The Riser Saga

by Becca C. Smith

  Where did she think she was going? This was one room, she was done for.

  BOOM!

  The walls rippled again frantically and the vibrating noise became deafening.

  One more trick, little one. That was Elisha’s voice! How did she get in my head?!

  CRACK!

  The whole room felt like it was caving in on itself. The noise was too loud. I covered my ears, but nothing could stop the pounding. I was losing consciousness.

  Ryan dropped next to me.

  When he went down so did my control over the army and Roberta.

  I fell to my knees.

  The pounding was making my bones rattle.

  Gramps dropped, then Harry.

  I tried to crawl to Roberta, but she went down as well.

  Dean grabbed Terence and Isabelle and the three of them disappeared completely. I couldn’t tell if Dean somehow used his powers to hide them from Elisha, or if he actually pulled them through the crytonsteel. Either way, they were gone.

  A part of me wanted to be knocked out so I wouldn’t have to be tortured by the raucous noise that threatened to deafen me permanently.

  That’s when I realized that none of the clones were affected by the sound. They all just stood there, staring…

  …At me.

  My arms buckled and I fell flat on my chest.

  I could barely lift my head as I saw Elisha slowly walk up to me, smiling and unfazed by the chaotic noise.

  “You’re mine now,” Elisha said.

  Everything went black.

  Chapter Five

  Friday April 8, 2321

  Ouch.

  I opened my eyes to try and figure out why my whole body was in agonizing pain.

  Oh.

  Wrists tied together with chains.

  That’s why.

  Oh, and I was hanging from a meat hook while my ankles were being pulled by another set of chains attached to the ground.

  I felt like a giant rubber band being stretched as far as I could go except for the fact that I wasn’t made of rubber. I had no idea how long I’d been hanging there. It must have been long, though, because I couldn’t feel my fingers. It reminded me of when I’d sleep with my arm above my head and then wake up in the middle of the night frantic because my whole arm had fallen asleep. Only this time it was both arms and I had no way to return the circulation. Everything ached. My head hurt.

  And I was captured. Again.

  I surveyed my surroundings, trying to get a feel for where I was this time. It was dark, lit a kind of reddish hue that made the whole room feel even more creepy than it already was (if that were possible). The walls and floors looked wet, as if the place had just been hosed down. There were about five rows of meat hooks running parallel to each other across the entire eight-foot ceiling.

  I was in the center row middle with nothing else hanging from the hooks. The walls and floors were cement, but more of a gravelly cement, lots of uneven footing and rocks. The room itself was huge, well over two hundred square feet. So much room for little old me. At least I wasn’t in a coffin! Small favors.

  I searched for anything dead. But I knew Elisha would have prepared this place. Like I thought: nothing. Not even dust. The sounds of air-sucking machines told me that Elisha had made sure that I didn’t have that particular weapon to work with.

  Next best thing…

  Roberta? I called out in my brain.

  Nothing.

  I wondered if she was okay or if she was even alive. Before I’d passed out, Ryan, Roberta, Gramps and Harry were all spread out unconscious just like me. Elisha could have taken us all. Only Isabelle, Dean and Terence had escaped. I couldn’t blame Dean for only taking his two comrades. Elisha would have had no hesitation about killing the three of them instantly so she could control them as dead people and use their powers for her own gain. I just wished Dean would have grabbed Ryan too. I’d feel a lot better if I knew Ryan was okay.

  The sound of a creaking metal door filled the air, making me flinch. The door was behind me so I could only hear the footsteps walking toward me.

  Oh joy.

  It was Eva.

  She smiled up at me as happy as I’d ever seen her. Eva really hated me.

  I almost felt a pang of sympathy for the girl when I saw exactly how Elisha had punished her for my escape. Eva’s body was covered in bruises and stitches. Even her beautiful face was black and blue. The fact that this girl was still loyal to Elisha blew my mind, but maybe it was loyalty out of fear. If so, I could use that.

