"Good morning, Nick," the nineteen-year-old clerk greets me as I enter the convenience store.

"Good morning, Kathy," I greet her as I pick up a shopping basket.

She's one of last year's graduates and is a year older than me. We never really talked until she started working here a couple of years ago, and even then, it's mostly just exchanging pleasantries. I'm not a sociable person, which keeps people at a distance, which is my intention.

Thankfully, Kathy isn't the type of girl to persistently try to talk to someone who clearly wants to be left alone. Instead, she greets me when I come in, talks enough for my transaction, then wishes me a good day. Sometimes, she might try to sprinkle in a little bit of small talk as she rings me up if she senses my mood is good enough for it.

Unlike the girl who works here in the evenings, who also tries to follow me around as she tries to force me into a conversation. That is annoying beyond belief. She's one of the only people that persistent.

Driving people away is part of why I wear darker clothes and try to show no interest in anything they have to say. Socializing with others is pretty bothersome, especially as it means people try to drag me into things I don't want to be dragged into.

Walking into one of the aisles, I begin looking at the goods they have today. I add to my basket a bottle of lighter fluid, some matches, marshmallows, chocolate bars, graham crackers, mini marshmallows, two boxes of pancake mix, and-

"Oh," I pick up a can of peaches. "This is rare."

I add four of them to my basket, since that's the listed limit per person. They must have gotten a decent supply in, though they're still expensive. Most of the peach orchards were destroyed in the World Revolt, and a place like here? We don't receive shipments of the rarer stuff that often. The canned stuff is more likely than the fresh, too.

After filling my basket with enough stuff to fill my backpack, I head to the checkout, and just as I start unloading the goods onto the conveyor belt, the front doors open behind me.

"Good morning!" Kathy greets them, then gives me a slight wink. "He's attractive, Nick."

I can't help it, I give the customer a glance. He looks about eighteen, like me. With a lean build, pitch-black hair, and bright green eyes, he's quite hot. Neither facial hair nor acne, nor any signs of past acne, adorn his face. Man is he my type. He's dressed in black skinny jeans and a black button-up left undone over a dark green tee that hugs his lean frame nicely, showing that he's probably got some light abs underneath.

Thankfully, he doesn't seem to have noticed that I'm staring, because he is hot. Instead, he just picks up a shopping basket and heads into an aisle, though I can still see the top of his head over the shelves.

"Earth to Nick," Kathy says in amusement, and I look at her. "Made you look."

"Well, you weren't wrong," I tell her, then sigh. "With that inhuman beauty, he's definitely a Sigil-Bearer."

All Sigil-Bearers are pretty hot, it's one of the ways they can be identified. That, plus the Sigil they bear somewhere on their body. Even though one wasn't visible on him, I'm certain he has one.

"You have inhuman beauty," she counters. "Does that make you one?"

"You know I inherited good genes from my parents," I roll my eyes. "And I keep fit with plenty of training and exercise. If I were a Sigil-Bearer, I'd probably only be average."

"I wish I had supermodel parents," Kathy finishes ringing up my purchases, and I insert my card into the reader. "Seriously. You got it good. I bet you could catch the attention of a Sigil-Bearer."

Sigil-Bearers are really only attracted to other Sigil-Bearers, it's something inherent about them. Yeah, there are a couple of known cases where one might have gotten with a normie, but it was never sexual and only ever short-term.

As teen romances are wont to be.

"You do realize that the more powerful they are, the better their senses are, right?" I ask Kathy, who freezes up. I pull my card out of the reader. "Just like with their strength, speed, and healing, their senses grow with the strength of their powers. So if you talk too loudly about your lust for him he'll probably hear you."

"It means he heard about you having the hots for him, too," she says with a low voice, then gives me a wink. "Though if he were into us normies…"

"My receipt, please," I roll my eyes.

I must be in a friendlier mood than I thought, that's rare. Normally, I'd just grunt at her and try to get her to leave me alone, just so that I don't have to engage very much.

"Just saying," she grins as she hands me my receipt. "You have a good day, Nick. I'll see you next time."

"See you, Kathy," I grab my bags, then walk over to the doors.

I place my receipt and debit card into my wallet, then return it to my pocket before pulling off my backpack. I arrange my purchases inside my backpack, pull it back on, then leave.

That Sigil-Bearer… I don't recognize him, even though he's my age. There's only one known Sigil-Bearer in the area, a seven-year-old girl whose ability allows her to generate a small flame with her hands. There used to be another known Sigil-Bearer in the area, but she disappeared from the public eye two years ago.

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Considering that I don't recognize him and he's not local, he's not a famous one, either. Most of the famous ones are heroes, helping people in the wake of the World Revolt. Or at least, as much as they could, considering every single one of them was conceived after it, and the World Revolt itself only occurred nineteen years ago.

Because of the location of this town and the fact that it takes more than two hours to reach us from the next town, my suspicions are raised about him. It wouldn't be the first time a Sigil-Bearer came looking. I'll need to check my supplies. If he's powerful, I might need to use a rocket launcher again.

Maybe I could have Ian drop off some more? I know that after my last encounter with Klen, I'm low on a few things. Thankfully, I took out the Sigil-Bearer they had with them before he could activate his ability.

That would not have been good. Someone who could vibrate the air itself? I'm lucky he didn't notice the rocket until right before it hit him. If he'd seen it coming sooner, he probably would have destroyed it.

