Struck Read online

  Within seconds, it was gone.

  That was when I started yelling.

  “Hey, hey, calm down.”

  It sounded ridiculous – calm down, really? I’d just woken up in what looked like the least charming room of the local nuthouse, the smell of bleach rammed so far up my nose I was sure I’d never smell anything ever again, chained to a bed in a totally not fun way. Yeah, like I was going to calm down.

  He stepped out from the shadows of the room, hands held up in a gesture of surrender. A whisper of recognition shuddered up my spine, a passing shiver that I couldn’t quite hold on to. I knew I knew him, the same way I knew my name and who was President.

  Or, ya know, maybe I just wanted to know him because damn.

  He was my type from head to toe.

  His brown hair was too neat, clipped precisely to curl around his ears. It looked soft and was naturally streaked with gold, even under the horrible florescent lights. He was tall but not thin, his graceful frame roped with lean, well defined muscle. The natural athleticism of his body definitely made me want to giggle. But his eyes were the nail in my coffin – a perfect storm of hazel, lined with long black lashes and narrowed in concern.

  “Calm down?” I croaked, letting my head thump back against the pillow. It started to throb instantly and almost certainly out of spite. “Really?”

  Something like a smile ghosted across his lips, taking at least five years off him. I’d thought he was an adult when he first spoke, but on my second glance, I could see he wasn’t much older than me. I tried to ignore the flare of curiosity in my stomach, getting distracted by a handsome young man while I was chained to a hospital bed was possibly the most stupid thing I could do.

  “I know this is freaky,” he began, letting his hands drop to his sides. “And you must have a million questions.”

  “A million and one,” I corrected him.

  “There’ll be time to answer them, I promise, but I need you to relax. You’re injured. How about a little TV?”

  He spoke like a real, proper adult. It was irritatingly soothing. I wanted to be mad, I wanted to be agitated, but it was really hard when he sounded so reasonable.

  I shrugged as he picked up the remote from the little bedside cabinet and turned on the TV. The noise filled the room instantly, effectively destroying the weird but not horrible tension between us.

  It was tuned to the local news channel, where they were reporting about the death of a smart, well liked young man. He’d been struck by lightning during an unexpected storm at the edge of town.

  It took me a minute to realize they were talking about me. Can you blame me? I’ve never been referred to as well liked, not once. Trouble maker, sure. Sarcastic, definitely. Freak, absolutely. But well liked?

  His eyes widened in a way that was more endearing than I’d care to admit as he fumbled with the remote, trying to turn off the TV.

  “Don’t,” I hissed, my own eyes burning as my horribly awkward yearbook photo from the year before flashed up on the screen. “I’m not dead.”

  “You don’t sound so sure,” he murmured as he sat in the chair beside the bed.

  “I’m not.”

  “You don’t belong in this town, Ethan. You never have. You’re reasonably smart, so I’m sure you knew that.”

  “Reasonably?” I yelled, head spinning. Maybe being dead wouldn’t be so bad.

  “I didn’t mean to insult you,” he replied, smiling softly. His hands were tangled in his lap, a slight tremble to his fingers. “You’re getting out of here. Isn’t that what you always wanted?”

  I watched as a nauseating parade of my “devastated” class mates filled the screen. They’d filmed some footage outside my house, the pretty news anchor making her serious face as my crumbling childhood home filled the frame. The drapes in the living room window twitched, probably my mom, but it wasn’t clear.

  You don’t belong in this town.

  “Who are you?” I asked him as the report ended. I was sore everywhere, but it was focused deep down in the cavern of my chest.

  “That’s a pretty long story,” he said, eyes darkening when they met mine.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” I reminded him, rattling the chain on my shackle for dramatic effect.

  He laughed, a deep, rough edged laugh that made something warm and fuzzy unfurl in my stomach. I tried to give myself a stern talking to – pretty sure it wasn’t the time to get butterflies, but I couldn’t help it. Puberty and raging hormones are one hell of a combination. Common sense didn’t stand a chance.

