Everybody in our high school knew about that lecture. I’d felt that it had been over-hyped at the time.

It seemed more insightful now.

It made sense, actually. When people with powers came into the picture, democracy could only last as long as they believed in it, and even if they did, it would be tempting for any government to bend things to keep them happy.

I said, “I remember it. That was the class that convinced Sean that Justice Fist ought to be open with identities.”

Cassie gave a short laugh. “That worked great for them.”

I supposed that he couldn’t be insightful for the entire lecture.

* * *

On Friday night, around 7 pm, we landed on an airstrip in the middle of a grassy field. In the twilight, I couldn’t see any farms or houses nearby. Given that it was dark, I couldn’t reasonably expect to, but even when we’d been in the air, I’d barely seen any lights around where we’d landed.

The airstrip’s lights had flickered off as the plane rolled into the hangar, one of three identical buildings made of gray, corrugated metal.

We’d flown in a nearly windowless MD-11 (the successor to the DC-10) that had been painted to look like a Fedex plane.

Inside the stripped down interior of the cargo plane, it was harder to take seriously the idea that we were some kind  of privileged group.

Even though the plane had seats, there was no carpet, just yellow lines in the aisles. Pipes, wires, fire extinguishers, and insulation hung from the top and sides.

Rachel had boarded earlier and noticed me eying all the exposed components as I walked in. She kicked my foot as I passed, and said, “Don’t touch anything.”

Given the surroundings, I shouldn’t need to say it, but we didn’t have any kind of in-flight entertainment.

We disembarked inside the hangar, taking elevators down with our luggage.

The doors opened into a hallway of gray concrete, lit by florescent lights. Blue arrows on the floor gave the hall its only hint of color.

Once we were out of the hallway, any illusions I might have had were blown away.

The metal doors opened into a big room. On the one hand, it was obviously an underground, concrete bunker. On the other hand, it was probably the nicest bunker in the world. The open area between the rows of rooms had couches, big screen TV’s, and chairs. Carpet covered the floor except for the sections with dark stained hardwood.

Clusters of green plants made the room feel less industrial, and the smell of food reminded me that I hadn’t eaten since lunch.

I placed my luggage in Daniel’s and my room, and followed everyone else to the dining area.

* * *

After dinner, I went back to the room. It was twice, possibly three times as large as my dorm room.

I considered turning on the television, but didn’t really feel like watching TV. I had a couple books in my backpack, and almost decided to read one when Daniel came in with Isabel and Jaclyn.

It still seemed weird to see Izzy here with us—and not just weird for me.

She glanced back as she shut the door behind her, and when she turned back to us, she smiled nervously.

To Daniel, she said, “What did you want to talk about?”

“Nothing in particular,” he said. “I thought we’d just hang out.”

Untouched by anybody, the television turned on.

As the channels flipped over to a movie channel, I felt his presence in my mind, and not just his—Jaclyn’s and Izzy’s too.

Sorry everybody, I feel like I have to keep this quiet in case someone’s hearing is good enough to hear us talk. Let’s all sit down and pretend we’re watching the movie.

Izzy sat in one of the chairs near the TV. It looked a little small when she sat in it.

Jaclyn sat on the couch.

I thought at Daniel, Private message… Not that I don’t trust her, but why are you bringing Izzy into this?

She’s got an outside perspective. We’ve all grown up with this in one way or another.

Then I felt everybody’s minds again.

Now, for real, Jaclyn thought at us. What’s going on?

I’d told Daniel about Courtney during supper. We’d agreed that if I were going to run her through the power impregnator that we all ought to talk about it because we were all going to get in trouble if it went wrong.

I explained about Courtney, the power impregnator, and what Isaac said about the “deal” the government had made.

So, I told them, I’m thinking through whether I should let Courtney use our power impregnator, and maybe other people too.

“Dunno,” I said, and tapped away at the computer, heading for the Feds’ supers database.

Vaughn said, “Aren’t you the guy who knows this stuff? You’re on the Double V forums all the time.”

“Well, yeah, but I don’t know everything. The Nine keep a low profile. Everybody knows they do stuff because sometimes they take credit for things, but they employ supers, and they’re an organization. So when supers show up, you never know if it’s one of the higher ups or some mid-level guy.”

I watched as our system passed our key, and then got an encrypted response from the other server. When it verified that it came from the Feds, we could assume that we’d logged into the real server instead of some impostor.

A little later, I’d searched out the Nine’s entry. I displayed it on HQ’s twenty foot tall screen.

We started reading.

“An organization with global reach, the Nine is best known for its mysterious nine leaders…”

I skimmed downward.

“The Nine’s operations include legitimate companies, but also support of political organizations, some with ties to terrorists, and even revolutionary groups. The group owns its companies indirectly, often using corporate entities that exist only on paper…”

It offered a link listing front companies and the organizations they’d supposedly owned as well as individuals said to be working with them. The names were meaningless to me.

I kept on reading.

“Our first evidence of the Nine comes from the raid the Heroes League made on Dr. Mind’ facilities that resulted in the acquisition of a toddler with a combination of Captain Commando’s DNA, DNA from an unknown donor, and nonhuman DNA. Following up on the communications attempts that followed the raid revealed worldwide connections. Further research indicated that these communications occurred regularly, and that Dr. Mind’s supplies had been ordered by individuals on other continents with no known ties to his organization.”

The entry listed operations where the Nine were likely involved in what was going on.

I read the whole thing, and clicked through to read related pages when Cassie and Vaughn caught up.

I didn’t, in the end, find a list of who specifically ran the Nine.

“Terrorists,” Vaughn said. “These guys fund terrorists.”

Cassie and Vaughn had logged into the database on their own.

“And political parties. And they don’t seem to have a problem bribing or blackmailing government officials either. It looks like they’re all about behind-the-scenes power,” Cassie said.

“Yeah,” Vaughn stared at his screen, “the Feds think they’ve got connections in corporations all over too. I’d say these guys want to take over the world, but it looks like it might be too late.”

From the sound of their voices, they were impressed, and maybe a little shocked.

So was I. If they had as many connections as it seemed like, it couldn’t be long before they got into whatever database listed all of our real names.

Of course, we didn’t have access to that one either. I’d checked. So maybe we were more secure than I’d expect.

“Umm…”I said. “Totally different subject, but I’d like to know what you think. You remember Courtney from school? I’m thinking about fixing up our power impregnator, and letting her use it.”

Both Vaughn and Cassie looked up from their computer screens.

Cassie said, “What?”

Vaughn cocked his head, and then shook it. “Whoa. She doesn’t know about, you know, all of this, right?”

“I haven’t told her anything. I was just thinking that it might be a good idea to let her use her powers legally instead of illegally. She’s going to use them anyway, and if she owes us, that’s a good thing. Otherwise she’s going to have to steal stuff to brew her own power juice, or find someone else with a power impregnator.”

Cassie stood up. “I know for a fact that the government’s got a bunch of power impregnators these days. What’s wrong with talking to them?”

“I talked to Isaac. I think it can happen if I try to pull strings, but I guess that there’s a line. A bunch of supers’ kids are going through as part of a political deal.”

“Deal?” Cassie looked over at Vaughn, but from his face it was obvious he didn’t know what I was talking about, so she turned back to me.

I explained it.

Listening, her face seemed to get redder as my explanation went on. “That is so messed up!”

“I don’t know,” Vaughn said. “I think that’s the way these things get done. Everybody cuts a deal.”

She shook her head. “Not like this. For all we know, the government hasn’t gotten around the whole psychotic side effect problem—which is not good at all if they’re running everyone through it. If they did figure it out, it ought to be open to everybody.”

“Right,” Vaughn said, either sounding calmer than Cassie, or faking it better, “but I’m sure they’ll open it up soon, right?”

He caught my eye.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Isaac never said anything about opening it up to the public. Actually, it sounds like they’re keeping the power impregnator as quiet as possible.”

We sat in a darkened room, looked up at the screen, and watched the professor talk. This would have been normal for a distance learning class except for a few details. First, we were sitting in League HQ. We could have been sitting in a room at the University, but then we’d have been sitting together with Sean, Dayton, and Jody.

It would have been a little awkward for all of us in a variety of different ways. Awkward for me, because Sean and I didn’t get along especially well. Awkward for Cassie and Vaughn, because they were friends of mine and knew Sean. Awkward for Julie and Shannon, because they had been on a team with Sean.

The other detail that made things a little different from your typical distance learning class was that the professor on the screen was in costume—specifically, a brown costume with a texture that suggested feathers.

Before he’d retired, people called him Chicago Hawk. In class, people still called him Chicago Hawk.

The lecture hadn’t been bad either, but it had also been three hours long. Presumably that saved the program money—they only had to set up the equipment in the various universities once a week, right?

“Remember,” he said, his voice scratchy, “that’s eighty pages to read by next week. I’ll know if you’re not prepared. And don’t forget that next weekend we’re all meeting in person. You should have already received your instructions.”

After the screen blacked out, Julie threw back her head, leaning back in her chair. “Eighty pages? Doesn’t he realize we’ve got other classes?”

“I’ll take the reading over calculus any day,” Vaughn said. “I’ve got problems due on Wednesday.”

Pushing herself up, and out of the chair, Julie said, “I haven’t even touched calculus yet. Hey Shannon, are you ready to go?”

She grabbed her books, and stuffed them into her backpack.

Shannon smiled a little, and said, “Almost.” She turned toward the table where Cassie, Vaughn, and I were still sitting.

“Thanks for telling us you were having classes here. It would have been really weird to sit with Sean and the guys after everything.”

Julie picked up her backpack, and hung it over her shoulder by one strap. “I don’t even want to think about that. At least I can avoid him when we’re meeting in the big group.”

