The Executioner at the Institute for Contaminated Children

The Executioner at the Institute for Contaminated Children
Margaret E. Alexander

ISBN: 978-1-939173-92-8
E-ISBN: 978-1-939173-93-5

© Copyright Margaret E. Alexander 2014. All rights reserved

Cover Art: Angelique Anderson
Editor: Joceline Farrah
Layout/Typesetting: jimandzetta.com

Ebooks/Books are not transferable. They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work.

All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Acknowledgements

This novel started out as a short story and would have remained that way if it weren’t for my friend and editor, Lauren, who gave me a nudge forward to expand it and give it a proper ending. Donna and Dan wouldn’t have gone through their amazing transformation without her, and I still appreciate her feedback to this day.

Extraordinary thanks to my betas, Regi, Rachel, Amanda, and Louise for their encouraging and valuable feedback. Some of them have been with me through more than one novel and I couldn’t ask for better company.

Endless thanks to my publisher, Stephanie, for believing in the story and my wonderful editor, Farrah, for all her tireless effort.

And thanks to you, dear reader, for your extraordinary ability to pick up a book and submerge yourself in its world—that which many fear is beyond them, although it requires no contamination.

Dedication

To my best friend, Mercy, who helps
extraordinary children every day

PREFACE

There is a student courtroom at our school. It’s a special program, the only one in the country, whereby the student populace makes the call, not the administration. It’s special because of the way it works. Because the Executioner forced it to exist. One of us, one of the students in the many classrooms, watching everything we do, with access to all the rumors. It started the year I came to LeJeune, and since then, nothing has been the same. Any student engaged in a dispute is required to attend the courtroom, in which the student jury and a panel of judges will judge him or her. If no trial is held for the dispute, the Executioner will make his own judgment: guilty or not guilty. Let’s just say the guilty are never seen again. And those that are—they’re usually found dead.

PART I
THE EXPERIMENT

CHAPTER ONE—Game Show

“A,”
I said under my breath. Even my whisper held confidence. I’m not sure how I knew it, but it always gave me a rush when I was right. And that happened a lot.

The contestant gave a different answer. Nice try.

“Oooh, I’m sorry,” said the host. “The answer is actually A, the Judicial branch. We’re going to take a short time out before we wrap up our quiz bowl with the tie-breaking question. We’ll be back in five.”

I yawned. That was probably the hundredth question, but who was counting? Nothing extraordinary had happened yet. 

“I can’t believe you’ve gotten every question right, you’re such a brain,” my little brother Torrey said beside me in the audience. He, my sister and I sat in Johnston Hall, a gothic building four-stories high with stone arcs and vines possessing the outer windows and walls, part of Marquette University. I loved buildings that looked like they could be part of a video game. Schools from all over had brought their best teams to the state-wide competition. Yet another thing I couldn’t get enough of. You’d think I’d be up on the stage instead of in the audience. But I was there on a top-secret mission. Well, more like against my parents’ wishes. I wasn’t on any of the teams.

“Yeah, well, you’ll know the answers too when you’re in high school.”

“But they didn’t know every answer.”

“That’s because they don’t study enough.”

“Whatever you say. I’ve never seen you study. Oh, and, by the way, didn’t Mom and Dad forbid you from watching game shows?”

I cringed. Couldn’t he just sit there,
quietly
? I didn’t like to break the rules…if there was a chance I’d get caught. Right now, my chances were slim, so I didn’t care. It’s the scolding I couldn’t stand. It put me under a very hot and embarrassing spotlight. Most people didn’t like it when others judged them, and I was no exception, but for me it was more than that. It made me feel like a loser. And I did
not
like to lose.

“Those are on TV. This is a quiz bowl,” I said.

“Same thing! I’m telling.”

“Are not, you little weasel!”

As much as I loved my little bro, he could really drive me up the wall.

“Fine, then tell me why we’re here.”

My lips pressed together. “See that team over there? They’re from LeJeune. I wanted to see what they were like.”

“What’s LeJeune?”

“It’s a special school. I’ll tell you later.”

“Tell me now or I’ll scream. Aaaah. My throat is ready!”

“Urgh! All right, okay! Just keep it down.” I cleared my throat. This was bad. I wasn’t supposed to tell them. “You’ve heard of the Institute for Extraordinary Children, right?”

“I think so.”

“LeJeune’s one of their branches. Twenty years ago…” Oh boy. I really wasn’t supposed to say this. I breathed in and out. They would find out some day anyway. I just hoped it wouldn’t slip to Mom and Dad. “…Thorton Chemical Plant exploded. It contaminated nearly five million people, or so I’ve heard, but they never showed any signs of it. Those pregnant at the time, though, gave birth to kids that developed…well…extraordinary abilities by the age of sixteen.”

“Ooh, like breathing fire?!” said Torrey.

“Right? Could be! Or like the Black Canary’s Canary Cry. I mean, they’re genetically mutated just like her, so it’s possible. Although I don’t know anyone—”

“Ahem,” said a surly lady behind me, her lips pressed together. My pale flesh immediately tinted red.  “Can you keep it down? Or off, for that matter.” She blinked her mascara-buffed eyelashes at me and I nodded immediately. I got so excited there I almost forgot where I was.

