The Persistence of Renegade X

by Chelsea M. Campbell

  Kat gapes at me.

  “Relax. We’ll be home in no time. And it’s not like we’re doing anything dangerous.”

  I double check that everyone has their seat belt on, which they do—because, despite what Kat might think, I am actually responsible—and then start the car.

  We make it about two minutes before Alex and Xavier start bickering.

  “Stop touching me!” Alex shouts.

  “I’m not!” Xavier screams, right as he purposely elbows him.

  “Hey,” I tell them. “Nobody touches anybody in the car. That’s Amelia’s rule, not mine.” Though what she actually said was that me and Kat can’t have sex in this car, so I might be extrapolating a little bit.

  “But he started it!” Alex cries, sounding devastated, like he thinks I’m taking Xavier’s side.

  “Be quiet,” Xavier screeches. “You’re not even supposed to be here. And your mouth is purple.”

  He says that like he thinks it’s the worst insult in the world. Mom probably never lets him have candy, though maybe that’s for good reason. After all, Xavier’s bad enough as it is—I’d hate to see what he’s like on a sugar high.

  “Don’t make me turn this car around and, um…” And what? Dump Xavier back at Mom’s house so nobody has to deal with him? “Kat, tell them what they shouldn’t make me do.”

  “Seriously?” She rolls her eyes at me.

  “What?” I tell her. “I’m driving. I can’t focus on driving and come up with a way to punish them at the same time. I’m trying to be responsible here.”

  I glance at the rearview mirror in time to see Xavier get this really smug look on his face, right as he tells Alex, “Damien’s going to zap you if you keep being bad.”

  Alex sucks in a breath, the look on his face both surprised and hurt at even the suggestion. “No, he’s not!”

  Before I can correct them and say that I would never zap Alex—although, the same being true for Xavier is up for debate—my phone rings. Which I can hardly hear over them shouting back and forth at each other.

  But I’m driving, and I don’t have one of those Bluetooth thingies set up to answer it, so I let it ring. Plus, it’s in my pocket, which is kind of hard to get to while I’m driving.

  I really hope it was Mom, calling to say that Taylor had some kind of miraculous recovery already and that I can just bring Xavier straight back to their house and be done with this. But somehow I doubt it, because even if that did happen, which seems unlikely, she’d probably sit on that information in order to get extra time without having to put up with Xavier. Though, then again, she’s probably also not crazy about him staying at a superhero’s house, so who knows?

  “I’m not going to share my special snacks with you!” Xavier tells Alex. “So don’t even think about it.”

  “You mean the ones we left in Mom’s fridge?” I ask him.

  His face turns red, like he’s going to have a meltdown. “Go back! We have to go back right now!”

  “They’re just snacks,” Kat tells him, rolling her eyes. “You can go a few hours without them.”

  “But they’re my snacks, just for me!”

  “Maybe I won’t share any of my snacks with you, either,” Alex tells him.

  And I know I’m probably supposed to encourage sharing and all, but Alex is totally in the right with this one.

  Xavier gasps. “Tell him he has to! You have to,” he adds, presumably to Alex. “Everyone has to share with me!”

  Kat’s phone rings. She grabs it out of her purse and slides her thumb across it. “Hello?!” She pauses, then shouts into the backseat, “Will you guys be quiet?!” Then she plugs one ear and tries again. “Hello?” She glances over at me. “It’s Sarah.”

  “Put it on speaker.”

  She hits the button.

  “Hey, Sarah, what’s—”

  “We’ve got an emergency, Renegade,” Sarah says. “We need you and Kat down here now. And what did I tell you about answering your phone?”

  “Uh, I’m driving? Besides, I can’t always be at your beck and call.”

  “Me and Secant are downtown”—she lowers her voice to a whisper—“and we need you guys to get down here.”

  I glance over at Kat real quick, then back at the road. “Are you sure you really need us? Because now’s not a good time. Like, at all.”

  “Yes, Renegade, what part of emergency don’t you understand?! We’re in D-A-N-G-E-R down here!”

