The Trials of Renegade X (20 page)

“Oh,
that
kind.”

“This is serious!” There are some scuffling sounds and pounding footsteps and then a door slamming. When Riley speaks again, his voice is hushed. “I’m trapped in some building downtown. I need you to come get me out of here.”

I laugh. “Why would someone like you need someone of
my level
to help you? Call Sarah.”

“Sarah’s the one who got me into this mess!”

“And you don’t have any other friends? That’s—” Kat slides her tongue along the edge of my ear, catching me off guard, and I gasp.

“What are you ...?” Riley sounds like he’s going to ask me what I’m doing, but then he must think better of it. “Look, X, you’re the only supervillain I know.”

“And that matters because?”

“Because I’m in a building owned by supervillains and there are killer security robots chasing me! And going invisible doesn’t work because they’re—” There’s a loud crashing sound. Riley swears, and then there’s a lot of commotion, and when he speaks again, he sounds like he’s running. “They’re tracking me by sound.”

“Have you tried shutting up? What about not breathing?”

“Can’t you do something?! Don’t you, like, know some supervillain code or something?”

“Why, because all supervillains know each other and share their secret codes to deactivate their killer robots?” God, he’s an idiot. “That’s so offensive, I don’t even know where to start. And this from someone who’s
so
much better than me.”

Kat finishes unbuttoning my dress shirt and pulls her T-shirt over her head. She presses up against me, her bare skin on mine, kissing my neck while her hands wander down my stomach to other,
lower
places. “Get off the phone,” she whispers, unzipping my pants.

I swallow. “Look, Perkins, I
really
have to go.” Otherwise this phone call is going to get indecent. “Good luck with those robots.”

“No, wait! I’m sorry for what I said! I’m not—” There’s a pause, and I can’t tell if it’s because the words are that hard for him to say, or if it’s because he’s having to evade a pack of killer robots. “I’m not better than you!”

For someone being tracked by sound, he sure does shout a lot. “Great. Can I call you back in three minutes?”

Kat punches me in the arm.

“Isn’t there something you can do?” Riley cries. There are more crashing sounds and another door closing, and then, in between gasping breaths, he says, “I’m at Fourteenth and Cedar. In this really corporate office building. Please—”

“Wait, you’re
where
?” I sit up suddenly, bonking my head against the slanting wall, and glance at Kat, wondering if she heard what he said.

“It’s some company. They make computers. I don’t know what it’s called.”

“Wilson Enterprises,” I offer. Fine, so supervillains do all know each other. I take a couple deep breaths, trying to clear my head.

Kat raises an eyebrow. “What’s going on?”

“This idiot I know is trapped at your dad’s company,” I tell her, not bothering to cover up the phone, so that Riley hears me calling him an idiot. “Do you know the codes to call off the security robots?”

She shakes her head. “You have to be in the building. And have a key card.”

I sigh. To Riley, I say, “I don’t suppose you have one of those?”

“I don’t have
anything
. Sarah was doing something with the computers, and then she just left me here, and then the security system came on and there were all these robots and I thought I was going to die, and I probably still am, and—”

“Geez, Perkins. Did I
ask
you for your life story?” I roll my eyes and share a look with Kat.

“I have a card,” she says, not sounding too happy about it.

I check the time. Still over two and a half hours left. “We can get down there and back and still have enough time to ... you know. Finish up here.”

“We’d better,” Kat says. “And then no more phone calls.” She puts her shirt back on and grabs her purse off the floor to double-check that she has the right card.

“All right, Perkins,” I say. “We’re coming to get you.”

“You are?! That’s—”

I hang up on him. He
so
owes me for this.

Chapter 15

IT TAKES US ABOUT twenty minutes to get down there, and then Kat uses her card to deactivate the security system. We find Riley on the third floor, where he’s barricaded himself into the copy room. The door has big gashes on it and some scorch marks and a couple now-inactive robots crumpled on the floor around it. The robots are metal and vaguely human-shaped, except that they’re on wheels and have saw blades and laser guns for arms. I tell Riley it’s safe to come out—I tried to tell him over the phone when we got here, but he didn’t believe me—and then there are some shifting sounds as he moves stuff out of the way and opens the door.

