Renegade: The Empowered series prequel story Read online

  “It’s my hair and I can wear it how I want.” My chest tightened. She’d told me she wouldn’t try to tell me how to dress or how to wear my hair. I liked it down over my face. Next she’d say she didn’t like that I rouged my cheeks. Too bad. That was our thing now, today.

  “Okay. Fine. But what about your power? You only have two choices, Mattie.” She was so matter-of-fact, like she didn’t have an opinion about what I should do. Just laying out the facts for me. Like I needed to be told them.

  “I know!” I shouted. “I know what my choices are.” I thought she’d understand. She had just said it was my choice, but it’s obvious she didn’t think it really was.

  She looked at me calmly. “You have only two. You either join the Hero Council, and get sent to their private school—“

  “Stupid creche,” I interrupted. “I know about that from TV! I’d never go.” Supposedly when you became Empowered you got sent there to be trained. That’s what they said. But getting Empowered was like getting struck by lightning, a million to one odds.

  “Then you’ll have to foreswear using your power. Sign a binding legal document to that effect.”

  She sounded like a lawyer. “How do you know so much about this?”

  “I watch TV, too,” she said. “Which is it going to be?”

  I ground my teeth. “I don’t have to decide yet.”

  She gave me a hard look. “You can’t wait much longer. You need to make up your mind, before they find out what you’ve been doing.”

  “I haven’t been doing anything!”

  She shook her head. She suddenly looked really old, and even more disappointed.

  I scrunched up my face and stormed upstairs to my room.

  I spent the day there. Thinking. I took a nap around lunchtime, but even then I was thinking. Thinking about Tanya and what she’d said. About a place to belong.

  By dinnertime I was ready to eat a horse. The twins had set the kitchen table for dinner when I came down. Ruth always insisted on setting the table. Said it was a thing from when she’d been in the Army.

  Ruth had baked chicken in the oven. She turned from the stove, looked at me. “Bet you are ready to eat,” she said.

  “Yeah.” I swallowed, still thinking. I had a chance to go be with others like me. Not be in the blue jumpsuit brigade, not give up my power, but be free.

  I needed to find out for myself what Tanya meant. I needed to call her and see.

  “I’ve been thinking about what you said,” I told Ruth.

  She raised an eyebrow. “And?”

  “I’ll decide soon, like you asked.”

  She looked disappointed. Probably had hoped I’d have decided by now. “Okay, but you can’t wait long.”

  “I know.” My voice was soft.

  Dinner was weird. The twins kept looking at me with big eyes, like I was going to sprout wings or start breathing fire.

  When we finished, I pushed back my chair. “I want to see my friends tonight.”

  Usually Ruth would give me the third degree about who, where, when, and why, but she didn’t this time. “Okay, but call if you are going to stay over at a friend’s house.”

  I nodded. “I will.”

  Ruth had given me a cellphone of my own, a little silver number with a red screen. At 8PM on the nose I called the number on the slip of paper.

  Tanya answered. “Hello, this is Tanya.”

  “It’s me, Mat.”

  “Decided to join us?” She sounded happy.

  “No, but I want to see what it’s all about.”

  “Don’t know if we can do that.” Now she sounded unhappy. But I wasn’t about to go with people I didn’t know.

  “Sorry, but I can’t say for sure yet,” I said.

  “Fine. Let me call you back. What’s your number?”

  I told her. Ten minutes later my little phone buzzed.

  “Meet me at the Trailways station downtown, at 10PM.”

  That meant a bus ride on my own, but okay.

  “See you then,” I said.

  The Trailways Bus station was a big druggie hangout. Lots of crooks, pickpockets mostly, hung out there. Ruth had warned me off like a dozen times after I turned fifteen and got to go on my own downtown.

  There were a bunch of people standing outside, smoking. A couple of guys eyed me, and someone whistled. Stupid. My bangs were down over my eyes, so you couldn’t really see my face. I wore cargo pants and a loose t-shirt too big for me, because I didn’t like dudes like these jerks giving me the once-over.

