“Okay, so, someone sent us a bunch of data we can’t read?” Chloe asks, frowning.

  “I didn’t say that,” Jess says. She looks at Brendan; her voice drops to a whisper. “The three of us had a twenty-first-century computer because we had a bunch of pre-Collective movies on devices like these.”

  “The three of you.” Deirdre frowns. “Who are you talking about?”

  “Brendan, me, and my sister,” says Jess.

  Abby scowls. “So, these files are from Claudia? What makes you think they’re safe? Isn’t she working for Orion?”

  Jess fiddles with her fingers and exchanges glances with Brendan. “Yeah. I mean, for the longest time Orion was her idol, you know? Mine too, before I knew. But everyone kept saying Claudia was the next Captain Orion, and she modeled so much of herself after her. She dyed her hair, started dressing like her, and even after we told her about Orion and the kidnapping, she didn’t seem to care. She really believed that what Orion was doing was right.”

  Bells coughs. “She’s your sister, though. You know her better than Orion.” He gently touches her elbow. “Is it okay if—”

  Jess nods. “Of course.”

  Bells clears his throat. “So, last year, Orion captured me to use me in her experiments.”

  “Something about perfecting her serum for increasing her power level strength?” Brendan says. “Yeah, I remember! We rescued you.”

  “Yeah, you did, dude,” Bells says with a smile and fist-bumps Brendan. “So, I told Jess this, but I haven’t told anyone else, ’cause you know, it’s her sister…”

  Brendan blinks. “What? She’s my sister too! You didn’t tell me?”

  “I didn’t want to worry you,” Jess says. “You know, in case it turned out to be nothing.”

  “What is it?” Emma says.

  “Claudia helped me escape,” Bells says quietly. “She was helping Orion, but I’m not sure she actually was. Orion was taking these supplements to increase her strength, and they tested one on me. It was a breath mint. You know, the kind you used to have, Em.”

  Emma nods. She loved those little blue minty things and always kept them with her.

  “She was lying to Orion. It wasn’t a supplement at all. She made Orion think she was getting stronger when she wasn’t.”

  Emma frowns, confused. “So, if Claudia is sabotaging Orion, could she be part of the Resistance? Like, a faction we don’t know about?”

  Bells lets out a hollow laugh. “Well, she called the Resistance ‘losers,’ so I don’t think so. I don’t really know. I mean… Claudia’s always been…” He looks at Jess.

  Emma never really got to know Jess’ older sister; Claudia went off to college and faded into the background of the Trans’ family holos and of Jess’ stories.

  Jess holds up the device. “Claudia’s always been on her own side. I think she realized teaming up with Orion wasn’t a great idea, and wants to, I don’t know, level the playing field.”

  Abby nods. “There’s also… Remember the fallout when Bells was the League’s most wanted? I mean, there were security cams all over Orion’s base when we rescued my mom, but Bells was the only one recorded. No shots of Jess, no mention of Jess’ parents in that confrontation with Orion at my old house. In fact, the whole narrative that came from that, how Smasher and Shockwave attempted to apprehend Orion, was extremely favorable to your parents, Jess. Your whole family could have been blacklisted by the League, or worse.”

  “Yeah. That would be just like Claudia,” Jess muses. “Keeping us safe, even when she was betraying us.”

  Brendan snatches the thing from Jess’ hands. “So what are we waiting for? Let’s go see what she sent us.” He’s already racing down the tunnel.

  She sent files— massive amounts of them. Opening them on the twenty-first-century computer takes time. The thing takes at least five minutes to warm up.

  It’s smaller than the “television” that Jess set up for them in the basement of the Trans’ house for their hangouts and sleepovers. A physical keyboard is attached to a large rectangular screen on a hinge, so the whole thing could be closed and carried, Emma supposes.

  “Do you know what this is?” Jess tilts the screen. “Anyone?”

