The Empowered Series (Prequel): Renegade

by Dale Ivan Smith

  He got up, brushing newspaper and wet leaves off his cargo pants. Working himself up to say whatever it was he had come here to say. He was shorter than me by a lot, so he had to look up.

  He was taking too freaking long to get to the point. “I can’t talk with you, Gus. It’s against my parole. Not that you would know about parole. Since you skipped out before they came for us."

  Gus looked guilty. He should be back on his knees begging me to forgive him “Saying I’m sorry won’t cut it, will it, Mat?”

  “Damn straight it won’t.”

  He swallowed again. “I want to make it up to you.” His voice sounded hoarse now.

  I shoved him, hard, and he stumbled backward until he hit the sign with a loud thump. He vanished.

  “That’s right, pull your blender act,” I said. Blender had been his nickname back in the Renegades. His power was great for running away.

  Gus reappeared behind me, in the parking lot. “I can make it up to you.”

  Hah. Make it up to me. That was a laugh. But okay, I’d bite. “How can you make up for cutting and running, Blender?”

  I wanted to shout at him, and how will you bring Tanya back from being dead? My best friend, dead because of this waste of skin.

  He blinked. “I can help you.”

  Blood pounded in my ears. Just like some of the other inmates in Special Corrections who said they could help me. No thanks. I just wanted to get a job and not deal with creeps like Gus. “Leave me alone, Gus.” I stormed past him. I managed to not kick him in the crotch, and headed toward my apartment building.

  I looked back and Gus was still following me, not even trying to hide this time.

  I couldn’t let Ruth or the twins see me talking to a scumbag like Gus. They’d recognize my old team mate. Ruth knew full well I wasn’t supposed to talk to criminals.

  I wanted to kill the bastard, but couldn’t.

  And he wasn’t going to leave me alone until he’d said his piece.

  I stopped. “All right, Gus, you can say what you came to say. But not here in the open where everyone can see us.” I nodded at the complex’s storage building. “Follow me,” I said. “But first, do your Invisible Man act.”

  He vanished. My skin still tingled from him being nearby. All of us Empowered are able to detect other Empowered when we're near each other. It means we have a hell of a time sneaking up on each other. Gus’s blending gave him an advantage and the little creep always took maximum advantage.

  I went to the storage building, unlocked the door, pushed it open.

  “In,” I said. I waited long enough for him to get inside, then followed. I turned on the light, and closed the door behind me.

  Gus stood in the middle of the room, flanked by storage cages, looking like a trapped animal. Which he was as far as I was concerned. Bastard weasel.

  He flinched when I walked up to him and looked at his hands. “Your hair is so different, it’s so short now.”

  I grabbed his jacket, hauled him up close to me. “What the hell does that have to do with anything? You’re wasting my time, jerk.”

  His Adam’s apple was bobbing like a cartoon character's. He was scared to death. Sweating. Gus had always been a bit fragile. Back in the Renegades, the Professor used to say Gus took careful handling, that fear drove him more than most people. Yeah, well, Gus’s fear killed the Professor and my best friend because he wasn’t there when we needed him.

  And now he was back, trying to screw up my life again.

  “I’m so-so-orry,” he stuttered. “Pl-lease--” I gave him a hard look, which shut him up. He wouldn’t have lasted a day in Special Corrections.

  “Cut to the damn chase, Gus.” The longer this went on, the more chance there was of someone seeing us together, even holed up inside this storage building.

  He wiped his mouth with the back of his gloved hand. He wore those old, beatup fingerless gloves of his. He always wore fingerless gloves.

  “Okay.” He swallowed again. I wanted to yell, enough with the swallowing, but kept my mouth shut. Anything to get him to spit out what he wanted to tell me.

  “I can hook you up with people who can help you.”

  “I don’t want your help, Gus.” The blood pounded louder in my ears. “Or these people’s help either.” I glared at him

  He surprised me. He didn’t duck his head, kept right on talking. “Mat, you need help. This group can give you what you need.”

  “Group, Gus? Group!” I grabbed the front of his coat again. “Let me guess, these are Empowereds, aren’t they?” Idiot. He was stupider than I thought.