See, the Black Canary was my favorite superhero. If there’s one thing I loved just as much as I hated attention, it was justice. And who better to represent justice than a martial artist clad in leather with a super-powered voice? If contaminated kids were truly like her, that would be amazing. Because there was the tiniest of chances that I might be contaminated too.

The only thing I couldn’t align with the Black Canary was why she didn’t wear a mask. If I were a superhero, I don’t think I could fight the bad guys if they knew my face. My family would be in danger and I’d be completely exposed. The thought of it made me blush. But the Black Canary had given her entire life to fighting justice. That’s why she was my hero. I couldn’t imagine sacrificing it all.

I lowered my voice to the softest of whispers. “I’ve heard some rumors on the internet. Most people fake it just to get attention. So lame. Anywho…they sorted out those kids and put them in special schools to hone their skills. Ever since then, there have been more kids born from those the explosion had contaminated. There’s about twelve of those schools around the country.”

“What does ‘contaminated’ mean?” said Lisa, my youngest sibling and the only kindergartner in the audience, never mind the whole campus. She sat on Torrey’s right, whose eyes were round with expectation. Torrey was highly imaginative and absorbed information like a sponge. I could bet anything he had an entire episode of the Justice League crossed with X-Men rolling in his mind.

“It means…uh…affected by something bad.”

“Are they bad?”

“No! No…they’re just like us…I think…” That’s why I came to Johnston Hall. I wanted to find out exactly what it meant.

“Wait,” said Torrey. “Didn’t two of those schools explode on TV? Why did they explode?” He shared my thirst for curiosity.

My mouth dried and opened slightly. “Because…people don’t like change. They think they’re…”

“Freaks?”

“Shush, Torrey. Don’t say stuff like that. They’re not…they’re just different.”

My eyes fell on the LeJeune team on stage. Two boys and two girls. Only two of them stood out, the girl with the half-buzzed white hair and the kid with the bandana. His brown bangs stuck out over it. He had a very attractive face, his body lean and tall, somewhat muscular. He looked like a football player. Did they have football at LeJeune? I couldn’t wrap my mind around a jock playing in a quiz bowl.

“When are we going home? I need to feed Emberlily,” Lisa whined.

“Just after this last question. They’re almost done. I want to see who wins,” I said. And I hoped they might slip some sign of their “powers.”

“I keep telling you, that name’s too long for a cat,” said Torrey with a shake of the head, his arms folded. 

“So what? You called yours Al Capone,” said Lisa. 

“Cuz he looks like him, dummy!”

“Leave her alone, Torrey. She can name her cat whatever she wants.”

“Says the girl who called her cat Sissy.”

“I was five, okay! And it’s short for Narcissa.” It happened to be based on my favorite flower, but I wasn’t about to explain that to a tween boy.

“When’d you make that up, five minutes ago?”

“Shut it.” 

A silly family tradition. At five years of age, we each got a new kitten. Mom said it taught us a sense of responsibility; Dad just loved cats. It excited us because we got to name them and raise them as our own. Sad only because as we grew up with them, we would have to learn to let them go. I hated that part the most. It made me dread the thought of college. Maybe that’s why I didn’t study much. That and because I didn’t like the thought of leaving my family behind, although I’d never admit it to their faces. Not to mention, my parents would help me get into Marquette.  Which made this little venture all the more dangerous; Mom currently lectured her law students while Dad was with the math department. I hoped. Because I was
supposed
to be babysitting, and Torrey had homework to do.

“Soo…,” said Torrey. “Does that mean if you don’t show any signs by tomorrow, you’re not ‘contaminated?’”

Tomorrow was my sixteenth birthday. “Yeah,” I said with a smile. I’m not sure if it was forced or not. Did I want to be contaminated? That sounded like a dumb question, but, honestly, I didn’t know. It seemed so mysterious, so...intriguing to be something
different
, like a superhero. At the same time, people often passed judgment on those different from them. And, in extreme situations, like the terrorism at the institutes, they sometimes exterminated them.  

CHAPTER TWO—Coevolution

“N
ow for the tie-breaker! Are you ready?”

“Bring it,” said the football player. Where’d that confidence come from? My eyes narrowed in on him.

“Coevolution between the common garter snake and what species have produced resistance to extreme levels of toxin in the garter snake? A, the frog. B, the salamander. C, the newt. Or D, the scorpion.”

A pause. The other team huddled amongst themselves. Oh, come on! The answer was so obviously the newt. Although…I’m not sure how I knew it. It just seemed clear, you know? Like a cat meows and a dog barks. No brainer.

The jock smirked at the host as he hit the buzzer. “B, salamander. Isn’t it?”

He sounded so sure of himself. The question was more of a statement. I smirked. His loss.

The host didn’t even look down at his cards. “That is correct!”

My jaw fell. What the hell was he talking about? No, it most certainly was not!

“LeJeune wins!”

The way his teammates celebrated him, you’d think he scored a touchdown.