by Jamie Zakian
“Who?” Lucius asked, glancing around the lab.
“Max. I put him to sleep in the stairwell. He went down the hall right after you left.”
Alexie stood in front of Lucius. “Are you sure you want to keep fighting? We can leave right now, weigh out options. Cyrus, don’t you think we should leave?”
“Yes.” Cyrus did want to flee from this depressing asylum, but not until he completed the task that had ended the only relationship he ever truly cherished. He’d already lost Evie and it wouldn’t be for nothing.
Cyrus hurried across the lab, toward Evie. “Right after I put her in the machine.”
“No,” Evie yelled as Cyrus latched onto her arm. He pulled Evie to her feet and Shay clunked to the steel-grated floor.
Evie’s fists bounced off his face. It didn’t seem like she was doing much damage, but each hit bruised his soul far more than it could ever sting his flesh. He hated himself—hated Evie for struggling so much. Hate was all he had left, so he dragged the woman he loved across the room against her will.
Max soared toward the asylum, leaving a trail of flames in the night sky. He’d already decided to forgive Alexie for sneaking around with villains behind his back, and he could never stay mad at Simon.
Alexie and Simon had taken him in when he returned from space with powers, after society turned its back on him. They helped him rebrand his image, and put him on the path of a hero. They were family, Simon and Alexie, the only family an orphan like Max ever had.
Far below the dark clouds Max flew through, in the shadows of the asylum, a figure climbed out a window and down the building’s side. Golden hair gleamed in the hint of moonlight, and Max slowed his speed. He hovered at the treetops, watching as Shay crept away from the asylum.
She spotted Max’s flames in the sky and ran toward him, waving her arms franticly. That sizzle didn’t burn in Max’s chest when he gazed down at her, as it had every time since the first time he set eyes on Shay in that stairwell.
The person who signaled Max wasn’t Shay. He’d bet his life on it.
Flames surged around his fist, which he held out in front of him as he barreled toward the Shay impersonator. The body shifted into Lucius just before Max’s knuckles crashed against its chest.
Max touched down in the tall grass, nice and gentle, as the shapeshifter launched backward through the air. Its body thumped to the ground, tumbled across a sloped field, and landed on its back as an unconscious young woman.
The girl couldn’t have been more than twenty. She was kind of cute too, dark skin, wavy hair. Max felt like straight up crap. He’d never hit a girl that hard before, but at least she took the impact in Lucius’s form.
“How did you know?” Simon asked, landing beside Max.
His heart would’ve thumped against his chest if that person had been Shay. Tingles would’ve nipped at his skin from the inside-out, but he couldn’t tell Simon that.
“I just knew,” he said, staring at the sorriest excuse of a villain he’d ever knocked out.
“You got lucky.”
Max let out a long, shaky breath. “I know. This thing irks the hell out of me.”
“Well, I think you broke it.”
“Good.” A burst of flames erupted around Max’s clenched fists as he turned toward the asylum. “Let’s go break a bunch more stuff.”
A hand slapped Shay on the cheek. It wasn’t a malicious hit, more of a loving tap, but it synchronized with the throb in her head perfectly.
“Wake up, Shay.” Hetal’s voice trickled into Shay’s mind, blasting over the buzz in her ears. “They’re putting Evie in the machine.”
“You,” Lucius said, which snapped Shay’s eyes open. “Power it up.”
“I can’t,” Hetal said in a whimper. “The wires to the power grid weren’t thick enough. They melted.”
Shay didn’t move. She probably could. Her fingers curled into fists when her will commanded it, but she could feel Lucius staring at her and that kept her body from budging.
“Useless human. I’ll do it myself.”
The thump of boots moved away from Shay. Glass shattered, and then she heard the one thing that could override the pain that radiated from the hit she’d taken to the head.
Evie screamed for help from what sounded like the bottom of the ocean. It was her name. Evie screamed Shay’s name, and the sound triggered a torrent of spikes to jab at Shay’s every muscle.
Flashes of blue and green light reflected off the broken medical equipment scattered around the lab. It stung Shay’s eyes as she rose to her knees. The light pulsed from tiny sparkling balls, and those balls swirled around Lucius.
