G-Force (Book 1): G-Force Read online

  G-Force

  By

  Laine Nye

  Text copyright 2017

  All Rights Reserved

  Thanks goes to my son Jared Nye and his wife Amy for

  reading an early draft and giving great suggestions.

  Jared read the book three times as it progressed.

  Also, my daughter Jennifer Nye Lipsey

  gave great suggestions.

  I received wholehearted support from

  Joseph and Nancy King

  after they read my book as well.

  Most of all I want to thank my wife Revelina

  who patiently and tirelessly supported me every step

  of the way, giving me constant encouragement to keep me on the path.

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Epilogue

  Chapter One

  He didn't mean to rise above the ground like that; Sometimes it just happened. When he was relaxed or feeling lazy and laying down or when he was asleep, he would just lift up into the air. He didn't even notice that he had gone up fifteen or twenty feet. Sometimes he felt himself brushing against the ceiling when he was in his room, and that's when he became aware that it was happening.

  He had been lying in the soft grass in his back yard. He didn't feel the grass underneath him anymore. He opened his eyes and turned his head. That's when he saw that he was now about twenty-five feet in the air. This was usually as high as he went involuntarily. He smiled. He felt good that he wasn't stressed or upset. He was amused to find that the lawnmower was hovering next to him nearly upside down with gas leaking out. The fluid was suspended in the air. Minute concentration righted the lawnmower.

  This time he didn't worry about the neighbors seeing him. The close ones had all left for vacation. It was almost completely dark, and there were tall trees and bushes surrounding the back yard. He didn't think he could be seen, unless his parents happened to come outside to get him. But that didn't seem to worry him very much.

  He started to think about the first occurrence of this phenomenon. A few months ago, his family had moved from North Ogden Utah to Florida. His parents bought a condo on Clearwater Beach. The magnificent view from the seventeenth floor highlighted the brilliant sunsets of the Gulf of Mexico.

  Brad loved the gulf coast waters but missed the mountains out west. He remembered the day his mom was hurt not long after they had moved in. He had been watching the torrential downpour of rain that frequently happened in Florida. He had never seen that much rain pouring out of the skies in his life.

  Brad's mom, Kate, a youthful looking brunette who had not lost her figure or appeal, was trying to hang a chandelier from a ceiling hook not realizing her husband needed to hook up the wiring before she progressed any further. When Brad turned around and saw that she was poised precariously on a step ladder with all the weight of the crystal and brass chandelier above her head, he rushed over to help her. He got there too late; being overextended, she lost her balance as she lunged desperately to secure the chandelier before she fell off the step ladder. Landing badly on her left foot, her ankle snapped in an instant as she fell to the floor yelling in pain.

  Brad's father, Steve, a six-foot tall dark haired slim man with abnormal strength for his body size and shape came running into the room leaving his boxes of belongings he'd been working on behind. He quickly assessed the situation, and after lending her some comforting words, he said he was going to carry her to the elevator and out to the car for a trip to the emergency room. He looked up at the swinging chandelier and told her that she should have waited for him to do the job. “I wanted to surprise you,” she gasped.

  “You have.” Brad's father said dryly.

  His father turned to Brad and said, “It will be better for you to stay here son since we'll likely be there for hours. But stay inside because there have been a couple of tornado warnings today already.” All states that have tornadoes have a warning system that informs the public when a tornado has already been spotted somewhere. A tornado watch means that the conditions were ripe for a twister to occur. A tornado warning meant that one had been spotted.

  His parents left quickly with his father carrying Brad's mother carefully so as not to bump her injured foot on anything. Brad was left alone with his curiosity piqued about tornadoes. He had been dying to see one for real instead of just the footage he saw on television.

  He had gone back to the very large picture window to watch the storm. Then suddenly, right before his eyes he saw a funnel cloud form over the water just below the darkened skies. The twister was quickly advancing toward land. It looked like it was heading towards the space between the condo building he was in and the next one over.

  He could not contain his excitement, and, in an instant, he decided he would run outside onto the common balcony for the 17th floor and to the end where he could watch the tornado as it rushed by his location. The elevator was situated to his left about halfway across the balcony. He turned to the right. There were twelve doors leading to all the residences on the floor. From where their condo was, it wasn't far to the end of the building. Upon reaching the end of the balcony, Brad grabbed the railing and leaned out to look past the end of the building toward the last place he had seen the twister.

  What he did not know was that in the short time it had taken him to go from their residence out the door to the end of the balcony, the tornado had shifted directions and was coming towards him.

