Riser (Teen Horror/Science Fiction) (Book #1 in The Riser Saga) ((Volume 1)) (46 page)

Turner had his usual
public
face
on. All concern and heartbreak. “It appalls me that Mayor Bradfield could be responsible for such acts. It is a violation of what Population Control stands for and it a hideously cruel act of murder and man-slaughter. Our hearts go out to the victims of this horrendous crime and Population Control will do everything in its power to make restitution for Mayor Bradfield’s actions. I’d especially like to thank Jason Keroff and Chelsan Derée for bringing this footage to light. If not for the heroics of those two individuals, Mayor Bradfield would have succeeded. The city of Los Angeles thanks you, the world thanks you, and I thank you...”

Jason turned the holo off with a grunt. “The bastard got away with it. Every bit of footage, equipment and logs were all under Bradfield’s name. We should have known when he let us go so easily at Headquarters. It wouldn’t hurt him either way if we actually succeeded!” Jason was fuming now.

I should have been more upset by this news, but somehow it seemed expected.

This was a small respite from my grandfather. I didn’t know how, but I just knew it in my heart.

“Make him set up a memorial,” I said to Jason, interrupting his rant.

Jason stopped and he nodded. “First thing.”

Ryan leaned over and kissed my cheek. It was the first feeling of good that I felt since leaving Turner’s.

Jason was already on the phone making demands and it made me smile a little as I looked around the kitchen. My new family. Everyone with a few bumps and bruises but otherwise just fine. I felt my emotions course through me as I realized how much they were a part of my life. As difficult as it was to think of my mother after everything that happened, I knew she’d be happy for me. I couldn’t let my grandparents have that kind of power over me. I wouldn’t let them destroy the beautiful memories I had of my mom. She loved me with everything that she had. She stayed with a man that beat the crap out of her just to keep me safe. She will always be my hero.

Ryan reached over and wiped the tears from my cheeks. I didn’t even know I had been crying. I had been doing a lot of that lately. And probably a lot more in the days to come. I needed to heal from all this and it was going to take time.

Ryan held my face in hands and kissed me. It was filled with just as much passionate toe-curling craziness as all of Ryan’s kisses, but there was something more to it this time. I wasn’t nervous. It felt right. I finally felt like we loved each other equally. I never wanted to be with anyone else and I knew Ryan felt the same way.

“You all need showers,” George said with a crinkle of his nose.

It was such an obvious statement that we all started laughing. It felt good to release the tension. And for once in a very long time I felt like everything was going to be okay.

“I hate to be the bad guy here, but school
is
tomorrow.” Vianne gave us a look that made it clear she was just the messenger.

Really?!

I couldn’t believe it was only Monday! But the more I thought about it, the more welcoming it sounded. Normal. Calm.

Then I thought of Jill’s threat:
If my father doesn’t come back, I’m holding you fully responsible and if you think your life was torture before, you haven’t seen anything yet.

Well, at least she wouldn’t try and kill me.

Who was I kidding? School was going to suck.

Uuggh!

Becca C Smith received her Film degree from Full Sail University and has worked in the Film and Television industry for most of her adult life. Becca wrote and illustrated
Little Family Secrets
, a graphic novel based on the true story of her great aunt who was famous for murdering her husband. Becca is also the co-author of the teen graphic novel
Ghost Whisperer: The Haunted
. She currently lives in Los Angeles, CA with her husband and two cats Jack and Duke.

A sneak peek of, Reaper, Book #2 in The Riser Saga

Now Available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble

CHAPTER ZERO

YEAR: 2320

     I was dreaming.

     It was the only way I could explain the darkness.

    It felt like I was standing in outer space where someone forgot to add the stars. It had to be a dream…

     …Or maybe something else.

      My gut was screaming that this was something more.  Something all too familiar.

     The last time I had a “dream” like this my friend (and super famous reporter) Jason Keroff told me it was called astral projection.  Yeah, sounds pretty weird, but actually it’s quite terrifying.  It basically means that I’ve either traveled to someone else’s brain or they’ve traveled to mine. 

     Either way, not exactly my idea of a fun time. 

     I might be jaded though. The only three times I’ve ever experienced astral projection were pretty horrific. The first time was my mother telling me that she was being murdered. The second and third times were with my grandparents. Which I know for a normal eighteen-year-old girl might not be a problem, but for me it was terrifying since my grandparents wanted to kill me. 

     Yes, I said kill me.

   What’s crazy is that I didn’t even know who my grandparents were two months ago! But suddenly they were in my life and ready to take me down. In fact, they were the ones who murdered my mother in the first place!

    My grandfather is Geoffrey Turner, the Vice President of Population Control, which basically makes him the most powerful man on the globe.  With the world’s population out of control due to a tiny pill called Age-pro, which stops the aging process and makes you young forever, he definitely has his hands full.  Before I knew him as Gramps I thought he was a pretty decent guy, but that was before I found out how he actually controlled over-population. 

     Unbeknownst to the public, he exterminates them, and my mom was one of the casualties.  He gassed our trailer park and made the world believe it was a tornado. If it weren’t for my besties, Nancy, Bill and Jason (and my unbelievably amazingly gorgeous boyfriend, Ryan), the public would never have known about what really happened to my mom. Of course, sneaky man that my grandfather is, he completely framed the Mayor of Los Angeles and got away scot-free. So my mission wasn’t over.  I vowed to expose my grandfather for the mass murderer he was. 

     I still intend to accomplish this.

     The first time Gramps visited my dreams he flaunted the fact that he had Brady, (the serial killer he hired to kill me) under his control. (Yes, he employs serial killers for his methods of “fixing” over-population.  Serial killers who were supposed to be extinct for a hundred years!) I could see the black swirling hole spinning in the center of Brady’s chest and I knew he was dead, and that my grandfather controlled him. 

