XGeneration, Books 1-3: You Don't Know Me, The Watchers, and Silent Generation

by Brad Magnarella

  “To health, wealth, and the death of taxes!” she proclaimed, ruffling his hair. “And that’s all you’re getting.”

  Tyler licked the sugary burn from his lips. His mother finished the drink in a quick tilt and then collapsed into the corner of the couch as if the effort had exhausted her. Soon, her eyelids fluttered closed and her breaths deepened.

  Tyler straightened the afghan over her lap. Maybe it was the late hour or their solitude, but he felt peace in their closeness, in the black-and-white glow of the television — fuzzy images of reverie, pronouncements of new beginnings. Their house was silent, for a change. Tyler thought he could hear the tension relaxing from the walls, the anger slipping deeper into the cracks around the baseboards.

  But within minutes, his father’s truck rip-roared up the street, lights and shadows playing beyond the red drapes. A bush along the driveway snapped. The shine of headlights hit the front window head on, seeming to set the drapes on fire. Tyler shrank down and looked at his mother. When the truck door slammed, her eyes shot open, a frightened sound caught in her throat—

  “Shhh.” Creed’s thin giggle returned him to the clearing. “He’s coming.”

  Tyler peeked around the tree Creed had ordered him to hide behind. His brother was hidden several yards away, beside the other path. Somewhere across the clearing, Jesse stood, waiting. Leaves crunched under someone’s tentative footsteps. And now Tyler could see fragments of a moving shadow.

  Damn it.

  Dread kicked him in his stomach. Probably nothing compared to the five-member metal band that would be stomping around in Scott’s guts about now. Returning to the place where he’d had his arm broken, knowing he was signing up to have the other one snapped — that took balls.

  But Tyler didn’t intend for anything to happen. Not tonight.

  Ever since he’d seen Scott on the ground, clutching his flaccid arm, his face ashen, Tyler had been looking out for him. Small stuff mostly, like spotting Scott before Jesse and Creed and distracting them. He’d done that on the first day of school back in August, when he’d seen Scott hiding behind the bush above the bus stop. And then later in the day, when Scott had been in line at the food truck. Both times, Tyler’s diversions had worked. Creed had been the one to spot him the following month when they’d cornered him in the tennis courts.

  From the darkness, Creed’s giggles rose like a specter, halting Scott in his tracks.

  Tyler heard his brother stand, but Tyler stepped out into the path first, snapping a twig beneath his shoe to give Scott some warning. Scott twisted toward the sound. He was wearing what looked like a crude space suit, but Tyler could tell by his stance that he understood the situation. Like at the tennis courts, he was cornered.

  “You came,” Jesse said.

  Creed’s laughter sounded as sharp as his blades. “Go on, Jess, break his fucking arm.”

  Jesse stalked toward Scott, whose hand had gone to his helmet. The clearing flashed white, as though someone was snapping a series of Polaroids. Jesse squinted against the sudden brightness. Then the clearing fell dark again. If Scott had been trying to blind Jesse, no dice.

  Jesse rose over him, his hands balling into fists.

  “W-wait,” Scott sputtered.

  “For what?” Jesse said. “This was the deal.”

  “I have another offer.”

  Creed stopped laughing. “Another offer? What are you, a Corleone?”

  Scott held his hands up while stepping from Jesse’s reach. “You’re right. We made a deal, and I’m holding up my end. I’m here. But things have happened since we last talked. I have information.” The big helmet peered around. “Information that involves all of us. What I’m asking in exchange — what I’m suggesting — is that you not break my arm.”

  He and Jesse continued their slow dance, Scott backing away in a circle, Jesse plodding forward. Every so often, Scott’s hand would go back to his helmet. He cussed under his breath and fussed with what looked like a wire dangling between the helmet and backpack.

  Blades stretched from Creed’s glove. “Enough of this shit.”

  Glee no longer lifted his brother’s voice. He sounded like their father the nights he would stagger home late and hammer on their locked bedroom doors. You don’t open this door this inshtunt, he would shout, and I’m gonna kick it in and… and murder whoever’s inside. By agreement, Creed and Tyler took turns taking their lumps, just as long as it wasn’t their mother. She had suffered enough.

