The Secret of the Supers (The First Superhero Book 4) (12 page)

O
ne of the
reasons Drew ate such a large breakfast was because it was the last meal he could eat before he went into surgery the next day. I sat in the tiny waiting room with Doug, Selena, and Eddie as the hours-long surgical process began. Ellie and Avery both said they’d come hang out with us later, but had work to do first. The four of us didn’t though, so it was just a waiting game until we got the news that the surgery was complete.

I sat in a cushioned chair next to Selena. Doug and Eddie sat across from us, and we were the only ones in the small room. At harsh florescent light lit up the small room. There was a small table in the corner that had a coffee maker sitting on it and a mini fridge underneath. The air in the room smelled sterile and stale. The small hospital was one floor underground, so there weren’t any windows or ways to let fresh air in the room.

“So this is it, huh?” Doug asked after we’d sat in silence for a few minutes. “Just sitting here for the next four to six hours staring at each other?”

“I guess,” I said. “Not much else to do.”

Doug sank down in his chair, defeated. “Ugh, I wish Reddit was still a thing.”

“Don’t you have some secret Super message board friends you can talk to?” I asked.

“You don’t get much of a satellite signal from underground.”

“Then how could you have gotten on Reddit if it still existed?” Eddie asked.

Doug huffed and threw his hands in the air. “I don’t know! Five minutes in and I’m already losing my mind.”

“Just calm down, Doug,” Selena said, her right leg shaking so fast it was a blur.

“Says the girl who’s trying to jackhammer her way down to the next floor,” Doug said, pointing at her shaking leg.

Selena stopped and placed her hand on her knee. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay to be nervous,” I said. “Trust me, I know I am.”

“You are?” Selena asked.

I scoffed. “Of course! Drew is my oldest friend. There’s no telling what could happen while they’re taking those things out of him, but there’s also no telling what could’ve happened if they were still in. He’s making the right call, and he’s going to be fine.”

Selena took a deep breath and nodded. “You’re right, I’m just overreacting.” She calmed down for a few moments, but after a minute or two of not moving, she stood up and began pacing the room.

I tried not to chuckle, because I totally understood what she was going through. I was just as nervous as she was. Drew and I had been through everything together. He’s was the only person with me that knew me when I was just Kane, not Kane and Tempest. I didn’t know what I’d do if something happened during the surgery, but I had the confidence that I wasn’t going to have to find out. I trusted Drew enough to make the right call regarding his safety. If he believed the doctors and scientists would be able to get his Eximus implants removed from him, so did I.

“Hey,” Doug whispered quietly enough so Selena couldn’t hear. She was pacing back and forth behind Doug and Eddie’s chairs, lost in her own world.

I leaned in close. “What?”

You ask her?
Doug mouthed, gesturing behind himself towards Selena.

I gave him a look that said
What?

Her and Drew.

I rolled my eyes and sat back.
No.

Doug threw his hands in the air and slumped back into his chair.

I had other things to worry about. Finding out if the two of them were an item was going to have to wait at least until, you know, one of them was
out of surgery.

I looked up at the clock above the door. My heart sank when I saw we’d only been in there for ten minutes.

It was going to be a long wait.

****

T
wo hours in
, and I began to consider the fact that I was legitimately losing my mind.

I lay with my back on the ground, and my legs up on the chair. I was staring at the ceiling, pondering how some of my favorite TV shows would’ve ended had LA not been blown up by a nuke and life in North America ceased to exist as I knew it.

You know, the important things.

I arched my head back and watched as Eddie danced an arc of electricity through his fingers. Doug sat on a chair trying as hard as he could to read a book, but given the glazed over look on his face, it seemed the novel was having trouble holding his attention. Selena floated in the corner of the room, her legs crossed, staring at the other side of the room.

I had enough. I groaned as I sat myself up. “Okay, one more second in the damn room and I’m going to go crazy. I’m going up to the roof to get some fresh air.”

“Oh thank god,” Doug said as he stood up and tossed the book aside. Eddie stood up as well, eager to get out of the waiting room.

