She grits her teeth but doesn’t look at me when I enter the room. “I told you.”
“You told me what?” I drop down and dig under my bed, retrieving the vials of juice.
“I told you that Nyx should be protected. And you all laughed at me.” She turns to me, staring at the glass vials as I strap them to my bare forearm. “Now look what happened.”
I wish I could laugh, shake my head and tell her how stupid she is. But she’s right. If we had stopped thinking that Heroes were invincible for a moment, then maybe we would have put more thought into Nyx’s weird message and the sender and what their motives could have been. Maybe we could have prevented this with a little more foresight. Or if we had listened to Nova. Perfect, smart, Nova.
“He’s going to be okay.” I say the words even though I’m not sure I believe them. My fingers weave together and I push my arms out, stretching the muscles and tendons. Preparing. “Stop being pissed off. Moping around won’t bring Nyx back.”
“Like you’re doing anything more productive?” Nova’s voice is a sickly outpouring of venom. She hops to her feet, standing exactly eye level with me. Her hands grip into fists. She does a good job of holding back tears but I can feel that she wants to cry. She points to my forearm, to the black strips of Teflon tape that I just fashioned to hold a row of juice syringes against my skin. “What do you plan on doing with that?” Her fingers wrap around my wrist so tightly that pain shoots up my depowered arm. I stand firm, not wanting to back away from her, not wanting to show weakness. But if she doesn’t let up soon, my bones will break and there will be no power to make them heal quickly.
“Let go,” I hiss. “I am a Hero and you will not treat me this way.”
Her grip loosens. Her emotions are a whirlwind of chaotic energy swirling around in her mind. Energy churns around us, making the knickknacks in my room vibrate and shatter. “I sure hope those vials contain a way to find Nyx. Or the missing Supers. Or the damned depowering machine.” She stands so close to me that her breath makes strands of my hair dance around my face. “Because you’re supposed to be a Hero, Maci. So do it. Be a Hero. Felix can’t win.”
“You’re right again, sister.” I say. “Felix can’t win. Are those comfortable shoes? Would you like to change?”
“Huh?” Nova backs away. “What are you talking about?”
I grab her arm with my good hand. “I’m tired of being what you call an unproductive Hero. I will stop Felix because I finally how know to find the depowering machine.”
I stab a syringe into my forearm. I’m so ready for this, I don’t even cringe at the pain or the cold shock of the juice flowing into my body. She knows the answer before she speaks. Her voice trembles. “How are you going to do that?”
I’ve never loved being a Hero more than I do right now. “I’m going to turn in a villain.”
His name is Paul and he’s the head of the Retriever Squad. He’s older than he dresses, with salt and vanilla colored hair, cropped short. He wears a gold lapel pin in the shape of the King City crown. His eyebrows are so bushy they look like fat hairy caterpillars fell asleep on his face. One of the caterpillars lifts curiously when I push open the door to the dungeon. He rises from his desk, slamming his laptop closed.
Jubilant power pours off him. He breaks into a smile, slips out a pair of Retriever hooks and bellows, “Hero Maci! Well done, Maci. Well done.”
Nova doesn’t say a word. I shove her forward, toward the man responsible for ensuring that she’s depowered. Paul barks orders into his wrist MOD, and then again out loud to the few Retrievers who have slipped out of their makeshift cubicles and poked their heads into our business. He leads us down a hallway between rows of empty fenced in holding cells to a bigger MOD screen on the wall. He shoves Nova’s hand onto the glass and two names appear on the screen.
Mine and hers.
He selects Nova Might. Then turns toward me with a big, satisfied smile. “I will ensure that you are given full credit in the apprehension of the villain. Let me also assure you that it will be depowered immediately and then we’ll hold a press conference and tell everyone the good news,” he says as if Nova isn’t right here, able to hear him speak about her like she’s scum of the earth.
Which, I guess, in any other situation with any other villain, I wouldn’t mind one bit.
