Overpowered (Powered Trilogy #2) (18 page)

“Nova, n
ow
!”

My sister rolls off the
depowering machine’s conveyor belt, tucking into a ball. Exactly how I pictured her moving when I yelled her name.

“Hey!” Paul’s face turns white and it isn’t from the glow of the MOD screen.

Juice streams through my veins. I feel it take over my power as I lunge across the room, jumping over Nova one second before Paul gets to her. My bad hand presses her back to hold her out of his way. I whirl my good hand across us, aiming my palm at his chest as he scales the room. “Open the doors,” I say, nodding toward the steel doors.

All the fear falls right off his face. “Why don’t you open it yourself since you seem to have things all figured out.”

This juice really is catered to my body. All I have to do is think about releasing a bolt of energy from my palm and it happens--cascading through the air and slamming into Paul’s smug little face. His body hurls backward. He’s smart enough to wrap his hands around the back of his head just seconds before he crashes into the jagged wall. Many of his fingers break, but they protected his head which is good. Because I still need that.

“What’s going on here?” He spits blood. I lower him to the floor with the power of the juice. He flexes his fingers, wincing when they begin to heal.

“Open the doors or I’ll cut off your hand and open it myself.” He has to know that threat is useless because security measures won’t let you open doors with the fingerprints of dead tissue. But it works. Maybe he thinks I don’t know it. Because he scrambles to his feet, still dazed from getting juiced and unlocks the MOD screen.

As the doors clamber open, I help Nova stand up and keep my palm aimed on Paul. His expression is a mixture of defeat and disgust. “You’ll never get out,” he says. “There’s too many locks.”

I step through the door and back into the hallway. “You’re welcome to come with me.”

Paul’s eyebrows draw together in a huff. He scans the room, and then checks his hands again. With a roll of his eyes, and probably the realization that walking with us out of this room is his only option, lest he be stuck with the
depowering machine for hours, he follows. “You’re going to be punished severely for this,” he says. “I’ll probably see both of you right back here tomorrow.”

“You won’t,” I say at the same time Nova mutters, “Probably.”

I glare at her as we walk through the jagged rocky hallway. She shrugs, not meeting my eyes and continues examining the hook still stabbed in her abdomen. “Oh wow, I forgot about that,” I say, stopping her. My eyes practically burst out of my own head. Hooks paralyze most Supers. The strong ones can still move a little bit and maybe even talk, but Nova is walking.

She gives me an incredulous look. “Seriously? You couldn’t feel all the pain I’ve been in for the last ten minutes?”

I guess I did feel her pain--I can feel it now. But I was too preoccupied with keeping her from pain a thousand times worse in that machine to take notice to it. “Wait...you know I can feel your emotions?”

Paul studies us in this casual way that fools no one. Nova nods. “Duh. I can feel your emotions too. It’s obviously a twin thing.
I think that’s why our power is so strong when we’re near each other.” She tugs at the hook, wiggling it back and forth which slices into her skin with each wiggle, leaving a gash that heals a few seconds later. Frustrated with the hook, she looks at me. “That’s how I knew this was a set up. I could feel it. Although I could have done without actually being forced on that machine...”

I smile. “So you knew I wasn’t betraying you just now?”

Her mouth falls open. “You meant you weren’t purposely trying to communicate with your emotions so I’d know what was up?”

I bite my lip. “I mean...not really. I was just hoping I’d be able to explain once it was over.”

She punches me in the arm. “Oh my god! You really are the evil twin!”

I laugh as relief floods into me. This is going better than I had thought it would. I couldn’t tell her that I was pretending to turn her in back at home because I feared that she wouldn’t act believably if she went into the dungeon willingly and not as if I was forcing her. I guess her acting skills are better than I’d given her credit for.

“You’re not going to get that thing out of you,” I say, pointing to the hook that sticks out of her stomach like she is merchandise that can be hung on a sales rack. “They’ll do it in the medical ward. I don’t even know how you’re standing right now. You’re insane.”

“What’s the medical ward
going to do that I can’t do?” she says, tugging on it again. It’s a good thing her tank top is black because now it’s probably drenched in blood. “Plus I can’t exactly walk in and ask for help...I’m still a villain.”

“We could dye your hair and you could be me?” I offer. We reach another locked door and Paul unlocks it without so much as an ounce of hesitation.

Nova shrugs. “I guess. I just really want it out now. It’ll be hard getting back home undetected and I can’t run or fight with this thing in me.”

She has a point. We only saw two members of the Retriever
Squad on our trip down here and I promptly told them Nova was being taken in when they asked. I also swore them to keep it quiet under President Might’s request. But making it back through the dungeon and up to our home could be a bloodbath if the wrong people were to see us.

I drop to one knee and examine the hook. Although the part we can see is made of smooth black metal shaped like a horseshoe, the inside, the two parts that are inside her, are shaped just like the hooks used in fishing. If you try to pull it out, the metal will rip through your flesh, causing a lot of blood and even more pain.

“We can’t do this,” I say.

“It’ll heal.” Nova walks to the wall and presses her back against it, bracing herself. “Just rip it out. Do it quickly before anything starts to heal.”

“Oh no,” Paul says. “Oh no, no, no. She can’t be serious.”

Seeing Paul squirm gives me the extra motivation I need to follow Nova’s request. “Deep breath,” I tell her. She sucks in air, bracing herself for the pain. I curl my fingers under the hook and count to three in my head.

