The Betrayal of Renegade X (Renegade X, Book 3)

by Chelsea M. Campbell

  Riley swears under his breath.

  “Relax, Perkins. I didn’t kill him.” I just saved the day, and potentially a bunch of lives, is all. You’d think I’d get some credit for that.

  “I told you not to do it!”

  “He’s a kidnapper. He’s hurt kids. He’s killed them. He was going to do it again. You know he was. I couldn’t—”

  “You couldn’t follow the rules. Just this once, when it really mattered!”

  “I couldn’t let him get away! Is your grade really more important than people’s lives?” Because, yeah, we’re totally going to fail this assignment. Or at least I am. But it’s worth it if this guy isn’t out on the streets anymore. Getting an F doesn’t really compare to making sure no more happy, innocent kids’ lives get ruined because of him.

  “The rules are there for a reason.” Riley picks his way through the room in the dark.

  I make electricity run along my hand, casting just enough light to see by.

  We head over to the elevator. The kidnapper’s lying on the floor, his limbs twitching a little. Riley opens the elevator grate and grabs the flashlight, shining it on the bad guy, who looks really sweaty and pale but is still, you know, breathing.

  “You can turn that off now,” Riley mutters, meaning my electricity.

  I do, but not because he told me to. I do it so I can take a closer look at the card in the kidnapper’s hand. It’s the thing he tried to get out of his pocket right as I was zapping him. Not a weapon, but a business card.

  I pick it up and grab the flashlight from Riley so I can read what’s on it. As soon as I do, I feel like I’m going to be sick.

  “What is it?” Riley asks.

  I’m tempted to tear it up. To fry the pieces beyond recognition. Or maybe just stuff them in my mouth and swallow them. Anything so he doesn’t see what it says. But he’s going to find out anyway.

  I hand him the flashlight back, along with the card. It has the Heroesworth logo on it. It says that this guy is actually part of the League, that he’s a superhero and a Heroesworth alumni, posing as a bad guy for our final.

  Our apparently staged final.

  Though, in my defense, all of our other missions this semester were real. With real-live bad guys.

  At least, I’m pretty sure they were.

  My mind races, thinking about how if this guy’s a plant, then that means there’s still a killer out there on the loose. But then I think about how all the research we did was through the school’s database, and how he really looks like the same guy we’ve been tracking all over town. And there were only “before” pictures of his supposed victims. I thought that was because the “after” pictures were too gruesome, but... maybe there weren’t any. Because there were no victims. Because this whole thing, from the moment Miss Monk gave us the assignment, was completely fake.

  The sick feeling in my stomach gets a lot worse. I feel like the ground’s just been pulled out from under me. Like I’m falling.

  “Great,” Riley says when he’s done reading the business card. “This is just great. This was only our most important project in Intro to Heroism, and you fried a freaking superhero!”

  “I thought he was a kidnapper! I thought he’d killed kids!” Okay, so maybe I didn’t save the day. Maybe there wasn’t actually a day to be saved. But I think I showed excellent skill in bravery and pre-emptive attacks, which, in my opinion, should still count for something.

  “I told you the rules are there for a reason! All we had to do was save those kids while following the League rules. That’s all. But oh no, you couldn’t do that. You couldn’t just listen to me!”

  I run my hands through my hair and take a deep breath. Adrenaline rushes through me and my blood runs cold. “He’s still alive. There’s that. Even if I’m dead.” So dead.

  “Correction. Even if we’re dead. Or did you forget that this is a group project?” He shakes his head at me and gets out his cell phone to call 911.

  It might be a group project, but I’m the one with the villain power. That I just used on someone from the League. I get out my phone too and contemplate calling my dad. Because if I’m going to get arrested again, I think maybe I should give him a heads up this time.

  “What were you thinking?” Gordon says when he comes to pick me up.

  Not from the police station, though, since it turns out the fake kidnapper had to sign a waiver. Apparently this isn’t the first time a superhero volunteer has been injured while helping out with a mission for Heroesworth. Though you wouldn’t know that from the way the League members who came over to sort this out—conveniently already on their way, since Brian called them after all—were looking at me, like I was some kind of criminal. And I told Gordon I could get home on my own, but he insisted on coming down to the abandoned factory to get me.

  “He was getting away.” I climb into the car and put on my seatbelt. I guess the car is as good a place as any to get yelled at, since at least here the whole family can’t hear him chewing me out.

  “So you shot him.” Gordon rests his hands on the steering wheel, even though he hasn’t started the car yet.

  “Zapped him. We should probably get going. This isn’t a very good neighborhood. Fake kidnappers everywhere.”

  “He could have died.”

  “He’s fine.”

  “They took him to the hospital.”

  “Okay, but he’s going to be fine.”

  Gordon turns to look at me, a horrified expression on his face. “You don’t know that, Damien.”

  “I knew what I was doing. And it’s not my fault that he wasn’t a real kidnapper. The school tricked us. I didn’t know the whole assignment was fake.”

  “And if he was a real criminal, that would justify using your villain power on him?”

  “Don’t say villain power like that.” Like it’s disgusting. “But yeah. Not to sound like Sarah or anything, but he’d killed kids. He’d tortured them. I thought he had, anyway.”

