Kayden Ward shuffled the two twenty-four packs of beer in his arms so he could knock on the cafeteria private dining room door, but before his knuckles came down, it opened.
Morgan stood in the doorway before him, smirking, eyebrow cocked. She was still in her Starflight courier uniform, because on top of having perfect grades, a near record setting number of Prestiges, and an undefeated combat record, she had apparently also decided that a couple hundred real world flight hours would look pretty good on the resume too.
And, to top it off, a shiny brass Captain’s badge now hung from a lanyard around her neck.
He grinned. “Hey, you got the nod!”
“I did,” she said simply.
He blew out a breath. “Gonna be a lot of pissed off seniors.”
Morgan, like Kade, was in her third year of the Heroforge Program at Aurora University, a junior. Morgan, like Kade, was an excellent fighter. But Morgan, unlike Kade, was in Solstice, a dorm for people who had never heard the word “tryhard” and definitely wouldn’t think it was a bummer to be called one if they did. Captaincy, meanwhile, was typically reserved for seniors, though it wasn’t a codified rule or anything. Morgan being promoted to Captain of her dorm, leader of the team fights and director of field activities, meant that an entire graduating class of the most insufferably competitive people in the entire school was ineligible for the Captain Prestige—one of the most coveted you could get—on their resume.
It was why he had gone Daybreak in the first place—better to be a big fish in a small pond than a big fish in a shark tank. That, and no other dorms had offered on him.
She shrugged. “They can challenge me for the spot if they want. Professor Gillespie has already agreed to shift the Captaincy to anyone who beats me.”
Kade barked a laugh. That was the same thing as her saying they could all go fuck themselves with a rusty spork. No one in the school, junior, senior, or probably even professor, was going to beat Morgan Manning in a one-on-one. Or a one-on-two.
Nobody, he amended in his brain, except Kayden Ward, that is.
“So,” he asked, hefting one of the twenty-four packs back to his other well-muscled arm. “Can I come in?”
She met his eyes for a moment, then let them drift down to his chest. Normally, he’d think she was checking him out—because most women did—but here, it was rather obvious that she was nonverbally noting his own lack of a Captain’s badge. Also, Morgan seemed about as interested in sex as he was interested in interpretive dance. Happy to see other people enjoy it, but only as long as no one tried to include you.
“Come on,” he cajoled. “It’s a formality and you know it.”
Her eyebrow cocked again, but instead of arguing, she just shrugged and stepped out of the way, implicitly condoning his presence.
Kade stepped into the dining room and raised the two packages of beer. “‘Sup nerds! Guess who brought the party!”
Four other pairs of eyes above four other Captain’s badges watched him, with reactions ranging from amusement to irritation.
Kade really didn’t care which was which and who felt what. It was hard to be intimidated by anyone when all you had to do to get them—or their girlfriends—to drop their pants was ask and be this hot.
Instead, he walked over to what looked to be the food table and set one of the cases down. The private dining room was small, normally reserved for staff or school visitors, but the spread was still relatively immense for six people. That was normal. Lou, the Heroforge Program’s on call personal chef, never did anything by half measures, and Kade suspected that his superpower was cooking. There were sandwiches, hot and cold, sides, vegetarian options, carnivore options, and even what looked like a fresh angel food cake with strawberries for desert. Of course, everyone in this room was a fitness nut by necessity, and everything with a shred of protein was picked over, while anything with carbs was mostly untouched.
He wondered what Lou would say if he were asked if he was offended that someone had gone through and meticulously picked all the croutons out of their salad, but he imagined the answer would be an uncomfortably blank amber stare, possibly with a single word grunted in response. He was a terse dude. Some people found him unsettling, but Kade thought he just needed to get laid.
After all, who didn't?
Free of one of his burdens, he took the other over to the central table where the rest were gathered and pulled up a chair. The table was covered in folders—dossiers, really—each containing the names of and relevant information about the incoming freshman class. Technically, they weren’t allowed to pick new members until Orientation, but by tradition, the Captains gathered beforehand to get some advance info and perhaps make some deals about how to divide them up. Things could change Orientation Day, depending on what they saw on the field, but having this time to scope things out kept day-of conflicts at bay.
