"Luce?"

Her mother's voice floated into Lucid's helmet, catching her off guard as she was struggling with a boot. She kicked it off before replying. "Yeah?"

"Nova needs extraction. Can you get Ethan in here as a replacement?"

"I thought you were getting Nova. Why aren't you back yet?" Lucid stretched her legs, dreading the moment she'd have to put the suit back on. "Veritas shouldn't be that hard to take down."

"Veritas."

Lucid bit her lip. "Uh, the super with a big white V on his chest, no mask. Hard to miss."

"Hmm. Well, it's not that. Nova's grounded – she just revealed her identity to her sister and I need her extracted ASAP. Ethan's with you, right?"

"Yeah—" She was already on her feet, mind racing. "Her sister – you mean Flickr? That's bad."

"Is that her name? You know I don't keep track."

Lucid shrugged, not bothering to argue. "Okay, I'm coming. Can I take a car?"

"We're a block away, honey. Save the cars for dramatic entrances."

* * *

Ethan's head was on his desk, covered by both arms and a cloud of gloom. He'd just shrugged when Lucid came in, not bothering to look up from the grid-lined notebook half an inch away from his eyes.

"I'm not coming," he mumbled again.

At a loss, Lucid glanced around the boy's room. She'd been surprised to learn that there were bedrooms in the warehouse that served as Vortex's centre of operations, but a lot had changed.

The room wasn't much, of course - a desk and a bed took up all the space in what used to be a janitorial closet. The floor was stained cement, and the faint scent of lemon cleaning products still lingered.

It was obvious that Ethan spent most of his time at the desk. The notebook peeking out from under his elbow was only the first layer of papers and books stacked on one side of the desk, a table-top screen taking up the rest of the surface. It was glowing faintly, but Lucid couldn't make out the program it was on.

"Look," she tried finally, "you could at least tell me why you think you can disobey direct orders."

Ethan thumped on the corner of his desk with a fist, causing a greenish hologram of a spinning pencil to pop up at eye level. A pleasant male voice filled the room, and Ethan mimicked it with resentment in his tone. "The key is not in finding a mysterious force in your mind that controls your powers, but in realizing that the laws of physics are in fact in your favour." He looked at Lucid accusingly, like she had personally written and recorded the textbook on Telekinesis 101.

"My problem," he said in a normal voice, as the hologram continued lecturing, "is that I have no idea how to follow direct orders."

Lucid shrugged sympathetically. "Well, you must have done it at some point. What happened?"

"In the training room with Vortex. It worked once, and then it didn't - and I don't know what the difference was!"

Ethan shoved his chair back from the desk, leaving the physical pencil he'd been staring at on top of the notebook.

"Okay," he said suddenly, "can we talk about what happened in the suit last time? You - I don't really understand—"

Lucid's gaze darted to the door, then back to the boy. "You mean from the audio recording," she said warily.

"Yeah. It's just - how do you know what to do all the time? You don't even have big scary powers or anything and you can still hold your own in a fight. I've been here – like with Vortex – for three years and I was fine until..."

"Until you got powers, and then suddenly you couldn't do anything without them?"

Ethan's eyes snapped to his sister's, wide with a speechless awe. "That's... that's exactly— yeah."

Lucid pushed off the wall, uncrossing her arms and reaching for the pencil in front of Ethan. She rolled it between her fingers, watching the hologram spin.

"I know how it feels," she started.

"Did Vortex give you powers, too?" Ethan blurted.

"What? No. Why would you—"

He shrugged defensively. "What were you doing the whole time everyone thought you were dead, anyway? How did you get out of the explosion? Did you, like, almost die?"

"We need to get going." Lucid's eyes were dark as she turned away. "I can give you a few pointers, but you've just gotta trust your tech until you figure out your powers, okay?"

"Yeah—" Ethan's gaze followed her to the door. She looked back, tossing him the black helmet she had been holding. He caught it with the tips of his fingers, glancing up again in surprise.

