The Hunt: The Oakmont Saga, Book 2

I was sitting on the beach, the clear, pale, blue water lapping on the shore. My feet were extended into that refreshing water, my body resting on the warm sand. There was a small pile of recently picked fruit, from the interior of the small island that I called home. My best friend, sister and cousin was playing in the water, laughing and having a good time.

It was warm, since it was a tropical climate, and the water felt absolutely wonderful on my legs and feet. I considered jumping in and splashing around, like a little kid, but was too comfortable and lazy to get up.

Me and Aliyah were finally carefree, safe...free from all the people that wanted to use us and enslave us. No more experiments were done to us, no more forced training and brainwashing. We were free!

That was what life should have always been. Unfortunately, reality always intruded on my dream...

Many years ago, scientists working for the government performed an experiment on my father without his knowledge. Today, I am the result of that sick, twisted work.. What they were after was to create a generation of telepaths that they could turn into tools, weapons. They gave me powers that no person should have. Because I am a product of their plan, they want to control me, saying I’m a danger to others and could hurt the country if our enemies got me.

But it’s not about them protecting me...not really. They want to use me. They need to understand, though, what they created is no longer theirs to control, if I ever was. They have unleashed a force that is far beyond what they ever dreamed was possible and I will not...cannot be controlled. Two years ago, I escaped the hell that they put me in. It took over a year for me to recover from the physical ordeal I’d been through, as much as I probably ever would.

I still had the addiction to the drugs, as well as still suffering occasional emotional breakdowns. Since I woke up, they’ve gotten further apart and less severe. At least, I thought they had.

Over the past few months, I’ve started coming apart again. Lots of time has been spent crying in the shower, wishing I could feel safe, and be able to regain that trust that Dad could fix anything. Of course, sometimes, I just cried.

Although I wouldn’t read his mind, I knew my dad was hiding things from me. I could sense it. But he was the adult and I was the kid, and that was the normal way of things. The problem was, I wasn’t a normal kid. I knew way more than I should about things no one should even dream existed. What was worse was that I had seen and experienced things no kid ever should.

The Oakmont program was the biggest of those things, and I suppose the fact that there were kids with telepathic ability would be one of those things as well. Of course, I was one of those kids, but I was different, I was more.

I was stronger than most of them and had powers I wasn’t even sure about, and yet I worried. I worried that when something happened I wouldn’t know what to do. I doubted Dad could help me. Aside from being a kid, why wouldn’t Dad tell me more? The worry was getting worse. A little over two years ago, doubting Dad wouldn’t have been possible. I was getting paranoid...was I going nuts...what was wrong with me?

When I first woke up from that long sleep after my escape, the coma, things seemed a lot better. It was like the horrible things that had happened were just a vague, bad dream. As time passed, the memories became more and more real to me, the visions I thought I had beaten began returning.

I’d been hiding it from Mom and Dad as much as I could, with Aliyah’s help, but I was pretty sure they knew. How could they not know? I was having nightmares. Although I was trying to keep them hidden, I was sure Mom and Dad could hear me sometimes.

Most nights, the nightmares were of the doctors putting probes down my throat and those shocking metal disks all over me. Those were the easy ones, the ones that I usually woke up from soaked in sweat but able to keep quiet.

There were others though, that were much worse. Those usually involved James with the doctors, using tools to cut into my body and do all kinds of horrible things to me. I always woke up screaming from those, my throat raw.

The worst of them involved them cutting into my skull, with me still awake and feeling it all. Those were pure terror for me, and I always woke up from them shaking violently, sweating profusely and whimpering. I never went back to sleep after those until the next night, and even then it was difficult.

What worried me most was that the nightmares were almost every night now, and the really bad ones were becoming more common too. I wondered how long it would be before they had to send me to another loony bin. There was only so long they could keep me, since I was going crazy and I knew it.

As I sat there, debating what my Dad’s intentions were, along with his honesty, tears started leaking out of my eyes. I was heading into that dark place again, the place I’d been many times.

Without remembering how I got there, I found myself curled up in a ball in the back corner of my closet. I had a blanket pulled over my head and I was crying. I couldn’t stop it.

Crawling into the closet like that was something I used to do when I was a very little girl, but had stopped as I grew up. When I went into that long sleep, things changed inside me. I started hiding in the closet again, as if I was still partially that little girl I thought I was when I first woke up.

Crying was something else that changed about me, thanks to my time at Oakmont. After 1st grade, I had completely quit crying. Of course, I still didn’t cry too much, but there I was, unable to stop the tears that were pouring from my eyes. I was weak…

Sitting there, crying like a baby, I wanted my island, badly. The dream was getting more and more desperate for me. My life was so much less than that dream. I needed it.