The Nephilim Protocol

The Duel

"Damnit, that smuggler was our best bet, and turns out he don't even have a working sub." Sue picks a dumbbell off the rack and tosses it lightly in his hand. "Shit, that still bugs me."

"It's been two weeks," I say. "Let it go."

"There don't be no better way, far as I can tell. Not that we've found. How'm I supposed to let that shit go?"

I glance up at the camera watching us from the corner off the weights room. "Shouldn't we wait to talk about this in the cave?"

"Looks too suspicious if we always go to the same spots." Dolphin is sitting on the floor, his back against the railing. He wiggles his fingers. "Relax, though. I got us covered. Pretty simple, really. I'm just mirroring the vibrations from the supply closet down the hall onto the camera's microphone."

"Are you sure there's no other bugs?"

"We meet here all the time, Square," Sue says. "Just you ain't been with us 'cause of that girl. You still on the outs with her?"

"No. Maybe. I don't know." In History class, she said we were good, but that's what she said when all the trouble started. And I still don't even know what went wrong then.

Sue rolls his eyes. "Look, we gotta come up with a new plan. Anybody got anything?" he asks the group, at large.

"Been trying to think of how we could use your new superpowers," Bally says, looking over at him. "But we still don't know how cold iron works on them."

"Could test them out," Dolphin suggests.

"Too risky." Mouse shakes his head. "Wolfe's starting to catch on. After she found out about Fatso and Strawberry's powers, she's been watching people more closely than ever. Fish got hauled away just yesterday."

"What?" I blink at him. I hadn't heard about that.

"Didn't you see the helicopter coming back this morning?" Mouse looks at me. "And kids keep disappearing to Detention. Really risky to use 'Aptitudes' right now."

"Be cool if Square could develop some extremely convenient powers like water-shifting or something," Dolphin says. "Or hey, like summoning a whale."

"Great. Fucking Aquaman?" Sue says.

"I could see it," Ball Buster says, chuckling.

"Hilarious, you guys," I say. "Look, that—"

The door swings open, and Destro comes in. The short, pudgy guy doesn't seem like the weightlifting type. He looks startled to see us too but quickly recovers and smiles. "Hello, noble friends! This is most unforeseen. Do you also welcome the opportunity to exercise?"

"Sure," Sue answers. He's got that look on his face—a look he reserves specifically for Destro, ranging somewhere between dismay and disbelief.

Destro looks at Dolphin. "Aren't you working, my friend?"

"Don't see the point. These things are like lifting soup cans," Dolphin replies. The weights in the room are made of depleted uranium, but even so, it's not a great effort.

"Truly, but even a soup can requires strength to lift 500 times," Destro says, still smiling.

"They have weightlifting machines in Ethiopia?" Ball Buster asks him, as Destro sets up by the leg-press machine.

Destro laughs. "Of course they do! Why shouldn't they have such a thing? We lift weights, just as Americans do."

Ball Buster looks a little shamefaced, which is new. "Shit, man. I just thought ... I mean, you're always acting so surprised by everything here."