The Loop

Past

Somehow, Daniel had known. Not just known about Troy’s cancer—that was remarkable in itself—but about all of it: the orbs, the powers. He had to have known for the last few weeks that Troy had known him to have made any sense.

Troy had gotten his mole checked, as per Daniel’s advice, and had found that, as he already knew by that point, it was skin cancer. A very aggressive form of melanoma, to be exact. The doctors had said that if he’d waited, if he’d let it go for another few months or years, he’d probably have been beyond saving.

And that motherfucker knew, he thought to himself. He knew and he chose to save me.

After that, things had moved quickly. Troy had returned to the warehouse where he’d last seen Daniel a week later, but he hadn’t been able to get in. The place had been locked down tighter than Fort Knox. Armed sentries at the road and all. He’d contacted Daniel’s family in the UK, but they’d been convinced that Daniel had gone missing or been killed and asked Troy if he knew anything. Troy had hung up on them.

He’d finally looked at Daniel's laptop, still open and unlocked in their dorm room two weeks after the last time he’d seen him. He’d known it would only be a matter of time before his family came stateside to search for clues, or the University staff started asking questions, as Daniel hadn’t been to class in almost two months.

So he’d done something he hadn’t felt right about at the time because he didn’t know what else to do. He’d taken the laptop and hidden it away.

Almost pointless, because by the time he got around to digging around on it for clues, there wasn’t much left to see. It looked, for the most part, like a fresh machine, no identifying information or personal files or photos left intact, except for one thing: a news article about a new digital security company called Custodian Systems Inc. had been left open on the web browser.

Troy had never been good with computers, had never taken the time to learn anything about them because the only things he needed them for were the most basic things that everyone could figure out. He'd considered anything that was beyond his ability to figure out quickly a symptom of poor design rather than his own lack of ability.

He’d been competent in photoshop and other digital art programs, but his prefered mediums had always been physical: oil paints or charcoal or watercolors. But after what had happened with Daniel, he’d completely changed focus. Art had started to seem like a luxury. What was important, what was necessary, was unraveling the mystery of his roommate’s overnight change, dire warning, and subsequent disappearance. He threw himself into learning about computers with a passion he’d never felt toward anything.

He dropped out of college, taught himself to code, to hack, to infiltrate. He’d applied for a job at Custodian Systems, been denied. He’d discovered a connection to a mysterious online syndicate called The Exposure Collective, but he was iced out there, too.

He’d started to believe his old roommate was not just connected to these things, but at the top of them, somehow. It was instinct more than anything, but he knew it was right.

For years, he’d supported himself doing freelance coding work, hacking, some graphic design on the side, rekindling his passion for art as the leads on Daniel dried up and he started to believe he’d never find out what had really happened. And then, the orbs had come.

Yesterday

“Sir,” said Luisa.

“Hmm?”

“Daydreaming again, sir?”

“Just running through some simulations,” he said. It was an old inside joke between them, to make his drifting thoughts seem more like work. He wasn’t reimagining scenes from his memory, he was ‘running through some simulations’.

Luisa laughed politely, but briefly. She’d heard the joke enough times that it had lost its edge. And besides, they both wanted more from their relationship than tired jokes and friendly, but distant, banter.

“I thought you might like to know, there’s a winged woman topside.”

“A winged woman?” he inquired.

“A Hype,” she clarified, as if the fact of the wings wasn’t clarification enough.

“DAH?” he asked. Organic wings would mean yes, biomechanical wings would mean no.

“Yes, sir. They look like the wings of a hawk, or a … some sort of raptor, anyway. Feathered, brown and black and white. Definitely attached to her.”

“And what’s she doing here?”

“Mr. X and Ms. Y report that she followed them all the way from their most recent arrest in Manhattan.”

“Is she with the villains?”

“Unclear, but they think no. They suspect she has power altering powers.”

“DAH and PAP,” he mused. They’d noticed a pattern in the research, of course. While PAPs could crop up anywhere, Digressive Anomalous Hyperhumans were more than ten times more likely to possess power altering powers than Hypes from the general population.

