The Twisted Future (Teen Superheroes Book 4) (14 page)

Chapter Thirty-Four

I was sick of running. I was sick of hiding. I wanted to be back in my own time. I wanted to be away from this twisted future.

But first we needed a ship. My eyes scanned the horizon, making out a tiny dot.

‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to be fast if this is going to work.’

I had done everything Old Axel’s way. I had followed his rules. Taken his advice. I had hidden when I wanted to fight. Well, no more. Now I was doing it my way. I sped across the sky, catching up to the ship in seconds. Veering under it, I kept pace for a few seconds.

‘Oxygen!’ I yelled at Ebony.

She appeared momentarily confused, but nodded. A second later I brought us up in front of the craft and plastered us against the window.

‘Now!’ I yelled.

She evaporated the glass and then we were inside the control cabin with the two pilots. They were taken completely by surprise. Possibly they had been trying to track my path when we dropped in their laps. I knocked them out, dumping them into a rear cell.

Ebony reformed the glass as Old Axel took control of the ship.

‘That was amazing,’ he said.

‘Thanks.’

‘Insane, but amazing. It was stupid to risk your life like that.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Like we were already in a safe place.’

Ebony gave me a friendly punch to the arm. ‘Well,’ she laughed. ‘
I
thought you were amazing.’

I winced. ‘Sorry, that’s—’

‘Oops. The fight. Forgot about that.’

I wished I could. Now that I had a moment to relax, I realized I was in a world of pain.
Easing myself into the navigator’s seat, Ebony fetched painkillers from the first aid kit. I swallowed a few while I assessed where I hurt the most. It was hard to pick. My jaw felt terrible. A couple of my ribs were cracked.

‘I feel awful,’ I groaned.

‘Relax for a while,’ Old Axel said. ‘I might have some good news for you.’

‘Good. I need some.’

‘I’m signaling to the other Agency ships that we’re having problems with our engines and we’re returning to base.’ He smiled at us. ‘We’re going home in style.’

‘Thanks to me,’ I said.

‘Thanks to all of us,’ he replied. 

I fe
ll back, exhausted. The last few days had been insane. After this I was taking a holiday. I would lie down on a beach and not move for a week. I closed my eyes. When I opened them again I heard Old Axel talking.

‘Wassat?’ I said.

‘I’m getting a signal on a secure channel,’ he said. ‘Encrypted.’

‘From the Agency?’ I sat up.

‘No. It’s a branch of the resistance.’

‘How is that possible?’ I asked. ‘No-one even knows we have this ship.’

‘It’s being sent on a channel used by an East coast group,’ Old Axel explained. ‘They’re sending a set of coordinates.’

‘What are you going to do?’

Old Axel glared at the console. ‘We’ll go,’ he said, his jaw hardening. ‘We don’t really have a choice.’

‘Why not?’

He didn’t answer. Ebony and I exchanged a glance. There was something he wasn’t telling us. Within minutes we were zooming over a mist filled town west of Washington. After landing us in an alley near a statue of some founding father, Old Axel retrieved some contamination suits from the back lockers.

‘Who was sending that signal?’ Ebony asked.

Old Axel swallowed. ‘I’m not sure.’

‘But you have a pretty good idea.’

‘I know who’s used it in the past.’

‘Who?’

He refused to answer. Leaving the ship, we found ourselves in a fog enshrouded street in a typical town in middle America. A tall building with a tower lay across the road from us. The streets were quiet though. The gas was as poisonous here as the mid-west.

We climbed the steps, Old Axel pushed the doors open and entered a town hall
with paintings of various civic leaders lining the walls. Surprisingly, the interior was in pretty good condition with most of the old woodwork intact. We continued on to the council chambers. Some sort of high tech plastic lay across the doors, creating an airlock. We pushed through.

‘Axel!’ Brodie screamed.

She jumped up from a seat near the lectern. Chad followed close behind and we found ourselves in a group hug. There had been times over the last few days that I thought I’d never see my friends again. It was like coming home. Old Axel crossed to some people in the corner. I ignored them for the moment as we exchanged stories.

