Our Future
Chapter 14: Time Freeze

Cain somehow heals his wrist, breaks free from Gabriel and reaches for the gun and grabs it. He fires at Emily.

“No,” I shout reaching forward.

Suddenly everything and I mean everything freezes completely aside from me and Gabriel, Jasper and Daniel.

“Joey? Joseph?” Daniel exclaims. “Nathan, what’s going on?”

“I think I froze time,” I comment in amazement.

Gabriel flicks the bullet in mid-air and it falls to the ground.

“Do you know how to...unfreeze it?” he asks limping on his leg to turn in our direction.

“I think we should move everyone before I do that so that nobody else gets injured,” I point out.

“How are we supposed to do that?” Daniel exclaims like we’re stupid for having the idea.

“I want to try something,” Gabriel replies.

He approaches Joey and touches two fingers to his forehead and concentrates. Joey’s eyeballs float up to Gabriel’s fingers.

“What’s going on?” Joey asks.

Gabriel jumps back not suspecting Joey to speak.

“Works just like my ‘mind reading connection’,” Gabriel comments.

One by one we free the people, aside from Cain, from their suspended time freeze motion. Most of them are confused.

“Just go back to the warehouse, like I said. We’ll sort this out,” I address everyone this time.

Everyone complies with it except Emily.

“He almost killed Joey and Daniel, I’m not leaving you,” she hinted.

“She’ll get in the way,” whispers Jasper but it’s not really a whisper.

“Emily, we stopped time he can’t hurt us, ” Gabriel tries to reason.

“They’ll be fine,” Daniel tries to assure her. “Come on,” he nods in the direction of the end of the alleyway.

You can tell Emily is torn between staying with us and going back to check up on Arran who has been doing a lot better since Emily came into his life. He’s almost back to the way he used to be before Quinn died, but he still has some bad days.

The three of us grab onto Cain’s legs and shoulders and lift him up. He’s easier to carry because he’s not dead weight this time and we have an extra person. Emily watches and then finally joins Daniel and Joey as they carefully hobble towards the warehouse.

“We should just drop him near some zombies,” Jasper mumbles. “Maybe they’ll eat him.”

I and Gabriel look at each other.

Jasper’s thoughts about Cain were dark. He honestly wanted to kill him. Then again that’s what Cain had attempted to do to him and Abele three times now.

This time we flew four hours out of town and dropped him on top of a wooden cabin. Again if the fall didn’t kill him hopefully he’d stay lost out here.

We fly back and when we reach the warehouse I push play on time. The wind starts whistling again.

Jasper disappears.

We find Daniel sitting at a lunch table with a pair of crutches.

“We’re sorry about what happened to both you and Joey,” I apologize.

“It wasn’t completely your fault. We knew Jason, yet, we didn’t see it coming. How could you of known that guy was going to attack you?” Daniel questions.

“We knew he’d come back eventually but we didn’t think it would be this soon,” Gabriel answers cautiously.

“You know him?” Daniel asks.

“He’s Jasper’s step brother. He came in with Abele and Jasper. Jasper told us he’d shot Abele so we kicked him out. He came back and Jasper almost practically gave him a concussion and then we flew him out of town,” I comment.

“Step brother? Does that mean he’s part angel?” Daniel asks concerned.

“No, Jasper was adopted,” Gabriel replies.

We hear barking in the distance.

“Here the boys come,” Daniel comments.

Two huskies come bolting from out of nowhere towards Daniel. One is completely white and the other is black and white. You can tell they are four or five years old.

“Hey, Storm. Did you miss us? Hey, Wolf,” says Daniel rubbing the dogs’ head.

Joey comes back to the table with a plate of food for himself and Daniel.

“Hey, you’re back. I see you’ve met Storm and Wolf,” he comments.

“Yeah,” Gabriel replies quietly.

Joey glances at me after Gabriel’s reply, I shrug.

As children, I and Gabriel hadn’t really been around dogs. We hadn’t really wanted one either. One time when Gabriel was walking home he’d been approached by an aggressive dog that ended up biting his knee. Gabriel was terrified of dogs for a while after. He was stuck swallowing antibiotics for five days straight after, too. It wasn’t a fun experience for him. I guess Gabriel was still a little scared of dogs.

“He knows they won’t hurt him, right?” asks Daniel quietly not wanting to offend Gabriel.

