Sol LAHQ. Neptune Department.

  Penn looked up as he heard footsteps coming toward his office at a jog. One of his monitors came to a halt in his opened door, a little out of breath. “Check the trendings, sir. I think we’ve got a situation.”

  With a deep sigh, he pulled up trending hashtags on their program, designed to scan and track anything notable on the main social media platforms. He didn’t have to look too hard. The phrase “Vatican magic” had a certain ring to it that was hard to skim past.

  He clicked on it and was brought to a short, fifteen-second video of a young woman in Saint Peter’s Square. She was maybe twenty, smiling for the video, flashing a peace sign. Behind her, maybe twenty feet away, a man was standing there, viewed from the back, and then he wasn’t. The woman holding the camera could be heard saying, “Wait.” The camera panned and someone who appeared to be the same man was halfway across the square by a line of pillars. The first girl asked, “What?” and she replied, “Hold on, I’m recording, let me play it back,” and the recording cut.

  Penn turned off the sound and let the video play through again. He glanced at the date and views. Four-thousand views, but it was only a few hours old. Not good. “Get the bots on this, commenting about it being fake. Make up some little detail that proves it’s CGI.” The man was there and then he teleported away.

  When the monitor didn’t respond, he looked up. She was biting her lip. “Read the top comment, sir.”

  He scrolled. Did you collab with and a tagged username. With a prick of fear, he clicked the username and went to its most recent video.

  When this video was also of Saint Peter’s Square, Penn swore. This video was a slow pan of the square from the opposite direction as the first. Penn picked out the same man from his clothing far off in one corner. Then the man teleported closer to the camera, facing forward, and Penn began to sweat in earnest. It was someone he recognized.

  The boy taking the video said, “Whoa,” and focused his camera on the group of people the man was with. Five people facing the camera, three facing away. There was a tense moment when one of the three made a lunge for the two beside him, and this time, it was this other man who teleported. The boy half-shouted, “Shit!” and the five people's heads turned. The camera shook and jumped as the boy ran and the video ended. Penn checked the views. Twenty-five thousand.

  Penn put his head in his hands. “Get the bots on it. Get whoever does our masked magician video channel—Kelley? Get him working on creating a video breakdown of how this trick was done. I’m going to prepare to crash and scrub the site.” She nodded and left. Following her to the door, he gave a shout loud enough for the rest of his staff to hear.

  “Everyone, check your email for the links I’m sending you. This is what you’re on today. I need to get a read on containment potential, so find out where else it’s been posted and when. Kenny and Leanne, I need you to get me blown up stills of each of the faces in them. Thank you.”

  Penn shut his office door a little too loud. His hands were shaking. After sending out that email to his staff and composing a stressful email to Mercury that they were in hot water and he may have to cause a global disruption to fix this, Penn took a moment to breathe.

  The first teleporter was one of Adler’s regular teleporters. Someone who brought Penn back and forth between LA and either Kyiv or Paris when Gage wasn’t available. He didn’t know the other four and he didn’t want to, but he could only assume they were Entropy as well.

  There was a tentative knock. A tentative knock was the only sort that he hated more than an urgent one. The person on the other side of the door was afraid.

  “What have you got?” he called.

  It was Kenny, a large tablet in hand. “Yes, sir. I was going to run the stills through facial recognition, but I recognized one of them. It’s the student Icarus. Different hair color, but the scar’s a giveaway.”

  Penn swallowed. “Thank you. Run them all anyway and send the results my way. I’m on it.”

  Rubbing his eyes, Penn tried to think straight. What the fuck was Adler doing going after their Icarus? Especially the kid? And in such a stupidly public manner? He had planned on waiting to see if the containment potential report could tell him if it would even be worth the trouble, but Penn had a bad, bad feeling about all this. He picked up his phone and dialed the Cleanup tech desk.

  “Sir?”

  “Crash it.”

  “Crash which, sir?”

  “Whatever you can.” He hung up, then dialed Gerrit.

  “What’s up?”

  “The good news in your missing foster has been spotted in Rome. The bad news is he was captured in several viral videos. I’ve got to work this but Kenny is pulling stills now. He’ll take care of you.”

