The Dominion Key (2 page)

“I guess you’re right.” A slight smile formed on Sophie’s
lips. Her blue-gray eyes shone a little brighter. She looked like she was about to say something else when a voice cut into our conversation.

“Are we getting cheese fries or not?”

Milton was standing next to a cell-phone kiosk, tapping his foot. Sophie and I hurried to catch up.

The food court was bustling. We grabbed one of the last available tables, setting down the large plate of cheese fries in the middle so we could all share.

“I wish we didn’t have to go to school on Monday,” Milton said between bites.

“I’m just glad to be starting off the year with friends.” Miranda smiled at us. Below her right eye, a birthmark in the shape of a star stood out against her olive skin. “That’s a first for me.”

“Me too,” Sophie said. “Besides, at least at school I don’t have to be around my dad and that redheaded bimbo.”

Sophie’s dad was the world-famous superhero Captain Justice. And as for the “redheaded bimbo” … that was Sophie’s nickname for her dad’s new girlfriend, Scarlett Flame. Ever since their romance went public, hardly a day passed by when I didn’t see photos of the two of them cuddling on the cover of
Super Scoop
magazine or battling zombies on the evening news.

“You should see them together.” Sophie made a gagging noise. “It’s disgusting. She comes over to watch Dad’s show with him. The only thing Scarlett
Lame
likes more than my dad is seeing herself on TV.”

Captain Justice’s reality show,
Hangin’ with Justice
, had
become a national sensation. Maybe Sophie didn’t like witnessing the romance between her dad and Scarlett Flame, but apparently the rest of the country did.

I reached for a handful of cheese fries, but the plate was gone.

“You already finished the fries?” I frowned at Milton. “Thanks for leaving some for the rest of us.”

“What do you mean?” Milton stared at the center of the table. All that remained was a glob of cheese where the plate had been. “They were just here a second ago.”

“Guys—look.” Miranda pointed beneath the table. On the floor was our plate of cheese fries.

“How the heck did they get
there
?” Sophie asked.

“Dunno.” Milton shrugged.

“Well, they couldn’t have just teleported,” I said. “Someone must’ve—”

I went silent when something hit my forehead with a wet
splat
. My hand shot up to wipe away a thick substance that looked like blood. Except it wasn’t blood. It had to be—

“Ketchup,” Miranda said. “Why do you have ketchup on your face?”

“Good question.” I spotted a bottle of ketchup behind Sophie. It seemed to be … drifting in midair. And suspended in the air beside it was a bottle of mustard.

Pffft!

Another stream of ketchup squirted from the bottle. This time it landed on the table in a looping shape that looked
something like a
W
. The mustard came next, writing out an
E
beside the other letter.

Sophie gawked at the floating bottles. “Did someone order a magic show without telling me?” she asked in a shaky voice. “Because otherwise, I’m starting to get nervous.”

“Oh, man!” Milton scrambled out of his seat, pointing a trembling finger. “The food court’s possessed!”

I watched as the floating ketchup and mustard squirted out an apostrophe onto the table, followed by an
R
and an
E
.

“What’s doing this?” I asked.

“Not what,” Miranda said. “
Who
. Someone’s controlling the bottles.”

She turned in her seat, her eyes searching. Miranda is a Senser, which is another way of saying she has superpowered intuition. Her Gyft gives her insight into things normal people can only guess about.

“We’re not the only Gyfted kids here.” Her voice was slow and measured. “There are … others. Don’t know who, but one of them has the power of telekinesis—”

“Tele-ki-
what
-sis?” Milton asked.

“The ability to control objects with the mind.”

“I’m guessing that includes bottles of ketchup and mustard,” I said.

Miranda nodded. “Whoever these people are … they’re sending us a message.”

“Yeah,” Sophie said. “And they’re spelling it out with condiments.”

She pointed at the table. There in gloppy red and yellow letters were four words:

It was right around this time that chaos broke out across the food court.

I’d been so caught up watching the ketchup and mustard practice their spelling that I hadn’t noticed what was going on around the rest of the food court. A group of high school girls squealed when a strawberry smoothie exploded against their table like a pink grenade. Close by, I spotted a family covered in kung pao chicken.

A food fight had broken out in the Sheepsdale Mall. And the food seemed to have a mind of its own.

As if that weren’t bad enough, other objects were getting in on the action. A bunch of DVDs looked like they’d floated over from the electronics store and were now whizzing across the food court like Chinese throwing stars. The pinball machine had escaped from the arcade. I watched with a growing sense of fear as it chased a group of old ladies.

Screams filled the air. Swarms of people were running for the exits.

“Any guesses what this is all about?” Sophie asked. She used a plastic tray as a shield against an incoming slice of pizza.

A look of concentration passed over Miranda’s face. After a moment, she let out an exasperated breath. “There’s too much going on right now. It’s like static. I can’t pick up on any one thing.”

“What about that message?” Milton looked down at the words scrawled on our table in mustard and ketchup. “
Who
is coming for us?”

“No idea.” Miranda ducked just in time to avoid getting smacked in the face by an airborne phone. “Whoever it is, it looks like they’re driving everyone else out of here.”

