Overpowered (Powered Trilogy #2)

Copyright © 2014 Cheyanne Young

All rights reserved.

First Edition.

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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems -except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews-without permission in writing from the author at [email protected].

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, events, and places portrayed in this book are products of the author’s imagination and are either fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

***

For Mom

Humanity has a stench about it that isn’t found in Central.
Instead of roads we have underground passageways lined with polished stone. They’re free from debris like the crushed soda can and sticky chip bag I step over as I turn into an alleyway that smells as if Death himself died back here. I’m not sure if it’s enough for us to save their lives every time a natural disaster happens. Maybe we should form a second Hero Brigade whose sole purpose is to teach the humans how to be clean and less disgusting. I know they’ve been on Earth way longer than Supers have, but as I hold my nose and breathe through my mouth, I can’t help but wonder if we deserve the planet more than they do.

My BEEPR rests quietly on my wrist, which is a good thing because the mission I’m on didn’t come from Central. The last thing I need is to be called to duty for some human emergency when I’m secretly dealing with an even more important Super emergency. A shiver runs through me at the thought; I am a Hero now and I am not allowed to consider humans unworthy of saving. That is my sole purpose as a Hero.
But if I don’t say it out loud, no one really knows I’ve thought it.

Darkness falls over the alleyway even though it’s not yet dusk. The setting sun is blocked by the tall apartment buildings on either side of me so I have to focus my power into seeing clearly. A thought runs across my mind for the millionth time since I left home two days ago:
Why am I here?

I shake the thought away without answering it because my intuition doesn’t have an answer, it
just knows. When I left our underground home in the Grand Canyon, against the wishes of my brother and Evan, who I guess you could say is my boyfriend, I was on a mission to find my estranged twin sister. I have no idea where she might be and even less of an idea of how to contact her, but these are just technicalities. The sting of intuition in the pit of my stomach had told me not to worry about the technicalities. So I didn’t.

And here I am. Standing in an alleyway between two low-income apartment complexes on the wrong side of King City. I take a few steps forward, following the phantom pull in my chest that keeps urging me forward, until it makes me turn left and step into a side entrance of one of the buildings. One pane of glass in the double doors is broken, replaced with a wilted piece of cardboard and duct tape. I pull on the handle, half expecting it to fall off at my touch. A stale smell like mold mixed with cleaning chemicals fills my lungs as I survey the small room in front of me. The light flickers overhead, shining a blinking glow on two tattered arm chairs and one elevator that even as a Super, I would be too scared to step foot in.

I inch forward but my intuition comes to a complete stop, leaving me stranded in this tiny room with no idea what to do next. I take a deep breath, refusing to believe that I am wrong. I didn’t come out here for nothing—I know I didn’t.

The ding of the elevator makes me drop
into a fight stance, one hand ready to release a pair of retriever hooks into whatever threat lies on the other side of the dingy door. The door grinds open, old metal gears squealing in distress. A child steps out of the elevator, counting a few dollar bills in his hands. My chest falls and I relax until I notice the strangeness of the boy’s skin. Translucent flesh covers his body, revealing deep colored veins that run through his arms and legs. His face is like a jellyfish; almost completely see-through to his skull. I take a step backward as a sensation much like repulsion mixed with pity toils around in my stomach. I’ve never seen a human with a condition like this.

He folds the dollar bills and shoves them
deep in his pocket, looking up for the first time. Our eyes meet and he inhales a sharp breath that makes the veins in this face retract. He drops to his knees and lowers his head. “Please.”

My head tilts to the side as I wait for him to finish his sentence, but that’s all he says. Please.

“What are you doing?” I ask. Stepping closer, I drop to one knee to get a better look at him.

“Please, I hav
e no more information. Please, Miss.” His voice shakes and his entire body trembles. I reach out and touch his shoulder which makes him flinch beneath my grasp. “What the hell?” I whisper as a soft current of what could only be power flows from his body and into mine. There’s no way. Humans don’t have power. “Stand up,” I demand as I also rise to my feet. He does what I say, keeping his head lowered. “Who are you?”

