In some computer programs, there were processes that would tick over and return to 0 when the counter exceeded a certain number.

I figured my nervousness had gone through something similar. The past few weeks had been a blur of worry and anxiety, a never ending storm raging in my head; I’d struggled to sleep, my hands would start shaking and I’d suddenly find it hard to breathe at random moments, and I had been in a constant battle to think about anything other than the looming spectre of the future, fighting off wave after wave of what if questions.

What if I failed? What if I got found out? What if I ended up being one of the 0.2% of hopeful students who got grievously injured during the infamous physical section of the open admission tests?

What if I could never become a superhero after all?

And yet here I was on the day I’d been stressing over, and my mind was tranquil as a still pond. Maybe I was just sailing through the eye of the storm right now, but I’d take what I could get.

The train lurched a little as it began to pick up speed, and I was forced to snatch for an overhead handle to keep my balance. From the faint reflection in the window, I could see I wasn’t the only one, though I was definitely in the minority. The sparkling clean standing car was packed with teenagers around my age, and I was pretty confident we were all headed to the same place.

Beside me, Ashika snorted. Even standing with her hands stuffed in the pockets of her black tracksuit and one ankle crossed over the other, she hadn’t even been budged by the train’s sudden movement. She had the decency to give no further comment, at least. Instead, she pointed at a speck zipping across the distant sky, this one vaguely distinguishable for its red nimbus and trail, like a shooting star.

“Pretty sure that’s Scarlet Haze.” She gave me a wry look. “She’s gotta be a three-pointer, right?”

“No way,” I replied, and I was still shocked at how level my voice was. It felt like I hadn’t been able to talk without my voice cracking in months. “Scarlet Haze barely has a dozen arrests to her name. Practically a rookie, even if she’s been getting a lot of attention recently.”

“Marketing,” Ashika spat the word like it was burning her tongue. “Think she has some rich backers? Daddy bought her a superhero career?”

I could only shrug. “Who knows? She’s pretty and charismatic enough that I can see it being organic.”

“Pft. Whatever. Two-pointer then?”

“One point. You won’t find many articles about it, but she got rated Level 5 recently.”

“Her ass is worth a point on its own!”

“Heroes aren’t rated on the quality or quantity of their ass, unfortunately.”

“Really? That’s a shame.” Ashika smirked. “What about her tits?”

I sighed. “One point. Take it or leave it.”

“Well, aren’t we driving a hard bargain today? I thought you’d be a stuttering mess, Emmett.” She tossed her head to get her shoulder-length black hair out of her eyes then elbowed me in the side, soft enough I barely felt it, thankfully. God knows she could’ve pulverised my torso if she really put her strength behind it. “Ah, well. If I don’t have to spend the whole morning keeping you from bursting into tears like the time Jenny Whatsherface dumped you, I can’t complain. 9 - 8 to me then.”

Ignoring her jab, I squinted out the window, searching for more specks flitting between the shining silver towers in the distance.

Despite the cloudless day, I knew it was probably hopeless. We’d been lucky to spot enough superheroes to rack up a collective score of 17 points; while Foresight was generally known as the cape capital of the country, it wasn’t as if there were constant battles raging, superheroes flying hinder and yon to deal with the next crisis in a series of endless calamities and cataclysms. Not like the news would want you to think, at least.

That and the fact that only a tiny minority of people could fly. Something like 1 in 10,000? I couldn’t remember the precise number, but suffice to say powers involving flight were extremely uncommon.

So I found myself more taking in the sights of Foresight’s skyline than actually scanning for superheroes, not that I could really complain. There were certainly worse ways to spend a train ride on the way to the most important event of your life, and it was a rare occasion that I actually got the opportunity to do this; there had always been something else to focus on, a task to get done, a plan to be made. How often did I get to stop and appreciate the beauty of this city from a distance?

And it was beautiful. Some people swore by the classic aesthetic of New York and its Empire State building, but I’d always argue in favour of retro futurism, and luckily whoever built Foresight Arcology fifteen years ago had agreed with me wholeheartedly. Not every architect had hewed to the arcology’s creative vision afterward, but enough had to give the city a skyline that couldn’t be matched anywhere else in the world.

