Capture (5 page)

Exterminate them?
He had to be messing with me.

I searched his face.

Nope. He was serious.

And everyone else at our table was nodding right along with him.

C
HAPTER 3

Tuesday, December 1st

Hayden

A
s expected, my family’s first Thanksgiving holiday without Damon was grim, in spite of how hard Mom and Dad worked to keep things upbeat with all their forced smiles and too cheerful chatting about nothing of any importance. I still hadn’t gotten used to Mom's continued habit of setting a place at the dining table in memory of Damon, and it was all I could do to choke down even her excellent cooking while staring at that empty plate and chair. Watching the annual football game between Texas A&M’s Aggies and the University of Texas Longhorns with Dad was worse. I kept expecting Damon to stroll into the entertainment room with the usual bowl of seven layer dip and platter of little smokies on toothpicks that we’d always end up fighting over till Mom made more.

By the end of the break, I was all too ready to return to school where I figured things would be a little more chilled out and back to normal.

I was wrong.

I had hoped all the talk about the Clann and freakish abilities would die out over the break. But then on Tuesday I discovered Tarah and a group of her weird friends gathered near my locker. In her hot pink sweater over a bright blue tank top and blue jeans, Tarah stuck out like a neon light in contrast with all the black the others wore as she leaned against the wall of red lockers.

Yet again, I had to wonder why she wanted to hang out with them.
Clearly she didn't fit in, and not just because she liked to wear a little color now and then. The girl I'd once known was always happy, upbeat, nothing like the emo crowd she now called her friends.

Usually the closest I ever managed to get to Tarah was in World History class.
But not today. Her back was so close to my locker that when I opened the door, my hand brushed her thick ponytail. She glanced at me over her shoulder, her ponytail swishing over my fingers again. Then she went back to comforting some girl who was crying. The girl was really laying into it too, the black rings around her eyes melting into dark rivers down her cheeks.

“
Hey. What's up with her?” I asked Tarah, leaning in towards my locker so I wouldn't have to yell over the noise of the crowded hall.

After a long pause, Tarah answered me with a sigh.
“Aimee's cousin, aunt and uncle are all missing.”

“
They're not missing, they were taken!” Aimee wailed through her hands. “You heard the phone message.”

“
Phone message?” I kept my voice lower this time so only Tarah could hear, trying not to set off Aimee again. With a wail like that, she must have descended from banshees.

“
It did sound kind of…suspicious,” Tarah murmured. “Aimee’s cousin was in the middle of leaving a message. Then she just stopped, made this weird gurgling noise, and then it sounded like she dropped the phone or something. You can hear some people shouting in the background. Then it just ends.”

I frowned.
“Anyone stop by their house? Maybe they went somewhere for the holidays and got stuck there by bad weather or something.”

Tarah frowned.
“No, they were staying home for the holiday since Aimee’s aunt had a bad cold. Aimee’s mom went to their house to check on her sister and said the front door was wide open with all the lights still on in the middle of the day. Aimee’s mom said she talked to the neighbors too. They claim some men in camouflage uniforms with big guns showed up, busted into the house, then took the whole family off in a military-style truck.”

“
When were they last seen or heard from?” I asked.

“
Friday night.” A hint of pink spread over Tarah's cheeks. I noticed she was careful not to turn her head towards me. If she had, our mouths would have been inches away from each other.

“
Military types, huh?” My fingers itched to touch her thick hair, see how soft it was. “Was the family connected to terrorists or something?”

Tarah scowled.
“According to your buddy Kyle, they are. Aimee’s aunt posted a video on YouTube showing how she could...um...”

“Play with fire?” I suggested without even the slightest urge to smile.

She watched me for a few seconds, seeming to debate, before shaking her head and saying, “Before showing how she could create water out of the air without anything other than her mind.”

Suddenly, Tarah's hair was the last thing on my mind.
I straightened up. “You’re screwing with me. Right?”

Tarah shook her head.
“I warned Aimee days ago that her aunt ought to take that video off the internet.”

“
We shouldn't be afraid to be ourselves,” Aimee sobbed. “You heard what Simon and that Phillips brother said. We outcasts have to speak up, reach out to others like ourselves, or we’ll never learn how to control what we can do!”

The short, wiry guy beside
Aimee hugged her to him, his dark eyes narrowing. Over her head he told the group, “Aimee's right. Why should we be afraid to be ourselves? We need to rise up and fight back, not hide.”

I swallowed down a curse, my skin tightening all over.

“Don't be stupid, Gary,” Tarah said.

“
Don't be a doormat, Tarah,” Gary fired back before leading Aimee and the rest of their group away.

Someone bumped into me from behind.
Ordinarily I would have turned to see who it was. Today I was in too much shock. At the last second I realized I was about to collide with Tarah, and my hands snapped out to catch my weight on the lockers at either side of her shoulders.

She tilted her head back, staring up at me
with wide eyes, and everything inside me knotted up into an even bigger tangled mess. I froze there, our faces inches away from each other, unable to even breathe.

Was this why she'd stopped being my friend all those years ago?
Because, like me, she'd felt the friendship start to change into something else?

For what had to be the millionth time, I wondered what was going on inside that head of hers.
I used to know everything about her. Or at least I’d thought I did, till one day out of the blue she told Damon and me that we couldn’t hang out together anymore. No eye contact, no emotion, and no explanation either while she ended what had once been the best part of my life.

I searched those eyes now for answers, but only found more questions.

“Sorry. Crowded in here today,” I muttered.

