Super Nobody (Alphas and Omegas Book 1) (21 page)

“So why are you here?” Mr. L still had that
lopsided smile, still had the thick glasses, and only a little more
hair than now. Neither of them made any sign that they heard the
siren.

“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

Mr. Jackson looked uncomfortable. Finally he
pointed a finger at Mr. L and jabbed it in his chest. “Don't let
this place trap you, Archie. That's what it does. You get out
before they get the hooks in you.”

“I won't listen-”

“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

His head rocked to the side, and the sting of
being slapped exploded in front of him. His head was his own again,
only it was full of red-hot clamps, like jumper cables attached to
his head all over, pumping a steady stream of pain in.

The siren: it was Michael, screaming and
screaming. His body was nothing more than nuclear slag on a slow,
total burn. Every cell of him screamed, not just his throat, though
the sound only came out of his mouth. That one scream wasn't
enough. His eyes were open but they wanted to shriek like the rest
of him.

The last thing he remembered seeing was
Charlotte's concerned face looking down at him, and a bright light.
Then everything flashed from white to black.

Michael dreamed of Bangledesh. He dreamed of
the dripping jungle leaves as big as his chest and the black,
boot-tromped soil, and burning tanks without turrets on them. He
was walking through a city, but it wasn't anything like the city he
knew. This one was crowded, full of litter, and most of the streets
were still dirt. A market was going, and Michael paused to step
through. The scents of smoked fish and mushrooms and cayenne pepper
assaulted him, but he kept walking. The people stared at him, but
then looked away in fear. Let them look away in fear. He'd just
saved their smelly, dripping armpit of a country, they were right
to be afraid. He caught a reflection of himself in a dirty window,
but saw his father instead.

Michael was in a brightly carpeted room with
lots of space, plenty of toys and stuffed animals, and windows that
looked out on fake sunny skies. It had a carefully disinfected
smell to it. He was sure the cleaning people came in every day
while he was in the exercise gym and sprayed everything to kill off
all the germs. He looked up at the friendly man as he came through
the lemon yellow door.

“How are we doing today? Still having
headaches are we?”

“Not as bad,” Michael lied. His head was the
chopping block they used over at Hildner's meat department, always
being whacked by the big guy in the bloody apron
.
And the
strange thing: he had Charlotte's voice. Wait a minute. How was it
possible that he was speaking with Charlotte’s mouth?

“Good, that's really good. But just to be
safe, we're going to keep up the dose for a few more days.”

“I was thinking...” he said. Charlotte said.
Somebody said: “...maybe my family could come and see me? I mean,
yeah, I know, you said it wasn't a good idea for me to go out, but
couldn't they come here?”

He laughed. Of course he'd laugh. “Well, of
course we can't have you running off again. We don't know how your
abilities are going to manifest, exactly. Until we know, it's time
to stay put and keep healthy.

“As to having your family here: I think
that's a really great idea,” he said. “You never know where people
get therapy from. Could be from reading a certain book, listening
to a certain song, playing a certain game, seeing a certain person.
I'll see what I can do, okey dokey?”

He wouldn't though. Doctors always made
promises that meant nothing. Like that your dad was going to be all
right. Like everything was going to be fine.

He was in his Grandpa's house. He'd been
there a million times before, but it felt different now. Like it
was
his
house, not Grandpa's anymore. He turned and saw
Susanna, his mother, there. She was angry, which wasn't unusual,
but she was holding herself tight, like she was scared. Michael
didn't think scared was a part of her vocabulary.

“I'm pulling him,” she said. “I can teach him
at home.”

“That's not a good idea,” he told her.
Grandpa told her. Michael was…his own grandfather?

She laughed, but there was no fun in that
laugh. “Oh yeah? And why not? Because he's made so many friends?
Because he's had such a positive experience? It's like he's a
walking danger magnet.”

“He's had accidents in the past...” he
suggested. “He always bounced back.”