I looked up at Selena. “You coming?” I asked.

She thought about it for a moment. She floated down to the ground and grabbed the doorknob. “I guess.”

We exited the room and rode the elevator up to the top floor. All the floor contained was storage closets and a few offices that I doubted were even in use. The lights up there weren’t even all on, and there weren’t any windows in the immediate vicinity. There was a sign right outside the elevator that pointed to the right and read
Roof Access
, so they at least made that easy on us. We walked to the right and turned the corner. At the end of the short hallway was an old door. We went through it, and went up the stairs to the roof.

A blast of wind hit us, filling our lungs with fresh afternoon air. The cloud covered up the sun, which also made the temperature a bit chilly.

I walked to the edge of the roof, enjoying the fresh air. I looked down on the sidewalk below. A construction crew was doing the best they could to patch the holes caused by Jigsaw and his men. Still, the sounds of them working away didn’t disturb me. In fact, I actually enjoyed the noise. It made the city seem like it wasn’t so empty. There were a few cars that drove by, and every once in a while a pedestrian would walk down the street. Still, it was nothing compared to the noise and business of a normal London. A London I hoped to be able to experience with my own eyes one day.

S
elena stood by me
, while Eddie and Doug walked around on the roof behind us, exploring. “If one of you falls off just start screaming. I’m sure one of us will be able to catch you,” I yelled at the two of them over my shoulder. That got a smile out of Selena, something I hadn’t seen in a while.

“Do you ever get a bad feeling about something?” Selena asked, her face returning to the sad, nervous state it’d been in all day.

“What do you mean? Like about a situation, or when I eat some bad food?”

“You know what I mean,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“Yeah, I guess I do. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say you’ve got a bad feeling about Drew?”

She didn’t respond at first. She stared down at the ground. “I just feel so helpless, you know?” she said, looking up at me.

“I know exactly how you feel,” I said, my mind wandering to Samantha. She was somewhere out there. I had incredible abilities, and I had no idea where that
where
was at. I had the power to save her. And yet, I couldn’t. So yeah, I knew the exact hopelessness Selena was referring to. “Drew’s gonna be alright, you know that, don’t you?”

Selena chuckled as she looked back out at London. “If I knew that, Kane, I wouldn’t be feeling like this.”

She had a point. “Well, trust me. Nothing’s going to happen to him.”

“I really care about him.”

“I can tell.”

Selena looked at me. “No, I mean I really do. We’ve been seeing each other since Dallas.”

Shocked by her out-of-the-blue admission, I wasn’t quite sure what to say. “Since Dallas?” I asked. “Who all knew?”

“Just Samantha. When we were out in London and Johannesburg we would send each other messages through her, so she kinda had to,” Selena said.

That made sense, and it made me think Samantha was that much more amazing. She didn’t give up peoples secrets, even if they were big ones like Selena’s and Drew’s. That’s the type of trustworthy person Samantha was, and it made me miss her all the more. “So that’s why you’re so worried, huh?”

“Yeah. I just can’t shake this sick feeling.”

“Trust me. He’s going to be fine.” I turned around and sat on the edge of the roof. I saw Eddie and Doug across the way, the two of them finding things to electrocute. “One time in high school, there was this party that Drew and I really wanted to go to,” I said, not really sure why I was telling this story. I guess I just wanted to try and take Selena’s mind off things. “There was this girl there named Gabby King, and I was going to finally ask her out. But then I accidentally let these chickens out that my dad had spent all day corralling into their cage, so of course I got grounded. In the middle of the night, Drew drove to my house and parked his car about half a mile away so my parents wouldn’t see the headlights or get woken up by someone driving up. He ran in the middle of the night—pitch black—all the way to my house. He threw rocks at my window like he was my damn lover and this was some John Hughes movie.” I started laughing as I remember the sight of him standing outside my window.

Selena chuckled and placed her head in her hand. She sat down on the edge of the roof next to me. “Sounds romantic,” she teased.

