Salamander Girl

Eight

After making it to the Lakeside police station and convincing my parents that the crowd had separated us, the police cleared everyone to go back home, though most of the power was out and would stay out until the power plant was repaired. When people asked what had happened, the frazzled officer said something about a "wicked scary spider" that everyone laughed off. They wouldn't be laughing when their power came back and they got to see the news again

Dad and Ammon went to go pick up our orders from Subway, and I collapsed onto my bed.

"Come on, get up, we're not done yet!" Sammy said, tugging almost imperceptibly on my pinkie toe.

I groaned into my pillow. "But I'm too tired!"

"It seems prudent that we shall have to construct a training regimen for you." Sammy observed.

Reluctantly, I lay at the end of my bed, facing my laptop, which had been successfully Sammy-itized, the perfect setup for any superhero central intelligence, minus the fifty-something extra computer screens.

"Where are you getting the power for all this?" I asked, circling the laptop with my pointer finger.

"It takes a surprisingly small amount of power," Sammy said, scuttling up the back of my floral-print office chair.

"Good, we don't have to steal power like Tarantula was. Hey," I snapped my fingers, trying stimulate my mind. "Did you...did you figure out where he wanted to send the power that he was trying to steal?"

"I did, actually!" Sammy said proudly. He hit the right-click button with his tail, pulling up a GPS map. A big, bright red dot identified an area on the seaside of the city.

"What is that place?"

"A company that calls itself 'New Beginnings', they say they're 'working in the sciences of tomorrow'." He chuckled and shook his head.

"I thought Tarantula was a Genesis experiment?" I asked.

"He is!" Sammy insisted. "Genesis is the first book in the Christian Bible, isn't it? New Beginnings is just their cover."

I narrowed my eyes suspiciously.

Falling back onto my bad, I cushioned my head in my arms. "Sammy, what if I don't want to be a hero?" I mumbled.

Sammy perched himself on my arm, staring at me curiously. "Why wouldn't you want to be a hero?"

I shrugged. "It's really hard, and I really don't know what to do. The police didn't want me to help, and I kind of just made things worse."

Sammy sighed, but he couldn't come up with anything to refute my claims.

"Not to mention, you and Doctor Christian seem to be keeping a lot of things from me. What exactly does Genesis do that makes it evil, anyway?"

Sammy wrung his hands nervously, not looking at my eyes.

I sighed and pushed myself up. I had finally made up my mind. "Pack up your things, Sammy. I'm taking you back to Doctor Christian."

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Sammy didn't talk to me after that. I even gave him the olives that he wanted, but he left them untouched in the corner of the new terrarium I'd gotten from the pet store. Mom let me take it only on the promise that I would pay her back for it working at the desk. I promised that I'd cover it fro the rest of the afternoon.

My bike was rusting under the back porch, covered in spiderwebs behind Ammon's plastic tricycle, but it still worked. I tucked Sammy's cage in the basket I stole of Abigail's bike, since she hardly used her bike either, and tucked my laptop in my backpack. Hopefully, Doctor Christian could fix what Sammy had done to it.