Overpowered

I shrug. “Those are the highlights. Max and I spent most of our life in Hero training. And Dad’s always busy with president stuff. You didn’t miss much.”

She shakes her head. “I missed everything.”

The purple flamed torches have been extinguished. The lettering above his studio simply says PEPPER in clear glass bulbs that used to glow neon purple. I don’t know what I was expecting when I came here. The delusional nostalgic part of my brain kind of hoped I’d be greeted by my friend and he’d rush us into his studio, offering us lattes and a new suit for Nova so she could blend in while we keep her hidden.

“The coast is clear,” I call out to Nova who waits around the corner. I know it’s risky bringing her here but I didn’t want to leave her at home when none of us exactly trust each other. We’re wearing matching outfits, the same ones from last night, only they’ve been freshly laundered. If we’re going to do this much longer, I’ll have to get more sets of matching clothes. The best option is to get her own Hero suit that matches mine. No one questions a Hero walking around in Central.

Well except maybe these new jackass Retriever Squad people. When my dad gets back home, he’ll put a stop to that crap.

“I remember this place,” Nova whispers. She walks up to one of the torches on the wall and touches the base. “This is where I ran.”

The memory of Pepper’s death crashes into me. How I found him held at arm’s length by Aurora herself. Now it all makes sense when she told me to get back in the pod. She thought I was Nova.

“Why did you run?” I ask, cringing when my voice echoes through the corridor. I’m supposed to be whispering, not bursting out my thoughts as if there wasn’t a bounty on our heads.

“I realized what horrible things she was going to do. I mean, I guess I knew it all along, but it didn’t feel real until that moment.”

“Where did you go?”

She points to the right. “I took off that way. Got all the way to the canyon ledge where we came in before one of her guys found me.” Her eyebrows draw together and she focuses on the floor.

“What happened?” I ask. She clearly doesn’t like reliving those memories but I have to know. What made her come back? What made her try to kill me if, just moments before, she bailed because the thought of watching Pepper die was too much?

Nova turns, staring down the empty corridor to our right. “They beat me. Strapped these magnet things to my wrists so I couldn’t fight back. Aurora said I was going to follow the plan or she’d make me wish I was dead.”

“I guess I understand why you tried to kill me,” I say with a forced smile.

“It was a lot harder than it looked.”

Footsteps echo from somewhere down the corridor. Nova’s mouth snaps shut. Her eyebrows narrow and she presses into the wall, hiding behind the large unlit torch. “Where do we go?” she whispers.

I’m impressed by the magnitude of fight that emanates from her chest. She’s not nervous. I mean, I’m even a little nervous. But I guess you have nothing to lose when you’re already considered dead. We duck inside of Pepper’s studio, which is no complicated task. The large metal doors swing open freely with just a light touch. Maybe the extra security has been shut off since Pepper isn’t around to pay his bills.

My breath catches in my throat when I gaze around the empty studio. It smells like electronics and cleaning supplies and a little bit like hazelnut coffee creamer in here. “Okay. We’re here for a reason.” Nova lifts an eyebrow but I ignore it. “We are not here to be sad. We’re on a mission.” I step into the podium in the middle of the room. It lights up. It knows my name. All of Pepper’s data about my measurements and my suit appear on the screen. He used to talk to the gigantic wall screen, telling it what he wanted. I have no idea how to do that.

“Pepper isn’t here,” I say aloud. The screen does nothing. With a sigh, I take the crumpled Hero suit out of my backpack, peel off the black duct tape I had been using as a temporary fix and hold it up. “My sleeve is shredded here around the wrist. Can you fix this?”

A tiny camera on a mechanical arm swoops out of the ceiling and examines my suit. It focuses on the rips in the black fabric. A zoomed-in image of my sleeve appears on the wall screen, along with numbers and formulas and crap I don’t understand.

“Repair.”

Nothing happens.

“I need extra fabric.”

Again, nothing.

I let out the breath I’d been holding and sit down on the podium. My head falls into my hands. I will not cry. I will not think of Pepper’s death.

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Nova’s cold hand touches my shoulder. “I’m sorry you lost your friend.”

“I don’t know what to do.” My fingers play with the tattered sleeve on my Hero suit. I waited so long to get this and once I had it, it only took one day in action to ruin it.

“Can I help you?” Nova asks. “There’s a sewing machine over there. Maybe we can fix it.”

“I don’t think you can sew this fabric. It’s all high-tech and fancy. I’m pretty sure his computer made it like a 3-D printer. Only Pepper would know how to fix this.”