They ended the call and Mike hurried to finish wrapping up so he could get out the door.
∞ ∞ ∞
On the drive to ACG HQ, traffic was heavy with the usual rush of everyone leaving work at five o’clock. Mike made it to ACG headquarters just shy of five forty-five.
“I’m here,” he announced as he walked in. As he’d come to expect, Caleb sat behind his big U-shaped desk. Amina was also there, on the mats practicing her martial arts, which looked to be a mix of Escrima and kick boxing.
“Excellent. Here are your updated glasses.” Caleb took them from the open box sitting in front of him. “The frames are lined with magnets that should counteract the polarity of your blasts. If you’re still getting headaches while wearing them, let me know and I’ll make adjustments.”
Mike took them from him and put them on. He couldn’t test the glasses without activating his power, but he could tell they were slightly heavier than before. He pulled them back off. “Thanks, Caleb.”
“I’m here to help,” Caleb said as he picked up a small black squirt bottle from his desktop and tossed it to Mike. “And for your post battle recovery.”
Mike caught the bottle and looked it over. His name was printed on the white label. Other than the personalization, it looked like any over the counter bottle of dry eye lubricant. “The solution to my eyes burning is eye drops?” he asked doubtfully. He’d tried Visine before with little to no result.
Caleb looked offended. “Hey! This is a highly advanced, medically engineered ocular solution.” He dropped the offended expression to grin. “But yeah, essentially they’re eye drops. You’ve got a solar wind beaming out of your eyeballs, man. And it’s giving you the worst case of dry eyes ever. You need moisture to ease the burn and this should do it.”
“Okay. I’ll try it.” He slipped the small bottle into his pants pocket. “Thanks again.” This hadn’t taken long at all and soon he’d see Aiden. An excited smile tried to tug at the corner of his mouth—he barely managed to pull it back.
“You’re in a good mood,” Caleb said as he returned to his chair. “It’s nice to feel that. I’ve had stress and worry in my head all day.”
“I’m sorry you were stressed. Is there anything I can help you with?”
“Oh, no.” Caleb shook his head. “Not my stress.”
Mike frowned in confusion. “You have someone else’s stress in your head?”
Caleb turned halfway in his chair to look up at Mike with his eyebrows raised in surprise. “You don’t know? I’m an empath. I pick up other people’s emotions. And today seemed to be a stressful day for a lot of people. I got bombarded with it at the coffee shop this morning and just about everywhere else I went. It wore me out.”
All this time, Mike had thought that Caleb’s powers were his technological abilities. He suddenly remembered the time Caleb had fallen into a coughing fit when he’d thought of Aiden giving him the lap dance. “Can you read minds too?”
“No, I’m not that powerful. But sometimes I get a snapshot of a person’s thought if they’re focusing on it hard enough.”
“Don’t let him feed you any nonsense that he’s not powerful,” Amina called out from the mats. “The man not only senses emotions, he can influence other people’s feelings too, which makes him a pathokinetic as well as an empath.”
“That’s impressive.”
Caleb shrugged off the compliment. “It’s not really. I’m not that strong with that side of my powers. I mostly use it to calm people when I see they’re having a rough time. This morning I sent a wave of chill over the Starbuck’s crowd. Hopefully all those people ended up having a good day.”
“Well, I still say it’s impressive.” Caleb had two superpowers that were tied to emotionsanda genius level intelligence for technology. That had to be a rare combination.
They talked for a few minutes longer about Caleb’s powers and the few occasions he used his pathokinesis. Mike learned that the tech genius adamantly refused to call himself a superhero and had no interest in further developing either of his enhanced mental abilities. He found that interesting and wondered at Caleb’s reasoning for it. But he wasn’t going to pry, and he needed to head out before it got too late. Mike said goodbye to Caleb and Amina, then hustled out to his truck to get ready for a night in with Aiden.