THE COIN
Hans, with Jack still slung over his shoulder, burst out an emergency exit off the gym. He spun, scanning the line of cars in the gated faculty parking lot across the street. Then he loped across the road and tossed Jack in the open roof of a forest-green Jeep Wrangler.
“This is Mr. Robbins’s car—are you kidnapping me?” Jack demanded.
“I am rescuing you.”
“I don’t need rescuing!”
“We need to keep you alive, Jack. You are the only one who can save them.”
“Save who?”
Hans flipped down the visor and a key fell out. He jammed it into the ignition, and the Jeep roared to life. “Everyone.”
He peeled out onto the street, smashing through the locked gate of the parking lot. A police car that had just zipped past screeched to a stop and arced back around in the narrow lane. Another police car sped from the left, blocking them in.
“Which way to your apartment?” Hans asked. “Without using these roads.” Hans eyed the police cars and revved the Jeep’s engine.
“How should I know? I’ve never had to plan an escape route to my apartment!”
Hans frowned. “I see. Please grip tightly onto the bar above your head.”
Hans stomped the accelerator, heading straight for the cop cars. A moment before impact, Hans spun the steering wheel. The Jeep jumped the curb into a narrow alley, ripping the side mirrors off the vehicle. Jack yelped.
Hans hung a sharp left and an immediate hard right. They blasted across another street. Then Hans bullied Mr. Robbins’s Jeep between two more houses, tearing off their aluminum siding. A police siren wailed on a parallel street.
A few minutes later, the Douglass Apartments rose straight ahead. Hans’s wristband glowed scarlet. He peeled around Jack’s apartment building, then skidded to a stop outside a heavily graffitied utility entrance between two dumpsters.
“What are we doing here?” Jack shouted.
But Hans was already out of the Jeep, pulling Jack after him like a rag doll. A rusted padlock hung on the utility door.
“That door doesn’t open!”
Hans ran his fingers along the concrete wall, as if searching for a spare key. Behind them, two police cars skidded to a stop.
Jack turned, ready to explain his innocence. But then he saw them. A figure emerged from each car. They wore Jersey City police uniforms, but they weren’t human. Their skin was tinted blue with an icy sheen; their violet eyes glowed with hate.
“Cursed shadow reapers,” Hans muttered. They looked like ice demons.
The two shadow reapers lunged toward Jack with their hands outstretched. Just as one was about to reach him, a deafening pulse erupted from the roof. The shock wave blasted Jack into Hans and threw the shadow reapers back against their vehicles. A short figure in black landed on top of one of the police cars, its face hidden in the shadow of a hood. A second hooded figure leapt, whirling a blade with a short flame bursting out the tip. The reaper deflected the blade with its arm as if its skin were made of steel. Then the reaper attacked, reaching for its assailant’s throat. The dark figure parried it back with the blade.
Amid the commotion, Hans continued to skim the wall with his fingertips. A square panel slid open under his fingers. Hans pressed his hand onto the pane of glass underneath, and it turned blue. Just then the second shadow reaper sprinted at Jack and Hans with inhuman speed.
“Hans!” Jack screamed.
Hans yanked Jack back by the collar. With his free arm, he pulled out a long, etched blade, the tip blazing with white fire. He swung it up with astonishing force. Sparks ripped across the reaper’s abdomen like a match across a striker. Jack screamed again.
The reaper stumbled back. Then it charged once more.
A third warrior in black jumped between Jack and the reaper. The tip of the warrior’s blade was an intense blue flame. The fighter thrust the flaming point straight and true at the center of the monster’s chest. With a burst of violet, the reaper was gone.
Jack stumbled backward, and Hans caught him. Hans tucked something into Jack’s pocket. “Give that to the Superior. He’ll understand.” Then Hans yanked open the door.
Jack was aware only of a rush of cool air, then darkness as Hans pushed him through. The door slammed shut.
Jack lay on smooth flagstones, their cracks filled with velvety moss. This was not the basement of the Douglass Apartments.
A gentle breeze flowed over him, then was still again. He was breathing the clean morning air of a forest, inhaling pine and earth and stone. He pushed himself up with a groan, and his voice echoed off the stones.
