The Betrayal of Renegade X (Renegade X, Book 3) (22 page)

“And that bothers you. Enough for you to come here.”

“Of course it bothers me! I mean, I don’t care what they think about me. The kids at school and stuff. But, yeah, the way heroes act like all villains are automatically evil and that they’re better than us? That pisses me off. A lot. And I knew things weren’t great for villains, like, before I went to live with heroes. But even my family, the people I
know
care about me and don’t hate me for supposedly being half evil, they still say and do letterist stuff all the time. My friends, too.” I shrug, like it’s no big deal. “But, Grandpa, I can’t join the Truth.”

“
I
can join,” Xavier says in his most annoying nails-on-the-chalkboard voice. “You should have asked me instead.”

I glare at him again. “Did I mention I’d zap you for talking?”

He glares right back but doesn’t say anything.

“Damien.” Grandpa puts a hand on my shoulder. “Listen to yourself. You live with heroes who supposedly care about you—”

“They
do
.”

“—and even they don’t treat you like an equal. What hope is there for the rest of us?”

“It’s not like that.”

“But you’re staying out of a group that supports villain rights because of them. That doesn’t sound like they’re really looking out for you.”

“Grandpa—”

He holds up a hand. “Hear me out. Your only reason why you can’t join—not even that you don’t want to, but that you can’t—is because your father’s a superhero. The man who wasn’t in your life for sixteen years, who didn’t raise you.”

“He didn’t even know about me.”

“Because he had random relations with
my daughter
, a complete stranger, and it never occurred to him that there might be consequences.” He cracks his knuckles. “He wanted to pretend it never happened and let your mother deal with the results all on her own. Some hero.”

“I don’t think...” Okay, maybe he did want to pretend it never happened. But I know he would have been there if Mom had told him about me. “He’s around now, okay? And I don’t want to screw things up for him again.”

Grandpa puts a hand to his temple, like I’m giving him a headache. “So instead you’re screwing up your life. And your future. He shouldn’t want that for you.”

“He doesn’t.” My voice is quiet. I don’t know if it’s true or not. I can’t imagine Gordon wanting me to screw up my life, but he and Grandpa have totally different ideas of what that means. “I want villains to have rights, okay? But I can’t do this. I’m trying to be a hero and to not make trouble for once. You made this organization partially because of me, but I didn’t ask for that. So, I’m sorry, but I can’t be part of the Truth.”

“Yeah,” Grandpa says, sighing and looking at me like I’m a huge disappointment. “That’s what I thought.”

T
his is the first time we’ve had to have partners in Rescue Strategy fifth period. It’s the only other class me and Riley have together besides Advanced Heroism. The teacher says to pair up for the assignment today, and Riley looks over at me like he expects us to work together.

And okay, yeah, we sit next to each other and are mostly on speaking terms. But that doesn’t mean I’m not still pissed he picked Mason over me.

“Come on, X,” Riley says when I glance around the room, looking for someone else to be partners with, even though no one is even getting out of their chairs, just turning to the person next to them. “Don’t pretend we’re not working together.” He sounds really put out about it.

“You shouldn’t make assumptions about who I’m working with. Just like I shouldn’t have assumed we were working together in Advanced Heroism. I mean, it’s not like we
made plans
or anything.”

He rolls his eyes at me. “Will you get over it already? It’s not like I
wanted
to ditch you. Er, not that that’s what happened. I didn’t ditch you, and if we’d been working in teams of three—”

“I get it,” I snap. “You don’t have to say it.” If we’d been working in teams of three, he would have included me. But when it was only two? He picked Mason. Who he hadn’t seen or talked to for years. So obviously we weren’t as good of friends as I thought we were. He can say it was because I zapped that superhero during our final and endangered his scholarship—and maybe it was partly because of that—but he was the one trying to convince me we should still work together. At least until Mason showed up. “Are you sure you can afford to do this assignment with me? I wouldn’t want you to risk your GPA.”

“Let’s just get it over with. Everyone else has already started.”

It’s true. Pretty much everyone in the class is bent over their sheets of paper, scribbling stuff and discussing the question on the board.

The teacher, Mr. Hernandez, wanders over to us, giving us a suspicious look. “Is there a problem here?”

I open my mouth, but Riley glares at me. “We’re working,” he says, scrambling to get a piece of paper out of his binder.

Mr. Hernandez nods in approval and goes off to annoy another group.

The question on the board is about what we would do if we had to rescue two people at once, but we only had time to save one of them. We’re supposed to talk it over and figure out what our plan would be.

Riley carefully writes down the question on the piece of paper, even though it’s on the board. “This one’s easy. We split up. There’s two of us and two of them.”

I shake my head. “That’s what
everyone’s
going to write.”

“There’s a reason they’re all writing it.”

“Uh, yeah. The reason is that they’re idiots. It’s too obvious.”

He sighs. “You’re making this too difficult.”

“Let me guess. Your best friend Mason would just go along with it. Because you’re both ‘on the same page.’”

“You don’t get it. Mason wouldn’t just go along with it. He’d
agree
with me. He wouldn’t be looking for ways to cause trouble.”

Is that really what he thinks I’m doing? “He’d agree with you, but then he’d just stand there. Why were you the only one who went chasing after that guy at the museum?”

“That wasn’t—”

“Next scenario,” Mr. Hernandez says, grabbing a marker and writing on the whiteboard as he talks. “Not only do you have two people you need to save at the same time, but it turns out both rescues are a two-person job. No splitting up—I saw a lot of you writing that on your papers.
And
one victim is the person you care about most. The other is the person your partner cares about most. If you can’t agree on which one to save, they both die. What do you do?”

