 
# Renegade

### The Empowered series prequel

## Dale Ivan Smith
Copyright © 2017 by Dale Ivan Smith

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Cover design by Yocla Designs

Published by Dale Ivan Smith

Portland, Oregon

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or deceased, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

www.daleivansmith.com

 Created with Vellum
For LeAnn, always and forever

### Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Empowered: Agent Chapter 1

About the Author

Also by Dale Ivan Smith

# Chapter 1

The Rikards were going to freak when they woke up in the morning. I brushed my bangs away from my eyes, blinking in the bright moonlight, and smiled at the new forest of weeds I'd created on their lawn. The putting green lawn was now a weed-filled jungle of spiky crabgrass and tall stalks of Queen Anne's lace. The crabgrass hissed in my mind while the Queen Anne's lace hummed. The weeds were giddy with the happiness of blooming plants.

Not a bad night's work for a sixteen year-old girl, but there was more to do. The August night was still hot as I turned and walked down the sidewalk to the community garden at the end of our block. Sweat ran down my back and inside my cutoffs. The full moon hung low over the West Hills. It was maybe an hour before dawn.

As I walked I stretched out my power. The walnut trees murmured in my mind, strong like mountains as my fingers brushed their bark. I was Empowered, just like the sanctioned stiffs in the Hero Council. But my power was a secret, just for me, no one else. Not ever. I hadn't told my grandmother, Ruth, or my sisters. It was my special thing.

I pulled my power back into me as I came up to the community garden tucked behind a tall hedge, next to Willamette boulevard and the bluff. In the distance, lights shone in Portland's industrial area.

The community garden kept getting dug up. Someone had snapped the bean poles and trampled the corn. I had used my power every night for the last seven nights to regrow the plants. I replaced the poles, too. I'd done my best to fix the garden.

No one suspected there was an Empowered living next door to them. When I first became "empowered" two months ago, I kept spacing out from all the plant songs in my head and feeling what they felt. Ruth thought I was on drugs. She kept watching me when she thought I wasn't looking, and asking me if I was all right. I had to work hard to hide that I was Empowered.

Now I only used my power at night, when everyone was asleep.

I took another deep breath and walked past the hedge, to where the community garden was. My eyes widened.

I reached out with my power, to listen to the tomato plants' songs and feel their contentment. Dying screams pounded inside me. I clenched my hands and grabbed at my temples. It was like hot spikes were being hammered into my skull. The tomatoes were dying. Some were already dead. I blinked away tears, reached out with my power to touch the corn.

There was nothing there. The corn was dead, all of it. The lettuce was dead. The beans were dying. All the plants were dying or already dead.

Poison. The plants must have been poisoned. The Rickards' asshole sons and their goon friends must have done this. They had been snickering at me all week long.

I stood up, balling my fists. I would turn their precious lawns into blackberry brambles. So what if it wasn't just some weird thing, if they realized there was an Empowered in the neighborhood. They wouldn't know it was me. My muscles tightened in anger, and I dug my fingernails into my palms.

I'd cover the whole fucking neighborhood in blackberry vines, covering every lawn, right up to the windows of all of the houses. This place would look like the thorn forest from Sleeping Beauty. I ground my teeth, imagining the shock and anger, savoring it.

My skin began to tingle, starting in my back, spreading to my neck and butt. I rubbed at my neck. The tingling crept up my scalp and down the backs of my legs.

In those stupid shows about Empowereds my twin sisters liked to watch, like _Sanctioned_ and _Super Son_ , whenever one Empowered got near another one, their skin tingled. I thought it was dumb, but all the shows did it.

I whipped around but no one was there. Maybe it was the poison. I backed away from the garden, toward Willamette Boulevard. The tingling moved to my chest and arms, grew stronger. I turned and ran across the street to the bluff. I reached out and urged the grass to grow taller, to thicken. Behind me the suddenly tall stalks swayed in the moonlight, like someone was moving through it. Shit.

Vines. I sent vines snaking up from the ground and growing up and around a person-shaped silhouette. Legs, arms, chest. A long-haired man in an army field jacket and cargo pants suddenly appeared in front of me, entangled in the vines. He stumbled and fell on his face.

I ran back across Willamette. The tingling faded away. I sprinted past the dead garden and the hedge. I reached the walnut trees and slowed down. Looked back. There was no one in the field. I stopped. Sweat poured down my face. I hadn't made plants grow that fast before.

My face and breasts started tingling again.

Someone stepped out from behind the walnut tree in front of me. She was short, and blonde, her hair a bunch of braided knobs. She wore cutoffs like me and tennis shoes. The tingling sensation became a thousand hot needles. My heart pounded.

"Hold it," she said.

I punched at her but she twisted out of the way. She grabbed my arm and pulled me past her. I tumbled and slammed hard against the sidewalk. The breath whooshed out of me.

"Just want to talk with you, girl," she said.

I kicked at her with my legs but she jumped out of the way.

"You aren't going to touch me," she said, and laughed softly. She looked past me, back toward the bluff.

"Keep clear," she said to someone behind me. I scrambled up and pressed my back against the walnut tree. There was no one behind her.

It had to be that creepy guy. He must be Empowered. They both must be. That was why my skin was tingling. That was why he could hide in plain sight, and why I couldn't lay a finger on her.

I lifted my hands, let the power flow through them and into the ground around me, down until I found seeds in the earth, blackberry seeds. They were everywhere. I made them burst forth and sprout, sending shoots to burst up and become vines.

"Hold on. We just want to talk," she said.

No way. I pushed the vines to grow faster, but suddenly I felt drained, and couldn't sense the vines. I wasn't used to pushing my power.

"You've got creepo there behind me," I said. "How many other people do you have watching me?"

She shook her head. It's just me and Gus."

"The creep!" My eyes narrowed. "I don't like creeps."

A corner of her mouth turned up in a smile. "Who does, girl? But he's okay. He can "blend" in. He's a creep, but because he creeps around." She giggled at her own dumb joke.

I jabbed my finger at her. "You going to use your power to flip me again?"

She grinned. "That isn't my power. That's martial arts. And I'm older than you."

"How do you know? You look maybe fifteen."

She put her hand on her chest, rolled her eyes. "Just because I'm shorter than giant girl doesn't mean I'm younger than giant girl. You're sixteen," she said. "I'm seventeen."

"How do you know how old I am? And I'm not giant, I'm just tall." I was almost six foot.

"Because we have been watching you for the last few weeks," she said. "Mathilda Brandt."

Fear slithered down my spine. She knew my name. "People call me Mat," I said through clenched teeth. "What's your name?"

She ignored my anger. "Tanya. And everyone calls me Tanya. But I think I'll call you Vine. You should have an Empowered nickname."

What a stupid idea. "Do you have one?"

She gave me a sly smile. "Yes."

"Well, what is it?"

"Now's not the time. We have more important stuff to talk about." She jerked her head at the dead community garden. "Somebody has it in for you, for sure. It's only going to be a matter of time before the Hero Council comes looking."

"What does this have to do with you?" I demanded. I kept glancing over my shoulder to where the creep must be.

The mocking grin left Tanya's face. "Because your power is a gift. Not to be wasted on messing with neighbors because they hurt your feelings. You get mad and do dumb stuff. You're going to get caught."

What a crock. "You don't know me, not one bit. You don't know what it's like being me. So, just take your creepo friend and fuck off."

Tanya stepped close to me, until she had to tilt her head back to look up at me. Her eyes were hard. "This isn't _just_ about you, Mat. There's a lot at stake. Lots of people's lives." She didn't blink. "You don't want to be wearing a blue Hero Council jumpsuit, do you? Follow their orders?"

I shook my head.

"Didn't think so," she said. "I know I wouldn't want to be a sanctioned servant."

That sounded like something she'd heard from someone older. "Stiffs," I said.

The corner-of-her-mouth grin returned. "Stiffs, huh? I like that."

I kept looking for Gus. "I really wish your friend Gus would stop being invisible."

She laughed softly. "He's not invisible. He just _blends in_." She waved a hand. "Let the girl see you, Gus."

He appeared behind Tanya, looking betrayed, like a puppy someone had just kicked.

I clenched my fists.

He flinched. "Don't come after me."

"Don't act like a creep and I won't."

His eyes narrowed. "I'm not a creep!"

Tanya put her hands on her hips. "Please, _kids_ , let's not have a stupid, pointless argument."

I relaxed my hands. "Fine," I muttered.

"You need to meet our _friends_ ," Tanya said, and something about the way she said it sent a thrill shooting through me.

"More Empowered?"

She put a finger on her lips. "Better not to talk about it out here."

I nodded. Just like that, I wasn't pissed at her any more. I was curious, wanted to know about her friends.

"Can I meet them?"

She got serious again. "That would be cool, but there's a catch."

Figures. "What?"

"You gotta leave home for good."

Leave Ruth and my twin sisters. Ruth and I seemed to be fighting all the time, but she was still my grandmother, the woman who raised me and the twins after mom and dad were killed.

I stared at the ground. "I...I can't."

"You'll be found out if you stick around. If you're lucky, they'll give you a chance to forswear your power. But if not, you'll get put on trial."

"Yeah, I know." I clenched my fingers. My power belonged to me, no one else. I wasn't going to give up my power. No way.

I raised my head. "I'll think about it."

She shrugged. "Sure. Just don't take too long. Not only are you risking getting found out, but things are changing soon for me and my friends. You won't be able to find us if you wait too long."

"You going someplace?" I asked.

She put her finger against the tip of her nose and winked.

Irritation tightened my mouth. "You like your secrets, don't you?" I glared at Gus, who shrank back. "All of you."

"I'm just with her," he said. "It's not up to me."

"Fine. Okay, so if I want to go with you, how do we hook up?"

She handed me a slip of paper with a phone number printed on it. "Call this number at 8PM. It will work for the next few days."

"What's it to?"

"A payphone. Someone will be there at 8PM. They'll tell you what to do next."

I nodded.

"But don't wait long," she said. "I mean it." She stepped closer until we were practically touching. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance."

# Chapter 2

I got home a little while later. I came in the back door, closed it carefully behind me, trying to be as quiet as possible. I smelled coffee.

"I'm glad you decided to come back for breakfast." Ruth's voice made me jump.

"Uh," I said. My heart pounded. "Um, what are you doing up?" I asked like an idiot. Pretty obvious that she was waiting for me.

She sipped her coffee, pointed at the empty chair across from hers. "Why don't you sit and stay awhile."

I sat. She took another sip, watching me in darkened kitchen. My eyes adjusted enough to make out the disappointed look on her face. She was dressed in slacks and a blouse, her short hair combed. Ruth didn't wear makeup. She told me once she'd been a "tom-boy" when she'd been growing up, back before the Missiles of September and the Three Days War, back before Empowered came out in the open.

What if she knew what I'd been doing? My heart pounded faster.

Ruth put down her coffee cup. "Mattie, what's wrong with you?"

"Nothing. Just went for a walk."

"At three in the morning? And for two hours?"

I never could lie to Ruth. Instead, I kept my mouth shut, and stared at my hands.

She squeezed my hand. "Talk to me."

I swallowed. I couldn't tell her the truth.

"After all these years, why can't you talk with me anymore? You used to come to me about anything."

It had been a while since those days. "I can live my own life," I said, blurting the words out.

She stared at me. "You're still a teenager, Mat," she said.

I jerked myself to my feet, knocking over my chair. It hit the floor with a loud bang.

"I'm old enough to decide what I want to do." Anger bubbled up inside me. She'd been bossing me around for years. No more.

"Are you using drugs?"

I shook my head. "I'm not stupid. I wish you'd give me more credit." I was practically shouting now.

Ruth raised a hand. "Calm down. I was just asking a question."

"It's a stupid question!" I took a deep breath. Lowered my voice. "How can you ask me that? I've seen what it does to my friends."

She stood. "I wish you'd told me that you were using drugs."

My eyes widened. She actually wished I was using drugs. Worry crept into my stomach, made it clench.

"You _wish_?"

She nodded. "Yes I do." Her voice was suddenly steel. "It would be easier."

"Easier than _what_?" I was practically shouting again. How could she know? I'd been careful. I hadn't used my power around her, not since June. And back then I was sure she had thought I was just spacing out. I loomed over her. "What are you saying?"

Ruth didn't flinch at my anger. "You know what I am saying. You are _Empowered_."

I shivered. Somehow she knew, _knew_ that I had become Empowered. "You're going to tell the Hero Council, aren't you?" I blurted the words.

She blinked. "You think I'd turn you over to them? This is up to you, Mattie. You have to decide what to do about this."

It felt like she'd thrown ice water in my face. I blinked. "You mean that?"

She sighed. "I wouldn't say it if I didn't."

I sat down hard, slumped my shoulders. "Okay. I mean, I really appreciate it."

She looked disappointed. "I just wish you had come to me sooner."

"Why? I haven't done anything."

"Really, Mattie, the neighbors lawns have just magically turned into weedy jungles overnight? And the community garden keeps growing back after being trashed."

My jaw tightened. "They killed it tonight. Poison. I couldn't bring it back."

"What power does Mattie have?" My sister Ava asked from the doorway. Behind her was her twin sister, Ella.

"Why are you sitting in the kitchen in the dark?" Ella asked.

My two baby sisters. They were twelve years old.

"Mathilda and I are talking about something that you don't need to worry about," Ruth said.

Ava frowned. "We're not five, grandma. And we can hear Mat shouting from upstairs."

"Is Mattie really Empowered?" Ella asked.

Great, now everyone knew.

I didn't say anything. They'd just blab it all over the neighborhood. I was trapped. It wouldn't be long before someone called the Hero Council and reported me. My power belonged to me. Me, no one else.

"Go back to bed," Ruth told the twins.

"That's not fair," Ava said, pouting.

Ella just look confused.

" _Now_ ," Ruth ordered. They turned and left, Ella still confused, and Ava with a flip of her hair, angry.

"You should have told them," Ruth said.

I gave a bitter laugh. "You're kidding, right? They'll just blab it everywhere."

"You have to decide what you are going to do," she said. She reached out and brushed my long hair away from my face. "I really wish you wouldn't wear it like that. You have beautiful hair, but wearing it over your face like that, it's just strange looking."

"It's my hair and I can wear it how I want." My chest tightened. She'd told me she wouldn't try to tell me how to dress or how to wear my hair. I liked it down over my face. Next she'd say she didn't like that I rouged my cheeks. Too bad. That was our thing now, today.

"Okay. Fine. But what about your power? You only have two choices, Mattie." She was so matter-of-fact, like she didn't have an opinion about what I should do. Just laying out the facts for me. Like I needed to be told them.

"I know!" I shouted. "I know what my choices are." I thought she'd understand. She had just said it was my choice, but it's obvious she didn't think it really was.

She looked at me calmly. "You have only two. You either join the Hero Council, and get sent to their private school—"

"Stupid creche," I interrupted. "I know about that from TV! I'd never go." Supposedly when you became Empowered you got sent there to be trained. That's what they said. But getting Empowered was like getting struck by lightning, a million to one odds.

"Then you'll have to forswear using your power. Sign a binding legal document to that effect."

She sounded like a lawyer. "How do you know so much about this?"

"I watch TV, too," she said. "Which is it going to be?"

I ground my teeth. "I don't have to decide yet."

She gave me a hard look. "You can't wait much longer. You need to make up your mind, before they find out what you've been doing."

"I haven't been doing anything!"

She shook her head. She suddenly looked really old, and even more disappointed.

I scrunched up my face and stormed upstairs to my room.

I spent the day there. Thinking. I took a nap around lunchtime, but even then I was thinking. Thinking about Tanya and what she'd said. About a place to belong.

By dinnertime I was ready to eat a horse. The twins had set the kitchen table for dinner when I came down. Ruth _always_ insisted on setting the table. Said it was a thing from when she'd been in the Army.

Ruth had baked chicken in the oven. She turned from the stove, looked at me. "Bet you are ready to eat," she said.

"Yeah." I swallowed, still thinking. I had a chance to go be with others like me. Not be in the blue jumpsuit brigade, not give up my power, but be free.

I needed to find out for myself what Tanya meant. I needed to call her and see.

"I've been thinking about what you said," I told Ruth.

She raised an eyebrow. "And?"

"I'll decide soon, like you asked."

She looked disappointed. Probably had hoped I'd have decided by now. "Okay, but you can't wait long."

"I know." My voice was soft.

Dinner was weird. The twins kept looking at me with big eyes, like I was going to sprout wings or start breathing fire.

When we finished, I pushed back my chair. "I want to see my friends tonight."

Usually Ruth would give me the third degree about who, where, when, and why, but she didn't this time. "Okay, but call if you are going to stay over at a friend's house."

I nodded. "I will."

Ruth had given me a cellphone of my own, a little silver number with a red screen. At 8PM on the nose I called the number on the slip of paper.

Tanya answered. "Hello, this is Tanya."

"It's me, Mat."

"Decided to join us?" She sounded happy.

