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  Paris’s tongue shot out of her mouth and wrapped around his neck, and soon, Roman had lost consciousness.

  Chapter Three: Hogtied Treason

  From what Roman could recall, he’d been slammed into the wall by Paris’s powerful tongue.

  Definitely a Type III Class B Exemplar, he thought as he tried to steady his vision, the taste of blood at the back of his throat. Maybe a Type II…

  He was belly down on his living room floor, hogtied, his lower back and chest screaming with pain. Paris sat before him in her blouse and pencil skirt, one leg crossed over the other as she looked through a small notebook.

  “Good, I’m glad you could join me.”

  “You’re an exemplar…” he spat, feeling the strain from his muscles pulling tight across his chest.

  She snapped her small notebook shut. “What gave it away? Was it my tongue?” she asked, licking her lips. Paris squatted before him. “I really should have killed you. Not that there aren’t people willing and ready to take your place. But that’s what shifters are for. It’s too bad we couldn’t have at least finished what we started.”

  “Who said we can’t?” Roman asked, doubling down. When it came to deceit or trying to get his way, Roman always doubled down.

  Paris raised an eyebrow at him. “You’re serious?”

  “Why the fuck not?” he asked, ignoring the strain in his muscles. “If you’re going to kill me, I’d at least like to go out with a bang, and by ‘bang’ I mean…”

  A smirk formed on Paris’s face. She dropped her hand to his side and slowly stroked her fingers down the muscles on his arm, to his waist and then to his nude hip. From there, she traced her fingers along a vein that pumped blood to his penis, and flicked his growing erection.

  “Nope, that’s not what I came here for.” She stood. “I have two options for you: One, I kill you and we replace you with a shifter.”

  “They’ll know,” Roman barked. “We do checks for that.”

  “Not to worry. We have a new way to replace you with a shifter, and it’s quite painful.”

  “Damn.”

  “Two, you become my informant on the inside. The Western Provinces have questions about Centralian immigration.”

  Roman tried to contain the look of realization on his face. She’s a Western Province spy.

  “You answer these questions, collect data, and provide it to me. I may also need you for other matters, such as a future processing concern I have. Do a really good job, and I just may find the time to finish what we started earlier, with or without my tongue, if you get my drift.”

  Roman swallowed hard. He’d never been loyal to the state, and while he may have worked for Centralian immigration, he treated it just as he would any other day job.

  No, Roman had loyalty to one person, and one person only—his dark secret something only a few people would ever know.

  “Fine,” he told Paris. “What information do you need?”

  Chapter Four: Super Cheating

  There was a reason Kevin Blackbook had decided to commit suicide.

  Kevin had never been the happiest of guys, but he’d been happier than usual over the last few years, after he’d married a widowed non-exemplar named Susan who was way out of his league. They’d met at one of the coffee shops on 15th Street (not far from Roman’s place, actually, although he and Roman never discussed this), and it hadn’t quite been love at first sight, but it did bloom into something of the sort.

  Love at tenth sight? It may have been the eleventh or twelfth time they’d met—Kevin never could get it right—that he’d mustered up the courage to ask her on a date. The rest was history, Kevin’s history, and Mrs. Susan Blackbook had been the love and sole purpose of his life ever since.

  This was before Kevin knew Roman—hell, before any of the newer employees had become immigration advisors. And Kevin and Susan had been happy enough, vacationing to the Southern Alliance when given a chance and even purchasing a timeshare in Lower Centralia.

  Kevin suspected that Susan was up to something when he came home one night, just a few weeks back, actually, and found the furniture toppled over. At first, he had assumed it was a burglar, but then Susan emerged from the bedroom in the flowing kimono she wore as a house robe with cherry-red cheeks and just about the biggest smile he’d ever seen on her face—a pleasure smile if he’d ever seen one.

  “Sorry,” she’d said at the time, “I got carried away cleaning.”

  Kevin had believed her, and that had been that.

  In fact, if Susan had been more careful, Kevin would never have figured out what she was up to.

  But like many non-exemplars who’d had affairs with exemplars, the temptation to experiment was too great, and it was yesterday that Kevin had come home to find a Type III Class D—a fucking Class D!—floating on his back in the living room while Kevin’s wife rode him reverse cowgirl, her feet pressed into his lower back, her hands pinching her nipples as she always did when she was orgasming.

  So that was what led Kevin to want to jump.

  And before he did, like he had done for years, Kevin Blackbook purchased a single Hero Ticket at the local corner store.

  This was mostly out of habit; he knew he didn’t have a chance to win. And besides, he’d be dead before they announced the winner anyway.

  Chapter Five: Nadine

  After the hospital visit he made every morning, Roman took the trolley to the Centralian Immigration Offices.

  He had a lot on his mind as he stared outside the window, watching the city blaze by, the morning sun reflecting off the smooth glass surfaces of tall buildings.

  One of the things on his mind was the fact that his day had just gotten a lot busier. Instead of sitting at his desk and looking busy or going to the break room hoping to see Nadine, as he normally would have on a Tuesday, he now had to take all of Kevin’s appointments.

