Burnout (The Invasion Chronicles Book 1) (10 page)

“Guys, what?  Do I have to guess?” she asked.  Out in the front of the house, Ava’s footsteps stalled on the stairs. 

“Lyds?” her friend called uncertainly. 

“It’s all right, Av—it’s the boys.”  She fixed Caleb with a glare.  “Standing here.  Being all weird and not at all forthcoming.” 

Zack’s face twisted into an exaggerated wince.  “I really did try to tell him we should come to the front.” 

Lydia might have been more forgiving if there hadn’t been a hint of laughter dancing under Zack’s tone.  Caleb rolled his eyes and (not so) subtly elbowed his brother in the side.  When he turned back to Lydia, though, his eyes were hooded and his face somber. 

“Look.  You’ve got no real reason to trust us, I know that.  But I just need you to listen, okay?” 

Lydia frowned.  Almost unconsciously, she took a step backwards, and was more relieved than she wanted to admit when Ava abandoned her laps on the stairs and jogged into the kitchen.  Her friend stopped just beside her, dark eyes darting between Lydia and the Reeds. 

“What’s wrong?” Lydia asked, some strange, nervous energy building in her chest.  She couldn’t say why, but she suddenly had the feeling that she wasn’t going to like whatever it was Caleb had to say. 

The older boy shifted again, staring at a spot just over top of their heads.  “Okay, look,” he said again, clearing his throat.  “Thing is, it’s not exactly an accident me and Z ended up in your neighborhood last night.  I mean, the Burnout escort was an accident—we really did run out of charge on the truck.  But we were here in the first place because…and look, I don’t want you to freak out, okay?  But—”

“Jesus Christ, man,” Zack interrupted without warning.  “Lyds, we know you’re a Psio and we need you to help Caleb lead that pack away from the barricade before they come in and Burn all of us.”

All of the air seemed to leave the kitchen.

Lydia gaped, her lungs stuttering in her chest as she tried to breathe, tried to move, tried to make her voice work.  Her ears rang, her pulse suddenly pounding so hard in her chest she was dimly surprised that her heart didn’t break a rib.  She stood there, stunned, losing precious seconds where she might have been able to deny it, to laugh it off, to do any of the dozen things her family told her to do if anyone ever found out her secret. 

              Caleb shot his brother a tired, irritated look.  “Okay, sure, I was trying to break it to them easy, but you can just blurt it out, that works,” he groused, sounding as if his brother had just spoiled the ending of a movie for Lydia and not tilted her entire world on its axis. 

              In the space between one heartbeat and the next, Ava surged forward, planting herself squarely between Lydia and the brothers.  Anger and fear crackling around her like a thundercloud, Ava stabbed a finger at Caleb’s chest. 

              “Out!” she snapped.  “Out!  Get out of our house!”

              “Hey, wait, whoa, no you don’t understand—” Caleb started, holding his hands out in surrender.

              As if the exchange had broken a spell, Lydia felt the world around her snap back to reality.  She gasped, sucking in air so fast it left her a little dizzy, shaking her head as she struggled to calm her racing heart.  Ava took a menacing step towards Caleb, her hands balled into fists.

              “I will throw you over the walls myself,” she hissed.  “Get.  Out.  Now!”

“Ava, it’s—” Lydia broke off, unsure of what she wanted to say. 

She looked past her friend to the Reeds, a thousand questions tumbling over themselves in her head, too chaotic to get any of them out. How could they know?  The only way was if they’d been watching the barricades, had seen her use her power to lure the Burnout away from the walls.  But that made no sense—would they have risked being attacked by the Burnouts that roamed the neighborhood just to spy on them? 

“I don’t understand,” she said finally.     

“I know,” Zack said, “and I’m sorry about that, but we’re running out of time.” 

“What the hell are you talking about?” Ava demanded.  “Lyds, don’t listen to this, let’s just go get Mike.”  Ava grabbed her hand and started to pull her away, towards the front door, when Caleb suddenly spoke up.

“Please,” he said.  “Please just listen.  I swear, we’re not trying to hurt anyone.  Just hear us out and if you don’t believe us, we’ll leave.  We’ll jump the fences ourselves and take our chances trying to get back to our truck.” 

That pulled both Lydia and Ava up short. 

It seemed to pull Zack up short, too.  He whipped towards the sound of his brother’s voice.  “Say what?  I didn’t agree to that!”

“You suck at this, you don’t get a say anymore,” Caleb said, not breaking eye contact with Lydia.  “Do we have a deal?” 

