Blackout b-1

by Robison Wells

  “Military use. They have a rating system to show how beneficial we’d be if we were in the army.”

  “What the hell?” a girl said. “I’m fifteen years old.”

  Josi shrugged. “I’m just saying what I saw.”

  Jack called out, “So what is it? What are we?”

  “We all have something called a Lambda rating. I don’t know what Lambda means—that wasn’t on the chart. Jack, you’re a Lambda 4T, which means you’d be best suited for tactical intelligence, which I think means reconnaissance. I’m a Lambda 4O—that’s operational intelligence. I’m not sure what that means.”

  “What about me?” Matt asked.

  “You had an asterisk,” she said. “That means ‘currently uncategorized.’”

  “Figures,” he said, annoyed. “Not much call for basketball in the army.” Matt had been diagnosed with a very mild form of telekinesis: without realizing it, he’d been guiding all his throws by gently nudging the path of the ball.

  Jack laughed. “Think of how well you could throw a grenade.”

  “And that’s probably it,” Matt said.

  “Laura,” Josi said, “you were the only five—a Lambda 5D, which means Direct Weapon Use.”

  “Nice,” one of the guys said. “Kickin’ ass and taking names.”

  Laura only smiled.

  Josi went through the rest of the list. There were a lot of twos—designated as “Civilian Use” —and a couple of ones—“No practical use.” Eddie, with the hot breath, got that one, and he was pissed. So did a girl who could change something’s color by touching it. She laughed it off and said she was glad—she saw a life ahead of her as an interior designer.

  The threes were all logistics—a kid who could fix anything mechanical, another who was some kind of human calculator, and a handful more.

  The fours were all intelligence. Nicole got lumped in there, same as Jack: Lambda 4T. Little Cesar Carbajal, the kid who could instantly count anything he could see, was also put in intelligence, which seemed to make Eddie even angrier.

  The fives were the weapons. Josi said this was broken down into several categories, but the only one in the room was Laura.

  It was a 3L, a sort of healer, who asked the question on everyone’s minds. “Does this mean we’re all going to be drafted?”

  “We’re too young to be drafted,” Jack said. “Well, most of us are. Who here is eighteen or older?”

  Laura and Josi were the only ones who raised their hands.

  “See?” Jack said. “And girls don’t have to sign up for selective service. We’re not going to get drafted.”

  “Maybe it’s in case we want to join up?” Laura said.

  Eddie shook his head. “Who would want to join up after this?”

  “I don’t blame them,” Laura said. “They said that the terrorists have this same virus, and they’re using it against our country—against America. I’m not just going to go back to school and the mall and pretend we’re not at war.”

  “After what they did to you?” Eddie pressed.

  “Don’t you think they were right to be nervous?” she said. “They didn’t know if we were terrorists. I wouldn’t trust me, if I were in their shoes. Why do you think they put these GPS trackers on our legs?” Laura pulled her leg up under her and tapped the ankle bracelet.

  There was a pause, and then the 3L boy with the strange mechanical affinity pointed to his own bracelet. “They’re not GPS trackers.”

  Everyone in the room looked at him. He was maybe sixteen, and extremely skinny and pale. “I’ve been messing with it. They’re not GPS. They’re bombs.”

  There was a moment of silence, and then the room erupted in noise. Jack had to force himself to lower his hearing, block out the painful sound.

  It was Laura who shouted everyone down. “Get a grip, people! Shut up and let the kid talk!”

  He looked at her shyly but gratefully. “It’s a small explosive charge. Probably not enough to kill you, but it’d take off your foot. If you try to cut through the plastic, it will explode. And it can be detonated remotely.”

  Eddie glared at Laura. “These are the people who you’re giving the benefit of the doubt?”

  She stared back. “Yes. If you had a room of people who were potentially terrorists—who were human weapons that you couldn’t disarm—wouldn’t you take some kind of action to control them?”

