The Riser Saga

by Becca C. Smith

  But then again, maybe this was all guilt. A part of me desperately didn’t want to be responsible for her death. I knew it wasn’t really my fault, but unfortunately the human brain doesn’t work that way. Roberta killed the twins and died as a result.

  I couldn’t stop remembering those twins, John and Samuel, especially the creepy way they always held hands and stared at me with their blind eyes… the way I took control over their power…

  I shuddered.

  Sure, I can control the dead, but the twins… they could control life itself.

  My grandfather had deadened the cells surrounding John and Samuel’s brains, allowing someone like me to control the twins by using their dead brain cells. Weird, but effective. Roberta and Turner could control the dead too, but not innately like me. They had to use spells and black magic to do it.

  I still couldn’t believe the things I’d done and seen over the last year. I had sort of slipped into the lull of “normalcy” these last five months, but when I was asleep I couldn’t hide from my past.

  From who I am.

  I’m the girl who sees swirling black holes in dead things and can make them do whatever I want.

  And the twins were the reason I had my power.

  Over two hundred years ago they killed everyone in the original I.Q. Farm by detaching the living from their spinning white holes. (That’s how they saw life, as a spinning white hole of energy.) One of those victims was Roberta, but for some unknown reason, because she was pregnant, she lived, and as a result my father was born with the power I have today. When Roberta and Turner tried to use a powerful curse to kill my mom and me when I was just a baby, Dad performed a spell and sacrificed himself to save us. Unbeknownst to him, he transferred his power to control the dead over to me.

  Warped as they were together, my grandparents truly loved one another. Turner and Roberta kept John and Samuel locked up because Turner was afraid that if he killed them, Roberta would die. He was right. Elisha used the collective minds of the I.Q. Farm kids and temporarily turned me into her puppet, making me use the twins’ power to kill everyone in the warehouse that night. Elisha almost succeeded. I almost killed everyone I loved. But Roberta, knowing full well that if she killed John and Samuel she’d die herself, forced herself to walk over to them and slit their throats. She died instantly.

  Elisha escaped with her three pregnant hostages (she made me use the twins to detach the spinning light from their bodies so the babies would have the same powers as mine) and none of us have heard from Elisha since. We have no idea if she performed the ritual on one of the babies to gain their power to control the dead for herself.

  Elisha had disappeared off the face of the planet.

  Which was actually a lot more terrifying than I cared to admit.

  “I’m not a ghost,” Roberta said as if reading my mind.

  This only confirmed that my brain had made Roberta up, otherwise she wouldn’t know what I was thinking...

  Ugh.

  I was over-thinking again. I was supposed to be relaxed and sleeping, not playing mind games…with myself!

  “I’m sorry for what happened,” I began. I figured if this was a guilt dream, I might as well say what I felt, therapy-style.

  Roberta rolled her eyes, annoyed. “Would you listen to me? I don’t have much time.”

  “Fine. What?” I figured my subconscious wanted to tell me something. I might as well give it free reign.

  “Elisha is awake now,” Roberta announced.

  Huh?

  This dream was getting weirder and weirder.

  “Was Elisha asleep?” Why was I giving into my insanity?

  Roberta’s image flickered, as if she were a bad holo-image about to go off the air.

  “Cocooning is more like it.” Roberta seemed disgusted. “Pay attention, keep your eyes open. She has spies everywhere and they’re watching you.” Roberta pointed her finger at me for emphasis.

  “Kay,” I said, thinking this whole dream was becoming one big paranoid delusion.

  “Chelsan, you’re not taking me seriously. I can see it in your eyes.”

  That’s when Roberta stepped forward and touched my cheek.

  Whoa.

  I felt a chill run up and down my spine as if I were fully awake.

  Roberta’s touch was real.

  Real.

  This wasn’t a dream.

  “You’re dead,” I said to reassure myself that Roberta was truly gone.

  “Yes, but not quite, I can’t explain here. It takes too much energy and I don’t have a lot of it.” Roberta’s image flickered once more.

