Teen Superheroes Box Set | Books 1-7

by Pitt, Darrell

  ‘It’s good to see you again,’ the doctor said.

  ‘We’ve met before?’ Brodie asked skeptically.

  ‘I initiated you into The Agency when you first arrived,’ Anna said. ‘Before everything went haywire. Now you must begin the next step of your training.’

  Judging by her name, I assumed she was Russian, but her accent was very faint. I looked closely at her face. She was a beautiful woman, maybe about twenty-five years old. Glancing back at Brodie, I noticed her watching me, and frowned.

  Oops.

  ‘I’ll take you to your quarters,’ the doctor said. ‘I suggest you get a good night’s sleep. Your training starts tomorrow.’

  ‘It won’t be anything we can’t handle,’ Chad said, laughing.

  ‘We’ll see,’ the doctor replied.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The alarm went off like a bomb in my head. To make matters worse, it was accompanied by the flickering of overhead fluorescent lighting. One second, I was sound asleep in complete darkness. The next, I felt like an insect being studied under a magnifying glass. I peered blearily at the alarm clock.

  You’ve got to be kidding.

  5.30am

  The previous night I’d been housed in a dorm room with Chad and Dan while Brodie and Ebony were given a room across the hall. Compared to our previous penthouse accommodation, this place was more like Guantanamo Bay. Everything was concrete. There were no windows because we were still a hundred feet underground. The beds were reinforced steel bunks. The walls were bare. Even the television looked like it was built during the cold war.

  I had half expected to find orange jumpsuit pajamas, but they turned out to be military green tops and shorts.

  Sitting up in bed, I found myself wondering one thing.

  What have I gotten myself into?

  Then the shower started running. Confused, I looked across at Dan and Chad, who appeared even worse than me. A computerized voice emanated from a speaker in the ceiling.

  ‘The shower provides hot water for three minutes,’ it informed us. ‘After that, it converts to cold water only.’

  You’re kidding.

  The three of us charged madly for the shower, but Chad got there first. I don’t think he’d ever showered with two guys watching him.

  ‘What’re you looking at?’ he asked, rubbing soap all over.

  ‘Two minutes,’ the computer intoned.

  ‘Out!’ I yelled. ‘Get out!’

  We virtually dragged him out by the hair. I jumped in next, promising I’d give Dan his full minute. Before I was even half washed, though, the computer announced the shower had one minute of hot water remaining. Dan glared at me.

  ‘Jeez,’ I groaned and got out.

  I dried myself and pulled on clothes. As soon as Dan finished his shower, cold and shivering, the computer told us breakfast would be served in five minutes in Kitchen Twelve. I remembered the location from Anna’s tour the previous evening. It was about two hundred feet down the hallway.

  The computer continued.

  ‘Breakfast will begin at five forty-five am and will conclude at five fifty-five am.’

  I had to think really hard about what the computer had said because my head was still in bed while the rest of me was only pretending to be awake.

  ‘Ten minutes,’ I said. ‘That’s ten minutes for breakfast.’

  We charged out of there and bumped into the girls in the hallway. They looked like they’d just escaped a flooded building. Neither had combed their hair, and Ebony’s was still dripping wet.

  ‘We had three minutes for both of us to shower!’ Brodie yelled.

  ‘Three minutes?’ I yelled. There’s some sort of inequality here! ‘Between the two of you? That means you each had an entire minute and a half! We only had a minute!’

  ‘Bad luck!’ Brodie snapped.

  No one spoke during breakfast. There were three attendants bringing food out to us like clockwork. And there was plenty of it: pancakes, bacon, toast, oatmeal. We ate it as fast as we could. Who knew when our next meal was arriving?

  This is insane.

  I remembered the abandoned warehouse I’d shared with Brodie that first night. The cold, damp building with rats eyeing us hungrily seemed like heaven as compared to this. I caught Brodie’s eye.

  ‘Remember the good old days?’ I said.

  She shook her head, and a lock of red hair bounced before her eyes.

  ‘Just eat,’ she replied.

