Super Powereds: Year 3

by Drew Hayes

  Alice took a moment to compose herself, then followed. In the brief time she hesitated, Nicholas covertly checked his phone to see if there were any messages from Eliza. It came up clean, so he pocketed the small electronic device. Eliza and Jerome were both pros; if they were staying silent, it meant everything was going to plan. Evidently, Nathaniel was still keeping his distance. That was a good thing; Nicholas had no desire to see his night ruined by the orange-eyed freak.

  * * *

  In the parking lot of Nicholas’s apartments, the flames were finally dying down as firemen doused the smoldering car liberally with water. Several police were on the scene, taking a quick scan of the area and immediately noting the tell-tale signs of a bomb. The car it had destroyed was a mid-size sedan, unremarkable in color or model. In fact, there was only one feature about the vehicle that distinguished it from the other automobiles in the parking lot, aside from having just been incinerated.

  Warped by heat and thrown several feet from the blast was the car’s rear license plate. That was not the oddity, though, the thing that made it stand out. Every other vehicle around had California plates, but these weren’t from the golden state.

  This car had possessed license plates from Nevada.

  68.

  The movie was pretty much exactly as terrible as both of them had expected it to be. Unfortunately, it was also a tense affair, since, as awkward as conversation between the two had been, silence turned out to be even worse. The fact that they were the only two people in the theater certainly didn’t help things much, and by the time the credits rolled, Alice and Nicholas both breathed a sigh of slight relief to be done with it.

  The parking lot was even emptier than when they’d gone in—not surprising given the late hour and the poor options available for viewing. Still, the neon glow from the marquee lit the lot well, and neither felt particularly in danger as they walked toward Alice’s car. For Nicholas, this was because he erroneously believed he still had people watching over him. For Alice, her confidence came from surviving two years in the HCP and being very sure of her own abilities. In this manner, she was not the first Super to be caught unaware and overconfident, nor would she be the last.

  The slight pop of sound was all the warning they received, and it was woefully inadequate. Nicholas felt the pinch of pain in his neck, immediately recognizing the sensation as a dart entering his skin. A cold, numb feeling began to flow through his veins. He barely made it another two steps before his feet refused to respond correctly. All Nicholas could do was twist his body as he began to fall, getting line of sight on his assailant. Even though the tall form was some distance away, the glowing orange eyes immediately gave away its identity.

  “Alice,” Nicholas grunted, the unknown poison making his tongue slow and heavy. “Run.”

  “No, Alice, was it? I must insist that you stay.” Nathaniel’s voice rang out across the parking lot as he gracefully stepped closer. Strangely, he was dressed better than either of them in a black suit paired with an orange button-down that clashed horribly with his flickering eyes. “I think our little party just wouldn’t be the same without you.”

  Alice took in the scene, the initial sense of panic and surprise quickly fading as she assessed the situation. There was a dart sticking out of Nicholas’s neck, and from the way he had fallen, it appeared he was at least partially paralyzed. The young man advancing on them wore an expression of unmasked hatred; there was no question he was intent on doing Nicholas serious harm. Probably her as well, judging from his statement. Given his eyes, he was either a Super or a Powered, and not knowing his ability put her at a huge risk. On the upside, the small black gun in his hand couldn’t possibly hold more than one dart of that size at a time. It meant he’d have to reload—an opportunity she would never give him—and he’d used his first shot to take out Nicholas instead of the blonde date he surely assumed was no threat. Alice let a light smile wash over her face. He was going to regret the hell out of that decision.

  “Party, huh?” Alice dropped her purse to the ground and stepped out of her heels in a practiced motion known only to debutantes and pageant queens. Her hands came up to her ears, deftly removing the modest earrings she’d selected for her night out. “What makes you think I want to party with a guy like you?”

  “Given that you’re out with Nicholas, you clearly don’t have high standards,” Nathaniel rebutted. He looked over at his nemesis. “Really, Nicholas, I did warn you that I was specifically here to take away everything you wanted. I give you the courtesy of a warning, and then you stroll out to a nearly deserted location with such a fine-bodied harlot. It’s almost like you didn’t think I meant it.”

