Super: Underground: Book 2 in the Super: Series

by Palladian

  “I suppose that’s true,” Lex murmured, resisting the urge to touch it as Riss flashed Lex’s old photo on the screen, also embedded into a poster.

  “At any rate,” Riss continued, flipping past the Wanted posters for the rest of the group, “here’s some information about the people they sent after us.”

  Lex held her hand up at the second photo, a familiar dread in her stomach as she looked the woman in the eye. “Do you have color pictures of them?” Lex asked, still staring.

  She felt more than saw Riss shake her head. “Not right now, but I can find some, if you want.”

  “Yeah, that would probably be good,” Lex replied, swallowing against a dry throat. Probably doesn’t matter, though, since I recognized the eyes out of my dream even in black and white.

  “This group doesn’t seem to be onto us in any way, though,” Riss added. “I’ve been keeping an eye on what they do, and they spend a lot of time harassing people on the street and trying to get police reports. It would probably be a miracle if they found us.”

  “Good. Can you continue keeping a close eye on them and let me know right away if they get any real leads? It probably wouldn’t hurt to start thinking of contingency plans, too, in case the worst happens.”

  Riss nodded in reply. “Sure, I’ll keep on with it and start researching some other things.”

  “I’ll start thinking on it, as well,” Lex replied, clasping her hands together in a tight ball.

  “I didn’t tell you any of that to worry you, though. Go ahead and get back to sleep; I’m on top of things.”

  Lex nodded, still looking at the screen, a bit afraid to meet Riss’ eye. “Yeah, you’re right, I guess,” she agreed, hoping against hope that the nervous feeling in the pit of her stomach was just worry and over-protectiveness for her friends.

  As the tour continued north, however, Lex had the dream more frequently. By the time they hit San Francisco she was having it every other night. As they began to head south again, the dream decreased in frequency until she pretty much forgot about it by the time the tour had reached San Diego.

  The crowds continued being enthusiastic and large the entire way through until the bands had been playing to packed houses every night the last few weeks of the tour. One night Casey came backstage as Alexander’s Army prepared to go on. “You know they’ve had to turn people away tonight,” she said, looking at the band to gauge their reaction. Everyone exchanged incredulous looks.

  “What do you mean?” Lex finally managed.

  “I managed to hear that they’ve had to turn people away for the past half-hour or so because there were too many people in here for the fire code. When I went outside to see if it was true, I found a crowd of people out there, so I sold a bunch of copies of the new CD,” she finished, grinning at her own cleverness.

  Lex shook her head, then looked at Kate, Riss, and Lou in turn. “Doesn’t seem possible,” she said, still shaking her head.

  Riss and Lou both shrugged, but Kate just grinned. “So, let’s get out there so we don’t disappoint the people who made it in,” she replied.

  “Yeah, you’re right,” Lou said, and with a final smile at Casey, he started carrying their gear out onstage.

  The live shows had been continuing to get better, Lex thought, as all four of them got used to each other’s styles and tastes. They started being willing to take a few chances with what they played, and the audience seemed to appreciate some improvisation in the songs. There was another change as they were out on the road that Riss alerted them all to one night after they’d gotten back to their hotel rooms from a show.

  “I’ve been keeping an eye on this for a while,” Riss began, looking at all of them, including Casey and Lou. The couple had booked their own room as usual, but Riss had asked them to visit for a brief discussion as they drove back from the show.

  “The thing is, we’ve started to sell CDs faster than expected. What we brought is running pretty low already, as Casey complained the other day, but we’re selling them on the website pretty fast, too. I’d like to propose that we ask the people who made them for us last time to make some more and send them directly to our distributor,” Riss said, looking around the room to try to determine where everyone stood.

  Everyone nodded or just shrugged. Kate put it into words for everyone. “Hell yes. Let’s get them to make some more. I think the worst thing to do would be to run out if people are buying them.”

