“Don’t touch her.” Dante is between them in a flash, pressing Riley into the wall.
“She’s my sister!” Riley answers indignantly, like it means something. Maybe it does. I don’t know. I mean, he looks sincere and sincerely offended that anyone thinks he might hurt Rebel.
“And she’s my girlfriend,” Dante growls. “You don’t get to touch her.”
“Rebel!” Riley looks scandalized. “He’s a villain. You don’t know what he’s capable of.”
“We’re all villains,” Draven says. “And you’re going to find out exactly what we’re capable of if you don’t start talking.”
Riley stares at him, a little stupidly in my opinion, but Rebel’s brother never has been the brightest bulb in the lantern, so it’s not entirely unexpected when he answers, “We are talking.”
Draven’s fingers tangle in Riley’s ridiculous pajama shirt as he hauls him to his toes. Riley is tall—almost six feet—but Draven is taller. And stronger. And obviously in control. “The heroes have a secret underground bunker. Code name Lima Whiskey. I want to know where it is.”
Riley goggles at him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Draven growls deep in his throat, and Riley’s life flashes before my eyes.
Then Rebel shoves Draven and her boyfriend out of the way. “Come on, Riley. We both know that’s not true. Tell us and we’ll get out of here.”
“What’s wrong with you, Rebel? Have you been brainwashed? When Dad said you were with the villains who broke into the lab, I didn’t believe him. But now?” He lifts his hands helplessly. “Think about what you’re doing. This could ruin all of Dad’s plans.”
“Maybe your dad’s plans need to be ruined,” I say, shouldering my way past Draven. “Do you know what’s been going on at ESH?”
“Kenna, I never thought I’d hear you say that!” Riley’s eyes widen. “Aren’t you supposed to be the reasonable one?”
“Like torture and murder are reasonable?” Nitro pipes up.
Riley looks at him blankly. “What are you talking about?”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about, mate. Everyone knows you’re Daddy’s number one pet.” Nitro’s hands have started to glow. “I bet you know a hell of a lot more than we can even begin to know about.”
Nitro’s fireball grows.
Riley notices the ball of green flame balanced on Nitro’s hands. He shrinks back, looking more like wall art than a human being.
“You’re crazy! And you need to leave before I call the SHPD.” He looks at Rebel meaningfully. “Leave my sister and Kenna here, and get the hell out.”
“We’ll leave when you grow a conscience and tell us what we need to know,” Draven says. “Until then, we’re not going anywhere.”
“No way. I’ll never talk, no matter how much you torture me.”
“Torture?” Draven asks incredulously. “We’re not the ones with a history of torture. I think you’ve got us confused with your hero friends.”
Riley narrows his eyes at him. “Heroes don’t torture.”
“They do,” I blurt out. “I saw it at the lab. You don’t know how important it is that you tell us where the bunker is. We have to find them or people are going to die. My mom could die, Riley. They took her. Heroes took her.”
“Why would heroes take your mom? She works for us.” He shakes his head. “We’re the good guys.”
“Good guys?” Dante tells him, stepping forward. “Good guys? Are you serious right now?” His fist slams into Riley’s stomach and Rebel’s brother doubles over.
Dante hits him again and again. Riley is no match for his strength or fury.
“Stop!” I shout, grabbing his arm, but Dante’s out of control.
“Back off, man,” Draven tells his cousin. “This isn’t the way to get him to talk.”
“Sure it is,” Dante says. “Give me five minutes, and I’ll get the little pipsqueak to give up everything he knows.”
Riley drops to the floor, cowering. Dante pulls back a fist, ready to hit him again.
But Draven pushes his cousin away. “We’re not like them. We don’t do the things they do.”
“Deacon.” Dante sounds shattered.
“I swear, we’ll find out where he is,” Draven promises. “But not like this. Never like this.”
He crouches next to Riley, eyes narrowed and hands clenched with restraint.
“Riley, tell him!” I urge. It feels like time is running out. “Please.”
Images of Deacon flash before my eyes again. Riley’s willful ignorance is killing me, knowing that my own ignorance let the superheroes get away with too much for too long. But I see the truth now, and even one person can make a difference. Right now, that person has to be me.
After all, only a few days ago I was just like Riley.
I try to reason with him. “We know that the lab has been shut down and the most important experiments have been moved to this bunker. We know that the heroes have been torturing the villains for—”
“That’s not true!” Riley gasps. “We’re not torturing them.”
“Liar!” Draven shoves Riley hard enough that his head bangs against the wall.
“I saw it, Riley. I saw what they were doing, and I saw the dead villains—”
“Accidents,” he says. “Mistakes. Every great program has them.”
“Great program?” Dante repeats. He looks like he’s about to lose his tenuous grip on his powers, and I don’t blame him. Riley sounds completely insane—not to mention totally heartless. “You think torturing my twin is part of some great program like the Peace Corps? Like Doctors without Borders? Yeah, you guys are real humanitarians.”
“You. Are. Killing. People!” Nitro adds.
“Not on purpose!”
Draven snaps. He doesn’t touch Riley, doesn’t hurt him, but he leans forward until his face is only inches from the hero’s.
