“I believe you have a package for me?”

  Isaac stood at the counter of the self-storage office, where the same bored kid as before slouched in his chair, reading a comic. For a moment Isaac thought that he’d have to repeat himself, but then the kid sighed, put the comic down, and turned dull and uninterested eyes his way.

  “Harkeem Jural,” Isaac prompted, and the kid sighed again, rising from the chair and shuffling over to the counter where a jumble of cardboard boxes waited. Isaac had to refrain from yelling and pointing at the appropriate box as the kid slowly poked through them, squinting at labels until finally locating the correct one and bring it over with that same lifeless gait. He didn’t even ask for identification or verification, just put it on the counter and picked up his comic again.

  “Thanks,” Isaac said, almost certainly unnecessarily, and absconded with the package. He hurried over to his storage container and opened the box, double-checking the costume for damage before re-packing it in a new bag. Under the circumstances, he was carrying his various costumes everywhere, so he could change at any time. Or, well, that had been the plan until he’d been forced to leave most of it at the convention center.

  Hopefully the bag was still where he’d left it, hidden away in the back of a janitor’s closet, but he couldn’t count on it so he was in the process of re-making Lou and Chains. Most of it was actually sewing clothes; the bald cap and moustache for Lou were relatively easy, and he had the pictures so he could reproduce the nose and scar alterations for Chains. Aging and sewing new overalls for Lou, and an Iron Nails patch for Chains, was considerably more work.

  He changed into the new Lou outfit, making doubly sure to blend the bald cap in correctly. New cosmetics always took a little bit of experimentation to get used to. Once he was set, false moustache in place, he took the car out and headed for the convention center to try and retrieve his bag.

  There was a small crowd there, as people obviously wanted to get their property back. A long line stretched out the door, leading up to a desk with a psychometric meta to verify people’s belongings, but Isaac wasn’t going to wait there. The fact that he’d been there in the character of Chains was liable to get him arrested if his backpack had been found.

  Isaac’s old ‘832 Odelle sputtered and muttered as he directed it around to the back, cramming it into a half-sized corner space in the employee lot, and extracted an old third-hand push-broom from within. The cleaning implement had taken up almost the entire length of the car, awkwardly angled between the seats, but it instantly made Lou’s character more believable. Something he’d need, since there were a lot of people inside, construction metas and regular cleaning crew tidying up the mess.

  There were a lot of the latter, so one more volunteer wandering in wouldn’t be out of place. Powers specifically related to cleaning up were rare to vanishing, and those people generally had better things to do. Besides, when it came to sweeping, mopping, and picking up, any old pair of hands could manage — and Isaac wasn’t just there to retrieve his bag.

  Several of the doors were propped open as people brought out trash cans and bags with debris and burnt material, so Isaac simply joined the flow of cleaning personnel and walked inside. It still smelled like smoke and soot inside, but already a good swathe of scorch marks had been scrubbed clean from columns, and the glass frames of the windows were clear of shards. He suspected the only reason the glass hadn’t been replaced yet was to let the place air out as much as possible, given the fire damage.

  Nobody paid attention to Lou as the apparently-older man headed up to the second floor and found the janitor’s closet there. It was wide open, but Isaac’s backpack was still crammed in the back corner where he’d left it. He pulled out a trash bag from the stash in his overalls, put the backpack inside, and then started pushing the broom as he hauled the trash bag along.

  A few minutes later it was safely in his car, and he rejoined the cleanup crew for real. He felt at least partly responsible for what had happened; after all, if it weren’t for the material he’d released, Plasmaster wouldn’t have bothered with the convention. He knew that it wasn’t exactly his fault, but as Dolores had said when he was back in foster care, it didn’t need to be for him to take responsibility. It wasn’t like he’d invited a supervillain in to wreak havoc, but he sure owed the convention enough to put in some labor.

