The world seemed to slow down as my mind went into overdrive. My heart hammered in my chest. I already felt like I was halfway to passing out from the strain of working my signal sense, but now I was forced to be more alert than ever.

  Stupid stupid stupid. The word kept repeating in my head over and over. It was all I could do not to scream it at myself.

  I took in the three security guards in their matching uniforms, cataloguing every piece of visual information on display as fast as I could. Generally speaking, security guys weren’t usually there to do more than act as a basic deterrent to a less determined trespasser. They weren’t actually expected to confront dangerous intruders. If you peeked into the window of a security booth outside some industrial park or other, you’d usually see just an average guy or two.

  These three were anything but average. They had the bulk of bodybuilders: broad shouldered, barrel chested, with arms that were probably meatier than the average guy’s thighs. If any of them were shorter than six foot three, I’d be shocked. Their eyes were sharp and watchful, alert. None of them had name tags.

  Each of them had model-like clear skin that told a story better than any scars could: they had access to healing of some kind. Perhaps even biological enhancement, judging by their absurd physiques. That kind of thing was not affordable on the salary of a security guard in a warehouse for superhero merchandise. Come to think of it, did this place even warrant three guys on shift at once? I didn’t know enough about this kind of business to say.

  Those questions were irrelevant. The situation was dire regardless of the background.

  Their signals sung to my sense, and I had to hide a wince. For more than one reason. It wasn’t just the strain I’d accumulated from overworking my new ability—I didn’t want to give away that I knew they’d activated or readied their powers, provoking them to act before we were ready to respond.

  Because it was obvious to me now, as I should have considered from the beginning, that these guys were in cahoots with the villains next door somehow. Whether they’d been paid off, planted here from the beginning, or even coerced somehow, I didn’t know. I didn’t even consider the possibility that they were reacting to the revelation, preparing themselves for the possibility of fighting villains.

  Not with the way they were looking at us.

  It wasn’t hopeless, though. The fact that they’d offered to take us to a secondary location, ominous as that sounded, actually meant we weren’t completely fucked. It showed they had to be inconspicuous to some degree. Whether that meant not all the workers in the warehouse were in on it or some other reason, I didn’t know. But it was something we could take advantage of.

  They didn’t know what we could do, after all. And if I played this right, I could find out what they were capable of.

  Barely a handful of seconds had passed since the silver-haired guard had made the offer to come to the security office to explain. I pasted a smile on my face, took a breath, and spoke as evenly as I could through the fatigue, “Sounds good to me. Remember, we want to keep this quiet, so the villains aren’t alerted.”

  None of them showed any outward reaction to that. They’d moved to surround us while we were getting out from under the shelf, so Blonde was on our left, Brunette was in the middle, and Silver was on the right, equally spaced out from one another.

  With their height, they naturally seemed to loom, but I couldn’t see anything in them that spoke of deliberate menace. If I hadn’t felt their signals activating, I might have thought the sharpness in their eyes was merely an artefact of them taking the situation seriously.

  Silver didn’t quite manage to smile, but he spoke in a genial voice as he turned and started walking along the corridor, moving in the direction from which we’d entered. “Come along then, this way,” he said.

  After exchanging a look, Ashika and I moved to follow him. Blonde and Brunette bracketed us from behind. All three of their signals were still active, but I was deliberately trying to keep my sense unfocused for now. I wanted to regain my strength a bit before trying anything. I was feeling wrung out already, and I knew I wouldn’t have many chances to use my pulse technique before I could barely stand anymore. It needed to count.

  Ashika’s signal was a comforting presence beside me, naturally ramping up as she moved. She leaned close and whispered, “I knew we’d get busted. If this ends up on my record or some shit, I’ll be pissed.”

  “It won’t,” I whispered back, projecting confidence. I looked her in the eyes, then winked the eye the guards behind us wouldn’t be able to see.

  She blinked back at me, baffled. It seemed we weren’t at the ‘communicate without words’ level of friendship. I’d have to do better than that.

  “What’re you two whispering about?” A surprisingly nasally voice came from behind.

