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I took an instinctive step towards her, but Kyle shifted his weight and blocked my path.

  “Hey, wait, you’ve got to see this video! The government's cleaning up our freak problem. Check it out.” He whipped out his phone, already displaying some website called The Truth Is Out There. “This Clann chick and her family were actually tagged and bagged live on internet TV.”

  I couldn’t have cared less at that moment about anything on the internet. But Tarah was talking with her friends now, everyone huddling in close like they were a sports team coming up with a new game plan. Eyes narrowed, Tarah shook her head with a scowl, muttered something I couldn’t make out, and stabbed the tip of her index finger against the table top as if to make her point. Her statement was met with a chorus of groans and mumbled curses from the rest of her table.

  Somehow I doubted they would appreciate my barging into their group conversation right now. And knowing Kyle, he wouldn’t get out of my face about his little video clip till I watched it. The fastest way to get rid of him was to watch the stupid thing and get it over with.

  “Fine. Show me.” Sighing, I rocked back on my heels and settled in for the minute long video.

  He tapped the video’s Play button, and the four inch wide screen filled with the image of a raccoon-eyed girl sitting at her desk in her bedroom while talking to her webcam. She looked familiar.

  Wait, I knew her. It was Tarah’s friend, Aimee, the Goth girl who'd been crying earlier this week in the hall about her missing cousin, aunt and uncle. I glanced again at Tarah’s table. No Aimee in sight today. A chill spread down my back and arms.

  The cafeteria's dull roar of too many people fighting to be heard over each other made it impossible to hear what Aimee was saying on the video. Then something appeared in the side of her neck. It looked like a short syringe.

  “What the heck is that?” I jabbed a finger at the screen, accidentally pausing the video.

  “Tranquilizer dart. Probably a sniper shot it through the window,” Kyle didn't hesitate to answer as he pushed Play on the video again. “I asked Dad about it last night.”

  His father being ex-career Army, he should know.

  “Keep watching.” Kyle held the phone right under my nose. Out of self defense, I grabbed it from him before he could hit my face with it. He grinned and rocked back and forth on his feet.

  In the video, Aimee slumped at her desk. As her head hit the keyboard, Kyle said “wham!” and snickered. My stomach knotted.

  In the background, Aimee's bedroom door flew open. A man dressed in khaki slacks and a maroon and white Texas A&M University sweatshirt ran in, maybe her dad. He rushed over to Aimee and shook her.

  Behind him, two soldiers dressed in camo without any patches tried to enter the room. Aimee's dad raised a hand toward them, and a blue light I recognized all too well burst out at the soldiers. Both intruders collapsed, either unconscious or dead.

  Bile rose up to the back of my throat, and I had to swallow hard to force it down.

  “See that? I told you those freaks are dangerous!” Kyle growled. “That dude probably used a killing spell or something on those soldiers.”

  Aimee's dad shook his daughter hard, but she wouldn't wake up. In an apparent attempt to save her, he slung the skinny girl up and over his shoulder like a fireman. He managed to stagger halfway to the door before a second dart appeared, this time in his neck.

  Two more soldiers appeared in the doorway just as Aimee and her dad hit the floor. One of the soldiers pushed a black band at his neck and said something. Then the video ended.

  No wonder Tarah was so upset. She must have seen this video too.

  “Isn't it awesome?” Kyle hooted. “Down with the freaks! Rumor is the government's doing this all over the U.S. in a major secret cleanup mission. Though why it's gotta be a secret is beyond me. They should be proud they're actually taking action! Dad says they're probably having to create special prisons out in the middle of nowhere for the Clann. He says it’d be safer than putting them in regular prisons with normal humans they might hurt.”

  Because now “normal” prisoners were more valuable than people with a few extra abilities? Weren't they all still just humans?

  I stared at him in disbelief, my jaw clenched, a sour taste filling my mouth. How had I ever wound up being friends with him? Just because Dad was friends with Mr. Kingsley…

  “So listen, I'm putting together a group,” Kyle said as he took back his phone and started fiddling with it. “TAC. Teens Against the Clann. You want in?”