  Hearing his brother now, Tyler thought a broken arm would be among the better outcomes tonight.

  “Wait.” Tyler caught up to him and grabbed the wrist with the glove. Creed had only been walking, not “slicing through space,” as he called it — here one second, there the next — like earlier that night in the pool hall when he had slashed open Baby Face’s shirt.

  Creed glared at him. “What’re you doing?”

  “Just wait a minute.” Tyler whispered. “Let him talk.”

  “After what he did to our phone?” He twisted his arm from Tyler and shoved him, both motions so quick — almost simultaneous — that Tyler landed on the seat of his jeans before realizing he’d even fallen. “He can talk all he wants after we’re done with him. Now get back to the path.”

  Tyler focused into the air, gathering atmospheric electricity to his hands. The others didn’t know about his power. He’d only used it around them once, when Jesse was crushing Scott’s neck at the tennis courts. The air was humid that day, almost too humid, but Tyler used the metal fence to concentrate and conduct what charge he could gather. Jesse had grumbled over his burnt hand for weeks, puzzling over what the hell had happened.

  “S-stop right there, Creed,” Scott said.

  “Or what?”

  Tyler aimed his hand at his brother’s back.

  It was bound to happen sooner or later.

  The clearing flashed white again, but not from Tyler’s hand. A thin beam shot from Scott’s helmet, silhouetting Creed in red light. Creed and Jesse drew back. Tyler lowered his arm, thinking he might not have to use his powers, after all. Scott had come prepared with… something.

  “Nice try,” Creed said, his red-lit face looking from the beam to Scott, “but that don’t even tickle.”

  Or not.

  4

  “S-stop right there, Creed.” Scott was unable to suppress a tremor in his throat, but he’d located the problem. The wire to the laser’s power supply had fallen loose around one of the battery leads. With sweat-slick fingers, he coiled it as tightly as he could while backing away from Jesse and Creed.

  “Or what?” Creed said. Slender blades glinted from his fingers as he angled nearer.

  Scott probed along the side of his helmet. If the laser failed him this time, he was dead. He found the switch, said a small prayer, and pressed it. The laser crackled and shot to life.

  Creed looked down at his chest where the red beam struck through the word ANTHRAX. The lenses of his glasses shone red. He seemed to hesitate. A second later, his razor-thin lips split into a grin.

  “Nice try, but that don’t even tickle.”

  “No?” Scott focused his energy along the line where the laser emerged from the tube. “Well, maybe this will.”

  Scott had discovered his special ability to navigate telecommunication lines as a budding phone phreaker and later computer hacker. But when he shorted what he’d believed to be a federal tap in November and the magnetic seal in the Leonards’ shed weeks later, Scott discovered something else: his powers could be used offensively. All he needed was a medium, something to conduct his energy.

  Enter Wayne’s tube laser.

  Scott staggered as he let go. A pulse shot the length of the beam. Creed had enough time to scream before being hurled the width of the clearing. Foliage crunched as he disappeared into the trees.

  Holy crap, it worked!

  Scott had put the percent chance of shattering Wayne’s tube laser at somewhere north of eighty. But not on
ly had the energy pulse followed the path of the beam, sparing the tube, it had taken Creed out of commission. Way out. Scott swung the red beam around, hoping to repeat the feat. But Jesse was no longer there.

  “Behind you, sport.”

  Boughs of pine needles consumed Scott’s view, and in the next instant, a tree crashed into him. Scott tumbled backward, acid sloshing inside the car battery. He flopped to a rest in the center of the clearing. The laser’s beam projected overhead, fading into the night sky. Scott sat up and performed a quick self assessment: nothing damaged.

  Pushing himself to his feet, he peered around. He didn’t have far to look. Jesse stood on the edge of the clearing in a batter’s stance, the fifteen-foot tall slash pine he’d uprooted cocked over one shoulder.

  “You made a big mistake,” Jesse said, grunting into his next swing.

  Scott threw up his hands. “Wait, wait!”

