Aberrant Trilogy 1: Super Charged (13 page)

But, as I glance over my shoulder I see that Flagrant has escaped the lobby and is following us, running pretty fast with his long legs.

“He’s gaining on us!” yells Mae.

I look around frantically for somewhere to hide. There is too much open space. We can be seen from all around. That means that we’re targets for Flagrant’s gun.

I spot a corner up ahead. Maybe we can duck around some of the walking people and lose Flagrant that way.

“Over here!” I say, and Mae comes with me as we pound across the walkway, taking a sharp left and down an alleyway.

We get about halfway down the alleyway when something makes my blood run cold.

The alley doesn’t open up onto the other side of the block like I had hoped. Instead there is a dead end, and the wall is too tall to climb over. It’s all brick and stonework. I try one of the doors to my right, but it’s locked tight.

Mae lets out a cry as Flagrant enters the alley, completely cornering us.

There are no words to say. We are caught.

Flagrant lets out a growl.

“Give up the Vestige, and I’ll let you live,” he says.

I hardly believe that. He is way too trigger happy with that gun.

But, what choice do I have? The cops aren’t here yet, though the sirens are blaring. Did they even see where Flagrant went? If not, they will get to the lobby of the publishing house and find out the details they need. By then it will be too late to help us.

We are on our own.

Mae raises her phone and begins to type a text message, probably to her mother, letting her know what is happening and that she tried to run away.

I try my energy blasts again, but this time Flagrant side-steps them with a grin.

“I learn pretty quick,” he says. “I wouldn’t try that again. You’re caught. Just give up.”

My mind races. What would Super Guy have done? I’m wearing his Vestige, aren’t I? There has to be something I can do.

Then it comes to me.

“Mae!” I say, stopping her in mid-text. “Grab onto me.”

She lowers her phone.

“What?” she says.

“Grab onto me,” I repeat myself. “Hold onto my shoulders.”

She hesitates, but I make the demand once more in a firm voice.

“Do it, now!”

Mae shoves her phone into her pocket and wraps her arms around my shoulders, holding tight. At the same time, I aim my hands palm-down at the tar beneath our feet.

I’m not even sure if this will work, but it’s my only option.

Focusing all my energy on my hands, I flex my muscles and hold them in a tensile position. Two streams of energy are forced from the lines of my palms and flutter against the ground. Slow at first my feet begin to leave the asphalt and Mae’s arms become heavy as her weight is dangling from my shoulders. She tightens her grip on me, and her feet leave the ground as well. She rests her feet on top of mine to keep from slipping off.

Flagrant doesn’t look surprised. Instead his expression reads to me as defeated.

He tries to threaten us with the gun again, but it’s too late for that.

I tense up my palms even more, widening my fingers as far as they will go. I do the same thing to my feet until it becomes painful, and suddenly the two of us shoot into the air, headed for the clouds.

21

Crash Landing

The buildings on either side of us rush past and become smaller and smaller as we soar straight up to the sky. The energy that’s flowing from my feet is so powerful that the soles on my shoes are blasted apart. Bits of rubber fall back towards the ground.

My ears pop as we reach a higher altitude and Mae’s must have as well because she cries out, pressing her head against my chest.

The air is rushing past us and the wind threatens to blow me off course. I hold out my hands to correct my trajectory and level us out as we reach the clouds.

It’s at this point that I need to slow us down. I don’t know how high I can go without passing out, and honestly, this is the first time that I’ve actually achieved true flight while being conscious. I relax my hands a bit and our ascent slows until finally I reach that sweet spot where we are simply levitating above the clouds. The air is damp up here and we both shiver.

Mae looks up at me now that she’s gotten over the shock of what just happened - both the power blasts and the flying.

“How are you doing this?” she asks, shouting the words to be heard over the sound of the wind.

I nod to the medallion around my neck.

“The Vestige,” I say.

Though I can tell that Mae is scared out of her wits to be up so high, she still manages to fix an
are-you-serious
stare on me.

“Say that again?” she says. “Because, I don’t think I heard you correctly.”