Lydia looked over at Ava, who shook her head violently.  Her friend was all but vibrating with the need to get out of the kitchen.  She was pacing back and forth, tight little steps that never took her very far away from Lydia’s side.  She watched the two boys with mistrust, but the fact that she hadn’t made good on her threat to try and throw them bodily out or go get Grandpa showed that she was at least willing to hear what they had to say.  Something about the Reeds had to have inspired at least a little trust in Ava.  And Lydia trusted Ava’s judgement more than almost anyone’s. 

“Your call,” Ava said, as if reading Lydia’s mind.  She shot her a significant look, arching one perfectly sculpted eyebrow.  Lydia’s mouth turned up in a shaky smile.  She…she had to know how they knew about her.  A strange, insistent feeling gnawed at the pit of her stomach, the back of her neck, urging her forward.  To what, she couldn’t say…but this felt important.  What they had to say was important.

“All right,” she said cautiously, “I’m listening.” 

Caleb’s shoulders slumped in relief, and Zack let out a soft little sigh.  “Okay.  Okay, look, sorry—my brother’s an idiot.  We were trying to think of the best way to tell you, but we’re kind of on a time limit, here.” 

“How did you find out about me?” she demanded, leaving the ‘running out of time’ aside for the moment.  Ava stepped closer to her.  She reached down and grabbed her friend’s hand again, silently readying herself to throw both the boys back from them if they tried something. 

Caleb sucked in a breath through his teeth.  “That’s the complicated part,” he hedged.  “Look, you know about Psios, right?”

Ava snorted, answering before Lydia could.  “
Everyone
knows about Psios.  They do a whole section on psionic powers every year in Health.” 

Caleb dipped his chin and his eyes shifted to Lydia again, dark and intense and seeming to plead with her for understanding.  Silence stretched between the four of them, growing thicker and heavier until Lydia felt like she could taste the tension on her tongue like bitter acid.  The air seemed to be getting colder, a leaden realization growing in her gut. 

“You know,” she said dully, and they all knew she wasn’t talking about just the fact that she was a Psio. 

They knew what she could do.  They knew how powerful she was. 

Caleb pressed his lips together and nodded, his face grim.  It was Zack who spoke, though. 

“Yeah, but not for any of the reasons you’re thinking.”  He pulled his ever-present glasses off and pinched the bridge of his nose for a moment.  “We weren’t spying on you, and I swear we didn’t mean for any of this to happen.” 

“You had to be,” Ava said, her glare dialing back up a notch.  “Lyds hasn’t used her powers hardly at all, except for yesterday.  How else could you know?” 

“Well, that’s the thing,” Zack said, with a grin that was a little too sharp to be self-deprecating.  He took a deep breath, spreading his hands.  “I’m like you.  A Psio.”

Lydia felt her eyes growing wide, her mouth falling open in surprise.  Beside her, Ava gasped.

“You’re like Lydia, how?” Ava asked, her grip on Lydia’s hand tightening.  “What can you do?”

A strange look passed over Zack’s face, indecipherable with the misty blankness of his eyes.  “Nothing physical, unfortunately.  Woulda made our lives a lot easier if I had one of the kinetic powers.  No, I…I know things.  Before they happen.”  For the first time, some of the jovial, laughing confidence leeched out of his voice.  “Bad things, mostly.” 

“Precog,” Lydia said, mostly to herself.  Zack nodded anyway, rocking back on his heels.  He tapped his fingers along the island until Caleb moved closer to him, and it occurred to Lydia that the boys were nervous.  She understood why. 

Precognition was one of the least common psionic abilities anyone ever showed.  Well…no, that wasn’t exactly accurate.  Confirmed precognition abilities showed up only a little less often than things like telekinesis or telepathy; it was just a question of how useful a precog Psio’s power would be.  Precogs who could see more than a few seconds or minutes into the future—
that
was highly unusual.  And Zack had said he was like her. 

“You’re strong,” she said, following the thought to its logical conclusion.  “Your power’s strong the way mine’s strong.” 

Strong enough to make people take notice.  Strong enough to be different even in a world full of differences.  Strong enough to be dangerous. 

Zack’s mouth turned up into an ugly, grim smile.  “Yeah,” he said simply.  “Something like that.” 

“Okay, I’m glad you two are having a mystical Psio bonding experience, or whatever, but can someone
please
explain what’s going on to
me
?” Ava interrupted. 

“Zack’s a precog,” Caleb said, and Ava turned to pin him with a glare. 

“I got that, thanks.  How do we know you’re telling the truth?  Lydia’s powers are easy to see…why should we just take your word that you can see the future?” 

She sounded angry, but Lydia had known Ava since the second grade.  Her friend was searching for confirmation, some proof that her own impressions of the boys’ trustworthiness were true.  If Ava really thought either of the Reeds was lying, she would have started throwing things by now, no matter what Lydia said.  But, they had to be cautious.  Lydia straightened, planting herself more firmly beside Ava. 

