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

lungs. You could probably survive a few days without a suit. Not much more.’
    ‘There isn’t a way around?’ Chad asked. ‘Or under. Or over?’
    ‘The subway tunnels have all been severed from here to Manhattan. If we had a vessel, you could try flying over the fog, but you’d show up on the Agency’s tracking systems.’ She paused. ‘They’d shoot you out of the sky. It’s this way or no way.’
    Sharla climbed up the ladder first. She struggled with the hatch for a moment before it groaned open. Toxic gas started to pour into the tunnel. They quickly left, shutting the hatch behind them.
    The mist was nicotine colored, and floated around them in tight, swirling formations. Sometimes, Brodie could see several feet ahead, but otherwise it was an impenetrable barrier. They were standing in a suburban street populated with closely set houses topped with pitched roofs. Brodie saw the distant sun. It dotted the sky like a brown rock in a murky river. She turned to Chad. Even he looked shocked.
    ‘How often have you done this journey?’ Brodie asked Sharla.
    ‘About half a dozen times.’
    ‘And you’ve always gotten through?’
    ‘I’ve gotten through, but the people I’ve chaperoned haven’t always been so lucky.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Because they didn’t listen to me,’ she said firmly, her eyes turning away as she remembered some distant tragedy. ‘Follow my instructions and we’ll be fine.’
    She started down the street. Brodie was pretty certain she could survive anything that came at them. She still had her abilities, suit or no suit. Chad, however, was locked inside his outfit; his powers wouldn’t work outside it. Sharla, of course, had her powers, but they were probably ineffective as well. She seemed to have an instinctive ability to move quietly through the shifting haze, darting across the uneven ground with ease. Brodie felt like a blundering idiot by comparison. The suit was cumbersome, and the gun at her side made her feel unbalanced. Chad was close behind. He was quieter than usual. Possibly it was the seriousness of the situation. He was almost likable when he wasn’t so full of himself.
    They crossed a park. Amazingly, the grass and the trees were still alive, but matted with brown tar. Some of the trees seemed to be mutating to deal with the unnatural environment; their branches were anchored into the ground, as if seeking nourishment from the earth.
    The fog cleared briefly, revealing a line of posters pasted across a wall, showing James Price with the message, Report Terrorists to the Agency, written across the bottom. An enterprising young rebel had responded by spray-painting swear words over them.
    Sharla led them into a street where a pitched battle had been fought decades before; a school bus lay on its side with cars parked at each end to close the street off to traffic. Bullet holes riddled the makeshift barrier from one end to the other with skeletal remains scattered around the ground. 
    Brodie picked up a gun. It appeared intact.
    ‘Leave it,’ Sharla said quietly.
    Without asking why, she put it down.
    Reaching a corner, Sharla held up her hand. Stop. Brodie peered into the mist. She couldn’t see anything. It continued to shift and flow around them like ghosts.
    Then she saw Chad ready his weapon as a slithering sound echoed down the street. What’s causing it? She saw a car creeping along the middle of the road.
    No, not a car, but something as big. 
    It resembled an enormous armadillo. Its head was short and stumpy with two horns at the front. One eye was shut; it had either been destroyed by the fog or in a battle with something else. The other eye was fixed on the road ahead.
    The creature moved on a row of tiny feet like an enormous caterpillar, its rear ending in a long snake-like tail. It opened its mouth as if yawning and Brodie saw a jagged row of bottom teeth.
    Sharla didn’t seem in a hurry to escape, so Brodie guessed she intended to keep them here,