The Rise of Renegade X Page 15

  “Maybe I’m that out of shape. Maybe I have asthma. Did you ever think of that?” I grit my teeth and open up Taylor’s laptop again.

  She shakes her head. “I’ve also seen you in your PE class. I sit next to the window in Japanese, and I have a good view of the track. You seem fine then. So what day works for you? I think if we meet regularly, we can be at the final stage in another two months. Maybe less.”

  The laptop finishes waking up. I shove the desk chair out of the way, not bothering to sit down, and start up the “find” function and search the files for any mention of Dr. Kink. “Aren’t you worried about sav—about helping your dad?”

  “Are you kidding? I’m a complete mess! Can’t you tell?” She peers at me through her glasses, studying my face like she thinks I might be joking. “Research calms me down.”

  Yeah, sure it does. I don’t like feeling betrayed and used—I’ve gone through enough of that with Kat—and Sarah doesn’t even like me; I’m just another research project to her. I clench my fists as the search results pop up on the computer. “I’m not your science experiment.”

  Sarah sighs, then pushes me out of the way to get a better look at the screen. “You’re being unreasonable.”

  I pretend I didn’t hear her and glance over her shoulder. Most of the results are copies of articles Dr. Kink wrote. One of the files is labeled Guest Check-in. Right. “Try that one,” I say, pointing at the screen.

  Sarah double-clicks, and a spreadsheet opens up. She searches for “Kink” and it jumps to his entry. His “check-in” is dated a little under two weeks ago, right after someone, uh, knocked over a certain hypno device in their mom’s lab. It says he’s staying in Basement Suite Four.

  “The basement,” Sarah whispers. “That sounds—”

  Dangerous, ominous, and not exactly the five-star hotel the check-in file would have us believe? “We can get a key from the main office down the hall. No—”

  “Don’t say ‘no problem.’ And you are being unreasonable, you know.” She gets up from the desk and adjusts her glasses, glaring at me. “We could learn a lot from each other. I realize I’m inexperienced, but I believe the results could be pleasing enough for both of us.”

  She might not know how to flatter a guy, but she does have a point. I’ve spent all this time chasing Kat, only to turn her down when I find out she wants me. Everything with Kat has gotten so complicated, and it seems like no matter what I do to avoid it, I’m going to get hurt. She’s dangerous, and Sarah seems pretty safe in comparison. And I like Sarah well enough. She’s interesting and thinks I’m cool, and I can’t say I’m not tempted by the idea of “experimenting” with her. An easy relationship? One that only involves fooling around? Kat and I aren’t together, we’re over—she proved that at the party earlier—so I’m free to do whatever I want. And right now, all I want is to fill Sarah’s notebook with plenty of good data.

  I take both of Sarah’s hands in mine. “Here’s the deal. Neither of us messes around with anybody else.”

  She nods. “But it can’t be more than that. You’re not my boyfriend.”

  “Done.” Good thing I don’t want to be, or my feelings might be hurt. I let go of her and hold my hand out to shake on it. She spits in her palm first, even though I didn’t. When we’ve sealed the deal, Sarah grabs her bag and her notebook from under the desk, and I wipe her spit on the side of my pant leg. She throws her backpack over one shoulder and we head for the door.

  “Oh, and Sarah?” I say, stopping her before we go into the hall. “One more condition.”

  “Yes, Renegade?”

  “I choose the experiments.”

  We stop by the main office—which is deserted at this time of night—and grab the key to Dr. Kink’s room. By the time we get to the basement, Sarah’s got practically a whole rulebook written up for our “non-dating” experiments. It’s like the tabletop RPG version of messing around.

  It’s great. The more rules she adds, the more excited I am about this, but I’m not going to tell her that. I get the feeling she likes thinking I’m upset about it, like the rules cramp my style or something.

  “And if we meet at my house,” Sarah says, “you’re my lab partner.”

  “And if you come over to my house, I’m telling everyone you’re a hooker I picked up on Saint Street. You’re in training, so I get a discount, like getting your hair cut by student barbers.”

