I Am Phantom (Novella): Subject Number One (6 page)

Drake
Sinclair is a freak. There’s no other explanation for his superhuman speed,
strength, and fighting prowess that makes him feared by his peers. But going to
college in North Carolina promises a fresh start; a new place with new people,
and maybe, just maybe, a chance to discover the origin of his abilities...

Until the
psychopath arrives.

The
notorious serial killer, Lucius Sykes, is physically enhanced like Drake:
stronger, faster, smarter than any human. He is the original survivor of the
illegal tests done to both of them by Project Midnight; a project that will
stop at nothing to capture Drake and complete their experiments.

Trapped between Sykes’ murderous frenzy against guilty and
innocents alike, and the brutality of Project Midnight, Drake realizes his own
superhuman abilities are the only things that can stop them both. He takes to
the streets as Phantom, a vigilante straddling the blurred lines of good and
evil. Hounded by the chief of police, his morality tested by the sickness and
hate he fights everyday, and split between stopping Sykes and seeking answers
from him, Phantom must find out who the real evil is before everything he’s
come to love goes to ruin.

Chapter
One

In
Which I Screw Up

My day really began the moment the men shot at
me.

To set the record straight, it wasn’t my
usual
idea of fun.

I crouched lower in the thick underbrush,
blending in as much as I could in the black hoodie I’d worn to ward off the
April chill of South Dakota. I could just imagine how the headlines would read:
Local Boy, Drake Sinclair, Killed by Poachers With
Lucky Aim
.

Not the kind of ending I’d hoped for. Not that I
contemplated my end too much.

The first poacher who’d fired at me swore as he
tripped over another branch. He shook his leg to free his camo jeans and
angrily pulled his jacket as it snagged on a limb. The small clump of thick
trees surrounding us may have only been a windbreak, but it was still
treacherous underfoot. Especially if you didn’t know where you were going. And
were an idiot.

“I swear I saw something,” he said. “Really, I
did.”

The second poacher growled. “You didn’t see
nothing! Just a bird or rabbit. Probably didn’t hit it anyway.”

No, he did not hit me. But there was an oak tree
a few yards back that was nursing two slugs and some deep resentment. I
breathed out as the poachers passed, then stopped, afraid they’d see my breath.
Then I realized that was stupid.

It was six thirty am. I had been out on my
morning run and it was very dark. That’s probably what the poachers were
thinking (not too much, trust me) when they’d come out. Dark enough to poach
without being caught, but too dark to see what they were shooting at; mainly,
me.

Brilliant!

By now the poachers had moved far enough away to
allow me to move. I easily leapt into the tree next to me and landed silently
on one of the sturdier limbs to watch them.

They had been smart (kind of) to come to the
backwoods of Dale Janson’s land. He owned so much, the back two hundred acres
were almost never checked. ‘Perfect mischief ground’ my dad called it. Mischief
ground.

That’s why I was here. It was the only place I
could be…me.

I mapped an imaginary course through the trees
in front of me, judged my moves, and jumped, leaping from tree to tree, so
quiet I didn’t even rustle a leaf. I eyed one on my right and went for it,
clearing the twenty-foot gap with ease.

Some called it Parkour. Free running, finding
the most efficient way to move, envisioning new ways to use space. Fun, I
called it.

Time to put the practice into play.

The poachers were just ahead of me. No doubt they
were looking for the tons of deer that loved the fields of clover Dale Janson
owned. I’d outrun a herd of them on the ten-mile run from my house to here.

“Man, you sure we won’t get caught?” Tubby
poacher asked. He leveled his Remington, like it would keep him safe. The
skinny one laughed.

“You scared? ‘Fraid old man Dale’s gonna catch
you?” His boots crunched leaves. “Or you frightened of the spooks ‘round here?
Oooh! Demons! Phantoms!”

“Stop that!”

“Nah, you stop being a baby. And trigger happy.
We shoot off too much, somebody’s gonna come lookin’.”

