Figures passed behind Vivainne as she stared at the floor to ceiling windows, out across the city at the mountains beyond, unable to tear her eyes away. So far, New Denver had been underwhelming, but the mountains…

  She’d never seen anything like them.

  Beaches were beautiful. Oceans were astounding, awe inspiring, so powerful Vivainne could feel it. But the mountains were showstopping. And the crater where Pikes Peak once was, a gaping wound on the horizon. A bleeding reminder of just how much damage superpowers could do, if out of control, without heroes to stop them.

  And the New Denver Unity Tower overlooked it perfectly.

  That had to be on purpose, didn’t it?

  The phone in her jacket pocket vibrated, and she quickly pulled her hand away. More than likely, it was Charles, considering both Darcy and Jordan had said goodbye earlier in the day before going to work. They’d argued before she left, to the point she’d nearly refused to go on this little trip, but here she was, thousands of miles away.

  And if he wanted to talk, he would have to call her, because she had better things to do if he didn’t want to tell her what was going on with her mother.

  Prickling with anger, Vivainne pulled her eyes away from the mountains. Before she got a chance to cool down, her eyes landed on a head of brown and purple hair, and all the rage boiled back up. She should have just stayed home. Why did Charles have to insist on her going across the country when everything important was starting to happen?

  Pip, dressed in a gaudy pair of pants and a huge puffer jacket, waved at Vivainne like they were friends. Thalia Carter accompanied her, giving Vivainne a nod in greeting, which caused the hero who had been accompanying her to split off and leave them alone in the hallway.

  “Hello,” Vivianne said, manners and propriety demanding she greet them. The phone went off again in her pocket, and she grimaced.

  “Ready to go?” Thalia asked, cutting straight to the chase. “Do you have a coat? It’s cold in New York this time of year.”

  Vivainne glanced down at her outfit, a quilted jacket buttoned over her long sleeve shirt and tight jeans. “I’m wearing a jacket.”

  “No, a coat,” Thalia said, then shook her head. “It’s fine. We can get you another coat once we arrive.”

  “I can go back home,” Vivainne said, blurting the words out before she could stop herself. If she went back home, she’d be there for the trial and wouldn’t miss what was going on, and wouldn’t have to deal with learning about everything via the news. Plus, she wouldn’t have to spend the next several days with Pip, a girl who she couldn’t begin to imagine as a hero.

  “No,” Thalia said, and her word was law, especially in these halls. Vivainne shut her mouth to protests, staring at the famed hero before dropping her eyes to the ground. “Pip, go get us a teleporter.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” The colorful girl darted off, damp shoes squeaking against the tile floor.

  Silence stretched through the hallway, voices drifting down the corridor from both ends, the words not quite reaching them.

  Vivainne jumped when a hand landed on her shoulder. How had Thalia moved so silently?

  “Enjoy the trip,” Thalia said, the words more an order than anything else. Did she even realize she was doing it, or had she simply been leading for so long that even years after retirement, she continued to give out orders? “Trials like these, especially involving supers and the Unity of Heroes are long and drawn out and complicated. Sure, it’s starting today, but that doesn’t mean anything will happen.”

  “I want to make sure she gets locked up,” Vivainne said, unable to look up at the hero as she wrapped her arms around herself. She couldn’t look up into The Archer’s eyes and show her just how terrified she was. There was always a chance, just like there was a chance with every trial, that her mother wouldn’t be convicted. She’d be released and then Vivainne would never be free of her, never be safe from her. And what about Vanya? Her sister was only beginning to get used to being free, getting to interact with people, spending time with kids her own age.

  “You’ve done all you can,” Thalia said. “Now let the adults do their jobs and trust them to make sure your mother gets locked up.”

  “But I could testify…”

  “And you probably will,” Thalia said with a shrug. “Charles doesn’t want you to, which is why he’s sending you away, but, well… He’s always been a bit of an idealistic one. He’d like to keep you far away from the pain, he’d like to keep everyone away from it really, and deal with it himself. But, yes, odds are you’ll have to testify. I told him as much.”

  “I heard,” Vivainne admitted, glancing up at the older hero. She barely appeared to be thirty, unless you looked at her eyes, and then you could tell she’d been around far longer.

  Thalia’s eyes narrowed, purple irises piercing into Vivainne. “You did?”

