The War of the Supers (The First Superhero Book 3) (7 page)

“Yeah, unless we just flew there and saw for ourselves,” Selena said.

I shot her a look, and she shrugged in defense as she picked up her water. “So, what’s it like over there?” I asked Doug. “What are your contacts telling you?”

“Well, Kane,” Doug said, turning to face me, pretending I was the only one there, intentionally ignoring the rest of the group, “I’m glad you asked. It’s actually not that bad over there. Most countries’ entire governments haven’t been overthrown.”

“Most?” I asked.

Doug shrugged. “Okay, none, although Johannesburg has been taken over by a crazy Super named Raven. But as far as the governments go, no, they’re mostly still intact. England actually has a group of Supers working with the government to keep the country safe from evil Supers, which—relatively speaking—there aren’t many of them.”

“Why aren’t there as many evil Supers overseas?” Selena asked.

“I’m sorry, Kane, did you hear something?” Doug said, cocking his head to the side.

I gave him a smile that said the shtick was cute, but now we needed to get serious. “Come on, why aren’t there?” I asked.

“Well,” he began, glancing over at Selena before turning his attention back to me. “I mean, the USA has turned into an evil-Super Mecca. They’re flocking here any way they can.”

“Well, that’s quite the double-edged sword,” Samantha said.

“Yeah,” Drew said. “Good news in the short run for Selena and Kane. Bad news for us all in the long run.”

I nodded. “What you’re saying is that most things overseas are business as usual?”

“As usual as business can be when arguably the most powerful nation in the world has fallen to a supervillain and his Legion,” Doug said. “From a political, economical, and just about every other viewpoint, the world is in chaos. But would you be able to tell if you were walking down the street? I mean, you don’t have to worry about someone coming up to you and making you pledge to the Legion or die, or a building coming down on top of you, or anything like that. So, yeah, compared to how things are here, it’s business as usual.”

We changed the topic soon after, and did our best to eat without bringing up the situation overseas, or the Legion razing the northeastern United States. When that’s your world, it’s difficult to do. Still, I found a way to spend my last dinner with them for a while as normally as I could.

When the giant ballroom we were eating in had started to clear out, I stood to leave. “Well, I’m going to go get some rest,” I announced as I grabbed my plate.

“I’ll walk with you to your room,” Samantha said. “I’m going to bed too.”

My heart skipped a beat, and I had a split-second decision to make. On one hand, I wanted to walk with Samantha back to my room, but on the other hand I wasn’t actually going to go to my room. It was just a lie to excuse myself and not have anyone come looking for me later. “Well, I was actually going to use the bathroom first.”

“Isn’t there a bathroom in your room?” Drew asked as he stood, collecting his trash.

“Yeah, but there’s something wrong with the pipes or something. I’m just using the one down here.” With that, I excused myself, unable to make eye contact with Samantha. If I did, I knew she’d somehow be able to tell I was lying.

I strode out of the room, making sure to swing the ballroom door open wide as I left. I looked around, making sure no one was in the hallway. The ballroom door was almost shut when I sprang into action. I ran back into the room so fast, nobody could see me.

I grabbed a plate of food and a bottle of water, and was in and out in a split second.

It was time to pay my little secret a visit.

PRISONER OF WAR

It wasn’t until I reached the entrance to the tunnels beneath Dallas that I slowed down. The sky was almost completely dark, and the long, dark entrance stretched before me. I sighed before taking a step forward. I focused on my eyes, causing them to glow, lighting my path.

The pedestrian tunnel system beneath Dallas housed many storefronts and food courts. It had been built to allow people to comfortably get around downtown Dallas during the sweltering heat of Texas summers, but it was rarely used and mostly neglected in recent decades. According to Selena, it was something that not a lot of people who lived in Dallas knew about.

I was able to keep everybody out of the tunnels, taking it upon myself to be sure they weren’t being used by the Legion or the STF to spy on us. When I went down into the tunnels, it was to visit the secret I kept down there.

When I reached the boarded-up store that had once sold clothes, I set down the plate of food and the water bottle and fished my keys out of my pocket. I unlocked the padlock and swung open the door. The light from the room hit me, followed soon after by my actual prisoner jumping on and hitting me. I pushed him back with my free hand, sending him across the room.

