Endgame (Book 3)

Chapter 45

"I never thought I'd be so glad to see you," I said, a relieved grin spreading across my face.

I didn't mean it that way, but my words made her grimace. "Even in the face of death, you still hate me?" she asked.

"You saved me," I replied coolly, avoiding the question. "Thanks. But I thought you said-"

"What I said was that I wouldn't tell them," she cut me off, levitating closer to Zero and lower to the ground. "As in your parents. I never said anything about helping you out. I didn't come alone, either."

No sooner had I opened my mouth to ask who else she had brought along when a large, ugly green monster dropped out of the sky.

"Ben!" I exclaimed. "I mean, Metagor!"

The ugly beast grinned at me, then extricated himself from the twisted pieces of metal he had landed in and made his way over to me. "You thought you were going to do this without me? I've been waiting for this payback for a long time." Was that coming from Ben or him?

Smiling didn't work for him. I was happy that both of them had come, but I still stood by my reason for coming alone in the first place: it was too dangerous for them to risk their lives over my problem.

"Why don't you get yourself free?" he asked.

"Powers are acting funny again," I explained. "I got struck by lightning."

Well, not again. This had only happened in my dream world, but- oh.

I was thinking my future seeing power was strangely the most active during my time in the pod. It predicted things that were happening now in odd ways, like my powers messing up. There was no way for me to tell what was going to come back up next.

Even still, maybe I could use that to my advantage.

Cassie's head whipped around toward me, her concentration broken. "You got hit by lightning again?"

Zero began to get up, growling, but Cassie focused on him again and he was forced down once more.

"What do you mean? This is the first time," I said.

"Maybe for you. It's happened before." I couldn't read her face; she had turned away, and I could only see her back. "One of our missions was to apprehend a metahuman criminal who could create tornadoes and summon lightning. We hadn't known about the lightning part at the time, and you got hit in the fight."

Metagor leaned in close to my restraints, inspecting them closely. "If I can just get these off..."

I winced at the smell of his breath. It was bad. Disgusting, just like the rest of him. It was strong enough to make me forget about what Cassie had just said.

He placed two spiked fingers around the metal band on my left wrist, pulling gently.

"This might hurt a little," he warned me. Then, he yanked the band out of its position, letting it fall to the ground along with the screws holding it in place.

"Ow!" I hollered. He had squeezed it tighter to get a grip strong enough to break it loose and  ended up hurting my wrist in the process. I held it to my chest, gritting my teeth while it throbbed. "Careful."

"Sorry," he apologized sarcastically. Some things never changed, even with Ben's and Metagor's personalities.

He repeated the same motion for the restraints around my ankles and right arm while Cassie and I continued to talk.

"Jay, I think you should let us handle the rest of this," she said.

"What? Why? My powers will be back soon. I'm just waiting right now," I said.