The Riser Saga

by Becca C. Smith

  But Isabelle was waiting for this moment. In fact, I realized almost immediately, she’d planned it. Isabelle looked like a Kung Fu movie, swinging her arms and legs in a graceful, but deadly manner. Little did Isabelle know that her targets were dead: no amount of kicking and punching would hurt them or slow them in any way. But it was enough for her to reach her goal.

  Roberta.

  Isabelle held Roberta in a chokehold before Turner could control his men to stop her.

  “I’m taking the girl or Roberta dies.” Isabelle looked triumphant.

  Um.

  Yeah.

  Roberta was already dead.

  I almost didn’t have the heart to tell Isabelle, but yeah, there was no way I was coming with her.

  I spoke up. “You can’t kill someone when they’re already dead.”

  Isabelle’s face showed real surprise at that. It was definitely the last thing she expected to hear.

  Then a light bulb seemed to go off in Isabelle’s brain. She eyed Turner with an almost grudging respect, then she laughed. “You’re the one who hired me to kill you.”

  Gramps smiled back and I saw the glimmer of an old friendship between the two of them. “It was the only way I could be sure if the two of you were still around.”

  Excuse me?!

  That bastard!

  I was used yet again. What if I hadn’t stopped her? He could have died.

  Like Roberta.

  Maybe his contingency plan was the same one Roberta had apparently used. Then the two of them would have been young again. I still didn’t know what had actually happened with Roberta, my brain was melting from too many questions.

  But Turner had said if the two of you were still around.

  Which Isabelle attempted to deflect, “I never said he was still alive.” Isabelle was serious once more.

  “Earlier, you said we know about your army.’” Turner gave her a look like he had checkmated her. “Besides, that little fire you two concocted to make me think you were killed was a little too obvious.”

  Isabelle still held tight to Roberta’s throat. She turned to me. “I’m assuming you’re the one who stopped me from killing Geoffrey.”

  I nodded.

  “You saved a monster today. I hope you’re proud of yourself.” Isabelle said it in a sort of sad way, like she understood why I had saved him, but couldn’t bring herself to admit it.

  “Not really.”

  Yeah, I said that.

  I could literally feel Gramps rolling his eyes.

  Isabelle paused. Then I saw it. A glimmer of amusement.

  “She’s interesting,” Isabelle said to Turner.

  “She is my granddaughter,” Gramps looked at Isabelle knowingly.

  Realization hit Isabelle. It was public knowledge that I was Turner’s granddaughter, but I don’t think Isabelle made the connection until that moment.

  Isabelle tightened her chokehold on Roberta.

  Roberta gasped for air.

  Turner’s eyes locked with Roberta.

  I would have done something to save Roberta, but well… she was dead already. Turner apparently felt the same.

  Isabelle placed her hand on the side of Roberta’s head.

  She was going to snap Roberta’s neck.

  “If she’s already dead, then this won’t hurt.”

  Okay, this girl was getting annoying.

  I didn’t care if Roberta was already a walking corpse, there was no way I was going to let her mutilate my grandmother’s body like that.

  So, I did something pretty violating.

  I connected to Roberta’s swirling black hole.

  It was like nothing I’d ever experienced. The only thing close was when I was able to connect to the twins and use their power to control life. Even though Roberta was dead, she was very much alive inside. I could feel her life force flowing through me, just like when I connected to the townspeople of Havenville. And even though she was dead, I could see her swirling white light. It was confusing, I thought that white light meant life, but it was more than that…

  It was her soul.

  Roberta’s soul was living inside a dead body.

  There was no other way I could describe it.

  But Isabelle was about to snap that dead body’s neck, so I shoved my feelings of awe aside and acted fast.

  I made Roberta grab Isabelle’s hand and push it away, then I made her back kick Isabelle in the knee.

  I connected to five of the dead army and had one of them pull Roberta to safety. I let go of my control of Roberta, feeling like I had debased her as a human being, then puppeteered the corpses to attack Isabelle.

