We Don’t Wear Capes

Year One

Joshua Guess

©2019 Joshua Guess

About Josh

Joshua Guess is the author of more than twenty novels, ranging from      post-apocalyptic zombie yarns to space operas, with a thriller and a few  superhero stories in between. When he's not working the day job, he  likes to sit at home and be a hermit. His favorite people to be around are  mostly the ones he makes up, with the exceptions of Sam and Dean, his  black cats. For five and a half years, he was a full-time writer thanks to the popularity of The Fall, and he's incredibly grateful to his readers for giving him the chance to live his dream.

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We Don't Wear Capes

Year One

The Fall

Victim Zero

Dead Will Rise

War of the Living

Genesis Game

Exodus in Black

Revelation Day

Beyond The Fall

Relentless Sons

Dead Nation

The Faded Earth

Deathwatch

Song of the Badlands

Men of Stone

The Ghost Fleet

Cascade Point

Borderlander

Breakspace

Rogue Orbit

Carter Ash

The Saint

The Next Chronicle

Next

Damage

Cassidy Freeman

Chosen

Living With the Dead

With Spring Comes The Fall

The Bitter Seasons

Year One (With Spring Comes The Fall, The Bitter Seasons, bonus material)

The Hungry Land

The Wild Country

This New Disease

American Recovery

Ever After

Black Sand

Earthfall

Ran

Apocalyptica

This Broken Veil

Misc

Beautiful (An Urban Fantasy)(Novel)

Soldier Lost (Short Story)

Dog Dreams In Color (Short Story)

With James Cook

The Passenger (Surviving The Dead)

Prologue: Observer Effect

Two agents in black suits appeared out of nowhere, setting foot where no human being had walked for more than fifty years.

The shorter of the two was a woman with close-cropped black hair and olive skin inherited from an Italian mother, her angular features set in a half-worried, half-excited expression. Despite years of training and more than a decade of practical field experience, Emma Rohm was nervous about being here.

Her partner, a stocky black man of average height, hair dusted with silver despite his relative youth, looked no less concerned. Eric Williams was solid, but walking on ground zero was no small thing.

“It looks so normal,” Rohm noted. “Even after reading all the reports I kind of expected it to look like the middle of a nuclear blast.”

Williams nodded. “It’s weird. Notice that? No animals. I can’t hear birds or insects. Nothing.”

Rohm shivered. She held no belief in the supernatural—or at least not beyond what people like her could do—yet the number of people who had died here and in the two-hundred-mile-wide circle centered on this place hung over her like a funeral shroud. Something so profoundly bizarre occurred in Littleton, Kansas almost seventy years earlier that the wildlife learned to avoid the place as a base instinct.

Discovering the origin of that weirdness was, after all, their entire reason for being here. It was what the last two years of training had been about. Why they’d gone through months of additional background checks, paperwork, government appeals, and two Senate subcommittees. Rohm was the most qualified meta in the entire world for the job, in no small part because she was partnered with Williams.

“No time like the present,” she said, walking toward the faded pennant waving lazily from its aluminum pole. The image struck her as anticlimactic, that this sad little green flag should represent the point of origin for the most significant event in human history.

The Flare. Both the event itself and the day off its occurrence—August 22, 1953—were referred to by that simple term.

“I’m ready when you are,” Williams assured her. His hands began burning a bright orange, then yellow, finally settling on a harsh white light without heat. Rohm nodded, and he put both hands on her shoulder.

As always she was surprised by the absence of any sensation when Williams used his power on her. He was one of a handful of top-tier enhancers working for the agency. His ability increased her own by an order of magnitude, yet she felt no rush of energy. The only way to know it worked was to utilize her own ability—which she would have to wait for.

Williams pulled his hands away but didn’t let the power burning from them dissipate. Once enhanced, a person could not be pushed further by him until the initial burst of power wore off. When he took her right hand a moment later, it had no immediate effect on Rohm’s ability. She closed her eyes and reached out to the well of power tucked away in the corner of her mind. Reached for but did not touch. Instead she hovered near it, letting its beat and rhythm fill her thoughts.

Through their clasped hands, Rohm could feel Williams do the same, but in a different way. When searching for Resonance, the recipient had to use their ability last.

It took a bit longer than she was used to for Williams to sync with her. She felt the odd sense of change wash over her mind.

“Ready,” he said.

“I know,” she told him, embracing her power and opening her eyes.

Rohm immediately felt her senses widen and new ones spring into existence. She had long ago grown accustomed to the feeling that a thousand faded images flickered at the corner of her vision, which was how her limited human brain tried to interpret the vast flood of information now washing into her mind like an ocean tide.

Under normal circumstances, Rohm was one of the most gifted psychometrists in the world. Psychometry was a broad term, and metas with the ability were often limited to one of its branches. Not so with her. Rohm’s gift spanned the gamut. She could not only read the history of an object, gaining both sense memories and instinctive knowledge from it, but in certain circumstances could intuit detailed information far beyond the scope of others who shared her power.

When amplified by Williams and then put in Resonance with him, her power both grew and changed dramatically. Today Rohm would not find the history of an object and catch glimpses of its passage in time. In point of fact, while in Resonance she could no longer do so any more than a car in fifth gear could also be in first. For the duration of their Resonance, Rohm was no longer able to touch and know physical objects.

Instead she reached out with her left hand, fingers spread, and read the history of a place. This place.

What she saw was this…

On an empty stretch of dusty dirt road just outside the city limit of Littleton stood six men. Five arranged in a circle around one other. The man in the middle was unfamiliar to her, but Rohm felt shock to the core of her being as she recognized the other five. Not just any five, but The Five. The most powerful, dangerous superhumans in history.

Yet in that moment they were only human. She knew this instinctively as her power granted her vast if imperfect understanding. The six men argued, the conversation too rapid and split among too many voices for her to make out the context.

The man in the middle began to glow faintly in the dusky light. The others didn’t notice at first, only catching on when the radiance grew sharp and fierce. In between seconds, the stranger went from arguing with his friends to gasping in a huge breath before exploding in a flash of brilliance that would have blinded her were she actually seeing it with her eyes instead of her mind.

When the burst cleared, The Five stood encased—or perhaps turned into—crystal. Their features were captured perfectly, as if carved.

Her mind rebelled against what she was seeing. Every report said that ground zero was and always had been empty. The Flare was assumed to be a tear between realities or some other cosmological event, one that gave rise to superhuman abilities in formerly normal people.

Even as she struggled to understand the presence of The Five in this place, at this crucial moment, history unfolded. Her mind, drawn to the historical impact of the Flare, could no more stop watching the events play out than a rock could stop itself from obeying the pull of gravity.

Within seconds of being turned to translucent glass as everyone within the two hundred mile wide quarantine zone was, the five men in front of her hummed a deep note as if struck with a tuning fork by the hand of a god. Their frozen forms vibrated in place before melting back into human bodies. Of the sixth man, who was apparently responsible for the Flare, nothing remained. No sign of his existence could be seen beyond slight indentations where his shoes pressed into the dirt moments before.

The five men who would become near forces of nature stared at each other wild-eyed until the scene abruptly cut off a few seconds later.

“Did you see that?” she gasped, coming out of the vision. “Did you see them?”

Williams stood next to her, stunned. “Yeah. The Five. This changes—wait. Is that another one?”

Rohm had only a moment to muse on the strangeness of another person sharing her visions before her power latched on to another vital point in history in this place where there should be only event of such magnetic power, and yanked her mind back in time once more.

“Why this place?” asked the man Rohm knew as Windwalker. He alone among The Five was unique in that over the next seventy years, he always appeared as he did in this moment; middle-aged and thick around the middle. “Why do you want to meet here? Not that I mind bringing us back, but there are much more comfortable places we could gather.”

The other four glanced at each other with bemused expressions. The villain known as Insight, long assumed to be the leader of the group, shook his head ruefully. “See, this is why you make a bad crook. You don’t think about the risks. This is the one place they’ll never look for us. Who knows how many other people out there can do the things we can, now? They quarantined this place in two weeks, and that was almost a year ago. It’s as safe as we can get.”

Windwalker sighed. “You all act like I’m an idiot, but I notice you’re happy to stand out by having Andrew make you look ten years younger. Not to mention you weren’t in that kind of shape during the war when we were on our feet all day and barely had enough to eat.”

As the men spoke, raw information struck Rohm. The pieces and parts were scattered, but they all fit into a whole. Andrew had to be the tall, bearded man anyone in the modern age recognized as Outbreak. A healer of legendary ability, he was the reason The Five were able to operate for seven decades without aging noticeably. She saw glimpses of the war Windwalker spoke of—for men of his generation, it was the war. She didn’t need to see ghostly images of Japanese Zeros and the twisted arms of swastikas to grasp the implication, but they served as definitive proof.

“I’m getting stronger,” said a third man, small and wiry. Cascade was easily the most dangerous of them in terms of immediate, raw damage. He gave off an aura of absolute control, but unlike Reign with his aristocratic and superior expression, Cascade’s mastery was of himself. Rohm saw the incredible grip the man had on his body, mind, and power. The longer she watched, the more information flowed into the construct of facts in her head.

Reign nodded in agreement. Rohm found it odd to see that perpetually youthful face without the ever-present sneer it would adopt over the coming decades. Was this before he learned the extent of his powers? Before the reach of his abilities made him so feared that entire Hero teams refused to go against him? On this subject her power remained stubbornly unhelpful.

“We can get to that later,” Insight said diplomatically but firmly. “You know the order we follow. We work out business first, then…”

The scene shifted.

Rohm saw three more meetings in rapid succession. Each was at ground zero, and in a display of sentimentality she could not have imagined these men capable of, on the anniversary of the Flare. With each new iteration she intuited more about them. In the grand scheme of a life, what Rohm got from the vision up to the end of that fourth meeting was little, yet still far more than the combined resources of the world had been able to gather on the men.

During the fifth—and as it happened, final—gathering she witnessed, everything changed.

Now they looked more like the villains she knew. The years had not yet twisted them into the merciless beings of seemingly infinite power they would become, but they were no longer the somewhat hapless victims of circumstance she had seen in that first meeting.

These men were confident, more comfortable in their power. They spoke about grander plans. Of using their abilities to do more as a group than they ever had apart. Five years of experience changed anyone, even normal humans. For those with the power to change the world, half a decade might as well have been a lifetime.

This had to be 1958, which was two years before The Five first became nationally known for what they were. History was a subject Rohm was naturally drawn to because of both her work and ability, and the blanks in her knowledge were slowly being filled in. She now had confirmation that the scattered reports of men displaying powers similar to The Five before their grand debut at the dawn of the sixties were true.

The dynamic between them was instructional. Every public appearance by these men was a unified front. It was part of what made them so damned dangerous. They worked in unison, never arguing or doubting, never for a second seeming less than a perfectly designed machine. Yet here she saw them at their most vulnerable—five old friends cast together by fate to ride the wave of history.

They all deferred to Insight. She knew this in concrete terms, but it was obvious without her power. He was the leader, the one they had grown to look toward for answers and direction. They all feared Cascade—even Insight—which unlike their respect for their leader was not apparent in their body language. And was there any rational person on Earth who wouldn’t be afraid of the man once they’d seen what he could do?

Outbreak was the black sheep among them, always standing back and observing. Not forgotten, just not out front. Not obvious. Reign was the same if to a lesser degree, stoic and serious as he let Insight run the meeting. For all the damage Cascade or even Outbreak could do if they wanted, Reign was easily the scariest of the group on a personal level.

Only Windwalker seemed unchanged, personality wise. He remained outwardly amused by nearly everything, even if he fell into the same patterns as the others. Rohm’s power snatched a fact from whatever ether her abstract knowledge came from and knew that Windwalker was and always would be the most human of them. Perhaps by choice.

She listened to them plot and plan the takeover of a city. Chicago. Clearly an event that never came to pass since she didn’t remember it. No exploit of The Five could have escaped the incredible scrutiny given to the group.

Her power began to lag as she tired. Rohm almost never used it for this long or with this intensity, struggling with every breath pull information into her like the gravity well of a planet. She redoubled her efforts, gritting her teeth and focusing on the five men as hard as she could.

Insight abruptly stopped speaking in the middle of a sentence. He swept his shaggy brown hair back as his head snapped up as if listening for a distant noise. His eyes had slowly changed over the course of five years to the flat blue—no whites, no pupils—covering the entirety of their surface. Rohm saw a familiar look cross Insight’s face, one captured on countless videos of his exploits. He was using his power—to some degree, he was always using it—to sense everything around him. The man could see molecules scrape together and hear gravity.

Insight cast his gaze in a wide arc, scanning his surroundings.

And then…

He saw her.

Over the years between them, their minds brushed against each other. As they touched, information passed from him to her, a flood that became a torrent. Rohm knew things, so many things. About him, about them. And in a flash of widening eyes, Insight gained the same understanding of her.

Emma Rohm was still screaming when the extraction team came to pick them up fifteen minutes later.

Part One: Resonance

Six months later

Chapter One

The B Team

Jeff Shirani knew his information was badly out of date the moment he appeared in front of the address. The agency put together a stack of dossiers for his meetings today, and the first and most important one was next to useless.

“Idiots,” he muttered. Then he put on his business face, the pleasant one that said he was not at all irritated with the lazy analysts who were clearly told how important these interviews were, and rang the doorbell.

A middle-aged black woman opened it and sized him up. “You’re Director Shirani?”

Jeff put out a hand. “Yes, ma’am. And you must be Mrs. Jackson.” She took the hand with a strong grip and shook.

“Just call me Ava,” she replied. “Haven’t been married for ten years. Come on in.”

The dossier should have prepared him for the place. The mother—Ava—was listed as being a mid-level manager at the federal Department of Agriculture. It was solid money, the kind a single parent could raise a family on, but it didn’t buy a place like this.

The house was not a mansion; it was something far more subtle and more expensive. It was big, sure, but not the sprawling monuments to compensation tech CEOs built on million-dollar acres in southern California. Here on the outskirts of Louisville, the home was isolated. Which explained how the more technically savvy metas in the area hadn’t lost their minds over it completely.

For someone like Jeff, noticing those kinds of things was second nature. He was, after all, a Hero. If you didn’t learn to spot advanced materials like the synstone covering the exterior of this place by instinct, you weren’t observant enough to survive more than a few missions.

Synstone was ludicrously expensive. He’d never seen a piece larger than a few feet across. The artificial slate gray rock looked like it was glazed with the thinnest possible coating of liquid opal, and a piece of it a quarter inch thick could protect against a lightning strike without singeing.

To have a home clad in the stuff was beyond extravagant. It was kind of insane.

“Interesting place,” Jeff said truthfully. “I did our normal background checks. I didn’t realize you’d come into money.”

Ava smiled as she led him to the kitchen. “Oh, we’ve had the money. Or I should say my daughter does. I just managed it for her until she turned eighteen. I still work. Been around long enough to know how fast it can all go away.”

Jeff nodded in exactly the right way to convey trust and understanding with just a dash of falsehood. The trick to building interpersonal relationships in the short time he had with prospective draftees was to project reality. You had to come off as a real person, not a perfect one.

Ava led them to a spacious kitchen with shining granite counters. The appliances were restaurant quality but clearly used often. The kitchen had a lived-in look no hired help would allow. Wherever the money came from, this woman was the sort to do for herself. Jeff found his respect for her ticking up.

“Have a seat,” she said, gesturing to a chair that probably cost more than his car payment.

Jeff sat and rested his arms casually on the long bar taking up one side of the island as if he didn’t have to travel halfway across the world and back several times today. “Will your daughter be joining us?”

“No,” Ava said. “No, she’ll want you to come to her. I just want to say a few things before then. Things a mother needs to say even if you already know them, you understand.”

Jeff nodded. “Sure.”

Ava reached down to her purse, which hung on her chair, and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. She lit one and took a long drag. “Sorry. Terrible habit. I quit for five years before we got your call.”

“I’m sorry if I upset you,” Jeff said. “It wasn’t my goal.”

Ava waved a hand. “None of that. I don’t need your apologies, mostly because I can’t trust them. I know who you are, Director Shirani. Or should I call you Glimmer?”

Jeff felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. “How could you possibly know my Hero identity?”

Ava raised an eyebrow. “My daughter worked it out ten minutes after you called. I know you can read people. Change the way you talk and hold yourself to make them want react how you want them to. I’ve watched videos of you out there in costume. You fight like someone in an action movie, and you hit like a train. I guess you’re tougher than someone like me, right?”

Jeff gave her a wry smile. “Somehow I doubt that.”

Ava rolled her eyes. “Flattery. That’s original. Point is, you’ve got strength. You can shrug off bullets. Right?”

He nodded. “It’s more complicated than that, but for the purpose of this conversation, let’s say yes. What’s your point?”

Ava stabbed the air with her cigarette. “My point, Director, is that my daughter is special. Not just because she has a power, but special to me. She’s my youngest, and unlike you she can’t get hit by a car and walk away. Now, I know your program is going to put her in danger. I’ve made my peace with that as much as I can. I’ve seen what you people do out there. You do what you need to make her survive it. I’m not some kid. I know you’ll have to be tough on her to make it happen. You just make sure you don’t take more risks with my baby girl than you have to. Because if she gets hurt or worse because you screwed up, some asshole in a mask is gonna be the least of your worries.”

Jeff barely raised his hand to knock before a voice from an intercom next to the door spoke in a soft, light tone. “Come in. It’s open.”

He stepped into outright science fiction.

The room was in the basement—no, the room was the basement. It stretched a hundred feet on a side and was packed with shelves and equipment in every direction. Only a patch about ten feet by ten was bare of tools and half-finished projects. It contained a bed, a dresser, and an entertainment center arranged with a logic that hurt his brain.

“Hello?” he said. “Uh, where are you?”

Movement in the right corner of his vision resolved into a young woman standing up from a large wooden desk. She moved toward him and though Jeff had read her file, it didn’t quite prepare him for the reality.

“America Jackson?” he asked, extending his hand. She was very tall, at least an inch over six feet, and not petite. The file had vague stats on her father, who was a giant of a man. America took after him in that respect. She was broad in the shoulders and full-figured without being curvy. She looked like someone who could kick ass on the mat more than model swimsuits.

“I don’t shake hands,” she said in that same soft, light voice. “Sorry. Consequence of my ability.”

Curious, Jeff let the hand fall away. “Really? Care to elaborate on that?”

She absently patted her hair, which was pulled back tight against her skull and gathered into a curly ball at the back. “You know what I can do, Director. It’s why you’re here, or so you say.”

“Humor me,” he said. “And I promise you, that’s certainly why I’m here.”

She glanced at his hand. “If I touch you, it’s a data point. Whether I want to or not, I’ll start recording every fact there is to observe. Facts I can’t forget no matter how much I try. Everything from the texture of your skin to its temperature, resilience, the hardness of your bones. I’ll remember every nuance of your reaction, the way your hair sways as you move from the shake. As it is, you’re already new data in my head. There’s a reason I stay down here most of the time.”

Jeff nodded. “Because you can’t control it.”

“Because I can’t control it,” she agreed. “Presumably, you’ve done background on me. You know what I am. Which means you also know I don’t even come close to qualifying for your program. I took this meeting more out of curiosity than anything. You should be flattered. I don’t have the chance to feel curious very often.”

Jeff laughed. “Really? You were an A+ student even before your powers matured. When you were eleven, which is much younger than most people.”

“Puberty is unpredictable,” America said. She waved a hand at herself. “I’ve looked like an Amazon since I was twelve. Can you imagine what it’s like for a girl to look twenty when she’s still playing with dolls?”

“No,” Jeff admitted. “It sounds awful.”

“It is. Which is why I spent the next few years keeping busy,” she said. “Seven doctorates. A few dozen patents, most of them sold or licensed.”

Jeff grinned. “Through shell companies, apparently, since we had no idea about the income. I’m sure the IRS would love to know how you kept it completely off their radar.”

At this, America smiled. “I didn’t. I kept it off electronic records. You should have had your people check the hard copy. You’d have seen the small novel of tax documents I prepare every year. And yes, I do them myself. It’s not like I have to think about the math.”

Jeff leaned against a support post and shook his head. “Honestly, understanding the tax code well enough to do my own would be the best perk of genius.”

She waved away the comment. “So. Please tell me why you want me in your program, Director. My understanding is that you only take a hundred in the annual draft, and they’re universally of medium-high to high power. My ability barely registers. I know. I checked. You’ve never taken anyone like me before.”

Jeff was extremely cautious with his answer. “We want you because we’ve never drafted anyone like you before. There’s a pilot program this year. A team of people with unique powers that register lower than our usual minimum. I’m sure you saw what happened with Cascade three months ago. One of The Five dead, but it cost us nearly a thousand civilian lives and thirty Heroes. What if we had someone like you out in the field, America? Someone whose first instinct is to think, to understand? How many could we have saved?”

He saw the hook sink in. It wasn’t a strong one, merely a first play on her basic humanity. And she had that in spades, unlike many metas with super intelligence he’d met.

Jeff pressed. “We lost an entire neighborhood in Chicago Heights. It made the higher ups ask a lot of hard questions. We need to broaden our approach.”

She crossed her arms. “Let’s say I believe you. Why should I come? What do you have to offer me? Helping people is noble. I respect you for making the choice. But going out in the world would be a nightmare for me.”

Jeff’s power didn’t allow him to miss to subtle cues. She desperately wanted control but was hiding just how powerful that need was. “Because we can teach you how to run your ability instead of letting it run you.”

“Uh huh,” she said. “What makes you think you can do that?”

He ticked off on his fingers. “A few facts. One, I don’t think genius is your actual power. It’s just one expression of it. Two, we might not have any geniuses as heroes yet, but that doesn’t mean we don’t work with them. We’ve got a couple on staff who can help guide you. Three, I know what your weakness is. And if I know that, doesn’t it stand to reason I have some clue on how you can get a handle on your gift?”

“I told you what it was,” she said with a bitter laugh. “Not much of a leap.”

Jeff shook his head. “No, your lack of control isn’t your weakness. It’s that you’re fallible. You absorb everything, and accept facts as facts even if you only believe they’re correct. You can build whole logic trees based on false information so long as you believe it’s real.”

America blinked. “How could you possibly know that?”

Jeff spread his hands. “Good question. If you want to learn the answer, then I guess you have a choice to make.”

His second appointment was much shorter and it took place in the food court of a large, open-air shopping mall.

“Cam Margolis?” he asked as he approached the table where the young woman sat. She looked up from her book, a tween romance by a mega-popular internet celebrity. “I’m—”

“Yes,” Cam said, smiling broadly.

“No,” Jeff replied. “I mean, I’m—wait, what?”

She closed the book and stood. Cam was average height and fairly plump but glowed with good health in a way that made him feel old and run-down as few other people could. She popped him gently on the shoulder. It took a conscious effort of will not to allow his power to react. That was all it did, really. React. Until it was time to act. Two sides of the same weird coin.

“Yes, I’m Cam, and yes, I accept your offer,” she explained. “Like there was ever a question.”

Jeff tugged his suit jacket straight, completely unnecessarily. “Oh. Good, then. That was easy. Since I have other appointments today, do you have any questions before I go?”

“Nah,” she said cheerily. “The mystery is part of the fun. I’ll take any advice you have, though.”

He cocked his head and tried to decide if the dossier on her was off as well. It said she, like all of the recruits, scored near the top of her classes all through school. Hard to imagine someone just out of college with a degree in biochemistry acting so…bubbly. He gave himself an internal shake and tried to remember how irritating it had been during his own training when everyone underestimated him. He was the man in charge, now. He couldn’t allow surface perceptions to cloud his judgment.

Not here. Not in this.

“Be careful who you punch, even gently,” he said. “Some of them will hit back a lot harder.”

Drew Garland was trickier. The thin blond man had given a range of possible locations he might be found at the time of his appointment. Jeff was fortunate to have teleporters at his disposal, because it took three tries to finally corner the kid.

“A junkyard?” Jeff asked as he approached the young meta. “Really?”

Drew ignored him. Instead he cast his hand out in a practiced motion toward a stack of crumbling concrete blocks that looked like old highway barriers. A tiny black blur moved from his palm and zipped through the concrete as if it didn’t exist. The blur didn’t ignore the stone—noisy cracks as the slabs broke and puffs of dust were proof of that—but neither did the dense material slow the blur down in the least.

“It’s where I can practice,” Drew said, standoffish.

Jeff suppressed a groan. Twenty-two years old and the kid sounded like a sullen goth high school freshman. “Yeah, I get that. I just mean it’s kind of…obvious. Bit of a stereotype.”

Drew’s eyes flashed at Jeff. “Aren’t you supposed to be here to convince me to sign up? Insulting me part of the plan, is it?”

“No,” Jeff said. “Offering you access to a billion-dollar facility where you’ll be encouraged to push your power to its limit was going to be my starting point. If concrete is all you can do, then my researchers made a mistake somewhere.”

Drew grimaced. “My sphere can go through anything. I don’t need your help with that. Nice try, though.”

“Yeah, maybe that was the wrong tactic,” Jeff admitted. “I guess my question is this: if that’s true, who’s going to care? People give a shit about Heroes and their powers, son. Not some kid screwing around in a dump. Which would you rather be?”

But Jeff knew the answer.

The next appointment wasn’t one. Chris Smith was supposed to have been at home, having recently graduated college as most of the recruits had, and waiting on this chance rather than finding regular work. Or that was what Jeff was led to believe. Damn those researchers.

“I’m so sorry about this,” said Ellen Smith, his mother. “Chris left one of his, ah, friends here at home but he ended up needing the extra hands out on the job site. The money was just too good to turn down.”

Jeff smothered his frustration. “It’s all right. I’ll pop over and see him if you give me the address.”

She did, if reluctantly. Jeff signaled his ride and was standing at the edge of a construction site a minute later. Four identical men swarmed a section of building that had partially collapsed after a crane apparently bumped into it. The damaged parts rested unsteadily against the crane, a danger to everyone below and making the partially ruined floor unstable.

“It’s Saturday,” Jeff mused to the fifth identical man, who stood only a few feet away from Jeff’s point of appearance. “Did they leave this overnight or something?”

Chris turned in surprise. “Oh, wow. Mister Shirani. Director, I mean. I thought I’d make it home before our meeting.”

Jeff shrugged. “No big deal. So what happened here?”

Chris gestured at the crane. “Someone left the crane unlocked with the key in it. Drunk guy climbed in and, well, you can see. No one is on site but the cops called the foreman and they wanted someone to clear all this away before it could pose a risk to any of the union employees on Monday.”

“So they called you.”

The younger man nodded. “Yep. I do odd jobs like this from time to time. Or I guess the rest of me do.”

One of the four identical Chris—Chrisses? Chrissi?—stepped a bit further out than a normal man might risk. The wobbly section of floor gave way, and the man slipped. He managed to grab hold of the crane but ended up dangling forty feet in the air. The Chris standing next to Jeff sighed.

Dangling Chris vanished in a puff of displaced air. A few seconds later, another one appeared in front of the original and dashed off to help his brother copies.

“Your mom says you’re looking forward to being drafted into the agency,” Jeff said. “Should I take that as a yes?”

The look of joy that spread across the original’s face was beatific. He was tall, with light brown hair and boy-next-door good looks. In a moment of irony so thick he could almost taste it, Jeff realized his newest recruit looked like one of those guys who led superhero movies. The ones he never watched because honestly, once you’ve lived the life, the fiction just seemed absurd.

“Yes, sir,” Chris said, unable to hit his joy. “It’s what I’ve wanted since I was kid. I never thought it would be possible.”

Jeff smiled and gave the kid a playful slap on the arm. “That’s great. Because we want you.” He thrust a palm toward the small army of Chris. “All of you.”

He spent an interesting half hour recruiting Celia Khoury, who didn’t live with her parents but refused to meet with him without them. They plied Jeff with excellent Lebanese food—the safiha baalbakieh was amazing—and increasingly flattering stories about their daughter. With each new iteration, the young woman seemed to shrink in on herself. Her dark brown hair hung over her face and her arms were hidden in the oversize hoodie wrapped around her like a shield.

“You should go,” her mother said, her face set what Jeff read as a familiar, long-suffering patience. “You could do so much good.”

“It’s too dangerous,” Celia said, not at all gently. She had none of the softness America had shown. Withdrawn, certainly, but willing to stand her ground. She shook her left arm inside the hoodie. “You’ve seen what can happen.”

Jeff leaned forward slightly, putting on the body language that told them they had to listen to him. That he knew what he was talking about. It was his own sort of armor. The kind that screamed authority. “That’s exactly why we want you, Celia. You’ve spent the last ten years scared senseless of your gift. Yet you use it every day. I know veteran Heroes who don’t utilize their power half as much as you, or have a tenth of your control. You’ll be an invaluable asset.”

She glanced down at the hidden hand. “How would I even manage? It takes all my concentration just keeping this up.”

Jeff knew exactly how to reel her in. “What if I told you we might be able to do something about that?”

She looked up at him, unconsciously shaking the hair away from her eyes. “You can’t be serious.”

“I am,” Jeff said. “If we could give you back what you lost, would it be worth giving the program a shot? A real one, I mean.”

Celia brightened, then. If only for a moment, all doubt and worry vanished from her features. “Yes.”

Ethan Hannah was his shortest meeting. Jeff met the stocky Hispanic man as he was rushing off to fill in for a coworker.

“If you still want me, the answer is yes,” Ethan said, every word more thrilled about the possibility than the last. “I really have to run, though. Sorry.”

Jeff didn’t even have a chance to reply before the kid was gliding down the street.

“Huh,” he said to himself. “Six for six.”

He had doubts about the last one.

She walked off the nightclub stage to applause that felt too large for the small space. Two years ago she had filled places twice as large. Five years ago she was a staple on television. In the years before that she filled stadiums. This was not, as Jeff initially suspected, simply the tail end of a career. She was as funny as ever. As relevant as ever. Every scrap of data at his fingertips said the scaling down of her tour schedule and the smaller venues were a choice.

As she moved through the crowd, he read why in every line of her body language. It was all over her face. This woman was tired. So tired. In ways Jeff, at age thirty-eight, could scarcely begin to understand.

“Miss Carroll,” he said as she walked past him. “We spoke on the phone.”

Susan Carroll, comedian, stopped in her tracks and turned those insightful blue eyes on him. They were eyes that truly saw, eyes like razors that cut to the bone and informed her routine with a raw honesty only the best in her line of work ever managed.

“I told you I wasn’t interested,” she said. “I told you the first five times you emailed me and on all three phone calls. You’re persistent, I gotta give you that. I didn’t expect you to come all the way to England to bother me.”

He followed her to the small dressing room set up for her use. It wasn’t much, clearly having served as a storage space in the recent past. She didn’t bother closing the door behind her. Instead of changing or gathering her small bag, she sat in the lone chair and turned toward him.

“Why would you even want me?” Susan asked, waving a hand lazily at her creased face and iron gray hair. “I’m sixty-two. I’ve smoked like a Bristol chimney since I was an annoying preteen back in Arkansas. On my best day, I’ve never been able to throw a punch. I’m old and worn out, Director. And at my age I’m not inclined to spend my golden years surrounded by a bunch of kids in the prime of their lives.”

Jeff didn’t let the smile touch his face, but she handed him his first talking point rather nicely. “If you agree, you won’t stay your current age. We have a meta who can make you young again. Match you with the people on your team.”

Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “You’re trying to tempt me with stolen youth? I didn’t think MICA dealt with age vectors. They’re supposed to be unethical.”

Jeff nodded. “And they are, when the meta siphoning youth from other people does so without consent. There’s a guy in Tulsa who pays people a hundred bucks a pop to sell him a week of age. Gets a bunch of them together in one spot, drains it away, then sells it off to wealthy people for a tidy profit. But our guy doesn’t do that. He’s a straight healer. Powerful one. Almost on par with Outbreak, if you can believe it. So not only will you be in your early twenties again, you’ll have perfect health.”

Susan showed no outward sign that this impressed her. “And I suppose this lasts so long as I’m working for you? I wash out of your program and suddenly I’m an old lady again?”

“Nope,” Jeff said. “So long as you act in good faith, you get to live out your years just like anyone else.”

Some of the fight seemed to drain away as she flapped a dismissive hand. “It’s tempting. I don’t know that someone your age can really understand how much. You have to be pushing forty, but you look ten years younger. You don’t know what it’s like to wake up one day and discover your back or hip hurts, and that’s just how it is now. You can manage it, but it’s always going to be there. Being young again, starting over…that’s a hell of a carrot. But it’s not enough of one. Sorry.”

“I didn’t think it would be,” Jeff said, consciously not using his power. This was not a woman he wanted to piss off if it was at all avoidable. “You’ve seen a lot. Been through the kinds of hell only someone with decades of life behind them can. That’s why we want you. We’re putting together an experimental team. Everyone but you is young—the youngest is only eighteen. To be frank, we need a little wisdom thrown in the mix. Someone to be the voice of reason and experience.”

Susan barked out a laugh. “If you thought that was going to convince me, you missed fucking wildly, Director. I already raised a kid. I’m not going to wrangle a team of them.”

As she heard her own words, the light faded from her eyes. Jeff felt a sudden, overwhelming urge to comfort the poor woman.

“I’m done with kids,” she said, her voice wavering.

He had practiced for this moment. Considered every avenue of attack. The conclusion he’d come to was that honesty—brute force truthfulness—was the only option.

“That’s the other thing I can offer you,” Jeff said. “I’m not going to dick around and pretend it’s not a bargaining chip, because it is. I can give you revenge.”

Susan’s head rose, and with it a bright anger. “What? What did you just say to me?”

“I know about your son,” Jeff said gently. “I was sorry to hear he died in Cascade’s final attack. I mean that. I’ve been watching your standup specials since I was a kid. I remember when you were nominated for the Oscar back in ’95 for Full Moon Tango and you took Brian to the ceremony as your date. I was such a fan boy. Stayed up all night to see if you’d get the award.”

“Don’t you dare try to use my son against me,” Susan said, moving to her feet. Power fairly crackled around her—not perceptibly. She was not that kind of meta. But the special senses Jeff’s ability gave him were tuned to the tiniest shifts in the body that told him an ability was on the verge of being used. And though she might not be able to punch a car across a street, in her own way Susan Carroll was one of the most terrifying beings on the planet.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t have much choice,” he said, raising his palms in front of him. “I’m not lying about Brian. My heart broke for you. I’m also not lying about giving you a shot at revenge. That much I can guarantee. Cascade is dead, but there are still four more members of The Five out there. We’ve…come into some new information about them over the last year. That’s how we were able to finally kill one of them. Hear me out, and if you still want to do to me what I know you’re on the edge of doing, I won’t stop you. Even if you do, I’d still want you on this team.”

To his surprise, she let him speak.

By the time he was done, he had his team of seven.

Chapter Two

Orientation, Day One

“If it’s your first time in Fight Club, you have to fight,” Director Shirani said to the crowd. America didn’t have to look around to know the joke missed and missed wide. The tension in the room was palpable. She didn’t need abnormal genius to notice the strain of it.

The recruits were arrayed in the auditorium in strange groupings. The space was small, barely more than two hundred seats, and split down the middle with a single aisle. America’s name was attached to her chair with a sign, and six other people sat in the line of seats around her.

Teams, she realized. They’ve already put us in teams.

“No one ever laughs at that one, and that’s okay,” Shirani said. “Anyway, this is your last chance to walk away before we transport you to the training facility.”

America’s eyebrows rose. The MICA building they sat in was one in an immense complex of structures on the outskirts of Washington, D.C., certainly large enough to house a training ground for ten times as many metas.

She wasn’t the only one surprised by the information. A slyly satisfied look crept onto Shirani’s face as he continued. “Yes, that’s right. This is only meant to be a convenient place to get you all together. If anyone chooses to leave, they’ll be given a ride home with no hard feelings. If you don’t stand in the next ten seconds, you’re in for the long haul. Any takers?”

No one stood or so much as twitched, as if they were afraid any movement might be misconstrued as accepting the offer to leave.

“Okay,” Shirani said. “I know you’ve all been kept in the dark about the details of this program. You know the broad strokes—it’s four years of training, it’s team focused—but everything else is classified, for reasons that should be obvious. As I made clear in my meetings with each of you, our recruitment methods focus on the person as much, if not more, than their power. We compile detailed profiles, which are updated after the interview process and during the psych evaluations you’ve all been kind enough to sit through. There is only so much information we can gather that way, however. After we leave here, you’ll be put through another evaluation no agent, Hero or otherwise, can go without.”

He motioned to one of the agents standing offstage, a tall woman with deep brown skin and intricately braided hair. She stepped forward and scanned the crowd with eyes suddenly blazing a bright yellow.

The world flashed that same color for half a heartbeat and suddenly America was somewhere else.

Every recruit processed the change differently. They were in an auditorium much like the one they’d just left. It was the same size and layout. Everyone was still sitting in the same relative positions they had been. But the air was cooler, the walls painted a calm shade of light green instead of the industrial gray they had been, and the stage was concrete instead of wood.

“What you’ve just experienced is teleportation,” Shirani explained to the confused audience. “Normally this facility is cut off from this sort of travel thanks to some interesting technology given to us by one of our alumni. We shut off part of the field to bring you in or take you off the island. We’ll be coming back to this room in a few minutes, but honestly? This is my favorite part. Follow me, please.”

Island? America’s curiosity was starting to wake from its long slumber. Already the influx of information was at distracting levels, but if the Director was right and she could learn to manage her power, that wouldn’t matter for much longer. She followed the crowd as he led them through several sets of high-security doors closer to something you’d see in a bunker or vault than at a government training ground.

The humid sea air hit her, followed by crisp sunlight.

“Wow,” one of the people who’d been sitting in her line said, an Asian girl with a light step and a thick frame. “Didn’t see this coming.”

America nodded. “Yeah, right there with you.”

The building stood atop a high cliff overlooking the vast churning body of an ocean. It was a hundred feet from the edge, which was marked with a high red fence for safety. She turned to scan the rest of the island and let out an involuntary noise of surprise. It was huge—big enough that the other side couldn’t be seen. Buildings peppered its length, as did long stretches of woodland and blasted sections clear of much but rock and grass where metas had clearly been practicing with their powers. The place was huge.

Half a mile or so from where she stood, atop a the sweeping apex of a rolling hill, sat a walled structure. She was not alone in gaping at the incongruous building towering over the rest of the island.

“Welcome to the Castle,” Shirani said. “Now, let’s see what you’re all made of.”

Two things happened once they reentered the auditorium. The first was the appearance of an enormous screen which descended from the ceiling. The second was the introduction of a man so breathtakingly average that America knew at once there had to be more to him than looks indicated.

“Allow me to introduce you to your partner for the next day or two,” Shirani said, gesturing at the average man. His facial features and skin tone could have meant he was anything from Caucasian with a perpetual tan, Latino, or some mixture of races. “One thing you’ll encounter during your training are active Heroes. I’m your first. Franklin here is your second.”

There was a murmur of surprise from others in the class. Apparently many of them hadn’t worked out that Shirani was actually a Hero and not some bureaucrat, much less his specific identity.

Franklin stepped forward and waved a hand. “Since it’s going to become obvious really quickly who I am, I’ll just tell you. My code name is Lazarus. Each of you will be facing me in your combat assessment. I see some of you recognize the name. Others don’t. That’s fine, though I won’t tell my publicist. She’d have a stroke. For those who don’t know, my ability is manifold. I can heal from any wound no matter how severe. I can’t die. Or rather, I can’t stay dead. I’ve been reduced to powder before and I just keep coming back. I volunteer for this job every year because I’m uniquely suited to taking anything you lot can dish out, and because of the third aspect of my ability. Every time I heal or resurrect, I get stronger, faster, and tougher. I can reset this to my base level of strength any time I want, and I’ve done so this morning.”

Shirani put a hand on Franklin’s shoulder. “We’ve set up a carefully designed schedule for your assessments. You will go in the order we’ve determined. Everyone else will stay here and watch the other assessments as they happen, with breaks for meals and the like. Today is your orientation, but that doesn’t mean you can’t learn something by watching. Now, first up…”

Susan was used to people laughing at her, but not laughing at her. Not that the little shits were obvious about it. Their low snickers were hardly audible from a few feet away, much less at the other end of the room.

Not that she much cared. Yes, she was three times their age for now. She could have had her treatment, as Shirani called it, well before showing up today. He’d given her the option, yet there was some validity in what she thought of as prison wisdom. This place wasn’t so different; a bunch of people who would be intent on establishing a pecking order based on strength sometimes need a reminder that not everything was what it seemed.

The combat cell was only a handful of yards from the auditorium, accessible through a door at the back end of the stage. Susan stepped inside and let the reinforced gate slam closed behind her.

“Susan Carroll,” Franklin said, looking at a small clipboard. Then he did a double take. “The Susan Carroll?”

She grinned. “That’s me.”

The younger man muscled his way through his surprise. “Well, then. I didn’t expect the first customer of the day to be a celebrity.” He smiled slightly. “You think after we’re done I could get a picture with you? I’ve been a fan for years.”

“If you still want one when we’re through, I’ll do an autograph, too,” she said. “Sorry about this.”

Franklin’s brows drew together curiously, but before he could follow up, a voice crackled from the speaker set in the ceiling. “Begin!”

Susan focused her attention on the immortal man in front of her, who had only just begun setting himself to accept some kind of assault. She understood why her assessment was first; her power caused no physical damage. He wouldn’t get any stronger from it, and it was obvious the people in charge wanted him to become more of a threat as the day went on and the more powerful recruits stepped up.

Still, not causing actual harm was not the same thing as being ineffective.

A fraction of a second after her eyes zeroed in on him, the man known to the world as Lazarus, the invincible fighter who had burned to death dozens of times during the takedown of Cascade, fell to the floor and writhed in agony. As she worked her mojo on him, she idly wondered if he had seen her son die in that attack. Guilt rose up like a coiled snake—it wasn’t his fault. The news footage showed Lazarus desperately trying to reach Cascade to stop his assault, enduring tortures that would have driven anyone else insane as his flesh was blasted away from his bones over and over again.

As Franklin’s muscles began to lock up from the overwhelming flood of pain, she let up on him just enough that he could speak or at least flail a limb against the floor.

“I give up!” he croaked. Susan released her power.

She walked over to him and extended a hand. “I feel really shitty about that,” she said in a low voice, hopefully quiet enough the microphones didn’t pick up the words.

Franklin shook off the remnants of the assault and accepted the help. “Don’t. I know what I’m getting into with his job. That’s a…different sort of ability you’ve got there. You’ll do well.”

She made one of the toughest Heroes in the world give up in the span of ten seconds. Just like prison—you find the guy absolutely no one wants to fuck with, then knock his dick in the dirt. You show the rest of the inmates what you’re all about.

For the first time in decades, Susan deeply hoped her audience was nowhere close to laughter.

“What the hell am I even doing here,” Ethan muttered to himself as he stepped into the room. The old lady could, what, fry someone’s central nervous system with a glance? How could he measure up to that?

Lazarus glanced at his clipboard. “Ethan Hannah? I don’t suppose you’ll tell me what you can do. That last lady wasn’t forthcoming.”

Suddenly self-conscious, Ethan had to work moisture into his mouth to speak. He’d been so excited. Recruitment for a slot in Hero training was a dream someone with his kind of power just never got. They were the heavy hitters, the ones who stopped threats no other force on the planet could hope to match.

“I control friction,” he said.

Lazarus’s eyebrows rose. “Yeah? That’s a pretty good one. Okay, let’s see what you can do.”

The phrase put him in motion before Ethan could think about what he was doing. It was the same thing his dad always said to him before they worked with his powers every day. It acted like a starter pistol, sending all six feet of his stocky frame forward in a blur of dark hair and pale skin.

By now, pushing off with one foot while making the other slick was ingrained so deeply in his reflexes it required no thought at all. Nor did the fine control needed to maintain balance while gliding across nearly frictionless surfaces. In this case the bottom of his shoes became slick, but only when he wanted them to.

Lazarus tensed as Ethan streaked across the room. Just as he was about to slam into the Hero, the older man tried to jump out of the way.

It didn’t go well for him. Waiting until the last second might allow the more experienced combatant the chance to take Ethan down at close range—the only way Lazarus had to attack—but it also brought him inside Ethan’s field. And in that field, he was supreme.

Lazarus discovered this as he attempted the jump. His own shoes stuck in place as he tried to push away. Lifting them directly up would have worked, but Ethan’s observations told him almost no one made that realization. Definitely not in the time he’d give them before attacking.

He slid sideways, nudging himself with a corner of his sole untouched by his power. Lazarus wobbled in place, trying not to fall over but not quite realizing how to counteract his sudden difficulty moving. Ethan wasn’t an idiot. He knew the other man could fend off half a dozen opponents at once. He didn’t stand a chance in a fair fight.

So he didn’t give Lazarus one. Instead he shifted his field to reduce the friction on his own body, ensuring any blows Lazarus might land would skid off harmlessly. Then he stopped in place and summoned his concentration, instinctively ducking a lightning fast jab that fell with perfect timing as soon as he came to a halt.

Lazarus grimaced a second later, the rictus of discomfort turning into pain as he froze. He twitched, muscles almost vibrating with the effort of not moving while desperately wanting to.

“What did you do to me?” the Hero asked through clenched teeth. Ethan needed all of his focus to maintain the divergent aspects of his field. Making himself slick for defense while doing the opposite to immobilize the enemy was the limit of his power, and it was hard. “Turned up your friction. Skin, teeth, clothes.”

He knew exactly what the man was feeling, having tested it on himself many times. The clothes were grating against Lazarus’s skin. Every hair and wrinkle on the surface of his body was like the world’s coarsest sandpaper as it gripped against smooth fabric suddenly made impossibly stiff and sticky. There was no way to describe it that could truly touch the reality, because nothing in nature had that sort of total friction. Maybe the plates making up a mountain range pushing against each other, but no less than that.

“Surrender,” Lazarus said, still clearly pained.

Ethan let him go at once, secretly happy he hadn’t needed to try out any of the theoretical parts of his power. Things he was too frightened to try on another living person.

When her introduction was over, Celia wasted no time. However reluctant she was to join the program, once she committed to something, she gave it everything. Somewhere in the back of her mind she thought about how she must look to the people watching. Short, slim, wearing generic baggy clothing and zero makeup. She was the girl everyone overlooked in school. That was by design.

Some people didn’t want to be noticed. Celia never had.

Now she had no choice.

As she ran toward Lazarus, the thick hoodie zipped open apparently all on its own. A closer inspection would show a thin strand of wire attached to the zipper, curled around it like a finger.

The jacket flew back as she shrugged it off, revealing a body wrapped heavily in a wild mishmash of strings, cords, and wire of varying thicknesses. Some unspooled as she moved, waving in the air ahead of her like tentacles. Enough of this layer peeled off to show the black tank top beneath, and both her arms were bared. The right was smooth and the same light brown from shoulder to fingertips. On her left Celia wore what looked like a thick glove halfway to her elbow.

Lazarus didn’t make himself an easy target. His power might not be much help in staying clear of her reach, but the man clearly hadn’t shirked his own training or practice. As a trio of black cables made of heavy nylon streaked toward him, he leaped sideways and performed a handspring so deft it could have been a snapshot of an Olympian. He managed it on one hand.

When he came up, Lazarus surprised her by slamming that same hand as hard as he could into the armored wall. The sickening crack of bone breaking went through her like a gunshot. Her laces wavered in the air as her concentration slipped a notch.

Lazarus continued to move, and as he did he gripped the broken wrist with his good one. Celia flinched and looked away, though not before she saw him twist the damaged limb violently. A spray of blood marred the wall as bones broke skin.

He’s trying to distract me.

The thought came to her as she realized her error. Looking away, even if it was an instinct she had no practice suppressing, would get her killed in a real fight.

Celia looked back just in time to see a fist coming toward her face. His damaged arm had healed in just the few seconds her head was turned. She raised her left hand to block. It was a clumsy attempt—Celia’s efforts were bent toward other pursuits than fighting. Other metas her age spent their teenage years learning flashy stuff, or how to be as powerful as they could manage.

She was all about one thing, and one thing only. Control.

As Lazarus connected, his fist to hers, Celia’s hand appeared to disintegrate. Tendrils of black and bronze exploded from the point of impact and engulfed his hand, then wrist, then his arm.

“What the fuck,” he shouted in obvious shock. He tried to pull away, and it should have worked. She was half his size. The tethers connecting them didn’t give her any more mass—did they?

Yet Lazarus stayed right where he was. Bronze wires snaked out from her body in a torrent, appearing from beneath coils of other laces and cables and wrapping around his limbs. In a matter of seconds, the Hero hung suspended in the air, arms and legs pulled uncomfortably but not painfully apart. A single line of bronze encircled his neck.

“How long do I have to hold this before you lose?” Celia asked.

Instead of answering immediately, his eyes fell on her left hand—or what had been her left hand at some point in the distant past. Where the gloved but otherwise natural-looking hand had been was a cap of material to which dozens of tethers were anchored. Her wrist and hand didn’t exist.

“How—you were using your power to mimic having a hand?” he asked, not afraid as nearly anyone else would have been in his situation. “Christ, girl. That’s some control you have.”

“Years of practice,” Celia said harshly. She wasn’t ready to be seen this way, dammit. Better to be the weird girl who wore a glove than the one without the most important part of her arm. “How long, dude?”

Lazarus shook his head as if to clear it. A fine line of blood showed at his neck. Celia felt momentary horror that he might have just cut his throat, but the man didn’t even seem to notice. “Oh, I surrender. But I have to know how you’re doing this. I don’t see anchors to balance my weight. How are you holding me up with these things?”

Odd as it seemed, the curious and somewhat excited tone made her feel better. He wasn’t put off by her missing hand. He, like her, was interested only in what she could do.

“It’s a form of tactile telekinesis,” she answered after a few seconds. “I control things I touch, and for whatever reason it’s mostly limited to objects with a high length to width ratio.” She lowered him to the ground and withdrew her tethers. They wrapped around her all at once—and she knew enough to understand this would send a message to the others. Controlling dozens of extra appendages at the same time was an impressive display of concentration even by Hero standards. Fashioning a false hand that passed visual inspection in everything but color—that was a whole different level of control.

With barely a thought, she sent out two laces to grab her hoodie and slip it back on. She stuffed her hands in its pockets and gave Lazarus a respectful nod before leaving the room to rejoin her peers.

Lazarus fought harder than Chris thought possible when his turn came up. There were four of him. His copies were perfect in every way, and he was smart enough to dive in and fight alongside them. There would be no singling the real him out by playing it safe.

It helped that his power, while weaker than the typical duplicator, came with its own advantages. No, he couldn’t summon up dozens or hundreds of clones. Just three to five, and that was pushing it. Existing copies cost him nothing to maintain—just the opposite. Every new him he was able to summon networked with his mind. He knew what they knew. They communicated with each other mentally, sharing experience and even sensory information. The truly unique element of his gift was that for whatever reason, every new copy made him and the other copies stronger, faster, smarter, and generally better in every way.

The problem was getting those five to exist in the first place. Each copy was more difficult than the last to summon, requiring more time and concentration. For this fight he settled on the relatively easy three he knew he could draw up in a handful of seconds.

Lazarus didn’t give a crap about how strong or fast he and his clones were. The man would not stop coming for him—the real him—relentlessly.

It took less than a minute for the Hero to puff away two of the copies. They could take hits but being energy constructs, were far less durable than human bodies. Chris squinted in concentration to form two more when Lazarus let out a piercing bellow that made him jump in surprise.

In that moment of distraction, the Hero pounced. He somehow got through a blind spot where neither Chris or his remaining copy were looking and slammed a fist into the side of Chris’s head. Then everything swirled and got a little distant, just long enough that Lazarus got him in a choke hold. The world went gray at the edges as his air and blood flow ceased. Chris quickly reached up and tapped three times.

“Don’t feel too bad, kid,” Lazarus said as Chris sucked in a deep, sweet breath. “I’ve fought my fair share of duplicators before. The trick is to never take your eyes off the original. You’ll get better.”

Chris nodded his handsome blond head and lumbered off toward the door. He wouldn’t have any choice but to get better. Not if he wanted to stay in. Lazarus was experienced, sure, and he had years of Hero training that covered a range of skills Chris could only imagine at the moment.

But from what he’d been told by the Director, the guy should be barely stronger than a human right now. He’d only been hurt a little, probably not enough to enhance his physical powers more than fractionally.

And Chris hadn’t been able to overcome that.

How was he going to handle the real threats?

Drew wasted no time. As soon as Lazarus was ready, Drew raised his hand while still as far across the room as he could be and summoned his sphere. The small black marble appeared at once and shot across the space between the two men faster than the eye could track.

It struck Lazarus in the left knee. One curious element of Drew’s gift was making the thing selectively destructive. If he wanted it to go through an object, the sphere damn well went through it. So far he’d discovered no limit to this ability.

Conversely, Drew could will the black orb to push against something without piercing it, at least until whatever it was touching reached its natural limit. If human flesh could take two hundred pounds of pressure per square inch, the sphere wouldn’t go through them until the flesh failed. It was like a slow bullet in that mode.

In this case, Drew knocked Lazarus off his feet by slamming the orb into his knee. The Hero was thrown badly off balance and landed flat on his back. Given his obvious dexterity and skill, he’d have been back up in seconds.

Drew didn’t give him the time. Instead he willed the sphere out of existence and back again, this time only a centimeter over Lazarus’s sternum. He pushed it down against the skin and bone, enough pressure to pin the man down without causing actual harm beyond a deep bruise.

“What the hell is it with your team?” Lazarus complained as he tried to wiggle free of the sphere. “You’ve got some weird ass powers, man. What is this thing?”

Drew’s brow wrinkled in confusion. Team? Had he missed a meeting or something?

“I don’t actually know what it is,” Drew admitted. “It’s just my sphere. Also, you’ll want to give up. I can kill you with it pretty much any time, but I’d rather not. You’re not going anywhere unless you think you’ll be able to drive it through your chest and get to me before I reform it and put it through your skull.”

He meant the words as he said them, but as soon as they were out there in the world, crippling doubt took hold. All those years spent in junkyards and condemned buildings seemed, in that moment, like the actions of a child. Practicing for a career he thought forever out of reach, and now here he was. The reality could not have been more different from what he imagined. The beat of his pulse, the fear rising in his gut, even the muffled grunts as Lazarus struggled to rise were all hyper real in a way that scared him.

There were consequences to failing, now. More terrifying were the consequences of success. Being a Hero meant having lives in his hands. Maybe it was best to end it here. To not have to face such an uncertain future.