  Our drill instructor turned out to be a large black man by the name of Mister Henderson. It seemed that no one here had first names. He never smiled; I don’t think his mother ever taught him how. He took us outside via an elevator that opened up to reveal a large field. Rolling hills surrounded it on all sides. It was very picturesque.

  ‘Where are we?’ I asked.

  He ignored me. ‘I will be your physical exercise instructor. I have three weeks to beat you recruits into shape. That’s not much time. That means you’ll have to follow my every command if you want to be ready in time.’

  ‘What if I don’t plan to be ready?’ Chad asked, smiling.

  What is it with this guy?

  ‘You don’t want to find out,’ Henderson said.

  I believed him.

  We started with a three-mile run along a track through the woods. It was a magnificent morning in a beautiful part of the country. Shame it had to be ruined with exercise. By the time I was halfway around, I was regretting eating so much at breakfast.

  After that, we moved onto pushups and sit-ups. Around that time, breakfast made a return visit for me, Dan and Ebony. Chad took a little longer to crack. It wasn’t until the second three-mile run that he emptied his stomach. Brodie made it through everything unscathed.

  It seemed like she had a natural advantage in all the exercises. Whereas the rest of us had powers that involved the manipulation of external elements, her ability was mostly physiological.

  We stopped for lunch. This time the break was more relaxed. No one spoke. Dan didn’t eat anything. It was the first time I’d seen him say no to food. Even Chad barely touched his meal.

  We all got separated after lunch. My personal trainer was a man named Mister Brown. He was like Henderson, but a smaller and stockier version—if such a thing were possible. He wore a tracksuit like a personal trainer, but he looked like a military guy. He knew all about my powers and began by getting me to produce shields of various sizes. Small. Large. Then he got me to morph them into different shapes.

  I moved onto flying. Mister Brown didn’t get me to fly any great distances. In fact, he got me to do the opposite. He had me do flying drills, flying short distances, but doing it with total precision. Sometimes he’d have me hovering bare inches off the ground. At other times I’d fly upside down and do complete somersaults. After doing this for an hour, I reminded him that I was capable of flying both high and fast.

  ‘I’m well aware of that, recruit,’ he told me.

  He’d either forgotten my name or refused to use it.

  ‘You need to polish your basic skills before you move onto advanced moves.’ He gave me the closest thing to a smile I’m likely to see. ‘Baby steps, recruit. Baby steps.’

  The day’s activities ended with me creating air weapons. First, I made balls and threw them. Then I moved onto darts. In the last hour, he showed me pictures of a Japanese throwing star called a shuriken and got me to create and throw them at targets.

  ‘So, when do I get a break?’ I asked him.

  ‘You can relax when I say you can,’ he replied, smiling.

  It was not a pleasant smile.

  By the time I headed back for dinner, I was so physically and mentally exhausted that I was just about falling over my own feet. Stumbling into the dining room, I found the others were already there. They looked the same. Poor Dan looked like he was ready to pass out. Ebony looked ill. Even Chad seemed tired.

  Brodie…well, what can I say?

  ‘How was yo
ur day?’ she asked brightly, eating like she’d been fasting for a week.

  ‘Great…great…’

  ‘Feel like a run after dinner?’ she suggested. ‘Nothing like a quick ten-mile jog to polish off a perfect day.’

  She’s so evil.

  After dinner, we had free time, but for every one of us—even Brodie—free time equaled sleep. An attendant showed us the location of a television and a games room equipped with the latest video games, but no one showed the slightest interest.

  Later, I remembered getting into my pajamas. I remembered falling into bed. I remembered closing my eyes.

  After that, I remembered nothing.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I’d like to say the following week got easier.

  It didn’t.

  There were some improvements. The showers were still three minutes long, but we got better at jumping in, scrubbing ourselves raw, and climbing out to make room for the next person. We learned to eat less for breakfast, more for lunch, and finish with a large dinner. As far as everything else went, it was still a nightmare.

