The Trials of Renegade X (41 page)

But then Sarah walks over to a control panel and presses a large red button.

As soon as she does, there’s a whirring noise, like a machine turning on, and then the lightning in my hands gets sucked away, disappearing into the metal bars of the cage. It feels weird, like it’s not just taking away what’s already there, but actually
draining
me.

I stop using my power. And I don’t know what’s going on, but I pray that Kat and Riley didn’t believe me about not dying up here. I hope they find a way in, and fast.

“It took me all week to build this,” Sarah says, beaming proudly. “Well, not the cage so much as
this
.” She walks over to the thing in the middle of the roof and pulls off the sheet.

The thing underneath looks like a giant metal drill. It’s as tall as Sarah, and twice as long, and it’s pointed down, toward the event hall. There are also big wires running from it over to the cage I’m standing in.

Sarah gives the machine a loving pat. “This took a while. I had to miss school.”

“And you think
I’m
dangerous?”

She grins. “You don’t even know what it does yet. It’s going to shoot a giant beam of lightning at everyone and obliterate them. I got the idea for it last weekend, when I saw you blow up part of Heroesworth. When I found out you have a villain power. You see, Damien, normally someone with your ability wouldn’t be able to use that much energy all at once. You only could because you were so freaked out. Like those stories you hear about moms lifting a car off of their kid, because of the adrenaline rush. But just because they can do that in moments of panic doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt them. Your body has limits, and if you use too much energy, if you push yourself too far, you could kill yourself. But that doesn’t mean you don’t
have
that much energy. Enough to power something like this.” She pats the machine again.

“You can’t
make
me power that thing.”

“Can’t I?” She laughs, like I’m an idiot. And Mom’s right, Sarah probably would do well at Vilmore, or at least this version of her. Maybe a little too well. “Last weekend, you nearly killed a bunch of people with your villain power. This weekend, you’re really going to. Only they’re going to be villains, just like you, like they should have been all along.”

“But you said if I turned myself in, you wouldn’t hurt anyone else!”

“Oh,
did I
?” She trails a finger from her eye down across her cheek, pretending to shed a single tear. “I lied. But you should thank me, because you’re going to die doing a good deed. You’re going to destroy a generation of villains and make the world a
much
safer place.”

“No, Sarah, I’m not going to do that! You can’t make me hurt people! And I
know
you, and I know you don’t really want to do this!”

She sighs. “I’d hoped you’d cooperate, but I guess I’m going to have to do this the hard way.” She walks over to the control panel again.

“Sarah, what are you—”

She presses a black button this time, and a jolt of electricity hits me. It comes from the bars of the cage, from all directions. Liquid fire burns through my whole body. Everything hurts, and I feel like I’m going to burst apart. Like my bones and my veins and my muscles are about to explode. My heart races, and my vision blurs. I feel like I’m screaming, but I don’t hear anything. I can’t move.

Then it stops. It felt like it never would.

I take deep, gasping breaths. I’m shaking all over. My heart’s still beating too fast and my muscles twitch uncontrollably. My whole body hurts, like I just got run over or something. “What ... what the hell was that?”

“You see?” Sarah says. “I can make you do whatever I want. The wrong voltage could stop your heart. And too much exposure to electric shock will kill you. But I did a little research. You’re immune to electricity, but only while you’re using your power. So if you don’t want to feel that again”—she hovers her finger over the button, and already panic races through my chest—“you’ll turn on your lightning power.”

“And then what? You’re going to kill me either way, right?! So why should I—”

She presses the button.

It hurts worse this time. So. Much. Worse. More liquid fire ripples under my skin. My nerves scream out in sharp agony, and I’ve never felt anything so horrible. My muscles spasm so hard, it feels like my bones are going to crack. Everything aches. My heart races faster. Like it could beat right out of my chest.

Sarah says something to me, but I can’t make it out. I can’t pay attention to anything but the pain ripping me to pieces.

I don’t want to kill people or help her power her crazy machine, but I don’t want to die. And I don’t think about it too hard—I can’t think about much of anything—I just do what she wants. I turn on my power. It’s the one thing that doesn’t take any movement. Just one barely coherent thought, and it’s there.

