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“Hey now,” Max says. “That is the most ridiculous conspiracy theory I’ve ever heard. You have no proof Maci damaged that droid or if it was even done on purpose.”

“Proof?” Aloki laughs. “Look at her
brown
hair. That’s all the proof anyone needs. It’s too bad her father is too damn stubborn to recognize it.”

A crackle of power bursts from Max and me, but unlike my strong-willed brother, I don’t have the self-control to ignore it.

Lunging past Max and shoving Crimson aside with enough force to send her tumbling into the sand, I throw my arm back and punch Aloki straight in his perfectly chiseled jaw. His head snaps back with a satisfying crack. I try not to smile. “I told you to
shut up
.”

I shove my hands on his chest, pushing him back several steps. He staggers and grabs my wrists to push me away but I am too strong and break out of his pathetic grasp only to punch him again.

“Dude, get away from me.” He’s smiling, or at least attempting to with the side of his face swelling as he speaks, but I feel the fear underneath his friendly façade. His power level shrivels until it’s gasping for air. He knows he’s gone too far. And now he gets to pay.

“You have no right,” I hiss as I grab his shoulder and pull him toward my knee. “I am
not
evil!” He doubles over in pain as my knee crushes into his ribcage. Power pumps through my chest, so raw and unhinged with rage that it’s almost painful. The only thought in my mind is to make Aloki sorry for what he said.

Before I can throw another punch at his remaining unhurt eye, my heightened senses notice a small clicking sound to my left. A split second later, someone releases a pair of Retriever hooks in my direction. I dig my fingers into Aloki’s shirt and twist him in front of me. His body seizes as the hooks bury into his back.
Not so sexy now, are you?

He drops to the ground—alive, but immobile. My chest heaves as I gasp for breath. A tiny part of my subconscious is freaking out about how wrong all of this is, but I find it easy to ignore. He deserves what he got. Screams fill the air and bodies of my former friends blur into the night as they run away from me. KAPOW pods arrive and zoom off left and right. The beach is in full hysteria mode. And that’s really unheard of in the Super world.

Max appears in front of me, his face glowing with the reflection of his BEEPR. His thumb swipes frantically across the screen. He grabs me around the waist with his other arm and shoves me toward our KAPOW pod.

My back presses against the inside of the cool metal pod. Max joins me and the door closes behind him. “Home,” he tells the tiny MOD screen. This is the first time his voice sounds unsure. The robotic voice confirms the destination, and even it sounds disappointed in me. The pod lurches forward and I fall into my seat.

“Oh god, Max.” I sink my head into my hands. “What have I done?”

The only sound for two full minutes is the gentle hum of the KAPOW and the unsteady gasps of breath filling my lungs. My mind functions in overdrive, bouncing from thoughts to emotions so quickly I can’t decipher any of it. All I know is that this is bad.

But it feels a little good.

And
that
is really bad.

“Okay.” Max breaks the silence by sucking in a deep breath. His hands slide down his thighs and rest on his knees while he looks at the celling. I look up there too and see both of our faces reflecting back on the distorted chrome surface. His hair looks lighter than normal—or maybe mine looks darker. He talks to me through the reflection. It’s probably easier that way.

“We can smooth this over. Nyx will say what I tell him to. Crimson, well, she’ll come around. We’re the only Hero witnesses and Central will accept our word over anyone else’s.” He lowers his head and looks directly at me. Blonde hair falls over his eyes and he shrugs it away. His hair is definitely not lighter than normal. I glance back at the ceiling, pulling my hair in front of my shoulders.

“We’ll state the facts,” Max continues, pointing to his index finger. “You had your Hero Exam today, which was very stressful.” I cringe. He continues, pointing to his middle finger. “They denied you Hero status when you clearly deserved it. Three—you were whisked away to a party that caught you off guard, four—”

“Don’t say it,” I whisper.

“You were thoroughly embarrassed in front of your peers when your crush was revealed to everyone.” I bang the back of my head against the wall. “Aloki? Seriously? You can do better. And five—Dad SOS’d you, and me for that matter, and it was hands down the most mortifying moment of our lives. So you had more than enough reason to snap tonight. Plus Aloki provoked you. We’ll be sure to note that as well.”

His BEEPR lights up and he reads a message on the screen. “Nyx is on your side. Said Crimson is too.” He taps out a reply and his screen lights up a few seconds later. “She’s pissed. But on your side.”

It must be a shadow on the ceiling. Hair doesn’t just turn a darker shade of brown overnight. I flinch as a hand touches my arm. Max meets my eyes. “This will be okay,” he says.

“I liked it.” My words are a whisper. When Max doesn’t acknowledge them, I’m compelled to keep talking. “I liked the feeling of being in control and knowing I was stronger than him. I liked making him pay for what he said to me.”

“Those are normal Hero feelings,” Max says. “Of course, it’s something we reserve for villains. We’ll work on keeping your temper under control.”

Max doesn’t get it. He has no idea what I’m trying to tell him. “I liked seeing him in pain.” Tears drip down my cheeks as I force myself to look him in the eye. “What if I am evil?”

My brother runs his fingers through his hair, his hand balling into a fist at the side of his head. “You’ve spent the last year in fight training. You just need to work on Hero ethics and emotion control and everything will be fine.”

“What if it isn’t?”

The KAPOW enters the white tunnels in Central and slows its speed. A few seconds later, the pod stops in front of our home. “It’ll be fine,” Max says more to himself than to me. “Now we just have to survive Dad.”

