The early weeks of the hero training program passed in a blur of training, fighting, and practicing power usage, split up by lessons about the philosophy of heroing that Damien just couldn't get behind.

And he hadn't gotten any closer to Vivainne. Or to figuring out where Vora was being held. A failure all around, time wasted, except for time spent with Florence.

Just a distraction. That's all he was. A distraction, and a means of getting closer to Vivainne, eventually. If he ever managed to get her to stay in the same room with him for more than a few moments at a time. He'd tried to speak to her in class, but even when they were paired together in combat class, she refused to open her mouth.

An abnormally warm finger ran across his bare skin, the boy's narrow body pressing against him from behind beneath the blanket covers. He could feel the point of Florence's hip against his side, his skin as warming as a heated blanket. "You're quiet today."

Damien found his hand and pulled it up to his mouth, the kiss faint but still leaving a tingling warmth on his lips. Everything about Florence was warm, uncomfortably warm at times, but it was a discomfort he could live with. "You haven't left much room to talk," he murmured back.

"Well, there's time now," Florence said.

Damien lifted himself up on his elbow, bringing him face to face with the pyrokinetic. This hadn't exactly been a part of his plan, but he had to admit, he was enjoying it.

A red light popped in the corner of his vision and he nearly jumped, barely managing to contain it to a flinch. Now? Vora was contacting him now, after weeks of nothing?

"You okay?" Florence asked, eyebrows knitting together. His face was always expressive, reminding him a bit of a cartoon character with the way the pyrokinetic's whole face reacted to emotion.

"Sorry," Damien said, looking away quickly. "Just a little warm."

"Oh, sorry," Florence sucked in a breath, and the warmth pulled back, turning his skin a temperature that was almost normal.

"It's okay," Damien said, the corner of his lips curling. "It's pretty hot."

"Ha ha."

"I suppose there's only so many times I can make that joke," Damien admitted. "Can I go to the bathroom real quick? I'll be right back."

"Sure." Florence let him go and Damien wiggled out from beneath the covers, crossing Florence's bedroom to the bathroom, where he paused in front of the mirror and opened Vora's message.

What progress have you made?

He gritted his teeth and mentally typed out an answer, knowing Vora wouldn't be happy. But what did she expect? It took time to get results, and she'd raised a damn mistrustful daughter. None. Vivainne won't stand in the same room as me.

And what of my location?

I've been biding my time. I was caught once for hacking.

Then don't get caught.

Damien ground his hands into his eyes, wishing he could tear out the implant in his brain. He'd volunteered for it, been more than eager, but constantly having Vora in his mind had been a bad idea. There just wasn't another way to contact her.

It wasn't that easy. The Unity System had computer systems specially built by tech supers and geniuses to be impenetrable to the very thing Vora was asking him to do. He'd tried hacking it once, been caught within minutes, and forced to go through that damn community service program that was the very reason Vivainne didn't trust him.

I'll try again, he typed out, jaw so tight he felt his teeth pop inside his mouth. But it will be slow, unless you want me to risk being caught again.

Make progress, Vora ordered, and the red light went dark.

"Okay," Damien muttered, foot tapping against the floor. He needed to go. Needed to get some space from Florence, from Vora, from this whole damn program he didn't want to be a part of. What even was he supposed to do? Drop out whenever Vora got what she wanted? Hang on for a little while after Vora broke out, so it wasn't so suspicious? Risk his own safety and freedom at the hands of the heroes to save this woman?

A knock sounded at the door. "You good in there?" Florence called, and the concern in his voice made Damien want to scream.

"Yeah." He scrambled to turn on the water, quickly washing hands before opening up the bathroom door once more. Florence leaned against the doorframe on the other side, dressed in nothing but a pair of boxers. Damien frowned. "Those are mine."

Florence glanced down, running a thumb along the waistband. "Oh, whoops."

Damien rolled his eyes and walked past him, gathering up pieces of clothing from across the bedroom floor. The trail led from the bed into the front of the apartment, with Damien's shirt on top of the fridge. How had it gotten up there?