  “What happened to you?” I asked, pretending I didn’t know.

  Eva self-consciously touched her bruised cheek. “None of your business,” she spat.

  “Are you going to get me down from here?” Thought I’d ask. Ha, ha.

  Eva smirked. “Yeah, right. You’re going to look a lot worse than me when Elisha is done with you.”

  “You mean like Max?” I had to say it. I had to see if Eva knew.

  She did. Eva’s face crumpled. Max was a soft spot for her and she thought he was dead. Her sadness quickly turned to raging hatred, her eyes practically on fire as she tried to stare me down. “Max’s death was your fault! If you hadn’t hypnotized him into helping you Elisha wouldn’t have had to kill him!”

  “Hypnotized? Max helped me because he knew it was the right thing to do.” I knew trying to reason with Eva was useless, but I had to try. Maybe if I could convince her…

  “The right thing? He’s dead. The only thing that gives me any kind of peace of mind is the fact that you’ll be dead too before this day is over. Max will be avenged.” Eva meant it.

  “Elisha killed Max, not me. You’re mad at the wrong girl.” At that point I knew I couldn’t break through to Eva. All I could do was plant a few seeds of doubt and hope that they’d grow. “Why are you here anyway?”

  Eva lit up at that question. Uh oh. “To help.”

  Help?

  Gulp.

  Was Elisha really going to beat the crap out of me? To what end? For fun?

  Then I remembered Elisha said I needed to kill myself. How was killing me, killing myself? Nothing was making sense.

  That same creaking door and the new footsteps that followed made my heart jump.

  Here we go.

  Elisha’s annoyingly beautiful face came into view as she stepped around to the front of my hanging body. Wearing a tight sweater and jeans, with her long black hair perfectly in place, made the moment as surreal as it could get. Her giant purple eyes stared up at me.

  “How are those arms?” she asked, knowing full well how my arms were doing.

  “Great,” I responded heartily. I hated her so much. My freaking arms were on fire!

  “I see, tough girl, huh?” Elisha seemed more amused than annoyed like I wanted to provoke her to be.

  SLASH!

  I screamed.

  Elisha pulled back the small knife she’d been hiding with her hand. I could feel the blood dripping from my thigh from the shallow wound Elisha had just made. Not enough to kill me, but it seriously hurt.

  “Eva.” Elisha nodded to the thrilled Eva.

  Eva took out a small pouch from her pocket and rubbed some kind of paste on the fresh cut.

  I screamed again. The pain was even worse that the cut itself.

  “The salve will keep you from bleeding out, but it’s designed to extract as much pain as the body can take. Get comfy, dear, we’re going to be here a while.” Elisha looked both businesslike and elated at the same time.

  The pain was searing. I tried to focus on something else, anything else, but when your leg feels like it is literally going to fall off, it’s hard to think of anything but the pain.

  SLASH!

  I bit my lip, not wanting to give Elisha the satisfaction of screaming again, but tears came to my eyes against my will. She had cut my other thigh, this time at least seven inches long and deeper than before. I felt like my muscles were going to spill out onto the floor. I wanted to c
ry like a baby it hurt so badly. I just wanted it to stop.

  Then Eva was there pasting on that damn cream. It was like she had taken a match and lit my leg on fire. I felt the sweat pouring down my face.

  SLASH!

  My shin.

  I heard myself scream, but I had no control over it. Then the fire cream. My vision was blurring. I couldn’t see straight. My brain felt more muddled than it did when I was given the drugs.

  …wait a minute…

  My brain clung to the only lifeline I could think of. Getting out of my body.

  SLASH!

  The other shin.

  My voice was already hoarse from screaming. I could feel my throat getting raw and tingly as I couldn’t seem to stop myself from yelling. Crying out was the only release I had.

  The salve.

  Then suddenly I didn’t feel any pain.

  I was staring down at myself like I had before when Elisha had injected me with the drugs.

  I was outside of my body.

  I wanted to cry from relief.