  And judging by the piece of paper he’d received from Selena, their bitchy department manager, Kevin had a full caseload.

  Kevin always had a full caseload; the middle-aged immigration advisor was still under the impression that if he worked harder, he would get noticed and be able to advance in the agency.

  Truth be told, the only way to advance was to know someone, and if you didn’t know someone, you could be good looking and fuck your way to the top.

  At least that was what Roman had seen, which explained how someone like Nadine, who had come in just recently, was already at a higher salary rank than Kevin.

  Not to say that Nadine had fucked her way to the top, but she was definitely hot, young, and had a way with words—all things chubby Kevin did not have. So maybe she had seduced her way to the top.

  Roman had seen opportunities to do this, a couple times actually, but he’d never really taken them. He liked his current position as an immigration advisor because he had some power, yet not enough to let it go to his head. Plus, he never had to work overtime.

  This fact didn’t stop Kevin from working overtime, which was why he had so many appointments today. And tomorrow.

  Appointments that now belonged to Roman. There were exemplars from the Northern and Southern Alliance, as well as the Eastern and Western Province. A worldly caseload if there ever was one.

  “Dammit, Kevin,” Roman whispered as his thoughts jumped from the stack of work that lay ahead to late last night, when he’d nearly been strangled by the powerful tongue of a Western Province spy.

  Now Roman was supposed to be some type of informant, but the information Paris had asked for wasn’t that classified.

  She simply wanted numbers, and possibly favors, which made no sense to him as he had absolutely no authority here.

  What Paris had done seemed like a lot of trouble to go through just to get some numbers, especially attending Heroes Anonymous, which must have been boring and pathetic as hell for an exemplar.

  Once Roman arrived at work, he took his sweet time walking from the train station to the entrance, something he
did every morning, and made it to his desk ten minutes after he was supposed to be there.

  Selena had caught him doing this before, but every time she did, he told her he had a stomach sickness that was triggered by coffee, which he had to drink to stay awake, so he’d spent a little more time in the bathroom than he’d hoped to spend.

  His manager grumbled every time he used this excuse, but Selena had bigger fish to fry, those fish being upper management and their constant need for metrics.

  “Hey Nadine,” he said as the slender woman passed by his cubicle.

  As always, the hotbody from the Immigration Inspection for Fast Travel Powers Department wore her dirty-blond hair in a bun, and this time, she had a hair clip in it that matched the green of her eyes. Her dress seemed tighter than yesterday too, something he noticed quickly and then tried to unnotice as she approached him.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Why? Does something look wrong?” Roman smiled at her.

  “I mean about Kevin. Did you hear?”

  “No, what happened to Kevin? I mean, aside from the fact that he tried to commit suicide yesterday and just so happened to be saved by the same goddamn flying exemplar that was boning his wife.”

  Her eyes went wide. “That’s who saved him?”

  “I’m sorry, I thought everyone here knew. Call it the ultimate irony. He jumps, and that asshole just happens to be flying by. It’s too bad, too. He used to sit right there.” Roman nodded toward Kevin’s cubicle. “I talked to him a bunch about it yesterday morning, before he jumped. I wish I’d been able to say more.”

  “That’s so sweet of you,” she said as she took the seat in front of him.

  “It was the least I could do.”

  “Well, I guess it’s my turn, then, to tell you something you don’t know.”

  Roman raised an eyebrow at the pretty blond sitting before him. “Go on,” he said, leaning back in his chair to seem relaxed.

  “Kevin died last night.”

  He gasped. “You’re serious?”

  “Yes, he died.”

  “How?”

  Selena, the chunky middle manager, came around the cubicle and stopped in front of Roman’s workspace.

  “You’re late, and you still have time to chat?” Selena rolled her eyes at Roman. “I don’t know what’s happened to this place, I really don’t, but it’s employees like you that make it hard for me to do my job. Have you ever thought about that? Have you ever thought about how hard it is to manage all these people like you?”

  “Not really,” Roman admitted.

  “You know what? Never mind. You’re not going to change your ways, and you aren’t the worst employee we’ve ever had, so there’s no reason for me to discipline you because then I’d eventually have to hire someone else that knows all the things you know, and that would require training, and training would require more unpaid overtime for me.”

  “Sorry to, um, hear that.”

  Selena threw her hands in the air and stormed away, only to return five seconds later. “By the way, Kevin died, and his first appointment should be here soon. Good luck.”

  “Thanks?”

  Nadine waited for Selena to leave before she continued. “Kevin was in the hospital when he disappeared.”

  “He disappeared? I thought you said he died.”

  “No, he’s definitely dead. They had some Type III Class Es scope out the area and, yeah, whoever took him killed him first.”

  Roman’s eyes darted to the handy chart pinned to his cubicle.

  “Class Es make great detectives.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  He paused briefly to admire Nadine.

  It wouldn’t be easy, but if he put just a little more work in, he’d probably be able to hook up with her. There was a spark between them, but he could tell she was modest. Call it intuition, or call it two years in the game since the incident that had changed his life for the worse.

  Point was, Roman could sense it.

