Virus Attack by Andy Briggs Read Free Book Online Page A

remedial class?”
    â€œWhat?” screamed Knuckles, his skin flushing like a beet. “You little nerd! I’m going to smash your face in for that!”
    Pete saw the fist being clenched and raised toward him. He closed his eyes in anticipation and waited for it to connect. It seemed like an age had passed and yet he still felt nothing. He opened his eyes, wondering if something had scared Knuckles away—but no, inreality only a second had passed and he saw a close-up of Knuckles’s fist connecting with his nose.
    The pain was unbearable. Multicolored lights flashed before Pete’s eyes. He fell to the ground with the peculiar salty smell of his own blood oozing from his nose. His cheap glasses spun off and landed a few feet away.
    Knuckles laughed loudly as he stared down at Pete, who had one hand across his nose, the other patting the ground to retrieve his glasses.
    Big Tony gave his friend a high five. “Nice one.”
    Knuckles felt elated. Professor had gone down without a fight, which is
exactly
how he wanted it. The quicker they fell, the harder he looked. But his smile slowly drifted, his mouth sagging open.
    Pete’s nose shifted under its own volition and they all heard a loud snap as the cartilage realigned itself. The swelling around his face deflated like a burst balloon, and the bleeding stopped in an instant.
    Pete shoved his glasses back on and felt his strength return in a huge wave that coursed through his body. He sprang to his feet, suddenly full of energy and feeling
very
angry.
    â€œThat’s the last time you hit me!” he roared.
    Without thinking, he balled up his tiny fist and threw a punch at Knuckles’s stomach. In an ordinary fight he would have missed the bully, or if he’d beenfortunate enough to connect, the punch would have felt like a tap.
    But this wasn’t an ordinary fight.
    Pete saw his hand expand to double its normal size, and it shimmered with a faint blue aura. When it connected with Knuckles, the bully felt as if a bomb had detonated in his stomach.
    The breath was expelled from him and he heard a couple of ribs crack. The punch was so strong that Knuckles was lifted clean off his feet and propelled more than thirty feet across the parking lot. He bounced off a MINI Cooper, crumpling the hood, ricocheted off a Ford, denting the roof and shattering the windows, before finally slamming to a halt against the side of a Honda, smashing in the entire door panel as though it had been struck by another car. A cacophony of car alarms sounded, and the Honda’s airbag abruptly expanded.
    Knuckles let out a long groan, indicating he was still alive. Pete swiveled around to face Big Tony, who was as white as a sheet.
    â€œYou’re one of
them
! You’re a
freak
! Get away from me!”
    Big Tony tripped over his own feet as he fled, distancing himself from Pete and not at all concerned about his friend’s condition. Pete stared at his hand, which was still double its size; veins throbbed underthe bluish skin. He shook it, the action returning his limb to normal.
    â€œI’ve got powers?” he mumbled under his breath. “How’s that possible?”
    A voice bellowed from a window above Pete—the unmistakable tones of the school principal, Mr. Harris.
    â€œWhat’s going on out there?”
    Pete pressed himself flat against the wall. If he were caught in this mess, he didn’t think he could explain his way out of it. A quick glance at Knuckles confirmed that he wasn’t going anywhere soon. Pete ducked back into the school and ran for the bathroom, fervently hoping he wouldn’t bump into anybody on his way.
    It was not just the boys who were experiencing erratic surges of superpowers. Emily had been slogging through a cross-country run during PE when her legs became a blur and she rocketed toward the finish line in the blink of an eye. Luckily it all happened so quickly that nobody had