Chapter Text

DANIEL JONES

If I’ve learned anything in life, it’s that there’s always a catch. I spent 16 years (well, maybe more like 12) dreaming of the day I’d go to the City of Stars, visit the Nexus Memorial and the Guard Tower, and wait outside for four hours until I’d get my chance to walk through the Gates of Vigil and touch the forcefield and look through at the Round Table. Heck, I thought I might even get a chance to see a member of the Vigil in the flesh.

On the one hand, now I was actually seeing every single one of them, in full swing, and it was more awesome than I ever dreamed. On the other hand, there was a building falling on my head. If I survived, I might get to shake hands with Tempest, maybe even get a photo. If I didn’t, well…

“Move, kid!” I heard someone growl.

It occurred to me that I was just standing there, monologuing internally while chunks of rubble were raining down from above. And yet, I couldn’t move. I was just looking up as the bricks fell. I saw tendrils of red light flying up above me. That was Vanguard. They knitted together like wool and formed a massive glove, indeed, a glove so massive that it was literally holding a building above my head. I’d like to say I was in this mess because I was pushing a pram out the way or trying to save an old lady, but really, I just freeze up when I’m stressed, and I have a knack of winding up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Like, say, under a falling building. I had school in two weeks. The Club was going to freak. They were going to be so sorry they hadn’t come along - that is, if I survived.

I was moving too fast to see anything. Someone was holding me. It didn’t hurt when they picked me. Must be a psychokinetic. Could it be? And then I was hovering, and next to me was Astra. Astra who once punched Doom-Monger into space. Astra who once single-handedly powered a hospital for three hours when the backup generator failed. She was GPD-ranked number 1 for psychokinesis, and as a Permanent Captain of the Vigil she had one of the highest approval ratings as well. Maybe it was the sudden deceleration… no, that’s not how psychokinesis works. Well, either way, I blacked out.

“Can you hear me? If you can hear me, open your eyes.”

I opened them, and sat up slowly. There was a paramedic kneeling next to me. I felt more or less fine. A little queasy. There were periodic flashes of light as reporters swarmed on the other side of a barricade. The other side. Weird. A few members of the Vigil were still there, helping to put together the slightly-destroyed buildings. I craned my neck to see if I could spot Tempest, but unfortunately it seemed like it was mostly B-listers. Well, Vanguard was there, actually, using his massive ghostly hands to pick up bits of buildings and put them back together like lego bricks, and somebody was with him helping to fix them in place. There were firefighters too, searching the rubble, but mostly they were trying to stay out of the way while Vanguard did the heavy lifting.

“Are you ok?” the paramedic asked.

“Yeah,” I said, “fine, thanks. Just a little…”

The crowd picked up. The cameras were flashing more frequently. I looked to see what had caught their eye. And there he was, Esper, in that iconic black coat that trailed on the floor and his signature black metal mask, walking straight towards me. No, not me, the paramedic.

“What’s your name, sir?” Esper asked. His voice was crisp and deep.

“Oh, uh,” the paramedic said, “Joe.”

“Joe,” Esper echoed, lingering over the sound. “Thank you for your help today. Our work wouldn’t be possible without men like you.”

He perched on the floor next to me.

“How about you?” he asked.

After a full five seconds of mental preparation, I finally managed to say “Daniel.”

The mask gave nothing away. He just kept staring at me. He reached out towards me and tapped my chest. “What’s this?” he asked.

I looked down. “That’s my badge. I’m a member of the Young Vigil, in Massachusetts.”

“That’s a gold badge,” he said, running his thumb across it. “You have to work quite hard to get one of those, Daniel”

I didn’t say anything back. I didn’t know what to say. What do you say when you’re talking to the man that knows everything? That was Esper’s power - he was always ten moves ahead of everyone else. So why would he even be talking to me?

“I suppose,” he said, “you’re here on a tour of the city. Are you all on your own?”

“Yeah. No. I mean, I’m with a couple other people, for a competition. I’m meant to be back at the hotel at 7.”

“That gives us a few hours then.”

“What for?” I asked.

“How would you like to have a drink in the Guard Tower?”

I can’t describe how it felt. I’d survived, and I’d seen The Vigil in action, and I’d even been picked up by Astra, and now, Esper was inviting me back to the Guard Tower for tea. There had to be a catch.

“Vigil Command,” Esper said, “get someone to drop me and a friend in the Guard Tower.”

