The assembled group of contestants began murmuring to themselves and a general round of disbelief seemed to permeate the assembled group. There were a few cries of “No way!” and “Must be a trick!” Jason was sure that he even heard “I was sure this was too good to be true.”

Sensing that she was losing the crowd after the initial reveal, Director Kingston spoke up. “I know that you all are thinking that this is some elaborate hoax or prank. I myself imagine that if I received a strange email or letter touting the existence of superheroes and a contest to give people superpowers, I would remain quite skeptical of the situation and probably just ignore the invitation.

“Nevertheless, what you see before you is true. This is a quantum teleporter. It has been here the entire time that you have been working on the questionnaires that we gave you. However, the device itself has been shielded from view by myself. You see, I am a chameleon; I am able to alter the matter density and makeup of things that are around me in order to make them invisible to the naked eye. Allow me to demonstrate for you.”

Director Kingston turned and waved her hands over the table that she stood in front of. With a flash of light, the table disappeared and the crowd began to chatter excitedly. Director Kingston smiled coldly at the ease which she had regained the attention of the contestants. As she scanned the group, her eyes alighted on Jason.

“You.” She pointed at Jason and looked at him directly in the eyes. Jason quickly looked away, not wanting to potentially have his mind altered by the director. “Come up to the front of the crowd here and sit where the table was, or should I say, still is.”

Jason shrugged and followed the command that had been issued by the imperious director. As he made his way through the crowd he noticed that about half seemed to be in awe of what they had seen, while the other half still seemed a bit more skeptical. One tall, well built man even bumped Jason as he walked past and whispered “I don’t believe what she’s selling. See if you can prove her wrong.”

Jason had no intention of proving anyone right, not the least of whom was this director who had not even talked about what she was the director of. Jason walked up to Director Kingston who gestured for Jason to put out his hand over where the table had once been. Jason doubted that it was anything more than a trick but then again, the contract had talked about superpowers. Jason wasn’t aware of anyone in the world having superpowers; if there were such superheroes, they would be plastered all over the news websites.

“I can tell you right now, that this man is not a plant. Are you?” The director turned to look at Jason.

“No, I’m not a plant,” he replied dryly. “I’m a man. I don’t sit in the sun and drink water all day.” Jason kicked himself mentally. Of all the times to make a horrible joke he had to do it when he had been called out to test a theory. He hated that he made jokes when he was nervous. Jason found that his default response to fear or anxiety was to break out into bad jokes or talking back to those that made him nervous.

A brief cold smile passed over the director’s lips and a small chuckle emanated from a few of the onlookers. “Well sir, would you please provide us your name. I’m assuming that ‘Mister Rhododendron’ is not your name.” This comment elicited further chuckles from the onlookers.

“Phantom.” Jason replied without an ounce of emotion in his voice. “My name is Jason Phantom.”

“Well Mister Phantom, would you please put your hand down on the table here?” the director asked.

Jason looked at the woman who stood before him. As he stared at her, Jason realized that her entire ensemble resembled something of an ice queen: cold, efficient and covered in muted blues and greys. As he inspected her, Jason saw that she was inspecting him as well.

Jason knew that he was not really much to look at. An average guy, he had gained some weight over the last few years and was not as fit as he once was. His hair had grown long and usually was unkempt, although this morning’s shower had helped tame some of the wildness of his hair. Jason would be considered more of a “dad-bod” kind of guy than a “rad-bod” guy. Jason sincerely hoped that his superpower, should he even get one, would be something that would allow him to look better.

Evidently finding him not a threat, Director Kingston nodded towards where the table had been as if to say, “It’s there. Go touch it.”

Jason took his outstretched hand and slowly lowered it. At about the height that the table would have been, Jason encountered some resistance. As he moved his hand around, Jason found that the resistance had the rough length and width of the table that was once there. Jason found the lip of what he assumed to be a table and found that the resistance proceeded down a few inches before disappearing, just like a normal table would be laid out.

