Forgotten (Reject High: A Young Adult Science Fiction Series Book 3) (20 page)

Hughes and Courtney continued to deteriorate and age. They didn’t have long to live unless I did something.

Neither did I. I squeezed my fist to keep the blood flowing. The pint bag was almost full. He’d want more, of course. King’s followers watched it like vampires eager to become everlasting. Soon they’d all have my powers. From there, it would be a matter of time before they killed Esteban and Sasha. Rhapsody had drank blood water, so she would live a long life.

Everyone stopped moving at the same time. A thin, pale white hand dug free from the soil in front of Margaret King’s headstone. Grasping the aquamarine, her other hand emerged as well. King rushed over to help his wife get out.

Her arrival got the attention of Courtney and Hughes, whose skin had grayed and wrinkled. Margaret was slender with long black hair down to her midsection and she had the bluest eyes I’d ever seen on a person. Her white gown billowed as she moved.

King grabbed her by the arms and kissed her dirt-smeared lips. He said her nickname with tenderness. “Maggie.”

“No ring” were her first words to him. She stroked the side of her husband’s neck with her left hand, the aquamarine prisms in her right. Then she walked right past him as if he didn’t exist. “I like puzzles,” she said. “Figuring things out.”

I’m unsure whether or not he was prepared for her to be mentally unsound. She kept babbling nonsense over and over again in a repetitive loop. Margaret padded over to Solomon and knelt at his feet. His sunken in eyes had a milky film on them. Had he gone blind?

Fingering the black wisps of hair left on his chin, she kissed him on the cheek. “Free?”

“Maggie.” He nodded yes ever so slightly. “Free.”

Margaret went over to Courtney, and her husband trailed after her like a lost puppy. In the few minutes she’d come alive, he’d already aged from the drain on his system. The parasitic effects of the aquamarine on him happened faster than it had on me. He walked with a limp and nursed a hacking cough.

Selby and Ryan snuck to my side. Ryan unlatched the full vials and Selby zipped back and forth from the aquamarine, giving Ryan crystals. He might have drank one of them when I wasn’t looking. I gagged at the thought – it’ll give him eternal life, but it’s still blood.

“No ring. Free,” Margaret said, patting Courtney’s cheek. “Sweet dreams.”

Dreams? Like visions? Margaret might have Alzheimer’s or dementia, but she wasn’t crazy. Not totally, at least. She talked in code. What were her powers? Predicting the future, like Courtney, or mind reading, like Ryan and Cherish? To someone alive in the 1800s and unaware of those things, her musings would sound like insanity. People would accept her here in this time a lot better than in hers. “Free” meant she knew Hughes used to be a slave. I figured Margaret lived here before Carrington. Then King put her near the dome, thinking the radiation would cure her insanity. He’d been living with guilt a long time.

Rhapsody noticed Margaret’s messages, too. Her cheeks dropped. “Without her meds, Cherish used to talk like that,” she said to no one in particular.

Cherish was a diagnosed schizophrenic. Her green emerald power was hearing others thoughts as they occurred. Only she couldn’t control it. Margaret might have a different sickness but similar abilities.

I had to do something. I couldn’t just lie here and willingly bleed to death. “Hey Margaret!” I called out to her. “Nice to meet you. I’m Jason. Your husband wants to kill me.”

My yelling attracted her attention, King’s, too. He wanted to eliminate me right then and there, except he couldn’t. Margaret had never seen him
murder.
Slaying me in cold blood would make him the monster we knew him to be in her eyes. He’d lose her all over again.

Margaret’s blank, icy blue stare sent a shiver through me. She made a beeline for my chair. For a few seconds she stared at me, eye-to-eye. Then her eyes blinked rapidly, like a thousand specks of dirt had flown into them. Her look lost its vacancy. She lifted the aquamarines in her hand to the sky as an offering. Then she faced me and said two words I’d remember for as long as I lived.

“Champion, Immortal.”

