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When I open my eyes, it doesn’t feel like I’m waking up in the morning. You can’t exactly wake up if you never went to sleep. The foreboding weight of fear and anxiety rests in my chest, having only slightly lightened during my hours of lying in Evan’s bed, listening to his steady breathing from the couch across the room.

The breathing is gone now and the couch is empty. I grab my MOD from the pillow next to me and switch it on, only to be met with the blank screen of a MOD still in lockdown. The only valuable information this worn-out piece of plastic can give me is the time. Five in the morning.

My body aches as I push myself up in Evan’s bed. It’s a weird sensation—dull throbbing pain coursing throughout my arms and legs every time I move. I’ve never felt pain longer than a few seconds after being injured. This injury just won’t go away. I touch my forehead and wince. So much for healing myself. A fleeting panic grips my mind as I wonder if my powers are somehow reduced after using so much of it to regrow my own skull.

What if I managed to grow bone but sacrificed my powers in the process? My heart races at the thought. That can’t be possible. I’ve never even heard of anything like that. The lady in the medical ward did say I was extraordinary. She seemed downright obsessed with my ability to heal myself. What if I did ruin my powers?

Life wouldn’t be worth living. You’d be worthless.

I shake my head to clear the thought. But because thoughts aren’t physical, they don’t go away. With an overwhelming panic I’ve never felt before, I leap out of bed, ignoring every pain shooting through my body. I close my eyes as the vibrating power beneath my rib cage roars to life at my internal command. Power flows through my arms and legs, reassuring me with its electrical pulsing warmth. I am a Super and I am not losing my power. I will not allow myself to think that way.

Evan’s voice catches me off guard.
You won’t allow yourself to think what way?

Huh?
Ugh, I forgot I was wearing the ring. Embarrassment consumes me. How long had he been listening? What did I think? I can’t remember.

I hear his voice again, a single sound formed into a word.
Ha.

With a shudder, I flail my hand and let the ring fall to the bed. This would be the most embarrassing gift ever, but having Evan read my thoughts barely compares to the Surprise Beach Party Humiliation so generously given to me by my best friend and brother.

The mere thought of Crimson and Max sends a shriek of pain through my heart, and it’s not from the soreness in my muscles or the residual embarrassment I feel when thinking of that night. I have no idea if they are okay. I’ve already witnessed one murder, how many more have happened that I don’t know about? Lockdown is supposed to be a way to hunker down with your loved ones and wait out the danger. Instead it has me isolated and completely helpless. I wouldn’t be here if I had listened to Dad in the first place. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised if he disowns me after this.

In an effort to take my mind off all the ways that I have completely and irrevocably screwed shit up, I give myself a tour of Evan’s bedroom. Last night Evan had tried to take my mind off things by playing every funny movie he owned. A few hours of Will Ferrell later, it had been all I could do to let him pull me by the hand into a darkened room and drop me on the bed. I hadn’t even crawled under the sheets.

The dimly lit room’s only source of light is the not-yet-risen sunlight coming from the narrow sweeping window at the top of the wall. It reminds me of windows in a basement of a human’s home—only a foot tall and so high up you can’t see out of it. This is somewhat odd, because every other floor has walls made of glass.

Every floor in the building is circular and from what I gather, Evan’s … er … apartment?—Living space?—takes up one half of this floor. He told me the other guy he works with lives on the other side, but he’s been on vacation for a while.

Evan’s massive kitchen with his high-tech gadgets of coolness take up about a third of the semi-circle, and a hallway full of artifacts and one Monet painting lead into his bedroom-slash-living area space. There’s a bed, king sized and ruffled from my sleeping on it, a couch that Evan slept on last night, and a bunch of boy-ish type things everywhere else.

His computer desk has three glass monitors and a dozen Star Wars toys. His television is bigger than I am tall and flanked on all four sides with movies and video games, and every possible video gaming system known to man. Plus two questionable-looking consoles that look homemade.

