Renegade: The Empowered series prequel story Read online

  He sounded so sure of himself.

  “How do you know? We’re just in a random car!” My voice cracked.

  He ignored me.

  “He used to be a cop,” Tanya said from the backseat. She cradled the Lolit’s head and shoulders in her lap, while Gus held her legs in his.

  It hit me. We were going to get caught, and end up in prison. I’d be locked away for good.

  Shit.

  “Can you get us someplace where there’s more plants?” I asked Driver-man.

  He cranked the wheel, and the car shot downhill. “Gotta get to a dumpier neighborhood first.”

  I had an idea. We got down the hill, and turned onto a gravel road. The car began bouncing.

  “This isn’t a dead-end, is it?” I asked him.

  His eyebrows rose behind his sunglasses. “I look that stupid, kid? No, it isn’t.”

  A cloud of dust rose behind us. Damn it. We were leaving a freaking trail that pointed right to us.

  His hands clutched the steering wheel. “Whatever you have in mind, you’d better do it soon, or else we’re about out of options.”

  We passed a yard overgrown with blackberry vines. “Stop!” I yelled.

  He stopped the car.

  “Damn it,” Tanya hollered. She and Gus struggled to hold the Lolit, who was still unconscious and swaying on the seat between them like a rag doll.

  “Come on, come on,” I whispered under my breath.

  Sirens echoed down the hill toward us.

  I reached with my power into the blackberry thicket. Vines crackled and snapped in my head, all that life coiled in them. It wouldn’t take much to push them. Which was good, because my head started pounding. I had pushed myself too much killing the tree.

  Couldn’t stop now.

  Couldn’t let the Lolit die.

  Couldn’t let Hideaway down just because some rich bitch was pissed her gold coins got lifted.

  Anger rose in me. My jaw tightened. Rich bitch still had the mansion and the staff, the huge yard—everything. She could spare the money. But the police wouldn’t see it that way.

  Grow, I told the blackberry vines, and they grew. And grew. And grew, snaking across the gravel road. I sent them into the ground, down, pushed them to seed and grow more vines. My head felt like it was in a vice, but I didn’t stop. I couldn’t stop.

  “Dip me in shit.” Driver-man sounded hoarse.

  Tanya and Gus both gasped.

  “That’s enough, Mat,” Tanya said.

  I opened my eyes.

  A blackberry thicket filled the street, eight feet tall, a tangle of thorny vines maybe twenty feet deep. That would slow them down for a bit.

  “Not exactly subtle,” Driver-man said. “But what the hell.”

  We drove down the road for a quarter of a mile, turned into another gravel road, then, finally onto a paved road. Lots of potholes, but paved, and then toward the bridges across the Willamette and Hideaway.

  We parked in a covered garage a block from Hideaway, and then took stairs to a secret tunnel that ran from the garage to Hideaway. We got to a sealed door that looked like it belonged on a bank vault, with a security camera above it. The door opened and the Professor was there with a couple of strong normals, who took the Lolit from Gus and Tanya. I carried the money, which was in a coffee can of all things.

  The Lolit died that night. She never woke up. The Professor said that even though she was Empowered, her age did her in. He said a pulmonary embolism killed her.

  I barely knew her but it hurt like hell losing her. She’d been so cocky and fearless. The old lady Empowered.

  She couldn’t be dead. But she was.

  Back in our room, Tanya and I held each other and cried our eyes out.

  Chapter 9

  The next morning I went to the Professor, in his lab. He was working on a tangle of cables attached to what looked like satellite dishes, wearing goggles, reminding me of the Lolit. I blinked away tears.

  He pushed the goggles up on his forehead. “I’m sorry the Lolit is gone.” He mopped his forehead with a towel. “She had the most spirit of anyone I’ve ever met.” He put down the towel and pulled off his goggles. “Except you.”

  The words twisted my gut. I wasn’t fearless like the Lolit had been. My power wasn’t flashy.

  “Not me,” I said. “I’m not special.”

