Rain pelted my bedroom window with occasional flashes of lightning. I always liked the sound of rain. It relaxed me and helped me focus, especially on days like this.
Lucy had sent me a list of things to cover for our assignment that was due on Friday and I was steadily working my way through it but every now and then, my mind would drift to Sam and contemplate what I needed to do to ensure our upcoming operation would run smoothly.
I leaned back in my chair and kicked my feet up onto my desk. I eyed the second table I had set up in a corner close to the door where all my gear sat. My suit, helmet, pistol, and drone were all going through a slow upgrade process since Sam had said she needed some time to plan our next move against the Cains.
I had invested points into strengthening my suit and helmet, along with implementing a stronger power supply for each of them. I wanted to incorporate active combat modes later on and they’d need a strong power source to sustain what I had in mind. The drone was upgraded to a similar state as the one I sold, except with a more efficient camouflage setting and a quicker mechanical shifting mechanism to change modes quicker. The laser pistol needed a bigger ammo capacity and I needed to address ammunition running out mid-fight, assuming I was using it consistently. I didn’t want to be caught with my pants down so-to-speak.
All in all, I wasn’t left with many charges to spare today, so I’d have to wait on getting started on Sam’s weapon and whatever my ‘bigger gun’ was supposed to be. I had a few ideas, a sniper rifle being one of them. I liked the idea of playing a more supportive role in the group. Sam had Red for brute force and assuming Anomaly really did join us, his transformation seemed like a force of nature on its own. Those two would be our frontline fighters. Though, I suspected Sam might be wanting to take a more tactical approach and use Gold more when we’re in the field.
My Entropy notifications started flashing.
Crap… wasn’t paying attention.
Rabbit_in_da_h4t (Today at 7:17P.M) (Lucy. K): Could you do the essay part? I can send you all the notes I’ve made so you can just put it together. I got to cram for this math internal that’s been pushed early and I’m sooooo not ready. If you can write it out and compile the links and references you used, I can make sure it's all formatted correctly. Seriously, you suck at APA formatting. Btw don’t forget to use the ‘Arial’ font.
Rabbit_in_da_h4t (Today at 7:25P.M) (Lucy. K): Yo don’t disappear on me.
Rabbit_in_da_h4t (Today at 7:28P.M) (Lucy. K): Maaaaaaaaaax
Rabbit_in_da_h4t (Today at 7:35P.M) (Lucy. K): WHERE ARE YOUUUUUUUUUU
Rabbit_in_da_h4t (Today at 7:35P.M) (Lucy. K): I know you're there, your icon is green.
Rabbit_in_da_h4t (Today at 7:39P.M) (Lucy. K): Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
I cringed a little. I had completely forgotten I had been talking with Lucy about the assignment. I knew what was going to come next.
Rabbit_in_da_h4t (Today at 7:40P.M) (Lucy. K): Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Rabbit_in_da_h4t (Today at 7:40P.M) (Lucy. K): Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Rabbit_in_da_h4t (Today at 7:40P.M) (Lucy. K): Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Pathfinder (Today at 7:40P.M): Sorry, got a little bit distracted.
Rabbit_in_da_h4t (Today at 7:40P.M) (Lucy. K): Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Rabbit_in_da_h4t (Today at 7:40P.M) (Lucy. K): Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Pathfinder (Today at 7:40P.M): Stop
Rabbit_in_da_h4t (Today at 7:40P.M) (Lucy. K): Finally. God, you're so annoying when you just disappear.
Pathfinder (Today at 7:40P.M): I can do the essay part. No worries.
Rabbit_in_da_h4t (Today at 7:40P.M) (Lucy. K): Thx! See u at school 2mrw
The sheer audacity to claim I was the one being annoying with these chat logs…
I tabbed out to an empty document and waited for Lucy to send through all her notes. I passed the time by fiddling with Deadlock’s tech. Sam had given it to me to take home, claiming I’d make more progress on cracking the thing if I was the one to have sole access to it. While she wasn’t wrong, I wasn’t entirely sure how to go about cracking it. Observing its makeup with my powers didn’t yield the results I wanted. Worse yet, I couldn’t actually make any changes to it.
