How To Survive In The World DxD With Fragment Memories - Chapter 153

“Jamie Tyler,” Sakura said while glancing at the boy, “We can help you find your brother, but you have to help us investigate Nightrise Corporation”

“Very well,” Jamie said without hesitation, he could not read her mind but he could sense instinctively that the girls in front of him were his only shot in saving his brother after he was labelled as a murderer.

“Come in then, the name’s Alicia” The lady said allowing Angelica, Sakura, Everest and Stephani to enter the house. She immediately went to make some tea for everyone while Angelica and the girls took their seat together with Jamie opposite of them.

“Can I know how you will help me?” Jamie asked,

“Right now, we are chasing a peculiar group of people. We believe they are linked with the group that tried to kidnap you and your brother, although you managed to get away they will continue to chase you” Angelica explained,

“But, although we said we will help you it will not be immediately since our enemy is a massive corporation that can even influence the governement” Sakura said,

“Not to mention that you and your brother are labelled as murderers for killing your adoptive father” Sakura added on,

“We did not kill him!” Jamie denied it immediately, he felt emotional and could not control it. It was the first time he was so far away from Scott, he could still feel Scott’s emotions yet he could not determine where he was through their link.

“We know that, however, there is much more to this than your issue” Everest said, even she found it hard to explain the supernatural world to this boy in front of a mortal woman.

As far as Jamie was concerned, this was all just another bad dream, worse even than the one he’d had the night before. It seemed to him that one impossibility after another was piling up on him and he almost expected the grey cowboy from his dream to jump out at him from behind the sofa, just for good measure.

Suddenly the girls, woman and Jamie heard the screech of tyres, the sound of cars pulling up in the street. At the same time, the squawk of radio transmitters filled the air. Doors opened and slammed shut. Somebody somewhere called out an order. “This way!”

It was Alicia who took control of the situation. As Jamie stood, rooted to the spot, she grabbed hold of him and suddenly she was very close. “We have to move,” she said urgently.

“You can’t be found here.” She added,

“But…” Jamie stuttered,

“You heard what they said on the news. That’s what they all think. You’ve been set up! If the police get you, you’re finished. We have to go.” Alicia muttered,

“Go where?” Jamie turned towards the front door but it was already far too late. He heard footsteps coming up the drive. The front patio had been laid with gravel and the boots crunched against it. Alicia understood. That way was blocked.

“Into the kitchen!” Angelica commanded leading the group away.

Jamie was angry with himself. ‘The situation was completely out of control. If Scott had been here, he would have known what to do.’ Jamie thought,

A door led into the kitchen. She pulled it open and they went through. Jamie tried to say something but the words wouldn’t come. He heard the front door open on the other side of the living room and realized that the police were already in the house. They hadn’t bothered to ring the bell.

Somebody muttered something but it was impossible to make out the words against the noise of the TV. Meanwhile, Everest went to check the doors in the front, Sakura went to check the windows while Angelica began to listen carefully.

There was another door right next to Stephani who opened it, hearing the noise of people approaching they began to move into a narrow utility room. There was a washing machine, a drier, a couple of shelves of canned food. At the same moment, the police entered the kitchen.

“Where are they?” One of the police officers muttered, looking around the kitchen.

“As expected, their supers” Angelica whispered when she sensed the powerful energy wave the police were emitting, it was definitely not something a human could easily emit.

“We should be able to deal with them” Everest muttered softly, she did not like the idea of playing thief running from the police. She would rather face them head on.

“We can’t alarm them since we are in their territory” Stephani reasoned it, causing Everest to pout.

“Just who are you girls?” Alicia asked,

“It’s best you don’t ask us” Sakura said with a cold voice causing Alicia to shiver before nodding her head.

Just as a policeman walked over opening the door into the room behind them. Jamie stood, staring at them, like something straight out of a Hollywood film, with his black, short-sleeved shirt and black shades that completely hid his eyes. He was young and white and he worked out. The ugly tools of his trade dangled from his belt: gun, CS gas canister, handcuffs and baton.

For a moment the police officer didn’t say anything. Then his hand dropped down to the gun. Jamie had been standing behind Alicia. Suddenly he stepped forward so that he stood directly opposite the policeman. She saw him look up and there was something in the boy’s face that she couldn’t recognize, a sort of intensity that seemed almost unworldly.

“There’s nobody here,” Jamie said quietly. “The room’s empty.” he added.