Is this what normal Supers my age do? Have kickass rooms with amazing stuff? My room at home has a bed, a TV that’s hardly ever watched, and well—stuff that’s been there since my childhood. Hero training consumed my entire school life and all of my free time. Yet here I am, aged sixteen and not a Hero. It was all for nothing.

After poking my head into the kitchen and the weird artifact hallway and not finding Evan, I retrieve the ring from the bed and try to clear my mind of every thought except for one.
Where are you?

I’m outside. Walk through the bookshelf.

Come again?

Evan’s normally raspy voice is silky inside my head.
Bookshelf. Walk through it. See you soon.

Glancing around, I notice the bookshelf for the first time. In the far corner of the room, diagonally across what would be the sharp corner of the pie slice that is Evan’s bedroom, it spans from floor to ceiling about five feet wide. Every bit of shelf space has a book shoved into it.

As pathetic as it may be, I suddenly feel very small and ignorant. Heroes don’t read books, and I’d grown up trying to be a Hero. Sure, I have a bookshelf at home too. It has all six editions of the Hero manual on it. Along with an assortment of Blu-rays with the shrink-wrap still on them, hair accessories, and random crap Crimson and I collected on that one vacation we took two years ago.

Evan’s bookshelf is stocked with comic books, books
about
comic books, an entire collection of Batman novels, and every single copy of the Hardy Boys. With a laugh, I reach for the large hardback book with the title this isn’t a secret passageway and pull.

Soundlessly, the massive bookshelf swings open, revealing a hallway that leads to a balcony. The cool early morning air brushes against my face as I take a tentative step onto the glass floor. Evan laughs. He’s standing with his elbows resting on the balcony’s railing, which is also glass, so from my view it appears like he’s floating in air with his body leaning toward the ocean.

I grip the railing. “What kind of freak would design a balcony like this?”

He swings a thumb toward his chest. “This one. Would you like some coffee?”

I decline with a wave of my hand. “You’re drinking coffee? At five in the morning? I thought maybe you were out here because you couldn’t sleep.” I lower my head, get scared of the empty air below me, and refocus my attention on my hands instead. “I’m sorry I took your bed last night. I bet it sucks sleeping on the couch.”

“I slept fine.” I watch him as he gazes out at the sun-tinted ocean. He inhales a long gust of air, closing his eyes as if relishing in the salty taste. When he exhales, I feel his power level weaken. “People waste the best part of the day sleeping. Look,” he says, pointing at the sun as it pokes over the horizon. I glance at it but then look back at Evan because the expression of pure joy on his face is more fascinating than a sunrise. He smiles as the sun reflects in his eyes. “Most people are asleep right now. So it’s like the sun is rising just for you and me.”

“Evan?” I ask.

He closes his eyes as a cool breeze washes over his face. “Hmm?”

“Why did you quit Hero training?”

His eyes fling open and steal a glance at me before he closes them again, this time pressing a hand to his forehead. “I said I didn’t want to talk about it.”

“No, you said that was a story for another time. Now is another time.” I press my shoulder to his, trying to be friendly and persuasive, not mean and demanding. He groans.

“My dad died when I was three. I don’t remember it. He was killed by a villain attack at the canyon entrance where he was a security guard.”

“I remember that,” I say. “Well not personally, but I’ve heard of it. That’s the last time villains tried to infiltrate Central. A lot of people died.”

“Yeah but the villains didn’t succeed.” He doesn’t elaborate but I know what he means. His father did not die in vain. I can already see where this story is going. Evan continues, “Apparently Mom was so devastated by his death that she couldn’t leave the house for weeks. She was always afraid of villain attacks. I don’t remember when I started doing it, but I do remember that my childhood goal was to protect her. I promised to be a Hero for her, and when I turned five I enrolled in Hero training. So she wouldn’t have to be scared anymore.”