  Gerrit sputtered a little. “Thank you.”

  “I’ve got to go.”

  Another knock. Gage stepped inside his office and shut the door. He looked uncharacteristically sheepish. “I thought you might need me.”

  “You thought right.”

  ---

  Entropy Residential Building. Paris, France.

  Gage teleported Penn into the hallway in front of Adler’s flat. He hadn’t gotten to take two breaths to calm his stomach when Adler’s voice rang out.

  “Come in, Mr. Harris.”

  Adler was walking toward the door as he opened it. “Gage,” he called. “I saw your mother downstairs a couple hours ago if you want to see her. She’s asked about you a couple times.”

  The teleporter gave half a smile and a knowing look to Penn before heading down the hall. Penn stepped past Adler and waited just inside.

  “What’s the emergency?”

  Penn pulled up the video that clearly showed the first teleporter’s face. As much as he wanted to yell, he kept his voice quiet and controlled. “This is my day now. That is your people going after one of the highest profile Icarus we’ve had in years. What are you doing?”

  Adler peered at the video. “Oh, that one.” He waved a hand and walked away to go take a seat, as though Penn was just bringing up some minor issue. “I’m trying to locate Gareth.”

  He turned his head to one side in surprise. “Who the hell is Gareth?”

  One of Adler’s eyebrows raised a fraction. “Fuck’s sake. One of your high profile Icarus’ team.”

  It clicked. “The ex-Entropy one. Right. What do you want him for?”

  “That has nothing to do with you.”

  Penn pointed to the phone. “It has everything to do with me right now.”

  “I would think you and your department would be used to being collateral damage for everyone by now.”

  “Mark—”

  His head jerked and he gave Penn a sharp, embittered look.

  Penn dipped his head in apology. This wasn’t Kyiv. “Force of habit. Mr. Adler, can you please ask your people to be more mindful of how public they’re being? I can contain this, but there’s a meeting in my future that will inevitably involve discussions about why Entropy is targeting our Icarus.”

  “So clean it.”

  “What?” Penn waited, but Adler wasn’t a man who repeated himself. Penn scoffed. “I’ll handle it.” His phone went off in his hand. It was his staff. “Excuse me.” He answered.

  “Sir, we need you here right now. It’s bad.” Penn’s eyes flashed at Adler, heart in his throat.

  “I’ll be right there. Hang tight.”

  Without a word, Gage teleported in by the door, summoned by Adler no doubt.

  Adler nodded to him. “Good luck, Mr. Harris.”

  Penn spared him one last look, then walked to Gage and let himself be ripped across space.

  ---

  Sol LAHQ. Neptune Department.

  Gage dropped him into the center of the kicked wasp’s nest of his people rushing about.

  “What’s the damage?” Penn shouted, pushing into their main bullpen, with its rows of computers and screens up on the wall.

  He was immediately swarmed with a ring of agents around him. He took the tablet he was handed and watched a bookish looking woman with short hair behind a desk. The video was titled, ‘Proof that Superheroes Live Among Us.’ Penn read the subtitles while his people filled him in.

  “We had several outages and worked to scrub the videos. It was going okay until this—”

  I’ve been saying for years that the government has been covering up the fact that people with superpowers exist all around us, but today we got actual, undeniable proof.

  “It’s been picked up by digital and broadcast news—”

  I’m sure by now that you have seen this video capturing a total of four people teleporting, but I understand that’s the sort of thing you could fake, even with separate accounts posting it. Here’s why it’s different this time.

  “We don’t know what to do, sir. We’re pushing the hoax angle but we’re not getting traction with something that vague.”

  On this platform alone, there are five different live cams recording Vatican square 24/7. When I scrubbed back to the correct time, because there’s a backlog of six hours on these cams, this is what I saw. There. I know it’s far away but you can clearly see a person disappear and reappear and then three people disappear. Here’s another angle from another live cam.

  “It’s getting away from us.”

