Secret Vault 20-15-25-S held some of the deadliest weapons known to humanity. Outsiders, those who gleaned their knowledge from urban legends and conspiracy theorists, called it the Toy Room.

  Jamie Lee Hurricane, an Agent stationed at Slayer Branch, Building Four, knew better. She disliked those who made stupid comments about it who had never seen its interior—idiots speaking on things they knew nothing about, she reflected. These weren't toys; they were advanced technological and meta-natural machines of chaos and cunning, decades ahead of their time.

  Jamie patrolled her assigned perimeter, walking through the corridors lined with collected and confiscated items—her daily routine. This week, her orders were to patrol Section A—the designated area for "Stage-Five Arms," or as her mother used to say, "the cream of the crop."

  Normally, Jamie was assigned to the vault's lower levels, where dust-covered steel crates bore barely legible labels. Section A, however, showcased big-ticket items in see-through glass cases with silver plaques and black lettering. This was Jamie’s third week patrolling this prestigious section—an honor reserved for top agents. She was moving up, she thought, hoping surveillance hadn't caught her idiot friend Nick's earlier request to steal his "science ring."

  Jamie's fury over the encounter still simmered. His unannounced visit was bad enough, but his messy brown hair and the dark bags under his blue eyes did him no favors. His unkept appearance and dirty clothes had made Nick stick out like a sore thumb. After all, as the descendant of a Guild hero, he knew better than most how things operated around Slayer bases. Investigative Agents on the fourth floor had already mentioned his name a few times. If he wasn’t careful, prison—or worse—awaited him.

  "Idiot," she whispered under her breath.

  Despite her anger, childhood feelings for him stirred a slight conflict within her. She still felt guilty about losing touch after his mother's death five years ago. But those were thoughts she couldn't afford to dwell on now. Instead, Jamie forced her attention to the various items in the vault as she passed, burying any thoughts of Nick deep within her conscience.

  The first item to catch her eye was a sword, displayed in what appeared to be pristine condition. It resembled a bastard sword from medieval times, its blade gleaming with silver excellence. The long handle was adorned with various gems and golden inlays. She paused, unable to resist a moment of admiration.

  The display's plaque read:

  Jamie had never heard of King Daniel or The Circle of Kings, leaving her to imagine their history. A sword that could cut through anything seemed more suited for party tricks or theft than actual battles, especially in an age of firearms and drug enhancements.

  "Maybe if Daniel had a gun instead of a fancy sword, he might still be alive," she muttered to the empty corridor.

  As Jamie continued her patrol, other displays that piqued her interest came into view. She stopped briefly to read what they had once meant to the world. The first of these was “The Immortal Book,” bound in cheetah skin. According to its label, the book was impervious to opening or destruction by any known method.

  Another item she admired was a circular amulet etched with metal carvings of twin snakes along its brass borders. In the amulet's center, a badly scratched glass orb contained a strange red substance that reportedly—if the label was accurate—could heal the sick. “Crafter unknown” concluded the plaque.

  Further down the long corridor, Agent Hurricane reached the area where plaques were unnecessary. She had entered the Guild of Heroes section, where relics of the Guild and their enemies were kept. The costumes and gear that had once belonged to heroes like The Immortal, the Atomic Nurse, Vapor, Chaos, Shift-Change, Rift, and Jamie’s parents, Hurricane and the Steel Lady, were kept inside cases, now worn by plastic mannequins molded to their dimensions.

  Jamie had never quite understood everyone's feelings about her parents' past fame. She had no memory of them as the figures celebrated by famous authors, TV shows, internet articles, big-budget movies, and the general public. Her experience of them was a deadbeat, long-absent father and a cold, semi-absent, workaholic mother. At least her mother had been around long enough to get her a job with the Slayer Division, she mused. Jamie had only met her dad a handful of times in random, solitary encounters.

  Simon—never Dad to Jamie—had been a fugitive from the government since the Slayer Division’s inception. As one of the few Alpha-Class powered individuals, Jamie’s father had been legally required to register with the Slayer Division, as her mother had done. His refusal had turned him into a hunted animal. Her life was better that way, she reasoned. She had no interest in a father who had no interest in her.

  She glared at the mannequin clad in the Hurricane battle suit—mostly black, rubberized polymer armor with a spinning white circle on the chest designed to ground the lightning he sometimes encountered in battle. She spat on the glass case out of spite and then quickly wiped it off with her sleeve, against her better judgment. Vault guards were forbidden from any contact with the artifacts or their containers. A fine awaited her if anyone had seen.