  Bells shakes his head; Emma squints and peers closer. It looks encoded, but there’s a familiar pattern, a cadence to the way the data is structured; if only she could remember where she’d seen this format before. Headings, subheadings, graphs, charts— a textbook? No, something else…

  Abby raises her hand hesitantly. “I’ve been practicing connecting with tech again with my powers. I’ve moved small objects with my telekinesis before; if one power is starting to work, the other should too. I could try—”

  “No,” Jess says. “We can’t risk you getting sick again. Also, we don’t know what exposing you to this data would do.”

  “Yeah, what if there’s a virus? We wouldn’t know how that would affect your mind, Abby,” Emma says.

  “You shouldn’t risk it,” Jess says.

  Brendan clicks his tongue and scrolls through the information. “There’s a lot here, but it looks like data logs from a programming language. I can figure this out.”

  “Oh! I have seen this before,” Emma says. “It’s a statistics program, like what I used to use to run my bio experiments for school. This is a form of data output.” She claps and point at a jumble of letters. “This looks like genetic code. These letters are all tri-nucleotide sequences.”

  Abby gasps. “It’s her research. Claudia sent us Orion’s research on how she made that anti-power serum.”

  Ch. 7…

  “I’ve got it covered,” Michael says. “What, are you a super-genius too?”

  “Just smart.” Emma wedges her foot in the door. Behind Michael and his stubbled chin, she can see the twenty-first-century computer next to a modern holoscreen with rapidly scrolling data. It took her some time to figure out that Leadership Personnel moved the files to Michael’s medical station and lab. She knows he’s been in charge of the health care of the Villain’s Guild and remembers from their last visit that he helped monitor everyone’s power levels too. She never warmed to him, especially because of the snide way he treated Bells until he realized how powerful Bells was.

  “I’ve already got Brendan and Abby in here with me, not to mention Chloe, who is an actual expert in statistics,” Michael says.

  “I can help,” Emma insists. She was the one who realized it was a report, after all.

  Michael sighs. “We’re dealing with a lot of sensitive information. Orion’s experiments aren’t exactly the most detailed or well documented, so getting through this to where we can understand it is a challenge, let alone trying to create an antidote.”

  Abby, eyes ablaze, is scrolling through several different projections and arguing with Brendan. A hologram rotates next to Chloe as she studies the code.

  “Oh, I did my AP Bio project last year on viral vectors. Is that what you’re looking at?” Emma asks brightly.

  “We’ve got this covered, Emma, thanks,” Michael says.

  Emma loses her foothold on the door as Michael gently nudges her out and closes it. She knocks furiously. Super strength would be very handy right now, Emma thinks, glaring at the door. She punches it and winces; her very normal fist doesn’t make a dent. She winces and shakes her aching hand.

  Like frightened birds, a flight of impulsive thoughts races through her. She could find a ventilation shaft and sneak in, but she shouldn’t have to! Emma has just as much right to be in that room as everyone else. Brendan is a genius, but Emma helped him with algorithms for finding the Resistance, and Abby is great, but her experience is in engineering, not coding.

  Emma scowls and shuffles off down the hallway. She passes two people who don’t even acknowledge her. She might as well be invisible.

  No, if she was invisible, she’d be a meta-human with a power. Then she’d be useful to the Guild and included in plans and not left behind on missions that were her idea in the first place. She was not left behind to oversee or supervise, but as just as the backup that no one ever expected anything from, as if giving her that title was only to make them feel better.

  Emma rarely sees her friends; everyone is caught up in the action. At meals, she’s usually alone because everyone’s got their own training schedule, but today Jess and Bells managed to steal away to have lunch with her.

  Emma pokes halfheartedly at her corn chowder as Jess plops down next to her, then yawns and rubs her eyes.

  “Are you okay? Where’s Abby?”

  “She stayed up all night doing research,” Jess says, her voice thin.

  “Again?” Emma asks. She’s barely seen Abby aside from a few scattered moments throughout the day.

  “She’s been doing that a lot.” Bells raises an eyebrow. “I mean, I sleep pretty late, and she’s usually still in the lab working on her mecha-suit or one of her many secret projects.”

