“No? Then who is?”
A soft smile tugged at her lips.
“I think you’ve pried enough information out of me today. Goodnight, Avalanche.”
“I’ll just call you back until you relent.”
She sighed. She knew I would, too.
“You first.”
I was too drunk to be answering that particular question, but I did it anyway.
“Smart, funny, witty. A woman that can keep up with my banter.”
“And here I was, going to list physical traits.” She chuckled. “I’m glad you went first, you might think I’m shallow.”
“I can go shallow. Long dark hair, blue eyes—specifically ocean blue—short, curvy, tattoos.”
Her cheeks flushed red, her eyes finding the ground around her feet.
“You know, that sounds a lot like Eva.”
“Blah! Gross. She’s my sister. Besides, her eyes are green. That null and voids everything else. Now it’s your turn.”
“Tall, dark hair, blue eyes—specifically icy blue—morally questionable, villain is a nice bonus but not necessary.”
“V—”
“It’s late. Goodnight, Avalanche.”
She hung up before I could get a word out, which was probably for the best. I was too drunk to be thinking straight, and I absolutely would have said something I couldn’t take back.
“Goodnight, Nightshade.”
17
THE VILLAIN
I fucked up big time.The next morning I slept through six alarms and woke up to Eva dumping water on me—a dull throbbing in my temples. I hadn’t been hungover since I’d become Avalanche, I’d completely forgotten what it felt like.
My loving sister tore a strip off me from outside my bedroom door while I ran around trying to rush through getting ready. She managed to track down a potential location of one of thelabs supposedly running experiments on missing criminals, and I was supposed to check it out at dawn.
Luckily, Eva seemed to have a sixth sense for my inability to get my shit together and broke in (metaphorically—she had a spare key). I only ended up being a couple minutes late, and I still managed to get everyone out before the scientists came in. But the only thing that seemed to matter to the others was the fact that I was late at all.
I spent an hour listening to them lecture me like I was a horny teenager chasing after a girl. It was annoying but I was dealing until Vance pulled out this line: “This is life or death. Imagine you’d been even five minutes later? All those people could have been killed to keep this secret and you nearly let that happen. Get over this silly volunteer or we’ll do it for you. Is that clear?”
“What’s clear, is that you make a lot of threats,Chief. You’ll remember I made one, too. But do you know the difference between my threat and yours?” I picked a bit of dry blood from under my nail and flicked it in his direction. He blanched and stepped back, which only helped drive my next point home. “I’mwilling to get my hands dirty. Have I mademyselfclear?”
Chang and Vance tried to posture some more after that until I gave the former an icicle cocoon—again. This time I left him in there until his lips turned blue and his teeth clattered. Vance insisted I’d made my point and could let him go, still I left him. Honestly, I was considering killing them all, but Eva came over and talked me down.
“We need them to finish the list. Take a lap, then interrogate the scientist you snatched to cool off. I’ll talk to them. I won’t let them touch her. I promise.”
So I went and did exactly what she said. I learned there were several labs hidden throughout the city, each one had a slightly different purpose. The one I busted up was trying to give theinvoluntary participants superpowers by recreatingthe incident. The purpose of the other labs ranged from trying to replicate existing superpowers, to trying to transfer superpowers, to trying to nullify superpowers.
It wasn’t just criminals, homeless, and drug addicts that were being targeted. All of the villains were at risk of being nabbed and experimented on.
No one was safe.
