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by Cheyanne Young

  He stops so quickly that I slam into his back. He spins around to face me. His left shoe shows my reflection as confused and a bit distorted.

  “This morning Central ordered me to incinerate the Retriever suit I had made for you. They even sent Lucy down to witness it.” He chuckles and rolls his eyes. “It’s like they don’t trust me. Can you imagine?” His coy smile is contagious.

  I smile back, happy to share a moment of bashing Central with him, despite my circumstances being totally the opposite of joy. “Can’t blame them for not trusting you. You’re on my side.” I pause. “The evil side.”

  “Don’t you worry your beautiful head, Maci. They’ll realize you aren’t evil and they’ll eat their words. I am sure of it. But when the time comes, I may not be around to make you the Hero suit you deserve.”

  “Huh?” I say, or at least—I begin to say—but Pepper’s index finger presses to my lips, silencing me mid hu? The studio lights dim until only his shiny eyes and the purple streak of sparkly eyeliner are visible as he whispers, “So I made it for you now.”

  With a flick of his wrist, a beam of light bursts from the ceiling across the room. At first, it looks like a person is standing under the light, but its lack of movement and frozen, hip-cocked, arms-locked pose tells me it’s a mannequin. It’s my size.

  And it’s wearing my Hero suit.

  “Pepper.” I breathe the word. My suit is black with intricate silver accents as sharp splines woven in the fabric. Two silver lines start at the shoulders and come to a point on top of the wrists. Thicker silver lines spill out of the sides and travel down the side where boning cinches in at the waist. I walk around the mannequin, taking in the fabric that seems to turn silver at one angle and black at the next. A thick Kevlar ribbon laces up the corset back through gunmetal grommets.

  The gloves almost look like human dishwashing gloves, only the fingers are catered to fit tightly against every muscle in my hand. Instead of rubber-duck-yellow, they’re black with slots along the back. If I know Pepper, and I do, the slots are a shroud for Retriever hooks. “I’ve never seen gloves like this.”

  Pepper’s arms cross in front of his chest. “It’s a Kevlar-carbon composite with steel reinforcements and two sets of hooks. Diamond-tip finger plates to amplify power release and textured to ensure grip strengths of five hundred pounds without slipping.”

  “So it’s got everything,” I muse. My finger places the barest touch on the sleeve and chills run down my spine. “Everything but a plunging, sexy neckline like Crimson’s.”

  I don’t know why I say it like that. I mean, I don’t want a stupid booby suit like hers, but I guess I’m insulted that Pepper designs them for her, and just about every other female Hero, but when it comes time to design a suit for Maci? Let’s have fabric cover her entire chest and she can be the virgin queen of the Supers, famous for emanating exactly zero sex appeal.

  “Oh, get off it girl. Crimson begged for that cleavage.” Pepper shakes his head and holds his hands above the chest of the mannequin, forming a diamond with his fingers and thumbs. “I designed this chest area for a reason. Research developed this new poly-titanium material that would protect your chest better than anything I could ever design. Your chest is the source of your power, after all.”

  My chest feels warm as I become aware of the power coursing through it. “I – I don’t know what to say.”

  “You’ll say nothing because I didn’t put it in your suit.”

  I arch an eyebrow.

  Pepper throws his hands in the air. “The poly-titanium blend was created at Research two years ago. I wanted to provide every Hero with an impenetrable breastplate, but due to regulations and Central’s paper-pushing elders, they wouldn’t let me. They said it was too expensive, said it worked too well, and that the Heroes wouldn’t try as hard if they felt invincible.”

  “That’s crap. We’re practically invincible without a fancy suit.”

  Pepper leans in. “A lot of things are crap, Maci Might.”

  “You wasted this suit.” My eyes fall to the floor. “I’m not a Hero. I probably won’t ever be. You had to know that.”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t know the future and neither do you.”

  He’s right, I guess. Central is wrong though. I don’t think any sort of suit would ever make me think I’m invincible. Pepper said it was invented two years ago, the same time Evan started working in Research. I wonder if he worked on this? I shake my head and focus on more important things.

