There’d been a few occasions recently where I’d struggled to put to words the exhaustion that overcame me after overworking my signal sense. Considering it had only happened for the first time a couple of weeks ago at Superverse’s power testing facility in Foresight Tower, I felt I could be forgiven for not having consistent terminology to describe it to anyone who asked.

  At first, I’d thought of it as my power sense being overloaded, and it had left me feeling weak and heavy even though my body hadn’t actually gone through any physical exercise at all. The phenomenon had baffled me, sure, but I hadn’t actually put much thought into it at the time. Too overwhelmed with the revelation that my power signal could somehow measure lower.

  The important part of this was: I distinctly remember thinking it felt like my soul had gone through a workout. Or something along those lines. I couldn’t remember the precise shape of my thoughts, except that I’d been mentally seeking terminology for a fatigue that affected something on a level deeper than my physical body. Spirit or soul were the obvious choices in that regard, and soul had won out for no particular reason.

  Now, hearing Marquise use that term had my mind screeching to a halt. For me, it had been an easy stand-in term for what I was feeling without any true belief that in anything spiritual. I got the immediate impression that wasn’t the case for her.

  “Indeed,” Marquise said, her voice still right next to me. “I mean exactly what I say: there is an immaterial aspect of human beings that is as much a part of you is your physical body. Is this so surprising, given the world we live in?”

  I supposed it wasn’t. The difference between terminologies for where powers came from didn’t really matter, and the idea that there was some kind of immortal spirit aspect to a human being wasn’t difficult to believe when every human being on Earth had access to superpowers.

  The shock came from the deeper implication, and the revelations it implied. Whether you called it a soul or a power signal, the fact that it was with us from the moment we were born was a huge deal.

  “Functionally impossible to measure without particularly sensitive abilities, of course,” Marquise said, like it was no big deal. “As far as I’m aware, the earliest a soul has been detected by the most precise instruments humanity has been able to construct was when the subject was eleven years and ten months old. Their powers didn’t manifest until they were thirteen years and two months. On the other hand, I have sensed the distinct and individual souls of multiple newborns the moment they were no longer attached to their mother via umbilical cord.”

  If I’d been able to feel my body, I probably would have had to sit down. A part of me wanted to argue back, to try and poke holes in her story, but somehow I found that… Well, saying I believed her would be putting it a bit too strongly. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say I saw no reason she’d lie about something like this. What would be the point?

  “In a few years, I have no doubt you’ll be able to ascertain truth from lies in most people through your signal sense.” I could hear the eye roll when she used that term. “It’s a fairly simple technique, all things considered. Though by the time you’re able to use it, you would have long since refined the ability to sense souls on a deep enough level to see the truth of my words for yourself.”

  That was a moment where I might have taken some deep breaths to calm myself. It felt like I should’ve been in the midst of trying to calm my racing heart, or settle the storm in my stomach. Instead, I was detached from it all, the implications able to affect nothing more than my mostly-tranquil mind.

  Don’t get me wrong, I was still reeling from the implications. It was simply a matter of intellectual confusion rather than world-shattering shock, which was undoubtedly useful to Marquise’s needs. Whatever they were. I still didn’t understand her motives for taking a sudden interest in me, beyond the idea that she wanted me to understand the scope of whatever the fuck was going on with my signal sense. Or soul. Whatever.

  “That will undoubtedly become clear in time without me having to explain anything further,” Marquise said. “The truth is, I still believe it’s better to let you discover the vast majority of the truth on your own. But I sat back and let a similar situation play out before, and it ultimately didn’t go the way I wanted. So, consider this as me giving you a nudge in the right direction, and our future interactions will be minimal.”

  Somehow, I doubted that.

  “Believe what you wish. It doesn’t matter.” Marquise’s voice had been almost entirely monotone, but that last statement contained the slightest hint of venom. “Regardless, I will give you one hint only: take greater concern with your own soul than others’. Yours is something different, both better and worse. Now, observe.”