It was the first thing I had ever touched that actually resisted my power. Every option was grayed out and it didn’t matter how far I looked into each mechanical branch, it was all inaccessible. It wasn’t like I would seriously consider upgrading it anyway, seeing as the cost to alter this thing was well into the hundreds. The cheapest option I could find would cost more than 275 charges and that was just to remodel the exterior design.
It wouldn’t do me any good here. Whatever kind of otherworldly security this thing had, it was interfering with my power’s ability to alter it. Maybe all mechatech was like that but it hadn’t stopped me from altering Nemesis’ spear. Perhaps Deadlock had some kind of secret to stop supers like me from messing with her work? It would make sense given her legendary status.
I sighed, spinning the cube with my fingers. The only way I was going to crack this thing was to build something sophisticated enough to interface with it. While I wasn’t able to actually change anything on her tech, my power was able to glean that the device operated on an advanced encrypted network. Nothing built today or for the next hundred years would be able to recognize that network, let alone decrypt it.
So, I’d have to make something powerful enough to recognize it and crack it.
Once I could crack it, I would be able to secure a master override key and gain control of all of Deadlock’s tech that used that specific network. It was a strangely exciting thought at first but my pessimism was quick to ground me. My power recognized this as a prototype design, which likely meant that Deadlock had since built more and amped up the security on the future models. This was a defunct model, out of order. I would be gaining access to a network that probably wasn’t monitored and likely had nothing of value on it.
None of this explained why my power refused to let me make any changes. If it did, I’d be able to modify its security to something I could easily access. It would drain all my charges for a single day but I could have access to it in two or three weeks. Instead, I’d have to do things the hard way.
I pursed my lips. This was low on my priority list. There were more pressing issues to attend to, namely the Cains and rescuing Anomaly’s friend from whatever had befallen her.
Long-term project then.
Incoming call from Spaciseebs . . .
I watched the notification flash across my screen a few times as I considered my next move. There was a lingering temptation to just let the call expire and pretend I wasn’t there. I had enough distractions as is and speaking to my sister was only going to take up more time that I couldn’t afford to lose.
Spaciseebs (Today at 8:05P.M) (Alex. T): Answer the call, dork.
I sighed and clicked accept. The window opened and webcam footage of Alex reclined in her chair sketching things on a pad appeared. She looked particularly frazzled with bags under her eyes, her platinum blonde hair messily tied up in a bun. Her fingers were covered in lead smudging from her pencil and her tank top was littered with multi-colored paint stains. It was the usual look for her but I noted just how exhausted she was.
“You look like shit,” I commented blandly.
“Right back at you,” she smirked. “Though, your eye is healing up nicely. You won’t be frightening any children now, at least.”
I lightly traced the ridges of my black eye. In truth, I had completely forgotten about the injury. My mind had been occupied with other more important things. The biogel Sam and I had stolen would probably be able to fix it in just a couple of hours but that would probably raise questions. That kind of stuff was expensive and pharmacies charged an arm and a leg for it.
“Thanks,” I replied idly. “Are you playing messenger for mom again? I swear, I don’t have her on mute this time.”
“Nope, just checking in with you. I thought we could have a lil sibling one on one, you know? It’s been awhile since we just talked between ourselves without mom around,” Alex said, sounding unusually sincere. “You used to call me so much not that long ago. What happened? I miss when you were so fond of me!”
I shrugged easily. “I grew up I guess. Got busy with school and other stuff. Besides, you call every morning and night so I didn’t feel like I needed to call you all the time. It’s not like you're out of the loop on anything.”
“Am I not?” She asked with a raised brow. “You’ve been pretty distant these last few weeks. Even mom’s starting to worry. You’re out later than usual and you're constantly making excuses to go out before and after school. You were a total shut-in not even a month ago.”
So she had caught on and if she was aware that it was out of character for me, Mom would think the same. Strange though, how she hadn’t said anything on the matter. Maybe she was just trying to give me some personal space? Regardless, they couldn’t be allowed to know what I was up to.
“Lucy and Abby are doing their best to drag me out of my shell. Jackson has been a victim as well,” I dismissed easily. It wasn’t technically a lie. Abby had been trying to get us to be more social outside of school but even she was struggling to find free time with her hero life cutting into things. “I thought you and mom wanted me to go out more. Meet new people and all that jazz, right?”
Alex pursed her lips. “I suppose we were trying to encourage you to be more outgoing and social. My suggestion was you getting a part-time job; how is that going by the way?”
