“I need you to say that again.” I say, doing my best to stay calm. It’s not working, but scaring Reyna more isn’t going to help the situation. I can lose my cool as soon as the phone call is done; right now, I need to be measured.

  “I don’t know where Amelia is. She was supposed to be over two hours ago for our marathon, but she hasn’t messaged me since last night, and I just kept going to voicemail when I tried to call her.” Reyna explains, speaking quickly.

  I pace the room, having a really bad feeling about this, especially if it’s been almost twenty-four hours since Amelia could have potentially vanished.

  Needing to confirm if it is what I think it is, I ask the burning question. “What was Amelia doing yesterday? Her entire schedule, if you know?” I ask, hating myself for going no contact with everyone for a few days so that I could reset.

  “Uh, she said she needed to report something to a friend and after that she was going to go read at the library. You know where she reads to kids from like seven to eight?” Reyna tries doing her best to not hyperventilate.

  “Do you know if she was walking everywhere or driving?” I ask, not sure which one I want to be the answer.

  “Walking? Her car is still at home? But maybe she’s home sick?” Reyna tries going with a reasonable conclusion.

  “I’ll check her apartment to see if she’s sick.” I assure her as I grab my keys and the box with the healing patches. If this turns into a fight, my body being able to stitch itself back together could be useful.

  “You have a key?”

  “Something like that.” I decide not to answer.

  I elect not to wear the sunglasses tonight. If I have to sneak into that lab, I’ll find something to cover my face, but they don’t know what my eyes look like now, either any? edge, even a disconcerting one that I have mixed feelings about I’m going to take.

  “Don’t do something stupid, Jason,” Reyna warns me. “Amelia is probably fine. She’s probably just passed out asleep with her phone dead because it’s not charged or something.”

  “I won’t just going to check her apartment to see what the situation is,” I say, omitting vast swaths of information.

  “If you’re sure,” Reyna says.

  “I’ll call back in a few hours when I’m done looking around. Would you like me to come over?” I ask, getting ready to hang up, but not willing to leave Reyna out to dry.

  I can do it all. Comfort Reyna. Find Amelia. Control myself. I can juggle all the plates.

  “Yeah, I would like that. Stay safe. Promise me.”

  “Through hell or high water, I’ll make it back.”

  “Thank you. Bye,” Reyna says before ending the call with a click.

  “Bye.” I say to the empty room as I continue getting ready.

  If I was willing to just run in a straight line through everything, it would probably be faster, but for now, it’s the car.

  Phone? Check.

  Wallet? Check.

  Keys? Check.

  Case of healing voodoo shit? Check.

  Way to cover my face that isn’t sunglasses and a mask? No check.

  Rifling through my closet, I find something that is both hilariously fitting for this, but also I cringe at the idea.

  A few years ago, we decided to do a group costume of Force Guardians, specifically the original one. And while who knows where most of the costume went, the mask is sitting on a shelf staring at me.

  Unlike the crab, which was spur of the moment, or my exploring the world with my powers this time, I’m going out fully planning on doing something good, so that means I should have a proper vigilante or hero identity, right?

  Grabbing the mask, I toss it onto my table before slipping my jacket on. Grabbing the mask once again, I just carry it with me as I dash down the stairs, taking them three at a time as I rocket towards my car.

  With doors not holding any bearing over me anymore, I leap into the car before turning it on and begin driving towards Amelia’s apartment building, paying enough passing attention to the speed limit that I’m not breaking it to any excessive margin.

  But everyone seems to be convinced the speed limit is five higher than it claims to be minimum anyway, so is anyone going to notice that little of a difference?

  In record time, I’m in the parking lot of Amelia’s apartment building where I after a second’s hesitation decide to actually park my car before vaulting out to race up the stairs this time going five at a time as I push my body faster as I rise.

  Dashing through the door into Amelia’s apartment, I’m greeted with a familiar sight. Just the regular living room connected to the kitchen.

  I already know that she isn’t in here. My mind map covers the whole apartment and some of the other ones near me, but I still comb through everything looking for clues.

  But none of my senses reveal anything out of the ordinary. Wherever Amelia was taken from wasn’t here. There’s no sign of a scuffle unless you count all the clothes on the ground in her bedroom.

  The laser gun isn’t here either which fills me with some hope because if she has that it might mean she can defend herself though I now wish I had told her to shoot me in like the pinky or something so we could have an idea of how durable supers from that experiment without necessarily physical powers are.

  In the darkness, I peer at the corkboard above her bed with all the various photos of Amelia and her friends over the years.

