Overtaken

by Mark H. Kruger

  All she did was lift her foot and bring it down. Hard. Grinding my fingers. The pain shot through my arm, and I pulled my hand away, which left me dangling from one hand. I closed my eyes as she lifted her foot again, ready to bring it down on the only thing left between the end and me. I tried to picture my dad and his bright, reassuring smile that always made me feel as if I could do anything I set my mind to.

  A bolt slammed into the back of Dana’s head, sending her out over my head and spiraling into darkness. I didn’t hear her land.

  A moment later Jackson’s hand reached down to me. I didn’t know if I could trust him, but I had no choice. He pulled me up and then in close to his chest. I clung to him tightly. It had been so long since he’d held me in his arms.

  “Forgive me,” he murmured.

  “I . . . I . . . What . . . How . . . ?” I felt dizzy and confused.

  “She never had me, Nica. I just let her think she did. It was the only way I could find out what she was up to. How else could I have found out about Blackthorne for you?”

  I shook my head and looked at him, wondering if I’d heard him right. “You?” I cried, pulling away and looking him directly in the eyes. “You were the—”

  He cut me off with a severe nod. “I’ll tell you everything. I promise. After we stop Cochran.”

  I searched his eyes to see if his was lying to me. All this time, he’d just been pretending? I couldn’t believe it, but I also had to admit that it made a certain amount of sense.

  “I don’t know if we can stop him,” I said, unsure if I had any fight left in me.

  “Then we can at least make him pay.” He grabbed my good hand and led me out of the facility as more rocks began to fall to the floor, destroying what was left of the room behind us.

  By the time Jackson and I wove our way back through the concrete halls and reemerged outside near the helipad, Cochran’s escape copter was already lifting into the air. It moved slowly, swinging wildly from side to side as it struggled to take off in the high winds and nearly blinding drifts of heavy snow. He was clearly comfortable leaving his two sons, Chase and Oliver, now united in a newfound disgust and abhorrence for their father, behind to freeze to death on the mountaintop.

  Oliver saw Jackson first, but I held my hand up as soon I saw the fear in his eyes. “It’s okay. He’s back.”

  But Jackson didn’t seem happy. His eyes flashed the same color blue as his hands, and I could tell that anger had consumed him. He aimed his hands as the helicopter lifted higher and higher, ready to fire a blast that would bring the whole thing down in flames.

  “NO!” screamed Chase, leaping in front of him.

  I couldn’t understand Chase’s desire to protect his monstrous father, but then, I wasn’t the one in that position. Would I do the same for my father if the shoe were on the other foot? The two rivals locked eyes, each daring the other to stand down. Neither one so much as flinched until Jackson lowered his hands and the helicopter vanished into the darkening sky.

  Jackson, Chase, Oliver, and I barely had a chance to breathe before the first explosion. When it detonated, it sounded like a pleasant rumble—a distant firework celebrating an obscure holiday. I knew the awful sound signaled death and destruction, but I tried to hold on to hope—however tenuous a fantasy—that everything would be okay. My friends reeled back. Jackson grabbed my hand and tugged, frantic.

  “Run, Nica!”

  My feet stayed firmly planted in the thin layer of snow and ice. I shook my head.

  “It’s over,” I muttered.

  “No, it’s not!” Jackson yelled back. “We can get out of here!”

  “And go where? Stand under the avalanche?”

  My memory of Cochran’s secret documents reminded me that my friends and I were just out of harm’s way: above and a quarter of the way around the mountain from the path of the avalanche. We were so far away that it took a full thirty seconds for the reverberations to weave their way through the solid rock and ripple beneath our feet. A second, third, and fourth explosion sounded. One after the other, they echoed the whole way down the mountain.

  Everyone relaxed—barely—as they realized I was right. From our vantage point, it was impossible to get a look at the fire and ice that surely erupted into the air, but I could picture the small concrete bunkers bursting outward in orange and yellow flames. Not only was all the evidence of Bar Tech’s training camps being erased, but the ground beneath them was being shattered. A solid line of broken stone and unstable ice would reach from the first explosion to the last, breaking a sheet of earth and snow cleanly off the surface of Whiteface and sending it hurtling at our small town below.