  Sarah scowls. “I’m not writing that one down. If we go to any dances—”

  I wag my finger at her as we round the last corner. “Ah ah ah. Dances is dating.”

  “Please. Everybody only goes to dances for five minutes to get their pictures taken, then goes somewhere to make out. Plus, dancing is physical. It’s part of the experience.”

  “How are you going to explain going to dances with your lab partner?”

  Sarah grins at me. “I’ll tell everyone you couldn’t find anybody else. I have a pink dress, so don’t wear anything that clashes with that.”

  Oh, man, if we ever go to one of those things, I’m showing up in a red-and-yellow zoot suit with green polka dots and no pants. But I’ll bring her a corsage, of course. “Define ‘clash.’”

  But Sarah isn’t listening because we’re there. She slams her notebook shut and shouts, “Daddy?” at the door marked B4. She doesn’t even ask me for the key I grabbed from the office, just fishes it out of my pocket without my permission—what are the rules on that?—and shoves it in the lock. There’s a click, and the knob turns, and I feel a wonderful sense of relief because tonight is finally over.

  It’s after midnight and I’ve skipped school, hijacked a train, and stolen a car. I’m going to be in so much trouble when I get home. But Gordon can go ahead and yell at me, because I will be asleep.

  It’s not over. The door swings open to reveal a dark, cramped little room. There’s a tile floor, and a bed in the corner with only a thin white sheet and a pillow to match. A sickeningly sweet smell, like there’s meat rotting under the bed or something, mixes with the chemical scent of floor cleaner. It’s definitely not what I’d call a suite, though it’s thankfully not as gruesome as I was picturing either. Just … awful, and not somewhere I’d want find anyone I knew. Speaking of not finding anyone, there’s no Dr. Kink. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. It could mean they let him go already. But … probably not.

  Sarah runs in, panic twisting her face. She grabs something off the floor and holds it up for me. “This is the tie I got him for Christmas.” It’s red and green—the only real colors in the room—and has actual tiny Christmas lights on it. Sarah flips the switch to turn them on, but they must have burned out. “He was wearing this the day he disappeared,” she says.

  “He’s been gone since December?”

  “No. Since last weekend.”

  I don’t ask who wears Christmas lights in March. And I don’t mention what a coincidence it is that her father disappeared after I broke Sarah’s hypno device. After seeing Sarah’s handiwork on the gun she made me, I’m sure that that garage-sale-reject contraption Mom had in her lab was pure Sarah. It could be a case of “like father, like daughter,” but I’m pretty certain inventing that device is what Sarah did to get her dad in trouble. She mentioned publishing some articles, and Taylor said it was like Dr. Kink didn’t understand his own invention. I’m putting two and two together, and it looks like Mom and Taylor got the wrong Kink.

  I put my hand on Sarah’s shoulder. Is comforting her in the rulebook? “Come on, Sarah. It’s late, and he’s not here.”

  She shrugs me off and runs to the bed in the corner, searching the sheet and checking under the mattress. “There has to be some clue. He’d know I’d try to find him—he wouldn’t … he wouldn’t just disappear!” Sarah stops and takes a long, slow breath, shutting her eyes and tilting her head back a little. She looks like she’s trying not to cry. When she gets ahold of herself, she says, “I know what you’re thinking, but he’s not dead. He can�
��t be.”

  I shove my hands in my pockets. “They probably wouldn’t kill him. They want him to fix the—” I catch myself and shut up before I reveal I know a lot more than Sarah’s told me. “I mean, they probably need him for something, so …”

  She shakes her head. “You don’t know supervillains. They’re ruthless and … and they don’t care who they hurt or how much.”

  Right. She’s upset, so I ignore how offensive she’s being. I feel a twinge of guilt for agreeing to do “experiments” with her, since right now she sounds just like everybody else. A hero worshiper who thinks all villains are pure evil. Like we’re not people with homes and families and stuff. Does her not wanting to go out with me for reals have to do with the fact that I’m only half hero? I guess in her mind it’s okay to use villains.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” she says. “Your X means you’re only half villain, and you were raised by the Crimson Flash. I didn’t mean you.”

