“Really, what am I to do...” Silva contemplated. It was a bit too early for her to go home so she was spending her time like aimlessly wandering around the neighbourhood. So much had happened in these two days, practically all of her world had changed. “What if there are more people like us… That would be good... Right?”

Truth to be told she had not given much of a thought how her life would change or what she would do in future. For the last couple of months, she had thought up and then discarded many plans on how to introduce herself to Steven and Mika. She had fantasized about them spending time together. But before that? If she would have to describe herself then it would be ‘going trough motions’.

She found herself in an almost empty playground. It was already late and only a few of the kids, who were usually here, were still out and playing. After finding an empty bench in a corner she sat down.

Truth to be told it would not be hard for her to live just by relying on her ability. There was plenty of option even she was not to go the easiest route, that being stealing. Granted, most of those options were still illegal, but she could always try to be a journalist or a detective.

The only thing Silva could not imagine was her future without relying on her ability. It was the single thing she had confidence in. Most of her time had been spent trying to improve and hone it. Experimenting with it and trying new things. It had become an inseparable part of her.

Silva started to swing her legs, she had sat on this bench for half an hour. Most of her time had been spent blankly looking at the children. Slowly their count had been dwindling and now there were only a couple left.

Still, she had come to one conclusion. That she would try her hardest not to fall so low as to exploit other people or do something illegal. Easy it might be, but she had not done up to now and she would try to not do it in the future. She had made a promise to her newfound friends after all.

There were still Mika’s suspicions about other people like them. If true would that change anything for them? Silva did not know.

"People like us… There is no guarantee that they would be friendly. I could always run away. What about Steven? What about Mika?" The chilling thoughts wormed themselves into her head and she could not help but shudder.

Silva was frustrated and the chilling evening air was not helping. The now-empty playground had lost all of its appeals and she decided to walk around to warm herself up before returning home.

Again aimlessly walking around she found herself returning to the alley where yesterday she had hammered a pipe against a man’s head. She had no real goals, only vague thoughts that she should do something. To prepare somehow. But the enemy was only a hazy idea and threats only an imagination.

“But that is not true is it?” Silva’s gaze sharpened as she noticed a very real threat. It was not that she had explicitly looked for the thugs, but then again, she had no other reason to return to this place.

She saw the very man she had downed yesterday. He now had a nasty bruise on his forehead where she had hit him and he was talking to a sturdy-looking man with an irritated expression and a beanie.

Ugly and Beanie were arguing about something as they turned and started to walk away from her. She noticed that they were on foot and after a short contemplation and a check of the clock she decided to follow them. Her father had a night shift and he would be back only early in the morning.

Silva did not know why they were looking for Steven or what their deal with his father was, but maybe there was a chance for her to help out. If she saw them doing something illegal a quick call to the police could save them a lot of trouble in the future.

Following them was easy and soon she was trying to listen in on their conversation. They seemed to be heading to the fringes of the city and while Silva had hoped to hear them talking about something she could use she seemed to be out of luck. All of the twenty minutes she had trailed after them the Ugly had complained about his girlfriend.

Silva was getting fed up by the torrent of bitching and could only admire the Beanie for his patience. There was also the thought swirling in her head that the Ugly had to be lying, as she was hard-pressed to imagine anyone dating the man for any reason.

The misguided mocking thoughts aside Silva was starting to worry about the distance they had walked already. The cold was getting to her, but the luck was on her side for once as the pair seemed to have reached the destination.

Silva had come all the way out to the fringes of the Oldsteel. She watched the duo enter what seemed to be a rundown warehouse. A few cars in the parking lot and several thugs dawdling about the place confirmed this place to their base of sorts in Silva’s mind. She memorized the place and started to rush back.

She would come back tomorrow after the school to see what is inside the warehouse, but for now, a warm and entirely normal peppermint tea was calling her back home.

–

Despite her plans, it took more than a month for Silva to finally return at the apparent base of the thugs. She had learned from Steven that they were calling it the Refuge and that they had plenty of people as members of the gang. They also had no real gang name and in general, they were called simply refugees.

When Silva had asked how did he know so much about them he had only laughed and she was forced to drop her question. Steven also had not told her why they were after him in the first place. Mika did reveal that it was personal and even she knew very little about it. Her advice was to wait for Steven to talk about it himself. Both had also warned her not to get caught up in the mess. A piece of advice she was going to disregard.

