Sophomore Freak (Reject High: A Young Adult Science Fiction Series Book 2) (22 page)

I’m not sure from where or how, but a blast of force knocked the breath out of me and sent me spiraling out of the sky. Though I saw myself on a collision course with the earth, I didn’t have the concentration to steady myself and slow down. I’m sure some kind of girlish scream came from my mouth, but at that speed I couldn’t hear it.

When I struck land headfirst my momentum rolled me over into a balled-up heap. I grunted, tasting the hard orange grit between my teeth. Spitting it out didn’t work. It covered my lips and the sides of my mouth. There was so much it was like I had eaten a bowl of the stuff. Would a gallon of water down my throat clear it out? And what could have hit me that hard and
that fast?
A flying bus?

Kneeling, I didn’t see anything, not even a trail of smoke in the sky. A small wind blew, but not enough to make a noise on the deserted landscape. Rocky cliffs, formations – nothing else as far as the eye could see, except for the massive dust cloud I’d created when I crashed.

I rubbed the back of my neck, cracked it, and urged my reluctant feet over to the scarlet emerald first. Millions of its dark red facets sparkled in the afternoon sunlight. Goshenite would sap his powers, but with these I could enter his mind, or control his movements, like I had done to Spivey before Sasha wiped his brain clean.

Are those footsteps?
Only one other person would be out here in the middle of nowhere. Instead of swinging at him, I grasped a cluster of scarlet emerald prisms.

“Freeze,” I said, praying that it worked.

Turning around, I saw King. He looked like a slightly older version of the man I’d seen in the journal’s photograph. Was he frozen or not? As he exhaled, his breath blew the hair on his ragged brown mustache. Otherwise, he didn’t even blink.

First things first. Without goshenite nearby, I’d have to find his prisms and take them off. Most of us wore necklaces, so he probably had one, too. Only a few, like Welker, chose rings or some other type of jewelry.

I reached out for his neck to search underneath his army green collar. That’s when he wrapped his hand around my throat, lifted me into the air, and flung me overhead. Hands out, I waved my arms and thought of a gliding bird. It didn’t work. Every thought passed through my mind too fast to process.

When I landed, my head cracked against a rocky boulder the size of a small car. Under normal circum-stances it would have broken my skull. A tiny part of me wished it had, so I could sleep, or let someone else figure out how to save the planet this time.

Maybe it did. For a minute, probably much longer than that, I lost consciousness. After gaining it back long enough to see an orange and blue blur, I dropped out again.

When I awoke, the metallic taste of blood flooded my mouth. I coughed out a stream of crimson mixed with dust. A burning, throbbing pressure invaded my sinuses. I heard a long, painful, desperate moan –
mine.

Opening my eyes, I saw King. He knelt in front of me and dropped a denim blue name badge cracked in half into my lap. It read “Debra” – her work badge?

“She begged me not to kill you,” he said with no hint of sympathy in his voice.

A lump formed in my throat. My stomach tingled with anticipation of the worst.

“So, I killed her instead.” His grin seared into my brain. “You’re welcome.”

My brain went numb. He’d done me a “favor” and murdered my stepmom? He was lying, doing it to get me angry. Debra misplaced her badge all the time. Tears filled my eyes. No. My lip quivered. She couldn’t die, not this way. Who would take care of my little brother? Who would love me?

I’d save her. I’d save them all. 

Digging my right hand into the surface behind me, I tossed orange dirt into King’s face. He cursed, stumbled backwards, and frantically wiped at his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt. Close as I could get, I reared back and grunted as I punched King square in the stomach. The impact lifted him several inches off of his feet.
Debra.
I saw her gentle face in my mind’s eye. His entire body shook with my next punch.

Lifting him by the midsection, I threw him like a football into a nearby quarry. He’d survive it. Good. I wanted him to suffer. First, I’d take away his powers. The goshenite wasn’t too far from where I threw him.

Then. . .it hit me. I’d have to kill him. No wonder Selby left so fast. 

Leaping over the cracked earth to where King had landed, I battered him with my fists, holding nothing back. With every strike the control Susan had taught me to sense slipped away in small chunks. My guilt over losing it melted away, too. The smack of my fists striking against his flesh faded away to nothing.

Oh no. Not now.  

I paused long enough for King to sneak in a shot at me. He tried to strangle me, digging his fingernails into the sides of my neck. I yelped, pounding away at his elbows as the pressure on my throat made me woozy. Soon my arms were heavy, like I was swinging lead pipes through liquid concrete.

We traded blow after blow. While he clearly had an effect on me, it did not seem that my efforts were worth anything beyond entertainment for him.

That was, until I noticed a drop of blood coming from his bottom lip.