“Alright. It’s just a weekend thing to earn some money.”
“Meet anyone interesting there?”
“Nope. I’m relegated to washing dishes. Don’t really get time to talk or do anything,” I replied. “You're digging to find diamonds when there’s only coal and rock. You’re not going to find anything interesting about what I’m doing. Between school and work, there’s not much happening for me.”
Alex’s shoulders slumped a little. “You never have any interesting tea to share. I swear, you getting jumped by those thugs is probably the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to you.”
I frowned. “My life isn’t that boring.” I had superpowers after all. “I don’t know what you were expecting.”
“Hmm. So where exactly have you been going lately? Have you found a new group of friends?” Alex asked. “You can tell me anything, Max. I’m not going to spill the beans to Mom if you have a secret girlfriend.”
Sam flashed in my mind’s eye and I wrinkled my nose a little.
“I don’t have a secret girlfriend.”
“Hmm?”
“Stop looking at me like that,” I scowled. “You’re getting all judgy. I can end this call whenever I like.”
“So defensive…” Alex’s tone turned playful. “Fine. I’ll pretend there’s no secret girlfriend—”
“There isn’t.”
“—Instead, I just want you to promise me that you aren’t doing anything stupid,” her tone shifted again, taking on a more uncharacteristic seriousness that I wasn’t used to hearing from her. “Whatever you're doing, you obviously don’t want Mom knowing about it and she’s not stupid. We both want you to have a little independence but you're only sixteen. There’s a limit.”
“Am I about to get a lecture from you of all people?”
Alex’s playful expression melted off her features. She became almost inhumanly still that I thought the connection had dropped. However, she eventually sighed, running a hand through her hair and leaning back in her chair.
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
“Okay, no. I’m not going to do this.”
My head involuntarily tilted. “What?”
“I wanted to let you figure things out like an adult but the world is getting more dangerous. Look, I know you have powers,” Alex said. I felt my blood freeze and the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. “I’m not stupid. I grew up with friends too so I know the signs and tells people have when they're keeping something a secret. The late nights, the busy schedule, the incessant need to keep everything to yourself. You're not being as subtle as you think.”
My lips suddenly felt dry. “I’m not—”
“Don’t lie,” Alex cut me off in the most dismissive tone I’d ever heard from her. A chill ran down my spine as I swallowed. “Those guys that attacked you, I don’t buy they were regular thugs. Gang members, right?”
I slumped in defeat. I didn’t see any way to explain this away without looking like a clown. “Yeah… it was the Cains.”
“What were you doing?”
“Selling Mechatech.”
Alex’s eyes widened a little. “You’re a Mechakinetic?”
“I can improve on anything material. Biological stuff just blanks on me,” I explained, deflated. “Can only do so much per day but I don’t need raw materials to work with. I can take what already exists and… yeah, just make it better. Transform it, transmute it, alter it. You name it, I can probably do it.”
“Woah, woah, back up a bit. You don’t need raw materials?” Alex was gobsmacked. “Say sike right now.”
“I’m not joking around. That’s what I can do.”
My sister ran a hand through her messy hair, a shaky sigh escaping from her lips. “You’ve got a freaky deaky power there bro. I haven’t heard of any Mechakinetic that didn’t need to buy stuff to make their funky toys. Are you telling me you can just… poof it into existence?”
I scowled at the simplification. “I still need a base model to work off of. Here, look,” I snatched a pencil off my desk and held it up to the webcam. “See this?” Alex nodded. I activated my power and spent a few charges to turn it into a pen. There were a few steps that made it rather costly but I’d sacrifice the four charges it cost for the demonstration.
Alex watched as the pencil went through the steps I was already familiar with before emerging as a mundane blue pen. I even gave it a few clicks to show that I wasn’t bullshitting her.
“If I spend the right amount of charges, the change happens pretty quickly. I could underpay, in which case the process would take longer. An hour for every charge I underpay, from what I know.”
“...You’re joking.”
“Why are you insinuating that I’m joking?” I grumbled. “That’s it. That’s all I can do. I make things better.”
“And you can’t alter living organisms?”
“No. We wouldn’t be having this conversation if I could. I would have fixed Mom already,” I muttered under my breath. “One of the first things I would have done was get her out of that wheelchair. It’s not easy.”
