A sudden kick in his gut had Alex rolling on the grassy ground.

“Go on. Get out of here. You can’t stay here,” a middle aged woman said to Alex.

“What’s your problem lady?” Alex said.

“I’ve had enough of you homeless stinking up the park. I just want to go on a morning walk in peace.”

“And how exactly was I bothering you? And I’m not homeless by the way.”

“You definitely look homeless. Why else would you be sleeping in the park? Also you stink.”

Alex took a whiff under his armpits and nearly gagged.

“Ok I’ll give you that one, but still. Just keep walking next time. You don’t need to kick a man while he’s sleeping. You’re lucky I’m normal. What if I was crazy? If I were, I would probably hurt someone that just kicked me in the stomach like that.”

She took several quick steps back.

“I’m not going to do that. I was just saying I would if I were crazy. Which I’m not,” Alex said as he tried to close the distance between them the same way one did when they accidentally hit a younger sibling while playing as children.

She ran away screaming and Alex decided that it was a lost battle. He made himself scarce.

I need to find a new place to stay. It would be nice if I could stay with Sarah, but I still need to figure that out. I’ll ask the team. Hopefully I can couch surf for a little bit.

Alex: “Does anybody mind me sleeping on their couch for a little bit? I’ll figure my stuff out eventually, but I just need to sleep somewhere that isn’t the park. My alarm clock today was some lady kicking me in the gut. Not ideal.”

He waited a few moments. There was no response.

Well don’t all jump on it at once, he thought sarcastically.

Eventually, they all came up with some excuse why they couldn’t take him in. He understood the girls declining. To be fair, it made sense from everyone’s perspective. They really didn’t know each other that well. The rest of the group probably had an even better relationship with each other than he did with any of them since they had been back on Earth for longer. He was essentially starting fresh. The only thing they really knew about him was the backstory he had told them, which could easily be fabricated, and their experiences during the tutorial.

He didn’t think that any of them thought he was a bad person. He felt like they had formed at least a little connection in the tutorial. He, for his part, didn’t feel like any of them were bad people. He hoped the feeling was reciprocated, but that was all he could do was hope.

With time, they would grow to trust each other more, but until then he would just do his best to leave a great impression. They were all he had at the moment. He didn’t know if he would ever be able to convince Sarah that he really was Alex, so he would live as if the team was really his only family for the time being.

I do need to find a place to stay though. The park is really just not going to cut it.

Alex brainstormed for a few minutes. He discarded nearly every idea he had for one reason or another. One idea he tried to discard, but for some reason it just kept popping in his mind. He recalled a certain team of adolescent ninjas that live underground. This would check all of his boxes if he could find a good spot. It would be discreet, free, secure, free, away from angry Karens, and best of all, it wouldn’t cost him a thing.

So without further ado, Alex found a manhole in an empty alleyway and dove in.

Luckily, with the upgrade he had received to his armor, Alex gained energy passively at about the same rate he had on Saxar IV. The only difference now was that he gained his energy through photosynthesis and not from the extreme temperature. It was far more preferable this way as well. The climate in Hillcrest was much, much better than Saxar IV.

Plus, this solar energy had the added bonus of being extremely flexible. He wasn’t sure the reasoning, but he was actually able to use solar energy as if it were any of his energies, whether that be thermal, kinetic, or his new electric energy. That, with the addition of the batteries, and he had a near constant influx on energy. Energy he used to illuminate the otherwise pitch-black tunnels.

He could feel the moisture in the air, air that smelled slightly of mildew and some other scents he could quite place. He had half expected it to smell of sewage. Either this was just a storm drain, or he hadn’t yet run into the stinky portion of the underground tunnels. The tunnels were around ten feet in diameter, allowing Alex to walk mostly comfortably.

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The tunnels were mostly silent aside from his echoing footsteps. He could hear the occasional squeak from a mouse, but had yet to see any of the furry creatures in the faint illumination.

Alex had grown up reading about cryptids you could find hiding in the underbelly of the city. It had been entertaining when he was younger, but now, he would love the chance to see if there was any truth to something like that. Without his powers, it would be terrifying to run into a beast like that. With his awakening, he was granted a certain measure of confidence. The unknown wasn’t nearly as scary when you had the strength to face off against these terrors. Heck, he had already run into much more powerful creatures. Whatever Earth could make would be much less intimidating.

