Marquise led us through the admin building with a casual stride, utterly uncaring that a fuming A-rank superhero was but a step behind her. Maisie’s power signal was buzzing like an angry hornet, but I was getting absolutely nothing from Marquise herself. Apparently, she was supremely confident in her safety, here. I knew that Maisie wouldn’t ever do something so reckless as to attack another licensed superhero, but it was telling that Marquise didn’t even consider the possibility worth preparing for, at least on the surface.

  I hadn’t had cause to spend much time in Aegis’ admin office in my past visits; in fact, I didn’t recall ever going beyond the reception area, where Dad had maybe dropped off some paperwork once or twice. In retrospect, he’d never seemed comfortable being here, even before Marquise had moved in. I could distinctly recall a tension in his smile that he’d brushed off when I’d asked him about it.

  So the interior of the admin building past the reception area was new to me, and what met me there actually took me off guard a bit. I don’t know what I’d been expecting from the building that was well known to be Marquise’s domain—I like to think I was rational enough not to buy into the rumours about her, but I had definitely anticipated something more intimidating than massive artworks depicting scenes of superheroes in action lining the marble walls. There wasn’t even a hint of black.

  The admin building was one of the earlier ones to be built in AA’s campus, and thus it had kept with the theme of the Olympians. The corridor directly adjoining to the reception room was more reminiscent of a Greco-Roman building than any of the more modern affairs dotting the rest of the campus. With its marble and mosaics, I actually kind of liked it.

  Still, the artworks Marquise had chosen to decorate the place baffled me at first glance. My initial thought was that they were simply holdovers from whoever had been in charge of this building before she’d taken over, but the very first painting I got a good look at disabused me of that notion immediately.

  It depicted a now-deceased hero called Daydream at his most famous moment, when he’d used his illusion ability to calm a villain who’d been going on a rampage due to a nervous breakdown. A photo of him embracing the villain had gone viral, propelling Daydream to fame in an instant and pushing him towards a path of advocating for mental health. The artwork showed Daydream in the moments before the picture was taken, facing down the rippling muscle of the charging villain.

  That incident had occurred five years ago. Three years after Marquise switched to the good side.

  I found myself engrossed in the artworks as we passed through the white corridors. There were dozens of them, all showing superheroes at their greatest and most famous moments of triumph, except never just rehashing the images that had made heir deeds famous. Mastodon diverting a meteorite, showing the man leaping up into the sky to meet it, rather than the well-known image of his fist against the icy space rock, cracks radiating out from his strike. Lightspeed rescuing a plane that had lost power, the impressionist painting showing a shining blur racing alongside the smoking plane, rather than the award-winning photo of her beneath the fuselage, straining to keep it up in the air for a bit longer. Kingfisher at the time when he’d changed public opinion of him by dragging some drowning kids out of a riptide with his net; in the artwork, he was sprinting along the beach towards the endangered children.

  And there were many more of them along those lines. Dozens. They were all great deeds. Inspirational. My heart soared with appreciation for the human race as I witnessed evidence of more and more deeds that showed just how frequently people would step up to do what’s right when called upon.

  But I couldn’t help noticing there was another theme in common between all these pictures.

  “These superheroes are all dead,” I whispered.

  “Yup,” Maisie replied at full volume without looking back, her gaze probably burning holes in Marquise’s back. “How noble of her to honour the fallen, right? I’m sure it’s a coincidence that they’re all old foes of hers.”

  It took a second for her words to sink in. All I managed in reply was a small, “Oh.”

  Marquise didn’t react to our chatter. In fact, she didn’t even look back at us even when she reached a pair of white double doors nestled surprisingly inconspicuously towards what had to be the back of the building. There was no name placard on them, no indication of what lay beyond. They opened on their own as she approached, revealing a spartan, windowless office that consisted of nothing more than a desk and three chairs. Nothing adorned the white walls, and the light seemed to come from everywhere at once. It was mildly unnerving in its lack of decoration, compared to the rest of the building.

  There’s no way this is all that’s in there, usually, I thought, wondering if she was more concerned about Maisie breaking her stuff than she’d implied. A part of me really wanted Maisie to break her stuff, all of a sudden.

