The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism

"The pools are segregated by gender during standard hours, and co-ed access is available during designated evening windows for students who choose to participate." Diane didn’t look up from her phone. "It’s optional, Sloane."

"I know it’s optional. I just think it’s worth noting that Halloran’s idea of team bonding involves sitting in hot water with people you’re supposed to be competing against."

"Heroes who trust each other perform better in the field. Building comfort and vulnerability in low-stakes environments translates directly to combat cooperation." Diane finally glanced up from her screen. "Also, the sauna does incredible things for muscle recovery, and both of you are going to need muscle recovery once those training schedules kick in."

She wasn’t wrong. Sloane’s combat drills had already turned my body into one continuous bruise that Boundless Stamina kept patching faster than a normal human had any right to expect. Whatever Halloran had planned for daily training would be worse by an order of magnitude.

A sauna sounded really good, actually.

I folded the housing packet and set it down on the counter, then picked up my acceptance letter again to look at the class assignment one more time. Class 1-B. Professor Imara Steele. Tactical flexibility and non-traditional Aspect applications. Twenty students per class, which meant I’d be living with nineteen other people in a mansion-style house with a bath house in the basement and seven hundred fifty square foot apartments that I was about to furnish with whatever Diane decided was appropriate for ’her babies.’

Third place overall. Top seven and a half percent. Five hundred new SP in my account and a silver ticket waiting to be pulled.

Not bad for a guy who was Unmarked two months ago.

"Lukas." Diane’s voice was the warning tone now, the one that preceded ear grabs and lectures about attention spans.

"Present. Listening. Both eyes forward."

"Good. Because I need both of your measurements for the furniture order. The apartments have specific doorway widths and I am not paying for delivery of a couch that doesn’t fit through the frame."

"You already know my measurements."

The words left my mouth before my brain caught up with them. Diane’s lips pressed together. Sloane’s head turned slowly toward me with the mechanical precision of a weapons system acquiring a target.

"For the apartment," I added quickly. "The room measurements. In the packet. Which I read. Just now. While paying attention."

Diane took a long sip of her coffee. "Saturday. Nine AM. We’re taking the SUV because we’re going to need the cargo space."

Sloane stole another grape from the fruit bowl and pointed it at me. "You’re carrying everything."

"I have telekinesis."

"And two perfectly functional arms that could use the workout. Carry the boxes."

She popped the grape into her mouth and walked out of the kitchen with her acceptance letter held against her chest like a trophy, her pink ponytail swinging with every step. She was already texting someone, probably Mira or one of her other friends from prep, spreading the news about 1-A placement with the particular energy of someone who’d been waiting to prove she belonged and just received the world’s most expensive confirmation.

Diane watched her go with an expression I couldn’t quite categorize. Pride, definitely. Something softer underneath that she would never name in front of Sloane or anyone else. The look of a woman watching her daughter step into a future she’d been building toward since Sloane blew out the kitchen windows at age six.

Then those blue eyes slid back to me, and the softness was gone. In its place was the look of a CEO who had just identified a project that required her personal oversight.

"You placed third."

"I did."

"Out of fourteen hundred."

"That’s what the letter says."

She set her coffee down and walked around the counter toward me with the unhurried pace of someone who had all the time in the world and intended to use every second of it to make me uncomfortable. She stopped close enough that I could smell her perfume, the expensive one she wore on days when she had something to prove.

"Third place," she said, quieter now. Her hand came up to the side of my face, her thumb tracing the line of my jaw. "Reina would have lost her mind."

The name hit different when Diane said it. Reina Belmont. My mother, biologically. The woman whose funeral Diane attended and whose son Diane took home the same day and raised for nine years alongside her own daughter. The woman I never met because the soul in this body arrived after her death, carrying only borrowed memories of a person I could describe but never actually knew.

"She would have been loud about it," Diane continued, her voice carrying the specific warmth she reserved for memories of her best friend. "She would have printed out the letter and framed it. Put it on the mantle next to Marcus’s Hero license. Called every person she knew and told them her son placed third at Halloran."

My throat tightened. Not because I missed Reina Belmont, a woman I’d never actually met. But because Diane missed her. And the look on Diane’s face right now, the raw and unguarded pride of a woman who’d promised a dead friend she’d take care of her kid, was doing something to my chest that I didn’t have the vocabulary for.

"Thank you," I said. "For everything."

Diane’s thumb stilled on my jaw. Her eyes searched mine with the intensity of someone who could read rooms as a literal superpower, looking for whatever truth lived underneath my words.

She must have found it, because she leaned up on her toes and kissed my forehead. Gentle. Maternal. The kind of kiss a mother gives a child she’s proud of.

Then she kissed my mouth, and that one was not maternal at all.

"Saturday," she whispered against my lips. "Nine AM. Wear something that shows your arms. The furniture store has a cute salesgirl and I want her jealous."