Super Nobody (Alphas and Omegas Book 1) (16 page)

Just like with Trent, and just like with
Jared, Michael was summoned to the counselor's office while the
rest of the school had an assembly to discuss what had happened to
the school. Mr. Springfield was in the same seat as before, in the
little cubicle, but in front of the filing cabinet stood another
man.

Mr. Springfield looked the same as always:
like someone had turned a bunch of bricks into a man (just like
Stone, he thought), only now he had a thin beard, and the raccoon
skin hat he told Michael he wore at the high school. He wore a
leather jacket with far too many little fringy things hanging
about.

The new guy was dressed in a business suit,
with a wool trench coat folded over one arm. It seemed a little
much for a school counselor, with the red tie as well. Above that
tie, the guy was square-jawed and had an intense brow, like two
caterpillars were staring each other down for a duel to the death.
Whatever he might actually be thinking or feeling, he seemed very
unhappy.

“Michael,” Mr. Springfield said with a
nod.

“Hi Mr. Springfield.”

“This is Mr. Jackson,” he said, and gestured
over toward the other man.

“Nice to meet you,” Mr. Jackson said.

“Nice to meet you too,” Michael said, and
felt super awkward saying it.

“Now, we're here because you're the hero of
the day again,” Mr. Springfield said.

“Mr. Hero,” Mr. Jackson said. Yeah,
definitely unhappy. Bitter maybe.

“Let's not be like that,” Mr. Springfield
said. “Michael did very well.”

“I think we have to ask ourselves at this
point,” Mr. Jackson said. “Why has Michael been the focal point of
all three of these incidents so far? What about him has attracted
these people. It seems pretty far-fetched that he was in the right
place at the right time three times in a row.”

Right place at the right time, who was he
kidding? Michael would have given anything not to be anywhere near
Jared when he went kaboom, and definitely would have loved not to
be a part of Davey Rightman and his trouble with relationships. A
super-powered lovers quarrel was not Michael's idea of a good
time.

“Well, what better way than to ask him?” Mr.
Springfield suggested. “So Michael, any idea why you're at the
center of this crapstorm?”

“Um...no, not really.” And he wasn't the
center of the Jared thing anyway.

“You think he's synergistic?” Mr. Jackson
asked.

“How would I know? Are you telling me you
don't
know
?”

Jackson frowned more deeply, if that was
possible. Michael felt something tingling at his scalp, and then
his sinuses felt really full, and a headache began creeping up from
just above his nose.

“No, I can't tell.”

Mr. Springfield stared at him in a new way
now.

“Well son, we're going to have to keep a
closer eye on you. I'm sorry it's got to be this way, but if you're
synergistic, that means you could Activate others.”

“Wait...Activate others? There's no way! I
wasn't anywhere near any of them when they...when they
Activated.”

“Actives are drawn to synergistic
individuals. Like flies to a bug zapper,” Jackson said. Michael was
beginning to dislike him quite a lot. Trent was not a fly, and
neither was Jared McClaren. And it made Michael look like he was
doing the zapping, which he definitely was not.

“What's going on in the gym?” he asked. He
really wanted to be anywhere but here, with Mr. Springfield
starting to think he needed someone spying on him for real, not
just in his imagination.

“An assembly,” Mr. Jackson said flatly. “What
do you think's happening?”

Last time he'd gotten the low down from
Charlotte, but this time that wasn't possible.

“Tell me,” Mr. Jackson said, laying his hands
down flat on the desk. The trench coat hung off one arm like a
bullfighter's black cape. “Do you find you have trouble finding
normal friends? And that the normal kids are afraid of you, or
jealous of you?”

Michael didn't answer.

“Synergistic individuals are shunned by
normal baseline individuals, Michael. It's only once they come into
their powers that the Actives start flocking around them.”

“We're done here,” Mr. Springfield said,
“Come on Michael. I think it's time we showed you what's going on
at these assemblies.”

