Blackout Read Online Free PDF Page B

he’d just turn himself in. Aubrey said she would, too, but it was a lie. She’d disappear. Run. Get as far away as possible.
    Where would she go?
    “This won’t get out of hand,” Jack said, confidence in his voice. “Name me a house in this town that doesn’t have at least two guns, probably more. Parents aren’t going to let the government lock up their kids.”
    Aubrey nodded. She knew it was true of most parents. Her dad . . . well, she’d be lucky if he was sober enough to say good-bye as she was taken away.
    “Lake Powell was attacked,” Jack said, and Aubrey stopped.
    “When?”
    “I don’t know. Today some time. That’s the closest.”
    She shook her head. “No. There was that sabotage at Kennecott.” People thought she was dumb—not caring about current events was almost a point of pride among Nicole’s friends—but she was still Aubrey. She still read, even if it was alone, in her room. She still cared.
    No, that wasn’t true.
    She hated what she knew she’d become. High school would be over soon, and then where would she be? Nicole wouldn’t be around to make her popular anymore, and even though Aubrey could disappear and steal a homecoming dress, that didn’t mean she could shoplift her way into college.
    Aubrey had been a straight-A student until she’d become friends with Nicole. Nicole could afford to skip classes and get bad grades—her dad was the richest man in Sanpete County and owned at least half the turkey farms. Nicole would go to college, tuition paid in full, with letters of recommendation coming from the best names in central Utah—mayors, judges, state senators. But Aubrey needed a scholarship, and she was losing it every day, all in exchange for popularity.
    “What happened to the lake?” she asked, turning and continuing to walk.
    “It sounds like the dam broke,” Jack answered. “I didn’t hear a lot of details.”
    She nodded, and they walked in silence for a long time. If only she could talk to Nicole—the one person who knew her secret. At times, their relationship had felt more like a business partnership than a friendship, but they shared the deepest, darkest secret Aubrey could imagine—that she was wrong . Defective. So different that she wondered if she was human at all.
    At first Nicole had joked that it was a miracle, that Aubrey was some angel sent to earth to do good works and fight crime. But it hadn’t turned out that way. Not only was she a criminal, but her anomalies didn’t end with invisibility. Her eyesight was getting bad—and not just something glasses would fix. Sometimes she couldn’t see at all.
    And the headaches were almost constant.
    There wasn’t a day that went by that she didn’t wonder if she wasn’t dying of a brain tumor.
    But the one time she’d gone to the clinic her dad had been there within hours to yank her away, and yell at the receptionists and doctors—and Aubrey—for unnecessary medical care. She knew he wasn’t paying any of the bills they’d sent. He’d never even opened them; they just piled up by the door next to the rest of the mail that she wished he’d look at.
    A brilliant white light burst on, less than a hundred yards away. Jack and Aubrey both dropped to their knees, and she went even farther, flattening herself in between a row of the crops. She instinctively started to disappear before she stopped herself.
    “It’s not a military truck,” Jack said quietly.
    Aubrey lifted her head enough to see the light. When it was pointed away from them, she could see someone standing in the back of a pickup.
    “Maybe they’re trying to find us?” she said hopefully. Jack was right—most of this town wouldn’t stand for the kidnapping of their kids.
    “No,” Jack said. “Look how it’s parked.”
    She strained to see, but to her it just looked like the outline of a pickup.
    The beam flashed toward them again and she ducked.
    “It’s sideways,” Jack said. “Like a roadblock.”
    He was