Through the haze, I pull open the door. I know every inch of the lab by heart. Even smoke-blind, I can find my way to the emergency ventilation button.
Weaving around stools and counters, I hurry along the front edge of the room. Seconds later my stomach connects with the counter that lines the far wall. I lean forward, tracing my fingers up the tile until I feel the big, red button.
I smack my palm against the plastic. A whooshing sound fills the lab, so powerful it almost drowns out the alarm sirens. Faster than I expect, smoke gets sucked up and out of the room through the massive vent in the middle of the ceiling. As the haze dissipates, the shadow of a figure emerges. A man stands in the back corner of the lab, facing the vault.
And the door is wide open.
I’m too late. I’ve failed.
“No,” I whisper, terrified at what the villains might get their hands on.
I have to find a way to warn the League. Right now. The system automatically sends alerts, but there have been a number of false alarms lately. I don’t want them to dismiss this as another one.
I glance around wildly and see my cell phone charging on the other side of the lab.
Using the counter to push off, I launch myself into a sprint. Only I don’t take into account the stool I had pulled into the center of the room while working on the transcription earlier. I crash into it and send myself stumbling into the nearest lab table.
“What have we here?” a sneering voice asks with a crisp British accent.
I turn to the guy standing in front of the vault. Like Dark-and-Scowly, he’s dressed in all black. Must be the standard-issue villain uniform these days. Except that his shock of red hair—which is currently standing on end—and the look of surprise on his face make him seem more startled-matchstick than villain-capable-of-blowing-up-the-vault.
That is, until he narrows his eyes at Dark-and-Scowly, who has somehow appeared in the blown-out doorway. I have a moment to wonder how the hell he got out of the janitor’s closet before Matchstick hisses, “I thought you were supposed to take care of problems like this.”
“I am,” Dark-and-Scowly answers. “I’ve got everything under control.”
The other guy snorts. “Don’t look like it to me.”
“You’d better go,” I tell them, disappointed by the unsteady tremble in my voice. I’m still angry, but the fear is creeping back in. I’m trapped down here in this lab with two villains. The last time I was this close to the bad guys, my father was murdered and I…I was—
I cut off that train of thought before it can go anywhere. I’m not that helpless little girl anymore, and anyone who thinks otherwise is going to be in for a big shock.
“Leave now,” I tell them. “Before it’s too late.”
Matchstick starts toward me. “Why is that, sweetheart?”
“The guards are coming.” I steel myself for whatever comes next. “Their response time is less than thirty seconds.”
He starts laughing before I finish. Smirking, he says, “Your guards aren’t coming. Aren’t even in the building.” He steps into the center aisle. “They took an unexpected vacation.”
I don’t want to believe him—he’s a villain, after all—but the cockiness in his tone tells me that, at the very least, he believes the guards are gone. Besides, it’s been at least thirty seconds since the alarms started blaring. Help should be here by now.
Which means I’m on my own.
Calling the League is the only option.
I try not to think just how badly a confrontation with two villains can go as I glance at my phone, still twenty feet away, and then back at the redheaded villain. His eyes flick to the counter, and when his gaze returns to me, he’s shaking his head. He can’t have missed my hot-pink case against the stainless-steel countertop.
Matchstick spreads his arms wide, his fingers stretched to maximum breadth, and his palms begin to glow. And I stop breathing.
This isn’t going to be good.
Chapter 2
I freeze as the ball of energy, or whatever he’s building between his hands, gets larger and brace myself for impact. There’s nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. But just as Matchstick lets loose with whatever badass concoction he’s cooked up, Dark-and-Scowly hurls himself at me, full force. We go down in a tangle of limbs as a firebomb blasts right past where I’d been standing.
“Hey! Get off me!” I shove at him as hard as I can, but he’s immovable. Maybe because he’s about six inches taller and fifty pounds heavier than me. But, again, that’s never stopped me before. I stand up to heroes twice his size all the time. Supers might think I’m weak, but I’m not.
Sometimes, being underestimated can be a real advantage.
I start to knee him in the nuts for the second time tonight, but he’s ready for me. His hand clamps above my knee and holds me in place.
“Will you relax?” he demands, his voice a lot darker and surlier than it was before I took my shot at the family jewels. “I’m trying to protect you here.”
Wrong thing to say, dude.
“As if I need a villain to take care of me? I don’t think so.” I buck and roll against him, all to no avail. This guy is strong, really strong. I’m not getting up until he decides to let me up.
Which just pisses me off more. Everyone around me is always insisting I’m helpless, telling me that being powerless makes me vulnerable. The last thing I need is a villain providing a real-life demonstration.
I think about biting him, but decide against it. He is a villain after all. And a hot-looking one at that. God only knows where he’s been.
Still, I need him off me. Now. I can’t think, can’t breathe. Long-buried memories well up inside me, making me panic. Making me want to scream.
I fight the anxiety, bury the dread. I can freak out later. Right now, I need to focus on how the hell I’m going to get out of this.
“Draven, what the hell is going on here?” A third guy comes careening around the corner and into the lab.