The policeman stared at him, as if puzzled by what he had just been told. Alicia waited for him to say something. But he didn’t. His eyes were vacant. He nodded slowly and walked out again. Jamie and Alicia heard voices in the kitchen as the officer rejoined the other men.

“Anything?”

“No. There’s nobody there. It’s just an empty room.”

“Hey – Josh. Why don’t you tell the sweepers to get in here? They can start clearing up.”

Jamie glanced at Alicia, then he glanced at the four girls. “Are you saying that there is supernaturals involved in this? Is that why you said there is more to this than the incident of my brother?”

“Yes” Sakura said as she was now certain that there was indeed something special of this boy, the fact he could control a mid-class super power with just a thought meant that his capability was at least high class rank.

“Let’s go then” Angelica said as she lead them out the back door, the six of them passed through into the garage. It was empty apart from a rusty lawnmower and a deep-freeze cabinet.

The two doors were closed but there was a window at the back. Angelica opened it and they climbed out. Now the garage was between them and any police officers who might be standing guard at the front. Everest made sure there was nobody around, then slipped behind the neighbouring house, making their way through the garden where the two girls had played.

Angelica took one last look at the house where they came out from, the entrance was already taped off. There were police officers everywhere: in the porch, on the front lawn, carrying equipment in and out. Three police cars were parked in the street. Distant sirens announced that more were on the way.

“Let’s go” Sakura said as she nudged everyone to keep moving towards Alicia’s car. Despite it feeling cramped, all of them got in the car making sure Jamie was out of sight from outside view and Alicia started the car driving away.

“What was that?” she demanded, she was bewildered by what she saw as she never believed in the world of supernatural. She felt such things should only exist in the novels, yet here she experienced it first hand.

“What did you do to that policeman? How did you make him… ?” Alicia asked, her voice trailed away.

“I can’t tell you, I don’t know what I did. And it doesn’t matter. Because I’m nevergoing to do it again.” Jamie responded,

“It’s best you don’t get too involved” Angelica said to Alicia, before adding “I know you have a purpose, but don’t get involved in a world that is beyond your ability. You will die”

Alicia nodded with a gloomy face and turned the ignition. One of the policemen glanced in their direction but did nothing to stop them since they did not see Jamie at all. Alicia put the car into gear and the two of them drove away.

“You should know that there is supernatural beings in this world…” Sakura starts to explain the supernatural world to Jamie in a basic form, it was only to prepare the boy for what he was about to face in the future.

“I found traces of their aura’s on their body” Angelica said while gripping the door handle tightly, although it was incredibly faint she could sense that familiar chaotic aura that attached itself to the police officers body.

“Should we call Masaru? The fact that one of the five children has been discovered would signal that those creeps are working behind the scenes once more” Everest said with a hint of worry, she knew of the second gate being in America and the fact this incident occured meant there is a chance they might attack that gate.

“No, we should continue to investigate. I will send a message to father” Angelica said with her face remaining stoic, she could not reflect her emotions as this was really that important of a mission.

A while later, they managed to reach a seclusive restaurant where they booked a private room where they can discuss their situation. Before Angelica and the girls could reveal their true nature, they had to understand why this woman was so bend on sticking with them.

Sakura ordered some food, since it was quiet it did not take that long for the food to arrive. Everest was smiling happily looking at the selection of food placed on the table, Angelica took a bowl of vegestables and chicken meat while Stephani helped herself to spare ribs.

The television was still on. A commercial break ended and yet another news bulletin began. They were reporting two murders now. Don White, shot at the theatre, and his partner, Marcie Kelsey, killed with the same weapon at her rented home. Kelsey. And now she was dead and he was wanted for her murder. Jamie Tyler, twin brother of Scott Tyler. Both boys missing. Delinquents. High on drugs.

“That’s enough!” Alicia picked up the remote control and turned the television off. “It’s none of it true, so what’s the point of listening to it?”

“Anyway, I suggest you all to eat. We can’t move forward with a empty stomach and we have much to discurss” Angelica said as she glanced at Jamie who did not want to eat, but after seeing Angelica’s stare he immediately began to shove food into his mouth.

“Before we start, I would like to know your story” Angelica muttered while glancing at Alicia, the sole normal human amongst them.