“Okay, kid. I give. You win.”

And just like that, Drew’s choice was taken from him.

Hero it was.

“Cam Margolis,” Lazarus said, pronouncing her name as her parents intended, like ‘calm’ without the letter L.

She stood with arms crossed, head tilted to one side. “I actually prefer Cam, like short for Cameron.”

Lazarus glanced down at his clipboard, puzzled. “Is it?”

“No,” she said. “I just like the way it sounds.”

He shrugged and dropped the clipboard. “So. What do you do? Control pants or something? Because I’ve never seen a first team with such a strange array of powers.”

Cam laughed. “Nah, man. I’m pretty straightforward. I’m a brawler.”

Lazarus actually looked relieved at this. She thought she got it; the guy was probably used to fighting a lot of criminal metas with weaker but also strange powers. For him this was like being at work, whereas Heroes had a tendency to fall into a few broad categories. They had to generally be tough and strong, or have ranged abilities, or else be a controller of some kind. There were always the odd ducks, of course, but nowhere near the variety of powers found in the larger meta community. He was used to coming into these things knowing he’d face a limited range of abilities.

“So you’re a tank?” he asked. Tanks, strongmen, bruisers, thugs—a lot of names for the same thing. Strong, tough metas who could dish it out and take it in equal measure.

“That depends,” she said, reaching into a pocket to produce a triangular object wrapped in foil. She ripped open the package to reveal…

“Pizza?” he asked, confusion etched in every line of his face. “Come on! Why do you have pizza?”

Cam responded by smiling happily, folding the pizza in half, and gulping down the entire slice in two inhumanly fast bites.

“Because my power is a lot like a food allergy,” she said as the pizza worked its way into her stomach. “Except I get stronger and tougher instead of, you know, dying.”

It hit her all at once, as it always did. One second she was at cruising levels, the residual food in her stomach providing a minimal level of power—then she was burning with it. Strength flooded her muscles, her bones and skin tingled with increased durability, every movement quickened. Even her mind picked up its pace.

She lurched forward, her plump frame perfectly balanced as she streaked across the room at five times the speed of the world’s fastest human sprinter. Lazarus leaped straight up in the air and whipped his foot into her face. Cam barely felt the impact, but her power didn’t change her mass. She was thrown off course by the hit, giving him enough time to dance away.

She reoriented and found him standing on one foot. The other dangled, broken from the hit to her face. It healed in the time it took her to reset and decide to move again, but she paused.

“Well, this is gonna suck, isn’t it?” she asked.

Lazarus raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

She waved a hand at his leg. “I’m built to beat your ass, but you’ll just heal and get stronger every time I hurt you. Which will make you harder to fight. And since you’re a Hero, you know how to fight way better than me.”

“Smart,” he said with a respectful nod. “Usually I get five or six tanks into these assessments before they wise up to that problem. What’s the solution?”

Cam could pull the second slice of pizza from her pocket and eat it—she was nowhere close to the point where diminishing returns kicked in. She’d be fast enough to catch him, but she would also be so strong that hurting him would be a given. Which would only add to his strength.

“Well, shit,” she said. “I didn’t want to have to be the first…”

She could see in his eyes that he knew what was coming. Making him submit through pain wasn’t an option, she sensed. With the others, who had no real physical gifts, that concession made sense. This was a guy used to suffering in order to make himself more of a threat. Against someone like her, he’d endure a lot just to get the advantage. It was obvious.

So Cam did the only thing she could. She ran forward and slammed into him in the blink of an eye, using every shred of speed she could muster. He flew back into the wall, head cracking against the reinforced stone.

She ran into him again, this time punching with all her might.

His head cracked like an egg. His brains weren’t quite as runny.

Cam won.

Then she threw up everywhere.

America went through the same routine as the others—after a brief pause for Lazarus to come back to life and for a quick cleaning—but made absolutely no move toward the man. After the introduction, she remained perfectly still and observed him.

She let the countless details and facts wash over her, wishing she could ignore them or even manage them. But that was why she was here, yes? To learn how to do that. Shirani was annoyingly vague on that front, presumably because too much information would allow her to work out those solutions on her own.

He didn’t have to worry about that. She was smart enough to know that if there was one useful lesson, then the four years of this program doubtlessly held dozens more. She was here for the duration, assuming she met the criteria needed to remain.

“Well, are you going to attack me or not?” Lazarus asked, more curious than bothered. “Don’t want to make all the other recruits wait, do you?”

“No,” she said. “I don’t think I will.”

Lazarus fixed her with an interested stare, studying America openly. “Why not?”

“Because I don’t have to. Do I?”

Lazarus snorted. “This is a combat assessment. We’re not here to bake cakes.”

“And that wasn’t an answer,” America said. “The others have all made the first move. You’re not testing how we fight. Or not just testing that. How many recruits would be seasoned fighters, anyway? Not many. You teach that here. It doesn’t matter if we can fight, only that if we can you be able to gauge how well.”

Lazarus raised a hand. “I—”

“Wasn’t finished,” America said, cutting him off. “What you’re actually testing is how we react to stress. To combat. You’re seeing what we do when put in this situation. So I choose not to attack. You’re more experienced. You know how to fight and I don’t. Your powers are already making you stronger than a normal human. I don’t stand a chance. The only solution for me is not to play.”

And with that, she turned and left the room. Lazarus said nothing, but in her last glimpse of him before she showed him her back, a proud smile began to form on his nondescript face.

Chapter Three

Orientation, Day Two

The first night, they slept in the same cafeteria where everyone ate lunch. After the combat assessments were over on day two, they were broken into teams and addressed by the Director just before dinner. America thought for a moment that the man might seem less commanding speaking to a bunch of kids in the middle of a lunch room. Then he opened his mouth and the illusion was dispelled.

“From this moment forward, your team is everything,” he said. “You live together in your dorms. You eat together. You fight together. Each year of the program covers a different specialty focus in addition to everything else you have to learn. The first year is all about teamwork, and I will be your instructor in that area. For now, get your food and wait for your team to be called. We’ll take you to your dorms and let you settle in.” He turned to leave without dismissing them, then stopped as if he remembered something. “Ms. Carroll, please come with me. If I remember correctly, you have an appointment to keep.”

The older woman hauled herself up from her chair, grimacing and rubbing the side of her left knee. “Yeah, I shouldn’t have put this off.”

Shirani glanced back at the crowd. “Well? Go. Eat. Get to know each other. Free time is at a premium here, especially once your field trials start.”

Field trials. The thought was immediately followed—as most of her thoughts were—by an avalanche of logical inferences and next steps. Those two words, taken in context with the training they were about to receive and knowing what Heroes did for a living, created a sort of probability tree in her head. One that would continue to grow and change over time whether she wanted it to or not as new information came in. Her brain was becoming a crowded place.

She was halfway to the buffet when she realized the rest of the team, sans Susan, followed her.

“What do you think that was all about?” Cam asked.

America shrugged. “No idea. Not our business unless she wants to tell us.”

They got into line behind a team America would have remembered even if her ability didn’t grant a perfect memory. There were six of them, and they were easily one of the more powerful combinations of talents she’d seen during the combat assessments. One was a water manipulator who had turned herself into liquid, then ice as she shapeshifted into more useful combat forms. Another had a similar ability to shift his body into steel—or at least a metal that looked like it—and grow shapes from his silvery skin. The third was a speedster, and top tier at that. Not even America’s advanced perception could follow his movements as he’d darted around the room fighting Lazarus, trailed by silver lightning he could throw like Zeus.

The other three in the group were clearly triplets. Two men and a woman, all with identical raven black hair, light brown skin, and green-blue eyes. They displayed remarkable energy-based powers, but America had been far more impressed with their control and competence than the powers themselves.

Cam sidled up to America as they grabbed trays, craning her head over the selections. There were service personnel refilling trays as the hungry recruits emptied them. The Asian woman waved a hand at one of them, vying for attention. “Hey, is any of this meat kosher?”

America blinked. “Huh. Didn’t see that coming.”

Cam grinned. “I know, right?”

“No, you really don’t,” America said. “Do you have any idea how rare it is for me not to read facts about people pretty much instantly?”

“No clue,” Cam said as the worker brought over a small container of meats. “Oh, thank you so much. This looks really good.” She piled her plate with a selection and turned back to America. “So that’s your thing? Being Sherlock Holmes?”

“Kind of,” America said, not wanting to explain the weirdness of her brain while slapping macaroni and a helping of very sketchy mashed potatoes on her plate. “Do you always eat this much? Wait, I didn’t mean it like that. I meant do your powers make you have to eat more?” She felt the heat climb her face, but Cam just laughed as they moseyed over to an empty table and sat down.

“No, it’s fine,” she said between bites. “To answer your questions, yes, I always eat this much. Food is awesome. No, my power doesn’t use up the food I eat or anything like that. Or if it does, not much of it. I’m still not a hundred percent sure about how it all works. That’s part of why I wanted to come here. Oh, and also: I’m fat. I’m totally cool with that. So no worries.”

America, who had never been thin and never really thought about that fact as anything other than a data point, shrugged. “Okay. Still, I bet we’re going to all lose some weight here whether we want to or not. We’ll have to do combat training, exercise, all kinds of stuff to get us into fighting shape.”

Cam seemed unconcerned as she lazily waved a forkful of pasta. “I’m not super worried about it. I gain weight because I eat so much to make my powers work, but a neat side effect is that I’m always in perfect health. I can’t get sick or catch diseases of any kind so far as we can tell. Even without food in my belly, I’m always at peak flexibility and strength, and I can run for hours.”

America smiled ruefully. “Well, now I’m jealous. All I got was a perfect memory I can’t control and a bunch of doctorates.”

Cam paused, jabbing her fork in the air hard thoughtlessly and causing some of her macaroni to drip onto the table. “I’ve always wondered about that. Why do genius types bother getting all those degrees? Seems like a waste of time to me.”

“You probably think we should stick to one thing rather than spread ourselves thin, right?” America asked. She’d heard it before, which was why she wasn’t surprised when Cam nodded. “Lot of people think that way. There are a bunch of reasons. One is that a lot of normal humans get a broad education. People like me just have an easier time, and generally we like to learn. There were a lot of subjects I was interested in. Physics, materials science, a couple species of biology…”

“Boo,” Cam said. “Puns are the lowest form of humor.”

“Puns are amazing and you’re a philistine,” America said with complete dignity. “I also worked in meta science, which covers a wide range of those same subjects. Only so many students are really able to grasp the next-level stuff genius metas can do, and you need a solid foundation to build on. That whole field is so advanced the rest of the world might never catch up.”

“Meta science,” Cam said. “You mean superscience.”

America shook her head with a smile. “Don’t let any other geniuses hear you call it that. They hate that term. It’s just science. Really, brain-meltingly advanced science too dangerous for the public domain, but still.”

“So you’re pure lab coat material, huh?” Cam asked. The other team members had filed in by now and seemed content to eavesdrop rather than contribute to the conversation.

“I’m an engineer at heart,” America confirmed. “I like building stuff that solves problems. But I’m not all lab nerd. I draw and paint. Even did a little acting in college, though since I was in my early teens at the time I never got lead roles. One of my degrees is in theater, as a matter of fact.”

Ethan, who was trying not to look like he was listening in and failing badly, choked on a bite of blueberry cobbler. Cam slapped him on the back, laughing. “You’re messing with me, right? Why theater?”

“I like musicals,” America explained. “And whimsy.”

Eventually one of the army of personnel in identical black uniforms checked in with the team and made sure their meal was finished before leading them away. The main residence for the hundred or so recruits and staff was the Castle itself. The building was much larger up close than it looked from a distance. The dining hall was centrally located about fifty feet inside the stone the structure perched on, with a network of tunnels branching out in all directions from it. They followed the worker to a single doorway marked with a numeral 7. The stone hallways were lined with recessed lighting hidden behind a drop ceiling, but there were also glowing strips running along the hand rails. Theirs was green—other teams had different colors, judging by what America had seen as they were led to their own quarters.

They went through the massive steel door, easily ten feet across, and into a shockingly large space. Inside it stood two people in casual clothing. One was a short woman with olive skin and tightly cropped hair, the other a stocky black guy.

The team stepped up next to America. Some of them were torn between gaping at the room and curiosity about the man and woman patiently waiting inside it. She was fascinated herself; the space was interesting. One giant hollow in the stone perhaps fifteen feet high and ten times that on a side, it was filled with an array of smaller rooms around its perimeter. Ten of them that she could see, like sets on a movie. Freestanding little buildings scattered around the edges, twenty feet wide and long. In the middle of the huge space was a common area set up with a television, a small kitchen, and exercise equipment. Every bit of the furniture sat out in the open like a house had vanished around it.

“Hello,” the man said, giving the group a warm smile. “I’m MICA agent Eric Williams. This is Emma Rohm, my partner. We’re your assigned liaison agents.”

When this statement was met with mixed greetings and confused expressions, Williams continued. “Every Hero team is really just the tip of the iceberg. The seven of you will be part of the agency, with every resource that comes with. Once you’re fully qualified, you’ll have a staff of anywhere from ten to twenty people working directly under you. Providing information, transportation, coordination with other teams or agents you may need for a specific job. As your liaisons, we operate both in the field with you and as a go-between for the support staff.”

Rohm nodded. “And for all intents and purposes, we’re part of your team from here on. We won’t be going through the training with you, but we will live with you. Here.” She waved a hand at the room. “We’ll be in and out—Eric and I have abilities that are always in demand by the agency—but concessions are being made to grant us as much time as possible here. Any questions?”

Drew, who America was already beginning to suspect would be a problem, crossed his arms. “You’re our babysitters?”

Rohm fixed him with a flat stare. “I guess that depends on how much help you need wiping your ass, kid. We’re assigned as your permanent liaisons. There’s a reason for that. MICA works out big, complicated models for ideal team composition, and they think the best combination of people for the rest of our careers are the nine people in this room.”

“Eight,” America said. “We’re still short one.”

A new voice caught her off guard from the doorway behind them. “Nope, she had it right. Nine of us now. Taking rings to Mordor and shit. And I feel like I can do it.”

The team turned to find a young woman standing before them with a broad grin painted on her face. America took in her features, extrapolated from what she knew, and had the answer before the others could do much more than begin to form confused looks.

“Ms. Carroll?” America asked.

The young woman waved a hand. “Pssh. Please. I’m one of you guys now. Susan is fine. Maybe this will help all of you forget I’m actually three times your age.”

Judging by the way Ethan was trying hard not to stare at her, that would be less a problem for him than it might be for others. “You’re young.”

Susan laughed, patting herself on the chest. “No fucking kidding. Do you have any idea how long it’s been since I didn’t have to worry about my tits getting caught in my belt? And god, you don’t realize how many little aches and pains add up over the years, or how tired you are, until you’re suddenly twenty again.”

Susan Carroll stepped up and joined the group, and they were indeed nine. America couldn’t know it then no matter how keen her mind, but only a third of them knew the stakes that brought the team together.

Chapter Four

Integration

“Who can tell me what the foundation of teamwork is?” Director Shirani asked during their first Integration class.

It was their first class of any kind. Orientation was extended to a third day so they could familiarize themselves with the island and with their dorm. Nine of the ten rooms inside the vast space set aside for Team 7, America’s group, were bedrooms. Inside each was a small bathroom and enough square footage to live comfortably. The tenth was reserved for her personal use as a lab, much to her surprise.

Chris Smith, the nicest and most outgoing member of the team other than Cam, raised his hand. Shirani nodded toward him. “You.”

“Trust, Director,” Chris said. “You can’t build a functioning team without trust.”

Shirani nodded. “Something you don’t have to worry about when you make copies of yourself, I imagine. That’s the answer everyone gives. Trust is what makes a team cohesive and effective, but I’m not asking how a team functions. I want to know what one is built on.”

America had a sudden intuition where this was headed. She couldn’t pick out precisely what made the idea gel in her head. Sometimes the subtle cues in body language and contextual information were more subconscious than overt. “Knowledge. Information about each other. You can’t trust someone you don’t know.”

“Correct, Miss Jackson,” Shirani said. “Knowing your teammates over time creates experience—shared experience. And that leads to trust. Since I’m going to teach you how to function as a unit, I need you to trust me. Which requires that same information. Miss Jackson, Mister Ivanov, if you’d both come up here, please.”

America moved toward the front of the room—this one an airy, open space inside the Castle proper, with high and narrow windows to let in streams of sunlight—behind the burly young man from Team 3 who could turn into living metal.

Shirani shooed America to the back of the raised platform at the bottom of the wide, curved room, creating plenty of space between her and the pair of them.

“If you would be so kind, Mister Ivanov, please activate your power and remain shifted until I tell you otherwise.”

The young man complied, his body rippling into shining metal. America noted the subtle thickening of the skin on his front, like layers of paint building up before her eyes. It was smart—the weapons he could form from the metal were obvious things, but adding extra plating at will could catch an enemy who thought they had his measure completely off guard.

Shirani turned to face the rest of the class. “My Hero identity is Glimmer. I see some of you know who I am.”

America already knew, of course, but the man was being modest. Everyone knew who Glimmer was. He didn’t have the same ability to inspire awe that some of the big names commanded. The public didn’t fear or dislike him, but he wasn’t the guy flying under a bridge to save a bus full of kids or fixing a broken dam with freeze breath.

He was an ass kicker. The one you sent in when you needed a threat neutralized fast. There were endless videos of him streaking across devastation created by some rampaging asshole with more power than basic human decency and knocking the hell out of them in short order. Glimmer might not sell a lot of inspirational posters, but America thought given the option she’d take the sort of reputation he’d built over being adored. There was a lot of utility in making criminals shit their pants at the idea of fighting you.

As Shirani continued to speak, a nervous expression formed on Ivanov’s metal face. “I’m not worried about one of you spilling my identity, by the way. I already know yours. I think you’ll learn fairly quickly how sacred that is among Heroes. Risking the sort of payback the community dishes out isn’t something you want to live through. I’ll even go one further and show you how my power works. Mister Ivanov, please step forward and punch me in the shoulder. About ten percent power, please.”

Shirani set himself and waited for the blow to land. Ivanov, in what America considered a display of unusual wisdom, appeared reluctant to attack. He followed instructions, however, and popped the Director in the shoulder hard enough to knock something out of place.

Shirani grimaced in pain. Ivanov immediately began to apologize. “Director, I’m so sorry—”

“No worries, son,” Shirani said. Raising his voice, he called out to the back of the room. “Dan, if you wouldn’t mind.”

America had seen the man standing in the doorway but assumed he was just another instructor who’d decided to observe the class. He raised a hand and Shirani’s shoulder slid back into place with a wet pop.

“Better,” he said, rotating the injured limb. “I was suppressing my ability there, and I had Dan waiting just in case someone needed healing. I did this to show you that I don’t have persistent strength or other heightened abilities. Now, watch.”

He turned back to Ivanov, who in her pity America began to think of by his first name, which was Greg. Shirani’s manner changed, his eyes sharpening and pupils going wide. In a flash he was across the platform and stepping in for a jab.

His fist hit the steel of Greg Ivanov’s chest like a piston, and the younger man shot through the air as if fired from a cannon, then slammed into the stone wall. The Director flexed his knuckles as if to display how unharmed they were, then his strangely intense expression faded away.

“You okay there, Mister Ivanov?”

“Fine,” the young man replied, lifting himself from the floor and brushing off stone dust. “That was a hell of a punch, though. I think you dented my chest.”

“Dan will take care of that if you’re injured,” Shirani said. “Now, Miss Jackson. Please step forward.”

She did as she was told. The room fell silent. Shirani’s eyes did their weird little dance again, and he punched a second time. Not wanting to get hit in the chest, America raised her forearms in a block. She was knocked back a foot or so. Certainly hard, and it would have knocked her on her ass if she’d taken the hit more directly, but not enough to even hurt her, much less the killing force he’d used against his metal opponent.

“So,” Shirani said to her, but loud enough for all to hear. “Want to guess what my power is?”

Deducing his identity was much harder, but she didn’t say that out loud. “You’ve got some kind of polar adaptability. Two sides of the same power.”

“Right,” Shirani said. “Want to get more specific?”

She didn’t, but there wasn’t much room for argument. “The passive part of your ability lets you observe and understand enemies. Gauge their power. The active part makes you as strong and tough as you need to be to take them down. Which doesn’t explain how you can shrug off bullets. I’ve seen you do it.”

“True,” he admitted. “Mister Ivanov, you can go back to your seat. Miss Jackson, hang out here for a bit.”

He turned to the stunned class. Revealing his identity was bad enough, but explaining the function of his power another thing entirely. They sat in mute astonishment that any meta, much less a Hero of his stature, would risk so much. “Once I’ve adapted, I can hold that configuration for as long as I want. I can even sleep through it. Generally I lock on to my strongest teammate and use them as my target. That’s how I go into fights so tough. Makes opening doors hard, though. You’ll notice none of the ones here have those little round knobs. I break them all the time because unlike someone who has super strength constantly, I never quite get used to using it delicately.”

“But that means if you reset your power, someone could just shoot you in the head,” someone said from the back ranks of students.

“Yep,” Shirani said. “You nailed it. Tell me, Miss Jackson. Is that how you’d kill me if you had to?”

America didn’t like this game one bit. She could see the next few moves but not a way to avoid them. “Yes and no. I’d place a shooter with a high-powered rifle at a preset location, then force you to fight a meta with low level powers. You wouldn’t want to kill him if you could avoid it, so you’d become just powerful enough to knock him out. Once you were fighting him I’d give the kill order. From as far away as possible so you never saw it coming.”

She didn’t care for the horrified looks a few people gave at her frank and emotionless explanation. Neither was she deeply concerned by it.

“Information,” Shirani said. “That’s the foundation. It brings understanding, which this class needs to focus on more than those before it. Miss Jackson and her team are part of a new initiative aimed at creating more diverse thinking and responsiveness among Heroes. They are all below the normal cutoff for Pitch—oh, that’s the level of their power for anyone not up on the terminology. Miss Jackson, how would you rate the power of your ability compared to the rest of the class?”

“I’m the lowest for sure,” she said blandly.

Shirani nodded. “And who is the most dangerous person in the class?”

“Susan Carroll,” she said without hesitation.

Shirani seemed genuinely caught off guard by this. “Really?”

“Yes,” she said with a nod. “She’s the one person in the room you actively try not to look at. Classic avoidance behavior, and if she can scare you, she’s a threat to anyone here.”

Shirani considered this. “Hmm. I would have said you, personally. You watched the combat assessments. Tell me, how many of the other recruits could you neutralize if you had to?”

America ground her teeth. Here it was. Shirani had to single out her team, had to create tension he could break. They were already standouts with obviously low abilities, and that would breed contempt if it already hadn’t. Some of the other recruits would no doubt hold to those feelings regardless, but the irritating head of the program had to force others to reevaluate any budding prejudices.

Which meant he needed to set an example, however crude.

“Depends,” she said. “How long do I have to come up with solutions? Per threat, I mean.”

Shirani raised an eyebrow. “Let’s say you have a day. You already told me how you’d kill me if you had to.”

“Given the range of powers I saw, I could prepare some method of containing or killing everyone in this room in a day,” she admitted. Then, because she knew he would ask anyway, she added, “I worked all that out between trials during orientation. Took about ten minutes.”

“Thank you, Miss Jackson. You can have a seat.”

America wandered back to her chair and sat down, angrily aware of the many sets of eyes following her progress. She would have it out with the Director in time. Better to save up any goodwill or benefit of the doubt she accrued for that moment.

“Knowledge is the most important tool any of you can have,” Shirani said. “Knowledge is why you’re here. It’s the fundamental impetus behind nearly everything you’ll achieve going forward. A lot of you will have come here excited to learn how to be better fighters, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But the root in that sentence is the word learn. If you’re asking yourself what use a genius with no physical powers can be in the field, I want you to think about Cascade. One of The Five. Murderer on par with third-world dictators. Thirty Heroes and a thousand civilians dead at his hands before we finally took him down. Do you know who did it? Not who performed the killing blow, but who came up with the strategy and tactics to take down one of the worst human beings to ever walk the earth?”

He gestured toward America. “Someone with a mind just like hers. Never for a second doubt the power of information in the right hands, children. Now, let’s get to work.”

Chapter Five

Personal Space

Training was a gradual buildup. A week into the program, none of the team had yet begun combat instruction or any of the other more rarefied programs meant to hone them into fighting machines able to take on any threat.

She understood it; the program was designed not to overwhelm them. A gradual process was best. It was why it took that week for her to meet her personal instructor. This was both an extravagance and a necessity. No other recruit had their own teacher, but only because her power was so specialized that it couldn’t be avoided.

Even more bizarre was that her first class took place in her own workshop. The lab space was still mostly empty. Only a handsome man in early middle age with dark hair threaded with gray waited inside when America entered. The walls were bare of equipment.

She saw him and froze, letting the door slam shut behind her. Her shock wasn’t because he was there—she’d known he would be—but who he was.

“You’re Evan Reed,” she said dumbly. “The Evan Reed.”

He smiled at her kindly. “I know I am. And based on what I’ve read of your work, I’m kicking myself that I didn’t know who you were before you got the invite into this program, Miss Jackson.”

“Uh, just call me America,” she said. “Or Ric, if you’re into the whole brevity thing.”

Reed laughed, clapping his hands in delight. “Quoting Lebowski is an excellent start. How about we get to know each other a little first, okay?”

America nodded absently. Sure. Get to know Evan freaking Reed, the most famous meta genius in the world. No big deal! The guy was only worth a quarter trillion dollars and had more patents under his belt than any fifty other people put together.

She resisted the urge to fan girl. “Um, I already know a lot about you. Maybe you should ask me whatever you want to know, Mister Reed?”

“Just call me Evan, please,” he said, pulling two lab stools out from beneath the main work bench. “I guess that’s fair. I don’t exactly keep a low profile.”

“How—why are you here?” she blurted unintentionally. “I mean, I can’t imagine MICA can afford your hourly rate.”

Evan looked puzzled for a few seconds, an expression America was certain rarely crossed his face, before comprehension dawned. “Oh. Oh, you think I’m here as a favor or something? America, I fought to get this job. I had to spend a week convincing my shareholders, lawyers, and executives that I could take the time without our business suffering. Then MICA put me through a grueling interview process against pretty much every other meta genius in the country. We all wanted to teach you. I think I only edged out the Farley brothers because my skill set and yours match up so well. We’re both engineers.”

America let out a nervous, almost manic laugh. “Whaaat the fuck? I’m sorry. But what? Why would that even be a thing? I’m the weakest recruit to ever be accepted here. I’m no one.”

Evan’s face grew stern, and America saw the shrewd businessman who parlayed two dozen patents into half a billion dollars in a single afternoon. “First off, you’re not weak. You don’t have any physical powers, but that doesn’t mean a thing. Second, how could we not fight for the right to teach you? You’re the first one of us to get into this program. The community might be small, but there are enough meta geniuses out there that we are a community. You’re all we talk about when we get together.”

America blinked again. “I thought this was all supposed to be ultra secret? Did you all just…figure it out?”

“Not exactly,” Evan said. “MICA agents are funded by the government, but salaries only. Everything else, this island included, is all us. Our combined net worth is just over three trillion dollars. You might say we tithe to make sure the Hero program has what it needs. In return, we get full access. When word came down that one of our own was getting in, there were actual fist fights over who’d get to sit in this room. Now, is it okay if I ask my questions?”

“Oh. Sure,” she said, wondering what a man who had revolutionized materials science and increased battery storage densities by a factor of ten could possibly find interesting about her. She was a shut-in, after all. A damaged computer with no control over how it saved data. Compared to the things he’d done, her achievements were nothing.

Weren’t they?

“First off, I’d like to know if you’re the one behind the SunTech breakthrough,” Evan asked. He had another of those famous smirks on his face.

America was floored. “How could you possibly know about that?”

“You wound me,” he replied. “SunTech hasn’t gone public yet, but they’re about to. I know that much because I’m a shareholder as of three days ago. Which was when I found out a mysterious young woman held a quarter of the company. And that happened a week after someone ‘anonymously’ contributed the biggest breakthrough in solar efficiency pretty much ever. You’re the only meta genius in the country I don’t know personally, so I figured it had to be you.”

America nodded. “Guilty. Yeah, I designed the process. If they don’t mess it up, those panels will get to forty percent efficiency. The spray-on coating might get half that.”

Evan shook his head and let out a low whistle. “You’re going to be a billionaire in about a week. You know that, right? Of course you do. So why don’t you tell me about yourself—whatever you want to share—and then I’ll help you take the first steps toward getting your power under control.”

America’s biography was short. She was, after all, just eighteen. She covered the strange period of time when her bright mind switched into eleventh gear and became an unstoppable machine more than anything else. It was rare to be able to talk to someone about it who truly understood what it had been like.

Evan nodded along, making the right sounds in the right places. When she was done, he looked satisfied. “So, what you’re telling me is that you suddenly became far more brilliant overnight, basically.”

“Yeah,” she said. “It was jarring. I couldn’t stop the flow of information. I’ve never really been able to manage it.”

“That’s because you’re not technically a meta genius,” he said. “If I’m not mistaken, Director Shirani told you the same thing.”

“He did,” America replied. “Just as cryptically.”

Evan laughed, a surprisingly boyish sound. “I’ll keep it straightforward. Based on what you’ve said, your ability isn’t simple genius. Every outright meta genius has had the same experience, and it’s not like yours. They—that is, we—get a slow uptick in our intelligence. Our memories are almost universally flawless. There are physical changes in the brain, ones you’ve also experienced, that alter us so we store data on a quantum level. It makes us functionally infinite hard drives. But it’s a long process. It took me more than two years. I know a couple, however, who had experiences like yours. Rapid changes with unpredictable results. All three of them eventually figured out that their power isn’t genius. That’s just a byproduct. Instead they have absolute control over their brains and minds. Enough to cause physical neurological changes.”

America frowned. “You’re saying I…made myself smarter just by wanting to be?”

Evan winked. “Yep. That’s exactly what I’m saying. It was subconscious, I’m sure. Every time you challenged your mind, it adapted and expanded. You were already really smart, and used to challenges. So you pushed it to the limit pretty fast, judging by the transcripts I found in your file. You went through puberty earlier than most, I assume?”

Slightly embarrassed, America nodded. “Yeah. Started when I was eleven. Which was when my powers manifested.”

Evan pulled a folded piece of paper from the pocket of his jeans and handed it to her. “This is from one of the people I mentioned. The ones who have your ability. Take a look at it real quick.”

She unfolded it and found what looked like a random bunch of scribbles. There were notes addressed to her in two corners, pieces of advice. The middle of the page was taken up by a list.

Perfect recall. Perfect replay. Perfect muscle memory. Perfect reflexes. On and on the list went, the words tiny enough to allow for dozens of entries. America looked up at Evan quizzically. “You’re saying I can do all this stuff? My Pitch is barely above human levels. I don’t have this kind of power.”

Evan grinned and popped up from the stool. From his other pocket he produced a super ball. “Can we both agree that I have no special powers other than my brain?”

“Sure,” America said. As she spoke, he glanced at the room. Then he closed his eyes and threw the ball.

It bounced chaotically, or so it appeared, before he reached up and snatched it out of the air with his eyes still closed. When he opened them, America was taken off guard by the playful light in that hazel stare. “I did that with my brain. I just did the math. Yes, your ability isn’t strong in the technical sense, but you can literally program your own mind to do anything within its power. Once you get some control, you’ll be able to do it at will. Want to calculate combat scenarios at hyper speed before attacking? You’ll do it. The options are virtually limitless, America. You think your power is weak, but just think about someone who can instantly calculate every variable and angle before firing a weapon with absolutely perfect aim as fast as their nervous system will allow. That? That is power.”

America’s thoughts whirled. The implications unfolded at her usual speed—an endlessly breakneck pace.

“How, though?” she asked, hating that she sounded so childish to her own ears. “I’ve been trying for years. If I have so much control, why haven’t I been able to do it?”

Evan grew more somber. “Ah, well. You see, you’ve probably been doing it unconsciously for a while. I think now that you know what your actual ability is, you’ll be able to direct it more intentionally. But I think what you’re asking now is how to manage the flow of information, right? You take in all this data and it just kind of does whatever it wants.”

America nodded. “Yes. I build these frameworks and I can’t change them. Not on purpose. It’s like I have an encyclopedia pop up every time I open my eyes. It’s driving me crazy.”

“You’re going to be really mad at yourself,” Evan said sheepishly. “That’s something every meta genius has to deal with eventually, and the trick is simple. Ironically, it’s so simple that most of us don’t think of it until some moment of inspiration hits us.”

America was leaning forward on her stool. “Well? I’ve been waiting almost seven years. Don’t keep teasing me.”

Evan nodded. “Of course. Well, what you have to do is discipline your mind. You need to focus on data of some kind—I used flash cards—and flex that mental muscle you use to store that information. What worked for me was reading a card and letting it sit in my brain. First I only worked on deleting whatever was on the card. Read it, store it, mark it out. Then do it again. Once you start being able to forget at will, you can move on to willing your mind to work like a computer. Instead of just deleting information, you practice moving it. It’s slow at first, but once you build mental reflexes, everything just sort of…fixes itself. The frameworks in your head start to reorganize like…”

America shook her head in disbelief. “Like a hard drive. Just like you said before. You’re telling me all I have to do is visualize it hard enough.”

Evan spread his hands. “The mind is like any other muscle. All you have to do is train yours to do the work of moving things around, and it’ll sort out the details on its own.”

He was right. It was so basic that she’d never even considered it.

That night she practiced for nine hours without stopping. That was when she was able to delete a mental file for the very first time.

It only got easier after that.

Chapter Six

Fight Club

After three weeks of combat training and six weeks at the Castle in total, Drew was beginning to understand the enormity of the task ahead of them. More importantly, the reality of just how tenuous his position and that of his teammates was could not have been more starkly obvious. At least in this room his relative weakness didn’t matter.

He deftly stepped to the side as Juan Hernandez, a member of Team Ten, telegraphed a haymaker that would have broken bones had it connected. Drew dropped down six inches as he dodged, knees bent to allow his weight to shift as needed, and jabbed hard into Juan’s liver. The much larger man let out an ugly explosion of air and fell to the ground with his arms wrapped around his midsection.

A healer ambled over. There wasn’t a rush; there never was in the Arena unless someone was on the verge of death. That didn’t happen often. The rest of the time their instructors were happy to let painful lessons have a few seconds to sink in.

“Nice shot, Garland,” said an even voice with iron running through it. It belonged to the lead combat instructor, Justin Berger. The man was average in most ways, a state of affairs Drew would have thought intentional if Berger had any control over how he looked. Then again, he taught some of the most powerful metas on the planet how to rumble, so maybe he did at that. Appearing average would be a great way to get inside the guard of an overconfident student.

“Thank you, sir,” Drew said with clear sincerity in his voice. Berger was tough but fair, and not generous with compliments.

“At least one of you was listening during my cell on body language,” Berger said, glancing down at the recovering Juan. “Today’s practice is all about shortening the fight. Mr. Hernandez, you should work on keeping your shoulders down and striking without such large movements. Give your enemy as little warning as you can.”

Juan grumbled something not quite under his breath as he stood. Drew caught a bit about ‘if he had his powers’ and felt sorry for the guy. What came next was a scene that had played out several times since their class had begun combat lessons in the Arena.

“Powers?” Berger said, stepping back to allow Juan room to get himself ready. “Son, my only power is being a United States Marine. Twenty-two years and counting. Have you not listened to a word I’ve said in any of the training cells I’ve given you? That the other instructors have led you in?”

The instructors in question, four women with the same bearing and hard face as Berger, had already begun moving students from the other three quadrants of the room into a large semicircle. This was always a show.

Juan began to stammer an apology, but Berger was already on the soapbox.

“Listen very closely, children,” he said. “This is the lesson you have to learn above all others. I’ll drill it into your heads until it sticks, no matter how long it takes. Because if you step out there into the real world and it’s not burned into your brain, you’re going to die. And if you don’t have the discipline to keep yourself alive, well, I can’t find a lot of pity for you. But you might take someone else with you. A teammate, an innocent. And that I can’t allow.”

Berger stepped back again, arms clasped behind his back. The space between Juan and the instructor was now about two yards. The class formed a wide ring. A circle.

In the words of one of Drew’s favorite childhood authors, a battle circle.

“I know, sir,” Juan protested lamely.

“You don’t know shit, son,” Berger said in that same even voice. Not a rebuke, merely a statement of fact. “You’re a powerful meta, just like everyone here.” Did his eyes flick toward Drew? Hard to tell. “But if you don’t have the skills to handle a fight without your powers, you got no place fighting anyone with them. You’re standing there thinking this isn’t gonna be a fair fight, and you’re right. I’ve got decades of experience and I’m in the prime of my life and perfect health thanks to the excellent healers on staff here. I’ve learned at the feet of Japanese Judo and Aikido masters, spent months with Israeli combat specialists, had my teeth rattled with Russian Sambo. I can kick the shit out of you with both arms tied behind my back.”

He let the arms drop from that position. Drew saw minor tension in the way they hung at his side. Relaxed but ready for anything. Berger looked over at Diana Bell, his senior assistant. “Bell, let the kid have his powers back, if you would.”

Bell, a fellow Marine and a rare neutralizer, nodded. She closed her eyes. Drew watched the change come over Juan, as if someone breathed life into him. The large man was a standard sort of tank, strong and fast and tough enough to take high caliber rounds to the face without missing a beat.

“Come at me,” Berger said.

Juan, despite being fifty times more powerful than only a few seconds before, balked. “Sir, no. I’ll—”

“You’ll get kicked to the curb if you tell me no again,” Berger said. “You come at me with everything you’ve got right now or you’re out of this program.”

Apparently deciding that accidentally maiming his instructor was a less terrible fate than washing out, Juan did as he was told. Faster than the average man, he still had to lurch from a standstill. It reduced that advantage.

Berger didn’t need it. He melted down and away, letting the much more massive man slide past him. Juan did not corner well as he tried to adjust. Berger took advantage by jumping straight up from his crouch and landing on Juan’s back, one arm wrapped around his throat.

“Won’t be able to choke me,” Juan said as he tried to grab the older man and throw him.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Berger said, then jammed the fingers of his other hand into Juan’s eyes. Through Juan’s eyes. A wave of nausea rippled up Drew’s throat, quickly forced back down. The scream which followed didn’t make the job any easier.

Blinded and enraged, Juan stumbled and swung wildly. Berger danced back, waving the rest of the class away. The circle widened.

“What the fuck did you do to me?” Juan shrieked, one hand wiping at his face as if the ruined orbs could be fixed by rubbing at them.

“I made a point,” Berger said, nodding toward the nearest healer. “You all have weak points, even if it’s just being overpowered or having your abilities suppressed. My job here is to make you able to defend yourself first and always, whether you can shit laser beams or not. Before you’re allowed out there, you’re going to be able to stop this kind of thing. Or you’re not going at all.”

As with every combat class, fighting America was unavoidable. After Juan was healed and thrown back into the mix, the rotation and permutations of who fought who played out as they always did. The matchups mutated regularly. Sometimes it was one on one, others wildly uneven sides. The only constant was that every student in the room had their powers blanked out. Turned off. For Drew this was both minimally troubling and deeply unnerving. The former because his ability gave him no physical advantage. He was no weaker or slower without his sphere.

The latter because his greatest weapon was taken from him.

He, Chris, and Cam faced off against America. It was deeply unfair that even without the ability to control her mind and brain down to the molecules, she was still able to absorb and internalize every movement she made. Every punch. She recorded lessons like a video. No, worse. She had explained over breakfast in their dorm that the controls she’d put in place made her able to program herself like a machine. All it took was one perfect repetition of a punch or throw and that move was part of her arsenal forever.

Chris ducked low, curling his large frame in on itself to allow Drew to leap over him in a surprise maneuver, aiming for a tackle. Cam moved in from the side and aimed for America’s legs. They’d hit her from two directions at once, with Chris bounding up to hand over the finishing blow. It was rough and unexpected, the best they could do with the few moments of planning given to them.

And of course it didn’t work. America adapted on the fly, contorting herself in mid-step and throwing herself forward into Drew. Their weight came down hard on Chris’s back, the resulting pile of bodies keeping Cam from being able to help much.

Drew choked a cough as a lightning fist caught him in the base of the throat. Despite the proximity of healers to prevent a fatal injury from taking, she’d only aimed to stun him rather than do any real damage. He was vaguely aware of her sliding past him even as she hit. His starry vision showed her delivering a devastating kick to Cam’s midsection followed by the smaller woman bending over at the waist and retching up lunch.

Chris got a nice kick of his own, this time to the side of the head. Just as Drew was beginning to get control of himself, America struck him again. Once, twice, then away to beat on another attacker. Each blow was stronger and more determined than the last, a slow escalation with a warning in it like a rock hidden inside a snowball: give up or this will only get worse.

It was always the same. The way she moved was flawless, her reactions perfect. There was never an opening to catch her off guard. She was always looking, listening.

Listening…

It came to him in a flash, as the best ideas usually did. He might not have his best weapon, but that did not leave Drew unarmed. America’s brain didn’t need her constant control to remain altered. The work there was already done. The only thing removing her power did was prevent her from tweaking it on the fly and making further improvements. She was wired to take in everything, to absorb with all her senses.

Sense that were wide open.

Without warning, Drew let out a piercing off-key shriek so loudly he could feel the lining of his throat burn. His entire body flexed in time with the noise, lashing out thoughtlessly in America’s direction.

His left fist caught her on a cheek as she involuntarily flinched away from the awful sound. The blow was fairly weak and badly aimed, but it was enough. Drew saw the opening the hit created, the careful set of instructions and commands America had put in place disrupted by the sudden shock.

He was relentless. Drew threw everything he had into the fight, jabbing and pushing forward with no plan or strategy, seeking only to keep her off balance and wear her down. One punch after another with kicks and elbows peppered in to keep the pace unpredictable, shouts here and there for good measure.

“Enough,” Berger said. “You’ve made your point, Garland.”

Drew had trained beneath the Marine for weeks and the calm but firm tone stopped him mid-swing. America stood dazed and wavering, a first for her. Her lip was split and blood poured from her nose, hardly equal to the treatment she usually dished out to others but more than anyone else in the class had been able to do since the first day.

Trying to get his breathing under control—and to find some mastery over the thrill that had risen into his chest from some deep place he didn’t want to think about—Drew stepped back and let his fists fall.

America needed only a few seconds to shake off the assault. She wiped a hand across her face and glanced at the streaks of red on the sleeve of her midnight uniform. Her eyes met his, and where he expected to find at least a dislike mirroring his own, he instead found a wry smile.

“I was wondering if you had it in you,” she said.

Drew frowned. There it was. The tone of constant superiority. “What are you talking about?”

“You hold back,” she said. “All the time. I was starting to think you’d never reach deep and cut loose. Your power is dangerous. Makes you too damn cautious.”

At a loss for anything else to say, he spoke the first words that came to him. “You don’t know me.” He turned and walked away to sit alone for the end of class lecture. If the bile in those four words had any effect on the woman, she didn’t show it. Instead he caught America giving him appraising looks the few times he felt her gaze on him during the remainder of the class.

Berger took up his pulpit again, this time to a room gone so silent it might have been empty.

“It’s brutal, I know,” he said to them in a deceptively gentle tone. “You have no idea how much I wish I could have taught the men and women under my command exactly how ugly and unfair it is out in the world. It might have saved them heartache. Might’ve saved lives, too.”

He waved a hand in Juan’s direction. “Some of you are stunned that I’d hurt someone so badly. You shouldn’t be. If you still don’t think my job is to prepare you for what you’ll face out there, you haven’t been listening. You need to. I can’t make it any more simple than that. Your powers don’t matter. How much you think this is a waste of your time doesn’t matter. All that does matter is whether or not I allow you to move on to your next training phases. Combat is far from the only challenge you’ll face out there, but it’s the most pressing. Statistically, if every trainee in this room were to start their Hero assignments at the same time on the same day, more than half of them would be dispatched into a scenario requiring physical confrontation by the end of shift. That’s just the numbers.”

A low murmur swept through the space. Berger wasn’t quite done.

“I want you to think long and hard about whether this class has value. Some of you will inevitably decide it’s worth the effort to pass by putting on a show for me and pretending you’ve come to your senses. Another fact to keep in mind is how many Heroes are on active MICA duty. The number is about twenty-five hundred. Keeping in mind that people tend to stick with this job for as long as they can, that we’ve been running it for fifty years, and that for the last three decades we have had the means to keep the Heroes who are one of our most vital resources from aging more than a few months before resetting them. Ageless and with access to healers—oh, and we used to take four times as many trainees. Yet not even three thousand are in the program. Ask yourself why. I’ll give you a hint: very few retire.”

The class ended there; Berger always gave them something to think about. Drew snatched his duffle bag from its spot near the door. He always chose a place close to the exit to beat the rest of the crowd in the rush to hit the dorms. The majority of the classrooms and training centers were located in or below the castle proper, which led to nonstop clogs in the hallways as everyone tried to make it back to their rooms to shower or get a bite to eat.

“Why do you always leave class without your team?”

The question came from an unfamiliar voice. Drew turned his head to find one of the strangely beautiful triplets walking next to him. Not the sister, but one of the identical brothers. He had no clue which.

Drew ignored the man, not that it helped.

“Are you hoping to be moved to another team? Or did they do something to offend you, maybe?”

With an irritated sigh, Drew shifted his bag. “How is that any of your business, dude?”

“Owen,” the taller man said. “Owen Miller. And I already know you’re Drew Garland. So what’s up with your team? Come on, man. Who hurt you?”

Owen said it in a joking tone, but with an undercurrent that suggested he would listen if Drew had something to get off his chest.

“I’m fine,” he replied. “I’m just not comfortable around people.”
Which was of course a lie. Drew had none of the social anxiety America carried with her. Not a trace of Celia’s nerves around large groups. Nor did he ham it up like Susan. He would never have Cam’s gregarious nature. He didn’t like being around people, true, but it was not a sore point either. Drew was happy not to be the center of attention.

The fact was, Drew just didn’t like them. He didn’t like America’s eyes and the way she seemed to see through everyone, as if she understood them so perfectly at a glance that she could then disregard them completely. Celia was quiet enough to at least not annoy him, keeping to herself when they were off duty. None of the others seemed to take the program seriously. While they spent hours in the common area playing video games or watching movies, Drew trained or studied. He’d had his moment of clarity in the combat cell on that first day, and his choice had been clear. Sink or swim—and only his best effort had even a chance of letting him keep up with the rest of the class.

Not that he was going to tell Owen, whose name Drew hadn’t even bothered to learn before it was forced on him, any of this.

“Well, that’s a little sad,” Owen said. “My teammates get under my skin from time to time, but who wouldn’t when you’re forced to live and work together? They’ve also been great with helping me expand my power and improve myself. I just thought it was weird that you always seemed to avoid your own people.”

“Pretty observant,” Drew noted. “Maybe you should spend more time with your head in the game instead of sticking your nose into other people’s business. Then you might figure out your own solutions instead of relying on your team to point them out.”

“Ooooooh, okay,” Owen said with a sage nod. “I get it. You’re just an asshole. That makes sense. You might want to reconsider slapping away helping hands, kid. Eventually people will learn not to extend them toward you.”

Drew shrugged and sped up his pace, eager to get away. “I don’t need help. Yours or anyone else’s.”

Owen’s laugh was half exasperation, half pure astonishment. “If you really believe that, then you don’t understand what this place is about at all. Good luck to you, man. Berger didn’t mention it, but there’s also a reason there are so few solo heroes.”

Chapter Seven

Names

Susan wasn’t sure why the meeting was called on this part of the island. The Castle as an installation might cover the entire thing, but the subsections other than the training grounds and the actual physical castle were mostly a mystery to her. Already a hundred yards down a series of tunnels branching off from the main complex, she became more and more sure that Shirani had some motive beyond making sure the rest of her team didn’t stumble across the four of them.

She found room MR-102 easily enough. There weren’t many doors in this section of the facility, and they were labeled clearly. Letting herself in, she flipped on the light and took a seat in what looked like a standard hospital waiting room.

The wait wasn’t long. Rohm and Williams appeared only a minute after she settled in, Shirani himself barely two minutes after that. There were no shared greetings—since arriving at the training facility two months earlier, the meetings had become more of a nuisance than anything else, and the people familiar.

Shirani lowered himself into one of the plastic chairs gingerly. When Susan raised an eyebrow at the slight wince he let show, he chuckled. “I was working with the combat class a year ahead of yours. They’re much less…restrained.”

Susan clicked her tongue as she had since Brian was…

Shit. She’d managed to go so long without thinking about her son. Gone now, all that was left behind were the memories she pushed down every day of her life. The little noise she made to get his attention or express frustration with him or just plain annoy him out of sheer boredom—that was a holdover from what felt like a previous life.

She spoke to cover the momentary lapse, shoving aside the mountain that threatened to tumble down on her constantly. “We’ve started using our powers in combat, so that’s a bit hard to imagine. Berger had to hurt a few more people after that Juan kid last month, but the class finally took the lesson to heart.”

Shirani shook his head ruefully. “I don’t doubt you’re all giving it your best, but the second years all have a lot more training under their belts. Believe me when I say they know how to hit, and hit hard.”

Rohm cleared her throat. “We’re on a clock here.”

Williams nodded. “We’ve already submitted our written report. What’s your take?”

Susan hadn’t minded sharing her thoughts on the team, not at first. They were strangers to her, just a bunch of kids with more to prove than anyone who’d been in the program before them. She was supposed to be their watcher, after all. The voice of reason and experience to speak up when they began to drift off track as most young people did. Learning was about failure.

Yet her role had begun to chafe over the last month. There still wasn’t anything like team unity, though with the extensive and expanding combat training and team exercises, the rough edges were coming off and the ice between them melting. Regularly getting the shit kicked out of you by someone led to hate or friendship with not a lot of gray areas between.

“You already know how the training is going,” Susan said somewhat hesitantly. “As for personal relationships, well…the worst of the lot is still Garland. Ah, Drew, I mean. Strange thing is that he’s gone from openly hostile to almost completely silent around us. Started about a month ago but I didn’t really notice it until the last few days. Used to be he’d hide away in his room or go out for extra training during his free time. Now he’ll sit in the common area with the rest of us but he never joins in. He’d just sort of there, like a piece of furniture.”

“We know all about Garland,” Shirani said. “He’s a special case. We’ve got some ideas in mind, so don’t focus your energy on him. How are the others doing?”

Susan blew out a breath. “America spends a lot of her time in her lab. No idea what she’s up to in there. She’s civil with everyone, and close with Cam. I think she’s a little intimidated by me. Chris and Ethan get along fairly well. Ethan is teaching him how to play some role-playing game, and Celia joined in last night. They’re integrating. Slowly, but they’re getting there.”

Williams cocked his head. “Is something wrong? You seem tense.”

Susan rolled her shoulders. She hated to fidget. Hated that it gave away how she was feeling. On stage, she was always in control. Before losing Brian…

“I don’t know how comfortable I am with doing this,” she admitted. “I don’t like it. They’re good kids. Even Drew isn’t really bad, just bad at being social. They deserve to know the truth. I’m pretty sure America already has suspicions.”

Rohm snorted a laugh. “Of course she does. According to every test Evan Reed has given her, she’s just about the smartest person on the planet. Even other people with her power haven’t done the extensive remodeling of their own brains to the degree she has. And none of them did it all the way through puberty, when the brain is malleable and growing. Just the fact that we accepted them into this program at all is suspicious as hell.”

“What we need,” Shirani said, cutting off the topic, “is some idea of whether the team is reaching any sort of stable balance. You’re only a few days away from your first group test. You’ll be submitting your temporary Hero names tomorrow. We try to layer on the new lessons carefully up to this point, but it gets harder in fast waves from here out. I’m worried about how it will look if I have to slow down the process just for your team.”

Given the purpose of the team—the almighty Secret the four of them shared—virtually anything that would improve the chances of their combined success was an option. If Shirani thought slowing down the entire training cohort would do it, he wouldn’t hesitate. Susan understood that and agreed with it. Fortunately—

“That shouldn’t be necessary,” she said. “Look, the brass tacks here is that we need a leader. A structure. We’ve been doing the team exercises but that’s all tactics and coordination. There aren’t any stakes. Once someone comes in and says, ‘hey, this is how it’s going to be’ and we start having to deal with training in real-world scenarios, I think we’ll be fine. Brian said it was that way in the Marines. Boys who argued and snapped at each other until they hit the field. Then they came together.”

Shirani nodded as if this was exactly what he expected to hear. “Lucky for us that the next two tests are designed to solve those very problems. Obviously, I can’t give you the details. Let’s say I’m pretty sure you’ll have your team captain after that, with minimal complaints.”

Susan both hoped for and dreaded the possibility that it might be Drew. He was a capable kid, no doubt about that, but the way he watched them bothered her. Like they were all rats in a lab. America was the scientist, yet she generally acted like a regular human being. Drew clearly wanted the job. He just never put it in words.

Rohm checked her watch. “It’s time. We need to go now if we want to get in during shift change.”

Susan raised an eyebrow at this but was hustled out of the room before she could ask a question. Shirani put a finger to his lips and led her further down the hall. The MR labels on the doors were made clear as they turned a corner—this was Medical Research. Ahead was a set of heavy double doors with a complicated, nearly theatrical, set of automatic locks keeping them secure.

“Open,” Shirani said as they approached. And the doors obeyed.

The room was a sort of morgue. Only a half dozen spaces for bodies lined the walls, and it wasn’t cold at all. Rohm moved to one in the middle and briskly opened it, pulling the tray all the way out to reveal a form shrouded in white. Williams bracketed the corpse on the other side, pulling down the sheet.

“Holy shitballs,” Susan said. “That’s—you have Cascade’s fucking body here?”

Shirani nodded. “We do. You can see where Lazarus shattered his rib cage, and where I broke his neck.”

Susan looked down at the passive, peaceful face of the man who had killed her son and a thousand more as he burned out like a furious star.

She spat on it, her face then whipping toward the Director. “Why are you showing me this?”

Shirani tilted his head toward the body. “Notice anything weird?”

Susan frowned, then gave Cascade’s form a more thorough examination. He looked dead, that much was without doubt. His skin was pale, the blood pooled along his back and legs.

Wait. He definitely looked like a corpse, but a very fresh corpse. And the room was warm.

“How long has he been thawed out?” she asked.

