The Powerless Series: Complete 5-Book Set

by Jason Letts

  “I can see now why they have their meetings so late. Only an idiot would be up to catch them at it,” Will griped.

  “Thanks,” Vern said.

  “Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean you’re an idiot. I only mean they’d be safe from me.”

  Vern and Will crept below to the lowest level and slipped into one of the tunnels. Will tagging along close behind, Vern retraced exactly what he had done while upside down so he could make the correct turns through the underground labyrinth in the dark.

  “We should’ve brought a torch,” Will said.

  “Keep your voice down. They’d see a torch.”

  “Why don’t we have a flashlight? It can’t be that difficult to make. Mira should build one for us,” Will whined.

  “Shut up!” Vern ordered.

  Reaching an area yet to be fully finished, Vern cautioned that their target was just around the next corner. But when they got there, the place was empty. Nothing disturbed the unified darkness.

  “I think this is where they were last time, but there’s nothing here,” Vern explained.

  “I’m shocked.”

  “Let’s keep looking around. They’ve got to be here somewhere.”

  “Do we actually know that?” Will asked. “If you caught them, of course they wouldn’t be meeting in the same place. And, besides, it would take forever to search through every tunnel in this ant colony. We don’t even know if they’re still having the meetings.”

  “Oh, no. We do know that. If you heard them, you’d know they were committed to finding information about the war plans. They would have let me in if I’d known something. It’s simply a matter of where they are. Stay silent and keep your ears open.” Vern began to turn back down the tunnel toward the main cavern, but Will closed his hand around Vern’s arm, holding him back.

  “Look, I want to find them just as much as you, but they could be literally anywhere, and not limited to these underground tunnels. We need to have a plan to find them and what we would do if we did. We can’t just run up to them pointing fingers and yelling ‘spy, spy, spy’!” Will reasoned.

  “You have a point,” Vern admitted.

  Rushing back to Westley’s home as quickly as possible, they flung open the door, and Will lit some candles while Vern shook Westley out of sleep.

  “Not again,” Westley groaned.

  “They weren’t there. We don’t know what to do now. You have to help us,” Vern begged.

  “I’ll give you some help alright. You need to learn to stop waking people up, and a good beating will do it.”

  “No, really, they meet at night, but we have no idea where, or what we’re supposed to do once we find them. Do you have any ideas?” Vern asked.

  Rubbing his eyes, Westley sat up in bed and dispensed with his grumpy antics.

  “Well even if they’re still meeting down here, they can’t all be living here. Some of them will have to go back to Topside, and there’s only one way to get there.”

  “Oh, that’s brilliant!” Will cut in. “We can camp out somewhere and keep an eye on the ladder into Underside. If Darmen Elite shadows start leaving, we’ll know they’re still down here. And if someone returns, we’ll know their meeting is up above somewhere.”

  “OK, great. Now have mercy and let me get back to sleep,” Westley pleaded, settling back down. Vern and Will left the apartment and made their way to the surface. Though the star-studded web and the moon provided relief from the darkness, no sign of human activity existed. The pair went to the edge of the waterfall and scanned the area from the bank. Keeping an eye on the ladder, they could faintly see the outlines of Darmen Topside. The area around the river appeared entirely uninhabited.

  The excitement of a stakeout kept their eyes peeled for a time, but they soon remembered their fatigue, and their work lost its luster. Nothing was happening at all.

  “I can’t stay here any longer,” Will complained.

  “It takes work to investigate something like this. Sitting here and watching is how we do that work,” Vern shot back.

  “The meeting might be already over. We have no idea. I’m going to fall asleep if I sit here any longer. It’s better if I go snoop around the outskirts of the city.” He rose from the riverbank and meandered away.

  “What! Get back here! Oh, all right. Whatever,” Vern acquiesced.

  Trudging over the sandy earth, they scoped out the area surrounding the city. Walking all the way around it would take considerable time, but they peeked down the streets for school uniforms and looked out onto the plain for lights and torches. Over the course of an hour, they crept up behind vagrants, peeked in windows, and circled the city’s poverty-stricken outskirts.

  “Why’re we doing this? I’m too sleepy,” Will said.

  Vern knocked him on the head. “It was your idea! But it doesn’t look like we’re going to find anything doing this,” Vern agreed.

  “What if we’re going about this the wrong way?” Will asked. “Instead of starting with the place, we should be starting with the people. Maybe we can get one of the members of the midnight club to tell us where they’re meeting, or we can overhear it somehow. Then we’ll know for sure, or we could just follow them. I see Darmen Elite students all over in the city. It won’t be hard to follow one.”

  “Remember, not all of them are part of this group. But I should have a good idea which ones are. Of course if any of them see me, they’ll remember me and we’ll be finished. If you want to try and dig it out of them, you can, but it might be better to follow them like you said…‌and there won’t be a chance for you to screw it up,” Vern instructed.

  “Leave it to me. I’ve seen enough failure recently to know how to steer clear of it for sure,” Will boasted.