Usually. Last year there’d been a personal singles match before the Taring even started, and Equinox had ended up stealing a heavy hitter from Nova. Freshmen technically choose where they wanted to go from available offers, but after the thrashing the other Captain had received, it had been an easy choice.
Kade sat down, plopped the beer case in the center of the table, and looked around.
Nobody spoke, though they shared glances that said volumes.
He rolled his eyes. “What?”
After a moment, someone spoke.
“Suppose I’ll be that guy,” Bruno Rhodes, the new Equinox Captain, said. He had that hesitant-but-not look people have when they know they’re about to say something dickish but are going to say it anyway and sleep just fine later. He spread his hands inquisitively. “I guess—what’re you doing here?”
Kade, unconcerned, grabbed the nearest dossier and flipped it open. Jessica Bennett, non-flight-capable mid-level brick, boring, Equinox fodder for sure. “Same thing you are, bro.”
“Really?” Bruno kept that same stupid aw shucks look. “Because I’m kinda here as a dorm Captain. In a meeting for Captains. And, sorta, not for anyone else, you know?”
Kade blew a breath out his nose and looked up at the other guy. Bruno wasn’t a bad dude, but he was kind of a pompous twat sometimes. Really, given the sorts of heroes Equinox tended to pump out, it was a miracle that he was only pompous, and not a full blown jackass. He wasn’t a bad looking guy either—he had the kind of classical handsomeness that said future Top Fiver—but he also insisted on dyeing his hair this awful peroxide blond that insinuated maybe his typically civil face was a veneer hiding mountainous levels of obnoxious vanity.
Kade couldn’t relate.
“I was Captain all last year,” Kade said, reaching for his beers, ripping open the top of the case, and pulling one out. “Is that not good enough?”
“Acting Captain,” Bruno said. “Because the other one dropped out. Wasn’t ever official, so unless you’re hiding a badge somewhere, probably not still in effect.”
“Nobody at Daybreak has gotten a badge yet,” Kade shot back. “No one has even heard from Professor Gravelle.”
“Pretty normal even during the school year,” a new voice, Daisy Chaney, murmured, with more than a touch of annoyed bitterness.
Kade sympathized. In addition to being Daybreak’s staff Patron, Professor Gravelle was also head of their law program, and which was Daisy's mundie major. He sympathized a little less than he could have, however, considering Heroforgers didn’t even have to pick a major—he certainly hadn’t, only superheroing for him—and Professor Gravelle was still a practicing lawyer on top of everything else. The fact that he could do all of that and run classes that got Aurora ranked on the same level as Harvard meant they were lucky to have him.
Daisy was from Nova, however, which meant that she’d probably be relying on a dayjob. Nova was basically Solstice without enforced sparring practice or gym time. Daisy was pretty fit, though. Pretty good in bed, too, very enthusiastic.
As though she’d heard his thoughts—she definitely hadn’t, though, she wasn’t psychic—she glanced in his direction and blushed slightly.
Morgan stepped in for the save. “Daybreak deserves to have someone here, Bruno.”
“Do they?” Bruno said. “They’re just gonna pick up whoever doesn’t get any other offers, right? That’s kind of their entire thing. They’re Hufflepuff. With keggers.”
Everyone at the table made some kind of objecting noise at that, mostly out of habit, and not because it was untrue. But it was, Kade had learned, impolite to reference the silly wizard books, especially in relation to the dorm system. He suspected it was something the staff encouraged to minimize the chance of a lawsuit.
But it was going to change this year and Kade had some ideas on exactly how to do it, starting with picking up some actual talent.
“Fine,” Bruno said, placatively, seeing that his argument had gone over like a rock-powered dirigible. He spread his hands again. “But maybe, like, a senior. I’m just saying.”
“We don’t have any seniors,” Kade said bluntly. “Captain or not, I’m RA this year, and none of the seniors have been assigned a room.”
Silence fell on the table as they absorbed that. A whole grade level from an entire dorm, all washing out.
It was kind of depressing, so Kade broke the tension the only way he knew how: He punctured the side of his beer can, popped the top, and shotgunned the entire thing effortlessly.
When he was done, he let out an immediate wall-shaking belch, and belted out, “Do it for state!”
Everyone at the table sighed, or chuckled, or some compromise between the two.
