Strange Country Day (10 page)

Sophie screamed.

“I warned you. I don’t want to do this, but I have to,” Flab growled in my ear. He flipped me over and kept his massive knees on my chest. I could taste blood running from my nose and I tried to move my arms. Nothing. He reared back a meaty fist.

Okay, powers. Time to kick in and fight back
. There was nothing. Literally zero. My nanobots were asleep. His knuckles connected with my cheek. I heard Sophi pleading with him to stop.

Then I remembered the panic button. Time to use it.

As he reared back again to take another shot, I finally got one hand free to try and hit the button.

Bad idea. Flab grabbed my hand—the left one, luckily, and not the one I throw with—and as I tried to pull it away, he locked onto my pinkie and pulled.

My vision blurred. This time, the smell of toasted marshmallows was what I thought it was, as was the sound of the tone.

Squeeeeeeeee

Showtime.

Flab’s eyes widened as my body did its complete flex. In one movement, I flipped Flab off me and leapt to my feet.

Flab looked at me in disbelief, then shrugged and started to charge. He stopped in his tracks and bent over.

Sophi had jumped on his back and wrapped her legs around his arms.

I was jarred out of my nanobot-induced trance.

“Sophi! Don’t—”

She put her hands up and squeezed his head between them. In an instant, lightning shot up and down Flab’s massive body. His mouth opened for a scream of shock, pain, and horror.

I shielded my face as I watched Flab’s eyes roll into the back of his head. Sophi let go and Flab went down. She rolled off him, trying to catch her breath.

I knew it long before this moment, but it was a shock to my system to see her knock Flab unconscious. Images flashed before me: The doorknob that electrocuted me. The lights stopping in the City. The video games that ceased working when she put her hands on them. The constant stream of static shocks. And Christmas lights in the middle of the woods? There wasn’t an extension chord in the world that could reach us.

“You … you’re … ” I stammered.

She looked up at me and nodded.

“I’m like you.”

“OhGodOhGodOhGodOhGod.”

Tears streamed down Sophi’s face as she clamped her hands over her mouth. We looked at Flab’s body lying still on the ground and tried to get over the initial shock after her … well, shock.

“Is he dead?” she whispered. I got off the ground and crept over slowly. His eyes were closed, and the color in his fleshy face had been drained. I leaned in to look for any sign of life, ready for his eyes to snap open and his beefy hands to reach out and strangle me. I stared at his chest for a few seconds and … yes! It was moving, but he was taking shallow breaths.

“He’s okay, but we need to get him to the hospital.”

Sophi shook her head vigorously. “No, we can’t! They’ll arrest me,” Sophi said, wiping her eyes.

She was right. We couldn’t just call on our cellphones, leave a tip, and run away. They’d probably trace the call, and we’d get in serious trouble. We couldn’t leave him there in case he was really hurt, and we couldn’t sit there and wait for him to wake up, though Sophi had proved there was a way to stop him.

I looked around the forest for inspiration, and it hit me: if there were a bunch of bodyguards following me, they saw what had just happened.

“I’m calling 911,” I said loudly.

“You can’t!”

“I’ll leave a quick tip, and we’ll run. It’s the only way to do it.”

“But what if they find us? He’ll tell the police what happened.”

I got up and put a hand on Sophi’s shoulder. “You have to trust me. What’s the closest street?”

“Serviet Road.”

I took out my phone, and Sophi turned away and started pacing. I auto-dialed my parents’ number.

“911, what’s your emergency?” Mom’s voice!

I lowered my voice for Sophi’s benefit, to keep up appearances. “We need an ambulance off the woods near Serviet Road. There’s an unconscious teenager there.”

“We’ll take care of it,” I heard Mom say as I hung up.

Sophi gave one last look back at Flab, who hadn’t moved once. She knelt over him. “Jared, if you can hear me … I’m really sorry I had to do that. But we are not dating. Okay?”

I let her lead the way as we began running out of the clearing. Just a few seconds in, she stopped. I nearly ran into her as she turned around.

“I left the lights on,” she said.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“No, it does. It’ll take one second.”

