Free Revenge of the ULTRAs (The Last Hero Book 4) by Matt Blake

Adam’s followers, but it wasn’t easy. I saw more of them emerge, and that’s what scared me. The faces. I recognized them from the street below. Some of them had electricity crawling up their hands. Others were jolting through the air, just like Roadrunner had.
    They weren’t just the first wave of Adam’s cronies.
    They were the people from the street.
    People with powers.
    And now they were using those powers to fight against us.
    I dodged the punch of a woman, and then I felt her foot connect with my face. I didn’t want to fight back, so I dropped further back, alongside the Resistance. With my refreshed powers, I created an invisible shield between them and us. But it wouldn’t be enough. It wouldn’t hold them off forever.
    “What do we do?” Ember asked.
    I felt a bitter taste fill my mouth as more and more newly converted people appeared from the hole in the building.
    I felt my skin crawl when Adam appeared, Roadrunner’s limp body in his arms, a wry smile across his face.
    “Roadrunner!” Stone shouted.
    He started to bounce forward when I grabbed his arm.
    “We do the only thing we can do right now,” I said, as the electromagnetic bullets and the attack of Adam’s followers burned through the shield.
    Stone looked at me. He shook his head. “No. You don’t take us away. You don’t give the hell in. Not now. Not when he’s got—”
    “It’s the only thing we’ve got,” I said.
    I closed my eyes.
    Held my breath.
    Then I focused all my energy on teleporting the whole lot of us away through a wormhole.
    This time, we would appear on the other side of the world.
    This time, we really were running away.
    Only Roadrunner wasn’t running with us.

16
    A dam watched his army of newly converted humans disappear into the sky in pursuit of Kyle Peters and the rest of his unelected Resistance.
    The clouds parted and the sun peeked through. He took a deep breath of the warm summer air and felt a smile stretch across his cheeks. He was on top of the government building which he’d detonated and destroyed just minutes before. The streets were lined with joyous people, celebrating that they finally had someone fighting for their best interests; someone who was all about redistributing powers rather than keeping them bottled away to himself.
    He heard a cough. When he looked to his right, he saw Roadrunner lying flat on the roof of the remaining section of the White House beside him.
    It was pitiful, seeing an ULTRA who had been so strong now so bereft of powers. Really, she was nothing more than a weak girl now. But that’s what she’d always been, too. Just a weak kid who’d suddenly found her strength when she discovered her powers. The world deserved stronger than her. The people deserved it.
    “How does it feel?” Adam asked.
    He walked up to her and stood over her. He didn’t say anything to her, just looking down at her as she lay in front of him.
    “To have everything you care about taken away from you. How does that feel?”
    “You won’t win,” Roadrunner gasped.
    Adam tilted his head to one side. “Oh, really?”
    He stretched out his arm and turned Roadrunner’s head to face him. He looked right into her eyes, and he saw tears. But not just tears of upset or disappointment. Not just tears of fear.
    Adam saw tears of anger, too.
    “Kyle’s strong,” Roadrunner said. “The Resistance, they’re all strong. They’ll come back. They’ll find a way to defeat you. And they’ll get me away from here, too.”
    Adam sighed. He chuckled a little.
    “What’s so funny?” Roadrunner gasped.
    “Nothing, nothing. Just find it amusing that you’re so confident you’re even going to be here to save.”
    He saw the shift in Roadrunner’s face then. He saw her look of defiance change to a look of confusion. He saw the subtle dilation of her pupils. “What—”
    Adam nodded at the follower beside him.
    They tightened their fists.
    Roadrunner’s eyes rolled back into her skull.
    She