"No, but I want to see what it's all about."

"Don't know if we can do that." Now she sounded unhappy. But I wasn't about to go with people I didn't know.

"Sorry, but I can't say for sure yet," I said.

"Fine. Let me call you back. What's your number?"

I told her. Ten minutes later my little phone buzzed.

"Meet me at the Trailways station downtown, at 10PM."

That meant a bus ride on my own, but okay.

"See you then," I said.

The Trailways Bus station was a big druggie hangout. Lots of crooks, pickpockets mostly, hung out there. Ruth had warned me off like a dozen times after I turned fifteen and got to go on my own downtown.

There were a bunch of people standing outside, smoking. A couple of guys eyed me, and someone whistled. Stupid. My bangs were down over my eyes, so you couldn't really see my face. I wore cargo pants and a loose t-shirt too big for me, because I didn't like dudes like these jerks giving me the once-over.

There was some kind of spiky weed growing in the bare ground by the building. I stepped over to it. There were cracks in the sidewalk.

"Hey, babe, looking for a fun time?" A guy's voice said from behind me.

I turned, kept my back to the building. Some random crook stood there, in a silk sport coat and shirt. His polished shoes gleamed. He grinned a shark's grin, all teeth.

"Nope," I said. "Not interested."

He tilted his head. "Come on, babe, it will be fun, I promise. And I always deliver on my promises."

I sent my power into the spikey weed, down to its roots. I didn't know how my power worked, just that it did. The dude stepped closer. His smile got bigger, which made him look like an idiot. Did that work on girls, really?

The spikey weed shivered, and sang a little song like rain drops spattering on a window. It wanted to grow.

I held up a hand. "Back off, Jack."

"The name's Riley." He put his hands on his hips. "I promise you'll never forget me."

That was the truth.

Weeds loved to grow. I found sprouts from the plant in the earth had them suck in water and food from the soil. Told them to grow, grow, and grow some more. Two new spikey weeds thrust up between Riley's legs, another three between us, and one behind him.

I sidestepped along the building, away from him. The idiot tried to follow me, and snagged his slacks on the weeds' little spikes. He winced and looked down.

"What the hell? Where did those come from?"

"Guess you should watch where you are going, jerk." I shoved him. He stumbled and fell backwards into more spikey weeds.

He yelled. "Fuck!"

"We'd better go _now_ ," Gus said beside me, suddenly materializing.

I jumped, heart racing.

"Follow me." Gus turned and headed to a beat-up van parked in a spot up the street. It looked like a perv mobile, tinted windows.

Behind us Riley was cursing. "Goddam bitch's got some kind of power. You see these weeds. Ow!"

I grinned and followed Gus. Maybe Riley would think twice next time before he hassled a stranger. Too much to hope that he'd stop hitting on women, but maybe this would leave a bad taste in his mouth.

"You see her," Riley yelled. Shit. "Over there by that van!" He was pointing at us. Me. Gus had vanished. The van's side door was open. I got in, slid it shut.

Tanya was behind the wheel, scowling at me. "You idiot," she said. "That was a dumb thing to do."

Gus appeared in the passenger seat next to Tanya. There was a bucket seat mounted on the wall. The rest of the van was weird. There were bookshelves mounted on the walls next to the side seat and across from it, filled with books and magazine boxes with magazines. Titles like _Popular Mechanics_ , _Popular Science_ , _Organic Gardening_ , etc.

I buckled in, as Tanya pulled out and drove down the street.

"That was dumb, Mat," Gus said. He wore a knitted orange cap, and his long hair actually looked like it had been combed.

"The guy had it coming. What was I supposed to do?"

"Not give away who you are, for starters," Tanya said between gritted teeth. "We don't need to be noticed. Not ever."

I swallowed. Okay, so I had been stupid. "Sorry. I didn't think."

"You got that right," Tanya said. She wore little red ribbons around each of her knobby braids, making her look like a crazy and short Cinderella. She was actually pretty, but even pretty people look ugly when they scowl.

"It won't happen again," I said. I couldn't screw up my chance of being with people like me. Actually having a place to be for once.

"Fine. Got it." She kept her eyes on the road. We drove across the Hawthorne Bridge.

I glimpsed a white shape floating in the night sky to the south. I jerked in my seat.

A Hero Council blimp. The underside was lit by running lights. I could just make out the blue Hero Council globe and the gold HC letters, ten feet high.

"Survelliance blimp." My voice was shaky. I hadn't expected to see that.

"Now you know why I'm so pissed, Mat," Tanya said. "The three of us could have been found out. There could be a locator on that blimp."

My mouth was suddenly dry. "Are locators real?" Locators were in those dumb shows on TV, looking for Empowereds. I figured that was just all b.s. for a TV show. I shivered.

"They are real. There are very few," Tanya said. "Of course, there are very few of us, too."

"How many of us are there?" I asked her.

"You'll have to ask the Professor."

"Who's he?" We crossed Union and then turned on Grand. We were in the rundown district if there ever was one. The buildings had mesh on the ground floor windows, and lots of the windows were cracked. Old cars and trucks were parked on the street, junkers that even desperate crooks might think twice about stealing.

"You'll meet him soon." Tanya went down a side street, pulled up beside a fenced off building. "No trespassing" signs hung on the cyclone fence. The gate was padlocked. The place was dark, windows boarded up.

"Looks like a new location for Creepyville," I said.

"What's that?" Gus asked.

Tanya snickered. "You need to get out more, dude. It's a haunted house."

"Oh," Gus said. I snickered, just a little.

We got out of the van. Tanya unlocked the padlock. We went through the gate and she locked it behind her. The click made my heart jump a little. Locked in.

There had to be another way out of here, because having to unlock a gate every time would be a real pain, especially if there was a fire or the cops showed up. We went up the steps to the front door. Double doors, and locked. Paper covered the inside of the window next to the doors.

I stopped. "I need to make a call."

Tanya gave me a look that said she thought I was nuts.

"My grandma is going to worry."

"You're kidding."

"Hey, it's the truth," I said, my voice getting heated.

She raised her hands. "Okay, be a little girl." She and Gus stood off to one side.

I called home. Ava answered. "Is Ruth there?"

"She went to the senior center for game night."

Great. Or maybe this was better, as long as Ava didn't screw up the message. "Tell her I'm staying at a friend's for a sleep over."

"Which one?" she asked. Of course my sister would ask.

I thought hard. "Sarah's grandma's place. I might get invited to go to the beach, but I'll call tomorrow.

"Dang, we never get to go the beach," Ava said.

"You'll tell her, right?"

"Okay." I hung up.

Tanya still looked annoyed. "Finished?" she asked sweetly.

"Yes, _thanks_." I could be just as sarcastic.

Tanya palmed a penlight and unlocked the right-side door. We went inside.

It was pitch-black inside when she closed the door, except for the little beam from her penlight.

I swallowed, trying to moisten my mouth, but it stayed parched.

What if this was a trap? What if Tanya and Gus were setting me up? I looked around frantically, heart pounding. Then I balled my fists. No sign of Gus, but I'd deck him if he came at me.

The penlight bobbed across the blackness. Suddenly there was a hum and overhead lights flickered on.

We stood in what must have been a lobby, once upon a time. Now it was just a big, empty space with high ceilings and cracked linoleum flooring.

"No reason to freak out," Tanya said. A mocking grin played at the edges of her mouth.

I dug my finger nails into my palms. "I wasn't freaking," I said.

"No, of course not." The grin grew. "You're going to break your teeth if you keep doing that."

I relaxed my jaw. Fine. Whatever. "So what now?"

"Elevator," she said. We headed around a corner to an elevator. "Need to have the lights on to power the elevator. And yeah, there's a key for the lights," she said.

"Seems like a lot of rigamarole just to take the elevator."

"Professor's idea," Tanya said. Gus suddenly became visible next to her, making me jump.

I scowled at him. "Geez, dude, don't do that!"

He looked away from my glare. "Sorry."

Tanya laughed silently, which only made me more annoyed.

# Chapter 3

The elevator took us to a concrete basement. The ceiling lights were the kind with wire coverings over bare bulbs.

"Must be a pain to change," I said as we walked down the empty, echoing corridors, passing locked metal doors. "What is this place?"

"It's an old fallout shelter," Gus said.

"Like from the 1950s?"

"And later."

"But America won the Three Days War." Okay, if you call being the country least devastated outside of the rest of the Americas, Australia, Persia, and India, winning. School history classes went on and on about the war. Millions of people had died. Ruth talked about it when we were younger, and still talked about it. "Why would you expand a fallout shelter _afterwards_?" __ I asked.

Gus glanced at Tanya. __ Tanya smirked. "You'll have to\--"

"Ask the professor," I said at the same time as her.

She laughed. "You're catching on. Cool." She gave me an honest-to-god grin without any sarcasm.

I smiled back. This was a lot better than fighting. I looked around. "Where is everybody?"

"Not here," she said with a straight face.

"Funny."

She shrugged. "It's game night." She caught my expression. "Really. They're in the rec room, which is a few corridors over from this one." We passed a big set of double doors with a keypad next to them.

"Huh. Must be going around." First Ruth, now the secret dungeon people were playing games.

"Games are good for the mind and the soul," Tanya said, sounding like she was quoting someone. I could guess who.

I raised my eyebrows. "The Professor, right?"

She grinned. "Yup." We turned a corner. A big set of metal double doors were at the other end of the short hall. There was a keypad by the door. Tanya walked up to it, and I followed.

"How big is this place?" I asked.

Tanya tapped on the keypad. A green light blinked above the door and there was a loud click.

"Big," she said, pushing open the right side door. Gus and I followed her inside

She wasn't joking about how big this place was. The room we walked into was the size of my school gym. The ceiling was like twelve feet high, sun lamps hanging from it. The room was filled with rows of trestle tables with long metal planters on them, slender rubber hoses running across each of the planters. Tomatoes, potatoes and other types grew from the planters. They didn't look so good though. The plants whimpered in my head, and my stomach clenched. I yanked my power back inside me.

I coughed. Closed my eyes. "You're trying to grow plants underground?"

"Yup. It's not going so well."

"No kidding." Why the hell would they put plants down here, when the artificial light sucked and the air was dry?

She frowned. "Hey, we are trying. We need our own food source."

I glared at Gus. "Don't tell me they have you working on the plants," I said in a low voice.

Gus winced. "I help with the drip system."

"Maybe this professor you keep talking about isn't so smart after all." Just then, my skin started tingling.

"You may well be correct about that," a man's voice said from off to my right.

A guy had stood up from behind a big crate which had a planter on it. Looked like they were trying to grow a miniature apple tree. The apple tree looked sick. The guy wore coveralls and yellow garden gloves, and had horn-rimmed glasses. His black hair was slicked back.

"I'm the Professor," he said. He smiled encouragingly at me. He reminded me of someone, but I couldn't remember who.

I opened my mouth to say my name but Tanya jumped in first. "Vine," she said. "She's called Vine."

I shot her a look but the Professor didn't seem to notice. He nodded. "Ah, excellent, an Empowered name. It's good to honor our predecessors."

"What's yours?" I asked him.

"The Professor, of course."

The feeling he reminded me of someone I knew grew stronger. "That's an Empowered name?" Seemed like cheating.

He laughed. "Yes, it's a title, but titles can work as Empowered names." His eyes seemed to look right into me. Maybe he knew I didn't like "Vine" but could also see that Tanya and I liked each other. Didn't want to start an argument. My head started to spin. All that from one look. "You are probably wondering why a supposedly brilliant person has jerry-rigged such a joke of a hydroponics farm."

Farm. That was the joke. I didn't know much about gardening, but I'd picked up enough, because Ruth was big into it.

I brushed my bangs away from eyes. I suddenly felt rude covering my face like that. Plus, it was better to see everything. "Yeah, I had kinda wondered."

Power cords ran to a generator chugging away in a corner. There was a gasoline can next to it. There was a water tank, a big one, like a hundred gallons, with drip hoses running from it to the planters. Bags of different kinds of fertilizer were stacked against a wall. It may have been thrown together, but the "farm" wasn't stupid. "Don't take anything at first glance," Ruth always said.

"Unfortunately, it's because our time and resources have to go into a more important project, though obviously at first glance it looks like we are just idiots." He smiled again. "Truth is, everyone else is busy helping with that other project and I haven't had the time to truly devote myself to the hydroponics farm."

"I don't know much about hydroponics, but this actually doesn't look stupid."

He laughed softly. "I'm glad to hear that. To me it's not elegant at all." He pointed at the sunlamps. "Those should be running off the power grid, but what we have is actually taking power from the local electrical grid, and we don't want to draw too much, or else we draw attention from those outside."

Why was he telling me all this? I was the new girl. He didn't know me.

"It might seem surprising that I'm sharing all this with you, having just met you, Mat."

I twitched. "Are you a mind reader?" I blurted out the question.

Laugh lines crinkled around his eyes. "To the best of my knowledge, Mat, there are no telepaths. I'm just very good at reading body language and at anticipating questions."

"Because you are a genius?"

He tilted his head. "People say that. It's more that I see connections that others don't. Or I make the connections before others."

It hit me then who he reminded me of with his dark hair, glasses, brains, and kind smile. My dad. I swallowed. My dad had been a scientist, too. He'd be about the Professor's age if he had lived.

"Are you all right, Mat?" the Professor asked, looking concerned.

I changed the subject. "What's the other project, the one everyone is helping with?"

Tanya frowned at me. "Maybe you aren't ready to know. The Professor has already told you a lot of stuff." She shot him a look.

He shook his head. "Mat is trustworthy," he said. I suddenly felt like a little girl in front of the grade school principal, brought into the office for causing trouble and the principal surprises the girl by being kind and understanding.

"You do?" I asked.

He nodded. He rubbed his neck. "I must apologize, Mat," he said.

"What do you have to be sorry for?" I asked.

"We looked into your background. We were watching you for weeks before Tanya initiated contact."

"You were spying on me."

"Surveilling," Tanya corrected.

"I call it spying." I frowned. Watching me, from the shadows. I jerked my head at Gus, who looked down at his hands in a hurry. "You sent him."

"Not often. We need Gus for _other_ activities." The Professor snapped his fingers. "That reminds me!" He pulled a little notepad covered with math scribbles from his coverall pocket. He handed it to Gus. "Speaking of the other project, Gus, would you run this over there, and let them know I worked out a solution."

Gus nodded, glanced at me. "See you later, Mat," he said, and headed off.

I was still thinking about what Gus could do with his power. Snatch and grab. Burglary. A dude that could basically be invisible could pull off all kinds of crimes.

"It was me, Mat." Tanya lifted her chin. "I watched you."

I narrowed my eyes. " _You?"_

"Do you know what her power is?" The Professor asked.

"No, I don't." I glared at Tanya, who made me madder by shrugging. "Somebody didn't bother to tell me."

"Tanya, that's rude."

"Sorry, Professor." She fiddled with one of her braids. She looked sorry. "I'm sorry, Mat."

"Well, what's your freaking power?"

"I'm a peeper."

Damn it. I'd heard a little about Peepers, but didn't know exactly how their power worked. "You spy on people, is that it?"

She looked at her hands. "Sort of. It's more than that. I can see what someone else sees."

My jaw dropped. I suddenly felt ice cold. That was creepy. "What anybody can see? Oh my god."

She shook her head. "Not quite. I can see through the eyes of anyone I can see."

The Professor jumped in with more information. "If whomever she sees is watching or looking at someone else, she can then peep through that second person's eyes. And if the second person is looking at a third person, she can peep through that third person's eyes."

Tanya looked like she wished the Professor hadn't told me all that.

Sounded like a way to make yourself sick to your stomach, too, with all that jerking around. It also still pissed me off. "Spying on me? For weeks?" I stepped close to her, glared down into her eyes.

She blinked but didn't look away. "Yeah. I told you we had watched you for weeks when we met."

She had? I'd been so focused on meeting others like me, who weren't sanctioned, that I must have let that slide by. Not that I'd met any sanctioned Empowered. I hoped I never would.

I took a deep breath. "Okay, fine. But don't spy on me again?"

Tanya glanced past me at the Professor.

"It's a fair request, Tanya," he said.

She nodded. "Look, I was just doing what I had to do. You would have thought us idiots if we hadn't checked you out before approaching you."

I blinked. "Yeah, I see your point. I'm sorry, I just have to watch my back."

"We all do." Her hand brushed my shoulder. "But we can do it together," she said.

I rubbed my eye. Bad time to get a speck of dust or something in it.

A tear ran down Tanya's cheek. She wiped it with the back of her hand.

"It's okay if you hug each other," the Professor said. "Really."

I'd been a loner since I was kid. The few "friends" I had were more like people to hang with, to kill time when I wasn't at home. But after my Empowering two months ago, I'd been more alone than I'd ever been. I couldn't share my secret, couldn't share my power, not with anyone.

Until now. Tanya was like me. So was the Professor, and Gus. This was a place where I could be myself, and not hide my power.

