The Riser Saga

by Becca C. Smith

  They all died trying to save Ryan.

  I was about to scream Elisha’s name like a lunatic when Roberta zoomed in on the perpetrator taking hold of Ryan’s arm.

  Roberta made the face of the attacker gigantic, well over twenty feet high, mocking me, telling me I was a complete idiot.

  Isabelle.

  “Turn it off,” I said in disgust at myself.

  Roberta flipped off the holo-footage.

  Turner was shaking his head, “What on earth would Harry want with Ryan? And how the hell did he know we were taking Ryan in?” He was obviously talking to Roberta. We were the forgotten four again.

  Roberta responded with just as much frustration, “He must have had eyes on Chelsan’s place. When your men arrived to pick Ryan up, Harry assumed he was important to us.”

  Harry Clifton. Isabelle’s boss and Turner’s ex-best friend.

  “Isabelle knows that the I.Q. kids are in Ryan’s head. I told her everything,” I confessed. I figured full disclosure was probably my best bet on getting Ryan back.

  “You what?!” Gramps whirled on me in rage.

  “Geoffrey, calm down.” Roberta touched his arm to soothe him.

  Nancy and Bill immediately stood in front of me like pit bulls.

  Turner rolled his eyes at them. “Even if I wanted to strangle that child, and believe me I do, she would have a hundred of my own men attacking me before I could lunge forward. Your little friend is entirely safe, you fools.”

  Nancy and Bill didn’t back down. They didn’t even flinch.

  Jason and Jill on the other hand stood exactly two inches behind me. They seemed to be of the same opinion as Gramps. I didn’t care if Bill and Nancy couldn’t physically help me if I was in trouble, the fact that they’d still stand in the line of fire made my throat catch. I loved them so much in that moment I thought I’d burst. They didn’t care one iota that I had just revealed all our trade secrets to the enemy. They loved my moronic self anyway.

  “Isabelle made me think I could trust her enough to tell her,” I said, trying to explain my behavior. Why had I told her everything? Because I thought if she really knew what had happened she’d leave me alone. It was selfish and it put Ryan in danger.

  Turner sighed, “She’s good at that.”

  Roberta stepped forward and I motioned for Nancy and Bill to relax. “There is a way we can find out where Ryan is located.”

  My body flushed with hope. “How?”

  “It might be dangerous…” Roberta began.

  “I’ll do it,” I interrupted. I didn’t care what the cost, if it could help Ryan I was in.

  “Chelsan.” I was surprised to realize it was Jill who spoke the word of warning, “This could be a trap.”

  I wanted to throw something.

  Yes, everything could be a trap! Everything! Everything! Everything!

  I was so sick of being in a constant state of distrust I wanted to hit something. No wonder I’d spilled my guts to Isabelle, I was tired of living a life of fear and paranoia! When you’ve lived eighteen years with an amazing mother and a dead stepfather you control, life is pretty free of any trust issues. In the last five months my life had turned into one big freaking trap.

  I just didn’t give a crap anymore.

  I turned to Jill and tried to smile as reassuringly as I could. “I have to do it.”

  Jill didn’t argue. No one did.

  I looked at Roberta with as much bravery as I could muster. “Lead the way.”

  Roberta simply nodded and walked past us out the large oak door. We all followed, with Turner behind us.

  It was weird traversing the corridors once again. I couldn’t keep my eyes off the back of Roberta’s head and her thick black hair bouncing slightly every time she moved. It was young hair, not like the thin, weakened hair with a strand of white every so often in her old body. And her swirling black hole, spinning wildly in her chest reminding me with every twist that Roberta’s soul was inhabiting a corpse. A walking, talking, breathing, corpse. She looked my age now. My age! My head couldn’t seem to wrap around it.

  No one said a word as we descended lower and lower into the underbelly of Population Control. I knew where we were headed: the deserted I.Q. Farm. It was where Ryan was supposed to be, hooked up to the strange brain machine that started this whole mess in the first place. If Ryan hadn’t hooked into that machine, those I.Q. kids never would have been stuck in his brain when they died. On the other hand, without that machine, we would have all died at the hands of Elisha, so it was both a savior and a curse.

