This shower is so damned good at its job it almost makes me forget why I’m scrubbing my skin so hard it turns a violent shade of red. An entire shelf of shampoo, conditioner, and fancy-smelling soap is ravaged until I feel clean, and then I stand underneath the large square shower head, staring at mounds of soap getting slurped into the drain, listening to water pat against the shower tiles and beat against my shoulders. I shut my eyes. Press my hands against the wet wall. I breathe shakily, almost tasting the shampoo in my hair. I work my fingers through it, pushing it off my face. What the fuck was that? Nobody’s ever touched me that way before. Nobody. Supervillains grab me. Or try to. But that’s part of the performance, right? You let ‘em punch you a bit, you knuckle blood off your lips, vomit some speech about never giving up, then punch them so hard you snap their neck, but if you’re really good at this gig, it only looks like they’re out cold. The girls I’ve kissed before were flings. Quick, drunken things that I don’t think about. Ever. They always taste too eager. Too scared. Like they want me, but also get spooked by what I am.

  I don’t take it personally. It’s…whatever. It’s fine. I’d be afraid, too, if the person I was forcing my lips against could lift an oil tanker over their heads with the same hands currently trying to undo my belt. That’s just the fun and awesome life of being a superhuman—you’ve gotta play by human rules when you think one of them looks good, because God forbid you playfully shove them too hard, and now their arm is broken and they’re suing you.

  Been there, done that—fuck you, Gloria from math class. Shame that supervillain landed on your house. I’m not the one who dictates where they land, and it’s also not my fault that your family couldn’t afford to fix it.

  I punch the brick wall, suddenly, quickly—the wall doesn’t dent, just splinters with cracks.

  I pull my fist back, shake it out, then turn off the shower.

  Steam sits in the air. My skin tingles and burns.

  And I still feel filthy.

  “Who the hell does she think she is?” I mutter, walking into my room as I towel down my hair. I throw the large, fluffy thing onto my bed and grab underwear and a scarlet PU tracksuit from my wardrobe. “Talking to me that way, touching me that way, like I can’t totally shove her off me and smear her all over mom’s stupid posters.”

  The silence agrees with me so loudly that my ears ring.

  I turn the TV on and switch to the news instead. Minor villain attacks. Smaller, vaguer superheroes taking up the awkward Sunday-morning talkshow spots, filling them with chuckles and throat-clearing and books they need advertised. It's a hollow, laugh-track empty noise that does its part defeating the silence inside my room as I pull on the fresh pair of pants and the tight white muscle t-shirt. Gym. Something to do. As long as I’m not in one place, stewing over Clare’s perfume still lingering in the air. Just…away. I needed to get out of here. Hopefully for the entire day. Maybe she won’t see me today. Or tomorrow. Or again. Maybe I’ll do what Jordan did and tell her to leave me alone. Who does she think she is? A human with no powers, pressing me against a wall and doing that?

  I stand in the center of my room, panting, shoulders rising and falling, already sweaty again.

  My jaw is so tight that it hurts. My fingernails are burrowing deep inside of my palms. I want to do what my mom would call recklessly, awesomely stupid. But I’ve already done that, and had my butt saved by Clare, too.

  So all I can be now is reasonable and mature or whatever.

  “Fuck,” I hiss. I grab a pair of sneakers, an energy drink, dump a spoonful of Titan’s own brand of protein powder down my throat, and peek into the hallway. Empty. No signs of Clare. The camera above me turns, squints. I ignore it and slip out of my room, then quickly jog down the hallway and hammer away at the elevator’s button. “Come on, come on,” I say through my teeth. I briefly consider using my window instead, but the elevator quietly slides open. Thank God it’s empty. I sigh with relief as I jab the eighth floor’s button and finally relax my shoulders.

  “Wait!” someone shouts. Before the doors fully shut, a blast of electricity briefly blinds me. Then there’s a Japanese girl standing beside me, panting as she fixes her hair into a ponytail. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, I am so fucked.” She looks at me for a second, pauses, then raises an eyebrow. “What the hell?” she says. “Aren’t you a freshman?

  She’s looking at me like I’m some kind of strange new creature she’s found in the gutter.

