There were two ticks for every second in the counselor’s office. One from the mechanical clock suspended on the wall. Another from the kinetic toy’s metal beads, swinging back and forth. Two men sat in the room. One behind a desk, his eyes peeking over sternly tilted glasses. The other leaned back, arms crossed, visibly angry.

“Is that what you’re going with?” Samuel Osprey asked.

“Yes,” Lyssa said. Her gaze did not leave her lap.

Froyd said, “There is precedent in CEOR that allows a gifted to make citizen’s arrest without it being constituted as hero work.”

“But we all know what her intentions were,” Samuel said.

“What was your intention in chasing after that man?” the doctor asked.

“I saw someone suspicious,” Lyssa answered honestly. “I thought they were involved in the attack.”

“You chased after a possible suspect by yourself?”

“I acted rashly.”

“We don’t always get the benefit of hindsight in this business,” Samuel said. “If you don’t know someone’s gift, they could easily kill you before you can react. Every enhancile is a loaded gun.”

“I understand.”

“I don’t think you do.” He sighed. “It’s out of my hands anyway. If it were up to me, you’d be restricted to a support role for the rest of the year. At least. But the big man wants to see you.”

Lyssa looked up.

“Who?” She asked.

“Who else? The Director of M.A.G.E. Cormigieu Whitworth.”

“Uhm, when?”

“Now.” The voice had no speaker.

Lyssa inhaled sharply. Samuel winced. He picked at his ear with a pinky.

“Hate it when he does that,” he muttered.

“Excuse me.” Lyssa stood from her seat and made her way to the administration sector. She had not been told where the Director’s office was. Somehow she knew the way as though she had walked it a hundred times before.

The path leading there was flanked by trimmed trees, one of many through the enormous ring of grass surrounding the admin buildings. It was early morning. The roads were full of students. A group was holding a contest to see who could hover the longest with a bunch of weights tied to their legs. Many had abilities they could not hide. Hair on fire. Skin made of metal. Protrusions and morphs. All acceptable, even useful, abilities in the now. History had much baggage to hide about the way certain gifts were treated versus others.

Clearly the priorities were different now. A large monitor erected overlooking the entire field played current events. After a brief retelling of yesterday’s attack on Langshir Central, attention had been drawn to Fleetfoot evacuating an entire laboratory from a dangerous gas leak in a few seconds.

It seemed as though there was one event or another happening every minute. Smaller scale incidents scrolled underneath the news anchor’s desk below changes in stock prices. A robber with the ability to supercharge copper, turning a simple Glock into a small cannon. A man who could make himself invisible to perception hiding in the women’s restroom, caught because he forgot he couldn’t hide his own reflection in the mirror. News not worth verbalizing.

Wait a minute. This’s just in…

And then all the eyes turned as the news anchor made a horrified, stern, yet ever-professional face as he explained that a category 8 metallokinetic had been identified causing an earthquake in the Japanese section of the Ring of Fire.

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The first questions were always ‘How do we stop them?’ or ‘Who are they going to send?’ Lyssa’s question was ‘Why?’ What motivates people to do this sort of thing? Rachminau had been insane. There were psychiatric records confirming his mental state before he did what he did. But Rachminau was hardly the first person to cause some apocalyptic event with their gift. Historians have even speculated that Krakatoa was caused by a very powerful gifted. Were they all insane?

These matters were too heady for seven in the morning. Lyssa stopped watching the broadcast. She was one of a few who kept walking to their destination. The office she had been instructed to attend was deep in the heart of administration. She had to take an elevator there, past many storeys of steel and earthy odors and labyrinthine corridors. But upon entering a set of oaken double doors, the air cleared again.

The Director’s office was lit by three tall windows. Where the light came from she could not guess. One man sat at the end of a long table. To his right a set of three glass slabs. To his left, a seat that had been pulled out. He looked up from his reading.

“Ms. Unas,” he said. “Please sit.”

She did so.

“Sorry, sir,” she said. “I must have done something horribly wrong to-”

“Do you know what CEOR is?”

“The Consolidated Enhancile Operating Regulations.”

“It’s not there to limit you, even if many otherwise intelligent people out there believe so. It’s for assurance. Standard operating procedure limits the variables. Makes risks tenable and reduces collateral.”

Lyssa simply nodded.

Whitworth continued, “There will be a time when you will be told to cast the CEOR aside. But you can only do that after you know the rules. This is why we entrust heroism to adults.” He chuckled. “Imagine if teenagers were charged with working under pressure knowing lives were at stake. When I was a spry fifteen year old we tried to feed arsenic to the neighbor’s pig.”

“You grew up in a farm, sir?”

“…Never mind that. I called you here not because you’re in trouble. We’ve apprehended the suspicious personnel near the vicinity of the attack.”

Lyssa stiffened.

“I’ve had my resident telepaths go through their heads. They’ve been scrambled. Like breakfast eggs. One of them can barely eat. It’ll take a long time to return them to normal. But all of them have the same blank space in their memories.”

“W-why are you telling me?” Lyssa asked.

“Because you chased after one of them. I want to know if you’re alright.” Whitworth held out a hand. “If you’ll allow me.”

“Okay.”

He placed a finger on Lyssa’s temple.

“Hm…”

Lyssa’s heart pounded. She wasn’t sure why. She had nothing to be nervous about.

“You’re very stressed out,” Whitworth said as he withdrew. “First year is not intended to be too involved. Rest assured. You’ll have plenty of time to grow into a true hero.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Unless you have any questions, you may leave and have a good day.”

“Actually, I wanted to ask…”

“Ask what?”

“Was Rachminau insane?”

Whitworth took a deep breath.

“Yes he was,” he said.

“Were they all insane? How come so many disasters were caused by gifted?”

Whitworth rubbed his chin, looking away.

“You have an Intro to Gift Biology course this term I believe. Today even.”

“Yes.”

“I think you will find some answers there. But a more nuanced answer: we’re all a little insane. Spend enough time looking at people’s thoughts and you’d see there is no normal, no conformity. It’s unnoticeable because most of us don’t have particularly powerful gifts. Imagine a situation where you are upset. Very upset. You take it out on something and then get over it the next day. As adults do. You wake up the next morning and pick up the pieces of the vase or teacup you tossed. Not even your neighbors heard what had happened. Imagine being so powerful you could lift a mountain. And something, or god forbid someone, made you very, very upset.” Whitworth stood from his seat and adjusted his tie. “As impossible as it is to do. A human, much less a hero, should endeavor to understand why someone chooses to do anything, without condoning or condemning. Now, I have a meeting to get to.”

“Good day,” Lyssa said. She politely excused herself and went to class.

Intro to Gift Biology was taught by a moody lady in a lab coat by the name of Dorothy Verruck.

“Back in the day they called me Biomancer,” she said. “I was a support, mostly because they didn’t like how I disarmed situations.”

“What did you do?” Someone asked without raising their hand.

Dorothy affixed them with a deadened stare for a solid five seconds.

“This,” she finally said. She pulled out a rat cage from under her desk. She pinched a rat by the scruff of its neck. Her eyes glowed violet for a moment. The rat screeched as its flesh morphed like clay in the hands of a child. Its arms folded into itself, its legs twisted into odd angles, its face flattened so it could not scream anymore. Then she returned the rat to normal and put it back in the cage. It jumped about in jittery movements.

“Handcuffs can be broken and picked,” she said. “But fuse someone’s wrist and ankle bones together? They’re not getting away. Why was I moved to the back? Who knows. I don’t really care anymore.”

She flipped through her notes. “What class is this?”