“See?” I tell Riley, gesturing at the board. “It was a trick question.”

“I was the one who spotted the guy at the museum. There wasn’t time to talk it over. The guy saw me notice him, so he took off, and I followed.”

“And Mason saw you running after some guy, and he... what?”

“He went and got security. And don’t look at me like that. It all happened really fast. There was nothing he could do.”

“If you were really on the same page, you wouldn’t have needed to talk anything over. If
I’d
been there—”

“You would have run after him with me. I know, X. But you know what else you would have done?”

I swallow. “Mason having a lame power doesn’t make him a better partner than me.”

“You would have zapped the guy.”

“Come on—give me more credit than that. I wouldn’t have—”

“Yeah, you would. You would’ve zapped that guy, who was unarmed, and I would’ve lost my scholarship.” He rubs his face with his hands and breaths out through his nose.

“I don’t just go around zapping everyone who looks suspicious. Geez. And before you say anything about what happened at the diner on Friday, that guy was definitely armed. He was pointing a gun at people, including my dad. So if that’s what you’re getting at—”

“It’s not. Let’s just work on the assignment.” His eyes flick down to the paper. “Who do you care about most?”

“Kat. You’re not even going to ask if I’m okay?”

“Sarah already told me.” He writes down her name, then adds Kat’s next to it. “She said you were fine. And trying to convince her not to go to college.”

The teacher stands in front of the whiteboard and waves a hand to get our attention. “Three more minutes, people!”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing. Sarah doesn’t need to go to college. Plus, if she becomes my sidekick full time, she won’t leave town. You should be on board with this.”

“Just because she’s going to college doesn’t mean she’s leaving. Two of the schools on her list are in Golden City. Come on, we only have three minutes to figure this out.”

“We don’t need three minutes.”

“Right.” He sounds a little relieved. “Because we’re saving Sarah.” He starts to circle her name.

“
What?
Why would you think that?”

“Because you care about Sarah, too? Sarah’s the most important person to me, and you’re her best friend, so, if you do the math—”

“Whoa. This isn’t about math, Perkins. You can’t decide whose life is worth more based on math. Unless, in this scenario, Kat is pregnant with my unborn lovechild and you’re killing two people by not even considering rescuing her. Three, if it’s twins. I don’t even know how you can be so heartless.”

“That’s not—” He tightens his grip on the pencil he’s been using to write with. “Nobody’s pregnant in this scenario. It’s just them. And Kat can take care of herself.”

“Yeah, so can Sarah. That’s not the point. Everybody needs help sometimes.”

“Okay, fine. Sarah’s more useful to society.”

I gape at him.

Riley glances away. “You know she is.”

“What, as opposed to Kat, because she’s a supervillain?”

He ducks his head. “That’s not what I meant. But Sarah’s a genius. She invents really amazing things.”

“Really amazing things that have a tendency to blow up.”

“Really amazing things that
you
rely on. Sarah’s brilliant.”

“And you think that makes her better than Kat.”

He sighs. “I was just trying to say that if we’re being objective about this—”

“Time!” Mr. Hernandez shouts. “How many of you came up with an answer?” He scans the room for raised hands. “Anybody?”

Everyone looks at each other. Nobody raises their hand.

Mr. Hernandez folds his arms and gets this smug grin on his face, like that’s exactly the result he expected.

Which really annoys me, because we didn’t come up with anything, either.

“I’ve been teaching this class for ten years, and nobody’s ever—”

The door opens, interrupting him, and another teacher pokes her head in. She seems really frazzled, and there’s urgency in her voice. “Turn on the TV. Quick! It’s on every station!” She ducks back out into the hall, not even closing the door all the way, and her hurried footsteps echo as she runs to the next classroom.

I share a look with Riley.

“What’s going on?” he whispers.

“How should I know?”

Mr. Hernandez’s face goes pale. He grabs the remote off his desk and turns on the TV.

And there, on the screen, is a dark, grainy video of two superheroes interrogating a supervillain. The supervillain is tied up, unable to move. One of the heroes is holding a club. The other raises his hands and shoots bright beams of energy at the villain, who immediately starts screaming.

Then the image dissolves and words appear on the screen:

This is the Truth. It’s time to believe.

M
Y HEART RACES AS more images appear on the screen. A couple of superheroes kicking someone on the ground. A written account from an anonymous villain of her treatment while in League custody. The camera zooms in on some key phrases:

They didn’t feed me for four days.

Later, they determined I was innocent and debated what to do with me.

I almost didn’t get out alive.

A cold, unsettling feeling creeps up my spine. I glance around the room, gauging other people’s reactions. Pretty much everyone is staring in horror at the screen.

Someone says, “That’s a lie. Villains are
liars
.”

Heads turn toward me.

I ignore them, keeping my focus on the TV. There are a couple pictures of villains right after being released from the League. Black eyes. Broken bones. Burns.

My stomach churns, empty and sick. I never trusted the League, but somehow this is worse than I expected.

Riley’s hands are shaking. He looks over at me, but I pretend I don’t notice.

Other kids are starting to mutter that it’s fake. Everyone knows the League doesn’t do this kind of stuff.
Villains
do. It would be just like them to stage something like this.

Photos could be set up. Written accounts could easily be faked. But these are real. I recognize some of the superheroes in them. Not anyone I know, but people I’ve seen on the news sometimes. They wouldn’t pose for pictures like this. And there’s something so visceral about the images, I don’t know how anyone can question them.

Then a video comes on. I swallow when I see myself on the screen. I’m at Grandpa’s party. Dressed up and obviously there on purpose.  You can see the top of Xavier’s head, but all the focus is on me.