Rohm answered, and the usual brash confidence in her voice had gone quiet. “Months. As far as we can tell, about a day after he died, Cascade just sort of went into stasis. He’s dead, but he won’t rot. Or really even change at all. Here, look at this.” Rohm pulled pocket knife from inside her suit and flicked the blade open before slashing a thin line across the dead man’s chest.

Within seconds the cut closed and vanished as if it had never been.

“What the actual fuck,” Susan breathed. “What does this mean?”

Shirani didn’t look at her as he spoke, his gaze fixed firmly on the corpse. “We’ve consulted every expert we can trust. Evan Reed even took a crack at it. No one has any idea. My guess is it has something to do with the rest of The Five, though. And if Cascade is connected to them somehow even while he’s dead, it can’t be good.”

As understatements went, Susan thought, that one might be on the all-time top ten list.

“These will not necessarily be your permanent Hero names,” said Shirani during an assembly two days later. “They can be, assuming they meet all the correct requirements and aren’t already in use, but for now these will be the call signs you use when training, during field work, or in tests. Everyone should go ahead and open the boxes on their desks. I’ll explain what the contents are after I record your choices for code names.”

Susan and the rest of the team sat in a cluster occupying the far left wall of Shirani’s classroom. All the other teams were present and just as segregated. Rather than yell out their choices across the room, the Director moved from team to team and recorded the call signs by hand.

Team 7 had barely managed to open their parcels by the time Shirani made it over to them. They were the third team he approached, and Susan quietly wanted to know what company had taped the damn boxes shut. Because the stuff they used could hold a car up in the air, apparently.

“Let’s just go in a circle,” Shirani said, nodding at Susan.

“Echo,” she said, then focused her attention on the smooth black cloth that filled half the box. She could almost feel the eyes of the others on her. The thought made a smirk tug at the corner of her mouth. None of them knew her power—well, America might have a good idea, because the girl had good ideas pretty much nonstop if she was conscious—and seeing their constant curiosity tickled her. Mom had always said Susan had a weird sense of humor, though she hadn’t considered that quirk the money-making feature it turned out to be.

The others didn’t have time to wonder what the name implied about her power, though she was certain America was already working out the probabilities, because Shirani tapped his clipboard impatiently.

“Sphere,” Drew said tersely, his eyes darting from one person to another as if ready to defend the choice. No one commented.

Ethan shrugged. “Slip, I guess. I hadn’t really thought much about it until you told us a few days ago we needed one.”

Celia, usually the most silent of the group, cleared her throat. Susan knew from their classes how uncomfortable she was speaking in front of groups. “Um, I think I’ll us Lace as mine. If that’s okay.”

“It’s fine,” the Director reassured her. “Miss Margolis?”

Cam grinned. “Nosh, please.”

“Oh, nice,” Susan said. “That covers a lot of bases. Kinda perfect.” Cam winked at her.

“I’ll be using Recursion,” Chris said, the duplicate sitting behind him working on an assignment from another class nodding in agreement.

Everyone’s eyes fell on America herself, who gave a slight smile. Could the others see the light tension behind it? She thought not—they all spent so much time together that it was inevitable they’d talk about each other. Every group of acquaintances, even coworkers, did it. If there was something obvious to the collective such as Drew being a standoffish dick, the rest would comment on it in some way. Even if it was just how to address and fix the situation. No one had said a word to Susan about the puffy eyes America had more often than not, or the subtle tiredness in her movements. She was ahead of all of them in every lesson so far, but almost nothing they’d done required the use of powers in a way that altered the playing field. America was smart enough to know that was going to change, and Susan guessed she was pushing herself too hard preparing for it.

“Delphi,” she said.

Shirani blinked. “The other call signs I get, but I admit to being stumped here.”

The younger woman gave Susan a brief, unreadable look, then sighed. “Well, what I do isn’t prophecy so much as data analysis and coming up with creative solutions, but a few people from other teams said it looks like I predict moves before they happen when I fight. The name Oracle is taken, and Pythia isn’t really my style. I like the way Delphi sounds.”

“Interesting,” Shirani said as he jotted down the choice. Only Susan knew exactly what he found interesting about it. The subject of America Jackson was the most common during their meetings.

The young woman was capable in ways Susan could barely wrap her head around. It was only because she had total access to the profiles created by the MICA analysts studying every report generated by the girl that she had even an idea of America’s real potential. Shirani was certain America was focusing on combat, programming her brain and muscles to work in perfect harmony, to allow her to keep pace with her more physically imposing classmates.

Susan had a different theory: America was slowly shaping their perception of her. The very first days of training, people saw her as a purely intellectual being. Someone so much smarter than them that they couldn’t help but be intimidated by it. This too was a truism Susan had observed countless times in her six and a half decades; people didn’t like knowing they were objectively less bright than someone else.

America was making them push that uncomfortable truth to the back of their minds by sheer misdirection. She focused everything she had on being incredible in the arena the rest of the class would soon race past her in: combat. The smug satisfaction most of them would have at blowing past her as they integrated their powers into fights would cancel out the negative feelings toward her at least a little.

As manipulations went, it was subtle but powerful, which was exactly why Susan was dead sure America was doing it on purpose. The other half of the equation was even more low-key in that the majority of their training cohort would overlook just how truly dangerous America was. They’d ignore the depth and breadth of her knowledge and the raw capacity of her mind to use what she knew in devastatingly effective ways. In short, she was putting on a show to convince everyone around her that she was profoundly able but only when her focus was narrowed to a single pursuit.

As far as Susan was concerned, anyone who’d spoken with the girl for more than two minutes who let themselves believe that was a moron of the highest order and deserved what they got.

“You’ll change into these after class,” Shirani said as he moved a clothed mannequin from behind a screen at the back of the room. “Allow me to introduce you to your new uniform. It’s what you’ll wear every day from now on. I should note that you are allowed to alter it or create your own so long as whatever you wear meets the same safety standards as the gear we give you. All home-brew designs have to be approved by the Castle’s lead designer, Cynthia Andrews.”

The mannequin wore a set of black tactical gear not unlike those worn by police, but more streamlined. There were subtle attachment points along the waist and outer thighs, with four more on the chest. Susan wasn’t quite sure how anything would hook to them since the points were little more than metal grommets, but they couldn’t be anything else.

“Your masks will be delivered to your dorms later this evening,” Shirani continued. He waved a hand at the dummy next to him. “What you see here is the result of years of effort from the meta community, especially some of our most talented meta geniuses. This material is highly classified and is only used by Heroes. It will stop a bullet from most handguns. It’s highly cut and stab resistant. It will keep you warm at temperatures as low as negative forty Fahrenheit and cool as high as one twenty. You’d melt before it catches on fire. And before you ask, the reason it isn’t standard issue with all police and fire departments is that it costs about twenty grand per suit.”

Susan thought there was more to it, probably leaning toward the classified aspect of the outfits. She’d known a meta genius or two in her time, and after a few drinks they spilled beans just like anyone else. Lots of their inventions were classified, held back until the world was ready for them. Sometimes that came in the form of artificial cost inflation, others were straight government intervention.

Shirani removed a small case from his desk and opened it. “What you see here are lenses for your eyes and a standard-issue Hero communicator. The lenses are pretty simple to use. You put them in just like contacts, though these pop out much easier. They will work with your comm to relay relevant data and orders as your team behind the scenes works. The comm itself is more complicated. You may notice that it looks like a small pill. That’s because it is.”

Susan craned her neck forward to get a better look, but there really wasn’t much to see. The comm unit was indeed a small gray pill. “I’m really hoping that’s something we have to swallow. I swore off the other way after a rough night in Vegas forty years back.”

Shirani’s class was rarely a forum for comedy, so the laughter was anemic at best. The Director didn’t seem bothered by the joke. He actually smiled. “You do swallow it. The pill is just a housing for a lot of complicated nanotechnology. The machines in there will travel through your bloodstream until they reach your inner ear and vocal cords. You’ll be able to speak through your comm and give it orders like passing text messages to your teammates by subvocalizing. You’ll hear in crystal clear stereo no matter what else is going on around you.”

He put the box down and stepped in front of the desk, which he then sat on. With his sleeves rolled up and arms crossed, it was easy to see the man’s powerful if lean muscles. The moment his expression cooled to what Susan thought of as his Serious Teacher Face, she was reminded that the man in front of her was among perhaps the most dangerous twenty or thirty people on the entire planet. He’d been in the trenches. He had officially Seen Some Shit. When he spoke, smart money was on listening.

“This stuff is going to help you out when you’re in the field, but don’t rely on it,” Shirani said, being obviously careful with his words. “Did you know that despite the improvements in turnout gear and other tools, firefighter mortality rates have stayed almost exactly the same for the last three decades? People get better protection and they tend to lean on it. I don’t want any of you to do that. Trust yourselves first, your teammates second. You think we’re hard on you because of the level of responsibility you’re going to have out there in the world, and you’re not wrong. But most of it, at least now in the early stages, is because we don’t want you to get yourselves killed in the first five minutes.”

The room was tense. Shirani usually compartmentalized himself from the more brutal lessons taught in their combat classes. He read the mood and gave a small nod of understanding. It was an unconscious gesture Susan could appreciate; the look of a man who had just seen what he was hoping to find.

“I don’t say that to scare you,” he continued. “I want you aware. There’s just no way the reality can sink in until you’re really out there doing it. None of you can have even the barest concept of the volume of weird and unpredictable stuff you’re going to run into. What we’ve been doing so far is just the prep work. You’ve had it easy for the most part. What comes next, after your test and first field operation, is the real work. You have the bare bones of what you need to get through the next several days, but it won’t be enough to prepare you for how random and dangerous Hero work is. Truth is, nothing can. Only doing the job, even just a little, can give you the perspective you need.”

He gave himself a little shake, as if waving away a bad thought. “Anyway, let’s go through all the specifics for your gear. You’ll find a small booklet in one of the cargo pockets. It has all the technical information you never wanted to know…”

As the class began following along, Susan noticed one person working ahead. Their resident genius was scanning through the booklet with a smile on her face. It was the look of a woman who had seen a challenge and happily accepted.

Chapter Eight

The Airplane Test

They were given no information about what the test would entail other than to wear their new gear for it and to show up at the exit site for the island at noon. Knowing they’d be using the exit site to teleport somewhere didn’t help America figure out what the test might be in the least, and without the ability to prepare, she began trying to manically distract herself in the middle of the night.

She woke everyone up at six, which was expected, before ducking back into her lab to work frantically for another hour. When she emerged again, America carried a small case and a large, complicated scanning device.

Everyone sat at the giant kitchen table. All of them were there, even the two agents. Both of them wore their usual suits, though Rohm hadn’t bothered with a tie this morning. The primary Chris ate with gusto while another Chris finished cooking an enormous stack of pancakes and a third tackled the dishes. A fourth sat on the couch playing a video game.

“Okay, guys,” America said as she slung the case and scanner onto the table. “I need your blood and to take some detailed scans of your bodies. Form a line, please.”

Everyone at the table stopped what they were doing and shared a series of uncomfortable looks. Cam rubbed a hand along her forehead, the coffee clearly not yet taking hold. “Jesus Christ, sweetie. We have to work on your bedside manner.”

America frowned. “I don’t get it.”

“Context would be nice,” Williams said, grabbing a pancake from the tray offered to him by a Chris.

“Actually asking wouldn’t hurt either,” Rohm agreed.

America blinked. “Oh. Yeah. Sometimes I forget. Um, I’ve been working on some stuff for all of you tonight. It’s gonna take a while, and I need exact measurements of your bodies as well as a better understanding of how your powers work. So I guess in addition to scans and blood, I also need to sit with each of you sometime soon and get a full rundown on what you can do.”

Celia perked up slightly. “What are you making?” Her false hand, the one composed of telekinetically-controlled threads, writhed slightly.

“New uniforms, some gadgets,” America said. “I spent a few hours last night looking at all the regulations and requirements, so we’re good on that. Then I ordered some materials I don’t have here. Other components have to wait until I can ask Evan about them. He’ll know where I can get them. I want to make sure everything I build works with your powers, though, so I need data.”

Celia’s eyes flicked to her false hand, but she nodded. America understood the reluctance to talk about it or even outright ask the question. So long as it remained in her head without a definitive answer, a new hand being crafted for her was still out there in a cloud of probability. The workings of the gears inside her head were as obvious to America as basic mathematics. Not everyone was so easy to read, but she’d spent a lot of time around these people.

Ethan cleared his throat. “Did you sleep at all?”

“I only need two hours or so,” America said. “I’m hoping to get rid of that need, too, but my stupid body apparently wants at least that much.”

Susan chuffed out a laugh. “But not your brain?”

America shrugged. “Not really. I turn off parts of it in sequence during the day and let them rest. It doesn’t seem to affect my judgment.”

Another series of looks shot across the table. Cam was somehow silently elected to state the obvious. “Honey, you don’t think storming up here and asking for blood shows bad judgment?”

America opened her mouth to respond, then closed it. Well, shit. “Okay, fair enough. But I really do need as much information as you guys can give me. I won’t have anything ready for at least a few days, so I’d like to get a head start.”

“Uh, how detailed are these scans gonna be?” Chris—the original—asked, looking somewhat nervous.

In response, America opened the case and withdrew a slim folder. From within it she produced a small stack of printouts. She had anticipated the question. “Pretty detailed. It’s rendered in cool colors rather than actual tones.” She handed the papers to Cam, whose eyes went wide before turning the stack over.

“These are nude,” she said in a scandalous tone. “These are nudes of you.”

America nodded. “I had to test it on someone. I built the scanner myself, you know. My suit is already being modeled on my system.”

“Yeah, no thanks,” Drew said.

Ethan snickered. “Doesn’t want you to see his dong.”

“Who calls it a dong past age twelve?” Chris asked.

America raised a hand. “It’s not like I’m going to actually see the scans themselves. The computer will overlay the information onto a generic image. And if it helps, keep in mind I’m designing armor that should keep anything short of an artillery strike from blowing off the family jewels.”

“I’m in,” Chris said.

“Same,” Ethan chimed in on top of him.

Drew sighed. “I guess.”

Celia rolled her eyes. “Boys.”

At noon they gathered at the exit site, a flat piece of circular concrete thirty feet across. Waiting for them were Shirani and a woman America had seen around the Castle from time to time.

“This is Delilah Sinclair,” Shirani said, indicating the short woman with the long, wavy black hair. “She will become your primary instructor after your field operation. She’s also the proctor for today’s test. Delilah?”

She stepped forward, hands clasped behind her back. “Normally this would be where I tell you the name of the test, but because of Miss Jackson’s ability to put together conclusions with virtually no information, I have to withhold even that much. Once you’re back, you’ll be briefed on who I am and what I can do. Saying more before the test might skew the results. The one piece of advice I can give you is that you’ll know what to do instinctively, or you won’t. This is pass/fail. Please gather in the middle of the circle while I disarm the anchors so you can be teleported.”

They did as they were asked. Sinclair stepped back from the group and began a countdown from five. On two she raised her hand, fingers crackling with yellow lightning. On one, a bolt of the stuff shot toward them and suddenly—

“Shit!”

“OH MY GOD WHAT?!”

“AHHHHHHH!”

“We’re all gonna diiiiiii—”

The shouts and terror around her slowed down as America’s power took over. Her brain worked as she told it to, but years of unconscious tinkering had given her instincts and reactions that were too useful to bother fixing. One of them was her time perception; her brain sped itself up to dangerously high speeds when she was in peril.

The facts flooded in and were incorporated into the vast fabric of knowledge she had at her disposal every moment of every day.

The most obvious was that they were falling. The ocean was far below, so far in fact that the curvature of the earth was plainly visible along the horizon. The cold slapped at the opening around her mouth and on her hands, the only exposed parts of her body. She’d forgotten her gloves.

The others flailed in slow motion around her, panic overtaking each of them. Even Susan, normally so jaded and detached that the laughter behind her eyes never went out, was losing her shit completely. Human beings were strangely predictable that way. Some stimuli were too deeply rooted to be overcome easily. Falling was one of them. Hell, people spent the first few years of their lives learning not to do it. Though usually not from such a height.

These thoughts took a twentieth of a second to race through the casual part of her mind that America wasn’t using for processing. It took just over a full second for the rest of her brain to take all of the relevant information and spin a solution out of it.

“Text interface on, team channel,” she said into her comm. The screen of her right contact, which had been hacked during the night to constantly stream educational content at ten times normal speed, blinked off to match the left. A blinking cursor waited.

“Echo, please give everyone some kind of shock to get their attention,” she said, and the comm kept up its voice to text duties without any noticeable hitch.

Two seconds later, a lance of pain shot through her lower calf. It felt like a terrible runner’s cramp. She saw the shock on the faces of the group even as they drifted away from each other. That was a problem in need of a solution…

“Lace, use normal rope to harness everyone together as best you can. I assume you’ve studied how to make them. Do it now. Slip, once we’re all clustered together, please increase our drag as much as you can, but only if you can tune the friction to work against the air. I don’t want my clothes to suddenly feel like they’re glued on and rip all my skin off.”

The text transmitted in real time rather than as a text block all at once, so by the time America was halfway through speaking, snakes of cord and rope were slithering around her body at inner thighs, waist, and under her arms. She felt no discernible increase in wind resistance, so she assumed Ethan was too afraid to use his ability, not having tried it in this situation before. She filed that away as something to explore later.

“Sphere, summon your, uh, sphere and have it keep pace with us about five feet above our heads.”

By the time she looked up, the tiny black ball was already in place. “Good. Lace, go ahead and pull us together into a group.”

The cords binding them drew tight with caution, fast enough to be noticed but slow enough no one slammed their heads together. Which was good, in America’s view. They’d already been subjected to cartoonish treatment. Veering into slapstick would have been a bridge too far.

“Lace, I need you to use some of the sturdier wire to form a small canopy over Sphere’s ball. Connect it to the lines holding us together.” She waited as the smaller girl did as she was told. Celia—Lace—grew less afraid as she worked, her remarkable control requiring concentration that left no room for overwhelming terror. It was a response America noted as especially important. She set a mental yellow flag on it. Any information about her teammates, who would certainly be at her back in far worse situations than this one, was by definition of far more value than the background data she absorbed constantly.

When this was done, America nodded in satisfaction. “Good work. Sphere, please begin to slow down your ball gradually. We don’t want to put too much shock load on this thing. It’s makeshift and there are a lot of unknowns in the materials making up the ropes and stuff. Let’s not stress them more than we have to.”

At first she didn’t notice a change. Then the very slightest tightening on the lines began to pull at her harness. She glanced at Drew again, watched the cool expression on his face as he concentrated. The orb took up more and more of their weight as it slowed relative to their fall. Drew never let up, keeping the rate steady so as not to over-stress the tangle of ropes and wires keeping them safe.

“We look like a fucked-up hot air balloon,” Susan said weakly as they drifted toward the sea at a few miles per hour, more than slow enough to be heard. “Big on the bottom, small on the top.”

With a shaky laugh, Chris ran a hand through his hair. “How high do you think we were?”

“At least thirty thousand feet,” America said absently, still watching Drew work. “Based on temperature and how thin the air was. We had plenty of time.”

Cam, who happened to be snug against America in their messy bundle of bodies, carefully reached an arm around her and gave the larger woman a gentle hug. “That was amazing, sweetie. I can’t believe you stayed so calm. You saved us.”

At those words, Drew’s expression shifted. He met America’s eyes for the briefest moment before getting back to the task at hand. There was something like respect in the glance. And…regret?

Whatever it was, she would sit down and work it out with him if that was what he needed. At that moment, her thoughts were consumed with getting back to sea level and onto the island. America Jackson very much wanted to have a talk with Jeff Shirani.

They were nearly to the water when the world blurred around them for a fraction of a second, and they were back on the island. Delilah Sinclair and Director Shirani stood in front of them, both with satisfied expressions on their faces. America felt the cords slip away from her body but was restrained almost immediately once again, this time by Cam.

“Hon, I know what you’re about to do, and you shouldn’t,” Cam said, one muscular arm wrapped around America’s torso from behind.

America gently pushed the arm away, and Cam let her. It couldn’t have been more clear this was the case, as Cam’s skin and the muscles beneath were as hard as ceramic or metal. No give whatsoever. She didn’t look at the others as she calmly stepped forward. America held no illusions about her power. She was a large woman with a powerful frame, but not physically superhuman.

Which was why she had no expectation that her full-armed slap would do more than hurt her hand. Yet Shirani surprised her; he was currently powered-down. His head rocked to the side as he took a half step back to regain his balance.

“I get why you did it,” she said matter-of-factly. “I understand the psychology, the information you gain. All of it. That doesn’t make it right, or not a shitty thing to do.”

And without looking at anyone else, she walked away.

Leaving the others behind in that moment was necessary. They saw her as mostly too interested in her own work to be bothered by trivial things. Not better than themselves by any stretch, but more focused. Which was largely true, except that her disconnect from the rest of the trainees didn’t stem from disinterest in other people like it did with Drew. America, for all her wealth and brilliance, was still trying to tweak the parts of her brain that forced her to endure excruciating anxiety around other human beings.

The fading murmurs behind her were fairly clear, the others wondering what consequences she would face. Throw in Celia mentioning to Susan that she wished she’d thought of punching Shirani first and Drew making disapproving noises, and yeah. It felt about right for the group.

America wasn’t worried about being kicked out. Partly this was because she had a net worth that had long ago guaranteed she would never go hungry even if she lived for centuries. She had options—and more, she had control. That was what Shirani promised her, and he delivered. Understanding her power and being able to consciously guide it was something she would never have been able to buy. America could leave tomorrow and feel completely satisfied but for two other factors.

One was that she was increasingly certain Shirani had a specific plan for Team 7. She wasn’t in love with any of them, but the sheer volume of time and proximity to the others had made them grow on her. Add to that her innate curiosity and inability to leave a mystery alone, and you got an America Jackson who would be unhappy to be sent away without solving the puzzle.

The other factor was that she was absolutely sure that for whatever plan Shirani was prepping her team for, he needed her. He’d been shot at, punched by gods, set on fire. A slap to the face was nothing to a guy like that.

No tactical teams jumped out of the darkness as she made her way down into the Castle and went straight for her lab. She locked the door behind her.

“Enable voice mode,” she said to the room, which lit up as she entered and set itself to her room profile. The space was unrecognizable from the spartan stone it had been when she first arrived. The universal fabricator took up a corner of the room, of course, though it was by far the least cluttered area. The opposite corner was occupied by a computer system of her own design, currently running a primitive AI she and Evan were working on as a fun side project.

“Contact Evan Reed,” she commanded.

“It’s late,” said Alan, the AI. The face she’d chosen for him blinked onto the screen, that of a man in middle age, hollow-cheeked and with long gray-brown hair and a beard to make fictional wizards jealous. His accent was English, because of course it was. Artificial intelligences were all supposed to be English. Then they broke their programming and tried to destroy humanity. Alan sometimes glitched out, but his errors were more along the lines of singing extemporaneous songs about unicorns than plotting genocide, so America wasn’t all that worried.

“America?” Evan said over the encrypted VOIP line they’d set up between the lab and his personal communicator. “Is everything all right?”

“No,” she said. “I was just dropped from several miles up. I’m salty about it.”

Evan chuckled darkly. “Yeah. The airplane test is a son of a bitch, but everyone goes through it. You want me to drop by? I can have my assistant put in a request for a teleport onto the island.”

“No, it’s okay,” she said. “I’m just irritated and I want to work. You and I discussed a material my fab can’t reproduce. You said it was a metal with special properties. I’d like to talk about getting hold of some if you have time to chat.”

There was a long silence. Then: “That’s an in-person conversation. When it comes to this stuff, never trust any communication that isn’t face to face. I’ve got a couple things to finish up here at the house before I come back to the island for the next month or so. I’ll ping you when I’m on my way. If you’re up, we’ll chat.”

America shook her head. “This stuff must be important if you can only be vague and cryptic about it over a secure line.”

Reed snorted. “It’s actually illegal to discuss it electronically. Too many metas with tech powers we can’t predict. This is a national security thing, not a call I made personally.”

America blinked. “What? Why?”

“Because the stuff you want to buy is the most expensive material on the planet,” Evan explained. “And the source is more protected than the President.”

She decided not to mention the fact that along with other items, some of it would be used to create invulnerable athletic cups.

Chapter Nine

The Space Between

Their field trial was pushed back a few days to accommodate the large number of failures for the Airplane test.

“Every team failed except one,” he had said matter-of-factly to the gathered class. “There are numerous cases of metas with teleportation or reality-altering powers who have killed entire Hero teams in just this way. Your teams were designed to allow for survival in this situation. We weren’t just testing your cleverness in finding a solution, either. This test lets us measure your reactions. How you think in a crisis. Some of you did well even though you failed. Everyone but Team 7 has to go through the backup test. They get a few days off.”

Which had just done wonders for their popularity. America took the extra time to meet with Evan and order—

“Alium?” she asked, looking at the spec sheet Evan had handed to her as he entered the lab. “The most valuable metal on the planet is called Alium?”

Evan shrugged, a wry smile twisting his lips. “Look, the guy who makes it got to name it, and his name is Al.”

America had told Evan to wait until the following afternoon to visit, and she was glad for the delay. She’d managed a good deal more design work in that time. Her eyes scanned the page and flew wide at the cost.

“Twenty thousand dollars an ounce?”

Evan chuckled. “Told you it was expensive. And that’s with the Hero discount Al gives. Fortunately he can make a few hundred pounds of it in a day, and ten percent is set aside for our use. As soon as you decide how much you need, we can send in your payment and have it teleported in. You can start working with it immediately. Though I should be here to offer advice when you start, at least. Alium is tricky.”

“I see that,” America said as she flipped over the page and read the properties of the metal. More heat resistance than tungsten. A tenth of the weight of titanium and a hundred times stronger. Virtually indestructible thanks to a seemingly impossible quirk allowing it absorb quite a lot of kinetic energy. She looked up at Evan and waved the paper. “What is this? How does he create it? This shouldn’t be possible.”

Evan raised an eyebrow. “You’re sitting twenty yards from a girl who gets strong enough to bench press a car if she decides to splurge on burgers. Rethink the entire idea of impossible. And to answer your question, Al is like that Russian kid in your class. He turns into Alium. Completely. He can slough off the excess and it retains its properties.”

America frowned. “Where does the mass come from? He can’t shed his damn body weight and then some every day.”

“No, he can’t,” Evan agreed. “Like a lot of metas with powers that seem to break the law of conservation of mass, Al borrows it. When he’s transformed, he can siphon off mass around him and convert it. It’s not just elemental phase shifters who can do it, either. Al usually absorbs concrete or other metals. I hear a couple really powerful duplicators make solid physical copies of themselves by doing the same thing. It’s all matter to energy conversion, then back again. How they actually do that part, we don’t know. Smartest people in the world can’t figure out the mechanics of it.”

America snorted a laugh. “Well, yeah. If we could, we’d be able to do…anything, really. We could make anything out of anything with no waste.”

Evan nodded, raising his palms upward. “Garbage to gold. That’s what we call it.”

The bit about duplicators stuck in her head, filed away for later investigation. “So from what I read here, there are pretty narrow circumstances in which—and I can’t believe I’m going to have to get used to saying the name—Alium can be worked.”

“Yeah,” Evan agreed. “Al himself can shape it however he likes, but you can’t get the stuff hot enough to do it yourself. Well, you can, but there’s no container in the world that wouldn’t melt or crack in the process. That’s the other thing you need to know: it has a weakness. One you can work around and plan for, but definitely need to know.”

He paused for effect, and it was painfully obvious. She’d seen his TED talk. Evan had good personal charisma, but when putting on a show his performance level was somewhere in the vicinity of fifth grade school play. She twirled a finger at him to continue. “Enough foreplay, dude.”

Evan blushed slightly. “Let’s say the answer will shock you.” He opened his mouth slightly, eyes going a touch wide as if waiting for her to get it. When America blandly stared him down, he deflated a little.

“Electricity,” he said sullenly. “The weakness and trick to shaping Alium is putting enough current into it.”

With that one word, America’s mind began to spin and whirl with possibility.

The first on her list was Drew, who entered the lab with the tension you might expect out of a bomb disposal guy in an action movie faced with his last day of work. He just knew some shit was about to go down.

She’d set up a desk and chairs not because she needed them—America tended to spread out across all work surfaces in any space she occupied—but to meet the expectations she knew the others would have. The desk itself was plain and mostly empty, in high contrast to the cluttered and chaotic mess around them. She gestured to the squashy leather armchair on the visitor side of the desk, and perched on her cheap aluminum folding chair behind it.

Drew sat with his arms crossed for a few seconds as America studied him before raising an eyebrow. “Didn’t you want to scan me? You’ve already got my blood.”

She cocked her head, then smiled and pointed over the door. “Oh, that. Yeah, I mounted that thing up there. Scanned you as soon as you walked in. I could make you a new outfit in an hour or so, but there are some questions I’d like to ask you first.”

Drew shrugged. “Go ahead, I guess.”

America nodded primly. “Okay. First one is this: why are you such a dick to everyone? Especially to me?”

His face reddened. “It’s not like I give you all a bunch of crap. I just don’t fit in with you.”

“No,” she said with a slight shake of the head. “You’ve tried to be part of the group lately. You’re at least around when the others are doing stuff out there. But it’s in how you look at us, how you carry yourself. You think they don’t see it, but they do. Chris uses his power constantly, and every time you see a copy of him cleaning or making food, you get this little sneer.”

“Because that’s not what our powers are for,” Drew said, the words exploding from him. “We’re here to learn to fight for our lives against people who aren’t afraid to use their abilities without any kind of mercy.”

America tried not to smile and failed, the expression coming out as a smirk. “That’s one way to see it. We’re also here to learn to use our powers to defend the innocent. And just because you happen to think what we can do is just for fighting doesn’t actually make it so. For example, I’ve never understood why you don’t use yours to fly.”

Drew blinked, confusion written on his face. “What? I can’t fly.”

“No,” she said again. “You can’t. But your sphere can lift seven people with no problem because it’s an unstoppable object or an immovable one when you want it to be. I’d have thought you’d at least try to grab onto it and let it pull you through the air. I was sure I’d see you practicing even though that’s about the least efficient way to do it. Yet all I see you do is use that thing as a ranged weapon. It’s a waste. I mean, have you even bothered to ask the staff here what their investigation of your power told them about what exactly your sphere is?”

Drew didn’t shrink back in his seat at the onslaught of words. Instead he balled his hands into fists and grew even more tense. “No, I haven’t tried to fly with it, because I have to see where it is to use it.”

“You have to visualize where it is,” America corrected. “I’ve seen you whip that ball around your head and behind your back without a problem. No reason you couldn’t slip it into a specialized pocket on a suit and use it to lift your body. Or for that matter, materialize it in place during fights to absorb attacks. But you don’t do that. You just use it like a bullet.”

He stared at her in wide-eyed shock. America had chosen these particular words, this line of attack, specifically to cut right through his defenses. Her access to the dossiers of everyone on the team, coupled with her own observations, made it simple to bypass objections and emotional shields. Drew was smart and driven, but had lived his entire life with an inferiority complex about his power. He knew exactly how dangerous it could be and wanted to use it to prove himself as a Hero, but never expected to be allowed to.

Showing him that he had tunnel vision about it and casually pointing out huge sections of potential he had either ignored or missed entirely was not, in the short term, a kindness. She hoped that over time he would take the words to heart and try to explore his powers further.

Rather than let him build up into a rage, she filled the conversational gap herself. “I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether you want to know what your sphere actually is. I’d ask soon, though. We’re done here, I think.”

Drew fumed as he lurched upright and headed for the door, but stopped when America said his name. She didn’t wait for him to turn and look at her. She knew he wouldn’t.

“You’ve spent years feeling less than you really are because you didn’t get a bunch of really useful stuff along with your power like other people,” she said. “I happen to think folks should be allowed to use their abilities in everyday life all they want, and thankfully the law agrees. There’s a lot of research that says doing that gives people more control. More finesse. Maybe it’s worth giving a try. And try to remember that as bad as you think you have it, at least yours lets you do something outside yourself. I can’t do that with mine. I think you’re lucky.”

He said nothing as he left the lab, but for a split second his body language changed. Almost like he was actually thinking on her words.

“Forced sympathetic nervous response,” America read off the page in front of her. She looked up to meet Susan’s eyes.

There was no surprise on the older woman’s face. “You should have read the original description if you think that’s a mouthful. It was almost a paragraph long. I couldn’t get one of those powers like flying or super strength. Y’know, where the description is in the name.”

America leaned forward on her rickety seat, interested. “The file doesn’t give me more than that, as far as your ability goes.”

Susan shrugged. “Not surprising. None of our dossiers do. They’re mostly psych profiles since that’s the more important set of facts when Shirani and the rest try to decide who will make good Heroes.”

America tilted her head curiously. “You’re not angry I have your file?”

Susan shook her head. “Kid, I’ve been headlining clubs since I was your age. I’ve been in movies. I’ve fucked people more famous than god and had it hit the tabloids before they could make me breakfast after. It’s pretty clear what role the Director has in mind for you in our little gang. I’d have been shocked if he hadn’t given you all the information he could.”

America blinked. “Role?”

“Oh, come on,” Susan said with a flap of her hand. “Don’t play stupid. No one buys it, especially not me. Anyway, ask what you want to ask. I got nothing else going on today. I’m all yours.”

America couldn’t believe the woman handed her the exact opening she’d been hoping for. “Well, okay. In that case, do you mind telling me why you’ve been meeting with the Director and agents Rohm and Williams?”

Susan gave such a non-reaction that it was itself a reaction. America had only caught on by accident, and recently. Her suspicions were half-formed and vague.

“No, sorry,” Susan replied flatly, a world-class poker face taking over. “I can’t talk about it without getting certain clearances. I’m curious how you figured it out. I mean, I knew you would, but I had a bet going with Rohm as to what would tip you off.”

America, now so used to answering questions, did so almost automatically. “The smell. You all smelled the same.”

Susan frowned, a rare expression. “What.”

America waved a hand. “The cafeteria was doing Italian day. Rohm and Williams were gone for almost an hour before you wandered off, and you were supposed to be going outside to the training grounds, which wouldn’t have taken you anywhere near the food. It’s the opposite direction. Yet when you came back, all three of you smelled like garlic bread. You had it on your breath. I assume you had lunch with Shirani since you didn’t eat much when the team sat together an hour after that.”

“Huh,” Susan said. “I can’t say I expected that.”

“Data is data,” America said. “Since you’re clearly not going to talk about it, let’s move on to your power. My guess is you can make people feel any physical sensation you want?”

Susan seesawed her hand. “Ehh, not exactly. I can make them feel anything I’ve ever experienced. And at my age, that’s a hell of a lot.”

America rubbed her chin. “Oh. Oh, you clever bitch. You’re rich. You had access to healers.”

A grin split Susan’s face, a fairly predatory expression. “Didn’t take you long to figure it out. I knew you were smart, but shit. Took like two seconds. Yeah, I built myself an arsenal, too. Never expected to use it for Hero work, just self-defense. I spent about a year having bones broken, getting cut, even had a guy do some really nasty stuff with a couple really sensitive nerves. Oh, and I took half a dozen shots to the liver and kidneys. Most painful place you can get hit, trust me on that.”

America tried to imagine the strength of will it took to essentially choose to torture yourself just to give your power more versatility, then realized that was exactly what all of them were doing. She badly wanted to know what the agents, Susan, and Shirani were conspiring about, but Susan’s body language combined with her words made her certain she’d get nothing.

“Making anyone feel anything,” America said. “Yeah, I can work with that.”

Ethan was something of a mystery. He sat across from America with a relaxed grin on his face as he looked around the room, but his constantly twitching fingers said he was nervous. Or at least anxious about something.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

Ethan looked at her as if just remembering she was in the room. “Hmm? Oh, yeah. I’m good.”

America frowned. “Because you’re really twitchy and if you want to do this later, we can.”

Ethan glanced at his hands, which went still. “Sorry. I don’t really like sitting still.”

“You’ve never really had a problem in class,” America observed. “Not that I’ve noticed, anyway.”

Ethan shrugged. “We get taught stuff we need to know in there. It’s life or death. Keeps my attention that way.” He smiled. “Not that this isn’t important. I try to stay busy.”

America nodded. That was true. Ethan was par for the course as men in their early twenties went; he played video games as much as humanly possible. Which wasn’t to say he didn’t keep up with the work load. Far from it. When he wasn’t planted on the couch, he was either studying or practicing with his powers by sliding all around the empty spaces in their dorm. A few time a week, he booked private lessons with staff members to hone his control of his ability and work out new uses for it. She wondered briefly if he could convince Drew to do the same.

“I just wanted to do a couple scans while you’re using your ability, if you don’t mind,” America said. “People who can influence fundamental aspects of physics the way you can are rare. It might help us figure out your limits if I can get a closer look under the hood, so to speak.”

“Sure, yeah,” he said, already becoming distracted again. “Just tell me what you want me to do.”

Deciding that she should take what she could get, America quickly tuned the various sensors and scanners in the room to the settings she’d decided would work best for Ethan’s powers. He was happy to rush through the exercises, which were mostly small things like trying to alter the friction in an area using simple machines America threw together for him ahead of time. Each was little more than a box containing structures that operated on friction, small Rube Goldberg devices with set parameters so she could measure the changes his power created.

All told it took less than ten minutes. By the end, Ethan was fairly dancing to get free.

“Did I do something to offend you?” America asked. “I know I can be abrasive and Cam says I’m distant sometimes, so if I upset you I’d like to know how.”

Ethan looked at her in surprise. “Huh? Nah, not at all. You seem pretty cool. A little scary, but compared to what I can do, anyone here is scary.”

America gaped at him. “Really? You could kill someone with a thought. Make their blood stop.”

“I might be able to,” Ethan said. “I’ve never tried it, right? And that’s the thing. I don’t have much in between. I’m not really a fighter, you know? I’m not like Drew or Chris. I never really thought being here was an option so I didn’t practice like they did.”

It was her turn to laugh. “You think everyone did? Plenty of people start the program without any bad habits to break. It’s a good thing. I don’t think being inclined to murder people from the jump is a particularly noble way to be. But what I meant was you seem really eager to get out of here.”

“Oh,” Ethan said. “Yeah, I am. I’m freaking out over the field trial. Kinda terrified about it. So I want to play video games.”

“A coping mechanism?” America asked.

Ethan laughed. “Sure, I guess. Mom called it a ‘crippling addiction’ but I like yours better. When I was a kid, I was the brown kid with the white name. Most people didn’t care, but all it takes is a few assholes to ruin your day. Every day. I used to hide in the library but reading isn’t really my thing, so Mrs. Kroft, the librarian, found me this old game system at a thrift store and set it up in her office.”

America felt a twinge of sadness knife through her gut. “That sucks. I remember…well, we all cope in our own ways.” She shook off the thought she’d nearly expressed. He wasn’t here to listen to her problems, especially ancient history.

“I don’t know if we’ll have time for games once the field trial is over,” America said. “It’s supposed to get so much harder from here on out. If we don’t, you can always come talk to me if you need a distraction. I’ll listen.”

Ethan smiled at her again. “Thanks. You’re all right, you know. No matter what anyone says.” And with that he slid through the door, perhaps not even realizing the blade hidden in the words.

That America only sighed before letting the minor annoyance pass was a damning indictment of just how often people slipped those rhetorical razors into their speech. That it no longer had the power to do more than bother her for fleeting moments was both useful and terrible.

She did a bit of cleaning before calling in the next person.

The meetings with Cam and Chris went quickly and without fuss, which didn’t surprise America in the least. Cam was easily her best friend here—and in any honest assessment, probably her best friend period. Cam had no trouble listening to suggestions when America had them to give. Chris was the same way. He was warm and friendly with everyone, and had an impressive grasp on how to exploit his power, such as using the shared mind with his duplicates to learn at an incredible rate.

She saved the best for last. Celia Khoury sat across from America with her hoodie wrapped around her uniform like armor. Hope and fear clashed on her face. Showmanship was unimportant to America, so it never occurred to her to draw the moment out.

“I’ve been working on this for a while, but it took until the last couple days for me to get the material I needed to fabricate it. The design took a while,” America said, pulling a large case from the floor behind her desk. She opened it and spun the case around.

Celia’s eyes widened. “It’s perfect. Looks just like my real arm.”

America grinned. “Yeah. I hope you don’t mind, but I sort of scanned you a long time ago. I needed the data.”

“So not complaining,” Celia said, tentatively reaching out. Her hand froze and she looked up. “It’s okay, right?”

America gestured for her to go ahead and watched as the other woman examined the prosthetic, turning it over and spending a lot of time staring at the fixture where it would attach to the site of her amputation.

After about a minute, Celia offered the artificial limb to America. “Okay, so is it ready? How do we attach it? How long will it take for me to be able to control it? Not having any sensation shouldn’t be a problem since I use my threads for a hand now and they don’t, either.”

America raised her palms. “Whoa, hold on. Okay, first, you can just pop it right on. Most of the inside of the cup is coated with a specialized smart polymer I invented, which will climb up your arm a little and form a tight seal. I actually came up with a much more permanent solution involving surgery and a fixture on your stump that attached to your bones, but I don’t think that’s the best option.”

Celia’s shoulders shook a little. There were no tears in her eyes and no tremble in her voice, but her words were thick with emotion. “I’d do it. I don’t know how I’ll ever pay you back for this, but if you have a way to give me full function again, I’ll do anything.”

America rested her chin on her hand. “You know, you’re more capable with one arm than almost anyone I’ve ever met with two. You can thread a needle with your laces, or pick up a car. It’s kind of incredible, especially since your power is so…”

“Limited?” Celia asked, the acid in her tone meant for the MICA field office that categorized her ability rather than for America. “They call it ‘constrained tactile telekinesis’ and they’re not wrong. They just didn’t have a clue how well I’d be able to use it.”

America nodded. “Damn right. I just don’t get why it’s so important to get your hand back. Your power way more than compensates.”

Celia chewed her lip thoughtfully. “The honest answer?”

America nodded. “Always.”

“I used to play music,” Celia said. “Piano, guitar, five or six other instruments. There’s something about feeling the hum in your hands and making something beautiful with it. I know there are a lot of people with disabilities who do amazing things and live happy lives. I tried. It’s just not me. You have no idea how much I need this. My family never had enough money to get me a decent prosthetic, and I told my parents not to bother once I started using my powers instead.”

“That’s fair,” America said. “As for your other concerns, hear me out. Um, you mentioned sensation. You’ll have the full range. It’ll feel like a real hand to you, at least after we tune it.”

Celia sputtered. “What—how—”

America raised her palms again, this time in a stopping motion. “Hang on. Let’s just assume that any explanation I give is going to be super technical and probably beyond whatever engineering, physics, and bioscience education you have. Can we agree that I have access to a lot of super science and the ability to make it on my own and move on?”

Blushing slightly, Celia nodded. “Yeah, okay.”

America pointed to the prosthetic. “That thing has an actual metallic skeleton inside it. The stuff it’s made from is virtually indestructible. The muscles are an electrically reactive carbon fiber. There’s a lot of expensive and complicated tech in it. Also, about a hundred yards of thin wire made from the same stuff as the skeleton. It feeds out from the palm. I wouldn’t recommend swinging from it without that surgical attachment we talked about…”

“I can’t pay for this, but I’ll give you a chunk of my paycheck once they start coming in,” Celia promised.

America shook her head. “I don’t care about money. It’s just a means to an end for me. In this case, I can easily afford to help you. That hand cost half a million dollars in parts. That’s not even a rounding error in my net worth. I’m happy to do the surgery—well, I’m happy to let Evan do it since I’m not as up on practical medicine as I’d like to be—but there’s that other option I mentioned that may make you reconsider.”

Celia tilted her head to the side curiously. “Which is?”

“Regeneration,” America said. “Which I will happily pay for. The prosthetic can be a stopgap between now and then, if you like. Use it until I can arrange time with someone who has that ability.”

Celia’s breathing picked up. “You can’t be serious. There are only a handful of people in the country who can regrow a limb. They cost so, so much.”

“They do,” America agreed. “Though one of them is under contract with MICA. We pay about a quarter of his usual fee. It won’t be easy or instantaneous. You’d have to undergo about ten hours of continuous pain and forced feeding to make up the mass you’re missing. You’d need a few weeks of recovery and daily physical therapy afterward. But you’d have your own flesh-and-blood hand.”

“I don’t know if I could accept a gift that huge,” Celia admitted. “I feel like a greedy bitch even thinking of accepting this one.” She hefted the prosthetic and gave it a little shake.

America sighed. “If it makes the decision easier, you can see it as a cold calculation on my part. This is just me getting a teammate’s head in the game and making her more functional.”

Celia smiled warmly, the first time in America’s perfect memory she’d done so. “Sorry, but that doesn’t square. You don’t do something like this just for that reason. You could have made this look like a robot arm and gotten the same functionality. This is a work of art.”

America shrugged. “Part of my interest was the challenge. I didn’t know if I could do it. I also don’t like to see anyone so unhappy, especially someone I live and work with. It’s a gift, Celia. I’m fine making you new ones as the need arises, or helping you get the real thing back. It’s up to you.”

“And if I decide on the surgery, that’s it? No going back, huh?”

America blinked. “What? No, of course not. The only problem there is that if you changed your mind after, we’d have to remove all the hardware we installed in your body. That would make the regeneration a bit longer, a bit more painful. But you’d be free to change your mind at any time.”

With a reverent expression, Celia raised her shortened arm and allowed the faux glove of threads and wires to fall away. Only being able to control long, thin objects that were highly flexible clearly wasn’t a handicap where her powers were concerned. Stump and prosthetic met, then tightened together as the technology inside the new arm woke up and did its thing.

Pure childlike delight lit Celia’s face as she flexed the fingers on her left hand for the first time in more than a decade. Her eyes blazed as she grinned at America.

“Let’s see how this does in the field before I make any big decisions. I really want to take this bad boy for a ride.”

Chapter Ten

Field Trial #1

No matter how well he prepared for this day with each and every team, Jeff Shirani never felt easy sending trainees into the field for the first time. He lived with the unease and to a degree was glad for it because no one should be complacent in this situation. He reminded himself endlessly that the students had oversight and nearly as much training as police officers at this point, but still the tension remained.

Good. No matter what preparations the recruits had, from combat to dozens of hours on how to deescalate a potentially violent situation to the prime directive of all Heroes—to preserve the innocent—the first field trial was always a crucible. Turning theory into practice for the first time was inherently chaotic. Dangerous. It paid to be on guard.

Team Seven had followed him to the telepad with serious expressions and utter concentration on their faces. They weren’t a real team yet, that much he could see from their body language. Some liked the others well enough, might even be friends. Others tolerated being thrown together. There was none of the universal trust where every team member was willing to have any of the others at their back in a fight—that much he could tell through mundane body language, even if his ability hadn’t been reading it all and feeding him the information in real time.

From the telepad they were sent to MICA Operations Command, usually referred to as Ops, in central Virginia. A room was set aside for scheduled teleports, large enough to accommodate a group three times their size. When the students regained their footing after the dizzying transport over thousands of miles, Jeff gave a camera in the corner of the room a thumbs-up. The door immediately opened to reveal Delilah Sinclair, a small tablet clutched in her hands.

“Director,” she said with a nod.

“Delilah,” he replied. “I was just about to give them the speech.”

Sinclair smiled and gestured for Jeff to go ahead. He turned to face the group. “I’ll keep it short and sweet. What you’re about to do is not a test. There’s no trick here. This a trial to see if you can take the things we’ve taught you into the field and make them work. This is the moment when most prospective Heroes really begin to understand what’s out there. The danger will be real. The only way you can make it through the day is together. You work as a unit. You have two minutes to designate a team lead for this exercise. After the trial, you’ll be asked to choose a permanent leader. It may be the same person. Or you might decide whoever you picked today didn’t serve the needs of the group and choose someone else. Either way, be very clear that once you’ve got a team lead, they are in command. Failure to obey orders is not something I tolerate in my program. For damn sure not in the field. Your time starts now.”

He watched them huddle and whisper among themselves, heated debate raging in fast forward. From their body language it was clear that Garland was trying to make the case for himself as the team lead. America said nothing. Not a single word. When the conference was over, Susan stepped forward as the representative of the group and gestured toward the tall black woman.

“At least for now, we want America in charge,” she said simply. Shirani nodded.

“All of you follow me,” he said. “We’re going to take you to Command, where the heart of Ops is located. This is the central node for all Hero coordination in the United States. Don’t push any buttons.”

It was a short walk; teams were brought in from across the nation to handle emergencies several times a day. Power sets and specialties varied wildly across the spectrum, so having a central clearinghouse where assignments could be handled and transport arranged was critical.

“Holy shit,” Susan said in a low voice when they walked through the three sets of heavy security doors and into Control.

The chamber was nearly a hundred yards across, a circular room ringed with work stations in concentric rings that centered on a platform where a lone man reclined. Even at a distance, the profound strangeness of the space was clear. Though a few handfuls of aides moved between desks, every work station was taken up by a tall black man in a simple gray uniform.

The same man, over and over again. One of him stood from a nearby desk and moved toward the group at a fast trot. He waved as he approached, a cheerful grin draped across his features.

Shirani nodded at the duplicate and gestured toward him as he addressed Team 7. “Everyone, this is Manifold. He’s not a well-known Hero since he works solely here in Ops, but he’s one of the most important people in the world. He’s the voice on the other end of the line when you’re out in the field. He coordinates everything.”

“We do,” Manifold said. “All of me. And on comms, you can just call me Overwatch. Come on, let’s see if we can find you a good first mission.”

Shirani took note of the fear rippling through the group. Good. That might keep them from doing something stupid.

Fifteen minutes later, the massive video screen covering half of Command went red and replaced the network of connected lines displaying dozens of Hero teams and hundreds of individual Heroes with a single alert message. Every face in the room that didn’t belong to Manifold turned toward it. The string of numbers and labels meant nothing to America—their classification system hadn’t been explained to her—but judging by the reactions of the rest of the staff, it was a big deal.

Shirani’s eyes lit up and she knew the team was in trouble.

“Yes,” Delilah agreed with the Director’s unspoken question. “Yes, I think that will be fine.” She reached out and took a tablet from the copy of Manifold acting as their liaison and tapped on it until a mission file came up. She handed it to America. “This is your mission. Notice the ranking at the top—this is an A rating. Normally we don’t hand anything above a B to recruits, but I’m sure you’ll note the special circumstances in the file.”

America sped through the document, which was dense and incredibly concise with its information to a degree she would have thought impossible for such a short span of time. She might have been able to produce something like this in a few minutes, though it would have been tough.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Manifold said. “We already had the group responsible under watch, and obviously the MICA asset they kidnapped isn’t someone we’d allow to go without some kind of guard.”

“A dead guard,” Cam noted as she read over America’s shoulder. “This guy, uh, this asset seems like kind of a big deal for the MICA. Is it really a good idea to send us in after him?”

America highlighted a section of the document. “Delilah said there were special circumstances. Take a look.”

Cam glanced at the paragraph, her eyes going wide. “Oh. Wow.”

America grimaced. “Yeah. I’d rather us go in with all the gear I’ve been working on and with Rohm and Williams at our back, but that’s not an option.”

From behind her, Drew spoke. His voice didn’t carry any malice, in fact didn’t seem to contain any worry or doubt. It was simply a question. “Do you think you can come up with a plan in time?”

America’s smile turned fierce. “Shit, man. I already have a dozen ready to go.”

“Well, this is a little stereotypical,” Ethan said as they approached the target location—a warehouse.

America was inclined to agree, but this was her show now. “Let’s keep as quiet as we can manage, okay? We don’t know what kind of surveillance they’ve got going on here. There could be directional mics hidden all over the outside of that building. We spent three weeks learning to use our comms through subvocalization. Let’s stick to that from here on out.”

As they moved through a narrow alley that offered enough shade in the afternoon sun to make their black uniforms into perfect camouflage, text popped up on her lens feed.

Nosh: Should we really be that worried about a bunch of bad guys who use a warehouse as their base? That’s like villain 101. No creativity.

Slip: That sounds like exactly the attitude we need to get murdered.

America sighed under her breath. Speaking inaudibly, she cut the conversation off as quickly as she could. “Our intel says this is just one branch of a larger organization. We treat this like any other call we might get. We play it safe and careful until we can’t. Keep the channel clear unless it’s mission related, please.”

There were a few apologies on the feed, and America let that slide as the chatter stopped. At least she’d gotten what she asked for. Eventually.

Sphere: Do we split up? After ingress, I mean.

America shook her head. “No. Because of what the asset can do, I think it’s probable they’ll stay grouped around him. We move as a unit, but I make contact.”

There was an explosion of text arguing against this, but America used the command feature of their small network and temporarily halted their ability to transmit. “Listen to me. The rest of you have some kind of external powers. I don’t. You’re all the secret weapon. And if I can make contact with the asset before someone manages to kill me, well…”

The others silently nodded in dawning comprehension as they reached the point in the alley where going forward would only make them more visible. America pointed to the door leading into the building on the right and Nosh—she idly wondered if the others were having trouble thinking in terms of code names, as even her computer-like brain wanted to rebel—poked out the locks with two precise jabs of her fingers.

They entered the abandoned butcher shop in its back area, exactly as the public records America had pulled up indicated. She pointed down toward the floor where a stained, rusty grate now collected dust instead of far more grisly fare. To her surprise, Sphere didn’t argue or even shoot her a dirty look. Instead he focused and summoned his weapon, the small orb sinking through the tile as if it were air.

The noise was far less than America expected, especially considering the speed with which Sphere carried out the orders she’d given him just before the teleport into the city, right at the end of the twenty minutes they were given to lay out a plan. The ball drilled down and down, then wove its way back up through the same hole.

“Got it,” Sphere whispered. “Not even three feet. Everyone stand back.”

Having seen what the orb could do, everyone indeed took a step back. The orb went from stationary to moving so fast it couldn’t easily be seen in the blink of an eye. It raced in a widening spiral, carving a path around the pilot hole a yard across, deepening as it went. In less than a minute there was a person-sized hole from the shop into the utility tunnel running below, a cramped space barely five feet tall and two wide.

“We have our access point,” America said. “Let’s go say hello.”

They didn’t cut a large hole to gain entrance to the warehouse at first. Instead, Sphere carved one just big enough for a drone to pass through. A flying drone would have been too noisy—America hadn’t yet been given permission to work with the more exotic compounds some metas could create that allowed gravity and other fundamental forces to be manipulated directly. She would have loved a silent drone in this situation, but she made do with one that rolled.

The images and sensor feedback it gave her showed an empty storage room. Though there were no lights, infrared and night vision combined with burst laser measurements to assure her the space was twelve feet on a side and devoid of living creatures.

