Super

26. highlighter-orange hair

"I can barely believe this," Ten said.

Jae shrugged. With some difficulty, he opened another shelf from the bookshelves and slid out a mound of heavy-looking notebooks. Dust flew from the tops of the notebooks as he set them down with a thump on the floor, making Baekhyun—who had been sitting cross-legged on the floor—sneeze heartily.

"If it helps, I didn't believe it at first, either," Jae said, as Baekhyun pulled a dusty old notebook from the pile and opened it with caution. "It's a crazy theory, I know, and I've been the butt of many a joke online from people who have read my magazines." He gestured to the open laptop he had taken from his backpack. "I've gotten used to it, though. At least now I can go to sleep knowing I helped the City's superheroes."

"Why don't you just publish the photos?" Ten asked. The four had been sitting in the basement of the innocent-looking diner for a few hours now, looking through the loads and loads of material Jae and his partner—the waiter they had met upstairs in the diner—had collected over the years. "There's so much proof here you could actually start a proper investigation. That way you could even get some attention for your magazine."

"I didn't create the magazine for attention, I did it to spread awareness about these guys," Jae said defensively. "And then, I can't release that information. It came straight from the central police department. I'm not a journalist: I can't gather data through illegal means and get away with a simple 'I can't reveal my source'."

"All right, all right, no need to get worked up," Ten muttered. He, like the other two of his team, were supposed to be looking through the documents and evidence for anything useful in their hunt for the Foursaken, since the material was too heavy to be carried around and they didn't want any more accidents befalling them on the way back to the building. What Ten was actually doing was looking through the sketches Jae had made of the people.

"We ourselves keep a lot of secrets from the police, so we can't exactly rebuke you for stealing files—especially when you're making good use of them," Baekhyun said with a smile that would put anyone at ease. He's good at this sort of thing, Ten thought, observing his leader for a couple more seconds before turning back to the drawings. "Why don't you try to convince your uncle to look into this, though?"

"First of all, he'd never believe me," Jae said, and Ten felt a pang of sympathy. "Second of all, as absurd as it sounds, I can't trust the police. If it had been any other simpleminded criminal I had been investigating, it wouldn't have been a difficult choice to make, but Irene...she's powerful. She's apparently also a beautiful zombie. I can't afford letting the police department in on this, knowing that there could be a source in there. A spy."

"I'd say that was a far-fetched idea, but I've known you long enough to tell that you probably know what you're doing," Baekhyun said.

"You've known me for a grand total of four hours."

"Exactly. That's more than enough."

At that, Jae smiled. This was the first time he had smiled—properly, that is, none of the knowing or teasing half-smiles that he had handed out like flyers—and Ten felt pleased, though he knew it wasn't him who had made him smile.

"If I may ask, how did you come up with the term 'Foursaken'?" Ten asked. "It's interesting, and pretty innovative, too."

"Well, for the three years I've tracked them, there's been only four people involved. Not one person more," he said, and tapped a cut-out poster that he had probably Photoshopped himself he had stuck on the board. "Irene, the goth girl, the ice angel, and this fox dude."

"I told you there was a foxlike guy at the bar," Lucas said under his breath.

"And you don't have names for any of them?" Baekhyun asked. He was looking through the loose papers with a frown, not looking up once. Ten wondered if the lightning he had summoned earlier came from inside him. "Locations? History?"