Free Superheroes Anonymous by Lexie Dunne Page A

my car door. “Run!” he said. And he shoved me out.
    I hit the asphalt, and it bit into both of my palms. When I turned back to say, “Hey!” in protest, Dr. Mobius slammed the door closed behind me.
    Then he stomped on the gas and drove away, leaving me lying in the middle of the street.
    I rose to my feet and promptly took a knee when that made the world tilt sideways, like I was on the deck of a ship in the middle of a storm. I managed two tottering steps and looked around in confusion. I was in the suburbs. I was in a nice neighborhood in the suburbs even.
    I turned around as a minivan turned around the corner, and it occurred to me:
    I was about to get hit by a car.
    Huh.
    M Y ARMS WERE strapped down, but that wasn’t my biggest concern when my eyes opened. Where was I? Why were my arms strapped? Was I on the metal table? No, it wasn’t cold. Something like wax paper crinkled beneath me. I was lying on a cushion with tissue paper on it, and my arms were strapped.
    Above me was a white expanse: a ceiling. I could hear voices from somewhere behind me.
    â€œI told you to take Seventh, not Bailey. You know they’ve got protests going on all day.”
    â€œYou wanna drive? Be my guest.”
    Somebody had strapped my arms in. Somebody—­Dr. Mobius had strapped me in once. He could have done it again.
    I yanked on my right arm, one sharp, hard tug. It came free with a quiet snap. After a second, I realized it was the leather breaking, not my wrist. Just the left arm to go—­good. I sat up and looked around in a daze.
    The drivers in the front seat of the ambulance didn’t look at me. I didn’t know why they were arguing or why they weren’t paying attention to me, but all I knew was that I had to get away. I had to run.
    Something had told me to run.
    They hadn’t strapped my feet down.
    I climbed free of the stretcher and scrambled for the back door. One jerk of the handle and I was free, tumbling out onto the street. The stopped ambulance was trapped in a swarm of ­people shouting and holding signs as they walked. Its red and blue lights flashed across the brick buildings around all of us in the night, like a troop of dancers, dancing, dancing away into the night.
    I stumbled away.
    I T WAS NIGHT. I remembered that much. Night was when the sky went dark, and the pinpricks of stars came out to greet the darkness. Sometimes the moon came out, but I couldn’t see it. I wasn’t worried, though. The moon always returned.
    It was night, and I was standing in front of a Kidd’s Mart. My neck ached. I’d been staring at a sign, a giant green K over the door. Which was probably why my neck hurt, come to think of it. It wasn’t the Kidd’s right by my apartment, I discerned, looking around. So where was I? I looked around, but there weren’t any street signs nearby.
    With a shrug, I pushed open the door to the Kidd’s and stepped onto the dirty linoleum. Usually, Kidd’s was always pretty busy. The fact that it was empty except for the store clerk told me it was probably pretty late.
    â€œExcuse me,” I said in a rusty voice.
    The store clerk didn’t look up from his game of Cape Crush. “Finally decided to come inside, huh?”
    â€œExcuse me?”
    â€œYou were out there for like twenty minutes. You were starting to freak me out. I thought about maybe calling the cops or something.”
    I knew why he hadn’t; I was maybe five-­two in heels. Barefoot, I didn’t qualify for anything but tiny. Even with my hair at its frizziest, curliest mess, and my clothing disheveled, I was a threat to precisely nobody.
    â€œCan—­can you tell me where I am?” I asked.
    The clerk looked up. He took in my bare feet and my dirtied clothing with a frown. And the fact that I had—­I’d just noticed this myself, so I wasn’t surprised it had taken him so long—­thick leather straps