Sophomore Freak (Reject High: A Young Adult Science Fiction Series Book 2) (16 page)

“. . .he thinks it will make him
immortal
or something,” Ryan finished. “The kids who have powers are helping him. He goes inside our minds whenever he wants. When he read mine and found out I wasn’t down with it, I became like one of you to him.”

“Absorbing high proton radiation will make him
immortal?”
Sasha restated it as a question she was asking herself. She gazed at the cloth and metal roof of the truck. “Either he’s right or he’ll melt like butter and the world will be a continent short.”

Rhapsody bit her bottom lip. “How do we
stop it?”

“I’ve got an idea,” Ryan said.

“If we knew how to stop him,” Sasha sneered at Rhapsody. “We wouldn’t. . .”

“I’m
so sorry,
Sasha,” Rhapsody interrupted. “Can’t understand your idea. Lift your butt a little higher so we can all hear you talking out of it.” 

While the girls sniped back and forth with each other and Selby tried stopping them from arguing, Ryan elbowed me in the arm. “Did you see the hot redhead in there? The one that picked me up?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said, wondering where he was going with this.

“She’s from back home. Went to North, too. I’ve been smashing her for a month.”

Why is this fool telling me about his sex life in the middle of a crisis? I stretched my sore neck. “You must not be any good at it,” I said, gasping. “She put you in here.”

He glared at me. “It’s an
act,
Champion. She had to make it convincing.”

I let the jokes go and heard him out. “Congrats. How are. . .you going to get us out of here?”

He shook his head no. “I’m not.
You are.”

Ryan turned his body toward me, revealing a green prism in his palms. Carefully, without touching him, I plucked the crystal from his hand. Instantly my body returned to normal. I broke the plastic bands around my wrists and stood up.

That got Rhapsody and Sasha’s attention away from each other. I freed Ryan and then Selby, with the girls last.

“Pop an Adderall and get us out of here,” Rhapsody said.

I unzipped my suit and fished around the pocket over my heart. King had taken my supply, along with my phone and Geiger counter. “I’m out.”

Sasha wrapped her hand around the inside of her bodysuit. “No worries. When Hughes and Camuto came for me, I grabbed some. It’s what a good girlfriend does.”

She handed me a pill and I swallowed it, hoping the little bit of spit in my mouth was enough for it to go down. “Ryan, where did they take our stuff? We need it.”

He wagged his index finger. “I don’t hate you enough to send you there. But there’s somewhere else we can go.”

“Alright,” Sasha said. “Rhapsody, can you ghost all of us out of here?”

I handed the crystal over to Rhapsody. Leaning on Selby and Ryan for support, I braced for the worst as we all slowly passed through the bottom of the moving truck.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

a suicide mission

Ducking into an alley between a bakery and a clothing store, the five of us watched the truck motor off in the dust without us. Sooner or later King would figure out we had escaped. He was part of the Collective once, so he might have their tracking technology. Meaning the fact I had a green crystal made me a moving target. Good thing I could move pretty fast.

Selby, however, was in bad shape. “Ryan.” My stomach tensed. “Selby can’t go on like this. He needs a crystal.”

“I’m aware of that,” Ryan said, clenching his jaw. “It’s a suicide mission.”

“We don’t have a choice, do we, Sasha?” Rhapsody asked.

“No.” She looked down. The two of them had formed a truce. Or, at least they had agreed to stop bothering each other long enough for us to figure this out.

Ryan crossed his arms in front of his chest. “There’s a one-level base north of here in Tamaulipas. If he has any prisms worth the trouble, they’re there.”

I tilted my head. “What if I got Rhapsody there and she ghosted through?”

Sasha looked away. “It
could
work.”

Selby tightened his fists. “Why risk
two
people? I can zip in and be out faster.”

“They’ll see you coming,” Ryan said, scratching his right eyebrow. “Champion’s right. He and Rhapsody give us the best chance of getting out of here.”

“Well, what about you?” I asked him. “I mean, I can carry you. But without a bodysuit, it’ll take forever to get home.”

“Just get me a red crystal. I’ll even take gold,” Ryan said, stepping back. “I can handle myself. We’ll be here when you get back.”

Rhapsody pulled her mask down and waited for me to do the same. I put the green crystal in my bodysuit’s inside pocket. Leaning over to Sasha’s left, I kissed her on the cheek. “I’ll be back for you,” I said in her ear before putting my mask on.

She stared past me into the distance. “You’d better.”

We closed in on our location. I felt it. Debra said the deep down place was my spirit, not my stomach. I wasn’t sure what it was, but it hadn’t led me wrong yet.

Rhapsody never moved much in the air, but her hand drifted from my neck to right over my heart. Warmth flowed through my veins and I started sweating. What was she doing? Then I realized she needed to use the crystal to turn us invisible.

We descended behind the metal fence around the compound. Dressed in all-black uniforms, two kids a little older than we were guarded the entrance. They had machine guns leaning against their shoulders. White ice weapons.

“Can you levitate us in?” she whispered. “It’s just – they’ll see your footprints.”

I thought back to the time in the control room, when I jumped and stopped in the air. “Hughes told you I could do that?” I asked her in a quiet voice.

“He told everyone. Just try it. I couldn’t turn intangible until I had to, remember?”

I didn’t have to come up with something to make me afraid, like I had been in the control room. Things were getting out of control and fast.

Rather than use my whole foot to jump, I pushed off on my toes. We rocketed straight up into the air, almost as high as the knob on the flagpole and remained there.

Rhapsody wiggled a little bit and held onto me tighter. I could tell she was looking straight down.

“Umm. . .let’s get down, Cap.
Slowly.
”

Dialing down our altitude, I focused on the flat roof of the building. Gradually we drifted over it. Neither of us said anything, in case it was a fluke. It wasn’t. Focusing on slow moving things helped me put on the brakes. Molasses, old people crossing the street, ants. It was working!

