You know why we’re here, right?”

  As much as he hated to admit it, Derrick was, in fact, not exactly sure how he ended up in a secret laboratory underneath Apex Tower.

  Yesterday morning, when he clocked into work at Apex Tower, he was just a reserve Protector, one of about fifteen that worked inside Apex’s secretive headquarters. Unlike the high flying, energy slinging Protectors in Sector One, Reserve Protectors lacked the skills that allowed them to fight against the Altered throughout the city. Derrick, for example, woke up the day after the Surge, went to his job as a stock broker, and set a record for single day earnings. Over time, he realized that he had developed an ability to internalize information more efficiently than before and accurately predict outcomes.

  Catching word of his exploits, and despite his lack of combat abilities, Amory plucked Derrick from his stock broker position at a large firm in the city (where he probably would’ve ended up shorting several gigantic companies, including Apex itself, eventually getting accused of insider trading) and stashed him inside Apex Tower, keeping him occupied by having him work with logistics to try and anticipate futured Altered attacks.

  Following the news that Titan was injured and wouldn’t be returning for the foreseeable future, Derrick stood up and pulled a red folder out of his filing cabinet. He had modeled this exact situation three months prior and found that Ascension would experience an almost overwhelming number of Altered attacks throughout the city, straining their defenses that would poke just enough holes in the dam that were the Protectors to overrun the city, unless Amory called up every single Reserve Protector to help stem the tide.

  He wore his best shirt, maroon with khaki pants, and stood in front of Amory, proudly, expecting Amory to press him into service as a Protector. As expected, after reading the report, Amory told Derrick that she was reassigning him, just as he predicted.

  Derrick did not predict, however, that he’d actually be reassigned to a position below the headquarter’s basement in a lab that wasn’t listed on any plans and was almost certainly illegal. In Quinn’s absence, Amory tasked Derrick with monitoring the shielding that blocked the Surge from breaching out into the city. Derrick took one look at the weathered shielding tasked with blocking an all-consuming radiation and told Amory that was like asking an ant to watch out for a nuclear explosion. She smiled and told him that at least he wouldn’t be alone.

  Derrick desperately wished he had pushed back on that second part.

  “Because I was too greedy in my last position and the universe wants me to reevaluate. Now I have to stare certain death in the face in the middle of the night while sitting a few feet away from the most annoying person alive.”

  “Wrong, on all counts,” Gabriela told him. Her long black hair covered her face as she spun dizzyingly fast in her chair. Derrick had no idea how she hadn’t puked on the floor yet.

  “We’re here because we’re expendable.”

  Unfortunately, Derrick couldn’t argue with her on that, a realization that forced him to channel his frustration into tapping away aggressively into his chair’s armrest.

  In his spare time, Amory had also tasked Derrick with another project: rank every Protector in her employ by combat readiness. Naturally, Titan ended up in the top slot, while Derrick ranked himself second to last. Last place was sitting on his right, spinning slowly in her chair like a fan blade in a deserted motel.

  Gabriela had nominally better combat skills than he did; she could throw anything she could get her hands on and hit her target, dead center. This would’ve been impressive and highly valuable, but she was also incredibly weak, limiting her abilities to little more than an annoying hit in the nose with a tennis ball or paperclip. Not nothing, but in Derrick’s estimation as close as you could get to nothing.

  “You’re expendable,” he told her. “I actually work with Amory. You seem to just take up space in the break room every time I need to eat my lunch.”

  Gabriela stopped spinning, pushing her hair out of her face to level her eyes at Derrick. “Oh, you do a lot of work with Amory? I didn’t know that. Does she read your reports, listen to your recommendations?”

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Derrick nodded. “I predicted the current wave of Altered violence. We’re only surviving out there because I let Amory know this would come.”

  “Amazing. Hey, question…if you’re so smart, why did she seat you directly in front of the death ray?” Gabriela started cackling. “She at least sat me just to the right of it!”

  “She wanted someone she could trust down here,” Derrick told her, ignoring her laughs. She shrugged, then stood to walk and stretch her neck.

  “You’re still taking this too seriously,” Gabriela told Derrick, throwing a paper ball at him. It bounced off his head, which was locked onto the monitors in front of him. The radiology chart barely ever blipped above the baseline, but Derrick was too worried to look away. If anything went awry, one, or both of them were supposed to hit the large red button in front of their stations that Derrick was convinced even Gabriela couldn’t miss.

