The group slipped in among a class of college students on a tour. Shudder kept glancing back and forth until Hedge placed a hand on her shoulder. She silently reminded herself that even though she couldn’t see his illusion, that everyone else could. To her, it might seem that she was standing in the middle of a highly secure lab’s lobby dressed as a not-quite-obscure supervillain alongside two similarly-costumed allies, but everyone else just saw a trio of students with the appropriate ID lanyards.

Of course, Hedge’s magic couldn’t prevent Shudder from drawing attention to herself by behaving suspiciously, so she tried to relax and remind herself that even if Hedge’s enchantment suddenly vanished, she could easily bail on the job and escape well before anyone who stood a chance of capturing her arrived. The worst case scenario was a lost payment and suffered a small blow to her reputation. Nothing she particularly cared about. Still, there was something unsettling about relying on something so intangible to keep herself from being noticed.

Finally, the tour group began to move. At their guide’s behest, each student scanned their badge to pass through a small set of gates that blocked the way to the lab’s inner hallways. When Hedge’s turn arrived, he mimed holding up a badge to the gate’s scanner. At the same time, their other companion, Gremlin, leaned forward as if to whisper to him and casually set her hand on the scanner. It beeped and the gates opened, letting Hedge through. Gremlin nodded to Shudder and stood to the side to let her go first. Following Hedge’s lead, she mimed scanning a badge, hoping Hedge’s illusion would make the action look normal. The gates opened and she passed through. Gremlin followed behind a moment later.

Once they were through, the trio quickly separated from the tour group by slipping down a side hall, then into a storage room. With a sigh of relief, Hedge wobbled and then braced his spindly body against a shelf.

“Spell’s gone?” Gremlin asked.

Hedge nodded. “I’ve never held an illusion for that long.”

“I’m guessing you won’t be able to do it again?” Shudder asked.

Hedge shook his head. Hedge’s claim to fame was being a self-taught magic user. As impressive as that sounded, in practice it meant his spells were short-term and unreliable. For the remainder of this job, anyone who saw them would see them as they really were, Gremlin with her pointed ears and leather jacket, Hedge in his patchwork coat, and Shudder in her black cloak with yellow accents. Even if they were too small-time to have any real notoriety, anyone could see that they were supervillains. Being seen was almost an inevitability now and once they were seen, they would need to move fast.

“How do we even find it?” Gremlin asked.

“Can’t you hack a computer or something?” Hedge suggested.

Gremlin gave him an incredulous look. “I’m not a hacker. I can make things malfunction, but I don’t have complete control of the results. Opening a door is one thing, but computers are way too complex. I thought you were going to use your magic to, like, scry its location or something.”

Hedge shook his head. “Too tired. I need time to gather up energy from the—”

“What about you, Igor?” Gremlin interrupted, looking at Shudder.

Low-level types in the superpowered underworld had a sort of community of their own, separate from the crime lords and would-be conquerors, complete with its own terminology. Non-powered people hired in numbers to work as muscle were ‘minions,’ costumed types with codenames who more influential villains traded like baseball cards were ‘small fry,’ and a fanatically loyal lab assistant to a mad scientist was an ‘Igor.’ Technically, these days Shudder was more of a small fry, but even two years after the fall of Dr. Tlön, the other small fry hadn’t forgotten her loyalty.

Shudder shrugged. This was the trouble with working with these randomly assembled groups. No one knew what anyone else was capable of. “I don’t know, maybe. What are we after, again?”

“Seriously?” Gremlin asked. “You didn’t pay any attention when he told us the job?”

Shudder rolled her eyes. “It’s always the same. Some asshole needs some device because he thinks it’ll make him big. How am I supposed to remember what each one is called?”

“A psionic wave detector,” Gremlin said sharply.

Shudder blinked, suddenly interested. “Wait, really?” It was true that Charles Ranium University had one of Fairfield’s few psionic wave detectors, but it was nothing more than a research tool. “What does he want with a psionic wave detector?” She couldn’t even remember the name of the man who had hired them. Was he a scientist?

“He didn’t say,” Hedge huffed. “Probably going to use it to find Repulse’s true identity.”

“It’s not a geiger counter,” Shudder replied. “You can’t detect the strength of a signal with the one here and it’s too large and unwieldy to carry around the city. Plus, outside of sterile lab conditions it’ll be picking up false signals left and right.”

“Maybe he’s going to soup it up,” Gremlin suggested. “Why do you care, all of a sudden?”

“I don’t. It’s just…” Shudder didn’t finish the sentence. It was just a bit of a blast from the past. She’d stolen a psionic wave detector for Dr. Tlön once. The two had used it to perform endless tests as they’d built Orbis Tertius. She shook her head. That was far behind her now. Whatever this person wanted the detector for, it couldn’t possibly match up to Dr. Tlön’s ambition and it was none of her business anyway. “Yeah, I can find it. But as soon as I do, we’ll be on a time crunch.”

