Overpowered (Powered Trilogy #2) (14 page)

Nova startles and then quickly masks her surprised face with a smile.

“That’s weird,” I say as I head into the kitchen for a snack. Nova follows me, taking a deep breath to calm her pounding heart. “What’s weird?” Her voice is dry.

I shrug and grab a box of Pop Tarts.

“I don’t know,” I say with an impish smile. “It kind of smells like Nyx Nightly in here.”

After Evan went home because he refused to risk falling asleep in my bed where Dad would find us, I stayed up watching human reality television for hours waiting for Dad to come home. When he finally did return, I guess I had passed out on the couch because he managed to slip in without waking me up. When I do wake up, it’s with a painful neck from sleeping on the couch. Max scoops a bowl of dog food for Chewy and then makes himself breakfast in the kitchen. Breakfast for Max consists of a dozen fried eggs and half a loaf of bread toasted and buttered.

“Where’s the bacon?” I ask, padding into the kitchen. My face
is crumpled with the texture of the couch pillows.

“We’re out,” he says. “I didn’t have time to go to the grocery store.”

“I noticed you haven’t had time to do much of anything.” My voice is one hundred percent snark and I one hundred percent don’t care.

“You’ll understand one day, Rookie.” He stabs a fork into his fried egg and shoves the entire thing into his mouth at once. “We save the world one problem at
a time. Not all at once.”

“Is Dad awake?” I ask, choosing to ignore Max’s unsolicited advice. He shakes his head, consuming another egg. “He’s not here. Meeting.”

“How many frigging meetings does he have to go to?” I yank open the refrigerator door, grab the carton of milk and slam the door closed.

“A lot. They’re making him president again.”

This makes me look up from pouring my glass of milk. “Really? That’s amazing.”

Max shakes his head and plops onto the couch with his plate that’s piled high with a mountain of food. “Do you read any of your memos, Mace? Seriously. You’re in your own little world all the time.”

“I read the important ones,” I mutter, hoping he doesn’t ask any follow up questions. Truth is, the message center on my BEEPR has been largely untouched for days. I know I should keep up with current events in the Super community, especially if everyone has agreed to keep my depowered father as the president but I am a Hero now. I have important things to do. I help save human lives. Whenever news is important enough for me to know, it’ll come to me in the form of a Hero alarm.

“I went looking for the
depowering machine,” I say, sitting next to my brother. “It isn’t there anymore.”

“I know. I looked, too.”

“Do you know where it went?”

“No, but that
cute girl behind the counter? I think she likes me.”

I groan. “I hate you.”

He laughs. “What? I didn’t say I liked her! I was just making conversation.”

My fist soars through the space between us. I allow myself to prematurely feel the satisfaction of punching him in the arm, but before my fingers make contact, Max grabs my hand, stops it from hitting him and puts it back on my side of the couch. Jerk.

“Finish eating. We need to find the depowering machine and figure out who is stealing the power from it.”

“Chill out, okay? I investigated it already. They won’t tell me where it is because it’s been moved to a secure location.”

“So you’re just going to give up?” I’m yelling, and it wakes up Nova. I can tell because I feel her power awaken from down the hall. It’s still unsettling, trying to get used to being connected to her power and her emotions whenever we’re close to each other. It has to be a twin thing because I can’t feel this much of anyone else. I’ll research that later. Right now, Max has some answering to do.

He shrugs. “I haven’t given up. I’ve accepted that I won’t find the thing and now I’m waiting for Dad to get home because if anyone will have access to it, it’ll be the freaking president.” He takes a bite of toast and peels his eyes off the television to look at me. “So like I said...chill.”

Still wearing my pajamas from last night, I step outside and climb into our family KAPOW pod. The overhead light comes on when I close the door. A soft vibration from the pod means it’s just starting up for the day. “Good morning, Maci Might.”

“Destination
depowering machine.” If this works, I’m a total genius.

The computer voice takes a moment to answer. “Destination undisclosed.”

“Go there anyway,” I say.

“Unable to complete task. Authorization insufficient.”

“You suck,” I mutter.

“Command unclear. Please try again.”

Defeated, I head to my room and change into my Hero suit, sans mask. I like wearing my suit when I’m not on a mission both because I look awesome in it and because it takes the guesswork out of finding something to wear for the day. I grab something to eat and ignore Max’s mumbles about my efforts being fruitless and how I should just wait for Dad. I flick the screen on my BEEPR.

“GPS coordinates to the
depowering machine,” I say quietly, hoping Max is more focused on the television than me. He’s not, because he laughs. I roll my eyes and watch my BEEPR. It flashes red.
Undisclosed destination.

Maybe it’s because I’m a probationary Hero. Smiling, I mosey over to my brother and sit delicately on the couch’s armrest. “Max,” I say sweetly, folding my hands in my lap like a lady. He gives me a sarcastic look but I keep up the charade anyway. You catch more flies with sugar and all that. “Could you please please
please
ask your BEEPR to locate it? Maybe it’ll work for you since you aren’t probationary.”

“Do you think I haven’t tried that already?” he asks.

“Did you?”

His shoulders fall. “No.”

I hover over him as he makes the same command to his BEEPR and I let out a curse when he’s met with the same response.

The doorbell rings and the house MOD screen shows Nyx Nightly standing just outside our door, holding a box of donuts. I let him inside and steal a few pastries
before he makes it to the kitchen. He acts like the same old Nyx when he sees me, so I’m guessing he doesn’t know that I heard him with Nova last night.

He drops a
holo-disk on the coffee table and it shoots out a wide display into the air. It’s the data we’ve been collecting about the missing Supers. I try to talk but he holds up a hand to stop me. “Last night I got this anonymous message and I haven’t been able to trace it anywhere.”

