Super Nobody (Alphas and Omegas Book 1) (23 page)

Lily fidgeted. Mr. Zeus answered dialed, said
a few curt words, and listened. He said nothing, but got the
clipboards off the wall and wrote on them. Once he went to another
part of the room, opened up the wall, and retrieved a file. He took
it to a table, had a quick read through, and replaced it.

“I’m so sorry Michael.”

“Don’t say that,” he told her. “What’s he
doing?”

“Collecting,” she said. “Zeus is the
collector. He gets all the reports. If nothing happens, you know,
it’s all paperwork, they can just stick the reports to the
clipboard, but right now he’s having a really hard time. All our
Keys have been having a lot of trouble. They don’t like what’s been
going on at the schools.”

“Like my mom. She’s threatening to take me
away.”

Lily nodded gloomily. “Others are threatening
to leave the town forever, and we think we have a mole from the
Syndicate somewhere. Trouble is we don’t know where.”

“The Omega Syndicate?”

“Yeah,” Lily sighed.

“Why’re you telling me all this now?”

“Oh, uh…it’s too late now anyway, right? You
know what you know.”

“So what’s the Omega Syndicate anyway?”

“A group of Actives and people like us
somewhere out there. They’ve been tearing parts of the world up.
They mostly believe that the world’s coming to an end because of
the Actives. The Active ones just like to be in control, they want
to be kings, gods. We have to stop that wherever we find them.”

“Who did Zeus go and call?”

“Oh?” she was off somewhere else, not really
with him. “Terrence Jackson.”

“You didn’t listen to me at all!” he shouted.
“He’s the one, he’s in the Syndicate. He’s probably their
leader!”

“Michael calm down,” she said, but there were
tears at the corners of her eyes. She spoke to him like she’d just
been to a funeral for her grandfather. “There’s no way Terrence
Jackson is the leader of the Omega Syndicate. All the Actives that
come here undergo a thorough screening process. And don’t worry.
We’ve got him under surveillance all the time. If he is who you say
he is, we’ll catch him doing something.”

“Yeah,” he laughed, “That’s what you
think.”

Just then he heard footsteps on the stairs
just outside, and when he turned Jackson was there.

“You can’t go stealing my lines, Mr.
Washington. It wouldn’t be proper telling the telepath what he
thinks.”

Michael looked around at them, around the
little soundproof room with its single desk, single lamp and single
venetian blind drawn so nobody could see in. Aside from that there
were two chairs, and two adults standing there, watching him.

“Is he supposed to be looking around like
that?” Lily asked. “I thought they got, like, hypnotized…”

“You do your job, I do mine,” Terrence
replied coolly. “I don’t tell you how to
stack books
.”

“Is that all you think of me, Mr. Jackson?
Well, I wouldn’t expect anything differently out of an Active who
couldn’t even make it in the Alphas.”

“Get out of here,” he snarled.

“Or what, are you going to make me go? Mess
with my head and get me to leave?”

“Perhaps you’d rather be blind then,” he
said.

“You wouldn’t!”

Mr. Jackson shrugged and turned back to
Michael. He was frowning, but not in the usual frowny way. Mr.
Jackson always, as far as Michael knew, had what his mother called
‘a bug up his bottom’, like he’d just been sucking on super atomic
sour balls for the last four hours straight, and hadn’t figured out
yet if his face would ever get back to normal. This frown was
different.

“If you stay in this room, Ms. Burkholtz, the
consequences are going to be on your head.”

“
In
my head, you mean. What are you
going to do to him?”

“I will count down from five.”

Lily stormed out before he even started, and
Jackson turned that lemon-sucking face on Michael. “You’re here and
now you know what you shouldn’t. Part of growing up, I remember:
knowing things your mother and father don’t want you knowing, and
doing things they think you ought never even consider. Yes,
absolutely the nature of growing up. And now, what will we do with
you?”

Michael just stared. It was like Harry Potter
facing down Voldemort for the first time. Only Michael didn’t have
the strength to do anything. No magic wand, no anger, no spells to
throw at him. He was just a boy, and Terrence Jackson was a
mind-reader. It was like playing poker against a guy who had a
forty card hand, and he could see the two cards you were
holding.