  While he worked, Isaac chewed over the ongoing issue of Smokeshow. She seemed like a nice enough girl, normal as anyone with powers could be, and perfectly capable of doing something other than being in a gang. Most of the others were violent or thuggish, and they’d probably never change, but Smokeshow might. He definitely didn’t want to lead her on; he liked her far too much for that. The fact that he’d been the one who’d snuck in, stole information from them, and then started a bunch of gang trouble sure didn’t help.

  It was an absolute mess, and one he didn’t know how to resolve without being a complete jerk. At some point Chains was going to have to disappear. In fact, at this point he probably should, since he got recognized by someone associated with Star Central. He’d already made it clear Chains was looking for something outside of the gang, so maybe he could make some excuses and head out without just vanishing. If he was really lucky, he could keep in contact without having to keep to the character of Chains.

  That was the conclusion he came to after several hours of janitorial work, the kind of thing that was almost soothing to him now, a meditative sort of labor where he could let the work of his hands pull his mind through difficult problems. At this point it seemed unlikely that Crash or, worse, Blacktime would mark Chains as being related to the information leak, which went a long way to fulfilling his need to remain unnoticed. He didn’t think it was a good idea to go back to being Isaac just yet – after all, he still had plenty of material to send to the papers – but it might be worth poking around to see what the powers that be thought Isaac had been up to.

  Broken glass was swept up, scorched and broken doors were hauled outside, stained or burned carpet was ripped out and bundled up. Isaac mopped tile, vacuumed new carpet after it was laid, and swept floors as the whine of power tools signified the installation of new bits of furniture, light switches, or plumbing. A construction meta appeared a few hours in, a tiny woman wearing a bright yellow poncho, and waved her hands as the walls flexed and resurfaced themselves. Glass panels grew from the window frames with a sound like cracking ice, undoing the bulk of the structural damage in a matter of minutes.

  They weren’t done by any means, but things like repainting required more specialized skills than general cleanup, so Isaac waved at his fellow volunteers – mostly convention staff, though there was one commercial crew among the group – and headed back out. He stopped off in a corner parking lot to switch back to Harkeem, taking off the bald cap and applying the cosmetics to darken his skin, finally donning the white gloves and climbing back behind the wheel of his car.

  If he was going to be doing something other than pretending to be a ganger and hanging out in a self-store, he needed to start looking at apartments. He needed some form of legitimate identity, something to balance out his ganger activity, and had enough creds to cover something small. Not for long, but at least enough to figure out what he was going to do to make money in a legitimate manner. Not to mention that someone like Chains would never be able to get at Cayleb, and find out what was going on there. Harkeem was his best bet for that, and nobody would bat an eye at a foreigner wanting to rent an apartment for only a few months.

  Heading back downtown, he picked up a couple newspapers for the classifieds, and swung by the real estate office he’d used to find his old apartment to get one of their catalogues. While Harkeem was definitely a higher class individual than Isaac had been, the reality of his finances – and the fact that he would be by himself – meant that he had to look for something on the smaller, cheaper side. He took all the literature to one of his favorite cafes, one that served massive sandwiches, and started perusing the material while enjoying a corned beef on rye.

  “Don’t move!”

  It took Isaac a good six seconds to realize that a super was there and addressing him. He only vaguely recognized the man; a kid in an electric-blue bodysuit laden with black belts. Each belt was studded with little crystals, making him extremely glittery. Or glowy, since there was a faint luminescence around each one. He couldn’t remember the super’s name, only that he had some form of energy blast.

  The kid was holding his hands Isaac’s way, and very carefully Isaac put down the sandwich and swallowed, entirely at a loss. It was one thing to be accosted as Chains, but quite another for a super to see him as a threat when he was just some random guy. He didn’t even know what he might have done that would have brought Harkeem to Star Central’s attention — though of course, he had already concluded that whatever his power was doing to make his characters more believable wasn’t perfect.

  “What is—”

  “Don’t speak!” The kid said, his voice cracking as he interrupted the vague question Isaac was about to ask. The super reached up to the communicator on his ear – Cayleb’s work, he saw absently – while the other people in the café quickly and quietly shuffled away from the potential super fight. Suddenly the last bite of sandwich seemed to stick in his throat, and Isaac grabbed his soda and sucked down a couple gulps.

