Super Secret | Half Hero Book 2 [ON HOLD]

Chapter 1: Dead Man Walking

The undercurrent of testosterone was confusingly brash for such a civilized conversation about contracts. 

My mom pulled my face up to inspect my hair, running her lithe fingers through my newly chopped curls.

"I like it," she declared. "Must be easy to style."

My hand automatically went to touch the phantom locks I'd snipped off with a pair of toenail clippers in a moment of willful defiance last week. Galen did his best to cover my hack job, but the only hairstylist he knew was a barber. 

I ended up really digging the artful fade his guy managed to shave into the underside of my punky new bob.

Honestly, I was willing to do anything to fluster mister Jonathan Miller and his brigade of sycophantic politicians. 

As soon as he brought me back from Malaysia, he'd been desperate to get me out in front of the American people, assuring them I was as wholesome as a sparkler on the fourth of July (complete with a spangled Scion getup and control-top hosiery).

Jonathan's image consultants told me that I needed to make myself less threatening by conforming to the normal 'human looks' most people want to see. My new hair was just the first in a long list of alterations I'd dreamed up to derail their plans. 

I am many things, but normal was never top of the list (or even on it).

While all this was going on, my mom and brother (and Varun, apparently) had been working tirelessly to stymie Mr. Miller's reckless ambitions. 

The tug of war over my future had granted me a brief, three-week reprieve, which was now coming to an abrupt end. Varun's arrival meant I was (once again) going to become a skin-pincushion in the name of science.

"Would you like to see where we will be working, Ella?" Varun asked, taking a step in my direction.

"I don't think I can say no," I smiled, flashing Galen another look.

Resentment burned through the fine tailoring of his woolen suit as Galen escorted us to the door. The secret service guarding my room tailed us down the mundane gray carpeting of the twenty-eighth floor, occasionally muttering into their wrist cuffs.

"Aaron's excited for dinner tonight, you have Varun to thank for that too," my mom whispered as we passed by one of the few unmarked doors breaking up the monotony of white walls.

"I know," I told her, pointing at the black band of chunky plastic hitched to my ankle, beeping like a tiny bomb. "I got this charming little accessory to mark the occasion."

In the event I took off without permission or used my powers, my ankle bracelet would alert the closest authorities. Everyone was aware that the thing would melt immediately if I used my supernatural gift, so it was mostly symbolic (and completely stupid).

We piled into a cubical of an elevator and waited for Galen to punch one of the blank buttons to select our undisclosed location. 

Thirty-fifth row down, fourth button from the left (to be exact.) 

Counting the buttons was a force of habit I'd picked up during my extended stay in this black-box building. 

There was no way to confirm how many federal agencies worked here, or what kind of work they did, or what state we were in. 

People weren't exactly chatty, and they clearly weren't big on labeling things. The only clue to our location was the gentile southern drawls of the security staff and the greenery decorating the sidewalks outside my comfy prison cell.