  “Yup,” I say. Smile, Sam. Smile. “I’m—”

  She takes the energy drink from my hands, cracks it open, and takes a sip. Her nose shrivels. “Cherry?” she says, then takes another sip before handing it back to me, which… What the fuck? “You like that flavor? Weird.”

  I stare at the lip of the can, where she’s left purple lip gloss smeared on it.

  I try not to clench my jaw.

  I try not to let the ringing in my ears get to me.

  I try not to make the thing explode as my fingers bend the weak tin.

  Forcing my jaw to unclench, and my shoulders to relax, I fish inside my pockets and pull out my tacky old earphones. I force them in and dial the music up until I can’t hear her heartbeat or the nervous foot-to-foot shifting she’s doing right now. She reeks of ozone and perfume, a nasty mix that makes my empty stomach snarl. I use my t-shirt to wipe the can, then down it until it’s empty. I crush it between my hands and wait for the elevator to keep rising. The space between each floor is thick, which isn’t a surprise, considering the amount of people inside of this building that can probably dismantle an entire city block if they have a bad day. Mix in drugs and alcohol, just like the tiny colorful tablet the girl beside me pops under her tongue, then you’re begging for something to happen, too.

  The Japanese girl nudges me. I bite down on my tongue, then pull out one earbud. “Yes?” I say.

  “Guardian’s kid, right?”

  “Uh-huh,” I mutter.

  She continues before I can put my earbud back in. “I’ve always wondered,” she says, folding her arms and leaning against the wall. She’s got a streak of violet dye in her jet-black hair, the only strand hanging beside her face. Athletic, lean, slightly muscular the way human runners are. “And tell me if this is weird, but who’s your dad?”

  I slowly turn my head to fully look at her. “Who’s yours?”

  She shrugs. “No idea.”

  “Got something in common, then. Apart from the, y’know, superpowers.”

  C’mon, how long is this gonna take? Just get to the eighth floor already.

  “Yeah, but this is different. Wayyy different,” she says. “Your mom is, like, the poster-girl for strong, independent women, right? All those women’s day marches, and don’t forget that whole Girls Are Super Too thing she had going on a while back. But you couldn’t have come out of some kind of test tube, right? Or some lab? A lot of people think you’re some kind of clone, but just younger, so when your mom gets old, you can slot back into her costume and everything’s normal.” I keep staring at her, my face blank, scratchy music still blaring from my free earbud. She shrugs again. “I told you to tell me if this gets weird, and you’re not saying anything, so I’ll keep—”

  “It’s weird,” I say, then put my earbud back in.

  She doesn’t take her eyes off me until the doors finally open again.

  And I’ve got no clue what I was expecting, but it for sure wasn’t anything this…boring. What, were you expecting me to say huge? Massive? Super-duper high-tech? It’s a regular old gym. Treadmills of the industrial, Speedster-durable kind. Benchpresses with reinforced steel bars that won’t bend when you pack them full with iron plates. The entire gym reeks of sweat and bodies and detergent. Old, grungy hip-hop music echoes throughout the place, and I say echo, because it’s practically empty apart from the very furthest part of the gym, where a large glass wall separates ten other superheroes from the one or two on this side of the wall. The Japanese girl vanishes in a violent burst of light, then she’s suddenly across the gym and behind the glass wall, pressing her hand to some kind of scanner beside a steel door first, then quickly apologizing to… Hang on a minute, that’s that guy, the Number One who caught me trying to touch the Capie. I toss the can over my shoulder into a trash can, and can’t help but wander closer to the glass wall. And the closer I get, the more questions I have circling rapidly inside of my mind.

  For example: how the hell did they fit a football field worth of space in a gym.

  “What the hell?” I whisper, stopping in front of the glass wall. Reinforced. Soundproof. For as far as I can see, solid white concrete stretches far, far ahead of me. The eleven superheroes behind the wall all wore various kinds of costumes. Some in full costumes, bright spandex and everything. Others in tracksuits. Most of them have the same bronze fist and shield logo of the Titan Legion. The Titan Legion. As in, the school’s eleven best Capes they have to offer. I get closer. So close I press my hands against the glass and fog it up with my loosely hanging mouth, because woah! I watched these guys on TV! Sure, I was in a foul mood, and the Japanese girl didn’t exactly make a great first impression, but I know most of these guys’ names, powers, and half of their stats engraved in my brain. I’m a nerd for superhero sports, sue me. I live and breathe this shit. My mouth gets wet being so close to them. The season starts this week. This Saturday. We’ll be facing off against Liberty State, PU’s more boring, more to-the-book superhero program, and holy shit! They’re practicing right now, right here, and I’ll get to watch, too?