“Yeah, he’s just not a big fan of dogs,” I answer.

“So do guys have powers like Jasper?” Joey asks changing the topic.

I glance around nervously.

“What is it?” asks Daniel cautiously.

I and Gabriel are both worried someone will over hear our conversation.

“Are you worried others will hear?” asks Joey. “We can go somewhere else.”

“That might be a good idea,” Gabriel suggests.

“Okay, let’s go,” agrees Daniel.

“Go lay down, okay?” Joey tells Storm and Wolf.

The dogs disappear back down the hall.

We follow Daniel and Joey to the same empty storage room we built our new box cave in. They scout the place out and then settle down on a couple of boxes to listen to us.

“I can read minds,” Gabriel mumbles quietly.

“I can tell the future,” I whisper quietly after.

“So were you seeing the future yesterday, on the roof?” Daniel asks.

“Yeah,” I answer.

“Is that how you knew about Jason?” Joey asks.

I hesitate, “Yes.”

“Will...will...I have...a power?” Daniel stutters.

“Probably, we haven’t met an angel without one, yet,” I reply.

“So are Sam and Anna angels, too?” Joey asks.

“No, our parents were half angel and when that happens you either get full angel children or full human children. They’re human,” I answer.

“How do you know?” Daniel asks. “That...they’re human.”

Again we hesitate. Noah had told us. We had just believed him. In truth, we had no clue whether they actually were or not.

“Someone told us,” Gabriel replied.

“Who?” Daniel asks.

“Noah,” I reply. “The one from the Ark in the Bible.”

“And you believe him?” Daniel asks. “Did he give you any proof?-”

“Why?” Gabriel asks.

“Because if they are angels and they don’t know it could be torturing them because they don’t know what’s going on. They could think they’re crazy,” Daniel exclaims.

“Calm down,” pleads Joey quietly.

“You’ve met them. Does it seem like anything is going on? Because when I was that age I had my power and I was spending time trying to find a place with as few people as possible because I didn’t know how to turn my power off. It was all I could hear, okay? My sister and Sam aren’t like that. They act normal, they’re kids,” Gabriel exclaims.

“Everybody just calm down,” I say getting in between the two before they start a physical fight.

“Kids are good at hiding things,” Daniel comments.

Gabriel hadn’t been. As a kid you could tell when something was wrong but then again maybe he wore his emotions on his sleeve.

“Quit it,” Joey exclaims to Daniel. “Both of you.”

“His sibling could be suffering and he wouldn’t know,” Daniel exclaims to Joey.

“I told you not five minutes ago that I could read minds. This means I can read Anna and Sam’s minds. I know what they think. I may not like it but I do, okay? I know they are human, okay?” Gabriel yells.

“Stop it. It won’t do us any good if we start fighting,” I exclaim.

It was bad enough with Cain and Jason; we didn’t need to turn on each other.

“You need to stop. It won’t help anybody if you start throwing punches. Okay, Gabriel?” I send over the mind link.

“Shut up!” he yells at me. “I’ll say what I want.”

He looks back at Daniel and then stalks off.

“I’m sorry, he’s normally not like this, I’ll have to figure out what’s going on,” I apologize more to Joey then Daniel because he just provoked Gabriel.

Daniel disappears. Teleportation again.

“Great, guess you better go find Daniel and see what’s up,” I reply.

“Maybe they see each other as competition,” Joey mentions quietly.

“Why would that be? It’s not like we tried to make a move on the other,” I answer.

“Has he ever had a boyfriend before and had other gay people around him?” Joey asks.

“No, he only came out three and half years ago and nobody else in our school was gay,” I reply seeing where he’s coming from now.

Gabriel had never been in a relationship and therefore he had never had competition, which probably meant he didn’t know how to act when there was.

“Well, maybe we should go talk to them and then get them to have a nice, calm conversation about it,” I answer.

“I don’t know if they’ll want to,” Joey adds.

“Well, it’s no good if they have this issue with each other,” I reply.

I turn to leave and find Gabriel.

“How am I supposed to talk to Daniel if he teleports away?” Joey asks

“You’re his boyfriend. Why would he do that? Talking to him should help, he has no reason to be mad at you,” I reply.

“I guess,” Joey answers.

We were straining their relationship. Some part of me wished we hadn’t moved. Their lives could have gone on peacefully. But we wouldn’t have met them and they might be dead by now if it weren’t us and Jasper.

