ANOM: Awakening (The ANOM Series Book 1)

by Jason R. James

  McCann marched himself between Gauntlet and Ellison. Neither one was moving; neither one standing down.

  McCann repeated himself slowly, “I said stand down!” Jeremy watched as Gauntlet rolled his shoulders. Then his whole armored body seemed to relax. He turned his back on McCann and Ellison, and with a metallic shink his black shield folded up, spiraling back and around, segment by segment, until the whole weapon fit in place on top of his armor. Then Gauntlet walked back and sat down in the dirt in front of the flagpole, exactly where he had been stationed before.

  McCann turned to Ellison. The major slowly let go of his grip on his pistol, and reached down to pick up his M-4 from the dirt.

  McCann called back to the Humvee, “Mirror!”

  Lara climbed out of the vehicle. She was wearing black pants and a black parka, and Jeremy could see her breath as it hit the air.

  She turned to McCann, “Yes, sir?”

  McCann barked, “Take the Anoms down to the Rec Room and start your debriefing. I want a full report by 2100 hours.”

  “Yes, sir,” Lara answered.

  McCann turned back to Ellison, “As for you, Major, you can march your men to the field observation tower. We are going to review every last second of today’s exercise. Am I understood?”

  “Yes, sir.” Ellison turned back to his men and shouted the order, “Fall out to the observation tower. Double time.”

  Jeremy watched as Ellison followed his men, running east into the forest. He watched as McCann climbed back into the Humvee, and he watched it turn and drive away. Jeremy stood and watched, not trusting himself to move. His legs still felt like jelly. Maybe he wasn’t alone. All of the Anoms, everyone except Gauntlet, seemed to be standing frozen in place.

  Finally, Lara spoke up, “Let’s head for home, guys. It looks like we’re walking.”

  Jeremy turned and started after the others, lost in his own thoughts, hardly paying attention, replaying his exchange with Ellison over and over. What could he have done differently?

  A quick movement to his left caught his eye, and he looked up. It was Gauntlet, walking next to him.

  Jeremy shook himself free and found his voice. “Thank you. Thank you for stepping in like that. You didn’t have to do that.”

  Gauntlet didn’t answer.

  Jeremy looked away, but he couldn’t just let it go either; he turned back to Gauntlet, “Why did you, anyway? I mean, why did you step in?”

  Gauntlet looked over at him. “If Ellison had pulled his gun, what would you have done?”

  Jeremy looked back at the ground; it was the same question he had been asking himself, and he still only had one answer. “Honestly, I don’t know.”

  Gauntlet looked forward again, his voice almost a growl. “If he pulled his gun, I would have killed him. That’s why I stepped in—because I could answer the question.”

  Chapter 14

  The metal door slid open, and Jeremy stepped into the room. Lara was already sitting in one of the square, leather-wrapped armchairs, the red Pinewood derby car resting in her lap and her tablet cradled in her arm. She was writing something across the screen of the tablet and didn’t bother to look up as Jeremy entered.

  “Have a seat.”

  Jeremy walked up to the back of the chair, leaning forward and digging his fingers into the leather. “I think I want to stand.”

  Lara wrote on her tablet, still looking down. “This is our second debriefing. Once again, there are no recording devices present. So…” then for the first time she looked up into Jeremy’s face. “What happened today?”

  “Nothing.”

  Lara’s eyebrows knit together. “How about defying an order, insubordination, and striking an officer in the United States Army? Does any of that sound familiar? Try again. What happened out there today?”

  Jeremy shrugged. “It sounds like I defied an order, I was insubordinate, and I struck an officer. I miss anything?”

  Lara slammed her pen down on the tablet. “Dammit, G-Force, this is serious. I have people I need to answer to. So do you. We have to tell Colonel McCann what happened today. My advice, right now, is that you start helping yourself.” She picked up her pen, ready to write. “How do you feel? Maybe you’re overwhelmed by the recent events. That might explain—”

  “No, I feel fine.”

