The Riser Saga

by Becca C. Smith

  “I’m sorry I put you on the spot down there,” Jill said with sincerity.

  “I’m sorry we have to work with that murderer.”

  “It really is the only way to rescue Ryan,” Jill whispered. I realized the effort it took for her to say that. She was trying to make me feel better about my decision to use Turner and Roberta.

  “Did you ever think three months ago that we’d be where we are now?” I asked with a pained smile.

  Jill smiled back, thoughtful. “No. I never thought in a million years I’d be nice to you.” She paused. “But I just want you to know that I consider you a friend now, even though I don’t act like it. You’re the only friend I’ve ever really had. I’m just sorry I was… well… you know. I just really hated you.”

  “Why?” I couldn’t believe I was actually having this conversation with Jill Forester. I’d always wondered why she was so mean to me and to finally have the chance to find out… It was kind of liberating.

  “At first it was because of Bill.” Jill shrugged. “He liked you before you had your little run-in. I still think he planned the whole thing.” She laughed, “The only way that shy boy could introduce himself was to smack right into you.”

  “That was my fault,” I said. There was no way Bill devised something like that. I was so klutzy and I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going.

  “You really think that, don’t you?” Jill shook her head as if she were incredulous at my ignorance. “Bill had been eyeing you for months before. And if you haven’t figured it out, I kind of like him. I couldn’t understand why he’d want you when he could have me. No offense.”

  “None taken.” At least not verbally. She really was full of herself, but I let it slide.

  “I mean, look at you, you’re poor. How could he like a poor girl? How could he like such a freak?” Jill lay back on the bed with exasperation. “That’s how I felt anyway, and the more I was cruel to you, the better I felt. It took away the pain of my dad, and of Bill not giving me the time of day. I know this is going to sound horrible, but it felt good to see you suffer. I can’t explain it, but it made me feel good,” Jill’s voice was laced with emotion. “I know, I’m a horrible person. I don’t feel that way anymore. I was just really screwed up. I just am really screwed up.” Jill sat up again and looked me in the eye. “And now, I was so close to having Bill, we even kissed, and it was… amazing. But as soon as he found out that Ryan lost all his memories, all Bill wants is for you to give up on Ryan and be with him. Bill and I have spent so much time together lately, and I really thought…”

  She shook her head. “It doesn’t even matter. Just a shred of a chance with you and Bill’s completely lost interest in me. I’ll always be second choice, if he ever chooses me at all.”

  “But, Jill, I love Ryan, not Bill,” I said, hoping this would make her feel better. It didn’t.

  “Duh. But it doesn’t matter. Bill still holds some crazy torch for you. He’ll always be waiting for you, I think.” Jill closed her eyes with a pained expression.

  I wanted to comfort her in some way, but I knew anything I said would upset her more. “I didn’t ask for any of this.” My voice was barely a whisper.

  “I know. But it doesn’t change the fact that it’s true.” Jill opened her eyes and forced a smile. “I’ll try and keep my temper, I promise. Let’s just get your boy back. Sound good?”

  “Yeah,” I said, taking Jill’s cue to change the subject. It was too hurtful for her to talk about Bill and I didn’t want to be the jerk who kept bringing it up. I could only imagine if Ryan was in love with someone else and how that would devastate me. I didn’t envy Jill’s position. I was just sorry I was the reason she was in it in the first place. “How’s your arm?” I asked, just now remembering her bullet wound, which she seemed to be hiding very well.

  Jill rubbed her arm in response. “Good. Roberta injected it with some kind of drug that made it heal up in a day. Look.” Jill pulled up her sleeve: the wound was already healed, with a fading scar as if she had been shot months ago.

  “Weird,” I said, examining the arm. I didn’t like the thought of Grams injecting anyone with anything, but at least Jill wasn’t injured anymore and it was another nice thing to chalk up for the grandparents. I hated that.

  “I figured it out by the way,” Jill said without making eye contact with me. She actually looked scared.