As Shannon and Julie walked away, I reflected on how different they were. They were cousins, but they weren’t much alike. Shannon had dark hair, wore clothes that never registered in mind, and seemed to be in a good mood most of the time. Julie had light hair, wore clothes that seemed to show a little more skin than average, and complained a lot.

Okay, maybe that wasn’t fair to her, but that was my impression.

Once the elevator door closed and started carrying them to the surface, Vaughn said, “Did you know Julie and Sean were dating last year?”

I turned toward him. I don’t know the expression on my face, but Vaughn grinned as I made it. “No,” I said. “That’s about the worst couple I can imagine.”

Vaughn threw up his hands. “Not my fault, but yeah, it was pretty bad.”

Cassie shook her head. “Over. Topic closed. Let’s move on. My mom’s practically got me under house arrest since the attack last week. Nick, do you know anything?”

“Nothing I haven’t told you. We’re being watched by the Feds, and they’re keeping us safe, I guess. At least that’s what Isaac says.”

Cassie snorted. “Just like we were when Ray or Prime’s people came after us? I’m not impressed.”

I sat up a little straighter in my chair. “I know. I told you what he said.”

Vaughn looked over at each of us, “Who do you think the Nine are sending? There are a lot of those guys. Could even be Dr. Mind, right? That guy was permanently after your dad.”

Cassie frowned. “Vaughn, Dr. Mind’s dead. He died in the same raid where Dad and the League found me.”

“Right,” Vaughn said. “I forgot.”

I tapped away at the keyboard, calling up Dr. Mind’s Wikipedia entry, and displaying it on the twenty foot tall screen. “That was always really bizarre. The original Captain Commando versus a brain in a jar? Usually he had piles of minions or powered armor, but it was still pretty weird.”

Cassie stared at the table, not listening to me. “I heard him talk about someone called Six or Sixer. I’ve been thinking about it all week. Who’s that?”

I searched for the Nine on Google, but didn’t find anything I didn’t already know.

“It says here,” I said, “that the Nine call the higher ups by number to confuse outsiders.”

“It’s working,” Vaughn said.

I skimmed across the entry, and decided I’d have to look at the Feds’ information to get anywhere.

“It might be their powered armor guy,” I said. “I’m pretty sure Rook was one of Dr. Mind’s followers.”

“That’s a lot of questions, and I’m in the middle of something. We’ll have to make this quick.

In the background a series of baritone horn blasts sounded. An alarm?

“Do you have to go?”

“No. It’s been like this for the last hour here. Let’s try to cover what we can…

“To get the easy stuff out of the way first, I don’t know anything about Logan. We did the initial interview once the juice wore off, but we passed him on to the CIA’s labs because they had better facilities. I don’t know what happened after that. Do you need to know?”

Did I need to? Not really, but it would have been nice.

Keeping my voice quiet so that it wouldn’t be heard outside the van, I said, “Just curious. I haven’t see him since then.

“Then about the Stapledon program—nope. We can’t take anyone else. We’re on our way to go over our budget already. They’ve been running anybody with the right connections through the M.E.D., and between that and the kids with new powers we’ve got the biggest class ever. We set aside ten times as many slots in the program this year and used every one of them. They won’t open any more.”

Isaac sighed. “So this friend of yours with the powers, what kind does he have?”

“Appearance. She can change what she looks like, and I guess quite a bit inside herself too.” I paused, trying to think of something that might persuade him. “It’d be useful for undercover work.”

He nodded, not showing any special eagerness.

“If she wants to use her powers, I’d tell her to join the military.”

“Yeah?”

“They’ve been testing their people. They’ve put a few into Stapledon—people from the military academies mostly. We suspect they’ve got hundreds of people using power juice now. It’s legal for military use. Plus, that way they’ve only got powers while they’re in the service. They only run people they can trust through the M.E.D’s.”

“OK. What’s an M.E.D.?”

“Metahuman Expression Device. It’s a better name than ‘power impregnator.’”

“That doesn’t take much.”

Isaac grinned. “Can’t argue with that. Anyway, have her contact a military recruiter, or wait for a year, and we’ll get her into the program. In the meantime, keep her off the juice. If she gets caught, the program won’t take her.”

I couldn’t see Courtney joining the military, and convincing her to wait would mean I’d have to tell her I was the Rocket.

“Um… Any chance we could run her through an M.E.D.? That way she’d have powers and wouldn’t be tempted.”

“No,” Isaac said. “Not quickly. She’d have to pass the background check, and after that, she’d be at the end of a very long line. If you want it to happen, you’ve got the pull, but we’re still going to consider whether it’s worth the risk.”

“Huh.” I thought about that. “Is there any way she could use power juice legally?”

“In the long run, yes,” he said, making another quick check to the right. “Not now though. We’re still working on the details of that. Right now, we’re getting it off the street.”

“Why?”

“Why? The obvious, Nick. It’s hard enough for your average cop to handle a supervillain. We don’t need three times as many.”

“I was thinking more along the lines of ‘Why now?’”

“Not a bad question. It’s politics. Last spring we floated the idea to the big guys in the superhero community. We thought they’d be all for it, but they weren’t. Some of them didn’t like they idea of the government regulating powers, but a lot of them… Well, you know how they say powers skip a generation?”

“Yeah.”

Isaac smiled, quietly amused at something.

“It turns out they don’t. It’s just difficult to make them active. A lot of supers had started letting their non-powered kids use power juice to get around it. Once we learned that, we offered them the use of M.E.D.’s and that was the end of the problem.”

So basically Courtney would have to wait until the rush on the government owned power impregnators was over. I could probably get ours working with her powers before then.

A boom came from Isaac’s end of the connection. He kept his cool, but said, “Is that all?”

“I think so.”

Looking squarely into the camera, he said, “Good. Then I’ve got something important to pass on. The Nine have something big going on, and we’ve good reason to believe Cassie’s a target.”

Crud. I’d forgotten to bring up Cassie’s “brother”…

“Nick,” he said. “We’re putting people in place to watch all of you, and in case you’re thinking of taking the Nine on, don’t. They’re not Syndicate L. They’ve got powered people throughout the organization, and even the normal people are armed with advanced technology. Plus, we’ve reason to believe they’re trying to reverse engineer Abominator tech.”

“OK. We’ll call you if we see anything.”

“You definitely will,” he said, “and we’ll send in the Midwest Defenders. The word is that the mission is being run directly by one of the Nine. Let us handle it.”

“I was there,” Courtney said, sounding annoyed.

Michelle, confused, said, “I’m not from here. I’m from Traverse City, so if something special happened, I don’t know about it.”

“You heard about it,” I said. “It’s the one where a guy turned into a monster and attacked people in the gym, and the Heroes League took him out?”

“Oh,” she said, sounding shocked, “that prom. They were talking about it on the news for weeks. That was when people started using that… power juice stuff?”

Right there I guessed that Courtney hadn’t told Michelle that Keith had been the guy who got famous for demonstrating power juice, breaking his arm in the process. I felt sure she wouldn’t thank me for explaining it either.

“Logan, the guy who turned into a monster? He was Melanie’s date,” I said.

Michelle’s jaw dropped. “No…”

Melanie nodded. “Oh yeah. I took the stuff too. He turned into this thing, and I could read minds or something. I’d already drunk a lot of Jack Daniels, and it felt weird. Just strange. It was like I was in this crowd of people who just wouldn’t stop talking.

“It’s a great story for parties,” she said. “Everyone’s got bad date stories, but I’ve got the worst date.”

She looked down toward where I sat on the couch. “What happened to you? We were talking, and then Logan turned into a thing. Where did you go?”

“I got caught up in the fog.” That’s what I’d been telling people anyhow.

She nodded. “Me too.”

“Keith and I were on the other side of it.” Courtney sounded tired.

I wondered if I should do something, but what was there to do? Anyway, I did have a question. “Whatever happened to Logan? I didn’t see him at all after prom.”

Melanie shrugged. “I saw him a little during the summer. I guess he’s in some college program, but it’s got something to do with the government. Maybe he’s in the army?”

“Huh.” I didn’t think the army would take someone with his drug use problems, and I knew he wasn’t in the Stapledon program. I would have noticed that. I really would have noticed that.

It didn’t seem likely that they had special program for people with bad reactions to power juice. I could see someone wanting to study him though.

“I should get to class,” Courtney said. She grabbed a notebook and a couple textbooks, and put them in a backpack.

I got up, and walked out the door with her. When the door shut, I said, “If your class is at eleven, it doesn’t start for at least half an hour.”

She sighed. “I know. I didn’t want to be there anymore. Michelle’s nice, but I don’t want to talk about prom.”

We stood there in the hallway. We weren’t the only ones. Halfway down the hall, someone said, “Hurry, they’re only serving breakfast for ten more minutes.” Plus, a bunch of the doors were open.

“Do you want to go outside?” Courtney looked down the hall.

I said, “Sure.” We walked down the stairs to the ground floor, and out of the building.

Not all that many people were around. Most of them were on the sidewalks, and we walked on to the lawn. No one stood near us.

“I’m sorry I dragged you over here.” She frowned. “I needed to talk to someone, and you’re the only one who knows anything about it.”

She looked around us, probably checking how close people were. “I’m also sorry if you feel uncomfortable. You’re Keith’s friend, and it’s really unfair of me to complain about him to you.”

“It’s okay,” I said. It was. Keith hadn’t been as much a friend as an acquaintance that I knew pretty well. Anyway, if I felt uncomfortable, it wasn’t because of him.

* * *

After my last class of the day (organic chemistry lab), I walked to the parking garage. Outside of driving to the League’s headquarters, it was the only place I knew I could get some privacy.

I walked up to the third floor of the garage, giving a look over the ledge in front of the van. Half of campus lay in front of me—residence halls, lecture halls, GLU’s recreation center, railroad tracks, and past them old factories, and old houses, most of them rented by students.