  “I thought things were different since you went back to Heroesworth.” He rubs his palms against his forehead. So much for being proud of me.

  “Things are different. Me and Riley pretty much aced all our other missions. I just didn’t have to use my power until now.”

  His eyes go wide and he blinks at me. “You didn’t have to use it. You never have to use it. And on a superhero...”

  A few months ago, he was mad at me for hiding my lightning power from him and trying to pretend it didn’t exist. Now he’s talking like that’s exactly what I should be doing. Like I should be pretending I only have my flying power—my hero power—even though I really hate it, mainly because flying means leaving the ground, which is one of my least favorite things to do. Or maybe that’s why he wants to pretend that, since he knows I never use it, which means I’m much less likely to hurt someone with it. “I told you already, I didn’t know who he really was. But you should know that being a superhero doesn’t make you automatically a good person. He could have still been a murderer while having an H on his thumb, and I would have still zapped him.”

  “This is why the rules exist. I thought you would follow them when you went back to Heroesworth.”

  I laugh. “Yeah, right. Zapping that guy was way more important than the rules.” Or at least it would have been, if the situation had been real. And I might not know the League rules that well, but I don’t think there’s anything in them that says, Thou shalt not hurt a superhero, even if he deserves it. They at least got that part right. “Can’t you start the car? It’s cold in here.” Freezing, actually. I can see my breath fogging in front of me. I bunch the ends of my coat sleeves down around my hands.

  He looks at me like I just asked him for a million dollars. “You put a man in the hospital. A League member. A superhero.”

  “So? A murderer who hurts kids doesn’t deserve to be zapped, but you think I deserve to freeze to death for stopping him?”

  “You broke the rules.”

  I
shrug. “Those are your rules, not mine.”

  “I didn’t think I even had to talk to you about not using your powers on people.”

  “Uh, superheroes use their powers on me all the time. But because I’m half villain that makes it wrong when I do it?” Typical.

  “They use their powers on you to stop you when you get out of hand. Which shouldn’t even be happening.”

  “And that’s what I did to that guy. He was out of hand, so I stopped him. And I was successful. You have to give me that.” Doesn’t anybody appreciate an efficient bad-guy take down these days? And shouldn’t he be relieved that if it had been an actually dangerous situation, I would have come out of it okay?

  “You’re not hearing me. I don’t know how to make you...” He runs a hand through his hair, looking annoyingly like me while he does it. And like he might cry. Which is a bit overkill, if you ask me.

  “Whoa, Dad. Calm down. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “The fact that you think that is what’s wrong.”

  “So just yell at me about it and get it over with.” Not that I really want him to yell at me, but if he’s going to do it, it might as well be now.

  “So you can ignore everything I say? So you can get back to doing whatever you want?”

  Pretty much, but I don’t tell him that. “Let me help you. You’re very disappointed in me and you don’t know what to do because Amelia would never use her power to the detriment of others. Which is wrong, because she uses her power to steal stuff from me all the time.”

  He shakes his head. “This whole semester, since you went back to school, I thought you were following the rules.”

  “I wasn’t not following them.” I just didn’t have a reason to break them.

  “I thought you understood right from wrong.”

  “I do. Geez.” I’m not a monster.

  But you wouldn’t know that from the way he’s looking at me right now. “We shouldn’t even be having this conversation. Superheroes should never have to use their powers on you, and you shouldn’t have to use yours on them. That makes you sound like a...”

  “Villain?”

  He winces, which kind of hurts. “You had your chance to go to Vilmore, but you chose Heroesworth. I thought that meant something.”

  “It did. It does.” Just not what he thinks. Deciding to go to Heroesworth doesn’t mean I suddenly want to join the League or be some kind of Gordon clone or anything. “And if you’re too upset to even start the car, maybe I should drive.” I have my learner’s permit.

  “You should be the one who’s upset here. You hurt somebody tonight. If you seemed like you cared, like you were at all shaken up by that, then...”

  Then what? Then he’d know I’m not evil? He should know that anyway. “You’d rather I regretted it? That I used my power on someone when I didn’t feel like it was the right thing to do? Because that sounds pretty reckless.”

  “Even if he was a criminal, even if you’d really had to use your power on him, you hurt another human being tonight. That should make you feel something.”

  “It’s so cold in here I can’t feel anything. Do you want me to drive or not?” And of course I feel something. It’s not like I wanted to zap anyone. Well, maybe Brian. But the fact that I restrained myself from electrocuting my most annoying group member—which I have to do on practically a daily basis—and used my power to stop the bad guy instead should say something about me. Though if I told Gordon that, he’d probably only hear that I think about zapping someone every day, which wouldn’t exactly help my case.

  He puts the key in the ignition and looks me over, like he’s still trying to find some sign that I know what I did tonight was wrong. Which it wasn’t. “I don’t know what to say to get through to you.”

  “You don’t need to get through to me. We just disagree.” I reach out and turn the heater up to full blast.

  “It’s not okay for us to disagree on this.”

