by Lucas Flint
“Jack?” said Mom, who sounded a bit worried now. “Were you saying something?”
An ominous feeling went down my spine, but I shook my head and shouted back, “No, Mom, it’s okay! Just thought I saw a mouse or something.”
“A mouse?” said Mom. She appeared in the doorway to my room and poked her head inside and sighed. “Looks like I’ll have to get the mouse traps out again.”
“Uh, sure,” I said. “Anyway, I’ve got to go. See you later!”
I ran past Mom out of the room, down the stairs, and out of the house toward the yellow school bus which stood at the end of our driveway. The school bus driver—Mr. Smith—didn’t look even remotely patient. He tossed me a nasty glare when I climbed onto the bus, which I could only return with an apologetic smile to show him that I didn’t mean to be late. But Mr. Smith didn’t smile back. He just grunted and looked away, putting his foot down on the gas pedal and sending the bus going down the street to its next stop. I wondered what Mr. Smith was so upset about, but decided not to push my luck with him today and just make my way to my seat.
As usual, the bus was crowded, mostly because my house was one of the last stops on the bus’ route. All of the students were sitting in their seats, with girls chatting with each other, boys talking about last night’s baseball game, and everyone loud and noisy, not helped by the students who were watching videos on their phones or listening to music. I didn’t mind it, though I did have a hard time finding a place to sit, because one of the hazards of being one of the last stops was that it was hard for me to get a good seat. Usually, I had to get one of the seats in the back, though a few times I had to stand and hold onto whatever I could due to how crowded the bus could get at times.
Luckily, this time I spotted an open seat near the middle of the bus, where a familiar face was sitting with his face practically glued to his phone.
“Kyle!” I said as I fell into the seat next to him. “What’s up, man?”
Kyle—who was my best friend in the school—nearly jumped when I sat down next to him and looked at me in surprise. “Jack, you nearly scared the daylights out of me. Almost made me drop my phone.”
“Sorry,” I said, resting my backpack in my lap for safekeeping. “I forgot how focused you can get. I wish I could get that focused sometimes, honestly. It would make doing my homework a ton easier.”
“Only if people respect your focus,” said Kyle, rolling his eyes behind his thick glasses. “My younger sister always pesters me to play with her every time I sit down to do my homework at home. And, in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not a big fan of dollhouses and tea parties.”
I chuckled at that. While Kyle was not much of a jock, I knew that he didn’t care much for girly things. He liked science, specifically medical science, and planned to go to medical school when he graduated high school. Me, I was probably going to go into construction like Dad, though I hadn’t decided yet.
Then Kyle’s eyes darted to the watch on my wrist and he frowned. “Where did you get that watch? I’ve never seen you wear it before.”
“This?” I said, holding up my wrist so Kyle could see it better. “This is a birthday present that I got today. It’s pretty cool, isn’t it?”
“Today’s your birthday?” said Kyle. He slapped himself in the forehead. “Aw, man. I forgot that your birthday is today and didn’t get you any gifts. Sorry, dude.”
“Nah, it’s fine,” I said with a shrug. “I don’t care if I get a lot of presents or not anymore. I’m not a kid anymore, after all.”
“But presents are what make birthdays so great,” said Kyle. He sighed and sat back in his seat. “On the other hand, this means I don’t have to feel guilty about not getting you anything. Still, I feel like I got to do something for you, so I’ll pay for your lunch at school today. How does that sound?”
“Sounds great,” I said, nodding. “I’ll make sure to pick the most expensive stuff off the menu just to empty your pocket.”
Kyle groaned. “With a friend like you, who needs enemies, eh?”
I chuckled at that. Kyle and I had known each other since we were kids, so we joked around with each other a lot. Our sense of humor wasn’t exactly the same—his was drier than mine—but we still got along pretty well nonetheless.
Then Kyle leaned toward me and said, in a low whisper, “Hey, Jack, did you hear what happened to Robby Mattis?”
