Cherry Blossom Girls Box Set

by Harmon Cooper

  The two exchanged glances as the pod doors hissed opened.

  I let out a sigh loud enough for all of us. It startled Veronique. Grace laughed a little and offered me a slight grin.

  There was no one waiting for us.

  “What?” I asked. “This is tense!”

  After gathering our nerves, we exited the pod and used the scientist’s keycard to take the elevator up to the top.

  Grace and Veronique went out at the same time, and both found themselves in an empty hallway. I came out next, looking like the ultra noob in my lab coat, backpack, bulletproof vest, and futuristic ballistic helmet.

  Where the hell is everyone?

  I knew my way to the exit – I was good with direction like that – and after we waited another moment to see if something would happen, we continued forward.

  No one was around, and the cameras on the wall didn’t follow us as we passed, which was odd.

  They are planning something, either Grace said in my head, or I thought.

  “I know they are.”

  Veronique looked at me curiously. “Know what?”

  I don’t speak in her head.

  “Grace and I think they’re planning something.”

  Veronique looked at us like we were amateurs. “It took you this long to come to that conclusion? You guys just break in here and take me out, and you don’t think they’re going to be waiting? They are going to be waiting.”

  My heart sank. “I know, you’re right.” I cleared my throat. “We have to push forward.”

  We cleared the main hall and arrived at the front entrance. Everything was still, from the security cameras to the fake plants in the corner.

  Veronique looked back at me. “Are you two ready?”

  Grace nodded.

  “Ready as I’ll ever be,” I said, still feeling weak.

  We pushed the door open and a giant spotlight flashed on.

  We were surrounded by men in black paramilitary outfits pointing assault rifles at us. Before Veronique could turn their weapons on them, one of the men bolted up into the air and slammed down next to her, sending the three of us flying in his wake.

  There was only one man I’d ever seen move that quickly. Before I could even get to my feet, Angel grabbed me by the throat and lifted me into the air.

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Calling Angel Out

  The world fell away as Angel carried me higher into the sky. I struggled to free myself, but I was weak, and the sound of bullets firing at Grace and Veronique was too much for me to handle.

  New Haven and the rest of Yale looked so far away now, just lights below, no different than the lights above.

  I was delirious, gravity was doing all sorts of shit to my body, and it was only when we began to fall back to the earth that I started to scream.

  Angel curved up just in time and we landed on the rooftop.

  His hand still around my neck, he pulled back and threw me into an air conditioning unit. The impact made me taste blood and it knocked the air out of me. My ballistics helmet was still on my head, strapped under my chin, and I could feel the warm metal pressed into the sweat of my face.

  I tried to get back on my knees, but Angel approached me and picked me up again by the throat. With his other hand, he tore off the bottom portion of my helmet, removing the cover over my jaw.

  “Anything you’d like to say before I do what I should have done yesterday?” he asked me. A few strands of his long black hair fell into his face.

  It took all I had, but I forced the word out. “Why?”

  He lifted me a bit higher.

  If he had wanted to, he could have easily broken my back using the corner of the air conditioning unit. He could have thrown me off the roof or given me the Bane treatment, snapping me over his leg like cracking a stick.

  Instead, he lowered me ever so slightly.

  “What do you mean by why?”

  “Why are you working for them?” I asked. “Didn’t they make you the same way they made Veronique and Grace, I mean Sabine? Aren’t you a super soldier they created? Won’t they retire you to create a better version?”

  “I believe that is an option we all face. There isn’t a human on this Earth who isn’t a stone’s throw away from being replaced by something new.”

  A gust of wind lashed at his long brown hair and his grip loosened. I fell to the ground.

  “What’s your name?” he asked me, menacingly.

  “Gideon.”

  “Hmmm …” He glanced up at the stars, then back down at me. “You will die here tonight, Gideon, yet you wonder about me and my future. How very odd of you.”

  “I just wanted to know why you would do this to someone who’s trying to help. I just want to be honest with you.”

  “Trying to help me?” He laughed bitterly. “You are one of them.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  I was starting to get my breath back and was surprised to find I could actually speak. That’s not to say I wasn’t completely petrified by the man who stood before me, and his ability to stop me as easily as if I were a cockroach.

  He could pull my arms off my body; he could strangle me with one hand; he could fly me out to the ocean and drop me in the middle of the Atlantic; and if he really wanted to, he could fly me above one of the church steeples in nearby East Rock and impale me.

  Hell, even if I had a gun and I was able to shoot him, the motherfucker could heal.

  “You’re one of them,” he finally said. “A normal. There is nothing special or unique about you. I am a different class of human, as are Veronique and Sabine. As are the others. Your life has little significance to us and the future we will bring.”

  “Did you say there were others?”

  “Surely you knew we weren’t the only ones,” he said, his voice filled with melancholy.

  “I figured there would be more, but I really had no idea. I’m still new at all this; I’m still uncovering all the details. I have to be honest with you, Angel.”

  “You know my name?”

  “Grace told me – I mean, Sabine. But she wants to be called Grace now.”