“Accidents? This isn't like him falling and
breaking his wrist!” And she did something he hadn't seen since she
was just out of high school: she pulled up a pack of cigarettes and
lit one. She was silent for a while, just pulling in the smoke (the
first step on the road to cancer, like she'd said before).

“Every time my husband comes home we end up
in a fight and I threaten to leave,” she said finally. “I'm
serious, Harold.”

“We are working on the problem, Susanna,” he
said. “We are doing the best-”

“
Your best isn’t good enough
!” she
screamed. “I swear to you, Harold, if my son wakes up in the
hospital because of your schools one more time, you will never see
us again. My
husband
can kiss his peace of mind
goodbye.”

Michael stared at her. Grandpa/Michael
stared.

“And don't even think about sending your
little bloodhound Actives after me. Using these, these people every
time you have a problem is a pretty poor way of doing things, I
don't mind telling you.” She took a long drag on her cigarette, and
the end flared up like a sickly eye. Staring at him.

And Michael woke up in the hospital.
Again.

His mother wasn't smoking when his dreams
finally ended, but she did look like she'd been through an ordeal.
Any other public outing would find Susanna Washington with
excellent makeup, carefully selected clothes (that matched) and
hair that took at least an hour to do. Instead the hair was
disheveled, the clothes were rumpled, and the makeup was creeping
down her face as it mixed with the tears. And she was holding a
pack of cigarettes in one hand.

At that moment, the doctor came through the
door and pulled up Michael's chart. He decided to play possum for
now, and shut his eyes.

“I have to apologize, Mrs. Washington, we
must have been wrong about the aftereffects of Archibald Lansing's
ability,” he told Michael's mother.

“And what's happening to him?”

“It's difficult to say,” he said. “We only
found traces of Releshzna radiation on him, but the last time these
were negative.”

“Someone mucked up the test,” she said, and
knocked the cigarette pack so that one stuck out. Then she frowned
and must have thought better of it, because she pushed it back
in.

“I can assure you, Mrs. Washington-”

“Stuff your assurances, doctor. You know who
my husband is. He pays you more than enough to find what is wrong
with my son. So find it, whatever it is, and fix it.”

“Of course we're doing the best-”

“Don't you say you're doing the best you
can,” she hissed. “I don't want your best, I want results. And
another thing, I don't want any of those...Actives...near him
again. He can do with medicine.” Actives, oh boy, the way she said
it, it sounded like something you'd find on the bottom of your
shoe. Something crawling around the underside of a rock.

“Of course, we're going to do everything we
can,” the doctor said weakly. Michael could practically hear the
man sag with relief, like a deflating balloon, as Susanna
Washington allowed him to leave the room.

Michael was hooked up to all sorts of
machines that were beeping out the functions of his internal
organs. Apparently everything was okay, unless you counted his
head. Everything from the neck down then was just fine.

And then a fresh wave of pain rolled over his
head, and he moaned out loud.

“Oh honey.”

She came over to the bed and sat down.

“How's my boy feeling?”

“Not like a three year old,” Michael groaned.
“I'm okay mom. I just want to go home.”

She just stared at him.

“How long do I have to stay?” he asked at
last.

“Until they know what happened?”

“I had a migraine,” he said. “That's it.”

She continued to stare.

“Mo-om,” he complained. “I'm fine. The
doctors are going to tell you the same thing.”

“And what about the Releshzna radiation they
found?”

“I don't even know what that is.”

“It's the radiation given off by Actives when
they use their powers. Something Archibald did to you must have
left some sort of...stain. No, you stay put and the doctors are
going to find out what's happened to you. I'm going to get cleaned
up. Your father's supposed to fly home tonight.”

“Great.” Michael hadn't forgotten about the
grounding, and he hadn't forgotten about his father's promise.
Death threat really. Maybe, that doubtful voice inside him said, if
you play this migraine thing up, they'll forget all about the
grounding. He knew it wasn't likely to happen, but if one thing cut
memory short it was getting sick.

