by Dee Benson
"You read my mind."
"Well, you're on my cell. We have to win, so that means we need to bond. Otherwise, I wouldn't be seen dead talking to you." She flashed a grin.
Axel gave her a hard elbow in the side.
Candy chortled with laughter. She led the way to a small, outdoor enclosure where they could change.
"Been here before?" Axel asked.
"Yes, unfortunately."
"Why 'unfortunately'?"
Candy unzipped her purse and pulled out two bikini sets. "I was stupid enough to date Prince Drake. It lasted two weeks before I came to my senses."
"What happened?"
"He has strange ideas about relationships. The Royal family here has always had lots of wives and concubines. He seemed to think he could have lots of girlfriends along with me."
Axel shuddered. "I feel like some of the girls in our class have so little dignity they wouldn't mind that."
"Good luck to them. I thought you'd be just like the rest of them, but you're a woman after my own heart. And you and Angelo are so cute together. Good for you. Angelo is way more gorgeous than Prince Drake anyway."
Axel frowned. "There's nothing going on between me and Angelo."
"Really?" Candy asked. "Could have fooled me."
Something about the deliberately casual look in Candy's eyes piqued Axel's suspicion. "You like Angelo?"
Candy held up the two bikinis. "Which one do you prefer? Actually, the pink one is sexier, so I'm having it." She tossed the black set to Axel.
Axel's eyes widened. "You have a crush on Angelo."
Candy looked at her for a moment, and then grinned. "Well, if there's nothing going on between you and him, then, yes, I do."
"Why don't you tell him?"
Candy looked like Axel had suggested she run down the street naked. "No can do."
"You're gorgeous, Candy. He would be so flattered. Any guy would want to be with you."
Candy unzipped her dress and let it fall to the ground. "You're so sweet, Axel. Angelo has never looked at me twice, though."
Axel remembered Angelo's comment about her in the gym, and how Trojan had said he didn't like strong women. Candy was definitely strong. Axel opened her mouth to encourage her, but Candy removed her bra and glared at her. "Seriously, Axel, stop staring at me."
Axel quickly looked away and began to remove her T-shirt and jeans. "Eww, I wasn't."
Candy giggled.
"You're just trying to change the subject. I'll put in a good word for you with Angelo—"
Before Axel could complete her sentence Candy's hands were around her neck, painfully tight. Her gaze was narrowed.
"Just joking," Axel choked. "Joking."
Candy released her.
"Geez!" Axel muttered under her breath, rubbing her neck.
Candy threw on her bikini, winked at her, and then ran out.
Great. Axel was going to have to walk out on her own. She finished changing and then wondered whether to tie her hair up. Most of the girls were wearing their hair down. Her hair didn't look good wet. It got into this strange state between frizzing and curling that just made her look deranged. She tied it up.
There was no mirror, so she couldn't even check how she looked. She'd bet she looked ridiculous. Her boobs didn't fill Candy's bikini top. Of course not. Candy's boobs were like four sizes bigger than hers. Ugh!
Each class so far had been pretty humiliating; and now, even a social situation was going to be humiliating for her too.
She stepped out of the enclosure and immediately felt like jumping back in when she saw Prince Drake, Angelo, and at least half a dozen other cute guys standing nearby.
Axel was about to slink back when Angelo spotted her. "Yo, Axel! Trojan said you weren't coming."
Prince Drake turned and looked at Axel. Angelo had just looked at her and she'd felt nothing. Prince Drake's look, on the other hand, made her want to grab something and cover herself. His gaze cruised her body from head to toe. Then he looked away, his eyes impassive. His gaze landed on a passing Super girl in a bright red bikini and his eyes suddenly seemed to crackle with approval.
Now, Axel felt like beating him over the head. So, she wasn't good enough?
You don't want his attention anyway so what does it matter?
Angelo was waving her over.
