Abomination: The Young Adult World of Genetically Modified Teens and the Elite (Swann Book 7)

by Ryan Schow

  But he is, I remind myself. Everyone can be defeated. Even me. I am immortal, but not all the way. I can be killed. After killing my future self, this is a fact proven by yours truly. Fearing the worst, I wear comfortable clothes, center myself, open my senses to full alert. I don’t detect him, though.

  Why can’t I find him?

  I know he’s near. That extra sensory something inside me, her warning bells are shrill. They’re telling me, they’re saying: this time will be different.

  My skin goes cold.

  The Stink of Grass and Blood

  1

  The sun was high, the air cool but starting to warm, the smell of cut grass and fresh flowers a welcome change to the stuffy indoors of her dorm room. It was late Saturday morning and Georgia had slept too long. She was walking through the open quad when a striking, black haired girl stopped and looked at an older boy with a tall, crazy twist of hair and a creepy grin on his face. She was still thinking of the news that broke only hours ago, that Cameron O’Dell’s father was caught having relations with—

  Wait, she wondered, what the hell? Who’s that?

  The raven haired girl bore a familiar look, but when Georgia tried to remember where she had seen her before, or who she was, her memories went inexplicably blank.

  Weird…

  The quad was easily the most picturesque place on campus. All the students hung out there on the weekends, talking, smoking, reading, studying, getting sun and gossiping. At its center was a large fountain similar to the one in Tripoli. The calming sound of bubbling water pervaded, and flowers of every variety gave the grass-laid quad bursts of color and a rich, floral texture to the air. Decorative stone benches adorned the open space, and a curving sidewalk wound through the center of it. At least two dozen students were hanging out. Among them, sitting hand in hand, were Brayden and Julie.

  God, she couldn’t stand that girl.

  Brayden waved, let go of Julie’s hand almost like he was caught with his hand in the candy jar. Julie shot him a look, then took his hand back.

  Georgia started for Brayden when the girl who was looking at the boy got into some kind of a big-boy/big-girl staring contest. People were now looking at them. Just like she was. It was like time stopped and only those two existed.

  “You,” the black haired girl said.

  “Me,” the boy with the strange hair and raccoon eyes replied.

  The boy’s hand shot out, like he was some kind of a quick draw in the Old West, and suddenly the über-weird staring contest stopped. The girl’s head snapped back, her raven-colored hair blowing backwards like she was hit with a sharp blast of air. The part that really freaked Georgia out, though, was not the two strangers doing strange things in the quad; it was the fact that when her head snapped back, the girl’s eyes also exploded in a mist of red. Holy shit.

  Holy shit!

  “Remember me?” he said with a cruel snicker. Then, darkly sinister, he added: “This ain’t no dream.”

  What just happened? Did that really just happen? How did that boy just destroy her eyes like that? Georgia watched the blind girl with black hair stagger backwards, her hands coming to her face. A cursory glance around said Georgia was not the only one seeing this. Everyone was watching, jaws slack, eyes flashing wide.

  The girl reacted almost instantly. Her right hand shot out and invisible energy smashed the boy like he was just hit with the world’s most lethal punch. The boy folded almost in half from the blow, but he didn’t move. How was that possible? Whatever hit him, it was hard enough to bend him in two, yet he remained rooted to the ground. That isn’t possible, she thought. The boy tried to straighten his body, but his mouth hung open like he’d been drugged at the mental ward, and his eyes were hazy from such a brutal attack.

  “How are they doing that?” she heard someone say.

  Brayden shook his hand out of Julie’s and ran toward the girl, but her other hand shot out toward Brayden and he stopped dead in his tracks, and not of his own volition.

  “That’s impossible,” someone near her muttered. She looked over and Theresa Prichard was at her side, looking like a runway model in a New York fashion show, not caring that they still hated each other.

