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My hands press harder against my head. My chest heaves with a deep breath as I force the power to drain from my toes and up through my body, pushing it from my fingertips into my head.

A soothing sensation tingles through my scalp. My body goes delightfully numb, leaving just a prickle as if it lost circulation.

A smile tugs at my lips as I pull more power out of my chest and force it to my fingertips. My scalp knits itself together first and then my skull vibrates, making my vision blur and my ears ring as my head grows more bone to replace what it lost. My breathing is steady, my fingers focused, my mind clear.

My eardrums crack as my hearing goes from reckless echoes to sharp and crystal clear. I let out the breath I’d been holding and climb to my feet. I smile, fists gripped tightly by my side as I hobble out of the cave and stare at the vast canyon before me. It tried to take my life. But it failed.

And I succeeded.

The stars fade to black and I collapse.

“She’s coming to.” A woman’s voice.
She’s coming to
. What does that even mean? What am I coming to? I’m not doing anything. Loud taps across the floor as someone walks across the room. Shuffling sounds—like maybe a rolling cart? My eyelids open just enough to catch a blast of white light before snapping tightly closed.

“There you go, hun. It’s safe now.” A soothing voice and a pat on my shoulder. The footsteps again, quieter as she walks away.

A shiver ripples through my body. It’s cold in here. My hands twist together under a thin sheet. I lift my head but a wave of pain sends it straight back to the pillow. Such a soft, squishy pillow. The overhead light is bright enough to make me squint even with my eyelids clenched tightly shut.

Someone clears their throat in the opposite direction of the woman’s voice. Dread weighs me down as I realize I’m not alone. That bothers me more than not knowing where I am or what I’m doing. My head rolls to the right. “Who are you?”

“I’m Jake,” the voice murmurs. “Can I help you with anything?”

“Turn off the light.”

A shadow falls over me. “This is the best I can do,” Jake says from much closer now. My eyes open. An Asian guy about my age hovers above my face, holding a blanket above his head so it makes a fabric cave around us. He has spikey hair—black hair—dark eyes and smooth pale skin.

“Who are you? Where am I?” I swallow, trying to wet my dry throat. “Why does my head hurt?”

“I’m Jake. Like I said.” He frowns as if I forgot.

“I heard your name, but who are you?”

His hair falls in front of his eyes and he doesn’t make an attempt to hide it, despite it being so dark. “I’m the Retriever who uh, saved you. You don’t remember? We had quite a talk on the trip up the canyon.”

I bolt up in bed, sending the fabric cave flying across the room, leaving Jake with a horrified look on his face. “I was
retrieved
?”

Again he gives me that,
Why don’t you understand what I’m saying,
look. I almost expect him to tell me his name again. “Yes.”

I grab the sides of my head as agonizing waves of pain flit through my skull like lightning bolts. “I’m a total failure.”

“You’re alive,” Jake says, absentmindedly popping his knuckles. “I’d say that’s a success.”

I watch him for a moment as he gives me the world’s most optimistic lopsided smile. Typical Retriever attitude.

The only door in this small room opens. A petite woman with silvery hair steps around the mass of thick steel and forces it closed behind her. She wears business attire; a navy blue blazer paired over a matching knee-length skirt. Her hair winds tightly in a bun at the back of her head. Her heels clack across the floor in a familiar way. She gives me a look over. “Good. You’re awake.”

“Where am I?” I ask.

“President Might will be here soon.” She peers down her nose at me and I’m not sure if she’s trying to be mysterious or what. I can see the badge on her chest pocket. She’s an employee at Central and has high security clearance. That plus the hoard of medical devices around me and the fact that I’m lying in a hospital bed kind of gives away my location. “I’m in the medical ward.”

“Remarkable,” she says. But I don’t think she’s commenting on my deductive skills. She approaches my bedside and reaches out her arm as if to touch my shoulder but I pull back. She doesn’t seem to care though, and in the same second it takes me to rebuff her, she moves her hand a little further until her bony fingers rest on my ripped suit. “Just remarkable. In my one hundred and sixty-three years I have never treated a Super with abilities like this.”

“Abilities like what?”

“A sense of humor too, I see.” She laughs and rifles through the contents of a metal cart against the wall.

I cock an eyebrow and glance at Jake. He points to his temple.

I reach up and touch the tender spot on my head where new bone and flesh cover what was missing last night. It hurts like ever-living hell. “My head,” I mutter, removing my hand and cringing when my hair folds over where my fingers had been. “Will I be okay?”

The woman snorts. “More than okay, I’d think.” She retrieves a thin metal syringe and holds it with the creepy pointed end facing me. “Supers heal almost instantly. But we do not regrow bones. What you did to your skull is completely unheard of. It’s unprecedented. You are quite the talented woman, Maci.” Her hand lowers the needle as she reaches for my left elbow. “You don’t mind if I take a sample of your blood, do you?”

“Um …” I’m suddenly unaware of how to answer a question. Nausea rises in my stomach but I’m not scared of needles. Something else about this isn’t right. My elbow is in her hand before I know it, the needle pressing against my pale skin.

The door bursts open and the woman drops my arm. My dad’s face turns to stone when he sees me sitting cross legged on the bed, my face contorted in agony and confusion. “You are not authorized to do that, Mrs. Kent.” He rips the syringe from her hand, crushing the metal in his palm. “Your orders were to keep her alive. Not experiment on her.”

Veins bulge from his neck and forehead as apologies pour out of Mrs. Kent’s mouth. “I was only curious,” she stammers, clenching her hands together in front of her chest. “For-for research. Her abilities could help other Supers who’ve lost limbs.”

“You will do no such thing.” His head vibrates with raw anger as he speaks. “You will speak of this to no one, and you will leave now.”

