Muttering voices woke Victor. He squinted at the light pouring through the windows and slowly sat up.

"Where are we? What happened to the ship?"

"You're in Jersey City," echoed Dante's voice. "On the east coast of the U.S."

"But our ship. We were under attack, what happened? Did we crash here?"

Victor rubbed his eyes.

"Hold on a moment. I'll explain in a little bit..." footsteps jogged in Victor's direction and he twisted. "Victor!" Dante hissed, crouching, running a hand through messy hair. "What do we do? Two of them have woken up," he motioned over his shoulder, "and they both keep asking about the spaceship. They think--"

"I heard," Victor muttered.

"What do we do?"

Victor rubbed the blister on his palm, thinking. "We can pretend like this is a test. The attack on the ship was a ruse to bring them back to earth. Hala sent them here to prove themselves. We won't tell them what it's a test of, but we'll use it to see who's loyal to Hala and wants to return to the ship."

Dante frowned. "But what about us?"

"Us two are in charge of the test. You already passed, and I'm, well..." he glanced over Dante's shoulder at the sleeping inhumans, plus the two awake beside the red, metal wall. "I took them to the spaceship in the first place."

Dante slowly nodded. "And the ones who aren't concerned with 'proving their loyalty'?"

Victor grimaced. "We let them go?"

"Sounds like a plan," his eyes lit up. "Maybe some will be willing to help take down Hala. What do you think?"

"Sure," he shrugged.

"Also, I'm sorry about last night," he frowned. "I shouldn't have...well, I was just happy to be off that prison ship and it was just us two and I thought to myself, what's stopping you? So I--"

"Don't apologize," Victor interrupted. Dante slowly shut his mouth. "I've never met someone like you before and it was nice," he grimaced. "I'll just wear gloves next time."

Dante's gaze shot to Victor's hands, brow furrowing at the blister. Too late, Victor curled his fingers into a fist.

"I did burn you."

"I didn't notice until later," he waved a hand. "Like I said, I'll wear gloves next time."

Dante nodded, rising from the ground. "I'll go, uh, talk to the recruits. Are we calling them recruits?"

"Why not?" Victor shrugged. "Just hurry up. Recruit."

"On it," he gave a mock salute, turning away. Victor sighed, rubbing his faintly-pulsing temples. "Wait," Dante turned back. "Next time? You said next time."

Victor froze. Then glared at Dante's black shoes. "So what?"

"You said next time!" Dante squeaked.

"We have recruits. Quit making them wonder what we're talking about."

"Right," Dante shook his head, trotting off.

***

Victor did a patrol of the warehouse while Dante spoke to the waking inhumans. Glancing over occasionally, Victor tried to attach memories and abilities to each of them. There was the girl with the red and white costume who'd zapped electricity up in the ship. A tall boy with a lime green costume, likely the one who shot green energy beams. The bear-like inhuman, furry and bare torsoed. Then the small boy in all white, who turned invisible. Victor strained his mind for names, for where in the city or along the coast he'd found each of them. Nothing came.

He didn't even recall seeing a bear-like inhuman before. Ever.

He turned his attention fully to inspecting the warehouse, which had truly been abandoned. Not a single earth-machine or crate of cargo remained to gather dust on the rough, concrete ground. Opposite the wall of windows--where Dante and the inhumans talked--were the doors, thick steel, unyielding to Victor's efforts to budge them open.

The rest of the warehouse sat empty. Victor located no way to turn on the massive, round lights dotting the ceiling. Probably, they wouldn't work even if he did find the control panel responsible for lighting them up.

After a complete circuit of the building, Victor returned to Dante and the recruits. The few conscious recruits eyed Victor warily, unspeaking. His jaw hardened, but he approached Dante--who stood with arms folded--and whispered in his ear, "the doors won't open. The windows or portals are our only way out, which makes getting supplies here harder since I'd rather save my energy. How's the test going?"

"Excuse us for a moment," Dante grinned weakly to the recruits. "Confidential stuff. For our ears only. So yeah--" Victor yanked his sleeve, dragging him away.

"When Squirrel Girl gets here, we might not be able to keep this up," Victor whispered.

