Sophomore Freak (Reject High: A Young Adult Science Fiction Series Book 2) (19 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

collecting on a debt

Groaning with every move, I rolled to my side and used my hands to prop myself up. The wounds were too deep to tell what Ryan had used on me, goshenite or bullets.

Blood soaked my t-shirt and oozed down my body. At this rate I didn’t have much time left. I needed to get to my bunk. I’d hidden my last gold ice prism there.

One. . .two. . .three.
I stepped my hands back and slid my body a foot across the floor. I looked up to keep my focus off of all the blood. I hate seeing blood.

I thought of what Rhapsody had said about dying with no regrets. There were things I wished I had done. Sasha deserved to know the truth. Something was missing between us.

I had never told Rhapsody she was pretty. That
something missing
between Sasha and me? Rhapsody had buckets of it.
But who breaks up with the prettiest girl in school?

One. . .two. . .three!
I moved back another foot or so and coughed up blood. I closed my eyes, turned my head, and spat it onto the floor.

I didn’t hate Ray, but he had pissed me off all the years he paid no attention to me. There was always work or some problem he had to fix with a client. Then it was about Julia. Then,
nothing.
After my ADHD and the rage blackout incident with the knife, he didn’t want me anymore. I was one issue he just couldn’t repair.

One. . .two. . .three!
Almost there. My heart felt like it might give out any second.

Would anyone find me down here? This place, I was sure, did officially exist. At least this time I wouldn’t be dying under ten feet of dirt. I used to want to be buried next to my mom. If I didn’t get out of here, I’d see her soon, and it wouldn’t be an issue.

I believed in God almost as much as I questioned Him.
Why did He make me different? Will I get to Heaven to be with her?
Maybe I wouldn’t.
Does it even exist? If it does, and He’s there, I plan to ask Him.
The answer should be pretty good, I think.
  

Finally at the door, I reached up and unlatched it. Using my upper body weight as a doorstop, I swung my left leg out into the hallway.

One. . .two. . .three!

I bent my right knee slightly and set it out next to my other leg.

Great, now I’m facing the wrong way.

Lying across the floor was a shriveled brown paper bag of a person sitting on her knees. Camuto? Courtney? Whoever she was, her clothes hung off of her. Her hair, thin and brittle, was completely white. Filmy brown eyes sank into her eye sockets. She crawled over to me, like an infant, and grabbed my left heel.

She gathered herself to stand. How, I didn’t know. With freakish strength she started dragging me away by my foot. We passed through two doorways into the control room, where she stopped moving. There were two other people there. The larger one face down on the floor had to be Hughes, making the other one propped against a desk Camuto or Courtney. Neither of them spoke.

“My. . .bunk. . .” The blood loss made me woozy.

Hughes low-crawled over and climbed on top of me. He couldn’t have weighed more than eighty pounds, but having him lie on me made it even harder to breathe.

“Hooooooold. . .”
he croaked over my mouth.
“Onnnnnnn. . .”

In a flash of yellow light we were inside of the bunk area, right next to my bed.
He teleported us!
Hughes rolled over onto the tiled floor and closed his eyes. A trail of golden mist wafted through the air.

Eyeing the top bunk, I grabbed the bed’s support pole and willed myself to one foot. While standing I jabbed my hand underneath the covers until I sensed an area warm to the touch. 

With the gold prism in my palm, I felt renewed. My body spit out the bullets Ryan had shot into it and sent them rattling across the floor. They were made of goshenite, after all.

I stepped into the bathroom and tore off my white shirt, stained completely red everywhere but the sleeves. There was no sign that I had been shot, not even a scar!
If someone takes off my prism, will the wounds return?
I didn’t want to find out.

Gotta get rid of the blood. 

I returned to the bunks. Hughes was gone. He must have teleported out to the control room. I’d meet him and the others there.

I entered the shower. Still with my suit on, I scrubbed at my exposed skin and let the water rinse away the rest. I realized something. I had bled so much that the water at my feet had turned pink. A retch rose in my throat. I almost threw up inside of the walled-in stall.

Feeling myself choking up, I let my emotions go and I cried over it all. My tears mixed with the water streams and dashed down my face in waves. Susan said crying was a healthy, normal thing to do. It felt terribly weak and exhilarating to me, all at the same time. I’d been on the edge of losing absolutely everything and I would, if I didn’t do something. I dried my face with my towel and blinked the last tears away.