  “Then you are a ghost,” I needed to know what was going on.

  “Not quite that either.” Roberta popped out of the dream.

  I was still in the room with dozens of silhouetted coffin-sized boxes.

  Roberta’s image faded in again, but she was transparent now.

  “Look inside.” Her voice sounded as if she were talking to me over a great chasm.

  I peered inside the boxes.

  Every single one had a body inside.

  Not just any body, but the same body.

  Roberta’s.

  A room full of sleeping bodies, all with the face of my grandmother in her youthful appearance.

  “Clones,” she whispered.

  Chapter One

  Monday April 4, 2321

  I awoke in my bed with sweat dripping down my face.

  I gasped for air, not seeming to breathe in enough of the stuff.

  Ryan’s arms held me in a protective embrace. “What is it? Are you okay?” he asked gently.

  I melted into him, immediately feeling more relaxed. I managed to catch my breath and steady my heart beat as Ryan held me.

  “Nightmare,” I mumbled into his chest.

  Then I told him about the dream.

  Ryan pulled me in tighter and kissed my forehead. “It’s over now,” he whispered softly.

  Man, could this boy make my toes curl.

  I could see daylight peeking through the curtains of my room and I knew it was close enough to “wake-up” time to get up for school.

  “George and Vianne don’t know you spent the night,” I said with disappointment. I didn’t want Ryan to leave, but I also didn’t want to disrespect George and Vianne either. Not that they’d really care if Ryan spent the night but, since they were my official guardians as of three months ago, I didn’t want them to feel like they weren’t in charge. They were the only parents I had left and I’d do anything for them. But Ryan was my weakness and I was grateful he had snuck inside my room last night. It was almost as if he knew I’d have this terrible nightmare and made sure he would be there when I woke up.

  “I’m going, I’m going.” Ryan pulled away with a smile and I couldn’t resist.

  I kissed his perfectly perfect lips and then realized, “I know I have bad breath,” I said, suddenly horrified at the thought of how disgusting my morning breath probably was.

  “I don’t care.” Ryan kissed me back. “Mine’s worse.”

  I didn’t even notice.

  Ryan was just about the most beautiful specimen I’d ever laid eyes on. With his sandy-blonde hair, light brown eyes and chiseled features, sometimes it was hard for me to believe he was actually attracted to me. I always thought I was so boring to look at. Brown hair, grey eyes, boring face. Although Ryan and Nancy would kill me for being so down on myself, sometimes it was hard for me to see myself as anything but ordinary looking. I always wanted to be beautiful like Nancy with her golden locks, perfect little nose and gorgeous blue eyes. I definitely felt like the ugly duckling of the group, despite how Ryan always told me how beautiful he thought I was. Someday I’d work on my self-esteem, but for now, I just wanted to stay in Ryan’s arms and forget about my crazy dream.

  Ryan abruptly pulled away and flinched in pain.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  Ryan massaged the temple of his head. “Same. I’m all right.” R
yan brushed my concern away, obviously not wanting to worry me.

  “You should have Turner’s doctor look at you,” I tentatively suggested. I hadn’t heard from Gramps in five months except for the occasional update report, but Ryan’s experience with the I.Q. Farm kids in Havenville had left him with killer migraines. Not surprising when you think that he literally plugged himself into a computer that connected all the kids’ brains together. When Elisha made me use the twins’ powers to kill everyone in the room, that meant all the I.Q. kids, too. Which meant that they died while inside Ryan’s brain. No one knew what the ramifications would be. So far it was just headaches.

  Really terrible headaches.

  I reached up and took over massaging his temples. Ryan relaxed into me, physically melting at my touch. At least I could do something to help him.

  Ryan gently pulled my hands away and kissed them. “I better go. I’ll see you in a bit.”

  “You sure you’re okay? George and Vianne probably wouldn’t mind that you snuck in.” I didn’t really want to him to leave while his head was hurting so badly.

  “I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.” Ryan kissed me lingeringly.

