Once they arrived back at headquarters, John Doe was handed off to professionals. Considering the fact that four hours had passed and Ashton still remembered him, things must have gone well. It did leave him with a lot to think about. If this was what the first day of training was like, what would it be like to do this as a career?

The pay was better than it had been at SI, but it was hard to say the job would be any easier or less consuming. Then again, there had been an emergency and he still hadn’t had to work any overtime. Ashton sat on his bed that night, deliberating if he should just give in and accept the position when his phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Ashton, it’s me,” Summer’s shaky voice came from the other side, “I’ve made a terrible mistake. I let Ned blackmail into meeting him again and…”

Ashton froze as he heard her choke down some panicked sobs. Ned? He thought that SI had taken care of MysteriousMaskz after his tip. From the sounds of things, he had gone far beyond blackmail this time.

“What happened?” he asked.

“He wasn’t there at the meeting place,” Summer managed, “Instead there was this girl, no woman. She had a crazy power. As soon as I saw her I lost myself. All I could think of was how beautiful and amazing she was. I didn’t know powers like that existed but it is the only explanation I can think of.”

“I am going to need to report this,” Ashton frowned, “Did you want me to meet you? I need to know as much as I can about her before I make the report.”

“No! She might target you because of me. But you have to warn Shadow Phoenix. She is obsessed with him,” Summer warned.

“She is obsessed with Shadow Phoenix?” Ashton asked, taken aback, “Why?”

“I don’t know. She wasn’t very clear on that. Just on why I was the one who ruined his life.”

Summer had far from ruined his life, but Ashton couldn’t assure her of that. “She definitely sounds dangerous. I will be sure to warn him,” he promised, “You should be careful as well. Call me immediately at the first sign of trouble.”

“What do I do now?” Summer asked.

“I don’t know,” Ashton admitted. He had no words of wisdom to offer, and he could not promise her any protection or safety. He couldn’t even use the resources of Gale Research as a trial trainee. There was one possible help he could offer. “Do you mind if I give your contact information to my team leader? He might be able to help more than me.”

“Go ahead. I will take any help I can get right now,” Summer approved.

As if he had been waiting, Jared was outside Ahston’s room once the phone call ended. “I had a feeling you might need me,” he told him, answering Ashton’s unasked question, “I’ve learned it is never a good idea to ignore my feelings.”

“I do need you,” Ashton confirmed, “Or someone close to me does. My girlfriend ran into someone with a dangerous power and an even more dangerous grudge. Have you ever heard of a power that can manipulate your perception of someone?”

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“Manipulate it how?” Jared asked, already in serious work mode.

“She said that as soon as she laid eyes on her all she could think about was how amazing and lovely she was, leaving her unable to think or use caution despite being actively threatened by her,” Ashton described.

Jared frowned. “That does sound serious. Can you give me her contact information? I may need to get more specific details from the source.”

Ashton wrote out her number for him. “I already asked her permission,” he assured, “Thank you for dropping by.”

“Just following my feelings.” Jared replied, taking the contact information, “I will take care of the situation with your girlfriend. You get some rest and focus on your duties as a trainee.”

The warning not to cross the line just because of a personal issue was as clear as day, and Ashton was happy to agree to it. Someone who couldn’t even commit had no business getting involved in personal and risky incidents like this. Ashton obediently followed orders and went to sleep for the night.

He awoke the next morning to the rather shocking sight of a woman entering his room. She was certainly not an employee of Gale Research, and something about the overwhelmingly warm smile she gave him when she saw he was awake gave him the creeps. It didn’t help that her vest jacket was a striking magenta that had an obnoxious sheen in the morning light coming from his window.

“Good morning, my beloved Phoenix,” she greeted warmly, holding her arms out as if waiting for a hug, “Do you remember me?”

Ashton was even more confused and concerned than before. Remember her? He stared at her face but was coming up completely blank. Besides, she had addressed him as Shadow Phoenix, not as Ashton.

The woman pouted as she sat at the end of his bed. “I guess it is true. What a shame,” she commented, “Ned told me that my power probably wouldn’t work on the object of my adoration. On the other hand, I guess this serves to prove you really are Shadow Phoenix.”

Her power? Ashton’s bad feeling started to get even worse. “How did you get in here?” he asked, pulling himself into a sitting position far away from the woman, more glad than ever that the pajamas he had brought were his winter set with long legs and sleeves.

She scooted closer. “You don’t need to worry about that,” she told him with a smile, “I am Queen Heart. You can call me Queen, or Heart, or Sweetheart if you would like. I will never forget the day you saved me. Your beautiful purple flames in the dark that night. I still have the lighter mechanism you used to make them. You dropped it when you left that day.”

Queen Heart presented him with exactly what she claimed to have. One of the igniters for his purple flame he had used while he was Shadow Phoenix. No, this one looked like one of the prototypes from the first version of his costume. There was an incident where it had gone out of control in testing so they had remade his suit from scratch.

“Why do you have this?” he asked.

“You gave it to me yourself,” she replied, “Don’t you remember? I guess I do look a lot different now. I dyed my hair once I gained my power.”

Ashton tried to think back to any woman or girl he could have given such a dangerous piece of evidence to. Then it hit him. Back when he was attending college, he had been putting on the costume before he left to save time on campus then traveling to SI. There was an incident that made him stop such reckless behavior, and in that incident there had been a girl.

“Two years ago, at the college,” Ashton muttered, “Was that you?”

She beamed and trapped him in an unsolicited and very uncomfortable hug. “You remembered! I knew you would!”

He remembered, but that didn’t make this situation any less alarming. The girl he remembered from the incident had fallen from the rooftop of the building and broken several bones. After that, she disappeared from the school completely along with a group of students who were rumored to have pushed her.

Ashton, or Shadow Phoenix, hadn’t saved anyone that day. He had run away like the coward he was, yanking his sleeve from the injured girl’s grasp after using her phone to call the emergency line. It was one of Ashton’s most shameful memories.

“You can’t be,” Ashton told Queen Heart, pushing her away roughly, “She died.”