Secret Super (Book 1)

9. Out of the Frying Pan Into the Sewer

Every time Kara tried to go for a glorious adventure, she ended up surrounded by trash.

Xavier was going to have a lot of questions to answer once she got to him. Namely, why he had directed her to break into a super data center. But that was a problem for another time. Right now, she really wished she had a teleportation superpower instead.

When the footsteps and shouting faded into the distance, she slowed to a walk. She glanced curiously at the other girl, Alek, who was leaning against the tunnel wall, her legs shaking and breathing in gasps. Her heart-shaped face was smudged with dirt. Either she was seriously out of shape or she hadn't used her superpowers in a really long time. She looked around Kara's age, though, so she should be a trainee in the Academy.

Which would make it really strange that her superpowers were out of practice.

"So, is Alek really your name?" Kara said, breaking the silence.

The other girl pushed herself off the wall and kept trudging through the tunnels. She didn't answer, just glared at Kara. In the darkness, her green eyes shone from under her fringe of choppy, dark-red hair.

Okay, so apparently "Alek" was ignoring her. Kara rolled her eyes and kept walking, boots splashing through the muck. She'd use her force-fields to protect herself from the sewage except that she'd already exhausted all her energy fighting Ice Woman or whatever her name was.

That meant she'd probably never be able to get the smell out of her clothes, she thought, grimacing at her dirtied boots. That was going to be hard to explain once she got back to the Academy.

"Come on," Kara said, addressing Alek again. She was not about to spend this entire walk in the sewer being ignored by the girl who had impersonated her just a few minutes earlier. "What is it? Iris? Tali? Eva?" She rattled off the most common names she could think of. "Seriously . . . If I wanted to track you down I wouldn't need your name." Her eyes widened. "Wait . . . please don't tell me your name is Kara. It was already freaky enough when you looked like me."

The girl snorted. She shivered, wrapping her thin worn-out jacket closer around herself and picking her way around floating pieces of rotten junk on the ground. "It's Zadia," she said after a few moments.

Kara grinned. Somehow the name seemed to suit her. "Zadia. Hey, I like that. So, did Xavier recruit you too?"

Zadia looked at her blankly.

"Never mind," Kara said hurriedly. Though if Zadia wasn't part of Xavier's organization, why was she even here? "Funny, I've never seen you in the super sector before. I mean, I guess there's a lot of trainees. Which of the buildings do you live in, anyway? I'm in 2B."

"Uhh . . ." Zadia's shoulders scraped against the walls as she walked, clinging as close as possible to the edges where the sewage wasn't as deep. "I'm in . . . 3C," she said, kicking away a piece of junk.

That would explain why Kara had never seen her, anyway. 3C was somewhere across from 2B, all the way on the other side of the super sector. "Who's your handler?" she said. "I have Harrison."

"Yeah, I have Harrison too," Zadia said immediately.

Kara narrowed her eyes. So this girl was still lying to her. If she really lived in 3C she wouldn't have the same handler as Kara. She decided to try a new tactic. "He's a total pain, isn't he?" she said. "And his stupid blond hair annoys me so much. I mean, teleportation's a cool power, but he's useless at it." She smirked, thinking of what Harrison would say if he could hear her.

"Yeah, I know right?" Zadia nodded emphatically. "He's so, um . . . annoying. And blond."

Even Jace was better at lying than this girl. Time to find out who she really was.