That the idiot hunter had gone off the rails and actually become friends with the Exhuman was a success even I hadn't imagined. That he could grow in power to not just dominate her with the force of his powers, but also had the cunning or power of mind to turn an enemy into an ally?

I waited impatiently while plans were drawn up and forces allocated for our inevitable strike. I was not accustomed to impatience, it was so rare that I had something to truly care about, but the option of recapturing the Ashton Exhuman was so tantalizing.

It had been me pushing for it, of course. As soon as I heard that the hunter had brought a family member into the clinic, something she'd never done before, I pulled up the files myself, and found the Exhuman. Then, the doors of fate themselves opened, and the two were confronted with another Exhuman. I was able to delay things for long enough to allow them some time to work, and inspected the battleground myself.

It was beautiful. My heart sung in harmony with the glorious devastation they wrought. The total destruction, not of the city but of the Exhuman they had destroyed together. She had been savaged, torn asunder and murdered in the cruelest possible way. To think of the bleating child who had despaired at accidentally killing a soldier or two, becoming a fully vetted and effective killer, against another Exhuman no less?

I trembled.

The crop had grown, it was time to harvest.

And what was more, he had a friend in the hunter. Based on the time and frequency of her visits, they were close. Every friend of his was a weakness to exploit, another stacked card in my hand. The universe could not have delivered a more perfect gift.

And all it had taken was a little digging around. It was almost laughable. I checked my schedule for the rest of the day. Nothing important, by which, I meant nothing related to the planned strike. I had my secretary cancel my remaining meetings and call my driver.

Not that my home was a place of solace any longer, but even the blathering of that idiot was still more amusement than I was likely to find here. At least he was passionate about killing Exhumans.

Said idiot accosted me the moment I entered my house. He was becoming a most unwelcome guest, demanding updates on the planned strike, how soon would it be, when could we mobilize, always wanting more now, as though he owned me.

I considered that his role in this was done, and I could send him home, or kill him if it amused me, but I held onto him to satisfy my own curiosity, though I was quickly reaching the point where his demanding insistence approached outweighing any amusement he may provide. Approaching, but not yet.

I gave him the usual platitudes that things were going well, deployment would be on schedule, and as ever he gave me the insipid responses. The Exhuman was a danger. We needed to act now, today. People, and especially the woman he loved was in peril. As much as I appreciated his zeal for murdering Exhumans, his concern for human lives tired me. His view was too small. There were always more humans.

Rather than waste time with pointless debates today, I had a toy for him to amuse himself. I handed him a tablet whose holo displayed live satellite data of the area, allowing him to check for himself what the Exhuman and his cohorts were up to. It was...highly illegal, but as I doubted he'd be alive much longer, I didn't concern myself. I excused myself and entered my study.

There, brooding as ever was a man I had taken quite a liking to. For starters, he was silent, and he was also prepared to do whatever it took to achieve his revenge. At all hours of the day, I could find him standing in the same spot, eyes staring unfixed, hatred coursing through his veins instead of blood. So transfixed was he that he would neither eat nor drink, and had to be nourished intravenously.

He was a fantastic specimen, and were he of more sound physical stature, I would have indoctrinated him into my private program. Still, as a pawn, he was one I cherished and would relish to see him in action. Simply another reason I could not contain my impatience.

I sat down, expecting no greeting and receiving none. Here, under his unfocused glare, I could work in peace.

As usual, I had tea brought in and began by perusing the latest Exhuman events and the magnitude and direction of their powerset. The number of events had been increasing slowly, but steadily, but I cared for quality, not quantity. I flipped through the latest batch of duds and found it impossible to concentrate, not when the Ashton Exhuman was so close. Perhaps that is why I didn't have the goon in the foyer simply killed, his impatience echoed my own.

To treat myself to a little indulgence, I decided to inspect my servants. I tried to avoid doing this to keep them in optimal condition, but today was a special exception. I merely had to be mindful not to allow myself too many exceptions.