  Jack didn’t want to think about it. Instead he sat back and tried to block them out. He focused his attention elsewhere. Deodorant and cologne. He could still smell it, fainter, but present. He walked to the door and closed his eyes. The smell seemed to paint a picture in his mind, to leave a trail that filled spaces and marked objects.

  The man had left their room and had gone left, his scent leaving a lingering picture of a narrow space—a hallway—before turning . . . was it to the right? Yes. To the right, down another hallway. There was a stronger scent there—a handprint on the wall, then another on a doorknob, and the man entered a large room where his scent spread to fill a much bigger space. Air vents were running through this room, but just churned his smell around, mixing it with the sage and dust of the outside air.

  Jack could see it all—or smell it. It was like all his senses were blending together. He knew the shape of the halls by the way the remnants of cologne filled them. Jack knew, without a doubt, that he could walk directly to the man—with his eyes closed.

  The man was still there. Jack listened. Water ran through pipes, electrical outlets hummed, as Jack retraced the path from him to the man. He could hear the air ducts in the man’s room—small, whirring, and metal, probably vents in the ceiling.

  The man was flicking through the papers. He was marking them, the scratch of his pencil—no, a smoother sound; a pen—making notes every few seconds.

  There was a sudden buzz and whir, which died down quickly, and soon the man began to type. Jack could hear each keystroke.

  A hand touched Jack’s shoulder and he started. He spun to see the rest of the kids staring at him.

  “What are you doing?” Josi asked.

  “Listening,” Jack said. “He’s grading our tests.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  AUBREY WAS IN THE ROOM for three days, and it slowly filled with people. On the first day she was handcuffed to a desk while she took a full day’s worth of handwritten exams. She wasn’t sure what the tests indicated, but on the second day a soldier unchained her and let her roam freely around the room.

  She didn’t know anyone there, but they were all like her. They all took the same tests, they all were looked on with the same level of suspicion. Some tried to be studious and alert. There was a boy at the end of the row who acted like he was in the army—saluting and standing at attention and calling everyone “sir.” A girl told Aubrey that he could superheat his body, whatever that meant. She never saw him do it. On the other hand, there was a girl who lay in bed all day and cried. She never got up for announcements or for meals or for anything, and on the third day an army medic came in and gave her an IV. Aubrey didn’t know what that girl’s power was.

  It was nearly evening; there were no windows in this room, but there was a big clock on the far wall. The door opened, but instead of dinner, it was an officer in a full dress uniform. He was young, maybe only a few years older than Aubrey, and he held a clipboard.

  “May I have your attention,” he said, his voice shaking the tiniest bit.

  Everyone in the room quieted down. Aubrey sat up on the edge of her bed.

  “The following people are requested to attend a meeting with Colonel Jensen. If your name is on this list we ask that you please exit this room in an orderly manner. There is no need to bring anything with you.”

  There were a few murmurs but he ignored them and began to read the names.

  “Joel Read, Lambda 5M,” the man said, and the boy at the end of the row shouted out a “Sir, yes sir!”

  “That’s not necessary,” the man said, and gestured tow
ard the door. The boy pulled on his shoes quickly and hurried out.

  “Michelle Wolf, Lambda 3L?”

  A tall girl on the far side of the room stood timidly, hugged a friend, and then left.

  “Gary Henson, Lambda 5D?”

  “Where are we going?” asked a boy who didn’t stand.

  “You’re Gary?”

  “Where are you taking us?”

  The man looked back down at his clipboard. “You’ll see. Next on the list, Aubrey Parsons, Lambda 4T.”

  Aubrey’s chest tightened, but she tried to ignore it. “Here.” She hurried to the door.

  There were a lot more teens in the hall than the ones who had just left her room—at least thirty—and they were all heading to the right down a long white corridor.

  She was overwhelmed with a strong, terrified desire to disappear. She was in a crowd, surrounded by other kids. She could get away so easily.

  Until she ran into another camera. She couldn’t go anywhere.