  At the word “Clann”, Tarah’s head popped up. This time when our eyes met, hers were narrowed with unmistakable fury as she watched me.

  I pushed past Kyle to our table a couple of yards behind Tarah’s and dropped into my usual seat. “Why would I want to get involved with anything like that?”

  “Why wouldn’t you?”

  I could feel more than one person’s stare as I cracked open the tab on my soda can. “Don’t we already have enough to deal with? It’s basketball season. We should stay focused on that, not be messing around with starting some club that’s going to waste our time.”

  “TAC will be a serious group, not some kiddie club. We’ll be doing something important.”

  “Oh yeah? Like what?” Probably just sit around in his basement listening to him talk a lot of crap about people he didn’t even know.

  “The government's going to need all the insider tips they can get to help track down all these freaks. And who's more in the know around here than us?” He tapped his phone’s screen then put on his best evil grin.

  My phone beeped in my jacket’s pocket. I pulled it out to find the screen lit up with an invite to an online group called Teens Against the Clann that Kyle had just created.

  “This way we can send group texts and and videos and set up private chats and stuff,” Kyle explained as phones all around our table began to beep.

  “Cool,” Becky said with a grin as she accepted the invite on her phone.

  Heads nodded all around as thumbs hurried to accept the invite. All except mine.

  “Well?” Kyle asked, staring at me now. “You in?”

  Feeling the back of my neck burning, I glanced behind me. Tarah was still staring at me, her seat well within hearing range. She arched an eyebrow in silent question. Or challenge.

  A loud bang in the cafeteria made me jump and several people whoop out in surprise. I looked in the direction of the sound. Apparently someone hadn't shut the cafeteria doors well enough on their way through, and the wind had caught and thrown the heavy metal doors open against the brick wall outside. That same winter wind whipped through the cafeteria now, rocking my food tray. Taking a deep, slow breath, I steadied the rattling tray by casually draping a hand over one of its rounded mint green corners.

  As the wind died back down and I stared at the tray, I could feel two pairs of eyes boring into me.

  Tarah at my back, still eavesdropping, waiting for me to turn down the invitation to join TAC.

  Kyle at my left, waiting for me to accept the group invite.

  Worst of all, though, was my dad’s voice inside my head, telling me over and over to fit in no matter what. Don’t make your brother’s mistakes, he always said. Remember, image is everything. Never forget what the Shepherd name stands for.

  Dad would be seriously ticked off if I refused to join TAC. Helping the law root out dangerous rebels for the safety of the rest of society was exactly the kind of thing he’d build a political campaign platform on. In fact, if he were here, Dad would already be angry that I had hesitated this long to answer. Maybe if Tarah hadn’t been listening to the whole conversation, I could have accepted the group invite without hesitation or worry. After all, how much could a bunch of high school seniors really do, especially with Kyle leading the charge? Kyle would have his harmless fun with his big ideas for a few weeks, then everyone would get bored and too busy to make the meetings, and that would be the end of it.

  But Tarah was h
ere. She was listening. And she would remember, and always hold it against me probably, if I joined.

  It shouldn’t matter what Tarah thought of me anymore. But it did. And even though I knew I really didn’t have a choice here, I wished for her sake that I did. Because I knew exactly how she would feel about it. She probably saw this as a black or white issue with an easy answer. But then everything was easy for Tarah, especially when it came to judging others. She had no idea what it was like to be weighed down by a family legacy, to grow up under the expectations of others, to have her entire life mapped out for her even before her birth. Tarah could be and do anything she wanted. She wasn’t a Shepherd.

  “Well, Shepherd?” Kyle said.

  I gritted my teeth and tapped my phone's screen to accept the invitation. “Yeah, I'm in.”

  Just as all the Shepherds before me would have expected me to say.

