Paranormals (Book 2): We Are Not Alone Read Online Free Page B

don’t think they have super-hero names, but Canada doesn’t have their own P.C.A. yet so I think that makes them sort of like super-heroes.
    There was also a guy in San Francisco who called himself The Magnet, but the sad part is that he didn’t last very long. He had a white costume, and he could move metal like that villain in the “X-Men” movies, but he wasn’t very fast at it. The second Rogue he tried to fight also had a gun with him and The Magnet wasn’t fast enough to stop the bullet and he got shot in the chest. And then he used his metal-moving power to pull the bullet out, but it turned out that was the wrong thing to do and he bled to death. I think the fact that he died so fast might have scared other Paranormals into not trying to be super-heroes, and that is sad, too.
    But I still think that things are better now than they were a year ago. We have Vortex now, and even though the P.C.A. headquarters got blown up last year, the P.C.A. has stuck with it. And there are two guys who help the P.C.A. who are kind of like super-heroes, too: There’s a guy they call Powerhouse who is really strong (he wears a ski mask and gloves, but no other costume parts), and another guy they call Shockwave. There are some other Paranormal helpers, but Powerhouse and Shockwave are the ones they talk most about on the news.
    Some other stuff has gotten better, too. They have started passing some laws that make it illegal to fire people who turn Paranormal unless they are Class One (that’s for Paranormals whose powers can be very dangerous). Class Two Paranormals (that’s for Paranormals whose powers are harder to make dangerous) would be just as protected as people of different races or religions. But sometimes people find it hard to agree on how to decide what is a Class One or Class Two, and some people even want them to make up a Class Three for Paranormals whose powers are really hard to make dangerous.
    But like I said: I think that things are a lot better now than they were last year. More and more Rogues have been put in jail in places like Alcatraz Island and the Nevada Desert and a real close prison called “The Rogue Pit.” People are finally not being so scared just because someone turns Paranormal. And it seems like there might not be quite as many people turning Rogue as there used to be.
    And I think a lot of that is thanks to Vortex ! If I ever turn Paranormal, I’m going to follow his example. And I hope that I am half as tough as he is!
     
     
     

TODAY
     
     
     

VORTEX
     
    Kimberly Bryce screamed when the rogue burst forth from the storm drain ahead of her. The terrifying paranormal moved so fast!
    If only she had followed her father’s advice never to talk to strangers, if only she had followed her mother’s example of treating every man as a potential threat, she might not be fleeing for her life right now. But she could play the “if only” game all day, it wouldn’t get her away from the snake-man.
    Throwing an arm around the street sign as she passed it, she spun into a nearly perfect ninety-degree turn and kept running. The snake-man thrashed his tail at her, coming so close to her legs she felt the air whip past her left calf. Hissing in frustration, he dove back into the storm drain, no doubt seeking to cut her off once more. So she stopped, caught her breath for two seconds, then doubled-back the way she had come.
    “Help!” she called for the fiftieth time, her voice barely carrying by this point. “Help, someone!”
    This close to the college campus, she was surrounded by low-income apartments, crammed with students who had made it past their freshman years. Even midday like this, someone had to be home, had to hear her pleas for help. But with the exception of one middle-aged woman who shouted from her cracked front door that she had called the police, no one had responded. Kimberly had, in fact, heard a police siren twirp a few streets over a minute ago, but when she had