  I sigh and fold my arms across my chest. “Did you ever think that maybe you’re the one who’s not listening? You’re not open to anything I say, and you won’t even consider the possibility that maybe I have a point. You already decided how wrong I was before you even came down here. So if you won’t change your mind about anything, why should I have to do any different?”

  He grips the steering wheel, his jaw clenching in frustration. “Because I’m your father and that’s just the way it is.”

  “Nope, not good enough. I’m going to need a better reason than that.”

  His eyebrows come together and his mouth twitches, like he really wants to argue. But in the end I guess he doesn’t have a better reason than that, because he lets out a deep breath, his shoulders slumping in defeat, and eases the car into drive without saying anything.

  Chapter 2

  “WHAT TIME DO YOU get in on Saturday?” I ask Kat on the phone Tuesday afternoon. I’m lying on my bed with my feet pressed against the slanting wall—the one I’ve banged my head on about five million times since Gordon forced me to move up to the attic a few months ago. I can hear clonking noises coming from Amelia’s room next door, and she keeps stomping from her bed to her closet. It’s probably wishful thinking, but it sounds like she’s moving out.

  “About two. But you can’t come over right away because you have to give me a chance to hide your Christmas present.”

  “Or you could drop off your stuff and come over here, and I’ll hide your Christmas present. In my bed, with no clothes on. If you know what I mean.”

  “Uh-huh. Isn’t that what you got me for my birthday?”

  Her birthday was last month. We hadn’t gotten to see each other in weeks, and I stayed over at her dorm, even though it was a weeknight. Needless to say, neither of us got to class on time, plus I had a forty-five minute train ride back to Golden City. I ended up missing a surprise group project in Intro to Heroism, which I suspect Miss Monk only assigned because I wasn’t there. “You’re forgetting First Mate Suckers.” First Mate Suckers is the stuffed octopus pirate I got her. He has an eye patch and a peg leg and is really badass while also being soft and cuddly. And I know Kat didn’t really forget about him because she posts pictures of him all the time, doing very non-piratey things like drinking coffee and taking tests.

  “I didn’t forget him,” Kat says, pretending to sound offended. “I’m just pointing out that half your present is a repeat.”

  “It might be a repeat, but I don’t expect any complaints. Plus, this time is different, because neither of us has anything we have to do the next day.”

  She clears her throat. “Actually... that’s not quite true. Don’t hate me, but I’m leaving again on Sunday.”

  I’m silent at first, the words not quite registering. “You’re leaving.”

  “Only for a week. Everyone’s going to this ski resort—”

  “Everyone?”

  “Liv’s going, and Tasha was going to, but then her grandma got sick and she had to cancel. But Jordan and his new boyfriend are coming, plus his old boyfriend, Lucas, which is going to be drama. And June and Kelly and Cameron are going, too. And a couple other people, I think. My dad said I could go, and I know we haven’t gotten to see each other much lately, but it’s only for a week. That still leaves us two weeks of winter break.”

  But it was supposed to be three. We used to see each other every day, and even that didn’t feel like enough. Now she’d rather spend some of her time off with her new friends, who she sees all the freaking time, instead of me? “That wasn’t the plan.”

  “I know. But everyone’s going, and they’re going to be talking about this for forever, and I don’t want to miss out. And we don’t really have to be apart because you could come, too.”

  “It’s a ski trip.” That involves ski lifts and mountains and other high up places. Not to mention all her friends, judging me.

  “You wouldn’t have to ski. Not everyone’s going to. Cameron’s not. His power is making things warm, and he can�
�t always control it. He said if he went skiing, everything would end up a big pile of slush. So you guys could hang out—I know you’d like him. And it’s not like I’ll be skiing the whole time. There’s a lodge. There’ll be snow and hot chocolate and a hot tub.”

  And feeling left out, and not knowing anybody, and listening to all her friends call her Katie, like she’s a different person to them than she is to me. “What about the wedding?” My mom’s getting married next week. And, despite hardly being invited, I’m going to be there. Kat’s supposed to be my date, or at least she was, before something better came up.

  She lets out a deep breath. “You don’t have to go to the wedding.”

  “If I’m not there, then Mom gets to pretend I don’t exist.” And she can act like Xavier, my perfect all-villain replacement, is her only kid. Like she has the perfect family she always wanted, that doesn’t include me. And I was really looking forward to very publicly making out with Kat the whole time and offending all of Mom’s guests. Which includes Kat’s parents, so maybe that dream was never really going to come true, but it definitely won’t if Kat doesn’t even show up.

  “Yeah, and that sounds like such a great reason to be there. Damien, you don’t have to put up with her crap. You deserve better. And this ski trip is the perfect excuse to not go.”

  “She’ll think it’s because I know I’m not really wanted. Like I’m giving her space for her stupid big day that’s all about her.”

  “So what if she does? Is it really worth putting yourself through all that? You could come on vacation with me. It’ll be super romantic and Christmassy and stuff. We’ll have our own room. For a week. My dad’s paying for it, and he doesn’t know you’re going.”

  “That’s because I’m not.”

  There are some angry noises coming from Amelia’s room—an outraged squeak, followed by muttering—and then the whole attic shakes as she gets up from her bed and stomps her way to the door.