Bruno, a chuckler, shrugged and grinned with an attempt at good humor, clearly—politically—withdrawing his objection. He even reached up into Kade’s beers and grabbed one for himself.
Then he paused, looking at it, frowning.
“Kade,” he said. “We have handcrafted, homemade meals cooked by an almost definitely superhumanly talented chef available on demand at any point in the day.”
Kade reached for another beer himself, and as he brought it back, paused. He liked the way his bicep popped when he bent his arm at that angle. His hard work in the gym was paying off. “Yeah, I know. I saw the snack table.”
“And you brought—” He looked at the aluminum can again. “Two cases of warm Natty Lite?”
Kade nodded. “Yeah. What’s the problem? You think we’ll need more?”
Bruno blinked at him. Then, he wordlessly popped the can open and took a drink, and barely grimaced afterward.
“Well, since that’s out of the way, let’s keep going,” Morgan said, effortlessly taking the charge. She tapped a dossier sitting open in the middle of the table. “We were just getting to a big name.”
“Darby Tomorrow,” Bruno supplied before Kade could lean in to see what was up. “The Tomorrow Kid. Biggest name in the Junior Hero world, already pegged as the strongest metahuman of his generation. And, you know, big news, with Paragon and all.”
Another uncomfortable silence fell over the room. Saying Paragon was a legend was like saying Muhammad Ali was a pretty good boxer—underselling it to a disrespectful degree. His death still seemed like fake news to Kade. Surely he’d pop back up any second, all of it being a ruse to catch some supervillain, or, surprise, he’d been hiding the power of total regeneration up his sleeve this entire time. Hell, that was even likely—Kade couldn’t imagine having the power to take other powers and going heroing without that on your side.
So yeah, his some-level-of-great-nephew and sidekick was going to be a big deal right now, power, reputation, and ultra-famous family aside.
Kade said, “Well, I want him.”
“Yeah, no shit,” said the Nightfall Captain, Damian Darkshadow, which was somehow—hilariously—his actual name. And even more improbably, he looked like a Damian Darkshadow. He was twenty-one years old and grizzled. “We all want him.”
“One-hundred percent chance Professor Castor uses our mandatory on him,” Bruno said confidently. “So unless there’s no one you guys see that fits your dorm ethos better, I’d sit this one out.”
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
Each dorm got one mandatory pick—that is, one instance where they got to simply declare that someone was coming to their dorm. It was only ever issued with the blessing of the dorm’s Patron, and Kade suspected they had it nailed down before the Captains ever saw so much as a page from a dossier.
Still, dueling mandatories were sometimes issued, at which point the Dean stepped in to arbitrate. Kade thought it was kind of weak that they could just yank the choice away from the student, since it was supposed to be the entire point of the thing, but the longer he stayed here, the more he realized how infrequently the important things were actually left to chance in the superhero world.
“He could be the greatest healer ever with the right training,” the Starlight Captain, Akira Inshinomori said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Professor Chang made an attempt.”
Bruno scoffed. “I heard the kid’s a piece of work. She’ll have a hard sell if she tries to mold him into a freaking pacifist.”
Akira gave him a withering look. He had a gravitas to him that made Kade wonder if his power was at work somehow. “She’s very persuasive.”
Conversation paused, and everyone looked to Morgan, who had so far sat surprisingly quiet on the subject.
Realizing that all eyes were on her, she acknowledged everyone with a shrug. “Pass.”
That took them all aback.
Bruno said, disbelievingly, “You don’t want him?”
“Like you said, I heard he’s a piece of work,” Morgan said, sounding more bored than anything. “We don’t need that in Solstice.”
“He’s part of the Tomorrow family,” Damian said gruffly. “They're basically synonymous with Solstice.”
“Say that five times fast,” Bruno interjected, grinning.
“With what's happened,” Damian continued, ignoring him, “seeing him as part of the Paragon’s old dormitory might be comforting to some people.”
Morgan watched him with a raised eyebrow for a moment, then flicked her fingers dismissively. “They'll cope. I'm here to build the best dorm I can, not to resurrect Paragon.” She eyed him. “Besides, don't you want him for Nightfall?”
Damian flicked his own fingers in a mirror of her own gesture. “Perhaps, but if Equinox mandatories him, there's no chance Professor Ivanova does the same. She's going to save it for a paranatural with a particular dietary or environmental restriction.”