"I'm not sure we can keep it up at all," Dante said. "I don't know how to be a drill sergeant. I just told them we were waiting to begin until everyone woke up, but I don't know what we're doing when they do. Is part of a mysterious test releasing them into the city to wreak havoc on the lowly humans?" He pointed briefly towards an orange-costumed inhuman. "Because that's what she suggested. She flies and screams sonic waves. Which I know, because I faced her in the training rooms. And she beat my eardrums out of me so badly I had to get fixed up in the medbay. How did I pass this test and none of them?"

"You didn't," Victor said. "That's the point, it's a pretend test. We just need to know who is loyal to Hala so we can leave them here when we return to the ship and take it down."

"And how do we do that?"

He ground his teeth together. "We wait for Squirrel Girl," he decided. "We'll tell her the plan, then have her wait outside. We get the recruits to go out there one at a time and she can question them."

"And whoever is loyal to her we send back in here," Dante said. "And whoever isn't, we send somewhere else! I like it."

Victor scuffed the dusty ground. "Except some will grow suspicious that we're sending them to be questioned by a human."

Dante pursed his lips, then held up a finger, eyes lighting up. "So we act like we're sending them down to the docks, but on the way Squirrel Girl snags them into an alley. Anyone loyal to Hala will try to run away to the docks, but those who aren't might listen to her!"

Victor nodded. "Good idea. Now we just need to find Squirrel Girl and warn her not to pop in through the window."

"I'll do it," Dante began to step away.

"You want me to stay here and watch them?" he peered over at the "recruited" inhumans. "I abducted all these people. Most of them hate me," he hesitated. Most of them glared at each other, moving away like magnets repelled. "They seem to hate each other, too."

Dante sighed. "Of course they do. I only fought three of them, but they probably had to fight each other every single day," he rubbed his hands together, eyebrows knitting. "Alright, I'll stay. Most of them don't know me. But you know, you abducted me too, and I hardly hate you...Maybe a little."

Victor glared. "Not what you said a day ago."

Dante waved a hand. "Whatever. Just remember, I'm not a drill sergeant. So if the building explodes, I did my best."

Victor rolled his eyes, strolling towards the closest window. "Got it."

***

Victor hardly had to wait for Squirrel Girl. He dropped from the window to the pavement, and a little mint-green scooter glided around the corner of the warehouse. "Victor?" Squirrel Girl called. "Whe--" Victor held a finger to his lips, silencing her. He tiptoed away from the window and darted over to her, guiding them back around the corner. Across the docks, through this alley, the sun's reflection glinted sharply off the ocean.

"Where's Dante?" she whispered, cutting out the scooter's engine. "We have a bet. Have the inhumans woken up?"

"Yes," he replied. "That's why I'm out here."

Squirrel Girl gaped back towards the windows. "You left him alone in there? Did you want him to die?" she tore off her helmet and sprung from the scooter, but Victor grabbed her arm.

"Listen, we have a plan," he hissed. "We told them they're here as part of a test. We're going to send them outside one at a time to meet someone down there," he pointed towards the concrete dockside, bobbing with fishing boats. "But in reality, you'll snag them into an alley before they make it there and determine who's loyal to Hala and who'd rather stay on earth and go back home."

"Uh-huh," Squirrel Girl nodded. "So I get to be the one blasted by electricity and mauled by bears to prove who's loyal to the evil kree. I might have some objections."

Victor hesitated. "We hadn't considered that. We thought there'd be some peaceful question asking and..." he shrugged. "We didn't think much past that."

"Here's an idea," Squirrel Girl pointed to the warehouse roof, hidden from view above the rust-red walls. "I'll watch from up there. Anyone who walks happily down to the docks I'll just ignore, but I'll go after the ones who look like they'd rather run away."

"That sounds a whole lot better, actually," Victor said. "I'll go back and tell Dante."

"Then what are we doing with the ones who do go down to the docks? Just leave them?"

Victor shook his head, overcome with images of siren-screams wreaking havoc on the lowly humans of the city, cowering and holding their ears. "That's a bad idea. I'll go down there and portal them back into the warehouse, afterward. Where will you take the ones willing to help us?"

Squirrel Girl waved a hand. "I've got a place in mind. You'll see."

He scuffed his armored boots on the ground. "How's Ms. Marvel doing?"

"Pffft. She's been texting me all morning telling me her mom won't let her out of the house with a head injury like that. They think she fell out of bed last night and hit her head on the desk," she yawned. "Sorry I wasn't here at dawn. She wouldn't let me sleep at all with her begging me to come liberate her, so I finally sent Tippy to keep her company," she tapped a finger to her chin. "I also have yet to inform her she owes me--or Dante, maybe--two peanut butter sandwiches. What do you bet, Victor? How many inhumans are going to attack us?"