Riley’s eyes widen as he recognizes Draven’s power, sees those blue eyes crystallize with memory control. Rebel’s brother squeezes his eyes tight, blocking out the psy access to his mind.
Draven doesn’t seem to care. He leans closer, whispers something in Riley’s ear. I can only catch a few of the words, but they sound a lot like pain and own medicine and death is too easy.
Riley shakes, trying to curl in on himself.
Clearly Draven doesn’t need to use his power to break Riley’s brain. And still he keeps talking, whispering new threats.
Riley holds a hand to his nose to staunch the sudden blood flow.
My mind screams at me that there has to be a better way, but I don’t move. I don’t intercede. I don’t do anything but watch as the darkness washes over Draven.
It’s a tangible thing, which fascinates me even as it freaks me out. There’s a shift in the way he holds his body, in how he transforms from fighter to predator. A sharpness in his eyes, a clenching in his jaw, a vibe that rolls off him, pumping electricity into the air, into me.
It frightens me, the way I’m responding to him. Not to mention the fact that the whole room seems as spellbound as I am, like we’re all just waiting to see what he does next. I know Draven doesn’t want to hurt Riley; he just wants to scare him. But I also know that if Draven loses control like he did with the guards, we’ll all be sorry.
With that thought in mind, I crouch next to Draven and rest a hand on his lower back. A shudder runs through him.
His eyes are so dark and tormented that my insides twist with fear for him.
“Rebel, you know I can’t tell them!” Riley says, eyes closed tight.
“Dad isn’t the paragon you think he is, Riley,” says Rebel.
“How would you know? You’re too busy playing the wannabe villain to know anything about this family anymore.”
She shakes her head
disgustedly. “For a guy who spends all his free time pretending to be Superman, you sure need to work on your X-ray vision. You can’t see shit.”
Rebel glances over to the display cabinet in the corner of Riley’s room, and a heartbeat later, a very expensive and authentic-looking statue of Superman flies off the shelf.
“Rebel, no!”
It hangs in midair for a moment, then falls to the hardwood floor, shattering into a billion pieces.
Riley gasps. “That was an original piece of artwork from DC Comics!” he screeches, crawling over to the mess and scooping some of the bigger pieces into his hands. “I paid a fortune for it. Why would you do that?”
“Because people’s lives are at stake. Lives that are worth a whole hell of a lot more than this ridiculous junk.” A collector’s plate that has Batman and Robin on it floats off another shelf and wobbles in the air. “You better start talking, Riley.”
“Don’t you dare, Rebel!” He lunges at her, but Dante holds him back.
“You better make a decision,” she taunts. “My power is feeling a little unsteady, and I just don’t know how long I can hold it…”
“Darn it, Rebel!”
“Where’s the bunker, Riley?”
“There’s no way I’m telling a bunch of villains—”
“Whoops!”
The plate crashes to the floor and Riley whimpers. He actually whimpers.
Rebel doesn’t give him a chance to say anything else before a three-foot-tall statue of Aquaman and a miniature Iron Man suit go crashing to the ground.
Riley watches in shock, but it’s not until she actually grabs his pièce de résistance—original cells from one of the first Superman comic books—that he starts talking.
“Stop! Stop! Just stop. Please, Reb. Just stop.”
She narrows her eyes at him, poised to tear the page in half. “Where’s the bunker?” she asks again.
“In the mountains.” Riley sinks against the wall. He looks sad, defeated. Maybe I should feel sorry for him—he did just rat out his father and everything he believes in. But it’s hard for me to be sympathetic when Riley cares more for a bunch of collectibles than he does for the suffering of real, live people.
“Where in the mountains?” Draven demands. “The Rockies are pretty damn big.”
“I’ve got it!” Jeremy crows from the doorway, Riley’s laptop in hand. “My rootkit found the coordinates for the bunker.”
“Thank God!” Nitro says, and before anyone can say or do anything else, he lets loose a fireball straight at what’s left of Riley’s extensive—and expensive—collection of comic book memorabilia. It whizzes past me, burns my arm, and then crashes straight into the display case.
Nitro laughs at the horrified look on Riley’s face as the whole thing goes up in flames.
Chapter 23
For long seconds, we all stare at the burning display case in shock. Then several things happen at once. Riley starts screaming, Rebel dives for the bathroom and comes back with a fire extinguisher, and my shirtsleeve catches fire.
Draven runs for me. He knocks me to the floor and smothers me with blankets.
By the time he lets me up—after patting at every inch of me to make sure there’s no latent spark anywhere—Rebel and Dante have the fire under control. Nitro surveys his work, seemingly pleased by the whole proceedings.
Jeremy ducks back into the other room just as Draven finally starts to breathe again.
“Are you all right?” he demands. He drags me into the bathroom and probes at the second-degree burn decorating the bottom of my bicep.
“I’m okay,” I tell him. “I mean, it hurts, but I’m a lot better than Riley’s comic collection.”
Draven’s eyes darken at my words. He presses a palm over my burned skin. “This is going to sting.”