Great. Three vile scumbags in the lab. This night is only getting better.
Like the other two, this one is dressed all in black, but somehow he doesn’t look nearly as menacing as they do. Maybe it’s the look of abject horror on his face. Or maybe it’s the way his dark brown hair is molded into a fairly spectacular fauxhawk. It’s hard to take a guy seriously when he looks like a punk-rock rooster—even if he is a villain.
“Nitro’s lost his mind, obviously,” Draven, a.k.a. Dark-and-Scowly, answers. “He started firing energy balls at innocent people.”
Holy shit. This is Nitro? Badass supervillain and second only to his brother, Quake, in the destruction he causes? Nitro is in my mother’s lab?
What am I going to do? He’s deadly. He could level this whole building with a single blast. No wonder the lab looks like a nuclear bomb just went off. In a way, it did.
I can’t suppress a little shudder. Dark-and-Scowly, otherwise known as Draven, looks down with blue eyes that seem way too steady and way too knowledgeable, and for the first time since he tackled me, his grip loosens a little bit. He pushes up to his knees and drags his hands through his hair.
Air flows into my lungs a little more easily.
“Oi, that was just a wee blast,” Nitro answers. “It wouldn’t have killed her. Just stunned her.”
“And that makes it okay?” I snap.
Draven reaches for me like he wants to clamp his palm over my mouth, but I shoot him a glance that says I’m rethinking my decision about biting him, and he just shakes his head.
“Are you serious?” Fauxhawk demands. “You really think this is what we need to be doing right now? When my brother has been missing for three days?”
“She was going for her cell phone.” Nitro looks thoroughly disgruntled now. “Deacon obviously isn’t in this lab, and we need time to search the rest
of the building. What was I supposed to do?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe let me take care of her?” Draven says. “I had it handled.”
Nitro’s yellow eyes narrow. “Did you? ’Cuz it looked to me like you were just making a bigger mess.”
“I’ll take care of her,” Draven reiterates. “Wasn’t that what we agreed on?” He climbs to his feet and I start to follow, but he puts his hand on the top of my head and shoves me back down. Which only makes me angrier. I’m not big on being manhandled.
In fact, I’m not big on being any kind of handled.
“Hey!” I complain, pushing against him as hard as I can. He doesn’t budge.
“If you want to get out of this without being roasted alive, you need to stay down,” he growls at me. “His control’s never the best when he’s this upset.”
Draven’s gaze is trained on Nitro, so I can’t really gauge if he’s telling the truth, but he seems to be trying to protect me. That must be another trick, though. Villains don’t help people like that.
Ignoring his dubious warning, I twist out of Draven’s grip and scramble to my knees. At least now I can see what’s going on. And maybe I can formulate a plan.
“Well, that’s a little rude,” Nitro interjects, obviously offended. “I never talk shit about your powers.”
“Because Draven never loses control of his powers,” Fauxhawk tells him, as he gestures to the burned and broken lab. “Do I need to remind you of what happened two weeks ago?”
“Wow. Set a few things on fire and suddenly everyone’s a critic.”
“Me!” Fauxhawk shouts. “You set me on fire!”
“I said I was sorry!”
“Like that makes it better? You burned off half my hair.”
“Stop being such a drama queen, Dante.” Nitro rolls his eyes. “It’s growing back, isn’t it?”
“Jesus,” Draven says, looking like he’s one step away from pulling out his own hair. “Can we focus, please? We don’t have long before someone finds out about this mess.”
“That’s what I’m saying.” Nitro raises his hands and starts to build another energy ball. “I was taking care of things, until you went all hero on us.”
“Screw you!” Draven lunges at Nitro.
I seize the opportunity and jump to my feet. But the villains weren’t as distracted as I thought. Before I can make a dash for my phone, Dante intercepts me, wrapping a hand around my wrist in an iron grip.
He raises his other hand in the air, like someone who’s refereed a lot of arguments between these two. “Can we just do something with her so we can keep looking?”
Pulling me behind him, Dante drags me toward the vault. But once he gets there, he freezes, and for a long moment, I can’t figure out what’s come over him. But then I see it—a shiny titanium watch with a bright red face lying on the floor. He drops my wrist and bends to pick up the watch. Then he squeezes it tight in his hand.
“Deacon was here.” His voice breaks as he shows the watch to his friends. “We need to find him before it’s too late.”
The bickering stops instantly. Rage vibrates in the air.
“What if it’s already too late?” Nitro snarls. “What if—”
“It’s not. It can’t be.” But Draven sounds more angry than comforting as he voices the reassurances.
“So where do we start looking for a secret level?” Dante demands. “This place is huge.”
“Why don’t we ask her?” Nitro nods at me with narrowed eyes, like he wouldn’t mind trying to set me on fire this time. “She seems to know her way around pretty well. Tell us how to get to the secret level, little bird.”
“Are you insane? We don’t need a secret level,” I retort. “We’re not villains.”
Besides, like I would help them find it if it did exist.
“Didn’t expect her to tell the truth, did you?” Dante glares at me. “She’s a hero-worshipper.”