I followed her as we jogged back through the path and into the lit area. Once again, Sophi came to a halt in front me. I took a step to my right to see what made her stop.

Two men stood near Flab. One wore a blue hooded sweatshirt, jeans, and workmen’s boots. He had a crew cut with graying sideburns. I recognized him almost immediately—he was the dog walker who had saved Dex and me the day Flab had tried to attack us.

He was joined by a tall someone in fatigues wearing a large backpack and a helmet. A mask and goggles covered his face.

He also carried a very large rifle.

We stood in silence for a few seconds before the dog walker said one word: “Go.”

I glanced at Sophi, who looked as pale as Flab. “Lights?” she asked, barely above a whisper.

“Turn them off,” he commanded.

Without taking her eyes off the pair, Sophi walked over to one of the large trees to which the lights were attached. She reached up and pinched one of the lights between her fingers.

TZZZT.

We were plunged into darkness.

Sophi turned around and began running again. I followed the sound, trying to protect my throbbing pinkie finger from the brambles and branches I encountered as we zigzagged down the path. We finally made our way out to the cul-de-sac and caught our breath.

“Who were they?” she asked between deep gulps of air.

“It’s a long story, but I don’t entirely know myself.”

“We have time.”

“You first. Flab interrupted us.”

As we walked back along the illuminated streets, Sophi told me her story. About a year ago, around her twelfth birthday, she began giving people accidental electric shocks. Only they weren’t those little bits of static shock from a sweater, a rug, or dry air.

One day, she was holding her dad’s hand and he jumped in the air. She’d wake up in the middle of the night from a nightmare and her room would be filled with lightning bolts streaming from her hands, so she started wearing rubber dishwashing gloves when she went to bed to keep the charges at bay. She didn’t tell anyone about what she could do and was still struggling to control her powers; she used the clearing in the woods as a practice area.

Recently, she began to be able to shoot bolts at specific targets, but didn’t know how much energy the bolts created. She had, however, figured out how to “accidentally” bump into kids at school who made fun of her and shock them slightly. But she’d never tried what she had just done to Flab.

“What was with all the shocks when we held hands?” I inquired.

She rolled her eyes. “You really didn’t know I was trying to send you a clue that we were the same?”

“I did, I swear! I suspected something.”

She responded with a tiny zap to the back of my hand and nodded sarcastically. “Sure.”

I told her everything, from the experiments my parents did on children all the way through what I had learned recently: that we were protected by a group of unseen soldiers and bodyguards, even at school. When I explained my nanobots, I pulled the device Dad had given me out of my pocket. Instead of showing “
READY
” in glowing green letters, it flashed a series of blinking red numbers. It meant I had activated in the middle of my beating.

“This is so much to take in,” she said as we walked.

“But you knew about me before tonight, so you must have figured out something was up.”

“When I watched you and Dex in gym class, I knew. It’s not the only reason I like you, but it’s perfect.”

“It’s a relief to tell someone else.”

“So you definitely didn’t call 911 back there,” she said as I recognized the crowded garden in front of Sophi’s house down the block.

She gave me a half-smile. “Quick thinking, Ptuiac. But I still have a million questions.”

“Same here.”

“Like what?”

“I’d really like to know why, if we have protection twenty four hours a day, they didn’t stop Flab.”

“I want know why I have these powers.”

We looked at each other for a second and walked past her house. Fifteen minutes later, I was walking up to my front door. Sophi put her hand on my arm.

“Are you sure this is okay?”

“I think so.”

I took a few steps over to our kitchen window. “I’m home,” I called out.

“Voice identified as Ptuiac, Alexander. Welcome home,” the computerized voice squawked. The front door clicked.

Sophi’s mouth dropped open. I laughed and opened the door.

We walked in to find Mom standing over our computerized cook. “Morimoto, a half-dozen chocolate chip cookies, please.”

The machinery started whirring, and Mom turned her attention to us.

“Hey guys! How was the rest of the bonfire?”

“It’s okay, Mom. She knows, and we want to know more.”

“Alex, what are you talking about?”

“Mom, I said she knows.”