  I had never felt so much pain before in my life. Emotional pain yes, even psychological pain, but this kind of physical pain was nothing like I’d ever experienced.

  “She’ll be grabbing you back soon,” I heard a voice say beside me.

  My astral self turned around to see Max floating behind me.

  “Max! What are you doing here? You’re not…” I didn’t want to say dead, but it was the first thing that came to my brain. He kind of looked like a ghost and I’d never seen anyone floating around in astral space before. Usually I’d just see strings of light that would draw me to certain people, namely, Grams. Seeing a hovering Max made my brain jump to conclusions.

  Max smiled, “Dead? No, but I’m in a coma back at Turner’s. Jill’s with me,” he said and I couldn’t help but grin. Even through all this crap, dying and coming back to life, Max still cared more about Jill. He was a keeper.

  Pain. Excruciating pain! I was slammed back in my body and I screeched in response. What happened?!

  “Cheating again, little one?” Elisha snarled. “What would be the purpose of me torturing you if I let you jump out of your body?”

  I couldn’t even think about responding to her. She had made three new cuts. One on the inner thigh and two on my ankle. I gasped for breath the pain was so intense. My eyes felt crossed. I could feel the drool falling from my mouth involuntarily.

  “Grab my hand,” Max’s voice sounded like music against the shredded backdrop of my screaming.

  My head lolled up.

  I could see Max. Floating above me with his hand outstretched.

  Elisha and Eva had no idea. They were so focused on slashing and salving that they couldn’t see him.

  My arms were dead, but I tried to pull my astral self out.

  I was too weak.

  “I can’t,” I muttered.

  Elisha thought I was talking to her. “Ready to give up so soon? I thought I’d at least have a few days of this.” She walked up to me so she could stare into my eyes. “Are you ready to kill yourself?”

  I needed to know her plan. The throbbing of every wound on my body was unbearable. I managed to say, “Why?”

  “There was one missing ingredient in the spell that transferred your father’s power into you: he killed himself.” Elisha actually was angry, her face kind of scrunched up. I didn’t care. As long as she was talking she wasn’t cutting. You’d be amazed at how much of blessing that was.

  “But… you have my powers.” Elisha did have my powers already, gained by performing the ritual and killing one of the babies from Havenville. After reciting the spell that my father had performed on me, Elisha had walked away possessed with my ability to control the dead.

  Then I remembered the connections I had made earlier that didn’t make sense at the time…

  Turner never realized the full extent of my powers because he had only tested the clones. They were copies. Maybe since Elisha received her powers through me using the twins and not directly…

  I knew I was growing closer to the truth, I just needed more information.

  Elisha screamed in fury and slashed under my arm.

  Even though it was numb I still felt the excruciating sting as the knife sliced through skin.

  Eva quickly applied the paste and my body tensed in pain, and I howled from agony.

  “I can’t do everything that you can! I have the echo of your powers, we all do! It’s like a copy of a copy, but you… you’re the source and I need you to kill yourself while I perform the ritual again!” Elisha yelled in my face. She was losing it.

  Even through my pain the gravity of what she’d just admitted to me sunk in. I was right. Elisha wasn’t as strong as me. Her powers were weaker. Diluted. How did she even know that when I didn’t even know the scope of my powers? The more I thought about it, the more it made me wonder what I could do. Mainly, what I could do to get out of this torture chamber!

  SLASH!

  I felt the knife’s edge cut deep into my calf.

  My screams were throaty and gravelly now. I couldn’t take much more of this.

  Eva spread the lotion on the cut. I slumped my head. I was going numb with the pain.

  That’s when I felt a hand pulling me out of my body. It was blessed release. As soon as my incorporeal form left my body behind, I felt the instant sensation of intense relief.

  Max held my hands in his as we floated above the disturbing scene of Elisha destroying my body.

  “I don’t think I can recover from that,” I said to Max as Elisha sliced the back of my heel. I was so grateful I didn’t have to feel that, but terrified that she’d drag me back down into my body so I’d have to.

