Mutant Academy (The Fundamental Society Book 1) Read online

  My mother began gulping in the water. I didn’t understand that. I glanced at the guards. “She can’t breathe!” I squealed. “Do something!”

  The guards had stunned expressions on their faces as they watched my mother lose oxygen. Right before she lost consciousness, she drew a heart symbol on the glass. I traced a matching heart through the air as I cried for my dying mother.

  “We fucked up!” I heard one of the scientists yell in an agonized tone.

  The guards started shouting amongst each other.

  “The mother was the human, you fucking idiots!” the scientist hissed at the guards. “The father was the Mutant.”

  “Our only chance is the girl.” One of the scientists gave me a probing glance. I held my breath.

  “No, please don’t put me in that thing.” I vigorously shook my head.

  “Test her,” the scientist said and nodded in my direction as if I wasn’t a person with feelings. “If she’s human too, she’s no use to us.”

  The guards shoved me into another pod next to my mother. My throat closed up. I couldn’t scream. I was paralyzed with fear. The pod began to fill with water. The guards were standing at attention in the presence of the scientists. All eyes were on me.

  The water was cold as it hit my skin. I did my best to quickly try to swim to the top in a last-ditch effort to survive. I wanted to hold on for as long as I could. If only I could float at the top…

  I pressed my hands to the glass as I propelled my body to the top of the pod. I took one final breath and held it, instead of swallowing the water like my mother. I closed my eyes. Everything went black but I didn’t think I was dead.

  Huh?

  What was that?

  I saw a reflection of myself. I blinked against it, thinking it was a figment of my imagination, but when I opened my eyes again, I was still there, almost like a mirror image.

  I was older, with red eyes and tattoos all over my body. My hair was silver and long, flowing across my shoulders. I knew it was me. I had the same features, only I wasn’t a little eight-year-old girl anymore.

  The older version of me opened her mouth and I listened.

  “Don’t die. You can’t die yet. You need revenge. You are our only hope.”

  “What?” I tried to shout.

  Then, as quickly as the reflection had appeared, it vanished into thin air.

  My world remained dark.

  1

  Tara

  I sat up like a rocket in the bed, as if a bolt of lightning had slammed directly into my body and sent a current rippling through me. A nervous sweat had drenched my sheets and was making my shirt stick to my skin. I shivered, but I wasn’t cold. I placed my hand on my chest, trying to pacify my violently beating heart.

  Deep breath in, deep breath out. I closed my eyes.

  It was just a dream. Stop freaking out.

  I opened my eyes again. The rhythm of my breathing evened out, and my heart started to calm down. I no longer felt my pulse pounding through my ears.

  I glanced around the darkened room, a sliver of fluorescent light illuminating the hallway outside of my cell door. The narrow slit was glowing brightly enough for me to be able to inspect the facial features of my best friend and cellmate, Maddie.

  She was a half-Mutant, just like me. We were twenty-two now and had been here since we were eight years old.

  I inhaled sharply and tucked my knees up to my chest. I wrapped my arms around my legs and rocked back and forth slowly for several seconds.

  I wasn’t a scared little girl anymore. I needed to snap myself out of this funk. I had to find a way to make these nightmares and flashbacks stop, but the past still haunted me no matter how hard I tried to keep it at bay.

  Maddie shifted in her sleep and made a contented sighing sound. Why the hell couldn’t I sleep peacefully like that?

  I knew why.

  I felt my jaw clench and I pursed my lips. I narrowed my eyes and studied the blinking red light on the ceiling outside of our cell door.

  It was a surveillance camera, pointed directly at us to dissect every move we made. We were monitored around the clock. There was always someone watching. There was no room for error. We could never slip up.

  I looked at Maddie again. Her silver hair was the same color as mine, spilling delicately over her pillow. I was nowhere near sleep.