  “I’m Adam. That’s all you need to know, for now.”

  I wanted to fight him on it, try to sweet talk some more details out of him, but I didn’t get the chance. I tried to fight the darkness closing in on my senses, but I didn’t have the strength for it. I was out like a light before I could start to argue.

  I woke up in a different life, a world away.

  The room was bigger, brighter, lit by a wall of windows that overlooked a sprawling city. I threw back the blankets almost as soon as I woke up, looking for restraints. They weren’t there. There was some medical equipment in the room – a stand for an IV, what looked like some sort of heart rate monitor – but I wasn’t hooked up to any of it.

  A man walked in before I could walk out, his vast frame filling the doorway and extinguishing any bright ideas I’d had about running away.

  It wasn’t just that he was big. Everything about him screamed “IN CHARGE”, from his silver speckled buzz cut to his steely blue-gray eyes. He was wearing a black button-down shirt, perfectly pressed pants and a tie, no doubt hoping that looking like a dork would take the edge off his frankly terrifying presence. He was shit outta luck.

  Then he opened his mouth.

  “Hello Ethan,” he said, his clipped English accent so at odds with his appearance that I couldn’t quite process it.

  “Uh, hi.”

  “I thought you might like to get dressed,” he continued, leaning past me to place a small pile of clothes on the bed. I nodded nervously, grabbing up the clothes and holding them to my chest like they might protect me from the big bad Englishman.

  “There’s a bathroom just behind you.”

  I turned around and sure enough, there was a white door behind me. I opened it slowly, like I was expecting some sort of ambush, before stepping inside.

  It was small but spotless, the light bouncing violently across the white tiles. The clothes were mine, from home, the spark of recognition enough to leave me breathless. I was shaking ever so slightly as the soft, worn denim of my favorite pair of jeans scraped over my bruised legs. I pulled the tee shirt over my head before turning to the mirror to smooth down my hair, a comforting habit that I didn’t realize I had until that moment.

  I looked…well, ok, considering. My hair was all over the place, as usual, so I snatched up the brush from the glass shelf under the mirror and brushed it, quick and brutal. There was a sickly purple-yellow bruise on my left temple and a small cut on my bottom lip, but I was unbelievably relieved to see that I still looked like myself.

  I contemplated locking the door and hiding out in there, climbing into the small bath tub and pretending I was in a submarine like I used to when I was little. It took me a minute, but I thought better of it. The answers I wanted weren’t in the en-suite. If I wanted to know what had happened to me, I was going to need to go out there and ask.

  And if I happened to run into Adam in the process, well, that would just be a nice bonus.

  “Are you alright in there?”

  I took a deep breath and wrenched the door open, my stomach in knots. The Englishman was waiting, exuding patience with just a hint of superiority. I walked past him, scared to meet his gaze. One side of the room consisted of floor to ceiling windows, perfectly clear sheet glass. I glanced out, squinting a little.

  We were in a skyscraper – rooftops stretched out towards the horizon, bathed in the buttery yellow glow of the sun. I tried to stop mysel
f from looking down, but being sensible has never been my strong point. After one little flip of my stomach, I was able to focus on the scurrying people hundreds of feet below my window. Every single one of them was in some sort of rush, pushing through the crowd or darting past each other without so much as a nod of recognition.

  “Welcome to New York, Ethan.”

  I looked at him over my shoulder, mouth clamped firmly shut. It was enough to knock me off balance. I’d never been in a big city, let alone a city like New York. Back home, in my dingy little room, the idea of waking up in a glass-and-steel skyscraper in one of the biggest and most iconic cities in the world would have seemed like a dream.

  The reality wasn’t quite so exciting.

  “How did I get here?” I asked him, crossing my arms in an attempt to look tough. It didn’t work – the smile that bloomed across his face was more than a little bemused.

  “You were brought here as soon as you were well enough to travel. I’m not surprised that you don’t remember the trip, being Struck is very traumatic for the body.”

  He opened the door and stepped out into the hall, indicating that I should follow him. I looked back out over the city for a brief moment, before following him out into the hallway.

