Hey guys! I'm back with a new chapter! I had to leave the exaggerated humour behind me and replace it with action and seriousness for most of this chapter, as what should be expected.
To everyone that reviewed, thank you! You guys help me immensely with the love my writing gets. It's nice to hear a non-mom opinion on the stuff I write((:
In the shadows of the sewers, three dark figures hovered over a tablet, eyes piercing the device evilly. "They got the alert," the one in the middle murmured, a crooked smile spreading across his face.
"They're off on their mission, the girl with them," another chimed, eyeing his fellow bad guys.
"Good. The first phase is over," a looming figure behind the three spoke up, his voice more dominate. "Now on to phase two." In the darkest part of their damp hideaway, the leader's eyes glimmered, only an outline of him seen by his men. "Activate it."
"Yes, sir," the third said, taking the tablet and bringing a screen up, pressing the large red button in the middle. "But are you sure you want to do this this way? It'll be easier to just get the deed done quickly."
"I'm not satisfied with changing their future, I'm bent on ruining it," the leader growled. "In destroying it if I have to." His malicious face was revealed briefly to his men, and fear creeped into their spines. "Question me again and it will be your last."
"Yes, sir," the first said, giving the third hunchman a hard look.
"Excellent," the boss man said, stepping back and sitting down into an office chair. He cupped his hands together, an evil smirk in his expression as he reassessed the plan in his head. He was confident of each delicate detail that was put in. Years of obssessing and living hellishly was not going to be his future again. Those who must will pay.
"Alexa are you sure you're up for this?" Chase asked again, concerned. The future girl was still vibrating slightly in the hands. She didn't seem the safest to be around.
"I'm fine," she reassured for the fourth time, but the glow in her eyes told Chase otherwise. If she was not capable of controlling the tiniest fractions of giveaways, the third bionic wasn't so sure of her, performance wise.
"Chase, we don't have time to go back," Bree argued. "Stop coddling Alexa, we're nearing the mission site." Bree had sped back and forth from the site to the group several times over, assessing the issue and giving the others updates. A train had derailed, most of the carts were badly damaged, some having small flames burning inside, but a few were hanging from the edge of the cliff. The people inside the unlucky few carts were trying to level themselves out between life and death, not capable of moving an inch. Bree had managed to get all those in the derailed but safely grounded carts out and far from the crash site, but those few that were left hanging had to wait for backup. One foot onto any one of those carts could throw it off its wavering balance.
"Any idea on what caused the derailment?" Chase inquiried, dodging a still burning cart as they sped past the non-mission oriented part of the site.
"No clue," Bree said, pointing in the direction of the endangered carts and its passengers inside. "The conductor is unconscious and no awake passengers saw anything." Her voice deviated from her normal tone for a second, like she sensed something was off.
Alexa and Chase were the only ones to notice, since Leo was busy getting his hero face on and Adam was highly unobservant.
"There!" Bree screamed, her eyes falling on one of the three swaying train carts.
A buzzing surge ran down each of Adam's, Bree's, and Chase's spines, something so slight they didn't even realize that it had happened.
Chase quickly scanned each cart with his x-ray vision, checking to see how many passengers they were dealing with, then directed Adam towards the one which he calculated had the less time. "This cart doesn't have as many people, so without the weight holding it down, it'll go down first."
Adam checked the cart for something to latch on to, and upon finding a crevice he could dig his hands into, he carefully leveled out the train till it was upright again. Putting every ounce of strength into his arms and core, Adam planted his feet to the ground, lifted, and pulled. His face was screwed in concentration, a sort of focus he only got when using an ability.
Chase then dashed off to the second cart, calling Leo over, "Leo, I need you to keep this steady until Bree can find something to tether it with," he gave Bree a nod, and she sped off on his command.
She came back with a Davenport rope, extra strength, that they had kept stuffed in one their mission bags. Chase nodded, satisfied, and quickly went to work on the third. He activated his molecular kinesis and concentrated on the train and the gravitational pull, and every possible word in the English language centered around balance. He found it easiest to control his abilities when he thought of words that applied to what he wanted them to do.
Someone came up behind him.
Alexa was standing there, her eyes penetrating the cart with a range of emotions going through her head. It was obvious her thoughts weren't only on the mission at hand. "Alexa, if there's something you can do, do it!" She peered at him through the corner of her eyes, her pupils widened.
"That's the thing," she murmured, voice distraught. "Whatever happens here today, I was never here to help before." Sweat started to bead on Chase's forehead. "Whether you failed or were successful, I can't interfere." Lexi's hands were at their worst, they shook with such violence it looked like the future girl was going to vibrate out of her skin.
"Then get out of the way!" Chase commanded. She was the one that had wanted to come, and now she was opting out of even helping at all. Turning back to his task, Chase was finally able to balance the cart out, the people inside no longer had to try to stand upright on a slant. Carefully, he began to drag it forward, trying to get it off the edge. It was a slow process, but after a while he saw progress was being made.
"Chase!" Leo called over. The bionic mission leader tried to keep his focus as he glanced over his shoulder to where his step brother yelled from. The rope Bree had used for the second cart was beginning to show signs of wear, threads started snapping from the overall. That didn't make sense, Davenport's ropes were virtually indestructable.
"Bree, go find something else to double the hold!" he yelled, his arms starting to feel weighed down. He didn't usually tire so quickly. It was like the train was too heavy, or his bionics were too weak.
Alexa was standing off to the side, eyes panicked and mouth twisted in impatience. She was bouncing up and down, making a few motions towards the second cart in hopes to help. The only thing holding her back was her constant reminder to herself that the future was already unsettled enough. "Adam, can you help them!"
