Then it turned. Hand outstretched, Kate guided it. As if it had a mind of its own, it flew around an overturned bus, back through a maze of twisted rebar, and slammed into one of the stacks of concrete blocks that served as a makeshift wall.
The wall shattered with the force of an explosion. Concrete and dust flew in all directions and the sound rattled the seats all over the stadium. When the air cleared, the wall was gone. Disintegrated. The missilea simple baseball, everyone was sure to notehad destroyed it.
Downs's prediction was right: The audience at home was astonished and amazed, and they couldn't wait to see more.
"Now," Peregrine said, donning her brightest smile yet. "Meet your new American Heroes!"
Twenty-eight contestants joined the winged beauty on stage, standing in groups of seven with their teams: Hearts, Spades, Diamonds, Clubs. It was gloriouslights flashed, music swelled, and it sounded like cheering.
Ana was caught in it all like a deer in the headlights, a tight smile locked on her face. Drummer Boy punched six hands in the air, and Wild Fox's tail flashed sparks as it twitched.
Amidst the thrills, elation, and chaos, Jonathan Hive tapped his wrist.
"All right, kids, check your watches," he said. "Your fifteen minutes starts now."
A week later, the party was over.
Four teams gathered on the same stage, which now served as the field of judgment. Behind each team, as part of the backdrop, was its logo: Hearts, Spades, Diamonds, Clubs.
No one knew what to expect, so the atmosphere was beyond tense. It crackled. The last time they'd stood here, the mood had been celebratory: They were the chosen ones, they'd been anointed. Now, they had failed. They'd had their first trial, and they didn't feel good about it.
One teamClubsheld itself differently. Their frowns were a bit more smug, their backs a bit straighter. Before any of them saw the replays, they could all guess who had won this round.
In fact, the replay of Team Clubs' assault on the burning building couldn't have been any more glorious if it had been scripted.
Stuntman did the impossible: ran into the burning building by the front door. Nearly invulnerable, he couldn't burn. He made three trips, pulling out four "victims," including the doll programmed with a digital recording of a crying baby. His clothes were scorched to nearly nothing, but Diver was on hand with a coat from the fire truck to cover him. The others had been more successful operating the fire hose. Jade Blossom increased her density, making herself an anchor to brace the nozzle. The water dampened the fire enough to clear a path in the front entryway. Two more people rescued. Brave Hawk, who manifested illusory brown-black hawk wings when he flew, had been able to pull another three victims out of upper-story windows, including the one who had jumped. The flier snatched him out of the air. And Toad Man, turned into his giant toad form, managed a particularly gruesome rescue by snatching the tenth and final victim out of a window with his thirty-foot-long, viscous tongue. All ten victims rescued.
Spades and Diamonds didn't achieve quite so spectacular a victory, but they each had their moments. On the Spades side, the Candle used his multipurpose, colored flames to build a glowing red ladder to the second-story windows. The victims within climbed to safety. Metal-skinned Rust-belt withstood the flames enough to save a couple of victims from the ground floor. The team, however, suffered a drawback when Simoon, in an attempt to quell the fire by blasting it in her whirlwind form, only succeeded in fanning the flames. Their rescue effort ended with five victims saved.
Diamonds fared better. The Maharajah, the easily overlooked man in the wheelchair, had telekinetically animated a half-dozen fire fighters' coats from the truck and marched them into the burning house to rescue three victims. Matryoshka had split into four smaller versions of himself, and they controlled the hose as a well-coordinated unit. Their flier, Jetman, rescued several victims from the upper floor. Unlike Brave Hawk, though, he'd failed to catch the man who'd jumped. They'd rescued seven victims.
On the other hand, the editing on the replay of Team Hearts' trial brought to the fore every mishap, every wart, every fault. Hardhat's success was reduced to a second or two, making the highlight of the sequence Curveball, Drummer Boy, and Hive yelling at each other, Hardhat and Gardener fruitlessly running around searching for victims to rescue, and Earth Witch and Wild Fox doing absolutely nothing. At least the many bleeps punctuating Hardhat's speech got a few chuckles.
For a moment, all was quiet. The judges' weighty silence was worse than any criticism. The Hearts gazed back hopefully, as if they might escape.
Topper shook her head, and it was like an ax falling. "Aren't you taking this seriously? Do you know how many people would be dead now if that had been a real fire?"
Seven, Ana thought. Seven people, even if one of them had been a fake baby.
The Harlem Hammer continued. "Half of you just stood there. You gave up before you even tried anything because you couldn't figure out how to use your powers. You think it's all about your aces? And you didn't even try to work together."
Then Downs inserted his own vitriolic assessment. "You guys aren't a team, you're a preschool! I wouldn't trust you to look after my hamster!"
Ana could imagine watching this on TV at home, and how exciting it must be. How gleeful the audience would be, watching Downs cut them to pieces. But even if she'd had a chance to respond, there was nothing she could say. They weren't wrong about any of it. Her cheeks were burning at the reprimands. Kate's gaze was downcast, her jaw tight, as if she clenched her teeth.
All the groups were quiet, quivering with tension. Maybe they had imagined what it would be like to lose, what the judges might say to them, but they hadn't imagined anything like this.
When Topper announced that Team Clubs had won immunity for the first challenge, no one was surprised. Clubs' members gave each other high fives and hugged in celebration, but didn't cheer. They looked relieved rather than smug.
Peregrine spoke solemnly, like this was an execution and not network television. "Hearts. Spades. Diamonds. Each of you will now return to your headquarters, where you'll decide who from your team to discard."
One of the judges accompanied each team to officiate the discard process. Just when Ana thought the evening couldn't get worse, Hearts was blessed with the presence of Digger Downs, who seemed far too gleeful in his role as the "bad" judge.
Her stomach was in knots, which were tightening with every breath. On the drive back, she and her teammates kept glancing at each other, sizing each other up, making calculations: Who should go?
She wasn't worried so much about herself. What she really hated was having to make a choice.
In the garage, Drummer Boy lingered by the Hummer and waved her over with a gesture from an upper arm. Uncertain, she went to him, wondering what he could possibly want with her.
His voice hushedand for such a huge, brusque man, he could make his voice surprisingly mutedhe said, "You know who you're picking?"
Ah, that was what he wanted to talk about. "No."
"You worried?"
"About what?"
He gave a huff, like he thought she was being stupid. "You didn't do squat during the challenge. That puts you in danger of getting kicked out, you know that?"
She supposed it did. "I hadn't really thought about it."
"You ought to be making deals," he said. "Trade votes. Make sure someone else gets it."
She couldn't do that any more than she could have stopped the fire by digging a hole under the building. She shrugged. "I don't even know who I'd pick."
"Bugsy," he said. "The guy's a prick."
"What do you get if I pick him?"
"Don't vote me off the next time we lose. It's that simple."
Downs called from the house for them to hurry up.
"I'll think about it," Ana said, and hurried away from the towering joker.