Our hug was awkward at first, then I squeezed her and she squeezed me back.

That was the moment I realized she and I were friends. Really friends.

The Professor smiled at us. "Welcome to Hideaway, Mat," he said. "I hope you'll stay."

I started to say, _I hope so, too_ , but a radio squawked. The Professor picked up a walkie-talkie from a work bench. "Excuse me," he said, and went over to a corner of the room. I couldn't hear what he was saying, or hear the person on the other end.

I raised an eyebrow at Tanya. She shrugged. "It's always something," she said.

The Professor returned, laying the walkie-talkie back on the workbench. "I'm sorry, but I have an assignment for Tanya."

" _Now?_ " She didn't sound happy at all.

"I'm afraid so." He looked at me. "It shouldn't take too long."

She hugged me again. "Sorry about this," she whispered in my ear, then marched off.

Figures that once I get a real friend, someone like me, she has to go away. At least it was only for a little while.

# Chapter 4

The Professor took Gus and me to meet the others. Hideaway was a maze of rooms and tunnels. The Professor told me the history of this place while we walked. Turned out it had been built by a guy called Roland Armitage. Roland had made his money building freighters in World War II. After the war he became paranoid about nuclear war and built this fallout shelter complex for his family, friends, and employees. He kept it a secret from them. Roland must have been the type who loved springing surprises on people.

When the Three Days War broke out Roland hid down in the complex without telling his family or friends, except for his son and a few trusted employees. Apparently he'd become even more paranoid, and didn't want to be cooped up in an underground bunker with people he thought wanted to kill him. Crazy.

Sounded like being rich was a big pain in the ass for him.

"Hideaway was Roland's name for this place," the Professor said. There were bedrooms with bunk beds, a cafeteria, a library, a gym, a machine shop, a lab, a place that must have been an armory but the gun racks were empty. "Roland's long gone now, but his son is with us."

"He is?" I asked. "Is he Empowered?"

"No, but he's still special. Toby cares about people, normals and Empowereds alike. He shares my dream of a sanctuary for outcasts and Renegades." He smiled.

"Renegades?"

"That's what Tanya calls us. The Renegades. I tried to tell her that such names belonged with super-villains, and not people trying to create their own home, but she wouldn't let it go." He laughed. It was happy, gentle laugh.

Renegades, yeah that fit Tanya. Maybe it fit me, too. I smiled to myself.

The Professor took me to a room that looked like a lounge, with lots of comfy chairs and a big sofa. There were little miniature trees—Ruth had told me they were called Bonsai—sitting on end tables. An old woman with stringy white hair sat in a big, black leather comfy chair. My skin had started tingling as soon as we neared the room. It was funny. When you were around another Empowered for a while, the tingling faded away. But when you met another one, it started up again.

"She's Empowered," I whispered to the Professor.

He nodded. The woman lifted her head. Her eyes were unfocused. She was blind.

"Hello, Professor," she said.

A blind Empowered. You never saw that on TV. They said Empowered healed faster, and were in perfect health. Being blind wasn't.

He knelt beside her, and she brushed a hand against his cheek.

"Hello, Sissy," he said.

She smiled. "You must have brought Mathilda Brandt with you."

The Professor motioned for me to come over. I swallowed. Something about her gave me the creeps.

She was old-older than Ruth, maybe a lot older- and Ruth wasn't young. I forced myself to walk over to her chair. There was an ancient turntable on a little end table next to her, with a flower-shaped funnel attached to it, and a hand crank. A Victrola? I'd seen a picture of one once in a book. The album on the turntable was _Four Seasons_ , by some guy named Vivaldi. The Victrola didn't have all the fancy knobs and dials Ruth's turntable did.

Sissy reached out and grabbed for my hand. I started to move away, but stopped when the Professor shook his head.

Her fingers grabbed at mine, squeezed. She was strong for being so old. She ran her thumb over my palm, and I shivered.

"You are the one I felt," she said.

_Felt_? "I don't know what you mean," I said. My stomach twisted as she kept tracing my palm with her thumb.

"I feel other Empowered, Mathilda Brandt. This is _my_ power. I felt you."

My shiver became a shudder.

"I felt your Empowering." She closed her eyes. "It felt like flowering." She let go of my hand and I stepped back.

"I'm sure you think I'm a crazy old woman," she said. She laughed softly. "I am, a little, but it _did_ feel like that to me."

I didn't know what to say, so I kept quiet.

"People who see things differently are often considered crazy by those who don't," the Professor said. He glanced at me. "I suspect you don't understand what Sissy is telling you."

I nodded, and he smiled. It wasn't a smile that said he thought I was stupid, or ignorant. It was a kind smile, the kind that made me almost embarrassed. The fact was, I did think Sissy was crazy. Actually, I thought everyone here, except maybe Tanya, was nuts.

"But when you have more experience as an Empowered, you'll understand that we see things differently than other people," he said.

I tugged at his sleeve and pulled him a few steps away so I could whisper. "So, Sissy's looking for others like me. Like us?"

"Yes. We need more help in our work here."

"There are no more," Sissy said, making me jump. She laughed again. "My eyes aren't so good anymore, but my ears are like a twenty-year-olds. Sharp, especially when the discussion is about me."

"You mean I'm the last Empowered?" I shook my head. "I can't be."

The soft laugh again. "The last one _we'll_ see," she said. I suddenly felt cold.

"Then why keep looking?"

"Because Sissy can't see the future," the Professor said. "No one can."

"True," Sissy said. "I just have a hunch."

I shook my head. "I don't understand."

"It's just a feeling I have, Mathilda." Only Ruth called me Mathilda, but Sissy seemed, well, like Ruth, only less severe. More at peace. "There's more," she said. "I also feel you will do great things."

I laughed. "Me? I control plants. Big deal."

"It's a far bigger deal than you realize." She looked at the Professor. "Have you told her?"

I raised my eyebrows. "Told me what?"

The Professor gave me a measuring look. "We would like you to help us. We need your help with the hydroponics."

"I don't know anything about mechanical stuff."

"To help grow the plants. Using your power."

Was that why they wanted me here? To use my power? They didn't care about me. This _was_ crazyville after all. A bunch of people living underneath a derelict building on the east bank. I frowned. And they wanted _me_ because I could grow plants. Why else would they want a teenaged girl? Tanya was peeper. Probably wanted her because she could do lookout stuff, or something.

"I'm sorry," the Professor said. His voice was soothing, which only irritated me more. "This is all rather sudden. You see some more of Hideaway, and think about it. I'll have Gus show you around."

Gus? I didn't want to spend more time with him than I had to.

He smiled. "Gus is a good soul," he said. "He just doesn't dress like one."

"Aren't you afraid the government will find this place?" I blurted out the words.

"I have a plan to make this place truly hidden, and live up to its name, Hideaway."

He was so confident. Hope fluttered up like a butterfly inside me. To truly have our own place, away from the world. It sounded wonderful. It sounded impossible, too, but I could do things now that were impossible for me two months ago, before I Empowered, so, why not a place of our own, hidden away from the world?

Gus took me around Hideaway. We went to the game room, where people played board games, played cards, smiled, and acted like a big family. It made me wish I could be a part of it. And I could, if I wanted. But, as pissed as I got with Ruth and the twins, _they_ were my family.

"How did you wind up here, Gus?" I asked him after he'd shown me the rooms where people studied, and worked on projects—everything from sewing to writing to redoing the rooms themselves.

Gus shuffled his feet, looked down at his hands. "I'd been on the streets for a long time."

"In Portland?" We stopped outside of a room with a medical cross on the door.

"Care clinic," he said. We walked on.

"Here in Portland?" I repeated.

"All over," he said. He looked up at me. "Since I became Empowered when I was fourteen. I got by. I was an orphan. He plucked at his field jacket. "This belonged to someone who took care of me." He lifted his chin, and for an instant he looked defiant.

"How'd you meet the Professor?"

He looked down at his hands. "I'd been poking around here, looking for a place to hole up, and the Professor found me."

"How do you find someone who can be invisible?" I asked. I imagined the Professor putting cans of paint above doors, or maybe some kind of automated sprayer that went off when you crossed a laser, something cool like that.

"Books," Gus said.

"Books?" That was crazy.

"Yeah, I like books, okay?" That was the closest Gus had come to getting pissed off.

"Okay."

Gus took me to a tiny room with a sleeping bag unrolled on the cement floor, and an old electric lantern on a wooden crate. There were some ancient news magazines. "You can stay here for tonight."

"Thanks."

"See you in the morning," he said, and left.

I suddenly realized how tired I was.

The next morning Gus was outside when I opened the door. He took me to the cafeteria, which looked like something out of a museum, with old Formica counter tops, and what looked like a milkshake machine. People sat in old-style chairs at round tables painted orange.

My skin didn't tingle. They were all normals. They glanced at me, but no one was rude.

Gus took me over to a table where a big, bald dude in a buttoned up pea coat sat reading a book. The title said _Bleak House_. On the table was a gray chauffeur's cap.

"Like the book, Driver-man?" Gus asked the guy.

The big dude put a bookmark in the book and closed it. "There's a lot to it," he said.

Gus grinned. "I _knew_ you'd like it!" He looked at me. "Oh, this is Mathilda Brandt."

I scowled at Gus. "It's Mat," I said.

"Sure thing," the big guy said.

"And you are?" I asked him.

"Just Driver-man."

More crazyville. There was an awkward pause, then Gus said, "I got more Dickens, Driver-man, when you finish _Bleak House_."

Driver-man nodded "Cool." He looked at me. "You read, kid?"

"Not really."

"That's a shame. You should give it a try."

"Maybe someday," I said.

"No time like the present," he said. "Well, nice meeting you, Mat. See you around." He obviously wanted to get back to his book.

I nodded. Gus and I went up to the counter to get food.

I had an insta-meal breakfast, scrambled eggs and turkey sausage, with peaches. Gus said that's mostly what they ate, at least until they could grow their own food. He said it like he wasn't trying to put any guilt on me. Gus didn't seem like the type who guilted people. Not on purpose.

It was funny, Gus wasn't so creepy anymore. In fact, I could see he cared about the people here, and they cared about him. Most looked like they were streeters, old people mainly, but there were younger ones closer to my age. After breakfast they all went off to do work on projects and do chores. No one complained. They all smiled, joked, and laughed at each other's dumb jokes.

Maybe Tanya was right. Maybe Hideaway was a place where you could belong. That decided it for me. I had to be here, to find out if I could belong. But I couldn't just not go home without saying something. I had to tell Ruth.

Tanya thought I was nuts. "Better not to go back."

"I can't do that. She won't know what happened to me."

Tanya nodded. "Exactly. That means she can't tell the police, and they can't tell Support, and Support can't tell the Hero Council."

"We're not bothering anybody." That was the first time I said "we" about Hideaway.

Tanya smiled. She'd heard me include myself. She got serious. "That's not what the Hero Council will think."

"Screw them." This was our thing, not theirs.

# Chapter 5

Gus went with me. Said I could use the company. We both worked at a shelter, he said. Tell Ruth that. Well, that was true.

Driver-man met us topside. He wore his gray chauffeur's cap and navy blue buttoned coat. He took us over to a building across the street, and lifted a big roll-up door. Turned out that was Hideaway's garage, filled with all kinds of cars and trucks, maybe fifteen or twenty vehicles all together. He picked a brown Ford Dasher. I got in the front, while Gus got in the back.

I started to give Driver-man directions.

"Already know how to get to your Grandmother's place," he said.

"How do you know?"

"I gave Tanya rides over there after Sissy detected you." That should have creeped me out, but it didn't. Funny how you can get used to things so quickly.

We pulled up in front of the house. I got out, and Gus followed me. I stopped at the gate in the little white picket fence. Ruth's rose bushes sang a happy tune in my head.

"Better stay with Driver-man," I told Gus.

He blinked. "I want to support you."

"You have, dude. But Ruth's going to wonder."

Gus nodded toward the house. "Think she already does."

Ruth watched us from the living room window. Shit.

I fought not to frown. Okay, we'd go with Gus's "we both-work-at-a-shelter thing."

But I couldn't not tell her I was leaving. Suddenly I wasn't sure I wanted to leave home. Ruth opened the door for us.

"Hi, Grandma," I said. She raised an eyebrow. I never called her grandma, it was always Ruth. I turned to Gus. "This is my friend, Gus."

Gus nodded. "Gus Silco, ma'am."

Ruth raised an eyebrow at the word "friend."

"We both work at a shelter," Gus added.

Great, now I had to explain that. But I'd have had to explain it anyway, so there we were.

"Shelter?" Ruth asked. "You'd both better come in and tell me all about it."

Tanya would be royally pissed if she were here with us. The last thing she'd want was for us to "tell Ruth all about it." Thank God she wasn't.

Ruth sat us down at the kitchen table. Offered Gus coffee, which he gratefully took. I had orange juice.

Ruth sat down, looked at me over the brim of her coffee mug. "I thought you were staying at a friend's."

"I'm sorry, I didn't think you'd understand," I said.

She raised an eyebrow. "So you lie to me instead? Why wouldn't you want me to know you were at a shelter? Unless you were staying there, instead of helping."

I slammed down my glass, and the table rattled. "I'm doing both!"

"Hey, Mat, it's okay," Gus said.

"Sorry, Grandma. Sorry, Gus." I took a deep breath. "I'm sorry I lied."

"It's because you are staying with other Empowered, isn't it?" Ruth asked. Her voice sounded brittle, worried. Ruth never sounded worried. "What's the point," she would say. "Would it do any good?" She never worried. But now she was worried.

I let out my breath. "They're good people, Ruth!"

She gave me a sad look. "No doubt they are." She looked at Gus. "You are one of them, aren't you?"

He hesitated, nodded. "Yes, ma'am."

"That's an old-style field jacket," Ruth said. "It's way before your time."

"It was a gift, ma'am. From a friend who'd been in the Army."

She put down her mug. "I served in the Army, saw duty in Europe." Her eyes got that haunted look they always did when she remembered what she saw in the Reclamation zones.

I swallowed. "We're not hurting anybody, Ruth."

Her eyes narrowed. "They won't see it that way, Mathilda. You are breaking the law. There are only two choices. Sanctioned or foresworn."

"What's wrong with rogue?" My words were hot. She just didn't get it.

"It's illegal."

"Will you report us?" Gus asked.

She shook her head. "I don't know anything to report." She leaned forward, grabbed my hand. "But don't do this, Mattie. Please."

Ruth never begged. I chewed my lip. What choice did I have? I didn't want to be an asshole in a blue jumpsuit. Besides, the Professor seemed too smart to go to prison. His plan was to keep us safe and hidden.

I lifted my chin. "I'm sorry, Ruth. But I have to."

She sighed, and shook her head. "It's your choice."

Gus looked at Ruth, then me, then back to Ruth again. "You aren't going to stop us, Ma'am?" He couldn't believe it. "I mean, your grand daughter is sixteen."

She sighed, suddenly looking very tired. "People have to make their own choice, Gus. Mattie must make hers." Her eyes grew soft, and sad. "No matter what, I will always love you, Mat."

I didn't cry until I was back in the car with my backpack filled with clothes and a duffel bag with more of my stuff. I rubbed fiercely at my eyes.

The Professor was pleased I had chosen to stay. So was Tanya, once she had gotten over being pissed at me for saying goodbye to Ruth.

"You're one of us," she told me. "You're a renegade."

I liked the sound of that.

Growing the plants wasn't hard. The Professor guided me, planter by planter. But that was only the first room. There were _six_. By the third I was pretty tired. The fourth gave me a headache. The fifth had me wanting to puke my guts out. I sat with my back against a concrete wall, eyes closed, and tried to stop the muscle spasms in my chest. It took me a couple of hours before I could do the sixth, and even then, it was hard.

I fell into the cot they had waiting for me, in a little side room I now shared with Tanya. The Professor said that, with practice, I'd be able to ripen the vegetables and fruit. He was working on setting up a seventh room for soybeans. People ate _a lot_.

I never thought about it before I had to help grow their food. "We can't eat insta-meals after we become self-sufficient," the Professor told me.

There was a room with compost bins for kitchen and human waste, to be used as fertilizer. The place stank to high heaven.

"We have to be able to take care of ourselves," he told me. "Building a self-sufficient community is filled with challenges. We need to come up with our own food and water supply, a means to create material goods, etc. But most of all, we need a power supply, and a means of ensuring we remain hidden."

I asked him what he meant by hidden. He said he'd show me later. Of course they weren't going to trust the new girl that fast.

Days went by. I started to lose track of time. I met more of the normals. Including Toby Armitage, Roland's son. Toby had gray hair as long as Sissy's, and liked to wear floppy sandals instead of shoes. He had old army pants, the kind with pockets everywhere, and olive green army shirts, but he didn't seem military at all. Not like Ruth, who'd been in the army. Toby seemed real gentle, the kind of dude that would break if you got angry at him.

