Zack woke up in a strange mood. He didn’t know what to do. He would have to wait twelve hours to link up with Icer and hopefully steal Magnometer for Kaine. The more Zack thought about this, the more he disliked this deal. He had no love for Amber Shaw - whatever her past relationship with his father. Still, this distracted him from his goals. After all, he was here to avenge his father, not take sides in in-petty intercampus rivalries.

Still, he needed the Power Amplifier to repair his suit, and with Max out of town, Kaine was the only one who could get it, it would seem. Zack didn’t trust Kaine at all. He also wasn’t sure what Kaine intended to do with the Magnometer. Simply putting it in one of Max’s many display cases as a “gotcha” to Shaw seemed juvenile beyond measure, and Zack couldn’t help but wonder if Sigma Alpha possessed other designs for the device.

It would also help if I even knew what the Magnometer did in the first place.

Kaine said it was the source of her power, but just what was Miss Magnitude’s powers?

Zack sighed. He would drive himself insane thinking about this for the next twelve hours. He needed something to do. He didn’t class, or rather, he didn’t have class with Dirk Saber. He supposed he could attend one of the several other classes he had signed up for. Then again, he hadn’t gone to any other classes in the first week he’d been at Innshadow U, and he didn’t see the point in starting now.

He considered wandering about aimlessly on campus. There was much of Innshadow he hadn’t seen. However, Zack knew that would do little to ease his anxiety about what lay ahead. The only thing which could really distract Zack from the mission at hand…was another mission. What Zack needed was a sidequest.

By the time Zack had left the shower, he had settled on one.

He would find out just how Amber Shaw aka Miss Magnitude fit into his father’s life. And he knew the perfect place to find out.

The library.

Zack finished getting dressed and then strode across campus. He passed the dorm rooms and the campus buildings. The architecture grew more sinister and Gothic the further he moved into the campus. A large concrete bridge spanned a wide walkway into a considerably more modern building at the center of the campus.

Zack remembered that Scott Stephens had told him the old library had been taken over by Alpha House. The new library looked considerably bigger, so he guessed Innshadow had gotten their money’s worth by the move to this place. Zack quickly power-walked over the bridge at a quick pace.

He was on a mission after all.

As soon as he entered the library, he saw a massive foyer span out before him. Twin sets of wooden stairs on his left and right lead up to the second level, while an elevator in the center of the room doubtlessly led down to the basement. A circulation desk staffed with several student workers sat in the middle of the room, with several rows of computers to the side. Zack began to peruse the room. There were several stacks of books on the first floor, but Zack gathered the bulk of the collection was housed in the second floor as well as the basement.

Zack scanned some of the books on the nearby shelves. Most of them were on various superhero subjects - the history of superheroes, the economics of sidekicks, the challenges of married superheroes. These books seemed to be newer and perhaps more popular, given their newer conditions. Most of them hadn’t even been checked out before, given the lack of a stamped due date on their interior cover.

But Zack was getting distracted. He had a mission here, he reminded himself. He would not be so easily distracted the next time, he reprimanded himself, before being immediately distracted by a row of paperbacks on the next shelf.

What surprised Zack about the paperbacks was how little they had to do with superheroes. All of them were fiction, and very few of them had anything to do with super-heroics at all. Many of them were from authors like Ray Bradbury, Stephen King, Joe R. Lansdale, and Robert B. Parker. Zack wondered what purpose these books held.

“Can I…help you?” a hesitant feminine voice said behind him.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“No, I-” Zack started to say as he spun around to see Blake regarding him, one hand on her hip. She wore a short-sleeved gray cardigan along with a fitted black miniskirt. She regarded him warily.

“Blake?” Zack asked. “What are you doing here?”

“I work here,” she said as she started to rearrange the paperbacks.

“You…work here?” Zack said, as if he hadn’t heard her right. She tossed aside his blonde hair to give him a hard look.

“Where do you think I met Perry?” she said. “I’ve always liked to read. And besides, books don’t explode in my hands if I’m not careful…unlike cell phones.”

“I . . . see,” Zack said. He had assumed Blake wasn’t the reading type based on how transfixed she was with her cell phone when they first met, but that was before he realized she was trying to stop it from exploding in her hands.

He was eager to change the subjects. “What are these?”

Blake gave him a strange look. “These are called books. We have a lot of them in the library.”

Zack rolled his eyes. “I know what they are. I mean why are they here? They aren’t about superheroes . . . as far as I can tell.”

Blake gave him another funny look. “You know, Zack, sometimes people like to read about things other than superheroes. That’s why the library keeps a small collection of books for leisure reading.”

She pulled a book from an author named Seanan McGuire and began to read it before putting it back with a sigh.

“If I didn’t have so much to do this semester I’d spend all my time here,” she said.

Zack nodded. He couldn’t remember the last time he read a book simply for fun. In fact, he couldn’t remember the last time he did anything simply for fun.

Blake turned her gaze back to him. “So what are you doing here?” she asked him again.

Zack turned to her. “I’m looking for information on my father.”

Blake brought her finger to her chin and gave him a thoughtful look. “That’s going to be difficult. He’s an Unaccredited superhero, right? So I don’t know how much information we’d have on him.”

Zack shifted a bit uncomfortably on his feet. “It’s just him I want to know about. I also want to know about any connections he had to a heroine named Miss Magnitude.”

Blake cocked her head at him as she briefly narrowed her eyes. “Isn’t that…”

Her reaction surprised Zack. Apparently Amber Shaw’s superhero past was public knowledge. Zack gave a noncommittal shrug. It was not used trying to hide it now.

“Yeah,” Zack said, before giving Blake a pointed stare. “But I could use some help narrowing down information on her.”

Blake sighed and looked around, clearly looking for anyone else who could help Zack. Finally, she gave up, and said with some degree of resignation, “Well, I guess we can give it a shot.”

She walked over to the computers, with Zack reluctantly following her. She gestured for Zack to take a seat.

Zack shrugged and took a seat, before looking back up at her.

“Should you be near a computer?” he asked.

“It’s just phones which give him trouble,” Blake said. “But I can stand back if you’d like.”

“You’re fine,” Zack said as he opened up his computer. “What am I looking for?”

Blake looked over his shoulders. “Innshadow Database Collection.”

“Got it,” Zack said as he clicked on a small icon on the computer. In an instant, it expanded into a white window with several fields of information.

“Try putting in her name,” Blake said.

“Code name or real name?” Zack asked.

“Code name,” Blake said from behind his shoulder.

Zack did as instructed and struck the enter key. Several articles popped up. One immediately caught his eye.

“Said she had earth powers,” Zack said. “So she could make like mini-quakes?”

“From what I read she could literally phase through the earth itself,” Blake said as she scanned the monitor’s flatscreen. “Made it really easy for her to sneak up on the bad guys.”

Zack continued to read through the article, with Blake at his side. One name kept coming up though.

“Who are the Extremers?” he asked. He turned just in time to see Blake shrugging.

“Never heard of them,” she said.

“One way to find out,” Zack said.

He clicked the article, and in an instant, he was greeted by the past, and a very different version than one he thought he knew.