The telekinetic was the easiest hunt I'd ever run.
His name on the file was Lutz. Mid-thirties. He moved cargo for two organizations who hated each other, which meant he had to be careful, which meant he was predictable, which meant my arrival at his garage at 2:14 AM on the first Tuesday of the month had already been written by his own routine. He saw me at the side door. He raised a hand. The roller wrench on his bench lifted off and came at my head like a thrown bottle.
I phased.
The wrench went through where my face had been and clattered against the back wall.
He was already throwing the second thing — a tire iron — when I got my hand on his collarbone.
Sleeper. Four seconds. Down.
[Telekinetic Touch — Minor — 55% extracted. +780 PP.]
I left him on the garage floor.
Tuesday after that — Sondergard, the fear-induction one. He was harder. He got the panic into me before I closed the distance and for about eight seconds I was an animal in a basement with the conviction that the walls were chewing themselves toward me, and then the Mental Fortitude stat that I'd been quietly building for nine months caught up with the panic and hauled it back into the box. I broke his nose with the heel of my hand. He went down. The extraction was clean.
[Fear Induction — 70% extracted. +1,100 PP.]
The third one I shouldn't have taken.
I knew it before I took it. The file on her — Marisol Vega, twenty-six, Velocity-9 user — had every red flag I'd ever taught myself to respect. Substance-derived powers. Cellular degradation. The same cliff Trajectory had gone over in a piece of plot I half-remembered from a TV episode I'd watched in a different life. But she was running, and the System was registering her signature as time-limited, and unstable meant cheap to take.
I cornered her in a stairwell.
She was crying when she saw me. Not from fear. From whatever the drug was doing to her.
"Just don't —" she started.
I put my hand on her shoulder.
The extraction tore through her like a yank on a piece of wet paper. She screamed. The blood vessels in both of her eyes burst at once. She slumped sideways against the railing.
[Velocity Rush — 40% extracted. Host fragment unstable. Power degradation: 18% per use.]
[+520 PP.]
I called 911 from a payphone two blocks away. Watched the ambulance arrive from a roof. Walked home and didn't sleep until five.
I never used Velocity Rush.
I logged it. Filed it. Left it in the back of the storage where it couldn't talk to the others.
---
I tried the fusion in the second week.
Phasing plus Illusion. The new spec the System had put in front of me after I'd hit Fusion Mastery 50. I'd looked at it for three days before I committed.
The first attempt blew the breaker in my apartment.
The second attempt put a duplicate of me in the corner of my living room — flickering, transparent, looking the wrong way — and then the duplicate phased through the wall and was gone, and I had to spend twenty minutes with a flashlight in the stairwell making sure I hadn't accidentally pushed a copy of my face into my neighbor's apartment.
The third attempt held.
Two of me. The duplicate stood three feet away. Mirror posture. When I lifted my left hand, the duplicate's left hand went up. When I told it to walk to the kitchen, it walked to the kitchen. It passed through my coffee table without disturbing it.
It lasted forty-one seconds before it dissolved.
[Fusion: Ghost Mirage — B-Tier acquired.]
[Sync: 10%. Duration: 40 seconds. Cooldown: 6 hours.]
I sat on my floor for a long time after.
When the powers fused, the way they always did, I got the leftovers. A flash of the man I'd taken phasing from — late nights in a Central City alley, lifting his hand to a wall and laughing because he couldn't believe it worked. A flash of Bell — the illusionist, the one I'd taken months ago — sitting in a kitchen I didn't recognize, teaching a small boy how to make a coin disappear.
I sat with that one a while.
The boy in the flash had the man's eyes.
I logged it. Moved on.
---
Jay was excellent.
That was the worst part. He was excellent in the role he was playing. He helped Cisco recalibrate the breach detector on a Wednesday and refused to take credit. He talked Caitlin through grief on a Sunday over coffee and didn't put a hand on her arm. He sparred with Barry in the basement training room and let Barry win three out of five. He told a story at lunch about losing a foot race to a kid in a soapbox derby on his Earth that I would have believed without question if I hadn't known what he was.
I caught him watching me twice.
The first time was in the hallway by the medical bay. He nodded politely as I passed and went back to whatever he was reading. The second time was in the parking lot at dusk — he was leaning against his loaner car looking at his phone and his eyes lifted to me as I walked out and tracked me all the way to my car without his head moving.
I drove out of the lot, took two turns I didn't need to take, and watched my mirror for ten minutes after.
He didn't follow.
He didn't need to.
He was making a list of who in the building was someone he'd have to handle when his moment came. I'd just earned a higher line on it.
---
Day 149.
I crossed the date off the kitchen calendar.
Made dinner. Real dinner. Steak from the butcher on 8th, asparagus, a glass of wine I'd been saving for the count to land. Ate at the table instead of at the counter. Used the good plate.
Set the alarm for six.
[Rank: D → C.]
[Level: 48. PP: 3,200. Storage: 10/10.]
[Combat readiness: Optimal.]
[T-minus 14 hours: Dimensional access window.]
I stood at my window and looked at Central City after midnight. Streetlights. A truck idling at a red light. A woman walking a small dog under the awning of the bodega on the corner.
Tomorrow morning, none of this was going to be the only version of itself anymore.
I closed the blinds and went to bed at a reasonable hour.
Slept like a stone.
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