Richie Gomez waited for the kid to wake. He slapped him around in jest, but his sister quickly shut his antics down.

“He’s just a kid,” Mary said. “Stop that.”

“Yeah” Richie slapped him once more to spite his sister. “A kid in a gang.”

“We don’t know his situation,” Mary said.

“Sure,” Richie said. He walked away and sat in a chair opposite from their captive. “I get it. We all have bad lives.”

“I’m not confident that this will go smoothly since we didn’t get to see his ability,” Mary said.

Richie clapped, and his flames traveled towards the boy, covering him with a thin sheet of fire. It was an incentive for the boy to not run away nor use his abilities, but it also served another purpose.

Mary took off her mask and made her way out of the room. She entered the impromptu surveillance room the twins set up in under an hour. Several monitors displayed a live feed of the interrogation room, multiple angles from different cameras.

“We have your clairvoyance for that,” Richie said, now over the wireless earpiece. “I doubt the kid is going to escape. He’ll probably squeal before then.”

The boy murmured and stirred in his seat. He was going to wake soon.

The boy opened his eyes, then blinked and stared blankly. Richie waited for the boy to say the first word, but he was just as adamant as Richie to wait for the other to speak.

“Speak,” Richie said, his voice deepened by a voice modifier. It was an expensive investment to find a gadget to perfectly disguise his voice, but it was well worth it. He would not be surprised if this kid was familiar with his work, or even his voice. The slightest familiarity would put him and his sister at risk.

The boy chuckled. “What do you want me to say?”

Richie twitched, annoyed by the boy’s tone.

“What were you doing with that lady?” Richie asked.

“Who?”

“The one you walked with today.”

“She’s my sugar mama.”

Mary let out a soft chuckle that broadcasted into the earpiece.

“Enough games,” Richie said. He withheld himself from inflicting fiery pain. “We searched through your car. We know your name is Harrison—”

Harrison instantly sighed. “Okay. Okay. I get it. You know information about me.”

“Do you understand the situation you’re in?”

“Sure do. Just another day of adults harassing me,” Harrison said. The boy closed his eyes momentarily, then opened them again. “What rival org are you from?”

“Have you ever been interrogated before?” Richie said. “This isn’t a casual conversation.”

“It seems rather casual to me,” Harrison said. “Doesn’t it make your job easier if I talk? I can make it harder for you.”

The flamed sheet over Harrison pushed down slightly, and slight groans escaped his mouth. He shuffled in his seat and tugged on the binds on his body. A pair of handcuffs held his hands against his back, while a cluster of chains were wrapped around his body. Richie smiled, but the boy could not see the face behind the mask.

“What were you doing with that lady?” Richie said again.

Harrison hesitated to answer but inevitably did. “I’m her bodyguard.”

“Good,” Richie said. “You’re smart for answering my questions.”

“I don’t have a choice,” Harrison said. Richie could hear disappointment in the boy’s voice, possibly regret.

“What do you know about that lady?” Richie said.

“That her name is Tac and she has a needle ability or something like that,” Harrison said. “I sold some products for her; that’s all.”

This was information that Richie already knew. He slammed the table and jumped to his feet. “Tell me what you know!”

Harrison bounced back, mostly his head since the chains did not allow for much movement.

“Today was my first day as her bodyguard,” Harrison said. “Trust me. I don’t know anything.”

“No!” Richie said. He snapped his right hand repeatedly, embers flared from the thumb slapping against the palm. “You know something! Tell me!”

Mary chimed in from the earpiece. “Calm down.”

Richie exhaled, moved his neck from the right to left, and sat back down.

“Okay,” Richie said. “Let’s start over.”

***

Harrison now knew what the phrase never meet your heroes meant. Even if Harrison could not see the man’s face nor completely able to decipher his voice, there was a possibility that this man was Richie Gomez. Harrison counted five snaps from the man.  Flames erupted slightly with increasing intensity from each snap. It was a gesture Harrison seen Richie Gomez do in interviews.

He grasped at straws to come up with the identity of this man with limited information, but it was not like Richie was the only person to be a fire user and snap in frustration. The man was masked with his body covered in black clothing. Harrison tried focusing on his speech, hoping to spot out any other regularities or usual phrases said by Richie, but he had no such luck.

Harrison scanned the area, pushing against the flooring. He found one other person in a room with a table and monitors. Harrison quickly hovered his eyes to spot out any cameras but found none visually. If this was Richie, then this would most likely be his sister Mary Gomez. Even then, this could be anybody, so there was no point fixating on the idea.

Harrison’s skin continued to singe and burn. For now, it was only an uncomfortable heat, but he wondered how far the man would go to find out answers.

Harrison debated on telling the man the truth about himself. Should he tell them that he was a student and that he was only there because he was bored and wanted to find out more about the Isaiah Delton incident? The idea slipped away, but only stayed under consideration because if these two were the twins, then that would help leverage his freedom. If they were two strangers, then he was not sure that that information would be sufficient. They were another Tac in the arrangement, another annoying variable to deal with. They knew where he lived and his name, so he needed to find something better to say.

