Sophomore Freak (Reject High: A Young Adult Science Fiction Series Book 2) (20 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

somebody is going to die

Having ADHD means that with things going on around me all of the time, focusing on one of them is a challenge.

That wasn’t my problem here.
Nothing
was happening
.
I could barely see the explosion I’d caused. Soon ambulances and fire engines would scramble to the scene.

The emergency personnel might have a hard time figuring this one out. How had a group of over-tanned senior citizens crashed two helicopters in the middle of nowhere?

Oh well. It was their problem, not mine. 

Someone was running at me from behind. I heard the cornstalks parting. With fists clenched, I swiveled my hips and threw my hardest punch. I missed and lost my balance, falling face first into the dirt. Good thing I still had my mask on.

“Stay on your knees,” said a male voice with a Spanish accent. “They’re coming.”

When I got my bearings, the boy put his hand on my shoulder. I glanced at his face and did a double take. He looked
a lot
like the twin brothers Ryan had with him.

“Esteban,”
he whispered, like he knew what I was thinking. “Not Luis or Julio.”

“What’s the difference?” I blurted it out, louder than I should have.

“Shh,” he said with urgency. “Trust me. There’s a
big
difference.”

The level of my voice must have alerted them to our position. A flurry of gunshots rang out in our direction.

Esteban, with his hand still on my shoulder, teleported us to another section of the field. Goshenite rocks landed close to our feet. We still weren’t safe.

Then he moved us to the grove of trees at the edge of the cornfield where I’d left the source crystals. Altogether, he must have popped us in and out across a few miles.

When we stopped moving I gasped and cursed, patting my body to make sure it was solid again. Trails of gold smoke drifted from the fibers of my bodysuit. I unmasked to let myself breathe.

Esteban’s laugh was coarse and annoying. “You get used to it,” he said. “Cool costume. I could use one of those.”

We weren’t alone. To my left was a curly-haired blonde my age. Next to her, a short, brunette girl grinned at me. She looked like the other girl’s sister.   

“They’re on the attack. We have to get the others and mobilize,” Esteban said, his voice shaking.

The others? “What’s wrong?” I asked him. “You okay?”

He spat on the ground and pointed up in the sky. “They’re starting. Look.”

There were no clouds to shield the sun’s strength, so I pulled my mask down. Even then, I couldn’t look at it for long. What I saw was amazing!

A small, round mass of sunlight bulged out from the sun’s right side. Like a balloon, it filled up to its capacity and burst, sending an explosion of vibrant yellow rays streaking across the sky. I didn’t have to ask Esteban what he meant.

Bending over, I closed my eyes and rolled over onto the lush grass. The earth was spinning in my head, more than like the night Hughes and I had drunk scotch.

Before long all four of us were on the ground, moaning and clutching our stomachs. Thankfully, it lasted a short time. But when it stopped I felt increased power flowing through my system, like I had guzzled a dozen power drinks back to back.

Esteban examined his hands as if they were glowing. “You guys feel that?”

The blonde girl’s head bobbed with enthusiasm. “Uh huh? Do you, sis?”

“Yeah,” said the brunette. Her voice squeaked. “It tingles.”

I didn’t like where this was going. If solar flares made us stronger, wouldn’t our enemies be affected, too?

“We have to stop them
here,”
I said. “But they’re invisible. The solar flares aren’t helping, and without white isotopes we can’t see them.”

“White isotopes?” Esteban repeated. “You must mean
goshenite.”

“Whatever.” I waved my left hand. The glare from the glass face of my Geiger counter flashed in my eye. “You said I’ll get used to it –the teleporting?”

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s a focus thing. I’m ADD, so even I get sick of it sometimes. The adrenaline helps, I think.”

He’s ADD, too?
“Hmm.” My eyebrows rose. “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to go into the field together. We’ll take them out, one by one, until we get the one who’s making them invisible. One of them has to know where King is.”

Esteban clapped. “Dangerous and risky. I like it! Good deal! I’m in.”

“We can cast a force field pretty wide,” said the blonde. “When we see you, we’ll throw it up. Won’t keep out goshenite for long, though.”

