The Betrayal of Renegade X (Renegade X, Book 3) (45 page)

The whole right side of the door explodes, and what’s left of it falls open.

“I said don’t fry anything!” Sarah scowls at me and rushes inside.

Kat stands next to me, almost shoulder to shoulder, as we brace ourselves for the incoming superheroes. She glances down at my arm. “That looks bad, Damien.”

“It’s nothing compared to—” I stop myself from saying
It’s nothing compared to what happened to Perkins
.

But I think Sarah must know anyway, because her voice shakes when she says, “It’s—everything looks fine. The equipment’s still working.”

The first superhero rounds the bend. “Over here!” he shouts to the others, pointing a raygun at us.

I try and zap him, but I’m too slow, and he dodges. My electricity hits the guy coming up behind him. That guys falls, and the other superheroes cry out and start shooting.

Kat aims her stolen raygun at them and fires. “You know,” she says, “this is really
not
how I planned to spend my Saturday night.”

“No more dates involving gun fights—got it.” I manage to zap the first guy, but only in the leg. It brings him to the floor, but it doesn’t knock him out. “Got those lasers disarmed yet?” I ask Sarah, not looking away from the fight.

“There are a lot of controls here. I don’t...” Sarah’s voice trails off. She doesn’t sound like herself—she sounds like she’s about to cry.

“She’s losing it,” Kat says out the side of her mouth. She shoots the floor in front of one of the superheroes, forcing them back a step. A raygun blast almost hits her in the shoulder, but she shapeshifts out of the way just in time. It explodes part of the wall behind us.

I take another hero down with my electricity. “Sarah, he’s going to be fine! I care about him, too, okay? I wouldn’t lie about this!”

“Right.” Sarah’s voice comes out a squeak. “Unless you were keeping the worst from me until after I disarm these lasers.”

“Come on, Cosine! This is an emergency!” I use her sidekick name in the hopes that it will snap her out of this. Then I glance over at Kat, hoping she’s not too pissed about it. Especially since she’s got a raygun in her hand.

Kat’s face is lined with concentration as she aims and fires at another hero. She hits him in the shoulder, making him drop his weapon. If she cares that I referred to Sarah as Cosine, she isn’t showing it.

Another superhero comes running toward us. He doesn’t have a raygun and instead fires a blast of ice. Me and Kat both dive in opposite directions to avoid it. He shoots at me again, and I have to roll out of the way. I don’t have time to zap him.

“Over here!” Kat shouts. She fires her raygun at the ice guy, her beam just grazing his arm. He cries out and blasts more ice at us. Kat drops to the floor, still shooting. “Damien! Take him out!”

I do what she says and hit him with my electricity. Maybe a little harder than I meant to, but it gets the job done. He looks like he’s twitching a little, so I’m pretty sure he’s not dead.

One of the heroes’ walkie-talkies makes a static noise, and then a voice says, “The villains are here! I repeat, the villains are here! All available League members to the ground floor!”

This is it. Grandpa’s mob has arrived, and the heroes are going to set off the lasers. “Sarah! Any time now!”

“I’m trying! But I don’t know which one it is. There are too many options. I don’t know what to do!” There are tears in her voice, and panic, and maybe it’s from all the stress of tonight, but it’s probably because of Riley, and maybe I should have flat out lied to her. I should have said he and Mason were outside, waiting for us.

But it’s Sarah. She would have seen through that.

“You can do this!” Kat says. She fires her raygun again, but this time it sort of half blasts, then fizzles out. “Damn it—I’m out of charge!” She throws the now useless gun on the floor and ducks behind me.

I zap a hero who takes aim at us.

“I can’t!” Sarah cries. “I can’t make sense of anything! I need more time!”

“This is your thing!” Kat tells her. “You know what you’re doing, even if you don’t think you do. We’re out of time—trust your instincts and just pick one!”

“But—”

“It’ll be the right one! I promise!”

I’m not sure how Kat can make that promise, but it doesn’t really matter, because Sarah says, “Okay,” and types something into the keyboard.

Right as Grandpa’s machine goes off and we all lose consciousness.

