James walked through the door in his mask and the rest of his apparel. Lyla sat on the couch and jumped when the door opened. He nodded at me, and seemed to disapprove of my disapproving expression.

“I made it out, right?” He asked.

“Barely,” Lyla said.

James flinched at her presence.

“I never got your name,” He lied. I heard the flutter from his heart.

“You won’t get it until I trust either of you,” She said, coldly. I turned to her and back at James.

“Have I given you any reason to mistrust me?” I questioned.

“Yes,” She uttered plainly. She was telling the truth. I crossed my arms.

“What would you like to know?”

“Who is he?” She asked. James looked at me nervously. He knew her, outside of this.

“No one you would recognize if he pulled that mask off,”

“He has powers, doesn’t he?”

“Yes, I feel that his display just now was proof of that,”

“And so do you,” Lyla deduced. 

“You’re right so far,” I chided.

“We have other problems,” James said, looking at his phone. “Check the news,”

I turned around and clicked open the browser on my computer. It opened and I typed in the website of the local news. It opened and we were greeted with a man with grey and brown hair swept back standing at a podium. Two large guards stood next to him as he spoke.

“I am displeased to hear about the robbery near the Slabs at noon today. It is also a great inconvenience to me to announce that the perpetrator was a well known vigilante known popularly as the Darkest,”

James growled behind me.

“CCTV footage shows the masked individual leaving the scene after getting into an altercation with the obvious hero of this scenario, a man of many feats who us at Oswald Industries are calling Polarity,”

“He named him before we could,” Lyla said, disappointed.

“The Darkest is a menace, and I would usually leave this to the police, but I am offering a three hundred thousand dollar reward to any citizen who brings in this masked criminal, in a legal way of course,”

Lyla gasped at the number, James turned and clenched his fists, no doubt trying his best to not punch the monitor. I clicked off of the browser and turned to face him.

Lyla made a move and James quickly turned around.

“Watch it,” He threatened. “Either one of you decides they want that reward than you’ve got another thing coming,”

Lyla raised her hands. “I don’t agree with that poser, and neither does Raymond,”

She nudged my shoulder with her elbow. I made a slight smile.

“If I gave you up to the police then I wouldn’t be able to look into us, our powers. That information is worth a lot more than three hundred thousand,”

James’ breath slowed and he lowered his guard.

“Sorry, just have trouble trusting sometimes,” He apologized. “Who the hell does that guy think he is?”

“That would be Homer Oswald, one of Lyndontown’s wealthiest entrepreneurs,” I explained.

“He’s a real tool,” Lyla admitted.

“This is bad, but it’s the least of our problems right now,” I diverted. “Antonio Amorelli is a leader of the Italian mafia in the city,”

“So Polarity is after him, or has it out for him. Why?” James asked.

“I could usually find out by checking out his criminal record, but I attempted that before you had shown up. Multiple suspicions of murder, assault, petty crimes, it’s harder to find something he didn’t do,”

“Anything personal?” Lyla asked. “Did he kill someone’s dog or something?”

“I found a few forum pages that had discussions about him but nothing panned out,” I explained. “But I didn’t try to track the IP addresses of the accounts they were using,”

I spun towards my monitors and typed away, trying to find the page I had looked at earlier that day. I found it on a website for mourning widowers, seeing as our suspect was most likely male. It was explained that a certain person of interest had broken into his home and murdered his wife, daughter, and dog in cold blood. 

Person of interest was what they called Amorelli on this website. I asked around on a few backwater dark web sites and the answer I got was bone chilling. Apparently Amorelli had more than enough resources to trace every person’s location if they used his last name at all. Many were victims to a similar fate as the current widower in question.

“This story stuck out to me, his username has since been deleted but the post is still here. ‘He took everything from me’, maybe its him,”

“Maybe, can you trace his profile without a name?” Lyla asked.

“Sure can,” I clacked away at the keyboard and found a matching name. “Tom Morrison, lives right outside of the suburbs, near that weird bar you go to,”

“That’s the owner, there’s no way it’s him,” Lyla argued. “I would have known if it were him,”

I clicked around and found the police report for the murder of Tom’s family. The lead detective had determined that there was not enough evidence and the case had been closed.

“Did he tell you about his family?” I asked. She shook her head and pursed her lips.

“We should reconsider looking further into this,” I stated. “For our sakes,”

“You’re kidding, right?” James objected. I peered at him with annoyance.

“It is a one way ticket to a top spot on Amorelli’s hit-list,”

“He’s the reason we should,” He argued. “The police don’t even know what’s happening here, who else is gonna help and keep a level-head,”

“Your head isn’t on straight either,” Lyla defended. James took great offense to this and clenched his fists. I didn’t push further and nodded.