I didn't see Tanya much, only when it was time for meals and bed. She asked me lots of questions, but wouldn't answer mine about what she was doing, other than it was with Gus. Bugged me that she wouldn't share. So much for being friends.

Gus had this habit of appearing out of nowhere. It bugged me at first, then it just annoyed me, and finally, it was just kinda funny, in a weird way.

There were a few kids around, I heard them laughing. I expected more Empowered—but there was only me, Tanya, the Professor, Sissy, Gus.

Gus also mentioned someone called "The Lolit."

"Lolit? What kind of name was that?" I asked him.

He gave me this big, goofy grin. "You have to meet the Lolit to find out."

I was beyond antsy. I'd been down in the basement for who knew how long now. We ate insta-meals. Only insta-meals. They were old insta-meals, too. Like Mac-n-cheese and Salisbury steak-type old. Must have been from Roland's private stash. Lots of canned pears, too. Professor said once we got our own food system fully functioning (his words) we'd be able to go natural with our food.

When I tried to explore beyond the plant rooms and the cafeteria, I ran into a man and woman, in old army field jackets like Gus wore, guarding a locked metal door with a sign over it that read "Lab", "Library," and "Power Room."

"You have to stay on this side of the door," the dude told me. Both of them looked like they'd been in a few fights.

"Just want to look around. We're on the same side," I said.

The woman looked like she doubted that. "Go back, please."

A muscle in my neck throbbed, but I turned around. The same thing happened when I found another locked metal door with a sign over it that read "Emergency Exit." There was a young guy there with a buzz cut, in jeans and a sweatshirt.

"Sorry, can't go this way." He nodded up at the sign over his head. "Only for emergencies."

So I went back to the damn plant rooms.

That night, when Tanya came into our little room next to Plant Room Four, I'd had it.

"I'm a fucking prisoner! Why the hell did I join you guys? Don't you trust me? I thought I was one of you." I went on like that for a while.

Tanya cocked her head to one side, let me rant. "Finished?" she asked when I stopped for air and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.

I put my hands on my hips. "I thought we were friends."

She looked like I'd hit her in the face. "We are friends, Mat. I knew we'd be friends the moment we'd found you."

_Found me_. I didn't have a choice, apparently. Well, I did. I was getting the hell out of dungeon-ville. "Excuse me," I said, pushing past her.

She grabbed my arm. "Hold on." She was stronger than I thought. She had me good.

She gave me an understanding look. "Listen, I had to go through the same thing. You have to earn their trust."

Trust. "How the hell do I do that?"

She let go, patted my arm. "Be steadfast, for one."

I blinked. "Steadfast?"

"Yeah, you know, hang in there. Prove you are worth trusting by helping, by not trying to go where you shouldn't."

"That's not fair. You are asking me to stay stuck in the plant rooms for God only knows how long."

"You can go to the cafeteria."

"At least I won't starve." I clutched my hands in frustration. "Nice to know."

"And the game room. You can go there."

"I don't play games. Besides, I barely know anybody. And the one person I feel close to—you, isn't around."

She looked away. "At least you had sisters growing up."

That stopped me. "No sibs?"

"No family. I'm an orphan like Gus."

I let out the air I'd been holding in. "I'm sorry. I'm a jerk." I'd never asked her about her family.

She smiled at me, her eyes wet. "But, you know what? When you're right, you're right. Tell you what. There's a job on my list you can help me with."

I leaned forward. "A job? What kind of job?"

"The illegal kind."

"Stealing something?"

"Yes. But I prefer to think of it as reappropriating."

I shook my head. "You sure know a lot of big words, girl."

She grinned. "Comes from hanging out around the Professor."

"How long have you been here?" I asked. "Or can't you tell me?"

She sat on her bunk bed. "Sure I can tell. Six months."

Since winter.

"What about the Professor?"

She shrugged. "Longer than me. I don't know how much." Her face went serious, and she looked me in the eye long enough I started to shift my feet.

Finally I couldn't take it anymore. "You trying to creep me out?"

"Sissy says if you really look at someone, without judging, just look at them, they'll show themselves to you."

"Sissy's nearly blind."

Tanya laughed quietly. "There are other ways to see, kid."

"So, you trying to see the real me?"

She nodded again. "To see if you are willing to steal from those who can spare it, to help those who can't."

"A Robin Hood-kind of thief?"

She laughed. "Yeah."

I still felt like an outsider, but this was a place for me, a place where I could be me, without having to wear a blue jumpsuit and salute when ordered to, or, sign away using my power for life.

"Is that what you've been doing?" I asked her.

"Yup. Me and Gus."

Figures he would be stealing. Being able to go invisible would make stealing a lot easier. Then again, maybe he couldn't hide what he stole. I wanted to ask Tanya, but she was staring at me again.

"If it's for those in need," I grinned, "then yeah, I'll do it. Definitely." I reached out to shake Tanya's hand, but she grabbed it and pulled me into a hug. Now my eyes were suddenly wet. Damn it.

# Chapter 6

We napped for a couple of hours, and then Tanya took me through the halls to Gus's room, which was up a flight of stairs. The guards let us past without question. Yeah, I'd say they trusted her. Gus's room looked like a guard room. It was right beside the main doors, on a landing. She rapped on the door.

"Come on, Gus, open up."

I heard the faint sound of a bolt being drawn back, the door lock clicking open, and then there was Gus, wearing grungy jeans and a sweatshirt, his long black hair all wild, rubbing his eyes. Tanya nudged him back into the room.

"Hey!" he protested, blinking.

"Got a job for us," Tanya said. She nodded at me. "Mat's coming with."

The room smelled like musty paper. The shelves behind him stuffed with books. More were piled beside a folding chair, and paperbacks covered a trashed-looking coffee table.

Gus pulled on his field jacket, then sat on a army cot in a corner and put on combat boots that looked like they were from the Three Days War.

Tanya caught my eye and nodded her head at a poster covering the far wall. It was a map of the world, from like 1970, showing the Russian, German and Chinese reclamation zones, with a United Nations logo.

So what? I mouthed at her.

She rolled her eyes. I shrugged. I didn't get it.

She went over to Gus, who was finishing lacing up his second boot. "Mat doesn't know you're are a history buff, Gus. Care to enlighten her?"

Gus straightened up, looked wary, like he thought this was a trap to make him look dumb.

"Come on, Gus," Tanya said. "Why don't you tell her why you like history?"

He brushed his hair back from his face. "History's important. You need to know what happened before. The Three Days War shaped the world, and we are still feeling its aftershocks."

"You sound like a history book," I told him.

Tanya snickered.

Gus's face scrunched up, but he bit his tongue and didn't say anything. I suddenly felt bad for him, but I didn't say anything. He was still at least slightly creepy Gus.

But Tanya had shown me this for a reason. Gus loved history, he wasn't really a creep. He just came off as one.

"My grandma likes history, too," I said at last.

Gus looked at me warily, like I was baiting him.

"No, really," I said. "She does." I felt a pang when I thought of Ruth. She would be worried about me. I was a selfish jerk, but I didn't want to give up my power, and I wasn't going to give up who I was, and go work for the Hero Council. _I_ wanted to decide how I lived.

His shoulders relaxed and he smiled. "That's cool. Does she talk about it to you?"

"Sometimes. Like when there's an election or when there's an incident in the Reclamation Zones, or a big Hero Council operation. She always wants to make it into a lesson. Says it's important to know the historical context."

I got so tired of hearing about history. I only half-listened when Ruth brought it up. Most of the time at least. When President Gabriel was killed by that rogue Empowered when I was ten, I listened, because she was the first woman president. It was so wrong. We were all crushed. The secret service and the Hero Council were supposed have protected her. But there had been a conspiracy _inside_ the government. Ruth said President Nixon had had to deal with two assassination attempts, President Reagan three.

But nowadays things were supposed to be different. The Hero Council had protected Nixon and Reagan. Not President Gabriel when it counted, just because they had to deal with some crisis they wouldn't even talk about. So a rogue Empowered killed the first woman president. I squeezed my eyes shut. I hated the Hero Council for letting her die. I never wanted to be one of them.

"You're remembering one of her lessons right now, aren't you?" Gus asked, face so eager.

Tanya smirked at me.

My face was red. I felt like a dork. "Don't we have a job to do?"

"Glad you remembered," Tanya said, still smirking. Gus looked disappointed.

The job turned out to be shoplifting at a pharmacy. Petty crime was not what I'd signed up for, but I had said I wanted to help, and not just make vegetables grow better.

Dengel's Pharmacy had been remodeled after the Earthquake last year, you could tell because it had that sticker on the window that said "HC approved quake rebuild." The HC had helped set up a fund in Portland to repair damaged buildings, and this one had been in an old brick place. The church next to my high school had totally crumbled. The high school had been damaged, but the HC's "Safe school buildings for kids initiative" or whatever it was called had put in seismic supports.

Dengel's had a big glass window and big glass double doors. There was a new-looking stone planter outside with a tree growing out of it.

Tanya stopped us while we stood across the street and gave us our marching orders.

"So, here's the deal. We need aspirin, vitamins, bandages." She rattled off a few more things. Scissors. Gauze. Iodine.

"Geeze, I'll need a shopping cart for all that stuff," I complained.

"It's not as bad as it sounds," she said, looking annoyed. "Besides, you only have to put the stuff in a basket. Gus will be the pickup."

So he could take inanimate things and make them invisible. That _would_ be the perfect power for stealing.

"Sounds boring," I said, trying to act like I didn't care, when I was worried inside.

"Boring is good. Besides, that's the simple part. The other part is that I'll be scoping out behind the counter for drugs we need, medicines and stuff, and Gus will lift those first. You'll wait outside until I come out. That will let you know that Gus did his thing, and then you can pick up your items."

I hung out across the street, next to a newspaper box and a phone booth, and tried not to listen to some guy beg someone on the phone, a woman probably, to take him back. The newspaper's headline was something about the latest trouble in the Russian Reclamation Zone. "Insurrection Continues," it said. I had my own troubles. Like committing my first crime.

Gus disappeared before he went inside. Tanya opened the door, held it for a moment—guess the door opening by itself would be a giveaway – and then went in herself. I waited, tried to ignore the dude on the phone's begging.

It seemed like forever. I shifted my feet. A car went by with the windows rolled down and a guy gave me the once over, driving slow. I glared at him. He just laughed, which made me madder.

Then the door opened at Dengel's and Tanya came out. She nodded at me.

I crossed the street, my heart pounding in my ears. Look calm, I told myself, but it felt like I screamed shoplifter by the way I walked. I tried to relax.

The door grew closer. I took a deep breath, pushed it open and stepped inside.

The counter was at the far end of the room. Mostly old people were standing in aisles, looking at medicines and stuff. They all ignored me. The woman at the checkout counter didn't even look at me. I took another breath to slow down my racing heart.

I picked up a basket and went to the aisle that said "pain relievers," and began putting bottles of aspirin into it. When I had a dozen big bottles, I went and got bandages and rolls, and iodine. The basket was stuffed with stuff. I tried to keep it out of sight from the clerk, but my arms were getting tired. Okay, that had to be enough.

So I went to the door. An old woman tottered in front of me. I put the basket down to help her on the end cap closest to the door, out of sight of the clerk, and then held open the door for her.

She mumbled a thank you. I glanced back at the clerk. She looked at me, and then went back to something behind the counter. I stepped outside.

My heart pounded like a jackhammer again. Sweat dribbled down my sides.

I heard a shout inside, and the sound of something falling.

The door opened but there was no one there. I heard footsteps pounding on the sidewalk.

"Run," I heard Gus say from thin air.

Tanya still slouched by a telephone poll across the street. Like an idiot, I charged across traffic. A truck honked. I spun out of the way of a car.

"Dumbass!" someone yelled. A cop car cruised up to the pharmacy. A police officer got out, looked in my direction.

"Stupid," I heard Tanya say.

I whirled around. My eyes were wide.

"You are just making it more obvious you're up to no good," she said. How could she be so calm?

I wiped my mouth. Another police car arrived.

"We gotta go!" I hissed.

"No kidding," she replied, and winked.

We walked to the nearest side street, ducked down it. Houses lined the street.

I looked over my shoulder. The police cruiser had turned around and driven across traffic to follow us.

"Shit!" I started running. "Come on!" I yelled at Tanya.

"Damn it," I heard her mutter. She ran after me.

I ran between two houses.

"You are going to get us caught!" she yelled.

The side yard wasn't fenced. There was a field behind the houses filled with weeds. I didn't think, I just ran, ran as hard as I could until I reached the field and the weeds. A stalk of Queen Anne's lace brushed against my leg, and I shivered. The weed burbled in my mind. Suddenly my power opened up to me like a flower, and I could feel the field singing, a little wordless tune that lifted my heart. I reached out, and sent my power into the plants. Grow. _Grow_ , I told them. Roots. I felt the roots beneath the soil. More seeds.

"Stop right there!" A man's voice boomed from a loudspeaker.

A police cruiser was parked on the street, and the big cop stood with the door open, a mic next to his mouth. Another cop car pulled up beside his. And then another.

I only half noticed. Tanya stood panting beside me. It was like I had a fever, the world seemed to blur. Blur until I only noticed the plants, the weeds. Police were running toward us. Tanya backed up. The weeds were tall around me, coming up to my shoulder. I slipped between them, careful not to trample any. They sang such joy in my head, it was like listening to your favorite album with the music turned all the way up.

Tanya swore behind me.

There was an old fence at the far end of the weedy field, poking up from a blackberry thicket.

Blackberry brambles blocked our way. I didn't even think, didn't hesitate.

I reached with my power into the blackberry patch, urged the vines to grow. My heart pounded, and my muscles felt like I'd been lifting weights non-stop all day, they were screaming. But the vines moved. Moved! There was a place where the old split rail fence was now clear of vines. I scrambled over it. I heard a cop swear behind me.

I urged the vines to snap back into place, and grow. The world was like a cartoon now, compared to the vines. They uncoiled, and spread, spread until a huge tangle had grown up behind me.

"We have an Empowered!" I heard the cop yell to another cop.

"Shit!" Tanya exploded. "They're on to you now."

But they wouldn't be chasing us this way. The blackberry patch blocked their way.

I couldn't help myself. I was grinning like a happy fool as we slipped between houses, down a tree-lined street, and back to Hideaway.

Tanya wasn't so happy. She chewed me out when we had gotten back to Hideaway. But I had helped us escape. Still, she was mad enough she went to talk to the Professor, and he sat me down and explained why I needed to be discreet, and walked me through the importance of hiding, and being cagey. Then he said I'd done good to get away.

I didn't rub it in with Tanya, even if she'd been the one who named me Vine, and kept calling me that, even though I hated it. She shouldn't have complained when I finally did like my name, and made vines.

It was two weeks before Tanya asked me to help out again on a job. It was for lifting seeds from a garden and nursery place. Easy. They didn't really need me, but she had me listening to the plants there, and watching things, for her, a phone in my pocket, while Gus went and shoplifted seeds. Big deal.

But they all thought it was a big deal. Sissy, Toby, and some of their oldster friends all cheered me. They'd been helping ever since I joined them with the hydroponics and the garden. Said it was easier and more fun with me around.

Seemed dumb, but I hummed when I worked now. I had caught myself once and stopped, but Sissy said, why stop? So from then on I hummed when I worked.

Gus liked to draw. He drew things on cardboard signs, and left them all over Hideaway. He had this whole symbol system worked out. He would draw a seeing-eye pyramid: that meant, he was nearby. Or he'd draw blind justice, meaning he wasn't. A plate meant he was eating. The funny thing was, no one bugged him about the signs. It was just a Gus thing. I asked him why, and he said people understood there's different ways to talk. This was one of his ways.

That made me think. That could come in handy, like out in the world. When I told Gus this, I figured he'd say, duh. But he didn't. Instead, he said he was just playing around.

I think Hideaway was the only place Gus felt free.

# Chapter 7

The next job was about money.

The Professor said he wanted to make us self-sufficient, but for now, we needed it. No surprise. What did surprise me was where we were stealing it from. I figured it would be someplace dangerous, like a bank, or a store, or an armored car.

But it wasn't.

The Professor came to Tanya, Gus and me, and said we had something important to do.

"Money, isn't it?" Tanya asked.

He nodded. How had she known? My face must have shown my surprise, because the Professor smiled at me. "Tanya keeps the books."

I raised my eyebrows.

She laughed at me. "I'm not just a pretty face."

I stuck my tongue out at her. "Who said you were pretty?"

She winced a little, and I regretted giving her a hard time. But the words were already out of my mouth.

I squeezed her shoulder. "You have a beautiful face."

She looked at me like she thought I was full of shit, but I held her gaze, nodded. She was beautiful—even with those goofy, knobby braids of hers. She was more curvy than me, I was just bigger. Heck, I was one of the tallest people here and I was only sixteen.

"As I was saying, money." The Professor deadpanned.

"You didn't say money, Tanya did," I pointed out.

"But I did change the subject back."

