The noise of the crowd hit us like a solid wall as we entered the stadium. Even though the main event hadn’t started, the ambient din of a full arena of 150,000 people chatting away was absolutely cacophonous, and that was without even taking into account the music playing through the speakers or the countless power signals on full blast.

  It made for a disorienting experience, and I was sure my face would be set to a permanent grimace for the duration of this event, whatever else happened. I found myself questioning whether this was a good idea, but tried to dismiss those thoughts; I’d come here for a purpose, and a bit of discomfort wasn’t enough to keep me from my goal.

  At the very least, I wasn’t put off enough to be unable to appreciate the feat of architecture and engineering that was Foresight’s own Colosseum. Named and designed after the famous ancient wonder of Rome, Superverse had gone all out to make it as grand and impressive as the original must have been to its ancient visitors back when it was in operation. They’d built it at the height of what people referred to as the Building Frenzy, when forward-looking corporations were in a rush to show off what could be achieved with the assistance of superpowers.

  The invisible dome, for example, that kept away the elements of the outdoors while still maintaining the open-air experience, was something that simply could never have been achieved without a small group of superhumans working in concert to make the building materials stronger, sturdier, and considerably more transparent than they naturally should have been. Not all the details of its construction were public knowledge, of course, so I didn’t know quite how it all worked, but there were many things like that in this place—and, indeed, in the other Building Frenzy-era constructions like it.

  Foresight Colosseum had some rivals for biggest stadium, but it definitely stood alone as the most popular. Though it could be argued that was more down to Superverse’s own dominance over the field of superpowered sports and entertainment rather than any virtue of the stadium itself. They simply had too much of a first-mover advantage on that front. Much as I disliked people using their powers for such frivolous things—partly, I’ll admit, borne of envy—I had to be realistic and admit that it was an inevitable thing; if it hadn’t been Superverse, it would’ve been someone else. For that reason, I couldn’t blame the company itself.

  Still, inevitable or not, I’d never been one for the games that went on in this stadium, and thus this was my first time visiting the place, despite the fact my childhood best friend pretty much had an open invitation to visit for the last few years.

  Ashika walked along beside me, her power signal singing, decked out in her usual tracksuit, her short hair scraped up into a bun. There was a resigned expression on her face, owing to the knowledge that she wouldn’t be able to avoid a bunch of conversations with various Superverse bigwigs. They always tried their best to woo her when they had the chance, no matter how obvious it was that she didn’t appreciate it. One didn’t become a TV executive without the ability to ignore others’ discomfort, I supposed.

  On my other side, Maisie was more engaged, her head on a swivel as she took in the sights. Much as I wanted to despair at her enthusiasm for this event, it was better this than the hovering she’d been doing for the last few days.

  Ever since our little confrontation with Marquise, she’d been treating me oddly, lingering around my general vicinity in a way she hadn’t in years—not since the initial verdict regarding my powers.

  I couldn’t exactly blame her. I knew, objectively, I’d been acting oddly myself. Getting stuck in my own head was nothing new to anyone who spent any significant amount of time around me, but I would admit that even in my most obsessive phases, I wasn’t usually so unresponsive as I had been lately.

  It wasn’t as if I could help that, though. There were too many thoughts swirling in my mind, shooting off in a million different directions, to the point it was hard to get a handle on them all. Maintaining any kind of conversation when a route to power was within my reach was simply not plausible. Monosyllabic answers had been all I could muster.

  And far beyond thoughts, I’d found myself fascinated by every power signal that came within my range.

  From the outside, it had probably looked like I was in the greatest depression of my life. Maisie had just been worried. I knew that, and I appreciated her concern for me, when I finally dredged up enough mental processing power to devote to my immediate surroundings and realised there were worldly concerns I had to deal with.

  So, when the idea came to me to piggyback off Ashika’s connections once again, I’d decided to invite Maisie. My sister and my best friend typically got along like a house on fire, so they’d be able to amuse each other while I remained stuck in my own mind, plotting and planning.

  We made it to our seats, right on the front row, the closest we could possibly get to the action without being directly on the field. Ashika technically had access to executive box seats where all the real luxuries were, but we weren’t here to be pampered, much as Ashika herself probably would’ve preferred that. We were here to see the fights.