  I was restless, but if I got out of bed, a guard would be alerted to my questionable activity in the middle of the night and would come down here. I didn’t want that, so I laid my head back down on the pillow and stared up at the ceiling pretending to sleep. I had been here for years. I knew exactly how to stay under the radar. I jiggled my legs anxiously.

  Whenever I woke up from my nightmares, it always took me ages to fall back asleep. I wasn’t in the right mindset. I was jolted and wired. This night in particular was a doozy. I had been dreaming of the moment my mother had died all those years ago.

  In my dream, her eyes were red and wide, swollen and filled with fear. Her fists were pounding on the glass. I was screaming, but no sound would come out. I couldn’t save her. The water began to fill the pod, flooding her body as she submerged.

  I watched her inhale huge gulps of water to get it over with quickly. I wished she had been a fighter. If she had been, maybe she would still be alive today. Tears stung my eyes.

  Don’t think like that. Everything happens for a reason.

  At the end of every nightmare I had, I always saw my brother’s tear-streaked face as it flashed before my vision. His haunted features were crippling as the guards from the Fundamental Society dragged him away through that tunnel. It was always the last thing I saw before my subconscious woke me up.

  My mind felt hazy tonight. It was eerily quiet in the cell, almost too quiet. I lifted my head and gazed over at Maddie to make sure she was still breathing. Once I saw the lulling way that her chest rose and fell, I was satisfied enough again to gently close my eyes and try to ease myself back into a tranquil state of mind.

  The night that my family was torn apart and ripped from my eight-year-old arms had been, up to this point, the very worst moment of my entire life. I hated recalling the disastrous events that had made a detrimental impact on my psychological health over the years to follow, but I had no control over what my subconscious focused on.

  I exhaled with frustration. I hated being wide awake in the middle of the night. I was a control freak to a certain degree, and I despised the fact that I didn’t have the ability to govern my own wandering thoughts when the shadows were out in full force, lurking not only in the hallways of the Home Base lab where I lived, but in my psyche too.

  I tucked the covers up over my head and squeezed my eyes shut. I balled my fists over the white, stark sheets that had been pressed by the cleaning crew, almost to the point of being stiff instead of soft against my body.

  When my eyes were closed, there were no rules. My mind played tricks me. I saw my eight-year-old self again. I was staring back at my own reflection as an adult. It had been a world-shattering experience for me to witness my parents’ brutal deaths unfold right in front of my eyes.

  Even to this day, I had a difficult time remembering every agonizing second. I stretched my legs out across the bed and winced as if my memories were causing me physical pain.

  Something snapped in me on that fateful night once the guards placed me in the pod and began filling it with water. After the reflection of my future self spoke to me and told me I had to survive at all costs, against the odds, I felt a surge of adrenaline power through me like electricity.

  I didn’t know at the time if the vision I was seeing through the water-logged glass was just a figment of my imagination, but I knew that no matter what, I had to believe the girl. I had no choice at the time but to take her advice on surviving.

  So, I had done just that. I had survived, but at what cost? It wasn’t as if I actually had a favorable quality of life in the Home Base camp where I lived, but I guessed it was st
ill better than being drowned.

  From that night forward, the determination to live had been etched on my soul. My survival instinct was always on alert. I never let down my guard, even when I was sleeping. Maybe that’s why I suffered from such intense bouts of insomnia.

  My eyes were still clenched shut as lay under the covers, battling with my mind. I was gritting my teeth and trying to focus on anything but the memory of what had gone down after the Fundamental Society guards killed my mother and father in front of me.

  Anger had burst through me like a surge of wind, giving me exceptional strength. Roaring in fury, I began kicking at the glass. I pounded it with my fists and stabbed at it with my feet. Before I knew what was happening, I was falling.

  I gasped as I realized I was sliding across the lab floor, drawing in oxygen instead of gallons of water. My clothes were water-logged and my silver hair was drenched. The guards wore stunned expressions in their wild, black eyes and their mouths hung open in ovals as they stood frozen.