  Lara lowered the tablet. “You’re lying. You feel angry, defiant. You’re borderline paranoid—”

  “You said you couldn’t read me like that. Now who’s lying?” Jeremy’s voice was suddenly louder, but he couldn’t help it. Lara was right: He was angry.

  “I told you I can still pick up big emotions. Right now there’s nothing but big emotions—”

  “Then maybe you should upgrade the chip inside my head!”

  There it was. He said it. All his cards were out now, and Jeremy wanted answers.

  For a moment, there was silence. Lara opened her mouth, ready to answer, but then her voice fell away. Jeremy watched her reaction. He could see the tension around her eyes. It wasn’t confusion—surprise, maybe—but it was only there for a second. Lara sat back in the thick leather chair, and the look on her face was gone. Jeremy’s suspicion was confirmed. She knew about the microchip, and she was surprised that he knew too.

  Jeremy tried to press his advantage. “You know, the microchip filled with explosives that you stabbed into my brain.” This time there was no reaction from Lara.

  She folded her hands in her lap, and when she spoke, her voice was calm, “All right, G-Force.”

  “All right what?” Jeremy was ready for a fight—ready for her denials.

  Lara spoke again, her voice still low, “You obviously have questions. I think you deserve to hear the answers.”

  “All right.” Jeremy stepped around the chair and sat down, still trying to hold onto his anger. “Let’s start with the microchip. Why’s there a bomb inside my head?”

  “So we can kill you,” Lara’s voice was cold.

  The answer was terrifying—a confirmation of his own worst fear—but, at the same time, Jeremy felt a sudden sense of relief. If nothing else, at least he could be sure she was telling the truth.

  Lara looked at him. “You’re dangerous, G-Force. You know that, but you’re probably even more dangerous than you realize. You stopped a bus like it was nothing. How much more would it take for you to stop a tank?”

  Jeremy had never thought about that. Could he really stop a tank?

  “Now what if you decide to turn violent? What then? How does the Army stop a man who can’t be stopped?”

  Jeremy forced a cold, half-smile. “It’s easy. You detonate the C-4 you stuck in his brain.”

  Lara smiled now too, and it was somehow more genuine before. “That’s your answer.”

  “So you have an explosive chip too?”

  Lara shook her head. “No. I’m a class three. We’re easy to kill, but you—you’re a class four. That’s a whole different breed.”

  Jeremy laughed; the whole thing sounded absurd, “How do you expect—”

  “It’s my turn now,” Lara picked up her tablet and looked at the screen. “You want answers? So do I. When did you first manifest your powers?”

  Jeremy was confused again. Her question had nothing to do with microchips or class fours Anoms. It wasn’t even connected to Ellison or the training exercise. It was meaningless, easy, safe. Then Jeremy understood—that was just what Lara wanted.

  It was a redirection. Jeremy had seen enough counselors after his dad that he recognized the pattern. Lara needed to get him talking again—it didn’t matter about what. It could have been any question. What’s your favorite sports team? Do you like action movies? How was your weekend? Anything. Then, when he dropped his guard, she would start asking the real questions again.

  Jeremy laughed—the whole thing was so obvious. He expected something more devious, but it didn’t really matter. As long as he was getting answers to his questions, he would play along.

  �
�The first real thing was the bus, I guess.” Jeremy leaned back against the leather chair, trying to remember. “I mean, there were other things—maybe a hundred different things before that, but they didn’t mean anything at the time. Now you look back and you can see it. Little things like you break a glass just by holding it. Or you fall out of bed and land six feet away. But then you get hit by a bus and stand back up like it’s nothing—that’s when you take notice.”

  Lara wrote something across the tablet and looked up. “But can you remember the very first thing? The first little thing that ever happened?”

  Jeremy knew exactly what she wanted to hear.

  *****

  He was standing in the living room at his father’s wake wearing a suit, and the whole house was filled with strangers.

  “They’re here for us.” That was the line from his mother, but Jeremy knew better. They were here for the ritual; to say the right things and be seen by the right people saying the right things.