  “Did you just fucking call me a whore?” Alice asked, an unexpected wave of anger washing over her mind.

  “I actually said harlot—”

  “I know what harlot means, you son of a bitch.” Alice tested her range of movement in her dress by carefully stepping back. She could use her footwork, but kicks were out of the question. That was all right, her hand-to-hand skills were likely more than adequate. She might not be allowed to use her powers, but two solid years of training and fighting had left her with plenty of mundane ass-kicking options. Then again, this fellow wasn’t under the same constraints as she was.

  “Hey, what’s his power?” Alice asked Nicholas, making no attempt to whisper or hide her question.

  “Fear,” Nicholas wheezed out. His eyes kept scanning the area; they were the only part of him able to function with some degree of normality. Where the hell were Eliza and Jerome?

  “You can stop looking for your backup,” Nathaniel told him. “I see you searching all over for them, but they were unexpectedly detained by a very inconvenient car explosion.”

  Strangely, his words had a more chilling effect on Alice than Nicholas. She’d been expecting a fight, and understood this person was an asshole, but she hadn’t truly grasped what was on the line until he’d casually admitted to murdering people. Her anger at his words faded instantly. This wasn’t a place for petty emotions. Alice was fighting for her life. No, for both Nicholas’s and her life. It was different from every match she’d been in so far. There was no safety net, no agreed-upon rules: this was win, or die. This, she realized, deep down in the core of her being, was what she’d signed up for. This was what it was like to fight as a Hero.

  It said volumes about the character of Alice Adair that, upon reaching a moment that had broken the will of many before her, the idea of running away never even entered her mind.

  Instead, she dashed forward, quickly closing the gap between her and the assailant. She was quick, but without super-speed, there was no way to be fast enough to not give him time to prepare. Nathaniel was ready when she arrived, sending a long-legged kick right for her midsection. Alice side-stepped it easily, countering with an open-palmed strike at his eye. Nathaniel dodged, barely, and still received a blow to the temple for his trouble. He darted backward quickly, faster than Alice could follow in her dress.

  “You’ve got spunk,” Nathaniel complimented. “I think that’s enough of that, though.” He reached into her mind and found the biggest, oldest fear she had, the one that had dominated the majority of her life. With a minor exertion of will, he activated it, filling her brain with an illusion that was sure to send her into fits of terror.

  To Alice, she went from fighting the orange-eyed man in the parking lot to tumbling through the air, miles above the ground and quickly dropping in an instant. It was the nightmare she’d had ever since she was a little girl: she’d floated too high and was now falling, dying the way any Powered with flight ultimately would.

  Back in reality, Nathaniel felt the burst of fear come from the girl, filling him with strength and energy. He turned to Nicholas, who was clumsily clawing at the ground, trying to pull himself up.

  “Let . . . Alice . . . go . . .”

  “I highly doubt I’ll be doing anything of the sort,” Nathaniel replied, lazily ambling o
ver to the man who’d bested him year after year for the entirety of their lives. Seeing him sprawled out helpless on the ground warmed Nathaniel with a great glow of satisfaction. He couldn’t wait to hear Nicholas begging for his life. Or, perhaps, for the life of the girl. “I think she’ll be a great addition to our evening. I must say, you do have fine taste in women. Even among the gaggles of women in Vegas, you have a knack for pulling out the most beautiful ones.”

  “Vegas, huh?”

  Nathaniel felt a strange prickle of worry run down his spine at the sound of that voice. He turned around to find Alice staring at him with a dark humor in her eyes, clearly no longer bound by the illusion.

  “If you’re one of his Vegas enemies, then that makes this a lot easier,” Alice said, mentally flexing her own abilities in preparation. If Nathaniel was from Vegas, then he wouldn’t be aware of the rules for the HCP, including the ones precluding the use of abilities or maintaining secret identities.

  “Do not underestimate—”

  “Save it,” Alice interrupted. “This fight is already over. You just don’t know it yet.”

  69.

  “How did you break out of my nightmare?” Nathaniel asked, regarding Alice far more warily than he had before.

