Milly awoke in her bed, as though nothing had happened.

For a brief moment, she wondered if the entire fiasco with the fire had been a dream. That illusion shattered the moment she noticed the annoying itchy feeling along her face and arms, like a sunburn.

“Gah,” Milly groaned as she sat up and examined herself. A couple of red-spotted bandages covered the areas that stung the most, obviously where she’d hurt herself in her escape. Her skin looked oily and reeked of aloe.

The herbal remedy was obviously a Niki contribution, but Milly couldn’t remember how she got back to the dorm. According to her watch, it was already 13:35, well into the afternoon.

“Of course you’d wake up the second I get her to take a break.” Terra sat at Milly’s desk, casually reading a book. She took a moment to finish whatever paragraph she was on, then snapped it closed. Terra looked perfectly fine. Uniform, hair, demeanor, it was as though she’d never even heard of a fire-breathing T-Rex, much less fought one. She gave a slight grin while she held up the book cover for Milly to see; something to do with meditation. “I assume you don’t mind that I borrowed this. You were fast asleep.”

Milly didn’t like that emphasis.

“Terra? Why are you here?” Milly glanced down and pulled up her blanket to cover the black scorch marks on her clothes.

Terra raised one eyebrow and gave Milly an incredulous look, annoyed even. “Because I had to pull your ass out of the fire last night, figuratively. I also spent like an hour making sure nobody else saw your face while you got patched up, and brought you back here.”

That was a surprise. Milly brought a hand to her bare face. She’d barely escaped getting exposed to the world thanks to Terra? Milly would not have expected that from her. Nobody in ACE hid their identity.

Maybe this was a trick? But what good could that possibly do? Should she deny everything just to be safe? Niki probably would agree. Where was she, anyway?

While Milly was silently pondering her situation, Terra spoke up. “Which reminds me, were you trying to get found out? At least get a scarf or something to cover up.”

Milly felt her cheeks burn in a whole different way at the scolding. True, it had been stupid to rely purely on her power. Even if nobody could see her while she was in motion, a back up plan would’ve been good. “I, okay, but would a mask have mattered if you could take it off me, anyway? I was out cold.”

“That’s like asking if I could’ve lifted up your skirt.” Terra rolled her eyes. “Yeah, anyone could have, but everybody else would’ve seen them reach for it and smacked them good. You can’t just go around unmasking supers, you know.”

Milly hadn’t been wearing a skirt, but she took Terra’s meaning. “Got it. And, uh, thanks for the help. I’m a little surprised you went out of your way to keep my identity secret… who knows exactly?”

“Yeah, well, I never had that option, figure it must be nice.” Terra leaned back in the chair and rested her feet on Milly’s desk. “Stella and I are the only ones who know about you. In addition to anyone you've told. Niki, Miss Arkwright, etc.”

Not Ruth then.

“That’s a relief.” Milly sighed. She caught Terra giving her side-eye. Maybe she’d been a little too obvious. “S-so! Why did you bring me here? Niki might not have been in on it.”

“Yesterday, Niki asked how my powers affected my lesson plan. It was pretty random at the time, but after seeing you, it clicked.” Terra waved the concern off. “Never mind that. Are you feeling okay? Do you remember what happened?”

“I’m fine. Last I remember I’d accidentally hitched a ride onto the roof with Stella and I was trying to escape. I… I think I jumped across to the other building then hit a wall. That’s all I’ve got.”

“So, you… knocked yourself out?” Terra asked while her attention fully shifted to Milly. She snickered into her fist. “Seriously? I thought you’d gotten attacked or something. We never found the villain behind the fire constructs.”

“Well, excuse me for not having any practice with jumping off of buildings.” Milly folded her arms. She knew she sounded stupid, probably looked stupid too, grandstanding to save a little face. “I was trying to help.”

Terra stayed silent for a moment while she stared stone-faced at Milly. As a sand sculpture, her poker face was impeccable. “…Okay. I’m sorry.”

Apparently, Milly’s poker face wasn’t nearly as good since she saw Terra notice her surprise.

“I should not have laughed. You’ve been nothing but helpful, and it’s not fair to mock you for getting into an accident.” Terra rolled the chair over and reached into her pocket, taking out a syringe with a blood-red liquid inside. “Especially not if you got hurt after you came to my aid and took out that T-Rex. Which actually brings us back around to why I’m here. I owe you one. Thanks.”