  “It’s been rough,” he lied. “I’ve been thinking a lot about Kevin and how I wish we’d connected better. It would be nice to connect with more of my coworkers, actually. I mean, we all work together forty hours a week, yet I hardly know some people, especially the new ones.”

  “I’m new,” she volunteered. If she got the hint that Roman was asking her out, she didn’t let on. This led him to believe that Nadine, like Roman, knew what she was doing. It made sense, too, as Nadine had worked her way up the ranks pretty quickly.

  “I should be going.” Nadine stood. “We have a meeting this morning.”

  “Not another one,” Roman joked, and sure enough, Nadine laughed.

  “How did you know we have so many meetings?”

  “A hunch.”

  He dropped both elbows onto his desk and clasped his fingers together. If Nadine could have seen the hamster wheel turning in Roman’s mind at that very moment, she would have seen it working overtime as he tried to think of another angle.

  “How about coffee today?” she asked, throwing him a bone. “After work. I know a spot on 19th Street. It’s quiet, low key. Called the Proxima Cafe.”

  Roman casually leaned back in his chair, made an effort to check the calendar posted on his cubicle wall, and turned back to Nadine. “Yeah, today, I’ll meet you after work. 19th Street, right?”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” she said as she left his cubicle. “See you tonight.”

  Chapter Six: The Hero Ticket

  The super known as Hazrat scowled at Roman Martin.

  “I know it’s not what you wanted to hear,” Roman told him, “but your wife is here in Centralia on an S2 Visa. Which means she is your dependent. Because she is your dependent, and not here as an immigrant worker, she is not allowed to work.”

  “But my wife is a Type III Class E, and the job she has is working with a science lab directly affiliated with the Centralian government.”

  Roman, sitting at Kevin’s desk, sighed as a frown took shape on his face. He had been arguing with Hazrat for ten minutes now, and the guy just didn’t seem to get it.

  There was nothing Roman could do for him.

  It was out of his control—just like most, if not all, immigration-related laws.

  Hazrat, who was clearly from the Southern Alliance, was used to a different way of government. Bribes, forgery, nepotism, privilege. It wasn’t that Centralia didn’t have these things, but the exclusive Southern Alliance was known for them.

  It struck Roman as ironic that a rich man from the south would be arguing immigration with him; the Southern Alliance had some of the strictest immigration laws on record.

  And Roman wasn’t stupid enough to think Hazrat wasn’t dangerous.

  The muscular man was a Type II Class D. His records indicated that he could manipulate shadows into weapons, which was why Roman was keeping an eye on every shadow cast in Kevin’s cubicle office.

  He’d already seen a few of the shadows tremble.

  “I don’t think you understand how talented she is,” Hazrat said, his long mustache lifting back as he revealed his teeth.

  “Sir, with all due respect, my understanding of your wife’s ability has nothing to do with her current visa status. If she wants to switch to a W visa, that’s fine, but she’ll need to do what’s called a Change of Status, which can take up to one year to process, and during that time she cannot work, period.”

  “But if it takes a year, she’ll lose this job opportunity!” Hazrat’s nostrils flared. He was a light-skinned guy with tattoos and markings running along the sides of his head and down his spine. Not everyone in the South looked like this; from what Roman could tell, Hazrat must have had somewhat of a rebellious streak in his youth.

  “I am well aware of that, but again—and I can’t emphasize this enough—this situation is out of my hands. There is no one you can appeal it to, and as I told you five minutes ago, you have two options: One, you can file for a change of status. This would mean s
he goes from an S2 Visa to a W Visa. Two, you could go back to the Southern Alliance and then come back on the correct visa. If you did this, you would have to go to the Centralian Embassy again, go through the entire application process of getting a W Visa, and come back that way. Personally, I suggest the second option, as it is faster and she could probably start working sooner.”

  “But she wants to start working now,” Hazrat growled. Roman noticed the shadows cast by the books on Kevin’s desk start to grow.

  “Intimidating me isn’t going to get you what you want; it will just end with you either going to jail or being forced to leave the country after going to jail,” said Roman, his voice firm. He wasn’t visibly scared of Hazrat, regardless of the man’s powers. “And I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news here, but all this information was made available to you when you came here on a Student Visa.”

  Shadows from beneath Kevin’s desk tore through the wood paneling, sending pens, pencils and loose papers into the air.

  The corner of the cubicle collapsed, causing some commotion as they also brought Kevin’s neighbor’s cubicle wall and Roman’s cubicle wall down. Every available shadow now floated in the air, barbed, occasionally stabbing at items around them.

  Roman had already kicked over his chair at this point, and, realizing he was pinned, he kept both arms at the ready, poised to spring into action as soon as the opportunity presented itself.

  Security was already on the way, evident by the siren that was going off.

  “I will fucking kill you,” Hazrat said.

  “Then do it,” Roman said, his fists in front of his body. He’d fought an exemplar before. It hadn’t been easy, and he’d ultimately lost, but after all the battles Roman had been in, he wasn’t the type to go down without a fight.

  Besides, there hadn’t been a moment in the last few years in which Roman hadn’t been ready to die. And this wasn’t the first super who had blown up at him.