Prologue

Mariam is sitting down. She can’t do anything else – too tired or too shocked maybe. It should be okay now anyways, she thinks. They beat him. She should be allowed to sit if she wants to.

She doesn’t move until she sees a guy appear in front of her eyes. Did she imagine that? Nah, she decides, probably another one of the million ‘friends’ Kara didn’t see fit to tell her about. She eyes him warily.

“Hey” she calls out. “Who are you?”

He turns around. He had, as far as she could tell, been looking at the remains of the lab. Even she wasn’t really sure what had happened there. She’d been hitting Dr. Frank – over and over again – and when she’d finished she’d seen the building was in flames. She puts it down as another one of those new superhero things.

“I’m Karl,” he says. “Are you Mariam?”

She nods.

“Okay, good” he says. “Help me pick up Kara okay? I need her here beside Chris.”

Mariam doesn’t even bother asking; she just goes and lifts Kara up. It’s so easy it’s ridiculous. He watches her, his eyes slightly widening.

“Oh,” he says and leaves it at that. “Right here,” he says, and she places Kara spread out side by side with Chris.

He puts a hand on each of their arms. “Touch me,” he tells her. This, Mariam looks at askance.

“I teleport,” he explains. “But I need to be connected to you somehow to bring you along. You don’t want to stay here, do you?”

No, Mariam thinks, looking back to the lab again, charred brick and half-melted windows. She really really does not want to stay here at all, and she places her hand on his shoulder.

In the next second the concrete lot is empty again, smoke quietly entering the sky.