Remember Jamie Baker (3 page)

Tony glared at me one more time, then turned his back on me. “Just go.”

“Fine.” Big baby. “If that’s what you want.”

I used my superspeed to pack up a couple suitcases and, in under a minute, was back standing in front of him, ready to separate my life from his. Tony looked at my bags and scoffed in disgust. “You’re going to regret this.” He sneered. “You’ll never survive on your own. You have
nothing
in this world except for me.”

I reared back. His words, laced with real hatred, hurt so much because they were true. I had nothing. I depended on Tony completely. I let him dictate my life because I knew nothing else. My tears started flowing freely again, and I finally managed to match the angry look on his face with one of my own. “You can be such a jerk sometimes, Tony. I don’t understand how I ever loved you.”

I slammed the door on my way out with a little too much force and heard the frame splinter. I didn’t care. I had to get out of there.

I was now
officially no one
from nowhere who had nobody. Talk about depressing. To keep my mind off of my dismal situation and the hurt Tony had caused me, I focused all my thoughts on the one thing I had left—my necklace. Plan B was everything now. I needed to see what jewelers could tell me about my necklace, and see if I could figure out who made it.

I decided to go to Las Vegas because it was the city where the Visticorp labs had been. I knew I probably wasn’t from there. Tony was from Italy and managed to end up in the same lab as me, so I knew I could have come from anywhere in the world, but I didn’t have a better place to go, and it was closest.

I was excited because I’d never been to Las Vegas. I’d never been anywhere public, thanks to Tony. My body buzzed with energy as I reached the infamous Strip, but as amazing and fun as it looked, I only lasted a couple minutes before I had to leave. It was sensory overload.

Aside from being able to manipulate electricity, I have a whole laundry list of other superhuman abilities. All of my physical senses are amped up—sight, sound, smell, taste, strength, speed, and agility. Basically, I’m somewhere in between Captain America and Superman with a whole lot of Elektra.

Having powers is awesome, but sometimes they can overwhelm me. I can’t ever completely shut them off, even though I spent the last six months with Tony learning to control them. It didn’t help that I’d been so secluded out in the desert all this time. I wasn’t used to the world coming at me in epic proportions.

I was a good four miles away from the main strip before I was far enough from the noise to make the pounding in my head stop. It wasn’t the best part of town, but I found a motel that smelled decent enough to stay in. I appreciated the dinginess of the motel when I noticed the guy behind the counter. My unusual looks would fit right in with his tattoos and facial piercings.

At the sound of my entrance, he droned out a welcome in a bored voice without taking his eyes off the small television he was watching behind his desk. “The rate’s thirty-nine dollars a night, we don’t rent by the hour, it’s a hundred-dollar deposit if you’re paying cash, and no pets, no exceptions.”

“What about the lice and roaches already living in the rooms? You going to charge me for those?”

The quip earned me a smirk from the guy. “Those are on the house.” Finally glancing in my direction, his head jerked back and his eyes widened as he took a moment to look me up and down. After admiring my body long enough for me to have to clear my throat, his gaze finally made it back to my face. He zeroed in on my eyes and then leaned over the counter to get a better look. “Whoa. Killer contacts.”

I wasn’t about to explain that they were natural as I slid my ID and credit card toward him. “Need to take a picture, Sparky?”

I got another smirk. With a shake of his head, he took my ID and started typing into his computer. “Just the one night?”

“For starters.”

He nodded to this, then squinted at my driver’s license. My hair in the picture on my ID was jet black and my eyes were green. I guess that’s what I’d looked like before the explosion. “Wicked. I can see why you go for the Chelsea’s Angel look. When your hair was black, you could have been her clone.” His eyes flicked up to my face again. “I like the green, though. It makes a statement.”

I laughed. I’m sure this guy was all about making statements with his looks. “Who’s Chelsea’s Angel?”

The guy froze in the process of handing me back my ID and credit card. “For real? You don’t know who Chelsea’s Angel is?” When I shook my head, he sat back and crossed his arms over his chest. “Have you been living under a rock in the middle of nowhere?”

“Yes,” I snapped. “Literally.”

My anger deflated quickly. It wasn’t this guy’s fault I was a freak. Amnesia was a lot more awful than simply not knowing my past. It also left me socially inept and made me feel like an idiot all the time. “Want to fill me in, or just keep staring at me like I’m a freak?”