Gus watched the whole thing from where he was perched on the counter in the corner of the lab. His eyes were big. Was there envy there? I had no clue. He looked, well, something. But what that something was I didn't know for sure.

"So, where is the money?" I asked.

"Private home."

That stopped me cold. "Why are we ripping off random people now? Why not a bank?"

"For one thing, a bank is way more fortified and well defended."

"But this is still wrong. We shouldn't be stealing from ordinary people." A bank seemed different. It was a business. That was how it seemed to me then.

I stared at Tanya for help.

She shrugged. "Come on," I pleaded with her. "You know that's wrong."

She stuck her tongue out at me, then laughed.

I blinked.

"Of course," she said. "The Professor's not going to have us steal from some random family."

He nodded.

So this had been, what? "Some kind of test?" I blurted out.

They looked at each other, and something flashed between them. Understanding, I don't know. They weren't a thing—he was old enough to be either of our fathers, and I wasn't even sure Tanya liked boys, but they'd been together longer here, and that meant something. Me, I was still the outsider half the time.

Like this time.

"No, we would not steal from just anyone," the Professor said. "We are taking money back from someone who stole it from a friend, from one of us."

Now I really didn't understand what was going on.

"Toby," Tanya said. "We are stealing it from his sister, who stole it from him.

"You've totally lost me," I said.

"Toby and his sister split Ronald Armitage's estate. Toby got the properties. His sister received the investments. Toby was supposed to have the cash assets, but she had him declared not mentally competent."

I blinked again. "So, I like Toby and all," I said, which was true—he was playful and fun, and seemed like a loyal guy. "But he's not all there."

The Professor sighed. "Toby suffers from depression, and several other issues I can't discuss. But he's bright, and loyal, and cares about others. His father told him about this place." He looked around at the room. "About Hideaway, and Toby felt this could be the start of something. It was his idea—Hideaway. I just helped it become a reality."

"His sister doesn't know about it?" I asked.

The Professor shook his head. "She'd probably have it condemned if she did."

"Okay, so this sister has money that she stole from Toby? And we are supposed to steal it back?" I shook my head. "Why isn't it in the bank?"

He smiled. "Because Toby's sister doesn't trust the banks."

"Then it's in a safe at her house, right?"

"We think it's in her freezer."

_"Her freezer?"_ I stood, flicked back my hair from my face. "Why would someone put money in a freezer?"

"To hide it, dummy," Tanya interrupted. "I saw her take money out of her freezer."

Saw her—"Peeping?"

"Duh," Tanya said. "It's better than a video camera, as long as you can set up a chain of people. Lucky for me, the lady has a staff."

Great, a staff. "So, we got security to deal with?"

The Professor looked disappointed. "What?" I asked him.

"Aren't you even going to ask what sort of money she has?"

"You mean, like twenties, or hundreds?"

He sighed. "No, like gold coins. Silver coins. But mostly gold coins."

"Gold coins?" I'd never seen a gold coin. They'd been used for a while in the 1970s. But President Brown had taken us back off using gold about 1990, and a lot of it ended up being melted.

"Still used by the black market," Tanya said.

I rubbed my neck. "Silver, now that I get, cause silver is a crook's best friend." That's what Ruth used to say. Silver was used a lot in the "gray" as well as black markets. "So, Toby's crazy sister has squirreled away her money in her freezer?"

"That's right," the Professor said.

He walked us through the plan. Gus was to do the actual theft, of course, with Tanya on lookout. Me, I'd provide a distraction.

"Distraction?" I asked.

The Professor got really serious looking, and stared at me sympathetically, long enough that I started to feel real uncomfortable.

"You'll have to kill a tree," he said at last.

A tree.

"I don't know how."

He gave me another long, searching look. "It's just the opposite of what you do to grow weeds."

"But a tree isn't a weed."

"It's another plant. You need to starve it, spread rot. You'll have time to learn."

Time.

He ended up being right. More than I ever realized.

The Professor took me to the plant room, and helped me practice my power on small plants first, herbs, lettuce, then a potato plant. When I killed each I got sick to my stomach. He walked me through breathing and calming my stomach. How to clear my mind and focus on how my power felt. He said he just saw things before everyone else, but really, he saw things the rest of us never did. That was his genius and his power.

There was that one other Empowered at Hideaway besides me, Gus, Tanya, Sissy, and the Professor. The one I hadn't met yet. The Lolit. I heard Toby and the Professor talking about her before the big job. I had wondered if Toby really didn't care about his sister stealing his money. Turns out he did care, but only because it was risky for us.

"Lolit is good to disconnect the house before Tanya's group undertakes their mission," the Professor was saying when I came into his office. They nodded at me, but kept talking. "Grown up speak" for "not yet." I could read the signs. So I went and spun the globe across the room. Of course I listened. _Mission_ made it sound like an army thing. I listened for any more talk about the Lolit.

"The Lolit's not doing well," Toby said. "I don't want her to risk it."

Now I was even more curious about who Lolit was. Some on the Hero Council, like the twins Halo and Hazard, and the old guy giant, Titan, went by nicknames. I thought Empowered names were dumb. Why not just be yourself?

But I let Tanya call me Vine. I had asked her like five times what her Empowered name was, and she wouldn't tell me. I asked Gus once and he said it was up to her to tell me. That seemed unfair of her. But now I wasn't even arguing with her about that any more.

But Lolit, that sounded like an Empowered who could-I don't know-go all smooth or something. What would that look like?

"She will do short sprints around the property."

"I don't even know why she has to," Toby said. He looked like a basset hound, eyes big and droopy, so sad. He was worried. I'd never seen him worried before. It made me want to protect him, which was crazy, since he was old enough to be my grandpa, but so what? He just seemed so, _vulnerable_.

He was so worried.

The Professor put a hand on his shoulder. "She knows the risks."

"But this isn't like the old days!" Toby gestured. "She could race to meet the dawn back then."

Professor shook his head. "The Lolit could never race like that, Toby. Always short sprints. And now she's very old."

"But she's Empowered."

"Even Empowered suffer the curse of age in the end." He patted Toby on the shoulder. "I'm sorry."

The Professor looked down at the map spread out on the table in front of him. I crept closer. It was some kind of blueprint thing. My eyes widened. _Hideaway_. It was a map of our hideaway. There was a circle around it, a dashed blue line. The words were too tiny to make out.

"She wants to make a difference before she goes."

Toby clutched the Professor's arm. "But she's eighty three, Rance. She shouldn't be using her power."

"Then you should especially appreciate how important this is to her."

"But her heart!" Toby started crying.

I looked away, feeling even more embarrassed. I glanced back. The Professor hugged Toby. "She feels like she has to help us do this."

Toby pulled away. "If I'd hung on to that gold, the Lolit wouldn't have to be risking herself." He sat down, crossed his arms, and rested his chin on his chest.

"Not true, Toby. It would be something else. She wants to leave a legacy for Mat here, Tanya, and all the normals, too. A haven for outcasts like us to build a new world. The same dream you and I have."

The Professor noticed me standing in the corner and motioned for me to come over. My ears felt like they were burning, but I forced my embarrassment down and made myself walk across the room. My legs felt wobbly. I swallowed. I felt bad for Toby about the Lolit.

"Thank you for joining us, Mat," the Professor said.

Toby rubbed his eyes again. "Hey, Mattie."

"Hey, Toby."

The Professor gestured at the blueprint. It was a huge maze of rooms and hallways. Toby's dad must have had _a lot_ of cash to build a place like this.

"Roland didn't build all this," the Professor said. "We've had help from an Empowered that can reshape rock."

My ears perked up. "Who?"

The Professor sighed. "Unfortunately, she is no longer with us." He shook his head. "She only wanted me to know her identity. This was before Tanya and Gus joined us. I respected her decision. We had a falling out."

"Why?" I asked.

"She didn't want normals included."

"But we're the Renegades. Normals and Empowered."

"She didn't like normals," the Professor said sadly.

They were always warning about that in those shows on TV—watch out for the crazy rogue Empowered that hated normals. The Hero Council loved normals, served them. But I had wondered. If you were Empowered, you were different, no two ways about it. Normals knew it.

But Hideaway was about normals and Empowered living and working together. All of us were the Renegades.

My attention snapped back to the present. The Professor was tapping the map on a room that said _power plant_. "This is our reactor room."

"You mean like a nuclear reactor?"

He nodded. "I wish it could be something else, but this is what we have, a breeder nuclear reactor. It's compact, and efficient. I'd prefer for it to be a Tokamak fusion reactor, but those are still experimental and quite expensive to build."

I had no idea what he was talking about.

He looked back at the blueprint. "Fusion power is tough to harness. Breeder reactor technology is well-established." He traced the dashed line that encircled Hideway on the blueprint. "It will power our cloak."

"Cloak? You mean like invisibility?"

"In a way, yes. It will effectively hide our electrical signature, and block ground penetrating radar, should any be employed against us. It will also dampen our heat signature, among other things."

Crazy, so crazy. I couldn't help myself. I giggled. "This really will be Hideaway!"

He laughed, and Toby joined in.

"It's good to hear you laugh, Mat," the Professor said.

Yeah, I didn't laugh much, but I hadn't had too much reason to before coming here. I felt so light all of a sudden, like I would drift away into the sky if I didn't have a ceiling overhead, if we weren't underground.

"Can that really work?" I asked.

"If my calculations are correct it will give us one hundred percent reduction in our energy signature and turn Hideaway completely opaque, making it seem part of the surrounding environment."

Toby looked worried. I patted his arm. "Don't you believe the Professor, Toby?"

"I want to. I just worry. I don't know how anything can make this place completely invisible."

I glanced at the Professor.

"It is possible," the Professor said.

That was good enough for me.

I was burning to meet the Lolit. I hadn't seen her around. A speedster! But I didn't find her, she found me.

I was talking with Tanya in one of the spare "gyms," a place the size of a hangar, about the job. Suddenly there was a breeze, and the old newspapers that littered the floor gusted up. I blinked.

An old lady in a tracksuit and tennis shoes stood in front of me. Her head was shaved, and she wore big goggles that made her look like a frog.

She grinned from ear to ear. "Shut your mouth if you don't want to catch flies."

"Uh, the Lolit?"

She laughed. "That's me."

"What does it stand for?" I asked. No one had told me.

I didn't think her grin could get any wider, but it did. "Lolit?" She tapped her bald head. "Miss, you should be able to work it out"

Tanya was laughing so hard no noise came out. She doubled over.

My face got hot. "I suck at things like that."

The Lolit did a pirouette, and kicked up one heel, which looks pretty freaky when you are eighty three years old. She pointed at herself. "Little Old Lady In Tennies." She giggled.

Tanya finally got some air and exploded in laughter, and the Lolit joined her. The huge room echoed with their laughs, which eventually trailed off to just giggling.

Little old lady in tennis shoes. That had been too obvious.

# Chapter 8

Toby's sister lived in a big, fancy house up in the West Hills, above Portland. It had a hedge that had just been trimmed. The lawn was green like a golf course, and there were old fir trees in the back yard, which was the size of the playground at my old grade school.

Driver-man parked our Lincoln Concierge down the street from Toby's sister's place. He said he'd wait in the car. He had a walkie-talkie to keep in touch with Tanya, who carried one too.

We were wearing nice clothes, even Gus. He wore a suit, a navy blue one. He kept pulling at his shirt collar just like the guy on TV who isn't used to wearing a suit. I was in a summer dress, and tennis shoes. Tanya had her hair brushed out in a page boy style and was dressed in nice jeans and a blouse.

"We look like we belong here," she said, her face sour.

"That's the point," Driver-man replied. "To look like you belong."

"But I don't have to like it," she said.

"Better if all of you looked like you were fine with it," he said.

She didn't argue any further.

"Where's the Lolit?" I asked Tanya.

She shrugged. "I don't know. Around, I guess."

The Lolit was supposed to take out the security cameras when I killed the tree, but that could be a while. No pressure, I told myself, none at all. I smoothed my dress. I didn't wear dresses. Not my thing. So, of course, I had to wear one today.

I had to stay across the street from the gate. I could just see the fir trees in the back. They were so far away. I couldn't reach that far with my power.

I closed my eyes and tried anyway. After what felt like forever, but was probably only five minutes, I opened my eyes.

"Can't do it from here."

Tanya frowned. "You have to."

"It's too far. If I could get closer."

"Security system," Tanya reminded me.

Gus shifted his feet. I hated the idea that just came to me, but had to ask. "Don't suppose you could make me blend in with you?"

He shook his head violently. "No. It doesn't work like that. Can't help another person disappear."

Too bad. We stood there for a while. Tanya's walkie-talkie squawked.

Driver-man. "You can't stand in one place for long," he said over the radio. "You'll look even more suspicious."

He was right. We looked pretty damn suspicious as it was. I glanced back at the house. Mansion, really. The thing had three levels, with a flat roof. The "briefing" the Professor had given us mentioned that there was a security guard on duty at all times. Geez. All because she had gold coins squirreled away in her freezer? No, the woman had to be paranoid. That was a lot of security. The Professor said she was connected, which made it sound like she was doing something criminal. I had wondered out loud if the guards were really guards or more like gangers.

The Professor had said she was politically connected. I didn't know anything about politics.

We had to distract the guard on duty, and any other staff: the cook, personal assistant, and her driver.

There was a fir tree by the gate. It looked old. What if I killed it and dropped it across the entrance? That would freak them out.

I walked over to the hedge beside the gate. I hoped I was out of sight of security cameras.

"Hey, Tanya." I waved her over. "I need to talk with the Lolit."

"The plan was for you to knock the tree over in the back, uprooting a power line, and then she'd take out the security cameras. There isn't one in the front."

"How was she going to take out security cameras?"

"She was going to cut their cables."

I thought about it.

"Too complicated," I said.

Tanya's eyes narrowed. "So, new girl thinks she knows better than the genius Empowered Professor and the more experienced older girl."

New girl. That stung. I'd been there for weeks now. But I was the new girl on this job. Like it or not. But this was too complicated. We just needed to get things clear for Gus. She could help with doors and stuff. The camera power thing.

"The Lolit can help with doors and stuff."

The wind gusted, blowing grit into my eyes. I rubbed them. The Lolit stood grinning in front of me, in that tracksuit she loved to wear, and those big frog-eyed goggles over her eyes.

"Kid, this isn't about just using your power," she told me.

" _What_ isn't?"

"Crime." She tapped her bald head. "Use your brain."

My face got flushed. "I can't kill the fir in the backyard from way over here. Besides, that plan was too complicated. We just need to get the guard outside and help Gus get in."

She jabbed a finger at me. "Okay, so tell me what you would do?"

I pointed at the fir looming over us. "Knock this tree down over the gate." Assuming I could kill it. I'd never killed a plant. All that practice with the Professor was to grow plants. And a _fir tree_ , that was going to be tough.. But the Professor was right--knocking a tree down would get their attention.

"Now you are thinking. I had wondered how long it would take you youngsters to figure that out."

Tanya scowled. "Why didn't you say something sooner?" she said.

"Not my plan."

Tanya shook her head. "Great. Frying our butts out here because you decided to watch us be stupid."

Lolit cackled. "It was pretty funny. You kids think you know everything, but you know what—you don't have enough imagination. It's all well and good for the Professor to give you a great plan, but you get here and discover things aren't what they should be, and you just get stuck."

"I'm not stuck," I said. She was getting on my nerves. We'd waited long enough.

I climbed up into the hedge.

"Mat, what the hell!" Tanya whispered behind me.

Lolit cackled again. "That's better." A sudden breeze whipped the leaves and I nearly lost my grip.

"She's gonna have a heart attack," Tanya said.

The hedge crackled contentedly in my mind, full of sunshine from above and water from below. The leaves caressed my skin. I perched near the top. The fir tree rumbled quietly in my head.

Kill it. I had to kill it. I put my hand on the trunk. I couldn't kill it. This was just money. The fir was old, and its roots ran deep. Kill it, why should I kill it?

But Hideaway needed the money.

I closed my eyes. The bark was warm against my fingers.

"Cameras are out. All of them. Now comes the rub." Lolit sounded like she thought this was fucking hilarious. I glanced back down. She stood in the shade. Sweat ran down her face, but she was grinning like a goblin. "Can't do it, can you?"

"I can do it," I said through clenched teeth.

"Don't think you can."

"Psst, Mat, what's going on?"

Gus appeared out of nowhere next to Tanya and Lolit. I hadn't seen him blend in, but he'd been gone for a bit, and then reappeared.

"Not now, Gus."

Lolit wouldn't stop cackling. Any minute a police car would come by, I was sure of it. I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate, like the Professor had taught me.

She kept laughing and laughing, or was it just my imagination. I ground my teeth. Screw the Lolit. I'd show her.

I shoved my power into the tree. My heart raced. The tree filled, right down to the roots. Rot was there at the edges of the roots. Maybe there was always a little rot, I didn't know, but I sank into it. It was like slime, swimming around in my mind. Spread, I commanded, and the rot shot up the tree. Poison, it was poison. I don't know how I did it, but I made the tree drink it.

