Forgotten (Reject High: A Young Adult Science Fiction Series Book 3) (16 page)

We neared Illinois late Sunday afternoon, about two hours after departing the Colorado Rockies. It made little sense to zip around the skyline looking for a train station, so I set us down just outside Chicago-Midway airport. We could take a taxi into town, secure lodging for the night, and meet the Collective, Esteban, and Sasha in the morning. One thing I’ve learned so far about this mission-to-save-the-planet thing – I can’t do it by myself.

Stuffy and crowded with people, the inside of the transportation terminal buzzed with conversations. The public address system blasted random announcements. The environment was a little disquieting so soon after I'd said goodbye to my mother.

“C’mon,” Rhapsody said. She grabbed my hand and dragged me over to the information kiosk manned by a pleasant-looking, blonde Caucasian woman.

“Welcome to Chicago,” she said, adding a little extra “ah” on the “a” in Chicago. “How can I be of service?”

Rhapsody saw a map on the ground and handed it to me. “Can you text the others our coordinates for me?”

I rummaged through my backpack for my cell phone. Finding it underneath my extra suit, I said, “Got it.”

While I figured out our location, the attendant rapped her fingers against the counter. Were we taking too long? “Need directions to a lake? Is that where you’re headed today?” she asked me.

I’d forgotten that we were wearing white shirts and shorts and you could see Rhapsody’s bikini underneath her clothes. “What’s a good mall to go to?” she asked the woman.

“There are shops downtown, if you want to stay close. Otherwise, Gurnee Mills is about an hour away, if your parents don’t mind the drive.”

My phone chirped with a message, “OK.” I showed it to Rhapsody. “This is all Camuto said. No answer from the others. They must be still in the air.”

“Thanks.” She waved at the attendant and we headed for the taxi stand. We’d have to show the driver that we had enough money for a trip that far outside the city.

“Hungry?” I asked her. Thanks to using my powers, my appetite was more in than out.

She pointed to her clothes and mine. “Yeah. Totally. As long as we do something about our clothes. We’ve been wearing the same thing for two days.”

She had a valid point and we had wads of money to use. I hailed us a taxi. The driver, an older Caucasian man with a raggedy mustache and a few days’ worth of graying stubble, offered to take our backpacks, but they were too valuable to leave our hands.

He adjusted his flat plaid cap. “Where are you trying to go?”

“Gurnee Mills,” Rhapsody said.

“Gurney Mills?
You got money? That’s a hump from here.”

I’d prepared for this and handed him a twenty dollar bill. “That’ll get us started, right?”

He took it and held it up to the light to examine its authenticity. “These new twenties look all funny to me. Get in.”

Close to an hour and a half later we arrived at an entrance with large, spaced out block letters spelling out “Gurnee Mills.” Cars dotted the parking lot. We’d arrived after six pm and the mall closed at seven on Sundays, which didn’t give us a lot of time to shop.

After I paid the balance of the taxi bill plus a generous tip, we went inside and found a directory. Shop-wise,  the mall wasn’t as big as the one we usually went to back home, but it was large enough that we couldn’t take our time looking around for long.

Rhapsody gave me a peck on the lips and dashed off. “Meet you at Ruby Tuesday’s in an hour,” she shouted over her shoulder.

I had to make good use of my time, too. Following the lit up map, I headed straight for the Nike factory store and bought a pair of white Retro Jordan sneakers, some athletic socks, a package of underwear, three pairs of sweatpants with pockets and matching t-shirts. I’d have bought a Raiders shirt, but the only black jerseys they carried were from the White Sox.

Ducking into the bathroom, I stepped out of my body suit and changed from what I’d been wearing into my new clothes and sneakers. After putting on my body armor once more, I zipped up and activated the cloaking device by pressing the back of my hand. Then I stuffed my new clothes into my book bag and ditched the empty shoebox and plastic bags.