Jack was in a large outdoor courtyard, lit by lampposts and enclosed by a stone wall that stood two stories high. White-and-gray marble benches were scattered throughout the area. In the center of the courtyard stood a statue of a young man, crouched and gripping a blade in his hand. An illuminated inscription wrapped around the base: One Life for Many.
Jack had tumbled through what appeared to be, even on this side, an exact replica of the utility door from the Douglass Apartments, complete with rusted padlock and illegible graffiti. On either side of it, set in the stone wall, dozens of doors of various sizes and shapes encircled the courtyard: barn doors, paneled suburban front doors, Middle Eastern doors with onion-shaped tops, intricately carved natural wood doors, and so on.
Footsteps echoed across the courtyard, and a man came into view. He was about fifty and wore a well-appointed charcoal suit and crimson tie. He had trimmed dark hair, sprinkled with gray, and looked like the curator of an art gallery.
The man stopped a short distance away and surveyed Jack suspiciously. “You’re not my team of operatives.”
Jack just stared at the man, unsure how to respond.
“Where. Are. My. Operatives?” the man pressed. “And who are you?”
“I’m Jack Carlson. What is this—?”
At that moment four individuals in black tumbled through the Douglass Apartments door. The leader lifted the hood, revealing spiked neon-blue hair and small black eyes. She stormed toward Jack, oblivious to the man in the suit.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she barked. “Is this what recruits are doing these days? Trying to get a closer look at a reaper?” She let out a string of scorching words in what sounded like an Asian language and stomped toward Jack. She gripped him by the throat, lifting him off his feet. “We could have been—”
“That’s enough, Operative Zhang,” the man said, stepping into the dim light.
The woman turned, letting go of Jack. She and the other three in black gear came to attention. “Superior Blue. I didn’t see you there.”
“It’s quite all right. You eliminated the reapers, I assume?”
“Yes. Flood blazed the first one. I blazed the second.” She spoke in a chopped voice, staring straight ahead.
“Excellent work as always,” Blue said. “I’m glad your team is safe.”
Operative Zhang bowed her head slightly but didn’t respond. Then she glared at Jack, as if searing his face into her memory. The team of operatives left through a large gate, each swiping a wristband over a glass panel.
Superior Blue turned his attention to Jack. “How did you get in here?”
“I don’t know where here is.”
“Answer my question, please.”
Jack rubbed the back of his head. “I was kidnapped. By my school security guard, Hans,” he stammered. “We need to call the police.”
“There are no recruiters named Hans.” Superior Blue stared at Jack, as if trying to decode his words. “And our recruiting class is complete as of this morning,” he said. “So let’s start again. How did you get in here?”
Jack was turning in a small circle, trying to get his bearings. “Where am I?”
“The portal courtyard. This is the only way on and off Elk Island. It’s the front door, the back door, and everything in between . . .”
“No,” Jack interrupt
ed. “This whole place. A second ago I was in Jersey City. Where am I now?”
The man squinted at Jack. “This is the Hadley Academy for the Improbably Gifted.” He sounded unsure whether this information was too basic. It was not.
Before Jack could reply, the courtyard gate opened again, and a large chestnut-colored Labrador mutt barreled through. It bounded over to Superior Blue and sat at attention at the man’s feet. The dog cocked its head at Jack.
The man didn’t take his eyes off Jack as he addressed the dog. “Hello, Maggie. I imagine you’re wondering who this young man is.” The dog just stared at Jack in response. “Well, that makes two of us. But it’s time for the Naming Ceremony, so we’ll have to bring our young interloper with us for the moment. Open the gate, would you, Maggie?”
The dog twitched her head up to the man. The man raised his eyebrows at the dog. “Ah—worried that we are letting in an intruder? Good girl,” he said. “But never you mind. Dr. Horn will mind-scrape him within the hour. Hup.”
Mind-scrape. The term settled in Jack’s stomach like a cannonball.
The retriever peeled off and leapt at the gate, her collar swiping across the glass panel. The gate swung open.