“Shay!” Hetal helped Shay to her feet.
“What’s happening?”
“Evie’s in the machine.” Hetal pointed, beyond the backs of Alexie and Cyrus, at Evie locked within the nebula burst generator. Evie pounded her fists against a small window on the large golden chamber’s door, her shouts barely escaping the sealed machine.
“And Antiserum’s devouring souls. He’s gonna power it up any second.”
The shimmering orbs of light around Lucius fused into his chest. He held his hands out at his sides, tilting his head back as power lit his body in a white glow.
“The hell he is.” Shay reached for her sonic blaster, finding an empty holster. “Crap.”
Lucius laid his hands on the machine and a cascade of colorful switches blinked to life on the nearby control panel. Arms of lightning spread from his touch, covering the entire machine in a web of electrical bolts. The floor below Shay’s boots quaked as a low hum rumbled from deep within the machine.
Evie stopped banging the door’s little window. Her fingers curled into her hair, and a look of agony twisted her face. Shay patted the pockets of her vest. One containment grenade and an electro-pulse dart was all she had left.
The machine groaned, louder and louder. Its thin arms started to rotate around the chamber, and Shay pulled the weapons from her pockets.
Alexie turned away from the machine. Her gaze connected with Shay, and Shay glimpsed fear. It wasn’t a selfish kind of terror, more of an Oh God, what have I done woe.
At this point, Shay didn’t care about Alexie’s guilt or sorrow. Her sister doubled over in pain, trapped inside a chamber of twirling magnetic arms that Lucius powered with the tangle of electric bolts streaming from his hands. Evie was all that mattered.
Shay bit down on the containment grenade’s pin and ripped it out of its safety lever with her teeth, spitting it to the ground. Before the little metal loop could clink against the steel floor, she tossed the bomb across the room.
A translucent field surrounded Alexie and Cyrus, locking them in place and out of Shay’s way. She turned from the containment orb, which rippled as Cyrus pounded his fists against it, and aimed her EP shooter at Lucius.
She could barely see him beyond a whirling electrical storm, which surged from his palms and fed the machine. Strobes of light fluttered her eyelids. One by one, a row of red indicators on the machine’s control panel blinked to green. It was a countdown to her sister’s death by mutation, and it clouded her mind.
“Do something,” Hetal yelled, nudging Shay’s arm.
“If I shoot Lucius, the electric pulse could surge the machine and fry Evie to dust.” Just the thought caused Shay’s hand to tremble and her finger to move away from the weapon’s button.
“Aim for the floor, at Antiserum’s feet. The discharge should blow him back.”
“Should?”
Shay searched through thick splinters of lightning, straining to glimpse Evie beyond the bursts of blue flares. She couldn’t see Evie. The supervillain who killed her parents was going to irradiate her sister, and she froze like a faulty hard drive.
“The last toggle’s gonna trip,” Hetal screamed. “You have to shoot now.”
Shay’s entire body shook beyond her control. The glare of light brought tears
to her eyes. It had to be the light. It couldn’t be bone-shattering terror. She definitely wasn’t crying because she was scared she’d miss her only shot, or worse, hit Lucius and disintegrate her sister to tiny specks of microscopic Evie.
“Shay. You have to go now, now.”
Hetal’s voice hadn’t registered. Shay couldn’t hear anything over the roar of the machine’s arms as they spun, or above her own mind screaming out calculations.
“Now!”
As the last toggle flickered between red and green, Shay pressed the button on her EP shooter.
An electro-pulse dart flew from Shay’s pen-shooter. The little chip crackled with electricity as it sped toward Lucius. It struck the metal floor at his feet, and then exploded in a burst of energy. The blast flung Lucius across the lab, and sent Shay teetering.
As she toppled to the floor, the containment field around Cyrus and Alexie sputtered out. She braced for hard ground as she fell backward to the floor, but landed in soft arms.
“Gotcha,” Max said, holding Shay tight. He whisked her up and onto her feet as Simon walked into the room, standing at her other side.