And suddenly I can breathe again. I can move and I can think. Tremors still run through my muscles, but they’re slowing down, getting less violent.

“That’s more like it,” Sarah says.

“Sure it is.” I can feel her machine draining me. It’s a weird tingling feeling all over as it steals the electricity from my body. And I think maybe this isn’t so bad. I can feel it taking energy from me, and I’m already kind of tired from being shocked so badly, but I can handle this. At least for a while. At least long enough for Kat and Riley to find a way into the building and come stop her.

I’m not going to die.

The realization sends relief flooding through me. She’s not going to kill anybody. Nobody has to die, not even me, and no one else is going to get hurt.

And then Sarah reaches for a knob on the control panel. She twists it really far to one side.

I scream as the cage’s power cranks up, ripping electricity out of me. It feels like it’s pulling it all the way from my bones. “Sarah, stop! You’re going to—”

“Kill you? That’s kind of the point.”

“I’m not a villain.” Sweat beads on my forehead and drips down my face. “You know me. You’re my
sidekick
! You’re just messed up right now, but deep down, you know I don’t want to hurt people!”

“You think I’m messed up, just because I’m finally seeing the truth? You might not
want
to hurt people, but that doesn’t stop you from doing it.”

“I’m half hero, Sarah. I’m—” I grit my teeth against the pain, unable to go on for a second. “Maybe I’ll never be all hero, but I’m not all villain, either!”

She shakes her head. “And that’s what makes you so dangerous. It’s tempting to think you’re not all bad, but you are. You’re worse, because you have hero genes and you’re
still
a villain. You hurt
everyone
—not just the people you know, but the whole city. And you being half hero means you had access to Heroesworth, where you brought an actual supervillain to the dance!”

“Kat didn’t do anything! She wouldn’t, and you know that!”

“You’re right. She didn’t.
You’re
the one who blew up part of the school with your villain power! You could have hurt people!”

“It was an accident. I didn’t mean to—”

“That just makes it worse! If you could control yourself, you could choose not to do it. But you can’t. You don’t belong at Heroesworth, even if you’re half hero. You couldn’t even answer a simple question, like what heroism means to you. Because it doesn’t mean
anything
, does it?”

“That’s not true!”

“You’re the most dangerous one of all, Damien, because not only do you have that horrible villain power, but you
live
with heroes. You’re a wolf among the sheep, just waiting to betray them even more than you already have. Well, you
were
. After tonight ...” She waves her hand, indicating that I won’t be around anymore.

It’s getting harder to breathe. My lungs feel so heavy. My whole body does. She’s taken so much energy from me, and I wonder how close she is to powering her machine. I can’t let her kill all those people, and if I’m going to die either way, I should just turn my power off now and be done with it.

But I can’t give in yet. I just can’t. And this is
Sarah
. Even if the personality enhancer screwed her up, she’s still there, somewhere, isn’t she?

“Sarah, you ...” My tongue feels like it’s made of lead and my mouth doesn’t want to form the words, making it hard to talk. “You say I’m a villain, but what about
you
? You’re not a hero, either.”

She scoffs, like she can’t believe I would even question that. “I’m helping people. I’m making the world a safer place. I don’t have to have an
H
on my thumb to do that.”

“What about the ...” I falter, the pain getting worse. My head spins and my skin burns all over from so much electricity leaving my body so fast. Being torn out of it. “What about the League Treaty?”

“What about it?”

“You believe in it, right? In the rules?”

She takes a step closer to the cage, folding her arms and peering at me, like she thinks I might have gone crazy. “What does a
villain
know about the League Treaty?”

“I know the third rule says heroes don’t cause unnecessary bodily harm. Not even to their enemies. That includes villains, Sarah.”

She scoffs, like she can’t believe I just quoted one of the League rules at her. It’s the only one I know, thanks to Riley and our stupid school assignment, but I’m not going to tell her that part. “These villains are
going
to hurt people,” she says. “I’m just getting to them first.”

