Super: Underground: Book 2 in the Super: Series (2 page)

Although she had no way to tell for sure, Lex started to get worried as time seemed to drag on. The darkness seemed interminable now, and finally she tried hard to see again, to get oriented, and gradually saw her feet on the wooden floor once more, seeming to materialize under her from the blackness. The light was even dimmer than it had been, and Lex felt weary in a way she never had before in her life. She started to get scared but instead sat for a few moments, getting her breathing steady, until she felt she was ready to stand again and tried to think. How should the form end? From what Lex had worked up so far, she had been able to keep most of her father’s attacks at bay as well as attack his weak points. But, she found she had no idea of where to go next.

“I wish Mr. Chen was here,” she murmured to herself as she began running through her form as it was so far, hoping it would give her inspiration about how to end it.

As she turned naturally during part of the form, Lex stopped suddenly, surprised to see Mr. Chen standing there. He nodded to her.

“Please continue, Lex. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

Lex felt a smile bursting onto her face and nodded at him, picking up near to where she left off. She worked the form through what she’d put together so far, then stopped, looking at her teacher.

“That’s all I have so far. I don’t know how to end it, yet.”

He looked at her and nodded. “Well, I think what you have so far is a good combination of elements. May I make a few suggestions while I think about what might be needed for a strong finish?”

Lex nodded, and the two of them went through a few of the sections together, Mr. Chen making a number of small suggestions that Lex felt made the form flow much better. Afterwards, they were both silent for a moment, and then Mr. Chen spoke.

“My first thought is that when a man goes through life trying never to bend to the forces around him, eventually he will be driven to kneel before them. The wiser man flows with the forces in his life, figuring out how to gently push himself where he wants to go.”

Looking at him speculatively for a moment, Lex’s mind started working.
Forced to kneel…
Suddenly, however, a wave of exhaustion overtook her. She staggered as she looked back at Mr. Chen.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I’m so tired.”

“Why don’t you rest for a while, Lex,” Mr. Chen said, his eyes infinitely sad. “You’ll probably feel better when you wake up.”

“Mr. Chen, what’s wrong with me?” Lex asked, her voice sounding slurred even to her own ears.

Mr. Chen just looked at her then, assisting her in reaching the floor safely before shrugging one shoulder and shaking his head gently.

The idea that her teacher didn’t even know chilled Lex. “I’ll get back up in a little while. You’ll see. I’ll beat him this time. I won’t let you down,” she said after a moment, hoping her voice sounded surer than she felt.

“You have done nothing but make me proud from the first day I started to teach you, Lex,” he replied quietly as he faded from view when the light dimmed.

Lex could feel herself smiling even as oblivion overtook her.

Sometime later, she came to the realization that she was just floating.
So peaceful
, Lex thought, feeling almost insubstantial, as if she could dissolve in the constant blackness surrounding her.

No
, a feeling of certainty came to the fore.
I won’t let go yet
.

The struggle seemed to go on forever once again, and Lex felt exhausted by the time she could see her bare feet on the wooden boards. She fell to her knees and rested a while, comforted by listening to her own breathing, hearing it even out and become steadier.

“OK,” she said to no one as she stood. “Time to end it.”

Lex ran through the form as far as she’d completed it and then went through a quick set of steps. She used sticking hands to control her opponent’s punches, and then came down with a sharp stomp on the side of his knee. It all ended up with her standing over her opponent, controlling his arms with a joint lock while he knelt on the ground.

She smiled to herself, satisfied with what she’d put together, and started from the middle again to practice the end part. As she turned while ending it, Lex looked up to see her father beginning to materialize from the darkness surrounding her. She just stood ready then, all her muscles relaxed as she waited for him to finish appearing, watching him as he solidified and smirked at her.

“I’m here to give you another lesson, Alex! Aren’t you glad?”

“Don’t fucking call me that,” Lex snarled, a sudden anger flaring as she waited for him to make the first move.

She anticipated his charge at her and met him, avoiding the bulk of his blows and landing her own strikes to pressure points and other vulnerable areas. This seemed to infuriate him, and her father started shouting and screaming obscenities and insults at her.

