185 Insider [Natasha Yuen]
185 Insider [Natasha Yuen]
Jacob finally walked out of the clubroom, closing the door behind him with a soft click. The moment he disappeared down the hallway, I let out a long, shaky breath and dropped into my chair. My legs felt weak from how tense I’d been while talking to him.
I pulled out my phone immediately. A message from Millie waited for me at the top of the notifications.
[Millie: I’m home.]
I sagged deeper into the chair. Good. At least one disaster today had resolved itself. The image of her earlier, wincing as she moved with that makeshift sling, flashed behind my eyes. Outside these campus walls, she wasn’t Millie Hartley, my secret girlfriend who always forgot to put the cap back on the toothpaste. Instead, she was Static, one of New Vanguard’s more aggressive frontline capes. And me? I was Leverage, though I tried not to think about the costume or the weight that came with it when I was on school grounds.
People loved imagining a hero’s life as glamorous. They didn’t see the paperwork that buried us, the training that destroyed our bodies, or the agonizing uncertainty of whether we’d live long enough to receive our next paycheck. Adventure? Fame? Those were for storybooks. The real job was dangerous, messy, and depressingly underfunded.
I typed out a quick message to her.
[Take the night off. Heal well.]
She’d bounce back. With a regenerator-3 rating, her recovery wasn’t instant, but it was reliable. She had survived her intern year in the lawless and most heroes didn’t even last two weeks there. But Eclipse… Eclipse had been something else entirely.
He terrified seasoned capes for good reason.
I set the phone aside and rubbed my temples.
Injuries were expected in our line of work. That was why healers were essential. Back when Markend still held weight in the Council, we could always call for one on standby. I remembered when Windbreaker lost his calf to a shotgun blast and next day a healer was already pumping power into him, knitting muscle, bone, and skin. Now? Funding was drying up. Investors were fleeing. The Council barely acknowledged us. And healers? They were becoming too expensive for us.
I dragged myself toward the club’s dusty desktop computer, powered it on, and opened an email window addressed to New Vanguard management.
[I’ve found a potential new cape for recruitment. Young, talented, and likely unregistered. High adaptability. Could be groomed for the roster.]
Jacob Terrence. Quiet. Polite. Under the radar. Strong. I could tell. He was exactly what we needed. If Eclipse was back and Promise was certain about that, we needed more bodies, more power sets, and more everything. At first, I was skeptical. Eclipse had supposedly vanished. But after what I witnessed in that abandoned ceramic factory? No doubt left. That ‘Eclipse’ wasn’t a ghost or an imitator. He was really back.
I hit send, leaning back in my chair.
And then I thought of Amy.
A familiar ache pressed at my chest. We had left things in a mess between us, filled with bad words and misunderstandings, both of us too proud to step back. I wondered how she was now. Last I heard, she was still with the SRC, assigned somewhere overseas… Wamond, was it? She hadn’t answered my last message. I doubted she ever would.
A new email notification blinked in the corner of my screen.
My heart jumped.
[From: Amelia Morose.]
“…What?” I whispered, opening it with trembling fingers.
Attached were files I knew by heart from her birth certificate, credentials, certification papers, and even her old resume. Memories rose unbidden: late-night cram sessions, laughing over awful cafeteria food, arguing about patrol schedules, and hugging through exhaustion.
At the bottom of her message, a single line was typed:
[PS — Want back on Markend superhero scene.]
I covered my mouth, trying and failing not to grin. Of all the things she could’ve sent, this was the last I expected.
I hit reply without hesitation.
[Let’s meet. Attached is a time and place. Don’t be late.]
My smile lingered long after I pressed send.
A sharp knock hit the clubroom door. I straightened, wiping the smile off my face before it had the chance to fade naturally.
“Come in,” I said, trying to sound composed.
The door swung open, and a blue-haired teenage girl, maybe seventeen or eighteen, stepped inside. Seeing her in her Mirch University hoodie didn’t make her look any less like what she actually was.
Mira. Spoiler.
I sat up straighter, forcing my posture into something professionally stern. Nothing reminded you of your own embarrassing moments faster than having a precog cape walk in, especially one who’d seen far, far too much.
“Thanks for the warning about the Jacob kid,” I told her. I tried to keep my tone steady, neutral, and unaffected. But the embarrassment still crawled under my skin. Someone had seen me making out with Millie, and not just one person, but two! The humiliation practically baked itself onto my face.
Mira waved a hand dismissively. “It’s fine. Just don’t mention it was me who pointed you toward him.”
Of course she’d say that. Precogs hated attention almost as much as they hated unpredictability. And after everything with Eclipse, Markend wasn’t predictable in the slightest.