  If I was any younger, I would’ve sat on my ass in front of the glass wall and never, ever left.

  But then the guy with dark hair from yesterday, the same guy who punched me in the gut, the same asshole who gave me that cup full of mystery alcohol, pauses mid-stretch, frowns, then jerks his thumb at me. He’s on the team? The hell? Then what’s the bar for even getting into the team? A bunch of them turn to look at me, along with the jackass who wrote me up for breaking that bullshit no-fly rule, and the blonde surfer guy with the nice smile.

  I step back, check over my shoulder, and the two other people in this side of the gym have their interests squarely focused on the bench press record they’ve got between each other. I purse my lips, then turn around again.

  The guy from last night walks over, fogs up the glass with his mouth, then scribbles ‘fuck off’ on it.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  He blows me a kiss and turns around.

  “Asshole,” I mutter.

  I’m halfway across the gym when I hear the steel door groan open. I glance over my shoulder, and Logan is standing in the doorway in sneakers, baggy pants and a tight white t-shirt. “Hey,” he says, and then that smile is on his face, almost like he’s got a tick or something. I pause. He waves me over. “C’mon, you wanted to watch, right?”

  I look behind me—again, I know, mind your business—but sure enough, I’m the one he’s talking to.

  “I was gonna get some reps in,” I say, not even really knowing what I’d start with. Maybe those stiff red punching bags. If I can conjure Clare’s face on one of ‘em, I’m pretty sure I’ll take it off its hook. “It’s totally—”

  Logan shrugs one shoulder. “Alright. Well, have fun.”

  “Wait!” I say. He pauses, then pushes the door open. “Are you being serious? Like, I can join you guys?”

  “Join us?” he says, raising one eyebrow. “Oh, that’s…” He sucks air through his teeth, and no, that’s not the sound of my heart plummeting into my gut right now. “You can’t really join the team that easily. Heck, right now, we’re practicing with two backups because our starters are injured. There’s spots on the practice teams if you want. They’re holding tryouts tomorrow afternoon in the stadium. You should go.” Yes. One-million, one-thousand percent I will be going, and yes, I’ll be on this team before I’m even a sophomore. The second ever person to do that, and you can mark my words and put it on my soul, because if I don’t make it, I might just jump off a building, too. “But what you can do for me right now is play spy. You know how to do that?” I shake my head. He grins and gestures for me to follow. “It’s easy. I need you to read offences, breakdown defences, not get in anyone’s way, and have fun. It’s literally that easy. Just fly around, point out where someone might be in a wrong position, and learn.”

  I’m in his face a second later, the gust of wind so hard it toys with his hair. “Really?” I whisper.

  “Yeah,” he says, again with another shrug. “I usually let a junior do it, but I can’t find him today. And if you can’t keep up or get confused, then that’s alright. This is just us dusting the webs off after summer training.”

  I don’t know if I should hug him and shatter his ribs or break his hand shaking it.

  So I go for the cooler, more Sentry-style response, and shrug. “Cool. Yeah. Sure. Pfft. I can do that easily.”

  “Awsome,” he says, and slaps my shoulder.

  Again, that hurts, and again, I’m expecting a new bruise.

  Just how strong is this guy? I’ve heard bits and pieces, but nothing major. He’s from the West Coast, not highly recruited out of high school. Just another run-of-the-mill blonde guy with nice teeth and a good body. They make guys like this in a factory. Walk around PU long enough and you’ll lose count. It’s almost a little unnerving, now that I think about it. Blonde-haired, blue-eyed kids probably outnumber everyone else by the dozen, but that’s not important right now. What’s important is that he’ll probably be working right alongside mom this time of year. Ultra Force’s current roster is heavy with starters. Mom. Saint. Titan. And now they’ve got Booster Blitz and Mr. Amazing onboard, with DarkWing signing a new million-dollar extension, nobody’s gonna be getting onto the active roster any time soon. But that’s why you work so hard, so that, when you finally do get a chance, you don’t ever let go of it, because there’s a million other people standing behind you, frothing at the mouth, waiting for you to fuck up so badly that you’d rather hang up your cape and open shitty burger joint and name it after yourself.

