Renegade: The Empowered series prequel story Read online

  “Unfortunately, it’s because our time and resources have to go into a more important project, though obviously at first glance it looks like we are just idiots.” He smiled again. “Truth is, everyone else is busy helping with that other project and I haven’t had the time to truly devote myself to the hydroponics farm.”

  “I don’t know much about hydroponics, but this actually doesn’t look stupid.”

  He laughed softly. “I’m glad to hear that. To me it’s not elegant at all.” He pointed at the sunlamps. “Those should be running off the power grid, but what we have is actually taking power from the local electrical grid, and we don’t want to draw too much, or else we draw attention from those outside.”

  Why was he telling me all this? I was the new girl. He didn’t know me.

  “It might seem surprising that I’m sharing all this with you, having just met you, Mat.”

  I twitched. "Are you a mind reader?" I blurted out the question.

  Laugh lines crinkled around his eyes. “To the best of my knowledge, Mat, there are no telepaths. I’m just very good at reading body language and at anticipating questions.”

  “Because you are a genius?”

  He tilted his head. “People say that. It’s more that I see connections that others don’t. Or I make the connections before others.”

  It hit me then who he reminded me of with his dark hair, glasses, brains, and kind smile. My dad. I swallowed. My dad had been a scientist, too. He’d be about the Professor’s age if he had lived.

  “Are you all right, Mat?” the Professor asked, looking concerned.

  I changed the subject. “What’s the other project, the one everyone is helping with?”

  Tanya frowned at me. “Maybe you aren’t ready to know. The Professor has already told you a lot of stuff.” She shot him a look.

  He shook his head. “Mat is trustworthy,” he said. I suddenly felt like a little girl in front of the grade school principal, brought into the office for causing trouble and the principal surprises the girl by being kind and understanding.

  “You do?” I asked.

  He nodded. He rubbed his neck. “I must apologize, Mat,” he said.

  “What do you have to be sorry for?” I asked.

  “We looked into your background. We were watching you for weeks before Tanya initiated contact.”

  “You were spying on me.”

  “Surveilling,” Tanya corrected.

  “I call it spying.” I frowned. Watching me, from the shadows. I jerked my head at Gus, who looked down at his hands in a hurry. “You sent him.”

  “Not often. We need Gus for other activities.” The Professor snapped his fingers. “That reminds me!” He pulled a little notepad covered with math scribbles from his coverall pocket. He handed it to Gus. “Speaking of the other project, Gus, would you run this over there, and let them know I worked out a solution.”

  Gus nodded, glanced at me. “See you later, Mat,” he said, and headed off.

  I was still thinking about what Gus could do with his power. Snatch and grab. Burglary. A dude that could basically be invisible could pull off all kinds of crimes.

  “It was me, Mat.” Tanya lifted her chin. “I watched you.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “You?”

  “Do you know what her power is?” The Professor asked.

  “No, I don’t.” I glared at Tanya, who made me madder by shrugging. “Somebody didn’t bother to tell me.”

  “Tanya, that’s rude.”

  “Sorry, Professor.” She fiddled with one of her braids. She looked sorry. “I’m sorry, Mat.”

  “Well, what’s your freaking power?”

  “I’m a peeper.”

  Damn it. I'd heard a little about Peepers, but didn't know exactly how their power worked. "You spy on people, is that it?”

  She looked at her hands. “Sort of. It's more than that. I can see what someone else sees.”

  My jaw dropped. I suddenly felt ice cold. That was creepy. “What anybody can see? Oh my god.”

  She shook her head. “Not quite. I can see through the eyes of anyone I can see.”

  The Professor jumped in with more information. “If whomever she sees is watching or looking at someone else, she can then peep through that second person’s eyes. And if the second person is looking at a third person, she can peep through that third person’s eyes.”

  Tanya looked like she wished the Professor hadn't told me all that.

  Sounded like a way to make yourself sick to your stomach, too, with all that jerking around. It also still pissed me off. "Spying on me? For weeks?” I stepped close to her, glared down into her eyes.