That was it. I had heard Esper, a permanent Captain of the Vigil, say ‘Vigil Command’. And I was a ‘friend’. I knew it was probably just a formality, but still. I couldn’t work out whether this was more stressful than having a building fall on me. The only thing that could make this day more awesome would be seeing Tempest. But obviously, meeting two Vigil Captains was more than I could ever ask for.

“Yes,” Esper said. “Another one. But trust me.”

He turned to me and extended a hand. The buildings and people in front of me contorted like a heat haze until there was just a patch of black. Then an arm reached out of the black, and touched Esper, and then everything was distorted and dark.

The darkness gave way to light, and we were standing up, me and my friend Esper.

“Thanks, Command,” Esper said.

I looked around. This was the Tower of Vigil. In front of me was the largest single pane of glass in America, beyond the capabilities of modern technology to produce. And past it was the breathtaking sight of Star City, home of heroes. A surprising number of the buildings I could see were on fire or falling down or just generally collapsing. Apparently that’s common here. Only four or five, but that’s still quite a lot of buildings to be having accidents. But that didn’t matter now. It paled in comparison with where I was now. All around me, the greatest heroes still on active patrol were pacing around having slightly heated conversations. I had so many questions. I didn’t even know what had knocked that building over in the first place.

“We don’t yet know what’s causing this. It seems to be a coordinated strike by several groups, although nobody involved seems to realise that they’ve been coordinated. You know, Daniel,” Esper said, “we don’t just give out this treatment to everyone.”

A man in a striped gold and black bodysuit ran over. I think I vaguely recognised him from a playing card. Edgerunner, maybe. “Esper,” he said, “the city’s collapsing. What do we do?”

“Don’t worry,” Esper said. “The situation is under control, and the worst has passed. You should go see your father. Now if you don’t mind, I’m a little busy.”

Without bothering to let Edgerunner (I think) say anything more, Esper put his arm around me and led me across the room.

“As I was saying, we don’t do this for just anyone.”

“Of course,” I replied. “Thank you so much for taking me here. This is amazing.”

“I’m glad you like it. But I didn’t bring you here because of the badge.”

I frowned. “Why did you bring me here then?”

He began to walk towards the coffee machine, guiding me forwards with his arm. I couldn’t help but snatch a glance of all the superheroes just sitting around little circular cafe tables.

“Try not to stare too much,” Esper said.

At the table, he took a cup and filled it with coffee. Then he reached into a mini-fridge, and handed me a can of Dr Fizzman.

“Am I right to assume you know what my power is?” he asked.

“Sure,” I replied. He kept staring at me so I kept talking. “You’re hosting the Esper spirit in you. It gives you supernatural intuition. That’s how you answer my questions before I ask them. That’s how you knew Dr Fizzman is my favourite drink. That’s why you’re considered one of the most powerful heroes out there, enough to rival people who can knock over buildings, because you always know what to do.”

“That’s correct,” he replied. “And that’s why I want you to have this.”

He reached into his coat and produced a sealed letter, with no name written on it. I held it like a family heirloom.

“Go ahead, open it. It’s meant for you.”

I peeled the flap off, and removed the crisply folded paper from within. I unfolded it. I read the top line out loud. “Letter of recommendation. We of the Vigil do hereby recommend that the holder of this letter be awarded a place at the Jonathan Frost Academy, along with one Vigil-funded full scholarships.”

I looked up at him, and back down at the paper. “Jonathan Frost Academy?”

He nodded. “It’s where I and many other superhumans were educated. It’s meant for people like us.”

“Us?”

“This letter is meant for you.”

“So I’m a superhuman?” I asked.

“Esper!” somebody shouted. The hairs on my arms stood up. I recognised the voice instantly. I’d heard it on TV so many times. My favourite toy when I was 7 was a Talking Tempest Action Figure, actually.

“Esper,” Tempest said, “what just happened? Why wasn’t there an alert?”

“Don’t worry,” Esper said. “The situation is resolved.”

“That wasn’t an answer,” Tempest said. I could feel static in the air. My hair was standing on end. He was easily half a foot taller than me, but still he looked somehow small now he wasn’t on TV.

“We’ll talk in a minute,” Esper said. “Have you met Daniel?”

Tempest turned to me. His eyes were, for want of a better word, electric. His expression softened. I could feel the static falling out of the air. He put his hand out to shake mine. “Hello,” he said. “I’m Tempest.”

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t do anything. I just kind of stared at him. This was definitely worse than having a building fall on you. And now nothing could save me.

