Emmett grabbed his things from the locker room, left the lab, and hustled down the Eastside to the bus stop on 61st Street.

The first and second bus of the day was a mix of passengers—students, workers, and retirees going down town—but this bus was almost exclusively workers going home from Gnosis.

Then he settled in for the long trip back to his apartment by putting on some tunes and getting started on his homework; he couldn’t do much, but he could at least map out the rest of what he needed to get done by the end of the night and the next couple days.

When he finally got to his apartment on the West End, Emmett felt like he had a handle on the rest of his evening.

He hopped off the bus and walked the last few blocks to the Woods. It was one of several blocks of apartments that were predominantly rented out to students of the university. Lazy guitar echoed through the apartments, and he passed groups of students under the gazebos.

Emmett hiked up the stairs to the fourth floor, picking up two squashed beer cans along the way—he’d throw them away when he got inside. He opened up room 449 on the top floor and stepped in.

The apartments weren’t much, they definitely weren’t the Heights, but the Woods had been home these past two years of college. Two bedrooms, living room, bathroom—everything a college student needed, and not a damn thing more.

They had to scrounge for furniture, but at least the Woods let them have free rein, so long as they didn’t knock down any walls and repainted when it was time to leave.

And remodel, they did.

Room 449 was decked out in strings of ambient lights, all connected with the TV in the living room and speakers throughout the house. It was currently pulsing red in time with the symphonic music his roommate preferred when studying.

Skeletons of electronics littered what would’ve been the kitchen table.

Emmett stepped in and shut the door behind him, calling out a greeting to his roommate, Lachlan—who went by Lock—but no one answered.

Emmett walked through the small kitchen and living room, and peered into Lock’s empty room, but he wasn’t there. The living room window was open, so Emmett climbed out to the roof and checked there too, but didn’t find him.

Lock kept odd hours—frequently working nights and preferring to sleep during the day—but usually they crossed paths in the morning and evening.

Emmett shrugged and started on his homework.

~

Emmett had migrated with his laptop to the living room couch. Then he migrated again to the roof, hoping the cool night air would wake him up.

Each apartment block had a small flat section of roof where the air conditioning units sat in rows. Emmett’s apartment just happened to be located right beneath it, and their fire escape went directly up to it. Emmett and Lock had stashed folding chairs and a small table up there—their own private balcony.

They rarely went up there in the Summer, but this time of year was perfect.

It was ten o’clock and the bustle on the street was starting to settle down. Emmett had knocked out his daily assignments and started on his engineering project—the radio locator.

It was equal parts design and programming, but ultimately simple. Three antennas were linked together and fitted with directional cones. The computer program helped analyze incoming signal strength and then pinpointed the origin of the signal. Ideally, the cones would turn and the antennas would move. This would make triangulation quicker, but Emmett’s program worked well enough with stationary mountings.

Till now he’d only built a small hand-held locator to prove that it would work, but he was going to build a full-sized version for his project—one that he would mount on the roof and could—theoretically—locate a signal anywhere in the city.

There were caveats, of course. His apartment roof wasn’t that tall and it wasn’t in the center of the city, so skyscrapers would interfere with signals from downtown and signals from across the bay would be weak. But none of that mattered for a school project.

Emmett looked away from his computer screen and rubbed his eyes. He should take a break soon.

For a moment, he imagined leaping rooftop to rooftop, using the locator array to hone in on a superhero transmission across the city. The system on his roof could only get him so close, so of course, he had a smaller system built into his suit. A readout on his helmet guided him closer to the target.

Emmett heard the muffled echo of footsteps on the fire escape and startled out of his daydream. His roommate, Lachlan, popped up with his backpack slung over his shoulder.

“Nice night,” Lock called as he walked over.

“You know it.”

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Lock was a bio major and avid weight-lifter who’d taken to altering his mind as much as his body. Emmett wasn’t sure exactly how Lock managed to try out seemingly every hallucinogen known to man and hold down his internship at Gnosis, but somehow he did. Probably some combination of just being smart enough and good enough at hiding it.

Lock dropped his backpack on the ground, grabbed another folding chair and slumped down into it, face and bald head still hidden by his baggy hoodie.

“Long evening?” Emmett asked.

“Nah, not tonight.” Lock pulled out his vape and took a hit. “Tomorrow night, though, I’m working a concert. So I’ll be late.”

“Yeah?”

The statement hung in the air like smoke, and Lock didn’t answer. That was how he was sometimes—cryptic for the sake of being cryptic. Emmett had learned to ignore it.

Instead, Emmett talked about the radio locator project. Lock listened and nodded along before starting to pull out his own notebooks from his pack.

