Abomination: The Young Adult World of Genetically Modified Teens and the Elite (Swann Book 7)

by Ryan Schow

  It was time for answers.

  The Coward Count Doubles

  1

  I end the call with Brayden. Gosh damn, I’ve got bigger problems than him right now! Like Cameron being dead. Deep down, I wonder if she’s been dead too long. I’m not sure I can save her. Would she even want me to save her if I could?

  The moment she died, I knew it. I felt it. I was still in the fight with whatever the hell that was from the future, when I felt her soul stirring in the void between life and death.

  The searing heat of healing needle-points my damaged eyeballs like a thousand spiders’ feet on the insides of them. By the grace of God alone, I resist the horrendous urge to itch them.

  The blackness of my lost eyesight broke minutes after the healing began. I wanted to tear off my clothes, plunge into an ice bath, take the required time to let my eyes heal, but alas, this was not a luxury I had just then. Slowly, after knocking into what felt like everything on campus, shades of light returned to my eyes, dim at first, and fuzzy, but then shadows and movement appeared and, thank God, because I was terrified of permanent blindness.

  By the time I reached the dorms, I was seeing color, and the fuzzy edges of everything started to sharpen. The pain had me writhing and screaming inside. Fidgeting like a f*cking head case. I was all out of time though. I had to reach Cameron. When I arrived at her dorm room, I kicked the door open with absolutely no hesitation. I felt her otherworldly presence so strong I nearly spoke to her.

  I couldn’t though.

  To do so would be an admission of her death. No, I told myself. I can save her. I can.

  Then the phone rang. It had been Brayden. I didn’t want to talk to him, but I needed to. What I just did in the middle of campus, that psycho boy, he provoked my powers out of me. That he did so in front of everyone was a disaster of epic proportion. Gosh damn catastrophic.

  I can’t stay here anymore. At Astor. After this, I’m going to leave and never come back. This is what was going through my mind when I called Brayden back. At some point in time, I’m going to have to say good-bye to the people I love. To this place.

  Slumped on the bathroom floor, a thick, shiny slick of blood pooling in a wide circle around the gaunt, smashed-in-the-floor side of Cameron’s face, she is lifeless looking, eyes glassed over, open and dead.

  It’s too late, I think with a sigh. Something in me surges: my unwillingness to accept defeat. It’s not too late! I lift the girl into my arms, whisper to her soul—which I know is still hovering nearby—“I know you’re still here, Cameron. We can fix this. I can fix this!”

  Tears hit my voice just before they hit my eyes.

  “It’s not too late for you to come back. Just…please, Cameron, come with me.” Her soul is not willing to move. I have to force the issue. Holland can help. That son of a bitch, he always manages to be useful in the most desperate of times.

  And so I drape her nude body in a sheet and carry her down the hallway, the elevator opening to the lobby where Head of Security, John Black, appears. He points his gun at me and says, “Set the girl down, get on the ground face-down and lace your fingers behind your head!”

  “No,” I say, walking toward him at a slower pace than I prefer.

  “Get down or I’ll shoot you, I swear to God I will!”

  “No you won’t, John,” I say, still walking toward him, my pace unchanged. “You didn’t come here to shoot kids. You came to get away from the memory of dead kids.” I see him waver. “Now put that gun away or I’ll put it away for you.”

  He backs up since I haven’t changed my pace since he demanded I get on the floor. When I pass right by him without a second’s consideration for his gun, he says, “What…what happened to her?”

  “Help me,” I hear myself say.

  His gun in hand, he looks at me, then at Cameron, whose face and mangled head is now partially visible. He doesn’t take his eyes off me. I know I must be a sight: hair frazzled, bloody mucus drained down my face like some demented princess. He holsters his Glock, steps in the elevator, then takes her from my arms.

  My eyes are wet, my entire body now pitching with sadness. By the time the metal door closes I’m crying. When we hit the Lobby, my sobbing is barely controllable, my self-loathing for being a part of this so much worse than normal.

  “Pull yourself together,” Black says to me.