“I am a waste of life,” he says as his hands tug at the bottom of his dirty T-shirt. “I am not worthy of a name.”

“Who told you that?”

Now he looks up at me. “You did.”

He must mean Heroes in general because I’ve never met him before. “You’re wrong. No child is a waste of life.” I stare at him as he watches me in confusion. I don’t know why he thinks Heroes would call him such a horrible thing, but I’m going to set the record straight. “Where are your parents? I want to talk to them.”

“Mom is at work,” he says. “I am waiting for her to get home so we can buy food.”

“Where’s your dad?”

He blinks several times, his eyebrows drawing together as if he doesn’t understand anything I’m saying. I guess it’s not uncommon for a child to be fatherless in this part of town. He bites his lower lip in hesitation.

“Do you not know where your dad is?” I ask in my most friendly child voice. “It’s okay, you know. A lot of people don’t have dads.”

He shakes his head. “No, I know where he is. Don’t you remember? You killed him.”

Power bursts from my chest, causing the flickering fluorescent light bulb above to shatter into tiny
bits of glass. One second later, the corner of the room lights up under the emergency exit sign. “Where is she?” I say through clenched teeth.

My intuition wasn’t wrong. But I wasn’t right. My sister does need to be found but not saved. The boy’s teeth chatter in fear as his entire body
continues to shudder with fear. I lower myself to his eye level. “You are not in any harm. But you must take me to the girl who killed your father. That wasn’t me. That was my twin sister.”

He nods slowly and turns around, pressing the up button on the elevator door. When we step inside, he presses the button for the top floor. I lean my back against the wall and concentrate on breathing slow
ly enough to keep my power level down so no other Supers can detect my presence, and also to prevent the elevator from suffering the same fate as that fluorescent light bulb.

We come to a rickety stop that has me preparing to grab the boy and hold him should the cables snap, sending us on a fourteen-story free fall. But the doors swing open despite my preparing for the worst, revealing a carpeted foyer that branches off into two apartment doors. Despite being
away from the filthy street, the garbage smell is somehow intensified on this floor. The boy takes my hand and another zap of power flows from his tiny fingers into mine. Something isn’t right about this kid.

He walks me to the door on the right, apartment 14B. “She’s in there,” he whispers, before dropping my hand and bolting across the dingy floor, seeking refuge in apartment 14A. I bite my bottom lip and stare at the wooden door in front of me, trying not to let my mind go wild with thoughts of what could be beyond this tiny barrier between my twin and me.

I might be a brand new Hero but I’ve faced death before. I wrap my bandaged depowered hand around the brass doorknob and twist it to the right. The apartment is dark inside, the only illumination coming from a single lamp in the corner of the room. It’s missing a lampshade so the bulb blasts white light in all directions.

The smallest flicker of power emanates from that part of the room. It is there that I see my twin sister, slumped on the floor, leaning against the wall. Her face is hidden behind a mess of tangled white blonde hair. If my chest wasn’t tingling with the essence of her power, I’d assume she was dead. This isn’t what I expected.

I step inside the apartment and close the door behind me. “Nova?” I ask as I walk toward her, hand hovering over my retriever hooks. She doesn’t say anything, but her chest rises and falls in slow breaths. “Nova, it’s me. It’s Maci.” I kneel beside her and place my hand on her shoulder.

Nothing happens for a long time.

And then a blast of power blows me across the room. My shoulder slams into a coat rack, sending it crashing to the floor. I spin around and come face to face with my sister. She stands, feet crookedly spaced apart, hands in light fists at her sides. Her chest heaves with ragged breaths and her hair is so snarled, I can barely see the glare she gives me from across the room.

“What are you doing here?”
Her voice seethes with anger. “Did they send you to kill me?”

That
last part was whispered in desperation. I tilt my head slightly to the side. “No one knows I’m here,” I say. “But someone
is
coming to kill you.”