His group had better and more comprehensive data on that subject than anything that was publicly available, owing largely to the substantial criminal Hype population in their custody, many of whom were happy to divulge information about their powers and submit themselves to testing to secure lighter sentences.

‘Cooperation will be rewarded’ was something his mother had always said. She’d used it as a way to make him and his siblings get along, and she’d back the words up by giving them candy when they did cooperate. But sometimes, she’d used it as a way to get them to snitch on each other. And that sort of cooperation usually came with a reward far greater than sugary treats.

“Sorry,” he said to Luisa, aware that his thoughts were drifting again while she stood patiently in the door leading from his office to the back, administrative half of the base. “What would you suggest, Luisa?”

“Talk to the woman, get her cooperation. Maybe she can be a help.” Luisa smiled and turned to leave. “If, that is, you really want my advice,” she added.

“I value you and I value your input,” he said. “Thank you.”

How many times had they come close? Hands brushing, faces flushing, lips coming near then drifting apart? And each time they’d pulled themselves back because they knew what such a slip up would cost them. But not doing it cost them something, too. Maintaining a professional work environment was important, but hadn’t Luisa been a greater help when the option had still been on the table?

Hadn’t they been more happy to work with one another when they’d allowed themselves to entertain the notion?

He did value her, and her input, but he wished that she didn’t work for him. He’d have taken an assistant half as competent if it meant that he could have her. But that was his feelings talking, and he was nothing if not a practical, focused man. The mission had to come first, always.

Besides, he could only make that call for himself. He knew how much Luisa valued her work.

He spoke into the communication device hidden within his armor. He’d had it switched off while he got some work done, not expecting his lieutenants to need anything from him. Their mission was supposed to be a routine arrest and villain transfer, nothing they didn’t do constantly with little oversight from him.

“Ms. Y, bring the woman downstairs. I’d like to meet her.”

“You’ve got it, boss,” came the reply. The other Hypes in his employ were always so eager to please, and he prided himself on maintaining their loyalty. He fought alongside them when fighting was necessary, put his neck on the same line they did.

But more important than that was the fact that he made sure that they got whatever information, whatever answers, they wanted. He’d found information to be the most powerful motivator of all, especially for Hypes. Though most wouldn’t admit it, especially since touching an orb and gaining powers was a conscious decision and not something forced on people—at least not for the most part—many Hypes struggled with a sort of constant anxiety about who and what they were, a desire to fit in, a need to have their questions answered, to be reassured.

And he’d managed to get himself in a position where he could provide all that. He’d even seen would-be villains like Powerplay and Quartermaster reformed and brought into his ranks for the simple price of being given a purpose, meaning, a place to belong.

But even now, none of them knew how great their purpose really was. Even he only knew bits and pieces of the truth. The full picture would only be revealed with time, and with the cooperation of someone who, so far, had refused to talk to him. Too much truth too quickly was as dangerous as a lie, though. No, he thought. More dangerous.

——————

Luisa had been with him from the start. Well, almost since the start. She hadn’t been there for the ride to Texas, or Troy’s subsequent investigation into the enigma of his roommate’s last few weeks beforehand, but she’d been there from the moment Troy had gained powers and come to the government with a proposal: help me discover what happened to Daniel and complete whatever mission he had, and I’ll help you create a system to contain Hyperhuman criminals and bring them to justice.

She’d been assigned as his personal assistant as soon as the federal government had reviewed his plans and proposals and decided to go ahead with them. It had stunned everyone how thoroughly he’d thought things through, how persuasively and passionately he'd argued his case. While everyone else was still struggling to come to terms with what was happening in the world, along came Troy who seemed not only prepared, but like he’d expected this, or something like it, to happen for years.

It wasn’t what Luisa had wanted from life; she’d begun her career as a congressional aide and had every intention of becoming a congresswoman herself, maybe president one day. But after two weeks working with—not for—Troy, she’d understood that she’d never be given an opportunity to do anything this exciting anywhere else.

