I’d been here more often than I liked.

In front of the dean’s office, listening to the muttering of the people inside. Muffled through the wall and wooden door.

I could almost see Charles, rolling out of whatever meeting he’d had and calling me inside. Smell the fruity smell of his whiskey, and hear the clinking of our glasses as we drank and talked. Sometimes, like the idiot I’d been, I thought he saw me as a friend.

He’d smile, ask about me, my wife and we’d joke around. Until one day, when Paragon had first turned. Announced to the world that there would be changes. Whether we wanted them or not.

“We need the Houses of Doom,” he said gravely. “A mission, with you and one of their members. I know I’ve asked you to compromise a lot, but you need to do this. You’re the only person I trust and, as much as I hate to say it, we need to work with the demons to stop the devil.”

Of course, that member had been Sofie. And the mission had lasted for a year. It was the beginning of the end.

With a creak the door opened, and I was snapped back to reality. Men in suits walked out, not even bothering to look at me.

I flexed my bare fingers. I didn’t have time to get a new pair. As soon as we got back from Greece, a professor walked up to me and told me to follow them. In spite of everything that had happened, I had still found my inner fanboy itching to get out. I hadn’t known him, but I wanted to.

“Mr Adamos?” I turned to the man, who was speaking in English. He gestured inside. “If you’d please?”

The office inside was very different than when Charles was here. A big tv and couch adorned the left side, while the whole right wall was replaced by a window. Knightley sat behind his wooden, fancy looking desk. There were golden letters lining the whole thing, spelling something in latin. Hell, he even had suits of armour framing him, each holding a spear with the same inscription.

“You wanted to see me?” I asked, tearing my eyes away from the desk and looking back at him. “Sir?”

He breathed out a laugh and gestured for me to sit down.

“Acta non verba and Cras es noster,” he said. “The words you see. They’re separate phrases, meaning ‘deeds not words’ and ‘tomorrow be ours’ respectively. I like having them surround me as a reminder that if we act accordingly, we can seize tomorrow. Have it come on our own terms.”

I shuffled in my seat. This was an…interesting start. But I couldn’t exactly gauge much about his personality or character.

“Would you prefer if we talked like this?” he asked, switching to broken Greek.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“It’s alright.” I kept talking in English.

“Honestly, that’s a bit relieving. Yours has been an especially difficult language to master. Worry not though, I’ll get it. I want to be able to talk to every student here in their mother tongue. Anything from Spanish and Greek, to Arabic.”

Don’t trust him.

Ahmed had been right.

We didn’t know if we could trust him, and our track record with deans hadn’t exactly been the best. I didn’t know how to act around him. So I just nodded, trying to see anything out of the ordinary about him and his black and white suit.

“You have been a decent student thus far,” he continued. “I have been informed by Professor Mystic that you’ve done quite well on Hero History specifically, but that wasn’t what I wanted to talk about. I wanted us to discuss the concept of a secret identity.”

“Oh? That’s-that’s a bit early, isn’t it? The whole secret identity portion starts in the third year.”

“It used to.” He leaned forward. “But villains are bold. So in conjunction with the deans of, well, pretty much every other Hero Academy, we decided to move it all up a notch. Secret identity lessons will be essential to your second year curriculum and you’ll even go to the tournament in, hopefully, fully formed. Professor Mystic and Madame Where will tell you all about that.”

“I understand. Is that all? Because, with all due respect, I don’t see why I had to hear it from you.”

Another breath-laugh hybrid.

“There’s no easy way to say this. When the villain known as Paragon first entered the island, there was a lot of chaos and confusion. But Charles Morris had notes on the encounter. An investigation that led to a single conclusion: a mental attack was what, somehow, transported him here. A mental attack so powerful, it somehow managed to bleed into reality.”

My hand hovered over my neck. I could almost feel his bony fingers around my neck. So frail, but somehow so strong. Death. I never told anyone in charge about this. How did Charles know?

How did that damn bastard know?

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“One of our seniors is one of the most accomplished psychics I know. He can help you fortify your mind. Make sure-”

“No.” I said it with more urgency than I thought I could muster. “Not again.”

Shit. I hadn’t realised how much this mind switch, how much the attack, had affected me. The mind. It was supposed to be the one thing you had left. But mine hadn’t been that. Not at all.

And now, after all this time, I had finally got it. Even with Alpha Surge hallucinations, my mind had been mine. Even more than that, I couldn’t let someone probe into my head. Risk them finding out the truth about Jacob, Paragon, and everything else.

“I understand your hesitance, but this wasn’t a request.”

“What?”

“If you want to stay in Atlantis, you will go through these fortifications. We can’t risk your life, or the lives and livelihoods of the people working here. There are over four thousand people working for us here and approximately five hundred students and post graduates. Not to mention the tens of thousands of residents.”

“But-”

“You want to help people, right? This is the way to help thousands. This used to be one of the safest places in the world. I won’t let Morris’ tainted legacy ruin this storied island. Understood?”

I didn’t have a choice. Unless, of course, you counted ‘go home’ as one of them. And there was no way in hell I would do that. So I took a deep breath and replied in the calmest and most neutral voice I could muster.

“Yes sir.”