"Alright, Sandy. Whats the verdict?"

Doctor Martinez leaned back in the chair in Sam's office, staring up at the ceiling for a moment. "This is one of the most exciting and frustrating experiences of my life. I want to recruit him into the lab and ask him which tests to run for all the projects that have been on the backburner for a while, but I know thats not the place Rhodes will use him."

Sam sighed, leaning against his desk on his elbows. "Yes, yes. We get it. This isn't the first time we've got someone in with powers that seem to upset the apple cart. You've had a week. We've spend a couple million dollars on testing equipment and other expenses, and hijacked training equipment from multiple departments. I don't need 100% assessments, obviously some of the tests will take time to work out. What can we confirm, and what's your opinion?"

Sandy set a folder down on the desk in front of Sam. "Well. He has absolute, precise, precognition just over three seconds out; so he's perfect for project Ground. If he uses one of the countermeasures we've figured out, he can deploy it moments before any speedster arrives, and poof. Done. Obviously he's not a silver bullet against any other sorts of meta, but if we add him to a team, and he sticks with them? We don't have to worry about some enemy speedster wiping them out before we know what's going on. He could even just shoot them... except that many high-end speedsters can outrun bullets. And, well. The absolute precision he has when he's hitting something that isn't going nine hundred miles per hour is crazy."

Sam opened the folder; pages showing marksmanship scores on the test range used for speedsters and those with super-reflexes. The scores... were almost perfect. The only shots that he missed were a few of those extreme-range shots... where it took over three seconds for the bullet to reach its target. Even those, his accuracy was vastly above par. "....If he can only see three seconds in the future, why can he get such good accuracy against something five seconds away?"

"He was a decent shot beforehand, a much better one now, likely because his overall physical abilities have all been amped up just a bit thanks to the whole Shadow nonsense; and of course, his vision is... insane. His ability to pick out details is ridiculous. I'm not sure how well he'll do on the flight simulator next week, though."

Sam studied each of the charts one by one. "Interesting enough. We'll find out. So the three-second thing is definitely useful. Outside of that?"

"We've tested it hundreds of times. He gets what he describes as 'a feeling' about things; clearly his power triggering subconsciously; whenever he's making decisions. Things he won't be able to see for a few minutes, a few hours, or even a couple of days, he can still be completely correct about. So far he's been wrong twice; and both times we changed the situation after he made the prediction, because of his prediction. I'd bet a substantial sum that when six months hits, the top ten stocks he picked are gonna be the ten of that list that did the best over six months.... unless something he did in the meantime influenced the stock price."

Sam smiled as he looked up at her. "...Nice. So, based on that first test, we're talking probably six year range precognition. Not just an excellent starting point for whatever version his children get, but could be incredibly useful for our own purposes."

Doctor Martinez frowned. "Well. Maybe. I don't know if the six-year precognition range is what I'd like to assign this. I... well. Six years is pretty close to the estimate we've got to the Jotun invasion force arriving, right? If things go badly enough..."

Sam's smile vanished. "...If things go badly enough, then all the stocks will be worthless. There might not be a limit, or it might be that it's fifty years, or even just the rest of his life. Shit. We need to figure out a way to answer that. If its a coincidence, its a terrible one."

"Oh, and we should get him a helmet. One with a good heads-up-display that shows all directions, maybe even speech to text. His power is strictly visual, from what we can tell. The only way he could tell about getting, say, stabbed in the back three seconds out, is if he saw the blood. I've got the boys making a prototype for him now."

"Don't spend too much effort on it. He's gonna be seeing the shrink for a psych eval, in fact I think he's there right now, but if Rhodes decides to put him on a team, even temporarily, he'll be talking to marketing.. and they'll probably want to add spikes or horns or some weird logo."

***

The couch was... comfortable enough. Jason felt relaxed. For the most part. The earnest, bearded young doctor was close to Jason's age; late 20s, early 30s; and was a calm, reasonable-sounding man... who he took an almost instant dislike to about thirty seconds after he introduced himself as 'Roy'.

He was about ninety percent certain he was a doctor of something. Psychology? Psychiatry? But he just wanted to be called Roy. Make small-talk. Beat around the bush, try to sneak up on questions instead of just asking them straight out. He'd been in for evals before, both other times he was hospitalized, actually, before being allowed to go into the field again.

It was honestly hilarious, to a certain extent. He'd mostly given up on life really mattering, and just wanted to go out with a bang, as it were. Do something big, flashy, heroic, and die a hero. Except.... he didn't die. Ugh. What was the nutjob talking about now?

"...And could you imagine how things would be if everyone -did- live forever? It would just completely ruin the world. We'd collapse from lack of resources, society would be stuck in an endless quagmire..."

Jason rolled his eyes, staring at the ceiling. Good god. "Okay. Yes. I get that people have to die, eventually, even though all the reasons you've been giving so far are, for the most part, bullshit. I just didn't want to be the one who had to pull the trigger on an 11-year-old boy pointing a 40-year-old rifle at my team."

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

He'd been much more cautious talking it out while he was enlisted. If they figured that he had been trying to get himself killed in a spectacularly heroic way, they might have sent him home. Now, though? Not only did he have new hopes for life, but he was damned sure he was too important now to kick to the curb like that.

"Well. There's no magic wand I can wave to make you forget; but we have strategies that can help. If you have anyone you trust... and you can trust me if you want to, nothing said in here leaves this room... talking about it helps. Focusing on how far in the past it is, that its just a memory, not something going on right now, helps. And it always gets better with time. If you get into a pattern of getting stuck into it, nightmares about being shelled, about doing things you didn't want to... things that break the pattern can help. There's medications, therapeutic treatments, we even have a telepath on-staff who can help with that. She's no magic wand, but she's almost as good."

