Gretchen knelt behind a bush on the perimeter of the beach occupied by Damian’s team, her arms outstretched and her hands cupped like she was a video game character casting a fireball spell. Her eyes blazed blue, as if she had been possessed by an ice demon.

Koffi and Max crouched alongside her, ready to run hell for leather if their cold-manipulating teammate was able to pull off a large-scale version of the fog she had successfully generated in small scale between her hands.

A mist began to curl around the enemy team’s ankles, creeping upward in silent tendrils.

Max’s stomach fluttered with excitement. It was working!

The mist’s progression was initially slow. But then it increased exponentially in both breadth and thickness, rising like a super-speed flood tide.

Someone on Damian’s team cried out in alarm, but it was already too late. Damian’s team was swallowed by a white fog thick enough to eat. In a few more seconds, the entire beach was covered.

The beach, moments ago clear under the bright sky, had completely succumbed to Gretchen’s powers. Considering how long it had taken Gretchen to master creating even a little bit of fog with her cold manipulation, it was breathtaking how quickly she was able to scale up her newfound ability. She might not be the sharpest tool in the shed, Max thought, but when she unleashed her abilities, she was like a dormant volcano erupting. Or whatever the cold analogue of a volcano was.

Though it had been his plan, Max was in stunned awe of how well it was working.

“Go now!” Gretchen gasped, shaking him from his incredulous reverie. Her outstretched arms shook with effort as her face dripped with sweat even more profusely than it had from the heat. “I don’t know how long I can hold this.”

Max’s pulse thundered a war drum’s beat. He glanced at Koffi, who nodded back.

They were ready.

Max and Koffi burst from their jungle hideaway, sprinting toward the fog bank. Max peeled away from Koffi, aiming for a different part of the soupy fog than his teammate. Max’s blood pounded in his ears, a deafening roar that matched the breakneck pace of his mad sprint.

He plunged into the fog bank moments after Koffi. The fog swallowed him whole, making the island disappear like it was a flimsy mirage. The fog transformed everything, muting sounds and blurring shapes, turning the beach into an alien landscape of swirling white.

The air immediately went from hot and humid to cold and damp. Each breath Max took was a cold shock to his heaving lungs. The mist was so dense that droplets of water clung to his eyelashes, turning the world into even more of a glistening blur than it already was.

He slowed to a creep. Visibility was reduced to almost zero in the thick whiteness surrounding him. He strained his other senses, already disoriented by the all-encompassing fog, trying to get his bearings. Muffled shouts of confusion came from Damian’s team, their voices distorted and directionless in the swirling, thick haze.

The enemy flag was at the water’s edge. Gretchen was supposed to extend her fog bank only to the water. Since the sun was still shining brightly on the rippling sea, the plan had been for Max to use his shadow-sensing abilities to use the tiny shadows dancing on the water to navigate toward the flag once his vision was obscured by the fog.

Max stretched out his awareness, trying to regain the lock on the water he had already lost in the shock of being plunged into a whole new white world that hobbled his vision and eradicated his sense of direction.

An explosion erupted from somewhere in the milky void, making Max flinch despite him expecting it. There was another explosion, then another. Muffled voices raised in alarm all around Max. As per the plan, Koffi must’ve been using his powers to create elements that reacted violently with the mist swirling around them.

Max suddenly froze. It wasn’t because of the whiteout conditions or the cacophony of the explosions. He felt people shifting in the mist, converging toward the explosions. Despite them being many yards away and completely obscured by the fog, Max somehow knew exactly where the other team was and where they headed.

What?! How?

He was stunned by what he was feeling, a completely unexpected shift in his perceptions. His shadow-sensing abilities were responding to the fog in a way he couldn’t possibly have anticipated. The fog somehow made the outlines of the people within it stand out in sharp relief in his mind’s eye, as if the people themselves were shadows. Despite him not able to see as much as a foot ahead with his actual eyes, with this suddenly heightened awareness, he “saw” everyone in the fog in his mind, like blotches of body heat detected via infrared goggles.

Stunned by this, Max’s mind raced to formulate a theory to explain it.

In normal conditions, shadows were formed when an object blocked a light source, and they were defined by the clear contrast between the light and the darkness. In this fog, the light was scattered, bouncing off all the water vapor in the air, blurring stark contrasts, eliminating the formation of sharp shadows. Max’s ability to sense shadows had somehow adapted to these conditions. The fog, acting like a light diffuser, created subtle variations in brightness around objects, almost like soft shadows. While they weren’t as defined as the crisp shadows he was used to, these variations were still detectable by his shadow-sensing ability. It was as if each person within the fog had become a walking shadow, allowing Max to “see” them in his mind despite not being able to see them visually.

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This adaptation of his powers was unexpected. But most welcome.

Max advanced, cautiously at first, then with increased speed and assurance as his confidence in this new aspect of his powers grew.

He easily avoided the silhouettes of the people he sensed around him, all of whom were stumbling blindly toward where Koffi’s explosions were still erupting. The plan was working better than Max ever could have anticipated. His opponents were effectively blind, but he was moving with the confidence of the sighted.

In the land of the blind, he thought smugly, the one-eyed man is king. He was starting to feel almost giddy. For once since being shanghaied to this misbegotten island, things were going Max’s way.

He easily located the enemy flag and grabbed it. Its erstwhile guardian Luna was gone; she was one of the shadowy blotches shambling toward Koffi’s explosions.