Her smile dropped. She looked at both of us. Finally, she spoke in that quiet voice she reserved for times when she was furious. “Sorry you have to hear this, Sophi, but what both of you are doing right now is dangerous.”

“So you were going to keep this a secret forever?”

“We’re still figuring out what to do. But the less you both know, the better. I mean, we’ve only begun to scratch the surface … ” She trailed off. “Sophi, make yourself at home.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Ptuiac. I really, really appreciate this,” Sophi said quietly as she slid into a chair at the table.

Mom looked down at my left hand and saw the broken finger. “I’ll have Dad grab something for that.” She raised her voice. “Honey, come up with an auto-splint for Alex.”

“Be there in a few,” came Dad’s reply from the intercom in the wall. Sophi nearly jumped out of her chair at the unseen voice.

Dad arrived two minutes later, carrying a laptop. He joined us at the table and handed me a finger-shaped piece of metal that looked like a cast with an opening at the end of it. I slipped my pinkie in there and watched as it adjusted to fit the contours of my finger. A female voice came out of it: “Five weeks remaining.” Sophi’s eyes almost bugged out of her head as we joined her at the kitchen table.

“The patent is still pending,” Dad said.

Pop!
All four of us jumped as Morimoto’s door opened. The arm dropped a basket of raw cookie dough on the table.

“For goodness’s sake, Morimoto,” Dad said, shaking his head. He turned his attention to Sophi.

“What you did back there was incredible.”

“Is he okay?” she asked.

Dad nodded. “He’s a bit woozy, but he’ll be fine. I heard you bumped into a couple of our men. After you left, they posed as police officers and took down a report when he woke up. He told them he didn’t know how he had been knocked out and that he wouldn’t press charges.”

He turned in his chair to face me. “Alex, I’m sorry about what happened, but I couldn’t stop Flab from attacking,” Dad said. “We can’t blow our cover for everybody. Once we ID’d him as your teammate, we were forced to let it play out. Only if you were in further danger would we have stepped in. The two of you going into the woods didn’t exactly help matters … ” Sophi blushed furiously. “ … But, hey, look on the bright side. We discovered quite a secret.”

“Martin!” Mom scolded.

“Okay, sorry.” He got serious again. “Sophi, before I explain a few things to you, you have to promise to keep this a secret.”

“Of course.”

Dad opened the laptop and typed. He turned the screen around. It was a long list of categories and a box for a photo that was blank. The categories were filled in with all kinds of information:
Date of Birth: 6/17/02; Weight: seven pounds, three ounces; Blood type: O positive.

“Sophi, it’s nice to finally meet case number 574912BK.”

Dad explained that Sophi had a rare heart defect that her parents had discovered before she was born. They brought her in right after her birth, and Dad’s team figured out a solution—a nuclear-powered battery attached to her heart.

Sophi’s already-wide eyes got even larger after hearing that.

“There’s another wrinkle to this story. When we dropped off the grid, some of the parents of the babies we’d helped save didn’t approve of us going underground to hide from the government. They thought their families would be harmed if they were associated with a group being hunted down.

“So when we decided to move, we sent out a message to every family we worked with, even those who wanted nothing to do with us. We told them they might be in danger whether they had stayed in touch or not and that we’d be better off moving close to each other to pool our resources. A few agreed, including Sophi’s parents.”

“Your parents also played another important role,” Mom interjected. “They thought this town was a perfect place for everyone. You’re the reason why we moved here.”

“But little did we know you had those powers. We had no idea this was going to happen,” Dad said.

“So we’re moving again,” I cut in.

“No,” Mom replied. “Like I told you, we’re still figuring it out. The problem is that there could be other kids we don’t know about out there developing powers like yours, without protection. That’s what we’re working on at the moment: getting the old group of scientists back together to find and help those kids.”

“Do my parents know I’m like this?”

Sophi spoke for the first time in what felt like hours.

“I don’t think so. Seeing you exhibiting these … side effects … isn’t something we’re ready so share with the group until we figure everything out,” Mom said.

Sophi shifted in her seat. “Why are you so open with telling me all this?”