

“With those clothes? No.”

He chuckled. “Sharp eye, lass. But nay, I have a ride already. I dinna’ think he’d appreciate it if I bailed out on him over a pretty face. This fellow doesna’ take kindly ta’ bein’ stood up, over just about anythin’, and I dinna’ think yuir goin’ ta’ be here for the next two years ta’ drive me back an’ forth.”

She laughed. “I guess not. Well, nice meeting you.”

“Nice ta’ meet ye as well,” he answered, giving her a little salute with two fingers to his forehead, then he turned and wandered away from her.

Nice girl. But there was something about her that raised a little red flag in his mind…why, he wasn’t too sure. He really didn’t have a ride, but the rain really didn’t bother him. It was a three mile walk down to the quarter from the campus, but he walked it almost every day, so today would be no different. Rain or shine, his walk down to the quarter, which was also where he lived, in a cramped apartment over the tee shirt shop in which he worked, was a daily ritual. He shouldered his large umbrella and drifted off towards the side exit, which was a more direct line on his route down to the Quarter.

The dark-haired girl with the pretty eyes frowned as he left, and about five minutes after he was gone, she was joined by two other young men. One was a large, hulking kind of fellow with a small-eyed face, blond hair shaved in a crew cut, and a meaty kind of body that might belong to an offensive lineman. The other fellow was a very small, thin, wiry young man that looked about fifteen, with scraggly black hair and a pair of glasses with oversized lenses perched on his nose. Both of them wore simple blue jeans and different colored unadorned tee shirts, allowing them to blend in with the students.

“What did he do to that cop?” the girl, Michelle asked.

“I couldn’t feel anything,” the smaller young man replied.

“I can’t hear his thoughts, his mind is too disciplined,” the bigger man added. “But there was a sense of resolve coming off of him. I think he killed that cop. I don’t know how he did it, but I think he did.”

“I didn’t want to hear that, Barry,” the girl, Michelle, said with a grunt.

“I want to know how he did that, if he did do it,” the young man said eagerly. “I didn’t feel a thing!”

“Maybe he didn’t do it,” she said with pursed lips. “If Petey couldn’t feel anything, maybe he didn’t do anything after all.”

“General Jack said to be real careful about this one, Michelle,” Barry said. “That means that since we don’t know what happened to that cop, I’m going to assume that he killed him. We don’t know how he did it, but we have to act like he did.”

“So, what are we going to do?” she asked. “If he really can kill people like that, getting him back to Quantico is going to be extremely tricky.”

“I know,” Barry said with a frown. “I don’t think he’s going to be too happy with the idea of joining us willingly. What little I got from his mind showed me that he’s a paranoid. He doesn’t trust anyone.”

“He’s been on the street since he was twelve. That’s an understandable reaction,” Michelle told him.

“I know, but I don’t want to fight with this one if I can help it,” Barry scowled. “He’s too dangerous.”

“Then maybe we’d better call home and ask for some advice.”

“I think that’s a good idea,” Barry agreed.

“I still want to know how he did that,” the smaller young man, Petey, repeated under his breath.

“You call home and ask General Jack for some advice. I’m going to shadow him and see what I can get out of his mind. We’d better find out more about this guy before we make any moves.”

“What do you want me to do?” Petey asked.

“Stay with Michelle, Petey,” Barry ordered.

“Aww!” he growled. “I want to help you!”

“You can help me by staying clear,” he said. “What I have to do is gonna make me have to sneak around. Sneaking around is always easier when there’s only one person doing the sneaking.”

“Well, okay,” he sighed.

“I’m gonna take a cab,” Barry told them. “I’ll contact you when I need you to pick me up. Call me if anything serious happens, or General Jack has some info for me.”

“You got your cell phone?” Michelle asked.

He patted his pocket. “I remembered to charge it this time,” he said with a grin.

“Be careful.”

“You know I will,” he said, then turned and hurried off.

“What do we do now, Michelle?” Petey asked.