  This realization spurred her to continue her route.

  Jamie pushed forward, making a few more passes up and down Section A, trying to banish her father’s memory along with Nick’s. She found herself unconsciously slowing down each time she neared the Rift display, though. Finally acknowledging her actions, she stopped to examine the items belonging to the deceased Thomas Morgan. He unlike most of the others had several plaques.

  The main one read:

  Thomas Morgan’s mannequin was shorter and of a slimmer

  Jamie admired the simple all-light brown suit, fitted with small armored chest and back pieces. The battery pack, she understood, connected to the single, long claw affixed to the right arm by thick, weaving wires. Thomas Morgan’s signature leather-band goggles covered the display mannequin’s face. Despite never knowing Nick’s father, she had long considered him her favorite member of the old Guild. He was the only one who might have lived up to the public’s overwhelming hype, she mused.

  Below the revered tech suit were several smaller glass cases containing other Rift Devices confiscated by the government. Among these, propped on its side, was a silver-blue ring labeled, “Rift Stabilizer Ring.” Jamie couldn’t help but think of Nick and his struggles to restore his family’s fortune.

  She now thought she might have been a little harsh with him earlier. Jamie, of all people, understood what it was like to live under the crushing weight of living legends. She also knew that wasn't an excuse for attempting dishonest means to escape those shadows. Jamie felt a growing conflict, especially with Nick’s Ring right in front of her and no one around.

  Maybe, she thought, just maybe, she could get away with borrowing it for a little while. After all, she was assigned to guard Section A for the rest of the week. In a moment of weakness, she considered doing exactly what Nick had asked.

  Suddenly, a loud buzzer signaled someone's entry into the vault. Jamie felt her heart skip a beat and began to hurry down the halls to intercept them, abandoning all thoughts of rebellion. As she rounded the corner toward the entrance, she slowed her pace to compose herself, in case a superior had arrived. She was slightly surprised to see Agent Jefferson, a fellow vault guard.

  “Jefferson… what are you doing here?”

  “Hurricane, you are relieved of duty and are to report to the eighth floor for evaluation and possible reassignment. I’m to take your post,” the young buzz-cut guard informed her.

  Jamie was taken aback by these new orders. Her evaluation wasn’t due for another six to eight months. Even more alarming was the fact that the eighth floor was the administrative level—a place reserved for top-level Agents. She had never heard of an evaluation being conducted up there.

  “Who am I supposed to report to, Jefferson?”

  Jefferson stepped in front of her and extended an open hand. Confident and emotionless, he answered, “You’re to report to the Commodore himself. Surrender your vault key.”

  His words sent a wave of fear rushing through her. Jamie wasn’t sure what was happening, and Jefferson wasn’t one for revealing information. Honestly, he probably didn’t even know if she was walking into a meat grinder. That was the Slayer way, she thought as she removed the key from her pocket and placed it in Jefferson's hand. Follow orders and don’t ask questions.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  “Take care of her, Jefferson,” the shaken girl requested.

  Jamie’s journey to the eighth floor was deliberately slow. She had never been there and knew little about it. The administrative level was where the Division’s true field agents worked—officers who actively fought and apprehended powered offenders.

  The nervous girl stood before the special eighth-floor elevator, catching empty glances from the lower floor agents going about their day. She envied them at that moment. Jamie had a bad feeling about this evaluation and wished she were still in the vault, surrounded by the relics of the past. Those relics, she now realized, had offered a strange comfort in her lonely life, and she was almost certain she would never return after today.

  Her mind lashed out in frustration.

  The elevator doors opened, revealing a silver interior of polished steel and a man with a strange purple speck skin condition, who was slightly taller than Jamie, wearing a brown leather jacket. As she boarded and stood beside him, she noticed an unusual blue specialty patch on his left sleeve. Jamie’s patch, for instance, was a plain round shield with a black border, signifying her as a guard of the lower vaults. She had never seen a patch like his before and couldn’t help but stare.

  The embroidered patch featured a thick, dark blue border with a lighter blue background. In its center was a pair of beautifully detailed angel wings, shedding feathers as they extended upward and outward. She glanced up to get a better look at the man’s face and saw him looking back with a tight-lipped, odd smile. He was mostly bald on top of his head, but his sides had a short cut of red hair and a five o’clock shadow to match.

  As the doors closed, a feeling of déjà vu washed over Jamie; she felt like she had seen that unnerving smile before. Then she noticed his nametag: “Burnside.” Jamie remembered that name from the Vault.