She rolls her head to the side and stares at the wall. “Let them.”

I don’t know why I say this, but I do. “I won’t let them kill you.”

She lets out a sh
ort breath in what could be derived as a sarcastic snort. “I deserve to die.”

“No, you don’t—” I interject, taking a step forward. I have no idea how I’m going to convince her to come with me. This isn’t a
n official Hero mission so I can’t call retrievers to help.

Nova lowers her gaze to the floor. “I deserve to die. I’m a murderer. A monster.”

“That wasn’t your fault. It was Aurora’s. She’s the villain, not you.”

She shakes her head. “The Heroes will kill me anyway.” Her voice turns to ice as she meets my gaze. “And you know what?”

She grabs a butter knife off an end table against the wall and plunges it directly into her chest. I hold back a scream and watch in horror as the knife slices between her ribs and then slowly slides back out as if a ghost were pulling on the handle. It drops to the floor, covered in silvery power and blood. The wound in her chest seals closed and supernaturally heals. Nova looks at the knife in disgust. “I can’t even kill myself.”

I guess she doesn’t know that chopping off her own head
zombie-style would get the job done, but now is definitely not to the time to tell her that. I reach out my hand to her. “You don’t have to die and you don’t have to live like this. Come with me.”

She scowls at my outstretched hand. “Why are you doing this?”

I stand strong. “Because you saved my life. Now I’m saving yours.”

Her power level weakens, lowering until it’s a mere pulse in tune with her heartbeat. She’s letting her guard down and that means I’m winning. “Why would you save me? You don’t even know me.”

I cross my arms. “Why did you save me?”

“I know you. I spent my whole life knowing you existed. That’s why I saved you.”

“Okay, well I’ve spent five days knowing you exist and I’m going to save you with or without your permission. You are my sister and I will not let you die.” I take her by the arm and pull her across the dingy apartment.

“Whatever. They’ll kill me the moment you bring me to Central.” Her eyes seem to sparkle for a moment. “At least it’ll be over soon.”

I ignore that and tug her along with me. She doesn’t put up a fight. When we get to the door, I stop and take a sweater off the toppled-over coat rack and pull it over her head. It may smell like mothballs but at least it covers her blood soaked T-shirt. She pulls her arms through the sleeves and glances down at herself with a look of insecurity painted on her face. I brush her hair out of her eyes, trying unsuccessfully to make it look reasonably decent. She looks at me expectantly and I lift an eyebrow in hesitation. Now would be a really good time for one of Evan’s hair ties.

“Where are we going?” she asks. Dark circles surround her eyes, making her pale skin uncommonly white. It’s as if I’m looking into a haunted mirror and seeing my own ghostly reflection staring back at me.

We head to the elevator and I press the down button. “I don’t know,” I say. “Home, I guess.”

The doors slide open. Nova crosses her arms and suppresses a shiver that threatens to crack her frail body. “Do you always do things without thinking?”

“Yeah,” I say, pulling her into the elevator with me. “It’s kind of my thing.”

The boy with the freaky power-infused translucent skin speaks in Spanish to his mother in the lobby of the building. My Spanish isn’t that great but I catch the words villain, sister and scared. The two humans turn toward us; the boy stares at Nova with wide, terror-stricken eyes while his mother drops to her knees and lowers her head as if we
are royalty. This catches me off-guard and I stand stupidly in the opening of the elevator, blocking the closing door with my fist.

Nova steps out of the elevator first, scaling the room in a few seconds without casting a glance their way. At the door, she turns around and lifts an eyebrow. “You coming?” she asks me. “Jesus, you’re the one who wanted me to leave.”

I suppress a bitchy reply and follow her to the door, although I can’t make myself ignore the two humans in the room. “Thank you,” I tell the boy. His mother looks from me to Nova and back, making the realization that we’re twins by opening her eyes wide and putting a hand over her mouth. She recovers quickly, and talks to Nova. “When should I expect you back, dear? Would you like food to be ready for you?”