Alicia who heard this had questions of her own, she felt frustrated that a girl younger than her was ordering her around. Hoever, her many years of experience told her it was best to do as she said so she began “It wasn’t just a coincidence, my being in the theatre last night. I was there for a reason.”

“Something to do with that photograph. Daniel…” Jamie muttered,

Alicia put down the beer. “Exactly,”

She glanced at Angelica, Stephani, Everest and Sakura before continuiuing. “Daniel. That’s what this is all about.”

She leant forward, resting her elbows on the table. Then she began.

“The boy in the photograph, Daniel, is my son. Last week should have been his birthday. He turned

eleven on 9 June. But I don’t know where he is. I don’t even know if he’s alive. He disappeared seven months ago and I’ve been looking for him ever since.

“All of you don’t need to know very much about me. I’m thirty-two. I have a sister. My parents are from New Jersey. A year ago, I was living in Washington DC, working for Senator John Trelawny. Maybe you’ve heard of him. Naturally you all should have.

“Right now he’s trying to become the next president of the United States and people say there’s a good chance he’s going to win. Anyway, I was with him for five years, sorting his mail, sorting his diary … that kind of thing. He’s a good man and I liked my job.

“The other thing I need to tell you all is that I was married for a time. My husband got sick and died two years after Danny was born so I had to bring him up on my own. But in a way I was lucky. I had a little house round the corner from a really nice school. And I had a wonderful home help, Maria, who looked after Danny every afternoon until I got home.”

She drew a breath. “And then, towards the end of last year. It was the first week in November, I got a call from Maria. It was about six o’clock in the evening and I was working late. Anyway, she said that Danny hadn’t come home from school. She’d tried his cell phone but she wasn’t getting any answer and she didn’t know what to do.

“I remember telling her to call round some of his friends and to phone me if he hadn’t shown up by

seven. Looking back, I can’t believe how calm I was. But Danny often went home with one or another of his friends, he was in a band and played drums. And he was rehearsing for a Christmas show. It never occurred to me that anything could be wrong.

“Well, Maria did call back at seven o’clock and Danny still hadn’t shown up and nobody had any idea where he was. It was dark by then and that was when I really began to worry. I called the police. The fact that I was connected to Senator Trelawny helped. They were round in about ten seconds and they put him straight onto the NCIC Missing Persons File.

“They also put out an Amber Alert, which meant that all thelocal businesses and shops had his description and his picture and it was like they were building a network of people who would look out for him. And I still thought he was going to show up. I could actually hear myself scolding him for being late!” She stopped. There was a long pause.

“He never did show up, nobody had seen anything. Nobody knew anything. It was as if he’d vanished into thin air. I searched all over the house, trying to find some clue as to where he might have gone. I drove out to all the places he used to hang out. I went on the TV and the radio. His picture was in store windows all over town and on the back of trucks too. But nothing…”

“Two weeks before Christmas, I made a decision. The police didn’t know where to look for him.

Nobody knew where he was. But I wasn’t going to give up. So I resigned my job and set out to find him myself. There are plenty of organizations that deal with missing children and I contacted them. I passed out leaflets.

“I trawled the Internet. Do you all even know how many children go missing every day? I began to put together names, faces, times, places. I noted all the cases that had been reported in the last year. I drew maps. I called the parents and spoke to them.

“To my surprise, a picture began to take shape. At first it didn’t make any sense and I thought maybe I was imagining things. But very quickly I realized that it was true. There was a sort of pattern. A series of coincidences. And that’s what led me to Jamie.

“What I noticed was that in the past six months, a large number of the kids who had disappeared had been what you might call special. What do I mean by that? I’m talking about kids with special abilities. These were kids with paranormal powers. I know it sounds crazy. This is not something supposed to believe in any more, not in the twenty-first century but even so, there was a definite link…”

Alicia got up and went over to the sofa. She opened a briefcase and took out a sheaf of documents. She spread one of them in front of Jamie. It had been taken from a local newspaper and showed a photograph of a rather intense-looking boy with cropped hair. The headline read, Daniel has a flash of the future.

The story didn’t take itself too seriously. Apparently, there was an eleven-year-old boy called Daniel Pugh who lived on his father’s farm in Kentucky. He’d had a dream and had warned his parents that a local church was going to catch fire. Twelve hours later, the church had been hit by lightning and had burned to the ground. Fortunately, nobody had been hurt.

“Six weeks after the paper printed that story, Daniel vanished,” Alicia said. She took out a second sheet of paper.

