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“Maci. Come back to me.” My cheek stings as Evan slaps me again. My eyes snap open and I throw him a glare.
“Stop hitting me,” I grumble. I go to sit up and Evan helps me. I want to push his arm away, but, I need the help. Just like a human.
I recoil at the sight of blood under me. “You’ve lost a lot,” Evan says. “But your body will produce more. Stop giving me that face … No Maci, don’t!”
Evan lurches out of the way just in time to avoid being hit with the contents of my last meal. As embarrassingly awful and horrible as puking in public is, it makes me feel better. I push up on my knees with my good hand and then take a deep breath and stand.
“What happened?” I ask, my mouth tasting like rotten acidic spaghetti. “I thought I was a goner.”
He glances beside us, where my twin sits with her back pressed against the wall, knees pulled up to her chest. Her eyes dart around the room in quick, frightened movements. No one pays attention to her.
“You’re alive,” he says. “That’s all that matters.”
Hugo Havoc kneels by my dad, his shirt also removed and wrapped around Dad’s chest and neck. He’s giving orders to the Heroes around him, demanding an immediate lift of lockdown for important personnel. He says Dad needs a medical KAPOW pod stat.
He never looks at me even though I am only a few feet away. He doesn’t summon medical help for me, even though I clearly need it.
Evan says all these things I’m thinking to Hugo, only to be met with a rude glare and a warning never to speak to an elder that way again. It isn’t until Max takes Evan’s side and demands that Hugo order a medic pod for me too, that he listens.
Aurora’s frail body convulses with the continuous zaps of electricity holding her in place on the floor. With Evan distracted, and everyone else tending to my dad, I take small steps in her direction. I don’t have a plan, but I’m sure I’ll think of one.
The silver four-button remote control of death stares up at me from the floor where Aurora dropped it during Evan’s juice assault. I pick it up. My thumb runs across the button. I can end this now. After all she’s put me through—after all she’s done in the last sixteen years. I can end it.
Though her body quivers uncontrollably, Aurora manages to form her lips into a snarl when I look at her. “How does your arm feel?” she hisses, sounding like an emphysemic old man.
“A whole lot better than what you’re about to feel.” With a tight grip on the device, I take a knee next to Aurora. She looks different up close. Fine wrinkles crease in her eyes and lips. Her hair is thin and lifeless. She must be way over a hundred years old. I kind of feel sorry for her.
Which is why I’ll kill her quickly.
“Maci, no!” Max’s yell echoes throughout the Atrium, startling me out of my murderous trance. I drop the device without realizing it and Max swoops it up, crushing it into the wall. Broken bits of plastic and metal fall from his hands as he brushes them off on his suit. “It is not our place to hand out punishments to villains. We will turn her in and the elders will decide.”
“What is wrong with you?” I yell as I jump to my feet, aiming a glare at my brother and a pointed finger at Aurora. “She depowered our dad! She deserves to die!”
“That is not for us to decide,” Max says again, leveling his gaze with mine and trying to pull that calming voodoo he’s so good at on me.
Aurora gasps for air. “Give me more credit than that, child.” I kick her in the stomach without taking my eyes off Max. Undeterred, she continues. “Your mother was my first kill. It felt wonderful seeing the light leave her eyes as she rambled on, begging for her life and spewing some pathetic nonsense about the safety of her babies.”
Max’s chest heaves in anger as he hears her words, but he chooses to be a Hero—to stay calm and unaffected by the words of a villain. Hero rule number five.
“We all knew Pepper was a diva, but I never thought he’d turn into such a pathetic whining baby.” Aurora’s laughter turns into coughs as she struggles to breathe against the volts still racking through her body.
“We need a Retriever pod,” Max calls over his shoulder.
“One is on the way,” Hugo Havoc says from his place at my father’s side. I don’t look over there. I can’t see Dad right now or I’ll lose my very thin grasp on sanity.
Max’s strong hand grabs my shoulder. “You’ve done all you can do, Maci.”
I give him credit for upholding his oaths of Heroism even when this villain attack turned personal. He is truly an upstanding Hero and an asset to King City. But as I’ve been reminded countless times in the last two weeks, I am not a Hero. I have no oaths to uphold. No one to answer to and no one to tell me what to do. I am part evil. And I am choosing my evil side.
“I’m sorry, Max.” I pick his hand off my shoulder and gently lower it. Confusion distorts his face. I’ll need to be fast so he can’t stop me.
With my right arm hanging uselessly at my side, I dig my left fingers under a metal sign on the wall and tug it off in what I hope is quick enough to look like a blur of confusion to my brother. Half a second later, I’m hovering over Aurora with the sign swinging toward her neck like a guillotine blade. Her death will be quick and absolute.
Her windpipe slices open and my makeshift weapon stops in midair.
Winterfresh Mountain Spring wafts past me as I look up to see Evan’s hand gripped around my wrist. Max lets out a string of profanities that I ignore. Evan’s height towers over my kneeling self and he uses it to his advantage in our little staring game.
“Let go,” I say.
