“We’re out!” Nitro shouts as he pushes the big villain up the hill in front of him. “We’re clear.”
The way he says it, Nitro sounds as if he’s giving a signal. I turn to ask what’s going on, when Draven shouts, “Now, Quake! Now!”
The ground starts to rumble. It feels like we’re standing on the edge of an erupting volcano. With the small villain boy clutched in my arms, I look around wildly. Quake, Nitro’s bigger, badder brother, stands at the cliff overlooking the bunker about a hundred yards from the SUV. With his hands spread wide and his massive muscles bulging. He looks like The Incredible Hulk trying to levitate a building. Except what he’s doing is much harder. He’s actually leveling a mountain.
“No!” I set the boy down and start to race back to Draven.
I don’t get more than five steps before I collide with a solid wall of wind.
“Let me go!” I scream at Dante.
But he doesn’t let up. And it’s too late. I stare, helpless—more powerless than I have ever felt in my life—as the mountain crumbles. A geyser of dust and rubble shoots out through the opening to the bunker. Then everything is quiet.
There is nothing left but a pile of boulders.
“Nooooo!” I wail helplessly.
I drop to my knees, put my head in my hands. My mind can’t form coherent thoughts. Draven. Trapped. Crushed. Dead?
This was his plan all along. His hushed phone call was to Quake; the look he exchanged with Nitro was a promise. He knew it would come to this, and he was willing to give himself up so we could escape.
I’m caught between sobbing and shouting. How could he do this? How could he do this?
A moment later, a lifetime later, I feel hands on my shoulders.
“Kenna,” Dante says, his voice just sympathetic enough to piss me off, “we need to go.”
“Don’t.” I shrug off his hands. “You knew.”
He doesn’t deny it. “Hero reinforcements will be here soon,” he says, half pushing, half carrying me to the car. “We can’t be here when they arrive.”
This must be what shock feels like. I’m numb. In the SUV, someone buckles my seat belt. Someone else starts the engine.
We speed away, leaving behind the one person who made me feel powerful. Leaving behind a piece of my heart, crushed beneath a mountain.
Chapter 28
Two days later
At this altitude, even in the heart of summer, I have to bundle up to go outside and gather wood for the fireplace. The abandoned cabin we found high in the mountains between Boulder and the Wyoming border isn’t just off the grid, it’s practically nonexistent. No power, no heat, and only icy well water running in the plumbing.
I thought Jeremy was going to have a heart attack when he found out there was no Internet. But with a few mini solar panels—what doesn’t he have in that damn backpack?—and something he calls a signal replicator, he’s connected enough to keep tabs on the situation.
I dump my armful of wood at the base of the porch steps to chop later, carrying a few pieces inside.
When I walk back into the cabin, everyone is gathered around Jeremy at the dining table. He’s holding the tablet he swiped from the security office at the bunker.
“Kenna, you need to see this.” He attaches something to the tablet and points it at the wall, and then the wall lights up with the projection of a newscast by XSHN, the superhero news network.
The newscaster is on location at the entrance to the bunker, or as the caption at the bottom calls it, ESH Lab Beta Campus. Though large boulders are strewn around, a hole has been dug out of the rubble. And standing there on top of the pile, like a miner rescued from a cave-in, is Mr. Malone. He looks as perfectly pressed as always. As if nothing had happened. As if a mountain hadn’t literally crumbled around him.
Draven stands at his right. My heart practically leaps out of my chest to see him there, alive. Unhurt. But definitely not safe.
His head is encased in a powers-neutralizing helmet—technology I didn’t realize they’d actually perfected. Titanium manacles encircle his wrists and ankles. The crawl at the bottom of the screen announces the capture of one of the most dangerous villains in the super world.
I brace myself on the table to remain upright as the newscaster’s voice echoes in the small cabin.
“The villain infiltrator was brought in by none other than Rebel Malone, daughter of League President Rex Malone.”
“What?” I gasp.
Beside me, Riley’s jaw drops. “Rebel did that?”
The camera pans to Mr. Malone’s left. Standing there in a floral sundress and minimal makeup is Rebel. Only she doesn’t look like the Rebel I know. She looks like the daughter Mr. Malone always wanted. A robot. Her eyes are blank, her face carefully neutral, and her spikey blond hair has been washed and styled like she’s trying for a beauty pageant. It is all kinds of messed up.
“We all have my daughter to thank,” Mr. Malone says, clapping a hand on Rebel’s shoulder, the model of a proud father.