Wanting to test a theory, Jason rapped his knuckles against the resistance. He heard a soft knock of knuckles on plastic, just as if he had rapped his knuckles on the table that was there. Satisfied, Jason turned around and faced the gathered crowd. With a grin, Jason did a short hop backwards and promptly sat down on the table. To his and everyone else’s surprise, Jason did not fall to the ground instantly. Rather, he seemed to float in the air with his feet dangling a good foot off the ground.

A wan smile crossed the director’s face. “I was not expecting you to sit on my table, but that is a far better example than I could have asked for. If you will note, Mister Phantom is not falling, nor has he encountered any difficulty sitting on the table that still remains.

“As I have said previously, my power, or at least one of my powers, is the ability to alter matter so that it changes structure to match the surroundings, rendering it all but invisible. Unfortunately, the largest downside to this power is that it only turns things invisible to the naked eye. As Mister Phantom has so clearly demonstrated, it does not make the object disappear from the physical plane and said object can still be interacted with physically, if you know where to find said object.”

Director Kingston turned to Jason. “Thank you Mister ‘Not a Plant’ Phantom. You may return to your friends.”

Jason began to object that he had just met the people at the table that he was sitting at, but a withering look from the director told him that he was already on thin ice with his plant comment and jumping on the table. Jason nodded curtly and returned to his place next to Tom and Misty.

With another gesture from the director and a flash of light, the table had reappeared where it had been previously. Jason wasn’t sure if the table had actually been invisible or if it had been replaced by something else, but at this point, it didn’t matter. Jason smiled at Misty and Tim when he returned.

“Not a plant,” Misty giggled. “That was clever Jason.”

Even stoic Tim gave Jason a brief flash of a smile. “Good job kid. That was pretty ballsy of you to say something like that to Director Ice Queen.”

Glowing with pride, Jason returned his attention to the Director in time to hear her say, “...which is how the Quantum Teleporter works. You step through and are taken through to another dimension, time or location. Sometimes all three. When you enter the portal, there is a chance that you might not be able to find the return portal, but most excursions through the portal are generally safer than the few dangerous portal destinations.

“That being said, please note that Liquid Gold Corporation holds no liability for the state of the location that you encounter on the other side of the portal. Liquid Gold Corporation has built the portal but it does not have any sway over the locations that the portal leads to.

“We do have some general ability to choose where and when the portal leads those who enter it, but at this time it is more a general ability to direct the portal. We can typically get people into the vicinity of somewhere within 10 to 15 square city blocks of an area and within 6 months to a year of the intended target and location. Sometimes it works out; sometimes it does not.”

Huh, thought Jason. It sounds as if there’s no real guarantee that we will be able to get superpowers or even encounter a way for us to get superpowers. Jason found himself wishing that he had read through the contract more thoroughly. He was sure that there was a clause in the giant contract about not getting superpowers at all. Once again, Jason was frustrated that he had not taken the time to read through thoroughly what he had been given before he signed the paperwork.

Jason remembered that’s how he had been suckered into his job as a recruiter. He had bought into the sales pitch that his boss had given him at the initial interview. Jason had signed on without a second thought, fully buying into the promise that he would be leading his own branch in six months. A year later, Jason was still working the same desk job, cold calling potential candidates and he wondered where things had gone wrong.

Jason had pulled out the contract that he had received from InsuraCorp and began reading it one night. It was nowhere near as long as the contract that he had signed this morning, but the paperwork did come close to 50 or so pages of technical legal jargon. As he had read through the paperwork, Jason found that in order to run his own branch, Jason would have to be bringing in triple the amount of workers that he got monthly, on a weekly basis. It was at that point that Jason stopped caring about his job and resolved to bring in only the bare minimum of potential candidates.

Once again, my failure to look into the details of a legal contract has come to bite me in the butt, Jason chided himself. You’d think after several years at InsuraCorp and having to deal with the consequences of signing something without fully reading the document, I’d have a bit better judgement. But no, I don’t. I got myself into the same position again: I’m stuck with this contract that i signed without a way to guarantee that I’ll be receiving what I was promised.