He flushed in embarrassment. “Sorry. It’s just…she’s so…
everyone
knows who she was. She’s so famous they’re making a TV show about her. Plus, you have the eyes, and you’re wearing the necklace.”

My hand flew to the charm on my neck. “You recognize this?”

The guy looked at me as if I were insane, and pointed to a small souvenir rack. Among all the postcards, Las Vegas shot glasses, and cacti, there was a whole stack of necklaces that looked exactly like mine. They were cheap plastic knockoffs, but they were exactly like my necklace. I picked one up and examined the little charm. “What’s this in the middle? Does it light up?”

The guy shook his head in bewilderment. “I can’t believe you’ve never seen one of these before. Yeah, it lights up just like Chelsea’s Angel’s did. Though, they say hers didn’t need batteries. She lit it up with her power. How cool is that?”

I gulped. Power? That could light up a lightbulb? That was certainly something I could do. “So…who was she?”

“She was a superhero.”

I laughed, relieved. For a minute I’d been so sure he was talking about me. “No way.” I may not have known much pop culture yet, but I definitely knew my comics. Tony was the biggest comic book junkie on the planet. (Hello, he named himself after Tony Stark.) “My ex is a comic book
freak
. I know my Marvel and DC characters well, and there is no hero called Chelsea’s Angel.”

The guy shook his head, but his eyes lit up. “Chelsea’s Angel wasn’t from a comic book. She was a
real
superhero. She was strong and fast and could shoot lightning from the palms of her hands.”

My blood froze in my veins, and goose bumps formed all over my entire body. How could it be? It wasn’t possible. I couldn’t be this Chelsea’s Angel person; I’d been locked up in a lab most of my life.

“Nobody knew who she was,” Motel Guy went on. “They called her Chelsea’s Angel because she used her superpowers to rescue a little girl named Chelsea, who’d been kidnapped. The girl mistook her for an angel and the name stuck. Chelsea’s Angel used to go all around the country helping people, until she died in that explosion south of town about six months ago.”

The only explosion south of Las Vegas six months ago was the one I caused that had left me brain-damaged.

This didn’t make sense; something wasn’t right. It didn’t add up. This girl couldn’t be me. It was impossible. But it couldn’t be coincidence, either. Was there someone else out there like me? Another girl who had my same powers? Was it possible I had a sister? Maybe I had a family who knew Visticorp had taken me. Perhaps this Chelsea’s Angel knew I was being held captive and was trying to break me out. Maybe we were trying to escape when the explosion happened.

My heart started to race as I dared to hope.

But my theory didn’t make sense, either. If this man was telling the truth—and why would he make it up?—Tony should have known this story. He would have known if someone was helping us escape at the time of the explosion.

He also had to know about this Chelsea’s Angel person. If her story and death were common enough to have her necklace mass replicated, then Tony should know who she was. But he
couldn’t
know. He searched the Internet for days after he found me, keeping track of all news about the Visticorp explosion. And, he was obsessed with superheroes. Even if he was locked in a lab until six months ago, he would have heard about Chelsea’s Angel in his searching. He would have told me about her. This was a
huge
clue about my past.

“Do you have Internet here?”

The guy laughed and pointed behind me. “It’s a slow connection on a crap computer, but knock yourself out. Look up the Chelsea’s Angel Live Rescue on YouTube. It’s the only video of her in person. You’ll freak. I swear you’re like her twin.”

“Thanks.”

He nodded and handed me a key to room number seventeen. I didn’t bother taking my stuff to my room first. I sat down at the dinosaur of a computer and held my breath as I did a Google search for what I hoped would be the key to my identity. Twenty minutes later, Motel Guy brought me a cup of coffee. “See? I told you, you look like her.”

I blinked at the monitor and gratefully accepted the caffeine. “It’s crazy.”

I didn’t just look like her. I
was
her. I had to be. She looked identical to me, with the exception of my craptastic green hair. She even had the yellow eyes, and they glowed when she used her powers, like mine do.

I’d spent the last six months in a constant state of confusion, but as I sat there reading article after article about Chelsea’s Angel and the explosion at the Visticorp lab, my perplexity reached an all-time high. Chelsea’s Angel was everywhere. She was beloved by everyone, and even worshipped as a saint by some. She was the most popular Halloween costume last October, and she had her own action figure.