We had brought each other up to date when I sensed something was wrong. Chad looked worried while Brodie kept glancing over my shoulder. Finally I turned to take a closer look.

Four people stood there. My mouth dropped open as I recognized the older versions of Brodie and Chad. This was getting weirder and weirder. A red-headed girl stood with them and Old Axel. The girl was eyeing our group as the adults engaged in some sort of heated discussion. She was young like us.

I had never seen her before, but she was familiar.

Why?

Something was wrong here. Horribly wrong. I felt it in the pit of my stomach. It was like playing a game of chess and knowing I was a move away from
checkmate.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked. ‘Who’s that girl?’

‘I think they’re catching up on lost time,’ Brodie said, airily. ‘They haven’t seen each other for years.’

She was deliberately ignoring my question.

‘And the girl?’

Neither of them spoke.

‘Who’s the girl?’ I asked again.

‘She’s their daughter,’ Chad said, his face reddening. ‘Their future daughter.’

Their future daughter? He was speaking some kind of foreign language. It didn’t make any sense. I muttered something incomprehensible and then it clicked in my mind and I understood.
Their future daughter.
Now I looked at the girl again and I knew why she was familiar. 

Brodie was speaking, but I couldn’t hear her.
Their future daughter.
She was Chad and Brodie’s
future
daughter. Now all the pieces were falling into place. This was what Old Axel didn’t want to tell me.

...contaminate the time line, causing irreparable damage to the space/time continuum...

My relationship with Brodie wasn’t going to last.

...take revenge upon those who have wronged us...

She was destined to fall in love with Chad.

...you think you can trust everyone...

But my friends would betray me.

‘—one of those weird time line things,’ Brodie was saying. ‘It doesn’t mean anything.’

I had missed most of what she’d said. ‘Your future daughter. Wow. That must have been a surprise.’ I managed to keep my voice under control. Almost. A tiny look of relief crossed Chad’s face, but I wasn’t fooling Brodie. She knew me too well.

‘Please,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s nothing, I promise.’

Sure it was nothing.
To them.
But they weren’t the ones who’d been betrayed.

I was.

‘Why would it mean anything to you?’ I asked, my voice rising. ‘My best friend and my girlfriend end up together, so what does that make me?’

‘Hey man,’ Chad started. ‘You’ve got to understand—’

‘
I thought you were my friends!
’

The wind began to build in the chamber. The group in the corner stopped speaking as a mini-tornado formed around me. I pushed everyone away. Chad. Brodie. Even Ebony. She was Chad’s sister. Did she already know about this? I didn’t know or care.

I couldn’t be with people I didn’t trust.

I was so enraged I didn’t hear the doors fly open behind me. It was only when Ebony fell that I knew something was happening. Looking back, I saw men in combat suits
firing stun weapons at us. I tried to react, but I was already too late. A man had me firmly in his sights. He pulled the trigger and everything went black.

Chapter Thirty-Five

A ceiling went racing by. Two men were holding my arms, dragging me down a corridor. I tried using my powers, but nothing happened so I fought against them. I saw one of them raise a baton and everything went dark again.

A million years passed—or so it seemed. When I next awoke, I found myself on a concrete floor with something around my neck. A brace of some kind. I blearily looked about, my eyes finally focusing on Chad.

‘It’s a portable zeno ray generator,’ he informed me. ‘Our powers are kaput.’

‘Great,’ I mumbled, peering around the cell. Brodie and Ebony were hunched together against a wall. ‘Where are the others?’

Ebony spoke up. ‘They were taken somewhere else.’

The room was concrete with a single barred window. Very Twentieth century. By comparison, the door was some sort of force field, transparent except for a red haze.

‘I already tried it,’ Chad said, holding up a burnt finger. ‘Ouch.’

Beyond lay an empty hallway with elevators at the other end. I tried in vain to push the wall down, but it was pointless. Chad was right. The brace was design
ed to nullify our powers and it was working. I tried tearing it off with pure brute force, but to no avail. These things had been keeping mods under control for decades.