  I wipe my eyes and follow the man to the infirmary. People are now trailing behind us, asking if that’s Cameron O’Dell under the sheet, and what happened, asking a thousand questions about Cameron and my eyes, about the boy and my powers. Black and I ignore them all. And me? I’m barely holding it together.

  The sheet I wrapped Cameron in, it held firm, but it was also splotched and wet with gigantic red blooms, stains which make everyone suspect the worst. During the entire journey to Holland’s office, I hold the bond between me and Cameron’s spirit strong. It’s diminishing, though.

  “Please,” I whisper into the ethers. “Please, don’t go.”

  “It’s okay,” the spirit whispers back, our telepathic link now open.

  Cameron’s spirit stays with me all the way to Holland’s office. I know from experience if she’s hanging around this long, she’s undecided as to her own fate.

  She can come back. She did it before.

  I came back.

  If I pave the way for her, I know she’ll come back. Sending her thoughts, making sure she gets them, I say, “I’ll heal you, if you come back. We can fix this. I can fix you, Cameron. Please. Please.”

  In Holland’s office, we take Cameron to the examination room where Black lays her on a table. Holland moves the man aside, pulls the sheet away and prepares her for stitches and a blood transfusion.

  “Raven de’ Medici?” John Black finally asks.

  I look up at him, troll his mind, feel him wondering where all the blood licking trails down the surface of my face came from.

  “This isn’t the time,” I say.

  “Several days ago, a boy was found dead in his bed by…unnatural means. Another was torn in half and charred to a crisp not fifteen minutes ago. Now I find you with this dead girl and with evidence of…eye injuries all over your face. I’d say this is the perfect time.”

  “No, this is not the time.”

  “We’re going to do it anyway, Ms. de’ Medici,” he says, posturing up. “Come with me.”

  “I’m afraid she’s needed here,” Holland says, like he has little concern for the man or whatever authority he’s trying to exude. “You can have her when I’m done.”

  “No,” Black growls. “Now!”

  “I don’t answer to you!” Holland barks, turning his soulless eyes on the man. Black’s hand goes to his Glock, but I put my hand on his, gently, then nab his eyes.

  “I’ll talk to you, after we save her life.”

  I still the man’s beating heart, invite him telepathically to sit down and be quiet. He does just that. Albeit against his will.

  After dispensing of Black, Holland asks me: “Is she here?”

  He’s asking if her spirit is still here.

  “Yes,” I reply. “Barely.” Black is looking on quizzically, trying to understand how I know the things I know.

  “We need to get her…to the lab,” he says, now looking at the very compliant, very glazed over Head of Security.

  “Stay,” I tell him.

  He nods. Stays put as ordered. He doesn’t want to sit still, but he now knows to fear me, that I am controlling him. So he quietly sits there, bound by invisible ties, asking himself if he’s gone insane.

  We move Cameron downstairs and sink her in a vat of the pink goo, and that’s when I feel like I can breathe again. Holland monitors her, praying for vitals, seeing only the flat line that tells him hope and effort are equally useless. She’s dead, though.

  But is she gone?

  I’m not looking at the vat, or her beautiful, scarred body.

  “It’s not too late,” I beg her spirit.<
br />
  I feel her soul glow into what a smile might feel like, and then things get really silent for her. She is there one minute, then she is good and truly gone the next.

  Nothing.

  “You can take her out now,” I whisper, my voice choked with defeat, the lump in my throat enormous.

  “She’s gone?”

  “Yes,” I say, my eyes a watery mess.

  “And there’s nothing you can do?” he asks, almost like he’s disgusted my abilities won’t work on the dead.

  Something sparks in me, drying my eyes instantly. “Of course there’s nothing I can do you ass!”

  “I didn’t do this to her!” he barks at me.

  “My God, Holland, you’re a piece of work.” We both stand there with hard eyes and accusatory stares. Frustrated with my inability to effect this outcome, I say: “You are…monstrous. Your soul is so fucking ugly I can’t stand it, yet you’re a necessary evil. So many things in this world are both right and wrong because of you.”