  “Figured what out?” I asked, hoping she wasn’t about to hit me with some kind of emotional-accusation-bomb.

  “The holo-chip.” Her eyes met mine and there was real fear there. “I haven’t told anyone, and I wasn’t even going to tell you, but… well… I needed to, I guess.”

  My heart stopped. The holo-chip. “How?”

  “When Roberta told you that I was the only one who could decode it, I started thinking that there had to be some kind of genetic lock. I researched for hours on anything and everything I could find on the subject. There are literally hundreds of genetic locks and I tried every one of them until the files decrypted. There was a false covering on the chip with a tiny concave slot in the center. I put a drop of my blood inside, closed the covering and plugged it into my computer. And there it was.”

  Jill’s eyes widened from the memory. “Turner has killed millions of innocent people. Millions, Chelsan. All under the guise of population control. My father must have spent years collecting all the proof… and it’s there, on the chip. Everything we need to put your grandfather away forever.”

  My heart sang and squeezed in terror all at once. “Jill, you can’t tell anyone. If Turner knows you have access to those files, he will kill you. Where is it now?” I was frightened for Jill.

  “My house. I hid it where no one will find it.” Jill was just as scared as me, but she looked slightly relieved to have shared this burden with someone else. After everything I’d put her through, I was glad to oblige.

  “Okay, good. After Turner helps us rescue Ryan and the twins we’ll give it to Jason and take good old Gramps down.” I managed a shocked smile at that. We could really put him away. As much as he’d been helping me, Turner still deserved to pay for everything that he’d done.

  Jill smiled back, then she reached over and squeezed my hand. “I’m in.”

  I sighed with a crazed kind of laugh. “For your dad.”

  Jill nodded, determined. “And your mom.”

  I nodded back. “First things first, let’s go save Ryan.”

  Jill put her sleeve back down, covering up her scar. “When do we leave?”

  “Two hours.”

  I sat at the window of Turner’s hover-van watching the California oaks below fly past at frightening speed. Nancy, Bill, Jason, Jill and I were in one of Gramps’s test vehicles, while Turner and his mini-army were in another traveling beside us, which basically meant the vehicles had their own flight lane and traveled very fast. He also said they had a kind of cloaking device, but I could see the hover-shuttle Turner and his men were in flying next to us pretty clearly as I looked out the window. Turner called it dimension displacement, but the more he tried to explain it the more I didn’t care. I just hoped Elisha wouldn’t be able to see us coming. Since Gramps didn’t seem worried about it, I wouldn’t be either. I just wanted to get in there, grab Ryan, and get out. I really hoped it would be that simple.

  Yeah, right.

  With Gramps and his men going after the twins, it would be up to me to defend my rescue team. I opted against using any of Turner’s men: it was literally just the five of us and our driver. Well, the five of us and whatever dead things I could muster up. The hope was that all of Elisha’s forces would be protecting John and Samuel, so that breaking Ryan out would be the easier of the two tasks. We were assuming a lot, I know, but at this point, I was blinded by my obsession to have Ryan back with me, and everyone else seemed to be indulging me.

  I could see Havenville and its stunning Cathedral in the distance. My heart started beating faster. I tried to stuff down the te
rror I was feeling. My last memory of Havenville was being drugged and put into a coffin, so yeah, not pleasant.

  We were moving so fast I couldn’t tell if anyone down below could see us, but Gramps seemed to be right: no crowds of people looking up or hovercrafts sent to stop us. This displacement thing appeared to be doing its job.

  Our hover-van started to slow down as we approached Building Sixty, the warehouse of doom, but also the place where Ryan was strapped into the brain-sucking machine. Turner’s craft zoomed past us. I could just see it in the distance, about ten warehouses further than ours. At least he was still close enough I could keep an eye on him. I just hoped he wouldn’t break his promise to not kill the villagers. If push came to shove, I feared that he’d start slaughtering anyone in his way to get to the twins. I honestly hoped his rescue mission would be easier than ours so he wouldn’t have to go back on his word, but it was a pretty slim hope. Elisha wanted Samuel and John more than she wanted me, and definitely more than she wanted Ryan. If she could tap into their power, Elisha could literally rule the world. I shook my head. I didn’t want to think about that.

