Overpowered (Powered Trilogy #2) (12 page)

“Okay,” she says, moving her hands over the keys a few more times. “Your mission will still include stepping in when the human police can’t stop a fight
. I know you’ve completed missions like that before. But I am also assigning you the task of looking into the fights, seeing if there are drugs involved. I know the humans could do this, but your senses are superior. You could find the drug and put a stop to this before any more humans die.”

“Sounds great,” I say. My pocket feels a thousand pounds heavier. She’d freak if she knew that I already possessed the suspected drug in question. But I can’t give it to her now. They’ll take it away from me when they discover that
it’s villain created. And then I’ll be yanked away from my own discovery because of my probationary status. This is my mission and I want to see it through until the end.

“Where should I report my findings?” I ask. “You know,
if
I find this drug.”

“Your father.”

“Huh?”

She nods and
swivels her monitor toward me. An email exchange between her and my dad is on the screen. “He’s very interested in this human case,” she says as if that explains everything. As if not having powers anymore has turned my dad so human-like that his only interests are now in human affairs.

I stand. “Thanks
, Ms. Bloom. I’m on it.”

I don’t think I’ll ever get used to feeling all the dead air around my dad. His power is totally gone and it’s so unnerving, I feel like I’m staring at a ghost. The distinct hum of three different power levels hover in the living room but t
here are four people in here. Dad and Max sit on the couch and Nova hangs out on the recliner with her knees pulled up to her chest. Chewy is curled up next to her with his little face buried into the crack of the cushions. I let out a massive sigh a few seconds after the front door closes behind me.

“That was an interesting meeting with Bonnie Bloom,” I say, giving Max’s ankle a little kick so he’ll move
his massive body out of my way. I sit between him and Dad on the couch. “She had no idea about our drug theory until I mentioned it to her.”

“How could she?” Dad says, turning down the volume on the television. It’s sports again. It’s always sports. “We’re not used to dealing with human matters that their police officers are supposed to take care of.”

“Tell me about it,” Max says. He doesn’t move his attention from the holo-disk he’s studying, or more like obsessing over. He probably knows every detail about the four missing Supers by now. “We fight villains. We kick ass and take names. Occasionally we save some humans from natural disasters but we do not stop their street fights. This is complete bullshit.”

“Max,” Dad chides. He only gets
that one word out before he gives up under my brother’s annoyed expression. Max shakes his head. “No. It’s bullshit. Our jobs are just a joke as of lately. Hell, Supers are disappearing without a trace just so they can get away from the boredom.”

“You don’t know that,” Nova says. “They could be hurt. They could be in danger. Don’t carelessly talk about their lives as if they’re okay.” Her eyes narrow at my brother. “Because you don’t know that for a fact.”

Max’s massive form shrinks under her glare. He switches off the holo-disk. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I’m just sick of the status quo lately. I’m restless. It’s like every villain in the world has gone into retirement.”

“That’s not entirely true.” I reach into my pocket, glancing at Nova. “Have you not said anything?”

She shrugs, strands of dingy blackish-blonde hair falling over her shoulders. “I didn’t think it was my place to say anything.”

Color me freaking impressed.

I slip out the silver vial, holding it up between my thumb and index finger. “It looks the same, and some kid sold it to us claiming that it was the drug, but as you can see, it’s a metal tube, not glass like the one we think came from Felix.”

I wiggle my hand back and forth and Dad grabs my wrist. “Wait, it is glass. Look at it.”

My eyebrows draw together as I watch the metal vial in my hand. The metal color...moves. No. It isn’t metal at all. It’s silver liquid as thick as syrup inside a thin glass tube.

Nova
eases onto the floor in front of the couch to get a better view. Max holds out his hand. “Can I?”

“No.” Dad takes the tube, holding it like it might hurt him. “We don’t know what this drug is. It’s killing humans so it could be toxic to us. We need to get it analyzed. Maci, call Evan.”

Max’s power trickles with disbelief. I feel it from Nova as well. If I paid any attention to my own power, it would feel the same way. Max says what my sister and I are also thinking.

“Why should we get it tested? It’s obviously power.”

A thick blanket of rain drops splatter across my bedroom window.
When the rain splashes onto my floor-to-ceiling window, I’ll usually pick a raindrop to watch as it makes its way zigging and zagging around other drops, absorbing and splitting again until it disappears out of sight. But the rain comes in a downpour tonight; even with Super vision I am unable to single out a solitary drop.

