CHAPTER ONE
Saturday, Aug. 13, 2016
Coeur d’Alene, Idaho
WyldWing zipped around one tall pine tree to see an impenetrable thicket just feet away. She angled up, whipping her head to move a stray lock of brown hair from in front of her goggles. Her dragonfly wings buzzed faster than they had in the four months since they’d sprouted from her back. She cleared the tree tops in moments, racing her unseen opponent. Below, a dense evergreen blanket stretched for miles, all the way to Hayden Lake’s glistening waters. She had no time to take in the view, though—she was on a mission. She dropped down beyond the thicket, staying focused and intent on her destination deep in the heart of the Coeur d’Alene National Forest.
You have to get these plans to the secret government base before Drone finds you, her mission coordinator had told her before she set out. The fate of the world depends on it!
She heard a whirring sound and glanced to the side to see the black device she’d been trying to evade, the one with Gotcha Chloe painted on its side. The drone’s pilot must’ve found a passageway through the thicket while she’d had to go over it. Very sneaky, Dad, she thought. Annoyed at herself for failing yet another training mission, she stuck her tongue out at the drone’s little camera, which was trained right on her . . .
And slammed head-first into a tree.
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“Chloe, how you feeling, honey?” her dad asked from the doorway. She sat propped up on pillows with a tray over her lap. It contained the wrappers from two protein bars, a tall milkshake glass, a large bowl with the remains of clam chowder sticking to its sides, and a plate covered in sandwich crumbs. Next to the plate, three dirty face wipes showed all the grit and grime that always covered her after flying. Her dad liked to tease about her reverse superhero mask—white around the eyes, where the goggles covered, and dirt-brown everywhere else.
“My head doesn’t hurt as bad,” she said, “but my neck’s killing me. How long’s this gonna take?”
Phil Wyld chuckled. “Believe it or not, hitting a tree at fifty miles an hour is a pretty big deal. Just be glad you’re not frail like us wimpy humans, or you’d have a long hospital stay ahead of you.” He held up her cracked helmet for emphasis. “This could have been your skull.”
She sighed and shifted the wings behind her back, trying to get comfortable. She still wasn’t used to leaning back against them. “Yeah, but it’s just a few days until I go to the Hero Academy. I need to be on my game.”
“They don’t expect you to already be a top-notch hero, kiddo.” He sat on the side of her bed and looked up at the gymnastics medals hanging from hooks above the headboard, next to a poster of Mustang Sally, until recently the field commander of Just Cause New York. “You’re not going to Nationals—it’s your freshman year. You’re a noob.”
“But they said there’d be testing . . .”
He put a hand up. “Just to gauge where you are. It’s not a competition. They have to determine your baseline before deciding what kind of training you’ll most need. Remember how much you hated balance beam, especially when your coaches made you do it twice as much as floor and bars?”
“Yes.” Chloe made a pouty-face. She still hated balance beam, even though she’d never get to compete on it again.
“It doesn’t do nearly as much good to train at something if you're already good at it. Coach Amy knew that. That’s why you got to spend all those extra hours on the beam, and that’s why it doesn’t matter how good you are at flying now. There will be other areas you’ll need more training in, and the Academy will design a course program to fit your needs. Now, why don’t you settle in and watch that episode of Heroes Among Us Mom told you about?”
She rolled her eyes but laughed while she did it. “Fine, Dad, I’ll be good.”
“Well, that’ll be a refreshing change.” He grinned and winked, then handed her the remote off her nightstand and left the room, closing the door behind him.
She shook her head, then winced at the pain it caused, grabbing at taut neck muscles. “Work faster, superpowers,” she grumbled and turned on her tablet, hoping to have a message from Lindsay Malone, her soon-to-be roommate. She’d gotten Lindsay’s email in an Academy welcome packet a few days ago, but Chloe didn’t know what to say so she hoped the other girl would start the conversation.