Chills prickle down my arms. “So why did you quit?”

He shrugs. “Being a Hero wasn’t in my heart. She knew that. When I turned sixteen and started preparing for my Hero exam, Mom told me that she was proud of me but wanted me to follow my dreams, not hers. She said I could quit if I wanted to. So I did. I signed up for Research that same day.”

I watch him as he stares out at the ocean. I picture a scrawny kid-sized Evan, standing up to protect his mom. “You may not be a real Hero but I bet you’re hers.”

He turns to me and he gives me this cute smile and I swear to God I think we’re about to have a moment. Like an,
I need to run home and call Crimson as soon as possible,
moment. And then a seagull flies over our heads and gifts us with a gigantic splatter of bird crap.

“I just had to pick a glass balcony,” he says with sarcasm as he steps over the offensive bird waste, taking a new spot closer to me. “I should have painted the balcony to look like bird shit instead.”

I inch to the left on habit, increasing my bubble of personal space. “Why
did
you choose glass?”

“When I arrived here, my half of the seventh floor was totally empty. I got to design it myself, and since I was sixteen and sixteen-year-olds are immature punks, well—” he spreads his arms, encompassing the balcony, “I did what I wanted.”

“Do you think I’m an immature sixteen-year-old punk?” I ask, without putting much—okay
any
—thought into what I just said.

“Definitely,” he says without hesitation. “Although punk is kind of a masculine word. Punkette, maybe.”

“Thanks, jerk,” I mutter as I stare pointedly at the ocean view in front of me.

“You didn’t lose your power, you know.” He dims his MOD screen and slides it in his pocket. “That’s impossible.”

No sense in denying it—he’d already heard it in my thoughts. “How do you know?”

“Because I am a scientist.” He says it with a hint of sarcasm and a crooked smile that sets me at ease and twists my stomach in knots.

I say the first thing that comes to mind. “I feel like we’re the only two people on Earth right now.”

“Look around,” he says. “That’s how I feel every day.”

“Where’s the other guy who works here?”

“Felix? I don’t know. He’s been gone for a few weeks now. He’s a secretive guy.”

“What about your family? Parents? Siblings?” He shrugs in nonchalance, so I add to the list, “Girlfriend?”

He gives me a look and I know my attempt at being casual didn’t work. “Dad’s dead. I don’t have any siblings. Mom is doing well, or at least she was the last time I talked to her. She took her retirement to France. Now she owns a bakery.”

“I’m sorry about your dad,” I say.

He shrugs. “I was a toddler. I never knew him.”

“I know the feeling. I mean, it’s a sad situation and all, but if you never knew someone you can’t exactly miss them.” He nods in agreement and then my stomach embarrasses me by letting out a loud, ridiculously long growl.

“Someone’s hungry!” Evan tugs my hair as he sweeps behind me and back inside the apartment. “Let’s get our cereal on and then I’ll show you my hacking skills.”

“Hacking skills?” I ask, following him inside.

He gives me a sly smile. “What, did I stutter?”

After two hours of attempting to hack into Central’s mainframe, Evan’s defeated sigh pretty much sums up how I feel about this endeavor. Evan offers me, for about the hundredth time, a seat on the metal stool next to him but I refuse. Maybe he can sit during a freaking crisis, but me? I’ll stand, thanks.

The glass monitor in front of us is a black-and-white tangled web of codes and script and zeros and ones and crap that I am so far from understanding, I can’t even describe it. Evan takes in the whole thing, over and over again, constantly typing more lines of jumbled code and fishing through bits of it to get the information he needs. I make a joke about him being Neo from The Matrix movie for the third time and he throws a binder clip at me.

“You’re going to wear a hole in my floor,” he murmurs as I continue to pace behind him. In a more hopeful voice, he says, “I’ve hacked into the BEEPR mainframe.”

I stop in my tracks. I wish I could understand the words on the screen like he does. “And?”