Page 3 of Beta Lies and Cursed Lives
If there is one thing I am naturally good at, it’s leaping. So I plan my route and make a mad dash for the closest rooftop, squatting down and using every muscle to spring across the gap. When my feet pound the roof, I keep moving, running straight for the next roof on my route and then the next.
Almost every day for the last decade, my Dad and I would run, lift, spar, and push our limits in every way we could. He would never let me rest, always preaching vigilance.
I was beginning to think he was overdoing it, being too cautious. I had no idea how wrong I was.
I land on the rooftop of the building I have to descend to the street from when I’m suddenly jerked backward with such violence it draws an unbidden scream from my lips.
“Gotcha,” a menacing voice declares from behind me.
I struggle against whatever is binding me, keeping my arms tight at my sides.
“Bind and collar her!” another voice shouts, getting closer.
“No!” I scream before I can stop myself, but not for the reason most others would.
The man behind me moves, and I see his bare hands holding a small device they lower over me. My body jerks to the side when he tries to touch the device to my neck, but it’s useless. The other soldier arrives and holds me down so the one who caught me can do what he’s been instructed to.
The instant his bare fingertips touch the skin of my neck and wrists, three things happen, and I don’t know which comes first.
The small device lights up, and a ring of pure golden light bursts from it, connecting behind my neck. Large enough for me to see hanging past my chin, but too small to pull over my head.
Something cinches my wrists together uncomfortably tight.
There is also a cracking and snapping sound, then a deep chill in the air as the hands of the soldier that collared me, the skin that touched me, turn to solid, clear ice.
The soldier who’d been holding me down curses and scrambles away from us, allowing me to roll away from the frozen one.
An ice sculpture. That’s what the soldier is now, like something you’d see at a fancy party. Only this was a living man up until seconds ago.
His entire body, his clothing, his weapons—everything that touched him while he touched me—turned to solid ice. Nothing living is left; no flesh, bone, or blood. Everything is snapped frozen and will remain that way until what’s left of him melts away.
I know this because I have to. My father told me how important it was to learn about my abilities, even though I never wanted to. I just wanted the power to go away.
We’d never have had to go on the run if I had never had this power.
But unlike when I was twelve and discovered my Curse at the expense of my mother’s life, no pain or sorrow invades my senses at the sight of the soldier before me.
If I could, I would kill them all.
I hear clicking noises and know that there are guns trained on me now. How many, I don’t know; I don’t bother to turn and look.
The collar around my neck can’t be removed. Officials always discuss the collars on TV and the internet; how they track the Cursed wearing them and have an explosive implanted in the device to blow off the heads of any who try to remove it or run from authorities.
They’ve shown demonstrations.
“What happened here?” a new voice demands from behind me. It’s male, harsh, and authoritative.
“She killed Adams, sir!” the soldier who’d held me down sounds both angry and disgusted at once.
“How did it happen?”
“He collared her, and she turned him into that.”
Footsteps circle around me until an older soldier, his tactical fatigues slightly different from the others I’d seen, stands before me and beside his icy subordinate. He examines the soldier briefly before turning stony eyes on me. “You only froze this man. Why?”
My jaw ticks. The explosive device around my neck compels me to respond. “He touched me.”
His next question is measured. “Did you freeze him because he touched you, or did touching you cause him to freeze?”
