Forgotten (Reject High: A Young Adult Science Fiction Series Book 3) (5 page)

“Alright,” Sasha cloned herself nine times, which made the closet pretty crowded. Clone Sasha gave me a peck on the lips. It startled her as much as it did me, but this clone represented her emotions. “Sorry, Rhapsody, force of habit.”

Now makeup free, a fresh-faced Rhapsody planted a bigger, longer kiss on me. I guess the truce was over? “No problem, Girl Genius.”

We rushed from the storage room. Rhapsody and all the Sasha clones left my company. I ran to the stairwell door at the end of the hall beside the elevator, rushed through and jetted up the stairs to the seventh level.

The explosive device must have come from that floor. Everything was shattered, burned to blackness, and dripping with water. Smoke and heat choked off the air. I began to cough. Looking down, I saw that the floor was soaked with diluted blood and covered with charred fragments of the building. The sight of sparking electric equipment and the scent of gas made my head hurt.

From a distance a crew of firefighters sprayed the flaming wreckage with water. Anyone on this floor must have been instantly blown to bits. I paused for a moment in respect of the lost lives. This section of the seventh floor was the “mixed nut aisle,” where they kept the crazies. It reminded me of Susan Lin, my therapist, who once feared I’d end up here. If not for her, I might have. I hoped she was still alive somewhere.

Back in the stairwell, I masked up to access the communication system in the suit. “Anything?” I asked my friends. The system did not register a sound.
Does it work
?

Out of breath, Rhapsody responded first. “Nothing on this end. Ghosted through level three. On my way to level two.”

“Alright. What about you, Sasha?” I waited a second for her to answer. “Sasha?” I called again. No answer.

The next time, Rhapsody joined me. Soon we were almost yelling her name at each other. True, she had ten levels to account for, but should it have taken her this long to figure it out? Was she hurt? Had her Bluetooth conked out?

“Hughes!” I shouted. “I know you’re monitoring the line. Answer me!”

Nothing from him, either.

Frustrated, I pounded my fist into the stairwell banister, curving it into a “U” shape. I opened the door to level six. It looked similar to my previous stop, except the back end of it sloped down to the outside world. Shards of glass covered the tile, and all of the wooden doors had been splintered. A few of the overhead lights worked but popped and flickered.

A woman I could not identify knelt in front of the nurse’s station. From behind she looked like Courtney. She lifted her head to look at me. An ugly, jagged wound ran the length of her bloodied face and had caked together a clump of her hair. Her usual white blouse and black business slacks were shredded rags. Her bodysuit was visibly damaged. She panted and held the left side of her ribcage. Who or what had taken her out? It probably couldn’t take me, too.

When I stepped forward, she frantically waved me away, whispering “Go,” or “No.” I couldn’t tell. Her cheeks and mouth were swollen. Either way, it was a warning.

To my right, a black and silver livewire dangled from a tear in the ceiling’s infrastructure. I shouldn’t come any closer because of that? Whatever, I’m invulnerable. I did it anyway.

She pumped her fist, beat the ground and cursed at me. Why was she so angry? Nobody was around. Unless it was someone I couldn’t see…

I twisted my mouth close to the felt padded microphone in the mask. “Sixth floor.” Could anyone hear me? With that, I sprinted to Courtney’s side. Her body trembled as I lifted her in my arms.

A whoosh whisked past me.
Selby!
Oh yes, I wanted every piece of this. Carefully I rolled Courtney back to the ground and balled my fists.

“I’ve been waiting for this, Freak,” he said to my back.

Slowly I turned in a circle. I thought he might be closer than he was, about two yards off from us. He had on body armor, but it was different from ours – more like the old, black version. He’d shaved off his red hair into a close buzz cut. His face was still chubby and dotted with freckles and punchable.

Neither of us moved, sizing up the other. He knew if I landed one punch on him, it would kill him. With his speed, I knew that was a big if. I tried not to think strategy too much on the off chance he had a scarlet emerald and poached one of my thoughts. Still, I had ideas.