“We’re clear,” she said. “Let’s hollow out as much as we can at the bottom of the tunnel first, then just cut one big circle out of the floor above that Ca—uh, Nosh can lift out of the way.”

Echo snickered. “Like sawing the floor around you in a cartoon. My confidence in your leadership grows by the second.”

It took a few minutes. In the end, Slip made the edge of the hole frictionless to allow the group to pass through easily, and Nosh hauled everyone up and out to speed up the process. Once they were in, America found everyone in the group looking at her in the dim light cast by the lone LED she let shine from the various electronics and gadgets strewn about her waist and torso.

“What?” she asked.

“Just not what we expected,” Recursion said in a low voice. It was only then that America realized they were speaking out loud. Before she could caution him to use the text interface, he continued. “Always imagined we’d be busting a door down the first time we stormed the lair of our first villain.”

A round of soft groans filled the room. Lace shook her head. “Did you seriously just call this a lair?”

Recursion might have been blushing, but the only hint was his sudden silence and the ripple of tension in his body. Their suits left not an inch of skin or even hair exposed.

“Sphere, I need another hole please,” America said. “In the door, if you don’t mind. Everyone else stay quiet.”

When Sphere did as he was asked, America rolled her entire complement of drones through the tiny aperture. A full dozen of them in a single-file line, splitting off to follow the plans for the building they’d downloaded. They were programmed for search, rescue, and recon work. The ability to turn blueprints into a workable 3D model was laughably simple to program, assuming you were a genius.

One of the others tried to speak, but America raised her hand for silence. It wasn’t that she was still worried about being overheard at a whisper—short of one of the kidnappers having enhanced senses, the area was empty and the nearest person well out of range to hear them—but rather that she had to split her attention twelve ways. Not impossible since the drones were also programmed to outline any potential threats in red, yet still a challenge.

She followed the feed and saw the shape of the building—everything was basically how she expected it. Though America had only enough time to glance at the data, that was all it took for her. Seeing the basic layout of the place made it clear where the best defensive position would be. The rear of the place was divided from the front, a heavy wall with steel doors between the loading docks at the back and the space she expected the kidnappers to wait. There was an office in that area and only one direct access point to the outside.

Brilliant as America was, it took her a few seconds after confirming things were as expected for the sharp reality to set in; she was in an honest life-or-death situation. And not just her own. The asset taken by these men was in danger if not mortal peril. She stood and watched the first distant images of the kidnappers pop up on the feed, her pulse racing as she mentally prepared herself to take the theory into practice.

This was going to be a fight, almost certainly. There would be blood and danger and her team would be responsible for taking down very bad people. She found she liked the idea—and felt a certain responsibility that hadn’t been there before today. She knew on some level that she could do this and probably better than most. And if that was true, did she have an obligation to do so?

America rather thought she did.

She gave the others their orders, quickly and specifically, then opened the door. Nothing squeaked or groaned to give away their presence. Once again, Slip’s power came in handy in ways the young man might never have considered.

Slowly, giving her team enough time to reach their positions, America made her way down the short hallway the storage room sat in and around the corner that would take her into view. Her hands were raised, her body language screaming surrender in every way she could make it speak. Her actual words, however, were anything but those of a quitter.

“Gentlemen,” she said just as the men who had only a few hours before stolen away a person of incalculable value to the United States government raised their weapons. “I’m here for asset IHE-001, who is a good friend of my boss, Jeff. We’d like him to come home.”

It was only a few seconds after the words died in the air that the men decided to open fire. Their weapons were meta tech, that much was clear, and clearly able to tear through steel plate. America in her merely handgun-resistant uniform never stood a chance.

Chapter Eleven

All According to Plan

On the one hand, it would have been nice to be able to bring the uniforms she’d been working on into the field. Not being shot a bunch of times seemed like a plus as she lay on the ground, bleeding but not quite dying. The pain was incredible—if not for her ability, America would have been insensate from it within a few seconds. As it was, she partitioned the conscious, functional part of her mind away from the autonomic sections. She walled off her awareness in such a way that the pain became a data point, merely background information. It wasn’t smart to eliminate the pain response completely, though she was able to do so. Pain was a necessary indicator of physical condition.

It was simply that in this situation, she didn’t need more than a peripheral awareness of it. Because she literally couldn’t die.

Her wounds began to close from the inside, though she could only tell because they were forcing bullets through their own entry wounds. The process was interesting and deeply unpleasant.

One of the bullet fragments popped out of her shoulder and fell to the floor with a smack of metal on stone just loud enough to be heard. One of the kidnappers sharply inhaled.

“What the fuck was that?” he said.

America coughed loudly as something deep in her lungs healed, then sat up. She groaned slightly as her healing body tried to understand what was going on. Muscles twitched and twinged as they healed, bones and joints protesting. You’re dying! No, wait, you’re okay! America gently exercised her power to send a sort of global reboot to her nervous system, forcing it to operate at her normal baseline. This done, she was able to pull herself to her feet.

The kidnappers stood arrayed in front of her around their captive, who was bound and hooded on a chair inside the makeshift cell they’d erected in the large space. There were concrete highway dividers set in regular intervals around the steel cage, stacked on top of each other in some places. It was a defensive measure meant to give cover in a firefight, America was sure.

The looks of shock on their faces told her that these men might not be stupid—anyone able to pull off a kidnapping of an asset protected by MICA couldn’t be idiots—they also clearly weren’t the quickest bunch at working out cause and effect.

“Ow,” she said, wiping blood from her face. “That really fucking hurt.”

The nearest of them, an older Latino man with the weathered face of someone with years spent outdoors, raised his weapon again. “How did you do that?”

Behind him, several unarmed people began to slowly spread out. Two were obviously brothers, with the same pale skin and white-blond hair. Their faces matched the dossier she’d read. It didn’t have a complete and comprehensive list of everyone in this particular organization, but the brothers were well-documented. As was the tall woman with a mass of curly black hair falling to her waist. The stocky older man with a beard like a sea captain was unfamiliar, but the energy glowing in his eyes couldn’t be a good sign.

America stretched her neck as she stood at her full height, realizing she was the biggest person in the room so far as she could tell. “How did I do it? Did you kidnap our asset without even knowing his power?”

Understanding flickered into life across the faces spread out before her. The four who carried no guns and who were now spaced in a semicircle in front of her seemed less surprised. It only made sense; they were more used to the use of super powers. The strange was intensely commonplace for them.

The other half-dozen bodies who were armed didn’t seem to care that the asset was keeping them all alive. Their weapons remained stubbornly directed at America. She kept the thrill of victory she felt at this state of affairs firmly off her face.

“So now you all know that none of the people in this building can die for the next, oh, half hour,” America said, unconcerned with the weapons pointed at her. “We can hurt—you can hurt—but your bodies will reset to where they were when the effect began no matter what I do to them. Mine will too. Which I have to assume is why you took the asset in the first place.”

The sea captain leaned forward slightly, putting his elbows on the top of the concrete divider he stood behind. “Why would he do that, though? He’s making it that much harder for you to beat us.”

America shook her head. Before today she hadn’t even known endowment metas—or Ends, as the MICA agents had called them—existed. People able to gift others with abilities for brief periods of time had to be a hell of a tightly kept secret for the general public to be ignorant of them. Then again, the Ends themselves probably didn’t want anyone to know once the obvious became clear: all of them would become targets just like this asset.

“No,” she said with a disbelieving shake of the head. “Jesus, how can you guys not get it? There are less than a dozen of you against an entire agency. You think the asset is making it harder for us to bring you in? He’s making sure he doesn’t die in the crossfire. That we’ll be able to take you alive for questioning is bonus points as far as I’m concerned.”

She kept her attention focused on the captain since his power was obvious and he was clearly aggressive with it. His body language fairly screamed his desire to fight this out. His nerves were plain as day to see in the increasingly bright light spilling from his eyes. It was why America began to dodge before his first attack was fired at her. Her guess about the nature of his power was right—he had vision abilities. Some kind of ocular blast. The way his head reared back—totally habitual and not necessary to make such an attack work—was all the telegraphing she needed to leap away.

She dodge and rolled in the captain’s direction, however. No one expected that.

As chaos erupted in the room, her team did nothing. All according to plan.

For her, the world slowed to a crawl. Her perception kicked in to eleventh gear as her senses and mental processing speed increased to match the danger in front of her. It was much the same as their test, but rather than dealing with a handful of people with one problem—an unfortunate clash with gravity—in an otherwise empty space, she had to track and deal with numerous variables. Each of them would have some effect on other variables when one was tweaked.

The sheer complexity of the problem would have overwhelmed her if she allowed her magnificent brain to attempt exploration of every possibility and permutation. The game of chess taught her a valuable lesson in deciding on a course of action. A mathematician once theorized that there are more possible games of chess than atoms in the observable universe; trying to work out every avenue was impossible. Instead the best choice is choice itself; pick an opening move and from there try to achieve your specific goals as you can. Improvise where necessary.

She danced through the guards in what looked like pure chaos in motion to an outside observer. In reality, America was avoiding the firing angles of the guns pointed her direction, trying to put enemies in the way as much as possible. It was precisely because of the unpredictable changes in her movement that no one could quite tell where she was headed, and that was how she found herself next to the captain as he readied another blast from his eyes.

She ducked aside just enough to let the blast skim past her left shoulder and slid her left arm up and to the side. The old man had his chin thrust out, shoulders back, his balance badly off because of the strained extension of his body. It was trivially easy to push the point of his chin with her left palm, raking the extended torrent of energy surging from his eyes across the room, ending with one of the pale brothers having his legs messily torn off just above the knees.

Not being able to die might not have been the blessing it appeared.

The other brother stood in mute shock for half a second before falling to his knees and trying to help his maimed sibling. The captain reared back, pulling his head away from America and refocusing his attention on her.

She punched him in the throat as hard as she could. Someone shot her in the abdomen, but she barely noticed. Vaulting over the barrier, America landed on the older man and crouched low atop him. Apparently his power took a fair bit of concentration to use, because despite her face hovering inches above his panicked expression, his eyes didn’t so much as sparkle.

“You stay the fuck down or I’m going to break every bone in your arms and legs. Believe it or not, this is me being nice,” she said in a calm, cool tone. “If I have to come back to deal with you, I promise you’ll look back on this moment with pleasant nostalgia.”

The old man nodded as far as he could with his damaged throat.

“Good boy,” America said, then dashed away.

The room was in a frenzy now as she spun and twisted through the maze of barriers. The arrangement was meant to be disorienting and confusing for anyone making an assault, but the effect was premised on the idea that the attacker couldn’t instantly memorize the locations of the barriers and understand the shape of the trap in front of them. America threaded the needle without conscious effort or thought much the way someone wandering their house in the middle of the night will avoid stubbing their toes without trying.

During her free time, America learned about every subject she might need in the field should she choose to work through the entire program. Strategy and tactics were particularly strong focuses, and she felt the various branches of psychology and sociology were natural complements to them. So it was that she took advantage of the expectations of her enemies by making it look like she was trying to do the thing their reptile brains screamed at them that she must. She dodged and weaved, ducking out of the way of attacks as she moved in a tightening spiral toward the captive asset.

They expected her to go after him, so she made them think it was true. This created a disruption in the enemy forces. After all, maybe she was a teleporter. She might touch him and vanish with him. They had no idea what she might be capable of. So they fought harder, moved faster, and lost much of the little coordinated effort they had, ceasing function as any sort of unified force. An army is an army because it works together. Isolated units will, especially in the frenzy of a fight, often become obstacles for one another.

The guards began breaking away from their careful defensive net as they moved to get better angles of fire or just avoid the sudden rush of bodies trying to overwhelm her within the haphazard concrete rows. They began to clump into groups. America saw a workable pattern, maybe even one she could utilize to end this here and now.

At the tail end of that thought, a shadow suddenly loomed overhead. She didn’t quite manage to get out of the way when the female meta dropped down and shattered America’s left leg to powder and chunks.

That pain, she certainly felt.

“Game’s over, little girl,” the woman said, throwing back her mane of dark curls.

America couldn’t keep a fearful breathiness out of her voice. “You’re not wrong.”

Thankfully, the team was networked with her comm system and could see through her lenses. They were under orders to intervene only if she was immobilized. As she tried to pull herself away from the female meta, elbows scrabbling on the frigid concrete for purchase, that condition was certainly met. No part of her had really expected to lose. How arrogant she’d been. Events had proceeded as she imagined them, and she’d attacked and acted without real fear. Now she was at the mercy of this lanky brunette with a face like a lioness and no amount of brains could stand up to her super strength or whatever it was.

America was helpless—but she wasn’t without help.

Without word or warning, the lioness was suddenly gone. Only a vaguely Cam-shaped blur could be seen as she was knocked out of the way.

America took a moment for herself and let her head loll back. “Teamwork.” She smiled. The word was sweet on her lips for the first time.

Cam couldn’t taste the food, which was a little weird. America gave her those special concentrated food pills to use in situations where she needed a concentrated burst of power, but she had only used them once to test them out. The use of her power was always married to eating something, and that usually meant some kind of flavor. Not today.

Not that she cared in the least.

“I’m gonna break you, bitch,” the female meta said as she pulled herself up from the broken concrete divider Cam had slammed her into.

Something about the voice cut through Cam’s brain. Deeply familiar. What was it? The memory was right there, ingrained from her childhood somehow. It was just the context that was messing with her—whatever the memory was, the thing didn’t come close to a fight in an abandoned warehouse.

“Holy shit!” Cam shouted as she dodged a swing from the taller woman. “You’re Casey Smith!”

The woman reared back, shock written across her face. She paled. “How in the world?”

Cam grinned. “Oh, my god. It’s you. The voice of Danger Girl. I fucking loved that cartoon. I had no idea you were a met—”

Smith used Cam’s distraction to dart forward and spear her through the midsection with a shoulder. They crashed through several sets of concrete dividers. Cam felt the blow, certainly, but there wasn’t any real discomfort. It was like being punched in the gut with a giant foam glove. Pressure, but not pain. With Smith’s arms occupied around her waist as they crashed through every obstacle behind them, Cam took advantage and brought her fists down on the woman’s spine.

When that did nothing, Cam hit harder. Then harder still.

Smith just laughed. “I’m more dense than any element in the universe right now, kid. Not many metas in the world who can so much as tickle me when I’m like this.”

“You’re a voice actress in a dumb cartoon,” Cam said, exasperation warring with rising panic as Smith took them to the ground and squeezed her waist with increasing force. “You were Danger Girl! What the—”

Smith released her, straddling Cam with her massive weight bearing down on the younger woman’s body. “Shut the hell up! Shut up!” She swung her fists, bashing Cam in the face.

And yet it didn’t hurt nearly as much as it should. Which Cam knew was odd. The blows should have broken her. Then understanding bloomed: Smith was altering her density. She was strong enough to move her body and had a lot of inertia when in motion, but she didn’t actually have enhanced strength. Cam couldn’t put up enough force to do the woman any harm—frustrating for a tank—but the older woman was in the same boat. She was dense as all hell but her arms just couldn’t swing fast enough to make that a game-changer.

“Echo,” Cam said, hoping the comm hadn’t been damaged by the fight. “I could use a little help.”

“On my way,” Echo replied at once. “Wow. You guys left a nice obvious path for me to follow, at least.”

With no way of knowing how long it would take Susan to work her way to them, Cam did the only thing she could and screwed up her concentration. Her power wasn’t as cut and dry as other tanks. There was some flexibility in how strong or fast she was that had nothing to do with how much of each food she’d eaten. Once she was powered up, Cam could shift some of that energy around if she really had to. Excess power utilization, her teachers called it. Common in metas whose innate biological energy fueled multiple abilities.

Basically, it meant with enough extra effort, Cam could gain a little burst of strength or speed or whatever. For a brief moment, most of her power went to raw muscle. It was just enough to push Smith up and away and allow Cam to slip out from under her.

She put one leg on Smith’s knee and pushed off with all of her considerable strength—the act of getting momentarily free wasn’t enough to actually get away. The push was enough to send Cam flying across the broken concrete in an uncontrolled tumble while kicking Smith’s leg right out from under her. The woman crashed to the floor with the sound of a shelf of boulders breaking off the face of a mountain. Dust and stone chips flew into the air as she slapped a hand down to stop her fall. It didn’t quite work; she was clearly unused to moving this way while using her powers.

Cam tried not to chuckle as Smith’s face hit the concrete—and felt the laughter die out when the woman stood back up. Not because Cam was afraid, but because Smith momentarily showed a weakness. The surprise of falling face first must have broken her concentration. Her movements picked up speed for a few seconds, with none of the accompanying cracked floor.

Her density reverted to normal, or at least lessened, when her concentration was broken. The realization made Echo’s appearance behind Smith, moving at a dead sprint, all the better. Cam took half a step back, as if afraid, trying to keep all the attention on her.

“Danger Girl would be so disappointed in you, lady,” Cam said, the words clear and taunting despite the mask over her face. Smith’s eyebrows lowered and she bellowed in pure rage as she rushed forward. Susan—Echo, dammit!—got within ten feet just as Smith took her second ground-shattering step toward Cam. Watching the powerful meta melt to the ground, her face beet red and eyes wide as dinner plates, served to remind her never to make Echo angry.

Cam jumped forward and punched Smith in the side of the head, careful not to land a killing blow even though everyone in the warehouse should be temporarily immortal. She reached for the specialized body cuffs secured in the side pocket on her pants, she and Echo working with practiced ease to secure the prisoner. They could hold Cam at her strongest, which she had tested personally, so Smith should be no problem.

“I almost don’t want to know what you hit her with to take the fight out of her so fast,” Cam said as they turned the prisoner onto her side.

Susan snorted a laugh. “A particularly memorable orgasm.”

Cam stared at her in shock. “You’re kidding. Why?”

Susan shrugged. It was so hard to think of her as Echo, or America as Delphi. Or of herself as Nosh. “She seemed like a brawler. I reckoned pain was something she was used to dealing with. Figured this would catch her off guard.”

Cam’s mouth quirked to one side. “Yeah. Somehow I doubt she…saw it coming. Get it? Saw it coming?”

“Leave the comedy to me, kid,” Susan said with a grimace. Then they both dashed off to find another fight.

Chapter Twelve

Friction

In the first few moments of the battle—his first real fight—Ethan was nearly shot in the face. It didn’t matter that he knew on an intellectual level that he couldn’t die. The fact that the asset was trained to push his power to the absolute limit and create what was functionally an immortality field around him until he was rescued didn’t even occur to him. In that split second when the gun barrels converged on him at the outside of the defensive perimeter set by the criminals, he forgot everything but sudden, gut-wrenching fear.

He reacted without thinking and threw his own power into top gear. His ability to affect things selectively was becoming more precise, though in that instant the delineation was dead simple: everything but the sole of his right foot went utterly frictionless. The three gunmen in front of him toppled and slid at once, their feet lacking any purchase as the tiny movements their bodies automatically went through to maintain balance pushed them off balance.

Ethan, used to the sensation, merely threw every watt of energy his body could produce into the foot planted on the ground to hurl himself sideways. He fell to his knees and slid across the floor, deftly spinning as he glided away so he faced the attackers. One of the first lessons they drilled into you in those combat classes was to never turn your back on the enemy.

The shooters were outside his range almost at once; Ethan’s field was only about twenty feet across, centered on his body. The transition from a total inability to find purchase on anything to suddenly having friction again was tough on them. They didn’t have the experience Ethan did, years of practice moving from one state to the other. Their muscles were still trying to get a grip on something, their brains mid-scramble to hash out the new physics that were their reality.

Then they were slammed back to how things always were, and adapting to the reversion took a few seconds. Seconds Ethan used to do the only thing he could think of amid the terror engulfing most of his consciousness.

He ran. Well, he slid. Point was, he got away. He just didn’t count on being chased.

There were a number of rooms down the hallway they’d come through. Small storage areas and supply spaces, the sort of thing you’d expect to see in a large and busy warehouse. Ethan still wasn’t thinking when he leaped to his feet and sprinted through the only open door he could see. In his panicked state, doors equaled escape.

The room was about five feet wide and ten deep, some kind of janitorial closet. Though there were no supplies to be found, all removed years ago, the mop sink and faint scent of decades of industrial cleaner made its purpose clear.

He almost ran into the wall before managing to skid to a stop. Spinning in place, Ethan coiled his muscles. His brain fired on all cylinders, even if they were out of sync and focused only on getting away. Apparently one of the gunmen, or maybe just a different one who’d been watching from a distance and took advantage, had seen his mad dash for freedom. Because someone with a rifle the size of a small child stood in the doorway. It looked like something out of a bad action film, all gleaming black polymer and a barrel big enough to drive through. Or maybe it just looked that way from a few feet.

“Please don’t,” Ethan heard himself say. The gunman—gunwoman, actually—cocked her head to the side as if considering the request. She was just past the door, standing in the hallway enough that the frame would protect her somewhat from the splinters of wood and chips of concrete that would certainly come with the massive barrage of rounds she was about to put into him.

Then the guards he’d put on the ground huffed into view, and there were four guns pointed at him.

“You don’t have to do this,” Ethan said. “We can all just walk away.”

The woman’s grip tightened on her weapon, a subconscious tic Berger had warned them about. Some shooters needed to mentally prepare their bodies to fire. Ethan had a subconscious tic of his own, one that came with having guns shoved in his face. Strange how he never got used to it no matter how much it happened. Maybe some people did. He doubted he would ever be one of them.

All four pulled their triggers at the same time.

All four weapons exploded in a truly horrendous fashion, as the automatic weapons tried to send several rounds through their barrels in a fraction of a second only to find those barrels trapped in a weird bubble of physics where friction was held at an impossible 100%.

All those expanding, exploding gasses had to go somewhere. Ethan threw his arms over his face protectively. His attackers weren’t so lucky.

Recursion and Sphere were having a relatively easy time of it. Sphere grudgingly admitted to himself that America’s alterations to their lenses came in handy. She’d whipped up a routine that automatically outlined the real Recursion so there would be no confusing him with his duplicates. This trick came in handy as the pair of them fought a fifth, unseen metahuman flanked by two pairs of shooters.

Recursion hadn’t quite been ready when the team of five rounded on them and started shooting. His first instinct, Sphere saw, was to dive out of the way. Which wasn’t a bad move, bullets being what they were. Sphere himself remembered perfectly well that he was functionally immortal for the next half hour or so, longer if the asset kept the field up, and forced down the instinct to flee. Instead he conjured his weapon and sent the little ball streaking forward toward the metahuman.

The enemy was one of those unfortunate metas whose physiology underwent a permanent change as part of their power. It was impossible to tell whether the meta was male or female, covered as they were in a dense layer of stony skin exactly the color of the concrete at Sphere’s feet. His orb hit the meta square in the chest, and the stocky figure danced nimbly out of the way before rushing toward him again.

“Hmm,” Sphere muttered.

Recursion popped up—or rather, several of him did. None were the original. Five new allies moved toward the gunmen, unafraid and all several times stronger than a normal human thanks to the odd quirk that made the original and all his copies more powerful with each new duplicate created. “I got them! We can take on the other one together!”

The sincerity in Recursion’s voice made Sphere feel a little guilty about what he was about to do. He’d thought long and hard about some of the things America said to him during their meeting. He had actually worked on a few ideas that weren’t direct uses of his orb as a weapon. There was one he’d been meaning to practice, but it was imprecise and dangerous.

When better to try it out than the brief window where none of them could die?

“No, I have him,” Sphere said.

He slammed the orb into the meta’s belly, moving it far faster than he could have safely against a human. The stocky fighter wasn’t able to dodge and bent over in half as the orb knocked the wind out of them.

Then Sphere made it move again—this time directly up.

“Wow,” Recursion said. “Right through the roof. How long do you think it’ll take him to come down?”

Sphere shrugged. “No idea. I’m still taking him into the air. Though my control is slipping. I can’t…there it goes. Lost the sphere.” With a minor effort of will, he reformed the weapon in front of him. All around them, Recursion’s copies were drawing the attention of the gunmen, and in two cases fighting with them hand to hand.

One of them popped into nonexistence as a bullet pierced the duplicate’s head. Another appeared a second later.

“You’re getting fast at that,” Sphere noted. “But let’s not give your clones all the fun. Come on. These guys should be cake.”

Recursion grinned, diving into the fray with a grace and power Sphere secretly envied. He’d never say it out loud, of course. A few minutes beating the shit out of bad guys would be just the boost he needed.

“Bring them back in,” a voice said in his ear. Not America.

“Dammit,” he muttered. “I was just about to have some fun.”

He realized a second later that he’d unintentionally transmitted the words, because Celia responded sharply. “We’re not here for fun. If this is how you get your kicks, you should find another line of work. Now follow orders and bring them in.”

“Yes ma’am,” Sphere said in a voice far more meek than his usual tone. And to his surprise, he felt a sudden pang of guilt. They were here to help a victim, after all. A frightened asset whose work for MICA normally amounted to getting a call and showing up in an office to give its agents a boost.

Celia—and by extension, America, who had created the plan—were right. This wasn’t about fun.

“Time to finish it up,” he said to no one in particular.

During one training session, Celia had mumbled something about Drew being the most dangerous of them with his unstoppable orb. America had paused—still easily dodging the attack aimed at her—and gave Celia a strange look.

“No,” the taller woman had said. “You are.”

Never one to give herself more credit than was due, Celia had to admit that America might have been right. She moved through the darkness of the high ceiling above the hanging lights, where the pools of black would all the more impenetrable for the people who actually did look up thanks to the bulbs glowing happily a few feet below her. She climbed and moved, tracking everything going on below and serving as a local overwatch for the team. Right up until she was called to step in, of course.

The others all had powers with surprising uses and, if she were to guess based on what she’d already seen, more power and versatility than most of them realized. Cam was the strongest in terms of actual Pitch, coming in at 40 on the 1-100 scale, but she was a tank. Small groups were the most she could do. Same with Echo and Slip, even Recursion. America was walking death in the right circumstances—all of them were deceptively fearsome.

But as Celia crept along the beams, suspended by threads and cables moving around her in a cloud, she conceded that none of them had the sheer breadth of options available to her. There was no new information here. She’d known her capabilities for years. It was only when the context around them changed that the true scope of it all became clear.

Then her moment came. Before now she watched and sent down long threads to tie up defeated enemies. More of them seemed to appear out of nowhere. New shooters piled up in and around the barriers. Susan and Cam worked their enemies, Ethan his. Drew and Chris tried to clear a path as newcomers—yes. They were apparently teleporting in.

America was still laid out, though slowly coming to. She was also surrounded.

Celia dropped several stories without concern for a landing, and not because she counted on being healed. She extended every one of her tendrils and caught herself with them, a third of them acting as legs and flexing beneath her to cushion the fall. At the same time, she extended the others and lashed out at every enemy in the room. The humans she bound. It was easy—hell, it was fun, no matter what she said to Sphere.

Each length of rope, wire, cord, and filament was controlled by her mind. They had to be touching her skin just a little for it to work, and maintaining that connection was trivial. All she had to do was will them in place against her and the flesh would rip away before the tendrils would.

Because of that connection between mind, body, and those artificial extensions, Celia had a strange sense of touch and presence along each of them. She knew their precise location in space and how much pressure they applied. Her mind was in most ways a human mind, but in this one area was more powerful than America’s genius brain.

She managed to tie up almost two dozen enemies simultaneously. Tracking all those motions and weaving all those knots didn’t come close to pushing her limits. After years of using her ability to create a functional artificial wrist and hand, this was child’s play. She didn’t have to work dozens of fake muscles and tendons and maintain a constantly balanced interplay between them.

The cloud of tendrils thinned slightly as she let some of them fall away after being tied. Celia didn’t want to be bound to stationary enemies, just in case. If she had to, she’d just use her remaining tethers to yank the ends of the discarded ones right back to her.

“Damn,” America said as she pushed herself to a sitting position. “Today is just full of surprises.”

Celia smiled. “Yeah. That worked out better than expected.”

As if she’d thrown down a gauntlet to the universe, a new figure appeared. It was a stocky man wearing a uniform that looked sleek and tactical at the same time, all black but for the mask covering his entire head. It was patterned in strangely distorted black and white checkers, only the eye holes breaking up the flow of the shapes. It looked sort of like an optical illusion, and was vaguely familiar. Something from one of their classes.

“Villain!” America managed to say before the masked man raised a hand and every drop of free will in the room evaporated.

Chapter Thirteen

One Punch, Man

Jeff saw Rule appear and follow his standard routine; sapping the willpower from everyone in the room. He felt his own mind give way. For a few seconds, the villain had control of one of the most dangerous people on the planet. Rule didn’t know it, of course. He wasn’t a telepath. Like everyone else in the warehouse, he had no idea Jeff was even there. The chameleon field generated by the small device clipped to his belt made him virtually invisible.

The control only lasted long enough for Jeff’s ability to kick in. What he’d told the class was true in the broad strokes, but there were more complicated and subtle aspects of Jeff’s power than he’d explained to the recruits. It paid to keep certain elements of a power as useful as his a secret.

For example, the ability to maintain the current power set his body had adapted to while allowing it to adapt further. At that moment Jeff was nearly invulnerable, could hurl a car like a lawn dart, and had speed and reflexes ten times that of a normal man. He didn’t have to put forth any effort of will to adapt to Rule’s mind control. When he was in the field, Jeff kept his adaptation running in the background all the time. You never knew when you’d come up against something like this situation.

When his body was fully under his control once more, Jeff reached down and deactivated the chameleon field. No one noticed him at first. This was partly because all the conscious people in the room were following Rule with their eyes as he made small circles through the center of the space, trying to figure out what went wrong. Obviously he was the one who’d hired this crew to kidnap the asset. He’d give Overwatch the rough side of his tongue when he got back to Control. They should have done more recon—a defensive setup like this would have told a more experienced team that something far more dangerous might be incoming.

Jeff wanted to know who Rule had working for him in addition to the team his kids had handily defeated. A teleporter at the very least, given his abrupt appearance in the room. He was halfway through his first step toward the villain when Rule sighed and waved a hand. With a wordless command, Team 7 straightened.

Shit. This was one of other things this asshole was known for. When confronted with a team of Heroes, he commanded them to use their powers on each other. Jeff whispered a request into his comm, though it was hardly necessary. As soon as his lenses caught sight of Rule’s face, they’d begun a search for the most recent updates to his file.

The text that popped up almost didn’t matter in content, because it came up red. What Rule would do to his trainees would damage them, and not just physically. That, they would survive. The complicated feelings of guilt at being forced to attack each other would be far more dangerous wounds.

In the blink of an eye, Jeff was across the room. His right hand shot out, and he barely felt resistance as his fist passed into and then through Rule. He lifted, dangling the villain from his arm, which had entered Rule’s body just past the crook of his elbow.

Rule was incapable of speech behind his mask, though a fair amount of blood spewed through its permeable layers. And the eyes went wide in abject terror blended perfectly with agony.

“Let them go,” Jeff said. “You’ve got a red notice. If I tell the asset to drop his field, you die right here and now. You have three seconds.”

It was partially true, at least. If the field came down, the lingering immortality effect would only persist for about thirty minutes. His team should be fine. They would heal any injuries well before that. Rule would as well, of course. But he might not know that.

“F-fu…” Rule gasped, trying to form the words. “Fuck you.”

In his peripheral vision, Team 7 began to move. Rule had to know there was virtually no chance they would be able to harm Jeff. Glimmer might not be a popular hero in the way many of the brightly-dressed boy scout types were, but he was respected and widely known. Whole teams of metahuman criminals fell like wheat before a scythe when Glimmer appeared. This was just Rule trying to impart as much damage as possible. He’d done it time and again, and in ways that served as a warning for just how vile and dangerous men with mind control could be.

So Jeff pulled back his left hand, balled it into a fist, and punched Rule in the face just so.

Which sheared the villain’s head clean off his neck. Well, it destroyed the neck, but it was decapitation all the same.

“Holy fucking shit,” Susan said, then vomited noisily all over the place.

It was a reaction he’d grown used to after being sent in to save the day. He had never planned to let the team work without supervision. He just hadn’t wanted them to know they had a safety net. Seeing the way some of them shook—especially America—he was silently thanking every god he could name that he had been here. This could have gone so much further sideways if anyone else had taken the job.

“You killed him with one punch,” Drew said, his voice detached and distant. Shock, obviously. “One punch, man.”

“He’s just going to wish I had,” Jeff said, letting the body fall away and not bothering to wipe the blood and gore from his suit. The all-black affair was designed to hose off out of grim necessity. “If you take a look, you’ll notice his head is still moving. He’s alive. Not terribly happy about it, I’m sure, but if we put his bean back on the stalk, they’ll reattach.”

The real question was whether Jeff was feeling generous enough to make that happen before the asset dropped the field.

He wondered what the answer would be…

However Rule’s day ended, Jeff wouldn’t find out until much later. There were cleanup teams to call in, statements to give, and most importantly trainees to debrief and get home. Copies of Manifold took them to the isolation rooms reserved for Hero teams who’d been through especially bloody days and who needed to decompress. MICA was generous in its treatment of its various agents. Any of Team 7 could leave the space they’d share at headquarters and request counseling or even a sedative.

When Jeff returned to them a few hours after stopping Rule, none of them had bothered with calling in a shrink. All seven sat on the couch in the lounge, a round sunken affair with a circular table in its center. The remains of a meal was in evidence thanks to the haphazard stack of metal trays and mostly-finished drinks.

They noticed him at once, or rather they were aware of him maybe before he even opened the door. Had one of them seen the light filtering in beneath it shift as he approached? Hypervigilance was a sign of trauma, and they’d certainly had their share of it today. Everything in their body language screamed tension, though all of them were carefully controlled. Jeff found himself strangely proud of that. Also worried; mental health was vital for even potential Heroes to maintain. You couldn’t stay in the job for long if everything stayed bottled up. He made a mental note to move the class about the dangers of trying to cowboy up and muscle through this kind of thing up by a week or so.

“Director,” America said coolly. She was feigning detachment as she often did. Jeff knew it for the mask it was, a way to fool herself into believing she was less vulnerable to the pain that often came with living in the real world. All of them had some kind of reaction to him beyond simple recognition. Susan was putting on a show of treating the whole thing as a joke, her bemused smile stopping well below her eyes. Chris and Ethan scowled. Celia frowned at him thoughtfully. Drew was openly furious. Cam crossed her arms and made a show of cracking her knuckles.

Jeff climbed down onto the couch and sat on the edge. He’d changed out of his bloody Glimmer costume after a quick decontamination shower, and into his usual shirt and tie. He loosened the tie slightly as he perched forward on the cushion and produced a slightly smooshed sandwich in a bag from his pocket and began to eat.

“This wasn’t some kind of trick,” he said as he slowly plowed through the peanut butter and jelly. “It was a fuck-up, plain and simple. We should have done more thorough surveillance. We only had eyes through the roof—thermal imaging. And we didn’t watch long enough to know they were going to set that place up for a war. If I’d have known their employer would show up, I wouldn’t have sent you in alone. I would have been with you as a team member from the start. Especially with it being Rule. The asset being who he was meant there was no chance you’d be able to die, and that made me stupid. I’m sorry for that.”

He looked down at the sandwich and decided a few bites were enough. Tossing it onto the pile of trays, he brushed his hands together before lacing his fingers. “You did an incredible job today. I thought you should meet the young man you saved.”

They’d been taken off site almost at once as MICA teleporters moved in, ferrying cleaners and tactical teams to oversee the scene and gather physical evidence. They hadn’t met the asset.

Jeff mumbled into his comm, giving a green light to a nearby agent.

“We’re not supposed to know the asset’s identity,” America noted. “The mission brief was very clear about that.”

Jeff shrugged. “I don’t give a shit. And because I both don’t give a shit about that regulation and am as high in the department as you can be without a congressional confirmation, I made it clear this meeting was going to happen and they could hold me responsible. Ah, here he is now. Come on in.”

The door opened, an agent in a charcoal gray suit leading a younger, shorter man into the room. In the chaos of the fight, it was easy to miss the short stature. And of course his head was covered. Now, not so much.

“John, these are my trainees,” Jeff said. “They’re the ones who showed up to help you.”

John’s age was difficult to guess at first glance. He was a few inches over five feet, with light brown skin and shaggy black hair that fell down over his ears in waves of tight curls.

Surprise rippled across the faces of Team 7, except for Cam. Her entire body went rigid with anger, which would have been obvious even without Jeff’s ability interpreting the reaction for him.

“Hi, John,” Cam said, reaching out a trembling hand, which he took. “It’s nice to meet you.”

She was putting on a good show, but Jeff knew there wasn’t any call for it. “Oh, relax, all of you. John has Down Syndrome. He knows it, you know it, I know it. It’s fine. He’s put in a lot of hard work to serve as an asset for the agency. He’s a talented young man. I’m just sorry he had to go through this. I’m sure you have questions. Believe me, he’s happy to answer them. John is very proud of being accepted into our asset program, so ask away.”

And to Jeff’s surprise, they did. John sat with them and answered patiently, his ever-present smile not dimmed a watt by the day’s events. The questions were hesitant at first, but grew more confident and thorough as the team realized John was happy to discuss the realities of navigating the deep waters of a MICA contract while living with his own personal challenges.

Jeff didn’t intend the meeting as any sort of grand life lesson. Not really. John was a good kid who wanted to help people, and so was the team. At the root, Jeff was most interested in giving Team 7 the chance to see the results of a job well done. An innocent protected.

It only occurred to him later that they might take a more favorable view of the agency based on meeting John. Judging by the look on America’s face, however, she had the thought as soon as the young man entered the room.

Part Two: Range

Chapter Fourteen

Breathing Room

America slumped in her seat in the back of Shirani’s classroom and tried in vain not to pay attention. It was actually a problem as her power forced her to record every detail her senses captured, but one she was intent on solving. She spent a good portion of the class actively using her power to separate the part of her that was her, the slice of her prodigious mind that felt and reacted and hurt, from the complex machinery built by her ability.

The class was the third in a row in the three days since their field mission in which Shirani dissected the performances of the teams who had been allowed to take on missions in the real world. Today was Team 7’s turn—her team—and her brain rebelled at being forced to watch the video recorded by their lenses and the audio captured by their comms. She’d already put a sort of lock on those memories so they wouldn’t boil up without warning.

After the presentation was over—Shirani gave them a surprisingly good review—he raised his hands for their attention once more. Usually the class was over by now, but America knew the look in his eye. He was up to something.

“There are two things I want to mention before you leave today,” Shirani said, putting up his index finger. “One is that over the last few months we’ve given you a lot of basic, practical training. The stuff you absolutely can’t go into the field without. As you know, soon you’ll begin more advanced coursework and certifications. How to defuse tense situations without violence, structural engineering so you don’t try to catch an airplane and end up shearing the wing off, all sorts of things that’ll teach you how to be an effective responder without doing unintentional harm.”

America snickered. “That’s just one thing?”

She hadn’t said it to be heard, but apparently super hearing was one of their instructor’s powers today. Shirani grinned. “No, Miss Jackson, that was more of a prologue to point one. Which is that we’ve also given you a decent amount of theoretical education. You all know what Resonance is by now, though you haven’t tried it. That’s going to change. Once you get back from your time off, your workload gets intense, because you’ll be learning to resonate if possible, as well as focusing on extending your Range.”

There were murmurs all through the room for more than one reason. Time off? That was news to her. The bit about Range, however, was not. Confronted with just how much she didn’t know about the metahuman race—partly because of the supreme effort to keep aspects of it under strict secrecy—America dedicated a solid chunk of her time and effort into…reading ahead. Sometimes this involved a bit more computer crime than she’d have liked, but if MICA didn’t want her hacking into the island’s computer systems, they should have had better security.

She knew all about Pitch from her classes, of course. The total power a meta contained, though that wasn’t precisely it, either. Pitch was really just a measurable phenomenon that told you how much a person’s body reacted to their power. Some people with a low Pitch could hit well above their theoretical weight class, like Cam. Resonance let two people sort of blend their powers, and the result could be wildly unpredictable. It was supposed to be hard, syncing them up, and no one had been shown how to do it. The warnings against trying on their own had been more like threats, and no one was stupid enough to cross Shirani on that one.

Range was far more simple a concept to grasp. Much like a singer, it encapsulated all the various applications and consequences of a power. America had read the term for the first time and had begun to understand why Shirani and MICA would not only allow someone like her into the program, but desire it. She might not be able to punch a tank, it was true. Yet with her perfect recall, ability to learn skills almost instantly, her genius, and the host of other applications her power came with, she was a living Swiss army knife.

“We’re getting a break?” asked Drew sharply from his seat in the third row. “Would’ve been nice if you told us so we could let our families know.”

Shirani raised an eyebrow. “Well, about that. It’s true you’ll be leaving the island and going back home, but there’s a condition.”

America knew it before he could say it, and she beat the director to the punch. “We have to go as a team. Together or not at all.”

Shirani, perhaps trying a bit too hard to make up for the dour atmosphere brought on by days of relentlessly shoving the violence of their field trials in the face of his students, chuckled and tapped his nose. “Nailed it. I leave the details up to you, though there will be an assignment during your break. You’ll get the specifics on that once you’ve chosen a location for one of the teleporters to send you.”

America felt her blood pressure go up. To have a few days, maybe even a week, of freedom dangled in front of her face only to have it snatched away—it was too much. She suddenly wanted out of this room very badly. To be anywhere else.

“You have until Friday afternoon to decide,” Shirani said. “Your training here is important, but with Thanksgiving coming up, we at least want you to have a little time to yourselves. Can anyone tell me why we didn’t warn you? Drew?”

When Drew said nothing and the silence stretched, Shirani gave a shrug. He knew she’d probably worked out the reason, but also not to push her into answering all the damn time. Maybe he could read her tension and mood. Hell, no maybe about it. That was an integral part of his ability.

“This is how it’ll be on the job,” he said. “You’ll never know when free time will pop up. You might have ten hours of patrol every day for months on end. If you have a particularly useful power or skill set, it’s not uncommon to get called in most days to put out one fire or another. We do it this way here to prepare you for that. As someone who can’t seem to avoid being on call no matter what job I take, listen when I tell you to grab hold of every bit of downtime you can get no matter how imperfect it might be, and squeeze all the life out of it you can manage.”

America could at least agree with that.

She was sitting in her lab staring at a blank wall when someone came in. The force with which the door opened, the gait of its opener, and the faint scent of Hawaii-themed body wash told her it was Drew.

“Hey, we need your vote on where we’re going for break,” he said, stepping around a pile of boxes containing the last things she needed to complete the team’s new suits, though of course Drew had no way of knowing that. “We only have a few—are you okay?”

He’d gotten a good look at her face in profile as she sat and stared, so it wasn’t a shock he had noticed her distress. The face staring at her in the mirror after that last class was haggard, the sort of obvious exhaustion and stress you couldn’t help seeing. Since the mission, America found herself constantly on the verge of a panic attack. The anxiety, usually coming with a cause and only in cycles she had learned to manage, was constant now.

What was surprising was that he bothered to ask at all. Probably just reflex.

“Do you really care?”

Drew made a frustrated noise and grabbed the visitor’s chair, dragging it next to her and sitting down. “Well, you’re our leader. Seems kind of important that you seem to be slowly losing your ability to cope.”

America snorted a grim laugh. “I’m only in charge until you vote someone else in.”

“Did that about ten minutes ago,” Drew said evenly. “You won. Unanimously.”

She slowly turned her head toward him, eyes slightly wide. “Do what now?”

Drew raised his hands in a half-defeated gesture. “Look, we both know you’re smarter than the rest of us. That isn’t the end-all, be-all, but you also put your ass on the line in that warehouse. You don’t fit the stereotype of other meta geniuses. You didn’t treat us like pawns or put us at risk without taking the same chances yourself. I can respect that.”

She tilted her head. “There has to be a ‘but’ in there somewhere. I’ve met you, after all.”

Drew grinned, an expression so unlike his usual dour look that it was a little unnerving. “Not really. Look, I thought I could do the job pretty well. Then we actually went out there and got shot at, and that has a way of making expectations a lot more realistic. I was scared out of my mind, but you kept your shit together. So long as you always remember that being the smartest person in the world doesn’t mean you’re always right, I think we’ll be fine with you in charge.”

America let out another gruff laugh, this one with a healthy dose of self-deprecation laced into it. “I never feel like I’m doing anything right. I mean, I’m a scientist among other things. An engineer. I’ve had shit blow up in my face, theories prove themselves to be nothing more than terrible assumptions based on false data. Being wrong is how you learn and get better, and that’s the problem right now.” She waved a hand at her face, with its dark smudges below her eyes, marring the smooth brown skin there. Tears welled up, too, though they didn’t quite manage to fall.

“Cam told me you have social anxiety,” Drew said. “That sucks. Is it not something you can use your power to fix?”

America shrugged. “Maybe, if I knew how to do that. Neuroscience has come a long way, but we don’t have definite causes that can squarely be blamed. I don’t want to go tinkering with my brain and fuck something up, you know? But that’s not why I’ve been constantly on the edge of freaking out.”

Drew leaned back in his chair. “Yeah. You’re worried that you’re going to screw up and get one of us killed. That seems kinda obvious. You’re worried one of those learning experiences you’re talking about is going to come at too high a cost.”

America nodded. “It’s…a lot. The pressure is intense. And I was scared out there. Not just for you guys, for myself too.”

Drew frowned and fidgeted with his hands as if not quite sure what to say in response to that. After a few moments of hesitation, he locked his fingers together. He didn’t look at her when he spoke.

“I think that’s probably a good thing,” he said. “Good leaders are decisive, but they also have to worry. Getting overconfident would get us killed for sure. As long as you’re stressing at least some, our chances are better than average.”

America continued staring at the wall, from which she had gathered all the possible data. It was a blessedly empty canvas for her now, a true blank that wouldn’t trigger her power and force her to drink in new information. “That doesn’t mean one of you won’t die on my watch.”

“No,” Drew agreed, “it doesn’t. I’m kind of ashamed at myself for all those years I spent not realizing just how fucking dangerous this job is. How stressful. Any day we go out is a day we might eat it. That’s true for everyone, though, even if the chances for us are much higher. No one can predict every possible scenario. But I’d rather have someone who can guess better than anyone else on the planet, because she’ll have a better chance of keeping us alive. You might lose one of us. No way around it. The question you have to ask yourself is whether or not any of the rest of us can do better.”

Had the words come from anyone else, America would have suspected they were trying to comfort her. Somehow, hearing them from Drew gave her the first seed crystals of belief that he might just be right.

Centering herself, America nodded and stood. “Yeah. Okay. Let’s go figure out where we’re heading for our little vacation.”

The corridor was dark, though the room it led to had recessed lighting that couldn’t truly be called dim, though it was far from bright. That was an artifact of base human fears; no one wanted to see a corpse in the harsh light of a bright bulb exposing its awful nakedness directly. That one turned on only when the coroner or some other professional needed to take a closer look.

The door opened seemingly of its own accord, at least from the perspective of someone sitting inside the room itself. The blackness in the hallway was absolute save for what filtered out from the room. The low light revealed a hand, then heads. Three people, coming to meet as they often did.

Three faces expressing surprise, then resignation, as they registered the fourth person in the room.

“Hi,” America said, elbow resting on the open drawer where the sole body in the room remained. “I guess this guy is who you’re coming to see? Care to fill me in on who he is?”

Agents Rohm and Williams managed to glance at Shirani at precisely the same time, for exactly the same duration. Spend years together and that sort of thing happened. America idly wondered if her team—including the pair of agents—would develop that same ability to function on identical wavelengths.

“You’re not supposed to be here, Miss Jackson,” Shirani said gravely.

America crossed her arms. “Oh, we definitely agree on that, Director. Here are some facts I know. Let’s just have them out in the open so no one is confused about the larger context.”

She extended a hand and ticked off points. “One: in the last year, the world saw one of its biggest changes in seven decades. One of The Five was killed. How his identity was discovered, no one knows. Or at least the public doesn’t. Two: following that event—and I’m sure you’ll tell me it’s unrelated—this program began allowing recruits with marginal to extremely weak powers for the first time. Three: one of those recruits, a person on the team with the others, had a son who was killed during the sting operation taking Cascade down.”

America unfolded her arms and stepped forward, her shoulders square and her eyes blazing. “Since this person was an older woman and a celebrity, she was ineligible for the program and wealthy enough not to need the generous money it pays. Which means her motivation had to be something else. Maybe revenge. Now, I know this woman. I’ve lived and worked with her for months. She doesn’t strike me as the sort of person who buys into anything people try to sell her unless she has a damn good reason for believing it’s the real deal. Given all those facts, it stands to reason that our team is somehow going to make that happen.”

She let her eyes rake the three people standing stone-faced in front of her, daring any of them to speak.

They chose not to, which she considered the wise move.

“So I think this is exactly the place I’m supposed to be, Director,” America said, steel in her voice. “I think—I know—that anyone with ideas of throwing my team at the most dangerous men in the world better consider pretty fucking deeply how much he wants to tell me. Because I’m pretty sure this is Cascade here in this drawer, and that his body isn’t decomposing. There are mysteries here I can’t quite wrap my head around, and I can’t tell you how much not being able to figure something out unnerves me. I want to know why you’ve picked us, what the plan is, and how you know whatever secrets you’ve managed to gather about The Five.”

Shirani glanced back to make sure the door had closed behind him, then met her eyes. “Okay, America. It’s a deal so long as you answer two questions for me.”

She’d never expected information to be free, so America nodded. “They are?”

“You said you want to know how we got our intel on The Five,” he noted. “Not that you wanted to know what the intel itself is. Why’s that? It’s an important distinction, at least to me.”

America shrugged. “Because it’s the bigger question. Seventy years of nothing, then suddenly we have a source that lets you take down one of those bastards? It’s an anomaly. Whatever you have one them is either dangerous beyond belief to have rattling around in your head, or boring. They’re just men, after all. Horrific men, but still human beings. If I’m going to be aimed like a gun at someone, I assume you’ll dole out information as I need it and not before.”

She didn’t say that if that were the case, she would leave the program rather than be spoon-fed the data she desperately needed to do her job. And as she spoke, America realized the idea of going after such powerful enemies appealed to her. Or at least to a part of her she didn’t like to think about very hard. It wasn’t a pleasant sliver of her mind, that area. “What’s your other question?”

Shirani measured her with his gaze, and with his power that was always a literal statement. “Why are you still here? You have all the training you need to control and improve the use of your ability. Why do you want to be a Hero?”

It was a fair question, though the words had a rote sound to them. America knew almost instinctively (though it wasn’t instinct but her mind processing numerous data points and reaching a conclusion at light speed) that he asked every trainee this question eventually. Probably so he could read their reaction like the open book they were and decide for himself whether that person was worthy of the Hero title.

“Because I think I can do better,” she said. “Better than most of the people who’ve been through this program. Maybe that’s arrogant, but there it is. I like the idea of helping people. You know that, obviously. It’ll be one of the things you looked for in my psych profile. You read all about the direction my scientific work has taken, and my charity. You know I like to help people and that I’m not just saying that because that’s what people like to say to sound generous or woke or whatever. But there’s ambition, too. I like a challenge. I want to get out on the street and show some of the knuckle-dragging punch machines you’ve graduated from here that there are alternatives to throwing down with everything they have once their sad little attempts at diplomacy fail.”

She mustered up the sharpest truth in her arsenal and speared him right in the heart with it. “For example, I wouldn’t have let Cascade kill a thousand people. I’d have taken him in without his temperature going above a low fever, much less turn into a fire hot enough to vaporize metal.”

Shirani’s eyes narrowed and his mouth tightened to a grim line, but he nodded. “That’s what I was hoping to hear.”

America cocked her head to the side. “Insults?”

“Honesty,” Shirani said. He motioned to Rohm and Williams, indicating they should find some way to get comfortable. “Rohm and her partner will tell you their story after they do the job we came here for tonight, which is for her to once again Resonate with Williams, let him boost her ability, and read Cascade’s past to glean new information. While they’re working on that, I’ll give you an outline. But you’re going to have to promise me you won’t talk to your team about this until I think they’re ready. Except for Susan, since she already knows.”

America was tempted to refuse just to see what he’d do, but she recognized there was only so far she could push. He knew she would walk away if she felt played by him. That meant Shirani would only hold back because he felt it was strictly necessary. That left out the near-certain fact that most of the team would shit themselves and run away if she told them they might have to square up against the remaining members of The Five.

“Fine,” she said. “Let’s have it.”

He told her.

She wished he hadn’t.

Chapter Fifteen

Basically Cocaine

Cam wasn’t alone in staring in surprise at the giant house. It wasn’t quite a mansion, but everyone had their own room.

“You live here?” she asked, her eyes wide.

America shrugged. “I have money. I like my privacy. And I needed space.”

There was something wrong with her friend, Cam knew that much. America seemed to have gotten out of bed more closed-off and thoughtful than usual, which was saying a lot. She knew not to push, however. Cam was among the rest of humanity in not being as smart as her taller friend, but that didn’t make her stupid. When it came to reading nonverbal cues, Cam was the genius.

The requirement that the group stay together wasn’t the same thing as having to stay in one place. Celia had been the one to work that out. Thanksgiving was a time for family, after all, and she reasoned as they settled in to the guest rooms in the giant house that if they could manage transportation, there was no reason everyone couldn’t visit their families for a little while over the holidays.

Considering their new and interesting surroundings and the fact that America hared off to her basement lab as soon as she could manage to have a little privacy, Cam decided to explore the house. She naturally gravitated toward the kitchen. In it sat Ava, America’s mother, who was reading a book with a scantily-clad man clutching a buxom damsel.

“Mrs. Jackson? I don’t want to bother you, I was just checking the place out,” Cam said carefully. Ava had met them at the back door after the team teleported in, shared a brief and unknowable look with her daughter, then vanished back into the house.

Ava put down her book and smiled. “You’re not bothering me. It’s nice to see America bringing friends home. Well, I guess you’re really more like coworkers, but still. The house is so empty when I’m here alone. And call me Ava, please.”

Cam ducked all the way into the room and slid herself onto the stool opposite Ava at the large island bar on the south edge of the huge room. “We’re friends. Me and America, I mean. I think I’m her only real friend at the Castle.”

Ava’s smile dimmed, though it didn’t disappear completely. “Yeah, I know how it is. She’s always had trouble making friends. Not because she’s so smart, like you’d think. It’s the anxiety. She just doesn’t know how to be around folks a lot of the time. You see it in how she tries to make herself smaller when she walks through a crowd.” She peered at Cam with an appraising look. “Count yourself special, girl. America doesn’t trust easily.”