  Pepper is a total genius. Every inch of this suit was designed for me, right down to the drastic color choices. I’ve never seen a black suit before. Heroes don’t wear black.

  I must have said that last part aloud because Pepper is beside me in the next moment. “Maci Might wears black,” he says in my ear. He takes a strand of my hair and runs his fingers through it, deliberately making his point. “Maci Might rocks it.”

  “You designed a suit that calls out my darkening hair rather than hides it.” I give Pepper a mild stink eye as he stands there looking pleased with himself.

  “You can hide what makes you you, or you can embrace it. That’s exactly what I told the examiners too.”

  “You did?” The weight of what he’s done for me, what he’s risked by overstepping his authority with the examiners, sinks in. “What did they say?”

  He waves a hand through the air. “They told me to screw off.”

  Oh.

  Well then.

  I wasn’t aware of how much hope I had stored up in those few words until his reply made it all burst and float away.

  At Pepper’s command, the mannequin shrinks into itself, taking what used to be the shape of my body and conforming it into a cylinder the width of a stripper pole before recessing into the ceiling. My suit crumples to the floor and Pepper folds it into a neat square, crossing the gloves on top of it.

  He places it in a plain paper bag, incognito style. “It’s yours. Now I’m afraid I must change the subject and ask for your confidentiality a moment.”

  “As if we weren’t already being confidential?” I smile. My fingers can’t stop running over the smooth fabric of my new suit inside the bag.

  “Do you know how to keep a secret?” Pepper asks, every fiber of his body writhing in melodramatics as he makes me a latté.

  “Of course I know how.”

  “But do you actually keep them?” He takes a seat on the barstool near his workbench and then stands right back up again.

  I sip my latté and ponder the question. As daughter of the president and sister to a Hero, I am privy to loads of sensitive information that I am not allowed to share. And I never have shared it. So, in that sense, yes, I can keep secrets.

  On a much more realistic level, I share my deepest, wildest secrets with Crimson every single day. Max hears all the ones that don’t involve boys or embarrassing female issues.

  “Maybe if you tell me the type of secret, I can answer more accurately.”

  Pepper watches me, his eyes flickering back and forth between mine. He opens his mouth and then closes it. He erupts into an avalanche of laughter. I jump at the unexpected sound and tighten my grip on my latté. It’s the kind of laugh someone does when confronted with a hilarious joke, something that makes you laugh and then laugh some more as each layer of the joke peels away, sending you even further into hysterics.

  I smile awkwardly as if I get the joke too. Pepper wipes his eyes with a handkerchief as his laughs subside into chuckles. “It doesn’t matter what I do. I’m over. I’m done.”

  “You’ll need to elaborate if you expect me to understand,” I say.

  “It doesn’t matter if you keep the secret or not.” With a final wipe of his eyes, he folds the handkerchief and slides it back into his coat pocket. “I have something to tell you and you are the first to know.” He sips his latté and sets the cup on the workbench. He takes a stainless flask from the inside pocket of his blazer. “I am retiring.”

  I
’m shocked into silence as he pours a clear, foul-smelling alcohol into his coffee, shaking the flask a few times to ensure it is empty. “I received a memo from Aurora this morning.”

  “She’s taking your job?” I ask.

  He spins around in his chair, facing the blank wall as it comes alive, displaying his messages. A lump forms in my throat as I read Aurora’s message to Pepper, sent less than an hour ago.

  My Dearest Apprentice,

  Please clear all personal belongings from the lower levels of my studio. When I arrive, I will take no offense if you choose to live elsewhere for the duration of my stay. Should you be there to greet me, you may find yourself in a place of questionable legality. Your loyalties to me, above all else, are expected. You have never failed me and I trust that you will not do so now.

  Yours,

  Aurora

  I snort. “That’s the most cryptic thing I’ve ever read. She’s a crackpot.”

  “Her studio,” Pepper mocks, his back still facing me as he looks up at the wall screen. “Fifty years here and she still considers it hers.”

  “It’ll be okay,” I assure him.

  “I’m worthless. I have nothing to live for.”

