The following day, Darion is eager to do more research on the guy, Jamie Walthouse. The gossip he obtained was collaborated by the pieces of evidence on the net and made him almost sure that the blackmailer was this person.

What's more, Darion is almost 90 percent sure that the young man is also an awakened being.

What made him first suspect is the fact that the guy set up some sort of automated payment system for the electric utility. Every time the bill is announced, the payment is on its way to the company a minute or two later. No one is that prompt with their bill payments.

Darion knew people can eventually set that up, but it made him think, and then all of a sudden, he can remember seeing all the automated set up within the house that he is observing. The grass was well maintained and a quick check found that Mr. Walthouse is also registered to amazon's automated android lawn mowing service, as well as the fence and roof addon maintenance. Knowing where to look, Darion pulled a few more various services from wall paint maintenance, solar rooftop damage control, disk cleaning services for the satellite and microwave dishes on top of the chimney, and lots more.

Not to mention the cameras littering the front door.

Everything is automated. Why?

That same night, Darion decided to infiltrate the house once and for all. He has no choice really since the morning after he needed to go back to Bainbridge to resume his duties as a street hero.

But first, Darion needed some anonymity. From his garage's machine shop, he fashioned a bulky bike helmet with shaded glass covering. it mostly obscures his face from any prying eyes.

Darion devised a simple electronic signaling tool on a transmitter to check for any electronic signal and attached it to the helmet and connected wirelessly on a customized app on his phone.

It was just after 9 in the evening when he arrived at the address. He'd already planned his approach and he zipped behind the property and is now standing at the back of an air-conditioning unit protruding at the back of the house. It is also the darkest part of the property and he is hoping no curious neighbors will be interested enough to look his way.

Originally, he planned on making an Omni-tool, or at least a very effective swiss army knife, to make his way inside. But then he remembered that he can just use his telekinesis power to dismantle the damn thing. And he did.

He was so surprised by how easy it was to use his telekinesis this way. Of course, when he saw the end of the aircon unit his mind already memorized everything about it and a quick search on the internet made him find the exact unit model and the blueprint for it. By now, he knew exactly where every knots and bolt inside the unit.

When he is ready, he took a deep breath and concentrated. He simultaneously unscrewed every bolt from their position and every other connecting part of the AC unit. The airconditioner literally disintegrated into its smallest parts and Darion neatly floated them into a pile in one corner of the house. Then he reassembled them back again before gently placing them down on the ground.

Congratulations! Due to your diligence, you are able to increase your skill "Telekinesis" by 1

Requirements: MIND 2

Current skill: 7

He blinked. Ookay...

He shook his head and focus on the task at hand.

With the boost in his agility, Darion had no problem shimmying his way in the small opening he created in the wall. Once inside, he dropped noiselessly before slowly looking around.

It was dark inside but Darion knew immediately that the place was abandoned. The place was orderly but there is a thin shin of dust covering the entire place and almost undisturbed. No one was in here for the last several weeks, if not months.

He barely noticed that his eyes needed any adjustment in the near-total darkness until a message interrupted him!

Congratulations! Due to your diligence, you are able to unlock the skill, Night Vision.

Requirements: PERCEPTION 1, MIND 1

Current level: 1

Night Vision: You are able to see in total darkness. The higher the level, the more detailed the vision. the ability also gives additional context to your observation skills.

Warning: The upgrade will not help you against magically induced smoke or fog, or any other form of obstacle that might physically or otherwise block your eyesight.

Darion read it, acknowledge it, and then dismissed it. With all the messages he is getting these last few weeks, Darion is getting used to the mysterious magical messages, and he is not letting them distract him too much from his goal.

He checked the kitchen, and although the ref is working fine, the meat inside was turning black. No one had used the supplies inside the house recently.

Darion frowned. In the silence of the night, he can hear a faint whirring sound. He wasn't sure if it is because of his heightened senses or maybe just his imagination.

In the end, he trusted his instincts. He kneeled on the floor and then closed his eyes. He concentrated on the feelings he got as he was taught in the army base camp.

"There are hundreds, if not thousands, of varieties of powers out there," Sgt. Mahoney boomed at the outdoor lecture hall. "But always remember that the first thing you need to learn to control and finally master your powers is to understand how they work in the first place. For movement buffs, I suggest you analyze the vibration around your powers. For brute force, the tension around the muscles, for Energy projection, the heat or radiation expelled within the vicinity of the attack, for gravity manipu-"

"How about super senses?" Darion interrupted.

The big sergeant turned to him. "That is actually one of the simplest. Your senses are already giving you hints, it is up to you if you can decipher those hints as something trivial or something important. Only you can tell yourself if it is part of your imagination or paranoia or if there is a genuine alert you needed to look at."

So Darion took a deep breath once more, ignoring the mildew and dust within the room, or the sound of the buzzing mosquito, or is it the spider? Or is it the spider killing the freaking mosquito?

You are getting distracted again...

Darion sighed and concentrated once more. Slowly, he went much deeper until he pinpointed every noise around him, and one by one, he discarded them temporarily away from his senses. he took in what is left of the data his senses are receiving until the faint whirring noise came back more prominently. This time, he was sure that it was real.

