The stone was cold and rough against my back, but I kept myself flush to the wall. Voices echoed from nearby, a few streets over at most, people calling out to each other. It was good to hear, because it meant they were still working together without me there to coordinate things. And, as far as I could tell, they weren’t in imminent danger.

There was always the worry that I’d stray too far, leaving myself unable to intervene if something major happened. Even if most of the people in our alliance were more powerful and thus theoretically better able to defend themselves than I was, I still felt responsible for them.

My goal had always been to get all our people to the end with their tasks complete, and I was determined to see it through.

A sound came from the street on my other side, a small scuffle of stone. I tensed, straining to listen. When I heard nothing more, I started shimmying along the wall, keeping my movements slow to make as little noise as possible. Reaching the end of the wall, I peeked around the corner.

I’d placed myself in an alleyway that linked two wider, terrace-lined streets, the fronts of the houses reaching right to the edge of the sidewalk. Cars took up one lane of the road, while the sidewalk was empty of even mailboxes or lampposts.

Not ideal, but could’ve been worse.

Open spaces were the enemy in this game of cat and rat. There was hardly a definitive doctrine when it came to combatting unknown superpowers—the possibilities were simply far too varied for that—but some aspects of common sense could be applied. Just as you didn’t want to be caught without cover against a gunman, confronting a cape without somewhere to hide in easy reach would be ill-advised.

Common sense being common, it wasn’t a trait exclusive to me.

I could see our ‘gunman’ making his way down the street towards me, crouching behind the row of parked cars. His blond hair was caked with dirt and dust, and at some point he’d lost the jacket of his school-issued tracksuit, leaving him with only a torn and stained shirt and his tracksuit bottoms.

We’d spotted him a while ago, weaving his way through the maze of streets a few hundred metres back from the core of our group. It was more accurate to say he was tracking than following us; he made sure never to put himself in a direct line of sight, relying on signs of our passing instead. He was being smart about it.

Apart from forgetting to look up. Rookie mistake.

For both his resourcefulness and his blunder, he’d earned himself the privilege of being the first saboteur dealt with by our impromptu strike force. I could admire a strategic approach, but there was no way in hell I was going to go easy on this guy. Even if he hadn’t actually done anything directly yet, his intent was clear.

After what had happened back there, after someone had almost died, we couldn’t afford to give him the benefit of the doubt.

I shifted, holding up a hand and pointing in our target’s direction.

There was movement in the dark alley directly opposite from mine, Billy rising from behind a parked car. He moved with surprising stealth for one his size, practically sliding along the wall on ballerina-like tiptoed steps. He mirrored me in peeking around the corner, and his gaze zeroed in on our target instantly. Meeting my eyes once more, he nodded.

Now it was a matter of how we approached this. The boy’s powers were unknown, but I could at least tentatively rule out the possibility of him being that versatile or strong. The state of his clothes and hair told me he’d had a tough time of things so far on this test, and I found it hard to believe a true juggernaut would get roughed up like that.

However, something gave him the confidence to think he could cause some problems for our alliance that still numbered twenty people. Whether it was delusion on his part or a genuine trick up his sleeve, he was dangerous.

Motion in my peripheral vision drew my attention upwards. Cat was perched on the edge of the roof, three stories above the ground, her upper body hanging right over the edge with the palms of her hands flat against the wall beneath the roof’s lip. Her attention was laser-focused on our target, and by the curve of her back she was coiled to spring like a cat hunting a bird.

I waved to catch her attention. Her eyes stayed fixed on the still-shuffling boy, but one ear turned in my direction.

“Surround him,” I whispered, so quiet I could barely hear my own voice.

In lieu of a response, Cat heaved herself up then prowled further along the roof until she reached its edge. Then she leapt over and down, out of sight. She hadn’t made a sound.

I turned back to Billy, and held up five fingers. Once I was certain I had his attention, I started ticking them off, second by second.

He nodded.

The boy was still moving, his gaze constantly panning over his surroundings. He’d stop intermittently, listening out for the echoes of conversation nearby. He was sharp, aware. But above all, he seemed cautious. Whether that was by nature or if this test had humbled him, it didn’t really matter.