  “So you’re always saying,” he replies. “I get it. Your friend died.”

  “She wasn’t my friend. She was a bully. Girls died because of her. Families were ruined. Rich histories erased in advance, leaving behind only wakes of despair. I hated her, but she didn’t deserve to die like this. She didn’t deserve…what I did to her.”

  “You did the X’s and the Bully carving?”

  “And her hair.”

  “You cut it off?”

  “I ripped it out strand by strand.”

  “Wow,” he mutters, breathless, with the smallest smile playing upon his lips. “Look how far you have come. From victim to bully to murderer to torturer to sympathizer. If I thought you enjoyed any of this, I would be proud.”

  “You’re disgusting,” I spit.

  With a deep sigh, he says, “You enjoy none of this, though, which is a travesty.”

  “So you say.”

  “I used to hate you, but now I just feel sorry for you. You’re so tortured. You don’t know who you are, and that’s sad. I may be a monster, and downright evil, but at least I know who I am. At least I’m embracing my inner me. You, you’re so unfortunate and dramatic. And goddamn it’s so boring for someone like me. Go be yourself already, you stupid child.”

  “With what you saw—the future me—with what Alice said about who I become, how can you say such a thing?”

  “You don’t owe anyone anything. You have got no one to answer to. No one to please. No one to disappoint. Don’t you get it? You can do and be anything and anyone you want and no one will care but you! So go live your life! Go do whatever the hell you want. Swim in indulgence. Drown yourself in drugs or alcohol. Lose yourself to as many boys as your libido will allow, or girls. Whatever you’ve been wanting to do, go and do it without hesitation or apology, for this is the life I’ve given you.”

  “I’m trying!”

  “Yet you’re still here. At Astor. I give you this life and, like a goddamn fool, you’re wasting it! God, you’re so damn stubborn!”

  He’s right. I hate him, but he’s right. Without a word, I turn to go and there is Alice. The young one. She’s looking up at me. I go over to her, lean down and kiss her lovingly on the cheek, then stand, smile at her, and slap her so hard she’s pitched sideways, off her feet and knocked out cold.

  Turning, I look over my shoulder at Holland, challenging him.

  He says, “Good one,” and then I leave.

  2

  When I’m gone from Holland’s lab, I release my hold on Black. I’m walking through campus, dodging people, using my mind to be invisible to them when I see the boy again. The same one I killed.

  I stop; he stops.

  Then he smiles, the same as he did before. “You are one child,” he says, “but I am eternal.”

  “Is that what you think?” I ask. Behind me, John Black comes storming out. Shit. I shouldn’t have done that. I should have kept him contained for a few more minutes. That’s what I get for being nice.

  “Raven,” he says, “stop!”

  “You won’t stop her,” the boy calls out. His tall twist of hair and that comical, almost amused look in his raccoon-looking eyes, is disturbing.

  If I killed him already, I’m wondering with horror, how is he still alive?

  “Don’t be so sure,” Black says from behind me. I feel him on a psychic level. I feel him pulling out his gun, aiming it at me.

  “Your gun won’t stop her,” the boy says. He throws his energy at Black; I throw up a psychic wall, block the charge and tell Black to holster his gun before he gets killed.

  I then throw energy at the boy, but the handsome thing with screwy silver eyes, his face goes paper thin, the veins showing, his skin sucking hard against his bones. His mouth cranes open to four impossibly long rows of sharp incisors.

  I cock my head; Black inhales sharply behind me. “You don’t want to be here for this!” I scream at Black.

  “I’ve seen a lot of things,” Black replies, “but this…this? I’m sure I want to be around for this!”

  Holding the line between the boy and us, I warn him. “It’s your death,” I say. Closing my eyes, I push my tentacles into the boy’s mind, feel the age of the thing who calls itself The Operator, discover something very important about him: his tether to the future. I didn’t see that before. When I killed him before and felt for his soul, I didn’t find it. Which seemed impossible. Now I know he’s not a boy.