I pulled King to his feet and tossed him as high as I could. We’d take it to the air, where I had an advantage on all of my enemies.

Using my hand as a visor, I tracked the black streaking dot in the sky. One thing I remembered Peters teaching us in Physical Science was something called “terminal velocity.” King would meet terminal velocity, stop accelerating, and fall.

He finally slowed down and stopped at terminal velocity.

But he didn’t drop.
Great.
He can fly and I can’t.

I swallowed hard and realized my best bet was to get to the goshenite. He saw my move coming and met me in the air when I jumped for it. Even with nothing behind him for leverage, he spun me around and threw me back to the ground.

Still unable to put on the brakes, I left a crater several yards deep. I curled into a ball in a thick bed of hard, orange rubble. And this time it
really hurt.

Had my prism flown out of my suit? No time to regroup and check. And, to be honest, I’d rather not know so far in advance if I was about to die.

King dropped down into the hole with a chunk of white ice in his hand.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

this one’s for Cherish

Straightening out my right leg helped kill the pain a bit. It was all I could do after King used the goshenite he juggled in his hand to strip me of my powers.

No one could rescue me. I couldn’t be tracked without my phone or prism. None of the others knew my location. Facing King was on me. I wanted it that way, because even now only I could stop him. Since Debra had traded her life for mine, I owed her that. For better or worse, I was on my own. If I failed, at least I wouldn’t have to watch my friends die torturous deaths.

He’s cocky, which plays into my favor
. Maniacs like to hear themselves talk, and that’s not just in the movies. Plus, like everyone else, he thought I was
stupid.
The longer he rambled, the better my chance of thinking my way out of this. Without Adderall, though, it was way harder for me to focus, but at least he couldn’t read my thoughts. 

Sweat moistened his brow. “Unite the crystals for me and nobody else will die.”

If changing sides guaranteed someone’s safety, I’d do it. What was his word worth, anyway? His plan was to absorb the radiation to make himself immortal. Not for a second did I think he’d spend eternity playing chess and watching TV.

As if to make me decide faster, King stomped on my chest with his black boot and pressed the steel toe into the flesh just below my throat. “You have the potential to be an asset to me. You found the emerald.”

“No,” I growled beneath his shoe. “Cherish Watkins did.”

He laughed. “Maybe. But you’re the one who got my attention.”

His statement didn’t clarify whether or not he had planted a morganite jewel on her. If I made it back to Rhapsody she’d want to know, so I accused him. “You told her to shoot herself.”

“She found morganite on her own. There are isotopes scattered across the globe. You can thank the Collective for that. They’re as guilty as I am, if not more.”

The idea that there were kids like us in other countries gave me pause. They could be unstoppable criminals, mass murderers, or worse.

King moved his foot from my chest and kicked my injured leg. I screamed and cursed from the dull ache and throbbing that came afterward.

He smiled a wicked grin and stomped me under the kneecap for good measure, causing white lights to flash in my eyes. Poking at me again with his foot, he asked me about the aquamarine. “Where did they hide it? The old lab? The HAARP compound?”

Fantastic. Welker had told him about my bluff and he’d believed it. “Ask your sister.”

“Can’t now,” he said matter-of-factly, drawing a slow finger across his throat.

An icy shiver tickled my spine. He’d killed her, too. 

He leaned over me and pressed the goshenite against my ribs near the bottom of my good lung. Shaking my head back and forth, I wanted to shout but couldn’t find the breath to do it. I’m sure my face purpled from a lack of oxygen, which led King to let up on the pressure.

He scratched at his stubble. Something in his beady eyes told me time was running short, so I had to think quicker. “The aquamarine’s location,” he growled. “
Now.”

Could I sell him on a fake site? Probably not. I thought “I don’t know,” but with a collapsed lung and the inability to speak, I mouthed it.

My hesitation must have convinced him I really didn’t know. King balled his right fist and cocked his arm back to strike me dead. I closed my eyes, ready to allow it to happen. I couldn’t fight anymore, not without help.

When King didn’t immediately hit me, I cracked open my eyes. He dropped the white rock and staggered, falling backwards and gurgling spit on himself.

“I don’t know,” I croaked between coughs. “Happy?”

Wide-eyed and shaking, King keeled over and clutched at his stomach.

Lying on my back, I watched the milder light of the afternoon sun filter through the clouds. Humongous solar flares blew up across its surface, one after the other. For the moment my enemy was powerless and unable to defend himself against me. The goshenite was closer than I thought, about three yards away. I’d have to look for the scarlet emerald, but by the time I found it the solar flares would be over.