  Then, just like that, the world turned black around him. He heard a loud roaring noise unlike anything he knew, and he was being lifted off the balcony. He grabbed the railing and held on tight. As tight as he had ever gripped anything in his life. He was turned upside down by the voracious wind, his handhold on the rail being the only thing that kept him in contact with the building. His grip on the railing failed in an instant. He was pulled out into the open sky still upside down. Then he was tumbling through the air like an out of control acrobat. He was seventeen stories up, and there was no longer a floor underneath him or even close by.

  The edge of the vortex sucked him away further from the building and he was being drawn into its center. His panicked gesture was to reach desperately for the wall of the condo building the way a drowning man grasps for anything in the water to keep him afloat, but the wall was too far away. He was about to get caught into the spinning of the vicious cycling air. Right now, he was merely being tossed and tumbled but as soon as he entered the black cyclone in front of him he would be whipped around like a straw in the wind.

  Debris was everywhere around him choking him, slamming into him. Like a child's overextended reach for its mother, he stretched his hands and continued to reach for the safety of the building each time he was facing it again. He was determined to return to the place of safety he had been wrenched away from but at best, it seemed to only be a panicked reaction without reason or logic.

  His body was soaked in driving rain and salt water that had been sucked into the spinning wind force when it was over the Gulf of Mexico. He was in the clutches of a tornado. He had not yet reached the critical vortex. Only split seconds to go. He was still caught up in the peripheral winds that violently pushed outward and pulled inward rip sawing back and forth, still reaching for the building in his panic. Soon it would be over. He would be pulled the rest of the way in.

  But then, he was inexplicably moving towards the building that his hands were reaching desperatel
y for in what should have been a futile gesture. At first, he thought it was the outer winds of the tornado pushing him back the way he had come. But when he slammed into the side of the building, his peripheral vision detected the dark vortex moving far away from him. The power of the storm abandoned him. There was no viciously whipsawing wind. He braced himself for the inevitable fall now that the storm had ceased holding him airborne, but he did not fall. He was still against the building and still almost one hundred seventy feet above the ground, not moving. He looked to the balcony railing wishing for it be within his grasp, even while another part of his brain was trying to comprehend what was happening. Then he was scraping along the wall heading for the balcony. Buttons were torn from his shirt.

  When he made contact with the bottom of the railing he grabbed it and held on tight. The experience had frightened him so that he felt drained of all his strength. He needed to pull himself up to the top of the railing but felt too weak. Maybe he would still fall.

  A new instinct was developing. He was beginning to adapt. Brad concentrated on the top of the railing. Then he was rising up to meet it. He continued to rise until his feet cleared the railing. Then, he simply stepped towards the balcony’s floor and dropped safely and slowly onto it.

  He looked back towards the tornado. It was over one hundred yards away from him already. Powerful feelings coursed through him. Terror was ebbing. Shock and awe was building. Then came exhilaration. He knew that something he had done had pulled him from the clutches of the tornado, placed him on the side of the building, and allowed him to slide along its side until he was safe.

  Running back into the condo, Brad reviewed what had happened over and over in his mind. With an excited yelp, he leaped from the floor. He felt exultant, excited and energized. He wanted to try the whole thing again. He looked up at the ceiling concentrating until he lifted off the floor much more quickly than he had planned. His shoulder bumped the chandelier and knocked it off the hook. It had not been secured after his mother fell. The accident broke his concentration, and he fell back to the floor along with the chandelier which shattered into pieces. One part of his mind was telling him that he was in trouble. The other part was telling him to try another experiment.

  He looked at the broken chandelier, concentrated and lifted all of the pieces off the floor. He placed them back onto the floor and tried it again for himself without the broken pieces. His ascent was gradual this time until his head touched the ceiling. His descent was just as gradual. Throwing back his head, he uproariously laughed. Then watching the floor in front of him, he began taking exaggerated steps bouncing almost lazily out of the room and down the hall. He thought about the videos he had seen of astronauts walking on the moon taking their giant steps across the surface. They must have felt like he did now.

  Okay. He thought. Somehow, I am changing gravity just by concentrating. Whatever happened out there when I was sucked off the balcony has caused me to discover something I didn't know I could do.

  But he could not explain how it could have happened. He only knew the feeling he felt as he began to alter gravity. There was a tingling sensation that ran from his head all the way down his spine. But he also noticed that the experiences he had created for himself had left him feeling physically spent. He was totally worn out. He wondered if it was the gravity modification that wore him down or if it was just the terrible fear he had experienced in the tornado. He changed his damaged shirt and wet clothes then bounced back down the hall to the living room.

  When his parents finally returned, they were dismayed to see the broken pieces of the chandelier in the garbage can. His mother, standing on crutches with a cast on her ankle asked, “Brad, what happened to our light?”

  Brad said, “I'm sorry mom, I was jumping in the living room and bumped it with my head.”