  “I said don’t move!” The kid raised his palms to point them at Isaac, then cocked his head, clearly listening to the communicator. “Yeah, send a backup team to Michael’s Sandwiches, corner of Third and Blake. Okay, Brawn-dude, turn it on!”

  A high-pitched whining made everyone in the café flinch, something that felt like it was inside Isaac’s head, rattling his inner ear. He winced, but it didn’t seem to do anything. He felt exactly the same, and despite the annoyance of the whining sound he could still think straight. Which meant he knew he had to get out of there before backup came.

  There was no telling what had sent them after Harkeem, but given that he had someone pointing a gun at him – or the equivalent – he wasn’t about to just go along with it. Isaac shoved inertia into his clothes – and himself, despite his misgivings – as he eyed room and figured the best way to get the hell out of there. There was absolutely no way he was going to get into a super-fight in the middle of a crowded café.

  Not that it was his choice. Once whatever it was had been turned on, the kid sauntered closer, and Isaac stood up, his heart pounding as he prepared to do — something. He wasn’t sure what. All he knew was that he wasn’t at all interested in going with the supers.

  “Stop!” The kid shouted, and loosed a blue-green energy blast. Isaac ducked as the wild bolt of vibrant blue-green energy shattered the windows behind him, grabbing onto his chair and instinctively augmenting it so it’d withstand the motion of his inertially-charged self as he toppled back. Both he and the chair hit the tile floor with enough force to crack it, and Isaac continued the movement of his backward roll rather than trying to redirect his inertia, picking up the chair by its low back and brandishing it, legs-outward, as a shield.

  Just in time too, as another energy blast smashed into the chair, shoving Isaac backward despite the massive inertial investment. Wood crackled and smoke rose, tongues of flame licking up from the front of his shield even if the impact didn’t bowl him over. It still slid him up against the wall-length broken windows, and then through the remaining facade. The lip of brick simply gave way rather than tripping him, rendered inconsequential by the forces involved, but Isaac was just glad he didn’t trip and fall again like a doofus.

  Part of him was tempted to chuck the chair at the energy kid, but he instinctively rejected anything that might seriously hurt someone, especially if it would leave more inertially-invested material around. Besides which, he was already outside the café — which was where he wanted to be.

  He’d heard the aphorism ‘the best fight was the one you didn’t have’ many times, so his first plan was just to run away. He had no intention to rush back in, trying to go toe to toe with energy kid, but he couldn’t just turn around and flee headlong because that would just invite getting sniped from behind. Instead he just backpedaled along the sidewalk, wincing as he accidentally bumped his elbow into a parking meter and twisted it sideways.

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  Horns blared as people drove away from the developing super-fight, everyone in Star City used to the signs. Isaac’s eyes widened as he saw a double-sized person – Brawn-dude, clearly – pelting his way along the sidewalk, fist cocked and ready. The giant super dodged past the energy kid as the latter emerged through the hole in the café, bearing down on Isaac in a matter of seconds. There were probably a thousand things a competent fighter could have done in the situation, but all Isaac could think to do was to crouch down, pushing his power into the chair as hard as he could and swinging it upward like a baseball bat.

  There was a confused moment as Brawn-dude’s fist punched through the charred bottom of the wood, but was caught in the ascending movement. Strength supers only vaguely obeyed the laws of physics, but whatever Brawn-dude could do didn’t stop several inertial tons from catching his arm and pulling him along for the ride. Isaac gawked as the chair creaked, but his swipe still sent the super through the air in a long arc, catapulted directly along the street.

  “Brawn-dude!” The kid shouted, and his palms came up again, crystals sparkling as he charged another blast. With the chair practically falling apart, and with it being his only real weapon, Isaac took a couple of steps forward to try and knock the kid’s aim aside. Instead, he managed to bracket him between the chair legs, the two of them staring at each other for a moment over the half-destroyed seat of the chair. Then in a flash of insight, he just shook the chair back and forth.

