“I’m not going in blind on any missions if I can help it. What are we doing this time?” Sami asked Steve through the window in the truck.
“It’s a parking dispute. We need to sort out something about some cars in a car park.”
“Great, more jobs on the street,” Sami said sarcastically, slouching back into the truck bed.
“Kinda hard to avoid cars when this whole city is just one street,” Claire said, presenting the pavement to him from her side of the truck.
“This just doesn’t feel like we’re actually doing good,” Sami complained.
“You say that about—”
“I know, I say that about every deployment, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Before I joined HUE, I stopped a robbery, but now it feels like I’d be deliberately avoiding robberies on deployments!” Sami threw his Shadow Hand in the air in annoyance.
“Nice subtle flex there. Stopped a robbery by yourself,” Claire murmured, amused.
“Do we think people are gonna be fighting in the parking lot?” Beth asked from the passenger seat.
“We don’t anticipate any fighting.” Steve squeezed the steering wheel nervously.
“Then… Why bring all three of us?” Claire asked.
“Four of us,” Steve corrected, pointing to himself by detaching his thumb from the steering wheel. “Our goal is to be taken seriously, and having four Awakened people will establish legitimacy. Hopefully, by having all of our faces out there, people will know to look to us for authority in future circumstances as well.”
“Except some of us have a hard time proving we’re Awakened,” Claire mentioned.
“Why are we still doing these softball deployments at all?” Sami asked Steve.
“We told you that we want to make a good impression…”
“I know that! But we went to the Fundraiser, we did the interview, Apex is still doing real work, Francine and Gan Wen stopped a fire, I think Gutshot found a lost cat… We’ve been doing a lot. When do we finally turn from these odd jobs to real stuff like the police handle?” Sami asked.
“You wanna be part of the police now?” Claire asked. She looked bored, but also pleased to have the conversation rather than sit in the truck silently.
“No, but if the cops are called on some Awakened guy that can eat bullets and dodge tasers, I think we’d be a useful asset on the field.”
“Apex handles jobs like that. He was called out to a bank robbery just recently,” Steve brought up.
“Sure, but he’s just one man. I thought the whole point of HUE was to be more than any one individual.”
“You make it sound like every time we step outside, there should be a life or death situation. Sometimes people just need help with parking,” Claire suggested.
Sami sighed loudly and organized his thoughts quickly.
“Look, I get it, okay? I’m being annoying and keep bringing up the same thing. I was just hoping for some progress by now. Even a timeline. Otherwise, it feels like we’re being strung along for what could be years. Instead of dodgy answers, I want to know that I’ll eventually be on a call that Apex or Gan Wen gets called to. Even if it was something that played to my strengths instead of a fire or armed robbery. Like grabbing at things behind bars, or putting Shadow Hand through deadly corrosion to turn off a dangerous leak. Anything! I’d go Freelance if I knew it would be too long.”
Steve’s eyes hardened, considering Sami’s words seriously.
“I appreciate your stance. You make an excellent point. I’ll bring it up with Naomi when we get back,” Steve promised.
Surprisingly, that dropped the rest of Sami’s frustrations. Things didn’t need to happen immediately, he just wanted some progress. He knew he could save lives; he only wanted to know how far he was from being “allowed” to save them with members of his team. The leash that was HUE toeing the line of legality tugged him arbitrarily. But he also knew that was probably because he never had to deal with someone trying to arrest him for being a vigilante and enacting his own sense of justice. The benefit and curse of HUE was the same: They picked his battles.
Steve pulled to a stop on the side of the road, a few feet away from a car park surrounded by a chain-link fence. Several people were yelling at the attendant at the booth, some looking ready to get physical with him. Leaning on his cheek, the attendant sat idly behind his glass window which Sami assumed was bullet proof judging by its thickness.
Giving the scene a quick Power Sense-assisted sweep, Sami saw that the attendant and one other person were Awakened. The attendant’s power bubble was green and the other was blue.
“They’re all stuck,” Claire relayed, looking through binoculars to read. “They’re double parked or something. A lot of them can’t figure out how to get out.”
“What’s the attendant saying?” Sami hopped out of the truck, using Shadow Hand to cushion his fall. It was getting stronger, able to manage his weight without wobbling.
“Nothing. He looks like he couldn’t care less.”
Getting out of the car and scanning the scene from a distance, Steve looked at the others as he locked the truck. “Get ready for anything. This could get serious if someone’s placed under enough pressure.” He started punching coins into an old parking meter.
“Two Awakened, as far as I can tell. Attendant is green and one in the crowd is blue.”
“What do the bubbles’ colors mean?” Beth asked, following the others from behind Claire.
