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“You don’t think I needed that army, do you? I don’t need to employ Supers to fight your precious Hero Brigade. They wanted to come. They
begged
to come. I’m not the only one with an unresolved vendetta here.”

I motion to the gore surrounding me. “But you killed them.”

She rolls her eyes. “Of course I did. You can’t trust a villain!”

“You will pay for this,” I say. “But feel free to tell me what your freaking vendetta is before I kill you.”

“Uh uh uh,” she tuts with a wave of her finger. “Before I tell you, we are going to play a game.” She flourishes her hand in the air as if presenting Miss America. “A Hero Examination retake, if you will.”

Déjà vu sweeps over me. Again I wonder if this is all just an elaborate trick; a sick game where I am both the winner and the loser.

“Many members of the community are accusing you of being evil.” She frowns and touches a hand to her heart. “And you don’t believe you are evil, isn’t that right?”

I nod slowly. “I am not evil.”

“Oh but sweetheart, how can you know? How can you be really sure you aren’t evil when your twin is dead?” She smiles with her head tilted to the side, her silky silver hair swaying gently behind her. I find myself thinking, although this is the absolute worst time to be thinking at all, that she is strikingly beautiful when she smiles. Old age suits her. Too bad she’s an evil psycho.

I start to reply but she cuts me off. “You can’t know. No one knows. Not since the beginning of the Super race has anyone known which twin will be the evil one. But we do know one thing, don’t we?”

“What?”

She moves the controls on the fishbowl and it lowers to the ground. My heart races as she steps out of the bowl and onto the floor—the same floor that I’m standing on not ten feet away. Now is my chance to attack her.

But I can’t. I want to hear what she has to say. She’s found a way to freeze me like the others by using her words instead of a fancy DNA device. She laces her fingers together and in front of her body, leaving her completely vulnerable to an attack. She knows I won’t attack her. That really pisses me off.

“The only thing we know is that one twin will always turn evil. Every. Single. Time.”

“I’m not evil,” I repeat.

“Look at that dark hair. Look at the ruthless anger in your eyes, how quickly you lose control when something pisses you off. You killed a droid, am I right? And yet, why are you not depowered? What makes you so special that you get to live until the age of sixteen when you have a fifty percent chance and a whole hell of a lot of evidence pointing to you being evil?”

She puts her hand in the air and makes a
come here
motion behind her. “Why, Maci? Maci
Might
?” She bites off my last name as if it’s a curse word. Her head lowers, her voice going from bold to condescending with each word, “Because your daddy is president, that’s why.”

“Or because I’m not evil,” I snap, knowing all too well that my argument doesn’t hold water.

“Why don’t we ask the man himself?” The squeaking of wheels in dire need of grease signals the arrival of another villain, dressed in all black, her small feminine features cloaked in what looks like the hood of Death himself. She pulls a hospital gurney behind her. Metal ropes hold my father onto the rusty frame.

“Dad!” My startled cry makes him jerk on the gurney, lifting his head to see me. His clothing is in shreds across his arms, chest, and legs where the ropes hold him in place. I know those aren’t ordinary ropes. They’ve singed straight through his shirt and jeans. Aurora holds out her hand. “Take one step toward him and he gets depowered.” The villain parks my father in front of the depowering machine and pulls a crank on the gurney, making it rise into a standing position. I can’t believe I hadn’t noticed that machine until now.

“Excellent,” Aurora says. “Now everyone has a front row view.”

Several emotional grunts and gasps come from the Heroes who stand paralyzed behind me. I don’t make a sound. Only I can fix this now. Only I can save my dad and the entire Hero Brigade. I just need to figure out how.

“Nice to see you again, Mr. President,” Aurora says as her Death-impersonating villain takes her side. My mind flips into Hero mode.
In two seconds I could scale the room, in ten seconds, I could overpower Aurora and knock out her stupid sidekick. In half a minute, I can rescue my dad.

“Oh, by the way,” she says, holding up her DNA-freezing device. From a closer view I see that it has four buttons in the center, not just one. Her thumb hovers over the second button. “Try anything and I’ll explode your friends’ brains just like I did to the others.”

I close my eyes and swallow my outrage. If there was ever a time to be calm, this is it.

Aurora steps around the fishbowl toward Hugo Havoc. She places her hand on his cheek before turning to look at me. I don’t move. I don’t really see a point in it. “Did you ever wonder why your father allowed you to be raised in the Super society, despite knowing that you could be evil?”

“He believed in me.” I try to keep my voice steady and unwavering. Dad is listening after all. “He knew I could be good if I was raised to be good.”

“How did he know that? Does he have some sort of superior-breeding genetics that would increase your likelihood of not being evil?”

“You know he doesn’t,” I say. “I was an experiment.”

Aurora’s eyebrows shoot to the top of her forehead. “An experiment!” She abandons her caress of Hugo’s cheek and turns to me. “President Might knows all about experiments. He participated in dozens. Do you know who he liked to use for his experiments?”

Dad’s arms pull at his restraints. A sizzling light zaps through the metal ropes and he falls still once again as the smell of burnt flesh wafts in my direction. I know where this she’s going with this. She’s trying to intimidate me.

And it’s working.

But I won’t let her know that.

I cross my hands over my chest. “Twins. He experimented on twins.”

Fire roars behind her eyes as she stands directly in front of me. “Twenty-one sets of twins were experimented on during your father’s first decade as president. Four of them survived. Our president knew that half of those children were good Supers and deserved a fulfilling life and yet he allowed every single one of them to be subjected to the torture veiled as experimenting in the name of the greater good.”

I stay strong. “That is not my fault.”

“Right again!” She slaps her hands together in front of her chest, a loud echo filling the silent room. “You know whose fault it is. I’m not alone in thinking that the president shouldn’t be allowed to spare his own child when he didn’t care about anyone else’s.”

