Fight or Flight

Zeke was standing below a cliff. There was always a large group of people milling around inside a fence. He always saw a boulder fall off of the cliff directly above them. Zeke would reach out to stop the it, but it would not stop. He would strain with all the strength had, but he always couldn't stop it. He wanted to scream and warn the people, but he couldn't open his mouth. Zeke was forced to watch helplessly as the people were slowly crushed by his partially suspended boulder...
Zeke woke up in a cold sweat. A loud cry escaped his lips before he could stifle it. In moments Rachael was pounding on his door.
"Zeke, are you ok? Open the door!"
He raised his hand, causing the door to melt. Rachael ran in. "Are you ok?"
"Yeah, I just had a nightmare."
"Oh, I'm sorry... So this is your room?"
"Some of it. There's another two chambers in the back."
"And the whole thing is encased in di?"
"When the door's shut."
"That's a little dangerous, isn't it? I mean, what if something had happened to you? We wouldn't be able to get in. Someone could break into me and Mike's room... but not yours."
"I'm sorry if that's the way it has to be, but I've got stuff back there that no one but me should see. Not even you two. There's ancient artifacts and training things for alchemy and stuff back there, and if they where somehow to get into the wrong hands, they could be extremely dangerous."
"But Zeke, we aren't going to do anything like that."
"But if you can break in, so can other people."
"No one knows about the base."
"Yet."
They stood in awkward silence for a few seconds while Zeke checked his clock. "Well, we had better head over to Charise's. The government officers will probably be looking for her."
Rachael turned and stepped out of Zeke's room, calling as she went. "Come on Mike, let's go."
Zeke and Rachael followed behind Mike as the stepped out of the tree and closed the hole. The three traveled silently through the night.
"So what do you do all that time in your rooms?" Zeke proposed, so softly as to be nearly inaudible.
"Tell us what you do first."
"Well, I train. I practice moving, shaping, freezing, and melting di."
"I've been working on a garden. It's about five chambers big."
"Wow."
"The more I grow the more I have to keep alive so it's helping me get better."
"Wow, I just hang around, do homework and talk to my friends on my cell phone."
"Oh, you shouldn't do that. If someone wanted to find us that would be a way to trace us."
"But no one's looking for us."
"But they will. After we prevent them from getting their staff back, the government will start to hunt us down."
"Yeah, but..."
"We may even have to leave. Mike how much money do you have in your account?"
"I dunno, maybe 2 grand. Why?"
"We might have to leave on short notice, and the government will be working against us, so you should pull a grand of that out as soon as you get a chance. Cash is harder to track."
"Zeke, you're sounding paranoid again."
"We are getting ourselves in deep! Who cares, better safe than sorry."
The three stepped up to Charise's house and sat down on the porch. They sat there silently until two heavily armored trucks rounded the corner.
"Mike, stop them."
Mike reached into his pocket and withdrew a handful of acorns. He threw them in the trucks path of travel and closed his eyes, hands still extended toward the acorns. They had not yet even hit the ground when they burst open in a tangle of roots and branches. The roots forced themselves down through the road as the branches began to amass near the ground. The trucks, to their peril, drove over the acorns. The branches shot up and worked their way into the nooks in the bottom of the trucks. There was a moment of tires squealing in road before Mike lifted his arms and the branches propped the trucks up. Then they began to writhe with activity. The branched found their way into the grills and hoods of the trucks. Foliage sprouted and began to envelope the vehicles. From the thickening mass of leaves emanated an ear-splitting bang. The motion slowed as Mike reached for his shoulder, already damp with blood. Another shot exploded from the truck and Mike fell as a splintering crack and red spurts of blood ejected from his leg. The next shot just missed his head, but the following one found its mark in his chest. By this time Charise was out on the porch with Zeke and Rachael. Mike was screaming.
"Charise! Come on!" Rachael called behind her. "We're coming!" The two girls ran to Mike and the two of them tried to lift him up as he began to vomit blood. The two of them started to drag Mike off toward the park. His last action before he lost consciousness was to lift a hand. The repercussions of which were profound. The trees restricting the trucks disintegrated into dust, dropping them a good six feet. The axles cracked and rendered them useless. Luckily, this distracted the driver from firing a fatal shot at Zeke and Charise. The drivers exited their trucks and began to advance on Zeke, guns raised.
"Hands up! FBI! Hands up!"
Zek complied, for the moment. One man leaned forward as if to sprint. Zek noticed he was looking right at Mike. There was no way the three could outrun him, and Mike was in no condition to stop him. Zek had never had a chance to test the full strength of di. The whole speech he had given to Charise had been more to impress her than to present facts. He knew that di was extremely heavy, but not how strong it really was. However, he had no choice.