There are big circles of sweat under his armpits, and he looks like he’s about to collapse. He tentatively pokes one of the deactivated robots with the toe of his shoe, cringing as he does it, like he expects it to come alive again and murder him. When he’s satisfied that we have indeed rescued him, he steps past the robots and exhales. “Thanks,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck. He takes us in, frowning a little at our disparaging outfits, but doesn’t ask about it. Then he looks nervously at Kat, like he’s afraid she might bite him.

“This is Kat,” I tell him. “She’s my girlfriend, and she’s a supervillain, and she just saved your life.”

“And you,” Kat says, looking him up and down, “must be the idiot.” She folds her arms and raises an eyebrow at him. “You want to tell us what you’re doing here?”

Riley slumps down in an office chair at somebody’s desk and puts his head in his hands. “It was Sarah. She said the computers they make here put out mind-control signals.”

Kat looks over at me.

I scratch my ear and stare at a very interesting spot on the floor. “I
might
have mentioned it to her. At some point.”

“Damien! That was confidential information!”

“Yeah, but it was just Sarah. She wouldn’t ... I mean, I didn’t
think
she would ever do anything.” I sit down on the edge of one of the desks and glare at Riley. “What, exactly, did she do?”

“She hacked into the system. So she could change the hidden message the computers send out and tell all the bad guys to turn themselves in. She was being really weird, like she was the other day when she was watching the jewelry store.”

“And you thought breaking in here and doing all that was okay?” Kat asks him, her hands on her hips. “Why? Because we’re supervillains?”

“No! Of course not.” He glances up at her, then away again. “She told me it was a superhero mission.”

“Which you went on without me,” I remind him. Er, not that I wasn’t exactly busy with my own plans tonight. And not that I would have gone along with it, for obvious reasons, which Sarah must have known, and which must be why she didn’t call me. Not because she chose him over me or anything.

Riley shrugs. “She asked me to go with her, so I did. And then she brought me
here
, and I realized what she was doing was wrong, but it’s not like I was going to abandon her.”

“You mean like she did to you?”

“I tried to reason with her, but you know how she was the other day. It’s like ... it’s like she’s a different person. Like her personality changed overnight.”

Oops.

“Something’s definitely wrong with her,” he adds. “It was like she didn’t care what happened to me.”

“What, and it’s impossible that she just finally realized what a loser you are?”

His eyes dart up to mine, a hurt look on his face, like he might have had that same thought. But then he shakes his head, dismissing it. “She finished what she was doing and
left
. And then the security system came back on, and I was trapped here, and the robots were destroying everything. You know,” he says, addressing Kat, “it seems like a really expensive way to stop intruders.”

“It’s also the reason we never have them. Plus, insurance pays for the clean up.” She gives us both a confused look. “So, Sarah wants bad guys to turn themselves in? What bad guys?”

“All of them,” Riley says. “She’s got this idea that she can make the world a safer place by pre-emptively weeding out criminals. She was trying to lure potential bad guys into committing crimes the other day, but it didn’t work, and she said that was too small scale, anyway. With her new plan, if somebody’s done something they should feel guilty for—or if they’re planning to commit a crime or something—then the mind-control messages from the computers will convince them to go to the proper authorities and confess. I thought it was messed up, but she wouldn’t listen to me. I told her
she
was the one committing a crime, but she said using supervillains to catch other supervillains was fair play.”

Kat gapes at me. “This is what you guys do? I thought you, like, helped people and stuff!”

“We do! I had nothing to do with this.” I wave my hands, emphasizing that part.

“But she’s
your
sidekick, Damien. It’s bad enough you hang out with this guy”—she jerks her thumb at Riley—“who’s obviously got a problem with supervillains, and now I find out Sarah’s even worse?!”

Riley swallows, looking really nervous again.

“First of all,” I tell Kat, “I don’t hang out with this guy. And, second, Sarah’s not normally like that.”

