“Your referral has paid your assessment fee, but that will be refunded to her if you qualify for a scholarship. I do need to warn you, however, that scholarships for males are very uncommon. This is not sexism, this is simply the law of averages, since most males don’t have a power paradigm that encourages public service.”

  The young lady at the assessment desk actually seemed interested by a male getting a referral, her eyes flicking over me like I was a rare beetle. To be honest, most men didn’t even bother trying for the academy. Why would we? The thousand-dollar reassessment fee was often considered more trouble than it was worth, a tax on hope for those of us who’d already been deemed insufficiently marketable by the state.

  If a man assessed higher than class 2, they could often get work as part of a publicity team, even if they were more-or-less untrained—a handsome face to stand behind the real heroes during photo ops. No one expected them to hunt supercriminals, and fighting during waves or Kaiju attacks was more a case of raw power, strength, and endurance than training, a field where we were statistically outgunned.

  Not to mention that more than a few of them simply took enhanced jobs or became supercriminals themselves. The pay was better and the hours were more flexible. It was vanishingly unlikely that I was going to be the only male at Kellar Academy, but I was definitely going to be one of only a handful. The weirdos. The outliers. The ones with either too much money or, in my case, a desperate, stupid hope.

  And if I DID manage to get a scholarship, well, most of the guys that would be there would have wealthy families, since an academy was not cheap. Socially unpromising, but if I didn’t find some better way to deal with energy recovery, I’d be doomed to spend the rest of my life as a third-rate supervillain barely making ends meet, since based on my current energy growth, it would take me damned close to thirty years before I could regularly produce more than a flake of anything useful or use my powers effectively. I’d be middle-aged by the time I could reliably fix a carburetor without needing a week-long nap. A thrilling prospect.

  After a quick description of what I was planning to provide as my ‘evolution’—a term that made it sound like I’d achieved a new state of being rather than just finally reading the damn manual—I was taken down to a small workshop on the second floor, where I met a bearded man dressed in contraweave.

  Contraweave was great stuff. It had the ability to distribute force over most of its surface, making it basically bulletproof, and it was highly resistant to heat, cold, and would even ground something like a laser or an electricity burst. Of course, the fact that it was skin-tight and cost almost a thousand dollars a square foot meant I had never used it myself—my villain budget extended to dark hoodies and the hope that people would be too distracted by my terrible name to aim properly—but it was often standard-issue for crime-fighting alphas.

  The fact that it was form-fitting and fairly thin, almost like spandex, meant that more than a few super-types would rather wear armor or Proxovan, which was a lot cheaper and heavier and behaved more like neoprene. Mostly people wore armor bits over it, as much for protection as for not revealing their religion or whether they were chilly.

  Yes, it was that thin, but to be fair, it was also more durable than most armors for people who already had protection and just needed to be sure that they didn’t get charged with indecent exposure after a rough fight. Not that it wasn’t sort of indecent even as a full-body suit, a fact that more than a few of the more attractive alphas capitalized on. Glacier Girl’s own outfit was a masterclass in the form.

  This guy’s contraweave was just a solid, unappealing yellow, and he covered it up with a Hawaiian shirt depicting roaring dinosaurs and board shorts as well as a pair of garish orange Crocs. It was clearly more for protection in case something went wrong rather than a fashion statement. The man had clearly given up on impressing anyone, a life goal I deeply respected.

  The workshop, or lab, was clearly meant for power testing, as it had workbenches, some weights, and a short multi-range. Obviously, stronger powers would probably require a more comprehensive testing suite, especially if you needed to test defensive abilities, but for an initial class two or three combatant, or a non-combatant like me, this should be fine. It had the feel of a high-school science lab that had been beefed up with a higher insurance policy.

  He was seated at a desk with a workstation, and smiled when I entered. “My identity is Linker. Did she tell you I was a truthseeker?” he asked me in a gravelly, but friendly voice, the kind you’d expect from a late-night radio host or a bartender who’s seen it all.

  I nodded, “Minor Bio-enhancer, actually, class three, but with an enhanced sensory suite that qualifies you as a court polygraph. Your testimony is admissible in twelve states.” I’d done my homework. Walking into a room with a human lie detector without preparation is like bringing a spoon to a gunfight.

  He nodded, “Truth. Good baseline. I will be asking a series of questions before I allow you to demonstrate your power evolution. If you don’t want to answer a question, just say you won’t, and if you don’t know the answer please just say you don’t know the answer instead of trying to guess or prevaricate. As an evolved power, I assume you have already tested your limits. Will this space work?”

  I nodded, “It should work, but I haven’t so much evolved my power as determined its capabilities since my first assessment. I believe I would qualify as at least a class three utility now, although the student who is referring me thinks I could qualify up to class five… but I think she is just trying to boost my confidence.” A little humility never hurt. It makes the eventual reveal more impressive.

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  He nodded, “Well, while you are here, we are being recorded. I can make an initial estimate, but if you disagree with my assessment or for other reasons, the recording can be audited by the local Alpha council. I’ve been audited 37 times, usually by clients who disagree with my class rating, but so far my judgment has not been overturned. I am pretty good at this.” He said it not with arrogance, but with the weary confidence of a man who’s had to defend his work too many times.

  I grinned, “Perfect. If I am just a class two, I’d much rather just know it now than get into trouble from being overconfident.” Another tiny truth. I’d prefer to know so I can adjust my illegal activities accordingly.

