Max, Gretchen, and Koffi lapsed into silence as they racked their brains, trying to formulate a new plan to grab their opponents’ flag. Each second they lingered in the jungle, not taking action, was a fresh opportunity for another team in the Capture the Flag tournament to win before Max’s team did.

“With the lines of sight they have from their position on the beach,” Max mused aloud, “the moment we step from out of cover, they’ll see us coming a mile away.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” Gretchen said. “Thanks for the recap.”

Max glared at the bald-headed woman. “How is that helpful?”

“Oh, like you stating the obvious is incredibly helpful.”

“We need something to neutralize their visibility advantage,” Koffi said, trying to get them back on track. “A shame it’s not nighttime. Or foggy.”

Inspiration struck Max. He snapped his fingers. “That’s it!”

“What’s it?” Gretchen demanded.

“Fog,” Max said, excited. “Do you know how fog is made?”

Gretchen’s brow furrowed. “With a machine. Sorry to tell ya, but we don’t have a fog machine handy. This ain’t a music video.”

“That’s just it—we might be able to create our own fog. Fog is essentially a low-lying cloud, formed when the air near the ground cools down to its dew point. The dew point is the temperature at which air becomes saturated with moisture and can’t hold any more water vapor, causing it to condense into tiny droplets. Namely, fog.”

Gretchen looked at Max like he had spoken ancient Egyptian.

“What?” Max felt self-conscious. “I read a lot. There’s not much else to do where I’m from that doesn’t involve drinking or drugs. I’ve been making my way through all the books in my tiny public library, including the ones about the weather.

“But that’s not the point. The point is, this humid tropical air is so thick with water vapor, it’s practically soupy. So if we can cool the air just enough to reach the dew point without going below it, we might be able to create our own patch of fog.”

Koffi’s eyes lit up, seeing what Max was driving at. “Gretchen can cool the other team’s environment to the point where fog forms. We can then make our move without them seeing us coming.”

Gretchen looked at both of them like they were crazy. “Guys, I make ice. I don’t cool the air. I certainly don’t make fog.”

“How do you make your ice?” Max asked her.

“Huh? What do you mean? I just do it.”

“But you don’t create ice out of nothing. Matter is neither created nor destroyed. It’s the law of conservation of mass. You form your ice out of something. You’re not a magician. If you were, Mirrorkin would have classified you as a Mystic like Koffi, whose body uses magic to create elements that don’t naturally exist within him. Mystics use magic to create something out of nothing. You’re an Elementalist, which means you work with what already exists. I’m guessing you form your ice by extracting moisture from the air and cooling it until it freezes. If you can control the temperature precisely, maybe you can cool the air around us just enough to form fog, not ice.”

Koffi nodded in agreement with Max’s logic. Gretchen just looked slack-jawed, as if she didn’t really understand what Max was saying. Max wasn’t surprised Mirrorkin had placed her in the Henchman Division; students in that Division seemed better at taking orders than giving them, or thinking things through for themselves.

Max leaned in closer to Gretchen, his expression earnest. “Just try it for me, okay? We’ll start small. Put your hands together. Try focusing on cooling the air around your hands slowly, gently. Don’t go straight to freezing. Just . . . chill it.”

Gretchen looked doubtful, but nodded. She held out her hands, palms facing up.

“Here goes nothing,” she muttered.

“Visualize the air around your hands getting cooler,” Max encouraged her. “Imagine the moisture in the air, how it might feel to have it condense.”

Gretchen’s brow furrowed in concentration. Her eyes glowed a vibrant blue. Ice immediately coated her hands like they were the surface of a freezing pond.

Shaking her head in frustration, Gretchen clenched her fists to break the ice. It fell to the ground in clumps.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

She tried again. Her eyes glowed once more, but not nearly as vividly blue.

A moment passed, then another.

Nothing happened.

“It’s okay, just keep focusing,” Max urged, trying to keep his mounting impatience out of his voice. “You can do this.” I hope she can do this.

Koffi, watching intently, added his encouragement. “We’ve seen what you can do with ice. This is just a different application of the same power. The theory is sound.”

Gretchen exhaled slowly, eyes still fixed on her hands.

“Okay, okay,” she said. “Cooling, not freezing.”

At first, there was again nothing.

But then, gradually, a fine mist began to form above her palms. It was faint, almost imperceptible.

As she continued to concentrate, it grew denser.

“There! You’re doing it!” Max exclaimed, unable to contain his excitement.

Gretchen’s eyes widened in surprise. “I . . . I am?”

“Yes, look!” Max pointed at the growing cloud of fog in her hands. “You’re creating fog right now!”

The mist swirled between Gretchen’s hands, thickening into a small cloud. Soon, fog was pouring out of her hands like smoke from a witch’s bubbling cauldron.