  “Don’t say that. You have spirit, and passion. I’d like to think if I’d had a daughter, she’d be like you.”

  My cheeks flushed. “Th-thanks,” I stammered.

  “I don’t mean to embarrass you, Mat. But it’s true.”

  “But Tanya has spirit, too,” I said. She did. Sometimes she felt more like my sister than my kid sisters, the twins.

  “She certainly does, but it’s different. She sees things, you feel them.”

  My chest tightened. “You mean I’m not as smart as her.” I felt the blood rush to my face. People always thought I was a big dumb girl.

  “Hey,” the Professor said, making me lift my head and look him in the eye. I don’t think I’d ever heard him say hey before. “You are intelligent,” he said. “More than you realize. Understand that people have different kinds of intelligence, and emotionally, you are very smart.” He paused, obviously thinking about how to tell me something I probably would hate hearing.

  “But?” I said, trying to get him to spill it.

  “You let your anger block you from feeling other things.”

  “I’m not angry,” I said, hands clenched.

  He cocked an eyebrow. “You could have fooled me.”

  “Guess you have a point,” I said, shaking my head.

  “Sometimes I do.” He smiled.

  Despite the pain of the Lolit being gone, I smiled back, just a little.

  He got serious again. “I wish we had more time to mourn the Lolit, but we don’t. I worry that the Hero Council and Support are on to us.” His words sent a chill down my spine.

  Support. The men and women in black suits, carrying stunner pistols. Normals who helped sanctioned Empowereds go after rogues like us.

  “We have to get your cloak working, right?”

  He nodded. “I thought we would have more time. But the thing is about life, you always think you have more time than you do.”

  My chest hurt. He was talking about dying. “We’re not going to die,” I said.

  “I don’t just mean how long you think you’ll live. I mean in all things. A person thinks they will be friends with someone forever, or that their favorite boss won’t retire yet, not for a few more years, or that a beloved pet won’t die this year. Whatever it is, it’s always sooner than you think. As far as dying is concerned, it is true that in the long run, we are all dead. It’s what you do with your time now that counts.”

  Standing there, the truth of what he said slammed into me like an avalanche. I blinked, trying to absorb every bit of it. Never as much time as you think.

  He smiled. “And yes, we need to get the cloak up and running.”

  The Professor didn’t waste any time after that. He had Tanya and Gus meet us in Sissy’s room. She lifted her head and smiled in my direction when I came into the room.

  “Hello, Mathilda,” she said. Toby sat next to her. His face was red. He must have been crying his eyes out. She held his hand.

  “How’d you know it was me?”

  “I can tell from the way your power tints green.”

  Tints green. Weird, especially since I didn’t know powers had colors. But if my power had to have a color, green made sense.

  The Professor leaned in close beside me. “Sissy is special, even for a locator. She can detect what sort of power an Empowered possesses.”

  “I’m right here,” she said, still smiling.

  “I know,” he replied, and smiled back, even though she couldn’t see him. “Can you tell us about the situation?”

  The smile left her face. “At least a half-dozen Empowered are now in the Portland area. They
must be aware of us. Their signatures match known members of the First Team.”

  “I was afraid of that. What about Excelsior Technologies? Are there Empowered there?” the Professor asked Sissy.

  “Still the one tinged blue, like you,” she replied.

  My eyes widened. Another genius?

  The Professor must have caught my expression. “Most powers are not unique,” he said. “Mine certainly isn’t. The first of us, James Goldin, known as Doctor Prometheus, was like me, only he was off-the-scale brilliant.” He paused. “The last job to undertake is Excelsior Technologies. They have components we need for the cloak.”

  “But how could a private company like this Excelsior have an Empowered?” I asked. Tanya and Gus looked like they had the same question, nodding as I asked him.

  “The answer is obvious—it’s a sanctioned Empowered. The Hero Council wants to protect what the company is developing. The components we need for the cloak are intended for something else. Something important to the Hero Council.”

  “Like what?”

