Negative Film (Star Child: Places of Power Book 2) Read online

  Negative Film

  By Leonard Petracci

  Book 2 of the Places of Power Series

  Dedication

  To my family, friends, and online community - without them, this would not be possible.

  Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars - mere globs of gas atoms. I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more?

  -Richard Feynman

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  Chapter List

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Chapter 104

  Chapter 105

  Chapter 106

  Chapter 107

  Chapter 108

  Chapter 109

  Chapter 110

  Chapter 111

  Chapter 112

  Chapter 113

  Chapter 114

  Chapter 115

  Chapter 116

  Chapter 117

  Part 1

  INTRODUCTION

  Superpowers are based on the topography of where someone is born.

  Chapter 1

  The front door gave way in two kicks from a reinforced boot, the paneling snapping as the locking mechanism exploded through the wood. It had never been meant to withstand force—rather, the house had relied upon the prestige of its neighborhood to provide protection, placing faith in the crime watch and the flimsy aluminum gate that guarded the street. The door itself had been crafted as an ornament, the rich mahogany actually extending only a sixteenth of an inch before it was replaced by cheap particle board, the gold-plated bracers constructed of hollow tin tubes. It stood confident and overbearing, proud, but without any true strength. Without a backbone.

  Just like its owner.

  "What is the meaning of this!" he shouted as he rushed down red carpeted stairs, lightning crackling between his fingertips. Lightning that he had never actually used for defense or work, but had offered as proof of his pedigree, atop a reputation supported by generational trust funds. "Don't make me—"

  "Police," came the gruff answer as six flashlights swiveled his way, and his face turned paler than their beams. There were plenty of reasons the police might appear at his place, but he had long worked out arrangements that would have prevented such occurrences. Laundered money was to be overlooked so long as change found its way to the station. The same principle applied for tax exploitation. And as for his other crimes, there were always those who would open their hand in exchange for closing their mouths.

  "Officers, surely we can reach an arrangement," he blubbered, the lightning fading to mere sparks. "May I request your purpose and your warrant?"

  "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear," said their leader, his eyes narrowing. "We received a report of suspicious activity at this residence. There are those who hide from the state, those who would be willing to pay dearly for a back room. James, your openness to lucrative deals does not go unnoticed, and my officers themselves reported figures entering and exiting this house. Confess now, and we no longer have to search. Of course, should you confess now, we will have found those wanted in the sewer, where they belong, and not your house. But only if you confess. Otherwise, you will be just as wanted by the state."

  "This is preposterous!" James, the owner, answered as the officers split, each taking a different path. "I've had no dealings of any sort!"

  "Then you have nothing to fear, James," answered the leader, his voice a whisper through thin lips. "Nothing at all."

  Dressers smashed into splinters as the officers searched, drywall caved to reveal no hidden compartments, and carpet surrendered to knives. The leader smiled as he watched James fidget, the dollar amounts nearly reflecting in his eyes as they streamed away from his net worth. And soon the first officer climbed the stairs, searching James’ own room, the uppermost of the house with a view of the city more priceless than any of his possessions. The officer frowned as he ripped covers from the bed, chucked the mattress to the floor, and tapped the floorboards. And he spoke after a minute, his voice exasperated and laced with frustration.

  "How many times do I have to tell you?" he said, rolling his eyes as he continued to search. "We're after the escapee. Number six from the report. Going to be damn hard to find, you know, because—"

  His voice trailed off as he turned and saw that he was the only one in the room. His brow knit together, and he mumbled, craning his neck to check that he was indeed alone. He could have sworn his partner had followed him, and after hours of briefing, had actually asked what they were looking for just a moment ag
o.

  But instead, no one was there.

  He continued to search with the hairs on his neck half raised, whipping around at the slightest noise to inspect the room, taking less and less care as each second passed. Then he nearly left the room at a sprint, like a child running back from leaving the trash at the end of a long driveway after dark. And in seconds, he returned to the lead officer, while the others kept watch on James downstairs.

  "There's someone here," he said. "I feel it, and I don't like it."

  "Your power," asked the leader. "Does it indicate anything?"