Straight and simple, in a flat tone, just like that. Deep down in my gut, I knew it meant something. She didn’t know my last name, and out of all the words in the English language to say, she'd picked two that had direct ties to me.

“Champion, Immortal,” she said again.

Yanking the needle out of my arm, I got up and crushed the pint bag under my feet. Blood spattered everywhere, like I’d detonated a bottle of ketchup. Some of it sprayed onto the fringes of Margaret’s dress and onto King’s boots. Her thin lips curled a bit at the edges.
Was that a smile?

Before King could retaliate against me, Rhapsody flew off with Debra to somewhere safe. Selby used the distraction to steal the remaining three vials of blood from me so I couldn’t destroy them. Luis teleported two of the vials out of Selby’s hand and handed one to Julio. The two of them popped out in a puff of green smoke to the aquamarine and then teleported to another location, leaving me, King, Margaret, Ryan and Selby at the asylum. Hughes and Courtney were dying.

I shoved Ryan so hard that he flew through the asylum’s back door and out through the front. He jumped over the house and landed in front of me. He tried to push me, but I stood my ground. We hit each other so hard our blows sent shockwaves through the air. Some of the headstones cracked and the glass windows in the house burst. Fed up, I flung him over my shoulder and heard a sonic boom shortly after that.

Selby kept the last vial for himself, which put him and King at odds. At that moment a clap of thunder cracked in the distance, but no lightning had preceded it. Rhapsody returned to my side and winked. Debra was safe.

“What are you doing?” King asked Selby. “Give me the vial, Michael.”

Selby was about to drink it himself when he dropped the vial into the grass, backed up and pointed at King’s face. “Might want to ease up on the blood drinking there.”

Dark, vine-like fingers were growing across his skin and connected in patterns. Margaret had seen their beginnings first. It’s why she told her husband she “loved puzzles.” The rotting patches of his face connected, like puzzle pieces.

“Whoa,” Rhapsody said.

Margaret didn’t take her eyes off her husband. “I’m not crazy,” she said. “Your face…I like puzzles. Figuring things out.”

King’s hands roamed across the ridged skin on his forehead and neck. He stormed over to Hughes, who was raking his dying breaths. “What did you put in his blood? Tell me how to reverse it!”

Although Hughes was blind, he knew who he was talking to. His voice glided across a series of notes as he sang the same hymn Debra had been singing.
How did he know?
Was it a code?
“It soothes my doubts…and calms my fears, and it dries all my tears…”

Riled up from his response, King grunted and stomped Hughes in the chest, instantly killing him. He ignored Courtney and turned his attention to me and Rhapsody. Selby was at our backs. We’d fight them alone if we had to.

Turns out we didn’t have to. Above us, the odd weather patterns continued. The temperature started to spike. The afternoon sun blazed down on us, bright and strong. Explosions blasted across its surface.
Solar flares.

Sasha and Esteban had done it.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

it gets real

It didn’t feel like as much like a victory as it should have. The rage of solar flares meant the provenance crystals were on borrowed time. So were we. The last storm brought us an incredible amount of pain each time the x-class flares spiked. For some reason, we were all right.

But Selby fainted into the brown grass from the influx of radiation into his system. Something in my blood was killing King, who was fixated with his resurrected wife. Her lucidity came and went.

We were winning or not losing as much as it looked like a minute ago.

“I’ve waited one hundred and forty five years to see you…the others,” King said to Margaret. He paused for a hacking fit. “Can you say something that makes sense?”

Margaret twirled the aquamarine prisms in her hand. “I hoped you all would stay away from the beryl deposits. Did Carrington do this to you?” she asked him.

King patted his cheeks and forehead. Indeed, black veins had sprouted from his skin and connected in weird shapes. A drop of crimson dotted his bottom lip.
“They
did this to me.”  

He was talking about us. Yes, he’d aged because I’d stripped him of his heliodor. My blood coursing through his veins gave him his gross appearance. But to call it our fault was a misrepresentation of the truth. I said, “I mean, yeah, but…”

Rhapsody circled behind me to cover my back and butted in. “Not the whole story, lady!”