  “Nothing’s supposed to happen anyway. Amory said it was, like, a one in a million chance that it even blew in the first place and nothing’s gone wrong since then.”

  “If it wasn’t important, they wouldn’t have us here. I don’t care that they think that we’re the dregs of the Protectors. We’re here to do a job.”

  “We’re here to do a job,” Gabriela repeated gruffly, laughing. Derrick rolled his eyes. “Now I see why we’re both here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She shot a rubber band that glanced off his neck. Derrick jolted in his seat. “You’re here to pay attention and I’m here to keep you awake.”

  “That so?” Derrick said. As much as he hated to admit, Gabriela’s idea made sense. Neither of them have any combat abilities and wouldn’t do well out in the field, but part of Derrick was still happy to be of use. Gabriela, as Derrick had deduced, could not say the same.

  “I’d say we’re doing an excellent job so far!”

  Derrick groaned, checking his watch. Six hours in, six hours to go until the day crew took over. He almost wished the Surge would burst through; at least then he’d be rid of Gabriela.

  While he was fantasizing about returning to the solitude of his desk several floors away from where Gabriela “worked”, the ordinarily straight green line measuring the amount of radiation bombarding the side of the shielding exposed to the Surge dipped slightly, no more than two percent, then reverted back to normal a moment later.

  Instantly, Derrick’s mind took off like a racehorse after the starting gun. This deviation, however slight, meant something: somewhere, way out in the mountains, there had been a shift, one that would have reverberations much larger than the slight dip in the amount of radiation bombarding the shielding in front of them. There hadn’t been a blip in three days and there was not, to his mind, any reason one should occur now. That meant there was an issue, somewhere they couldn’t see, and that meant it was something they couldn’t fix.

  He brusquely interrupted whatever Gabriela had been going on about.

  “Are you familiar with tsunamis?” he asked her.

  She glared at him, clearly in the middle of crumpling another paper ball to throw at him. “Weren’t you listening? I was asking you if you thought I could run out and grab a burger or if-”

  “Tsunamis.” He repeated.

  She pointed to her pale skin. “Do I look like I live in California?”

  “Before a tsunami hits, the waves recede.” He pointed to the dip in the monitor. Even now, the radiation readings were already back to normal levels. “That was our recession in the tides. There will be more, deeper recessions than before. Then comes the tsunami.”

  “That’s your whole power, right? Pattern recognition, or something like that?”

  Derrick nodded. “It’s…not impossible I’m wrong, but it would be a rare mistake for me.”

  “Okay,” Gabriela nodded, sitting down next to him, looking serious for the first time in three days. He had properly shaken her out of whatever flighty ideas she had a moment ago. “Let’s say you’re right. What do we do about it? Hit the button?”

  He stared at her gravely. “You need to get out of here. There’s a reason Kingston-the former technician here-left, and we just found it.”

  Gabriela smiled.

  “What?” Derrick asked.

  “A minute ago you couldn’t want to get rid of me and now you’re not going to be able to get me to get rid of me.”

  She surveyed the room. The emergency button was welded into the station in front of her, but the monitors were on wheels. Ignoring Derrick’s protest, Gabriella pulled the monitor to the very back of the room, swinging it behind the very last desk nearest to the door.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Giving us some cover. Or, at least, a chance at an exit.”

  “Couldn’t hurt, but how are we going to press the emergency button now if it’s all the way over-”

  Derrick’s heart nearly stopped as Gabriela grabbed a pencil off the desk and threw it at the emergency button, missing it by less than an inch. It clattered harmlessly to the floor.

  “You figure out when this tsunami is going to hit. I’ll take care of the button. Teamwork, okay?”

  Derrick nodded, then sat down and got to work, watching for any more dips in the readings. “Couldn’t hurt,” he muttered. “Also…were you going to throw that at my head?”

  “Well,” Gabriela went back to spinning in her chair, this time though she held a rubber band ball she had made. “I was, but that was before I knew were all going to die. So I think I’ll hold onto it…for now, on the off chance this is all just a ploy.”

  “Believe me,” Derrick sighed, “I wish it was, but you should hold onto that ball. I’m afraid you’re going to need it.”