  Focus.

  Ryan.

  The hover-van came to a stop and it was the first time that I realized none of us had spoken a word the entire trip. It was as if we were all mentally preparing ourselves for what we had to do. I didn’t really want any of them to go with me, they were just more bodies I’d have to look out for. But I knew there was no way I could talk them out of it, so I hadn’t even wasted my breath. Even Jason insisted that he go along, and that’s saying a lot seeing as he’s normally the first one to run from danger.

  Now that I was able to use my powers through the special compound metal or whatever it was, I’d be able to use anything dead inside or outside of Building Sixty, including the entire graveyard of Havenville. I could sense from the van that a lot of the corpses were almost completely decomposed, which meant my control over them would be less powerful. Still, there were just as many fresh ones as well. Gross. I hated having to think tactically about dead bodies and their levels of decomposition. Seriously messed up.

  Our driver turned to me, “I’m going to shift the van back so you can exit, but I’ll be cloaking myself until you’ve obtained your target. Just signal me with this when you’re ready to leave.” He handed me a small round device with a diameter of about a half an inch. “Just press it into your palm.” Apparently, I was eyeing the thing with confusion. “Vice President Turner’s diversion is scheduled to start in two minutes.”

  I nodded, wondering what Turner had planned. He hadn’t told me any details and I really hoped it wouldn’t involve hurting anyone. There was no controlling him, and I had to keep reminding myself that Turner would have gone after the twins with or without me. Small comfort, but I couldn’t feel responsible for everything bad Gramps did. It would kill me, I think.

  The same buzzing sound that we heard when we first entered the hover-van sounded again. This must be the displacement thing at work, but to us nothing visually changed, I just opened the door and stepped out of the vehicle with the others. When we were all out the buzz sounded again. This time my mouth dropped in shock.

  The hover-van was gone. As in, not there anymore.

  I reached out to see if it was just invisible, but there was nothing there. I guess displacement meant exactly that, it could displace itself from where we were. Dimensions, Turner had said. Too much for my brain to handle at that moment, so I tucked the circular device in my jeans pocket and hoped that when the time came, the ship would re-appear when I activated it.

  “Shouldn’t you get some dead thing wrangled up before we go in there?” Nancy asked as she looked at the doorway to the building.

  “Is it weird that there aren’t any guards, anywhere?” Bill searched the empty street carefully.

  “Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Maybe they’re all protecting the twins,” I said. It was eerie. Like we had stepped into a ghost town. When Jill and I had been here before there were at least a couple of random guards strolling the perimeter, but now… trap? Probably.

  BOOM!

  A large explosion sounded in the distance. That must be the diversion. I put my feelers out for any new dead bodies, but so far Gramps had kept his promise. The explosion hadn’t killed anyone.

  “Let’s go,” I said, swinging the door open to Building Sixty. I led the pack and raced down the hallway towards the door that would lead me to where Ryan was held.

  Still no guards.

  I stopped.

  Everyone clambered up behind me, almost tackling me to the floor.

  “What is it?” Nancy asked as she and the others regained their bearings.

  “I’m not going to run in there blindly. We need a guinea pig,” I said.

  The others nodded their approval.

  “Anyone in particular?” Jason asked.

  “Any of the dead villagers will do,” I said and connected to the freshest corpse I could find in the graveyard behind the warehouses. Making the body dig its way up from its grave sent shivers down my spine since the memory of being buried alive was still fresh in my mind. But there was no time for my problems. I concentrated, and after a few minutes the corpse was running at full speed toward our location.

  For the sake of their own sanity, I seriously hoped no one who knew the dead person saw it running down the street.

  I made the body open the door to the building and a dirty, grey-skinned, old woman stood before us.