A loud cheering brought Jason out of his thoughts. Jason looked up to see a group of four people standing in front of the front table. Two men dressed as Master of Power, another famous superhero, and two women, one dressed in a t-shirt and jeans, and the other in what seemed to be spy gear. Director Kingston raised a small device and tapped it once with her thumb. Jason watched in awe as the ring began to spin faster and faster. Within seconds, the ring was spinning so fast that it looked like one, continuous sphere. After a few seconds of the high speed spinning, Jason saw a small pinprick of light begin at the middle of the spinning sphere. As the light grew larger, the spinning slowed down.

When the light had fully enveloped the inside of the ring, the ring abruptly came to a halt. As Jason looked at the light in the ring, a picture began to come into view. Fields of yellow and white flowers dominated grassy hillocks and knolls. Jason was pretty sure that he saw a few butterflies in the portal but he was not too sure as they had flitted past the portal opening too quickly. Large purple mountains dotted the far horizon and a soft rustling of wind through the grass and flowers emanated from the portal.

“It looks like we have a good one this time everyone,” the Director crowed. “I believe that this is one of the preferred locations to start off our competition.

“The rules are simple: You have been given several remote camera contacts that will provide a first-person perspective and wireless transmitters for those cameras. These will work pan-dimensionally and will broadcast not only what you are seeing, but also your feelings and current physical status. As stipulated in your contracts, we will be watching the footage in real time and splicing it together for our show. Keep in mind that we will be broadcasting the show no matter what happens to you, so make it a good show!”

“That’s cold,” murmured Jacob.

“Would you expect anything less of the Director of Ice?” replied Tim in a low voice.

The director continued her speech: “Your objective is to find and replace four stones of power somewhere on the hills surrounding the portal. They should be well marked and easy to spot as they will be on pedestals. Take these,” The director held up what looked to be a rock that had several runes inscribed on it, “and replace the stones of power with these stones. Make sure that you replace the stones quickly, or there will be consequences.”

The team that had lined up at the table nodded in understanding. Each one of the members picked up a stone from the table in front of them and began making their way towards the portal behind the table.

“You have just under two hours to complete this mission,” the director stated in a no nonsense manner. “If you take longer than that, the portal will close and you will be trapped within that dimension.”

With a whoop, one of the Master of Power cosplayers threw himself through the portal. The girl in jeans followed shortly after and the final two contestants weren’t far behind her. As the final girl entered the portal, it began to shimmer and change color. What seemed to be a window into another world, became opaque and turned to a silvery blue liquid.

The Director cleared her throat and turned to the wiry man who had not said anything as of yet. “Tempo, please let me know when five minutes have passed. If our contestants have not returned then, make sure that nothing else gets through the portal before it is shut.”

Tempo nodded his head in a quick gesture of understanding and moved towards the open portal and the pedestal on which it stood.

“I didn’t see Tempo start a timer or make note of the time” noted Misty. “I wonder if he can keep time internally?”

Jason didn’t know how to answer, but he had to agree with Misty’s assessment. Jason too had noted that Tempo had not consulted a phone to set a timer or even glanced at a watch to find out the time. He had simply acknowledged the Director’s orders and made his way over to the portal. Interesting, Jason mused. I’ll have to keep an eye on the three administrators as there seems to be more going on here than we were let on to believe at first.

As the rest of the candidates waited with baited breath to see if the first group would succeed in their task, Director Kingston snapped her fingers and a large monitor appeared to her left. On it was listed four names, a heartbeat counter under each name and simple readouts that looked like a general health and stamina bar like most video game heads up displays would show. As the crowd watched, names appeared over each set of stats: Franklin Drixx, Anita Mann, Yuri Kolsneska, and Maria Cruz.

“You’ll notice that each of the contestants has a health and stamina bar,” pointed out Director Kingston, “along with a heartbeat monitor to measure the current stress levels of each of the contestants. As of right now, things seem to be going very smoothly for our first team, but keep an eye on the heart rate and stamina bars to see if they’re encountering any difficulties.

