Super Nobody (Alphas and Omegas Book 1) (27 page)

“Why’d you kill Johanna?” he asked. “She
never hurt anyone.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Mr. L laughed. “She was
the only threat to me. In this whole town of super idiots, the only
one. She and that Washington brat.” Michael froze where he was.

Terrence actually laughed. “You’re imagining
things, Archibald. Michael Washington is harmless.”

“Imagining? I know he’s going to Activate,
and I know what he’s going to become.”

“And what’s that?”

“A threat,” Mr. L said. “You take all the
others in this town. I don’t care if they could crush the whole
world, jump through electrical lines, talk to dolphins or have a
campout on the moon. Only one power is a threat to us,
Terrence.”

“Walking through dreams doesn’t sound like a
very dangerous ability. Sure you haven’t made a mistake? I’m sure
you have. Why don’t we all take a deep breath, think about this,
and
walk away
while we’re still good, law abiding citizens
alright?”

Mr. L threw back his head and howled
laughter. Now Michael had it: Mr. L could be a mad scientist. All
he’d need to do was get that hair around the back of his head to go
silver and grow out all wild. And Terrence was definitely speaking
in code. He was telling Michael to get away. Well, he didn’t listen
to Terrence before, and wasn’t going to start listening now.
Charlotte started pulling on his sleeve, but he pulled back.

“Michael,” she warned, really low.

He had to see this. He would pay to see Mr.
Jackson get his.

“Michael we need to go get some help.”

Why, he thought. Just because there’s an army
of mind-controlled Actives down there ready to tear Mr. Jackson
apart? Pssh. Big deal. Terrence Jackson had hurt him, threatened
him, basically tortured him. Michael had front row seats now. If
only he had popcorn.

“And you really think you’re going to win
this? Are you really so deluded that you think you’ve got a chance
to pull this off? What’s your next move, genius?”

Mr. L snarled. “You said it yourself, this
town is one flick away from destroying itself. All I’ve got to do
is apply some pressure and the whole thing comes undone. And you,
my good friend, can watch.”

“I’m going,” Charlotte said at last. But she
didn’t go. This was another of those times, those 'shark attack
videos' times, where you couldn't look away. Some horrible part of
your mind wanted to see, so even while you were screaming or
telling yourself how awful it was, you didn't miss a second.

“You Activated those kids, didn’t you? Trent
and the others.”

Mr. L’s widening smile was all the
confirmation Mr. Jackson needed.

“How? You can't steal synergism.”

“But you can tell her when and how,” Mr. L
said. “So I just borrowed it from you and gave Jessamine a couple
of suggestions. Telepathy really is the greatest thing since sliced
bread. There’s nothing you can’t do with it.”

“You were trying to get that Washington kid
killed weren’t you?”

“Go on Mr. Mathematician,” Mr. L said.
“You’ve put two and two together so far. You’re on a roll.”

Instead Mr. Jackson laughed. “You failed
then. You must have been pretty desperate to kill off a woman like
Johanna Lane. If you thought a couple of kids would upset the
balance here in town, you were sorely mistaken. Which is why you’re
out in the open now. The coward’s plan went south. Now it’s
desperation time, time for plan B, is that it?”

Mr. L shook his head. “I would have thought
you of all people would understand, Terrence. You set events in
motion, you can’t always predict how they’re going to turn out in
the end. Hit the cue ball, strike the one, hope the eight ball
finds a pocket. Sometimes though, even the best pros miss a
shot.”

“And what number’s Washington?” Mr. Jackson
said. A smile played over his face even though he was being held
down by five mindless teachers. “Wait, let me guess…he’s the eight
ball.”

“I know what you’re trying to do, but it
won’t work,” Mr. L explained. “You see, I’m doing what I need to do
right now, while you’re spouting off at the mouth. They’re all
mine.”

It was true. One by one, the dazed teachers
were opening their eyes, sitting up straight, and moving around in
stiff, zombie-like motions. They started to shuffle around the
library, looking a lot like kids who had just been told off by
their teachers. Eyes to the floor, they even bumped into each other
at times.

“Michael,” Charlotte begged. “We need to get
out of here.”