Viewed from the outskirts, the city looked like a gleaming silver-and-white forest divided into districts by a vast lattice of raised train tracks. More towers than one could ever hope to count by sight surrounded the ziggurat-like arcology that marked the city’s centre and origin. Each tower was a wonder of engineering and design, corps and agencies and even foreign embassies working to outdo each other.

None of them could match the arcology itself.

The building that graciously shared its name with the city was a sloped ziggurat that dwarfed the distant mountains before you even got to the towers that sprung up just before its four curved walls could meet at a point, like it was a pyramid firing a beam at the heavens. It gleamed pearly white, yet somehow didn’t glare in the sun. It absorbed light, stored it and converted it to power a thousand times more efficiently than our leading scientists’ best efforts—some claimed it powered the whole city by itself.

It had appeared seemingly out of nowhere fifteen years ago, and no one had claimed credit for it. Rumours abounded, but ultimately the behemoth of a building was still a mystery. A lot of people were sceptical of it, calling it a trap despite over a decade of evidence to the contrary. Many refused to set foot in the place.

The Olympians, of course, were not counted among them.

I watched in wide-eyed disbelief as seven tiny specks peeled away from the very top of Foresight Tower. They floated in the air for an endless moment, then streaked across the sky, almost in the total opposite direction to where I was watching from. From so far away it was impossible to tell which members had just headed out, but there was no doubting they were The Olympians.

The train car had gone silent as the grave. Those looking out the windows had seen it for themselves, and others were no doubt glued to the little screens that usually cycled through advertisements and commuter information above the train’s doors.

They showed the vast arcology from a much closer angle, looking up from what had to be close to its very base. The view zoomed all the way to near the top of the tower, playing a loop of seven figures flying away. I was disappointed to see their identities weren’t any clearer on the TV, just blurry silhouettes. Text scrolled across the bottom of the screen.

‘BREAKING: Olympians abruptly called to action! New crisis? Foresight City Council and Hero Association yet to comment.’

Ashika huffed a breathless laugh. “How many points are you gonna count that as?”

“A million,” I said after a moment of thought.

“Bullshit. If a Level 5 Hero is one point, a bunch of 8s and 9s can’t be more than, what? Five each? You scammer.” She snorted, then patted me on the shoulder hard enough I would have lost my balance if I wasn’t already gripping a handhold. “Well, you win either way. Good job.”

In other circumstances, I might have tried harder to rub it in. It wasn’t often I got one over on her, after all. In my defence, I was still a little shell-shocked. Even as someone who’d lived in Foresight City for his whole life, I’d never seen the Olympians deploy multiple members at once like that.

“Thanks,” I managed to murmur.

“Ugh. You fanboy.” Ashika’s gaze flicked up to the TV screens. “Pretty quick response time from the news.”

“They have people waiting outside the arcology literally 24/7. There’s livestreams and everything.”

“Really? Who would even want to watch that?”

Me. But I wasn’t exactly going to admit to that now.

“I’m more interested in what the Hero Association will have to say about this. Must be something pretty serious to have guys like them rushing off out of the blue.”

Ashika grimaced. “Yeah.”

We lapsed into silence on that grim thought.

The train continued on, steadily filling with anxious energy. Worries about the upcoming exam mingled with the new concern about what the Olympians were suddenly dealing with, and it made for a strained atmosphere in the standing car. I could hear a few people trying to strike up conversation, but most of it fizzled out quickly. There was even a remarkably pretty girl whispering urgently to her blue-haired friend, who was in turn staring at her phone with horror.

I found myself focusing back out the window. I’d travelled this route a thousand times, to the point I could probably recreate it from memory if I tried. Across the Dover Bridge, which my mom had made me run back and forth over when I acted up as a kid. Past the fields where the first soccer tournament without dad around took place. Around the stadium where I’d heard Valiant’s familiar voice and decided, then and there, that I couldn’t be anything else but a superhero.