  She was gone.

  I searched the area.

  Nothing.

  Isabelle had completely disappeared.

  I released my hold on the men and turned to Ryan.

  “Did you see where she went?” I asked him since he was Observant Boy.

  Ryan was at a total loss. “I got so focused on Roberta’s ninja moves, I didn’t see her.”

  “That was me,” I said, feeling a little ashamed at controlling Grams like that.

  Ryan raised an eyebrow in curiosity, but there was no judgment on his face.

  Not so true with Gramps.

  “How dare you!” he roared. “Never do that to Roberta again, you hear me? Never!”

  “Geoffrey, it’s okay.” Roberta locked her arm in Turner’s. She turned to me.

  “I have no control over you tapping into this corpse at any time. That’s how much I trust you. I wanted you to see that for yourself.” Roberta was so sincere, it made me feel even more guilty.

  “What about Isabelle?” I asked.

  Hello? There was still a psycho assassin on the loose.

  Turner was calm once more. “She’ll run back to Harry and tell him I know they’re still alive.”

  “Who’s Harry?” Ryan asked.

  I knew they’d never tell us, but I felt a surge of pride that he even tried to ask.

  “Oh I’m sure your little team will figure it out soon enough, the details are not something you need to know. But know this: If you think I’m ‘evil,’ Isabelle and Harry are ten times worse. They’ve been in the business of killing for three hundred years. They have no remorse and no conscience. At least when I have to let people go it’s for a greater good,” Turner explained.

  “Let people go? It’s not like you’re laying them off from a job, you’re freaking murdering human beings!” Okay. I was mad now.

  “Relax,” Gramps grumbled. “I’m just saying that they’re worse.”

  I groaned, knowing I wasn’t going to get anywhere with this argument. I focused my attention on Roberta. “What happened to you?” Before she could answer I waved at the dead guards around us. “And can we just send these lame butts away please.”

  “These lame butts saved my life, but we can go to a safer location.” Turner was getting annoyed with me again. So much for his earlier affection. I guess it had just been a show for Isabelle.

  Ryan and I followed the grandparents to a small office down in the bowels of the Staples Center. Gramps kept two of his dead guards with us just in case, but he let the rest of his men leave. Ryan stayed quiet the whole time and I wondered what he thought of all this. Even though he was my stoic statue today, I couldn’t have imagined going through everything without him. It just made me worry that his head was killing him. Ryan was only quiet when he was trying to keep me from worrying, which of course made me worry. As if reading my mind, Ryan reached around me as we all sat down on the two facing couches. He kissed the top of my head.

  All cozied up. I felt like I could face anything.

  Or at least I hoped so.

  Roberta and Turner sat next to each other on the couch across from us. The room was lit with ceiling pot lights. There was nothing else in it except the two couches and a couple of fold-up chairs leaning against the wall.

  “What are you?” I couldn’t keep it in anymore.


  Roberta smiled, and it was a pleasant contrast to her previous face-stretched smile of the past. “I showed you last night.”

  “That was you. Clones,” I thought out loud. “But why is this clone dead?”

  “There’s a reason why cloning humans never caught on. There has never been a successful case of human cloning in history,” Turner interjected with an air of irritancy.

  “But hello?” I motioned to Roberta proving him wrong.

  Gramps looked at me as if I were an idiot child that was incapable of understanding the obvious.

  Roberta placed her hand on his to quiet him and turned to me. “What Geoffrey meant to say is that cloning is very successful when it comes to the physical. We can replicate anything if we have access to its DNA. And the replication is identical. It’s just that with human cloning… they end up… unbalanced… in the head.”

  “You can replicate a body, but not a soul,” Ryan said seeing things more clearly than I did.

  “Exactly,” Roberta agreed. “Geoffrey and I have other means at our disposal, if you hadn’t noticed.”

  “Voodoo.” I was starting to see the bigger picture here.