My last finger curled down, my fist closed, and I launched myself out from around the corner and across the street, keeping the cars between me and him. Billy moved at the same time, his footfalls thunderous, cracking the ground.

The boy yelped in surprise, but reacted instantly. Reacted smartly.

Out of the two of his pursuers, Billy was the more obvious threat. The boy snapped an open hand out in his direction, his signal shone, and a glossy rectangular mirror about the size of a door shimmered into existence right in the oncoming juggernaut’s path. Inches away as it was, Billy didn’t have a hope of stopping or dodging it. He ran straight into it, vanishing into a gap in the air for a brief moment before it spat him out the same way he’d come, keeping his momentum. It was obviously a disorienting experience, as Billy swerved like he was dizzy, crashing into a car and almost tipping it over. An alarm started blaring.

I’d crossed almost halfway to the boy in the intervening time, but with Billy dealt with, his raised palm swung to me.

I was wise to the trick. I ducked behind a car, breaking his line of sight, running at a crouch. The boy cursed as Billy’s quake-inducing footsteps started up once more. His power was a useful one, but seemingly limited to only creating one of his mirrors at a time, and it had to be in line of sight.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

I crouched low, ducking through a gap between cars, and peeked out onto the street. The boy had backed up because he wasn’t an idiot, and a mirror rippled in the air in front of me.

“Fuck off!” he shouted. He was almost running backwards. “You guys aren’t fast enough to flank me. I’ll just keep reflecting you away! I can do this all day, assholes!”

I shot him a grin.

He was right, of course. The two of us would probably never be able to take him down on our own.

But anyone who works with dangerous animals will tell you:

Never turn your back on a big cat.

The boy was taken completely by surprise as a predator the size of a teenage girl sprung on him from behind, tackling him to the ground. The mirror before us winked out of existence, the power signals nearby dropped to two, and Billy and I were free to charge unhindered.

I couldn’t decide whether to be disappointed or not when he surrendered before we could even make it there. It was tough to blame the kid for giving up when razor-sharp claws had been pressed to his throat by a girl who’d already proved herself far stronger than him, pinning his arms at his side with her knees, but that angry, vicious part of me had very much been looking forward to punching someone, hard.

I didn’t want to interrogate that impulse too much.

Standing over him, luxuriating in the intoxication of triumph, I asked, “Can we help you with anything?”

The boy swallowed, and Cat’s claw stayed with the bob of his adam’s apple. His eyes were wide, almost feverish, watching her like a mouse pinned by a tiger. To his credit, he only sounded a little terrified when he spoke. “W-what the fuck do you guys want?”

“Don’t play dumb. You know exactly what’s going on here,” I snapped. “You were at the briefing. You heard what I said.”

“Yeah, you said you didn’t want to screw anyone over. So why are you screwing me?”

I rolled my eyes. “We’ve been watching you for a while. Care to explain why you were following our group from a distance?”

The boy kept his silence. Up close, I could see the hints of bruises and scrapes beneath his torn shirt. There was a yellow splotch over one of his eyes.

Crouching down, I patted down his pockets.

“The hell are you doing?!” he demanded, tensing as if to stop me.

Cat simply leaned forward the barest fraction of an inch, and that was enough to freeze him in place.

I ignored the byplay, continuing the check. His pack was nowhere in sight, and the only things on him were the armband we’d all been issued and a token marked ‘E’. Somehow, I got the feeling this guy probably hadn’t gotten any higher ranks than that.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“What?”

“Your name. The designation by which you are known and to which you answer, either the one assigned to you at birth or otherwise.”

The boy squinted at me, then seemed to remember the sharp claw against his throat and snapped his gaze back to Cat. “Why do you wanna know?”

“Answer,” Cat purred, smiling.

“Jake,” he said immediately.

“Who gave you the shiner, Jake?” I asked, gesturing at my own eye.

“I don’t know, dude. I didn’t stop to ask their name.”

“Fair enough. Tell me: did this person come after you, or was it you going after them?”