  Before I could argue any more, Ryan was climbing out the window and running up the street toward his house.

  I watched him go.

  “You two are not fooling anyone, you know.”

  I turned around to see my best friend in the whole world, Nancy, standing in the doorway in her pajamas. She had her arms crossed and a smile on her face.

  “Yeah, I know, but I don’t want your parents to be upset,” I reasoned.

  Nancy guffawed, “You obviously don’t know my parents. They’d give Ryan permission to stay here permanently if you two just asked.”

  “I wouldn’t feel right asking if my boyfriend can live with me in their house. I’d be mortified.”

  Nancy just laughed at that. “But he practically does already, dork.”

  “I guess,” I admitted, seeing her logic. Suddenly I felt like a total hypocrite. Somehow keeping all parties in ignorance had felt like the right thing to do at the time.

  Nancy’s best-friend-radar was always on. “You look spooked,” she said, suddenly serious.

  I told her about my dream.

  “You think we should tell the rest of the gang?” Nancy asked after I finished recounting the nightmare.

  “Maybe… What do you think?” I genuinely wasn’t sure if I was just having residual guilt dreams or if Roberta’s ghost or clone or whatever had visited me in my head or not. Not exactly a normal thing to think, but then again my life was far from normal.

  “I think, with you, we should assume the worst and prepare for it. After you tell everyone, then we can all keep our eyes open. I mean even if it’s your subconscious, you basically told yourself to watch out for Elisha and possible spies for Elisha. Sounds like playing it smart to me,” Nancy rationalized.

  I nodded in agreement. “Better call Jason. Bill will be here in a few and I’ll tell Jill at school.”

  “Weird that Jill is a part of the gang. Never thought that would happen in a million years,” Nancy sighed. “Still, she has been useful these last few months.”

  I had to agree. Jill had been my mortal enemy at the beginning of the school year and now I considered her family. We all went through a lot together and Jill had come out the other side a better person. Sure she could still be a raging bitch, but at least it wasn’t directed at us anymore.

  Mostly, anyway.

  “I’m going to jump in the shower,” I said, suddenly feeling like the soothing hot water would improve my mood.

  “I’ll assemble the troops.” Nancy left with a slight bounce to her step. Calling her boyfriend Jason always put her in a good mood. Although they usually ended up in an argument, Nancy and Jason belonged together and were madly in love. It was a long road coming though. Jason felt he was too old for Nancy at first, being eighty years her senior thanks to Age-pro, but in this day and age everyone looked eighteen, so it hardly mattered to Nancy. Eventually, Jason’s feelings for Nancy overpowered any doubts he had about their age difference and they finally hooked up. And I was happy to say they’d been together ever since.

  I was about to head into the shower when something caught my eye.

  Or more precisely, someone.

  At the Hover-Shuttle station just up the road was a kid from my school, Max Grunter. Max and his sister Eva just transferred from New York about three months ago. The two of them were total opposites. Everyone assumed they were adopted, since Max was black and Eva was as pale as anyone I’d ever met.

  Max was tall and lanky, like he’d just grown six inches in the last month and his body hadn’t caught up yet. He had a shaved head, full lips and dark eyes that always seemed to be contemplating something deep. I had to admit, Max was a very good-looking guy. (Sorry, Ryan, love you always, but I still have eyes!) Jill thought so too, though she was keeping her cool about the whole thing. After everything that went down with Bill, I guess Jill decided she didn’t want to be second fiddle to anyone (me being the anyone, Bill had professed his love to me while he and Jill were dating!).

  And, besides, Bill had now shifted his interest to Max’s sister Eva.

  Eva was quite beautiful with long auburn hair and bright green eyes. Well, beautiful except for the burns. Only her face was unmarred by the long streaks of scarring covering her entire body. Neither Max nor Eva ever talked about how Eva received her burn marks, but they looked excruciatingly painful.

  I had never seen Max at the Hover-Shuttle station before. I didn’t even think he lived around here.

  That’s when Max’s eyes looked at mine with purpose.

