“I don’t see why I have to go to this.” Vivainne’s words fell on unresponsive ears as she waited in the corridor for Charles to finish getting Vanya ready to leave. “Isn’t there something else I can do?”

  “Why?” Charles asked, glancing up at her from where he knelt on the floor, tying Vanya’s shoes. Giving her shoes with laces seemed like a bad idea to Vivainne, considering Vanya hadn’t been taught how to tie them yet, but Darcy had gifted her the shoes and they were pink and sparkly enough that her sister insisted on wearing them.

  “It feels… pointed.” She wasn’t complaining about having to do community service, even if it felt a bit contrived. She’d overstepped and this was her punishment. But, why not a soup kitchen? Or picking up trash off the side of the road? That was something the city desperately needed.

  Charles sighed as he stood, meeting her gaze without an ounce of give in his eyes. “It’s not pointed. The Unity programs exist to help and serve supers. Is it unreasonable to think that doesn’t extend to community service?”

  Vivainne stared at him, racking her brain for a response before letting out a frustrated breath. “No. But why aren’t you coming with me?”

  The corners of his lips twitched into a sarcastic grin. “I’m a bad influence, apparently. And there’s still trial matters to attend to.”

  She frowned. She hadn’t heard anything else about the trial since her testimony. “They need you back?”

  “I’m the lead hero on the case.” He pulled a jacket from the wall, holding it up for Vanya. “I have to be there as much as a detective would have to be, in a mundane criminal case.”

  “Ah.” Vivainne opened the door, stepping out into the cool morning, shivering in her cardigan. Anything heavier, and she’d be too warm by lunch, but she still wished for something warmer as they waited for the sun to warm the city back up. “How much longer do you think it will take?”

  Charles shrugged. “Hard to say. But we need to get going, I’m running late already.”

  They packed into a car Charles rarely used, strapped Vanya into the car seat in the back, and took off. Despite Charles’s assertion that they were running late, he pulled through a drive through for coffee and breakfast, feeding them all before dropping them off at the tower and racing to the courthouse.

  With Vanya’s small hand gripped in her right, and coffee in her left hand, Vivianne made her way inside the tower. More than she’d made out on her first trip to the tower, she could now identify groups throughout the entrance level. Some of them in classes, getting ready to train. Others there for support groups, talking resignedly in small clumps. Other people who just needed help, had a question, or wanted to find a hero to solve a problem for them.

  Vivainne walked past all of them, a simple keycard giving her entrance to the rest of the tower and the support so many people were seeking. She smiled to the man at the front desk, waiting for the elevator to open.

  The door popped open with a quiet ding, and a flash of brightly patterned fabric.

  Iris stopped mid step, grabbing Vivainne by the shoulders to stop her own momentum.

  “We have to stop meeting like this,” Vivainne deadpanned.

  Iris offered a bashful smile. “Sorry, I was just coming to look for you actually.”

  “Yeah, I know, we’re running late,” Vivainne said, sighing as Iris looked pointedly at the coffee in her hand. “This wasn’t my idea.”

  “Yeah,” Iris sighed. “That does seem like more of a Recompense move.”

  Vivainne snorted as she led her little sister into the elevator, Iris stepping right back inside. “I wonder if he knows everyone knows that about him.”

  “Oh, he does.” Iris nodded emphatically, her eyes lighting up. “One time, we were supposed to go on a really big mission to stop some loose metafauna, and he showed up half an hour late with coffee for everyone. And I mean, everyone.”

  “How does he not get in trouble for that?”

  “The power of coffee, I guess,” Iris said, shaking her head. “I just know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him without a cup of coffee, unless he’s actively in the field. Are you taking her to daycare?”

  “Yeah,” Vivainne said, giving the little girl’s hand a squeeze. Vanya didn’t return the motion, too focused on a muffin half the size of her face and littered with chocolate chips. “The Path apparently had a long shift last night, so Recompense didn’t want to wake him to bring Vanya in.”

