Isaac stared at the supers confronting him, his mind flashing back to the attack when he’d been at the diner. But this was different; not only were these top-level supers, and he hadn’t a hope in the world, but they weren’t throwing powers at him without explanation. In fact, if they were truly there to help him, all he could think of was that it related to Mechaniacal’s drones. Which were most definitely a proper threat.

  “All right,” he said, seeing no other choice anyway. “But, am I actually going to get to meet with Cayleb? Haven’t been able to talk to him since you took him away.”

  To his credit, Mocker looked mildly guilty for a moment. Then the moment passed, and he made some kind of gesture to Gabitech. The android blurred with super-speed, a close pass that raised the hairs on the back of Isaac’s neck as Gabitech suddenly appeared behind him. The supers unceremoniously hustled him out of Sal’s Place, moving quickly like they expected an attack at any moment.

  It seemed the people on the sidewalk were real enough, as most of them stopped and stared, looking startled as the five of them emerged and crossed the road to a parked car. Despite the situation, Isaac couldn’t help but take a moment to admire it; the modified ScorTech Interceptor was an absolute beauty, with a sleek bubble canopy, angled lines and sweeping tailfins made even more imposing by the tinkered armor. It floated in the air, crystaltech repulsors replacing wheels, but didn’t dip even slightly as they all clambered inside.

  Gabitech squeezed in on one side, a hulking monolith of metal and flesh, and the masked woman bracketed him on the other. Despite the unrelieved black of her bodysuit, it still managed to accentuate her curves in the way only the most professionally tailored costume could accomplish. When he realize he was staring, he tore his gaze away to take in the car, unable to help his curiosity about what the highest tier of superheroes drove.

  The inside was a wonder of both comfort and tinkertech, leather and suede with a console up front that had dozens of buttons and levers. Balanced atop the dash was a comms station that was recognizably Cayleb’s style, a little rectangle with a glowing display and a few inset buttons. Stop Motion, of all people, got behind the wheel, pulling two of the levers and pushing a button. The car itself seemed to turn translucent, before Stop Motion wrapped his hands around the steering wheel and the world started to move in fits and starts.

  “We’re returning to Star Central,” Mocker said conversationally, though Isaac could have guessed that. “I don’t expect you to know, but is there anyone who has been following you? Someone, perhaps, that’s been asking about Machine Head — your friend Cayleb Ruston?”

  “No?” Isaac shook his head, watching as Stop Motion expertly steered around slower-moving traffic with stuttered twitches of his hands, ignoring conventional road rules to dart between lanes and even onto sidewalks. Nobody seemed to even see the car, whatever stealth technology it had preventing even the pedestrians that Stop Motion missed by a whisker’s length from reacting. “I mean, I asked about him, because he just vanished.”

  “Yes,” Mocker said, not apologizing. “There were certain security concerns. Thoughtstealer?”

  “Same pattern,” said the previously-unnamed woman. Not a super he’d ever heard of. “More of it though. Lots of little nudges.”

  “Exactly those concerns,” Mocker said. “Mister Hartson, Star Central detected certain influences on Mister Ruston’s mind during the intake screening. The same ones present on your mind.”

  “You read my mind?” Isaac repeated, flinching. There were a lot of things that his power didn’t do anything about, and mind-reading seemed to be one of them.

  “Patterns only,” the woman said in a clipped voice, each syllable enunciated with the precision of an industrial machine. “No contents.”

  Isaac relaxed slightly, but only slightly. He was still in deep trouble, but at least someone wasn’t digging through his head and airing out every secret he had. That would have just made his life impossible, but as it was, he was pretty sure what they were talking about was the exact thing he had figured out himself — his power had more than just a physical effect.

  Then he realized what the conversation implied. Everything had changed so fast that he was still disoriented from his rapid change in circumstances, but he really should have thought of it first. It wasn’t just himself he was altering with his power. He’d been messing with Cayleb.

  That, more than anything else, made him stop and think. Being taken in by Star Central was a problem, certainly, but it wasn’t personal. His issues with the official law of the land were his, the results of his choices and the results of theirs, given how many superheroes were associated with villainy. But affecting Cayleb, the guy who had been there since they’d been roomies at age six, was completely beyond the pale. Unacceptable.