As a highly rated precognitive cape, Spoiler saw nearly everything, if she wanted to. She normally kept her distance from others. Corporate capes weren’t supposed to mix too deeply with state-sponsored ones anyway. But Mira was an exception to many rules. Including mine.
It surprised me she’d even applied at Mirch University. By all accounts, she should still be in senior high school. Capes usually didn’t cross paths in their civilian lives unless they came from the same team, the same agency, or the same disaster. The only reason I knew Mira’s civilian identity was because of that incident years back.
Back then, she wasn’t Mira. She wasn’t Spoiler. She was Missive, and she terrified everyone.
She smiled faintly, tilting her head. “We’re friends, right? We’re supposed to look out for each other.”
Friends. Hardly. State-sponsored cape and corporate-sponsored cape didn’t put us on the same side of anything. The only thread tying us together was our shared history during the Nth Contract crisis. I'd been SRC then, until the pressure at the midpoint broke me and I walked off the task force.
That was the beginning of the rift with Amelia.
“What do you think about joining New Vanguard?” I asked, already knowing her answer.
She shrugged. “I’ll think about it.”
It was always that answer. And maybe it was better this way. Spoiler and Hover were technically semi-affiliated with the SRC. Adding her to New Vanguard right now, with Eclipse back in the shadows, would complicate the very thing I needed. Mira’s connection to Eclipse, however vague, ran deeper than most knew.
“Anyway,” I said, shifting the topic. “How are you liking Mirch so far?”
Her eyes softened. “It’s nice. Quiet. People are normal here. I still have a lot to prove though. Being young doesn’t help. And coming straight out of the advanced program… well.” She shrugged again. “I like being somewhere that doesn’t feel like a cage.”
I imagined it wasn’t easy for her. Trapped by the Nth Contract, forced into villainy, stripped of choices until the SRC dismantled the whole thing. Normalcy wasn’t just a luxury for her. Instead, it was a miracle.
I leaned forward slightly. “So? What did you want, Mira?”
Mira leaned one hip against the edge of my desk, arms crossed, eyes bright with something between excitement and calculation. “Next time Eclipse shows up,” she said, “I want my team to take a crack at him.”
I stared at her, blinking slowly. “Your duo cape team? Against Eclipse? Mira, we sent the entire New Vanguard and he walked through us like we were cardboard cutouts.” My tone turned sharper than I intended, but I didn’t retract it. She had to understand the weight of what she was asking.
She didn’t flinch. Of course she didn’t. Spoiler never flinched.
Hover had the same core skill set I did, aerial control with long-range firepower. Where he had experience and mobility, I had versatility and the ability to weaponize gravity. Spoiler herself was a different level entirely: precognition, regeneration, and a newly developed replication ability that made her impossible to pin down. Even if they only had two capes on paper, the duo still had enough tactical value to challenge some full squads. On top of that, Spoiler had the advantage of her villain years. She was resourceful, ruthless when it counted, and armed with skills corporate capes rarely got the chance to learn. That was exactly why I wanted her in the New Vanguard, since she was a multiplier that could drag any team two tiers up. And Hover’s scouting presence alone would be a godsend.
Mira waved my worry off like dust on her sleeve. “We’ll manage. And… we’re getting someone new.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Who?”
“It’s a secret.”
Of course it was. I exhaled through my nose, resisting the urge to rub my temples. At this rate she might as well have been blackmailing me. If word of me and Millie ever leaked, the media would have a field day. Heroes already lived half their lives under a microscope. Female-female relationships weren’t forbidden, but the scrutiny? The headlines? The questions about professionalism? The New Vanguard couldn’t afford another blow. Not after Eclipse humiliated us on live broadcast.
I kept my voice even. “What’s your connection to Eclipse?”
“Estranged,” Mira answered immediately.
I didn’t buy it. Her expression was too calm and measured. Still, I let her continue.
“And what do you gain by going after him?” I pressed.
“I want to know if it’s really him,” she said. “If it is, I need to make sure he doesn’t hurt anyone else… or himself.”
Her eyes softened for the briefest moment. Regret? Sympathy? No. It was resolve. It could also be that she was acting, which she seemed quite proficient at. But still, it made me wonder what kind of history she wasn’t telling me.
I folded my hands on the desk. “Fine. Here’s the deal. Your team responds first. My team waits on standby. If you can’t contain him in fifteen minutes, New Vanguard steps in. From that point, operational command goes to me.”
Mira smiled and extended her hand. “Then it’s a deal.”
I hesitated only long enough to acknowledge the weight of what I was agreeing to, and then I shook her hand firmly.
Her grip was warm, steady, and confident.
For a second, I wondered if I’d just signed myself up for a disaster.
But the deal was made.