“Now we go back to the van,” she answered. “And we call the big man.”

He hated this job, but he had to keep up appearances.

It wasn’t that he minded working, he just hated dealing with drunk people all the time. When he got through a shift without dealing with drunk people, it actually wasn’t all that bad.

The shop where he worked wasn’t on Bourbon Street, it was on Royal Street, one block away, just past Dumaine and two blocks from Canal Street. Royal Street was as well known for its antique stores as Bourbon was for debauchery, but the antique shops started further down the street, leaving the first three blocks of Royal towards Canal open for more tourist-based businesses. If anything, though, it was convenient, because he lived in one of the tiny apartments that took up the second and third floors of the building. He lived on the third floor, and it was a simple matter of going out the shop, turning left, taking four steps, then going through a graffiti-covered door that went up a narrow, creaky, rather unstable staircase to the ratty apartments upstairs. The shop owner didn’t own the apartments, only rented her shop space, but she too lived upstairs with her husband. Kit rather liked her, a tiny middle-aged Thai-Vietnamese woman named Tranh who spoke very little English. She was funny and smart, but she was a bit demanding as far as work went, but that, he’d discovered, was something of a trait for their culture.

Sometimes it got funny. She spoke with a heavy accent and broken grammar, he spoke in Scots brogue, and they often had no idea what the other was saying. But they managed well enough.

She was bustling around the shop when he arrived, putting up a new order of shirts. “Hea, hea, you finish,” she ordered brusquely when he put his umbrella away.

“Are ye hurryin’, lass?” he asked.

“Hurry, yes, hurry,” she nodded. “Me go court.”

“Court? What for?”

She took out a piece of paper from her blue apron and handed it to him. He quickly scanned it. “Och, Tranh, why didn’t ye say somethin’ about this?” he asked.

It was a hearing to protest an eviction notice for the tee shirt shop.

“What for you do?” she asked archly, then she sighed. “They say no pay rent. Me have receipts. Me win easy.”

Of course she would have the receipts. Tranh kept absolutely everything. She was the biggest pack rat he had ever seen in his life. But unlike most pack rats, she knew exactly where everything she had was. She could point to it. Tranh was actually an extremely intelligent woman, but her lack of English skills made her seem slow, or dim-witted.

“Well, I guess ye really dinna’ have much ta’ worry about, but it would have been nice o’ ye ta’ let me know. Do ye have a translator?” he asked.

She nodded. “Law-yoor Vietnamese, speak good English.”

“Good. Ye go on, Tranh, I’ll finish this.”

“Good good. Thanks. Oh, check in box.”

“Thanky dear,” he said with a smile. She gave him a smile herself and patted him on the shoulder, then took off her blue apron and hurried out the door.

He attended to the business of putting up the new inventory, and after that was done, there was little to do but wait. It wouldn’t get busy until after dark, but fortunately for him, Tranh’s husband Sinh took over and watched the shop at ten o’clock. Kit used the slow time to study and do homework, and so long as he got all the work done, Tranh didn’t mind a bit. She liked to watch soap operas on the tiny television behind the counter.

Then again, Tranh would put up with him, because, simply put, nobody stole anything when Kit was working. She thought he had this kind of mystical ability to see shoplifters, even when his back was turned. In actuality, he used sounding almost continually when people were in the shop, keeping an eye on them with his power and making sure they didn’t pull out a gun and try to shoot him more than to keep them from stealing the merchandise. Kit was an extremely nervous person who had been out on the streets too long to relax when in the company of strangers. Besides, there was always the gangbanger or mob soldier who would come and try to recruit him to work for them, and sometimes those offers got ugly when he refused. Tranh knew he had something of a reputation, but the register balanced to the penny every shift he worked and he kept the inventory under strict control, so she preferred to overlook his colorful past.