“Riiiight.”

“She’s not! She’s just a little messed up right now. Because I
might
have accidentally used her personality enhancer on her.” I say this last part out the side of my mouth, so my words are kind of unintelligible.

“What was that?” Riley asks.

“I said I might have accidentally used her personality enhancer device on her last weekend. On the ’worse’ setting. And there may have been some stray electricity involved.” I hold up my hand, letting a couple sparks flicker to life at my fingertips, in case he wasn’t sure what electricity I was talking about.

Now he’s gaping at me. And looking like he wants to kill me. “You
what
?!” He gets to his feet, his hands balled into fists at his sides. “And you weren’t going to say anything?!”

“I’m saying something now, aren’t I? And I didn’t know for sure anything was wrong with her before. I mean, she’s kind of just like that. Sometimes.”

“I don’t understand why Sarah’s even friends with you. How could you do this?”

“It wasn’t on purpose.”

“It’s
never
on purpose, is it? Not when you broke my finger—”

“Oh,” Kat says, nodding and smirking a little. “
This
guy.”

“—not when you bashed my nose the other day, and certainly not when you, like, damaged school property with your villain power! And now that you’ve screwed up Sarah and turned her into some crazed vigilante, I suppose
that’s
not your fault, either?!”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t my fault—I said it wasn’t on purpose. And I think you’re making too big a deal out of this. All I have to do is get the device, turn it to the ’better’ side, and use it on her again. Then everything goes back to normal.” An excellent and foolproof plan, if I do say so myself.

“All
you
have to do? You’re not going anywhere near—”

A loud whirring sound interrupts him, followed by some beeping. Little lights start flashing on the dead robots.

“Oh, no,” Kat says, squeezing her eyes shut.

I don’t like the sound of that. Neither, apparently, does Riley, because his face goes pale and he starts shaking all over. “Not again,” he says, watching as the robots pick themselves up.

“Kat?” I whisper.

“I thought I turned it off, but I must have put it on a timer. I’ve never done this before.”

Riley starts muttering over and over that we’re going to die.

“Shut it, Perkins,” I hiss. “Just be quiet. They can’t track us if we don’t make noise, right?”

All three of us watch as the robots come to life again and start patrolling the room. One of them glides over to us. We hold perfectly still, hardly daring to breathe. Electricity flickers to life beneath my skin, but I will it to stay there, trying to remain calm. The robot comes right up to where I’m sitting on the desk, looking me in the face. I hold my breath, praying for it to go away. It can’t know I’m alive, right? As long as I don’t make a sound, it’s going to wander off and not kill me.

And then Riley sneezes and I throw myself to the floor, narrowly avoiding a laser to the brain. The saw arm comes down and hacks through the desk I was just sitting on.

I grab Kat’s hand and shout, “Run!”

“This way!” she says, leading the three of us down a hallway, the robots following.

“Can’t you use the card again?” Riley asks.

A laser hits the ceiling above our heads, sending bits of tile and plaster raining down on us.

“Only if we can get downstairs.” Kat turns a corner, taking us down another long hallway and then another after that, giving us a little lead time on the robots. The hallway’s a dead end, but it’s also where the elevators are.

She presses the button for the elevator to come, but it doesn’t light up. She presses it again. Then a bunch of times. “It’s not working. It must have turned off when the robots spotted us.”

“I knew it,” Riley says. “We’re going to die!”

“For the last time, Perkins, shut the hell up! We’re not going to die!” I shout this at him right as a laser narrowly misses my shoulder, blasting a chunk out of the wall behind me instead. The three robots chasing us are at the end of the hallway, and now there’s nowhere for us to go.

“How?!” Riley says. “Because unless you have some brilliant plan you haven’t told me about, that’s exactly what’s happening!”

The robots descend steadily down the hall, their saw blades whirring and their lasers charging.

Riley looks around frantically, as if he thinks there’s another door or other escape route we were just too stupid to notice. There isn’t.

“Kat,” I say, nudging her with my elbow and ducking another laser beam, “do something.”