  But the tree was already sweeping toward him. Scott bent at the waist, throwing his torso nearly to the ground. Boughs whacked over him. The trunk nicked the battery pack, spewing bits of bark. Scott rolled with the blow, pressed himself to his feet, and scrambled toward the trees. He was a sitting duck out in the open.

  When he turned, his laser lit up Jesse’s face.

  Scott concentrated his energy along the tube for another blast, but Jesse grunted and swung. Wind screamed through the tree’s needles. Scott threw himself into the woods and thudded against the limb-littered earth. The swing missed high. Trees cracked and toppled in its wake, falling over him.

  When the last limbs settled, Scott opened his eyes. He wasn’t crushed, thank God, just buried. He clicked off the laser and lay still.

  If I play possum, maybe he’ll think I’m hurt. Maybe he’ll leave.

  Out in the clearing, something crashed to the ground. Scott imaged Jesse tossing off his tree trunk.

  “I don’t get you,” Jesse said, almost sadly. “We work out a fair deal, and you pull something like this.”

  Scott’s shelter shook. He didn’t have to peek up to know that Jesse was excavating him. Something in Jesse’s determination told Scott that even if Jesse believed him unconscious — or dead — he’d still break his arm. A deal was a deal.

  “Wait, listen to me,” Scott pled. “We’re being watched, all of us. That’s what I came to tell you.”

  Jesse paused. “Who’s watching?”

  “I’m still trying to figure that out.”

  Jesse sighed, and the collapsed timber resumed shaking. Debris rained down on Scott’s helmet.

  “But I think it has to do with what happened to Janis,” he said quickly. “With — with the Leonards and all of that.”

  Scott pushed the helmet up his brow and shone the soft light of his wristwatch around. Branches and sap-oozing trunks faced him on all sides. More debris fell as Jesse yanked away another limb. Scott twisted onto his stomach and spotted his best chance for escape: a low opening toward the deeper woods. Using his elbows, he began to wriggle toward it.

  “Our phones are being monitored,” he called over his shoulder, trying to project his voice backward. “All of Oakwood, in fact. I checked. Yours, Creed’s, the Graystones’, mine. Some kind of a switchboard over the neighborhood.”

  Jesse continued to work but had slowed his pace.

  “And — and you remember the cameras on Janis’s house? Did you hear about that? Well, last week, I found a camera pointed at mine. I’m betting there’s some on you guys’s, too. That’s one of the things I’m offering in exchange for my arm. To check it out for you.”

  The rustling stopped.

  Last Saturday, Scott had gone out the front door with a pair of binoculars and a tattered bird book he’d found among his father’s junk. He made a show of flipping through the glossy illustrations before pressing the binoculars to his glasses. The camera appeared on the first pass, in the same streetlight that illuminated his bedroom blinds at night. He glassed the streetlight again to be sure. The camera was small, pencil thin, but it was there. Watching.

  Scott pretended to consult the book while probing the camera with his mind. The camera was wireless, its signal scattering off in all directions. Had a monitor beneath the Leonards’ shed once received the signal, rendering it into black-and-white images? Is that what the toggle switches on the panel had done, changed cameras? Scott had found four more cameras that day.

  “Why would someone be watching?” Jesse asked.

  “Our powers. I think someone’s interested in our powers.”

  “Powers?”

  “Listen to me, Jesse.” Scott turned sideways, slipping beneath a limb that had snagged the car battery. “Your strength — haven’t you ever wondered where that comes from? You just uprooted a tree, for Pete’s sake. Or Creed’s speed?”

  Or my ability to navigate electronic mediums? Or Janis’s to wield astral energies.

  “If this is another trick…”

  “It’s not.” Scott swept aside a branch. “But we have to come to some kind of an agreement before I tell you any more.”

  “The arm business comes first,” Jesse said. “That’s the deal. Then we talk.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m going to need my arm.”

  “That part’s not negotiable.”

  Scott wriggled free and peered backward. Jesse’s head and shoulders hulked over the collapse. Scott groped for the laser’s power button. No, too dangerous. Jesse would spot him the second he turned it on. And in the time it would take for Scott to gather enough juice for a blast, Jesse could bring a tree down on his head. Scott pressed himself to his feet.