  Stop Motion’s hand strayed toward the radio, a fading afterimage showing his hand on the dial, but he refrained from actually turning it on. It wasn’t like the trip took too long, either. Between the natural speed of the ScorTech Interceptor and Stop Motion’s powers, they were only minutes away from Star Central itself. Before Isaac could properly sort through his thoughts, they were turning into the underground, secure garage, descending through a hidden elevator in the rear lot of Star Central’s tower.

  The moment they were within the aegis of Star Central’s protections, the supers very obviously relaxed. Isaac had no idea what protections the massive edifice had, but he imagined they were many, varied, and potent. Not that he remembered any particular attack or siege, but it was possible that such attempts stalled out before they even began, stymied by whatever magic or technology kept the tower of Star Central safe and intact.

  The hearty growl of the ScorTech’s sixteen-cylinder engine faded as Stop Motion parked the car in a reserved spot near an ordinary door. Or at least, it looked like a normal entrance from an underground garage, but there was probably nothing ordinary about anything inside of Star Central. Stop Motion exited the car without even opening the door, but the others clambered out with the grace of either practice or power.

  Isaac followed, keeping his eyes busy and his head on a swivel. He wasn’t sure what he could do at this point, but it wasn’t going to be blindly following everything Star Central wanted. So long as their pet telepath didn’t go digging around in his head for everything he knew, it might even be possible to keep back some of his secrets. Technically there were legal protections about too invasive a questioning, but Isaac didn’t really trust that meant anything.

  The ordinary looking door turned out to be five inches thick. Isaac touched it, probing it with his power almost by reflex. It was a simple exercise, removing the tiniest fraction of inertia so he could sense the thing before restoring it, and from the feedback he got he had to guess it was something close to solid steel. Only after he did it did he realize how stupid that could have been, but none of the supers nearby seemed to care.

  The interior looked ordinary as well, with blue walls and a tiled floor, but reaching out to trail his fingers along the wall to trickle in a touch of his power – since his escorts didn’t seem to notice – he got a vague impression of a lot more reinforcement than paperboard or even stone. The entrance hall emptied out into what looked to be a circular interior hall, running around the core of the tower, one that was almost empty. A couple supers that Isaac vaguely recognized walked briskly on whatever errands, but they stepped wide around his escort.

  “Here we are,” Mocker said, stopping at a door and opening it to reveal what looked like a tiny study. A couple of recliners, some books, a television, a miniature fridge in the corner; nothing at all like the police interrogation room Isaac had seen once when he was much younger. Still, it was with some misgivings that Isaac went in, Mocker following him and closing the door. If he had to guess, Thoughtstealer was going to an observation room, but the muscle probably had other things to do.

  He kept his breathing controlled, the fingers of one hand tapping against the heel of his hand as he tried to keep his mind clear. Of course he was in some amount of trouble, but if he was judicious about his answers things might not be too bad. Given Thoughtstealer’s presence, even if she wasn’t picking through his mind he wasn’t going to be able to get away with lying. But that wasn’t the same as just blurting out everything.

  The best thing would be to conceal all of his various identities, but most of them were disposable at this point. The ones he really cared about were Lou and Ravdia; the former because it was one of his longest-running and most invisible personas, and the latter because virtually all his stuff was bound up there. Similarly, it’d be best to conceal as much about his power as possible, but if they started questioning him about mind control he wasn’t going to be able to keep that back.

  “Have a seat,” Mocker offered, striding to one of the recliners and settling into it. The chair’s shape and color shifted, changing to something dark and thin that matched Mocker’s outfit. Isaac knew theatre when he saw it, but it worried him that such a high-rank super was running the interrogation. Carefully, Isaac lowered himself into the other recliner, finding it to be absurdly comfortable.

  “So, can I see Cayleb?” He asked, pre-empting whatever Mocker was about to say.

  “After we talk some, I can send for Machine Head,” Mocker agreed easily. Isaac shook his head at Cayleb’s choice of hero name. They’d thrown around what he thought were much better options before, like Electronizer or The Signal. But it wasn’t his hero name, so he wasn’t going to say anything about it. It was a stupid thing to think about under the circumstances, but nerves were sending his mind in all kinds of different directions.

  “Okay,” he said, and Mocker flipped a hand, a swirl of darkness stretching out to the fridge in the corner. It opened up, and two sodas floated out. One levitated over to him, and Mocker took the other, treating Isaac to the unconventional sight of a powerful magician drinking from the nickelsteel can like some kind of frat boy. Isaac would have expected the super’s drink of choice to be red wine, or the like.

