Minerva wasn’t an impressive school by any metric.

Its mundanity was almost charming in a way. The main gate made it seem ordinary, boring even. It was just a collection of featureless buildings that didn’t seem to hold any personality beyond the vague suggestion that it was, in fact, a school. Every other place had some sort of esoteric design to its buildings or a funky meaningless art piece that postured around outside. For all intents and purposes, the place was bland, and I couldn’t help but begin to feel that lack of excitement seeping into me like an infection.

I was sitting on the hood of the family car we had finally managed to get after the insurance company finally wrote off our old one. It was a simple machine, a 2006 V6 Ford. I wasn’t about to complain since I had always liked the sound of the engine, but after having driven in my upgraded car, going to this thing just felt… disappointing. It was a discomfort I could get over, but the one currently festering within my stomach was much more of a concern.

This is a waste of time.

Deep down, I felt like there were more important things I could be doing with my time than going and spending time at school. I could be in my workshop, designing modules for my suit, or creating objects to see what shortcuts my power could take with the 3D printers. Coming here even made me use some charges to make sure my pistol actually looked and functioned like an actual watch because there was no way it wouldn’t have been spotted eventually. I knew that leaving this place behind was the smart thing to do, but I just couldn’t let go. I needed to be here. I already had taken last week off and now I was behind everyone else.

School wasn’t going to improve my future now, not after I had Awakened. Foolishly, I had tried to do what everyone else probably tried to do, and keep a low profile – but I really, really hadn’t. I had thought I was, but hindsight was a great teacher and an even greater bitch. I knew now that there were a million and one better things I could’ve spent my time doing.

I could’ve built my suit earlier or worked on weapons or a thousand other pieces of tech that would’ve helped more than a fancy laptop and a comfy bed. Knowing what I did now, I’d definitely do things differently. I imagine that ninety-nine percent of supers probably have had the same thought at some point.

I didn’t even need to ask Sam if she was the same, because I was almost certain it was something that crossed her mind regularly. She had once lamented that she hadn’t ignored Gold and told her parents about her Awakening. That’s what kicked everything off for her.

Funnily enough, what she shouldn’t have done, was probably what I should have done. All I wanted was to fix Mom and I had decided to go about it in almost the worst way possible. I wanted to kick myself for that stupidity. I had built it up in my head that I could earn enough money by selling my tech so that I could pay for the biokinetic treatment that she needed. In my fugue, ego-driven state, I had completely ignored the fact that Mom would outright deny the treatment even if my initial plans had miraculously worked.

I had deluded myself because I wanted to have my cake and eat it too. The secrecy and freedom of having my powers all to myself – to be able to abuse them without consequence – while also being the good son who fixed his Mom without her ever knowing. The logistics of that were just… insane, and I think I started to realize that when Sam told me that I’d never get anywhere with something as undervalued as money.

If I really wanted to make the right move, I should’ve told Mom about my powers right from the start. Maybe then, I wouldn’t be involved in this mess.

Fantasizing about ‘what ifs’ is the real waste of time.

I was in the thick of it now, so wondering what could have been wouldn’t do me any good. Still, I couldn’t find it in myself to step forward and leave the parking lot. Every fiber of my being was screaming at me to drop this nonsense, go back to Sam's apartment, and continue my work. I could drop out of school and earn my UE some other time when it suited me.

Yet…

I couldn’t bring myself to do that either.

I watched from afar as my peers strolled through the gates, chatting with friends; laughing, smiling, and yelling. Not a single one of them knew how bad things really were – what the supers inside this city were really doing. They saw the surface-level stuff, the things the news talked about. There was so much more going on than they would ever know. I’d always thought I had the privilege of peeking behind the curtain, courtesy of being one of Abby’s close friends, but I didn’t know jack shit.

Abby either wasn’t allowed to tell us or didn’t want to talk about it. Either way, I couldn’t blame her. Shit was going to hit the fan any day now, and there was only so much we could do to prepare. Sam was still forming her plan to draw Splicer out and there was no telling it would be ready in time before the city went sky high.

