Chương 23: Part of the Team

The next morning, we headed into the city bright and early to complete the basic registration that would allow us to take more jobs. By the time we were done, the government app had upgraded my profile from provisional to basic registered Supe. So, yeah. I was one of them now. One of the big boys, so to speak.

The details on the profile were vague enough to satisfy both my and Nadia's paranoias—a time/speed adjacent power, enough information to know where to slot me when it came to the jobs I could do, and not much else.

"They really care more about bureaucracy than they care about knowing your power," I commented. The comment didn't live long, because we soon discovered the limits of the basic registration.

"Now it makes more sense," Nadia said.

"This is just low-tier freelance stuff." The rest, it turned out, needed yet more paperwork. The bigger jobs, the actual superhero stuff, fell under Halford's managed municipal rapid-response roster. And in order to work with them, even as an external freelancer, you needed a point of contact—a manager. They would handle the boring stuff for you, put your name on the roster, and you'd be on retainer and able to select or be selected for the higher-paying jobs.

"We could make do with the basic stuff," Nadia whispered to me as we looked at all the available jobs. The board looked like one of those starter quest boards in video games, full of cats to rescue or rats to clear out of basements.

"I hear a but," I told her.

"Butts don't speak, Adrian," she deadpanned before snickering.

"Anyway, yeah. Freelance work might pay the bills, but if we make it to the city roster, even low-tier…" She eyed the selected jobs we were allowed to see, put there as an advertisement.

"It would be enough to slowly repair the house, and more."

"Build an actual life," I said wistfully.

"We are building a life together," she said, grabbing my arm and wrapping herself around it.

"We don't need the roster to make it real, but the money would sure as hell make things easier." I nodded. I was thinking the same.

"Let's see what we need to do to get into the big leagues, then." ◈◈◈ It didn't take long at all. In fact, most of the work was done via the app, where our now-unlocked profile allowed us to schedule an appointment for later in the day. It was close enough that we could go on foot after grabbing something to eat.

The narrow streets of the city center were full of little restaurants, eateries and snack bars, most of them catering to summer tourists and then adapting their menus to feed the working class on lunch break. The municipal bureaucracy was all gathered in the city center, and there was no shortage of paper pushers who needed a quick, tasty and cheap bite.

"Remember our cover?" Nadia asked as she scooped up the tomato sauce with the last of her spaghetti.

"I'm your very normal civilian girlfriend, providing tactical support. You have your time power, we'll see how much we need to disclose about it, and we need the job to fix the house. Let's stick to the truth as much as possible."

"What if there are mind-readers?" I asked. It was a real possibility, and while many of them had rather obvious tells, like glowing eyes and whatnot, many others didn't.

"That's why we stick to the truth as much as possible. And, in case you feel anything, anything, Adrian, you stop time and get the fuck out of there."

"I'm not leaving without you," I said. She smiled at me.

"It's hot, knowing you'll be there to save me in case anything happens. Now let's go and see this response center." The transition between the narrow, cobblestone Mediterranean streets and the Latnium Halford Civic Response Center was stark. Locals still called it the Old Municipal Hall, but after the Onset the city had handed Latnium a long-term concession and the company had turned the old building into the local headquarters for all things super.

The streets had been widened and paved over, and the old plaque was crowded by layers of steel beams, reinforced glass, sliding doors and metal detectors. Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. Vehicles ran nonstop across the old plaza, where once there had been a fountain and now there were several colored staging lanes, bollards, wide pedestrian lanes and unloading areas. The building, much like the rest of the world, had not survived the change of eight years ago unscathed.

It had been forced to evolve, to keep pace with the new world and its many quirks. The intake room was full of winner stories. Posters, pamphlets and animated slides painted a picture of courageous heroes working for the good of humanity.

Old columns were covered with newspaper cuttings about animal rescues, thwarted bank robberies, and the tales of superheroes working for the good people of Halford, the shield that protected humanity from all the supernatural dangers the new world was throwing at them, supervillains included. There was a coffee maker on an old wooden table, a relic from the municipal offices.