The others nodded, so Shudder opened the door and leaned out to peek around the frame. A security guard had just walked past, but he paused to take a drink from a nearby water fountain. Perfect timing.

Gesturing for her allies to follow, Shudder stepped out into the hallway. She cleared her throat loudly, in a way that was a clear demand for attention. The guard looked up and as his eyes widened, surprise briefly flickered from him like an old light. It was tempting to latch onto it mentally, but that risked sending him into a panic. Instead Shudder held back.

“Keep quiet and nothing bad will happen,” she commanded.

For as long as she could remember, Shudder had been able to sense an aura-like presence from anyone she interacted with—in fact, anything capable of thought. It had never occurred to her that it was anything unusual; she thought it was a normal part of communication, until she had mentally lashed out at a bully, leaving him visibly unsettled, and discovered that what she had been sensing all this time was fear.

She couldn’t create fear out of nothing. Everyone had it, of course, but a fear being mildly felt had a tightness about it, making it difficult to hook and tug even if she knew how to find it. It was even worse when Shudder didn’t know what to look for. If a powerful fear was well hidden, she wouldn’t know what to search for mentally. Thankfully “The known supervillain staring me down” was usually a safe guess.

The real art to her power was nudging and twisting fears in particular ways in order to get people to do what she wanted. In this case, it was easy to imagine what the security guard must be feeling, and a little psychic prodding confirmed her suspicions. With a few mental tugs, the fear of what might happen if he tried to raise the alarm, of what his potential assailants’ powers might be, of bodily harm and injured bystanders were all enhanced until the fear of what might happen if these criminals got what they wanted was carefully pushed aside. This left him with a clear path forward. Keep quiet and nothing bad would happen.

“What do you want?” the guard asked. His voice was steady and his body was tense as if he was planning to fight. His steadiness was impressive given the amount of terror he must have been feeling.

“Psionics research,” Shudder replied. “Which lab?”

“That’s, uh, room 124,” the guard answered. “I’ll escort you. Just take what you’re after and don’t hurt anyone.”

Shudder nodded. “As long as we get what we want.”

The security guard led them around a corner and down another hall, past a few surprised-looking lab assistants before finally pausing at a door. “It’s here. Let me enter first and clear everyone out.”

Gremlin pushed past the guard to open the door. Shudder and Hedge moved to follow her.

“You don’t have to do this,” the guard said. “Christ, you’re just kids.”

“Still have to eat,” Hedge replied.

Inside, the lab was split into two sections. The outer observation section looked like a normal office, albeit a somewhat cramped one. A pair of researchers sat at a counter-style desk which was crammed with notes, monitors, a pair of laptops, and a microphone. The researchers looked up in surprise at the sudden intrusion.

“It’ll be in the inner room,” Shudder said, gesturing to another door.

Gremlin pushed it open and peeked inside. “There’s nothing there.”

“Someone took it,” one of the researchers said.

“We were going to call security in a minute,” the other added. They both sounded distracted, as if they were busy concentrating on something else. For the second time today, a memory was sparked in Shudder’s mind. This time, a memory she refused to look at directly because what it implied was terrifying and would demand to be addressed as soon as she acknowledged that it was real.

Panic rising, she rushed to the door to look into the inner lab. There was a large table, a pair of chairs, and a thick cable leading to nothing. The psionic wave detector was gone.

“Where the fuck—?”

Before she could finish the sentence she felt a heavy impact in her side. Her footing lost, she was forced across the room. Just as she was bracing herself to hit the wall, she passed through it as if it wasn’t there. Instead, she impacted with the ground in the next room and swiftly kicked her assailant off of her. In a moment, both were on their feet and staring each other down. This room was unlit, but it wasn’t difficult to recognize her attacker’s angular, carapace-like armor which completely covered his head and body and ended in claws on each finger. 

Whisper.

“Seriously?” Shudder asked in frustration. “You show up at, like, every job I do. Do you have a crush on me or something?”

“I’ve gone easy on you in the past, Shudder, but now you’ve gone too far,” Whisper said. His voice was raspy and soft yet clear even from a distance.

They seemed to be in the outer section of a lab with a similar setup to the neighboring one. The only light came from the cracks around the door leading to the hallway. Whisper was standing between Shudder and it. She drew her baton and tried to figure out how she could get past him quickly.

“What are you talking about?” she asked, stalling.

“I saw what you did to that tour group,” Whisper hissed. “You have an Uqbar. You of all people should know what Tlön’s technology is capable of. Why would you help someone recreate it?”

