I let out a big sigh and made my way to the elevator. Hunger scratched at my stomach, and I realized I hadn’t eaten in a long time. Selena probably hadn’t either, and suddenly I was feeling confident that I’d be able to bring her back if I brought up the prospect of food.
As I entered the elevator, I was feeling confident. I wasn’t sure what to expect as I’d never seen Selena so upset before, but I was sure that I’d be able to reach her and help her through this. We could help each other.
The doors opened and I walked towards the exit. I looked up at the holes in the wall that’d been hastily patched up. I could hear the faint hum of the Eximus wires that ran along the outside of the building. By now the ceiling was probably covered too, which meant Eddie and Doug were going to have to be a bit more careful if we went up there again.
I realized I hadn’t talked to either one of them since Drew’s death. I made a mental note to check on them when I got back, if they were still awake whenever that was.
But first thing was first, I needed to find Selena. I stepped out into the cold London night, and took off in the air, beginning my search.
I flew across the city, scanning the rooftops and parks for any sign of Selena, but found nothing. As I searched, I realized I really didn’t have any clue as to where she might be located.
I looked up at the clouds above me. Nobody below could see past them. It was like a privacy divider between a city and the rest of the universe. If Selena really wanted to be alone, I knew she’d be on the other side of there.
I flew up and through the divide, marveling at the clear sky on the other side. The moon was big and bright, lighting up the clouds below me. The stars twinkled, and I felt utterly alone. It was perfect.
I spun around, scanning with my supervision for any sign of Selena. A mile or two away, I saw a figure floating that had to be Selena. I flew over, on my way wondering how I was going to start my conversation with her. She had her back towards me as she looked out upon the sky that stretched before us. For a second I thought it might not be her. It could be my head messing with me again, just as it had been whenever I kept thinking I saw Samantha. But as I got close, I realized it was her.
“Hey Selena,” I said as I flew up behind her. “Pretty view, huh?”
Selena turned to face me, and I froze when I saw her eyes glowing a bright white.
III
ATHENA’S PRICE
31
A MATCH
Sometime during the 21st century
Athena had taken a camera from the twenty-first century, traveled back to the 1400’s, and took a picture of her son when he was a teenager.
She looked down at it, in awe of how beautiful he was. To her, he had only just been born. But thanks to time travel, she didn’t have to wait and see what he would grow up to look like. She had this picture to remind her.
Which was good, because she didn’t want to have to keep going back and forth from then to where she was now, sitting in a car, watching another teenaged boy. She looked back and forth from him to the picture of her own son. The two of them were almost identical.
This was really going to work. She’d be able to pull the plan off, and no one would notice.
She closed her eyes and sighed. She began to question whether or not she should go through with it. But then she thought of Patrick, and how he had begged her to. Despite loving her son, she viewed Patrick as her firstborn. She loved spending time with him. Talking with him. Practically raising him.
But she knew she could never bring him back with her.
So instead this plan was going to have to work. She was doing it for him. To save Patrick’s life.
To save the world.
32
RIDING THE TUBE
I froze for a few seconds before my mind kicked it into high-gear. “Look, I know you’re in there, Selena,” I said, putting my hands out. “Just stay cal—”
A sudden jab to my chest interrupted me, and I flew back across the sky. I did a back flip through the air and recovered. Once I did so, she was just a few feet away from slamming into me again. I dropped down just enough to where she’d miss me. I reached up and grabbed her ankles, pulling her to a stop. I yanked her towards me and unleashed a series of punches. She dodged every one, and then kicked me hard in my side.
I stumbled but kept myself from flying off. I lunged and grabbed her arms. She reached up and grabbed mine, and the two of us grappled for dominance. “Come on, Selena,” I said, trying to gain control. “I know you’re in there. I know you can fight this.”
She opened her mouth and a voice spoke that was not her own. It was deep and garbled, like three or four voices speaking at the same time. “Punish,” it said.
The strange voice caught me off guard. It chilled me to my core, hearing a voice like that coming from somebody I knew so well. Selena—or whatever was controlling her—used this to her advantage. She knocked my arms out of the way, grappled me, and began flight straight down towards the ground fast and hard.
Before I even knew what was going on, Selena slammed me into the ground. We hit in the middle of a street, and kept on going. I burst through the roof of the London subway—or tube, as they referred to it—and slammed into the track, Selena right on top of me.
I pushed her up and off me, and stood to the ground. My blue eyes fought with her white ones to light up the otherwise dark tunnel. I ran to her, unleashing a flurry of punches, but she dodged and blocked them easily. Whoever was controlling her was a very well trained fighter. I launched another couple of blows, and one of them connected right one her jaw. She stumbled backwards from the force of the punch, and I was ready for the follow-up. I kicked her hard, and she flew backwards right through an abandoned subway car.
I flew over to the car and landed on the back. I walked through the hole I’d just made in the twisted bent metal by kicking Selena. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. I knew exactly what she was going through. The horror of being trapped within her own body. Thankfully the two of us had a lot of practice fighting with each other, so the only thing I was worried about was not whether or not I could beat her, but was whether or not I could beat her by causing as little damage as possible.
