Powerless

by Tera Lynn Childs

  “Nitro, definitely.”

  She snorts. “Yeah, probably.”

  “No ‘probably’ about it. He just told Jeremy he had cooties.”

  “Nice.”

  “Do you ever wonder how we’re going to break into the lab with these guys when the group can’t get along for more than five minutes at a time?”

  “Pretty much every second of the day.” She closes her eyes and blows out a long breath.

  “I’m glad I’m not the only one.”

  We sit in silence until—eyes still closed—she asks, “Do you ever wonder what that’s like?”

  I’m not following. “What do you mean?”

  “Nitro knows exactly who he is. So do Dante and Draven and Jeremy. Villain. Hero. They wear their labels proudly. Absolutely.” She opens her eyes and gazes off into the distance. “It’s the same at home. Dad, Riley, even Mom. They know which side of the line they stand on. They know who they are and never question the fact that they’re the good guys. And me”—she breaks off and takes a couple deep breaths—“I’m the black sheep. The rebel. Between the pressure to live up to the family name and the fear that I’ll never live it down, I don’t know if I even have a clue who I am. Hero. Villain. Both. Neither? I don’t even know.”

  “You’re a hero,” I tell her firmly. “The real kind. More so than your dad or any of the others working with him are. “

  “Why? Because I don’t buy into the bullshit?”

  “Yes.” I lean back and stare up at the starry sky. “And because you’re willing to do something about it. You’ve always known the superheroes had a weird agenda. And you’ve fought it. That’s totally heroic behavior.”

  “Yeah, well, if I’d fought harder, maybe your mom wouldn’t be missing. Maybe Deacon wouldn’t be half dead in some six-by-six cell none of us can find. Maybe—”

  I interrupt her with the most absurd idea I can think of. “And maybe I’d grow a superpower or two. Anything is possible, Reb, but you can’t live in a world of what-ifs.”

  I twist in my chair to face her and make sure she’s looking at me before I continue because it feels really important that she understands what I’m about to say.

  “I could sit here making up a million scenarios about what might be different. What if I’d bought into Jeremy’s conspiracy theories years ago? What if I’d listened when you’d tried to tell me things weren’t what they seemed? What if I hadn’t left my mom alone, sleeping, totally vulnerable, while I went to the lab to check things out?” I huff out a tight breath, the weight of all those what-ifs crushing my chest.

  “If any of that had happened, everything could be different right now. But it’s not. There’s no going back, no power of time travel. So we just have to work on the problem, you know? We have to deal with what is, not what might have been.”

  Rebel sits silent for a long time. She’s totally withdrawn, totally locked inside of herself, and there’s a part of me that wants to break her out, to smash through the walls she’s putting up in self-defense. But I don’t, because I get what she’s going through. With everything I’ve had to process during the last couple days, I never stopped to think that finally discovering the truth, finally learning that she’s been right all along, must be weighing on her.

  Feeling alone led her to seek out villains. I won’t let her feel alone ever again.

  “You’re right,” she says with a grimace. “Still, sometimes I wish I could be more like you. More like Riley.”

  “Riley? You want to be more like your brother?” I ask incredulously. “Okay, who are you and what have you done with my best friend?”

  “It may sound crazy, but it’s true. Yeah, my brother drives me nuts, but everything is easy for Riley. The world makes sense to him. He sees the superverse in black and white, good and bad. So do you, Kenna.”

  I think back to the supermarket and how nothing seemed black and white anymore. How complicated everything was and how I didn’t know what to think—what to feel—about any of it.

  Nothing is easy anymore.

  I don’t know where this upside-down path we’re on is headed, and I sure as hell don’t know where it’s going to end up. But I’m certain that Rebel is the one person in all of this who shouldn’t be beating herself up.

  “But you were right,” I tell her. “Good isn’t always good, and bad isn’t always bad. You’ve always seen the shades of gray.”