When he leans in, his breath smells like old coffee. “I do have to ask that you keep this confidential until at which point we make an official announcement. You might want to go get gussied up for the press conference and interviews.”
Gussied up?
I keep a polite smile on my face even though I kind of want to ask him what the hell is wrong with the way I look right now. “Actually,” I say, grabbing onto Nova’s elbow. “I would like to witness the depowering.”
“Oh?” he says. The gears in his brain scramble to think of something to say next, but I beat him to it.
“Yes, actually. I am the Hero who captured this villain and seeing as how this is a high visibility mission, I would like the satisfaction of seeing the punishment take place with my own eyes. I am sure my father, President Might, will agree.”
His lips form a flat line. “Okay then. Follow me.”
Four Six Two Four. Retina scan. Six Six Eight Three. Thumb prints. One One One Zero Star Three Two Nine. Key. Deadbolt. That’s how far I get before I can no longer keep track of the multiple security measures that meet us as we travel into the depths of the canyon. The air cools as we travel down and the polished rock walls of the corridors have long since turned into rough, uneven chiseled surfaces. These corridors must be access ways or maintenance routes never meant for normal use. They don’t even register when I check the GPS on my BEEPR.
Nova’s hands are behind her back, Retriever cuffs keeping her in place. I know from experience in my Hero training that those things suck. They’re made with powerful magnets that inhibit your power and basically allow you to walk, follow directions and that’s about it.
Paul leads us as the hallway narrows and the floor becomes more uneven and cavernous. Nova shuffles along behind him, taking smaller steps to avoid losing her balance. I walk after them, carefully scrutinizing Paul’s movements and gestures. He looks and acts like a Retriever, a law enforcer. Maybe he has no idea what’s going on with the power stolen from the depowering machine. Or maybe he’s involved in it.
Which is why I watch him closer than I watch my own sister.
“The great thing about this new location,” Paul says, briefly looking back at Nova before unlocking another steel door. “Is that you can scream all you want and no one will have to listen to it.” He smiles. Smiles. As if it’s some kind of grand gesture that they moved the machine all the way down here so that her torturous depowering will be able to take place in a soundproof cave that won’t bother anyone who happens to be passing by. I pat the vials of juice on my forearm, making sure they’re still secure and ready to be used at a moment’s notice.
Because I’m pretty sure this guy is a villain.
The next door we come to is a massive slab of steel, the size of those doors in car dealerships that allow entire trucks to drive through. Paul palms the MOD screen to the right of the door. Metal gears dig into each other and the doors slowly pull apart.
“Ah-ha,” Paul says, arms spreading open as the doors part. “Here we are.”
My stomach drops. A lump forms in my throat that threatens to suffocate me. All of these feelings are Nova’s and they slam into me as I walk behind her. In front of us, with a single ominous light bulb hanging over it, is the depowering machine.
Paul approaches the right side of the machine, flipping switches. His expression delights when the machine hums to life. Nova glances at me but I look away. Something isn’t right here.
The machine’s new home is inside a man-made cave hundreds of feet underground. Inside is the machine, the single light bulb and a MOD screen near the doors. Everything else is completely barren.
“Where do you…” I begin, stopping because I can’t exactly ask where he puts the power when he steals it. Nova’s power enlightens as Paul steps closer to her. She keeps looking at me with those piercing eyes, which only makes it harder for me to think.
He looks sideways at her. “You two are almost identical,” he muses. To me he says, “I guess that trademark dark hair of yours is coming in handy now.”
I almost punch him in the face.
Paul grabs Nova’s wrist, dragging her across the room. For the first time since we left my house, Nova puts up a struggle. She digs her feet into the stony floor, refusing to budge. Paul grits his teeth and pulls harder.
“Go,” I say, ignoring her silent pleas for help. “You know the drill.”
“Apparently she doesn’t,” Paul says. He reaches into his pocket and steps forward. His other hand swings toward Nova. She grunts in pain when he stabs a retriever hook into her abdomen. With both ends of the horseshoe shaped hook jabbed into her body, he curls his index finger under the hook and pulls her toward the machine. Tears roll down her cheeks.
