Infiltration (3 page)

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It was Esper, speaking to us telepathically. I glanced towards the house and saw her staring at us from a huge bay window. Hands on her hips and her brow severely creased, you didn’t need to be an empath to know that Esper was in full mother bear mode and being fiercely protective of her cub — Electra. This really didn’t come as a great surprise to me; the Alpha League had raised Electra since she was an infant. Thus, they were all wildly vigilant with respect to her safety and well-being — even when it came to someone they trusted, like me.

Mentally, I said hello to Esper. In response, I got the telepathic equivalent of a curt nod — and then a door being slammed in my face.

“
You better go,” I said to Electra. “Before Esper comes out here and flash-fries my brain, or worse.”

“
Even if she did,” she said with a smirk,
“
it’s not like anyone would be able to tell the difference.”

“
Get out,” I said in mock anger. She laughingly exited my car. I shifted into reverse and was preparing to back out of the driveway when Electra politely knocked on my window. I rolled the window down (manually, of course — no automatic doors or locks on this clunker).

“
One more thing,” she said, leaning down to look me in the eye.
“
That crack about preferring to break up with me than be kicked off the team? You’d better have been joking.” And with that, she sashayed towards the door and into the house.

Chapter 2

I arrived home about a half hour after dropping Electra off, electing to park on the street in front of the house rather than the driveway. “Home” was, of course, a relative term. The house we’d actually lived in had been burned to the ground a few months back by a supervillain. Since then, we’d been staying in a loaner (courtesy of a family friend) while our new place was being built.

Telepathically, I could sense my mother and grandfather inside, and I knew they could feel me as well. Thus, it was no surprise when I came walking through the door.

“Just in time for dinner,” my mother shouted from the kitchen. “I was afraid you’d leave for the game with your father without eating anything.”

I bristled slightly at her casual use of the phrase “your father” as I followed her voice into the kitchen. Alpha Prime and I were still in the getting-to-know-you phase of things, so I still had trouble thinking of him as my father in any way other than a biological sense.

“I was going to grab something at the game,” I said in response to her comment. “Plus, I already had some chips and queso at Jackman’s.”

Mom had just pulled a baking tray full of scones from the oven. She tossed it onto the stove and then turned to me with her hands on her hips. “So your plan was to binge on a buffet of unhealthy snacks after school, then come home, skip dinner, go to the game, and fill up on a bunch of junk food there?”

I shrugged. “More or less.”

“Not going to happen,” said a voice coming from behind me. I looked around to find my grandfather walking into the room. “You need to eat something healthy, boy, before you leave this house.”

“Fine,” I said in resignation. “I’ll get some fruit.”

I went to the refrigerator and got some grapes from the fruit bin. After rinsing them off, I placed them in a bowl before flopping down at the breakfast table. Mom and Gramps joined me, ironically plucking and devouring some of my grapes — the healthy snack that they had encouraged
me
to eat.

“So,” said Mom, “how’s Electra?” Surprisingly, my mother and girlfriend had developed a strong bond — so strong, in fact, that I had come to realize that any breakup between me and Electra would almost affect those two more seriously than myself.

“I guess she’s fine,” I answered noncommittally. “Probably thinks I’m spending a little too much time with Alpha Prime, but fine beyond that.”

“Well, don’t be too hard on her about that,” said Mom. “She doesn’t really know what’s going on there, just that you aren’t taking advantage of opportunities to spend time with her.”

“You should probably do something to make it up to her,” said Gramps.

“Like what?” I asked almost sardonically, then immediately regretted it.

For the next twenty minutes, we had a somewhat embarrassing conversation that consisted of my mother and grandfather giving me advice about my love life and asking intrusive questions about the same. Suddenly I couldn’t wait to get to that game with my father.

After making me promise that I would attempt to effectuate at least some of the advice she’d given me, my mother excused herself. This was typical for her; my grandfather being the primary male role model for most of my life, Mom frequently gave us the opportunity to have one-on-one conversations.

“So,” Gramps said, “did we embarrass you with the advice we offered?”

“Frankly speaking, yes,” I said. “I’m just glad there was no one else around to hear it.”

“Also, I couldn’t help but notice that your response was a little ambivalent when we first mentioned Electra. Are you sure everything’s okay?”

“Yeah, everything is going fine between us. She may be taking the team leader bit a little too seriously, but we’re good.”

“What do you mean?” asked Gramps.

I gave a quick explanation of how Coach Electra was sending me back to the minors.

“Well,” Gramps said when I’d finished, “the team leader position is rotated every couple of weeks, right? Everyone will get a chance to be top dog — even you, so quit bellyaching.”

“Easy for you to say. You didn’t just get booted from the team.”

“You’re not booted from the team. You’re just sidelined for the rest of her tenure. Plus, think about it from her point of view.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, frowning.

“You’re her boyfriend, and all the teen supers know it. If she takes it easy on you when you make a misstep, nobody will respect her.”

I contemplated that for a moment. “So you’re saying that she’s coming down hard on me because she has to. Because otherwise…”

“Otherwise, no one will take her seriously.”

“Still, I bet Grandma never kicked you off the team.”

“You’re right; she never did. But I did it to her once.”

“Really? What happened?” This was something I’ve never heard before. As far as I’d ever known (or been led to believe), my grandparents never even had so much as an argument. They were yin and yang — inseparable, melded together forever as a seamless whole.