  I stood up in an instant and jumped onto their backs, one at a time, cracking their necks and killing them instantly. It was as if I had become an animal in my own right, a beast who had set out to purge the world of all the evil that lurked in the vicious shadows.

  Even now as an adult, I couldn’t believe that I had been capable of such acts at the age of eight. I wished that I could get away with that behavior now, but we were locked in here with no escape.

  At the time, I hadn’t known that. When I first arrived, I didn’t know there were cameras studying my every move and guards at every door and window in this entire place. It was pointless to struggle. If I gave them too much hell, they would just kill me and move onto the next lab rat to inspect under their microscopes and testing tools.

  I hadn’t been able to escape then, so why should I ever think it was a possibility now? I still dreamed and brainstormed, but I hadn’t figured out how to book the hell out of here yet.

  After I killed the Fundamental Society’s scientists’ guards, I looked back at the men in their lab coats. They’d looked tall and domineering but I hadn’t feared them. I still wasn’t afraid of the scientists who studied the Mutants in these labs today.

  They called themselves the Fundamental Society because they thought they were the supreme beings, but that was as far from the truth as I could possibly imagine.

  As an eight-year-old, I had felt a foggy pull begin to cloud my brain. My arms and legs felt rooted to the ground as if gravity was intensely pulling me through a black hole, stretching my body beyond its capacity. I glanced at the scientist who had his eyes locked on me. I still remember how forceful his penetrating stare had been at the time. Even to this day, the recollection made me tremble.

  I would learn later that the scientist had been practicing mind control on me. I had fallen to the floor, collapsing like a pair of jeans tossed aside. When I had woken up later, I had been brought to the Home Base camp.

  I had been here ever since. The scientist told me I should be lucky that he spared my life after killing his guards, but I would never feel gratitude toward my captors, no matter how vigorously they tried to drill it into my mind.

  I heard movement beside me. I swiped the covers off my head and instinctively moved my eyes in Maddie’s direction. She was sitting up in bed. She stretched and yawned and scratched at the back of her elbow.

  “Hey,” I whispered through the darkness.

  Maddie looked a little bewildered, still half-clouded with sleep.

  “Hey…” she trailed off. Her voice was hushed as if she were afraid of someone else outside of our cell walls hearing us.

  “What are you doing up?” I whispered. I propped myself up on one elbow and stared at her.

  Maddie let out a soft chuckle. “I could be asking you the very same thing.”

  “I couldn’t sleep,” I told her. I glanced down at my sheets and began absentmindedly trailing the thread with my index finger.

  “Nightmares again?” Maddie’s voice sounded sympathetic.

  “Yeah.” I nodded but didn’t look up to meet her burning gaze.

  “Oh, dear.” Maddie let out a long-winded sigh and then fell back down onto her pillow as she looked up at the ceiling.

  “What about you?” I asked.

  Maddie turned her head and looked at me. “No nightmares for me tonight.”

  Maddie had been put through hell too. She had lost her family, along with a twin sister. She was just as alone as I was. We only had each other.

  “Good,” I said and managed a feeble smile.

  I laid back down too and put my arm under my head. The red light on the surveillance camera was really bugging me tonight and breaking my concentration.

  “We should go back to sleep,” Maddie said.

  “We can try…” I trailed off, uncertain.

  “If the guards hear us talking—”

  “I know,” I snapped back, maybe a little too harshly because Maddie went quiet after that. I looked at her after a brief pause. “I’m sorry, I’m just feeling a little on edge tonight.”

  “It’s okay.” Maddie cleared her throat. She was still staring up at the ceiling. “I just don’t want us to get in trouble.”

  I chuckled. “All right, you’ve convinced me. I’ll go back to sleep.”

  I loved Maddie and respected her, but she wasn’t as strong as I was, physically or emotionally. She was not as defiant, which was unusual for a half-Mutant. I wasn’t afraid of these burly men who made it their life’s goal to intimidate the Mutants they held captive.