Superior Blue. The woman in black—Operative Zhang—had called him Superior Blue. Jack had almost forgotten. He reached into his pocket, fishing for whatever Hans had thrust upon him. He pulled out a small round object. It appeared to be an old coin and had an engraving of a stone silo on the front and a spiral of numbers on the back.
Whoever Hans was, there was no question that he had saved Jack’s life. He was trustworthy. Jack handed the coin to Superior Blue. “That guy told me to give this to you.”
The Superior took the coin from Jack tentatively and held it up to the light. “Somebody told you to give this to me? Who?”
“Hans. The guy who sent me through that door. He told me to give it to the Superior.”
The Superior eyed Jack with new interest, then studied the coin. His eyes widened. “Follow me, please. We’ll discuss this later.”
Jack looked back at the graffitied Douglass Apartments door. Should he make a break for it? Or would there be more reapers on the other side?
Unsure what else to do, he followed Superior Blue through the gate.
CHAPTER 3
TRAMPOLINE GRASS AND STEEL TREES
Superior Blue was speed walking up the path. The dog, Maggie, trotted at his heels but peeked back often to make sure Jack was following.
They led Jack past castle-like ramparts that peeked through thickets of slender, aged pine trees. Cobblestone paths divided the forest like dry creek beds, leading to all manner of clearings and structures. A bunker-like building sat off to his left. Its entrance resembled the open jaws of a crocodile that disappeared gradually into the ground. The black marble sign above it read Office of Reaper Engagement.
They crossed a flat wooden bridge over a narrow river. Far upriver, the bank rose into a long, rocky bluff. Atop that was a row of mismatched houses of widely varied architectural styles—from a simple thatched cottage of old Ireland to a traditional Japanese home with white screen doors.
Across the bridge, in the middle of the woods, stood an exact replica of a four-story tenement house, complete with a zigzagging rusted fire escape clinging to one side. Jack was about to look away when the top of the building burst into flames. The blaze exploded out the windows of the top floor.
Jack pointed dumbly and called to the Superior. “Uh, excuse me. Is that supposed to be . . . ?”
Superior Blue glanced over impatiently. “Yes, yes. It’s fine. Lucent—the young woman sitting cross-legged there—will warn them when somebody needs to be caught. Hurry up now.”
Jack kept up, but he couldn’t look away. Two young people in black stood at the foot of the building, gazing up. A third, Lucent, sat on the ground with her eyes closed. A terrible crash echoed from inside, as if an entire floor was collapsing. The fire escape jerked off its bolts and smashed to the ground. Lucent turned to say something to her teammates, pointing to a fourth-floor window. A moment later, a teen girl plummeted out that very window, falling toward the twisted metal of the fire escape.
Jack swallowed a scream as one of the kids on the ground—a girl with a green headband—stretched out her hand. Enormous vines erupted from the earth and ensnarled the ruins of the fire escape, yanking it out of the way of the falling girl. A boy with a blond surfer’s haircut pressed his hand to the ground, and the earth shimmered.
The girl hit the grass. Then she bounced, unharmed, into the air.
“Escapes class,” Superior Blue said over his shoulder. “Those old New York City tenement houses are terribly difficult to navigate. Firetraps, all of them.”
“She fell . . . She bounced,” Jack started.
“Because Bound there can turn any surface into an area of trampoline-like elasticity.”
“And that other girl. She made vines.”
“Ivy is what you dormants might call ‘good with plants.’ A green thumb, no?”
Maggie barked, drawing Superior Blue’s attention forward. Up ahead, there was an enormous maple tree made entirely of steel. The detail of the leaves was extraordinary, and it glittered as if it had been newly polished.
“Boris Kleptov!” Superior Blue stormed up the path to the edge of a long clearing and shook a finger at a meaty-looking boy with dark hair matted to his head. “What have I told you? You want to destroy the entire ecosystem? You’re supposed to be with your team, spotting for Escapes! Have you decided to shirk every responsibility?”
“Ivy won’t let me use metallics on her vines,” Boris mumbled in a Slavic accent. “She doesn’t want the vines to get hurt. As if the plants can feel anything.”
