Upbeats 2: Crime After Crime

By Erin Sheena Byrne

Sequel to Upbeats!
Alright, so, our five teenage heroes have saved the day, once, from the villain Gemini. However, it was a short-lived victory as he got away.
Now the Upbeats are constantly on their toes, waiting for Gemini, hoping to find him before he tries to wipe out humans again.
On top of that, the media has noticed the Upbeats.
Every time they save someone, cameras, microphones and questions bombard them.
Luke is afraid someone will discover that these superheroes are really just a group of super-powered teenagers.
However, Brooke thinks they can use this publicity as an advantage...
Will it work out as planned or will someone see through the Upbeats' disguises?
Regardless of what happens, you can be sure that the Upbeats will be there, Crime After Crime...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Erin Sheena Byrne
• Release date: Aug 12, 2013
• ISBN: 9780987508317

Erin Sheena Byrne

I am 21 years old, born and mostly raised in South Africa but now living in Australia.Telling stories, creating characters, and constructing plots is the outlet for my vivid imagination and love for adventure. I’ve always loved writing and I will happily spend forever refining my craft.Upbeats is a story I wrote for my little sister when I was 13. She’s always helped me build my fictional worlds and characters. Now, she - a digital artist - brings the characters to life with dazzling colour.Besides writing, I enjoy playing guitar and piano, drawing and painting, baking and cake decorating, and sewing.

Book preview

Upbeats 2: Crime After Crime

By Erin Sheena Byrne

Copyright 2013 Erin Sheena Byrne

Smashwords Edition

License Notes

Thank you for downloading this free ebook. Although this is a free book, it remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy at Smashwords.com where they can discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.

Upbeats 2: Crime After Crime does not contain inappropriate material and is suitable for children, young teenagers and adults.

Discover other titles by Erin Sheena Byrne at Smashwords.com:

Upbeats

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Epilogue

Observer Scene

Author's Note

To Jolie, my collaborator

Chapter One

My name is Brooke O'Mackey.

I'm tall, athletic, pale skinned, blue eyed and I have shoulder-length, strawberry blonde hair.

I'm fourteen, I go to high school, I'm not that fantastic with my grades but they're good enough that no one has to tutor me.

Ask anyone, who has at least met me once, and they will tell you that I am fierce, fearless, determined and confident. And perhaps I am all that.

I have never been scared of anything, no one can stop me when I'm on a path, I think I've forgotten how to cry, and I'm not afraid to say what I'm thinking.

I live in a normal city called Rockwell.

Rockwell is not a terribly big city: in fact, the city part is rather small. In the heart of Rockwell, slap-bang in the middle, reside tall, sleek buildings and skyscrapers. But, walk a few blocks and you're past it. Then you're onto the normal town stuff: the mall, the shopping district, the restaurants, cafes, diners, and older buildings like the banks, libraries and the high school I go to.

If you saw my city on a map, you would see a large, misshapen rectangle with one of the long sides curving along the west coast. So, our winter isn't that cold, we don't get snow. But it is still cold enough to make you shiver.

The opposite long side of the rectangle, the country outskirts as they are called, is made up of a vast expanse of farms, old country houses, woods, mountains, rivers and wildlife.

The north end of the rectangle is Uptown Rockwell. That's where all the rich people live so you can pretty much imagine that it's clean, neat, fancy and really shiny.

The south end of the rectangle is Downtown. Downtown is dirty, it smells, it's dangerous and no one under the age of eighteen is allowed (by their parents) to roam the streets of Downtown alone after dark. Cheap, old and practically falling-to-pieces apartment buildings line the filthy streets; drunks dance, sing and sway along the streets at night and graffiti is scrawled everywhere.

Then, in between Uptown and Downtown, are the suburbs where most families live. The suburbs are neat with clean streets lined with tall trees whose leaves change colours in autumn and fall off in winter. The pavements are smooth and easy to ride a bike on. The front lawns are regularly mowed and the houses are smart looking double storey structures, vaguely identical, and well maintained. And the backyards are spacious and most have big trees with either a swing or a tree-house built-in.

I live in the suburbs, in a neat, double-storey family house that lacks a complete family.

My older brother, Arthur, is my legal guardian. He’s a detective.

My brother cares for me, drives me around and whenever there are legal papers that need signing, he’s the one who has to sign on the dotted lines. But he is not the only family I had.