  The machine.

  That was it.

  Roberta was going to hook me up to it to find Ryan.

  I knew it with such certainty I didn’t even feel the need to share my revelation.

  Everyone would freak out soon enough.

  One last flight of metal stairs and we entered what was left of the main I.Q. Farm. I’d never come in through the front door before. Normally, I was breaking in through air vents, so that in itself was surreal. But seeing the place deserted, with unused and unplugged machinery made it look like a ghost town of electronics. The sight was a relief in a sense, because it was difficult to see children strapped into machines looking all comatose and such (even though they weren’t really children, just Age-pro’d adults). But still, I’d learned that the world was much safer with them in the Farm than out in society. The kids were brilliant, but they were all like Elisha.

  Devoid of humanity.

  It was Turner’s way of using their brilliance without having to kill them off before they became serial killers. Most of the world’s scientific advances were made in this I.Q. Farm through the machines hooked up to the genius psychos. A weird kind of trade-off.

  Roberta moved to the middle of the room, where the largest machine rested. It was the crazy-wired mind-sucking machine that had terrified Ryan when he was a kid. There were several hundred tubes draped from the ceiling and into a headpiece for the lucky participant that volunteered to be strapped in.

  Namely, me.

  “You are seriously not going to strap yourself in to that.” Nancy looked at me incredulously.

  I plopped down in the chair. “Nancy, I have to do this.” Then I turned to Turner, “Hook me up.”

  Gramps and Grams began suction-cupping wires and tubes and every other nightmarish piece of machinery onto my head. I had only experienced being “in the machine” once before when Ryan brought me in through astral projection. It was kind of a rush, but I’d felt safe then because Ryan was guiding our way the entire time.

  When there was one last wire to hook up, Grams turned to me and said, “When I plug this in, everything will go black and you won’t hear any of us. Focus on Ryan: if he’s in the system, he’ll guide you to him. We’re going to unplug you in five minutes no matter what, so try to get in and out as fast as you can. Agreed?”

  “Yeah,” I heard myself say, but my heart was racing and I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience. Knowing me it might have been possible, but I needed to stay grounded if I was going to be any help to Ryan. Focus. I breathed a deep relaxing breath.

  Roberta plugged me in.

  Black.

  Grams wasn’t kidding. This was worse than astral projection because I had absolutely no power. I couldn’t create an environment by just thinking it. I couldn’t create anything.

  A lightning flash whizzed by me and I felt like I jumped. Then I realized I was only “here” in mind, no body, so jumping wasn’t exactly possible.

  Another lightning flash.

  Okay. This must be electricity or electronics or something computery.

  I took Roberta’s advice and concentrated on Ryan. I screamed his name out in my head, hoping that this magic brain-sucking machine would connect me to him.

  A blinding flash engulfed me completely. All I could see was white.

  It was so bright I found myself bathing in it. It felt like a weird kind of purity, since I didn’t have to squ
int. I was surrounded by the brightness and never had to look away from its beauty, like basking in sunlight without the fear of going blind. It reminded me of the twins and using their power to connect to life. I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to stay in the brightness forever.

  “Chelsan?” Ryan’s voice called out to me.

  I tried to speak through my mind, “I’m here.”

  That’s when Ryan’s beautiful face formed in front of me, shaped out of the light into perfection.

  “What did you do?” Ryan asked. I could hear the worry dripping from his tone.

  “Where are you? Do you know?” I asked. I was evading the topic of being hooked up to the machine, since Ryan would blow a gasket if he knew.

  “I’m stuck. I can upload my coordinates, but they have an army here. I don’t think you’ll be able to get in. Isabelle took me,” Ryan tried to explain.

  “I’ll come get you,” I responded.

  “This Harry guy is dangerous. He reminds me of Turner.” Ryan’s giant glowing face was surreal to watch.

  “How do we get you out of the computer system?” I hoped he knew the answer.

