Prologue

As much as he wouldn’t have admitted it, Lexi wasn’t really paying attention. Yeah, his job was super important and all; he’s the assessment specialist for the inner-city branch of the department of enhancement registration in the city of Los Calientes.

With a big pretentious job title like that, and all the responsibility that it holds, he really should be paying attention and not coasting through it. If he didn’t do his job right then people might end up in danger or worse.

But… important or not, his job was really boring. All day, day-in and day-out, people would come into DoER (colloquially: “door”) and register the myriad of random enhancements they got.

Something like a hundredth of a percent of people randomly developed enhancements, but that was still a lot of people in the long run, what with overpopulation and all; so there was always a steady stream of people coming into the DoER every day.

His job was to assess their abilities, mental state, and general attitude. He was often all that stood between a teenager who just got the ability to shoot lasers out of their face and whoever that kid’s high-school bully was.

The latest person he was evaluating made zoning out easy, to be fair. This person’s “enhancement” if you could call it that, did almost nothing… except turning him into a giant humanoid insect. He’d seen some extremely scary powers in his time, so this? This was nothing. What made it even easier was the man’s occupation. He was a therapist of all things. He’d be set up with a compensation package due to the difficulties he will have with his job due to the changes from his “power”.

“Thank you for expediting this process.” the man said to him. “It would have been difficult, heading straight back to work. I’ve had to email all of my patients not to come in! ha! I do hope they are all doing okay.”

“It’s no problem whatsoever.” Lexi said. “It is my job after all.” Finishing with the paperwork, Lexi allowed the man to leave with his new identification card.

Legally, companies and most government offices are not allowed to ask to see the “enhancement identification card” given out by the DoER. This is to stop any discrimination on the part of these companies, but in practice most enhanced have obvious physical signs which make them easily identifiable. The good doctor here was lucky he had his own practice, otherwise he may have been fired on the spot.

"Next in line, please," Lexi called out, trying to sound as professional as possible.

The next person got up from her seat and walked over to the counter. She was wearing a hoodie and had her head down, fidgeting with her hands. As she approached the registration desk, Lexi couldn't help but notice how she kept glancing over her shoulder, as if she was being followed.

The woman handed over her identification papers, and Lexi scanned over them. He looked up at her, taking in her nervous demeanor. He could practically feel the anxiety radiating off of her.

“You are Jillian James?” he asked.

She nodded in response.

“Please come with me,” he got up from his chair. “we will be conducting this interview in the room through this door.”

She nodded, stepping around his desk, following his direction through the door behind it.

Lexi’s never really liked the “interview rooms” built into most DoER registration offices. He understood the need for them, it was theoretically the first point of contact between the DoER and enhanced individuals. If a powered individual were to be unstable enough to lash out, then it was better to have a contained place to let it happen.

Most assessment specialists have enhancements which help them get themselves out of danger, or at least protect them from it, in the case of a bad reaction of a newly enhanced. In Lexi’s case, he was a speedster. He wasn’t the fastest speedster, but he was fast enough to get out of the room and seal it if something goes wrong.

He walked around the interview table, and gestured for his latest interviewee to sit.

“Welcome to the DoER, Ms. James. I know that things might be hectic in your life right now, so this first interview is simply to gather basic information about you and your enhancement.” Lexi started his regular spiel, still being very much in autopilot mode. “Before we begin, I would like to give you the assurances of DoER that none of the information disclosed in this and subsequent interviews will be made publicly available without your explicit consent. Please indicate to me that you understand.”

She took a moment to respond. “…yes.” she said. She was quiet, and it was clear that it took a lot of energy for her to convince herself to respond verbally.

“Excellent.” Lexi said. “Now, we should start off simple. What’s your date of birth?” and so began the long list of basic questions he had to ask everyone who entered this room.

Theoretically, he didn’t really have to ask these questions. It was all right there in the identification papers people were required to bring with them, and that was all being cross-referenced with online databases by the building’s computer system. The only reason he still had to ask them was to “establish a baseline rapport with the enhanced individual”… which is government mook speak for “make sure they’re not bat-shit insane before continuing.”

But, all of Jillian’s responses were appropriate, if a bit quiet. So eventually they made it through the slog of it all and made it to the real question of the day.

“So, now that we’re through with that, I only have a few questions left.” he started. For all he would complain about his job being boring in his head, this was the one part he really enjoyed. He loved seeing the wonderful powers and abilities of the people of this city. “First, what's your enhancement?” he asked.

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The woman hesitated for a moment before finally answering, “I can move really fast.”

Lexi nodded, scribbling something down on his notepad. “Interesting, can you give me some more details about your enhancement? How fast can you move? Have you noticed any other changes since gaining this ability?”