I sighed. He tried that every single time I went down there.

I grabbed the food and the water bottle and shut the door. “You have any dirty clothes for me?” I asked him as I set down his meal on the table I had set up in the middle of the room.

He stood up, groaning from my push. “Yeah, over there,” he said, pointing to the hamper next to the bed, up against the back wall.

I walked to the hamper and picked it up, and set it down next to the door so that I wouldn’t forget it when I left. Then I walked over to the table and pulled out the chair across from him. I sat down and watched him eat.

My prisoner’s name was Marcus Arinelle. He was a late-20s STF agent I had captured two weeks prior. His hair was unkempt, and his beard was starting to come in thick. “I’ll bring you some shaving stuff to take care of that beard, if you want me to,” I said.

Marcus looked up at me, chewing a bite of mac & cheese. “I thought you forgot about me. You didn’t bring me lunch.”

“There was an attack. Got a little distracted.”

“The STF?”

“No, the Legion,” I said.

“Anybody die?” he asked.

“Two civilians. One Super got injured. Nep.”

“I’m sorry about the civilians,” he said.

“I know.”

“Does that mean you’re going to do it tonight?”

I was taken aback. “What do you mean? Do what?”

“Do what you’ve been telling yourself you’re going to do every time you’ve walk through that door for the past two weeks,” he said, pointing his fork at me and at the door. “Are you going to do whatever it takes to get information out of me?”

I didn’t know what to say. I opened my mouth, but the words didn’t come out. “That’s not the point,” I said finally. “That’s not why you’re here. You’re a prisoner of war.”

“Oh, yeah?” Marcus said, leaning back in his chair. “How many of your Super friends know that I’m down here?”

I didn’t answer.

“That’s what I thought. Why haven’t you told any of them about me? I’m not just a ‘prisoner of war’. You want to question me. Get information out of me. Beat me half to death to do it if you half to. But you can’t, because you’re a coward.”

“No, I’m not,” I said, standing from my seat. “If I wanted to, I could get you to tell me whatever I wanted you to. I could beat the information out of you if I wanted to. I nearly beat a member of the Legion to death today. I would’ve if someone hadn’t been there to pull me off him.”

Marcus laughed—a deep, hearty laugh. “Of course you could’ve!” he said, mocking me. “Except you didn’t. Do you know why?”

I didn’t answer.

“Because you knew that your little friend who was there was going to pull you off him. You knew that you could go as far as you wanted to, and somebody else would be there to draw the line for you.” Marcus leaned forward, smiling. “Well, guess what, Kane? Nobody’s here to pull you off me. Nobody’s here to stop you from going too far. And that’s why you’ve been working up the courage for the past two weeks to do it. Coming down here, bringing me food, a bed, books to read, even rerouting the electricity down here to give me lights and air conditioning. You’re hoping that if you make me comfortable enough, I’ll freely tell you everything I know. ‘Oh, Mr. Andrews, thank you for making my life so comfortable! Here’s everything the STF is planning,’” Marcus said in a mocking voice. He leaned back in his chair, cackling. “If you want anything from me, you’re going to have to beat it out of me, Kane Andrews!”

I yelled in frustration, silencing Marcus, then slammed my fist down on the table. It cracked under the force of my blow, causing Marcus to lean back in his chair, laughing. “See? If that table could talk, it’d tell you everything it knows.”

I turned and stormed out of the room. I’d had enough of Marcus’ taunting words.

I slammed the door behind me and paced up and down the hallway. “Come on,” I told myself, hitting my fists together. “Come on! You’ve got this. You’ve got this!” I slammed my fist against the wall and grunted in frustration. “Come on!” I yelled, trying to pump myself up.

I knew I had to do it. If I could just get Marcus to tell me everything he knew, there was no telling how far ahead we’d be. At that moment, we were in the dark. But if I could just get Marcus to tell me everything he knew about the Legion, the STF—even what he knew about us—we’d be so far ahead of where we were.

But I knew what it was going to take to get that information out of him, and I wasn’t sure if I could do it.