  “If I knew that…” He shrugged. “Unfortunately, there is no time now to learn what that something else might be.”

  “Time to hide Hideaway,” Tanya said.

  I rolled my eyes. “Funny.”

  “Hey, it was.”

  I stuck my tongue out, and she did likewise. I suddenly felt like a kid again. Just for a moment. The Professor and Sissy both laughed softly. But Gus just watched us, looking even paler than he usually did. Worried, I guess.

  “We are indeed going to hide Hideaway,” the Professor said.

  The plan was simple. Gus, Tanya and me were going to go with Driver-man and three other normals and break into Excelsior Technologies that night. Driver-man was going to use his former cop skills to disable the alarm system. I didn’t know cops could do that, but something told me Driver-man hadn’t been a regular cop. Gus was going to go in, and get to Lab 3, where the components the Professor needed for the cloak were stored.

  Two of the other normals would be wearing Excelsior security uniforms. Gus would sneak into the lab first, and hand off to them outside the lab, because the case was heavy and he wouldn’t be able to blend far carrying it. They’d bring it outside and hand it over to Driver-man. I was in “reserve,” as the Professor put it, ready to turn the plants and trees on the company grounds into obstacles. Tanya of course would be peeping where she could, and would also be in radio contact with Gus. They had some kind of super secret military-grade comm gear the Professor had been saving for just this sort of job.

  The break-in sounded easy, routine. A snap.

  The Professor said once we brought back the secret “who-knew-what-it-really-was-for stuff,” he could turn the breeder reactor on for real, and Hideaway would not only be hidden, it would be powered up and ready for us to be self-sufficient. We’d finally have a real home.

  But things never end up being as easy as they seem at first.

  I hated being backup. I sat in the van with Tanya outside Excelsior Technologies while the others got ready. It was almost four in the morning. The campus had dogwood trees everywhere, and shrubs in cement planters along the walkways. Not a lot to work with if things went craptastic.

  Gus looked nervous as hell. He wore his field jacket and cargo pants. They couldn’t talk him into getting into a security guard’s uniform.

  Tanya was disgusted with him, but what could she or I do? Even the Professor couldn’t persuade him.

  So, he disappeared into the night wearing that old field jacket, the one with the patches where the radiation detectors used to be. Driver-man, and Jim and Phil, the two normals in security guard uniforms, followed. Tanya sat in the back of the van, watching with binoculars. She was busy soon.

  “I’d be better inside than stuck in the van,” she groused.

  “Tell me about it.”

  The normal that stayed behind to guard us was a woman who reminded me of a bulldog. She was short, with a thick neck, little bulging eyes, and the kind of attitude that wouldn’t back down. I decided to call her Bulldog in my head.

  “You girls are too young,” Bulldog said.

  Tanya and I just looked at each other and giggled. Nervous giggling. I couldn’t sit still.

  Bulldog told me to settle down like three times. I’d wait, then start fidgeting again, until I was up, and she ordered me to sit still again.

  My heart wouldn’t stop pounding. I kept licking my lips. I swigged from the water bottle so much that bulldog had to tell me to stop drinking or I’d be stuck with a full bladder and no place to pee.

  The job wasn’t supposed to take that long.

  A loud bang broke the night’s silence. The three of us jerked our heads around, trying to find where the sound came from. More bangs.

  “Damn it!” Bulldog said. She shook her head. “They weren’t supposed to use their guns.” The normals carried guns, but Empowered would be executed if they did. That was the law.

  Bulldog jumped into the driver seat. Driver-man had left the keys in the ignition, just in case.

  Two men charged past the lit Excelsior sign and ran up to us. Driver-man and Phil, carrying a big metal case between them. They slid it into the van, and scrambled inside.

  “Where’s Gus?” Tanya and I asked.

  “What about Jim?” added Bulldog.

  “Head home,” Driver-man managed to gasp. He was out of breath.

  Phil lay against the inside of the van, holding his side.

  Bulldog started up the van.

  “Go!”

  Sirens.

  We peeled out and roared down the road, lights off.