  The last artwork before her office had showed Valiant, his spear and shield in hand, standing battered and bruised with his defeated teammates around him, refusing to surrender against a foe that overwhelmingly outclassed him. I’d barely glanced at it for a second, but that’d been all I needed. I’d seen the famous photos it was based on too many times to count.

  Marquise strode into the room and took a seat on the other side of the desk, leaving Maisie and I to stand, baffled, at the doorway.

  “Not sure I like what you’ve done with the place,” Maisie said, grimacing, her eyes darting around as if she was searching for a trick.

  “Sometimes, it’s good to ensure there are no unnecessary distractions,” Marquise replied. She gestured to the chairs in front of her, one eyebrow raised.

  Gritting her teeth, Maisie stepped into the room, stomping towards the chairs, and I followed her. Except I only took one step before stopping, my gaze snapping to the corner directly to my right.

  In the still, quiet room, the signal emanating from that spot was practically deafening. It was weak, fluttering like the sound of a moth’s wings, but it was unmistakeable.

  “Hm.” Marquise drew my attention back to her. Her eyes were sharp as they flicked between me and the corner the signal was still coming from. She raised a hand, and the signal quieted to a low buzz. “What gave it away, exactly?”

  “The power signal,” I replied. “What are you playing at, here?”

  Maisie had been halfway to sitting down, but when she caught on, her eyes blazed like stars, and she shot back up to her feet. Instead of whirling on Marquise and firing off accusations like I expected, though, she stomped towards the corner of the room. “Show yourself or get squashed.”

  There was a moment of silence, tension building, before Marquise nodded minutely. There was a ripple in space, the power signal spiking to a crescendo before fading away to nothing at the same time as a young man in an armoured full-body suit was revealed. His features were plain, his expression blank, and his dark hair shorn short. He wasted no time on apologies or explanations, simply striding from the room without a word.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  Maisie watched him go, then finally whirled on Marquise. “So you were worried after all!”

  “Not exactly.” Marquise was still looking at me. “Just a test.”

  “A test. That’s how it always is with you. Constantly poking people to see how they react,” Maisie said, striding back over to the table and looming over the vice-principal. “And what did you get from this one, huh?”

  “Your brother is sensitive to power signals,” Marquise said. She still hadn’t looked away from me, and her head slowly tilted to one side. “I always find those… interesting.”

  I swallowed, caught between glaring back with defiance and taking a step back. The force of her attention was unnerving, like she was trying to pick me apart with her eyes. It made me feel like a lab specimen on a table, waiting to be dissected. For a moment, I considered the possibility she was using her power on me, but there was still no signal at all coming from her. Not a peep.

  As if sensing my distress, Maisie stepped between us, blocking Marquise’s line of sight to me. “You’d better lose that interest damn quickly.”

  Marquise actually sighed at that. I couldn’t see what expression she was making anymore, but I imagined it wasn’t impressed. “And we find yet another promise I cannot make. As the vice-principal of Aegis Academy, it is quite literally my job to take an interest in its students.”

  There was a moment of silence as her words sunk in. When they registered, my heart seemed to leap and sink at the same time. If she was implying what I thought, then I really had been given a spot in AA, fulfilling a dream that had occupied my thoughts for as long as I could remember.

  The cause of the sinking sensation was harder to diagnose.

  Maybe it was just the fact I had to find out from her of all people.

  “So Emmett passed the entrance exam?” Maisie breathed. I tried not to feel hurt at the note of disbelief in her voice. She probably didn’t mean it like that.

  “If he didn’t, I would have sponsored his enrolment myself,” Marquise said.

  Once again, the room lapsed into silence as her statement registered, the implications bearing a heavy weight. Maisie was the first to find her voice, and she sounded too baffled to remember to be angry, blurting out a simple, “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  Shaking off my stupor, I stepped forward to Maisie’s side, meeting the vice-principal’s eyes. She was cool as ever, but there was something to her gaze, something more than the distant disinterest she’d been showing to Maisie ever since we’d intruded upon her domain, but I didn’t know her well enough to pin an emotion to it.

  All I knew was it unnerved me.

  “Why?” I asked her. “I don’t believe for a second that you value my actions in the practical exam.”

  “You recently tested lower on the Shimada Scale than a previous test,” she said.