I looked three cars down and saw the indents where her body finally came to a stop. Only problem was she wasn’t there. I had no idea where she was hiding, and she stopped her eyes from glowing so I couldn’t track her down that easily. “Selena,” I called out as I walked down the abandoned subway car. “Selena I know you’re in there. Just try the hardest you can to fight it. Don’t worry though, I’ll help you. You know that.” My way of helping her was hitting her while trying to keep her from hitting me, so it wasn’t exactly an orthodox method. Most things weren’t, though, when it came to Supers. I listened carefully as I walked, all my senses on the lookout for her. I could hear the floor creaking as I walked. I could smell the old, stale air that was trapped down in the tubes. The fumes that had nowhere else to go so they just settled all around.
Not a single sign of Selena.
I reached the end of the train and stood in front of where she landed. I looked to my right and saw the sliding doors had been busted out. She’d gotten out. Escaped.
A loud crashing noise stole my attention. I ran to the door Selena had escaped from, just in time to see a subway car spinning through the air, coming right for the train I was standing in.
One train smashed into the other and I went flying backwards. I tumbled backwards as the train cars twisted together, tumbling and flipping backwards off the track. I slammed into poles and hit my head on the seats. The walls and roof caved in as the car rolled across the ground.
After a few seconds, everything stopped. I lay in the midst of the twisted train cars, taking a moment to recover. A creaking noise in the distance forced me to get up.
I shot up through the mound of mangled train cars just in time to see another train car just a few feet away, spinning towards me. I jumped up onto the ba
ck of the train, and bounded to the top. I ran along the top of the train as it spun in slow motion beneath me. I took long strides, and when I reached the end of the train car, fell down and slid off the top. I reached behind me and grabbed hold of the train car behind me, shifting and using its momentum to my advantage. I swung it around, and launched it right back at Selena.
She saw it coming towards her, and jumped up to meet it and flew right through to the other side. I was ready for her though, and flew close behind the car. She flew through one side, and when she came out the other, I was ready to meet her.
I slammed into her body, catching her off guard. She slammed into the ground, disoriented from my taking her by surprise. I reached behind me and pulled up a piece of the train track. I wrapped the steel track around her as tight as I could. I wrapped my arms around the steel, holding it secure so she couldn’t get out.
With her in my arms, I flew up through the roof of the tunnel and out into the London street. Selena struggled beneath me, and it took all my strength to keep her from getting free.
I wasn’t sure how long I could keep her restrained, though. I needed to get back to the headquarters, and fast. I flew towards the direction of our London home as fast as I could. It came into view, and I kicked things into high gear. I flew over the roof, and dropped Selena.
The subway track railing exploded as she got herself free, but before she could do anything else, she landed on the roof, the Eximus wires that were installed shocking her. She convulsed for a few moments before coming to a rest, having been knocked unconscious.
33
TOP FLOOR
I had almost fallen asleep when Doug woke me up.
“She’s waking up!” he shouted.
I was wide awake in a second. I jumped up from my chair and watched Selena slowly come to on her cot in the corner of the room. Her hands were behind her back, restrained by Eximus handcuffs. Doug stood nearby with an Eximus blaster just to be safe. Eddie stood behind him, one of his electricity grenades in his hands.
“Damn,” Selena moaned, her eyes still closed. “I feel like hell.”
I stepped over to her and got on a knee next to her. “Is that you, Selena?” I asked.
Her eyes flickered open. She winced in pain, and tried to sit up. That is much harder to do with your hands behind your back then may seem. “Am I cuffed?” she asked, her voice groggy.
I nodded. “Are you in control?”
“Yeah, of course,” she said as if she hadn’t been possessed by something and attacked me.
I turned to Doug and gave him a look that meant to be ready. He pulled his Eximus blaster up to his shoulder and tensed up.
“I’m gonna take the cuffs off you now,” I said. I reached behind her and pressed the safety release button, careful not to touch the part of the cuffs that were flowing with Eximus energy.
The cuffs popped off and fell down onto the cot Selena laid on, disabled. I picked them up and placed them on the ground.
Selena took a deep breath and let out a sigh of relief. “Oh thank god,” she breathed. “There we go.” She sat up and leaned her head back on the wall, her eyes clenched tight. “Healing factor work your magic,” she said.
After a few moments, the color returned to her face and she looked much less tense. “Better?” I asked.
She opened her eyes and two glowing blue orbs looked up at me. “Much better,” she said as her eyes faded from their blue glow back to their normal state. She looked around the room, confused. “Where are we?”
“We’re in an abandoned office on the top floor of the headquarters,” I said, standing up. In one corner was the cot that we placed Selena on. On the other side of the room were three chairs for Eddie, Doug, and I to sit in while we waited. There were no windows in the room, just a white door that blended in with the white walls, and led to the dark hallway outside. “We figured it’d be best for you to recover up here. Just in case.”
“Just in case what?” Selena asked, eying Doug who still had his Eximus rifle pointed at her.