“These health and stamina bars will also be available to you when you enter into the portal and you will find that you have a heads up display that will overlay your vision via specialized contacts that we will provide before entering the portal. This HUD will also allow you to view your current powers and help you keep track of how much time you have left in the alternate world.

“Keep in mind that time might flow differently in that reality than in ours. If you will notice, I have had Mr. Tempo guard the exit from the portal due to this particular realm moving far quicker through time than our reality. In fact, it runs at about an hour there to 2.5 minutes here. We are not quite sure as to why that is, but that is the reason that we have integrated wireless transmission into our mounted cameras: too many had been lost in previous iterations of our show without any way of retrieving the footage from the cameras that followed our contestants.”

As the director continued onward with her lecture, Jason saw that Franklin’s heartbeat had spiked rapidly to 185 beats per minute and then declined to nothing. The same thing had happened with both Anita’s and Maria’s heartbeats as well, but they seemed to remain high for just a few seconds longer than Franklin’s. Yuri’s heartbeat spiked to 190 and seemed to remain there for almost a minute before bottoming out. All four contestants’ healthbars plummeted to zero and each of their names and stats grayed out.

A loud roar came from the portal and a sizzling object came flying through the opaque portal. “SHUT IT DOWN!” yelled both Director Kingston and Doctor Eggburton at the same time. With practiced speed, Tempo performed a series of maneuvers around the portal that Jason couldn’t seem to follow. Whatever Tempo did immediately caused the silvery blue portal to shimmer and then disappear, but not before another object came flying through the portal.

The object steamed as it came out of the portal and rolled a few meters before coming to a stop. As Jason stared at the object that had come flying out of the portal, he realized what it was:

“Why did a human skull just come flying out of the portal director?” Jason asked, pointing at the skull.

At Jason’s query, the forty odd contestants that were waiting at the portal started chattering animatedly. Some pointed at the skull that had landed a few meters away from them; others started yelling at the Director and Doctor Eggburton demanding to know what was going on. A few, like Misty, just stared blankly at the portal as if they couldn’t understand what had just occurred.

“What the hell is going on Director! I think we deserve to know what is going on, especially since that was a human skull that just came flying back through the portal!” demanded Jason.

With calm, practiced ease, the Director walked up to the skull, plucked it from the ground and placed it on the director’s table at the front of the gathered contestants. The white, plastic table contrasted starkly with the still smoking skull that sat upon it. While much of the skull had been burned black, Jason could still see a few patches of burned skin and hair that were smoldering.

“It seems,” the Director stated matter-of-factly, “that the first group was not up to the task set before them.”

This brought a pandemonium of protests and curious shouts of people attempting to find out what the director meant. The contestants quieted down as she raised both of her hands to indicate that she required their attention.

“Doctor Eggburton,” the director directed her attention to the shorter man. “It seems that there was a slight miscalculation with the difficulty of the initial portal. It seems that rather than the gentle introduction that we were expecting for our first group, they were deposited into a rather dangerous realm of some fire-breathing monsters.

“Let’s have a look at the footage shall we?” Director Kingston gestured to a large projector and extremely large screen that sat to the left of the table. At the director’s motion, the projector flickered on and four various perspectives came onto the screen. Each was labelled with the names of each of the party: Franklin Drixx, Anita Mann, Yuri Kolsneska, and Maria Cruz.

Franklin seemed to be taking the lead through the portal and Maria seemed to be taking up the rear. As the team began walking down the path, Jason saw that the path was lined by white flowers that looked similar to daisies, but had a strange star shape. The pathway led into a hilly valley where large oblong rock pillars stuck up in the fields of flowers in seemingly random patterns. Butterfly-like creatures flitted from flower to flower and both Anita and Yuri focused on the creatures for a few seconds each.

As the party proceeded into the valley, they came across a white stone pedestal that had four oval grooves in the top of the pedestal. A dome of pure metal sat in the center of the pedestal and strange symbols softly glowed with a yellow-orange light. From the pedestal four separate paths branched from the main path that the team had come down.

