The Trials of Renegade X (40 page)

The message ends. A computer voice asks me if I want to save the message or delete it. I tell it to delete it.

“Well?” Kat says.

“What did she say?” Riley asks.

“She’s here,” I tell them, a cold, sick feeling twisting in my stomach. I check the time on my phone and see that it’s seven fifty. “She’s going to kill everyone at Vilmore, in about ten minutes, unless ...”

Riley screws up his eyebrows. “Unless what?”

“Unless I go talk to her.”

Kat’s shaking her head. “That doesn’t sound right, Damien. And I don’t trust her.”

“I’m supposed to call her, to find out where she is.”

“I know where she is.” Riley points to the tall building next door. “She’s on the roof.”

“She wouldn’t be on the roof. She wants me to meet her, and she knows that I’m—” She knows that I’m afraid of heights, but I don’t need him to know that. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“It overlooks the dance, doesn’t it? And I’m the one who saw the map. That’s where she is.”

“We don’t have time for you to be wrong.”

“I’m not. Just
trust
me for once. Because if she wants you to call her, then I don’t think you should. I agree with Kat—this doesn’t sound right. Nothing about it does. And if you call her, she’ll know we’re coming. This way, we can surprise her. I mean, how do you know she’s not just going to shoot you with a raygun as soon as she sees you?”

He looks really worried, like that could actually happen. It probably
is
going to happen, since that’s what Sarah wants, isn’t it? She didn’t
say
she was going to kill me, but she wants me to trade myself for the lives of everyone else, and she thinks I’m the most dangerous supervillain here. She thinks stopping me is worth letting a whole generation of supervillains go free. And as far as her not killing me goes, that doesn’t sound too promising.

I hope Mom did a good job on that personality enhancer. Because if I go up there and I
don’t
shoot Sarah with it before she shoots me, or if it doesn’t work, then ... I’m not coming back down.

“You guys stay here.”

“
No
.” Kat grabs my arm and glares at me. “We’re all going, and we don’t have time to argue about it.”

“But—”

“I’m not waiting around here, not sure if I’m ever going to see you again. I already did that, and I didn’t like it the first time. Besides, I’m a shapeshifter, and he can turn invisible. She doesn’t have to know you didn’t come alone.”

“Yeah,” Riley says. “We’ve been through this already. Don’t be an idiot.”

“Okay,” I tell them. After all, it’s not like I
want
to die tonight. If there are three of us, then maybe we stand a chance. Plus, Sarah said if I turned myself in, she wouldn’t hurt anyone. I hope that includes the two of them.

I also hope that, if things go really badly tonight, they won’t have to watch me die.

Chapter 29

“YOU TAKE THE PERSONALITY enhancer,” I tell Riley as we race over to the building next door. “We go up there, and then I’ll distract her while you go invisible and sneak up behind her.”

“I think you mean while
we
distract her,” Kat says. She stops at the door to the building and grabs the handle. It doesn’t budge. She tries it again, but of course it still doesn’t move. She starts to turn her fingers into lockpicks, then notices the door doesn’t have that kind of lock. It’s electronic, with a number pad you have to type the right sequence into in order to open it. Kat swears under her breath, then says, “There must be another door or something. Or a window we could—”

“You think Sarah’s going to make it that easy?” I ask. “She had to get up there somehow, right? So she’s probably also the one who locked it behind her. She would have locked all the other doors to the building, too, and made sure there’s no way in. She wouldn’t have taken the chance that someone might get in the way of her plans.”

“Damien, you don’t know that.”

“But I know
her
, and I know she’s going to kill everyone in only ...”

“Five minutes,” Riley says, glancing at his phone.

I cringe, because with only five minutes left, then I definitely know what I have to do. “Five minutes.” I swallow. “Even if we did find a window or something, there might be more doors on the way up. She probably locked them, too, and there’s no way we’d get through all of them in time.”

Kat puts a hand on her hip. “Then what are we going to do? Turn around and go home?”

“I think you mean ’run for our lives before Sarah murders us.’ But you know what has to happen.” I glance up at the roof. I feel dizzy even thinking about it.