Yet here I was, going back to school like nothing was wrong.

I heard the scratching of metal next to me and I looked down, only to see that I had anxiously scraped a small bit of the paintwork on the new car. I grunted and pulled my hand away, opting to let it rest on my lap instead.

Despite everything that had happened, I didn’t want to abandon school, no matter how pointless it seemed. It was my connection to Abby, Chris, and Jackson. They clearly cared, otherwise, they wouldn’t have shown up at my house yesterday, I couldn’t just throw that away. Outside of Mom, they were the only thing that really separated Maxis Troy and Upgrade.

I need that separation, otherwise, I’ll end up like Sam.

With that decided, I shouldered my bag and headed toward the front gates. I wasn’t even out of the student parking lot before someone a head shorter than me rolled up beside me. Out of the corner of my eye, I guessed it was Chris, but the hair and build were all wrong. I did a double take and stopped dead in my tracks when I realized Liam was walking next to me.

“Hey,” he shifted nervously. “Glad there’s someone I know that goes here.”

“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked, panic surging into my chest. “This is my school, people will wonder who the hell you are!”

Liam shrugged nonchalantly. “No need to worry about that, I just started here today.”

“You just started—” I stopped myself when the pieces were starting to click together. “What, are you transferring from somewhere? What’s going on? You never said anything about this before.”

“I didn’t really know until last night. My uncle did all the paperwork to get me here. He didn’t tell me anything about it,” Liam shrugged. “It’s probably the last school in the city that’d take me.”

“Take you?” I looked at him, the realization dawning on me. It lined up with his story about his Awakening. He was a problem child, someone who didn’t get along with the authorities. He wasn’t transferring. He had been expelled and this was the last place that would take him in. “Oh.”

Liam chuckled at the expression I made. “I’ve never been much of a student. Did the bare minimum, you know? After I got my powers, I thought; what’s the point?”

“Finishing school and getting your UE is one big point,” I argued with a complete lack of enthusiasm in my voice. “Otherwise, you have to wait till you’re twenty to get in, and best of luck finding good work in a country like this without a proper qualification.”

Liam gave me a curious look before shrugging.

“Working sounds pretty miserable anyway,” he replied with a sullen edge to his tone. “I’ve made a bit of cash just robbing gangs ‘n shit. If there’s something I really want, I can just swipe it from a store. It’s no big deal.”

It would not have been very fair of me to chastise him for stealing. I was very much aware of the glass house I was in and I wasn’t about to throw any stones.

“So if you don’t really care about school, why are you here?”

“I need to keep up appearances,” Liam said. “My uncle still works. He’s supporting me and I live in his house. I have to at least look like I’m doing something otherwise he’s gonna get on my ass. If I fuck up here, I think the only other option for me is trade school. I dunno about you, but I ain’t fixing toilets for a living.”

“Being a plumber isn’t the only trade,” I rolled my eyes. “But I’ll be honest dude, I don’t really see you pursuing any sort of career path.”

I didn’t want to sound insulting, but he didn’t really seem passionate about anything. The most I had seen in that regard was his insistence on saving Mia from the Cains. After that, I noticed he had become a lot more relaxed and… unmotivated to really do anything. He had his interests, sure, but he didn’t seem like the type to think about the future.

“Yeah. None of that shit sounds interesting. I think I got enough stuff to worry about with whatever Sam has planned for us,” Liam explained. “If I could have things my way, I’d have enough money to comfortably live anywhere I wanted and do what I wanted. Seriously, that's pretty much it. At least with you guys, I get a little bit of both.”

“Is that right?”

“Yeah. Groves Den isn’t the nicest place but it’s out of the way and you’re fixing the place up,” he said. “I’ve got an apartment to myself, so that’s cool. If things ever go south with my uncle, I can always just live there. It’s pretty sweet, all things considered,” he leaned over and gave me a knowing nudge. “Your power is something else as well. I bet you can make all sorts of cool shit. Hey, do you think you could upgrade my console?”

