Listening to Anderson’s openly hostile opener, Los understood immediately what Jordan’s earlier warning had meant.
Beautiful women stirring up trouble.
That was a problem with no expiration date, no matter the era or the culture.
At Godolkin, competing for Cate’s attention was practically a school sport.
Though honestly, this was still a pretty student-level move.
Los reached out without warning and snatched Anderson’s floating coin clean out of the air.
“Give that back.”
Anderson’s eyes went wide, as if someone had laid hands on something precious.
He pushed his magnetic field manipulation hard, bearing down on the coin, trying to pull it back.
Nothing happened.
He found, quickly and with considerable confusion, that he had lost all control over the coin.
His magnetic ability wasn’t working.
Anderson’s mind stalled out.
He couldn’t make sense of what he was looking at.
“Mine now.”
Los flipped the coin off his thumb, tossed it up and caught it, right in front of Anderson, without any particular concern.
However hard Anderson pushed his ability, the coin in Los’s hand didn’t shift by so much as a fraction.
Jordan had come over by this point and leaned toward him.
“You alright?”
“Fine.”
Los shook his head and didn’t bother hiding the coin from Anderson’s continued attempts.
He let him keep trying.
In the instant his fingers had closed around it, he had completed a matter conversion, binding the coin’s internal electrons and neutrons into a configuration that was no longer metallic.
In other words, this coin wasn’t in the metal category anymore.
Use a magnetic field on it?
Anderson could try for a hundred years.
Los pocketed the coin and waved Jordan toward the door.
“Getting kind of boring.
Let’s head back.”
They were already moving toward the exit when Cate came out of the restroom, pushed her hair back from her face, and turned to Los directly.
“I’m not feeling well.
I’d like to go rest.
Would you mind walking me back to the dorms?”
Golden Boy, standing one step behind her, had gone completely blank.
Anderson, still attempting his magnetic ability, and half the bar around them had gone just as still.
“Of course.
Let’s go.”
Los agreed without hesitation and walked out of the bar with the best-looking girl at the party and his roommate Jordan, who had switched back to her female form, on either side of him.
Golden Boy watched Cate leave with Los and let out a short, humorless laugh.
“Anderson,” he said, his voice dropping.
“You’re staying here and drinking with me tonight.
Neither of us is going home sober.”
Anderson didn’t react.
He was still standing there, still working his ability, still trying.
Outside the bar.
Jordan watched Cate, who had hooked her arm through Los’s and was moving a little unsteadily, like the wine had caught up with her.
Jordan blinked, then said under her breath: “I can go stay at a friend’s dorm tonight if you need the room.”
Los shook his head.
But I do need you to do something for me.”
“What?”
Jordan gave him a sideways look.
The next day.
Noon.
Jordan came back to the dorm after class.
The door had barely swung open when Los, still facing his computer screen, tossed a small metal ball over his shoulder without turning around.
Jordan caught it on reflex.
She looked down.
In the sunlight coming through the window, the little ball caught the light with a faint, unmistakable golden gleam.
Los spun the chair around halfway.
“Call it even for the meals.”
“Is this gold?” Jordan went very still.
The weight and the color told her everything.
Real gold.
One of the precious metals.
“Your family’s in business, so you probably have the channels.
Can you convert these into cash for me?”
Los said it calmly and pulled the desk drawer open hard.
Inside, sitting in a neat row, were a dozen bright gold bars.
Bang.
Jordan crossed the room in two steps, shut the dorm door, locked it, and pulled the curtains closed.
She stood there breathing hard, staring at a drawer full of gold, her usual poker face doing nothing for her for once.
“Where did this come from?”
“Relax.
Nothing stolen, nothing taken from anyone.”
Los smiled slightly.
“I can promise you the source is completely clean.
There’s no risk selling any of it.”
Jordan stared at him.
Then something from the night before clicked into place: Los asking her, before they went to sleep, to get him a large bucket of mercury.
Her mouth opened.
It kept opening.
“Los.
Don’t tell me you converted mercury into gold.”
Los nodded without hesitating.
“That’s impossible.”
Jordan shook her head, genuinely thrown.
Mercury and gold had similar chemical structures, that much was true.
But actually converting mercury into gold was completely beyond anything current science could pull off.
Artificial synthesis was essentially a non-starter, which was part of why gold had been a functioning global currency for as long as it had been.
And her roommate had just done it in a dorm room.
“But I can do it.
Through the ability I’ve been developing.”
Los said it plainly.
Jordan immediately checked the door lock again, then lowered her voice.
“Keep it down.”
Her expression had never been this serious. Get faster updates on g.com.
“You didn’t tell Cate any of this, did you?”
“No.”
“The school?”
“Right now, you’re the only one who knows.”
“Good.
Good.”
Jordan let out a slow breath and dropped her voice further.
“Listen.
The fact that you can convert things into gold with your ability is something you don’t tell anyone.
Ever.”
Coming from a business family, she understood exactly what she was looking at.
This was actual alchemy.
If this got out, the impact on the world would be comparable to half of all superpowered individuals suddenly existing at once.
Every government and organization on earth would go completely off the rails trying to get to him.
Jordan pressed a hand over her chest and gave Los a rueful look.
“Honestly?
You shouldn’t have told even me.”
“I figured I couldn’t hide it from you.” Los smiled, easy and unhurried.
“And we’re friends, Jordan.”
He wasn’t naive about it.
Carelessly revealing a gold-conversion ability to anyone was the last thing he would ever do.
Showing Jordan now was a deliberate test.
Taking over Godolkin and building toward control of The Boys universe required a faction, and that required people.
Cate was already the first name on that list.
Jordan, capable and from a business background, sharp in all the ways that came with it, was the second.
More than her background, though, it was her character he was taking the measure of.
Jordan, caught completely by the word “friends,” sighed again and shook her head.
“I genuinely want to turn you in for the reward.
This goes way past just being rich.
This ability could wreck the entire global economy.”
“I’m not going to convert gold at any kind of scale.
I have no interest in breaking the market.”
Los said it simply.
“This is just the first money I’ve ever made.
I have better ways to generate income from here on out.”
Any single patent in the Stark Industries database could take a tech company from nothing to orbit.
“As long as you’ve thought it through.”
Jordan nodded, genuinely relieved he wasn’t planning to flood the gold market.
She looked at Los, who sat there completely unbothered, and asked: “How are you this calm?
The gold in that drawer alone is enough to set you up for life.”
“A little happy.” Los held his thumb and index finger a small distance apart.
“Not that much.”
With matter conversion and everything Stark’s knowledge base contained, becoming the wealthiest person in the world was only a matter of time.
That was already a given.
What Los actually valued was something else entirely.
Power.
Jordan looked at her roommate and felt something she didn’t usually feel: a thorough, uncomplicated sense of defeat.
While she was still here grinding against other students over rankings, her roommate had quietly achieved financial independence through his ability alone and was already looking past it toward the next thing entirely.
The two of them weren’t even operating in the same space.