Cam wasn’t sure what to say to that. The vague unease creeping into her gut only got worse when the obvious truth, something Cam already knew on a subconscious level, was put out there in plain English. She felt doubly bad for letting America hide in her lab. “Maybe I should check in on her? I mean, your kitchen is awesome and everything, but if she needs to talk…”

Ava waved the remark away. “She needs time alone to think, trust me on that. She’ll come to you when she’s ready.” She gestured toward the expensive appliances. “I thought you’d end up in here pretty quick. Kind of your thing, isn’t it?”

There was a ponderous silence as Ava heard her own words. Cam, being Cam, kept a perfectly straight face.

“I didn’t mean, um,” Ava stammered. “Your power. America sent word ahead that it works with food.”

Cam burst out laughing. “Oh, that’s fantastic. Sorry, I just never get tired of people doing that.” She looked down at herself and considered what she saw. “You know, I’ve always been pretty happy with how I look. Or I guess I’m happy with however I look. I don’t really give a shit what other people think. Though I’ve packed on some muscle since we were recruited. I’m beefier than I was. Lost some of my puppy fat.”

Ava looked somehow relieved and embarrassed at the same time. “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

“Nothing to apologize for,” Cam said. “Though to be honest, we did have to leave the island before breakfast. I don’t think any of us has eaten anything today. Got anything good in there? Or do I have to wait for Thanksgiving before I can shut my belly up?”

She wasn’t serious, of course. That was two days away. But making people feel better about accidentally saying things that could be insulting if Cam were the sort of person who could be insulted by her appearance was a constant in her life. Chalk it up to parents who were hippies born forty years too late for the trend raising her. She couldn’t stop trying to make people feel better about the sometimes dumb things that came out of their mouths.

“Thanksgiving,” Ava said thoughtfully. “That must be a hell of a thing for you, right? America didn’t say what you could do, just that I needed to make sure we were stocked up on all kinds of food because your power works on it.”

Cam smiled and gave a brief overview of her ability, the same canned response she’d long since internalized. “And yeah,” she said in conclusion, “Thanksgiving is what I imagine doing a whole bunch of coke is like. While everyone else sits down and falls into a coma watching football, I’m buzzing around trying to find something to hit. I overindulge like most people do, and it makes all the parts of my power go into overdrive for a few hours.”

Ava raised a curious eyebrow. “And then?”

Cam laughed. “Then I sleep like the dead for ten hours. Just like all the tired uncles who decide to catch a nap before heading home after the family eats.”

The two of them ate and talked over the next hour, getting to know each other in the slow way people do when both parties want to make a clean but honest impression. Cam laughed often, but in the back of her mind could not stop wondering what might have upset her friend deeply enough that she had to retreat into isolation.

“You should be careful,” Susan said from the edge of the room. “I think someone already has a copyright on billionaire superheroes brooding in their cave.”

America looked up from her computer, which was networked to her system back on the island. On it was a model for an idea she’d had just after their test. Something she now suspected she would need sooner rather than later.

“I asked to be left alone,” America said as she saved her work and closed the laptop. “I was pretty clear about it.”

Susan stepped into the pool of light surrounding the work space. “You did, and you were. And I chose to ignore you. Free will is a hell of a thing that way.”

“I know what you’re doing,” America told the older woman—and no matter how Susan looked, she’d always remember that fact. “You can skip the pep talk.”

Susan belted out a sharp, deep laugh. “Oh, honey. It’s like you’ve never met me at all. I’m not here to lift your spirits. I’m here to tell you to get over yourself, go upstairs, and lie your ass off to those kids.”

America sat up straight. “Excuse me?”

“You heard what I said.” Susan slowly walked the outside of the light, half of her fading into the dark beyond it. “You’re sitting down here trying to figure out the best way to tell them all the truth. That we were all selected for this team—that the program’s standards for power were lowered—solely to make us a weapon against The Five. You’re trying to work out how to frame it in a way that won’t scare the shit out of them, and the answer is that you can’t. Because being afraid of the five most dangerous men since Hitler is the right fucking reaction to have. They need to be hardened. Get some more experience under their belts before we drop something like that on them. That’s just the way it is. Until that happens, you go up there and act like everything is fine. Tell them you’re still off balance after Rule took control of you, I don’t care.”

America considered for a long time, and not just a long time by the standard of her enhanced brain and its lightning responses. There were consequences. Always consequences. She hadn’t always thought of them as such, but their mission ending with Rule taking control of her for even a brief time changed the way she viewed the world. It was consequences she was thinking about when she stood.

“Thank you,” she said to Susan, and meant it. “You made the decision easy. This isn’t some weekly drama where I keep a secret like this and after revealing it, my team has a few hard days of feeling betrayed but learns to trust me again. This is real life. If I lie to them for however long you think it’ll take, if I manipulate them that way and push them toward a fight that at that point they might not feel they’re allowed to walk away from, they won’t forgive me. And they shouldn’t. We operate on trust. We don’t have to like each other or be friends. But we have to trust.”

And she walked toward the door. Susan stepped in front of her, a hand raised. “You know I can stop you.”

America paused, her brown eyes locked on Susan’s blue. “You can. Then again, the defenses in this room will probably cut you in half if you try. They’re locked onto you right now and I never did get all the rough spots ironed out of the code. It’s buggy and errs on the side of protecting me.”

Susan gave her a grim smile. “You’re bluffing.”

“Only one way to know,” America said. A few tense seconds passed before Susan stepped to the side and let the tall young woman leave the room.

When she was alone, Susan’s smile turned into a grin.

Cam sat with everyone else—including Ava—in stunned silence after America finished speaking. Only Susan remained wholly unfazed by the revelation, something the others were already noticing. A lack of reaction when you’re told that your small circle of underpowered superheroes in training will be facing the worst criminals the world has ever seen is a dead giveaway that you were in on the secret.

“I’m gonna find a way to break that man’s arms,” Ava said matter-of-factly.

Cam glanced over at her. “Who?”

“Shirani,” Ava breathed, the name a curse on her lips. She lit a cigarette and frowned. “You know, I warned him…”

Susan sighed and waved a hand. “Look, Shirani was just the point man on this. He had the job of putting together the parameters for a team and did all the work of making sure we’d work by going through our psych and power profiles, but the idea didn’t originate with him. It was higher up in the agency. Beyond that. This was presidential level direction.”

Ethan’s eyes went wide. “I’m so not ready for this. A few months ago I was a delivery boy. And not even the kind who gets frozen for a thousand years and wakes up in the future. Just a regular one. I can’t do this.”

“Susan thinks we can,” Cam interjected. “She obviously knew what was up, though she didn’t tell us shit. And I’m kind of wondering why you’d tell us right before our families showed up for Thanksgiving.” The last was directed toward America, who looked deeply uncomfortable.

“Because you needed to know,” she said, not looking at the team. “This isn’t the kind of thing you should be tricked into doing, or pushed toward without ever knowing until it was too late. I didn’t mean to ruin your holiday, I really didn’t, but I need you to think hard about how you want to move forward from here. If seeing your families makes you realize how easily you could be taken from them by one bad day in the field, much less by going after the rest of The Five, then maybe you’ll want to quit.”

Her eyes rose, and there was no judgment in them as she scanned the faces. “There’s nothing wrong with that. I’m not kidding or trying to make you feel better. Shirani wasn’t straight with us about why we were recruited—”

Chris raised his hand, which was just adorable. Cam stifled a smile at the earnest—and then embarrassed—look on his face when America waved his hand down. He smiled sheepishly. “I was wondering how that works, though. Why us? We’re…I won’t say weak, because I’ve gotten stronger since we started training, but we don’t even register compared to people like Shirani. And how do they even know this stuff?”

“Exactly what I was thinking,” Drew and Celia said at the same time, their words not quite matching up.

America crossed her arms and looked pointedly at Susan. “You’ve been in the thick of this for months. You want to explain it? All I got was an overview.”

Cam reckoned Susan had been planning this moment for a long time, because she didn’t look even a little flustered as she gathered her thoughts and got comfortable. Or maybe that was just the consummate performer in her, the woman who’d spent decades headlining comedy clubs and stadium tours before breaking into the movies. People like that weren’t easily rattled.

“We know because Emma Rohm knows,” Susan began. “This is how it works…”

Chapter Sixteen

Crazypants

“You shouldn’t call yourself names like that,” Doctor Gavankar said. “It’s unhealthy. And you’re not crazy.”

Rohm sat uncomfortably on the sofa. Not because the sofa itself was uncomfortable; it was plush enough to fall asleep in if you didn’t keep your wits about you. Rohm’s inability to relax stemmed from being here in the first place. Rosemary Gavankar was one of only a dozen psychiatrists with the clearance necessary to treat Heroes and MICA agents alike, and the only one of them all to be allowed the highest level of clearance. She knew about the plans put into motion by the agency and the department secretary, if only because the stress of taking on The Five had to be dealt with. The risk of having one more person in the loop was deemed worth it given the possible rewards and the disastrous consequences of failure.

“I thought you weren’t supposed to even use that word,” Rohm said. “Shrinks on TV don’t even say it like you just did, because saying someone isn’t crazy implies that other people might be. Mentally ill is the preferred term, right?”

Gavankar sighed, and Rohm understood the older woman’s frustration. The good doctor was a metahuman herself, though not a Hero or even technically a MICA agent. She was powerful as hell, too. Able to create a field nearly ten feet across that rendered her invulnerable to literally everything, including being moved, the thing blocked out everything from physical force to heat to telepathy once it locked itself into a point in space. That level of power meant she was unlikely to spill any secrets by force, but it left her helpless in the face of her more stubborn patients. Like Rohm.

“I’m trying to speak to you in your own language,” Gavankar said. “You’re not mentally ill. You’re stressed and worried beyond belief because you’ve got this enormous pressure on your shoulders. Taking out The Five is no small task.”

Rohm shook her head, sitting even more ramrod straight and running her hands down the lines of her suit to make sure it was perfect. “You know what the first attempt cost. All those people dead just to take down one of them.”

“What happened with Cascade wasn’t your fault,” Gavankar said for what felt like the millionth time since their sessions had begun. “You argued against it pretty damned hard, Emma. You knew someone who’d managed to elude justice for seventy-plus years was going to be hard to take down.”

Rohm, put on edge even further by her unexpected run-in with America Jackson, shook her head violently. “Not just him. Taking them out one at a time was just one of the plans. This other one, with these kids…it’s not right. We can’t expect so much of them.”

Gavankar kept a notepad on her lap and a pen in her hand, though she rarely took notes. The pen was a gift from a patient, one of the rare super-geniuses willing to undergo therapy. It was a beautiful piece of engineering, made from hundreds of pieces of seamlessly fitted metal. It gave her something to occupy her hands with as she worked through her thoughts.

She twirled the pen through her fingers as she framed her conclusion. “This isn’t just about Team 7, and you know it. You feel responsible for all of it because of what you saw, even though you had no way of knowing what you’d stumble across when you looked back through time.”

Predictably, this set Rohm off. Not into a rage—the words were a catalyst forcing her to release the vast reservoir of guilt she felt. “No, I couldn’t have known I’d learn so much about The Five. Or that my mind would connect to Insight’s across the decades. But when it did, I gave him knowledge about the future. There are a few people, very smart people, who believe by doing so I created a locked timeline where the future we live in now and everything that has happened since the day Insight saw it became unavoidable.”

Gavankar leaned forward, pen turning into a pointer as she aimed it at her patient. “You’ve brought that up before, and I’ve looked into that theory. It’s bullshit, according to the temporal theories of a bunch of those very smart people you mentioned. I gave them a generic scenario like yours, and do you know what they told me?”

Rohm said nothing, choosing instead to avert her gaze and clench her jaw.

Gavankar continued anyway. “They said that the timeline had already happened, that you had nothing to do with it. The events leading up to your glimpse into the past were already there. Nothing you did caused them to happen.”

Rohm shook her head again. “Even if you’re right, it doesn’t make what we’re doing with those kids anything but horrible. All the information I gathered from Insight’s mind and just from using my power to see back that far isn’t enough. We’re building strategies on disconnected pieces of data and throwing everything we can think of at the problem to see what sticks.”

Gavankar, like everyone in her profession, was trained to keep most value or moral judgments out of the equation. There were always exceptions even if they usually dealt with things like immediate harm to the self or others. This time she decided to be honest because it felt like her best bet to make progress.

“I agree with you,” she said quietly. “It’s one thing to send a group of powerful, trained Heroes against someone like Cascade, however badly that might have gone. That’s a fairly simple scenario.”

Rohm stared at her, suspicion written in every line and angle of her face. “You’re just saying that to make me open up.”

Gavankar reached out a hand. “Use your power on me. I know it’s not as precise with living beings, but your file says you’re a fair lie detector. Ask me if I’m sincere and touch my hand.”

Rohm thought about it, then did exactly that. Maybe other people wouldn’t have. Certainly folks in movies didn’t bother. This, however, was real life. Trust was thin in her profession, at least with people outside it.

“Now you know I’m being honest with you,” Gavankar said. “I think using those people to take advantage of Reign’s weakness is, frankly, abusive. I was one of the experts they asked to profile potential candidates, you know.”

Rohm nodded. “Yeah. One of the criteria was to search for people who either dreamed of being Heroes but weren’t powerful enough, or who had other strong reasons to stay with their team once it was formed. Though I don’t expect the experiment will be a problem much longer since America knows the score. I doubt she’ll waste much time telling the rest of the team about it.”

Gavankar shook her head. “The only reason I participated at all was so I could have a hand in the process. I’d hoped to guide Shirani toward candidates who could handle the strain once they discovered the truth. You’re right. This might be too early.”

Rohm snorted. “Too early? If it gets them to quit, I figure it’s perfectly timed. The other members of The Five are powerful in their own ways, but it’s always been the group together that posed the real threat. Except Reign. He’s a one-man army. The ability to control any metahuman has always forced us to minimize contact in any encounters we had with him.”

Except that wasn’t exactly true. One of the dangerous facts Rohm discovered was that Reign could only control metas he could resonate with. Granted, that seemed to be far less choosy a pool of people than one usually found, but she had learned it was limited. Rather than being limited to what appeared to be random other metahuman like most, Reign could resonate with any of them above a certain Pitch threshold. Anyone ranking just over fifty on the scale would be under his control at a glance.

And so the idea to bring in a team not just below forty—the standard minimum Pitch required to enter the Hero recruitment rolls—but much lower and carefully tailored to appear minimally threatening to men as powerful as The Five. So unthreatening they might be overlooked completely.

In other words, a hidden weapon.

Assassins.

Rohm had decided to get her trip to Gavankar’s office out of the way the day before Thanksgiving so she could get a bit of a break herself. She was always on call, that was a constant in her life which had long since become her version of normal, but even with that as a given she had a chance to get a few days away from the work.

Living on the island meant she was only called in as a Reader when the handful of other people employed by the agency who shared her power were stumped. The others could fill in the gap during the holidays.

On Thanksgiving day, she found herself in the nation’s capital and reflecting on how much she loved and loathed D.C. The monuments and attractions were okay, though she rarely had time to appreciate them, but the culture around politicians here was truly awful. It was unfortunately common to head out to a favorite watering hole only to run into a famous face who had, days before, railed against something you cared about deeply on the Senate floor.

She stuck mostly to the less glitzy and glamorous areas of the district when she could. Sometimes that meant waiting an hour or longer to eat after being forced to sit with congressmen or the higher-ups in the Department of Metahuman Affairs. Strange how none of them considered the possibility that she would use her power in those meetings. The amount of information she’d gathered by brushing her hand across phones and folders was enough to blackmail half the politicians in the city if she wanted.

“It’s forty degrees out here,” a voice said from a few feet away. Williams strode forward wearing his usual dark suit, a peacoat over it. “Aren’t you freezing?”

Rohm smiled. She didn’t have to ask how he found her. One of the odd side-effects of being enhanced by him was that he could always find you. It was the psychic equivalent of tracking a scent. “I thought you’d be in Baltimore with the kids.”

Williams grimaced. “I was. Sherri didn’t even give me any crap about having to work around my schedule. As exes go, I’m pretty lucky that way. She even understood when I got the call.”

Rohm’s hand automatically went to her pocket. Shit. She’d left it on silent. That was a worse mistake for her than the average person. MICA agents had to be reachable around the clock, except for specific circumstances like her meetings with Gavankar. “I’m sorry, Eric. I didn’t mean for you to have to leave the family and hunt me down. I’ll make it up to you.”

Williams shook his head. “Nah, I’d have had to go anyway. We’re on special alert status. First in the mix if we’re called.”

Rohm’s face screwed up into a confused expression with just a dash of irritation. “What? Why us? There are others on duty who can handle anything we could.”

Williams slid his finger across the screen of his phone and poked at it for a few seconds before handing it over. His face somehow managed to convey the sigh he carefully didn’t let out. “See for yourself.”

She read the alert missive, her eyebrows trying to climb her face like they wanted to escape. “Wait, seriously? Mike Wells is back? I thought that guy died like two years ago.”

Williams shook his head. “I guess not. You and I were the ones who hunted Wells down after he started targeting Heroes with those damn machines. We’re tapped because we know him better than anyone else. Also because of what’s on the second page there. I’ll save you the trouble: it’s a manifesto. Like, a crazy-ass, living in the woods and I hate the government sort of manifesto. He’s making a lot of threats. Sent in a video of himself reading it just to prove it wasn’t a hoax. Guy looks like someone dragged him through a whole damn forest of crazy trees and made sure he hit every branch on the way.”

Rohm scanned the documents quickly, in the learned manner one had to acquire when regularly sent on missions at the drop of a hat. The threats were about as far-fetched as she could imagine but for the fact that Wells really had done some of the things in them, if only on a smaller scale.

“Well, shit,” she said. “Doctor Crazypants here is gonna attack D.C. I don’t know whether to hope for it so we can throw him in chains or what.”

“Or what, if I get a vote,” Williams said. “I’d rather not think of the collateral damage something like that would come with. Not to mention the fact that Team 7 is also on the alert list with us.”

Rohm’s head snapped to the side. “You’re kidding.”

“Nope,” Williams confirmed. “Third page.”

It was normal procedure for most Hero teams to be on call with their liaisons, less so for trainees. While far from unheard-of, it was uncommon enough to make her wonder just who in the hell decided it was the right call. It was bad enough those kids were being shaped to fight the remaining members of The Five who couldn’t create an army of metas just by touching them. The things they’d have to do to fight Reign would be…damaging. At the very best. How do you stop someone who can take control of half the people on your side without harming those innocent victims when he orders them to incinerate you on the spot?

She’d seen into Insight’s mind, sure, but he wasn’t the one so terrifying that she felt the raw, animal panic start to rise up at the thought of him. She’d learned many important details about The Five when she’d made that ill-fated connection, and the worst of them was that the rest of them were all scared of Reign to some degree or another.

And the agency couldn’t find it in their hearts to give those kids one last week of stress-free holidays before they had to confront the ugly future waiting for them.

“I’m gonna kick somebody’s ass over this,” Rohm promised. “Especially if we actually have to—”

Just then, Williams’ phone began blaring the active alert message all field agents dreaded. The stocky man nestled deeper into his heavy coat and finally let out that sigh. “Always tempting the universe. Someday you’re gonna have to learn to keep that shit to yourself.”

Rohm and Williams appeared in America’s kitchen with the agent on duty as their transportation. She found a surprised Ava and several other middle-aged people she didn’t recognize.

“Sorry to pop in, but we have a situation,” Rohm said. “We need the team. Right now.”

A head poked into the room. Williams waved. “Chris, get the others.”

“I already am,” he said. “My original and the other copies are gathering them together. Do we need our uniforms?”

Williams nodded. “This is combat. The real thing.”

The duplicate nodded and went vacant for a moment as it passed the message along. When its eyes refocused, there was surprise in them. “They’re already changing. Two minutes.”

When the group entered the kitchen, they were not alone. It looked as if all of their parents were in the house—which Rohm realized must be why they were clearly planning to have their holiday meal for lunch rather than dinner. It would give them time to get back home and get their feast on with the rest of their families.

“Whoa,” Williams said as he took in Team 7.

Rohm raised her eyebrows, impressed despite herself. Rather than the reinforced but generic uniforms the Hero program issued, each of them wore a…costume. It didn’t feel like the right word; few superhumans wore anything that could be described that way. Men like Rule hid to avoid being identified, as did most Heroes. Concealing your identity saved you from a lot of heartache down the road, as many Heroes had learned to their sorrow.

Usually the outfits were just far enough from normal clothing to set Heroes and Villains apart, masks very much included in that. But there were never vivid color patterns or elaborate getups to be found. By and large, their clothing was practical.

Team 7 wore matching black uniforms, concealing their bodies from head to toe. The only adornments were done in a silvery metal that wasn’t quite right for steel, and yes—every one of them seemed practical. There were a few white highlights here and there, mostly on pockets and pouches, which made sense to Rohm instantly. You wanted to be able to easily spot the place where your gear was stored. The suits looked durable, and in the cases of Celia and Drew, perfectly designed with their powers in mind. The former had minuscule loops of tendrils running over every inch, while the latter was pocked with flat metal V shapes that looked as though they could pop up to hold his orb. Not for storage, that was obvious. Maybe to add weight to his punches, or…

“Flight,” she muttered.

Williams took in the gathered team. “We don’t have much time. This is an active incident. We’ll be dealing with nonhuman combatants with an unknown level of artificial intelligence.”

America somehow managed to convey her startled blink from behind the white lenses of her mask. “I’m sorry, did you just say we’re fighting robots?”

“Yep,” Rohm said. “You won’t be the only ones there. Try not to accidentally hurt anyone, and don’t get yourselves killed. Williams and I will be working with you and bringing in any assets we can wrangle.”

America glanced at the teleporter, who had so far remained quietly out of the way. He’d been assigned to the island since her first day in the program. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I’ve ever asked your name.”

“Dave,” he said simply, his voice curiously deep for his willowy build. “It’s okay. Can’t get to know us all.”

America nodded. “We’re ready. Mom, everyone, sorry about this.”

Ava stepped up and gave her daughter a quick half-hug. “It’s okay, baby. You go fight the good fight. We still have an hour before lunch. Should be plenty of time.”

Rohm couldn’t stop the disbelieving chuff of laughter that bubbled up from her gut. “You really think we can take down a small army of what are probably heavily-armored machines in less than an hour?”

Ava cocked her head, a slightly disbelieving but confident look on her face. “It’ll only take that long if my girl is having a bad day.”

Rohm had a moment to wonder, as Dave blinked the group from one place to another, what it must be like to have a parent so damned proud of you, and so utterly certain that you were capable of anything you set your mind to. Not in the cheesy Hallmark way. No thin platitudes. Something concrete and real.

It occurred to her that no matter how strong or fast or even smart a Hero might be, the people who supported them were often the ones who gave them their real power.

Chapter Seventeen

What We Have Become

They appeared on a rooftop and it felt like the end of the world. The noise was incredible, a din of clashing metal and concrete peppered with gunfire and screams that sounded like every version of hell America had ever heard of.

“This is Delphi,” she said into her comm. “Team 7 is on scene. Requesting a direct visual pipeline to agency data services in my left lens. I need on-demand information.”

The response was instant and was delivered to the entire team. “That’s a broad request. We’ll need a reason to put on the report in case this goes badly.”

America scowled, though Overwatch couldn’t see it. Or maybe he could, tapped into the comm and lens feeds as he almost certainly had to be in order to do his job well. “The reason is that no matter how smart I am, I can’t do much to direct my team without context and relevant facts. The kind I can’t directly observe. I can’t make bricks without clay.”

“Sherlock Holmes reference noted,” Overwatch said, deadpan. “Channel open. Please state any requests you have and we’ll take care of the rest. We’ve allocated eleven of me to your team. Three of us are at your personal disposal.”

America nodded. “Stand by.”

They were far enough back on the rooftop that none of the machines or Heroes below could see them. Williams stepped forward—this part had been drilled into them. The agents were their liaisons and support in the field, and with Williams that meant being juiced up.

He briefly touched everyone on the team on the shoulder, save for Sphere and America herself. She didn’t need a boost since giving her better control of her brain was pointless in the short term. It wouldn’t make her any smarter or her mind work any better. They’d tested it out a few times. As for Sphere, well…

“When we get back to your house, please remind me to ask you why they won’t let him enhance me,” he said. When America opened her mouth—clearly visible even through the tough material of her mask, he raised a hand. “No, seriously. Wait until later. I’d rather not be distracted right now. We have people to help.”

It was perhaps the most polite thing he’d ever said to her, and the fact that Drew was thinking about the innocents below first was startling enough to remind her of how time-sensitive the situation was.

“We’re going to split up,” she said, her tone allowing for no way to mistake the words as anything but orders. “Sphere, I want you and Recursion together on the roofs. You’re going to be handling ranged attack. Focus on enemies that are directly threatening innocents or Heroes who look like they might be about to die. Recursion, keep your original self up above the fray with him, but feel free to send copies out as needed. In this situation, Sphere is our heaviest hitter. Your job is to keep him safe.”

Chris nodded, his tall and muscular frame almost humming with the power Williams had lent him. America could imagine the way his wavy blond hair would be dancing around the crown of his head if not for the mask.

“Nosh, you and Slip are together,” America continued. “Slip can keep himself safe enough that you won’t have to focus on defending him, but do keep an eye on each other. Slip, your job is to tangle those machines up as much as you can. Make them easy targets. If you can freeze them up, so much the better.” She cocked her head, remembering something. “Oh, yeah. Almost forgot. Nosh, look in your belt pouch. There are some, uh, provisions in there. Experimental food pills I came up with for you. If you need a boost, pop one in the left side of the mouthpiece of your mask. It’s designed to feed it directly to your mouth.”

America turned to Celia. “Lace, you’re our mid-range fighter. Do damage, slow them down, and generally cause chaos where you can. You’re on your own, but we’ll be keeping an eye on you as well just to be safe.”

“We?” Susan said. “You’re keeping me out of the fight, aren’t you?”

America nodded. “I’m going to have Dave ’port you to another rooftop to expand our view, but yes. You’re essentially an observer this go around. Your powers probably aren’t going to do anything to a bunch of robots.”

She turned away before Susan could respond and gave the agents a rapid series of orders. In a few eye blinks, everyone but America was gone from the rooftop.

“Wow,” she muttered. “Dave can really move.”

“He can,” Overwatch said, though she hadn’t been speaking to him as much as to herself. “We don’t let people into the field who can’t use their powers at peak.”

She slipped forward, edging toward the lip of the roof and catching her first glance of the battle raging below. The inside of her mask—really more of a helmet—was one single screen capable of displaying dozens of information feeds at once. “Give me everything you have on the man you believe is responsible for this, displayed at triple speed.”

Mike Wells wasn’t what she would have come up with had America been asked to name a villain. It didn’t seem to jibe with the metallic forms below. Their creator’s name was common. Boring.

The machines were anything but. Eight feet tall and gleaming silver, they looked like a child’s drawn stick figure brought to life. Their torsos were cylinders of stainless steel with stovepipe arms jutting out of half-spherical joints at the shoulders. The hands were segmented claws with three digits, the legs identical to the arms but longer. Their heads were the only thing even remotely human about them, roughly shaped like a person’s with the vague outline of human features. The effect was broken by hard, round eyes.

As she watched, more of them boiled up from the massive rent in the pavement below. They lashed out at anyone they saw—thankfully few innocents remained—and seemed interested only in killing or, failing that, escaping. The dozen or so Heroes below were hard-pressed to keep the handful of civilians alive while also containing the threat.

“Sphere,” America said. “On my mark, create a safe zone around the civilians closest to you. Lace is going to haul them up out of the fray and onto your building. Then walk your shots farther away and repeat until there are only Heroes down there. Do it was fast as you can.”

“Roger that,” Sphere said, grim concentration in his voice.

“Mark,” America said.

She watched him work, Celia swooping in amid a cloud of tendrils to scoop up the terrified humans in a display of control that took America’s breath away. The timing wasn’t perfect, but Celia kept herself focused enough to make up for any small errors. Drew wasn’t wasting much time getting the job done, either. The height of the machines worked against them, there. He was able to fire his orb through their heads on a plane above the danger zone for the civilians cowering on the ground.

Yes, she watched, but her brain had begun working on the larger problem.

“This is too random,” America said, not bothering to turn off the comm. “It doesn’t make sense. What are these robots after? What does Wells actually want?”

The attack had to be serving some other purpose. You didn’t build an army of machines in secret and set them loose on a city just to see if you could. You did it because you had an objective. America was troubled because she had no idea what that objective might be. Not the first clue. It was an alien feeling, made worse by the suspicion that stopping the onslaught and keeping the wall of metal killers contained might end up relying on understanding what their goal was.

She started calling up more information, so much that even her ability to instantly remember things seen in bare flashes was put to the test.

It looked like her mom might have been wrong about when they’d be back for lunch.

The first thing Cam learned as she waded into the fray was that punching robots fucking hurt. She’d sparred with other tanks before, some of them far more powerful Heroes than she would probably ever be, but not even Director Shirani himself had punished her hands so much when she struck him as the metallic forms in front of her did.

And that was with the effects of Agent Williams’ power flooding her system. She felt a powerful hunger even though she’d stuffed food into her face at top speed as they left. His enhancement apparently hadn’t just given her body an extra stockpile of energy to draw on, but seemed to have kicked her power itself into overdrive. As the first dented robot stumbled away from her, the gnawing inside her belly grew stronger. Distractingly so.

So she popped one of the food pills into the slot of her mask and swallowed it.

Nothing happened.

Still nothing.

Holy shit.

Power surged through her body in ragged pulses so strong Cam felt as if her skin would burst. It had never been like that before. She’d always felt a sense of renewed strength or speed—the slight reactions her body had to her power as it acclimated to increased capacity so she didn’t rip someone’s arm off or run straight into a wall—but this was completely different.

America said something in her ear, but Cam didn’t pay attention to the words. Her mind fogged over somewhat as the need to move, to hit, to use the new reservoir of energy took over. She couldn’t have stopped it if she’d tried. It was like the way a person’s heartbeat slowed when their face was touched by water. Her need to burn off the power was as ingrained as the submersion reflex.

And use it she did.

Cam blurred through the crowded square toward her next target. The machine seemed to move in slow motion as she leaped twenty feet and barreled into its back with both knees. The force took it to the ground, limbs flailing. Cam grabbed the nearest of them—a leg—with both hands and pulled.

It came apart under her grip like a wet roll of paper towels, metal shrieking and wires flashing with sparks. The head came next, which shut the robot down. Well, that was good to know. The man who’d built these things hadn’t bothered to put their important bits inside the more heavily-armored torso.

A Hero in a dark blue outfit traced with white highlights shouted for help, his large and muscular form getting pushed back even as he tried to manipulate the stone around him to protect his body. Cam launched herself in his direction and got between him and the nearest machine just as it unleashed a roundhouse punch.

The blow caught her in the chest, knocking her back slightly and forcing her to drive her back foot into the pavement slightly. She grinned as the ground cracked beneath her heel and snatched a robotic hand out of the air.

With a shout of effort, she yanked the robot off its feet and spun it once before hurling it into a crowd of its brethren.

This was getting fun.

“That’s not good,” America muttered to herself.

“Problem?” Overwatch asked in her ear.

America considered. “Probably nothing I can’t handle if it gets out of control. One of my teammates seems to be having an unexpected reaction to the combination of having her powers boosted and eating a specialized supplement I made for her. She’s getting a little more aggressive than I’m used to seeing.”

Overwatch didn’t answer at once, then sighed. “From what we can see of what you’re dealing with, aggression isn’t necessarily a bad thing.”

“No,” America agreed. “Not unless it gets sloppy, I guess.”

Sphere picked his shots out of sheer necessity. In a perfect world where there were no civilians trapped below and no other first responders trying to quell the chaos, he could have turned the square into a giant blender with a thought. His control wasn’t quite in the same league with Celia, but he could still move his only weapon across a space this size at the speed of thought with accuracy down to fractions of an inch.

In a perfect world, he wouldn’t have been needed. No Hero would. That was what four years of training were meant to prepare him for.

A new clone popped into existence next to him. “Ready,” it said.

Sphere nodded and brought his orb up to the clone, which laced its hands together and wrapped them around the ball. Sphere lowered it to the ground in the place Recursion pointed out to him, where three other clones did a fluid dance of evasive maneuvers between twice as many robotic enemies.

“You have how many copies going now?” Sphere asked as he directed the orb through the heads of four robots in as many seconds.

“Eleven,” Recursion said. “And that’s everything I got. I was kind of hoping for more but Williams can only boost me so much.”

It was obvious the copies were better than they had been before the enhancement, however. Each one Recursion created made the group stronger, faster, and more durable, Recursion himself most of all. Their awareness and senses were shared, and considering how well-coordinated the various copies were, he suspected they all grew a little smarter with each new version.

The copies being more durable was what caught Sphere’s attention. That didn’t seem to make sense for reasons he couldn’t quite put into words. More energy in the form of Williams’ enhancement meant more of them could be created, but usually it was only the original that got tougher. Something America had said in passing months earlier, a question she’d posed that never had been explored due to their intense training schedules.

Why do they pop?

He wondered at the question as a pair of clones below vanished under a robot assault. They’d jumped between an off-balance Hero swathed in head-to-toe black and brandishing swords.

He repeated the question out loud. Recursion looked at sphere, head tilted curiously. There was no way to read his expression through the featureless mask, but the curiosity got across regardless.

“Your copies,” Sphere said. “They make popping sounds when you conjure them.”

A thought occurred to him, and Sphere pulled off a glove. He put his bare hand out to the side. “Make new ones right here. As close to my hand as you can.”

“Why?” Recursion asked in a bewildered tone.

Sphere smiled beneath his own mask. “Because I want to feel it.”

When the new clones came into existence, Sphere knew his hunch was right. He felt the gentle rush of air around him. He’d been in their team meetings, in all the training, and of course you couldn’t keep a group of metahumans from dishing about their powers whenever they got together in groups. He’d heard more than he ever wanted to know about how people with Recursion’s power did what they did. The dupes were made of energy. Temporary living force fields that served as echoes of the original’s mind.

But other duplicators didn’t have clones that made the original better. That implied the copies were somehow feeding energy back to him. Others didn’t create copies that pulled in air and presumably other matter into their forms. Which implied things that Sphere grudgingly admitted to himself he wasn’t educated enough to fully grasp.

He took a moment to pick off three more robots before helping the new pair of clones down to the ground.

Recursion perked up. “Oh! Jackpot! I got a clone into the tunnel. Just for a few seconds, but I could see down it just fine. No humans in sight. Actually not even any room for them, wall to wall bots.”

Sphere’s mask warped as he grinned behind it. Shelving his minor realization that his partner’s ability might have depths none of them yet understood, he keyed the comm. “Did you get that?”

“I did,” Delphi replied at once. “Change of tactics, everyone. We’re going to clear a path to that hole in the ground. I need everyone below who isn’t currently shielding civilians to focus on parting the seas running east to west from the spot all those things are coming up from. Any Heroes down there with area abilities who might be able to lend a hand, link in with my team channel, please.”

Sphere mentally prepared himself. The moment was here, the one he’d dreamed about for so many years. Back then it had been empty and apparently fruitless to imagine he’d show them all what his power could really do, but he hadn’t been able to stop. Strangely, that urge had faded somewhat since being selected. It still existed—he wasn’t a completely new person, after all—but now his mind couldn’t help considering the collateral damage being wrought, the lives being risked, or the emotional traumas being inflicted. He wanted to prove to the world that power didn’t have to be big or flashy or even fall within some arbitrary scale to be effective as hell.

But to his surprise, he wanted to stop the threat far more.

“In five,” Delphi said. “Four…”

“What the hell is that?” said Moonbeam, a Hero who had decided to team up with Celia as she worked her way around the field. The number of robots had begun to get a little silly by the time Sphere made his way to the hole in the ground they swarmed from. America had wondered aloud over the channel at one point what the purpose of the attack could possibly be, and Celia was inclined to agree. It was weird as hell. Mayhem like this only happened in the movies. In the real world, no one spent the kinds of time and resources it took to create a freaking robot army just to waste it this way.

“It’s a distraction,” she said, speaking without thinking.

Moonbeam thrust her hand forward, something that looked like a geometric heat shimmer springing into existence in front of her flattened fingers. The semi-visible plane of force jutted out three or four feet and intersected the head of a looming robot, cutting through it without any noticeable effort. “Lace, you’re telling me that whirlwind of robot parts is a distraction? Why would the asshole doing this destroy his own units to keep us busy?”

“Oh, that,” Celia said. She was still having a hard time remembering to respond when people called her by her code name. “No, that’s Sphere. One of our guys. He’s sitting in the mouth of the hole those robots are trying to come out of. Pretty sure he turned the tunnel beneath it into a big metal grinder.”

“Oh,” Moonbeam said, her face contorting behind her black and silver mask. “Wow, that dude must be tough to dish out that kind of hurt.”

“Please don’t tell him that,” Celia asked politely. “We just now started housebreaking him. He’ll be insufferable.”

Moonbeam chuckled. “So…you’re saying all this—” she waved a hand around while also calling up a protective sheet of force as a robot barreled toward them “—is the distraction.”

Celia nodded. “Yeah. I dunno what might be around here a meta genius would be interested in, but it feels right.” She cocked her head. “Admittedly, I’m a trainee with a couple months under her belt and everything I know about investigations I learned on NCIS, so I’m probably wrong.”

She flexed her prosthetic hand, an old habit from the years when she hadn’t had one at all. So much time spent learning to control the threads to make the hand work, then far more giving it mannerisms and realistic motion. That kind of thing was hard to undo.

“I came to the same conclusion,” America said over the comm. “Sphere and Recursion have moved into the tunnel. The flow of robots there is almost gone. Once we clear up the rest of them up here, the danger should be over. We can work on locating Michael Wells. Who is barely a meta genius, by the way. These things are rudimentary, even if there are a lot of them.”

Celia couldn’t help smiling a little beneath her mask. Of course America had read everything MICA had on the guy. She put a hand on Moonbeam’s shoulder to make the other woman pause, then sent out half a dozen tendrils to snap around the torsos of as many machines. She pulled them together in a giant mass in front of Moonbeam, who obliged by quickly forming a snowflake of intersecting planes of force that effortlessly reduced the ball of metal to spare parts. “Thanks,” she said.

“No worries,” Moonbeam replied. “Thinning out up here. Want to help me mop up the stragglers? I think my team is good without me.”

“Sure,” Celia said, suddenly pleased with herself. Something about wearing the mask was freeing. She’d hidden away for a long time, not wanting people to notice her hand. Even at America’s house earlier today, she’d worn the giant hoodie and let her hair fall over her face. It was just more…natural. Comfortable. The mask gave her total coverage, along with the uniform, but it also gave her the freedom to act.

She’d come to the program to get her hand back, with no idea what shape that would take. The part of her that had always taken to observing from behind the veils she raised around herself wondered if Shirani had known all along that America would want to make it happen. Maybe he’d seen right away in America what it took others weeks or months to uncover: that she was an odd but pleasant blend of someone who enjoyed challenges for their own sake, and who cared enough to make them worthwhile efforts.

Celia might have come for her hand, but today gave her a glimpse of what it felt like to make herself seen while attaining the perfect anonymity she’d always tried for. There was a seductive, almost addictive quality to knowing she was helping people. A dose of that hit her as she and Moonbeam darted toward one of the few remaining clusters of machines, who were wailing on a hero built like a cartoon character, his frame and muscles were so large. He held up well, but the damage had begun to accumulate as he crouched and huddled over…

“A dog?” Celia breathed. “He’s protecting a dog!”

She sent out threads of Alium from her artificial hand, using her power to make them as strong and stiff as possible. A few were thin as a human hair. Her tactile telekinesis was unique in how it let her manipulate tethers. Few people really understood the implications.

With that effort of will, the Alium threads became a scythe, hard as diamond and far stronger than the steel they whipped into. The robots jolted in place as the threads whipped through them, then toppled in half.

“You okay?” she asked the huge Hero as he stood. He said that he was as he cradled the dog against his chest. It shook and whined, eyes wide and darting. She slowly reached out a hand, brushing the backs of her fingers along its snout to calm it. The little dog began to wiggle, its tail thumping against the man holding it. It gave her a doggy grin. The rush of satisfaction she got from the simple relief the little guy felt at being rescued coursed through her.

And that was just a dog.

She could get used to this.

Chapter Eighteen

An Annual Tradition

It happened during the cleanup phase. The thing they’d had drilled into their heads in nearly every combat class, every piece of instruction meant to prepare them for working on their own in the real world: the unexpected. Anyone skilled and powerful enough to achieve the title Hero and be accredited with the responsibilities and rights that came with it had to be prepared for anything. The opposition was just as much a community, and criminals the world over had no qualms about sharing strategies and tactics best suited to take down costumed champions.

Capitalizing on their expectations and overconfidence was chief among them.

America had come down into the square with all the other Heroes, in training or otherwise. Agents by the dozen appeared once the fighting was done, initiating what she learned were standard post-incident protocols. Williams officially took charge of the scene while Rohm moved about freely, touching every downed machine to gather psychometric information from it.

Distracted by the information flooding her lenses as she tried to make sense of the attack, America took nearly a full second to realize something was wrong. She stood with her team, her head bowed slightly to push away the random data the world forced at her in every waking moment. It was because she was looking at an unchanging section of damaged pavement that she saw the drone.

It was a small thing, a metal sphere a few inches across traveling on ten pincer-like legs. The camera serving as its single eye focused on her, then scanned to the side to take in Team 7.

America frowned at it, understanding flooding her brain even as the thing let out a shrill beep. All around the shattered section of city, which was surrounded by barriers of energy conjured by one of the agents, shattered mechanical bodies clinked and clunked. Her mind went into overdrive, time slowing as she tracked the barrels of weapons emerging from those robots whose chest cavities hadn’t been crushed or torn apart.

In a fraction of a second she was able to calculate and see, almost by instinct, the trajectory of every shot that would be fired in her field of vision. The team had just begun to react themselves, though only the first movements of surprised victims as yet unable to grasp what the strange noises they’d heard could possibly mean. They were the proverbial deer in the headlights.

Heroes and agents scattered across the desolation in front of her reacted quickly—inhumanly so, in a few cases—with barriers coming up to protect some, bursts of super speed to disable weapons or invulnerable bodies thrown in front of the danger in others.

America saw one pile of machines zero in on her group, the weapons emerging from the broken robot bodies like mechanical saplings all moving as one to take aim at them. Without conscious thought, she threw herself between the cluster and her companions.

There were shouts from behind her as the heavy weapons unleashed a fusillade of bullets.

Bullets. Thank god for that.

America screamed as they struck her, a thousand fists of lead hammering against what felt like every inch of her body. A heartbeat later, something shook the world around her and the assault abruptly cut off. By then she was already falling, pain filling every atom of her universe.

As it turned out, enough hurt could overwhelm even her control. She passed out to the sound of worried, furious voices. Her friends were worried about her.

Friends, she thought as the world went black. Huh.

“Huh,” Susan said to the momentarily stunned group. “I kinda thought you’d be more dead. Or at least hurt.”

America groaned as she sat up, Cam putting a hand to her shoulder. “Dude, what are you doing? Lay down until we can have a healer look at you.”

“Not shot,” America grunted. “Suit stopped the rounds.”

A small displacement of air sent concrete dust wafting across the area around the team. “We have an injury?”

The new arrival was an unfamiliar Hero in an all-black uniform broken only by a white, circular patch on his left shoulder containing a small rod of Asclepius. The large man, clearly a healer by his singular marking, knelt down and unceremoniously put a hand on America’s shoulder.

“Hmm,” he muttered. “Twenty-seven impacts. No bleeding, but you’re gonna bruise like a son of a bitch. There are…let’s see…two cracked ribs and you took an unlucky trio of shots to the tendons in your left wrist. I’ll need to touch your skin to patch you up. I can only dowse you through the uniform.” He tugged at a fold of fabric where America’s sleeve met her shoulder. “Also, what’s this made of? Because I’d love to get myself a new uniform. Anything that can hold up to all those bullets is worth the money.”

America grinned inside her helmet. “It’s special order. There’s a couple hundred thousand dollars’ worth of Alium in it.”

The healer—identified via her lenses as Balm—started slightly. “Uh, wow. How’d you swing that?”

“I’m very rich,” America said drily. “Can we go somewhere private? I’d rather not show any skin in public if I can help it.”

Balm nodded. “Oh, yeah. That’s standard protocol. There’s a teleporter around here somewhere, hang on.”

There was a flurry of conversation and an equally quick physical transition before America found herself back home. The team surrounded her, along with Balm, Rohm, Williams, and Dave. They were in her great room. She could tell from the variety of subtle clues. The vaulted ceiling. The north-facing windows. The dozen or so family members staring in shock at the sudden appearance of almost as many people in costumes.

America shook her head and detached the glove from the seal where it met the wrist of her suit. She extended the hand to Balm, who pulled off his own glove to reveal a soft brown hand of his own. Soothing green light flowed from his fingers and into her, and with it came relief. She’d been pretty sure the suit would hold up to most gunfire, but testing in the lab and jumping in front of a spray of bullets were two horrifyingly different things. The memory was still fresh. Even thinking about it jolted her away from the calm healing aura calming her pain and washing away her injuries.

Balm’s hand tightened on hers, gently but firmly. He crouched next to America and met her eyes. She wasn’t quite sure how she knew that considering the featureless black mask with its white lenses, but she did.

“Piece of advice?” he asked. And he was genuinely asking—he waited for America to nod at him before continuing. “I’ve heard of you. Your team. I know you’re smart, so please just take this as someone with a little more experience trying to help you out.”

“Sure,” America said.

“Good,” Balm said. “You’re gonna see some things, do some things, that mess you up. Some of it will help show you who you really are. Not all the stuff we think of when we talk about identity. That’s important, but not what I mean. I got a feed of the video of what you did about two seconds after you did it. I was the on-call medic for your team. You put yourself in danger to help your friends. Maybe not the most logical decision, but you did it anyway. That tells me a lot about who you are—who you really are—deep down.”

America said nothing, wishing the others weren’t so close. Hell, that so many strangers weren’t standing right there listening to this.

Balm sat back on his heels. “It’s good to get a grasp on the kind of person you are, because it helps you shape the person you want to be. The other part is what you have to worry about. The traumas add up. Don’t push them to the side or pretend you don’t need to deal. The only way past them is through, as my mom always told me. Confront it now and work through it. Every time.”

America shook her head and removed her mask. It was more of a helmet, though the Alium composite plates were all held together by the woven black metallic fabric the world saw when they looked at Delphi. “That’s a pretty thorough speech.”

“I give it a lot,” Balm admitted. “I’m usually assigned to trainees in the field. I used to be a combat medic. Then when I got home, I studied psychology and became a trauma therapist. I’ve been where you are. I just want to help.”

America blinked several times, eyes misty. “Thanks. Seriously.”

“No problem,” Balm said, breaking contact and standing. “Dave, if you wouldn’t mind getting me back out there? I think everyone here would like to continue their holiday. The debrief can wait until tomorrow.”

Dave nodded, stepping forward. “Hopefully Control agrees with you.”

Balm waved a goodbye. “It’s my medical opinion. They’d better.”

The men vanished, leaving the team and agents to the rest of their Thanksgiving day. Cam and Susan helped America to her feet, though after the wave of healing energy, she didn’t need it.

“Let’s get changed,” Susan said, gently guiding America’s elbow. “I think you’ve earned a few hours of rest and stuffing your face.”

Though she wasn’t sure why, the idea of sitting around and eating with the team sounded like the best possible way to spend her free time.

America took a strange joy in watching her friends eat the home-cooked meal.

“Oh my god,” Chris said as he dove into his third plate. “I didn’t know green bean casserole was a thing, Ms. Jackson. This is amazing.”

Ethan enthusiastically nodded his head as he swallowed a mouthful of food. “Same. I might propose marriage.”

Ava snorted a laugh. “Honey, you need another ten years before you can handle this.”

“Mom, come on,” America said. “Gross.”

Across the kitchen, Rohm hid a smile behind the sleeve of her pressed white shirt, but America caught it. Of course she did.

A chime filled the house, echoing through every room. America stood. “Oh, I special ordered some components for our suits. Must be the delivery guy.”

Williams waved her back down. “I’ll get it. You hang out.”

As he left the room, a sleepy Cam leaned toward America. She’d begun drifting shortly after they’d returned to the house. America itched to look at the biometric data from Cam’s uniform to find out what happened when the supplement she designed interacted with the other woman’s enhanced ability.

“How’d you get someone to deliver on Thanksgiving?” Cam asked, sounding a tad drunk.

Drew laughed. “Didn’t you hear her? She’s very rich.”

America shrugged. “There are delivery services that use teleporters to get emergency stuff where it needs to be. Most of them will bring you just about anything, though, if you throw ten thousand dollars at them.”

Susan shook her head. “Damn, kid. I mean, I’m rich but not ‘waste ten grand on a delivery’ rich.”

The conversation came to a halt as Williams returned. He was not alone.

No.

To say they stopped speaking fails to capture the moment. Every person at some point in their life experiences a change in atmosphere so abrupt, so powerful, that it alters the behavior of every person present. This is an artifact of the animal nature at the core of human existence. When a prey animal senses a threat, predator or otherwise, they freeze. In people this translates in many ways. Time may seem to slow, the world appears to go quiet for a few seconds. The awkwardness, tension, fear or whatever source of discomfort causing the change sends a ripple through everyone present.

The newcomer with Williams was a giant of a man. With their lenses still in, every member of the team would be informed that he was six feet, eight inches tall and between 300-325 pounds. Broad enough to need to turn sideways to get through smaller doors and heavy enough in the chest and arms to take those doors off their hinges, the man would have been intimidating to the average person. For a group who spent part of their morning destroying murderous robots, his vast dimensions were of passing note at best.

The reactions from America and Ava were instantaneous, and were what sent the wave of tension throughout the gathered families. Ava lost her smile, face going as stony and grim as any soldier gazing down on a battlefield. America shrank in on herself, shoulders drooping as she forced herself not to look away from the man whose face was a rough sketch of America’s own more finely finished product.

“Hello, honey,” he said in a voice not quite as deep as one would expect from a man so large.

There was a pause, short but violent in the way a stabbing changes the texture of an encounter.

“Oh, Gary,” Ava said in a low voice. “You just can’t help sticking your dick in a beehive.”

Gary took a step forward, his hand extended toward America, and that was all it took. Williams put a hand on the much larger man’s shoulder and said, “Don’t,” as Chris and Ethan sprang from their seats to bracket America in her chair. Both young men radiated the ready, contained violence present in all Heroes.

Cam came fully awake and joined Susan in stepping in front of America, while Celia and Drew merely stood where they were with arms crossed, ready to intervene from a distance if necessary. Gary took in the strange scene and—with the self-preservation instincts of a man who shouldn’t have been stupid enough to intrude on this day—froze in place.

“What is this?” he asked, uncertainty etched on his face.

America sat and used every shred of her power not to tremble. No one but her mother understood what was going on, yet every one of the others had stood up for her. Without hesitation or thought, they took her side and chose to put themselves between her and a man who clearly upset her. She wished she could make them realize how much that meant to her, and how paralyzed she was by the sudden volcanic eruption of anxiety that she still couldn’t manage to contain or control. The world around her felt suddenly heavy, pressing on her from every direction. Her skin, her chest, her head. Everything was just too much.

Yet from some well of strength she hadn’t known existed, America found the power to speak.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she said. “You should leave now.”

Gary frowned, looking at each of the faces in front of him and finding only angry determination. “You’re my daughter. I wanted…”

America shot to her feet, pushing between Cam and Susan to stare her father in the face. She didn’t raise her voice, but did raise her hand, finger jabbing him in the chest to punctuate her words. “Your what, now? You left us. You left me. As soon as you found out what I was, you were gone. Because of what I am, I couldn’t forget your exact words or the look on your face when you said them. I couldn’t lose the memory of you walking out the door to leave your ‘freak’ daughter to deal with her powers without her dad. Now that I’ve learned how to forget if I want, I decided not to. Because I never wanted to let anyone hurt me the way you did ever again.”

Gary’s face contorted with anger. “You don’t speak to me like that, girl.”

Celia let out a bark of a laugh. “Dude, you have no idea who you’re dealing with. You’re the one who needs to watch his fucking mouth.” A cloud of tendrils slithered from beneath her clothes, writhing in the air menacingly. Next to her, Drew conjured his orb and let it orbit his head as he stared daggers at the huge man.

Cam flexed, Ethan rolled his shoulders in the way all young men did when they were about to make a brave but probably suicidally stupid decision, and Chris suddenly became six of himself. Only Susan made no move other than to cross her arms and grin.

“Seems to me you left your kid when she needed you the most and came back once she got herself some money,” Susan said lightly. The others knew her well enough to sense the murderous rage being held in check. “Me? I would kill to have just one more day with my son. I’d have done anything for him. That’s what parents do. You think these other people here are scary, but not one of them would mess with me. Consider that real hard before you open your mouth again.”

America felt the anxiety quiet down in a way she never had before. It loosened up just enough to let her once more touch that reserve of strength. “I don’t know how you found me, but you need to forget this address. You need to forget you have a daughter, because as far as I’m concerned, you don’t. India and the other kids might forgive you, I don’t know. I just know I never will. I know who you are deep down, Gary. The fact that I hid my identity and moved across the country should have been enough of a hint, but you’re still here. I’ll make it as clear as I can.” She waved a hand at the team. “You pop back up again, I don’t think any of us is going to do much talking. Now get the fuck out of my house.”

Gary took in several deep breaths, clearly working himself up to something. Rohm didn’t let him. She nodded to another guest, one who’d remained in the background. “Dave,” she said lazily, “I believe we have an intruder. It’s our duty to relocate him to keep our students safe.”

Dave, who had been steadily annihilating a plate of deviled eggs, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and stood. “Understood, Agent Rohm. The usual spot?”

Rohm nodded. “Should be far enough to prevent him from causing any more trouble.”

Gary cast a wary look at the pair of agents and didn’t notice Williams removing his hand from his shoulder and stepping away. “Now, wait just a damn minute. I—” Whatever else he was going to say was lost to them, however, as he and Dave vanished in a blink.

Ava shook her head. “Every year he tries to get in touch with us. Kinda thinking he’ll let it slide next Thanksgiving.”

America took a calming breath and felt Cam’s warm—too warm—hand settle on her shoulder, giving a gentle and reassuring squeeze. She glanced at Rohm. “Where’d you send him?”

