Part Four: Debrief

My hand must've slipped when I put the limiter in.

I stood there, frozen, staring at the human puddle on the street. Had I just killed a child? A baby?

Jesse grabbed my shoulder.

"Listen, Nathan—"

"Don't touch me!" I shoved his hand off and stepped back. "Please... I don't want to hurt you."

"Listen, don't sweat it, Nathan. One more roll of the dice—his mind was already gone." Jesse's voice was careful, measured. Was he afraid of me?

He tapped his comms.

"Damn it, Scribe. You didn't tell me he could make people explode!"

Amelia's voice came cold and detached through the comm.

"It was important that he sees the outcome of his ability. He must rip off the bandage and get used to it. Also, I wanted it to be a surprise."

"That doesn't even make any sense," Jesse muttered off-comms.

"I just killed him. A child! I knew this would happen... why did I move?" My thoughts spiraled. This is just like before... with my brother.

Lance stepped toward me. "There's nothing you could do, kid. It was an accident. You heard the team lead—his mind was too far gone."

"Amelia, can you send a transport down here? Bluejay has zero casualties. Send clean-up crew as well," Jesse said, as casually as if he were ordering takeout.

Neither he, Lance, nor Veronica looked fazed.

Maybe this was just part of the job—but did no one truly care? Whether an Omen was limited or dead, it didn't seem to matter. If he'd been limited, his mind would've been destroyed anyway. They'd have sent his broken body off to rot in Nevada. Maybe even removed the limiter and killed him on the spot. His power was valuable, but he couldn't operate in society. Not even in a Venator squad.

This is what this job is.

I'm grateful I have a limiter. Without it... I'd be like the Wizard. Maybe worse, given what I can do.

"Jesse, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to push your hand away like that," I said quietly. "It's just... this is all too familiar."

He nodded. "Don't sweat it. What we do saves lives. We can't limit them all."

Why couldn't we?

The sad reality hit me on the drive back to base. The Venator squads only limited the ones they could use. The rest—exterminated. We were exterminators, not saviors.

But it wasn't just the system. It was the Omens.

They were the reason the world was in chaos. The reason William died. The reason for people like my parents—sick, violent criminals with power.

I sat in the back of the truck, nerves easing as my conviction hardened.

I will rid the world of Omens—either by limiting or exterminating.

"Jesse," I said, turning to him.

"What's up?"

"That outburst I had... it won't happen again. I'll do whatever it takes to protect you and this squad. Even if that means using my power."

He gave a short laugh. "Don't worry about it, man. It just surprised me, that's all. We have to kill Omens all the time."

When we arrived at the Undercroft, everyone began shedding their gear and stepped one by one into the sanitization chamber. I followed. The blood rinsed from my hands as a detox field swept down my body in cold lines of light.

As I stepped out, Lance glanced over while walking toward the elevator.

"C'mon, Nathan, we gotta head to debrief."

"Roger that." I followed in trace.

In the elevator, I felt a poke in my back. Then another. I turned. Veronica stood behind me, poking me rapidly.

"Uhhh... Lance?" I glanced sideways. "What's she doing?"

"Hmmm," Lance smirked. "I think she's touching you to see if she explodes."

"What? Why would she—" I stopped. Lance burst out laughing.

"Veronica, I don't think that's how it works," Jesse sighed, chuckling under his breath.

Veronica stopped poking and smiled.

We all stared.

Lance was the first to speak. "Dude... that's the first time I think I've ever seen her smile."

We laughed, except for Veronica—who quickly returned to her usual, expressionless self.

As the elevator doors opened, a red-headed kid about Veronica's age stood in the doorway, grinning ear to ear.

"Alex, my man!" Lance greeted, offering a knuckle bump.

Alex turned to me and extended his hand.

"Hey! You must be Nathan. Nice to meet you. I'm Alex Earnhest, second team leader!"

I shook his hand. "Nice to meet you, Alex."

He led us down the hall to the conference room, cracking jokes with Lance and poking fun at Veronica—his personality the complete opposite of hers.

The conference room was a multipurpose space: briefings, debriefs, meetings. Amelia had shown it to me during orientation. Ten chairs lined a long table, and a projector screen hung on the far wall.

Amelia sat at the head of the table, already in place.

Everyone began taking their seats. I reached for one when Veronica suddenly grabbed my arm. I turned to see her shaking her head and pointing at the chair's headrest.

I looked—and saw the word ZILLA printed on the leather, accompanied by a cartoonish kaiju creature.

Assigned seating.

"Sorry, Veronica. My bad," I said, stepping back.

I walked to the end of the table—and there it was.

DEATHSTEP. Stamped clean in plain text on the backrest.

I sighed and sat down.

"Damn, Spitfire…" I muttered under my breath.

Amelia spoke from her chair, a grin creeping across her face.