I got into the van, pulled the curtain, and sat in the back with most of the stealth suit, the guitar, our utility belts and our costumes. When I bought the van, I’d put in hooks to hang things on, and put in shelves, but it was still messy.

I sat in a bucket seat, trying not to step on anybody’s costume, hoping I wouldn’t discover anybody’s underwear.

I pulled out my League phone, and called Isaac Lim.

He answered, and his picture appeared on my screen. Black haired, with light brown skin, he wore a black suit, and stood in front of a gray wall. It appeared to be painted metal as opposed to rock or a normal wall. Could he be on a ship?

“Nick,” he said. “ What’s up?”

“I’ve got some questions. A bunch, actually. I’m wondering if you know anything about that guy we fought last night, if someone I know could get into the Stapledon program, and if you know anything about Logan, the guy who attacked people at prom last year? Plus, what’s up with the power juice ban? Can anyone use it legally?”

Well, a little through the news, but mostly through the Michigan Heroes Alliance’s emails. The various states’ Heroes Alliance groups had come out against it.

Still, I’d originally heard about the change last spring. I wondered what took them so long.

Courtney barely gave me time to finish my sentence. “I thought they’d do something eventually, but not without more warning.”

“You should be okay, right? You keep your shape even without taking it, and you’re making your own power juice anyway.”

She started to say something, stopped, and then said, “It’s not that simple. They’re going to watch who purchases certain ingredients now, and I’ve been… experimenting. Plus being able to use my powers is just better.”

I thought about what she’d said. “Experimenting?”

She shook her head. “Nothing weird. I wanted to find out what I could do.”

“What did you find out?”

“A lot. I can control what’s going on inside my body more than I thought. For example, I can change how sensitive my fingertips are, and I can stop alcohol from making me drunk.”

“Huh. Do you think you were metabolizing it faster, or did you make it so that your system didn’t get affected by it at all?”

“I’d say I metabolized it more quickly. I felt it, but not as much.”

“That’s cool. I wonder how much you could control your body chemistry? If you think about it, you might be able to control moods, or maybe make yourself focus more deeply than normal people, or give yourself perfect recall, or I don’t know—lots of stuff.”

“Not if I go to jail. Nick, I’m officially a criminal now. I’ve got a huge stash of juice hidden at my mom’s house, and I can’t let her find it. Even if she doesn’t care what I’m doing, she could go to jail if someone else finds it.”

“Wow.”

Her hands moving nervously as she spoke, she said, “I know. I know. I’ll figure something out, but this is that last thing I need right now.”

I knew I could do something. I could hide it in HQ, or even in Grandpa’s house. The problem was that I’d have to get it to her whenever she wanted more, and then I’d be storing a controlled substance.

Right, I told myself, as if the League HQ’s contents didn’t violate a bunch of laws even without power juice.

Then it occurred to me that she wasn’t asking for help at all.

She sat in the chair by her desk, staring down at the floor. She wasn’t crying, but her voice had a little bit of a tremor sometimes as she’d talked.

She’d probably called me because with Keith out of her life, I was the only person she could talk to about this. She’d called me for comfort, and I should probably give her a hug, or put my hand on her shoulder, or something.

Except honestly, with Courtney looking like an idealized version of herself, I didn’t feel comfortable with that.

I could have said something, but nothing came to mind.

As I tried to formulate an idea for what to do next, the sound of keys and voices came from the hall.

The room’s door opened.

Two girls entered. The first one, the one holding the keys, had to be Michelle, Courtney’s roommate, the one with the country music shrine next to her bed.

She wasn’t much taller than Haley (short), had dishwater blond hair, and smiled as she noticed the two of us.

“Sorry Courtney, I hope I wasn’t interrupting?”

Courtney said, “No,” and if she was annoyed, she didn’t show it. “Michelle, this is Nick. He’s a friend from high school.”

Michelle smiled at me, “Hi Nick, when I opened the door, I thought you might be her mysterious ex-boyfriend.”

Courtney shook her head slowly, “That will not ever happen.”

Michelle gave a short laugh, and turned to the girl behind her, “Everybody, this is Melanie. I just met her in my freshman composition class.”

Taller than Michelle, Melanie had hair so blond it was practically white, and she seemed a little thin–the kind of thin where you worry about her health, not the kind that people compliment.

Then I recognized her. She’d gone to my high school’s prom with Logan, a guy who, after taking power juice, turned into a monster and tried to eat everyone in the school.

Worse, she’d taken it too, and she had telepathy or something like it.

Melanie’s eyes narrowed as she looked at me. “I know you from somewhere.”

“Uh, yeah… Central High’s prom.”

Her eyes widened. “I was so wasted that night.”

“Organic chemistry? Don’t sophomores take that? And it’s supposed to be a hard class.” Jeremy looked up from his cereal. He’d dripped a little milk on his t-shirt.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s only the first week, but it doesn’t seem that bad. I tested out of so much stuff that I’m taking everything out of order.”

“Yeah? I saw your schedule. It’s all two or three hundred level classes. I don’t know how you’re going to survive.”

“The three hundred level classes are all math or engineering, so that’s okay. I’m actually a little more worried about the criminology class I’ve got to take.”

Jeremy started laughing. When he stopped, he said, “I wouldn’t worry about it. You’re going to be fine. I’m going to need the help. I’ve been looking over some of the stuff in my calculus book, and I’ve got no idea how I’m going to get to point where I understand the stuff in the back. Some of the stuff on the syllabus for two weeks from now looks pretty scary.”

I put my fork into my scrambled eggs.

I was doing this all wrong. It was nice of the Stapledon people to get me out of classes that would bore me, but I hadn’t intended to look like this much of a freak.

How long would it be before he connected “The Rocket: inventor and genius” with his roommate who was always gone when the Rocket was around, and just happened to be surprisingly smart?

Not for the first time that week, I told myself that I should have roomed with Vaughn.

We’d talked about it, but between school, the team, and the Stapledon program, it sounded like a little too much togetherness.

At the same time, if I were rooming with Vaughn, I wouldn’t have to hide anything at all. It would have made everything so much simpler.

“What did you see last night?” Jeremy asked.

“When I went out to watch fight? Nothing worth mentioning. They were all running around on rooftops, and I couldn’t get up high enough to see anything until the police came—”

“Nick?”

A hand touched my shoulder. I turned to find Courtney standing next to my chair.

“Oh, hey Courtney.”

It still took me half a second to recognize her, and that was despite the fact that she was wearing clothes from high school—a Guardian t-shirt, and jeans. Well, the jeans couldn’t be from high school—too small, but I remembered the shirt.

Now it looked like she was deliberately wearing something oversized.

“I was hoping to catch you. Do you have time to talk?”

“I’ve got class in…” I checked a clock on the wall, “Crap. Five minutes. I can call you afterward.”

She bit her lip. “That’ll work. Class goes till 10, right?”

“Right.”

She said good-bye, and walked after a couple of friends. I got up from the table with my tray. I was going to have to run to make it on time.

Jeremy watched her go. “How do you know someone who looks like that?”

“High school,” I said, and left.

* * *

Courtney said she’d leave her door partly open, and that’s how I recognized the room.

The girls’ side of DePuit Hall smelled better than the guys’ side, or if not precisely better, more strongly of perfume and hairspray. Whoever the R.A. was had put more effort into aesthetics too. In my hall, the R.A. taped white cardboard with our names written in marker to the doors. Here, the names were neatly written on cutouts of the school mascot “Wavie.”

Granted, it was still kind of stupid to have the school’s mascot be a wave, but it looked better than white cardboard.

I knocked on the door, and said, “Hey, it’s Nick.”

Courtney opened the door all the way. “Hi, come in and sit anywhere. Michele’s got class.”

The room was a testimony to random roommate assignments. Above Courtney’s desk hung a poster of Guardian and the Midwest Defenders—including Daniel’s dad.

Meanwhile, a series of pictures of men and women stuck to the wall above the lower bunk. Almost all of the people wore cowboy hats. Many held guitars, and a few were on stage.

I guessed they must be country musicians. I didn’t recognize any of them.

Not being able to think of anything else, I said, “How’s it going?”

“Not good,” she said.

From the tone of her voice, I believed her.

“Did you know Keith’s been going out with someone for a month? I saw it on Facebook.”

“No,” I said, hoping that she hadn’t called me over to talk about that.

She didn’t say anything more for a little while. Then she shut the door, and said, “You can sit down.”

They had a carpet on the floor, and an old, green couch.

I sat on the couch. Courtney sat on the chair by her desk.

“Did you hear the news this morning? They made power juice a controlled substance.”

We never saw the helicopter that the leader—Cassie’s brother? What do you call someone who was cloned from the same person you were cloned from? Cassie had at least been raised by the original Captain Commando. It made sense if she thought of him as her dad, but for the guy we’d fought, Captain Commando wasn’t much more than an unwilling DNA donor.

Anyway, the Nine’s copter didn’t appear. The News 10 Choppercam did, but unless they were secretly controlled by the Nine, the Nine’s people must have scrubbed their mission.

That’s a long way of saying that by the time the police cars and deep sounds of the Boxes’ diesel engines faded, we’d relocated to the van I’d parked in the alley.

Once we’d taken turns changing back to civilian clothes behind the curtain in the back of the van, Cassie said, “We ought to talk about how we did.”

Vaughn stepped out from behind the curtain. He wore black jeans and a New Pornographers t-shirt. Putting his hair into a ponytail, he said, “We won, right? What more do we need to do?”

Cassie sat in the passenger seat, twisting around to look at Vaughn and Marcus. “We need to think about what we did right and wrong. We do this all the time.”

Sliding over the back of the seat, he said, “Not all the time. I mean really, not even half, I bet.”

Cassie made a noise somewhere between a grunt and a sigh. Whatever it was, she sounded annoyed.

“I messed up.” Marcus looked up from the floor. He hadn’t been holding his head in his hands, but his position had a little bit of that feel.