  Friday, December 11th

  Tarah

  Over the next week, word spread fast about the video of Aimee's arrest. It even headlined on Yahoo as breaking news. Gary was ticked off that his girlfriend had been arrested, but he was also proud of Aimee for gaining the outcasts so much national attention. He was convinced everyone in our group must be outcasts from the Clann and their families just didn't know it or want to admit it.

  Unfortunately, her arrest didn’t seem to scare him at all.

  There was some evidence that the U.S. government tried to step in and stop the video from going viral…YouTube’s first upload of it was mysteriously “removed by user”, and the new website where it appeared next was soon replaced with a generic download error message. But in our hyper connected world they couldn’t move fast enough to counter technology, and by the next week, almost everyone worldwide had either seen the video, reposted it online on their blogs, social media sites, YouTube accounts, and websites, or shared it with everyone they knew by email and text message attachment.

  As a last resort, the U.S. government must have felt forced to do a little spin doctoring, judging by what happened next in World History class.

  That Friday, Mr. Sherman didn't say anything before starting a video on the classroom TV as soon as the late bell rang. His mysterious behavior was the only thing that helped me resist the nearly overwhelming urge to turn and glare at the traitor sitting directly behind me.

  In the video, another podium, this time an old fashioned wooden one, stood before the White House seal on a dark blue curtain. This time the speaker was the former Vice President Palmer, now our new president. She cleared her throat, shuffled some papers before her, then finally looked up at the cameras through rimless rectangular glasses that made her eyes seem eerily huge.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” she began in a sharp, high voice that reminded me of a parrot with a Minnesotan accent. “As you know, the NSA has been relentlessly investigating the explosions that took place here in D.C. several weeks ago. I am currently speaking from a secure location, where we are working tirelessly to bring to justice the true terrorists behind these crimes. And today I am so happy to be able to say that our investigation has made several definitive breakthroughs. We now believe the explosions, while directly set off by Eli and Caleb Phillips, were actually part of a larger plot spearheaded by an international terrorist network who refer to themselves as the Clann with cells right here in our own nation.”

  The Clann...an organized terrorist group? What the heck was she talking about?

  “These so-called ‘Outcasts’...” President Palmer made air quotes, her long, bony fingers and sharp-edged French manicured nails looking like claws raking the air. “...claim to be only peace-loving, innocent people who were born with some kind of magical abilities that they merely wish to learn how to control and use for good.”

  Now she gripped the edges of the podium like some creepy pterodactyl roosting on a rock while scoping out the air for its prey. “But make no mistake about it, these Clann members are nothing more than your average suicide bombers, and there is nothing good about their intentions. We have discovered that they are using ordinary, magic-themed books and arcane symbols to secretly communicate their plans with each other and find new recruits, recruits whose once innocent love for fantasy is all too quickly perverted by the Clann into a desire for destruction, anarchy, and chaos. So if you or someone you know has publicly accessible books on a magic theme, please consider temporarily pulling these items from public usage for the safety of your local residents. In doing so, you will be helping us thwart these terrorists’ encoded recruitment endeavors.”

  My jaw dropped. “Is she for real? Give me a break! Why should we get rid of our books? Harry Potter had nothing to do with—”

  Several people shushed me. I grumbled but shut up again if only to hear what else the crazy lady had to say.

  President Palmer took a deep breath, and her face assumed a more pleasant expression that was apparently meant to make viewers feel comforted. “While these terrorists have wounded our nation and taken out many loved ones and our former president, they can not and will not win this new war on terror. The fact that I am here standing before these cameras today is proof that our great nation’s government will prevail. We as a people are strong as long as we stand united against terror. We can send them a bold message…that this is the United States of America, and we will not be made to cower in fear. To support that message, we at the federal level have taken careful steps to empower officials at the federal, state and local levels so we can all work together to bring these terrorists to justice for the fear and pain they have inflicted upon our country. To this end, we will be using any and all means to root out and capture these Clann members, as well as anyone else who seeks to undermine our great country's laws, which have been enacted for all of our safety.”

  Uh oh. That didn’t sound good.

  But President Palmer didn’t stop there.

