Apex (4 page)

The nurse walked to a wall mounted phone, glanced over her shoulder fearfully one last time, and the tape ended.

Jack stared at the blue screen, mouth agape, his heart pounding in his throat.

He blinked just to be sure he still could. His eyes were dry and itchy.
His mind was numb.

The General said, “Now do you understand why I’m here?”

“I do. But it can’t be real. People can’t hover or move things around with their minds. I can’t do any of that.”

“That’s why you’re here. We knew you exhibited some strange abilities while you were unconscious, but now we suspect you might be able to consciously replicate some of what you did in that hospital.”

“I wouldn’t know how.”

“Let’s figure it out together.”

Jack knew better than to trust the military man. He was here to assess threat levels and nothing more. And what if he deemed jack a threat? But he also had an overwhelming itch to find out what he could do. The film had frightened him at first, but as time ticked by, it had started to intrigue him more than anything. Did he have telekinesis? Could he fly? He had to find out.

Reunion
 

Scott whooped and ran at Jack in the little, long abandoned cafeteria of the quarantine building. They had come through opposite doors. That explained why Jack hadn’t been able to hear him through the walls; he wasn’t being housed anywhere near him. Melanie was more somber, no doubt depressed by her incarceration.

Scott said excitedly, “I think they’re going to train us to be super soldiers.”

Melanie whispered, “I think they’re more likely to have us executed.”

Jack shook his head. “Let’s just see what we can do before we worry about what comes afterwards.”

Melanie held her hand out, palm up, and said, “I already know how to do some things.” Her hand filled with blood and turned bright red. Her fingernails turned a deep pink. Then, a light fixture in the ceiling crashed to the floor just a few feet from them.

The general was busy instructing his men to move the unused tables out of the center of the room. He turned to the fal
len light fixture and said absently, “This place is a dump.”

Melanie whispered, “We don’t need them to help us figure out what we can do.”

Jack asked, “How did you do that?”

“It just came to me naturally. It’ll come to you two as well.
We’re infected. Something has changed inside of us.”

The doctor came into the disused cafeteria. He was
nonchalantly messing with his phone when he looked up and saw the three teenagers. “I can’t wait to see what potential you have.”

Jack said, “I thought you were going to have a bunch of tests set up for us. What happened?”

“The military got involved.” The doctor offered nothing more by way of explanation because it spoke volumes all by itself.

The general dismissed all but one of his men once the center of the room was cleared.
They took up posts outside the doors.

He asked Jack to stand in the middle of the room and for everyone else to step back. When that was done, he turned to his man and ordered, “Kill him.”

Fight

If Jack thought the soldier might have a problem with killing an unarmed, teenaged civilian, he was wrong. The man was quick too, coming at Jack with murder in his eyes and a foot long knife in his grasp. Jack’s mind was running in several directions at once. What could he do?

The doctor tried to intervene but a stern look from the general rooted him in place. He shut his mouth and watched the horror unfold.

The soldier brought the knife down fast but he missed. The room flickered before Jack’s eyes. He felt faint, but elated at the same time.

He
counted his blessings and was about to run when the man slashed again with the knife. Only then did Jack notice it was going straight through him like he wasn’t even there. The room flickered again.

Melanie screamed out in pure fear and the
soldier came off of the ground. He was being propelled upwards by an unseen force, his arms thrashing around, and his legs kicking the air. His eyes bugged out as he looked around, confusion and fear all over his face.  His body crashed into the ceiling, but instead of hitting it and falling back down, he was pushed upwards even harder. He started yelling for mercy.

The general watched it all unfold with a detached look of bemusement. He did nothing to intervene.

Jack saw blood start to drip at his feet as the suspended soldier was crushed more and more, rupturing and leaking his fluids. Jack looked around the room to see who or what was doing this unnatural thing to the soldier. Melanie’s hands were beet red and a thin trickle of blood dripped from her cuticles. Her hands were raised towards the soldier and they were quivering uncontrollably.

Jack did a double take, just to be sure he was seeing what he thought he was, and then he yelled for her to stop hurting the guy. He didn’t know why he cared. The man had just tried to kill him. But none of them were murderers and the soldier’s screams were chilling his blood.

Melanie seemed to be struggling against some unknown entity that no one else could see. She was trying to control her powers but they’d gone haywire.

The man on the ceiling was screaming in utter horror now.
He sounded like a dying animal.

Scott put a hand on her shoulder and the
soldier fell to the floor in a heap. He didn’t move. He was already dead.

Melanie started to
cry and Scott hugged her tightly. When she saw the dead soldier, her cries turned to sobs.

Jack yelled at the general, “Why did you do that?”

“To test you,” the general said with a smug grin. “As it turns out, my initial assessment of you three was right. You are a threat.”

Jack took an aggressive step forward but he stopped when the general pulled his sidearm and fired a warning shot in front of Jack’s feet. The boom of the gun brought the other guards now.

The general beckoned the doctor over to him. The doctor seemed torn, like he didn’t know which side he was on, until the general said, “Get over here now or you’ll be shot too.”

The doctor ran over to him like his life depended on it, which it did.

Jack and Melanie panicked. How could a simple test lead to three deaths? Killing the military man was an accident and it was self defense anyway. If anything, the general was at fault for what happened.