Her finger hesitated above the email icon. Taking a deep breath, she tapped the screen to open it.
The first three subjects made her shrivel up inside, as she did every time she opened email these days. “Cheater," the first one said. The sender was named Flip, a poor cover for a gymnast trying to disguise her identity. Chloe knew it was Jessi, her former teammate and, unfortunately, former best friend. Back in their first year of competition, their coach had nicknamed them Flip and Flop, because every time one did well, the other flopped. Whoever did better at any particular meet got to be Flip. Chloe had hated the names even then. She deleted it. The next was from the cleverly named “Anonymous” and the subject line was, “Coach is being investigated cause of your cheating.” She deleted it, too.
She did hope Coach Amy wouldn’t get in trouble. It wasn’t her fault Chloe had sprouted wings during a meet.
She’d never forget the moment. She released the high bar and focused on “flying” to the lower one, when she felt some kind of muscle spasm in her back and realized she was hovering between the bars. Not moving forward, not falling—stuck in the air somehow. A loud buzzing sound filled her ears.
Chloe didn’t understand what was happening and watched as her coach ran across the gym to her and her parents stood at the edge of the floor, staring with terrified expressions.
“What’s going on?” she’d asked the coach in a trembling voice.
“Chloe, I don’t know how to tell you this, but—you’re flying,” Coach Amy said. “You have wings.”
Chloe looked over shoulder and saw them, blurred with motion, and still couldn’t comprehend what was going on.
“Can you get yourself on the ground?” Coach asked.
Chloe’s head spun. “How?”
Coach took her hand and pulled her down until Chloe could swing her feet down onto the mat. Everyone stared. A few people clapped while most of them sat in stunned silence.
Instead of getting to finish out the meet, she’d been taken to the hospital for a battery of tests and examinations of her new appendages. There was no question in her mind who had flopped at that meet. It was her.
The bylaws of the gymnastics association had no provision for parahumans, but it had only taken the officials a few minutes to determine that her points earned in competition were void. She had new muscles in her back, and the muscles and wings constituted an unfair advantage. They booted her off the team. With her scores nullified, it had meant the team was ineligible to compete in State for that season, which was why her former teammates were so incensed with her.
The third email, from “X” and titled Bitch, also went to the trash.
The fourth message raised her spirits a little. It came from Lindsay Malone, her soon-to-be roommate. Chloe clicked on it, butterflies replacing the knots from moments earlier.
Hey! It’s so awesome to meet you! I saw you on the news and it’s so cool how your wings came out. Flying must be the best thing ever.
Are you on ParaFrosh yet? If not you should totally get on it. Some of our other classmates are there already.
Chloe remembered seeing something in the welcome packet about ParaFrosh—an incoming-freshmen-only part of the Academy’s social media site—but she’d dropped off all social media after the harassment started and wasn’t anxious to get back into it.
Maybe it’ll be okay, she thought, since it’s just parahuman kids, like me. She did a quick search for the welcome email and got registered.
She accepted an invitation to friend Lindsay, whose profile pic showed a white girl with freckles and long black hair. Next, she found a list of the nine members of her class. It included photos and she recognized the name Zayden Lord right away. Everyone did—he was probably the most famous parahuman outside of Just Cause and the Champions. He was the subject of the Heroes Among Us episode her mom had wanted her to watch. Her stomach fluttered when she looked at his smile and bright blue eyes.
Icons next to everyone’s names showed her five classmates already on the site. There was a girl named Rhiannon, with white-blond hair, deep tan, dark eyeliner, and bright pink lips. Also signed up were Isabella Machado and Jacob Cotton. His name seemed familiar, so she Googled it.
“That’s right, I remember now,” she murmured as headlines popped up about him rescuing kids from a flooding daycare, along with a Black Lives Matter meme in the image results. It showed a white neo-Nazi kid who’d shot up a black church and threatened police when they arrived, yet was arrested without being hurt, in a split screen with Jacob. Above the Nazi was written “Drop Out with History of Violence.” Above Jacob, it said “Hero & Honors Student,” and below his face, “2.5x more likely to be shot by police.”