  He nodded.

  Damn him. Damn him to hell.

  “The Scourge can help you.”

  “The Scourge! Don’t fuck with me, Gus.”

  He shook his head frantically. “I’m not, Mat, I’m not! I’m in the Scourge.”

  “Stop lying!” I slammed him into a storage cage. I wanted to slam him again and again. He deserved it. I leaned in close to him. “The Scourge is gone, asshole.”

  He winced. “No, they aren’t.”

  Gus was lying. He had to be. The Scourge had been destroyed while I was in prison. The world’s Enemy Number One, the biggest, baddest super villain group, ever. The Renegades had been nothing by comparison. But the Scourge had still gone down. Rogue Empowereds always got caught in the end.

  “Why are you wasting my time with this bull?”

  His eyes were wide, spit on his lips. The weasel. “It’s true, Mat! I’m in the Scourge.”

  Gus had gone crazy while I was locked up. He must have. He never would have had the guts to try and feed me made-up garbage like this crap story.

  “I can talk to my cell leader. He can help.”

  I ground my teeth. Cell leader? What a load of crap. “You came here just to give me a b.s. story about the Scourge somehow coming back from the dead?”

  He wouldn’t stop. “I’m not lying. Listen, I’ve got a place.” He told me the address. “Think it over. Come see me. I can get you in, I promise.”

  That was it. I slugged him, fist smashing his jaw, sending spit flying as his head snapped back. He slid down the cage’s mesh.

  Damn, it felt good.

  I yanked him to his feet, frog marched him to the door, and shoved him through.

  “Leave and don’t come back.”

  He vanished, leaving spit and tears splattered on the pavement.

  Gus was a crazy fool. I was done with crazy fools, especially him. I slammed the door behind me. What in God’s name had gotten into him to try and feed me lies? I shook my head. He was crazy as a rabid bat.

  I looked up and saw Ruth watching me from her bedroom window.

  #

  Ruth was going to be pissed. I pounded up three flights of stairs to the apartment. I’d tried to talk her into moving to a ground floor unit, but she liked this one, said the exercise was good for her. But these days she didn’t leave her apartment much, thanks to Thalik’s disease. She also said she liked being able to see the world from higher up. I couldn’t figure out why. Why would you want to see a dingy apartment complex and a bunch of trees? I sure as hell didn’t.

  I reached our door and stopped because I still wanted to break something. I took a deep breath, then went inside. The living room was empty, no sign of Ruth, or the twins.

  The television, a big thirty-inch model, was on, tuned to the Triple N, the National News Network. Ruth must have been watching it. The twins could care less about the news.

  “Rebuilding Russia: An Ongoing Concern,” crawled across the lower part of the screen below an image of New Moscow. Whatever. I was about to turn it off when the video switched to a reporter talking to a woman in a white UN military uniform and a huge man dressed in a deep blue jumpsuit with a gold Hero Council badge. I shuddered. I recognized him. I’d seen him the day they caught me. My stomach felt like ice. The day Tanya and the Professor and the rest of the Renegades died.

  That was Titan, President of the
Hero Council and the only founding member still alive. He was still built like a giant linebacker even though he was ancient, like seventy-five years old. The reporter asked him something about unrest in Russia. Titan said rebuilding always takes longer than people want. Thanks, Mister Hero Council President. He went on about the responsibility of sanctioned Empowered to aid society and how the Russian Rogue Empowered were only holding their people back. Sure, if Empowered weren’t “sanctioned,” meaning part of the Hero Council, then they were part of the problem. The only choice they gave you if you didn't join up was to sign on the dotted line, saying you’d never use your power.

  I turned off the television.

  I heard Ruth coughing in her bedroom. The racking cough made my skin crawl. I went through the kitchen, past the sink filled with dirty dishes that the twins obviously hadn’t taken care of and the still full garbage can, down the short hall to the two bedrooms. Ruth’s was the far one. The door to the twin’s room was covered in new doom ballad posters. Apparently Four Horsemen was their favorite band this week. I shook my head. Predictable.

  I knocked on Ruth’s door, pushed it open. It was freezing in there.