But not all the street people were enemies. It was about time for Rat to scurry through. Rat was a small, wiry little black boy who lived on the streets, much as he had when he was that age, who made his living as a street corner performer. Rat was a good dancer and an excellent tumbler and gymnast, whose claim to fame in the quarter was selling backflips for a quarter. Give him a quarter, and he’d do a backflip for you. He was one of the smart kids who stayed away from drugs and avoided the gangs, but didn’t raise the ire of the mob, the cops, or the merchants. Rat was more or less welcome in most shops in the quarter, and sometimes they would hire him to do little jobs for them. Rat was certainly an exception to the rules when it came to the reputation of the street kids. Most were opportunistic little thieves who would stab you in the back for the change in your pocket, where Rat could be trusted to at least not try to put the shop in his pocket when one turned his back. Rat would come around to see if Tranh or Kit had any work for him to do, and he had something of a schedule that made him very predictable. Tranh rather liked Rat, but she’d kill Kit if he ever told the boy. She always acted like he was the most inconvenient object in the universe when he came around, but did often pay him to do little jobs and run errands. Tranh’s good heart showed through in that sometimes those errands and jobs were made up just to give him something to do.

Kit got about three pages into his calculus homework when the electric eye chime rang, indicating that someone had just came through the open doorway. He looked up to see Rat coming through the cramped shop, its floor open but its walls plastered with shirts of every variety, wearing a torn white tee shirt with dirt smudged on it and a pair of khaki shorts. He had rather new tennis shoes on his feet. “Hey Kit,” he called. “You got any work for me?”

“Aye,” he answered. “Tranh told me ta’ have ye throw away yon boxes,” he said, pointing to a stack of folded cardboard boxes, broken down and stuffed into one that had not been, which sat in the far corner. The floor space of the shop was open, and the checkout counter was on wall near the door. Nobody could easily pull down a shirt and stuff it in a bag, and the counter was close enough to the door to allow them to give those exiting a close look.

“Five bucks.”

“Two.”

“Four,” he replied immediately.

“Three.”

“Deal,” he said immediately, rushing over and picking up the box holding the others folded down inside it.

Kit gave him a look as he came back up, and saw that his cheek was puffy. Rat’s skin was very, very dark, and it wasn’t easy to notice such things on him. “Och, lad, what happened ta’ ye?”

“Just a run-in with the Latin Kings,” he said. “It ain’t no big thang.”

“I told ye ta’ stay away from Esplanade,” he chided.

“I wuz taking a letter tuh someone,” he said. “I had tuh go, Kit.”

Kit gave him a reproachful look.

“Mista’ Summers gave me an extra ten bucks cause I done got hit,” he said with a grin. “Dat made it wuth it.” He looked around. “Where Miz Tranny is?”

“She had ta’ go ta’ court,” he answered.

“Court? Whut, dey arrest her or somethin’?”

“Nay, nay, she’s having an argument with the landlord,” he answered. “The landlord says she hasna’ paid her rent. Ye and I both know that’s a crock.”

Rat laughed. “Miz Tranny don’t forget nothin’,” he declared.

“Aye,” he said with a smile, reaching into his pocket and taking out three dollar bills. “Well, off with ye,” he said, handing them to him.

“You want me tuh come back later and get you some food?” he asked.

“Aye, when ye have a chance,” he affirmed.

“Cool. See yuh later.”

“Be careful,” Kit called as he waddled out the door with his load.

“If I ain’t careful I’m dead!” he called from outside as he disappeared from the doorway.

That was certainly the truth. Kit had lived on those hard streets for six years before getting the tiny, ratty apartment he had upstairs, until he was old enough to sign a lease for himself. He remembered what it was like to not know where he was sleeping, having to protect everything he owned, knowing that people might let him stay with them but afraid of them discovering his secret. Back then, he stole only what he could carry, limiting himself to money or things that he could easily trade for food or the things he needed to survive. Back then, he was much like Rat, more or less tolerated by the merchants of the quarter because he didn’t steal from them, focusing more on the tourists and burglarizing homes surrounding the quarter itself. He was very careful and actually rather wise in never stealing from merchants, houses, or shops in the quarter itself, because it was where he lived and he didn’t want to get thrown out of the places he depended upon, like fast food restaurants, the game room, the French Market, or the Riverwalk. He’d had quite a few little experiences like the one Rat had, run-ins with gangs and thugs who either took offense to him being on their turf or robbed him. The patch of white hair over his left eye wasn’t his only scar from his childhood. He’d spent nearly two months in the hospital when he was thirteen after getting shot twice in the stomach by a gangbanger. He’d been shot for his shoes.

