Manipulate (Book 1, Alien Cadets)

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Sam’s calves burned as he and the other cadets jogged down the lawn at Pepperdine University. He could see the ocean, half a mile away, across the highway. The sky was a cloudless green, the water grayish blue with ash.

When terrorists sabotaged the Hadron collider and caused the cataclysm that had killed so many people, all those irradiated particles dispersed into the atmosphere and the ocean. Spo technology mostly scrubbed the atmosphere, but the colors were different.

He hoped Greg wouldn’t jog them down by the beach today, though. They weren’t up to it. Armen lurched along next to him, his head dipping with each jarring step. Melanie was just in front of them. She was usually the chipmunk of the group, but the transition to Earth’s atmosphere was weighing her down. Sam tried to remind them how to breathe correctly, to avoid over-oxygenation, but Armen shook his head, still sucking air like an asthmatic.

Greg brought them diagonally across the grounds to the corner of Malibu Canyon Road and the Pacific Coast Highway, PCH. The light turned red as they approached and Greg halted on the sidewalk.

Melanie grabbed Sam’s arm as they stopped, doubled over and panting.  Her brown hair was coming out of its pony tail; strands of it stuck to her face and fell past the tattoo on her cheek.

“Physical strength, important to survival,” Greg said to them. “Survival is sanity!”

“Survival is sanity,” chanted Sam.

“Survival is sanity!” Greg shouted.

“Survival is sanity!” they repeated. Sam could hear Armen, Melanie, Nat, Downy, and all the others yelling with him.

Greg nodded, and began running as the crossing sign changed to WALK.

A yellow Mustang squealed to a halt at the intersection. The driver’s mouth hung open as he watched Greg bound in front of him, and he groped for his phone, holding it up to snap a picture of Greg in the street. The Mustang guy must be a tourist, Sam thought. There were still a few of those, even though LA plummeted in popularity when the spooks made it their global headquarters.

The driver took a picture of Sam and his friends, too. The tattoo on each of their cheeks displayed what they were. Spook cadets. The newscasters had already dubbed Pepperdine the ‘alien academy.’

 “Don’t quit, Sam,” his friend Armen muttered. “Remember, Snickers are sanity.”

“Right. Idiot.”

Greg jogged them through a huge parking lot on the other side of the highway toward the water.  It was one of those gargantuan parking lots for beach visitors, with section labels so people would remember where they parked.  There were only a few cars in it now, although July was perfect beach weather.

A general moan trickled through the group when Greg left the asphalt and they started across the sand.

Half an hour later they started back up the hill to Pepperdine. Sam was getting a bit of a runner’s high now, but he ran at the rear of the group with Armen, who clearly wasn’t on a high. Greg headed straight towards their dorm, but Sam saw Nat veer off to run past the tower at the front of campus.

Sam grunted to Armen and followed her. By the time he caught up, she’d stopped. Sam pounded to a stop next to her, in front of the Theme Tower. She was standing off the path, staring at the tower with her arms wrapped around herself. The tower had no purpose now; it was several stories high and about six foot square, sporting a huge, empty cross on the front. It could be lit from within, making the cross visible for miles around. Pepperdine’s had been a Christian university.