“Robby Mattis?” I repeated. “Isn’t he the quarterback on the football team?”
“Linebacker,” Kyle corrected. “But it doesn’t matter. There’s a rumor going around that he got arrested last night.”
“Arrested?” I said, sitting up straighter. “Why? Wait, let me guess. Drunk driving, right? I know he’s been drinking despite not being old enough yet, but—”
“Worse than that,” said Kyle. “No confirmation yet, but all of the rumors say that Robby was caught buying the Power drug illegally. Supposedly, he met with the dealer in the park last night, but got jumped by the police. The dealer got away, but Robby got arrested and is currently sitting in jail.”
My eyes widened. “No way. Granted, I don’t know Robby very well, but he always seemed like a cool guy to me. Are you sure he was even arrested? Maybe he got sick and had to stay home from school today or something.”
“Look around,” said Kyle. “Do you see Robby anywhere on the bus? I haven’t, and my house is one of the bus’ first stops, so I get to see everyone who gets on board. And we didn’t stop by Robby’s house, not even for a little while.”
I looked around and found out that Kyle had a point. I didn’t see Robby anywhere on the bus. He wasn’t even sitting with his fellow football teammates upfront. I saw Ryan Bond, the star quarterback of the Rumsfeld Robbers and all around popular guy, laughing and joking with a couple of other players, while his girlfriend Steph leaned against him like he was a magnet. But Robby himself was nowhere to be seen, though there was an empty seat next to Jorge Garcia, where Robby usually sat.
I looked at Kyle again. “Okay, but that still seems crazy to me. Just because Robby isn’t on the bus doesn’t mean he was arrested.”
“My cousin works in the city’s police department,” said Kyle. “He told me this morning that a guy who looked like Robby was brought in late last night, though he wasn’t able to confirm his identity. It fits with the rumors, though.”
I bit my lower lip and looked back over at Robby’s empty seat near the front of the bus. A part of me still hoped that Robby might have been absent for reasons that weren’t as bad as the rumors suggested, but in the pit of my stomach, I knew that they were probably right, because Robby wasn’t the first student in the area to get arrested for buying such a dangerous drug and he probably wouldn’t be the last.
You see, Power was an illegal drug that, when injected into a person, gives the user a superpower, such as flight, super strength, x-ray vision, etc. It was a knock-off version of Superpower, a drug that the government injected into people who passed the Superhero Exam and got their superhero licenses, which also gave the person injected with the stuff powers.
But while Superpower was generally safe to use and was strictly regulated, Power was not. If you injected yourself with Power, you ran the risk of not having complete control over your power. So while you might gain the ability to conjure fire, your body might not have the ability to withstand the heat generated from said fire, meaning you might die the second you use your new power.
As a result, Power was completely illegal, with extremely harsh penalties for anyone caught dealing or using it. Even so, there was definitely a black market for it, like with any illegal drug, and the problem was growing bigger by the year, from what I’d heard on the news. There was a gigantic market for the stuff and it was very hard to make, which was why drug dealers who sold it often charged the craziest prices for it, with $2,000 per kilogram considered the low end.
Me, I’d never used the drug myself and had no intention of doing so, but I knew that there were
plenty of kids my age who did. This was because it was supposedly an easier way to get superpowers than going through the Superhero Exam, which had a 90% failure rate. Lots of guys and girls my age wanted to be superheroes and this seemed like an easy way for most of them to do it, but I didn’t want anything to do with the stuff, myself. It was far too dangerous and I hated seeing anyone who used it for any reason.
“I can’t believe it,” I said. “And Robby’s friends don’t even seem concerned about him.”
“What do you expect from a bunch of dumb jocks?” said Kyle with a snort. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “But I can’t say I’m surprised Robby would try this. He’s exactly the sort of person who would try to buy a drug as dangerous as that. Like all Power users, he probably thought it would be a quick and easy shortcut to popularity, popularity he didn’t even want to work for. Disgusting, isn’t it?”