  “Whose benefit are you spelling that for? Because I’m pretty sure Riley can read.”

  “We were out doing superhero stuff and landed ourselves in trouble, and now we’re stuck, and we need you guys to come help.”

  “Sarah! What were you guys out doing superhero stuff without us for?! And I thought you guys were, like, on a date. Tell Perkins he made a pretty crappy choice for date night.”

  Sarah ignores that. “Are you coming or what?!”

  I grit my teeth, because on the one hand, we probably shouldn’t bring Alex, Jess, and Xavier along for this. But on the other hand, there isn’t time to drop them off first, and what am I supposed to do, leave my best friends in the lurch to get killed? “Okay, okay. Just give me your location. We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

  Chapter 4

  I PARK ON THE street near the location Sarah gave me. She said she and Riley are hiding in a back alley downtown. They were staking out a potential crime scene when actual bad guys showed up, and, according to her, there are too many for them to take down on their own. And the bad guys don’t seem like they’re going anywhere anytime soon, and it’s only a matter of time before they find her and Riley. And then who knows what they’ll do to them.

  The thought makes my stomach feel like there’s a rock in it, and little sparks of electricity run up and down my spine.

  “Damien,” Kat says, glancing around and keeping her voice low, “this looks like kind of a bad neighborhood.”

  “Yeah, I noticed,” I say, not liking it any more than she does. “But…”

  “I know,” she says, sounding worried.

  I hold up my hands and mime zapping bad guys. “This won’t take long.” At least, I hope not. “We’ll get Sarah and Riley out of there in, like, five seconds.”

  Alex leans forward, his eyes wide. “Are you going to…” He glances up at me, his eyes meeting mine. “Are you going to kill people?”

  “Yes,” Xavier says in an annoyed voice, as if this information is super obvious to everyone but Alex.

  At the same time as I say, “No, of course not!” I glare at Xavier. “Nobody’s killing anybody. This is a hero group.”

  Alex frowns. “But you’re not a hero. And neither is Kat. And Sarah’s—”

  “I know.” So technically we’re a hero group with only one hero. Well, one and a half. “But we still fight crime and stuff.”

  “And rescue our idiot partners,” Kat mutters.

  “Right. Exciting stuff like that.”

  Alex’s eyes light up. “Cool! If you’re not going to kill anybody, can I watch?”

  “No!” me and Kat both say at the same time, giving him horrified looks.

  “You’re staying in the car,” I tell him. “All of you.” I make eye contact with Xavier when I say that, just in case he was getting any ideas.

  Though, actually, he looks pretty shocked by the thought of us leaving. “I’m Mommy’s precious little angel miracle! You have to keep me safe!”

  Alex winces at Xavier’s screechy voice and rolls his eyes. Then he glances at me, about a million questions warring on his face, but he stays silent.

  “Here.” I hand him my phone. “Just in case.”

  His hand shakes when he takes it. “In case what?”

  “Um. In case we don’t come back. Then you should call Gordon. And then he can call the police or his stupid superhero group or whatever.”

  “O-okay.”

  “But, Alex, that’s only if we don’t come back. I mean it. Absolutely do not cal
l Gordon—or anyone—unless we’re gone for at least…” I hesitate, trying to think of a good number, and glance over at Kat.

  She looks at me, then at the neighborhood we’re in. “Give us fifteen minutes. Or if anyone comes up to the car. Or if they have a weapon, or—”

  “I think he gets it,” I say, quickly cutting her off as Alex’s eyes get wider and wider.

  “Actually,” Kat says, “maybe I should stay here.”

  I considered that, too, but I shake my head. “We don’t know what kind of situation we’re walking into. We might need everyone we can get. And they’ll be fine,” I say, gesturing to the kids. “If anyone tries to kidnap them, they won’t make it even two seconds with Xavier before they change their mind and run screaming.”

  “Hey!” Xavier shrieks.

  “Good point,” Kat says, though she still sounds kind of nervous about this.