“Oh, uhm… I, uh, I guess you’re welcome?” Milly stumbled over her words. She’d helped a lot of people since getting her power, but this was the first time someone thanked her in person. She failed to fight back a blush. “Sorry, I don’t know what to say to that. Except, I reckon you don’t owe me at all. If it weren’t for you, I’d be monster chow by now.”

Regardless of how long it has been from her perspective, Milly still vividly remembered Terra shattering the window to blast Meatcrawl at the last second.

“Heh. Aren’t you modest?” Terra tossed Milly the syringe. “You’re in for a surprise later. Anyway, have this.”

“Gah!” Milly nearly had a heart attack as she saw the needle coming for her. She fumbled it, trying to avoid the sharp end, and just barely got a hold of it. “What the heck?”

“Huh. I thought you were super fast.” Terra sounded embarrassed. “So, uh, I guess this is a good time to mention that Miss Arkwright won’t share any details on our powers. It’s up to us what we want others to know… I’m just gonna guess you aren’t fast all the time?”

“Great guess.” Milly grumbled while she looked over the syringe. No label, but she was fairly sure it really was just blood. “She really didn’t tell you anything? Also, what is this?”

“Well, she mentioned you and Niki were cleared to join TRACE, but not that you had powers. Also that she’d be representing the mystery speedster and was working on a collab.” Terra tapped a finger to her chin. “Now that I think about it, if she already knows, I guess I should tell her that Stella and I know who you are now.”

“TRACE?” Milly tilted her head. “You mean ACE?”

“Oh, right. It’s new.” Terra groaned, clearly not thrilled to explain the whole thing. “Long story short? ACE is the main force of the team. TRACE is a subgroup geared toward investigation. Most of our new members aren’t suited to combat, so we split it up this way.”

“So, TRACE finds things, and ACE fights things?” Milly asked.

“Hey, that’s pretty good. I’ll be using that next time.” Terra actually grinned at that; she had a nice smile. To Milly’s surprise, Terra had actual teeth instead of just sand; how did that work? “As for that syringe, one of the new girls in TRACE made it. She goes by Cell-Line. Her power lets her create mild healing effects. We occasionally worked with her last year too, but she always refused to join. In hindsight, I guess that’s because The Minutemen had their hooks in her, and she didn’t want access to more information. I always figured she was just shy.”

“So, I inject this and it heals me up like you?” Milly felt apprehensive. “Why does it look like blood?”

“Because it is blood. Full disclosure, I never used it, for obvious reasons.” Terra ran a finger through her wrist where the veins would be but left just a gulf in the sand that slowly filled back up. “I just need a playground and a couple minutes, but I hear it feels better than it sounds.”

Milly set the syringe on her nightstand. “Right… I’ll take it later, maybe. Thanks, though. So, does that mean I’m in TRACE?”

“Yes and no.” Terra wobbled her hand. “Milly is in TRACE, but The Millisecond is in ACE. Obviously, nobody knows you are the same person.”

Milly blinked. “The Milliwhat?”

“It was all over the news. Th—”

“Milly!” Niki squealed from the open door, dropping a full lunch tray at her feet. Ignoring the mess, she rushed two steps forward before she abruptly paused and returned to close the door. As soon as it clicked into the frame, she ran over to Milly. “How do you feel? Do you need anything? What happened?”

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Terra rolled her chair backward to create some space for Niki. She gave Milly a nod then took a keen interest in the laptop on the desk, occupying herself.

“I’m alright.” Milly took Niki’s hands into her own, giving a reassuring squeeze. Even so, she felt them trembling while Niki stared at her on the verge of tears. “I got trapped by the fire, then accidentally discovered I can jump between buildings! Gotta work on my landing, hehe.”

Niki bit her lip. Milly’s bravado just made her tear up more. “I thought you would return within a minute or two like always, but then when you did not come back… What if I had gotten you killed? I should never have woken you up! I am so sorry.” Niki leaned in to hug Milly but froze while her eyes darted down to Milly’s burns and bandages. She swayed in place with indecision.