  Ruth was sitting up in bed. She coughed again, but shook her head no when I started to move forward. I stood there, twisting my hands. Ruth looked terrible. Her face had more lines in it than this morning, and her short gray hair was a mess.

  Her reading glasses were on the night stand, on top of her current book, something about the Long Winter. Ruth loved history and current events. Magazines on politics, foreign affairs, and science were stacked on another little table by the window.

  “You’re up,” I said lamely. That’s me, Miss Obvious. I hated seeing her like this. Thalik’s disease was the bitch queen of all diseases. The mystery disease that had no cure. No one even knew why you got it. Sure, it was rare, but what good was rare when it got you, or someone you loved?

  Ruth sipped from the water bottle she kept by her bed, hands trembling, and took a pill.

  Her skin was really pale and she’d lost so much muscle since I’d gone to prison.

  No cure whatsoever for Thalik’s.

  She was taking expensive medication to help her cope, but was still dying day by day. If I could get a job and hold it and then apply for a medical grant, maybe get some legal help, Ruth could get on a trial for some sort of new drug. Something. Anything. She had raised me and the twins after our parents died. Been there for us, was still there for us, despite everything.

  I had to find a way to help her and get the girls on the right path.

  She put down the water bottle, wiped her mouth and looked at me.

  “Mathilda,” she said, using my full name. Only Ruth called me that. Her gray eyes searched my face. “Who was that you were with just now?”

  “Someone I used to know.”

  “Someone from the Renegades.”

  “I told him to fuc—I I told him to get out of here and not come back.”

  “Why was he here in the first place?” Ruth was angry, but she did the under control type anger, not like me.

  I squirmed. “He wanted to make up for something.”

  “That was your friend Gus, wasn’t it?” Even sick, Ruth’s memory was sharp. There wasn’t any point in lying to her.

  I shook my head. “He’s no friend of mine.”

  “Seeing him breaks your parole.”

  “I know, I know.” Tell me something I didn’t know. This wasn’t fair. I hadn’t wanted to see Gus.

  Ruth waved at me to come over to the bed. I slunk over, feeling way shorter than six one and like I was ten years old again.

  Ruth reached and had clasped my hand. “You only get one chance.”

  I nodded.

  “You can’t give up, Mat.”

  “I’m not.”

  Ruth let go of my hand, lifted her chin. “It looks to me like you are giving up.”

  “I’m trying, Ruth, I’m trying!” The potpourri scent in her room suddenly made me sick.

  Ruth uncrossed her arms. “You left your phone at home. Again.”

  “Sorry, I forgot.” I hated carrying that thing. “My parole officer called?” Winterfield always ruined my day. He was one hundred percent pure hardass and he rode me nonstop about getting a job.

  Ruth frowned. “Three times. You need to be reachable, Mathilda.”

  “I know, I know.” I spent five years in Special Corrections always being reachable. Once in awhile, I wanted to be unreachable.

  I knew what she was going to say next. Going to go over the whole "don't see any criminals" thing anymore. I tried to relax, slow my breathing. Tried not to get angry.

  “Meeting with Empowered criminals is especially dangerous.”

  Yep. Here we go. “Does it matter?” I retorted. “If I see any criminal, I go back to Special Corrections.”

  Ruth shook her head at me, frowning. “Mat, you know there’s a difference. Seeing a normal criminal is a violation, but meeting with an Empowered criminal is a one-way ticket to Special Corrections without appeal.”

  Okay, okay, she had a point, but I was trying to stay away from ALL criminals, not just Empowered ones.

  “What did he want?” Ruth asked.

  “To apologize. Like it mattered.” I couldn’t keep the disgust out of my voice.

  “That couldn’t have been all he wanted to say.”

  I shrugged. “I wasn’t going to listen to anything else.”

  She squeezed my hand. “If your PO finds out, you’ll be in trouble.”

  My face flushed with anger. “I told the creep to leave me alone!” I got up. “Where are Ava and Ella?”

  Ruth sighed, suddenly looking not just old but ancient. “Change the subject, why don’t you?” she said in a low voice. She sighed. “Out, just like you were.”