  “Can we go home yet?” Mira burst in a fit of irritation, breaking the silence of the forest and snatching Widget’s attention. “I’m tired of wearing dirty clothes and sleeping on the ground and having knotty hair. I’m tired of hunting for food or stealing it. If you needed me to prove I could live out in the woods without anything for comfort, I proved that a long time ago. So let’s stop wandering around this big wild bed of thorns and go home.”

  A slick smirk formed on the old man’s face, and Mira couldn’t tell if he restrained himself from laughing or if he faked it to mock her.

  “And where exactly is this home you’re referring to?”

  “Your home. The place where I found you at the bottom of the hillside by the swooping ridge. We haven’t gone far since the cave, and I bet we could make it there by the end of the day. We’ve just been letting the days pass in these hillsides. It gives me the impression you don’t want to return even though we’ve nowhere else to go.”

  “It’s funny you offer to call it home so quickly,” Widget said, huddling his arms around his legs. He cast his eyes toward Mira, a seedy smile complementing his pale skin and white hair.

  “Home is just a place where you don’t feel like you have to go anywhere,” she argued. “It’s a place where you can keep your problems at arm’s length and find a little peace at the end of the day.”

  “Is that really what you think?” Widget asked standing up and coming closer. “Maybe you do, but I doubt you’ll believe that for long. I think you’ll learn the problems of the world love nothing more than to invade the one place you think you should be safe from them. They’ll follow you in, riding in your pockets or grasping at the whispers in the back of your mind, and they’ll leap out once you think they’re gone and show you why any hope of respite is nothing but delusion. Trust me, I know.”

  His words unsettled her, and the two locked eyes in suspicion and contempt.

  “You know, Mr. Widget, I think I’ll be quite pleased to be done with you when the time comes. I realize what an inconvenience I’ve been, and I’ll hope you’ll find yourself free to live out your days as you choose before you know it,” Mira said.

  “How ungrateful!” Widget erupted loudly as he turned from Mira and started dow
n the hillside. “You’d think after all I’ve done for your family you’d be a little more appreciative. I guess not. What would you be if not for me? Nothing! These things I know have made you who you are.”

  Mira quickly dashed after him. His obnoxious manner inflamed her ire, and she could no longer be polite.

  “I’ve heard about what you did for my family. My mother was sick for months after she gave birth to my sister and I. It sounds like a great failing on your part that you didn’t know enough to help her. You are foolish to think there is nothing beyond your grasp.”

  “You have no idea what forces were at work! My work was unimpeachable,” Widget stammered.

  “Oh yeah? So tell me! Tell me how my mother’s sickness was not your fault!” Mira hounded him.

  “Why would I tell you when you can see it for yourself?” he said, trotting down the slope.

  Mira saw smoke rising from a chimney in the distance. The small, rundown buildings of Dee Dee Grove sat pitted around a clearing. Looking down the hillside, the opposite side came into view, where she had first stumbled into town right before her apprenticeship had started. She still remembered the rude welcoming she received and the crushed feeling that came from being denied help when it mattered most.

  Instead of turning to the clump of homes, Widget continued on, leading Mira through the trees and up an embankment. A terrace formed at the top, and the trees encircled a small field of rustling tall grasses. The grasses made it seem like any other field for a moment, but a few steps beyond the trees exposed remnants of the past. She first saw a wooden beam, burned black, nothing to support but the empty air. The rubble at her feet almost tripped her up, causing her to examine the shiny debris and the wooden splinters.

  Realizing where she was forced the air from her lungs. She took baby steps and held her hand to her mouth. Widget, who stood back by the tree line, winced when he saw her shaking. Inching forward, Mira noticed the remains of a low wall buried in the grass. Broken glass crinkled under her feet. Charred wood covered the ground. Parts of the flooring remained, but green shoots had long since found their way through. On one side, logs and boards poked out of a sinkhole where a basement had been. Anything of value or use must have been taken, while everything that didn’t burn away sat untouched.

  “I used to live here,” Mira said, “with my family.”

  She tried to piece together the details she had learned about her past. How little it amounted to. She and her sister had spent their very first months here. Her mother, Jeana, had suffered from a debilitating sickness after giving birth, and Widget had been their faithful doctor.

  A wild man descended upon them and tore their family apart. Stealing Mira’s power, he perpetrated an evil thought impossible, and he took her twin sister, Clara. He destroyed everything in an instant, and their family had remained quietly broken ever since. Mira glanced around for anything she might remember, anything she could tie directly to her family. Though she found nothing, it didn’t reduce the aching in her chest.

  “Have you been waiting to bring me here?” Mira asked, sensing Widget’s approach from behind.

  “I don’t know if you’re ready to understand, but we’re running out of time.”

  Widget bent down and ran his hand over the debris. Bits of metal, wood, stone, and earth passed underneath. He let out a long sigh before standing up.

  “An electrical fire caused this house to burn down. It overwhelmed your father, who could barely salvage the life of his wife and child much less attempt to contain it. I never saw them again after it happened. I came here on schedule a few days later, and it looked much the same as it does now. In truth, I didn’t even know if your family survived, only that they hadn’t died here. It seemed a pitiful end to my work since I had helped them through every step of the pregnancy, from our first meeting when they wept at being unable to conceive.”

