I strained against the bar. Feet planted, shoulders flat, and arms parallel, I pushed with all my righteous indignation behind me, giving it everything I had and more.

A personal best hadn’t been in my plans when I started, but the way I was feeling right now, since Billy’s words had settled like a burning coal in my gut, it wouldn’t come as a surprise if I smashed through it—I’d welcome it, even. Records always seemed to come when I was experiencing heightened emotion.

Reassuring, given how so many capes said the same thing about their powers. A fantasy of finding my first revelation right here, right now, flashed through my mind, but I dismissed it. Needed to focus on the matter at hand.

It was perhaps naive of me to assume the incident back at the written exam was an isolated one. I’d felt the cheater’s glare on my back the whole way from there to here, and there were still moments when I’d catch a glimpse of seething white eyes across the room. With that attention on me, I’d told myself I was the only one falling victim to another examinee’s overly competitive nature.

But the fact of the matter was, it was exceedingly unlikely that the girl’s power could pull off the sabotage as Billy had described it.

While most powers trended towards relatively simple effects, some superhuman abilities could be… out there. Powers started out defying logic at a base level, and they could get very, very weird.

The Asian girl who’d attempted to steal my test clearly had one of the more bizarre powers. She’d been able to swap my pencilled answers for the ink blots she’d left on her own exam, even though she hadn’t been able to see my answers themselves. All she’d needed was a line of sight to my paper and, presumably, some vague definition of the answers I was writing down, and she was good to go.

When powers dealt in concepts in that way, that was when things got funky. It was entirely possible she could swap muscle mass. Or muscle memory. Or the idea of the strength within those muscles without actually manipulating anything physical at all.

It might have been easy to take that as the answer. It would have been nice and neat, and my faith in my fellow candidates could have stayed unshaken.

But she needed line of sight. And, as aforementioned, I was pretty confident her glare hadn’t strayed from my august person since the moment I’d foiled her scheme back in the written exam, because fuck me for not allowing myself to get screwed over and fail the test, right? I tried not to pay attention to the side of me that was taking so much satisfaction from her rage.

Regardless, the truth here was a simple, frustrating one:

She was not the only one willing to screw over her peers.

Maybe it was more a matter of idealism than naivete. I’d wanted to believe she was the odd one out, that the rest of the students here saw the path to heroism the same way I did: if you didn’t do it honestly, what was the point? In my mind, superheroes were supposed to be virtuous and honourable, and any self-respecting hero-in-training would do their level best to embody that ideal.

Of course, I was wrong. I should’ve known better, seeing as a guy like Lucas was taking part today, somewhere in this very same building. It felt like a moment that should’ve been a revelation, but nothing came to mind, and I wasn’t sure I would’ve wanted that kind of foundation if it did.

I still couldn’t help feeling a bit betrayed by it all.

A buzzer sounded, and a red light twinkled in my eye. The resistance from the bar slowly faded, until I was able to push it up and out of the way effortlessly. I sat up.

“No problems there?” Maria asked.

The other two shook their heads.

“Excellent. Reconfigure for overhead press, if you would.”

They moved to obey, scooting me off of the bench and directing me to stand aside while they worked. As I waited, I scanned the room, trying my best to keep it casual.

There were hundreds of people in here, each one of them with an unknown superpower. Anyone could have been the saboteur. A needle in a haystack.

But I wasn't going to let that daunt me. The idea of some cheater prospering off the misfortune of another student was enraging like few things I’d ever felt before. I refused to let it happen.

Billy had moved away to another station, but it didn’t take long to find him through the crowd. He was at the reflex testing area now, dodging gracefully for one his size as a machine fired foam balls at him. The determination in his eyes was visible even from here.

As was the occasional hitch in his step. For the most part, he dodged the balls with ease. With that level of control over his own body, the exercise should’ve been a cakewalk for him. But now and then, there’d be a moment’s hesitation, a stumble, or a flinch, and the ball would strike him.