  “I did,” I admitted, grimacing. I didn’t bother asking how she knew that. “So you want me to attend AA to satisfy your academic curiosity?”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Well, I don’t see what else it could be. My power getting weaker doesn’t strike me as an indication that my powerlessness is a temporary state of affairs, and a powerless kid doesn’t strike me as something that would interest you for altruistic reasons.” I stared her down, trying to catch something, anything from her expression, but it was hopeless. “But then again, I don’t have the slightest clue as to your motivations. I don’t know what you want or why.”

  “Feel free to ask, Mister Shaw.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Maisie frowning. Her power signal had settled to a dull whine, her ability inert but ready. There were no other power signals nearby… and it struck me, then, that that was strange in and of itself. Walls never usually blocked them.

  I looked around. “This room is a signal isolation chamber?”

  “It is,” Marquise said.

  “You’re interested in power signals.”

  “You could say that.”

  “Answer him properly,” Maisie growled.

  “I believe that our understanding of powers and the signals they emit is lacking, and it is of paramount importance that we correct this inadequacy, yes.” She paused, steepling her fingers beneath her chin. “So, yes, I am interested in signals, and thus I am interested in your sensitivity to them, Mr Shaw.”

  “And why, exactly,” I said, glaring with all the venom I could muster, “do you think I’ll help you with that?”

  There was another moment of silence, and it felt good to be the one who caused of it this time, rather than on the receiving end. Beside me, Maisie smirked.

  Marquise leaned back in her chair, inspecting me. “I’m sensing some hostility towards my person,” she said dryly.

  “What did I tell you about pretending to have a sense of humour?” Maisie cut in, stepping across and in front of me, drawing Marquise’s attention. “I know you’re faking it, trying to make Emmett think you’re not that bad. It’s creepy.”

  Marquise looked at Maisie then, and I realised it was the first time her attention had strayed from me since I’d sensed her hidden lackey. There was no change in her expression or demeanour, but the atmosphere became heavier, somehow. I could swear the temperature in the room dropped.

  “Explanations, then,” Marquise said, and I flinched. Her voice hadn’t been vibrant before by any means, but it was positively arctic now. I’d thought Maisie had been exaggerating when she said the vice-principal was pretending earlier, because she was already so composed that the idea it was an act to make her seem more personable seemed absurd.

  “That’s better,” Maisie muttered, but I couldn’t help but notice the minute tremor in her voice.

  Marquise stared her down, unblinking. “Tell your brother what you’ve kept secret as part of our agreement.”

  Yet again, there was a pause. 3-1 to Marquise. “Really?” Maisie asked, sounding truly caught off guard now.

  “Elaborate to your heart’s content,” Marquise said. “I give you my express permission, and will not consider our deal broken.”

  Maisie slowly looked between me and Marquise a few times, lips pursed, then nodded to herself. “In my last year at AA, there was a guy called Jake. Massive douchebag, but with heaps of plausible deniability for the shit he pulled. At least at first. He started escalating when a bunch of us banded together to deal with the bastards sabotaging other students like I told you about, and ultimately, he got expelled for hurting a minor villain really bad during a work experience placement.” Maisie took a step forward, confusion forgotten as her anger flared once more. “Except he didn’t get expelled, did he?”

  Marquise said nothing.

  “I saw him skulking around campus a month later, late at night after a tutoring session I’d been running. I thought he’d just snuck in; AA is a big place, and it’s confusing enough that maybe he’d found some hidden entrance. So I followed him. My power lets me be pretty stealthy, when the moment calls for it, y’know? Thought I’d catch him dead to rights and get the sweet satisfaction of kicking him out. Except then he met up with a few other students I didn’t recognise in a place I hadn’t been to before, down in the fuckin’ depths of the campus. And guess who they reported to?”

  Once more, Marquise said nothing. She waved a hand for Maisie to continue.

  “To this day, I don’t know what they were doing there,” Maisie continued, looking at me. “But I have my guesses. Maybe now she’ll finally tell me the truth, if she wants your help with her shady research or whatever. My best guess? She’s running her own hero programme right under the school’s nose, shaped in her image.”

  My breath caught. “And Sooyoung and Taeyong, those assholes from the test, were looking to join it.”

  Those words hung in the air for a moment, before Marquise leaned forward, resting her elbows on her desk. “Eight years ago, Herakles and I had an interesting conversation, much like this one,” she began.