by Matt Blake
I had to watch my step. I had to be very careful. I couldn’t put my friends at risk.
I activated my invisibility and edged closer to the compound fences. I watched my step at all times, desperate not to trigger some kind of system that’d alert the guards to my presence. I knew it would be only so long before they went looking for their missing colleague in the woods. And when they didn’t find him, I dreaded to think what they might do.
I hovered off the ground and drifted over the fence. There were serious numbers guarding this compound, sure. But they were nothing I hadn’t handled before. Nothing I couldn’t deal with.
I dropped to the other side of the fence, staying elevated just inches above the ground, and with my invisibility still activated, I hovered closer toward the building.
The closer it got, the more nervous I got. I knew these people weren’t ULTRA hunters, and it seemed like they weren’t totally with Adam either. They were just doing their job, and their job was to hand over my friends and me in exchange for powers of their own.
I knew how dangerous the greed for power could be. We had to be vigilant.
I was about to hover through the wall inside the compound when I heard the dogs beside me growling.
I looked around at them. They were massive, American pit bull style dogs. Studded chains were draped around their muscly necks. Thick saliva drooled down from their mouths.
They were looking right at me.
I checked to see I was still invisible. I was, so I knew they must be able to smell me somehow.
“What’s up, boys?” a man asked in Spanish. Yeah, I’d used my abilities to help me learn other languages. Didn’t all heroes? How meta.
I saw him, with a rifle in his arms, walk up to his dogs. One of them barked. One of them thrust against the leash.
I was about to quickly head inside when I heard gunfire in the distance.
The man turned around. “Shit.” He went running away from the dogs, in the direction of the gunfire.
A distraction. That was just what I needed right now. It was perfect.
I took the opportunity to avoid teleporting through the wall for fear of what might be on the other side and instead drifted down towards the main entrance. I held my breath, reduced my form so not a single atom would be detectable by any systems they had in place—hopefully—and I moved through the door.
The inside of the complex was vast and mostly empty. It was even hotter in here, the glass ceiling creating a greenhouse effect. It smelled of sweat, badly.
I didn’t have to look so far to find out why.
In front of me, masses of people worked away at picking leaves and mashing them up. Further at the back of the compound, I saw a machine working away, as more people chopped leaves into small pieces. The air reeked with a sour, unfamiliar smell. I had no doubts now, from some of the documentaries I’d seen on Netflix, that this was some kind of cocaine operation.
I looked around. The Resistance had to be somewhere in this place. I couldn’t see them on show, though, so it made me wonder.
I searched all around but couldn’t find them.
And then I saw the door at the back of the compound.
I looked over my shoulder. Outside, the gunfire was getting louder. Definitely some kind of battle going on.
I held my breath and started to open the door.
“Stop.”
My muscles tightened. My stomach turned.
I slowly looked over my shoulder.
A woman was standing opposite me.
She was holding a knife.
I started to open my lips to protest when I saw another woman appear beside her.
“I can’t stop.”
“You have to stop,” the woman said, putting a hand on the other woman’s back. “For your children. For your family.”
I took a deep breath and closed my heavy eyes. I was invisible. They couldn’t see me. I had to stay focused.
I moved through the door and made my way down some steps. The further down I got, the cooler it got.
I ended up moving through another door.
Then I saw them.
The Resistance—what was left of it—were in a cell.
Standing opposite them, five men.
All of them had those electromagnetic guns raised.
“You ever gonna let us out of here?” Stone grumbled. He was bruised. He looked like he’d taken a beating.
One of the guards grinned, revealing a golden tooth. “Oh you will. You’ll be outta here soon. Only we’ll have your powers, big man. See how many people you’re punching then.”
“Not so fast,” I said.
I appeared behind the men.
Right away, I activated a wormhole and started to drag them into it.
One of the men fired an electromagnetic pulse at me. I saw it getting closer. It was just inches from singeing my skin and rendering me useless for a short while.
I focused on it, as the men disappeared into the wormhole.
Then I froze it in midair, inches from my face.
It turned to ice. Then it melted and dripped to the floor.
I looked up at the men as they got further through the wormhole.
“You were saying?” I said.
“Please don’t—!”
I blasted the men through a wormhole.
Wherever they were going, at least they’d be out of my way for a while.
Careful what you wish for.
I deactivated my invisibility and walked over to the cell. “Come on. We have to get outta here.”
“You took your time,” Vortex said.
I tried to open the cell door, then stepped back and aimed my powers at it. “Yeah. I was unconscious too.”
“Wow,” Ember said. “The golden boy’s not so perfect after all.”
“Let me deal with that,” Stone said.
I was about to fire the cell door away when Stone grabbed it with his rocky hands and ripped it away without even breaking a sweat.
“There. Now what?”
I thought about disappearing.
Then I thought about those people working away in awful conditions upstairs. I thought about the woman crying, just desperate to make a tiny bit of cash for her kids. “There’s something we need to do first.”