“You don’t know that! And even if you did, it doesn’t give you the right to kill them! You might not have signed anything, but you want to be a hero. You believe in the rules, but you’re the one that broke them. Not me. I never hurt anybody, but you shot Kat and Riley! And you’re hurting me now, and I—” I sink to my knees, gasping in pain. I can’t keep this up. “You tell me
I’m
the villain, but I never broke the rules! That was all
you
. You’re the one killing your best friend right now, so what does that say?!”

Her mouth falls open and her face sort of crumples. She blinks at me as what I said sinks in. “I broke the rules,” she says, sounding numb, like she can’t believe it. She drops the raygun and puts her hands to her mouth.

Right as the door to the roof bursts open and Kat appears. “Oh, my God, Damien!” she shrieks when she sees me in the cage.

I wonder where Riley is, and then I realize he must be invisible. I hear his footsteps as he darts across the roof, toward the personality enhancer.

Sarah grabs the raygun.

“Kat!” I scream. “Watch out!”

Kat runs straight at Sarah, which is not at all what I meant for her to do.

Sarah points the gun at her, her finger on the trigger. But then her face crumples a little, like it did a minute ago when I told her she’d broke the rules, and she hesitates.

And that’s when Kat punches her in the face and knocks her to the floor.

Whoa
.

On the other side of the roof, the personality enhancer moves and disappears. I know it must be Riley, that it didn’t really move and go invisible on its own, and then a beam of light shoots out of it and hits Sarah while she’s still lying on the floor.

Sarah sucks in a deep breath, like she’s never breathed before. Riley goes uninvisible and runs over to her. She sits up and puts her hands to her temples, looking really confused. Then realization hits her, and she looks over at me. In the cage. Dying. “
Oh, no
,” she says.

Kat hits some buttons on the control panel and turns the dial the other way. The cage stops draining me. I’m too afraid to stop using my power, though. What if it electrocutes me? What if that part’s still on?

“Hit the black button!” Sarah shouts.

Kat hits the button, just as my body decides I can’t keep my power going anymore. It’s not a choice, it just happens. I collapse on the floor of the cage, exhausted and covered in sweat.

And really surprised to still be alive.

Chapter 30

KAT GRABS THE KEY from Sarah and unlocks the cage. She flings the door open.

I’m more tired than I’ve ever been in my entire life, and I still feel like I’m about to die, but I don’t waste any time getting out of there. I scramble out of the cage on my hands and knees before getting to my feet.

Kat nearly knocks me over as she throws her arms around me and buries her face in my neck, squeezing me really tight.

I squeeze her back and say, unable to hide the awe in my voice, “You punched Sarah.” Not that I wanted Sarah to get hurt or anything, but ... wow.

“She had it coming.”

Over her shoulder, I see Riley kissing Sarah like he hasn’t seen her in weeks, which I guess he sort of hasn’t.

“But,” I say to Kat, “you, like, knocked her down. With your
fist
. I didn’t know you were so bad-ass.”

“I didn’t, either.” She steps back and contemplates her knuckles, shaking her hand out a little. Then she glares at me and pokes me in the chest. “And I
told you
you shouldn’t have come up here alone!”

I shake my head. “If I hadn’t, she would have killed you.” She would have fired at Kat as soon as we got to the roof. There wouldn’t have been any hesitation.

“She almost killed
you
,” Kat says, shooting Sarah a dirty look.

“It wasn’t really her. I told you, the real Sarah would never—”

She cuts me off, like she doesn’t want to hear it. “Are you okay?”

My whole body hurts, like I got hit by a truck. And like maybe it backed up over me a few times. My arms and legs are so heavy. I feel like I haven’t eaten in a week, and like I could sleep for at least that long. My muscles are still sort of twitchy, and I’m overly aware of my nerves. But I’ll live, and Kat’s okay, and Sarah’s back to normal. And a whole bunch of people didn’t just get blown to smithereens. “I’m going to have to take a rain check on going to your room with you. Even though you being such a bad-ass is
super
hot.”