He brought his hand back. He looked down at the letter I was holding. “You’re going to Frost’s?” he said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“What’s your power?”

I looked at Esper, and back at Tempest. They were both staring at me. Was this a nightmare? Was I dead? Was this hell?

“He doesn’t know,” Esper said.

“Oh,” Tempest said. He frowned at Esper. “Do you?”

Esper tilted his head back slightly. “No.”

That was the catch. There’s always a catch.

“Well,” Tempest said, “if the man with the best intuition in the world,” he glanced at Esper “thinks you should be going to a school for people with superpowers, I’m sure you’ll work it out.”

He reached out and patted my arm. I felt a slight electric shock.

Esper turned to me. “You can leave out the elevator. Or if you ask the receptionist, there’s a private exit to avoid the paparazzi.”

“Do you want my contact details?” I asked.

Tempest laughed. “We’ll work it out,” he said.

JAMES DAVIES / JACKDAW

London’s a crazy place. Something like nine million people live here now. They come from all across the world to get mashed into a city that’s existed since the Roman empire. What I love most about it is that it always surprises you. I’ve been looking after the city for four years, and I never stop being amazed by how good and kind some of the people of London are.

And amidst all the craziness, sometimes I liked to come here to the centre, and the skyscrapers. Seems like there’s a new one every few months these days. You get a weird sense of perspective from up here, looking down at how enormous the city is, and how small every individual person in it is, even you, while also realising how lucky you are to even be able to come up here. On a night like this, it’s so beautiful. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it. But hey, with great power comes all sorts of other stuff. So, my peace up here never lasts long.

There was a sharp set of three beeps. Red alert.

“I hear you Weaver,” I said. “Where am I going?”

My earpiece buzzed. “You’re not going to like this, Jackdaw,”

“Spit it out, Weaver. We don’t have all night.”

“Quite,” the earpiece buzzed. “It’s a paranormal alert.”

“We only have those installed at -” I began, but I trailed off.

I felt the gears turning in my head as I processed what he meant. Scratch what I said earlier. I don’t always like surprises. Sometimes they’re a pain.

“It’s coming from 14 Bromwell Avenue,” Weaver said.

It was a secure line, but it was worth being at least a little subtle. Weaver wasn’t going to say it out loud. But that was my house.

I took one last look at my city. Google maps doesn’t do it justice. All the lights, twinkling, and the sounds of the people down there. I had saved a countless number of them. But right now, there were only three that mattered. My three.

I jumped off the peak. I couldn’t fly, but I could glide. My arms spread out and with them came the thin polymer that caught the wind. I burst forward. The wingsuit coupled with my psychokinesis pushing me upwards and forwards from this height would give me about a minute or so until I hit the ground. That should be long enough. Faster than a speeding ambulance, because I could go in a straight line.

I couldn’t think how this had happened. We’d always been so careful. The only people who knew my name were the members of the Nightguard and exactly seven trusted allies. Even by superhero standards, we were careful. And we had one of the best telepaths in the world protecting us, so nobody could have snooped. I was going to have a fun time patching this leak. But that would have to wait. Someone with powers was in my house.

I was getting carried away, and the ground was slowly approaching. I slowed myself a little as I dropped onto a roof near my house, and slipped into the garden. The back door was always unlocked. I’d told my parents so many times that it was dangerous, but they insisted on it for some reason. And now I was living elsewhere, I couldn’t keep tabs on them. I slipped into the garden.

“Ok, I’ve got you on the map,” Weaver said. “It’s above you and ahead.”

Nobody ever really thinks about all the things you can do with psychokinesis. But there are a hundred and one tricks I learned to call on. Like, for instance, softening my steps so I could run through the house and not make a sound.

“On your right,” Weaver said.

I pivoted onto the landing and moved forwards, prowling.

“Left,” Weaver said.

That was my younger sister’s room.

“Straight ahead,” Weaver said. “You’ve got backup coming in two minutes. Signal’s still there.”

Someone in my little sister’s room, doing something non-stop for five minutes. Telepathic surgery maybe, or building a portal. No way of knowing, unless I went in. There was a faint crackling noise, like broken electronics. I couldn’t afford to wait for backup. Silently, I turned the handle, and thrust open the door.

“Stop what you’re doing now!” I shouted.

“Oh my god, I’m sorry!” a familiar voice cried out.

“Paranormal alert’s clear,” Weaver said through the earpiece.

