Scorpion Shards Read Free

this world not to know the things he had done.
    N OT FAR AWAY , D EANNA Chang climbed a steep sidewalk, trying to forget her appointment with the psychiatrist. She didn’t dare to look at the people she passed—they all eyed her suspiciously, or at least it seemed that they did—she could never tell for sure. It made her want to look down to see if her socks were different colors, or if her blouse was bloody from a nosebleed she didn’t even know about. Now that she was outside, her claustrophobia switched gears into agoraphobia—the fear of the outside world. It wasn’t just that her fears were abnormal—they were unnatural, and it made her furious. She had had a warm, loving childhood—she had no trauma in her history—and yet when she had turned twelve, the fears began to build, becoming obsessions that grew into visions, and now, at fifteen, the world around her was laced with razor blades and poison in every look, in every sound, in every moment of every single day. The fear seemed to steal the breath from her lungs. So strong was the fear that it reached out and coiled around anyone close to her; her parents, the kids who had once been her friends—even strangers who got too near. Her fear was as contagious as a laughing fit and as overwhelming as cyanide fumes.
    As she reached the corner, her fear gripped her so tightly that she couldn’t move, and she knew that she was about to have another waking-vision of her own death. That it was only in her mind didn’t make it any less real, because she felt every measure of pain and terror.
    Then it happened: Confusion around her, loud noises. She blinked, blinked again, and a third time, as she tried to make the horrific vision go away. But the vision remained. The driverless car leapt from the curb, and it swallowed her.
    D ILLON WATCHED FROM THE top of the hill, his horror almost overwhelming the wrecking-hunger in his gut. His eyes took it in as if it were slow motion.
    The truck was hauling six brand-new Cadillacs to a dealership somewhere. A few minutes ago, Dillon had jaywalked across the street. He had searched for the chains that fastened the last car onto the lower deck of the truck and picked the locks with the broken prong of a fork. Another human being could have spent all day trying to figure out how to pick those locks—but chains, ropes, and locks were easy for Dillon. He was better than Houdini.
    He had clearly anticipated the entire pattern of how the event would go, like a genius calculating a mathematical equation. The car would spill out of the transport truck; the bus driver behind it would turn the wheel to the right; the bus would jump a curb; cars would start swerving in a mad frenzy to get out of the way of the runaway car; many fenders would be ruined—some cars would be totaled . . . but not many people would get hurt.
    Maximum damage; minimal injury. This was the pattern Dillon had envisioned in his unnaturally keen mind. What Dillon did not anticipate was that the driver of the bus was left-handed.
    Dillon walked up hill and watched as the truck lurched forward, got halfway up the steep hill, and then the last car on its lower ramp slid out and down the hill. Horns instantly began blaring, tires screeched, the escaping Cadillac headed straight for the bus . . .
    Â . . . And the bus driver instinctively turned his wheel to the left, instead of the right— right into oncoming traffic.
    That simple change in the pattern of events altered everything. Dillon now saw a new pattern emerging, and this time there would be blood.
    Horrified, he watched as car after car careened off the road into light posts and storefronts. People scattered. Others didn’t have the chance.
    Dillon watched the driverless car roll through the intersection and toward a corner. A man ran out of the way, leaving a solitary girl directly in the path of the car—an Asian girl no older than