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My Dearest Apprentice,

Please clear all personal belongings from the lower levels of my studio. When I arrive, I will take no offense if you choose to live elsewhere for the duration of my stay. Should you be there to greet me, you may find yourself in a place of questionable legality. Your loyalties to me, above all else, are expected. You have never failed me and I trust that you will not do so now.

Yours,

Aurora

I snort. “That’s the most cryptic thing I’ve ever read. She’s a crackpot.”

“
Her
studio,” Pepper mocks, his back still facing me as he looks up at the wall screen. “Fifty years here and she still considers it hers.”

“It’ll be okay,” I assure him.

“I’m worthless. I have nothing to live for.”

“That’s not true,” I snap on reflex. Pepper gives me an annoyed look, a look that says
really? That’s the best you can do?
“In a few hours, Aurora will kick me out of my own studio—my own home. I will have precisely nothing to live for.”

“You have tons to live for!”

Pepper’s lips form a flat line. “Name one.”

Deafening silence fills the space between us as I close my mouth. I have no answer for him. All of my knee-jerk replies are nothing but empty words and excuses, like a dime store sympathy card meant to make someone feel better. There are no cleverly worded poems or historical quotes that can make him feel better; nothing that can change his situation. I’ve been in Pepper’s shoes before. I’m there right now.

If I’m not a Hero, I have no reason to live.

Pepper was born to design suits. He wakes up every morning, puts on a fitted shirt with matching cufflinks and a belt so that he can look as passionate as he feels about his job. He dedicates his entire life to designing each suit to be better than the last. This isn’t his hobby; it is his life. This is when I realize that Pepper and I are very much alike.

It’s me who grabs his shoulders this time.

“You’re right.” I stare him in the eyes with my jaw set and watch his own purple eyes swell with tears as his bottom lip quivers.

“You’re absolutely right. You have nothing to live for if you aren’t here, doing what you were born to do.” I swallow, knowing my speech isn’t just for him. It’s for me too. “So, isn’t that worth fighting for?”

Jake doesn’t look happy to see me even though his first words are, “Thank god, I found you.”

“Technically I found you.” When I left Pepper’s and didn’t find Jake waiting outside for me, I walked halfway home before I came across him, sitting slumped against the wall in the tunnels. He was convinced that he was on a one-way trip to be depowered once my dad discovered he had failed to escort me home. It took all of my Hero-negotiation skills to convince him that he technically could still walk me home and no one would know about the detour.

We look to the left as a terrifying noise echoes through the tunnel, growing louder as it nears us. It isn’t the screeching of a KAPOW pod in need of a tune-up. The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. It’s a scream. Not a high-pitched, Wilhelm scream from horror movies, but a low, guttural lash of desperation. A single word.

“
No
.”

The next sound is more frightening than the one before it. Static screeches through the air as a computerized female voice echoes through the tunnels in Central. “All Supers are in Lockdown. Proceed to shelter and do not leave until notice is given. Do not use communication devices. All Supers are in Lockdown.”

A weight falls to the bottom of my stomach and my skin turns to ice. My eyes lock with Jake’s and he gives me a look that I know I will never forget:
This isn’t a drill.

He doesn’t even glance at the door to my house, which is only a step or two away from me. He doesn’t try to force me and my brown paper bag through the door and into safety. Guess he finally figured out there’s no use in trying to argue with me.

I leap into a sprint and he’s trailing after me half a second later. There’s shouting and desperate pleading, sobbing and more shouting echoing through the tunnels as I follow the two different voices. I refuse to believe what logic and my short-term memory is telling me.

That the male voice I hear begging and crying is Pepper.

Behind me, Jake pants for breath as his footsteps lag behind me. He calls out for me to wait up, bargains that he’ll give me anything if I please just let him escort me. I smell the sweat rolling off him, hear it splash onto the concrete, but as I turn the second to last corner to Pepper’s studio, I don’t slow down and I don’t look back.

I’m not out of breath when I reach the last turn and slow to a creep walk. If anything, I have too much oxygen in my lungs, too much adrenaline coursing through my body. I take a slow, deep breath. Above, the speakers keep repeating the same warning about being in lockdown. My fingers slide against the wall as I crouch to below eye level and peek around the corner.

A public KAPOW pod waits outside of the studio, its open door swinging in the nonexistent wind. A thin woman stands at the threshold of Pepper’s studio with her back to me. She’s flanked on both sides by two men of imposing statures who are dressed head to toe in black. She wears high-heel leather boots and a black mini dress that fits tightly around her shapeless body. Silver hair sways around her lower back as she speaks.

“I demand loyalty.” Her words are shards of glass, spilling out of her mouth and slicing through everything in its path.

A whimper pulls my gaze away from her and to the crumpled, bloody pile at her feet.

Oh God.

Oh dear God.

Pepper’s body convulses as he sobs. “I cannot tell you,” he says. “I—I—I don’t know. I’m sorry, Aurora.”

“LIAR.” The heartless bitch stomps on Pepper’s outstretched hand.

Rage thunders inside my chest as my body aches to leap into action, to rip her head off and shove it down her throat. With a monumental amount of willpower, I hold back. I stand perfectly still. I don’t act upon my emotions. Because that always gets me into trouble.
Think
, Maci.

Jake is nowhere near, the slow bastard. My MOD won’t work since we’re in lockdown and the only thing I have is a paper bag with my Hero suit in it.