  The body before me is a conduit for something far greater than flesh and bone.

  The moment I crawl his head, I see what he’s doing and I jump back into my body just in time to feel the rusted circles flying from his hands like saw blades, teeth and all.

  The first blade slices right through my arm. The limb drops from my body, but mentally I catch it mid-air, slam it back on the opened stub, force the repairs.

  Less than a second passes.

  Another saw blade whistles from his hand, a larger one that takes my leg. Using my powers, I push through the pain—which is indescribable—long enough to catch and reattach my leg and start the healing.

  The heat of a billion fire ants healing my severed arm and leg feel like red hot coals dropped on open wounds.

  “Impressive,” he says, standing straight up and truly moved. I’m doing everything I can not to show him how much this hurts. Or how much I’m winging this. “Now I see why they made the acidic solution the did.”

  The one that won’t allow me to heal.

  Sweat is leaking from my pores like a sieve. I wipe my eyes, my brow, fling the sweat on the grass beneath my feet. Behind me Black is reeling, wondering if his eyes are playing tricks on him.

  He fires his gun, but the boy stops the bullet before his eyes, turns it over mid-air, then taps it with his finger. It falls in the grass.

  “You people are so predictable,” the boy says. “This time holds almost no mysteries anymore.”

  In a blur, his hands move through the air and four more saw blades zing at me. I move this way and that, then feel one slice through half of my neck, nearly detaching my head from my body. The last thing I do is make sure my legs don’t fail me as my head tries to zip itself back on the half-stump of my neck.

  The skin, arteries, nerves and ligaments grab for their counterparts; muscles reach out for other muscles, and the notched bone grabs its foundation. The healing starts anew, as does a new stratum of utterly blinding pain. One thing’s for sure, though, after Dulce, my healing got fast!

  “No way,” the boy says. And with that, in a snap, I turn my vision inside out, seeing things on a molecular level the same way Keanu Reeves looked at the matrix and saw only green 1’s and 0’s.

  From his body, invisible to the naked eye yet stringing out like some sort of umbilical chord, or spinal chord, is his connection with the far future. I lock on to it with my mind, sever it, tie it off. The boy’s mouth screams and rages.

  “YOU BITCH!” he roars, throwing his body around in a fit.


  His hands become claws that launch energy at me; I form a protective bubble, but much of the force gets through. My body crashes backwards through Black and onto the grass, blood spilling from my not-yet-healed arm, leg and neck wounds.

  Thankfully, nothing falls off.

  Black rolls over and is pumping bullets at him, but the boy—shot six times and still standing—he crumples the weapon in Black’s hand then flings the man forty feet away where he smashes into the side of the science building with two broken ribs and no weapon.

  I then imagine the boy’s entire body—from the inside out. Telekinetically entering into his back, I grab fistfuls of his core, then I jerk everything connected inside of him outside as fast as the flick of a switch. Blood, bone and carnage power out of him like a shot-gunned watermelon. Gore explodes in a splash of red everywhere. That’s when I feel The Operator’s soul departing the steamy pile of carnage. I catch his escaping soul with my mind, drag it toward me, study it. Whatever The Operator is, or was, he’s one nasty son of a bitch.

  There’s something so dark and sinister in the squirming, twisting thing. It’s old. Eons old. So old and powerful I can’t let it go. Can’t let it flee. So I swallow it whole, swallow it deep down inside me and lock it in an imaginary six inch iron box where he sits, screaming, thrashing, cursing and dying.

  OMG, I think. Then it dawns on me: this is how it starts. This is where those vile, antagonistic voices trapped inside future me’s core came from. The prisoners I took as well as the alters I formed in the midst of tortures I have yet to survive.

  The honeycomb structure in my mind, the one I found inside my future self, I realize this wasn’t a structure crafted by sinister men looking to control me. This was a prison shaped by my own devices. If I can successfully lock down The Operator, I can lock down a thousand wicked souls.

  I can stop them. I can eat them all.