  "Nothing, sir," he answered, shuffling his feet. "I feel nothing alive in this room. Aside from the clock, there's no energy consumption. But there's ways to hide, as you know. And this feels wrong."

  "Fine," hissed the leader, extending a hand forwards, his eyes sliding over each of the objects in the room. "Step back; we need a full investigation."

  The officer rushed through the doorway just as the leader's hand formed a fist, and the room came to life. James' bedspread unknit itself, each of the individual threads spiderwebbing apart, pulling the seams of the mattress with them. The springs uncoiled as if they were made of spaghetti, arranging themselves in neat rows on the hardwood. Screws unwound from the bookshelves as each book came apart at individual pages, streaming forward in rivers of paper that accumulated in a neat pile at the center of the room. The dresser disassembled at the joints, the planks stacking to be organized by size, with a neat row of knobs atop. And every other object of the room unmade itself, from the desk to the office chair, the ceiling fan to the vents, down to wiring in the walls, until all that was left were their components, organized, and inanimate.

  "Nothing to be found," stated the leader as the officer peered wide-eyed over his shoulder.

  "I'm sorry sir," came the reply, the far larger man biting his lip. "I thought—"

  "It does not matter; I expected to find nothing anyway," the leader said, his voice level. "The descriptions of those entering the house did not match our records. No, not at all. I knew that walking in."

  "Then why did we bother, sir?"

  "Because there are those who would best remember," he answered, looking through the floor to where James stood below, "who runs this city and who merely resides in it."

  He shook his head and left, the officer following, too far away to hear the gulp that sounded from the roof as three adolescents pressed their ears against shingles, catching the bits of conversation below, the words muffled. And as the police cars trickled away, they departed, one of them hovering to lower the other two to the ground and to steal off into the night.

  Chapter 2

  "Look, I already told you," said Arial, rolling her eyes towards the ceiling, her voice exasperated. "He's not on the case. The police want no one who was involved in the rehabilitation fiasco involved. Except for me, but you already know that."

  "I do," I answered, rubbing the heel of my hand against an eyebrow in frustration at our lack of answers. "But if your father isn't working with them, how do they plan on catching anyone? And what did they ask you again?"

  We sat in the corner of Burner's Coffee Shop, at a small wood table nestled into a brick alcove, with me settled at the deepest point. Those walking by would only see Arial's brunette hair unless directly in front of the recession, and even then, they would likely be more focused on the steaming cup between their hands than two whispering teenagers. Normal whispering teenagers were be commonplace here, and we were doing our absolute best to be normal whispering teenagers. Normal, after everything over the last few months, was difficult bordering on impossible.

  In front of me was a list of names, one for each of the students who had attended the rehabilitation facility that had turned out to be more like a school for brainwashing recruits, accompanied by an untouched cup of coffee.

  "It's the best in the city," Arial had claimed when she deemed Burner's our meeting point, "And more importantly, it's a block from my new school, so I can wait to be picked up there without suspicion under the guise of doing homework. My parents will never know I met with you, so long as you're not using your power if my father pulls up."

  Though I had never tried coffee, the store did smell enticing, and I developed an immediate affinity for the pastries behind the glass counter. Arial ordered for us from a thin man with a scraggly grey-flecked beard and knitted hat, and he reached into a bag of raw beans, heat pulsing away from his fist as the beans roasted before being dropped into a small grinder. With a practiced motion, he pulled a pitcher of water from the shelf behind him, the water boiling in his hand by the time the grinder finished, then poured the powdered beans inside before capping the glass.

  “It’s a French press,” Arial explained as I carried the empty cups to the table and she held the larger glass filled with cloudy brewing liquid. “Burner’s introduced it to me, and you’ll love it. It's sophisticated, unlike the north.”

  She winked, her last comment alluding to the lie I had given her the first time we had met—that I was a traveling Boreal, one capable of replicating the Aurora, born near the tip of the hemisphere. Utilizing my own power, I'd been able to produce a similar effect by extracting light that was trapped within one of my dark spheres. It was the lie I had fed her parents when I attended dinner at her house, one that her father had not bought for an instant, and had marked the start of our journey together. A journey that had ended with us liberating dozens of brainwashed students from a city rehabilitation facility that had far darker goals than their occupants' welfare.