  “But you don’t know where they went?”

  She shook her head, laughed sadly. “That used to be you,” she said.

  “It did. That’s why I worry.”

  The deep rumble of an eight-cylinder engine came from the parking lot, interrupting what Ruth was going to say next. I went to the window, and peered outside.

  A newer model gold Lincoln Overlord pulled up below our apartment, white wall tires and silver spoked-rims screaming ganger-mobile. A rear door opened and my younger sister Ella got out, followed a moment later by her twin, Ava. Ava’s raven black hair was nearly as long as mine used to be. It swung around her face like a curtain, while Ella wore hers in a short, curly perm.

  Cute chicks. Way too cute. That was the problem.

  A muscled arm reached out of the car, pulled Ava back in, and I caught the hard profile of a tattooed man. They kissed, and my stomach roiled. Ganger crooks made me sick.

  “You didn’t say the girls hung with gangers!” I spat out the words. “You lecture me about Gus, and here they are hanging with gangers.” My skin was hot.

  “I’ve told them not to.” Her eyes went hard. “I’ve got to pick my battles.”

  “They aren’t listening,” I retorted.

  Another racking cough. “No more than you did,” Ruth said when she could speak again.

  “I’m trying now.” I turned back to the window.

  The girls stood by the stairwell, watching the car drive off. Then they headed up the stairs, Ava in the lead as always, Ella following.

  I met them at the door. “Where have you been?” Stupid kids, hanging with gangers. What were they thinking?

  Ava tried pushing past me, but I braced an arm against the door frame. The twins were five feet eleven, but I was taller at six one, so Ava had to look up to meet my gaze.

  “Out with friends,” Ava said when she couldn’t push past me. “That good enough for you, sis?” This last came out as a hiss.

  I leaned forward, looking down at her. “Don’t be a fool like I was.”

  “Yeah, you were a fool, all right. We all remember.”

  The twins had been twelve when I was convicted.

&n
bsp; “Good,” I said, blocking the doorway with my arm. “Those creeps down there won’t do you any good. How long have you been seeing them?”

  Ella spoke up, fast, trying to please me. “Just for a couple of weeks.”

  I clenched my hand. How the hell had I missed that? Because I’d been out pounding the pavement looking for work and getting leered at by creeps in interviews for dead-end jobs.

  Ava gave me a defiant smile. “You’re just jealous.”

  I laughed. That was too funny for words. I ignored Ava and kept looking at Ella. “How about you, Ella? Why are you hanging with gangers?”

  Ella looked away. “They’re fun,” she mumbled.

  “You going to let us in?” Ava crossed her arms. “I have to pee.”

  “I just want you both to understand something first.”

  Ella raised her head and looked at me, expectantly. She was the good one, always willing to listen.

  Ava brushed her hair back. “What’s that, sis?” Ava, on the other hand, was a stone cold bitch in training. Ruth said we were alike—we were nothing alike.

  “Those creeps are hanging with you for only two reasons.” I tried to look less angry. “One, they want sex.”

  Ava’s eyes flashed. “So what if they do? You weren’t a virgin back in the Renegades, were you?”

  I hadn’t been, but that didn’t matter here. “Two, they are just using you to get to me.” Checking things out, taking their time. I’d have to figure out a way to end this thing the twins had with them.

  Ava gave a loud, sarcastic laugh, and even Ella looked angry.

  “It’s not all about you,” Ava said. Ella nodded sharply in agreement. She was the follower when it came to Ava.

  Ava shoved my arm out of the way and they marched past me. “Stay out of our lives,” Ava shot back at me over her shoulder.

  I stomped outside and slammed the door behind me.

  The Lincoln Overlord pulled out onto Powell. The car’s engine revved, and it sped away, out of sight beyond the line of firs. Gangers off to have fun elsewhere. Scum.

  The hum of the trees in my mind tugged at me as I gripped the handrail. My power couldn’t help me. The trees certainly couldn’t. I had to deal with this just like any normal would. I couldn’t go to the police. I needed to get out and find a job that would get us out of this dump. And away from those gangers.