  She was breathing rapidly now, wondering what new fate awaited her, and terrified it would be more of the same: more drugs, more danger, more deception.

  A hand grabbed her arm, and she spun.

  Jack. He looked like he’d lost weight, and the skin around his eyes was dark and sallow. She grabbed him in a bear hug.

  “You’re okay,” she said.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to get you,” she said, pulling away from him enough to look into his eyes. “They caught me.”

  A voice from the back of the line shouted to keep moving, and Jack let go of her. He took her hand in his, though.

  They both tried to speak, talking over each other. Finally, he told her to go ahead.

  “They said you really are a Positive—a Lambda, I guess.”

  “Yep,” he said. “I had no idea. It’s nothing flashy—not like you—but I have, like, supersenses, or something. I can hear everything, and see for miles, like I’m looking through a telescope. Other stuff, too. It’s nuts. How did you get caught?”

  Ahead of them, the crowd was leaving the hallway and entering a room through thick steel double doors.

  “I’ll tell you later,” she said, squeezing his hand.

  They took seats in the second row, on metal folding chairs that faced a podium and a large TV. Four military personnel stood near the front, and three more who looked like civilians. Or, more likely, FBI or CIA. Or doctors. They were all very serious.

  Nicole came in, surrounded by half a dozen boys. Aubrey’s stomach immediately turned. She couldn’t believe that they’d been so close, and Nicole had never told her. She’d made Aubrey think she was alone, the only freak.

  But Nicole could never be a freak. She could be different. She could be infected—a Lambda—but she’d never be a freak. She’d never have people look at her like she wasn’t good enough.

  Nicole broke through the ring of boys that surrounded her and hurried over to Aubrey.

  “Aubs!” she said, excited. “You’re here! And with Jack, too.”

  “Hey, Nicole,” Aubrey said. “Looks like you have friends wherever you go.”

  THIRTY-THREE

  THE OFFICER AT THE FRONT cleared his throat loudly and Laura sat up a little straighter in her chair.

  “Please settle down,” the man said as he waited for the stragglers to find their seats. He didn’t look like the type of person who was used to having to ask twice.

  “My name is Colonel Jensen. You undoubtedly have questions. In time, they will all be answered. For now, I just want you to know that you’ve made a very short list. Here in this temporary facility, we’re housing more than twenty-six thousand persons between the ages of thirteen and twenty. This is just one of many facilities around Utah, and there are facilities like this all across the nation now. And this virus, which you’re all very familiar with, is not limited to just the United States. Countries all across the world are dealing with similar testing regimens. This operation is trying the world’s manpower more than any crisis in recent human history.

  “This is to say nothing of the war that we’re waging here on our own soil against a threat the likes of which the world has never known.”

  It was all Laura could do not to smile, and she began biting the fingernail on her pinkie to keep her mouth occupied. The likes of which the world has never known. She’d been part of it. She’d been in the middle. It was her, and they were all completely oblivious.

  If only Alec could see me now.

  The officer stepped back from the podium and fiddled for a moment with the TV remote.

  “You’ve been shielded from the news for the past several days. I don’t have time to list all of the battles we’ve been engaged in, but let me illustrate briefly what we’re dealing with.”

  He clicked a button and an image of a bridge, twisted and collapsed, appeared on the screen.

  “The Hernando de Soto Bridge,” he said. “Where Interstate 40 crosses the Mississippi. The steel beams were melted right off their piers on Tuesday. I’m told that takes 2,600 degrees.”

  Laura marveled at the thought. None of the teams ever met each other, but she wished she’d been able to see that one in action. Did they create fire? Some kind of energy beam?

  He clicked the button again and a picture of a flooding stairwell appeared. “A coordinated attack took place on the pump stations in the New York City subway system. The cause of the damage here is less well understood, but the pumps themselves seem to have deformed in some way.”

  She bit down harder on her finger. Deformed. Deformed was good.

