Allie's War Episodes 1-4(11)

More fear coursed up my spine as his words sank in.
Allie! They can’t hear me! Only you can...what does that tell you?
Cass ran up at the same moment. “Allie! What is going on?”
The black-haired man looked at her. As he did, his concentration seemed to break.
Jon’s eyes cleared in the same instant. He stepped forward once they had, as if remembering where he was. His mouth hardened into a line as he grabbed ahold of my wrist.
“Al...get away from this guy!”
Confusion twisted my stomach in knots. I tried to think through the fear I saw in Jon’s eyes, the worry I saw on Cass’s face...but the black-haired man’s words resonated somewhere in my mind, and I knew suddenly, that I believed him.
I couldn’t stay here.
Memories swam forward, worsening that ache in my gut. Things that I’d suppressed for years, maybe since I’d been a kid. I remembered needles, endless tests, my dad pale-faced and silent while my mom yelled at doctors in white jackets. I remembered feeling like there was something wrong with me, like they all knew. I’d been so afraid of being found out, of them knowing I wasn’t like them, even though my blood said I was.
The doubt lingered. I remembered feeling my father’s fear...
I couldn’t go there again. I couldn’t.
When Jon yanked on my arm, I didn’t think.
A part of me reached out, seemingly on its own.
A folding sensation started somewhere deep inside my mind...as if a part of me collapsed like a telescope, pulling me with it. I exhaled it out, flexing a muscle I didn’t know I had.
It was over in less than a blink...
...and then Jon was all the way across the room.
Despite how quickly it happened, he didn’t get there gently.
I couldn’t remember raising a hand, finger or toe––and anyway, the paltry amount of Choy Li Fut kung fu that I knew, mostly from Jon force-feeding it to me, wouldn’t have caught Jon himself so completely by surprise.
I saw a soft flash of light. I saw Jon’s eyes widening.
Then, he was just gone.
When the force hit him, he immediately released my arm. He tried to grasp at me the instant he’d let go, but despite his super-fast, martial arts reflexes, he missed. His fingers splayed, groping first for a bar stool, then the counter, then the blender by the back wall. He careened backwards as if he’d been thrown bodily by a much larger man, before slamming into a series of shelves covered in clean water glasses. His arm smashed into a row of those same glasses. Over ten feet from where I stood...from where he’d started...he fell ungracefully to the rubber mat.
He took over half of the shelves’ contents with him.
The sound was deafening. Everyone in the diner looked up.
Tom, the manager, emerged from the back room. He looked between me and Jon, stunned, then back at the mess covering the back area behind the counter.
Jon scrambled to get up, impressively fast, but water glasses continued to fall. Over the sound of breaking glass and people rising to their feet, I realized everyone in the diner was staring at me now, too.
I didn't take my eyes off Jon.
I tried to understand how he’d gotten there. I tried to make sense of it.
Had I just hurt my brother? Jon? How could that have happened?
Out of nowhere, I found myself remembering my Uncle Stefan.
The memory stood out plainly behind my eyes, crystal-clear, if only for a heart beat. We’d been visiting his farm, touring the pig barn, and I’d been maybe seven years old. No one in the family talked about what had happened that day...not once, at any point afterwards. Even now, my memories of those events struck me as strangely surreal, despite how clear they formed in the foreground of my mind. I remembered standing there with Uncle Stefan, as the wind jerked my hair around my face. I remembered standing with him outside the barn, his rough hands on my shoulders. I’d been crying. My father had been trying to reassure me.
Jon hadn’t been there. Neither had my mom.
Uncle Stefan wasn’t a bad man. He was a rough man, a practical man, and a life-long farmer...but he wasn’t a bad man. He’d just finished telling me what happened to the runt baby pigs, right after I’d finished reading Charlotte’s Web...
The next thing I knew, Uncle Stefan was screaming, pinned against the wall of the barn. He’d been a big man, around six-two, over two hundred pounds, most of it muscle.
I forced the image from my mind, feeling sick.
When I glanced up, my anxiety turned into full-blown terror.
The black-haired man was staring at me, shock written all over his face.
At the same instant, I realized I knew.
Maybe I'd always known. Maybe my parents had known, too. Clearly, this black-haired guy knew what I was. At any rate, he'd known I'd hear his thoughts inside my head, without him saying them aloud. Not a whole lot of humans who could do that. I looked up at his pale eyes, maybe for help. But the shock on his face was as prominent as anyone else’s in the bar. More so, maybe. He stared between my eyes, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.