Vaughn shook his head. “No, you were the best of anybody. We’re all okay because they couldn’t take you out.”

“No,” Marcus said. “I messed up before anyone even knew about it. I shouldn’t have been out there alone, and it never occurred to me that they had paralysis guns. If they’d turned around and shot me each time I moved, I wouldn’t have been able to shift out of it. They could have taken me out any time they wanted, but they didn’t, and I led all of you guys into a trap.”

“That’s not your fault,” Cassie said. “None of us thought about it either. I never thought they were anything more than bank robbers until they started talking about D.C. We were lucky they couldn’t handle Vaughn.”

She looked over to me. “Nick, what do you think?”

I stopped typing on my League phone. “Sorry, Haley wanted to know what happened, and I’ve been telling her.”

Cassie frowned.

At Cassie’s look I said, “Sorry,” again.

“That doesn’t mean I wasn’t listening though. Um… I thought we screwed up from the beginning. They literally jumped over us. If we could have attacked them then, the paralysis guns might not have mattered.”

“Right,” Cassie said. “I thought about that too.”

“The other thing that should have tipped me off,” I said, “was their technology. I don’t know how much was in the bank vault, but if it was less than twenty thousand, I bet those exoskeletons cost a lot more than that.”

“No kidding?” Vaughn shook his head.

“No kidding,” I said. “Plus Haley and I were talking about when she fought Ridgeback, and it’s really obvious in retrospect that that should have tipped us off too. What in the world is a mercenary like Ridgeback doing robbing a jewelry store in Grand Lake?”

Vaughn threw up his hands. “Ok, you win. This was a total screw up. So now what?”

I didn’t have an answer. I wasn’t going to suggest the obvious—track down the Nine to their secret base and take them in.

The Defenders hadn’t done it. There had to be a reason for that, one that was probably connected to the hero body count the Nine had racked up over the years.

“I don’t know,” Cassie said. “But we’d better come up with something because I don’t think they’re going to give up.”

* * *

Cassie didn’t say much on the way back to the dorms. If I’d been attacked by a clone of my dead father, I don’t know how talkative I’d have been.

Around 3:25am, I snuck back into my dorm room, changed into pajamas, and went back to bed.

Jeremy seemed to be asleep.

That’s what I thought at first, but when I pulled the covers up, he said, “Where’d you go? You’ve been gone for an hour.”

More than that actually, but I didn’t correct him. I had to think. He’d find out about what happened tomorrow morning, and it wouldn’t take too much to notice I’d been gone around the same time the Rocket appeared.

I needed to come up with an explanation he’d accept.

“I couldn’t sleep, and then I heard the Heroes League was fighting somebody downtown, so I went down there.”

“Seriously? Bring me along next time.”

Part of me hoped it still worked by the the time I could move. I planned to grab it. A more practical side of my mind hoped it had been destroyed in the first lightning strike.

Near me, Cassie stood up, entering the edges of the helmet’s peripheral vision. She didn’t waste any time. Once she was on her feet, she ran straight at the leader as he bent over to grab the gun.

She hit him in the back of the head with her fist—not always a good move. Do it softly enough, and you can knock someone out with minimal work, but do it hard enough, and you can give them permanent brain damage. If you’re Cassie, and they’re normal, you also stand a good chance of punching through the skull.

I strongly doubted that he was normal.

Either way, he hit the roof, and lay there.

Cassie pulled out handcuffs from her utility belt, and cuffed his hands behind his back. Then she pulled out another set for his legs.

I’d made them based on one of Grandpa’s designs. Jaclyn and Cassie could both break them—Jaclyn almost instantly. Cassie needed time.

From what I’d seen, this guy’s strength was closer to Cassie’s than Jaclyn’s. Hopefully we had enough time for the police to bring a Box.

“Whoa,” Marcus said, “that was great. What do you think we ought to do with these other guys?”

Cassie glanced over at Vaughn and me, “Storm King fried most of them, but if they do wake up, the cuffs’ll never get around the exoskeletons. We’ll have to get them out first.”

“Hope we don’t rip their skin off. A few of those guys are looking extra-crispy.”

I moved my left arm, and tried my left leg. They moved. I rolled myself over to my front, and pushed myself up.

I could stand even if I felt a little wobbly.

Next to me, Vaughn pulled himself up. “Hey guys, we won anyway.Doesn’t that kick ass?”

I turned to look at him, and nearly fell over.

Cassie grabbed my arm, stopping me.

“Are you okay?”

“I think so. My legs are still coming back.”

Vaughn put his hand on my shoulder. “Me too. I wasn’t along when you guys fought Ray the first time. That’s a nasty weapon.”

“Yeah. I know.” I concentrated on standing.

Marcus nodded. He’d changed back to almost normal—human shape, but all gray skin and his green costume. “Ray caught me when I was completely pre-change. I couldn’t do a thing. This time was pretty cool.”

“Except that he was going to kill us,” Vaughn said, grinning. His mask didn’t cover his mouth and chin.

Marcus sighed, and looked over the unconscious bodies on the roof. “That does bug me. Does anyone know why?”

Cassie let go of my arm. I didn’t fall over. My legs were feeling closer to normal.

“I’m thinking it’s the Nine. They were talking about what happened in D.C. when I was there.” Cassie sounded tired. “I fought people who worked for the Nine, and discovered they were kidnapping girls who looked like me.”

“Wow,” Marcus cocked his head. “Did someone make clones of you too?”

“No,” Cassie said, “but it’d be easier if they had. They wouldn’t have any reason to send people after me. I think they’re interested in Abominator technology.”

“Oh,” Marcus said, and didn’t say what we were all thinking. Some Abominator technology worked for Cassie that, so far as we knew, worked for no one else on the planet.

“We’d better call the cops and get these guys out of here,” I said. “They mentioned something about a helicopter coming.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Marcus said, “the police have been following me since those guys robbed the bank.”

He had a point. I’d been hearing sirens in the background during the entire fight, and they were growing closer now. Police cars rounded the corner and roared down the street, blue and red lights flashing.

Something scraped the roof. We all looked.

The leader was awake. More than that, he was obviously trying to move himself toward the edge. Given the half-foot high ledge, it would be a challenge to get over with his feet and hands cuffed.

Once we turned to stare at him though, he tried to break the cuffs on his arms, muscles straining. Cassie dropped down to push his arms straight.

I picked up his paralysis gun, and pointed it at him. Cassie looked at me, and let go.

When I fired, his head slumped, his arms and legs relaxed.

“I wonder how long that will work?” She stood next to the body, pulling a flashlight off her belt, and looking him over. Covered in black (mask, jacket, pants), the guy’s muscles were obvious through his clothes. Vaughn’s lightning and the man’s fall to the ground had ripped his shirt in a few different spots.

Blood stained spots around the rips, but his skin was unbroken. Even without my helmet’s help, Cassie’s flashlight made it obvious.

“There’s something up with this guy,” Cassie said.

As I began to say, “Yeah, I recognized his voice from somewhere,” she reached down and pulled his mask off.

Blond haired, and square jawed, he looked like a younger version of her father.

Taking an experimental step, he spied something on the roof, and bent over to get it—the automatic pistol. When he came up the second time, he seemed stronger. He stood up normally.

Quickly, he pointed the gun past me—probably at Vaughn.

This time the wind came up as a roaring, howling blast that drew the man into the air, and threw him off the building.

If I’d been able to gasp, I might have.

Vaughn had used lethal force twice, but I wasn’t complaining about it. The guy had been planning to kill him, and Marcus when they couldn’t defend themselves. Anyway, given what had just happened, the chances were likely that it wasn’t lethal enough.

Still, was the guy dead or not? And if not, how long would it take before he make it back up to the roof to finish his job?

I hoped desperately it would be after the effects of the paralysis wore off. I wiggled my toes with the idea that I’d soon be able to move the rest of my leg. Some moved more easily than others.

Maybe getting messages from my brain to my toes wouldn’t make any difference anywhere else, but I couldn’t think of anything that would bring me closer to actually being able to move.

Near me, but out of sight, someone who had been hit by Vaughn’s lightning moaned and whimpered.

Just a little louder than their voices and the wind, Marcus said, “Hey guys, I think I worked my way around the paralysis—not all the way around, but I can move.”

He paused.

“Anybody there? Look, I know Storm King can hear me even if he can’t say so. Can anyone else give me a sign?”

From the tone of his voice, I couldn’t say he was panicking, but he sounded nervous. I would have sounded nervous too.

In that moment, he stood alone.

Times like this made me wish Daniel had decided to go to college in Grand Lake instead of Chicago. A telepathic group discussion would have gone a long way just then. I could have told Marcus about the van we’d parked in the alley next to the building. Driving away had a lot going for it.

“I’m thinking this through guys. We can’t stay here, but I can’t carry you all away at once, and I don’t want to leave anybody. I’m wondering… Could a zap from Storm King clear the paralysis, maybe? We could try it on Captain Commando first.”

He paused, and then in a more excited voice said, “No! Got it! I’ll change into a glider, and Storm King can float us out of here.”

He grabbed Vaughn, Cassie, and I, placing us next to each other. Then he changed, and I felt straps surround me. Out of my peripheral vision, I could see his body stretching into a wide pair of wings.

“Don’t start the wind just yet,” he said. “It’ll take a minute before the wings are strong enough.”

A boot scraped across the edge of the roof.

I glanced toward the noise. The leader had climbed over the edge of the roof to my left.

He held the paralysis gun, pulling it up, and aiming.

I wanted to say something. I couldn’t.

It turned out I didn’t need to. I half expected that he’d tell Vaughn to start the wind going, but he didn’t.

The straps, tendrils, or whatever they were withdrew at a speed that caused us all to roll sideways while Marcus flopped over in a clatter of wings, and weird noises that sounded a lot like “splort.”