  “Are you Larry Burnside, The Flyer?” Jamie questioned, a hint of excitement in her voice.

  Burnside, still smiling, turned to face her and extended his open right hand. She noticed small purple specks dotting his skin, extending beyond his sleeve.

  “The one and only,” the older man replied in a raspy voice. “Good to see you again. Though I guess you were just a pup when we first met.”

  “Yeah, I was! I’m Jamie,” the young woman replied after shaking Flyer’s hand giddily.

  “Small world! I used to have a thing for your mom, back in the day—before her and your dad got together, that is. Those were the good ol’ days. Sometimes you just want to do what you want to do, instead of having orders barked at you all the time. Jesus,” he croaked a laugh, “We couldn’t have been much more than nineteen. How old are you now, girly?”

  “Nineteen,” Jamie answered, starting to feel uncomfortable with the older man's wandering gaze.

  The senior agent smiled again, this time a full smile revealing his yellowed, chipped teeth. Jamie’s discomfort grew with each passing second. Burnside had been a member of the Guild —a group built from the greatest men and women the world had ever known. It felt strange that one of those great men could look at Jamie like a butcher admiring a cow before the slaughter.

  “You know, if you wanted, I could take you flying sometime,” the man offered.

  Before Jamie could reject Burnside’s offer, the elevator stopped at the seventh floor and opened into a bustling room where men and women moved in every direction, hectically focused on their tasks. The Seventh floor was Dispatch and had always been rumored to be the most chaotic floor in the building.

  “Think about it,” Burnside requested as he exited the elevator.

  The doors closed, and Jamie breathed a sigh of relief that the strange encounter was over. She watched the floor indicator above the doors, waiting for it to change from seven to eight. It did, and Jamie felt the elevator come to a jarring halt, preparing to open she thought. However, she was caught off guard when the machine veered to the side. The motion slightly threw her off balance.

  As the doors opened, an all-white reception room with black accents and typical furnishings was revealed, along with a short, brown-haired woman in a red dress suit holding a circular object in her clasped hands.

  “Hello, Ms. Hurricane,” the woman greeted her in a high-pitched voice. “I’m Dana Webb, the personal assistant to Commodore Gabriel Wilton. You’ll be happy to know he’s in his office waiting for you now, but before you can go in, I’m going to have to ask you to put on this Power Cuff.”

  Jamie had seen the black metal cuffs before. In her years as an agent, she had learned they were power dampeners—made for government employees with stable powers. Her mother had worn one on her wrist ever since joining the Division. Jamie, on the other hand, had always received her damping shots on schedule, as ordered by the courts since her powers began to manifest when she was eleven.

  Now on into her twenties, Jamie had almost forgotten what it felt like to have abilities in the first place. “I’m up to date on my current dampening treatments, so… the cuff won’t be necessary.”

  “No. I’m afraid it is. Because you’re meeting with the Commodore, extra security measures are required. Again, I apologize, but there's nothing I can do,” Dana told her, holding up the cuff once more.

  Uneasy about the whole situation, Jamie took the cuff and clasped it around her wrist quickly, as not to overthink it too much. A display screen lit up, reading zero percent with two arrows beside the number pointing up and down.

  “Now, please press the up arrow so the display reads one hundred percent,” the assistant instructed.

  When Jamie complied, she felt the cuff tighten around her wrist, and a sharp pain shot from what felt like small needles or prods digging into her skin. A few profanities escaped the surprised girl. She watched as small trails of blood seeped out and ran down her arm.

  “How about a little warning next time, Dana?” she snapped at the assistant.

  “It slipped my mind. We don’t get too many of your kind around this place,” Dana explained, offering the bleeding agent a tissue from her skirt pocket.

  Jamie grabbed the cloth with slow hesitation and watched as the short woman retreated to her desk and pressed a gold-black button near her computer. The Commodore’s personal assistant then walked over to the seemingly empty and normal white wall positioned to their left. Ms. Webb pressed the blank surface with her flattened palm, and as she did, the wall retracted, revealing a large hidden room.

  “The Commodore will see you now,” Dana announced to the semi-stunned Jamie.

  Leaving the assistant behind, Jamie entered the room with inquisitive caution. She was surprised by its size. Turning ninety degrees to the right, she saw glass cases filled with various antique-looking items lining the long right wall. On the left side of the room, a giant floor-to-ceiling window offered a sweeping view of New Rome. In front of Jamie, the Commodore sat behind a large, finely finished wooden desk in the middle of the long room.