  “Yeah, I heard they had an exciting night,” Iris said, looking at Vivainne like she expected her to pick up from there.

  “I don’t really know what happened last night,” she said apologetically. “I haven’t been paying attention to the news lately, because, well…” She waved her hand vaguely, what should be enough to indicate the entire situation she was somewhat embedded in.

  “Ah, understandable,” Iris said, nodding. “The Path ended up fighting some street cape with a reality power. There’s some interesting video out there of the scuffle. Kind of a mind fuck to watch, honestly. Sorry.” They pressed a hand quickly over their lips, giving Vanya an apologetic look.

  “Oh, I didn’t know what,” Vivainne said, ignoring the curse. Vanya had definitely heard worse. They moved through the hallway, passing by suited heroes on their way to work, busier than she usually saw it in the early morning. “Sounds dangerous.”

  “Ah, it can be,” Iris said with a shrug. “Some reality powers are more dangerous than others, it really depends. This one had the ability to bend planes.”

  “What?” She paused to glance at the hero, not sure how to interpret the words.

  “Like, directional planes. So, he could force up to be down. Sort of. It makes more sense if you look at the video. That’s why The Path got sent in for it, though. Good match up to that power.”

  Reaching the daycare, Vivainne quickly checked Vanya in, noting the director’s disappointment at Recompense’s absence. She’d have to let him know.

  Turning back to Iris, she let her curiosity bubble over. “How does that work?”

  “How does what work?”

  “Like, the deployment of heroes,” Vivainne said. “There’s a lot of heroes here at the tower, but doesn’t this tower service more than just this city? And then, figuring out who goes where…”

  “I mean, you know we have dispatch,” Iris said. “They do a lot of the like, minute to minute deployments. Staying in contact with heroes, keeping them abridge of a situation, letting them know where to go.”

  “And we have an Oracle, don’t we?” Vivainne flicked her eyes toward the ceiling, remembering how massive and yet transparent the New York Unity Tower had been. It must look different, here.

  Iris blinked at her. “We do…” she said. “You’ve been doing your research, huh?”

  “I was taken to visit the New York tower,” Vivainne said. “They showed me the Oracle there.”

  Iris stared at her, expression blank, for so long Vivainne began to worry she’d said something wrong. Was this not something heroes spoke about?

  “I hate you a tiny bit.”

  “What?”

  “Do you realize how few people ever get a glimpse at the original Oracle?” Iris demanded, leaning in and impressing her point on Vivainne.

  “No?”

  Iris let out a little frustrated groan and spun away from her. “Not even fair. I’d do anything to see it.”

  Apparently showing her the Oracle in New York City was an even bigger deal than Vivainne thought. Why had the heroes cared enough about her to show it to her? Did they know it would only intrigue her?

  They entered the elevator, riding back to the ground floor. “Who runs the tower?” Vivainne asked, straining her mind to remember. The one time she would have met the head of the tower, Artemis had been covering them.

  “Hana Malachi,” Iris answered. “Osiris. And of course, you know Recompense is on the Oracle council too, along with a few others.”

  Vivainne nodded. She’d heard the name Hana mentioned before, though she’d never met the woman. Artemis had been filling in for her at the time. But Osiris was a name she was familiar with; she’d come up with the same group of heroes as Artemis and Athena and Recompense.

  Rather than taking her on a rainbow, Iris led Vivainne to a car and set off across the city. They left the hustle and bustle of traffic behind, at least the majority of it, cutting onto back roads and moving away from the heavily industrialized area of the city, moving further into the suburbs as everything around them grew more stretched out.

  “So what did you think of New York?” Iris asked, breaking the silence.

  “I liked it,” Vivainne said. “The tower there is very different from here. There’s this massive globe on their ceiling, and you can see all the towers across the world. It’s really fascinating.”