  “OK,” Riss replied with a nod. “I’ll go ahead and place the order. There’s something else you should know, too. The last electronic music service payment we got came to about $5,000.”

  The group was completely silent for a moment, then Casey finally broke it by standing up with her arm in the air. “Yes!” she exclaimed, a broad smile on her face.

  Everyone just laughed then, and Kate clapped Lex on the back. “Good idea of yours,” she exclaimed, smiling with the other woman.

  Riss looked at Lex as well, with a small smile. “I have to agree. If things keep going like this, I think we may end up making some actual money.”

  By the time the tour ended in mid-December, all of the bands were having so much fun that it was difficult to split up and go their separate ways. They were all eating pancakes after the final show, talking in little groups about how the show and the tour had gone, lingering even after everything had been eaten. Riss, Victor, and Luke (who’d come out for the final show) were sitting in one corner deep in conversation while Casey, Eddie, Sarah, and Rachel were talking. Kate and Jack held hands under the table, and Laura and Lex sat talking at the very end of the booth.

  “You know,” Laura said, “we should just do this again. I don’t think we’ve ever sold so many CDs or so many tickets as when we went on tour with you. Maybe we should do it for longer next time.”

  Lex couldn’t help but smile in return. “That doesn’t sound like a bad idea,” she replied, looking over at Casey who seemed to have overheard. She raised an eyebrow at the taller woman, who smiled in return.

  “What does everyone else think?” Casey said as she raised her voice a little to get everyone’s attention. “Do you guys want to do it again? Maybe for longer this time, six months or so?”

  Lou looked at her as she announced the length, appearing a little skeptical. When he looked at Riss, however, the other woman shrugged, so Lou turned back to Casey and shrugged, signaling that he was at least willing to consider it. Around the table were a number of agreements. No one seemed to disagree, so Casey nodded.

  “OK, I’ll start looking into it as soon as we get back home,” she added with a smile.

  Chapter 31: Breakout

  “So, is everyone ready to go?” Casey asked, her smile insanely cheerful.

  Riss and Lou looked at each other and sighed, but then nodded as they picked up the last of their things to pack into the van. Kate let out a cheer as she got into the van, and Lex and Victor looked at each other for a moment before they got in, too. Victor nodded and Lex answered Casey, “Yeah, I think we’re all ready.”

  It had taken Casey about a month to set up the next tour, and everyone had been busy preparing in the break they’d had. One of the reasons was that Lex had bugged everyone until they’d all agreed to do team training again.

  “I don’t see why we’re doing this right now,” Casey grumbled as they’d all gotten together for the first session. “There’s still so much to do to get ready for the tour.”

  “Trust me, it’s a good idea,” Lex had assured her, darting glances around at the rest of the group, hoping no one else had objections.

  Riss, Lou, and Victor had all seemed to have no problem with the idea, and Kate had stepped forward to put her hand on Casey’s forearm. “I think it’s a good idea, too,” she’d said. “I know we’ve worked together before, but it’s smart to practice as a team. That way if something unexpected happens, we’ll already know how the other people on the team will react.”

  Kate had winked at Lex as she ha
d stepped forward and they had all got started with the session. Lex had breathed a quiet sigh of relief that everyone had seemed more or less on board. She’d continued having the dream with the reddish eyes pursuing her every week or so, which had left a feeling in the pit of her stomach that something bad was about to happen.

  They’d continued with their normal music practice sessions and had written some new material, but Lex had thought everyone had seemed to be trying to take it easy before the next tour started, not wanting to get too burned out, she’d guessed. Casey had been preoccupied with setting the tour up, and Victor and Riss had seemed to be working on some sort of joint project, so Kate, Lex and Lou had spent more time together. Mostly they’d worked out, but Kate had wanted to visit all the local zoos and aquariums, so Lou and Lex had gone along with her.

  “So,” Lex had asked one day as she and Kate had pressed themselves to the glass to watch a shark circle its tank, “is there any animal or fish here that you haven’t seen before?”