  I think about Draven, about what a good guy he is deep down, under the long hair and villain tats and that ridiculously obnoxious smirk. Under his screw-the-world attitude. He may be a total badass, but that doesn’t mean he’s bad. How can he be when he spends so much of his time trying to do the right thing?

  “Seeing in black and white is highly overrated,” I say.

  She gapes at me. “I never thought I’d hear you say that.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s a brave new world, isn’t it? And what do they say about new worlds? Adapt or die?”

  She looks at me strangely as she echoes my earlier question. “Who are you, and where’s the real Kenna? What have you done with my best friend?”

  “That seems to be the question today, doesn’t it?” I reply with a forced laugh.

  Too bad I don’t have an answer anymore.

  Chapter 17

  “Dude, are you sure this is going to work?” Dante asks.

  “Absolutely,” Jeremy answers as we inch forward on our stomachs. “Thanks to the codes on Mr. Malone’s computer, I disabled the villain sensors and the perimeter alarm. There should be an entrance to one of the evacuation tunnels a little bit ahead.”

  “Should?” Draven echoes.

  “Just how confident are you that there is an evacuation tunnel? It wasn’t on the blueprints,” Rebel hisses at Jeremy.

  “Totally confident. There has to be at least one, if not more.” Jeremy squints into the shadows. “I’m, like, eighty percent confident—well, maybe seventy-five percent—that we’ll find it. But—”

  “Seventy-five percent?” Draven whisper-yells. “We’re betting my cousin’s life on a seventy-five percent chance that you’re right?”

  It’s dark so I can’t see his face, but I can all but feel the anger radiating off him. Not that I blame him. Seventy-five percent odds just aren’t that great, especially when that’s just to get into the facility. God only knows how difficult things will get once we actually set foot in the lab to rescue Deacon.

  Hopefully we’ll also find some clue about where my mom is being kept. Despite two straight days of hacking and exploring Mr. Malone’s computer, Jeremy didn’t find even a hint about her. He’s convinced she’s not here, and I’m afraid I believe him.

  “Do you have a better idea?” Jeremy snaps back. “Besides, I was ninety-five percent confident before you guys started messing with my head.” He ups his pace, looking like a cross between an earthworm and a yogi as he scoots across the hard ground.

  We’re making our way through one of the undeveloped fields that surround the lab, the plants and weeds providing cover as we creep forward, dressed entirely in black. I have to admit, we blend into the night pretty well—certainly better than I thought we would when Jeremy laid out this leg of the plan—but I’m still not confident we won’t be discovered. With all the extra precautions Mr. Malone has taken to protect the lab, I can’t believe he left this area with nothing but an easily disabled perimeter alarm for protection. Especially if Jeremy’s right and there are access tunnels out here.

  “I’m giving you ten more minutes,” Dante growls. “If we don’t find the tunnel by then—”

  “What?” answers Jeremy. “What are you going to do? Walk up to the front door and blow the thing wide open?”

  “If we have to,” Draven tells him grimly.

  My mouth goes dry at the determination in his voice. One way or another, Draven is getting into th
at lab tonight, and I have a feeling he doesn’t give a damn whether or not he gets hurt or killed in the process. He’s willing to do anything, take any risk, to save someone he loves, and I can totally relate to that. I feel the same way about Mom and Rebel. But while he doesn’t seem to care much about his safety, I do. The thought of him getting hurt upsets me more than a little.

  Closing my eyes, I send a quiet plea into the universe that we all get out of this alive.

  “You won’t get two steps into the lab that way and you know it,” Jeremy says.

  “Ask me if I give a crap.”

  “Can you all just bloody well shut up and get moving?” Nitro says from his spot at the back of our wiggling, dysfunctional line. “It’s only a matter of time before something crawls up my pant leg, and I have to be honest, I’m not okay with that.”

  “Don’t be such a—”

  “Yes!” Jeremy crows in a loud whisper, cutting Draven off mid-insult. “Found it! Down there to the left. Do you see it?”

  I narrow my eyes, trying to peer through the darkness at where Jeremy’s deliberately dim flashlight is pointing. “That round thing in the ground?” I ask, excitement thrumming through my blood.