Someone was whispering my name, but I kept at the tree.

There was a loud snap. The hedge shivered in my head, and I lost my balance and tumbled. Smacked my ass on the ground.

The fir tree toppled into the gate with the sound of crunching metal.

Tanya helped me up.

No sign of the Lolit or Gus.

"We need to haul ass," Tanya said.

We crossed the street and got into the Lincoln Concierge. Driver-man went down a cross street and up the hill, parked it so Tanya could see the mansion from there. My muscles hurt like hell.

"Got one," Tanya said. Her face went slack. Peeping. "Must be the security. He's out front, with a cook and a woman who looks like Toby. Must be his sister."

My legs were cramping up.

Tanya's lips curved into a smile, which looked freaking creepy with the rest of her face slack. I don't know how the hell she did that—it must be linked to her power somehow. Like her face was slack because she wasn't seeing out of her own eyes, but she needed her eyes to see through someone else's. The whole thing made my head hurt.

"What about the Lolit and Gus?"

She snorted. "The Lolit's probably through the house, opening the doors. And Gus better be inside by now. And no matter what, he'd better be blending."

This all seemed so easy. I exhaled, massaged my calves. I don't know why the hell my legs hurt. But I didn't understand my power. It just was.

"Sis and security are still by the gate," Tanya said. "But the cook is running back to the house.

"She's going to call the cops," Driver-man said, his face grim. "Unless they are already on their way. "Blender and the Lolit better get here soon."

"But the Lolit can sprint super fast and Gus can hide," I pointed out.

Driver-man gave me a long look through his wrap-around sunglasses. "Empowered never think of the little things," he said, matter-of-factly. "Like the fact that this car sticks out, even in this swank neighborhood."

"Why?" I didn't get it.

"Because everyone knows what everyone else owns around here, and because we are parked on the street."

My breath caught. I hadn't noticed before, but the streets were empty of other cars. All these big houses had gated driveways.

The shriek of approaching sirens made my heart jump.

Driver-man shook his head. "I was afraid of this. They called the cops. We can't wait long or we're going to be answering some hard questions."

Trees stirred down the street from us, like the wind was blowing, but the trees and plants around us were still. Something blurred, streaking toward the car. The blur became the Lolit, bent over, Gus on her back. He slipped down. She took two more steps, then crumpled to the ground.

Tanya and I jumped out of the car and ran over to where she lay. The fall jammed her goggles up her face. An ugly purple bruise spread across her cheekbone. Her left leg was bent. This was bad. Really bad.

Gus got up and came over. Tanya glared at him. "Damn it, Gus!"

"I did what I was supposed to," he whined, sounding like a little kid. "It wasn't my fault. She insisted on carrying me."

"You ought to know better. She's real old."

She must have broken her leg. That was very bad for an old person. Maybe it would be different for an Empowered, but I doubted it.

Driver-man leaned out of the car. "We gotta go." The sirens were headed in our direction.

I squatted beside her, tried to cradle her legs. My stomach lurched at the way her left leg hung at a weird angle. "Help me get her up," I told Gus. He hesitated. "Now, for fuck's sake! Lift her by her armpits."

Her bodysuit was still warm to the touch. We carried her to the car and laid her in the back. I jumped into the front passenger seat, while Tanya and Gus squeezed in on either side of the Lolit.

Driver-man reversed the Lincoln, and then floored it, and we roared up the hill. Tires squealed as we took a sharp turn and headed onto a cross street.

"Gotta find a place to lose the cops," Driver-man said. "If we don't do it fast, they'll call in a copter."

He sounded so sure of himself.

"How do you know? We're just in a random car!" My voice cracked.

He ignored me.

"He used to be a cop," Tanya said from the backseat. She cradled the Lolit's head and shoulders in her lap, while Gus held her legs in his.

It hit me. We were going to get caught, and end up in prison. I'd be locked away for good.

Shit.

"Can you get us someplace where there's more plants?" I asked Driver-man.

He cranked the wheel, and the car shot downhill. "Gotta get to a dumpier neighborhood first."

I had an idea. We got down the hill, and turned onto a gravel road. The car began bouncing.

"This isn't a dead-end, is it?" I asked him.

His eyebrows rose behind his sunglasses. "I look that stupid, kid? No, it isn't."

A cloud of dust rose behind us. Damn it. We were leaving a freaking trail that pointed right to us.

His hands clutched the steering wheel. "Whatever you have in mind, you'd better do it soon, or else we're about out of options."

We passed a yard overgrown with blackberry vines. "Stop!" I yelled.

He stopped the car.

"Damn it," Tanya hollered. She and Gus struggled to hold the Lolit, who was still unconscious and swaying on the seat between them like a rag doll.

"Come on, come on," I whispered under my breath.

Sirens echoed down the hill toward us.

I reached with my power into the blackberry thicket. Vines crackled and snapped in my head, all that life coiled in them. It wouldn't take much to push them. Which was good, because my head started pounding. I had pushed myself too much killing the tree.

Couldn't stop now.

Couldn't let the Lolit die.

Couldn't let Hideaway down just because some rich bitch was pissed her gold coins got lifted.

Anger rose in me. My jaw tightened. Rich bitch still had the mansion and the staff, the huge yard—everything. She could spare the money. But the police wouldn't see it that way.

_Grow_ , I told the blackberry vines, and they grew. And grew. And grew, snaking across the gravel road. I sent them into the ground, down, pushed them to seed and grow more vines. My head felt like it was in a vice, but I didn't stop. I couldn't stop.

"Dip me in shit." Driver-man sounded hoarse.

Tanya and Gus both gasped.

"That's enough, Mat," Tanya said.

I opened my eyes.

A blackberry thicket filled the street, eight feet tall, a tangle of thorny vines maybe twenty feet deep. That would slow them down for a bit.

"Not exactly subtle," Driver-man said. "But what the hell."

We drove down the road for a quarter of a mile, turned into another gravel road, then, finally onto a paved road. Lots of potholes, but paved, and then toward the bridges across the Willamette and Hideaway.

We parked in a covered garage a block from Hideaway, and then took stairs to a secret tunnel that ran from the garage to Hideaway. We got to a sealed door that looked like it belonged on a bank vault, with a security camera above it. The door opened and the Professor was there with a couple of strong normals, who took the Lolit from Gus and Tanya. I carried the money, which was in a coffee can of all things.

The Lolit died that night. She never woke up. The Professor said that even though she was Empowered, her age did her in. He said a pulmonary embolism killed her.

I barely knew her but it hurt like hell losing her. She'd been so cocky and fearless. The old lady Empowered.

She couldn't be dead. But she was.

Back in our room, Tanya and I held each other and cried our eyes out.

# Chapter 9

The next morning I went to the Professor, in his lab. He was working on a tangle of cables attached to what looked like satellite dishes, wearing goggles, reminding me of the Lolit. I blinked away tears.

He pushed the goggles up on his forehead. "I'm sorry the Lolit is gone." He mopped his forehead with a towel. "She had the most spirit of anyone I've ever met." He put down the towel and pulled off his goggles. "Except you."

The words twisted my gut. I wasn't fearless like the Lolit had been. My power wasn't flashy.

"Not me," I said. "I'm not special."

"Don't say that. You have spirit, and passion. I'd like to think if I'd had a daughter, she'd be like you."

My cheeks flushed. "Th-thanks," I stammered.

"I don't mean to embarrass you, Mat. But it's true."

"But Tanya has spirit, too," I said. She did. Sometimes she felt more like my sister than my kid sisters, the twins.

"She certainly does, but it's different. She sees things, you feel them."

My chest tightened. "You mean I'm not as smart as her." I felt the blood rush to my face. People always thought I was a big dumb girl.

"Hey," the Professor said, making me lift my head and look him in the eye. I don't think I'd ever heard him say _hey_ before. "You are intelligent," he said. "More than you realize. Understand that people have different kinds of intelligence, and emotionally, you are very smart." He paused, obviously thinking about how to tell me something I probably would hate hearing.

"But?" I said, trying to get him to spill it.

"You let your anger block you from feeling other things."

"I'm not angry," I said, hands clenched.

He cocked an eyebrow. "You could have fooled me."

"Guess you have a point," I said, shaking my head.

"Sometimes I do." He smiled.

Despite the pain of the Lolit being gone, I smiled back, just a little.

He got serious again. "I wish we had more time to mourn the Lolit, but we don't. I worry that the Hero Council and Support are on to us." His words sent a chill down my spine.

Support. The men and women in black suits, carrying stunner pistols. Normals who helped sanctioned Empowereds go after rogues like us.

"We have to get your cloak working, right?"

He nodded. "I thought we would have more time. But the thing is about life, you always think you have more time than you do."

My chest hurt. He was talking about dying. "We're not going to die," I said.

"I don't just mean how long you think you'll live. I mean in all things. A person thinks they will be friends with someone forever, or that their favorite boss won't retire yet, not for a few more years, or that a beloved pet won't die this year. Whatever it is, it's always sooner than you think. As far as dying is concerned, it is true that in the long run, we are all dead. It's what you do with your time now that counts."

Standing there, the truth of what he said slammed into me like an avalanche. I blinked, trying to absorb every bit of it. _Never as much time as you think_.

He smiled. "And yes, we need to get the cloak up and running."

The Professor didn't waste any time after that. He had Tanya and Gus meet us in Sissy's room. She lifted her head and smiled in my direction when I came into the room.

"Hello, Mathilda," she said. Toby sat next to her. His face was red. He must have been crying his eyes out. She held his hand.

"How'd you know it was me?"

"I can tell from the way your power tints green."

_Tints green_. Weird, especially since I didn't know powers had colors. But if my power had to have a color, green made sense.

The Professor leaned in close beside me. "Sissy is special, even for a locator. She can detect what sort of power an Empowered possesses."

"I'm right here," she said, still smiling.

"I know," he replied, and smiled back, even though she couldn't see him. "Can you tell us about the situation?"

The smile left her face. "At least a half-dozen Empowered are now in the Portland area. They must be aware of us. Their signatures match known members of the First Team."

"I was afraid of that. What about Excelsior Technologies? Are there Empowered there?" the Professor asked Sissy.

"Still the one tinged blue, like you," she replied.

My eyes widened. Another genius?

The Professor must have caught my expression. "Most powers are not unique," he said. "Mine certainly isn't. The first of us, James Goldin, known as Doctor Prometheus, was like me, only he was off-the-scale brilliant." He paused. "The last job to undertake is Excelsior Technologies. They have components we need for the cloak."

"But how could a private company like this Excelsior have an Empowered?" I asked. Tanya and Gus looked like they had the same question, nodding as I asked him.

"The answer is obvious—it's a sanctioned Empowered. The Hero Council wants to protect what the company is developing. The components we need for the cloak are intended for something else. Something important to the Hero Council."

"Like what?"

"If I knew that..." He shrugged. "Unfortunately, there is no time now to learn what that something else might be."

"Time to hide Hideaway," Tanya said.

I rolled my eyes. "Funny."

"Hey, it was."

I stuck my tongue out, and she did likewise. I suddenly felt like a kid again. Just for a moment. The Professor and Sissy both laughed softly. But Gus just watched us, looking even paler than he usually did. Worried, I guess.

"We are indeed going to hide Hideaway," the Professor said.

The plan was simple. Gus, Tanya and me were going to go with Driver-man and three other normals and break into Excelsior Technologies that night. Driver-man was going to use his former cop skills to disable the alarm system. I didn't know cops could do that, but something told me Driver-man hadn't been a regular cop. Gus was going to go in, and get to Lab 3, where the components the Professor needed for the cloak were stored.

Two of the other normals would be wearing Excelsior security uniforms. Gus would sneak into the lab first, and hand off to them outside the lab, because the case was heavy and he wouldn't be able to blend far carrying it. They'd bring it outside and hand it over to Driver-man. I was in "reserve," as the Professor put it, ready to turn the plants and trees on the company grounds into obstacles. Tanya of course would be peeping where she could, and would also be in radio contact with Gus. They had some kind of super secret military-grade comm gear the Professor had been saving for just this sort of job.

The break-in sounded easy, routine. A snap.

The Professor said once we brought back the secret "who-knew-what-it-really-was-for stuff," he could turn the breeder reactor on for real, and Hideaway would not only be hidden, it would be powered up and ready for us to be self-sufficient. We'd finally have a real home.

But things never end up being as easy as they seem at first.

I hated being backup. I sat in the van with Tanya outside Excelsior Technologies while the others got ready. It was almost four in the morning. The campus had dogwood trees everywhere, and shrubs in cement planters along the walkways. Not a lot to work with if things went craptastic.

Gus looked nervous as hell. He wore his field jacket and cargo pants. They couldn't talk him into getting into a security guard's uniform.

Tanya was disgusted with him, but what could she or I do? Even the Professor couldn't persuade him.

So, he disappeared into the night wearing that old field jacket, the one with the patches where the radiation detectors used to be. Driver-man, and Jim and Phil, the two normals in security guard uniforms, followed. Tanya sat in the back of the van, watching with binoculars. She was busy soon.

"I'd be better inside than stuck in the van," she groused.

"Tell me about it."

The normal that stayed behind to guard us was a woman who reminded me of a bulldog. She was short, with a thick neck, little bulging eyes, and the kind of attitude that wouldn't back down. I decided to call her Bulldog in my head.

"You girls are too young," Bulldog said.

Tanya and I just looked at each other and giggled. Nervous giggling. I couldn't sit still.

Bulldog told me to settle down like three times. I'd wait, then start fidgeting again, until I was up, and she ordered me to sit still again.

My heart wouldn't stop pounding. I kept licking my lips. I swigged from the water bottle so much that bulldog had to tell me to stop drinking or I'd be stuck with a full bladder and no place to pee.

The job wasn't supposed to take that long.

A loud bang broke the night's silence. The three of us jerked our heads around, trying to find where the sound came from. More bangs.

"Damn it!" Bulldog said. She shook her head. "They weren't supposed to use their guns." The normals carried guns, but Empowered would be executed if they did. That was the law.

Bulldog jumped into the driver seat. Driver-man had left the keys in the ignition, just in case.

Two men charged past the lit Excelsior sign and ran up to us. Driver-man and Phil, carrying a big metal case between them. They slid it into the van, and scrambled inside.

"Where's Gus?" Tanya and I asked.

"What about Jim?" added Bulldog.

"Head home," Driver-man managed to gasp. He was out of breath.

Phil lay against the inside of the van, holding his side.

Bulldog started up the van.

"Go!"

Sirens.

We peeled out and roared down the road, lights off.

"What about Gus?" I asked him.

He shook his head. "Don't know. He got into the lab, found the components and had the case ready for us. Then the alarms went off and he vanished. Security showed up. I couldn't bluff my way out. We ended up getting in a gun fight.

Phil coughed, blood foaming on his lips.

"Shit!" Tanya said, grabbed a rag and dabbed at his mouth.

"Phil took a round in the side."

"What about the Empowered there?"

"Shot him," Driver-man said. "The guy was wearing a blue jumpsuit, and some kind of weird-ass helmet. He pointed a stunner at me but I fired first." His laugh was a crazy one. "Didn't think I'd get him before I got knocked out, but guess I got lucky." He shook his head, looking dazed. "Not that I call this situation lucky." He laughed again. This time he sounded bitter.

Phil had closed his eyes and slumped down.

Tanya crawled over to him. "His breath is shallow."

"We need to get him to a hospital," Driver-man said, "but that sure as hell isn't going to happen at the moment."

"No shit," Bulldog said. Sirens flashed behind us. Looked like half the cops in Portland were after us.

Driver-man took a deep, shuddering breath. "Okay, here's what we do."

We were approaching an intersection. "Stop," he ordered Bulldog.

"You crazy?"

"Yes. But we need to slow them down long enough for you to get to Hideaway."

"No," she said. "Not gonna happen. You think you're going to grab the shotgun in the back and delay them, is that it?"

He nodded. We were almost at the intersection. The light was red.

"No way." Bulldog floored the accelerator. The van sped faster and roared through the intersection. I leaned over enough to glimpse the speedometer climb past ninety. Ninety-five. Hundred.

A car flashed by in the other direction.

"We live together or we die together. Those are the choices. We must get those components to the Prof," Bulldog said. "Then we can vanish."

Driver-man slumped back in his seat, wiped his face.

I don't know how, but somehow we managed to elude the police. Bulldog slowed the van down, and we drove across the Morrison bridge into east Portland. A few minutes later we pulled up beside the garage across from the old building that led to Hideaway.

The sky was brightening in the east. Sun would be up soon. We all got out.

Except Phil. He didn't move. Driver-man got it together and lifted Phil's body, carried it out while Bulldog closed the garage door behind us. We took the stairs down to the secret tunnel the ran underground to Hideaway.