She leaves without another word or even a glance in our direction. Jake stands but Dad tells him to stay.

“I didn’t do anything special.” I shrug and another sharp bolt of pain slaps the side of my head. “I just concentrated really hard. I’m sure any Super could do it if they had to.” I smile to lighten the mood, but when the air in the room doesn’t change, I realize something is wrong. The dark circles under Dad’s eyes aren’t from worrying about my injured skull. He’s not here to check on my health at all.

“What’s wrong?” I ask. “Is everyone okay? Is Max in trouble?” Judging by the calm state of the medical ward, and the fact that Jake never mentioned we were being attacked, I know villains didn’t infiltrate last night. But my brother ignored his Hero alarm, and—oh God. Where’s Max?

“The only person in trouble is you, Maci.”

“Me?” My body rocks forward in surprise, a nerve-induced move I immediately regret. “I tried to help! I went to save Central when no one else answered their BEEPRs.”

Dad folds his arms in front of his chest as I continue. “Not even you, Dad. You ignored my calls. Central was being attacked.”

“Do you think I’m an idiot? Do you think I didn’t know about the attack?” He makes air quotes around the last word. “The entire event was planned by yours truly.”

“It was a … setup?” I don’t understand. There was an alarm. There were villains. I
fought
them.

“That you are so quick to dismiss your father as incapable of running the entire Super community astounds me. Of course it was fake. We’ve had numerous villain attempts to break into Central and this was a way to catch them.”

My jaw falls to the floor. Details of last night come back to me—the first villain’s fancy BEEPR and shiny new suit. How he was so hesitant to fight back when I attacked him. “How did you know it would work?”

He lets out a sigh like he shouldn’t even waste his time explaining such a resolute fact of life to me. But he does anyway. “We have reason to believe they’re able to intercept our Hero alarms, MODs, and god knows what else. Tonight was a test. If we released a private Hero alarm saying the south door was wide open and a villain was listening, they’d be all over it.”

“And they were,” I say, hanging my head in shame.

“Because of your stunt last night, that villain got away.”

“I was only trying to help. To—to prove myself.”

“You embarrassed me.” The tone of his voice implies so many more words than the three he just said. Disappointed, angered, humiliated, shamed.

“Why didn’t you just follow the rules?” Dad’s icy glare bores into my soul as he points a finger at Jake. “You could have lived a respectable life as a Retriever.”

Jakes lips press into a thin, reverent smile. If my head wasn’t in so much pain, I’d probably be able to feel my cheeks burn with embarrassment right about now. Dad drops something on the bed in front of me. My MOD. Held together with a strip of duct tape.

I pick up the device and turn it over in my hand. The rectangular screen has a red border several pixels thick around it. I’ve never seen it do that before. I look questioningly at Dad.

“Your MOD has been reprogrammed. That thing has no more functionality than a human cell phone.”

I place it in my lap, knowing I deserve as much. Dad holds out his arm to Jake, who immediately returns the gesture so Dad can swipe his BEEPR to Jake’s. “Thank you for bringing my daughter safely home.”

“Thank you, sir,” Jake says quietly. “For the opportunity to.”

With a turn on his heel, Dad stares pointedly at me. “You are to go home now. Do not let that woman take your blood. Do not let anyone take your blood.”

“Yes sir.” I push the thin sheet off my legs and start the painful and slow process of climbing off the bed. Dad watches without offering to help and even puts a hand on Jake’s shoulder to prevent him from helping. So much for chivalry.

“Jake will escort you home and he will not leave your side until you check in with the home MOD and lock the door.”

Jake beams with pride. I groan.

Dad steps forward. He’s not nearly as tall as Max so when he looks me in the eyes he doesn’t have to lower his head. For some reason this makes him more intimidating instead of the other way around. “You are to go home. You are to stay home.”

His breath has a slight scent of coffee. I nod. I don’t roll my eyes even though I feel like it. I deserve this, and I’ll stand straight and take it like a Hero.

Dad’s eyes bore into mine. “You will stay home no matter what. I do not care what the MOD says—you will not leave our house. I don’t care if your brother and I are in trouble. I don’t care if we die—you are not to leave. Do you understand?”

I nod. And swallow.

“The house could catch on fire and you are still not allowed to leave. All of Central can burn to the ground and you will burn with it. Tell me you understand.”

My stomach flips. “I understand.”

His face softens. “The house will not burn down, Maci. But you are not to leave until you get permission from me or Hugo Havoc. In person. Not through the MOD.”

The knots in my stomach twist themselves into knots. Hugo Havoc is Dad’s replacement were he to die. Dad never talks like this. Like—like something bad could happen.

“Can we have a signal?” I ask, grasping for some kind of redemption. “Like, a secret signal where maybe I do get to leave? Like maybe you could call me on the MOD and blink three times or something?”

Dad’s annoyed sigh is the only answer I get. He pulls open the metal door, revealing a hallway that makes a square path around a room bordered in solid glass walls. Straight in front of us on the other side of the glass is another medical room of sorts. An unsettling feeling falls over me.

In the center of the room is a massive machine—solid white with shiny surfaces that reflect off the high beam overhead lights. It’s shaped like a huge donut, almost like a human CAT scan machine, only bigger.

Jake takes my hand and wraps his arm around my waist, leading me toward the door. It doesn’t escape my notice that he makes every effort possible to avert his eyes from the room with the machine. Dad avoids looking at it as well.

But I can’t take my eyes off it.

As we step into the hallway, I can’t help but break the icy silence. “Is that—?” I ask, finding myself suddenly unable to say the words that float so easily through my mind.
The depowering machine.

“Yes,” Dad says. “And let this be the last time you ever see it.”