“Not as long as I have,” I said. It had been months since I'D had a rage blackout, but the way my emotions were churning, I knew one was coming if I didn’t calm down.

He said something vulgar about Sasha, something I could have gone centuries without knowing. The worst part was, I didn’t even know if it was true or not. He was the only person on the planet who would know besides her. I wanted to beat that knowledge out of him. If I had my way, it would be the last nasty thing he said about her with all of his teeth intact.

Courtney grabbed my foot and said three words that would change the outcome of this fight, “It’s not him.”

“Taylor.” I said her name out loud and waited for her to change back to herself.

“You ruined my surprise, Eris,” she said, still in Selby’s body, her voice with an edge of sarcasm. Then she extended her fingers and Courtney’s body arched with pain. I ran up to stop Taylor, but she sped around me and continued torturing my former mentor. Turns out, when she shape shifted she assumed the power of the person whose body she imitated. Great.

Good thing she wasn’t playing me.

Trying to keep Courtney alive, I gave mind controlling Taylor a shot. I might as well have run face first into a brick wall. It was about as effective. Where had this chick come from? Taylor dropped her assault on Courtney and turned her attention to me. She quickly discovered what King and Mr. Welker, my old principal, already had found out – mind controlling ADHD kids is like putting your brain in a blender.

I used her blinding headache as a chance to channel my concentration into sapping Taylor’s powers with my goshenite. It must have worked, because Courtney sighed with relief and Taylor morphed back into her usual form - a pretty twenty-something phlebotomist. However, without her powers, she rapidly aged. Using the goshenite was like flexing an arm muscle. Hurting her for tapping into my most damaging memories was easy. I
thrived
on it.

I watched her skin wrinkle and sink in on her face. Her auburn hair grayed and became brittle. “Where is she?” I screamed. “Debra Desiree Brown. Where is she?”

Rhapsody ghosted through the wall nearest me with Sasha beside her. They spotted Courtney and what I was doing to Taylor. Neither of them said a word.

I knelt over and tore open the top of Taylor’s suit. There, around her neck, hung an emerald, scarlet emerald, goshenite, and heliodor necklace. I yanked it off and closed it in my fist. She groaned. Even with my strength, I could not destroy the stones and tossing them out meant someone would get superpowers or bone cancer. Too big a risk. I put it inside my suit pocket instead.

Once I had done that, I shifted focus to my scarlet emerald. Swimming through Taylor’s thoughts, I found an image of my stepmother in the rehabilitation center, which, I think, we were standing in the middle of. She was in a black, purple, and blue tracksuit. A brace supported her neck and cupped underneath her chin. She was helpless to defend herself against Taylor and the real Selby, who had escorted her out before the bomb destroyed it.

“Jason…”

I heard Sasha’s voice, but I ignored it. I couldn’t stop the tears flowing down my face. Taylor was almost a skeleton now, bleeding from her nose and eyes and crawling away from me, groaning in pain. I followed her. Thank God Sasha hadn’t heard what Taylor said about her. Clearly, it was past information, but she was fragile enough.

Taylor had pretended to be my mother and almost killed me. She'd partnered with my worst enemy and kidnapped my stepmother. I’d gotten some of the truth out of her. She’d shown me when and how. Now I needed to know where she was and why they’d taken her. I repeated the questions over and over again until the thoughts drifted to the surface of her brain.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Rhapsody trying to ghost through a shield of golden light. Courtney had thrown up a force field to keep them away from me. Good. I was almost done with my interrogation. Up came a vision of King’s wrinkled skeleton being injected with a vial of blood.
My blood.
A few seconds passed. He sat up and roared with vitality. Behind him were cases full of blood vials – every sample they had taken out of me multiplied.

They wanted my blood in exchange for Debra’s life.

“Where is she?” I yelled, completely oblivious to what was going on around me, except for an electric sizzle and pop, then a trail of smoke and the worst scent ever. I stretched myself and reached into Taylor’s mind even further.

Nothing remained but a tunnel of smothering darkness.

Rhapsody and Sasha’s touch on my shoulder brought me back to my senses. Courtney collapsed, her shield evaporated. I sighed and looked at my feet.