“I told you to stop that,” Nova
snaps at the woman. “You do not take orders from me, okay? So stop it.” The woman opens her mouth to object, but Nova holds out her arm, silencing her. “Aurora is dead. And I killed your abusive husband. You don’t take orders from anyone anymore. Just thank me and go away.”

The boy grabs his mother’s hand. “Gracias
, Miss Nova,” he says.

I’m beyond confused at this situation, but I answer the woman’s question since Nova didn’t. “We aren’t coming back,” I tell her. “Probably not ever. I am Hero Maci Might, and I’m taking Nova to Central, but you can never tell anyone about this.” I give her a piercing Hero’s glare, allowing my power to radiate off
of me. She nods, understanding that agreeing with me means taking this secret to the grave.

“Please,” she begs, pushing her son forward. He gives her a frightened look. “Please take Xavi with you to Central. Please get him help.”

The boy reaches for my hand and, stupidly, I start to take it. Nova’s bony fingers shove me so hard I stumble backward and have just enough time to say “
What the hell?”
before I’m face to face with my sister. Her teeth grind together, exactly the same height as my own, as our eyes stare directly at each other. Her breath freaking reeks. “Do. Not. Touch. Him.” Fire dances in the back of her eyes, a villainous rage that rolls out of her soul, washing over every good part of mine. Even in my most angry rages, I have never felt this wicked.

“What’s wrong with him?” I ask, my voice strong and unaffected by her shocking outburst. It’s a lie, but I hold on to it because I will not show her weakness.

Nova wraps her hand around my wrist and pulls me to the door. “He’s a half-breed. He’s a waste of life and he will die when he turns sixteen.”

My jaw drops in
dismay and I glance at the boy and his mother, who sobs quietly into her sleeve. “Isn’t there something we can do?”

Nova laughs. “His mother knew better than to
hook up with a Super. Now she gets to suffer the consequences.”

“That was really rude,” I mutter a few minutes later. Nova’s black Chuck Taylors crunch over all the debris in the alleyway
. I still make an effort to avoid stepping on any of it.

“What’s your point?” she asks. “I can be rude. It’s a free country and all that.”

I stop walking and cross my arms. Somewhere close by a rodent scavenges for food in the garbage bags near our feet. “You can’t just tell a little kid they’re going to die.”

She turns toward me and lifts an eyebrow. “So you’re saying you’d rather me lie to him? Aren’t you the Hero here?”

My hands clench into fists at my sides, but I take a deep breath and relax my muscles. Punching her in the face won’t do anything in my task to bring her over to the good side. “You don’t have to lie to him, but you didn’t have to be so mean. I didn’t even know humans could mate with Supers,” I add as an afterthought. “No one has ever mentioned such a thing in Central.”

She shrugs. “I guess it’s a villain thing.”

We turn left onto First Street, which is home to some of the finest establishments in downtown King City, but once you get way out here to the crap part of town, everything declines from designer clothing stores to pawnshops and signs that advertise bail bonds.

Nova rakes fingers through her knotted hair but they get stuck near her skull. She pulls a few times before giving up and scratching her neck. “So what’s your big plan? What exactly are we doing?”

I kick a piece of broken asphalt out of its hole in the road and watch it tumble ahead of us. “I’m a Hero now, so I can get away with things normal Supers can’t. I’m hoping I can just sneak you inside with me. You can hide out in our home until Dad gets back.”

“Where is he?” she asks, trying unsuccessfully to mask her curiosity.

“He’s in the medical ward for a few more days.”

A silence falls over us as we walk. In Nova’s malnourished state, I can’t discern what she’s feeling from her power levels. Only a thin pulse of energy emits from her, as weak as a battery-powered radio. This is hands down, the most awkward experience of my life. She’s a stranger but she’s my sister.
But I guess being genetically related to someone doesn’t automatically make you friends.

Lost in my own thoughts, I brush against her arm and jump backward.
I have just enough time to shiver from how cold her skin feels when I hear a woman scream.