Super Heroes (The New Super Humans #4)

by T. M. Franklin

  “Shut up, Calvin.”

  He sucked his teeth, eyeing Gavin mutinously.

  “Let's calm down, please,” Cyrus said, his voice a low rumble. “Calvin is right. The ship has sailed. Whether Gavin or Eve should face disciplinary action is something we will have to consider at a later time. The issue at hand, right now, is what to do with the Order.”

  “If they decide to join us,” Eve pointed out.

  “Well, there's no debate about that, is there?” Wes asked. “They will join us?” He watched Eve, waiting.

  After a moment, she nodded, ever so slightly. “Most likely. Yes.”

  “Then the question is, can they be trusted?” Beth asked.

  “I believe they can,” Gavin replied.

  “You believe?” Calvin dropped his foot to the floor, leaning forward. “That's reassuring.”

  Gavin forced himself to breathe evenly and choose his words carefully. “The Order was chosen, we all know that. By who? Well, that we don't know. But the history of the Order shows that they always fight on the side of humanity. I think that shows we can trust them.”

  Wes frowned, unconvinced. “Just because previous members have been incorruptible, doesn't mean the same can be said today.” He opened a thin file folder and scanned a page inside. “This Blake girl, she seems rather obsessed with finding Ethan Reynolds.” He looked up at Gavin over his glasses.

  “That could be a serious security threat,” Wes said, glancing at Cyrus. “He's still secure, I presume.”

  Cyrus nodded.

  “And he will stay so,” Gavin said. “I've made it clear that Ethan Reynolds is lost to them.”

  “Are you sure they believe you?” Alice asked, blue eyes wide as her long, thin fingers twisted together. “The containment cannot be breached. It would be disastrous.”

  “I will ensure that Reynolds remains contained,” he replied.

  Wes closed the file folder and leaned back in his chair, considering. “You're certain you can do that? How do you know they'll listen to you at all?”

  “Because they're decent people, and they'll do what's necessary for the greater good.” he replied, quickly losing his patience. “The Order was called out of need,” Gavin pointed out. “We—humanity—needed them, and they answered the call.”

  “But will they answer our call?” Wes asked. “Will they submit to WARDEN's authority?”

  And that was a question that made Gavin a little uncomfortable. He exchanged a wary look with Eve.

  “I told them they could retain their autonomy,” he said finally. “Work with us under an alliance.”

  “You did what?” Wes bellowed. And the other members of the board talked over each other, just as appalled.

  Gavin sat back for a bit, letting them vent their concerns. When they started to wind down, he stood up and leaned forward, palms on the table.

  “I know you don't like it,” he said. “But what's done is done. I invited the Order to join us, under their terms. And I think you all understand why.” He met the gaze of each board member before he continued.

  “The Order is powerful. Very powerful,” he said. “And the fact is, we need them, more than they need us.”

  Chloe stared at the window in Gavin's office, frowning at the snowy scene displayed. The last time she'd been in the office, the window had looked down over the parking lot. Now, it looked like they were in the middle of a park in Saskatchewan or something. Light flakes drifted down on the barren trees and fluffy drifts. It was hypnotic, and she wondered how much technology like that cost.

  Maybe it was something they'd developed at WARDEN. It probably had security applications. Chloe would bet Gavin could flip a switch and monitor the security cameras in the building. He was probably sitting right there at his desk when he caught them breaking in.

  She sighed and glanced at the clock. Anne had said Gavin would be back soon, and was anxious to speak with her, but she'd been waiting about ten minutes, and was getting impatient. It had been a long weekend, and she was tense after spending two days being cautious of every word spoken while inside the Victorian.

  That was Number One on their list—that any surveillance currently in their house be removed immediately.

  They'd ended up back in the clearing on Sunday afternoon. Some might have called it an odd choice, given what they'd been through there, but it was far enough from town that they didn't have to worry about running into anyone, or being watched by WARDEN lackeys. Still, they took precautions, like they had all those months ago, using Maia and Wren to hide their location.