Michael tried telling himself Mr. Jackson
deserved this, that it was the magical karma boulder rolling back
onto him and ready to squash him flat. He couldn’t convince
himself, though. He kept looking at the pain on Mr. Jackson’s face.
People didn’t deserve to suffer like this at the hands of people
like Mr. L. He’d learned that much in fifth grade against Trent,
while he was still a plain old jerk instead of a super jerk.

“All yours, eh? Everybody in town?” Jackson
asked. “Right up until the moment you fall asleep. You don’t think
you can keep this up forever, do you? Just until the real Omegas
show up, right? The ones who have real powers? They’ll handle the
situation for you. You’re just small potatoes.”

And then he screamed.

“The first trick is pain,” Mr. L said. “I
used it first when I was trying to get the hang of your ability,
just the little headaches and bodyaches. You wouldn’t believe how
easy it is to convince the mind that the body is in pain. It’s an
easy trick. Everybody’s in pain every day. It starts from the first
minute you’re in the world. And against a telepath, it’s the only
trick that works.

“Between you and me Terrence, I’m a little
jealous you ended up with mind powers. The world’s unfair, huh? You
could be the fat bald guy nobody really respects, who’s the
laughing stock of the high school, and I could be the dark and
dangerous hypnotist with no backbone for using his abilities.”

He squinted, his smile broadened, and
suddenly Terrence was screaming again. Cords stood out on his neck
and spittle flew from his lips while he howled and thrashed. His
face was already red, and started edging towards plum.

Michael couldn’t leave him like that. Nobody
deserved that, even if they’d done it to Michael just a couple of
weeks ago. There was no question about going down there and
smacking Mr. L around until he was unconscious. Up here there were
just chairs and books.

Chairs and books!

“Michael-” Charlotte started.

“Go talk to my grandfather,” he muttered.
“I’ll distract him.”

She just stared at him.

“Trust me,” he said. “I know what I’m doing.
When they’re not looking, you run.”

Yeah, and if he was one of two people Mr. L
really wanted dead, standing up and shouting ‘here I am’ was only
going to get him killed faster. He just hoped that the Keys people
and his grandfather’s people, and maybe even his dad would have a
chance against Mr. L. You’d think that the most powerful Actives on
the planet who swept up the world’s messes would do the trick, but
Mr. Springfield was down there, Active and as useless as a one
legged man in a butt-kicking contest. In fact, all Mr. L had to do
was get behind him, and he wasn’t useless, he was a shield for the
bad guy.

What would his dad do against this? Mr. L was
right, only another mind reader was going to even the odds. And
whatever the crazy fat man thought, Michael was definitely
not
that mind reader.

He sneaked over to the reference shelves. Up
here there weren’t many books, but there were, amongst the study
desks, a number of dictionaries and thesauruses.

“Thesauruses,” he muttered, and picked one
up. “What a silly word.” It had some good heft to it, but wasn’t
hard enough. He settled on one of the old school encyclopedia
Britannica volumes instead. W for Washington. You could probably
kill someone with one of these things, it weighed half as much as
he did with a nice cardboard cover, bound in leather.

He was about to heave it over the glass
railing when a cry went up. It sounded like the shriek of a wounded
animal, but Michael froze mid-hurl. Near the stairwell a teacher
was pointing at him and shrieking.

He was getting detention for sure. He pulled
the book up over his head like he was doing a soccer throw in and,
as Mr. L turned to look at him, he let fly.

Teachers are a lot of horrible things. First,
they are demanding. They make you show your work when you have the
answer already figured out in six seconds. They force you to do
scads and scads of problems just to show you can embed a single
formula somewhere in your cranium. They all seem to conspire to
give you huge amounts of homework on the same weekends that new
games or movies come out.

Second, teachers are hypocrites. They tell
you to act like proper human beings and then prop their feet up on
their desks. They tell you to sit up, and then sit on their desks
hunched over. They tell you smoking’s bad for you, and light up as
soon as they get in their cars to head home. They urge you to be
punctual and then leave you sitting outside their classroom ten
minutes after first bell goes. They never apologize for loading you
up with a million things to do. They never seem to accept it when
you just get the project done and no more. They make themselves out
to be these all-seeing, all-knowing beings without a single fault,
and when you test them, they admit they don’t know.