  Looking over my shoulder, I guessed from his raised eyebrows that it was Blonde who’d spoke. Brunette was staring blankly ahead, like he wasn’t paying attention to his surroundings. Neither of them had visible power signs anywhere, so I assumed their powers weren’t sensory in nature.

  “My friend’s worried that we’ll be in trouble,” I told him, aiming for a casual, unworried tone. It sounded a bit strained because of my current state. “I was just assuring her it’ll be fine. Once the heroes come to deal with the villains, they’ll sort everything out.” I paused, as if thinking. “Speaking of which, I assume you have a phone in your office, right? We’ll have to make some calls.”

  “We can do that,” Blonde said neutrally. His face gave nothing away.

  “Good,” I said. “I really don’t want these villains to get away with what they’ve done.”

  I meant that with all my heart.

  “Something wrong with you, kid?” Silver asked from ahead. He was leading us on basically the same route Ashika and I had taken during our little infiltration, and I couldn’t help noticing that he was imperceptibly slowing down at each junction of the shelves, just like we had. Telling, that no one had seen us. “You sound like you’ve just run a marathon,” he continued.

  “My power takes it out of me,” I said.

  “That a fact? I heard strong powers can wear you out, but never seen it for myself.”

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  I smiled at that. I couldn’t help it. The idea of me having a strong power was laughable. Still, I supposed there could be an advantage in them overestimating my abilities while seeing I was weakened. Hopefully, it’d distract them from the real threat here.

  “It’s kind of a pain in the ass,” I agreed. I noticed Ashika was watching me, brows scrunched in confusion. She didn’t interject, though. “It’s a really useful power, in the right circumstances, but the drawbacks more than make up for that. Right now, its best use is gathering intel.”

  “Oh, yeah? What can you do, exactly?” Silver asked without looking back.

  “I can demonstrate, if you like,” I said. “It’ll probably halfway knock me out, but it’s not like I’m gonna need it any longer once the heroes get here.”

  Ashika was staring at me, and I met her gaze. Her frown deepened.

  Silver spoke, “As long as it doesn’t do any damage or bring half the people in the warehouse running.”

  “Nah, it’s subtle,” I said.

  Silver glanced back at me, then his eyes strayed over to his comrades behind my back. After a moment, he nodded.

  Right, I thought, gotta sell this.

  And the best way to ‘sell’ it, I figured, was to make it real.

  Taking a deep breath, I mentally prepared myself. The three signals surrounded me in an almost equal triangle, with Ashika adding an extra point of reference on my left. Just with my passive signal sense, I could get a decent enough idea of which direction they stood in relation to me, and I preemptively focused my attention based on that information.

  Nothing to do with my signal sense yet. This was a kind of meditative thing, you could say. The most rudimentary of self-hypnosis.

  I listened to their footsteps, summoning an image of their visages in my mind’s eye. I pictured their too-clear skin, their too-neat hair, their too-muscular physiques. I mentally replayed their voices. Every little detail I’d seen or heard of them, I summoned into my imagination.

  Holding onto that mental model, I envisioned their current movements. I imagined I could see them from every angle at once, inside and out, even their muscles and bones and organs and everything else. Every atom of their beings. I told myself that was all real and true and indisputable.

  I shut the rest of the world out. Made sure my mind was filled with them and only them, empty of even the slightest outside distraction.

  Holding up my right hand, palm upwards as if to prepare some impressive technique, I sent out a pulse of my signal sense, even shorter than I’d done it before, barely a blink of focus. With my head empty of anything else, every bit of my consciousness was dedicated to deciphering the jumbled information it gave me.

  Still, it was a herculean task. There was so much noise, like I’d suddenly shoved a raging thunderstorm into my head and tasked myself with deciphering how much energy was in each lightning bolt.

  But I grit my teeth, and I did it. Four signals active. One, too familiar, discarded beyond being used as a comparison. Three foundations, eight aspects. Analysis, performed in an instant. Jumbled signals, indistinct. Didn’t matter; had to fill in gaps with guesses. Too much information. Prioritise.

  Biology, weight, shadow.

