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I think. I still await some kind of answer even though I know he’s not listening. The ring sits dead on my finger when he’s not wearing the matching one. I feel like a total jackass for even attempting to use the ring because I don’t want to talk to him. After what he said, I’ll be happy if I never have to see him again.

I’m not selfish.

A sniper shoots my game character and I toss the controller aside. I’m not selfish, I repeat to myself, as if saying the words enough times will make them true. I just want things to happen my way, and when they don’t … I get pissed off. Evan should understand that. He should understand and just do what I freaking tell him to do. My fingers dig into my legs. The world wouldn’t end if he’d just agree with me.

Okay, maybe I am a little selfish.

Maybe I haven’t treated him as decently as I should have. Breaking stuff never fixes the problem, although it does feel amazing to direct my anger into something without caring for the consequences. I lay back against the couch as I think about what Evan said. I replay how I’ve acted in the last week and how I probably should have acted instead. Although I have a justification for every time I was a bitch to him—I know deep down that my behavior is not that of a Hero’s.

Excuses or not, I shouldn’t have treated him that way.

I may never become a Hero. But I don’t know the answer to that now. As far as I know, I’m still under consideration by the examiners. Once this stupid lockdown is over and that witch of a woman is depowered, maybe I’ll get a reprieve from my life as a failure.

With a sigh, I turn off the Xbox. I take deliberate care to place the controller back on its charger and tuck it away safely on the shelf. Then I change into a clean white t-shirt from the pile of clothes Evan set aside for me to wear, and I brush my teeth with Evan’s extra toothbrush and I pull my hair back with a rubber band I found in the kitchen junk drawer. I do all of these things as slowly as possible, because I am in no hurry to finish.

Because when I finish, I have to apologize to Evan.

A trip down the Green Mile would be more enjoyable right about now. Since the elevator and its surrounding walls are glass, I find Evan on the third floor without much effort. The doors open with a hydraulic swoosh, which might as well be a gong announcing my presence amidst all this silence.

Evan’s back is to me as he stands near a table full of test tubes and microscopes, his hair pulled into a ponytail. He wears plastic gloves and has a syringe in one hand. I know he hears me but he doesn’t turn around.

You can do this, Maci. It’s just like talking an evil villain into releasing his hostages. And by just like it, I mean it’s not even remotely close to being like it at all.
“Hello,” I say. Okay, good. That’s progress.
Now swallow your pride and apologize.

“There’s food in the fridge,” he says. His voice is too flat to decipher his mood.

“I’m not hungry.” I take a step closer, eyeing him as he sucks a red liquid into the syringe. The needle taps against the glass as he sets it on the table. One at a time, he peels the gloves off his hands and my heartbeat quickens as he turns to face me. “What do you need?”

My fingers twist into knots. “Iwanttoapologize.”

His lips squish to one side of his mouth. “Uh. Okay.”

“I mean it,” I say, stepping closer to him as I bare my soul. “You were right, about all of it. I was selfish, stuck up, and rude. I should have never came here and made your life hell. I don’t even know why I showed up here … I panicked.”

“You haven’t made my life hell. You’ve made it … interesting.”

I lift my shoulders and let them fall. There’s really nothing else I can say. Except, “Thank you for putting up with me.” I frown, first in sadness and then in pain because frowning makes my temple hurt. Evan must think I’m about to cry because he jumps across the railing between us and puts his arms around me.

“Hug it out.” He pats my back. “Hug it out. We’re good.”

“I’m not crying,” I say into his chest as I push away from his unneeded hug. Geez, not all women are hormone-driven psychos who need a continuous flow of hugs to make them feel better. I plaster a smile on my face to replace the glare that I’m sure was there just a moment ago. “Friends?” I ask.

“Friends,” he says. My chest feels lighter. He let me off easy, but I’ll take it.

“So what are you working on?” I pick up a glass slide with a red liquid on it. Blood, most likely.

“My gene-test project.” He takes the slide away from me and sets it carefully back in its place.

“Did you finally get some villain blood?” I nod to the slide.

“That’s mine.” He pulls open a drawer, revealing dozens of additional slides with blood on them. “And so are all of these.” He gives me a thin, lips-squished-together smile. “I’m isolating different genes for analysis so when I do get villain blood, I can compare the two and find my hypothesis, which states that one of them will be different and easily identifiable.”

“But isn’t there like, thousands of genes? There’s no way you can analyze all that in your lifetime.”

He nods. “Try thirty thousand. I’m focusing my research on the five hundred genes Supers have that humans don’t. That’s achievable in a few years.”

“We only have five hundred more genes than humans?” I ask. He nods, and I know he’s crazy smart, but I still find that hard to believe. Supers are so different from the humans, with their fragile, disease-prone bodies. Not to mention their prejudice, wars, and inability to provide basic food and shelter for their own people. If it weren’t for us stepping in to stop their wars, feed their poor, and protect them from natural disasters, I’m certain the humans would have died out centuries ago.

“Wow,” I say, absentmindedly picking up another glass slide. “I thought we were vastly different from them.”

He takes the slide away from me. “We are,” he says, tapping his sternum. “We have that whole second set of magnetic veins thing going on, and they sure as hell don’t have that. We’re a completely different species. That’s why we don’t mate with humans.”