  Go down to the waterfront, and you’ll find about a dozen of them. The owner has the same sob story. One of the best. Snapped their spine. Just wasn’t the same anymore. Can’t lift heavy. Can’t fly fast. A little more scared fighting supervillains. Before they know it, their wife is off with the kids, your parents are long dead, and that kid they used to write headlines and entire news segments about is the same person shooting drugs in an ugly motel.

  Or something. All that is according to the soap operas I’ve watched. What? I’ve got a lot of free time on my hands. No friends, remember? Just boring crime and thugs and supervillains, all dealt with in a handful of minutes.

  Which means this should be a walk in the park. I can keep up with just about anyone.

  So what if they’re seniors? You’re talking about the number one ranked Junior Cape in the nation here.

  “What the fuck is she doing here?” the guy from last night asks Logan.

  “She’s helping us out with spy duty,” he says, patting his shoulder.

  “Must be nice to be that privileged,” the Japanese girl mutters.

  The guy who gave me the flying ticket walks over, all smiles and handshakes, like he hasn’t just ruined my first semester here. “Looks like you’re doing some good with your life,” he says, then heavily pats me on the back. I nearly stumble forward. “Sticking around here means getting to learn a lot about what it means to be a superhero.”

  “Not that media darling bullcrap you already know,” a girl with a buzzcut says. Skull nose piercing. Dark eyes. Pale skin. She reeks like a gas stove, and is somehow just as tall as me. “We’re not here to babysit you either.”

  I hold my hands up. “Relax. This is a major honor for me. I’m just here to watch.”

  “Good,” Last-Night says, stretching next to a girl with dark, feathered wings who hasn’t taken her eyes off me since I walked in. “Just stay out of our way and shut up. Logan’s too nice for his own good, letting you be in here. So let’s outline what being a spy means.” He’s in my face fast. Just like yesterday when he put his fist into my stomach. I flinch reactively. He smiles. Just a little. I clench my jaw as he pats my shoulder. “Woah, there, GG. Ease up.” Logan looks at him strangely. “Don’t call plays, don’t say anything—cheer and clap and watch me be great. Sounds easy enough, right? I’m pretty sure you can do this, too. It’s literally all you’ve done since you came here.”

  I swipe his hand off my shoulder. “I kinda don’t like people touching me.”

  He backs away slowly, hands in the air, almost mockingly. “Alright, alright. I’m just being friendly.”

  “Ignore him, he’s an idiot,” Logan sighs, then he claps his hands together. “Alright, everyone. Let’s keep this basic and give Sam something to tell her mom about, because I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t mind a nice little recommendation letter from Guardian when we graduate.” They chuckle a little. I try to keep the small smile on my face as he jokingly nudges me. “I’m kidding. Seriously, though—let’s iron out last year’s kinks. We work hard to be the best, and to be the best we’ve gotta…” They all grumble, ‘work hard.’ Logan grins. “That’s the spirit.” He fishes inside his pocket, then hands me a tiny ear black ear piece. The rest of them are already wearing one. “You’ll hear everything we’re saying during the sim. I know you might have super-hearing, but focusing on specific voices in the middle of a shitstorm is harder than you think. Try to pay attention to what the sim is throwing our way. Use all those super-senses of yours to keep me updated. And don’t panic, alright? It’s just a sim. Nothing here is real, OK?”

  “Nothing here is real, got it,” I say, then wedge the thing inside my ear.

  “And if you get confused…” Logan shrugs. “Just stick to what you know.”

  “What does she know that hasn’t been vomited into her skull by her mother already?” I blink, then look at the girl with ink-black wings. She’s sharp angles and pale skin, platinum blonde with pale gray eyes. Her wings are bigger than Jordan’s, that’s for sure. They look heavier. She narrows her eyes at me. “Something you’d like to say?”

  “And you are?” I quietly ask.

  “Skylace,” Logan says, then gestures at me. “Sam. Sam, Skylace. Now we’re all friends.”

  She walks closer, right until she’s looking down her nose at me. She feels…cold. Like frost is seeping out through her pores. Her wings furrow when she rolls her shoulders. “Valeria Morozova.” My eyes widen. Just a little. But enough to make her head tilt. “What’s the matter?” she asks. “Does the little American not like the sound of my father’s name?” I open and close my mouth. None of the other seniors are stepping in now, just distantly watching.