“Hey,” Lex finally said, the quiet yet commanding tone of her voice enough to make her father stop in his tracks. “Stop having a fit and fight. I didn’t think you were still two years old.”

The look that her father gave her then almost made Lex smirk. She knew that if he could have reached out and killed her at that moment, he would have done it. He came at her with a wordless yell and she found herself easily evading what he had to throw at her. Lex moved surely, her breath coming easily and rhythmically.

He seemed to fall into every trap she set, and Lex either danced gracefully away from his blows or controlled them so that the force went past her. She became worried, though, as each movement seemed to drain a little of her strength, but at length the final sequence neared. By that time, Lex observed her father breathing hard and that the movement in his right arm and left leg seemed impaired. Lex herself breathed calmly and had suffered little damage, but her weariness continued to increase and she hoped she could keep herself moving as quickly as necessary. She waited as her father seemed to collect himself to come at her again. Controlling his movements with sticking hands and feet, Lex barely managed to work his arms into the correct position, and after she stomped on the side of his knee, she joint locked one of his elbows, forcing him to retain his kneeling position.

“Don’t make me kick you over and step on your neck,” Lex said with quiet authority.

Her father didn’t reply for a few moments as he knelt, almost panting, but finally spat out, “You always were a little monster, you bitch.”

Something in Lex seemed to snap then, and she felt her stomach drop as a tidal wave of rage and adrenaline started to pump through her. She leaned forward a little, causing her father to wince as she pushed a little harder on his arm, and got her mouth close to his ear before shouting back at him.

“I was a little girl, you asshole! I had to depend on you to take care of me. Instead, all you did was beat up on me and tell me how worthless I was! I loved you and looked up to you, but you tried to thrash the life out of me and make me feel like I was worse than nothing! YOU’RE the monster, you goddamned piece of trash!”

As Lex bent over her father, nearly screaming, an amazing thing happened. Instead of yelling back at her, he bowed his head and cringed, almost looking as if he were trying to get away from her words. Lex paused and then blinked rapidly as the dim light in the room quickly went to almost blinding. Suddenly, her hands were empty and she stumbled, then came to rest in a sitting position on the floor.

She put a hand over her eyes as the light continued getting brighter. After a few moments, it felt as if she was lying down, so Lex struggled to a sit up again. The exhaustion that had fled as she yelled at her father had returned in force, which made it a difficult task, but eventually she made it.

Lex tried blinking her eyes to clear her vision, but the light seemed intensely bright, so she squinted against it instead to see her surroundings. She sat in a small bed, and to her delight she realized she could see everything: the covers, her own hands, and even the lumps that were her feet. As her eyes traveled up her arms, Lex frowned to see a needle taped into one of them, and she visually followed the attached tube up to an IV bag. As her eyes adjusted further, Lex spotted Casey sitting in a chair along the wall a few feet away, engrossed in a paperback. Lex tried to call out to her friend, but when she opened her mouth, she found her throat so dry that she couldn’t make a sound. Swallowing a few times with difficulty, she felt relieved to find it seemed to help.

“Casey,” Lex finally managed in a wispy, dry-sounding voice. “Why is it so bright in here?”

At the sound of her name, Casey’s head whipped around to stare, the book falling forgotten to the floor. She arrived by Lex’s bed in a second, closing the blinds at the window over her head. When Casey turned back towards the bed, Lex could see her friend crying.

“Are you OK?” Lex asked with concern. “What’s wrong?”

Casey ran a hand under her eyelids and smiled. “Count on you to be worrying about everyone else. I’m fine, just surprised is all. How are
you
feeling?”

Thinking about it for a moment before answering, Lex responded, “Tired and thirsty, but OK otherwise.”

Casey nodded, smiling now. “OK, I’ll get you some water.” Then, she stopped in her tracks as she had another thought. “Now that I think about it, I’ve got to talk to Lily first. Let me get Riss so she can get you some water. She’ll want to see you anyway, once I tell her.”

