Powered

by Cheyanne Young

  Copyright © 2013 Cheyanne Young

  All rights reserved.

  First Edition.

  Interior Design by Angela McLaurin, Fictional Formats

  https://www.facebook.com/FictionalFormats‎

  Cover images from Kesu at Shutterstock.com

  Metro font from Jovanny Lemonad at FontSquirrel.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems -except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews-without permission in writing from the author at cheyelizabeth@gmail.com.

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, events, and places portrayed in this book are products of the author’s imagination and are either fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Acknowledgements

  About The Author

  The humans turn sixteen years old and call it a Sweet Sixteen. I call it Villain Ass-kicking Day. There will be no streamers, glitter, and pop music celebrating the day I turn sixteen, and there sure as hell won’t be any frosting-covered cupcakes. But I wouldn’t have it any other way.

  I pull the covers up over my head and then shove them back down again, unable to get comfortable in my bed. Now that I’m officially sixteen, my power is fully developed. I twist my hands in front of my face, feeling the power reverberate through them as chills prickle down my neck.

  What if it doesn’t work? What if I’m broken? What if the Hero alarm goes off and I can’t remember how to fight?

  I shake my head and check the time on the Biometric Engineered Earth Positioning Receiver strapped to my wrist. Powers don’t just quit working. They are a part of me; a part of every member of the Super race. Oh, and it’s one-fifteen in the morning, a whopping sixty seconds after I last checked the time on my borrowed BEEPR.

  With a groan, I roll to my back and stare at the smooth white celling in my bedroom. Shadows of the moon shining through the Grand Canyon paint a familiar picture on my wall. I don’t know how the examiners expect me to sleep on my birthday. This is the day I’ve trained for my whole life. If only the timing of Hero exams weren’t a big secret, then maybe I could get some sleep.

  Blurry images dance across my subconscious—floating bits of dreams that disappear before I can grasp them in my mind. My wrist vibrates, emitting an all-familiar sound. My eyes snap open. The BEEPR displays the message I’ve waited sixteen years to see.

  HERO MISSION RECEIVED.

  I’m on my feet two seconds later, mask lowered over my face, jaw set. Power courses through my chest, pumping though my body faster than the blood in my veins. A chill trails down my fingers and toes. It isn’t fear that pulses through me. It’s confidence.

  I twist the borrowed BEEPR around my wrist so I can view my mission details on the touchscreen. Messing with it will cost precious seconds, but I only have to put up with this one time. After today, I’ll have my own BEEPR.

  After today, life will be perfect.

  My footsteps echo off the smooth stone walls as I run through tunnel after tunnel, following the BEEPR’s instructions until the blue dot turns green. I kick through the tall steel door in front of me, expecting to see the Atrium. Built into the side of the Grand Canyon, the Atrium is the center of King City. It’s where the miles of underground corridors all come to a stop.

  Some of them aren’t totally underground; the main corridor to the Atrium has polished limestone walls to the left and a sharp three-hundred-foot drop to the right, enclosed with a wall of glass. It’s a gorgeous view and I’ve grown up making trips to the Atrium with Dad and Max. But this isn’t it.

  This is a … carnival?

  Words flash across the BEEPR and I commit them to memory. My first mission is to save one human and capture two villains. Excitement zaps through me until I’m no longer flesh and bone, but pure adrenaline. These two bastards will wish they’d never turned evil when I’m done with them.

  My boots step cautiously on the gravel as I survey my surroundings. I’m in a narrow pathway between two rows of carnival game booths with twinkling yellow lights and colorful painted signs. Gigantic stuffed teddy bears sway in the gentle breeze, their stitched-on smiles waiting anxiously to be won and taken home. Tacky music plays somewhere in the distance. The cheerful tune is nothing but creepy when I’m the only person around.

  Sixteen years of Hero-training philosophies, rules, and even my own Hero daydreams flood into my mind. I’m in a modern working carnival with zero visitors and not a carnie in sight. This is a set up.

  “Show yourself,” I say, stopping in front of a booth with balloons taped on a dartboard. My voice is strong and unwavering; exactly the way a Hero’s voice should be.

  He doesn’t make a sound but prickles of energy dance up my left shoulder, hinting that he’s close. I cross my wrists in front of each other and retrieve two black hooks. Once activated, their chemical components will make any Super’s power seize up in their veins, freezing like glass. Any unnecessary movement and you’re dead. I need to make this count.

  “I said show yourself, coward.” I turn my head toward the power. My fingers grip the hooks patiently, not wanting to release them until the perfect moment.

  “That’s no way to talk to your elder.” He steps out from behind an oversized scale with the words ‘guess your weight’ above it in blinking lights. The time it takes me to recognize him as Bammer, the world’s most pathetic villain who typically picks on homeless humans, is exactly how long it takes me to fling my hooks.

  They shoot through the air with a thwoop. Each hook wraps around his wrists, their full magnetic power harnessing onto the power in his veins and bringing him to the ground. He lets out a groan, from either the debilitating magnetic force or because his head bashes into the ground when he crumples.

