ONE YEAR LATER

          Null Enterprises, to its credit, treats its prisoners well. I have my own cell, with a bed and a toilet and everything. Its curved glass wall overlooks a hallway, which overlooks Central City. My cell is all glass and plastic and smooth stone, no metal. No metal because, as my keepers learned early on, I can manipulate it.

          I had woken up restrained in the back of a truck, my hands cuffed behind my back and my face covered. All I could see beyond the dark fabric of the bag over my face was little spots of light, the truck jostling underneath me. I was groggy and dizzy—had they drugged me? I didn’t know how long I’d been out.

          When they dragged me from the back of the truck, they kept the bag over my head, ushering me through hot sunlight and into the shade of—I assumed—a building. Concrete slapped under my shoes, my steps uneven with the guys holding me on either side. They walked me along ramps that led down, but I couldn’t get my bearings with my vision obstructed.

          They threw me to the ground, and they ripped the bag from my head. I squeezed my eyes shut, cringing against the harsh fluorescent lights above me. My cuffs were removed, and as I rubbed my eyes so hard I saw stars, I heard the clank of a door closing. I turned, blinking at the light, and saw the interior of a holding cell, dark cinderblocks on three sides and thick metal bars on the fourth, facing a hallway of more cinderblocks, barred cells, and fluorescent overhead lights.

          I stood shakily, panic rising in me. I trembled as I collapsed onto the small cot in the corner. I curled my hands into fists and pressed them to my eyes, trying to stop my hands from shaking and tears from streaming down my face. My elbows dug into my thighs, my jeans rough on my skin.

          I heard the creak of metal and looked up, thinking my captors had come back for me. But I blinked in surprise when I saw the gap between the bars. Two of them had bent like parentheses, creased in the middle and creating a space wide enough to step right through. I rushed to it, poking my head out into the hallway. It was quiet, empty save for the row of bars to either side and heavy doors on either end of the hall. The hall was only maybe thirty feet long, with a cell door on either side of mine and three more across the hall.

          Excitement thrilled in me as I stepped out into the hallway. I covered the distance to one of the doors in a few long strides. Beside it was a sign with an arrow, pointing to a loading bay. I pulled it open, wincing as it creaked a little, and slipped through it—into another hallway full of guards.

          That was three hundred and forty-two days ago.

          Now it’s home sweet home in this glass and plastic and stone cell. Truthfully, it’s very nice. Much better view. My cot is a thin mattress pad atop a platform of cinderblocks. I have a vinyl desk where I eat my meals, and its surface is marked with three hundred and forty-one tally marks. I drag a plastic knife in a small line next to the other tallies, marking the current day. It takes a while, but carves a neat little line next to the prior one. Null neglected to give me a pen and paper.

          I hear a door opening, and I look up.

          “Hey, Shortstack!” I say, giving the girl a little wave. She only makes an amused face at me. Shortstack stands outside my cell with a pair of guards. I don’t know her name, only that the blonde young woman is much smaller than me, her frame petite though she looks to be about my age. Her black leather shift dress falls to her knees, her fair hair slicked back from her face. She holds a tablet in her arms.

          “Finnegan Brady,” she begins, tapping on her tablet as it lights up her face. The guards enter my cell and secure my arms behind my back with plastic zip ties. “No blood-work. Just EEG today,” she says.

          “Again?” I say, amicable. I shrug one shoulder. “Just don’t mess up my hair.”

          “Sure thing, Sasquatch,” Shortstack says, her mouth tilting to one side in a smirk. She turns and walks down the hall overlooking Central City, the guards guiding me along behind her.

          To my left, the towers that sprout up from downtown are surrounded with canals that create a moat around the shining glass structures that reach into the sky. Null Enterprises sits at the southernmost end of the island created by the canals, on a hill overlooking the rest of downtown. The building is made of glass like the rest in the wealthy sector of the city.

          If I focus, I can very faintly feel the soft hum of the building’s metal skeleton, like it’s a part of me. But I can’t do anything to it, not like I did to those bars on my cell wall that first day. My power, strong as it is when it decides to show up, is hard to access, though the hum of metal is always present in some measure.

          Shortstack and the guards lead me to a lab, bustling with people in starched white coats. Hologram screens hover midair as people scroll through them and click buttons. One shows a chart with my face on it, and numbers that will show my vitals once I’m hooked up to the machine. Above my face reads: 03850, F. Brady. I have my own case number and everything.

         The guards take me to a small room off of the lab, with a huge window so they can observe me. They release my hands and sit me in a chair before a table as I rub my wrists. I shiver. My Null-issued scrubs are little defense against the chill in the room.

          The lab coats get to work sticking electrodes on my temples and forehead, clamping a little device on one pointer finger. The screens beyond the window come to life, showing my pulse and little waves that represent my brain activity. I’m used to this by now, seeing my life laid bare on a hologram screen like a lab rat. It doesn’t make it easier though, and I squirm a little in my chair.

          A guard sets a metal spoon on the table in front of me and leaves with the lab coats. The wires from the electrodes spill over my shoulders, arching up to where they are plugged in to a box in the ceiling of the small room. I catch the outline of my reflection in the window. I look like a marionette.

          The radio that connects to the other room crackles and a lab coat leans forward to speak. “Begin,” she says. I lower my eyes to the spoon. I can feel the hum it’s giving off, like the ripples of a pebble dropped in a pond. I focus on it, my hands folded in my lap.

          An indeterminate time passes, and then the spoon vibrates, clattering softly against the table. It’s more than I can usually do during these observation sessions. The spoon’s hum makes my skin prickle, but not like the chilliness in the room or the lab coats watching me. It feels like lying in warm sunlight. My eyes drift closed as I wrap myself up in it.

          After a moment, I let go of it, letting the warmth of the sunlight-hum fade from me. The soft clanking of the spoon stops as I release my power’s hold on it. I open my eyes; the spoon has shifted position by an inch or two.

          As I raise my eyes, I see the lab coats muttering over the charts on the screens. The waves that show my brain activity have shifted to jagged spikes, and my pulse has quickened. I can feel it pounding in my chest. I blow a breath out through my lips as the lab coats come in and begin to remove the electrodes and heart monitor on my finger. The guards zip tie my hands again. Through the window, Shortstack is watching me intently, her dark eyes unwavering.