Death 07 - For the Love of Death Read Free

Book: Death 07 - For the Love of Death Read Free

Tags: Science-Fiction, Literature & Fiction, Horror, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Genetic engineering, dark fantasy, High Tech, Dystopian, Hard Science Fiction

Ads: Link

syncs with my command, filling the car with oldies. Real old.
    Gramps gave me a bootlegged copy of Loverboy from the twentieth century. Love those synthesizers.
    Volume thirty-five.

    Eff me.
    I always forget the anti-deafness clause in all volume controls.
    I think what the highest volume allowed is.
    The pulse sensor sets it.

    I lean back. Night has fallen, and my second eyelid membrane folds over my eye. A thin, opaque covering absorbs starlight, moonlight, firefly, and light pollution in a fifty-mile radius.
    I see like a cat in the dark.
    The scientists haven’t been able to explain that one. I was a Random. A should’ve-not-been. Yet here I am, born of a supposed mule with a five-point AFTD marker and a lick of precog. Yep, I’m an unknown.
    High school had sucked.
    They’d parked a Null on my ass at every class. One guards my house even now. Mandatory for all five-point Randoms under age eighteen.
    Hell on a love life.
    Paxton Hart is a pariah to girls. Who wants to date a Random with second eyelids, who can raise a cemetery? “Unsexy” doesn’t cover it. There’s no game on for that skill set.

    Gramps.
    < Mac O'Brien >
    I close my eyes, and the car sings about being on autopilot, with a bunch of additional garbage about the best route and Gramps’ vitals, age, history.
    Blah, blah, blah.

    Pax?

    My eyes pop open. The black ribbon of road appears gray under my translucent lid. I can see every displaced pebble on its surface.
    Another car passes me, going in the opposite direction. Our side mirrors almost touch.

    Yeah?

    Where are you? I don’t feel you.

    Going to Gramps’.

    Mom and Dad are freaking out.

    Yeah.

    They’re not the enemy, ya know.

    Girls.

    I heard that.

    I roll my eyes. I know she can’t hear that. However, she’s a new class of Random: Emotive. They feel in shards of sensation.

    Stop rolling your eyes, Pax.

    Stop getting up my ass about the parents, Deegan.

    Silence.

    I shouldn’t say that. Sometimes, all we’ve had is each other.

    I mean… God, ya know what I mean.

    I know you’re pissed about Gram.

    Aren’t you? I think at her.

    Yes. But mainly, I’m so sad I can’t get past that part.

    Gramps’ perimeter barricade appears like reverse stakes pointing at the sky.

    You there already?

    Yeah.

    Don't come home late. Think something at Mom so she knows you're okay.

    A few seconds swell between us.

    Yeah, okay.

    I love you even though you're cantankerous.

    Dee's on a new vocab kick. Just another teen phase to live through. It makes me smile, though.

    I love you too, Tinkerbell.

    I grin at the nickname. She puts up with it. She has to, it suits her.
    There's more space when she leaves my head, and the pulse scan begins. For an old dude, Gramps really gets on board the tech stuff. He has embraced the regeneration experiments for life expectancy.
    His reversal worked well.
    Too bad that doesn’t work on cancer patients.
    I shove my grief aside. The anger is easier to embrace.
    The gate slides open, and my bullet-shaped car automatically glides into a backward position between two trees. Gramps has cleverly used what would be a perfect hammock space as a hanger for my wheels. Not that I have those.
    I feel the jolt as the magnetized rails align with the receptors.
    One heartbeat goes by and the air pressure shifts in the car, popping my ears.
    The door opens and swings to the top. When I step out, the solid aluminum chassis bounces. Without my weight, the car lifts a half-meter, suspended by invisible pulleys.
    The pulleys aren’t invisible to all.
    I see them with my night vision eyelid. It’s creepy. Mainly because I’ve told the scientists who regulate my abilities only what I think is safe for them to know.
    They’d shit a Granny Smith if they knew I could see the veil between the worlds.
    And how many there