  Okay, that’s it. Do I really act like I was raised by that cape-wearing idiot? Do I rescue orphans or help little old ladies cross the street? No, I do not. “Sarah, I think we’ve seen enough. He’s not here, and it’s time to go.”

  “We can’t leave. This is my fault. It was my invention that got him here. I wrote some articles about it, but I didn’t think anyone would take them seriously if they were by someone still in high school, so I put his name on them. Then someone stole my invention, and then they kidnapped him!”

  “What are you doing in here?!” A girl about our age appears in the doorway. She’s got curly brown hair and blue eyes and a security badge that reads HENRIETTA STONE.” She’s casually holding a raygun that’s about to slip from her fingers, along with a bag of Cheetos and a Cherry Coke Zero. As the seriousness of the situation dawns on her, she drops her snacks and adjusts her grip on the gun, wavering between pointing it at me and at Sarah. “I go on a vending-machine run for five minutes, and this is what happens.” She mutters under her breath about being “so screwed.”

  She’s screwed? What about us? We’re the ones with the weapon pointed at us.

  “If you’re looking for Dr. Kink,” Henrietta says, “he’s busy in the torture chamber.” She starts to laugh, then chews her lip. “Hey. You.” She focuses the gun on Sarah. “I’ve seen a picture of you in his wallet. You’re—”

  I fake like I’m going to rush past her, to take the heat off of Sarah and keep her from asking more questions. It works. Henrietta aims the raygun at me. She stands so her feet are shoulder-length apart, kicking her Cheetos and soda out of her way on the floor. Her hands shake, but we’re still too close for that to make me feel better.

  Henrietta fires at me. I don’t know if her finger slipped or if she meant for it to happen. I duck, narrowly avoiding the beam of green light that zaps through the room. I smell burning hair and realize my evasion wasn’t 100 percent successful. The ray hits the wall behind me, sending chunks of plaster flying through the air and spewing dust everywhere. Henrietta gapes at us, stunned by her own actions. Sarah rummages through her bag, but I grab her arm and shout, “Run!”

  We push past Henrietta, shoving her to the ground, and my foot lands on the Cheetos with a satisfying crunch. I almost slip on the bag, but I recover and keep moving.

  Behind us, Henrietta swears and takes a walkie-talkie off of her belt. “Pete!” she shrieks. “I need backup! Hello?” She makes a frustrated noise to rival one of Amelia’s. “He’s never around,” she mutters, then screams at the top of her lungs, “Security! Security breach in the basement corridor!”

  I hear doors open in several directions. Crap. Sarah pulls me into a side hallway. She stops to catch her breath and digs through her bag until she finds the gun she made. “Did you hear her?” she says. “The torture chamber! We have to get him out of there!”

  “Sarah, listen to me.” I’m breathing hard, almost too much to talk. “The bad guys will be here any second. They’re going to catch us, and then we’ll be in the torture chamber.” Well, I won’t, but Sarah doesn’t need to know that. I don’t want her getting hurt, and I don’t want my mom or Taylor finding out I was here. “There’s another way. We don’t have to do this.”

  Sarah fiddles with the panels on the gun, sliding them around and pushing the buttons on top. She does it in a sequence of blue, red, yellow. “Here. This should give them a taste of their own medicine. Aim for the heart.”

  I hold my hands up to ward off the gun when she tries to give it to me. “Are you crazy? I’m not going to kill anybody!”

  “It’s okay, you’re half villain. You can do it.”

  Is she nuts? I thought she wanted me to be a hero? And what does she think we villains do, just go around slaughtering people? There she goes with her offensive stereotypes again. Plus, there are a lot of bad guys coming for us and only one of me. Brute force isn’t my style, and it isn’t going to get us out of this.

  Footsteps come tromping down the hall, at least three or four sets of them. Someone shouts, “Found ’em!” and then more people join in the chase.

  I grab the gun from Sarah, and we both take off running. “Sarah,” I gasp, “you have to trust me.”

