by S. A. Beck
Race really wasn’t what it was about at all. That just happened to be the easiest thing for Courtney to pick on. No, it was something else. Somehow Jaxon broadcast to the world how different she was. It was like she had a big neon sign on her forehead saying MISFIT.
Why? For years, she had tried to fit in and never could. Her words never came out right, or she went about making friends all the wrong way. And then there were times when she was made to stand out, like when kids talked about their parents or grandparents. Even when someone asked something as simple as “Where are you from?” she was set apart.
Jaxon had been a foundling. She didn’t have a birth certificate. The courts had decided to designate her “birthday” as the day she had been found at the door of some clinic in San Francisco. Her bassinet had had her name written on it and nothing else. Doctors had estimated her age, and that was what they put on her paperwork. She had a seventeenth birthday coming up, and she knew she wasn’t turning seventeen that day. She might be seventeen already, or she might be sixteen like her paperwork said. She might even be fifteen.
How could she fit in when she didn’t know anything about herself?
The teacher’s voice interrupted her thoughts. “Ms. Andersen, would you mind answering the question?”
Jaxon looked around. The other kids were all staring and snickering.
Great, the misfit just screwed up again.
“Um, sorry. Could you repeat the question?”
At the end of the day, Isadore picked Jaxon up in her Lexus.
“So how was the first day of school?” she asked.
“Great!” Jaxon replied, putting on a smile. “The teachers are cool, and the classrooms have everything.”
If the foster system had taught her anything, it was to tell her temporary parents what they wanted to hear. Less trouble that way. And she hadn’t totally lied. The school had the best facilities she had ever seen. Jaxon had studied in everything from run-down public schools in bad parts of town to small classes run by tutors at group homes, and now the most exclusive private school in Los Angeles.
The car pulled out into LA afternoon traffic. Isadore put on some classical music and set the volume low.
“This is Mozart’s Symphony Number 40,” she said. “It’s good for you to learn about classical music. It helps the developing mind.”
Jaxon looked out the window so her foster mother didn’t see her roll her eyes. Isadore and Stephen were always saying stuff like that.
“So did you make any friends?” Isadore asked.
“I met a lot of people. There’s a girl named Courtney who I think will be talking to me a lot.”
“That’s wonderful! I know you’re going to be happy there. It’s not easy to get a spot in that place. We got you in by the skin of our teeth.”
Isadore didn’t seem to need a response, so Jaxon didn’t bother to say anything. She daydreamed as she looked beyond the snarled highway traffic, beyond LA’s grim skyline, and wondered what Otto was doing right now. Would she ever see him again?
Chapter 6
JUNE 5, 2016, OUTSKIRTS OF SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
8:25 AM
Otto Heike walked by the side of Interstate 5, picking up trash and putting it in a large garbage bag. He and the rest of his crew wore identical orange jumpsuits with the word CONVICT written in large black letters on the chest and back. The prisoners hobbled along like old men thanks to their ankle chains, which clinked as they moved and made an odd counterpoint to the whoosh of traffic nearby. Two prison guards flanked them, holding rifles and staring at them from behind mirrored shades.
So this is my future. Otto bent to pick up a rotten old package of half-eaten fried chicken. Eighteen and already a convict. The judge had given him two years in prison for burning the greenhouse back at the group home, a crime he hadn’t even committed. The judge said that now that Otto was eighteen, he could be tried as an adult, unlike for the other fires he had actually set when he was younger. It felt as though he was getting a delayed punishment for his real crimes. Otto fantasized about burning the courthouse down. It would serve them right.
At least the judge took pity on him and put him in a minimum-security prison. Otto didn’t want to think about what would happen to him in some of California’s tougher jails.
His parents had barely talked to him since he got locked up. In the month he’d been here, they hadn’t come to any of the weekly visitors’ days and had only called twice to chew him out and remind him how disappointed they were in him. As if he didn’t know. They’d been telling him that since he was a kid.
An incoherent yell came from the highway as a car raced past—something that might have been, “Pick this up, lowlife!”—and a garbage bag flew out of the window. Otto leapt aside to avoid being hit, his ankle chains getting snarled around his legs and making him fall. The garbage bag burst against the gritty earth, spilling out old food and crushed beer cans and stuff Otto didn’t even want to try and identify.
“On your feet and clean that up,” one of the guards said with a wicked grin.
“Trash picking up trash,” the other said.
Otto untangled himself and rose, dusting off his jumpsuit. Sometimes the guards harassed you if your clothes got dirty out here—took away rec time in the yard or made you eat your dinner in your cell. They were always thinking of some way to take it out on you. One of the guys, in jail for stealing cars, was missing two front teeth after some imagined infraction made one of the meaner guards lose his temper.
“I got to get out of here,” Otto said under his breath for the millionth time that month.
“What you say, pyro?” one of the guards asked.
“I said ‘I got a lot of trash here,’ sir,” Otto replied.
“Don’t want any of your trash talking, kid,” the second guard said. “Hey, Joe, get it? Trash talking! We got ourselves some talking trash!”
Both guards guffawed.