  It hit me like a truck, and I stumbled. My legs wobbled, and I let them give out. I gasped for breath. Strongs arms caught me before my body could fully tip to one side, and I forced myself to go limp, leaning all my weight onto her. My forehead came to rest against Ashika’s shoulder, and I whispered:

  “Villains. Be ready.”

  She stiffened, but only for a moment. Aloud, she said, “What the hell, Emmett? If you were this exhausted, you should’ve said something. Goddamn dumbass trying to show off when you’re half knocked out already.”

  The three guards had come to a stop, keeping their distance.

  “He okay?” I heard Silver ask.

  “He’ll be fine,” Ashika said. “His power must have backfired because he didn’t have enough energy left. It happens sometimes.”

  “Sorry,” I said, not having to fake the strain in my voice. I wasn’t actually at the point of collapsing yet, but I was very nearly there. More than a couple more of those pulses, and I’d really be down for the count, no doubt. “Didn’t realise I was running so low. Completely spent now.”

  I kept up the charade a little bit before moving to regain my balance again. As Ashika helped me stand up on my own two feet, our eyes met. Her expression didn’t change, and I hoped mine was equally calm, but I liked to think there was an understanding between us, then. Ashika was no idiot. She’d know what to do.

  “Woah,” I said, tearing my eyes away and blinking up at the ceiling. “I feel dizzy. Give me your shoulder?”

  Ashika sighed heavily. It sounded remarkably genuine. “Come on then, dumb dumb.”

  I leaned on her, shuffling along at barely half the speed we’d previously been moving. It could’ve been my imagination, but Silver’s shoulders were starting to look a little tense ahead of us. I sent Blonde and Brunette the most contrite look I could over my shoulder, and just caught a glimpse of them exchanging frowns before they both blanked their expressions.

  “Sorry about this,” I said. “Didn’t mean to disturb your quiet shift.”

  “No problem,” Blonde said, with the tiniest hint of strain in his voice.

  I smiled as I turned forward once more.

  It took less than a minute to reach the door to the office area of the warehouse, but it felt much longer. Every second we drew out was to our advantage: our win condition here was buying enough time for the heroes to arrive. It felt inevitable there was going to be a fight, and I was confident we could hold our own—or, at least, Ashika could—but we had to stall as long as possible.

  And, most importantly, our personal failure state here was capture. If we were taken hostage, we would’ve only made the situation more complicated for whichever heroes responded. We couldn’t afford that.

  In a close second place was taking any action that could alert the villains next door of something going wrong. We couldn’t let these three get in contact with them. Equally, we couldn’t make so much of a ruckus that the workers in the warehouse were sent into a panic and made calls themselves, assuming they weren’t in on this too. Luckily, the security guards appeared equally keen to keep things quiet. On that one point, we were aligned.

  Silver entered the office area slowly, and if I wasn’t already suspicious of him I might not have noticed how he was checking each corner for anyone present. Muffled voices echoed from within, and he led us away from them, down a long corridor. He ended up taking us through a circuitous route that rather obviously wasn’t the most efficient before we finally found our way to a nondescript door labelled “security.”

  This time, I was pretty sure it wasn’t my imagination that Blonde and Brunette were tense behind us.

  Silver didn’t knock before opening the door, and I held back a sigh of relief when I saw there was no one else within. There’d been a chance more guards were waiting for us in here. Ashika stepped through first, still supporting me. Blonde and Brunette took a moment to follow.

  The room wasn’t large by any means. Three chairs sat before a long table that spanned the entire wall opposite the door, covered in TV screens showing live security footage. They seemed surprisingly high definition. White rectangles hovered over the faces of anyone who came into view of a camera, accompanied by a little popup that gave a bunch of information. The rest of the space was mostly empty, maybe four meters by four meters. Some LEDs in the ceiling provided light.

  No one spoke for a long moment. Silver came to stand by the surveillance desk, then turned his back to the screens, facing us. We stood in the centre of the room, with Blonde and Brunette still behind us. Silver gave them each a significant look.

  The door shut with a click.

  “Alright,” I said. “I’ll give you guys the benefit of the doubt. Are you gonna let us call for help?”

  They responded by attacking.

  Discord :)