Emily had gotten pretty good at tuning out specific sounds with her advanced hearing aids. At first, combing through the amplified noises beating against her eardrums was like swimming in an ocean with a million currents. Eventually, she was able to switch between the different tracks with little to no issue.
It made blocking out the annoying frequency of Director Shaw's voice that much easier.
Upon arriving at the Acropolis after their unsupervised field trip, she and her acquaintances had been forced into a large, windowless room. No one said anything to each other. The air in the stuffy room seemed to tremble with anticipation and dread.
The others were noticeably antsy, constantly shifting in their seats and throwing nervous glances at the door that had yet to open. Even Chase wouldn't stop fidgeting with the hem of his Atlas T-shirt. And this had all been his idea.
As for Emily?
She couldn't stop reliving it. The rush of it all… From the moment they boarded the jet until their encounter with NEMESIS, the buzzing feeling in her head wouldn't leave her. Excitement coursed through her veins, and it took everything within her to keep from smiling. She didn't, of course. She still had a reputation to uphold.
Admittedly, she'd been a bit skeptical about the plan to tag along on Atlas Corp's covert mission. After all, she wasn't an Atlas agent. Neither were the others. The six of them had little to no combat training and barely any real training with their new powers. Not to mention NEMESIS had two—yes, two—menacing Primes on their side.
Apex was second-in-command at NEMESIS, outranked only by their nefarious leader, Klaus. Sometimes the sight of his scarred face haunted her nightmares. She blinked rapidly as her memory flashed with the image of his teleporting figure jumping about the battlefield, dodging every single bullet with his name on it. She thought back to Frost—the blond, blue-eyed commander who discovered them within the facility. The woman dispatched Atlas agents with her ice abilities as if she'd been doing for years.
She probably had.
As six young Primes had been waiting for someone—anyone—to enter the room, Emily wondered how long Klaus, Apex, and Frost had been...like this. How long had they been Primes? According to Klaus, they were all born this way; the Prime gene sequence hid within them, waiting to be awakened.
Waiting to reveal their true nature.
How long had Klaus, Apex, and Frost been able to be their true selves?
Because—despite the nature of her chance encounter with NEMESIS—that's what they'd given her. The opportunity to be her true self. The others might not have always said it, but she could see they pitied themselves. They feared what they'd become. If they could've reversed what was done to them, they would've. Emily liked to believe she would too. But some days, she felt grateful for what happened. For the past four years, she'd been an outcast in our town. In her own home. She'd become a pariah that no one wanted to touch with a twenty-foot pole. She was used to being different. The feeling was a comforting one these days.
Her entire childhood was spent pretending to be someone else.
But she had finally escaped all of that.
And now a new layer had been added to her complex nature. She was an entirely new species—a manifestation of humanity's next evolutionary step. She was a Prime. If she thought she was different before...
She shook her head.
She'd rather die than be forced back into that cage again.
If they could all go back to that day in the quarry, she wouldn't have changed a thing. Well, maybe one thing.
Eventually, Director Shaw entered the room. The stern expression on his face suggested he wasn't happy to see them. The look behind his thin-framed glasses reminded her of the way her father looked upon her when she screwed up—which was quite a lot.
"Do you know how badly that could've gone?" was the first thing he said. His low voice trembled with controlled rage. "Do you understand the danger you put yourselves in?"
No one answered. They didn't even dare to look him in the eye.
"That wasn't a rhetorical question."
Chase cleared his throat. "We were just trying to help—"
"I told you no," Director Shaw interrupted. He removed his glasses, pinching the bridge of his nose as he squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. "The squad I sent had it under control. The mission was to track NEMESIS to where they've been storing their equipment. Thanks to your interference, my squad was forced into a gunfight. One casualty. Multiple injuries. And all of them could've been prevented if you had just listened to me."
Emily felt sick. She didn't see any of the Atlas agents fall in battle. The perimeter they'd set around the compound meant they were ready for NEMESIS before the terrorists could regroup. She'd been too busy fighting them to notice anyone else around her.
But someone died. They were dead.
The word echoed in her head.
Was it their fault? Was it hers?
"They have two Primes on their side. Two very skilled Primes, at that," Chase explained. "We tried to… You needed help. You needed our help. Atlas can't take them down alone."
"For decades, Atlas Corp has been dealing with threats you can't even begin to fathom." Director Shaw took a seat at the head of the long, wooden table in the bright room. "If anyone can stop NEMESIS, it'll be us. Not…six children."
Emily crossed her arms. "But we're not just children. Not really." They weren't. Not anymore.
Director Shaw pursed his lips.
"Chase is right," she continued. "If you could've stopped them on your own, then you would've done it already. You can be as mad at us all you want. Hell, I'm used to it. But that doesn't change the fact that if you want to beat them, then you need us."