  These are live cams run by news organizations, travel companies—not people who would all conspire together to run a hoax with some user with only 800 followers. And how could they even do that? These videos were all streamed live. This is real. Then the platforms where these videos originally ran crashed? That’s just more proof, in my eyes. They’re hiding something from us.

  Penn felt like his body was turning itself inside out.

  “Who’s picked it up?”

  “We anticipate everyone will be running something on it, whether serious or a special interest of a viral phenomenon within two hours.”

  His phone rang. Sage. “We’re on it, sir.”

  “Would I be in the way if I came down?”

  “We need all the hands we can get.” He hung up. “Reception?”

  “Some exactly what we want and more than a few people saying they’ve also seen things, but sir, they’ve identified the shortest woman as 18B.”

  Penn could feel the headache building. “Thank you. Tell Gerrit. Keep doing what you’re doing. Scan her social media to locate three close friends and create a write up on each one to see who would make the best leak.” He held up the tablet. “And get me her address.” He turned back to Gage. “Mercury, now.”

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  He didn’t even have time to take a breath to prepare himself when Gage popped him into the entry space in front of Mercury’s office, making his assistant, Shane, nearly jump out of his suit.

  “It’s emergent,” he told Shane and walked into Mercury’s office. “I apologize, sir, but we’re in a lot of trouble.”

  Josh, looking up at him, appeared apprehensive, but not angry that he’d barged in. “Fill me in the quick way.”

  Penn went into his head and gave him everything his team had told him.

  Josh cleared his throat, adjusting. “Talk to me.”

  “Our people are doing everything in our power, but this is moving faster than we can run, sir.” He glanced at the floor and then back. “Two videos is one thing, but at this point, we’re looking at seven corroborating videos from seven different sources. When I leave here, I’m going to go ruin a woman’s life for telling the truth.”

  His boss sat in silence for a moment. “What do you need from me?”

  Penn didn’t bother keeping the emotion from his face. “Due respect, sir, for you to understand that that’s terrible.” He let out a defeated huff and straightened. “And for you to get whatever wheels in motion you will need to prepare to contact the CIA and whoever else benefits from keeping this contained as a last measure. And let Mars know she may need to prepare her people.”

  Josh leaned forward slightly. “You think Mars might have to get involved?”

  “I think I’m going to do everything I can to reel this back in, but there’s a chance that this is the big one and we don’t really know what’s coming if it is.”

  Josh’s shoulders rose with a breath. “Go.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  When he got back to Cleanup, Sage was there, bent over a desk with two of Penn’s staff.

  “You up to speed?”

  Sage nodded and handed him a printout of a fit looking young man. “You’re looking for someone to leak that the woman in the video faked the whole thing?” Penn nodded. “He’s a close friend. Social media looks active and, let’s say, attention-seeking.”

  Penn nodded again. He’d be someone who might use this to get followers. “Good. I’ll have someone put it in his head that she’d confided in him that she was planning this whole hoax. I’ll take care of the woman at the center at the same time. Tomorrow she’ll post an apology video for faking the whole thing. She’ll be horribly discredited and probably get death threats for six months.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “It’s more realistic. No one apologizes until they know for sure they can’t get away with it. And then it’s just working the comments and holding our breath to see if it takes. It’ll be out of our hands at that point.”

  “What about the five live streams?” Sage asked.

  “Doctored video. Like she said, you can only scrub back six hours from the present. It’s been far longer. By the time she posted her video, no one could go back and verify what was really on that footage.”

  “Good.” Sage lowered his head and raised his eyebrows. “You alright?”

  “Don’t ask me that question right now.”

  His phone went off again. Emmett. A text. He’d be worried. Love you. You’ve got this.

  Penn’s chest was feeling tight. It would probably be fine. Probably, it would resolve itself—with a herculean effort—and most of Sol would never even know there was a crisis. Those that did would forget about it in a few months. The thing was, there was no way to tell that crisis apart from the one that wouldn’t end that way. He looked at Sage. “Let’s just get this done.”

  ---

  Sanctuary. ?ilina, Slovakia.