  It was hot inside. His mom had the AC going, but there were so many people crammed into the house that it didn’t matter. Someone pressed a glass of water into his hands and told him to drink it. That’s when he saw Mr. Peters, CEO of the hospital. Jeremy had never met the man in person, but he knew the name and recognized the face.

  Peters walked right up to him from across the living room—like they were old friends or something—and the old man reached out for his shoulder. “I’m sorry about your dad’s accident.”

  Accident. Like he slipped on a goddamn wet floor or something.

  That’s when the glass in Jeremy’s hand shattered. It fell away in a thousand pieces, slipping between his fingers like a handful of clear confetti. The water in the glass went straight down, splashing across the floor and Peters’ black leather shoes.

  *****

  “When did your ability first start?”

  Jeremy looked away at the wall. “I’m not sure. It was after my dad.”

  “That would make sense.” Lara scrawled a note on her tablet and looked up. “In most cases our abilities are triggered by some kind of trauma. A lot of times it’s physical, but an emotional trauma, like the way you lost your dad, could be the catalyst. When—”

  “Why can’t you read me?” Jeremy quickly asked. He was willing to play her game, but he needed answers of his own.

  Lara straightened in her chair. “That’s more difficult. There’s—there are things you don’t understand. You will, but right now you don’t. The simple answer is I can’t read you because you’re spiked.”

  Jeremy’s face twisted.

  Lara continued before he could ask the next obvious question, “A spike—it’s the first trick any Psychic Anom learns, how to spike a target. You can think of it like password protection for your brain. No one can get access without the right code.”

  Jeremy’s mind raced, trying to follow. The way she was talking, it all sounded so commonplace, but that made it even harder to accept. It was like the first time you hear someone ask for a pop instead of a soda, and your first thought is they must be joking.

  “We spike a target so we know what to expect when we use our powers. That way no one can come in behind us and start changing what we’ve already done. It’s safer this way—for everyone. A good spike is usually something short, simple, and easy to remember. It could be a name, or a place, or a color—”

  “Something like ‘Seattle?’”

  Lara laughed. “Yeah. Something like that. You weren’t supposed to hear that, you know? I didn’t realize you were already spiked when I tried it.”

  “And so that’s why you can’t get in my head now. I’m…spiked?”

  “Yes and no.” Lara shifted in her chair. “I can see some things from you, like those strong emotions, but I can’t see everything. So you’re spiked, but I think it’s fading.”

  Jeremy nodded, acting like it all made sense now; the truth was it made anything but.

  “So now my question for you is, who did it? Who spiked you, G-Force, and why?”

  Jeremy’s mind reeled. He hadn’t gotten that far yet—hadn’t even considered it. He was still stuck on the idea of a password locking up his brain. But Lara was right. If he was spiked, that meant somebody put it there. Until yesterday, he didn’t even know Anoms existed. If it weren’t for the thing at the mall—

  “What about the guy in the mall?” Jeremy asked. “Hot Shot. Maybe he did something—”

  “No. He was a kinetic anomaly. Different kind of Anom.”

  Jeremy tried to think. “There was a guy when I was in the hospital. Some nurse that no one seemed to know about.”

  Lara shook her head again. “I know who you mean. He was actually one of ours. It’s how we got your DNA. Think again. Could there be anyone else? Someone close to you?”

  But Jeremy couldn’t think. Not about this anyway. There were too many other things to consider; too many questions worth his time. Like taking his DNA in the hospital. How did they get there so fast? How did they even know about the accident with the bus? How long had they been watching him? Did they know about his abilities even before the bus?

  Jeremy looked closer at Lara, and his voice was hollow now, “What is this place? Really?”

  Lara’s body stiffened, and Jeremy could see it, just for a second. This was the question he needed to ask; the question he needed answered.

  Lara looked down at her tablet, “You already know what this place is, G-Force. We told you this is a research facility. Reah Labs has partnered with—”

  “You don’t need the Army for research.” Jeremy’s voice was hard now. He wouldn’t let her parrot back the same lies from their stupid introduction video.

