FOUR: Avowed Communications

Avowed Communications

Alden stared at the note for a while. He hadn’t seen Hannah since that day at the hospital, but obviously, she’d reached out to his aunt at some point. Maybe right after the accident, since this message had been buried in the Flat Stuff Place for so long.

He had gotten a video call from Arjun Thomas once, several months after it happened. It had taken place in his therapist’s office. The hero was polite, but the whole thing was extremely awkward. By that time, Alden had cobbled together enough of the details to understand that during the last few seconds of the fight, Body Drainer had run toward his unconscious body in a desperate attempt to drain Alden and re-up his own power.

Mr. Thomas had grabbed the teenage villain and…done what someone with incredible super strength did.

I should have thanked him for saving my life.

It was a new thought.

Alden had long been aware that Arjun and Hannah had technically saved his life. Twice. Once by stopping Drainer and then again when Hannah put him inside her magic bubble to keep him from bleeding out.

But any gratitude he felt had always been overshadowed by the death of his parents.

Now though…

He took a deep breath and dialed the strangely long number. The words he’d been refining all day during school were on the tip of his tongue. As soon as Hannah answered, he would say them, get his final answer, and then hang up. That would be that.

The phone rang once and then immediately connected.

“This is Alden Thorn,” he said in a rush. “I—”

“Hello, Earthling!” said a cheery, canned voice with an unfamiliar accent. “You’ve dialed in to your planet’s Avowed Communications Network. Your number isn’t registered. Please state your name, reason for calling, and level of urgency. Prank calls will be penalized.”

Alden blinked. Am I talking to the Artonan System right now? The actual System?

He had to be. It was calling him Earthling.

He hadn’t realized that a reality-altering magical interface could even have a phone number.

And his brain was so set on delivering his message to Hannah quickly and with a minimum of social discomfort that he had to think for a beat before he could answer the unexpected, but perfectly simple, questions.

“Um…this is Alden. Samuel Alden Thorn. I’m calling to talk to Hannah Elber. She’s a superhe—one of the Avowed. It’s not urgent, so I guess my urgency level is low?”

There was no pause after he finished talking. The System replied immediately.

“Oh, yes,” it said, in a pleasant voice that no longer sounded pre-recorded at all. “I see you, Alden. Hannah has listed you as a priority contact. She’s not on a quest right now, so I’ll patch you through to her. Would you prefer video, audio only, or empathetic telepathy?”

“Empathetic telepathy?” Alden asked, startled. Telepathy was a superpower, wasn’t it? Not something you just used for phone calls.

“I don’t recommend it,” the voice said. “It’s damaging for underdeveloped minds, and Hannah can only afford to pay for four-point-six-eight minutes worth. Your call would have to be brief.”

Why is it even an option, then?!

Alden held the phone farther from his ear, as if that would mitigate any potential brain damage. “Um…audio only is fine.”

“Forwarding you now.”

###

“You’re the most boring person in the world. I hope you know that.”

Hannah looked up in surprise to see her best friend standing over her. Cly was carrying a pair of plum juice mocktails, and her brown eyes were narrowed in disappointment.

“Are you seriously working during my Super Extraordinary Going Away Brunchtime Extravaganza?”

“Ah…” said Hannah, setting aside her notebook and gazing around at the restaurant. “Isn’t the party kind of over?”

Cly had finally gotten her first off-island job offer, a coveted posting in Toronto. She’d be starting in a couple of weeks, and she’d booked her favorite Sichuan place for the entire morning so that all of their friends could farewell her. It was the first time Hannah had ever had extra spicy mapo tofu for breakfast, but she had to admit it was pretty awesome.

Now, though, the buffet was empty and just a few people were left sitting at tables piled high with dirty dishes. In one corner, a Shaper who Hannah only vaguely recognized seemed to be practicing his skills by making the dregs of green tea from his cup float around in lazy circles over his table.

“The party is never over while I’m here!” Cly proclaimed, lifting the drinks over her head. Some plum juice spilled onto her sleek black bun, and she completely ignored it.

A few people raised their glasses toward her and cheered good-naturedly.

“I really am going to miss you,” Hannah said with a smile. “I hope Toronto is a blast.”

