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“What is wrong with you?” I yell as I jump to my feet, aiming a glare at my brother and a pointed finger at Aurora. “She depowered our dad! She deserves to die!”

“That is not for us to decide,” Max says again, leveling his gaze with mine and trying to pull that calming voodoo he’s so good at on me.

Aurora gasps for air. “Give me more credit than that, child.” I kick her in the stomach without taking my eyes off Max. Undeterred, she continues. “Your mother was my first kill. It felt wonderful seeing the light leave her eyes as she rambled on, begging for her life and spewing some pathetic nonsense about the safety of her babies.”

Max’s chest heaves in anger as he hears her words, but he chooses to be a Hero—to stay calm and unaffected by the words of a villain. Hero rule number five.

“We all knew Pepper was a diva, but I never thought he’d turn into such a pathetic whining baby.” Aurora’s laughter turns into coughs as she struggles to breathe against the volts still racking through her body.

“We need a Retriever pod,” Max calls over his shoulder.

“One is on the way,” Hugo Havoc says from his place at my father’s side. I don’t look over there. I can’t see Dad right now or I’ll lose my very thin grasp on sanity.

Max’s strong hand grabs my shoulder. “You’ve done all you can do, Maci.”

I give him credit for upholding his oaths of Heroism even when this villain attack turned personal. He is truly an upstanding Hero and an asset to King City. But as I’ve been reminded countless times in the last two weeks, I am not a Hero. I have no oaths to uphold. No one to answer to and no one to tell me what to do. I am part evil. And I am choosing my evil side.

“I’m sorry, Max.” I pick his hand off my shoulder and gently lower it. Confusion distorts his face. I’ll need to be fast so he can’t stop me.

With my right arm hanging uselessly at my side, I dig my left fingers under a metal sign on the wall and tug it off in what I hope is quick enough to look like a blur of confusion to my brother. Half a second later, I’m hovering over Aurora with the sign swinging toward her neck like a guillotine blade. Her death will be quick and absolute.

Her windpipe slices open and my makeshift weapon stops in midair.

Winterfresh Mountain Spring wafts past me as I look up to see Evan’s hand gripped around my wrist. Max lets out a string of profanities that I ignore. Evan’s height towers over my kneeling self and he uses it to his advantage in our little staring game.

“Let go,” I say.

“You don’t want to do this.”

“Shut up, Evan. You have no idea what I want.”

“You want immediate satisfaction of your evil compulsions.” His fingers turn white on the metal sign as I pull against his two hands with my one good hand. His voice lowers so that only I can hear. “Killing her will not bring your mom back to life. Nor Pepper. It will not heal your dad and it will never repair the damage she has inflicted on you.”

I sigh. “I never said it would.”

“You don’t have to do this. You can choose, Maci. Good and evil are in your veins. Which are you?”

My only reply is a furious shake of my head as I watch Aurora struggle to breathe against the blood pouring from her neck that won’t heal because my blade is stuck between her skin. Her eyes are weak with fear, her mouth twisted in pain.

“Do it,” she whispers with a jagged smile. “Kill me.”

My fingers itch to force the blade through the rest of her neck, to feel the crack of her spinal cord, and see her horrible head roll away from her body. Pure satisfaction ripples through me at the mere thought of it. She deserves it.

Evan’s grip gradually eases as he lifts one finger at a time off the sign. At first I think he’s giving me permission to slice her head off, and so does Max since he reacts by trying to pull me away. Evan stops him with a hand on his chest. “It’s her choice.”

“You’re kidding me,” Max says. “You aren’t a Hero. Stay out of Hero business.”

“Neither is she,” Evan growls in what is the first time I’ve ever seen someone stand up to Max. “This is her choice, in front of all these witnesses. They already consider her evil. This is her chance to prove what she is. Good or evil.” He turns to me. “It’s your call, Maci.”

Well, shit. When he puts it that way … I don’t want to be seen as evil. My subconscious wrestles with indecision as Aurora lies helpless underneath the weight of my choice.

The cool metal of my ring presses against my palm.
What do I do?

I care about you, Maci. But I can’t make your choice for you.

Aurora deserves to die for what she’s done.

That’s true. But you don’t.

Examiner Lucy watches me from across the room, her arms crossed in front of her chest and the snobbiest look of vindication on her face. She is only one of the dozens of witnesses that will see what I do. My enemies will be proven right and my friends will become enemies. All the satisfaction in the world won’t replace a lifetime of being fully depowered for my crime. Pepper wouldn’t want me to avenge his death.

He’d want me to put his Hero suit to good use.

I toss the sign to the floor and stand. A collective ease of power fills the room. But I’m not doing this for everyone else. I’m doing it for Pepper. For Mom. For Dad.

For me.

Aurora’s flesh binds together and she sucks in a deep breath. “You don’t deserve an easy death,” I tell her as I step aside and make room for three Retrievers to restrain her. “Your punishment is to live with what you’ve done.”

My hospital room smells like rose petals and Winterfresh Mountain Spring. Evan must have sprayed some of his body spray on the flowers he had delivered as some kind of stupid joke. At least, I hope it was a joke.

Around two dozen bouquets, some in vases and some in wicker baskets with one attached to a huge teddy bear, litter my small room. The medical staff hasn’t allowed any visitation in the three days I’ve been under their care, but they do allow deliveries of tacky stuffed animals and flowers that wilt and droop after only few days.

Because flowers cheer me up way more than my friends do, obviously.

My clever and insanely smart Evan found a way around the no-contact rule. The flowers he sends me a few times a day are just a disguise for his handwritten note on the underside of the delivery card. I’d consider his sneaky contraband delivery a genius move if he had anything good to say.

