The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism novel Chapter 557

Chapter 557: 557 | The Commission Is Coming

I stared at that message for a long time.

Commission. The International Hero Commission. The governing body that regulated everything from licensing to equipment to the specific shade of blue a Hero could use in their costume if they wanted to avoid trademark disputes with existing brands.

They were sending someone. To talk to students who had survived an attack that never should have happened. To ask questions about what we saw and what we did and probably to figure out who was responsible for the security failures that let thirty-one masked combatants and one twelve-foot monster walk onto a campus that was supposed to be the most secure training facility in the western hemisphere.

who’s the Commission rep?

unknown. Ashby didn’t say. either he doesn’t know or he knows and doesn’t want us to know which means it’s someone important.

great. looking forward to it.

that was sarcasm.

yes percy. that was sarcasm.

just checking. your text voice is hard to read sometimes. you use the same tone for sincerity and mockery.

feature not a bug.

Percy sent a single emoji in response. A small figure with its head in its hands. I interpreted this as agreement.

I put the phone down and looked around the room again.

Monday. Two days from now. Forty-eight hours to figure out what I was going to tell a Commission representative about the things I’d done in that dome. The gold light. The speed. The staff that appeared from nowhere and vanished when I was done with it.

The System notifications had given me four thousand points and a new passive trait. They had not given me a convenient explanation for why a Rare-tier Channeler with a fifteen-foot range had been moving like a top-ten Hero while wrapped in electricity that didn’t exist on any registry.

I was going to need a story.

A good one.

The kind of story that answered questions without actually answering them. The kind that gave people something to believe in while keeping the truth safely buried under layers of plausible deniability.

Diane would help. She was probably already working on it, sitting in the passenger seat of whatever car Sloane was driving, typing messages to lawyers and PR specialists and whoever else she kept on retainer for situations exactly like this. Her Read the Room would be running the whole time, calibrating every word choice against what a Commission analyst would be looking for. She’d have three versions ready by the time they arrived.

But Diane couldn’t be in the room with me. When the Commission rep asked me directly, when they looked me in the eye and wanted to know how I did what I did, I was going to have to sell the lie myself. No interface prompts to guide me through it. No Oracle Feed to tell me what the other person wanted to hear. Just me and whatever explanation I’d practiced enough to deliver without flinching.

I was going to have to be convincing.

The thought should have scared me. It didn’t. It just felt like another problem that needed solving, another obstacle between where I was and where I wanted to be. Another performance in a story built on performances. I’d been doing this since the day I woke up in this body. One more wouldn’t kill me.

Where I wanted to be was simple. Graduate. Go pro. Build something real with Sloane. Keep the people who mattered safe. Make it through another day without the Unmarked file becoming completely unsustainable.

twenty minutes

i’ll be outside 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

don’t go anywhere

where would i go? there’s nobody here.

exactly. that’s what worries me.

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