  “I’m not sure. As soon as they brought me here, they hooked me up to a newer version of the machine that Turner and Elisha have.”

  You mean the one I’m strapped into. I didn’t want to alarm Ryan by admitting that that was how I was communicating with him.

  “How do you know where you are?” I wanted to know.

  Ryan responded, “I can see everything, and I mean everything, so their system must be plugged into satellites and surveillance holos; that’s why I can send you coordinates. I can hear them talking and Isabelle seems to like you. She keeps trying to convince them that you were telling her the truth. That Harry guy hates your grandpa pretty badly though, and he doesn’t trust you simply because you’re Turner’s granddaughter. I can tell you this: if Turner shows up here, they’ll kill him.”

  “Is that necessarily a bad thing?” I joked.

  WHOOSH!

  Unplugged.

  I couldn’t stop blinking my vision was so wonky. Going from the brightest light imaginable to a regular old room, lighting was a difficult adjustment to say the least. After a few moments I started to make out the worried faces of Bill, Nancy, Jill and Jason.

  Gramps just looked pissed. What was his problem?

  That’s when I could see enough to read the holo-screen next to me. It had Ryan and my entire conversation typed out and floating in front of me. I guess my joke about him dying not being a bad thing didn’t go over so well. Oops.

  Grams started unstrapping me. She smiled gently at me and I found it strangely comforting. “We have Ryan’s coordinates. We’ll send a team to retrieve him.”

  I helped her take off the rest of the suction-cups and stood up. “I’m going. And you heard Ryan, you’re not.” I eyed Turner. As evil as Gramps was, I didn’t want him thinking that I wanted him dead.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You’re not going anywhere, it’s exactly what they want.” Turner just looked annoyed. He was already punching the coordinates into his holo-device.

  I grabbed his arm. “Send them back to Nancy’s and send me with the extraction team. Trust me. I can talk to Isabelle.” I was full of crap! But I needed to rescue Ryan and Gramps was the only one who could make that happen.

  I could already hear the peanut gallery (and by peanut gallery I mean Bill and Nancy) arguing with me, but I cut them off. “I can’t worry about the two of you. Isabelle is a killer and she knows you’re my weakness.” I focused back on Turner, “Just give me some dead guys and I’ll be fine.” Wow. That was quite a statement, but true. Even if Elisha was planning a surprise ambush I was pretty sure I could best her when it came to controlling corpses. It wasn’t a hundred percent, but I was willing to take the risk.

  Turner and Roberta exchanged a look, then Turner slowly nodded.

  It took a good hour before everyone was headed back to Nancy’s and I was on my way to Ryan. The hover-vehicle was filled with a mixture of alive and dead soldiers. I felt safer with the corpses. Controlling dead people was like second nature to me, even with the compound Turner injected into his dead soldiers that was meant to keep people like me out. It used to work on me. It would make me see corpses as live people, and prevent me from using my powers on them. But I had learned how to break through it and then later Roberta taught me how to master seeing through the strange substance so that it wasn’t even a nuisance anymore.

  I leaned my head back against the cold steel of the hovercraft’s wall. It was like a metal dungeon with benches and seat belts, two long rows on either side of the craft.

  A thought kept plaguing me. Why couldn’t Ryan and I catch a break? Every time things approached some semblance of normal for us, one of us was kidnapped or tortured or something. It would almost be funny if it wasn’t so depressing.

  And now Ryan had a bunch of I.Q. kids stuck in his brain. Did Isabelle and this Harry guy even understand what that meant?

  The soldier in charge walked over to me. (And yes, he was dead, controlled by Gramps who wanted to be there even if he couldn’t physically be present.) “We’re almost there. Harry and Isabelle have no idea I can inhabit the dead. They won’t know I’m there,” Turner said almost conversationally. My how things had changed!

  “You know this Harry guy and what he might do to Ryan so I appreciate you coming,” I admitted. Before, when I first thought of this rescue mission, I was planning on charging in alone, though determined, I felt way out of my depth. Isabelle could crunch my heart. And I wasn’t sure how my “dust trick” would go over the second time. Something told me Isabelle was the kind of girl that would be prepared.