I should have just focused on school. Harrison thought. I should have focused on that degree, but I had to be that guy to put his nose in matters that he shouldn’t.

Despite the possibility that these were not the Gomez twins, he liked the idea that he was up against adversaries that he was familiar with. He would be more comfortable if he had prep time to learn more about these two, but that was not an option. It was better to infer and assume powers and anticipate moves than to plan blindly. From that point forward he went fully with the idea that these were the Gomez twins.

Harrison’s mind scrambled to establish all the information he knew. This pair knew who he was and where he lived, but what else did they know? Harrison knew that he was not the target and that they were interested in Tac. They have never seen Harrison before, which meant that they investigated only recently, possibly even today. They must have come up across Harrison’s car only because Tac arrived at the parking garage. Then there was Mary Gomez in the other room observing the situation behind monitors. Was that out of safety or to pick out information from behind a lens?

Harrison thought about simply attacking Richie, but Mary was still to be accounted for. That clairvoyant power of hers was rather tricky. She would be able to tell her future, and if her future happened to be Harrison flinging all the objects in that room towards her, then she would surely anticipate that.

How would he work around that ability? Harrison previously tried figuring out ways to thwart the power, but even with his viewings when he watched her live and in action, he could not formulate a response to defeating the clairvoyant. He thought about acting in such a way that immobilized her in thought, bombarding her with many scenarios and futures that she would not know how to act, but that seemed like such a foolish and cheap trick. No way would a combat strategist and technician be defeated by such a ploy, nor would she never have dealt with such a plan before. It was obvious, but maybe that obviousness would assist him?

What was one weakness the twins had?

The gears in Harrison’s head turned, and the neural networks connected.

“Now, tell me,” Richie said. “What else do—"

Richie moved away from his chair and waved his hands over his body. A flame wall covered and protected him. Harrison had not moved a muscle nor done anything to make Richie get defensive thus verifying the presence of his sister. Mary must have given him precognitive information. This was a good thing. If her sister reacted this late, then her variance in telling her future was currently limited. Those few extra seconds were the variables that Harrison needed.

The chains around Harrison’s body burned, his skin heated up significantly and his body squirmed from such unease. Harrison breathed in, trying to cool down. He told himself that the heat was only temporary and that when he was done with this next step it would all be over. He focused on the chains wrapped around his body and flung them, his body following forward. Still bound to the chair, Harrison tightened up, and his body tackled Richie. Every bone in Harrison’s body rattled, but he managed to continue his plan.

The pair stumbled forward, and Harrison used his momentum to whip the chains up to get back to his feet. The chains around Harrison unwrapped from his body. Harrison had grown familiar with the chains, realizing how they were tied and which areas needed some push and pull to become undone. It had taken him a few minutes within the interrogation to realize the binding’s vulnerabilities, and he was fortunate enough to come this far from that point in the plan. 

Simultaneously, in the other room, Harrison pushed all the objects he could towards Mary, hoping to knock her out.

Within seconds, the chains finished unraveling and quickly transferred over onto Richie.

Harrison did not know whether Mary was still conscious, but he yelled out, “You better not come in here!” He tightened the chains around Richie to set his point across.

Harrison was still handcuffed, and he hoped to find the keys. Handcuffs rarely negated a person’s abilities; they just made it harder to escape. Despite that, handcuffs like these were built to confine even the strongest man, so any hope of Harrison breaking it or destroying it, even with his telekinetic abilities were moot.

“The keys to the handcuffs!” Harrison ordered Richie.

“Screw you,” Richie said. He let out a mocking laugh, taunting Harrison.

Harrison twitched his cuffed hands, trying his best to point at Richie’s face. The mask blew from off his face, confirming the identity of the man. Richie’s face was full of sweat, with eyes that looked like they have not slept in days.

“Richie Gomez,” Harrison said with an animosity yet admiration in his voice.

“Yeah,” Richie said. “You a fan?”

Harrison knew the Gomez twins were having it bad, but he did not expect them to be this far gone. Even from all the backlash from the media and society, they could still manage with a battered image. What were their intentions? What brought them to this moment?

“Yeah,” Harrison said. His wallet smacked Richie in the face, then traveled into his hands. “I want an autograph.”

Harrison crushed everything in both rooms into dust, all that was left was the chained-up body of Richie, and Mary in the other room. He had no time to gather any would-be belongings or ask questions.

Propelling his handcuffs forward, Harrison flew into the air. It was an unconventional way of flight, but it worked. He never tried it much, since he did not want people to know that he was capable of such a thing, but it worked.

He navigated his way through the building, and then he was out. He screamed at the top of his lungs triumphantly, and he looked back at the abandoned building. He took a mental note of the location and stored it in his memory.

Under the night sky, Harrison boosted into the air, flying with handcuffs behind his back. He would push himself upward and forward again when he started losing height, and he traveled before landing at his destination.

He flung a rock at the door, knocking loudly in the dead of night.

“Harry?” the door guard said.

Harrison flashed a smile running off a high. “I’m here to see Tac.”