Read Online Powerless by Tera Lynn Childs, Tracy Deebs - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Tera Lynn Childs, Tracy Deebs
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hours that I’ve heard about a secret level. The first two I can dismiss as crazy conspiracy nonsense. My mom, however…
Her eyes widen for a split-second before she shakes her head and laughs. “Sub-level two. I meant sub-level two. It’s been a long day.”
Rebel’s words echo in my mind. My mom is the most senior scientist at ESH Lab. If anyone had access to a secret level, she would. My chest tightens.
I must be so tired that I’m having aural hallucinations. Except…except Rebel seemed so sure. As did Draven and his friends. And even my mother said it casually at first, like its existence is obvious.
“I’m exhausted,” Mom says. “I’ve been up for nearly thirty-six hours, and if I’m lucky, I’ll sleep until morning.”
I nod and manage to force out a whispered, “Good night.”
She stops in the doorway and turns to me, a soft smile on her face. “In the meantime, don’t go getting into fights with any villains.”
I nod weakly as she walks upstairs.
They can’t be right. There can’t be a secret sub-level where heroes torture and experiment on kidnapped villains. Evil or not, villains are still people. They’re still human and deserve basic human rights. Superheroes are the good guys. They don’t hurt people. They sure as hell don’t torture them.
I’m not sure how long I stand there, palms splayed on the counter to hold myself up, mind whirling while I try to make sense of it all. Finally I shake my head, knocking the crazy thoughts from my mind.
“It’s not true,” I tell myself again. “Like Mom said, she’s exhausted. It was just a slip of the tongue.”
But as I stand there, trying to convince myself of what I know to be true—what I want to be true—I catch sight of her coat draped across the granite. Her coat…with her security badge.
She may have cut my pass to pieces, but hers is right there. She’s planning to be dead to the world for the next dozen hours. I could take her card, reassure myself that there is no secret sub-level at ESH, and get the stuff I forgot at the lab too.
She’ll never even know her badge was gone.
I stand there for another minute, staring at the badge. It’s the answer to all my problems. Well, at least, all my non-Rebel problems. Then, before I can talk myself out of it, I snatch my mom’s pass and slide it into my pocket. In a few short hours, as soon as the sun sets and the security guards change shift, I’m going in.
I’ll prove Rebel and the villains wrong.
Chapter 6
Sneaking out of the house isn’t a problem. Once my mom falls asleep, it would take a foghorn or a full-scale villain assault on her bedroom to wake her before she’s ready to get up.
Getting into the lab isn’t a problem either. The night security guards haven’t seen my mom yet, so they don’t know that I’ve been banned from the facility. They don’t bother to check the badge—they just let me scan my way in like I do every night.
Even packing up my research isn’t a problem. There’s a lot of it, and some of it is kind of hard to carry, but I find a couple boxes that will hold the fragile stuff pretty well. It’s not ideal, but I’ll just continue my experiments at home until Mom gets her sanity back.
Everything goes like clockwork. All that’s left is to find sub-level three. The problem is that I don’t have a clue how or where to look. There must be an entrance. But where?
This building is huge. There are three levels above ground and two—well, maybe three—below. Plus, the layout is downright labyrinthine. A million different hallways crisscross each other, and each hallway leads to four or five separate labs or storage areas or offices. I explored a lot of them when I was younger. There’s not much else to do when your mom is obsessed with her job and you’re too young to actually touch anything in a state-of-the-art research center.
It was annoying when I was little, but now I’m glad, because I don’t have to waste time
Her eyes widen for a split-second before she shakes her head and laughs. “Sub-level two. I meant sub-level two. It’s been a long day.”
Rebel’s words echo in my mind. My mom is the most senior scientist at ESH Lab. If anyone had access to a secret level, she would. My chest tightens.
I must be so tired that I’m having aural hallucinations. Except…except Rebel seemed so sure. As did Draven and his friends. And even my mother said it casually at first, like its existence is obvious.
“I’m exhausted,” Mom says. “I’ve been up for nearly thirty-six hours, and if I’m lucky, I’ll sleep until morning.”
I nod and manage to force out a whispered, “Good night.”
She stops in the doorway and turns to me, a soft smile on her face. “In the meantime, don’t go getting into fights with any villains.”
I nod weakly as she walks upstairs.
They can’t be right. There can’t be a secret sub-level where heroes torture and experiment on kidnapped villains. Evil or not, villains are still people. They’re still human and deserve basic human rights. Superheroes are the good guys. They don’t hurt people. They sure as hell don’t torture them.
I’m not sure how long I stand there, palms splayed on the counter to hold myself up, mind whirling while I try to make sense of it all. Finally I shake my head, knocking the crazy thoughts from my mind.
“It’s not true,” I tell myself again. “Like Mom said, she’s exhausted. It was just a slip of the tongue.”
But as I stand there, trying to convince myself of what I know to be true—what I want to be true—I catch sight of her coat draped across the granite. Her coat…with her security badge.
She may have cut my pass to pieces, but hers is right there. She’s planning to be dead to the world for the next dozen hours. I could take her card, reassure myself that there is no secret sub-level at ESH, and get the stuff I forgot at the lab too.
She’ll never even know her badge was gone.
I stand there for another minute, staring at the badge. It’s the answer to all my problems. Well, at least, all my non-Rebel problems. Then, before I can talk myself out of it, I snatch my mom’s pass and slide it into my pocket. In a few short hours, as soon as the sun sets and the security guards change shift, I’m going in.
I’ll prove Rebel and the villains wrong.
Chapter 6
Sneaking out of the house isn’t a problem. Once my mom falls asleep, it would take a foghorn or a full-scale villain assault on her bedroom to wake her before she’s ready to get up.
Getting into the lab isn’t a problem either. The night security guards haven’t seen my mom yet, so they don’t know that I’ve been banned from the facility. They don’t bother to check the badge—they just let me scan my way in like I do every night.
Even packing up my research isn’t a problem. There’s a lot of it, and some of it is kind of hard to carry, but I find a couple boxes that will hold the fragile stuff pretty well. It’s not ideal, but I’ll just continue my experiments at home until Mom gets her sanity back.
Everything goes like clockwork. All that’s left is to find sub-level three. The problem is that I don’t have a clue how or where to look. There must be an entrance. But where?
This building is huge. There are three levels above ground and two—well, maybe three—below. Plus, the layout is downright labyrinthine. A million different hallways crisscross each other, and each hallway leads to four or five separate labs or storage areas or offices. I explored a lot of them when I was younger. There’s not much else to do when your mom is obsessed with her job and you’re too young to actually touch anything in a state-of-the-art research center.
It was annoying when I was little, but now I’m glad, because I don’t have to waste time
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