There were four of them, and as usual, we assembled in room beneath the gym, where there was naught but a large concrete room with padded walls and floor. Silently and quickly they changed into karate gi, folded their servant attire in careful piles, and assembled, just how I liked it. The door was locked, and my inspection began.

I had them pair up and fight, to first blood as per usual.

Again silently and quickly, two joined at my sides while the remaining two faced off. They readied themselves and then stood resolute.

"Begin," I said.

Instantly, the room filled with images of one, whom I had named Temperance, illusions of herself made of nothing more than light. Tower, the other, took one single step, and it propelled him forward at impossible speed. Ignoring the clones, he dove straight through the empty air where Temperance had started the fight, but connected with nothing but the far wall. His target lost, he ricocheted off the far wall with a kick, launching himself back across the room, weightlessly hovering inches off the ground, again at speeds barely perceptible.

Like a pinball, he careened around the room at random, snatching at shadows and light, in relentless, blind pursuit of his foe.

Temperance was a heliopath, with control over light. For her, making illusory images or rendering herself invisible was child's play. Were this a real fight, she would have attempted to end it immediately by focusing a beam of light, making her own laser. Unfortunate for her that doing so would destroy not only her opponent, but also the room and everyone in it.

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Tower had built up even more speed, and with every bounce, flew faster and faster. Temperance may have been invisible, but her body still resided somewhere in the chamber. All Tower had to do was find it once, and the fight would be at its end.

To this end, Temperance's strategy was a mind game. As much as Tower wished it to be, human impulses rendered it impossible for him to completely ignore the clones. Whether he knew it or not, their existence steered his attacks, either into them or away from them, especially given how little time he had to react and repel himself at these speeds.

I imagined it as a game of chess, where one player possessed only a queen which could move as swiftly as the player could move the piece around the board, and the other could replace their army at will and hid their king. A methodical sweep of the area gave the king ample time to analyze the pattern and move to avoid it, whereas a random attack left many openings. Similarly, the decoy pieces demanded attention, perhaps the king was hiding among them, or using them to draw the queen away.

It was frantic, and beautiful.

Unfortunately for Tower, this time, he was too slow. Temperance had finished her manipulations and insubstantial plates of energy had begun to fill the room, a minefield of infinitely-sharp blades suspended in the air.

Solid light. With effort, she could snag photons themselves from the air and bring them down from lightspeed to the realms of mortals, Temperance was able to weave weightless, immobile, solid objects out of nothingness. It took several minutes before enough photons could be amassed for them to be even visible, much less usable, but by focusing on doing it to the whole room at the same time, thousands of the solid light flakes began to appear all at once.

En masse, they posed a major threat. The blades could only move slowly, sluggishly, towards Tower no matter where he fled. He ducked and wove, and several times ran into a solid light construct, and had to use his power to repel off of it rather than be cut and lose the match, but his time was wearing thin. The existing constructs grew in size, and more appeared out of nowhere with every passing moment. In another minute, it would be like dodging snowflakes in a blizzard.

Yet as the hazard intensified, he had one final chance. Temperance herself was not immune to the flitting light structures any more than she was immune to a razor. There was a human-shaped void in the swirling minefield, and Tower merely had to strike it.

Tower saw and moved, the very center of the room, where the conflux of light shards was at the greatest concentration. The opening had to be there. He dove, pinging off the sluggish flakes as he drew ever closer to his goal. With a sweeping slash of his arm, he tore through the gap in the center.

The gap was an illusion as well. As Tower swung, his arm entered empty space and then rebounded off of a construct rendered invisible in its place. He spun backwards, off-balance by the force of his own blow, and then struck another construct, and then another. Rather than spend eternity weightlessly bouncing off of snowflakes, he allowed physics to retake their hold on him and fell to the mat.

A flake of solid light gently nipped him on the tip of the ear and drew a single bead of blood. He had lost.

