TEEN JUSTICE: Justice Has a Curfew - Book One

By C.A. Gordon

** Experience the explosive first entry in the TEEN JUSTICE series from C.A. Gordon! **

Five ordinary teenagers struggling to navigate the everyday perils of adolescence. Five ordinary teenagers living in a world recovering from a crisis born from one man's act of revenge. Five ordinary teenagers. Also

• Language: English
• Publisher: CA Gordon
• Release date: Jun 19, 2023
• ISBN: 9798988089711

Book preview

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INTRODUCTION

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

INTERLUDE

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

EPILOGUE

PREVIEW OF BOOK TWO

BONUS MATERIALS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

OKAY, LET’S DO THIS.

First and foremost: Thank you Mom and Granddad for Everything. Without either of you, I would not possess my creative pilot light or the fortitude and work ethic to spark it to life.

To my long-suffering—oh wait, it’s called patient now—wife, Katrina. You came into my life long after these kids, but rest assured that you’ll remain in my heart far longer than they ever will.

To Grant Waters, for the gift of a lifetime of adventures in the Land of the Rising Sun, all boiled down into a few months. Subete ni kansha shimasu. Anata wa saikōdesu!

To the real Brad, Anna, Jasmine, Anderson family, and the others who will inevitably join me in fictitious infamy. Thanks for being good sports.

To Stan, who deserves as much credit as my biological family for making me the man I am today.

To Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Mystery Men, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Power Rangers, and the other legions of completely real, totally non fictitious heroes. I’ll never stop believing.

A special thanks to the hours between midnight and five a.m. We had some Good Times.

And, finally, to Deborah J. Copeland, who got there first.

—C.A. Gordon

INTRODUCTION

THEY WOULD NOT DIE. NOT YET.

There were flashes of light and the chill of the evening air. There were globs of molten glass and shards of shrapnel flying above—now behind—now around them. There was the searing heat of the blast and the lingering roar of the explosion, and the acrid smell of the remnants of machines and men who were never designed to withstand combustion.

And now there was the ground, rushing upward to meet them in an intimate way. Except it wasn’t the ground. It was a domed rooftop of inch-thick opaque glass and metal framework, and soon the sound of the wind around them would be replaced with four more explosions—smaller yet accompanied by voices wailing in agony as the impact tore through flesh and muscle, skin and sinew.

But they would not die. Not yet.

Their outfits would absorb some of the damage, but not enough. Gravity would prevail, and they would continue their plunge a final, short distance to the inevitable conclusion at ground level, where the last breaths of air in their lungs would be snatched away like a jewel thief’s prize.

But they would not die. Not yet.

No crowds would gather around to inspect or identify their crumpled and broken bodies. There would be no one to assess the devastation, no one to mourn the tragedy. There would only be the glitter of broken glass decorating the floor around them. And one faint, final, shared sense of satisfaction between the four of them. A sense of relief in the knowledge that, despite their overwhelming lack of insight and experience, despite the crushing weight of their loss tonight . . . they pulled it off.

They didn’t save the world, they didn’t even save their city. They didn’t avenge a murder and they didn’t forge a legacy for successors to defend. Nothing as dramatic as that.

They simply learned a lesson. And they learned it together, as a family.

And the realization of this success would certainly bring a smile to their bruised faces and send a wave of peaceful warmth through their hearts as they finally stopped beating. They would share one last thought of their fallen companion, the fifth one, whose ultimate sacrifice validated everything they’d known about him but was, somehow, nothing they’d expected from him.

Then they would die.

But not yet . . .

PROLOGUE

Center for Enhanthrax

Research & Treatment

Keaton Layer—10:13 pm

A PAIR OF DARK ARTISAN HIGH HEELS CLATTERED TO THE sparkling terrazzo floor as the woman bounded, barefoot, down the hallway and cut a hard right at the corner. She continued down another darkened corridor, moving faster than the overhead motion lights could sense; only a glimpse of her cobalt velvet evening gown was illuminated as she reached her destination, an innocuous door labeled CONTROL.