He was grateful when she finally left to get
the house ready for his father, because there was a lot to think
about. He remembered the details of his dreams completely, which
was odd. Normally he didn't dream, or woke up trying to catch them
like streamers of smoke through his fingers.

He would have just put his dreams down as
dreams, except for the cigarettes. She had never in Michael’s life
put a cancer stick to her lips. As far as he knew anyway. The way
secrets were getting revealed around here lately, he wouldn’t be
surprised to learn that King Kong was his uncle and that his
grandfather was actually a robot sent from the future, waiting to
destroy them all.

So he dreamed things that were real. Okay,
fine. In the long line of super powers, it was probably the worst
one. And either it was really his, or it was just some fading echo
of whatever Mr. L had done to him. Either way it sucked. He would
really rather have hot lava spit or invisibility or something, but
he wasn’t going to complain. Knowing more was better, despite what
his parents and grandfather thought. Either it was going to make
his head explode or it wasn’t, and it was either going to lead to
some other amazing power, like cutting guns in half with his mind,
or it would fade away. Either way, he had a situation that needed
dealing with, and it couldn’t wait for him to try jumping off his
house to see if he could fly also.

The main problem was that his mother was
going to take him away. He thought he could be prepared for this,
maybe. Just refusing to go and locking himself in his room might
do, but there was the problem of food. And the bathroom. He'd have
to come out, and he couldn't just climb out the window to eat at
Charlotte's house.

If he couldn't stop her, then he needed to
stop the other thing. Whatever was going on, it was clear Mr.
Jackson was at the heart of it. He was the same guy Charlotte had
talked to as a counselor, and he was a mind-reader guy. Michael
didn't know anything about psychics, but he had read a few books
about this sort of thing, and if they could take thoughts from your
head, maybe they could put some back in. If he could do that, he
could probably put in signals that would help Activate Trent and
Charlotte and the others. Like a hypnotic thing. Like when you
wanted a cigarette and popped a stick of gum instead, just because
the hypnotist told you to.

He had other facts that didn't make sense.
His mother had mentioned the Omega Syndicate. Definitely a bad guy
name if there ever was one. So maybe Mr. Jackson was working for
them. Maybe he was the leader. Anyway it was clear that if you
wanted to stop something in this super town, you'd have to be
secretive about it. If you just came rolling up in your evil engine
of destruction with attached satellite death ray thingy, fifty or
sixty super-powered people were going to punch your lights out.

Okay, so the Omega Syndicate was trying to
blow the volcano. The town. If Mr. Jackson was right, and a few
underage Actives were really a big problem, the whole town could go
up. Well, his mother and Grandpa were really worried about it. Was
Mr. Jackson right? Was it as easy as tipping the town off balance a
little?

Michael wasn't about to find out. He may not
be popular at school, and everybody might be afraid of him, but
there were plenty of people on his paper route who were nice
people. They didn't deserve to get caught up in a volcano blast.
Mrs. Sulzsko and the twins didn't deserve that either. His mother
didn't deserve it, no matter how many times she grounded or yelled
at him.

He had to do something. The trouble was he
didn't know what to do. His parents and his Grandpa were keeping
secrets from him. They didn't want him to know about the Omega
Syndicate. They wouldn't be happy if he told them about it. It
might earn him another grounding. Talking to Charlotte was clearly
always the best option, but she was stuck underground in some sort
of prison cell. Call it a treatment facility, but it was nothing
more than a jail cell dressed up and pretending to be a
classroom.

He decided, after a bit of thought, that Lily
was the answer.

The doctors, terrified and puzzled, informed
his mother that there was nothing wrong with him. She told them
that all the money in the world couldn't surgically remove their
heads from their butts, and left the hospital with Michael in one
hand and a pack of cigarettes in the other.

“Mom?” he asked.

“Hm?”

“What's with the cigarettes?”

“Oh, nothing. Stress. I used to smoke, you
know. A long time ago.” He didn't know, and he didn't approve. It
meant something was very wrong, like a plague of locusts on the
horizon, millions of them ready to swarm all over everything and
chew the world to pieces.