I had almost conditioned my responses to these sorts of questions but I held off, considering that Sam wasn’t around to hear.

“You already know I could,” I said. I saw his mouth open to continue but I quickly cut him off. “But you also already know I’m not going to do that.”

“Something something it’s a waste of charges, yeah I get it,” he waved me off as we made our way into the noisy crowd of students. I wasn’t sure where he was going but I was heading to my locker. “Gotta deal with the big bad G—”

“Dude,” I cut him off. “Not. Here. If we’re going to hang out, we can’t talk about this stuff, okay? At school, we keep a lid on the Super stuff. We don’t know who could be listening,” I said, gesturing to the busy crowd of people around us. “Just because everyone else is engaged in their own conversations, doesn’t mean they don’t have ears.”

Liam snorted. “Oh, come on, who’s going to know what we’re talking about?”

“Yo, Max.”

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

We turned to see Abby strolling up to us, proving that the universe truly did have a sense of timing.

I was quick to recover from the shock of seeing her here so early in the morning. Normally, she’d show up halfway through the first period. Abby almost always missed homeroom. We didn’t share the same one but to see her here so early for once was actually surprising, especially given that just yesterday, she was going on about how busy everything was at Headquarters.

“Hey Abby, you’re here early.”

“Junkmonger and Techies somehow broke containment earlier this morning,” Abby said with an uncharacteristic deadpan to her tone, though I could sense some bitterness in there as well. “They caused a shit load of chaos and managed to free Nemesis, Gold Rush, and a couple of other villains. I ditched the base so I didn’t get pulled into cleanup. I’ve actually been here for over an hour.”

Well, I can't say I was expecting that.

“Gold Rush and Nemesis were captured?” I asked, acting surprised. Outside of actually witnessing their capture as Upgrade, I never saw any news detailing their incarceration. I wasn’t even sure if it was made public. My best move was to act ignorant. “You guys have been putting in work.”

“Evidently, not enough. We can get them, we just can’t fucking keep them,” Abby grumbled, scratching her neck awkwardly. “Bonesmith also managed to escape a while ago. Sorry I forgot to tell you, we’ve just been so busy playing damage control,” she sighed. “There’s a silver lining though, we finally have an excuse to get an overhaul for our security systems.”

“That’s good to hear – the last part that is,” I said, making sure to keep my outward expression positive. Internally, I seethed at the fact that I’d need to improve my hardware and software even more to be able to interact with their systems. “Do you know how Bonesmith managed to escape? What about the rest?”

“No idea about Bonesmith. I didn’t even know until this morning when Lich was ranting about our shitty security,” Abby’s tone turned a tad more serious. “Junkmonger died today, trying to escape. Techies is in a coma, along with a few others. Nemesis and Gold Rush managed to get away unscathed.”

Liam coughed awkwardly, having gotten over his initial shock of being so close to Comet.

“Am I supposed to be hearing this?”

Abby gave him a blank stare. She looked him up and down before sighing.

“Probably not, but I’m too tired to care,” she said, crossing her arms. “Have we met before?”

I decided to answer before Liam could open his mouth.

“He’s new here. We play games together online,” I said, coming up with an easy lie. “I’m helping him get settled in.”

“Cool,” she sounded completely disinterested, which meant she bought the lie without a second thought. “I’m Abby. You probably know me as Comet, Yada yada yada, nice to meet you. Welcome to Minerva, it’s boring and everyone hates it here.”

Liam offered a nervous smile.

“I guess I’ll fit in just fine then.”

She offered a light-hearted chuckle but that’s all she managed. It was gone almost as quick as it came and before I knew it, she was moving over toward me.

“I need to borrow Max for a few minutes, then you guys can continue on the tour, or whatever it is you were doing,” Abby tugged at my shirt and gestured for me to follow her. “Is that cool?”

