Seventeen year old Jay Sasaki lives in a world where corporations spend millions of dollars to exploit superpowered children and the media defines good and evil. Cursed with the ability to steal souls, Jay leads a double life as both a normal high s...
On the following Monday, I returned to work. I spent most of the day delivering coffee to busy reporters, as usual, but there was one unusual thing that happened.
Shortly before our lunch break, I walked past Declan, who was presumably hard at work on whatever story he was writing. I was about to go right past him so I could ask Gwen what I was supposed to do next when Declan suddenly yelled, "Vanessa! Come on over here!"
Vanessa sighed and got up from her desk. "What is it?" she asked.
"What would be a good synonym for 'powerful?'" Declan asked.
"Why don't you just Google it?" Vanessa suggested.
"I should have thought of that," Declan said.
As he typed "synonyms for powerful" into the search engine, Vanessa asked, "What are you writing? Were you trying to find a new word to describe Captain Fedora's super speed again?"
"They're space-time manipulation powers, but I'm not writing about Captain Fedora," Declan said. "I'm writing about the aftermath of the earthquake. Did you know that they're going to have to rebuild most of the Academy building next to us?"
"I didn't know that," Vanessa said, despite the fact that Ellen had mentioned it a few days earlier.
"We're lucky that our building wasn't damaged," Declan said, yanking me out of my own mind. "Thank goodness this place is earthquake resistant."
Space-time manipulation powers, I repeated in my head. That was the phrase that Captain Fedora always used to describe his own powers, even though it was possibly the most pretentious way to describe super speed that I had ever heard. I had never heard anyone other than Captain Fedora use that phrase, and for a moment, the crazy idea that I had thought of when I had first met Declan popped into my head again. Then again, perhaps it was only a coincidence.
Vanessa leaned over to look at Declan's computer screen. She then said, "Declan, do you really have to check your email every five minutes?"
"It's like a compulsion," Declan said as his eyes scanned over the screen. "I only got one piece of mail, and I'm pretty sure it's a scam."
"Why don't you try replying to it?" Vanessa suggested. "I've heard that messing with scammers is fun, and it distracts them so they can't scam anyone else."
"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Declan asked. "You were just complaining about me spending too much time checking my email."
"I just think that it would be fun," Vanessa said.
At this point, my curiosity got the best of me. I looked over at Declan's computer screen and read the scam email.
