Super Nobody (Alphas and Omegas Book 1) (33 page)

“I'm your only girl,” she said, and Michael
felt her face lift into an easy smile. He also felt the mask over
his face.

“I've got a few new 45's for you,” her mom
said. Michael looked down at the stack of records. “I thought you'd
want some doowop and some easy listening.”

“That's great mom.”

“Coming home?” one of the twins asked.
“Charrit coming home?”

Charlotte's mom smiled, but there wasn't any
warmth in it. It was a hollow smile, and the way her throat worked
up and down, Michael was sure she was on the verge of tears.

“Soon, bud,” she rasped. There it was. On cue
the tear slipped down her cheek.

“Quit it,” Charlotte said.

Her mom just nodded.

Charlotte's mom blurred, and suddenly Michael
was staring down at Mr. L. The fat, bald former teacher already
looked thinner. And Michael was, well, he was enraged. A feeling
he'd never before experienced went all through his body, the pure
anger of a man who has carefully laid out the silverware, plates,
folded up the napkins into peacock fan shapes, put on low candles
and expected a pleasant dinner date, only to have some slob sit
down at the table just before the conversation got interesting.
Archibald was this slob, he was the man interrupting a scheme that
was building up, and this was not at all something you just
got
wrong
. This was the rendezvous, the soiree, the gala to end all
galas, and when the French made up a word that slithered its way
into English, you had better believe it was the perfect word.

“No manners,” Michael said coldly. “You're
the type of man to be third at a dinner for two, and not even ask
to pass the rolls. Am I right? You'd just reach over and grab
whatever you like.”

It was a day of firsts. Michael had never
before dreamed of Mrs. Sulszko, never woken up half boy, half tube.
He had also never before seen Mr. L scared.

Now he was. Sweat ran down his face. The
little hair he had was frizzy and stuck out to one side. His
glasses, gone. This was not the time to be messing with Michael
Washington.

“Sir, please, listen,” Mr. L said. Where was
that smug grin now, Michael thought.

“Oh yes, you think you've done us a grand
favor, don't you? You think you've made everything easier for us.
You're wrong.”

“But, I, I don't-” Mr. L spluttered.

“The Alphas were nothing before. Now they
will come back stronger and better prepared than ever. The same for
the citizens of their pathetic settlement. There was no shield
before. Our agents were confident of a full-scale collapse within a
few months, but
only if you had done your job.”

Mr. L's face contorted in pain, and he began
screaming. He was tied to a chair, and he struggled uselessly
against it. As Michael watched, several places in his face became
like liquid, running over into foreign places. His cheek collapsed,
and an ear slid down until it was at the corner of his mouth. There
was no talking, just a growing scream that started out impossible
to hear. It slowly ran up all the way to MAX, until Mr. L was
drawing great gulps of air in between full throated screams.

And then he woke up again.

This time he drifted awake, like the hospital
room was coated in a thick layer of fog and he was slowly burning
it away. He could hardly open his eyes for all the drugs still
circling around in his body. He didn't know what they'd given him,
but he couldn't move a muscle. Dragging his eyelids open was more
difficult than trying to climb that thirty foot rope in gym class.
He hated that rope.

They were whispering to each other, his mom
and dad. “Jackson's got his work cut for him then.”

“Between working on just about everybody in
town, and getting ready for Alpha training, I'd say so.”

“And working on the shield.”

His dad snorted laughter. “Say what you want,
maybe he was lazy and manipulative before, but he won't have enough
time to be anymore.”

“We just better make sure someone's watching
over his shoulder. I still don't trust him.”

Michael roared with effort, but just managed
to pull his eyes open for a second. His mom and dad were sitting in
the visitor's chairs a few feet beyond his hospital bed, well away
from the cloud of beeping machines.

“I thought maybe...” his dad said. “Maybe
this was it. You know, we talk about it sometimes.”

“Oh Michael,” his mom said. Michael couldn't
sort through a statement like that, so loaded with feeling he'd
have to separate them with a shovel.