  I walk up to him. He doesn’t move. My BEEPR blinks orange when I scan it over his body, sending word back to Central that there’s a rogue Super ready for punishment. Well. That was easy.

  A satisfied laugh escapes me. I just bagged my first villain in under sixty seconds. It’s as if I’ve been doing this my whole life.

  Time to capture the second one.

  Sensing no other power in my vicinity, I run through the game booths toward the rides. Every ride is in motion, spinning in circles or flipping over and over, despite having no riders in the restraints. The clanking of metal on metal in the giant mechanical gears sends my senses on a loop. I fixate on the grinding lull of each ride.

  Enchanting lights flicker and swirl around each two-person cage on a ride called The Zipper. The massive steel circle of the Ferris wheel lights up in green, blue, purple, and red starbursts that start out small, and then grow until they’re as big as the wheel itself. Carnivals are beautiful when there’s no one around trying to sell cotton candy or swindle the humans in a rigged game that gives three throws for a d
ollar.

  A scream bursts through the air and I spin toward the sound. A single human, a woman from the sound of her shrieks, stands in a ride called the Gravatron. It’s a large cylinder with no roof that spins fast enough to make your body stick to the inside walls with centripetal force. Then it tilts left and right, making you think you’d fly out if not for the restraints. My best friend Crimson and I tried it once but the G-forces that make humans squirm did nothing to us.

  The second villain mans the ride’s control board. My stomach drops as I take in his pearly white suit and bald head. Snapback is not an easy villain to defeat.

  “Step away,” I demand. “You’re caught. Might as well give up.”

  “Nice try, rookie.” The shrill tone of his voice haunted my nightmares as a kid. But I am not afraid now. He presses the red button in the center of the control board. The ride slowly cranks to life as the human lets out another panicked scream, her arms flailing wildly around her.

  She’s in her early twenties probably, with dark brown hair sticking to the side of the wall. She screams—yet again—as the ride accelerates. Besides making her a bit dizzy and ruining her good hair day, I don’t see why she’s a victim. I mean, not unless her lifelong goal was to avoid carnival rides. But whatever the reason, if my BEEPR wants me to save her, I will.

  I keep my voice light as I close the distance between us from thirty feet to about ten. “Some evil plan you’ve got here. Putting a human on a ride that was made for humans?” I snort. Snapback focuses on his prey as she spins around and around, his eyes wide with pleasure as he delights in her fear. What a sick jerk.

  For a tiny second, I think this may be an easy capture. Too bad I wasted my only set of hooks on the first villain. I take a deep breath and think out my attack. I play it cool by stretching my arms in front of me, acting as if I’m not scrambling for ideas in my head. I clear my throat. “What are you going to do? Spin her until she throws up?”

  The close proximity of my voice surprises him and he whirls around, fixing me with an evil glare. I lunge toward him, grabbing a metal awning with one arm to pull my body in the air. He grabs for my legs but I kick him in the jaw before letting go. I concentrate all of my power downward as I land with my feet on his shoulders. His back slams across the control board with an eerie crack.

  “You bitch,” he spits out, clutching his back with his left hand. I grab his right hand before he can touch it to his other wrist, generating enough power to send a deadly bolt of it in my direction. He twists around trying to break free, but it only makes me wrap his own arm around his neck, pinning his back to my chest in the ultimate chokehold.

  With his wrist in my hand, I squeeze hard, hoping to shatter his bones … or at least cause enough pain for him to stop stomping on my freaking foot.

  “What have you done to her?” I ask, remembering the first rule of being a Hero is to save the humans.

  “Die,” he says through gritted teeth.

  “Predicting your future, eh?” I snort, tugging his arm even tighter around his own neck while he gasps for breath.

  “You can’t kill me,” he says in ragged gasps. “It’s the highest law of Heroes.”

  He has a point. And I have no good comeback. So I knee him hard in the kidney and demand to know what he’s doing to the human.

  “I’m just giving her a ride.” His voice drips with sarcasm. “It’s not my fault she didn’t put on a seatbelt.”

  Oh shit. The ride has reached its full speed, rising a good twenty feet off the ground. Any moment now, the tilting-at-sharp-angles part of the thrill will begin. And a human in the Gravatron with no restraints? Well, it’ll be like the time my brother put a plastic army man on the ceiling fan and flipped on the switch.

  The human cries out, in pain or fear—I can’t tell which, but it assures me she’s still alive. I release my hold on Snapback, giving him a powerful shove to get him far away from me so I can use those precious seconds to think of a plan. After all, there are no passing grades for rescuing a dead human.

  I go to the back of the control box and lean over it to keep Snapback in my vision as I survey the controls. All the buttons are smashed. Every single one. I press hard on the cracked plastic of what used to be the stop button. Nothing happens.

  I expect Snapback to attack me again, running up from behind the broken bits of what used to be a spinning teacup. But he doesn’t come back as I break open the control box and rip out wires, hoping one of them will cut the electricity. I can’t sense his power anymore, but that’s not comforting since I don’t have the mental energy to focus on feeling out his power and saving the human.