  “Sabine is mischievous, and it was better when she was kept away from others. Veronique’s actions have come as a surprise. She never indicated before that she was unhappy. What an incredibly stupid girl.”

  “That’s your opinion,” I said, my voice growing with confidence. I quickly stomped that confidence out like it was a small fire. Now was the time to be modest, not to try to have a dick measuring contest with a superhuman. “But everyone has opinions.”

  “You are right about that.” He nodded and walked back over to me. “You are the weakest man I’ve ever met, and I’ve met many pathetic scientists. It amazes me that Sabine and Veronique have joined forces with you. That just shows how truly warped their minds are.”

  “They are allowed to make their own decisions,” I said through gritted teeth.

  “You said you wanted to be honest with me. What is it exactly that you want to be honest about?” he asked, settling his black eyes on me. “The gunfire has stopped down there, so make this quick.”

  “I know you’re not going to believe this, but I am trying to expose this facility, expose what these people have done.”

  I was glad he couldn’t read my mind. Not only did I want to expose the facility, but I wanted to destroy it. This was one detail Grace and I hadn’t worked out; it was something we were going to play by ear if we had the opportunity. The most important thing was to save Veronique.

  Below us, a man screamed.

  Angel smirked. “You are feeling confident?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know what I’m feeling. Just a few days ago I was a regular guy, and now look at me.”

  He shook his head. “You shouldn’t have gotten involved. You could have lived your pathetic life until your natural death; now your death will come rapidly, tonight. It is rather funny, isn’t it?”

  “But I did, and I need
ed something – some change … something to make my life have meaning. So, I don’t regret it. There, I said it. What’s happened here at this place is wrong; people shouldn’t experiment on other people. Didn’t we learn that in the 1940s and 50s? We shouldn’t do this. You shouldn’t …”

  “I shouldn’t what?”

  “You shouldn’t exist,” I said, fire burning deep within me. “You’re an amalgamation of a human, you are …”

  “I agree with you, Gideon.” He crouched before me. “I am an amalgamation of a human. But you’re not being honest.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How much of what you are doing is driven by desire?”

  “Desire?”

  I hadn’t really thought of it in that way, and as I sat there staring at him, I realized that he may be right. There were many desires at play. My desire for Grace, for Veronique, for power, my desire to matter, to make a difference, to become a famous writer.

  “I see it in your eyes, Gideon, you have ulterior motives.”

  He picked me up with one hand and body slammed me to the ground. I felt the concrete beneath me give way slightly, the wind rush out of me.

  “This is for your own good, Gideon,” he said as he loomed over me.

  “I’m trying to do something here,” I pleaded with him. “Everyone has an ulterior motive.”

  “You’ve just now figured that out? This is a poor time to learn a new lesson.”

  “Just a week ago I was nobody. And I’m still nobody!” I shouted, my breath barely holding on after being slammed on my back. “But at least I tried … At least I tried to do something different than the others. Yeah, I know what you mean by others. Everyone is an other. You and I are …”

  “We?” he took a step back.

  “Yeah, Angel, we have a similarity.”

  He started to laugh, and as if he were some type of weather god, droplets of rain began to fall from the sky.

  “Let me rephrase, Angel, we had a similarity.”

  Something twisted inside my body. I rolled over and pushed myself up, eventually getting to my knees, and then my feet. More rain fell, quickly saturating my lab coat.

  I had to keep my legs wide to stand up, but I did it, and as I stood I pointed at him.

  A smirk formed on his face as the rain beat down upon us. “Say your piece, and then I will end it.”

  “My piece? I was like you one week ago, Angel, playing a role, fitting into whatever they wanted me to do. Following their rules, obeying their laws, doing what they said was right, avoiding what they said was wrong. And then I became like me,” I growled.

  “Are you suggesting that you are no longer a conformist?” he asked, moving his wet hair out of his face.

  “I’m suggesting more than that. I’m no one’s bitch any longer. Do you see now? There is a difference between us now.”

  Angel had me by the throat in a matter of seconds, only to be broadsided by a long metal pole.

  He dropped me. I landed on my knees and scurried away, my heart pounding in my chest. I couldn’t believe what I’d just done.

  Bullets, hundreds of them, tore into Angel’s skin.

  They pierced his flesh, ripped through his black armor, and worse, as soon as they exploded out of him from behind they turned in the air and came back around again.

  He staggered to the left, and to my horror, I saw that a few of the wounds on his face had already started to heal.

  That was when he was thrown sideways, an invisible force stopping him just before he reached the edge of the building and smacking his head against the parapet.

  Angel was out cold, oblivious to the rain slapping against his body.

  “Holy shit …”

  Grace and Veronique stood at the opposite end of the roof. Neither seemed hurt, but Veronique did have a slight lean to her, as if she were quickly running out of juice.

  “We have to destroy the place,” I said, cursing myself for not getting a few gallons of gasoline earlier.