“I swear to God, if we get another vampire this year, I'm gonna Buffy their ass,” Bruno said, rolling his eyes and sipping his Natty. “I think at this point there are more vampire superheroes than vampire villains. And they're all emo as hell.”
“There aren't, and they're not,” Damian said, a bit defensively. “Have you even met Todd?”
“Suckboy!” Kade crowed, and in honor of one of his biggest bros, chugged his beer on the spot. He finished it, crushed the can, tossed it aside, and reached for another.
“He's not seriously sticking with that for his callsign, is he?” Daisy asked, disgusted.
“Already locked in,” Kade answered. “Suckboy for life.”
“I've tried talking him out of it,” Damian sighed. “But he says it's perfect, because he's a vampire and he's gay.”
“Which is cool,” Kade said forcefully, staring everyone around the table down.
Morgan snorted.
“Nobody said it wasn't!” Daisy said, offended that someone would dare question her open-mindedness. “It's just an awful callsign!”
“Awful fuckin’ rad,” Kade muttered.
“So I take it,” Morgan cut in, “that we’re up in the air about Tomorrow?”
“What’s tomorrow?” Kade asked.
She just looked at him.
“I’m kidding,” Kade said. “But yeah, I want him, and we’ll mandatory him if we have to.”
“You mean, whoever is Captain will mandatory him,” Bruno said. “Or, won’t, because Professor Gravelle never uses mandatories, or disputes other dorms’ picks.”
“Bro, if you wanna go, we can go,” Kade said, flexing his pecs and leaning forward. “Pick a time.”
“We actually can’t,” Bruno said. “Stadium isn’t open until Orientation.”
In response, Kade reached into the case of Natty and pulled out two fresh ones. He tossed one to Bruno. “Chug, motherfucker.”
“Seriously? I’m still working on the first—” He cut off as Kade cracked his open and hastily did the same, raising it quickly to his lips to drink.
Kade still smoked him with two seconds to go. That was the secret to shutting up anyone in the Heroforge Program. Nobody could pass up a challenge, even when they were on someone else’s turf. And nobody in the school—possibly the world—partied like Daybreak partied.
It wasn’t like they had anything better to do.
Kade let out another belch, this one a roar of triumph, as Bruno ended his attempt trying not to do the same. “Lux Aurorae!”
“You know this shit sucks, right?” Bruno said, crushing his own can and setting it to the side. “Tastes like someone made seltzer with dirty sock water.”
“Well you can’t chug microbrews, hipster,” Kade said. “So we’ll call that the battle for Tomorrow, yeah?”
“Not a chance,” Bruno said. “He’s coming to Equinox.”
“Not if we have anything to say about it,” Akira cut in.
Bruno looked at him evenly. “You don't.”
“So we're going to call this one a wash and let the Patrons sort it out,” Morgan said, decisively flipping the folder closed and moving it to a pile near the side. She reached for the next on the stack she had pulled his from in the first place, flipped it open, and raised her eyebrows. “Well, next up is another big name. Bigger than the last in my opinion.”
“Unless it’s another Tomorrow,” Bruno said, “I really don’t see that being true.”
Morgan tossed it, open, to the center of the table for everyone to see. “Annabelle Jones. Our friendly neighborhood supervillain.”
Silence settled around the table again. This time, Kade felt no need to break it.
Morgan looked around at all of them, with much the same energy Kade had when they’d been talking about Todd. “What?”
“They’re seriously still letting her in?” Bruno said, disgust dripping from his words. “Fucking gross.”
Morgan’s eyes locked on him, which at any other point would have been enough to shut him—or anyone—up. “Gross, huh.”
“You know she helped kill Paragon, right?” Bruno continued, defiant.
“Bullshit,” Morgan hissed. “That’s a baseless, nonsense rumor and anyone who repeats it is going to answer to me. And I don’t mean chugging or a singles match. We’ll go outside right the fuck now.”
“How do you know?” Bruno asked, stubborn. “Were you there?”
“I just saw her yesterday,” Morgan said. “Delivered some of her legal paperwork, in fact. She didn’t look like she was fit to kill a pot of coffee, much less Paragon. And if she somehow had, I doubt she’d be staying with Fury of all people.”