Three, two, one. Pull.

“Ugh,” Nova grunts. Her eyes squeeze shut. I drop the hook to the floor. Blood and power coat the formerly black surface. Paul probably doesn’t want it back now. My stomach clenches in phantom pain. Nova opens her eyes a few moments later and her power levels slip into serenity.

“You’re such a badass,” I say. Her right hand presses against her ripped shirt. She holds up her left hand for a high-five which I happily give her.

“I am in so much trouble,” Paul mumbles under his breath.

An unexpected female voice speaks from further down the hall. “Looks like all of you are in trouble.”

Paul spins toward the voice.
“I am Retriever Squad Director Paul McGreen. No one has permission to be in these hallways without me.” Paul, who until this moment was petrified with fear, steps forward, back straight. He’s all business. “I’m going to need to see some ID, ma’am. And a thorough explanation for how you made it past the security doors.”

The woman is thin with big hips and curly bright red hair that reeks of hair dye. She wears black leather pants, combat boots and a matching sleek leather jacket. She smiles, looking past Paul toward me. I move in front of my sister, hoping to block enough of her face so that we don’t look like twins. Or more importantly, so she doesn’t look like Nova Might: wanted villain.

“You don’t need to worry,” the woman coos. “I haven’t slipped past your security system. You’ve actually slipped past mine.”

“And how is that?” Paul snaps.

“Come on up here and I’ll show you.”

Nova’s internal emotions go into Red Alert mode. I wish there was a way I could turn off our mental connection because I don’t need a second reminder that we should be more than a little concerned right now.

Paul’s neck cranes forward but it’s obvious that with the tunnel’s roughly carved walls, he can’t see what she’s talking about without walking the fifty yards to where she stands, hands on her hips. He glances back at me, not for advice or help, but to glare at me as if he thinks I’m going to make a run for it the first chance I get.

In his defense, that’s exactly what I plan to do.

“Did she break out of a dungeon holding cell or something?” I ask. My dumb question must be all the motivation he needs because he rolls his eyes at me and walks toward the woman. I glance at Nova. Her eyes are wide and frightened.

“What is it?” I whisper.

“No talking!” Paul yells back. Ugh. If he were a human, he wouldn’t have been able to hear that. Nova grabs my arm, digging her fingernails into my skin. I mouth the word
what
? She shakes her head, looking from the woman to me. Her eyes go wide again. I shake my head back at her because I can’t read her mind. She closes her eyes and an explosion of power crushes into me. Bad, angry, scared.

I move my lips without talking.
Do you know her?

Before she can answer, Paul’s shocked gasp catches my attention. “How did this ha
ppen? This is a secure location!” He’s staring at something in the side of the wall, past the ridged surface that can’t be seen from here. I don’t see the woman anymore. It’s like a hole appeared in the wall. Paul reaches for his MOD.

Then I do see the woman. She’s a blur, moving faster than my eyes can keep focus, shoving Paul backwards until his body cracks against the back wall. Ouch. That’s twice tonight. Her hand holds him up by the neck, closing his airways so he can barely breathe. I can hear his gasps.

Okay. If anyone is going to throw Paul around, it’ll be me. Not some mysterious biker chick who appeared out of thin air. “Cover me,” I tell Nova. She nods. We run to save Paul but he passes out, his body going limp just moments before we get there. A pile of rocks and dust are on the floor just past the ridged bump in the wall. The woman broke in here from another hallway.

“I am Hero Maci Might,” I hiss. The woman is much older than she looked from farther away. She’s probably close to three hundred which would make her look like a sixty
-year-old human. At my introduction, she drops Paul, turning quickly on her heel to watch me.

“Maci Might?” She says, cocking her head to the side just like Chewy does when he doesn’t understand you. Only she understands. Her eyes narrow, forming deep crow’s feet wrinkles. “And this must be...
Nova
.”

Nova folds her arms across her chest, making her completely vulnerable to an attack.
But the stance only makes her look like more of an immovable force. Like she’s not afraid of this woman. “You need to crawl back into whatever hole you came out of,” Nova says, nodding to the crumbled rocks in the side of the wall that opens into what looks like a small cave. This woman must have been digging around underground and happened into this hallway at the right time. “You’re on enemy ground.”

She laughs. “You are
too
cute! I heard you went on a little rampage back at the King City headquarters. Killed a few of your allies, hmm?” Her eyebrows draw together. “That’s not a very nice way to honor Aurora’s memory.”

If I knew how to operate the
depowering machine, I’d throw this lady onto it in a heartbeat. She’s obviously hanging out with the villains. Paul is still unconscious. I lift my left wrist and swipe my BEEPR screen. “I’d shut up if I were you,” I tell her. “Although you’ve already incriminated yourself, so.” My lips slide to the side of my face. “It’ll be fun arresting you.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” the woman says. I look up, preparing to hit her with a
retriever hook if she plans on running back through the hole which brought her here. She does move. But not toward the hole. She grabs my wrist with her left hand. I twist my hand up onto her arm, shoving down on her elbow with my right hand. The hyperextension of her elbow drops her to the ground. But it’s too late. The hiss-pop of broken electronics makes me jerk away. Whatever is inside her rubbery glove just fried my BEEPR.

“
You broke my elbow!” She cries, lifting her arm up as she watches it dangle the wrong way. She’ll have to pull her arm back into place before the bones begin to heal.