The tension in the air only increased as we reached the next stop. Barely anyone got off. Only more people got on. We didn’t end up packed in like sardines or anything, but I no longer had a half-metre bubble of space around me.

The tannoy system crackled to life. I tuned most of the announcement out, picking up only on the name of the station.

“This is Little Dublin.”

Two more stops and we’d be at the end of the line: Haslow Park Station. From there it was barely a five minute walk to my date with destiny.

Superheroes were ubiquitous in the United States. We went crazy for them. Movies, music, books, and even the news; every popular piece of media you could name was dominated by capes and their exploits, so there were no prizes for guessing the most coveted career in the country.

Problem was, it wasn’t so simple as pulling on a costume and going out to fight crime. There were laws, regulations. Expectations that every superhero had to uphold, lest they be labelled a vigilante or, worse, a villain.

Every human being on Earth above the age of 13 had a superpower. Society had learned early on that didn’t mean they knew how to use them responsibly.

The government ensured there were countless avenues one could explore to learn about their superhuman abilities. Boot camps and summer schools and crash courses aplenty, on top of the mandatory classes even those who had no interest in being upholders of justice were expected to take, just to ensure they could learn to control their abilities in a safe environment.

For some people, simply learning basic discipline wasn’t enough. Some people wanted more.

That’s where licensed hero schools came in, and Ashika and I were aiming for the best of the best. Out of the hundreds that had sprung up across the United States, there was one that everyone, no matter how little rival institutions wanted to admit it, knew was far and away the best.

Thousands of people from all over the world applied for less than a hundred spots every year even though Foresight City alone had a dozen hero schools. Technically, anyone could get in if you proved to the examiners you had what it takes.

They called it Hero High. The Super School. The alma mater of the Olympians, The League of Eleven, and The Valkyries. Founded by one of the most revered and respected heroes in the world.

Aegis Academy. That was where I was going to learn to become a superhero.

Even if my power was so weak we hadn’t figured out what it did yet.

The train started moving once more, and Ashika nudged me in the side. When she didn’t immediately speak, I gave her a questioning look.

She stared back at me for a long moment, a frown on her lips and her brow furrowed. After a moment, her frown turned upside down and she gave me a nod.

“We’ve fuckin’ got this,” she said. She held up a fist that demanded to be bumped.

I smiled back and opened my mouth to reply.

That was when I saw it.

Maybe it was because everyone else was too absorbed in their nerves while I was so anxious I’d topped out and circled all the way back around to feeling calm. Maybe I was just more diligent than the average prospective hero. It was even possible that my power had just manifested as the ability to spot things before anyone else did—though I rather doubted that.

Whatever the case, I was fairly sure I was the first one to notice the man in the trench coat who definitely hadn’t stepped onto the train at the last station, nor had he been present before we’d arrived at that station. His head was bowed, a black cap casting a shadow over his face, serving to highlight the infernal red glow of his eyes. He pulled his clawed hands from his pockets, and my heart dropped through my stomach until it felt like it was jackhammering between my feet.

My hand had been halfway to returning Ashika’s fist bump, but instead passed it and landed on her shoulder, turning her around to face the same way I was. I didn’t need to speak a word. Her muscles tensed beneath my touch, and I knew she’d be able to cross the distance between us and him in the blink of an eye.

I also knew she wouldn’t be fast enough.

In the earliest comic books that existed before powers showed up in the real world, superheroes often went uncontested by supervillains. They were larger than life figures, but they spent a surprising amount of time engaged in mundane matters. Saving cats from trees, putting out fires, lifting heavy objects beneath which some poor fellow had been trapped. That sort of thing.

It was unrealistic, of course. If just a small fraction of the population gained powers, the probability that they’d all go to ‘good people’ was so low it might as well be zero.

If every human being on the planet was destined to gain them?

The man lashed out with his claws and there was a spray of red. Screams rose. People ran.

“Everyone get the fuck back,” he roared.

In a world of superheroes, there were always going to be supervillains.