  “I… What? No, of course not.” Small laugh. Barely a chuckle that dies on my lips. I clear my throat. “I—”

  “She’s not Russian,” a guy with thick, curly hair and a pilot’s jacket says. “Val’s just screwing with you.”

  “Right,” I say quietly, then try to smile again. How’d someone with that kind of name even get into PU?

  Not that I’ve got anything against Russians or the Soviets, I just…you know…think they’re better off freezing and starving and slowly vanishing into the history books, just like a lot of the humans do for what they did to my home planet, hollowing it out and taking everything left of it. What? The Soviets literally turned most of America into a wasteland crawling with mutants and ghouls and God only knows what else. Ever since I first started going to school on this planet, all I’ve heard is how nasty and animal-like the Reds were during the two Cape Wars. They were like these beasts that would tear superhumans apart and boil their guts and turn their brains into stew that would keep them warm in the first bouts of nuclear winter. They’d video themselves having sex with the flag and then setting it on fire, just to use it to light puddles of gasoline that would eviscerate whichever superhuman unit they’d come across. Everything I know about those people is just evil. And like mom always tells me, Evil Never Wins. Moscow is gone. Most of their cities are rubble. Their superhumans and their ‘superheroes’ are either in prison or in hiding, so terrified of what’ll happen that they’d rather kill themselves quietly than ever come out.

  I might not be from Earth, but I know a bad group of people when I see one.

  Luckily for Skylace, I can’t smell any evil coming off her.

  Just gaudy, rich-person perfume that stings the back of my throat.

  Hiding in plain sight, I think to myself. Look at you, brave enough to stand here and glare at me.

  Like she’s got any right to be angry at me when it’s her people who fucked up on her behalf. All I’ve done is take out supervillains that vomit the Reds’ ideals. I’m doing my part as a good-natured, All-American superhero.

  Or whatever. I’m just here to take out the bad guys.

  Like Val’s daddy, if he really is a Soviet, too.

  Skylace scowls at me when I smile at her. She shoves past me, too.

  The guy with curly hair sighs and says, “Welcome to the team, where we’re all great friends.”

  “Yeah,” I say, glancing over my shoulder, watching her large black wings spread, and then carry her into the air with one powerful gust of wind. I turn around and face the team. “Thanks for making my dream come true.”

  Logan pats my shoulder. “Don’t thank us just yet. This might get ugly.”

  “How ugly?” I ask.

  They all groan and swear.

  “What?” I say. “What did I say?”

  “You never ask him how ugly,” the Japanese girl says. “Because now he’s gonna—”

  “Very ugly, you say?” Logan spreads his arms. “I’ve got just the thing. Let’s take down the Dark League.”

  “Nice going, GG,” Roman mutters, shoving my shoulder. “Now none of us is gonna have fun.”

  The girl with the buzzcut says to one of the Healers, “Hand over the painkillers. My back already hurts.”

  “Computer,” Logan says loudly. A hum makes the entire room shudder. “Let’s go for…urban sprawl, mid-fifties because I like the atmosphere, late afternoon so we can work on our visibility and communication skills, and make the Dark League a Threat Level…” Logan folds his arms and chews his thumb. The others are all quietly begging him to lower it. The two Healers are quiet, smiling tightly, quietly muttering about wishing to just get this over with already before anyone breaks too many bones. “Fine, fine. You’re all such babies. Threat Level 7.6, OK?”

  “7.6?” I say. “Dude, listen, I’m used to fighting people in the high 8s—”

  Skylace tsks from above and rolls her eyes, like she doesn’t believe that.

  I ignore her.

  “—but isn’t that a little high for a warm up?”

  “Preach to the choir, sister,” curly-hair says.

  Logan shrugs. “We’re superheroes. One day we’re gonna get woken up by a Threat Level Nuclear, and we won’t have any time to stretch and warm up and get ourselves in the right mindset. You’re a freshman, I get it. But when you’re at this level, in this program, you can’t afford to take it easy. So just stand back and watch, it’ll be fun.”

  With one more sharp, devilish smile, the entire room goes pitch black, then erupts with destruction.