I stood staring at the culprit. Sky blue eyes, check. Jet black hair, check. Just like me. Of all the possible metahuman threats, this was about the best outcome, but in other ways more or less the worst. It was my sister. Well, at least there wasn’t a leak.

“Is there anyone else in the house?” I asked, harshly.

“No! Just me!”

“And you were the one, uh,” I trailed off.

“You’re Jackdaw, aren’t you? I’m Amber. I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean to do anything wrong, I just-”

“It’s alright, you haven’t done anything wrong.” I replied. “Weaver, can you get a sweep from Angela?”

I heard that familiar old voice in my head. “Hi Jason. There’s nobody else in the house. It’s just your sister. And by the look of it, she’s not lying.”

“Amber, where’s your family?” I asked.

“My parents are at a conference in Spain. I have an older brother who lives in London who was going to come check up on me but I guess he forgot.”

“Wait, what day is it?”

“Tuesday”

I cursed under my breath. She was right. I guess I had got muddled.

She gave me a funny look. “Hang on-”

There was a thudding noise in the backyard.

“Pendragon’s here,” Weaver said.

And now there was another paranormal in my house. This was a mess.

“What was that?” Amber cried.

“Don’t worry, Amber, that’s just a friend of mine. Weaver, tell him the door’s open.”

“Oh my god, that’s Pendragon, isn’t it?” Amber said. “Why are you all coming to my house?”

“You should probably come downstairs,” I said. “Plus, seriously? Superpowers. I mean, seriously, why would you ask why we’re coming to the house when you just…”

I had to restrain myself from treating her like my younger sister.

We went down to find Pendragon in full plate armour standing in my living room. This was not where I saw today going. But at least Amber wasn’t in danger. And frankly, if she was going to be a part of this world, she might as well know what was going on.

“Sit down,” I said, pointing to her chair. I took Pendragon into the kitchen and began to boil a kettle.

“Are you going to-” Pendragon began.

“Yes. She needs to hear the talk.”

“Do you want me to-”

“Yes,” I said. “You do it better. Her name is Amber. Tea?”

“I’d rather not.”

“Right.”

Pendragon walked through to the other room. I watched them, while the kettle boiled.

“Amber,” Pendragon began. “Show me your power.”

She nodded, and held her finger tips together. A little light arced between them.

“Ow!” she cried, at the static shock.

Pendragon sat down on a sofa. He wasn’t really sitting. In that suit, he’d break it, but he could fly, so he was just hovering above the sofa, pretending to sit, to make her feel better. “In future, you’re going to want to hold something conductive in each hand, like paper clips or metal sticks. But that’s beside the point.

“Your power,” he said, his voice taking on a lofty tone, “is a ticket into a world beyond your comprehension. It may not seem like much, but it’s the start of something you can’t possibly hope to understand right now. So it’s a little unfair of me to say this now, but you need to make a choice. If you genuinely want it, then a telepath can reach into your mind, and take away all memories of this exchange, and put a little mental tic in your head that will stop you from ever triggering your powers. This is what we call telepathic surgery, and it will protect you from consciously developing your powers.

“However, if you’d rather, we can take you somewhere where you’ll be taught how to use your powers, and hone them into a force to shape the world. But be warned: once you’ve begun using your powers, they will become a part of you, a part that cannot be so cleanly and surgically removed by even the finest telepaths. And you will never be able to leave this world behind.”

Amber didn’t make a noise. I walked in with tea, a cup for me and a cup for her. She was just sitting there, looking at Pendragon in wonder.

“What’s it to be?” I asked.

“Red pill,” she said. “Red pill all the way.”

“What?” Pendragon asked.

“The Matrix,” I said. “It’s a movie reference. She wants to be like us.”

She nodded.

“Right,” I said. “That makes this bit a lot easier. Congratulations, Amber Davies, you just became a friend of the Nightguard. Take this.”

I reached into one of my pockets and produced a clean silver chain with a magnetic clasp. She put down the tea and held a hand out, and I let it fall.

“You should be able to put it on and take it off without breaking the clasp. If the clasp is ever broken, we will know, and it will be much easier for us to check up on you and get you help.”

“Wow,” she said. “Thank you so much.”

She slowly lowered the chain around her neck, tucking it into her shirt.

“I don’t want to sound ungrateful,” she said, “but why are you doing all this for me? I mean, how do you have the time to look after me like this?”

I nodded. “Good question. But seriously you should be able to figure out the answer. I mean, I knew your surname, I knew where we keep the mugs...”

She frowned as the pieces fell into place. “Dad?”

