Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain (36 page)

“Can you two get home safely?” I asked Claire and Ray.

“Sure. I’m not hurt. Just dirty and sore,” Claire promised.

Ray stood up slowly. He paused to think before answering. “I don’t think I have a concussion. I’ll take it easy on the way back, just to be sure.”

“Good. We’re not going to be outpowered again.” I didn’t mean to snap, but I must have sounded like it. Turning, I teleported down to the next terrace, then the next, one by one to the ground and then out to the sidewalk. It left my body screaming from the ache, but I cared more about the bilious resentment burning in my guts. That was what made my hand shake as I summoned up my light bike. Throwing myself into the seat, I pumped the pedal and zipped on down the freeway.

I wasn’t in police custody right now because of the penny. I was sure of that. I didn’t know what it did, but the fight changed the moment I stuck it to her.

That wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough. We needed more weapons, better tricks, more force and different ways to attack. Claudia had been good, but we’d been smarter, better organized. There just hadn’t been anything we could do with that advantage. Now that our overconfidence had been bruised, we’d be faster to run away when out of our league, but what we really needed was to make sure we were never out of our league ever again.

That was my job. Ray and Claire’s powers were incredible, but I was the mad scientist and I gave us the edge. I knew the first thing I wanted to build. It wouldn’t have helped against Claudia, but we’d have bullets fired at us a hundred times as often as we’d face anyone with that level of power. I knew what to do about that. I could finally focus on the picture in my head. It wasn’t the same as I remembered. It had grown, become more complicated. Wildly complicated.

The headache hit, pain spiking up from the back of my head worse than ever before. The light bike knew how to avoid obstacles. I bowed my head forward and closed my eyes, letting the pain pass.

I opened my eyes to see The Machine spit a sphere of quartz the size of a tennis ball onto the work bench in front of me. The bench? I looked around. I was in my lab. I’d blacked out again. Worse than ever before. My head felt fine now, at least. The picture had disappeared because whatever it was, I’d made it.

New lesson, Penny. My power really, really did not like being frustrated. Pushing this inspiration into the background over and over had forced it to build until it took me over. And now I had this thing, this ball of crystal.

My new weapon was certainly pretty. Cloudy pink painted the interior of the sphere, swirling around delicate traceries of gold. Gold? I looked around. Blocks of raw materials lay all over the place, including the bar of gold. As I watched, a mini-Machine crawled through the air vent and dumped a cube of gooey fat on the floor. Ew. I’d recycled some raw materials I didn’t want.

Forget my surroundings. What had I made? Ceramic chips lay scattered around the table, curved in complicated ways. What did they do? I couldn’t remember the picture, but I’d been left with the impression they didn’t do anything. They were just decoration for the sphere that lit up faintly as I watched.

The glow came from deep within, subtle, really bringing out the pink color. I picked up the sphere, placed it in the middle of the chips, and tapped the crystal surface. Slowly, the ball levitated up off the surface of the table. Bits of ceramic slid across the surface, sucked toward the sphere until they darted up and took their places floating around the ball. Mostly beneath the ball. None of the ceramic tips touched the sphere or each other, but the end result looked like a very artsy foot tall pixie. Those six triangular shapes were wings, for example.

Yes, three of the longer chips lifted as the fairy extended her arm. She drifted over and touched her little hand to the top of The Machine. Then she turned, and I saw for the first time the swirling, black smudge like a pupil where the ball focused. Hovering up to my face, she touched that smooth, tiny hand to my forehead.

I’d created life again. Yes, I’d gotten my toy to stop bullets, but she came with a personality. Oh, boy. The Machine just sat there, but as I straightened up this creation watched me, clearly alive enough to pay attention.

I lifted my own hand and touched a fingertip to her outstretched hand. “I’ll call you Vera,” I told her.

The sphere turned, looked down at my finger, looked up at my face, and Vera answered with a noise like a faintly chiming, silver bell.

got home around 12:30 a.m. I had to take my regular bike, since the light bike is attached to my supervillain jumpsuit and I sure wasn’t taking that home. I couldn’t even use my teleport rings—I skipped one intersection and nearly fell off my bicycle. Too tired.

No car in the driveway, and the only lights in the house were the ones I’d left. My parents hadn’t gotten home yet. I stumbled into the house and fell into bed. Discomfort made me undress, and a faint ache in my heart made me scoop Vera out of my belt pouch. Apparently, my power could sometimes sacrifice enough dignity to make something simple and practical, because I’d been wearing this pouch when I finished Vera and I certainly hadn’t when I started.