We hesitate in front of our door, both of us trying to summon the courage to enter what will surely be a war zone. Max’s courage arrives first. His hand palms the door. “I’ll do the talking,” he says. I give him a wary smile, wondering how many times Max will have to save my ass before I get a chance to save his.

We step into an empty house. I’d spent the twelve-minute ride back home imagining all the ways our incredibly pissed off father might greet us when we arrived. This wasn’t one of them. The knots in my stomach untangle themselves in the midst of my temporary reprieve from Dad’s wrath. I’m now aware of how dry my mouth is and how much my fingers hurt from tightening into a ball of nerves. Who knows how much time I have until he gets home, but I’ll try to enjoy every second of it.

The MOD screen flashes red when it senses our presence in the room and Max rushes to it. I head to the kitchen to grab a drink.

“Dad’s on a mission,” Max says, glancing from the MOD to the BEEPR on his wrist and back again, probably wondering why he wasn’t called to duty as well. “On the north side of the canyon. That’s weird.”

I shrug. “Nothing ever happens up there. Maybe it’s a president thing.”

He taps the glass. “It says mission.”

“Can’t say I’m not happy he’s gone.” I smile. “I hope it’s nothing serious or anything but I really don’t feel like being yelled at any more tonight.”

“This doesn’t sit right with me. I’m going to see what’s up.” Max fumbles with his BEEPR for an unusually long time. His eyebrows draw together. “It’s confidential. They won’t disclose the coordinates to me.”

“Then it’s definitely a president thing.” I drain half the soda from my can. “I’m going to bed before he gets home. If I’m lucky, Dad will save my punishment for the morning.”

Max doesn’t acknowledge me as I walk past him on the way to my room. He just stares out the glass wall, his eyes wide and his thoughts somewhere far away. Maybe if I were a Hero I would care more about this confidential mission. But I’m not. And I don’t.

Dad doesn’t come home all night. The biometrics on his MOD are synchronized to the home MOD and they show him as being alive with no risk of peril, so I’m not too concerned. Being president of the Super race is a demanding job. Max however, is not so Zen about it. He spends hours calling his Hero friends, contacts at Central, and anyone else who could possibly know what kind of secret mission Dad is up to, but to no avail.

I lie on my bed and wonder if I would be more concerned with Dad’s whereabouts if I wasn’t awaiting a verbal lashing when he returns. I still don’t know the answer when I close my eyes. The sound of Max pacing in the living room lulls me to sleep.

I awake several hours later to what my subconscious deciphers as the sound of yelling. When I’m awake enough to open my eyes and sit up in bed, the house is silent. Still, something feels amiss.

I crawl out of bed and stand near the window. It’s a starry night above and total darkness below; exactly the way it always is so I have no reason to feel like something is wrong. A shudder jolts my body. I think about the yelling. The sound of a male voice, desperate and inconsolable—yet it was all just a dream. It had to be. Maybe a walk will clear my head.

I step into flip-flops and then think twice about wearing loud, flappy shoes down our polished granite corridors. The last thing I need is to wake up Dad so he can yell at me some more. Kicking the flip-flops under my bed, I slip on a pair of hot pink toe socks, slowly open my door, and step into the hallway.

The sound of typing and shuffling papers echoes down the hall. As I walk past Max’s closed door, a faint glow comes out of an open door farther down. Dad’s in his office, and working hard by the sound of it. Great. Guess I won’t be sneaking out for a stroll in the KAPOW tunnels at two in the morning.

I make a one-eighty, knocking into one of Dad’s Hero award plaques on the wall. The typing sound stops. “Who’s awake?” Dad calls out. I’m too far away from my room to run back and close the door without him seeing me.

“Uh, it’s me.” I can’t tell him I had a bad dream. Heroes don’t have bad dreams. “I just needed some water.”

“Okay then,” he says and the typing resumes. I wait for it, for the yelling and the grounding me for life and all—but it doesn’t happen. With soft footsteps, I approach the office and peek into his office door.

“They were just babies,” Dad says from behind his computer screen. I lift an eyebrow in confusion. He sighs. “Newborns.”

The word hangs in the air and he still doesn’t look up. But it’s kind of obvious he’s talking to me. “Who?” I ask in a voice as weak and jaded as my dad looks.

“Depowered twins after I took office. Laws weren’t clear back then and some twins made it to sixteen or seventeen before the evil one revealed themselves and were caught for depowering. But by then, they had caused terrible damage and had often taken several innocent lives.”

My mouth opens but no words come out. He knows I know all of this because it’s required reading in school. The history of Super twins was always the most awkward subject for me. I place my hand on the doorframe and watch the lines deepen on his forehead.

“I changed the laws to have twins depowered right after birth, figuring it would save the world from one villain each time twins were born. Because with twins there is always a villain. Yes, the other twin would be handicapped for life, but it’s no different than the pain the good twin suffers upon seeing their best friend turn evil.”

I swallow. “Why are you telling me this?”

He keeps talking as if I’m not in the room. “When your mother and I found out she was having twins, my whole world collapsed. I couldn’t depower my own child, especially the one who was good. And the evil one, well I was selfish. I had this idea that I could raise both children to be good. That they could choose to be good when they turned of age and their full powers developed. So I changed the law.”

A heavy pain fills my chest. Dad loved us when we were born, despite knowing one of us would be evil. Does he still love me now that I’ve totally screwed my chances of having a Hero future? My fingers tap the doorframe. “Would you still love me if I were the evil one?”