Right. It was easy for Milly to act blasé about her accident. By the time she woke up, the whole ordeal was already over, and Terra was there to tell her she’d taken care of the loose ends. Milly also knew exactly what she’d done wrong and to avoid touching Stella when she was waving from now on. It hadn’t been nearly the same for Niki, who’d been left in the dark and could only grow more worried with each passing minute.

Niki still had her pajamas on, but she looked like she hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep.

Even though Terra had brought Milly back an hour later, that still left another nine hours where nobody knew the first thing about what had happened to her. Niki was left with little more to do than blame herself and hope Milly would wake up soon.

Milly felt as though she’d swallowed a millstone. She’d neglected Niki’s perspective. After waking up, maybe the first thing she should have done was call Niki to let her know she was okay. At least do something to show understanding of the distress she’d caused. “...I’m sorry too.” Milly leaned in to meet Niki the rest of the way and wrapped her arms around her, ignoring the stinging that came with it.

Niki returned the hug without further hesitation.

----------------------------------------

It took Milly about ten minutes to tell the full story of what she’d been up to and how exactly she managed to trap herself on top of the burning police station. Her main goal was to reassure Niki that she’d had things well under control, for the most part. She might have tactically left out how scared she’d been at the end there.

In the background, Terra listened in and occasionally nodded as though parts of that night were finally making sense to her.

“You really saw colors and stars when Stella teleported you? Fascinating.” Thankfully, Niki was a sucker for any new information she could get regarding powers. She’d adopted the thinking pose, resting her chin on her knuckles while she stared off into space. “What could that have been? A place between worlds? Some pocket dimension? A visual guide for Stella? The number of stars appears to correlate to the number of people at your starting and ending position, yet that may be a simple coincidence. If so, however, what do the colors signify?”

“I don’t know!” Milly threw up her hands. Okay, maybe she was a sucker for it too. “Green is safe. Red might indicate heat? It sure was hot where we ended up.”

“Stella never mentioned colors or stars,” Terra interjected, “but those spider threads you saw vaguely match some part of her power. Talk to her about it if you want specifics. Anyway, I found what I wanted you to look at. Check it.”

Milly and Niki watched as Terra turned the laptop around. The screen displayed a webpage that Milly easily recognized.

The single biggest community on all things super related for the last decade. It included articles, forum discussions, a wiki database on known supers, and social media. The modern replacement for the newspaper and town square.

The Supers Public Affairs Network and Index.

Better known as: Span-Dex.

Milly had used it before, but ever since coming to Arkwright Academy, the real life supers had been much more interesting. Now though, she was dumbstruck, staring at a massive thread titled:

New Hero? Anyone rescued in an instant? (Solved! The Millisecond!)

Scrolling through the page revealed post after post. It started off tentatively. People who experienced a loss of time or memory of how they ended up elsewhere, but soon screenshots were posted with a couple of the notes she’d left people. Then links to news articles of other stories speculated to be related to her; not all of them were.

A few pages deeper, people were analyzing her signature, 00:00:01. Before long they identified the stopwatch format. A heated discussion on how that was pronounced, finally resolved by a community poll between Centisecond and Millisecond. The latter won. Much to the chagrin of some that rightly argued that was technically wrong.

Milly skipped to the final page where the discussion had moved on to how involved ‘The Millisecond’ had been in the evacuation of the burning apartment building. There were reports of all the doors opening at once which was evidence to some; others argued that if Millisecond was involved, the entire building would have been empty in the blink of an eye.

The biggest piece of evidence towards the end of the page was a statement to the press that the villain had been defeated but ACE’s bruiser, Terra, denied she’d done it.

Milly looked up from the laptop to Terra, bewildered.

“What? I didn’t want to steal your credit, but I never said who did it.” Terra protested. “In part because I didn’t know what you wanted to be called. I guess that’s been settled, though.”

“The Millisecond?” Milly groaned.

“I think it’s cute.” Niki gingerly wrapped an arm around Milly. “It suits you.”

That made Milly smile despite her reservations. She supposed she didn’t have any better names lined up, but she’d have liked to choose. Once the internet got a hold of something, it was nearly impossible to rebrand.

Milly looked over to Niki. “There’s only one thing to do…”

“Which is?” Niki asked.

Milly reached into her nightstand for a pen and notebook. She jotted down her answer then turned the message toward Niki and Terra.

