Powered

by Cheyanne Young

  He nods and closes his mouth, even though his eyes tell me he has a million more things to say. The KAPOW reaches our secret destination quicker than expected. Jake escorts me across an empty corridor with black floors. Dad’s presidential office has black floors. I didn’t think they were anywhere else in Central.

  “Do you know where we are?” I ask. He nods and keeps walking by my side. “Are you going to tell me?”

  He stares straight ahead as we near a pair of black metal doors set into the rough canyon walls. Jake’s right hand presses against my lower back as his left one touches the door until it beeps and both doors swing inward. At his gentle push, I step through the doors first. “Good luck,” he whispers in my ear. The doors close a moment later, leaving Jake on the other side.

  My fingers dig into my palms as I step through a tiny black-tiled foyer that makes a sharp left turn. Whatever lies ahead can’t be worse than what I’ve already endured. It’s not like Aurora is waiting for me on the other side of this hallway.

  At least—no, she’s not. That nightmare is over. Everything is going to be okay. I turn the corner. Three of Central’s elders, the examiners, watch me as I enter the room, which appears to be Hugo Havoc’s office. He sits at a massive mahogany desk, flanked on either side by Lucy and other examiner, whose name I can never remember. His face softens when he sees me. The two women remain stiff like stone.

  “Erm, hello.” I stop behind a single chair in front of his desk. I know better than to sit uninvited.

  “Maci,” Hugo says. “How is your arm?”

  I cringe. What kind of answer am I supposed to give? Oh, it’s fantastic. A depowered arm is the latest fashion accessory for every teen that spent their entire life trying to be a Hero. My arm is GREAT, thanks for asking!

  Since I have nothing nice to say, I choose to say nothing at all.

  “I am sure you are ready to go home so I will make this quick. Because of recent events and the way you handled yourself and protected the Heroes as well as President Might,” he swallows and rises from his chair. “We have decided to award you probationary Hero status.”

  Words fly out of my mouth quicker than I thought possible. “Thank you, sir.”

  I bring my arms behind my back and grasp onto my bandaged hand with my good hand. No need to have the offending arm in sight.

  The examiners all give me a forced smile as if they had practiced it before I arrived. Lucy places a black leather folder on the desk and opens it to a contract with an attached pen. She twists it around to face me.

  “Your Hero contract is probationary for ten years, at which point all precautions will be lifted if you have not breeched any rules. If you agree to the terms, you will become a Hero immediately and will be assigned only to assist with natural disasters and the occasional human criminal. Probationary status bans you from dealing directly or indirectly with Villains and high security level operations. Failure to comply with your contract results in a permanent ban from the Hero Brigade. Please consider this carefully. This is a one strike and you’re out situation, Miss Might.”

  My eyes scan across the single page contract but the words are blurry and meaningless as I step forward on shaky legs and grab the pen, signing my name at the bottom. I don’t care what the rules are—I will follow them.

  Lucy takes the contract the moment I set the pen down. Hugo holds out a stainless steel box and opens the lid. Inside sits a shiny new BEEPER and I have a feeling it will fit my wrist perfectly.

  “Congratulations,” he says, stepping around the desk and shaking my hand. “You are the newest member of the Hero Brigade.”

  Everything happens quickly and yet slowly at the same time. I know I’m supposed to turn around and leave but I can’t help myself. “What happened to my sister?”

  Lucy squares her shoulders. “You have no sister.”

  Hugo clears his throat. “I assume you are talking about the villain who is allegedly your twin sister.”

  “Um, yeah,” I say. “That person. What happened to her?”

  Lucy lifts an eyebrow. “She is as good as dead. No need to concern yourself with her.”

  “Was she depowered?”

  Hugo gives Lucy a look, which she returns with a glare. The third examiner speaks up. “We do not keep secrets from Heroes, and I trust you two haven’t forgotten that.” To me, she says, “The villain in question ran off shortly after we arrived on the scene. We do not know where she is, but we are searching for her and she will be given a swift death on sight.”

  A lump forms in my throat. “But we’re Supers. I thought we didn’t kill?”

  Hugo places a hand on my shoulder. “If you murder innocent Supers and depower the president, we will make an exception.”

  Lucy’s head tilts to the side, my signed contract still gripped tightly in her hands. “Do you have a problem with that, Miss Might?”

  I slip the BEEPR onto my wrist and it tightens into place. I shake my head. “Sounds like a great plan to me.”

  The smell of home hits me like a freight train. I hadn’t realized how much I missed my house and the familiar sound of the door sliding open, the stench of Max having just done a workout in his bedroom, the feel of the carpet beneath my feet. Evan’s place didn’t have carpet.