“Not all Power users are like that, though,” I said. “Some use it because they feel like they have no other choice.”
“Yeah, sure,” said Kyle, rolling his eyes. “We all know what Power users are like, Jack. My cousin has arrested enough of them to get a pretty good idea of what they’re like. They’re criminals, every last one of them, and I, for one, am glad that they’re rotting away in prison, where they deserve to—”
“Shut up,” I said in a low voice.
Kyle paused and looked at me in surprise. “What did you say?”
“I said shut up,” I said. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“What do you mean?” said Kyle. “Sure, I’m no expert on Power users, but I’ve seen enough to—”
“My brother,” I said, interrupting Kyle again. “Thomas.”
All of a sudden, the blood drained from Kyle’s face. “Oh, right. Your older brother. I forgot. I didn’t mean to imply that he—”
“No, it’s fine,” I said. “I know you didn’t mean to offend me. I don’t even disagree with you necessarily. I’m just bringing up my brother because, well, you know.”
“Yeah, I do,” said Kyle, nodding rapidly. “I’m so, so sorry. I think I’ll just shut up now and get back to reading my ebook until we get to school.”
Kyle immediately buried his face in his phone again. I didn’t mind that, necessarily, because the last thing I needed was hearing Kyle’s one-sided opinion on Power users which, while not entirely wrong, didn’t exactly have the whole truth behind it. It didn’t include my older brother Thomas, for example, who died from a Power overdose last year.
Thomas hadn’t been a crook or a criminal. He’d just been an ordinary guy trying to do the right thing until he got fired from his job, got divorced from his wife, and ended up losing his home and kids to her. Even though my parents and I tried to support him, Thomas became desperate and went to a local drug dealer, who worked for the Injector drug cartel, for Power, because he thought it might give him a power he could use to ace the Superhero Exam and make some money.
But it hadn’t worked out that way. When Thomas injected Power into his bloodstream, his skin melted off his body and he died within seconds. We’re still not sure what superpower he got, but whatever it was, it killed him, though none of us saw him die. Not that I was complaining, however, because just the mental image of Thomas’ skin melting off his bones was enough to give me nightmares for weeks afterward.
That had been over a year ago now. Like Grandfather’s disappearance, Thomas’ death didn’t hurt as much as it used to, but it was still a sensitive subject for me. Unlike with Grandfather, however, I had wanted to avenge Thomas by finding the idiot who sold him that drug and teaching him a little vigilante justice. Sadly, my parents didn’t let me go out in the streets with my baseball bat to find the guy who sold Thomas that drug, and the police weren’t successful in arresting the dealer, either.
Nowadays, I accepted that Thomas was gone and that there was nothing I could do to avenge him. Even so, every now and then I still felt a strong desire to find that monster who sold him the drug and take him out myself. But that would never happen. The best I could hope for was becoming a cop when I graduated from high school, which was a career path I’d seriously considered, but I wasn’t sure I would actually do it.
Of course, I could always try to pass the Superhero Exam and become an officially licensed superhero working for the government, but like I said, the failure rate for the Exam was 90% and I definitely didn’t think I would be part of the 10% who did pass. I would just have to live with the knowledge that I would never avenge my brother’s death, and learn how to deal with it.
The school bus came to an abrupt stop, so abrupt that I was nearly thrown out of my seat, while Kyle accidentally dropped his phone, which fell on the floor and slid underneath the seat in front of us out of his reach.
“What was that?” I said, looking at Kyle.
Kyle—who was bent over trying to reach under the seats in front of us for his phone—said, “I don’t know. You should ask someone else.”
Frowning, I looked out the window and saw that we were at the last stop before the school, but I didn’t see any students climbing on board. I looked at the girls who sat in the seats before and, leaning forward, said, “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” said one of the girls, a black girl with pigtails. “Heard that there’s someone in the road, but I’m not sure.”
I was about to get up and go look for myself when a man with a gun stepped onto the bus and opened fire.