Axel shook her head and then quickly stopped when Prince Drake looked at her again. He stopped a passing server. "What would you like to drink, Axel?" he called.
"Is there any water?" Axel replied through gritted teeth.
Prince Drake snapped up a glass from the tray and held it up.
Axel walked over. She made sure to focus on her glass of water, and not on the selection of six-pack abs before her. The water was ice-cold. "Thank you."
"You're welcome," Prince Drake said smoothly.
"You told me this party was only for our cell."
"I lied." Prince Drake grinned.
Axel glowered at him.
"I'll let you hit me as revenge."
"Thank you." Axel slugged him in the shoulder.
He grinned, and flexed his pecs.
"Eww." She grimaced. "And ouch." She handed him back her glass of water and looked at her hand, which was throbbing with pain. "Ouch!"
The other guys burst into laughter.
"Netherling chicks are kind of cute," one of them said.
"Hey, no hitting on the señora," Angelo said. "She doesn't like it."
"Yes," Axel said, shading her eyes from the sun with her hand. It was roasting out here. "I don't like it. Thank you, Angelo."
She walked away. Prince Drake fell into step with her. "We can still talk about activation if you want."
"It's fine. You go and party."
"No. I want to keep my promise and help you."
Axel stopped walking and looked at him.
He stopped too. He quirked a brow. "I know I'm probably the most dashing young man you've ever seen, but staring is kinda rude."
"I, uh, said some things in combat class about The Firemaster."
Prince Drake's brows lowered. "I remember."
"So, why don't you hate me?"
He was quiet for a moment, and then he nodded towards the house. "Let's go inside."
Axel looked over her shoulder for Angelo or Trojan. She spotted Trojan in the pool, floating on his back. Angelo was still with that group of guys. Their gazes met across the yard. He nodded slightly.
Axel exhaled and turned back around. She entered the house ahead of Prince Drake who stepped aside to let her go in first. Angelo would come and look for her if she didn't come out within a few minutes.
Inside, Axel was thankful for the coolness. A bunch of Super High students were sitting around eating and drinking in the comfort of the air conditioning. Axel didn't miss the looks a few of the girls exchanged at the sight of her with Prince Drake.
She followed Prince Drake through another door and into a large lounge area. White leather couches sprawled around the room. The floor was marble. The fireplace was made of gleaming granite. Axel couldn't imagine why a house here would need a fireplace. Maybe the winters were cold.
Prince Drake gestured to the couch. Axel sat. He lowered himself down beside her and grinned. "Your outburst the other day was because you knew no better," he said.
Axel raised a brow.
"You're new and you have a lot to learn," he said in voice so gentle it was patronizing. "You have been fed lies about my father. We need to disabuse your mind of those lies."
His father had killed her parents. That wasn't a lie. It was a fact.
Gooseflesh pebbled her skin, but it wasn't because she was cold. If someone had told her last week that, in a week's time, she'd be in the Super Land, attending a pool party at The Firemaster's son's house, she would have thought them crazy.
"I know it's not easy. You've lived in Netherium all your life. Now, all of a sudden, you find yourself here. But my father is a very patient person, as am
I. I overlooked what you said during your outburst because I could tell you did it out of ignorance."
A thick, heavy feeling swelled in Axel's chest. He thought she was ignorant? Maybe his father hadn't told him that he'd killed her parents.
"Sometimes, we have to go through painful things," Prince Drake said, softly. "But they're for our own good. Your parents were a hindrance to you."
So he did know.
She wanted to bury her fist in his face for the casual way he was talking about her parents' death. But it wouldn't hurt him. It would only hurt her. And she didn't want to give these people any reason to increase the dosage of the drugs they were giving her, or, God forbid, hurt Zanda in order to get at her.
Prince Drake smiled and Axel had to look away from him. She felt sick. She would like to actually be sick. All over him.
He must be completely stone-hearted not to see anything wrong with his father killing her parents. Or maybe he thought that because he and his father were royalty, they could do whatever they liked.