  I glance over all of them—at Alex, looking worried, and at Xavier, still gaping at me because I’m going to leave “Mommy’s precious angel miracle” unprotected, and at Jess, who’s dozing in her car seat and doesn’t seem to have any idea what’s going on.

  “I’m putting my phone on vibrate,” Kat says. “We’ll just be right down that alley. So if anything happens, or you get scared, text me.”

  “But we’ll be right back,” I assure them.

  “And if you don’t hear from us in the next fifteen minutes, then go ahead and call your dad.”

  “Right.” I swallow, not liking that scenario for about a million different reasons. “But nobody’s going to need to call or text anybody, because everything’s going to be fine.”

  “Sarah. What do you mean there’s no emergency?!” I clench my fists, seriously reconsidering what I told Alex about not killing anyone.

  Sarah pushes her glasses up onto the bridge of her nose and folds her arms. “It was a drill.”

  “A drill,” Kat says, scowling at her.

  Sarah and Riley are both in their superhero costumes, and all four of us are standing in an empty alleyway between two streets. There are a few piles of random garbage, plus some old rotten crates piled on one side, but that’s it. No bad guys, no D-A-N-G-E-R, nothing.

  Riley’s gaping at Sarah, looking just as shocked as we do, though I’m not sure that gets him off the hook.

  “You better not have been in on this,” I tell him. “I thought you guys were actually in trouble. I thought—”

  “Of course I wasn’t in on it!” he says, looking kind of hurt that I’d even suggest that. “You know I wouldn’t do that, X. I was in the bathroom when Sarah called you. I thought you knew it was a drill. I didn’t even think you were going to show up!”

  “In the bathroom?” I tilt my head, indicating all the garbage piled around us.

  “Not here,” he says. “Back at the coffee shop. Down the street.” He jerks his thumb toward it. “And, I mean, I don’t agree with lying to you about it, especially not about us being in danger”—he gives Sarah a look at that, though she ignores him—“but you do have to admit you blew off all the other drills we tried to do. Even though you agreed to this when we started.”

  He means when the four of us decided to try out being a team and fighting crime together or whatever.

  I glare at Sarah. “I told you it wasn’t a good time!”

  She rolls her eyes at me and Kat. “Right. I can guess what you guys were busy doing.”

  “That’s not—”

  “And,” she goes on, not letting me say anything, “real emergencies don’t always happen when it’s convenient for you. And also your response time could really use some work. If me and Riley had actually been in trouble, you would have been cutting it close.”

  “Oh, my God, Sarah!”

  “And you can’t just agree to do drills and then ignore them all the time. If we’re all going to work together, we need to take this seriously.”

  “Yeah, seriously, like faking an emergency?!”

  “X,” Riley says, his eyes flicking to something behind me.

  I glance over my shoulder and see Alex holding Jess’s hand, leading her into the alley. Xavier’s right behind them, making horrified faces at every speck of dirt that dares get on his shoe.

  Jess’s face is red, and she’s making little hiccuping, sniffling noises. When she sees me, she breaks away from Alex and runs over to glomp my leg.

  “Where are all the bad guys?” Alex asks. He says it totally casually, too, as if it’s actually at all okay for him to be here and as if that’s a totally normal thing to ask.

  I lean down to pick up Jess, then narrow my eyes at him. “I told you to wait in the car.”

  “You brought them to this?” Riley asks, making it sound like I’m the one in the wrong here.

  “That explains the delay,” Sarah says. “Though in a real emergency response, you probably shouldn’t bring anyone too young to carry a weapon.” She’s eyeing Jess when she says that, but it’s Alex who takes offense.

  “I’m not too young!” he cries.

  “Someone who wasn’t too young would have listened to me when I said to stay in the car instead of wandering into a creepy alley to get themselves killed,” I tell him.

  “But there’s no one here.”

  “But you didn’t know that.” Then, to Riley and Sarah, “And I only brought them to this because I thought it was a real emergency!”

  Riley furrows his brows. “That kind of makes it worse, X. You thought you were actually going to be fighting bad guys, and you still brought children with you?”

