The Rise of Renegade X Read online

  Sarah glances over at me, her eyebrows bunched up in a quizzical expression, but then something farther down the aisle catches her attention.

  “If I’m in a subway bathroom, and I meet a girl I like, do I still need to use protection? Or will the germs in the bathroom give us nasty enough infections that we’ll both end up sterile?”

  Silence. Then Gordon laughs awkwardly. I’ve never heard anything more forced in my life. “This better not be who I think it is,” he says, and I can hear the fake smile in his voice.

  “So that’s a no, then?”

  Gordon diverts my question onto the Safety Kids. “What do we think about safety?” he asks them. I know he’s asking them because this is a standard line of his.

  And they shout back the standard response, “Always be safe!”

  “So would you call pushing someone off a building safe? Or is that a—”

  The line goes dead—took them long enough; I’m surprised I was on the air as long as I was—and then Sarah nudges me with her elbow. “Damien!” she whispers, pointing to a middle-aged man making his way down the aisle. “Do you see who that is?”

  He looks a little familiar, but I can’t place him. Before I can shake my head no, she says, “Meet me in the bathroom in thirty seconds,” then runs off.

  I knock on the bathroom door. At the other end of the train car, the middle-aged man opens his coat to reveal a red supervillain outfit underneath. His chest has the letters TB on it, plus a picture of jacks. Not the kind you use on a car, but the kind kids play with. And the TB doesn’t stand for tuberculosis, either. This is Jack the Toy Boy.

  Erg. His name makes him sound more like a porn star than a supervillain. I met him at the Christmas party Mom threw last year. I don’t know if she even invited him. He kept hounding Kat to show him where the coat closet was, alone, until she shapeshifted into a six-foot-tall burly guy.

  Just for the record, this isn’t the type of supervillain I want to be. I prefer to be the calm genius type, not a creepy soap dropper.

  Pedophilia Man pulls out a handful of jacks and lets out a peal of maniacal laughter as Sarah opens the bathroom door for me and I slide in.

  “God, it stinks in here.” And the floor is inexplicably wet. All over.

  The sink digs into my back, and my knee jabs into Sarah’s thigh. I have to hold my arms up and twist my torso to fit in the room.

  I hear the muffled screams of the people in the train as Jack shouts at them. “Don’t move, and nobody gets hurt! Too badly.” He laughs. He sounds like a hyena on crack.

  Jack busted out of prison only about six months ago, after getting captured by his superhero arch nemesis, the Bold Defender. He’s not even a well-known hero—I only heard of him because when Jack got captured, everyone kept making fun of how he’d said the Bold Defender was going to be easy to defeat. I bet getting caught by him was really embarrassing, but not as embarrassing as taking two years to find a way to make a jailbreak. Since then, I hear he’s been trying way too hard to prove himself to other supervillains. As far as I know, I’m the only supervillain here, and I don’t appreciate him hijacking the train and making me late for my very casual not-rescue mission.

  “We have to stop him,” Sarah says, now that we’re both safely hiding in the bathroom. “It’s a good thing we’re here.” She digs through her backpack and pulls out a gun. I say “gun,” but I’m not really sure what it is. It’s gun-shaped, though it looks more like one of those toys for toddlers where you can push buttons and have it make silly sounds. It’s a big, clunky piece of white plastic, a little too round in places to look like a real weapon. It has three buttons on the top, like a trumpet, only they’re different colors—blue, red, and yellow—with blinking lights underneath them. Wires hang off it, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she told me its guts were all tinfoil and duct tape.

  “I made you something,” she says.

  “Aw, you shouldn’t have.” The way she points it at me makes me a little nervous. I’d back up, but there’s nowhere to go.

  “It’s not fully tested, but I used my most up-to-date research, so there shouldn’t be any unpredictable side effects.”

  “Unpredictable? Side effects? Sarah, you just said three of my least favorite words in one sentence.”

  Sarah ignores me, fiddling with her invention, sliding panels around to reveal more buttons. She holds her finger to the trigger and closes one eye, aiming for my heart. “It only works for superheroes. Well, someone with superhero DNA. I wanted to make it so it only responded to your specific DNA, but I’m not there yet.”