  Kate had laughed. “Maybe, but that really isn’t why I wanted to go.” She had paused and looked thoughtful for a moment, then continued. “It’s hard to explain, but somehow, the longer I’m able to watch an animal, the more I’m able to, I don’t know, get on its wavelength, I guess? Some animals I feel like I can imitate as easily as breathing and the shift is perfect, but others are more difficult. So, I like to visit them as often as I can because it helps me learn all of them better.”

  Lex had continued to watch the shark as it swam and thought about it. “So, it’s not only fun for you to see the animals, but you get something out of it, too,” she’d said, turning back to Kate with a grin.

  As Lex had watched, Kate had changed somehow, and when her friend had grinned back at her, Lex had had to laugh at her shark-like smile. “You don’t know the half of it. Where did Lou go, by the way?”

  Lex had moved her head to one side, considering. “He said he was going to see if he could find some lunch. You want to see if we can figure out where he is?”

  “Yeah, let’s go,” Kate had said with a smile.

  And after what seemed like much too short a time off, she found herself sitting between Riss and Kate and on her way back to Los Angeles.

  “This seems so familiar,” she said almost to herself at one point, causing Riss to elbow her and Kate to giggle.

  That night when they’d reached Los Angeles and were hanging out with their friends from End of the Road again, Lex looked around at her band and at her friends from the other bands and smiled, feeling lucky to be surrounded by such trustworthy, capable people. She ended the evening in Laura’s little garden in the backyard, lying on a small patch of grass and looking up at the stars. As Lex glanced to one side, she could see Riss on a nearby deck chair, her face all angles and intensity, illuminated by the laptop screen in front of her. She slid her eyes over and smiled at Lex, as if she’d known her friend had been watching.

  “Kind of nice here, isn’t it?” Riss asked as she continued typing, absorbed by the screen again.

  “Yeah, pretty nice,” Lex answered, her own face breaking into a wide grin.

  It might have been her imagination, but it seemed to Lex that the rest of the people in the band caught her own happiness and enthusiasm. To her, everyone seemed more at ease and much more able to laugh off the problems that cropped up during the normal course of a tour.

  Instead of having moments of dread when the stage butterflies got the best of her, Lex had learned to channel the anxiety into a feeling of excitement. Most of the time now she felt able to get out on the stage and just feel exhilarated to be there and to pour it into her performance. Everything seemed to go smoother during the performances, and when she talked to the other members of the band, they all agreed that they were putting on some of their best shows ever.

  Casey, Laura, and Jack all shared responsibility for documenting the shows, and Riss had continued posting the still shots and videos and publicizing them on all of the bands’ websites. “Look,” Riss pointed out to Lex several weeks after their joint tour had begun and the two waited backstage for their time to go on, “that first video posted for us, the fan video, has over a million hits now.”

  Lex felt a twinge of nervousness in her stomach but just shook her head and smiled about it. “Doesn’t seem possible, really.”

  Riss shrugged. “Doesn’t surprise me at all,” she responded. “People just like to hear you sing.”

  “Hey,” Lex said as she fixed Riss with a glare, “it’s all of us out there making the music. I’m just one part of it. Well, I guess two, if you count the keyboards.”

  Nodding, Riss conceded the point as she turned her head, smiling, and continued working on the laptop.

  The group headed south first in an attempt to appreciate the warmth there in the spring before the summer rolled around. They played at a few of the same venues as the previous tour, but due to the number of their original places that had been overcrowded or sold out, Casey had decided to book a few bigger places this time around. Lex felt it when they all arrived, nervous as they seemed at first, but somehow she managed to walk in, turn around, and smile at all of her friends.

  “The sound is going to be really great in here tonight,” she said, and she could almost feel it as everyone relaxed and started to smile or laugh in return. It had been a great show that night.