  Roberta nodded. “When I died, I needed a vessel to be brought back into. With the voodoo ritual, it needed to be a dead body. We’ve been keeping clones of ourselves in stasis for the past two hundred years. Geoffrey injected one of my replicants with poison, performed the ritual and voila… Here I am, twenty years old.”

  “And dead.” I really didn’t mean that the way it came out.

  “Yes, and dead,” Turner picked up on my attitude right away.

  I almost apologized, but we were interrupted by one of Turner’s advisors. A live one.

  “Mr. Vice President, sorry to interrupt, but your hover-limo is ready for your guests,” the weasely little man groveled.

  “No interruption. We were done here. Have my granddaughter and her guest escorted home. If anything happens to her, I will hold you personally responsible,” Turner ordered.

  The man’s face turned five shades of white at the possibility of being blamed for any mishap that may fall upon me.

  I was taken aback yet again by Turner’s strange kindness and almost… loyal words toward me. He’d never say anything like that to my face when no one was around, but it was weird hearing him threaten people on my behalf. I didn’t know if it was an act for others or if it was real. I knew I shouldn’t care either way, but there was still a little part of me that missed my family, and it made me cling to the shred of a string of hope that Gramps could change and maybe be a good person someday.

  What was I thinking?

  Seriously? He just threatened a guy.

  Ugh. My brain was too jumbled at this point to think clearly, so I took the moment to stand up, bringing Ryan with me.

  “Don’t worry about it. We’re taking the shuttle.” I started to walk toward the door with Ryan holding tight to my hand.

  The man in the doorway turned about five more shades of white.

  “You will do no such thing, young lady!” Gramps said like he was actually some sort of parent figure to me.

  I whirled on him, suddenly angry.

  “Don’t you dare act like you care. You’ve had me kidnapped, tortured, and you’ve tried to kill me a bagillion times. Now, because former cat-lady actually grew a conscious and has some weird obsession with me, you think you can order me around and pretend to even like me?” I almost snarled at him, “Just stay away from me and my friends. And the next time you want to use me to re-connect with your old psycho buddies, leave me out of it!”

  I shoved Turner’s poor lackey out of the way and left the room before Turner or Roberta could respond.

  Ryan kissed my cheek. “Good for you.”

  I was still reeling. I didn’t know where all that anger came from in that exact moment, but it hadn’t subsided yet. I was so angry with myself for creating a false sense of calm with my evil grandparents. And they were evil. Why did I always seem to ignore that fact and do them favors?!

  No more.

  They could fall off the face of the planet and I wouldn’t care.

  I made sure my “brain walls” were in place. I didn’t want Roberta jumping in to try and reconcile with me. Screw her and her twenty-year-old-soulless-dead-clone-body!

  After a few minutes of us charging through the hallway bowels of the Staples Center, Ryan started to chuckle. “We’re totally lost, aren’t we?”

  I had been storming around so thoroughly I hadn’t realized that all these hallways looked exactly alike. I started to laugh with him.

  “Should we ask that guy you shoved?” Ryan kissed me playfully.

  I rubbed my hand over my face in embarrassment. “Did I really just do that?”

  “Yes.” Ryan kissed me again. Melt. “And it’s about time.”

  I stopped in my tracks with a horrible thought.

  “You still need help! What did I just do?!” Dread started to set in. I had just burned a bridge with the only person who could help Ryan. He could die and it would be all my fault. Why couldn’t I have just sucked it up until Ryan was okay? I was so selfish!

  Ryan kissed me passionately, leaving my head spinning. When he pulled away he cupped my face in his hands like I loved so much. “I’ll be fine. I can take care of this on my own. I think I know how. I don’t need their stupid machine.”

  “I’m going back and apologizing.” I couldn’t let anything happen to Ryan. Pride be damned, I would grovel on my hands and knees if it would save Ryan’s life.