  She fires, and I jump, banging my elbow hard against the wall. Other than injuring myself, nothing happens.

  “See?” she says. “This way, bad guys can’t take it from you in a fight. It’s completely useless.”

  Great. A useless gun. Add that to my useless power of flight, and I think we’ve really got something. “So, what does it do? Is it like a homemade raygun or something?”

  “It has a variety of settings. I’ll explain later—you have to trust me.”

  “Fine, but I can’t go out there,” I tell her, jerking my head toward—and bonking it against—the door. “I know him—I mean, he might … I need a disguise.”

  She grins and rummages around in her bag. “You mean something like this?” She pulls out a very sleek superhero costume. It’s black and dark green and has a silvery X on the front. It could be for a supervillain, or a vigilante hero. There’s even a mask that goes with it, which is a good thing, because if it was my body I didn’t want anyone to recognize, I have a feeling I’d be out of luck. It looks like the type of skintight outfit where people are going to be able to count my ribs. Next time I want the kind with the muscle shapes built in.

  “Did you make this?” I ask, gaping at it. Okay, I can’t help it. Renegade X is a cool name, and this costume rocks.

  “I had it done.” Sarah looks a little ashamed at her confession, even though it’s pretty normal to go to a specialty shop instead of making your own. Though our high school apparently has a costume club that Amelia was a member of for about two seconds, before she found out they were a bunch of snobs. Read: the club was all skinny girls who thought she was fat. “But,” Sarah adds, “I designed it myself. Now hurry up and put it on!”

  Outside, I hear Jack laughing after one of his explosive toys goes off. He seems to be making his way down the aisle. He’s probably got a big sack with a dollar sign on it that he’s forcing people to dump all their jewelry in. I hope he doesn’t try the bathroom.

  I stare at Sarah.

  “What?” she says.

  I nod toward the door. I make a shooing motion with both hands.

  Her mouth hangs open in shock. “You want me to go out there? With the terrorist?!”

  “Well, there’s not enough room to breathe in here—how am I supposed to change clothes?”

  She taps her chin. “I don’t know, but people have sex in these things all the time, so I think we can manage.”

  “No, they don’t!” I feel my face heat up, and not because I’m trapped in a small space with a girl telling me to take my clothes off. “That’s just a myth, Sarah. Ha ha. I can’t believe you were fooled by, um, an urban legend.”

  “It’s not an urban legend. Don’t be so naïve, Damien. I don’t know the statistics, but it must happen all the time.”

  “Well, I don’t know anyone who’s done it, do you?” And I don’t know anyone who was conceived in a public bathroom either, because things like that don’t happen. No, they do not.

  “Come on, Damien,” Sarah says. “We don’t have a lot of time, and it’s not like I haven’t seen it all before. You weren’t so shy when I had X-ray glasses, and that wasn’t even an emergency!”

  She has a point. This is no time for modesty. I get undressed, but it’s a nightmare, and not because Sarah’s here. This place is so gross. I don’t want to touch anything, I don’t want my clothes to touch anything, and every time I move
, I slam into something. And I’m in a hurry, what with all the poor, innocent people getting exploited in the other room. Maybe if I take long enough getting dressed, Jack will have finished looting everyone and have escaped, and I won’t have to stop him. We can just sit down again and enjoy the ride. But also the longer I take getting dressed, the longer I have to be in this bathroom. Ugh.

  Sarah stuffs my clothes into her bag as I hand them to her. She closes her eyes when I get down to my underwear, which I suppose is considerate of her. Maybe she’s afraid I’ll make her buy me another lunch.

  I get the costume on pretty quickly, all things considered, and pull the mask on over my face. It covers my whole head and has tinted green plastic over the eyes, so I’m completely hidden. No goggles required, though I have to say, the ones I had at my birthday rocked pretty hard. I’d wear them anyway if I had them with me.

  I look myself over in the mirror. What I can see looks wicked awesome. Until I hold up the gun Sarah made me, and then I’m not sure if I’m cool or just a loser in a cheap costume. “Okay,” I say, “you wait here.” She might not need to hide from this guy like I do, but that doesn’t mean she wants him recognizing her in the future.

