Aurora has to yell to be overheard from the machine. “You told me that my sons would feel no pain when they were depowered.” She stares over Dad’s body, one hand up in the air, thumb hovering over the doomsday button in her palm. The other hand motions to the machine in front of us. “It was April nineteenth. My sons were two weeks old. I had just lost my husband to a Retrieving tragedy. You said there would be no more poisonings and no more experiments. You claimed there was a new device—a depowering machine—and you said it would make depowering much easier than the old way of using a scalpel to cut out the power veins.”
I shudder.
Her intense focus on my dad causes me to forget my sister, forget the Heroes around me. I’m captivated by her story, unable to move. She lost her husband and sons in the same month. If that isn’t a good reason to turn evil, I don’t know what is.
“And then I was informed that I wouldn’t get to keep my depowered children. No, I was informed—not by you, Mr. President, but by your secretary—my sons had died. Right here in this machine. They were too young to survive it. Their screams were heard all throughout Central.” Her voice is strong, held taut by a thin string of courage. The pain in her face is impossible to hide. For the smallest minute, I almost empathize with her.
“I knew I would make you die for this,” she says. “I knew that if I were patient, my day of revenge would present itself. And what do you know? Forty years later, your wife gave birth to twins.”
Chills run up my arms and down my spine. My entire life has lead up to this moment; all planned out before I was even born.
“When I destroyed Saint Elizabeth Hospital, my plan was to kill your daughters and call it a day. But the Heroes showed up sooner than expected and I was only able to grab one. When Sophia tried to fight back, I killed her quickly. It wasn’t her fault, after all.”
White-hot rage bursts through my chest. Aurora must feel my power because she turns around and winks at me before placing her hand on my father’s shoulder. “With only one twin in my possession, I devised an even better plan. I raised her for sixteen years to be my personal vendetta machine. She turned out wonderful, didn’t she? As fate would have it, I grabbed the good one.”
She laughs. “Guess you were wrong about nature versus nurture. Both of your brats turned out evil.”
Aurora places her fingertips over the command plate on the machine. Every hair on my body stands up. Her entire hand is the only thing that will start the machine. Fingertips are just a tease. There’s still time to save him.
“You will pay for this,” Dad manages to say between gasps of pain.
“Do you even love me?” The voice comes from my left where my twin has managed to crawl up from the floor after her bones healed. Aurora gives her a bored look before turning back to my dad.
“Do you?” she repeats.
“Of course not.” Aurora shoots back bitterly. “How could I love someone who isn’t my own blood?”
A soul crushing sound comes from my twin and I’m tempted to reach out and touch her shoulder. But she did just try to kill me so I stay put.
I need a plan. I take a deep breath. I need a plan, I suck as a Hero and I need a plan.
Tell me where you are and we’ll think of a plan.
It’s as if Evan is standing right next to me. I squeeze my fingers into a fist, reaching out to the only lifeline I have available. I’m in the Atrium. Aurora has my dad on the depowering machine. All the Heroes are frozen. My sister is alive. Where are you? Hurry ohgodwhatdoidoevan?
“You told me they left me for dead,” my twin says, her power somehow growing weaker as she talks. “You said you took me and raised me because they didn’t want me. Why won’t you look at me?”
Your sister is alive? That explains the dual life forces in your blood.
Enough with the nerd shit, my dad is about to be depowered. Where are you?
“I’m right here.” This time his voice really is over my shoulder. Like the twins that we are, my sister and I twist in unison to find Evan standing between us. He’s looking at me, but he hooks a thumb in her direction. “What the hell is that?”
My twin dawns a look of bitchface, which I think looks absolutely fitting on her. “I’m Nova,” she hisses. Without so much as a glance backward, she sprints across the room, leaving waves of power in her wake. My jaw hits the floor as she slams into Aurora—fist first, knocking her against the side of the machine but most importantly, removing her fingers off the command plate. “I can’t believe—” she grunts, pulling back her fist and punching her again. “—you were going to—” Punch, kick. “—let me die!”
