12: Cate’s Probe
Los walked into the bar, where the music was running loud enough to feel.
Young men and women in sharp clothes moved freely under the shifting colored lights, the whole place saturated with energy and something more charged than that.
And the undisputed center of all of it was Cate.
She was already the most eye-catching person on campus in a school uniform.
Tonight she was in a black cocktail dress, fitted and elegant, with semi-transparent crystal-heeled shoes.
Her pure gold hair fell to her waist, lit by the party lighting into something almost luminous.
The pale skin of her neck and arms was flawless, and those legs had drawn a quarter of the room’s attention on their own.
Around her, a loose orbit of good-looking young men, every one of them angled toward her.
“Los, Jordan, you made it.”
Cate spotted them the moment they walked in and broke into a warm smile, stepping away from the group with her wine glass and bringing two of the young men with her.
“This is Golden Boy, and this is Andre Anderson.”
Jordan, in male form, looked at Golden Boy and Anderson with a stillness that said everything.
Los understood where it was coming from.
Golden Boy: fire projection, flame-powered flight, and enhanced physical capabilities across the board.
Currently ranked second in the school, with Blindspot having graduated, he was already drifting toward the top spot by default.
Andre Anderson: ranked sixth, ability in magnetic field manipulation, a power that in some ways had higher long-term potential than Golden Boy’s.
Jordan’s goal was first in the school.
These two were exactly the kind of competition that kept that goal from feeling comfortable.
“Jordan Li.
You’re sitting at twenty-one right now, aren’t you.”
Golden Boy gave Jordan a glance and a smile that didn’t bother hiding how self-assured he was, then raised an eyebrow and shifted his attention to Los.
“As for you, I don’t know who you are.”
He said it easily.
The pride was just part of his posture.
He had arrived at Godolkin already effectively ranked first, the school’s resources and promotional attention leaning fully his way, and the kind of looks and ability that had half the campus following his every move.
Golden Boy had every reason to carry himself that way.
“His name’s Los.
You’ll know him soon enough.”
Jordan allowed himself a quiet smile.
He was thinking about the fact that both Golden Boy and Anderson had been chasing Cate in their own ways, and that Cate had spent a night asleep in his roommate’s bed.
It settled something in him.
Anyone who underestimated Los was going to regret it.
Rufus had found that out permanently.
Jordan didn’t believe for a second that Homelander just happening to pass by had been a coincidence.
Los had no particular interest in drawing out the conversation with Golden Boy.
He found a spot on a couch in a corner of the bar and sat down.
Cate clocked this immediately and turned to Golden Boy and Anderson.
“You two keep talking,” she said, already moving toward Los with her wine glass.
Neither of them had ever seen Cate make a point of following someone before, including either of them, toward whom she had maintained an easy but clearly bounded friendliness.
“Who even is that?” Anderson narrowed his eyes.
“Genuinely no idea.”
Golden Boy pulled out his phone and started pulling up the school’s ranking database.
“What are you drinking?”
The voice came from right beside him.
Los turned his head.
Cate had settled onto the couch next to him, close enough that the faint scent of something like violets was immediately present.
When he glanced down, the neckline of her dress left relatively little to the imagination.
“I said I was buying tonight, anything you want.”
Cate’s breath carried the warmth of wine.
She had her legs crossed and was leaning back in the leather couch, turning her wine glass by the stem with light, easy movements, the smooth gold hair resting over one shoulder.
The composed, aristocratic presence she carried was something close to untouchable.
The bar’s shifting lights fell across her features, which were precision-perfect, and made her already slightly soft eyes look almost dreamlike.
The faint part of her lips made the whole picture considerably more interesting.
“This is enough.”
Los reached over and took the wine glass directly from Cate’s hand.
He took a small sip and smiled slightly.
“Good wine.”
Cate blinked, then covered a small laugh with one hand, something shifting behind her eyes.
In social situations, being genuinely beautiful was a significant advantage.
This was the first time someone her age had simply taken the initiative away from her without hesitation.
“I want to know,” Cate said, “how you beat Rufus.”
Los turned the glass slowly in his hand.
“Didn’t I already tell you?
Homelander killed Rufus.”
“But you beat him before Homelander got there.
That’s the part I want to understand.”
Cate was watching him directly, not trying to disguise the question.
Even for her, if Rufus had made contact and triggered his ability first, she would have lost consciousness immediately.
He had that kind of technical edge on mental ability users.
“If you want to know how I did it, you could just try it yourself.”
Los set the wine glass down and held out his left hand to her.
The rhythm of the conversation shifted again.
Cate looked at the offered hand.
In her experience, nobody ever voluntarily invited her to use her ability on them.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
She took a slow breath.
The elegant line of her leaned forward and she extended her right hand to meet his left.
Their fingers interlaced lightly, and Cate activated her ability.
Her ability wasn’t identical to Rufus’s, actually.
Almost immediately, Cate’s expression became the same barely-conceivable confusion that had crossed Rufus’s face.
Through the contact with Los’s hand, her consciousness reached out and began its invasion of his thoughts.
And then it couldn’t go any further.
The actual core of his mind, the place where his real self lived, remained completely untouchable.
Endless darkness.
A total void.
She could feel him.
He was right there.
But it felt like she was separated from his mind by the entire width of the universe.
She couldn’t dominate it.
She couldn’t even reach it.
Then, dimly, she perceived something.
A vast pattern, or perhaps a special equation of some kind, vast and completely impassable, blocking everything.
She couldn’t make out the details.
But simply sensing that it existed was enough to bring fear and despair flooding in.
Her soul recoiled instinctively, pulling back, trying to get away.
Cate cried out and yanked her consciousness back from Los like a wave pulling off a shore.
“Are you alright?”
Los reached out and steadied her.
He had intended this as a demonstration of his psychic immunity, something to establish a foundation of leverage for what came later.
A calculated move toward pulling Godolkin’s key players into his orbit.
The effect appeared to have been somewhat stronger than anticipated.
Before he could think much further, Golden Boy and Anderson had crossed the bar the moment they heard Cate’s voice.
They took one look at her: face flushed, nearly slumped against Los, and both of them turned on him at once.
“What did you do to her?”
“It’s not his fault, he didn’t do anything to me.”
Cate straightened up, pulled in a few slow breaths, and turned to Los with an apologetic look.
“Excuse me for a moment, I need to use the restroom.”
She stood and crossed toward the back of the bar.
Golden Boy went after her without hesitation and posted himself outside the restroom door.
“Let’s talk.”
Anderson took the seat directly across from Los and opened his palm.
There was a coin resting in it.
Then the coin lifted.
It rose from his hand and floated, held in place by nothing visible.
“Los.
Ranking 385?”
Anderson looked across at him with a cool, dismissive expression.
If Rufus hadn’t been removed from the rankings, that number would have been one worse.