  “While the details are reserved, there seems to be a telepath somewhere in Star City, possibly a full clairvoyant. There are a number of persons of interest that have appeared out of nowhere, and it’s unclear what, precisely, their goals are.” Mocker waved in the direction of the television. “Footage UM-6-B on monitor one, please,” he said, clearly speaking to someone else.

  Isaac popped the tab on the soda and raised it to his lips to hide his expression as a video of a familiar southener appeared on the television. From the outside, he didn’t look like he was panicking and improvising the whole way through. Instead, Harkeem kept a detached, fussy attitude as he was attacked, sent Brawn-dude flying, and then systematically battered the source of the footage with a chair. In a way it was impressive, but Isaac was completely certain he’d not be able to replicate the feat. Really, he was just lucky he was confronted by a couple of newbie patrollers and not someone truly competent.

  “This is the primary individual we are concerned with,” Mocker said. “Have you encountered him before?”

  “…yeah,” Isaac said, taking a drink of his soda as he tried and failed to think of some way to twist out of it. But there was no way, and he suppressed his irritation, schooling his face to neutrality as he was forced to make the admission. “That’s me, actually.”

  He could feel Mocker’s stare, shadows subtly shifting around the warlock. Isaac was pretty certain that hadn’t been the answer Mocker was expecting, and whatever rubric he had for questioning was out the window. It was obvious that the man wanted Isaac to elaborate, but at this point it was best to not volunteer any information.

  If this was merely a civilian matter, he would have wanted a lawyer, but things worked differently for supers. For good and bad; while Star Central had a very distinct authority over criminal supers, it was also far easier to get off lightly provided a super paid restitution. After all, it was nigh impossible to imprison someone who could turn into living smoke or could teleport, so pragmatically there was an incentive to accept a change in behavior rather than enact punishment by force. Isaac hadn’t crossed any true lines, nobody was killed or even hurt in what he’d done — except for the thing he’d done by accident. Mental influence.

  “You claim that you are this person?” Mocker said at last, indicating the television and its freeze-frame of Harkeem.

  “Yes. I’m wearing cosmetics, but it’s me,” Isaac confirmed.

  “Why did you fight?” The warlock pressed.

  “The energy kid just came up to me, started shouting, and attacked.” Isaac adopted an air of confusion, which wasn’t hard because he still didn’t know exactly what had brought that on. “I didn’t know what was going on, so I just got out of there as fast as I could.” Mocker sighed, but didn’t try to argue against that.

  “Dare I ask why you were dressed as a southerner?” He tried instead, but Isaac was ready for that one.

  “I’m a cosplayer. So it’s something I do as a hobby, just be other people.” Not only was it the truth, he was pretty sure whatever file they had collected on him included that particular hobby.

  “At least it makes sense you were asking after Machine Head, then,” Mocker mused. “But why the indirect approach?”

  “I’d asked a couple times and been given the runaround,” Isaac argued. “If reporters asked, though, I figured that would be different.”

  “Hmm.” Mocker took a drink of his own soda, and Isaac noticed a tiny earpiece – probably of Cayleb’s design, but he couldn’t tell without a closer look – that likely meant he was listening to whoever was in the observation room. “We’ll circle back to that one,” he said, a phrase that made Isaac wince if for no other reason than it always presaged a long, useless meeting.

  “How about this. There are a few individuals that we believe may be related persons of interest. Photostats UM-6 C and D, side by side, please.” The TV fuzzed for a moment, then two pictures went up. They were odd renditions of Dimetria and Chains, subtly different than he remembered — but there was no mistaking them either. Even if the photo of Chains was from the convention, when he was in civilian guise.

  “Before I tell you why we think they’re involved, could you tell me if you recognize either of these people?” Isaac was half-astonished that Mocker hadn’t made the connection the moment he learned that Harkeem was one of Isaac’s, but maybe it was less obvious looking at it from the outside. People just didn’t pretend to be different supers; it was a stupid idea even in the few instances where it was possible. Trying that kind of thing resulted in a limitation on abilities and an investment of time that wouldn’t pay off except for extremely limited circumstances.