  The crowd stood poised to move, and paralyzed at the same time. Georgia inched in, turning her palms up, ready to…what the hell was she going to do? It wasn’t her fight. But it was a fight, albeit one the likes of which she’d never seen before.

  The blown out eyes, it wasn’t some Hollywood effects stunt. The girl was really bleeding out of her eyes. Everyone around the two, their faces were pale, etched with morbid curiosity. The crowd held its collective breath, the whole of them—including Georgia—watching the fight unfold in horror.

  The girl with the mutilated eyes and the black hair, she psychically released Brayden (who, when released staggered forward and nearly fell). She then used both hands to throw her power at the creep of a boy. This all happened in maybe a second or two.

  The boy with the twisty-hair, his body rocked backwards from the telekinetic shot, his feet still rooted to the ground, like they were staked in or something. He fell backwards, landing completely on his shoulder blades. The gruesome cracking of his ankles snapping in half as his feet stayed planted to the ground made everyone wince. It was over. Wasn’t it?

  No, it wasn’t.

  The raven haired girl twisted her right hand palm up, made a fist and yanked it backwards fast and with an unrelenting force. The boy rose back up at an impossible angle, jerking forward with such intensity, food, blood and snot powered out of his mouth and nose. His broken ankles, how were they even supporting him anymore?

  Theresa looked over at Georgia, her eyes wild with fear, her body shaking. She said, “Georgia, is this really happening?” Georgia couldn’t speak, couldn’t tear her eyes away from the scene, let alone answer the question.

  Arms outstretched, locking on her attacker, even though slow rivers of red mucus drained from her demolished eyeballs, the mystery girl seemed to be conducting an orchestra of death. Like some sort of marionette, she moved her hands and the boy’s body moved. With one swift motion, she literally tore him from his broken feet which, impossibly, remained planted on the ground. Destroyed flesh, muscles, ligaments, nerves and arteries flopped over his shoes like wet blood worms and meat. His shoes started out as white Converse. They weren’t white anymore.

  Only Georgia was looking at his feet. She was fixated. Lost in wonderment. Everyone else was staring into the sky ten feet up. Startled, she looked up a moment later. Hovering in the air, the boy was screaming, blood from his lower legs raining down on the grass and the fountain’s edge.

  The girl’s hands shifted and the boy’s body swung horizontal, went limp, and (with a jerking apart of the girl’s arms) was pulled in half. A viscous, gut stew slopped over the ground, showering the ground with organs and entrails.

  The two halves of the ruined body, they dropped onto the grass like mangled sides of beef. No one said a thing. They just gasped and stared in muted silence. The blind girl walked to the upper part of the torso, knelt down and felt her way to the head. A moment later, she moved her hand to the place where his heart should be.

  Georgia moved forward while everyone else moved back. The seashell shaped needles were out of her palms and she had heated up sufficiently if the girl turned on her. The world started to go just the slightest bit gray. She held the fire at bay. Barely.

  The girl, she closed her ruined eyes for a moment, then opened them and they were pure white. Not shattered. No longer broken. They blinked, but didn’t focus, which scared the shit out of Georgia and everyone else. How did she do that?

  The girl looked around and people reeled. The eyes were pure, milky white. Back to the boy, she shut them, took a deep breath, then seemed to force her energy into his body for one long moment before muttering the words: “No fucking way.”

  Not opening her eyes, she appeared lost in thought, then she stood and walked away from t
he kid who attacked her, from everyone. The circle of onlookers opened to release her, those same people now more curious than afraid.

  Was she really fleeing the scene?

  The girl tripped on a hedge, stumbled sideways and ran her shoulder into a iron lamppost. Any person blinded the way she was would put her hands out, slowly feel their way forward, but this wicked girl with pitch black hair, she didn’t do what everyone else expected her to do. She just kept walking, knocking into things, then walking further.

  “Where is she going?” Theresa asked, like they were friends. She still had her eyes on the girl. Everyone did.