Alex sat up, her fingers flexing as she rolled forward in her chair and began typing. Her hands whirled across the keyboard as the light of her monitor reflected in her glasses. I felt my stomach sink as thoughts drifted to Mom. There was no way she wasn’t going to tell her now that she had it confirmed. If Alex had always known, then maybe Mom did too. Has she always known?
“Are you telling mom now?” I asked.
Alex shook her head. “Nope. Just looking you up. Upgrade, right?”
“How did—”
“Deductive reasoning.”
What was it with the women in my life being borderline psychic? Sam was the exception, of course, with Gold’s ability to literally cheat but this had been happening for years. They just seemed to know without me even saying a word.
“Looks like you’ve been doing your best to keep your head down. Not much anywhere in the way of who you are. Just some threads around where your codename pops up but you’ve been fairly active in those,” Alex said, pursing her lips. “So this is how you’ve been making side cash, huh? I respect it, though very irresponsible. You’re lucky to have survived your encounter with the Cains.”
“You’re scrying the internet for my name? How are you even doing that?” I asked, perplexed.
Alex gave me a sly smile.
“I have a super techy friend who’s given me some stuff to keep myself up-to-date. I’m not so behind the times as you might think. Check this out,” she shared her screen as she pulled up a secured ECU database. “Even now, they still haven’t patched some of the old holes in their systems. Child's play, really. Here you are,” she highlighted a name in the spreadsheet, one that I could unmistakably recognize as my own. “ECU has you flagged. No surprise there. They have you listed as benign.”
“They… they know about me?” I couldn’t believe it. I had been so careful. How had they picked up on my activities? I’d been active for about a month now and judging by the date my name was added, they had me pinned within the first week! “H-How? I was so careful.”
“I wouldn’t sweat the small stuff bro, they’re good when it comes to IDing newbies. The internet is not as safe as you might think and they have a lot of Mentalists on payroll for this specific reason. See? Look here,” she expanded my details and a lot of it was just archives of things I had posted on some forums. “They know you're an Evohuman but they haven’t dug into your personal details yet.”
“But they could if they wanted to,” I murmured under my breath. I needed to fix that, break into their systems somehow and scrub those details. I didn’t want them to know who I really was, especially when I was bound to come across them sometime in the future while working with Sam. “Can you wipe my information?”
“Nope. I would ping in their systems. I’m using a Rats Tunnel, so I’m limited to just observing. Anything more and I’d have the authorities busting down my door,” Alex chuckled like it was no big deal. “If you keep your head down then they won’t have any reason to bother you. Plus, the ECU doesn't really have the legal right to dig into people’s personal information, even villains and supers.”
“Not even if they’re a danger to innocent lives?”
“It’s a dangerous scale the ECU has to balance,” she explained, her tone turning weary. “They have the resources to figure these things out but the real risk is who they target. You remember Scrubber?”
“Yeah, the biokinetic behind Satan’s Gift.”
“Public story is he lost his mind, his powers finally getting the better of him. The real story is much different. The ECU got impatient and wanted to bring him in. They pulled their resources, dug into his personal life. Found everything. Name, birthday, family, children, wife. They tried to use all of it against him to try and get him to surrender peacefully. You know what happened next.”
Tragedies happen every day in a world like ours. It was rare to watch the news and not see anything relating to Evohumans. There was always something going on, but even once in a blue moon, you’d get someone who goes the extra mile to the point where their name would be cemented in history.
You had people like Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, and Genghis Khan. Names the human race would never forget for as long as they lived. Then you had the dawn of the new age, a time when a nameless nobody from who the fuck knows where could rise up and shock the world. Scrubber just happened to be one of those people.
“He wiped out Taiwan,” I breathed. It had happened decades ago, before my time but it was still one of many horrible tragedies caused by a single person. “They lied…”
“He killed over twenty million people in under three days. The ECU can’t admit fault there, they’d lose footing across the world, so they concocted a story. The guy snapped. If you try and look online for information there’s even records of him having problems with his mental health. All faked by the ECU. He was completely sane, but had been backed into a corner.”
“A sane person doesn’t kill twenty something million people because he was backed into a corner,” I argued. “That’s completely fucked.”
“You have to consider the ultimatums the ECU was giving him,” Alex said. “I’m not defending him, I’m just saying you’d need to put yourself in his shoes to even begin to understand what he was going through. If he really was sane, could you imagine the kind of stress he was under to even consider the option he finally ended up taking?”