“Anyways, I go to climb out the window because I had creaky stairs and my parent’s room was right under them. But just the thought of sneaking out
and
asking Gabby King on a date made my palms really sweaty. As I held on to the window seal, trying to lower myself onto the part of the first floor roof below me, I slipped off, fell to the ground, and broke my leg.” I winced just thinking about how painful that experience was.

“Oh man, that sounds painful,” Selena said.

“It definitely was. Anyways, the both of us got in big trouble. Once I went back to school, everybody was trying to figure out why I’d broken my leg. Of all people, Gabby King walks up to me and asks.” I laughed and cringed at myself, remembering how awkward I was at that moment. “I just froze. Totally froze. But then Drew stepped in and told this story about how I broke it by pushing this little kid out of the way of an oncoming car, and took the hit instead. Total bullshit, and Gabby knew it too. But still, he saved me from my own awkward self. Drew telling that story broke the ice enough for me to ask Gabby if she’d want to go get lunch on Saturday. ‘I’ll tell you what really happened,’ I said, definitely overcompensating for my earlier awkwardness.”

“What’d she say?” Selena asked.

“She said no, of course. She was way out of my league.”

“Wow, not even a sympathy date? You did have a broken leg.”

I threw my hands up in the air. “I know! That’s what I was thinking. It was not a fun time to be me. An itchy leg I couldn’t scratch, and a rejection from the then-girl of my dreams.”

Selena laughed, and I felt a sense of pride knowing that I made her forget about her fear and nervousness, even for just a few minutes.

We sat there for a few more moments before I finally stood up. “Come on, we’d better get back down there. Wouldn’t want to miss any news.”

I reached down and helped Selena stand up. When she stood, she embraced me in a hug. “Thank you,” she said.

“For what?” I asked.

She pulled away and smiled. “For being a good friend.”

I didn’t know what to say. I was both shocked and genuinely touched by Selena’s gesture. “No problem,” I said, not sure what else to say.

We turned and walked towards the exit.

“We going back down to that hell-hole?” Doug yelled across the roof when he saw us walking towards the door.

“Yep, sure are,” I said.

“Aw, dammit,” he said under his breath as he kicked at a rock. “Wait for me.” He and Eddie ran over to our side, and the four of us made our way back down to the waiting room.

We entered the top floor, and even though the heat wasn’t turned up as high as it was in the lower floor, it still offered a huge relief from the biting cold wind outside. I walked to the elevator, everybody close behind. The hallway stretched out long and dark ahead of me, before twisting out of sight. I felt the urge to go down there and see what was around, but I wanted to hurry up and get back down to Drew. I was worried that I was going to miss a doctor coming in and telling us something.

I clicked the button and waited for the elevator to come. Once it did, we all stepped in, and began the ride down to the basement. With every floor we passed, I felt a pit in my stomach growing larger and larger. I pushed it out of the way.
Come on,
I thought.
Believe what you told Selena. Everything’s going to be fine.

The door opened and we made our way to the waiting room. As we approached, a doctor exited the room. The top of his head was balding, while the sides were a bright white. His eyes looked tired, and his face worn from all the stress he carried day to day.

“There you are,” he said as we approached. He held the door open for us and gestured inside. “Please, step in. I have some news to deliver.”

I felt a slight relief that we got back just in time. We hadn’t missed any important news. But once I stepped inside, that relief was replaced with suspicion.

Two guards stood inside, their Eximus blasters at their side. Their hands were tense, ready to pull them into action at any time. “What’s going on?” I asked as everybody piled in behind me and the doctor shut the door behind him. I made eye contact with Selena, and she looked equally as suspicious. She looked at me, her teeth gritted. I tried to tell her to keep calm with my eyes, but given the fact that her expression didn’t change, I didn’t think it was working.

“These guards are just here to make sure no one gets out of hand,” the doctor said as he stepped forward. “I’ve come here to let you know that there were some complications during the surgery. A large blast of Eximus energy was released, resulting in an explosion that killed everyone in the room. I’m sorry to say, but your friend Drew is dead.”