Maybe Marcus was right. Maybe the reason I had gone crazy on Rob was because I had known Drew was there. I’d known Drew would pull me off Rob. And no matter how mad I’d gotten at Drew for doing it, deep down, I was thankful to him for stopping me from crossing that line—the line I’d been counting on him to draw.

I sighed, resting my forehead on the cool concrete wall. I wasn’t that person. No matter how guilty I felt for not being able to do what was necessary to get the needed information from Marcus, I couldn’t be that person.

I ran into the room as fast as I could, grabbed Marcus, and flew him far outside of Dallas. I dropped him off in the middle of a town called Fairfield and left him there without a word. I’d known I was going to have to set him free anyway, since I’d felt too ashamed to tell anyone about him, and I wasn’t going to leave him down in the tunnels to starve while Selena and I were overseas.

I flew back to Dallas, feeling as if a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders.

10

ATTACK ON DALLAS

Screaming, followed by the crackling of Eximus guns, woke me from my sleep.

I jumped from my bed and exploded through my hotel window, skipping running out through the lobby altogether. Then I watched as a group of about a hundred STF soldiers attacked our Dallas base and herded all the civilians up into a row of trucks.

I watched as Nep, still recovering from his earlier injuries, tried his best to fight off a two STF soldiers in the middle of the road. A volley of Eximus blasts was launched at him from the soldiers’ futuristic weapons. He fell to the ground in convulsions.

I sprang into action, flying down to swoop him up and away from the STF soldiers.

Then one of them cocked his shotgun and launched a blast into Nep’s chest.

Nep’s lack of healing powers meant that was it. He was gone with a single blast from a shotgun.

I let out a yell of anger and grief. I landed next to the two soldiers and ripped their guns away from them. I grabbed the one with the shotgun and flung him like a rag doll across the road. I kicked the other, sending him flying into a group of STF soldiers.

The ones who hadn’t been taken out turned and looked at me.

“We’ve got Tempest, twelve o’clock!” one of them yelled.

Suddenly a volley of bullets—the Eximus and the lead types—was being shot at me.

I jumped up into the air, having to twist and maneuver my body to dodge the Eximus blasts, while the bullets I just ignored. My healing abilities would take care of them.

I flew up into the darkness and out of the way. They shot at where they thought I was, but their blasts weren’t coming anywhere near me. I scanned the crowd, searching for the best point of attack.

And there he was. Standing in the back of an army-type truck with a canvas roof, leading a group of civilians inside, was Marcus. He had somehow been able to get into contact with the STF and tell them what he was able to learn about our camp. I was willing to bet they had made their way into downtown through the tunnels I had kept him prisoner in.

I cursed myself, not wanting to believe how stupid I could be. I was going to have to make things right, if not for anybody but Nep.

I flew down, ready to take on Marcus. Now I had a reason, an excuse. This was defense of my new home. Everything I worked to protect.

But as I flew down towards him, somebody slammed into me, and I was suddenly going in the opposite direction, away from Dallas. I looked up and saw the person who had me was Selena, and I gave in as she took me, flying far away from Dallas. I didn’t have it in me to fight her. She obviously knew more about the situation than I did.

All I could focus on was the fact that this was all my fault.

11

HEADCOUNT

Selena dropped me off at a parking lot in front of a big box store. Doug, Drew, and Samantha ran to my side. They asked me things like, “Are you okay?” and “Do you know what was going on?”, but I paid attention to none of it.

Doug, Drew, Samantha, and Selena.

That was it. Nobody else.

“Where are my parents?” I asked.

Everybody stopped their questions. Nobody answered.

I turned to Samantha, put my hands on her shoulders and looked her deep in the eyes. “Samantha, please, tell me where my parents are.”

Samantha nodded and closed her eyes, putting her powers to work.

We all stood there for a few tense moments as Samantha focused. “Okay…okay, I’ve got ’em.”

“Where are they? Tell them I’m coming to get them!” I was already floating a few inches off the ground, ready to take off as soon as Samantha told me.

“They were in one of the first trucks. They’re already on their way to the STF base.”

“Tell them I’m on my way!” I shouted as I began to fly back.