     Did I forget to mention that’s how I see dead people? 

   Actually, anything dead.  If it had life, and now it doesn’t, I see a black churning hole in its center. 

     Oh, and I should also probably mention that I can control the dead, too. Like they were puppets. Seriously, I know how it sounds, but it’s something I inherited as a baby when my father sacrificed himself to save my mother and me from the deadly curse dear old Grandpa and Grandma placed on us. (Another story for another time. Let’s just say that Dad’s side of the family has some serious conflict-resolution issues.) Anyway, I quickly found out my grandparents have the same power to control the dead that I have, but they use rituals and Vodun spells to do it.  I guess that gives me an advantage because my power over the dead is innate, but not much. Turner still manages to be a step ahead of me at every turn. 

    The third time I experienced this “dream astral thingy” was with Roberta, my grandmother.  She’s what society calls a Feline. Someone who was around when Age-pro was invented in 2020, and had so many face-lifts they resembled cats.  Age-pro “freezes” you at the age you’re at when you start taking it, so she was stuck with stretched frozen face forever.  Turner keeps her out of the public eye since Felines terrify the youthful public. The main difference between my third dream and the earlier ones was the fact that it was actually me who traveled to her head. I saw all sorts of things in Roberta’s twisted brain.  The worst being that she and Turner kept my father eight-years-old for a hundred years by giving him Age-pro! So horrific, I still can’t stop thinking about it.

     So, yeah, astral projection, definitely lame.

    I looked around in the darkness, hoping that I wasn’t in either grandparent’s head.  Maybe I lucked out and I was in Ryan’s brain.

    I immediately wished I hadn’t thought that.  What if I saw that he didn’t like me as much as I liked him?  Or he was going to break up with me?  Or he secretly liked someone else?  I knew I was being paranoid, but I couldn’t help it. Ryan was just about the smartest most amazing boyfriend EVER. And I didn’t want to find out I was completely delusional in thinking that he actually liked me.

     I took a deep breath.  I had nothing to worry about.  Ryan had proven how much he liked me over and over. I needed to grow some confidence!

     And I needed to figure out where I was. Or more importantly, whose brain I was in.

     “Chelsan?” A child’s voice called out in the darkness.

     My heart skipped a beat. The voice sounded terrified.

    “Hello?” I answered back. The blackness was so complete I couldn’t even see my hand in front of me.

    Suddenly, I started to glow like my skin was coated with phosphorous. I became the light source in the inky shadows.

   That’s when a girl about seven years of age stepped into the luminosity my skin radiated. She was stunning to look at, with porcelain skin, bright lavender eyes and long black hair almost as dark as our surroundings. I couldn’t stop staring at her eyes. Aside from their over-large cupie doll size, they were filled with sadness and fear, but mostly hope.

    “You are Chelsan, aren’t you?” she asked tentatively.

    “Yes,” I kind of mumbled. I was still trying to figure out why I was in this girl’s head or more likely why she was in mine.

    “I knew it.” The little girl closed her eyes and took a sigh of relief.  “I’ve been searching for you since I first saw you.”

    “Um…” Wow. I was full of words of wisdom. I couldn’t seem to help it.  Even though this girl was maybe eight tops, she intimidated the crap out of me.  She just held herself in a way that radiated power. I felt out of my depth and I couldn’t figure out why.

     “I saw you.” She stepped forward and her lavender eyes pierced through me. 

     I felt like I was being probed or something. It scared me enough to take a step back from her.

     “Who are you?” I blurted out.

     The girl immediately placed her hands up in supplication. “Don’t be scared of me. I need your help, and you’re the only one with the power to do it.”

     “Look kid…” I was about to try and break our brain-dream connection.  This girl was freaking me out on a core level, even worse than Turner had when I first met him.  She was just… well… scary.  And I had zero reasons to give why.  It was just instinctual.  Something was very off.

     “I’m ninety-eight.”

     Oh.

     Oh man.

     Of course. That’s what was off.  Her eyes were scary because she was almost a hundred years old and stuck in a child’s body! She said she had seen me before.

     “The I.Q. Farm.” I suddenly realized.

     “Yes. I saw you use the rats.” She looked up at me with desperation. “I saw you bring them to life and attack the guards. You escaped and left us all there.” She nearly choked from emotion.

      I remembered all too well. When the gang and I snuck into Turner’s headquarters I connected to hundreds of dead rats and made them attack Turner’s army so we could escape. It was a terrifying experience especially when we stumbled into one of Turner’s biggest secrets: I.Q. Farms.

     Turner kidnaps kids whose test scores rank above the genius level and brings them to facilities known as I.Q. Farms. The public has no idea these farms even exist, and Turner’s goons keep the children’s parents silent. The only reason I had even heard of these farms in the first place was because Turner took Ryan when he was eight. Ryan pretended he had cheated on his test scores and Turner sent him back home.  Three years later my grandparents were furious when they realized that Ryan had tricked them when he solved Trilidon’s theorem. (A math problem that hadn’t been solved in centuries!) But Ryan never forgot how terrifying the I.Q. Farm had been. And when we discovered one as we were escaping from Gramps’s headquarters, Ryan realized that some of the kids were the same age as when he’d left them. 

     Yet another distortedly repulsive thing my grandfather does. Using Age-pro to keep these kids children forever. I still didn’t know why these farms existed, but seeing this girl in front of me and knowing she was seventy years older than me made me want to throw-up a little.

     “I’m… I’m sorry.” That’s all that I could say. The kids had looked like they were in technological comas when we were there, all of them strapped into devices and focused on holo-screens. 

     But the guilt hit me like a ton of bricks.

     I had left hundreds of kids locked in a basement of technology against their will.