From there I went straight to Ruby Tuesday’s and sat at the bar. Rhapsody would want to eat together, so I purchased a lemonade and watched the sports highlights. To my right, the television aired the local news. I had no interest in watching that. The last time I saw the news Julia had been stabbed and I’d been arrested for it. Nobody needs that kind of karma.

When I was halfway through my fourth lemonade, Rhapsody arrived at the waitress station. She, too, had ditched her old clothes. What she was wearing looked nothing like I expected her to wear – a blue denim skirt and unbuttoned red and blue patterned blouse with a white tank top underneath. The only thing black on her entire outfit were her new boots. I stood up, tossed a few bills on top of my receipt, and met her there.

“No laughing,” she warned me. “It’s not like I had a whole lot of options here.”

I couldn’t conceal my smiling. “Noted. Ready to eat?”

We polished off three appetizers, two entrees, and dessert without blinking. I ate mindlessly, barely tasting what I swallowed. Though I usually enjoyed what I ate, eating had become a routine for me – something I forced myself to do in order to function with superpowers.

At the end of dinner Rhapsody insisted on paying, just because she “could do it.” I knew the feeling. Having an unlimited wad of cash at our disposal was a wonderful feeling. It meant having
choices.
And besides, this might have been the last time for a while.

Hand-in-hand, we walked around the backside of the mall property, where the anchor stores had already closed for the evening. My plan was to find a safe place to take off from. However, Rhapsody had a different scenario in mind. She wanted to talk.

“So, about last night,” she said, her voice trailing off. “I wanted you to know…” She stopped talking, never finishing her sentence.

I looked at her and she made it clear with her eyes what she meant. I wasn’t used to Rhapsody clamming up about anything.

“Yeah, me, too,” I said. “Mine, too.”

“I thought you and Girl Genius might have hooked up before us.”

At that moment I realized how very little I knew about Rhapsody’s dating history.

Now I knew the most important thing, I guess, though she stopped short of actually saying it.

“No, we didn’t.”

She tickled the center of my palm with her thumb. “I stopped by Vicki’s. Got something cute.”

I didn’t know much about women, but I understood what “Vicki’s” meant. Trying not to seem the least bit surprised or excited about it, I said, “Okay.”

“Why not? We’ve been through a lot today and…we might not have tomorrow.”

I thought about every day being my last day, so I knew what she was saying. We did not have a lot of time. We had to make the most of what was left.

When it was clear no one had spotted us, we turned invisible and flew to a local hotel not far from the mall. We’d bribe our way into a room, get some sleep and in the morning meet up with our friends.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

we lose an old friend

Turns out we didn’t have to bribe our way into a hotel stay, after all. Rhapsody convinced the desk clerk that we were eighteen. She passed him a thousand dollars to hold as a security measure.

He eagerly took the money, telling us, “I’ll refund you the balance when you check out.” Even if he didn’t, it wasn’t our money and we wouldn’t even miss it that much.

Early Monday morning we woke up cuddled next to one another. Rhapsody wore the lacy, black nightgown she’d bought at Victoria’s Secret. She kept it on. When the weight of the day hit me and my eyes got misty, she curled up next to me. That night I dreamt of Mom the way she had looked the last time I saw her, and I felt a sense of peace.

Rolling over to my nightstand, I checked the time. Five-fifteen a.m. I got a return text from Esteban, saying they’d arrived in Chicago and had checked in at a place near the airport for the night. Scrolling down, I saw Camuto had texted us a series of reminders to meet them at Union Station promptly at six a.m. They’d disembark the number seven Southwest and meet us on the platform for the thirty-four Pennsylvania train headed straight into Harrisburg.

Camuto said she had a plan. I thought it would be a bigger deal than a straight route. I poked Rhapsody in the side.

She stirred. “Mmm. Not now, I’m sleepy.”

“Time to get up,” I grumbled.