  Brad's father looked at the tall ceiling and said, “Brad, you are only sixteen-years-old and five-foot-six. How could you have jumped that high?”

  “From the same footstool I fell off, I'm sure!” Said his mom in an aggravated tone. “I broke my foot for nothing. Now we don't have anything to show for my pain.” As she said this, she was pointing at the broken chandelier.

  “We still have your cast to show!” Brad's father said with a wistful smile, trying to ease the tension.

  It didn't work. She stormed out of the room on her crutches as fast as she could which wasn’t very fast at all.

  “Well Brad, you're going to have to find a way to redeem yourself,” his father said.

  Brad responded, “Sorry dad, I was just really excited. There was a tornado while you were gone. After it went by, I came running back in, and jumped onto the footstool and leaped off bumping my head.”

  That was as close as he dared to tell his father the truth. He didn't like lying to his parents and had only done it a couple of times in his life. But something inside of him caused him to stay silent about this new-found ability to modify gravity. He had actually manipulated gravity to pull himself out of a tornado. He had modified gravity several times after that. How could he explain that to his father?

  “Well, we saw the effects of the tornado outside. It really tore some things up. Brad, you were told to stay inside in case there was a tornado! Is your curiosity about these storms satisfied now?”

  Brad rarely saw his father this upset, so he knew he was on thin ice. He felt the exhilaration about all he'd been through! He was trying to act penitent while controlling his excitement. “Yes, I don't want to be that close to another one again, he said truthfully.

  “Why don't you go hang out in your room for a while Son. I think that would be best,” his dad said in a frustrated tone. Brad quickly agreed with this suggestion.

  Brad laid on his bed in deep contemplation. His mind going over the events that had just occurred over and over. As he thought about the moment that the wind had torn him free from the balcony the horror of the experience was repeated in his mind and he felt his adrenaline spiking as if it was happening to him again.

  As he remembered what happened next; The fact that this gravity control energy he had emitted had been more powerful than the tornado, he was in awe and very excited. He could not begin to fathom how such an event took place. Not just that. But the fact that the gravity control had actually pulled him to the side of the building; He should have fallen down to the ground, which would have killed or injured him. That was amazing.

  Putting gravity into the side of the building so that he would be pulled into it? How was that even possible? Then there was the thing he did with the chandelier and with him floating up to the ceiling just by looking up and concentrating. Oh, and when he was pressed against the side of the building without falling then looked longingly at the balcony, he was pulled across the wall to the balcony then up and over the railing.

  He did not even realize that he was grinning from ear to ear as he considered all that had happened. But when he thought again about the cyclone breaking his grip on the railing so easily and pulling him towards the dark grey vortex, he was not smiling but feeling the panic again.

  Brad lived in a family of goodly parents who were devoted to him and each other. Many of his friends came from homes that were broken by divorce. In his case though, he rarely saw his parents in a disagreement. They had shown much patience in raising Brad and with each other. Brad was aware that in his friends' homes where the parents were still married, there was still strife and contention in their lives. He had much to be grateful for.

  He began to realize just how tired he was. Exhausted from what he had done with the whole gravity thing, he quickly relaxed and fell into a deep sleep.

  What Brad did not know, and really could not have fully comprehended at that time was this. When he pulled himself out of the tornado and back against the wall of the building, the objects inside the condo unit that he was up against (which was one floor below his) were pulled from their positions and slammed into the inner wall adjacent to where Brad was hovering. The
residents would return later in the day and find to their dismay and puzzlement, that their end table, coffee table and overstuffed chair were all bunched up against the wall where Brad had 'landed'. Magazines, books and a lamp were laying in a heap on the floor against the wall among the furniture.

  The other occurrence that he was totally unaware of was that when he had lifted off the floor in the living room, the gravity shift had lifted objects directly underneath him in all sixteen condos below. Those pieces of furniture and other items went up to their respective ceilings and then fell in a heap on the floor when he dropped back down. The police were called to investigate the seeming ransacking of the residences, yet nothing was missing. No forced entry was found. Whatever had happened didn't even look like it could be vandalism. Case closed.

  Chapter two

  It was completely dark now and Brad still hung lazily in the air with the lawn mower floating next to him. He knew he could place it back on the ground, but it wasn't urgent. He just wanted to relax. He began to fall asleep when he remembered the incidents that led to the first time he had used his new-found ability in the presence of others. That memory woke him back up as he thought about it.

  It was the first day of school, and it was third period. Brad had been through orientation and was starting his Junior year in high school. He was a very intelligent student who had an above average vocabulary for his age. His teachers had always wanted to advance him at least two years when he was younger but his parents refused stating that they wanted him to fit in socially as well as academically. Other students frequently came to him with questions on various subjects. Brad always seemed to have the right answers for them.