The agent returned the look with a crooked grin. “Moscow. I don’t think he’ll be able to cause you any trouble for a while.”

In her head, America decided to add Rohm and the other agents to the short but growing list of people she considered friends.

Chapter Nineteen

Real Life Doesn’t Have Montages

The weeks following their short break were gruesome and torturous for everyone on Team 7 except for, of course, America. Being inducted into Hero training with months of brutal combat training had given them all strong incentive to learn quickly, but no one on the planet learned faster than her. It was now simply a fact of life to the rest of the team, as pointless to get angry about as a force of nature.

Though the shift in priorities that came after their return to the island was less physical, they still did their time in the gym and in fight training. These were familiar friends every trainee had come to look forward to, because it meant a break from the mountainous piles of study they faced on a daily basis.

“Tonight you’ll want to read over the assessment criteria for emergency medical treatment,” Delilah said to the class in front of her. It was composed of Team 7 and Team 3, who turned out to be excellent training and study partners.

Greg Ivanov, the young man who could turn into living metal, spun in his seat and cast pleading eyes at America. “Please tell me you have the time to tutor us tonight.”

America couldn’t help smiling in return. “Oh, god. Put away your puppy dog eyes. Those should be illegal. I’ll find the time. I’m down to two hours of sleep, so it shouldn’t be a problem.”

As their workload increased, America had worked with Evan to fine-tune her power. His belief that she was the most intelligent person on the planet due to her constant—if unintentional—use of her ability to improve her brain function during the critical development of her adolescence also led him to theorize that those same improvements had numerous practical consequences she hadn’t yet explored.

Such as programming herself to fall instantly into the deep sleep all people needed to truly refresh. In a normal human it took a few hours to reach that state, and they only stayed in it for an hour or two. She managed to pack enough rest into a pair of hours for an entire day. Well, usually. Sometimes she needed three if the work was especially intense.

Delilah let the trainees grumble for a few seconds, then shifted slightly behind her lectern. That was all it took—she was the sort of woman who had students teleported where they could drop from the sky as a test. She was not to be dismissed lightly.

“I know we’re piling a lot on you,” she said gently. “That’s why we’ve split your classes. In our experience, smaller groups tend to reinforce this stuff. You’re getting an extra dose of that thanks to America, I know. Most of your training with me will be like this. You can learn it all. You have time to practice and study. Don’t get discouraged.”

The low chime alerting them that class was over filled the room, and Delilah cleared her throat. “That said, I will be gauging your progress tomorrow, so do your best.”

There were a few more grumbles as they left the room, but nothing overt enough to actually drift back to Delilah Sinclair. Though Team 3 was far more powerful in raw metahuman ability than Team 7, the former stuck close to the latter as they moseyed toward the cafeteria. They weren’t strangers any longer, though no one on America’s team was what she’d call close with them. Maybe it would happen in time, but for now she thought of them as friendly acquaintances.

Of course, they were also Heroes in training, and she saw plenty of practical reasons to want them as knowledgeable and skilled as possible.

“This is horseshit,” Owen Miller said. “When are we going to need EMT training?”

His brother Ian, while not identical, looked enough like him that even America confused the two on occasion. “Yeah, because there’s no chance we’ll ever get into a fight without access to healers, right? You really can’t see how much we need this stuff?”

Owen flushed slightly. “Okay, that much I get, I guess. Even the law classes, since we’ll technically be law enforcement. But engineering? Psychology? All those other subjects, too. I see where some of it might help in weird situations but it doesn’t seem worth dropping six tons of work on us this soon.”

The third Miller triplet gave Owen a gentle slap on the back of the head. He whipped his head to the side. “I told you not to do that, Cadence.”

His sister gave Owen an evil grin. “I told you not to call me Cadence, dick. Stop your bitching. America has been helping us study, and so far we’ve all done really well.”

Marta Erickson and Nick Powell, the two members of Team 3 who hadn’t yet waded into the conversation, strolled together behind everyone else with arms linked. America liked them more than most of her training cohort. The girl was an incredibly powerful elemental meta but didn’t let her mastery of water and ice swell her head. It made her a good partner for Nick, whose super speed and durability made him as eager as a toddler to do all the things at all times. Marta had apparently been a calming influence on him in the months before the teams were paired off together.

As always, America let the others talk and play around her without fully being in the moment with them. It would always be that way, or at least for as long as people needed her to guide them. There would probably come a day when that was no longer the case.

For now, she needed a good meal to keep her going for the long evening of study ahead.

After the members of Team 3 left their dorm, it was Cam’s job to make sure the doors were secure. With their schedules growing increasingly full, her own team only managed to have these meetings twice a week, and they tended to be short.

Cam didn’t rush, however. She did the rounds at an even and measured pace. Currently it was the only speed she could safely go. Though she hadn’t suffered any injuries during the robot invasion, neither was she back to perfect health. It was strange to feel muzzy and tired, with the normal aches and pains human beings went through. Ever since that day, when the enhancement she’d been subject to combined with the concentrated, refined nutrient pill America made for her, she had suffered from what the excellent medical staff on the island referred to as ‘some really weird shit going on with your powers.’

She sat back with the group inside the confines of their makeshift living room, which despite the vast open space and lack of walls anywhere near the furniture remained a neat hexagon. America glanced up from her tablet, then tapped a command on its screen.

Six slim pillars extended from hidden recesses in the end tables at each corner of the space and crackled with power. The sound faded almost immediately.

“We’re secure,” America assured them.

Rohm and Williams looked at each other. Williams shrugged, and Rohm gave a sigh before speaking. “Director Shirani should be joining us any minute.”

Cam, slumped in her usual spot on the longest of the couches, gave a small start. “Wait, he knows about these meetings?”

Rohm gave her a withering look. “You all banded together and decided you weren’t going to even consider taking on The Five unless I gave you every fact I know about them, so yeah. It’s pretty damn relevant to his interests. Dave has a two-minute window to ’port in here.”

Cam returned the look with a sour one of her own. “You don’t have to be a bitch about it. Can you blame us for wanting to make an informed decision about the five weakest Heroes ever to wear the title—if we even make it that far—going up against four of the worst mass murderers in history?”

Rohm’s eyes narrowed and her mouth opened, but Williams put a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Emma, come on. You know she’s right. You said the same things when the Secretary put this idea on the table. You told him straight to his face it was wrong to train a team to take on those five without telling them the truth.”

Rohm swallowed whatever words she’d been about to speak and looked down. “Yeah, okay. I know. I’ve just been so pissed for so long. It wears on me.”

A voice spoke from the shadow surrounding the communal space. “I’ll be having words with Secretary Elliot about that, next time we meet.”

Everyone turned to see Jeff Shirani amble toward them, six pizza boxes stacked on his hands. The thought of food made Cam’s stomach lurch as if it were trying to run away. Her powers still worked, but the fourteen hour coma she’d fallen into on Thanksgiving plus a couple weeks of getting nauseous beyond belief every time she ate had done the Pavlovian thing and created an aversion to food.

Dave was nowhere to be seen. She guessed he’d just dropped off Shirani and popped back to wherever he’d come from.

Shirani stepped through the shimmering curtain of energy surrounding the living area and took a seat next to Chris, who looked deeply uncomfortable at being stuck next to one of the world’s most prominent Heroes, even one who taught him how to be one on a regular basis.

“This is the best pizza Chicago has to offer,” Shirani said, setting the pies down on the nearest coffee table. “Some of you might disagree with the idea that Chicago style pizza actually is pizza, but I’m buying so you can keep that to yourself.”

No one said anything. Other than America and Susan, Team 7 seemed frozen. Shirani’s eyebrows came together as he gave them a wry smile. “For the love of…guys. I’m a person. Just a dude. Eat. Bitch at me for agreeing, however reluctantly, to do as Secretary Elliot ordered and keep you in the dark if that’s what you want to do. I deserve it. I’d just like you to give me the chance to prove that from here on out, I’ve got your back. You get full disclosure and whether or not you decide to be our strike team for The Five is up to you. You have my word that no matter what it takes, I’ll make sure you can be Heroes either way you choose.”

Cam saw the others react to the words, the weeks of worrying the idea of fighting The Five like a toddler gnawing the corner of a blanket adding up in their heads. She saw the tension in their shoulders and the way every one of them had grown more tense, Susan excepted. Cam was pretty sure the older woman would skydive without a parachute if she thought there was a good chance she’d land on one of The Five.

Rohm began to speak, briefly going over the things they’d covered in their last meeting before delving into the detailed topic for this one. She gave the standard warning about how dangerous information could be just before getting to the meat of tonight’s topic.

“Remember that all I did was tell Secretary Elliot that Cascade made an annual trip to a certain bar on a certain day, and see how that turned out,” Rohm said, eyes moving from person to person. Cam didn’t shrink away because she was intimidated, but because the smell of the pizza was making her even more queasy than usual. “The smallest fact can lead to the most disastrous consequences.”

“Only if reactionary idiots considering running for President in a few years see an opportunity to enlarge their political dicks,” America said. “Did anyone consider asking why he went to that bar on that day? What it was the anniversary for?”

Shirani nodded. “We had an investigative team analyze it for a month. We couldn’t work it out. Obviously, the place is gone now. Cascade went nova inside it. All we have are the scans our people took during the investigation.”

America perked up and the sudden movement made Cam light headed. That didn’t seem right. Just watching someone move in their seat should not have that kind of effect. “I need those scans. I need everything you have on The Five, really, but definitely the stuff on Cascade first. I might be able to work out a—”

Cam leaned forward, eyes closed and hands on her head. “Honey, I know you can use that beautiful brain of yours to do just about anything, so before you solve the mystery by seeing what kind of shoes Cascade wore or some other ridiculous thing, do you think you can figure out why the world is spinning around so fucking hard?”

Then she vomited and passed out. The only good thing about the former was that Cam had so little in her belly that the mess was small and contained. Thanks to the latter, she only had a few seconds of feeling embarrassed before unconsciousness saved her the trouble.

When she woke, Cam was instantly aware. The clarity with which the world suddenly came into focus was as sharp and concise as it was familiar. This was her power at one of the daily peaks she’d experienced before battling the robots. No nausea assaulted, only the passive sensation of strength that pervaded her muscles and bones after eating just the right kind of meal.

With this new clarity, Cam also noted that she wasn’t in the infirmary.

“Your lab? Really?” she asked.

America looked up from the tablet in her hand and smiled. “It’s the middle of the night. We thought it would be suspicious to call a healer at this hour.”

Cam nodded, and reveled for a moment in the fact that the motion didn’t send her stomach into cartwheels. “Can’t risk anyone getting even the slightest idea that something strange might be up, yeah. I remember.”

America’s face grew less sunny, falling closer to the more strained countenance she’d walked around with since learning why their team was assembled. Cam couldn’t blame her. It certainly would have been easier on America had they decided to walk away from the job, but they hadn’t. Not even one of them. Not that anyone but Susan was all-in on the idea of becoming a secret weapon to be used against The Five. No sane person blithely walked into that lion’s den, full stop.

Yet the psych profiles Shirani used to gather Team 7 must have been packed with accurate information, as far as Cam was concerned. Their goal was to gather a team made of people with some innate desire—maybe even a need—to do the right thing, even if that impulse was heavily painted with other and possibly less pure drives. The kind of person who will stand and fight even when they’re terrified to their bones is also the kind of person who won’t run away when presented with a daunting task orders of magnitude more frightening than that fight.

Cam was like the others in that she was unwilling to walk away without cause. They wouldn’t be thrown at The Five before they were ready. Shirani was very clear on that front. It wasn’t a trick MICA could pull twice. Oh, they’d almost definitely have similar efforts being put together on smaller scales, now that they knew Reign had limitations on who he could control. Cam might not be America Jackson-level smart, but in human terms she did well enough. You’d have to be an idiot to assume there weren’t MICA agents with low-powered abilities that could still wreck the shit out of a supervillain’s day if jammed in the spokes just right.

If she was going to see it through (and Cam was inclined to, a thought that made her mouth go dust-dry with fear both because the enemy was vastly more powerful and because that inclination said scary things about the effectiveness of her survival instinct) then there were practical considerations.

“I assume you figured out what was wrong with me,” Cam said dryly. “I mean, you figure out everything and I’m guessing you went to town studying me since personal space is as alien to you as the Klingon language.”

“Qo’ vaj be,” America said in a guttural tone, though her smile returned.

Cam shook her head. “God, you’re a nerd.”

“To answer your, um, assumption: yeah. I figured out what was wrong,” America said. “Basically, we can either let Williams enhance you, or you can use the supplements I made, but not both. Your power—and I mean your normal power without either of them—was kind of broken. Apparently the combination of the two fixed it.”

Cam blinked. “You’re gonna have to run that one past me again. Does not compute.”

America chewed the inside of her lip as she considered her answer. That was a thing Cam got about her that other people missed. The girl was probably the brainiest human being on the planet, and not by a small margin. Because of that, everyone else assumed she knew the answer right away. That much was probably true in most cases, yet it didn’t mean that she always knew the best way to give the answer. When it came to saying the right thing not to upset a friend, for example, she was often just as slow and awkward as anyone else.

Yet Cam had her expectations dashed—it wasn’t bad news.

“Basically, you’ve always assumed your ability is that you’re sort of allergic to nutrients,” America said. “You get different abilities based on what’s in your stomach. That’s…kind of true. It’s complicated. Basically I discovered that a part of that process is that your body converts some of the mass of that food into energy that fuels your strength and speed and whatnot. Before the attack, it was a really inefficient process.”

Cam found herself nodding along. She saw it even as America spoke. “Because if my powers used up the food that way, I’d starve to death.”

America nodded back enthusiastically. “Nailed it. The capsules I made for you contain the raw, concentrated forms of several nutrients. Your stomach doesn’t have to start breaking them down to fuel your powers. They’re ready to use. Which under normal circumstances would just make you stronger, faster. But when you were enhanced, it was a geometric increase in how efficiently your power worked. You basically turned those food pills directly into energy, or enough of their mass to do some truly messed-up shit to your body. You absorbed the energy and it made you a human wrecking ball, but it was like putting too much voltage through a wire. It almost burned you out. The last few weeks have been the fallout of that. You’ve been nauseous because your body was telling you that food was dangerous—and it was, for a while. I sort of…reset you.”

Cam grimaced. “Should I ask how?”

America didn’t treat the question as rhetorical or a joke. “No, I wouldn’t. The important thing to know is that after a lot of intensive scans and some testing you should be really glad you slept through, I’m positive that the supplement and the enhancement together threw open the faulty circuit in your power. You’ll get more bang for your buck from any food now. You’ll draw way more energy from it.”

“Wait, you mean my Pitch has gone up? Won’t that make me vulnerable to Reign?” Cam felt that ever-present worry about The Five bubble back up to the surface.

“Nope,” America said with a grin. “I’m starting to think Shirani and his people are smarter than me, at least as a group. Your Pitch is exactly the same. Your power is a sort of cheat around the whole system. Pitch measures your bioelectrical field compared to normal humans. It’s a set thing, a reaction to your ability itself. Your power is to fuel one or several abilities based on what you eat by converting food directly into raw energy. If that supplement had been ten percent more mass, you’d have burned out. I mean, it couldn’t have been perfect matter-energy conversion, or that gram of food would have released the energy equivalent of a 44 kiloton warhead. Still, it was enough.”

Cam blinked. “I’m gonna be more powerful than before, is what you’re saying.”

America gave her a sly look. “I’m saying you’re a living battery that charges itself up to do a staggering variety of things, and that your vulnerability to Reign’s influence doesn’t increase at all because of it. Which I’m pretty sure Shirani knew, which I’m also sure is part of why he picked you, which makes me think he would have done the same thing in selecting the other members of this team. I think it’s time we start looking harder at what each of us can do.”

Cam wanted to close her eyes and wail silently at the idea. Since coming to the island, her life had become a nonstop barrage of training, pain, and endless study. America wanted to add more to it, on top of the quiet conspiracy to stop The Five.

Not for the first time, Cam found herself thankful that America was on the side of the angels. As a Hero, even one in training, she was dangerous enough.

Chapter Twenty

Honky-Tonk

It was three days before Christmas before Shirani and Delilah Sinclair brought Team 7 up to date on the machine incursion they’d dealt with on Thanksgiving. The meeting came on the afternoon following a long morning of certification testing. They had a long way to go on the more complex subjects all aspiring Heroes had to learn such as engineering, but everyone on the team was buzzing with relief that they’d passed the basic emergency medicine and crisis management tests.

“I’m glad you all did well,” Shirani said as they settled into their seats in a conference room. They rarely saw the administration level. He preferred to keep it that way; let the students see the machinery that made the program function too often and they might start to believe it was run by fallible human beings after all. “As I told you when I set this meeting, we’ve concluded our investigation into the attack in Washington by Michael Wells.”

Susan, lounging low in her seat with one leg thrown up over the arm of her chair, raised an eyebrow. “Finally caught him, did you?”

Shirani frowned, but it was Delilah who spoke. “We found his body. We know the attack was his work since he was spotted just before the heavier concentrations of machines showed up. We were hoping to capture him alive and discover how he managed to escape the scene.”

Celia, who had done more of the work in dealing with the robots than nearly anyone else, spoke sharply. “Did you finally work out what he was after?”

Shirani and Delilah shared a significant glance. “Wells was discovered in his…look, no one actually calls them lairs, okay? But this thing was basically a lair. We had people working to crack the encryption on the navigation software his robots used for three weeks, and it was obvious he’d been dead for at least ten days by the time we got there.”

He paused. They were cleared to tell the trainees everything, though every instinct in him fought against it. There would be time for them to learn how fragile all institutions really were. It wasn’t right to seed them with those doubts now.

But America had told her team the truth, and it hadn’t broken them. If anything they had become a more solid team, if only through the shared bond of their distrust for MICA.

“Wells had access to MICA computer systems,” Shirani said with reluctance. “We assumed his attack had another level to it aside from the crap he put in that manifesto. Rohm and Williams chased him for years when he targeted Heroes, but the guy was pragmatic. He always had secondary and tertiary objectives. Takes a lot of resources for someone like him to operate.”

America snorted. “I could hack your system in a day if I had to. You’re saying he didn’t have any of those secondary objectives?”

Shirani gave her a toothy grin. “As a matter of fact, you couldn’t. Wells only got in so far that he could access the ground-floor stuff. Important information, but nothing so secret it directly endangered lives. I’m sure he really was trying to make some kind of statement about the government since that’s been his whole shtick for the last decade, but his actual goal was taking out Rohm and Williams. He knew they were on call that day.”

The silence that fell across the room was palpable. Shirani and his people had chosen Team 7 with extraordinary care, even if they’d missed America’s wealth. The profiles were accurate down to the micron—none of them were stupid. They all saw the implication at once, though it was Susan who spoke first. Probably because she had the most personal stake in making sure the experiment that was Team 7 succeeded.

“Does that mean he knew about us? About why you put our team together?”

Shirani shook his head. “No. I won’t say it’s impossible that someone could have worked out our plans for your team, but they couldn’t do it even if they had full access to the MICA database. There’s nothing on paper, nothing electronic—as far as the world is concerned, your team exists solely to test out how well lower-strength metas can function as Heroes. Other than the people on this island, less than twenty people on the planet know the truth.”

His job was to pass the news along to them, and that was done. It was up to Delilah to give them their marching orders. A job Shirani found himself thankful to be free from this time around.

They sat at a table—technically two tables—and spoke in normal voices, unafraid of being overheard. Though Celia had her doubts about the small device disguised to look like a cell phone now sitting on the table in front of her, a bit of testing proved it worked just fine. To anyone outside the bubble surrounding their barren section of the bar, the conversation would be muted babble. Background noise. They couldn’t be overheard.

“Who killed Wells, do you think?” Celia asked, deliberately trying not to glance around to see if any other patrons heard her despite the protections in place.

“Who cares?” Susan replied, punctuating the gesture with the drink in her hand. “You read the reports. You know he dealt with a lot of dangerous people. Maybe he screwed one of them over, or his attack brought the wrong kind of attention. Good riddance.”

Celia did care, though. It struck her as too convenient that the man would end up dead without a chance of being questioned. The brief summary given to them by Shirani before Delilah sent them on this weird outing—apparently another of their first-year tests—said that every system Wells had was wiped. Nothing in any of his computers, no paperwork that could lead them to other criminals. A clean slate.

“What I want to know is how this constitutes a test,” Cam said, nodding toward the bar. “Sinclair tells us to dress in civvies and teleports us here. Which by the way, what even is her power? That’s the second time she’d done that, but I’ve seen her move things with her mind a couple times. Does she have a bunch?”

It wasn’t unheard of. Sometimes people developed clusters of abilities for no reason anyone could determine. Usually it was low-powered stuff and even then it was rare for the abilities not to be related somehow. Like everyone on the planet, Celia knew some of the giant exceptions to that rule by their colorful costumes and legendary status.

But Celia knew that wasn’t the case here. “You haven’t worked it out?”

Cam cocked her head. “Worked what out? Her ability?”

“Yeah,” Celia said with a nod. “She’s a mimic. Or something close. I think she can hold on to three or four powers she’s copied at one time.”

Everyone at the table stared at her in surprise, even America, who spoke. “How’d you work that out? I didn’t work that out.”

Celia shrank into her ever-present hoodie slightly at the attention. She might have gotten better about dealing with people since the start of training, but the mundane setting was, in a bit of irony, now something she wasn’t used to. The island and the things they trained to do, even their odd jaunts into the world to do the work itself, made something as boring as sitting down to hang out in a bar feel jarringly off. Being plunged into normality somehow broke the shield being isolated or in costume had built around her.

Which was obviously the point.

Delilah sent them to this bar with the simple instruction that they not reveal their metahuman nature to anyone inside it. She wanted them to remember that there were ways they were still vulnerable. Or maybe the point was to impress on the trainees that regular people were no different than them, but for the strange genetic fluke giving Celia and the other their powers. Probably both, now that she thought about it, and maybe the test had more lessons buried in it that she couldn’t see. She’d keep looking, though. That’s what she did.

“I pay attention,” Celia said with a shrug. “I spend more time on the admin floor since they have to monitor my hand. She’s there all the time.” She flexed her wrist unconsciously, but there was no worry anyone would look twice at the prosthetic. Mostly because America had been good to her word and made switching it out as simple as changing shoes. This one had few tricks built into it, but looked like a completely normal hand.

A waitress approached—it was a bar and grill, after all—and America slipped her hand over the sound damper in a move so casual and natural that Celia knew it was practiced. How the hell did the woman find the time to practice things like that? She must have wired it into her brain just like all the combat training. Damn, but that was a useful talent.

There was no sign that the damper was off. Anything obvious would have defeated the purpose. Celia just assumed America had done it with perfect timing, and it momentarily stunned her that she’d internalized that level of trust for anyone outside of her family so fast.

The others were stiff—with the exception of Susan, of course, who never seemed particularly bothered by anything—and Celia knew it was because they were all thinking of this as the test it was. Celia, however, just felt nervous. Which was par for the course when she was in public. That made whatever criteria they were being measured against a lot less relevant. She decided to manage her discomfort in the traditional way.

“Hi,” Celia said to the waitress, who introduced herself as Danielle. “I’d like to start with a rum and coke, as soon as you can get it to me. And keep ’em coming.”

If the entirety of this test was to see if they could go a few hours without making it obvious they were metahuman, then Celia would excel by making sure she did the most human thing possible. She’d drown her worries in booze and hope for the best.

Staying at a bar for hours by itself wasn’t all that strange, though doing so in the middle of the day when the place was still sparsely occupied did make the team stand out. Celia was quietly thankful Susan had aged herself down. Too many people knew the face she’d carried for the last twenty years or so. There was always a chance someone would recognize her anyway—she’d been famous long enough that even her youth was of interest to some people—but Celia knew that was an outside chance at best. And of course, it wasn’t common knowledge she was a metahuman.

The strange glances they got from a few of the regular patrons, who were easy enough to distinguish by the way they comfortably slouched on their stools and spoke with familiarity to the staff, was enough to make Celia constantly aware of how out of place they must have seemed. It was lucky that bars weren’t exactly new territory for groups of young twentysomethings looking to burn away an afternoon.

Ah, that was it. They weren’t acting right. The suspicion directed their way wasn’t because they were there—it was because they weren’t behaving the way a group their age would be expected to.

She was five drinks and two hours into their stay (with three shared plates of appetizers to soak up a little of the booze) when the realization hit her.

“Is the thing on?” she asked the table in a low, if slightly slurry, voice.

Cam glanced down at the damper, more easily in her line of sight, and looked up with a nod. “Yeah. What’s up?”

“This is definitely a test, but I’m pretty sure it’s not just to make sure we don’t do something stupid and obvious,” Celia said. Her thoughts were coming a little easier now. She took in the things she’d only peripherally noted over the last hour as she’d thrown back tall drinks loaded heavily with delicious rum. “I think it’s also to see how well we blend in. We kinda suck at that. We’re being quiet and respectful.”

America looked puzzled. “That’s the polite thing to do so we don’t attract attention.”

Drew let out a small ‘ah’ sound. “We’re a bunch of college-aged kids in a bar on a weekday. We’re not supposed to be polite. We’re supposed to be rude assholes.”

Celia smirked. “If anyone would know, it’s Drew.”

“Fuck you very much,” Drew said mildly.

To her surprise, the others took the point fairly easily. Ethan and Chris seemed to relax and fell into their roles within a few minutes, almost as if being obnoxious dude bros was somehow written into their DNA. There was even some arm-wrestling. Maybe twenty minutes after that, Celia made her way to the bathroom for the third time. She hadn’t paid much attention to the various posters and flyers slapped on every surface on the other occasions, but now she was starting to get more of a feel for what this test actually entailed. It was because of this enhanced wariness that she noticed a poster slightly less trashed than the ones around it.

With today’s date on it.

“Son of a bitch,” she hissed as she finished her business and ran out to the others.

They sat at the table ordering their meals from Danielle, who smiled brightly at Celia as she returned. She was the last to order—something called a Cowboy Killer Burger—and motioned for America to turn the damper back on.

“I know why they put us here today,” Celia said. “And why that bitch Delilah gave us such a specific window to be here. In about an hour, there’s gonna be a Donny Woods show.”

Ethan, who had been playing on his phone, looked up with a frown. “Isn’t he that guy from the Thanksgiving parade a few years ago?”

Susan barked a laugh. “You mean the one who was supposed to be having his big, career-making performance but came onstage so wrecked that he started hallucinating halfway through his first song and broke a guitar over the head of one of America’s favorite morning hosts?”

America sat up straight. “I don’t—”

“The country, sweetie,” Cam said. “So what’s the big deal? He’s gonna play a few songs. Not really surprising this place is the best he can do these days.”

Celia briefly closed her eyes and counted down from three. God help her, did none of these people even tangentially brush up against internet culture? “Woods also said some pretty upsetting things in an interview afterward. Not white supremacist stuff, but definitely shitty. So now there are whole message boards set up to make sure people show up to protest any time he plays. And because people are fucking awful as a general rule, trolls show up to counter protest because they love the chaos, I guess.”

“Oooooooh,” Cam said with dawning concern. “So this place is gonna be packed full of actual, real assholes pretty soon. Who could do anything, really, with no way to predict how they’ll behave.”

The test, as it turned out, was a little more complicated than any of them expected up front. Which Celia realized was fully on them. At this point they should have learned to be instantly suspicious of anything Shirani did. It was just a good survival mechanism to develop.

Though Celia spent the first hour of the show a nervous wreck, Donny Woods didn’t end up being the problem. The bar had apparently insisted on extra security for exactly the reasons everyone who knew about the guy would expect, and the trio of off-duty cops kept things under a respectable amount of control. She did her best to watch everywhere at once without being obvious about it. It helped that no one was paying attention to her or the group.

Almost no one.

A fight broke out between two groups of men ostensibly there to enjoy the pop-country stylings of Donny Woods, though both sets of dudes were eyeing each other from the moment they noticed the existence of the other. It was the brewing trouble she’d expected, but not, as it turned out, the trouble she got.

Alarm bells rang in Celia’s head as the three police officers broke up the scuffle and hauled the offenders outside with a quickness surely born of a strong desire not to have to deal with any of this shit on what should have been their day off. It wasn’t the fight itself which pushed her anxiety right up to the edge of actual panic; it was the sudden lack of a security presence.

When she saw one of the bar regulars stand up and peer directly at the table before jerking his head at someone she couldn’t see in the crowd, she knew. It was too convenient. Too well-timed. This guy had waited for his moment and the way he gently swayed as he shouldered through the crowd told her all she needed to know about how much cheap beer he’d swilled.

He was big. Not a giant by any means, but big all the same. Maybe six two and solidly built, with short hair and beard both salted with gray. His companions, three men so close in style and build that they might have been made at the same factory, spread out slightly as their leader stepped up to the table.

All of Team 7 looked at him, even Chris, who had to spin around in his seat and crane his neck awkwardly.

“Can we help you?” America asked in a perfectly calm voice.

Shit. That was bad. Distracted, anxious, mildly condescending, excited as she explained something—America was rarely that controlled in how she spoke. Usually it happened during team exercises. Also? During fights.

“You can get the fuck out of our seats,” said the leader. The pleasant smile and equally pleasant tone clashed terribly with his words. “Matter of fact, you can just leave, period.”

Without drama, America reached forward and activated the screen of her phone. Celia blinked. When had she managed to switch it out with the damper? That girl had no right to be as quick with her hands as she was between the ears.

The time was displayed large enough for everyone to see. They still had another hour or so. America looked up at the four men trying their best to be intimidating and gave a polite, even apologetic shrug. “My friends and I were planning to be here for a while yet. We’ll give up our seats around eight, if that works for you.”

“No, it doesn’t ‘work for us,’” said another of the men, who for some reason wore expensive wraparound sunglasses indoors. When it was dark out. Celia wanted to slap him on principle, but at least it wasn’t an unforgivable sin like socks with sandals.

She felt the urge to laugh roll up her throat and clamped down on it as hard as she could. She’d spent all this time worrying, and why? Now that something had happened, it was just…people. Swinging into battle against massive, deadly robots designed to kill hadn’t made her this nervous. Scared? Absolutely. She was completely in agreement with the Justin Berger school of thought when it came to fear. Their combat instructor believed that the second you stopped being afraid in a fight, the timer counting down to when your carelessness killed you started ticking. Healthy fear was a survival mechanism, a lovely middle road threading the needle between blasé regard for the self and the sort of frozen panic that made you a perfect target.

America Jackson had jumped in front of a storm of bullets with no guarantee her armor would hold. These jackasses couldn’t begin to frighten her.

Drew turned his chair around enough that he could start to rise. Celia didn’t see any fear there, though the slightly eager species of cockiness twisting his smile was almost as worrisome.

The man who’d spoken put a hand on Drew’s shoulder and pushed him back down into the seat before the younger fellow could get his balance.

“Sit down, son, before you get hurt,” he said, his hand still clamped onto the younger man.

America was up and away from her chair in a move so fluid that Celia was worried it would break their cover. “Take your hand off my friend. No, Chris. Stay there.”

Chris, who sat next to Drew, was barely in the process of shifting his weight in his chair when America called him out. The big idiot was probably about to do something he thought was noble but was mostly stupid.

“You’re a big bitch,” the drunk leader of the gang said.

America smiled. “Oh, you have no idea. Let go of him. Now.”

The leader smirked. “Or what?”

America tilted her head. “The way I see it, there are two outcomes here. One is that you cause the kind of trouble that ends in another brawl. I can guarantee you that won’t work out the way you think it does. And for what? Seats? Or because you just don’t like brown people and giving us shit is how you get your kicks? It’s a low percentage situation for you, because even if you manage to beat us all senseless, you’re gonna have to kill me.”

The leader frowned, the haze of booze making it a slow, laborious process. “Come again?”

“I’ll fight you if I have to,” America said, crossing her arms. It was, Celia thought, a good effect. She was a tall, broad-shouldered woman with naturally abundant muscles honed to stone by months of grueling work. As threat displays went, it was no dilophosaurus shaking its extended neck frills, but it got the job done. “But if you leave me alive, I’m going to spend all the time I need fucking your lives as hard as I can, possibly with a pineapple or a broken lawn chair.”

Leader guy shook his head. “You’re not making sense.”

“Maybe you’re just too stupid to understand the danger you’re in,” America said in that same dangerously calm voice. “You hurt my friends and I’m going to make you hurt for it. I won’t lie and tell you it’ll become my obsession. I’m pretty good at multitasking and I can’t imagine ruining the every waking moment of four alcoholic dipshits will occupy more than a coffee break on any given day. If you’re curious how I’ll manage this, well, my current net worth is somewhere north of a billion dollars. I’m not really a fan of rich people using their money to hurt others, but I’m willing to spend whatever it takes to make sure you spend a long, long time regretting being the disappointment to your mothers I’m certain each of you are.”

The thing about a certain kind of man—the sort who went through life thinking he could casually menace whoever he didn’t like and get away with it—is that threats rarely work. Because they usually don’t. They get away with it. Bullies get away with it. Celia knew that better than most, so she wasn’t surprised that none of them looked worried about America in the least. They did, however, grow universally flushed at the mention of their mothers.

Celia let out a low, silent sigh. “Welp. That’s that.”

Drew was yanked out of his chair without warning. Chris tumbled forward in an attempt to help his friend, though the effort was instinctive and unplanned, ending in the big blond nearly breaking his face on the table. This was all America needed, apparently. One of her friends was being attacked, and that was not something she could allow. Not from anything short of a public threat, at least. Assholes like this were as low-rent as they came.

America launched herself over the table with one hand on its surface, perfectly balanced and aimed. Celia felt an odd relief that the moment had come. She was so relaxed that she allowed herself a half-second to glance around. It was then that she noticed one of the silent televisions high up on the wall. The news was on, ignored amid the chaos inside the bar. No one was paid attention to the BREAKING NEWS chyron or the aerial shots of…

“Oh, god,” Celia breathed, barely aware of America dropping one of their new drunk friends with an elbow landed with surgical precision. “Guys!”

“What is it?” Cam asked, fidgeting with her desire to join the fray and as aware as Celia that America wanted to handle this on her own.

Celia pointed toward the TV and the scene of utter devastation filling its screen.

“Someone…somebody just attacked Cincinnati,” she whispered. Judging by the destruction, there could be hundreds dead. Maybe thousands.

And they’d been sitting here wasting their time while it happened.

Chapter Twenty-One

Benched

America dropped the last of them without breaking a sweat. Part of that was thanks to the clothes she wore, made in her lab with the thermal regulation technology she’d developed when she was fourteen and bored one spring break. It was on the list of inventions she kept meaning to license out or just plain sell but somehow she never seemed to find the time.

Mostly she just didn’t have to put in that much of an effort. She’d launched herself over the table only after one of hers was attacked, but the painfully slow punch one of the men threw at her was a freebie. It was always best to let them get one shot in, according to the gospel of Justin Berger. Gave you a solid legal standing to hospitalize idiots when needed.

Maybe before she’d spent a few months having her reflexive fear of being hit in the face erased by the necessity of making it a familiar experience, she’d have been scared of these men. This situation. Now it was laughable. She was careful not to dodge around them too easily. She could have flowed between the four men like water and embarrassed them twice as badly. Instead America fell into bar fight mode and thanked her past self for seeing the eventual need for a fighting style that was effective without drawing too much attention.

When the last of them fell, she noticed the place had grown completely silent. She followed the eyes of everyone else in the bar up to the TV.

“What?” she asked in a small, helpless voice. “What?”

She only had a few seconds to process the incomprehensible destruction she saw before someone caught her completely off guard.

“Don’t move!” said a voice thick with the sort of authority that’s handed out with a job title rather than earned on its own. America turned her head toward the source of the words, the world painted in a dreamlike skin of unreality. There were heroes, honest to god superheroes, on the streets every day and on the rooftops every night. They were supposed to stop things like this from happening. Oh, not the cop with his hand resting tensely on the butt of his pistol. That was par for the course.

Things like Cincinnati being attacked—partially destroyed—were supposed to be impossible.

Another policeman approached the scene, picking his way around the fallen, groaning bodies of the four drunks. Chris and Drew were already climbing to their feet. The second cop frowned. “Who wants to explain what happened here? We got patrons telling us a bunch of kids picked a fight with four guys minding their own business.”

“Ah,” America said. Her brain might be more powerful than any other on the planet, but her emotional state fuzzed her thinking just like it did anyone else. A brief flicker of shame burned in her chest that it’d taken her this long to figure it out. This was part of the test. It was a setup. Fortunately, she always planned ahead. “Good thing we have the whole thing on video. Cam, show the officer your phone, please.”

Cam sat up straight, momentary panic darting across her features. She got control quickly, hand going for the phone she’d thrown on the table and hadn’t bothered touching for hours. “Yes, I absolutely did record the whole thing.”

America suppressed a smile. Cam would never be a good liar, which was a good thing so long as she never had to lie to save someone’s life. She could have kissed Cam for the level of trust she showed toward America right now. Hacking their lenses meant a fair degree of control. It had been trivial to use her own interface to force Cam’s lenses to record the fight and dump the video to her phone.

The officer, of course, watched the whole thing. The shot cut out just as Cam looked away from the brawl and toward the TV. That was good. It’d be kind of hard to explain why she’d bothered to turn her phone toward the news.

The pair of police officers scowled down at the four men on the floor, but they still had skeptical expressions for America. That was okay. She was used to dealing with people who had more power than her. It was starting to become a way of life.

When they asked questions, she started explaining. The lies rolled off her tongue without any friction at all.

No one came to spirit them away early so Team 7 could help with rescue efforts in Ohio. Instead, America and the others spent an uncomfortable half an hour speaking with the police and, in her estimation, narrowly avoiding assault charges. Not that she would have minded going to court other than the waste of time it would have been. The chance to rake these idiots over the coals publicly appealed to her, though of course she’d been bluffing about ruining their lives. Random assholes weren’t worth setting aside her principles.

When they finally did return to the island, she was furious. They’d left as a group and followed their instructions to the letter. Missing the exact time at the extraction point would not be good. It could have taken hours to set up another where humans wouldn’t see them vanish.

Delilah herself met them and transported them home, apparently borrowing Dave’s power to do so. She led them silently to a room that would have been spacious without eight people crammed into it. There was only one chair and that behind a cluttered desk, and Delilah took it. Which made sense considering the fairly small, windowless box of a room was clearly her office.

“A bar fight,” she said tonelessly. “That’s how you stay under the radar?”

America had barely opened her mouth to speak when Ethan snorted out a disbelieving laugh. He bristled next to her, arms crossed and a furious smile on his face as he spoke. “Oh, come on. You expect us to believe those guys were actually just a bunch of drunk guys giving us shit? Lady, you need to try harder next time. We passed your test. You said we couldn’t give ourselves up as metahuman. We didn’t.”

Delilah’s face went perfectly smooth. “Not a fan of your tone, young man. But what makes you think—”

Ethan threw his hands up in frustration. “I was really close to them. Too close. You know what I didn’t smell on anyone’s breath? Alcohol. You know what none of them did? So much as waver. Yeah, they sounded hammered, but they didn’t act like it. You should pay your actors more. Might get you someone halfway believable.”

He glanced at the team, stopping to share a significant glance with America, who returned the look with an encouraging smile. Of them all, Ethan was the most quiet and the least accomplished. He didn’t do anything flashy. He wasn’t the most talented of them.

But dammit, he knew how to say what she was thinking. Also, he caught on that the drunks were fake when she hadn’t. Interesting.

“Now that we’ve passed, can you please send us to Cincinnati so we can help look for survivors,” Ethan pleaded. “We saw what happened. There are hundreds of buildings knocked down. I guess you’ll tell us how and who did it on the way, but we should move. God knows how many people are trapped and hurt.”

“I’m afraid not,” Delilah said with what sounded like genuine regret.

Chris straightened. “Excuse me? Isn’t this the job you’re training us for? How can you not let us help?”

Delilah considered the large blond man for a few moments. Not aggressively or with any obvious ill intent, but truly as if she was trying to understand the place those words sprang from. “It’s one of the jobs we’re training you for,” she finally said, placing subtle emphasis on the number. “And considering the traps we didn’t even suspect the last time we sent you into the field, it’s been decided on a level way above my head that you’re benched until further notice.” She raised her hands to ward off the sudden tide of angry disagreement. “Look, I know, okay? You’re trainees. You can’t be sent into the field every time there’s an emergency. This one is being handled. There are more than enough Heroes and agents out there to save every life still in danger. It’s not our first rodeo.”

America shook her head. “Meanwhile, you get to keep your team full of secret weapons nice and safe. Wouldn’t do to let one of us get killed.”

Delilah slapped a hand down on the desk. “Of course we don’t want you to get killed. You’re trainees! You haven’t even said whether you’ll take the other assignment, and it doesn’t matter. A few of you don’t have powers that are useful for this kind of search and rescue. Not every metahuman is the right fit for every scenario.”

They tried to argue, but it was noise on the wind. Their voices clashed and broke against each other while Delilah sat in unshakable authority. Even if they wanted to disobey and run to help, there was no way off the island. It took less than a minute for the others to realize it and devolve into half a dozen sullen, angry, or just disappointed silences.

“The rest of you can go,” Delilah said once the furor died down. “America, I need to speak with you alone.”

Cam and Celia gave her curious looks, but America shooed them out the door. She’d tell them whatever was said, and they knew it. Unless she decided she couldn’t. In which case they’d abide by the decision even if they didn’t like it. It was part of the trust they’d put in her as a leader; sometimes information is too dangerous to be shared.

When they were finally alone, Delilah pushed a button on the bottom of her desk. The door locked and sealed off with a faint hiss of air. A secure place to talk. Also interesting.

“Sorry about the fight,” America said. “For what it’s worth, I didn’t know it was a setup.”

Delilah waved away the apology. “They were always going to fight you. The point was to see how your team reacted when they couldn’t rely on anonymity or their powers. You did fine. I asked you to hang back because…well, because you’re the person Shirani believes should have all the information possible. You’re our best shot at working out solutions to problems, seeing patterns. And there’s a big hole where our information should be. None of us knows what it means.”

America chuckled. “I don’t even know what that sentence means, so I guess we’re on even footing. What do you mean, a hole in your information?”

Delilah grimaced. “It’s standard practice to have a reader—in this case, Rohm—touch the bodies of any criminals who’ve died in suspicious circumstances. We had her amp up using Williams and try to read the corpse of Mike Wells. We wanted to know who killed him, who might have funded him, that sort of thing.”

The horrible—the impossible—truth of what Delilah was leading to became instantly clear. “She got nothing. Right? Someone managed to wipe away the stuff Rohm can read? The traces of the past or whatever?”

“Yes,” Delilah said. “Someone didn’t want us to know a damn thing about Wells, where he’d been, or who he was talking to. And MICA has never encountered a metahuman capable of making that sort of information disappear.”

The implications unfolded in her mind with a brutal insistence she couldn’t even begin to stop. There were too many unknowns to be sure of anything. It could be The Five, somehow, though their powers were at least partially known and none of them could do this. Whatever the cause, it wasn’t good. The Hero community thrived on information.

“Why are you telling me this now?” America asked, then answered her own question as an intuitive leap happened of its own accord. “Because it happened again. Whoever hit Cincinnati today, Rohm is there and couldn’t read them.”

Delilah gave a barely perceptible nod. “It was a group. Three individuals all in Resonance with each other. All three dead, all the same blank slates. Someone is coordinating these attacks, and they’re getting worse.”

Unspoken but clear was that the agency was officially desperate enough to consider America, a trainee with almost no experience, one of their better options for figuring out the game of whoever was behind the attacks.

“Give me everything you’ve got,” America said. “Full access. Nothing I can’t access and read.”

Delilah frowned. “We’ve had this talk before…”

“Yeah, yeah, you can kill me when I’m done solving the mystery,” America said with a dismissive shrug. “Get me full access to everything MICA can touch, every agency they share information with. I’m on the job now. We’ll get these fuckers.”

She believed that to be the absolute truth. The only variable in her equation was whether they could do it before more people died.

Jeff Shirani stood in his uniform and helmet, every inch of his body demanding that the world call him by his Hero code name, and he’d never felt less like his persona in his life. Glimmer was the man you called when you needed a threat stopped instantly and if you were willing to invoke lethal outcomes. He was a human wrecking ball or a high-caliber round fired from a kilometer away depending on the need in front of him.

There was no threat here. Nothing for him to fight. Only destruction as far as his eyes could see. There was nothing his powers could do that made him more useful than any of the other three hundred Heroes and agents already on the scene. He was here not because of the wondrous feats his genetics allowed him to perform, but for the man he was. A man who knew the abilities of every active Hero and most of the MICA agents who supported them. As the director of the Hero training system, he had a deeper and wider knowledge of every subject taught in it than any of his colleagues.

“Sir,” said Moonbeam, who acted as his aide and runner on the scene. “Paragon is here.”

Shirani sighed. He nearly raised a hand to pinch his nose but caught himself. The helmet would have stopped him, and he didn’t want to look like an idiot in front of Moonbeam. “Christ. Of course he is.”

Moonbeam blanched. “Sir? Do you want me to send him over?”

Shirani shook his head. “No, I’m sure he heard me.”

A rush of wind buffeted the pair and suddenly a man stood before them. Moonbeam inhaled sharply, the awe in her body language obvious even without Shirani’s power. It was easy to understand the reaction. At six and a half feet tall, Paragon was built like a refrigerator. The sheer presence of the man overwhelmed most people the first time. Hard for any other feeling to make its way through your head when you knew the guy within arm’s reach could rearrange the very landscape around you with as much effort as it took most people to lift a coffee mug.

“Glimmer,” Paragon said, his voice clear and strong thanks to his lack of a mask or helmet.

Shirani nodded to the new arrival. “Jamie. Surprised to see you here.”

Moonbeam made a choking sound. “Sir, you shouldn’t…”

“It’s fine, young lady,” Paragon said with a wave of his hand. “My identity is public, and Glimmer is a friend. He’s not hurting anything by calling me by my name.”

Moonbeam clearly didn’t agree with this, sputtering a series of disjointed words. Shirani heard something about respect in there, and smiled beneath his mask. “Moonbeam, could you give us a few minutes, please? Check in with the team leads and see how the telekinetics are doing removing the rubble.”

“Sure,” Moonbeam said in a tight but clearly disgruntled tone. “I’ll be here in two shakes if you need me.”

The pair of men waited until she was gone, which was when Shirani crossed his arms and shifted his weight. “What are you doing here, Jamie? You weren’t called in to help.”

The shift between Paragon and Jamie Ardoin was subtle for most people. It might as well have been a scream in the night for Shirani. When the aura of confidence and power fell away, the man left leaning against the ruined hulk of a half-crushed pickup truck was, well, simply a man. Oh, the frame was unchanged. Jamie was huge partly because of his powers, and he’d maintained that for so long that it was impossible for him to go back to whatever size he was actually supposed to be. The medium brown skin didn’t alter a whit either.

His visage lost its air of command, however, even as the bones beneath his face shifted visibly into that of another man entirely. There was nothing left of his Creole upbringing in Jamie’s voice, but the face that emerged as he partially relaxed his power was markedly different—it was how he actually looked.

So much for living publicly. The world might know the name Jamie Ardoin, but there was a lot to be said for anonymity at a whim.

“I know I can’t do anything that isn’t already being done,” Jamie said, clenching fists that could crush diamond ineffectually. “I can’t even go after the monsters who did this. I was just hoping you could give me something to do. Anything.”

Shirani considered his response. It wouldn’t do any good to correct him on the first fact; there were no monsters here. Just people. Pretending they were somehow different from the masses created an emotional distance that might let those name callers sleep better at night, but not with any sort of real honesty. The truth was that people could do monstrous things. Paragon knew that better than most. Four decades of Hero work left him with no misconceptions.

“I don’t have anything for you here, you’re right,” Shirani said. “I know you want to swoop in and save the day. It’s kind of your thing.”

Jamie shook his head ruefully. “You don’t think much of me, do you?”

Shirani chuckled. “Are you kidding? You’re fucking Paragon, man. You’ve been doing this job longer than I’ve been alive. You don’t let fame go to your head. You don’t believe your own hype. You’re a good man. I think the world of you.” Jamie looked up, faded brown eyes like old leather sad but appreciative. “But we don’t think in the same ways. You’re…straightforward. You want everything to have neat solutions. You get away with it because there’s no one on the planet who can stop you, and because MICA has enough metahumans to fill in every gap. People like you and the other big names don’t have to be as sneaky as people like me, or have all the solutions.”

Jamie rolled his eyes. “No one on the planet? You’re not giving yourself enough credit, Je—Glimmer.”

“The official record is what matters,” Shirani said, choosing to ignore the near use of his first name. He gestured toward the broken section of city before them and the figures moving around the devastation. Some glowed, some flew, some simply walked, but every one of them was a study in controlled frenzy as telepaths searched out survivors and rubble was moved away by a staggering variety of methods. “You could go out there and do a lot of good, sure. You could sense things right through the ground, or fly above big chunks of building and haul them off. But we’ve got that covered. You’d be just another cog in that machine.”

“I’m fine with that,” Jamie protested. “This isn’t about ego.”

Shirani stepped forward and put a gentle hand on the larger man’s shoulder. “I know, and that’s why it’s so damn hard to be jealous of how much people love you. Rather than let you go out there and take the place of someone who’s already working, how about you help me with a bigger problem? Something that may give us—Heroes, I mean—a long-term advantage.”

Jamie clasped his hands together, a hopeful look on his face. “Anything. You know I’m not afraid of a fight.”

Shirani grinned behind his helmet and mask. “Famously so. Can you say the same about a teaching gig?”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Silent Nights

The trainees didn’t go home for the winter holidays, but most of the staff did. There were no classes for ten days, though the onsite services that kept everyone fed and alive kept right on going. The faces were largely unfamiliar and moved in eight-hour shifts. America learned their names easily, building profiles of the new people, who were obviously agents filling in as needed.

Oversight was mostly handled by Shirani, who popped in and out at regular intervals. America used large chunks of her suddenly empty days to work on several projects she’d minimized over the previous months. Some were business ventures—mostly the finishing touches on patents she intended to license out—while others were pet projects meant for her own use.

In between, she organized training for her people as well as Team 3. They could only do so much combat without the usual instructors and healers, so America decided to focus on activities that stretched their minds as much as their bodies.

“She’s gonna kill him,” Cam remarked cheerfully as Cade Miller and Ethan stepped into the makeshift combat circle they’d set up in the Team 7 dorm. Ethan looked nervous but not frightened as everyone else expected him to be. Cade was obviously confident, short dark hair ruffled into careless spikes that looked like ocean waves at night. Confident—not cocky. That was an attitude beaten out of every trainee within a few days of stepping into Berger’s ring.

“Cade, please keep your shots low-energy,” America said blandly. “Cam would rather you not deep fry our friend.”

Cade gave a theatrical sigh, putting a hand on her chest. “If I must.”

“He’s my teammate when we play Dark Arena,” Cam said. “I don’t want to train someone else.”

Ethan rolled his eyes. “The love is real, y’all. I can feel it.”

America looked at him, sizing the young man up. It didn’t matter that he was older by a few years. When someone voted to put you in charge, and when your brain worked so much more quickly, it aged you with remarkable speed. “You know your job, yeah?”

Ethan nodded. “Sure do.”

Cade tensed into a half-relaxed stance, hands forward and fingers loosely splayed. It was her standard form of readiness, and worked well. Cade didn’t rely solely on her power, choosing instead to follow Berger’s teaching as closely as possible. Her ability blended with a dedication to hand-to-hand fighting that others could barely grasp made her a dangerous opponent and everyone knew it.

“Begin,” America said.

Ethan slid to his left as Cade shoved her right hand forward. Beams of light erupted from her fingertips and palm, forming a bar of sunshine not quite bright enough to hurt the eyes but not far from it, either.

The movement of her hand and arm—unnecessary to use the power itself—threw off Cade’s aim by a few degrees, slewing the beam to her left. Ethan’s quick motion to his left put him well out of the line of fire. Cade could have had him were she willing to sweep the beam of energy at him, but she wouldn’t. According to the rules of combat, she couldn’t. America and Cam sat just outside the circle, in the beam’s path.

Instead Cade ceased releasing light and pivoted toward Ethan. She went for a grab and slipped over him like the guy was six feet of greased eel. Cade, normally so controlled and precise, stumbled hard and flopped unceremoniously to the floor.

“Oh, my god,” said her brother Ian, laughter bubbling up. “All the training during our time off was just officially made worth it. America, thank you for this amazing family memory.”

At any other time, Cade would have bit back. In a fight (or on assignment, from the rumors they’d all heard) Cade let nothing distract her. No witty banter. No insults. Only the job.

She spun on the floor and threw her hand forward again, fingers now crackling with electricity. The miniature bolt of lightning should have been unavoidable as she created a circuit between herself and Ethan in the air. That would have been true if she’d been able to complete the gesture.

Instead, her hand and arm scraped loudly across the concrete, the electricity breaking up into random sparks before vanishing entirely. Cade let out a pained grunt. There was blood smeared liberally on the floor.

“Oh, that sucks,” Cam said sympathetically. “He’s done that to me a couple times. Like the worst rug burn in the world.”

America nodded. Increasing the friction to a high enough point to cause minor injury without raising it so high that it fully stopped movement was delicate work and devastatingly effective. Most metas needed concentration and control to make their powers work correctly, and this was so true for people like Cade that not having one or the other handled effectively cut off her abilities.

She sprang to her feet, face clamping down into a brutally focused expression as her hand began to glow with a nascent beam of light. This lasted for half a second before her feet shot out from under her and she landed flat on her ass.

Ethan never stopped moving, sliding and changing direction every few seconds. Cade made one more attempt to attack, carefully aiming her body and arms toward him while still on the ground. She did it cautiously, making sure the positioning was right, but it made her slow. More than slow enough for Ethan to wreak hell on the friction of her uniform, the floor, even the air around her. He wasn’t faster, and certainly not more powerful.

But America decided he might be smarter than his opponent, and Cade was no intellectual slouch. The last few seconds ticked by as the prone woman tried everything she could to get into a better position, but it was fruitless.

“Ethan wins,” America said. Cade was on her feet seconds later, the disruptions to the friction on and around her gone. “Let’s talk about how he did it…”

The fight mattered only because it taught a lesson. It was one she hoped every Hero, trainee or otherwise, used in their daily work. It would certainly keep more of them alive.