There was no excuse in my mind, no scenario I could comprehend where I could justify what that man had done.
“No. Fuck that.”
“It doesn’t matter. I was trying to make a different point,” Alex said, changing the subject. “The point is, the ECU take a more practical approach. They weigh the threat level of the villain before acting. Ninety-nine percent of the time, they’ll capture them the old fashioned way. Heroically, is how they like to portray it. Families and personal life are kept out of the way. Things tend to get ugly otherwise.”
I grimaced. “So, what you’re saying is that unless I’m actively threatening to wipe out a country, they’ll stay out of my personal life?”
“Something like that,” Alex’s tone was wishy-washy and I wasn’t sure I liked it. “Your best course of action? Don’t kill anyone. It’s a slippery slope.”
Intrusive thoughts had me momentarily thinking of Mirage before I ultimately pushed him out of my mind. “That’s fine, I never planned on it anyway. Until recently, I didn’t even want to make weapons but I’m doing it for my own safety now.”
“Good,” Alex nodded. “Selling weapons is a good way for the ECU to come crashing down on you. I probably don’t need to tell you that though, seeing as that hasn’t happened yet.”
I drummed my fingers on top of my desk as my mind drifted back to the information on the screen. Alex hadn’t tabbed away so I could still see my super name highlighted in the ECU database. Curiosity got the better of me as I leaned forward and read the other names. None of them I knew and it looked like the spreadsheet had been ordered alphabetically. Not many supers with ‘U’ at the start of their names.
“Alice, can you look her up?”
Alex raised an eyebrow. “Someone you know?”
“She’s the one helping me out. We’ve got a… thing going.”
Alex scrolled up to ‘A’, combing through hundreds of names until we eventually came across Alice. Expanding her details showed quite the story.
“Girl’s got a deep record. Petty theft, B&Es, evading authorities, multiple accounts of DTP, aggravated assault, unregistered firearm carrier… the list goes on. Doesn’t seem to be anything major in here though,” Alex tried the more condemning crimes. “She hasn’t killed anyone, at least from what the ECU knows. Lots of small-time crime though. Oh! Look at this. She used to be a rookie.”
Alex pulled up Sam’s old file.
“Catelynn Whiterose…” I murmured. “She changed her name?”
“Makes sense,” Alex hummed. “If she was a rookie, the ECU would know everything about her. Ran away, changed her name, got a new life.”
I looked down at her old super name. Split.
Directly under it was a detailed description of her powers. Strangely, Gold, Orange, and Purple were missing from the archives. Had she never shown her hand there or had some of those powers developed later on? Powers had the tendency to grow and evolve over time after all. It wouldn’t be out of the ordinary but I remembered Sam saying that Gold had warned her against telling her parents.
“She has a moderate warning. Most Aspects do these days,” Alex observed.
“What about Anomaly?” I asked. I knew about Sam but didn’t know much about our potential new recruit. “Anything on him?”
Alex found his file almost instantly. “Nothing much. Just a bunch of aggravated assault charges. That’s pretty standard for supers though. He’s got a cautionary warning though.”
“Meaning?”
“The ECU has no clue how his powers work,” Alex sounded impressed. “Huh, that is unusual. Not often you can stump the Mentalists they have. He sounds interesting.”
Given what he looked like, that didn’t come as much of a surprise. Sam was able to figure parts of him out though but that was likely through direct exposure. Gold was exceptionally good at what she did, that I couldn’t deny. She was a powerful Mentalist and it made sense why Sam put so much trust into that side of her power. It kept her alive and out of the grips of people like the Cains and Pandora.
“Anything on Masquerade?” I asked, my curiosity getting the better of me. “I’m interested to see what the ECU has on this guy.”
Alex didn’t move, her fingers frozen, hovering above her keyboard. Her eyes looked up at me, almost like she was staring at her webcam, directly at me. Slowly, her eyes narrowed.
“...Why do you want to know about that guy?”
“I was out with Alice and Anomaly last night. We were trying to go after Gold Rush and found out that he was meeting with the Cains. He and some other guy were talking in the VIP lounge at Poseidon’s Vault. Gold Rush was there but wasn’t really participating,” I explained. I noted the range of facial expressions that flashed across Alex’s face. “Alice said he was a big shot arms dealer from Dubai, working with the Iron Maiden. Outside of that, she didn’t say much else.”