  It was painted white and seemingly endless, but at least there were other human beings around – nurses in pristine white scrubs, doctors in long lab coats, their names carefully embroidered above the breast pocket. It all looked very official, but I knew I hadn’t woken up in a hospital.

  I followed him to the elevator, the cheerful music putting my teeth on edge. He pushed the button for floor 67 while I tried to imagine what the view would be like from that sort of height.

  “You’re unusually quiet. I was warned that you’d be a talker,” he said as the elevator swooped up to the sky.

  “Warned by who?” I demanded as I followed him out into what looked like the sort of apartment you saw on stupid reality TV shows with more money than the producer could count.

  It was massive, with floor to ceiling windows like the hospital room. It took me a few seconds to realize some of the windows where actually doors. They opened out onto a beautifully organised terrace, wicker furniture tastefully arranged around a little table.

  The floor had an open plan layout, but each area had its own distinctive purpose. Granite topped counters and frosted glass fronted cupboards off to the left formed the kitchen, all chrome appliances. It would have been perfectly boring, if it wasn’t for the polaroid photos haphazardly plastered across the refrigerator doors. I wanted to go over and look at them, but I could tell it wasn’t the right time.

  The kitchen area led into what I assumed was supposed to be the dining room, complete with a long, low table and at least a dozen chairs. There was a lounge too, with oversized and overstuffed L-shaped couches and an obnoxiously big TV. The back of the room narrowed into what looked like a door lined hallway that I was itching to go explore, but the Englishman curled a deceptively gentle hand around my elbow and led me to the couches.

  He sat with his back to the windows, his massive shoulders hunched as if he wasn’t comfortable. I couldn’t relate, the couch was freaking awesome. I sank into it with a sigh. I hadn’t realized how exhausted I was until I sat down, and I was pretty sure he was going to have to use a crowbar to get me off that thing.

  “Well, here it is. The official explanation. I’d appreciate if you could let me say my piece first, then I’ll answer any questions you may have. Does that sound fair?” He asked, his gaze fixed on my face.

  I didn’t really like his terms – I’m not the sit-still-and-listen type – but I knew that he was probably the key to figuring out exactly where I was and why I was there. I nodded, crossing my arms again.

  “My name is Jones, I’m an employee here. This building is the home to a government funded research facility. This facility is dedicated to studying the effects of an experiment designed by a scientist called Dr Timothy Harrison.

  Dr Harrison proposed that there were certain…abilities, shall we say, that could be unlocked in the human mind after experiencing a focused wireless power transfer, across an electromagnetic field. When you stepped onto the metal base plate, you experienced something like an electric shock, Ethan. Dr Harrison believed that these abilities could be gifted to young people who could then be taught to use them to help the world.

  Test subjects were chosen very carefully, before being exposed to a wireless power transfer. We refer to this exposure as being Struck. The results have been miraculous, the say the least. We don’t fully understand the implications of them yet. Unfortunately, Dr Harrison is no longer part of this initiative. The test subjects live in this building and we refer to them as The Lightning Project.”

  I couldn’t help but shiver. The Lightning Project? He sounded crazier than I felt, but there was nothing on his face that indicated he’d spectacularly lost the plot. He was perfectly calm, his expression carefully blank. I could feel a headache coming on.

  “So let me get this straight,” I began, hating the tremble in my voice. “The government experimented on me against my will and has now kidnapped me to be the latest contestant in their star-studded freakshow in the hopes that I start demonstrating some sort of fucking super power?”

  “Something like that,” Jones replied with a wry smile. “I must say, you’re taking this very well, Ethan.”

  “I’m no stranger to government conspiracies,” I snapped, head spinning. “But you probably know all about that, right? I’ll bet the top-secret file you guys have on me is one hell of a read.”

  “Well, it’s certainly bigger than the others.”

  “So there is a file!” I grinned, fleeting vindication replaced by icy fear. “I knew it.”