I sighed. I drew my hand up to my head, and turned off my voice synthesiser, then carefully put my mask on the side.

Amber cocked her head. “Huh.”

“Look,” I said. “The school I went to, Frost’s, it’s not a normal school. It’s for people like you and me. If you apply, you’ll get in. It’s what made me the person I am today.”

“You’re Jackdaw,” she said. “The Jackdaw.”

“Yes.”

She was staring at me blankly. I snapped my fingers in front of her eyes, and she pushed my hand out of the way.

“But I’ve been around Frost’s,” she said. “I came with you on the open day. It’s just a normal school.”

“Come on,” I said. “It’s a school for telepaths and shapeshifters and everything in between. You remember when you came to see that play I was in, the Shakespeare one?”

“You mean Hamlet?”

“Yeah, I don’t remember because I wasn’t there. I was in the middle of the Pacific on a scavenger hunt.”

“But how-”

“Holograms. Trust me, you’re gonna love it there.”

ALEX COLLINS

“I know this all seems strange. Just do as I say. Explain to me what happened last night, in as much detail as you can.”

“Ok,” I said. “I was being driven home, by a friend’s parent - Mr Wilson - across the countryside. It was late. The car swerved, and we went off the side of the road. I think we flipped. I remember flames, smoke, burning my throat and my eyes. I must have hit my head.”

“You’re doing very well,” he said.

He reached into his grey blazer and took out a pocket watch. He flipped it open, then snapped it shut. He scratched at his sharp grey goatee. When I tried to look at his face, my eyes slipped out of focus. Everything was out of focus.

“Do you remember anything after you passed out? Any dreams? Visions?”

I nodded. “There was something. It wasn’t quite a dream. More vivid. I was at the foot of a pyramid. But it wasn’t smooth - there were steps. And around the pyramid there was a jungle. At the top was a creature, made of fire. It was like a snake with wings, but not a dragon. It was long.”

“Did you touch it?” He asked, raising his eyebrows.

“I’m not sure.”

“Cast your mind back. What did you do when you saw it?”

I looked up at the bare ceiling and frowned. “I tried to climb the pyramid, towards it. But the heat was unbearable.”

I felt hot just thinking about it.

“That’s good. That’s very good. You’ve done well.”

I turned to him. His face was blurry. Everything was blurry. I felt a little numb. There was a droning noise in my ear.

“Why can’t I see?” I asked.

“You can take the drip out of your arm if you want. I’ll come find you when I can. I’m sorry.”

The droning faded with the blur. I was lying in a hospital bed and there was a drip in my arm. But there were no windows. There was nobody, nothing in the room except the bed, the machine next to me, the chair, and two doors.

I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t know if it was day or night, or if my family was even still alive. I just wanted to get out.

I reached for the drip on my right arm, and pulled on the tube till the needle slipped out of my arm. A drop of blood welled up in the spot. I wiped it away. There was no mark. My arm looked wrong. It was more tanned than normal. My hands were wrong too. There should have been a little red dot on the side of my index finger. There should have been a mole on my left arm.

I pulled aside the flimsy blue bed sheet and stepped onto the floor. My feet were cold. They were the wrong colour too. I felt off balance. I took a few timid steps towards the doors. I decided to go for the one on the right. I reached out and my hand hit the door. My arm was the wrong length. My hand-eye coordination was shot. What was I?

I grasped the handle and pushed on it, but I couldn’t turn it. I twisted, harder, until I felt it begin to give. It snapped. I opened my hand, and the broken metal handle fell to the ground, clattering on the floor. I sighed, and turned to the left door.

Slowly, I wrapped my hand around the other handle. It felt looser. I turned it, and pulled the door open. The room on the other side looked like a bathroom - a toilet, a shower, and a sink. I stepped into the bathroom. There was a large mirror. I turned and looked at myself.

It took me a minute to be sure that the person looking back at me really was me. Tanned skin, soft, round face, green eyes, short red hair. I raised my hand, and the girl in the mirror raised hers.

I lowered myself gently onto the toilet seat. It felt cold. I ran my hand along the curve of my face. It was smooth, and warm. I leaned my head back onto the wall.

It’s hard to express how I felt. Isolated is the best word. I was cut off from my family, my friends, my home. I felt sick, like I needed to cry. I leaned forwards with my head between my knees. I think I stayed that way for about ten minutes before I finally stood up and walked clumsily back to the bed. I didn’t know where I was, or what day or time it was, and now I didn’t even know who I was.

