Lyssa took a sharp breath when she resurfaced. She kept her head down and reassessed her surroundings. Nothing had changed. A second had passed. The bank was still under siege. Law enforcement held their ground, no doubt waiting for a negotiator to arrive. Nobody knew how many civilians remained inside. Or how many robbers there were. Or what their gifts are, if they are gifted.

“Those masks. They’re blocking out telepathic reach. But I can still feel their absence. Like moving voids. There’s about twenty.”

Lyssa let Bildungsroman sink into her. Like slipping on pajamas, really. For what were all the different Selves but perspectives. All humans did this from moment to moment, choosing to put on different aspects of themselves based on context. Stiff and professional for your superior. Loving and passionate for your spouse. Candid and truthful to your therapist. Imagine if those parts of the human mind had an opinion, an ego of their own. Lyssa did not have to imagine. She felt two sides of herself think different thoughts in parallel. But now she did not need to rely on Bil’s word. She became the telepath, warts and all.

She touched, but not through her hands. She saw, but not through her eyes. The walls between people with all their skull and bone and blood were nothing more than cellophane. She reached, expanding her range until she saw through the eyes of the policemen and the heroes in the air. But not through the robbers or their hostages. Those masks kept her out. She tested her strength on a random void kneeling on the ground under the teller’s desk, pushing like a thumb on a tack. She felt the hostage convulse from her force, like an insect underneath a shoe. She pulled back.

“Flimsy.”

Lyssa had meant the mask. Bil had meant the hostage. Both were true. The masks amplified the wearer’s psychic energies to create a weak shield, even if they did not have the gift for it. She could easily push through, but then she would do damage to the wearer. Perhaps if she crushed all of the robbers minds at once. She had done it before.

Lyssa snickered.

“Hm? Did you say something?” Carrie asked.

“No. No,” Lyssa said. Her expression returned to neutral.

This was a dangerous thing to do; thinking with two minds at once. She could give herself heat stroke. For now, she pulled back. Despite how it looked, the situation was under control. She separated herself from the telepathic gift, losing that resentful perspective and regaining her normality.

Just as well. The students winced as a single, amplified command dug into their skull.

“Return to the school. Fleetfoot is on the way.”

“Did everyone hear that?” Carrie asked.

“Yep. Looks like we were not needed,” Penny said. She yawned. “I was exhausted anyway.”

As the students reluctantly left the scene, Lyssa kept an eye on the bank out of curiosity. What happened next was a blur. A superheated pocket of air streaked onto the scene, strode up the stairs, and into the building. The fires were extinguished, seemingly at the same time, and at the same instant as twenty or so people appearing before the steps, bound and gagged, squirming like surprised worms. A man in blue stood proudly behind the captured criminals. He lifted his goggles and took off his oxygen mask to smile. Many of the students cheered. The police just looked relieved. Lyssa was more intrigued than anything.

She could vaguely follow Fleetfoot’s movements with Mercurial’s gift, even if she could not move like that herself. How did he move fast enough to ignite the atmosphere and touch humans without harming them at the same time? There was a lot about gifts she did not understand.

Meanwhile, the drones overhead scattered.

“So what do we do now?” Lyssa asked.

“Sleep?” Penny said.

“Study. Prepare for the third game,” Amelia answered. “We have a week. It will probably be an obstacle course of some kind.”

“I hope so,” Carrie said. “I can do with an easy win.”

--

Whitworth stood out of the amplifier’s seat and strode impatiently out of the lab. The technicians made way hastily. Passing personnel hurriedly stepped aside as he passed, even doing as much as flattening themselves against the wall until his steps receded. The more he walked, the more his frustration became apparent, until he practically stormed through the hall. He burst through the door of the M.A.G.E facility’s head of security.

“Clear the room,” he said.

The meeting stopped. Its few members glanced at each other and vacated. Only two men remained. Whitworth and one other. A man who seemed at home behind a desk, thin and tall, with russet hair and dark irises. His pupils however were a translucent white. Like stained glass.

“You better have something for me, Jackson,” Whitworth said.

“It’s someone with a phasing gift,” Jackson said calmly. “We think they worked in conjunction with someone with a size altering gift. They phased through the ducts past the automatic filters, avoiding the electromagnetically shielded walls and ceilings.”

“Who did they take?”

“That’s the strange thing. They took that old man and those weird kids you found in a restaurant. The ones with their minds scrambled by something.”

“The vigilantes.” Whitworth sat heavily in a chair, burying his face in his hands. “They didn’t even bother hiding it, then. Fuck, I was so busy tracking the bank situation and trying to find whoever hacked those drones. I stopped paying attention to what was right under my nose.”

“The hole in our defense will be patched up,” Jackson said, casual and matter-of-fact. “I’ve put in the work order.”

“That’s not good enough, Jackson.” Whitworth affixed him with a deadly glare. “They could have done anything while they were down here.”

“Well, not anything-”

“I want you to reassess our entire security system and make more contingencies for any possible holes.”

“I don’t think we have the budget for that, not while you’re participating in whatever you’re doing with Hegemon.”

Whitworth froze.

“What do you know about that?”

“Enough. Listen, sir. Have you considered that maybe you’ve too much on your plate?”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re monitoring the situation in the Middle East, supervising this facility, looking out for bank robbers, working on blacker-than-black projects with a trillionaire.”

“You know you’re awfully unabashed for someone whose security system was just compromised.”

“By clear planning. By a group of underground wannabe heroes who have evaded even your Clandestine superspy group. There are ten thousand possibilities that are 1 in 10,000. Preparing for even one of them requires time, men, and resources. Prep time is a waste of time. Unless you know exactly what you’re preparing for. So if you want me to improve our walls, give me something to work with first.”

Whitworth took a deep breath.

“Maybe you’re right.”

“I am. Trust me.”

“Hard to. I wish I could read your mind, Jackson. Or know what your gift is.”

Jackson smiled. “That would be a breach of security.”