Deep creases formed around the man's mouth. The greys in his beard seemed brighter than before. She suddenly noticed the crow's feet around his eyes. He reminded her too much of her aging father. She frowned.
"This isn't a game, Emily. Like it or not, you all are under Atlas's protection. You all could have gotten seriously hurt. If what the mission report says is true, Oscar nearly got himself killed."
Emily glanced in a depressed-looking Oscar's direction. His forehead was pressed against the table. He'd hesitated in the face of the speeding eighteen-wheeler loaded with the stolen Arkangel tech. He could've stopped them from making it away with whatever machine they were building. She had to stop herself from sneering at him.
Defeat, inadequacy, and incompetence weren't things she respected—a byproduct of being raised by her parents. While she loathed them, she had them to thank for her strong will. Had she been in Oscar's position, those NEMESIS agents would've never made it off the compound. If it had been her, they might've been having a different conversation with the director of Atlas.
Months after her biggest secret was revealed to her parents, her father spoke to her for the first time. And all he told her was, "If you are going to live like this, then you need to be tsuyoi."
She had to be strong.
"This cannot happen again," Director Shaw continued. "I told you that you weren't ready. And what did you do? You proved me right. My agents had the situation handled."
Chase snorted. "With all due respect, sir," he began, "I don't think that's true. Do you even know what they're building? Did you know Arkangel Pharmaceuticals is working with them?"
Director Shaw pursed his lips.
Emily smirked. She didn't remember reading about that in NEMESIS's file in the Watchtower. The bioterrorists had stolen from a plethora of different companies, namely Nexxus Industries. But Arkangel was working directly with them, supplying them with parts for the metal monstrosity they'd stolen.
What even was that thing?
"I know Klaus and his mission well," Director Shaw revealed. "He wants to throw the world into chaos—and he won't stop until he's done it. He thinks because he burned, the rest of us have to as well."
Klaus's ghastly face invaded her mind. All she could see were his scars. She wanted to know where he got them from.
"But…how's he going to do it?" Theo asked. "Because that machine we saw… I dunno, it looked like something out of a movie. All kinds of buttons and tubes and stuff—"
Director Shaw tapped his finger on a glass panel built into the table. A touchscreen interface awakened. After typing something onto the translucent keyboard, a holographic image hovered above the glass. "Did it look like that?"
The speedster's jaw dropped. "It looked exactly like that."
Emily gawked at the spinning hologram. It was almost an exact replica of the contraption from the laboratory, save for a few missing pieces blocked out by shaded, pixelated squares.
"What is it?" Stella asked.
Director Shaw rubbed his chin. "My researchers have their theories, but without being able to see the machine up close, there's no real way to tell." Director Shaw rubbed his chin. "NEMESIS has stolen from a lot of companies, even kidnapping workers and researchers to assist with…whatever this project is. The two biggest companies affected so far have been Nexxus and Arkangel. Genetics research and pharmaceuticals."
Emily remembered Klaus' words in that quarry.
"I will introduce you to your true selves…"
An epiphany hit her in the chest like an arrowhead. She sucked in a breath, drawing the attention of everyone in the room.
"They're building a bio-weapon," she announced.
"A bio-what?" Theo nearly dropped his inhaler.
"They're instruments of destruction used in bioterrorism," Chase answered. "Mustard gases, airborne toxins, diseases… My dad used to operate a squad that specifically went after terrorists like NEMESIS."
Director Shaw nodded. "My researchers are still trying to confirm, but my theory is that Klaus intends to use all of his stolen technology to build a machine that spreads Primonium throughout the world. His goal has always been to usher the world into a 'new era'. If he gets his way…"
"He'll have an entire army of Primes," Chase finished.
Oscar lifted his head from the table. "How the hell is he gonna do that? We had to get baptized in the stuff to get our powers. He can't do that to everyone, can he?"
"There are many ways he can do it—infecting the water supply of every major city, creating a contagious airborne toxin, the list goes on and on. That's what's been making it difficult to counteract them," Director Shaw said. "We cannot let any of that happen under any circumstances. Primonium…it's an extremely volatile material. We don't know how those without the Prime sequence will react to it. If NEMESIS succeeds in their plan, we risk millions of people getting sick. A large percentage of them may even die from Primonium poisoning."
A lump formed in Emily's throat. That explained why she never saw any NEMESIS soldiers handling the element barehanded. It'd been mentioned before that Primonium wasn't native to Earth despite having been here for millennia. It was foreign. Otherworldly. Alien, even.
She stared at her hands as if they were atom bombs.
What am I?
"We've have to stop them." Chase shot up from his chair. He pressed his hand into the table, hard enough to leave a hand-sized imprint in the wood. "Look, I know we messed up. I take full responsibility for that. It was my idea to sneak onto the jet, my idea to try and help with the mission. If you want to punish anyone, let it be me." He stared deep into Director Shaw's eyes. "But, sir, you're not in the position to be declining help from the only people capable of fighting back against NEMESIS. Maybe with a few weeks of training we can—"
The director raised his hand. Chase went quiet. Emily's gaze bounced between the two as if she were watching a silent tennis match. She fully expected the man to shoot down the idea again.