  The sound of crashing snow was unmistakable and all encompassing. I imagined the rescue workers in the streets starting to turn around. I imagined kids awake in their beds wondering what the roar in the distance was—the roar that was growing louder every second. I imagined parents looking up at Whiteface in horror, wondering how much time they had. Long enough to say good-bye?

  Standing up here, helpless, was almost worse. It wasn’t a death sentence, but part of me longed to be among the doomed so that the guilt wouldn’t haunt me for the rest of my life. This was my fault. The war that had sparked between Dana and me had metastasized into something that touched each of my friends and now many more people I didn’t even know. Sure, the five of us up here would survive, but what would it matter if our families didn’t? Not to mention we’d be trapped up here with no way of getting down, short of walking. There I was, full circle back to “death sentence” again. But there was no way to stop a wall of snow.

  Or was there?

  “Maya,” I gasped. “Where’s Maya?” The boys looked at me like I was crazy. “Topher, we have to find her!”

  “She could be anywhere in Barrington by now, Nica,” Jackson interjected. “Or dead.”

  I wasn’t accepting this for an answer. No. I knew where she was. I called up Bar Tech’s bank of screens in my mind, the ones from which I watched her unleash chaos just an hour or so ago. I hadn’t been paying attention to the details, but I tried to focus. What street was she on? In which direction was she walking? What could I see and what could it tell me? I had to hope my recall was accurate and I wasn’t just seeing what I wanted to see. Oliver could run down there and check, but we didn’t have time. There was what—a few minutes before Barrington left the map?

  An hour ago she was walking north up Laurel. Where was she going?

  “Guys, if you take Laurel north from the school,” I asked, “where does it go?”

  “Uh, um . . .” Chase tried to land an answer. “Nowhere, really. Dead-ends in a cul-de-sac near the base of the mountain. Just woods.”

  I knew it! There was nothing left for her here. She’d finally leaped straight off the deep end, and there was nothing for her to do anymore but run. Luckily, it seemed like she was running in the right direction to do one last thing before disappearing for good.

  “Last time she left, she told me that she’d spent time in the woods, that she’d centered herself there. She needed to calm down and regain control of her powers. I bet you anything she’s doing that again, and it’s right where we need her to be.” I strode to Topher’s side. “Take me there.”

  “She just laid waste to almost half the town!” Topher barked back, shooting me an “Are you insane?” look.

  “Topher, please,” I begged. “I need to talk to her. We all do. She needs to know she’s our only hope.”

  Chase, Jackson, and Oliver looked at one another. I hoped they realized I was serious. “She can stop that avalanche if you can get us there!” Topher shook his head. “Now or never, Topher!”

  “Now or never,” he muttered, grabbing my hand. I took Chase’s, Chase took Oliver’s, Oliver took Jackson’s, and we all closed our eyes. Topher exhaled heavily, trying to find peace at the center of this disas
ter. His breath slowed. He focused at some unseen point and rolled his head in a circle, loosening his neck—and there we were. Five of us, together, in the woods at the edge of town. Sure enough, the rumble of the avalanche was as I’d imagined it. Distant but intense. No doubt something awful was headed straight for us. I strained to see our target in the dark.

  “Maya!” I shouted.

  The boys chimed in, calling Maya’s name in a mad hope that somehow she would hear us in time. As I tried to get her attention, Topher controlled our location, projecting us from one place to the next, disappearing from one segment of the woods and reappearing in the next. We moved deeper and deeper, closer to the avalanche until I turned around—and there she was. Totally alone.

  Maya was bruised and bleeding, a vacant look still haunting her face, though her eyes seemed brighter than ever; silver stars set in her skull, waiting to explode. She didn’t seem particularly surprised to see us; instead, she was content. Relaxed. Maybe resigned to what was about to happen.