The reason why she had returned to this place after such a long time was that Steven and Mika had dragged her to a nearby storage unit that Mika’s father had rented some time ago. The place was half-full of boxes, old furniture and smelled of mould. There was barely enough place for all three of them and the only positive thing Silva could say about it was that it was truly safe for any experiments they wanted to do.

They had the place for themselves only for a week before Mika’s father had asked for the keys, but that had been enough to experiment with their powers for a bit. Though they mostly had just talked and played around with Silva’s ability as there was not much they could do with Steven’s or Mika’s due to their nature.

They also only spent about an hour at a time as Steven turned out to be quite busy after school and while Mika had invited Silva to hang out with her she had declined after the first time as it was too awkward for her. Rest of the time was used for them to get up to speed with their studies as Mika had helped them both to do their homework.

All in all, Silva could say that they had grown closer, but she still could not quite get used to her newfound friends as she still had trouble speaking and give her opinion. It was easy for her to get caught up in mischief Steven was up to time to time and get scolded by Mika immediately after.

The world, despite her worries, had not collapsed and days went by peacefully. Despite that she still caught herself thinking about sneaking in the Refuge to see what they were up to. There was not much she could do for her friends otherwise and the more she got to know them the more she wanted to do something of value. She felt like a dead weight otherwise.

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Her friends had learned all she knows herself about her ability while she could finally get a third parties opinion of how her ability worked and looked like.

The most surprising thing for her had been the fact that she did not become invisible, or not really. It also did not happen instantaneously. From Mika's description, it seemed that she started to get blurry and uninteresting, hard to focus on and after another moment she was gone.

Thinking about it again she should have known that that would be the case. She could not hide from the cameras, after all, so she knew that she was not invisible. It just not had dawned on her that she influenced other minds somehow. There was also a distance restriction. More than ten meters and her friends could find her again. It was not easy and could take a while but it was possible. It seemed that her power had something to do with misdirection and concealment.

For now, Silva decided to try and increase the distance from which she could be noticed. They had also experimented with cats and dogs, to see if her power worked on them. After some looking around the city for a stray cat or dog Silva had learned that the animals also were oblivious of her presence. She had suspected that beforehand as well, but living in a city it was rare for her to encounter any animals, except for the pigeons that seemed to be everywhere.

Her power included everything that was on her, as when receiving a call under her power her phone was undetectable and even if she was carrying something that smelled bad on her it was still hidden. There were limits of course, for example when she tried to move something big it was still very obvious.

All of this satisfied the curiosity of her friends. She, on the other hand, learned little of how her friend abilities worked. It also came to her as a surprise that from their descriptions it seemed that their abilities were quite a lot harder to activate. From what they said it took a lot of concentration and conscious effort to use them.

For Silva that seemed strange as it had taken only a little while to get fully used to her ability. It also could be used almost indefinitely while Steven complained that his ability was too demanding and he got tired after ten minutes of using his. Mika did not really know for how long she could keep up her healing and there was no way to check as none of them was keen on getting hurt repeatedly just to experiment.

Mika also had scoured the internet for any additional information she could find about superpowers, urban legends, myths and hearsays that could help, but nothing really fit their circumstances or was with any legitimacy.

As for Steven, he was generally him, and Silva found it hard to tell how seriously he took the situation they were in. Mika had assured, that he was earnest, in his own way, otherwise, he would have excused himself already, instead of jokingly proposing stupid procedures for testing. Like taking trying to get her to strip and check if nervousness impacted her invisibility. He had earned a punch for that one from Mika.

The last month had been fulfilling but also had reinforced her wish to investigate and now Silva felt ready for the trip. Or as ready as she could be. She was dressed for the occasion in dark bulky clothes, even covering her face, in case there were cameras, which she doubted there was any. She would still check for them, but if not for the constant men lingering around the entrance she would consider the building abandoned.

Now standing before the Refuge she felt small and weak. She wondered if what she was doing here, what she wanted to gain, but soon she shook her head. “I'll go and take a look. There must be something that can help my friends. I'll know when I see it. There is always the police I can call, I just need something...”

She had been standing for almost fifteen minutes, but there was no rush. Her father had a night shift again and he would not be home until morning, but just in case she had said that she would be staying at a friends house for the night. Tomorrow being a weekend he had reluctantly agreed.

