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Officer Plummer’s gun slides out of the holster and I hear the metal on metal of the gun cocking. A bullet fills the chamber. It’s cute that a human has my back. But he has no idea what he’s getting into.
The four of us stand in a circle, facing off, watching and waiting. The drugged men sneak glances at each other and then back at me. I hold off, saving an attack as the last resort. One of them keeps looking at his hand, flipping it over and over again as if he can’t believe he’s looking at his own skin. The other grits his teeth and clenches his fists. “You need to leave.”
I smile. “Humans don’t tell me what to do. I guess you missed the memo on that, eh?” I take a small step forward, never breaking eye contact. Luckily the other dufus is so freaking enthralled in looking at his own body that I don’t think he’ll be much of a problem right now.
“You see these hooks?” I slide one out of the pocket in my forearm. “They’re Super-made. Not only will they drop you instantly, you’ll also be paralyzed for the rest of your life. If you even live long enough to see that happen.” His eyes go wide and I take another step forward, planning to distract him with my made up ramblings long enough to detain him. How exactly I’m going to detain someone filled with power, I don’t know. I’ll figure that out right after I secure their fingerprint on my BEEPR. “So you’re going to sit down next to your friends and you will not attack me or Officer Plummer. Tell me you understand.”
The guy’s mouth opens but nothing comes out. At least, I can’t hear anything he says because my BEEPR just launched into an SOS siren, creating a force field of silence over the entire house. Everyone in the area will now be able to hear the message, which they will feel in their body, not hear through their ears.
My heartbeat goes silent. I breathe in a long gasp of air but I don’t hear it inflate my lungs. The familiar sound of my father’s voice pierces into my heart. “Attention every citizen of the Super race,” Dad begins. I wasn’t sure if humans would be able to hear the SOS message at first, but the horrifi
ed looks on their faces confirm it. “Eighteen-year-old Hero Nyx Nightly has been kidnapped. His whereabouts are unknown. Villains are confirmed as responsible.” Water pools in the corner of my eyes, squeezed out of my tear ducts by how hard I’m clenching my teeth in anger. I close my eyes and listen to the rest of the message.
“All Heroes are hereby dispatched to retrieve him. All Supers are called to action-leave no area untouched in your search for our Hero. Information on his whereabouts can be reported to any member of the Retriever Squad or to a Hero. Proceed with caution: Villain activity has been confirmed.”
Anger and hatred and every bad sort of feeling slips into my subconscious, filling me wholly. My body whirls around, knocking into the two powered humans. I feel the bones in their legs shatter and hear their cries as they drop to the floor. It’s been long enough for their injected power to have worn off. They’re the human’s problem now.
“What the hell was that?” Officer Plummer says with a shaky voice. “What’s going on?”
My body vibrates from raw anger. I grab the table of glass vials and fling it across the room. The table collapses, the vials shatter, silver flowing over the concrete floor.
“Shit!” Officer Plummer yells for backup into his walkie talkie. “Miss Might, are you okay?”
Red fills my vision. I’m only thinking of one person.
“Nova.”
As my identical twin, Nova’s biometrics are the same as mine. She wouldn’t show up in the system if I had wanted to have my BEEPR locate her whereabouts. If I tried, it would probably point to me. But I don’t need to ask technology to locate my sister. I can feel where she is.
I can feel her pain, her anger. I follow the invisible pull she has on me, the tug in the center of my chest that takes me straight home and to my bedroom down the hall. It’s is a little disconcerting because lately she’s spent a lot of time in her own room. Nova sits on the floor, almost hiding behind my nightstand. Her knees are pulled up to her chest; her face is a blank expression staring straight ahead.
She grits her teeth but doesn’t look at me when I enter the room. “I told you.”
“You told me what?” I drop down and dig under my bed, retrieving the vials of juice.
“I told you that Nyx should be protected. And you all laughed at me.” She turns to me, staring at the glass vials as I strap them to my bare forearm. “Now look what happened.”
I wish I could laugh, shake my head and tell her how stupid she is. But she’s right. If we had stopped thinking that Heroes were invincible for a moment, then maybe we would have put more thought into Nyx’s weird message and the sender and what their motives could have been. Maybe we could have prevented this with a little more foresight. Or if we had listened to Nova. Perfect, smart, Nova.
“He’s going to be okay.” I say the words even though I’m not sure I believe them. My fingers weave together and I push my arms out, stretching the muscles and tendons. Preparing. “Stop being pissed off. Moping around won’t bring Nyx back.”
“Like you’re doing anything more productive?” Nova’s voice is a sickly outpouring of venom. She hops to her feet, standing exactly eye level with me. Her hands grip into fists. She does a good job of holding back tears but I can feel that she wants to cry. She points to my forearm, to the black strips of Teflon tape that I just fashioned to hold a row of juice syringes against my skin. “What do you plan on doing with that?” Her fingers wrap around my wrist so tightly that pain shoots up my depowered arm. I stand firm, not wanting to back away from her, not wanting to show weakness. But if she doesn’t let up soon, my bones will break and there will be no power to make them heal quickly.
“Let go,” I hiss. “I am a Hero and you will not treat me this way.”
Her grip loosens. Her emotions are a whirlwind of chaotic energy swirling around in her mind. Energy churns around us, making the knickknacks in my room vibrate and shatter. “I sure hope those vials contain a way to find Nyx. Or the missing Supers. Or the damned depowering machine.” She stands so close to me that her breath makes strands of my hair dance around my face. “Because you’re supposed to be a Hero, Maci. So do it. Be a Hero. Felix can’t win.”
“You’re right again, sister.” I say. “Felix can’t win. Are those comfortable shoes? Would you like to change?”
“Huh?” Nova backs away. “What are you talking about?”
I grab her arm with my good hand. “I’m tired of being what you call an unproductive Hero. I will stop Felix because I finally how know to find the depowering machine.”
I stab a syringe into my forearm. I’m so ready for this, I don’t even cringe at the pain or the cold shock of the juice flowing into my body. She knows the answer before she speaks. Her voice trembles. “How are you going to do that?”
I’ve never loved being a Hero more than I do right now. “I’m going to turn in a villain.”
His name is Paul and he’s the head of the Retriever Squad. He’s older than he dresses, with salt and vanilla colored hair, cropped short. He wears a gold lapel pin in the shape of the King City crown. His eyebrows are so bushy they look like fat hairy caterpillars fell asleep on his face. One of the caterpillars lifts curiously when I push open the door to the dungeon. He rises from his desk, slamming his laptop closed.