He forces her to lie down on the machine’s conveyor belt. After she’s completely docile, he removes her handcuffs. Shoves her head onto the curved surface.
I’m running out of time.
I blurt out the first thing I can think of. “So what happens with all the power that’s yanked out?”
The steady hum of the machine grows louder. Paul taps the metal frame. “It’s incinerated instantly.”
“Really?” I choke out. My stomach flip flops. “Nova I think we were wrong.” I can barely hear myself talk over the thumping of my own heart. “I don’t think the Strike was stolen from here.”
She doesn’t answer. Paul cocks an eyebrow. “What the hell is Strike?”
My hands shake. “Does anyone else run this machine since they moved it?”
Paul’s confused expression turns into a smug smile. “Just me. Special clearance and everything.”
“Oh god,” I mutter. I glance around the room, looking for something, anything I may have overlooked that could prove that my theory wasn’t wrong after all. My entire Hero career has been a string of failures and leads that go cold. As I look around the empty room with its extreme lack of villains or clues or bottles of power lying around, I know that I am standing right in the middle of yet another dead end.
Only now, I haven’t just failed a mission.
I’ve failed my sister.
“Nova, now!”
My sister rolls off the depowering machine’s conveyor belt, tucking into a ball. Exactly how I pictured her moving when I yelled her name.
“Hey!” Paul’s face turns white and it isn’t from the glow of the MOD screen.
Juice streams through my veins. I feel it take over my power as I lunge across the room, jumping over Nova one second before Paul gets to her. My bad hand presses her back to hold her out of his way. I whirl my good hand across us, aiming my palm at his chest as he scales the room. “Open the doors,” I say, nodding toward the steel doors.
All the fear falls right off his face. “Why don’t you open it yourself since you seem to have things all figured out.”
This juice really is catered to my body. All I have to do is think about releasing a bolt of energy from my palm and it happens--cascading through the air and slamming into Paul’s smug little face. His body hurls backward. He’s smart enough to wrap his hands around the back of his head just seconds before he crashes into the jagged wall. Many of his fingers break, but they protected his head which is good. Because I still need that.
“What’s going on here?” He spits blood. I lower him to the floor with the power of the juice. He flexes his fingers, wincing when they begin to heal.
“Open the doors or I’ll cut off your hand and open it myself.” He has to know that threat is useless because security measures won’t let you open doors with the fingerprints of dead tissue. But it works. Maybe he thinks I don’t know it. Because he scrambles to his feet, still dazed from getting juiced and unlocks the MOD screen.
As the doors clamber open, I help Nova stand up and keep my palm aimed on Paul. His expression is a mixture of defeat and disgust. “You’ll never get out,” he says. “There’s too many locks.”
I step through the door and back into the hallway. “You’re welcome to come with me.”
Paul’s eyebrows draw together in a huff. He scans the room, and then checks his hands again. With a roll of his eyes, and probably the realization that walking with us out of this room is his only option, lest he be stuck with the depowering machine for hours, he follows. “You’re going to be punished severely for this,” he says. “I’ll probably see both of you right back here tomorrow.”
“You won’t,” I say at the same time Nova mutters, “Probably.”
I glare at her as we walk through the jagged rocky hallway. She shrugs, not meeting my eyes and continues examining the hook still stabbed in her abdomen. “Oh wow, I forgot about that,” I say, stopping her. My eyes practically burst out of my own head. Hooks paralyze most Supers. The strong ones can still move a little bit and maybe even talk, but Nova is walking.
She gives me an incredulous look. “Seriously? You couldn’t feel all the pain I’ve been in for the last ten minutes?”
I guess I did feel her pain--I can feel it now. But I was too preoccupied with keeping her from pain a thousand times worse in that machine to take notice to it. “Wait...you know I can feel your emotions?”