“He was only trying to protect everyone else in the world.”

“He was being a selfish, hypocritical asshole!”

My hair blows across my face at the force of her hands flying through the air as she talks. I swallow as I prepare a tactic I’ve never used before—reasoning.

“I have no excuses for my father,” I begin, my voice sincere. “But killing him won’t make you happy.”

“Wrong.” She glances at her fingernails to prove just how bored she is with my reasoning. “Killing him would make me very happy. But I’m not going to kill him. I’m going to depower him.” She points to her eyes with both index fingers. “Eye for an eye, and all that.”

I glance from her to my dad, to the tiny yet fatal object still in her hand. “Let me assure you, Maci, darling—” she reaches for my hand and I pull away. “You will die tonight. But it is not because of the rules you broke, or the darkness of your hair, or even because I just don’t like you. Your death won’t be from anything you did. This is your father’s punishment.”

“Yeah?” I say, stretching out my hands and popping my fingers. “Bring it.”

Unaffected, she turns on her heel. “I’m not going to kill you just yet. I have a Hero Examination to grade.” Spinning on her heel, Aurora walks back into the fishbowl and places her hands on her hips. “Here is your exam: You proclaim that you are not the evil twin—now is your chance you prove it. You will fight my protégé.”

She motions toward the depowering machine to where the girl dressed as Death steps forward. “If you do not wish to kill her, you may be depowered with your father. But if you happen to have the gift of villainy and you choose to end her life, then I will set you free.”

“Mother!” The voice comes from the person next to my dad. “You never said I’d have to fight her. That was not part of the plan!” God, she sounds even younger than her small frame suggests. She’s too young to be a villain.

Aurora snorts. “Just because you are unaware of something, doesn’t mean it’s not part of the plan.”

Death’s shoulders straighten. She doesn’t make a good Death, not like the ones in horror films, but I’ll call her Death because that’s what she’s dressed like. Like a tiny version of the grim reaper who wanted to dress like a villain but robbed a Halloween store instead. “Fine,” she says. “I’ll fight her.” Her cloaked face turns in my direction.

“What about my dad?” I choke out, buying time. “Let him go.”

“Oh, honey, he will be depowered no matter what. I am only sparing him that grueling agony so that he may have all his senses to watch his precious daughter take her exam.”

Only the worst of all villains would consider a fight to the death an
exam
. “Why are you doing this?” I ask, stepping backward as Death approaches me with slow precise steps. “What are you trying to prove?”

The fishbowl rises into the air, stopping at the halfway mark. The same spot the real examiners were when I took my first Hero exam. Aurora’s eyes have a reminiscing glaze over them. “I don’t have to prove anything, you little brat. I am avenging those innocent twin children.” Her voice is so quiet I have to strain to hear her. “All forty-two of them. But especially the two who were my sons.”

Remember your training. Remember the Hero rules. Remember the classes that taught the importance of never losing your cool in a real life situation.
The voice in my head says the opposite of what I feel.
This is not a training session. This is real life.
You can do this.

My arms bend at the elbows, hands gripped into fists, ready to fight but waiting for my opponent to make the first move. A thin vibration of power rolls off Aurora, filling the air around me with the feeling of pure elation.

I am not afraid to fight, but Hero training did not prepare me for this. I have no Heroes to call in for back up because they are all frozen in a state of terror, forced to witness this scene as it unfolds. I have no Retrievers because they are in lockdown. I am surrounded by people but totally alone. Yep. There’s no chapter on this in the Hero manual.

I’m watching Aurora in one moment, lying on my back staring at the ceiling in the next. Death pulled a sneak attack so quickly I hadn’t even seen her move. Kicking onto my feet, I launch myself at her, missing her by an inch as she swirls and delivers a kick to my cheek. Damn that stings.

She leaps toward me and I grab her arms, bringing both of us to the floor. My head crashes against the granite and everything doubles as my skull fractures along my temple. The intense pain of a shattered skull feels exactly as horrible as it did two weeks ago. When I grab my head, her feet slam onto my arms, breaking them.

The walls change colors and my vision blurs as she kicks my head over and over again. The bones in my arm knit themselves back together, allowing me to reach up and grab her ankle, blocking her next kick. My legs heal a moment later and I jump to my feet. Adrenaline grabs hold of me. This isn’t over yet.

I seize the fist she throws at me, twist her arm around, and use her own leverage to send her flying over my head and crashing to the floor. Diving on top of her, I break both of her wrists and jam my elbow into her throat. She gasps and coughs, blood spilling out of her mouth as she struggles to breathe.

My laugh is satisfying despite the immense amount of pain it causes in my head, stomach, and ribcage. The weight of my decision no longer pulls at my ethical heartstrings; if anything, this villain deserves a quick death from me. Aurora will only kill her anyway.

“Any last words?” I ask, a bit ironically as I dig my elbow further into her windpipe. She’s barely breathing—she sure as hell won’t be talking. Aurora’s stiletto heels clack across the floor as she approaches me. Because of this distraction I probably don’t hear what I think I hear when the villain’s lips part and mouth what looks like the words,
I’m sorry.

My eyebrows draw together as I watch the villain slowly dying. I’m vaguely aware that Aurora is now only an arm’s length away until she starts to clap. It’s the most faked applause ever.

Clap. Clap. Clap.

I look at up at her, refusing to let her see the doubt in my eyes. “Well done, Maci. I’m impressed. You’ve beaten your opponent and are well on the way to killing her. But, before you do, and believe me I can’t
wait
until you do—” The villain writhes beneath my grip, her lips moving furiously in words I can’t understand. Aurora frowns and then continues, “I’d like to show you something.”