“Unless she was in on it,” Bruno muttered. “They got divorced for a reason.”
Kade thought Morgan would actually take his head off on that one—he felt his own fist clench for a moment, before he caught it and stopped—but instead she smiled at him. “Say that to her face. I dare you. It’ll be even funnier than what I do to you if you keep pushing it.”
Bruno raised his hands. “Regardless, she’s a supervillain. Not even an at-risk metahuman, but an actual supervillain. She’s robbed a bank in broad daylight. Letting her into Aurora is wrong. And in this political climate, destructively divisive. We should be building bridges, not reaching across Walls.”
“Wow, Bruno,” Morgan said. “You’re going to be a Senator one day for sure.”
“Harsh,” he said, sarcastically hurt. “I was thinking governorship into a presidential campaign, after a decade or so of hard work on the street, while I’ve still got my looks.”
Morgan’s lips thinned. She dismissed him, instead looking around the table at everyone else. “Thoughts? Concerns? Who’s got ‘em?”
Everyone shared another pause.
“Seriously?” She looked at Kade. “What about you? She’s a powerhouse.”
Kade felt uncomfortable, which was unusual for him. Being hot generally solved most of his problems, socially speaking. He reached across the table, picked up the girl’s dossier, and looked it over. “I don’t know, Morgan. I’m kinda with Bruno on this one. She’s a villain. She doesn’t belong here.”
“She’s a person the system failed and forgot about,” Morgan said. “I thought you’d understand that better than the rest of them.”
Kade shrugged. “I mean, they said the same thing about the Columbine kids, though, didn’t they? Said they were bullied and lashing out, boohoo, and it turned out it wasn’t true at all. Turns out they were just psychos who wanted to kill people.”
“I think there’s two problems there,” Morgan answer, voice deceptively reasonable. “One, it’s on record that Jones was bullied, viciously, and two, she didn’t kill anyone.”
“Technically,” Bruno interjected. “That we know of.”
“Literally,” Morgan countered. “That we know of.”
Kade listened to them, but looked down at the dossier. It included a recent picture, though it was beyond him how or when they’d gotten ahold of it. She was… cute. In kinda a Wednesday Addams creepy-ass way, but still. She looked almost delicate, ethereal, with her startlingly white hair and big, dark, admittedly sunken eyes. She looked like someone’s kid sister, all grown up.
But her face was weirdly flat, expressionless, eerie. She kinda reminded him of Lou, to be honest, and in what might have been a first for him, he felt no need to prescribe a vigorous sheet session as a cure. He had learned two things about women: One, when they were down to fuck, and two, arguably more important—or maybe not, he respected boundaries, but still—when they were crazy.
And this girl had crazy written all over her. If you stuck her face on the poster of a horror movie everyone would assume it was another The Omen remake.
Kade shook his head and flipped the folder shut. “Nah. Hard pass.”
“I mean, if everyone’s passing, she’ll just come to you anyway,” Bruno said, somewhat snidely.
Kade realized with some alarm that he was right. Fuck, like it wasn’t enough that he had to deal with Riley Harper, now he was gonna have cut-rate Carrie in his dorm too. He hoped he could convince Professor Gravelle to listen to him—
Morgan suddenly relaxed, all the tension she’d been projecting evaporating in an instant. She even smirked. “Good. Sounds like I won’t have to burn our mandatory on her, then.”
Everyone startled in some way, and stared at her in silence.
Bruno started to let out a rolling chuckle, then threw the rest of his original beer back—the lightweight. “Holy hell, Morgan. If this is gonna be the quality of your leadership going forward, Equinox is taking this year’s Stan Lee Cup, easy.”
“No, you aren’t,” Morgan said, voice almost lazy. “Because even if I’m an awful leader and terrible judge of character, I’ll still be fighting.”
On one hand, Kade was relieved that he had just dodged that bullet. On the other hand, he was uneasy about Jones coming to the school at all. She’d probably try and rob it, or something.
On a third appendage—no need to specify—holy Christ on a cracker, there was nothing hotter than earned confidence, and Morgan Manning was a fucking smokeshow in that regard. And most others. There had to be something in this world that turned her on—though if it wasn’t his face, he was kinda out of ideas. That was pretty much his plan A through Z.