It was an ugly, frightening, dangerous life, but it was the only one he could hope to have at that time. He’d still been traumatized by getting thrown out of his house, and looked upon his gift as a curse, an evil thing that nobody must ever know about. Because of that, he’d run away from every foster home they’d put him in, always refused when people offered to let him stay with them, no matter how sincere they were, and he avoided the convent and the Saint Louis Cathedral like the plague. That hurt him spiritually, for he’d been raised a good Catholic, but then again, his father had told him that he was a work of the devil, an evil thing that the Church would destroy when they found out about him.

It all started innocently enough, when he was just a few weeks from his twelfth birthday, one of those stupid little things that meant nothing now, but meant everything to an eleven year old boy. He’d lost his house key down a sewer grate, and it was the fourth key he’d lost, so he absolutely could not go home without it. His father would tan his hide and ground him for a week for losing that key, since he’d been specifically warned not to lose this one. He could see it down there, glittering in the light that shone down into the storm drain, and no matter how hard he tried, he could not reach it. It was just a few inches out of his reach, and no matter how hard he strained or wiggled, how much skin he stripped off his upper arm and shoulder, he could not reach his key. He began to get desperate, to panic, and then he felt a strange surge build up inside his head, kind of like a bucket of water being poured into a hole in his head. He felt it reach a fever pitch, and then felt it race out of him like the bucket being tipped over.

And the key jumped up into his straining hand.

Most young boys may not have thought much about it, but Kit knew that he had somehow made the key jump off the bottom of the storm drain. He’d raced home and thought about it a long time, then, after bedtime, he sat there looking over his bed and tried and tried and tried to make it happen again, to make his slipper jump up off the floor. He tried until well after midnight, until he drifted to sleep, then he tried again the next night, and the next night, and the next, until he finally felt that same strange surge, and made his slipper jump up off the floor. He practiced with all night, then again the next night, then the next, until he could make it happen ever single time.

Then he realized that he could do more than just make them flop off the floor like fish. He could pick things up, hold them aloft, or move them around by doing nothing but thinking at them. He was very careful to keep it an absolute secret, to never do it until after bedtime and after his parents were asleep, until he became quite proficient at it. From his bed, he could make his action figures dance and walk around like they were real people, make his Hot Wheels cars zoom around on the floor by themselves, and put together puzzles and rearrange shelves. He learned how to make more than one thing move at a time, and to this day, he still had warm memories of the “G.I. Joe versus Star Wars” battles between action figures that took place on his homework desk in the dead of night. The G.I. Joe figures usually won, since they had ambulatory elbows and knees and could move better than the Star Wars figures. Then again, he always did cheat a little bit when his Chewbacca figure was fighting, since it was his favorite. Chewbacca never lost.

Things would have been alright if he hadn’t become so good at it. He could do it without even making an effort by the time he was nearly thirteen, and he started getting careless, moving things when he thought nobody was looking, or hiding what he was doing by blocking what was going on with his body. Again, it was something utterly ridiculous that got him caught, for he was sitting on the toilet and had no paper, so he simply fetched some from the linen shelf on the far side of the bathroom. His mother opened the door and saw a roll of toilet paper flying through the air in a lazy arc towards Kit, who was reaching out for it.