“It’s the Vestige!” I say, going to lift the medallion off my chest with my fingers, but as I lift my hand, we begin to teeter in the air. Mae nearly loses her grip and has to hold onto me now so tight that it hurts my shoulders. Her nails are practically breaking through my shirt and digging into the soft spots beneath my shoulder blades.

“Can we get down now?” she asks. There are tears brimming in her eyes as the wind whips at us.

I return my hand to its spot at my side and we balance back out.

I nod nervously.

“Yeah,” I say. “That sounds like a good idea. If I can figure out how to land without splattering us on the pavement…”

“
What?
” Mae shoots daggers at me. “You mean this is the first time you’ve done this?”

A wave of self-consciousness sweeps over me and that wringing feeling returns to my gut.

“Something like that,” I say, and when she goes to yell more terrified things at me, I cut her off. “Don’t worry! We will be fine. I just need to find a nice, clear area for us to touch down.”

Of course, I’m just making this all up as I go, but common sense says that if I don’t want to be spotted and completely blow my cover, I need to get us to an area where there aren’t a lot of people. This is kind of hard in a bustling city like Boston.

I look down and try not to feel dizzy.

I can’t tell Mae that I haven’t actually landed before. Looking around I notice a small park to the north, complete with a duck pond. If push comes to shove, I’ll aim for the pond so that we don’t get hurt.

“Alright,” I say. “Hold on tight!”

Then I relax my hands and feet slightly. This does what I expect it to do, albeit to a much greater degree than I had hoped. We drop about twenty feet and my stomach leaps up into my throat. Mae screams and her grip becomes tighter around my neck. I feel my windpipe starting to get crushed.

“Careful!” I say, my voice strained.

I need to land us, quickly, before I lose control and we drop even more, or before I am suffocated by Mae and we fall from the sky anyway.

I use a particularly strong gust of wind at my back to propel us forward and I constantly flex my hands, letting out bursts of energy to the right and left to keep us upright. Then I squeeze my feet until we slowly descend to the grassy knoll away from onlookers at the tiny park.

Nobody saw us, so I let out a huge sigh of relief as Mae releases me from her grasp and collapses onto the grass. I go falling onto my butt as I lose control of my stability. We both are gasping for breath.

“Never - do - that - again!” says Mae, jabbing a finger at me. “You know I hate heights!”

“I’ll try to remember that,” I say, not telling her that I nearly wet my own pants.

22

Explanations

“So, start from the beginning.”

Mae sits me down in a secluded area of the park. The bench is comfortable enough, but I sit rigidly as I tell her about how I was nearly drowned and then woke up clutching the Vestige. From there, I recount how I blasted Tyson across the cafeteria, and then the levitating.

“And, now I can fly completely,” I say.

Mae smirks at me.

“Well,
almost
completely,” she says, and I laugh. It releases some of the pressure that’s built up in my chest.

“The whole maneuvering around will take some practice,” I mutter.

“I’m just glad we didn’t fall from the sky,” says Mae. We chuckle for a few moments, then it goes quiet between us.
 
“It all makes sense to me now,” she says. “The reason you wanted to go and look through the archives. You were looking for instructions on how to use these powers.”

“Inquisitive as always,” I say, giving her a slight smile. “Looks like I ended up finding more than I bargained for.” I’m thinking of that man we just escaped from - Bill Flagrant. Mae is on the same wavelength as me because she speaks up as well.

“Who was that guy?” she asks. “You didn’t know him, did you?”

I shake my head. “That’s the first time I’ve seen or heard of him.” I go back over the blur of events in my head. The one thing that sticks out the most is the way his eyes widened at the sight of the Vestige around my neck. I glance over at Mae. “Do you think he already knew about the Vestige?” I ask.

She shrugs. “It sure seemed like he already knew about it. I get the feeling that he was looking for the Vestige to begin with. Maybe he was hoping that it was in your father’s files. He was definitely surprised when we took off like that.” She looks over at me, her hands clutched together in her lap. “Am I the first person you’ve told about your powers?” she asks.

I nod.