  They sat in a circle on the grass near the edge of the trees. The sun was warm on their faces, birdsong and chattering wildlife making it feel more like a picnic than a somber meeting about whether or not they would join a secret government agency. Chloe couldn't keep from remembering the way they'd tried to imprison the townspeople near the cliff over there . . . where she'd fought Gina in the woods . . . where Ethan . . .

  “I made a list of pros and cons,” Miranda offered, once they'd settled down. “I figured we could add to it, and then make our decision?”

  The others agreed and she flipped open her notebook.

  “Okay then. Pros,” she said. “Access to intel, that's number one. It'd be good to know what's coming.”

  “Research, too,” Dylan added, pulling up pieces of grass. “They know more about this stuff than we do. No more stumbling around in the dark.”

  “And training,” Wren said. “If they can teach us to use our gifts better. If we can work with other people like us? That would be pretty awesome.”

  “But there have to be strings,” Beck said, leaning back on his hands and crossing his legs. “You know they're going to want to control us.”

  “That's a Con.” Miranda scribbled in her notebook. “Also red tape . . . and dealing with authority. I can't imagine we'll have the freedom to do what we think is necessary. I mean, even Gavin has to answer to that board, right?” she asked Chloe.

  “Right,” Chloe said.

  “And what about our normal lives?” Maia asked. “Are they going to try and stop us from going to school? Getting jobs?”

  Miranda tapped her pencil on her lips, thinking. “I'll put that in the question mark category for now.” She wrote it down. “Anything else?”

  Chloe's gaze drifted to the other side of the clearing. “Ethan,” she said quietly.

  The group fell silent. “Right,” Miranda said, making a note. “They won't let us look for Ethan.”

  “Which just proves the point.” Dylan got to his feet and brushed dirt off his jeans. “If it comes down to it, their agenda will always trump ours. And they only share information with us that they want to share with us.”

  The debate continued for another hour or so. Once they'd come up with the pros and cons, they discussed the best way to confront Gavin. Some thought they should all meet with him, present a united front. But Chloe argued that she had formed a relationship with Gavin already, and that the best way to get what they wanted was to be as non-confrontational as possible.

  In the end, it was really a moot point. They all had jobs they had to be at on Monday morning, so it was left to Chloe by default.

  She fingered the folded piece of paper in her pocket and checked the clock again as the door opened behind her. She jumped to her feet, nervous, but Gavin waved her back.

  “Have a seat,” he said. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

  She sat back down as Gavin rounded his desk and collapsed into his own chair. “I just met with WARDEN's Board of Directors,” he said. “They are not happy with me at the moment.”

  “Because of us?”

  Gavin scrubbed his hands over his face. “No, no . . . because of me, really. I didn't follow protocol.” He dropped his hands to the desk. “But none of that matters. I'll be fine. The question is, what have you decided?”

  Chloe took a deep breath and pulled out the piece of paper, unfolding it carefully. “We will join you,” she
said, adding quickly, “but we have a few conditions.” She slid the paper across the desk.

  Gavin raised a brow, but took the paper and read it silently. After a moment, he leaned back in his chair.

  “First of all,” he said. “There's no surveillance equipment in the house.”

  Chloe wasn't sure she believed that. She met his gaze steadily.

  “It's true,” he said with a shrug. “We do have a team of seers, so it was hardly necessary. Your actions were being monitored—”

  “So we're being followed?”

  “We had to keep tabs on you,” he said. “It's part of the job.”

  Chloe didn't like that, but it was hardly unexpected. She folded her arms and jerked her chin at the paper. “What about the rest?”

  He ran his finger down the list. “Training is a given. We'll work around your schedules, so school, jobs, that's all fine. As I said, you'll have autonomy and will decide as a group how you will participate in WARDEN missions.” He looked up at her. “But you will be expected to participate. That's part of the deal.”