  She blinked but didn't look away. "Yeah. I told you we had watched you for weeks when we met.”

  She had? I'd been so focused on meeting others like me, who weren't sanctioned, that I must have let that slide by. Not that I'd met any sanctioned Empowered. I hoped I never would.

  I took a deep breath. "Okay, fine. But don't spy on me again?"

  Tanya glanced past me at the Professor.

  "It's a fair request, Tanya," he said.

  She nodded. "Look, I was just doing what I had to do. You would have thought us idiots if we hadn't checked you out before approaching you."

  I blinked. "Yeah, I see your point. I'm sorry, I just have to watch my back."

  "We all do.” Her hand brushed my shoulder. “But we can do it together," she said.

  I rubbed my eye. Bad time to get a speck of dust or something in it.

  A tear ran down Tanya's cheek. She wiped it with the back of her hand.

  "It's okay if you hug each other," the Professor said. “Really.”

  I’d been a loner since I was kid. The few “friends” I had were more like people to hang with, to kill time when I wasn’t at home. But after my Empowering two months ago, I’d been more alone than I’d ever been. I couldn’t share my secret, couldn’t share my power, not with anyone.

  Until now. Tanya was like me. So was the Professor, and Gus. This was a place where I could be myself, and not hide my power.

  Our hug was awkward at first, then I squeezed her and she squeezed me back.

  That was the moment I realized she and I were friends. Really friends.

  The Professor smiled at us. "Welcome to Hideaway, Mat," he said. “I hope you’ll stay.”

  I started to say, I hope so, too, but a radio squawked. The Professor picked up a walkie-talkie from a work bench. “Excuse me,” he said, and went over to a corner of the room. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, or hear the person on the other end.

  I raised an eyebrow at Tanya. She shrugged. “It’s always something,” she said.

  The Professor returned, laying the walkie-talkie back on the workbench. “I’m sorry, but I have an assignment for Tanya.”

  “Now?” She didn’t sound happy at all.

  “I’m afraid so.” He looked at me. “It shouldn’t take too long.”

  She hugged me again. “Sorry about this,” she whispered in my ear, then marched off.

  Figures that once I get a real friend, someone like me, she has to go away. At least it was only for a little while.

  Chapter 4

  The Professor took Gus and me to meet the others. Hideaway was a maze of rooms and tunnels. The Professor told me the history of this place while we walked. Turned out it had been built by a guy called Roland Armitage. Roland had made his money building freighters in World War II. After the war he became paranoid about nuclear war and built this fallout shelter complex for his family, friends, and employees. He kept it a secret from them. Roland must have been the type who loved springing surprises on people.

  When the Three Days War broke out Roland hid down in the complex without telling his family or friends, except for his son and a few trusted employees. Apparently he’d become even more paranoid, and didn’t want to be cooped up in an underground bunker with people he thought wanted to kill him. Crazy.

  Sounded like being rich wa
s a big pain in the ass for him.

  “Hideaway was Roland’s name for this place,” the Professor said. There were bedrooms with bunk beds, a cafeteria, a library, a gym, a machine shop, a lab, a place that must have been an armory but the gun racks were empty. “Roland’s long gone now, but his son is with us.”

  “He is?” I asked. “Is he Empowered?”

  “No, but he’s still special. Toby cares about people, normals and Empowereds alike. He shares my dream of a sanctuary for outcasts and Renegades.” He smiled.

  “Renegades?”

  “That’s what Tanya calls us. The Renegades. I tried to tell her that such names belonged with supervillains, and not people trying to create their own home, but she wouldn’t let it go.” He laughed. It was happy, gentle laugh.

  Renegades, yeah that fit Tanya. Maybe it fit me, too. I smiled to myself.

  The Professor took me to a room that looked like a lounge, with lots of comfy chairs and a big sofa. There were little miniature trees—Ruth had told me they were called Bonsai—sitting on end tables. An old woman with stringy white hair sat in a big, black leather comfy chair. My skin had started tingling as soon as we neared the room. It was funny. When you were around another Empowered for a while, the tingling faded away. But when you met another one, it started up again.

