Forgotten (Reject High: A Young Adult Science Fiction Series Book 3) (21 page)

“A few seconds, a few minutes? Forever?” Sasha shrugged. “It’s untested science. Knowing Hughes, it’ll give us time. The needle will have to go in his back near his kidneys.”

I couldn’t hold it in any longer. “He’ll kill you before you have a chance.”

Sasha stared at the ground. “I’m the only one of us with a shot at getting that close. I’m open for other ideas, if you’ve got one, Cap.”

Rhapsody held her hand out. “Give me the needle. You distract him. I’ll do it. You couldn’t get it through his body armor, anyway.”

We didn’t have time for more guesswork. He’d be back from the east coast any second.

“She has a good point. Do it,” I told Sasha.

She gave over the syringe.

Rhapsody turned us invisible just in time. Selby zoomed in from the direction of the cemetery and stopped when he saw Sasha and the pit. Though I’d replaced the lid, the area got unbearably hot with radioactive heat. Wiping the sweat off of my brow, I watched everything carefully in case the plan went sideways and I’d have to jump in. 

In Selby’s right hand was a large, clean hunting knife. The blade was clean.
Oh God. He killed them with that.
I held in my grief for my aunt and little brother, hoping they hadn’t suffered much or for long. If I knew Selby, that’s exactly how he’d done it. 

Sasha pretended she was going to enter the compound.

He zipped in front of her, too close to her face for my comfort level. “Where is he?” he asked her.

“Jason? Since he hooked up with Rhapsody, I haven’t kept tabs on him.”

“B.S.,” he said. “You’d wash his drawers now if he asked you to.”

She paused before answering him. “Not anymore. We broke up. He moved on.”

She played innocent so well she almost convinced me. I tried not to move. The weeds were so high that an unintentional moment could give away my position. It turned out to be a good thing. He circled the area at super speed, thinking we were in the area. I held my breath. Selby whisked right past me. When I thought we were in the clear, he ran back to where I was standing. He didn’t see me and couldn’t read my thoughts. Had he smelled me or something?  

“What’s up with the Rambo knife?” Sasha wrapped her sweaty hair back into a bun.

The provenance crystals rumbled inside of the concrete pit.
I remember that sound. They aren’t far from blowing.

“Ran all the way to Philly for nothing! King sent me to an empty house. Jokes on him. Cap killed him. Probably for lecturing him.”

Aunt Dee and Zachary are still alive. How did they escape?
I’d have to find out later.

Still facing me, Selby licked his lips and grinned. “Ever think about the hotel?”

The mention of what he’d done to her gave me the urge to punch him. Her response, “All the time,” did, too. I’m sure the two of them meant it in different ways.

He looked me up and down so hard I thought Rhapsody’s powers had misfired. “We should do it again sometime,” he said.

“How about now? You can have the fun one instead.”

That was the distraction? The inside of my chest burned. Sure, we had broken up and I had no right to feel jealous. We were friends, though. Couldn’t I be angry? I hoped Sasha knew what she was doing. Selby was unbalanced and powerful. None of us could move fast enough to stop him from hurting her if he was that close. 

Though I hated her strategy, it worked like a charm. Original Sasha stood to the side and nodded her approval. Against my better judgment, I stayed put, trusting she’d do only what was necessary for as long as it was needed.

From a distance, I watched as Clone Sasha moved her left hand to Selby’s neck and pointed her right index finger above his left kidney.

That was the signal. 

Rhapsody moved quickly through the grass and ghosted the needle through the back of Selby’s suit and into his body. He broke their kiss and gasped, slashing the knife behind him at his regular, slow speed.

Then he reared his arm back and plunged the knife into Clone Sasha.

I screamed “no” and rushed to Original Sasha’s side. So did Esteban. When she absorbed her clone, the wound passed over to her. I held her in my arms as her body went into spasms.

“You…” she said, her lips trembling.
“Promised.”

I’d told her I would make sure she kept living. She'd said it as a joke on the train, but there was always a little truth behind her jokes. She trusted in me to protect her and I’d failed. Even now, I couldn’t fly her to the hospital in Walsh. She’d die in the air.

“Take her to the hospital,” I said to Esteban.

His eyes darted back and forth. “I don’t know where it is.”

I lost my temper and swore at him. “Find it!”

He nodded and they disappeared in a wisp of emerald green smoke.    

That left us alone with Selby. Rhapsody had done away with his bloody knife and stripped him of his prisms. She had him on his knees, her hand at the back of his neck. With my strength, she could easily snap his spine, like King had done to Debra.

“Move an
inch,”
she told him. “I want to see you do it.”

Now, unable to harm anyone, I saw Selby for who he was. An overhyped bully with serious issues. He cursed us from the ground and spat at my feet. I hoped my blood’s effects on him had finally worn off so he would feel everything that I was about to do to him.