  The energy kid yelped as he was thrown back and forth, a rapid thump-thump-thump that broke his concentration and drove the breath from him with a long whoof. After a few seconds, he dropped to the ground, dazed, and Isaac divested his power from the chair before setting it on the sidewalk outside the café and turning to run. If he could just duck out of sight, he could probably wipe off the cosmetics and ditch the suit, and without a tracking super they wouldn’t be able to find him.

  “You’re not getting away that easy!” A deep bellow came from down the street before Isaac had even made it to the end of block, and Brawn-dude reappeared, none the worse for his trip through the air. The oversized super reached over and picked up a car – a ‘920 Maltis, a nice little subcompact – and then simply threw it at Isaac.

  “Oh sh—” Isaac cut off the exclamation as he flung up his hands by reflex, having about half a second before the impact to prepare. He juiced his inertia even more, straining with his power, and then focused on sucking the car’s inertia out as he waited for it to hit. The bumper dented as he caught it by the front, the combination of his own increase and the car’s decrease as his power began to work arresting its forward momentum.

  It dropped straight down, and Isaac reversed the divested inertia before scrambling away, only thinking about how glad he was the car hadn’t landed on him. That would have squished him, powers or no, because he couldn’t do anything about weight. It was only by sheer luck that neither of the supers had killed him. And they still might, if he didn’t either surrender or get away.

  As tempting as the first seemed, he was already committed to the second. He didn’t trust Star Central much to begin with and this absolutely didn’t help, especially since he had no idea what the hell was going on. This was more than just some arrest, it was like they thought he was some sovereign-class terror. He dashed across the empty street – only parked cars remained – and dived toward an alleyway.

  Brawn-dude stomped on the street, a fissure rippling through the asphalt toward him, detonating under his feet and sending him sprawling. Chips of pavement flew where he hit the ground and rolled, his power not enough to keep him from tripping over his own two feet. His own clumsiness reinforced how badly Isaac needed to get away; every second meant it was more likely backup supers would arrive – ones that could fly – and once that happened it was all over.

  The super stomped again, and Isaac had half a second to figure things out. He had used a kind of super-jump before, bouncing his inertia between nearly nothing and quite a lot, and Brawn-dude’s fissures had even more punch. Isaac frantically dialed down his inertia, and the ground ripple hit with the bizarre, floating sensation that always accompanied inertia-free movement. Just as frantically, he dialed it back up to just above normal, to keep air resistance from stopping his motion, and the confusion resolved into a whistling of air around his ears and the sight of building walls blurring past.

  He grunted as his shoulder bounced off brick, redirecting his tumble. It took him another second to get his bearings; flying out of the alley between two five-story office buildings toward a two-story mall in the next block. His stomach lurched as he tumbled, completely out of control — at least until he dropped his inertia again. Then the air itself stopped him, making him drop straight down, save for some back-and-forth from errant breezes, landing him on the roof of the mall.

  For a moment he stood, completely stunned that he’d gotten out of the super-fight alive. Sure, some of it had been due to his powers, and other people not understanding him, but it was still mostly on the pair of supers. They hadn’t had any coordination, and he’d had more than a little luck.

  Knowing that flying supers would be there any moment, he sprinted off the roof, dropping down onto one of the balconies and slipping past the bemused people there. Given how many metas were around, someone arriving from the air wasn’t totally unheard of, but there were still people who’d remember him. He hurried into the mall, ducking into a corner and retrieving a package of wet wipes from his pocket, scrubbing at his face to get rid of the cosmetics darkening his skin. Then he quick-marched for a clothing shop, stripping off the brown outer suit coat and bundling it up under his arm.

  He wasn’t carrying much money, but it was enough that he could get pants and a shirt, handing over the cred tabs and borrowing a changing room. The suit and dirtied wipes went into the bag that the clerk had given him for his clothes, and he shoved it in a trash can as he headed toward the mall’s exit. Ditching the identity of Harkeem had taken maybe five minutes, but he could already see supers hanging around the exits, and in the distance he spotted a group of bright costumes sweeping the mall. They probably couldn’t shut it down and detain everyone, but just looking around with super senses would be enough for most people.