Shuffling a designer clutch beneath one armpit, she yanked the opera glove off her light brown left hand and grabbed the door handle. The fingerprint scanner took a few seconds to recognize her, and even though she understood the delay—this was, after all, the first time she’d ever been to this room; indeed, this entire wing of the building—those seconds seemed to crawl into eternity.

She knew they were following her. She also knew they would catch her.

The lock released and she was in. The sound of the door sealing behind her was drowned out by the pounding of her heart and her labored breathing, but at least the lights were already on in here. She inhaled deeply, closing fierce brown eyes set behind violet contact lenses as she withdrew the breath slowly through her lips. She scanned the room and settled her focus on the bank of computer monitors mounted along one wall above a long, pristine frosted glass desktop.

Taking a seat at the console, she reached into her clutch and produced her server, an electronic device the size and shape of a small hard drive. She placed the call and waited.

It won’t be long now, she thought.

Okay, she said when the call was answered. Now what?

Her task was simple: deactivate the lockdown. With her free hand, she navigated the wireless mouse across the desktop, following the instructions as quickly as they were fed. A thin veil of sweat was forming above her brow and in between the server and her left ear, which she ignored.

There came the inevitable knocking at the door, rattling through the control room like automatic gunfire. She ignored that, too.

A pause in the knocking, then a muffled male voice from the other side of the door:

Come on! I’m not paying for a new lock.

In front of her, one of the monitors displayed a warning: ATTEMPTED SECURITY SYSTEM OVERRIDE DETECTED. ADMINISTRATOR ACCESS REQUIRED. She put the server in speaker mode, set it face down, and used the keyboard to type in her username followed by a random combination of characters dictated by her wireless companion.

Outside, the banging on the door stopped, and the voice changed from one of frustration to firm resolve. The words that followed were direct while clearly offering no alternative to their compliance.

She heard the start of a ten-second countdown but kept her focus, knowing it would take at least twelve seconds to finish the sequence.

From outside: Three . . . Two . . .

She located the icon on the monitor labeled SYSTEM RESTORE.

There was a metallic crunch, and a moment later the door exploded inward. A half dozen uniformed men and women poured into the control room, none of them with weapons drawn. No one shouted for her to cease and desist, no one ordered her to get down on the ground. They knew who the woman was, after all, and their instructions were to retrieve, not immobilize her.

The woman entered the command into the computer just as hands the size of saucepans grabbed her from behind. Resisting savagely, she thrashed her arms about the desktop, sending her clutch, glove, and the keyboard all clattering to the floor. During the struggle, one hand landed on something small with hard edges, and as her left arm was twisted behind her back, the woman used the momentum to swing her gloved right palm around and up into the face of the uniform. There was another crunch, a grunt of pain, and the wireless mouse fell to the ground in pieces.

Enough! a voice boomed, and everyone froze. The uniforms stood at attention as a man entered the room with a casual demeanor that belied the authority in his tone. He wore a nondescript charcoal grey suit that perfectly concealed his large and muscular frame. A badge was clipped to his left breast beneath a speckled pocket square.

He looked through wire-framed glasses first at the woman, then at the uniform clutching his bloody left cheek, and finally down at the broken mouse.

I’m not paying for that, either, he said.

The woman’s expletive-laden response died in her throat when she saw the man’s focus shift from her to the monitors behind her.

With the successful deactivation of the lockdown, the surveillance cameras were now capturing images of restored order throughout the building. Perimeter doors were retracting, alarm strobe lights had ceased flashing, and, most important, the smart glass exterior walls and ceilings had converted from opaque back to transparent.

But the man’s attention was fixed entirely on the channel feed from the south side of the facility. Specifically, the lobby.

Even without the benefit of audio, the woman and everyone else in the control room could behold the clear image of a black object busting through the ceiling and plummeting, arms and legs flailing like pinwheels, down into the lobby. The figure landed face-first in the marble fountain with a visible splash and didn’t move.