Joey quietly and slowly makes his way to the front door of the storage room but glances back at me before leaving.

Seriously, where could Gabriel go? He didn’t know any hiding places here that Daniel didn’t know or that weren’t too obvious. It meant he’d probably jump the warehouse fence and if that were the case then I had no clue where to look.

I needed a vision to tell me where he was or at least give me an idea.

If I could hear Gabriel when he directly talked to me through the mind link maybe I could sense his mind link. My problem was: How do you pick up on a mind link?

Normally Gabriel would just listen, but he could read everyone’s mind. I could only hear him when he wanted me to.

I concentrated on feeling the different people and entities around me and eventually I got a mental map of where every mind was. It was amazing how many people were actually left. It had to be around a million, spread out in little groups of people that ranged from fifty to a couple hundred.

There were some single dots as well; I assumed one of them had to be Gabriel. I located my own mind and went out from it checking all the single dots for Gabriel’s mind. I came across Joey and Daniel’s minds. They were back in the alley. Why were they back there?

I saw a dot a few blocks away, it was stationary. It had to be Gabriel. The dot was flashing well all the others were solid. I shut the mental map down after taking note of the streets he was near and started to make my way there.

I wish I had Daniel’s teleportation power. Gabriel could move in the span of time it takes me to walk there and I might have to check the map again to pinpoint his where abouts and he could just keep moving.

Gabriel usually wasn’t one for confrontation but he just went at it with Daniel. Maybe Daniel thought something but neither of them mentioned anything.

I round a corner and I spot Gabriel’s brown wings. I haven’t seen them in a while; they look more tan in the light than brown.

“Gabriel, what are you doing?” I ask.

He seems to be staring off into space. He was going to get himself shot if he stood out in the open like that.

“Gabriel?” I question coming around his front side.

He has three deep gashes in his left cheek, like something was trying to claw his eye out.

“What happened?” I ask concerned grabbing his shoulders.

He looks up at me. “Nathan?”

“You okay?” I ask.

He reaches up and touches his injured cheek, his hand comes away bloody.

“I’m bleeding,” he informs me.

“Do you know what happened?” I ask again.

He stares at his blood covered hand as if trying to remember.

“I was yelling at Daniel and you and Joey were trying to stop us and then I left, but I don’t know how I ended up here,” he replies. “I’m sorry I told you to shut up.”

He honestly sounds and looks apologetic as well as confused.

I examine his wound. I hoped whatever had scratched him didn’t come back.

“It’s okay. Are you sure you don’t remember anything?” I try to comfort him.

“No, it’s just blurry,” he whispers looking down at his hand again nervously.

“Can you tell me why you were upset with Daniel?” I ask quietly.

“It’ll sound stupid because he didn’t do anything,” he avoids the question quietly.

“Come on, Gabriel. We’ve been friends for over a decade,” I remind him gently.

“I was jealous, okay. I don’t know. I guess I was worried he’d start to like you or you’d start to like him or something. I didn’t want to be alone, Nathan,” he whispers nervously. “I love you, and I don’t want to lose you.”

“I’m not going anywhere, okay? I love you, you know that. Daniel’s just another guy, just because he’s gay doesn’t mean I’ll like him. I’m not going to fall in love with every guy I see,” I whisper. “We should go back.” I nod in the direction I came from.

He glances at me nervously.

“Nobody’s mad at you for fighting with Daniel. He provoked you so you defended yourself. Come on,” I try to comfort him again.

“Nathan...” Gabriel whispers but then hesitates.

“What?” I ask quietly.

“My wings won’t retract,” he whispers.

That could be an issue if we wanted to go back. How were we going to keep people from seeing his wings? We had to hide them somehow.

“Nathan,” calls Joey.

I turn and see Joey and Daniel at the end of the alley. Daniel has cool-gray wings spreading from his shoulders. He seems nervous.

“He can’t retract them,” Joey mentions slowly.

Great. Just like last time only it’s them this time instead of me.

“What happened to you?” Daniel asked quietly.

He seemed to have calmed down.

“I don’t...remember,” Gabriel stutters starring at the ground. “Can’t we go in a back door and hide till they go away?”

“People will be looking for us though because we’ve been gone for so long,” Daniel replies quietly.