  “Now, are you gonna honor the agreement, or am I gonna have to enforce it myself?” Jesse asked the collapse. “We shook on it.”

  That’s what you call crushing my wrist? But Scott stayed low and silent.

  “You have until three to answer me.”

  Scott backed deeper into the woods.

  “One… two…”

  On “three,” Jesse’s fist crashed down. Scott’s former shelter imploded. Bits of debris clanking off his metal suit, Scott hurried through the trees. Behind him, Jesse began digging through the wreckage, casting limbs away.

  Scott emerged onto the lip of the clearing, beside the path he’d come in by. Jesse was still half in and half out of the woods, his backside heaving like the tail end of a VW bus. Scott slid his gaze to the hole across the clearing where Creed had disappeared. Thin moans issued from the darkness. He’s alive, anyway. Scott searched for Tyler. Not finding him, he made for the path.

  “There you are.”

  Scott spun as Jesse began his charge. Tremors radiated through the earth, up Scott’s legs, and into his quaking bladder. No way he could outrun Jesse, not strapped to a car battery and a ten-pound helmet.

  He pressed the laser’s power switch. Nothing happened.

  Shit on a stick.

  A second later, the tube crackled and blinked on. The red shaft landed on Jesse’s swaying breasts. Scott narrowed his gaze as he concentrated into the tube laser. His consciousness compressed along its length, as though his skull was being hand cranked through an old-fashioned wringer. And then he was inside the conductive channel.

  Jesse’s rumbling approach grew louder.

  Scott focused his energy along the near end of the beam, watching the orb in his mind’s eye shift from red to orange. A subpar blast would slow Jesse but not stop him. White spots began to blot out Scott’s vision.

  A moment longer…

  Scott was dimly aware of his legs folding. A fist swooped past his face, knuckles grazing his chin. The pulse released, shooting the length of the beam. The battery cracked between the ground and Scott’s back. The cottony feeling in his mouth dissolved like pink carnival candy, and his vision expanded.

  Above him, Jesse swayed.

  Must’ve caught him under the chin, Scott thought dimly.

  Almost too late, he yelped and threw himself from Jesse’s path. A leaf-blasting whump sounded behind him at the
same instant pain stabbed through his left arm. He twisted around to find Jesse facedown. A booming snore stretched the army fatigue jacket over his back, then rumbled from his flapping lips. The red beam followed Scott’s gaze down to where his left arm disappeared beneath Jesse’s stomach.

  Great.

  Scott winced and tried to retract his arm. The sensation of ground glass made him stop. He worked his legs around, planting the bottom of one sneaker against Jesse’s hip and wedging the other sneaker deep inside the fold of his armpit. Scott turned off the laser.

  All right. He clasped his trapped arm above the elbow. Took a breath. Ready… set…

  He rocked to build some momentum, then heaved with both legs, managing to turn Jesse’s body a few degrees, and drew his arm free. Scott fell back to the ground, cradling the arm to his chest. Iciness throbbed through the tissue, as if he’d rescued it from arctic waters. Scott flexed his fingers, rotated his wrist, and palpated his forearm. Not a compound fracture, not this time. But he knew a broken bone when he felt one.

  He staggered to his feet, the threat of nausea needling his throat. He looked down at Jesse and then out at the clearing, empty now save for the cast-off tree. The nausea dissipated, leaving behind a cold constellation of sweat.

  “They got their arm after all,” he mumbled as he limped up the path. “But a little different than the last time, eh?”

  In his half-shocked state, he began to chuckle. The woods around him — and all that had happened inside them — felt unreal, like something out of a comic book. His chuckles swelled into laughter. Jesse Hoag was felled, all four hundred ugly pounds of him; Creed Bast, the giggling demon, was demolished somewhere; and Tyler—

  Scott’s laughter ended as if severed by a sword stroke. He lowered his throbbing arm, fumbled for the laser’s power switch, and aimed at the thin silhouette in front of him. But no sooner had he clicked the switch than a hand closed over it. The laser blinked, lighting up a charcoal-colored denim jacket buttoned to the throat. Then a white flare erupted, and sparks spewed from the power supply. A flash of heat seared the side of Scott’s face.