“I’ll pop us out,” Esteban said.

He didn’t sound sure of himself. “You can teleport all of us?”

“Not far” was all he would say about it. “Stay close. I have to be able to see you at all times.”

With that, he teleported us back to where he had found me. We stood, back to back, and rotated around, listening, watching. My watch clicked a few beats.

One of our enemies was close, but
how close?

I swept my arm in the air, creating a semi-circle. I stopped when the clicks became stronger. They could hear it, too. Esteban elbowed me in the shoulder, right before one of them shot at us.

I caught three rounds of goshenite in the stomach before I pinned down his location.

“At your six o’clock!” I grunted.

Esteban popped us in the exact direction I’d told him. I lunged forward and tackled the boy to the ground. Grabbing his weapon, I placed my left foot on his chest and shot him a couple of times. He must have the invisibility power, because the rest of his crew appeared once he was down.

I sprayed shots at them. The goshenite hit the five other boys. Two of them were close to us.

Esteban went to each and stripped them of weapons and gold ice. He kept one of their guns and threw the rest of it into the air. They vanished in a burst of gold smoke.

“Didn’t know you could do that,” I said to him. Pulling goshenite rocks out of my skin was always painful, but with my bodysuit’s protection, it didn’t hurt as much.

He shrugged. “Me, neither.”

“Where’s King?” I asked the guy underneath my foot. I took his necklace. His skin darkened and wrinkled like a raisin. He couldn’t answer me.

I moved on to one of the other boys and pointed my gun at him. “Where’s King?”

“Castling,” the boy said from his dry lips.

A city named “Castling?” I didn’t know of any in the state. Maybe King was somewhere farther away than we thought.

“Dude,” Esteban said from between clenched teeth. “Can you move?”

My leg muscles seized so I couldn’t jump away. Then the paralysis spread to the rest of my limbs. My heart skipped one or two beats and I stopped breathing. The flare had expanded Ryan’s power. He could control my organs now, too.

I heard his ridiculous laugh behind my back. “New powers are something else.”

He’d even frozen our eyes open. It didn’t hurt me, but I could tell Esteban was suffering. The last time Ryan mind-controlled me, it didn’t last long if I tried to escape. I couldn’t link together my thoughts, even though I’d taken Adderall this morning.

“I don’t know how you survived,” he said, walking around us. Ryan cocked his gun. “This time I’ll watch you die.”

“You’re going to fail,” I said. “Always do.”

Ryan shot Esteban in the chest before he could think to teleport. “Not this time.”

Esteban grunted in pain, but stood still. A small circle of blood appeared on his white baseball shirt and dribbled a line down to his waist.

Esteban crumpled to the ground and Ryan stepped over his body. He smiled back at me. “You’re next,” he said.

If I didn’t do something, try something, Ryan would murder him.

Summoning everything inside me, I concentrated on rushing Ryan. My effort broke through his mental grip. He turned around too late to stop me.

I flew forward, my shoulder thrusting into his gut. We brushed through the fields at a ridiculous speed. I wanted to slow down or stop, but couldn’t. I was in the hallway at North High School all over again, and he was making fun of my mother. Something inside of me broke and reining it in wasn’t an option anymore.

Hughes was right. Killing him was on the table.  

I finally planted my feet and slid to a stop in a grass field. Ryan tumbled for a quarter mile before landing face down. Jumping over to Ryan at once, I turned him over. Blood, dirt, and grass stains streaked across his face. His clothes were shredded. I patted around his collar and broke his red ice chain off his neck. I tossed it as high as I could throw it and threw mine next to a nearby tree. It would be a fair fight. 

Gasping for breath because of my lung, the pain in my leg, and the bullet wounds, I balled up my fists and punched Ryan with everything I had. He tried blocking my punches, but I was too strong for him. Over and over I smashed my fists into his face until he fell unconscious. We still weren’t even.

Hughes had said Ryan would come back with reinforcements and kill me. Now I believed him. He had to die here.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

the real fight starts

I limped over to the tree and retrieved my emerald. Its power revived me. My bad lung inflated and the ligaments in my knee mended better than new.