His parents were Scottish immigrants who had immigrated to America because they were Catholic, and they reacted to this shocking revelation with horror. His mother was shocked about it but willing to try to do something about it, bring a priest in to examine him and find out what was going on, but his father went absolutely off the deep end. He called Kit an unholy monster, possessed by the devil, an abomination, and ordered him out of the house. Right now. His mother tried to protest, but his father struck his mother hard enough to nearly knock her out, then grabbed Kit and beat him so terribly that he lost consciousness three times during the course of it. The last time he came to, he was laying in a bloody pool on the floor, and his father was holding a knife with a wild look in his eyes while his mother frantically tried to stop him from killing her son. Kit managed to get up and stagger out of the kitchen, out of the house, and he had never looked back. He knew if he ever went back home, his father would kill him.

Two weeks later, he’d found out, his father had killed his mother, and his father was sent to Angola to serve a life sentence. He was killed by another inmate two years later.

Kit was twelve years old and out on the streets, on his own. It was a terrible time for him, for he was not prepared for it. Before they discovered his secret, his parents had been rather protective of him, and he had led something of a sheltered life. That worked against him when he was exposed to the big bad world. He had no idea what to do, where to go, how to get any money. He was too afraid to go to a homeless shelter, go to the church, seek any kind of aid, terrified they would discover his secret and try to kill him like his father did. He was injured and traumatized when he was thrown out onto the streets, and to this day he could not suppress a shudder at how utterly helpless he felt, how frightened and alone, when he staggered away from his family’s shotgun house and knew he had nowhere to go, nothing to eat, no bed to sleep in.

They were very bad times. For the first two years, Kit barely managed to eke out any kind of existence by stealing using his gift. He was in and out of hospital emergency rooms as he paid the cruel price for not knowing which streets were safe, which parts of town were owned by who, and who to approach and who to run away from. They would catch him every once in a while and send him to a foster home or the juvenile detention center when he was snared after the child services offices closed. He would run from foster homes as soon as the case worker left him there, and when he went to Juvy, he simply waited until the case worker came and took him to a foster home. They couldn’t keep him locked up in Juvy because he really wasn’t committing any crime other than running away, at least at first. They thought he was too young to understand what he was doing. They did try to keep him in Juvy when he was nearly fourteen, but he simply escaped from it the night after he learned that they were going to keep him there as the child psychologists tried to help him. Then they tried to put him in an institution, but he escaped from that the night after they dropped him off.

It was a terrible thing to live by stealing. There was a certain terror to it, the fear of getting caught, that made it almost impossible for him to do at first, at least until his starvation drove him to it. He was raised to believe that stealing was wrong, and he had to go against his upbringing to do it. Even back then he seemed to understand that he could only take what he could carry, what he could easily hide, because if the thugs and gangbangers knew he had valuables, they’d kill him to take them. He started small, using his power to unlock window locks he could see on a first floor house and then using his power to pick up anything in the room that he could see that he thought he could use. Money, rings, watches, anything very small and possessing value. He always hated doing it, and never stole everything from his victims, only taking one ring, or a watch, or half of the money he found laying on a dresser or a stand. But the consistent wearing away of his morals beat that out of him within a year, until he started taking anything and everything that he felt he could carry and hide from others, though he never took wallets. He’d empty a wallet, but he wouldn’t take one. He didn’t want the ID in the wallet to pin him to any particular crime. Because he never entered the room and always wore gloves—he knew about fingerprints even back then—the cops could never really pin anything to him. He was usually very careful about not being seen, and always wore a black bandanna over his face, so nobody could really identify him.

But the stealing made him more and more proficient with his ability, and he began to lose his fear and loathing of it. He came to understand that it wasn’t a gift from Satan, but rather something that was inside of him, a part of him, and always had been. He still had the trauma-induced fear of letting anyone discover his secret, but he at least didn’t fear his own ability anymore. As he got proficient with stealing and learned the ways of the streets, as the pressure of simply surviving to see the next sunrise diminished, he started practicing with his power, learning it better and better, and started wondering at exactly what it would do.