Where the hell is that coming from?

It is not one of the appliances still working in the house, but it was definitely... a machine. Darion's eyes shot open.

A machine, Darion thought again. Something small. He started walking towards the row of books on one corner of the living room. A simple machine. Something hidden.

Something like...

Darion carefully picked up the book that is faintly giving the whirring noises in his senses. The book is called "Triggered" by some dude named Donald Jr. Inside the book was a hidden camera directly looking at the living room and beyond.

Someone is monitoring the place, Darion thought. A cold smile etched itself slowly in his face. Almost unconsciously, he reset the helmet on top of his face. He also made a quick check of his body to see if he has anything that might identify him. As far as he can tell, there is none.

Darion returned his gaze at the hidden camera. Then he pulled out his smartphone. If the camera is transmitting then it is using some sort of wifi connection. All he had to do is trace the source power and then bypassed the... damn, the firewall is much sophisticated than he thought.

But it wasn't up to the task of stopping him. He pushed through with brute force as his program subroutine applied several billion possible passwords until it found what it was missing and then he bore through. The signal is coming from...

The heck? Below the house? But there is no basement in this location. I already check.

Darion frowned again. Or is there?

Now that he knows what to look for, he stomped his foot and felt the faint echo of a hollow ground below him. Sonafavitch, Darion cursed for not seeing this earlier.

The blackmailers are below ground and are probably looking at him as he scurries around the dark open house.

Now that he is aware of the direction of his prey, his mind redoubled its focus on the room. He rechecked everything, finding every tidbit and minor interesting things around the house.

He could almost name every kind of animal and the last time humans sat on the sofa by simply following the slight indentation of the memory foam on the couch. He could guess the height and weight of the main occupant in the house by studying the minuscule stressed in the foot of the chair and the angle of how the old chair wobbled.

The smell of the dusty table made him aware that the occupant unusually like the ingredient paprika in his or her dishes. He or she is a nonsmoker but otherwise definitely a slob. He may have a routine wherein he clean the house once a day but it wasn't that thorough. At least that was the routine before. It was obvious to Darion that no one cleaned this place for at least several weeks now.

His eyes swiveled in the collection of books and it stayed there. The majority of the books are political or studies in economics as if the occupant wanted to be known as an intellectual. And Darion agreed the guy was smart.

Too smart.

Just like him.

Darion is willing to bet that the guy is an awakened being, but not the traditional standard powers, but he was just like him in terms of classification.

A tinkerer.

A person with a genius-level mind but unlike him, the dude wasn't trained. Most of his works are sloppy. His or her ideas were brilliant and well-executed, but there are lots of flaws that he never really thought about. Like the email. It wasn't an easy trace sure but he should have known that email tracing is possible for other tinkerers like him.

Hadn't all that been explained to him during his stay in the army training camp?

Darion frowned. or did he skip that?

Even intellectuals have their own biases and a person who already think a certain way is rather set on his way and is not easy for them to look at another person's point of view. Darion looked at the massive bookshelves once more. As he already surmised, the majority of the books are political, but when he looked closer he realized that most of them are right-wing conservative-leaning ideas.

So the book about the Mueller Report in one corner of the shelf stood out to Darion.

He grabbed it but to his surprise, it didn't budge. He realized that it was attached to the wall itself. After studying it for a few more seconds, he let the book slide to its side. He heard a loud click, and an activated motor started whirring. Suddenly, a huge door panel opened next to the shelf.

Cool, Darion thought.

Carefully Darion entered the secret door and realized that it was a narrow private elevator. There are only two buttons, an up and down arrow, so Darion clicked the down arrow. The elevator closed and he was transferred to a lower hidden level of the house.

The first thing Darion noticed was the foul smell, despite a powerful ventilation system inside the room.

The room was a spacious single circular room. In the middle of the room was a fantasy setup of a computer rig that would make any geek drooling with envy.

It has multiple monitors stacked on top of each other showing different display screens, from a porn website to an automated graph of the latest NASDAQ, to a torrent downloading program that continuously downloads something according to the compiled subroutine, to an unfinished C++ compiler program, to a streaming site of the latest kpop drama.

And in the middle of it all, sat a corpse. Or what's left of it. Darion almost staggered out of the elevator because of the foul smell. His hyper senses just made everything worst.

He placed a handkerchief around his nose and it helps a little bit but with his focus mind ability, at least he can still think properly. Judging from the state of the body, the corpse began to liquify and is at the final stage of decomposition called skeletonization. How he knew that he has no idea. His best guess is that the corpse used to be male, obese, and dead for the last 7 weeks.

It was amazing that the system he set up is still working even though there is no more human intervention. He noted the entire room until his eyes returned to the dead person.

Did he have a heart attack? There was no visible sign of any struggle or wounds. And his research told him that if this dude is Jamie Walthouse, then he has a lot of medical problems.

Gingerly, he navigated the expensive and bombastic computer chair that still holds the remains of the dead owner of the place and set it aside to one corner. Then Darion set to work on the computer itself.