Thinking about the Collective, I hurried. Shutting the water valve off I shook off the remaining moisture. The suit did not absorb water but repelled it. Now I was ready to rescue my friends, take care of these provenance crystals, and break Ryan’s face again.     When I returned to the control room, I found one of the women tending to Hughes and the other woman. Both were laid out on beds with IV bags.

“Courtney?” I asked, looking for a sign of recognition in her face.

She grumbled long and low and concentrated on what she was doing. Then I noticed she was wearing a shirt slightly different than Courtney’s.

“Amauri?”

She nodded her head forward, like the weight of the world balanced on her skull. “You’ll get over. . .seeing blood,” Camuto said. Her voice crackled and hissed as she spoke. “Takes time.”

It was good advice. “King has the white and red. I dropped the pink and green at Hidden Potential.”

“Not much time,” she growled.

I glanced over at the monitor hanging from the ceiling. Red, green, white, and pink dots were clustered in a spot no more than two inches from our location. Still missing were the gold and blue. Swiping my hand over the glass, like I’d seen King do, I switched the display. A blob of gold people were practically on top of the fortress. One of them was a reddish tone – that must be Ryan. My nostrils flared at the sight of him.

“Where do I find the missing ones?”

“Dome.” Camuto coughed, her voice faltering. She pointed to her desk.

I rushed over and looked through the drawers for anything important. The one thing I found looked like a large remote control. I pressed its largest button.

The metal floor rumbled and parted in the middle. Below it was a rounded structure the size of a large bedroom. The surface was stone on the outside. No telling what was on the inside, but it had to contain nuclear-level radiation. She wanted me to drop the crystals into that thing. I could do that after I found my friends.

Pushing the button again closed the floor. I figured the button underneath it retracted the roof, or gave me an exit to get this thing out.

Camuto wavered and almost fell. I ran to her, lifted her frail body in my arms and laid her onto a spare bed. Next to it were an IV stand, tubes, and a needle. I always left the room every time the nurse stuck my mom in the hand.
How do you do this?

“. . .return,” Camuto said, licking her cracked lips. “Save. . .
them.”

I rubbed my forehead. “And you, too.”

“I’m one hundred. . .seventy,” she managed. “Don’t. . .wanna live. . .”

Leaving them in this condition was difficult, but I couldn’t save them by giving up my crystal. Not if I was the only one left to stop King. I rounded the bed and stopped at Hughes. “Solomon,” I said close to his ear. “You saved my life. I’ll be back for you.”

His eyes opened and focused on me. He blinked twice, as if to say, “Alright.”

Last, I went to Courtney. She looked as bad as Camuto, wrinkled and dark brown. Her bushy blonde hair was a dusty mop of thin gray strands now. The rest of her body was skeleton-bony and fragile-looking. “Don’t worry,” I said as she looked at me. “I’m not staring at your boobs.”

Courtney laughed into a hacking fit. “Luck. . .” she said between coughs. 

Examining the display, I realized King and his people were probably within earshot of the entryway to the fortress. If I opened it, they would figure out I was alive. “Why aren’t they moving?” I wondered out loud. Courtney, Camuto and Hughes all slept peacefully. They were dying of bone cancer and needed heliodor. Where could I find help – someone smarter than I was and on the outside with powers?

I palmed my phone and stared at the wide-face display. With no other choice, I internet-searched Mr. Peters and found his home number. Taking a deep breath, I punched in his number and hit the green call button. It rang once.

“Hello?” said a woman, a
really young sounding
woman. She giggled. “Hello?”

“Is Jeff Peters there?” I asked.

Someone else snatched the phone. “Hello?” asked a different, just as young sounding woman. “Hello?”

“Jeff Peters,” I said, gritting my teeth. “Is he there or not?”

“You sound cute,” she said. “What’s your name? Wanna come over?”

I rolled my eyes. The phone muffled for a few seconds before Peters finally picked up the receiver. “It’s 6:15 in the morning. Who is this?” he demanded.

“Jason Ray Champion, Jr. You’re going to help me. I saved your life.”

“Get out!” he shouted to the girls in the background. “I need to be alone.”

“Okay, okay,” one of them said.

Peters waited until they closed the door behind them. “You must be in pretty bad shape if you need to collect a life debt from me.”

The worst.
I rubbed my eyes. “I’m stuck underground with your friends. King has four of the provenance crystals, and they’re all going to explode soon. I need help.”