King waved us off and knelt next to the fringes of his wife’s gown. “Remember the vows we took, to always be true to one another? We can rule together. Help me defeat them.”

She looked at Rhapsody and me and then down at her husband. “The man I knew and loved wouldn’t kill children to get what he wanted. Honor your vow to me and we can be together.”

King unzipped his body suit and fingered the aquamarine stone hanging around his neck. It linked him to her, giving them identical powers. Keeping it on meant they’d die together. He appeared to consider her proposal, giving up his dream to sit on the world’s throne.

King stood and slapped the aquamarines out of her hand. Margaret instantly crumbled into a pile of gray ash. “You didn’t know me well enough,” he said spitting over her remains.

Taking his cue, I immediately attacked him, pounding him with punches. I snatched at his necklace but he covered his throat with one hand and fought me off with the other. Soon Rhapsody joined in, too. She took turns being visible and invisible to confuse him. I trusted she would dodge me since I couldn’t tell where she was most of the time. I grabbed King and slammed him into the ground, over and over again.

When I heaved him into a neighboring field so we could regroup, Selby stepped in. He had been faking the radiation sickness the entire time. His punches and kicks didn’t hurt, but the speed at which he moved made him hard to track. The constant blurring and shaking made me nauseous. Rhapsody tried to help, but he grabbed her by the hair and shook her head around. She collapsed to the ground, holding her temples and groaning.

Selby whirled me around and tossed me to the ground. I crashed through the iron fence and slid into another field. My momentum had created a long ditch of dirt and a mound of earth at my back. Everything inside of my head hurt. It was all I could do to get the clumps of dirt out of my eyes. But I knew I couldn’t think I could die or it would become a reality.

A sonic boom popped over me. King stood at my feet and Selby joined him. I couldn’t keep fighting them like this with no effect. Neither of them looked worse for wear besides the dirt on their armor.

“Tell me,” Selby said to King. “I’ll take care of it.”

He responded with an address. “8372 Baynton Street in Philadelphia.” 

“What’s that?” I asked. My vision spun like a high-speed Ferris wheel, but it started to regulate. “I suck at guessing games.”

King actually answered me. “It’s where your aunt and little brother have been staying…hiding.”

Crap.
In twisted psychopath-speak, that meant one thing. He wanted to make another trade – the rest of my blood for their lives. Hughes was right. The strategy worked, so he kept using it. Problem was, there was no guarantee he’d keep his end of the bargain.

“…and I’ll be there in
minutes,
thanks to you, Freak.”

So he faked that, too. My blood hadn’t worn off after all, but it gave him heightened strength and made him even faster.

Selby rushed off, I guessed, to kill two of the five living relatives I had left. There was nothing I could do. King could stop me from trying. If he didn’t, I couldn’t fly fast enough to outpace him.

“Think vulnerable thoughts,” he said. “I’ll call him off once we start.”

“How do I know you’ll do it? How do I know Selby won’t kill them?”

King smiled. He had no intentions of giving me a guarantee. Either I trusted him or I didn’t. He counted on me being the hero. In a pinch, heroes sacrificed themselves, their needs and desires, for the greater good. When a villain threatened the lives of thousands or millions, the hero found a way to save everyone, beat the villain, and find a way to lock him up for good. At least that’s the way it’s supposed to go.

Except, like I told Debra, I’m no hero.

“All right,” I lied.

I’d taken my Adderall this morning. He couldn’t read my mind to tell the difference. Assuming my blood worked the same as wearing a prism, I concentrated on removing King’s powers – one of which was long life, thanks to the heliodor.

He gagged and dropped to the ground, choking. I used all the terrible things he’d done to fuel my focus. Reject High. Almost killing me. The nameless faces of kids he’d killed in the name of science. Had he not tried to unite all the crystals, the Collective wouldn’t have had to hide them in populated places.

Mom, George, and Cherish might still be alive, Asia, too.

