"Yesss!" I take a swig of my beer and accidentally knock over a few of my two dozen empties. It's loud as fuck. "Whoops. Sorry, library nerds, my fault. Okay, uh, let's see here. So, I've been combing through her recent posts and none of them really strike me as anything abnormally secretive except for the most recent one. She was here, at this table, and there's a book in the shot titled Dark Urges."

"By Vannessa Frazier. A modern classic."

"And then the caption is: When eyes are watching and the fangs close in, the nights I've been haunting will begin again."

"That's a quote from the book. There's nothing cryptic about it."

"Fuck. She also left me this long strip of paper. She wrote a bunch of letters on it, it's clearly her handwriting, but it's like a ribbon, and none of it makes any sense, Aunt Athena. Please, help me."

"Did you look inside the book?"

"Yes."

"Let me rephrase that. Did you read any of the book?"

"Yes."

"Nicole."

"No..."

"I think the book she left you for cracking codes is going to be a decent resource to be used in the process of cracking the code she left you."

"But what do I do?"

"You read the book, Nicole."

"Wha–Reading? I didn't sign up for this to read! Only nerds read!"

The nerds around me at the library look offended.

"I'm kidding. I'm kidding! I love nerds! My best friend is a nerd!"

Athena sighs. "Titans, Nicole, you're killing me. Go to the section on Ancient Greece."

I flip to that page. "Okay."

"Read it."

"Bruh–"

"Read. It."

"Ahhhh! My fault again, nerds. I'm just having a serious self versus self conflict over here. I assure you, the dramatism is entirely necessary for my character development arc. Fine, fine. Okay. I'll read the stupid book. 'One of the earliest methods of Ancient Greek encryption was a method of transposition utilizing a tool called a scytale'–Aunt Athena, this is so boringgg."

"What is a scytale, Nicole?"

"Ugh. Ugh. A cylinder and a strip of parchment with vertical writing wrapped around its length which would... which would then reveal a decoded message, assuming the recipient possessed a cylinder of the same diameter to that which the message was written on. Okay, and?"

"And a beautiful addition to that invention was the change to ridged edges, to firmly align the letters in the proper place. What is the most common cylindrical thing in a library with a decent length and ridged edges?"

"The strap-on in my backpack? Heheh! Heyo!"

"Not... that."

"Uh. Then... Table."

"Cylindrical shape."

"Oh, oh. Uh." I start chewing on my pencil, poring over the words on the page and trying to mentally review what Athena just told me. Gods, I haven't had to think this much since I flunked out of college. "Run that back, please?"

"The most common thing in a library with a cylindrical length and ridged edges."

I tap a rhythm with my pencil on the table. "Can I get a hint?"

"This is your hint."

I toss my pencil on the desk and groan. "I can't do this."

"Think about it, Nicole. I can't help you any more than this."

I roll my pencil back and forth. "I'm never gonna get it."

"You will if you think."

I flip my pencil and catch it a few times, saying, "Thinking is too hard. I'm drunk."

"You're always drunk. Nicole, the answer is right in front of you."

"Right in front of me." I take that literally, because I'm desperate. "Beer can?"

"Try again."

Oh. There it is. Right in front of me.

I gasp, picking it back up. "Pencil!"

Doot doot. Athena hangs up on me.

"Too easy! Fuck yeah, I'm so good at this!" 

I tape the paper to the pencil and wind it around the son of a bitch until it's tight. There it is, clear as day. The message reads in Greek: κόσμος με ακολουθεί, δεν υπάρχει διέξοδος, είμαι σε μπελάδες, συνάντησέ με στη σκιά. 

People are following me, there is no way out, I'm in trouble, meet me in the shade.

"Well, great. That clears up nothing whatsoever. Fucking thanks, Anna. In the shade of what? We're in the city, everywhere is shaded–Oh, oh. Ohhh, I got you. Shadewood. I got you. Bet. On my way, beautiful."

Tossing my twelve empty beer cans in the trash like the responsible adult I am, I dash past the front desk, telling the nice lady I cracked the code and thanking her before jumping down the library's front steps into the chilly late night and running for–

"Oh hello," I purr to a pair of beautiful middle aged office women types as I pass. "Don't you two look nice? Where you headed? Oh, dinner out? I'd love to, but–Oh, sure, I've got time for pictures."

After smooching both lovely women for #kissthestorm and wishing them a beautiful day, I continue on my way to Shadewood. My phone buzzes in my waistband. I check it to see those pics already posted with me tagged. The caption is, Sometimes lightning does strike twice! I literally laugh out loud, like the post, and comment, bruh peak caption

Time to go!

My power surges, crackling and buzzing, and my legs spark a violent blue. The world stretches and blurs. My perception speeds along with me. I'm moving so fast everything around me is in slow motion.

You've seen this sort of shit before, the super speedy speedster and the moving so fast everything else is in slow motion and the whatever, so I don't really care to describe it much more than that. You get the gist of it. I may not be the speediest of speedsters, that title belongs to Hermes, but I go fast and I hit hard.

Leaping from high rise rooftops is always a thrill. I love the feeling, the sight, the rush, only intensified by the power coursing through me. Doing backflips and sideflips and frontflips too, and handsprings and cartwheels and casually clearing fifty foot jumps–Gods, I fucking live for this shit!

Annabellalizabethastasia, here I come!