  This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “Well…” Isaac sighed, resigned to having to give up those identities, and he took a drink to steady himself. He actually wasn’t a fan of that particular brand of cola, but under the circumstances he wasn’t going to turn down some extra sugar. “Both of them are me, as well.”

  “What.”

  If there was any real positive to come from the situation, it was seeing the most powerful magical super in Star City – Moonblast not being a Star City resident – absolutely flabbergasted. It probably wasn’t the best thing to admit to damaging an armored van and stealing a couple hundred thousand creds worth of softchips, but that was the worst crime they could pin on him. It was not nothing, but still on the very low end so far as supervillainy was concerned.

  “Mister Hartson,” Mocker began, then stopped again. “There are several issues with that, but if you are admitting these are also identities of yours, that at least removes some of our worst-case scenarios.” He set his soda on a small stand beside his chair and narrowed his eyes at Isaac. “However, a greater question is what exactly you were doing, masquerading as a supervillain.”

  “Trying to fund Cayleb,” Isaac replied promptly, preferring to focus more on Dimetria than on Chains, and was another point where absolute honesty wouldn’t hurt him at all. “He was rotting away in the apartment, just didn’t have the resources he needed to break out into being a top-tier tinker. I figured I could rectify that situation, but you all noticed him before I could follow through with it.”

  “I suppose there are worse reasons,” Mocker said diplomatically, clearly not meaning it. Though from what Isaac could tell, it was more that he was distracted by other things. He might not have even heard what Isaac said. “That will require more explanation, but let us continue — are you familiar with the spherical drones that have been operating lately?”

  “Mechaniacal’s, yes,” Isaac nodded. “I was actually attacked by some a week or so ago.”

  “Too much to ask that you would have been behind those as well,” Mocker sighed. “Where did this attack occur?”

  “In the slums,” Isaac said with a shrug. “Down toward the end of fifty-third street.” He wasn’t about to give the exact address, but the neighborhood should tell Mocker everything he needed to know.

  “We’ll follow that one up,” Mocker said, his eyes focusing back on Isaac. “I’ll have a few questions, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t run several other unknowns past you. Photostats UM-12 A through C on the screen, please.”

  This time, Isaac had no idea who or what he was looking at. Two costumed supers, and one figure that was either a severe mutation or a monster, with a hulking frame, three eyes, and claws. It was a reminder that Star City dealt with a lot of stuff, most of it way beyond his pay grade. He indicated a negative, and Mocker rotated through another four unknown individuals before finally shutting down the television and reclining in the chair.

  “Well, Mister Hartson, you’re in trouble, but it remains to be seen how much. Officially, the only thing we could hold against you would be one count of Enhanced Robbery, and since that’s the only thing on your record, that’s easily disposed of. However, we still have the issue of the mental influence and, frankly, your power entire. I got a good look at Lunar Bolt’s costume and there’s something there that doesn’t accord with a normal strength super.”

  “I’m actually not sure what is going on with my power,” Isaac hedged. He didn’t want to completely clam up and give them license to have their telepath pry things from him, but at the same time he very much didn’t want to let them know everything. “I think it can do more than I’ve been using it for.”

  “Secondary awakenings or expanded portfolios are not unknown,” Mocker said, flicking up a pair of fingers to conjure — something. Isaac couldn’t tell what it was, just some hazy distorted shape, but Mocker frowned at it, squinting as if he were reading small text. “But your personal lifeline is so severely distorted that it’s impossible to tell.”

  “Lost Generation,” Isaac said laconically, though after a moment he realized that Mocker probably meant the influence of his power, instead. Fortunately, that seemed to be a good enough explanation since Mocker merely grunted.

  “What happens largely rests with you, Mister Hartson,” Mocker began, in what was very obviously a boilerplate speech given to misbehaving supers. Isaac interrupted it.

  “Can I see Cayleb?” He asked, holding up a hand. “It’s been a month, and I haven’t been able to talk to him except for a couple posts on the cybernet. Just want to make sure my brother’s okay.”

  Mocker examined Isaac with the sort of look that was normally reserved for scientific specimens. It was difficult to know if the warlock had started to think through the implications of what Isaac had done or had just lost sympathy when it turned out he wasn’t the victim of some rogue telepath, but he was noticeably cooler than he had been. Not that Isaac minded, so long as he didn’t keep prodding.