  “Nica . . . ,” she said quietly, pointing over my head in the direction of the encroaching disaster. “Can you see it? It’s coming.”

  “Maya, listen,” I said, as the others drew close around us, silent and terrified—trapped between an unforgiving wall of snow and a girl with godlike powers. Her wide, trembling eyes floated over me like I was speaking a foreign language. “Forget everything that happened back there.” I indicated Barrington before looking her dead in the eyes. “Right now this is all that matters. I know you’re angry, but you’re the only one who can stop this.”

  “No one can stop it,” she muttered, sounding lost in a dream. “This is what happens to a town that makes monsters.”

  “That’s not true, Maya.” I locked eyes with her. “Cochran was responsible, and Cochran already got away. These are innocent people being punished. You can take all your anger and all your sadness and all your rage and turn your back and let this happen, or you can stop it.”

  As I talked, I could see the familiar ripples flitting through the air around her, ducking and weaving in and out of reality. I needed them to grow. I needed those deadly indicators of her power to swell to the size of a mountain.

  “I need you to think about who you want to be—like Dana and sell us all out for Bar Tech? Or are you Maya Bartoli, the girl who fights to the end?” This seemed to click; my words brought her back from the edge. It was as if she’d snapped out of a deep trance and saw us standing there for the first time. Shock turned to concern, and concern turned to resolve. She didn’t have any questions about what she needed to do.

  “You guys need to get out of here,” proclaimed Maya.

  I shook my head and took a step toward her instead of away. So did Topher and Chase and Oliver and Jackson.

  “No. This is our fight, too,” I replied, reaching for her hand.

  She was shocked when her fingers passed right through mine. But we all tucked in as close as possible, forming a protective circle of friends around Maya as she stared down the avalanche and began to unleash her psychic energy in waves.

  Just like at the dance, it started with a rumble, long and low, then a crack, then an explosion that shook the snow from the trees. Each of these shocks passed right through us as we stood in awe at the center of the storm.

  Maya gritted her teeth and pulsed over and over, each one larger than the last, until she fell to her knees, howling like a demon was trying to rip itself from her body. As she convulsed, the snow began to melt away, and the mud it left behind began to boil. We all took a horrified step back as a circle of heat and immense power spread from her in a concentric circle, tossing boulders and tearing up trees by their roots. She seemed to the enveloped by the earth itself as her power tore the forest apart.

  In that second, I realized I’d taken my eye off the avalanche. I’d been so focused on Maya that I’d forgotten to look up. When I did, there was no time, no time, no time. I screamed as the fury of untold tons of rock, snow, and ice plowed into us, enveloping my fractured world in darkness.

  I inhaled deeply, the fresh pine and frozen air enveloping my senses. Light filtered down in glowing pockets among the centuries-old evergreens. Snow and a baked forest floor crackled beneath my feet with each leisurely step. The woods were alive with birdcalls and racing squirrels, the hustle and bustle of fauna’s daily life, but I was taking it slowly. A true stroll without purpose or destination, besides meditation and decompression.

  My mother had been waking me up for five a.m. yoga since she’d arrived three days earlier, along with an entourage of Internet journalists and cable news reporters whom she’d alerted about Bar Tech and Richard Cochran in the wake of my “visit” to Antarctica. Lydia had pulled every string she could with National Geographic to get airlifted out of McMurdo Station and on the first flight north to Denver. I was so happy to have her there that I’d indulged her habit with a smile.

  “I had everyone at McMurdo doing it,” she’d bragged. “They were grumpy at first, but they all agreed: Sun salutations at dawn is the only way to start your day.”