  Before I had a chance to ponder her advice, the signals around me began to shift once again. They shuffled around, most of them fading away until only one remained. And it grew. In the span of seconds, it went from an indistinct blob to my signal sense to something truly massive, filling the entirety of my attention and blocking out all else. Even if I wanted to turn away and view the rest of the signals in the warehouse, I wouldn’t have been able to. The others were still there, still in relatively the same positions, but I couldn’t get anything out of them if I tried.

  It took me a moment to realise the soul Marquise was making me focus on was the one I’d already analysed a bit before getting distracted by my own signal. A foundation about leaping, with three aspects to shore it up, strengthening the original power and making it more versatile.

  All the while, my own signal—my own soul was utterly tranquil. Unmoving. Not reacting to the opposing soul in the slightest. Without that resonance, my brain shouldn’t have had any way to receive information on the villain’s soul. The only explanation was that Marquise was somehow feeding me this information directly.

  “It’s good to see it works,” Marquise said, responding to my thoughts again. “Most of the times I tried this, my subject’s brain didn’t have the context to interpret what I was showing it. The concept of sensing another’s soul was too alien, even for those with powers given that silly ‘meta’ label researchers so love. Now then.”

  The soul she was showing me coruscated, then expanded. Parts of it started to darken, while others brightened—visual terminology didn’t quite fit, but it as the best way I could think of to describe it. This soul sense was entirely separate, unrelated to any physical organs. Perhaps it would be better to say some parts of it faded to my attention, while others were emphasised. If the soul could be described as a nebulous cloud vaguely in the shape of a human, then it was like Marquise was highlighting the parts she wanted me to pay attention to.

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

  The parts I’d already noticed came first, a foundation and three aspects. Then the foundation enlarged until it was all I could ‘see.’ I couldn’t deny it was fascinating to behold. A far clearer understanding of the components of a power filled my mind.

  A hazy nebula of colour, full of countless twinkling little stars that fed energy into tendrils of light. The tendrils seemed to spread beyond the bounds of the foundation, presumably linking it to the other aspects of the villain’s power. In this form, it was somehow harder to understand exactly why or how I’d gotten the feeling of ‘leaping’ from this foundation.

  Then Marquise took us even deeper, enlarging the soul once more. It swelled until it felt like the tiny motes of light that made up the foundation were as large as my entire soul. But obviously that made no sense. She wasn’t enlarging the soul. She was zooming in on it, somehow. A single speck of the soul came close enough I felt like I could touch it, if I was standing in real space with a real body.

  Instead, it came to me, and my vision went white.

  Foreign emotions filled me. Images flashed, distorted and hazy, like I was looking through a telescope with a smudged lens. I heard unfamiliar sounds, muffled. Felt a phantom breeze on my skin.

  There was a yearning in my heart that wasn’t my own. A longing. I was intimately familiar with a desire for something I didn’t have, but this wasn’t like that. It was more… juvenile. Fleeting. My own desperate need for power was an empty hole in my chest that could never truly be filled, while this was the passing whim a kid who’d discovered a new fascination. I was familiar with that one too, but it still wasn’t my own.

  The image sharpened. High above me there was a ledge, maybe two stories above the ground. It resolved into a windowsill, with a cat sitting on the edge, looking down on me. The wind tickled my skin. It was a warm day. The cat’s eyes were a brilliant blue, so unlike the yellow I was used to. I’d always loved the animals, and I wanted to play with it. Had been following it for a while. But it had jumped up there, a place where I couldn’t go.

  It made me sad, seeing that. There were always places I couldn’t go, things I couldn’t reach. Other kids called me a shrimp, a midget, a dwarf, just because I hadn’t hit my growth spurt yet like they had. Memories sped through my mind, showing my hands stretched high above my head, desperate to grasp something above me but always too far away. Every time I had to ask someone to grab something off a high shelf was a new humiliation, and I was fed up of it. Even something as innocent as petting a pretty cat was beyond my reach.

  I want to reach.

  Something clicked into place deep inside of me, and I knew high places would never be outside my grasp again. I jumped, and the cat yowled as my hands gripped on to the ledge. It ran away, but I suddenly found I didn’t care about the cat anymore.