It was already a little bit past midnight and the surroundings were unusually dark for a city. The moonlight illuminated the rundown parking lot and building. The building itself was dark as well except for the little beams coming out from the cracks under the entrance doors.

A couple of thugs standing near the entrance were smoking and talking. Raucous laugh resounded through the air from time to time rousing Silva out of her thoughts each time.

It was time and Silva moved closer to the door carefully checking for anything that could be a problem. There were no signs of cameras or any electronics for that matter. The thugs were talking nothing of importance. Silva settled near them and waited.

Luck was on her side as soon one of the thugs excused himself and headed back in the building with Silva following right behind him.

She found herself in a long dimly lit hallway with several doors and the man heading for one of them. Simple unadorned walls, two-meter high walls just ended with no ceiling and you could see the roof higher up. The overall feeling of this place gave her the impression that this place was renovated by the gang themselves. Many of door arks were out of level, walls were skewed a bit, lamps that were hanged on those walls were all different. Barely any finishing had been done to this place.

The many doors had no signs of where they led to and after waiting for the man who went to the toilet head back outside again Silva started to carefully see what was hidden behind the doors. After several tries, she had not found anything discriminating

At one point what she discovered in a random room were several beds with people sleeping in them. Silva held her breath for a moment forgetting her ability, but no one was awake. She idly remarked to herself how strange she thought it was that these men were sleeping so early. “Stereotypes are not always correct huh?” Slowly she closed the door and headed deeper into the building.

Following findings included a couple more rooms of men sleeping and Silva became even more careful, but there seemed to be no guards wandering around, nor any other security measures.

The end of the hallway did a 90 degree turn to the left with even more doors for her to check. Silva sighed to herself but still checked for anything that could be of interest to her. She found a room dedicated to games, training, living room, kitchen, toilets, bathroom and any rooms in between. She did check for any discriminating documents, weapons, or drugs but there was nothing. Not even a smidgen of proof, that this place was run by a group of criminals.

Upon reaching the end of the hallway and opening the last door she found a room entirely different from others. For, even with the dim light coming in from the hallway, Silva could tell that this room was done by people with skills.

Wooden panels, carpet, chandelier, huge writing-table in the middle, several cosy chairs and cabinet at the right wall. There even was a painting of the Oldsteel on the wall. The only thing that was out of place was the computer on the table reminding her of the current century.

She entered the room and after carefully closing the door she found herself in darkness. She fished out her phone and used its screen to illuminate the room. She checked everywhere, but the computer which she did not risk to turn on. In the end, this room too yielded nothing.

At the back of the room, there were two more doors, so she pinned her hopes on those. One of them even looked sturdier, as if proclaiming its importance.

Silva first headed for the well-built doors, but they turned out to be locked. That left the other doors that turned out to lead to a lavishly decorated bedroom with slight light coming from an electronic clock that rested on a night-table next to the bed. She entered the room, clearly owned by someone important and started to check for anything interesting. That, someone, was also currently soundly asleep in the bed.

She did not have any hopes of finding anything illegal, but what she thought would be here was the keys for the locked door.

Slowly Silva checked everywhere she could think of, but still found no keys. She scrutinized the room once again, and then she noticed that the man sleeping in the bed had a chain around his neck and on this chain, there was a key peeking out from beneath of the blanket.

Next ten minutes Silva spent trying to pray the key out of the man's hands without waking him up. She anxiously, and with trembling fingers finally hooked out the key from the chain. The man snorted and turned to other side leaving Silva frozen. The key was in her hand and after giving another sigh she swiftly left the room.

Silva hurried to the closed door and with pounding heart, she tried the key hoping that it would work. The loud clicking sound reverberated in the room almost stopping her heart. She opened the doors which revealed stairs heading downwards and leading to the basement. She could see another door at the bottom. She headed down after closing doors behind her to see what was hidden behind the only locked doors in the whole building.

Slowly she inched down fearing that the stairs would creak. Her phone gave her the light she needed to not trip up and soon she was standing before the last doors. There had to be something important there. Better yet, important and illegal. What Silva found after opening the door was definitely important. It also was not something she thought she would find.

“What the hell…” Silva let out her voice as the brilliant blue light illuminated her.