Amped: A Kid Sensation Companion Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

good PR. We’d just lost a promising young super, Vir, a number of high-profile missions had gone sideways, and the public was starting to sour on capes.”
    “So I was just a public relations move.”
    “Also, we needed something to keep us grounded, to remind us of what we were putting it all on the line for every day.”
    I pondered this for a second. Although it really didn’t tell me much, this was more direct information than I’d ever gotten before.
    “Well,” I said, deciding to push the envelope, “what about –”
    “No, that’s it,” Esper said, cutting me off with a wave of her hand. “That’s enough.”
    From experience, I knew that this was the end of the discussion, but decided that – this time – it wouldn’t be the end of my efforts to find out more about who I was. If I couldn’t get Esper to simply tell me, I’d just find out on my own. With that in mind, I gave her a curt “Goodnight” and went to bed.

Chapter 6
    Babies come from somewhere.
    That was my leadoff (if unoriginal) thought the next morning as I began earnestly looking into my own background. Esper was still asleep when I got up, so – following a quick breakfast of cereal and milk – I had hurried back to my bedroom, anxious to get started.
    My room was fair-sized in my own opinion – about one hundred and fifty square feet in size. In addition to a standard bedroom set (consisting of a bed, dresser-and-mirror, and a nightstand), it also contained a bookcase roughly six feet in height and a student desk, on which sat my laptop and a printer.
    Upon entering, I closed the door and went to my modest walk-in closet; reaching up, I pulled a small black lockbox from the shelf above the clothes rack. Tossing the lockbox onto my bed, I grabbed my keyring from the top of my dresser, where I’d tossed it the night before when getting ready for bed. A moment later, the lockbox was open.
    Inside were a few of the typical things you might expect to find, including a small wad of cash with a rubber band around it, a few pieces of jewelry, some savings bonds I’d received years earlier as a birthday gift, and various important documents.
    There was also a small, gift-wrapped box – my Christmas present from Jim. As I had mentioned to his mother, we had exchanged presents before he left, but decided not to open them until he got back. (It was our goofy, adolescent way of trying to add some sort of impetus to his return, I suppose.) I picked it up for a second and held it, thinking for a moment about my boyfriend and trying to envision what he must be going through light-years from home.
    After a moment, I put Jim’s gift back and pulled out what I was really after: the documents. Setting aside various items such as my passport and instruments related to my trust fund, I found myself holding a small sheaf of papers held together by a paper clip. As hard as it was to imagine, this handful of documents represented my entire life: birth certificate, state records, court orders concerning guardianship – everything I’d been able to find out about myself over the years. It admittedly wasn’t a lot (and I’d had a hard enough time pulling this much together), but it was essentially all I had. I got to work.
    I immediately set the birth certificate aside. It was a work of pure fiction: fake name, fake date of birth, fake place of birth… Basically, no one knew anything about me when I was found, so they had made everything up. It wasn’t a record that could be relied on in even the flimsiest sense. It only existed because it was essentially the gateway to getting other mandatory documents (a passport, for example).
    I then began slowly and methodically poring over the remaining paperwork, something I had done countless times before. In truth, I knew almost every word on every page verbatim, but I hoped – as I did each time I reviewed this stuff – that something new would leap out at me. Unfortunately, nothing did initially, and