My head was spinning again.
Now that Glory had outed herself, the world knew we existed. I had figured I got these abilities from the meteorite, and that seemed certain now – which meant that probably many others got powers too, how many, I had no idea.
That was not the most time-sensitive matter, though. The assassin-for-hire Kevin had spoken of a follow-up contract after they had finished with me, a target in Florida. I had a chilling idea who that target might be.
I had to find Glory and warn her.
I jumped on the Internet and started searching for Glory Garcia – and of course I found tons of search results, but nothing that lead me to where she lived, apart from the likelihood it was in somewhere in the town of Hialeah or nearby.
And according to my search, Hialeah had a population of a quarter of a million people, and was part of the greater Miami metro area of over six million souls.
This was not going to be easy. On top of that, most of the residents spoke Spanish before English, and I did not.
I suddenly had what I thought at the time was a bright idea: instead of trying to track Glory, perhaps I could track her friends and find her that way.
I found the video of Glory’s interview online, including the part where she found the meteorite with her friends and got her abilities. I downloaded it and watched it over and over. Then I went back online to look for more clues.
After a few hours of some very thorough searching – I did tech for a living, you’ll recall – I stumbled onto a whole section on the dark web devoted to people speculating and investigating these new occurrences. Even though they had no more clue than I did, I was able to find an unedited copy of the original phone video of Glory getting powers. I downloaded it, analyzed it, and hit pay dirt.
Encrypted in the video stream, the camera had stored the GPS of where the video was taken. Not down to the precise spot, but at least I now had only a one-block radius to search – and I was sure I would know the street when I found it.
Before I went out in public though I figured I had better conceal my identity, in case anyone saw me. I grabbed a dark hooded jacket from my closet, but I also needed some way to hide my face. I wasn’t willing to wear a ski mask, so I jumped online to search for options, and I found the perfect solution: a steel mesh lower face mask from a paintball supply store. It would cover my nose, mouth, and cheeks, and with the hood down should make it impossible to identify me. It would also make me reminiscent of Dr. Hannibal Lecter, but that couldn’t be helped.
I astralled to the store in Ohio and purchased it along with some black matte spray paint, which I used on the mesh. It dried quickly. Assembling my outfit I looked pretty nondescript, especially in dim lighting with my hood pulled up and forward.
Now the hard part, I looked for a livestream feed somewhere near my destination, and found one not far away. I studied it for a bit, then astralled there.
It was warm compared to New Hampshire, and a touch humid. I tried to pull out my phone and found that in astral form my pockets didn’t work – so a found a nook where I wouldn’t be seen and took back my body. Then checked my phone, and started walking in the right direction. When I got to the rough area, I found another out of the way nook and abandoned my body again – scanning the neighborhood would be much easier if I could invisibly fly and pass through solid objects.
So I did. I started crisscrossing the area, flying right through all the buildings in the process.
That’s when I stumbled onto the girl I had seen before. Not Glory, but one of her friends from the video.
She was tied to a chair, terrified, surrounded by a dozen of what could only be the local Miami mafia.