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hurts."
    Together they walked up the stairs to the main street level, Keepsie stopping to lock the door for the first time.

Chapter 5
     
    Keepsie slept fitfully that night, her body crashing from the multiple adrenaline rushes the day had given her. Whatever wisdom she'd hoped her subconscious would reveal during the night never came, and she awoke with more questions than she'd gone to bed with.
    Michelle woke her at ten o’clock. "Hey, I just found out some pretty interesting stuff."
    "Did you sleep at all?" Keepsie asked, trying to buy time to clear the cobwebs from her head.
    "Not a whole lot. I just kept thinking about everything Clever Jack told us. The media really haven't covered the origins of the heroes, although it feels like they do a human interest story on one of us every time a talent makes itself known."
    "I just turn off the news when they start talking about heroes,” Keepsie said. “Pallas is, what, thirty five?"
    "Something like that, yeah. There was a web site that launched a couple of years ago with conspiracy theories regarding the heroes. It got shut down, but not before it was mirrored a couple of places. They're not highly-traveled sites, and it seems as if they do all they can to avoid the search engines to keep the heroes off their back, but the conspiracies are pretty intense.
    "According to this, the heroes were manufactured by the Academy,"
    Michelle said breathlessly.
    Keepsie held her hand up. "Wait. So the Academy wasn’t created to train with the heroes, it actually created them?"
    "Apparently."
    "Does that mean the Academy made the villains as someone the heroes needed to fight?"
    "I don't know, it doesn't go into that. But here, it says that Seismic Stan and Pallas made their public debuts around the same time in 2005, and they were around the same age: 15. They both appeared in Seventh City. The Academy was founded -officially -the same year," Michelle said, her voice muffled like she'd taken a bite from something.
    Keepsie realized she was hungry. "Listen, I'm starved. Let me get a shower and I'll meet you at the diner. Print out whatever you can and bring it along. I'll see you in an hour."
    "Sure thing, see you in a bit," said Michelle, and hung up.
     
    Keepsie put the phone down slowly. This was beyond her capabilities.
    When she was a child, she'd watched her mother's talents - the ability to grow plants in impossible ground -and knew her mother was very useful. She’d spent a good deal of time in the Peace Corps before having Keepsie, and Keepsie was proud of her accomplishments, but secretly she had hoped her own powers would be more suited to allowing her to fight crime and defeat the bad guy.
    Her mother had told her, Mr. Rogers' style, that she could do anything she wanted, even after her passive power revealed itself during an uncomfortable post-prom encounter with a football player.
    Her hopes of making a difference had changed when the Academy lobbied for the Vigilante Bill of 2012, stating that only licensed heroes were allowed to use their power to stop criminals. It didn't stop people from using their powers in their everyday life; that would have been difficult for people like Michelle, whose job depended on her power, and Keepsie, who simply couldn't stop using hers. However, if the First and Third Wavers had decided they wanted to pursue a criminal with their paltry powers, they would need to join the Academy or be subject to law enforcement. And the Academy didn’t accept many First and Third Wave citizens.
    Would Timson try to throw Keepsie in jail for the obstruction of justice or possession of stolen property? Why hadn't she just arrested her? Of course, if she'd done that, Keepsie would have become even less likely to hand over the device. Her power was in effect for all of her possessions; if she were in jail then Timson still wouldn't have been able to get her hands on the device unless Keepsie allowed her.
    If only the heroes weren't so damned smug. They