Jillian fidgeted with her hands, her gaze fixed on the table in front of her. “I don't know exactly how fast I can move, it just feels like everything slows down when I run. And sometimes I feel like I can react to things before they even happen.”

Lexi paused for a moment. That was… interesting. He had a lot of experience with speedsters, he was one after all, but he’d never encountered that particular phrasing before. “What do you mean, “react to things before they even happen.”?”

She just shrugged in response.

“I see.” He was probably over-thinking it. He noted down the response and moved on to the next question. “Do you wish to enroll in our program which lets you test your abilities in a safe environment?”

“no.” came her immediate response. It was her quickest response today, though he wasn’t surprised. Very few people took them up on that particular offer.

“Alright.” he continued. His next question he had to handle delicately. He was required to ask it, but it was always quite nerve-wracking. “I see that you have declared several mental illnesses. Our agency will provide funds to any and all medical agencies you go to, to treat these illnesses or their symptoms.”

She tensed up. She did not like the sound of that. He backed off a bit, “You aren’t required to go see a therapist, or an endocrinologist, or a psychiatrist, or any other medical professional for any reason. We will not require it of you. We are simply making funds available to you at any time, should you wish to take advantage of them.”

At this she calmed slightly, though she was still a bit on edge. “no thank you…” she finally said in response.

“Alright.” Lexi said, trying to relieve the tension. The reason that his office offered this program was simple: super-human individuals with anxiety hurt more than just themselves. A telepath with depression could cause a mass death incident; a super-human brawler with bipolar disorder could lash out and kill their loved ones, completely unintentionally; a technopath with claustrophobia could rip apart the computer in a car traveling at speed, killing them and everyone else in the car; and a speedster with anxiety, depending on how their power worked? Now that was a disaster waiting to happen. She could run through a crowd of people without even thinking if she got spooked, and by through he really means that she could atomize them.

In this case, however, Lexi didn’t think that Ms. James was going to cause such an incident. He had seen her move at speed a few times, while she fidgeted, and from what he could observe the air around her wasn’t as disturbed as it should have been. He had a lot of experience with “reality warping speedsters”, one of his moms was one. If his mom ran into someone at speed they would simply “bump” normally; it would just happen a lot slower from his mom’s perspective.

Still, he had to test it to make sure.

“So, I have one final thing we need to do today.” he started. He got out a small device, no larger than the fingernail on his thumb. “I need you to pass your hand over this. Please do so quickly, using your enhancement.”

The device was essentially a really advanced scale. It used a myriad of sensors (that if Lexi was honest he didn’t understand, even a little) to determine the exact force used to accelerate an object that passed over it. In this case, Lexi was using it to find out exactly how much influence Jillian had on the world when she was moving.

She did as asked. While Lexi wasn’t paying much attention to the movement itself, focused on the sensor as he was, he could tell that she was particularly fast. Quite a bit faster than he was. Not that he was jealous. Or at least not that he would admit that he was jealous.

The device registered 0 force, meaning that it experienced absolutely no stress at all. Normally, for a person moving at regular speeds, the device would give a reading; however it made sense in this case that it wouldn’t. Many speedsters, when they weren’t intentionally acting on the world, exhibited no force on things around them. It wasn’t exactly known why this was the case for some speedsters, but it was a good sign that Jillian was one of them.

“Alright!” he said, with a little cheer in his voice. “That will be it for today; please step out of this room and wait at the main desk while I prepare your new ID.”

She stood up and walked out without another word, still shuffling nervously.

A few minutes later, he walked out and handed her the card. He wished her good luck and she was off. He’d probably never see her again. Generally, no matter how powerful, people with that much anxiety didn’t become capes or celebrities. It would be too stressful. He was glad to have been the first, or admittedly probably second, step on her journey.

Of course, now that the slightly-more-interesting-than-normal encounter was done, he looked at who was next on the list. ‘Haaaaaaaaah.’ he sighed mentally. ‘Another kid.’ he looked up at the excited youth jittering in his seat, waiting to be called. ‘This is going to be a long day…’

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She walked out of the DoER building and released a massive breath she didn’t realize she was holding. Jillian James never liked talking to people. It was way too stressful. She didn’t really like going outside, either, but in this case she had to. There was no choice. It was either go get registered with the DoER or try to hide her new abilities. She knew that the latter option wasn’t really sustainable, and she didn’t have any real reason not to register… again she just really didn’t like dealing with people…

Thinking of getting away from this place, and back to her megabuilding, she set off back home as fast as she could.

‘That’s one good thing.’ she thought to herself, a few seconds later. ‘I can always just run home now.’ She walked into her apartment, locked the door, and promptly passed out on the couch.

It had been a long day of talking to people and she was just happy it was over…