  Lara looked up, locking eyes with him, and just like before, if nothing else, at least now he would get the truth; she started slow, halting, feeling her way between the words. “When President Truman ordered the atomic bomb dropped on Japan, he believed he was saving lives. Whatever horror he was about to unleash on the world, he thought those lives were worth it. You really want to know what we’re doing here? We’re saving lives.”

  “So Anoms are supposed to be your nuclear deterrent?”

  “No, G-Force, not a deterrent. You’re supposed to be our response.”

  Jeremy felt the bile rise in his throat, but Lara pressed on before he could interrupt. “Other nation-states are already recruiting Anoms. We know that for a fact. So are terrorists. Paramilitary groups. Home-grown militias. We’re all after the same thing. And we’re not talking about if it happens anymore, G-Force. We’re way past that. We’re speaking about when. When it happens, you, and Nyx, and Talon, and Gauntlet, you’ll be the horror we unleash on the world.”

  Jeremy nodded. Maybe more than anyone, he could understand the truth behind what Lara was saying. He saw firsthand the devastation caused by a single Anom. He knew too well how a group like the Red Moon could use them.

  “We need you on the team, G-Force. We need you, and that’s why we need to talk about what happened today. Tell me what happened this afternoon with Major Ellison. You failed to follow orders. Then what?”

  “It had nothing to do with following his orders. Ellison crossed a line.”

  Lara twisted in her chair. “Major Ellison is the officer in charge of the Anoms. Everything we just talked about, being a response team, none of that works without Ellison.”

  “No offense, but it doesn’t seem to work with him either. The guy’s a dick.”

  “You don’t even know him.” Lara’s voice took a sharper edge. “He raises his voice a little and you all get your feelings hurt. He’s in the Army, and you’ve been here for less than a day. Maybe he was motivating the team or addressing a specific issue with Nyx. You don’t have any—”

  “He wasn’t just yelling, okay? The man was screaming in her face.”

  “So what? So what if he was?” Lara shrugged. “Nyx didn’t seem to care. She didn’t strike an officer.”

  “Nyx was terrified!” Jeremy
jumped to his feet and paced around to the back of the chair. He was at the end of his patience. Lara wasn’t there, and if she wasn’t going to believe him… He tried to take a deep breath—tried to calm himself.

  Finally he looked up, back at Lara. “Listen, you want a story for your notebook? Write this down: I’m fourteen years old and I’m getting bullied in school. It’s this group of boys and it’s every day and it’s bad. I mean really bad. So one morning I sneak into my dad’s office, and I try to pick the lock on his gun safe with a paper clip.

  “So my dad comes in and he catches me. I mean, I got the paperclip all twisted into the lock, and he looks at me and says, ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

  “And I look up and I just tell him the truth because I don’t even care anymore; I say, ‘I need your gun.’

  “And he just stares back at me, hard. ‘Why?’

  “And I tell him again, ‘I need it to scare the kids at school. I need to make it stop.’

  “So you know what my dad does then? He takes out his keys, right there in front of me, unlocks the safe, and hands me the gun. I mean he puts it right in my hand, and I’m thinking, ‘This is it. I guess I’m really going to do this.’

  “But then before he lets go of the gun, he looks at me, right in the eye, and he says, ‘Bullies and cowards trade in fear. Real men rely on action.’ And just like that he walks out of the room.”

  Lara still sat, silent, but now her eyes had softened. She didn’t seem angry—not like before—and Jeremy could feel his own resentment slipping away.

  She edged back in her chair, “So what did you do—after your dad left?”

  “I put the gun back in the safe and went to school. And the first thing in the morning, as soon as I walked through the doors, this guy named John Charles Pierce pushes me into the lockers. He was the worst, and I remember he’s standing over top of me, laughing. And his friends, they’re all behind him laughing, and I didn’t do a thing. I just acted like it didn’t bother me. I didn’t say anything, and I didn’t do anything. I just stayed down until they left. Then I waited… until lunch. I waited for John Charles Pierce to sit down at his table with all his friends, and then I walked up to him and I hit him in the face with my history book as hard as I could—broke his nose.