When I woke up, everything was cold. He was sitting by my bed, in the chair. I recognised the grey beard and blazer, but again, whenever I tried to look at him, his face, my eyes went out of focus.

“Hello,” he said. His voice was deep and smooth.

“Who are you?” I asked. “Where am I?”

“You can call me Echo, and you’re in a secure facility. To keep it secure, well, I can’t tell you any more than that.”

He got up, and walked over to the door where I’d snapped the handle. He picked the broken handle up off the floor.

“The room’s a little meagre,” he said, “but I’ve done what I can.”

“Why am I here?” I asked.

“In short, a group of people staged the car accident you were caught in, probably to kill you. We’d been monitoring them, so when we saw, we stepped in, and saved you. We brought you here.”

“Why were they after me?” I asked.

“Because you have powers. That’s why your appearance changed. That’s how you broke the handle.”

His answers felt deceptive. But I couldn’t place why. As if he were choosing his words and the details he gave very carefully.

“Also,” Echo continued, “your body temperature is about 10 degrees above average, and you are, as far as we can tell, fireproof.”

That was a little more surprising. Maybe that was why everything was so cold.

“Is Mr Wilson ok?” I asked.

Echo sighed. “The car fell into a river, and was utterly wrecked. We tried our best to save him, but he didn’t make it.”

I felt my stomach twist.

“Am I going to be able to go home?” I asked.

“I’m sorry,” Echo said. “For now, it’s too dangerous. If the people coming after you were to even realise you survived the attack, the lives of everyone you knew would be at risk.”

Knew. Everyone I knew. The word stuck in my mind. I put the tray aside.

“But my family are ok?”

“Yes. In fact, in a week your father will be promoted, and not long after, the teacher that has been neglecting your younger brother is going to be offered a job in another state. We will keep an eye on them for you, and keep you updated from time to time.”

“Why are you doing this for me?” I asked.

Echo sighed, again, deeply. He stood up. “Because you have just been dragged into a shadow war, and cut off from your entire family, and similarly, they have lost you. It’s the least we could do.”

I nodded, slowly.

“What happens to me now?”

“Well,” Echo said, “in theory you could stay here, as long as necessary, as a guest. And in theory you could become an agent for our organisation. But I don’t think either of those options will appeal to you. So I have an offer to make you.”

“Oh?”

“There is a boarding school in London. The Jonathan Frost Academy. We will give you a new identity. You already have a new face. This academy, it’s special. You’ll learn to use your powers. And you’ll be safe there.”

“New identity?”

He scratched his goatee again.

“I can’t tell you anything more than that, for safety reasons. You have to accept. So, yes or no?”

“If I accept, I can leave here? Live a normal life?”

“Well, you won’t be able to contact your family, and you will be going to a school that specialises exclusively in people with superhuman powers. But it will be more normal than this.”

“Ok,” I said.

“You need to understand. No matter what, the only way you can survive is with my help, but for you to leave here, you need to agree to let me do what I need to do.”

“If I don’t accept, I can’t leave?”

“No. For your own safety.”

“Then I don’t have a choice.”

“You do. You always have a choice. But if you want to leave, and survive, you have to accept.”

I looked up at the blank ceiling, and the bare walls. “I accept.”

“Good.”

I almost thought I could see Echo smile. Why had he even needed to ask so carefully? I felt as though I’d just sold my soul.

“I’m going to give you your cover identity now. It will be a bit disorienting for a little while.”

He walked over, and rested his hand on my head. And then everything went dark.

It was like waking up from a dream. There isn’t a better way of putting it. At first it felt like nothing happened, I was just feeling a little nauseous. But I was in the same bleak room. Same two doors. Same one chair with Echo sitting in it. The trolley was gone.

“What happened?” I asked.

“What do you know about Alexandra Collins?”

For a moment I paused. I didn’t know an Alexandra Collins. I’d never heard of her. But now I thought about it, I knew she was a girl, born on July 2nd, about a month older than me, in Sacramento, California. Her father was named Frank, and he worked in insurance. Her mother was named Angie, and she had been a teacher until she passed away a few years ago. Her best friend was named Drew, and they became best friends on a camping trip, confessing their secrets around a campfire. Her first kiss was with a boy named Pat who was allergic to nuts, and she’d been eating roasted peanuts earlier that night, and freaked out that she was going to kill him, but in the end everything was fine.

“Everything,” I said.

“Everything?” Echo asked.