  “David Jeffries,” Isaac muttered to himself, grabbing the name from the brands he saw on display as he fiddled with the collar of his brand new polo shirt, tousling his hair to make it different than Harkeem’s crisp cut. He set his jaw, compressed his lips, and threw his head back as he strode along with purpose. Generally he wouldn’t have bothered trying to come up with some kind of cover identity if he were just going from one place to another, but he recognized that something within his power helped him avoid recognition. Just as before, he could feel a faint shiver, the use of a muscle he didn’t realize he had, but that was all. He hoped it would be enough.

  From the corner of his eye he saw the immense form of Brawn-dude squeeze through the front entrance to the mall, and had to keep himself from breaking into a run. Instead he aimed confidently for the food court — if nothing else, he hadn’t actually finished lunch, and scrambling to leave would probably make him suspicious. Isaac almost felt like he was outside himself, performing a character in a play as he pretended he hadn’t just been in a super-fight that could have easily killed him, and wasn’t on the run from Star Central for reasons unknown.

  He got himself an oversized slice of pizza from the food court, leaning against one of the columns, then wincing as his shoulder, bruised from hitting the building, protested. He switched to the other one, chewing on his cheap mall food as he listened to a nearby group of teenagers gossip about the supers combing the mall. Most of the theories centered around Mechaniacal and his drones, since Star Central had yet to find out who was controlling them. Even after all these decades, the old tinker’s technology was just superior to most everything Star Central could manage.

  When Brawn-dude himself strolled by, Isaac lifted his slice of pizza to his mouth, blocking most of his face with the oversize crust as he watched the giant super look around. A smaller woman trailed him in a costume that looked like secretary-chic, with a clipboard, hair bun, and a dress that exposed far more skin than strictly necessary, but the way she carried herself just screamed danger. Neither of them gave him a second look.

  Isaac threw away the last of his pizza, feeling a little sick from everything going on, and stopped by the bathroom to splash his face with water and take a few deep breaths, as well as make sure all the makeup was gone. Then he headed for the exits. He wasn’t going to feel safe until he was well away — but he couldn’t go back to the self-store. Or the hotel, for that matter. Even his car might not be safe, but he had to at least check if he could recover his bag. There was just too much there – including some of his backup money – to leave it be.

  The parking garage was less than a block away, and Isaac didn’t see any supers guarding it. Though it wasn’t like there was any reason to think this garage in particular would be related to the super-fight, not when there were so many other ways to get around town. Regardless, Isaac was sure it was only a matter of time, so he strolled up to his car, got out his bag, and left. If he was wrong, the car would still be there in a day or two — maybe with a ticket, but still there.

  There was nowhere he could go. The self-storage was in Harkeem’s name so he didn’t dare go back there, and that meant leaving everything behind. His materials, his tinkered costuming kit, his clamshell minicomp. Everything that characterized his old life — not to mention the rest of his money. Not for the first time, Isaac wondered whether he’d really made the right choices, whether he was too skeptical of super heroes and villains.

  But when a pair of supers were willing to smash up a café and throw around cars as a first reaction, it was hard to extend any trust. Or, for that matter, kept a brand new super completely hidden and incommunicado after recruitment. At least Isaac had gotten some people to ask about Cayleb, which might force them to make him public. Though without the clamshell, there was no good way to reach his brother.

  Isaac brooded over his situation for a while, walking along the sidewalks of Star City’s commercial district, but eventually he realized he had to do something. Go somewhere. Move forward, or at least start moving, whether or not he had a destination in mind. Unfortunately, there was only one place he could think of where he had some degree of credit and people he knew.

  It looked like he was going be stuck as Chains for a while.

  ***

  “That was not your best showing.” Vilmonica’s words were hammered and precise, made all the more scathing by the severe lack of emotion. Brawn-dude and Blue Blast – the names sounded like some kind of soft drink promotion – winced, as well they should. At least they had the mercy of the dressing-down being performed in Administrator Ike’s office, rather than somewhere public.

