Meltdown

By Chris Archer

In the final book of this middle grade sci-fi series, superpowered teens are on the verge of saving Earth from a mutant race when one of them disappears.
 
Toni Douglas feels like she’s losing her mind. But maybe that’s to be expected when you’re a thirteen-year-old who has just traveled back in time to save the Earth. Somehow, just moments before she was about to stop a lifechanging meteor strike, she woke up in a strange bed. With parents she didn’t recognize keeping a bedside vigil for someone named Denise Butler. When Toni tries to insist they have a case of mistaken identity, a doctor tells her she’s suffering from amnesia!
 
But Toni knows exactly who she is. And if she doesn’t escape this madhouse she’s fallen into, she won’t be able to find her friends and help them destroy the mutant Omegas who are trying to take over. So why does everyone keep insisting the Omegas—and her friends—don’t exist? Somehow Toni has to convince everyone she’s not crazy, and fast. The future of the world is at stake . . .

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Release date: Oct 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9781504089180

Chris Archer

Chris Archer is an American author known for his contributions to the world of fantasy and science fiction literature. He is best known for the Mindwarp series, which explores a future where technology allows for the manipulation of consciousness, and delves into the moral and ethical implications of these advancements. Archer’s other work includes the Pyrates series, the Fright Club series, and the Haute Tension series.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

My name is Toni Douglas. And I’m about to let you in on a couple of secrets.

Secret number one: You know how sometimes when people have been in a near-death situation, they’ll say, My entire life flashed before my eyes?

They’re lying.

Trust me on this. I know. I’ve been in a plethora of near-death situations, and I can tell you for a fact that during every last one, the only thing that ever flashed through my mind was some words my dad says only truck drivers use.

But you don’t have to take my word for it. Just use common sense. I mean, really: Aside from a newborn baby, do you know anyone whose entire life could be completely summed up in, like, ten seconds?

Not mine, that’s for sure.

My guess is it would take at least ten books to sum up all the stuff that’s ever happened in my life. Heck, I bet it would take that many books just to cover the last year alone! And believe me, you wouldn’t find these books in the romance section. Horror/science fiction is more like it.

I often wish my life were fictional—as in unreal, made up, not really happening, close-the-book-and-it’s-over. It certainly feels unreal a lot of the time.

Like right now, I thought bitterly as I struggled to free my friend Ethan Rogers from the flaming wreckage of a time machine.

You heard me right: time machine. More like a barbecued, stuck-right-here-in-time machine.

All around me lights were flashing. Angry white sparks exploded out of the backs of ruined computer terminals while blue flames crawled over exposed wires and licked at the crumpled metal walls. An oily black smoke hung thick in the air, along with a bitter, burning plastic smell. I could barely breathe, which made freeing Ethan pretty difficult.

He was lying on the floor in front of me, trapped beneath at least a thousand pounds of steel. His legs had gotten pinned under the ship’s guidance system, a collapsed grid of thick metal bars and computer monitors. Don’t worry, I told him, I’m going to get you out of here.

Holding my hands at arms’ length, I concentrated until twin beams of electricity crackled out of my palms. The oscillating bolts of energy intertwined to form an intense, focused ray—like a laser beam. I only hoped it would be powerful enough to slice through the metal that held him prisoner.

Oh. I guess now would be a good time to mention secret number two: I’m not your average eighth grader.

As you’ve probably guessed, I’m not talking about the fact that I sometimes use big words like plethora and oscillating. (But thanks for noticing.) I’m talking about the fact that I have silver blood in my veins and, at any given time, several thousand volts coursing through my body.

I inherited my powers—as well as my perfect cheekbones, flawless complexion, and curly brown hair—from my mother. She was an Alpha, a genetically engineered soldier created by the United States government in the far future. She time-traveled into the past with a group of other Alphas, where they married regular humans like my dad and had kids like me.

Of course, Mom never told me that she was an Alpha. Maybe she intended to, but she died in a fire the year I turned four—or so I thought. I know now that she didn’t really die. She faked her death along with the other Alphas. They were attempting to escape from the Omegas, who had tracked them down.

Omegas. They were also from the future, a different kind of soldier created in the government’s labs. Different, as in evil. And they wanted our parents dead.

You see, the Alphas hadn’t just come to the past to raise families. They came to destroy the Omegas. That’s because in the future the Omegas had taken over the planet, launching a nuclear war and virtually driving the human race into extinction. The Alphas had devised a plan: They would figure out which scientist in the past had invented the technology that created the Alphas and the Omegas and then convince that person to destroy his or her experiments before they could lead to disaster.

Unfortunately, before the Alphas could find the scientist, the Omegas found them.

The Alphas’ mission fell to us, the kids they left behind in Metier.

There were six of us altogether: Todd Aldridge, Ashley Rose, Jack Raynes, Elena Vargas, Ethan, and me. Three boys and three girls, the only hope that stood between humanity and destruction.

Luckily we came prepared.

On our thirteenth birthdays we each developed our Alpha parents’ special powers. Each kid’s power was different from the others’. Todd became a master of disguise; Jack, a master of communication. Ethan was gifted with incredible fighting prowess. Ashley got underwater skills. Elena developed psychic abilities.

Me, I discovered that I was a jumper. I had the bizarre, superhuman ability to store up and then release electrical energy. I could use my power like a stun gun, shooting beams of electricity from the palms of my hands. Or if I concentrated, I could use it to punch a hole in the very fabric of the universe, a way to travel through time.

Even though the Alphas had managed to keep us kids a secret, once our powers showed up, so did the Omegas. (You try staying anonymous when your blood turns silver and pink sparks shoot out of your hands every time you sneeze.) And once the Omegas realized who we were and that we posed as much of a threat to them as our parents had, our lives became a mind-warping race for survival.

By banding together we kids were able to keep each other alive long enough to track down the mysterious scientist our parents had been seeking, Dr. Alice Mason. But our discovery didn’t come without a sacrifice: Before we could get to her, the Omegas captured Ethan, Ashley, and Jack.

Dr. Mason informed us remaining kids that the key ingredient to the government’s evil plot wasn’t her research at all but a hunk of mysterious metal from outer space—a meteor—whose radiation caused the strange genetic mutations that gave us our superpowers. The giant rock had landed in Wisconsin back in prehistoric times, blasting a crater that would later fill with water and become our town’s reservoir. Dr. Mason had stumbled across a small fragment of the original meteor, accidentally exposing her experiments to the strange radiation. Her remarkable results attracted the attention of the Pentagon, who immediately confiscated the original meteor from the bottom of the reservoir. So we had found Dr. Mason, but it was too late. Of course, late is never a problem when you can travel through time.

Our next plan seemed foolproof: Jump back into the prehistoric era, snatch the meteor before the government could get its hands on it, and destroy the creepy space rock once and for all.

Which brings me to secret number three: Sometimes I make mistakes.

And when I jumped us to the Land Before Time, I definitely erred. Elena, Todd, and I landed in the too-prehistoric past—the meteor hadn’t even hit Earth yet.

But it was about to. Yes, I had landed us in just the right time and place to intimately witness two enormous collisions. The first was an Omega time machine on a crash course to Smithereensville.

The good news is,