  The world distorted and faded away, the images sinking back down into the fog. Physical sensation tore itself out of my grip like we’d been playing tug of war this whole time without my noticing, and I was back in the black void, surrounded by motes of twinkling light, senseless beyond the numb tranquillity of my soul.

  But I barely noticed. My mind was a raging vortex of thoughts, and not a single one of them would settle. I felt like I was spinning, even though I wasn’t moving a millimetre.

  That had been the villain’s first revelation. The formation of his foundation. It had to be. Stored somewhere deep in the archives of his soul had been the memory of the very moment he’d unlocked his powers and started walking the path set for him.

  If the soul could store information like that, what else could we see?

  “Everything, Mr Shaw. You can see everything.”

  My mind reeled once more. Questions upon questions piled up and crashed together until I could barely form a coherent thought. There was so much I wanted to know. So many questions to answer.

  At the same time, though, a heavy realisation settled on me. Not for the first time, I was glad I couldn’t feel my body. Glad I couldn’t feel adrenaline start pumping, couldn’t feel my heart start hammering, couldn’t feel my stomach dropping.

  Even with all that stuff muted, the idea that Marquise could know anything about a person must have affected me right to the depths of my soul, because I still felt a shiver pass through me.

  “I do prefer to keep that capability to myself,” Marquise said mildly. “For what it’s worth, there’s nothing pushing you to develop your soul in the exact same way I have, Mr Shaw. This is the truth of our situation: we are still walking our own unique paths, as Dr Shimada would call them. You and I simply have a lot more… flexibility in how we develop. Forget about foundations and aspects. Ranks mean nothing to us. Levels mean less than nothing to us. In fact, I would go as far as to advise you not to waste your time with a man like Dr Klein. If you must ally with a researcher, seek out Robert Roos.”

  My first inclination was to try and find a way to purge the name from my mind and refuse to ever even think about visiting a man who came at Marquise’s recommendation, but I resisted it. Whatever else I thought of her, she was undeniably the greatest source of information on how to proceed with my power.

  If my path was my own to decide, I wanted to make sure I walked it with knowledge of all my options open. Whether I took inspiration from the powers of others or formed my own, I needed knowledge.

  “Remarkably mature of you,” Marquise said, deadpan.

  With no warning, the soul state I’d been shrouded in fell away, dumping me back in my human body. Sensation snapped back into place. It took me off guard for a moment, and I found myself locked in position, so tense all my muscles immediately ached in protest. Only when my brain had adapted to the sudden return of outside stimuli did I manage to take any stock of my surroundings, and it quickly became clear what had happened.

  Marquise was in the process of returning her hand behind her back. Her expression hadn’t changed, watching me with steely grey eyes. The rain was still hissing static against the pavement and pounding against my skull like a flock of invisible birds were clawing through my hair. Ashika hadn’t moved a muscle. Neither had any of Marquise’s creepy subordinates in their black bodysuits and white masks. Everywhere around me, power signals were blaring, at the ready.

  Or, should I say, souls were blaring.

  “Did that answer your question?” Marquise asked.

  After a second of confusion, I eventually remembered what I’d asked. I’d wanted to know how she was muting the effect of Ashika’s signal. She hadn’t exactly answered the question in any direct way, but knowing what I now did, I had some guesses as to how she was doing it, in an abstract sense. The actual technique of how she was accomplishing it was far beyond me, but I could surmise she was actually messing with my soul the whole time.

  That realisation came with another: I didn’t feel exhausted. I might as well have woken up well-rested after having refrained from straining my soul for multiple days.

  Somehow, she’d healed my fatigue. I’d noticed it earlier, but had assumed that was an artifact of whatever strange state she’d pulled me into.

  My lack of answer was apparently answer enough for her.

  “Good. I hope it was enlightening,” she said. “Now tell me: how many people are in the enemy hideout?”

  I grit my teeth. I could feel Ashika’s gaze boring into me. She was still bouncing in place, keeping her charge. “Are we still in your simulation?” I asked.

  Marquise nodded.

  I reached for my soul once more.