  “What about Gus?” I asked him.

  He shook his head. “Don’t know. He got into the lab, found the components and had the case ready for us. Then the alarms went off and he vanished. Security showed up. I couldn’t bluff my way out. We ended up getting in a gun fight.

  Phil coughed, blood foaming on his lips.

  “Shit!” Tanya said, grabbed a rag and dabbed at his mouth.

  “Phil took a round in the side.”

  “What about the Empowered there?”

  “Shot him,” Driver-man said. “The guy was wearing a blue jumpsuit, and some kind of weird-ass helmet. He pointed a stunner at me but I fired first.” His laugh was a crazy one. “Didn’t think I’d get him before I got knocked out, but guess I got lucky.” He shook his head, looking dazed. “Not that I call this situation lucky.” He laughed again. This time he sounded bitter.

  Phil had closed his eyes and slumped down.

  Tanya crawled over to him. “His breath is shallow.”

  “We need to get him to a hospital,” Driver-man said, “but that sure as hell isn’t going to happen at the moment.”

  “No shit,” Bulldog said. Sirens flashed behind us. Looked like half the cops in Portland were after us.

  Driver-man took a deep, shuddering breath. “Okay, here’s what we do.”

  We were approaching an intersection. “Stop,” he ordered Bulldog.

  “You crazy?”

  “Yes. But we need to slow them down long enough for you to get to Hideaway.”

  “No,” she said. “Not gonna happen. You think you’re going to grab the shotgun in the back and delay them, is that it?”

  He nodded. We were almost at the intersection. The light was red.

  “No way.” Bulldog floored the accelerator. The van sped faster and roared through the intersection. I leaned over enough to glimpse the speedometer climb past ninety. Ninety-five. Hundred.

  A car flashed by in the other direction.

  “We live together or we die together. Those are the choices. We must get those components to the Prof,” Bulldog said. “Then we can vanish.”

  Driver-man slumped back in his seat, wiped his face.

  I don’t know how, but somehow we managed to elude the police. Bulldog slowed the van down, and we drove across the Morrison bridge into east Portland. A few minutes later we pulle
d up beside the garage across from the old building that led to Hideaway.

  The sky was brightening in the east. Sun would be up soon. We all got out.

  Except Phil. He didn’t move. Driver-man got it together and lifted Phil’s body, carried it out while Bulldog closed the garage door behind us. We took the stairs down to the secret tunnel the ran underground to Hideaway.

  I lugged the box of components, trying to run to the lab. People came out of rooms and watched us go by. Driver-man and Bulldog took Phil’s body to the hospital. I still couldn’t believe Gus hadn’t come back with them.

  Tanya walked beside me, pale and shaken-looking.

  I was breathing hard. “Did Gus run out on us?” I gasped out the question.

  She seemed to only half hear me. She was staring off at something. “They are going to come after us.”

  “Yeah, I know. That’s why we’ve got to get this to the Professor in the lab,” I reminded her. We were in deep shit. But the Professor had his components. They would work. They would have to.

  The box had two handles, one on each side. I stopped. Tanya kept walking.

  “Hey!” I shouted. “A little help here.”

  She shook herself. “Sorry.” She took one handle and I switched hands. We ran down the corridor.

  “Mat,” Tanya gasped as we ran .

  “Save your breath.” My side was aching.

  “I wanted to tell you, the reason why I never told you my Empowered name.” She sucked in a breath. “Because I don’t have one.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “Because I couldn’t find one that fit.” Her face looked so sad.

  I wanted to tell her that I’d help find her a name, but we rounded a corner and reached the lab. The Professor waited for us at the doorway.

  “Here you go,” I said.

  He smiled, but there was a look in his eyes. A look I’d never seen in his eyes before. Fear. He was scared to death. We lugged the box to a work bench by a bank of computers. The Professor swallowed. Picked up a walkie-talkie.

  “Lab to central,” he said over the radio. He voice sounded strained.

  “Central here,” Driver-man answered.