  Heat crept across Vivainne’s cheeks. Maybe she shouldn’t have admitted that. “My power is handy,” she said, the words coming out as a whisper.

  “Hm.” Thalia looked away and shook her head. “We’re going to have to keep an eye on you. Now come on, we don’t want Pip teleporting off without us.”

  The older hero led the way through the halls of the tower Vivainne had only just been shown around, leading them to a small room tucked out of the way of the main thoroughfare, heroes passing by like water. The door sat propped open by a bag, one Thalia snagged and threw across the room the moment she entered. A yelp came from inside, and Pip barely caught the bag before it slammed to the ground.

  “Ready?”

  Vivainne nodded even as her eyebrows knit together. There wasn’t a teleporter in the room, and Jordan had gone back home after dropping her off at the New Denver tower. Maybe they had to wait for the on-call teleporter?

  Before she had a chance to question it, Thalia gave a signal, and the room went white.

  Color returned, and with it, a head rush so intense Vivainne stumbled. Her ears popped, and it almost felt like her sinuses did along with them, as she gradually regained her equilibrium. Something dripped from her nose, and with a shock, she found it was blood, and quickly wiped it away. Thankfully, it didn’t keep bleeding.

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  Across the round room, Pip let out a small groan. “I hate that.”

  “Get used to it,” Thalia said, unphased. “And trust me, that’s a lot better than they originally were. You’d be lucky if all your organs were in the right place, thirty years ago.”

  “What is that?” Vivainne asked, regretting opening her mouth the moment she did. Nausea rose up, which she fought back with an effort. Teleporting with Jordan was never like this. Disorienting sometimes, but never enough to make you sick.

  “Teleporter pad,” Thalia said. “Kind of like the teleporters in those old sci-fi films, before powers. You’d be surprised what a few tech geniuses can do, especially if other supers get involved. Still rough, but it allows us to move without having to have a dedicated teleporter on the ground.”

  “Nice.”

  “That’s a word for it,” Vivainne muttered. It was fantastic technology, she just didn’t have the mind to truly appreciate it, not when her breakfast wanted to make a reappearance. A piece of her knew her mother would find it incredibly fascinating, and she quickly dashed the thought away. Why did she need to think of her mother anytime she saw an interesting piece of super-tech? She didn’t need to think of her mother at all.

  “All right, that’s enough,” Thalia said, evidently deciding they’d been waiting there too long. She began to move, and Pip and Vivainne had no choice but to follow, no matter how much Vivainne wanted to sit down to get the blood to stop rushing in her head.

  The moment the door opened, a rush of sound hit Vivainne’s ears, tenfold over the sound of the New Denver tower. It was as if they’d stepped into the very heart of the city itself, even though Vivainne knew that wasn’t true.

  “Woah…”

  Vivainne stumbled over to the balcony outside the teleportation room, gripping onto the railing as she stared wide eyed at the building around them. If Los Angeles and New Denver had a tower, New York City had a skyscraper. Made in the typical supercrafted glass, light shone through with a blue tint, illuminating the inside of a massive building. Heroes, hundreds of them, crowded the halls. Some congregated at a massive hub in the middle of the floor, suited agents seated behind the round desk in conversation with them. Others split off into smaller rooms, or made their way up the many staircases that lined either side of the building, running and dodging briefcase carrying liaisons.

  In the center of the room, far above their heads, hanging from the ceiling, was a globe. Lights raced across it, connecting with pinpricks of light in other states, and even other countries. A rush went through Vivainne’s body as she realized what it was depicting. Towers of Unity, full of heroes, all across the globe. With some searching, she found the pinhead of light that would indicate the tower back home. A line of light connected it directly with the tower they currently stood in, the only one illuminated in a vibrant blue.

  Those lines, were they teleportation lines?

  The globe connected with a thick pane of glass, light continuing the glow through it and giving it an otherworldly feel. Through the glass, Vivainne could make out the faintest shadows, outlines of feet on the floor above.

  “This is massive,” Pip whispered.

  “This is just the beginning,” Thalia said, beaming out at the skyscraper full of heroes. “Come on, I have a lot to show you.”

  “The training grounds?” Pip asked, leaping past Vivainne to catch up with her grandmother.

  “No,” Thalia said, shaking her head. “We’re headed up there.” She pointed toward the globe. “The Oracle.”

  “What, really?” Pip jumped in front of her grandmother, stopping Thalia in her tracks.

