The Secret of the Supers (The First Superhero Book 4) (6 page)

“
A
lright
, gotta admit, that was pretty cool to watch,” Doug said from his spot on the couch.

I smiled as I looked at my handiwork. I’d just boarded up the front door in five seconds flat. It was now closed off to the outside world, with only a teeny bit of light seeping through the small cracks between each plank of wood. “Not gonna lie, it felt pretty cool,” I said as I turned to him.

“Does this mean we’re going to have to take the back door whenever we want to go outside now?” he asked.

“Yep,” I said as I sat down on the couch next to him.

“Oh,” he said as he turned back to his computer. “That’s not fun.”

I looked on the other side of Doug, and sitting next to him was his Eximus rifle, the barrel sticking off the edge of the couch. It looked really futuristic, like something you’d see on a sci-fi tv show. I felt nervous looking at it, knowing it was something both made and used to kill Supers all over the US. “Where’d you get that thing?” I asked as casually as possible. “Didn’t know we kept one around.”

Doug eyed the blaster next to him, and tensed up. It was obviously a conversation he didn’t want to have. “Well, I’ve had it for a while, actually.” He picked it up, and my heart skipped a beat. He pressed a button in the middle of the gun, and its metal form clicked and folded in half. It was now much smaller, and much more portable. “I kept it in my backpack.”

“How come?” I asked.

Doug hesitated. “To be honest, Kane, Samantha gave it to me…just in case.”

“Just in case what? We were attacked?” I asked, wanting to get the full answer out of him. Assumptions were popping up in my head, but I wanted to know the truth.

“In case we were attacked. By any Supers.” His eyes glanced at me and then darted away.

“Samantha was worried I would attack you guys?” I asked, confused and hurt.

“I don’t know, she just gave it to me and said that I needed to be ready to use it whenever I needed to, against whoever I needed to. She just wanted me to be safe, Kane.” He turned to look at me. “I don’t think she meant you specifically—I doubt she did. But she made it clear to me that I shouldn’t be afraid to, if I needed to.” His eye turned to the hole I boarded up where the front door used to be, and then behind him where the still gaping hole lead from my room to the living room. “It’s a good thing too, because last night, I needed to.”

I sighed, the guilt and nausea piling up inside me. I couldn’t believe I’d done all of this. “You’re right, I’m glad you had the courage to use it,” I said. “What do you think about going to London?” I asked, wanting to change the subject.

“I think it’ll be a good idea. We could use the change of scenery.”

“You aren’t worried about Samantha?” I asked.

“Of course I am,” Doug said. “But I’m also worried about what Athena will do if you make her mad by not going. She knows where Samantha is, she could punish her if we don’t do what she says.”

I hadn’t thought about that. “You’ve got a point, although I don’t think she’d do that. Athena’s not like that. She’s never not been helpful.”

“So you’re saying she’s a good person?” Doug asked.

“I don’t even know if she is a person. I think she is, but there’s a lot we don’t know. I think the more we talk and work with her though, the more we’ll find out. About her, about Supers, about everything.” I paused for a moment, thinking about what I was about to say next. Whether or not I actually believed it. I decided I did. “I think she might be the key.”

“The key to what?”

I shrugged and looked away, thinking. “Everything?” I said with a chuckle. “She obviously knows a lot about Supers. She’s incredibly powerful. I think she might know how we can defeat Atlas, restore humanity; she might even know where our powers come from.”

“And you think she’d tell us?” Doug asked.

“I don’t know, but she sure as hell would be more inclined to if we were on her good side.”

“Well then,” Doug said, nodding his head. “I think we’re making the right call by going to England. “If it’ll help us in all those ways
and
help us find Samantha and rescue her, we’d be dumb not to.”

I gave Doug a pat on the shoulder. “I think you’re right,” I said with a smile. I stood from the couch. “Where’s Eddie?” I asked. “I need to apologize to him for…you know…almost choking him to death.”

Doug pointed to the backyard. “He’s out there in the shed. Tinkering with something, of course.”

I nodded my head. “Thanks man. Keep me updated if you hear something from London.”

“Roger that.”

****

I
stepped
into the two-car garage that Eddie turned into his own work shed. The smell of gasoline flooded my nostrils, joined by the scent of something burning. There were shelves of tools, supplies, and failed experiments stacked on all the walls. A large workbench sat in the middle of the room, a pile of various pieces of equipment and pieces of metal piled high. “Hey, Eddie!” I shouted.

