We all turn to Riley. He looks small and scared, practically curled into a little ball on the bench. “They really took her?” he whispers. “Heroes took my sister?”
Nitro rolls his eyes with impatience, but I understand what Riley is going through. It’s a lot to process. I went through the same thing just a few days ago.
“They did,” I tell him. “Heroes took Rebel. On your dad’s orders. Just like he ordered the torture and murder of countless villains. Just like I think he ordered the kidnapping of my mom.”
Riley flinches. He looks at me like I’m the last life preserver on a sinking ship. His voice is barely a whisper as he asks, “It’s all true? That wasn’t just a rumor about a rogue group?”
I give him a sad half-smile.
His face breaks, just for a moment, and then he’s pulling it all back under control. For once, maybe all that hero training will do him some good. Do us some good.
“Okay,” he says, nodding, like he’s building up steam with the movement. “How do we get her back?”
“First, we rescue Deacon. Rebel sacrificed herself so we could get to him, so that is our primary mission,” I explain. “Then we find her and my mom and get them back.”
“But to get to Deacon,” Jeremy says, “we need wheels.”
“How far are we talking?” Draven asks.
“Yeah, mate,” Nitro says, cracking his knuckles, “where precisely is this bunker?”
Riley and Jeremy answer at the same time.
“Wyoming.”
? ? ?
Riley offers us the use of his car, but none of the guys except Nitro trust that it’s clean. Jeremy insists that our powers—his and mine—would block any kind of tracking equipment, but there’s another problem. Riley drives a Porsche. So while his car might get us to the bunker fast, it will only fit two of us. Three, if we put Riley in the trunk like Dante suggests.
Instead, Draven “borrows” an SUV from a mall parking lot. It seats all six of us with room for Deacon and a few more rescued villains. If there are more than can fit in a single car, we’ll figure something out when we get there.
Nitro is at the wheel, which doesn’t exactly make me super comfortable because he’s never been the best at control and his idea of road-trip music is some kind of twangy electronica that makes my skin crawl. But since Draven and Dante are making plans for phase two, after we get inside, and Jeremy and I are hunched over his laptop in the third-row bench seat working on phase one, that left us with either Nitro or Riley. And with speed-limit-observing, law-abiding Riley at the wheel, it would take us at least twice as long to get there. Nitro has no problem keeping the pedal to the metal.
Jeremy insists we spend the drive studying the schematics for the bunker security system so that I understand exactly how he wants me to use my power.
My power. It blows my mind to think that I have a power. And not one I manufactured in a lab. One I was born with.
I have so many questions for Mom. Did she know I had a power? Did she know the immunity serum would mask it? What about before she developed the serum? Had she found another way to hide it even before that? She must have. But why did she keep it a secret all of these years? And that’s on top of the questions about the heroes, the secret experiments. Did she know those were going on? Did she participate in them? But first we have to find her. That won’t be easy.
Thanks to his rootkit and Riley’s insights, Jeremy has pinpointed where in the bunker the heroes are keeping the villain prisoners. But nothing has turned up any clue about where my mom might be. Not a hint, not an intercepted email. Nothing.
Jeremy thinks that he might be able to get greater access from within the facility, penetrate deeper into the secure communications. Which makes getting inside all the more important.
“This relay box here,” Jeremy says, pointing at a square on the screen, “powers the force field that shields the entrance.”
I start to point to a similar square on the screen but pull back. I spent the first hour of the trip learning how to do meditative breathing to control my power just to be in the same space as Jeremy’s electronics without sending them kaflooey. But touching them is another matter.
Jeremy had to modify one of his communications earbuds so that there’d be a layer of foam between it and my skin.
As part of my training, every few minutes I focus on the car’s satellite radio and change it to a country station. The funny part is, Nitro has no clue that it’s me.
“So if I focus my energy, my power on the relay,” I say to Jeremy, “then we’ll be able to get in?”
Jeremy gives me an almost condescending look. “Hardly.” He zooms in on another section of the drawing. “We’ll still have to make it through the fence, the guards, and the six-foot-thick titanium door.”
“The fence is no worry,” Nitro calls out. He lifts his right hand off the steering wheel, casually forming a bright yellow ball of energy while he bobs his head in time to the music.
I scrunch lower in my seat. I’m not eager to meet up with another Nitro special.