  The fights and the power signals. I couldn’t think of a better environment to get close to a running battle between powerful superhumans, not without getting really reckless. Inspecting idle power signals would be as easy as hanging around in an area with high foot traffic, and that was something I planned on. In fact, I intended to seek out every kind of signal-dense scenario I could think of. I’d even taken up Dr Klein on arranging to attend a power therapy meeting, and we were in talks to let me “intern” at the power testing labs, to see what else I could get out of the machines and the people they were testing.

  There was a concrete path forward for me now, and I was going to inspect every molecule of it as I walked it.

  My attention was riveted on the court in front of me as I took my seat. Today, the showrunners had set up a simple scene: the stage was a great square with lines dividing it into four quarters, and markings showed that each quarter was 100 metres by 100 metres. The arena gently curved up towards the middle until it reached a small platform that couldn’t be more than five metres across in the centre. It rose three or so metres above its surroundings, high enough to clearly mark a ‘hill’ but not so high that it would make things difficult to follow for spectators.

  One of the most impressive features of Foresight Colosseum was its modularity. One day, it could be set up for a soccer match, the next morning it could be a racetrack, and that same night they’d have it reconfigured as a boxing ring. Naturally, all of those needed to be bigger than the norm, to accommodate for the superpowers on display, and the stadium wasn’t limited to the more conventional sports that had been around before the advent of superpowers.

  King of the Hill was the name of the game today. Four teams would battle it out for an entire hour, seeking to occupy that central zone for as long as possible. For every second a member stood on the ‘hill’ uncontested, their team would gain a point. More members on the hill at a time earned more points.

  With ten players on each team, it was known as one of the more chaotic events in Superverse’s repertoire. They’d be recording five matches today. Over two-hundred different powers in total would be displayed over the course of the next twelve hours. Every one of them would be going hard, stretching their abilities above and beyond, with the promise of millions of dollars for their eventual victory.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  It would be absolute bedlam. Madness. Sensory overload of the highest order. The power signals would undoubtedly be disorienting, overwhelming to my senses.

  In other words, it was perfect for my needs.

  Anticipation was building inside me. I tried to keep still, but it was like my legs had a mind of their own, bouncing and jostling and fidgeting. I crossed my arms over my chest, only for my fingers to start tapping on my elbows. Ashika and Maisie had been happily chatting across me, but something in my demeanour must have drawn their attention; they’d fallen quiet, and I could feel their gazes on me like a ten-tonne weight pressing in from either side.

  “Is that a smile I see, Emmett?” Maisie asked, a teasing lilt to her voice.

  “It totally is,” Ashika grumbled, leaning close enough that I could feel some of her loose hairs tickling my cheek. “Don’t tell me you’ve had a change of heart about this super-combat crap. I thought you hated it?”

  “It’s for research,” I said.

  “Research for your future career, huh?” Ashika said.

  “No! Power signals,” I sputtered, sending her a glare. “I told you about all this already!”

  Ashika narrowed her eyes at me. “I dunno. I’m thinking maybe you came here to see Vixen. I heard her costume’s pretty revealing.”

  Unfortunately for Ashika, Maisie was liable to stab you in the back when it came to teasing. “Oh? And where have you been hearing rumours like that, Ashika dearest?” she asked, faux-innocently. “Been searching up naughty costumes, have we?”

  Ashika reared back like Maisie had just whipped out a gun. “The hell are you talking about all of a sudden, woman?! I thought we were teaming up!”

  “Oh, Ashika.” Maisie shook her head. “You spend so much time around the Superverse nerds and execs, I thought you would’ve learned it’s a dog-eat-dog world out here. You just watch, kiddos, the team ups and betrayals that go on today will make your head spin. I’m just preparing you.”

  “Bleh. Whatever.” Ashika sat back in her chair. “Fine, since I’ll just get teased myself if I try to tease you, I’ll ask more seriously, Emmett.”

  I eyed her. “Sure?”

  “Why’ve you suddenly decided to go all in on the power signal thing like this?”