I
T’S KIND OF FITTING that I sneak back home in the middle of the night, since that’s how I left when I ran away. It’s two in the morning by the time I get there, and the house is quiet. Thankfully. I don’t really even know if Gordon’s going to let me stay here. I mean, he said on TV that he wanted me to come home, but what if he changed his mind since then? What if he blames me for what happened tonight?

Even if he does want me back, he’s probably got a lot to say about me leaving. A lot to say that might also take the form of yelling, and right now, I don’t think I can take it. I can’t take him being mad at me or the whole family gawking at me like they’ve never seen a prodigal son before. Today was one of the worst days of my life, and after everything I’ve been through—including my grandpa betraying me, finding Riley in that pile of rubble, getting shot by superheroes, and spending hours in the emergency room—I just want to crash and try not to think about it.

It takes me forever to get up the attic stairs, and I keep thinking someone’s going to wake up and find me there, but they don’t. I get to my room and crawl into bed. I don’t even get undressed. My pajamas, along with everything else I took with me, are still at my grandparents’ house. I could find something else to wear, but it doesn’t matter—I don’t have the energy to bother changing anyway.

I’m
so
tired, but as soon as I lie down, the enormity of everything that happened today hits me. More than it already had. I curl up into a ball and press my face against my pillow as tears fill my eyes.

There’s a knock at the door. I expect it to be Amelia, but it’s Gordon who pokes his head in and says, “Damien? I thought I heard you come in.”

I don’t move. Maybe he won’t know I’m here and will go away. If he asks tomorrow, I can say I must have been asleep.

He turns on the light and sighs with relief.

I quickly wipe my eyes on the blanket and sit up, blinking against the sudden brightness.

Gordon rushes over and pulls me into a hug. Which is kind of the opposite of yelling at me.

“
Ow.
Dad, watch the arm!”

He lets me go and sits on the edge of the bed, frowning at my bandage. “What happened?”

“It’s nothing.”

“Damien.”

“I got blasted by a raygun, okay?”

“You what?! Amelia didn’t mention that.”

“It happened after the last time I saw her.” Though I know she made it home all right, and that she and Riley didn’t die or anything, because she texted me earlier on his phone. I’ll have to get her to use her power to get mine back in the morning. Assuming Xavier hasn’t done something to completely ruin it. “They patched me up at the hospital.”

“At the
hospital
? Why didn’t anybody call me?!”

“It still hurts, but it’ll be okay. And they did call you, but it was after midnight, and you didn’t answer. And can you keep it down? We don’t need to wake the whole house.”

“I must not have heard it. After we took Amelia home, I went back to help get things straightened out at the gala. I actually only got back here myself about an hour ago.”

“I didn’t mean to wake you up. You can go back to bed.”

“I wasn’t asleep. I was worried about you.”

“So you were just sitting around, hoping I’d show up? Wait, does that mean you knew I was here and you were
listening
to me go up the stairs?”

He looks away. “I know having an audience for that makes you uncomfortable, so I thought I’d wait until you got to your room. I didn’t want to scare you off when you’d finally come home.”

“Uh, yeah, that doesn’t make any sense. What did you think I was going to do? Run back down them and out the door?”

“I was trying to give you some space.” He runs a hand through his hair and lets out a deep breath. “I know I’m a big reason why you left.”

“Amelia was
supposed
to give you my letter. I left because—”

“Because you were trying to protect us. I know. I read your letter about a thousand times.”

“Okay, then you know it didn’t have anything to do with you.”

He shakes his head. “You shouldn’t feel like you have to run away from home to keep us safe. I shouldn’t have
let
you feel like that. You’re my son, and you’re only sixteen. It’s not your job.”

“Hey, I’ll be seventeen on Friday.”

He gives me a look. “You know what I mean. You tried to tell me how you felt, and I didn’t listen.”

“Yeah, well, that’s not exactly anything new. And I saw that interview you did. You went on TV and told everyone I was wrong. You said villains should be
ignored
, that we would just go away.”

He flinches on the
we
. “Damien, I didn’t mean—”

“Yes, you did. And that was after I left home. So you’d already had your revelation that you weren’t listening to me, right? But you still went on TV and did a whole interview about how much you disagreed with me.”

