While Baekho got his own checklist lecture, Aron and the five men of team Alpha marched towards the desolate building.

Little vegetation broke apart the gray-brown landscape of rough rocks. The lonely concrete slab of a building – without glass in the windows or even a coat of paint – was a bit spooky, despite the daylight. Only the wind and the steps of their heavy duty boots were audible around them.

Team Sierra had spread out around the zone and surveyed the area, reporting no discernable activity. Commander Wang gave them greenlight.

Marching forth, the five men and one boy passed through the remnants of the construction site. Empty cement bags; a not fully dismantled scaffolding; even an ancient, rusty digger.

As soon as team Alpha was close enough to see the main entrance – no door had been installed – they gave their position to commander Wang and approached running.

Aron rushed into the lobby. Sunlight was falling in from behind him and through the plastic covered window-holes in the bare walls. There were clear signs of habitation – mostly energy bar wrappers and plastic cups.

“Team Alpha, secure the area,” the powerful boy barked as he marched farther in. “I’ll move in first. If nobody is on the ground floor I’m taking the place apart wall by wall. Let’s see if we can find an entrance to below. We can…”

There was a strange hissing sound coming from everywhere at once. Aron’s eyes darted around the space. There were tiny holes in the floor, the ceiling and multiple concrete pillars. Those were causing the noise. What could-

Aron felt very tired very suddenly. Behind him, an operative dropped to the ground. Then another.

What could he do? Close the holes! No, he had to touch all the relevant places. What else? Construct a barrier around himself! No, he would leave the other men on the team out to encounter who knows what. And if the gas was lethal no one could get to him to reanimate him.

The boy sank to one knee, unable to keep his eyes open.

What else? Why were his thoughts so slow? He could…he could…explode the whole damn thing!

With the last shred of consciousness he told the three levels of steel and concrete to move in every direction at once.

The snapping of rock and metal echoed from the surrounding mountains. The earth trembled as the four exterior walls hit the ground individually and the ceilings rained down in man-sized chunks.

Aron didn’t see any of it, already slipping away. It was too late for him.

He thought of Minhyun.

Something creaked.

Prying his eyes open one last time, his vision blurry and fading, he saw men in gasmasks approach. That was one thing to add to the checklist.

***

Begin Flashback:

Four days after the attack on the time loop bunker.

Korean main base, 11am.

“Okay, this is scary,” Aron said. “It’s that simple to defeat my powers?”

Junior’s face scrunched up. “That’s just it. The principle is simple, but it should be impossible with current technology.”

The two boys had spent several hours since the attack trying to figure out how Aron’s powers had been deactivated by an unknown force field. And now, the better part of this day had been spent trying to find a way to corroborate the precog’s random spark of information. Vacuum bells were oddly hard to come by on short notice.

Accompanied by four scientist they had run a few experiments. The personnel didn’t look science-y, Aron found – less white coats, more fluffy sweaters. And that wasn’t even the weirdest part.

He looked upon the apple that might have weighed a million tons for all he could tell. It was under a thick glass bell that contained no air whatsoever. As the bell had been evacuated his ability had been less and less responsive towards the piece of fruit until he couldn’t move it at all. Even generating plasma or electricity inside the bell wasn’t happening for him.

“How did you figure this out?”

Junior shrugged. “You know how it’s weird that you have so many separate abilities? My random information sense serendipitously told me it’s not as it seems. Think about it this way. You generate plasma, but that’s just superheated air, so we can lump it in with your control over temperature. But that’s just control over molecular or atomic movement. And so, of course, is telekinesis.”

“I see where this is going,” Aron said. “All my abilities that create energy from nothing – which shouldn’t be physically possible anyway – are atom-telekinesis. What about shooting lightning or lasers?”

“Lightning is made of electrons which are-“ Junior said, leaving the sentence hanging as a patronizing question.

“Inside atoms, right. And light is emitted by those, too. But… ” Aron gestured at the mockingly motionless apple with an inquisitive expression.

One of the scientists, whose name the boy couldn’t remember, raised a hand. The middle aged guy with huge glasses and unkempt scruff was the least outwardly excited of the researchers, who had gotten to study Aron’s powers.

“You’re ability is entirely atom based and needs a medium to travel through. Unless you’re underwater, the medium is going to be air. Within a vacuum it doesn’t work. I suspect if we put a bell containing air inside the evacuated one you still wouldn’t be able to affect anything inside of it.”

“Woah!” Aron shot up, having an epiphany. “And my transfiguration affects atoms, too, telling the protons and molecular bonds to be arranged differently. The material itself is the medium. It’s all transfiguration. Everything I do.”

“And that’s how I suspect the force field worked,” Junior said. “It’s actually two layers of field with a millimeter of vacuum in between. I can’t imagine how they knew this would happen. There is no technology that could do that.”

It also became clear that he could have joined them inside the bunker without losing his powers, because the shield only blocked his powers – it didn’t deactivate them. He felt a bit silly about his fear from back then and was glad Junior left this little detail unmentioned.

Aron sighed with dramatic exaggeration. “Time for lunch. I’ll have an orange, or a banana. Just no more apples. We’ve learned a lot today.”