  “Yes,” Thalia said, easily sidestepping her.

  “No way,” Pip breathed.

  “What’s the Oracle?” Vivainne asked, her cheeks flushing as she made eye contact with Pip.

  “It’s like, mission control,” Pip said. “I can’t believe we get to see it.”

  Vivainne shot her a look. “Like you haven’t seen it before.”

  “I haven’t,” Pip said, shaking her head.

  Vivainne blinked. Why would Pip, a Carter, never have seen this before? It wasn’t like she was an outsider to the hero world like Vivainne. Pip was practically royalty, not that Vivainne would ever say as much to her face. “Why not?”

  “My mum, human mum, doesn’t really want us involved,” Pip said. “Not until we’re old enough to make that decision for ourselves.”

  “Plus, the Oracle is supposed to be private,” Thalia said. “Especially considering this isn’t just New York’s Oracle, it’s the world’s.”

  “What?” They stepped onto a narrow staircase, shielded from the rest of the building by a solid wall.

  “Every major city has a Tower of Unity, at least in the United States,” Thalia began. “Plenty across the world do too. But you need someone to coordinate all those towers, so everyone isn’t just acting independently. That’s what our tower does, and part of why I think this is the best place to train. We’re at the center of the hero world, quite literally.”

  “Really?” She’d known all the Towers of Unity worked together, of course, but she hadn’t really thought about what that would mean.

  “You know, I was really tempted to put the world Oracle in Delphi,” Thalia said. “But that would have been really inconvenient, especially back then. So, I decided to put it in my hometown.”

  She reached the landing before the rest of them, pulling a keycard from her pocket and swiping it at the door. Rather than open, like the rest of the doors in every tower Vivainne had seen so far, a light flashed, and they were left waiting.

  After a few moments, the door opened. A tall, spindly man with shockingly red hair stepped into the doorway, flashing a wide smile. “Thalia! We were wondering how long it would take you to gather up the young ones.”

  “Not too long,” Thalia said, grinning back. She stepped into the room, motioning for Vivainne and Pip to follow. Pip marched in without hesitation, her eyes wide and sweeping as she took in the room. But she belonged here. Vivainne had to take a breath and steal her nerves before stepping into the room, taking it all in.

  A replica of the globe below sat in the middle of the room, this one with far more lights than the one on the ceiling beneath them. These, she couldn’t decipher, not without some clues.

  From the globe, her eyes slid around the rest of the room. No one in the room wore a costume, and none had a face Vivainne recognized off the bat, but that didn’t say anything about how powerful they were. They had to be, to be in this room. Vivainne certainly didn’t belong here.

  “Pip, Vivainne, these are two of our resident heroes here,” Thalia said, drawing Vivainne’s attention back to the spindly man and a tall, dark skinned woman with dreadlocks faded to white at the ends. They looked older, at least for heroes, something Vivainne immediately noticed. It wasn’t often heroes looked their age, or at least, looked a day over thirty. “Nicoli and Janean. They’re Florence’s parents.”

  “Oh! So you’re…” Pip’s eyes went impossibly wider. “Ashfall and Manhattan?”

  The moment she whispered the names, Vivainne’s jaw dropped open. How long would she have to be in this world before she stopped getting shocked by the massive heroes she met? Evidently, a long time, if Pip had the same reaction.

  “Ashfall and Manhattan,” Vivainne breathed, unable to believe the words even when she said them. Another two of the world’s most renowned heroes. Ashfall, for controlling the Yellowstone eruption that could have, and nearly did, destroy the United States. And Manhattan, for not only defeating a villain that earned her the name she was now known by, but for being there again and again to help save the world.

  “Oh, don’t react like that,” Nicoli—Ashfall— said. “Not anymore.”

  “No, let them react,” Janean, or Manhattan, said, smirking at them. “We’re incredible.”

  “They’re just a piece of the Oracle council,” Thalia said, and shot off a series of names that only left Vivainne feeling more starstruck and small. These were titans. Some of them literally, still around from the age before heroes officially existed.

  “Now, we don’t normally let just anyone see the Oracle room or council,” Nicoli said, “But Thalia seemed convinced it was the only way to convince you two to come and train over here, and she’s committed to getting you to train here.”

  “I told you,” Thalia said, grinning widely as she threw an arm over Nicoli’s shoulder. “This is where all the fun happens.”

  Vivainne certainly couldn’t argue with that one.