“My son had joined
the Truth
. You better believe I disagreed with that.”

There it is. Now he’s starting to sound pissed. Part of me wants him to go away and not have this conversation, and the other part of me wants to piss him off more and just have it out. “So, nothing’s changed.”

“You’re home. And since you didn’t go back to your grandparents’ house, I’m assuming you’re not with the Truth anymore.”

“You figured out where I was?”

“Not exactly. I had my suspicions, but I didn’t know for sure. Not until I called your mother.”

“You called
Mom
? How did you even get her number?”

“I found it on a wedding invitation.”

“You went through my stuff?!”

“Well... Amelia got it for me.”

“Wow. Didn’t you pay
any
attention to what I wrote in my letter?” I specifically told him not to let her touch anything. “But just because I’m not with the Truth anymore doesn’t mean I don’t care about villain rights. And it doesn’t change the fact that you think villains should just be ignored, or that you still think it’s okay to be part of the League after everything they’ve done.”

“Not everyone in the League agrees with their current policies, or with what they’ve been doing to villains.”

I hold up my bandaged arm. “You mean like shooting your son? That’s the difference between us. When the Truth started attacking heroes, I
left
. But the League practically kidnapped Alex and tried to haul me in off the street, and you didn’t care. And now they actually shot me. And yeah, I was zapping them, too, but only because they’d totally lost it. They had Kat and Sarah trapped, and they were attacking them. And they almost killed Riley.”

“What happened to you guys tonight wasn’t okay. But you have to believe me when I say that those people don’t represent all of the League. And the Truth did have an attack planned.”

“I can’t believe you’re actually defending them right now. Didn’t you hear me? They almost
killed
my best friend. And he’s a hero. He has an
H
on his thumb, and he didn’t point any weapons at them. But I guess seeing him with me was enough.”

“I wasn’t one of those people.”

“Yeah, and I wasn’t hurting anyone while I was in the Truth, but that doesn’t mean you were cool with me being part of it.”

“I’ve been with the League for almost twenty years. Maybe it’s not what I thought it was, but I still believe in what it stands for. Or what I’ve always
thought
it stood for.”

“They tried to kill me! But you obviously care more about them than you do about me!” I press my palms over my eyes. I didn’t mean to say that, and now I can’t look at him.

“Damien. That’s not true. I care a lot about you. You have to know that.”

“So what? So does Grandpa. I thought Mom just didn’t actually care, that that’s why she gave me up. And maybe she didn’t, but Grandma and Grandpa do. Probably more than they care about anybody else. And they still betrayed me.”

“I’m not them. And I’m not those people in the League who were shooting at you.”

“Grandpa actually listens to me. He
loves
me.” Great, now I sound like Xavier. “I can actually talk to him. Or, at least, I could. But things still didn’t work out, and if I couldn’t trust
him
, then how am I supposed to trust
you
?”

Gordon’s silent. I still have my hands over my eyes, so I have no idea what his expression is or what he might be thinking.

“Damien, do you... do you think I don’t love you?”

I shrug, still not lowering my hands. “It’s okay if you don’t. You’ve only known me a year, and I’m always doing stuff that pisses you off.”

“You’re my
son
, and I— Will you look at me?”

Slowly, I let my hands fall to my lap.

“You’re my son, and of course I love you.”

“You say that”—though this is the first I’m hearing about it—“but you think it’s okay to be part of an organization that wants to drag me in off the street and kill me.”

“I don’t think it’s okay, all right? But I can’t quit the League. I’d lose my job. How would we put food on the table or keep a roof over your heads? I know this situation looks black and white to you. You’re young, and... Let’s just say that part of being an adult is having to make compromises.”

“That sounds a lot like something Grandpa said.” Right before he locked me up.

Gordon sighs. He doesn’t look happy about being compared to Grandpa. “Even if I could quit the League, I don’t know if I would. I
want
to be able to believe in it.”

“I’ve seen the place where they torture villains. It’s real, and it’s even worse than it looked on TV. Whatever you think the League stands for, it’s not true.”