XGeneration, Books 1-3: You Don't Know Me, The Watchers, and Silent Generation by Brad Magnarella

Author:Brad Magnarella [Magnarella, Brad]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ya, teen, young adult, paranormal, paranormal abilities, supernatural, thriller, suspense, mystery, powers, superhero, science fiction, sci fi, series
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

18

In the computer programming section of Janis’s seventh-grade enrichment class, her teacher had had the students write a simple function that would divide a number by zero. “Nothing can divide by zero,” the teacher said, “not even a computer. It’s a mathematical impossibility. It defies reality. Don’t believe me? Watch what happens.” And sure enough, when the dubious students punched in the divide-by-zero function and hit enter, their lab computers began to freeze.

That’s what Janis’s brain felt like now: a frozen computer, a computer ordered to divide a number — to divide reality — by zero.

He’s dead. He’s alive.

A mewling sound crept from her lips.

“Shh…” The skin over Mr. Leonard’s palms was pale yellow and lined with grime. “I know what you must be thinking. But I’m not going to hurt you. You have to let me explain.”

He advanced slowly but with long, reaching strides, like a spider’s. He wore a khaki coverall that appeared too small for him, its hems drawing up his shins and down his bone-thin wrists. Occasionally he reached out to touch a passing tree. And then his long fingers rested against one of the trees that had anchored a corner of her and Scott’s old fort.

Janis staggered back another step, but she was only hemming herself deeper into a corner. Beyond the creek stood the six-foot-tall levee. “Stay away,” she managed to whisper.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he repeated, his brow creasing over his wide eyes.

Where have I heard that before?

Janis blinked and blew a strand of hair from her vision. She sank into a half crouch, her brain beginning to reboot. For the past months, she’d been telling herself that she was less traumatized by what he had done than by his warning. Under the present circumstances, that felt like a pile of bull crap.

He took a long stride nearer.

Her eyes slid to the right. Too dense. Trying to flee in that direction would be like running into a web. Her eyes touched his, then slid to the left.

Janis had grown up playing in these woods, her mind developing an implicit understanding of the spatial relations between the trees, of how to move among them. The aptitude was embedded in the gyri and sulci of her brain. She spotted a seam, one leading to a path that would deliver her to her cul-de-sac. If she hit the seam at a sprint, she might lose Mr. Leonard in the twists and hairpin turns. She wouldn’t have to slow much. Her body would make the adjustments of their own, gray matter and muscle fibers working hand in hand.

Leaves crackled like cellophane under Mr. Leonard’s next reaching step, thirty feet away.

Janis’s body tensed. But before she could break for the seam, she caught a ghost image of Mr. Leonard darting laterally, arms outstretched, cutting her off. And he was carrying that device in his pocket, the one that looked like an electric razor and hummed when he flicked his wrist. He would pin and incapacitate her before she could make a sound.

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