There, laying on the ground, was Taylor with the end of the livewire stuck in her mouth.

CHAPTER FIVE

a late mother’s day gift

Her head still facing down, Taylor’s mummified head smoked white trails from the mouth. The livewire dropped from her bottom lip. Violent bluish white sparks popped in front of her chin.

Any hope I had of finding Debra just convulsed and died with her smoldering mouth. I pounded a hole in the wall with my fist.
Unless I bring her back to life
. Thanks to reading Courtney’s thoughts, I knew how, and it didn’t involve giving Taylor mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

Courtney propped herself up on her elbows. Her steely mud brown eyes said it all.
Don’t try it.
I’d gotten lucky enough to get the jump on our attacker and zap her powers first. Bringing her back might be too risky. Usually my timing for these kinds of things is way off. Not this time. Or else I’d have been King’s personal IV drip by now.

Still woozy, Courtney rolled to her feet. She sounded way worse than she looked. “We have to leave,” her voice rumbled in the air. “They’ll extract her. We’ll be outnumbered.”

“I should take her,” I said without thinking.

Rhapsody’s eyes flitted with disgust. “You’re kidding, right? What for, a souvenir?”

I struggled with whether or not to tell the truth about my intentions or to even think them in front of Courtney. “She’s the only person who knows where Debra is, and I can…”

“She’s dead,” Rhapsody argued back. “There’s no going back.”

I knelt down and slung Taylor’s lifeless body across my right shoulder. The stench of electrocuted flesh was too much for me, so I pulled my mask over my face. The aroma of the suit’s manufactured air overcame that of the decomposed flesh next to my face.

I offered my free hand to Rhapsody. “Tell me you wouldn’t try if we were talking about George.”

Her face drooped at the mention of her dead father. I’d gone too far with the comparison. “Nah, I’m good, Cap,” she said. “Taking the stairs. Meet you in the van.”

“It’s broad daylight out there,” Sasha shouted at her. “We need you to make us invisible.”

She flashed us the peace sign with her fingers. “No you don’t, Girl Genius. I’m out.”

To my surprise, Sasha didn’t comment further but to say. “What a drama queen,” after Rhapsody had left the room. “Is she always that emo, babe?”

I’d pushed her there. She would’ve tried to find George, too. I didn’t have to ask.

Sasha donned her mask and curled her arm around mine. “Let’s go.”

Courtney limped over to me and used her right hand to steady Taylor’s rank corpse.

“Jason,” she said in a nasal voice. Taking a cue from us, she put on her mask. “My Bluetooth is out. Tell Hughes you need him to fire a five second EMP with a three block radius. On your mark.”

A five second what? “He wasn’t answering me a while ago. Mine might be out too.”

Courtney sucked her teeth. “He’s ignoring you. An EMP, electromagnetic pulse, will knock out the recording equipment on that news helicopter without crashing it. It’s why we drive older cars – EMPs don’t affect our ignition systems because they aren’t electronic.”

Might as well give it a shot. I tapped my ear. “Janitor Brad, we need a five second EMP with a three block radius. On my mark.”

I heard background noise in my earpiece. He was ignoring me after all. “Roger that.” Good thing I was feeling confident for Courtney’s next piece of news.

“Get us to the ground and out of sight in those five seconds or less,” she said.

The helicopter held a tight flight pattern at our eye line. Its blades chopped the air and made it hard to hear each other.
Without killing you?
What if the helicopter cameras already saw us?
I panicked. So did Sasha. Her grip tightened around my arm. Blood rushed to my brain. Did I have another choice? No, not really. I had to fly us out.

“On you mark, Captain,” Hughes reminded me. “We don’t have all day.”

The sound of my heartbeat thumped in my ears. “Alright.” I paused for a beat and addressed Hughes by his name in my earpiece to avoid his wrath. “Now.”

The four of us flew out of the building, swooped underneath the helicopter, and landed softly in the same alleyway where Camuto had parked. Before anyone could notice us, she swung the van over to our location and again Hughes sent a golden cloud swirling around us. I closed my eyes to quell the nausea which ended up making it worse as we teleported.

