The walk back to my motel room was slow, thanks to the bullet wound in my thigh. But after enough limping, we made it. I sat on the bed while he took a seat on the floor. We didn’t say anything to each other, just sitting in silence, occasionally interrupted by the noise of the city outside.

  “So, what’s the plan?” he asked.

  I was hoping to rest for a bit, but he was already trying to push me forward. “Well, the top priority is finding more supers to work with. With enough unique powers, I’m certain I could work out some way to counter the Disciples. Actually, what powers do you have?”

  “I’ve only got two. With [Secondary] I can pull out any weapon that I want, as long as I know how it’s built. [Super Stopper] lets me make shit that’ll beat the hell out of a super. It’s what I used on that blade in our fight. But that one takes a lot out of me, even worse when it’s complex. What about you, what powers you packing?”

  I contemplated lying to him for a second, still ashamed of my powers, but we needed to trust each other if we’d be working together. “I only have one ability. It’s called [Take], and it lets me pull small objects into my hand.”

  The second I told him, he just started laughing. It took him a solid minute before he calmed down enough to keep talking. “Damn, can’t believe I lost to some shit like that. If I’d known that was all you had, I would’ve just made it a fist fight. Oh well, not like I can back out now.”

  While rude, his response was a bit comforting. “Yeah, I got dealt a bad hand. I’m still a super though, so that’s worth something.”

  “Fair enough, fodder. Who knows, maybe we won’t die fighting the Disciples.”

  Right as I was about to say something, I received a sudden wave of messages from Polymeniac. The flood made me pull up the messages, just so I wouldn’t feel them keep tapping at me.

  Shit. I knew if we fought back, Agony would eventually get involved. But as we were now, we wouldn’t stand a chance at defeating him. Agony’s most trusted enforcers, his lieutenants, were some of the strongest villains in the South Rain.

  Despite that, he alone was the reason that the Disciples of Agony were the largest gang in the city. In all of South Rain City, there wasn’t a single super that could rival him.

  Poly’s messages thankfully reminded me about the messaging system. From what I knew, it was a hierarchical system. You could either message someone who works for you or the person you work for, but there isn’t any way to message someone as equals.

  While you could have countless subordinates, you’re only allowed to have one person above you. The system was nearly perfect, it was only that feature that limited its potential.

  I focused my eyes, opening Polymeniac’s profile, which shared only the barest of options and information. I could see his villain name and the fact that he was my boss. There were only two options, [Emergency] and [Quit].

  My eyes focused on [Quit], and his profile suddenly vanished. You needed to be in person to connect two systems, but you could break the bond from anywhere. There would’ve been an advantage to keeping him, his harassing messages letting me know when he’s awake. But the downside of him fucking with my sleep was too much to ignore.

  “Hey, let’s link our systems.” I extended a fist out to Reload.

  Reload shrugged, “Alright.”

  We fist bumped each other, and both of our systems popped up, asking us to decide who was in charge. Once we picked, Reload’s profile suddenly popped into view. When I opened his profile, I was shocked at the list of options available to me. I could mute his messages, see if he’s read my messages, and a bunch of other features I couldn’t be bothered to look through.

  What stood out to me most, though, was the option to see who was connected to him. I had no clue that was a feature, making it a real lucky break that I separated from Polymeniac first.

  “So, you got anything to do?” Reload asked. “We could go terrorize some henches.”

  “No, we should rest up.” I answered, snapping out of thought. “Tomorrow we’ll try to find some more supers to work with. There has to be other people out there with a grudge against the Disciples.”

  Stolen story; please report.

  “Cool, cool. Can we at least put the TV on or something?”

  “Sure.”

  I had to rummage around the bed for the remote, having gotten it tangled up in the sheets last night. When I finally found it, I reached out to try and hand it to Reload. We were both just a bit too far to pass it, and right when I was about to throw it, something incredible happened.

  It flew out of the palm of my hand, and it landed in Reload’s grasp. He didn't seem to notice anything, simply turning on a Seinfeld rerun. But I was frozen in place. My system updated, notifying me about my new ability.

  [Give]: You can send small objects towards someone’s hand.

  The world froze around me, my own heart stopped beating. I wasn’t an idiot, I knew that a super’s powers would grow stronger, and they could even gain new ones. When Elementalist suddenly started shooting icicles alongside fireballs, there were only so many possibilities. But that didn’t mean I knew how it worked.