  “She’s Empowered,” I whispered to the Professor.

  He nodded. The woman lifted her head. Her eyes were unfocused. She was blind.

  “Hello, Professor,” she said.

  A blind Empowered. You never saw that on TV. They said Empowered healed faster, and were in perfect health. Being blind wasn’t.

  He knelt beside her, and she brushed a hand against his cheek.

  “Hello, Sissy,” he said.

  She smiled. “You must have brought Mathilda Brandt with you.”

  The Professor motioned for me to come over. I swallowed. Something about her gave me the creeps.

  She was old-older than Ruth, maybe a lot older- and Ruth wasn’t young. I forced myself to walk over to her chair. There was an ancient turntable on a little end table next to her, with a flower-shaped funnel attached to it, and a hand crank. A Victrola? I’d seen a picture of one once in a book. The album on the turntable was Four Seasons, by some guy named Vivaldi. The Victrola didn’t have all the fancy knobs and dials Ruth’s turntable did.

  Sissy reached out and grabbed for my hand. I started to move away, but stopped when the Professor shook his head.

  Her fingers grabbed at mine, squeezed. She was strong for being so old. She ran her thumb over my palm, and I shivered.

  “You are the one I felt,” she said.

  Felt? “I don’t know what you mean,” I said. My stomach twisted as she kept tracing my palm with her thumb.

  “I feel other Empowered, Mathilda Brandt. This is my power. I felt you.”

  My shiver became a shudder.

  “I felt your Empowering.” She closed her eyes. “It felt like flowering.” She let go of my hand and I stepped back.

  “I'm sure you think I'm a crazy old woman,” she said. She laughed softly. “I am, a little, but it did feel like that to me.”

  I didn't know what to say, so I kept quiet.

  “People who see things differently are often considered crazy by those who don’t," the Professor said. He glanced at me. “I suspect you don't understand what Sissy is telling you.”

  I nodded, and he smiled. It wasn't a smile that said he thought I was stupid, or ignorant. It was a kind smile, the kind that made me almost embarrassed. The fact was, I did think Sissy was crazy. Actually, I thought everyone here, except maybe Tanya, was nuts.

  “But when you have more experience as an Empowered, you'll understand that we see things differently than other people,” he said.

  I tugged at his sleeve and pulled him a few steps away so I could whisper. “So, Sissy's looking for others like me. Like us?”

  “Yes. We need more help in our work here.”

  “There are no more,” Sissy said, making me jump. She laughed again. “My eyes aren't so good anymore, but my ears are like a twenty-year-olds. Sharp, especially when the discussion is about me.”

  “You mean I'm the last Empowered?" I shook my head. “I can't be.”

  The soft laugh again. “The last one we'll see,” she said. I suddenly felt cold.

  “Then why keep looking?”

  “Because Sissy can't see the future,” the Professor said. “No one can.”

  “True,” Sissy said. “I just have a hunch.”

  I shook my head. “I don't understand.”

  “It's just a feeling I have, Mathilda.” Only Ruth called me Mathilda, but Sissy seemed, well, like Ruth, only less severe. More at peace. “There's more,” she said. “I also feel you will do great things.”

  I laughed. “Me? I control plants. Big deal.”

  “It's a far bigger deal than you realize.” She looked at the Professor. “Have you told her?”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Told me what?”

  The Professor gave me a measuring look. “We would like you to help us. We need your help with the hydroponics.”

  “I don't know anything about mechanical stuff.”

  “To help grow the plants. Using your power.”

  Was that why they wanted me here? To use my power? They didn’t care about me. This was crazyville after all. A bunch of people living underneath a derelict building on the east bank. I frowned. And they wanted me because I could grow plants. Why else would they want a teenaged girl? Tanya was peeper. Probably wanted her because she could do lookout stuff, or something.