  “Piss off,” Georgia said, surprising herself. Needing to put her fire someplace, she thought about stuffing it in Theresa. God that would feel good!

  When the girl was gone from sight, people crowded the body. The fire inside her, however, it wouldn’t be contained. It needed out. Focusing her energy, Georgia pushed the fire onto the boy and his body parts burst into flames. Everyone creeping forward jumped way back.

  As they watched, her fire ate every last bit of the boy, right down to a crisp.

  In the Name of the Blessed Hive

  1

  By quick thinking and sheer luck, The Assassin, now the soul of The Operator, barely escaped the body. On the return home through the open wormhole squeezing him from 2015 back to The Nest almost one thousand years into the future, the essence of him seethed. It raged.

  Until Sensei Naygel, he had never been beaten. He swore it would never happen again. But it did. Raven, oh sweet Raven, she controlled him marvelously! Tore him clean and bloody from his own feet, which she somehow managed to root to the earth. The inventive Raven de’ Medici, her eyes burst open and yoked like a pair of quail eggs, she levitated then ripped his body in half.

  So he was made to suffer defeat not once but twice! On the same mission no less! Fortunately he escaped the body unattached, and fled 2015 before the clone expired, which would have trapped his soul in that time, in that corpse, in the different cycles of life and death.

  No wonder the little shit survived the centuries. No wonder she had the reputation she did. Even as a babe—inexperienced and fresh to the world—she defeated him. Only once, though.

  Not again.

  With one body destroyed by Sensei Naygel, and another destroyed by Raven, he had one body left to occupy. He knew he should operate from afar, from inside The Nest, where it was safe, but he wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t be afraid of this stupid child.

  When he entered the third body, his mind said he was out of control with rage, yet he stood by his determination to oust Raven de’ Medici and exercise her soul. Within moments, he and the cloned body traveled to 2015, only minutes from when the second body was so violently slaughtered.

  People looked at him in fear and revulsion, and they quickly backed away. He understood. They saw the body murdered. They witnessed a will of telekinesis, a battle between what they would deem a pair of immortals. And there he stood again, looking right and pissed off and ready to kill. Now, if only he knew where in The Hive’s blessed name she was.

  Spec Ops Soldier

  1

  John Black had taken the position of Head of Security on the Astor Academy just over a year and a half ago. The job, a menial job he never believed himself capable of enduring, was “awarded” him after a decorated career first with the US Army and then with the CIA.

  “Protecting snot-nosed kids at some high school?” he first said from his wheelchair as he sat in front of his Commanding Officer. “With all due respect, sir, are you goddamn kidding me?”

  For all he’d done for The Company and his country, Black demanded an explanation.

  “Basically all the kids here, they’re going to play significant roles in this country and others over the next fifty years. They will be Presidents, CEO’s, Military officers. They’ll be your future operators, your terrorists and your worldwide game changers. You are not only going to take care of them, you’re going to get to know them.”

  “No,” he said, terse. “Not happening.”

  “You’re going.”

  “The only place I’m going with these useless legs,” he barked in a voice teeming with disgust, “is behind either a desk or to a goddamn bar.”

  He was still coming to terms with his permanent paralysis.

  “You’re meant for the field, Black, not a desk. This is the in-between. For now. Besides, part of your service at the school will be augmented with treatments for your ‘condition.’ If you don’t lose your shit between now and then, that is.”

  “What do you mean, my condition?”

  “Your legs, dumbass.”

  “So, what, a full reversal?” he asked, sitting up a little straighter. “You saying I’ll walk again?”

  His CO held his eyes without flinching, then gave him the smallest nod.

  “Okay then,” he said, no longer certain of anything.

  John Black didn’t exactly regret taking the position, since Dr. Gerhard repaired his permanently broken body last year, after running Campus Security for a few months in the wheelchair, which he still couldn’t wrap his mind around.

  After a few months of service at Astor, a veritable country club of an assignment, he called from a secure line and asked his CO about the kids.

