It turned out that developing an entirely new technique from an esoteric sense was easier said than done. But that had been expected. Rome wasn’t built in a day.

  After hours of straining myself against the chaotic onslaught of power signals, though, I probably should’ve seen the pain coming. I felt like my soul had been listening to a hundred different rock songs on full blast without any protection, and that same part of my self that had been worn out after the signal testing at Foresight Tower now throbbed like a body-wide migraine. Worse, there wasn’t really a good way to relieve it. With a regular stress headache, you could at least shut yourself away in the dark. Not so for me, here.

  The best I could do was retreat to one of the VIP rooms Ashika’s connections gave us access to, once the day’s schedule had broke off for lunchtime. Even then, there were still countless signals around me, and they felt weightier than they usually did, battering against my signal sense rather than me passively noticing them.

  It was far from comfortable, and yet with it came a feeling of triumph. I’d achieved very little in terms of actual, material gains. Beyond that moment when I’d managed to isolate and focus on Vixen’s signal, I had seen little success. But somehow I was fine with that.

  Just like you didn’t need to beat your PB on the deadlift to feel accomplished after a workout, I supposed. The strain on my soul told me I’d been working hard, even if I hadn’t found a massive success to boast of. That was something. And it made me feel good.

  Just as I had that thought, a groan tore its way out of my chest without my input.

  Okay, it hadn’t made me feel entirely good. But there was at least a feeling of accomplishment to offset the body-wide ache of straining my signal sense. Otherwise, it might have been pretty unbearable.

  “You okay there, Squirt?” Maisie’s voice was close to my right, speaking in a whisper.

  I cracked my eyes open to glare at her. I was laid back on one of the plush chairs in the small VIP room Ashika had commandeered, with my two companions on either side of me. Maisie was leaning over me, concern stark in her gaze, while Ashika was leaning back in her own chair, lazily resting her head on her arms, showing quite the opposite level of concern. I couldn’t decide which irritated me more.

  “He’s fine,” Ashika said. “This is what he came here for.”

  “He didn’t even argue when I called him Squirt,” Maisie retorted. “I wouldn’t call that fine at all.”

  “I’m sure he’ll get you back for it later.” Ashika squinted at me for a moment, then nodded to herself with a satisfied smile. “Look at him, Stargirl. He’s practically preening.”

  Maisie gave her a dry look. “While it’s cute to see you coming to your friend’s defence, you know I changed my name to Vesper,” she drawled. “And where the hell are you getting preening, here? He looks dead to the world.”

  “Well, now he’s about ready to rip our heads off for bothering him while he’s trying to puzzle out what he’s learned so far today,” Ashika said, waving a hand at me as she turned her attention away to whatever was going on outside.

  “She’s not wrong,” I muttered, my voice hoarse. Well, she was partially wrong. I did want to puzzle out what little I could deduce from the strain I’d put on my soul, but I wasn’t in any state to be ripping anyone’s heads off, let alone two people who so vastly outclassed me. Not that I would even if I could.

  “What have you even been trying to do today?” Maisie asked. “I can’t wrap my head around it. All this talk of power signals all of a sudden…”

  She trailed off, and I let my eyes fall closed, so I didn’t have to bear her sceptical expression. The problem with that question was: “I’m not sure myself. Don’t know how to explain it. ”

  “Exactly,” Maisie muttered.

  “I just figure I have a muscle that I’ve neglected to properly train, and I’m trying to fix that,” I said. “You don’t have to stick around if you’re not interested in this stuff.”

  “I’m interested in what you’re up to,” Maisie said, but again I couldn’t help but note the doubt in her voice.

  “More like you’re worried what Marquise has put me up to,” I corrected her, a little more snippily than I intended. I took a deep breath. “Look, I get it. She’s a schemer and manipulator and whatever, and you think she’s got into my head. But I was going to be messing around with signals anyway. That day, when you dragged me along to confront her, I was planning to research this stuff all day anyway.”

  “I really wish I’d been there for all that,” Ashika said. She was probably pouting.

  “It wasn’t all that interesting,” I said. “She really didn’t give us all that many answers. Controlled the conversation from the start, gave us the runaround.”

  “She did,” Maisie said darkly.

  “And, yes, she also did open up my mind to some ideas that I might have taken a little longer to come to on my own.” I paused, taking a deep breath. Talking while my soul was battered and bruised like this wasn’t pleasant. “I don’t think she’s trying to mislead me or harm me, though.”

  “She probably wasn’t,” Maisie agreed. “But you can’t trust her to have your best interests in mind, Emmett.”

  “That doesn’t mean I should ignore any potential avenue for finding my powers that might have been influenced by her,” I said. “I can’t afford to waste any opportunities, Maisie. I need power.”

  Stolen story; please report.

  There was a moment of silence, and then a hand came to rest on mine, squeezing softly. I opened my eyes again to find Maisie watching me with a mournful gaze. “I know things have been hard on you—”

  I practically jumped to my feet. My aching body protested the movement, but I ignored it. Maisie’s hand almost slipped away from mine, but I caught it at the last second; didn’t want to storm out of here too childishly. “I don’t want to do this right now. I’m going for a walk.”

  “Emmett—”

  “Not right now. Way too tired to be delving into any heavy conversations. Dinner with Uncle Adam’s on Friday. We can have a mushy heart-to-heart then.” I gave her hand a squeeze and mustered the best smile I could. “For today, I’m focusing on power signals to the exclusion of all else. And right now, I’m gonna go for a walk.”

  Maisie just nodded, smiling sadly. “Sure, Emmett. See you in a minute, then.”