I started to make my way up the stairs, the Resistance following closely behind.
I walked out of the door into the main room.
What was waiting for me wasn’t exactly what I’d expected.
The guards were all down.
In their place, Adam’s followers, no doubt about it.
There were fifty of them.
And they were surrounding us.
21
Adam walked up the stairs towards Ellicia’s apartment.
It was totally silent in this apartment block. He figured it was a bit of a downgrade from the family home Ellicia used to live in. But at the end of the day, safety was paramount, and Ellicia felt safer away from her home.
Quite cute that she stayed in Staten Island though. As if nobody would find her, eventually.
Adam looked over his shoulder at the doorway. The guards that had stood there lay still, their necks twisted and their eyes bulging. He felt a twinge of sympathy inside. He hadn’t enjoyed doing what he did to them. Of course, he hadn’t done it firsthand. He didn’t have the strength to do things like that, not yet. But one of his followers had done it for him.
But even so, he still felt like he’d been the one to snap their necks. It sparked a strange sense of guilt inside, even though he knew he was fighting the good fight.
He never enjoyed taking anyone down. It just didn’t fit in with the ethical code he’d had instilled in him from a very young age. His mom had always told him when he was annoyed or mad at someone, to get inside their heads and imagine why they might be acting the way they were. When she’d first told him that, Adam found the idea pretty cool. Getting inside someone’s head was like a superpower, and Adam had al
ways wanted superpowers.
But the older he’d got, the more truth he saw in his mom’s words. When you get inside someone’s head, when you put yourself in their shoes, you can truly understand their actions. Maybe not understand them fully sometimes, but at least empathize with them.
As the years passed by, Adam fast realized a dark secret. A flip side to the coin his mom had introduced him to when he was being bullied by Mike Hart back when he was eight.
Nobody thought they were the bad guys.
In their own minds, everyone was doing the right thing.
And right now, knowing he was going to enjoy what awaited for Kyle Peters—what he was going to take away from him—he wasn’t sure whether or not he was the good or the bad guy.
But he was going to do what he had to do anyway.
He got further up the stairs. The steps creaked beneath his feet. The closer he got to Ellicia’s apartment, the more he could smell her perfume in the air. He knew her parents were away. He’d been sure to visit at a time when he had fewer people to get past and deal with.
It was just Ellicia, all alone.
Adam reached the top of the stairs. He wasn’t sure how exactly Ellicia was going to fit into his plan just yet. But he knew that she would. He had ideas. Lots of ideas. And all of them involved getting to Kyle somehow.
He didn’t want to be cruel to Ellicia, though.
It’d be much more satisfying to him if Ellicia joined his side by choice. That would hurt Kyle even more.
Not only would Adam have Kyle’s abilities, but he’d have his girlfriend, too.
He walked further down the corridor towards Ellicia’s room. He’d not always had such a downer on girls. He was a typical eighteen-year-old really. He’d had his relationships, most of which had fallen apart. He’d been betrayed one too many times. So that didn’t exactly instill him with confidence.
But Ellicia was going to be different. Ellicia was going to be special.
He stood outside Ellicia’s door and listened to the gentle sounds of her footsteps walking around in there. His hood was still up. He pulled it back, shuffled his dark locks around.
Then he took a deep breath and reached for the handle of the door.
“I’m through with him, Ellicia. I’m through with being afraid. And you should be too.”
The guy’s voice took Adam by surprise. He wasn’t expecting Ellicia to have company.
“He’s my boyfriend, Damon.”
“And he’s my best friend. Or at least he was my best friend, before all this… this…”
“He’s just doing what he thinks is right.”
“Don’t make excuses for him, Ellicia. You were the one who said you were worried about him in the first place.”
“I am worried about him. But that doesn’t mean I’m turning my back on him.”
Adam shuffled closer to the door. He heard a sigh.
“Kyle’s made his bed. For the first time in his lazy life, he’s actually made his bed. Now he has to lie in it.”
“Damon, please.”
“I’m sorry, Ellicia. It’s been… it’s been nice. Knowing you. Being friends with you. And I hope we’ll stay friends for a long time. But you should see sense while you can and get far, far away from Kyle. He’s dangerous. He’s going to get us all in trouble. He’s going to get us all killed.”
Damon’s footsteps got closer to the door.
Adam stepped back and leaned against the wall, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible.
“You really believe what the media are saying?” Ellicia asked.
“What about the media?”
“Adam. The people rising up. You really think that’s the right thing? For the Resistance to have their powers taken away? I mean, for every mistake they make, they save ten more situations. We just hear the bad stuff because the news always tells us the bad stuff. But there’s more to it than that. You know there is.”
Damon didn’t respond for a while. The silence stretched on, intense and unbearable.
Then, “Maybe Adam has a point. Maybe it is time someone else had a go at looking out for the world.”
