Rebels Rising (Dark Rebels, #1) (4 page)

“It is a long story. Why don’t we tell it over dinner?”

Dinner. She was hungry; that alone surprised her. How could she be hungry after everything that had happened? It seemed she was though, so she got to her feet and followed the group out of the room.

***

T
he house was shaped roughly. The stone walls were dark; the occasional light sat in a bracket on the wall as they walked down a long hallway and into what looked like a central room. Food was being cooked, and the smell of it made Krista’s mouth water.

They all sat at a long table. Besides the ones she already knew, there was a tall, reed-thin man with a hooked nose and a long scar on his right cheek who introduced himself as Gregory, a girl with hair the same color as fire named Laurie, and about two dozen others whose names escaped Krista at the moment.

The food was delicious: beef stew floating in rich gravy, homemade biscuits, and an apple cobbler that was rich, sweet, and still warm. Krista wolfed down bowl after bowl of stew, too hungry to care about her manners.

“It’s coming back,” someone observed when she shoved a sixth biscuit in her mouth.

“What?” she asked through a mouth filled with buttered bread.

“Your Power. They take it, or try to. Those who are Naturals need fuel to burn; Primes are better suited genetically to our Powers because, unlike Naturals, we cannot be starved into loss of Power and strength.” Steven said.

“What is the difference?”

Steven leaned forward. “Listen carefully. I will give you the five dollar tour. Once upon a time, a scientist came up with the theory that man was too flawed to survive the inevitable changes the world is undergoing. We outlived our ability to evolve, you see.

“So he got together with a few other scientists, and he began to experiment with genetic coding. They tracked down people who had rumored abilities. They killed a lot of fake psychics and mediums in the process, as well as a few people making a living by ‘moving’ things around with their minds.

“They did eventually begin to find people who had the natural talent that they were looking for. In the beginning, they wanted to ensure the survival of the human race by building better, faster humans, humans who would be able to survive a catastrophe of global proportions.

“They wanted people who could do things like know what the weather would be before it did, people who could read minds and police those who would be criminals. They wanted those who could move objects, or even fly, because the world would be vastly changed, and they had to have abilities to fly. How better to escape a lava flow than by flying away from it? I honestly believe that in the beginning, they thought what they were doing was a good thing, even if it was flawed.

“Then their research changed. With the wars that were being fought then raging around them, they turned to doing what the government has always done: they began to try to find a way to make sure that the soldiers they put on the battlefield would win against the enemy.”

“Wait, why would they need mind readers in a firefight?” Krista asked.

“It was not just for the actual battles. What better way to win a war than to know it was coming? If they had an army of telepaths who could tell them exactly what the enemy was thinking and doing, they would have a powerful weapon, don’t you think?”

“Holy crap,” Krista muttered.

“Back to the origins of the story: Second Adam was a failure. They became mere clones. Yes, they were fast and strong and brutal, but they were unable to use any Powers; they would not pass down no matter how often they tried to splice them into their DNA.”

“But you can do it.”

“I’m a Prime. Primes are the third generation. Seconds and Betas came first. Betas took some coding, some could read minds or were intuitive, some were able to move things to some degree. Laurie, show her.”

“Sure.” Laurie sent the salt shaker tumbling down the table’s length, but as soon as she did, a thin trickle of blood appeared at her nostrils.

“You’re bleeding.”

“Betas die from using their Powers. We have a finite amount, and once we use it all up, we are used up. It was written into our genetic codes.”

Krista was no longer hungry. She shoved the cobbler away. “That is inhumane! I mean, that is tampering with God’s design, even!”

“Has that ever stopped a scientist who thinks they are working for the betterment of the world?” Connor retorted.

“So what happens to Primes?”

Blake spoke. “We were genetically modified to be different. Blake and I got wings, so we can fly, obviously, but so can Tawny, who is wingless.”

“I have the ability to use my mind to shape shift.” Tawny actually sounded smug.

“Makes us Naturals look sad in comparison, huh?” Noite asked.