“What? Oh, yeah,” Liam raised his hands and nodded. “It’s all good, I’ll just wait here. I don’t wanna intrude or anything.”

“Thanks.”

She pulled me into the nearest empty classroom and shut the door. I could tell she was stressed so I gave her the time she needed to compose herself. I shuffled over to a desk and sat on the corner, watching as she started awkwardly pacing in front of the whiteboard. I could see the gears in her head turning as if she was trying to figure out what she wanted to say. There was a small part of me that was about to start panicking when the idea of her knowing about my powers popped into my head, but that was quickly vanquished when she started talking.

“I need your help with something.”

I felt my brow raise. “It’s not every day that a superhero needs my help.”

Abby rolled her eyes, a smirk of amusement flashing across her lips. “Shut up, this is serious.”

“Alright, what’s going on?”

Just like that, the brief flash of humor I had seen disappeared.

“I’m worried about Lucy and with everything that’s been going on recently, I’m starting to wonder why she’s missing school,” she paused for a moment and I contemplated jumping in and adding my two cents but I stopped myself. I wanted to know where she was going with this. “I didn’t think much of it yesterday when we talked about it, but last night and this morning… things are clicking into place and I’m not liking what it’s shaping up to be.”

I grimaced and rolled my shoulders a bit. I had to act like I wasn’t sure what she was talking about. Realistically, just hearing that led me to believe that she was concerned The Cains had gotten her. The odds were astronomically low, but the worst part was I couldn’t rule it out. Alex and Sam had both said there would be more than one place where Splicer and Grim were working, which meant more victims.

If Lucy is one of them…

A rage simmered beneath my skin.

“Where are you going with this?”

“I couldn’t say before. I shouldn’t now but… if you’re going to help you need the full picture. The Cain’s are taking people and experimenting on them, Max,” Abby said, sounding sick to her stomach. “Why? I have no fucking idea, but we were able to rescue most of them. You probably haven’t noticed yet but Pete isn’t at school and he won’t be for a long time. He was one of the victims.”

“You think they’ve got Lucy?”

“I don’t know,” Abby stressed. “She’s not answering calls or any of my texts. She isn’t answering you either, Jackson and Chris are the same. That’s unlike her – really unlike her. Sometimes we can’t get her to shut up!”

“It’s not like we can just check up on her. We don’t know where she lives,” I pointed out. “Even if we did, I doubt her family would appreciate us just showing up at her front door. It might be okay at my place but there’s probably a reason why she’s never wanted us to go round.”

Abby grunted a little. “Isn’t that weird though?”

“Of course it’s weird,” I scoffed. It had always been a small point of contention in our relationship. “Let’s not split hairs here, we’ve talked about this before. Her family’s probably abusive.”

“Oh, so that’s it then? We’re just going to sit here and wait for her to come back? What if she never comes back?” Abby snapped.

I glared at her. “I never said I was okay with it.”

“Good, because fuck that. We’re going to do something about it before it can get worse,” she took a shaky breath before throwing a quick glare toward the door. There were a couple of girls peering in and staring at her. Thankfully, I was not in the line of sight. Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to stop Abby from using her powers to shut the door’s curtain with her power. “It feels like this city is just spiraling all of a sudden. I need to know she’s okay.”

“Then what’s the plan?”

I had grown used to seeing the cool confidence Sam exuded when she was thinking. Her plans might not always be foolproof but that never stopped her from coming up with some great ideas. Abby on the other hand, did not exude that cool confidence. She looked pressured by her own thoughts – an expression that betrayed reluctance. She wasn’t sure about this but she was willing to drag me in here to go through with it.

“We might not know where Lucy lives but legally, the school is required to know.”

“You want to break in and access the school’s student record?” I asked, disbelief coloring my tone. “That’s… awfully brave of you. You do realize if we get caught doing that, we’re totally fucked, right? They keep all the grades there. They’ll think we’re trying to hack our records or something.”