“
No
.” She grits her teeth and shakes her head.

“Can’t you just fly up there or something?” Riley asks.

Just fly up there. He makes it sound so easy.

Kat glares at him for bringing it up, as if I hadn’t already thought of it on my own. As if we weren’t just talking about it. “Damien, you
can’t
. You can’t go up there alone! She’ll ... She didn’t really say she just wants to talk to you, did she?”

I don’t answer her. My arms and legs tremble. And I really,
really
don’t want to do this, and not just because I’ll probably end up with another raygun pointed at my chest. But I have to. “I’m the only one of us who can get there in time.” And it’s my fault she’s up there in the first place.

“So,
call
her!” Kat clenches her fists. She searches my face, her eyes pleading with me. “She
wants
you to go up there. She’ll unlock the doors, and we’ll all go. If she knows you’re coming, she’ll wait a couple minutes before doing whatever it is she’s going to do to hurt people. You said yourself, Riley can go invisible and sneak up on her.”

But maybe not before she kills me. Or Kat. Plus, like Kat said before, this doesn’t feel right, and I’m pretty sure it’s a trap. I just don’t know what kind yet.

I exchange a look with Riley, who’s shaking his head. “Don’t call her,” he says. Then he looks at his phone again and goes sort of pale. “Four minutes.”

Kat’s voice is frantic. “Damien, you can’t do this! You can’t go up to the roof—you can barely get up the stairs! She
knows
that. She knows how afraid of heights you are!”

“Wait, what?” Riley says. “You’re afraid of heights?”

Damn it. He really didn’t need to know that, though I guess he would have figured it out in a minute anyway.

“Is
that
why you said flying is lame?”

For the record, me being afraid of heights and flying being lame aren’t mutually exclusive, but I don’t bother saying that, and instead I ignore him and tell Kat, “She won’t be expecting me to fly. This is our best chance at stopping her. And we
have
to stop her, because if we don’t, she’ll kill everyone here. Everyone at the dance. Your dad’s there, and your friends, and a whole bunch of other people who don’t deserve to die.” Let alone get massacred. “And I don’t know what she’s planning or how big it is. She might kill you guys, too.”

“You think I’m letting you go up there alone?” Kat says. “You think I’m going to let her kill you?!”

I hold up my hands and make a few sparks fly at my fingertips. “She’s not going to kill me.”

Kat looks anything but convinced. But it doesn’t matter. We’re out of time, and it’s now or never.

I take the personality enhancer from Riley. “I’ll fly up there and blast her with it,” I say, looking up at the building, which suddenly seems a lot taller than it did a minute ago. And a lot blurrier. My chest gets tight and I already feel like I can’t breathe, but I try to keep the strain out of my voice when I lie and tell them, “I’ll be fine.”

“We’re going to find a way in,” Kat says, as if she didn’t hear anything I said. As if she didn’t believe a word of it. “You don’t get to die.”

“Three minutes,” Riley says.

And it really is now or never.

I shut my eyes and picture floating up, like I did in my room the other day. When I—

When I panicked and fell.

I tell myself that’s not going to happen this time. It
can’t
, because if I fail, if I can’t do this, a lot of people are going to die. In only three minutes.

I try pretending I actually like flying, because it worked the other day. But I can’t shake the nervous feeling clawing at my stomach. I couldn’t pretend it was a life-or-death situation then, and I can’t pretend this isn’t as serious as it is. So instead I think about just how badly I need to get to that roof. I think about how it’s my fault Sarah’s up there. How she’s going to kill all these people if I don’t get to her.

This time I notice when my feet leave the ground. It sends my heart racing and a little zap of electricity runs up my spine. I open my eyes.

Kat bites her lip.

Riley watches me hovering there, looking at me like he’s having serious second thoughts, like maybe I can’t do this and we should all be running while we can.

“Shut up, Perkins,” I mutter.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“But you were thinking it.”

I’m not going to let them down. I think about rising through the air. It works, and then I’m actually
moving
. I’m clutching the personality enhancer for dear life and have to make myself ease up, so I don’t break it again, but at least I’m making progress. I keep my eyes focused on the building, because then I can’t see how high up I am. Or how far away the ground is.

