Free The Twisted Future (Teen Superheroes Book 4) by Darrell Pitt Page B

for short range teleportation.’
    ‘Teleportation?’ I said. ‘You’ve got to be kidding.’
    ‘I told you James Price was brilliant. Get on the mat.’
    We climbed onto the metal platform while Old Axel manipulated the controls. He pushed a button and the platform began to hum. Taking a running jump, he landed next to me—
    —just as everything started to shimmer. The world divided into cubes. Then they divided into smaller cubes. And again. They continued to sub-divide. I couldn’t move. White light surrounded me. Then I saw tiny cubes reassembling into small cubes. Larger cubes. Blocks.
    Except now we were standing on a metal mat in a completely different place, a maintenance area surrounded by vessels. A man worked on a landing strut. I knocked him out with a bolt of air before Old Axel could kill him.
    Adjusting the beehive shaped device he had stolen from the vault, Old Axel set it on the matter transporter. He activated the transporter and the device disappeared.
    ‘That should keep them busy.’ We raced up the stairs of a fighter craft. Five times the size of an Earth fighter, I was seriously impressed, but we had no time to appreciate it. We scrambled onto the flight deck where Old Axel slid behind the controls.
    ‘How can you operate all this technology?’ I asked.
    ‘Correspondence course,’ he said, starting the engines. ‘You remember I said we’ve had information leaking from the Agency for years. I’ve studied every schematic I could lay my hands on. Besides,’ the vessel lifted off the ground, ‘this ship isn’t so different to the old flex craft. It’s just larger.’
    The entire station shuddered as we heard the distant rumble of an explosion. Old Axel gave a satisfied grunt. ‘Right on time.’ He aimed us at the nearest bulkhead. ‘Let’s hope the weapons are operational.’ He flipped a switch, a missile roared away from us and the wall exploded into shrapnel.
    Atmosphere erupting through the gap, we entered the void of space, the Earth beneath us. As Old Axel poured on the acceleration, I looked back at the space station. The space dock at one end was ruined. Another segment was open to space. It looked like the station was about to break apart. Bodies and pieces of metal were being blasted into the vacuum of space.
    I felt sick. Slumping into my seat, I tried not to think of the multitude of people we had just killed.
    ‘We did it,’ Ebony said, collapsing next to me. ‘We’re alive.’
    Old Axel shot me a rare smile. ‘We’re a resourceful person,’ he said. ‘Those who have wronged us will live to regret it.’
    Whatever that meant.

Chapter Nineteen
     
    Brodie peered up at the old sewer hatch. She, Chad and Sharla stood at the base of a rusty ladder dressed in protective suits; brown plastic outfits with helmets that looked disturbingly like goldfish bowls. The helmets contained miniature transmitters so they could communicate with each other.
    ‘Every remaining habitable area on the planet is surrounded by walls hundreds of feet high,’ Sharla explained. ‘The gas in the badlands won’t kill you immediately, but prolonged exposure will.’
    ‘How were the badlands made?’ Brodie asked.
    ‘An experiment of James Prices that went horribly wrong. Now we’re locked inside the walls like rats in a cage.’
    Sharla handed them handguns that fitted neatly into holsters sewn into the suits. ‘Try not to waste bullets,’ she said. ‘They’re a precious commodity around here.’
    ‘Why do we need guns?’ Brodie asked.
    ‘There are things living in the fog. They used to be people. Somehow they’ve survived the gas...but what they’ve become isn’t pretty.’ She grimaced. ‘And James Price dumps his biological experiments in the badlands.’
    ‘Wonderful.’
    ‘But the biggest issue is still the fog.’
    ‘So if our suit rips..?’
    ‘Don’t breath e in. The fog contains an acidic compound. It will irritate human flesh, but breathing it in will burn your