Lucid flashed him a smile. "Then suit up. I'm gonna need your help again."

* * *

Two days.

Two days he had been in this city, and Sebastian Esposito wanted to get off this rollercoaster.

In two days he had lost his girlfriend, gotten promoted, made an idiot of himself in front of the most famous superhero in the country, and been punched in the face by a screaming teenager who could very well have imploded his skull with her superpowers but chose instead to vent her fury at police officers in general with her bare fists.

Sebastian touched his bruised cheekbone gingerly, hanging back as he listened to the dispatch radio. Other local officers were on their way, but at the moment they weren't in any immediate danger. The second superhero he'd ever met, Flickr, was crouching beside the open door of the cruiser, talking in a low voice.

And the first supervillain he'd ever met was sulking in the backseat.

He was trying not to listen to their conversation. It was awkward enough already having to arrest a superhero's little sister, and Nova wasn't making it easy on them. Once Veritas had disabled her super suit with a good hit, they had discovered her powers were almost entirely useless without the tech.

Then the girl's face— she couldn't have been older than fifteen.

Nova had done what fifteen-year-olds do best when she realized she was outmatched. Screamed, bargained, alternating between tears and empty threats - but Vortex was gone long before the police showed up, and the girl's promise of retribution on mankind looked to be postponed for the moment. Captain Hyland was in the front seat with a Taser held on the delinquent teen, but she didn't seem terribly concerned that Nova would try to escape. The girl had exhausted her bravado by the time Flickr threatened to call their mother, and she was sitting with her eyes closed, curly hair sticking to tear-and-sweat-stained cheeks.

So overall, super awkward.

Sebastian's head jerked up at the light footfalls behind him. Veritas stepped into the glow of the streetlight, frowning so hard he nearly ran Sebastian over. The sergeant hopped out of the way just in time – he considered himself a fit guy, but the superhero was half a foot taller than him and shaped like a three-dimensional Dorito.

"Excuse me," said Veritas, and that was all he got.

He watched as the super bent to confer with Flickr. She stood up, glancing one last time at the girl in the backseat, and closed the car door.

Sebastian wasn't sure whether to interrupt. He'd only been in this city two days – was there protocol? How much authority did supers have? They could tell the police what was going on at least, right?

Captain Hyland had no such insecurities. She rolled down the passenger window and let out a sharp whistle.

"Who's staying?" she asked.

Flickr opened her mouth, but Veritas spoke first.

"Take her back to your station," he said. "She needs medical attention. I'll patrol the area and join you later."

The dark-skinned super glared up at him. "She has a name and an opinion."

Sebastian winced, but Veritas just nodded.

"I know," he said softly. "You should stay with your sister, Flickr. Lydia."

Flickr was still staring. Eventually her shoulders sagged. She reached up and unfastened her blue helmet, tugging it gingerly over her head and smoothing a hand over the cornrows tied into a knot at the base of her neck.

Sebastian kept his expression as neutral as possible, darting a glance at the captain to see if this was normal. Had Flickr just revealed her secret identity? He supposed the game was up, anyway, since they had her sister in custody. Still, he was surprised at how pretty the superhero was, her eyes large and dark with fatigue. Flickr saw him staring and flashed a self-conscious smile.

"Fine," she said to Veritas, "but only if the sergeant stays with you. And—and keep an eye out for Aether? She hasn't been answering calls."

"Deal," said Captain Hyland immediately. "Esposito, you've got forty minutes. Let's move out."

Alert, Sebastian glanced at Veritas, who grinned and clapped him hard on the shoulder. Once he was sure none of his bones had been dislocated, he nodded awkwardly at the super.

With the car gone, the parking lot felt suddenly colder. Cement crunched as Sebastian shifted from foot to foot, glancing around. Veritas took a few steps into the open, then spun as though about to say something.

"Finally," came a voice from the alley behind Sebastian. "I thought they'd never leave."