  “They’re the kids of the elite now running this world,” his CO said. “Astor Academy is where our future leaders are being educated and indoctrinated. I already told you this.”

  His CO said “elite,” but all he heard was “high value target.”

  Black worked as an operator with Delta Force under the US Army’s Special Operations Division for the better part of ten years before being recruited to the Special Operations Group (SOG)—an elite group of soldiers working under the CIA’s super-secret Special Activities Division (SAD). He worked with SOG for another eight years until an IED (improvised explosive device) took out his car and he was forced out of the field. He almost died. Being medically discharged, however, was the same as dead.

  Being at Astor was a necessary change from constantly being in the field or in training. It gave him time to reflect. What he realized after a few months was how much he’d done. How much he had seen. In his time with Delta Force and SOG, Black was awarded so many medals and citations they were now in a box in his closet under other moving boxes collecting dust. He was proud of his service and his accomplishments, but he didn’t need the medals to remind him what he did, what he survived. He had his nightmares for that.

  On the mission that ended his field clearance and almost took his legs, that was where he lost it. Where he cracked his brain in two. It was a hostage rescue mission. Three of his team had been killed in action. During his escape, he wished he died, too. Heading to his extraction point in a shitty Toyota Corolla that felt about a hundred years old, his head was so chock full of electric mice that he missed the IED completely. How he was dragged to safety from the smoking wreck of his car he still didn’t know. Why he survived was yet another mystery. He received his final medal for not dying during that solitary and seemingly successful mission. He loved and detested that medal, the medal no one but himself and his superiors would ever see.

  He’d been trying to save children from a known terrorist black site. When his team breached the compound, however, the things he saw scored his brain so deeply those same images haunted him to this day. The stone walls of the compound were lined with headless women, women who survived countless atrocities before being beat to death then decapitated.

  What was done to the children was far worse.

  His six man team ended up surviving only as a three man team, but the terrorists, the price they paid for their shocking and inconceivable transgressions was something John Black would never forget. He could still hear the sounds of their hairy skulls being reduced to pulp. He could still see his hands and the hateful, violent things they did. These men were terrorists, but what he and the other operators did—if there was indeed a
heaven—they would not be granted entrance.

  By the time he and the remainder of his team were finished with said terrorists, what they’d left behind, it was just gore and blood and pulverized organs and stomped-on bones.

  Since that mission, the other two operators died. Both by their own devices. He was not so far behind. Black was certain they were right, that eating a bullet was the only way to stop the nightmares. He resisted though. He had to. He refused to disgrace God this way, nor could he be part of the ever-expanding stain left upon The Company’s namesake. He would not kill himself. And that is what he told himself on the nights he sat with his gun in his hand sucking down a bottle of Jack Daniel’s Black Label.

  Astor Academy with its bloated paycheck, its definitive lack of risk and its spotless staff seemed like a waking hallucination, the counterpart to sleep—where the real nightmares sunk their claws into him. Then someone died. A kid. And only then did he wake back up to the war inside himself, and the peace that followed him into war. Only then did he fall back into the persona he was molded into…

  ….a Spec Ops Operator.

  Black knew how to kill. Better than most. He understood how bodies were supposed to look when they were murdered, but he was no homicide detective. He wasn’t a cop. Still, when he asked Headmistress Klein to bring in local PD to deal with Tavares Baldridge’s body, she said, “Surely you must be kidding.”

  He wasn’t kidding. Not ever.

  “Astor Academy doesn’t exist to the local authorities,” she said. “Astor. Doesn’t. Exist. I’m surprised you weren’t debriefed on this prior to your acceptance of this position.”

  “I was. But I was also told this wouldn’t be the kind of job where I’d be dealing with murdered children.”

  “With this group of students,” Headmistress Klein mumbled, “anything is possible.”

  “So that’s a no on the locals?” he asked. He still couldn’t understand why there was no blood on the wound. The entire body looked licked clean.