It didn’t leave me in a great position either. I’d managed to roll completely on my back, the rockets holding the middle of my back above the ground. My head flopped over, the helmet touching the roof. When I was a little kid, looking at the ceiling upside down like that, and pretending I could walk on it had seemed fun.

Under the current circumstances? Much less fun.

On the bright side, when I tried to get up, I actually moved my right leg a little.

I didn’t have time to feel good about that. From my right came a flash of light, the crackle of electricity, and the sound of Cassie saying, “Fuck, that hurt!”

I crumpled, and fell to the roof of the building. I fell sideways, and then rolled halfway on to my back—”halfway” because I was mostly on my arm and right side of my back, and partly on my rocketpack. It wouldn’t let me roll all the way there.

The other guy—the only guy with an exoskeleton still standing—had pulled out a paralysis gun too.

I could tell because the helmet’s sonar gave me better peripheral vision. That let me see a flying person fall (Vaughn), and simultaneously see Cassie jump, drop to the roof, and let go of her staff.

I couldn’t see if it fell to the ground.

Not that it mattered. We couldn’t do anything anyway.

I didn’t see them get Marcus, but since they’d stopped fighting he had to be down too.

The man without the exoskeleton (the leader?) looked over the group. He turned to the other guy, “Check how badly our people are hurt. I’m calling it in. We’ve got the girl.”

Something about his voice sounded familiar.

The other guy said, “Think that means we’ll get a bonus? They were going to give one to Ridgeback.”

“Doubt it, but we deserve one.”

“No shit. After D.C.? We’re lucky we’re not dead.”

“Nah. They don’t kill people.”

“Yeah? I heard guys died.”

“Me too, but I think that was the frog-men.”

“Bastards.”

“Yeah. Check those guys, okay?”

“Got it.”

The leader pulled a phone from his belt, and held it in front of his mouth. “Tell Sixer, we’ve got her plus some teammates.”

I couldn’t hear the response.

“Who? The guitar guy—we’re pretty sure he’s the Rocket—plus Storm King, and the shapeshifter.”

The leader went quiet for a while, listening to the person on the other end, or maybe waiting for a response.

Meanwhile I heard the heavy steps, and occasional hum of the man with an exoskeleton moving around, helping the guy who’d fallen over up, shaking the other guys back to consciousness.

A breeze blew across the roof. It sounded like it might be gaining strength.

That would be great. What’s worse than lying on roof paralyzed and unable to defend yourself? All of the above, but with darkness and rain.

If I were lucky, it wouldn’t just be rain, but I couldn’t count on that.

I tried to think of a way out of it, but no obvious plan came to mind. Unlike Daniel, all my plans required the ability to move.

My mind jumped around. I don’t like to think I was panicking, but if I was, I had an excuse. Doing my best to keep my mind on something possible, I tried to move my toe.

Strangely, I could. I could move all my toes—not my legs, hands or arms, but toes? Yes.

Not that it mattered. What was I going to do with my toes when I couldn’t move the rest of my legs?

Then I thought, why didn’t my anti-paralysis device work?

I thought about my toes, and I knew why.

My device worked against the kind of paralysis created by one of Man-Machine’s inventions, a paralysis gun that used sound to trigger paralysis throughout the body. It worked because we needed to be paralyzed to sleep.

The gun they had used some form of radiation to specifically block individual limbs from moving. I wasn’t sure how you’d manage to avoid paralyzing the heart, but since I wasn’t dead, it was obviously possible.

“Dead? Both of them?” The leader sounded matter of fact about it.

He pulled a gun out of its holster—an automatic pistol, not the paralysis gun.

“What’s your ETA?”

He hung the phone back on his belt. “Men,” he said, “they’ll be picking us up by helicopter in ten minutes. There will be a medic on the flight. Before then, we’ll need to get a couple things done. They want the Rocket and Captain Commando, but Storm King and the Shift are useless. They don’t want us to leave them alive.”

I felt sick.

I tried to wiggle my fingers. Even if couldn’t move my arms, I could do a lot if my fingers were free.

They wouldn’t move, and the leader’s voice still seemed strangely familiar to me.

The leader stepped forward as the wind kicked up a notch. “I’ll take Storm King and—”

Then lightning hit him, engulfing his entire body. He fell over.

I’d have closed my eyes if I could. Bright, white light filled my vision, followed by a thunderclap, both filtered to a bearable level by my helmet.

Vaughn didn’t need to move to act.

Around me, electricity hit the men in exoskeletons—the ones who’d gotten up anyway.

I’d have felt a lot better then, if it weren’t for the leader.

Even with his burned and smoking clothes, he’d begun to stand up.

If it weren’t night, I could have blamed it on his green costume. I only recognized him because I knew he was coming, and because no normal human could stretch like that.

Frog-like or not, the way his shape briefly blocked the stars made me think of Batman cartoons—which ironically brought me back to reality.

We should have attacked them when they passed over us. If we’d called Marcus and told him to hang back, that could have worked beautifully.

Sparing everyone else my 20/20 hindsight, I said, “I’m going up,” started the rockets, and shot into the air.

Suddenly above the row of buildings, I had to decide how I wanted to handle this. We didn’t have a plan. Okay, we kind of had a plan, but it didn’t amount to much more than, “Find out who Marcus was chasing, and help him.”

I leveled off, and angled sideways, flying above the street.

I’d gotten ahead of them, giving me a second to detach the guitar from my chest, and send a message to everyone on the comm.

“Hang back, I’m going to blind them. One…”

The stealth suit’s sonar filled in the details normal human vision couldn’t, assisted by a computer. I’d improved it during the summer. Each of the seven figures running across the roof appeared to be wearing more than just boots.

Hard supports ran up the sides of their legs, arms, and chest. Small rockets or jets hung on the supports, probably to help stabilize the boots. The design reminded me of Jack Maniac’s a little, but unlike him, I hadn’t seen any sign these guys could do more than make rocket-assisted jumps.

Large bags hung by straps across their shoulders. I guessed they might hold the bank’s money.

Marcus had lost ground or he’d heard my message. Either way, he ran half a rooftop behind them.

Cassie followed him, staff in hand, sword on her back. Vaughn flew above her.

“Two…” This could work, I told myself. Blind them, and we could take them hand to hand. Reports of their actions during the chase showed no indication they were anything more than normal humans. Sure, their exoskeletons might be strong, but they weren’t armor.

“Three…”

Switching the setting from communicator to voice, I shouted, “Hey,” through the suit’s speakers. As they turned their heads toward the noise, lasers from my guitar bathed the rooftop in bright, multi-colored light.

My helmet blocked most of it, but from the shouts, their helmets hadn’t done as well.

Better than the shouts, lightning flashed from Vaughn’s black gloved hand to hit one of them. The bank robber’s arms flailed, and he fell over as electricity crackled.

The crazy thing? I recognized that as one of Vaughn’s smaller “taser sized” blasts.

I turned and flew toward them, landing a few feet from the edge, and letting the guitar hang while I gave them a blast of pain with the sonic weapons.

The two directly in front of the blast tensed, and one put his hands uselessly on the side of his helmet.

Marcus, in the meantime, had shifted from his long-limbed form into a muscular, humanoid shape that appeared to be made of rocks and reminded me of a comic book character.

Shouting, “It’s clobberin’ time,” he punched a guy in the face, cracking the man’s helmet, and knocking him down.

Cassie came out of the darkness behind Marcus, sweeping a guy’s legs out from under him with her staff, and hitting him in the head with it when he tried to push himself up.

He stayed down after that.

I charged the two guys standing in front of me, taking one down with a punch to the solar plexus. While he gasped for breath, the other backed away. He must have been disoriented from the light and my sonic blast because he tripped.

The exoskeleton restricted his movement more than the Rocket suit because he had a hard time getting his arm into a position to push himself up.

The big bag of money couldn’t have helped him either.

That left two effective fighters—one guy in an exoskeleton, and another who (I only then realized) wasn’t wearing rocket boots at all.

He’d been jumping between buildings with nothing but his own strength.

Dressed in black combat gear like the rest of them, he pulled out a pistol with a solid barrel—a paralysis gun in all probability. He pointed it at me before I had the chance to move.

I didn’t have time to worry, but if I had, I probably wouldn’t have. I’d worked out a device that countered the sounds the gun used to trigger paralysis.

He pulled the trigger.

The device on my belt didn’t hum at all.

Despite what you might see in the movies, being a chemistry major doesn’t automatically qualify you to construct a device that activates powers hidden in a person’s DNA.

I mean, honestly, it would have been a lot of work for me to construct one, and I had Grandpa’s documentation.

I knew that, and yet on Thursday night I lay in my bunk, staring at the ceiling, and wondering what she planned to do with her powers anyway.

She could already pass for a model. What else did she want?

I turned my head. On my desk, the numbers of my alarm clock glowed red, showing the time—1:34 am. I had three classes on Friday. I didn’t have anything due, but I still wanted to be awake.

I settled in, closing my eyes, and trying to think of something that would put me to sleep.

On the bunk below, Jeremy breathed steadily, probably sleeping. Over the last few days, he’d seemed okay, and I’d decided I could deal with him for a year.

I just hoped I could keep my identity as the Rocket secret.

Naturally, it was as I thought about that that my League phone began to vibrate. I’d put it in a pocket in my pajamas, hoping it would wake me up.

I clicked on it, and the screen glowed.

Marcus had sent a yellow. I checked the map. He was downtown, and moving.

Was he alone? If he’d gone on patrol, he was supposed to take someone else along.

I dropped to the floor as quietly as I could, pulled on the stealth suit—the innermost layer could pass as long underwear or exercise clothes, and pulled jeans and t-shirt over it.

Cassie, Vaughn, and I had worked out a plan for situations like this, and tonight we’d get to put it into practice. I couldn’t realistically keep the Rocket suit in my room, and I couldn’t realistically head back to Grandpa’s house to get it on short notice.