“Fine, but the moment either of your families are threatened we drop it and you can go after a mob boss by yourself,” I acknowledged. He nodded at this. I turned around and started to type at the keyboard, pulling up surveillance footage of Tom’s address. There wasn’t a car in the driveway, but it was still early afternoon.

“I’ll head there now,” James said, starting towards the door. I jumped and ran in front of him at the door.

“Slow down, we don’t need to jump straight into this. If we’re gonna keep going, we’re gonna do it right,”

He furrowed his brow but then his expression calmed.

“You’re right,” He admitted.

“We should also discuss the new power you’ve discovered,” I continued, slowly making my way to the closet at the end of the couch. “I should run a blood test to see exactly what happened,”

“You haven’t done that before?” James asked. I shook my head and pulled a needle from my bag of medical supplies. I pulled a small tube from another pocket and motioned for James to sit. He obliged and sat. James rolled up his sleeve and I stuck the needle in between his forearm and bicep. I pulled out the tube and stuck it into the end of the needle. A dark red liquid exited his arm and into the small container.

“I hate needles,” Lyla groaned from across the room. Her hand was placed firmly on her forehead and over her eyes.

I ignored it and tried with all of me not to make some sort of snarky comment.

“That should be good,” I said, slowly taking out the needle. James flexed his arm and bent it back and forth. I could hear Lyla’s hand drop and then her eyes dart straight to his arm and then away quickly. I peered at her and her expression was embarrassment, but then changed to annoyed when she noticed my gaze.

“Can I talk to you in private?” She asked.

“If we did, he would hear everything,” I admitted. I pulled a small blood examination machine from my first aid kit and plugged it into my computer. I popped the tube into a centrifuge and it started to spin rapidly. She sighed and stood closer to the desk.

“You know more than you're telling,” She uttered. “I would like to know what,”

James' ears seemed to perk behind me. He looked up at us.

“I don’t know what you mean,” I answered, which was a bit of a lie. Her brow scrunched and her forehead wrinkled.

“You said you’ve seen a few people about him, trying to find anyone like him. Did any of those times go this far?” She asked, now raising her thin eyebrows.

I was the one who sighed this time.

“Admittedly, no,” I said. “And it is a change of pace that I have been craving,”

“Why me?” She questioned.

“You already asked tha-“

“This time I want the real answer, not the crap you gave me last time. No deflections, no jokes,”

I gave her a look of surprise.

“You want the truth?”

She nodded and James paid extra attention from the couch.

“I have been curious my entire life about myself, my powers, and others like me. I’ve been less successful in that last endeavor. Alas, I tested, poked, and prodded at myself to no avail. I don’t know what caused my powers, or why they are even remotely possible,” I explained. “Then a vigilante became active sometime last year, and I studied him as much as I could from a distance,”

James shifted in his seat uncomfortably. I continued.

“I also found another,” I said. “I was doing some casing around an area where he had done work, and I felt something, the presence of power, so I investigated further. I felt it stronger inside of a coffee shop, and the strongest when I was in close vicinity with one of the staff,”

Lyla’s expression was full of surprise, which I expected, but I didn’t expect the mix of understanding. It seemed she knew, or had some idea of what she was.

“All of us here have powers,” I said. “Some more powerful than others, but all the same,”

James’ heart started to beat considerably faster. I could feel a wave of warmth as his skin grew hot and his teeth gritted.

“And you didn’t tell us,” He said through those teeth.

“I was planning to, but I was trying to play it smart. It isn’t uncalled for seeing as we each have superhuman abilities,”

“How do you know I have powers?” Lyla asked. “I didn’t,”

“It’s hard to explain, simply put, I can sense others like me. I did with him, and I feel that same power from you,”

Lyla scoffed.

“How is this supposed to make me trust you?”

“I told the truth, whether you choose to believe it is up to you,”

James was quiet. He didn’t say anything to that, he seemed to still be taking in the fact that Lyla had powers. He took a deep breath and looked at her.

“He isn’t lying, his heart beat is normal,” He said. Lyla looked at him and scrunched her brows again.

“I’m supposed to believe you?” She said, disgruntled. “How am I supposed to trust a man who wears a mask?”

James recoiled at this and clenched a fist. He released it and sighed.

“It’s better you don’t know who I am,”

“Why does Raymond get to know and not me?”

“That wasn’t exactly my choice,” James' voice got deeper as he glared at me.

“Maybe we should pick this up tomorrow?” I suggested. The conversation was close to getting heated, James had tried his best to suppress it but it showed that he was getting angry. I needed time to examine the blood and wouldn’t be able to do so with the two bickering behind my shoulder either.

“We should,” James said as he walked out the door.

It slammed shut behind him.