"You've noticed your chair, huh? A little birdy I used to know over at Crow gave me a pretty good idea for your callsign."

Lance leaned over from beside me, pushing my shoulder to read the name.

"Deathstep? Whoa, that's pretty good considering what happened today!" He erupted into laughter, slapping my back.

"Ha ha... yeah." I forced a chuckle. They were so nonchalant about death.

Alex took his seat across the table. His chair read KILLJOY.

I glanced at the three other empty chairs—presumably his team.

COMMANDO, HOAX, and ECHO.

COMMANDO's was covered in military stickers. HOAX had a sniper-scope crosshair forming the "O." ECHO was written twice—mirrored and upside down under the bright text.

Each seat was customized. Everyone's callsign carried something unique.

Except mine.

Just plain, bold letters. Maybe it was because today was my first day. Looking back, it might've also been the craziest day of my life.

So much had happened.

Once everyone settled—aside from the absent second team—Amelia stood and approached the projector. She pressed a button, and the screen flickered on as she swiped an ID card at the scanner beside it.

Her name flashed on the screen:

Amelia M. Earnhest

Earnhest... I looked over at Alex.

Are they related?

The projector hummed to life, casting a pale blue glow across the room. Data scrolled across the screen—location tags, redacted mission notes, biometric readouts. Amelia tapped the console beside her and brought up a still image.

It was him. The boy from earlier. What was left of him, anyway.

My chest tightened. I couldn't look away.

"This is… sorry, was… William Hargrove from Bayview Orphanage. After doing some digging we can see that his escape was linked to the group known as The Cortex." 

The sterile conference room hummed with an uneasy energy as everyone shifted in their seats, clearly uncomfortable. I could feel the tension hanging in the air, thick and suffocating. It wasn't hard to guess that the Cortex group—whoever they were—was a big deal. The way Amelia had walked in, her no-nonsense posture, and the immediate gravity of her presence told me that much. 

"As you know," she began, voice steady and commanding, "The Cortex has had a history of trying to gain control over children with Omens… as well as attempting to capture Venators to remove their limiters."

A collective shudder passed through the room. Uncertainty flickered across faces, eyes darting between one another. Had this happened before? The room remained silent, save for the low hum of the overhead lights. 

"We don't know why they're doing this," she continued, "but right now, second team is on a reconnaissance mission, scouting suspicious activity at the Bayview Orphanage."

Her words lingered, almost ominously, as she clicked a button on the desk. The screen flickered and the next slide appeared: a grainy image of me during the fight. A hoverdrone must've caught it from overhead, but honestly, I hadn't even noticed it at the time.

Then, Amelia tossed a thick folder onto the table. My file. From when I was held in Nevada.

I didn't need to look at it to know what was inside.

"Now," she said, turning her focus to me, "Nathan—new callsign Deathstep—has a unique ability. We were going to brief you on it earlier, possibly with a little squad icebreaker, but our last mission took precedence. Now, I'll fill you in."

All eyes shifted to me. It felt like the weight of the world settled on my shoulders as I tried to sink further into my chair, wishing I could just disappear.

"Nathan," Amelia continued, her tone softer but still firm, "as you all know, has the ability of Teleportation. In the world of Omens and Gifts, it's incredibly rare. Movement-based abilities, like his, are hard to come by, but they're invaluable in a squad. Lucky for us, we've got two. Well, if you even count Tara's power as a movement ability…"

Tara? She must've been on second team.

Lance, raised his hand. Amelia nodded at him.

"Yeah, so… how does teleporting correlate to…" He gestured vaguely, before pulling his hands into a ball, then mimicking an explosion with his fingers and making a kaplow noise.

Amelia didn't miss a beat. "When Nathan teleports, he rips through space. Anyone he touches and tries to teleport with will be ripped apart and spaghettified—that's the technical term—because they don't have his Gift. He can only teleport to places he can see, thanks to his limiter."

I could feel Lance's eyes on me, but I couldn't meet them. Instead, I watched as he scooted his chair back, slowly. He then casually reached beneath the table and took a swig from a flask, he must have these damn things stashed everywhere.

There was a long, uncomfortable pause.

Amelia switched slides again, this time to a picture of Lance breaking the shield in the last fight. "Why didn't you teleport the first time the shield broke, Nathan? This mission could've ended minutes earlier with less localized destruction."

I sighed deeply, the weight of her words pressing down on me like a physical thing. "I was nervous, ma'am. I didn't want what happened… to happen. I hesitated."

"But your body moved on its own earlier," Amelia said, crossing her arms, scrutinizing me with sharp eyes. "When the shield was still up. That's what you told Jesse."

"Yeah," I replied, "but I can't control it sometimes. My hesitation... it prevented my body from moving at that time."