  Jess crosses her arms. “She and Michael have been talking a lot. I think she’s working on a way to get her powers back, but I wish…”

  “Is she okay?” Emma asks.

  Jess’ voice wavers. “I don’t know,” she says finally. “She’s been keeping weird hours.”

  Bells nods. “She woke me up yesterday at, like, three in the morning, asking if I wanted to go for a run.”

  “Yesterday?” Yesterday afternoon Abby asked Emma if she wanted to play volleyball in the gym. They tried to set up the net, but, while Emma was still untangling it, Abby ran off to go do something else.

  “Yeah, she’s been… off. Like, she will talk with Michael for hours and hours about meta-genes, and I don’t follow all of it, but Michael doesn’t seem to either? And he’s an expert.” Jess buries her face in her hands.

  Emma wonders if Abby is trying find something in those files that could get her powers back, reverse-engineer the serum somehow. Whatever it is, it’s keeping her occupied. They finish eating, and Bells pecks her cheek before running off with Jess to training. Emma, hoping that running some laps on the treadmill will help her feel better, finishes her chowder and follows them to the gym, but the training area is filled with people exercising their powers. Tanya and Sasha are popping in and out of thin air all over the cavern, and Ricky, well, Emma can’t see him but she assumes he’s there.

  Bells is practicing rapid shifts, blending into the background of a changing screen. Emma’s sure he’d talk to her, but she doesn’t want to interrupt his practice; his training is important. Just because Emma doesn’t have anything to do doesn’t mean she can distract other people from their tasks.

  Emma climbs to the lookout platform. She sits alone, swinging her feet over the edge, watching the forest. Do I even have a place here?

  “Psst,” a voice not-so-subtly whispers behind her while Emma’s flipping through a book.

  “What?” Emma turns around, cross.

  Michael waves at her and holds out his tablet.

  “What’s all this?” Emma looks at the screen.

  “Based on your genetic history, the powers you could potentially unlock.” Michael waggles his eyebrows. “Remember when I gave everyone physicals? I ran your DNA too. Look!”

  Emma takes the list.

  Electric manipulation

  Super strength

  Voltage increase

  Emma doesn’t realize her fingers are trembling until Michael reaches out to hold the tablet steady. It’s true; meta-abilities did run in her family. Tia Rosa could send little zaps of electricity from her fingertips. It had been no more than a curiosity, and she was Registered, but never was a part of any Meta-Human Training program.

  “Come with me!” Michael gestures for her to follow.

  They walk past all the main large workspaces, past the medical labs, past the halls that lead to the dorms. When they get past the garden caverns, Emma begins to get suspicious. “Where are we going?”

  Michael opens a door into another long cavern.

  “What is this, the sickbay?” Emma asks, but then she recognizes the space. This is where they had their physicals and tested their power levels. It looks the same, with curtains sectioning off rooms. But behind the curtains, shadows quiver and people moan and groan. She tenses; some of them must be in pain, and the reek of vomit lingers. “Ugh, it smells awful, Michael.”

  He frowns. “Yeah, I gotta get Deirdre back here to freshen up the scent.”

  “What’s wrong with everyone?” Emma frowns, folding her arms. “Why are so many people sick?” Things like the common cold and most infections have long been dealt with by vaccinations provided to everyone in the Collective. “What happened?”

  “Adverse reactions to the new R-31 serum,” Michael says.

  “The what?” Emma stops. “You mean what Orion injected into Abby?”

  “This is a different strain I’ve been developing,” Michael says.

  “You mean you—” Emma doesn’t even know where to start. “You don’t know where those files actually came from! What if the information had been incorrect or malicious or—”

  Michael twitches. “Look, we don’t know why the files are here, but it’s definitely Orion’s research. We know that the League has all of these resources; why shouldn’t we?” He draws a curtain. “This is Nina,” he says.

  Emma doesn’t recognize her; she must be a new recruit.

  Nina’s face is ashen, she’s breathing heavily, and her fevered eyes are glazed over, but she smiles. “Hi, Michael,” she says before turning to Emma. “Nice to meet you. Are you going to be invoked as well?”