It wouldn’t hurt his scores, because there was nothing to score. This was no competition.

That just made it worse. There wasn’t even any need for sabotage here, unless you were so selfish you’d be willing to get another student disqualified before they could even compete, potentially believing they’d been living with an undiagnosed medical issue.

That was something that could be life-changing. For anyone who wasn’t me, failing the written or practical test wasn’t the end of the world; they could just try again at one of the other major schools. Failing the medicals? You could easily have someone thinking their career was over before it could ever begin.

I grit my teeth, keeping up my search.

~~~

“What makes you say that?” I asked, trying to keep my voice level.

If Billy’s nervous shuffling was any indication, I’d failed. “Well, uh. My power is—” he stopped, eyes going wide. “My friend said I shouldn’t share the details of my power with anyone in the exams.”

“He was probably right,” I hated to admit. “I think I have an idea, though.”

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“You do?”

“You’ve clearly lost some weight since I last saw you in the exam hall. My guess is your power cannibalises your own body for a physical or mental boost. I assume that comes with some kind of special awareness of yourself?”

Billy stared, gaping.

“Got it in one?” Now it was a struggle to keep the pride from my voice. If the twitch in his brow was any indication, I was two strikes down. I waved him off with a nervous chuckle. “Everyone gets lucky sometimes.”

He swallowed. “Is that your power? Super luck?”

My discomfort deepened. “No. Sorry. It was just an educated guess.”

“Well, you were basically right. My crappy power lets me burn fat for strength. C-rank Level 2. My doctor said there’s some kind of formula to it, but I don’t remember that stuff. They say I can be really strong though, with more Aspects.”

“You call that crappy?”

Billy looked at me like I’d just grown a second head. “Are you kidding me, dude? I have to eat constantly to store up fat, or my power has to use muscle or even frickin’ bone. That shit hurts, let me tell ya. Also, I end up looking like this.” With a heavy roll of his eyes, he swept a hand across his huge torso, thrice as wide as mine. “Whatever, the point is I have complete control over my body. I know what every little part of me is doing down to the cellular level. And someone’s messing with me, bro!”

“Messing with you how?”

“I dunno! It’s like… do you play video games?”

“Not much, but I’m familiar enough.”

“Uh. Same here. Heh. But you know what lag is, right?”

“I get you. So you feel like your body isn’t responding as fast as it should?”

“Exactly! Nothing was wrong on the treadmill. That kind of shit’s easy for me, so I got through it super fast. But ever since I got to the weights thingie… It’s subtle. Comes at random. Lasts a fraction of a second. If my power wasn’t the way it is, I might not have even noticed it. But sometimes my brain will forget how to send commands to my body for just a second. Not really a problem here, but you can see how that could super hyper mess me the fuck up on one of the other tests, right?”

I nodded. “Why haven’t you told one of the scientists?”

Billy froze up.

“You hadn’t considered it?”

I’d been expecting some embarrassment, but instead his eyes darkened. “Snitching never works.”

“You can’t know—”

“If you don’t wanna help, just say so. I’ll ask somebody else.”

“I want to help you. I do. I was just making sure you’d considered the options.”

Billy closed his eyes and let out a slow breath. When he opened them once more, he slumped, eyelids drooping and shoulder hunching like gravity had suddenly doubled. “These guys will barely look at me. They’re disgusted by me. Like, because I’m fat I’m not even fucking human to them. It’s always the same, most people are like this. I’ve tried to go to people like them before, Emmett. I’ve learned my lesson.” He sighed, and the motion seemed to deflate him. “If I need anything, I gotta search the crowd for the one person who doesn’t look like they wanna spit on me. In here, so far that’s only you. If you could find a way to help me out, I’d appreciate it.”

One of his handlers called out to him, and he walked away without another word.

~~~

Observing the other tests going on was starting to make me paranoid. Did that girl trip naturally, or did someone sabotage her too? Did a group of scientists rush over to stop a guy’s test because something was genuinely wrong, or had they been tricked? Was that limp a pre-existing condition that only came to light today, or had someone done that to them just now?