  “That two-cent illusion? Please, that kind of piss-poor power won’t hold someone like me. So, what’s your deal, you make people hallucinate their fears?”

  “Feeds . . . off . . . them . . .” Nicholas added from his prone position on the ground.

  “Not sure what that means, but it doesn’t really matter,” Alice said, keeping her eyes fixed on Nathaniel. “Because you picked the wrong fear.”

  “Did I?” A wild grin cut across Nathaniel’s face, the orange glow from his eyes reflecting slightly off the veneers of his teeth.

  “Yeah, you did. You had me tumbling toward the ground from a mile or so up, spinning helplessly out of control.” Alice returned his expression with a dazzling grin all her own. It would not have looked out of place plastered on the cover of a magazine, worn by an airheaded celebrity. All the same, it filled Nathaniel with a sense of unexpected dread, which only served to prove he wasn’t quite as stupid as Nicholas thought him to be.

  “Your turn.” At Alice’s softly spoken words, Nathaniel blasted off into the air, a short yelp of surprise and an expression of unmitigated panic the last they could see before he rose out of sight. Alice turned to Nicholas, who was trying in vain to pull himself off the parking lot asphalt. “Are you going to be all right? Should I get you to a hospital?”

  Nicholas shook his head. “Short . . . term . . . paralyze . . . not . . . poison.” The one upside to his current, near-incapacitated state was that he didn’t have to explain how he was so well versed in the effects of various drugs and poisons.

  “Good.” Alice smiled at him, not the false grin she’d given Nathaniel, but a genuine expression of affection. This also induced a feeling of dread, though for very different reasons. “I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  She looked up at the sky, where Nathaniel was now suspended in a zero-gravity field. Her summer with Mary truly had improved her level of control beyond what she’d ever expected. Last year’s final match had been a hell of a motivator. She just hoped it would be enough to see this through to the end.

  “Stay put for a second, I’ve got to finish this.”

  “No . . .” Nicholas protested, desperately willing his words to come out faster. She didn’t realize what she was doing, the danger she was stepping into.

  “Hush now,” Alice instructed. “You know as well as I do that if I leave it like this, he’s going to come back sooner or later. I realize you don’t remember, but this is sort of what we do.”

  “Dangerous . . .”

  “Life is dangerous,” Alice replied, rising a few feet from the ground. “But I’ll be damned if I’m going to let someone come after one of us. Especially you. Now, shut up and watch, because today, the princess is going to be the one doing the saving.” She was off, soaring into the sky like a blonde bullet in a green metal casing.

  In that moment, as Nicholas took in her words and watched her fly, bursting through the light fog that had settled in the parking lot, he understood why Nick could have fallen for this girl.

  Nathaniel had nearly recovered from the initial shock of being hurled from the ground when Alice appeared, floating with graceful ease as she circled him. She was almost close enough for him to reach into her mind once more when an unexpected new force exerted itself on him, sending him into a rapid spin. He stayed put as he twirled in place, but the speed increased continually, and within a few moments, his dinner had exited through the entrance.

  “What’s wrong?” Alice called, close enough to be heard, but still out of physical reach. “Having trouble focusing that mental power in a spin cycle?”

  A quick retort was washed away in another burst of vomit that emerged as soon as Nathaniel dared to open his mouth. Mercifully, the spin slowed, and Nathaniel found himself merely floating at a deadly height and horribly dizzy, which spoke to how bad the previous situation had been, if this was an improvement.

  “Or, heck, maybe you’re smarter than you look,” Alice theorized. “Maybe you’ve realized the only thing stopping you from plummeting to the ground is me, and you aren’t certain if I’ll continue to be so gracious once I’m stuck in a hallucination.” In the back of her mind, she could practically hear Professor Pendleton’s advice: “Never use idle threats when intimidating someone, use rational outcomes.”

  Nathaniel hadn’t actually considered such a possibility; however, he was keenly aware of the point she raised as soon as the words left Alice’s mouth. With his ability rendered useless, Nathaniel decided to attack the girl through another venue.