Forget the courthouse, Otto decided. I want to burn down the prison.
As Otto cleaned up the mess so kindly deposited by one of California’s finer citizens, he wished for the thousandth time that he didn’t have his urge.
He’d been lighting fires since he was a kid. It had started with small stuff that all kids did: igniting a pile of dry leaves with a box of stolen matches or melting one of his plastic army men to see what it would mutate into. While most kids did that once or twice and went on to other things, he had become obsessed. Fire was one of the most powerful forces in the world, and he could control it. All it took was one little spark and a bit of flammable material, and he could almost be like a god.
Soon piles of leaves and model soldiers weren’t good enough. He graduated to piles of old schoolbooks and the mailbox of the crabby old woman across the street. He knew what he was doing was twisted, and that only made it more appealing. Every time his parents nagged him, every time he caught his dad stumbling in at three in the morning with some woman’s lipstick on his cheek, every time something went wrong at school, there was always the flame waiting for him. It let him be in control again. Dr. Hollis made him realize that.
But before he had been caught, before he had gotten help, all he knew was that setting fires was the only thing that made him feel at the center of things. His parents sure as hell didn’t do that. Dad was always who-knew-where, and Mom… well, if Mom was sober enough to walk in a straight line, that was only because it was still early in the day.
The neighbors’ barn had been a turning point. It wasn’t some random object that didn’t affect anyone or something like Ms. Cronan’s mailbox, which counted as a punishment for being such a mean person. This time it was downright cruel. Mr. and Mrs. Bunsen were a kind old couple who had never said a cross word to him. They had a barn in their backyard from the days when they were younger and kept horses. All those horses were dead by the time he was in elementary school, and the barn was sort of a memento for them.
The night it happened, he’d bee
n in his room studying. Mom had been sitting downstairs, drinking in front of the TV, when Dad came home. There’d been a squawk from Mom and a sharp answer from Dad. Then they both started shouting at the same time, neither of them listening, neither of them stopping, and Otto knew it would go on all night. He’d been there before.
Otto had set down his pen and looked at his half-finished math homework. A distant, hollow feeling came over him, a feeling he knew well, yet far more powerful this time. He opened the top desk drawer, took out a pile of old notebooks, and found the Ziploc bag hidden beneath. In it were half a dozen lighters, a bunch of matches, and some fireworks he’d bought when they’d gone down to Hilton Head in South Carolina for summer vacation.
He grabbed a box of matches and put the bag away. One box was all he needed. Amazing what could come from such a little thing. Otto stuffed it in his pocket and put on his shoes. In that weird, detached calm he always got before he lit, he went downstairs and walked right by his parents, red-faced and standing two inches apart in the living room, screaming at each other and completely oblivious to his presence.
From the living room, Otto passed through the laundry room and opened a door into the garage. There, past Mom and Dad’s cars, was the lawn mower and a jerry can of gasoline. He grabbed the can without breaking stride and walked out into the night.
He didn’t remember much after that. There was the old musk of the barn interior, with its moldering bales of hay and dry wood walls and rafters. There was the splash of the gasoline and its sweet, sharp tang, and the rasp of a match. The next thing he remembered was the cop’s gentle pressure on his neck as he ducked Otto’s head to put him in the backseat of a police car.
Why did they always do that? They made sure you didn’t bump your head as they took away your freedom. Otto supposed it was so they didn’t get accused of police brutality. It seemed strange though, that little bit of care in a brutal system.
And now he was here, in an orange jumpsuit, picking up trash by the side of the highway.
He really, really needed to light.
The squeal of tires made Otto flinch and look up, wary of another bit of trash getting launched at him at sixty miles an hour. A red Subaru Impreza screeched to a halt on the shoulder, its tires spitting gravel. The convicts stopped what they were doing and stared. The two guards swiveled and raised their rifles halfway, unsure of what to do.
A gorgeous blond woman in a miniskirt and halter top emerged from the driver’s seat. Every man, both prisoner and guard, was too busy staring at her cleavage to notice what she held in her hands.
“Hello, boys.”
The men gaped.
She jerked her arms. Something small and black flew at both guards. There was a boom and a flash, then a sharp hiss. Otto’s eyes widened at the lovely flame.
It was gone too quick, replaced by thick smoke. The guards choked and staggered back. Within seconds, they had fallen and lay on the ground, racked with coughs.
A strong hand grabbed his wrist. Otto turned to face a thirty-something man with a slight build and intense eyes fixed on him from behind a pair of glasses. He looked like some science geek, but he carried himself like a soldier.
“Get in the car,” the stranger demanded.
“But… I…”
“We need you to help Jaxon. She’s in danger.”
“Jaxon? Is she here? I can’t break out of prison!”
The man slapped Otto across the face. “You have no future. Your parents don’t give a damn about you. The system doesn’t give a damn about you. Want a future? Get in the car.”
Without waiting for an answer, the man dragged Otto toward the Subaru. The ankle chains slowed Otto down, and he stumbled as he tried to keep up. He didn’t know why he was following, but something in the stranger’s words hit him deep. There was nothing for him here.
“Wait! Take me!” one of the convicts shouted.