She was right. A battalion of plastic dolls had ventured from the toy store and were herding people through the exits. Anyone lagging behind got a kick in the butt from a floating tennis shoe. A mall security guard tried to restore order—until a flock of books flew at him, their pages flapping like wings, chasing him toward the open doors.

“That guy’s got the right idea,” Milton said, watching the security guard bolt. “Let’s go!”

I broke into a run. But obstacles kept getting in our way. When we tried to reach the emergency exit, a set of kitchen knives darted into our path, their gleaming points aimed at our chests. Turning around, we were met by a dozen baseball bats from the sporting goods store. They floated in midair, swinging at any of us who got too close.

Whoever was controlling the mall might have been driving the rest of the people out, but they were doing everything to keep us
in
.

Before long, we were the only ones left.

WHAM!

All at once, the doors slammed shut. And just to make sure they stayed that way, arcade games scooted across the floor, sealing the exits closed. Mountains of TVs, stereo equipment, and computers piled up across the broad corridors that led to other parts of the mall, creating a barrier that trapped us into the food court.

Knives drifted closer. Baseball bats circled.

There was no way out.

A shadow fell across the food court. My eyes were drawn to the ceiling, where the blazing August sunlight poured through a glass roof. Staring down from above was a girl, perched at the edge of the glass. She looked about our age, with a pixie haircut and a smirk on her face, the kind of expression you’d see on a kid sneaking out of detention.

“That’s her!” Miranda said, pointing at the girl.

“The one with tetanus?” Milton asked.

“Telekinesis,”
Miranda corrected him. “She’s the one controlling everything!”

The girl held out one hand, fingers outstretched. A flick of her wrist and the glass shattered, sending hundreds of shards crashing down.

Clenching her hand into a fist, the girl yanked her arm back like she was pulling on an invisible string. Suddenly, a TV rose from the messy floor, its cable dangling beneath
it like a tail. The TV drifted steadily through the air until it was only a foot below the shattered ceiling.

The girl repeated the same motion—clench fist, pull back—with her right hand, then her left. A laptop burst into the air, followed by a plastic serving tray. More objects began drifting toward the ceiling—a computer monitor, a DVD player, a coffee-table book—each coming to a stop a little below the one before it.

She was building a spiral staircase.

The girl stepped through the hole in the ceiling, one foot landing on the flat-screen TV that was levitating beneath her. Her other foot came down on the laptop, then the plastic tray. She descended to our level using the mall’s merchandise as her own personal stairway. Even with the pit of nerves twisting inside me, it
was
impressive.

As soon as she reached the floor, a movement above distracted me. Someone else was peering down at us through the gaping hole in the ceiling. A guy who looked a couple of years older than us—and a whole lot
bigger
. Square jaw, no neck, muscular arms. And his size wasn’t even the most remarkable thing about him. The dude had skin the color of concrete. I stared up at him with equal parts fear and awe. He was like a boulder in an XXL T-shirt.

Big Boy uncrossed his arms, went into a crouch, and …

Jumped.

I staggered backward, too distracted by the sight to give much thought to the knives and baseball bats circling us. The guy plummeted to the ground and landed like a ton of bricks—which is probably about what he weighed. The
impact shook the entire food court. The floor cratered beneath him. But Big Boy looked unfazed. As he rose to his full height, his concrete face broke into a crooked grin and he brushed the dust and debris off his supersized clothes.

Ten feet away, the girl with the pixie haircut looked up at him.

“You call
that
an entrance?” she said. With a snap of her fingers, her staircase of consumer goods went crashing to the ground. “Where’s the skill? Where’s the precision and elegance?”

“Yeah, but my way’s faster,” replied the gray-skinned behemoth in a gravelly voice.

Milton looked from one to the other. “W-what do you want with us?” he asked. “Who are you?”

“Leave the introductions to me.”

The voice came from above. Hearing it was like a claw gripping my heart. And right away, I knew who the voice belonged to.

nFinity.

He’d been the fifth member of the Alliance of the Impossible, the superhero group we’d formed at the start of the summer. nFinity had once been a teenage supercelebrity. But that was before he betrayed us and joined up with Phineas Vex, the evil billionaire who’d attempted to kill or kidnap me and my friends on multiple occasions.

So I guess you could say I wasn’t thrilled to be seeing him again.

After vanishing with Vex, nFinity had gone missing.
Until now. I stared up at him, watching as he drifted toward us on his sleek hover scooter. He had the same tousled brown hair, the same blue and red uniform with the same
n
logo on his chest. But he looked different now. Changed. His eyes were bloodshot, ringed with dark circles, as though he hadn’t slept over the past couple of months. His face was pale and gaunt. It was like his time with Vex had scrubbed away every last trace of the heartthrob he’d once been.

I nervously searched the food court for an escape route, but all exits had been blocked. And there was little chance that we could get that far anyway. Not with floating knives bearing down on us like bayonets and baseball bats waiting for us to make a false move.

“This is Grifter.” nFinity pointed to the girl. “Found her in Vegas, using her Gyft as a street magician.”

“Distract folks with a nice show,” Grifter said, “and it’s a lot easier to lift their wallets.”

“And my concrete friend here goes by the name Lunk.”

“S’up,” said the massive guy. “I’m looking forward to squashing you.”