There is also my dad, but he was never around much. He worked for the CIA (still does) and he was devoted to his work. He worked in a big city, like five hundred miles away, and we never saw him.

He used to come home on weekends and holidays and he used to work closer to home. But that wasn't the case anymore...

So our house is often empty.

It used to be so happy and cheerful. Back when my mom was still alive, dad worked in Rockwell and left home every morning at nine and came home every night at exactly five. He didn't work on the weekends.

Mom would have dinner ready, Arthur and I would come home from school, and we'd all sit around the table, exchanging stories from our day.

And when I was upset, nothing was working out the way I wanted it to, she would turn the music up as loud as she dared and then we'd dance like idiots until she got me laughing so much, I’d forget why I had been upset.

And my father loved her to bits.

Whenever he'd had a tough day at work; couldn't catch the bad guy, as he would tell Arthur and me; Mom was the only person in the whole wide world who could get him smiling again.

Then one day, she died. No one even told me she was sick...

That was four years ago.

Dad started working longer after that. I never even realized that the clock was ticking further and further: it happened gradually. Then one day, he was gone so long; I nearly got Arthur to drive me down to the office to see if he was still alive.

I was a ten year old about to have a heart attack. Then my father walked through the door with a briefcase in his hand and an unsmiling face. I wanted to hug him and tell him how stupid I had been, but one glance at his face and I learnt to hold myself back from that day forth.

That was the first time my dad came home after dark.

Then he began accepting assignments that took him to other cities and states; something he had never done before.

Nevertheless, soon I was used to never seeing him.

And then he started changing offices. He used to call us often but, slowly, the calls got fewer and farther between.

Now it was amazing if I even received a voice message on the phone.

He was a grieving man. I could understand that. We were all grieving.

But he didn't have to leave Arthur and me alone.

There was a framed picture on my wall of my mother and me, taken when I was ten. Every time I woke up, I saw that picture. Sometimes, it made me sad, but it also reminded me of the good times I used to have with my mother.

My mom was great. She knew all the right things to say, and she never just said anything: she meant it with her whole heart. She was the one who taught me that you never lie: if you are going to say something, then you are going to mean it. And promises are made to be kept.

So there, now you know me. Or, at least, you know the motherless, just about fatherless, in your face, afraid of nothing and no one, girl from across the road.

But there's so much more to me...

I'm a superhero, I can stretch to impossible lengths, I've saved the planet once and I've got a deadly enemy.

But I'm not alone: I've got a team: the Upbeats.

Chapter Two

It all started on a rainy, autumn day about a month ago.

The entire ninth grade was going on a field trip to the zoo.

I found it hard to be thrilled about it: I have never been much of a zoo person. I just never really liked the idea of walking around and reading random facts about animals in enclosures and habitats that were not their own.

But I wasn't going to complain about this trip because the zoo barely had any animals in it anyway: construction had not been completed yet.

So, in all truth, it was just going to be a trip to an unfinished building, which was someday going to be a zoo.

(And, seriously, do you know any kid on this planet that wouldn't jump at the chance to get a day off school?)

The field trip was not well planned, though. Besides the destination consisting of an incomplete zoo, another problem arose when we arrived at the zoo.

Only when the sea of ninth graders and a handful of teachers were all standing around the zoo lobby, dripping wet and shivering cold from the pouring rain outside, did the organizers of the field trip realize that there were too few teachers to shepherd the swarm of kids.

The brilliant solution was to revert to the old buddy system.

The plan was beautiful in its simplicity: groups of four kids could go their separate ways, meander freely amongst the few enclosures that had been completed and inhabited and observe the builders working hard on the Under Construction areas.

None of the groups had assigned leaders. But Luke Rosenhart, a tall boy with neat-but-ruffled white blonde hair and the kind of green eyes that tell you he is sensible and responsible, automatically became our leader.

He never said a thing and we never voted, but he's just one of those people you immediately turn to when you're in trouble, you need someone to look up to, or you don't know what to do next.

His doofus of a friend, Ned Detwiler, was in our group as well. Ned is Luke's complete opposite. Luke is fair and Ned is from African descent, Luke is realistic and Ned believes that only bad things can happen to him, Luke is sensible and serious and Ned can crack a joke when he's bound, gagged and about to be thrown over a cliff.

The selection was random: you didn't know who you were going to get stuck with. So