Invincible (21 page)

I turn back to the others and suddenly I see Taylor staring at me with fear and confusion. I knew at that moment that she had seen what I’d done.

I walk over and take hold of her hand, which starts to tremble with the rest of her body.

“Taylor,” I say, surprised by the tone in my voice, r
eflecting itself with my worry.

“How?” she b
arely whispers. “How did you-?”

“I’ll explain later,” I say to her. I was trying to find other words to comfort her, but I wasn’t sure of what else to say other than that. And what else could I say, really? She had already seen too much. There were no excuse
s to cover it. No lies to tell.

“Well, I suggest that for everyone’s sake, we get the hell out of here while we still can," says Alex.

“Agreed,” says Jack. “We have to keep moving. We’re almost there.”

I nod my head.
“All right. Let’s keep moving.”

My feet began to move, going into a run, but I’m abruptly stopped. I turn back to see Taylor remaining still, her perplexed expression still intact.

“Taylor, come on,” I urge.

She exits her trance by shifting her eyes to mine, and knowing they were now filled with fear, I avoid them, looking down at the ground instead. A dead silence fills the air, no movements made. Then I feel the grip of Taylor’s hand, and notice her left foot taking a step forward. When her other foot follows suit, I pull up my head and immediately turn away fr
om her face as I begin to walk.

We catch up with the others and continue to move, going one way, then another way, and then another, when finally Taylor decides to stops us.

“That’s it,” she says, pointing to one of the doors at the side of the hallway.

Alex walks over to the door, pulls i
t open, and peaks her head out.

“This is it,” she says, coming back in. “Let’s go.”

We walked through the door, leading into a long tunnel, and ran as fast as we could before the Catchers could become aware of our location.

It was dark and silent by the time we made it out to the field, which was kind of unusual because this was the time we were usually out of school. Wouldn’t there at least be a sunset, or any noise going on in the background? Or were we here longer than that, and everyone was
just too scared to come into range?

I didn’t have time to think about these things. My only concern was to get everyone out of here safely. But before I could even talk to Alex about the remainder of our escape plan, green, thick beams of light begin to catch my eye.

“Duck!” Alex orders.

Everyone falls flat on the ground, but not me and Alex. We crouch down and turn to witness the five Catchers approaching us.

“Move back!” I yell, turning to Taylor and Jack.

The two get back on their feet and start to run farther onto the field. I turn around and see Alex—who was running a few feet away—shooting at the Catchers, aiming in every direction. I could tell by their yells that she was succeeding, but then I heard a jam in her gun and she stops, relentlessly pulling the trigger, hoping bullets would start flying out again. But the deafening
clinks
told us otherwise.

“I’m out!” she yells, tossi
ng the gun aside in frustration.

The Catchers
that seemed to have survived her shots were still moving towards us, the fact of her being done with her gun bringing a smile to their faces. 

They obviously didn’t know Alex. It wasn’t really my place to say, given the fact that I’ve only known her for a while, but just
by looking at her, you can tell she’s determined. She wasn’t going to give up, never going to quit. Like me, she was going to stick it out through the end, no matter what obstacles stood in her way.

Wow. We really must be related.

By the time I had ran over to her, Alex was already unleashing hell on the Catchers, kicking one of them across the face, and driving a knife into the other’s neck. I run towards one of them and punch him in the face, leaving him falling to the ground as I kick the other one behind it. Another one heads toward me also, and by the time he raises up his gun, my knife lodges into his chest.

As he drops to the ground, I walk towards Alex, who looks at me in horror as she points ahead of me.

“Look!” she shouts.

I whip around to see what she was looking at, and stagger back at the sight of fifteen Catchers walking towards us, with the
blond-haired one leading them.

“We have to get out of here,” she says.

“Yeah,” I say, nodding my head.

We head towards Jack and Taylor, who were already at the end of the field. Before they could ask us what happened, we pulled them by their arms and carried them on our backs, with Jack on hers and Taylor on mine.

“Can you fly?” I ask Alex.

She nods her head.

“Okay,” I say. “Just follow me.” I then look to Jack and Taylor. “Hold on tight, you two.”

By the time the Catchers start to close in on us, we were already in the sky flying away.

After traveling for a few seconds, I turn my head to look back at the now demolished school, and the hunters that destroyed it, fading in the distance. Instead of feeling relief, emotions of shame began to dwell on me. All of this was my fault. All because of the Catchers’ determination to get me. To kill me.