"Zero," he muttered.

Squirrel Girl opened her mouth. Stared. "Darn it."

"What?"

"Well, we bet how many would attack us when they woke up. But they're already awake. And you two didn't get attacked. So you're technically right, but your bet is invalid because you bet after they woke up," her shoulders slumped. "Now I don't get Ms. Marvel making peanut butter sandwiches for me."

Victor rolled his eyes. "I'm going inside. Uh, good luck."

"No problem," she grabbed her scooter and wheeled it away. "In no time we'll have our own inhuman army to battle the kree--plus me, of course, since I'm not inhuman, and you all are; plus the squirrel army I told you about," she flashed a grin, jogging out of sight around the warehouse.

Victor shook his head and trod back to the open window. Gripping the grimy ledge, he pulled himself inside, sliding awkwardly through the gap and dropping to the ground.

"Alright everyone!" Dante shouted. "The test begins now! You," he pointed at the girl with the red and white striped costume, "will go first. Head down to the docks just outside. Search for the kree soldier waiting on one of the boats. Wait there for us. And, uh, you may encounter difficulty, or obstacles on the way. This is a test, after all! So not all of you may make it.

"And this is a stealth mission. We don't want to alert anyone--any humans--to our presence here. Understood?"

Victor stepped away from the window. The red and white costumed inhuman nodded, barely. She swept past Victor, climbing to the window and glaring at him. He glared back, smiling icily.

Victor marched past the gathered recruits, shoulder prickling with their silent stares. He stopped beside Dante. "And now we wait," he muttered. He folded his arms. "Squirrel Girl had a slightly better idea," he whispered.

Dante turned, eyes wide.

"Nothing changed much," Victor said. "She's just going to avoid whoever's obviously eager on heading for the docks."

Dante's eyebrows settled in relief and he nodded.

"She also has a meeting place picked out somewhere, but she didn't say where."

"Great," Dante nodded again, eyes narrowing toward the recruits.

***

 One flaw in their plan: they had no clue how quickly to send recruits out the window on their way to the docks.

How long did Squirrel Girl need to convince someone she was there to help, and send them to whatever secret place she'd come up with? How long did they not have before the recruits scoured the boats along the docks and discovered there were no kree soldiers?

They settled for two minute increments. As close to two minutes as they could get, Victor and Dante switching off who counted the full hundred-twenty seconds, then pointed at a recruit to send them out the window. Orange-costume recruit. Bear-inhuman. Girl with cyan costume and a ring of frost around her feet.

They sent the boy in white last, on account of his ability to turn invisible, and the possibility he'd climb out the window and vanish before Squirrel Girl could spot him. Victor didn't want an apparent lapse in their two-minute cycle by sending him in the middle, in case Squirrel Girl wondered if that meant something had gone wrong.

Of course, she may have been too busy scrambling about chasing after fleeing inhumans to notice anything like a two-minute cycle. But Victor saved the invisible kid for last regardless.

After sending the boy out the window, Victor whispered, "we need to go find Squirrel Girl, and seal those windows shut," he motioned to the wall. "I'm going to teleport the Hala supporters back here and we don't want them getting out."

Dante rubbed his eyes. "Okay. Let's do it..." he yawned. "By the way, being drill sergeant is exhausting, and I'm starved."

Victor dragged Dante to the ajar window, boosting him up so he could slither through. Then he pulled himself up, dropping out the other side to the asphalt.

"I've got this," Dante's hands burst alight, aiming for the window. Victor squinted away, glancing down the alley for any sign of Squirrel Girl. Instead he found stray pigeons, waddling ignorantly of Dante's flames.

When Dante moved on from the first window, the flames left a dripping, molten mess of bubbling glass and glowing metal in the window frame. Victor shook his head, quietly grinning.

He jogged after Dante, who worked his way down the alley. After window number five or six, a blur plummeted from the rooftop beside Victor. He swung toward it, fists ready, surprised to find Squirrel Girl.

"Whoops, sorry," Squirrel Girl hissed. "Didn't mean to startle you. But you were the better option, quite frankly," she jabbed her head toward Dante, flames scouring the final window frame. "I'll take him on my scooter. After you get those lousy inhumans back inside, we'll meet in the park."

"What park?"

