"Heading out already?" Rick asked as he watched Lance stroll out of the community center in his sleek leather jacket while Dr. Rodriguez trailed behind him before setting a small bag and cardboard box onto the ground.
"Yeah. Dr. Rodriguez cancelled the group."
"Oh." Rick cleared his throat. "Such a shame. These sessions were really helpful for people like us."
"It's not safe anymore." Lance zipped up his jacket, glancing at Dr. Rodriguez who was taping a notice to the community center door.
"Not safe? Are you in any trouble?"
"I'm alright," Lance smiled. "No trouble at all."
The good doctor’s hands quivered as she smoothed the paper that read 'Support Group Session Cancelled.’
"About yesterday - are you feeling more in control now?"
"Yes, definitely. Thank you." He brought a hand to the back of his neck. "Listen Rick, someone's attacking people with arma. Just... be careful, okay?"
Noble to the core. Trying to protect others, even when he's also in danger, Rick thought, a sad smile marring his face.
"Good morning, Rick," Dr. Rodriguez called out, her voice lacking its usual energy.
Could Lance have done something to her? Rick wondered, then immediately dismissed the thought. No, he wouldn't. Not after all the progress he'd made.
"I'm sorry about the group," she said, gathering her belongings. "Please be careful, all of you."
Rick watched them leave the community center, shoulders slouched against the brick wall. The tremors had finally died down, and with them went his beloved support group. But something else lingered in the air—potential, raw and electric. Like the moment before the curtain rises, when anything feels possible.
Lance's performance last night had been... illuminating. The way the darkness had spread across his skin, consuming him. Yet he’d conquered it. Such raw talent, but so misguided. Such darkness festering beneath that carefully maintained facade.
"Just like Tommy," Rick whispered to the empty parking lot.
Two years felt like yesterday. Tommy Blackwood, sixteen, front row of Rick's advanced drama class. The boy had that same spark Lance carried—that barely contained intensity threatening to burst free. Tommy's true nature had revealed itself during the spring musical. Rick still remembered the moment perfectly: Act Two of "The Glass Menagerie," when something shifted in Tommy's eyes during his monologue.
The memory washed over him like theater lights...
Tommy stood center stage, trembling. "Mr. Munson, I can't keep pretending. Everything inside me, it's—it's too much."
"Breathe, Tommy. Remember what we practiced." Rick approached slowly, hands raised. The boy's shoulders heaved with each ragged breath, his performance transforming into something raw and primal. "Let it flow through you, like we discussed. You're the performer, not the performance."
"I'm trying, but it hurts. Everything hurts."
Rick's heart ached. The same potential, the same raw emotion—wasted on someone who couldn't truly appreciate its beauty. Who couldn't understand the greater role they were meant to play.
"I know it does, Tommy. But pain shapes us. Molds us." Rick's voice carried to the back of the empty auditorium. "The question is: what will you become?"
The boy's eyes met his, brimming with tears and trust. Such innocence. Such waste.
"Help me, please. I don't want to be like this."
Rick smiled, gentle and warm. "Of course I'll help you, Tommy. That's what I'm here for."
He stepped closer, close enough to see the tremors running through Tommy's frame. Close enough to… well…
He should have seen it sooner—the signs were all there. The boy's rising aggression in rehearsals. The way he'd manipulate his castmates, turning them against each other for his own amusement. Small cruelties that grew larger each day.
He'd tried everything. Private coaching sessions. Extra rehearsals. Long talks about channeling darkness into art. But Tommy had only gotten worse.
The incident with Jessica had been the final straw. She'd been a promising young actress, until Tommy systematically destroyed her confidence, whispering poisonous words between scenes, orchestrating "accidents" during her monologues. Rick had found her sobbing in the prop room, ready to quit not just the play, but school entirely.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
That night, after everyone had left, Rick confronted Tommy on the empty stage.
"I thought I could help you," he'd said. "I thought if someone just showed you the right path..."
But Tommy had only laughed. "Help me? I don't need help. I need an audience."
Rick had watched the boy strut across the stage, so proud of his petty manipulations. So blind to the true power of performance. Of transformation.
"You're right," Rick had told him. "You don't need help."
The next day, Tommy transferred schools. A month later, his family moved away entirely. No one asked questions. No one even seemed to notice.
Rick's fingers drummed against the cold wall. Lance was different. Lance could still be saved from the darkness consuming him. All he needed was the right guidance. The right director.
Rick smiled. After all, that's what he was here for. To help. To shape. To transform.
To set things right.
***
Mitsuki Yamada's fingers hovered over her keyboard, the grainy video paused on her monitor. The timestamp read [21:53:03]. Two figures approached the burning Oakwood Apartments, their outlines distorted by smoke and the phone camera's auto-focus struggling in the dark.