Paul studies us in this casual way that fools no one. Nova nods. “Duh. I can feel your emotions too. It’s obviously a twin thing. I think that’s why our power is so strong when we’re near each other.” She tugs at the hook, wiggling it back and forth which slices into her skin with each wiggle, leaving a gash that heals a few seconds later. Frustrated with the hook, she looks at me. “That’s how I knew this was a set up. I could feel it. Although I could have done without actually being forced on that machine...”
I smile. “So you knew I wasn’t betraying you just now?”
Her mouth falls open. “You meant you weren’t purposely trying to communicate with your emotions so I’d know what was up?”
I bite my lip. “I mean...not really. I was just hoping I’d be able to explain once it was over.”
She punches me in the arm. “Oh my god! You really are the evil twin!”
I laugh as relief floods into me. This is going better than I had thought it would. I couldn’t tell her that I was pretending to turn her in back at home because I feared that she wouldn’t act believably if she went into the dungeon willingly and not as if I was forcing her. I guess her acting skills are better than I’d given her credit for.
“You’re not going to get that thing out of you,” I say, pointing to the hook that sticks out of her stomach like she is merchandise that can be hung on a sales rack. “They’ll do it in the medical ward. I don’t even know how you’re standing right now. You’re insane.”
“What’s the medical ward going to do that I can’t do?” she says, tugging on it again. It’s a good thing her tank top is black because now it’s probably drenched in blood. “Plus I can’t exactly walk in and ask for help...I’m still a villain.”
“We could dye your hair and you could be me?” I offer. We reach another locked door and Paul unlocks it without so much as an ounce of hesitation.
Nova shrugs. “I guess. I just really want it out now. It’ll be hard getting back home undetected and I can’t run or fight with this thing in me.”
She has a point. We only saw two members of the Retriever Squad on our trip down here and I promptly told them Nova was being taken in when they asked. I also swore them to keep it quiet under President Might’s request. But making it back through the dungeon and up to our home could be a bloodbath if the wrong people were to see us.
I drop to one knee and examine the hook. Although the part we can see is made of smooth black metal shaped like a horseshoe, the inside, the two parts th
at are inside her, are shaped just like the hooks used in fishing. If you try to pull it out, the metal will rip through your flesh, causing a lot of blood and even more pain.
“We can’t do this,” I say.
“It’ll heal.” Nova walks to the wall and presses her back against it, bracing herself. “Just rip it out. Do it quickly before anything starts to heal.”
“Oh no,” Paul says. “Oh no, no, no. She can’t be serious.”
Seeing Paul squirm gives me the extra motivation I need to follow Nova’s request. “Deep breath,” I tell her. She sucks in air, bracing herself for the pain. I curl my fingers under the hook and count to three in my head.
Three, two, one. Pull.
“Ugh,” Nova grunts. Her eyes squeeze shut. I drop the hook to the floor. Blood and power coat the formerly black surface. Paul probably doesn’t want it back now. My stomach clenches in phantom pain. Nova opens her eyes a few moments later and her power levels slip into serenity.
“You’re such a badass,” I say. Her right hand presses against her ripped shirt. She holds up her left hand for a high-five which I happily give her.
“I am in so much trouble,” Paul mumbles under his breath.
An unexpected female voice speaks from further down the hall. “Looks like all of you are in trouble.”
Paul spins toward the voice. “I am Retriever Squad Director Paul McGreen. No one has permission to be in these hallways without me.” Paul, who until this moment was petrified with fear, steps forward, back straight. He’s all business. “I’m going to need to see some ID, ma’am. And a thorough explanation for how you made it past the security doors.”
The woman is thin with big hips and curly bright red hair that reeks of hair dye. She wears black leather pants, combat boots and a matching sleek leather jacket. She smiles, looking past Paul toward me. I move in front of my sister, hoping to block enough of her face so that we don’t look like twins. Or more importantly, so she doesn’t look like Nova Might: wanted villain.
Overpowered (Powered Trilogy #2) Page 15