“Let it go. Celebrate your young life while you can, Jason. The world is going to
burn
. What makes you believe that you can stop King and put it out?” 

A month ago Principal Welker had asked me the same question and I had never answered him. What was my “will to power?” I thought about it for a few seconds. 

“I’m
fifteen,”
I said back to him. “Are you going to help me or not?”

Peters laughed. “I’m getting dressed. Tell me everything.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

so screwed over

I told Peters all the details I thought he should know, about the crystals, my kidnapped friends, and the state of the Collective. Then he hung up on me.

From his house in the Heights to here couldn’t be longer than a half-hour trip. I could wait that out. What if it was a trap, like the one Ryan pulled? I didn’t want to think about it.

After a while watching twenty gold blips on the screen got tiresome. Being in the room with three two-hundred-year-old cancer patients was
really
depressing.

My stomach rumbled, so I excused myself to the kitchen. I fumbled around the coffee maker long enough to figure out where to put what and made myself some.

A box of breakfast bars, two cups of coffee and a half box of Pop Tarts later my stomach was full. King and his people hadn’t moved. Peters wouldn’t answer his cell phone. An hour-and-a-half had passed and I was trapped in the compound.

“Wait.” I said out loud to myself. “The TV!”

I made my way to the lounge and played with the buttons and switches. Finally one of them produced a buzz of electricity and the television turned on. Except it wasn’t a television – it was the screen for their surveillance system. Three different points-of-view popped up beside the larger, main one. “Nothing but corn and weeds. Where are they?” I asked.

Eventually there was movement in the middle screen and the faint sound of a car engine. Still out-of-view, the ignition stalled and shut off. I heard a door opening then shutting and the sifting of moving corn.  

“Diane!” yelled a hoarse male voice.

Was it Peters?

The middle camera showed the rising entryway to the fortress from behind. I rushed back through the control room and faced the elevator. As it rumbled and descended, I prepared to fight, just in case whoever it was tried to kill me.

Instead, Peters was in a little better condition than he had been in the hospital. His skin had a deep tan and creases that were turning into wrinkles. The muscles in his arms had sagged. He groaned and slumped against the control panel.

Pulling back the gate, I put his arm around my shoulder and helped him walk to the control room.

Breathless, Peters relaxed once I put him on the last of the beds. He reached out his right hand. Of the emerald crystals I had given him, only
one
was left. Peters rolled it into his slender fingers and gave it to me.

When I touched it, the radiation from the green had a different “taste” than the gold. Without it, Peters’ condition rapidly worsened, so I gave him my heliodor prism. The aging process reversed on him, but not completely. Now, he appeared to be a healthy sixty-year old man. He stared at the bodies of his dying old friends.
What must he be thinking about them right now?
 

“A little better,” he said, rolling his neck around until his bones cracked. He walked over to the display screen. “I disabled their monitoring system. Go to the surface and get the crystals back. Leftover radiation keeps us alive, but not for long.”‘

“Hold on. How did you disable the monitoring system?” I asked while securing the green crystal into my necklace setting.

He gave me a knowing look. “They were monitoring you. I
disabled
them.”

My eyes widened with disbelief.
He killed kids my age.

He sighed heavily. “This isn’t the movies. You don’t knock them unconscious and leave. They have gold ice. They’ll survive, come back in bigger numbers. They’ll
end you.
And they’re not kids. They’ve been alive longer than you think.”

“I don’t
kill,
not even King,” I said, not totally sure I meant it.

Peters smacked me on the shoulder. “Policemen kill criminals. Governments execute dissidents. Armies bring down violent regimes. You have that kind of authority now, whether you like it or not. Grow up and use it. Stop acting weak.”

I shook my head. “What if I don’t want it?”

Peters folded his arms over his stomach. “Whatever. I don’t owe you anymore.” He pointed his index finger toward the Collective. “People are going to die, no matter what – including them and your family, if you don’t do anything.”

Hughes and Courtney had risked a lot for me. Camuto probably had, too. “How do I get back in here?” I asked him. “Yell out ‘Diane’ like you did? Who’s Diane, anyway?”

Peters released a small, notepad-sized keyboard from the side of the display and started tapping keys, like he was familiar with it. “That’s
my
wife’s name, my code, synced to
my
voice,” he said, his eyes suddenly cold. “I’ll program one for you. A name is fine. And don’t ask me about her again.”