The woman’s face went pale. Every ounce of defiance was replaced with despair and nausea.

Moments later, a second, smaller figure fell into the room; this one slammed, upside down and backward, into one of the flat panel televisions mounted above the Information Desk. The display was reduced to a spiderweb of pixelated Technicolor as the figure dropped to the floor behind the counter.

There were two additional forced reentries, but the man didn’t see them; he was already out of the control room and down the hall with radio in hand, ordering another team of uniforms to converge at the impact sites. Before he left, he issued orders for the woman to be relocated and secured—as far away from the lobby as possible.

No! the woman exclaimed with tears in her eyes and rivulets of makeup running down her cheeks. "No, no . . ." Her frantic cries fell on deaf ears as the remaining uniforms wrestled her bodily out of the control room.

Seconds passed.

One of the female uniforms returned to retrieve the woman’s displaced glove and clutch from the floor. She spared a coveting gaze at the accessory before dismissing the sensation and turned to leave. At the very last moment, she remembered to grab the woman’s server from the desktop.

The call was still active, although the woman’s companion had wisely chosen to keep quiet throughout the proceedings. But upon hearing the last echoes of the woman’s voice trail away to be replaced with dead silence, the other party was now calling out her name, over and over with increasing anxiety.

Without a second thought, the uniform killed the call.

*      *      *      *      *

He fell first, but not the hardest.

The glass ceiling of the Center’s southern entrance showered inward like diamonds as the teen’s body plummeted at a forty-degree angle into the pool at the base of the fountain. The tattered vestiges of his black twalium-reinforced garb barely protected the bones in his body—in particular, his partially concealed face and skull—from fracturing upon contact with the gleaming white marble of the statue. The water was warm, but the teen was not conscious of enjoying it.

Then a second, similarly dressed adolescent turned one of the lobby’s WELCOME video monitors into a broken wall ornament. He remained embedded in the television screen just long enough to let out a quick yelp before dislodging, completing his fall behind the check-in desk. His limp body bounced off the countertop and down to the carpeted floor, scattering the mop of burnt sienna hair across his face.

The third teen, a girl, managed with great effort to control her descent. Somewhat. A split second earlier, her piercing shriek excised a large, nearly perfect circular hole in the roof. The girl mustered the wherewithal to twist her body in the precise manner to avoid the razor-sharp glass edges. She even slowed in midair and glided down into the center of the lobby with the visage and grace of a black swan, one adorned with a crown of mid-length auburn hair. The small black cape attached to her shoulders fluttered behind her like a liquid shadow as she touched down in a haphazard crouch, both knees bent to soften the landing. The maneuver certainly wouldn’t win an Olympic medal, but it would suffice.

The girl rose slowly to her feet and shook her head a few times, trying to clear away the melancholic fog . . .

. . . And that’s when the fourth teen, another girl, crashed into the lobby and landed directly on top of her with a loud thud. She fell last, and she fell the hardest.

The pain was so intense it knocked the very taste from their mouths. The caped redhead was a crumpled pile of bruises trapped beneath the squirming, lean form of the other girl, a blonde with light grey eyes hidden beneath a pair of cracked goggles. She finally rolled off to one side, grasping her lower back.

"Oww ow ouch owie ouch ouch ow," was all the blonde could get out while her companion-turned-reluctant seat cushion groaned and tried to regain her footing. She did not succeed.

The first teen’s head shot up out of the water and he gasped for air, just in time to see a dozen DHS-EX agents flood the lobby. They surrounded the fountain, the information desk, and the two girls.

None of the agents took any chances with the teens; each one was restrained according to the estimated threat level he or she posed. For the first teen, who was busy hacking up a gallon of water out of his lungs, they used a simple set of interlaced plastic cable ties around his wrists. The second boy began to stir, and an agent immediately sprayed him with a burst from a nearby fire extinguisher before securing him with electronic cuffs. Before the redhead could open her mouth, a thick metal collar was slapped around her throat. There was a soft beep and instantly she felt the phonatory muscles of her larynx freeze in mid-abduction. She could still breathe, but any ability to produce sounds was effectively crippled.