Once he was out of the picture, the rest were easy. I just lobbed a few grenades at them and shot the ones still alive after. It's what I train for, and the Klen have no business here.

They believe in the superiority of the Sigil-Bearers, even if most of them are people who were born before the World Revolt and are thus normies. They want to pave the way for a world of only Sigil-Bearers holding power and authority, knowing that even they will be nothing more than pests and slaves if their dreams are realized.

Despicable.

"Excuse me," someone steps in front of me. "Are you Casimir Wade?"

The speaker is a man dressed in jeans and a dark red button-up, and he looks to be in his late thirties, maybe early forties. No visible earpiece, but he does have a clipboard tucked under one arm. Around his neck, he wears a silver chain, though it's barely visible due to being worn under his shirt rather than over.

A man like him plus the Sigil-Bearer showing up so close togetherpretty much confirms my suspicions. Klen is here.

There are only three types of people who seek me out intentionally. The Klen, reporters from journals and news stations, and Federation employees. Of them, only the Federation calls me by my middle name, which is what I prefer to go by.

While this man is trying to give off the feel of being a reporter, what with the clipboard and formal approach, it's obvious he isn't.

His stance tells me he's a fighter, and his tone isn't that of any reporter I've met before from when they first approach me. It's full of authority and determination, confidence. No sign of the curiosity every reporter before has had.

After meeting enough reporters and Klen members, it's easy to see through the guises the Klen members use. They make it so obvious.

However, I do need to be sure. It's possible he's a former soldier, so I need to provoke him into revealing himself. There's one way to guarantee he does. If he's Klen, he'll fall for it. If he's just a reporter, he won't.

"I prefer Nick," I tell him. "Who are you?"

"My name is Joshua Themps," he introduces himself. "I work with the Nightly Wentol, and we were wanting to expand our viewer area to some of the places more isolated after the World Revolt. Frendok is one of those towns, and we were hoping to interview some of the locals regarding major events that have happened here."

A plausible story. Also one I've heard before. Does the Klen never learn?

Then again, we usually kill the people who realize I know they're lying. It's not because they lied to me, but because they're Klen. One would think they'd get the idea and stop sending people here. How many more of their Sigil-Bearers do I need to blow up, how many more of their agents do I need to kill, before they stop? There's never more than ten, either.

I mean, it's good target practice, and my skills have improved a lot, but seriously? They've had to have lost at least two hundred people over the last two years from my attacks. I guess being a massive, global terrorist cult means they can continue to throw lives away in pursuit of their goal.

"Sorry," I tell him. "But if you want to interview me about my parents, you'll need to give me something in return."

"I'm sorry about what happened to your parents," he tells me. "And know it must have been hard for you. I wouldn't dream of trying to dredge up old wounds like that. Actually, I'm here about something else that happened. The case of Allison Smol, we heard you might know where she is? I was hoping for an interview with her."

There's the proof he's from the Klen rather than an actual journalist. My habit of going into the ruins outside of this rebuilding town have caused rumors that I might know of her location. There is no actual evidence that she live sin the ruins, though, so it's all speculation.

A proper journalist would have had one of two responses to my statement.

If they were actually here for her, they would have asked me for an interview directly, just to see if I did actually know something. They wouldn't have told me they were hoping for an interview with her, but for those who might know her or what she's been doing since she ran away. A proper journalist or reporter wouldn't dare try to risk her actual location.

As for the other response, every journalist I've spoken with already knew about my parents. And as soon as I mentioned my condition, they always reacted differently than this man. Either they asked me what my condition was, or showed surprise I was willing to talk about my parents.

Not once have they told me they had no interest in reopening old wounds and then moved on without batting an eye. This man showed absolutely no interest or surprise.

He's Klen.

A proper journalist would never be disinterested in what happened to the first deaths directly caused by a Sigil-Bearer. A three-year-old one who lost control of his power during a tantrum while they were babysitting him.

They died in front of me, when I was four years old, and I alone survived the incident. Anyone who properly researched me would realize that I have a vivid memory of the incident, too, and any proper journalist would have researched me as soon as they found out about me and the rumors around me. In fact, they'd have known about me even before discovering I might know Ali's whereabouts.

Which is how I know for a fact that he's Klen and not a journalist or news reporter.

"Sorry," I tell him. "I never really knew her before the incident, and haven't seen her since. Wherever she is, it's not nearby, and I couldn't help you arrange an interview even if you paid me a hundred million to try. Now, if you don't mind, I want to go play paintball with the deer."

"You want to do what?" He asks.

"Target practice," I tell him. "As I said, I don't know where she is. She disappeared two years ago, and I was already skipping school most days back then. Hell, I'm still skipping it. Today is a Monday, after all. School started over an hour ago. I mostly just hang around the ruins, which is why everyone seems to think I know where she is. I don't. She's not in them, and I don't know where she went. I never even saw her after the incident."

"Oh," he says. "Sorry to bother you, then."

I start walking away, and as I pass him, he grabs my shoulder with the hand holding the clipboard.

"If you do think of anything," he holds out a business card. "Could you give me a call?"

"Sure," I tell him. "But like I said, I don't know where she is and she ran away two years ago."

I take the business card and pocket it, then keep walking. I really do want to get to paintball, but it looks like I'll need to do some environmental cleanup first. Can't have terrorists running around the ruins here, they're bad for the ecosystem.