"Going somewhere?" Florence asked, following him into the room. He opened up the fridge, mostly empty aside from a few bottles of beer and takeout containers, and absolutely nothing else. "We don't have class today."

Damien paused to pull his shirt over his head, giving himself time to think. "I thought I might go explore the city," he lied. "I've been so busy, I've barely had time to do anything except train."

"Well, you've got yourself a born and bred New Yorker here, so I can show you around," Florence said with a crooked grin. Damien looked at him, letting out a deep sigh. He enjoyed his time with Florence, more than he should probably, but it was so hard to shake him sometimes. It wasn't that he was clingy, but he was just so damn earnest. "What do you want to see? I know we complain about tourists sometimes but you really should see those things at least once. Ooh, have you been to the Hero Museum?"

Damien opened his mouth to protest that he didn't want to go to the Hero Museum or learn more about heroes than he already had before his mind caught up to him, barely stopping his mouth before he could say something stupid. "That's in the Unity Tower, isn't it? I've never even visited the Unity Tower, aside from getting checked in for orientation."

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"Really?" Florence shook his head, his kinky fire-orange hair braided back along his scalp. "That's absurd. You've never even wandered up there after class?"

"I didn't know we could," Damien said.

"Well, you can," Florence said. "Let me show you around. I know that place inside and out. It's practically my second home."

"Is that so?"

"Yup," Florence said, grinning. "I really do think I spent more time there growing up than our loft. Daycare in the tower before I started school. Then hanging out after school while my parents were working. Training on the weekends, taking classes there. You know, when I was little, I was almost like the tower mascot."

"I can just imagine it," Damien said, a smile ghosting his lips. A smaller version of Florence, running around the Unity Tower, talking to everyone who'd so much as look his way. He'd never met someone this outgoing, this friendly, who was also so genuine.

"Well? What are we waiting for?"

Damien raised an eyebrow. "You planning on going in that?"

Florence rolled his eyes and retreated back to the bedroom to find clothes, quickly dressing while Damien put together a plan. Maybe with Florence's help, he'd be able to get access and opportunity to be able to hack into the system. He didn't need much, just the location of Vora's prison. How hard would that be to find?

They left the apartment through the front door rather than the hidden tunnel, crossing the busy street to the front entrance of the world's first Unity Tower. There were constantly people coming and going; Damien had no idea how anyone dealt with it. In the coming weeks, they were supposed to start their classes on social work, to learn how to handle the multitude of issues heroes would come across as they worked on the Unity opening floor.

That was something good the heroes did, Damien supposed.

Florence dragged Damien into the tide of the crowd, their hands locked together, as they moved into the Hero Museum. He whispered into Damien's ear like his own personal museum guide, telling him everything about every exhibit, every hero, every event that had shaped the hero culture in the city.

The city did care fiercely for their heroes, and claimed to be the birthplace of superheroes. According to Philosophy of Heroes, the first version of the hero training program had actually taken place in Maine, but nobody seemed to care. New York City screamed to the world that it was the birthplace of Unity, and people flocked to the city to see the original Unity Tower and the Hero Museum on its bottom floor.

Damien leaned against Florence's arm, letting the boy guide him through the room, talking nonstop. Florence was undoubtedly passionate about the hero program, but he couldn't blame him. He'd only ever seen it from the inside, not the harm it could cause.

He winced as a pinching pain began at the tips of his fingers, where his hand should be. The prosthetic didn't have pain receptors, it wasn't the reason the hand hurt. It hurt because it was missing.

"Damien?"

He blinked, twisting to find Florence staring at him in concern. He needed to stop spacing out, this was getting bad. He couldn't keep disappearing into his own mind like this.

"Yeah, yeah, I know," Damien said, massaging the line where his arm met the fake flesh Vora had designed years ago. "Sorry, the hand hurts."

"Is there anything I can do?"