  A single chair was positioned opposite his workstation. Jamie approached it and announced her presence. “Sir, Jamie Lee Hurricane reporting for her evaluation, sir!”

  The Commodore was a bald, clean-shaven man who appeared to be in his late thirties. He wore the Military version of the Slayer Division uniform, his jacket draped over the back of his chair. He stared at her for a long moment, maintaining unbroken eye contact. His eyes were a deep, dark brown and seemed devoid of compassion, Jamie decided. That’s why she was surprised when he stood up and shook her hand across the desk.

  “It’s good to see you again, Agent Hurricane. It’s been a while,” he said in a friendly tone.

  “Same here, sir,” she lied.

  “Please, sit down, Agent Hurricane,” he requested, and she obeyed.

  “Now, I know you’re probably wondering why I called you here for an evaluation months ahead of your scheduled date. Also on your mind is why I have elected to carry out this task personally. Before we get into that though, I need to know one thing from you, Agent. What is your current relationship status with Nicolas Morgan?” the Commodore questioned.

  Wilton’s words hit Jamie like a punch to the gut. Everything started to fall into place. Surveillance had caught him talking to her earlier in the day and probably saw her eyeing the ring inside the Vault. She was to be considered a threat to security. Jamie knew the punishment for conspiracy was a dishonorable discharge from the Division. She wasn’t about to go down without a fight, she affirmed to herself, even if that meant throwing Nick’s stupid ass under the bus.

  “Honestly sir, there isn’t much of one,” she explained.

  “I haven’t seen him in over four years until today. He’s changed, sir. He’s not the same Nick I remember from my childhood. I was going to report his visit to my CO before I left today,” Jamie lied again.

  The Commodore leaned back in his chair, “I tend to agree with you, Hurricane, but knowing that, why didn’t you report it immediately? Conspiracy to commit theft is a major crime when talking about the contents of Vault-S. You’re aware of that, yes?”

  “I am, sir,” Jamie replied, gathering her thoughts.

  The agent searched her mind to explain that detail of her story, but all she could see was a memory of her looking at that glass case with the brown suit and gadgets Thomas Morgan had made, eclipsing everything else. “Honestly, Commodore,” Jamie said after letting out a long, forced sigh.

  “I was conflicted… not because of any sort of bond I shared with him when I was a kid, but out of respect for his father. I wouldn’t be alive if he hadn't stopped Gravaton that night,” Jamie explained, adding a tactical touch of sadness to her voice.

  The Commodore pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger, and then shook his head in approval, appearing to connect with Jamie’s words. “I understand what you mean.”

  “The boy is a lost cause, as far as I’m concerned. However, I would be lying to you if I said I wasn’t conflicted in pursuing the criminal activities of the son of my idol,” the Commodore said before taking a long pause, seemingly lost in a conflict of his conscience.

  After some time passed without any words being exchanged, Jamie couldn’t stand the silence any longer. “What’s to become of me, sir? Are you discharging me?”

  Wilton’s concentration on whatever he was thinking about was broken by her question, and he looked at the girl with apparent confusion. “Discharge? Quite the opposite, Agent Hurricane. Now that I know your feelings on this matter, I can trust you without reservation. Starting tomorrow, you are to be promoted to Junior Administrative Officer.”

  The Commodore’s statement was not what Jamie had expected. In fact, she was in a near-shock state for several moments after Wilton broke the news. This meant she really was moving up. Junior Administrative Officer was just one rank below her mother and came with a significant pay bonus. She could move out of her mother’s house, not that her mother was ever there to begin with. Jamie could live on her own terms, as she had always dreamed of doing.

  “I’m sure you know, as a junior officer, you will be assigned to shadow a regular Admin… until they approve your promotion as their peer,” the Commodore stated. “It will be difficult, but I have every reason to believe you will be one of the best.”

  Jamie was nearly overcome with a barrage of excited and scared feelings, but managed to ask the Commodore who her CO would be before exiting his office.

  “I’m glad you asked,” he said with a grin. “Your commanding officer is none other than Administrative Agent, Jane Ward—your mother. I’ve called her in from East Asia for you.”

  Jamie Lee Hurricane’s stomach knotted in pain at this new information, and she offered the leader of the Slayer Division a hollow smile. It had been over a year since she had seen her mother, and she had hoped it would have been longer. “That’s wonderful, sir,” she lied again.