“Because let’s face it, boy, ignorance is
bliss, isn’t it? Before you know about danger, you ride your bike
all over the place, just as fast as you like. Wind whips through
your hair, the world is just a blur and you’re completely free.
Nothing can stop you. Wear a helmet, elbow pads, wrist guards? Yeah
right. All those things are for babies, you tell yourself.

“Then you skin your knee, or you hit the
brakes wrong way and what happens? You snap a bone in your wrist.
Only it’s not just a bone that’s broken, it’s the illusion that
everything is absolutely perfect. You swim out of the kiddie pool
and into the deep end, where you can barely see the bottom, and
what’s down there? Well, you could be hit by a car in your bike.
You could smash into a tree. Your chain could come off or your
brake cables stop working, and you’re out of control. First time
you taste fear.

“You’re better off not looking where you
aren’t invited to look, Michael Washington. Be happy learning the
history that’s in the history books, learn your x and y axes. And
while you’re at it, you might as well learn what you can about
girls. Do it early. Make some mistakes and figure out where you can
and can’t go, what to and what not to do. And for the sake of all
things holy
stop thinking about superheroes and super
powers.
Do you understand me?”

Michael nodded, just staring. He was trying
to figure out when the mind power was going to hit him. Or would he
even feel it? He didn’t know how it felt to have his head mucked
around with. Was he just going to wake up in the hospital
again?

“I mean it. Because you keep skirting around
your mother and father, don’t you? You’re not telling them what’s
going on. You’re on some little private detective kick. Well, you’d
best watch it before it kicks you back. There's some chance that
you're going to be synergistic. Nobody knows the future, and if
that happens, you turn out to be a synergist, you're going to love
that: Activating the powers of others while you just sit there and
hope that the Activation doesn't get you killed. You know how many
synergists we've had?”

“No sir,” Michael droned.

“Five. And do you know how many we lost while
activating some poor kid? No you don't. The number is four. One of
them we had to scrape off the walls. So leave it be. Let this
garbage go. Whatever you think you know, better to go and play
video games until your brain's mush and you've forgotten all about
it.”

Yeah, like forgetting about Charlotte was
ever going to happen. Still, Michael kept his best stone face
on.

“Yes sir,” he said.

“Bull,” Terrence said. “I haven’t convinced
you. You’re just going to keep down the path you’re on, and you
don’t believe me. Where you’re headed, Michael, is a place that’s
going to scramble your brains better than I could.”

“Yes sir,” he said again. Maybe if he just
agreed with this evil madman, he wouldn’t die right now. He could
still find a way to convince his mother and grandfather about
Terrence Jackson, how he was…

Something huge and hot smashed into Michael’s
forehead, rocking him back in his chair. He smelled ash. He didn’t
see stars, but some sort of invisible lava stuff over his vision
that crept down and made Mr. Jackson a wavy ghost man. No, it was
tears. He was crying from the pain.

“Okay, I’ll stop!” he shouted.

“Not good enough,” Terrence whispered.

Claws raked down Michael’s spine. He fell out
of the chair and tried to crawl away from whatever tiger Terrence
had magically teleported into the room, but couldn’t. The thing on
his back weighed five hundred pounds, and Michael’s muscles were
jelly.

“Swear to me,” Terrence whispered.

“Huhaaaaaagggghhh-”

“Nothing about this place leaves this
room.”

Was the man right next to him or in his head?
The pain slashed at his body, and he realized something as he tried
to flee to a nice secluded place in his brain, away from the pain:
Terrence couldn’t kill him. His father was the leader of the
Alphas, and his grandfather was the head of the town somehow, and
his mother was a Key. Even the leader of the Omega Syndicate
couldn’t just kill him.

But just because he couldn't be killed didn't
mean Terrence Jackson couldn't do something terrible to him. Some
things
, even.