  I looked at Ashika, but she just waved lazily, still staring out the window. Permission granted, I strode from the room without looking back. Whispers were exchanged behind me, but I was happy not to hear them.

  The door at the back of the VIP room led to a lush, opulent balcony overlooking a lobby that looked like it’d be more at home in a palace than a supersports stadium. Round tables, ornate chairs, golden plating on all the cutlery, and staff strutting around in immaculate tuxedos, flitting between the crème de la crème of clientele with unerring efficiency. It was all way too gauche for me, so I took a left turn, ignoring the stairs down to the lobby, heading towards… well, nowhere in particular. Away, mostly.

  I ended up in a bathroom, which was a familiar thing, though the room itself was more flashy than I was used to. Marble floors and tiled walls rather than linoleum and grey-blue paint, and not a hint of graffiti. Finding myself in a bathroom after escaping an uncomfortable conversation was nothing new, but the soreness in my soul was a novel experience as I made my way over to the taps, splashing a bit of water on my face.

  Funnily enough, the aching condition of my signal sense didn’t seem to be affected by my physical exertions. I could’ve sprinted over here at full tilt, and it wouldn’t have been much different from how I was feeling now. It was all about interaction with signals. For the same reason that we’d chosen to move up to a VIP suite, taking us further away from the action, being here, relatively isolated, was actually doing me a bit of good.

  Right now, I could only feel a handful of signals out there. None of them particularly close. Walls didn’t tend to stop signals very well unless they were made of specialist material, so that just meant I was quite far out of the way.

  I took a deep breath, staring at myself in the mirror, searching. People often said I looked like my father, with the strawberry blond hair and general face shape being the most common traits they cited. I tended to disagree, pointing to the differences between us, at least the physical ones. But when I’d done so, I’d really been thinking about the major difference that mattered most to me: power.

  Dad had had power. Great power, even. Oh, he wasn’t one of the best out there or anything, he was never at the pinnacle, but he’d got better and better over time, and that growth had placed high hopes on him, ones he’d sometimes shared with me. He’d had dreams of reaching the top of Olympus some day, as he’d phrased it. I’d taken that to mean he wanted to team up with Herakles and co. And, frankly, it wasn’t out of his reach. He could’ve done it.

  I, on the other hand, didn’t see how something like that could ever be possible for me. Powerless, I was so far from the peak of Mt Olympus that I couldn’t even see it.

  And yet, maybe there was a similarity in mine and Dad’s power after all.

  If I’d only had Marquise’s word to go on, I might have been more sceptical. But as soon as she’d said it, I’d recalled Tempest telling me something similar. That realisation had inspired an all-nighter of research, going back through Dad’s career in a way I hadn’t been able to bring myself to do since before he’d died.

  There weren’t publicly searchable records on powers. The only way to learn about someone else’s abilities was for them to reveal them; just like doctors were bound by patient’s rights to confidentiality, so too were researchers and their ilk obligated to keep mum about anything someone wanted kept secret.

  But when you knew someone well, you could piece things together.

  Growth in power wasn’t an unusual thing; there were plenty of stories of people who’d jumped multiple ‘Grades’ on the Shimada Scale over time, and Levels were explicitly there to measure the growth of a power. Aspects, too, could drastically alter someone’s capabilities, as Revelations allowed them to pursue new facets of their power that they hadn’t previously considered.

  But Dad… As I looked through his career from the beginning, I came to realise something important. When you looked past all his feats and deeds, crawled through all his interviews and appearances, and really looked…

  He’d never once mentioned his Rank or Level.

  Thinking back, he’d never told it to me or Maisie either. In fact, I didn’t recall it ever coming up with anyone at all. Somehow, everyone had just assumed he stood at the very top, and he’d never bothered to correct them.

  That was why it had taken me off guard when Tempest had revealed it to me. That was why Marquise, herself, was surprised—or so she made it seem—to learn that I didn’t know either.

  Could it be that he was like me? And that he’d found some path forward, allowing him to grow in power himself?

  Now that I thought of it, what had his power even been? He’d always made it seem that he was merely super strong, super fast, and super smart. Like he was capable of some kind of physical augmentation. But there’d been moments. Ones where he seemed to know more than he should, hear more, see more. There were times when it felt like he’d read my mind, and he was deviously good at hide and seek, always able to find me and Maisie.

  Marquise had said she didn’t want to let my ability go to waste. Was that what she’d thought of Dad’s? Was he capable of more, and just didn’t know it?

  Could he have escaped, that day, if he’d known what Marquise implicitly claimed to?

  I didn’t know. There were so many questions I had for him, but he wasn’t here to answer them.

  Drawing in a ragged breath, wiping my stinging eyes, I stood up from where I’d been leaning over the sink. My stomach was turning, and my signal sense still felt like it had been strained to its very limits.

  Well sorry, Signal. Or soul. Or whatever the hell you are. We’re not done yet.

  I can’t be satisfied with reaching my limit. I need to push past that.

  Determination surged within me, and I strode to the bathroom door, prepared to storm back to the VIP suite and demand we retake our courtside seats. But the door swung open before I could stop it, and I came face to face with quite possibly the last person I was expecting to see.

  Beautiful golden eyes blinked down at me, taking in my sorry state. The fluffy orange ears atop her head twitched a little, and her tail swayed side to side, giving off a dubious, concerned air.

  I can’t for the life of me communicate how I got that impression. But at least her words confirmed it for me.

  “You okay there, kid?” Vixen asked, her voice soft and smooth as velvet.

  Discord :)