“Just in case you weren’t back in control,” I said as I reached out and lowered Doug’s gun. “Plus it I didn’t really think it was a good idea if Ellie and the rest of them knew you were back yet.”
Eddie grabbed a bottle of water from the pile in the corner and handed it to Selena.
“Thanks,” she said as she took it from him. “Why not tell them?” Selena asked before she took a drink.
“They sent me out there to find you and bring you back. Didn’t want you out being a “loose cannon”. They’re already on edge, I wouldn’t want to tell them that we destroyed part of their subway system. They really wouldn’t trust us then,” I explained. I sat back down in my chair.
“Kane texted the both of us last night,” Doug said as he sat down in his own chair, gesturing towards Eddie. “Told us to meet him up here with all this stuff. We’ve basically just been camping out keeping an eye on you for the rest of the time.”
“How long have I been out?” Selena asked, furrowing her eyebrows.
“A couple hours. It’s probably three or four in the morning right now,” I said.
Selena sighed, taking in all the things she’d done. “So what’s the plan now?”
“Now that we see you’re you, we’ll go back to our rooms and try to get some sleep. Tomorrow I’ll tell Ellie that I found you and we came back in the middle of the night together,” I said.
“What if…I…” Selena began, not wanting to put her thoughts into words.
“I haven’t since my incident, so I think you should be fine. Who or what ever did that to you probably used a lot of energy in the process. We should be good for now.”
“For now,” Selena said, standing from the cot. “This can’t keep happening, Kane. We need to get to the bottom of this.
“I know,” I said. “Trust me, I know. There’s a lot of things we have to get to the bottom of.”
“What do you think that voice meant?” she asked.
Eddie and Doug looked at me. I hadn’t told them about the voice that came from Selena. “Some voice said ‘punish’ while we were fighting,” I explained to them. I looked up at Selena. “I don’t know what it could mean though.”
“I think it’s pretty clear. You, me, or the both of us were being punished for something,” Selena said.
I nodded. “Yeah, I got that. What I mean to say is that I don’t know where to go with it. Who could we have pissed off though?”
“Uh, how about Jigsaw and his men? I’m sure they’re more than a bit perturbed.”
“Yes, but that was after my experience with having white eyes,” I said. “I guess it could be those first white eyed Supers we saw, but for the split second they had control of themselves during our fight, they seemed dazed and confused.”
“Maybe it was Genna, the leader of those Supers. She didn’t have a weird sounding voice, and she always had control of herself,” Selena said as she began to wander around the room, thinking.
“If she had the power to take over other Supers, she would’ve done it while we were fighting them. That would’ve made things much easier on her,” I said. “Whoever is doing this, we don’t know. Right now what I do know though, is that I’m beat. I could use a little bit of sleep.”
Selena nodded. “I guess I could use some sleep in my own bed as well. Let’s sleep on this and then try and figure something out tomorrow.”
“Sounds good,” I said as I stood from my chair. I turned to Eddie and Doug. “Keep your phones off silent, just in case I need to get a hold of you guys. I’ll do the same.”
“Roger that,” Doug said as he stood.
The four of us snuck out of the office we’d commandeered, and made our way back down to our rooms.
Even though I woke up at eleven the night before, I felt tired from mine and Selena’s fight, plus the stress of waiting hours for her to wake up at any moment. So once my head hit my pillow, I was out.
34
&n
bsp; DRIFT
I rolled out of bed a few hours later, feeling rested. For the first time since Drew’s death, I felt as if the fog that clouded my mind was beginning to clear. My emotions were starting to get back in check. Of course, it helped that I had something to distract my mind, like fighting Selena. I decided to keep that trend going and try and get some work done on the Jigsaw front. I needed to get out there and be proactive. Find out where he was hiding, and send him packing.
But first, I had to get rid of that damn morning breath.
After brushing my teeth, I walked out of my room just as Ellie came down the hallway. “Good morning,” I said. I couldn’t help but think about the things that had just happened the night before in her own city, and she had no clue about them.
“Good morning, Kane,” she said with a smile. “I saw Selena eating breakfast this morning and spoke with her. It’s good to see she’s doing better. Thank you for being so understanding last night.”
“It’s no problem,” I said. “I’m glad she’s someplace safe.”
“As am I. I know you’re probably still processing what happened with Drew, but I was wondering if you remembered that dinner with my parents I mentioned a few days ago?”
I nodded my head. “Yes, I remember.”
“Well they were wondering if you wanted to bring everyone over tomorrow? It’d be good for you guys to get out of here and clear your heads. Eat some homemade food for a change instead of what’s in that food court,” she said with a smile.
“A real meal does sound nice,” I said. I didn’t feel one hundred percent ready to get back to normal, but who knew, maybe the dinner would be what pushed me over the edge. “I’ll let everybody else know. I’m sure they’d all love to come.”
“That sounds great! I’ll ring up my parents and let them know to be expecting us.” She stepped backwards down the hallway. “I better get back to work now. I’ll talk to you later, Kane.”
The Secret of the Supers (The First Superhero Book 4) Page 13