“Luisa, ma’am,” said Charlie V, falling in step beside her as she strode confidently down the hall toward the large office space with its rows of cubicles where the real work was done. He handed her a folder as they walked.

“Latest domestic threats?” she asked.

“International, actually. Plus a proposed joint framework for incarceration, prosecution, and reformation from the EU. And one from China, who are demanding a pretty comprehensive extradition treaty, mostly in their favor, of course.”

“Understandable,” she said. “But it would be great if they didn’t feel the need to play these political games with the stability of the world at stake. I’ll review these and get Troy’s sign-off after.” It was another point in Troy's favor that absolutely everyone in the base was encouraged to call him by his first name. Half the lower-level people probably didn't even know his last name, Luisa supposed.

He handed her another folder. “And here,” he said, “are the domestic threats. You’ll notice it’s about half the size of last week’s folder.”

“Well there’s some good news.”

He handed her a final folder. “And here’s the proposed plan for the new West Coast base and holding facility outside of Seattle. Preliminary reports suggest we’ll need someone other than Digger and Builder on the project—the ground’s extremely rocky in the planned location.”

“Seismologist?” she suggested. “Combustress, maybe? Although she certainly wouldn’t be as delicate. I think we’re on good terms with both of them, for a short term work contract at least.”

“I’ll run it by the boys in Infrastructure, see what they think.”

“Run it by The Innovators, see if they have any ideas.”

“Ma’am?”

“I know, I know. They’re kind of full of themselves, but they can’t resist an opportunity to show our guys up. Point them at a problem and they rarely miss.”

The Innovators were a nascent group of Hyperhumans from across the country who shared two things in common: powers that specifically enhanced their cognitive, scientific, and technological prowess; and a desire to use those powers to improve life for every living thing on the planet. Their leader, a woman calling herself Physician—but whose real identity Troy had worked out to be one Maria Lopez—specialized in medicine and creation of artificial lifeforms, including partially-biological AI. She’d been mostly cooperative with their efforts, so far, helping with any projects that didn’t seem to be too far removed from their mission of saving the world.

And they were excellent at what they did. Good enough to poach any up-and-coming Hypes with similar skills.

Arrogant bastards, though. And Luisa wasn’t sure how long they’d last without funding. If they’d been a little more open to military contracts, they could have had all the money they needed to do their good works. They’d announced they were working on cold fusion, but they refused funding from anyone they suspected was in it for the profits, which, it turned out, was pretty much everyone interested in funding research into cold fusion. They were idealists, and that could be frustrating, but … Well, Luisa couldn’t fault them their convictions.

“Yes, ma’am”

“Thanks, Charlie.”

They reached the opening into the large, open space and Charlie peeled away, heading back toward the annex outside of Troy’s office where he and several other top analysts worked. Unlike her—and unlike Troy, too, come to think of it—Charlie V didn’t like to be in the open space with all the cubicles. He didn’t like the thought of getting cornered by workers with their million questions and becoming so bogged down in the tedium of the office that he got nothing done.

The reason why they’d put her office at one end of the facility and Troy’s at the other was specifically so anyone wanting a word with one or the other of them would have to go through the cubicle area, forcing them to associate with the low-level office workers who kept this place running. It was Troy’s theory that one had to keep oneself humbled and grounded to be an effective leader, but not every one of his upper-level employees bought into that philosophy.

That’s fine, she thought. We’ll just have to lead by example.

She passed under skylights that looked genuine, sunlight and slowly drifting cumulus clouds being visible through them, and she had to shake her head and remind herself that it was an illusion, that they were under many, many feet of earth and water. She was claustrophobic by nature, and if the illusion weren’t so convincing, she’d have had to leave this place a long time ago, no matter how fulfilling and exciting the work.

As she entered her office, she thought for the thousandth time about the unintended effect of keeping her office on the opposite end of the base from Troy’s: the physical separation made the tension between them even more oppressive. In his office before, keeping things professional, she’d barely been able to breathe. It had been stifling, strangling, being in his presence.