  He raised an eyebrow, “Partial falsehood?”

  I nodded, impressed. “I don’t think I am a class two, but you’re the expert, and while I won’t be happy if you assess me at that, because it’s liable to cost me, I am unlikely to contest your judgment.” Because contesting it would draw more attention than it’s worth, and attention is the one thing a part-time villain can’t afford.

  Some of the questions, I clarified, and then reluctantly said I didn’t wish to answer, like ‘have you ever committed a felony’, which I asked if juvenile pranks count, and after an affirmative, I clammed up about. Obviously, I didn’t have any felony warrants, at least not that I knew about. Negative Zero probably had felony warrants, but that’s one of the reasons why he was deceased. Let the dead bury their legal entanglements.

  “So let me get this straight,” he said. He was able to bend the ‘improved’ coin with his fingers, which just showed that he clearly used his bio-enhancement on his own body, but it was a struggle. A normal human would have needed a vise and a hammer. “You can merge and reinforce almost anything, including wounds?”

  I nodded, “Yeah. But it’s always small-scale. That’s what I spent the last two years learning to do. The biggest problem, and the reason I wouldn’t call myself a widgeteer, is because of the energy requirements.” The ever-present, soul-crushing energy requirements.

  “What do you mean?”

  I thought about it for a moment, “You know how the human body produces bio-electricity, and caloric energy?”

  He chuckled, and I remembered that his basic ability was as a bio-enhancer. “I might have some familiarity with the concept.” His smile was dry.

  “Well, I did some research. Most alphas seem to draw the energy for their powers out of the environment, sort of. They use bio-energy to control it, so after they use their powers for a while or do one of their giant attacks, they are drained for a short period. They need to eat, rest, or nap a little to rebuild it.” I gestured vaguely. “They’re like hybrids. I’m a clunky old diesel. I have to provide the fuel and the engine.”

  He nodded slowly, his expression becoming more focused, more clinical.

  “In my case, I have to use that bio-energy for every part of my powers, not just for control. I don’t have any environmental energy I can wrestle into shape. That’s why what I can do is so minor… I technically could probably use my abilities to bend a steel bar, but it would take a lot more energy than just picking the damned thing up and hammering it with a hammer until it bends. The larger something is, the more energy it requires to manipulate exponentially. It’s a terrible, inefficient system designed by a cruel and lazy luck. Serious changes of larger items are simply beyond my power.”

  He nodded, “So you could stick a one-pound pile of pennies and nickels together, but if you tried to stick one pound of solid nickel and copper together, it would be a lot harder?”

  I nodded, “That’s exactly it. In fact, merging a pound of actual bronze is way outside of my energy pool. I mean, I could do it slowly, like over weeks, and it would look weird for a while, but eventually I would get there… or I could do about half that in a hurry, burn out my energy pool, and then I’d have to spend a week relaxing, eating, and feeling like crap before I tried it again. A week of metabolic depression.”

  “Power burnout.”

  I nodded, “Exactly. I call it energy debt. The interest rates are usurious.”

  “But it’s not that bad when you… heal, right?”

  I shrugged, “That depends on the wound. A simple cut? Merging the tissue back together is child’s play if it’s inside my range, but if there’s a lot more damage, dead tissue, or missing flesh, it gets exponentially more difficult based on actual mass. A simple slash is easy; a large third-degree burn could potentially be impossible.” I let the weight of that hang in the air. It was mostly true. The impossible part was more about my willingness to endure the consequent agony than an absolute limit.

  He looked at me seriously, “Why is it that I keep getting the feeling you are only telling me half-truths?” His eyes were like scalpels.

  I shrugged, a practiced gesture of feigned helplessness. “Because I am? Let’s put it this way… if I have to heal myself, I can bring a lot more of my bio-energy into play, because I am willing to sacrifice my body’s resources to stay alive, and I know what I am doing… If it’s someone else, well, unlike you, I am not a bio-controller. I don’t really know what’s wrong with them, and just sort of think my powers into working. If I run out of energy, I have nothing left to offer them, because the resources I could pull on to heal myself are a lot less than what I can pull from THEM. Three inches, remember?” It was an elegant dodge, wrapping a core truth in a blanket of misleading practicality.

  He nodded, “That’s a lot closer… okay, I will buy that. Do you have a way of determining how low in energy you are? Like right now?”

  I nodded, “Yep, I am running a little over ten percent. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to try Kellar. I hoped that they had a way of helping me improve my potential energy, instead of having to constantly walk around in burnout and eat ten times as much as anyone else just to hope for another one percent someday.” The desperation in my voice wasn’t entirely faked. The financial strain of my grocery bills alone was enough to drive a man to a life of minor crime.

  He smiled slightly, “That and a favorable grant or possibly even a scholarship?”

  I nodded, “Not going to lie. That’s the primary reason. I mean, yeah, I’d love to improve my power, but in the long run, my degree is going to keep food on the table and maybe support a family someday.” Another tiny truth. The degree was the goal. The power was just the vehicle to get me there without drowning in debt or getting shivved in a prison shower.

  He chuckled, “Yes, and no. Based on your display, I am going to tentatively assign you as support class 6.”

  “What?” The word escaped my lips before I could stop it, a perfect blend of shock, elation, and utter terror. Class 6. That was… that was a problem. A very large, very attention-drawing problem.