Gone (Gone 1)

“This isn’t fair,” Andrew said. Jack adjusted the lens to encompass Andrew’s entire body.

“Five minutes,” Jack said. “I’m going to go ahead and start the video running.”

“Do what you have to do, Jack, don’t announce it,” Caine said.

“Can’t you help me out, Caine?” Andrew pleaded. “You’re a four bar. Maybe you and me, if we both used our power at the same time, right?”

No one answered him.

“I’m scared, okay?” Andrew moaned, and now the tears were flowing freely. “I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

“Maybe you wake up outside the FAYZ,” Panda said, speaking for the first time.

“Maybe you wake up in hell,” Diana said. “Where you belong.”

“I should pray,” Andrew said.

“God forgive me for being a creep who starves people?” Diana suggested.

“One minute,” Jack said softly. He was nervous about when to start the still camera. No one figured Andrew’s birth certificate was exact to the minute—Benno’s had been off by weeks. He could disappear early.

“Jesus, forgive me for all the bad stuff I did and take me to my mom I miss her so bad and please let me live I’m just a kid so let me live okay? In Jesus’ name, amen.”

Jack switched on the still camera.

“Ten seconds.”

The room erupted with a sonic explosion from Andrew’s upraised hands. Waves of shattering sound began to crack the plaster ceiling.

Jack covered his ears and stared in fascination and horror.

“Time,” Jack remembered to yell over the barrage of noise. Chunks of plaster were falling from the ceiling like hail. The bulbs in the chandelier all shattered, sending down a snowfall of glass dust.

“Plus ten,” Jack yelled.

Andrew was still there, hands high, crying, sobbing, beginning to hope maybe, beginning to hope.

“Plus twenty,” Jack said.

“Keep it up, Andrew,” Caine yelled. He was on his feet now, eager, hoping it was true that the blink could be beaten.

The ceiling was cracking more deeply, and Jack wondered if it would fall.

The sonic blast ended.

Andrew stood, exhausted, but still there. Still standing.

“Oh, God,” he said. “Oh thank—”

And he was gone.

The ropes fell, suddenly released.

No one said a word.

Jack pushed rewind on one of his high-speed video cameras. He backed it up ten seconds. Then he hit play and watched it on the tiny LCD screen, frame by frame.

“Well,” Diana was saying, “so much for the theory that you don’t ditch if you have powers.”