“We won’t get caught. This’ll be just like last time.”

“Abby, we were in intermediate school. All we did was distract a teacher and delete an email, they even had their password saved,” I pointed out. “I hate to break it to you, but getting into Minerva’s records is going to be a bit harder than that.”

Her shoulders sagged a bit in defeat. “Are you saying you can’t do it?”

“I never said that,” I crossed my arms, allowing a bit of my hubris to slip. Breaking into Minerva’s records would be child’s play with my tech. “I’m just pointing out that it’s a lot riskier than last time.”

“If Lucy is in danger, then it’s worth the risk. If she isn’t then…” Abby trailed off before sighing. “At least I’ll sleep a little better at night knowing she’s just sulking or something.”

At least she knows the risks.

“Okay, so we break in and find her address,” I nodded at the simplicity of the idea. “I can get behind that. Then what, you fly off to her house? I’d like to tag along too, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“Uh, yeah. I’m not gonna say no,” Abby drawled. “I might be a bitch but I’m not that bad. Come on, give me some credit.”

I offered her an easy shrug.

“Why do we need the school’s records to do this? Surely, you can just get some techie guys at the ECU to do this for you,” I asked, giving her a blank look. “Are things really that bad over there that they can’t even spare the time or resources to help you find your friend’s house?”

“I already asked,” she grumbled. “You’d think something like that would take a couple of minutes to do but nooooo,” the sneer in her voice was practically venomous. “There’s apparently ‘privacy laws’ and we have to ‘respect the rights of our citizens’ or some other bullshit.”

“So you’re breaking the law instead.”

“The law isn’t doing much good for the city right now,” Bayside’s Golden Heroine said. “So the law can kiss my ass on this one. If Lucy’s in danger, I can help her. If she isn’t, I’m… probably going to drop her a couple kilometers out at sea and make her swim back or something. I don’t know, I’ll think of something heinous and cruel to punish her for making me– us worry so much.”

“Right,” I said, pushing myself to my feet. “When exactly did you want to do this?”

“After school today,” she said. “Not exactly ideal, but you gotta understand. If something bad is happening, every second counts.”

I grimace.

I know.

“Alright. Where are we meeting?”

“Meet me outside the computer labs at four. They lock things up around then so we can sneak in when they aren’t looking,” she explained. “I’d say we should do this after school’s closed for the night but there’s lots going on back at base that I have to be there for. It has to be four. That gives me enough time.”

“What time do you need to be back at base?”

“Six thirty.”

Unless Lucy lives on the other side of the city, that’s more than doable.

I was more than confident that wouldn’t be the case. Whenever I’d take her ‘home’ in my car, she’d make me drop her in the same street every time. It wasn’t the street she lived in, obviously, but it was close enough for her to walk. She had once caught me when I tried to tail her home. Not exactly easy to sneakily follow someone who’s walking, while you're in a car.

“Alright then, I’ll be there.”

Abby shifted uncomfortably. “Are you sure you want to do this? I don’t want to force you to do this.”

“Yeah, it's fine,” I shrugged nonchalantly. “We’re best friends. If something’s going on, I wanna know.”

It bothered me a little bit that Abby had come to this conclusion before I did.

“Okay,” Abby smiled. “See you then.”

We parted ways when we left the classroom and I found myself walking towards my locker, lost in thought. It was strange to see Abby take this much of an initiative, even more so that she was willing to break the law and go behind the ECU’s back to do something like this. It made me happy that she treasured our friendship so much that she was willing to do this.

“Well, that was something,” Liam said, appearing at my side. “You never mentioned you knew Comet personally. Who knew the heroes could be just as sneaky as us?”

I was halfway through rolling my eyes when my head snapped in his direction.

“You were listening?” I asked in an accusatory tone. “How?”

He pointed up.

I sighed.

Of course, he was hiding in the ceiling.