  Not just any old woman…

  “Beth,” Nancy said in shock.

  I nearly lost my hold on Beth as I recognized Elisha’s twin sister. They killed her. They killed Beth! Why? I knew Elisha’s reunion tears was an act, but enough to kill? I could tell Beth had been beyond happy to see Elisha, but the next day at breakfast… something had seemed off between Beth and the Elisha/Roland team.

  “I knew something was wrong,” Jason practically spat. I had never seen him so mad. “When we split up, Nancy, Bill and I went back and talked to Beth. She seemed scared, but we couldn’t get anything out of her.”

  “Then we were ushered here to the warehouse,” Nancy said and I could tell she was upset as well. “She was so nice.”

  “And Roland’s her son. How could he kill his mother?! He’s supposed to be a minister,” Bill piped in.

  I couldn’t fathom the reason why either, but I also knew we were running out of time. I would’ve taken control of another body, but we didn’t have the time to spare. And the horrible part of me that I was ashamed to admit existed secretly knew that Beth would be a valuable tool in throwing Elisha and Roland off their game.

  “I’m sending her in,” I said.

  That quieted everyone.

  I made Beth enter the next room, then I closed my eyes so I could see through hers without the headache.

  About twenty armed guards surrounded Ryan in a tight circle. Elisha was there as well, monitoring the read-outs of Ryan’s brain activity.

  No sign of Roland, he was probably protecting Samuel and John.

  Almost as soon as Beth entered the room, the guards all pointed their guns at her.

  “Freeze or we’ll shoot,” one of the guards yelled.

  Just for Elisha’s sake I made Beth talk. “Go ahead. Sister, what do you think about that?” I cringed at the sound, and in that moment I loathed Elisha more than I ever had before. Beth’s voice was grated and crackled like she had been screaming when she died. How could anyone do that to someone they loved? I guess being a sociopath gave you the ability to feel nothing. Or at least not let feelings get in the way of your psychoness.

  “STOP!” Elisha screamed to the guards. Her face was wracked with terror and fury all balled up into one. “Don’t shoot her! Shoot the people behind that door! You’ll pay for this, Chelsan Derée!”

  Gigs up, and I only had Beth to block. “Get back outside! They have guns! I’ll bring in more corpses, you come back in with them and try to free Ryan while I ta
ke care of Elisha,” I said very quickly.

  “We’ll keep the exit open in case you can’t make Beth fend them off,” Bill said as they all followed my instructions and ran out the hallway to the exit door.

  I concentrated on seeing through Beth’s eyes.

  Inside the room, the soldiers were running toward her, but not shooting, per Elisha’s command.

  I puppeteered Beth to block the doorway and then made the ninety-seven-year-old kick some serious butt while I slammed into about thirty black swirling holes in the graveyard outside. It was making me dizzy, having thirty corpses claw their way up through the ground while super-grandma was punching and kicking Elisha’s guards, but the No Kill order was keeping her intact at least, and by default keeping the goons away from me. None of them had reached the door yet.

  I backed up to the exit just in case. I really didn’t want to be shot today.

  Elisha’s men were shoving past Beth, twenty against one, and even at super-strength I couldn’t make her corpse fight that many off. The thirty corpses finally broke ground and I made them run towards the entrance as fast as I could make their dead legs move. Some bodies were more decomposed than others, so they lagged behind, but a good twenty were strong and fresh. Ewww. I’m glad I wasn’t there to see my friends’ faces as these decaying corpses came running at them full speed, but they knew the score, and they knew it was necessary.

  Beth was finally knocked aside. I opened my eyes to see the first guard fly around the corner to the doorway and aim his gun at me. I dove through the exit as bullets flew over my head. More men filed into the hallway, guns blazing, just as I made all thirty dead bodies enter the hallway in front of me. Bullets shredded their already rotted skin and I heard some of the soldiers scream in terror. As a town that had never taken Age-pro and lived by their religious beliefs, seeing their dead family members come back to life to attack them was too much to handle.