Krista shook her head to try to make things fall into place, but it did not help. “So Primes, do you have Powers? Like telepathy or whatever?”

“It depends on the Prime. Some of us were modified to know math and science, hence the kids at the school who were not stolen from their parents. Like Blake and Connor and me, they were grown in a lab.” Tawny added.

“Nerd clones,” Krista muttered and giggled.

“That is not very funny.” Steven said sharply.

“Sorry.”

“Some Primes have Powers, but not like the ones Naturals have. No matter how hard they tried, they could not implant anything that strong.”

“So, what kind of Powers do I have?”

“What don’t you have?” Steven replied.

“Yeah, since you’re a half...”

“That will be enough, Noite,” Steven said sharply.

“I’m a half what?” Her curiosity was fired by the cut-off comment and the rebuke. “What is it I am half of?”

“Nothing, you are a hundred percenter.” Steven’s smile was tight. “That is all you really need to know right now. We do not have a lot of time to talk anyway. By now they have discovered that chopper, and we have to move on.”

“What? Where will we go?” Krista protested. “I thought you said this place was invisible, Blake!”

“It is, but only because those of us who are Connected work hard to keep it so. Only, to keep it any longer means using up some of our Betas, which makes us no better than the people we are hiding from.”

“Welcome to the family,” Noite said with a gamine grin, and then she touched her hair and changed the color of it to blue in a flash. “Pretty neat trick, huh?”

“Yeah, neat. Now if I could just figure out how to get rid of the hair on my legs without having to shave,” Krista said.

“It’s called wax.” Noite said and stuffed another bite of cobbler into her mouth. “I guess it is a good thing you do not have much to pack.”

“Yeah, I mean there has to be some kind of bright side to having been kidnapped by a weird shit government agency, being saved from being murdered by your best friend and freak by flying guys, and finding out you are some kind of teenaged X-Man, only without the cool costume.”

“She’s taking it way better than you did,” Laurie said to Noite.

“I thought I had been abducted by aliens,” Noite told Krista.

“I see.” She didn’t, not really. Everything was confused and chaotic. “So, where are we going?”

“You will see when we get there.” Steven replied.

“I don’t...tell me one thing. If Luke is like a factory, why not just blow it up and be done with it? I mean, isn’t that the simplest solution?”

“They always want the simplest solution,” Blake muttered, and Connor dug an elbow into his ribs.

“We have friends there,” Tawny said. “We don’t really want to blow them up, but thanks for the idea.”

“You have friends there? Like, spies?”

“No, like people who have been captured and are being held in thrall to the machine.” Connor sighed and said, “We have to show her.”

“Laurie can’t.” Noite said sharply.

“Yes, I can. I always knew it would come to this at some point.”

“To hell with what you know!” Noite shouted. “Just tell her, she can believe it or not. I am not letting you die because she is too stubborn to see it without this!”

Krista stared from one girl to the other. “I don’t understand.”

“No,” Noite said angrily, “You don’t and because you don’t...” her chair scraped the floor as she shoved it back from the table. “Steven, don’t do this.”

“We have no choice.”

There was a sick feeling in Krista’s belly. She was about to cause something very bad, whether she wanted to or not, and she did not know how to stop it, or even if she could. “Whatever it is, is there not a better way?”

“No.” Laurie said. “Watch.”

Her hand reached for Steven’s. Some of the people at the table linked hands, others did not. Instantly a thick tension filled the air. It felt like an electric current running through the room. Krista had to fight to breathe at first; the change brought about some sort of barometric differences as well.

This was Connecting, she knew it even as she did not know how she knew it. Laurie groaned and blood dripped from her nose. Noite sobbed out loud, but the cries were muffled by a thick wall of that electricity, and Krista was carried up on it.

On the table there opened a dome. Inside the dome lay Luke College. She watched as the walls and floors were peeled away to reveal a sub-structure of solid metal and thick rock. Machines hummed and beeped, and the hallways were walked by people in white coats and more of the Second Adams. There was at least ten replicas of him about, and while that did not completely get rid of her guilt, it helped to assuage it.