Akira leaned in and took the dossier, opened it, and looked through, thoughtfully. “You’re that sure of her?”
“I liked her energy,” Morgan said, simply, and knowing her power, it was probably literal.
Akira looked thoughtful. “She’s a full spectrum psion. She could be taught psychic healing.”
“She uses her prodigious mental powers to punch people really hard,” Morgan said. “Which I admire for its pure spunk, but I don’t think she’d be a good pacifist either.”
“We’re not all total pacifists,” Akira said, sounding thoughtful. “I might throw our hat into the ring. It might be the best outcome of all this. A supervillain being molded into a mostly nonviolent healer.”
“Maybe,” Morgan agreed. “But she’ll end up in Solstice.”
Akira smirked up at her and handed the dossier off. “Care to wager?”
“If mandatories don’t get involved,” Daisy, who had taken the folder, said, “we might put in an offer too. It says here she exhibits high-level tactical thought. That’s something we value in Nova.”
Kade listened, then turned an eyed Morgan suspiciously.
She winked at him.
All at once, she’d turned the Jones girl from a dodged bullet into a competition, and naturally, the other Captains had eaten it all up. They couldn’t help themselves. Everyone wanted to be the best, and since Morgan was currently the best, that meant whatever she wanted carried weight. She wanted Jones, and more than that, for whatever reason, she wanted Jones to be a hot commodity on Orientation Day. Given the villain’s history, she probably figured it was better than her being a pariah. And the other Captains had taken the bait hook, line, and sinker.
And now that he thought about it, Jones was a powerhouse. They needed heavy hitters in Daybreak, especially if there were no seniors this year. If they could gut out just one victory in the Trials, that’d be more than they’d managed since he’d been here, and it would have to be proof that he was ready to earn his callsign. Surely.
There was one Captain who was still firmly unconvinced, however.
“Y’all are crazy,” Bruno said, cracking open another warm one. “And if I know Professor Castor, Jones and anyone on that side of things isn’t going to have an easy time here. He’ll make sure of that.”
“And if I know Professor Gillespie,” Morgan said, “or Professor Ivanova, or Professor Gomez, or even Professor Styx, he’ll watch his step and act like a professional and an adult.”
“You don’t have to act like either of those when you’re an Omega,” Bruno said. “And that’s the difference between him and the rest of them.” He chortled. “Especially fuckin’ Styx. There’s probably a reason Eclipse dorm got shut down.”
Eclipse, the seventh, now defunct, dorm, of which the perpetually drunk Professor Styx was supposedly the Patron. Kade had actually asked around about it, and funnily enough, he’d never met a single superhero who had graduated from it, even though it was supposed to have just closed a few years before he’d shown up. And when he’d asked the graduates about it, it had closed a few years before they had showed up too. He’d be inclined to think it was a campus myth, if it wasn’t for the fact that the dilapidated, shuttered building still existed on Hero’s Row, complete with a sign out front that said Eclipse Dormitory—No Trespassing.
The conversation eventually moved on, and Jones’s dossier went on the “undetermined” pile right on top of Darby Tomorrow’s. Truthfully, Kade was still unconvinced of her fitness to even be at the school, and with almost everyone now wanting to stake their claim on her, there was a slim chance she’d pick Daybreak over anyone else. Maybe if he put the moves on her, but as an upperclassman, he thought that hitting on freshman girls in their first semester was probably a creep move. He hadn’t liked it when he’d seen it as a freshman and he wasn’t going to do it now. They needed some time to adjust.
Tomorrow, on the other hand. Well, if it came down to a battle of mandatories, his Patron was a lawyer. He had faith that Professor Gravelle could make a convincing case to the Dean. With a little power on their side, Kade was confident he could actually whip Daybreak into something resembling a competitive force, and if he could do that, he could prove himself beyond a shadow of a doubt.
All he needed was an opportunity. A chance to show everyone what he had, what he could do. All he needed was a shot.
And, he thought, remembering the notable lack of weight on his chiseled chest, a Captain’s badge.
The future was looking bright for Kayden Ward. It had to.
Because the alternative was reading another page of the little black, reality-twisting book hidden in a locked strongbox in his dorm. One page had given him everything he knew of his powers.
And nearly killed him.