“
I…” She hesitated, took a deep breath. “I have to go.”

She was running away again.
From me? From herself?

I
pushed off from the lockers, stepped back and let her go.

As she headed down the hall, she glanced back at me, her eyebrows drawn.
In confusion? Or was she just annoyed?

If only I could read minds
too.

Thursday, December 3rd

Two days later during lunch, things got even crazier at school.

Something had Tarah’s crowd riled up more than usual in the cafeteria.
Everyone at her table, including Tarah, had their heads down, hunched over their phones and tablets. I stopped in the aisle behind one of them, trying to sneak a peek over their shoulder to see what was going on.

Before I could see anything, Kyle walked over and clapped me on the shoulder hard enough to rock me.
“It's finally happening!”

“
What is?” I asked.

Tarah pressed a shaking hand to her mouth, then glanced up across the table and caught my stare.
Her eyes were wide open, rounded as if in shock, and shiny, tears at the edges ready to fall.

I froze.
Unlike most girls, Tarah never got weepy.

Once when we were kids
and Tarah's family still lived beside mine, Tarah cut her hand on a rusty nail that was poking out the side of her family’s back deck, which we’d been playing under and pretending was a fortress under siege from an enemy wizard. Her dad had let Damon and me go with them to the hospital so Tarah could get the cut cleaned. The nurse had also given her a tetanus shot. And throughout it all, Tarah never cried. Even Damon had said she was the toughest girl he’d ever met.

So if Tarah was upset enough today to nearly cry in front of the entire school, there had to be something seriously wrong.
Had someone said or done something to hurt her?

I took an instinctive step towards her, but Kyle shifted his weight and blocked my path.

“Hey, wait, you’ve got to see this video! The government's cleaning up our freak problem. Check it out.” He whipped out his phone, already displaying some website called The Truth Is Out There. “This Clann chick and her family were actually tagged and bagged live on internet TV.”

I couldn’t have cared less at that moment about anything on the internet.
But Tarah was talking with her friends now, everyone huddling in close like they were a sports team coming up with a new game plan. Eyes narrowed, Tarah shook her head with a scowl, muttered something I couldn’t make out, and stabbed the tip of her index finger against the table top as if to make her point. Her statement was met with a chorus of groans and mumbled curses from the rest of her table.

Somehow I doubted they would appreciate my barging into their group conversation right now.
And knowing Kyle, he wouldn’t get out of my face about his little video clip till I watched it. The fastest way to get rid of him was to watch the stupid thing and get it over with.

“
Fine. Show me.” Sighing, I rocked back on my heels and settled in for the minute long video.

He tapped the video’s Play button, and the four inch wide screen filled with the image of a raccoon-eyed girl sitting at her desk in her bedroom while talking to her webcam.
She looked familiar.

Wait, I knew her.
It was Tarah’s friend, Aimee, the Goth girl who'd been crying earlier this week in the hall about her missing cousin, aunt and uncle. I glanced again at Tarah’s table. No Aimee in sight today. A chill spread down my back and arms.

The cafeteria's dull roar of too many people fighting to be heard over each other made it impossible to hear what
Aimee was saying on the video. Then something appeared in the side of her neck. It looked like a short syringe.

“
What the heck is that?” I jabbed a finger at the screen, accidentally pausing the video.

“
Tranquilizer dart. Probably a sniper shot it through the window,” Kyle didn't hesitate to answer as he pushed Play on the video again. “I asked Dad about it last night.”

His father being ex-career Army, he should know.

“Keep watching.” Kyle held the phone right under my nose. Out of self defense, I grabbed it from him before he could hit my face with it. He grinned and rocked back and forth on his feet.

In the video,
Aimee slumped at her desk. As her head hit the keyboard, Kyle said “wham!” and snickered. My stomach knotted.

In the background,
Aimee's bedroom door flew open. A man dressed in khaki slacks and a maroon and white Texas A&M University sweatshirt ran in, maybe her dad. He rushed over to Aimee and shook her.

Behind him, two soldiers dressed in camo without any patches tried to enter the room.
Aimee's dad raised a hand toward them, and a blue light I recognized all too well burst out at the soldiers. Both intruders collapsed, either unconscious or dead.

Bile rose up to the back of my throat, and I had to swallow hard to force it down.

“See that? I
told
you those freaks are dangerous!” Kyle growled. “That dude probably used a killing spell or something on those soldiers.”

Aimee
's dad shook his daughter hard, but she wouldn't wake up. In an apparent attempt to save her, he slung the skinny girl up and over his shoulder like a fireman. He managed to stagger halfway to the door before a second dart appeared, this time in his neck.

Two more soldiers appeared in the doorway just as
Aimee and her dad hit the floor. One of the soldiers pushed a black band at his neck and said something. Then the video ended.

No wonder Tarah was so upset.
She must have seen this video too.

“
Isn't it awesome?” Kyle hooted. “Down with the freaks! Rumor is the government's doing this all over the U.S. in a major secret cleanup mission. Though why it's gotta be a secret is beyond me. They should be proud they're actually taking action! Dad says they're probably having to create special prisons out in the middle of nowhere for the Clann. He says it’d be safer than putting them in regular prisons with normal humans they might hurt.”

Because now
“normal” prisoners were more valuable than people with a few extra abilities? Weren't they all still just humans?

I stared at him in disbelief, my jaw clenched, a sour taste filling my mouth.
How had I ever wound up being friends with him? Just because Dad was friends with Mr. Kingsley…