“No clue. Still working that out.” Sami walked next to Steve at the head of the group.
“You hoping to see some real action to put down?” Steve asked, looking at Sami sidelong.
“No, I don’t want to deal with a group of angry, powerless people in a brawl. I’m more interested in stopping Awakened. This is a job for the police.”
“I thought you wanted to help the police?”
“This should be a job for the police because all the more serious work should be our job!”
“Get your story straight!” Claire teased.
“It’s the same story!” Sami smiled, but sounded somewhat exasperated.
Entering the park, Sami counted ?seven people, including the parking attendant. There was a strange bend in the chain-link fence, twisting inward toward the parking lot like an explosion went off just a few feet outside the area. The light gray asphalt cracked open in places, revealing patches of dirt underneath; it likely hadn’t been repaired once after it was first laid. Faded but distinct, the parking lines revealed that many cars had parked at angles; some were even double-parked.
Sami couldn’t imagine why the parking lot would allow one car to take two spots. That would be a lost sale. But giving another look at the bored parking attendant, he could come to understand why it might not be addressed.
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“Then how much longer are we supposed to wait?” A heavily accented man knocked on the glass.
“Until the system reboots,” the attendant replied, the response more a sigh than words.
“You keep saying that, but you don’t tell us what that means! How long does the system go down for?” A woman with bobbed hair said, frustrated.
“It doesn’t normally go down. I phoned my boss and he might have said he’ll look into it.”
“Might have said!?”
“I don’t know. He was kinda hard to hear.”
Steve held a fist out in front of him and manifested a straight, long staff of clay that hit the floor with authority. The top expanded and molded into a pommel with “H.U.E.” emblazoned on it, forming into a scepter.
Clearing his voice twice to gather attention, Steve frowned as he spoke. “We’d like to speak to the person in charge here. This is official HUE business.” He sounded serious, but Sami could see the wobble in his knees.
The attendant sat up. “HUE? This isn’t a robbery.”
“Yes, it is!” the man at the window claimed immediately. “This boy won’t give us back our keys!”
“That’s not what I said!” The attendant stood up, looking panicked as Steve approached with a smack of his scepter to accent every step. “The system is electronic! I don’t control it and it went down! I can’t tell whose car is whose without the proof in the system. I can’t just give keys out without verifying!”
“I better not be getting charged extra for this!” Another person in the crowd called.
Steve stood at the counter for two long seconds, the rest of the patrons to the car park stepping away in either intimidation or respect. Blinking several times as he scanned the attendant and his small booth, Steve turned to the other members of HUE.
“What are your thoughts?”
Sami read the question for what it was. Steve had no idea what to do.
“I can probably open the gate with enough force and my Shadow Hand,” Sami suggested.
The crowd murmured, impressed when the phantom hand moved at his will into a fist pushing upward.
“And maybe if these people have an email on their phone from like a smog check or repair or whatever, we can confirm who owns what,” Claire added.
Immediately, half a dozen phones popped out of pockets, the customers scrubbing through their respective email apps.
“The gate can open manually,” the attendant reported.
“Some of the cars are parked so badly, we’re blocked in,” one of the men reported from his phone, but his anger was mostly replaced by annoyance. Tapping on his phone quickly, he seemed confused by the results.
Sami frowned to himself, feeling like he had to do something in the situation rather than wait for it to resolve. It was bad enough that he felt he didn’t need to be present for the deployment to go successfully, but he definitely wasn’t going to be sidelined.
“I’m gonna go check on the blocked cars and see if I can move them.” Sami made his way to the angled vehicles.
“Umm, I might have a better time moving the cars,” Steve said, his clay appearing on the ground and shifting slightly as though to move cars by their tires.
“Nah, you should stay with the attendant. You have things under control here. We don’t want to lose that.”
As much as it was self-serving, it was also a sincere sentiment. Steve had positioned himself as a person of authority with the scepter, and people were already more polite in his presence. The yelling stopped almost immediately. It would work out better than the younger group of HUE members trying to boss around the adults.
Making his way over to a set of cars parked adjacent, he saw that both of them twisted at an angle in their respective spaces. But he assumed one car would force the other to park at the odd degree. Glancing at the cars next to it, he saw they had turned as well, none of them quite in the lines of the parking lot. Tilting his head in curiosity, Sami made a slow turn in place to check on every vehicle. Sure enough, all of them had rotated in some fashion, like they were all shifted away by a distant explosion. Or dragged, just a nudge.
“Claire, are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Sami spun in a circle with arms wide to indicate to all the vehicles.
“Yeah, all the cars are adjusted. You said they’re Awakened?” Claire gestured to the crowd and attendant with a tilt of her head.
