Chum

"Mr. ESP," Jordan states, after an uncomfortable amount of silence, apropos of nothing. "I've been thinking about him."

"In what way?" I ask, before my eyes widen fractionally. "Oh. From the Kingdom?"

Derek nearly spills his drink, jolting upright at the mention of the name. "Mr. ESP?! Shit, don't tell me that creepy asshole can actually read minds?"

Jordan taps the side of their head ominously. "No, it's even stupider. He gets a new ESP power every day, or something. Last time we met he mentioned 'waking up with remote listening'."

Tasha frowns, worrying at her bottom lip. "Isn't mind-reading impossible? Like, last I heard nobody's ever met a true telepath for one reason or another. They can transmit but not receive, or something?"

Jordan shakes their head. "Yeah, no mind reading. Just like... random new forms of ESP each day. I think he's why we set up the Faraday cage room."

"Well, if they gave it to him, it has to be what he calls them. Like maybe his name is Mr. Extra Sensory Perception. Or maybe it's Mark Sam Patrick. Or Maximillian Sony PocketStation. He could be from anywhere. Even Florida," I say, frowning in deep thought at the idea of Florida. "Jeez, I'd sure hate to wake up each morning with a new form of ESP like Russian Roulette, not knowing if it's gonna be inconvenient but mostly harmless or like, reading the intrusive thoughts of everyone around me. I get enough of those on my own."

"Let's hope Florida doesn't seep into the water supply," Derek jokes. "You wanna pick up mindreading so we can send our thoughts back to Mister Spookyscary Peepers or whatever his name is? You've got that blood thing going on as it is."

"Wait, you met this guy?" Maggie asks, a flare of panic coloring her tone. "Do... do you think they know about the Music Hall, then? The meeting rooms and everything?"

"It was in the sewers in South Philly, right before the Chernobyl fight last year," I say, frowning. "And yeah, I think there's a high likelihood he has this place scoped out. I think it's a wonder we haven't gotten just blown to bits with a bomb."

Jordan's face scrunches up a bit in thought. "It was an abandoned subway station,"

"You're right. Abandoned underground subway station. Sorry, my memory is a little fuzzy given that I got nuked right afterwards," I correct myself.

Tasha's eyes widen as she connects dots in her own head. "It's like a panopticon... no wonder he just outright told you what his powers were."

I snap my fingers, nodding emphatically. "Even if he's not actually doing it, just the fact that he could be completely changes how we have to operate. We have to account for the fact that they might know what we're planning at any moment, and have to operate basically in the dark."

"You need to take classes in game theory," Jordan teases. "And it's called a 'nonzero chance'"

Connor looks utterly lost, glancing between us all with a bewildered expression. "Okay, I'm officially confused again. What the hell is a panopticon? Nonzero chance?"

"It's this theoretical prison design," Tasha explains eagerly, clearly excited to show off her knowledge. "Basically, there's a central guard tower surrounded by cells, and you never know if the guard is actually watching you at any given moment. So prisoners have to act as if they're always being watched, even if they're not."

Derek lets out a low whistle. "Damn, that's some Big Brother shit right there. No wonder y'all are so freaked out by these guys."

Jordan throws up their hands in frustration. "Yeah, and it's not like we can just go around wearing tinfoil hats all the time! Although..."

They trail off, a speculative gleam entering their eye. I groan, already knowing where this is heading. "No, Jordan, we are not lining all our costumes with tinfoil."

"I mean, it's a thought at least," Jordan says, frowning at me suddenly. "Speaking of tinfoil, what exactly happened to you and Tasha at the Zoo? You, like, mentioned it offhand, but we haven't really done a thorough debriefing yet."

"Mrbl," I say, eloquently, before swallowing. "Well, it was mostly Tasha, anyway. But we were there investigating, and also going to the zoo, because the zoo is awesome," I pause, looking to Tasha for confirmation at that. She nods to me to continue. "We bumped into Mrs. Xenograft. She said hi to us in her civilian garb, real friendly-like, just started talking about her job and stuff. Not sure why. But she didn't attack us or anything. And she sort of subtly threatened us that if we told anyone anything then we'd regret it."

Tasha, who has been slowly regaining her color throughout my retelling, speaks up again. "Yeah, it's like she was just...taking our emotional temperature or something. And also warning us off a bit. Like she wanted us to know she was there, and that she's got her eye on us now."

"Well, she tried to make us think she was just going to the zoo, but, like, I don't believe that," I reply. "Too specific,"

Jordan looks grim at this news. "So, it was less of a social call and more of a reconnaissance mission in disguise. Great, that's fucking fantastic. Anything else we should know about?"

"Yeah, she said she's just in it for the money, and that we have a very black and white view of the world, you know, nothing I haven't been told by my therapist already," I say, shrugging. "Just to keep us from having an ethical crisis about it or something when we inevitably fight her in the future, I guess. And then she just walked off."

Connor, bless his heart, looks like he's about ten steps behind in this conversation. "Wait, so...this lady's a supervillain, but she's also a zookeeper? And she just casually threatened you guys while you were, what, looking at the monkeys or something?"

I crack a smile. "She was just visiting, I don't think she's a zookeeper. You never met her when the Phreaks were cavorting with the Kingdom?"

Connor shakes his head emphatically. "No way. I think any crazy shit, that was Stitches. I didn't even know we had met the Kingdom, just that one day, she was telling us to take bigger risks and be meaner. Didn't want in on that. And Deathgirl, too, Stitches brought her in and it was never quite the same,"

Jordan, however, isn't in a laughing mood, sort of just letting Connor's words pass through them. They're staring intently at the map of Philadelphia spread out on the coffee table, tracing their finger over the various marked locations. "Speaking of things not making sense...what the hell do we think the Kingdom's endgame is with all these targets? I mean, the zoo, the docks, City Hall, random high schools...it's like they're trying to hit every major landmark in the city."