Then Terrence Jackson did something very
strange. He snapped both his fingers several times, rapidly, and
clapped twice, then once. Springfield went very still, and his eyes
were suddenly glassy, like Michael looked when he was in the middle
of a really good daydream.

“What-”

“Shut up,” Jackson said. Michael’s mouth
snapped closed. He wasn’t used to being talked to by any adult, not
even the one person who was allowed to: his mother.

“Now listen closely. Neither of you are going
to remember this conversation, understand me? We had a nice chat,
discussed the strange ability you have for finding trouble, and
that was it. No synergists. Now I’m going to snap my fingers and
we’re going to head to the gym like nothing happened.”

Was this man completely off his medication?
Apparently not, because when he snapped his fingers Springfield
jerked, smiled, and stood up.

“Come on Michael. I think it’s time we showed
you what’s going on at these assemblies.”

Michael spared one last look at Mr. Jackson
and thought the man was probably completely crazy. He had these
wild eyes Michael couldn't get over. You just couldn't see them
normally, under those enormous eyebrows.

He got to the gym just in time to see an
Active fly through the air and throw someone into the ceiling. It
was just a blur, but the woman flew down around the gym while
hundreds of students sat, horrified in silence. The man on the
ceiling, just a splatter of blood, slowly peeled off and fell
headfirst into the floor, thirty feet below. There was a chorus of
horrified screaming.

“These abilities are not a game,” the Active
woman said. “They are not cool things we do to show off to our
friends. We don't have cheeky classes and throw hyperspeed spit
wads at our teachers. When we get these abilities, we're scared,
boys and girls. Sometimes excited, but usually scared. We quickly
realize how difficult it is to control ourselves. We're afraid of
hurting people, like my friend Bob here.”

She waved a hand back at the squashed man,
who was now moving. Several dozen girls and boys screamed.

“Bob got lucky, he can't be killed. But you
didn't know that, did you?”

Bob was unsticking himself from the floor and
crunching his body parts back to their rightful places. He packed
his arm bone back into the hole it'd punched out of his skin, and
Michael watched while the hole repaired itself. Now some of the
boys were laughing and pointing.

“I wish I could tell you this was fun play
time,” the woman said. “It's not. It's not a laughing matter. When
you burst into flames, are you going to burn your house down? Are
you going to be responsible for killing your friends or your
parents? We hope not.”

The lights cut out, except for an enormous
projector illuminating the massive white rectangle of a screen,
maybe twenty feet long and half that tall. A picture appeared, and
everyone gasped.

“This is what happened in Tallahassee
Florida,” the woman said. “Just after an Activation.”

The city was a smoking ruin. One of the
buildings had been sheared in half, but there were piles of rubble
everywhere. Everywhere, columns of smoke rose lazily into the air,
pointing straight to where the damage was the worst. The most
terrible part of the photo was a man standing to the side of the
photograph, clutching his bleeding arm to one side. He had a
microphone in the other, and looked to be in the middle of
delivering a newscast. And someone was flying, at least forty feet
up and at least a half mile distant. It was little more than a
speck, but the roiling, neon red energy was clearly visible all
around that figure.

“These used to be houses, hospitals,
schools,” the woman said. “People used to live in them. It only
takes one Active to start this.”

“And Tallahassee is not the only place where
this has happened,” Bob the indestructible man said.

“The problem is, Bob, that some of our young
friends here still think this is a piece of cake, that you can run
the world if only you have a little bit of power. I don't think
they fully understand what it means. I don't know if they can
appreciate the responsibility.”

“I think we need a volunteer,” the woman
said.

Not a single hand went up. Many of the
students looked around each other in bright-eyed fear. What sort of
thing were they going to do, they were asking each other.

“How about the young man near the door?” the
woman asked.

Mr. Jackson suddenly gasped and his hands
flew up to his head. Okay, creepy. What was everybody doing looking
at him?

Oh gods, the Active lady was pointing at
him.
Two hundred plus heads all turned to look at him. This
was not a good idea. Nobody liked him. They weren't going to care
what happened to Michael. A stab of fear sunk into his guts and he
felt a weight press on his middle. All at once he felt like he
really,
really
had to pee.