  I had spent most of my teens just trying to figure out how to improve my powers. Despite all the information online about supers, there was almost nothing for when you are one. Most of the forums and posts on the topic would be removed, nearly every trace wiped by the AI in charge of the Dendranet.

  I’d spent years getting into bar fights and training, but nothing ever worked. My power became easier to use, but that was it. After years of failure, I just assumed that my powers would always be weak. But things had just changed.

  I didn’t know how long I just sat there, but I finally spoke up. “Yo. Reload. I just gave that to you.”

  “Want an award?”

  “No, like, I sent that to you with my mind. Here, hold up your hand.”

  It took him a while to turn to me, his eyes glued onto Kramer’s stupid face. When he finally raised his hand, I realized that I didn’t know what to send him. I quickly rummaged through the bedside cabinet for the old religion bibles these places always have. I turned around, seeing his bored gaze, and flexed my hand while focusing on his, activating [Give].

  Now, this certainly didn’t look exciting to anyone else, but that didn’t matter to me. Because that bible sure as hell flew into his hand. I didn’t need to put any force behind it, just a simple thought and the bible moved on its own.

  “Cool,” Reload said, turning back to continue watching Seinfeld.

  I didn’t give a shit about Kramer, however, so I continued to interrupt his viewing. “This is so much more than just cool! I’ve only had one ability since I got my powers, and this is the first time I ever got a new one. I didn’t even know it could just happen like that!”

  He gave up on watching Seinfeld and turned to me. “Makes sense, you beat me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The system hooks you up with better abilities the more supers you take down. It’s like the first thing I figured out.”

  “It can’t be that simple. No way that Dendranet would block out something so simple. Hell, my old bosses never even told me that’s how it worked, they just told me to keep working.”

  “Praise the Dendra and all that, but the Dendranet is a joke. What, you never fought any other supers?”

  “No, I’ve fought with other supers. I would have sparring matches against the other supers that worked for Agony, and I even won a few times.”

  “Well, yeah, obviously that wouldn’t work”

  “What, why wouldn’t that work?”

  “Play fights don’t count. There needs to be stakes, life or death fights.”

  “But we weren’t trying to kill each other?”

  Reload just shot me a grin and continued watching TV, raising the volume to obnoxious levels. This man was definitely some form of psychotic, but so was half of the villain community. There wasn’t much else I could do but hope that he wouldn’t slit my throat while I was asleep.

  I grabbed my phone, having left it behind in the motel room, and scrolled past the countless messages threatening me. For a gang that wanted me dead, they spent way too much time texting instead of hunting me down. There were already stories on the local news sites about what happened last night.

  It was the usual crap they peddled to make the heroes look good. The official story was that L4S3R B34M took down a group of criminals, returned all the money, and he even managed to find a lead on the gang that was responsible. There was a distinct lack of face melting horror in the description of that night.

  What stood out more to me than the story, however, was just how difficult it was to read on my phone. It wasn’t just the phone, but simply looking felt oddly painful. Every blink felt as if my eyelids were being dragged across concrete. It was subtly worsening, and I was only now really noticing it.

  That was when I remembered my contact lenses. I’d put them in before the heist, and they’ve just been drying up ever since then. While I could stretch these dailies out for a while, I needed to get my hands on more.

  Throm, sadly, couldn’t do anything about being born with fucked up eyes. If I didn't figure something out, I could be left having to fight blind. I laid on the bed, quietly cursing to myself, trying to think through options in my head.

  Normally, I would have my prescription delivered to me from out of the city. But with the current lockdown, there was no way I could get a delivery in time. And from what I knew, the only optometrists were either in Hero Territory or Disciple Territory.

  I wasn’t going to walk into their territory for an appointment while they were actively hunting me down, that was practically asking to be found. Hero Territory would have been safer, but a better idea suddenly came to mind. I could just grab the rest from my apartment.

  I used [Take], stealing the remote and muting the TV. “Reload, you’re from around here, right?”

  “I mean, I currently live around here.” He gave a disinterested response, annoyed at another interruption. “Well, the guy who’s apartment I stole lives here.”

  “Alright, not going to get into that. Do you know where to find some Surge Gang henches?”

  That caught his attention. “There’s a couple fools that always hang around Elm street. I noticed them because of those dumb yellow jackets, but didn’t realize that was their gang’s whole look. Why?”

  “I’ve got an idea, and we’re going to pull it off tonight. Make me an assault rifle, we’re headed out once both of us are healed.”

  Reload smiled at me as he pulled a rifle out from behind his back. “You got it, boss!”