Not Your Villain (Sidekick Squad #2)(61)

Bells exhales a sigh of relief, but he hasn’t shifted today. What will the machine pick up? He glances at the dial’s needle pointing between “A” and “F.”

“Let’s see where it is now, right after you’ve taken the supplement.” Orion gestures to Claudia.

Claudia grabs two of the cell bars and stretches them apart. A bead of sweat forms on her head. How much has she been straining her powers while on the run with Orion?

Bringing the machine, Orion steps through the gap. Claudia follows and holds Bells by the shoulders. “Don’t try anything clever,” she says, tightening her grip.

The comeback dies in his mouth, and he swallows hard as Orion inflates a fabric cuff to a tight squeeze and then deflates it. She slips a device on his finger, pricks another finger and blots up the blood with a thin strip of paper, and feeds the strip with the spot of blood to the machine.

It beeps and whirs, and the lever moves. It flips past the “B” and moves toward “A,” and Bells watches in horror as it tries to continue past that.

Orion shrieks, jumping up and down. Her delight radiates across her face, briefly transforming her into her old self. She gestures at Claudia. “They work! They work! Give them to me. I’ll take another now.”

“Of course they work.” Claudia narrows her eyes at Bells. There’s an unspoken question there, but she doesn’t say anything else, just takes the tin out of her pocket and hands it to Orion.

Orion shakes out a mint, then two, and pops them into her mouth. She closes her eyes. “Excellent job on the flavoring, by the way. I knew you were listening when I pointed out the last batch tasted too much like cinnamon.”

Claudia paces. “Do you want to do the second test?”

Orion laughs and throws her head back; there’s a wild gleam in her eyes. “Absolutely. You’re gonna have to use your power for this one, Chameleon. Gotta get an active read on how much of the gamma-protein you’re using. Since you haven’t shifted today, we’ll be able to see how saturated it is, and that will tell us how much you’ll be able to use your power today.”

Claudia nods. “Most B-class meta-humans are solidly in the sixty to eighty milligrams per deciliter range. He was at fifteen last night when we brought him in, and was actively shapeshifting at the time.” She turns to Bells and puts her iron grip on his shoulder. “Change.”

“No,” Bells says. “You’ve already got what you needed.”

Orion clicks her tongue. “It works. Your power level is up an entire class. But I need to know about stamina. And this won’t work unless you’re using your ability.” She sniffs and looks down her nose at him. “Now, are we back to sixty or even higher now?”

Claudia’s nails dig into his shirt. He doesn’t see the point of going along with her charade any longer. He’s at their mercy. Does it matter whether it’s Claudia’s or Orion’s game he’s playing? Bells looks at Claudia and is hit with a sudden pang of sadness; she’s got the same pinched expression that Jess makes when she’s tired. He hates what Claudia did. And yet, Orion’s experiments have clearly taken a toll on Claudia. He doesn’t understand her choices, but maybe she regrets them.

Orion is tapping her feet on the floor. “Go on, shift. You’re part of something bigger now: a brand new development in the evolution of meta-human biology. You can join me at the start of a new era.”

Bells concentrates on pushing all of his disgust into his expression.

“Don’t you want to be a part of something better?”

“I’m not going to help you,” Bells says. “You know I’m gonna do everything in my power to stop you, so my answer is definitely no.”

Orion’s grin tightens. “I thought you might say that. You see this?” She takes the syringe out of the case and very slowly draws the serum into the needle. Shining in the scant light, a bead of liquid drips off the tip.

“I can nullify your abilities. You’ll never shift again. You’ll be stuck in that body forever.” Orion steps closer, bringing the needle up to his bare shoulder. “So let me tell you what you’re gonna do. You’re gonna shift some small detail of your appearance. Make a toenail grow longer; it doesn’t matter what. Then, I’m going to measure your gamma protein levels, and you’re going to tell me everything you know about the newest training center and where it is. I’m going to need a lot more subjects for my experiments if I’m ever going to be the most powerful meta-human again.”

Bells should be terrified that Captain Orion knows who he is, that all the precautions that he’s taken, that his parents took, the fake name and fake identity and shifting the entire time he was at training, that all that was for nothing. He squares his shoulders and glares at her.

“So what, you read my file, you think you know me? I’ve had a lifetime of figuring myself out, and I’m still doing that. But I knew I was trans before I knew I had abilities. My body is just one aspect of who I am, and if you take my powers away, I’m still me.”

Bells’ heart is racing like a hovertrain off its tracks. He’s afraid, but he pulls himself together and faces that fear head on. “You think I would betray my friends, everything I believe in, for this? My body isn’t me. I am everything in my mind and heart and what I believe in.”