“Yeah.  How do we know you’re a Psio?”

For a moment, Zack seemed honestly confused, as though he couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t just take him at his word.  Caleb sighed. 

“Rule thirty-five, Z,” he said.  In an instant, the confusion on Zack’s face was replaced by chagrin.

“I’m doing it again, huh?” he said.  Before Lydia could ask him what he meant, he leaned forward again, stretching out his hand, palm up.  “I can prove it, but fair warning, you might not like it.” 

Lydia stared at his hand, as though the creases in his palm could tell her something.  There was a jagged cut running up one side of his arm, healed but not old, standing out pinkish against the warm brown of his skin.  She found herself wondering how many scars this new world had already left on him, how many bruises and cuts and injuries the brothers had had to endure on the road, dodging Burnouts wherever went. 

“What’re you gonna do?  Precog is random…you can’t make yourself have a vision,” she said, recalling words and lessons Grandma had given her as soon as she was old enough to understand.  Old enough to train and control her ability.  Touch helped her grandmother in crowded places and unfamiliar surroundings, let her hone in on someone and hear their thoughts back, but precognition was different. 

If Zack’s expression was anything to go by, though, that might not be entirely true.

“Telekinesis is a card trick…you can’t lift anything more than a pound or two.  But I’m pretty sure you do,” he said in exactly the same tone, grinning that too-sharp grin.  With the mischievous tilt of his eyebrows and quiet voice, he seemed otherworldly for a moment, puckish.  She was struck with the sudden feeling that taking his hand would lead her straight down the rabbit hole, even further than she’d already gone since the Burnouts appeared. 

“Lyds,” Ava said uneasily, but didn’t try to stop her as Lydia stepped forward. 

She glanced over at Caleb, who was leaning against the edge of the sink with his arms crossed over his chest.  He met her gaze briefly and nodded his encouragement, though she thought she saw nervousness in his eyes.  Fear.  The boys were both acting like there was something breathing down their necks.  She looked down at Zack’s proffered hand one more time, and then reached out and grasped it firmly. 

#

She had always been able to tell when her grandmother was using her gift, and she figured Zack’s had to be at least a little similar to Grandma’s telepathy if he thought he’d be able to form some kind of connection with her to prove he was telling the truth.  She expected a gentle nudge of warmth, maybe a tingle on the back of her neck, the little signals that had always preceded Grandma’s soft, bell-like voice in her head. 

Instead, it was like being punched in the throat. 

For the second time, Lydia felt as though the air was being sucked away from her, her chest closing as her lungs struggled to draw enough oxygen.  Heat rushed through her whole body, like hot wind racing through her veins, and then…

And then she was sitting in her living room.  On the comfortable couch that they had bought last year, with its overstuffed cushions and Grandma’s old throw pillows piled up by the arms.  The one that now formed part of the barricade over a gap in the fencing between Jim Perry’s backyard and Eric Grant’s.  She was sitting on the couch in her living room, but she was also still standing in the kitchen.  She could feel the warm weight of Zack’s hand in hers, the rough scrape of a scabbed-over cut on his knuckles, the way he was squeezing her fingers tightly.  She could feel Ava’s hands on her shoulders, hear her best friend’s frantic voice in her ear.

“Lyds?  Lydia!  What’s happening?”  Ava was calling.

“
Any luck?
”  Ava was saying.

Lydia could only blink, still gasping as Ava’s voice sounded twice, like some weird overlay.  Her vision blurred further, a headache building in her temples as she tried to wrap her mind around the double vision of herself in the kitchen with Ava, Zack, and Caleb, and herself in the living room, also with Ava. 

Lydia-on-the-couch tossed her slim personal netglass down onto the coffee table, glaring at the sky-blue display that read
No Channel Available
.   She looked at her friend, who was curled up on the other end of the couch. 

“I’m okay,” Lydia whispered.

“
Nothing
,” Lydia-on-the-couch said. 

“Stop it, let her go!” Ava yelled.

“
How can this be happening
?” Ava said. 

“It’s fine, Av, I’m fine,” Lydia said, shaking her head and closing her eyes.  The kitchen faded away, the living room sharpening in focus until only Zack’s hand in hers seemed to anchor her to the kitchen. 

To the present, she realized. 

When she opened her eyes again, it was like she was back in the living room, even Zack’s hand only the faintest shade of real for her.  She drew her legs up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, staring in rapt horror at the netscreen on the wall opposite the couch.  She knew, dimly, that the screen had been pulled down in August so that Eric could strip out its wiring and circuitry in an effort to keep the shield going on the barricades.  Now it was scrolling newsfeed after newsfeed, all talking about one thing:  the Burnouts.