I lugged the box of components, trying to run to the lab. People came out of rooms and watched us go by. Driver-man and Bulldog took Phil's body to the hospital. I still couldn't believe Gus hadn't come back with them.

Tanya walked beside me, pale and shaken-looking.

I was breathing hard. "Did Gus run out on us?" I gasped out the question.

She seemed to only half hear me. She was staring off at something. "They are going to come after us."

"Yeah, I know. That's why we've got to get this to the Professor in the lab," I reminded her. We were in deep shit. But the Professor had his components. They would work. They would have to.

The box had two handles, one on each side. I stopped. Tanya kept walking.

"Hey!" I shouted. "A little help here."

She shook herself. "Sorry." She took one handle and I switched hands. We ran down the corridor.

"Mat," Tanya gasped as we ran .

"Save your breath." My side was aching.

"I wanted to tell you, the reason why I never told you my Empowered name." She sucked in a breath. "Because I don't have one."

"Why not?" I asked.

"Because I couldn't find one that fit." Her face looked so sad.

I wanted to tell her that I'd help find her a name, but we rounded a corner and reached the lab. The Professor waited for us at the doorway.

"Here you go," I said.

He smiled, but there was a look in his eyes. A look I'd never seen in his eyes before. Fear. He was scared to death. We lugged the box to a work bench by a bank of computers. The Professor swallowed. Picked up a walkie-talkie.

"Lab to central," he said over the radio. He voice sounded strained.

"Central here," Driver-man answered.

"Can you and the assembly team come to the lab at once?"

"Will do!"

The Professor put the radio on the work bench, licked his lips.

"Okay," he muttered to himself. "This can work."

I glanced at Tanya. Her eyes were wide. The Professor was losing his shit at exactly the wrong time.

"What can I do?" I asked the Professor. I tried hard to look calm.

He wiped sweat from his face. "The array will go online soon. I'd like you both above ground, to keep an eye on what's going on." He looked at Tanya. "Go to your lookout in the upper level of the garage."

She nodded, started to leave.

"Wait," he said. He opened a locker at his feet, pulled out a pistol with a flared muzzle. There was no bore on it. I'd seen one on TV. A stunner.

"Only use it if you need to in order to get back here."

He pulled out another.

I shook my head. "No thanks."

"Very well. You'll be on the ground floor, and she can look through your eyes as well as her own." He handed us each a walkie-talkie.

"But I don't get the point. Why bother if the array is going to activate?"

"I need to be kept up to date."

I shook my head. "But why?"

His eyes narrowed. "Please just follow my instructions." Driver-man, Bulldog and two other normals ran into the lab right then.

"Go!" The Professor yelled at us. Tanya took off, but I hung back. This seemed all wrong. The Professor handed out components to Driver-man and the others, ignored me.

"What about the nullifier field?" Bulldog asked.

Nullifier field?

The Professor gave a gold-colored cylinder to Bulldog. "Plug this into the Breeder reactor, and the main cloak cable into it," he told her.

"Null field?" I asked out loud.

The Professor looked at me, his face urgent. "Mat, please go. I need you topside."

I swallowed and took off at a run. Something nagged at me. Nullifier. That was as illegal a tech as they came. Even teenaged-me knew about them, from those stupid TV shows. They took a nuclear reactor to power. I thought the Professor had wanted to hide this place, not neutralize powers. Thoughts raced through my head as I ran.

Sissy. Toby. If this place was overrun, they might be hurt, imprisoned, or even killed. Everyone could be. If I could think of that, the Professor must have been able to.

Which meant he had to have a backup escape plan.

Luckily Sissy's room was on the way to the elevator to topside. I had had a hunch that there might be other ways out of here. _Please God, there must be another way out of here_. Then it hit me. The emergency exit I'd been turned away from. I skidded to a stop outside Sissy's room. I pounded on the door.

Toby opened the door. The lights were off.

"Where's the emergency exit?" I asked him.

"What's going on?"

"We brought the components. The Professor's plugging them in. But he said something about a null field."

Toby looked at his hands, twisted them. Didn't say anything.

I grabbed him. "That must be because he has an escape plan, right?" I remember something dimly about null fields also killing, but I couldn't remember where, if it were true, or some stupid TV-thing that wasn't.

"I told him not to," Toby said, his voice weak. "He said it was a last resort."

"Okay, then maybe the cloak will work," I said. It had to. But why bother with the null field if the Professor was sure it would? Didn't make sense. Unless the cloak wasn't working, and the Professor knew it, and was panicking.

"He's not sure the cloak will work, is he?" I asked Toby.

"Nothing's a hundred percent certain."

I took a deep breath. Probably this was as crazy as everything else down here, but better safe and looking like an idiot.

"Get ready to leave. Where does that escape route go?"

He blinked. "It comes out underneath the bridge overpass, couple of blocks away. We have a school bus parked there."

I sagged against the door frame. Thank you, God.

Sissy came to stand beside Toby, patted his arm, her blind face toward me.

"I knew you were special, Mattie," she said.

"Okay, I have to get up topside," I told them. "Can you get all the normals near the escape route. Do you have a radio?"

He did. He told me to use channel 5. The Professor was using 2, Tanya 3.

I raced to the elevator and the world above, running past the garden room. The plants were doing so well. If only they could continue to do well. If only we all could, here in our Hideaway. If only it could remain Hideaway.

I'd give anything for this place to be cloaked, and for this sudden feeling that the cloak wasn't going to work to end up being just another crazy thought in my head.

# Chapter 10

I charged out the elevator and ran to the window. The sky was brightening. It would be dawn soon.

I thumbed the radio on. "Tanya, do you see anything?"

"Yeah, an idiot at a window."

"Funny." I switched channels, radioed the Professor. "Is the cloak running? It's almost sunrise."

"We're working on it. Please keep me posted." He was all business, with an edge to his voice. I guess I couldn't blame him, but suddenly I didn't feel like we were part of a family. Everything was coming apart.

The minutes crawled by. The sky brightened. The sun was about to rise. The night had turned into shadow.

There was a roar from the sky, and something big rocketed down. A weird-looking plane, jet engines pointed earthward, landed in front of the building, the thrust churning up old newspapers and scraps of cardboard.

"Hero Council Strike jet!" Tanya called over the radio to me.

"That's it," I yelled. "We have to leave."

A half-dozen people in blue jumpsuits came out of the weird-looking jet. They looked familiar. The first team. I'd seen them all on TV, but suddenly I couldn't remember their names or their powers, just that we were in deep trouble. The last one was a huge, white-haired giant of a man. Him I remembered despite my fear. Titan. President of the Hero Council.

A voice boomed from the cement walls like thunder. "Surrender immediately!"

I clutched my ears, wincing. The command boomed again and again. I called the Professor, but there was no answer.

The command stopped. The figures fanned out, heading toward the building. The cyclone fence had been flattened, either by the jets or by a power.

"Tanya, get out!" I yelled over the radio.

"No way."

She appeared in the window of the garage, aimed her stunner. I thought it might be too far, but one of the figures crumbled. Titan and the others hit the deck.

"Okay, you've bought us time. Now get out of there!" I ran to the elevator, looked back.

One of the sanctioned, a short, muscular bald guy, ran over to the shelter of the wing, raised his hand.

There was a thunderclap that made my ears ring even inside the building. I actually saw the air outside ripple. The open window and Tanya both disintegrated , and the roof crumpled. She disappeared in a shower of red spray.

And just like that, she was dead. Some kind of killer sound.

I got in, turned the key, and rode the elevator down, my heart ashes in my mouth.

My best friend, Tanya, killed trying to protect us.

I called Toby. "Are you ready to run?"

"Yes! But it will take us a while."

I wanted to see why the Professor hadn't answered, but it was in the opposite direction.

It didn't matter now if the cloak worked or not. They knew exactly where we were.

I kept calling the Professor as I ran through the corridors to where Toby, Sissy and the others were. Maybe the Hero Council would let the normals off easy, but I didn't know.

What about Sissy? They would imprison her, since she was empowered. She was old. She'd die in prison.

My radio clicked on as I neared the emergency exit. It was the Professor.

"I'm sorry, Mat," he said. "The cloak failed to work. We're trying to get the nullifier on."

"They're already here!" I shouted into the radio. I yanked open the metal door. Another corridor in front of me. People at the far end, heading up stairs. Toby was helping Sissy up the stairs.

Shit. They were taking too long.

Something boomed behind me, way back inside Hideaway. Like something heavy had been knocked over. I ran down the corridor to the stairs.

"Professor!" He didn't answer, but he had left the channel open. I could hear yelling.

Someone screamed "the walls are flowing!" I reached the stairs.

Another boom, behind me.

I turned. The walls were oozing like concrete mud, a sticky, earthen avalanche.

The Professor and the others were being buried alive. I ran up the stairs, and helped Sissy and Toy clear the last few steps

I blinked in the sunlight.

There was an old yellow school bus across a weed-choked lot.

People were filing into the bus, a line that stretched back to the escape door from Hideaway.

Things had gone to pieces in an instant.

I ran out into the lot, waved people to keep moving. There was a blackberry thicket growing besides an abandoned building. We were maybe two blocks from the entrance to Hideaway.

I squeezed tears away. Reached out into the blackberries, willed them to grow, spread, send vines every way, until there was a wall of thorns eight feet high.

Maybe, just maybe we'd make it. Sissy and Toby were at the door to the old school bus.

I motioned _go_ at them. Just go. Leave. They got inside, and the bus started up.

Thunder boomed, and my blackberry wall blew apart, the vines screaming in my mind. A red-headed woman in a blue jumpsuit flew down and landed in front of me. She aimed a stunner at my chest.

"That's enough," she said. Her face was as grim as steel.

Behind me the bus's engine coughed and died.

"They haven't done anything," I said. "Please let them go."

She kept the gun pointed at me.

"Please!" I shouted. But she ignored me.

A black sedan pulled into the lot, and a group of Support personnel boiled out, brandishing stunners and carrying handcuffs.

They slapped cuffs on me. They put cuffs on Toby, and the others, even Sissy.

My heart felt like lead in my chest. Hideaway was gone. Tanya and the Professor were dead, Driver-man, Bulldog and Phil, too.

The grim-faced sanctioned Empowered woman marched me into a black van, and I was surrounded by Support agents. She slammed the door shut, and we drove off.

The next few days and weeks passed in a blur. They put me in a cell in some windowless jail. Told me the crimes I'd been charged with. I was numb at first. They wouldn't let me see Ruth. Wouldn't answer any of my questions.

Anger began to simmer deep inside me, the first anger I'd felt since before Hideaway fell. They weren't treating me like a person, they were treating me like a menace. All I had done was try to help build a place for outsiders and Renegades.

They wouldn't tell me what happened to Sissy. Toby and the surviving normals were charged with ordinary crimes.

I didn't get a jury trial. No, they stuck me in a room with a judge, a court reporter, and an sanctioned Empowered I didn't recognize. The judge sentenced me to Special Corrections for life. I had a chance to be paroled at twenty-one.

I was going to earn that chance, no matter what.

THE END

THANK YOU FOR READING **RENEGADE**! I hope you enjoyed this prequel novella to **The Empowered**.

If you enjoyed the novella, please **join my reader group**! You'll receive "Nullified," a short story about the crucial episode from Mat's time in Special Corrections, which takes place two years after the end of **Renegade** , and three years before the start of **Empowered: Agent**. I share previews, deleted scenes, short stories, and updates.

I wanted to show Mat's "origin story:" why and how she became a criminal and how she was captured. As both a teenager and a newly Empowered young woman, Mat was looking for a place to belong. The problem is, the first place we find isn't always the right one for us.

The world of **The Empowered** is different kind of place for those with superpowers, as you saw in **Renegade**. Empowered are extremely rare, and given a stark choice when they become Empowered, either become a "sanctioned" hero or forswear ever using their power. Refusing that choice makes you a "rogue," and a criminal. It's a world where a different version of the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred, a month earlier than the one our world faced, with a different President of the United States, and a different result. It's a world where things aren't always as they seem.

After this prequel, there are four novels in Mathilda Brandt's story, beginning with **Empowered: Agent**. I've included the first chapter as a preview, so read on if you'd like to see what happens to Mat five years after this story.

I love to hear what you thought of **Renegade**. Feel free to email me at dale@daleivansmith.com.

Finally, if you enjoyed **Renegade** , please post a review at your favorite eBook retailer, and/or at Goodreads. Reviews can make a difference in helping a prospective reader decide whether or not to try a book.

Happy reading!

Dale

# Empowered: Agent Chapter 1

It was the three-month anniversary of my being paroled from Special Corrections. All I wanted was a job, to get out of this wet dress, and a break from the chorus of plant voices singing their happiness in my head now that it was finally raining again.

Today's interview went like all the rest for the last month. Badly. At least the weaselly interviewer didn't try to steal a look at my chest. He was too scared of me, the paroled rogue Empowered. An interview without chest ogling to piss me off was nice for a change, but the rest of the interview sucked.

Worse, the plants would not shut up.

I stepped off the bus at the 151st street stop and into rain. My damn heel caught in a sidewalk crack. Just managed to save it. Couldn't afford to break a heel. Not until they'd helped me find a job.

The damn crabgrass growing up from the crack in the sidewalk brushed against my legs and hissed softly in my mind.

Begging for my help. It needed more water.

I could do it. I could urge the roots to grow and spread, pulling water and nitrogen from the soil. I could make the blades wider, to catch more of the drizzling rain. I could help it, give it just what it wanted.

And go back to prison. For life, this time.

Convicted rogue Empowered weren't allowed to use their "gift."

Period.

When I spotted the cardboard sign with the familiar looking sketch of a seeing eye pyramid fastened to the bus stop sign, I was already in a crappy mood.

I yanked it off the metal post. The pyramid was sketched in deft little strokes, and the eye radiated squiggly lines of electric power. If I squinted, I could just make out the faint curve of a smiling mouth in the pyramid below the eye.

I knew who drew that.

Gus Silco. My old "team mate" in the Renegades, and a weasel if there ever was one. The cardboard was damp, not soaked through, so it couldn't have been there very long. Which meant he might still be hanging around here. This was his crazy way of leaving me a message, letting me know he was here. What I wanted to know was _why_ he was here. He was the last person I ever wanted to see again. Looked like I had no choice though, if only to get him the hell away from me, once and for all.

I tore the sign in half and tossed it in the street. Started looking for Gus.

Douglas fir trees ran in a line behind a slat-board fence. The firs murmured sleepily in my mind like softly humming giants. They liked the drizzle, and for an instant their pleasure made me happy. Only an instant, and then my resentment bubbled up. What had my power ever done for me except land me in prison?

My parole might forbid me from using my power, but it couldn't stop me from hearing plants in my mind. It wasn't like I had a choice. I had to fight to keep the plant chorus from drowning everything else out, and I couldn't completely stop hearing them.

Just like I couldn't stop detecting others like me. My skin tingled. Another Empowered was close.

Gus. It had to be him, since I couldn't see anyone else.

Damn him. Jerk would get me thrown back in prison.

"Gus, I know you're here. Appear already." There wasn't much for him to blend into here. Across the street, a line of abandoned cars slowly rusted in front of a fenced junkyard. The only plants there were a few dead Queen Ann's Lace from last summer. I pulled my power's awareness back before it could feel the dead plants and shuddered. The dead plants couldn't tell me what I needed to know.

But he had to be over there.

"Gus, come out!"

He didn't.

There was an old Ford pickup with a tarp-covered bed directly across the street from me. "Okay, so listen. I don't want to see you!" I shouted. "Ever again!" He was probably standing there smirking at me, his body blending in with the junker truck. Perfect camouflage for a scumbag. What the hell did the weasel want with me, anyway?

I turned and headed for the Shadow Wood Apartments, wiping the damn rain off my face and keeping my eyes fixed on the apartment complex sign. Didn't work. I heard footsteps on the pavement coming up behind me. I kept walking. No way was I talking to that traitor.

The apartment manager had gotten the tags on the sign painted over again, but hadn't bothered to clean up the bottles and crap all over the ground.

God, I had to get Grandmother Ruth and my sisters out of this dump.

But I had to have a job first. I could still hear Gus behind me, so I walked faster. Along with using my power, talking to a known criminal, normal or Empowered, busted my parole. I'd go back to prison for life. My family would be hosed.

The moss under my feet moaned softly. It would be so easy to reach out with my power, caress it, and cover the trashy ground with a thick carpet of the stuff.

No more. Never again. I pushed the urge away and kept walking, almost running now. Mister Get Me Thrown Back in Prison was right behind me.

Then I heard swearing and the clink of bottles.

I whipped back around. Gus sprawled on the dirt next to the sign, face down on slimy wet newspapers. His jacket hood had fallen back, and I could see long dark hair beneath a knitted black cap. A lone beer bottle rolled across the sidewalk and clattered over the edge into the street, while two more bottles spun slowly near his feet. Tripped by the party from last night. If I wasn't so ready to punch him, I'd be laughing.