  The physical regime got more difficult every day. The distance of the run increased by only a few hundred feet, but you knew about it. Then there were endless sit-ups and pushups. Mister Henderson seemed to only know three words—faster, harder, and faster.

  Okay, that’s only two words, but you get the idea.

  Even the skill-building sessions in the afternoons got more complicated. Every day it was more challenging. Every day more demanding. As soon as I mastered one skill, Mister Brown got me to move onto something else. After a few days, he got me to start combining my skills. I got to the point where I had to stay in flight while creating a barrier and throwing invisible balls at a moving target. The whole thing gave me a headache.

  Finally, we moved onto speed and distance trials. Mister Brown fitted me out with a device that registered height and speed as well as a special suit to keep me warm. Then he got me to fly upwards as fast and as high as possible. It turned out to be the single most enjoyable part of the training.

  The first time I did it, I erred on the side of caution. Returning to Earth, Mister Brown was waiting with a frown on his face.

  ‘You call that fast, recruit?’ Mister Brown asked. ‘I want that sound barrier broken!’

  ‘Yes, sir!’

  I took flight again and gave it all I had. This time I went so high, the sky started to turn an indigo shade of blue. This time I returned to base to find Mister Brown examining his tablet.

  ‘You broke Mach One today,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow we’ll try for Mach Two.’

  On the eighth day, I stumbled into the dining hall, feeling both tired and energized all at the same time. I had to give The Agency credit for one thing. They knew how to build a healthy body. In under a week, I’d grown muscles I never knew I had.

  During dinner, Chad kept on trying to catch my eye. When the catering assistants went to the kitchen, he leaned across the table to me.

  ‘We need to talk,’ he said quietly.

  ‘About what?’

  He eyed the kitchen staff suspiciously. ‘We’ll talk later.’

  Leaving the dining hall, I lagged behind with Chad. We found a quiet recess leading off one of the corridors. I wondered why he’d chosen this particular spot until I realized no cameras monitored this part of the facility.

  Even then, he looked around carefully for listening devices. ‘Okay,’ he said, finally. ‘I think we can talk.’

  ‘What’s this about?’

  He leaned close. ‘It’s about this place,’ he hissed. ‘It’s Stalag Thirteen! It’s a nightmare. I’m getting out of here.’

  I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right. ‘You must be joking,’ I said. ‘This place is more secure than Fort Knox. And what about Ebony?’

  ‘I’m not leaving forever,’ he said. ‘I just need a break. Maybe twenty-four hours of rest and relaxation.’

  ‘You’re crazy.’

  ‘I want you to come too.’ His mouth turned into a smile. ‘I can’t party on my own. There’s gotta be a town around here. We can get some booze. Listen to some music.’

  ‘No way!’

  ‘What are you? A saint?’

  ‘I don’t want to get into trouble!’

  ‘Get a life!’ He poked me in the chest. ‘This place is run by aliens and mad scientists. They’re not in control of our lives. We are.’

  ‘And what about the poison capsules they inserted into our bodies?’

  ‘They’re not going to kill us for just blowing off some steam.’

  I turned my back on him. ‘Goodnight!’

  Neither of us spoke as we returned to the dorm rooms. Dan had been lying on his bunk, staring up at the ceiling. He frowned as we entered.

  ‘Where were you guys?’ he asked.

  ‘Don’t worry about it!’ Chad snapped.

  After getting ready for bed, the lights went out. At first, I lay awake and stared at the ceiling. My eyes strayed to the clock. I didn’t want Chad screwing everything up for us. Despite the hardships of the last week, I knew I’d developed further in that time than I would have in a year.

  My eyes grew sleepy.

  10:00pm.

  Darkness.

  My eyes slowly creaked open. It’s still night. This was the first time I’d woken without the lights snapping to attention since we started here. What’s going on? Why aren’t I asleep?

  Then I heard the muffled sound of someone getting dressed in the dark.

  Chad.

  I climbed out of bed, fumbled around, and found a light. Chad was already pulling on his shoes.

  ‘Hey amigo,’ he said cheerily. ‘Coming out to play?’