  Ryan held my arms with his hands and looked me straight in the eye. “I won’t let you do that. You have to trust me. I’m going to be fine. I can do this on my own even if I have to build one of those brain machines myself.” Then he smiled. “I’m just that smart, you know.”

  Ryan would sell me the moon at this point, so there was no use arguing with him. I vowed to myself that I would visit Grams in my dreams tonight and ask for their help. I probably wouldn’t even have to apologize. She really was getting a little stalkery on me.

  “This isn’t over.” I left it at that and Ryan didn’t argue. He could tell by the expression on my face that I wouldn’t be able to let it go, but he also knew there was no use in arguing the point further.

  “Let’s just try and get out of here. I think I remember the way.” Ryan concentrated and used that super-memory-brain-power-thing he was so good at and led the way.

  Twenty minutes later we were exiting through the back of the Staples Center. The Hover-Shuttle station was visible in the distance through the crowd of people and all the press-hovers parked everywhere. We started to head toward the station when…

  Eva stepped out in front of us.

  I backed up instinctively (and logically, the girl looked vicious!).

  “What do you want, Eva?” I asked.

  “Elisha knows Max spilled the beans, and she’s ready to see you now.” Eva had her arms crossed in a kind of confident defiance. She really thought she was on the winning team.

  “Max telling me was all a part of her plan so don’t act like it was an accident,” I said, more to gauge Eva’s reaction, though, than actually believing what I’d just said was true. There was still a part of me that believed Max was on the up and up. Eva’s response would tell me a lot.

  I wasn’t disappointed.

  Eva looked defensive. Defensive, not upset. If Eva had been upset it would have been because I had seen through their ruse. Defensive meant she wanted to protect Max, and more probably his reputation. It wasn’t concrete proof of his innocence, but it was a start.

  “Leave Max out of this,” Eva scowled.

  “You brought him up,” Ryan chimed in.

  Eva tossed her auburn hair back as if to say she was bored with the two of us. “I’ll take you to her.”

  “No thanks,” I said and started to walk away with Ryan.

  I was not about to go to an undisclosed location to talk to a psychopath that had forced
me to kill innocent people so she could gain the same power I had. It was bad enough I had to talk to her in Ms. Floster’s head, but in person? There’s no telling what she could do to me. Elisha knew way more about my powers than I did, and that meant she’d most likely be able to kick my butt.

  Seriously, no thanks.

  “Wrong answer.” I heard Eva say behind us.

  That’s when I saw it.

  Millions of swirling black holes coming straight at us. She was using my trick with the dust.

  But this girl had only been alive for five months.

  I had my powers my whole life.

  Before the dust reached its intended target (our noses and inevitably our lungs), I stopped every last piece dead in its tracks.

  “You really want to play this?” I turned to Eva, asking her calmly.

  Ryan could see none of this, to him we were just standing in open air, but he’d been with me long enough to know something was happening.

  Eva’s face was scrunched in concentration as she tried to regain control over the dust.

  Not going to happen.

  Eva dropped her attempt and looked at me with pure fury in her eyes. “You’re coming with me.”

  A slew of dead branches came flying at us like a sudden tornado in the middle of the Staples Center loading zone.

  I acted fast and stopped all of them. They were literally hovering around us.

  This Ryan could see.

  And unfortunately so could the hundreds of press crews just behind us.

  Eva was sweating bullets as she tried to make at least one of the dead pieces of wood smack me on the head. It would have been comical except for the fact I knew I was going to be on the evening news. Using my powers in public was not something I needed right now.

  I disconnected the branches from their black swirling holes and they all dropped to the ground. Once disconnected not even I could control them anymore.

  Eva’s eyes widened in shock.

  Apparently, she didn’t know that trick.

  The press reached us in seconds and started screaming out questions about hovering tree branches and what happened and was Geoffrey Turner involved.

  Oy.

  I wanted to crawl under a rock and then throw the rock at them.

  I took full advantage of the swarm of people and jumped right in the middle with Ryan in tow, making our way to the Hover-Shuttle.