As soon as Max tucked the enemy flag under his arm, the muffled explosions ceased. Reaching out with his newfound awareness, Max sensed three shadows off in the foggy distance, all practically on top of one another. Two members of the opposing team must’ve finally converged on Koffi, and tagged him.

One of the three shadows suddenly split from the others. Moving at a rapid clip, it was somehow beelining for Max.

It’s got to be Damian, Max thought. The size and shape are right. His morphic resonance powers must’ve alerted him to my presence.

Time to go.

Max began moving through the cold fog back toward the jungle. His pace was more of a slow trot than a run. Even in the best of times, running through sand was laborious. Not being able to see where his feet were landing was not the best of times, even with his shadow-sensing powers giving him a general idea of the terrain.

But Max didn’t have to break any sprint records. He just had to be faster than the shadowy figure pursuing him. He had altered his course in an attempt to intercept Max.

Max finally burst out of the fog bank, wisps of fog clinging to him like fingers trying to pull him back. The sudden sunshine was blinding, the abrupt atmospheric shift jarring. It was like stepping out of a refrigerator into a steam room baking under the glare of a spotlight.

Blinded by the sun, Max slowed, afraid he might stumble and fall. If he did, he’d surely get tagged by the shadowy figure that was still on an intercept course within the fog. Despite wanting to take a moment to catch his breath and adjust to the light and temperature change, Max forged ahead as quickly as he could. There were no shadows large enough for him to shadow hop from on the pristine beach, but there were plenty on the jungle’s edge. He just had to get there before he was tagged.

A sound behind him made Max venture a glance back.

Damian was out of the fog. The sudden transition from opacity to bright sunshine didn’t seem to hamper Max’s roommate in the slightest. His arms swung rhythmically and his legs churned like well-oiled pistons, propelling him through the sand towards Max.

Damian was frighteningly fast. If it were an equal foot race, he would smoke Max.

But it wasn’t an equal foot race. Max had a big head start. As long as he didn’t trip, he knew he would reach the jungle before Damian reached him.

Max arrived at the jungle’s edge in a spray of sand. He was swaddled by the cool shadow of a palm tree.

Panting, Max spun around. He grinned triumphantly, giving Damian a mock salute before he shadow hopped.

Damian and the dismay on his face disappeared.

Max reappeared a stone’s throw away, deeper in the jungle. His heart soared as he exulted. Now that he was back on his own team’s territory, he couldn’t get tagged. The only way Damian’s team could beat Max’s team was if the former somehow got to Max’s flag and brought it to their home base before Max took their flag to his.

Max snorted at the thought. Good luck with that. Gene and Ollie were ready to tag anyone making their way on the jungle trail toward their home base. If by some miracle someone made it past those two, Molly was guarding home base. Besides, Max would shadow hop the enemy flag to his home base long before the enemy team could penetrate deep into their territory.

The other team was essentially already beaten. Max just prayed he got the flag back to home base before another team in the tournament beat him out for the grand prize: a night off of the island.

As Max shadow hopped through the jungle toward home base, victory in his grasp, he thought about how he would make good on his escape from Prometheus Academy. Armed with what he had learned about his powers during his brief time on Villains Island, he was confident he could elude any chaperones that might accompany him off the island.

Then what?

Edgar would still be stuck on the island. Max had promised to not leave the speedster behind. His mother was a U.S. Senator. If Max told her where her son had been abducted to, surely she had the pull to mobilize the government and all the Heroes necessary to free her son. Once the wider world knew of Prometheus Academy’s existence, the supervillain school would no doubt be shut down for good, its faculty and maybe even its students arrested for violations of the Unreal Accords.

What about Gene and Damian? Though they were technically criminals, Max considered them friends. Could he really bring himself to narc on them?

As Max got closer to home base, he wrestled with bittersweet thoughts.

Yes, he would escape the island and no longer be a prisoner. But wouldn’t he be exchanging one set of shackles for another? His life in Rebel County, Mississippi had been a prison, of sorts. Time away from his home county had given Max perspective, showing it for what it was—a prison of poverty, desperation, and corruption. At least at Prometheus, he was learning how to use his powers. He had developed his powers more in a few days here than he had in months back in Mississippi.

Max emerged from the shadow of a tree at his team’s home base, the captured flag in hand. The tree’s thick foliage seemed to embrace Max in welcome.

Molly was nowhere to be seen. He wondered why she had abandoned her post, but dismissed the thought as soon as he had it. It didn’t matter. All he had to do was plant the enemy flag next to his team flag, and the game was over.

His heart pounded with the thrill of success, yet his mind was a whirlpool of conflicting emotions. He pondered his future outside the island and the implications of his actions on his friends. What would life hold for him after Prometheus Academy? What would life hold for them? Would he ever see them again?

As he moved out of the shadow of the tree to place the flag, a soft sound whispered to his right. Some primal survival instinct screamed a warning at him.

Too late.

There was a dull thud. An excruciating pain exploded in his head. It was sudden, overwhelming, a lightning strike to his brain.

His knees buckled. His vision blurred. The ground seemed to rush up to meet him. The captured flag slipped from his fingers as the world spun, with darkness swooping down like vultures to fresh roadkill.

The last thing Max saw was the enemy flag, mere inches from where it needed to be planted.

Victory, like consciousness, slipped through his grasp as darkness shuttered his eyes.