This time it was a girl. Her name was Marcy Cotton and her story had been reported in the Miami Herald. It seemed that she could bend spoons and stop watches just by looking at them. There had been a picture of her in the back of a paper, leaning against a grandfather clock. The clock had stopped at exactly midday. According to the story, she had been responsible.

“She disappeared too, two months after the story ran.” Alicia said

She added more pages to the pile. There was a boy who had managed to predict the winner five times in a row at a local racecourse. Another boy who, without moving, had fused all the lights in his school. A girl who talked to ghosts. An autistic boy who knew the names of everyone he met before he was introduced to them. Another pair of twins who seemed to live in each other’s minds.

“It’s as expected, my father too found these incidents” Angelica muttered,

“Why did he not do anything about it!?” Alicia shouted,

“Because the ones responsible was too dangerous to face head on” Angelica said,

“Sigh… Anyway it is a dozen of them in just six months. It seemed clear to me that someone was deliberately targeting these kids.”

“So did you go to the police?” Sakura asked since this woman was serious she must have went to the authorities,

“No.” Alicia sat down again.

“Read the articles. None of them are serious. I mean … one kid who can bend spoons? Another who talks to dead people? Grave Business of Girl Who Gossips with Ghosts.’ Read it for yourselves. Of course, once these children had disappeared, everyone treated them very seriously. But the paranormal stuff was just forgotten. It wasn’t important. In fact it was hardly even mentioned.” Alicia said, as if she was trying to build up the reason she did not go to the authorities.

“I suppose the same thing happened to your son?” Everest asked,

“Yes. there has been a article of Daniel a few times. I think someone read it. I think someone came for Danny because he was special. And for the last few months, I’ve been scouring the newspapers, looking for kids like Jamie. Because, you see, if there really is someone out there searching for kids with powers, maybe I can get there ahead of them. Maybe I can find out who they are and discover what they’ve done with my boy. Now you all know why I was in Reno.

“I happened to see this piece in a magazine. It was about two boys performing a mind-reading act. The writer said he’d seen them twice and he couldn’t work out for love nor money how they did it. So I came over to see for myself…”

“And you arrived just in time,” Jamie said with a complicated smile.

“I couldn’t believe it when those men came after you with stun darts and bullets.” For a moment, Alicia’s eyes lit up and she couldn’t keep the excitement out of her voice. “But it proves what I’m saying. There is somebody out there who really is going after these special kids. They got your brother and wherever they’ve taken him, that’s where Danny may be too.”

“There’s one thing I don’t understand,” Jamie said. “Suppose you’re right and somebody is kidnapping kids with special powers. Why would they do that? What’s the point?”

“Not to mention, do you really think they’d believe in that sort of stuff?” jamie asked sceptical, although he could since he experienced it. But other normal humans? No way.

“Of course they believe in it, Jamie. They spend millions of dollars every year experimenting with the paranormal. And there are major corporations out there who run programs, working with special children and their families. I even got in contact with one. I thought they might be able to help.” Alicia said

“Who was that?”

Alicia put down her beer. “They’re a huge multinational. They’re into communications, healthcare, security, energy … just about everything. But they also have a division that specializes in paranormal research.”

She paused. “They were the people who came for you in the theatre. Their name,”

She finally said, “is Nightrise.”

“That is why we said it is not something we can move forward recklessly,” Angelica said with a stoic face, she continued “Since they have a department to research paranormal research they are linked with the supernatural world”

“Supernatural world?” Alicia asked while Jamie glanced at Angelica with interest.

With a single flick of her finger she created a small flame made from demonic power, “Supernatural refers to beings and powers that humans like you would regard as a fantasy, myth or something that should not exist. yet it does”

“Why are you going after Nightrise?” Alicia asked,

“Unlike you two, we only came because we discovered Nightrise has linked with a peculiar group of people we need to deal with. Having you two with us only makes it convenient, hench why we said it will be a trade” Sakura said glancing at Jamie, “You help us and we help you. That simple”

“What about me?” Alicia asked warily, after experiencing something abnormal again she felt weak compared to everyone else in the room.

“For your information you provided and connection with the government, we will aid you in saving your son” Angelica said,

“And I will treat him if there is any injuries” Stephani added on with a bright smile,

‘Just what in the world have I gotten myself involved with’ Alicia thought wondering how she and her son got involved in something far bigger than humans could handle.