In the next few moments I’d kill Ryan Cain. 

Before I got to him Esteban teleported in and interrupted me. “Stop,” he grunted out. “The girls have the force field up. We gotta go.”

“No,” I said, bumping his shoulder as I passed him.

He popped in front of me again. “Murder him and you’re no better than King.”

My arm muscles quivered. “Move or
I’ll move you.”

Esteban stepped aside and held up his hands in surrender. “You got it.”

I grabbed Ryan by the neck and lifted him off the ground. His head bobbed.

Raising my fist to deliver the death blow, I looked over at Esteban, expecting him to teleport my enemy away. He broke eye contact with me. I was on my own.  When I let Ryan go he fell awkwardly to the ground. My confidence shrank a little. As much as I wanted to rid myself of him forever, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

“Whew.” Esteban wiped his brow. “Thought you might actually kill him.”

I swallowed hard and made a shooing motion with my hands. “Can you. . .”

He held his palm in Ryan’s direction and made him disappear in gold smoke. “He won’t do anything to you now, not where I put him. We need to head back.”

In a moment we were inside Hidden Potential’s borders. I recognized most of the buildings from the brochures I’d seen. King’s helicopter had landed in the camp’s main square next to the flagpole. Nobody was guarding it.

Inside it, tied down to the seats, sat Sasha and Rhapsody. Selby slumped between them. The source crystals King had stolen were gone.

I reached across Selby and yanked Sasha’s and Rhapsody’s binds at the same time. Both of them had the instinct to hug me, but Sasha nudged Rhapsody to the side and got to me first.

“Oh, God, Ryan said you were dead,” Sasha said, kissing me on the cheek.

From behind Sasha’s back, I watched Rhapsody. She didn’t say anything, but her watering eyes did. She wiped her tears away.

While the girls gathered themselves Esteban checked Selby’s limp wrist for a pulse. “Not good news over here,”

Turning my attention to Esteban, I asked him, “Got green crystal anywhere?”

“Emeralds?” he asked. “Ms. Coker doesn’t keep any around, so we don’t kill each other. We’ll have to go to the pit for it.”

I understood that. Giving aggressive superpowers to teenage criminals sounded like a bad idea.

Rhapsody scowled. “And ‘the pit’? Doesn’t sound like a place we need to go.”

“I’m open to other ideas,” Esteban said, folding his hands at his waist. “Got any?”

We looked at Sasha. “None over here,” she said.

Seeing as I was the super-strong one, I drew the short straw. Tossing Selby over my shoulder, I said, “Well, it’s not like we have all day.”

In a blink Esteban transported us to the pit site, which was in a field behind the campground. Nine of King’s people, dressed in all black, were gunning for the campers.

The sisters were at the forefront of the battle, straining to keep their golden force field strong enough to block the waves of goshenite and protect the pit.

Breathing heavily and sweating, Esteban dropped his shoulders and took several breaths through his mouth. “Need a minute,” he said before teleporting away.

With nowhere to hide in an open plain, I had to protect the girls. I clutched both of them around the waist and leaped to the closest building. We set down at its back steps. I returned a minute later with Selby, whose breathing was shallow.

From here the fight looked like a daytime fireworks show. “Stay here.”

“You can’t leave us here!” Rhapsody shouted at me.

For once Sasha agreed with her. “Not happening, babe.”

I ran my hands through my hair. “You need green ice to fight, and it’s in the pit.”

Rhapsody sighed and pouted. “Fine,” she said, crossing her arms. “We’ll stay.”

I didn’t believe her for a second, but there was no time for debating.

With my mask on, I returned to the battle. The force field withstood the charge, but not without help. Vivienne Coker was there, casting the force field with the sisters. When I landed at the edge of the force field, she allowed me in and quickly closed it behind me.

“Jason.” She said my name like she was acknowledging my presence.

“I need to get into the pit,” I shouted over the gunshots and yelling.

She nodded back in its direction. “Hurry. We need help.”