  There are no pictures of her family. Amelia hasn’t talked to them positively in years. I’m not even sure if they’re going to care that their daughter is missing.

  One picture catches my eye.

  For spring break our junior year of college we splurged and got a big vacation for the group and one of our favorite games was hide and seek and to make it more possible we allowed location sharing with our friends because even if we were in the area that didn’t mean we were on the right floor.

  Just maybe Amelia left location sharing on her phone, and it could still be on.

  “Please let your phone be fully charged, or at least charged enough so I can find you.” I whisper as I pull up the map app and rifle through the settings trying to find the find my friends feature.

  Between the updates and how long it’s been since we used the thing the setting has been moved and changed a myriad of times, but eventually I crack the arcane secrets of the map app and it lights up with a bunch of pings of my contacts.

  Though it does make me realize how easy it is to track my location with my phone. Maybe I should get a new one or at least not bring my phone when I’m out exploring locked locations.

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  Doesn’t matter, right now I need my phone with me so after taking a few more seconds to calm myself I leave Amelia’s apartment racing down the stairs as fast as I can before practically throwing myself out of the building and into my car before driving towards Amelia’s location. It looks like she ?vanished somewhere near the olde town.

  Why was she at olde town? There’s a way faster way home from the library.

  Regardless, as soon as I find a place to park, I jog my way over to where my map tells me Amelia’s phone should be.

  As I round the corner, I close my eyes, focusing on my mind map to find the phone. With everything here my normal vision won’t find it, so I have to trust this power to tell me where her phone could be.

  Walking around, I sweep the area before breaking into a sprint upon coming into contact with a small object that definitely looks and feels like a phone, according to my mind.

  Picking it up, I instantly know something’s wrong with the hairline cracks spread all over it as if the phone got knocked out of her hand somehow.

  But it turns on, and on the lock screen are all the notifications of people having tried to call or text her in the last who knows how long.

  “I’m going to find you.” I promise as I unlock her phone, only to be greeted with my contact information.

  Her last act before she lost her phone was to pull up my contact information to call me.

  “Fuck!” I scream, punching the wall with the hand not carrying Amelia’s phone.

  Amelia was probably captured by the lab, meaning she has minimal time before something bad happens to her and if she was captured in response to her reporting stuff to the police, then I would put that at no time till something unbelievably bad happens to her.

  Even if she’s like me and can become a super, will she get a power that would let her escape like I did?

  Do I go to the lab right now and try to bust her out, fighting my way through everyone trying to save my best friend?

  Do I do what the shows always tell you to do and sleuth around trying to find some clues that will make it all easier?

  Opening my eyes, I look around, trying to see if there’s any information that my mind map didn’t tell me, and almost instantly, I see the bloodstains on the ground.

  I don’t know what happened, but it looks like multiple people were bleeding heavily in various spots.

  There’s three notably separate stains, one just in the alleyway.

  Another at the bend and the final one ?past that.

  Hopefully, the bloodstains are a sign of Amelia fighting back and taking names.

  If she dropped her phone, maybe the gun is here too?

  Searching around both with normal and super senses, I don’t find any laser guns, but I find a hunk of scrap metal and wires that seems to have been twisted on itself repeatedly till it ruptured into multiple pieces.

  Dollars to doughnuts I’m pretty sure that this guy is going to be the remains of the laser gun which might mean that they aren’t that valuable if they’re just willing to destroy them or that they were really pissed off after Amelia kept blasting them?

  I’m going to lean toward the second option.

  But those weapons are effective, so I have to avoid ?getting shot and maybe see if I can get another one.

  Or several if we’re going to be honest, but thinking about what type of laser guns I want to steal isn’t going to help Amelia, so I need to concentrate and figure out what I can do.

  I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.

  None of the options I can think of seem particularly amazing? I could do some sleuthing like I’m a detective, but I’m almost positive about what happened to Amelia.

  And does just going in guns blazing into a fortified compound really seem like the greatest option here?

  If I go sleuthing around, I might not find any useful information, and I’ll have wasted time that something could have happened to Amelia. If I feel like every instant matters, I can’t just let them have free rein.

  I escaped ?somewhere around the day and a half mark. I don’t know when I woke up or when I was buried. Time became meaningless pretty quickly there, but if Amelia’s been missing for a whole day, then…

  Okay, I’m just going to run over. I don’t want to risk my car getting recognized and then tracked, so I’ll just run while hiding the mask in my jacket until I can find somewhere to put it on.