  “I told you it was a bad time!” I kind of shout that at him, and Jess makes a little sobbing noise and clings extra hard to my shoulder.

  “Jess woke up and was freaking out,” Alex explains. “And we wanted to see all the fighting.”

  “There isn’t any,” Kat tells him. “And what did I say about texting me?”

  She gives him a stern look, and he sort of deflates, his eyes darting guiltily to the ground.

  “I thought you guys were in actual danger,” I tell Riley and Sarah. “I didn’t think I had time to take everyone home first!”

  Riley winces at the mention of them lying to me, or at least of Sarah doing it. “Sorry, X. I really didn’t—”

  The sound of lasers firing interrupts him.

  We all look up and see a villain on one of the roofs overlooking the alley, firing a raygun at a couple superheroes on the opposite side. One of them shoots an energy beam at him that blows a chunk off the roof, sending bits of brick and debris raining down. The other superhero shouts, “Freeze!” and shoots a blast of ice at him.

  I don’t even have time to roll my eyes at that before a stray blast from the raygun—which the bad guy is firing like crazy—comes down into the alley. I grab Xavier and pull him out of the way right as the blast hits the ground where he was just standing, blowing a chunk out of the pavement. Xavier makes a squawking noise of disbelief and just stands there frozen, his eyes wide, like he can’t believe what just happened.

  I can’t believe it, either. And more stray blasts are coming toward us.

  “Come on!” I scream, motioning for everyone to run.

  “We have to get out of here!” Kat shouts.

  Especially since the villain on the roof is now using some kind of grappling hook to zip line down to the ground, and the superheroes aren’t far behind him.

  I’ve still got Jess, and I hold onto her for dear life as we all take off running toward the far end of the alley. Unfortunately, the guy the heroes are chasing has the same idea, though at least he’s not firing his raygun in our direction anymore.

  Alex glances over his shoulder and sees the bad guy sort of chasing us and screams.

  An energy beam from one of the heroes hits the wall of a building right above our heads. My heart races, and what the hell is wrong with people?! If they’re going to shoot in the same direction as a bunch of random civilians, they should at least know how to aim.

  “Out of m
y way!” the bad guy shouts at us. “Move!” He turns to fire more shots at the heroes, who fire right back.

  Kat uses her shapeshifting power to stretch out her arm and block an ice beam from hitting Sarah. Kat cries out when the blast hits her, but then she transforms her hand back to normal and shakes it off.

  “Go right!” I shout as we hit the end of the alley, which opens onto a side street. The last thing I need right now is for any of us to get separated. Well, maybe second to last, since I really don’t want any of us to, like, get hit with a laser beam or anything.

  Sarah hesitates, like she’s thinking left would be better, but only for a split second, and then we all go right.

  Including the bad guy.

  “Damn it!” he shouts at us, sounding kind of winded. “This is my—” He stops in mid sentence when he sees me. “Hey, you’re that famous kid! From the videos!”

  He actually sounds excited about that, like catching sight of me is more important than him running for his life. Though, to be fair, he doesn’t have a bunch of children with him whose parents are going to kill him if they, like, get blasted. Plus, I’d feel pretty horrible for the rest of my life and would never get over it and stuff.

  “Go away!” I shout back at him. Because, seriously, this is not the time.

  And the superheroes are gaining on us, and they’re still firing at him, which means they might as well be firing at us. And my heart’s pounding, and I’m not sure how long we can keep this up, and I cannot let Amelia win. Or let any of the kids get hurt. Or any of my friends. And I can feel electricity surging through my veins, and I’m still holding Jess, and I really don’t want to accidentally zap her. Or worse.

  So I focus really hard—because I’ve never done this while holding another person—and zap the bad guy instead. Just on his foot, just so he stumbles and falls and we can get ahead.

  It works, and I hear an oof sound as he hits the ground.

  Alex slows a little as he turns to look.

  “Keep going!” I tell him.

  “Get back here!” one of the heroes shouts. And I’m pretty sure they’re shouting it at us—well, at me—because I don’t hear the bad guy get up or anything.