From chubby to not in under eight hours, Kane was loading up his dinner trays with small mountains of calorically dense entr閑s. He`d done a lot of running, sure, but people didn`t gain or lose several pounds of fat with a single meal or a single day spent running.

　　"So, Kane&."

　　"What`s up, new guy?"

　　"All this food you eat, what& happens to it?" I queried with a certain confusion about what exactly it was that I was asking. "Is it related to your gift? Actually, what is your gift?"

　　"Metabolism manipulation," Kane said with a shrug.

　　"Which means what?"

　　"Well, apart from gaining and losing weight when I want to, I can use fat stores with super human efficiency."

　　"Dumb it down for me," I snorted. "Practically speaking, what does that mean?"

　　He chuckled. "It means that as long as I have fat on my body, I don`t get tired."

　　"So& super human stamina?"

　　"Yeah. Let`s go with that," he said with a smirk.

　　"Well that explains a lot," I mused, and Kane`s subdued chortling moved off in the direction of some cheese sauce.

　　Daisy had pushed a pair of long tables against each other to form a square so Kane could have one table to himself while the rest of us crowded around the other. With Daman on one end of the not-reserved-for-Kane table and Daisy on the other end, I took the seat next to Daisy- an obvious choice- leaving the seat between me and Daman for Kalak whenever he joined us.

　　"So, Oran, what did you think about your first training mission?" Daisy asked.

　　"It was& kinda cool." I shrugged, attempting to appear chill in my response while simultaneously feeling like I might explode from the sheer awesomeness of the experience.

　　"Daman was telling me that he already submitted his report to Argus and heard back from him. It sounds like we`ll be getting briefed on a real assignment after dinner. Do you think you`re ready?"

　　"Do you?" I reversed the question, and Daisy laughed airily.

　　"I think you did just fine."

　　"Thanks," I grinned, the building pressure of the excitement finding release in the way I couldn`t stop grinning after that. "So, Daisy, how does your gift work exactly? You do a little rain dance and summon the weather you want?"

　　She rolled her eyes. "It`s more nuanced than that, but yeah, essentially."

　　"More nuanced how?"

　　"Well, what I`m really doing is controlling temperature and barometric pressure as it relates to water vapor, layering the different conditions in the atmosphere to produce the results that I want."

　　"That sounds complicated," I frowned.

　　"It`s not an exact science," Daisy admitted. "I have to do a lot of experimenting to get different results besides generic rainfall."

　　"I`ll bet," I nodded to indicate way more understanding than I actually possessed.

　　"So what about you? How does your reflection projection thing work?" Daisy asked, her stormy eyes giving me her attention over a swig of water.This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author`s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

　　"Well, beyond the mirror is sort of this alternate reality? I`ve never quite figured out how to explain this, but imagine a giant room in which beams of light from all the reflective surfaces in a given area stream and merge and intersect and form a network or web. My gift allows me to project my reflection into that web and then navigate my reflection through it to the other reflective surfaces."

　　"Fascinating," Daisy said with a contemplative frown. "Obviously you navigate the web very quickly."

　　"It`s not entirely consciously done. In a lot of ways, my reflection does a lot of the work. I just tell it what to do."

　　"Sort of like a puppet?"

　　"Uh& sort of, sure?" An awkward lull in the conversation gave me the insane urge to engage Daman. "So, what about your gift, Daman? How does it work?"

　　"It`s a limited mind link gift," he stated the obvious, returning quickly to his food to stave off further inquiries. I turned to quirk an eyebrow at Daisy as Kane lined up a fourth tray of food on his table and sat down.

　　Daisy leaned in and lowered her voice a little before answering my unspoken question. "So, my understanding of Daman`s gift is that he can give or take experiences, especially sensory experiences, of different kinds depending on where he puts his hand on someone`s head. He can also link two other minds together with the same limitations."

　　"So& back of the head like during training&?"

　　"Visual link," Daisy nodded.

　　"Ah. Makes sense. And Kalak creates portals?"

　　"I link mirror-like surfaces together-" Kalak paused to smirk at the way I`d jumped to find him magically sitting next to me already, "-to transport objects between them. So, yes, portals."

　　"Hey, guys, you didn`t tell me yet," Kane said through a mouthful of mashed potatoes, "what did target one`s face look like when he got swallowed by your mirrors?!"

　　*****

　　"After a highly successful training assignment, Oran, congratulations, you are now officially a member of the team," Argus declared after we`d all assembled in one of the larger rooms on floor 4, this one outfitted like a conference room with an austere set of stiff-backed chairs surrounding a hardwood table. "And now that the team is up another member, Daman, would you like to present the next assignment?"

　　With the click of a button on a small, hand-held remote, Daman summoned to life a large monitor at the foot of the table, the UIB symbol emblazoned across the screen while Daman provided a brief introduction to the case. "This is an unusual case with two targets. Meet Sahau Noriko." The screen flashed with a picture of a slender, twenty-something year old man with dark hair and a razor-sharp jawline under a couple days` worth of scruff. There was an intensity in his deep-set, brown eyes that made him appear a little unhinged. "An investigative journalist by day, trouble by night. He is an obvious threat and the prime suspect in the murders of a handful of officials and board members all connected in some way to the Aayu Foundation." Another click, and a collection of pictures of the victims in these murders filled up the space to the side of the target`s picture.

　　"The Aayu Foundation& as in the medical company?" Daisy interrupted, her brows knitting with concern.

　　"The Aayu Foundation does a lot more than simple medicine," Argus supplied. "Their operations include building and running hospitals, funding medical research, developing and supplying pharmaceuticals and medical tech, standardizing paramedic training, medical schools&. The works! In other words, the Aayu Foundation is at the heart of our entire medical system."

　　"So someone targeting people all linked to the company may be trying to bring down the medical system?" Daisy asked, her face pinching further.

　　"We don`t know what his motives are," Daman said. "That`s not our job anyway. Our job is to stop him."

　　"Right." Daisy surrendered the floor with a little shake of her head.

　　"Our second target is Sumira Okapi," Daman said, clicking the button to reveal the picture of a stunning young woman with a demure, almost cautious smile. Bloody rain, she was hot: willowy with long, coppery-black hair, silver eyes, full lips, warm-toned, smooth, sensual skin— "... suspected of providing him with insider information, and, generally, a person of interest in this case. However, her involvement is unclear at this time. It seems just as likely that Ms. Opaki is actually a victim as she has several personal connections to the Aayu Foundation herself."

　　"What sorts of connections?" Kalak asked, his voice even quieter than usual, perhaps just as caught off guard by her image as I was.

　　"Most directly, she ran a therapy clinic funded by an Aayu Foundation grant until quite recently," Daman said, and Kalak seemed to hesitate before nodding once. "It is worth noting that deadly force is not authorized for apprehending Ms. Okapi unless you are threatened first. For Mr. Noriko, any means necessary. Both should be approached with caution, but Mr. Noriko especially should be considered armed and dangerous." Another click, and both targets` pictures appeared side by side on the screen.

　　"I will leave you all to discuss the logistics," Argus said, standing up to leave. "Let me know if you need anything for this operation. Good luck to all of you." I tore my eyes away from the screen long enough to acknowledge Argus`s departure, but once he was gone&.

　　Sumira Okapi. I felt my lips curl into a smirk as I studied her face. What secrets lurked behind those striking, silver eyes? I couldn`t wait to find out.