[OLD] The Supers Experiment (#1)

Twenty-Two

The white building appeared out of nowhere. Surrounded by trees and swamp, it looked out of place. It was too bright, too clean.

Tyler, on the other hand, was not. Her clothes were soaked in mud from trekking through marshes. She struggled to catch her breath as she surveyed the building. The setting sun glinted off its dark windows, a painful reminder of how long the day had been.

"Well, they've done a pretty good job of hiding themselves," Tyler muttered. If Scorpion wanted privacy, they couldn't have picked a better location. There were no roads anywhere near the building. The only way in and out was by helicopter.

Or a miserable hike through Florida wilderness.

But it was real. Tyler had found what she'd been looking for. It had taken a lot of work and research. Not to mention the cross-country drive, which had mostly been spent figuring out how to drive a car and worrying that the police would pull her over.

Tyler sat down and leaned back against a tree. Now what? She couldn't just march in and fight Claudia. What did she want anyway? Revenge? An apology?

She wasn't sure, but that wasn't the main reason she'd come. It was the news, the reports, the missing teens.

Shortly after she'd left Los Angeles, there was a 'disturbance' at Cladis Point. The news reporter said some teens had broken in. Witnesses claimed to see a jet flying to and from the area. By the time the authorities arrived, there was no one there, but there were signs of a fight.

Something wasn't right about it. The authorities were hiding something. Tyler pulled a water bottle out of her backpack and took a long sip. Admittedly, the idea of adventure, the opportunity to be a hero, had encouraged her to leave California.

But Tyler also had information. She had a feeling that something bad was coming, and she might be able to stop it. She still had questions, though.The teens that broke into Cladis must have been survivors, like her. What she wasn't sure about was the fight. What would they be fighting about?

She knew that when Claudia left Cladis Point, she'd taken a few of the powered kids—Altered—with her. The question was, what for? To study? That seemed the most plausible, but Tyler was sure there was something else.

Tyler put the water bottle back. She needed to know what was inside the building. But there were cameras, and probably security guards of some sort. And her powers wouldn't do her any good.

That didn't make her useless, though, like Claudia thought she was. Claudia had studied her and taken her blood like the other kids, but after that she was done. So what did she need the other kids for that Tyler couldn't do?

She needed them to fight.

Tyler stood up and counted the small security cameras hanging off the building. She would prove that she could be useful. She didn't care what Claudia thought of her, but she did care what Claudia was up to. Tyler never liked her, even when everyone else did.

Leaving her backpack hidden in the bushes, she crept closer to the building, using the undergrowth as cover. The cameras swerved, leaving small areas unwatched for a few seconds at a time. When Tyler had moved as close as she dared, she turned her attention to them. She timed them, figuring out what areas she could use to approach. The cameras didn't appear to cover the ground right by the building, at least on this side, so if Tyler could just get close enough...

But how would she get in? Tyler looked up and her gaze rested on one of the windows. That raised a whole new set of questions. Would breaking the windows set off an alarm? Could they even be broken, or were they bulletproof?