  “Machine Head has been asking about you as well,” Mocker admitted after a moment. “I believe it can be arranged. Stay here, Mister Hartson.” He stook up, the chair returning to normal, and made a circular gesture with one hand. Shadows swirled around him, and he vanished. Theatrical, but magic often was.

  Left alone for the moment, Isaac rose and wandered the small room, running his fingers over the books. After he got to talk to Cayleb, he would need to give serious thought about what he was going to do, because it wasn’t likely that Star Central would let him go of their own accord. While generally metas had the freedom to not join up with supers, even if they had done a little bit of vigilantism or supervillainy, he was pretty sure that wouldn’t be the case with him.

  Mental influence was one of the big exceptions to live-and-let-live, though now that Isaac knew he was doing it, he could get a handle on it and stop it from happening. However, once they pried out that he was able to use his power in a broader manner – things like ontological inertia and who knew what else – there’d probably be all kinds of ‘mandatory training’ and ‘observation.’ Cayleb’s sequestration made that clear.

  Breaking out of Star Central was a daunting task, though. He was sure better metas than he had tried, though his understanding was that it was ultimately the people that made it work. It wasn’t like he’d been moved to some high-security cell somewhere anyway, and he knew his way back to the parking garage because it was just a single corridor away. Escaping was a good fantasy, but he wasn’t sure how to make it work.

  Nevertheless, he picked up a book and started fiddling with it as he waited. While he would have liked to have a better handle on the new aspects of his power, he was going to have to go with what he knew he could do. Admittedly, the particular exercise he had in mind wasn’t something he hadn’t bothered with too much, so he had little practice.

  Instead of investing inertia into the book as a whole, he tried just investing the cover. Like with the paperboard back at the mercenary house, it was a little bit fuzzy, but possible. Taking it back to the recliner, he started to flip through the pages, investing in each one of them individually. Not that he could fit that much extra inertia into a single piece of paper, but little pieces added up.

  He'd tried it once or twice before, but had abandoned the idea given how long it took. It just didn’t fit with the way he used his power, investing or divesting quickly and leaving no trace behind. Simplicity had always been the name of the game, nothing that he could forget or lose track of, or might cause problems if he was pressed for time.

  In this case, though, if he was thinking of trying to break out of Star Central, the time might actually be worth it. Individual pages with heavy inertial investment could be slide between a door and a jamb to open or even sever a lock or a latch, and the book itself would, when totaled up, have an amazing amount of heft. Enough to break a lock, maybe. It wasn’t like he was in a high security cell.

  He’d gotten maybe halfway through when the door opened, and Isaac sprang to his feet as Cayleb entered the room. Or maybe Machine Head, as Cayleb was in a very noticeable mechanical suit, mostly to support his head but probably also to enhance his strength and durability. It was a slick black-and-silver creation, not quite power armor but with enough bulk to hold strength augmentations.

  “Isaac!” Cayleb beamed, striding into the room without the normal exaggerated care he had always needed to walk around, a paper bag in one hand and the other gesticulating wildly. Isaac tucked the book under his arm and crossed over with an enormous sense of relief. In a way, it was like a weight he’d been carrying dropped away, and this time it wasn’t anything to do with his powers.

  “Cayleb!” He said, gripping his brother’s hand before thumping his shoulder, only to wince as his hand bounced off unyielding metal. “Or should I say Machine Head? Really, that’s what you went with?”

  “Hey, it was free, and I like the sound of it!” Cayleb shot back, poking Isaac in the chest. “Least I didn’t just vanish into thin air.”

  “You kinda did, man,” Isaac said, shoving away Cayleb’s accusatory finger. “I got your damn maybe I’m dead message even!”

  “Oh shit, I forgot I had set that up,” Cayleb said, looking momentarily horrified. “Didn’t mean to scare you like that! They just had me shut in for a while ‘cause of some telepath stuff.” Isaac suppressed a wince at that, because that was exactly what he was going to have to talk to Cayleb about.

  “Yeah, they said something about that, but come on. Couldn’t they have at least let us keep in touch?” Isaac kept his tone light for the moment, stepping back and waving to the seats. “For all I knew they had you locked in the basement.”

  “I mean, they kinda did,” Cayleb said, laughing and rubbing at the shiny dome of his helmet. “All the tinker stuff is underground, but man, my lab is awesome! We get all the toys, and I’ve actually made a ton of stuff for Star Central already.” Isaac chuckled at his enthusiasm; at the very least, it seemed that Cayleb was enjoying himself.