“She didn’t take it well,” Gramps said, reminiscing. “When I got home that night, she’d already packed up and left to go back to her home planet.”

My mouth practically fell open. This was something I’d never heard before. My understanding had always been that my grandmother Indigo, an alien princess, had been compelled to return to her home world because of some type of crisis. It turns out it was just a marital spat, resulting in her pulling an interstellar version of “going home to Mother.” Innumerable questions started bubbling up in my mind, so fast that I didn’t know which to ask first. Then I saw my grandfather snickering.

Of course; it was a joke. I couldn’t help but smile as well.

“Sorry, I couldn’t help myself,” Gramps said between chuckles. “Seriously though, Indigo took it just fine. She understood why I had to make that call and accepted it. Of course, it helped that we were both telepaths and able to be completely open and honest with each other.”

I nodded in understanding. Gramps was a retired cape, but at one time he was the most formidable telepath on the planet. Although no longer in his prime, he still possessed one of the most powerful psychic minds in the world. Mom was also a telepath (and a world-class one at that), but had never really gone down the superhero path. These days, she was a mid-list author of superhero romances.

On my part, I had apparently inherited the telepathic gene, but in a diluted form. I could project my own thoughts, and pick up the surface thoughts of others, as well as any other information they wanted to willingly share. However, that was about as far as I typically went in terms of mindreading.

In essence, I find other people’s minds to be cluttered with unsanitary mental detritus and offal, and going too far inside makes me physically ill. Thus, doing a deep dive into someone else’s cranium (for example, trying to pry out nuclear launch codes) is off the table as far as I’m concerned.

“Anyway,” my grandfather went on, “you and Electra seem to have a special connection. I think it’ll take a lot more than team politics to break you guys up.”

“I hope so.”

“Well, that’s enough of this hearts and flowers stuff. Let’s talk about tomorrow night.”

“What? The exhibition?”

“Yeah. Are you ready for it?”

I shrugged. “I suppose.”

At some point during the past few months, someone in charge of public relations for capes had decided that superheroes weren’t getting enough positive press. (And, in light of what had happened with Alpha League HQ and the Academy, maybe they were right.) The end result was that an exhibition had been arranged — with all proceeds to go to charity — in which supers would get to showcase their powers while engaging in some friendly competition with one another. It was scheduled to be broadcast live, coast-to-coast the next night.

Ordinarily, it wouldn’t have been a big deal. This kind of dog-and-pony show happened every couple of years, and for a while there you could count on seeing all of the big-name supers participating (even a few from foreign countries). Needless to say, the exhibitions traditionally raised tons of cash and scored incredible ratings. However, they also led indirectly to another, more ignominious statistic: during the broadcast of the exhibition, criminal activity would skyrocket.

Of course, that’s something that should have been expected. If the capes are otherwise occupied, it’s the perfect time to commit a felony. To combat this uptick in crime, fewer and fewer of the A-List superheroes volunteered to be in the exhibition, with the result being a noticeable decrease in donations and viewership over the years. Now, however, all of that was purportedly about to change.

With respect to participants in this year’s exhibition, someone had gotten the bright idea to jettison the old guard and focus on the up-and-comers. Basically, they decided to showcase the future of crimefighting: teen supers. That being the case, I and quite a number of my colleagues had “volunteered” to be on the show. (In my case, the process had involved what can only be described as a direct order from the Alpha League consisting of four words: “You are doing this.”)

“You don’t seem particularly excited,” Gramps said, interrupting my thoughts.

“I don’t know about all this,” I said. “I mean, for two years now, I’ve been pretty much a mystery — ever since that wretched induction ceremony.”

My grandfather nodded but remained silent, knowing that this was one of the topics I really hated discussing. Two years earlier, I had aced the Super Teen Trials and had been looking forward to being part of a superhero team (or rather, the teen affiliate of one). During the induction ceremony to officially commence my stint as part of the Alpha League, a quarrel with another teen (Paramount, to be specific) had erupted into a full-blown battle royal between me and a bunch of supers (the Alpha League, to be precise). Captured on tape, the entire episode had been shameful and embarrassing for everyone involved, and afterwards I had gone into a sort of self-imposed exile with respect to the superhero community. It was only recently that everyone had decided to kiss and make up.

“Plus,” I said, going on, “I kind of like the fact that no one knows very much about me — that I fly below the typical superhero radar.”

“I see,” Gramps said, thoughtfully rubbing his chin. “You like the mystique that’s been built up around you as Kid Sensation, and if you let the general public get too up close and personal then their fascination with you will go away.”

“I wouldn’t put it exactly like that,” I said, frowning. “You make me sound like some sort of conceited, self-centered diva” — my grandfather laughed at that — “when all I’m really trying to say is that there’s a certain level of privacy that I want to maintain.”

“That’s easy enough to do. You’re a shapeshifter, and there’s no law that says you have to go to the exhibition with
that
face.” He pointed a finger squarely at my nose.

I blinked in surprise. My grandfather had subtly reminded me of something that I had practically forgotten: when I’d initially gone through the Super Teen Trials, it had been in a different persona — I’d altered my appearance. Rather than my own countenance and racially ambiguous complexion, I had chosen an appearance based on a high school picture of my grandfather: a handsome-but-gangly teen with a rich, brown skin tone. It was
that
face that the world had come to associate with Kid Sensation, not my own. Hmmm…maybe it
would
be possible to preserve a certain level of anonymity.