Zack moved outside into the hot September sun. Rachel was already moving quickly down the Promenade with a folder tucked between her arms. She gave no indication she saw Zack, even as he pushed through several students.

“Hey Rachel, wait up!” Zack said.

He was relieved when she stopped. She looked back at him, and Zack could see hesitation lining her green eyes. He wished more than anything she could look at him with the same warmth she did when she was in high school. But those days were long gone, and as Zack approached her, he had to force away any lingering memories of his father or his mission. He couldn’t risk her psychic powers detecting his true mission.

“Zack,” she said in a cordial tone. “Did you talk to Dirk?”

“Yeah, I’m all cleared up,” he said. She showed no reaction to this. She seemed neither pleased by this news nor particularly upset by it. She seemed to treat it as a neutral fact, with no fact one way or the other.

Rachel nodded. She slowed her pace to allow him to catch him.

“He put a lot of effort into…your issue,” Rachel said. “He was in his office for two days straight last week. I hope you appreciate it.”

Zack nodded. The way she spoke about Dirk triggered something in him, a flicker of jealousy, but Zack knew well enough to let it pass. He wasn’t going to risk making Rachel angry over a slight like that. She had told them they were just friends, and he was her mentor. Just like Dirk was trying to be Zack’s mentor.

If anything, it showed how insidious Dirk Saber could be, trying to weasel his way into his life. Or at least, that’s what Zack desperately wanted to believe. His hate had kept him going this far. To have it challenged by Dirk’s kindness threatened to distill his determination. He turned back to the situation at hand.

“I have superpowers. Enhanced muscle memory apparently,” Zack said.

“That’s what the test results were?” Rachel pivoted around to look at him, her brow creasing with mild surprise.

“You didn’t know?” Zack said, raising his eyebrow.

“It’s confidential,” Rachel said. “Dirk didn’t tell me anything.”

“And you didn’t…you know…snoop around for answers,” Zack smirked.

“Dirk would have my ass if I did,” Rachel said.

Zack knew better to remark on that. He closed his mouth. Whether Rachel was reading his thoughts or not, Zack couldn’t say. But she didn’t remark on them either.

“I’d get fired so fast,” Rachel said. She gave Zack a confused look. “I’m surprised you didn’t know already though. I mean everyone in the team was pretty sure you had them.”

Zack spread his arms in frustration. “Seriously? How am I the last person to know about this?”

“Zack Kestler, you threw the winning field goal three times in a row,” Rachel said. “You won football games like clockwork. Everyone could see it.”

“Except me,” Zack muttered. He was always so proud of his accomplishments. He wanted to believe that he was more than just a nepo baby coasting on his father’s cape. He wanted to believe everything in life he gotten through his own determination and hard work.

But these powers threw a wrench in all of that.

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“And your dad didn’t mention it?” Rachel asked.

Zack’s thoughts swirled around his father. Truth be told, however, Zane rarely attended a football game. He usually had better things to do, like save the world, or at least the president. Beyond that, he never gave any indication Zack wasn’t a regular kid.

“No, none,” Zack said.

They kept walking in silence for a few more moments. Rachel kept her gaze forward. Zack was pretty sure she wasn’t reading his mind - she usually had to maintain eye contact to do so, but then again, those were the rules when she was a sidekick. She could have improved since then, and knowing Rachel, she probably did.

Zack wanted to say he was comforted by the lack of someone rooting around in his brain, but somehow, the gulf between them felt cold and uninviting. He never minded Rachel’s psychic presence in the past. Before it was a comfort.

Now there was nothing.

“Rachel,” Zack said. “I’m…I’m sorry about how things went down….at the party…”

Rachel flashed her eyes at him. “How things went down?”

Zack quickly realized he had said the wrong thing. Just like he had said the wrong thing at the party which got beer dumped on his head. He really needed to work on his interpersonal skills. This wasn’t surprising. The only interpersonal skills he had developed in the last two years was terrifying criminals into giving him information about his father’s killer.

“I told you my boss was suffering and your response?” Rachel said. “Good.”

Admittedly, that wasn’t Zack’s finest moment. He was so caught up believing he had his father’s killer on the run, he stumbled into a poor choice of words so bad Rachel had no choice but to respond the way she did and storm off.

“You know who does that, Zack?” Rachel continued. “A sociopath.”

“Yeah,” Zack said, rounding the corner of the path to jump in front of Rachel so he could look her in the eye. “But you know me. You know I’m not a sociopath.”

“Are you, Zack? I don’t know what you’ve been doing in the past two years,” Rachel said. “You know, Perry had a pretty livid theory that you cracked and started hunting down people Dexter-style like some kind of serial killer.”

Zack grimaced at that remark. “Yeah, he might have shared that one with me earlier.”

Rachel began to push past him. Zack knew he had to say something to salvage the situation, if not the relationship entirely.

“Rachel, I-I’m sorry,” he said. He rushed towards her, reaching for her. Rachel jerked her hand away from him, but she did look him in the eye, which Zack considered an improvement, if only a temporary one.

“It was my fault,” Zack said. “I was jealous of Dirk and…and you. That’s why I said what I said.”

Which was true, on a very shallow level. Dirk and Rachel were close. Zack was pretty sure there was a mutual attraction between Dirk and Rachel. He may have been twenty years her senior, but Dirk was a dashing badass, and Rachel, well, Rachel was amazing. Zack believed Rachel when she said their relationship was strictly professional…mostly. He observed them to be close friends, but nothing else. Zack believed Dirk probably wouldn’t act on the attraction either.

Zack really wanted to hate Dirk. He really wanted to believe he killed his father. Despite Zack wanting to believe this whole business about superpowers was just some sort of psyops, Zack found himself starting to trust Dirk. Or wanting to trust him at any rate.

Maybe he really was getting in his head.

Rachel stared at him for a moment.

“That’s the truth,” she said. “But that’s only part of it, isn’t it. And the rest of it…you’re not sharing with me, are you? You’re holding it back.”

Zack felt a familiar warmth in the back of his skull. She was reading him.

“Rachel…” he started to plead.

“You never used to hide things from me,” Rachel said as she started to turn away. “Even when you should. Even when you admitted you thought Cassie Messer was cute in study hall. Even when you told me you fell asleep at the movies, you were always so honest with me.”

She drew closer to him, “There's a darkness inside you, Zack. It wasn't there before.”

Rachel broke off and continued down through the Promenade. “But it's all I see now. I'm sorry.”

Zack watched her go, and this time, he didn’t follow.