Killing King was one thing. He was old and should’ve died a long time ago. Selby was around my age. Murder is murder, I guess, but one seemed worse to do than the other. Even after everything he’d done, I couldn’t picture taking his life.   

He belonged on death row. That much was clear. Problem was, we couldn’t put him there or prove any of his murders. He’d committed all of them with otherworldly powers. Except Sasha’s. By the time the cops delved into all of the details of our story, we’d all be in handcuffs or straitjackets.

For like the third time in an hour, something Hughes had said to me came to pass. Everything we thought about laws, right and wrong, had to change.

Starting now.   

CHAPTER TWENTY

happy sixteenth birthday to me

Birthdays should be personal holidays, the one day out of the year I get exactly what I want.

Debra didn’t see it that way. She did wake up early and order hotel room service for us, but it came with a catch. Debra sat at the edge of my midnight green pull-out couch of a bed to deliver it. She didn’t turn on the light, so I pretended that I was still asleep.

She kept talking, anyway. “Happy birthday, sleepyhead.”

I ignored her, trying not to smile.

She tapped my back with her fingers. “I know it’s your birthday today, but I want you to go to school. You’ve missed enough already.”

I rubbed the lingering sleep from my eyes.
Go to school? Is she serious?
To learn what? Too sleepy to communicate with words, I moaned and sank into my soft white pillow.

Sighing, she turned on every lamp in the living area. There was the staggered slide of her feet across the tan carpet. Then I heard liquid pouring and smelled the rich flavor of brewed coffee beans. Hot coffee. She had me at least a little interested. 

“You and Rhapsody mean well but you’ve been non-stop helicopters circling around me and it’s making me nuts.”

I ended the façade of fake sleep, held out my hand for the coffee she’d made me and sipped it. The bitterness made my tongue curl. She hadn’t put enough sugar in it.

At this point, I didn’t see the need for traditional education. With everything we’d been through, I felt as if I’d lived fifty years. Thanks to the Collective, we had access to millions of dollars and no war to spend it on. Rhapsody, Esteban and I decided to split a million three ways and leave the rest for now. That would be enough to get us back on our feet and more than enough for Esteban’s family to leave Everwood.

Sasha’s parents made way more than that. They wouldn’t need it. 

Anytime I pictured going to class, I’d think some lazy kid in my class would complain about his page of homework. Then I’d want to tell him about a real problem, like how to survive a nuclear explosion.

Sensing my reluctance to her suggestion, Debra scratched at her white and blue headscarf and sat with her own cup of coffee. Nowadays, thanks to her injuries, her energy levels dipped without warning. Thick, dark circles sagged underneath her eyes. She didn’t sleep much since being kidnapped. Unlike us super beings, she’d aged in real time.

The white neck brace kept her chin in place so she faced me. “Go.” She patted the bed’s floral print quilt. “Get Rhapsody to go with you. We’re safe now.”

Something inside me recoiled.
Are we safe, truly out of danger?
Ryan, Luis, and Julio were missing with blood water.
If they drank it, they should be dead or dying, right?
Our other enemies were definitely dead. Without the aquamarines around they weren’t coming back. 

All except for one.

Until Selby joined them in death, a part of my brain would never relax.

“Tomorrow,” I argued. “Today we’ll stay here, pig out on room service, whatever.”

She frowned. “No, you won’t and you know it! The solar storms knocked out the cable, the internet, and your cell phones. You two will bother me until Dee gets back. No thanks.”

And when would that be? We had no way to reach Aunt Dee. According to Debra, the address King mentioned belonged to my distant cousin. I’d have gone to check on them by now, but our governor declared a high level terror alert. They couldn’t shoot us down, but it wasn’t a bad idea to lay low, especially since video of the train derailing had gone viral.

At least we had been masked. With the cable down, the only place we saw photos of ourselves was in the newspapers they laid at our door every morning with headlines like, “Inhumans in action.”
Inhumans?
It was scary and cool at the same time. 

“Deal?” She extended her hand so we could shake on it.

I hesitated. “One condition. No curfew tonight.”

Her face twisted. A school night out with my girlfriend and access to unlimited funds? I knew she’d disapprove, maybe even say no. But she couldn’t really force me not to, and the fact I even asked beforehand was a milestone in itself.

It was my birthday and I had a promise to keep. “C’mon. I’m sixteen today and we saved the world. Twice.”

My wisecrack brought a smile to her face. “I get that. But remember what I said about waiting. And you go to class tomorrow and Friday, no cutting. That’s the deal.”

I remembered every word she said. I didn’t have the heart to tell her the truth. Heliodor makes its wearer unable to have kids. Since I'd absorbed its radiation, I was not sure I could have them later if I wanted to. Still, Rhapsody and I should be protected the conventional way. That made sense. I’d agree to that.

I shook her hand, agreeing to two of the three conditions. “Deal.”  