I glanced at Brodie. Whoever had imprisoned us knew our powers intimately. She had been secured to the wall with a metal brace. I caught her eye momentarily, but then I remembered what the future held for Chad and Brodie. Happy families. Together forever. The wrenching apart of everything I’d known since I’d woken up in a squalid hotel room with superpowers. I looked away.

Despite the terrible situation we were in, I could understand why Old Axel was so bitter and angry. He—or I—had been betrayed by my closest friends.

‘Someone’s coming,’ Ebony said.

The elevator doors slid open. Two guards approached with a man behind. He had gray hair and a youthful face. What was it Old Axel had said?

The years—and plastic surgery—have been kind to him.

The door dissolved and Price stepped in. The guards produced weapons, aiming them at us. They didn’t stop Chad. He immediately made a grab for Price, but a bolt of crackling electricity from a weapon knocked him down.

Writhing in agony, unable to stand, he spat at Price through clenched teeth. ‘You’re going to regret that,’ he said.

‘I doubt it,’ James Price said. He had a high-pitched voice, belying his callous interior. Turning to a guard, he said, ‘Again.’

So they hit Chad with another bolt. We leapt to our feet, but the guards waved us back.

‘I can make things very bad for you,’ Price said. ‘You don’t want that. Not yet.’

Ebony dragged Chad away where he crouched against her, shaking, blood seeping from a cut in his mouth.

‘What’s going to happen to us?’ she asked.

‘I’m a scientist. I want to know what makes you tick,’ he said. ‘I’ve experimented on a lot of mods over the years. There’s always more to learn.’

‘You’re sick,’ I said.

He laughed. ‘After I’ve found out what I want, you will be neutered, your powers permanently removed. Then I will confine you to the lowest levels of the darkest dungeon I can find, and there you will rot for the remainder of your lives.’

I tried to think of something clever to say, but nothing came.

‘Nor will your older selves ever see the light of day again,’ he continued. ‘You’ve had a wonderful adventure, but your days of adventuring are over. As the years slowly pass, I’m sure you will remember those times fondly, hoping you will one day escape.’ Price
shook his head sadly. ‘But you never will.’

He marched out, the guards reactivated the door and they disappeared into the elevator.

‘And here I was thinking this was serious,’ Chad said.

No-one laughed.

We remained silent for over an hour, lost in our own thoughts, drowned by the horror of what James Price had said.

Finally Brodie muttered something under her breath.

‘What?’ I asked.

‘That’s Morse code.’

Brodie could have said the moon was made from green cheese and it would have made more sense. She pointed at the light. It had been flickering on and off for several minutes, but I had barely noticed it.

‘What’s Morse code?’ Chad asked.

‘An old kind of message system using dots and dashes. The light is sending a message.’

I stared at her. 

‘It is!’ she continued, angrily. ‘It’s saying...E...L...E...V...’ A few seconds passed. ‘Elevator. It’s saying elevator.’

I nodded. ‘Sure.’

A click came from my throat and I felt the brace loosening. Gingerly touching it, I pulled it away in amazement. I stared at the others. Theirs had also unlocked.

‘What’s going on?’ Chad asked.

‘No idea,’ Ebony replied. ‘But I don’t care. Let’s go.’

I crossed to Brodie and broke her metal chains. I was still pissed with her and Chad, but we had to focus on getting out of here. With a little effort I could smash a hole in the wall—

The red haze in the doorway flickered to static before it faded completely.

‘Do you get the feeling someone’s helping?’ Brodie asked.

‘Maybe it’s a trap,’ Ebony said.

‘Shot while trying to escape?’ I said. ‘They don’t need to do that. They could have killed us anytime they wanted

We made our way to the elevator. It appeared as if almost on cue. Climbing in, we stood, undecided, until the elevator made up its mind for us. It descended. I should have been rejoicing in our newfound freedom, but instead an image of Chad and Brodie together flashed through my mind, and acid burnt in my stomach as we sunk into the bowels of the earth.