Alex bit her lip before scrolling to find his file.
Before long, she pulled it up and my jaw almost hit the floor. The document was massive. There were over a thousand pages with multiple links to different spreadsheets. The ECU had written whole theses on the guy, documenting every sighting and every encounter. There were videos and analyses taken from the perspective of multiple different ECU heroes on the guy. He was the real deal, through and through.
“Holy shit…” I murmured. I suspected I was doing an authentic impression of a goldfish by the way Alex was nodding. “I knew he was big but I didn’t expect this.”
“Stay away from this guy, Max,” Alex said seriously. “If he’s working with the Cains, then some serious shit is going down. He’s one of the most dangerous warlords in the world.”
“Well, the Cains have Anomaly’s friend and we’re trying to help him out,” I said. “Alice is trying to recruit more people to our group so that we aren’t completely defenseless. She wants to make a name for us in the city, hold territory and all that.”
Alex gave me an incredulous look. “And you want to be a part of that?”
“I don’t know, okay? It sounds like a massive undertaking—”
“It is!”
“—but I don’t know what else to really do. I want to fix Mom and get her out of that stupid wheelchair and I’m not about to join the ECU to get that done,” I replied. “We both know who’s responsible for putting her there and I don’t want anything to do with them. Abby and the rookies are alright I guess but I don’t want to be a part of that if I can help it.”
“I don’t exactly want you in the ECU either,” Alex said with a frown. “They keep law and order but there are aspects to them that can’t be trusted. You want to help Mom out?”
“Yeah, at first I thought I just needed to make enough money to pay for a biokinetic to fix her up but Alice said that there are simpler ways to go about that. Namely by exchanging my powers for goods and services, I can secure a few favors from people I work with,” I said. I continued to drum my fingers anxiously on my desk as Alex’s features darkened a little. “Money apparently isn’t something a lot of the more successful independent supers are concerned about.”
“You know Mom’s going to have difficulty accepting charity.”
I grunted in agreement. “I know. I haven’t exactly thought about how I’m going to approach her with that yet.”
“I’ll help you.”
I felt a weight lifted from my shoulders. “You will?”
“You even need to ask? I don’t like Mom being in that chair anymore than you do. Plus, if you’re going to navigate this fucked up world, I’d sleep better at night knowing that I was doing everything I could to help you out. I have friends and contacts that can help you as well,” Alex said with a small smile. “Your big sister isn’t as lame as you think she is.”
I scoffed. “I never thought you were lame.”
“Coulda fooled me,” she grinned. Her smile vanished almost as quickly as it came. “Look, the criminal underworld is vast. Just be careful who you trust. It sounds like you lucked out with this Alice girl but you never know. Keep your wits about you, okay bro? I know I said I have friends and contacts in this biz, but I’ve also lost a bunch as well. If you’re not careful, shit can go south really fast.”
I thought back to Mirage and Banshee, how quickly and easily they had managed to catch me, then the second time at the Mall. I’m in this game now. There was no backing or chickening out now. I needed to play and take advantage of every hand I was given.
“You seriously won’t tell Mom about this?”
“Just as long as you promise to keep me updated; and I mean on everything. Do that and I won’t tell Mom,” Alex bargained. “I want to help but I can’t if you don’t tell me anything.”
“I’ll keep you in the loop,” I agreed. “You know, I thought you’d try and convince me to back out of all this and stay home. Lock myself in my room or something. It’s kinda why I don’t want Mom to know. That’s exactly what she’d want me to do or try to do herself.”
“And that’s why I don’t want to tell her either. She’ll start stressing and neither of us want that. Besides, I know what little good it would do to try and keep you away from all this,” Alex sighed, running a hand through her hair. “Sooner or later, someone will find out. There’s no escaping this life now that you have powers. The best I can do is help you avoid the pitfalls my late friends stumbled into.”
“Thanks, Alex,” I said with a weak smile. “I should’ve told you sooner. Sorry I didn’t trust you.”
She smiled. “It’s cool. I get it. Just promise not to do anything stupid. Out there, stupidity will get you killed.”
I nodded. “I’ll try my best.”
“The best is all that some of us can do.”