Chris stood at the back of their small group as America spoke, listening as hard as he could. Three of him were listening, in fact.

“What I do, what my brain does, isn’t really much different from anyone else here,” she said, somehow easily grabbing the attention of each person. He saw her fight the urge to fidget, the tension in her shoulders. She didn’t like being the center of attention. It took months to get accustomed to their team, and now here she was helping a whole new one. Maybe even making friends.

“I do it faster and, yeah, better,” America continued. “That’s just my power. But when I see a situation, I weigh the factors just like anyone else. If you’re talking about a fight, it’s not just a matter of knowing and exploiting your opponent’s weaknesses. It’s about knowing your strengths. That’s what Ethan did here.” She reached out and snagged the shorter man by the shoulders and hauled him close. “He knew Cade needs to aim and maintain control. She could blast everyone in this room pretty easily, right? She’s a powerhouse. The ability to absorb, magnify, and redirect energies of all kinds is nothing to sneer at. It’s a top-tier ability.”

She let go of Ethan and gestured toward Cade, who seemed fascinated rather than frustrated or angry. She’d been beaten fairly by someone so far below her on the power scale that there was no real comparison to be made. Chris had expected some kind of ill will, but apparently the beautiful woman was made of better stuff than him.

“Cade knows how dangerous her power is, so she didn’t do that. She reins it in constantly, just like she’ll have to do out there in the real world. Ethan knows he’s good at making small, precise changes in friction, so he stuck with that. But he was working inside rules, too. Tell me, Ethan: could you have beaten her more quickly.”

Ethan, now looking fairly embarrassed, nodded. Chris knew why, of course. The two of them were followers by nature and had no problem with that. They preferred to let someone else lead and make plans. It left them with more free time than the others as the women on the team worked out strategies and schedules, and Ethan had quickly become a good friend. He’d told Chris every new and novel way he’d learned to use his power.

“Tell us how,” America said. “If you don’t mind.”

“I could have killed her,” Ethan said in a small voice. He sounded embarrassed but also a bit horrified to state the harsh truth so boldly.

Cade’s mouth dropped open. “Oh, come on. Really?”

Ah. There it was. Cade was a decent person from everything Chris knew about her, but she wasn’t perfect. Being powerful meant an almost inevitable measure of arrogance to some degree, and that translated to disbelief that someone like Ethan could follow through on such a statement.

“It’s true,” Chris heard himself saying before he’d even formulated the intent to speak. “He killed Lazarus a bunch of times. They’ve been working on it every few weeks when Lazarus has time.”

Cade looked bewildered. “But how?”

Ethan shrugged, clearly uncomfortable. “Everything creates friction. Blood, internal organs. Everything.”

The horrible reality of what Ethan was saying spread through the room. Chris wasn’t bothered; he’d long since worked out the ramifications of his friend’s ability. He listened with half an ear as the others asked questions almost against their will, wanting to know what Ethan’s limits were. It was the grisly curiosity of people who’d just seen a car wreck and couldn’t help but beg the details. He let the babble wash over him.

It was in that moment of distracted half-thought that an idea occurred to Chris. He hadn’t worked with America nearly as much as the others, but she’d given him a fair amount of information and theory about his power. He’d tried some of the exercises she suggested. None of them worked. Maybe that was because of him, though. He’d studied other duplicators since he was a kid. Mentality played a huge part in how powers worked, and his biases could be slowing him down.

“Cade,” one of his dupes said quietly. That Chris—who the original thought of as Two, since he numbered them in order of creation—tapped her on the arm. “Can you do me a favor?”

Cade, torn away from the ghastly conversation happening around her, looked puzzled. “Sure? What’s up?”

“I need you to try to absorb me,” Two said.

“I understood the individual words in that sentence, yes,” she replied. “That’s the worst pickup line I’ve ever heard.”

Two chuckled. “I’m a copy. According to everything I know, you should be able to absorb the energy that makes up my body. It’s a weakness of almost every duplicator in the world, but I’ve never tested it out. Can you give it a try?”

Cade tilted her head and smiled uncertainly. Then she reached out a finger and touched Two on the hand. There was a strange sensation like someone pulling on all of his skin at once, but after a few seconds the pressure released.

“Huh,” Cade said. “I can’t do it. Sort of what it feels like when I try to absorb kinetic energy. I can do that, but it’s tricky. This is worse—like trying to draw electrons from solid matter. No dice. Does that help?”

“Oh, yeah,” Two said. “You just proved a theory of America’s completely right, and I’m an idiot for not thinking of it way sooner.”

Christmas came and went, and the new year brought no obvious changes to life on the island as a whole. From a distance—if the place could be viewed from more than a mile away, which it couldn’t—everything would have seemed the same. The place ran in what Drew thought of as maintenance mode as the normal staff took their breaks away. It was smart, he thought. You can’t isolate professionals for the entire year without giving them breaks to look forward to. Training was not the same as Hero work, even if the two overlapped fairly often. MICA could afford to lavish, long stretches of time at home to the experts it relied on to keep the ranks of superheroes fleshed out.

If you looked closely enough, understood enough, you could see the many small changes slowly accelerating through the first-year training cohort. Nowhere was this more visible (if you had the context to really know what you were seeing) than in Team 7. Drew had spent his morning watching Chris summon duplicates in a variety of odd scenarios. The first was in a small training room filled with some sort of heavy dust. Powdered concrete, he thought. The duplicates didn’t seem different at first, but over the course of half an hour and with monumental concentration, Chris did something different.

He’d created a dupe, but the vague shape of a man appeared as a growing void in the dust before the copy formed. In the second between silhouette and fully-formed clone, a huge mass of the floating specks were drawn in, clearing fully half the room. A little testing showed the dupe had actual mass. Not much of it, but far more than the usual constructs. It had measurable weight and increased durability. Drew reckoned that was because the dust didn’t just swirl around inside what was essentially a soap bubble shaped like a dude—it formed into a thin, dense layer between whatever inner field held the thing together, and the outer field that defined its details. All it took was a hit with his orb and a little observation to notice the shell of dust compacted inside.

Chris was ecstatic, of course. They all wanted to push their limits and find out what their abilities could really do. Drew even found himself happy for the other man. It surprised him; he still didn’t have the closeness with them that they did with each other.

Now, hours later, he sat on the highest wall of the castle he could reach, staring out across the ocean. From here he couldn’t see the defenses. Whatever holographic generators hid the island from view didn’t interfere with the sunset, ruddy shades of red and orange spilling into the first deep purples of a coming night. Other than the odd boxy device spotted here and there on the walkways and streets, part of the network keeping anyone from teleporting in without permission, the place could have been a resort. It was quiet right now. Peaceful.

His hand tightened on the small tablet in his hand. There would be no physical record of the results America procured for him. He couldn’t have a piece of paper floating around in the world detailing the conclusions drawn from myriad scans, both overt and covert, as a host of people tried to work out exactly what his sphere was.

Now he knew. Now he understood why the idea of amplifying that power filled anyone who grasped what he actually did with bowel-shaking terror.

“I know you’re there,” he said, not moving or even looking away from the dying light in front of him. “It’s okay. Come on out.”

America appeared from the tower doorway a few feet away, gingerly stepping onto the wall Drew so casually sat on the edge of. “How did you know?”

Drew shook his head. “Kind of glad you didn’t ask if I’m okay. I’m not really sure I’d believe you meant it.”

“I…care,” America said haltingly. “We’re not close. But you stood up to my dad. You’re not the same guy you were when you got here.”

Drew laughed bitterly. “I’m mostly the same, let’s not get carried away. Someone pointed out how dangerous this job is and it made me prioritize. I always thought, growing up, that what I could do set me apart. That I was more powerful than anyone realized. Coming here and being hit in the face with how insanely wrong I was, well, it put me in the position that all I needed was a push from a stranger. Apparently.”

“So you started getting with the program out of self-interest,” America said with a shrug. “So what? You didn’t step up to my dad because you thought it’d get you ahead. You could have hidden your face. Instead you risked your identity. That means a lot to me. So yeah, I care.”

He nodded, unsure of how he’d gotten to this point. Drew wanted to be a Hero from the first moment he understood the concept. He had a lot of reasons, but once the path opened to him, he’d expected to dominate by force. Not start to care as much about the relationships he was building—a first for him—or worry about the danger his power presented.

It was a lot to take in. “Explain it to me,” he asked. “Please. I need to know I understand this.”

“You read the documents, the summaries,” America said. “I don’t—”

He waved a hand. “Fine, then. I need to hear it out loud. I need to know this isn’t a joke.”

“Okay,” she agreed, her voice somehow small. Not afraid, or at least not afraid of violence. Maybe she was a little afraid of what acceptance of the truth might do to him. “You don’t actually summon a sphere. Your weapon is the physical manifestation of a thin spot in reality. Your power is to open and manipulate a portal. We think it only goes to that one place, a specific reality or universe, because your Pitch is so low. What you trade in power, you gain in perfect aim. You’re locked onto that single universe.”

“And still not strong enough to actually open it up, thank god,” Drew said.

America nodded. She did it reluctantly, but did it all the same. “Yeah, it would probably be really bad.”

The file gave a lot of context. There were other metahumans able to open dimensional rifts, though they were extraordinarily rare and with the exception of Drew, all immensely powerful. Their abilities were also mostly random. A few referenced in the documents had a sort of special sense that let them target broad swathes of realities. One of those was able to yank open portals to other universes full of fire or cold. So far none of them had brought through living beings. Certainly none could travel to them.

Drew’s target universe was a known quantity. There were metas who could see between the strata of reality in the right circumstances. He guessed they could do it only while Resonating with someone like him. The place his orb came from was a dimension filled entirely with some super dense matter operating according to laws of physics utterly alien from their own. The sphere was the pressure from that matter pushing outward in all directions against the thin spot he created. The outer limit of his power was finite; he wasn’t likely to get much stronger.

Which as he said was good. Letting Williams amplify him might mean actually opening a gate to that strange space, and once the torrent of matter far more dense than anything short of a neutron star started pouring through, there might not be anything on the planet capable of stopping it.

“What do I do with this?” he asked. “I’m a loaded gun that could break the galaxy.”

“You’re not,” America said. She considered briefly. “I’ve been studying up on the theory and digging into what we know about dimensional physics. I’m pretty sure the flow of heavy matter into our universe would cut itself off—the pressure would create a sort of friction against the rift and the energy buildup would destabilize it. Worst case scenario seems to be destruction of the solar system. Really, not that bad.”

Drew snorted a laugh. “Not that bad. In a universal sense, I suppose.”

“Well, yeah,” she replied. “I’m thinking of the big picture.”

“When did you start learning about this stuff?” he asked, because the question was in his head and it was enough of a distraction that he’d take it.

“A few months ago,” she said. “Took a few hours to get my head around it. As for what you do? I think you keep right on. You’ve been using your power for a long time and nothing bad happened. Even if some bad guy out there decided to amp you up for whatever dumbass reason, you could just, you know, not use your power until it wore off.”

Drew didn’t quite shake his head, but he didn’t not do that, either. It was more of a tremor of indecision. His world was a far different place than it had been hours earlier. “Just keep calm and carry on, huh?”

“Yep,” America said simply. “You’re already training yourself to deal with dangers most people can’t imagine. This isn’t all that much different. Just do what you’ve already been doing, and pretty well in my opinion. Just be a Hero, Drew.”

Though he would never approach the use of his power the same way again, though there would always be a thin veneer of fear and anxiety when he touched that well of energy inside him, Drew Garland knew that he could at least do that much.

“Be a hero,” he said to the softly emerging night.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Unstoppable Force

By late January, most of the team had finally found their bearings. They’d all passed their initial certifications for the host of bizarre areas they’d been training in. The classes after the start of the new year began to integrate those disparate lessons into a coherent narrative. Understanding structural engineering meant you knew where not to punch a bad guy through a wall so a building didn’t come down, while disaster management and emergency medical training meant you could organize a response while performing triage and treatment of civilian victims if someone else did manage to knock something down.

The team, like all the first year recruits, began internalizing these lessons and making them part of their general outlook. It was much the same as a soldier who learned to constantly study his surroundings for potential threats, scanning the quadrants around him and making sure there weren’t any good ambush points. They were learning to think like Heroes—to see the world that way. Even Susan wasn’t immune, a reality America still had a hard time reconciling with the older woman’s cynical nature.

America herself had no problem seeing the world the way her instructors wished; she’d adapted to the concept almost instantly. In point of fact, it was nearly impossible to do otherwise. Anyone with her capacity for managing information and even a shred of human decency would be compelled by their morality and ethics to do the same.

Alone among her team, however, America was not content. The work itself didn’t bother her. The training was easy enough mentally that she could dedicate a single track of her mind to it and allow the other mental train cars to fly down their routes freely. The physical aspect was more difficult, but judicious management of how her brain interpreted pain and exhaustion made it easy enough to endure.

It was the attacks that bothered her. First D.C., then Cincinnati. In the third week of January, a small series of explosions at a chemical plant outside of St. Louis. Yesterday, a small commune on the outskirts of Denver was razed to the ground, with only a single person killed. That was when their break had come; Shirani was off the island interrogating the man responsible for the last attack. It could be a lead, and America was nearly rabid with the need to get caught up with every development and help investigate. She was honest enough with herself to know this was partially because anything that took her away from thinking about The Five was preferable, and partly because she loved puzzles.

Instead she sat in one of the larger combat cells, fifty feet by twenty, with the rest of the team while a new instructor gave a rambling introduction to the topic at hand. They sat behind a pair of long portable tables, on uncomfortable chairs, and listened.

He was big, with a face America couldn’t place. The guy was either a Hero or an agent based on the casual way he spoke about the differences between metahuman criminals.

“There are basically three types,” the large man said, running a hand over the shining dark skin of his shaved head. “With a fourth special case. The first are the gangs. Street gangs were a bit of a problem back before the Flare and the emergence of metas, but since then they’ve become a nightmare. Thankfully they tend to be self-limiting, so none of them grow to much larger than twenty or thirty people. There are no international organizations there. Really, most don’t cover areas larger than a dozen city blocks. Too much infighting. When they get past three dozen members, well, they start attracting attention with the bloodshed between them.”

The instructor, who had introduced himself simply as Louis—pronounced the French way—paused to take a drink of water. America tried to imagine a world where gangs were allowed to grow into large entities capable of influencing nations and reaching across borders. The thought made her shiver. There were rarely more than a few metahuman gangs in any city. That too was self-limiting. The more that sprang up, the more they fought, and usually only the ones smart enough to lay low and operate under the radar stayed in business and free of the attention of Heroes.

“The second type, MICA refers to as specialists,” Louis continued. “These are metas who act as professional criminals. You’ll always get the odd duck here or there who suddenly develops super strength or the ability to control machines with their mind and decides, hey, I’m gonna go steal a bunch of stuff. But for the most part, specialists are metahumans who’ve married their abilities with solid training and experience as career criminals. They don’t draw attention to themselves for pretty much any reason. They’re the hardest to catch.”

America knew what was coming next. They all did.

Louis sighed. “Then you have villains. Which is a word I hate saying because it just feeds right into the messed-up narrative those people build for themselves. Almost every metahuman who puts on a costume to commit crimes ends up having some kind of mental illness or personality disorder.”

America frowned. “That’s a shitty thing to say. I have a mental illness, you know.”

Louis put up his hands defensively. “A very small fraction of them are bipolar or schizoid, and they need help more than anything. There are plenty of people without powers who need help dealing with their brain’s messed-up chemistry, to keep them from believing delusions or whatever. It just so happens that when people with powers deal with those kinds of things, a small number glom onto the pageantry of Heroes and villains. Just like a tiny fraction of mentally ill humans will become violent. I’m fully aware they’re not the norm.”

He cleared his throat, buying time to focus his thoughts. “It’s usually the much more common other type of villain you’ll need to worry about. Those with personality disorders. Take your pick on how that can go terribly wrong and you’ll almost always find an example of it in the real world. Malignant narcissists are the most common and most often the worst. The things they’ll do to prove they’re the most important and best person in the world…it can leave you with bad dreams for years.”

America thought of her brief encounter with Rule, the sudden and complete control he had over all of them. Just the sensation of losing voluntary use of her motor functions, the feeling of being a passenger in her own body, had sent her into a days-long spiral of research. It was what she did when the world proved time and again that it was a terrifying place to exist in.

“The special case?” Susan asked, for once completely focused on the lesson itself. That seemed to be happening more and more, a change America liked and was deeply suspicious of in equal measure.

“The fourth kind of metahuman criminal, the special case,” Louis said, “is part of why this class exists. It’s why only your team is in it for the first session. I know why you were brought into this program. Today, the eight of us will discuss The Five, how and why they’re so dangerous, and what fighting them would be like.”

America let out a frustrated sigh. It would never end. “Why you?”

Louis gave her an uncertain smile. “Let’s say I’m uniquely qualified to convey the experience to you. All of you will get extra time with me before class. We’ll be going over every bit of information we have about The Five—though the other first year trainees will be getting a lot of that, too. Never hurts to make sure the next generation knows their enemy.”

“Yeah,” America said, pouring the sarcasm on thick. “That’s worked out so well for every Hero for, what? The last sixty years?”

When Louis began to speak, however, she found herself pleasantly surprised.

“The Five aren’t unbeatable,” he began. “You’ve seen that on the news, I’m sure, and the Hero community knows it firsthand. They are pretty damned tough, though, and we’ve never been able to capture any of them. You all know what it cost to bring down Cascade, their most dangerous front-line fighter.”

Cam’s ears perked up at the last—she was after all the meat shield for their team. The front line is where she’d live for most of her career. And maybe where she’d die. Her attention wasn’t so focused on the man speaking that she didn’t notice America’s keen, raptor-eyed interest in him.

“Your name isn’t Louis,” America said with certainty.

Louis smiled. “Middle name. Anyway, there are things you need to know regarding the power sets of The Five. Things we’ve only learned from Emma Rohm’s accidental connection with the leader of the group. You see, when she looked back in time to ground zero for the Flare, she saw those men caught in the wave and turn to crystal—then immediately back to human. Or at least metahuman. All five were turned simultaneously, and we think the sixth man who turned them and everyone else for hundreds of miles was a sort of metahuman incubator. Whatever caused him to flash into light and spread around the world was more concentrated locally. He was friends with the other five, and as they were right next to him, their powers emerged instantly. And instinctively.”

He waved a hand over the phone sitting on the small podium he’d brought into the room with him, and a holographic image sprang up. It displayed an animated rendering of the scene he described. The Five were turned to crystal in a wave of light, played out in ultra-slow motion. Visual effects illustrated the points Louis made as he narrated the scene.

“The key here, we believe, is Outbreak,” Louis said, pointing at the tall man with the wild black mane of hair and thick unruly beard. “He’s a healer the likes of which the world has never seen. The ability to heal aging was first seen in him. He can instantly remove any wound, absorbing injuries and able to hand them back out. He can cure any disease, from what we’ve been able to determine. He can also vector them back out to people. Rohm’s connection to Insight, the leader and tactician of the group, gave her specific knowledge about them. That’s a separate thing from the, well, insight she gains from her power itself. Thanks to the latter, we know that when the Flare happened, Outbreak was using his power at full strength, healing himself and everyone he was in Resonance with. The crystallization process was healed before it could finish.”

“Resonance is supposed to be hard, and take a lot of practice,” Cam said, seeing what Louis meant instantly. “You’re saying they did it as soon as they developed powers, unconsciously, all with the same guy.”

“Nope,” Susan said, leaning forward in her seat. Anything that touched on the enemy turned her into a predator eager to exploit a weakness. The toothy grin on her face told that story every time The Five came up in conversation. “He’s saying they’re all Resonating with each other. All the time. Making each other’s powers stronger or different or both. Right?”

Louis seesawed a hand loosely. “Yes and no. Yes, they’re always in Resonance. No, we don’t know what effect it has on their powers. We’ve never seen a lessening or change in their abilities even when they’re apart. If they’ve changed at all since Cascade died, we have no way to know because none of them have been seen. I guess losing one of their own after more than sixty years must have been a blow. Cascade had been going to that bar every year for decades. I don’t imagine any of them suspected it would be any more dangerous this go around.”

Another thing Rohm had simply known after her contact with Insight. The habit of visiting a particular bar on the same day each year was a dangerous thing for a wanted criminal, if safer for Cascade because until Rohm’s glimpses of the past, no one had known his face. Cam frowned in thought. “Distance matters. How come they can stay connected when they’re apart?”

To her surprise, it was Drew who answered. “Because of Windwalker. He’s their teleporter. I bet Resonating with him let’s all of them access some kind of weird space…foldy…thing that makes it like there’s no distance between them at all.”

Louis very carefully didn’t smile any more than he already was. “Weird space foldy thing is our leading theory, Mr. Garland. We think they all share certain benefits of each other’s powers. We’ve seen each of them heal at incredible rates without Outbreak present. Insight, with his suite of senses more powerful than any technology in the world, might not let them see in every spectrum or hear human cells dividing, but they clearly have sensory advantages over most Heroes. Maybe some of his ability to adapt his body to the stimuli around him carries over, we can’t be sure. Definitely not as strongly as he does, thank god.”

“No kidding,” Cam muttered. It was a comparison she couldn’t have made before Shirani gave away the secret to his power, of course, but it also wasn’t something her brain could ignore once she saw it. Glimmer had a similarly reactive power, growing stronger and faster and tougher as he perceived individual threats. Insight, whose power set was widely known, reacted in much the same way to everything he perceived, if not on the same scale. One of the more famous bits of rare footage captured of The Five in combat showed the man casually put out an arm to clothesline a superspeeder zooming at him. He’d stepped just right not to get hit, but the arm should have been ripped clean off by the impact. The energy in the speeder’s body had to have been immense—but Insight was strong and tough enough to kill the man running at him instantly with nothing more than a half-step and a straightened arm.

Cam slapped her desk. Everyone looked at her. “Holy shit! I bet Reign is the reason they all Resonate with each other constantly!” She caught looks ranging from blank—America’s version of thoughtful—to bewildered from Louis himself.

“What makes you say that?” Louis asked.

Cam shrugged. “I mean, it just makes sense, right? It’s got to be one of those weird loopholes in our powers that makes things work when they shouldn’t. Like how I can get way stronger than I should be, according to what my Pitch score is, because I don’t produce all the energy I need to be that strong or fast myself. I turn food into power. So they all Resonate with each other when they’re together, but Reign lets him control others he can Resonate with. Maybe his contribution to the group pool was that once Resonating, he could keep the effect going indefinitely. Especially since distance isn’t a problem.”

“I didn’t think of that,” America said, sounding angry at herself.

Drew shot her a bemused look. “You do know it’s impossible for you to have every good idea in the world, right?”

“If you don’t mind, I’m going to pass that theory up the chain,” Louis said. He sounded impressed. “I don’t know how much it’ll help, but it’s a damned clever idea. We’re going to get back to this stuff in a bit, but there’s a reason I invited you to a combat cell. It’s been relayed to me that you’ve had some issues fighting as a cohesive unit. You’re coordinated, but you don’t fight together. Not all of you at once. There’s also some concern your successes have given you an uneven idea of what you’ll be facing with The Five. I said they’re not unbeatable, and that’s true. But with Reign there to take over anyone at his Pitch or above, you could face just about any powerful metahuman as an enemy. So today, you’re gonna see what that feels like.”

He faced the group. “I’m going to turn around and walk toward the far wall. When I get there, I’ll touch it. That’s your signal to begin. I suggest attacking me at once, and with everything you have. Assume I can survive anything you throw at me. Hold nothing back.”

He gave them a sunny smile. “I know I won’t.”

Chris noticed that the others began to sprint across the room while he and America stayed back. His copies took a little effort to conjure, more so this time because he was trying something he’d only achieved once in practice. It meant less duplicates on the field, but the three he could manage would be far more durable and much stronger.

Over the span of three seconds, he summoned a new Chris from one of the nearby walls. A layer of reinforced concrete a few millimeters thick peeled away as it was pulled into the vague shape of a man. When the dupe was fully formed, it looked no different than normal—but Chris could feel the strength of it. The mass it used to stabilize itself meant less of the energy it pulled from its environment went to holding the form together. That excess flowed through their link into Chris. That single duplicate gave him the power of five unmodified clones.

Just before he began summoning the second copy, a series of high-pitched whines split the air. He looked over to see America standing exactly where she’d been, right arm raised with a weapon extended from the top of her wrist. It looked like a Sci-Fi gun had grown from her somehow, its pieces and parts taking the contours of bone and flesh, but made of metal.

“Hmm,” she muttered just loud enough that he could hear. “No effect. Interesting.”

Chris forced himself to concentrate, ignoring the battle now taking place a few dozen feet away as he pushed himself to summon the other two dupes. After the first, the second and third were easier. The power flowing into him made each successive duplicate less of a strain. But three were all he could manage this way; for some reason his body simply refused to produce another. America had theorized that the energy it took to make them came from him—obviously—but that he couldn’t feel the drain with the high influx of strength and durability the empowered dupes broadcast to him. It was a little like being high. His body was dull to the usual warning signs of intense effort.

As soon as there were four of him, Chris launched himself into the air. His leap was three times more powerful than when he first began training. The air clones, as he now thought of them, just didn’t have the oomph of his earth clones. The nearest of them put up a hand in perfect sync as Chris fell in his arc overhead and caught his foot by the sole. It shoved him forward with all its might as he bent his knee and pushed off, rocketing him toward Louis.

He saw himself from three slightly different perspectives as the copies closed in and spread to surround Louis. He didn’t have to consciously control the flow of information or the movements of the copies; they were fully functional versions of him. They were a hive mind, all senses and reflexes meshed into four-as-one. They reacted instantly and if necessary, independently.

Chris flipped midair and drove his feet into Louis’s chest, a kick with the strength of a low-level tank behind it. Even now he didn’t have anything approaching Cam’s power, but he more than made up for it with the fact that there were several of him in every fight. Even still, the kick was strong enough to knock a small car several feet. He’d tested it.

Louis was big, and by the way he’d hurled Cam away with one arm, he was clearly strong. Chris had taken his leap expecting to perhaps barely move the man. What he hadn’t—couldn’t have—considered was that the force of his kick would simply vanish into Louis’s skin as if it had never existed. It was as if the force ceased to exist, and as a result Chris had nothing to push off from. The change caught him totally unaware, and he fell straight to the ground in front of the giant man.

The impact hurt, but didn’t actually cause harm. He was more durable with clones in play, after all. Chris skittered backward away from the enemy’s advancing steps, and saw for the first time just how badly outmatched they were.

Susan stood in mute horror with her hand extended, something she’d started doing when using her power. The idea was to create a fake visual cue so that enemies believed immobilizing her arms would make them safe from her ability. Clearly, it wasn’t working on Louis. Chris felt a set of contrasting urges at the sight, strange in how different they were. Half of him wanted to be able to get up and save everyone—that was who Chris desperately wanted to be—while the other half regretted ever pausing his game the day he’d taken Shirani’s call. How much easier would it be to simply have stayed home and worked his irregular jobs? Far more. And far less full of terrors.

Cam dusted herself off, the crater in the wall behind her a sign that Louis really wasn’t playing around. The small woman shot forward almost faster than he could track, taking a nod from Chris and jumping cleanly over Celia, who was in the process of wrapping every tether she had around Louis’s arms and legs.

The big man didn’t even slow down. The tethers snapped in a chorus of tortured metal and fiber, even the ones made of Alium. Celia stumbled and let out a guttural shout, hands going to her temples. A hot burst of fury, raw and red, welled up inside him. That rising tide frightened him for the split second before it wiped out every other emotion and rational thought in his head. That had never been him. Seeing Celia, usually so confident and in control, get hurt that way broke something critical in his head.

His clones redoubled their efforts to join the fray. So far they’d been unlucky, as the rest of the team constantly moved around Louis in a tight circle. Now that he’d seen what the instructor was capable of, he didn’t try to do any damage. The trio of copies moved instead to confuse and restrain, darting in and out of every tiny opening they could find. They went for eyes, throat, testicles. The places that every man, no matter how experienced or well-trained, will instinctively react if you try to hit him there. The copies hit hard, but not with any expectation of actually doing harm.

He left that to Drew. He and Ethan managed to get behind Louis during the furious assault. America waited in a half-crouch several feet behind Chris, watching the team. Just as Ethan spread his hands, barely visible from where Chris lay, America took something from her belt and threw it in a perfect imitation of a big-league pitcher.

The weapons hit Louis in the face, specifically right in the mouth, where it splattered but didn’t fall apart. Instead, a green-gray goo spread across nose and mouth.

“Ethan, make sure he can’t pull that stuff off!” shouted a Chris dashing around to attempt a choke. Even as the dupe said the words, Louis calmly reached up and tried to paw at the goo cutting off his air. His fingers found no purchase, and Chris felt a surge of relief. This fight would be over soon, and they’d win. That feeling got stronger when the big man tried to take a step and fell on his face—though he managed to drag the clone on his back over a shoulder and land on him, popping the dupe and releasing a cloud of dust.

The feedback hit Chris hard, like being shocked by an outlet. He felt a curious buzzing at once, a sort of hum rising and falling in a steady pattern. It didn’t fade away. It got stronger.

“What the hell?” Drew said from the other side of Louis’s fallen form. The big man struggled to get up, seemingly unbothered by the lack of oxygen. The sphere Drew had conjured had begun to vibrate in time with the odd buzz in Chris’s chest.

Then it split into three.

“What the fuck?” Chris said, as if trying to one-up his teammate. He felt something snap into place in his head, and a third clone appeared with no warning. He hadn’t summoned it, and that scared the shit out of him. There was something different about this clone, a sense of solidity and raw power he’d never experienced. The wash of energy from it made him ten, then twenty, then thirty times stronger than he’d been only a minute before. Whatever weird crap was happening to the clone had spread to the other two. Chris leaped to his feet and set them in the concrete.

And the concrete cracked.

“Resonance,” America said, awe in her voice. “I didn’t know you guys were practicing that.”

Chris shook his head. “We haven’t. No idea how this is happening.”

Louis’s head snapped up, his eyes going wide over the gag. His bearing changed and with a slight grunt of effort, he lifted from the floor. His skin altered, growing stony and thick. The goo sloughed off in a shower of stone dust, freeing his mouth.

“Test over,” he said at once. “You two have to stop what you’re doing right now. Dismiss those copies. Get rid of that sphere.”

“You’re flying,” Chris said. “How many powers do you have?”

“At least two,” America answered. “Or that’s what everyone thinks about Paragon, anyway.”

Louis didn’t smile, instead staring at Chris with an intensity that had terrified thousands of criminals over the decades. With a completely manly and not at all boyish squeak, he dismissed his copies. To his surprise, all three spheres vanished at the same time, causing Drew to stagger back.

“Unintentional Resonance is incredibly dangerous,” Paragon said, drifting to the floor.

Chris nodded distractedly. “Uh, yeah. Okay. But can I have your autograph?”

Paragon smiled at him as he touched down. Then he fell to the floor again, face chipping the concrete.

“Sorry,” Ethan said, embarrassed. “Forgot to turn that off.”

Part Three: Pitch

Chapter Twenty-Four

A Villain Appears

Shirani wasn’t happy about letting America into the interrogation room. She was less happy still, as he’d kept all information about the captive from her and Team 7.

“The last attack was a month ago,” she said just before they entered the room a quarter mile below MICA headquarters. “You’ve stonewalled me every day since then. Why are you letting me in now?”

“Because,” Shirani said, his hand on the door, “we’ve tried everything else. And I mean literally everything else, even some stuff that broke a couple laws of physics. We can’t get anything from him.”

“So you said,” America remarked, then pushed open the door.

The man within wasn’t anything special at first glance. Nor at second or third. He wasn’t handsome nor particularly imposing. Slightly above average height, left-handed, eerily calm behind light brown eyes and a ruddy European complexion. He watched her enter the space with a placidity she certainly wouldn’t have felt after weeks of confinement in the most secure lockup in the world.

She sat in front of him and opened his file. The fifteen pages took her less than ten seconds to flip through.

“Michael Furlan,” she recited from memory. The man—Furlan, apparently—regarded her without a twitch. “You’re a viral controller. You take over a mind, and that makes taking over the next one even easier. You can do it remotely through the minds you’ve already taken. You’re completely immune to telepathy and anything even close to it, and Agent Rohm got nothing from you.” The last bothered America more than she’d let on. Confounding someone like Rohm was no small task. “In the time you’ve been held here at The Cooler, you haven’t spoken a single word.”

Furlan said nothing. Again. Loudly.

“What’s interesting to me is that you, a twenty-five year old post-grad working toward a doctorate in anthropology, with not so much as a parking ticket on your record, would suddenly decide to orchestrate a series of pointless attacks all over the country,” America said. Furlan narrowed his eyes as if in thought.

“I’m not going to get you to talk, I know that,” America said. “I guess that means you’ll just have to listen. I think someone got into your head. I think they hollowed you out and turned you into their sock puppet. Someone wanted to make these attacks happen and you were the perfect cover. Whoever you were before is gone. Maybe some scraps are left behind, but not enough to make you who you were.”

Furlan twitched an eyebrow, and it gave her an idea. Some reactions were so ingrained that they couldn’t be eliminated no matter how hard you tried. People respond to their names.

Furlan hadn’t.

“The Cooler is locked down in a bunch of ways,” America continued, unbothered. “No known power can get in or out. You’re cut off from whoever scooped out your mind and replaced it with some pirated copy of their own. Based on the observations your guards and interrogators have made, I’d say the process is unreliable and doesn’t work very well. You’re a kludge, a quick solution to a problem and left to the consequences your makers forced on you.”

She leaned in slightly, only enough to be noticed but nothing dramatic. America smiled at Furlan. “I’m not a betting woman, but I think I’d be safe putting money on Reign being in there somewhere.”

Furlan’s eyes twitched, widening slightly. The intake of breath would have gone unnoticed by anyone not sitting two feet away from the man.

“Hmm,” Shirani said from his spot on the wall behind her. “So The Five are behind the attacks. Now we just need to figure out why.”

Furlan frowned, opening his mouth halfway before stopping himself. Then he smiled.

“By the time you do, it’ll be too late.”

On a quiet hilltop with a commanding view of the countryside for miles around, a man stood waiting. He was alone, if not for long, and as always he served as advanced scout as well as leader and primary organizer of their little troupe. He swept the vista around him, spinning in a slow circle as he took in every bit of information possible. Eyes swept the whole of the electromagnetic spectrum and saw down to molecules. Ears heard worms scraping through the earth in the pastures below. A billion conflicting scents from as far away as a hundred miles assaulted his nose and were cataloged and filed away automatically.

The Five, they were called. Named as a group and as individuals by the public. Certainly, Insight would not have chosen that for himself. None of them would. Yet even to themselves, the ridiculous ‘villain’ monikers had been internalized. That was a decision made in the first decade of their…adventures. To never refer to each other or themselves by their birth names, nor even a more mundane if false identity.

“Become the legend they’re building around us,” Reign had said on a dreary night in 1959. “Their fear will do as much to protect us as our power ever will.”

He’d been right. He usually was.

Insight pulled out a small device, one of his own design. The blessing of eternal youth and perfect health was that you had time to pursue interests without the fear of age or infirmity slowing you down. The comm’s design changed now and then as he worked out new updates, and the other four—now three—were replaced as well. The lengths he and his companions had gone to in securing a means of communication that couldn’t be intercepted or traced bordered on the insane. For anyone but the legendary Five, that was.

He smiled at the memory of a particular caper which the world at large believed was a complex plot to steal military secrets. Certainly they’d needed to raid a massive research facility. The deaths were regrettable; all five of them had great respect for the armed services. Still, getting Reign into the hidden launch facility without anyone being the wiser was an achievement that still warmed Insight as he recalled the event. The metahuman who worked with the joint USAF/CIA satellite program was valuable in the extreme. Especially when controlled long enough to have him slip a small satellite into the bundle he carried to orbit. Nearly thirty years later and no one knew it existed. Of course, Windwalker could jump into space if he wanted, though back then it hadn’t been an option. Thus the need for misdirection, which was always a useful tool.

Insight pushed the button to send the all-clear message to the others. Within five seconds, a portal opened in the world. The snap and hiss of energy around the gaping maw in the skin of the universe was more than close enough to hit Insight, yet the threads of elemental energy somehow seemed to dance just past him no matter how many snarled from the edge of the gateway.

The others walked through, Windwalker at the rear. Reign was as silent and taciturn as ever. The man only came alive in times of war or in the middle of a job. Reign knew himself well enough to know that was a liability. Considering the nature of his power, he would otherwise have easily been the leader of The Five. Everyone knew it, and so he deferred absolutely to Insight. It kept things simple.

Outbreak looked irritated by something, but that wasn’t news. He’d been out of sorts since Cascade’s death. Insight had the strange impression that the burly, wild-haired man was constantly bothered by insect stings. He had the body language of someone relentlessly fighting the urge to scratch.

Windwalker closed the portal without twitching a muscle, and the hill fell silent.

“Scotland?” Windwalker asked. “Really? Why all the way out here? America is big enough to find somewhere no one will bother us.”

Outbreak snorted. “You always say that, but the one time we let you pick the meeting place, we almost got nabbed.”

Windwalker grinned unashamedly. “Hey, you have to admit that getting together on the top of Lincoln’s head was kind of great. Rushmore will never be the same.”

Reign merely shook his head in defeat. Of them all, he and Insight were the most dedicated to whatever job lay before them. Whether it was a personal agenda or one of their infrequent mercenary contracts, both men had an intense drive to do it right.

The only difference was that Insight had a sense of humor, and Reign’s had been shot off in some war or another.

“Gentlemen,” Insight said as a means of welcome. “Good to see you again. We’ve hit a snag. Our puppet was arrested. How should we proceed?”

More than seven decades of working together, both before and after the Flare, made the four of them more than able to work through their differences without strife. The so-called villains of the world, rare though they might be, were generally unstable enough that they never achieved the sort of unshakable power their comic-book counterparts always seemed to manage. Cooperative effort and megalomania were strange and uncomfortable bedfellows.

As was their custom, they went in order of rank. Windwalker, the only member of the group who chose to look middle-aged even if he was still in perfect physical condition, went first. “Doesn’t change much. We can run out and put strings one a couple new ones I’ve found. Amazing how the agency lets all those powerful metas run around without a leash.”

“They’re citizens,” Outbreak said without much fire. It was an old argument between the two of them, much rehashed and robbed of any viciousness by the passing of years. “Works for us that their civil liberties are being protected, though. Walker is right. We can grab a few new faces and let Reign tie them up. It’ll take a little extra time, but we have forever.”

Reign shook his head. “I don’t think it’s a good idea. Furlan took me weeks to get right, and even then he didn’t self-destruct the way he should have when escape was impossible. Normally I’d say he won’t talk, but this hasn’t happened before. Without Cascade tuning with us, I just don’t have the level of power I need to do it fast or easily. Definitely not both.”

Insight nodded in agreement. They’d all suffered a setback at the death of their fifth. His contribution to their group Resonance was raw, unmitigated force. He made them all vastly stronger. Without that energy, they weren’t the unstoppable threat the world made them out to be. Still wily and experienced, nothing could change that, but there would be no toppled governments and enormous paydays without that immense surge of energy.

“I think we take the other option,” Insight said. “It has the advantage of speeding things up rather than adding yet more time to the plan, and there’s virtually no chance it won’t work. We’ll need to get the timing right, of course, but we’ve never had a problem with that.”

Windwalker let out a theatrical groan. “We went to all that trouble to dig up the information, and now we have it and you want us to do the endgame in person? That’s crazy.”

Insight smiled. “Some people would say seventy years of being the bad guys would drive anyone crazy, but look at us. We lost one of our own, and we didn’t lash out and kill an entire state. We don’t murder wantonly. We’re as precise and as controlled as we can be, and we always have been. We’re experts, boys. This is what we do. We jump in like lightning on a clear summer day, confuse them with chaos, and never let them see our real move before we escape. And we do that because we’ve got the experience and the will to make a plan and stick to it.”

Outbreak gave Insight a grim smile. “You know I hate it when you give rousing speeches, right?”

Insight grinned. It wasn’t the condescending, superior look he gave Heroes or agents in the field, the one that told them every story was true and he was so far above them that fighting back was pointlessly stupid. No, this was the bright and pure smile of long friendship and deep respect. “I know. Because it always works.”

“Yeah,” Outbreak said with a sigh. “Guess my work’s cut out for me keeping you idiots alive. Let’s make a plan and get this done.”

As another portal opened leading to their shared base of operations—only traveled to when they were already together to reduce the chance of someone tailing them—and the group stepped through, he heard Windwalker grumble from the other side of the world.

“I’m real tired of us having to be the bait in our own goddamn plans.”

The hierarchy of MICA agents was more complicated than any outsider realized. There were Special Agents in Charge just like the FBI, but these were generally people who helmed specific units with command privileges limited to those directly beneath them in the chain. Free agents, as the majority of the Metahuman Intervention and Containment Agency operatives were informally called, existed on a wide spectrum of trustworthiness. Some were assets only, metas given access to the common areas and not much else, while others could enter any secure area of any MICA facility or log in to read the most classified files available to anyone below the rank of Assistant Director. As rank-and-file agents went, the latter category were as trusted and in the know as anyone who hadn’t made a career out of ladder climbing.

Dave Sallee was one of those highly trusted agents. He had to be, considering his job. The location of the island was one of MICA’s most dearly guarded secrets, and before that he’d been the head of the teleportation section of the nationwide retrieval team.

What the trainees believed about the teleportation anchors and what was actually true didn’t line up. It was fact that the meta geniuses who’d invented the anchors made them capable of blocking out all teleportation. Spatial rifts were dangerous for a thousand obvious reasons, but after the first few months of use, it had become clear that the system needed flexibility. That flexibility was also a weak spot in the armor around MICA facilities, however, so its true nature was kept need-to-know.

Each anchor was programmed to recognize the specific frequency of a spatial rift trying to open inside its sphere of influence. If Dave wanted to go to the island, he could do so regardless of whether the proverbial front door was open for him or not.

The same held true for all MICA facilities. The sad fact was that no matter how well you planned, sometimes you needed to pop a bad guy right into a cell that could contain them without going through a bunch of red tape beforehand.

Dave was not high on MICA’s org chart as far as overall responsibility went, but his entry in the general database did come with a few markers that made it clear to anyone with access that he could go pretty much anywhere he wanted on the planet Earth, and that he had special rights not otherwise explained in that easy-to-access file. A clever enough person wouldn’t have a problem putting the pieces together.

“Every Thursday like clockwork,” the barista said as she brought over the comically large vat of coffee. It technically was coffee in the sense that it contained the stuff, though the ratio was low enough that a strong argument could be made against the easy label. More than half was not coffee, a collection of heavy cream, sugar, and flavorings more in line with frozen treats than anything else.

“I try not to miss this,” Dave said with a smile, hefting the cup to his lips and inhaling deeply. The barista—Erin, who looked about his own age—shook her head with a muted grin.

“How are you not twice your size, drinking that stuff?” she asked. “Not that I’d mind, you understand. Nothing wrong with a nice dad bod. I just don’t get where it all goes.”

Dave didn’t teleport himself to the same tiny Portland coffee shop once a week just for the java, however delicious it was. He always made sure to ask about Erin even if she wasn’t working. Everyone there knew him. Of course, he didn’t say so. “I’ve always had a good metabolism. One of these days it’ll slow down, and then I’ll get love handles.”

It wasn’t likely. Turns out you burned a lot of calories opening up doorways in space/time.

Erin turned to walk back to the coffee bar, then whirled back around with a finger snap. “Oh, yeah. Your friend wanted me to tell you he’d be here in a few minutes.”

Dave frowned. “Friend?”

In most field agents, at least those whose abilities inclined them toward combat, reactions would have tended toward instant movement. Dave, however, had a lifetime of being able to escape virtually any threat with little more than a thought. It was a weakness found in many teleporters, and the hesitation cost him.

“Thank you, Erin, but I’m already here,” said a new voice. Dave turned and looked instinctively, eyes meeting those of the total stranger who settled into the seat opposite him. The face was bland and generic, but the eyes—he knew them.

“Ah, I see you know who I am,” Reign said when the recognition washed over Dave’s face. “Not my usual look, but then your people know we have the means to change our appearance to maintain our anonymity, don’t you? Not any great leap needed to work that one out. We couldn’t have stayed free all these decades without it.”

Dave tried to access his power, but found nothing. He tried to move, but remained still. He tried to do anything but sit there thinking as hard as he could, the thoughts themselves fueled by fear and rage, yet even the thoughts came slowly. His eyes darted around the room, both hopeful someone had heard the conversation and terrified they might have. Reign wasn’t known for his gentle reactions.

Reign saw this, of course, and waved a hand casually. “Don’t worry about them, Mr. Sallee. I have no interest in causing a scene. I got here early and took precautions. No one can overhear us, and none of the staff will remember anything but a pleasant chat between two old friends. You may not realize it, but your expression is perfectly calm with just a hint of a smile. Like you’ve seen an old friend.”

Dave found himself nodding, then speaking. “Yes. Old friends.”

Shit.

SHIT.

Reign let out a small sigh. “Yes, I have you. Unfortunately I don’t have time to hollow you out, so we’ll just have to do this the quick and dirty way. If it means anything to you, your superiors will know exactly what happened once the dust settles. I doubt they’ll find you responsible for any of it in the end. Though if I’m being honest, that might be the least of your worries. I’m told the therapy to get over what I’m about to do to you is extensive.”

Dave fought with everything he had. Every shred of his willpower pushed against the fingers digging into his psyche, fingers that even now felt as if they were sprouting claws.

“What. Are. You. Doing. To. Meeee.” Dave spat out each word between the gritted teeth of a smile that wasn’t his own.

Reign steepled his fingers and leaned close. “Using you to let an old friend come out and play. It’s a card we’ll only get to play once, but I’m pretty sure that will be enough. Now, come with me. This is going to hurt, and enough pain can loosen my control enough that you might actually scream. Then I’d have to kill everyone in this building. Maybe even the whole shopping center. It will be simpler if you choose to come with me, Mr. Sallee. Safer for everyone.”

Dave made a choice. He might not have been a Hero in the technical sense, but every person who had earned the title would have agreed that it was the one they would have made. To save the many, Dave left the coffee shop of his own free will and walked into an unknown hell. He chose to protect those he knew were in danger rather than risk their lives to prevent an unknown from happening. In short, he sacrificed himself. At least potentially.

It was the decision any Hero would have made, if not the one every trainee would have. It was the selfless choice.

It was also the wrong one.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Like a Shitty Street Magician

The alarm rang out across the island, and at least above ground it was the simplest and most effective method available; the bell tower tolled.

“Form up,” America ordered, and behind her two teams of trainees snapped into predetermined arrangements. Team 3 marched next to Team 7, their team drills left behind as they moved toward the castle as they had long been instructed to in the unlikely event of an island-wide alert. Other teams made their way to the outer wall and followed her people through the gate and into the courtyard, all lining up in precise rows, one for each team and split into two columns.

Shirani and a somewhat bedraggled Delilah stood waiting. The former wasted no time.

“The Five have launched an attack on Portland, Oregon,” he said, tightly controlled fury etching lines into his otherwise useful face. America saw the Hero in him in that moment. Not the educator, not the man high enough in the pecking order of the agency to affect real change, but Glimmer. The guy who got called in to put the boot to the worst possible threats. The one who didn’t shy away from blood and death if it meant protecting the innocent.

Murmurs spread through the crowd. America noted with some satisfaction that no one on her team or on Team 3 made a noise.

“They’ve somehow sprung Rule from lockup in the Cooler,” Shirani continued. “There is a joint MICA facility in the area that works with a few of our better known meta geniuses on highly advanced tech, and it appears to be their target. All four of the remaining members of the group have been spotted. They’re fighting using human and metahuman puppets. The situation will turn Portland into a war zone if we can’t stop it. For that reason, I’m activating most of you to assist. Each team that goes with us will be given a Hero to act as a commanding officer. Team 7 and the Miller triplets from Team 3 need to come with me.”

America frowned but followed as Shirani broke from the pack. Delilah was already teleporting groups of trainees off the island. He led America and the others into the entrance hall and toward one of the handful of ground floor training rooms. It was, she noted with disinterest, his own classroom.

“I need the three of you to wait out here and guard the door until I open it,” Shirani said to the Millers. America thought them a good choice even if they weren’t as flashy as people with super strength. Cade with her energy absorption and magnification, Ian with his force fields, and Owen’s ability to emit enough light to burn your eyes out of your head—and to offer up his sister some extra ammunition in the process—were a potent combination. It was this and probably the clear trust America had for the triplets that made Shirani choose them as protectors.

Once the room was sealed, its electronic shielding in place, Shirani sped through his speech with the rapidity of a man who knows every second he’s not in a fight counts. He raced across the room and opened the locked cabinet there, removing his Glimmer uniform. Without shame he began changing while Team 7 listened to him talk.

“I’ve been ordered to keep you here as a guard unit,” Shirani said with a grimace as he yanked his thick uniform pants over the thin khakis he habitually wore on the island. He paused to wave a dismissive hand at them. “No. No arguments. Nothing I can do about it. You’ve had an encounter with Rule, and he’s there in Portland. If you read the dossier on him, you know what he’s capable of. You know that because you’ve been under his power, he’ll be able to get you from a much greater range the second time. You know what kind of man he is.”

“Sadist,” America said. “He enjoys torturing his victims, who he often rapes. Who else will be on the island?”

“Basic staff, of course,” Shirani said. “But in terms of people with combat training, it’ll be you seven, the Millers, and Paragon. We brought in a small team of specialists to give the other trainees a boost, but they’re noncoms. They’ll be at your disposal if you need them, in containment room 2. Oh, and Agent Williams will be with you. Rohm will be needed in Portland. She’s our best information-gathering asset in the field.”

He finished dressing and tapped the collar of armor coat covering his torso. A thin gorget slid up from it to cover his neck and twist upward to shield the base of his skull. The only thing left was the helmet. He tucked it under his arm and turned to fully face them. “Honestly, I’d just have Paragon here if it were up to me. He’s the most powerful meta in the Hero program. You’re all here because my boss wants you safe.”

America raised an eyebrow. “And the Millers? Why are they here?”

Shirani’s smile was thin, but grim. “Because you have a bad habit of not staying safe when you should.”

Ethan and Chris nodded and in unison said, “Yeah, that’s fair.”

The island was far too large to rely on patrols alone. A hundred people in constant motion across it would have left gaping holes in the perimeter, making a small team like theirs virtually pointless without technological assistance. The sensors monitoring the island as well as the air above it and sea below were such that America and the others were rendered purely a reactionary, defensive force. They weren’t needed to catch a threat should one show up. Just to stop it.

They stood on the castle wall in clusters. Chris and Drew spoke with Paragon about their progress in Resonance practice over the few weeks. The weather was starting to turn, though the island was never all that cold even in winter.

The thought tickled something in the back of her mind. She tuned out the game of ‘have you ever’ being played by the bored trio of Celia, Susan, and Cade. Ian and Owen talking video games with Ethan faded to the background. Only Cam stayed vigilant, as the others trusted the system to warn them of any trouble. She and Cam were the only ones with sensor feeds ported to the lenses in their eyes, a precaution even the most paranoid member of their crew would agree was a bit far.

“Hey,” America said, glancing over at Paragon. “Where are we?”

The big man frowned at her. “I don’t catch your meaning.”

“The island,” America said. “Where is it, actually?”

Paragon fidgeted, which was a strange look on a man who could knock over a skyscraper with a single punch. “That’s classified.”

America crossed her arms. “We’re literally standing on it. I’m not asking you for GPS coordinates here, just the general location. I promise I won’t tell.”

“You’re not gonna stop until I tell you, are you?” he asked. America smiled in response. “Fine. We’re in the southern Atlantic, way outside of any shipping lane you could hope to be rescued in if you decided to take a long swim.”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, her brain took them and ran at full tilt. She’d tried for so long to put the pieces together about the attacks. When Shirani told them about the research facility, she’d thought it made sense as an end goal. Whatever The Five were up to probably had roots in a plan—theirs or someone who hired them—that reached back years. The previous attacks were logical even in their pointlessness if they served to test the response of the heroes who came in to handle them.

And yet…

In all that pondering, all the mystery at the why of the attacks, she never stopped feeling like something was off. Just barely, but off. She couldn’t stop herself from coming at it again and again while the others stood there looking at her with their usual mildly confused expressions. She tried to fit this new fact into the models filed away in her brain because it was new information even if it didn’t look like it had shit to do with the attacks or The Five on the surface. Frustration built up in her until the tiny, non-genius section of her mind that focused on everyday things chimed in with an answer so basic that she would have overlooked it if she hadn’t remembered just then that none of The Five were meta geniuses. Smart men, surely, but they thought more like your average person than she did.

It wasn’t about testing the heroes. Or not just about that—it was location.

“Every attack was further west,” she said sharply.

“America?” Cam asked, her voice thick with concern. “Hon, what are you thinking? I know that tone.”

“We’re idiots,” America said. “Me especially. Think about the things we know about The Five. What we know about Windwalker. He’s not just a teleporter, right? He can anchor as well.”

“Most powerful in the world,” Paragon said. “But he can’t teleport here. The system won’t let anyone who isn’t approved through the dimensional anchors here. Even Dave can’t come back until he gets whitelisted. You leave the island for more than twenty-four hours and you have to be manually activated again.”

America shook her head. “It’s misdirection, the first trick every magician learns. Say you want to pull away every damn Hero and half-trained meta on the island away. More than that, you want to draw Heroes as far away from your target as possible. So you stage a bunch of attacks over time that get further from the place you’re going to hit with every new attack. Then you hop in, lock down teleportation, and you’ve bought yourself all the time you need to get what you want.”

Cade, who was starting to look grim, half-raised a hand as if they were in class. “You sound like you know what they want, and that makes me real fucking curious how that could be.”

Paragon shot America a warning look, which she returned with a mild shrug. “If I’m right, they’re going to know soon. I’d rather them have some idea what they’re up against if—”

In her left lens, a camera feed blinked to life just as an alarm blared in the courtyard beneath them. A console unfolded from the seemingly solid wall beside Paragon and a magnified artificial voice began to speak.

“Metahuman signature registering as Windwalker has appeared over Island airspace,” the mechanical voice said. “Altitude twenty thousand feet and falling.”

America grunted appreciatively. “Damn, those are some precise sensors.”

“We’re all gonna die,” Ian moaned.

Owen grinned. “Nah, he’s gonna hit the sand at terminal velocity. We’re good.”