  Iris smiled at the windshield. “I’ve heard about that. Why’d you go up there, anyway?”

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  “To tour their hero program,” Vivainne said.

  “Why?” Iris laughed. “Our program here is perfectly fine.”

  “I’m actually going to the one in New York,” Vivainne said, watching the hero carefully for her reaction.

  “Oh, really?” Iris shifted her grip on the steering wheel, taking yet another turn onto a narrow side street, houses on either side. “Did you get in?”

  Vivainne paused for a moment. “Artemis made it seem that way.”

  Iris let out a small breath through her nose, then broke a smile. “Now I’m definitely jealous. I applied there and didn’t get admitted.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” She squirmed in her seat, suddenly regretting saying anything about it. Had she only gotten in because of Charles, or because Artemis felt bad for her?

  “Oh, don’t look like that,” Iris said, a teasing smile pulling across her lips. “You have a badass power and you’re very interesting. It makes sense. I was just a little bit hoping you’d train here, so you’d be around.”

  “Oh.”

  “What about your sister?” Iris asked.

  Vivainne shrugged. She’d thought about it a lot, and when Recompense had first suggested it, absolutely hated the idea. She didn’t want to leave her sister alone, but Vanya had a home now, and Vivainne could come and visit any time. “She’ll stay here, with Charles and the others. I can come and visit her when I want. They’ve already found a school for her.”

  “That’s good,” Iris said. She turned, pulling them into a parking lot dotted with cars, pulling into an open spot near the front door of a long single story building. She put the car into park, staring at their destination, a sign on the front quietly declaring it to be a home for supers. Vivainne’s stomach turned just looking at it. “I’m glad things are working out for you. I was worried. Don’t be a stranger, though, to your friends back home.”

  They winked and Vivainne grinned back, relieved for a moment before they opened the door and reminded her why she was here.

  Iris stepped out of the car, and Vivainne followed, stomach twisting in knots as she walked behind the hero. The urge to run hit her as her eyes slid across the sign by the door, barely taking it in. Had things gone slightly differently for her, she could be living in a place like this, or if she managed to hurt her core further and shatter it entirely…

  The thought left her feeling sick. Anywhere else, anything else, would have been better. But no one would have chosen it on purpose, would they?

  Iris pushed open the nursing home door and Vivainne stepped inside, expecting to be hit with the hospital smells of disinfectant and lemony soap, the scent of the dead and the dying. Instead, the interior smelled like they’d stepped into a cinnamon farm, surrounded by warmth and the deep, comforting scent of cinnamon and pine.

  Laughter drifted up the corridor from past the front desk, a collection of adults and teens waiting for the brightly colored hero to make her entrance and speak to the secretary.

  Vivainne joined the group, tucking her hands into the pockets of her cardigan. Were they all here for community service as well, or were they just volunteers? Working with supers with shattered cores wasn’t exactly the sort of volunteer work Vivainne could imagine people deciding to do on their own, considering how dangerous it could be, and how taboo the topic of shattered cores was.

  A figure slipped out the group, movement discernible from his height before he left the cover of bodies. He slipped up beside Vivainne, pulling one hand out of his hoodie jacket and offering it to her, keeping the other tucked away.

  “Hello there.”

  “Hi,” Vivainne said, not moving to take his hand. God, if she had to deal with someone flirting with her the entire time she was here, she’d phase through the wall.

  He dropped his hand, letting it fall. “Okay, then. I’m Damien. I feel like I recognize you.”

  Her shoulders tensed at the words. She didn’t need anyone recognizing her from her mother’s trial. “It’s Vivainne,” she said quickly. “And I just have one of those faces.”

  He stared at her for a moment, blue eyes twinkling, before grinning. “No, I don’t think you do.”

  She rolled her eyes and stepped away from him, following Iris into the home.

  Vivainne paused in the doorway, her eyes wide. Why had she thought the supers here were mostly going to be old, like in a proper nursing home? Over half she saw on her first sweep of the room didn’t look like they could be a day over thirty, and more were younger than that. They were so young… How long had they been living with shattered cores?

