Robison Wells - Blackout

Alec didn’t help. He thought she was stupid, just because she was the lowest-ranking member of the group. She wasn’t even the youngest—she was nineteen, only three months younger than Alec—but he treated her like she was a little kid, like she didn’t know how to do anything.

She leapt sideways, hundreds of feet above the canyon floor, and caught another outcrop of stone. She wished she wasn’t wearing shoes—they only slowed her down. Her feet and toes were just as tough and unbreakable as the rest of her.

“Can you climb from here?” Alec asked impatiently.

“Sure,” she said, leaping again to the side and catching herself deftly. She couldn’t even see her landing spot clearly—it was just a craggy outline in the darkness—but she knew she could grab hold of it. It was like a playground, like a circus high-wire act.

“You look like an orangutan,” Dan said, a smile in his voice.

Laura laughed, and swung with one arm, leaping up to where the boys stood.

“You done?” Alec said, the snide frown on his face illuminated only by moonlight.

“We can climb down here easy,” she said. “Lots of hand holds. Dan, are you strong enough to hang on?”

He held up his wrists. There was a rope tied between them. “Alec already helped out with that.”

Laura smiled. Alec probably thought it was ingenious. He thought everything he did was brilliant.

“Try to just crack the supports,” Alec said. “Leave it on a hair trigger for the next eighteen-wheeler that drives over it.”

Dan nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”

He put his arms, tied together at the wrists, over Laura’s head. He’d ride on her back all the way down the cliff.

“Dan,” Alec said, his tone more serious. “For your mother and mine.”

“Yeah,” Dan answered quietly.

With that, Laura hunched over, lifting Dan off the ground so she could move freely. He smelled of sweat, but she probably did too. They’d been on the run for hours, and sitting in an old car.

She stepped down to a ledge.

“Try not to choke me,” she said, and leapt toward another rock.

JACK SAT BESIDE AUBREY, BUTneither of them talked. Two soldiers were behind them in the bus, and Jack was sure he didn’t have to warn Aubrey to be quiet about her—was it invisibility? She was an expert at keeping secrets. At lying.

The two of them had cooperated at her dad’s trailer. They’d given their names and ages, and her dad had confirmed them—with a constant request for extra financial compensation. The man had tried everything: claimed that Aubrey’s job was his only source of income; claimed that she helped him with his handyman jobs around the trailer park; claimed that he was disabled and needed her to help him around the house.

The army had given Jack and Aubrey bracelets, just like the ones they’d used at the Gunderson Barn. They also got plastic handcuffs because they had tried to run. They were considered dangerous.

Jack still didn’t know what to think about Aubrey. It was true—she was exactly what the army was looking for. If it was anyone else, he thought he’d just urge them to tell the truth, to turn themselves in. But this was Aubrey.

She’d lied to him. She’d ditched him. She’d given up a lifelong friendship in favor of parties, malls, convertibles, and dresses. And it wasn’t like he’d forgiven her for any of that. The truth was, when the black ops guys burst into the trailer with tear gas and machine guns, she’d disappeared. She’d tried to escape on her own, to leave Jack by himself yet again. Even in the chaos and the smoke, he’d known.

But he wouldn’t turn her in. He couldn’t. He’d seen the look on her face when she’d confessed what she could do, that she had some kind of superpower. It wasn’t a look of guilt, like she’d been caught, and it wasn’t a look of shame, like she was admitting how poorly she’d treated him. It was a look of fear. Fear of what she could do. Fear of who she was.

He didn’t trust her. He didn’t know if he ever could. But he wasn’t going to turn her in.

She was Aubrey Parsons.

The bus pulled into the parking lot of North Sanpete High School, entering a hive of military activity. There were at least eight Humvees and two other buses. Tables were set up on the asphalt and soldiers sat at laptops. Others patrolled the perimeter with M-16s and night-vision goggles.

When their bus parked, an officer told Jack and Aubrey to stay where they were, and then he and all but one of the soldiers left the bus. The last man stood at the door, his focus more on what was going on in the parking lot than on the two teenagers he was guarding.

Aubrey was fidgeting in her seat. “These cuffs are digging in to me.”

“I know,” Jack answered with a nod.

“Where is everyone?” she asked, her voice a whisper so the guard at the front of the bus couldn’t hear.

“Maybe in the school?” Jack said.

“Maybe. But where are the other buses?”

He shrugged, and felt the awkward pain of his twisted arms. “Moved on to the next town? Ephraim or Manti? Mount Pleasant was probably an easy target because we were all at the dance. It’ll be harder to round up the other kids.”

All the more reason for offering a reward, Jack thought, though he wondered where that money was going to come from. There were a lot of kids, and he still doubted that most parents would give their kids up without a fight.

An idea struck him, and made him sick to his stomach. “What if they’re testing for something different? Something else besides what you’ve got—what you can do.”

“What do you mean?”

He made certain he was talking too quietly for the guard to hear. “There’re terrorists all over the country. And as of today they’re in Utah. What if something was put into our water supply, or our food? What if this has nothing to do with Nate or you? What if it’s a real virus?”

Aubrey let out a long slow breath and then smiled for the first time in hours. “I don’t know whether to be happy about that or horrified.”

Jack chuckled softly.

The guard stepped farther down the steps so he was looking outside.

“So how does it work?” Jack asked. “It’s not invisibility like in the comic books.”

She paused for several seconds and then spoke. “Here’s my best guess. I don’t think I’m actually changing—I don’t think my skin goes transparent or anything like that. I mean, my clothes disappear too, and people can’t hear me when I’m gone. I think, instead—and I know this is going to sound crazy—but I think that my brain talks to your brain and tells you I’m not there. So your brain just ignores any sign of me. Does that sound nuts?”

Jack thought it over for a moment. “Yes. But not any crazier than just turning invisible.”

She smiled again, and then leaned forward to try to take pressure off her bound hands.

“How long have you been able to do it?” he asked.

Aubrey was silent for several seconds, like she was trying to decide what to say. “About six months,” she finally answered. “It was in March. I’d been at a church activity and all of a sudden I couldn’t see.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. So, my leader drove me to the clinic and they were going to do tests, but my eyesight came back. I was sitting in an exam room and someone walked in, and I freaked out—I was just wearing one of those flimsy hospital gowns—and I realized they couldn’t see me. Something about wanting to be hidden made me just disappear.”

“That’s so weird.”

“Tell me about it.”

“How could you tell they couldn’t see you?”

“Because they just stood there and stared, and then started looking all around—in the bathroom, in the hallway—and they couldn’t hear me or see me. They were sure I’d just been there—they just couldn’t figure out where I’d gone. I finally reappeared, by accident. It took a long time to control it.”