The wondering was making my head spin. I almost missed it when I finished up with the resistance test, and Maria seemed unimpressed when I asked her what I’d scored. I imagined only her sense of professional decorum had held her back from calling me a meathead, but the look she gave me betrayed her thoughts regardless.

But even so, I was still watching the other candidates as we moved on to the next part of my medical. It didn’t take me long to notice the pattern.

In a high-stakes situation like this, people were always going to mess up. It was only natural that a few mishaps would be brushed off as accidents. You’d think they might be more diligent in looking out for foul play, but Morphosis had already given me a taste of how much the staff running these tests could be relied on there.

I tried to comfort myself with the knowledge that they were processing tens of thousands of hopeful applicants over the course of a week or two, but it helped little.

So people were going to mess up. Without Billy’s level of literal self-awareness, they’d maybe think it was just their own mistake. Staff were going to brush it off as they tried their best to rush through applicants. Okay.

But why was it that students who had been putting in high performances were so frequently messing up on the very next exercise?

The girl I’d seen earlier with the blurring legs and gyroscope-like perfectly balanced upper body was on the ground with her head in her hands, a scientist by her side awkwardly trying to comfort her. The light boy seemed unable to work up a rhythm on the treadmill.

And, of course, Billy. It didn’t look like the sabotage had derailed him too badly just yet, but there was always a chance that things could go wrong. This wasn’t a competition. It didn’t matter if he scored badly.

That didn’t mean he, or anyone else, couldn’t get hurt.

My teeth were audibly grinding together as we arrived at the next testing station, and it took a conscious effort to stop it. My palms stung as I slowly managed to unclench my fists.

Why did people have to suck so much, sometimes?

“Are you ready for the next round, Emmett?” Maria called, drawing my attention. She looked calm as she stood at the ready beside yet another set of monitors, but her colleagues were about a second away from glaring. I considered stalling, just to see if they’d actually deign to speak to me.

I put that petty side of me in a box and sealed it shut. It was time to see if my theory was right.

“So how’s this one gonna work?” I asked as I approached, eyeing the equipment. A bunch of coloured baskets had been laid out on a padded mat about the size of a boxing ring, surrounded by a ring of sleek grey monoliths with circular openings sticking out the top. Several expensive-looking cameras were trained on the scene.

“It’s a pretty simple one. Hand-eye coordination. You stand in the middle, and a buzzer will sound when one of the launchers is about to activate. Catch the coloured ball it throws, then drop it in the corresponding hole at your feet.”

“Sounds competitive.”

“There’s a minimum score here, but not a high score. We don’t care if you can get 100%, as long as you show enough to convince us you’re not colour blind, hard of hearing, or visually impaired.”

I blinked. “That sounds discriminatory.”

“Disability requires special considerations. Having one does not amount to instant failure, despite what many may think.”

“Right,” I said. The other two looked like they were going to throttle me, so I stepped into the ring and moved to stand on the faint mark in the centre. “No monitoring equipment this time?”

“The cameras are fine for what readings we need. Ready?”

I nodded, and Maria wasted no time in starting the test. A buzz came from behind me almost instantly, and I spun to meet it. I caught the ball that popped out easily and, after a glance, dropped it in the correct hole.

Silence fell, and I listened with rapt attention. Another buzz from directly behind me, another spin, another easy catch. Two more went the same way, and then they started mixing it up, launching at different intervals and more awkward angles.

I’d been going for a few minutes, just starting to enjoy myself, when it happened.

It was just as Billy said; if I hadn’t been looking for it, hyperfocused on the movements of my body, I wouldn’t have had a hope of noticing it. I’d have no reason to doubt my slow reaction, watching helplessly as the ball bounced off my open palm, my fingers closing half a second too late.

I was both flattered and relieved.

The former, because the saboteur had evidently thought my performance on the resistance test was impressive enough to make me worth worrying about.

The latter, because that was exactly what I had wanted.