  Their last jump landed them just outside a Sanctuary in Slovakia. Alex had followed inside, oblivious of other voices, and crawled into a bedroom to lay down and nurse his wretched stomach. The Sanctuary was close, with narrow hallways, a crowded galley kitchen, and several beds crammed into small bedrooms upstairs. Alex felt wrung out and run over, and he fell asleep almost as soon as he collapsed on the stiff sheets.

  The next morning, he woke tense and sore. The other two were still asleep on their cots, crammed in at Tetris angles in this walk-in closet-sized bedroom. He fumbled for Misha’s pre-pay, which he’d kept in bed with him, and tried dialing Reeve again. Nothing. Alex nudged Hannah’s cot with his foot and she came awake with a start. They must have been in such a bad state last night, practically holding each other up, that no one challenged her about staying in the same room as them.

  “What?” she asked groggily, pushing herself up from her face-down sprawl.

  He held up the phone. “Still nothing.”

  Alex tried to find the brakes on his speeding mind as he chased down all the gory reasons why they couldn’t answer the phone. Hannah sighed and reached out her hand for the phone. He handed it over. Normally it was the past that pulled at him, but now it was the future that had tangled him up and turned him upside-down and whispered about bloody alleyways right behind his ear. He needed to focus. He needed caffeine.

  While Hannah called, he ventured out into the Sanctuary. He hadn’t gotten used to the eerie quiet of everyone being asleep in a crowded house during the daytime. He slunk into the kitchen and grabbed an energy drink from the fridge. When he got back, Hannah was grumpily pulling on her shirt. She tossed him the phone and shook her head.

  Alex bit his lip and tried not to get pulled back in. “Misha?”

  She leaned over the divide and shook his shoulder, but Misha only groaned. It wasn’t like him. Alex was used to Misha being the one waking them up at all hours. Hannah shook him again and he swatted at her hand before turning over and pulling the blankets over his head.

  Hannah frowned. “Now what?”

  “I want to know what that thing is. The gift, or whatever, for Gareth.”

  Alex dragged Misha’s pack across the floor, purposely making a scraping noise, but Misha didn’t budge. He shrugged and opened the bag. The pouch was right on top. Alex hesitated, so Hannah snatched it up. With a look like she was regretting it already, she unzipped it and peered inside.

  “It’s a suture kit,” she muttered, her brow furrowed. She squinted at it closer. “Yeah,” she said, answering no one, “it’s a suture kit.”

  Alex leaned forward, too. Hannah had taught him basic medical and he recognized the forceps, scalpel handles, and hooked needles. The once-white packaging that held the thread was aged and stained. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “I don’t know. He’s never said anything to me about medical stuff, but there’s lots he doesn’t say.”

  Alex held out his hand. “Well, one way to find out.”

  Hannah drew the kit back with a grimace. “Are you sure? Entropy is...”

  Alex dropped his hand. “What, you want to wait to ask Gareth, who, I’m sure, will be happy to recount its meaning to us?”

  Hannah bit her lip. “I mean, it’s a little fucked up to pry when he’s not here.”

  “I mean,” Alex mimicked, “that is exactly what I do all day long, though. Sort of.” He said it with humor, but it was mostly to cover up the growing knot of unease in his stomach.

  Hannah’s knuckles were white as she gripped the kit, pausing. It made Alex hold his breath a little with worry, but it didn’t take long for him to get over that. Easier to find out than to wonder. He couldn’t Read the phone to tell where Gareth and the others were, but he could damn well get to the bottom of this mystery. He reached out his hand again. “He should have answered his damn phone.”

  The kit was heavier than it looked, forcing his arm to give an inch or two. With the inertia and heft of it, it was like the Story sank into his palm as he held it, heavy as lead.

  Alex pushes past the years of quiet dust, sitting in a desk drawer, moving house at the bottom of a footlocker, waiting on a shelf next to piles of books. As he works backward, it strikes him that the kit doesn’t have any kind of label or name tag. Someone had kept track of it through the years. Knew what it was by sight. He turns the pages back.