Evan grabs my arm. “You need to save your dad. Quick, while she’s distracted.” The seriousness in his eyes startles me.
Three things happen at the same time. But my brain processes them in this order:
Evan kisses me. Full lip-on-lip, his hands in my hair, three-second smooch.
Aurora releases her power, sending Nova rocketing off her feet and crashing into the wall with a fatal-sounding crack.
The depowering machine groans to life as Dad’s body lurches feet first into the bright circle, Aurora smiling as she pants for breath with her hand pressed firmly to the command plate.
“Dad!” is what I think, but my screams drown out any form of discernible language coming from my mouth. Aurora’s laughter fills the air, followed by my father’s blood-curdling scream. His legs lift off the gurney, convulsing as blood splatters out from his toes, to the arches of his feet, up his ankles, and continues to climb up his legs as the machine moves. Strands of silver pull out of his body, sucking up into the machine at speeds barely noticeable even with my Super vision.
I’m stunned into a paralyzed stupor, but Evan springs into action. He holds up his hands, aiming at Aurora. The old hag flies into the wall exactly as I had when Evan used his juice on me. With a flick of his wrists, he zaps her again and again and again until she is just a bouncing blur in my peripheral vision as my feet finally move. I race to my father.
Dad’s face is frozen in an open-mouthed portrait of agony; there is no point in continuing to yell because his pain is far from over. Blood pours from his calves as his flesh rips open, allowing silvery veins to rip out and suck into the machine.
Jake’s words come back to me as I survey the machine, looking for some kind of button to shut off the power. Once the machine starts, you can’t stop it until a depowered body comes out the other end.
I throw myself onto his chest, digging my heels into the base of the machine. My arms hook under Dad’s shoulders and I pull him toward me. Powerful magnets and Super technology are no match for my muscles and lack of proper nutrition. His two-hundred-pound body would be no trouble to move under normal circumstances. But now, my teeth grind together as I throw all of my strength into trying to release him from the magnetic pull of the bright white circle that’s now encompassing his knees. My ankles lose circulation from how hard I push against the machine. Red fills my vision as capillary vessels in my eyes burst but I blink them away and pull harder.
It doesn’t work. He only moves closer into the machine, losing more of his powered veins as each torturous second unfolds. His eyes are closed, his mouth stretched open but with no sound coming out. With no strength left, I sag onto Dad’s chest as I gasp for breath.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” I cry as I try once more to pull on him, but my arms are limp. I’m all pulled out.
As I lay on Dad’s chest, his bloodshot eyes look right at me as tears streak down his cheeks and shudders of pain zap into him like mosquitoes hitting a bug zapper. His chin lowers onto my head in a comforting gesture that I know isn’t an involuntary jerk. My heart shatters into a thousand pieces. Even though my dad is being depowered, he’s trying to comfort me.
Blinking away tears mixed with blood, I see Evan take the poker-chip device from Aurora’s fingers, probably breaking them in the process. He presses a button without hesitating. Either he’s an electronic supe
r genius, or he had a hand in building this device. I’ll choose to believe the first one for now. A crackle of energy shoots through the room and the frozen Heroes return to life once more.
The chaos turns into louder chaos as everyone springs into action. At the same moment, a line of Retrievers enter from the double doors, hooks at the ready, faces in war mode. God, these guys are good. They don’t let their feelings get in the way; they don’t break down and cry like I do.
The weight of my faults hits me as I realize that all the things I did when pretending to be a Hero were only what I thought Heroes should do. Being a Hero is much more than kicking ass and taking names. It’s being strong when everyone else is weak. It’s knowing when to act and when to remain still. It’s being the kind of person that will instantly remove all fear from the civilians in the room, just by showing up.
That kind of relief falls over me now. The Heroes are here, the Retrievers are ready—Aurora will not make it out of this the victor. Everything is going to be just fine.