Casey’s smile threatened to take her face over as she almost ran out the doorway.

Chapter 22: Aftermath

Lex looked around a little after Casey left, and saw a small room and the tiny bed she lay in. The windows overhead spoke of being in a basement, but Lex couldn’t place the room as anywhere she knew or had seen before. The walls had been painted off-white a long time ago, but now looked more yellow than white, marked with the occasional furniture scrape. Other than Casey’s chair and the bed, Lex saw no other furniture in the room.

Gingerly, Lex tried to remember what had happened, and finally the incident at the train station came back to her. She remembered being sick, Casey picking her up and carrying her, and then nothing, just some weird dreams. Shaking it off, Lex moved to get out of bed, thinking that she should probably get ready. Although she couldn’t place their location, Lex figured they hadn’t gotten far since she fell ill and since they were in touch with Lily.
All three of us should get moving as soon as possible,
she thought,
so we don’t put anyone in more danger.

When she tried to rise from the bed, however, Lex found that she couldn’t even sit up very far until her muscles started to shake and another wave of exhaustion hit her. Casey and Riss came into the room at that moment, and the blonde rushed to Lex’s side.

“Whoa, tiger, why don’t you wait until Lily gets here? She wants to have a good look at you to make sure you’re OK. She said it was fine to give you some water, but drink it really slowly, all right? You’ve been having a lot of trouble with your stomach.”

At that moment, Lex found she could only focus on the small glass of water in Casey’s hand. With trembling hands, she guided it to her mouth and tried not to gulp it down despite her raging thirst. After a moment, she began to think about the rest of what Casey had said.

“Lily’s coming here?” Lex asked, bringing the glass of water to rest in her lap. “We shouldn’t do that. It will put her in a lot of danger, and—”

“Lex,” Casey said, kneeling by her bedside to look her in the eye. “Don’t worry, it will be OK. I know you probably have some questions, but Lily wanted us to wait until she gets here to start talking about everything. Can you wait a little while longer? We’ll answer everything then.”

“OK,” Lex said with a confused frown, and settled back in bed to sip her water again. She leaned forward as Casey arranged the pillows behind her to support her back, and looked over at Riss, who’d sat in the corner a few feet away, legs crossed tailor-style under her and a laptop in her lap. Lex had felt her friend looking intently at her face, but Riss glanced away when Lex looked over in her direction.

“How’s it going, Riss?” Lex asked, causing the other woman to look up to meet her eye.

Riss shrugged. “Lots better than it was. Lily should be here soon, maybe another fifteen minutes.”

Lex nodded and slowly finished the last of her water, pleased that her stomach seemed fine as she did. Closing her eyes, Lex massaged her eyelids gently, then her eyebrow ridge. The whole area felt tight and hot.

Opening her eyes sometime later as she heard a noise, Lex blinked as she saw Lily bustle in, dressed in business clothes and a lab coat. Lily stared straight into Lex’s eyes for a moment, as if confirming something, then turned to Casey and Riss.

“All right, ladies. Out. Once I’m done, we can all talk.”

The two women filed out quietly and closed the door behind them, and Lex thought she could hear someone settle in the hallway just beyond the door. Lily started taking a number of instruments out of a small satchel she’d carried in with her and laid them out on a cloth on top of the chair Casey had been sitting in. Finally, she scrubbed up with hand sanitizer and turned to Lex.

“I’m going to check you out to see how you’re doing,” Lily said, donning her stethoscope and lifting Lex to put it on her back. “Breathe normally for me.”

An hour later, Lex felt exhausted again, if only because of the amount of medical observation that had been done on her. Lily nodded and actually looked pleased as she pulled her stethoscope off and put it back in the bag.

“Everything looks pretty good, all things considered,” Lily told Lex. “I can go through what I think are going to be problems for you, then we can review any other questions you have. Do you mind if I call Casey and Riss back in? We’re going to have to rely on them to help take care of you for a while, so they’ll need to know this, too.”

Lex looked back with bemusement before nodding, not trusting her voice at the moment.
What the hell happened while I was asleep?