  “Yes! That’s an access grate!” Jeremy does a crazy little wriggle that I assume is his version of a victory dance. “I told you it was here. I told you we’d find it! I knew it! I just knew it!” Another wriggle. “Who’s the man? Who. Is. The. Man?”

  It’s a rhetorical question, so nobody answers him. And we don’t interrupt his moment of victory either—he’s earned it.

  “Nice job, nerd king,” Rebel says affectionately when Jeremy finally stops congratulating himself and we’re congregated around the grate. “Now what?”

  “We rip the thing off its hinges and go in,” Dante says. He reaches for the grate, when Jeremy yells, “No! Don’t!”

  We all freeze.

  “What’s wrong?” Draven demands. “I thought this was what we were looking for.”

  “It is.” Jeremy gets on his knees, pulls off his backpack, and starts rummaging around in it. “Just because it wasn’t on any of the security diagrams or property blueprints doesn’t mean it’s not protected. It’s an outside access point. It’s probably wired.”

  “With explosives?” Nitro asks, eyes wide.

  Jeremy rolls his eyes. “With security devices that alert the big guys with superpowers.”

  He pulls a gadget from his backpack and aims it at the grate. The device lights up like fireworks on the Fourth of July. An intricate web of crisscrossing lines shimmers over the entire drain.

  Lasers.

  “What are we going to do?” asks Rebel. “We can’t get past that.”

  Jeremy snorts. “Speak for yourself.”

  He retrieves some other handheld machines, presses a sequence of buttons, then waits. He repeats this three times, then reaches for the original gadget and points it at the grate. This time it doesn’t so much as beep.

  “Excellent!” Jeremy quickly shoves his equipment back into this backpack. “Let’s move.”

  “What did you do?” Draven demands as Jeremy starts prying at the gate with a crowbar.

  What doesn’t he have in that backpack?

  He glances at us and shrugs. “I jammed the signal.”

  “All that to jam a signal?” Nitro asks.

  “It was a very complicated signal.” He keeps working with the crowbar, but the grate barely moves.

  “This is taking too long,” Dante says. Suddenly, a huge gust of wind comes out of nowhere, knocking us onto our backs and slamming into the grate.

  The metal rattles and moans, but the hinges hold.

  “Heads down,” Dante warns before an even more powerful burst of air whooshes back out and past us. The hinges bend under the force, the metal squealing as it slowly gives up the struggle. After a few seconds of Dante’s reverse tornado, the grate flies off, narrowly missing Nitro’s head.

  “Oi! Watch it!” he yells.

  “I told you to stay down,” Dante answers.

  “Let’s go,” Draven says, jumping to his feet.

  He’s the first one into the tunnel—no surprise there. “Watch your step. It’s slippery in here.”

  Slippery? I exchange a look of trepidation with Rebel. I don’t even want to know what’s inside the tunnel that makes it slippery. When Jeremy told us that he suspected there had to be hidden access points in these field, far enough out that no one would suspect their association with the lab, he’d been very vague about what kind of tunnels they might lead to. I have a feeling we wouldn’t have wanted to know anyway.

  I enter the tunnel behind Draven and Dante, and my foot sinks four or five inches into sludge. Gross. Never have I been so grateful that Rebel made me borrow a pair of her Doc Martens.

  “Eeeew!” Rebel screeches, her voice echoing through the tunnel and almost—almost—drowning out the disgusting sucking sound our feet make as we plow forward through the muck. I’m kind of glad it’s dark so I can’t see what we’re walking in.

  “Damn,” Nitro says. “Is this stuff radioactive?”

  Rebel reaches around and smacks him on the shoulder. “Why would you even say that?” Then she starts trying to walk a lot more softly than she was just a minute ago. “It’s not, is it, Kenna? We aren’t going to turn green, are we?”

  “Does it matter?” Draven demands, picking up his pace so that he’s all but running. “We’re not turning back.”