Once I got my shoes on, I stepped out of the room, closed the door quietly, and walked as quickly as I could down the hall. After I stepped out of the dormitory, I ran for the school parking garage.

I’d parked the van on the second floor, so by the time made it up the stairs, I found I wasn’t the first person there. I opened the door and stepped inside to find Cassie was already in the back of the van, grabbing things.

“There you are. Now all we’re missing is—”

Vaughn opened the passenger side door, and stepped in.

I turned on the van, and drove out. Even at this time of night there were still a few people using the parking garage, but I’d taken the precaution of tinting the windows so they couldn’t easily see inside.

I’d also added a few other details that made our lives a little easier, but the main point of the van was more to be a mobile closet than a recognizable League fighting vehicle.

“Does anyone know what’s going on?” I tapped a few buttons on the dashboard, and a screen showed Marcus’ location downtown.

“No,” Vaughn said.

From the back, Cassie said, “Marcus caught somebody breaking into First of Michigan Bank downtown, and now he’s chasing the guy.”

“I didn’t think we were doing patrols because of school starting,” I said.

“We’re not,” Cassie said. “Marcus went out for the fun of it after work.”

“Anyway, Marcus is still in high school so he doesn’t start for another week,” Vaughn said. Except for the mask, he’d changed into his costume.

“I know,” I said, “but we were using the buddy system for patrols to avoid this kind of stuff.”

I pulled the van to the side of the road. We were downtown. If Marcus and whoever he was chasing kept on moving in the same direction, they’d go past us soon.

Getting up and walking into the back, I threw off my t-shirt and jeans, and pulled on the stealth suit’s upper layers—pants, jacket, and helmet. Then I grabbed my utility belt, rocketpack, and the guitar.

Meanwhile, Vaughn and Cassie had stepped out of the van.

I followed them out, hearing the sound of gunshots, and brief roaring noises that reminded me of jet engines.

I’d parked in an alley. We were near the city’s arena next to a street of old, brick buildings that had once been factories, but were now restaurants and shops.

The roaring noises grew louder, and I looked up in time to see seven people jump the distance between the two buildings on either side of the alley. Glowing lines of fire shot out of the bottoms of their boots.

Rocket boots?

“Did you just see your advisor too?”

“Kind of. I got out, and then I noticed you were in there, and thought I’d say hi when you got out.”

Then I wondered if I’d been too honest. She could take that a bunch of ways ranging from “creepy stalker” to “he’s interested in me” to “just being friendly.”

The first two were the last things I wanted her to think. Even beyond not wanting to hurt Haley, I’d never thought about Courtney in terms of dating. She’d been dating Keith the entire time I knew her. I’d always thought of her as nice, and a lot more sensible than Keith in a lot of ways, but more as a friend than anything else.

If I’d met her for the first time in college, I’d probably have classed her as “completely unapproachable.”

“Hey, you’re silent all of a sudden. What’s on your mind?”

“I still can’t get over how different you look.”

“Oh,” she said, and took a breath. “Well, you know why.”

She’d showed Haley and I at the restaurant when we’d gone out together before prom.

“Yeah,” I said, “but you’ve made a lot more changes since prom.”

Her eyes darted around. We were walking down the stairs to the first floor with a lot of other people. Every freshman had to see their advisors today. Classes started tomorrow.

“Let’s not talk about this here. Let’s try…” She paused. “Let’s try somewhere on the lawn. Michelle always has people in our dorm room.”

We didn’t say much as we followed people down the stairs and out of the building. One look outside told us that the lawn wouldn’t be private. People were everywhere. Freshmen had moved in on Friday and Saturday, but on Monday everybody could move in. Cars filled the streets between buildings, and every parking space in front of them.

Students carried suitcases, backpacks, and duffel bags full of stuff across the lawn toward the residential halls.

“We could walk by the river,” I suggested.

A few minutes later, we’d walked past Voss Hall of Engineering, and stood near the water. The park where the League fought Evil Beatnik lay on the other side. A few people sat in the park, or walked down the sidewalk next to the river, many of them in business clothes.

The university’s side of the river hadn’t been developed as much. Weeds started where the lawn ended, and continued down the bank, ending in mud.

It was private in the sense that no one stood in hearing distance. I supposed that people could still see us through the windows of the engineering building.

We sat where the river bank began—the edge of the lawn .

“You’re probably wondering why Keith and I broke up?”

I had been, but I hadn’t intended to ask about it. I’d really intended to find out how much power juice she was using, and where she was getting it.

“A little.”

She stared down at the river before she said anything else. “Keith wants to be a superhero. He went to college in Chicago so he could impress the Midwest Defenders. He kept on bothering me to do it with him—I’d do the investigating, and he’d do the fighting. It was awful. I only wanted to lose some weight, or at least look like I had. It wasn’t coming off any other way. We argued for months, and he dumped me in July.”

I nodded.

“And that’s it,” she said. “After we broke up, I had a lot of time on my hands, and I spent it experimenting with my powers. I don’t know why, but I thought I’d see how attractive I could become while still looking like myself. Maybe it was supposed to be some kind of revenge on Keith. I don’t know. It’s a little like how my mom dyed her hair red after my parents divorced.”

She stopped, and watched the river. I didn’t say anything for a little while.

“Does it last? Or do you have to take more juice all the time?”

She gave me a slightly lopsided smile that reminded me of how she used to look.

“If I change myself, and don’t take any more, I stay that way.”

“That’s interesting. I wonder if you’re changing yourself at the level of DNA, or if you’re rearranging yourself, but you’ll slowly change back with time?”

“Can’t tell you. I’m not taking the risk of finding out. I’m making my own juice. I don’t want to get stuck if I don’t have to.”

“What happens if power juice becomes illegal?”

She shrugged. “Maybe I’ll build one of those machines that make powers permanent.”

I wondered if that was intentional or accidental. Lee would have approved, though he probably would have positioned Vaughn with his back to the wall and Cassie nearer to the edge.

She’d work better as a lookout because she could take a lot of damage and still report back, giving Vaughn time to counterattack.

Not that any of us were likely to be attacked in the cafeteria—at least not this early in the semester.

I sat down next to Vaughn, thinking that I’d spent far too much time training in the last year.

“Who were you talking to?” Vaughn’s gaze followed Courtney and her friends down the steps.

“Remember Courtney from high school? Dated Keith?”

“No kidding? She’s looking really good.”

“Power juice?” Cassie asked.

“Can’t say for sure, but I’d bet on it.”

“Oh yeah,” Vaughn said. “Shapeshifting. Appearance only, right?”

“I think. But that’s with power juice. If someone made it permanent, she might be able to do more.”

“You know what would be crazy,” Vaughn said. “Shapeshifting girlfriend. Think about it.”

“Right,” Cassie said. “She could shapeshift into a guy, and no one would ever guess you were dating.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“What I’m wondering,” Cassie said, “is whether we should talk to the program about her. Everyone and their dog can make powers permanent these days. I told you about that, right?”

When she’d been in Washington D.C., she’d learned that the military had a power impregnator, and she’d seen an ancient (probably Abominator made) version when she’d broken into a research facility owned by the Nine. I hoped they hadn’t learned anything from it. That would not be good. The Nine were scary.

“Everyone except us,” Vaughn said.

He was right. Our power impregnator had been modified, and then damaged during the summer.

“We probably should talk to someone,” I said. “Impersonating people could be really useful. Think Mystique in the X-Men comics.”

“See,” Vaughn said. “Blue and naked is exactly the kind of thing I had in mind.”

“God,” Cassie muttered, “and you were wondering why you and Brittany broke up?”

* * *

I saw my adviser Monday morning. Not Dr. Nation, but my official college advisor Dr. Farkas. Well, one of my advisors. I had two because I had two majors—chemistry and electrical engineering.

Dr. Farkas wasn’t taking it well.

I sat in his office while he opened my folder, and stared at the papers inside. I occupied myself by looking at the books that covered all four walls of his office. To judge from them, chemistry was his only interest.

“I don’t think you can do this,” he said. “I don’t like to say that because obviously you’re very bright, but majoring in electrical engineering and chemistry could easily result in flunking out of both programs. Aside from which, you’ll never get through both programs in four years if that’s your goal.”

“I… I think I can. You’re looking at my initial schedule. It’s changed. I took some tests a few weeks ago and it turns out I can skip a bunch of classes in both programs. I’ve actually got a list here… I’ve divided up the rest of them by year and made a schedule for the next four years, and it should work.”

I took it out and put it on top of his folder. I had a photocopied copy for each advisor in case they hadn’t gotten it.

He read it. “I’ve never seen any student test out of this many classes.”

“The registrar okayed it and so did my engineering advisor,” I said. “I can more or less skip the first year of each program and go straight into sophomore courses. If you look at it, you’ll find I skip more electrical engineering courses.”

After a call to the registrar, and a call to my engineering advisor, he signed my paper, and I was free.

The Chemistry Department’s professors all had offices in the same section of Davidson Hall so I walked out to find a lot of students standing or sitting at the tables in the common area between offices, and generally waiting for their advisors.

Courtney stood in a line next to a door. It wasn’t a surprise. We’d been in AP (advanced placement) chemistry together.

She didn’t seem to see me. I thought about it. I had questions for her. If I caught her at the right time, I could ask them.

When I turned to check on her, she’d just stepped into her advisor’s office.

I decided to wait. It wouldn’t be long.

Jeremy turned out to be a slightly chunky guy in shorts and t-shirt. The t-shirt said “Gevil” (except the “e” was a sigma) in Google’s multi-colored letters. Jeremy himself had a small mustache and five o’clock shadow.

“Does she actually believe it?”

“What? No. I don’t think so. I think she bought it at a garage sale. It was really popular once, and she was curious, so…”

After a pause, she said, “I’m Haley, Nick’s girlfriend.”