  I froze.

  He was trying to tell me something.

  And I mean literally.

  I could feel him tapping at my head.

  My Grams, Roberta, had taught me how to keep people like Elisha out of my head, since astral projection was not only a real thing but also a dangerous thing. I shuddered thinking about how Elisha had made me go against my basic instincts by crawling inside my head and influencing me to do stupid things I wouldn’t normally do. Teaching me how to resist Elisha’s brain invasion was another thing I was grateful to Roberta for. Once I knew how to keep Elisha’s meddling creepiness out of my head, I was able to keep anyone out.

  But Max?

  Did he even know what he was doing?

  Most people have no idea that they are capable of astral projection. It’s like when someone says something that you were just thinking. Either you or the other person had popped into each other’s head and most of the time no one was the wiser.

  Except me.

  I could tell.

  And Max was trying to get in.

  I almost let him, just to see what on earth he wanted to say or what he was thinking. But I trusted my instincts and kept him out.

  Max looked away as the Hover-Shuttle arrived. He stepped onto the shuttle without another glance in my direction.

  Bizarre.

  I shook the thought of Max from my brain and took a quick shower.

  I put on a pair of jeans, my favorite blue T and my black high top Chucks. I was ready for the world or, at least, school, which sometimes felt like the world. I couldn’t believed we only had two months left of school and we’d all be graduating. With the craziness my life had been this last year, I hadn’t even thought about real life. Or normal stuff anyway. Prom, graduation, homework, boys: they were all things that most teenagers stressed about. I had to think about psycho grandparents, sociopathic seven-year-olds and learning as much as I could about my power to control dead things.

  Lucky me.

  Grabbing the electronic reader from my bedside, I hurried out of my room, to the terracotta-tiled hallway and down the spiral staircase to the living room. The life-sized holo-TV was on, but no one was watching it. I barely glanced at the newscaster giving her report as I pushed open the door to the kitchen.

  The
gang was all there waiting for me.

  Ryan was standing against the wall and immediately grabbed my hand when I walked in. He kissed me softly with a grinning, “Good morning, beautiful,” as if he hadn’t seen me already this morning.

  “Morning,” I said back, giving him a slight roll of my eyes at his attempt at subterfuge.

  “Hey.” Bill nodded in greeting. His brown hair was perfectly messy and his big blue eyes sparkled with a hello. Even after all the rejection I’d put him through, Bill still wanted to be my friend. I considered myself very lucky. Bill was such a good human being it made my brain hurt.

  “Clones, seriously?” Jason was already there sitting at the kitchen table with Nancy at his side. His curly black hair mussed as usual and his green eyes looking up at me with an amused twinkle.

  Apparently, Nancy had given them the scoop.

  George and Vianne sat across from Nancy and Jason. Vianne waved a hello. “Sit down and have some breakfast, Chelsan.”

  George, Vianne, Nancy and Jason all had a bowl of cereal in front of them and I had a pang of disappointment. I would’ve killed for pancakes. Bad dreams always brought out my comfort-food cravings. But cereal would do just fine as long as it was full of sugar. I let go of Ryan’s hand and pulled down a box of rainbow colored nuggets with pastel-colored marshmallows and knew I had selected a breakfast of champions.

  Pouring ample milk on my brightly colored food, I sat at the head of the table. “It could have just been a nightmare.”

  Armed with a spoon of his own, Ryan sat down next to me and snuck a couple of bites of cereal from my bowl.

  “With you, we can’t be sure. Cloning though… Unless your grandparents have the secret of all secrets, there has never been a successful case of cloning,” Jason mused.

  “But I thought they’d been cloning things for years?” Nancy asked in confusion.

  I had to agree with her. Everything we’d read in school said scientists had been cloning for over three hundred years.

  “Successful cloning, cutie,” Jason said to Nancy, reaching over to kiss her cheek.

  Nancy turned pink as usual and that led to the inevitable silly grin, which would be stuck to her face until Jason pissed her off.