Eddie’s sweaty head poked out from the side of a pile of scrap. He smiled when he saw me, his sixteen-year-old face beaming with the joy of doing something that he loved. “Hi, Kane,” he said.

I walked over to him. Whenever I got close I could see the bruises around his neck caused by my own hands, and I once again thought I was going to lose it all over the garage floor. “What’re you working on?” I asked as I stepped around his workbench to stand next to him.

“I’m working on these little pod things,” he said, pointing at one of the silver cylindrical objects he was working on while he sat in my room, waiting for me to come to.

“What for?” I asked.

“I’m trying to store my electricity in them, that way I can make a bunch of…
electricity
grenades, I guess you could call them.” He picked one up and tossed it around in his hand. I grew nervous at how nonchalantly he was handling something that had the word “grenade” in them, even if the electricity wasn’t going to have any effect on me.

“Those could come in handy,” I said.

Eddie nodded. “Yeah, I’m trying to figure out a way to attack people that’s a bit more predictable. Just shooting electricity is unpredictable, the current might go somewhere I don’t intend. But these things?” he said, holding the cylinder up to the light. “Where ever these things hit—
poof
, the target is fried.” He set it back down on the table, his presentation over. “I just need to work on my aim.”

I chuckled, although I felt weird about laughing at something that was really pretty dark. “I’m sure you’ll figure something out soon.” I cleared my throat, and scratched the back of my head. “What I came out here for, Eddie, is that I really wanted to say that I’m sorry about…” I wasn’t sure how to say it, so I just gestured to my own neck.

“Oh, you mean grabbing me by the throat, pulling me through a wall, and slowly choking me to death?” he said.

I nodded. “Yeah, that. I’m sorry about…that.” I didn’t know why I couldn’t just come out and say it. I guessed it was because if I did, it’d make me so sick I’d throw up everywhere.

“Well, I can’t say I trust you completely. What you did hurt in a lot of ways. But I forgive you, Kane. I know you’d do—and have done—anything to protect us,” Eddie said, his eyes not looking away from mine.

The way he was being genuine touched me, and I was happy to have his forgiveness. “I totally understand. Thanks for forgiving me.”

“No problem,” Eddie said with a smile. He turned back to working on his electricity grenades.

“You should get out of this shed more often. You’re always tinkering with things, we’d love to have you hang out with us more,” I said.

Eddie stopped and looked up me. He nodded his head. “I think I’ll try and do that.” He smiled, and I smiled back.

Three down, one to go.

I stepped out of the garage and walked on the stone path to the back door to the house, my conscious feeling much better and lighter. There was still one more person I needed to confront before I felt totally okay, and I doubted it was going to be as easy as everybody else.

Before I could start looking for Selena though, Doug stuck his head out the back door. “Kane! You need to get inside. It’s London. Athena was right, they need us.”

“
W
hat’s going on
?” I said as I followed Doug into the living room. Drew was laying himself down on the couch, not wanting to miss whatever it was Doug was about to say.

“I just got a message from Ellie, one of the members of Leopold’s squad,” Doug said as he moved his laptop over from in front of the couch. He sat down on the recliner, pulling everything up on his computer screen.

The backdoor opened, and Selena walked in through the kitchen. “Something happen?” she asked.

Doug nodded. “Yeah, it turns out Athena was right about something at least. Our friends in Europe are asking for our help.”

Selena walked across to stand by Drew across from me. “What are they saying?”

“The Legion of Richter is really starting to expand their reach out there. The government has a lot of their people out on different sorts of missions—including Leopold—so their numbers aren’t as strong as they need to be in order to repel the attack. They’ve set up strict curfews, soldiers out in the street, all their political leaders running the country from underground bunkers, etc. They’ve got things on total lockdown.”

“So what do they need us to do?” I asked.

“They want us to come over there and help repel the attack. If The Legion were to have control over America
and
Europe, it’d be pretty much game over. They’d be able to spread like wildfire from there, and there’s not much we’d be able to do to stop them.” Doug looked between Selena and I as we processed the information.

“So what you’re saying is that, Athena or no Athena, we’d be pretty stupid not to go over there and help them?” Selena asked.

Doug nodded his head. “Yeah, it really sounds like they need our help. Besides, they didn’t let me forget that they came over here and helped us when Raven was attacking.”

I chuckled quietly and shook my head. “Is there anyone out there that we
don’t
owe?”

Doug laughed. “At this rate, there’s not going to be many people left.”

“So what’s our next step?” Drew asked, bringing us back on topic

Doug cleared his throat. “Right now they’re waiting on a response from me. Should I tell them we’re coming?”