  “I’m sorry,” the Professor said. His voice was soothing, which only irritated me more. “This is all rather sudden. You see some more of Hideaway, and think about it. I’ll have Gus show you around.”

  Gus? I didn’t want to spend more time with him than I had to.

  He smiled. “Gus is a good soul,” he said. “He just doesn’t dress like one.”

  “Aren’t you afraid the government will find this place?” I blurted out the words.

  “I have a plan to make this place truly hidden, and live up to its name, Hideaway.”

  He was so confident. Hope fluttered up like a butterfly inside me. To truly have our own place, away from the world. It sounded wonderful. It sounded impossible, too, but I could do things now that were impossible for me two months ago, before I Empowered, so, why not a place of our own, hidden away from the world?

  Gus took me around Hideaway. We went to the game room, where people played board games, played cards, smiled, and acted like a big family. It made me wish I could be a part of it. And I could, if I wanted. But, as pissed as I got with Ruth and the twins, they were my family.

  “How did you wind up here, Gus?” I asked him after he’d shown me the rooms where people studied, and worked on projects—everything from sewing to writing to redoing the rooms themselves.

  Gus shuffled his feet, looked down at his hands. “I’d been on the streets for a long time.”

  “In Portland?” We stopped outside of a room with a medical cross on the door.

  “Care clinic,” he said. We walked on.

  “Here in Portland?” I repeated.

  “All over,” he said. He looked up at me. “Since I became Empowered when I was fourteen. I got by. I was an orphan. He plucked at his field jacket. “This belonged to someone who took care of me.” He lifted his chin, and for an instant he looked defiant.

  “How’d you meet the Professor?”

  He looked down at his hands. “I’d been poking around here, looking for a place to hole up, and the Professor found me.”

  “How do you find someone who can be invisible?” I asked. I imagined the Professor putting cans of paint above doors, or maybe some kind of automated sprayer that went off when you crossed a laser, something cool like that.

  “Books,” Gus said.

  “Books?” That was crazy.

  “Yeah, I like books, okay?” That was t
he closest Gus had come to getting pissed off.

  “Okay.”

  Gus took me to a tiny room with a sleeping bag unrolled on the cement floor, and an old electric lantern on a wooden crate. There were some ancient newsmagazines. “You can stay here for tonight.”

  “Thanks.”

  “See you in the morning,” he said, and left.

  I suddenly realized how tired I was.

  The next morning Gus was outside when I opened the door. He took me to the cafeteria, which looked like something out of a museum, with old formica counter tops, and what looked like a milkshake machine. People sat in old-style chairs at round tables painted orange.

  My skin didn’t tingle. They were all normals. They glanced at me, but no one was rude.

  Gus took me over to a table where a big, bald dude in a buttoned up pea coat sat reading a book. The title said Bleak House. On the table was a gray chauffeur’s cap.

  “Like the book, Driver-man?” Gus asked the guy.

  The big dude put a bookmark in the book and closed it. “There’s a lot to it,” he said.

  Gus grinned. “I knew you’d like it!” He looked at me. “Oh, this is Mathilda Brandt.”

  I scowled at Gus. “It’s Mat,” I said.

  “Sure thing,” the big guy said.

  “And you are?” I asked him.

  “Just Driver-man.”

  More crazyville. There was an awkward pause, then Gus said, “I got more Dickens, Driver-man, when you finish Bleak House.”

  Driver-man nodded “Cool.” He looked at me. “You read, kid?”

  “Not really.”

  “That’s a shame. You should give it a try.”

  “Maybe someday,” I said.

  “No time like the present,” he said. “Well, nice meeting you, Mat. See you around.” He obviously wanted to get back to his book.

  I nodded. Gus and I went up to the counter to get food.

  I had an insta-meal breakfast, scrambled eggs and turkey sausage, with peaches. Gus said that’s mostly what they ate, at least until they could grow their own food. He said it like he wasn’t trying to put any guilt on me. Gus didn’t seem like the type who guilted people. Not on purpose.