  Dashing back to the car, I grab the mask out of the backseat before beginning to run in the direction of where I had escaped from that fateful night.

  Maybe by changing up where I enter each, I’ll be unpredictable and they won’t know what hit them.

  Standing at the intersection, I slip on my Force Guardian mask as I feel below me. There’s nobody near me, and I can’t decide if that’s a good thing or not.

  Objectively, it’s almost certainly good for me. There’s nobody to see me, so I can sneak in without a problem.

  On the other hand, I really want to find someone to hurt and break till they give me my friend back.

  Opening the case of patches, I pull one out. If I’m hurt, who knows if I’ll be able to actually put it on in the middle of the fight, so I think I should put it on earlier?

  Placing the patch on my arm, energy courses through me, invigorating my body as if I have infinite energy.

  The most important part is when it reaches my mind. The strain of processing the mind map lessens, letting me shoot it out farther than I ever have before.

  If it applies to that?

  Darkness spreads beneath my feet, phasing a chunk of the street.

  I could phase with a person, at least right now.

  Not knowing how long this lasts, I drop to the tunnels before running to the compound at full tilt.

  For once, even though I’m moving incredibly quickly, I don’t feel overwhelmed by the information my map is giving me for a moment, letting me navigate this place far easier.

  Right now I need to find Amelia, so using my newfound temporary strength, I throw myself into the air, climbing into my burial room.

  This room is still a mess, but I’m thankful for it. It means I can use here as my place of operations to scout with my mind from without risking being seen.

  Scouting is a lot easier this time, with everything being clearer and being able to see farther. More than that, I don’t need to search this whole place. Probably.

  I don’t need to check any of the storage areas at least, so I can skip an entire floor.

  And at the moment, I’m just looking for a single person, nothing beyond that.

  In all the immediate rooms near me, both below and to my sides, don’t hold Amelia and the next rooms over…

  Shifting to the opposite side of this room to extend my range as much as possible. Negative Amelia isn’t in the next set.

  Primary places I need to look at the moment.

  Holding room for all the people they’ve captured but haven’t started testing on. The most likely place for Amelia to be and probably the easiest to get her out of. At least, if my newfound unlimited power includes being able to phase people.

  The second place is the transition room, where the serum is administered.

  Part of me wants to refuse to check the morgue, but it’s right next to the containment area for inpatients. I can’t ignore such a good location.

  Wanting to kill two birds with one stone, I move towards the morgue, leaping through and around any obstacle, doing my best to not get caught. With the strength to move from the third to the first in a single action, my ability to avoid detection has skyrocketed.

  Even if they’re all being so much more observant than last time.

  Did Amelia’s warning to the police about them put them on such high alert?

  It’s as I reach the morgue and see the fist-shaped dent in the stone wall that I cringe in realization that I tipped them off something fierce with that one, didn’t I?

  My own fuck-ups aside, I lean against the wall, closing my eyes to block out a sense as I focus on the map.

  One by one, I check each of the bodies in the morgue. None of them look like Amelia in my mind’s eye, and none of them have any clothes that I recognize of hers. I let out a breath I definitely knew I was holding.

  It isn’t much, but that bit of information is enough to confirm that Amelia isn’t dead. She could be missing for me never to find her again, but I can at least know that she’s not dead.

  Next, I turn my attention to the holding room, beginning to analyze each and every person with my mind’s eye, looking for any matches.

  I take my time doing this. I don’t want to accidentally miss her because I was rushing. I’m probably going to check with my eyes as well, just to be sure.

  I can’t fail here. I refuse.

  But after searching all thirty people in the holding room, none of them feel like Amelia.

  There are no kids in here, which is good. Most of them seem to be a lot older and haggard, which isn’t surprising; who’s going to notice a kidnapping of the unmentionables of society.

  Moving up to the uppermost floor, I resist the desire to steal any more power enhancers or laser pistols. I need to not draw more attention.

  Reaching the room where they injected me with their super drugs, there’s five people currently bound being drip fed the juice, but none of them are Amelia.

  In the next room over there’s three people getting bandages changed from some really gruesome injuries, but again, no Amelia.

  And the room after that are a bunch of I would guess super in containment pods, but none of them are Amelia.

  At least none of the human-looking ones are Amelia, and I don’t know how to wake up a giant sludge monster in a containment pod, so I’m just going to have to believe Amelia isn’t in there either.

  Slowly combing through the testing chambers, I am forced to come to one absolute and inevitable conclusion.

  I can’t find her

  Amelia isn’t here.

  And it’s all my fault.

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