If you can’t beat them.

Join them.

-00:00.001

Niki smirked. “You realize this means when you are a big famous hero, those early ‘misprint’ notes will be worth a fortune, right? Maybe you could write me a couple.” She nudged Milly’s shoulder.

“Huh, good point.” Terra thoughtfully stroked her chin. It made a sound like rubbing sandpaper together. “I could probably get your first note from Ruth before she figures that out. I’d be set for life.”

Milly rolled her eyes. “If you two are done trying to embarrass me, I’m starving.”

“Same, but uhm…” Niki gave a guilty glance back at the mess she’d left by the door when she dropped the tray. “The cafeteria was just closing when I left.”

“This is a good opportunity to flex some of your new privileges then,” Terra commented, drawing curious stares from both of them. “I mentioned it before, but you're part of TRACE. Your current task is to figure out who was behind the attack on the police station. You could call an emergency meeting with the other two members to coordinate. If that happens to be somewhere food related, well, how fortunate.”

“Can we simply do that?” Niki asked. “What else is included? Is there a guideline?”

Terra shrugged. “Since you lot are junior members of ACE, you might not get away with as much. Ruth claims that if you can defend the necessity of the action in general, the details aren’t as important. Personally, I just do what I think needs doing and put up with the penalties if there are any.”

Given Terra’s personality, that probably meant Terra didn’t care too much about breaking things. It certainly lined up with the window and solar panel Milly had seen her destroy. Milly definitely identified more with Terra’s approach.

Still, she liked the idea of meeting with the other girls over lunch. The agreement she’d made with Miss Arkwright required that she gave the team a fair chance, and that included getting to know them a little.

Actually, Milly supposed she’d been doing that with Terra already. She looked over to see Niki questioning Terra.

“So, how exactly were we supposed to know about this task? Do we have any leads? Who do we report to and how?” Niki made notes on her phone as she spoke. “In addition, where can I see who else is on TRACE?”

“We hadn’t gotten that far yet, okay? I guess we’ll add you to the group chat or something.” Terra had defaulted to her stern, annoyed expression while folding her arms. “As for how, just do whatever you did during the Meatcrawl/Vanna case. You had it handled. Talk to Paige and Celine.”

Terra obviously disliked being asked so many things that she didn’t have good answers to. Just like how Niki grew more exasperated with each answer that revealed how little thought had actually gone into this.

Still, after hanging out with Terra, one thing Milly noticed about her was that even though Terra scowled the whole time, she was still trying to provide answers.

Come to think of it, Niki’d also spoken to Terra about powers yesterday and gotten a good response.

Terra was actually a lot more helpful than Milly had expected. Maybe she’d always been. Milly mostly just remembered her as angry.

Milly wondered if she’d missed more things like that when she hadn’t been looking for it.

Milly’s phone buzzed. A quick check revealed an invite from Niki in two brand new group chats labeled ‘TRACE’ and ‘ACE’. They also had open invitations to two new girls: ‘Paige Turner’ and ‘Celine Cortez’.

Looking up from the screen, Milly saw Terra hold up her phone while Niki copied numbers. For someone without superspeed, Niki sure was quick to take charge of an operation she didn’t want to be in.

What was up with that?

“That’s all the members as of yesterday.” Terra flicked her clamshell phone closed. The old design made sense when Milly considered sand could not operate a touch screen. “Before you two head off. There’s just one more thing.”

“What’s up?” Milly asked while Niki took a break from her phone to hear her out.

For a long moment, Terra looked between the two of them, her expression unchanging. “…You don’t have to decide today, but would you consider speaking with Vanna at some point? I know Meatcrawl was a nightmare, but she’s been asking how yo—“

“Yes.” Milly didn’t skip a beat. She’d been distracted by her own novel problems, but she was still curious what had become of Vanna after locking her in that freezer.

Niki glanced at Milly and gave a hesitant nod. “We heard that NYMPH was handling her. How is she?”

“Hungry and not ready for edible visitors,” Terra admitted. Her demeanor showed that it was as disappointing to say as to hear. “I can’t talk about it, but maybe soon. If you crack this arson case, I’d have a much better argument for bringing you in.”

Milly shared a look with Niki. “You hungry?”

“I could eat.”