This building might be several stories tall, but it’s not anywhere near as high as the Banking and Finances building. It really doesn’t take that long before I’m almost to the roof, where Sarah has her back to me. She’s staring at her phone, and there’s something in the middle of the floor, something big, only it’s hidden under a sheet, so I can’t see what it is.

My pulse races from being so high up, and my palms sweat, but I try not to think about it. Instead, I keep my attention on the roof, noticing there’s also a big metal cage, like the one I saw in the drawing at Sarah’s house. It’s big enough for a person. And maybe it’s because I’m distracted, looking at the cage and getting this horrible sinking feeling in my stomach, or maybe it’s because I misjudged how close I was to the ledge in my effort to not look down, but when I try to step onto the roof, I
miss
, and my foot finds empty air.

A wave of sharp panic lights up my nerves, and my power cuts out, and I’m actually
falling
.

For a split second, I’m weightless, with nothing below me but a sickening drop. I recognize the feeling of plummeting through the air. I’m going to die. And then adrenaline courses through my veins, and my flying power kicks back in, and I hurtle myself over the edge onto the building as fast as I can.

This time, I definitely don’t land gracefully. I don’t even land on my feet. Instead, I slide face first onto the roof. The crash knocks the wind out of me, and I accidentally let go of the personality enhancer. It goes skittering across the floor. I hurry to reach for it just as Sarah hears me and turns around.

“Seven fifty-nine,” she says, slipping her phone into her pocket and pointing a raygun at me. “You’re cutting it close.”

The personality enhancer is several feet away. And well out of my reach. What I wouldn’t give for Amelia’s power right now. Not that I’d
ever
admit that to her, even if I don’t die tonight.

I wonder if I could make a run for it and shoot Sarah before she shoots me.

But then Sarah fires her raygun at the ground between me and the device, blasting a chunk out of the floor of the roof. “Don’t move,” she says through clenched teeth. “You were
supposed
to call me, so I could let you in. Instead you used your hero power! As if you’re not one hundred percent
villain
.” She spits the word, making a disgusted face.

“Sarah. You don’t mean that. You know I’m—”

“I know what you
think
you are!” She aims the raygun at me with both hands. She’s right in front of me, and there’s no way she’d miss if she fired.

My heart pounds. She’s going to kill me.

At least I’m not wearing just swimming trunks this time. At least when I die, I’ll be well dressed.

“Get up,” Sarah says.

I get up. Lightning flickers in my palms. “You don’t have to kill me. You don’t have to kill
anyone
!”

“Get in the cage.”

“What? No, I’m not—”

“Get in the cage, or everyone dies. And don’t even think about zapping me. Because if anything happens to me, the bombs go off automatically, and you can say good-bye to Vilmore and everyone in it.”

She’s bluffing. Maybe. Okay, knowing Sarah, probably not. And I really don’t want to die. And I don’t want Kat to die. Or Riley. Or anyone at the dance, really. Well, except for Tristan, but I’d like to be the one to kill him.

I think about blasting Sarah with my lightning and making a grab for the personality enhancer. But I don’t know if I can do it without killing her. And maybe it’s come down to that, but ... I don’t know that she’s bluffing about blowing everything up.

I make the lightning go away.

“Good boy,” Sarah says, as if she was talking to her dog. “Now
get in the cage
.”

I do what I’m told.

She closes the door and locks me in, then steps back, a smug grin on her face. “You should have embraced villainy, Damien. Because you thinking you have a heroic side? I meant it when I said it’s your worst trait. It’s the one that’s going to get you killed. If you could have just admitted you’re all villain, you could have walked away.” She mimes walking away with her fingers.

“Sarah ... what are you talking about?”

She shrugs. “There aren’t really any bombs. I wasn’t going to hurt anybody—not without
your
help, anyway.”

“
What?
” My stomach drops and my blood runs cold. I summon up lightning in my hands, because ... because maybe I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I know I have to do
something
.