I thought harder. There were details missing. People she knew, but I wasn’t quite sure what they looked like. And things I remembered about her that she couldn’t know, like what it was like taking her home from the maternity ward fifteen years ago. And nothing from the past two months, or at least two months before the accident.

“What did you do?” I asked.

“I gathered up everything anyone knows about Alexandra Collins,” Echo said, “and I put it in your head.”

“Who is she?”

“She was a girl just like you who discovered she had powers. One of them was changing her appearance. And unfortunately, she is gone. So you are going to be taking her place.”

“But I’m not Alexandra Collins. She’s a person.”

“From now on, you are.”

“No, I’m-”

The words caught in my throat. In my head, I knew what my name was. I knew it wasn’t Alexandra Collins. But it was like a box had been put around me, my memories.

“Good luck,” he said.

“Shame, isn’t it?” a deep voice said.

I was getting really sick of this. I turned around. It was Frank Collins. He looked older than the pictures. We were in a garden, surrounded by houses. I was standing up. The sun was high in the sky. Not a cloud in sight. This was Alexandra Collins’s house.

“What?” I asked.

“You getting up and leaving. By the time you’re done at Frost’s, you’ll be off to college, and then who knows where.”

I stared at him. He was looking at the sky, with his hands in the pockets of his big leather jacket.

“I’ll come visit in the holidays,” I said.

He laughed. “Come on,” he said. “We should go.”

“I’m not Alexandra Collins,” I said.

“I know.”

“I don’t want to go.”

“I know.”

We stood there, for a while. He lowered his gaze down to me. His eyes were soft and brown. His face was creased, from many years of laughter.

“So,” he said, “where are you going to go?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Do you remember who you were?” he asked, tentatively.

“Yes.”

“Who were you?”

I shook my head. Hard. I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes, rising over my vision. I felt Frank’s great, strong arms around me. I let myself fall. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and handed it to me. I wiped away the tears. He led me into the house, through the glass bay doors that I knew so well. He pulled a chair out for me and we sat at that old rectangular oak table that I remembered eating at so many times.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked.

“Favour to somebody who got me out of a jam,” he said. He rubbed his nose. “I get the sense you aren’t too happy about all of this.”

I looked down at the table. I couldn’t bear to look around the room.

“Listen, I know you’ve got nobody right now. I know what that’s like. But what you’ve got here is a fresh start. And that’s rare. Now, you could stay here if you wanted, but seeing as you’ve got nowhere else to go, I think you might do alright at Frost’s.”

“Why are they doing this to me?” I asked, frantically.

“They want you to stay alive. I don’t think they’re all that fussed about if you’re happy.”

I took a few deep breaths, and wiped away the last traces of tears, and looked up at Frank. It felt like the first face I’d seen in months. Maybe it was. He was smiling at me, but his eyes were sad.

“What happens now?” I asked.

“I drive you to Frost’s. You meet a bunch of other kids who’ve had their worlds turned on their heads. Together, you all muddle through. It’s that or nothing.”

“Ok.”

The bags and suitcases were already loaded in the car. It was an old red hatchback. Much bigger than one man could need. Frank had packed us lunch and plenty of water. It was a long drive from Sacramento to Oregon. I sat in the passenger seat, watching the buildings go by. I remembered them all.

Frank never looked at me. He just looked out forwards, at the road. “After I graduated from Frosts’s, I went into infiltration. I know what it’s like to keep your whole life secret. It’s a damn shame you have to do it at your age. I mean, wouldn’t you rather really believe you were just Alexandra Collins? So this was all simple?”

I ran my hand through my hair. It was smooth. We were out in the country now. It was a beautiful day.

“You’re a telepath,” I said, “aren’t you? That’s how you know what to say?”

Frank chuckled. “I wish. I’m just old.”

For a while I watched as every trace of the city faded away into the open country. The road cut right through the sprawling fields.

“You know, seeing as I’m your dad now,” Frank began, “I might as well give you some fatherly advice about Frost’s. It’s not a normal school.”

“What was it like for you?” I asked.

“Well, definitely not like it will be for you. I grew up in the Cold War. Things were a bit different. The government didn’t want people walking around who could level cities. And I was a prime candidate for an infiltrator. If I wanted to, I could look exactly like someone, and I had a knack for being persuasive. They put me through telepathic screening to make sure I wasn’t a spy for the Soviets, and then fast tracked me. I actually had a friend who turned out to be a 25-year-old Russian shapeshifter gone undercover. Dropped off the face of the earth when screening day came around. As for me, I was out in the field as soon as I was ready.” Frank sighed slowly. “That sort of thing doesn’t happen anymore, thankfully.”