She'd watched this clip seventeen times now. Each viewing revealed new details, tiny inconsistencies that made her instincts buzz. The way Lance Lawthorn moved - too fluid, too precise for someone who claimed to be just another NARS survivor. His companion flanked him like a practiced unit, not random good samaritans who happened upon a crisis. Something about that inhuman precision made her uneasy, like watching a predator pretending to be prey.
She tapped play again.
[21:53:15] Lawthorn disappeared into the inferno. The woman with pink-tipped hair - Victoria Contreras, sister of the deceased Valentina - followed close behind.
[21:55:42] They emerged carrying survivors. An elderly man in a wheelchair. Two children clinging to each other. All safely evacuated before the building's partial collapse at [21:59:17].
The footage painted a clear picture: two heroes rushing into danger, saving lives. It should have closed the case. Should have erased him from her suspect list.
So why couldn't she shake the feeling that she was missing something crucial?
Mitsuki rubbed her eyes, the late hour and endless coffee catching up with her. On her desk, a stack of files chronicled the mysterious deaths plaguing Durham's enhanced community. Somewhere in this mess of data, witness statements, and shaky phone videos, there had to be a connection.
She pulled up her notes on the latest victim. Ronald McMullan. Thaddeus Blackwood. Ryland Kestrel. Three deaths that should have stayed unconnected - if Stevie hadn't spotted the pattern before taking stress leave. His hasty notes pointed out what everyone else had missed: all three were arma users, and all three had died in fires.
McMullan was found in his apartment, no signs of forced entry. No evidence of a struggle. Just another elderly man who appeared to have died in his sleep. It mirrored what happened to Thaddeus Blackwood a week and a half ago, the first death that caught Stevie's attention. Now Kestrel had followed the same pattern, his body recovered from the ruins of Oakwood Apartments. Initial reports suggested the fire had been set to destroy evidence, the building chosen because its outdated sprinkler system had been flagged in multiple safety inspections.
If Lance Lawthorn was the killer, had he returned to confirm Kestrel's death? Mitsuki dismissed the thought almost immediately. The security footage showed Lawthorn spending exactly two minutes and forty-seven seconds inside, rushing up to apartment 4C to save elderly Mr. Crow. Meanwhile, Kestrel's body had been found in the basement maintenance room on the opposite side of the building. Even with enhanced abilities, the timing didn't add up. Lance seemed fast, but not that fast.
"What are you hiding?" she muttered, freezing the video on Lance's face as he placed the man and the wheelchair down. Ridiculous.
Her nose almost graced the monitor, squinting at a shadow behind Victoria. Frame by frame, she tracked the movement - [23:32:89], [23:32:90], [23:32:91]. There. A figure lurked just beyond the emergency vehicles' flashing lights, their stance too purposeful to be a random bystander.
"Detective Yamada?"
Mitsuki startled, hand instinctively reaching for her coffee. Officer Sullivan stood in her doorway, arms laden with manila folders.
"The warehouse files you requested," he said, dropping the stack onto her already crowded desk. "Complete structural analysis, fire marshal's report, and chemical residue findings from the scene."
She flipped open the top folder, scanning the contents. "Anything interesting?"
“Define interesting." Sullivan scratched his stubble. "Place was a mess before the fire. Safety violations going back five years. But get this - night shift workers at the factory next door kept seeing lights on in there. Started about two weeks ago.”
Mitsuki tensed. Two weeks. Right when NARS first appeared.
"Thanks, Sullivan. Before you go - can you get Tech to enhance this section?" She pointed to the timestamp. "[23:32:91]. There's someone behind Contreras."
Sullivan leaned in, adjusting his glasses. "Pretty grainy. Might take a while."
"Priority flag it. Something about this doesn't feel right."
After Sullivan banged Stevie's office door shut because the pneumatic closer had been broken since before Mitsuki had started borrowing the space, she turned back to the image. The figure's outline was barely visible, but their posture suggested someone watching, evaluating. Not the stance of a concerned citizen or emergency responder.
The stance of a hunter studying their prey.
She forced herself away from the screen, her neck protesting the hours spent hunched over footage. Her gaze landed on the photograph pinned to her corkboard - the strange symbols they'd found scrawled on the maintenance room wall opposite Kestrel's body. Arrows pointing north, crosses intersecting circles with dots, parallel lines that seemed to ripple across the concrete. The imagery nagged at her, like a word stuck on the tip of her tongue.
Mitsuki traced the patterns with her finger, willing them to make sense. They had to mean something - killers this methodical didn't leave random graffiti. Unless they weren't the killer's at all. Maybe just kids breaking into empty buildings, leaving their mark. But the precision of those lines...
With a frustrated sigh, she let the photograph fall back against the corkboard. Her digits found the first manila envelope in Sullivan's stack, crisp and official against her palm. The folder's weight promised answers, or at least new questions to chase.
She cracked it open.