  Arial paid without asking, knowing my traditionally tight financial setting, and I enjoyed the refreshing smell of coffee far more than the bitter taste, taking only a single forced sip. But that hadn’t stopped her from filling my cup to the brim every time we met here, though the owner scowled each time we departed and I left a full but now cold mug on the counter.

  “Anyways,” continued Arial after a sip of the fresh brew that day, a variety that Burner's chalkboard specials announced to have been infused with strawberries by Vibrants, “the police only questioned me once, and they only wanted to know if anyone had not returned to their families. Apparently, a few had scattered back among the streets. The officers claimed to be concerned for their safety, but obviously, they would know who had and had not been accounted for. So I answered no, playing stupid, and since there were no charges, they couldn’t bring in a Truther to check. At least, with the story of what happened in the subway still fresh, they couldn't risk bringing one in without it potentially blowing up in their faces.”

  “But they wouldn’t say who they were asking about?” I inquired, a frown forming on my face as I thought about what we had heard the officers say on the rooftop just a few nights before. Despite their words, Lucio had planted a memory to look exactly like us in a few of their minds, which had lured them to enter the location after we noticed it had been under surveillance.

  The descriptions of those entering the house did not match our records. No, not at all. I knew that walking in.

  “No, they wouldn’t, and I didn’t think it would be the best of ideas to ask. I heard Wendy was brought in four more times because she said she used to know a few of the missing students outside the rehabilitation center, and I wouldn’t want to arouse suspicion. Trust me, at first they were looking for you. Roland made it his top priority, and Father was inundated with requests about your whereabouts. But that’s changed, ever since his demotion.”

  I sighed. She’d already mentioned Roland, the former chief of police’s change in position. A new chief had moved in from another city, one that had been pushed into Roland’s role as quickly as the officers who had been in the subway had been redirected to traffic duty and desk work. Under my breath, I cursed—when Roland and the Hunter were in charge, I had known their motives and possible plans. But now, someone new had entered the arena. Someone unknown.

  And in the words of my old instructor Linns from the rehabilitation facility,
the unknown is the most dangerous.

  Chapter 3

  “Tensions continue to heighten after a statement this afternoon by High General Webster,” spoke the newscaster, her cherry red lipstick two inches above the microphone and concern pushing through the thick layer of powder on her face, her voice with a hard and forced edge. The wind plucked at her otherwise perfectly brushed hair, threatening to pick apart the careful flow and pull the strands in its own direction, despite a near army of clips forcing it into place.

  “General Webster,” she continued, her eyes flicking towards a still scene of political buildings that formed the backdrop behind her, “has assured Congress that we have entered an immediate state of distress. Should war break out across the Atlantic, home forces are not seasoned or powerful enough to adequately answer the call. He calls for more troops, for stronger individuals to enlist, even for a draft. Inaction, he claims, exposes our nation in a way that can only be described as a direct threat to our populace’s well-being—”

  “Oh, can’t we ever watch something more entertaining?” exclaimed an exasperated Lucio, cutting off the reporter and drawing my gaze away from the screen. “Like an actual movie for once? If we’re all cooped up down here, we might as well get some culture out of it! I can feel myself starting to get boring.”

  It was our fifth week in the subway station, and I drummed my fingers on my leg from where I sat on the garage sale purchased couch. Lucio perched across from me on another garage sale couch, horridly mismatched with my own, as we watched a television that had gone out of style roughly ten years prior. Lucio, with his ability to alter memories, had already illustrated the point that he was capable of far more resolution than the flickering screen. The subway itself had changed drastically since we first arrived, or at least the section we inhabited—tents were strewn across the concrete floor for each of us, pushed far enough apart to form small territories like rooms, each with a small collection of belongings to declare its perimeter along with hanging sheets for privacy. The small kitchen had expanded after Slugger had found a small electric stove in an abandoned house and carried it back, his Momentive powers making it as light as a feather when he maneuvered it through the tunnel. A few space heaters supplied warmth, their extension cords crisscrossing the area to a plug that Lucio discovered had miraculously still worked, and since we paid no power bill, they were kept on high. At its base, the plugs clustered like tree branches to a trunk, stacked on top of each other in precisely the manner fire safety presentations instructed not to do.