Nisha didn’t respond, choosing to look down and bite the inside of her cheek. So much had gone on in a short amount of time, she could barely process what was happening. Plus she didn’t trust any of these clowns with any personal information whatsoever. Sam seemed alright, but no one else. Alex sighed and Nisha looked up to see that old and tired expression creep back on his face. “I know things are confusing and scary for you right now, hell I’m terrified. But if it wasn’t for James and Finley, you wouldn’t be here right now. Not that you owe them anything…...but no one here is out to get you.”

Nisha raised an eyebrow with an unimpressed expression and looked pointedly at Carolyne.

Alex ran his fingers through his hair. “If Carolyne does anything, Which she won’t, I will protect you.”

Nisha snorted. “Yeah? What can you do?”

“Time travel.” Alex replied dramatically. “For about ten minutes.”

Nisha considered that. She had heard of superhumans who could time travel before, although they were few and far between. Always a huge asset in any team, the government was constantly on the prowl for them. She felt a pang of empathy- very slight empathy- for him. Government work was hard, barely paid, and often cruel. As soon as they got out of here, if Alex somehow couldn’t find an agency to represent him, he was looking towards a very miserable future.

“You said Finley and James specifically helped me, what do they do?” She asked glancing to Finley, who was staring at her shoes which were tapping a distinctive pattern on the floor, and James who was carefully examining everyone from his thick rimmed glasses.

“Ah! Well Finley here is a healer, and James is…...uh--a mind reader.” Alex stammered out, particularly spitting out the last half of that sentence with a lot less grace and gravitas then he normally commanded.

Nisha immediately felt her blood run cold.

Most people were, at the least, wary of the majority of superhumans. Someone who can make tornadoes spontaneously appear was certainly something to be concerned with. Nisha didn’t agree with the strict regulations and propaganda against them, she certainly understood what it was like to be someone people feared for simply existing, but she could also understand why people would be nervous. Mind readers though, they scared everyone. Someone with unexplainable amounts of power (research surrounding them was few and far between) that could pry into your deepest psyche, come away with all your secrets, even manipulate the way you thought forever and you would be none the wiser. Rumors said most of them went insane, unable to deal with their power, or got violent. Most of the time it wasn’t even the power that people were most afraid of, it was the fact that they could hide.

When Nisha looked over at James, though, all she saw was a man folded up in the corner, making himself as small as possible. Every few moments he would wince, look around concerned, or fold in on himself more. He seemed so terrified.

“James here could hear your brain working as we were trying to find an exit” Alex explained. “He insisted we find you, wouldn’t let us get a move on until we did. Then he said he thought he might be able to get us out of here, isn’t that right?”

“I-I-I don’t know” James started; his voice shaky, warbling, and surprisingly his voice underlined with a relatively strong Scottish accent. “The passcode to this door--- i-it’s supposed to be read via a palm but no matter what I do, h-how much I crack, nothing seems to work. It’s like...it’s like its made to specifically c-counteract superhuman DNA or something…..I th-think we’re stuck in here-”

A light thudding noise occurred, making James cut himself off. It sounded like shoes hitting the floor, like someone landing to the ground after a fall. James slowly turned towards the noise, his eyes the size of dinner plates, his chest heaving erratically up and down.

“I think I can help you with that.” A new voice cut out through the sudden silence, as everyone turned in unison.