She’d give up her career, her life, for a chance to be with him. But it wasn’t fair to ask him to make those sacrifices. And it would be career suicide, for both of them, to take things to the next level.

He was a great man, and she was honored to be able to work with—not for—him, and she truly believed what they were doing was pivotal in keeping the world from devolving into a state of absolute chaos. But still … to hold him? To kiss him?

She wasn’t sure avoiding the collapse of society was worth giving up a relationship with Troy. She'd never felt for any man what she felt for him, had never known such a connection was possible. It was like she'd found someone who stood for all the same things she did, and she hadn't even realized the things she stood for before she met him.

She made it through the cubicles with little distraction and no one tried to waylay her; they could tell when she was busy, and they'd learned not to bother her too much at those times. Still, she strived to always appear approachable, and the door to her office was never shut. Not least because her claustrophobia wouldn't allow it.

As she settled at her desk, she pulled up the camera feeds from the fake ferry, the long staircase that led to the lower levels, and the massive prisoner holding area, and she watched the progress of Mr. X and Ms. Y as they led the winged woman—Luisa already thought of her as the new recruit, even though no job offer had been extended yet, so certain was she that no one would be able to resist Troy’s pitch—toward their meeting with the boss, Troy. Trojan.

She’d asked him when he got his power why he’d chosen that name and he’d demonstrated. The armor, the shifting, semi-fluid material that he could reshape on the fly that was impervious to attacks from conventional weapons or Hyperhuman powers, and when he’d turned it into a wall around himself, she’d been certain she’d understood.

“Ah, like the Trojan Wall,” she’d said. “Very clever.”

“Oh,” he’d replied. “Actually, I was thinking of the Horse.”

She hadn’t understood what he meant then.

But she did now. She understood, but she couldn’t bring herself to hold it against him.

He knew what was best, after all.

——————

Daniel had saved his life. Maybe he shouldn’t have. How well had they known each other, really? He’d liked Daniel, really he had. Thought the world of him, actually. He wouldn’t have agreed to drive him cross country on a whim if he hadn’t. But the more he thought of it, the more he wondered.

Why had Daniel warned him about the cancer? If he started with the premise that Daniel had known the future somehow, and he followed the logical train of thought, then the only explanation was that Troy was meant for great things, that his death had to be avoided to assure some proper outcome in future events. That idea kept him going when the darker thoughts, the guilt, the doubt, came creeping in.

“I’m Trojan,” he said, smiling widely and meeting the winged woman's eyes. “But my real name is Troy. I’m very pleased to meet you, Priya. How would you like to help me save the world?”

His power went to work immediately, his charm, his natural charisma. She removed her helmet and returned his smile.

“I’ve wanted the chance to do something great with my power even since … Well ever since I got it,” she said. “And I’ve wanted …”

“Answers? About why you grew wings? Why other Hypes don’t have that? What sets you apart?”

“Yes,” she said, slightly out of breath. “Yes, very much yes. I’ve learned some things online. If you can tell me more, I'm excited. But first … I feel I have to explain why it seems like I was sneaking into your base.”

“You were curious about the man with multiple powers?” he guessed. It was a safe guess, people with PAPs were often innately curious about others with the same type of powers. Only, something felt different about that man in particular. No wonder he’d piqued her curiosity.

That curiosity was itself a valuable attribute to Trojan. He felt he'd like this woman working for him very much.

“Mhmm,” she said. “And I had no idea what sort of place this was. I didn’t realize you were, well … the good guys. I mean I knew that they—” she indicated Mr. X and Ms. Y “—were like cops or something. But based on what I’m seeing here, you’re like the really good guys. Like the guys in charge.” Her face was getting flushed and her words were starting to slur together.

He laughed. “It’s okay. Calm down.”

She calmed visibly, stopped fidgeting, stood still and met his eyes.

“Sorry,” she said, still a little out of breath. “To answer your question: yes. I would love to save the world.”

