Universe 7F

  Rio had been getting weird messages on his radio at home.

  For his eighth birthday, he was given a Make-Your-Own-Radio Kit! (batteries not included), which he and his father made together. He had been trying to spend more time together, to do projects and little things here and there with him because Rio felt sad ever since the baby was born.

  This evening, Rio was cooped up in the room he shared with his brother and was fiddling with the radio once again. He turned the knob on the radio dial back and forth while perched on top of the dresser and looking out the window. The treehouse his father made was halfway done and every day Rio would stare at it even longer willing the process to go faster with his mind.

It never worked.

Once he found the station he was looking for, he jumped off the dresser and started slowly walking across the room, twisting the antenna back and forth. He stopped, once he heard the first few words.

"And....we cannot be afraid of...."

It wasn't what he was looking for, it was the local news report.

He sighed and decided that he was never going to hear the special messages from the other day unless it was by chance alone. Quick to move on to something new, he decided to go on a short trip to visit a friend.

It was hard to do, sneaking out, and if Dad found out what he was about to do, he would take away his weekly privileges again.

And Rio just couldn't have that!

So he slowly sat down on the wooden floor, littered with books and toys, glanced at the door warily, and picked up a teddy bear nearby, dressed up like a soldier. Deftly, Rio took off his grounder on his wrist. It was more similar to an anklet someone on house arrest would wear, because Rio was always taking his plastic ones off, but had finally learned how to take this one off.

It started beeping, but he wrapped it around the stuffed bear's hand, and it stopped, the sensor easily tricked.

"Thank you for your service General Teddy," Rio said.

The hard part was over, and now it was the easy part.

Rio's amber eyes flickered black, and a tiny dark spot appeared next to the radio antenna. Everything in the room went silent, all sound stopped, and time slowed down, for a millisecond, and then began again as Rio had messed up.

The spot was only supposed to be tiny, a little portal, but he wasn't quite sure what he was doing. Instead, the black spot became the focal point for everything in the room. Everything except Rio was slowly being dragged towards it, and the moment he saw the dresser start to groan across the floor, he knew he had put too much power into it.

First inside the little speck was his radio.

"No," Rio shouted.

Next was General Teddy.

"Oh no."

Stolen story; please report.

And that was when his father opened the door to see once again he could not leave his son alone for more than ten minutes without the possibility of his entire house disappearing into the night. Rio nearly jumped out of his skin when the door banged open. He accidentally increased the size of the small black speck to an entire small ball, and the door was torn off its hinges in an instant, dragged into it, and disappeared into the nether.

Rio stood up and looked at his father clutching onto the doorframe for dear life. The entire house groaned and heaved as it was sucked inwards.

"I lost my grounder," Rio shouted.

"Accidents happen," his father replied. "Just relax and it will all stop!"

The dresser bumped into Rio, he fell to the ground, the black small ball grew in shape, now the walls of the room curving inwards. Rio wasn't hurt, but he was mostly worried about something much more important.

"Are you angry with me," Rio asked.

"No!"

"Really?"

"YES!"

"Am I losing my privileges?"

"No!"

The black ball got smaller and smaller, the walls relaxed, and from downstairs the other two children could be crying.

"Go to me and mom's room," Rio's father said tersely.

Rio ran as fast as he could and then opened the door to his parent's room. Inside a bag underneath their bed were bundles of dollar store grounders, and his dad immediately put one on both of Rio's wrists for good measure.

"Am I in trou—"

"Now return to yours."

Rio ran off, slamming the door, and his father worried he might have made him cry, cutting him off mid-sentence, but he was at this breaking point. His son's abilities developed abnormally early and he was now a danger to himself and others. Once a week he had to take his son to the local registration office to ensure that he was within current standards of an "abnormal living threat", and feared the government would take him away one day.

But this was not something he was emotionally able to handle, so he decided to ask another parent.

Once again he looked under the bed and found his trusted friend. He pulled him out from under the bed, and the sword lit up once taken out of its scabbard.

"Good evening Tyreceus," Unas said.

"Hey...I need some advice. What am I supposed to do with him," Tyreceus whispered.

"Hit him a bit. Worked with mine, and they turned out fine!"

"No! I just...I didn't sign up for this."

"That woman gave one of those babies to you knowing what they are. You cannot decide what the child's burden is when it was already decided by someone else."

"You're right. It's not his fault, I'm just afraid. If this is what he can do, I wonder what the others that Leofric killed could have done," Tyreceus wondered aloud. "What can I do to stop this?"

"Put him in a place where he can't hurt anyone. Possibly in the mountains, with someone you trust," Unas suggested.

The door opened and Rio had returned. Tyreceus was caught, sitting in the dark, talking to a flaming sword like a crazy man and his son had been listening to the conversation the entire time. Defiantly Rio ripped off the paper-thin grounders and his tiny body shook in anger.

"I'm running away," Rio said quietly.

"I'm sorry. I just want you to stop," Tyreceus replied.

"You need to stop! You're playing with fire!"

Tyreceus quickly put the sword back in his scabbard and tried to console Rio, but it wasn't working. He pushed his father away when he tried to hug him, and he started to cry, big heavy drops streaking his face and shame in his eyes.

"I am going back to the Secret Garden," Rio declared.

"What are you talking about," Tyreceus asked.

"I am never coming back!"

Little black specks covered Rio's body and Tyreceus jumped away, but nothing in the room moved. All sound was gone as Rio disappeared, the little black specks covering his small frame, until there was a child-size gaping hole in reality. It swirled and morphed, and then shrunk once more until Rio was gone.

"Come back," Tyreceus said, to an empty room.

His wife called for him downstairs but Tyreceus stood in the same spot waiting for his son to return, numb to the outside world. He didn't move from the same spot until Amara came upstairs and was standing in the same spot Rio was, holding their daughter close to her chest and Aegean was trailing behind her.

"Did you hear me calling? What happened this time with Rio," she asked.

"He ran away."