  “Almost there, sir,” one of the guards called out to the corpse Turner was in control of.

  “Assemble the men,” Gramps ordered.

  Things started to bustle.

  What were we really expecting? To charge in there and take Ryan? They had to be waiting for that. What did Harry and Isabelle want to happen? Did they want me to attack? I had too many unanswered questions and the closer we flew toward our destination the more questions popped into my mind. I wouldn’t have to wait long, I guessed.

  As the hover vehicle descended to land, I looked out a small round window and saw that we were landing in the middle of a large warehouse facility. It reminded me of the warehouses in Havenville, but much grungier and more dilapidated. Good hide-out. I would have assumed they were abandoned. Beyond the warehouses was a pine forest that went on for miles. Anyone and anything could be lurking inside the trees’ shadowed protection. It made me wary. As if I wasn’t wary enough!

  If I could gulp any bigger I would have. Outside the center warehouse stood at least three hundred men, all with guns, none of them dead (shocker) waiting for the shuttle to land.

  So much for the element of surprise. Not that this gigantor hover-craft wasn’t a huge giveaway!

  Yet, somehow, I knew it would go down like this.

  The moment we landed I was close enough to see Isabelle’s smug face at the forefront of the armed warriors. I knew rescuing Ryan was going to cost me something.

  Turner’s puppet turned to me, “Just tell her that I’m your personal bodyguard. She’ll let me come in with you.”

  I nodded. Couldn’t believe my “back-up” was Gramps.

  The Commander-corpse ordered the men to stay and the two of us walked out of the hover together. So much for bringing an army. A part of me was relieved, though. I really didn’t want anyone to get hurt, and knowing Turner, this situation might have turned into a blood bath. In his brain that would probably have been the best option because then he could control the freshly killed soldiers. Didn’t Isabelle know how dangerous it was to threaten Turner with her soldiers? Isabelle hadn’t believed me, I guess. Or, as Ryan had observed, Harry must have thought I lied about my powers to Isabelle. I really hoped I wouldn’t have an “I told you so” moment with Isabelle later down the road.<
br />
  When I was face-to-face with the assassin I nodded to the dead man next to me, “He’s my bodyguard.”

  Isabelle didn’t argue, she just acknowledged what I’d said with a slight nod. “Follow me,” she said quietly and turned toward the open warehouse door. Her men parted for us, all statues of frightening stillness, hands grasped tightly on their guns, ready to shred us with bullets. I wished for a moment I had inhabited a dead body of my own for protection.

  Walking through the warehouse’s giant double doors, I felt like I was entering a metal barn, except for the fact that it was…

  SHLUNK!

  Steel sliding doors slid shut behind us, sealing us off from our men and theirs.

  And…

  Uh, oh.

  I was right. Isabelle had up’d the ante.

  The warehouse we were in was hermetically sealed.

  No dust.

  There went that back up.

  I searched for anything dead.

  Not much.

  A couple of flies and a few harmless spiders.

  Even if Harry didn’t believe I could control dead things, Isabelle apparently did and prepared as such. I wondered if Harry even knew Isabelle had been so thorough.

  Looking around there were a couple dozen desks with holo-computers at every table and soldiers manning each station. Probably thirty people total. The walls, ceiling and floor were all the same solid steel that kept the dust out. They must have either found this place after Isabelle met me, or had it installed like ninjas. Either way it made me even more nervous about their competence.

  We rounded a desk and there was Ryan.

  Lying flat on a four-foot tall bed, his head suction-cupped and wires running back into the computer system. The only movement I could see from him was his chest slowly rising and falling as if in a deep sleep.

  I ran to his side.

  Guns from every corner lifted and pointed at me, but I ignored them completely.

  Isabelle nodded for the men to put their guns down. They responded instantly to her command and went back to their holo-stations.

  I held onto Ryan’s hand, but there was no response. I turned to Isabelle demanding in rage, “What did you do to him?!”