“I’m Nick,” I said, and even though it was obvious, followed it up with, “I just moved in.”

“I guessed,” Jeremy said. “I don’t believe in any of that stuff either, but it’s connected to some deep, deep secrets.”

“Yeah?”

“Oh yeah. Mind blowing stuff. You ever heard of the Immortal?”

“A little,” I said.

Haley’s upper lip twitched, but she managed to smooth it into a smile, and appear politely interested.

“He’s big. Really big. Records of him go back to Sumerian times, and some people think they’ve seen records of him in cave paintings. The guy’s totally mysterious. He appears all over the world. He changes his looks and name, but some things never change—his attitude, the way he takes outrageous damage, and how he manages to make weapons appear out of nowhere.”

“His attitude?”

“Oh yeah, he’s totally devil-may-care. Nothing fazes him. Plus, he’s a total sociopath. He’ll kill anybody. Former allies, friends, whatever. He doesn’t mess with his employers—he’s a mercenary—but, after the job’s done they’re fair game too.”

I’d seen web sites devoted to Lee, and his actions as the Immortal. This was going to suck. I did not need to watch my every word—especially since I’d be heading to Lee’s studio to train with him every Wednesday.

How easy was it to change roommates?

“Um,” Haley caught my eye briefly, “what does that have to do with Teachings of the Eldest?”

“He wrote it.” Jeremy practically shouted. Then he stopped.

“Sorry, this is the biggest new development in years. He co-wrote the book with another guy, and now the guy is suing him. Well, not as the Immortal, but as ‘the Eldest’ who has a P.O. Box in Chicago ‘in care of’ Don Juan Matus. And that’s also where he gets his royalty checks.”

“Don Juan?” I thought about that. “That sounds…”

“Fake?” Haley supplied.

“Yeah. Very.”

“It is fake,” Jeremy said. “Don Juan was this old Indian shaman or something in a totally different series of spiritual books. He was fake too.”

I could totally see Lee finding that funny.

“How did you find this out?”

“There’s this Internet group that studies him, and one of our guys stumbled on it. You know what? That’s not the best part. He’s associated with the Heroes League, and he showed up here in his Gunther identity just last spring. I might see the guy. Wouldn’t that be cool?”

“I guess,” I said, “but if he’s a totally remorseless killer, are you sure you want to?”

“I wouldn’t get close,” he said. “I’m not crazy.”

* * *

Haley and I took a walk around campus before she left. It seemed like the only way to get away, and by then it was nearly supper time. Time to use my brand new ID card in the dining hall for the very first time ever. I planned to join Vaughn and Cassie, and maybe Jeremy, but I hoped not.

Figuring out what to do about him would be harder if he were around.

Giles Hardwick Hall had been built only five years ago. I didn’t know what to call the style. Pseudo old building? Though mostly red brick, the arched doors, inset windows, and concrete corners shaped like stone blocks gave the impression of age. At any rate, it looked better than my dorm.

The line extended out of the dining hall and onto the sidewalk outside. The other dining hall wouldn’t open until the rest of the student body arrived. For the weekend, it was Freshmen only.

The practical result? I got to examine the trees and grass behind the dining hall while waiting.

I stood in line behind a group of girls I didn’t know at all. They were talking and laughing together. I tried to think if there were anything I’d done that would give Jeremy clues that I was more than your average student.

Deeply into my own thoughts, I barely noticed when one of them said, “Nick?”

Then I did recognize her—Courtney—as in Courtney and Keith, the biggest fans of Guardian I’d ever met. They’d dated all the way through high school. Last I’d heard, they’d been planning to go to the same college, but not Grand Lake University.

What’s more, Keith’s uncle had been one of the first people to brew power juice in Grand Lake. Courtney could use it to change her appearance.

She looked great. Better than I’d ever seen her in fact. She’d lost a lot of weight last year, but she’d changed more than that. She’d had two large moles on her cheek, but now her skin was perfect. Something about the shape of her face seemed different too, but I couldn’t think what.

Come to think of it, she also seemed taller than she used to.

“Hey, Courtney. I didn’t recognize you. I didn’t expect to see you here at all.”

She walked around her friends to stand next to me. “Keith and I broke up this summer, and I didn’t want to go to the same school.”

“Sorry. I should have guessed.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m happy it’s over. Believe me, it was a miserable summer. How are you and Haley?”

We caught up on the way in, and she introduced me to her friends. I stayed with them until we got inside the cafeteria. Once I got my food, I sighted Vaughn and Cassie.

Walking over to join them, I reflected that if Courtney wanted to keep all those changes, she’d need to use power juice all the time.

“Hello?” I could at least pretend I didn’t know who was calling.

“Hi.” Sean sounded tired. “This is Sean.” Pause. “From school.”

Like I had any confusion about which Sean he was.

“I’m calling because… I’d like us to get along better.”

That was close to an apology. It moved vaguely in that direction without using the words.

I didn’t say anything.

“I don’t want to cause trouble for you. So… that’s why I called.”

I thought about it. I didn’t want to be friends with him. I didn’t even want him to think things were okay between us, and I felt like that was exactly what I was supposed to do. When someone apologized, weren’t you supposed to accept it, and forgive the guy?

It felt fake. I struggled to think of something to say, and then I found some words—even if they weren’t the best words.

“You want us to get along better? Leave me alone. It’s really simple. It’s all I’ve ever wanted from you. Don’t make my pens roll away. Don’t close doors on me. Don’t make snide comments about me or my friends. Don’t hit me. It’s not hard.”

And then I hung up.

The words had come all at once, but once they were over I found myself sitting on the bed, staring at the phone in my hand, not sure of what to do next. I couldn’t convince myself that what I’d said made things better.

Sure, Sean hadn’t made much of an apology, but it was closer to one than anything else he’d ever said to me.

On the other hand, maybe it was good for Sean to know that after you treat someone badly enough they don’t really care when you apologize.

I could tell myself that.

I put my phone back into my pocket.

Haley had gotten off my bed just before the phone rang. She sat down next to me, and took my hand. With her senses, she’d probably heard both sides of the conversation, my rising heartbeat, and smelled… well, whatever reactions my body betrayed there.

Then she put her right arm around my shoulders. I leaned into her, and put my arm behind her back. We stayed that way until I felt better.

* * *

A little over a week and half later I found myself moving into my college dorm room at Grand Lake University.

I’d been assigned to dePuit Hall, a long, brick, rectanglar building. Built in the 1960’s, Grand Lake University had designated it as one of the default dorms for freshmen. Whenever it had been designed must have been some kind of low point in the architecture of institutional buildings. It wasn’t much more than a five story rectangle with one long hall that stretched from one end to the other.

It was almost impossible to get lost, but it had to be among the most boring buildings I’d ever seen.

I didn’t bring much with me—my books, clothes, and bedding. I’d grown up in Grand Lake, and I assumed that I’d be able to pick up anything else I needed from home. The fact that I didn’t have a car would probably make that more complicated, but I’d figure it out.

Anyway, between my dad, Haley, and I, we brought everything up in one load.

Dad gave me a hug before he left. Once he was gone, Haley and I put my clothes into drawers, made my bed, and set up my laptop.

It didn’t take long. While we worked, we couldn’t help but wonder about my roommate. He wasn’t there when we arrived, but all of his stuff was.

According to the information I’d gotten about my room assignment, his name was Jeremy Barrows, and he was a physics major.

A quick look over his books gave a more interesting picture. He seemed to be interested in aliens. In addition to the textbooks on his desk, I noticed a book called Aliens Among Us. It had a blurry picture of a Xiniti on the cover.

The picture looked like it dated from the 70’s—back when the League would have been meeting the Xiniti for the first time.

“Nick,” Haley said, “look at this.”

She pulled a book off the shelf on top of Jeremy’s desk. It was a copy of Teachings of the Eldest, a book Lee, my martial arts teacher, had co-written as part of a scam.

I laughed, and was about to ask her to pass it over so I could look at it when I heard a voice from the open doorway behind me.

“Hey, that’s mine.”

We were sitting on my bed at home, backs to the wall, our legs next to each other.

“I don’t know. Isaac and Flick took him away. Isaac asked me some questions later, but he already seemed to know what happened.”

“What happened after they left? You said everyone was in the hall.”

“Well, not everyone. Izzy and Travis both have enhanced senses so I know how they found out, and I don’t know about anybody else. It wouldn’t surprise me if more people heard us than opened their doors. Sean was shouting part of the time, and I’m sure I was louder than usual. Anyway, by the time Isaac got up there, there were maybe eight people. I told you they detect power use somehow. I think they might have cameras in the hall too.”

“It doesn’t sound like they trust the students much.”

“I… think it’s more complicated than that. I mentioned that I was surprised they got up to where we were so quickly, and Isaac told me that the program had no tolerance for bullying. He said, ‘You’ve heard of bullied kids coming to school with a gun? Well, it’s as if every kid in the building has a gun—except for the ones with atomic bombs. Plus they’ve got friends. If the program turns this hotel into a smoking hole in the ground, the fallout will be so big that getting fired will be the least of my problems’.”

Haley’s eyes got a little bigger. “Oh, no. He’s right.”

“Yeah. I mean, if I got the jet, I could probably take out the hotel myself, and there are a bunch of people who could do it without any technology. They measured strength, and Travis can move 40 tons. Izzy and Jaclyn can both do more than 80. The device they brought isn’t accurate after 85 tons. It’s a very interesting device though—”

I started to explain why, and then stopped. Haley had an expression on her face that I’d slowly begun to recognize as the “please don’t explain that now” look.

“Anyway, I’d bet any of them could take out the hotel by themselves, and I know they’re not the only ones.”

“Is Sean out of the program?”

“I don’t think so. I saw him the next day. If he was out, I think they would have sent him home. Why?”