CHAPTER THREE
Everyone screamed, including myself, but then the gunman fired the gun into the ceiling again and everyone went quiet. Kyle was literally trembling right next to me, keeping his head down and his hands on his head. Even though I felt the same fear Kyle did, I couldn’t help but peer around the seats in front of me to get a better look at the gunman.
He was a Hispanic man, probably in his late twenties, with a red bandanna wrapped around his mouth and nose to hide his face. It wasn’t as useful as the masks superheroes wore, but given how he had a gun and the rest of us didn’t, I saw no reason to quibble with details like that.
Lowering his gun, the gunman said, in a thick Mexican accent, “Much better. I can’t stand screaming children. Too annoying.”
Mr. Smith, who was shaking in his seat, turned toward the gunman and said, in a very trembling voice, “W-Who are you? If you d-d-don’t get out of here now—”
The gunman pointed his gun at Mr. Smith’s face. “I wouldn’t be so quick to boss me around, amigo, especially when I have a gun and you don’t.”
All of the blood drained from Mr. Smith’s face as soon as the gun was pointed at his face. He made a very undignified whimpering sound, but didn’t even try to stop the gunman. That disappointed and scared me, because Mr. Smith was the only adult on the bus and if he couldn’t or wouldn’t defend us, then we were definitely screwed.
Two more gunmen stepped onto the bus. Like the first gunman, they wore red bandannas around their mouths and appeared to be Hispanic, though they were shorter than the first guy. They immediately aimed their guns at us, probably to make sure that none of us got any bright ideas or tried to take them down. I figured that the gunmen could kill us all within minutes if they wanted. Even hiding behind the seats wouldn’t work, because those bullets would be able to tear through the soft material of the seats as easily as flesh.
“It’s just a bunch of kids,” said one of the gunmen, who was slightly shorter and fatter than the other two. “Are you sure this is the right bus?”
The first gunman nodded. “Yes, but there are far more students than I thought. It will take too long for us to search them all before the police or Bug Bite get here, so let’s force them to give us their things.”
“W-Who are you guys?” said Ryan Bond, who, due to sitting upfront, was one of the closest students to the gunmen. “Terrorists?”
The first gunman chuckled. “Not terrorists, no. Criminals, outlaws, yes, but not terrorists. We are Injectors.”<
br />
Every person on the bus knew what that name meant. Of course, no one said anything, because no one wanted to get shot, but even a cursory glance around the bus showed me that all of my fellow classmates knew just who the Injectors were and why you should be afraid of them.
The Injectors were the members of the drug cartel that sold the drug Power. They called themselves that because Power had to be injected directly into the body in order to work. It had started out as a nickname, but was now so closely associated with them that they had taken it as their official name a while ago. Their leader was a man known as Michael Jones, though I didn’t know much about him because Jones operated in secrecy and, as far as I know, no one has ever actually seen his face.
But I knew about the Injectors not just because their criminal activities were so infamous. I knew about them because they were the guys who had sold Thomas Power and had even helped him inject it into his body. They were responsible for his death, much more so than Thomas himself in my view. I had learned about the Injectors last year when the police were investigating Thomas’ death, but at the time, they had seemed so distant because I had never met an Injector myself.
Now I got to meet three. And each one of them was armed with a gun and ready to kill anyone who looked at them funny. Just my luck.
“Injectors?” Kyle whispered next to me. “No way. Why would people like them be on our bus?”
“No idea,” I whispered back. “But I think these guys are the real deal. They’ve got the red bandannas, plus I heard that a lot of Injectors are Hispanic. If they’re fakes, they’re doing a pretty good job of faking it.”
“Now,” the first Injector said, raising his voice to be heard throughout the bus, “my comrades and I are not here for a quick chitchat. One of you students has something that belongs to us and we want it back.”
“What are you looking for?” said Steph, who was Ryan’s girlfriend, and clinging so tightly to Ryan right now that the two of them looked like they were about to combine into one person. “Money?”