Page 44 of No Capes
Golden Ace elbows Dark Static. “You owe me twenty bucks.”
I lean back against the wall, catching myself. “But they always test athletes for powers. My records don’t show anysigns of them.” I remember when Arielle had tested me. How quickly she’d declared I was normal. Then the image of knocking six seconds off my 100m time at the swim meet replaces that memory, and I remember how the water had rippled with me as I shredded through it with impossible speed. Those memories do not match up.
“My sister is a liar.”
Golden Ace claps his hands, jumping up and down. My favorite Super is so much more hyper than I expected him to be. And… younger? Maybe? It’s hard to tell, except for the casualness of this meeting. Very different from when he’d presented at school.
“At first, it was just a lucky coincidence that you wanted to help D.S. with the mayor thing, but then we heard about your last swim meet,” says Golden Ace.
“Dropping six seconds off your 100m freestyle, for a swimmer of your caliber,” D.S. says, “is almost unheard of. It raised a flag for a lot of people that you might have powers. Apparently, Arielle kept them pretty quiet, because Bridges didn’t fully investigate them until today. Though, I suspect he might have been looking for them the night we met.”
A strange lightness pulses through me, a weightless luminescence, and I feel like I could float on a cloud.Wait. Can I?Is that possible now?
I have powers.
Me.
“I need water to use them,” I think aloud, “But what can I do, exactly?” Golden Ace can fight, fly, and read minds, and those are only the basics. D.S. has lasers and lightning and then some. I don’t think I have flying capabilities, and I definitely cannot mind-read, but it seems like I can do something with explosions. And water.
“It’ll be hard to know for sure until you can control them,” Golden Ace answers. “You’ll discover them as you test them out.”
Control them?Yikes.We’re standing before exactly what will happen if I can’t control them—debris and a dead man. Sure, I know a lot about Golden Ace’s powers, or at least as much as all the Goldies, seeing asno onepredicted he could read minds, but I don’t know what it would be like to have powers, or how to use them, or if there are any limitations, which there have to be. Supers aren’t gods. Everyone can be beaten.
“I’m definitely going to need help,” I say. “This is crazy.”
“You’re in luck.” Dark Static grins. “I’ve already volunteered.”
Golden Ace touches his mask, suddenly alert. “Time to go. Company in about four minutes.”
I swallow my awe.That’show Golden Ace bests every villain. He must be able to hear thoughts at shortandlong ranges, and almost no one knows. How incredibly useful. How incredibly important that people never find out.
“Time to go, Roberts,” says Dark Static. He grabs my hand, which feels small and cold in his glove, and pulls me into the darkest corner of the debris.
He wraps his arm around my waist, pulling me against him. He smells like the night. Shadows, crisp air, and secrets.
“What—” I start to say.
“Hold on tight.”
“If you think for one second that I’m flying with you—”
And for another time that afternoon, everything goes black.
Seventeen
The blackout lasts about four seconds.
Then Dark Static and I are standing, tightly wound together, in a thicket of bushes and trees.
Wait. I recognize this tree. It’s the tree I stare at when I swing…
“You can let go now,” he says, close enough for his chin to rest on my dust-covered hair. Even his heartbeat feels electric.
I step away, the shadows cascading off until I’m in the open, under the setting sun.
He brought me to the swing set in my neighborhood.
“You can portal,” I say. A rare ability for Super.