“If I was going to tell anyone, it was going to be you,” I reply.

“I’m flattered,” says Mae, releasing her hands to brush her hair out of her face. “But, don’t you want to tell your grandparents? Or even your mom? Maybe they can help somehow.”

“Mom?” I say in an amused tone. “She just sent me away to the country because I climbed up on the roof of the school. How do you think she’ll react if I tell her that I somehow managed to find the Vestige and can now fly around the sky - not to mention blast energy from my hands?”

Mae shrugs.

“There’s a good chance she already knows that the Vestige exists,” she argues.

I ball my hands into fists at the idea. She’s right. Mom might already know everything.

“But, if she
does
know, why hasn’t she said something before now?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” Mae replies. “Maybe she wanted to protect you. Or, maybe your dad forbid her from saying something.”

“Or he never told her about it to begin with,” I muse. “He
did
hide the Vestige in the lining of his sports jacket. That’s not normal.”

“Nothing about this is normal.”

There’s another dash of silence and a few people walk by us. I catch some of their conversation. They’re chatting about going to a movie. Such a normal thing. I wonder if I’ll ever be normal again.

I shake it off.

Suddenly Mae leans away from me, giving me a side glance.

“You don’t have any other powers besides those two, do you?” she asks.

“Like what?” I reply.

She crosses her arms.

“Like X-ray vision or something?”

I roll my eyes.

“No, I do not have X-ray vision. Even if I did, do you really think I would use it for something so stupid as trying to see through your clothes?”

Mae raises an eyebrow.

“You never know,” she says. “At the same time, it looks like the powers so far have just appeared randomly. Who’s to say you would be able to control it right off the bat?”

I groan.

“I highly doubt I will get X-ray vision. That power never appeared in my dad’s books, and if it
did
happen, I’d make sure to look away from you. Are you happy?”

On the contrary, when I glance over at her, Mae looks a little hurt.

For the first time since we started this ridiculous conversation I feel my neck turn red, and it’s not from being crushed in a height-defying hug. I look down at the ground.

“Sorry,” I say. My eyes move from the walkway to my shoes, which are obliterated. I sigh. “My shoes are destroyed. What if I can’t control these powers? I’ll be doomed to continue buying a new pair of shoes every couple days!”

“Calm down,” says Mae. “You’re forgetting all the research we just did. If your dad’s notes are telling the truth, the Vestige is the source of your powers. Lose that and your powers go with it. If you don’t want the powers, get rid of the Vestige. Even then, last time I checked, you only have
part
of the Vestige. Where’s the missing piece?”

I shrug. “Getting rid of the Vestige is easier said than done.” I lean down and start to untie what’s left of my shoes. “If I hide the piece that I have, then the chances that this Flagrant guy will find it end up skyrocketing. It’s safer with me. And, you’re right. I need to see if I can hunt down the missing piece. If having the Vestige gives someone powers, what does having just a piece of it do?”

Images of strange, faceless villains float through my head. Each one of them has the shard of the Vestige and their powers are all more intricate than mine. If Flagrant gets super speed, then not only am I screwed, but the world is screwed as well. Nobody will be able to stop him then.

“Then you have to learn to control these powers.” says Mae, giving me a serious look. “That’s what you have to do for now. Learn to use them to your advantage in case you come up against a villain.”

I snort. “It seems so stupid,” I say. “What is this, some superhero series on Netflix? I’m going to use those powers to fight crime?”

“Maybe,” says Mae. She still looks serious, and my sarcasm hasn’t changed anything. “You said you had a vision of your father. What if that wasn’t just some vision. What if he was communicating to you from the great beyond? What if this is your destiny to possess the Vestige, put it back together, and guard its powers?”

The idea makes me want to run and hide. Being the only person in the world with these abilities makes me a target for not only the government, but also crazy people who want to steal the Vestige for themselves. Bill Flagrant has marked himself as the first, and now that he knows that I’m Jeff Boding’s son. That makes it easier for him to hunt me down and steal the Vestige.

I definitely have a target on my back now, whether I like it or not.