I’d put Vera to sleep before I left the lair. Now she was only a pink crystal ball with a white ceramic case. After I unwrapped The Machine from my wrist, I put my arms around them both, curled up tightly in my bed, and fell asleep.

I’m usually eager to get up and about, but, when I woke up the next morning, I just lay there for a while. I didn’t even try to go back to sleep. I propped up my pillows against the head of the bed, stared at the daylight outside my bedroom curtains, and petted The Machine with one hand while I rolled Vera around in the other.

What had I made, anyway? As a practical question, I needed to know what she could do. I was not going to lose again, so I needed to know what tools I had at my disposal.

There was another side to that question. A more important side, as reluctant as I was to admit it. What did she want to do?

I put Vera down in my lap and tapped her. “Wake up.” Her shell cracked, sliding off into its individual pieces only to be scooped up as she rose into the air. Fairy-shaped again, her glowing, pink head turned until the black pupil faced me.

And that was it. So much for what she wanted. Maybe I’d misread her behavior last night?

Naturally, the moment I thought that, she turned and floated away from me. She hovered over my computer, which beeped and hummed as it abruptly switched on. Okay, that was one thing Vera could do.

She didn’t follow up. Instead, she turned and drifted over to my statue of The Apparition. Circling it slowly, her eye darted up and down the illusionary figure in the mirrored case. A detached hand reached out and tapped the case, then tapped again.

I slid out of bed and wandered over as Vera continued to stare. The Apparition floated inside that jar, or at least a convincing duplicate. Transparent, gray, a sad girl in a loose dress. Perhaps a hospital gown? Did she die on-site from what Mourning Dove did to her, or did her life bleed away as doctors struggled to even find a wound?

“Yeah, there’s something about her, isn’t there?” Vera didn’t even turn to look at me. She was hypnotized. I gave her another tap. “Sleep.”

She did, dropping slowly down onto my desk as the ceramic parts closed up into a shell. She was easy to turn on and off, at least.

I dropped her on my bed, fastened The Machine back onto my wrist, and went to take my shower and get dressed. It was only when Dad’s gizmo was braiding my hair out of my way that I put those thoughts together. I’d showered wearing The Machine. Had I been doing that for days now?

I stepped out to meet my parents. Dad was in his office. A timer dinged, and Mom slid some eggs and bacon and toast onto the table, but I walked in to see what Dad was doing first.

His office computer was covered in photos and diagrams of the tower I’d left in the landfill. Of course.

Might as well find out. “What’s that?” I asked him.

“I’m not sure. Passersby reported lights in the Puente Hills Landfill last night. Police were worried it might be dangerous, but Echo sent me every scan and measurement he could think of, and as far as I can tell it’s exactly what it looks like—a big patchwork tube with lights stuck on.” He clicked between a few windows to show me the empty interior and the bands of different materials.

From the kitchen Mom called out, “The tower is a distraction, made out of refuse from the dig. The tunnels are the important clue. Someone with access to nonstandard technology went searching through that landfill. They knew something was there, and we may never find out what it was because they took it and got out.”

I wandered back into the kitchen, sat down at the table, and dug into my breakfast as Dad shouted back, “So you think it’s another hit by The Inscrutable Machine.”

Mom set a glass of milk in front of me and walked over to the doorway of Dad’s office so she wouldn’t have to shout quite so loud. “It fits their current MO. They like attention, and it’s only bad luck no superhero saw the tower. They’ve already gathered one artifact no one else knew existed. They were seen in the area, as were robots like the ones at the monster attack. However, the tower doesn’t match the technology they’ve shown off already. It’s too crude.”

Well, yeah. The Machine built it, not me. He wasn’t exactly a genius, he just made a tube out of garbage like I told him to.

“It doesn’t match anything I’m aware of,” Dad replied. “A stiff wind and the tube will collapse under its own weight, yet it’s built out of seamlessly refined materials from the dump.”

Mom disappeared into Dad’s office, but I could still hear her. “I’m not actually sure The Inscrutable Machine were directly involved here. The odds lean to their being used as a cover by whoever sent them after the first artifact.”

“But you’re certain the crimes are connected,” Dad said.

“Enough that I would act on that hypothesis if I were professionally involved. It would be difficult. Without knowing what was found at this dig site, we can’t guess what they’re going to be used for.”

I got up, put my dirty dishes in the sink, and circled back to my room to pick up my new belt pouch and scoop Vera and the teleport rings into it. “I’m going out!” I yelled as I headed for the door.