Certified Superhero (Misfits #2)

5: my friends were nerds

I knew I was good at reassignment. Not quite prodigy level, but I was getting there.

Not to talk crap on the Conspiracy after they've given me a job, a place to live, and saved me from an evil school board, but the Reassignment department had no clue what they were doing. I would be lying if I didn't say that I was good at it. Not quite, prodigy level, but I was getting there.

Devon, a short man who was not quite bald but might as well have been, met me at the door of their conference room. He looked relieved. Then again he always looked relieved, like a huge disaster was just around the corner and every second without a massive explosion was a reason enough to celebrate. "Anna! Graham didn't tell me that you were coming today!" Pure relief. I didn't blame him.

Unlike most departments at the Conspiracy, Reassignment wasn't a class I had attended at Paramount Lake Academy. My best friends at Paramount Lake, Miguel and Elliot, were the best at it. As much as I teased them about acting like nerds for pouring over maps and statistics while trying to figure out where we could all get employed as vigilantes in the same general area after graduation, I paid attention to what they were doing. They were definitely nerds, but everyone at that school was in some way or another.

"My meeting with Graham got canceled so he and Rory thought you could use me here. What can I do to help?"

He ushered me into a chair near his at the head of the conference table and started laying out the issues of the day.

"We're working on basic transfer cases. Every once in a while a few heroes make some nasty enemies, get hitched, break a leg, or whatever it is we supers do on our off time. They place transfer requests through the Conspiracy, and we try to figure out the best way to help them. Do they just need more reinforcements--that's been tight lately--or should we emergency evacuate them to a more or less violent area. Lots of numbers to run and decisions to make. You up for it?"

That sounded like homework, and I was not feeling it today. Most of the time I just got to look at population and crime maps and move around action figures like pawns on a complicated chessboard. Math? Not my thing.

Good thing I was practiced in getting out of homework.

"You said getting reinforcements has been tight? Why?" Ah, yes, an off topic question, the Anna Green classic.

He looked at his crew of number crunchers as if they were 1) paying attention to anything but their laptop screens covered in calculations and 2) didn't already know whatever information he was going to dish out to me.

When none of them so much as blinked in his direction, he said in a low voice, "I keep requesting files of different heroes from the Conspiracy so I can know the full scope of a situation before we make the final call on reassignments and transfers. The thing is a lot of the requests are either denied or the files come back only half filled. It's like the heroes are turning into ghosts and so is all their paperwork." Each word got quieter and quieter like he was telling me a ghost story, and I guess he was. Until, "Poof! They're gone forever. I haven't seen any of those files come back." His exclamation made the number cruncher nearest me jump.

A chill ran down my spine. Disappearing heroes? I had friends out in the field somewhere. Were they in danger of disappearing too? Graham had mentioned the same issue in our meeting yesterday. It was the reason he and Rory had shut down my request for backup in Stones. The ranks were slowly depleting. Too much crime, not enough heroes.

Before I could start to worry too much about my friends, an annoying beep sounded from a number cruncher's laptop. I wouldn't have thought much of it, maybe just a countdown until their break, but everyone in the room looked up instantly pale faced.