Their shapes stood out to me in the near
darkness. Time to make my move.

I hit the ground and rolled, then took off
towards them. I rushed the fat one, my feet flying over the ground, coming
within a foot from him and yanking on the tail of his shirt before jumping
back.

“Gah!” He yelped. “What was that?”

“Watch where you point that thing! Watch it!”

I charged them again. The skinny one must have
sensed something coming his way, because he swung his shotgun around and fired
right at me.

Pssh. Lucky guess.

I twisted in midair, contorting my body so the
slug buzzed harmlessly past and cracked! into the tree behind me. I grabbed the
hood of his hunting jacket and tugged it hard over his eyes and shoved him into
the fat one.

“Run,” I whispered.

I didn’t know men could scream that high.

“Go! Go!” The skinny one shoved his friend
forward and together they stumbled, tumbled and tripped their way back the way
they had come. I stood there and tried to keep from laughing too loudly.

When they were gone I checked behind me at the
horizon, which had begun to turn a light pink. I usually liked to stay out
longer. With the end of my high school senior year coming up, I had a lot to
think about, and no easy answers. There were still classes to worry about, and
I needed to decide what college I was going to for my psychology major. If I
was going at all.

But I couldn’t hang around here. If those two
goons caught sight of a black-hoodied kid running out of a forest they thought
was haunted, well…that’d be an awkward meet ‘n greet.

So I started running back home.

South Dakota, to me, is split into two
categories: not boring, and boring.

Unfortunately, I’d been born in the boring part.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s beautiful country, lush and green in the springtime,
and the sky sometimes seems like it can go on forever and ever. But this time
of year the landscape was struggling to get back some color, with spots of
clover and forbs sprouting up and dotting the sides of the roads. What was left
of the grass after winter was valiantly trying to break through to the surface.
The land was flat, flatter and flattest, and if you found one of the few hills
around, you could see for miles.

My feet churned under me, the cold air
refreshing in my lungs. In four minutes I had cleared Dale’s boundary at the
three-mile mark. Six miles I was nearing my hometown, Maize, South Dakota
(Yeah, Maize. Seriously) and hearing the hourly bell toll, and by nine miles I
had to slow down, so if people saw me, they wouldn’t see a kid running faster
than was humanly possible.

I should probably explain: I’m not normal.

When I was fourteen…things started happening.
And I don’t mean puberty, geez. No, something far stranger. And having gone
through puberty that’s saying a lot.

One day I woke up and my world had changed. My
vision was sharper, colors more vibrant than they’d ever been before. Walking
had almost become difficult because my muscles were so strong. I could leap
farther, jump higher, move heavy objects that normal humans would find
impossible. And my speed…that’s what had scared people the most. It must have
been unnerving seeing only a blur and then having me appear by their side. By
the time I learned to keep that in check it was too late, and some of the kids
in Maize had already grown suspicious.

Had I questioned why I had my abilities? Heck
yes. Who wouldn’t? My parents didn’t have them. What I’d searched for on the
Internet hadn’t come up with anything except for comic book characters that
looked downright silly to me. So I had been forced to come up with explanations
on my own. Which led me from thinking I was adopted, to some kind of alien.

Really encouraging stuff for a fourteen-year-old
who’s trying to figure out hormonal changes without freaking out the general
populace with his crazy powers he can barely control. Maybe there was something
in the water. Or the air. Maize was a little more in the middle of nowhere than
usual, but then, nobody else had anything like this.

I turned down our gravel road at 1142
Briarsridge Lane. By the time I got to the front door I had easily caught my
breath, but continued panting to make it seem like I was winded in case my
parents had been watching me walk up the drive.

When all of the weirdness first started happening
I tried talking with my parents, but they chalked it up to “Your body’s natural
changes” and left it at that. When I subtly hinted that maybe being able to
jump ten feet straight up wasn’t how normal kids went through puberty, they
only seemed more confused. They loved me, but I hadn’t brought it up since,
choosing instead to disguise any instances of abnormality.

