Nick held his piping bag over the vat of liquid nitrogen, moving the peanut butter/strawberry jam mix in careful circles as it was piped out. When 150 grams of the mixture was in, he set the piping bag on the counter and fished the frozen noodle-like thing out with a spatula.

He repeated this process until the bag was empty, giving him eight portions.

Leaving the noodles to thaw ever so slightly, he pulled three loaves of bread out of the pantry and began toasting slices. Victor preferred white bread, as bland and boring as himself. Nick, Shawn and Inez enjoyed whole grain. Emmy got a special type of bread, made by Nick, enriched with twentyish vitamins so the poor kid didn’t die of malnutrition. It also had chocolate chips in it.

When the bread was toasted to everyone’s preferred state of toastyness, Nick slid on a portion of the peanut butter/jam. It was beautiful.

Nick plated the food, backing out of the kitchen into the dining room. Inez and Shawn were already at the table, with Victor just coming down the stairs.

“Breakfast is served,” Nick said with a bow, sliding everyone their plates.

“Thank you,” Shawn said, nursing his coffee.

Inez blinked at the food, still half asleep. “What is it?”

“Today I created-“

“Frozen noodles made out of peanut butter and strawberry jam,” Shawn muttered, cutting him off.

Nick and Inez shared a glance. Maybe it was a fluke.

Victor took his seat next to Inez, barely saying hello before biting into the toast. He chewed once, then winced.

“I think I’ve got-“

“-A cavity or something,” Shawn finished, his voice completely monotone. “It’s good but the cold is making my tooth hurt.”

Nope. Not a fluke.

Nick sat down. They were all watching Shawn now.

Shawn took a sip of coffee.

Emmy walked in and collapsed into her chair. She picked up the toast, sniffed it, and made a face.

“Strawberry?”

“Didn’t you have any blackberry, I hate strawberry. I do have blackberry, but the strawberry jam was nearing its expiration date because no one eats it,” Shawn muttered. “It’s jam, doesn’t it last like forever? Technically yes, but it’s still best to eat things by their ‘best by’ dates.”

The room went dead silent. Shawn took another sip of his coffee. They all watched him, fear growing with every second.

“What happened?” Inez finally asked.

Shawn tapped his coffee cup nervously, staring into the dark liquid as if his life depended on it. “I don’t know.”

Victor set his toast down. “You don’t know?”

Shawn didn’t look away from his coffee. “Not… exactly.”

This was bad. This was very bad.

Shawn didn’t have an obvious superpower. It wasn’t like Emmy’s speed or Victor’s flight, things that were discovered by accident. It wasn’t an intuitive thing, like Inez’s light or Nick’s affinity for chemicals. Shawn’s power was to, upon death, have his consciousness go back to the last time he woke up.

The first time Nick experienced it was the morning of a battle against eight superpowered bank thieves. Shawn called the other superhero team in the city, Copper, for support. Eleven heroes vs eight thieves and it had still been a close fight. The second time was the morning of a fight with a flying villain. The third time, Shawn packed everyone into the car and drove two hours to the beach for water training. Copper battled a slime monster that day. Nick never found out what had originally happened.

Shawn never outright said when he’d died. Instead, he signaled it by repeating conversations as they happened. It was unnerving. It was frightening.

Nick refilled Shawn’s cup. “How do you not know how you died?”

“There was an explosion,” Shawn said. “We were all here, just got back from a battle, and… Boom.”

“Was it a bomb?” Inez asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Was it something Nick was cooking?” Emmy asked, biting into her toast.

“I’m offended,” Nick sniffed. He glanced at Shawn. “Was it?”

“I… don’t know. You were making sushi.”

Nick mentally revised his kitchen, wondering if something related to sushi could explode. “Unlikely,” he decided.

“But not impossible?” Emmy asked.

“Never impossible,” Nick said. “I’d be more likely to accidentally create a lethal gas than an explosion. Unless I realized I was creating a lethal gas, and set fire to it. But that would do little more than blacken the ceiling and burn off my eyebrows again.”

“Should we search the building for a bomb?” Victor asked.

Shawn closed his eyes. When he opened them all the fear and uncertainty was gone. He was back to being Leader, Team Manager, the Responsible Adult of the group. “Yes,” he said firmly. “After breakfast we’ll search the entire building. Including our rooms. At four a man in midtown will turn into a shark person and begin attacking people. If we haven’t found any bomb by then we’ll deal with the shark, then come back and search again. We’ll only have a few minutes, so most of the searching will have to be done by Emmy. I’m sure, if there is a bomb, we can find and deactivate it. Everyone in agreement?”

“Yes.”

“Yep.”

“Yeah.”

“Of course.”

Shawn nodded decisively. “Good. Let’s eat.”

Emmy looked under the chairs in their movie room, checking for anything bomb-like. Nothing.

This was dumb. They probably weren’t going to find anything, because there probably wasn’t anything to find. If she were to plant a bomb somewhere, she’d do it while no one was around. She bet the bomb would be placed while the team was out beating that shark dude.

Which meant the job of really finding the bomb would fall to her. Emmy felt a knot in her stomach when she thought about that. She’d had training in bomb disposal, she knew how they worked, but she’d never had to deactivate a real bomb. It was a responsibility she didn’t want. She didn’t want to make a choice that could potentially kill someone.