But what he said next sent an electric shock through her entire body.
"We might've failed to stop NEMESIS today," he began, "but the mission wasn't a complete failure. We managed to capture a few of their operatives, who are being interrogated as we speak. Plus, from what I heard, some of you weren't half-bad out there. You all definitely need work, though."
Emily's face lit up.
"Chase is right," the man continued as he stood up. "NEMESIS has Primes fighting on their side. We don't. Or…at least we didn't."
Stella lifted a brow at him. "Are you saying we're going to be—"
"Superheroes?" Andre asked. It was the only word he'd said since they got back to the Acropolis.
"Please let us be superheroes. Please let us be superheroes," Theo pleaded with his fingers crossed.
Director Shaw smiled. "Well, I wouldn't say superheroes." He moved toward the exit of the meeting room. "You want to be Atlas agents? Fine." He grabbed the doorknob. "Training starts at five in the morning. Don't be late." His smile stretched into a grin before he disappeared, the door closing slowly behind him.
Emily didn't bother hiding her smirk.
They'd broken almost every rule the man gave them in a single night. She'd fully been expecting some sort of punishment. Her father would've locked her in her room for eternity. She scowled at the thought.
The room went deathly quiet. Emily could pick out the sounds from outside the door—footsteps, hushed conversations, clacking keyboards.
Theo was the first to break the silence.
"Dude… We're gonna be superheroes!"
Everyone smiled. Except for Oscar. He looked completely and utterly mortified.
Emily didn't blame him. She would've thought Theo wouldn't be cut out for something like this, but even he managed to pull his weight back in Colorado. As for the fire-wielder…
"I don't know about this guys," he mumbled.
Andre dropped a hand onto his shoulder. He didn't say anything. He simply nodded.
Chase turned his attention toward the boy. Emily sat back in her chair, waiting to see what the blond would say. The two of them might not have been friends, but she could tell they were raised similarly. His parents were military. That meant they didn't tolerate weakness either.
Oscar refused to meet his gaze. "Look, don't even say it, man. I know I messed up back there. If I'd just stopped that truck, maybe NEMESIS wouldn't have—"
Chase waved him off. "Don't worry about it, Oz."
Emily blinked. Seriously?
"Hey, man, I'm sorry about earlier," he said. "I know I messed up— "
Oscar's eyes widened. "Huh?"
"It was your first time in a situation like that. You froze up. It happens to everyone." Chase shrugged. Then he smiled wistfully, his eyes fixed upon something the others couldn't see. "I remember the first time my dad took me hunting. I'd managed to track down this huge deer. Its antlers were the biggest I'd ever seen. I…I had him right in my sights. But…he looked at the scope. There was no way he saw me—we were twenty meters away—but he looked at me. I saw its eyes, I swear he did. All I had to do was…pull the trigger." He paused. "But guess what I did?"
"You pussied out," Emily answered with a cheeky grin.
Stella shot her a dirty look. She ignored it.
A half-smile surfaced on Chase's lips. At least he's not a snowflake. She didn't know what the guy saw in a girl like Stella. Had she played for the same team as him, she would've entertained the thought of… She shook her head. Now wasn't the time for that.
"I couldn't shoot the deer," Chase continued. "My dad had to take the shot. He gave me a stern talking to after the fact, saying that I can't freeze up like that. Because one day I'll end up in a situation where freezing isn't an option." He glanced at everyone else in the room. "But not everyone is built to make decisions like that. Not at first. But if we're going to do this…if we're going to have each other's backs…I'm expecting you to do what you have to do. Because it might not be just your life at stake next time. It might be mine. Or Stella's. Or Emily's."
"I might let that last one go," Oscar joked.
Emily rolled her eyes.
"Great speech," Theo quipped. Yawning, he zipped over to the door. "Now, can we get out of here? I need a shower."
"Yeah, you do," Stella said while fanning her face.
Chase nodded. "We all should get some rest. If we're going to stand a chance against NEMESIS, we've got to become just as powerful as they are." Straightening like a trained soldier, he stuck his hands into the pockets of his pants. "And that starts with training tomorrow." And, with that, he exited the room.
They all left one by one.
Soon, Emily found herself sitting in that windowless tank alone. She found herself replaying Chase's words in her head. They were clear as day in her ears. His message injected a strange mix of fear and courage into her veins. Because she knew he was right.
Next time they went into battle together, one of their lives could depend on another member of the team making a tough decision. What if Oscar froze again? What if she hesitated when it mattered?
She clenched her jaw. Squeezing her eyes shut, she banished the thought. Hesitating wasn't an option. It couldn't happen.
She wouldn't let it.