  He clicked another. An enormous industrial pier was burning, next to a partially sinking ship. “We don’t know what the hell happened here, but it was four days ago, and the fires are still burning.”

  He turned off the TV and stepped back to the podium. “There are dozens of other photos to show you, but I think you get the idea. This country is under attack. It’s coordinated and planned. This week it was the destruction of key transportation hubs. Last week, it was power facilities. Before that it was the commercial sector—shopping malls and restaurants and theme parks.”

  Someone in the back row raised his hand, and the colonel pointed to him.

  “Why would their attacks be coordinated, but so different from week to week?”

  Laura stopped chewing on her finger and clenched her jaw.

  The colonel nodded for several seconds, as if mulling over the question. “This is just conjecture,” he said, “but I think part of it is because it spreads our forces. They attack dams, so we guard dams; then they attack ports, so we defend ports. We’re spreading ourselves thin. Second—this is terrorism. Their goal is to hit targets that create terror and cripple the country.”

  Laura wondered if that really was all they knew, or if it was all he wanted to tell a group of kids. Surely they had to know how the teams operated, how they got their orders. Had things gone to chaos when Alec was killed in the avalanche?

  A tall girl raised her hand. “What does this have to do with us?”

  Someone else—a woman in a civilian business suit—stepped forward. “The terrorists who are carrying out these attacks are people your age—usually in their late teens, and—”

  A guy stood. “Are you accusing us?”

  “No,” the woman said emphatically, motioning him to sit. “We’re not accusing you. I’m with the FBI, and have been working closely with the Centers for Disease Control. Here’s their latest information: The terrorists are usually ages seventeen to twenty-one. And they all—everyone we can identify—have the Erebus virus. This virus, unfortunately for you, can attack anyone but will only infect a host during certain stages of brain development. I could spend the day in this room with you, and touch you and share your dishes, and I’ll never become infected—the brain is fully developed during the late teen years and early adulthood, so the virus won’t affect me. But at some point in your recent past, the virus infected all of you, and
altered the growth of your brains.”

  She held up her hands, as though to stop an inevitable question.

  “You might hate me for saying this, but you’re the lucky ones. Everyone in this room has symptoms that can be beneficial and lack symptoms that are too detrimental to function. There are people out there who are so debilitated by this virus that they are only surviving in a hospital.”

  Jack—the boy who had sat in the cell across from Laura’s—raised his hand. “I don’t get it. You’re saying we’re not to blame, we’re the healthiest ones—so why do you have us here?”

  Another man stepped forward. Judging by the sheer number of pins on his chest, he looked to be the highest-ranking person in the room. He strode to the podium and took it with both hands.

  “Because it’s time to fight fire with fire. What’s your name, son?”

  “Jack Cooper.”

  “Oh, yes. Jack, you’ve been designated as having hypersensitivity. I’m told that you can see in the dark, can hear through soundproof glass, can read a book from a hundred feet away, and can hear a heartbeat from fifty yards, through a brick wall. Is that correct?”

  “More or less,” Jack said.

  Laura was impressed. That was something that would have been useful on their team.

  “Well, imagine the other team has someone like you. Don’t you think we’d want to even the odds?”

  Jack sat down and the girl next to him leaned into him a little bit.

  Laura felt an unexpected pang of loneliness. She’d had friends. Well, Dan had been a friend. Alec had been an arrogant boss. Still, it’d be nice to have someone to talk to.

  “Here’s the deal,” the man said. “You all have a bracelet attached to your legs. That’s because, despite our best efforts, we can’t confirm one hundred percent that you’re not terrorists—or that you won’t become terrorists. You are living weapons and our intel suggests the real terrorists are all American citizens—kids, just like you. On the other hand, you can be extremely helpful to our cause.

  “So, if you want in, we’ll take you. We train you the best we can, but our priority will be getting you out on the battlefield as quickly as possible. This is not because we don’t care what happens to you. It’s because every day that goes by we are losing this war. We need to get things back under control.