Emmy’s mother and older brother were surgeons. They did things every day that, if done wrong, would end someone’s life. They wanted her to go to medical school, too. They’d pushed her to use her speed to study. As a result, she’d graduated high school at sixteen. They believed she could use the same techniques to go through college.

Rather than tell them she’d retained none of what she learned and felt like a fraud who would murder all her patients, Emmy ran away. She’d joined the first superhero team that would take her, lying about her age and hiding severe impostor syndrome behind a mask of overconfident girly-ness. Her first battle had gone… badly. No one died, but it had been close.

Nick and Shawn had pulled her out of a dumpster when the fight was over, nearly comatose with panic. They’d listened to her sobbing confessions without judgment. When she finished, Shawn scheduled her an appointment with a therapist. Nick took a blood sample and discovered she was deficient in a number of things.

They’d taken care of her. Inez joined the team a month later and quickly became a surrogate sister.

Emmy’s mother found her the day after she turned seventeen. She’d walked into the building, announced Emmy had had her year of fun, and it was time to go back to the real world.

The whole team fought to keep her. It wasn’t a physical battle, against an enemy they could hurt. It was a battle of minds, of intelligence. A battle of stubbornness. A battle which involved lawyers.

Nick won. He was able to prove that Emmy had come to them suffering from severe malnutrition. He had the records to show she’d improved mentally and physically since joining the team. Still a minor, Emmy had been placed in Shawn’s custody.

Emmy would do anything she could to keep the team safe. To keep her family safe. If that meant disarming a live bomb three seconds before it went off, so be it.

She finished checking the room and walked back into the hallway. Inez was standing a few paces away, staring into the stairwell that led to the basement.

“No one’s found anything?” Emmy asked, walking up to her.

“Not yet,” Inez said, smiling nervously. “Want to help me check the basement?”

“Sure.”

Inez flipped the light switch a few times. Nothing happened. The lightbulb down there had gone out months ago. Rather than fix it, the team had decided to pretend the basement didn’t exist.

Emmy walked quietly down the stairs, Inez creating light behind her. Sure, they were superheroes who beat up bad guys on a regular basis. They were strong, confident women who knew how to handle themselves. But the basement was creepy.

They got to the bottom of the stairs and looked around. Emmy shivered in the cold, hearing something skitter away from the light. Boxes of old junk leftover from the company they’d bought the building from sat in one corner, growing mold. Corner two held a table covered in cleaning supplies. The team’s washer and dryer sat in the third corner. Emmy remembered she still had clothes in the dryer and went to pull them out. The last corner of the basement was empty.

Rather, it was supposed to be empty. Emmy stopped halfway to the dryer, staring at the plastic box. Inez turned her light towards it and froze.

“That’s…” Emmy cleared her throat. “That’s always been there, right?”

“It hasn’t,” Inez said, very hesitantly walking over.

Emmy followed, really not wanting to. “Think it’s the…”

Inez pulled the top off and looked inside. She caught her breath. “It’s the bomb.”

Emmy ran over, her heart racing. Her instincts screamed for her to run. She wanted to take the box and drop it into the ocean. She wanted to hide under her bed until someone else dealt with the problem. But she couldn’t. There was a procedure to follow here.

“Investigate,” she recited, kneeling down to look closely at the box. “Are there wires going away from the box?”

Inez brightened her light, moving around it. “No. No strings or wires. No footprints, either.”

“Assess,” Emmy said, starting to sweat despite the cold. “What kind of bomb is it?”

They looked carefully at the contents of the box. There was an electronic timer, a modified laptop battery, and an enclosed compartment.

“Incendiary?” Inez guessed. “This thing looks like it could contain liquid.”

“It does, yeah,” Emmy said. “It must be something potent if it exploded the whole building.”

“Let’s disarm this before taking it to Nick.”

“Right. Disarm. Identify the number of wires.”

They both silently counted the wires that led out of the electronic timer. Movies always showed a rainbow of colored wires around bombs. Or at least the classic red and green. Realistically, though, bomb creators usually saved money by buying one spool of wire and using it for all the wiring needs. After all, what use would a non-electrician have for three hundred feet of wire?

“Four,” Inez decided.

“Four,” Emmy nodded. “Identify which wires lead to and from the power source.”

Inez pointed at the two wires that led from the battery to the electronic timer. “Do you have wire cutters?”

“No. Be right back.”

Emmy got up and ran up the stairs. She ran to the supply closet, got the wire cutters and a pair of pliers that had a cutter in them, and ran back. Barely five seconds had passed. She gave Inez the wire cutters and put her pliers over the wire.

“Cut the wires at the exact same time,” Inez said. “Ready?”

“Nope.”

“Me either,” the older girl said.

They smiled nervously at each other.

Inez looked at the wire. “Ok. Ready… And… Now.”

There was a click as the wires were cut in tandem. They held their breaths, waiting for something to explode.

Nothing happened.

Emmy collapsed backwards onto the cold concrete, heart still racing. “We did it!”

Inez started to giggle. “That was terrifying.”

“Yep.”

“Let’s go tell Shawn.”