“What do you mean?” Max asks between bites of donut.

Nyx breathes and his energy is worried, nervous. Which is weird for a Hero. “It said they know I’ve been looking for the missing Supers and they might be able to help me. But they don’t want me to tell anyone. They said they’d only work with me.”

“Then why are you telling us?” The voice comes from the hallway. We all spin around and find Nova, dressed in a pair of my old cutoff jean shorts and an oversized King City T-shirt.

Nyx’s heartbeat races. “I tell Max everything,” he says. Max slides over and offers a seat on the couch to our sister. “We’re Heroes,” Max explains. “We don’t keep secrets. We’re completely transparent. We’ll lie to villains but not each other.”

She nods, looking as if she doesn’t quite accept that way of thinking. Nyx continues. “So I replied and acted like I would comply with their request. I asked who they were and where I could find them.”

“And?” Max and I ask in unison. Nyx holds up his palms. “No reply yet.”

A feeling of alarm pulses through Nova’s body. The weird thing is, as I look around the room, I think I’m the only person who can
sense it. “What?” I whisper to her. Unfortunately, everyone else hears my question and they all turn to look at us. Nova gnaws on her bottom lip. “Shouldn’t we tell someone? Like, maybe put some kind of protection around Nyx so nothing happens to him? He was basically threatened by someone we don’t know.”

Nyx laughs. “I’m not worried. I can take care of myself.”

Max throws an arm around Nova’s shoulders and pulls her in for a mighty Hero squeeze. “You’re so sweet and considerate, Sis.”

I choose this moment to butt in. “Do you know where I can find the
depowering machine? They’ve hidden it. Our GPS won’t find it and neither does the KAPOW.”

His brows draw together as he thinks. “Did you ask your dad?”

“Not yet but I don’t know when he’ll be back.”

“I don’t know,” Nyx says. “I’ve never needed to find it before. I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”

I feel Nova’s newfound energy the moment she speaks. “The machine is used to depower villains, right? So if you were to capture one right now, they’d be sent to be depowered, right?”

“Yeah,” Max says. “But we haven’t had a villain in a while.”

“If you had one, where would you take them? Can’t you just do that and find the machine?”

Max shrugs. “We don’t do anything. The Retrievers handle it.”

The energy in the room bursts to life as if a collective light bulb just turned on above everyone’s head. “Perfect!” Max beams.

“Why are you always coming up with the great ideas?” I snap. “You’re not even a Hero.” Nova’s smile falters. All of her happy energy melts away.

“Hey now,” Nyx says, holding up a donut. “Rude.”

I grit my teeth
and walk to the front door, saying the only thing I can think of. “Whatever.”

Jake is a Retriever about my age who rescued me when I was thrown from a ledge of the Grand Canyon a few months ago. I haven’t been a Hero long enough to
work with many Retrievers and I’ve never been particularly chummy with any of the older ones my dad knows. I don’t want anyone to know what I’m up to, so I pull up Jake’s name in the Retriever directory.

I call his personal MOD number as I lean against the corridor wall near our house. I haven’t walked far, just far enough to ensure no one lurks around the corner to eavesdrop on me.

Jake answers after a few rings. “Hey...Jenn.” Laughter and television sounds come from his end of the phone. “What’s up?”

“I don’t know who
Jenn is, but this is Hero Maci Might.”

He laughs heartily, like I had just told the mother of all hilarious jokes. “I know. Where are you?”

“I’m at home. Listen, I need to talk to you.” When he doesn’t say anything a few seconds later, I add, “It’s kind of a huge favor.”

“Pizza sounds fun,” he says over the loud roar of teenagers cheering about something. “I’ll meet you there.”

“What the-” I say, stopping when I hear him whisper something into the phone.

“I’ll message you coordinates. Be there in five.”

Jake’s message comes through as promised and a few minutes later, I’ve followed the coordinates to an abandoned KAPOW loading dock directly under Yellowstone National Park. His hair is shorter than the last time I saw him. It’s buzzed on the sides and pushed forward with watermelon scented hair gel on top. I frown when I see him. I liked the long sleek hair better, but only because that’s the part of him that makes me feel like I can trust him. In a species of mostly blonds, he also has dark hair like me.

“Hey,” he says with a
half-smile. He shifts slowly from his left foot to his right foot and back while he stands, hands shoved in his pockets. “Sorry about that call. I was being sneaky.”

“I figured that much,” I say. “But you called me
Jenn so I’m guessing you weren’t with a girlfriend who’d be pissed if she saw you talking to another girl.”

He laughs. “Find a girl who wants to date a dark
-haired Super and I’ll give you a million dollars.”

He’s so pitiful looking with his big brown eyes and hopeless lovesick expression that it almost makes me want to hug him and tell him that things will get better. But for all I know, my comforting words could be a lie; I have no idea if it gets better. Lately, it feels like I don’t know anything at all.

“Thanks for meeting me,” I say instead of
sorry no one likes you. If it makes you feel any better, I think you’re cute
. “I need a big favor and I’ve been told that only a Retriever can help.”

His friendly smile disappears. “I can try, I guess.”

Without giving away too many details, I tell him I’m on a Hero mission and I need to investigate the depowering machine for clues that would help solve my mission. I don’t tell him that Heroes aren’t allowed access to the machine’s new whereabouts. Instead, I stretch the truth a teensy, tiny bit. “So since they moved it to a more secure location and everything’s been all crazy lately, they haven’t had time to update the Hero’s BEEPR databases.” I point to the BEEPR on my wrist and laugh like it’s just the silliest thing ever. “So these things are basically useless. Anyhow, I was hoping you could take me to the machine real quick so I can finish this mission.”