  ‘You’re insane,’ I hissed. ‘You’re just going to get us all into trouble.’

  ‘Are you coming or not?’

  Sitting on the edge of the bed, I stared down at the floor. This is a stupid idea. We need to be getting ready to take on Typhoid. Going out to party was crazy. However, there was a nagging thought in the back of my brain. How bad could it be? If we got caught, we’d just make light of it and promise to be good boys from now on. Besides, they needed us more than we needed them.

  ‘Okay,’ I sighed. ‘I’m coming with you.’

  ‘Good man!’

  Dan stirred and drowsily sat up. ‘I bag’s first shower.’

  ‘Go back to sleep,’ I said.

  He did. Dragging on my gear, I followed Chad to the door. He peeked out, and I heard a low crackling sound.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Follow me.’

  I wondered about the camera—until I saw the burnt wires attached to it. Chad had used his powers on it. Shaking my head, I followed him down the hallway.

  This is dumb, I thought. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

  I was already regretting my decision to follow him. Reaching the next cross passage, he repeated the same stunt.

  ‘Where to now?’ I asked.

  ‘Stairs lead up from here,’ he said. ‘It’s an emergency exit.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘You think I’m stupid? I checked them earlier.’

  We entered the stairwell where a camera was positioned halfway up one of the walls.

  I grabbed Chad’s arm. ‘Leave this one for me.’

  It was on a pivot mount. Focusing, I pushed the camera to point at the wall. We scurried up the stairs, and within minutes we were heading out the exit door.

  I took a deep breath and let it out as we stepped into the chilly, clear night, and looked up at the sky. A million stars looked back down at us. Chad was an idiot for suggesting this, but I still loved being out in the open again.

  Free at last.

  The wind churned in the trees. Then I realized it wasn’t the wind. It was more rhythmic than that, like a machine. The darkness was extinguished as a spotlight beamed down from the sky, blinding us both.

  A helicopter hovered overhead.

  ‘Put your hands up!’ a voice boomed down.
‘You are under arrest!’

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Take my word for it: being in jail is no fun. After being taken into custody by some tough-looking guards, we were handcuffed and had black bags shoved over our heads. Chad tried to protest but was cuffed about the head for his complaints.

  I remained silent.

  We could have fought our way out, but for what purpose? It would have just made things worse. Besides, we didn’t want to harm any of The Agency staff. We just wanted a few minutes of freedom. After our arrest, we were taken to a cell, and the bags and handcuffs were removed. The first thing Chad did after we landed in the cell was yell at the retreating backs of the guards.

  ‘Just go to sleep,’ I told him.

  Probably the worst thing about the cell was that the lights stayed on all night. The second worst thing was the beds. I’d thought the dorm beds were bad; the ones in jail were like sleeping on concrete.

  Chad finally drifted off to sleep. It took me longer. I dreamed about being in the room with Ravana and his constant questions about The Agency. Then I dreamed about him bursting into flames as we made our escape. I saw him toppling over, pounding the concrete roof of the building with his burning fist.

  Pounding and pounding and—

  Someone was hitting the bars of our cell. I woke to see Brodie standing there. Her hair was uncombed, and she looked tired and harassed.

  ‘Do you know how long I’ve been standing here?’ she asked.

  ‘Ages?’ I guessed

  ‘I’ve been calling your names for the last ten minutes as well as smacking the bars with this cup!’

  She had a metal mug in her hand. ‘Seriously,’ I said. ‘They really give those things to prisoners?’

  ‘What do you think you drink from?’ Brodie asked. ‘Your hands?’ She shook her head in disbelief. ‘Why’d you do this?’

  ‘That was me.’ The voice came from Chad as he blearily raised his head. ‘I talked Mister Goody into breaking out with me.’

  ‘I should have expected as much,’ Brodie said, folding her arms. ‘Can you tell me why?’

  ‘Because I don’t like to take orders!’ Chad said, now fully awake and annoyed. ‘I refuse to be treated like a prisoner. I’m a citizen of Norway! I shouldn’t even be in the United States!’