Stronger: A Super Human Clash Read Free Page A

Hazlegrove walked away from me, I had to suppress the urge to leap up and come down on his head, and keep jumping on him until every one of his bones turned to jelly.
    Keegan saw the look on my face, and she reached up and put her hand on my arm. “We’ll get them out,” she said with a forced smile.
    A couple of the others approached. “What’s the plan?” Cosmo asked. In the outside world, Cosmo would never havesurvived. His weak muscles gave him just about enough strength to stand upright. Unable to dig or carry anything, Cosmo had been assigned the task of operating one of the crushers, and he couldn’t even do that for very long: He was barely strong enough to pull the machine’s levers.
    “I don’t have a plan,” I said, and then added, “yet.” I sat down cross-legged and shrugged. “Maybe we can dig a side tunnel through from D?”
    Keegan nodded. “Yeah, that might work. If the blockage isn’t too heavy, there’s a good chance some of Jakob’s team is still alive. So we pick a spot about seventy, eighty yards in—that should be past the blockage—and we bore through. The shafts are about twenty yards apart at that depth. It’ll take a couple of days, and that’s only if we don’t hit any bedrock.”
    Cosmo said, “No, look, here’s what we should do…. Instead of digging a full-size tunnel from D, we just dig a bore-hole. Wide enough for me. That’ll be a lot faster. I can go through, see if there’s anyone alive in there.”
    “Good thinking,” Keegan said, and Cosmo beamed at that. He’d had a crush on Keegan since the first day they met. She continued, “If there
is
anyone alive, you can bring them food and water while we work on widening the tunnel.”
    By now, there were two dozen workers gathered around us. And they were looking at me to give them the go-ahead. They saw me as their leader. They always had. Not because I’m smarter than anyone else—which I’m definitely not—or because I’ve been here so long. It’s because I’m bigger and stronger.
    I don’t like being a leader. I’ve
never
liked that. I’m muchhappier following other people’s instructions. Actually, I’m happiest when I’m completely on my own, but it’s been a very long time since I was able to indulge in that luxury.
    Keegan reached up to my shoulder and casually brushed the dust and tiny flakes of rock from my blue skin. “What do you say, Brawn?”
    I nodded. “All right. Let’s get to work.”

CHAPTER 2
TWENTY-SEVEN
YEARS AGO
    I WAS TWELVE YEARS OLD when my world ended. Not
the
world, of course. Just
my
world.
    It was Sunday morning, and I was in church, in the choir. Not by my own choice, mind you. My mother had made me join a year earlier. I came home from school one day, and when I opened the door, she was waiting for me with Pastor Cullen. “Here’s my little darling now, Pastor! Isn’t he adorable? Voice like an angel! Go on, sweetheart, sing something for the pastor!”
    “Ma, no!” I pleaded.
    “No, petal. You have to. Sing ‘Always on My Mind’—you love that one!”
    That was embarrassing, and made even worse because my best friends Adrian and Jaz were right behind me.
    I turned bright red and then Jaz nudged me in the back. “Go ahead, Elvis,” he said. “We don’t mind waiting.”
    I spent the next year trying to live that one down. It didn’t help that I actually
was
able to sing. Pretty soon Pastor Cullen was giving me solos.
    I didn’t want to do it, but I couldn’t say no to Ma. Well, I
could
have said no, but it wouldn’t have made any difference: When she set her mind on something, that was it.
    Pastor Cullen was the same: No matter how much you protested, he did things his own way. That was why everyone in the choir had to dress up in a long white vestment. An alb, it’s called. Goes from your neck right down to your ankles. Not so embarrassing to be seen in when you’re with nineteen other choristers, but it’s horrible when you’re doing a solo and