We were an hour of walking away from the school. Luckily, we'd managed to check into a motel for the night before with the money Contri'd remembered to bring. She had a pretty big allowance, and had decided to bring everything she'd saved up. A couple thousand dollars would keep us going for a bit, and that's all we needed. Staying on the run would be the only way we could stay free and safe. We'd also dashed back into our rooms (the biggest elastic band I ever made was two stories tall as of then) and grabbed a change of clothes or two.

I searched our bag and clothes for more microphones and cameras, but found nothing. Good. I may not have expected to find anything, but it was a relief that they didn't know where we were.

"Anything there, Tara?" Contri asked. I laughed.

"Nope. Nothing I can find, Sara." The fake names (and aliases) we'd adopted were kind of funny. They rhymed. Kind of. Only on paper, not in the air, which was great because we were pretending to be sisters. I was almost a year older, which was no way true. Contri was actually a bit older than I was, but I looked more mature. I also looked like I could be fifteen, which was, supposedly, my age.

I crossed my fingers that the Execs- or the rebels- hadn't called my mom. She'd freak. And we- at least I- wouldn't be able to go anywhere without our faces being recognized.

I plopped down on the bed. The room had been cheap- 50 dollars for the night- but only had one bed. I'd slept on the armchair the night before, and luckily I was so tired I couldn't help but fall asleep right away. It was Contri's turn the second night.

"Where do we go next?" Contri asked. We hadn't talked about what we'd do after we escaped. The whole getting-away-from-the-Super-stuff had been a split-second decision that would probably impact our lives.

I shrugged. "Away from the Academy. Where are we now, anyways?"

"I honestly have no idea. I haven't had time to look it up. The wifi here is slower than a dying snail." She grabbed her phone from the small coffee table and searched it up. We waited. And waited. For what was probably five minutes. But felt like forever.

"We are about sixty kilometres from Toronto. The Academy is about halfway in between, but there's a lot of side streets. It would take maybe half an hour to drive from school."

"Not far enough," I said, and took the phone to convert it to miles. Contri muttered something the sounded like "Americans," under her breath. I ignored her.

"We can't hide forever," she said. "We're going to have to stop them from murdering each other at some point. You know they'd get into a huge fight, now that Adam knows where the Resistance headquarters are. They're bound to invade. Though Maddi is smart enough to realize that, so she'll probably move it."

"She might not soon enough," I pointed out. "Liam- her friend- did just die. Because of her. She'll be blaming herself forever."

"Maddi can get through it." Contri seemed determined that Maddi was strong enough to push past the grief. "Mr. Prent's probably doesn't even have any that his fellow teacher and accomplice was killed. Jacques, on the other hand, just killed his teammate. He'll probably be out of the running for a while."

I sighed and turned around. "What is it?" she asked.

"This talk," I said, standing up. "Of people dying. It's just so weird. Two weeks ago..." I trailed off.

Contri laid a hand on my shoulder. "Two weeks ago we didn't know each other. We didn't have these awesome powers. Sure, bad things have happened, but good things have too. Make the best of things."

"Aren't you an optimist." I dug through the bag we'd brought and picked up the rock. "We should hide this, shouldn't we. It's too dangerous to keep it with us."

"Actually," Contri said, taking the rock from my hand. "Maybe that's a good idea. Somewhere we'll remember. Could we pop over to my house? Replace it with another rock? I have a huge rock collection. I'm sure there'll be one like it. That way, even if they get it, they don't."

I smiled, and she did too.

Maybe this wasn't going to be too bad.

A/N: Thanks so much for reading The Almost Heroes! I hope you enjoyed it. I'll be editing it sometime soon (but not too soon) and there will be a sequel at some point. No clue when, maybe when I'm 80 years old, but someday. I didn't quite make my goal (60 chapters) and it did take a bit longer than I'd planned, but it's the longest thing I've written in my life, and I'm really proud of it. I'm pretty sure it isn't a contender for the Watty's anymore, but oh well.
Thanks especially to Some_Random_Person98 and Jaspcat360 for voting as well as my sister for silently reading.
-bookcats