Temperance stepped out of nothingness from right next to where Tower had been standing before he charged, and delivered a bow to me, and then a bow to her rival. Tower did the same, and then the two sat down and the others at my sides stood.

I smiled, despite myself. As ever, the performance of my servants was exemplary. But that was to be expected, I had hand-picked them myself. The two others sat and waited while the last remains of the bladed snow disappeared from the room. I extended my hand and caught a flake which hovered in front of me and closed it in my hand. When I opened it, there was nothing, melted away into stray light.

Eventually the room cleared and my other two servants stood ready. Jack of Swords and Magician. I was about to utter the word when my mobile rang.

"Deputy director Blackett. Speak," I said into the device, rising, unbarring the door and walking upstairs.

Some kind of urgent affair which demanded my attention. Another Exhuman event with dozens slaughtered. More events every month, it felt. I hoped the numbers on this Exhuman were decent at least, the Prather index of the four changing back into suits downstairs were all eleven or higher.

"It seems I will be returning to work after all," I said, and Magician bowed and stepped swiftly to the garage, holding the door for me as she went. Silently and quickly, just as I liked.

Still, some good had been done by our inspection. I had entertainment for the last hour, and now this event to tide me over for the rest of the day. And I had managed it all without listening to the prattling of that idiot.

Still, as we drove further from the house, I felt my mind draw back to the Ashton Exhuman again and again, wondering how he would now be ranked, if he could be made to serve, how he currently fared, and how easy it would be to break him.

I found a smile on my face, which was unusual for me. I enjoyed breaking Exhumans more than anything, and pompous self-righteous little shits like Ashton were the greatest of all.

Still, I erased the smile. There was no need to be unprofessional.

I arrived back at work. There was the normal amount of panic about the event. Some Exhuman who seeped a lethal miasma. Dozens were dead and emergency containment units were already on the ground, having a hard time finding the target through the black haze which was seemingly impenetrable to all known optics.

I was uninterested. The powerset was strong, but not broadly applicable. With any luck, we could capture the Exhuman alive and weaponize his vapors if they did not prove too volatile, but even if that proved impossible, it was no great loss. Exhumans who simply killed everything around them tended to be the best for public relations, as who didn't love hearing of the disposal of an entity which literally seeped death? But they were boring and useless to me otherwise.

I watched with disinterest as the Exhuman got the drop on an entire squad and killed them in a single heartbeat. Crude, but effective. Unfortunately for him, the numbers of XPCA ran deeper than this Exhuman could conceive.

Which was actually a bit troubling for me as well. I laughed to myself to think that I shared a dilemma with the Exhuman running through the streets. I sent another couple of squads to their death to thin our numbers and put up a token show of force, before authorizing a precision airstrike.

One missile later and the Exhuman ceased to be. His pollution was blasted into a larger area, which would certainly kill more civilians, and I assembled a task unit with containment and cleanup, and a research team to see if the fumes could be captured or reproduced.

It was a futile effort. The powers could never be reproduced. But I had to give the scientists something to do.

And like that, a few hours later, and my job was done again. After the missile fell and the Exhuman was confirmed dead, people stood and cheered, clapping enthusiastically like we'd just put a man on the moon. I failed to see the excitement, it was a solitary Exhuman and not even a particularly strong one, versus the united strength of the collective XPCA. That they would die was merely a formality at that point.

But soon, very soon, if the trends were accurate, we would be seeing ever-greater numbers of events. Double events would change from once-in-a-lifetime catastrophes to a commonplace occurrence. A triple event may even someday occur.

Or, I should say, may even someday occur again.

Nobody, not even here in the throne of power of the XPCA, an organization dedicated to the study and prevention of Exhumans knew of the triple event. There had been no survivors, no witnesses, no catalogue of the incident or report that it had transpired.

Nobody...but me.

I pushed myself away from my station and divorced myself from the room of applause, and all the noisy, tiresome people within.

Double events were still a non-issue for the time being. I could spend the rest of my day at home, and perhaps finish where we had left off, downstairs.