The machine reaches Dad’s thighs. Well, almost everything. His power veins are twice the size now, leaving gaping wounds an inch thick as they rip from his body. My stomach churns at either the sight of it or the overwhelming smell of iron and blood. I can’t stay here much longer. I will have to let him go. I’ll have to meet him on the other side, when he is a human.
My left hand pulls Dad’s head toward me as I hover over him. “Dad, look at me. Don’t focus on the pain, focus on me.” My words are intense and all strung together and tinged with panic, but he appears to understand them anyhow. Our eyes meet and I keep talking, hoping that even a second of distraction will take away some of his pain. “I love you, Dad. I’m sorry I screwed things up, I’m sorry I foiled the undercover plan and I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you and just go home when you told me to. I never meant for anything bad to happen—I, I truly thought I had things under control. I’m sorry, Dad. I’m sorry. Don’t look down! Don’t look! Just don’t think about it.”
My voice cracks as I talk faster, trying to stop him from lifting his head to look at the machine’s progress. He’s almost violent as he jerks his head harder toward the machine, as if he wants me to look at it too. “Stop looking at it!” I yell, pushing his head back down. “Close your eyes! Think of something else, Dad, please!”
His eyes look from me to the machine, from me to the machine. Panic and pain must have consumed him, despite how calm he stayed for the first part of the depowering. My sobs are uncontrollable now. Dad’s face, twisted in agony, relentlessly staring at the machine, will forever burn into my memory. You can’t unsee something so disturbing.
Warmth hits the fingertips on my right hand. The moment I notice the unexpected heat, it turns from warm to scalding hot, lifting my fingers right off Dad’s chest.
Now I know why he was freaking out.
My fingertips split open and I watch in open-mouthed horror as tiny slivers of silver escape from my fingers and suck into the machine. My fingernails—painted purple with silver sparkles—twist and deform until they lift right off their nail beds as my skin bursts open to free my power.
My left hand draws blood as it digs into Dad’s shoulder. My thoughts spin in a million horrific directions, none of them ending with me getting out of this. The panic under my skin hurts more than the flesh in my hand. Shock fills me and for a moment I feel no pain at all. Just disbelief—and then agony.
I am being depowered, I am being depowered, this can’t be happening this must be a dream, oh god please let it be a dream, I’m going insane I’m totally insane, it hurts so bad, why won’t it just stop hurting. I’d rather die, just let me die!
Guilt digs into me as I realize that how I felt when Dad was being depowered is nothing compared to how I feel now that I’m the one under the machine. My knees give out from struggling against the pain, and soon I am lying limp, half on the gurney with Dad and half sinking to the floor. Thrashing with pain as the machine moves up to my wrist, and then my forearm, and then my elbow.
This is it. I’m doomed. This is happening. This isn’t a nightmare or possibility; this is reality. My eyes squeeze shut as I try to block out the pain, or maybe I’ve blacked out. I have no idea what I’m doing with my body; all I know is that I hurt. I will not be the one who saves the day.
I will never be a Hero now.
Why is that the only coherent thought to enter my mind?
A scream pierces the air, but it isn’t mine. I haven’t screamed at all, because allowing myself to scream would mean I’d never stop. The intensity of that scream pulls me out of my pain coma just enough to remember that although my arm is ripping to shreds, my neck is still perfectly capable of looking around.
Aurora struggles against the wall, held in place by a hand wrapped around her neck. Nova’s hand. “You don’t want to do this,” Aurora says, cutoff halfway by Nova tightening her grip.
“My whole life was a lie,” Nova says. “Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you now.”
“Because you are to kill her,” Aurora’s voice drips with disdain. “They won’t allow both of you to live. She must die.”
Nova flips her long blonde hair over her shoulder. “I don’t believe you.”
My teeth rip into my bottom lip, spilling blood in my mouth. The machine moves past my elbow and soon it’ll engulf my shoulder and then my face. The reality of the situation is right here smacking me in the face, and yet I still have this tiny flicker of hope buried somewhere deep in my subconscious that maybe I will be okay. That hope, that tiny flicker of possibility in the face of absolute hopelessness is the very reason I am not a Hero.