We showered and dressed pretty quickly. Rhapsody’s outfit was a less preppy than the one she’d worn the day before – black jean shorts and a black spaghetti tank with a flannel over top of it. She slipped her arms into the straps of her book bag and turned off the cloaking on her armor.
“Now,
will you stop staring?”

“Fair enough,” I said. “I’ll go get the deposit back. Meet me downstairs in five.”

There was a different clerk on duty, a young, African-American girl no older than twenty-five or so. She did a double-take when she saw me approach. “Can I help you?”

I informed her of my situation, that I wasn’t old enough to rent a room with a credit card and had left a significant amount of money as a deposit. Flirting with her might be the only way to avoid suspicion, so I did it. Plus, how many girls think I’m good looking, anyway?

She played with the keys I’d handed her. “I’m supposed to inspect it first, but…it was just you up there, right?”

“Yeah,” I lied, letting my morning voice go as deep as it could. Her nametag said
Rita.
“Just me, Rita.”

“Okay.” She passed through a door to my right and returned with the cash in hand. After deducting the room’s expenses, she handed me the change with a business card at the bottom. “I have classes every day but Mondays and Tuesdays. Give me a call.”

I left without giving her any promises. Right before I got outside, I tossed Rita’s number into the trash can. She was cute, but there was no way I had room for that in my life. When Rhapsody gave me the street address for Union Station, I had to trust my ability to find it in a city that I didn’t know. Following a quick vanishing act, we took off.

We got to Union Station in good time, early enough to grab coffee and something to eat at an open Dunkin Donuts nearby. We’d had a twelve hour break from insanity, sickness, death and fighting, and while it felt nice, there was more work to be done. I wasn’t losing another mother in my life this week.

Still sipping from our cardboard coffee cups, we navigated our way to where the number seven southwest was due to come in. Underground, the area around the tracks smelled rank – a mixture of urine and rotten body odor. I checked the time on my phone instead of my watch. Although they were more bulky than most phones, our cells looked more normal than the large, boxy wrist pieces we wore.

Eight minutes.

“Good move, by the way,” Rhapsody said. “Tossing Rita’s number.” She pronounced “Rita” like it was a Spanish word for “poison.”

“We agreed! You wouldn’t ghost in unannounced.”

She rolled her neck.
Uh oh.
“Well, you have a girlfriend and you were flirting…”

“…to get our money back.” I puffed out my chest a little. “Had to eavesdrop, huh? Jealous much?”

She scoffed at my accusation and gestured towards her body’s curves.
“Please.
She’s a cute little college student and all, but why go for that when you’ve already got all
this?”

I couldn’t help smiling. She laughed. We needed this light moment. In four minutes or less, we’d go back to risking our lives for people who would never know we’d done it. Esteban and Sasha were nowhere to be seen. Where were they?

“They should be here by now,” I said out loud.

Rhapsody’s voice wavered. She sounded as nervous as I felt. “They will be.”

Almost on cue, I spotted a puff of green mist behind a stone pillar.
How did they get their crystals back?
Esteban and Sasha rounded the pillar. They joined us in front of the red platform edge, color-coded for danger’s sake. Esteban looked down, then at his bullet-marked forearm. It must have reminded him of the red road at home.

Since I was upright and pain-free, Sasha must have figured out what had happened. My mother was gone. She hugged me. “I’m here for you, too, you know.”

“I know,” I said before letting her go.
Six minutes.
“How did you get your prisms?”

“Calculated risk,” Sasha said, looking at my clothes. “King was looking for your radioactive signature, not ours. No sense in being defenseless.”

Esteban scowled at the rumble approaching. “The train’s here already?”

All four of us joined the crowd forming around the marquee. The red LED display said the train would arrive at 6 a.m. not 5:55 a.m. That wasn’t the only thing wrong. I’d heard subway trains arrive before. With this one, the metal against metal rattle was
quickening.
It was supposed to be slowing to a stop, but it was speeding up. This was the end of the line for the southwest. I didn’t want to jump the gun, but we were the only ones in the building with the ability to prevent a derailment.

