Rise of the Dark Heroes (BOOK #1)

Chapter Two

STEVIE

THE MEMORY flickered in the back of my eyes like a movie projector, replaying the same scene over and over where I met the Deviate's soft eyes. My eidetic memory wouldn't allow me to unfetter the picture from my thoughts; it remained there, stuck like glue. I found those eyes in my dreams every night or so, vivid as real life.

"Psst, Stevie," a voice sharply whispered.

I curved my head to the side, my eyes wandering for the owner of the whisper. A classmate of mine appeared beside me in a hazy blur, and I watched my memories shove away into the storage bin of my mind, expected to perform sometime again when it wasn't occupied with college.

My eyes had to readjust to reality and find Grace, a friend in my class whom I've gotten to know since the first semester started. I eyed down at her like an idiot until I grew adapted to my surroundings.

I was in a research laboratory, specifically a laboratory of Havenbrook's Facility of Technical Science, or the FTS, as most people abbreviated. My Materials Engineering professor booked us a tour, and there I sat, gazing off into God knows where.

"What?" I whispered back at Grace.

"Are you paying attention?" she asked.

I flashed her a slight roll of eyes and murmured, "It's nothing I haven't heard before."

It was factual; everything our tour guide was telling us was stuff I had already known. It was essential calculus, something I'd formerly learned about in a college course back in high school.

My eidetic memory was like a superpower, granting me the ability to read ten thousand words per minute and recollect everything I lay my eyes on. Sadly, that includes negative things as well—whatever they may be.

My eyes moseyed back to the same whiteboard I had been blankly staring at since I sat down with Grace and my other classmates. Our tour guide, whose name had eluded me, was scribbling down an equation in black, wittering on about mathematics as he wrote. He was impossible to fathom due to his excellent aptitude to talk without catching a single breath in his speech, receiving zero attention from us as a result. I glanced around the class, noticing my peers each were suppressing perplexed expressions on their faces, even Grace, who usually followed through any lecture without complications.

"So, with that being said, do any of you want to find the derivative of the that I just wrote out?" our guide asked the class, presenting his marker to a potential worthy taker.

I glanced around the lab, noticing everyone's eyes acquaint their tables. No one ever wants to walk up to a whiteboard and make a fool of themselves. Knowing that there's a chance that you'll get the wrong answer, it's not worth volunteering in the first place. My traveling eyes linked with Grace's, and she flashed me an encouraging look, looking at the board and back at me, wiggling her eyebrows suggestively.

"Come on, don't be shy," our chaperon persisted.

Grace knew I could find the derivative, she knew I could do so much more too, but I had trained myself to keep quiet over the years in fear I would steal the spotlight from others or come off as a know-it-all. People never wanted to hear me talk because they knew they'd get more than what they requested. It was a significant factor in why I was single and only had one friend: Grace, who actually loved listening to what I had to say.

In this situation, nevertheless, I figured I'd be saving my class more than boring them. Someone had to do it.

I shrugged at my friend, bravely raising my hand for the guide to see. I heard nearly every student in the room release their breaths apart from one, a boy named Adam Murphy. Adam had been a peer of mine since eleventh grade. I never, ever figured out why, but I knew he didn't like me. He scoffed among the others, rolling his eyes. I decided to ignore him.