  “The important thing to remember, Ethan, is that whatever power you have now is a gift intended to help humanity. You’re not a small town, closeted hacker anymore. You’ve been called up for a higher purpose.”

  I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at that. Higher purpose? I may have believed that there was more to me than a cramped, stifled life in Orchard Side, but delusions of grandeur had never been my thing. I didn’t believe in a higher purpose or a higher power and I never had. I wasn’t about to start just because some smooth-talking Englishman said so.

  “Well this has been lovely, crumpet, but I think it’s time for me to go home,” I said, getting to my feet. I missed the couch already, but I figured my creaky bed in Orchard Side was better than an amazing sofa in a secret science lab.

  Jones’s expression darkened, his eyes narrowing at my nickname. I briefly reconsidered my attempt at humor, but figured it was worth his stormy glare.

  “You can’t go home, Ethan. Not until we have your powers under control.”

  “Oh please,” I laughed, but my resolve was buckling under the weight of his sombre expression. He was deadly serious.

  “Your abilities haven’t presented themselves yet,” he said as he got to his feet. I knew he was trying to intimidate me. I hated that it worked.

  “What does that even mean?”

  “It means that we don’t know what powers you have now. Until we do and until we can teach you how to control them, it’s not safe for you to be anywhere but here.”

  “How convenient,” I fired back, trying to ignore the sick feeling in my stomach. Sure, my parents annoyed me most of the time, but I didn’t want to hurt them or anyone else. Plus, everyone in Orchard Side thought I was dead – I was pretty sure that the news reports I’d seen when I’d first woken up weren’t a hallucination. I had no clue how to start explaining that to people.

  I wasn’t sure if I believed a word Jones said, but until I knew for sure he was lying, I was going to have to stay put.

  “Would you like to meet the rest of The Project?” He asked me, trying (and failing) to sound upbeat.

  “I hate faux cheeriness, just for the record,” I warned him as I slumped back down on the sofa. He shook his head, but he w
as smiling as he pulled a cell phone from his pocket and tapped out a short message.

  I watched as he crossed the room to the kitchen. He was surprisingly graceful for someone so big. He opened the fridge and started pulling out bottles of orange soda, lining them up on the counter.

  The elevator dinged and the doors slid open, revealing a bunch of jumpsuit wearing teenagers. My eyes were drawn to Adam instantly. I ignored the fluttering in my belly, chalking it up to nerves. I’d just discovered I was the latest in a long line of government experiments, it really wasn’t the time to be developing a misplaced crush.

  “Hi guys,” Jones said, smiling warmly at the kids spilling out into the room.

  “Hey,” Adam replied, nodding once. “Hi, Ethan.”

  I did some sort of dorky half wave in response. My cheeks were burning, and I was praying that the sofa would swallow me up whole. It was unlikely, but weirder things had happened. Hell, weirder things had happened to me in the proceeding 24 hours.

  There were six of them in total and they all seemed to be around 17 or 18, my age. They were clearly all good friends, too, exchanging smiles and bumping shoulders as they followed Jones over to where I was trying to make myself look as cool as possible.

  Jones sat beside me like a well-mannered buffer. Adam sat as far away as the couch would allow, much to my disappointment. A dark skinned, curly haired girl sat beside him, her shrewd gaze fixed firmly on me. In that moment, I became pretty sure that blushing was going to be my super power.

  “You’ve already met Adam,” Jones began, gesturing in Adam’s general direction. “So let’s start with Esther.”

  The girl sitting beside Adam smiled at me, a little half smirk that made it quite clear she knew something I didn’t. I warmed to her instantly. She tucked a strand of wild hair behind her ear and started talking.

  “Name’s Esther, also known as Number 4. Born in Boise, Idaho and lived there all my life before I was Struck,” she spoke quickly and unapologetically. “I was planning on becoming a concert pianist, but now I’ve accepted my calling as the Invisible Girl for a new generation. Cuz you know, being black and gay didn’t make me an outcast enough as it is, I now have the power to make myself literally invisible. The irony is sickening.”