Haley pulled her legs up to her chest, and put her arms around them. “Don’t be mad. I still think Sean is a jerk, but I don’t want to see him kicked out if he doesn’t have to be.”

“I don’t want to see him kicked out either, but you know what’s weird? Isaac told me that if they can only have one of us in the program, it will be me. It’s really crazy that he’d say that. I mean, I could get Sean kicked out.”

“I don’t think he was promising to kick Sean out if you asked for it.”

“No, but still… After Sean tried to push you to go farther than you wanted, and after I fought him, he brought in lawyers and his dad’s friends. He made the school get me counseling, and his dad pushed the police into investigating you. Now it’s totally the opposite. He’s got no power over us at all, and there are lots of ways I could hurt him.”

She bit her lip. “What are you going to do?”

“Nothing. At least for now. I want to give him a chance, but honestly, I got pretty angry about it afterward. In the moment I didn’t feel much, but later it bugged me that he thought he had the right to terrorize me.”

“I know I said I didn’t want Sean to be kicked out, but if it looks like anything is going to happen, tell somebody, and watch out.”

“Don’t worry about it. I will. Daniel said the same thing, and I don’t think he’s going to let me go anywhere without him.”

Then because it had been on my mind, I asked, “What happened to you? I saw you sent a yellow to everybody, and then everything turned green later.”

“Oh that,” she smiled a little. “I was downtown with Sydney and Camille, and Kayla relayed that the police were having trouble with a lizard guy. He called himself Ridgeback–I’ve never heard of him–and he’d robbed a jewelry store. Anyway, we caught him. Sydney and I chased him down, and Camille turned off gravity around him, and made him float. He had a few normal people with him, but they weren’t hard to catch.”

“Ridgeback? That’s interesting. If he’s the guy I’m thinking of, he’s more of a mercenary. I’ve never heard of him stealing jewelry.”

“He wasn’t very good at it. He did it in the middle of the day, and overturned a bunch of cars. It was almost like he was trying to get attention.”

“Which would be dumb,” I said.

“I know.” She let go of her legs and stood up. “Do you want to go for a walk?”

“We could.”

My phone began to ring. I pulled it out of my pocket. I didn’t recognize the phone number.

Haley leaned over and glanced at the screen. “That’s Sean.”

That annoyed me, because it wasn’t as if I’d volunteered the information. He’d asked. I didn’t see any reason to start a conversation with him. If anything, I’d be willing to go out of my way to avoid it.

I pressed the down button on the elevator. If nothing else, I could leave.

“Have you been telling stories about me?”

“What?”

“Telling stories about me. Making me look bad.”

“I’ve barely seen you, much less talked to anybody about you. Anyway, if I wanted to make you look bad, I wouldn’t need to lie. You’ve actually treated people I know badly. That’s your fault.”

As I said that, a part of me knew that this was not one of those occasions where honesty would help. In fact, it was probably a really bad idea.

“Yeah, like what?”

“That time you tried to beat me up with Jody and Dayton.”

“You threw a snowball into Dayton’s car.”

“Which does not justify beating up anybody, and three on one is kind of cowardly.”

“You fucked up my leg. I’ve still got a limp!”

He did. Not normally, but after today’s exercise, it was obvious. I had mixed feelings about that most of the time. I mean, I’d done permanent damage to his knee. In the moment though, I said, “Which I’d never have done if your friends weren’t holding me down so you could kick me.”

We stared at each other.

The elevator door opened. I stepped forward. He could argue with himself if he wanted to.

The doors shut before I reached them.

“What are you going to do about that?”

Sean smiled at me, more pleased with himself than he deserved to be.

That brought the situation home. I stood facing Sean without any armor, not even the stealth suit, armed only with a book, and not one of Banks’ larger books either.

The question was, did Sean intend to hurt me, or had he given any thought to what he’d do next at all?

Near him, the vending machine shook. I doubted that he even realized he was doing it.

Through my growing fear, I found myself analyzing what I could do. The vending machine sat in an alcove built into the wall at my left, Sean’s right. If I punched him, I could probably take him down before he backed up enough to put the vending machine into play.

This was so much like chess only he was thinking zero moves ahead—unless he knew something I didn’t.

Also, was I really going to attack? He hadn’t attacked me, and shutting the doors was more of an implied threat than a direct threat.

“See? Without the armor, you’re not much.”

As I tried to come up with a reply, I felt (and heard) a gust of wind. For a second, I thought Vaughn might have heard us. Then I realized Izzy stood with us in the hall.

She reminded me somehow of the Dixie Supergirl identity she’d used when she’d been under Evil Beatnik’s control. It might have been her ponytail and her pajamas even though the pajamas didn’t look much like the Dixie Supergirl costume. The costume had been covered with the Confederate flag. Her pajamas were a t-shirt with the words (and pictures of) “Peace, Love, Giraffes” and blue, plaid pants.

Both the costume and t-shirt left her arms bare. Even though they weren’t weirdly sinewy like some bodybuilders’ muscles, they were solid.

She’d also drawn herself up to her full height. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Sean stepped back. I didn’t blame him.

Even though her voice wasn’t loud, it didn’t quite sound human. The tones were richer, and stranger.

Remembering how she’d taken him out this summer, I wondered if he’d recognized her yet. There couldn’t be a lot of women taller than he was. Plus, she’d taken him out with her voice.

“I—” He said.

She talked over him. “I could hear you. What was the point of that? Do you think that just because you have powers and he doesn’t, you can do anything you want?”

It didn’t end there. Travis appeared. I had no idea where he’d come from, but he stood there in jeans and no shirt, giving a very good view of his muscles.

Other doors in the hall opened, and a few kids stepped out. I didn’t recognize all of them, but enough.

“What’s going on?” Travis asked.

If that wasn’t enough, Isaac Lim stepped out from the stairway along with Flick, a woman on the Midwest Defenders’ team.

She wore her costume, a yellow bodysuit with massive gauntlets around her hands.

“Sean,” Isaac said, “we have to talk.”

As the woman in scrubs taped sensors to my arm and chest, and after she’d explained to me what I had to do, I turned to Jenny. “I saw Brooke before I met my adviser. I don’t know where she is now.”

From the row of bikes behind me, Brooke said, “Back here.”

I turned toward her voice and saw her. “Hi. I didn’t notice you.”

She looked just like she had last spring—tanned with long, curly hair. Based on looks, I’d pegged her as good looking, but not necessarily smart. I’d been wrong. When we’d been captured by Syndicate L, she’d been the one who organized us to escape.

Then I said, “Is your hair different?”

Jenny laughed while Brooke said, “Yes, now that I’m dating Alex my hair grows faster. I was dyeing it blond, but my roots kept on showing so I gave up.”

That explained it. Her hair was still blond. It just wasn’t as blond.

“Less talking, more pedaling,” the woman monitoring us said.

“Troublemaker,” Jenny said, but she knew me well enough to know exactly how much of a troublemaker I wasn’t.

“Yeah,” I said, and pedaled.

On my other side, Sean kept on pedaling, and didn’t say a word.

It was so different from high school. If I’d known her in high school, I’d never have spoken to Brooke. Honestly, I probably wouldn’t have spoken to very many people there. We wouldn’t have had much in common.

Because of my grandfather, I knew people here anyway, and even the people I didn’t know had good impressions of the Rocket—both past and present versions.

Except for my senior year, high school had been pretty lonely. When I considered the number of times people tried to kill or kidnap me last year, it seemed strange to think that socially at least, it had been the best year of high school—even including the time Sean and his friends tried to beat me up.

Hey, Daniel broke into my thoughts telepathically. I’d watch out for Sean. He’s angry at you.

What does he think I’ve done now?

It’s not what you’ve done, and really I don’t think it’s even you. He was a big deal in your high school, right?

Yeah. Very.

So he’s here, and nobody knows him, but lots of people know and like you—

And he’s always seen himself as popular, and me as, well… not. I finished Daniel’s thought for him.

Yeah. Plus you’re dating his ex-girlfriend, who’s friends with his sister, who he’s angry at for being friends with his half-sister, because she proves that his late father cheated on his mom.

Crap. I’m starring in a soap opera. Or possibly an episode of Jerry Springer.

Except unlike Jerry Springer, the violence here is real. Nick, I get brief prescient visions of him attacking you. Make sure you don’t end up alone with him.

I’m not planning to. Wait, is he thinking about attacking me right now?

No. He’s not intending to hurt you at all. Think “crimes of passion.” He’s feeling angry, grieving, insecure, and out of place. If you’re nearby, he might lash out.

OK. I’ll stay away from him. I was planning to anyway.

So after that, you know what happened? Nothing much. They tested how much I could lift, ran me through an obstacle course, tested how well I sprinted and a few other things too. A few hours later I was done.

That night around 2am, I found myself awake. I couldn’t put all the blame on Daniel, but first of all, he snored. Second, we’d been friends as long as we’d been alive, constantly talking to each other through his telepathy. The upshot of that? Not only did he snore, but sometimes I could feel his dreams while he slept, if he slept nearby.

In this case, nearby meant across the room in my own bed. I didn’t know what sort of dreams he was having, but I woke up with my heart racing, and feeling panicky. Thirty minutes later, I still hadn’t managed to fall asleep.

I pulled on jeans and a t-shirt, and grabbed a book. I’d been reading Iain M. Banks’ Player of Games. Reading it in the lobby might help me calm down.

I didn’t even make it to the lobby.

The floor’s vending machine stood next to the elevator, and Sean stood in front of the vending machine. To be fair to him, he wasn’t stealing pop. With magnetic powers he could have.

I should also say that despite what Daniel thought, Sean didn’t start out being hostile.

He pulled a can of pop out of the vending machine and said, “So, what’re you doing up?”

It wasn’t friendly either, but it could have been worse.

“I couldn’t sleep.” I didn’t want to explain that I’d had Daniel’s nightmare.