“I can't lose you.”

“You're not going to,” she said.

“And you're not going anywhere, right?
Because my dad said you told him-”

She sighed. “I just don't know, Michael. This
place, it's...it's dangerous. It seems like its more dangerous than
safe right now. Maybe it always was. You just can't put these
people together in a town like this and expect everybody to
cooperate.”

“But...but it's been that way for the last
fifteen years.”

“I know, and we had some close calls. But
nothing like this. And you know what, Michael? I don't think
Archibald was the real deal. I think he was the tip of the
iceberg.”

Michael opened his eyes again, and locked on
with his mother's.

“Somebody's waking up,” she said.

“Welcome back to the land of the living,
bud,” his dad said.

He could only manage a tiny 'mmm', and open
his eyes for a fraction of a second. His mom and dad were sitting
before him, smiling in some unfamiliar way. It took him a while to
realize they were both worried and relieved: happy, mostly. They
also looked bone tired.

“You were asleep a while there,” Dad said.
“Your mom and I started to get worried you were getting carried
away in whatever dream you were having.”

They got him water when he was finally able
to ask, and watched him while he drank it.

“You feeling okay sport?” his dad asked.

“I got shot didn't I?” he asked.

“Pretty brave, everything you did. I heard
all about it.”

Mr. Terry Pratchett had some interesting
things to say about bravery, Michael knew. You could cook up a
completely insane plan, like charge a dragon with a blindfold on
and one hand tied behind your back. If you survived: brave. You
died: crazy, stupid.

“Thanks,” he said anyway.

“You did...” his dad looked away, wiped his
face, then turned back. “You did better than I did.”

“Michael,” Susanna said gently. It was her
way of saying the whole thing wasn't anybody's fault, and most
especially the funeral.

“Somebody died,” Michael said. It was half a
question, and his dad nodded.

“We had the funeral just yesterday, while you
were still recovering from the surgery.”

Surgery. He'd been out for at least an entire
day, on whatever sorts of drugs they used to put you to sleep, for
however many hours they needed to cut you open, do some business
inside your body, then sew you back up again.

“That super sucks,” he said.

“Language,” his mother admonished. Still, the
grunty chuckle out of his dad was worth seeing.

“How long...” he asked.

“Two days.”

“They wouldn't tell me about Charlotte,” he
said.

“She's going to make it,” his mother said,
and still managed a look of distaste. Wow, even after all this,
after Charlotte had saved his life, she still wasn't going to cut
the Sulszko family any slack. He wanted to see her, but knew enough
about his mom to keep his mouth shut. When he could walk, he'd
walk. Find Charlotte. Ask her what it was like to be a wolf. Try to
pretend he hadn't bared his soul to her.

“Well bud,” his dad said. “Your mom and I are
going to get some rest. Doctor's orders. Somebody hasn't gotten any
sleep in the last forty-eight hours, has she?”

“Some things are more important than sleep,”
his mother said, but a touch of smile hit her face. Soon they
struggled to their feet, left him with his e-reader and the TV
remote, and shuffled out to get some sleep.

He wanted to bring up the Omega Syndicate,
but they hadn't even talked about the Alphas. They hadn't talked
about much, except that Michael was awake, Charlotte wasn't headed
for the light at the end of the tunnel, and someone on the Alphas
didn't make it.

They didn't mention how Stone had been
contacted, and how they'd arrived back in town less than twelve
hours after the situation got serious. They barely talked about
Michael and his mother leaving
forever.
If there was ever a
talk to be had and closed up, that was the one.

His dad was playing it very smart. In the
coming days, Michael knew, his mom's mood was going to dictate the
future of the entire family. They couldn't leave anything up to
chance, not when she might cut herself chopping vegetables and then
be packed to leave town twenty minutes later. This was the whole
reason for the Keys. They were so silly, yet so important, weren't
they? If Michael disappeared, his dad might collapse, and what
would happen then? An Active with nothing to live for, no reason,
well, they might just start thinking things like Mr. L had.

