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the order: the execution of all Supers.
    Her head tingled at the thought. She would be infamous then. The woman who’d saved the world from the Supers. A true hero.
    She couldn’t wait for that day.
    That’s the day you’re going to have to look for a new job, she thought with a slight chuckle. She’d be happy to join the unemployment line.
    A knock at the door broke her from her train of thought. “Come in,” she said.
    Agent York stepped into the room. “Are you busy, ma’am?”
    “I am not. What have you got for me, York?”
    Agent York stepped into the room and sat down in the chair across from her. “We’ve gone through all the details about Tempest that were transmitted to us before the shuttle went down. Really, it was just pictures of his face, fingerprints, et cetera. All the blood samples and everything else they gathered about him were destroyed in the crash.”
    Director Loren sat up in her chair, preparing herself for what Agent York had to tell her next. She tried to hold back a smile, but she knew what was coming. She was about to get him. She was about to learn who Tempest was. “You ran the pictures through facial recognition, yes? The fingerprints?”
    Agent York nodded, but hesitated to speak. “Y-yes, ma’am. We did.”
    Loren didn’t like the hesitation. This should be great news—fantastic news. News that Agent York should be bursting at the seams to tell her. “What is it? Who is Tempest?”
    Agent York let out a deep breath. “We ran all the identifying information we have on him through the database. We ran it a dozen times. I personally ran it. Nothing. This guy’s a ghost. He’s not in any databases. Not in ours, or any other government’s.”
    Director Loren sat back in her chair and closed her eyes. Anger welled up within her. All that work retrieving Tempest, and all they’d managed to do was set him free into the world once again. The things they were going to learn from him—the answers they would get… He was the most powerful of all the Supers, and he’d slipped through her fingers.
    She should’ve captured him when she had the chance, back during the Richter crisis. She knew that she’d had no way of doing so then, but still, she kicked herself for not thinking of something.
    “Agent York,” Loren said as she opened her eyes and looked at York’s worried face. “Get out of my office.”
    “Yes, ma’am. Sorry, ma’am,” York said as he stood from his chair and backed out of the room.
    He shut the door behind him and left Loren alone in her small, bare office.
    Director Loren wished she had some pictures on her desk, or paintings on the wall. Not because looking at them would calm her down, but because she wanted nothing more than to grab something and throw it against the wall. She wanted to break something. To destroy something.
    Her intercom buzzed. “Director Loren?”
    Loren picked up the phone. “Yes, Sierra?”
    “We have that new Super arriving from Dallas. He’s being unloaded and brought to cell 903,” Sierra said, her voice calm and professional.
    “No, take him to the Chamber, and tell Dr. Finn not to begin the therapy until I get there. I want to do it personally,” Loren said.
    “Yes, ma’am. I’ll be sure they’re waiting for you.”
    “Thank you, Sierra,” Loren said.
    She hung up the phone as a bit of sadistic joy washed over her. She’d get her chance to break something, that was for sure. She’d get to take out her anger and frustration about her failures with Tempest on some thing . This new Super, coming from Dallas. A Duplicator, if she remembered correctly.
    The more the merrier, she thought as she grabbed her coat from the back of her chair. She slipped it on and exited her office.

Part II:
    The Rise of a Hero

11

Riptide
    September 20 th , 2078
    L eopold Renner tried to think back to the events that had led to his bleeding out on the floor of Tempest Memorial Museum. It was all he could do to try to stay awake. The