Adam was grunting and pulling on the first train cart, the passengers almost homefree as they were being pulled farther from the edge. Sweat dripped from the older brother. "Little busy over here!" Adam was not invincible nor did he not have boundaries to his strength, but this seemed a little extensive. This wasn't their first train derailment, but everything seemed to be harder; things were going wrong that initially shouldn't.
A loud explosion hit Chase from behind, knocking him off his feet and making him flail around from his shot bionic hearing. The hold he had with his mind on the train cut off, the hot air sizzling in the dark, suffocating environment. Screams of the passengers on the third cart were barely heard through the ringing in Chase's ears. He tried to stand up, but his ultra-senses were practically crying and his back felt burned. That was it. The people he was trying to save were dead. He had let them down, literally. The soot and fire made it hard for him to see, but Chase rose to a kneeling position, hunched over in pain.
When the skies began to clear, and the third bionic was able to wipe the ashes from his burning eyes, he saw Alexa's arms extended out, having an invisible hold on the train like he previously had. The only difference was she seemed to have a stronger grasp, and was able to pull the citizens up to safety in half the time he was.
Bree and Leo were now off to the side, helping the victims from the first cart climb out, while Adam had taken over the half tethered second train cart. He gasped and he grunted, and for the first time in a while Chase saw his brother was completely worn out. Lexi issued Chase the task of helping the people out of the third cart, and she rushed off to help Adam. Chase was competely disheveled, and too shellshocked to realize he had had control of the mission taken from him. He had weakened immensely, as did Adam. It was a very slight change in their abilities, not enough to take extreme notice and suspision, but enough to effect their performance in the field.
"They completed their mission without any casualties," one of the three hunchmen concured, watching the five from an unknown video source. He seemed a little disappointed, but their leader cackled.
"Yes, yes, but it's just the beginning," he said. "Casualties will come, innocent will die, but not now. We will choke them out ever so slowly." He leaned closer to the three followers. "Why do you think cats play with their food?" A grinch-like smile spread quickly upon his menacing face.
Bree had ran everyone back one by one, and after depositing Adam at the academy, her knees buckled and she fell in an exhausted heap.
Davenport walked in then, taking notice of the four collapsed bionics and Alexa sitting nervously on the tech table. He frowned, and jogged over to them. "What happened out there?" he asked, eyes creasing together in concern. "Chase, I completely lost contact with you!"
Chase moaned, and tried to raise himself up, only to wince from his scorched back, and fall back in pain. "There was an explosion-" He arched his back, trying to ease the sizzling and spreading burn. "It must have damaged the ear piece," the third bionic grasped his blue tooth, with too much effort, and flung it away.
Mr. Davenport could tell Chase was biting his tongue to keep from screaming, and decided to treat him in the infirmary. "You guys have handled train derailments in a hitch, you can do it blindfolded and with one hand tied behind your back." His voice wasn't criticizing, it was just confused. He knelt down to help Chase up.
Bree shook out her palms, a rope burn red and rash-like marking the spot where she had tried along with Leo to pull the victims of the second cart to safety. She had acted on instinct and not on logic, but thankfully Adam took control of the situation before she doomed herself along with the passengers. "I know, Mr. Davenport. I-" But Bree had no words.
"I felt like Chase does on a regular basis," Adam grumbled. "Weak; like my arms were turning into gummy worms." He licked his lips, causing everyone watching to roll their eyes.
Davenport shook his head, allowing Chase to lean on his shoulder as he took him for medical attention. The boy's ears were red and the back of his head had scabbed over, red with blood.
"Thank, Lexi," Bree sighed, her stomach heaving with deep breaths. Her eyes fluttered for the first time since they got back, finally starting to relax a little.
Alexa didn't look over at the other bionic girl, she just nodded, and continued looking at the floor with a horrified expression plastered on her face.
"Well don't look so disappointed you saved the day," Leo said sarcastically, rubbing at his tired bionic arm. He hopped up next to her on the table, fiddling with a couple of the controls absentmindedly.
"It's not that," Lexi huffed, fixing her tangled brown hair into a poorly done ponytail. "I screwed with the future. I wasn't suppose to, but I did." She peered over at Leo, who was silent for once in his life. "I couldn't just stand idly by, I felt this weird energy in me that I was meant to help, that I had to help."
"Those people in the third cart would have died without you," Bree tried. She sat uptight, which looked very bothersome for her.
"And most likely those in the second one," Leo added.
"I had those ones, they would have been fine," Adam grumbled, but everyone could still see his arms shaking from overuse. He had strained himself out there, farther than he ever had before.
"If those people were meant to die in the past, I just gave them a future," Alexa said. "Everything's so unstable enough, so undetermined and feeble, I-" The vibration in her hands was back, and the features in the future girl's face darkened and twisted. "I told future Davenport I wouldn't be able to handle it-" She balled her hands into fists and suddenly pounded them against the tech table she was sitting on. Something like a sonic boom cracked throughout the academy. Alexa's pretty brown eyes glowed, her usually serious mouth was crooked and angered.
"Alexa, I have this odd gut feeling that whatever happened out there today wasn't suppose to happen," Bree's voice dropped. "It wasn't meant to be."
Lexi turned to her fellow bionic female, control back in her face. She was staring at her for a while, her scared, wide eyes replacing her rage. They shared a moment of silent exchanges, before Alexa glanced back down at her feet and nodded. "What are we up against..."
"Who are we up against..." Bree corrected wearily, falling back down on the ground.
Just then the out-date rang complete, exiting back to the screen with the coordinates. The red dots blinked, clustered together under one very well known area. Mission Creek High.