  There was some kind of spikey weed growing in the bare ground by the building. I stepped over to it. There were cracks in the sidewalk.

  “Hey, babe, looking for a fun time?” A guy’s voice said from behind me.

  I turned, kept my back to the building. Some random crook stood there, in a silk sportcoat and shirt. His polished shoes gleamed. He grinned a shark’s grin, all teeth.

  “Nope,” I said. “Not interested.”

  He tilted his head. “Come on, babe, it will be fun, I promise. And I always deliver on my promises.”

  I sent my power into the spikey weed, down to its roots. I didn’t know how my power worked, just that it did. The dude stepped closer. His smile got bigger, which made him look like an idiot. Did that work on girls, really?

  The spikey weed shivered, and sang a little song like rain drops spattering on a window. It wanted to grow.

  I held up a hand. “Back off, Jack.”

  “The name’s Riley.” He put his hands on his hips. “I promise you’ll never forget me.”

  That was the truth.

  Weeds loved to grow. I found sprouts from the plant in the earth had them suck in water and food from the soil. Told them to grow, grow, and grow some more. Two new spikey weeds thrust up between Riley’s legs, another three between us, and one behind him.

  I sidestepped along the building, away from him. The idiot tried to follow me, and snagged his slacks on the weeds’ little spikes. He winced and looked down.

  “What the hell? Where did those come from?”

  “Guess you should watch where you are going, jerk.” I shoved him. He stumbled and fell backwards into more spikey weeds.

  He yelled. “Fuck!”

  “We’d better go now,” Gus said beside me, suddenly materializing.

  I jumped, heart racing.

  “Follow me.” Gus turned and headed to a beat-up van parked in a spot up the street. It looked like a perv mobile, tinted windows.

  Behind us Riley was cursing. “Goddam bitch’s got some kind of power. You see these weeds. Ow!”

  I grinned and followed Gus. Maybe Riley would think twice next time before he hassled a stranger. Too much to hope that he’d stop hitting on women, but maybe this would leave a bad taste in his mouth.

  “You see her,” Riley yelled. Shit. “Over there by that van!” He was pointing at us. Me. Gus had vanished. The van’s side door was open. I got in, slid it shut.

  Tanya was behind the wheel, scowling at me. “You idiot,” she said. “That was a dumb thing to do.”

  Gus appeared in the passenger seat next to Tanya. There was a bucket seat mounted on the wall. The rest of the van was weird. There were bookshelves mounted on the walls next to the sideseat and across from it, filled with books and magazine boxes with magazines. Titles like Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Organic Gardening, etc.

  I buckled in, as Tanya pulled out and drove down the street.

  “That was dumb, Mat,” Gus said. He wore a knitted orange cap, and his long hair actually looked like it had been combed.

  “The guy had it coming. What was I supposed to do?”

  “Not give away who you are, for starters,” Tanya said between gritted teeth. “We don’t need to be noticed. Not ever.”

  I swallowed. Okay, so I had been stupid. “Sorry. I didn’t think.”

  “You got that right,” Tanya said. She wore little red ribbons around each of her knobby braids, making her look li
ke a crazy and short Cinderella. She was actually pretty, but even pretty people look ugly when they scowl.

  “It won’t happen again,” I said. I couldn’t screw up my chance of being with people like me. Actually having a place to be for once.

  “Fine. Got it.” She kept her eyes on the road. We drove across the Hawthorne Bridge.

  I glimpsed a white shape floating in the night sky to the south. I jerked in my seat.

  A Hero Council blimp. The underside was lit by running lights. I could just make out the blue Hero Council globe and the gold HC letters, ten feet high.

  “Survelliance blimp.” My voice was shaky. I hadn’t expected to see that.

  “Now you know why I’m so pissed, Mat,” Tanya said. “The three of us could have been found out. There could be a locator on that blimp.”

  My mouth was suddenly dry. “Are locators real?” Locators were in those dumb shows on TV, looking for Empowereds. I figured that was just all b.s. for a TV show. I shivered.

