Criminal Destiny (20 page)

The acceleration is scary, and I understand immediately that when we reach the bottom, we'll either be free, or dead. Either way, we won't have to worry about the Purples we've just slipped away from.

“You're insane!” I scream at Amber.

“I know!” she shouts right back.

Watching her as the skid speeds up, blurring the world around us, it dawns on me that this girl has zero fear. Well, I've got enough for both of us. I wonder if Gus Alabaster was this scared through all the dangers he must have faced.

It's an interrupted thought, because that's when we reach the river. You normally consider water a soft landing. Maybe not in Texas. We hit the rushing stream like it's reinforced concrete. For a second, I'm airborne, launched clean off the slats. Then white water surrounds me, surging down my gasping throat, leaving me choking. I struggle to stay afloat, but I can't catch my breath. The eddying current drives me under.

All that water polo training, and I'm going to drown!

Even now, in the greatest panic I've ever experienced, I can't help but resent Happy Valley. Turns out, that stupid town will be the only life I'll ever know.

I surface, thrashing blindly, searching for a glimpse of wood. A hand comes out of nowhere, slapping me across the face.

Laska!

“What was that for?” I sputter.

“Shut up and hang on!”

She's in the water too, holding on to the skid with one hand and me with the other. The river washes us downstream at astonishing speed. All we can do is close our eyes and go with the flow. I'm underwater for at least two-thirds of the ride, sneaking a breath whenever I can. If it wasn't for Laska, I'd be fish food. But the current is taking us far away from the Purple People Eaters, and that's a good thing.

It feels like hours, although it's only a few minutes before the torrent calms down a little, and we're able to haul ourselves onto the skid, riding it like a raft. I get about thirty splinters. They hurt way less than the rest of me.

By unspoken agreement—because we're both too breathless to speak—we don't try for shore. Shore means Purples, who'll be coming after us. This river is like nature's getaway car. A gift.

Finally, I find my voice. “The others . . .”

“Caught,” Amber manages to gasp. “They must be.”

A wave of sympathy washes over me. Poor Frieden, poor
Torific. I'd love to believe otherwise, but I'd be a moron to deny the truth. We're on our own now.

If Project Osiris is ever going to be defeated, it'll be up to Amber and me.

A rough hand grabs me from behind, strangling me with my own collar.

Tori! Where's Tori?

No time to worry about that now. The chokehold is so strong that my vision starts to cloud. I know I have mere seconds to remain conscious.

Desperately, I twist away from the grip, dropping to the gravel of the shoulder and rolling away onto the grass. I see the gray flannel of my attacker's slacks stepping toward me. I reach for something I can use to defend myself. A stick, a rock—anything.

My hand closes on a tubular object, smooth, cool, and plastic. I stare at it. A syringe. It was in Dr. Bruder's hands just a few seconds ago. He must have dropped it.

Wielding it like a knife, I get to my knees and stab it into my enemy's thigh. He stops dead, letting out a gasp of pain that's instantly familiar.

Dread washes over me. It's Felix Frieden.

My father's eyes widen. “Son—”

No! I will not let this monster control me again!

“I'm not your son!” I barely recognize my own voice. “Thanks to you, I'm not anybody's son!”

“Eli—” He takes one more step and collapses to the ground, out cold.

I look at the syringe in my hand. Only a tiny amount of its contents has been used. Dr. Bruder must have filled it with a powerful tranquilizer, intent on recapturing his clones without a fight.

A chorus of angry voices sounds. I wheel just in time to see Malik and Amber disappear down the embankment, sliding on the wooden skid. A stampede of Purples charges after them, slipping and sliding on the hill.

That's when I spy Tori, struggling against a Purple I recognize as Bryan Delaney, the husband of our water polo coach. I come up behind him and stab the needle into the back of his shoulder, depressing the plunger just a little. Bryan drops like a stone.

Yep—tranquilizer, definitely.

Tori grabs my arm and begins hauling me away from the embankment toward the helicopter. I see her plan immediately. With everyone freaking out over Malik and Amber, the chopper is sitting all alone on the road.

“I can't fly that thing!” I protest.

“But
he
can.” She points to the bubble. The pilot is visible, sitting at the controls.

I must be stupid, because I can't follow her logic. “If I knock out the pilot, he can't fly it either!”

She looks exasperated. “A weapon is strongest when you
don't
use it. Threaten him.”

We jump aboard, and Tori pulls the hatch shut behind us. The pilot starts to get up, and I brandish the syringe.

“This already took out two people, and see how much I've got left,” I rasp. “Take off. Now.”

He doesn't move, eyeing the needle fearfully.

I add, “They'll wake up eventually. But if I pump the rest of it into you, you never will.”

Still he hesitates. I realize the flaw in Tori's strategy. I can't be bluffing. If he doesn't obey, I have to be willing to see it through.

My voice becomes low, flat, and the temperature of dry ice. “The guy I'm cloned from killed nine people. Want to be number ten?”

That does it. He manipulates the controls. The engine roars to earsplitting life. The rotor starts to turn, slowly at first, then picking up speed.

Through the Plexiglas, I see some of the Purples break off pursuit of Malik and Amber, and come running back in our direction.

I press the needle flat against the pilot's neck.

