I raised my hand, but didn’t knock on the door.

I straightened my tie, adjusted my glasses and went over all the main points I had in my head one more time. I’d faced down villains, monsters and I had interviewed some of the most powerful people on the planet. But this made me nervous. Still, I didn’t get to be where I was by hesitating.

I knocked on the door.

“It’s open,” I heard from the other side.

I let myself in, and I was met by Charles Morris–named after his grandfather–the dean of Atlantis Academy. I always liked his office. It wasn’t big, and had a warm atmosphere around it. Years’ worth of pictures, showcasing most students of the last years, decorated the walls.

“Hello, professor,” I said, tilting my head to the man who was sitting behind his chest. He had a small smile on his face, and he was lightly tapping the keyboard of his computer with one hand, while scratching his grey beard with another.

“You know, Kent,” he said casually, “I’ve told you to call me Charles about a dozen times during our meetings.”

I smiled. “As much as I’d like to, I think this situation calls for a tad more professionalism than most of our conversations.”

“Ah.” He motioned for me to sit on one of the chairs in front of his desk. He took a bottle of whiskey out alongside a couple of glasses. “I hope you don’t mind, I think the situation will call for it.”

“I’d rather not. You-”

“Never know what might happen,” smirked the professor at me. “Ever the boy scout, huh? Now I know that you ran into Jensen. What he’s investigating is on a strictly need to know basis, but I can make an exception for you. Tell me what you know, and I’ll fill in what blanks are needed.”

For a brief moment, I thought about not answering. Charles Morris was many things, and forthcoming was one of them. For every bit of information he shared with me, there was just as much that he would leave out. And even what he did give me wasn’t guaranteed to be completely honest. But his support–or at the very least his input–could prove to be crucial for what I was planning.

“Crisis is on the move, communicating with major villains across the world. Prison break on a small prison in the pacific, lead by an up and comer known as Frankenstein. Major Criminal organisations are closing ranks. I hear rumours of something big. What’s going on Charles?”

He took a sip of his whiskey as he seemingly contemplated what to say next. “What do you know about the Houses of Doom?” he asked after a while.

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“Before my time, but I am familiar with them,” I said, trying to think back to what I knew about them.

I never really stopped to consider them before. I knew that they were a powerful organisation in their heyday, and there were a few delusional villains that thought they were still around, plotting their next big attacks. The thought honestly terrified me. That a force of villains like that could exist, especially at a time when heroes were so disunited.

There was never anything to back the idea up, and there were already plenty of powerful villains and organisations to deal with that I never had the time to look into the Houses of Doom in detail.

“Don’t tell me…”

“No, no.” He shook his head before taking another sip. “Even if the Houses of Doom are still operational, they aren’t behind any of this. Frankenstein intends to seek them out. A quest that, while ultimately doomed, could prove enough cause to gather substantial support and a strong power base.”

“How do you know about Frankenstein’s intent?”

At this, Charles took a deep breath and downed the entire glass. He rolled back to the window behind his office, and to the ones on the other walls and shut them completely. He was in a wheelchair, having lost a leg when he was young. He’d never really talked about it, but I knew people speculated about it.

“What you’re about to hear is known by eleven people in the world,” he said, shutting off his computer. “It’s the single secret that you can never tell anyone outside this room, or else we’ll both wind up in the deepest pits of hell for a thousand life sentences. Do you understand?”

The tone of his voice, his posture, his grim expression. He wasn’t joking. This was going to be something major, and something real. It didn’t mean that it’d be the whole story or even close to it, but it’d be a good start.

“I understand,” I said, nodding at him.

He poured himself another glass of whiskey. “There is a man, trapped in the most remote desert with five layers of protection keeping him in check. He’s watched by five hundred of the most elite troops of the planet trained specifically to bring him down.”

“And he is Frankenstein?”

Charles chuckled at this. “If he were we’d all be dead by now. He found a way to holographically project himself into that area. We barely managed to capture him before he became a threat, losing hundreds of people in the process.

“We carefully and methodically made sure that nobody knew about him. Access to that information–to that man’s very existence should be impossible. The fact that he knows about him means he’s more dangerous than eighty percent of villains out there.”

I didn’t like this. I didn’t like it on multiple levels. There were holes in his story, from the fact that they kept a man’s entire existence a secret, to someone really powerful being captured secretly somehow and a lot more.

Still, I could use this to my advantage.

“I think that all of this makes my proposal all the more necessary, professor,” I said, getting up and removing my glasses. I put them down as blue electricity engulfed me, my entire world going white before it became normal once more.

I took a deep breath.

My whole world was shifted, all my senses enhanced and imbued. I could feel every bit of electricity on the island. I was now wearing my hero suit, the electric blue spandex suit and I could feel my entire body thanking me for it.

I was no longer Kent Smith, at least not in body. I was now Alpha Surge.