  It’s raining. Gareth and another man are ducking under the sparse cover of an awning on a closed loading dock. Gareth looks about the age that he was when Alex met him. It has to be close to when he left Entropy. The man is a little younger than Gareth, probably in his late teens. He has shaggy brown hair matted to his face with rain. Gareth is trying to sew up a gash on the man’s calf but the wound is wide, with enough skin missing that it probably needs a graft. Gareth is struggling. The man is patiently sitting there, wincing, his eyes shut. Alex doesn’t move closer. He reaches back and turns the page, shifting to find the first instance of Gareth’s face.

  He is in a windowless but brightly lit warehouse with absurdly high ceilings. The kind of place you could house airplanes in. It is filled with rows of steel shipping containers in pale gray, navy, and rust. The wide aisles are bustling with people, and along one wall, there’s a crane truck that looks like a flatbed with a scorpion tail.

  Gareth is standing next to him by the doorway. He’s young but already so tall. It makes his arms and legs look awkwardly long and gangly. His face has a rounder cast to it than Alex is used to. The backpack on his shoulder holds everything he owns. His lips are pulled in a tight straight line.

  A man jogs over to him. He’s in his late twenties, but something about him seems older. He doesn’t have glasses yet, but the sandy hair and square jaw are there and Alex still knows him. The man flashes a smile as he comes to a stop, which surprises Alex.

  “You new?” he asks.

  “New to San Fran. They sent me here.”

  “Oh, the healer,” he says, his face lighting up. “Good, I need another one. I’m Marcus Adler.”

  “Gareth. You in charge?”

  Adler looks over his shoulder at him as he walks over to a desk to grab the top black suture kit from a small stack. “Of what? Everything?” He hands Gareth the kit. “Not yet,” he continues with a gleam in his eye, “but in this building, yes. Welcome to The Spa.”

  Gareth balks. “Spa?”

  “That’s what I call it, anyway. It’ll catch on. Keep that with you,” he continues, pointing to the kit, “you’re going to need it. Come on, let me show you where you’re living and what you’re doing.”

  He leads Gareth down one row of containers with long, fast strides. Alex has to rush to keep up with their long legs. The containers have their doors open and people are living inside of them like a metal row house in a range of states, from several bedrolls crowded together to a loveseat and a real bedframe. They stop at one with two other beddings set up in it.

  “This is you. You can leave the pack.”

  Gareth hesitates, looking around. His jaw is as tight as his fist around the backpack’s strap, but at the expression Adler was giving him, he drops it inside the container, other hand still clutching the suture kit. Alex can feel he knows what happens when you don’t do as you’re told.

  Alex follows them out back toward the front of the warehouse.

  “Now,” Adler says clapping his hands together, “aside from other things, this is actually a working warehouse for Entropy Games, so if someone tells you to load or unload boxes you do it, understood?” Gareth nods. “Good, for the most part you’ll be prepping and helping our Elders contain their third night here. You know what I’m talking about? Good.” He leads them down a long corridor of shipping crates at the far end of the warehouse, all closed and locked with chunky padlocks. Gareth’s nose burns with the ripe smell of it.

  “The beast night can cause more public attention than we want right now,” Adler explained. “We have three dedicated containment rooms. If you run out of space, I’ll show you who to call.”

  “Why only three?” Gareth's eyes dart to the hundreds of crates.

  Adler stops and turns. He raps on the crate next to him with his knuckles. “Do you think that could hold them?”

  Gareth looks at his feet and shakes his head.

  “Right.” Adler pats the side of the crate he’d knocked on and calls, “Sorry!” before continuing with a small smile. He stops at a mobile staircase parked along the wall and starts climbing.

  “What are—”

  “Stop asking things. I’m showing you.”

  It’s crowded on the stairs with the three of them, and even though he knows it doesn’t matter, Alex doesn’t want to touch either of them. He looks where Adler is pointing. From above, he can see there are three clusters of crates at the back of the warehouse, all one level except for a single container sitting on top of the center of each one.

  “Those containers on the ground are packed with cement blocks. Our guests are put into a container with, well, we’ll get there, and are lowered into the center of that block of crates. Then one more heavy crate is set on top of them. All this is done while they’re asleep, or at least it’s supposed to be.”