“Go on, son,” Mr. Springfield said quietly,
but Michael could hear the glee in his tone.

The woman beckoned him forward, then turned
back to the row of older men and women standing behind the podium
at the base of the projector screen.

“Mr. L, if you could,” the woman said. “And
get ready with Bob’s ability, if you will.”

A bald man with a smug grin stepped forward.
“Absolutely.”

“Young man, come here please. Everybody,
could you help our young volunteer here? Give him a round of
applause.”

A couple of half-hearted claps followed, and
more than a few whispers about Michael.

“Mr. L is just about to give you my
abilities,” the woman said. “What's your name son?”

“Michael. Michael Washington.”

Fear flashed across her face, here and gone
so fast he wasn't sure he really saw it. No, he was sure. After
all, there was Grandpa in the line of adults and teachers, at the
far end, staring at him. He hadn't seen Grandpa since the sudden
insight when he'd sneaked into the school. He didn't really want to
see Grandpa right now. Then the fear disappeared from her face,
quick as a whip, and the winning smile came again.

“Well Michael, are you ready?”

She held a microphone forward for him.

“Uh...no. Not really.” More snickers.

“And this is what happens, ladies and
gentlemen, boys and girls. No one is prepared for this sort of
thing. And there are those of you who will still walk away from
this assembly and go 'this is really cool' and throw yourself off a
building or shut yourself in your parents' freezer. And ninety nine
of the hundred of you who try, you will die. Now, Michael.”

He was trembling with fear when she turned to
him, bent low, and held the microphone away from them. In a quiet
voice, she said, “Don't worry. I know this is going to hurt, but
you're not going to be permanently injured in the slightest. Just
take a deep breath.”

Then she brought the mic up and yelled, “Mr.
L has given you the power, Michael. Now
fly,
Mr.
Washington!”

And he was flying.

Oh God! His feet left the floor and he fell
forward onto his face. He hit his head, but he only grazed it
because he was still rising up into the air. He was listening to
himself screaming, and flailing his body around trying to get a
hand on something so he could stop. He smacked into the projector
screen and knocked it off the chains holding it.

There was some new pathway open in his head,
some unbearably painful and sweet openness that told him he had the
power. Not just flight either, he had power over gravity. Somewhere
in his brain was knowledge, or if not knowledge, then the instinct.
Superheavy gravity could pull someone to the ground like they
weighed seven hundred pounds. Light gravity could send somebody
flipping through the air like...like they were in space. Just like
Michael was doing right now.

When he finally hit the ceiling he turned and
saw that everyone was starting to float off the bleacher seats in
the gym. Lots of them were screaming. Many were holding tight to
their seats, hanging upside down. Others were on their way to join
Michael in zero G.

“Stop it!” some were saying. Michael was one
of these.

“Thank you Michael,” the woman said.
“Archibald? Archibald? Now would be nice, before any of them got
too far-”

And it stopped. There was one instant of
horrible stillness, while gravity still hadn't made up its mind
about the LADCEMS gymnasium, only Michael's stomach knew. It
dropped somewhere near his sneakers, and the place where it had
been completely frozen.

And he fell.

He was so sure that he would wake up in the
hospital again that he didn't bother opening his eyes. But
something wasn't right, it was the wind rushing past his-

His eyes snapped open just in time to see the
floor rushing up, and smashing him into nothing.

Michael had never thought much about dying.
He had read about it plenty of times in plenty of books, and seen
it in the movies, where the person sees their life flashing before
their eyes. He wished something like that would have happened, so
he could think about Charlotte. The trouble was, all these annoying
screams were getting in his way. He couldn't think with people
being hysterical so close to him. The only people he could think
of, oddly, were that woman who flew, and Mr. L, the bald smiling
man who was responsible for his death.

“Archibald, come on now!” the woman was
shouting.

“I'm trying.”