I roll away from facing the window, letting my body decompress on top of my
ultra-fluffy cloud-like mattress. Max was right when they ordered this mattress for me a couple years ago. Nothing beats lying on one of these beds after a long day of working as a Hero. If only they made memory foam mattresses that worked inside your head. A place to lie your thoughts at night so all the stress and anxiety that’s been balled up in your mind all day can decompress.

Nova lies next to me, propped up on her elbows on top of the comforter.
Sometimes she sleeps in here and sometimes she’ll slip into the safe room in Dad’s office. We haven’t talked about it, and I don’t ask. She’s holding a wallet-sized laminated photo of our mother, staring at it like she does every night. Her eyes trace the lines along Mom’s golden shoulder-length hair, her tight smile and big blue eyes. It’s an official photograph that Mom kept in her wallet next to her work badge. In it, she’s dressed in a royal purple Retriever suit, one of the old fashioned styles from before we were born.

My sister’s hair has faded almost entirely back to blonde now. I guess that’s why human hair dye companies have never asked a Super to endorse their products. It doesn’t last in our hair very long.
I reach out, touching a strand of her hair. Some of the dye rubs off at my touch, revealing shiny wisps of Nova’s real hair. “I should buy some more boxes of that hair dye. We might need it again to keep you hidden.”

“I wonder if I would have been a Hero too,” Nova says, sliding her finger down the front of the glossy photograph.

“What do you mean?”

She shrugs. “If I wasn’t taken by Aurora and if I just grew up normally with you. Do you think I would have wanted to be a Hero?”

“Hell, no.”

Her face crumples up
as if my words just slapped her. I roll my eyes at her stupidity. “You wouldn’t be a Hero, Nova. You’d be a depowered invalid. Both of us. We’d probably live on the street somewhere wishing we were dead.”

“That’s a little harsh,” she mutters, turning Mom’s picture over in her hand.

“It isn’t harsh. It’s the truth. Don’t you know what happens to Super twins?” I lower my voice so it isn’t so condescending. Maybe she doesn’t know. She wasn’t educated like I was on the history of the Super race. Nova swallows and her power level flattens out into a neutral state.

“Yeah
, I know. The laws say that we would have been depowered.”

“So why bother reminiscing about some stupid
make believe past that would never happen?”

She shrugs. I feel like she has something more to say but I don’t bother asking.
I’d rather just go to sleep.

Evan stands awkwardly in our foyer, like he’s a guest in our home now that my dad is back from the medical ward. You’d never know by his rigid posture and the business-like expression on his face that he spent a few weeks crashing on my bed while wearing Max’s pajamas. It took him an entire two days to analyze the drug after we shipped it to him in full bio hazard protective casing. Dad’s having an off day, or at least that’s what Nurse Martha called it when we spoke with her earlier this morning, so we decided to have Evan come to us instead of risking bringing Dad on the long KAPOW ride to South Africa.

“Is that all you brought?” Dad asks from his place on a barstool in the kitchen. He’s been drinking water all day so he hasn’t left that spot.

Evan holds out the vial of the drug which is now half empty. “Yes, sir.”

I motion for him to follow me into the kitchen and he finally uproots his feet from the foyer and joins us next to Dad. He places the vial on the countertop. Dad gives it a curious glance and then flattens his hands on the granite. “Well? What did you discover? What is it?”

“Is it power?” Max interjects.

“Yeah.” Evan chews on his bottom lip. “It’s power.”

Dad lets out a disappointed sigh.

I can’t help but think that Evan looks super freaking cute when he’s nervous about being around my dad. But that’s not the point right now. Max curses under his breath and takes a big bite off the protein bar in his hand. “What else is in it? Cocaine? Speed? Heroin?”

Evan shakes his head. “No, just power. Good power actually.”

“What does that mean?” Dad asks.

“Well it’s not evil. It was a mixture of mostly good and a little evil.”

Max chokes on his food. “Wait, what? You figured that out already?”

“What’s going on?” Dad’s voice booms through the room, making all of us jump. Screw his off day. Right now he looks and sounds exactly like the man I remember. “Since when can you determine if power is good or evil?”

