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Looks like Pepper will get to keep his job after all.

I cross my arms in front of my chest. “I’m not sitting anywhere.”

“Really?” she drawls, slow and condescending. I catch Pepper in the corner of my eye. He shakes his head no, pleading with his eyes. Pleading for what, I don’t know. Aurora has him by the throat a second later. “Maybe this will convince you.”

Her outstretched hand with the silver object presses against his chest. I lunge forward, fingers desperate to grab hold of her hair and yank her neck back before she lays another bony finger on Pepper. But I’m too late.

Another shockwave pulsates through the air. His eyes roll back into his head, his lips part. A single word escapes his lips in a whisper. “
Maci
.”

Pepper drops to the ground. Lifeless.

I scream.

Aurora spins around, eyes wide and full of a newfound rage. “
You
,” she hisses. My outstretched arms are now just inches from her face. Instead of slamming into her, I recoil. I’m frozen. So close. Close enough to touch her. Close enough to kill her.

But I can’t move. As long as that thing is in her hand, I can’t touch her.

Aurora’s silver hair turns to frizz. Power zaps the air. “Get her.”

Her goonies advance toward me, one of them flexing his massive hotdog fingers as a sick grin twists across his scarred face. I’ll fight him. I’ll fight both of them. And then I’ll kill her.

The first guy dives toward me, swinging a dagger in his fat fist. I catch his wrist seconds before the blade slices into my skin and heave it back. He grunts in pain as his wrist cracks and the dagger buries into his gut. I kick him out of the way and he rolls along the ground like a bloody sack of potatoes.

Aurora curses as the second guy approaches me. I focus on every muscle in his body, watching, waiting for him to make a move.

And then I notice his secret weapon.

A silver circle in his palms.

A dozen things float through my mind at once:
I can take him; I can fight all three of them. It’ll be hard but I can do it. No, I can’t. She has that … thing. Where is Jake? Where is my dad? Pepper. No, don’t think about Pepper. Dad. Where’s Dad? What the hell am I supposed to do?

My back presses into something cold. The KAPOW. I hadn’t realized I’d been walking backward as they stalked toward me. My heartbeat reaches a speed I hadn’t thought possible. If Jake is any kind of good Retriever, he would have saved me by now. Created a distraction. This is not the Hero life I had imagined.

Behind my back, my fingers grab onto the open door of the KAPOW pod. My first thought is to rip it off the hinges and use it as a shield while I run for safety. My second thought is the better one.

With Hero-like speed, I dive into the pod and slam the door closed, narrowly missing the guy’s fingers as he tries to stop me. Activated by my touch, the pod door locks, protecting me—for now.

“Destination?” the computer voice asks.

“Home,” I say on instinct, as the bio-screen reads my DNA through touch. The pod blasts off, leaving the scene of Pepper’s murder in a surreal blur. I collapse into the seat, a public transportation hard plastic pit of germs that isn’t soft or comforting like our personal pod.

Red light pours through the tiny pod window, a constant reminder that the entire Super race is in lockdown. The warning lights of something bad—something that isn’t a drill. It dawns on me as I let my head fall harshly against the wall.

I can’t go home. That’s the first place they’ll look.

“Change destination.” My body pushes forward at the abrupt drop in speed.

“Destination?” The voice is innocent. Preprogrammed and unaware of the dangers before us. It can’t give me advice or comfort me or suggest a safe place for me to go. Frankly, I’m surprised the KAPOW even works in a state of lockdown.

“Destination?” it repeats.

“Um.” I can’t think over the thumping of my heart. I need a safe place. Somewhere far away. A face flashes in my mind—shoulder-length hair, tall, broad shoulders. I take a deep breath. I guess it
is
the safest place in the world.

“Destination Evan Letta.”

It’s still daylight in South Africa. My legs are jelly as I step out of the KAPOW, my arms lifeless appendages at my sides. Though my body moves, steps, and breathes, it does not feel like a real body. I am dejected—so thoroughly broken, straight to the core. Pepper is dead. The Supers are in lockdown. Some crazy bitch wants me.