“Well, Joey will have to do the talking because unless you know they’re going to accept you nobody can see you,” I reply.

“Where are they going to stay till then?” Joey asks looking at Daniel concerned.

“If we get in one of the back doors we can hide them in a storage room but we have to distract the patrols,” I reply.

“I could try to do that,” Joey adds. “I don’t know how good I am at distractions.”

“Well we’ll wait till they’re around the front of the warehouse so if your distraction doesn’t work we still have time, okay?” I answer.

“I’ll do my best anyway,” he remarks.

“Good luck,” Daniel adds quietly.

Joey nods, understanding what he didn’t say out loud.

“Let’s go,” I sign.

We walk back in silence but Gabriel glances around panicked every time he hears a sound. He was never concerned with being seen before, why was he so worried now? Was it because if we were seen they might kill us? They’d seen Jasper but that didn’t mean they were fine with it, they could be more scared then anything and it was only three people. Obviously Emily, Jasper, Michael and Rider had talked to them about it otherwise I think they would have looked scared of Jasper but they weren’t. They were more concerned for Joey and Daniel’s safety then anything.

Joey goes back through the hole behind the rock and then I watch silently from outside the fence as he approaches the same old brown haired guy he was with when we first met him and a younger male brunette than looks our age. Once they start talking I join Gabriel and Daniel at the back of the warehouse.

They each grab one of my hands and fly me over the fence and drop me. I land on my hands and feet. They land silently.

I didn’t want to take my wings out just in case they got stuck being out, too. We sprinted to the back door that leads to the storage room we built our box cave in and picked the lock. Once we were safely inside we breathed a sigh of relief.

Joey joined us about ten minutes later.

“Did anyone see you?” I ask.

“I don’t think so, why?” he answered.

“We don’t need people coming in and seeing them,” I whisper harshly.

“Matt, Roger and Jackie already know so it’s fine if they see us,” Daniel replies.

“They know about Jasper, they don’t know about you, and sometimes people aren’t as accepting if it’s their friends they find out are different,” I add glancing at Gabriel.

He meets my eyes but quickly breaks the eye contact.

“Jasper is their friend. It’s not like he’s done anything to make people dislike him,” Joey quietly adds.

“Jasper is more like a classmate or coworker then a friend to them. A friend is somebody you know personal things about, what do they know about Jasper? Almost nothing,” I remind them.

They side glance each other and seem to get my point.

Gabriel has taken a seat on a box and been silent for a while.

I join him; I grab a nearby roll of paper towel and try to gently apply pressure to his still bleeding cheek. The scratches were deep. I was concerned about it becoming infected. I looked around, searching for bandages or disinfecting supplies but I didn’t see any.

“Don’t worry about it,” he whispered quietly. “It’s not as bad it looks.”

“It’s been bleeding for the last fifteen minutes. And if we don’t bandage it, it may become infected,” I reply quietly with concern.

“Here,” Daniel says holding out a giant Band-Aid and some Polysporn.

I nod my thanks and take the supplies.

I gently apply the Polysporn to Gabriel’s wound. He hisses in annoyance at the stinging of the Polysporn disinfecting his wound. I place the giant Band-Aid over the wound and press down gently.

“Stay still,” I hiss when Gabriel tries to pull away in discomfort.

“You’re making it hurt,” he hisses.

“Oh, please. You’ve been shot, this is nothing,” I add.

“It still hurts,” he replies.

“Why were you shot?” Daniel asks.

“Honestly, we don’t know why. But it was one of our old classmates, Farren. We think he had some issues,” Gabriel answered quietly.

“Issues?” Daniel asks.

“With our sexuality,” I hint quietly.

“So he was a homophobic?” Daniel asks.

“That’s what we’re guessing. He didn’t exactly say. Nobody knew we had powers at this point. And we didn’t know we were angels then either. It was the only thing he could have found out about us and disliked,” I reply.

“What happened to him?” Joey asks.

“He attempted to shot me but Gabriel pushed me out of the way and he missed. He refused to put the gun down so I shot him. He’s dead,” I answer.

“At least we don’t have to worry about him coming back, Cain still might,” Daniel comments.

“Let’s just hope he doesn’t,” I remind Daniel.