It was tough watching another person die, even someone who deserved it as much as he did. His skin had shrunken close to his bones and grayed. Between his nonexistent hair and yellowed teeth, King resumed a mummy. He let out a horrible groan and sighed his last breath. I nudged his body with my boot and the slight force I used powdered his bones. Taking a deep breath, I kicked at his remains until they were dust. 

There was no going back.

I’d done it. I’d killed a man.

Rhapsody materialized next to me. I barely felt her hand on my shoulder. She slid her hands beneath my armpits and held me. There was no time to grieve over what I’d done, or the fact Selby would kill my brother and aunt. I mouthed a solemn “so long” to them and prayed they didn’t suffer long.

With that, we returned to the cemetery. Courtney had dragged her body over to the aquamarine. Her blonde locks were now brittle white strands and her hands and face were almost jet black. We knelt in front of her.

“I’ll go to the HAARP compound and get you a heliodor prism,” I said.

Too weak to shake her head no, she simply wagged her finger. “Harold.” She motioned to a jagged remnant of a headstone. “See him soon.”

After almost two hundred years she was ready to die and see her husband.

Rhapsody panicked. “What are we supposed to do? You’re the last one we could trust.”

“Not,” she said, pausing for breath. “…the last.”

Who was left? Peters. I hadn’t seen him since he coded the compound with Rhapsody’s name for me and I used his car as a shield from gunfire. Twice he’d tried to kill me. 

Courtney patted my face. Her palm felt like sandpaper. “Thanks.”

“For what?” I asked.

Her eyes dip-flashed down to her chest. It was the last moment I thought she’d make a joke about my checking out her boobs. We all laughed. Hers rattled with phlegm.

“Remember.”
She tapped her temple. “…to
forget.”

My brow scrunched. What was she talking about?
Remember to forget?
Before I could ask, she said one more thing, a phrase she’d told me at the beginning. Using her last ounce of energy, she said, “It’ll all work out.” She stopped breathing.

Rhapsody closed Courtney’s eyes and stood. Both of us had seen way too much death for one day.

With the aquamarine on my shoulder, I flew to the compound with Rhapsody following me, though I probably should have helped her out. She overshot her landing by a good fifty yards. I couldn’t really teach her – it took concentration and control I had to learn the hard way.

Esteban and Sasha had organized the provenance crystals in a straight line in front of the pit the Collective had constructed. While Vivienne’s pit was shaped like a large cylinder, this was more circular and smaller. I had no idea how the four Collective members who died had fit into that thing with all of the crystals. Perhaps they were much smaller two hundred years ago?

There they were – the morganite, then goshenite, heliodor, the green emerald and the scarlet emerald. I set the aquamarine at the back and leapt on top of the pit. Lifting its lid and setting it on the ground, I started with the aquamarine and put them into the pit one by one. The crystals loudly buzzed with radiation and sent our Geiger counters crazy. I wished they’d explode already. 

While I worked Rhapsody filled them in on what had gone on, starting with Selby and ending with Courtney’s demise.

“We have to stop Selby,” I said. “He’s on my blood and doesn’t have a weakness.”

“He has a weakness,” Sasha said.

This time I didn’t have to ask. I knew exactly what she meant. “Put your hands on your hips all you want, you’re not doing it,” I told her. 

Esteban made the timeout motion with his hands. “You don’t even know what it is. Hear her out. It’s a good plan.”

I crossed my arms and watched Sasha produce a white bottle and empty it into a syringe. “Without going into a lot of details, this medicine will eliminate the production of adrenaline in his body.
Permanently.”

“All
her
idea. We found it in Hughes’ desk downstairs,” Esteban said proudly. “Sasha multiplied the dosage, in case we had to use it on King.”

Of course it had to be Hughes coming up with a way to stop us. I almost felt bad for thinking it since his idea might save us all.

“Since adrenaline juices our powers, it’ll turn his off,” Sasha said.

“How long will it last?” Rhapsody asked.