Scott seemed calm though, like he had a trick up his sleeve. Jack could only hope he did.

Escape

A half dozen soldiers opened fire on them in close quarters. Jack’s life flashed before his eyes. Melanie screamed. But Scott’s face went ashen and a blood vessel popped in his eye as he concentrated with all of his might.

All of the bullets hit and ricocheted off of an invisible barrier, erected by Scott’s mind. One of the ricochets hit a soldier in the arm and he yelled in surprise before taking cover
behind a support beam.

Scott said, “I can’t keep this up forever. Someone’s going to have to do something.”

Scott’s face was white as a ghost and a blood vessel burst in his other eye now. He was holding his breath and his knees were shaking.

The general said to his men, “Wait until he can’t hold it any longer and then fire.”

Melanie said, “We need to get out of here. We’re all going to die.”

Scott’s entire body started to quiver as he lost control over the barrier. He slumped to the floor as he lost consciousness.

The doctor ran to him instinctively and jostled his shoulder.

General Parsons yelled, “Get back here doctor.”

“Screw you general. This wasn’t the plan.”

“It’s been the plan all along. If you don’t come over here, my men will be ordered to open fire
.”

Jack felt something alien well up inside of him. At first he felt a rush of adrenaline that quickly turned into uncontrollable euphoria. He felt a power
rise up that was elusive. But when he understood its nature and concentrated on bringing it forth, the euphoria turned to dread mixed with a dose of determination.

If he concentrated hard enough, he could move them all away from the quarantined building in an instant.

He saw the walls start to breathe in and out, like he was hallucinating. They shimmered as though they weren’t quite real. He felt the air gather around him. It was thick and oppressive. Reality blinked on and off.

The general didn’t understand what was happening. He pulled his radio out and said into it, “The situation
is out of control. Light it up.”

The teenagers had all seen enough combat movies to know what that meant. The building was about to be reduced to rubble by air support.
The general was so afraid of them that he was willing to sacrifice his and his men’s lives just to kill them.

Jack’s determination redoubled. He put everything he had into concentrating. He had to move them to a safer place right now or they’d all die.

The scene blinked in and out rapidly. Matter shimmered like it didn’t know if it had a right to be there.

Just as Jack’s vision started to turn black, he heard the general say in a far off voice, “Belay that order. They’re gone.”

Teleport

Doctor Henshaw said, “Where the heck are we?”

There was an entire section of the cafeteria floor still under their feet, but they were outdoors now.

Jack and Melanie helped Scott to his feet. Melanie looked around and then laughed. “We’re in Ault, by a root silo.”

Jack’s vision came back to him. “I couldn’t think of anywhere else to take us.”

Melanie breathed in a deep lungful of air. “How did you do that without practicing?”

“I have no idea.”

“You saved us. Thank you.”

Scott shook his head sadly. “This isn’t safe Jack. This is the first place they’ll look for us.”

“I thought we could go to that couple’s place. No one knows they were infected too and they’re so far off of the radar that we can probably hole up there if they let us.”

“They want nothing to do with us.”

“I had no other options.”

The doctor said, “I didn’t know others were infected. What exactly was it that infected you
kids?”

No one said a word because they still didn’t trust the doctor.

“Oh, come on. I had no idea they were going to try and eliminate you.”

Melanie said to her friends, “Don’t tell him a thing.”

“We weren’t going to. What should we do with him?”

“We have to bring him with us.” Melanie didn’t even try to face the elephant in the room which was,
should they kill him to protect themselves?

The doctor said, “I promise I had no way to know the general would resort to such brutality.”

They suspected he was telling the truth, but they couldn’t bet their lives on it, so for now, he was considered an enemy.

Melanie whispered, “I just hope Dan and Molly are still ok.”

On The Run

As they walked through the fields, Scott said to Jack, “Have you been working out?”

Jack snorted. “I could ask you the same thing.”

Melanie added, “It’s great that you two are all buff but a lady’s supposed to be dainty. I wish my muscles hadn’t thickened up like this.”

Scott looked her over. “I like it.
Some guys have no problem dating a she-hulk.”

“That’s not nice Scott. And at least I can hide my musculature.”

Jack laughed. “You’re not exactly insulting us when you say our muscles are so big that we can’t even hide them.”

Scott put an arm around Melanie’s shoulder and said, “
We don’t know if the muscles are permanent just like we don’t know if these powers are.”

Melanie shrugged off Scott’s arm and Jack took a second to wonder why.

The doctor interjected. “I could try to work on a way to reverse whatever it is that happened to you.”

“Shut up doc. If you could, the general would’ve made you do
it already.”

Melanie went quiet. She leaned into
Jack and whispered, “I murdered that man back there.”

“You saved
my life.”

“I couldn’t control myself.”

Scott overheard them and patted Melanie on the shoulder. “Thank you for saving my best friends life. I hope you don’t regret it.”

“Of course not. I just wish I could’ve done it some other way.”

Jack said, “He tried to kill me. He was going to succeed, or else we were going to make him fail, at which point the general was going to have us all executed anyway. There’s no two ways about it; we did what had to be done to survive. You’re a hero in my book. You saved us.”

“You did your part too, teleport
ation boy.”