“What about Rhapsody, and Sasha, and Selby? How can they get in here?”

“Not without you. That’s their problem.” He smirked. “If you want them to actually survive, you’d better get going. I’ll take care of these three.”

I rushed to the elevator and closed the mesh gate. While inside it, I tapped the unmarked button and saluted Peters. It was the closest thing to a “thank you” he was going to get out of me. Amazingly, he saluted me back, saying “Captain.” After all this time, I guess I was finally getting used to it.

“Crap!” I shouted as daylight flooded the entryway. “Peters, what’s my code?”

He didn’t answer me and I didn’t have enough time to go back downstairs. When the time came, I’d have to guess it. Hopefully it was something simple and not a trick.

Once I was outside and the opening to the compound shut, I heard the rhythmic sound of helicopter blades.
Are there three sets? Four?
I couldn’t tell. Blood rushed to my head and throbbed in my ears. My heart raced. They were approaching fast.

“Alright, Jason,” I said, wiggling my gloved fingers. “Run or fight? Run? Or
fight?”
I could jump away faster than they could zap my powers with white ice. My friends would still be in captivity if I left. Two provenance crystals were on the loose and there were the two I had ditched at Hidden Potential. Running wasn’t the answer.

“Okay then,” I said, cracking my knuckles. “Now, what’s next?”

I tugged my mask down over my face and inhaled the air circulating through the mouthpiece. From twelve o’ clock came three military helicopters flying in an “L” formation. The one at the longer part of the pattern had two propellers and was the largest.

Using my left hand to further shield my eyes from the sun, I gazed in the distance and cursed.
How did those things get across the border without being stopped?

I had to think fast. Other than my body, I didn’t have a weapon.
Peters.
I dialed the compound from my phone. “Where’s your car?” I asked Peters when he picked up.

“Nine o’clock, twenty yards out. It’s old, so hotwire it. The clutch sticks a bit and. . . .” he said, before catching himself.
“Wait.
You can fly. Why do you need to drive?”

Why do people keep saying I can fly? “Driving it’s not what I had in mind.”

I took a short jump over to his Jupiter, lifted the car by the side of the chassis, and used it as a two-ton shield. With its width blocking my entire body, I walked toward the
chop chop chop
sounds.

Suddenly the pilots fired at me. The rounds went
rat-tat-tat-tat-tat
into the plastic shell of Peters’ car, but they did not penetrate through it. For the second time in less than a day, I hoped to God it wasn’t goshenite.

The barrage continued and cut through the chassis, shattering the windshield and passenger side windows. The blasts started hitting metal parts and ricocheting off of them. I stepped over pieces of the Jupiter as they dropped off. This wasn’t working. 

Letting the car down a foot or so, I peeked over its side. The helicopters were in plain sight, close enough for me to take them out. The two in the front were a regular size, but the one to their left was
huge – what is in there?

Switching my grip to each side of the chassis, I yelled and flung Peters’ car at the first helicopter. Its hood smashed right into the cabin. The middle and rear of the body flipped over into the rotors.

“Yeah!” I pumped my fist as the helicopter exploded in a burst of orange flame. Heliodor would protect them, so I didn’t have to worry about killing anyone, after all. Some debris caught the other small helicopter and sent it into a wicked tailspin. It crashed to my left in a cloud of fire, tossed corn, and black smoke.

The only one left was the two-rotor helicopter. It lined up in front of me. Before it could open fire, I crouched down and leaped for it. When I came close enough to see Sasha, Rhapsody, and Selby tied up inside of the cabin, the helicopter vanished in a wisp of gold mist. I soared far beyond it and landed miles away in a wheat field.  

“Great,” I said, thrusting my hands out. “A disappearing helicopter.”

I turned around and jumped back to the two-helicopter wreckage. None of the passengers were conscious. Three or four were pinned under the burning wreckage. It smelled like burning skin and hair. I searched around for anything I thought might be useful. Written on a burning piece of paper wedged into a control panel was a set of coordinates. The right edge of it had burned off the last number.

Peters had a point. They would come after us. I stripped all of the occupants of their gold prisms. Without heliodor, they aged at a slower rate than Peters and the Collective had, settling around fifty years old or so.

I dropped all of the prisms at the base of the compound’s hidden entryway and flashed Peters a “thumbs up” sign.

The others and Camuto would live to see another day, even if they didn’t want it. I’d be back for the dome.