  “But we can’t just sit back and wait while the government and law enforcement do all the work,” she continued. “All of us must come together and declare that we are not afraid, and we will not stand by and let a few bad apples send the rest of us into the darkness of fear. So I am also asking you and everyone you know not only to avoid reading, selling or sharing books about magic, but to go one step further, to join with us in stopping these terrorists’ campaign of fear by notifying your local police if you have any knowledge of others who are distributing these books about magic in potential Clann recruitment efforts. Any and all tips will be greatly appreciated. And you never know, your tip just might be the one that helps us turn the tide in this new war on terror. Remember, we are not a country of individuals who stand apart weakened by our personal limitations, but rather we are a nation, one and indivisible, and together we will stand strong and brave.”

  Amid clapping and more than a few hoots and hollers, Mr. Sherman turned off the TV.

  I nearly threw up in my mouth.

  I honestly couldn't decide if our new president was misinformed, nuts or just full-on diabolically terrifying. Maybe all of the above. Regardless of why she'd come to her crazy conclusions, one thing was clear. With her holding the reins, America was now on the brink of total disaster. And judging by the response from most of this class, way too many people were actually dumb enough to support her.

  Shaking my head, I looked around me at my fellow seniors in disbelief. “Please tell me I’m not the only one here who heard what she was really saying?”

  “Which would be?” Mr. Sherman encouraged.

  “Gee, let’s see, where do I start? Censorship of books? Or how about that she’s obviously trying to turn us all into spies against each other in the biggest witch hunt ever!”

  Murmuring broke out on all sides of the room.

  “All right, settle down,” Mr. Sherman said. “One at a time, please.”

  Kyle snorted. “All I heard was that these Clann members are going down exactly as they deserve. It’s bad enough that they went all suicide bomber on our government and hundreds of
innocents. Now they’re using our own books against us to try and pull in more recruits. I say we burn every magic book out there and force them to go back into hiding like the cockroaches they are.”

  I smacked a palm against my forehead. Oh geez. Where did I start? “Okay, first off, Eli and Caleb Phillips, the so-called ‘suicide bombers’, actually didn’t mean to kill anyone. If you saw their dad on TV, he explained how they just lost control of their abilities. And second, where is that woman coming up with this whole story about there being some secret Clann terrorist organization? Real descendants of the Clann don’t gather to learn how to terrorize people. They gather so they can help each other learn how to control their abilities so things like the explosions in D.C. don't happen. Palmer didn’t even give anyone any proof! She just stood there flinging completely unfounded accusations against an entire group of people, kind of like Hitler did against the Jews, to try and make everyone afraid of the possibility of real magic instead of our being amazed and in awe of it. And isn’t spreading terror the definition of what makes someone a terrorist? If so, then she’s the one who sounds like the real terrorist here.”

  I thought it was a pretty darn good argument, and I looked around, expecting at least a few nods of agreement. Instead, all I found were frowns and scowls, a look of pure horror on Hayden’s face, and the usual evil smirk on Kyle’s.

  Kyle stared at me. “All the proof you need is in the name Clann. Sounds an awful lot like the KKK to me."

  "It's Gaelic Irish for—" I began.

  "Yeah, yeah, whatever." Kyle snorted. "If they were smart, they would have picked a different name, Irish or not. And besides, if they're not really evil, why go with the whole magical abilities story for a cover? Everyone who's ever read the Bible knows God hates witches. These Clann members might as well just go ahead and call themselves demon worshipers while they're at it! And who would go around proudly telling the world that they worship demons? Someone who wants to make others afraid of them. In other words, a terrorist.”

  Oh wow. I had to blink fast a few times at that. I felt like I’d just woken up in the middle of a plague of stupidity. “You’ve got it all wrong. Their magic has nothing to do with religion. I'm sure quite a few of them are Christians too. It's like Simon Phillips said. They're born with these abilities, and someday science will be able to explain exactly how they work. It's a genetial gift, not terrorist activity. For all we know, they could end up changing the world for the better.”