“...And at the end, I’m going to set up antennas there, there, and there,” Emmett said, pointing to the corners of the roof.

“Let me know if you need any help with that,” Lock said absently. He had paused his writing and looked up at the sky. It was impossible to see the stars in the city, but up on the roof, Emmett thought he could see them sometimes.

Emmett turned to Lock. “How about you? What are you guys working on in the lab now?”

“Man… just more beauty products.” He hesitated before continuing. “Sometimes I think I got into the wrong line of work. Maybe I should’ve went into engineering like you did.”

“At least they’ll tell you what you’re working on,” Emmett replied. “Dr. Venture still won’t tell me what kind of stuff we’re working on.”

“Still think it’s weapons?”

Emmett shrugged. “Probably. That’s where all the money is, right?”

Lock chuckled. “That and makeup. You still trying to talk to Clara?”

Emmett thought back to their brush in the broom closet. “I don’t know. She’s hard to read sometimes. Doesn’t help that her dad is my boss.”

Lock took another drag and waved a finger at him. “You always were good at digging holes for yourself.”

Emmett scoffed, but eventually they both laughed.

Lock said, “Remember when getting a date was the craziest thing we had going on?”

“Some of us still have a hard time getting dates.” Emmett meant it as a joke—Lock certainly didn’t have trouble getting a date—but Lock didn’t laugh. He was staring off toward the skyscrapers in the distance.

“I’m just saying, seems like things are getting more complicated.”

Emmett watched his roommate, but couldn’t see his face behind the hood. “Between school and Gnosis and bouncing? I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”

“Yeah,” Lock said suddenly. “Just senior year. All that. I’m going to turn in. I’ll catch you later.”

Then he climbed down from the roof, leaving Emmett sitting alone, wondering what he’d said.

~

It was midnight when Emmett finally stopped working on his project. He’d finished diagramming the design for the radio locator and made a list of all the materials he would need to build the final model.

Instead of going to bed right away, Emmett scrolled lazily through the news sites, looking for more super news and updates. Then he made his way to the various forums that he frequented. Always lurking, never actually posting. Double Mask, Reddest Knight, and The Green Machine… There were other forums, but those three had the best info. Emmett suspected that there were a mixture of heroes, villains, cops, and government agents that leaked information there because there were many stories that often made their way into the actual news days or even weeks after appearing in the forums. But then, for every kernel of truth, there was a pound of rumor and bullshit to search through.

> There were two thefts at Aquarius stores, which police were theorizing were actually a string of connected robberies, which the local mob might’ve been involved in.

>

> Witnesses sighted magic using supers fighting vampires. There was no way to tell if they were involved with a larger cabal or just monster hunters.

>

> Then there was another rumor about Paragon retiring from the Summit of Heroes. It felt like this one came up every other month.

There were other rumors from across the country, and other sites with news from across the world, but even on his curious days, Emmett could only take in so much at a time. There was a world of super news out there, and he was just one guy.

With heavy eyes, he opened up his personal database. When Emmett was young, he’d spent his childhood reading about heroes, compiling lists and accounts of their powers. Sure, there were other sites and publicly sanctioned archives that had almost as much information, but Emmett had found discrepancies over the years.

His was more complete.

Public sites often didn’t list the known weaknesses and limitations of heroes and villains, and other private forums were often monitored and sanctioned if they listed such things—there had been several high-profile forums that had been forcibly shut down over the years. Now, the main forums quickly and quietly enforced those rules on their members. Talk about the wrong thing, get banned.

Even talking in code wasn’t enough sometimes.

So Emmett maintained his own database, encrypted and secure, which focused more on powers and weaknesses of supers.

Emmett scrolled to the Scarlet King, the villain that Dr. Venture had been focused on. He was one of the world’s most powerful telekinetics and also a formidable psychic, whose power manifested in violent purple energy.

Emmett scrolled through a dozen photos—all far away or obscured by debris. The Scarlet King wasn’t exactly known for staying still for photos.

Why had Dr. Venture been so fixated on them?

The obvious answer was that someone Venture cared about had been hurt or killed by the Scarlet King. Emmett imagined that thousands of people felt that way.

Or maybe… Venture was a cape plotting his next move against an old nemesis.

Emmett chuckled. That was dumb. Why would a cape be making weapons—especially ones that agencies like the Division of Superhuman Affairs often turned against heroes and villains alike?

No, the real answer was simple and tragic. Venture and Clara just hadn’t confided in him. Maybe he could ask Clara about it sometime? That would be normal, right?

Emmett fell asleep a few minutes later.

~ ~ ~