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“I remember that,” I say. “Well not personally, but I’ve heard of it. That’s the last time villains tried to infiltrate Central. A lot of people died.”
“Yeah but the villains didn’t succeed.” He doesn’t elaborate but I know what he means. His father did not die in vain. I can already see where this story is going. Evan continues, “Apparently Mom was so devastated by his death that she couldn’t leave the house for weeks. She was always afraid of villain attacks. I don’t remember when I started doing it, but I do remember that my childhood goal was to protect her. I promised to be a Hero for her, and when I turned five I enrolled in Hero training. So she wouldn’t have to be scared anymore.”
Chills prickle down my arms. “So why did you quit?”
He shrugs. “Being a Hero wasn’t in my heart. She knew that. When I turned sixteen and started preparing for my Hero exam, Mom told me that she was proud of me but wanted me to follow my dreams, not hers. She said I could quit if I wanted to. So I did. I signed up for Research that same day.”
I watch him as he stares out at the ocean. I picture a scrawny kid-sized Evan, standing up to protect his mom. “You may not be a real Hero but I bet you’re hers.”
He turns to me and he gives me this cute smile and I swear to God I think we’re about to have a moment. Like an, I need to run home and call Crimson as soon as possible, moment. And then a seagull flies over our heads and gifts us with a gigantic splatter of bird crap.
“I just had to pick a glass balcony,” he says with sarcasm as he steps over the offensive bird waste, taking a new spot closer to me. “I should have painted the balcony to look like bird shit instead.”
I inch to the left on habit, increasing my bubble of personal space. “Why did you choose glass?”
“When I arrived here, my half of the seventh floor was totally empty. I got to design it myself, and since I was sixteen and sixteen-year-olds are immature punks, well—” he spreads his arms, encompassing the balcony, “I did what I wanted.”
“Do you think I’m an immature sixteen-year-old punk?” I ask, without putting much—okay any—thought into what I just said.
“Definitely,” he says without hesitation. “Although punk is kind of a masculine word. Punkette, maybe.”
“Thanks, jerk,” I mutter as I stare pointedly at the ocean view in front of me.
“You didn’t lose your power, you know.” He dims his MOD screen and slides it in his pocket. “That’s impossible.”
No sense in denying it—he’d already heard it in my thoughts. “How do you know?”
“Because I am a scientist.” He says it with a hint of sarcasm and a crooked smile that sets me at ease and twists my stomach in knots.
I say the first thing that comes to mind. “I feel like we’re the only two people on Earth right now.”
“Look around,” he says. “That’s how I feel every day.”
“Where’s the other guy who works here?”
“Felix? I don’t know. He’s been gone for a few weeks now. He’s a secretive guy.”
“What about your family? Parents? Siblings?” He shrugs in nonchalance, so I add to the list, “Girlfriend?”
He gives me a look and I know my attempt at being casual didn’t work. “Dad’s dead. I don’t have any siblings. Mom is doing well, or at least she was the last time I talked to her. She took her retirement to France. Now she owns a bakery.”
“I’m sorry about your dad,” I say.
He shrugs. “I was a toddler. I never knew him.”
“I know the feeling. I mean, it’s a sad situation and all, but if you never knew someone you can’t exactly miss them.” He nods in agreement and then my stomach embarrasses me by letting out a loud, ridiculously long growl.
“Someone’s hungry!” Evan tugs my hair as he sweeps behind me and back inside the apartment. “Let’s get our cereal on and then I’ll show you my hacking skills.”
“Hacking skills?” I ask, following him inside.
He gives me a sly smile. “What, did I stutter?”
After two hours of attempting to hack into Central’s mainframe, Evan’s defeated sigh pretty much sums up how I feel about this endeavor. Evan offers me, for about the hundredth time, a seat on the metal stool next to him but I refuse. Maybe he can sit during a freaking crisis, but me? I’ll stand, thanks.
The glass monitor in front of us is a black-and-white tangled web of codes and script and zeros and ones and crap that I am so far from understanding, I can’t even describe it. Evan takes in the whole thing, over and over again, constantly typing more lines of jumbled code and fishing through bits of it to get the information he needs. I make a joke about him being Neo from The Matrix movie for the third time and he throws a binder clip at me.
“You’re going to wear a hole in my floor,” he murmurs as I continue to pace behind him. In a more hopeful voice, he says, “I’ve hacked into the BEEPR mainframe.”