  “I don’t think so.” Sarah pulls her sweater off, revealing a sidekick costume underneath. It’s black and blue and has a theta on the front. “You’re looking at the Cosine Kid.” She pulls a blue mask over her eyes and positions her glasses in front of it.

  I narrow my eyes at her, my hand already on the door. “I thought you hadn’t made up a name yet.”

  She shrugs. “It wasn’t written in stone.”

  “Just spandex.” I glance down at the big silver X on my own costume, the one I thought was so cool, and realize it has nothing to do with the letter on my thumb. “You named me after a variable, didn’t you?”

  Sarah ignores me. She throws the door open and shoves me into the aisle. “Come on. We have a bad guy to catch.”

  “Catching bad guys” definitely sounds like superhero work, if you put it that way. I’m not “catching” Jack; I’m getting him out of my way. He’s a loser and a crappy supervillain, but I’m not looking to hand him over to the police or to get credit for this or to ever have anyone mention it again. Ever. He’s hijacking the train and slowing us down, and I want to get this non-rescue mission over as quickly as possible. Simple as that.

  I point the gun Sarah made me at Jack the Toy Boy. I still don’t understand what it does, if anything, but it’s all I’ve got. “Stop right there!” I say.

  Everyone on the train lets out a collective gasp-wail and ducks in their seats, covering their heads with their hands.

  Jack half grins, half makes a face like he just ate month-old seafood. He looks a little like he’s going to cry. He tosses his explosive jacks idly in one hand, holding his bag o’ loot in the other. “You want me?” he says, making like he’s going to drop all the jacks on the floor, which would end in lots of booming noises and fire.

  I start toward him and shout, “No!” though really I was answering his question, not responding to him almost dropping the jacks. No, I don’t want anything to do with him, ever.

  “Then come and get me!” Jack shrieks, and he throws the jacks straight at me.

  “Renegade!” Sarah shouts. “Fire!”

  My hand shakes as I pull the trigger, not expecting it to do anything. I squeeze my eyes almost shut, resisting the urge to keep them safe from explosions enough to see what happens. Which at first seems like nothing. The gun doesn’t shoot or make noise or do anything. It could be an overly elaborate dog whistle, for all I know.

  And then the jacks speed up, racing toward us. We’re the only people on the train stupid enough not to duck. This is it, we’re going to die, and then—

  The jacks stick to the gun. I’m shaking all over, staring in disbelief. Jack’s eyes get wide, realizing he’s about to get hauled back to prison by yet another superhero.

  Jack drops his loot bag and runs. I chase after him through the other train cars. Passengers scream as we go by. Someone shouts, “He’s robbing the train!”

  Gee, thanks. I hadn’t realized. I pull the trigger again, aiming at Jack. Sarah screams, “No!” and grabs my arm, but she’s too late.

  Everything happens in slow motion. The jacks that were conveniently stuck to the gun and not exploding go shooting in every direction. I grab Sarah and fling us both to the floor. I hear the jacks go off, and debris rains down on us.

  “He’s trying to kill us all!” Jack screams, pointing his finger at me.

  Nobody looks hurt. There are some scrapes and bruises, but I don’t see anyone gushing blood. Covered in dust and maybe not as dry in the pants department as they’d like, but otherwise okay. Some of the seats have holes in them, the ceiling has chunks blown out of it, and a couple of kids are wailing. Nothing permanent.

  I get up, and everyone is staring at me like I’m the maniac here. Don’t they see Jack over there, with his obvious picture of jacks on his supervillain costume?

  Wait. Jack has his coat closed up again, so you can’t see that part. You can’t see that he’s wearing a costume at all. And then there’s me, looking really bad-ass and holding a gun that I’ve apparently just fired. At everyone, at the same time.

  Damn.

  I try to hold my hands up in a peaceful gesture, but it looks like I’m waving the gun around.

  When someone asks me what my demands are, I scream at them to stop the train.

  I had to wave my gun around a bit more, but eventually I got the train to stop and let us off. Unfortunately, that meant it dropped us off in the middle of nowhere, but Sarah and I had no choice but to make a break for it. We stopped to change back into our regular clothes, hoping it would be enough to fool any authorities who might be looking for us. Because we hijacked a train. Even though they let us go, that was because I was holding some crazy gun Sarah made, and I’m pretty sure they’re going to report my supposed crimes. Just a hunch.