Whisper was putting words to the fear Shudder hadn’t wanted to acknowledge; the people in the lab had looked remarkably like they were under the lingering effects of the Uqbar. But there was no time to dwell on the implications of that. There was no chance Whisper would listen to any attempt to claim innocence, so Shudder decided on a different approach.

She flashed a smirk. “Finally figured it out, huh? Trust me, what we’re planning is going to make Orbis Tertius look like child’s play.”

That produced the spark of fear she needed. Whisper had spent over a year investigating Tlön and Shudder. He knew exactly what Orbis Tertius was capable of. The possibility of something even worse created a fear that was deep, urgent, and existential. Easy to mentally latch on to, force to the surface, and enhance until it dominated Whisper’s thoughts.

The armored figure took a step back and Shudder wasted no time in swinging her baton at Whisper’s knee. Even through his armor, the blow was enough to send him collapsing into a kneeling position, giving Shudder just enough time to fling the door open and run out into the hall.

She didn’t bother looking for her companions, instead sprinting forward to put distance between herself and Whisper who had already recovered and phased through a wall to pursue her. The hallway lights would sap his strength, but if she tried to fight he would keep her stalled long enough for someone else to intervene. There was no time to orient herself, so she prayed she was heading either east or south and skidded to a halt at a door she hoped led to an exterior room, twisting around to face her pursuer just as he was grabbing at her.

She swatted away one hand with her baton but the other followed a moment later, scoring a gash on Shudder’s arm. Ignoring the pain, Shudder attempted to throw a punch with her left arm, but Whisper caught her wrist.

“Try messing with my head now,” he said.

Whisper knew her powers too well. Over the course of their many encounters, he’d worked out that any time he had the upper hand, her ability became more difficult to use. However, Shudder had long ago learned that confidence could be exploited nearly as easily as fear. With her free elbow, she lowered the handle of the door behind her, then, in a single fluid motion, she heaved herself backwards, forcing the door open and twisting around to pull Whisper into the room.

This room looked to be a chemistry lab of some sort, all long counters and beakers and Bunsen burners, but the only thing that interested Shudder was the row of windows that lined the wall. Just as Whisper already knew her weaknesses, she had worked out that he avoided sunlight like the plague. She pulled mentally at Whisper’s fear as she leaned into him, pushing him towards the windows.

Whisper made a frustrated hissing sound. “They’ll keep manipulating you, Shudder,” he said. “Until you decide not to let them.”

With that, he released her, and sank into the floor and was gone.

She examined her wrist where Whisper had gripped it. His claws had dug through the layers of black nanofiber that formed her sleeve all the way to her skin, drawing blood. He was usually very cautious with those claws, favoring punches and kicks, likely out of fear of causing irreversible damage to his opponent. The last time he had used his claws on her had been back when she had worked with Dr. Tlön. Attacking during the day was unusual for him, too. He must have already been convinced that she was involved with a major threat.

An alarm started blaring, shaking Shudder from her contemplation and causing the already-tense researchers crowded at the far end of the room to collectively jump. They had kept their distance from the costumed figures who had burst into their lab and their growing fear was filling the room like a fog. Shudder ignored them, however, and made for the windows. Doubling back to look for her allies only risked more trouble, so she broke one of the windows with her baton and carefully climbed out.

Outside, she made her way across campus, avoiding sidewalks and staying at the backs of buildings. When navigating a less-familiar area like this, especially during the day, her rule was to look for dumpsters. Since people tried to keep them out of sight, they formed a guide to avoiding the most frequented areas. Eventually, after climbing a small wall and making her up a hill, she reached a tree-lined walking path where the foliage was thick enough that she could be sure that she was completely out of sight. Here, in a bush, she’d hidden a backpack containing a first aid kit and a change of clothes. After a few minutes she had bandaged herself up and changed into a nondescript shirt and jeans. The shirt was long-sleeved despite the September heat, but it was less suspicious than walking around with obvious injuries.

With her costume now stuffed into the backpack she was free to make her way off campus at her leisure. Ignoring the sirens of the arriving police, she made her way up a hillside and to a bus stop. Several stops later, she arrived at a business district. It was an older part of town, where both buildings and roads had been built, renovated, demolished, and rebuilt so many times that the architecture no longer made sense. Down one of the roads of this district a sidewalk ended in a sort of wooden ramp which rose up from the street and curled around the side of a building before ending at the entrance to a cafe. It was so well-hidden from the street that Shudder wondered how it received any business. However, it made for a perfect rendezvous point and, sure enough, as soon as Shudder entered she caught sight of Hedge and Gremlin. They, too, had changed out of their costumes and into casual clothes. Gremlin’s ears were hidden under a hood. They already had drinks, so she ordered herself some tea before joining them.