  As the tour progressed, on nights when they were staying in cheaper motels Kate and Jack had started getting a room together. No one said anything about it, but Lex began feeling bored since she’d been hanging out with Kate when they got back from shows and talking for a while until they could get to sleep. Riss and Victor both always had things they were working on, so what Lex often did on nights while she was alone was see if she could get into the pool, if the place they were staying had one, and then stop by to see if Rachel and Sarah wanted to go for a swim with her. About half the time they would, and the three of them would float, looking up at the moon and chatting, until they felt tired enough to attempt to sleep.

  Everything just seemed to go more smoothly, and Lex began to feel she wasn’t only connecting with the audience. It seemed that now when the four members of Alexander’s Army got up onto the stage to play, they worked almost like one person. The music just seemed to flow, and the crowds seemed to love it. They had to order more CDs in the middle of the tour because they’d been selling so many, and the venues they played at continued being pretty packed and sold out fairly often.

  They had actually even started to get some press attention, mostly from the local papers in some of the towns they’d pass through. Lex couldn’t help but laugh as she read some of the articles and saw their new names.

  “Robert Louis Stevenson, huh?” she asked late one morning as she sat across from Lou and read the latest article that had been written about them.

  He smiled quietly in response. “Treasure Island was my favorite book as a kid. So, how about you, Jane Mansfield?”

  Lex rolled her eyes. “Obviously, I should have researched the name further before I chose it. I guess I have the white hair down, though. Wasn’t she supposed to have been a platinum blonde?”

  She laughed then and continued reading the story, briefly admiring the photo that they’d taken of the four of them under some flowering trees. It had been windy that day, and at the moment the picture had been snapped they were being showered with countless tiny flower petals.

  One place flowed into the next as all of them enjoyed the tour and continued to work hard to give good performances. The change started to slide in gradually, almost unnoticed. As they began heading north and got past San Francisco, Lex had a longer dream about being sought by the reddish eyes. She did her best to forget about it the next morning, telling herself that it was probably nothing, that she should just continue enjoying the tour.

  It felt easy to do, at first. Every new town that they came to seemed to have its own charm, its interesting people and areas. The group had also ma
de sure that they had a few days off now and again during all of their performances so that they didn’t get too burned out. It seemed to be working, because the members of all three bands still agreed that they were giving some of the best performances of their lives.

  Their days off allowed them to explore some of the places they came to stay. They all loved the rugged coastlines they encountered as they went farther north, and Casey especially loved the mountains. Lex admired that her friend never seemed to get tired of looking at the hills they would pass while on the road and always managed to arrange a hiking expedition to a local park for anyone interested whenever they had a couple of days off.

  They’d been in Oregon a few days when Casey called one of her trips together. They hadn’t had any luck enticing any of the members of the other bands to go with them, so it was just the six of them. After following a short trail to an overlook, they stopped for a picnic lunch and gradually fell into talk about the future.

  “Lou and I have been discussing it,” Casey said as she looked at the assembled group, “and we both agree that we like it here, everywhere from San Francisco north. It’s beautiful and the people here seem like folks I wouldn’t mind living around.”

  Lou nodded to back her up as he finished his mouthful of sandwich, and then Kate spoke up. “I really like it up here, too. I want to see the rest of Oregon and Washington, though. I’ve heard really good things about both, and I want to see what the towns and cities are like.”

  Victor nodded as well. “I’d like to see what the rest of the North holds for us, but I’ve been enjoying it so far. I think if we went any farther south it would just be too hot.”

  Riss shot a curious look at Lex before she said anything. “I think you’ve all got good points, and I have to admit I like it here better than Phoenix because it’s too dry for me there. What do you think, Lex?”

  Lex couldn’t manage to look at any of them because her dream started to loom large in her mind. “It’s so beautiful here that it would be hard not to love. How about if everyone thinks about it as we finish the tour and makes mental notes on all their favorite places? Then, once we get back home we can start voting and making some plans?”