I looked over to Selena. “You think we can do this?” I asked. Despite the fact she was annoyed with me—and for good reason—I knew I couldn’t do any of this without her help. I didn’t
want
to do it without her.

Selena nodded her head. “I think we can. We have to.” She hesitated for a moment. “Especially if it means it’ll give us a chance to find out where Samantha is,” she said, a little quieter than usual.

I nodded my head, agreeing with her, happy that she was admitting that we needed to follow along with Athena. “Okay then, let them know we’re on our way—all of us.”

“Um, well if we’re all going, we should wait a bit.” Drew said. He lifted up a hand and pointed at himself. “Still got a concussion.”

I turned to Doug. “Can they wait another twenty-four hours or so?”

“I’ll ask, but it shouldn’t be a problem,” Doug said, already typing our response message.

“Okay then,” I said, taking a deep breath. “It seems tomorrow we’re heading to London.”

A
chill breeze
rushed across my skin as I walked down the streets of London, which was now a ghost town. I thought it was empty last time I was here just a few weeks ago, but it was nothing compared to the way it was now. Nobody walked down the street, and only a few cars would drive by here and there, their drivers’ eyes darting up at the sky, searching for any sign of Supers.

“How much farther? Why couldn’t you just fly us there?” Drew asked.

“We don’t want to cause a panic. If anybody saw a bunch of Supers flying around, people would lose their minds,” I said. Up ahead, I saw the tall white building with the many white steps leading up to the entrance. “It’s that white building up there,” I said.

Everybody picked up their pace a little bit, excited to finally be at our destination. It was hard for us all to get a good sleep the night before. Both because of the whistling of the wood through the slats in the boards I used to fix the walls, and because we were all excited and nervous about going to London. We had no idea what things were going to be like here, and so far they didn’t look good. At least all the buildings were still standing, people hadn’t abandoned the city, and Supers weren’t roaming free, taking and destroying whatever they wanted.

But still, that isn’t to say it wasn’t eerie and didn’t leave me with a bad feeling.

We walked up the steps to the building, and walked inside. The room was filled with armed guards, whose eyes turned to us as we walked in. A woman in a suit with her hair pulled back walked up to us from behind a desk in the middle of the room. “Can I help you?” she asked.

“Uh,” Doug said, looking back at us, not sure what to say. I thought we were expected? “Yeah, we’re here to see Ellie? We’re from America.”

The woman had a moment of realization. “Oh, yes! You’re Tempest!”

Doug’s cheeks flushed red with embarrassment and he shook his head. “No—I’m not…uh…”

I stepped in, realizing Doug. “Sorry to disappoint, but I’m Tempest.” I held my hand out. “Kane Andrews.”

She shook my hand. “I’m Amelia. If you’ll follow me Mr. Andrews, I’ll take you to Ms. Ellie.”

Amelia lead us down to a door in the back of the room. We walked through it, and were greeted by a long and tall hallway, with many people moving around going from office to office. Their shoes squeaked across the floor, echoing around the hall. Nobody talked as they had their eyes either down at papers in their hands, or their eyes straight ahead, on a mission.

“Right this way,” Amelia said, breaking me from my train of thought. I looked to my left and saw everybody standing in front of an elevator, staring at me.

“Right, sorry,” I said, moving over to the rest of the group quickly.

“Everybody seems to really have a fire up their ass,” Drew leaned over and whispered to me.

I nodded my head as my eyes scanned the hallway. The elevator door dinged, and we all piled in. Amelia hit the button for the fifth floor, and we began to shoot up the building.

The elevator doors behind us slid open. We all turned around and walked into a much smaller hallway. This one was carpeted and had a lot fewer people running about in it.

Amelia led us down a bit before reaching a set of double doors. She opened them and gestured for us to step inside. The room was a large conference room with a big table and multiple chairs set up. Each spot at the table had a paper tablet and bottle of water. A large TV hung on the wall behind the head of the table, and had a picture of the seal of the British Government on as its screensaver.

“If you’ll just wait here a moment, I’ll let Ellie know you’ve arrived,” Amelia said.

“Thank you,” I told her as she shut the door behind her and left us alone in the room. We all chose a seat and sat down. Selena and I sat across from each other next to the head of the table, Drew next to her, Doug next to me, and Eddie next to him.

“Think we can open these?” Eddie asked, holding up a water bottle.

I looked down at all the unopened bottles that sat on the table. “It looks like they’ve got plenty, so I don’t see why not.”

We all opened our bottles and started drinking.