Blood surged through her veins as she stood between two superheroes and stared at a pack of supervillains. She felt as strong as Mr. Amazing himself. Her spine remained stiff, even as Lucius climbed off the floor to snarl at her, until she remembered she had no weapons.
“Looking for this?” Alexie said, lifting Shay’s sonic blaster. “Here, take it.”
Alexie tossed the sonic blaster to Shay. She flinched as the clunky metal gun sailed toward her chest, but she actually caught it—despite a little fumble—then pulled it close.
“Lexie?” Lucius said, a heavy layer of hurt shading his eyes.
“Sorry, Lucius.” Alexie slammed her electric-laced fist against Cyrus’s face. She jogged across the room, to the hero side, as Cyrus fell to the ground. “Your brother was right. I am a treacherous bitch.”
“No,” Lucius shouted. “You’re a dead treacherous bitch.”
Cyrus jumped to his feet as Lucius rushed toward Alexie. Shay lifted her blaster, but Simon ran in front of her to kick Lucius in the gut.
In one blink, the scene erupted into an all-out brawl. Max charged Lucius, punching the man with fire-encased fists. Alexie strutted toward Cyrus, her arms stretched out, shooting streams of lightning from her fingertips.
Shay wasn’t worried about the people fighting. These guys beat each other down on the daily. Her sole concern was for Evie. She weaved to see beyond Simon, who took a hit from one of Lucius’s black energy balls, to peek inside the machine’s small window. There was no hint of Evie within the chamber. The little window only showed a flicker of yellow lights.
Shay ran toward the nebula burst generator and Max crashed to the floor at her feet. Steel grate bent around his body, the floor crimping up and tripping her steps.
The crackle of Alexie’s lightning cut off behind Shay. Without the sizzle, and other than Simon’s grunts and the slap of fists hitting skin, an eerie hush clung to the air.
Shay peeked over her shoulder. Cyrus had seized Alexie by the throat, and lifted her feet off the ground. With the hand that wasn’t throttling Alexie’s neck, Cyrus reached into her pocket and pulled out a tiny silver device—Hetal’s brainwashing-blocker. He dropped the thin metal disk to the floor, then crushed it under his heel.
“Why don’t you just die,” Cyrus said, staring into Alexie’s eyes.
Alexie’s arms flopped to her sides. Cyrus released his clutch, and her limp body thumped against the floor.
“No,” Shay yelled. She pointed her sonic blaster at Cyrus and pulled the trigger without hesitation.
Twenty gigahertz of ultrasonic waves rushed toward Cyrus, disrupting the air around him. He ducked, but it struck his chest and threw his body into the solid wall behind him.
Shay dropped to her knees beside Alexie. She latched onto the dead woman’s cape straps and shook. “Come back to life.”
Shay didn’t have brainwashing powers like Cyrus. She didn’t have any powers, but she couldn’t help herself from trying. Alexie’s eyes remained empty and Shay looked away, right into Max’s broken gaze.
“I need a defibrillator,” Shay yelled. “Any kind of electric charge.”
She’d given Max very specific instructions, yet all she got from him was a blank stare.
“The wires, on the wall behind you,” Hetal called out from her hiding spot in the lab’s farthest corner.
Max ripped two thick wires from the wall. Tiny blue arcs hissed from their frayed ends, cascading around his hands.
The ground shook as Lucius slammed Simon against it. Simon slid across the floor and crashed into a steel table, which flattened like a shiny pancake.
Lucius leapt across the room. He landed atop Simon, cracking the fractured walls of the asylum even farther apart, and started punching the downed superhero.
“I gotta help Simon,” Max said, shoving the wires into Shay’s hands. He kissed two of his fingers and placed them on Alexie’s forehead before soaring off in a burst of flames.
Shay knelt over Alexie. The wires in her hand spit bright white sparks, which bit at her skin in every place they touched.
“I’m not afraid.”
The floor trembled beneath Shay as an explosion rang out across the room, but the quake paled in comparison to that of her own muscles.
“I’m not afraid.”
The wire’s severed tips crackled as Shay brought them just above Alexie’s heart. She was afraid, but she wouldn’t let fear keep her from trying to save a life.