His fingers dance on the keyboard as he zeroed in on the necessary info he first wanted to find out. He was right after all. The blackmailer was in fact, the homeowner Jamie Walthouse.

Now that Darion is sure that the blackmailer’s name is Walthouse, he quickly made cursory research on the person and he found plenty.

Walthouse is also a registered awakened being. For a time, he was also in the hero program but he failed spectacularly as he started screaming at his trainer and professors. The poor kid was diagnosed early on with a severe anxiety disorder that makes him unable to socialize with other human beings. Shortness of breath, panic attacks, and the tendency to lash out against anyone who comes near him are the normal diagnosis of several doctors who checked him throughout the years.

Unfortunately, he is also considered to be a mediocre tinkerer by the ISSUE evaluators who is only good at computer programming and is regarded as a low-risk individual. He was given a small stipend, a tax break on his mortgage, a stern warning not to do anything illegal with his powers, and he was left alone on his own.

At the time, ISSUE is very very busy dealing with a lot of things, and then the government sort of forgot all about him.

Within minutes, Darion is able to find the blackmail materials targeting Melvin Colmy. He made sure he has all the necessary data, and that the blackmailer doesn't have any other backup hidden somewhere else. Once that is done, he hesitated for a moment. It turns out that the blackmail wasn't personal.

The Walthouse kid set up a personality profile search program. Darion recognized the parameters as someone most likely to cheat, then the kid sort of created a coded script that he placed on Facebook and other dating sites to filter out possible candidates. Those with a "most likely to cheat" determination from the program gets a designated private investigator. The program set it up so that all interactions are done via email. Once the private investigators are paid online and sent the necessary data about the client's "Spouses," the professional investigators, given the nature of their work, didn't ask any more questions.

Those targeted individuals who indeed cheated and investigators find pieces of evidence are tagged and evaluated again. A separate algorithm subprogram determined the maximum amount of possible financial compensation they would reasonably pay for, based on their current lifestyle, and the blackmail materials are sent to the targeted individuals. 90 percent of the victims sent revenge emails, threats, and dire warnings to the blackmailer, but in the end, they paid the asking amount.

One dude in Sudan is being asked to pay 5 dollars every 3 months because that is simply what Walthouse's blackmail system had analyzed to be the most he could afford without the victim financially collapsing.

It was a good setup, and Darion is surprised to learn that the Walthouse kid is accumulating almost 1.6 million dollars from 87 "Clients" every 3-4 months. He has multiple bank accounts both here and abroad that are still being maintained even today. The primary account alone accumulated almost 3.2 million dollars as of midnight.

For a moment, Darion was tempted to keep the program running. The script had accumulated almost 3218 possible targets and all he needed to do is to reactivate the blackmail program for them to receive their pictures or other forms of evidence. And within 3-4 months, Darion will have access to several more million dollars’ worths of blackmail money.

But he hesitated only for a moment. Darion sighed, and with a few more adjustments to his keystrokes, he created his own subprogram and completely wipe out all the pieces of evidence stored in the Walthouse personal storage server, including the one for Melvin Colmy.

Then he stepped away from the computer and looked around the room, and then finally his eyes rested on the remains of the young awakened. The bones are showing connected only by a small amount of hair and thick cartilage and fiber. Darion didn't even realize that he got used to the dank smell in the room as he stared at the poor guy.

The last thing he is supposed to do now is to report the death of one Jamie Walthouse to the authorities, and he is done with this entire affair.

This time, however, Darion hesitated a bit longer. Destroying the blackmail program to help out his client was one thing since he is obligated to help out someone who did hire him to do a task.

But Darion didn't feel the same obligation towards the government. He owed them nothing. Darion's eye returned to the corpse.

Apparently, so did the young Mr. Walthouse here.

Barring the blackmail side job, and with the dude's program to pay his taxes and bills at the right time, as far as the government is concerned, Mr. Walthouse is a model citizen. If he did report the guy, then his name will be unnecessarily get dragged into the mud.

Darion didn't really care, but the problem is that the guy was an awakened being. And what the boy did will become assuredly negative propaganda against his kind when they couldn't afford such publicity. The world is already too divided about the topic of awakened beings as it is, so no need to throw gasoline in the fire.

Darion believed that the government is just waiting for an excuse just like this.

And then the leash will tighten even more.

Sure, but then he'd be violating at least 30 state laws by not reporting this, including identity theft, if he continue with the plan that is building in his head.

He opened his cellphone and scanned for his controller's number and froze.

On the other hand, he could use Mr. Jamie Walthouse's identity for his own benefit. It is not as if the kid needed it anymore. For him, it will be a tremendous leeway if he can control a second identity and move things secretly in his name.

He knew that part of his recklessness is due to his growing powers, but deep inside he also knew that this is also what he wanted. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and he did not want to let it go. Of course, there are dangers, but he believed that with his newly acquired intelligence from the system and his natural carefulness, he can navigate the dangers with minimal fuss.

So after deliberating for a few more minutes, he stored his phone back in his pocket and looked around the dank place smelling of death.

"Well," he said to the room with a sigh. "I guess I'm keeping you."