Superior Blue led Boris away from Jack, chiding him in a low voice. Boris eventually slunk past Jack toward the tenement house, his eyes fixed on his feet.
“Boris’s spade is that he can turn organic matter into steel,” Superior Blue informed Jack, motioning to the newly glittering maple tree.
“His spade?” Jack asked. He hurried to walk alongside the Superior, though he backed off when Maggie gave him a suspicious look.
“His gift,” the Superior said. “Everyone is born with a gift, Jack, even a dormant—a civilian who hasn’t discovered his or her gift. Someone like you.” He eyeballed Jack up and down. “But more to the point, the problem is that nobody at Hadley has a spade that can turn metals back into organic material. Which means it is imperative to restrict where Boris practices.”
“But that tree—it’s beautiful.”
“Yes, well, the next time he may try it on the grass, and we’ll find ourselves walking on a field of needles.”
Superior Blue stopped and considered Jack with a sparkle in his eye. “The only difference between Boris and you, Jack, is that Boris has broken through. Do you know how improbables tap into their gifts?”
Jack shook his head. Superior Blue leaned closer.
“They believe they have it!” Superior Blue spoke as if he were announcing ice cream for dinner. “Dormants listen to the world telling them, every day, that they can’t have a gift. ‘Be normal, like us!’ the world says.” Superior Blue waved his hand at their surroundings. “Improbables ignore what the world tells them. They risk looking different, looking strange, in order to explore their gifts. That is true courage.”
There was a small explosion far ahead of them to the left, followed by a high-pitched, “WhooOOOOAAAHH!!” A boy surged above the treetops, arms flailing wildly.
Superior Blue didn’t even react. “Come on now. No time to waste.”
Along the way he called out to several more cadets. “Nice work!” He encouraged a slight-figured girl who had just hurled a throwing knife clean through the trunk of a tree. And he admonished a grinning boy reclining against a rock who was capturing random students in oversized bubbles and floating them high in the air until they were stuck in trees.
Only once did Super
ior Blue nod respectfully, to a group of four walking down the path. Or rather, three of them walked. A fourth leapt from one tree to the next, swinging impossibly from branch to branch. All four wore black uniforms, each with a different symbol on the chest. Jack fought an instinct to freeze, the way you might feel if you came across a bear in the woods or a stray dog baring its teeth.
“The one in the trees—she’s impressive, no?” Blue whispered to Jack. “They call her Howler. Never seen her stand still. Try not to make eye contact with any of them. Operatives are not like you and me. They thrive on combat; they’re bred for it. They see everything as a challenge.”
Just as they were passing, Howler contorted her body and flung herself right at Jack. He flinched and collapsed into a crouch, hands covering his head.
But the operative had only come over to stroke Maggie’s back as the dog passed by. In one smooth movement, Howler was back in the trees, catching up with the other operatives. Maggie barked happily.
“I know, girl,” Superior Blue whispered to her. “Those operatives are hard characters, defending humanity as they do. But they love you, don’t they?” Maggie barked again.
“Does your dog talk?” Jack asked.
The Superior stopped in his tracks. He turned to Jack and cocked an eyebrow. “Does Maggie talk?” he asked incredulously. “Margaret Thatcher here—she’s a dog. Of course she doesn’t talk.”
“I didn’t know . . . There’s a lot of crazy stuff happening right now,” Jack started, his cheeks growing warm.
Superior Blue’s face softened. “Ah. You’ve never had a dog.”
“No.”
“A special bond develops between a dog and a human. It does not take an improbable gift. Now hurry, I’m late for the Naming Ceremony. We’ll get you over to Dr. Horn immediately after. The mind-scrape won’t hurt a bit.”
Jack shuddered at the term but kept up.
As they walked through the island, the pine forest to the south grew denser. Only the occasional deer trail broke the darkness of the forest, and the sloping morning light stopped at the woods in a perfectly cut line. The entire place felt carved out of the woods. Even the path itself followed the natural contours of the land, winding around old trees. Notes of sea salt, too, were in the air, but Jack could neither see nor hear the water.
The Hadley Academy for the Improbably Gifted Page 2