“You’re never going to know what I’ve put in
your head, Michael,” Terrence whispered. Sweat dropped down onto
Michael’s face,
plink
! “One day you’ll just attack your
father. Or someone will call on the phone and say pink daisy, and
you’ll get a shotgun out of the cellar and shoot your grandfather.
You’ll watch the whole thing and you won’t be able to control
yourself. Now do you understand?”

“Yeeeeesssss,” he hissed. Had he bitten his
tongue, or was Mr. Jackson putting the taste of blood on it?

“You keep that mind to yourself. Don’t talk
to anyone.”

“Noooooohhhhh,” he groaned.

“Or I’ll know. Maybe you’ll wake up with the
phone in your hand and you won’t know who you’ve just called. What
do you think of that? You’ll be Michael Washington one minute, and
you’ll be strutting around clucking like a chicken the next. For
the rest of your life.”

Another bead of sweat dropped on Michael’s
face.

“Think about it. You don’t have to dig
further. You don’t have to break yourself. Do as I say and
everything will be just fine.”

He didn't remember Terrence Jackson leaving,
or Lily coming in afterwords. He didn't remember sitting in a back
room with a juice box and cookies, or having Lily check in on him
every several minutes. Eventually, Lily told him the next day, he
had drifted out of the library, picked up his bike (unlocked, but
not stolen, of course not) and ridden home. His mother was still
angry at him but he didn't notice that much either. He skipped
dinner, which she said was fine with her, and slept for the next
fourteen straight hours.

He took some headache pills the doctor had
prescribed, but they didn't work. School drifted by in a painful
haze. The only thing he became aware of, at the end of the day,
were the extra homework slips each of his teachers had given him.
There was a landslide of homework waiting to bury him when he got
home. It wouldn't matter for long, but when Susanna Washington was
angry she became the most efficient person in the world. By
extension, of course, everyone around her was expected to perform
just like her. So while she was scrubbing the stove and the fan
hood thing above it, Michael was cleaning up the porch, refolding
and rearranging all the clothes in his closet, repacking his
remaining toys and video games in boxes, and even organizing the
files on his computer as per her instructions.

Michael found it amazing that the body and
the mind could be in two places doing two completely separate
things at once, but his did. As he did his lot of chores, Terrence
Jackson did not once fade from his mind. He was always there
breathing orders and threats into Michael's ear and telling him how
his life was going to end just as soon as Michael went snooping
again.

In between folding clothes, he came to the
conclusion that, in all the books, the hero never gave up when he
was forced into a corner that he couldn't see a way out of. He
might not have his mind for very much longer. Terrence might have
planted some sort of…what was the word? Oh, now it would bug him,
like a song that got stuck in your head all day long. They’d just
studied sleep and dreams at school. Michael rushed over and ripped
his science book out of his bag. Subconscious, that was the word.
Terrence might have set up a subconscious bomb. With hypnotists,
they put you into a dream-like state, and they worked on your
subconscious directly. People almost always used hypno-therapy to
get rid of bad habits. The hypnotist could make you chew gum
instead of pick your nose, or do something silly every time you
were about to go to McDonald’s. There was even this theory about
triggers, like if you saw a yellow flower, suddenly your
subconscious would activate and you’d do a handstand or juggle axes
or something. Michael hadn’t felt hypnotized. But then again, Mr.
Jackson was supposed to be the expert’s go-to guy. He could fiddle
with your subconscious while you were lying on the floor in agony,
for instance. He could probably read your mom’s mind and put
thoughts into your head at the same time.

But there were a few things he felt were
true: one, that all these super kids weren’t
accidentally
going nuts around him. Either someone was Activating them (the
synergist Jackson told him about?) or he
was
one, and that
meant Actives were just drawn to his Active Activating power.

So he had to investigate synergists, and
synergy, whatever that meant.

The second thing he felt to be true was that
this thing was more serious than the adults realized. All of them
were safe. They knew the town had never collapsed. There were too
many shields protecting the city, too many Actives for any of them
to be afraid. Well, Michael was afraid. He’d nearly died a bunch of
times. His mother was taking it seriously, but only threatening to
take him away. What about all these
people
?