  “Hi!” Iris called out, walking into the room with a skip in her step. She clapped her hands together, a bright smile on her face as she greeted the disabled supers. “Nice to see you all again. You know the drill. I have our volunteers here, put ‘em through their paces. As for all of you,” Iris turned her attention to Vivainne and the others. “Do your best to be helpful. Talk to the supers here, see what sort of favors you can do for them.”

  “Well.” Vivainne flinched as she realized the boy, Damian, had snuck up beside her again. “This beats picking trash up off the side of the road, I guess.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “So you’re here for community service too?”

  “Pretty sure we all are,” he said with a shrug. “Unless you’re just here for funsies.”

  The temptation flitted through her mind the lie, but she ignored it. “No.”

  His face lit up, curiosity raging. She should have just lied. “Really? What are you in for, then? I can go first, if you want.” He didn’t wait for Vivainne to respond that she’d rather not know at all, already speaking. “I tried hacking into the Tower system, so here I am. Cleaning up my act, or something like that.”

  “You… hacked into the Unity Tower?” Vivainne asked, uncertain she’d heard correctly. She certainly hoped she hadn’t heard correctly. That was a step beyond anything she’d done. How had he only gotten community service for it?

  “Well, tried,” he said, shrugging. “Obviously, it didn’t work out.”

  “I can’t imagine why you’d think it would,” Vivainne scoffed. Breaking into a hero’s house was one thing, not that she’d have ever done such a thing without being forced to. But the protections around the Unity Tower were on an entirely different level. No one had managed a successful attack on a Unity Tower, not in the past fifty years.

  “Can’t blame me for trying,” he said. “Not all of us can easily access the resources we need.”

  “If you’d walked into the tower and asked, I’m sure they would have helped you,” Vivainne said. Why was she even entertaining conversation with this criminal? She needed to get to work, helping these supers or whatever it was she was supposed to be doing. “Now excuse me, I’m going to get to work.”

  She stepped away from the boy, hoping he wouldn’t follow this time, and moved into the sitting room. The other volunteers had dispersed, and Iris stood off to the side, speaking to a man in his twenties, light distorting around his body. Every so often, a ray of light would fire off, and one of Iris’s rainbows appeared to block it without a sound, or a pause in her conversation.

  This was something Vivainne often forgot about shattered cores, and the reality that awaited her if she wasn’t careful. Supers who shattered their power cores didn’t lose their power, they just lost their ability to control their power. Any skills gathered, gone. Finesse, motor control, even impulse control, all gone. Like an injured nerve, it flared when it wanted, spasming and often causing damage to things around them. That had to be worse than just losing your power altogether.

  “You there.” She stopped as a hand snagged against her cardigan, a small shock running up her body. Arm tingling, she turned around, facing one of the older women in the room. “You’re not doing anything right now. Sit down and help me.”

  With no room to budge, and no reason not to listen, Vivainne dragged over a stool and sat down beside the woman. Grey flecked her dark hair, wrinkles lined around her eyes. That was another issue with shattering your core. Whatever it was inside a super’s power core that made them live so much longer than a normal human, it broke too. Vivainne had never seen an old super, not one who looked it.

  “What can I help you with?” Vivainne asked, folding her hands over her knees.

  “First, you can tell me your name,” the woman demanded. “It’s only polite. My name is Vivian.”

  Vivainne’s mouth twitched with a smile. “Funny coincidence, my name is Vivainne,” she said, reaching up to shake the woman’s hand.

  Vivian held up a hand, stopping her. “Oh, you don’t want to do that, dear. I only do that to people I’m trying to prank.”

  What’s that supposed to mean? “Oh, okay then,” Viv said, dropping her hand back into her lap.