  I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I’d rather be underneath my flannel sheets and down comforters. I did, however, appreciate some company in my afternoon commune with all things Mother Earth. Tall and stoic as ever, Jackson followed along, about half a step behind me. If I was honest with myself, his presence, along with the endless pine grove, was what I’d missed the most. I could just make him out in my peripheral vision, but I could feel our connection with every step. When the pulse had first hit and he and I had discovered our powers, the woods had become our safe haven from Bar Tech’s relentless eyes. I hadn’t thought about it in so long because the delicious memory had turned so painful, but it was where we’d shared our first kiss. Well, our first real kiss. There had been the tentative one in his Mustang, ruined by Dana’s ghost and my insecurities. But the one that had led to more? That had happened here, the same cold air filling our lungs as our blood had turned to fire.

  Even now I could feel the warmth radiating off of his body. It was slight—dampened and contained by layers of polar fleece and Gore-Tex and waffled cotton—but his return to my side had heightened my senses for every ounce of familiarity and pleasure I’d been deprived of since Dana’s reappearance. I bristled even at the thought of her, once again a ghost for Jackson and now a harrowing specter of mine as well.

  Ever an emotional lightning rod for me, Dana was a reminder of all of the psychological rubble that still needed to be cleared in the wake of the past month’s events. I knew how right it felt to have Jackson back at my side, but neither of us had even begun to unpack the meaning of it. And then there was Chase.

  I hated to admit it, but I think Chase had been the first to read the writing on the walls. He had kept his distance in the days after the avalanche, texting to let me know he was okay, but nothing more. Oliver had been splitting his time between the two of us, so most of what I knew was through my recently restored best friend. Chase was struggling with his father’s secrets and betrayal. Luckily, he had a brand-new brother to shoulder some of that weight. I knew firsthand that the sudden loss of a parent was a gut punch, but I had also seen the look in his eyes when Jackson had exposed himself on the mountain as a double agent working, not for, but against Bar Tech. Jackson’s heroic moment had been a restorative one for me.

  For Chase, however, it might as well have been the nail in the coffin of our relationship. I hated knowing I’d hurt him. Chase had pushed for it, fought for me, shown he wasn’t the invulnerable jackass that he wore right along with his letterman jacket. After I’d lost my friends and my dad, he had been my only lifeline. At the same time, though, I think he and I had both known that my heart had never fully strayed from Jackson. Even after we’d been captured by Bar Tech Security and banished to their darkest dungeon, Chase had called me out on my lingering feelings.

  That surprise was still w
orking me over. Not only had Jackson strung Dana along since she’d been unable to satisfy him with a credible explanation for her reappearance, but he had also been my very own mystery texter. It made me rethink every encounter Jackson and I had over the past month, not to mention my interactions with the shadowy informant.

  Jackson had known exactly how to attract my attention and exactly how to earn my trust. Breathing against my neck in the dark theater. Sneaking into my bedroom in the middle of the night. I’d even finally been able to connect the dots as to how my informant had gotten past our house’s formidable Bar Tech Security system. It may have been a real stumper for a house burglar, but not for the guy who had harnessed the power of electricity.

  All along, I’d thought Jackson had chosen Dana, but really he had chosen me. Jackson once told me to trust him. I’d thought I had been discarded, abandoned, but in fact Jackson had been my guardian in the shadow. He’d helped me every step of the way, staying close when I thought I had lost him, watching over me when I thought I was invisible, confident above all that I would be the one to help him take down Dana and Bar Tech when the time came. Jackson believed in me. It was proof of everything I had ever wanted to hear from him, and he had communicated it all without a word.

  But did he trust me? That was the bad taste that lingered as my mind tore every last detail to shreds and pieced the tiny pixels back together. I couldn’t stop asking the question. Why had it been so important that I remain in the dark? I was reluctant to break the easy silence, a rarity in my life, but I had the guy right here.

  One last calming breath. In through your nose, out through your mouth, I could hear Lydia correcting me. God, I’d missed her so much.

  “Why did you keep it a secret?” I asked, my voice initially abrasive to my own ears. It hung in the air, the final mystery in my days of reflection and retrospection. There was no accusation in my voice. I just needed to know. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”

  I wanted to look at him, and slowed my pace, falling into stride. It was too much to stop, but I glanced over as he mulled his answer.