I’m still not a Hero. But that doesn’t seem so earth-shattering anymore.

I trudge through warm sand on the shore of Nacameto Island, the hidden research facility in the Mozambique Channel off the coast of Africa where Evan lives and works. There are no loud flashing sirens here, just a beautiful beach, rocks, trees, and birds flying carefree from branch to branch. Oh, to be a bird and have no worries other than—
Which way is south?
—every time winter rolls around. I resist the urge to step into the ocean and drown myself.

The only building on the tiny island could be mistaken for a mirage to some seasick, stranded fisherman. The research building is not quite as tall as a Manhattan skyscraper, but it looks massive on the island. Instead of sharp angles, the building is smooth all around, forming a cylinder that stretches toward the sky. The only windows are at the very top, stretched in a thin line around the top floor.

I approach the front of the building looking for a door or a MOD screen to introduce myself. There are no signs guiding me and if it weren’t for the KAPOW’s unfailing coordinate-locating system, I’d think I was lost.

I peer at the smooth matte wall that stretches in both directions. There is no friggin door. Another glance behind me shows only the tunnel I came here in, rising from the ocean onto a concrete platform at the edge of the sand and the KAPOW pod, all dinged up and missing paint on the sides.

A lump forms in my throat and I swallow it down. Maybe there is no door because the research facility, like all of Central, is in lockdown. Maybe it closes up like this in emergencies. Maybe I am the only Super in the entire world who isn’t following instructions and remaining safely locked indoors right now.

I suck in a deep breath of salty air and let it out in a defeated sigh. My head falls back as I stare at the blinding sun in the heavens. I’m not asking for the world to be handed to me on a silver platter here, but if something—anything—could just go right for once. It’d be a damn miracle.

I’m not used to being denied things. At home, when I want something to open, I just press my palm to it and—Oh! The wall moves beneath my touch, sinking in and twisting until an archway and door forms in the surface.

The wall, now with door, stops moving. I gnaw on my lip and try touching my hand to it again. The metal surface warps under my fingertips as if it were a pool of water instead of a solid surface. Ripples flow from where I touch, widening in a circle until a familiar MOD finally reveals itself. “Welcome to Research and Development,” the screen says in a posh woman’s voice. This place is fancy.

I select Evan’s name from a list of two names. The other name is gray and marked as unavailable. Just like at home, the MOD calls him and I stand awkwardly, my boots covered in sand as I wait for him to answer. It takes several rings before he picks up.

When he says hello a burst of nervous butterflies explode in my chest. I say hello back and then he says, “Maci?” and suddenly I’ve forgotten my own name. “Uh, yes,” I say.

The MOD shuts off and the door wrinkles back into steel before my brain can put together the fact that I told him my name and he hung up on me.

“Well …” I kick the sand and let out a sigh. “… shit.”

“What’s up?” An amused voice appears out of thin freaking air. I spin around just in time to see Evan fall from the sky and land with a
thwap
that shoots sand everywhere.

“Where’d you come from?” It sounds like I have a speech impediment as I spit sand out of my mouth. Evan’s wearing khaki cargo shorts, a pair of Nike shoes, and no shirt. I repeat—no shirt. My eyes need somewhere else to stare, so I sweep my hands across my now-dirty Hero suit, pretending to care about getting every last bit of sand off it.

“I was on deck when you called,” he says, nodding to a platform above us; one I hadn’t noticed until now because it’s made of glass. He shrugs. “It’s faster to jump down than go back inside and take the elevator.” His eyes sweep over me, making my stomach tighten. “That’s a sweet suit, Maci.”

My lips squish to one side of my mouth. “I thought you hung up on me.”

“Nah,” he says, taking a step forward as his hands dive into his pockets. “What’s with the hair? Are you trying to be ironic?”