"Now you can become all that you were destined to be," Prince Drake said. "All that they were trying to stop you from being."
Axel didn't have to sit here and listen to this. In fact, why was she here at all? She should leave.
"Now, about activation," Prince Drake said, just as Axel opened her mouth to make an excuse about needing the bathroom so that she could escape him. "You definitely have powers. We're all surprised that none have manifested all your life, considering your DNA."
Axel pushed away her anger and disgust towards him and forced herself to look into his conceited blue eyes. "What about my DNA?"
He shrugged. "You know; your genes."
Was he being deliberately elusive? "That's a question I've been meaning to ask. I have two dominant genes, so I'm a full blood Netherling. Is it possible for someone with two dominant genes to activate? I've been told that it's not."
Prince Drake shook his head. "There's no way you can have two dominant genes when your Mom was one of our aristocrats, and the daughter of Lord Frankel, no less. The aristocrats and the royal family are full bloods."
"How can I find out for sure if I can activate?"
Prince Drake snapped his fingers, and a man in a black uniform appeared in the doorway to the room. "Get me my laptop," Prince Drake commanded.
The man bowed his head and then scurried away to do his bidding.
Axel rose from the couch and moved to the large bay window in the room. She sucked in a long deep breath as she looked out. The effect of the drugs she'd been given this morning must be wearing off. She could tell because her emotions were getting more intense. A part of her hated that she was being drugged, but another part of her appreciated the respite from the pain.
The pain was flooding in now, thick and fast.
The man returned with Prince Drake's laptop. Prince Drake tapped at the keyboard for a few minutes before looking up. "Come and see this."
Axel went to resume her seat beside him. She looked at the screen. He was in some kind of database. Her details filled all the fields. Her name, date of birth, gender, address back in Netherium—even her social security number.
"My father has records on everybody," Prince Drake told her. He clicked into a new tab titled 'Powers'.
He pointed the mouse on a field at the top right of the screen labelled 'genotype'. 'Homozygous s', was written in the field.
Axel shook her head. That wasn't true. It should be an upper case 's' for 'dominant'.
"You have two recessive genes," Prince Drake said.
"How would they know?"
"They've tested you."
"They haven't."
"They have. My father wouldn't go to the extreme of having your parents killed if he wasn't certain of it. And just to make sure, he would have had someone test you. I'm sure Serloyd would have cut off some of your hair or taken a blood sample from you at some point."
There was a thud in Axel's heart as she realized that Serloyd had done just that. He'd cut off a piece of her hair the first night she got here. She'd been drugged up at the time, so she hadn't even asked why he'd done it.
"They've carried out tests and confirmed your genotype. You have two recessive genes. You're a full-blooded Super."
Axel went cold all over. Was this true? Her parents had told her she had two dominant genes and was a full-blooded Netherling. But she had two recessive genes, and was a full-blooded Super—if she believed The Firemaster's data.
If she did believe it, it meant her parents had lied to her.
Chapter 15
WHY?
SHE KNEW WHY. To protect her.
But if they'd lied about her DNA, what else had they lied about?
That was a question that Axel didn't even want to begin to think about.
The next few days were a blur of classes, attempted activations, and more mocking whenever anything Axel tried failed.
The only difference was Axel's attitude to the whole thing had changed. Before, she'd been resentful. The resentment was still there, but now she was also desperate. Desperate to activate.
Axel sighed as she stepped under the shower on Saturday morning. She'd been informed that Super High was staying open for the weekend and they had classes as normal. Over the past few days, she'd begun to doubt that activating would buy her back her freedom. Wouldn't it make The Firemaster want her the more? She would probably become his slave aristocrat. But it would buy Zanda her freedom, and that was enough. Whatever happened to Axel, she would deal with it. And she would be happy whenever she thought of Zanda safe and sound in Netherium.
