The Loop

August 4th

Connections appeared in his head like bits of thread tying together concepts. At least, that’s how he visualized it—like the token scene in every good mystery movie where the detective, who’s just starting to lose it a little bit, is shown to have a big bulletin board where every clue, person, and place even remotely connected to the case they’re attempting to solve is represented, and bits of yarn are tacked up between these things to show how they might be connected. It was like that, except with everything.

He could think about one thing, then think about another, and his mind would find a way to link those two things together. Sometimes the links made sense and he held onto them, sometimes they were huge reaches or links that were so obscure as to be meaningless, and he discarded them.

The enhanced senses—above and beyond what he’d learned from rudimentary internet research all Hypes got as part of the package—seemed to be more a complement to the primary power of drawing connections than important things in themselves. If he could see and hear more, then his mind had more information, more concepts and ideas to try to draw links between.

Novaks and Murphys. Working together? For what reason? Just to trick the kid, make his life a nightmare before Sean Murphy kills him? Too much of a reach. At each other’s throats after years of relative stability, though. Why? His mind drew a thread between Felipe and Samantha ‘Sammy’ Novak. Lovers. Incidental? Their relationship started independently of Felipe’s commitments to the Murphys? That thread held more weight. Sean to Sammy now. Sean simply saw the relationship between the two of them as an opportunity to deal a blow to a rival gang that had been a thorn in his side for too long? Probably. Figured it would either work out and he could deal that blow while sending a message at the same time, or else Felipe would get himself killed for betraying Sammy, which was also just fine? No. Sean Murphy was the type who would want to kill Felipe himself. He’d wanted the plan to work out—and he’d believed it would, or he wouldn’t have risked someone else getting the kill—which meant that, for all his anger toward Felipe, he also had faith in the kid’s ability to get things done.

“You’re zoning out again, Ricky. You were going to help me figure out my power, remember?”

“Shit, sorry Pérez. My mind gets away from me sometimes.”

They were in a large abandoned warehouse—the same one where he’d found the orb two nights ago, in fact—and he was, as Pérez said, helping her with her power. It seemed like a simple formality by that point; she’d already figured it out herself. He suspected that along with the upload of the powers into people’s bodies and minds, there was a subconscious set of instructions on how to use them. Powers and safety, he thought. Powers and not accidentally killing ourselves with them. The threads were easy enough to draw. Still, given the nature of his power, Pérez had suggested that he might be able to help her figure out any extra nuances of hers. Really, she just wanted an excuse to break shit. Pérez and breaking shit, he thought. She loves it. Maybe the most solid thread he’d drawn yet.

He flicked the light switch, blanketing them in darkness once more, and threw several pieces of discarded detritus in the air.

Interestingly, she had a bit of a power overlap with him in that regard; her eyesight was enhanced to the point where she could see in near complete darkness, and she could see slightly into the infrared and ultraviolet part of the spectrum. She’d revealed this when she told him that she could see the heat coming off of him while tracking his movements through the room.

“Ha!” she shouted, knocking each of the items out of the air with thrown objects of her own before any of them had even hit the apex of their ascents. She looked around the room for affirmation. She didn’t get much.

Felipe clapped halfheartedly; he’d already seen this display several times. He was able to see it at all only because his own ability to bend light allowed him to direct what little light was in the room with the bulbs off in such a way that it bounced off the things he wanted to see and then into his own eyes. So that made three of them who could see in the dark, all through roundabout ways.

Kayla just yawned. She couldn’t see anything at all.

Orb to powers, he thought. Powers to team. Intentional synergies or coincidence? Intent implies intelligence. But that made sense; the orbs clearly were intelligent. They weren’t just powerful machines or computers. Do they pick and choose which powers to give out? Logical. A solid thread.

“Am I boring the three of you with my awesome display of power? I bet I threw that last brick close to the speed of sound, and the kid claps sarcastically, this chick yawns, and Ricky can’t stop daydreaming. You’d think superpowers would hold people’s attention a little more.”

“Hey, I don’t even know what you’re doing. If you want my enthusiasm, you’ll have to do it with the lights on next time.” Kayla was scowling, but Ricky didn’t think she was mad, really, just anxious and impatient. Kayla and time? Always late for something, or thinks she’s going to be? No, not quite it. Afraid of using time incorrectly? Yes, to the point that she becomes immobile and doesn’t do anything at all. Yes. Another solid thread. He pinned it in place.

“Not a bad idea,” said Ricky. “It makes sense not to keep training on the exact same scenarios. If you get used to tracking things only using your enhanced night vision, you might get worse at tracking things in the light.”

Kayla to Camilla, he thought. No, not important right now. Kayla’s power to Camilla’s power. He drew out some threads, saw some promising ones.

“Actually, Kayla, if you don’t mind getting a little more involved with the exercise?”