Mr. L, good old Archibald. The details of the
dream snapped into focus. He shuddered when he thought about what
had happened to Mr. L's face. He had every reason to believe it had
really happened too, and that somewhere out there was a person much
scarier than Mr. L, a person with plans in the long term. Plans
maybe older than Michael. Probably older. Someone patient and
exacting, someone...

...someone who still had agents in town.

Michael had to tell someone, but now wasn't
the time. Charlotte was the most important right now. He wanted to
see her, and she was the only one who would understand about
this.

Who else could he tell? The other adults in
his life had their own agendas, or they were forced to talk to him,
like Mr. Springfield, in which case they were part of somebody
else's agenda. Which was just sad, when it came down to it. He was
just a thirteen year old kid. He didn't need to be in the middle of
something this huge.

He stopped.

“Huh,” he said. “Course I don't. I don't need
to know anything about it.” And at the core, it was true, wasn't
it? It was an adult thing, and the only thing he was going to get
by involving himself was hurt, confused, and upset by what they
weren't telling him.

But he was a part of it now. Active or no,
adult or no, he had gotten involved. He couldn't just back out now.
Too many things would circle around his head until he went
crazy.

He swung his legs out of bed and hobbled out
to see whether Charlotte's mom had actually cried.

He bumped straight into Mr. Terrence Jackson
as he was about out his hospital room door. Just great. He hadn't
even started looking for the one person he wanted to see, and
already he smacked into the last person on his list.

“Going somewhere, Mr. Washington? You should
be in bed. Doctor's orders.”

“I-” he started. The old familiar deference
to elders was springing up, closing up most of the parts of his
mind except for the manners, and his mother's first lesson was
clearest: no talking until your elder asks you a question.

“Have a seat. We need to talk.”

He did. Jackson sat next to him. Right away
Michael noticed the dark circles already under his eyes, like he'd
been punched twice. He looked a bit like a raccoon. His hair stuck
out in odd places, and he clearly hadn't had a shower since before
Michael was in the hospital. Yuck.

“Think you were pretty clever, electrocuting
the entire town, don't you?” Jackson said. “You'll get the hero's
welcome from the rest of them, but not me. What you did was foolish
and could have gotten a lot of people killed.”

Michael found himself growing angry. This was
a sort of normal reaction to Mr. Jackson. Even when Michael had
cleared him of being in the Omega Syndicate, and while he was
riding that train of thought, there might still be Omegas in town.
Mr. Jackson could still be one of them.

“I'm not sure I understand, sir,” Michael
said.

“Course you don't.”

“So you're saying, if I left Mr. L doing what
he was doing, a lot of people wouldn't have been in danger of
dying?”

“That's the sort of thinking, Washington,
that gets innocent people killed. It isn't up to you to decide,
boy. We leave the decision-making to the people of this town. They
know the risks when they move in here. They know that at any time,
a thirteen year old kid might Activate and go straight up nuclear
on the town.”

Meaning he, Michael, might just destroy half
the town at any given time.

“What happened with Mr. L was anticipated. We
had planned for it.”

Michael made a noise. “Psshhhyeah, and that
worked out real well. The Alphas-”

“The Alphas were the distraction for me to
engage Mr. L,” Jackson snarled. “You just delayed that. You can
keep your judgments and speculations to yourself.”

Michael could just see it: Mr. L along with
twenty of the town's Actives flying out to fight his father and the
team. Everybody would have been dead, home and away teams. Of
course, being an adult made you right. Even if being an adult made
you impossible, you were automatically right.

“And you can feel free to wipe that look off
your face. I may not be able to read your thoughts, young master
Washington, but your feelings are very clear on your face.”

“Yes sir,” he said. Kill em with kindness. Or
at least manners. Being kind to Terrence Jackson was always going
to be much more than a stretch, it was going to be like cutting his
own throat.

“So we are agreed then,” Mr. Jackson said.
“You leave the defense of this city to the people who spend their
days thinking of such things, and I leave the play time and the
girl-chasing to young people who have very little concept of how
the world works.”