A second meme showed Jacob with cross hairs over his face. It had the N-word “AND parahuman?” written above him, and below, “Better shoot him twice.”
Chloe sucked in a breath and felt nauseous. She’d knew how much she’d hated all the attention, both positive and negative, after her wings’ dramatic appearance during the televised meet. Every time she saw the video, she wanted to run and hide. How horrible must it be for Jacob to know that meme existed?
She clicked on an article and learned he was a speedster, just like Mustang Sally. A reporter had asked what made him run into the daycare and he’d answered, “Why wouldn’t I? I mean, no one would let kids drown if they could help them, right?” Chloe decided she liked this guy and marveled over having two classmates who’d already performed superhero rescues while she’d only just figured out how to maneuver in the air.
She Googled the rest of her classmates but just found social media sites, so no others had made the news, apparently.
A chat window popped up and she expected it to be Lindsay, but it turned out to be Isabella. Her profile pic featured the singer Selena Gomez.
Hey! I’m Izzy. You’re Lindsay’s roomie, right?
Yeah, Chloe sent back. It’s so cool meeting ppl before school starts!
Right? I’m stoked to get to the academy. Do you know who Zayden Lord is?
Chloe’s face got hot. Ya kinda, my mom’s trying to get me to watch a documentary on him.
You totally should watch it, it’s pretty good. And OMG, he’s so cute I’m dying.
Hahaha. Srsly. Have you met him? Or anyone else in our class?
No, I just know my twin brother irl and Lindsay and Rhiannon here. Well and you now. Heehee. Plus my big sis goes to the academy.
Wow, you’re all three paras? Chloe asked.
Yep. Not our other brother tho. He doesn’t have the gene. Gotta go but ttyl, k?
Ttyl
#
From the TV series Heroes Among Us, Season 2, Episode 7, “The Lord Family: Triumphs & Tragedies”
Segment 1
The Lord family looked like any other, raising their sons in Lee’s Summit, Missouri—America’s heartland. Little did they know what changes were in store for them.
In 2009, Nathan and Anna Lord welcomed the first change: their seven-year-old son Zayden’s parahuman powers revealed themselves when the family witnessed a grisly car wreck—and Zayden used his telekinesis to separate the cars so the occupants could escape, and just in the nick of time. Just as the last person got to safety, the engine burst into flame.
But then, tragedy stuck. The very next day, three-year-old Daxton—previously described as a chatterbox—went silent. He was listless, eyes unfocused, and Anna rushed him to the emergency room. What doctors found remains a mystery to this day. In the ER, on one of the worst days of her life, Anna Lord says she felt attacked by medical personnel.
“The ER doctors said it had to be exposure to some kind of toxic chemical and asked me what he’d been into, like I’m a horrible parent who lets my toddler play with nuclear waste or something.”
Weeks later, she’d find an ally in Dr. Preston Huxley, the country’s preeminent parahuman neuropsychologist.
“Portions of Dax’s brain were simply gone, as if they’d been eaten or burned away somehow. It’s similar to the damage we see with high-level mercury exposure, but tests showed no trace of mercury or other known neurotoxins in his system. Right away, I suspected another cause.”
The ER doctors said Dax’s brain could perform only the most basic activities—those that kept the little boy alive. But Doctor Huxley disagreed, seeing activity in what remained of young Dax’s brain that was anything but normal.
“You see these areas here, how they’re lit up? This is consistent with Dr. Grace Devereaux’s well-documented findings of parahuman brain activity. I believed from the start that, rare as it is, Dax’s powers had surfaced at just three years of age. For some reason we don’t yet understand, those powers destroyed these areas—here, here, and here. It’s unprecedented. No one has ever seen anything like it.”
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