“Yes,” Junior said with a nod. “For example, if you misbehave we only have to shoot you into space.”

End Flashback.

***

Aron awoke with several complaints.

The ground was too hard. The lights where too bright. The air was stale. It was difficult to say what irritated him most after having gotten used to his luxurious bed back at the head quarter.

Also, he was completely .

Wait? Where was he?

The boy shot up. It took a moment for his eyes to get used to the harsh light. His surroundings were a special kind of terrifying.

A windowless, clinically white room – square with a high ceiling. Big and empty except for a few technical gadgets like the cameras looking straight at him.

In the center, suspended between floor and ceiling by no discernable mechanism, hovered a shimmering cage. The force fields that were impenetrable to his powers formed a cube of two meters edge length.

And he was inside.

The blueish surface on which he lay was a handbreadth above the PVC floor and the one over his head mirrored it close to the overhead lights. Whatever held his prison up was either invisible or in another room.

Just to make sure he wasn’t missing the obvious, Aron slammed everything he got into the field. Pure kinetic force, plasma, intense heat, electricity, every possible kind of radiation. All power he could muster was reflected along the fields around him and fizzled out unspectacularly.

Nothing outside the cage responded to his telekinesis. He was perfectly trapped.

“Hello Aron,” said the Shadow’s voice from several sources. Every corner of the room had a tiny speaker. So sound could get inside the cage! That wasn’t useful right now, but something to remember.

“I hope you are not feeling any after effects,” the villain continued in English. “It was unavoidable. You understand, surely. I also apologize for your lack of attire, but I didn’t think the risk was worth the increase in modesty.”

Reluctantly, Aron spoke up. “You can hear me out there?”

“No. Sound cannot leave the confine, only enter it by causing specific vibrations in the field. My own design, new and improved. But I am a capable lip reader. If you want to be understood, just look at any of the cameras.”

“Where am I?”

“Kowloon City of Hong Kong. Yau Tsim Mong District.”

It was that simple to make him talk? Was the archenemy going to fall for the trap of laying out his evil plan to the imprisoned hero?

“You just tell me that?” he tried.

“Why not? What could you possibly do with the information? Knowing you are surrounded by living spaces can only deter you from dramatic actions if you are capable of tricks of which I’m not aware.”

“Why am I here? Will you take me apart to see what makes me tic?” If the Shadow wanted him dead above all else, the gas wouldn’t have been non-lethal. But that didn’t mean the guy wasn’t planning to dispose of him later.

“No need. You can stay in one piece. I have no hope of finding the source of your ability inside your brain.”

“Then you already know more than we do.”

“Likely.”

Some things fell into place. But Aron had difficulties putting the vague ideas together. “Wait, do you have a power? Is that why we can’t ever find you? What is it?”

“I have… options.”

“The devices,” Aron whispered. “Those ugly things that can’t possibly be of human origin.”

“I have been instructed in their use. Or rather, I have been warned against their use. But with diligent efforts it was possible to turn them from mysteries into tools. Understand, dear Aron, that I don’t intend to kill you or murder everybody I don’t like or anything of the sort. I have no grudge against you. Or your lover, Minhyun”

He chose to ignore the implicit threat. “But you’re trying to use those devices for your gain.”

“Of course. I found one and have been searching for the rest ever since. I do believe my collection was complete. Once you boys found out how to detect them, I had to abandon quite a few, but most are inconsequential to me anyway.”

“What are they? What do they have to do with our powers? What do you want from me?”

Aron had never felt so agitated. He wasn’t in immediate danger and by all means he should have used the opportunity to calmly gather information, deliberately weighing how much he could give away for gaining intelligence on the Shadow. But he was just so frustrated.

The unseen man paused for a moment, making the boy fear the conversation was over. “What I want, Aron, is to make things go my way. What I want from you is, ideally, cooperation. How loyal are you to Junior? What does he make you do? Hunt me? Is that a good use of your time? Why not work with me? There are people whose absence would make the world a brighter place. The superrich, who start wars to make a few meaningless billions more. The warlords who follow them and raise armies of children. The CEOs who profit off the misery inflicted.”

“Wow,” Aron said, drawn out and with an eye roll. “You know exactly what I want to hear. Your spies have informed you well. Did you have the cleaning lady read my little list? Guess I should have put it under my pillow or something.”

“I must apologies for underestimating your intelligence.”

“What would you really have me do?”

‘Come on’, Aron thought, ‘tell me your grand master plan so I can go back home with something useful once I’m out of here.’

“I suppose I can be honest,” the Shadow said, slowly. “Perhaps I can still convince you to change loyalties. I wouldn’t make you harm anyone. Indeed, doing harm may come to an end if I am successful. Luck has dropped all I need into my lap.”

Aron grumbled. “Luck is a b*tch. I’ll kick her off her throne next time I see her.”

“What?”

There was genuine alarm in the Shadow’s voice. That had not been scripted. It had sounded overeager, like a slip of the tongue. Was it possible?

“Lady Luck?” Aron tried. “A glowing woman on a throne of white. On top of some crystals or ice or whatever.”

“How do you know her!?”