Sasha pressed the backside of her palm and donned her mask. Soon she was surrounded by eight of her clones dressed in identical body armor. “I’ve got the crowd.”

Rhapsody, Esteban, and I put on our masks and turned the cloaking feature of our suits off. They followed me to the edge of the platform, stopping short when I jumped onto the rails. I pointed ahead. Even at a distance, the groaning train was overbearing, too loud for me to tell them what I was thinking they should do.

Frustrated, I used my scarlet emerald, forcing Esteban into teleporting himself and Rhapsody into the oncoming train. She should find the emergency break while he teleported as many passengers as he could. Meanwhile, I punched through the protective metal cover over the electrified rail and disrupted its flow. Bluish white sparks popped out as I bent the pieces backward to prevent their contact. From my current distance, I couldn’t tell whether or not Rhapsody had succeeded and the train was actually braking.

I flew into the corridor, slowing down when the glare of the white headlights hit my mask visors. Through its window I could see the conductor had slumped over in his chair and Rhapsody held onto the emergency brake for dear life. Palms outward, I pushed against the momentum of the train, increasing my speed as it neared the concrete wall behind me. The combination of the brake and my efforts seemed to be working, although my hands were sinking deep into the chassis of the front car.

The train finally stopped, sandwiching me between the front car and the wall. With care, I pushed it away just enough for me to climb free.

That’s when I noticed the people.

Esteban had teleported a group of about thirty. They were in various states of disarray – on the ground, checking their loved ones and patting themselves down for injury, or cursing a blue streak about how a second ago they were on a train and now they weren’t. Behind them, a sea of cell phones, tablets, and flashes were trained on me. Now would have been a good time for Hughes to blow a five second EMP with a three block radius. Too late. I had been exposed. The video would be on YouTube within the hour. King would know exactly where we were.

Suddenly they stopped recording and taking photos. I was invisible. Waving my hand against the train’s surface, I saw I was intangible, too. I hopped into the train next to the conductor. Olive-skinned and thin as a rail in his striped, button down shirt and blue vest, he lay against the controls.

“You here?” I asked, careful not to call Rhapsody by name.

“Yeah.” She touched my arm. “Dude’s either a really heavy sleeper or on something. We need to extract Courtney and Camuto before someone offers us a reality show.”

With any luck, they were long gone. But this was our team I was talking about.

Together, we ghosted through the cars in order. Without the electricity from the third rail, the train’s interior lights flickered and dimmed, functioning only on backup power. The first two were almost completely empty. The passengers in the cars that remained were disoriented and shaken up but uninjured.

Esteban popped inside the car from the other end. “I’ll get them out,” he said, approaching his next targets. “Sasha says cops are coming, two minutes out. We’ll meet you.”

“All right,” I said. We hurried to our business seating car. Unlike the other cars, there was no power at all. I clicked the pad on the underside of my palm, triggering the glow. A purplish aura of light projected for a foot or so. Though I knew where they would be sitting, we had to get closer to see them. Beneath the chaos going on inside the station and the buzz of the recovering lights, I heard low, painful groans and random movements from inside the car.

Rhapsody put her hands at my back. With our next step, something liquid squished under my feet.
Ewww.
I followed the trail back to its source, Camuto propped up against the window. Her right hand clamped over a gaping wound in the side of her neck. Her scarred face was ash gray and wrinkled, her hair thin, white and brittle. She wouldn’t have lost the heliodor prism that kept her alive since the 1900s –
it had been taken.
The train derailment had been set up to divert our attention and do this to her.

Camuto gurgled and pointed a bony finger behind me.

Courtney, our mentor was in a similar condition, covered by vicious gashes across her torso. I removed the heliodor stone from my necklace and placed it into her palm. The change in her condition wasn’t as immediate as it had been in the past. We didn’t have time to let it work.
What about Camuto?
She was in no condition to travel and I only had one heliodor prism.