Overpowered (Powered Trilogy #2) (17 page)

“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.

Jubilant power pours off him. He breaks into a smile, slips out a pair of Retriever hooks and bellows, “Hero Maci! Well done, Maci.
Well done.
”

Nova doesn’t say a word. I shove her forward, toward the man responsible for ensuring that she’s depowered. Paul barks orders into his wrist MOD, and then again out loud to the few Retrievers who have slipped out of their makeshift cubicles and poked their heads into our business. He leads us down a hallway between rows of empty fenced in holding cells to a bigger MOD screen on the wall. He shoves Nova’s hand onto the glass and two names appear on the screen.

Mine and hers.

He selects Nova Might. Then turns toward me with a big, satisfied smile. “I will ensure that you are given full credit in the apprehension of the villain. Let me also assure you that it will be depowered immediately and then we’ll hold a press conference and tell everyone the good news,” he says as if Nova isn’t right here, able to hear him speak about her like she’s scum of the earth.

Which, I guess, in any other situation with any other villain, I wouldn’t mind one bit.

When he leans in, his breath smells like old coffee. “I do have to ask that you keep this confidential until at which point we make an official announcement. You might want to go get gussied up for the press conference and interviews.”

Gussied up?

I keep a polite smile on my face even though I kind of want to ask him what the hell is wrong with the way I look right now. “Actually,” I say, grabbing onto Nova’s elbow. “I would like to witness the
depowering.”

“Oh?” he says. The gears in his brain scramble to think of something to say next, but I beat him to it.

“Yes, actually. I am the Hero who captured this villain and seeing as how this is a high visibility mission, I would like the satisfaction of seeing the punishment take place with my own eyes. I am sure my father, President Might, will agree.”

His lips form a flat line. “Okay then. Follow me.”

Four Six Two Four. Retina scan. Six Six Eight Three. Thumb prints. One One One Zero Star Three Two Nine. Key. Deadbolt. That’s how far I get before I can no longer keep track of the multiple security measures that meet us as we travel into the depths of the canyon. The air cools as we travel down and the polished rock walls of the corridors have long since turned into rough, uneven chiseled surfaces. These corridors must be access ways or maintenance routes never meant for normal use. They don’t even register when I check the GPS on my BEEPR.

Nova’s hands are behind her back, Retriever cuffs keeping her in place. I know from experience in my Hero training that those things suck. They’re made with powerful magnets that inhibit your power and basically allow you to walk, follow directions and that’s about it.

Paul leads us as the hallway narrows and the floor becomes more uneven and cavernous. Nova shuffles along behind him, taking smaller steps to avoid losing her balance. I walk after them, carefully scrutinizing Paul’s movements and gestures. He looks and acts like a Retriever, a law enforcer. Maybe he has no idea what’s going on with the power stolen from the depowering machine. Or maybe he’s involved in it.

Which is why I watch him closer than I watch my own sister.

“The great thing about this new location,” Paul says, briefly looking back at Nova before unlocking another steel door. “Is that you can scream all you want and no one will have to listen to it.” He smiles.
Smiles
. As if it’s some kind of grand gesture that they moved the machine all the way down here so that her torturous depowering will be able to take place in a soundproof cave that won’t bother anyone who happens to be passing by. I pat the vials of juice on my forearm, making sure they’re still secure and ready to be used at a moment’s notice.

Because I’m pretty sure this guy is a villain.

The next door we come to is a massive slab of steel, the size of those doors in car dealerships that allow entire trucks to drive through. Paul palms the MOD screen to the right of the door. Metal gears dig into each other and the doors slowly pull apart.

“Ah-ha,” Paul says, arms spreading open as the doors part. “Here we are.”

My stomach drops. A lump forms in my throat that threatens to suffocate me. All of these feelings are Nova’s and they slam into me as I walk behind her. In front of us, with a single ominous light bulb hanging over it, is the depowering machine.

Paul approaches the right side of the machine, flipping switches. His expression delights when the machine hums to life. Nova glances at me but I look away. Something isn’t right here.

The machine’s new home is inside a man-made cave hundreds of feet underground. Inside is the machine, the single light bulb and a MOD screen near the doors. Everything else is completely barren.

“Where do you…” I begin, stopping because I can’t exactly ask where he puts the power when he steals it. Nova’s power enlightens as Paul steps closer to her. She keeps looking at me
with those piercing eyes, which only makes it harder for me to think.

He looks sideways at her. “You two are almost identical,” he muses. To me he says, “I guess that trademark dark hair of yours is coming in handy now.”

I almost punch him in the face.

Paul grabs Nova’s wrist, dragging her across the room. For the first time since we left my house, Nova puts up a struggle. She digs her feet into the stony floor, refusing to budge. Paul grits his teeth and pulls harder.

“Go,” I say, ignoring her silent pleas for help. “You know the drill.”

“Apparently she doesn’t,” Paul says. He reaches into his pocket and steps forward. His other hand swings toward Nova. She grunts in pain when he stabs a
retriever hook into her abdomen. With both ends of the horseshoe shaped hook jabbed into her body, he curls his index finger under the hook and pulls her toward the machine. Tears roll down her cheeks.

He forces her to lie down on the machine’s conveyor belt. After she’s completely docile, he removes her handcuffs. Shoves her head onto the curved surface.

I’m running out of time.

I blurt out the first thing I can think of. “So what happens with all the power that’s yanked out?”

The steady hum of the machine grows louder. Paul taps the metal frame. “It’s incinerated instantly.”

“Really?” I choke out. My stomach flip flops. “Nova I think we were wrong.” I can barely hear myself talk over the thumping of my own heart. “I don’t think the
Strike was stolen from here.”

She doesn’t answer. Paul cocks an eyebrow. “What the hell is
Strike?”

My hands shake. “Does anyone else run this machine since they moved it?”

Paul’s confused expression turns into a smug smile. “Just me. Special clearance and everything.”

“Oh god,” I mutter. I glance around the room, looking for something, anything I may have overlooked that could prove that my theory wasn’t wrong after all. My entire Hero career has been a string of failures and leads that go cold. As I look around the empty room with its extreme lack of villains or clues or bottles of power lying around, I know that I am standing right in the middle of yet another dead end.

Only now, I haven’t just failed a mission.

I’ve failed my sister.