Shay pressed the wires against Alexie’s chest. Alexie convulsed on the floor. Her limp arms flailed, slapping the steel grates below her. A hint of red returned to Alexie’s blue lips and Shay lifted the wires from her chest.
Alexie gasped, in more of a watery gargle than an intake of air. She sat up with her fist high, wobbling.
A thousand volts of electricity sizzled from the wires in Shay’s hands. It kept her from hugging Alexie, but it couldn’t deter her from smiling. “You’re okay. Right?”
Alexie’s eyes grew wide. Her already balled fist drew back, and all the little hairs on Shay’s arms stood up. A monster was behind her. She could feel his rage, which jacked up the heat in the entire room.
Without looking, or thinking twice, Shay spun around and thrust the wires in her hands outward. She wasn’t expecting the sensation that clutched onto her when she electrocuted Cyrus. To see agony in his eyes, to bring his super-powered body to a shuttering halt, felt amazing and she hadn’t been expecting it.
Shay’s palms slid up the wire’s smooth rubber casing as she pressed them against Cyrus harder. His body launched from the tips of the two arcing wires. He shot backward, crashing against the same fractured wall as before, and then fell face down on the floor.
This time Cyrus would stay down, that is, if the supervillain ever got up again. Shay may have just killed a man, a man who tortured her sister, and she didn’t know if she could care about that.
“You brought me back,” Alexie said through chattering teeth.
Shay tossed the wires aside and held out her hand to help Alexie off the floor. “I owed you one.”
As soon as Alexie looked semi-steady on her feet, Shay ran toward the nebula burst generator. She had to see inside the machine. Even if her sister had been atomized, left as a pile of glittery flakes, she had to witness it with her own eyes.
Shay grabbed onto the machine door’s top lever and unlatched it. Max crashed against the machine, right beside her, denting its side. Shay jumped back as Max landed in a heap.
The air grew thick, ice-cold. Lucius could be behind her, or beside her … his frosty vibes rippled the air all around her, making it impossible to trace their origins.
She lifted her sonic blaster and Lucius teleported directly in front of her. The shock of seeing a man materialize from thin air stunned Shay still.
Lucius snatched the weapon from her grasp, leaving her in a sway. With one large hand, he shattered the gun’s barrel in a shower of sparks. With the other, he grabbed Shay by her throat.
“I’m weak,” he said, lifting Shay off the ground. “And you have two souls.”
Shay kicked her feet. She scratched and punched Lucius in the face, and all the while a force tugged at her chest. She couldn’t scream, couldn’t pry Lucius’s fingers from her neck.
Oxygen wouldn’t flow past the airways Lucius crushed, and unseen talons ripped, clawed … shredded Shay’s insides. Lucius was taking her soul. The man was tearing her very essence from her body and she couldn’t stop him.
I have an ace up my sleeve, Jenna whispered in Shay’s mind. It’s a wild card. Let it out?
“Hell, yeah,” Shay managed to garble before falling under a gray haze.
Max peeled himself off the now mangled floor of the makeshift laboratory. An orange fog clouded his vision and he rubbed his eyes, except it wasn’t a fog. He should’ve recognized that glow immediately. The intense heat that stung his skin and the orange tinted, flame-laced winds had been his world … once.
“Jenna,” he whispered, looking up at the flashes of orange light.
Shay hovered above his head, with Lucius dangling at the end of her grasp. The tips of her blond hair blazed in orange flames, and her eyes burned a bright shade of red. Solar winds whirled around her, flinging bits of broken metal across the room, yet Shay floated gently in place midair.
“What is that?” Simon asked as he limped to Max’s side.
Alexie stood on Max’s other side, leaning against his shoulder. “That’s Jenna’s solar winds, but the red eyes and orange hair is different.”
Coils of glimmering orange light circled Shay, growing dimmer by the second. She released her grasp on Lucius, and he crashed to the steel grate floor in front of Max.
The thud of his limp body bounced off every wall. When his head rolled to one side, Max was sure the man had died and it brought a great sadness to his soul.