“Is it really the best use of our time to keep this up right now? We get it; she tracks moving objects incredibly well and throws things incredibly fast. Haven’t you broken enough bricks and pipes and bottles to prove that?”

“Humor me?” he asked.

“Whatever. It can’t be worse than just sitting on the sidelines in a dark room and hearing things bang together. What do you need me to do?”

He described a synergy he’d worked out, and gave them both their instructions. His power was nudging him to get Felipe involved as well, even hinting at a way to make it happen, but he didn’t want to make things too complicated so quickly.

The two of them got in position. He looked over at Felipe and saw the look on his face—boredom, but more than that, the boredom was masking a deep fear and anxiety. There was an unasked question: Why are we doing this instead of figuring out a way to resolve my situation?

“Felipe, help me throw some shit in the air?”

The boy nodded, the ghost of a smile passing across his dark features.

“All right,” he said, gathering a bunch of small bits of junk into his arms while Felipe did the same on the other side of the room. “Kayla, draw your portals out whenever and wherever you feel is best, on my mark. Pérez, just do your thing.”

She smiled, and it was no fleeting expression on her; she was loving this.

“Mark!” he said, beginning to throw objects into the air randomly. Felipe had been watching him carefully, waiting for his cue. As soon as he started throwing objects in the air, so did the boy.

Their goal was to throw things in places that were outside of Pérez’s line of sight, objects that she wouldn’t be able to track, and that weren’t in straight lines for her to hit.

Portals started appearing as soon as the first couple objects were in the air, rectangles of distorted space of various sizes, but that always came in pairs. Kayla was creating them in such a way that one of the pair was always close to Pérez, facing her, and the other one was facing one or several of the objects in flight.

Pérez’s hands moved at a dizzying rate, picking up and throwing small objects at speeds that probably were nearly supersonic. There was a cacophony of noise—mostly crashes and bangs and cracks—as old bits of metal and glass and brick and stone collided in mid-air, many being knocked dangerously off-course.

She missed a few, which was no surprise; they had thrown over thirty objects in all. But she hit most of them, leaving the room in an even greater state of disarray than it had been in when they’d first entered it. This time, when she cheered at her success, she wasn’t the only one.

“Okay, that was pretty fucking cool.” Kayla was the first to speak.

A smile, larger than before, lingered on Felipe’s face for several seconds before Ricky saw the anxiety creep back in.

“Fuck yeah!” said Pérez.

“Fuck, yeah, indeed,” Ricky echoed.

In truth, part of why he’d kept the power exercise going as long as he had was because he was still working out a plan in his head that he’d already promised them he had ironed out. Part of it was because it was genuinely fun. And part of it was because if they were going to pull off anything close to what he had in mind, they needed to learn their own powers and each other's, as well as how to trust one another, in a very short span of time.

Now he felt he was ready to move on to the next phase.

“Down to business,” he said, and watched their demeanors go somber in an instant. “Felipe, you’re in a bad position; two major criminal gangs are out to get you, and neither of them is aiming to buy you a lollipop. We talked about you getting out of town when your uncle comes to get you, and you made it seem then like you were considering staying. But if you want, right now, tonight, we could get you out. Get you far away from this.” He nodded toward Kayla. “She can get you far away.”

The boy considered for a minute, his brow furrowing slightly, then he shook his head, as Ricky had known he’d do. Felipe and honor. Felipe and loyalty. He didn’t even need to test the threads between these concepts; he knew they held weight.

“Okay, well what about you two?” he asked, indicating the two women. He knew which way Pérez was going, of course, but he was less certain about Kayla. Kayla and Felipe, he thought. She still doesn’t trust him, not all the way. Because he reminds her of her. She’ll stay just to keep an eye on him? But no, that made it seem almost nefarious, like she was just waiting to catch him in a lie. She’ll stay to look after him, because no one was around to look after her. That was a better connection, but still not certain. He wouldn’t have been surprised if it had gone the other way.

“What about us what?” asked Pérez. “We’re in, obviously.” She glared at Kayla, as if daring the other woman to disagree.

“We—I … I said I was all the way in already. I’m not going back on that. Besides, I think these … these things, these orbs, they want us to stick together. Everyone who touches the same one, I mean.”

It was a good observation, a thread Ricky had already drawn between the orbs and their obscure desires. What scared him was how many threads his power kept trying and failing to draw between those two concepts. The orbs were too much of a blindspot, and he found that utterly terrifying. But one thing at a time.

“All right. Well then there’s only one good plan I can suggest. We get everyone in a room together—the Murphys, the Novaks, and Felipe—and we see what shakes out.”

“That’s your master plan?” blurted Felipe, and Ricky could see in the boy’s face that he felt betrayed.

“I’m with the kid,” said Pérez. “That plan fuckin’ blows, hombré.”