“Me too!” another cried.
The whole crowd of prisoners shuffled forward, their ankle chains clanking. The woman who had thrown the bombs ducked down and signaled to someone inside the car.
A moment later, the passenger-side door opened. A huge man dressed in black with a tribal tattoo on the right half of his face and a shaved scalp stood and leveled an assault rifle on the approaching crowd.
The convicts stopped. The stranger dragging Otto toward the car kept on going. The woman with the bombs flung open the back door. The man holding Otto put a hand on the back of Otto’s head and pushed him down into the backseat like a cop putting a prisoner in the back of a squad car
Otto landed on the seat hard. The stranger sat beside him and slammed the door shut. A moment later, Otto jerked back as the woman hit the gas and the car shot down the highway.
“Where are you taking me?” Otto shouted.
“Shut up, we’re not out yet,” the guy who had grabbed him said, pushing his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose just before they slipped off. He pulled a semi-automatic pistol from his jacket pocket and looked out the rear windshield. “We got company!”
Otto had the weird thought that whoever this guy was, he had seen too many action movies.
The wail of a police siren made Otto turn and look out the rear window. “That’s the second squad car! They’re with the other work crew.”
“They should have stayed with them,” the woman driving said.
“Want me to get them?” the hulking monster with the assault rifle asked.
“No, I can handle this,” the driver replied.
The big guy looked disappointed.
The woman flicked open a panel on the dashboard and revealed a row of red buttons. She wiggled her fingers along the row as if she couldn’t decide which one to press then jabbed her forefinger at one.
Otto heard a soft clunk from the rear of the car. An instant later, there was a boom and a flash that almost blinded Otto even though he wasn’t looking out the back window. He glanced back. The police car was swerving off the highway from a billowing cloud of green smoke. The vehicle crunched into the shoulder and came to a stop in a cloud of dust. In a minute, it had receded out of sight.
“We got him!” the man who had pulled him into the car said. “We’re in the clear.”
Once again, Otto felt as if the guy was fantasizing he was in an action movie. But wait—flash bombs, a police chase, explosives that popped out of the back of a car at the touch of a button… they really were in an action movie!
“What the hell is going on?” Otto demanded.
The woman driving looked at him in the rearview mirror. “You just sit tight there, honey. Everything’s going to be okay.”
“Okay? You just busted me out of prison! If I get caught, it’ll be another five years at least.”
“You ain’t gonna get caught,” the burly man in the passenger’s seat said. “Push your legs between the seats here so I can get those chains off.”
Otto did as he was told. The man produced a small leather case from his pocket and opened it to reveal several metal tools with curved ends.
“Are those lockpicks?” Otto asked.
“Your dossier says you’re smart,” the man said, “but we won’t be using those.” He picked out what looked like a key from the collection. “Handcuff key.” He stuck the key into the lock on Otto’s ankle.
“My dossier?” Otto asked.
The metal band around his right ankle popped open, and the man started on the other one.
Otto took a deep breath and looked around. They were on a lonely stretch of highway with no one in sight. “Okay, so tell me what’s going on.”
The man in the backseat with him adjusted his glasses. “A secret government agency called the Poseidon Project is after Jaxon because of her special powers. They want to make her a slave.”
“Special powers?” Otto tried to play dumb, but his curiosity got the better of him. “Wait, how did you know about that?”
The man’s face turned grim. “Because I used to wo
rk for that agency. I quit when I realized what they were up to, and now I’m fighting them. My name’s James Yuhle. Sorry for slapping you.”
“Um, no problem. So what’s with Jaxon anyway? Is she some kind of mutant?”
Yuhle laughed. “A mutant? No. She’s descended from the Atlanteans.”
“What? You mean Atlantis? The sunken continent? That’s a myth.”
“Maybe, maybe not. The Atlanteans are real though. Didn’t you notice she looks different, like a mix of all races at once?”
“Yeah, she’s mixed race, so what?”
Yuhle shook his head. “She isn’t mixed race. She’s a different race, a different species, perhaps. She isn’t human.”
“Oh, come off it!”
“Can normal teenage girls beat up half a dozen soldiers?”
“I helped,” Otto said, feeling a bit put out.
The burly guy in the front laughed. “Don’t get jealous of your little girlfriend, buddy. Give her some training, and she could flatten me too.”
“Or maybe without training,” the woman driving the car said, giving him a teasing smile.
“Not a chance,” the big man said.
Otto looked at the mass of muscle in front of him and wondered.
The car pulled to a stop at the side of the highway, right behind another Subaru of a different make and color. There was no one inside.
“Let’s go,” the driver said, looking around, probably to see if there were any other cars in sight.
They got out of the car and into the other one. As they pulled away, the car they had been in erupted in flames. Otto looked back in awe before forcing himself to turn around.
“Covering our tracks,” the driver said, smiling at him in the rearview mirror.
They drove in silence for a time. Otto felt overwhelmed. He had resigned himself to being stuck in prison, and now he was on a remote highway headed east with a group of heavily armed strangers.
At last he found the courage to speak. “So where are we going?”