Evan’s eyes go wide and I grab his arm to calm him. “I don’t know if it’s one hundred percent conclusive,” he begins, looking at his hands. “Well, no. It is. Max is right. I figured it out.”

Dad looks at me. “When?”

Evan hesitates and I squeeze his arm. “You can tell him. He’s my dad.” He gives me this look that says
it’s your funeral
. “A few days ago, Hugo Havoc and some of the other elders assigned me the task of determining if Super blood has evil or good coding in it. Only...well I was already secretly researching it myself. I tested it on Maci when she was on lockdown at my lab.”

Dad’s mouth opens and then closes. Maybe it’s the lack of power, or the jeans and t-shirt instead of his Hero suit, but right now my father looks like a little kid. “Don’t look so scared, Dad,” I say. “Yeah, I’m evil. But we already knew that. It doesn’t mean anything.”

Dad swallows. “That’s not what’s worrying me right now.” He stares at his arm, flexing and twisting his depowered limbs.

“What is it?” Max asks.

“Villains are selling Super power as a drug to humans. Power doesn’t grow like pot leaves and it’s not created in a lab. They’re selling power which means they’re getting it from somewhere. And Evan just said it didn’t all come from a villain.”

The gears in Max’s head turn. “Well there’s not exactly mobile
blood bank vans that go around asking Supers to donate power.”

Nova raises her hand. We all turn to look at her. “The
depowering machine?”

It takes everything in me not to repeat her words all high-pitched
while shaking my head, sticking out my tongue and blowing a raspberry at the end. Of course she would think of the depowering machine first.
Of course
she would.

“It did take your power and some of mine,” I say to Dad, ignoring my know-it-all of a sister. “That would explain why the power is mostly good. What happens to the power after it’s taken?”

“It’s incinerated.” Dad’s eyebrows knit together. “Of course, that usually happens in the machine’s room down in the medical ward. It’s connected to piping that incinerates everything it takes out. But Aurora uprooted the machine and put it in the Atrium for her little stunt.”

I get chills at how casually he speaks of losing his power.

“So the bitch rigged the machine to keep the power and now they’re selling it.”

“Don’t--” Dad begins before waving his hand toward Max. “Never mind. You’re old enough to curse.” He lets out a snort of laughter. “I can’t believe I still think of you as kids.”

Nova smiles and wraps her arms around Dad’s shoulders. He hugs her back, patting her arm in that fatherly way. As if she were always a part of this family and not a newcomer who doesn’t quite fit in yet.

Of course I might be the only person who hasn’t accepted her completely into the family. And I don’t even care how ironic it is that I’m the one who brought her here.

“We need to find who’s currently in charge of the depowering machine and where they put it after they cleaned out the Atrium. Max and I can pull all the security footage and see who handled the machine. Somewhere along the way, someone stole the power from it. We’ll find out who.”

I grind my fist into my palm. “And we’ll make them pay.”

Max shakes his head. “You should let me handle this, Mace. It’s a villain matter and I don’t want you to violate your probation.”

“What? No! I have to do this.” My lungs are tight as I struggle to breathe. “The power they got came from my arm, too. That’s my power they’re selling to humans.
I’m
responsible for their deaths. Dad, back me up.”

Dad sighs. He’s been doing that a lot lately. He runs his hand over his face. “Central has always been a transparent government. We don’t operate like the humans do, keeping secrets from our citizens and stretching the truth. But everything I’ve stood for has gone to hell in just a few weeks. I’m harboring a wanted villain who is the daughter I had thought was dead, my other daughter has evil DNA and we haven’t told anyone, I’m willingly allowing Evan to lie about his research.” His hands fly up in the air in a gesture of defeat. “I don’t know, guys. I just don’t know.”

“I’ve got this, Dad.” Max stands to his full height which fills the room with his immense presence. Even Evan seems to shrink back under my brother’s sheer intimidation. “I’ll investigate the depowering machine and find a list of all people who have access to it. And I promise you, Maci, I’ll report everything I find back to you. Don’t give me that look!”

I fold my arms over my chest, clenching my teeth together as I glare at my brother to the fullest intensity.

“I’m coming with you,” I say.

“No.”

Dad speaks up. “I trust Maci to handle this herself but I also trust the examiners to uphold their contract. It isn’t worth it, Maci. You will let Max handle this situation.”

I know he’s right but that doesn’t stop my guttural groan of disappointment.
At least this time I don’t punch anything.