“Why aren’t they following us?” says Alex, her hair
gracefully flowing in the wind.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“They can fly, too,” she explains. “So why won’t they just follow us?”

“It’s probably bette
r that way,” says Jack, locking onto Alex’s neck as if there were no tomorrow.

I begin to think about Taylor, and pull her arms more securely around my neck. After that, I didn’t pay much attention to anyone. All I could think about were the Catchers, and why they wanted me dead. Whatever those reasons were, surely Alex would know the answer. And now that we’ve escaped, there was nothing that could stop her from keeping them from me.

I land in front of Taylor’s home; Alex and Jack had decided to go ahead without me, heading towards my house.

“Go inside,” I tell her as she hops off my back. “I’ll come back in a couple of hours, okay?”

She slowly nods her head, looking even more shocked than she was when she saw me fight that Catcher in the hallway. She doesn’t look at me, instead she runs towards the door, looking as if she might cry, but I don’t chase after her. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t. Not now. Not when a group of men are trying to assassinate me, not when I don’t know their intentions with me, and certainly not when I have a cousin who I’ve never met before, and has the answers to the questions that I’ve been chasing after for the last few weeks. As much as I wanted to be with Taylor and see if she was okay, I had to leave her and find out what was going on.

I managed to catch up with Alex and Jack, who were only merely seconds away from my house.

“What happened?” Jack asks, squinting his eyes to block the wind.

I shake my head. “Nothing,” I say. “Nothing happen
ed.”

When we land in front of the house, I realized all the lights were on inside. Panic shoots through me, and as Jack jumps from Alex’s back, I immediately rush towards the door and open it, anticipating the Catchers.

Surely enough, when we came inside, Brad was on the couch—alone—watching TV. I took a closer look at what he was watching and realized that the

object on the screen was my school—or
what was left of it, at least.

Brad immediately leaps from the couch and runs toward us.

“Troy,” he says in a relieved voice, hugging me so hard that I could feel the oxygen escaping my lungs. “Oh, thank God you’re okay. I got off work as soon as Ryan called and told me what happened.”

He then releases me and turns his atte
ntion to Alex, gazing upon her.

“Who’s this?” he asks, pointing to her.

“Oh,” I say nervously, trying to figure out the right words to say. “That’s my…she’s my…my-”

“This is his cousin, Alex,” says Jack.

I whip my head towards Jack, staring at him with shock, resisting the urge to slap him. But instead I turn my focus to Brad, who continues to look at Alex. I thought that he would stay like that for a while, but eventually he starts to smile, holding out his hand.

“Pleasure to meet you,” he says. “I’m Brad.”

“You, too,” Alex says, shaking his hand.

As they let go of ea
ch other, Brad faces me again.

“So, would someone explain to me what happened?” he asks.

I didn’t really know how to explain this one either. I turned to Jack, hoping for him to say something, but it looked as if he was having the same trouble I was. Both of us were kind of clueless as to what happened at the school, and I couldn’t find any excuses to cover me. Fortunately, the only one who knew the answers was the first to talk.

“We were attacked,” says Alex.

Confusion sweeps across Brad’s face. “Attacked?” he says. “Like, by an angry classmate? Terrorists or something?”

“Not exactly,” Jack says.

His lips start to move again, but before any sound could escape them, I lightly elbow him in the stomach.

“Well,” Brad
asks impatiently, “what is it?”

I sense worry in his eyes. Worry that I was keeping something from him. The more I realized it, the more it starts to eat me up. I couldn’t hide anymore. Not from Brad. And why should I hide it? Everyone else knew my secret. Jack—my best friend—had known, and Taylor—my girlfriend—had now known. But now the only person left out was the man that took me in and raised me. My guardian. My father.

“Brad,” I say before Alex begins to speak. “I have to tell you something.”

“What is it?” he asks.

I began to feel fear, but immediately brushed those emotions aside as I try to find the right words to say to Brad. But then a thought entered my brain, and I realized I didn’t have to say anything at all.

Using my super-speed, I run behind Brad and lightly tap my finger against his shoulder. He then turns around to look at me
, his skin turning onion-white.

“How did you do that?” he asks, looking at me as though he’d seen a ghost.

“I ran,” I say, speaking in a voice so soft and low, it almost sounded like a whisper.

“What?” Brad gasp
s. “What did you…how did you-?”

I then hear the words “Lion-Man” come from the TV
, and I immediately point to it. I turn to look at it and see a picture of me across the screen with a tiny box showcasing the ruins of my school, along with a caption at the bottom that reads “Lion-Man not in sight at demolished school.”