“Huh?” I sweep my hair across one shoulder and peer down at it. A chill runs through my body at the sight of my former brownish hair. It’s as black as the fabric on my suit. In horror, I bring my eyes up to Evan’s, having no energy left to close my gaping mouth. “I—I—didn’t …” The stammering continues for a painfully long time.

“You didn’t know your hair was darker?” Evan plucks my thoughts out of their incoherent sentences and places them in order for me. I nod numbly.

“That’s odd,” he says.

I throw my arms up in frustration. “Some serious shit is happening and you’re asking about
hair
? Come on, Evan. We should go inside.”

“I’m sorry but what do you mean when you say serious shit?”

I toss my hair behind my shoulder so I don’t have to look at it. “This lockdown isn’t just a drill. It’s real—there are villains and I saw them—”

Evan grips my shoulders. “Slow down, Maci. What lockdown?”

My eyes widen in the universal gesture for
duh
. I swirl my finger in the air. “
The
lockdown?”

“We’re not in lockdown.”

“Yes we are.”

He cocks an eyebrow.

I burst into tears.

“Whoa. Oh holy shit—” a gentle pat on my shoulders, “—um, it’s okay?”

I sink my face into my hands as the sobs burst from deep within me. Warm hands move from my shoulders to my back as Evan pulls me into a hug. My wet cheek presses against his tan skin and I squeeze my eyes tightly shut in an effort to stop tears from escaping. His chin rests on top of my head. The gentle pat on my back is comforting.

“Listen, Maci,” Evan begins, his mouth moving on top of my hair. “You’ve obviously had a bad week, and you’re upset about it. But we aren’t in lockdown. I mean, no one tells Research freaking anything lately, but I’d know if we were in lockdown.”

The way he says the last part—in a gentle tone as if I were a child—really pisses me off. I swing back an arm and punch him in the stomach. He bowls over and curses, gripping his abdomen while waiting for the pain to subside.

I wipe away tears with the back of my hand, their absence bringing a renewed energy to my voice. “Don’t call me a liar.”

Evan releases his stomach and returns his body to an upright position. There’s a swoosh in the air and then I’m knocked straight on my butt by a swinging Nike shoe. “Don’t treat me like a villain.”

“Asshole,” I mutter under my breath while spitting out, for the second time today, a mouthful of sand.

He points to the rusty old KAPOW pod still parked in a visitor’s slot from when I arrived. “KAPOW doesn’t work during lockdown. You want to explain that, Miss I Know Everything?”

He offers me a hand to stand back up and although I’d rather swat it away and tell him to go get run over by the KAPOW, I don’t need to be making any more enemies. So I take his hand and stand. I sure hope my Hero suit isn’t dry clean only.

“Pepper is dead, Evan.” He doesn’t so much as flinch at this news. That’s what several years of Hero training will do to a man. If I had half as much discipline as him, I wouldn’t have tears in the corners of my eyes. “He’s dead and I saw him murdered and the entire time this was happening, the damn sirens were going off over and over and over again, saying we were in lockdown.” Still no reaction from Evan, other than a slight furrowed brow. “So if that isn’t good enough for you to believe me, then I’m sorry I even showed up here.”

“Who murdered Pepper?”

“Aurora. The suit designer who trained him before she retired.”

He contemplates this and then a burst of power hits me as his eyes go wide. His words send a chill down my spine, “That pod is hijacked.”

I follow him to the pod, watching as he rips off a piece of the outer wall, revealing the circuit boards and high-tech guts of the system. Expertise makes his fingers move quickly, and soon he’s removed a silver box from inside the KAPOW pod. A blue LED blinks on the box, that is until Evan crushes it in his palm. He tosses the broken bits into the ocean.

“You could have been tracked,” he says by way of explanation. With more configuring of the circuit boards, he closes the metal latch back into place and sends the pod back into the underwater tunnel.

“We have to get inside. Activate Lockdown mode. If she had time to track you, then she could send an army here.” He gnaws on his lower lip. I sneak a glance toward the tunnel, half expecting to see her thin profile standing in the distance. Evan’s wave of power recedes into his body. “We’re just two people.”