I raced over to the pit and lifted the cover. It looked identical to the dome at the fortress. A warm blast of light and radiation greeted me. The Geiger counter on my wrist clicked a thousand times a second. Inside were the emerald, morganite, and heliodor sources.

They had the gold one the entire time!

I eased down inside of the hole, which was the size of a well. The morganite was on top, which worried me because of what Camuto said – it released the heart’s deepest desire. I didn’t know mine and didn’t want to know. Reaching down, I freed a bunch of green and gold prisms and placed them in the bodysuit pocket over my heart. Never hurts to have extras.

When I started climbing out, I overheard loud yells and cries of pain.

“Jason,” Vivienne said. A gasp of pain cut her voice off. “Get out!”

The shooting stopped. It was around noon, so I looked up in time to see the end of the solar flare. The hum of energy vibrated under my feet.

Leaning against the pit’s lead inside, I took deep breaths to stop the nausea. Sweat poured down my face and wet the inside of my suit. It hurt and lasted way longer than last time had.  

I pulled myself up to the surface and closed the lid to the pit. The after-effect of the flare was stronger within me. With the force field still down, I leaped for the spot where I’d left my friends. Selby was sprawled out on the steps. Sasha and Rhapsody were both gone. I’d known they wouldn’t stay. Small explosions erupted nearby – discarded cell phones.

Selby stirred when I brought one of the prisms close enough. “Thanks,” he said, standing to his feet a minute later. “What did I miss?”

I pointed to the battleground where activity had resumed. “King’s going after the provenance crystals. We’re going to stop him.”

“Uh huh,” he said, nodding.

“Good guys are with Vivienne Coker. Bad guys have white ice, so be careful.” I handed him two prisms. “Give these to the girls if you find them first.”

“Gotcha.” Selby raced off.

For the life of me I couldn’t figure out why Sasha and Rhapsody would go off somewhere without powers and
together?
That was even weirder. I needed to find King and take him down. If I did that all of this would be over. Where was he?

Instead of joining Vivienne and the others, I jumped for the enemy camp and dropped behind their flank. I surprised two of them, ripped off their gold prisms, and tossed them far behind me.

One of the boys turned toward me and held out his palm, like Esteban does.

Oh crap.

A gold blur of smoke later I stood alone in a cornfield. I paused for a moment so I wouldn’t vomit. “Hate. . .teleporting,” I muttered.

Reciting the compound’s coordinates, I jumped for it. I could grab the Collective for reinforcements and head back to fight.

When I arrived I ran through the possibilities of my entry code.

“Anna” was the first name I said. It didn’t work. Peters knew everything else about me. He didn’t know my mother’s name?

Alright. Let’s try again. “Debra. . .Zachary. . .Deidra. . .Ray. . .Julia. . .Selby.”

Nothing. None of them worked.

I flapped my hands in frustration. “Sasha. Not
Sasha?
You’ve got to be kidding me, Peters. I don’t have time for this! How about Rhapsody?”

I was halfway joking, but the entryway whirred open. Ducking down, I ran in before it fully opened, hurried down the elevator and into the control room.

The place had been trashed. The display screen had been torn down and shattered. Sparks popped from its crossed electrical wires hanging from the ceiling. The overhead lighting flickered every few seconds.  

I stepped carefully around the broken glass and approached the infirmary. Hughes, Camuto, and Courtney lay there, motionless.

I gave each of them a gold and green prism and waited.

“We need to talk,” said a familiar, gruff voice from the darkness.

Grabbing one of the unused IV stands, I tossed it like a spear in the direction of the voice. I must have missed, because he kept talking.

“Stop acting like a Neanderthal and listen to me boy!” he shouted before opening fire.

I held up my arms to protect myself, but I didn’t need to. Hughes had revived and teleported me across the room to my assailant. I grabbed him by the throat and lifted him. The shine on his bald head and the gold prism dangling from his neck disappointed me. It was Ron Welker, my old principal from Reject High.

I tossed Welker through the control room wall and followed him through the hole. “Talk,” I said as he coughed up blood onto the floor. “Where is he?” 

Welker looked at me with cold eyes. “Castling.”