“I’m very glad you said that,” he replied. “Let’s get started with your orientation.”

A Few Months Ago

As soon as he’d heard the first inklings of whispers of rumors about the orbs, he’d been on the hunt for one, certain after years that whatever strange premonition Daniel had had was coming to fruition. He’d felt the hands of fate at work.

And he’d found one, very quickly. Never mind how much he’d paid the people who had actually come across it. Never mind what he’d done to them afterwards, to ensure their silence.

As soon as his power manifested, he’d seen the path forward. Go to the government, convince them—an easy proposition for him, now—and get their help in breaking through the digital and physical security in place at the warehouse where he’d left Daniel all those years ago. And they’d agreed to play ball, of course. He could be very persusasive.

They’d assigned him a task force, given him resources, let him interview and handpick Hypes to work for him. Of course he’d been most interested in those with PAPs, but he’d also tried to find anyone who could help him figure out what had happened with Daniel.

Four weeks after he’d gotten powers, he’d led a team to the warehouse in Texas, blown open the doors and found … nothing. Just row after row of computer servers, exactly as he remembered them except shut off, no background whirring and humming, no ethereal lights without source. It was like the building was dead. In the corner, by the big black box, the chair he’d helped Daniel into years ago was still there, empty once more.

“Fuck!” he’d sworn, because some part of him had been convinced that Daniel would still be in there, would have spent the intervening years working away on those computers, doing some important work. But that was madness, and he knew it. Daniel had been on the brink of death when he’d left him.

He’d had his team dismantle the servers, removing them and transporting them to the base in New Jersey. There they’d gone to work analysing them. Cryptomancer and Whiz Kid, two recruits he’d actually managed to poach from The Innovators when he’d seen that they weren’t quite as idealistic and money-averse as the rest of their team, had combed through the thousands of drives and billions of files in a tiny fraction of the time it would have taken a team of hundreds of ordinary humans to do.

“Empty,” Whiz Kid had said.

“Well, not empty empty,” Cryptomancer had added. “More like deliberately emptied.”

“The distinction being?” he’d asked, shorter and more impatient with them than normal. He still couldn’t explain why working out the mystery of Daniel felt as important to him as it did, but he tended to experience larger swings of emotion where that investigation was concerned than anywhere else in his life.

“That these drives had something very important on them,” Cryptomancer had said.

“And we can tell that they were wiped intentionally, hastily, and not without error,” Whiz Kid had added.

“And something interfered with the process. Best we can tell, something or someone tried to upload the most important files to a server— ”

“—A satellite, we think—”

“But someone or something else got in the way, caused some of the files, or portions of them, to fail to transfer. Took a bite out of the system, so to speak.”

He’d grown very impatient then. The two—Whiz Kid with his enhanced pattern recognition and mathematical prowess and Crytomancer with his innate ability to see through cryptographic cyphers and work out puzzles—had a tendency to talk over one another, to try to constantly one up each other.

“What is the point of all this?” he’d asked.

“We pieced together what we could,” said Whiz Kid.

“There was an AI on the machine, the big black one—”

“An AI called Overseer—”

“And we think he was from—”

“—from the future.” It was Troy himself who finished the thought. All the pieces had clicked together then, like staring at a Magic Eye picture and finally seeing the sailboat or the fish or whatever image was hidden within. It had been there all along, but he’d needed to screw his eyes up in just the right way to see it.

“Keep digging,” he’d told them, but he already knew what they’d find.

Daniel hadn’t died, he’d become a machine. He hadn’t gotten sick, his mind had been overwritten by a future version of itself. And he hadn’t disappeared, he’d been working behind the scenes the whole time.

Within days of the discovery, he’d convinced a special investigatory committee to start looking into Custodian Systems Inc. Within a week he’d had the company shut down. He was hoping to bait Daniel—Overseer—out into the open. Hoping to get him to reveal himself, his plan. To at least acknowledge Troy’s existence.

To tell him why he was still alive.

To tell him his purpose.