“Everybody looked like they were five minutes late to a meeting with the principal,” Doug said.

“Well, their country is under attack,” I said as I twisted the lid back onto my bottle.

The door on the other side of the room opened, and in walked Ellie, with the grim figures of Mr. Auder and Ms. Ava behind her. The two of them were Leopold’s—well, now Ellie’s—direct commanding officers. They dressed in boring gray suits, and reeked of cheap perfume and cologne.

“Hey guys!” Ellie said excited as she walked over to us.

“It’s good to see you again,” I said. Ellie and I only spent a little time together, as usual when we saw each other it was when we were either under attack or I was distracted by the search for Samantha. But what time we did spend, I saw her as a kind, bubbly person, and an excellent Super as well.

Selena and Ellie gave each other a hug, excited to see each other once again. They spent the most time together, and had become good friends.

“If we all will have our seats, we’ll get started,” Ms. Ava said, her lips pursed. Mr. Auder looked equally perturbed.

Selena sat down and Ellie sat down at the head of the table. Mr. Auder and Ms. Ava stood at the other end of the conference room, both hands behind their backs.

“We thank you for trusting us enough to ask for our help,” I began. “We’ll help you in any way we can.”

Ms. Ava smirked. “Really? I’m surprised, given the last time we asked for you to stay in London and help us, you said we were being inappropriate and refused.”

I felt trapped, unsure what to say. She wasn’t wrong, but she didn’t have to attack me in such a passive aggressive way like that. “Circumstances change, Ms. Ava,” I said, staring at her as coldly as possible, letting her know I didn’t appreciate the way she was approaching things. “We’re grateful for how you came to our aide when Raven and Atlas were attacking us, and are eager to return the favor.”

From the corner of my eye, I could see Selena smirk at me. She appreciated the smart-ass undertones in my voice.

“I believe my colleague is trying to say thank you, in her own way,” Mr. Auder said in a boring voice. “How are things in the States?” he asked with a forced smile.

“They’re pretty shitty,” Drew said.

Mr. Auder turned to look at him, a curious look in his eyes. “I don’t think we’ve been introduced,” he said.

“My name’s Drew,” he said.

Mr. Auder tilted his head. “A pleasure. And what about your friend Samantha?”

“Yeah,” Ellie said, placing a hand on my shoulder, causing me to turn and look at her. “Any news?”

I cleared my throat, and stole a glance at Selena. We hadn’t discussed whether or not to tell them about Athena. Selena raised her eyebrow, and I decided to leave that part out, at least in front of Mr. Auder and Ms. Ava. “Not really, no.” I gave her a forced smile. “Thanks, though. We’re confident we’ll have some good news soon.”

Ellie patted me on the shoulder. “Good, I’m glad.”

I gave her a nod in thanks, and turned back to the two living statutes at the other end of the table. “So, what’s the situation in London? What do you need our help with?”

“A lieutenant of Atlas from The Legion of Richter named Jigsaw has come over from the States. He and his goons have been picking away at our forces, testing them,” Mr. Auder said.

“We believe they’re trying to suss out the best weakness they can exploit,” Ms. Ava said.

“So they haven’t launched any full-scale attacks on you?” Selena asked.

“No, not yet. It’s only a matter of time, however,” Mr. Auder said.

“So where do we come in?” I asked.

Ms. Ava cleared her throat, her describing how we can help an obvious displeasure for her. “We need your help to help nip this whole thing in the bud. Many of our forces are out on very important missions for us, including Leopold Renner, Thomas Frank, and Nathan Valorie, all three of which were part of the team sent to help you in Texas.”

“Yes, I’m aware of who they are. You can’t just call them back?”

Mr. Auder and Ms. Ava looked at each other. “No, we cannot,” Mr. Auder said.

“Your team will help Ellie and Avery to dispel this small regime from our boarders,” Ms. Ava said.

“How many people does this Jigsaw guy have with him?” Doug asked, speaking up for the first time. “My name’s Doug,” he said before Ms. Ava could opened her mouth to ask.

“It’s a pleasure, Doug,” Ms. Ava said, although the look on her face made it seem like it was anything but. “Our sources indicate he has anywhere between eighteen and twenty-four Supers accompanying him.”

I scoffed. “Well, that sounds like a walk in the park,” I said with a sarcastic tone.

“I need your confirmation, Mr. Andrews,” Ms. Ava said. “Can you or can you not help us?”

I looked at Selena and the rest of the group. They all seemed to be game. “Any objections?” I asked them. They all shook their heads. “Alright then, I guess it seems like we’ll be helping you.”