  “They are real. There are very few,” Tanya said. “Of course, there are very few of us, too.”

  “How many of us are there?” I asked her.

  “You’ll have to ask the Professor.”

  “Who’s he?” We crossed Union and then turned on Grand. We were in the rundown district if there ever was one. The buildings had mesh on the ground floor windows, and lots of the windows were cracked. Old cars and trucks were parked on the street, junkers that even desperate crooks might think twice about stealing.

  “You’ll meet him soon.” Tanya went down a side street, pulled up beside a fenced off building. “No trespassing” signs hung on the cyclone fence. The gate was padlocked. The place was dark, windows boarded up.

  “Looks like a new location for Creepyville,” I said.

  “What’s that?” Gus asked.

  Tanya snickered. “You need to get out more, dude. It’s a haunted house.”

  “Oh,” Gus said. I snickered, just a little.

  We got out of the van. Tanya unlocked the padlock. We went through the gate and she locked it behind her. The click made my heart jump a little. Locked in.

  There had to be another way out of here, because having to unlock a gate every time would be a real pain, especially if there was a fire or the cops showed up. We went up the steps to the front door. Double doors, and locked. Paper covered the inside of the window next to the doors.

  I stopped. “I need to make a call.”

  Tanya gave me a look that said she thought I was nuts.

  “My grandma is going to worry.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Hey, it’s the truth,” I said, my voice getting heated.

  She raised her hands. “Okay, be a little girl.” She and Gus stood off to one side.

  I called home. Ava answered. “Is Ruth there?”

  “She went to the senior center for game night.”

  Great. Or maybe this was better, as long as Ava didn’t screw up the message. “Tell her I’m staying at a friend’s for a sleep over.”

  “Which one?” she asked. Of course my sister would ask.

  I thought hard. “Sarah’s grandma’s place. I might get invited to go to the beach, but I’ll call tomorrow.

  “Dang, we never get to go the beach,” Ava said.

  “You’ll tell her, right?”

  “Okay.” I hung up.

  Tanya still looked annoyed. “Finished?” she asked sweetly.

  “Yes, thanks.” I could be just as sarcastic.

  Tanya palmed a penlight and unlocked the right-side door. We went inside.

  It was pitch-black inside when she closed the door, except for the little beam from her penlight.

  I swallowed, trying to moisten my mouth, but it stayed parched.

  What if this was a trap? What if Tanya and Gus were setting me up? I looked around frantically, heart pounding. Then I balled my fists. No sign of Gus, but I’d deck him if he came at me.

  The penlight bobbed across the blackness. Suddenly there was a hum and overhead lights flickered on.

  We stood in what must have been a lobby, once upon a time. Now it was just a big, empty space with high ceilings and cracked linoleum flooring.

  “No reason to freak out,” Tanya said. A mocking grin played at the edges of her mouth.

  I dug my finger nails into my palms. “I wasn’t freaking,” I said.

  “No, of course not.” The grin grew. “You’re going to break your teeth if you keep doing that.”

  I relaxed my jaw. Fine. Whatever. “So what now?”

  “Elevator,” she said. We headed around a corner to an elevator. “Need to have the lights on to power the elevator. And yeah, there’s a key for the lights,” she said.

  “Seems like a lot of rigamarole just to take the elevator.”

  “Professor’s idea,” Tanya said. Gus suddenly became visible next to her, making me jump.

  I scowled at him. “Geez, dude, don’t do that!”

  He looked away from my glare. “Sorry.”

  Tanya laughed silently, which only made me more annoyed.

  Chapter 3

  The elevator took us to a concrete basement. The ceiling lights were the kind with wire coverings over bare bulbs.

  "Must be a pain to change," I said as we walked down the empty, echoing corridors, passing locked metal doors. "What is this place?"

  “It’s an old fallout shelter," Gus said.

  "Like from the 1950s?"

  "And later."