Zek ducked to the ground and thrust his hands forward. A stream of liquid di ejected from his back pack, forming a semi-sphere around him. The sound of the bullets pelting the di was deafening, but he stayed focused. Eventually the shots stopped. Zek peered out and figured that by the way they were looking at their guns, they were out of ammunition. He melted the shell down into a long pole. The two men flipped their guns around to use as clubs and rushed him. He blocked their first wave, but felt awkward and clumsy with the pole, so he split it in two and formed the halves into tonfas. He had had some training with them, and felt more confident. Zek was blocking and even getting a few hits in when one of the men grabbed the end of one tonfa. Zek melted the end around his wrist. The man, by reflex, grabbed his wrist with his other hand, which was soon ensnared as well. Zek melted his remaining di into orbs around his hands and started to lay waste to the other man. He got a lucky shot into the guy's stomach. He was about to finish him off with one between the shoulder blades when he sensed a mass of di moving very quickly for his head. He focused on stopping it, and it yielded. Zek turned around to find an astonished man nearly suspended by his wrists. One well placed punch between the eyes and he was out. One hit and the other guy was out as well. Zek rushed off to find the other three.
They were two blocks away. Rachael was kneeling over Mike in tears.
"I can't heal him! He's unconscious, so his mind is blocking me out!"
"Can you heal him if we get him conscious again?"
"Yes, of course, but he needs more blood... we have to get him back to the base before he bleeds to death!"
Zek coated Mike's wounds with di and wrapped a bit around his leg as a splint. He formed the remaining di into a stretcher. Rachael and Charise picked it up as Zek did his best to make it as light a possible. The four slipped away through the dark as peopled ventured out of their houses, curious as to what was causing all the noise.

~~~~~

"No Zek, keep it there!"
Mike was on a table in Rachael's room. The interior of the room was full of undulating, twitching columns of flesh. Veins full of blood and large stretches of muscle were easily distinguishable. Zek was prodding at her wall and trying to figure out how to do something with it. Rachael grabbed the part of the wall he was playing with and waited for a blood vessel to float over to her fingers. She then pulled it out and continued until she was to Mike.
"Zek, I need a needle."
He formed one out of di and gave it to her. Rachael opened up the vessel and stuck the back end of the needle in it. The she plugged the sharp end into Mike's arm. She then ran over and placed her hand on the wall.
"O-positive, O-positive..." she muttered to herself. Soon blood was visible running through the blood vessel and into Mike. In a few, long seconds Mike was conscious again. He had no sooner opened his eyes than started to gasp in extreme pain. Rachael quickly stepped around the table to his head.
"Mike, try not to focus on the pain. You need to let me in!" She clasped her hands around his head. She continued to whisper, "Relax, please, I'll heal you, I promise. I'm not going to let you give up now, you just need to let me in…" For several seconds, nothing happened. Mike's quick, labored breathing made Rachael squeeze her eyes shut and clutch Mike's head a bit harder than necessary. Then Mike suddenly relaxed and his breathing became slower and deeper.
Rachael issued orders before anyone could ask questions. "Ok, Charise, I need you to cut his clothes off while Zek gets the di out of his wounds."
"What?"
"I need to get to the wounds to heal them. You heard me, now cut his clothes off!"
Charise looked around for scissors or a knife. Zek handed her one he had just formed out of di. It was small and had large circles cut out of the body of the blade, and there was no handle.
"How…?"
"Grab it from the back side and use the holes to grip." He answered quickly. She grabbed it and looked up in surprise. "It's really heavy!"
"Di is."
"Less talking, more saving! I made a promise, I intend to keep it!"
Charise started to cut the clothes while Zek pulled the di out of one of the wounds, which immediately began to bleed again. Rachael had to stay in constant contact with Mike's body so it would not reject her again, and she started with his chest. She placed her hand around the wound and closed her eyes. The tissue began to move and pull back together. Then she moved to his shoulder. Before the healing could begin she had to remove the bullet. Rachael just pushed her finger into the wound to grab it. Zek and Charise turned away. His leg took longer because Rachael had to fix the shattered bone. When she was done, she called to them softly to let them know it was ok to turn around. Mike looked peaceful and much better, except that he was still covered in blood. Rachael produced a towel and a small basin of water and they began to gently wash off the blood from Mike's skin.
"So what did you do to calm him down?" Zek asked while they worked quietly.
"Oh, I just disconnected his brain from the nervous system and such so he couldn't feel the pain."
"Did you put them back?"
"Of course! I reconnected them after the healing was done. He's sleeping now."
Mike looked very comical laying there in just his shoes and his boxers, but the situation had been much too grave to allow them the humor. Zek pulled Mike's shoes off while Rachael found him a blanket.
"Ok, you two, you've seen too much of my room already, now go get some sleep." Rachael said while shooing them out. "And don't worry, guys, I'll be on nurse-duty all night." She winked and shut her door.
Zek opened the door to his room and let Charise go first.
"Wow! Neat room!"
"I'll tell you more about it tomorrow, but we need to sleep now."
Zek raised his hands, and out of the ground next to his bed formed a second one. It was a rectangle and the inside suddenly became liquid.
"It's ok, the liquid is much denser that you are, so you'll stay on top." Zek lay down on his and sank in a few inches. "It takes a while getting used to not sleeping on your stomach, but it's better than a water bed."
"Okay." Charise climbed gingerly into her bed.
"Good night, it's about to get dark." Zek raised his hand and as the door melted shut, utter darkness enveloped them.