He’s right. My arm erupts in pinpricks, like I can feel the burn on every nerve ending. It takes a little while, but eventually the pain fades. What was a bubbling, red second-degree burn moments ago is now nothing more than a patch of red and a couple of blisters.
Draven releases my arm, his head hung low. “I can’t heal it all the way,” he says quietly, “or they’ll know.”
I don’t have to ask what he means. He already told me that his second power and his mixed parentage are a secret from everyone except Dante. “It’s fine,” I say, yanking down the remains of my sleeve. “It feels a lot better.”
“Why was it so bad this time?” he asks. “When he hit you before, it wasn’t like this.”
I shrug. “The serum must be almost out of my system by now.”
He moves closer, traces a fingertip over the back of my palm. “So your immunity is gone?”
Considering how much I’ve always resented those damn shots, I’m surprisingly emotional at the thought that my immunity—the one thing that made me more than ordinary—is gone.
“I guess so.”
“When was your last shot?”
I shake my head and look up at the ceiling. “I don’t know. Early last week sometime.”
He storms out of the bathroom and stalks up to Nitro. He wraps his hand around his friend’s throat and lifts him several inches off the ground.
Nitro claws frantically at Draven’s fingers.
“Let him go,” I say. “We’ve got more important things to worry about right now.”
Draven’s grip loosens enough for his friend to breathe. “What the hell were you thinking, Nitro? It’s like you didn’t even try to miss her.”
“She has immunity. Even if I winged her it wouldn’t matter,” Nitro gasps.
“She doesn’t,” Draven snaps. “Not anymore.”
Riley looks up from his quest to rescue his prized possessions from the charred and foam-covered mess that was his once proud display case. “Kenna’s immune?”
“Not anymore, idiot.” Rebel smacks him on the back of the head.
“How was I supposed to know?” Nitro complains, hands in the air as if surrendering.
I’m not happy either—believe me, getting set on fire wasn’t in the top one hundred things I wanted to do today—but there’s nothing to get angry over. I mean, until we find my mom, there’s nothing any of us can do about my immunity, or lack thereof.
“Don’t worry. I’ll be okay,” I say.
“Don’t worry?” Draven stares at me incredulously. “How the hell am I supposed to protect you if you can get hurt as easily as any other ordinary?”
“I didn’t realize you had to protect me,” I tell him. “I thought we were all supposed to protect each other.”
“You have to admit, you need more protection than the rest of us. So you need to stop getting so offended every time I try to help you. I don’t care that you’re powerless. I swear, Kenna. But you don’t seem to trust me. You want me to trust you, but this is a two-way street. If we’re going to get through this, you’re going to have to change that. Otherwise, we don’t have a chance.”
Maybe he’s right. Maybe he’s not. I don’t know. But right now I don’t have time to figure it out.
“Seriously,” Riley says, oblivious to, oh, apparently everything else that’s been said, “Kenna is immune to powers?”
I glare at him.
Rebel answers for me. “No. Her mom cooked up an immunity serum to protect her. It’s a huge secret, but now everyone here knows. So she’s never gone without the serum before, never tested to see how long it takes to get out of her system.”
“That’s against League regulations,” Riley complains, and starts citing policies and procedures. “All research is supposed to be recorded and approved by the—”
“Yeah, well, torture is against regulations, too, Riley,” I retort, “and it seems like no one cares about that. As long as the public doesn’t know that villains are suffering and dying on your father’s wat
ch, those who do know don’t give a damn. Including you.”
He glares at me. “You keep calling it torture, but it’s not. Of course we interrogate villains who have been caught breaking the laws, but torture? We’re the good guys. We don’t torture anyone.”
Before anyone can react to that ridiculousness, Jeremy calls from the living room, “Sorry to interrupt, but can you guys get out here? I want to show you what I’ve found. And pick your brain for a minute.”
The last of Draven’s temper mellows at the prospect of good news—or any news. He starts for the door. I grab him by the back of the shirt and tug him back.
“We can’t leave Riley alone,” I hiss at him. “He’ll call Mr. Malone and ruin everything.”
“We’ve got this,” Rebel answers.
Sure enough, Dante and Nitro have Riley cornered, and my best friend is armed with a roll of duct tape.
Guess he won’t be much of a problem after all. At least not for a while.
In the main room, Jeremy sits in Riley’s breakfast nook. He’s got Riley’s desktop and laptop set up side by side, and there are blueprints on both of them. His phone also displays some kind of schematic I don’t recognize. Whatever it is, they all seem to be linked because the pictures change as he works on his tablet.
“What’s going on?” I ask, leaning over his shoulder to get a better look. “What did you find?”
“Give me a second,” he says, not even glancing up from what he’s doing. “Check out the blueprints over there.” He gestures vaguely at Riley’s laptop. “Breaking into the bunker is going to be ten million times harder than the lab.”
That’s not exactly a surprise.
“So, any ideas?” I ask.
“Maybe. Take a look at this entrance.” He points. “It’s the weakest spot. I think I can hack through the security there, and if I can—”
Suddenly, all four of the screens go wonky, blur, and disappear completely.
“What the hell?” Jeremy exclaims, jumping to his feet.
Powerless Page 21