  I drop the hospital bag full of medicine, gauze, and my damaged Hero suit to the floor and give a halfhearted smile to the two faces staring back at me. All the air squeezes out of my lungs as Max throws himself over me in a massive bear hug.

  “Welcome home, Mace.” He pulls back slowly, letting his right hand trail down my left arm but ignoring my other arm. I can’t blame him for that. His hand stops at my BEEPR. “What’s this? Is it from the hospital?”

  I snort, feeling excitement rush over me for the first time since I left the examiners. “What does it look like, genius?”

  Max holds up his left wrist. “It looks like this.”

  I pat him on the chest as condescendingly as I can for being so much shorter than he is. “Good job, Sherlock.”

  “You’re a Hero?”

  “Yup.” I try to play it cool but I’m all smiles and there’s no denying my excitement. All the air rushes out of my lungs again. This time Max lifts me off my feet and spins me in a circle. When he puts me down, he punches me on the shoulder.

  “You’re the most badass person in Central now. Partially depowered and still a Hero.”

  “I can fix that for you.” Evan speaks up for the first time. Max and I both spin around to face him.

  “You can?” I practically yell to him in anticipation. He scratches the back of his neck. His hair is pulled into a messy ponytail. His eyes have dark circles under them and his t-shirt is three sizes too big. Borrowed from Max, no doubt.

  “Well, I have no idea how to fix it.” He bites his lower lip. “But I’ll work on it. We can clone power cells, regrow veins, maybe do a partial vein transplant—I don’t know but I’ll figure something out.”

  He stares at my bandaged arm as he talks, the gears in his brilliant mind turning and thinking up possibilities that I could never imagine. I have full faith that he will think of a solution. Because that’s just Evan. I smile at him even though he’s not looking.

  “Geez, just hug already,” Max says, shoving me toward Evan. “I can cut the sexual tension in here with a knife.”

  I turn a furiously embarrassing shade of red and fall into Evan’s arms. He clutches me to his chest, wrapping both of his arms around me without a care as to which one of them is depowered. My cheek rests against his neck and I breathe him in, digging my fingers into his shoulders. I’ve seen him more than I’ve seen anyone else in the last two weeks but somehow I missed him the most.

  He kisses my head and shivers run through my body.

  The doorbell rings. Max slaps his hands together. “Pizza’s here.”

  An hour later I’m still munching on cheese bread while Max and Evan play Assassin’s Quest in the living room. The game room has a bigger screen and
better gaming chairs, but I get the feeling Max wants to be closer to the door just in case Dad comes home earlier than expected. We haven’t talked about Dad yet. I think we’ve all just decided he’s better off as the gigantic invisible elephant in the room right now.

  I take a sip from my bottle of orange Gatorade and sit on the floor between the boys.

  “So …” Max says in an extraordinarily casual way as he taps away on the game controller. “We have a sister.”

  A lump forms in the pit of my stomach. My mouth goes dry and I reach for my drink. I stare straight at the television. “Not for much longer.”

  Max pauses the game. “What does that mean?”

  My hands twist together, powered fingers intermingling with bandaged numb ones. “The examiners told me she ran away,” I begin, but Max interrupts me with, “She did. She scared off the Retrievers pretty quickly. I saw her standing against the wall when they finally took you off in a medic pod and when I looked for her again, she was gone. But it’s not like she had a MOD on her, so no one knows where she is.”

  “They’ve sent trackers to find her,” I say.

  Max’s eyebrows draw together as he looks at Evan. “Do you know anything else?”

  Evan shakes his head. “I’ve told you all I know.”

  “And what is that?” I ask.

  Evan massages his left wrist. “I was interrogated after Aurora died. They asked me a million questions about your twin. I guess they thought I might have been connected with Felix and would know something. But I didn’t, of course.”

  “Wait,” I hold out a hand. “Aurora’s dead?” Guess I shouldn’t be surprised after all. They’re going to kill my twin too.

  Evan nods. “Nova snapped her neck. Right after she saved you.”

  Stars fill my vision and all I’m doing is sitting here. I find myself straining to inhale, my power so high-strung it feels like it’ll burst out of my chest. “Nova did what?”

  “She killed her. I know we’re against murder and all, but—” Evan tugs at his eyebrow and glances at Max. “It was kind of awesome.”

  “Not that.” The words are sluggish as they leave my mouth. “The other thing.”

  “She saved you? You don’t remember?”

  I rock back on my knees, my fingers digging into my thighs. “I remember being depowered and thinking my life was over, and then I remember waking up in the medical ward. What do you mean she saved me? She was trying to kill me.”

  Max shifts awkwardly in his seat. His power feels tense, hurt and angry all at the same time. Evan looks me in the eyes and takes my bad hand. “Nova pulled you out. She saved you.”

  I toss the words around my mind, trying to make sense of them. “I don’t understand.”