The tableau grew in size until the hideout vanished and she was alone there, walking along those halls invisible to those around her but able to see everything herself. It was an odd feeling, like being partway awake and partly asleep. Her skin tingled, and she found herself walking on her tiptoes even though she knew there was no need to do so.

The scene rapidly unfolded, and she was sped across the hallways and down echoing corridors. A long, low hum filled her head, made her eyes ache and her skin literally tighten on her bones. Her teeth even hurt, and her gums felt like they were being scraped with some hard, shiny tool. Of the others, there was no sign.

She went into a room and stared openly. Horror and pity broke across her heart at the sight of the teenagers sitting at desks, their eyes forward and their stares intense as they read the words scrolling along the screen in front of them. It was complex mathematics problems mixed in with what looked like other languages, and as she watched, one of them fell out of his desk, sprawling limp and lifeless on the floor, blood running darkly from his open mouth. A large man in white kicked his body to one side and watched as another boy of maybe seventeen was brought forward, his face wearing a sleepwalker’s expression.

“Betas,” the man in the white coat said.

Krista opened her mouth to scream, but she was seized and tossed into another room, a dark and cold place. The long canisters on the walls were filled with some sort of murky fluid, and when she drew closer, she saw something floating in one container. Sick and revolted, she wanted to turn away but she could not, so she pressed her face closer, peering through the grayish-green fluid.

Her own face bumped against the glass. Krista staggered backward and fell, her bottom hitting the cold tiles of the floor and her jaw ratcheting open in a giant scream that echoed through the dining hall as the scene folded in around her and she found herself back in the spot she had been sitting in.

Her scream ended, but someone else was still screaming. Dizzy, disoriented, and sure she had just taken a trip on the crazy train, she looked around to see Laurie slumped over the table, her pretty face in her dinner plate and blood—darkly purple and thick—staining her upper lip and nose.

“I hope you are happy!” Noite screamed.

“Stop!” Blake roared, and Noite fell silent, her tears still running down her face but her trembling lips pressed tightly together, so tightly that they looked bloodless and thin. “We had no choice! Besides, she was done anyway. We could not save her; eventually, it happens to all Betas.”

“It shouldn’t!” Noite cried and put her face in her hands.

“No,” Connor said softly, “it shouldn’t.”

Noite took her hands away from her face. Her eyes were red-rimmed and her voice hoarse. “You better be everything they say, Krista. You better be, or I will kill you myself.”

She stomped out of the dining room. Krista was unable to do anything more than stare around at the people gathered there and say, “They killed a boy.”

“A Beta. It happens daily. The machine is not known for pity. They used to be less brutal with the Betas, but since they have the new models in production, they have begun to phase them out.”

“You are talking about people.” Krista did not want to look at Laurie, but she had to. The girl had died to show her that terrible horror at Luke; she owed it to her to see what she had sacrificed. “And what new model? And I thought you said we could not Connect, so what the hell was that?”

“That was us Connecting and showing you something. I do not have time to explain that right now, but I will eventually,” Steven said. “You saw the new model.”

The lump in her throat was huge. “It’s me, isn’t it? They are cloning me.”

“They are trying to. They must have had a breakthrough to order you to be killed. Maybe it is too late already,” Blake said.

“Too late for what?”

“To save any of us.” He got up and his wings burst from his back, shredding the tee shirt as they did so. She could see the magnificent cut of his abs, the stack of his ribs, and the golden glow of his skin through the torn fabric. It was unfair that he was so sexy. There was something inherently wrong with thinking a guy with such a bad attitude was cute. Not to mention he had wings and was a killer.

She was a killer too. That thought sent her spiraling back into a depression that might have taken hold if there had not been a loud crash from outside.

“Shit, they are here already,” Blake said. “Grab your stuff— it is time to blow this place. Everyone meet at the staircase!”

People ran. Not sure where to go or what to do, Krista sprinted behind Tawny. An explosion sounded from somewhere, and the aftershock lifted Krista off her feet and tossed her into an outcropping of rock. She yelped in pain as her ribs and belly met solid granite.