Franklin began speaking to the party noting that each person would probably have to go down one path to ensure that they were able to get their stones before the time limit ended. Each party member chose a different path: Franklin went to the bottom left, Anita took the top right, Yuri took the top left and Maria took the bottom right.

It was hard for Jason to pay attention to each of the perspectives being projected onto the screen, but as he watched Franklin’s screen, he noted that the wildflower fields suddenly transitioned into a wintery wasteland after a few hundred meters. Jason noted that the valley continued behind several hills which is why there had been no indication of the sudden change in biome. Jason noted that although at first glance, the valley seemed quite large, the wintery valley had turned into a bowl-like valley that only extended several hundred meters. In the bottom of the bowl sat another pedestal of ice similar to the one at the center of the pathways.

Jason quickly glanced at the other three perspectives and found that each one had entered what seemed to be various elemental areas. Anita seemed to be in a volcano or fire area that had a pedestal of obsidian, Yuri was in an area that seemed to be deep jungle with a pedestal of wood in the center of a clearing in the middle of a swamp, and Maria had emerged in an area that had floating islands over what seemed to be a bottomless pit that had a pedestal that seemed to be made of cloud.

As Jason’s attention shifted from perspective to perspective, Jason noted movement on Anita’s point of view. She had made her way to the central pillar and had picked up a glowing red stone that sat on the obsidian pillar. Jason noted that this must be one of the stones that the Director had told the team to retrieve. However, as soon as Anita had picked up the stone, a large creature emerged from the lava surrounding the small island that the pedestal sat upon.

A loud roar permeated through all four of the team’s perspectives and Anita immediately began running towards the central pedestal. Jason noted that both Maria and Franklin began running back to the central pillar to determine what was going on as the roar continued. Anita’s perspective began shaking and although she looked back several times, Jason had a hard time determining what was chasing her.

Yuri seemed intent on getting to the small island in the middle of the swamp, but as he jumped from rock to rock, he slipped and fell into the muck of the swamp. Yuri attempted to get back onto the rock that he had fallen off, but something seemed to be pulling him down into the swamp and although he yelled for his teammate’s help, his cries were drowned out by the roaring that seemed to be growing louder. Yuri slipped beneath the surface of the swamp and his camera went black, which brought a shudder from Jason. Imagine dying from drowning in mud; that’s worse than water.

Jason switched back to looking at what Anita’s perspective showed and when she finally made it back to the main pedestal, she turned to see what was pursuing her. Jason’s blood ran cold when he saw a dragon emerging from the path that Anita had come from. Large obsidian black scales covered the dragon and a red hue leaked out from beneath the scales giving the dragon a sense that it was made from lava and hardened rock. Large wings spread out to either side of the dragon’s body, seeming to be made entirely of flame.

Jason watched in horror as flames came out of the dragon’s mouth, enveloping not just Anita, but also Franklin who had just emerged into the small valley that held the pedestal. Both cameras went black as their owners were incinerated, but Jason saw both Franklin and Anita burned as he watched Maria’s perspective.

She had begun running back to the portal to try and escape the dragon, and had made it almost to the portal before a flying chunk of obsidian had come flying past her and went through the portal. Through the portal, there could be heard the Director and Doctor Eggburton yelling “SHUT IT DOWN!”

The whole crowd watching the video feed tensed and collectively held their breath, knowing that the inevitable was coming. Maria turned to look at the dragon one last time, which caused her to trip and fall backwards. Jason knew what was coming but couldn’t look away. A huge scorching blast of fire came flying at Maria and her camera went dark.

Jason choked down some bile that was threatening to come out and looked away from the camera. The contestants had been warned that the games would be dangerous but he hadn’t expected freaking dragons to be something that they would be facing in the initial challenge, much less at all.

“Dragons,” choked out one of the men dressed as Super-Dude. “We have to fight dragons? What the hell?”