"....Huh. A telepath. Could she just make me forget about it? Like it never happened?"

"Oh, no. Destroying parts of your memory can cause all sorts of problems. What she can do is help remove patterns, and make it easier to tell when its just a flashback. Divert your mind around them, so that you only think about them when you're trying to, rather than them always popping in like an intrusive thought."

"...That might be worth trying. Who should I talk to about that?"

Roy chuckled. "Well. She'll need to be read up on the right classification level to treat you, but I'll get that handled. You're not going to be deployed into the field for probably months to come as they test out your powers. How about we spend some time trying therapy, perhaps some medication, before going that far?"

***

"The Chain of Eternity."

The burly man with his thick beard, wearing what seemed to be a nice, italian suit, frowned. "What the hell is the chain of Eternity?"

"It's what is going to fuck us all. The Jotun have this caste of genetically-engineered telepaths. Frankly, incredible ones, and one of them is augmented by a magical artifact that takes a ridiculous amount of time to recharge between uses. The thing that kills us off, dooms us on day one? The Chain takes over Lightning. Uses him to wipe us out. He circles around the world, killing the other Titans first, throwing Valkyrie into orbit by hitting her with a rock with about as much force as a nuke, and then wipes out every military base on the planet that matters. Except. Now, there's someone who will be in Washington in six years, that kills him. So, he wipes out the east coast of the US, but not the west coast, leaving a trail of devastation between all of the Titans, then dies."

Zeus rubbed his beard, absently walking around the meeting table. He was the only one to show up so far; he... just didn't command the same respect he used to. Though, admittedly, he'd been available because he had been chatting up a few girls on social media and avoiding Hera.

"So... they can just control us and turn us against each other. How do we fight that?"

"It can only work against one mind. Just one. Odin and Hephaestus worked out most of the details after I asked the question, so we'll get better information at the meeting at the end of the month. But. From what I've been told... it can see almost everything. Scan an entire planet, every mind; the stronger the mind, the longer it takes, but you'd need a similarly powered artifact to avoid it. Once it's scanned enough people to figure out the best person to control; in the past, it was usually a military leader, a president, that sort of thing, on the Jotun's other targets... it uses them to do as much damage as possible."

The tiny form of Apollo looked up at his 'brother' for likely the millionth time. "So. We need to get rid of the really dangerous Titans. Kill them. Put them in stasis. Whatever. Get all the world leaders who have nukes and make sure they need at least two people to launch them. Basically.... if we do it right, we can make sure that the Jotun can't use this Chain of Eternity thing against us effectively. And considering I already have plans with Hephaestus that should let us take out their dedicated orbital bombardment platforms, so long as there aren't too many of them..."

Zeus smiled. "So what you're saying is that we might have a chance?"

"Exactly. First things first, though. We need to kill or subdue the Titans. All of them. And soon... we'll probably have to arrange a few dictators who won't go along with the plan to pass away as well."

The massive man laughed, slamming a hand on the table with enough force to warp the tungsten surface. "Deposing tyrants! A particular favorite. How long has it been, brother?"

Apollo shook his head with a soft chuckle. "Not long enough. Hopefully we can get that number down to zero, but there's at least one who I doubt we can manage that with. Go enjoy your womanizing and craziness a couple more days. Once Odin and Hephaestus get here, we'll need to make some plans. The US clearly has some means to take out Lightning; we just need to do it ourselves, or get them to use it now, in a controlled setting, instead of at the tail end of a massacre."

***

Thomes slowly reviewed the data; both that from the reports he'd been given by Project Ground, as well as the up-to-date stats of the stocks that the test subject had chosen. Nine of the ten were all ones that a good stock broker would have chosen; thanks to the rounding errors and trying to spend about a thousand dollars on each of the packets, they were the most valuable and most likely to grow out of all the stocks. The final, tenth choice, was a penny stock that was supposed to be de-listed any day now, despite its CEO constantly claiming that a miracle was around the corner.

That one had been worth 25 cents per share when it had been bought; and was now worth 21. While the packet with Apple shares had included only four shares of stock, worth one thousand at the time and now about 1200... the stock for 'TKM' 'Thomas Keller Manufacturing' had already dropped to the mid-800s.

Was this a sign that the test subject's powers were unreliable; that they failed one out of ten times, giving a false result; or that this company was about to have a meteoric rise? Or perhaps was even engaging in fraud, deliberately lowering its stock price so they could buy it back more cheaply before revealing a breakthrough?

He didn't usually get this involved with new recruits; especially not the ones who didn't have some sort of super-durability or regeneration. Working for him was the most dangerous job in the country; people without some sort of defensive power had an unfortunate tendency to die within the first couple years, or get crippled and then retire. Once they got past the first couple years, it was better. But... well. If he could legitimately see the future, he could probably dodge bullets.

He sighed, and tapped the intercom. "Stacy. Have the Hammer of Liberty and their marketing director given the proper classification level for Ground, and let Silver Sword know Bennet will be joining his team. Make sure whatever they tell the public about his powers meshes with how he actually works, but the people he works with need to know what he can do."

Silver Sword was one of his better teams; if they'd been available, they likely could have handled it when the Lord of Iron had taken a walk through new york; but they were tangling with a breakout of weird mutant rat cyborgs that had swarmed up out of a sewer in Utah at the time, too far away to get there; as opposed to Lightning, who had the situation resolved within minutes... but caused a few million dollars in damage to interstates and killed a few dozen cattle.

He might not be seeing as much action as he did in the desert... but he'd certainly be seeing some more unusual situations.