Superhero Effects

22. LUCINDA

I wrenched away from Cooper, furious tears bunching in my eyes.

He hadn't been able to pull me far. We were still under the house's foundation, standing on dirty cement in a hallway filled with closed rooms, hiding who knew what kind of sad stories.

"Lucinda, listen to me," he whispered furiously.

"Get. Out. Of my way."

He grabbed me by the arms. "Listen."

"I don't know what happened to you, and I don't have time to figure it out right now. Get out of my way, or I will knock you out!"

"This," he said flatly, his grips on my arms tightening, "is the only way. I am on your side, Lucinda. Always. We don't have the time or privacy to go into how I got sucked into this, but I am trying to protect everyone with this. Tristan will survive. She's smart, intuitive, and the best chance we have at finally ending all this. I know that's what you were thinking when you brought her here. The plan has changed but not the goal."

My eyes watered as I began to shake my head, almost frantically. "No. You don't know. You don't know how much he'll push. I'm not letting my sister go through that. We'll find another way."

"There is no other way," he stressed. "If there was, you would have found it by now and you know it."

The echo of a faint scream reached us.

I looked to the way we had come, my heart racing. If Uncle Mack trusted Cooper enough to have him down here, with no Colors watching over him, he had to have majorly proven his loyalty, and he had to have been proving it for a while.

There had to be a way different to get all of us out. I didn't care if we had to run for the rest of our lives; letting Tristan go through a fraction of what I went through wasn't an option.

"What happened to you?" I whispered with tears in my eyes, focusing back on him. His eyes hadn't moved from studying my expression.

"I told you—"

"I'm not buying it. You don't believe in sacrificing people, no matter the goal. You don't believe in dishonesty and playing games. You were solidly good and humble and honest, Cooper. You were my good influence. You're the reason," my voice broke as a lump grew in my throat, "I was trying so hard."

His face fell. "I-I'm trying to save you, Luce. All I've been doing is trying to save you."

My heart dropped. That whole time and beyond, all the memories of him had been the reason I had been striving to be so straight-and-narrow. He was my good influence...and I was his bad one.

Another tail end of a faint scream sounded. Cooper flinched.

"I'm getting my sister out of here," I said. "If you try to stop me again, I'll knock you out."

He was quiet for a long moment. I started forward impatiently when he sighed and said, "You'll have to knock me out anyway. If you're blowing you're good-standing; I'm keeping mine. One of us has to stay behind."

"What did you—?"

"Don't," he warned quietly, "ask me how I proved it. I won't tell you. I won't tell anyone." I frowned. "I'll cover for you, Lucinda. Just do it."

I did it. With one hard, quick, super-powered punch to the temple, he dropped.

I turned my head and let him fall with a thump to the ground. If I had eased him down, it would have looked suspicious. I didn't have the heart to look at him again; I just crossed over him and took off.

I knew what an average person looked like. My dad was normal, and my little brother and step-mom. They were fragile. They were slow and clumsy. They got sick easily and a little toe knocking into the corner of something set them off.