No words are needed. We lift off, hovering over the chaotic scene. Purples mill around in our windstorm, shouting up at us.

The radio crackles to life.
“What are you doing? Land that bird! Pronto!”

In response, Tori pulls a metal first aid kit off a bulkhead bracket and smashes the transceiver until wires and pieces pop out in a puff of smoke. The speaker goes silent.

She drops the kit and points. “Look!” Far below, the wooden skid is rocketing down the river with two tiny figures dangling behind it. An instant later, they're out of sight, obscured by trees and terrain, surging toward an uncertain fate.

“Follow the river!” I order.

The pilot takes us out over the waterway. We peer down, hoping to catch a glimpse of our two friends through a gap in the foliage.

That's when we see the black SUVs speeding along the road, tailing us. My eyes meet Tori's. There's nothing we can do for Malik and Amber. We have to escape Project Osiris.

“Get us out of here,” I tell the pilot.

“Which direction?”

“Doesn't matter. South.”

We bank away through the sky, climbing higher and putting distance between ourselves and the SUVs. After a few minutes, we can no longer see them. The enemy is out of range, but so are our friends. We have no idea if Malik and Amber will be captured, or if they'll even survive the rage of the river.

We have no idea if we'll ever see them again.

The knot in my stomach tightens, and I bite the side of my mouth, hoping the pain will keep me focused. It's sad, but sadness is no reason to blow our only shot at freedom.

As we fly, I stay behind the pilot, holding the syringe against his neck, just as a reminder. That's probably what Bartholomew Glen would do, although he might be thinking up crossword puzzles to communicate his orders. I hate him, but I'm pretty sure that, without his DNA, we never
could have made it this far, flying away from the trap Osiris set for us.

Tears are streaming down Tori's cheeks, but her expression remains calm and resolute. For sure it's the others on her mind—especially Amber. The two of them have always been closer than sisters.

“Maybe they're okay,” I offer. I wish I could give her more, but I'm not even sure
we're
okay. We're away from the Purples now, but what about the pilot? Wherever we land, we'll be on foot, leaving a potential capturer equipped with a helicopter.

I know how Bartholomew Glen would solve that problem, but I refuse to be him.

We've been in the air about forty minutes when the pilot says, “Look, I've got to set her down.”

I press down a little harder with the flat of the needle. “
We
decide when and where you land.”

“No,” he replies evenly. “The fuel tank decides.” He indicates a gauge on the control panel. The indicator is already at E. “One way or another, we'll be on the ground in a few minutes. A very few.”

I scan the horizon. There's a city up ahead—it's no Denver, but it's definitely a population center—large enough
for two fugitive clones to disappear into. “What's that?”

“Lubbock,” he replies.

“Can we make it?” asks Tori.

“On fumes, maybe.”

Our eyes move back and forth between the fuel gauge and the approaching skyline of Lubbock, Texas. The engine coughs.

The pilot leans on the controls and we begin to descend.

“We're not there yet,” I say harshly, wiggling the syringe to remind him that it's still there.

“You do what you've got to do,” he tells me. “I'm doing what I've got to do.”

The engine coughs again, shaking us. He's right. It's now or never.

We're still a few miles from Lubbock, above ranch country. It's a rough landing, and, like the pilot warned, probably on fumes. We drop the last few feet, landing with a crunch in a stubbly field. A crack appears in the Plexiglas, but otherwise the chopper is intact.

The pilot hunches over the controls, panting from the effort of bringing us in.

I say, “You'll wake up. I promise,” and prick him with the needle, careful to inject only a small amount of tranquilizer into the back of his neck. “Sorry.”

He's out cold even before I withdraw the syringe. Immediately, I drop it to the deck, not wanting it in my hand a split second longer than necessary.

Tori pops the hatch. We jump to the ground and start running. The only witnesses to our strange arrival and departure are a few dozen head of longhorn cattle in the next field.

There are questions to be asked: Where can we go? What can we do? But there's no time to think about that now. When the pilot regains consciousness, we have to be gone.

In spite of everything we've been through, we don't get tired. Our strides are powered by sheer desperation. The one thing we had on our side was the fact that the four of us were together. That's gone. And the hunters are close behind us.

I keep my eyes on the horizon—the future. We can get there; we can have one. We have skills locked in the DNA code of every cell in our bodies. We might not have discovered how to use them yet—not fully, anyway. But they have to be there.

We're masterminds.

Photo by Owen Kassimir

GORDON KORMAN
wrote his first book at age fourteen and since then has written more than eighty middle grade and teen novels. Favorites include the
New York Times
bestselling
The 39 Clues: Cahills vs. Vespers, Book One: The Medusa Plot; Ungifted; Pop
; and
Schooled.
Gordon lives with his family on Long Island, New York. You can visit him online at
www.gordonkorman.com
.

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Masterminds

Ungifted

Pop

COVER ART © 2016 BY KEVIN KEELE

Balzer + Bray is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

MASTERMINDS: CRIMINAL DESTINY.
Copyright © 2016 by Gordon Korman. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

www.harpercollinschildrens.com

ISBN 978-0-06-230002-7

EPub Edition © January 2016 ISBN 9780062300041

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FIRST EDITION