The first trick he’d learned was sounding. He couldn’t really remember how he’d stumbled across it, but he knew it was the first advanced use of his power that he’d learned how to do. After he learned how to sound, and learned how to manipulate things he could sense with sounding without having to actually see them, he began to learn how locks worked, and was able to unlock doors and key-locked windows without a key. He learned from people on the street how simple window security devices worked, with magnetic reed switches, and he learned how to freeze them in place and let him unlock and open a window without setting off the alarm. Learning these tricks let him start stealing from houses that had more to offer, and he’d started taking more at a single theft, which let him live on his gains longer without having to steal again, which gave him more time to practice.

And practice he did. Every day he practiced, practiced picking up big objects, small objects, many objects at one time, even learning how to pick up liquids like water. He refined his sounding ability until he could tell one type of matter from another by its texture, and the realization that he could see that deeply into something was what unlocked his second trick. He discovered that if he looked really, really deeply into something by sounding it, he could kind of jimmy the stuff it was made of, kind of like rubbing it really fast, which made it heat up. If he kept it up for a while, the material would burst into flame if it were flammable, or get soft and melt if it were plastic, or evaporate if it were water or other liquids, or turn red-hot and eventually melt if it was steel.

After he got the hang of that, he went the other way with it, and learned his third trick. He found that if he looked really deep into something and kind of pushed at the stuff it was made of, he could make it bend, or even break, which was a more exhausting way of doing something that he could do with his power the normal way if he just grabbed both ends and pulled them towards the middle. He practiced more and more with this idea of messing with the stuff that made up the material he was working with, and learned several other tricks. He learned that if he pushed at it hard and fast, it cut the stuff like a knife, which let him shear through matter as if he were wielding the sharpest knife ever made. If he kind of pulled it apart, the matter got soft and pliable, letting him mold hardened steel like it was Play-Doh. If he put his “hand” over it, laid his power of it like a blanket and muffled it, it got brittle, which made it easy to break.

And then, in something of the ultimate expression of that trick, he discovered if he looked really deeply into something, grabbed the stuff it was made of, then sort of filled it with his power like pouring water into a bucket, it would eventually reach a point where it couldn’t take anymore. When that happened, the material exploded violently, like a firecracker.

He didn’t know it then, but he knew now that his power was called telekinesis, and those tricks were him using his power at a molecular level. He was monkeying with the molecular structure of the object itself, exciting it to make it heat up, stilling it to make it brittle, softening covalent bonds to make it pliable, separating those bonds to cut the matter in question, or infusing it with more energy than the matter could hold, which caused it to explode.

By the time he’d learned how to make things explode, he was sixteen, and had established himself on the street enough to know what was going on. He’d been living by himself for four years, sleeping in abandoned buildings, under stairs, behind dumpsters, owning nothing more than he could carry, and he was getting sick of it. At sixteen he could open a bank account, but he had no address and no proof of one, but he could rent a safe-deposit box from the right place as long as he had something that looked legal. So, he got up enough money to rent a post office box, got a copy of his birth certificate from the state of New York, where he was born some two days after his parents reached America, and faked a couple of documents that gave him the illusion of having an address. Then he went to a certain safe deposit box company that was known to be a bit lax with the rules by the mob and by the gangs and rented himself a safe-deposit box. That gave him some place permanent to put things, and it was going to be his ticket out of the streets, because now he could put stuff he couldn’t carry around with him in the box and start amassing the money he needed to do more than simply survive.

At sixteen and with a couple of good fake ID’s, Kit started the transition to a somewhat normal life. He still trusted no one, but at least now he could do for himself. He started renting squalid hotel rooms to sleep in, never in the same hotel two nights in a row, which got him off the street when he was sleeping, when he was the most vulnerable. He started stealing more, always careful to make his burglaries wide-ranging, never hitting the same neighborhood twice in a row, ranging from Chalmette to Kenner, from Crown City to Metairie, anywhere he could reach on the bicycle he bought. He put the excess in his safe deposit box, starting to build up his money so he could rent an apartment when he turned eighteen, became a legal adult, and child services would finally stop trying to track him down and stick him in foster homes. He practiced less and devoted himself to stealing more, and by the time he was seventeen, when a Blood gang member slashed off a piece of his scalp with a knife and gave him his distinctive white lock of hair, he had nearly fifteen thousand dollars stored away.