  “To tell the truth, I noticed some of your equipment on the supers already,” he said, crossing over and opening the fridge to take out another soda and toss it to Cayleb. His own was near empty, somehow, despite not recalling taking more than a few sips. “About the only thing that kept me from knocking down the front door.”

  “Hah, you should have anyway!” Cayleb said, catching the soda and popping the tab with a hiss. “Oh right, I brought you a bagel sandwich since we couldn’t go to the diner!” He lifted the bag he’d been holding in his off hand, offering it to Isaac. Immediately, Isaac could smell it, and he took the offering in the spirit it was given. Cayleb threw himself into the recliner, which didn’t creak at all despite the extra mass of the powersuit. “’Cept, what kind of trouble were you in? I mean, it wasn’t like you couldn’t make rent, right?”

  “Ehhh,” Isaac temporized, sitting down in the other chair and leaving the book on his lap as he dug out the bagel sandwich. “I don’t suppose you can mute the mics in here? Some of what I’m saying I don’t want to share out to everyone just yet.”

  “Prooobably shouldn’t,” Cayleb said, squinting at him. “Mocker didn’t tell me much but did say you’re in a bit of trouble.”

  “Yeah, and I’m not asking you to not report onward, but I figure I can trust you with what needs to be known and what doesn’t, you know?” Isaac wasn’t even slightly lying, though mostly he just wanted to talk without the feeling of someone else crowding in to listen. But he did hope that Cayleb would keep some aspects of the discussion about powers a little bit private, if only for long enough for Isaac to get a handle on them himself.

  “Hmm, well…” Cayleb raised his arm, as if he were looking at a watch, but instead typed at a tiny pad that popped out of the vambrace of his armor. He frowned at it, then poked at a few more things. “Okay, Thoughtstealer is still monitoring, but the actual audio recording is scrambled.” He poked at the vambrace again. “Now it’s scrambled for real and not just the nominal privacy setting.”

  “Thanks,” Isaac said, figuring that was as good as he was going to get, and he trusted Cayleb to at least try to fulfill things. Even after the morning’s misdirection, he was pretty sure that was all set up by Star Central — and Cayleb probably went along because he was concerned about Isaac. “So, here’s the deal.”

  Isaac wasn’t much a storyteller, but the vital details weren’t that complicated anyway. All he had to do was sketch out the Dimetria heist, Chains, and grabbing the information. For the moment he left out Smokeshow and Ravdia, the former for many and varied reasons and the latter because it seemed Star Central hadn’t connected up that identity, and he wanted to keep it if possible.

  “Oh damn, so you went through with it?” Cayleb stared at him, impressed. “How the hell did Crash not just annihilate you?”

  “Well, that’s one of the main things I wanted to talk to you about. Powers,” Isaac said, glad that Cayleb had reacted to the softchip heist with nothing more than a look. Neither of them needed to chew over that at this point. “So here’s the thing. I think the reason nobody realized I wasn’t a real ganger is because of my power. Before, I thought it was just affecting physical inertia, but it turns out that there’s other kinds, too. People have inertia. Identities, behaviors. Thoughts.”

  “Oh.” Cayleb squinted at Isaac for a moment before his eyes widened. “Oh! All that telepath stuff — that was you.”

  “Yeah.” Isaac grimaced, rubbing at his temples. “I’m sorry, man, I had no idea that I was doing anything. Turns out I’ve been messing with people for who knows how long.”

  “Well…” Cayleb sighed and slurped at his soda. “Honestly it’s fine man. I’m where I wanna be, I’m who I wanna be. But you — you gotta really got to get a hold of it before you hurt someone with it.”

  “Yeah I do,” Isaac agreed. “Which is why I wanted to talk to you. You know more about powers than anyone, and you’re smart. So you’re probably the best person to help me figure things out.”

  “Sure,” Cayleb said, eyes lighting up with delight. “Let’s do it.”

  Isaac hadn’t truly discussed his powers with anyone, not for ages. Not even Cayleb. But under the circumstances he needed someone’s perspective on his newfound applications, to gain control over the side effects if nothing else. If he was going to go around messing with people’s minds all the time, Star Central would be right to lock him up.