Meanwhile, the blonde’s tailbone had nearly been crushed in the fall; but, once upright, she could still easily outrun any agent foolish enough to try and restrain her by force. So, before she even got to her feet, one of the agents simply grabbed her goggles, pulled them back by the rubber straps, and released. The frames smacked into the blonde’s face, stars exploded in front of her eyes, and she slumped.

The extraction was over as quickly as it had begun. The agents gathered their captives and carried them out of the lobby.

*      *      *      *      *

It was a moderate-sized conference room rather than an interrogation chamber. The agents led the teens inside before lining the walls like roaches scurrying at the flick of a light switch. A calm and warm atmosphere was a welcome contrast to the sterile fluorescence of the lobby. The teens were deposited into ergonomic office chairs situated around an oblong table.

The first teen removed what was left of the mask covering his face and head and was blinking rapidly, trying to regain his orientation, while the second boy was vigorously shaking the remnants of the fire retardant powder out of his large mane. If the redhead seated next to him could speak, she’d doubtless be screaming at him in irritation. As it happened, though, the loudest sounds in the room came from the blonde, who had awakened and was emitting a low, steady wheeze. Her matte black-covered chest rose and fell in a short, staccato rhythm.

DHS-EX Special Agent George Anderson sat at the head of the table, one hand absently twirling a yellow albuterol inhaler with an orange cap on the tabletop. With his other hand, he scrolled through the data in his server. After a few moments, he stopped twirling and slid the inhaler down the length of the table toward the blonde. It was intercepted by the first teen, who snatched it up and inspected it dubiously. He popped out the aerosol canister and checked the mouthpiece, checking for signs of tampering. His gloved fingers finally registered a small imprint of the letters T and A on the inside of the container and his suspicion eased a fraction.

Don’t worry, Anderson said reassuringly. It’s hers.

The teen kept his almond-shaped brown eyes locked on Anderson’s as he slid the inhaler the rest of the way to its owner.

It’s yours, he confirmed to her in a neutral tone.

The blonde tried her best to not leap for the medication. She was painfully aware of how long it’d been since she needed a rescue dose and the accompanying struggle to keep the shame from showing on her face.

She pressed down the canister and inhaled deeply, holding her breath for a few seconds to allow the albuterol to fully dilate the bronchioles in her lungs. Finally, her eyes closed as she withdrew the breath from her lips.

While she repeated the process, Anderson switched on his server’s recorder and addressed the group:

Okay, let’s do this. My name is George Anderson, I’m the Special Agent in charge of the Department of Homeland Security’s Enhanthrax Investigation Division assigned to Silver City—DHS-EX for short. The four of you have been positively identified as— Anderson pointed to each teen as he read off their names in succession: Gordon, Cameron A., age sixteen; Andrews, Taylor M., age sixteen; Haynes, Zachary T., age fourteen; and Stevens, Melody, age sixteen.

The redhead shot Anderson a venomous glare for the use of her given name. Anderson ignored the look and added:

No middle name indicated, but I’m told you answer to ‘Nova.’ Is that correct?

Nova mouthed a silent middle finger at Anderson.

Before we begin, Anderson continued, I am obligated to inform you of your rights in accordance with the EX Axioms. First and foremost, as documented EX-positive minors, you may request but are not entitled to having a parent or approved adult guardian present during interviews. You may not request one during a formal interrogation—

"Which, obviously, this ain’t," Zack interjected sarcastically.

Of course it is, Anderson said, showing a trace of annoyance. "You know exactly what you did tonight. My boys and girls are still counting the dead next door, and that number includes several of their fellow agents." He made a motion indicating the uniforms against the walls.

"Every adult in this room right now is aching to bury the pieces of you. In sandwich bags. How you answer my questions determines whether I let them."

Zack said nothing, a rare phenomenon.

"Now, you may not request a parent