Once inside the back of the van I unloaded Taylor’s funky body against the back of the driver’s seat and scooted away from it. Suddenly a burning sensation seared through my body.
Am I on fire?
I actually patted myself down until I realized Hughes was suppressing our powers again to keep us from escaping. I cursed him and the pain from my healing injuries.

Two seats down from mine slumped an unconscious dark-haired boy about my age. Esteban? Hard to tell his identity through the grime streaked across his face. Hopefully it was him and not one of his triplet brothers. I hadn’t seen Esteban since he'd stopped me from killing Ryan Cain. I owed him one for that. They kidnapped him, too? Why? What’s he doing here?

Directly across from me, Rhapsody crossed her arms and gave me the silent treatment. That was, until Sasha crawled over when the van braked to a stop and sat next to me. A long line of cars had stopped in the intersection in front of us and had recently begun to move again after the EMP’s effects wore off.

“What’s he doing here?” she whispered in my ear. Rhapsody gave her a dirty glance.

“I don’t know.” The Collective’s motives were always murky, unless they revealed them. There were always parts to this growing puzzle.

“Watch,” she said, directing her eyes toward Rhapsody. “Your girlfriend is jealous.”

I checked to see if she was right. Rhapsody quickly averted her glance, which made it more noticeable she was spying on us. At least she still cared and didn’t sleep with her ex.

Taylor’s eyes stared blankly at nothing specific. Once a lovely sea green, they were dull and filmy. When the front wheels struck a bump. Taylor’s head moved but her dead eyes did not. Spooky. Hughes scanned her body and a spark of recognition hit his face. “Wait, is that…”

“Yup. It is.” Courtney said, cutting him off. She winced, repositioning herself enough to buckle into a seat next to Rhapsody. “Pass me the red box under your seat, Jason?”

I groped around and found the first aid kit without aggravating my mending ribs. “King hired her to steal my blood.”

“Yeah?” Camuto said. She wasn’t surprised. Nor did I expect her to be.

Hughes drew his finger in the air connecting imaginary dots. “But how was she…”

“How do you think, Solomon?” Courtney interrupted him again. “He figured it out.” Even with my mask on, the scent was atrocious. I gasped and choked.

“Open a window, Camuto,” Sasha said, patting me on the back. “Taylor stinks and we need some ventilation back here.”

Rhapsody slapped her hands against her thighs, clearly irritated that my ex was touching me in any way. “Will one of you talk? This ‘no trust’ thing was lame before.”

Courtney injected herself with what I can only assume was some sort of anesthetic. She loaded it with a white tube and tossed it to me, pointing that I should shoot it into my bicep. I braced myself and plunged the needle into my skin. Instantly, a cool tingling flowed to my side, knee, and chest – all the places where I had experienced surgery. I almost felt normal.

Holding onto some equipment for leverage, Courtney knelt in front us. She hesitated before unfastening Taylor’s suit. A bloated cloud of gray dust puffed out of the material. Everyone in the rear of the van held their breath. Courtney rummaged through the inside of the suit and finally pulled out a shiny, round aquamarine. As soon as she removed it, the corpse became a pile of gray dust and bones.

Hughes looked back. “Not all over the van!”

That lump of ash used to be a human. Good thing Camuto kept the windows closed. Courtney palmed the jewel, which was round and about as wide as a half dollar. While she spoke, she did not take her eyes off of me once. “The other colors of beryl transfer power one way. This one is reciprocal.”

The first one to catch on to her explanation was Sasha. “Two people have to wear it?”

I pointed to the pile of dust. “She and Selby kidnapped my stepmother. She was my only clue and now she’s ash! How am I gonna get Debra back?”

Hughes sighed. “You
can’t.
They know you’ll give them whatever they want now.” King’s theory was correct, after all. Exposure to the six exploding crystals would make him live forever, which explained why he wanted my blood. But what’s that say about me? Am I going to become immortal? “He still wants to live forever.”

“Ughhh…” Esteban groaned and massaged the back of his neck. “What happened?”

