The office, to my surprise, turned out to be an actual office. Or, at least, the boarded up shell of one located a few blocks from the park. Judging by how old and grubby the for sale sign on the wall was, it must have been on the market for a while now.

  “Sam’s old man is a realtor and a landlord,” Cassie explained, motioning to the skinny boy as he fished a ring of keys from his baggy trouser pocket. “Owns a few spots like this, empty spots that he hasn’t found a renter or buyer for. And the economy being what it is, probably won’t for a long time. So we’ve been making use of this one.”

  We ventured inside, the air stale and musty. To my surprise the lights came on when Sam flicked a switch on the wall, dispelling the murk from the boarded-up windows. “He still pays the electricity bills, at least,” I said.

  “But not the cleaner,” Beatrix said, shaking her head. “We had to sweep up shit for days straight when we started using this spot, and I still sneeze my ass off from all the dust that got left behind.”

  We walked deeper inside, to a large room that had likely been dominated by desks and cubicles in the past. It was a pleasant surprise to see that Cassie and her friends had refurbished the place a bit, having brought in an assortment of armchairs and small couches. One corner of the room was dominated by a large flatscreen TV, a games console, and a boxy silver mini fridge.

  “Make yourself comfortable. I guess,” Sam said, shrugging dismissively.

  I got the distinct impression Sam hadn’t inherited the realtor genes from his father.

  “So!” Cassie clapped her hands together. “Show and tell time, class. Just so Jay here knows we’re the genuine article. Guess I’ll go first.”

  I flopped into an armchair, watching the taller girl all the while. “By all means,” I said.

  Purple smoke suddenly wafted around her and in an instant she vanished from where she stood and reappeared on the other side of the room. Then she did so again and again, vanishing and reappearing at all corners of the room. Each movement carried with it a whooshing sound of displaced air, atmosphere rushing to fill where Cassie had once stood.

  “I’m a Transporter. A teleporting kind, obviously. If I have a spot in a line of sight, I can go there. Plus, this smoke here,” She formed a few clouds of the nebulous black fog from her palms. “It can be a useful weapon. But you’ll have to take my word for it. I’d rather not damage anything around here. On the job, I go by Cheshire.”

  “Ah.” That explained the CH3SH title on Masquerade, at least. She hadn’t inherited Red Hot’s pyrokinetic powers, but that wasn’t too odd. There were no guarantees when it came to Apex parentage. Some Apexes had totally normal human kids, totally normal human parent could have kids suddenly developing powers. And those kids could inherit similar powers to their parents, like I had with my old man, or not.

  “Okay... Sam, you’re up.”

  The young man tensed, eyes widening. “Uh...” he glanced at his feet, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Pass.”

  That made me raise a brow.

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  “Bro, come on, it’s not a big deal,” Beatrix said. “Your power is cool, really!”

  “It’s... embarrassing,” Sam murmured.

  Cassie stared at him for several moments, before ultimately letting out a small sigh. “Okay okay. But you gotta be ready to show your stuff next time we’re on a job.”

  “I will. When the time comes, it’s just... I don’t like... casually showing it off.” He looked at me, hugging his elbows. “But, when we’re working, I go by Dynamo.”

  Well now... that made me curious. And while I was intrigued, I knew better than to pry. “What about you?” I asked, pointing at Beatrix.

  That got a giddy smile from the shorter girl. “Oh, I don’t now. I don’t like to show off. But...” Her left arm snapped outward... and kept going, the forearm elongating like a rubbery whip. She pulled the mini fridge open and reeled her arm in, clutching two chilled vans of root beer in one hand.

  “A Shifter,” I murmured. The sleeve of her blouse, I noticed, did not grow with her. Unsurprising. You needed a talented tailor with special material too get clothes that could change to follow the powers of a Shifter.

  “Yup. I go by Stretch when I’m working,” she said, offering me a can. I took it with some reluctance. Damn my love of root beer.

  “It’s a pretty impressive power,” I admitted. Highly versatile, though I had to wonder what the upper limit to her stretching was. Was her whole body like rubber, making her bulletproof? Could she squash herself paper thin and slide under doorways? The implications and questions gnawed at the back of my mind as I took the first few sugary sweet sips. “That just leaves you, then,” I said, motioning to Greg.

  “You gonna chokeslam me if I don’t show off?” he asked, giving me a small smirk.

  “I haven’t decided yet.”

  Snorting, Greg rose to his feet. His eyes took on a sudden crimson glow, and he fired twin beams of orange light from his eyes. They crossed the room in an instant, striking some empty cans in one corner of the room and slicing them clean in half. The broken pieces smokes and melted at the point of destruction.

  A Conduit, able to project energy. Could he only do it with his eyes?

  “I got fancy eyes,” he said, as if reading my mind. Wisps of light, like embers from a campfire, floated from the corners of his eyes as the beam died down. “The lasers are like, the main thing. I can control how much heat and force they give off. But I can also see in the dark, an’ see the heat of living beings. You know, like the alien in that one movie. Still workshopping a codename but... Foresight is winning me over.”

  “And together the four of us are called the Devils,” Cassie said.

  I gave her a flat look. Edgelords.

  “Never heard of you,” I said.

  “Yeah, well.” Greg flopped noisily onto one couch, rubbing at his eyes. “We’ve only done like... four crimes.”

  “Gotta start somewhere.” Sam made for the fridge and fished out a can of iced tea. “Heck, we haven’t even fought a superhero yet. Just rental cops. And like, cop cops.”

  “So, Jay.” Cassie and the others had their eyes on me now. “Show us that tech of yours.”

  “I didn’t bring much with me, but.” I fished my yo-yo out and suddenly launched it outward, metal blades springing from the circular surface. A whining shriek filled the room, like a buzz saw, and I rapidly whipped the yo-yo back and forth. It had little air jets molded into the plastic, able to suck in or blast in air from either side, allowing it to accelerate to great speeds.

  A group of army men emerged rom my hoodie pocket, marching in formation. They took aim at the cans Greg had destroyed, shooting the debris with a salvo of energy bullets that shredded the scorched tin further.

  Another mental command brought Lassie from my pack. Servos activated, her metal limbs elongating and her polymer plates clicking outward and changing from white to black. The dog gave a synthetic growl, the tazer in ‘mouth’ crackling with bolts of electricity.

  The blades of the yo-yo retracted as I reeled it in, the army men and Lassie forming up around me. “Whoaho!” Beatrix was grinning like a kid watching a circus performance, her loud claps echoing through the hideout. “That’s fucking cool!”

  “Yeah,” Sam said, actually perking up a little. “Pretty cool.”

  Even Greg gave me a few grudging claps. “Not bad, for toys,” he admitted.

  “A smart cookie, just like I hoped. One of the reasons why I was hoping to recruit her,” Cassie said. To say nothing of our... mutual interest in Sidewinder. “How about it Jay? You wanna hear about the job we’ve been cooking up?”

  Lassie shrank to her smaller size, hopping up beside me as I took a seat in an unoccupied couch. “I’ve come this far, haven’t I? Fire away.”