  I never let go of my mother’s final words of wisdom to me right before she died, and I tried to put them into practice every day of my life.

  I truly believed that her heart was still alive and beating alongside mine. She poured more love into me than I could have ever soaked up. She was pure and genuine and robbed of life, but I would make sure that her legacy and spirit lived on within myself.

  You have to seek revenge.

  The older me in the reflection of the glass never let me forget that either. I had vowed to myself on that night to do whatever it took to survive. I was tough and durable. I had to be to endure this torture and the testing the scientists performed on me.

  I took the struggle one day at a time, dreaming of the freedom that lived unbound right outside of these walls.

  2

  Tara

  I was sitting in the cafeteria at breakfast with Maddie. We were doing our best to not outwardly laugh loud enough to grab the attention of the guards. Maddie was special. She had been in captivity for as long as me, and was half-Mutant too.

  But she was different.

  She had psychic abilities that gave her an advantage, even though she didn’t necessarily use them in that way. She was able to read people’s thoughts when she concentrated hard enough, although the amount she was able to glean varied from person to person.

  We were sitting at a table near the assembly line where the tired kitchen workers sporting hairnets and sleepy expressions stood behind glass displays.

  “Him.” I nudged my chin in the direction of the human worker who probably made minimum wage at best to work behind the counter, serving the Mutants their meals.

  Maddie glanced over her shoulder and let out a snicker. “You want me to read his thoughts?”

  I nibbled on my bottom lip, seeking entertainment wherever I could find it.

  “Uh-huh.” I nodded.

  Maddie took a deep breath and stared at the middle-aged, balding man. Her brows knitted into a line of concentration. My eyes flickered between her and the man, who was yawning as he scooped up a pile of oatmeal and slapped it into a waiting Mutant’s bowl.

  “He wants to go home,” Maddie said with a shrug and swiveled back around to face me. She took a sip of her milk.

  “He wants to go home?” I asked, feeling confused.

  “Yeah.” Maddie nodded in confirmation. “He hates it here.”

  I rubbed my temples. �
��He should join the club.”

  “No,” Maddie said and gave me a stern look. “Don’t ever think that.”

  “What?” I chuckled and met her gaze as I propped my elbows up on the table. I wasn’t hungry for this mush.

  “Don’t ever say that any human should join a Mutant club.” Maddie’s upper lip twitched. “Even a metaphorical one.”

  “We both had one human parent,” I reminded her. “My mother died to save me. She was the bravest woman I’ve ever known, and she was a human.”

  Maddie raised her eyebrow and looked unconvinced. “She also told you to never trust humans.”

  I sighed and leaned back in my seat. “Well, I am just trying to think positively. My mother was a wise woman. She just meant we shouldn’t trust the humans who were out to hurt us.”

  Maddie gobbled down a giant blob of oatmeal from her spoon and shrugged again.

  I frowned. “How can you eat that stuff?”

  “I don’t want to starve,” Maddie said with a grin. “So, I eat, even if it tastes like cardboard.”

  I rolled my eyes and wrinkled my nose. “Knowing the scientists, they probably put something in it to make us obey them better.”

  Maddie’s eyes twinkled mischievously. “Is that why you are always so defiant, because you hardly eat?”

  “Maybe.” I chuckled.

  “I just do my best to not think about it too much,” Maddie said and wiped her mouth with a napkin.

  “Think about what?” I asked.

  “The fact that we are in this place.” Maddie’s voice was flat, but I knew exactly what she meant.

  I glanced around. There were other Mutants going through the motions of the morning in a robotic manner. None of them were smiling. There was no brightness, no cheer in the air.

  It was melancholy almost all the time, like being in a jail. I hated the scientists and their guards who kept us trapped in here. We had no quality of life. It was a wonder that we had survived this long based on the way we were treated.