“That’s good to hear.”

“I have friends who stayed on as teachers. Parts of it are the same. I don’t know what the last school you went to was like, but I imagine there wasn’t as much fighting.”

“Huh?”

“Hormonal kids with superpowers? The teaching staff figured out pretty quickly that they couldn’t stop the fights, and that people would get badly hurt if they weren’t kept in check. So there are big arenas, and there’s a compulsory freshers course in how to use them. If you want to pick a fight with someone, you do it in an arena, with a teacher watching.”

“Right,” I said. “I’ll bear that in mind.”

“I had some wild fights back in my day. I had a little gang of friends. We were the oddballs who got lumped in Moore. We stuck to each other like magnets. We had this little hideaway, where we’d spend hours planning how to use our powers together. I miss those days.”

I nodded.

We were mostly silent for the rest of the journey, but occasionally we would talk for four or five minutes. Or rather, Frank would start telling me a story about his time, and then get distracted. A few details stuck in my mind. Try to make friends; don’t give the teachers an excuse to read your mind; don’t give the kids who look like radioactive freaks dirty looks because they tend to be more powerful than normal; get used to waking up in New York and having breakfast in Nevada. At this point, nothing was going to shock me much. Not after what had already happened.

Frank seemed nice. Like the sort of person I’d want my father to be. The only things I could remember about myself - who I really was - were that my brother didn’t like his teacher, and my father was going to get a promotion. I wondered if Echo was really going to keep me posted on them. Even though I hated this, I understood it. I was glad to know they were safe. And Frank really did seem very sweet, so that could have been worse. And even in all this chaos, I still had one thing to hold on to. I knew that there were people out there who wanted me dead, people keeping me apart from my family. Someday, somehow, I knew that I would find them, and fix this.

ESPER

“I’m sorry,” he said.

I looked up. Everything was white. We were hovering in an empty world.

“The blast,” I said, “I didn’t see what happened. Where are we?”

“Don’t you recognise it?” he said. “This is the rift between worlds. This is where your powers come from.”

I nodded. I reached up, and slid the mask off my face. It still didn’t feel like my mask. It was an icon. A perfect black metal cover, with two eye slits, and not a single thing more. I would never be worthy of it. But somebody had to wear it, and I had more right to it, to what it represented, than the man I took it from.

“I think,” I said, “I finally know why they always wore a mask.”

“Why?” he asked.

“It wasn’t about secrecy. It was because the mask, what it stood for, was more important than anyone that wore it.”

The world was empty and silent. The only sounds I could hear were my own breath, and the whirring noises his suit made. I tried holding my breath. It didn’t hurt. I wasn’t really breathing, then. Was I dead? That didn’t matter. This was never about our lives.

I looked up at him. “Is it over?”

“No. There is a chance.”

I heard a mechanical whirring, that same clicking that I’d spent years chasing, as he brought his hand up. The infinite white space distorted, and he vanished, and in his place they all appeared.

Wildfire was the first on her feet. A corona of fire rose up around her. “Where are we?”

Apex groaned with pain, as he fell sideways. Amber ran to catch him.

“We’re in a rift,” I said. “We’re in between dimensions.”

“What’s wrong with Apex?” Amber cried.

“Intuitive powers don’t work normally here,” I said. “His head’s getting overloaded by impressions from, I think, every possible world.”

Wildfire stormed over to me. “He betrayed us!” she cried. I could feel her spit on my face. “The Nexus Machine, the Arc, it was all a trap. This was their plan all along.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t believe that. I think he sent us here, because this is where we have to be, to fix it all.”

Amber looked up at me. She was holding Apex tightly. “How?”

“I know,” Maria said. She had been sitting, cross legged, perfectly still. “I read about this place in the archives. This is the rift between worlds. All predictive powers, intuition, divination, they flow through here.”

Apex groaned again. Amber brushed the hair away from his face.

“So?” Amber said.

“So,” Maria said, “from here, we can send out a message. If we use Wildfire’s spirit, and mine, as anchors, and Apex as a bridge into the worlds, we might be able to reach someone.”

“It’s impossible,” Wildfire said. “The chances that anyone’s listening, they’re next to none.”

“Not impossible,” Maria said. “There are many worlds. We only need one message to get through. Next to none, sure, but there is a chance.”

I smiled. I slipped the mask on over my head. It was a good fit.

“A chance is all we need.”