At just the right moment Rhapsody ghosted us through the building. The place looked a little bit like the Collective’s fortress. Actually, it was designed
a lot
like it. Instead of gray metal, the beams and walls were navy blue. The feel of the building was newer and modernized with more up-to-date technology. There were card sensors by each door and televisions on the walls that doubled as electronic billboards. Had the Mexican military built this place, or had King done it himself?

Rhapsody and I solidified on the bottom floor, where many of the teenage soldiers milled about. Among them I saw Ryan’s girlfriend but didn’t get a good look at her face. All of them were wearing
gold
prism necklaces. No red or green.
Great! Something else to worry about.

King emerged from a brightly-lit room adjacent to where we stood. The white source must be in there. Sasha was right again. He went after it first and laid a trap for those of us who came after it.

He walked straight over to a black glass table. On its face was an interactive map of the world. It looked
exactly
like the one belonging to Camuto and Hughes.

Rhapsody and I stood close enough to see the display. A solid white dot blinked near the coast in Mexico. The red dot in Colorado was solid, too, while Montana had a blinking green dot. If solid means it’s missing, who had gotten to the red source before we did?

“Did you give him a green isotope like I asked?” King said over his shoulder.

The redheaded girl turned her head to face him. “I did.”

I cursed in my head. She’d been playing Ryan all of this time. Figures he’d be that stupid.

King swiped his palms over the glass surface. A different map appeared, one with miniature people on it. There was a cluster of gold people in Mexico and one, lone, green person in the middle of them.

Me.

King looked around the room and waved his left hand. On its fourth finger was a ring made entirely of white ice. “Ryan? Where are you? No? Maybe one of our other friends. . .”

I wheeled around and snatched the gold prism necklaces off of every kid around me. Something strange happened to them when I did. Immediately their bodies turned a dark shade of brown and withered up, like dry leaves in the sun.

“Go!” Rhapsody shouted.

With her in my arms, I jumped out of the basement. We fell into a bare room on the middle floor. I’d never stopped in the middle of a jump before. The green prism tumbled from my fist when I hit the ground. It was clear. How had that happened?

Rhapsody pounded the floor with her fist. She had lost her power, too.

My body started aching again. “What the. . .?”

Right then a brassy siren blared throughout the building. Visible and vulnerable, we looked at each other with alarm.

“Quick! Give me one,” she said.

I tossed her a gold prism necklace and tied one around my own neck. My knee and lungs were fine again! We didn’t have time to test what else it could do, but I hoped my strength and her intangibility were included. Shoving the remainder of the prisms into my suit, I picked up Rhapsody and jumped in no particular direction.

We passed through the building at blinding speed, way faster than I had intended to go, than I had ever gone. I tightened my grasp on Rhapsody but after a long time in the sky, I felt her slipping. At this speed, I couldn’t see clearly, so I thought to slow down just enough to see how far we had gone.

I blinked to make sure I was seeing correctly. Orizaba was directly below us, with the alley we had been hiding in not much farther.  

I was too nervous to drop in between two buildings, so we landed on the sidewalk of a busy street. Once we had unmasked, Rhapsody let our invisibility down.

She put her hand on her chest. “My God, that was amazing! Do you feel different?”

The energy of the gold crystal was higher than the green
–
like the difference between licking a double AA battery and a car battery. “Definitely,” I said.

Rhapsody squealed and gave me a lingering touch on the arm. “It’s incredible. I mean, my whole body’s tingling. I’ve
never
felt this good before.”

Her eyes were glassy. Things were getting a little weird again. “We should go.”

“No, wait, Jason. I need to say this while I can.” Rhapsody made eye contact with me. “Sasha and I go at it like we do because. . .well, I really like you and she knows it.”

The hairs on the back of my neck stood at attention. “R-rhapsody, I. . .”

“I know you’re with her right now,” she said, her smile building slowly. “I didn’t say anything all this time because. . .I thought you. . .couldn’t be into a Goth. We’re way different. But I think, deep down, you like me, too. And we could be
beautiful
together.”

Listening to her, I gained a presence of our surroundings. People were walking past us, staring, especially at Rhapsody. I heard children speaking to their parents and the sound of moving vehicles. The scent of fresh bread wafted through the air. We were standing in front of a bakery. My armpits were sweating inside my suit, even though the cooling apparatus was on.

I didn’t want to say yes to Rhapsody, but I couldn’t say no.

“We’ve had some close calls,” she said, taking the pressure off of me to speak. Her lip trembled. “I don’t want to die. But if I do, it’s no regrets.”

“I can respect that,” I finally managed to say. We left it there.

Selby, Sasha, and Ryan were waiting for us in the alleyway. Sasha flung herself into my arms and kissed me, despite her hurt lip. A pang of guilt hit me inside, but I returned the kiss.

“That was quick,” she said, slowly backing away from me.

With my back to the street, I unzipped my suit enough to free the crystals. I tossed one to Rhapsody, then Sasha and Selby.

“Righteous!” Selby yelled after he tied his necklace. “Thanks, Freak.”

I saved Ryan for last. Channeling all of my natural strength, I popped Ryan in the nose with my right fist. He immediately started bleeding.

“That’s for Julia,” I said, tossing a necklace at his feet. “We’re not close to even.”

Ryan pinched his nose. “How did you get these?” he asked in a nasal voice.

“Stole them,” I said, proud of myself. “Why? What’s the problem?”

“There’s a list of what these things can do,” Ryan said. He tied his necklace around his wrist as a bracelet. Blood continued running down his face, which he wiped off with the back of his hand. “What I learned. . .the real thing you need to know.”