  Chloe nodded. That was no surprise. “What about access to intel and research?”

  “Research is fine,” Gavin replied. “We'll give you access to our library files. There's enough there to keep you busy for decades. As for intel—” He blew out a long breath. “My hands are tied to a certain extent. I won't be able to share everything with you.”

  He leaned forward, elbows on the table, his gaze steady. “But I give you my word, I'll share what I can. And I will always be honest with you.”

  Her gut told Chloe to believe him. “All right, then,” she said.

  Gavin perused the list one more time. “I noticed that Ethan Reynolds is not mentioned.”

  At the mention of Ethan's name, Chloe's nerves shot to life, her stomach churning once again. “You made it clear that he was off the table.”

  “That I did,” he murmured, almost to himself. After a moment, he slipped the paper into his top desk drawer and got to his feet. “All right then,” he said. “I believe we have an agreement.”

  “That's it?” Chloe got to her feet, a little stunned. “No contract, or, I don't know, a blood oath or something?”

  Gavin laughed as he walked around his desk. “It's an alliance, not a selling of souls. We'll work out the details later.” He opened his door and motioned for her to precede him. “Now, how about the real tour?”

  “The real tour?”

  Gavin smirked as they headed toward the elevator. “You didn't think this is all there is, do you?”

  “Well, I assumed not,” she replied. “There is the door we couldn't open.”

  Gavin pressed the B button, then slid his I.D. card through the reader. The doors slid shut. “Yes, well, we have regular security precautions in place, but also some to guard against those with enhanced abilities. The door you refer to has been specially armed to dilute certain gifts.”

  “Dilute?” Chloe turned to face him and leaned against the back wall of the elevator.

  “Beckett Leighton's strength for example. It's diverted through the door and dissipated through the building. Kind of like dropping ink into a puddle.”

  The elevator kept dropping. “That seems handy.” And a little frightening. She imagined they had no problem imprisoning people with gifts either.

  “Nothing for you to worry about,” Gavin said, as if reading her mind. “We are allies, after all.”

  Chloe narrowed her eyes at him. “Do you have a gift?” She couldn't believe it hadn't occurred to her before this.

  “Me? No.” Gavin slipped his hands into his pockets. “Just an ordinary human . . . with access to some who aren't so ordinary. And some pretty cool technology.”

  “I bet.” Chloe realized they'd been in the elevator longer than they should have been. “Where exactly are we going anyway?”

  At that moment, the elevator slowed to a stop and the doors opened.

  “Our basement is a little bigger than you think,” Gavin replied. “We have ten levels below ground.” They stepped out into a cement walled hallway, extending as far as Chloe could see in both directions. Gavin led her to the right. “All heavily shielded and fortified to withstand both natural and supernatural threats.”

  Chloe didn't quite know what to say to that, so she followed him quietly down the hall. It arced to the left and she realized it was actually a large circle, with doors along each side of the curving hallway.

  “You'll each be assigned to a trainer specializing in your particular gift,” he continued. “Whenever the others can come in, we'll get them set up as well. In addition to the training facilities here, we have outdoor grounds near the edge of town. Out of the way and shielded, of course. They're best for those who might need a little more room.

  “As for you, it makes sense for you to work with Eve, since you already know each other.” He glanced at her. “As long as that's not a problem?”

  Chloe shrugged. “No problem here.”

  They entered a pair of sliding metal doors that opened with a whoosh. Inside was a large, circular room, lit by a glowing domed ceiling. A group of people sat in a circle in the center of the room, Eve Dubois directly across from them as they entered. At the sound of the door, she got to her feet and walked quietly around the circle toward them. The rest remained cross-legged with their hands balanced palms up on their knees and their eyes closed.