“So what the hell happened to you back there?” Gremlin asked.

“Whisper happened,” Shudder sighed.

“Whisper,” Hedge said thoughtfully. “Unlicensed hero, right? Aren’t you his nemesis or something?”

Gremlin snorted. “What kind of pathetic hero would have an Igor for a nemesis?”

Shudder rolled her eyes at the slightly insulting reply. “He was the first one to investigate Dr. Tlön back then. Since then, he shows up at half my jobs and screws up everything. Such an asshole.”

“So, what, you think he hid the detector from us or something?” Hedge asked.

Shudder shook her head. “I think it was stolen by someone else. He was probably following the other thieves and assumed we were involved when he saw us. Speaking of which, did you find any clues in the lab?”

“What are we, cops?” Gremlin asked sharply. “We got out of there as soon as you vanished.”

“All I noticed were those dazed scientists,” Hedge said. “And a bit of magical residue. But why does that matter? We’re not getting paid enough to hunt down the other thieves. Unless you think Giaour’s going to do something to us if we come back empty-handed.”

“That’s always something you have to consider,” Gremlin admitted.

Giaour. That was the name of the scientist who had hired them. A dark-haired man in a brown suit, lacking the usual renegade scientist look. Shudder briefly wondered whether that was a real name or a codename, but that question was unimportant now.

“I’m not worried about him. I’m worried about the other thieves. I think they had an Uqbar.”

“That was Tlön’s tech, right?” Gremlin asked. “Slows down people’s thoughts or something?”

“It disrupts executive function,” Shudder explained, “making it impossible for the target to settle on any particular action. It was our second successful psionic projector, but it was destroyed.”

Gremlin shrugged. “So? Someone probably found a stash of her old equipment and some of her notes and built their own. What does it matter?”

“It matters because if they can build an Uqbar, then they might be able to replicate more of Dr. Tlön’s tech.”

“Like the bomb?” Hedge asked quietly, as if asking the question too loudly made the threat more real.

Gremlin was beginning to look annoyed. “Again I ask, so? Whisper already knows about it. Let him deal with it. We need to focus on what we’re going to tell Giaour.”

“You don’t think we should look into this?” Shudder asked. “If something like Orbis Tertius were to fall into the wrong hands—”

“And who exactly is the right hands?” Gremlin asked, raising her voice. “You and Tlön?”

Shudder was taken off-guard by Gremlin’s sudden anger, and hesitated as she tried to think of a response. “Well, no, of course not. But there are people who would do even worse things with it.”

“Worse than enslaving the entire planet?” Gremlin had dropped any pretense of pretending to be normal customers. Shudder glanced back at the two baristas at the counter, who stared back. This was a useful meeting place, but it wasn’t safe to talk openly about crime. She wondered how long before they would call the police.

“Hey, Grem, take it easy on her,” Hedge said. “That was years ago.”

Gremlin wheeled on Hedge. “Don’t you get it? They were going to brainwash everyone. That includes us. Igors always put themselves above the rest of us. They think they’re special because they were chosen by whatever self-obsessed scientist they work for. She’s still perfectly happy to mess with people’s heads if it suits her. She just doesn’t want anyone else to have that power.”

“Come on, Grem,” Shudder protested. “I just make people scared. It’s just like any other power.”

“No, it isn’t. And don’t pretend like it’s just scaring people. I saw what you did to that security guard. He wasn’t shitting his pants. He was calm.”

Shudder didn’t like people knowing just how subtly she could wield her power, mostly because it inevitably led to a single question. A question Gremlin now gave voice to.

“If she can use her powers and no one can tell, what proof is there that she isn't using them all the time? On us?”

“That could be said of anyone,” Shudder replied weakly. “We all know it. The only way we’re able to work together is that we trust that Gremlin isn’t going to screw with our cell phones and Hedge isn’t going to place some curse on us. My powers are no different.”

But of course it was different. Shudder knew that. For whatever reason, despite a vast world of superpowers with horrifying implications, nothing seemed to frighten people more than mental manipulation. Maybe it was because it was nearly impossible to know for sure if one’s thoughts were being altered. Maybe it was because people considered their thoughts the most central part of themselves. Shudder wasn’t sure. To her, it just seemed like another talent, but looking at the anger on Gremlin’s face and the fear on Hedge’s, it was clear that she was in the minority.

She felt her phone buzz and dug it out of her pocket as an excuse to look at something else. The message she found would normally have her tensing with anxiety, but now it came as a relief. Even her increasingly distrustful allies would agree that it couldn’t be ignored.

“Looks like you two will have to deal with Giaour. Arachne has a job for me.