There were also dozens of articles linking Chelsea’s Angel to the Visticorp explosion. There was a reporter she’d come to rescue that day who blew the whistle on all of Visticorps’s human lab testing. There was so much information on the Internet about Visticorp—information I’d tried to find a hundred times at home that had never come up in any of my searches before.

I’d been trying to put the pieces together since I sat down, and the only answer I could come up with was one I hated. Tony lied to me. It was the only explanation. Tony was a computer genius. He told me I could only ever use the computer he’d given me because he put special firewalls on it to keep anyone from hacking it. But now I couldn’t help wondering if he’d actually put special
restrictions
on it that kept me from discovering any of this.

He kept me so close, so sheltered. I thought he was just paranoid and overprotective. Obviously he was scared of Visticorp finding us—I sincerely believed that—but it had to be more than that. He knew something, and he didn’t want me to figure it out. He was lying to me and using my lack of memory against me. But why? And how could he do that?

The longer I sat there, the more I felt certain I was right, and the stupider I felt for not seeing the signs. Everything he’d ever said and done had been manipulative. I felt betrayed, and I needed answers. I called him, but it went straight to voice mail. Fuming, I hung up. There was no point in leaving him a message. He must have been pretty mad at me to have turned his phone off. This was probably a conversation that needed to be had in person, anyway. Assuming I could accomplish that without killing him.

“You okay?” I jumped, startled by the sound of the voice behind me. I’d forgotten that the motel clerk was still standing there. “You look majorly pissed.”

My phone beeped as my voice mail updated, informing me I had over a dozen messages. I’d turned the stupid thing off when I left the house that morning because I knew the calls would start coming the second Tony realized I was gone. I’d left for my doctor’s appointment without telling him about it, and I’d never taken off like that before. I’d felt guilty about worrying him all day, but now… He probably hadn’t been concerned that I could be in danger; he was probably just afraid I’d go someplace, be recognized, and realize he was keeping secrets from me.

I nearly crushed the phone in my hand, and the electricity in the building blitzed as I lost control of my temper. The lights brightened until they popped, and the computer monitor in front of me exploded. We were plunged into darkness as we both ducked for cover. “Whoa.” Motel Guy whistled. “That was weird. You okay?”

Actually, it wasn’t weird at all. That’s what always happened when I lost control of my temper, and at the moment my emotions were spiraling out of control. “I’m fine.” It wasn’t a total lie. Physically, I was all right. Emotionally… Well, I think the fried motel speaks for itself.

I was angry, frustrated, and confused, but I was equally as hurt. I sat there in the dark with my eyes closed because I knew if I opened them they’d light up the room better than any flashlight, and that effect wouldn’t be one I could write off as colored contacts. If I went all Lite-Brite, Motel Guy would realize I didn’t just look like his dead supergirl.

“Must have been a big power surge,” he muttered, looking out the front window of the building. “It looks like the whole block is out.”

Oops. I definitely needed to cool off a little before I went back and confronted Tony. I took a few deep breaths until I knew I my eyes weren’t glowing anymore and I wasn’t itching to blast someone with a lightning bolt. As I calmed myself, my senses sharpened, as they usually do, and I noticed voices whispering somewhere outside the building. “Confirmed sighting. We’ve found the girl.”

Tony’s extreme paranoia kicked in reflexively, and my head whipped toward the front of the building. Before I could get a look out the window at what I was up against or get Motel Guy to safety, three guys came busting into the building. And I mean they
literally
busted in. One ripped the door right off its hinges. Another jumped through the big picture window in the front of the building, and the last actually busted right through the wall.

They all came straight for me. I tried to dodge them, but they were too fast. They surrounded me, and one of them grabbed me from behind. I tried to break out of his grip, but for the first time that I could remember, I wasn’t strong enough. I’d never seen anyone move that fast or use that kind of strength before. Well, besides myself. And now these superfreaks had me.

I let my energy rise to the surface of my skin and waited for my captor to let go of me, but nothing happened. My electricity didn’t hurt him at all. He was wearing some sort of protective suit that kept me from frying him. So not cool.

Realizing that I was basically defenseless against the guy, I started thrashing in his arms and kicking at any part of him I could reach. I even tried throwing my head back into the man’s face, but he dodged my blow as easily as I would have ducked his.

I was stuck, locked in the arms of a man just as strong as me, while the other two moved in front of me. One of the men grinned menacingly. “You’re not so tough up against other supers, are you, girlie?”