  “But how?” Grace asked. “We need to leave before he wakes up.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “We destroy the place with him on top of it.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Goodbye, Cruel World

  Veronique came up with one hell of an idea. She moved slowly over to Angel and knelt before him as her hand flashed red.

  His energy became hers and as she drained him, his skin started to dry and wither, blips of red light cascading up her arms. The energy formed a sphere over the crown of her head as the rain continued to fall from the sky, forming small puddles on the rooftop.

  A look of realization spread across Grace’s face.

  “It’s brilliant,” she said, and her eyes flashed white. Using her psychokinetic ability, Grace began to move the ball of light and energy away from Veronique’s head.

  Once she was sure she could do it, she returned the pulsing red sphere to Veronique, who absorbed even more energy from Angel’s body.

  Call it dormant kinetic energy, or simply a ball of combustible matter – whatever it was, the sphere she was forming continued to enlarge until it became the size of a beach ball. She continued to drain Angel, his skin shriveling and turning black and blue, his eyes sinking into his skull, his limbs becoming frail.

  “We have to get out of here before you drop that thing,” I told Grace.

  I could already hear a helicopter, and I knew reinforcements were on the way.

  As Veronique finished up, I walked to the edge of the building and looked down.

  I wasn’t prepared for what I saw.

  The secret agent men were scattered, dead or dying, their bodies arranged in a way that resembled a black rainbow of carnage. There were severed limbs, pools of blood drummed upon by the rain, a few men wheezing as they tried to keep their intestines from spilling out, and one, toward the back, was sobbing, a shredded torso in his arms.

  “Oh my god …”

  The butterflies in my stomach shifted when my body rose into the air.

  I glanced over my shoulder to see Grace controlling my body, lifting me up and over the edge of the rooftop.

  She and Veronique were already airborne, hovering just a few feet above the ground. It was amazing how much her power had improved, especially since she was also in control of our bodies and a sphere of blistering red light, now the size of one of those large exercise balls.

  The sphere hung like a disco ball above us, and as Grace lowered all of us to the ground, the sphere remained in place.

  Like a floating lantern, it hovered, casting an eerie crimson glow on our surroundings as we turned and made our way toward our getaway vehicle.

  I had a strange awareness that we were minutes away from encountering more hostile forces. The feeling of urgency was new to me, but something I would start to get going forward. I’d read about soldiers being able to sense an oncoming battle and now I knew what that felt like.

  Crazy, but I knew they were coming.

  The guy in black mil-spec armor who had waved us in earlier now hung out of the check-in station, a portion of his arm cut away by a slice of steel Veronique had peeled off of the building.

  “Are we ready to do this?” I asked them.

  Veronique nodded, a predatory grin stretching across her face. All Grace could muster was a tight smile.

  “This is what we came here for,” I reminded her. “Remember what they did to you, remember what they put you through. Blow that fucking building to the ground.”

  With a deep breath in, Grace cast her hands out before her. The large sphere of red energy whooshed toward the building, bursting through the front entrance like a cannonball.

  “We need to run,” she said, grabbing my hand.

  The three of us started to bolt as we saw the sphere of energy lift up through the building, briefly splashing the air with a dazzling array of lights before turning around and heading downward, toward the basement, the hyperloop pod, the subrooms that were used to keep people captive.


  We reached the Tacoma when the explosion rocked the sky.

  It shook the ground, causing car alarms to go off, electricity to flash, the power grid to shut down.

  “Drive, Chip,” I said as soon as we got into the vehicle.

  It was already running, the windshield wipers going a mile a minute. He took off before Veronique could even get the door shut, navigating over the slick streets toward our other getaway vehicle.

  I reached over and pulled her door shut. Veronique’s tight body now pressed into mine, Grace between Chip and me.

  I would later have nightmares when remembering the Rose-Lyle facility, and as many others had done before me, I would bottle those nightmares up and cast them into the sea of troubled memories.

  PTSD? Sure, I would experience that too.

  But I’d also experienced what it felt like to be a changed man, to have one’s reality completely turned on them, the rug pulled out from beneath them, a mallet of truth cracked against their skull.

  I would come to like the new me.

  It only took him a few minutes to get us to the Dodge. We transferred vehicles, I threw the peace sign at Chip, and revved the Charger’s engine.

  Fire trucks raced in the other direction as we approached the on-ramp to the highway. We were going to head west, to see what else was out there, and hopefully, to shut down more of those laboratories.

  Once we got on the wet highway and were about forty miles away from New Haven, I put the Charger on auto drive. I gasped, exhaled audibly, and relaxed in my seat.

  Grace was next to me, a tight grin on her face. Veronique was asleep in the back, her hair and body still wet.

  I knew I wasn’t superpowered, regardless of the pictures I’d discovered on Grace’s drive. I didn’t have any ability, and I wasn’t going to be able to help them in that way. I was sure of this, but that didn’t make me weak.

  Angel was wrong about me being weak, and now, he was likely dead.

  But there will be others, Grace said inside my head.

  I know, I thought back.

  My phone buzzed, and I checked the message as the Charger continued along the highway.

  Luke: Are you all right?