Rolling over to King, I searched his shirt and pants for any color of prism. He halfheartedly pushed me away until I delivered a couple hard punches to his jaw.

We weren’t done – not even close.

Once he stopped moving I concentrated on searching him while the flares were still going. His pockets were clean. Where was he keeping them? I experienced a small surge of energy with them being so close, but any more power and I’d be sick like he was.

Against my better judgment, I tore open his clothes and stripped him down to his white tank top and pale blue boxer shorts.

Not one prism.

One look at the sun let me know that the flares were weakening. I broke out in a cold sweat in the middle of the desert. King’s strength would return soon. “C’mon, think!” I said, smacking my head with my hands.

My eyes wandered across his body, even the places I didn’t
want
to look. Then in the sunlight, I saw a faint glimmer on the left side of his chest.

Unzipping my suit and pulling my arms free from the sleeves, I touched the hairy area above his heart. A hard sharpness pricked me. On closer examination, I saw a loose flap of leathery skin.

Gross. He implanted them.

King groaned and blinked his eyes. I grabbed the goshenite rock, suppressed his powers, and continued my search as the solar storm ended as quickly as it had begun.

Using
my fingernails, I dug underneath the flap of skin on his sweaty chest. I pulled out five small prisms – the green emerald, then the goshenite, scarlet emerald, morganite, and heliodor.

I pocketed the green emerald and immediately revived. With the remaining four crystals in my hand, I stepped far enough away that King could not draw power from them. His skin sagged, darkened, and withered on his bones.

He gagged and hacked, clutching at his throat. “Noooo,” he wailed.

An uncontrollable desire to break him in half rose within me. I told him the first word on my mind, “Die.” He was way too dangerous to survive. Of all the people who tried to kill me – Peters, Selby, Welker, and now him – King is the only one for whom I wanted to return the favor.

I gazed at his wretched body long and hard. What kind of end did he deserve?

I remembered the morganite, the one stone that would not revive or sustain him. I flung the fingernail-sized prism next to his arm. “That’s for Cherish and Debra,” I said.

King twitched with surprise and patted the ground until he found the crystal. Holding it close to his face, for his eyesight must have worsened, he laughed. Not at my stupidity for leaving him a prism, but the fact he’d done the same thing to us. 

Whatever his deepest desire might be, he’d discover it here, alone in the desert with his last breath. Eventually he’d want to die bad enough to find a way to do it.

He deserved it for all he’d done.

When I landed at Hidden Potential after six o’clock, the ground was scorching, like beach sand. Rhapsody waited for me beside the pit. No one else hung around.

After I unloaded the scarlet emerald and goshenite crystals from my shoulders onto the ground, Rhapsody rushed into my arms and gave me a kiss. In the middle of the kiss, I fell to my knees and broke into tears. She eased back and held me tight. I wanted to tell her everything, that King had murdered my only real parent and I’d left him to die for it. My mouth wouldn’t form the words or anything beyond a pitiful wail.

“What happened? Whatever it is, no judgment. You can tell me.”

“Debra,” I sobbed.

Rhapsody read between the lines. She placed her hands on my neck and looked at me while I bowed my head.

“He killed her. . .”

“When this is all over, Jason, we’ll find out the truth.” Her voice rose in pitch. “Did you. . .”

“No.”

She touched my cheeks with her palms. “And don’t leave me like that again.”

“Promise,” I said, holding my hand up in a pledge. “I had a good excuse though.”

Heat from the pit pulsed through the soil and created small pockets of hissing steam. Something wasn’t right. The solar storm wasn’t supposed to peak until noon tomorrow.

“It’s been doing this for the past half hour,” Rhapsody said as we stood. “Vivienne told us to take off our prisms if we see solar flares coming, but they’re hard to get a jump on.”

I lifted the lid to the pit and a gush of boiling air puffed up at me. I dropped the scarlet emerald inside, then the goshenite. The prisms I’d stolen from King were next. Then I resealed the pit’s cover.

“What’s wrong?” she asked me.

“Nothing,” I said, forcing a smile from my sweaty face. “I’m good.”

Rhapsody crossed her arms over her breasts. “You don’t wanna talk about it. It’s fine. You know me. I won’t force you.”

It’s one of the things about her I appreciated the most.

“What if the solar storm is coming quicker, harder than we think? Nobody knows where the aquamarine is, not King, not even the Collective – or so they said.”

She sighed. “We’ve got most of them. The pit will hold those, won’t it?”

“And what if it doesn’t?” I asked. “What if the whole thing blows?”

“I don’t know, Jason,” she said. “What do you think we should do?”

Our time was winding down. Whether I believed King or not, the Collective wasn’t telling us everything. I’d force them to tell me the rest.