  The ride hasn’t tilted yet, so that’s one good thing. The control panel looks like a bowl of wire spaghetti. The ride has to have some kind of shut-off switch amidst the gears underneath the massive, spinning cylinder. My hair whips around my face, circling my neck like a caramel-colored scarf as I step under the spinning ride.

  And damn if I’m not a total genius. Three metal levers are in front of me: two black and one red. I grab the red one and shove it down. The gears let out a frightening grinding sound as they shift into a new position. Everything gets dark as the metal floor tilts sharply on its axis and smashes me in the face.

  Pain of this magnitude was never described in my training material.

  Now on the ground, mouth filling with my own blood, I crawl on my hands and knees to avoid another whack in the face. The human’s cries come as quick gasps as she holds onto the edge of the wall, trying not to fly out. I hoped it wouldn’t come to this.

  “Let go,” I yell, scrambling to my feet. Blood gushes down my forehead and I wipe it away with the sleeve of my suit. “I’ll catch you.”

  I expect her to refuse but she complies. Her body flies out of the ride and soars a dozen feet in the air. I knock over a popcorn cart as I run faster than she’s moving. When I’m far enough away, I turn around and hold out my arms, catching her like an oversized football.

  Crouching by the ticket booth, I place her gently on the grass. She pulls a wooden stake out of the ground and rips off the string of triangle flags attached to it before brandishing it like a weapon. Geez, she could at least pretend to be grateful that I saved her life. But Heroes also can’t be assholes, so I suck in my thoughts and stick to the training material.

  “I am Hero Maci Might, and you’re okay,” I tell her. “Just wait here.” I pull my BEEPR off my elbow and twist it up so I can see the screen. I swipe through the options, trying to find the button to call a Retriever. I could have sworn it was in this menu—

  Five fingers dig into my back and throw me on the ground. Snapback’s toothy grin hovers in front of my face and it’s all I can do not to cringe and lose concentration. His breath smells like motor oil but that’s not as unbearable as the sight of his disgusting notched teeth.

  I leap feet first into a standing position. My right arm makes a sharp swoosh through the air, landing—oh, crap—right into thin air as Snapback ducks, missing my punch. With nowhere to land, my fist swirls through the air, spinning me in a circle before I can regain my ready stance. This wins me an even bigger grin from the hairless freak in front of me.

  A bead of sweat rolls down my forehead, an ever-present reminder that I don’t have a proper Hero suit to wick away the wet distraction before it ruins my fight. No worries. I’m about to put an end to that by defeating this bastard and earning my title of Hero.

  Snapback karate chops my forearm as I wipe my face. My arm goes cold but I continue to fight back as the freezing chill shoots up it and into my chest. It’s pain, I know, but the adrenaline coursing through me refuses to let me feel it just yet, and I’m grateful.

  He lunges toward me and I flip backward, landing behind a row of roller coaster seats that hit him in the chest as his leap takes him a shorter distance than he’d expected. That’s what happens when you jump with a broken back, idiot. My knee presses painfully against the coaster’s railing in front of me. I pull away,
knowing exactly how I’ll defeat Snapback.

  Roller coasters have powerful magnets that enable the seats to travel up to the dropping point. My jaw clenches as I push the carts off the track, conveniently toppling them on Snapback. That wasn’t my intention, but it is a nice benefit to hear him cry out in pain. I pry a large magnet off the rails and let its magnetic force fill my fingertips. It isn’t a Hero-grade magnet but I think it’ll work.

  The carts fly through the air as Snapback bursts from the ground, renewed with the energy to win. I let him take a step forward, allowing him to think he might have a chance of defeating me. His chest heaves with each breath and his grin stretches across his whole face. He reaches out to grab my arms.

  “Here, have a parting gift.” I shove the magnet straight into his chest. It presses against his sternum, harnessing onto the central location of his power. I let my own power rise from my toes and up through my chest, pushing everything I have through my arms and into the magnet. The scent of burning hair wisps off the magnet as Snapback’s eyes roll to the back of his head and he collapses.

  I swipe my BEEPR over his chest and rush to the human who is still crouched by the ticket booth, the shard of wood clenched tightly in her hand. I wrap my arm around her and press the call button on my wrist.

  The carnival rides sink into the ground, followed by the gravel roads and game booths and even Snapback’s jittery body, revealing the white marble floor of the Atrium. A glass bowl lowers from the sky, which is now the vaulted stone ceiling, revealing a panel of three examiners who have been watching my every move.

  A woman’s voice echoes throughout the Atrium, “Congratulations on your successful completion of Hero Examination Level One.”

  I smile, mouth open as I’m still out of breath but trying to make it look like I’m not panting. So many nights spent dreaming of this moment and now that it’s here it doesn’t even feel real. Except the pain in my face. That feels real.

  The woman in my arm wriggles, complaining about her neck. “Shut up,” I whisper, still smiling toward the examiners. I loosen my grip and adjust my arm to cling around her shoulder instead of her neck. I’m not going to let her go just yet—she could purposely run away and ruin my mission. The examiners are tricky like that.