“Mate? What are we, animals? Seriously, Evan. Who says words like ‘mate’ to refer to sex?”

His tanned cheeks turn red when I say the s-word. I roll my eyes. “Why aren’t you testing our silver power? If that’s what makes us different from humans, wouldn’t the villains have different genes in their power?” I stand a little taller, having provided an insanely smart idea.

That’s when he opens a second, and third … and fourth drawer of glass slides. “I have,” he says. “I’ve exhausted research on our power. But it’s all worthless until Central allows me to get a sample of villain power.” He swings the drawers closed. “Doesn’t look like that will ever happen.”

“I wish I had some encouraging words for you, but Central seems to be a total jerk every time I’ve ever asked for something.” I smile, trying to make light of my un-Hero situation. “Which was once, by the way.”

“I can see why you tend to take matters into your own hands.” The sinister way he says it makes me to do a double take. I’m not sure if I should agree or disagree with his observation. “I’ve thought about faking Hero too,” he says in a low voice.

A sliver of exhilaration rushes up my spine. “Seriously?”

“I have enough training to know what I’m doing. I could easily hack into the BEEPR servers and send the notifications to my MOD. I’ve thought about it … a lot.” He shoves his hands into his lab coat pockets and rocks back on his heels, his eyes far away. “But I haven’t acted on it. That’s what makes me very different from you.”

I smirk, taking that as a compliment. “My reasons make sense though. Why would you want to fake Hero? You left Hero training.”

“Because capturing a villain with my own two hands is about the only way I’ll ever get a sample of villain power. I spent several years in Hero training and the urge to stop evil still runs through my veins. Although research is my passion, sometimes I practically salivate at the idea of capturing a villain and using him for my research. Hell, I’d depower him myself with a scalpel and a magnet.”

“A slow, gruesome depowering.” I laugh. “That’s harsh. I approve.” I hold out my fist and he taps his fist to mine.

“Unlike you, I’m scared of what would happen to me if I broke protocol like that.” He runs a hand over his messy, pulled-back hair. “But sometimes … man, the urge to track down and stop a villain is almost overwhelming.”

Chills creep up my arms. Every word he said parallels my own thoughts about villains. It’s one thing to want evil to be cast out from the world, but it’s another thing to desire to use your own hands to do it. The yearning to rip away the power that enables villains to hurt is the strongest emotion I’ve ever felt.

If only the examiners could know what is in my heart. How could anyone suspect that I’m actually an evil villain myself, when my greatest wish is to destroy them?

Things are phenomenally better between Evan and me now that we’ve had our little talk and hug-it-out session. He spends the next two days showing me around the research facility, (no, those aren’t torture devices). Allowing me to play with his experiments, (abruptly banning me from the massive thing that splits atoms). Explaining things using words I didn’t understand, (electrophoresis?), and just generally showing me how ridiculously smart he is while remaining humble about it all.

The only unfortunate thing about crashing uninvited at Evan’s is that I have to act like I’m him for the duration of my stay. White T-shirts and black sweatpants with the drawstring pulled extra tight are all I wear, and showering in his shower means I always smell like Winterfresh Mountain Spring body wash.

When I asked him how a shampoo company could possibly know what a spring in the mountains during the winter smells like, he shrugged and told me I think too much about things that don’t matter. Then I flipped my hair across his face and said, “Do you like my hair, baby? It’s Winterfresh, like a mountain spring.” And he shoved me on the bed and told me if I didn’t like his toiletries then I could shower in the salt water outside. Turns out we really get along when we’re not preoccupied with being jerks to each other.

I spread my arms open, relaxing on a beanbag as it hovers three feet off the floor in Evan’s living room. I toss my head back. “I could get used to this.”

He’s controlling the hover device with a remote he made with spare parts from other remotes. The idea, something he affectionately calls the Cloud Bag, is from the collection of inventions he created for kids. He’s dedicated an entire floor of the Research building to what Evan hopes to market as a Toys-R-Us sort of store for Super kids.

He moves the joystick that came from a video game controller and the beanbag swooshes to the right, taking me with it. “It is nice having someone else here to be my guinea pig.” The pencil between his teeth muffles his voice as he holds out a tape measure from the floor to the bottom of my hovercraft.

I hold on as he swings the beanbag to the left, stopping just before sending me head first into the wall. He takes a measurement again, marking it on a notepad with Star Wars characters on the front. “I can’t test everything out on myself, and so far I’ve only tested this with a hundred-pound weight.” He snorts. “That’s not nearly enough to test the strength of the hover engine.”

“Not
nearly
enough?” I fling myself off the beanbag, sending it crashing into the ceiling. “Excuse you.” I catch it before it hits the newly fixed coffee table on its descent. “You don’t know how much I weigh.”

He laughs. “More than a hundred pounds, princess.”

In lieu of retaliating, I change the subject. “I never thought I’d say this because, you know, Research is for total nerds.” I point at him with my index finger under my nose, pretending to scratch my lip. “But this place is cool. I could see myself working here if the Hero thing doesn’t work out. It would be more fun than being a Retriever.”

“You’ve worked hard to be a Hero—you shouldn’t give up that soon. Besides, who would hire you? Certainly not the only employee whom you just called a nerd.”