I reach inside my pillowcase with my left hand, straining to keep my right bandaged arm on the other pillow beside me. I retrieve the seven pieces of cardstock that all say
To: Maci, From: Evan
in fancy calligraphy on the front. That was the work of the florist, not Evan. His chicken-scratch handwriting has me squinting to make out the words on the back as I read the cards again.

Lockdown is lifted, but security is on high alert. I’m not allowed to take a KAPOW out of Central. Staying with Max. Miss you.

Hugo Havoc gave a speech about you and President Might. Candlelit vigil and everything. Hope you’re well. Miss you tons.

I have nothing to say. Just thought you’d like some daisies. Daisies symbolize healing. So, heal. (PS – Yup, still missing you. Just not the sarcasm. Or the snoring.)

Max beat your high score on Assassin Quest. Hurry up and get out of there. He’s way better than me.

Guess where I’m sleeping? In your bed. Smells like you. And candy. Do you eat candy in bed?

Hero training announced 42 new enrollments. You inspired that. Even if you’re not a Hero, you’re one to the kids who signed up.

Max called you my girlfriend. I didn’t say anything but I didn’t deny it. Just thought you should know.

The last card feels heavy in my hand, as if each time I read the words it gains a pound of emotional weight. A knock on my door catches me off guard and I fake a yawn as I stretch my arm back and shove the cards inside my pillowcase.

Nurse Martha gives me a warm smile as she checks her wrist MOD; the creases in her eyes making her look like a loving great grandmother instead of Central’s super strict head nurse. She’s delivered just about every Super child born in the last century, myself included. When she isn’t in Central, she spends time in the human hospitals training their staff and using her healing powers in the NICU.

“You know what time it is,” she says, taking her usual place on the right side of my bed.

I shift my body to the left. “I don’t want to.”

She takes my arm anyway, lifting it off the pillow and forcing my wrist to bend up and down, bending my elbow inward and back out again. “You whine about it now, but one day you will realize how lucky you are. The luckiest Super in the world, I reckon. No one has escaped the depowering machine.”

“I didn’t escape. I was still partially depowered.” I suck in a deep breath and let it out in a huff. My right arm is the last thing I want to talk about. I don’t even look at it if I can help it. I haven’t seen the wounds. Every day when Nurse Martha cleans them I stare at the ceiling and clench my teeth as I bare the stinging scent of rubbing alcohol. But I don’t look down.

My arm is dead now. Powerless.

“Press against me,” she says in her soothing physical-rehabilitation voice. She pushes down on my arm and I’m supposed to pull up, negating her pressure. We do it every day. Every day I hate it.

“Now make a fist.” I do as she asks, and my fingers must close into each other because she says, “Excellent. You’re doing so great.” But I don’t feel like I’m doing great. My hand doesn’t feel like it’s making a fist. It feels dead. Numb. Like I’ve fallen asleep lying on my arm and lost all circulation so much that I’ll never get it back. The power that courses through my veins no longer courses through my right arm.

Now it’s just flesh and blood and muscles and bone. Now it’s worthless.

“You’ll get used to living with a depowered limb, Maci.” A gentle tug tells me she’s removing the yards of gauze wrapped around my arm. The alcohol scent will come soon, followed by stinging and then relief as another gauze replaces the old one. “You still have most of your power. You can still work. I know you feel like your life is over, but it isn’t.”

She says this kind of crap every day. I’ve done a good job of ignoring her and counting the dots in the ceiling tiles, but today I can’t hold back. I can’t pretend that everything is fine when it’s not.

“Why are you doing this?” My voice is raspy from a lack of using it. She stops pressing against my fingers. Her head tilts to the side and I can tell she’s deciding whether to answer me seriously or in a lighthearted way. “Why are you rehabilitating me?” I ask. “Why are you acting like I can go on from this and live a normal life?”

The creases deepen around her eyes. “I have worked here for over three hundred years. You may think you’re a lost cause, but I’ve seen far worse patients than you. Of course I’ve seen my share of injured Heroes, but it’s the twins who will break your heart.” Her eyes stare past me as her lips press together and she shakes her head.

Her hand squeezes mine and I actually register the feeling in my worthless hand. Pressure and a gentle sweep of her thumb across my palm. The feeling is similar to what it normally feels like only—it’s different. It’s lifeless. The tingling feeling of power pulsing through my skin is gone. My arm is still here, still a part of me, but it is forever changed.

A sigh escapes my lips. If she isn’t afraid to touch it then I shouldn’t be afraid to look at it. Nurse Martha watches me, probably guessing what I’m about to do. With clenched teeth, my left hand grabs a fistful of the bed sheet as I slowly drag my eyes across my body, reluctantly focusing on my depowered arm.

Bile churns in my stomach. Now I know why so much rubbing alcohol is needed. My arm looks like pale flesh that was raked over a bed of nails. My fingers have bloody nail beds that used to have nails with unkempt cuticles. My wrist is a mass of torn flesh, some of it seeming to barely hang on. I stretch open my fingers and watch my skin break apart, fresh blood leaking out until I relax the muscles and the skin presses back together. I’m so used to the pain I hardly feel it anymore.

Nurse Martha dips a strip of gauze into a clear solution. “The depowering process is much more humane than what they used to do, you know.”

I give her an incredulous look. “What could possibly be worse than this?”

She peers down her nose at me. “You could lose your life.”

I think of Dad, stuck in a room in the medical ward as well, his life forever ruined. I’m not sure how I can go on without my arm. How can he live without power in his entire body? “I think death would be better,” I say under my breath.

“Depowering only robs you of your power. It does not take away your body or your mind. Some of the earlier Supers weren’t so lucky.”

The next few moments are silent as she rewraps my arm and injects more pain suppressants into my IV on top of my shoulder. Then she surprises me by pulling out the needle and placing a hot pink sticky plastic strip on top of the spot where the needle had been.