  “Join the club,” Max mutters.

  Evan shrugs. “When you got sucked into the depowering machine, Max and I tried pulling you out but we couldn’t. Then she shoved past us, grabbed your shoulders, said she was going to regret doing it, and just pulled you out of the machine like it was no effort at all. That’s when I wrapped my shirt around your arm and you almost killed Aurora.”

  “I remember that part,” I interject. Flashes of holding a metal sign over her neck come back me.

  Evan continues, “You left Aurora and Max and I were at your side. Then we all kind of forgot about Nova as we were tending to you. I looked back just in time to see her snap Aurora’s neck.”

  “Nova pulled me out,” I say, more to myself. “She saved me.”

  He sucks in a deep breath and slowly lets it out. “She was stronger than Max and I combined.”

  I shake my head, disbelief clouding my thoughts. “That’s not possible.”

  “I think it’s because she’s your twin. If your power is doubled, then so is hers.” Evan keeps talking, using words over my realm of understanding, but I don’t hear any of it. The whole room blurs into nothingness. Breathing becomes harder. My mind is in a fog, too thick with emotions to make sense of anything around me. Nova saved me. She was sent to kill me and instead she saved me.

  Max grabs my arm and shakes me back to reality. “Maci, say something.”

  I shake my head as the room returns to normal and my vision clears. Max looks horrified as I shrug his hand off me and stand. “I’m going to find her.”

  “Why?” Max yells, standing to his full height. The pain behind his eyes tells me I’m making the right choice. The choice he would make if he wasn’t so loyal to Hero rules.

  Evan gnaws on his bottom lip. “You’re a Hero now. You can’t do this.”

  “I don’t care about the freaking Hero rules. That is my sister. She saved me and she didn’t have to.” I grab my Gatorade bottle and down the rest of the drink in one gulp. “Now I’m going to save her.”

  “Maci,” Max begins, but I ignore it, pushing past them and grabbing my Hero suit.

  “Can’t this wait until you’ve thought out a plan?” Evan argues, following me to the door. “Even if you find her, what will you do? Twins aren’t accepted here. You could lose your Hero status.”

  I hook my hands around the back of his neck and pull him close to me, kissing him on the lips. He kisses me back reluctantly then presses his forehead to mine. “They won’t let both of you live,” he whispers, gripping my face in his hands. “What exactly do you think you’ll do when you find her?”

  I shrug as a smile spreads across my lips. “Guess I’ll figure it out.”

  Many thanks to Felicia Morgan, Allison Renner, Emily Godwin, Nikki Godwin, Melissa Anderson, PT Dilloway and Christina Channelle for beta reading. Tons of thanks to my early readers and everyone to left me a review or will leave a review. Thanks to Shane Morgan for hosting the blog tour and for all the hard work she did to promote Powered.

  To my editor Cynthia Shepp who is awesome in about a million ways. Kerry Sparks at Levine Greenberg Literary Agency helped me get this book into shape and I am super grateful for her time and kind words.

  To Trudy Blough for being my first official fan. Readers like you are the reason I write!

  Thanks to Brad Sypniewski and Kevin Williams for helping me brainstorm King City and figure out how Maci’s story would end. I appreciate all the ideas and encouragement, despite the fact that you guys frequently suggested I kill off my main character. That’s so not happening.

  To Jamie for being the perfect big sister by offering unfailing support and encouragement in every single thing I set out to do.

  The same goes to Susan Connally who is my cheerleader. Everyone needs a Susan in their life. But you can’t have this Susan because she’s taken.

  And lastly, to Mom, Dad, Katie, Hallee and Chris, for being the best family a girl could ever ask for. You guys are all awarded Hero status.

  Cheyanne is a native Texan with a fear of cold weather and a coffee addiction that probably needs an intervention. She loves books, sarcasm, nail polish and paid holidays. She lives near the beach with her family, one spoiled rotten puppy and a cat who is most likely plotting to take over the world.

  Find Cheyanne on the web:

  www.CheyanneYoung.com

  Twitter @NormalChey

  www.Facebook.com/AuthorCheyanneYoung

  Coming Mid 2014

  The Second Book In The Powered Trilogy:

  OVERPOWERED

  After rescuing her twin sister Nova from a life of evil, Maci fears she’s made a huge mistake. As if she didn’t have enough trouble fitting in with her fellow Supers, Nova outshines Maci in personality and power.

  In the midst of this one-sided sibling rivalry, humans are dropping dead from a powerful drug that originates in the underground tunnels of King City. Someone is a traitor and Maci wants to capture the villain before anyone else—especially Nova.

  With Nova in the spotlight, Maci needs to set aside her jealousy before more humans die and the future of King City is changed forever.

 
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