But that was unlikely. He probably wasn’t going to stop until he was dead. That was if he was even possible to kill. We had shot him and he healed himself. Jasper had given him a pretty good beating, too and all he’d gotten was a bloody nose. He hadn’t even broken any bones when we dropped him in the middle of that field. Maybe he was part angel, too bad we had no way of knowing. He oddly hadn’t grown wings yet either if he was.

“Squeak!” the door screeched open at the front of the storage room.

“Stay here,” I whisper to Gabriel, Daniel and Joey.

I sneak to the edge of the box pile and peek at the door. I recognized the young man who entered. I’d seen him earlier in the alley but I didn’t know who he was. He knew about Jasper.

“Daniel,” I call quietly.

Daniel comes tiptoeing into view.

“You know our visitor?” I ask moving aside so he can look around the corner.

“That’s Vlad. What’s he doing here? Did he see Joey?” Daniel muttered concerned.

“Dan?” Vlad called.

Daniel rolled his eyes.

“I hate that nick name,” he muttered again.

“Do you think Joey can get him to leave?” I ask.

“Not exactly. He’ll just make him stay. They’re not on the best of terms,” Daniel answered.

“Well, we have to do something, he can’t stay here. He’ll find you and Gabriel,” I comment.

“We should just move. None of us can get him to leave without causing a problem,” Daniel suggests.

“He’ll hear us,” I whisper.

“I can hear you,” Vlad shouts.

“I can teleport us. We just have to find a place to teleport,” Daniel suggests again.

“Is there any place people don’t go often?” I question. “Hurry, he’s coming.”

We sneak back to where Gabriel and Joey are waiting.

“Dan? What’s going on?” Vlad calls again.

“We need to go,” Gabriel pleads.

“We’re going,” Daniel hisses grabbing Joey’s hand.

I grab Gabriel’s and Daniel places a hand on my shoulder. We’re in the storage room one second and the next in different storage room full of empty boxes and extra mattresses.

“That was a close one,” I sigh.

“Will he continue to look for you?” I then ask Daniel.

“I don’t know,” Daniel breaths a little out of breath from the teleportation.

“Who was it?” Joey asks.

“Vlad,” Daniel replies annoyed.

“Do you know what he wanted?” Joey asks.

“No, he’s your ex,” Daniel exclaims.

“I broke it off with him before I met you, you know he means nothing,” Joey replies.

“But he wanted something with me, so either he’s not over you and is going to try and get you back or he has an issue with me,” Daniel adds.

“Just because somebody breaks it off with you doesn’t mean they get over you,” Gabriel replies.

He was referring to Emily. She wasn’t an issue anymore because she liked Arran and Arran liked her.

Gabriel was grateful to Arran. Because he got to meet the real me, not the friend who tried to be interested in girls and just didn’t feel anything. He got to fall in love for the first time and be loved back. There used to part of each other we couldn’t relate to and now we could because we knew how it felt.

“You should talk to him before you jump to conclusions,” I add quietly. “Maybe somebody just wanted to talk to you so he came looking.”

“No, he was a terrible person. Drug addict, not committed, cheated,” Daniel advised us.

He must have been the rebound after their break up or something. He knew too much. Sharing that you’re old lover was a drug addict wasn’t exactly something you just told anybody. At least their relationship lasted.

“That doesn’t mean somebody just wanted to talk to you and he came looking cause neither of you were around, ” I reply.

“Maybe you guys should go out so they know we’re not dead,” Daniel mumbles sarcastically.

“I don’t know if that will help. If they’re looking for you specifically, what are we supposed to say?” I ask.

“That you don’t know where I am but if you see me you’ll let me know,” he replies.

“We need to figure out why your wings won’t retract not cover for you,” I hint.

“Can you force the visions so we have some clues?” Joey asks quietly.

“I’ve never really tried it,” I reply.

I had a vision when I was worried about Gabriel but I think that was a coincidence because it didn’t help.

“I wouldn’t know how to do it,” I continue.

“We don’t need to,” Gabriel mumbles.

“What? Why?” Daniel asks annoyed.

Gabriel looks up at him annoyed with his tone.

“They’re going away,” he whispers pointing at Daniel’s wings which have shrunk.

Soon the wings are no more than nobs and then they disappear completely. Gabriel’s wings disappear faster probably because his body is accustomed to doing it more so than Daniel’s.

“We should go see Sam and Anna,” Gabriel mumbles getting up.

“I’m sorry,” Daniel calls after him as he exits the storage room.

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