“You can’t really think that.”
“Well, I do.”
Silence again.
Adam smiled.
“I’m sorry, Ellicia. Really. I… I hope you find your way.”
He opened the door and stepped out into the corridor.
Adam watched Damon walk away. He watched him walk towards the stairs, big rucksack on his back.
He watched him, and he smiled.
He didn’t need Ellicia anymore. Not yet.
He had a better idea.
22
“So. What now, genius?” Ember asked.
I looked ahead. All around, Adam’s followers surrounded us. Some of them had flames in their hands. Others, electricity. I could see the skin of one girl turning to a red brick-like texture.
“She stole my damned ability,” Stone said.
The girl smiled. “Not quite. I’m tougher.”
Stone tightened his fists. “Yeah we’ll see about that.”
I looked over at the women and men that were being forced to work in this place. They were lying flat on the floor. Some of them were praying. Others were just crying.
“We could make this nice and easy,” a voice opposite said.
I turned and saw a short ginger guy walking towards us. He had spikes sticking out of his palms. He wouldn’t be much to reckon with if he didn’t have those spikes.
“We could, could we?” I asked.
The guy smiled. “We’re all people here, after all,” he said. “I’m James. This is Billie. You know what we all have in common?”
“Go on.”
“You took someone away from us. Someone we care about.”
I sensed the mood shifting then. I couldn’t put my finger on what it was, but there was a distinct shift in the atmosphere. “Aren’t you gonna get on with it and take us back to Adam?”
James laughed. So too did a few of the others. “Oh, Kyle. We aren’t taking you back to Adam. We came here for you because you’re all ours. Because we want to deal with you ourselves.”
I realized what this was, then. These people had been given abilities, and they were betraying Adam already. “Not sure your leader’ll approve of that too much.”
“Let him disapprove,” Billie, the girl beside him, said. “What matters more to us is that you suffer for what you did. For what you put us through.”
They started to walk towards us then, surrounding us even more.
I put a hand back. Held it out. I had to teleport us away from here. Far away.
“Yeah. I get that might be important to you. But we’ve got bigger fish to fry right now.”
I went to teleport us away when I snapped back into the compound and fell to the floor.
I held my winded stomach. I looked up and saw Billie smiling as she got closer.
“What’s up?” she asked. “Can’t quite find your way outta here?”
I wiped my mouth and tried to teleport away again.
But once again, I just bounced right back into the compound.
This time, James was standing right in front of me.
He swung that spiked hand at my face.
I dodged it, rolling onto my side and shooting into the air. My flight was unbalanced and wobbly. I felt like I was learning to fly for the first time all over again, and I knew it had to be something to do with those powers Billie had used to disorient me.
I felt something smack into my side. I spun around and saw three of Adam’s followers floating opposite me, all of them with flames in their hands, all of them firing.
I swooped away from them and clumsily landed under them instead of above them. I dragged one of their legs down and threw them into the two beside them.
All around me, I saw the fighting unfolding now. I saw Stone cracking his fist into the metal exoskeleton of a girl, who stood her ground and punched right back
. I saw Ember firing flames at a woman who just extinguished them with water right away. I saw Vortex’s eyes rolling back into her skull, only for her to be knocked to her side and distracted every time she tried.
I was about to fly down and help her when I felt something around my neck.
I looked down and saw some thick, rubber tentacles wrapped around my throat. They were slimy and crusty on the surface. I tried to break free of them, kicking and attempting to teleport, but still my teleportation was weak.
“Feel bad?” a deep voice whispered in my ear as the battle rallied on below. “Feel bad watching your little army collapse?”
I couldn’t accept that.
I couldn’t let everything get taken away.
I had to fight.
I squeezed my eyes together then I slammed my hands against that tentacle.
I froze it. I kept on going and going, even though the tentacle was getting harder around my neck in the process.
I kept on going until it was completely solid.
“Sorry for this,” I said.
Then I smashed the tentacle in pieces and hurtled towards Billie.
I knew I had to stop Billie. She was the one blocking my teleportation. She was down on the ground fighting off Ember and Vortex, as the rest of the Resistance tried to stave off enemies of their own.
I flew faster towards her, still a little wobbly.
Then I felt something pierce my stomach.
I looked down.
There was a spike right through my torso.
Blood dripped down from it.
I felt myself go weak and cold and I fell to the floor.
I landed on my back. I put my hands on my stomach. It was bleeding badly. I had to focus.
James stood over me, my blood dripping from one of the spikes on his palms. “Now we watch as your powers trickle away with your life,” he said. “Now we watch you get what you deserved for hurting us. For hurting our families.”
I poured all my energy into healing that wound on my stomach.
But James was lifting his spikes again.
He was pointing them at my legs.
I squeezed my eyes shut and put all my attention and a little more onto that wound.
Then I heard a thud.
I was half-expecting to open my eyes and see another two spikes through me.