The fall must have broken his concentration, and without that, he couldn't "blend in," and hide.

He still wore that grungy old Army field jacket of his. It was ancient, made just after the Three Days War. There were blank patches where the radiation detectors used to be.

Gus got onto his knees and looked up at me. The same old Gus. Pale face, and nervous eyes that never looked in any one place for long. His black hair hung down from under a dirty orange cap. He was maybe five years older than me, but he looked...old.

I clenched my fists. "Why are you here, Gus?"

He got up, brushing newspaper and wet leaves off his cargo pants. Working himself up to say whatever it was he had come here to say. He was shorter than me by a lot, so he had to look up.

He was taking too freaking long to get to the point. "I can't talk with you, Gus. It's against my parole. Not that you would know about parole. Since you skipped out before they came for us."

Gus looked guilty. He should be back on his knees begging me to forgive him "Saying I'm sorry won't cut it, will it, Mat?"

"Damn straight it won't."

He swallowed again. "I want to make it up to you." His voice sounded hoarse now.

I shoved him, hard, and he stumbled backward until he hit the sign with a loud thump. He vanished.

"That's right, pull your blender act," I said. Blender had been his nickname back in the Renegades. His power was great for running away.

Gus reappeared behind me, in the parking lot. "I can make it up to you."

Hah. Make it up to me. That was a laugh. But okay, I'd bite. "How can you make up for cutting and running, _Blender_?"

I wanted to shout at him, _and how will you bring Tanya back from being dead_? My best friend, dead because of this waste of skin.

He blinked. "I can help you."

Blood pounded in my ears. Just like some of the other inmates in Special Corrections who said _they_ could help me. No thanks. I just wanted to get a job and not deal with creeps like Gus. "Leave me alone, Gus." I stormed past him. I managed to not kick him in the crotch, and headed toward my apartment building.

I looked back and Gus was still following me, not even trying to hide this time.

I couldn't let Ruth or the twins see me talking to a scumbag like Gus. They'd recognize my old team mate. Ruth knew full well I wasn't supposed to talk to criminals.

I wanted to kill the bastard, but couldn't.

And he wasn't going to leave me alone until he'd said his piece.

I stopped. "All right, Gus, you can say what you came to say. But not here in the open where everyone can see us." I nodded at the complex's storage building. "Follow me," I said. "But first, do your Invisible Man act."

He vanished. My skin still tingled from him being nearby. All of us Empowered are able to detect other Empowered when we're near each other. It means we have a hell of a time sneaking up on each other. Gus's blending gave him an advantage and the little creep always took maximum advantage.

I went to the storage building, unlocked the door, pushed it open.

"In," I said. I waited long enough for him to get inside, then followed. I turned on the light, and closed the door behind me.

Gus stood in the middle of the room, flanked by storage cages, looking like a trapped animal. Which he was as far as I was concerned. Bastard weasel.

He flinched when I walked up to him and looked at his hands. "Your hair is so different, it's so short now."

I grabbed his jacket, hauled him up close to me. "What the hell does that have to do with anything? You're wasting my time, jerk."

His Adam's apple was bobbing like a cartoon character's. He was scared to death. Sweating. Gus had always been a bit fragile. Back in the Renegades, the Professor used to say Gus took careful handling, that fear drove him more than most people. Yeah, well, Gus's fear killed the Professor and my best friend because he wasn't there when we needed him.

And now he was back, trying to screw up my life again.

"I'm so-so-orry," he stuttered. "Pl-lease--" I gave him a hard look, which shut him up. He wouldn't have lasted a day in Special Corrections.

"Cut to the damn chase, Gus." The longer this went on, the more chance there was of someone seeing us together, even holed up inside this storage building.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his gloved hand. He wore those old, beat up fingerless gloves of his. He always wore fingerless gloves.

"Okay." He swallowed again. I wanted to yell, _enough with the swallowing_ , but kept my mouth shut. Anything to get him to spit out what he wanted to tell me.

"I can hook you up with people who can help you."

"I don't want your help, Gus." The blood pounded louder in my ears. "Or these _people's_ help either _._ " I glared at him

He surprised me. He didn't duck his head, kept right on talking. "Mat, you need help. This group can give you what you need."

"Group, Gus? _Group!"_ I grabbed the front of his coat again. "Let me guess, these are Empowereds, aren't they?" Idiot. He was stupider than I thought.

He nodded.

Damn him. Damn him to hell.

"The Scourge can help you."

"The Scourge! Don't fuck with me, Gus."

He shook his head frantically. "I'm not, Mat, I'm not! I'm in the Scourge."

"Stop lying!" I slammed him into a storage cage. I wanted to slam him again and again. He deserved it. I leaned in close to him. "The Scourge is gone, asshole."

He winced. "No, they aren't."

Gus was lying. He had to be. The Scourge had been destroyed while I was in prison. The world's Enemy Number One, the biggest, baddest super-villain group, ever. The Renegades had been nothing by comparison. But the Scourge had still gone down. Rogue Empowereds always got caught in the end.

"Why are you wasting my time with this bull?"

His eyes were wide, spit on his lips. The weasel. "It's true, Mat! I'm in the Scourge."

Gus had gone crazy while I was locked up. He must have. He never would have had the guts to try and feed me made-up garbage like this crap story.

"I can talk to my cell leader. He can help."

I ground my teeth. Cell leader? What a load of crap. "You came here just to give me a b.s. story about the Scourge somehow coming back from the dead?"

He wouldn't stop. "I'm not lying. Listen, I've got a place." He told me the address. "Think it over. Come see me. I can get you in, I promise."

That _was_ it. I slugged him, fist smashing his jaw, sending spit flying as his head snapped back. He slid down the cage's mesh.

Damn, it felt good.

I yanked him to his feet, frog marched him to the door, and shoved him through.

"Leave and don't come back."

He vanished, leaving spit and tears splattered on the pavement.

Gus was a crazy fool. I was done with crazy fools, especially him. I slammed the door behind me. What in God's name had gotten into him to try and feed me lies? I shook my head. He was crazy as a rabid bat.

I looked up and saw Ruth watching me from her bedroom window.

#

Ruth was going to be pissed. I pounded up three flights of stairs to the apartment. I'd tried to talk her into moving to a ground floor unit, but she liked this one, said the exercise was good for her. But these days she didn't leave her apartment much, thanks to Thalik's disease. She also said she liked being able to see the world from higher up. I couldn't figure out why. Why would you want to see a dingy apartment complex and a bunch of trees? I sure as hell didn't.

I reached our door and stopped because I still wanted to break something. I took a deep breath, then went inside. The living room was empty, no sign of Ruth, or the twins.

The television, a big thirty-inch model, was on, tuned to the Triple N, the National News Network. Ruth must have been watching it. The twins could care less about the news.

"Rebuilding Russia: An Ongoing Concern," crawled across the lower part of the screen below an image of New Moscow. Whatever. I was about to turn it off when the video switched to a reporter talking to a woman in a white UN military uniform and a huge man dressed in a deep blue jumpsuit with a gold Hero Council badge. I shuddered. I recognized him. I'd seen him the day they caught me. My stomach felt like ice. The day Tanya and the Professor and the rest of the Renegades died.

That was Titan, President of the Hero Council and the only founding member still alive. He was still built like a giant linebacker even though he was ancient, like seventy-five years old. The reporter asked him something about unrest in Russia. Titan said rebuilding always takes longer than people want. Thanks, Mister Hero Council President. He went on about the responsibility of sanctioned Empowered to aid society and how the Russian Rogue Empowered were only holding their people back. Sure, if Empowered weren't "sanctioned," meaning part of the Hero Council, then they were part of the problem. The only choice they gave you if you didn't join up was to sign on the dotted line, saying you'd never use your power.

I turned off the television.

I heard Ruth coughing in her bedroom. The racking cough made my skin crawl. I went through the kitchen, past the sink filled with dirty dishes that the twins obviously hadn't taken care of and the still full garbage can, down the short hall to the two bedrooms. Ruth's was the far one. The door to the twin's room was covered in new doom ballad posters. Apparently Four Horsemen was their favorite band this week. I shook my head. Predictable.

I knocked on Ruth's door, pushed it open. It was freezing in there.

Ruth was sitting up in bed. She coughed again, but shook her head no when I started to move forward. I stood there, twisting my hands. Ruth looked terrible. Her face had more lines in it than this morning, and her short gray hair was a mess.

Her reading glasses were on the night stand, on top of her current book, something about the Long Winter. Ruth loved history and current events. Magazines on politics, foreign affairs, and science were stacked on another little table by the window.

"You're up," I said lamely. That's me, Miss Obvious. I hated seeing her like this. Thalik's disease was the bitch queen of all diseases. The mystery disease that had no cure. No one even knew why you got it. Sure, it was rare, but what good was rare when it got you, or someone you loved?

Ruth sipped from the water bottle she kept by her bed, hands trembling, and took a pill.

Her skin was really pale and she'd lost so much muscle since I'd gone to prison.

No cure whatsoever for Thalik's.

She was taking expensive medication to help her cope, but was still dying day by day. If I could get a job and hold it and then apply for a medical grant, maybe get some legal help, Ruth could get on a trial for some sort of new drug. Something. Anything. She had raised me and the twins after our parents died. Been there for us, was still there for us, despite everything.

I had to find a way to help her and get the girls on the right path.

She put down the water bottle, wiped her mouth and looked at me.

"Mathilda," she said, using my full name. Only Ruth called me that. Her gray eyes searched my face. "Who was that you were with just now?"

"Someone I used to know."

"Someone from the Renegades."

"I told him to fuc—I I told him to get out of here and not come back."

"Why was he here in the first place?" Ruth was angry, but she did the under control type anger, not like me.

I squirmed. "He wanted to make up for something."

"That was your friend Gus, wasn't it?" Even sick, Ruth's memory was sharp. There wasn't any point in lying to her.

I shook my head. "He's no friend of mine."

"Seeing him breaks your parole."

"I know, I know." Tell me something I didn't know. This wasn't fair. I hadn't wanted to see Gus.

Ruth waved at me to come over to the bed. I slunk over, feeling way shorter than six one and like I was ten years old again.

Ruth reached and had clasped my hand. "You only get one chance."

I nodded.

"You can't give up, Mat."

"I'm not."

Ruth let go of my hand, lifted her chin. "It looks to me like you are giving up."

"I'm trying, Ruth, I'm trying!" The potpourri scent in her room suddenly made me sick.

Ruth uncrossed her arms. "You left your phone at home. Again."

"Sorry, I forgot." I hated carrying that thing. "My parole officer called?" Winterfield always ruined my day. He was one hundred percent pure hard ass and he rode me nonstop about getting a job.

Ruth frowned. "Three times. You need to be reachable, Mathilda."

"I know, I know." I spent five years in Special Corrections always being reachable. Once in awhile, I wanted to be unreachable.

I knew what she was going to say next. Going to go over the whole "don't see any criminals" thing anymore. I tried to relax, slow my breathing. Tried not to get angry.

"Meeting with Empowered criminals is especially dangerous."

Yep. Here we go. "Does it matter?" I retorted. "If I see _any_ criminal, I go back to Special Corrections."

Ruth shook her head at me, frowning. "Mat, you know there's a difference. Seeing a normal criminal is a violation, but meeting with an Empowered criminal is a one-way ticket to Special Corrections without appeal."

Okay, okay, she had a point, but I was trying to stay away from ALL criminals, not just Empowered ones.

"What did he want?" Ruth asked.

"To apologize. Like it mattered." I couldn't keep the disgust out of my voice.

"That couldn't have been all he wanted to say."

I shrugged. "I wasn't going to listen to anything else."

She squeezed my hand. "If your PO finds out, you'll be in trouble."

My face flushed with anger. "I told the creep to leave me alone!" I got up. "Where are Ava and Ella?"

Ruth sighed, suddenly looking not just old but ancient. "Change the subject, why don't you?" she said in a low voice. She sighed. "Out, just like you were."

"But you don't know where they went?"

She shook her head, laughed sadly. "That used to be you," she said.

"It did. That's why I worry."

The deep rumble of an eight-cylinder engine came from the parking lot, interrupting what Ruth was going to say next. I went to the window, and peered outside.

A newer model gold Lincoln Overlord pulled up below our apartment, white wall tires and silver spoked-rims screaming ganger-mobile. A rear door opened and my younger sister Ella got out, followed a moment later by her twin, Ava. Ava's raven black hair was nearly as long as mine used to be. It swung around her face like a curtain, while Ella wore hers in a short, curly perm.

Cute chicks. Way too cute. That was the problem.

A muscled arm reached out of the car, pulled Ava back in, and I caught the hard profile of a tattooed man. They kissed, and my stomach roiled. Ganger crooks made me sick.

"You didn't say the girls hung with gangers!" I spat out the words. "You lecture me about Gus, and here they are hanging with gangers." My skin was hot.

"I've told them not to." Her eyes went hard. "I've got to pick my battles."

"They aren't listening," I retorted.

Another racking cough. "No more than you did," Ruth said when she could speak again.

"I'm trying now." I turned back to the window.

The girls stood by the stairwell, watching the car drive off. Then they headed up the stairs, Ava in the lead as always, Ella following.

I met them at the door. "Where have you been?" Stupid kids, hanging with gangers. What were they thinking?

Ava tried pushing past me, but I braced an arm against the door frame. The twins were five feet eleven, but I was taller at six one, so Ava had to look up to meet my gaze.

"Out with friends," Ava said when she couldn't push past me. "That good enough for you, _sis_?" This last came out as a hiss.

I leaned forward, looking down at her. "Don't be a fool like I was."

"Yeah, you were a fool, all right. We all remember."

The twins had been twelve when I was convicted.

"Good," I said, blocking the doorway with my arm. "Those creeps down there won't do you any good. How long have you been seeing them?"

Ella spoke up, fast, trying to please me. "Just for a couple of weeks."

I clenched my hand. How the hell had I missed that? Because I'd been out pounding the pavement looking for work and getting leered at by creeps in interviews for dead-end jobs.

Ava gave me a defiant smile. "You're just jealous."

I laughed. That was too funny for words. I ignored Ava and kept looking at Ella. "How about you, Ella? Why are you hanging with gangers?"

Ella looked away. "They're fun," she mumbled.

"You going to let us in?" Ava crossed her arms. "I have to pee."

"I just want you both to understand something first."

Ella raised her head and looked at me, expectantly. She was the good one, always willing to listen.

Ava brushed her hair back. "What's that, _sis_?" Ava, on the other hand, was a stone cold bitch in training. Ruth said we were alike—we were nothing alike.

"Those creeps are hanging with you for only two reasons." I tried to look less angry. "One, they want sex."

Ava's eyes flashed. "So what if they do? You weren't a virgin back in the Renegades, were you?"

I hadn't been, but that didn't matter here. "Two, they are just using you to get to me." Checking things out, taking their time. I'd have to figure out a way to end this thing the twins had with them.

Ava gave a loud, sarcastic laugh, and even Ella looked angry.

"It's not all about you," Ava said. Ella nodded sharply in agreement. She was the follower when it came to Ava.

Ava shoved my arm out of the way and they marched past me. "Stay out of our lives," Ava shot back at me over her shoulder.

I stomped outside and slammed the door behind me.

The Lincoln Overlord pulled out onto Powell. The car's engine revved, and it sped away, out of sight beyond the line of firs. Gangers off to have fun elsewhere. Scum.

The hum of the trees in my mind tugged at me as I gripped the handrail. My power couldn't help me. The trees certainly couldn't. I had to deal with this just like any normal would. I couldn't go to the police. I needed to get out and find a job that would get us out of this dump. And away from those gangers.

![The world says those with superpowers are either heroes or villains. But what if you're both?
          Mathilda Brandt isn't the angry, out-of-control teenager she was before she got out of jail. She's hungry for a chance at a normal life, but when a gang threatens her sisters, she has no choice but to use her illegal superpower to protect them.
          A secretive government agency gives her a choice: go back to prison for life, or infiltrate a notorious super-villain group in order to stop a psychotic Empowered. To save her city, her family, and herself, Mat must become the last thing she ever wanted to be again: a criminal.
          Empowered:Agent is the first book in Dale Ivan Smith's The Empowered urban fantasy series. If you like heroes and villains, you'll love this fast-paced, suspenseful read featuring a strong female hero.
          Buy the book to start reading the first novel in The Empowered series today!](images/empowered-agent-back-of-ebook-cover.jpg)

# About the Author

Dale Ivan Smith writes fantasy and science fiction, and is currently working on The Empowered series. The first novel, Empowered: Agent, will be published in late January 2017, and the second, Empowered: Traitor, is scheduled for February 2017. When he's not writing or reading, he's working as a para-librarian for Multnomah County Library, in Portland, Oregon.

You can find him at these places:

www.daleivansmith.com

dale@daleivansmith.com

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# Also by Dale Ivan Smith

Empowered: Agent

Empowered: Traitor

Empowered: Outlaw