"The one where we first ran into each other," she broke into a sprint after Dante. Victor slowed. Where they first met? He winced thinking about it. Him hunting down Dante, hardly paying attention to Squirrel Girl or Ms. Marvel...

Still wincing, he spun a portal into the void, sinking out of sight. His eyes slowly adjusting in the dimness, he sped across the length of the warehouse to the docks, fishing boats and cargo trucks seeping into his awareness.

The void was bound to the physical world by locations; one spot in the empty, violet gloom matched with a particular street corner, or a patch of ocean water. Since people and animals constantly moved about, finding them was nearly impossible. Only a few times had Victor been able to hone in on the location of a person and portal directly to them. The main instance being last night, after he dropped many unconscious inhumans, including Ms. Marvel, in an empty warehouse, and when he returned on the second trip he'd used her as an anchor point.

Skimming the docks through the void, he hoped the fact that he'd carried all these inhumans through the void not that long ago would lend some awareness to his search. But, nothing. They'd moved too far from where he'd initially dropped them, and he recognized little about them in the first place.

He picked a narrow alley between buildings close to the water and slipped out of the void. His head ached slightly, and he squeezed his eyes shut until the pulsing faded. Between hunting these inhumans down, portaling them into the warehouse, and needing to return for his few supplies taken from the apartment and ditched in an alley, his headache was only going to build.

Shuffling sideways through the narrow gap between gray buildings, Victor emerged into a silent dockside. Piers jutted from the street down to the water, fishing boats bobbed up and down with the waves. Victor shielded his gaze from the sun, glancing around for signs of life, inhuman or otherwise. He saw nothing but a few seabirds taking flight.

A flash of lightning to his left split the sky. He whirled, darting into motion. A green pulse of energy sizzled into the water, followed by a warbling scream. Victor planted his hands over his ears and kept running.

He skidded down the dock wood to the steel ship, but the boarding plank--or what was left of it--hung warped and twisted in the water. Victor nearly slipped on the wet dock and grabbed the rusted boat railing to catch himself, but the boat rocked wildly, almost pulling him off the dock into the black water.

He stepped back, waves sloshing under the boat. At least three of the inhumans were arguing aboard, possibly more. An electric bolt pierced the sky again, blinding him.

Well. He already had a headache, what was the worst that could happen?

He spun a portal into the void beneath the boat, head splitting with pain. His portal sucked in water, taking the ship with it like a sinkhole. Inhaling sharply, he stepped off the pier, plummeting into his portal too.

Bucketloads of water, the boat, and the inhumans aboard floated perfectly still inside the void. Victor slammed his portal shut.

He dragged the boat and motionless inhumans--Victor doubted they were even aware of their time within the void--toward the warehouse, gritting his teeth with the weight. He'd never carried a whole fishing boat before, much less one holding multiple passengers.

The journey lasted mere seconds, from the dockside to the warehouse. He shoved the boat out through his portal and surfaced behind it, wincing at the splashing water and groaning shrieks of the boat tipping onto concrete.

Muffled yelps announced the inhumans tumbling off the deck. Victor closed his portal, specks dancing in his eyes, but he marched around the hull, forming a shield from the ship's shadow.

"How many made it?" he growled to the floor. "Is this all of you?"

The specks clouding his vision cleared, revealing six bodies groaning on the floor. A polka-dot costumed inhuman--with golden hair rippling of its own accord--sat up and glared. "There weren't any kree, Exile," she spat.

A blinding blur erupted from the overturned ship's cabin, and a heavy force knocked Victor to the ground. His shield clattered away and puffed to nothing. He grunted, wrestling against jaguar-spotted arms and glinting teeth. "What's your problem?" Victor grunted.

"We checked every single boat," she hissed, pinning his arms to the ground. "No kree. You lied to us."

Victor kept his face impassive. "That wasn't the test, idiots. You all failed."

The jaguar-spotted arms didn't release him, but her golden eyes narrowed in confusion.

"We followed your directions exactly," came a hissing voice. "There's no way--"

Victor spun a portal open beneath him and disappeared into the void, repelling the jaguar-spotted recruit so she didn't fall through after him. "So long, failures," he muttered to the darkness, rubbing his wrists. Then he flowed off, first to collect his few belongings, then to meet up with Dante and Squirrel Girl.

***

If you hit the vote button below, you won't fail the test of loyalty (bwa ha ha)