  “Invoked?”

  Nina holds her hand out. Very slowly, a pulsing ball of light begins to form. Sweat beads on her brow, and Nina exhales laboriously as the ball of light gets as large as her palm.

  “Excellent, Nina!” Michael claps his hands. “Don’t strain yourself, you have to preserve your strength. Don’t use your powers outside of the testing period! Wait for official measurements.”

  Emma stops. “So you’re helping Nina develop her powers? Why is she sick?”

  “Nina previously did not have any meta-human abilities,” Michael says, puffing up his chest with pride.

  Emma freezes. “What.”

  Nina beams. “I mean, I was a good candidate, since my cousin could create these balls of light, so there’s a foundation for it in the family, at least. I’m so excited! I can finally help out on the missions!”

  Emma grabs Michael by the sleeve and drags him out of Nina’s curtained cubicle. “What are you doing?”

  “Working with the data we have. It’s revolutionary.” He grins at her. “Want to be next?”

  The blood rushes to her head as Emma dangles upside down on the lumpy couch to watch yet another episode of The Gentleman Detective. She trails her fingers across the floating blue pixels, scattering Styx Kipling’s form as he looks for clues. Emma’s taken to hiding in the cluttered storage room, away from the business of the Guild. These forgotten boxes and shelves stacked full of memory chips and old paperbound books won’t judge her.

  “Do I want to be next?” Emma mutters darkly. She throws another handful of popcorn in her mouth and chews angrily. How dare he assume what I want?

  Maybe he was just trying to be nice, another part of Emma reasons.

  Emma sighs. It’s not that she hasn’t thought about having a power, but it never was a possibility before, so it never went any further than oh that would be cool. She thinks about it now, imagining herself hurling lightning bolts at Captain Orion alongside her friends, leading the charge with Deirdre crying out apologies in the background. She has wondered what it would be like to feel what her friends feel, to have that experience. Maybe powers would be nice.

  She thinks about the sick people in Michael’s lab. He hadn’t perfected his own version of the serum and he was already doing patient trials.

  If it was ready, would you do it? That voice whispers in her head.

  Emma scowls and turns up the volume.

  This show is a thousand times less fun without Bells and Jess. She misses their tradition of watching the new episodes each week, laughing at Bells’ shrieks of delight and Jess’ befuddled face as she tried to figure out the clues. Before they got swept up into this mess, Abby would join them too. It had been nice, a piece of soft, mundane quiet they could enjoy even while the rest of their world seemed to spin out of control.

  Outside, Emma can hear people moving about, making plans, taking action.

  Emma sighs and flicks her hand at the screen with more force than necessary, scattering the words Next Episode into pieces. The movement makes her lose her balance, and she topples out of the couch and onto the packed dirt floor. She coughs, spluttering. If she’d been with her friends, she would have made a joke. Jess would offer her a pillow, and Bells would probably tug her into his lap, but she’s alone. All her friends have official duties, and Emma is watching reruns.

  “I can’t just sit here and do nothing,” Detective Kipling says, jawline set.

  “That’s absolutely right,” Emma mutters. So she can’t help with this part of the plan? Fine. She’s got other plans she can check on. Emma stands up and dusts off her clothes.

  She kicks open the door and strides down the hallway; ignoring others’ puzzled looks, she barges into the gym. Bells is throwing kicks at a punching bag. It shakes with the force, rattling the chain. Emma marches right up, grabs the bag, and holds it still.

  “Hey, Em,” Bells says. “Wanna work out?”

  “We have to call your dad,” Emma says.

  They’re a few days ahead of Bells’ scheduled call, but Emma wants to try anyway. “Sean’s bound to be monitoring the transmission at Grassroots headquarters,” Bells says. “He and his boyfriend chat all the time.”

  Emma wonders how that relationship works, since it’s long distance. She and Bells have been in the same place but somehow worlds apart. She thought she’d have so much more time here with Bells to talk to him and figure out what they were doing with their whole relationship thing, but he’s been so busy, preoccupied with training.

 

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