  “That’s not true,” I snap on reflex. Pepper gives me an annoyed look, a look that says really? That’s the best you can do? “In a few hours, Aurora will kick me out of my own studio—my own home. I will have precisely nothing to live for.”

  “You have tons to live for!”

  Pepper’s lips form a flat line. “Name one.”

  Deafening silence fills the space between us as I close my mouth. I have no answer for him. All of my knee-jerk replies are nothing but empty words and excuses, like a dime store sympathy card meant to make someone feel better. There are no cleverly worded poems or historical quotes that can make him feel better; nothing that can change his situation. I’ve been in Pepper’s shoes before. I’m there right now.

  If I’m not a Hero, I have no reason to live.

  Pepper was born to design suits. He wakes up every morning, puts on a fitted shirt with matching cufflinks and a belt so that he can look as passionate as he feels about his job. He dedicates his entire life to designing each suit to be better than the last. This isn’t his hobby; it is his life. This is when I realize that Pepper and I are very much alike.

  It’s me who grabs his shoulders this time.

  “You’re right.” I stare him in the eyes with my jaw set and watch his own purple eyes swell with tears as his bottom lip quivers.

  “You’re absolutely right. You have nothing to live for if you aren’t here, doing what you were born to do.” I swallow, knowing my speech isn’t just for him. It’s for me too. “So, isn’t that worth fighting for?”

  Jake doesn’t look happy to see me even though his first words are, “Thank god, I found you.”

  “Technically I found you.” When I left Pepper’s and didn’t find Jake waiting outside for me, I walked halfway home before I came across him, sitting slumped against the wall in the tunnels. He was convinced that he was on a one-way trip to be depowered once my dad discovered he had failed to escort me home. It took all of my Hero-negotiation skills to convince him that he technically could still walk me home and no one would know about the detour.

  We look to the left as a terrifying noise echoes through the tunnel, growing louder as it nears us. It isn’t the screeching of a KAPOW pod in need of a tune-up. The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. It’s a scream. Not a high-pitched, Wilhelm scream from horror movies, but a low, guttural lash of desperation. A single word.

  “No.”

  The next sound is more frightening than the one before it. Static screeches through the air as a computerized female voice echoes through the tunnels in Central. “All Supers are in Lockdown. Proceed to shelter and do not leave until notice is given. Do not use communication devices. All Supers are in Lockdown.”

  A weight falls to the bottom of my stomach and my skin turns to ice. My eyes lock with Jake’s and he gives me a look that I know I will never forget: This isn’t a drill.

  He doesn’t even glance at the door to my house, which is only a step or two away from me. He doesn’t try to force me and my brown paper bag through the door and into safety. Guess he finally figured out there’s no use in trying to argue with me.

  I leap into a sprint and he’s trailing after me half a second later. There’s shouting and desperate pleading, sobbing and more shouting echoing through the tunnels as I follow the two different voices. I refuse to believe what logic and my short-term memory is telling me.

  That the male voice I hear begging and crying is Pepper.

  Behind me, Jake pants for breath as his footsteps lag behind me. He calls out for me to wait up, bargains that he’ll give me anything if I please just let him escort me. I smell the sweat rolling off him, hear it splash onto the concrete, but as I turn the second to last corner to Pepper’s studio, I don’t slow down and I don’t look back.

  I’m not out of breath when I reach the last turn and slow to a creep walk. If anything, I have too much oxygen in my lungs, too much adrenaline coursing through my body. I take a slow, deep breath. Above, the speakers keep repeating the same warning about being in lockdown. My fingers slide against the wall as I crouch to below eye level and peek around the corner.

  A public KAPOW pod waits outside of the studio, its open door swinging in the nonexistent wind. A thin woman stands at the threshold of Pepper’s studio with her back to me. She’s flanked on both sides by two men of imposing statures who are dressed head to toe in black. She wears high-heel leather boots and a black mini dress that fits tightly around her shapeless body. Silver hair sways around her lower back as she speaks.

  “I demand loyalty.” Her words are shards of glass, spilling out of her mouth and slicing through everything in its path.