Present

Luisa watched the video feeds from a secure panic room at the absolute rear of the facility, one level below the administrative level she worked on. There were others milling about, each at their stations, each busy making calls or tapping away at keys, but Luisa just watched.

The room was large, but not large enough. Luisa popped another anxiety pill to cope with the feeling of being trapped, and tried to focus on the video feeds at her console, instead of on the fact that the facility could collapse at any moment, sending millions of tons of rock and dirt and water down on their heads, crushing and drowning and …

Her instinct was that the interlopers weren’t villains. But they also didn’t seem interested in stopping to explain themselves, or in playing ball. Not government types, but good Hypes, trying to do something important. Noble, even.

She’d said this to Charlie K who’d looked at her like she was crazy. “If they’re good guys, why didn’t they call ahead? Why didn’t they explain why they were coming? Why did they attack us on sight?”

“Well,” she’d wanted to say, “we did come storming at them with guns and powers at the ready.”

Instead she held her tongue, making a secret wager with Charlie K, whom she hated. If he was right, she’d stop switching out his coffee beans in the break room for a different brand that he didn’t like. If she was right, she’d convince Troy to fire him.

Now she watched, waited, anticipated where they’d crop up and switched her feeds ahead of time.

Two of the group were at a terminal near the back corner of the holding area. They looked like an uncostumed civilian and a Hype in one of the silliest get-ups she’d ever seen. The others had appeared seemingly out of thin air in one of the security towers arranged throughout the holding area and were now making their way to a rendezvous.

The cameras she was watching them on were isolated from the main security system, which itself was isolated from the rest of the base’s network infrastructure. It was a system that had been designed by a Hype with a mind for that sort of thing. The three systems operated in tandem, with many physical connection points which would become severed from one another the instant an outside force was found interfering. A good thing, too, because the Hype near the terminal—she’d learned his name was, fittingly, Cyberspace from the camera’s audio—was using some sort of power to wreak absolute havok on whichever systems he could make physical contact with.

The well-designed sytem kept cutting relays, trying to quarantine the affected systems, but he kept slipping past. Thankfully he wasn’t putting much effort into trying to get into the camera system she was using now, or she’d miss the show.

“I don’t like this, Lin— Cyberspace,” his compatriot, a teenage girl, said. She’d at least had the good sense to cover her face with a ski mask, but nothing else about her appearance or behavior suggested she was a Hype.

On another feed, Luisa watched as Trojan and his high-level strike team took the hyperlifts downward from ground level. The armed but unpowered human guards were already breaching into the holding area, despite this Cyberspace’s attempts to keep the doors locked and sealed. The Hypes wouldn’t be far behind.

She switched back to the feed of the other four running toward their friends. She suspected all four of these were Hypes because, although the oldest looking man with them wore only a simple ski mask like the teenage girl with Cyberspace, all of them were calling each other by codenames: Ganzfield, Oneiros, Virtuosa, and Dynamo.

She switched feeds again. Mr. X and Ms. Y were getting off their lift with two more soldiers. Troy rode with the new girl, Peregrine. Her wings were too big for anyone else to fit in the lift. Luisa felt momentarily jealous that it was just the two of them in that lift. Stop that, she thought. This isn’t the time. You wouldn't want to be trapped in that tiny lift, anyway.

Back to the team running to their two wayward members, and they were almost there. And then they were, and the lights everywhere in the facility dimmed as Cyberspace finally broke contact with the terminal and turned to face the other members of his team.

She could see that they were talking, but couldn’t make out the words. She turned up the volume.

“—is in a cell at the end of the block. We swung by but he’s talking complete gibberish, not making sense.” That was Cyberspace.

“He didn’t make that much sense to begin with,” said the one called Virtuosa.

“Even less than before, I mean.”

“Anyway, did some digging into the facility.” Cyberspace again. “Headed up by this guy, technically a government employee but he’s a Hype. Calls himself Trojan.”

The one called Ganzfield, who had been walking impatiently in circles, stopped dead in his tracks. “Say that again,” he said.

