Relentless (The Hero Agenda, #2) Read Online Free

instant later, I yank it off and toss it across the room. It’s useless now, thanks to my circuit-destroying EMP.
    “What the hell are you doing here?” Draven demands.
    Does he really have to ask?
    I flash him a more-confident-than-I-feel smile. “Saving your ass. As usual.”
    He gives me the cocky half smile I’ve come to love, and that more than anything else makes me believe that things will turn out okay.
    “Kenna!”
    I turn at Riley’s shout, just in time to see Mr. Malone break through Nitro’s firewall. Right behind me.
    I freeze. This is the first time I’ve been face-to-face with Mr. Malone since I found out all the terrible things he’s done.
    Since I found out he tortures decent people for reasons I can’t even begin to fathom.
    Since I found out the word hero was a big, fat lie and they aren’t the good guys after all.
    Rage overtakes me, and I lunge for him, forgetting the plan, forgetting everything but the need to make him hurt as he’s hurt so many of the people I care about. In a flash, Rex’s hands are around my throat. I’m completely immobilized, lifted to my toes and barely able to breathe.
    Draven is enraged as he turns on Rex—his father—and shouts, “You’re not going to touch her!”
    “Who’s going to stop me?” Rex sneers. “You?”
    An instant later, he releases me and drops to his knees, howling in pain as Draven uses his biomanipulation to do God knows what to Mr. Malone.
    I draw in gasping breaths, relieved at the oxygen now flooding my bloodstream.
    “Never go near her again,” Draven snarls, ramping up his biomanipulation grip on his father.
    I lay my hand on Draven’s arm. We aren’t here to kill Rex, and the last thing we need is anyone in this room learning that Draven has a second power.
    His muscles relax beneath my palm, and so do mine. Just this brief contact with him is enough to center me even in the middle of all this chaos.
    Rex collapses into a lump.
    Draven snorts with disgust as he stands over his father’s prone body.
    The faint thump, thump, thump of an approaching helicopter jolts me back into action. We have to move, now, before reinforcements show up and eliminate our escape plan.
    But first I need to free Draven. I bend down, trying to find some way to remove the shackles or at least disconnect them from the loop in the floor. We have bolt cutters in the chopper. Why hadn’t we thought to bring them into the courtroom?
    “Allow me,” Nitro says, and suddenly a flash of blue whizzes past my nose. I watch as the loop melts into a pool of liquid metal.
    “Nice,” I tell Nitro, and his cheeks blush bright pink.
    Then I race across the room to the stand at the other end of the stage where my mom is secured, like Draven, to the floor.
    “Look out!” I shout as one of the female members of the Collective breaches the firewall, breathing out something that looks like toxic fog.
    Mom turns her head, still trapped in the disabled powers-neutralizing helmet. In a puff, the fog is gone. The woman frowns, confused. Then she draws in a huge breath and blows it out, as if she expects another wave of toxic fumes.
    She exhales nothing but normal breath.
    Mom turns back to me.
    “Hurry,” she says, holding up her shackled hands. “The suppression won’t last long.”
    I repeat my removal of her helmet, just like I did with Draven, but as I’m about to throw it aside, she stops me.
    “Keep it,” she says. “We might need it later.”
    I nod and tuck it awkwardly under one arm. “Hey, Nitro, can I get another one of your—”
    Another bolt of blue.
    “Thank you,” I tell him. And then Mom is free.
    This time, I can’t fight the urge to give her a hug. Since the moment I first went home and found her missing, it’s been torture not knowing where she was. Not knowing if she was okay. Not knowing if she was even alive.
    But as I wrap my free arm around her and feel her arms squeeze me tight, I can almost forget about everything that’s happened