But as far as teachers went, Michael had
never known teachers to be violent. Oh, sure, he’d heard the
stories about the old guard history teacher with the baseball bat
he’d slam on students’ desks if they fell asleep, and he’d heard
about the time that the baseball bat broke some kid’s fingers a few
years ago, but you never knew who the kid was. And you’d hear about
the teacher who got fired for flicking a student on the ear, but
you never knew who that teacher was.

You never heard about getting bum rushed by
thirty teachers all at once with murder in their eyes, but that’s
just what was happening. At least he’d have gone out doing some
damage.

And it was a sweet shot, if he did say so.
Michael’s W-bomb sailed through the air with just enough time for
Mr. L to flinch to one side and take the hit on his shoulder rather
than his nose. There was a satisfying crunch, and Mr. L spun to the
floor with a sissy little shriek of pain.

“Good job Mikey,” Terrence Jackson called.
“Now get your skinny little butt out of here!”

“Don’t call me Mikey!” he shouted. The army
of zombie teachers was pounding up the stairs. The only ways down
were the elevator (yeah right) and jumping fifteen feet down onto
bookshelves. Both were right out. Neither was he keen on getting
torn limb from limb by a pack of wild teachers. He didn’t have a
whole lot of options here.

“Go on Charlotte,” he muttered as he went.
“Get out of here. Go on.”

Michael darted back to the reference shelves
and heaved out another volume. This one was random. He definitely
had enough time to get in position and, there, hurl another book
bomb down at the bad guy.

The heavy volume plummeted through the air,
but Mr. L was quicker this time. One of the teachers raised her
hand and the book exploded into a thousand fluttery, charred and
burning little pieces. It was like flaming snow.

Nuts.

The mob of teachers appeared at the doorway
and surged toward him. Well, that was it for his options. If he
went down the elevator, he was going to be facing ten or fifteen
rabid teachers when the doors slid open. He could go up, and, what?
Delay getting caught by another minute? Get Mr. L even angrier with
him?

He climbed up on one of the study desks and
looked out over the edge of the railing. It looked like a long way
to fall, with nothing soft to land on. The tops of the bookshelves
were covered in other books, globes, and a couple of toys that went
with the books. They weren’t even that wide, those bookshelves.
Even if he landed on one he was bound to fall the wrong way and
fall an extra four feet to the floor below. And that floor had
carpeting so thin and hard you could use it in wood shop as sand
paper. Or a saw.

“Don’t do anything you’ll regret,” Mr. L
said.

“Right here, Mikey!” Terrence shouted.

Sure, he could jump down onto the people
holding Terrence, if he was an Olympic long jumper. There was no
way he’d clear fifteen feet with one jump. More likely he’d land on
a chair or a table and break every single bone in his body.

They were getting closer. Michael looked
straight down. It would be a simpler drop, just land on the
bookshelf and sprint toward the exit. Just dodge around the
super-zombie teachers and avoid getting scorched into nothing. He
wondered if the terror squirming around in his stomach was the same
kind of thing people felt when they were about to commit
suicide.

He jumped.

And landed hard. Books clattered off the top
of the shelf, and his knee banged against a globe, instantly
tearing it open on the metal top, but the globe itself went flying
off the top of the bookshelf. The pain was bright and immediate,
but he tried not to listen to it. It might be telling him to lie
down and cry until his mom showed up with the band-aids, but this
was neither the time nor the place. He steadied himself with his
hands, then bolted down the aisle toward the only exit
available.

“Get after him!” Mr. L screamed. A dozen
zombie faces turned and started moving toward the exit, but for
some reason they weren't sprinting like the others. Then he
realized: these ones were all older. The ones who had come up the
stairs were the younger teachers. Did it make a difference? He
didn't have time to find out.

Michael's body was a lean, mean running
machine. He'd taken a few beatings, but more importantly, he'd
worked his tail off two and half hours a day pedaling and running
all over the neighborhood to pay off Trent, and later just because
he liked making money.