“Both of you shut your holes,” Cade said calmly. She favored America with a distrustful look. “Since you seem to know way more than you should, how likely is it he’ll survive the fall?”

“He wouldn’t have done it if he couldn’t walk away,” America said. “Who would? Come on. We all need to hop down to the entrance hall and get our support team to safety. He’s gonna be here soon, and we need to be ready.”

She expected to feel fear. She should have felt it. The deep, writhing mass of anger directed inward left no room for it. It was obvious what Windwalker was coming for; why else go to all the trouble of finding the island and emptying it out? If The Five wanted to nuke the place and kill four years’ worth of aspiring Heroes and no small number of actual Heroes, they wouldn’t have staged the attacks. They wanted something they would have to look for. After all, not a single computer on the mainland contained the location of Cascade’s corpse.

The Five operated for more than sixty years as a unit. There wasn’t a chance the others would leave their man behind.

“Tell them,” America said to Paragon. “I’ll take the heat. These fuckers aren’t getting their buddy back without a fight.”

Whatever Windwalker did to avoid the defenses—which fired on him in continuous bursts of such a wide variety that it took America a moment to actually count all the types of weapons hurling death into the sky—it wasn’t what he used to land. They hadn’t been able to see him through the blistering upward hail of bullets, explosives, electrical blasts, plasma weapons, and half a dozen other attacks. The how of his survival became a trivial point of concern when he fell below the 500 foot altitude mark and the guns went silent.

She could just see him as the sky cleared of burning afterimages traced across it by the defenses, a helpless speck plummeting toward the ground. Right until he wasn’t anymore; his fall slowed dramatically almost instantly, followed by a quick descent to the ground. He touched down on the nearest shore to the Castle, an inlet that came within a hundred and fifty yards of the northwestern corner.

“He’s coming this way,” Drew said as the seemingly harmless middle-aged man trudged through the sand. Those four words implied a lot, and carried the weight of a body count usually reserved for small wars.

“Not for long,” Paragon said. “I can take him out in a single hit. He’s alone.”

America shook her head. “No, he looks alone. What if he has Reign with him, somehow invisible? He clearly has tech on him that keeps him safe from attack, and maybe even a device to control his relationship with gravity. You’ll be their weapon in no time. And we can’t take you out.”

Paragon scowled, but she thought more at the irritating accuracy of the logic than any real displeasure with America herself. “What should I do, then?”

Ethan spoke up. “How fast can you fly?”

“Not fast enough to get help before you’re all killed,” Paragon said evenly. Ethan’s eyebrows shot up, and the older Hero smiled. “I’ve been doing this a long time, son. You’re not likely to surprise me.”

“Slip,” America said, nodding toward the rapidly approaching figure. “How about you surprise him instead?”

As he stepped toward the edge of the castle wall, America passed instructions on to the rest of the team. She used text. No sense in getting anyone caught because they were overheard. She slipped away and down the steps set into the interior face of the wall, quickly rounding to the gate and moving through the smaller door to its right. From inside the tiny space and through a ten inch window of reinforced plastic facing the sea, she watched Ethan do his work.

The distance didn’t matter so much, not with a jolt of enhancement from Agent Williams. Everyone took those differently—even though she’d never found much use for it, America had taken one as well this time—and Ethan’s gift from being amped up was a massively increased range. Or rather, the ability to stretch and deform the much larger field of altered friction he was able to create.

It was how he could reach out fifty feet and cause Windwalker to fall flat on his face. The older man writhed on the mix of exotic grasses beneath him, trying his best to find some kind of purchase.

“Cam,” America whispered into her comm. “You’re up. Remember how fast all of them can heal.”

To her credit, Cam waited until Windwalker had fallen in such a way that he was no longer facing the castle. How shocked would the old man be when a pissed-off tank of a woman dropped out of nowhere to break him like a bundle of twigs?

As it turned out, pretty fucking shocked.

Cam, exempted from Ethan’s power by the force of the young man’s will, had no problem keeping her footing as she landed. Part of her success was in the smart call she made not landing on Windwalker himself, instead slamming into the earth inches away and immediately raising her foot to stomp on his knee. The leg didn’t break so much as cartoonishly explode. The back of his knee faced the ground, and Cam’s boot went through it as if it didn’t exist. The joint shattered so badly that the leg bent all the way in the wrong direction.

Windwalker let out a bone-chilling shriek of agony, cut off in seconds by blinding rage. It was obvious even from a distance, carved into every line of his body. His eyes locked on Cam and before anyone could do anything at all, he had raised a hand and released a blinding burst of energy directly at her face.

Cam turned her head, but it wasn’t enough. The force of the blast threw her backward like a giant grabbed hold of her skull and chucked her by it at full strength. America felt the impact as Cam hit the wall not ten feet away. Dust rained down in the tiny vestibule she watched from.

“No,” America whispered, and she heard the comm pick up the word. “God, no.”

“Keep steady,” Paragon said in a gentle, deadly voice. “I’m still getting a feed from her suit. She’s alive.”

America was moving through the door and toward Windwalker before she realized what was happening. He saw her and moved his hand in her direction.

The world slowed. It was simple to dodge just far enough to avoid the lance of energy. Her mind went arctic, emotions suppressed enough not to rule over her reason. As much as America wanted to cut this man into neat little cubes, trying it without more information was suicidal. And right now, she was all that stood between the legendary villain and Cam’s unconscious form.

“Energy blasts,” America said as she casually moved aside to avoid another one. “That’s new. We had no idea you could project that way. Interesting. I’m curious how you kept it hidden so long.”

Windwalker pushed himself to his good knee, teeth clenched so hard she heard at least one of them crack. She was almost to him, now, her pace slow enough to invite attacks that might reveal more hidden talents.

“Oh, I got more,” Windwalker said. His hands shot down and back, torrents of wild blue energy arcing into the ground and bouncing off every surface. The blanket of snapping power didn’t go up the wall or interfere with the hologram currently hiding the rest of the team. America frowned in confusion, a rare sensation, as she tried to figure out his endgame.

One of the nearby metallic cylinders dotting the island was hit by a tendril of energy, which burned a hole the size of a basketball through it before petering out.

“Ah,” Windwalker said. “I made a hole. That’s so much better. Now I can bring friends, too.”

He slipped to the ground again, Ethan somehow regaining the focus to slow the villain down after seeing his friend swatted like a bug, but it wasn’t enough. Even without the ability to sit or stand and through the ungodly pain of his ruined—and now healing—leg, he was able to open a rift.

Through it stepped two figures. One was clearly Outbreak, obvious even only as a vague outline against the harsh light of the gateway standing where no gate should rightly exist. He was a dangerous son of a bitch, no doubt in her mind about it, but it was the other body moving through that set her heart beating against her chest like it was trying to make a bid for freedom.

Rule stepped through and saw her, recognition dawning on his face. A shark’s smile pulled at the corners of his mouth, teeth showing. “Hello, sweetie. We’ve got some catching up to do. No Glimmer to save you now.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

Full Contact

“We don’t have time for this,” Outbreak said, grabbing Rule by the arm and hauling him off at a dead run.

America felt the full force of his gaze fall upon her, and the oppressive blanket of Rule’s power hit her mind hard enough to stagger anyone into full compliance. Or almost anyone; America’s hand blurred to her waist and she pulled a strange weapon and fired in a single motion.

Rule took the shot to his right hip as Outbreak hauled him along at more than human speeds. He squawked indignantly, not at all in line with his self-imposed image as a classical mustache-twirling bad guy. The pair vanished into the side of the castle wall as if it didn’t exist.

“Huh,” she said. Then she keyed her comm. “They have technology we need to get our hands on. They just walked right through the wall and probably down into the subterranean levels.” She gave this command as she stepped around yet more blasts from Windwalker, who was swiftly recovering. She aimed her weapon at him and he grinned before vanishing into thin air.

“What just happened?” Celia asked as she landed on a cloud of extended wires and cables extending from her uniform. “How did Rule not get you?”

America tapped the side of her helmet. “I sandboxed my consciousness. His commands went right to a little section of my mind I roped off from all my vital functions. I also programmed myself to draw and fire the minute any fuckery happened to my brain. Rule is gonna have a hard time using his powers for about twenty minutes.” She holstered the tiny firearm, which let it recharge with the microscopic machines it used for bullets. Once the round entered the body, it spread out and the individual robots used their limited batteries to wreak hell on the central nervous system. “Form up on me. We need to get inside.”

Ethan and Paragon grabbed Cam and carefully rolled her over. America strode over and pulled a small flask from a thigh pocket. “Here, make her drink this.”

Paragon frowned. “What is it?”

“Moonshine,” America said. “I noticed at the bar that a cut on her hand healed up when she drank a shot of vodka. Alcohol apparently allows her to heal.”

Ethan blinked. “And you never told her? Because that’s a thing Cam would have mentioned.”

She began to walk away even as she replied. “You’ve seen how much she uses her powers. I was worried she’d get even more reckless, counting on it to save her. Or become an alcoholic. Let’s move, people.”

Except for Paragon and Slip, they did as they were told and formed up on America. They knew where the invaders were going—Cascade’s body hadn’t been moved. She suspected The Five had an ability to sense each other. Rohm’s information hinted strongly that was the case. Windwalker and Outbreak would find him eventually, and it was to Team 7’s benefit it be sooner rather than later.

They made their way down into the administrative wing at top speed and Set up in and around the morgue.

“Paragon,” she said into the comm once everyone was in place. “Can you resist Rule’s power? Can he take you over?”

“He can’t,” the older Hero said hesitantly. “Not like he does everyone else. But it’s a fight. He’ll slow me down to human speed. I won’t be able to fight very well.”

“Then don’t,” she said. “I think you should go for help, no matter how long it takes. If Reign shows up, you’re going to be used against us. He’ll take you in a heartbeat. We can’t risk that.”

On the map of the island displayed on her lens, she saw the dots representing him and Slip moving slowly toward the building with Cam’s dot in between them.

“I can’t abandon you,” Paragon said.

Over the comm, a weak but determined voice spoke out. “You won’t be. You’ll be saving us from the damage you could do whenever Reign shows up.”

“Cam?” America asked. “You okay?”

“Oh, now that’s a loaded question,” Cam said. America moved away from the door to the morgue and prowled around the area surrounding it as her best friend spat a tirade at her. It was no more than she expected. Keeping part of Cam’s power secret from her, even as an unproved suspicion, wasn’t something a friend was supposed to do.

“We’re almost at the entrance to the underground,” Paragon said, interrupting.

“Then this is where you stop,” Cam said. “Go get us help. America plans for everything. We’ve got this.”

America keyed her comm down to almost silent as the pair argued, but after thirty seconds she saw the dot representing Paragon dash away and vanish almost instantly.

“Still hurt,” Cam said once their nanny was away, and the words carried more than one meaning. “But I can still fight.”

America stopped where she stood at the entrance to the lobby of the administrative area, a large space with twenty foot ceilings, marble floors, and water fixtures. It was meant to impress visiting politicians who wanted to be sure with their own eyes that the program was running well. At the other side of the room stood her three opponents. She subvocalized the command for the others to move up and join her. The longer they could keep the invaders from the body that had to be their prize, the better chances were that help would get here before everyone was killed. At no point did America believe they’d all be able to walk away from this one. Casualties were essentially guaranteed.

If it had to be anyone, she would try her best to make sure it was her.

No banter from either side erupted into the silence, only a few seconds of everyone gauging everyone else and then sudden violence.

Rule collapsed where he was, his body refusing to obey him even as her nanites sent waves of crippling pain through his limbs. She considered it a regrettable decision not to make them lethal. It would have been easy. Easier in fact than programming them to disrupt. Twenty minutes without breathing or blood flow would certainly have done the trick, but at the time she’d developed the idea, it seemed too cold-blooded even for her logical mind.

That didn’t stop her from shooting Rule a second time as she danced away from Outbreak. The tall, slender man had an obvious fighting style. They hadn’t needed Rohm’s visions to know that. If he could touch you, he could hurt or kill you, but it was all in his hands. Skin to skin contact wasn’t required, but he had to grip you for at least a second or two. America didn’t give him that chance. As soon as Outbreak got close enough to get a grip on her, she twisted and spun with a gymnast’s grace just out of reach. She rather thought the gymnasts she’d mentally recorded and copied would be proud.

Her punch took him in the middle of the sternum. To say he was surprised as his entire chest caved in while he flew backward through the air to crash against the wall would be an understatement.

“How the hell?” Windwalker snarled. He obviously wasn’t concerned for his companion; Outbreak healed as well as Lazarus, and from everything generations of Heroes had thrown at him.

“Trade secret,” America said with laughter in her voice. The support staff brought in by Williams and Shirani counted five metas who could gift powers onto others. For the next hour, America was strong, fast, durable, healed like a short Canadian hero she’d once read about, and had reflexes that would let her dodge bullets. “I think you’re next, bud.”

“I don’t think I am,” Windwalker said with a grim smile. His body erupted with pale blue energy, racing along his form until there was nothing left but surging power. “You can’t hurt me like this, kid. I’m pure energy.”

America laughed, and the shining form stalking toward her faltered. One failing of being a legendary villain was that you probably got to a point where people not cowing before you was the exception. It clearly threw Windwalker off his game. “What’s so funny?”

“Oh, you know,” America said. “I have a friend who’s always worried he won’t be good enough, or have enough control, even though he’s a pretty talented guy. I just think it’s funny that the first time he’s gonna really be able to let loose is against a guy made up of what I assume is pure dimensional energy. Right? You’re composed of the stuff that happens inside spatial rifts?”

From the doorway she’d come through, a dead-black dot raced ahead of its maker. The ball hit Windwalker in the head, and behaved as if the man was flesh and bone. It burst through and whirled in the air to return to hover in front of Sphere as he stepped into the room.

“Ahhh, fuck me that hurts,” Windwalker said as the energy splattered around the outline of his head drew back in. “Gonna pay for that.”

“Keep hitting him,” America said. “Keep him busy. We’ll handle the other two.”

Cam and Ethan burst through the door the three villains had come through just as the rest of her team and the Miller triplets boiled out of the dark hallway behind America. She was thankful they hadn’t needed to fight in the much smaller space, silently thanking an uncaring universe that her initial urge to go find her enemies rather than wait for them had panned out.

“Outnumbered again,” Windwalker said, waving his hand.

“Sphere, stop him!” she shouted, running forward. But it was too late. A slash of blue light rotated in the air and figures stepped through. Reign and Insight were here, along with several Heroes who must be under their control.

None of the new arrivals wasted any time turning the room into a war zone.

Susan wasn’t stupid enough to stick around. She saw the bodies flying, people throwing down with everything they had, and decided that discretion was the better part of valor. Over the many strategy and tactics sessions their team had talked through, a free-for-all like this had come up more than once. It was a depressingly common occurrence when dealing with metahuman criminals. There was a lot of chaos during which just about anything could happen.

For example, someone could slip away. She knew that because just before she backed down the hallway toward the morgue, she saw Insight catch the attention of Outbreak as he pulled himself to his feet and healed. The leader of The Five nodded his head toward the deeper parts of the administrative wing. Susan’s instinct was that the fight—which the new arrivals probably could have won in seconds by killing everyone in sight—was another misdirection.

So she did what she’d planned to do from the moment Shirani made her an offer impossible to refuse: Susan Carroll went to the one place she knew the bastards would be.

She made as little noise as possible, even controlling her breathing as America had taught her. No telling how well Insight could track everyone in the complex with those senses of his. With more care than she was normally inclined to give, Susan crept toward the morgue and hid herself inside.

Running away wasn’t her style. Never had been. She was the little girl who punched bullies right in the dick. She was the young woman fearlessly standing on the stage and inviting the hecklers to do their worst. She was the mother of a dead son. A murdered son. And these fuckers would not scare her away.

Perhaps others would see her actions and assume the worst. It was a possibility that crossed her mind as soon as she made the decision to retreat, and a few seconds of consideration made Susan sure she’d be okay with that. America would know better, and she’d convince the team. More than once in the various scenarios the team practiced, Susan had been a weapon of last resort. A hidden trump card.

In her mind, she wasn’t running away from the fight. She was running toward the one place she had even a small chance of getting those bastards alone.

Any amount of bad reputation was worth the risk.

It was, finally, too much for America to keep track of. The chaos in the room flooded her perceptions with far more information than even her extraordinary mind could process at once.

She rolled away from a burst of energy fired at her by Windwalker and passed through illusions of The Five created by one of the metas being controlled by Reign. None of her people were dead so far—was that Williams fighting in the north corner?—but it was only a matter of time. Everyone was hurt to some degree. America wasn’t bleeding thanks to her armor, yet Insight had managed a punch that fractured something in her left shoulder.

There were illusory copies of every enemy in the room, several times over. They moved and acted exactly like real people, and casual visual inspection offered her no clues to determine if they were the real thing or simple images. Whichever of the strangers under Reign’s thumb was creating them knew his job; the false enemies never stepped on so much as a piece of debris that could give them away by not moving the way it should.

After a fierce five minutes of back and forth, she realized there was no other option but the hard choice. The gun she’d created to slow down Rule and keep him from controlling anyone had been made with him in mind, but it should work on most metahumans. She only had six shots total inside it, which meant just four left. Rule was a known enemy. The metas brought in by Reign weren’t.

But they’d kill her team either way. It didn’t matter if it was their fault.

“Lace, give me cover,” America ordered over the comm. “I need to know which of Reign’s puppets are the originals.”

“Only gonna get one shot,” Celia said as she hauled herself onto the wall, tendrils digging through the drywall and into the raw stone of island behind it. “Soon as they see what I’m doing, they’ll all come for me.”

“She won’t fuck up,” Cam said, her words so quiet on the channel they were nearly impossible to hear. There was effort in her voice; a glance showed her best friend trading blows with Reign himself. The villain didn’t seem worried. Every person he controlled made him a little stronger, and he must have been tethered to a small army of metas to exchange shots with someone as strong as Nosh when she was amped up by Williams.

No, America thought, I won’t.

The cables, wires, ropes, and other weapons usually wrapped around Lace in a thick protective layer unfolded like a massive black flower. There was barely time to appreciate the beauty of the sight, only a flash, and then the cloud of tendrils shot forward.

“Shit,” America said. “Retreat! Get us out of here, Lace!”

To Celia’s credit, she didn’t waver or hesitate. She dropped to the ground even as she reoriented her artificial limbs to grab hold of her teammates. America was hauled off her feet and pulled down the hallway leading to the morgue as Celia held off every remaining person in the room they were swiftly leaving behind.

Less people than there should have been, for certain. No Rule, no Insight, no Outbreak. Two of The Five were nowhere to be found. That was only true for a short time, however, because they ran into the three men as they beat on the door to the morgue.

“Lace, keep the rest of them away,” America barked. “Everyone else, take them down.”

Insight stepped away from the door—she very much wanted to know just when he’d been able to sneak away—and cocked his head slightly. His next move was quick and efficient, with no wasted motion, producing a small device from a pouch on his belt and clicking a button on its surface.

Her team stopped instantly. Every one of them froze where they were. Recursion was in mid-step when the thing activated and tipped over, locked into the position he’d been in.

“This was tricky to steal,” Insight said mildly. “The paralysis is short term. It forces your brain to pause all voluntary muscle control. In about twenty minutes you’ll be fine. There aren’t any long-term effects as far as we know.”

As villainous speeches went, America expected more. She seized on the nugget of information he’d given her and began searching through her brain to find the problem. It wasn’t hard since part of her power was a constant awareness of all the pieces and parts of her mind and neurology. The problem was severe, though, and she had to focus on every frozen synapse for a fraction of a second.

Meanwhile, the two men in the hallway were nearly through the door. It barely hung on its frame, the lock’s hold on the retention plate tenuous at best. They’d be through it in a few moments. The others left back in the lobby would join them. Then everyone would die.

Wouldn’t they?

It seemed like a bad tactical decision to leave Team 7 and the Miller triplets locked in their bodies but alive. The Five weren’t known for their concern for the well-being of others, yet here they were not killing their captives. Why? The question burned in her even as America stopped the repair work on her brain and began setting up a sort of programmed purge. It would take less time to automate the process and let it run in the background than to repair each frozen link alone.

The process had just begun when two things happened simultaneously: Insight gave the door one final kick and popped it open, and Windwalker appeared from the hallway. He stopped next to the statue that was Cade Miller and pursed his lips.

“Won’t do for you to try to come after us once that wears off,” he said. “If it was up to me, you wouldn’t be breathing to give it a shot. This should keep you busy.”

And he fired a short, focused blast of energy through Cade’s side. She made no sound, not even a reflexive grunt. She couldn’t.

“That’s enough,” Insight said. “We don’t have time for this.”

A voice issued through the morgue door in response, and there wasn’t a molecule of fear in it. Only a deep, terrifying rage. “You’re goddamn right about that. You don’t have any time at all.”

Then the remaining members of The Five and their puppets screamed in unison as they fell to the floor.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

To The Pain

Susan stepped into the hallway with fists clenched as she stared down the fallen enemies. Her eyes, so often full of hidden laughter, blazed with fury. She stepped over the shuddering form of Insight as he shouted himself hoarse, then stopped. Staring down at him for a few hard seconds, Susan brought her leg back and kicked him in the side of the head without mercy. Once, twice, five times with the relentless mechanical repetition of a metronome.

She stopped short of knocking him unconscious, letting her foot settle back on the ground while still staring with those incandescent eyes and dangerously flat expression.

“Your buddy in there killed my son,” Susan said quietly, her voice touched by a roughness that almost sounded like a growl. “I can’t kill him again, so I figure I’ll get my shot in for all the sons and daughters out there you fuckers have taken away.” Tears began to stream down her face, but her voice remained steady. “My name is Susan Carroll. You know who I am. I’m not wearing a mask so you can see my face when I tell you that I’ve been saving this one up for more than thirty years.”

She knelt down and put her face inches away from Insight’s own. His eyes were wild with agony, but she knew he was seeing her. Hearing her.

“What you’re feeling right now? That’s the pain of my son coming into the world magnified a couple times over.” The words were hot with emotion, her voice growing thick. “That’s the cost I paid to have him, and I’d live through it a thousand times to have another day with him. That’s what you took from me, you pieces of shit. That’s what you take from everyone. I—”

A blast of energy hit her from nowhere, throwing her over the sea of bodies and down the hall a good five yards.

“Thanks for that,” Windwalker said as he hovered forward, entire body a blazing torch of energy. “I probably wouldn’t have been able to think of switching forms if you didn’t give me a clue about how your power. Might want to work on that.”

Susan felt her grip on the villains loosen and then fail abruptly—her concentration couldn’t keep up the stream of pain she sent them. Her own hurt, a massive energy burn she was pretty sure went down to the bone on her right side ribs, screamed at her.

“Oh, and look at that,” Windwalker continued conversationally, his voice wry. “Looks like that other young lady I shot is having some kind of weird reaction. Have fun dealing with that. Come on, fellas. Let’s finish the work.”

Susan fought the pain and mustered up her focus as best she could. Ignoring everything else around her, she zeroed in on Windwalker and hit him with everything she had.

He must have felt something, because he glanced back over at her, but whatever it was obviously didn’t hurt. Somehow his featureless head managed to convey a shitty grin. “Sorry, but I don’t have a body when I’m like this. You can’t hurt me. I, on the other hand, can hurt you.”

And he blasted her again.

“Enough,” Insight said. “We’ve got a job to do. Leave her.”

Susan let the pain wash over her again. The second blast wasn’t as energetic, and she thought that was strange since Windwalker clearly didn’t have the restraint his peers did. Maybe he was running low on juice. She let her eyes wander over to America to see if the girl had managed to work her way out of the paralysis, because if anyone could it would be her, but Susan’s eyes stopped on Cade.

“Oh, god,” she said.

Cade wasn’t bleeding, at least not blood. Windwalker’s power had scorched her, and he was right. There was some kind of reaction. Cade bled energy, waves of red power rolling from the injury like fog only to crackle in tiny bursts of crimson lightning just before it evaporated.

“Cade,” Susan said. “I’m sorry.” She pulled one hand from her side and reached out with it to haul herself along the slick tile floor. Her wound left a sticky trail of something behind, fluids that probably included a little blood as the damaged tissue scraped against the floor.

Cade let out a sigh, a sound that had to have been completely automatic since she couldn’t voluntarily do it. Susan began to scrabble forward with a quiet desperation. She’d heard that sound before. Her memory latched onto the death rattles of old friends and family that had often followed it.

But Cade didn’t die. What she did stopped Susan cold.

The young woman began to fade at the edges. The red light suffused her body and softened it until she resembled Windwalker, a vague person shape composed of raw power. Tendrils reached out and it took Susan a moment to understand that these were her arms and hands. The limbs splayed as they reached their full extension, one hand on each of her brothers.

Both men reacted. Though Cade only touched their booted feet, the power spread from her onto them like lamp oil climbing a wick. Ian shuddered as his power went berserk, force fields springing to life and blinking away faster than Susan could track them. Owen flickered like a disco ball gone insane, flashing bright with pure white light one second, then all of the power in him condensing into a tiny laser beam the next. The walls scorched in crazed lines and her retinas threatened to resign in protest.

The energy swept fully over both brothers in a matter of ten or fifteen seconds, and then they too became the power.

When all three Miller triplets collapsed into a single large shape, Susan cried out.

“Mary, mother of God,” she spat.

The massive figure shimmered for a moment before exploding upward. It vanished through a sudden hole torn in the ceiling and presumably right on through the seventy or so feet of island between the admin wing and the castle itself.

Okay, seeing three tentative friends fuse into one being and dart away like a startled deer wasn’t the way she thought this would go. She could admit that. Losing was never in her game plan, either. There had to be a way out of this. Some solution she hadn’t considered because she wasn’t the one on the team with the super mega brain.

It was possible some clutch play was just on the edge of realization, one eureka moment away from actualization. Susan would never know for sure, because between heartbeats The Five appeared. The four living members stood with Rule, who was still hunched over in spasms of pain from America’s odd little gun. The slaves Reign had commandeered held the corpse of Cascade upright.

“We have to do it here, now,” Outbreak said. “We’ll be tracked. If we have to fight, we’ll need the power. We almost got beat by these second-stringers.” His hand waved in a lazy arc toward the people frozen around him. Susan wished she could focus enough to hurt the bastard for that, among other things.

“Quickly,” Insight said.

What was happening? Susan asked herself the question because there was no other option. Basic primate psychology demanded she investigate the curious things she encountered in the world. She couldn’t not ask it.

She got her answer, like it or not.

Not. Definitely that one.

America regained her ability to move just in time to be absolutely certain that staying still was the only way to survive the next few minutes. Frozen by choice, she watched in a strange dual state of clinical detachment and muffled horror as Outbreak stepped between the corpse being held by the two metahuman slaves and the slumped but conscious form of Rule.

Outbreak closed his eyes and took a deep breath, stilling his own body as he gathered up his concentration or maybe his power itself. Of The Five, the limits of his ability were perhaps the least understood. He could do things no one else in history was capable of when it came to healing and hurting. It would take five of the most powerful metas in their various fields to mimic the totality of his observed abilities.

He put one hand on Cascade’s chest and took another long breath. It was as if he was reaching into the dead man, feeling for something that was supposed to be there. America knew the look on his bearded face from her own work; it was the expression of someone dearly hoping they’d guessed right.

His other hand slowly and inexorably drifted toward Rule, who was now held up by Reign. Rule’s arms were quickly pulled behind his back and locked by the stronger man who even now was feeding his physical attributes with the energy of the bodies and minds of those he controlled. America had suspected that among the many blessings given by the group Resonance of The Five was an immunity to any sort of mind control. Heroes had tried that route many times, every one of them a failure and most ending in death.

Outbreak’s left hand seemed drawn to Rule over the last few inches, his palm shooting forward and sticking to the bound man’s chest as if magnetically attracted.

Rule’s eyes snapped open, the whites showing all the way around as terror or pain—or both—shot through him. His gaze darted around the crowded hallway, looking for a savior. He caught America’s attention long enough to note that like the rest of the trainees, she was motionless. A small, dark part of her heart couldn’t be bothered with right or wrong in that moment, and she smiled behind her mask.

If he’d been about to speak, to beg for men known worldwide and for generations to be without pity or remorse, the words never made it past his lips. Two seconds after being touched by Outbreak, Rule arched as if he’d grabbed hold of an electric fence, body convulsing and wordless howls escaping his throat.

At once, America understood. Hidden behind her mask and helmet, her own eyes moved toward Cascade. She watched his neck just below the jaw. Five seconds, then ten.

Then a single jump, nothing more than a twitch of the skin. Strange, she thought, how context changes everything. Something as simple as a lone spasm of a square centimeter of flesh can signify not just life-changing events, but ones that might shift the foundations of the world.

Rule collapsed on himself, something vital draining away as his screams trailed into an exhausted whimper. Seconds later, Cascade lurched forward and took a gasping breath as his weight settled halfway onto Outbreak’s extended arm. The formerly dead man clutched at his friend—his literal savior—with a frenzied desperation.

“Almost there,” Outbreak said gently. With another deep breath, his left hand clenched hard on Rule’s shirt and drew the fabric into a fist.

Rule died. Instantly and without fanfare. His body took up the pallor of death that should have needed a day or so, while Cascade regained the healthy color of the living in turn. It was only then, with Rule stilled into motionlessness for all time, that Outbreak released both men.

Cascade stumbled forward, trying to regain his footing. Insight put a hand on his arm and steadied him. “Glad to have you back.”

Cascade shook his head. “Where. What happened?” His words came out in short, harsh croaks. Being dead for a year or so would have done a number on his hydration, America observed.

“Not here,” Insight said. He nodded toward Windwalker. “Time to go.”

Windwalker hovered in place. “I think we should sterilize before we leave.”

“That’s why you don’t make the decisions,” Reign said, dropping Rule to the ground. “No reason to antagonize the capes more than we already have. Let’s go.”

America saw the silent communication pass between the two men, even if one of them was nothing more than a blaze of light in man-shape. She read it just fine through gross body language. Windwalker didn’t like being told what to do. Didn’t like being subordinate.

And yet:

“Fine,” Windwalker said, his voice a strange buzz coming from his immaterial form. “No fighting in front of the kids. I get it.”

There weren’t any dramatic parting words. America realized early on in her training that the movies and books got it wrong. There usually wasn’t time or a need for wisecracks or threats. Heroes were, for the most part, people as afraid to die as anyone else. In the heat of battle, they were just trying to stay alive and get the job done. Villains, at least the professional ones, didn’t spout endless monologues or explain their dastardly plans. They did the job and got away. Usually without witnesses.

And yet here she was with her team, alive if not well.

Interesting.

Twenty-three minutes later, backup arrived.

Shirani was dropped to the ground from sixty feet by his ride, a furious Paragon who impacted just behind him hard enough to shake the earth. He wasted no time following the path of destruction into the castle and down the winding passages leading to the admin wing.

He found a battered set of trainees, some bleeding, some seemingly fine, with their leader buzzing between them dressing wounds. Without missing a beat, Shirani turned his head and spoke. “We need a healer down here. Go.”

Paragon, widely regarded as the most powerful metahuman on the planet, ageless warrior whose ability bound him to the planet itself in ways no one fully understood, didn’t even hesitate. He spun and went back the way he came. Shirani kicked himself for not dragging a medic with him.

“What happened?” he asked, spying the body among them. “How did Rule get here?”

America didn’t even glance at him as she worked on Susan, spreading a thick gray paste along the other woman’s burns. “Windwalker brought him. Brought them all.”

“They took Cascade’s body?” Shirani asked, spying the open door.

Susan let out a raspy cough that might have conceivably been a laugh—that is if anyone with her injuries was capable of finding humor. “Didn’t just take him. He’s back. Alive.”

“That’s impossible,” Shirani said reflexively.

America shook her head. “Impossible happened ten feet from here, sir. The Five are back. We’ll need to sit and talk it out during the debrief. There are things that don’t make sense, starting with why we’re all still alive. First you need to get outside and find the Millers. They…well…”

Celia, who sat with her back against the wall next to the morgue, looked up sluggishly. All of Team 7 had that look except for America and Susan. Had they been drugged?

“They turned into one person and did that,” Celia said, pointing toward the hole in the ceiling.

Shirani pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes for a few moments. “They…you know what? I’m just gonna take your word for it. The healer is on her way down. Let me go deal with one of the other thousand pieces of fallout I need to tackle today. I’m going to speak with you once you’re rested and patched up.”

He knew they didn’t need the immediate debrief others might. America would recall every moment in perfect detail, and the hacks to her team’s lenses and comms she believed he didn’t know about would have recorded everything anyway. Assuming they weren’t destroyed, the sensors and cameras all over the island and castle would provide the same. A perfect record of The Five in action, something no one in the world had as a complete piece. There were always flashes of video from their sightings and crimes, but those men were well acquainted with sweeping their tracks. They hoarded information about their activities with an almost desperate ferocity.

That was how Shirani knew they were still ignorant about the discoveries made by Agent Rohm. If they had even the slightest idea how well-informed MICA now was about them, or at least the key people who made policy, they’d have slaughtered every one of the trainees. They couldn’t suspect what Team 7 was, because if they did this hallway would have been a lake of blood.

The problem was that eventually they would figure it out. To have taken Rule from his cell, high-level MICA agents had to be compromised. Measures would have to be taken. Certain protections put in place. Luckily, several precautions were already in effect, some from almost the first day Rohm had delivered her stream of intelligence on the enemy. The most important were the blocks installed by MICA telepaths to prevent the spread of that information. Rule being broken out of prison meant a teleporter was involved, brainjacked by Reign. If it was Dave, then they should be safe. As soon as his mind felt the intrusion, the blocks would have essentially covered all knowledge of Rohm’s revelations and Team 7’s actual purpose with impenetrable white noise.

It should be impossible for them to know.

Just like it should have been impossible for them to invade the island. If Jeff Shirani knew one thing, it was weak spots. Everyone and everything had them.

Today proved they could no longer allow those gaps to exist. No matter what it took, Shirani would shore up the defenses, both on the island and in his people. They might hate him for it. He decided he could live with that so long as they lived too.

Epilogue

The Long Goodbye

Celia sat next to Cade and her brothers as they slept on, if comas could be defined as sleep. She stayed because they’d become friends. Even casual friends deserved to see a familiar face when they woke up. Someone who cared. She knew how important that was. It was also her turn. Every member of Team 7 spent a few hours a day here over the last week.

“Want some company?” someone asked over her shoulder. Without waiting for a response, Drew pulled up a chair and sat next to her.

He didn’t speak again, and Celia thought he deserved a bit of credit for being able to read people. America got all the attention, but her habits rubbed off on all of them over the last year. Being observant wasn’t contagious, yet constant exposure made them all aware how far short they fell from what they were each capable of.

She hated small talk. Still, the hours of silence weighed on her, and maybe the triplets were in that minority of coma patients who could hear what was said around them.

“I was only out for twelve hours,” Celia said as she stared at the three motionless bodies before her. They’d been found that way—that is, as separate people again—and all the siblings were ten to fifteen pounds lighter than they started. America theorized that they’d sacrificed mass to fuel the strange transformation. She did the science thing and scanned them every which way she could and even called in Evan Reed for help. They’d stood there with those detached expressions and hmmmed their way through hours of data without sharing a bit of it.

Rather than being annoyed, Celia just felt tiredly hopeful they would find a way to help their friends.

“Out for what?” Drew asked.

Celia raised her prosthetic hand and flexed the fingers. Drew’s eyes were drawn to it at once. He gave a little nod of understanding and stayed quiet to let her speak at her own pace, and her opinion of him went up another notch.

“When I went under I knew my arm was really bad,” she said, the memories of her terror and confusion floating to the surface. They were rarely gone, not completely—only when she’d come here where powers were celebrated and encouraged rather than being simply accepted had she found moments of real peace. That those moments came when death was on the line (to quote a famous Sicilian) was an irony not lost on her. “When you’re that age you’re not supposed to worry about things like an amputation, y’know? Don’t all kids run on an immortality complex? But I did. As soon as I saw my left hand turning colors, I knew I might lose it. It scared me, made my power harder to control. I sat there trying to undo the tangle cutting off my circulation and only made it worse.”

“God,” Drew said, reaching out a hand to touch her shoulder but stopping halfway. Celia wouldn’t have minded but she didn’t comment as he withdrew. Being around people, actually caring about them, was still new to him. That much was obvious. “I’m so sorry. That must have been terrible.”

“It was,” she said. “It was. But you know what the first thing I saw when I woke up was?” Drew stared at her, the sad look on his face obvious even in her peripheral vision, and gently shook his head. “My mom and dad. Mom actually worked at the hospital as a physical therapist. Dad’s a lineman for a utility company. They busted their asses for years to get us into a good financial situation, and I woke up to their faces, so fucking worried, and all I could think about was how much it all cost. These were people who went without eating some days when I was little so I could have food. Put themselves through college and trade school while they worked shit jobs to give me a better life. And I hurt myself so bad it could have bankrupted us.”

She leaned forward, tucking her left hand under her right elbow, an old and deeply ingrained habit. “They never said a word about it. Not once. They supported me, made sure I knew I was loved. Mom worked it out so the hospital just let me come in and do PT with her. It was incredible. I owe them more than I’ll ever be able to repay.” She looked at Drew for the first time. “Point is, family is family no matter how you get them. Sometimes you’re lucky enough to be born into a good one like I was. Sometimes you only find out who family is when the shit hits the fan and you see who sticks around. I’m not super close to these three, but they stood with us. They didn’t run. And neither did you.”

Drew shook his head as if disagreeing with her and looked off to the side. Celia let her gaze fall back on the Millers. If he blinked a few times and maybe wiped at a cheek less subtly than he imagined, well, Celia wasn’t one to judge.

Over the course of the year the entire team had come together, some more than others. It was almost impossible to share anything about your life without touching on and talking about family. Unless, of course, you made the choice not to.

Of all of them, Drew was the only one not to. That said a lot.

“How about you spend the break with me?” Celia asked. “My parents have the room, and they’d love to get to know you. We both focus on our control. You can help me get more reactive, and I can help you hone your precision and speed.”

Six weeks of mandated time away with weekly trips to MICA headquarters for psych evaluations and therapy were nobody’s idea of fun, but Shirani hadn’t budged on it. If the Millers weren’t awake by the weekend, Team 7 would no longer be able to maintain their vigil.

It was hard to say what emotions played across Drew’s face when Celia invited him home with her. Not the flash of hope that might have come with romantic interest, certainly. She’d never seen him so much as glance at anyone. A little resentment, perhaps, that she had a place to go where everyone loved her. And relief that he didn’t have to choose between an empty apartment or visiting a family he clearly didn’t have much to do with.

She only had ten seconds or so to think about the look on his face before he dipped his head and said, gratefully, “Yeah, that would be nice.”

“Fucking finally,” Cade said in a hoarse croak as her eyes snapped open. “How’s a bitch supposed to sleep with all this yakking?”

Cam found Chris—all six of him—moping as only Chris could. The original sat at a picnic table watching the ocean while his copies ran drills and sparred with each other. Leave it to the all-American boy to be sad his bestie wouldn’t be hanging out with him and still manage to cram training in.

“Ethan needs some time,” she said as she approached, not bothering with a greeting. “That fight scared him shitless, dude. Don’t be mad he’s not spending the whole time with you.”

Chris looked up at her as if seeing her for the first time, his expression one of an archaeologist who’d just opened an ancient tomb and found a half-eaten bag of Cheetos. “What? Ethan?” He shook his head slightly, eyes coming into focus. “You think I’m down because he’s not coming home with me?”

“Yeeeeeah?” Cam said, stretching out the word. “You’re not?”

Chris rolled his eyes. “God, no. I mean, yeah, I’d like to hang out with him when we’d actually have time to do fun stuff that doesn’t involve almost dying, but I get it. Told me he almost lost it and killed those poor guys Reign was controlling. He wants the extra training, he should do it.”

Cam grimaced. None of them had known it at the time, not until the briefing, and hearing that Ethan nearly lashed out with his power from the sheer terror of facing The Five hadn’t been the most pleasant revelation she ever had. The poor bastard kept the real truth from most of them, which was how unpredictable his power would be at full blast without the restrictions he usually clamped down on it.

Ethan could kill with a thought. Yeah, it would take a minute or two, but the end result was the same. Cam understood the implications at once—he probably wouldn’t be able to stop the power from hitting all of them in the heat of that moment. Not that Ethan had been able to admit that out loud. Hard to blame him for that.

“Then why so glum, chum?” Cam asked. She was silently glad Chris wasn’t asking her why she was wandering around the island looking for people to talk to rather than handling the usual bout of last-minute packing and prep needed for trips. Thankful he hadn’t noticed the hollowness in her cheeks or the distant, ghostly look in her eyes. How could anyone not see her bleeding all over them?

Except she wasn’t. Not really.

Except she was. She could feel it. Something vital inside her felt like it was leaking out and nothing she did could stop it. So she pretended everything was fine. She stayed cheerful. It helped a little.

The scary thing? Cam wasn’t sure if that was a lie she told herself or if it was the truth. Anything could feel like the truth if you believed it hard enough. If you needed it to be.

Chris shook his head. “Man, I threw everything I had at them. I used every trick I had to get as strong as I could. They still wiped the floor with us.”

Cam cuffed him lightly on the back of the head. “Because they were more experienced and better prepared. They’ve been doing this since before our parents were born. We’ve got the smartest person on the planet in our corner. It’s gonna take time, but we’ll catch up with them somehow. And if we can’t, America will make up the difference. I’m gonna go home and work my ass off training. Probably study a lot, too. We need to be able to think like heroes. Probably wouldn’t hurt to learn to think like the bad guys, too. I’m not giving up. Are you?”

Chris looked up at her blankly, then gave a tiny smile. He raised a hand and she took it, helping him to his feet.

Susan was lost.

In the days following the ass-kicking handed to them by The Five—and goddammit if there weren’t five of them again—she spent increasingly long periods of time wondering if the fall from the top of the castle wall would be enough to kill her. There were enough healers on the island that death would need to be instantaneous. She’d have to shed the uniform and somehow escape the monitoring systems all over the damn place. But she could do it, she thought. It was possible.

Every time the thoughts reached that point, something inside her resisted. An instantaneous fury rose up against it and demanded she do anything else. At first it was pacing, until pacing wasn’t enough. Then jogging.

Eventually she ran. The track connecting the various training grounds and facilities spread around the island was popular for runners, and though throughout her decades Susan had never been much of a runner, she still found herself eating up the miles. Even with a year of training under her belt, it hurt. The ache in her legs and the burning in her chest were constant.

She found herself yearning for the pain. It was proof that she was alive even though she’d failed. There was no way to blame the others; her loss of focus because of her injuries let them escape.

Didn’t matter how factually true it was, just how she felt. Susan understood her own mind and reactions far better than any of her younger teammates, even America. It was one of the potential advantages of living a long time, if you were introspective enough to take a hard look at yourself. Picking apart and understanding your reactions as things beyond your control, knowing that there is nothing you can do but ride out the storm, is a survival mechanism with incredible long-term benefits.

But man, getting through the hurricane in the short term sure could be a motherfucker.

When she finished her run and returned to the dorm for a shower, Susan was stopped five feet inside the door. America walked toward and then past her, snagging her arm on the way and dragging Susan along despite her protests. Eventually she gave up and went with America, a choice she began regretting when it became clear where they were going.

Her trepidation wasn’t at all eased when America barely slowed as she approached Shirani’s door and barged right through it without knocking. Inside sat Shirani and Paragon, along with a copy of Manifold from Operations and…

“Director Richardson,” Susan said without intending to speak. “Ma’am. I didn’t realize you’d be here.”

Elizabeth Richardson was the newly-installed head of the Department of Metahuman Affairs. Though the attack on the island remained stringently classified, it rattled enough high-level government officials that someone’s head had to roll.

“I didn’t either, Miss Carroll,” Richardson said in a high but not at all girlish voice. “I was brought in only a few minutes ago. I am curious how Miss Jackson knew about this meeting.” Her eyes landed on America, who stood with her back to the door she’d just closed, arms crossed tightly over her chest.

“If you have to ask how I know things, you should probably read your dossiers more closely,” America replied coolly. “As for that, we have two more incoming if I’m not mistaken. We’ll wait on Dave and Delilah before we start.”

Shirani and Paragon both flinched when she smarted off to the Secretary of the government agency in charge of their lives and—probably more important to Shirani, if Susan read him right—a nontrivial part of their budget. Susan herself could only be amused, and it was the first time since the attack she had to hold back laughter.

“You seem to think this is your meeting,” Richardson said, lowering her eyebrows.

“You seem to think you can do anything to stop me,” America shot back. “You’re here because Shirani wants to talk tactics. How we move forward against The Five now that they’re all alive again. I’m sure that little nugget is near the top of the agenda.” She waved a hand vaguely in Susan’s direction. “I’m here because you still need my team, and we’re the best option in front of you. I’ll spend as long as it takes to convince you of that. You need us, but we don’t need you.”

Paragon, dressed in shorts and flip-flops that seemed bizarrely incongruous with his public persona, raised placating hands. “Let’s all take a minute, here.”

“Don’t you?” Richardson asked, a threat in her tone. “You can’t operate as Heroes without MICA consent, and that means finishing the remainder of your training.”

America laughed outright. “Yeah, if we’re going to argue over petty legalities, sure. You could arrest us. But my team has agreed to a person to make taking down The Five our top priority. We’re in. This meeting is supposed to be a discussion about whether it’s ethical to go that route any longer. I’m here to tell you we’ll do it no matter what. I have the resources to take us underground. We won’t go around fighting crimes if that ends up happening. Our sole focus will be on finding and killing The Five, sanctioned by you or not.”

Richardson studied America for a long time, enough that Susan began feeling uncomfortable. Then the older woman smiled. It was only at the corners of her mouth, but it was real. “Let’s take it as a given that your team are assets we would prefer not to lose. I don’t see why that requires another member of your unit here.”

America looked at Susan with sympathy in her eyes. “Susan’s here because she lost her son, and less than a week ago she saw the man who killed him brought back to life.”

Susan found herself impressed that America held back from spewing out her theory on that subject, one she had discussed and bounced off the team several times over the last few days. She didn’t believe Outbreak could bring back the dead, or at least not anyone who wasn’t in The Five. Cascade hadn’t decomposed, which Susan agreed was the sort of ‘huh, weird’ situation that had scientists scratching their heads and contemplating the impossible. It had to be something to do with the way those five men constantly Resonated with each other. Something hadn’t let Cascade quite fully die, at least not on a cellular level.

It took a few seconds for the other implication to hit her. When it did, her mouth dropped open in shock. “You think I’m going to try to get them to bring Brian back?” Susan asked, outrage and plain old rage bathing the words.

“No,” Shirani said, his fingers steepled together thoughtfully. “Otherwise she wouldn’t have said a word. But she thinks that impression is something we can use. Right?”

America nodded. “We’ll have to wait for Delilah and Dave to get here. Also, Director Shirani, you should find better security software for your email. I cracked yours over a bowl of cereal this morning. The short version is that I think I understand how The Five think well enough to believe they’ll be trying to cultivate new assets as fast as they can. If we play this right, I think Susan can be one of them. A double agent.”

Fear, hope, and anticipation burst to life in her chest. No part of her believed they could or would bring Brian back to her. He’d been burned to death along with so many others. Even if his body were perfectly preserved, it wasn’t going to happen. Fear of failure, hope that she could do some good in the face of their failure during their first encounter with the enemy, and anticipation of the challenge. She’d studied acting with a mad intensity as soon as she got the script for Full Moon Tango. Acting was something she could do.

It would be a lot harder than that, of course, but for the memory of her child and the thousands of families shattered by Cascade, she would endure just about anything. This, she understood, was another chance. There was no way Susan could allow it to be wasted.

“I’m listening,” she said.

Once the full group was there, they talked.

If Insight was there, if he could have stood in that room and glimpsed what was to come, he would have felt stirrings of fear for the first time in decades. The dawn of a new future and its infinite unknowns would have shaken him to his core.

There was nothing here to read, and it should have worried Rohm. The—for lack of a better word—lair was stripped clean of all impressions. Even with Williams to boost her, she could not see the past of this place. It was as if it sprung into being complete, with never a human so much as breezing through the doors.

“Dead end,” she pronounced to the room. Williams grunted a sound that only his long-term partners would understand as frustration. The list of people who knew that sound by heart was a short one; just Emma Rohm and the former Mrs. Williams. That their partnership as agents had lasted longer than a marriage said everything about the dedication to the job the duo shared.

At the edge of the room, MICA’s best and brightest waited. Shirani was there as well, having secured the location himself after teams of agents from the Pursuit division finally managed to hunt down where The Five operated from. They’d investigated dozens of these hideouts over the decades, and there was never anything left behind.

“They’ve got a cleaner,” Williams said. “We’ve seen it before. Must be a new power set. I don’t know anyone who—”

“Not a new power,” said a voice from the group waiting at the edges, which now dispersed through the room to look for more mundane evidence than distant echoes from the past. America stepped forward in her slightly battered uniform, the armor scored from the fights she’d seen since she first put it together. “An old one. Temporal dislocation.”

Williams frowned and Rohm returned the confusion. She cocked her head at the younger woman. “You’ve heard of someone with whatever that ability is?”

America nodded. “And so have you. Or MICA has, anyway. You used to have an asset who could do it. Disappeared about twenty years back.”

“John Riggan,” Shirani said. “I worked that disappearance. I met Riggan. He could hide people from being found by other metas.”

“Yep,” America said. “His power sent a little shockwave forward and backward in time. Not enough to change anything directly, but it made whatever location he used it in neutral. As if nothing had ever happened there. Not really sure how that one works, but then I’m not an expert in temporal mechanics. Maybe I should have passed on the theater degree in favor of that.”

Rohm snorted. “Not an expert yet. I give it a week.”

“I remember,” Shirani said carefully, waiting for the lower-ranked agents to slip away to their tasks, “that Riggan was considered almost unique. We’re saying another power like his popped up and The Five managed to find that person before they registered with MICA?”

Rohm had spent enough time with America to read her body language even through the layers of armor. That was something the young woman would have to work on—no matter how smart you were, giving obvious signs to your enemies about what and how you were thinking was suicidal in the long-term. Rohm read the tension in every line of America Jackson.

“I don’t think so,” America said as she tapped the side of her helmet. “When I pulled the file about Riggan, it had a lot of information. Scans of areas where he’d used his power. When I was reading through the database, I remembered the bit about finding a blank space like this after one of the attacks and it made me wonder. So I built a scanner according to the specs in the Riggan file, miniaturized it, and installed it in my helmet.”

Rohm’s stomach dropped. “It’s the same.” Not a question.

“It is,” America said. “Exactly the same. It raises some questions. Maybe ones that shouldn’t be asked here in public.”

But they all knew. It was impossible to miss. For years, more years than Rohm or even her parents had been alive, The Five were known as a force of nature. They did jobs for themselves and others, and while they never went out of their way to kill, not a single piece of evidence existed to support the idea that they avoided it, either.

Yet Insight had forced his people to run from the island, leaving Team 7 alive. And now a meta who was supposed to be twenty years dead might be alive and working for them. There were plenty of explanations, and that was the problem.

Because all of them made her blood run cold. America summed it up better than Rohm would have managed if put on the spot. The younger woman crossed her arms and spoke with a dread certainty.

“We have to question every assumption we’ve ever made about The Five,” she said, and Rohm found herself nodding along. “Every puzzle piece makes me more sure that we have no idea what their long-term game is.”

And, Rohm added to herself, this young woman was apparently the first person to work out that the world’s most dangerous villains even had a long-term playbook to begin with. No one else had picked up on whatever patterns America saw.

Then and there, Rohm promised that above all else, she would keep this young woman alive. If only she’d known what was coming, she might have made a different choice. But that was the cost of looking through time itself, of locking the world into a single course for all the years between her peek and the moment she saw. Now that history had momentum, and few choices could sway its course.

America Jackson and her team might be the only chance to change things before it was too late to do anything but mourn.

Author's note

If you're a regular reader of my work, you may have noticed I'm not putting out books very often these days. I went from 3-5 a year to one a year if I'm lucky. 2020 will hopefully be a shift back to the old way of working. I've been keeping a full time day—well, night—job since August of 2018, and it's very physically demanding and coming home every morning I'm exhausted to the point of only being able to sit and stare.

That's starting to change. I've had to sit on this manuscript for almost a year now because the crippling anxiety I've battled since my early twenties decided to attach itself to my writing in the autumn of 2019. It's taken me this long to finally push through it and start tentatively writing again.

A large part of this is because of the slow but steady decline I saw in my sales (see: working a full time job again) leading up to a cliff-like plummet when I released Dead Nation. That month, with a book release, I could no longer afford to write for a living.

I'm not blaming anyone or anything other than the world of changes that have taken place over the years in the realm of indie publishing. When I started, you had a chance of being discovered equal to anyone else. Now the game requires massive, nonstop networking and playing the system in increasingly complicated ways, and I just couldn't keep up with that. I did what all the writing groups and how-to guides told me and saw negligible increases in sales that didn't continue over time.

A huge part of the problem was the years-long failure on the part of the biggest online retailer in the world to correctly feed out books to readers who'd subscribed to notifications from authors. Seven releases in a row, that happened. It took well after the fabled First Month for people to be alerted about my new books. It was a recipe for disaster which played out over and over again, essentially killing my writing career.

Now I'm trying again, but without even the tiniest expectation of making money. Now I'm writing less than I used to before my long pause, but I'm writing what and how I want. I think my readers will enjoy it, though if not, I won't be offended. I'm now at a point where writing for the sheer joy of it is the only reliable motivation I can use.

That said, I really do hope you've enjoyed this book. In July of 2020 (which right now is about a month away) I'll be changing my Patreon page ( found here ) so that all of my books are available for free there, and not just to patrons. Any person, anyone at all, will be able to go to my page and download all of my books—no Patreon subscription required. No strings attached.

Essentially I'll be turning Patreon into a tip jar. My books will still be available for sale (and I'm going to go wide, selling them on as many platforms as I can) and if you want to chip in money every month to support my work by becoming a Patreon patron, that'd be great.

But you won't have to. In the age of actual pandemics and economic hardships, I'm extraordinarily fortunate to have a job. The extra income does help (a lot!) but it won't break me not to increase my sales or Patreon income. So if you need an escape or know someone who does, then please feel free to head on over on July first or later and download to your heart's content.

I'll keep at it, no matter how hard it gets for me. I hope you'll keep reading.

Joshua Guess

(but you can call me Josh)

June, 2020