  “Do you have any idea who you’re trifling with? I am Nathaniel Evers, member of one of the most powerful crime families in all of the Northwest. If you beg me for forgiveness, slowly, I might be willing to overlook your idiotic antics this evening.” Nathaniel waited for her to pale and tremble at the realization that she’d inadvertently bitten off a feud with real criminals.

  Instead, Alice threw back her head and laughed. Long, giggling peals of laughter that filled Nathaniel with a burning ember of hatred.

  “A gang? Or, sorry, mafia? That’s what you threaten me with? Motherfucker, my father keeps an entire private army on speed-dial, and he is not shy about using that button. You think I don’t know what I’m messing with? I could make three calls and have you bankrupt by morning. But I won’t do any of that, because I don’t need someone else to fight my battles. See, Nathaniel, you seem to think that this is a fluke, that you lost this one out of sheer bad luck.”

  Alice extended her hands, showing off the manicured, painted nails at the tips. “Not even a chip. That’s how little effort you are to me, Nathaniel Evers of the mafia; you didn’t even require me to chip a nail.”

  Nathaniel’s body began to spin again, but this time, it was a slow, deliberate movement. Alice matched his rotation, eyes gleaming in the moonlight as she stared at him.

  “Do you know why I had a strategy prepared specifically to incapacitate someone who induced hallucinations? Do you know why your shitty illusion couldn’t keep me fooled for more than a few seconds? Do you know why you have been so amazingly, miserably ineffective? Because, while I’m sure you’re hot shit in Vegas, this town is out of your league. While you steal, and plot, and do whatever it is that criminals do, I’m training. While you sleep, I’m training. While you obsess unhealthily over Nicholas Campbell, I’m already miles ahead of him, because I was training. You think your power makes you unstoppable, but that’s because you’ve only used it around humans or unskilled Supers. You’re like an idiot with a knife, one who kills unarmed people and thinks himself invincible. But you left your little town where you were so scary, and in this place, you won’t find such easy prey.”

  Alice was only a few feet away from him now. She exerted a grav
itational field that pinned his arms to his sides, then leaned in, pressing her hand to his chest. Her lips continued forward, until they were only an inch away from his ear. She whispered to him, breath warm and words cold, filling Nathaniel with the sort of uncertain terror he hadn’t experienced since childhood.

  “Welcome to Lander. Here, there be monsters.”

  Alice pushed, sending Nathaniel in a downward arc to the ground. She took care with his descent; he would land in a nearby dumpster hard enough to bruise and perhaps break a bone or two, but nothing that would kill or permanently maim him. Alice had certain ethical standards to uphold.

  After all, she was training to be a Hero.

  70.

  “Well shit,” Alice sighed. “That does put kind of a damper on things, doesn’t it?”

  It had taken nearly an hour, but Nicholas had finally regained enough motor control to talk, and the first thing he’d told her with his rediscovered eloquence was the vital piece of information he’d tried to impart during the battle.

  “I would say it puts far more than ‘a damper’ on things,” Nicholas huffed. “Nathaniel is a student of Lander and lives in town. He is eligible to turn you in, informed enough to know about it, and spiteful enough to do it. Your entire HCP career could be gone by tomorrow morning.”

  Alice nodded, her hair somewhat tangled from the high winds she’d flown through. “Yeah, that would really suck.”

  The two were parked a few streets from Nicholas’s apartment, illuminated by the bright safety lights of a nearby gas station. Currently, they were waiting for word from Eliza that the area was safe to enter and that there were no more bombs waiting to be detonated.

  It seemed Alice and Nicholas weren’t the only ones who’d had a surprising evening. Nathaniel had spared no expense in contracting out local muscle to try and take down Nicholas’s guards/keepers. A car bomb had mildly winded Jerome, whose ability kept him safe from such things, but the armed thugs had presented a somewhat more time-consuming challenge, especially since they’d had to be dealt with out of sight from the police. Between them, cell phone jammers, and having to sweep for bombs, Nathaniel had succeeded in taking them temporarily out of the equation, though he’d surely have preferred if they were killed. Still, if he’d wanted that outcome, he should have hired far more or far stronger people. In Vegas, reputations like Jerome’s were earned for a reason.