Now, it’s my turn to glare. “Hero-worshipper” is really vile, really insulting slang in the super world, so bad that few people even say it. As an ordinary living among superheroes, I hear it more than most, and the fact that this obnoxious, fauxhawk-sporting villain is the one lobbing it at me pisses me off more than I can say.
My heel connects with his instep before I can think better of it.
While Dante howls in pain, I back away. There are too many villains between me and the exit, but even a little distance makes me feel safer.
“I’ll make her talk,” Nitro says, and this time the energy ball he’s building between his hands glows an icy blue. I don’t know why, but it looks a million times scarier than the red-hot one he lobbed at me earlier. And when he pulls his hand back as if to throw it at me, I duck behind the nearest lab table.
Sometimes discretion really is the better part of valor.
Still, I’m not backing down. Not this time. Not to these guys.
I glance around frantically for something I can use as a weapon. I’m in a bioengineering lab, for God’s sake. Just about everything in here can maim, poison, or kill. Surely, I can find something within reach that will take these jerks down. Or at least incapacitate them long enough for me to call for help.
“Stop, Nitro.” Draven’s voice is low and urgent, with an unmistakable note of command. “Torturing her won’t do any good.”
He moves deliberately, self-assured as he places himself between his buddies and me.
“It’s what heroes do to us,” Nitro argues. “Torture us, experiment on us. Kill us. They have Deacon. Why the hell should we care what happens to one little hero-worshipper?”
Is he serious? Heroes aren’t the ones with a history of torture and murder. He should take a closer look in the mirror.
“Let me talk to her, see what she knows,” Draven says. “You guys look for clues about the secret level before the cavalry arrives.”
Nitro’s sneer turns cocky. “Thanks to you, the cavalry’s not coming. You made the guards believe they’re on vacation.”
“Someone’s going to hear the alarms eventually,” Dante says. “This place is wired into the SHPD precinct. Once they figure out there’s a problem, they’ll be here in less than ten minutes.”
How does he know that? How does he know any of that?
How did they even get in here? And, for that matter, how did they even know this place existed?
The Elite Superhero Lab is a top secret facility. Our existence isn’t known to most heroes, let alone villains. And our police protocols aren’t exactly common knowledge. So how can these guys have so much inside information?
This is much bigger than just a simple break-in.
As the three of them argue about the best course of action, I inch toward the nearest lab table. They’re so absorbed in their discussion that they don’t even notice me scooting that way.
Finally. A weapon. I grab the fire extinguisher with both hands, pull the pin, and leap into the aisle, brandishing it in front of me. Dante yells in alarm, but it’s too late. I depress the lever and watch as it shoots white goo all over Nitro and his energy ball.
One problem solved, at least for now.
For a second, no one moves. Then Draven turns to stare at me, his eyes wide and incredulous. Nitro takes a little longer to recover—probably because he has to take time to spit potassium bicarbonate out of his mouth. Then he lets out a roar that shakes everything that’s not nailed down and fires a small and lethal-looking fireball straight at me.
“No! Don’t!” Draven yells, diving in front of me and knocking me to the ground again. Only this time I feel him tense against me as the fireball rips along his back, setting his black T-shirt on fire and burning the skin beneath it.
To his credit, he doesn’t make a sound. But his eyes clench shut and it’s clear he’s in a lot of pain.
Since Draven�
�s in no position to argue, I wiggle my way out from under him and give him a good blast with the fire extinguisher as well. The fire dies out immediately, but blisters are already rising on his back and arm.
Guilt tears through me. I try to tell myself that it’s all his fault. He’s a villain, after all. But I know the truth. Draven might be ill-equipped to play hero, but he did his best to save me. The thought boggles my mind—a villain trying to save anyone but himself?—though I have no time to worry about it. Not with Nitro and Dante screaming at each other like crazy people.
“Shit!” Dante yells. “Now you’re setting Draven on fire?”
“I’m sorry! I can barely see. She got that crap all over me.” Nitro lets out another yell, and a second fireball comes whizzing past us. “Shite, watch out!”
“Get down!” Draven snaps, uses his uninjured arm to tug me back to the floor.
But I’m done hiding.
“Hey, dragon breath!” I shout as I shake off Draven’s grip. Leaping to my feet, I shoot another blast of potassium bicarbonate straight at Nitro’s face. This time I keep my finger on the lever, covering his eyes, nose, and mouth with the nasty stuff. Then, while he’s trying to wipe it away, I chuck the fire extinguisher at his head as hard as I can.
I’ve got great aim—it’s the closest thing I can claim to a superpower—and I hit him square in the forehead with the butt of the red canister. He stumbles for a second, banging into lab tables, then lands flat on his face. If he weren’t a villain, he’d be out cold. Even so, I can practically see the little birdies circling his head.
Dante’s laughing his ass off at this point, which is totally not what I’d expect from a guy like him. Plus there’s something that looks an awful lot like respect in his eyes as he looks back and forth between Nitro and me. The same can’t be said of Draven, who’s back on his feet despite his injury.
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