I won’t be okay. I am not okay.
Dad falls unconscious, either from the pain or blood loss. I’ll join him soon. Hell, I almost welcome it. Stars flicker across my vision as I try to focus in on what’s happening to Aurora. Two Retrievers approach her and Nova from each side, both looking to Max for direction. My brother motions to them and says something I can’t hear. Evan holds out a hand as if to stop them, shaking his head at whatever Max orders. Retrievers take no action against Nova, whose fingers are now drawing blood from Aurora’s neck.
Max shoves Evan out of the way. Evan shoves back.
Shouts come from both of them as other Heroes step in to mediate the argument. Crimson seems to side with Evan, which only pisses off Max even more. For one minuscule fraction of a second, I almost forget about the pain in my arm, until the machine rips a big ass vein straight from the inside of my elbow, hyperextending my arm in the process.
I cry out in pain as my legs give out underneath me.
Nova’s voice is the last thing I hear before everything goes black.
“I’m going to regret this.”
My tailbone sends shards of pain up my spine as I fall straight on my ass, rolling on my right side to compress my severed arm under my shirt. So much pain—white hot pain and icy wetness spilling against my chest. Just let me die, why can’t I die?
Evan drops to his knees beside me, yanking off his shirt in one quick motion. He pulls me over, exposing my arm to the air and my teeth grind until they crack in half, sending more pain into my supersaturated nerve endings.
I want to cry and scream but I don’t think I’m doing anything. Am I breathing? I can’t tell.
“It’s just your arm. You’re going to be okay.” His eyes meet mine for a fraction of a second, and in that tiny bit of time, I feel better. Then the agony slams into me full force again. “Try to hold still, I need to wrap it to stop the bleeding.” He rips his shirt and wraps it around my arm, starting at my armpit and spiraling down, pulling the shreds of flesh tightly back into place. The pain eases a miniscule bit, but I’ll take whatever I can get. My tongue scrapes across gritty sand—bits of my teeth chipping off.
Crimson orders Retrievers to bring medical help. Hours go by in a few seconds. Power buzzes through my chest in erratic spasms, unlimited sources of energy with nowhere to go. My thoughts are a scattered
deck of cards. Why isn’t my arm healing? I’ve never felt pain this long—it should heal. I regrew my own damn skull! Grow arm, grow!
Evan ties the shirt over my fingers, leaving my right arm as a blood-soaked mummy. His hand touches my cheek. “Stop hyperventilating. Breathe slowly. Your arm has been depowered, so it will heal the way humans heal.”
My eyes go wide. Large drops of saline that I refuse to call tears roll out of my eyes and down my cheeks as I take in the new information Evan dropped on me. My arm has been depowered. It will not heal instantly. Depowered.
“Maci. Come back to me.” My cheek stings as Evan slaps me again. My eyes snap open and I throw him a glare.
“Stop hitting me,” I grumble. I go to sit up and Evan helps me. I want to push his arm away, but, I need the help. Just like a human.
I recoil at the sight of blood under me. “You’ve lost a lot,” Evan says. “But your body will produce more. Stop giving me that face … No Maci, don’t!”
Evan lurches out of the way just in time to avoid being hit with the contents of my last meal. As embarrassingly awful and horrible as puking in public is, it makes me feel better. I push up on my knees with my good hand and then take a deep breath and stand.
“What happened?” I ask, my mouth tasting like rotten acidic spaghetti. “I thought I was a goner.”
He glances beside us, where my twin sits with her back pressed against the wall, knees pulled up to her chest. Her eyes dart around the room in quick, frightened movements. No one pays attention to her.
“You’re alive,” he says. “That’s all that matters.”
Hugo Havoc kneels by my dad, his shirt also removed and wrapped around Dad’s chest and neck. He’s giving orders to the Heroes around him, demanding an immediate lift of lockdown for important personnel. He says Dad needs a medical KAPOW pod stat.
Powered Page 19