  We turn down another hallway, only to find it blocked by three more members of Vilmore security. All packing rayguns. We leap out of the way just as all three fire at us. There’s a loud exploding sound as the rays hit the wall. If we get caught, I have a feeling my tuition’s going to have some added expenses tacked on. Assuming all this doesn’t completely ruin my chances of getting in.

  “We’re not going to find your dad like this,” I tell Sarah, wishing I didn’t have to talk and run at the same time.

  “We can’t leave him here!” She stumbles on the carpet as another raygun blast misses her foot, blowing a hole in the floor.

  We hit a dead end. Sort of. We reach the elevator, and I punch the up button over and over.

  There are about ten security guards, plus Henrietta, closing in on us.

  “Use your weapon, Renegade!” Sarah shouts. “Shoot them!”

  I hold the gun up, but I don’t want to use it. “Cosine, if I told you I could get your dad out of here but we’d have to leave right now, would you believe me?”

  Sarah looks to the elevator doors, which are still closed, and to the Vilmore security force. The security guard closest to the front eyes the gun I’m holding, in all its garage-sale chic, and he actually smiles. A smug, nasty smile that sends unpleasant shivers up my spine.

  Sarah grabs my shoulder. “Do something!”

  “Do you believe me?!”

  “Yes! Anything, just get us out of here!”

  I swallow and aim the gun. The security guards go tense but don’t shoot. Henrietta hangs out near the back, ducking behind them. There’s no way I could shoot them all before they took us down, if I was crazy enough to listen to Sarah. It’s easy for her to tell me to do the dirty work. She sees me as a hero, but I’m half villain when it’s convenient.

  In one quick motion, I point the gun at the ceiling and fire. A blue laser flashes. Huge chunks of plaster and wood and debris rain down on the security guards. A couple crumple to the ground, buried in ceiling remains. The others cough and wipe at their eyes to get the dust out. The elevator doors ding open. I shove Sarah through and push the button for the ground floor as fast as I can.

  I surprise Helen when I drag myself into the house at almost two thirty a.m. Once we got out of the elevator, Sarah and I were able to evade Vilmore security long enough to get off campus and find our way to the train station. The last train didn’t leave until after one, hence my late arrival back at the Tines house. I was hoping I could sneak in unnoticed, since Amelia tells me we’re not allowed out after nine on a school night. But after hijacking a train, stealing a car, and causing massive damage to my future alma mater, coming home late is the least of my crimes. Helen’s sitting at the dining room table in her pajamas, reading a book. She gasps when I open the door and puts a hand over her heart.


  “Oh, Damien, you startled me.”

  “I didn’t think you’d be up.” To catch me sneaking in at all hours of the night, which is apparently frowned upon. Mom wouldn’t care when I was out. She has a tendency to get cranky if I wake her up at ungodly hours or disturb her lab time, but that’s it.

  “I couldn’t sleep, so—” Helen sets her book down, her brows furrowing. “Hey, you all right there? You look exhausted. What happened to the sleepover?”

  Apparently she didn’t get the memo about what a horrible, misbehaving stepson I am. I stand in the doorway, my mouth gaping open, not sure what to say.

  “Things didn’t go so well at Joe’s, huh?”

  Joe? Who the hell is Joe? I play along and shake my head.

  “Amelia said you were staying over. I figured your phone call to Gordon earlier might have had something to do with you wanting to be scarce tonight.” She sighs. “What happened? You change your mind, kid?”

  “Oh, well …” I scratch the side of my head and tromp into the kitchen. I haven’t eaten anything since the lemon meringue, and that was hours ago. “Joe and I got in a fight.”

  “What?” She heaves herself up from her chair. “About what?”

  Judging by her level of surprise, she must be under the impression that I’m some kind of saint, despite knowing about my phone call to Gordon. I guess acting out against my dad who recently tried to kill me is one thing, getting in a fight with a supposed sleepover buddy is another. I grab a box of crackers from the cupboard. I stuff some into my mouth as I say, “Well, he didn’t like it when I kissed him.”

  Helen pales. She stops in her tracks, too shocked to come comfort me. She blinks a couple of times. “You kissed him.”

  Cracker crumbs spill from my mouth. “To see what it was like.”