  “Sometimes I just wonder why,” Mira spoke up. “Why were the days of our happy family life numbered so few? Why does evil seek out the weakest and the humblest? And above all, why me? To see in so many ways all the things I should’ve had is more depressing than anything.”

  “Your family was the chance victim of a merciless degenerate. His only ambition is destruction. His drive for vengeance comes from a belief that the people of this world owe him for his miserable and pathetic existence. The harm he can cause doesn’t come only from his control of energy or his mind full of hate. He has a way of controlling people too,” Widget explained.

  “I thought you said you weren’t there when this happened? How can you know all of this about him?” she asked, turning to fully view his grave expression.

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Mira. He came to me too. Rearing his head through the shadows, he made his presence and his dark intention known. I felt firsthand his unnatural coercion, the way he draws you in until you are nothing more than a puppet in his hands. I wasn’t strong enough to resist, Mira. It’s impossible to resist.”

  “What are you saying?” Mira shuddered, concern contorting her face. She stepped back from Widget, her chest heaving.

  “He made me. He made me tell him about your family. I knew he had something horrible planned, but there was nothing I could do! There’s nothing he can’t make you do!”

  “What? How could you? My parents trusted you and you brought this upon them!” Mira shouted.

  “Just listen to me!” Widget said, grabbing Mira by the shoulders and shaking her. “You have to understand what he does and that it wasn’t my fault. It’s the way he traps you behind those painful truths you can never admit to yourself, and you’re so desperate to deny them you’ll do anything. Free will is the noose he ties around your neck, and you will sooner hang than accept what he shows you of yourself.”

  “I don’t believe you! There is always a choice and you chose betrayal.”

  “I know, Mira. I did. And that’s why I need you to forgive me. Your parents gave me the means to the greatest breakthrough of my life, and that guilt robs the oxygen from my every breath. Please, you have to understand. He finds a black hole in your soul and uses it manipulate you. It’s unbearable.”

  Widget’s beady, unblinking, pale eyes hovered in front of her, and she could see the grip the wild man’s malevolent force still had on him. The intensity of his clenched face frightened her, and yet seemed pathetic at the same time.

  “The way you say it makes it sound like a power. But you said his power involved energy. How can he have two? Is that second power the one he stole from me? Is that who I am?” Mira asked, contemplating what it would mean if she had been meant to possess such a frightening ability. Widget looked into her eyes and calmed her a bit.

  “I have no idea. It does sound like a second power, but that’s impossible. And there couldn’t be any connection with his energy. Either way, that doesn’t alter what he did and what I did. Can you forgive me, Mira, please?”

  He watched intently while Mira struggled to sort out the tragedies following her birth. Somehow Widget had been part of what set this awful chain of events in motion. A part of her and her sister’s unfortunate fate rested on his shoulders. He claimed he had no choice because of this monster’s power.

  “If it happened as you say it did, I can forgive you. You did something terrible, and it’s hard for me to believe there wasn’t a way out, but it’s true some things are beyond our control. Let’s just try and move forward and do what we can to set things right.”

  Mira turned and started to walk away from the burned-down house. It reminded her of the home she left in Corey Outpost. Something needed to be done to ensure that these scarring invasions never happened again.

  “They said my sister is being held captive by a woman named Pyrenee, and she leads the Sunfighter army. I wonder how this abductor fits into all that. Did he get rid of my sister so he could cause more pain or is he too involved with the enemy army? Did he even have a name?” Mira wondered.

  “If he did, he never felt t
he need to tell me. And I’ve never heard of anyone named Pyrenee either, not that any news of the war comes my way. It’s hard to imagine the enemy warlord picked your sister up by accident. The more their forces are bent on turning their talents to killing and destruction, the safer it is to assume this fiend has a hand in it,” Widget said.

  Walking back down from the hillside terrace, Mira felt the injustice of what happened and she wished to strike out in fury at those responsible, but a deep despair moored those emotions to the present. Everything seemed to be irrevocably falling apart. She deeply regretted expressing her displeasure to Wicket.

  Slamming doors and the shifty, suspicious eyes peering from the windows amplified her melancholy and loneliness. As much as it had been her home before, the occupants of Dee Dee Grove made it clear they did not want her now. She kept her head down, following blindly, until Widget took her to the path Mira followed to his door.

  “What were my parents like back then?” Mira asked, hoping for a silver lining in all this sadness. Her question made Widget purr.

  “Oh, first and foremost they were trusting. It took a great deal of faith for them to jump headfirst into experiments that had never been tried and could never be possible anywhere else. I told them I could solve their problems, and it might not surprise you I did just that. Your mother, Jeana, was a little bit headstrong, possessing a sharp wit. Kevin was above all a kind man who did his part to bring a little love and joy into the world.”

  “They haven’t changed at all since then. It’s a shame I couldn’t have seen what we all looked like together,” Mira added through her forlorn haze.

  “We’d exchanged visits for countless tests and procedures,” Widget continued, “and I got to know them well. They were happy together and eager to extend their love to children. I wish it had worked out for them as they dreamed it would. Instead, they got a difficult delivery followed by your mother’s illness, and she didn’t get better before…‌you know what happened.”