Terrance and Julie insisted that I was ready to test for my license and set up both my written and practical tests for the following week. I passed on my first try and I was added to the company’s liability insurance plan. We had a small celebration in the office and Julie brought me out to a hanger that I’d never been inside before. She unlocked the door and turned on the lights.
Inside I could see a row of seven helicopters, all gleaming and seemingly ready to fly at a moment’s notice. At the center of the group was a Hughes 500D with the same paint job as TC’s copter from Magnum PI!! Although it was the smallest helicopter of the bunch and by far the least expensive, it was the only one I had eyes for. I ran up to it and looked through the doors at the control panels.
“Part of our business is to provide hanger space and maintenance services for some of our clients with their own craft. The client that owns that helicopter asked me to find him a buyer that will love it as much as he does. It’s in excellent shape and only has a few thousand hours on it. I have all the maintenance records ready for you, if you’re interested. Terrance and I can arrange for you to use of the company helicopter, just as you asked, or I can get you a deal of lifetime on this one.”
I squeaked in joy and told her that I’d take the deal! Uncle Paul was going to flip out when he saw this and I couldn’t wait to show it to him. Julie brought me down to Earth a bit, explaining that she’d need several weeks to finalize the deal, in which the company would be forgiving a large debt from the old owner in exchange as part of that amazing deal, and to get the papers transferred over. However, she did say that she was allowed to give short test flights to prospective buyers and we took it for a fifteen-minute ride. It was just as wonderful as I’d thought it would be and it took a few days for the constant smile to leave my face.
Two weeks later, the ‘Chopper’ was mine and I flew it all around in reality and in the layers. The best part was being able to park it right in front of my house. That was just so cool. I didn’t need a car anymore. Mom needed some milk? No problem, I’ll just fly over to the grocery store and pick up a quart. Once, I even flew it into the store in R3, just because I could. I had to shift into R2 to be able to land on the floor though. I took mom and dad on a ride and although they enjoyed, it wasn’t their thing. On the other hand, Uncle Paul nearly blew a gasket he was so excited. He understood. It was really good to have the mustache and the Chopper reunited again.
One phone call put an end to the fun and games.
“Hi Abby, it’s Kevin. Senator Daniel’s daughter was just taken.”
“What happened?” I was having breakfast with dad before we went to work and my words caught his attention. He looked up at me, waiting to hear more.
“Daniels was ordered to vote to kill a bill yesterday. He didn’t and we had agents at his house and at the governor’s house. We had all the manpower we needed. Somehow, someone got in and took her anyways. We still don’t know how it happened. He took her in the few minutes between the senator’s wife waking her up and her going down to breakfast. Can you please call Roger? We could really use his help on this one.”
Kevin sounded defeated and I assured him that I would call Roger right away. Instead of calling myself, I used my phone to log on to the cameras I’d set up in the kid’s rooms. While I waited for the cameras to download the data for the past thirty minutes, I filled dad in on what was going on. He waited with me as the video finally finished downloading.
“That’s very bad, Abby.” Dad voiced my thoughts exactly as we watched, or rather failed to watch, the kidnapping. One moment the little girl coming out of her bathroom, all ready for school, and the next she was gone. Gone. As in no longer there. No longer in reality.
Someone else had my abilities and they were using them to help human traffickers.
“Can you run it back again, Abby? To just before she disappears. I thought I saw something.”
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Dad’s words shook me out of my stunned disbelief. I did as he asked and once I had her back on the video, I advanced it frame by frame. Dad was right. He did see something. In the five frames before the girl disappeared, a man can be seen taking a step towards her. Then they both disappear.
“He’s not as practiced as you are. You wouldn’t have needed to come back to reality to take her.”
Dad’s brain was moving faster than mine. It took me a few seconds to catch up to what he was saying and I thought about it. “No. It’s not a matter of practice. He either can’t create the connections between layers and sublayers, or he doesn’t know how to do it. He could also have wrapped her in a field and sent her to whatever layer he was in and not even needed the connecting field.”
We both considered the implications of this. Bad Shifter couldn’t do things that I could. That should give me a strong advantage in a confrontation. However, it was never a good idea to underestimate your opponent. He probably had other ways of using the field that I hadn’t even considered. Regardless of his abilities, I would have to hit him fast and hard. The trick was to end the fight before he even had chance to use any of his abilities on me.
“Abby, I know what I’ve told you about the slippery slope of killing, but in this case, I don’t see that you have any choice. This man cannot be allowed to go free. He is like you, but without your moral compass, your compassion, or your drive to help people. There is no telling how much damage he can do to people’s lives. He is too dangerous. You will need to permanently stop him.”
I heard dad’s words and felt the conviction behind them. Admitting that truth to me was not easy for him and it only served to underscore the seriousness of the situation. I nodded to him in acceptance and started heading out the door when I remembered that I had to get my gear. Shifting to L2, I ran to my room and grabbed my Roger outfit and the rest of my usual gear, including all my medical backpacks. I had no idea what I’d find at the end of my searches and I was determined to be prepared. Before leaving my room, I remembered to grab a diamuby from the shelf. It would have sucked to start my search only to have to come back because I had forgotten the very thing I needed to track the girl.
Dad was at the front door, waiting to see me off. I shifted back to reality and he gave me a fierce hug and wished me luck. I kissed his cheek and disappeared into L2, where the Chopper was waiting for me. Before I went through my pre-flight checklist, I remembered to call Shauna and ask her to move my morning cancer sessions to tonight. Then, with my gear loaded and the pre-flight checklist verified in record speed, I took off in the direction of Raleigh.
Once again, Waze was my friend. I clipped in my phone into the holder and set Waze to Raleigh, before connecting the phone to the clip with a field and sending the phone to reality. This allowed me to make sure that I was going in the right direction, without having to make tons of calculations in my head. I simply had to make sure that the dot was heading in the right direction. Fewer distractions meant that I could focus my attention on the pulse-scans that I’d need to use to find the little girl.
To get a better view of reality as I was flying, I shifted the Chopper to R1. Highway 85 was the main highway linking Charlotte to Greensboro and you have to link to Highway 40 from there to get to Raleigh. However, flying allowed me to take a more direct route over the Routes 49 and 64 and shave over forty miles from the trip. Every minute saved was important because I didn’t know in which direction the girl had been taken and with every passing moment the search sphere was growing.
With that in mind, I started multi-scanning the area below and in front of me for miles. After a few minutes I realized that I might be making a mistake. If the kidnapper was leaving Raleigh and heading towards Charlotte, then I would miss him entirely, since he would probably use or be directed to use the faster and more heavily used highways, which were all too far for me to scan from my position. Luckily, it was still early enough in my flight that there wasn’t much chance that the kidnapper had reached my position. The girl had been taken less than an hour ago and the drive time to Charlotte from Raleigh was over two hours.
I corrected my course and soon found the highway I needed. For the next half hour, I sent out my multi-scan out looking for a diamuby like the one in my pocket. I sent out hundred of multi-pulses and found nothing. The idea of having to do this along every direction leading out of Raleigh was daunting. I had severely underestimated the magnitude of the task. A twenty-mile range was extremely impressive, until you realized how many directions you needed to send it out in. Couple this with the limited amount of fuel that the helicopter could hold and I had a situation that was more that slightly depressing. At this point, my best-case scenario was that the kidnapper had holed up someplace in Raleigh until the search died down. Although, that logic fell apart when it occurred to me that a search would never be able to find me and that the kidnapper had my abilities.