Camuto turned off for the interstate. “He needs your blood and the provenance aquamarine. Once he’s combined them, he’ll be unstoppable.”

I didn’t need to read their minds to discover their argument. One life wasn’t worth sacrificing the existence of billions. This reasoning never felt right, no matter how many times they tried drilling it into our skulls. I blurted out, “There has to be a way to save her.”

“There’s not,” Hughes said matter-of-factly. “Let her go. The world will spin on. You’re playing a hand besides your own here. It’s too much to risk.”

I beat my fist against the van’s interior. “Your families are in the
ground,
Hughes. Mine is still out there. I’m going after her, even if I have to do it alone and without powers.”

Courtney pressed the aquamarine she’d taken from Taylor’s body into my left palm and winked. She was on our side, I think. “In 48 to 72 hours, King will expect you to deliver the aquamarine. If he doesn’t get it he’ll kill her and anyone else he thinks will get you to do it.”

Aunt Dee, Zachary, Ray and Julia. I closed my fingers over the jewel. Only Rhapsody and Sasha saw me do it. Esteban was still coming back to consciousness.

We were going to make a move. Again, on my mark.

I signaled Rhapsody with my eyes. She held up her hands and shrugged. I mouthed “ghost” to her and nodded my head in Sasha’s and Esteban’s directions. Then she understood. “Ride or die,” she mouthed back.

Without Esteban’s cooperation, we had one shot to make this work. Since Sasha was right next to me, I simply whispered, “Hold on” into her ear. She grabbed my hand and held tightly. Rhapsody wouldn’t protest it this time. What we were about to attempt was suicidal.

I thought of a sentence, a statement that would serve as my signal for go time. Once it came to mind, I held Courtney’s attention by staring. She’d have to be the one to stop Hughes from controlling our powers. “If you’re not gonna help me, you’re gonna have to stop me,” I said, swallowing hard, “And to stop me, you’re gonna have to kill me.”

Hughes straightened up in his chair and grunted. “Eris!” he groaned.

It was the last thing I remember seeing before dropping through the bottom of the van. We tumbled onto the paved highway. Heels over my head, I flipped four or five times.

It didn’t hurt, even when two cars slammed into me, but it was disorienting. Rhapsody ghosted me when she could. I saw machine parts, fast-food cups and fossilized French Fries as I rolled through the bottoms of cars.

How she kept her focus on all of four of us, I’ll never understand. Finally landing face first in the middle of the busy interstate, I became fully visible. Everything was moving too fast for me to locate the others. Head spinning, I saw a speeding blue hatchback about to crash into my face. Too dizzy to fly, I closed my eyes and lay straight. Maybe the car would pass over me. Instead, I heard a “pop” and sensed I had moved much further than a couple feet.

Overcome by nausea, I unmasked and threw up in behind the rumble strip. Esteban had safely teleported me to the road’s shoulder. “Still not used to it, eh?” he asked me.

I tried not to belch. My bubbling insides didn’t help. “…not so much.”

Esteban helped me to my feet. Unlike the three of us, he wore regular clothes – a pair of brown sandals, tan cargo shorts, and an olive green V-neck shirt smeared in car grease.

Rhapsody shook the cobwebs out of her head and turned us invisible. She shouted over the traffic noise. “We need off the grid. Like yesterday. Where to, Girl Genius?”

Silence from an invisible girl is unsettling. Her gears must be turning. “My parents have a vacation house upstate. I know the security code. It wouldn’t be the first place they’d look.”

It sounded like a plan we could work with. We weren’t spending any money and we’d have time to shower, pick up some cheap changes of clothes, and maybe even catch some sleep. I knew I couldn’t fly everyone. Each time I carried both Rhapsody and Sasha, things got awkward for all parties involved, so I asked off of it. “I need to make a stop.” I held up my palm. “Alone.”

“You’re the one they want,” Esteban yelled back. “You shouldn’t go by yourself.”

“I’ll go with him.” Rhapsody had followed the sound of my voice and placed her hand on my shoulder. “Should be fine if he’s invisible.”