  Now, an hour later, Sarah and I drag ourselves into some Podunk town, tired and sweating and maybe even lost. I have a general idea of where we must be, but I couldn’t tell you how to get home from here. Or to Vilmore.

  The town is a one-horse kind of place, except instead of one horse they have one car. It’s painted like a police car and sits in the middle of town, at the only intersection. I guess it’s there so travelers will slow down and obey the ten-miles-per-hour speed limit.

  “Truth or dare,” Sarah says. We’ve been playing for the past fifteen minutes or so to pass the time, and Truth or Dare is apparently Sarah’s favorite game, because no matter which one someone picks, it results in good data. I’d never played before, but I can already see plenty of ways to use it to make people uncomfortable. Sarah tells me girls play this game a lot, especially at get-togethers. I can’t wait until Thursday night when Amelia has what she calls “one of her famous slumber parties.” And people on the train thought I was evil.

  “Truth.”

  Sarah takes a deep breath and thinks about it. She slips on a patch of mud on the ground, but luckily I grab her arm and keep her from falling. I’m quite the hero. “What’s the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to you?” she says.

  “I caught my girlfriend making out with my best friend.”

  Sarah’s spine stiffens. “Your girlfriend.”

  “At my birthday party. On my bed. We’re not together now,” I mutter, thinking about how Kat and I are friends, nothing more, and about how I keep having to remind myself that’s a good thing. “It was a year ago, and she’d just gotten her shapeshifting power—”

  “Shapeshifting?” Sarah raises an eyebrow and scrunches up her nose. “What is she, a supervillain?”

  “Ha. Ha. No.” I rub the back of my neck and wish I hadn’t said anything. “What I meant was, she thought she wanted to be somebody else. To be with somebody else, I guess.”

  “You’re using the past tense.” The way Sarah says that, I feel like I�
�m in an interrogation room, with the hot lights shining on me. “She thought she wanted to be with somebody else. That implies she doesn’t think that anymore.” If Sarah’s tone didn’t sound so accusing, I’d think she was trying to help sort things out between me and Kat. “So she wants to be with you.”

  “Uh …” Oh, how I miss the simple times when I saved Sarah from getting her pants muddy. Those were the days, thirty seconds ago, before I mistakenly opened up this can of worms. I can see that this Truth or Dare game has more potential to make people uncomfortable than I thought. “Yeah, well, she realizes what she missed out on, now that it’s too late.”

  I shut up after that, and Sarah doesn’t ask any more questions about my love life. Instead she purses her lips and looks deep in thought. Neither of us says anything until we reach the middle of town, where there’s a helpful sign that says Vilmore is another twenty miles away. Which is just wonderful. I already want to die from fatigue, and it’s getting dark. So much for getting home for dinner.

  Sarah sags against the sign and rubs her shoulders where the straps of her backpack dig into her. “Easy peasy, right? No problem?”

  “Right. Because now that we’re in town, we should be able to find some kind of transportation. A ride, if you will.”

  We’re standing next to the town police car. I peer in the window and notice it has the keys in the ignition. I guess nobody worries about it getting stolen. Maybe nobody here would know what to do with it anyway. “A ride,” Sarah says, sounding doubtful.

  “Maybe a bus comes through here or something. These people have to have some way of leaving. …” As I say it, I think about those stories you hear where someone’s car breaks down in some nowhere town, and they don’t have the money to fix it and leave, so they end up living there. Until they die.

  I shudder. “Come on.” I lead Sarah across the street and into a nearby diner called May’s. The diner is half full with the dinnertime crowd. The locals sit hunched over their food, but they all turn and stare when we come in. It’s a small town with no tourist attractions—they must not get very many visitors. I ignore them and stride up to the counter. The woman behind it has a pot of coffee and a rag glued to either hand. Her scraggly brown hair hangs in stringy clumps around her face. I can’t tell how old she is. Her body says she couldn’t be much more than thirty, but her wrinkled and haggard face says nothing under fifty. Her name tag reads, DELORES.