With the lights back on, I could finally see the people around me in detail. Almost every person present had a visible scar on their face or arms. Frank was the only one with a body unblemished by violence, though his eyes bore the weight of the years. Of course, Viscera was by far the most grotesque of the group. He looked like a stitched-together amalgam of various animals, and even the parts of him that were human more closely resembled a corpse than a normal human.


    Frank immediately placed his smartphone on the island and began using an outlet to charge it once the lights turned on.


    “Hey, I was going to use that to charge my phone,” Claire complained once she saw Frank use the outlet.


    “You snooze, you lose,” Frank said.


    “So, there are about ten Heroes in New Kinsington. How many Villains are there?” I asked.


    “About thirty,” Frank said. “It fluctuates between thirty and fifty, and there are probably another hundred Enhanced Human criminals who still don’t rise up to the level of Villain. Essentially, there are four gangs in this town that hold most of the Villains: the Brotherhood of Evil, the Torricelli Mafia, the Ephemeral Troupe, and the Dragon Triad. They control different parts of the city, and Sutton only wants the Heroes to get involved if they start fighting each other.”


    I squeezed my eyes shut and pinched the bridge of my nose. Every question I had answered gave birth to three more questions. I asked what the wall was for; now I don’t know what a nightwalker is. I asked how many Villains are in the city; now I don’t know what the Torricelli Mafia, the Ephemeral Troupe, and the Dragon Triad are. Somehow, I felt like I was losing ground on my journey to learn about this new world.


    “What year did the first superpower appear?” I asked, hoping that a simple question would allow me to take a step toward broad understanding. The moment that the first superpower appeared would most likely be when this world’s timeline diverged from mine.


    “Uh,” Frank said, scratching his head. “I’m not sure. Mid-twentieth century, I guess.”


    Shrugging, Jason said, “That’s more of an academic question, and none of us went to college. Hana would know.”


    For the first time since she arrived in the kitchen, Alice looked up from her food, saying, “The first superhero was Salmasius the Sorcerer, who first appeared in 1935. The Serum was created as an American weapons’ development program in 1941, and the children of those who received the Serum were mutants most of the time.”


    “You’ve been doing your research, Countess,” Jason said, smiling. “Yeah, that sounds right. They started mass-producing the Serum, and there were tens of millions of Enhanced Humans by the 1980s. That was a big cause of the Warlord Era.”


    “Okay,” I said, my headache growing. I would have to just buy a history textbook and read that. At least now I knew that their timeline diverged in the year 1935, and I could reference events before that point without contradicting reality.


    This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.


    “Thank you, I don’t have any more questions today,” I said, concealing the frustration I felt that I couldn’t nail down the facts of this world.


    With my focus shifted away from gaining information, my eyes fell on the food being consumed around me, and my mouth began to water. There was only one meal left on the counter, and it must have been meant for Sparrow. They must have ordered the food earlier.


    Wordlessly, Viscera grabbed a ceramic plate from a high drawer without standing up from his feet. He placed the plate in the empty space on the table in front of me before using his chopsticks to shovel some rice and chicken onto it.


    “Sorry,” Frank said as he took some of his own food and moved it onto my plate. “I was so distracted by our conversation that I forgot you didn’t have any food.”


    One by one, everyone at the table, even Alice, gave me a portion of their food until I had the most food of everyone present. I don’t know why, but that brief moment of unnecessary kindness touched me greatly.


    For the first time, I realized that the people of this world were actually capable of selflessness. None of them gained anything from giving me their food, but they did it without thinking. I had to look away to hide the tears welling up in my eyes.


    They told me to stay in Room 304. The apartment building was eight stories tall, but the top five floors were uninhabited. Each floor had more than a dozen rooms, and very few of those rooms housed anyone. The only other people living on the third floor were Frank, Jason, and Vick. The women all lived on the second floor. When I asked why things were set up this way, Frank said it was a rule that had been around since before he took up the name “Deadeye” fifteen years ago.


    I wore some of Frank’s old pajamas while I put my clothes in the wash. Frank was about the same height as me, but he was much wider in the chest and arms, so the pajamas hung loose from my body.


    I pushed down on the mattress in my room. It was firmer than I’d like, but it was clean and had sheets. The room had electricity, AC, and running water. It was more than enough for me.


    With a sigh, I decided there was one last thing to do before I went to sleep. I took the stairs down to the second floor and spotted Veronica sitting on a sofa nearby. Approaching her, I asked, “Do you know which room is Hana’s?”


    She raised one eyebrow suggestively.


    “I just need to talk to her,” I said.


    “She’s in Room 202,” Veronica said, pointing to a nearby room.


    “Thanks.”


    I walked up to Room 202 and stood at the threshold. I waited there for several long seconds, building up my courage to knock on the door. It was better to rip off the band-aid now rather than later. I couldn’t build my relationships with the Heroes of this city on a foundation of lies.


    I knocked on the door, and Hana immediately responded with an annoyed, “What do you want?”


    I couldn’t help but smile. People knocking on her door must have been a semi-regular occurrence.


    “It’s me, Kevin. I, uh, need to talk to you.”


    “Oh,” Hana said, the harshness leaving her voice. “I’ll be out in a second.”


    Soon after, the door opened, and Hana appeared at the threshold. She wore a large shirt that ran down to her thighs, and I couldn’t tell if she was wearing anything else. She might have been wearing shorts underneath, but I couldn’t be sure.


    “Hey, what’s up?” Hana asked.


    “I need to tell you something,” I said, taking a deep breath.


    “What is it?”


    “Ganymede is dead.”