  “You will recover and I will too, but we need Fortski’s help.” Max started to pull me away from the scene. “You have to hold on to me. She can’t pull you back in as long as you’re tied to me.”

  I wasn’t so sure. “But I was inside Ryan’s brain and she ripped me out of there.”

  Max looked at me and I felt instantly reassured. “It’s not the same thing. Elisha doesn’t know everything, even though she likes to think she does.” Max pulled me further toward the wall. “I’m taking you to Fortski, just don’t let go of me.”

  He didn’t need to tell me twice. There was no way I was going to let go of Max, not if it meant I’d have to feel the pain again.

  As we traveled through the cement wall I could hear screaming. I was pleased to recognize that it was Elisha, frustrated and in a rage. She had obviously tried to pull me back and couldn’t. Max was right. The part that made me happiest though was the fact that she thought I’d done it myself. The more powerful Elisha thought I was, the better.

  On the other end of the compound was a completely white room. Definitely a lab of some sort. Rows of pristine tables filled with glass beakers and Bunsen burners boiling crazy concoctions; it looked like a really expensive version of the chemistry lab at school. There were several scientists busy at work, entering notes in their computers while experimenting with their potions.

  “Fortski is over there.” Max nodded toward the famous man himself.

  John Fortski. Inventor of Age-pro and pretty much the most famous man alive. He was old, like Turner, probably about fifty-something. He almost had no hair, just grey wisps on the sides of his head. Fortski had small furtive features that made him look like a mouse. He was using an eyedropper to put some kind of liquid into a beaker.

  “How’s Fortski going to help me?” I asked. I mean it was cool and all to meet the man, but I didn’t see this guy as being the hero type.

  “He’s going to help us.” Max turned to me. “He’s developed a formula that will heal all wounds instantly no matter how severe. Elisha is going to keep it hidden from the public and only use it for herself and whoever she sees fit.”

  Just like Ms. Floster let slip in class. The universal wound healer. This was the invention that Fortski had been working on three hundred
years ago when her dad worked at his lab. He had actually done it!

  If the public ever heard about this, they’d go nuts. People lived a certain protected way because taking Age-pro meant you could live forever, but you were still susceptible to dying by other means. If Fortski had invented a new drug that could heal any wound, then it would be a lot harder to die. Like Ms. Floster had said, the only way you could actually die was if it was instant, like a shot to the brain. She specifically said that the drug couldn’t bring you back from the dead. So, we just had to decapitate Elisha and we’d be all good. Uh, huh.

  “There’s only one prototype and Fortski carries it in a secret place at all times. He’s told Elisha that it’s not quite done yet, but he’s lying. He wants to escape. He wants her dead like the rest of us.” Max really wanted to kill Elisha, I could see it in his eyes. Or in his ghosty eyes anyway.

  Knowing that Fortski had a formula that could cure Max and I of all our wounds made me want to jump inside his head, control his body…

  …control his body.

  Could I do that? I knew Elisha could. She had controlled Max quite thoroughly.

  I turned to Max. “Max, do you think we could do what Elisha did and control a live body?”

  “Elisha can’t really control people. She jumps in the part of the brain that makes all of the decisions and makes you believe you’re doing what you want to do. It’s a neat parlor trick, and she made me do things I regret like hitting you with a pipe, but she can’t actually control anyone. Only the twins could do that. I’ve tried to do the whole influencing thing and I can’t seem to make it work. I tried to convince science guy over there to rescue you, but all I could do was make him have to pee.” Max looked embarrassed and I laughed.

  Max cracked a smile and started to laugh too. It felt good in the middle of all this chaos to have one good feeling. “Well, peeing is something, anyway.” I smiled at him.

  “I think you’re powerful enough to do it. You’re stronger than Elisha, even though you don’t think you are.” Max looked at me with a confidence I didn’t feel.

  I got a little embarrassed, but he was right: I didn’t think I was even close to how powerful Elisha was.