After we ate, showered, and dressed, Rhapsody and I flew to North High and landed behind the sophomore wing near the quad. The campus was wide-open, formed of brick and the landscaped bushes had been neatly clipped and trimmed. Most of the past three days replayed in my mind on continuous loop and made me paranoid. I wore my body suit to school and cloaked it so all anyone would see was the white Raiders shirt and black cargo shorts I wore underneath. I’d do it until Selby was dead.

“Ready?” I asked her.

Rhapsody was back in full Goth attire, black eyeliner and lipstick, netted shirt with tank top underneath, a skirt and ripped fishnets.

“No, I’m not ready,” she said. “It’s too early and it’s your birthday. Let’s call it a day and start over tomorrow. He might not even be here.”

She knew I’d need to see Selby sooner rather than later, and not because I wanted to. Besides, for me, if I never started, I’d never want to start. I promised Debra and keeping my word was new for me. “We’ll get through it.”

We walked over to a group of kids dressed like her and sat on a soft carpet of green grass. She introduced them to me one-by-one, and by the third one, I couldn’t remember their names, except Bridget. She was quite possibly the shortest person I’d ever seen.  

While they discussed the latest alternative music release, I busied myself by absorbing the normalcy of this morning.

“Warning bell’s in two,” Bridget said. Her voice bounced with a dash of husk to it. 

I inhaled the air and didn’t smell anything burning or the scent of gunpowder. For the first time in five months nobody was trying to kill me. I wasn’t depressed over Mom. We’d rescued Debra, and she had even scheduled an appointment with my therapist. Susan was alive – she and her husband were out of the country on a trip. Ray and Julia were okay, too.

Everything was almost perfect.

Rhapsody and I separated at the bell and promised to meet in the hallway outside my homeroom. I found my way to Ms. Burbank’s class and sat in the empty seat in the middle. The third one from the front was also empty, but that one belonged to Sasha.

Ms. Burbank walked down the aisle and looked over her glasses at me. Her red poof of hair sent a shudder down my spine. It reminded me of Taylor’s.

“Jason, it’s so good to see you back. I trust you got the work I sent home with Sasha?”

I thought about my knapsack, the one I’d left in my hospital room and had yet to go back for. Not the one on my shoulder that could withstand supersonic speeds. “Yeah, I did. I left it in the hospital and my stepmom can’t drive yet.”

She touched my desk with her bony index finger. “Where is Sasha? So unlike her to miss school!”

I recited the story Esteban had told to Sasha’s parents, the hospital and the cops. “She was in a bad part of town and got stabbed. She’s still in intensive care.”

Ms. Burbank laid a hand on her chest. “My God! Is she going to pull through?”

She’d already had two operations and the doctors were discussing a medical coma. “Nobody knows.”

“She’ll be in my prayers. Have her mother call the school or send me an e-mail when they’re ready. We’ll get her started on homebound.”

The homebound program was for students who had children or injuries that would cause them to miss a significant amount of school. She had put herself between Selby and anyone else he’d stab to death and might die for it. And Selby was alive, healthy.

He might even be in the building.

Rhapsody knew his schedule and said that he’d pass right by me if I took the long way to first period World Literature. That was what I intended to do, because I hated English class. If Selby lived even a second longer than Sasha did, I don’t know that I’d ever forgive myself for allowing it. I could have killed him after Rhapsody injected him with the adrenal meds but I hadn’t. That decision haunted me whenever I tried closing my eyes and going to sleep.

I tapped rhythms on the underside of the desk until the homeroom period ended. I had to rely on the suit’s cooling system to dry my clammy armpits and skin. Joining the crowd, I left the room and met Rhapsody at the end of the hallway. She gave me a quick kiss. “Ready?”

“To take his head off? Yeah, I’ve been ready for that.”

Rhapsody sucked her teeth and took my hand. This time when she squeezed it, I knew it meant she believed in me, that I wouldn’t cause a scene. “At least see if it worked, first.”

She meant what we’d done to Selby, the only way out of killing him. Locked up anywhere, he’d spill the beans about the crystals, us, the compound, the Collective. If they could prove one thing about his story, we’d be toast.

My body suit didn’t have pockets, so I balled my free hand into a fist. I spotted Selby’s freckled face and my heart jumped. He walked in our direction on purpose. In a few seconds we’d be face-to-face for the first time since Rhapsody had strapped him to a hospital bed. He had taunted us, saying, “You have to kill me and you won’t.”

Then he had tapped his temple, the same way Courtney had done before she died. My memories of her snapped like a stretched rubber band. Looking back, I realized many of the things she’d said to us were clues about future events. This was one of them.

I had to use my scarlet emerald powers to erase his memories.

It was the hardest thing I’d ever done, like taking every standardized test of my life over again in a row backwards.  Courtney said it took concentration, patience and control – three things I was usually bad at. Rhapsody had known him for years, so she helped by first drugging him and making him talk about everything, starting with the provenance emerald in the basement of Reject High and his speed powers.