  Ike himself was letting the team’s handler ream them out; Vilmonica was, herself, an information super and coordinated the bulk of the common-class teams. Usually supers were in pairs or trios, to cover each other’s weaknesses. Blue Blast’s range and speed was supposed to pair with Brawn-dude’s strength and toughness, but clearly nobody had accounted for brains.

  Though that was perhaps slightly unkind, as they were just meant to do street patrols, and the anti-telepathy tools had been issued to everyone as a matter of course. Nobody would have expected Blue Blast to actually spot the man they were interested in, just casually sitting at a diner without a care in the world. Or for him to exhibit powers that were very much not that of a telepath.

  “For high-value targets, you call in backup first, and only once they have arrived do you approach the target,” Vilmonica lectured, while the pair squirmed uncomfortably. “You do not try and take down someone at that level on your own.”

  “But we had the jammers!” Blue Blast said, which he really shouldn’t have. Even back when Ike was a trainee, he knew better than to argue with the handler. Vilmonica’s demeanor didn’t visibly change, but the weight of her displeasure still stalled out any further words of argument. She let the silence stretch for a few moments to drive the stupidity of the reply home before speaking.

  “And this incident only demonstrates why that kind of tool shouldn’t be taken as a guarantee,” Vilmonica tapped her finger against her arm, frowning at the pair. “We didn’t know whether this person was the telepath at all, only supposed it.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Brawn-dude said, nudging Blue Blast with an oversized elbow before the latter could make another comment.

  “This sort of thing is even more regrettable when we’re having to endure a smear campaign about our relationships with supervillains,” Vilmonica lectured them, Ike’s presence tacitly reinforcing her words. He let her proceed for a few minutes more, until the pair were thoroughly cowed, then stepped in.

  “Now that we are all on the same page, let us review the actual fight,” he said, tapping at the controls of his chair to bring up the imagery taken by Cayleb’s surveillance. They were just small cameras attached to the earpieces, but it was better than solely relying on verbal reports. He flipped up the first useful frame, that of their target eating a sandwich.

  The man was of average height and build, but the brown suit and white gloves he wore concealed everything but his face, so in truth he could have looked like anything beneath it. The heavily tanned, almost bronzed cast to his face meant that he likely hailed from the Nasir Kingdom to the south, which might create some interesting political troubles. Ike clicked through the still shots and then touched on the short clip of Blue Blast failing to cut through a chair.

  “Clear toughness power, likely extending to personal possessions,” Ike noted, which was in the minority but not unheard of. Most costumes needed to be engineered to deal with the rigors of super-fights, but some people had a power that protected things like clothes and glasses. Everyone was envious of them.

  “Strength, too,” Blue Blast said. “Even if he blocked it, that was a lot of force.”

  “Yes, we’re getting to that,” Ike said, flipping to Brawn-dude’s camera and clicking forward to when he’d punched through the chair. The perspective of the short clip careened wildly as the suspect sent Brawn-dude flying, and Ike froze it again. “In practical terms, he didn’t demonstrate anything beyond common-class powers. But his usage of them? The two of you never had a chance.”

  “Gee, thanks,” Brawn-dude muttered.

  “It’s a simple fact,” Ike stated, poking at the controls on his chair and flipping to the timestamp where Blue Blast got absolutely clobbered by chair legs. “Control of the environment, adept use of power with no collateral damage, and look at his expression.” Ike highlighted the slightly condescending, thoughtful face the suspect held throughout the entire fight. “He never changed it. Perhaps this man isn’t the telepath, but he seems to be a professional.”

  “So next time—”

  “Next time, you will call your superiors before approaching a suspect,” Vilmonica said, cutting off Blue Blast. “As for finding this super, other people will be attending to that.” Ike had already put a watch on the transportation out of Star City, but he didn’t have any great hope. Someone like that would vanish once their cover was blown, but it was still another point of data to find their telepath.

  Sooner or later, Star Central would run them to ground.

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