Damien shook his head, then glanced around. The museum was packed. There wasn't so much as a free corner to escape into, where he could mess with the arm, and try and convince his brain there was nothing there to hurt. "Actually, somewhere private would be nice."

"Come with me."

Florence led the way out of the museum and up to a small desk tucked away in the back of the bottom floor. A woman in an unassuming grey suit sat behind it, minding to a computer. Reaching out carefully, Damien activated his technopathy, reaching out for the computer. Maybe he could hack this one?

"This way," Florence said, tugging gently on Damien's arm before he could connect with the computer. They passed the desk and the woman sitting there, a door Damien hadn't noticed sliding open on the wall behind her.

They passed through into the room beyond, one that looked so much more like what Damien expected from the Unity Tower. There were a few heroes on the bottom floor, their uniforms only vaguely recognizable, but most of the people in the room were suits. Whatever it was they did, it wasn't hero work.

"Here," Florence said, motioning to a small sitting area in the middle of the room, a set of chairs surrounding a table adorned with a bowl of oranges.

"Why oranges?" Damien asked, momentarily forgetting what they were doing.

"I don't know," Florence said. "It's just one of those things people do. Do you want me to do anything else?"

Damien glanced up at him, eyes tracking past the boy to the room around him. The presence of technology pinged all around him, like pinpricks of light against his core. Some plunged deeper, access to something more. Those points were what he needed. "Maybe some water?"

"Okay," Florence said. "I'll be right back, hold tight."

He took off, leaving Damien alone on the couch, unsupervised in the Unity Tower.

This was just what he'd been looking for.

Reaching out with his senses, he kept his eyes locked on his prosthetic hand. The motions needed to detach the hand and stop the pain were so familiar he could do them in his sleep, allowing him to focus on the computers nearby as he did what he could to stop the pain.

With his biological hand, he turned off the faux skin, defaulting the hand back to its base mechanical black, then flipped open a panel on the side. It balked against his brain's idea of what was supposed to be there; real hands couldn't open up to a collection of wires, gears, and false nerves.

At the same time, he found a nearby computer in his mind. Most technology was only skin deep, simple to read and understand, simple to control. Computers were different. Not computers, but the systems they were connected to. The internet was like a well he could dive into, with so much to explore it was overwhelming.

The Unity tower's systems were both deeper and easier to navigate. As a closed system, they didn't connect with the whole internet, and Damien was more easily able to parse the information flying at him.

There was so much here. If he wanted, he could take every bit of information, steal it and distribute it to the world. Change the way the world saw heroes. Change the way the Unity System was perceived.

But that would mean abandoning Vora.

He couldn't do that.

Damien reached a finger into his prosthetic hand, digging out a small, detachable wire. A small piece of technology that controlled the input between the false nerves and Damien's brain, feeding sensations like touch and tensile control to his mind. Once, when the phantom pain had gotten bad, he'd torn the wire out, convinced it would make everything better. It hadn't, and he'd been left with a broken hand once again.

That had been enough to stop the pain.

Vora had fixed the wire, but at his request, made it removable. He detached it now, killing every minor sensation the hand sent to his brain, leaving it nothing more than dead weight at the end of his arm.

Somehow, it was enough to trick his brain temporarily, that his hand wasn't there. He didn't need to feel pain.

He moved carefully through the tunnels of the Unity computers, searching for something regarding the meta prisons they controlled.

"Got the water!"

Damien flinched, nearly pulling back as he brushed against a file. Before he could think better of it, he dug his power into the file, searching for an edge to crack through. Instead, he met a wall as solid as steel. To get through, he would need more time, and access to a computer, not just his technopathy.

He jerked back with the realization, heart pounding a mile a minute as he came back to himself.

"Feel better?" Florence asked, leaning over him, bottle of water in hand.

"Much better," Damien said, smiling. No one had seemed to notice. He was in the clear.

As Florence opened the bottle of water for him, Damien opened up the line he had to Vora, typing out a quick message.

I need more time, but I know now where to find the information. All I need is an opportunity.

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