Derek leans forward, squinting at the markings. "Well, if I had to put money on it, I'd say the docks are probably their top priority. Lots of valuable cargo moving through there, easy access to the water for quick getaways..."

"And it's a great place to do shady shit too," Maggie adds, her freckles standing out starkly against the sudden wash of deep thought that floods her face. "Lotsa weird noises and ruckus to cover up less-than-legal behavior."

"Rampart and I met this one guy," I say abruptly, like I'm worried if I don't say it now it'll fall out of my head like an ill-constructed tower of blocks. "While doing rounds in Mayfair. He just completely short circuited when we asked about this drug he had called Jump. Like he wanted to answer but all of a sudden, he couldn't. Like someone was controlling him remotely and put up some kind of mental block."

The others perk up at this, intrigue and alarm warring for dominance on their faces. "Mind control?" Tasha asks sharply. "That's a new one. You think the Kingdom's got another metahuman in their ranks we don't know about?"

I shake my head. "I mean, maybe. But I don't know, none of the jumpheads we've ever pressed in the past couple of months, big or small, seemed to know anything about the Kingdom. You know how our usual guys are - professionals in suits. Everyone's been getting Jump from dudes in sweatshirts. And there's something with 'Rogue Wave', something Sparkplug mentioned. He made it sound like a group, but maybe it's a person? I don't know."

"Rogue Wave sure sounds like the name of a lame supervillain organization," Derek cracks, glancing at his watch. "Gotta go in about an hour, unless any of you have a dog crate."

"I am not kenneling you when you go werewolf mode," Jordan jokingly snarls.

"Oh, right, and the craziest fucking thing happened when I mentioned Rogue Wave to the guy Rampart and I were interrogating a couple of days ago," I say, coughing twice into my fist.

"He went... I don't know, like, he got possessed. I said 'Rogue Wave' and he just stopped paying attention to Rampart at all. Every single bit of energy was spent trying to immediately kill me. Dude tried to put his thumbs in my eyes, and he wouldn't stop going until Rampart choked him out," I recount, as if it's the most normal thing in the world.

I glance around to find the whole group all staring at me in mute horror and disbelief.

"What?" I ask, feeling suddenly self-conscious. "Is there something on my face?"

Jordan is the first to break the stunned silence, their voice strained with barely-contained emotion. "Sam. What the actual fuck. Why didn't you lead with that?!"

"I was getting there!" I protest, throwing my hands up defensively. "It's not like I'm used to giving structured reports or anything. I just sort of...word vomit until all the relevant info is out there, you know that. Sorry for not starting with the headliner."

Tasha pinches the bridge of her nose, taking a deep, steadying breath. "Okay, okay, let's just...take a step back here. So, this guy, he went from being completely normal to, what, frothing at the mouth and trying to gouge your eyes out, all because you mentioned 'Rogue Wave'? That's...not normal."

"Definitely some kind of trigger phrase," Jordan agrees, their brow furrowed in thought. "Like, straight out of a Cold War spy novel or something. Bet my left nut - not that I have one - that this Rogue Wave character is the one pulling the strings. Either some new metahuman with mind control powers, or maybe some kind of cutting-edge brainwashing tech."

Derek shakes his head, looking deeply unsettled. "Man, I've seen some fucked up shit in my day, but that's...that's next level. Turning people into fucking Manchurian Candidates or some shit."

Maggie puts on a weak smile. "What's Manchuria got to do with it?"

Tasha immediately leans in, faster than Derek can, clearly excited to explain something that she just saw someone else not knowing in front of her.

"It's a movie reference, baby," she elbows her midsection gently, to where I imagine she must have her ribs. "There's a really old movie from 1962 called 'The Manchurian Candidate' where this guy gets abducted and brainwashed all Cold War-style by the North Koreans and Chinese and sent back to assassinate the presidential nominee. Only it was actually a hypnotic trick by his own mom to put herself in a position to be the most powerful woman in the world. It was remade in 1999 but they changed the Communist Chinese to the Communist Russians and made the incest subplot weirder. The movie's real as hell."

Maggie gets a studious look on her face. "Okay, I'll put that on the list to watch,"

"Wh- Hold up," I say, furrowing my brow, and putting my hand up to point towards Tasha. "His own mom tried to put herself into a position to be the most powerful woman in the world? Why only woman?"

Tasha chuckles, a sort of 'hah hah' noise - I don't know if other people visualize their laughs in text but I usually visualize them as those little speech bubbles you see in dictionaries and textbooks that have the text describing the sound written out - "I mean, have you met the government elite? They're pretty sexist. And this was a movie from the 60s, Sam. Gotta take it with a grain of salt."

"The first one went harder than the remake," Derek says, smiling mildly, crossing his arms. "1999 was really meat."

Tasha's jaw drops in mock outrage. "Oh my god, did you just call a movie 'meat' in front of me? In my own home? The disrespect!"

"Pretty sure it's Jordan's home, actually," I say, smiling. Sometimes I have a hard time telling when people are joking and when they're being serious, but I think Tasha's being pretty overt with her body language that she's joking, and it feels like the tension is lifting a little bit if people are bickering about movie quality so I want to contribute.

Jordan snorts, shaking their head. "Alright, alright, enough with the film criticism hour. We've got bigger fish to fry here. Like, oh I don't know, the fact that there's apparently a supervillain out there who can turn people into fucking mind-controlled sleeper agents?!"

Everyone sobers up at that, the brief moment of levity evaporating like a shallow puddle under the harsh glare of the sun.