Hidden in the tunnel adjacent to Pepper’s studio, I strip and step into my new Hero suit, not allowing myself even a moment to savor the feeling of the fabric on my skin. Instead, I figure out my plan of attack.

I’ll hook the two cronies. Easy. Then I’ll take out the woman. She’s decades older than me but she’s no thicker than a skeleton so I’ll be faster and stronger. But not too fast—she needs to suffer for what she’s done to the man who is my only ally.

From around the corner, Aurora demands that he tell her something and Pepper adamantly refuses. I take a few deep breaths as the seconds feel like hours. Willpower clenches to my muscles, forcing me to stay put until the best time to reveal myself.

A hand touches my shoulder. Instinct swings my body around, grabbing my unexpected attacker by the neck, and shoving him into the wall.

“Jesus,” Jake breaths with a gasped breath. I let go.

“Sorry.”

He rubs his neck. From around the corner, Aurora’s voice is sickly sweet. “Pepper, sweetheart. I do not want to hurt you. You are my sweet apprentice.”

“I am no longer an apprentice,” Pepper interjects. A
smack
echoes off the tunnels. Jake’s eyebrows draw together in concern. “What the hell is going on?” he mouths. Or at least, that’s what it looks like. I press my finger to my lips to silence him.

A cold female laugh makes me cringe as Jake and I eavesdrop. “You will tell me where she is this instant or you will die.”

Jake sucks in a breath. Time is running out. I press my hand to Jake’s chest and stand on tip toe until I’m eye level and one inch away from him. In a voice only a Super can hear, I whisper, “There’s three of them. I’ll hook, you retrieve. But don’t come out until I call you. We may need the element of surprise.”

Jake’s eyes widen. “This is a Hero’s job, Maci. We can’t do this.”

“I’m doing it with or without you,” I hiss.

From around the corner, “You have ten seconds, apprentice!”

Jake grabs my shoulders, his whisper a faint cry, “We’re in lockdown. Heroes will be here any minute. Please, Maci.”

“Five Seconds!”

I shrug him off—fixing a glare on him that could move mountains. “How dare you be such a coward?”

“Three seconds!”

Jake’s shoulders fall. He steps backward, admitting defeat. I turn and peek around the corner, preparing to make my move. Whatever Aurora wants to know, Pepper isn’t telling and that means it’s a secret worth keeping.

I take one step forward, arms tight and locked in a hook-throwing position. Now is the time in the human superhero movies where the hero says something badass, clever, and quotable for years to come, right before taking out the villain and saving the hot girl.

Pepper isn’t a hot girl, and this isn’t a movie, but I would love to have something incredibly badass to say right before I send this real life villain to the depowering machine.

“Time’s up,” Aurora says, grabbing Pepper by the neck and pulling until he’s standing again, albeit against his own will. Red tears fall down his cheeks. Guess she is stronger than she looks. Each word she says now comes out like its own venomous sentence.

“Where.”

“Is.”

“The.”

“Might.”

“Girl?”

My body goes numb. My stomach leaps into my throat and threatens to block off my airway. Tingles flow through my arms and into my chest, paralyzingly painful. This woman has come into Central and made a bloody pulp out of Pepper for the purpose of finding someone. Me.

And he kept my location a secret.

He risked his life for me.

When I haven’t ever done a single thing for him.

I take another step forward, coming into their view. This time I know exactly what the movie superhero would say.

“I’m right here, bitch.”

Four sets of eyes shoot in my direction. The only sound is the scraping of Aurora’s stiletto heel against the smooth floor as she turns to face me. Her demeanor softens. Her lips stretch into a smile, showing faint wrinkles on either side of her mouth.

“Sweetheart. You don’t belong over there.”

“Like hell I don’t.” Her eyes bulge as I swing an arm out, sending a set of hooks flying through the air toward the guy on her left. With a twist of my hips, my right arm swings out a millisecond later, sending the next set of hooks to her right. A flicker of panic crosses her face as she probably realizes that without her two goonies, she’ll have to fight me alone.

Aurora’s lips press together. Her hand extends perpendicular to the ground, revealing something smooth and metallic in her palm. The shiny surface pulses red, reflecting the flashing sirens above our heads. It all happens in a nanosecond, but it feels like hours as I watch the thing in her hand emit a shock of electricity that stops, no—obliterates—the hooks in thin air. Black dust erupts in a
poof
just inches from both guy’s bodies.

I gasp. What sort of fresh hell is this?

A bored laugh escapes her. I steal a glance at Pepper, who is backed into the wall, hands tied with silver cord, dried blood clinging to every inch of his skin. His eyes fill with pain as he watches me, and for a moment I’m overcome with annoyance. He should be happy that I’m here to save him, not giving me a head-shaking look of disappointment.

With no more tools at my disposal, I need to stall for time. Jake will come up with something, call for help, or reveal himself and come help me. The Heroes, the real ones, will be here any second. I just need to stall.

“I won’t let you do this,” I say.

“This doesn’t concern you.” She points behind me, toward the KAPOW pod with the open door. “Go sit down. I’ll deal with you in a moment.”

This is the weirdest confrontation I’ve ever seen. An obviously evil woman is willing to torture Pepper for information on my whereabouts, but doesn’t even try to fight me when I show up? She expects me to
sit down
and obey her? Dad will have a field day with this. She’s batshit crazy.