A whirlwind. A bureaucratic, soul-crushing, and deeply inconvenient whirlwind. I’d sort of expected the BSA to have some kind of follow-up procedure for a newly-minted Class Six, but I’d assumed it would involve more paperwork and less outright abduction. What really surprised me, though—and frankly, added a thrilling new layer of existential dread to my afternoon—was the official designation they’d stamped on my file: ‘High-Value Kidnapping Risk.’
Seriously. A kidnapping risk. Me, Jake Doyle, a guy whose most valuable possession was a multi-layered spreadsheet for optimizing ramen noodle consumption. I’d meticulously designed my power display to scream ‘handy support guy,’ not ‘premium asset.’
I had zero registered combat abilities, a defensive suite that amounted to ‘can maybe make a paper shield,’ and a bank account that would make a go-fund-me for a pet rock look lucrative. The worst part? They were absolutely right.
If some enterprising villain scooped me up to force me to build their doomsday device or, god forbid, their custom hot tub, I’d be functionally useless for fighting back. First off, my energy reserves were sitting at a cool twenty-five units, enough to maybe reassemble a disassembled watch if I took a week-long nap afterwards. And second, unleashing the full, gritty potential of my microkinesis would involve a light show that would blow my carefully constructed ‘Class Two’ cover straight to hell and probably get me a one-way ticket to a BSA black site or a Black Box Incorporated recruitment seminar. Neither option was conducive to my long-term goals of graduating and not being dissected.
Which was how, mere minutes after receiving my life-altering—and life-endangering—paperwork, Mindy and I were hustled into an unmarked, suspiciously vanilla-smelling van. It was part of a six-van convoy that immediately scattered to the winds in a display of tactical misdirection that would have been impressive if it wasn’t so utterly transparent to anyone who could, say, track the unique molecular composition of the building we’d just left.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Somehow, during the panicked flurry, Mindy’s designation had been upgraded from my ‘referral’ to my official ‘sponsor.’ The stone-faced agents driving us weren’t big on conversation, which left me plenty of time to contemplate the new, exciting ways my life could now be ruined.
“Now you see why I was a little worried about the whole black site thing,” I muttered, the words tasting like cheap irony.
Mindy sighed, shifting uncomfortably on the hard plasti-leather seat. “I get it, but at least we aren’t wearing bags over our heads, and they haven’t tranquilized us. Small mercies, right? Hey, can you tell us anything?” she asked, leaning forward to address the suit in the passenger seat.
The guy didn’t even turn around, just offered a shrug that was a masterpiece of bureaucratic indifference. “You aren’t hostiles, but I don’t have much to say. All I know is that we have a drive-through to the transit hub, and we drop you off there.”
“Transit hub?” I asked, my internal catalog of potential nightmare scenarios updating to include ‘hidden orbital launch facility.’
He nodded, a single, efficient motion. “Transit hub. I can’t tell you much more, except to say that in this case, you are getting the golden ticket from the Champions HQ. I don’t know your names, and I don’t want to, no offense.”
None taken. Being professionally uninteresting was my brand. After about ten minutes of driving that felt specifically designed to induce motion sickness, we were driven into an underground garage. I couldn’t bear to tell Mindy that, based on the faint but persistent molecular signature of the BSA center’s industrial-grade floor polish, our entire ‘covert’ journey had been a scenic tour of a few city blocks, culminating in us being deposited right back under the very building we’d started from. The sheer, audacious pointlessness of it was almost beautiful. I half-expected men in dark sunglasses to hop out and start playing a soft jazz rendition of ‘Hail to the Chief’ on saxophones to complete the farce.