Alex had tried his best to keep track of the path he was taking, but had long since lost track of how many twists and turns he had already taken. He would find a suitable place and then make his way back to the surface. There had to be exits all over the place, he would find the closest one and that would be his front door.

Luckily, he had the foresight to keep the homing crystal he had been allowed to use on Saxar IV. The two black crystals worked together to function as a sort of GPS. When he found a suitable location, all he needed to do was place the crystal designed to be located in a fixed location in the base, and then the other crystal would guide him to it. The only downside was that the crystals only showed a direction. He had no way to know how close he actually was. He would also have to just wander around as it didn’t work like a normal GPS. It wouldn’t tell him when to turn or what paths to take, it simply pointed him in the right direction.

Alex hoped that with time, he would be able to memorize the tunnels and that he would easily be able to walk around down there.

At least that’s another bonus. People will have a hard time tracking me down here. It will be a pro. Right now it just sucks.

He was starting to feel like he was understanding the layout a little better. It seemed like there was somewhat of a pattern to it all. After so many intersections of tunnels, there would be a larger opening that acted as a sort of hub. Multiple tunnels would connect at these hubs. Sometimes the hubs would only have three or four connections, while some would have upwards of seven or eight.

He wondered if there was a map of all of this somewhere and if he could access it. He both hoped for that to be and not to be the case. If there was a map, he would have an easier time of finding a suitable location. But then again, if there was a map, someone could use it to find him.

He didn’t have much reason to hide currently aside from the person hunting them. This could change if he made enemies somehow. He didn’t want to keep looking for a new base every time he pissed somebody off. So, the more secret his base could be, the better.

There had been a few places that Alex felt could be potential places for him to park for the time being, but none of them had the long term potential he was looking for. He was hoping for a place where not only he could set up shop for himself, but also the rest of his team. They seemed to be rather disjointed at the moment with each of them working independently. They shared information and occasionally got together, but Alex was hoping he could get them to work more united.

Of course, Cameron had said that he didn’t want to work with a bunch of people with loose morals such as Sophia, Ethan, and Alex. Alex hoped that was just something he said in the heat of the moment and that it wasn’t something they couldn’t talk about.

Cameron had been on a few missions now and Alex had a hard time believing the man hadn’t killed someone by now. The very first day Alex was on a mission he had killed. There was simply no avoiding it. If he hadn’t yet gotten over that particular mental hurdle, Alex would just need to be patient. It would happen eventually. Either that or Cameron would get himself into a sticky situation.

It will probably get him killed.

Alex shuddered at the thought. He didn’t want to think of any of his friends dying. He would need to do his best to make sure that none of them suffered a fate like that.

He continued his search of the tunnels. On multiple occasions, he had to duck into side tunnels to avoid maintenance workers. This only solidified his suspicions that everywhere he had looked thus far would be unsuitable for a secret lair.

There has to be something down here for me to work with. Maybe there’s an old subway tunnel, or an abandoned section, or maybe even an old section used by bootleggers or something like that.

Alex started to look harder at the walls and near the ground. If he was going to find a place that would be hard to spot, the entrances wouldn’t be obvious.

After searching for hours, Alex was starting to lose hope. He wanted to get outside again to see the sun. He felt cramped and trapped underground. He would probably get used to it, but was it something he wanted to get used to?

Just as he was about to give up and back up to the surface, he saw something that caught his eye—a narrow crack at the base of the wall, half-hidden by shadows. So narrow in fact, he wasn’t sure if it was actually a gap at all. It could easily just be a crack in the tunnel wall. The only problem was that it looked too precise to be just some random crack.

He wondered if his heightened stats had helped him to actually see it at all. He doubted it would have made much of an impression on him before. The more he looked at it, the more he was convinced—this was a doorway of some sort.

He tried in every way he could think of to open the door. He pushed, pulled, said the magic words, and nothing worked. He tried to find a secret button or lever, but all he managed to do was break a light he had pulled on to see if it was in fact a lever. He was about to just slam into the door when a prompt appeared in his vision.

Coalition tech recognized. Would you like to interface?

“Yes?” Alex said aloud.

A sort of computer console materialized in front of him. He didn’t have extensive computer knowledge, he had just tinkered around with his personal computer here and there. He didn’t know what types of commands the system would utilize so he just started doing whatever came to mind. He typed open, grant access, etc, nothing worked. He typed in help and a list of usable commands populated the screen.