  Eve crooked a finger to invite them into a small antechamber off the larger room. Chloe hadn't spotted it at first, but it appeared to be a break room of sorts, with a coffee machine, mini fridge, and a little round table with a few folding chairs. A window Chloe now knew was a projection screen showed a view of the mountains on the far wall, and there were a couple of small cots along the wall below it, blankets folded in a neat pile atop a pillow on each one.

  Eve closed the door and smiled at Chloe. “I don't want to disrupt the others,” she explained. “This is our silent room, isolated from the outside world in every way to allow us to more completely focus on our visions, and to aid each other in enhancing our abilities.”

  Chloe almost gasped out loud. “You can do that?” she asked. “Help each other with visions?”

  “Among other things,” Eve replied. “You'd be surprised what we can do if we work together.”

  “And all those people out there,” she waved toward the door. “They're like me?”

  “To a certain extent,” Eve said. “All have some level of precognitive ability, although it manifests in different ways. Some have visions. Some dreams. Some see the future in words or numbers—like a code. Some use objects. Few have your raw talent.” She said it more like an accusation than a compliment.

  “The Precognition Department takes up this entire floor,” Eve said. “Once we're finished with meditation, I'll show you around.”

  “And with that, I'll leave you to it,” Gavin said, reaching for the door. “Chloe, your keycard has been reprogrammed to allow you access to most of the sub-basement floors. If the doors don't open, you're not allowed inside. Security—”

  “Protocols,” she finished. “I know.” She reached out to touch his arm, stopping him before he opened the door. “Which reminds me. How did I get to the basement in the first place, the other day? That wasn't a coincidence, was it?”

  Gavin laughed. “We have the best security in the world, Chloe,” he replied. “Nothing that happens within these walls is a coincidence.” And with that, he walked out of the room and was gone.

  In some ways, training with other seers was easier than Chloe had thought it would be. And in some ways, it was much more difficult. It was weird to sit in a circle with strangers, in traditional meditation pose, eyes closed, listening and trying to match their breaths.

  But at the same time, it almost felt as natural as—well—as breathing.

  Eve's quiet voice led them through the guided meditation, although Chloe thought it was probably for her benefit more than the others.

 
“Picture a mountaintop,” she said, soothing and slow. “You're standing on the top of it, breathing the air, the sun shining on your face. And you see other mountains around you, other people standing on top, reaching out to you. You reach out to them, too, but not with your hands, not with your bodies, with your mind—with your gift. Until you form a circle of power radiating outward and in, seeing all that is . . . all that was . . . all that could be.”

  Visions swept through Chloe's mind, gently in and out with her breathing, and she realized they were not only hers. Their visions layered on top of each other, weaving into a web of past, present, and future, and she could almost . . . she could feel . . .

  Suddenly, the connection to the others snapped, and she almost fell over at the emotional recoil.

  “All right, that's enough for today,” Eve said in that same quiet voice.

  Chloe opened her eyes, a little dizzy. Spots floated in front of her for a few moments.

  “Put your head down between your knees,” the girl to her left whispered. She was a little younger than Chloe, with red hair and cognac-colored eyes. “Don't worry, it happens to all of us sometimes.”

  Chloe did as she was told and the dizziness dissipated. “Thanks,” she told the girl.

  “No problem.” The girl stretched out her legs and bent down to touch her toes. “I'm Abby.”

  “Chloe.”

  “Yeah, I know.” She reached her arms up, leaning to one side, then the other. “Everybody knows about you.”

  “You do?”

  The girl turned toward her and rolled her eyes. “We're seers,” she said. “We've seen you coming for ages!”

  Before Chloe could respond, Eve appeared at her side. “I think that's enough of that, Abby,” she said, chiding. “A little rude, don't you think?”

  Abby winced. “Sorry,” she told Chloe.

  “No problem.” Chloe wasn't surprised to hear that WARDEN had been watching them. She knew that. It was, however, a little weird to think the people in this room had known about her long before she'd ever heard of WARDEN or the Order, or even knew about her own gift. A chill ran down her spine, and her arms broke out in goosebumps.