  "But America won the Three Days War." Okay, if you call being the country least devastated outside of the rest of the Americas, Australia, Persia, and India, winning. School history classes went on and on about the war. Millions of people had died. Ruth talked about it when we were younger, and still talked about it. "Why would you expand a fallout shelter afterwards?” I asked.

  Gus glanced at Tanya. Tanya smirked. ”You'll have to--"

  "Ask the professor," I said at the same time as her. She laughed. "You're catching on. Cool.” She gave me an honest-to-god grin without any sarcasm.

  I smiled back. This was a lot better than fighting. I looked around. ”Where is everybody?”

  “Not here,” she said with a straight face.

  “Funny.”

  She shrugged. “It’s game night." She caught my expression. “Really. They’re in the rec room, which is a few corridors over from this one.” We passed a big set of double doors with a keypad next to them.

  “Huh. Must be going around.” First Ruth, now the secret dungeon people were playing games.

  “Games are good for the mind and the soul,” Tanya said, sounding like she was quoting someone. I could guess who.

  I raised my eyebrows. “The Professor, right?”

  She grinned. “Yup.” We turned a corner. A big set of metal double doors were at the other end of the short hall. There was a keypad by the door. Tanya walked up to it, and I followed.

  "How big is this place?” I asked.

  Tanya tapped on the keypad. A green light blinked above the door and there was a loud click.

  "Big," she said, pushing open the right side door. Gus and I followed her inside

  She wasn't joking about how big this place was. The room we walked into was the size of my school gym. The ceiling was like twelve feet high, sun lamps hanging from it. The room was filled with rows of trestle tables with long metal planters on them, slender rubber hoses running across each of the planters. Tomatoes, potatoes and other types grew from the planters. They didn't look so good though. The plants whimpered in my head, and my stomach clenched. I yanked my power back inside me.

  I coughed. Closed my eyes. ”You’re trying to grow plants underground?”

  "Yup. It's not going so well."

  "No kidding." Why the hell would they put plants down here, when the artificial light sucked and the air was dry?

  She frowned. "Hey, we are trying. We need our own food source.”

  I glared at Gus. "Don't tell me
they have you working on the plants,” I said in a low voice.

  Gus winced. “I help with the drip system."

  "Maybe this professor you keep talking about isn't so smart after all.” Just then, my skin started tingling.

  "You may well be correct about that," a man's voice said from off to my right.

  A guy had stood up from behind a big crate which had a planter on it. Looked like they were trying to grow a miniature apple tree. The apple tree looked sick. The guy wore coveralls and yellow garden gloves, and had horn-rimmed glasses. His black hair was slicked back.

  "I'm the Professor," he said. He smiled encouragingly at me. He reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t remember who.

  I opened my mouth to say my name but Tanya jumped in first. “Vine,” she said. “She’s called Vine.”

  I shot her a look but the Professor didn’t seem to notice. He nodded. “Ah, excellent, an Empowered name. It’s good to honor our predecessors.”

  “What’s yours?” I asked him.

  “The Professor, of course.”

  The feeling he reminded me of someone I knew grew stronger. “That’s an Empowered name?” Seemed like cheating.

  He laughed. “Yes, it’s a title, but titles can work as Empowered names.” His eyes seemed to look right into me. Maybe he knew I didn’t like “Vine” but could also see that Tanya and I liked each other. Didn’t want to start an argument. My head started to spin. All that from one look. “You are probably wondering why a supposedly brilliant person has jerry-rigged such a joke of a hydroponics farm.”

  Farm. That was the joke. I didn’t know much about gardening, but I’d picked up enough, because Ruth was big into it.

  I brushed my bangs away from eyes. I suddenly felt rude covering my face like that. Plus, it was better to see everything. “Yeah, I had kinda wondered.”

  Power cords ran to a generator chugging away in a corner. There was a gasoline can next to it. There was a water tank, a big one, like a hundred gallons, with drip hoses running from it to the planters. Bags of different kinds of fertilizer were stacked against a wall. It may have been thrown together, but the “farm” wasn’t stupid. “Don’t take anything at first glance,” Ruth always said.