  Adler trots back down the stairs with enough speed to make Alex flinch as he moves by.

  “Now, even with that barrier, it’s best to keep our guests sated and distracted. We still lose too many crates a year to being torn open as it is. Here—” He stops at one of the containers and opens the lock with a key on his waist. There is a woman inside, slumped and listless. Alex’s whole body shivers and itches, feeling both Gareth’s cold, stoic terror and Adler’s amusement so close in proximity.

  She is shackled to a loop in the center of the crate. There’s a ratty blanket and gallon jug of water in the dim space, along with a bucket for waste. She is thin but healthy-looking.

  “There are other people whose job it is to clean these containers, but if someone above your rank tells you to clean them, you do it.”

  Gareth sputters, then finds his voice with a gulp. “How will I know who’s above me?”

  Adler cocks his head. “The people above you are the ones that tell you to do something and then you do it. Anyone else gets you to do that and they’re above you now. Follow? Now, we need to feed the Elders to keep them sated and occupied.”

  “You put her in the crate with them?”

  “Sort of. City’s been turning up the heat on missing persons, and they never eat a whole person in one night anyway, so it’s a waste. Part of them goes in the crate. That’s where you come in.”

  Adler beckons him to approach the girl. He hesitates. Alex takes a step backward.

  “It’s fine, they’re all dosed to keep them calm. It’s in their water.” Adler’s voice is almost comforting, as though Gareth’s reluctance is from fear of the woman hurting him.

  But Gareth doesn’t move. Alex can feel that he’s barely breathing, trying to ward off the whooping gasps of his panic.

  Adler’s shoulders drop. “Now.” His voice echoes loudly in the container, and Alex feels Gareth’s fear vanish. Simply gone into thin air. That heavy weight and pain is suddenly replaced with a certainty that almost makes him sleepy, it’s so comfortable and secure. So sure.

  Gareth walks briskly to stand across from Adler and crouches down with him. Suddenly the gnawing pit of fear is back and Gareth’s chest is moving like a bellows. He falls backward, barely catching himself with his elbows. Alex feels that all Gareth wants is to either be away from here or have that certainty back, even if it was just Adler’s telepathy fooling him.

  Adler watches intently, and waits for Gareth to pull himself up properly. “So,” Adler says lightly. “You have your kit? Good. There are a few other tools, saws and things, but it’s not a one person job, anyway. We take arms first and move onto legs if they survive it. More will survive as you get the hang of it, as they say. One limb per guest should do it. If they ask for two, you do that. One of you will be doing the cutting and the other will sew her up.”

  Gareth doesn’t say anything, but Adler considers him closely.

  “You want to know why? We’re not going to feed our fellow agents meat that died days ago. Fresh means fresh. Keep her alive and she keeps.” He briefly smiled at his own joke and continued, “It extends how often we have to go out and haul in more prey. It’s less work in the long run. Less police to deal with. You understand in theory?”

  Gareth can’t speak.

  “I said, do you understand in theory?”

  Gareth’s head pops up like a champagne cork and chimes, “Yes, Mr. Adler,” in a bubbly cheerful tone. Then his head drops, wide-eyed.

  Adler leans forward into Gareth’s sightline. “Now you say it.”

  “Yes, Mr. Adler.” His voice shakes, but holds.

  “Good. You get the theory, so now I’ll give you all the steps in detail, in a way you won’t forget. I hate having to repeat myself.”

  He reaches out and puts one hand on Gareth’s closely shorn hair. A moment later a sound comes out of Gareth that builds to a full-throated yell. Alex opens his own mouth as if to shout, as he feels Adler’s lightning fast mind shredding through Gareth’s with an unsettling mix of violence and exactingness. Alex can see now how someone could wield a butcher’s cleaver with elegance and precision. But all he knows is that he needs to stop feeling it and hearing that scream, so he tries to locate his hands.

  Alex dropped the kit on the floor and Hannah caught him before he followed it.

  “What is it?” she asked, her voice tight.

  Alex shook his head. “Hold on, I’m gonna need a minute. It’s bad.” He looked up. “Can you try dialing them again?”

  ***