Except for the voices echoing from the distance and Jake’s increasingly laboured breathing, silence reigned. Jake’s lips pressed into a deeper line as seconds crawled by.

“I went after them,” he whispered eventually. “Some short Asian kid with white hair. Thought he’d be an easy target, but his power was insane. I don’t even know what happened. One second I was activating a mirror in front of him, the next I was spinning through the air, all torn up.”

That information got filed away for later.

I nodded, pasting a pleasant smile onto my lips. “And have you gone after anyone else? Done a bit of sabotage, screwing over your fellow examinees to get yourself ahead?”

Jake opened his mouth to reply, but I talked over him.

“Hey, come to think of it, how long have you been following our group for? Have you been screwing us over, too? That mirror power of yours is pretty nifty.” My smile fell away, and I crouched down close to him, letting the full extent of my anger show in my glare. “I’m gonna cut the shit. Did you bring that house down?”

Somehow, his eyes went even wider. “What? Bring a fucking house— No way! How the hell would I even do that with my power?”

“How am I meant to know what you can do with your power? You fucking tell me, Jake.”

He shook his head a fraction, then winced and cringed away as if expecting the movement to get his throat slit. The thought turned my stomach, and I reached out to nudge Cat’s arm away. She retracted her claw, but stayed planted on his chest.

“Explain yourself,” I said.

“You can’t expect me to—”

“I can,” I said.

“I swear on my grandpa’s grave that I didn’t—”

“I don’t care. Tell us how your power works, and we might consider letting you end this test with your points.” I pinched the E-rank token between two fingers and held it up, dangling it before his eyes.

His gaze tracked it like it was hypnotic. “Come on, man. It’s like you saw. I can create mirrors that reflect momentum.”

“They have to be standing up like that? You can’t change their shape?”

“Yes, and no.”

“You can’t move them?”

“No.”

“They’re not infinitely sharp at the edge?”

“No! I wish, dude! Maybe after a few more Levels I could do any of that shit, but right now I’m still at foundation. Fuckin’ D-rank.”

I dropped the token, letting it plink off his forehead. It rang as it struck the ground and rolled a few feet away. “Here’s what’s going to happen, Jake. We’re going to activate the distress signal in your armband. When someone arrives to help, you’re going to tell them that you’re dropping out of the test.”

“But—”

I held up a finger and shushed him. “They should, in all likelihood, let you score the points for collecting your token. You won’t be dropping a duck.”

“And then end the test with only an E-rank? No way will I pass!”

“That sounds like a you problem.”

“That’s—”

“A problem caused entirely by your own actions. All that time spent tracking our group, waiting for your opportunity to screw one of us? Did you ever consider, I don’t know, trying to go for your own tasks? Who knows, maybe you would have completed the exam by now.”

I paused, listening. The echoes were getting quieter, and the power signals were fading. Time to finish up.

“The alternative is we break your token and leave you tied up here. Either way, you’re not finishing the test.”

Jake closed his eyes, falling silent. Before my eyes, he seemed to deflate, limbs going limp, head falling back on the ground. He took a shuddering breath.

“You don’t understand what you’re doing to me. Yeah, I heard your speech. I can fucking relate. I’ve wanted to be a superhero since I was a kid, too. Maybe not as much as you, but it’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

“You’ve got an interesting idea of what a superhero is supposed to be if you’re out here trying to destroy other peoples’ chances.” I poked him hard in the hest. “Do you feel like a superhero right now, Jake?”

He opened his eyes, fixing me with a blood-shot and watery stare. He snorted. “Do you?”

I looked around, trying to picture the scene from his perspective. Three teenagers, one massive, one tall and well-built for his age, and one oozing with deadly grace, all looming over a kid with his shirt torn up, his hair crusted with dirt, his body covered in soon-to-be bruises and some shallow cuts.

“Yup,” I said. “Nothing more heroic than taking down a villain.”

Billy gave a short laugh—the first sound he’d made since we caught this guy, I noted—and Cat made a pleased sound.

Jake made to speak, but I was done with this. I lifted his armband.

“What’s it gonna be?”