  “I think I know one issue,” Cayleb said after some awkwardly honest back-and-forth about what Isaac had tried. “You’re not a meathead, so honestly, thinking about everything in terms of exercise and muscles is probably a bad idea. A useful metaphor, but you’re applying a superpower, not just lifting weights. Physical and non-physical don’t match up.”

  “Does that work for tinker stuff too?” Isaac asked, though it was a good point to make. “I mean, all your things are physical, but…”

  “Distinguishing between matter and energy are important, yeah,” Cayleb agreed happily. “I’m an electromagnetics man myself, and a lot of what I do can be reproduced by different tinker approaches, but not all of it. And vice versa.”

  “Going to take a while to retrain myself,” Isaac muttered, pulling on his power but not doing anything with it. He’d been thinking of it like going to the gym for years, since the gym was where he’d ended up exploring the physical nature of his power. Moving weights, set in tracks so he couldn’t screw up too badly, did a lot to help him understand investment and divestment. While he saw what Cayleb was talking about, it wasn’t something he could shift to instantly.

  “They’ve got all sorts of resources here,” Cayleb offered, but Isaac shook his head.

  “Even if I wanted to do the hero thing, which I don’t, you know they’d lock me down tight. Especially with the permanency thing! I’d go crazy cooped up in here.”

  “I mean. You’re gonna have to work off that heist,” Cayleb pointed out. “Though you could probably sell some inertially altered stuff to tinkers and cover it in an afternoon.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” Isaac said with a grimace. “I can imagine all kinds of people who would want to lock me in a basement churning out altered stuff. S’why I never said anything about that part before.”

  “They wouldn’t — well, I guess they would,” Cayleb corrected himself, sheepishly rubbing at his armored cranium. “I guess they had me locked in the basement churning out stuff, but that’s what I want to do anyway.”

  “It’s not for me,” Isaac said. “You see why I want to keep some stuff quiet. As far as the fines and such, I’ll figure something out. Hell, releasing all of Blacktime’s information ought to be worth something.”

  “Maybe if you hadn’t sent it all to the press first,” Cayleb laughed.

  “Who says I sent it all to the press?” Isaac grinned back.

  “Huh, well—” Cayleb was interrupted by a beeping from his arm-computer. He glanced at it and then pursed his lips. “Oh, the press conference is on. Want to see it, since I know you’ve complained about Glorybeam before?”

  “Eh,” Isaac said indifferently. Really, he wasn’t all that interested. It was likely to be more empty platitudes, as it always was. “I’m not happy about Glorybeam, but I’ve never been after her all that hard,” he pointed out. “It’s more that I needed to get the encryption on that tape broken, which Greg did – you remember Greg – and he wanted to publish the Glorybeam dirt. And I mean, I’m not going to protect her.”

  “Greg? No, I don’t remember Greg,” Cayleb said and shrugged. Isaac shrugged back, not terribly surprised, before Cayleb reached over and turned the television back on, spinning the knob to show channel 3 — apparently it was connected to normal broadcast as well as the internal systems.

  Glorybeam floated just outside of Star Central, her golden armor polished as usual and faceless helmet making it impossible to know what she was thinking. Administrator Ike himself was visible in the background, embedded in the massive travel chair, the deep scars on his hairless head and face obvious even at a distance. Some lady was talking just out of frame as the camera panned from Ike to Glorybeam, then suddenly whirled around and framed the crowd of reporters before the operator focused on something up in the air. A spherical drone.

  For a moment, Isaac stared at the familiar sight, wondering why the person behind them would do something so stupid as attacking a site with so many supers. Then he realized; hardly anyone might know the power suppressor was ranged, or that it was permanent. He was on his feet before he realized it, and turned to Cayleb.

  “You have to warn them, that suppressor thing is dangerous,” he said. “Whoever is using them modified it. They attack at a distance, and it doesn’t wear off.”

  “It doesn’t…?” Cayleb frowned at the monitor.

  “Yeah, saw it happen. She’s still depowered.”

  “Oh. Shit,” Cayleb said, tapping frantically away at his armband. On the television, a familiar ripple appeared around the drone, and a golden wave swept out to meet it. The camera blurred as it fired, the air distorting as two forces met — and the gold vanished. The camera whipped around, and wild focus caught the golden-armored figure as it plummeting down to the stage.

  Glorybeam.

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