Sami jogged back over, assessing the two Awakened people. Stepping next to him, Steve waited for Sami to point them out. Trying to be subtle, Sami attempted to shrink his Shadow Hand down. To his pleasant surprise, it worked, and he pointed out the two people with a tiny hand the size of an action figure’s. Steve nodded appreciatively.
With authority, Steve pointed at the customer with his staff. “Your power?”
The woman placed a startled hand on her chest. Grimacing as the crowd took a collective step away from her, she shivered slightly.
“How did you even know?”
Steve smoothly glided his scepter in a circle as though mysteriously gaining the knowledge, then subtly stopped it in front of Sami. Sami got the message to stay silent. No telling what they would do if they thought he was targeting them.
“The power?” Steve tapped his staff self-importantly. The staff was working and the display would have convinced Sami that Steve was always in control if not previously knowing him.
“It’s nothing, really. I can see people’s ages. Look.” She started pointing to customers and HUE members in quick succession. “25, 17, 39, 22, and 34. Did I get any wrong, should I do any more?”
The Unawakened shook their heads as though she threatened them. Steve looked at Sami and they nodded to each other, satisfied that nothing else was going on with her.
“And you?” Steve asked the attendant.
“He’s Awakened?” A customer asked, disturbed.
“I don’t know what it is!” The attendant held his hands up like he was being arrested.
“Not even an idea?” Sami walked up to the counter. “When most people Awaken, they kinda get a feel for their ability.”
“I don’t know! It felt weird the other day, but that could be anything. But I know I affect things! Stuff in my house gets disorganized overnight and driving to work felt like I was fighting with my steering wheel.”
Sami turned to the other three. Beth looked like she didn’t want to be present at all, Claire was looking inquisitive, and Steve scratched his brow, leaving a smudge of clay. Sami looked back at the cars, working his jaw.
“I think he screws with Internet signals,” Claire ventured as she looked at her own device. “My phone’s wonked out. And none of these people can open their email apps. He might have shut off the parking lot system too.”
“Hey, stop screwing with my mobile!” The accented man yelled, raising his phone threateningly.
“No, I don’t think this is messing with the Internet.” Sami blinked as he gave one last look at the angles of the cars. Not just turned. They all pointed to the booth. “Dude, you’re magnetic.”
Frowning, the attendant quickly grabbed a random keychain set and put it up to his palm. Releasing, it fell to the counter immediately.
“Magnetic pulses then. Maybe subtle ones?” Claire suggested, looking like she already believed in Sami’s theory.
“Excellent. We’ll take over the booth, wait for the system to load and get everyone their cars while you wait a safe distance away. Umm, if that’s okay with you?” Steve asked, his confidence waning as eyes lingered on him.
“Ummm, I should really ask my boss.”
“You said you couldn’t,” Claire said impatiently. “Unless you know how to make a call without a working phone.”
Sami immediately thought of Darius, but knew it wasn’t the time to bring it up. Forcing a smile, he leaned on the counter casually.
“Don’t worry, dude, we’ll make sure nothing goes wrong. Everyone will get their car and leave happy.”
“But what about me? I’m gonna lose my job if my boss hears I shut down the system by existing!”
“We don’t have to tell your boss anything, but you’re going to have to try and get control over the power. Right?” Sami looked to Steve who nodded.
“I’m definitely complaining online as soon as I have a connection!” One of the customers poked their phone aggressively. “He made me late for my daughter’s birthday!”
“Please don’t!”
“I’m filing a complaint too!”
Sami closed his eyes and stepped away, not having anything to offer with his power. His Shadow Hand rubbed his temple, calming himself down. Voices stacked over one another and an argument erupted as the customers all reprimanded the attendant for throwing off the timings for their day.
Beth stood next to him and smiled sweetly. “You did great. Good job.”
“I know you’re just saying that to make me feel better about this worthless job… But it’s working,” Sami admitted, opening his eyes.
Blinking, he saw more Power Sense bubbles just beyond the fence. Squinting, he saw them getting bigger. Approaching.
“More Awakened?” Sami asked.
Steve turned and tensed immediately. Sami barely got an impression of the people approaching, but he saw a single feature on each of them.
Black goggles.
“Everyone get behind me!” Steve commanded immediately.
Snapping into action, Steve smashed the ground with his foot. A tall wall of clay shot up around the booth and customers who stumbled back toward the booth in fear. With a spin of his arms, clay armor formed around Steve, absorbing his scepter. A protective helmet crawled everywhere over his head but his face.
“Protect the civilians!”
With that, Steve created a set of stairs along the wall and raced up, diving over the side with two newly fashioned clay spears in hand.
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(Before reading the next chapter) Who is approaching for a fight?