  I lean close to Rebel and whisper reassuringly, “It would be glowing if it was.”

  Dante takes off after Draven and we try to keep up, but it’s hard. I feel like I’m running through quicksand and the further we get, the deeper the sludge. Jeremy is struggling more than the rest of us. Probably because he’s been up for forty-two hours straight, hacking into the security program so he could disable systems as needed.

  And maybe because he’s got eighty pounds of extra gear in his backpack.

  Fifteen minutes of running, trudging, falling through sludge, and we’re all gasping for air and covered in muck. But we’ve reached the entrance—a round, metal door three feet off the ground that looks barely big enough for me, let alone the guys, to crawl through.

  Draven stops before touching anything, waiting for Jeremy to catch up. He and Nitro have fallen so many times that they’re a good two minutes back.

  “This one wired too?” Draven asks when Jeremy arrives, scooching by Rebel and me.

  He waves one of his gadgets over the door and the thing goes nuts. “These aren’t standard security sensors.”

  “What does that mean?” Nitro asks.

  “Must be part of the new security,” Jeremy says, reaching into his backpack for a pen. He throws it at the door and when it hits, an electromagnetic wave pulses, knocking us into the disgusting sludge. I swear to God, if we get out of this alive, I’m going to kill my ex-boyfriend.

  “A little warning next time, asshole,” Dante says bitterly as he climbs to his feet. He reaches down to help Rebel up, and Draven gives me a hand.

  “Sorry.” Jeremy’s already rummaging through his backpack. “I didn’t realize it would be that powerful.”

  “How are we going to get through it?” I demand. Staring at that door, knowing we’re so close, I’ve never felt more desperate. Or more powerless.

  Jeremy doesn’t answer, just pulls out another gadget, waves it at the door, and frowns. Another gadget. Another frown. Another gadget…

  The wait is killing me.

  I inch closer to the door, my whole body tense. The closer I get, the stranger I feel. There’s a weird tingling under my skin. I’ve never felt like this before, and I can’t help wondering if Rebel’s right and this sludge we’re standing in really is radioactive.

  “Can’t you just”—I wave my hands at him in a vague, you’re-a-
superhero, use-your-powers gesture—“take care of it?”

  He scowls at me. “Only if I want the equivalent force of twenty nuclear bombs coursing through my body.”

  “Would it deactivate the security before it killed you?” Draven asks hopefully.

  Jeremy ignores him, pressing the button on his latest gadget, but nothing happens. Or at least, it doesn’t look like anything is happening.

  We all wait tensely, and after a minute Jeremy says, “Huh. That’s strange.”

  “What’s strange?” Dante demands, his voice stretched taut as a circus high wire.

  “It’s not picking up any more electromagnetic activity.” He shakes the gizmo, aims it again. No lights, no beeps, nothing.

  “Did you break it?” Draven demands.

  “It worked twenty minutes ago, at the grate.” Jeremy pulls out another pen.

  “Bloody hell!” Nitro shouts, crouching down. “Not again!”

  I brace myself—we all do—and clamp my mouth closed so when I hit the ground this time I won’t get any of the disgusting sludge in my mouth.

  Jeremy throws the pen.

  It strikes the door with a ping, then falls to the ground. That’s it.

  “What the hell?” Nitro and Draven say at the same time.

  Jeremy shrugs. “I have no idea.” He pulls out a book and repeats the pen test—with the same result.

  “Maybe the electromagnetics were defective,” he says after a minute. “One pulse could have knocked a weak connection out of commission.”

  “So much for security,” Dante sneers. He raises his hand to summon his wind, but Rebel stops him.

  “Let me do it, babe. One blast of your power in here and we’ll all be on our asses again.”

  She extends her hands and the lock and hinges squeal, the steel literally bending to Rebel’s will. Moments later, the door floats right toward us and she lowers it next to Nitro.

  “Stay behind me,” Draven says as he hoists himself up and peers through the opening, looking both ways for danger.

  “Is it clear?” Dante asks, shifting restlessly.