That little incident opened his eyes to the danger of living on the streets, and he withdrew from having to deal with the street people as much as he could, but that wasn’t easy for a burglar who had to sell the items that he was stealing. He’d been attacked outside a pawn shop by a gang member who knew that Kit had just sold a gold and emerald ring for a hundred dollars. That little incident was also what put the police more firmly on his tail. It was the first time he’d been caught unloading stolen goods, but managed to get out of an arrest by claiming he’d found it, and the fact that he’d never sold anything at that particular pawn shop before. He was sure that the cop suspected him of stealing the ring, but he had no proof. Up until that point, Kit had been very careful not to draw attention to himself. He rarely brought more than one item to a fence at any one time, and only brought them in at erratic times that were at least a month since the last time he had been there, more than long enough for a pattern to be more or less hard to find. He avoided stealing objects whenever he could, always preferring to steal cash. In his eyes, it was better to steal ten dollars from ten houses over the course of a night rather than steal one ring and try to sell it for a hundred dollars. But sometimes he had little choice but to steal an object and try to sell it, when the pickings of cash were slim. It wasn’t easy to steal nothing but cash, especially in the evolving age of credit cards and debit cards, and the police were patrolling more diligently than they had the year before.

Oh, there were other brushes. He was never caught in the act, because he never went into the houses he burglarized. He’d been stopped for loitering around a few times, but he was just a kid on a bicycle, not carrying any kind of burglarizing tools, so there wasn’t much the police could do. Sure, they correlated and discovered that there was an increase in reported burglaries in places where he was seen, but they couldn’t prove anything. They never caught him with anything other than cash in his pockets, and cash was very hard to identify. The worst they’d ever picked him up for was criminal trespass, and he managed to talk fast enough with the magistrate, weaving a tale about retrieving his hat from a backyard that had been blown into the yard by the wind, to get out of it.

They never quite got how he did it. By that time, his powers had developed to the point where he didn’t have to be anywhere near the house to burglarize it. He could do it from across the street, by sounding the target with his power. After that broad sweep, he would locate any cash—he couldn’t see denominations, only identify the cash because of the unique properties of the paper on which it was printed—then pick it up and spirit it out of an opened window. He would then drop it on the ground and hold it there, bike down the street, and stop and pick it up. It was quick, efficient, and it absolutely did not put him anywhere close enough to the crime scene for them to track it back to him. The incident where he was caught in a backyard was because he’d seen a police cruiser go by twice within five minutes, and he wanted to disappear off the street for a little bit.

But he wasn’t earning enough money fast enough. He wanted to have a hundred thousand dollars saved up by the time he was twenty-one, which would be enough for him to go to school, earn a degree, and move out of New Orleans and start a real life. He shifted from robbing houses of small change to hitting businesses, which required a fundamental change in his tactics. Businesses had more sophisticated alarms, and it was much harder to steal the cash within them and pick it up without someone seeing it. Businesses were usually in places were people could see, and many of them had surveillance cameras in them that would reveal to the world how he was pulling it off. So he had to retreat and study alarm systems and cameras, and that was when he learned his next few tricks. He learned how to project his power as physical force, as raw power, something like a telekinetic punch, which he needed to set off alarms from outside by tripping motion sensors. Motion sensors could detect it when he did that. In the other direction, he learned how to lay a blanket of force over one of those sensors that blinded it to real motion, allowing someone to slip by it without setting it off. He learned how to shift that telekinetic force to make it solid to light, refracting it away from what was on the other side, which allowed him to put a blanket of darkness over a camera, preventing it from seeing anything. He studied for a very long time to try to learn how to defeat inductive and capacitive sensors with h