The room was quiet as I felt a pang of guilt. I could've ended it. I could've stopped the fight before Cleric had gotten hurt. Before more buildings had been damaged. But instead, I hesitated, second-guessing myself when I should've acted.

"We'll work on the quirks of your Gift in training, Nathan," Amelia said, voice softening just a little. "And trust me, there will be plenty of that." She turned to Jesse then. "And you. You should've made the lethal call when his Omen began to show it moving up in class. What were you waiting for?"

Jesse froze, his face going unreadable for a moment. "I—I was hoping he could be limited," he stammered, clearly caught off guard.

"We don't waste limiters on lost causes," Amelia said firmly, her voice cutting through the tension like a knife. "Once you realized the Omen had gone beyond the point of no return, you should've put him down. We don't waste time."

Her words rang in my ears. Lost cause. I couldn't help but feel a knot in my stomach, a sinking feeling that reminded me of something darker. William. The regret gnawed at me, but deep down, I knew she was right. I had hesitated when I should've acted decisively. The threat had to be removed.

The air in the room felt thick now, as though everyone had just witnessed something they didn't want to admit. But Amelia's leadership style was confusing—no room for hesitation, no room for second chances when lives were on the line but she could have easily made the lethal call and passed it to Jesse. Was she testing us? 

"Alright, Team One," Amelia said, breaking the silence. "That's enough for tonight. Get some rest. Team two will be on standby for any calls."

Alex jumped out of his seat with an exaggerated salute. "Team two's got it, sis!" he declared, and before anyone could respond, he was already out the door.

I wondered why he wasn't on the recon mission with his team.

The briefing was over.

I made my way toward the elevator, feeling both physically and mentally drained. The weight of the mission sat heavily on me. Sweat soaked through my shirt, clinging uncomfortably to my skin. I untied the sleeves of my jumpsuit and let them drag behind me as I slumped into the elevator, surrounded by Jesse, Veronica, and Lance.

"Good first day, huh, roomie?" Jesse grinned, clapping me on the shoulder. "First Omen takedown and everything. I'd say it was pretty eventful."

"Yeah," I muttered, feeling a flicker of annoyance. "Pretty eventful."

The elevator chimed as it reached the fifth floor, and we all stepped out. Lance was busy drinking from his flask, wiping at his aviators with a cloth, while Veronica walked with that same unreadable expression.

Jesse gave me a playful shove. "Hey, so what if we got a little chewed out by the Scribe? Happens all the time, man."

Lance snorted, chiming in with a grin. "Yeah, one time she got mad at me for cooking an egg on my holy mace using my stun gloves."

We all stared at him in bewilderment, and Jesse shook his head, chuckling. "Okay, moving on. We get paid tomorrow, you, me, Lance, Veronica?"

He paused, looking toward Veronica, who just gave him a side-eye of disapproval. Jesse raised his hands in mock surrender. "Okay, okay, maybe not Veronica. But us three guys, we hit the Atrium for some shopping and food. Sound good?"

"I do wanna see the Atrium," I said, my curiosity piqued. Honestly, I had no idea what to expect. Team bonding? It was a new concept to me.

Jesse turned to Lance. "Lance, what do you think?"

"Sure," Lance shrugged, "There's some good bars there anyway."

The Atrium was the largest shopping district in New Angels. Fancy shops, high-end restaurants, and security everywhere. Expensive, but there was always something to see.

"What about cops with readers?" I asked, suddenly aware of the implications. "Won't we pop up as Omens when they scan us?"

Lance waved it off with a smirk, tapping the side of his neck. "Nah, man. These limiters show up on the readers. They'll know we're in Bluejay."

We reached Lance's door, and I couldn't help but wonder about his roommate.

"Who's your roommate?" I asked.

Lance scanned his keycard, "Markus. He's in second team. You haven't met him yet, but he watched your little scuffle with Jesse when you first showed up."

I felt a flicker of curiosity. Markus. Was he Commano, Hoax, or Echo?

Lance pushed the door open, giving me a mischievous grin. "Looks like Markus is still on recon. Somebody gets the room all to themselves tonight!"

With a last chuckle, Lance disappeared inside, and Veronica, who'd been walking behind us, went to her door across from Lance's room. 

"Night, V!" Jesse called. "Tell Tara I said hello."

We headed down the hall toward our room. I'd just realized this was the first time I was walking to it being conscious. Good thing Jesse was with me.

Veronica gave a small wave before disappearing into her own room. 

Once we reached our room Jesse scanned his key card and we entered. 

"I call dibs on first shower!" Jesse said as he ran to the bathroom before closing the door and turning on the water. 

I walked over to the space in between our beds and sprawled out onto the carpet, its small fibers felt nice on the back of my head and arms. I closed my eyes thinking about my first day and quickly I had fallen asleep, thinking about what was to come. 

I could finally relax.