I went inside and raided the fridge, grabbing
some milk and leftover something that was lurking in the back. It was almost
seven fifteen, so mom was gone for her shift at the hospital. I shut the fridge
door.

“Drake?” My dad poked his head in from the study
room. The curly hair I’d inherited from him was more of a mess this morning,
like he’d just rolled out of bed. “What’s happening, kiddo?”

I scooped the leftovers onto a plate, stuck it
in the microwave, then sat back on the counter while they were heating up.
“Nothing much. Morning run.”

He nodded. “Good one?”

I shrugged. “Same old same old.”

He nodded again. “Glad to hear it. Well I’ve got
a client at nine, so why don’t you hurry on up and get ready after you eat and
I’ll drive you to school.” He retreated back to his study while I retrieved my
food and started shoveling it into my mouth.

My dad was cool. For a dad, I guess. If there was
a coolness scale for that sort of thing. He was a financial advisor for
farmers, so he knew pretty much everybody around here. When we’d go into town
for anything he’d always get caught up talking to one person or another about
the latest prices of grain or a new loan for the shiniest piece of farm
equipment. Usually the only way to pull him away was to have my mom drag him by
his ear.

When I was done eating I hurried upstairs to my
room. I kicked aside a dirty pile of clothes and searched for something clean.
Though I wasn’t normally excited for school, today was a little different.
Today was the day I was asking Missy Vans to prom.

Did she suspect it? No. Did she know I existed?
Maybe.

But I was going to do it anyway. For the last
couple months I had been figuring out whether or not I had a shot. Missy was a
‘popular’ kid, and I was…well, not as much. She was more into jocks, and I
couldn’t play sports, because of the whole enhanced speed and strength thing.

But Missy seemed super nice, and was super pretty,
and I maybe, just maybe, she’d say yes.

So I made sure to brush my teeth twice, and put
on some of dad’s cologne I’d borrowed from downstairs. I checked and rechecked
myself in the bathroom mirror, pulled on my favorite black hoodie for luck,
grabbed my backpack and returned downstairs. Dad was leaning against the table
near our front door, munching on an apple and reading the
Wall Street
Journal
.

He sniffed when I walked up, ready to go.

“What’s that smell?”

“Success. Can we go?”

I’m not terribly proud I have to be driven to
school. I mean, I’m eighteen. I have a driver’s license but the only other car
besides the one mom drives is a beat up pick up truck that my dad needs to make
trips out to clients’ farms. School’s too far to walk. I can run in, but I was
already going out of my way to not be more of a freak than usual.

But I liked driving with dad. He turned off our
road and we hit the ‘highway’ leading in to Maize, passing rows of farm fields,
and lines of lanky trees in the distance. Every now and then a grain elevator
popped up, like a chubby rocket ship pointed towards space.

“What are you thinking about, kiddo?” My dad
asked. He was looking over at me. I hadn’t realized I had been zoning, staring
out the window, thinking about nothing much, except maybe how to approach
Missy.

“Stuff,” I said.

He shifted in his seat and turned down the
radio. “Well since I have you trapped in here, I thought we could take a second
to talk about your college plans.”

I held back a groan. Here it came. The ‘let’s
talk about your future’ conversation. It was about as well liked as somebody
saying ‘here’s a porcupine. Shove it in your eye!’.

“Now your mom and I know you want to study
psychology, which is great, it really is. But, you know, graduation’s coming
up, and you haven’t applied to any colleges yet.” He gave me a concerned look.
“It’s getting a little late, kiddo. Maybe too late. We wouldn’t mind you
hanging around here for a semester. Take some time to think about what you
really want and get your head on straight, but you’ve got choices to make.”

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to go to college. I
did. Badly. And preferably as far away from Maize, South Dakota as possible.