She looked up at Max, a mix of astonishment and pride on her face. “This is amazing!” she breathed.

Max clapped her on the shoulder. “See? You just needed to think outside the box. Now, imagine doing this on a larger scale, around the enemy team. Think you’ve got the juice to pull something like that off?”

Gretchen was looking at her fog-belching hands in amazed wonder, like a child who had discovered her toy chest was a portal to a new world.

“Gretchen? Hello, Earth to Gretchen.”

“Huh?” She looked up, what Max had asked her finally sinking in. Her face became determined. “Now that I know I can do it at all, I’ll bet I can make enough fog so they won’t be able to see their own noses. As a prank, I filled my high school gymnasium with snow to the rafters. It’s what got me expelled. If I can do that, I’ll bet I can do this.”

“Good. You stay here and generate the fog. If you can get it thick enough, Koffi and I will run in. One of us will grab the flag amid all the confusion, and get out.” Even to Max’s optimistic ears, that sounded easier said than done. The fog would obscure his and Koffi’s vision as much as it would the other team’s. But any plan was better than no plan.

Koffi suddenly interjected. “I can use my powers to create something to draw the other team’s attention. Lure them toward me. While they’re distracted, you can slip past them in the fog and snag the flag. Since you can shadow hop to safety once you’re back out of the fog, you should be the one to go for the flag.”

“What kind of distraction are you talking about?” Max asked.

Koffi shrugged. “There are lots of options. I dunno . . . I’ll use white phosphorus or something.”

“What’s white phosphorus?” Gretchen asked, frowning.

“It’s an allotrope of the element phosphorus.”

Gretchen’s frown deepened. “What’s an allotrope?” Max could have mouthed the words with her, knowing the question would come. Someone who hadn’t bothered to spend time analyzing how her own powers worked wasn’t the type of person to know what an allotrope was.

“Allotropes are different forms of the same element,” Max explained. “A diamond is an allotrope of carbon, for example. So is graphite. But Koffi, isn’t white phosphorus dangerous?”

Koffi grinned fiercely. “It sure is. But that’s the beauty of it. It ignites when it comes into contact with air. Between the light show and the smoke it’ll produce, the other team will think they’re on the beaches of Normandy during D-Day.”

Max’s eyes widened in alarm. “Isn’t that stuff used in actual warfare? From what I’ve read, it burns intensely and can cause severe injuries. I think the smoke it produces is toxic, too. We can’t use something that dangerous.”

Koffi shrugged nonchalantly. “It’s effective. If the other team doesn’t have the good sense to get out of the way, that’s not our problem.”

A chill went down Max’s spine at Koffi’s cavalier attitude. Koffi was so smart and so reasonable that Max had forgotten whom he was dealing with: a Villain. Many Prometheus Academy students wouldn’t balk at hurting others. Malik was Exhibit A of that fact.

“We’re not here to hurt anyone,” Max said. He was about to appeal to Koffi’s sense of fair play, but then remembered when dealing with a Villain, it was better to appeal to his self-interest. “Pantheon explicitly said not to harm other students. If we do, he’ll probably disqualify us from the tournament even if we win it. Maybe even expel us. He doesn’t strike me as the type to go easy on students who defy him.”

Koffi glanced up thoughtfully at the ever-present monitoring drones bobbing overhead. They fed tournament telemetry to Pantheon, whose various replicants floated high overhead like all-knowing gods.

Koffi sighed, his fierce expression softening. “Alright, I get it. No white phosphorus. How about a bit of sodium or potassium instead? When they react with the water vapor in the fog, it’ll create a violent reaction. A kind of mini-explosion. It should be enough to draw the other team’s attention without causing any real harm.”

Max considered this. “As long as it’s safe and won’t hurt anyone, that could work. It’ll create a diversion and draw their team toward you, while I beeline for the flag.”

“Exactly. I’ll throw small amounts. It’ll be just enough to startle them, not enough to do any damage.”

Max nodded, feeling a surge of adrenaline. A lot could go wrong with this plan, but crouching here jawing even more about it would give other teams the chance to capture their flags before Max’s team did.

“Let’s do it,” he decided. “Gretchen, start with the fog. Koffi, you and I will make a run for the beach as soon as the fog is in place. You’ll try to draw the team toward you while I head for the flag. Molly, you should still be linked with me, able to hear and see what’s going on through my eyes. If this plan goes sideways and we all get tagged, send Gene and Ollie running up here to try to capture the flag again. You stay where you are to defend our own flag.”

Gretchen and Koffi nodded, determined looks on their faces. It was interesting how the team followed his lead so readily. If you acted like you knew what you were doing and spoke with confidence, he realized, people tended to defer to you. It was a lesson to mull over more later.

But right now, he needed to focus on the task at hand:

Capturing that flag, and getting the hell off this island.