Better Undercover

Ending 1

Lillianne, one year later

Cameron and I both collapsed onto the couch as soon as we got into the house. "How much more of this?" Cameron asked me.

"Seven more months," I said.

"You don't have to do this anymore," he replied. "Your birthday already passed."

"We're doing this together," I replied, leaving no room for argument. "We both know this is the only way."

Cameron sighed. "We brought in Foley. That was the condition for Kade to be the adult. I don't understand why that couldn't apply for you."

I shook my head. "I don't know. The lawyers explained it to me so many times, but I don't know."

We both laid in silence for a couple minutes. Government work was extremely difficult, and ever since other countries started to publicize their superhero powers, we were being worked so much harder. After Kade was killed, our options were to work for the government or potentially fall under Rebecca's, our mother who tried to steal a share of our dad's fortune and fled, custody. We took the lesser of the two evils.

"You ready to get to work?" I asked Cameron. Despite how exhausted we were, we were trying to help Foley track down Courtney. We hadn't really had the opportunity to talk since they got out of prison, but when Foley reached out to ask for our help, we couldn't refuse.

She didn't go into the details on why, exactly, we needed to find Courtney, but apparently she had vanished and if we do find her, we need to be very cautious.  I could read into that much.  Whatever happened in the past year, particularly in the four months since they got out of jail, Courtney and Foley were no longer on the same side.  As someone who had lived through a time of that, I knew what that could mean if we couldn't find her.  So despite how tired my brother and I were nearly all the time, we had to do this.

Cameron groaned and rolled over. "Yeah."

We got up and walked downstairs. I turned on the light to our lab and saw the computer was still running the search algorithm we had created to try to track Courtney's power signature. Cameron approached it and clicked through some of the results.

"Lillianne, we have something," he said in surprise. I joined him and looked over his shoulder.

I gasped. "Oh, God."

"I thought her powers were unique. Like ours are generated and can be replicated but hers come from some other power source," Cameron said, almost asking a question.

"I thought so too, but this means..." I trailed off.

There was a small silence, which Cameron filled. "Either Courtney can duplicate herself,"

"Or there's two other people with the same powers as her," I finished his statement. I walked over to the closet on the other side of the room and changed out of my government-issued uniform.

"Lane, what are you doing?" Cameron asked.

Once I had changed into normal clothes and hung up my uniform, I turned to face my younger brother. "We have to investigate this."

"Lane, we can't."

"Teleportation. Super speed. We'll be back before anyone notices. We owe it to Foley to find out which one of those is Courtney."
"And what if none of them are?" he asked me.

"Even more reason to investigate."

"Lillianne-"

"Are you coming or not?" I asked.

Cameron sighed. "There's three. I'll take the Illinois, if you can do Massachusetts and Arizona?"

I nodded. "We just need to be back by morning."

"What about the trackers?" Cameron asked.

I cursed and looked down at my forearm, where I knew a small chip was implanted to monitor my location.

"Make it fast," I said as I held out my arm to him.

Cameron's hand began moving quickly, and he reached through my skin and pulled out the metal chip. I screamed softly as it happened, but as soon as his hand was out I healed myself.

"Can you do it to yourself?" I asked. He nodded.

"Be ready to heal it though," which is what I did.

Then we split up. It was late, so I don't know what I expected to find. When I got to the location from Massachusetts, I was at a residential neighborhood park. There were three teenagers sitting on the swing set. One blond guy had a textbook in his lap, which I'm not sure how that was of any use to him because it was dark out, and the two dark haired girls were laughing as they swung back and forth. One of them had a soccer ball in her lap. As she swung backward, it slipped and fell. Before it hit the ground, however, the other girl and leaned over and grabbed it without even falling from her own swing. To anyone else watching, it would've just seemed impressive, but as someone who grew up with a brother with super speed, I could see it for what it was.

"Tanner!" I heard the girl who dropped the soccer ball cry out. Tanner, I guess her name was, laughed as she continued to swing like it never happened, even though the soccer ball change in possession clearly indicated that I didn't imagine what just happened.

There was someone else with super powers.

I knew this was true, as other countries had people like myself and my brother, but it had been so long since I saw someone who had powers with no restrictions, no one controlling them, and from what I could tell here, no conflict. I could've approached her and talked to her, but that would've caused more harm than good. I turned around and teleported to the Arizona location.

Tanner probably wouldn't always be free with her powers, and I wasn't going to be the person to take that away from her.

Now I was outside of a hospital. I went inside to the exact location the power source had marked. As I walked through, I checked my watch. I had four hours until I needed to be back at work. If I didn't, or if Cameron didn't, there would be so much suspicion. It led me to a door marked with a name I recognized. "Oh, God," I said quietly. Then someone inside the room turned and saw me through the small window in the door. She held up her hand, and I felt myself fall through the door as the world faded to black.

Forever Undercover - coming soon