1st POV: Jaime
If I thought juggling school, family, and a secret power set was hard…well, I was right. It sucked.
But things were finally starting to shift.
After making sure my family was safe and not unknowingly harboring a walking WMD (me), I could finally begin investigating the weird tech showing up around town. Reports were popping up on message boards and local forums—nothing flashy enough to catch the League's attention, but enough to give me a bad feeling in my chest. Advanced gear, laser-sighted rifles, mini-drones—you don't find that in El Paso pawn shops.
At first, I thought it was just small-time arms dealing. But the longer I watched, the clearer the pattern became: a trail leading back to one busted-up warehouse that had "Cadmus offshoot" written all over it. I'd seen this kind of setup before—in comics, yeah, but also in intel reports back in my old life.
Cadmus wasn't subtle. But they were shady.
In parallel, I stumbled onto something else: a kid about my age—homeless, no records, scared out of his mind and leaving a trail of scorch marks wherever he went. The El Paso Fire Department blamed him for a string of building fires. Arson, they said. Public menace. A danger to society.
Problem was…none of the reports added up.
Patterns were too clean. Ignition points too specific. Someone was framing the kid, and I had a hunch it wasn't just some bored insurance agent with a lighter. It reeked of something more deliberate. Someone making a profit while pinning it on the powerless.
Two problems. Two paths. And I couldn't solve either if I went full tilt without a plan.
So I divided my time.
By day, I monitored the gang tech: traced shipments, hacked surveillance, got a look at faces and plates. By night, I followed the kid, hiding in shadow, watching his powers flare in alleyways and on rooftops. No finesse. Just raw, terrified firepower.
I couldn't approach him yet—not when he was so jumpy he'd probably roast me on reflex.
And as for the Cadmus gear? Khaji Da and I were still compiling scans, trying to figure out who was supplying it and why they were running it through back-alley gangs in my city.
I had a feeling the answers were going to cross paths soon.
But for now? I had to be careful.
I had to be smart.
I had to be quiet.
And most importantly?
I had to stay the hell away from dragging my family into any of this.
The fire on East Side was the third one this month.
A laundromat gutted in under ten minutes. Official report blamed faulty wiring. Nothing to see here, folks.
But I'd seen the photos. I'd heard the chatter in private servers, crime networks, and even El Paso's underground message boards that I'd quietly hacked into like digital Swiss cheese.
The pattern was too neat. Buildings with high insurance values, previously flagged for code violations, all going up in smoke just after midnight—right after anonymous calls warned people to stay away.
So I went to the scene.
The air still smelled like burnt fabric and carbon. The fire trucks had come and gone, but the scorched skeleton of the laundromat remained behind police tape and a "Do Not Enter" sign made of duct tape and hope.
Khaji Da scanned the perimeter silently as I crouched near the cracked sidewalk.
"Any thermal residue?" I whispered.
[Negative. No anomalous heat signatures remain. All combustion appears consistent with natural gas ignition.]
I frowned. "Accelerants?"
[Trace quantities of petroleum derivatives found near gas intake. Consistent with standard fire-starting methods. No exotic chemical profiles detected.]
So… no sign of meta powers.
No napalm fingerprints. No heat distortion. No molten concrete or plasma shadows. Just… normal arson.
But there was a kid. Supposedly spotted near two of the fires. Local rumor said he was homeless. Did odd jobs. Never caused trouble.
Until suddenly every building that burned had a blurry image of the same teen, and now he's "wanted for questioning."
Framed. Had to be.
The weirdest thing? The call that warned 911 each time came from a burner phone—same model, same SIM wipe pattern. Khaji Da confirmed it.
[Three separate calls. Matching anonymization protocols. Very likely a coordinated effort.]
"Which screams setup," I muttered, stepping through the police tape and glancing at a blown-out dryer. "They're making him the face of the fire while hiding behind the smoke."
I crouched, brushing soot off a bent ventilation cover. A strange residue glimmered beneath the grime—an iridescent shimmer, like tech-grade polymer spray. Not something you'd find in a laundromat. Definitely something you'd use to contain a fire—or start one surgically.
[Potential synthetic polymer match found. Used in controlled demolition environments. Possibly LexCorp origin.]
"LexCorp?" I muttered, narrowing my eyes. "That can't be a coincidence."
Just then, a cough echoed from the alley behind me.
I turned, instincts flaring—but saw no one. Just shadows and the distant buzz of a streetlight on its last legs.
But I felt eyes on me. Watching. Scared.
The kid had been here. Maybe still was.
And now I had a bigger picture forming: someone with money wanted these fires. Someone smart enough to hide behind a scared teen who didn't even know he was being used as a human red herring.
"Time to do some digging."
I turned away from the scene, slipping into the shadows.
Next step? Find the kid. Earn his trust.
Because if I didn't, they were going to bury him right alongside the evidence.