  A whimper pulls my gaze away from her and to the crumpled, bloody pile at her feet.

  Oh God.

  Oh dear God.

  Pepper’s body convulses as he sobs. “I cannot tell you,” he says. “I—I—I don’t know. I’m sorry, Aurora.”

  “LIAR.” The heartless bitch stomps on Pepper’s outstretched hand.

  Rage thunders inside my chest as my body aches to leap into action, to rip her head off and shove it down her throat. With a monumental amount of willpower, I hold back. I stand perfectly still. I don’t act upon my emotions. Because that always gets me into trouble. Think, Maci.

  Jake is nowhere near, the slow bastard. My MOD won’t work since we’re in lockdown and the only thing I have is a paper bag with my Hero suit in it.

  Hidden in the tunnel adjacent to Pepper’s studio, I strip and step into my new Hero suit, not allowing myself even a moment to savor the feeling of the fabric on my skin. Instead, I figure out my plan of attack.

  I’ll hook the two cronies. Easy. Then I’ll take out the woman. She’s decades older than me but she’s no thicker than a skeleton so I’ll be faster and stronger. But not too fast—she needs to suffer for what she’s done to the man who is my only ally.

  From around the corner, Aurora demands that he tell her something and Pepper adamantly refuses. I take a few deep breaths as the seconds feel like hours. Willpower clenches to my muscles, forcing me to stay put until the best time to reveal myself.

  A hand touches my shoulder. Instinct swings my body around, grabbing my unexpected attacker by the neck, and shoving him into the wall.

  “Jesus,” Jake breaths with a gasped breath. I let go.

  “Sorry.”

  He rubs his neck. From around the corner, Aurora’s voice is sickly sweet. “Pepper, sweetheart. I do not want to hurt you. You are my sweet apprentice.”

  “I am no longer an apprentice,” Pepper interjects. A smack echoes off the tunnels. Jake’s eyebrows draw together in concern. “What the hell is going on?” he mouths. Or at least, that’s what it looks like. I press my finger to my lips to silence him.

  A cold female l
augh makes me cringe as Jake and I eavesdrop. “You will tell me where she is this instant or you will die.”

  Jake sucks in a breath. Time is running out. I press my hand to Jake’s chest and stand on tip toe until I’m eye level and one inch away from him. In a voice only a Super can hear, I whisper, “There’s three of them. I’ll hook, you retrieve. But don’t come out until I call you. We may need the element of surprise.”

  Jake’s eyes widen. “This is a Hero’s job, Maci. We can’t do this.”

  “I’m doing it with or without you,” I hiss.

  From around the corner, “You have ten seconds, apprentice!”

  Jake grabs my shoulders, his whisper a faint cry, “We’re in lockdown. Heroes will be here any minute. Please, Maci.”

  “Five Seconds!”

  I shrug him off—fixing a glare on him that could move mountains. “How dare you be such a coward?”

  “Three seconds!”

  Jake’s shoulders fall. He steps backward, admitting defeat. I turn and peek around the corner, preparing to make my move. Whatever Aurora wants to know, Pepper isn’t telling and that means it’s a secret worth keeping.

  I take one step forward, arms tight and locked in a hook-throwing position. Now is the time in the human superhero movies where the hero says something badass, clever, and quotable for years to come, right before taking out the villain and saving the hot girl.

  Pepper isn’t a hot girl, and this isn’t a movie, but I would love to have something incredibly badass to say right before I send this real life villain to the depowering machine.

  “Time’s up,” Aurora says, grabbing Pepper by the neck and pulling until he’s standing again, albeit against his own will. Red tears fall down his cheeks. Guess she is stronger than she looks. Each word she says now comes out like its own venomous sentence.

  “Where.”

  “Is.”

  “The.”

  “Might.”

  “Girl?”

  My body goes numb. My stomach leaps into my throat and threatens to block off my airway. Tingles flow through my arms and into my chest, paralyzingly painful. This woman has come into Central and made a bloody pulp out of Pepper for the purpose of finding someone. Me.