Today was bound to be another difficult day. They'd been instructed to wear their Super suits because they were going out into one of the fields to fight. Nigel was going to have them fight one another, unit by unit. They'd fought yesterday and Axel's body was still aching from the injuries she'd sustained.
If I'm a full-blooded Super, why is this so hard?
Tomorrow, they were going to have flight practice. Everyone was looking forward to the flight class. They were also going to the visit the Merspool conflux of rivers in the evening. Nobody seemed to be looking forward to that. Dynamo had told them how they would have to be silent and be very careful, lest they 'incur the wrath of the forces'.
As Axel showered, she imagined herself taking off into the air and flying higher than any of the other Supers could manage. Visualization. It was supposed to help. One of the activation books she'd gotten from the library had recommended it. But she'd been visualizing like her life depended on it over the past few days, and nothing had happened.
When she finished her shower, she headed back to the dorm, and stepped behind a long bedsheet that Trojan had hung from the ceiling for her to get dressed behind.
The guys had been pretty good about giving Axel her privacy, although a few had thought it was funny the first few days to try and peak around the sheet. Trojan had yelled at them like they'd tried to steal one of the cookies in the stash under his bed, and Angelo had threatened to beat up anybody who ever did that again.
Axel smiled to herself as she took out her mom's Super suit. Trojan and Angelo were the only reasons why she was still relatively sane.
She fingered the deep blue material of her mom's Super suit. She was really going to wear it.
She knew she'd be crying buckets right now if she hadn't been drugged this morning already.
Despite the drugs, her heart constricted as she thought about her parents, and all their rules and the vehement meant way in which they'd insisted that she and Zanda have nothing to do with anything Super.
She donned the forbidden suit and then stepped out from behind the curtain, trying not to feel like a naughty child or a fraud.
As she packed her book bag, she noticed that her roomies were looking at her funny. Maybe it was the Super suit. It was pretty clingy. Too clingy?
"Hey," called Curtis, whose bed was over by the door, meaning Axel rarely spoke to him. "Where'd
you get that suit? The eighteen hundreds?"
Some of the guys snickered.
Trojan immediately ran over to Curtis and whacked him over the head with a pillow. "What are you talking about? She looks great."
Axel looked down at her suit as Trojan and Curtis pushed and shoved each other. What was wrong with the suit?
She looked at Angelo.
He quickly looked away from her. Suddenly, he looked super-engrossed in the label of a bottle of water on his bedside.
"Angelo?"
He jumped up and grabbed his book bag. "It's almost time for class, guys. Better go."
"Angelo!" Axel growled.
He dashed out, ignoring her.
Fifteen minutes later, when she got to the field and saw the other girls, she realized why. Their suits were brightly-colored and sexy, while hers was plain. It looked washed out and faded. And old. She was glad to see that Candy's suit was all black. But it had a cinched waist that emphasized her curves, and a cutout across the chest that revealed a hint of cleavage. She looked so glamorous in it. Glamorous and dangerous.
"You don't want a fashionable Super suit anyway," Trojan told her as they waited for Nigel to show up. "It'd be no good for camouflaging and hiding."
Axel said nothing, but she appreciated the fact that he was trying to make her feel better.
Nigel appeared before them from thin air.
Some of the girls squealed with surprise.
"Wow," Gladys, a blond who sometimes hung out with Candy, said, clutching her chest. "Did you activate a new power, Neuro?"
Nigel didn't even spare her a glance. "No."
About five girls crowded around him.
"Then how did you do that?"
"I discovered a new use of my mental powers." Nigel looked around. His gaze settled on Axel.
Axel forced an aloof, unimpressed expression. She was sick of the way the girls treated him like he was some kind of god.
He looked at her Super suit and then gave her a weird look. Axel refused to feel embarrassed. She stared right back at him. His cold eyes and steely gaze didn't intimidate her.
Axel nudged Trojan. "This suit belonged to my mom," she said loudly. "And I'm very proud to wear it."