  “Grab my laptop, dear,” the woman said, motioning at the table to her right. “I have a few emails I’m sure I need to respond to, and then I’m going to video call my babies.”

  Though she couldn’t imagine why the woman needed help with that, she wasn’t in a position to question, so Vivainne grabbed the laptop and opened it up. The screen lit up, asking for a password, which Vivian quickly provided.

  Opening up to Vivian’s email, Vivainne skimmed over the contents. Junk mail, magazine subscriptions, news articles full of scammy, clickbait medical advice. Medical journals about supers, power cores, and fractures cores. Staring at them, Vivainne felt sick. Of course the people here were still looking for answers, for solutions. A solution that at least one person had access to, not that she could share it.

  Vora had ruined that opportunity, leaving Vivainne as the only person who would have a successful power core implant. One she hadn’t even needed.

  “Stop snooping, girl,” Vivian said, snapping her fingers for emphasis. “Anything promising?”

  “No,” Vivainne said softly, scrolling further into the emails. The same thing, repeated over and over again. More articles. More pleas for support or funding. More dead ends.

  “Well, don’t be too descriptive,” the woman grumbled. “Why don’t you print out some of the journals for me?”

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

  Vivian rolled her dark brown eyes, the air around her growing static. “I’m not really looking for your input. I want to read the journals. Print them out for me.”

  “But why?” Vivainne shook her head, meeting Vivian’s eyes. “What good does it do? There’s not a solution out there.”

  “Not yet,” Vivian said. “Do you expect me to just roll over and stop looking, when we live in a world of constant innovation? Not even a hundred years ago, the thought of super powers was so fanciful you would have been laughed out of town if you thought they were real. Now, they’re everywhere. The face of the world has changed, the state of tech, the reality of life. So is it really so absurd to think that we won’t discover a way to fix power cores? Besides,” she sat back in the chair, fixing her dark, braided hair. “I was planning on being a nurse at one point, and I still find the medical field interesting, whether or not there are any answers there.”

  “You were going to be a nurse?” Vivainne asked, closing the laptop. She would print the medical journals like the woman wanted, even if it wouldn’t help her. Maybe Vivian would find something others hadn’t, if she read enough of them.

  “I was,” Vivian said. “Then the world exploded and I decided it was a bright idea to go and be a hero instead.”

  At the word hero, electricity surged, the lights in the room flickering. Eyes darted to Vivian, muttering quickly subsiding as the hair on Vivainne’s arms lay flat again. Her skin continued to tingle from the outburst, the low-level burst of electricity that thankfully wasn’t intense enough to hurt her.

  “You were a hero?”

  Vivian sighed loudly, enough to send a nurse glancing her way. “Not a very good one,” she admitted. “Like I said, I was more interested in the medical field than all that punchy fighty stuff. But I tried.”

  “Is that how you broke your core?” Vivainne asked. Maybe it was an insensitive question, but she needed to know. She was joining the hero program with a fractured and weakened core. She needed to know what she might be in for.

  “No.” Her hands curled around each other, swollen knuckles gripping each other tight. “My core shattered when I miscarried my youngest son.”

  “Oh.” The noise escaped before Viv could stop it, coming straight from the gut. She hadn’t ever thought that a core could shatter because of something like that, something that could happen to anyone with a womb. To not only lose your child, but a piece of yourself as well?

  She couldn’t imagine.

  “And just like that, my days as a hero were over and I couldn’t even go back to school to be a nurse,” Vivian said. “Too much electrical equipment. I could have hurt somebody.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Why are you sorry?” Vivian demanded. “It’s not as if it’s your fault. I doubt you were even born.”

  “I’m sorry because I can’t help,” she said, regret heavy in her voice. If she hadn’t said anything about her mother, maybe Vivian would now have a prosthetic core, or at least the hope she’d have one soon.

  I can’t be thinking like this. She shook her head and jumped up from the stool, tucking the laptop under one arm. “I’ll go print these for you. I’ll be right back.”