  I took a few seconds to find the right answer. “I hadn’t considered the possibility of power signals being important in and of themselves before, and I’m mad at myself for that.” I grimaced. “Now I need to make up for that lost time.”

  “Right,” Ashika said. “That much is obvious. But… why?”

  My grimace deepened as I considered what to say.

  The problem was, I’d made a deal with the devil.

  ~~~

  “What do you mean I can learn that?” I asked, hating the tremor in my voice. I cleared my throat, speaking more assertively, “Is your power to manipulate power signals? You’re offering to, what, mess with my signal so my power finally comes out?”

  “No,” Marquise said mildly. “I mean that you can learn to do precisely what I just did.”

  “What did you just do?”

  “That’s a very difficult question to answer. Mister Shaw.” She stood from her chair, and paced around to lean against the side of her desk, looking down on me with a level expression. She crossed her arms. “In the past, I’ve had little cause to try and put words to the feeling of power signals. Trying to explain a sense that, as far as I’m aware, no one else has experienced has always been an exercise in frustration, in the rare cases that I trusted someone enough to even discuss it.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “And you trust me?”

  “I suspect I don’t need to,” she said, and there was gravity in her voice now, affecting the same sense that picked up on power signals without actually emitting a power signal.

  “How are you doing that?” I asked, my voice trembling once more. I looked around the room, searching for any kind of answer, and froze when I saw Maisie’s state.

  She was utterly still. Not in the way of a human that had stopped moving, but frozen, like time had stopped only for her. Her hair didn’t sway, her eyes didn’t blink, she didn’t fidget. Her chest wasn’t even moving.

  I surged to my feet. “What have you done to her?!”

  “Nothing.” There was a change in the atmosphere, and Maisie moved.

  In slow motion, I saw her eyelids twitch a fraction, barely getting halfway through a blink before she went still once more.

  “But I have done something to the two of us,” Marquise said, and I spun back to face her and took a step away at the same time.

  “What?”

  “Gave us some privacy.”

  “How? You’re not giving off a power signal.” I paused, frowning at my own words. They weren’t quite true. “Or not any kind of power signal I’ve ever felt before.”

  “Indeed,” Marquise said, and for the first time, she smiled. It made her look remarkably normal; there was nothing inherently sinister to it, in fact it looked natural on her face, nothing to indicate that it was fake or rehearsed. And yet, it was perhaps more intimidating than anything else she’d done today.

  “I don’t need to trust you with any explanation on how I experience power signals, Mister Shaw, because I strongly suspect you are familiar with the sensations yourself.” She shrugged. “I’ve no guarantee our perceptions are exactly the same, and I doubt we’d describe them the same way if truly pushed to put our thoughts to words as best we could. But I can count on the fingers of one hand with plenty left over how many people have had this understanding, and this time I’m not going to sit back and watch it play out. This ability is too important to go to waste.”

  “And you want to teach me how to do whatever the hell this is?” I asked, shifting to glance back at Maisie while keeping the vice-principal in my line of sight.

  Marquise nodded. “That’s one possibility.”

  “Hell no,” I said immediately. I wished my conviction on that matter was as strong as my words…

  Marquise nodded again. “A rather low possibility, in my estimation. That’s fine. Opening your mind to the concept is, for now, more than sufficient for my purposes.”

  “What are your purposes?”

  “I just told you, Mister Shaw,” she said. “Making sure your ability doesn’t go to waste.”

  Silence reigned for a long moment as I stared down the vice-principal of Aegis Academy, the former ruler of one of the world’s biggest and most powerful criminal organisations, and realised that I potentially knew more about her power than anyone else on Earth, now. I didn’t dare ask for more. “Can you let Maisie go, please? I want to leave.”

  “That’s fine.” Marquise rose, looming at her full height. The atmosphere in the room changed again, but Maisie didn’t unfreeze. Or, I suppose, it would be more accurate to say she didn’t release me from whatever she was doing. “But I’d like to make a request of you, before you go.”

  I swallowed. “What?”

  Marquise simply placed a finger to her lips.

  Needless to say, we both knew it wasn’t actually a request.