Not Your Villain (Sidekick Squad #2)(81)

Abby cracks her knuckles, concentrating hard.

“Anything?” Bells asks.

Her eyes are closed, and her fingers are pressed to her temples. The DED in front of her seems to flicker.

“I know it’s there,” she says, frowning. “I can feel it, I just can’t— I can’t do anything!”

Abby looks across the room, where Jess and Emma are deep in conversation.

“She’s not going to think any less of you if you can’t get them back,” Bells says quietly.

“I know,” Abby says. “It just… and I feel doubly guilty, you know, that I want it so bad.”

“But you can feel your power,” Bells says. “How much is there? Is it the same as it normally is?”

“I don’t understand.” Abby frowns. “What do you mean, feel your power?”

“When I think about shifting, I imagine there’s a fire inside me—that’s my power. It changes, depending on how I’m feeling or what I’ve done that day, but if I think about it, I can see how much energy I have left before I’m tapped out.” Bells can see his power now, a tall flickering flame.

“You can see your power? I’ve never heard of that—did they teach you that at the training center?”

“Nope. Just something I like to do. At training, once they hand you your power rating, people pretty much stick to that, the four hours, two hours, one hour thing. No one really tries to last beyond that. Guess I just like to push the boundaries.”

“But that made you stronger,” Abby says, eyes widening. “All right, I’ll try it. What do you do? Just—imagine a fire?”

Bells is at a loss. He doesn’t really know how to explain it—it just is. He reaches for his power, and he can see his fire, but doesn’t know how to help Abby see hers.

“You know the difference when you just woke up and you feel really refreshed and ready to go, right? Like you know how much energy you have? It’s kind of like that, and I just try to get a sense of how big it is, you know?”

Abby takes a deep breath. “I just don’t know what I’m doing. This all feels very—weird.”

Okay, so the fire imagery isn’t working for Abby. She’s logical and her power is all about connecting with tech, things flowing from one circuit to another…

“Can you think of it like… If you’re a solar panel or something, like can you tell how much of a charge you have?”

“I am not a solar panel, Bells,” Abby says flatly.

He chuckles. “Okay, not a solar panel. What about a computer? I mean, you know tech better than I do, you know, the thinky part—”

“Motherboard.”

“Close your eyes, think about what you feel. Can you feel your power?” He feels silly saying it, but he doesn’t have a better way to describe it.

“Yes, Bells, I can feel my power,” Abby says, amused. “Actually, yeah. Like I know I have it, I just—can’t do anything about it.”

“Okay, don’t worry about that. I mean, we figured that the serum is doing something, like blocking your ability to access it. But you can still feel your power, that’s great!”

Abby winces. “All right, so if I was a solar panel, it’s covered in dust, and I just need to clean it.”

Bells grins. “Exactly!”

“… and how do I do that? It’s not as simple as believe it and it magically happens. Maybe we should just focus on developing your new skills. I mean, this was interesting and all, but I don’t really see the point in having me imagine what my powers look like inside me.”

“Hmm, but you know you still have them,” Bells says, smirking at her.

She offers him a slow smile. “Oh. I guess I do.”





Ch. 16...





Genevieve crosses her arms. “You are children. You don’t need to be putting yourselves in danger. We are safe here.”

Jess looks pointedly at her parents, who also nod, agreeing.

“We need to focus on our job here, to keep meta-humans from falling into the hands of the Collective,” Li Hua says.

“It sounds like you’re hiding.” Bells frowns. “We can’t just sit here and not do anything.”

“We need more information,” Genevieve says.

This devolves into more arguments, and more adults get involved.

Jess rolls her eyes and jerks her head for them to follow, and they go to Bells’ room they’ve claimed for themselves.

“This is going to take forever. We’ve already spent more time here than necessary. Orion could have the Registry already.” Her brow furrowed in thought, Jess paces the room.

Bells grins. “You know what? Why do we need their permission? Brendan, you were working on making new ID’s for us so we can get on a train…”

“Oh, that’s done,” Brendan says.

“We were waiting to ask the Guild for help,” Abby says. “But it doesn’t look like they’re going to want to risk it. We’re on our own.”

The door opens, and Christine smirks at them. “How are you gonna get out without getting caught, though?”

“Oh, yeah…” Brendan says. “Yeah, I mean, Abby and I made this.” He holds up a small device. “And it’ll scramble the locks, but if my mom is there she could pick us all up with one hand and bring us back.”