The lights were warm, coming from ceiling lamps nestled between the old beams of the original building, then reflected on the crisp glass surfaces of the later renovations. Through a window, we could see the comings and goings of the actual Supes in the big central space, entering with their teams or followed by truckloads of supplies, or leaving in a hurry to deal with this and that problem. To the sides, more mundane scenes still told us we were in the hotspot of power.

A girl warming her hands with a faint light beam coming from her eyes. A man and a woman floating several inches above the ground, hovering instead of walking.

"Show-offs," Nadia said with a scoff. I agreed, but I couldn't help but feel a sense of awe at seeing so much variety, so many different powers all at once. Here, extraordinary awakenings had turned normal people into idols and celebrities, but those men and women stood side by side with others whose powers were less flashy, and yet they worked together to really make a difference. It was strange seeing it all gathered under the same Latnium logo.

The Mind Privacy billboard, the heroes who had turned a grocery-store robbery into a recruitment pitch, the bounty app, and now this. For a moment, I even forgot my fear of mind powers and simply took in the atmosphere, the shiny glamour of what they advertised as the future. Every one of the Supes was young, like Nadia and me. Of course they were. They had to be in order to have a power. The oldest Supe would have been twenty-five eight years ago, making them no older than thirty-three now.

It made a stark difference with the rest of the personnel we saw when we were finally led through a series of corridors into the more mundane parts of the response center. Clerks and workers were older, most of them unpowered, and even the managers were mostly older than the Supes they managed.

"Manager Vera is ready for your onboarding," the clerk said, showing us to a small office near the back of the building. Inside, it was more spacious than it looked, with a big window behind a massive desk. The woman sitting behind it studied us as we entered without pausing in her work. Her hair was black as the night, gathered in a precise bob, and her clothes were impeccable.

"Supe," Nadia whispered to me as we sat. The woman looked older than her twenties, more mature, but if Nadia was right, then she couldn't have been much older than me. Deep blue eyes regarded us from behind rectangular, thin-framed glasses. A lock of black hair had escaped the precision of her bob and spilled down one side of her face.

"Welcome to the Latnium Halford Civic Response Center," she said with a practiced smile that somehow didn't feel as fake as the words she spoke from rote memory.

"I'm Manager Vera, and I'll be handling your onboarding today. That does not mean you'll be working under me if you pass the assessments, but it does mean I get to decide whether you're ready to enter them." She typed something, then turned her screen enough that both Nadia and I could see it.

"Adrian Hale. Some sort of unspecified temporal or speed-adjacent power. Three completed bounties, no freelance work, and straight to the managed roster." Her eyes settled on me.

"Your profile tells me almost nothing. Professionally inconvenient." A pause.

"Personally interesting." And a hint of a smile. I wasn't sure how to answer that. Her attention shifted to Nadia.

"And you're the tactical support."

"I'm no Supe," Nadia said.

"I didn't ask if you were." Vera glanced at the three completed claims on the screen.

"Did you help plan these?"

"Every one."

"All of them," Vera said.

"Then the profile is underselling you too. Good. I'm onboarding both of you. He may be the registered client, but you're part of the team." Nadia's irritation disappeared so quickly it was almost funny.

"My thoughts exactly."

"Good. This will be easier if we don't waste time establishing the obvious." Vera turned the screen back to face her and began to tap away with quick, confident movements.

"Your secrets are yours to share. My job is to work out what you can safely do with what you're willing to disclose." For some reason, I felt like she was looking solely at me as she said that. I couldn't help but notice her eyes again, and the hint of a smile at the corner of her mouth. She was very attractive, but I tried my best to avert my eyes before Nadia noticed. She had already noticed. Of course she had. Nadia's mouth twitched, but she spared my ribs from being elbowed.

"Now," Vera said, perfectly at ease.

"Let's do a proper onboarding, shall we?"