“What? Trojan?”

“We need to get out of here. Like, get the mission done and hop back in the Dreamworld. I don’t care if we have to take Pitch with us to get it done.”

“What?” asked the unpowered girl. “Ad— Ganzfield, what are you talking about? Do you know this Trojan guy?”

“Knew of him, before. In my last life.”

“And?” asked Dynamo. She stood up straight now, tense, ready for anything.

Luisa was now intently focused, invested in whatever they were about to say about her boss, her friend. How did this man know him? What did he mean by his last life?

“If he gets near you, don’t make eye contact. His helmet is designed with the eyes exposed for a reason. If he speaks, cover your ears.”

“Ganzfield, you’re scaring everyone. Explain yourself.” That was the one called Oneiros.

“His power. He gets past your defenses, and not just physically. He gets in your head. No, not like me. If you’re at all susceptible to suggestion, if you’re able to be convinced of a position, he’ll convince you. Doesn’t work on everyone, some people’s positions are too diametrically opposed to his to be changed, but it works on most.”

No, thought Luisa. They don’t understand. He means well. He always means well.

“What do you remember about him?” asked Cyberspace as they started walking again.

“He set himself up as a very important figure in the government’s Hype-handling infrastructure. Made himself indispensable. Then, after a few years of amassing power and followers, he went off the deep end and nearly caused the whole thing to implode. It took a lot of good Hypes to back him down, and not all of them made it out alive.” Ganzfield’s voice was distant, haunted. “His power is possible to resist with practice, and I’ll have some natural resistance given the nature of my power, but it’s best if we avoid him. Like, at all costs. I know what he’s capable of.”

Luisa didn’t understand what he was talking about. He was naming events that definitely hadn’t happened. Couldn’t happen. Troy wanted what was best for the world. He wanted to help people. He’d helped her.

Hadn’t he?

She looked around at the cramped, shrinking space and felt her heartbeat quicken. Her feet started tapping a mad staccato rhythm on the floor. She turned back to the console.

The group on the screen rounded a corner and approached a cell that was set apart a little from the others. She knew about the man in that cell. He’d been arrested in connection with a series of kidnappings and disappearances. The kids who had helped apprehend him had insisted he was a Hype, and all the evidence the police had collected corroborated that conclusion. The only problem was, since being brought in, he hadn’t displayed a single hint that he possessed powers of any sort. He’d also rambled on incoherently every waking hour since he’d been in custody.

As they approached his cell, she heard his rambling stop abruptly.

“You,” he growled.

“Yes, me,” said Ganzfield.

“No,” he said, pointing at the woman standing behind Ganzfield. “You.”

“Me?” asked Virtuosa.

Luisa switched back to the feed following Troy’s progress, but it was unnecessary. He was already coming into frame on the camera focused on that cell, that team.

“That’s far enough,” he said in his commanding voice. Even transmitted through the microphone, the digital compression, the shitty laptop speakers at her station, Luisa heard the strength of it, the power. “Now, let’s talk.”

The team had turned away from the cell to face him, Virtuosa’s movement just a little delayed compared to the rest of them.

Behind them, in the cell, things were starting to darken, as if a shadow was creeping out and covering the lights.

“Oh shit,” she muttered. The power dampening field wasn’t active in that cell. It hadn’t seemed necessary, since the man’s powers had apparently already been disabled.

That seemed like a critical lack of judgment, now.

Luisa picked up her comm, hoping to warn Troy, but it was already too late. The camera feed went black, but based on the sounds she could hear, all hell was breaking loose down there.

She got up from her chair and ran for the exit, almost unable to breathe. “Unlock this goddamn door right now!” she shouted at the sentry by the exit to the panic room. An apt name, she thought, panicking. The man complied. She wasn’t Trojan, but she could be compelling too, in her own way.

Her only thought was of getting to Troy, assisting him. She wasn’t sure what she could do, but already she could hear the sounds of fighting from the level above her, and she knew she had to do something. After everything he’d done for her, didn’t she owe him that?