“You could always be my sidekick,” Cly said hopefully. She leaned over the table, a familiar pleading expression on her face. “I know we could make it work. I’d split my salary with you 60/40. Canada would get two for the price of one. They’d love it.”

“It would be fun, but you know I want—”

“‘To maximize a partner’s effectiveness.’ I knoooww. But why don’t you try to maximize me. I wanna be maximized. It would be cool.”

“You’re a long-range mind sniper who turns a target’s brain into custard. You’re already a hundred percent effective as long as you don’t miss. How am I supposed to maximize that?”

Actually, Hannah had made a couple of plans for how to support Cly’s skills as a Sway…just in case a need ever arose. But it didn’t change the fact that, in most circumstances, the two of them working together would be just the same as any two powerful heroes working in parallel.

The goal of a battlefield support—the goal Hannah was aiming for anyway—was to make a partner exponentially more effective than they would be without her.

Right now she was writing a team-up proposal for a fellow Adjuster currently stationed in Jakarta. He was an older, more experienced hero who did some extremely creative things with localized temperature shifts. He’d had a dedicated support briefly a few years before, and his mission success rate had shot through the roof, but the sidekick had gotten a quest summons and never returned to Earth.

Possibly he was just busy with whatever task he’d been set by the space wizards, but at this point, it was better to presume he was dead.

“I’ll take this,” Cly said, placing a mocktail on the table and snatching the notebook. “You take the drink. We’ve still got an hour on our booking for this place. Let’s play poker!”

Amused, Hannah agreed, and before long they were playing mid-day poker with the other leftovers from the party. The Shaper was a minor leaguer named David. Poor guy was getting fleeced because he hadn’t realized that their friend Nuray had a permanently engaged passive skill that heightened attraction.

Nuray’s fiancé, Ilya, was grinning behind his handful of cards. He had insane dexterity stats, so he was probably cheating, too. But none of them would ever catch him at it.

“I still can’t believe they’re letting an S-ranked Sway off the island,” Ilya said, shaking his head as Cly excitedly revealed a winning hand. “I thought for sure you were stuck here until you were old and gray.”

“I’ve been pure of heart and even purer of deed since I was fifteen,” Cly said, smiling broadly. “My record’s so lily white my own mother’s criticisms bounce off of it. I am saint. An angel. An absolute lamb. A—”

“An unholy terror that could kill us all without getting up from your seat?” Nuray said, stealing a maraschino cherry from Ilya’s glass.

Cly shook her head. “Realistically, I could only kill one of you at this range. Then, the others would stab me to death with forks and chopsticks.”

“We should do that,” said Ilya. “I haven’t had a mission bonus in ages.”

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Hannah smiled at the banter. It really was amazing that Cly had gotten the Toronto job. Most countries weren’t okay with the idea of mind controllers crossing their borders.

The majority of Sways—the ones who didn’t become villains—spent their lives on the island or in one of a few other zones owned by the Allied Heroes of Earth. Cly’s parents were superhumans, too, so from the moment she’d gotten her class she’d understood the stakes.

Perfection was the minimum requirement if she wanted to work internationally as a hero.

She’d taken it a step farther by specializing at every turn until she was finally categorized as a mind sniper instead of a manipulator. She had no subtle tweaks in her repertoire, just powerful single-target mind destruction. Very scary, but not in the way that made people in power want to keep her on the opposite side of the planet.

It was a big gamble on her part to narrow her focus so heavily. Hannah was glad it had finally paid off.

“You know, maybe before you head to Toronto, you should…oh, wait. Got a call.”

A visual notification blinked in her peripheral vision, and she reached up to swipe at it. She’d never bothered to train herself out of the habit of prodding around at thin air. Controlling your thoughts to give perfectly accurate mental commands to the System interface really wasn’t as easy as just using your fingers.

The blinking call notice was gold—the color she’d assigned to highest priority—so she didn’t even bother to check the identity. Cly was sitting across the table from her, and she didn’t currently have a partner. So that meant it could only be her mother.

“Hi, mum!” she said. “What’s up? It’s the middle of the night in London, isn’t it?”

There was complete silence for a few beats.

“Um…” said an uncertain voice. “This is Alden Thorn? Is this Han—Ms. Elber?”

Hannah dropped her playing cards.