As it turned out, they didn't have a better plan and testing Magnus's powers was the most appealing form of entertainment on everyone's agenda. Or more specifically, Telekinesis, since it was simultaneously the most interesting and the one Magnus was most comfortable using, apparently.
"Okay, but flight," Ethan said, already pacing. "We haven't actually tested flight."
"We tested short-distance floating last week," Aaron said.
"Floating isn't flying. Floating is a hover. Flight implies directional control, sustained altitude, actual mobility." Ethan held up a finger. "Think Jean Grey. Direct levitation, controlled trajectory. Or Miss Martian — full aerial mobility, no visible mechanism. Or—" he pointed dramatically, "—Static. Dude rides a metal disc through the air using magnetism. Different power entirely, obviously, but the principle is the same: if you can move an object with your mind, and you can also apply that to yourself, there's no reason you couldn't ride something instead of just floating loose."
Magnus stared at him. "You've thought about this a lot."
"Of course I have. I've thought about this since the moment you told us what your powers were. It's not every day you find out someone you know is an actual superhero."
"I'm not a superhero!"
"You kinda are, bro."
"I'm really not!" He turned to Aaron and Miguel. "Tell him."
"I mean…" Aaron said slowly.
Miguel just shrugged.
Rachel, from where she was sitting with a glass of water, glanced around the property. "This is probably the best place to actually test it, honestly. We're on private property, no one's going to be walking by, and even if someone theoretically could see over the dunes—" she shrugged, "—the odds are about as close to zero as you're going to get without doing this in a locked room."
"Practically zero," Aaron agreed. "Not literally zero. But close enough that the risk-reward makes sense."
Magnus considered this. Then looked at Miguel, who was already setting up the inflatable trampoline out of what appeared to be pure reflex at this point.
"You don't have to," Magnus said.
"I know," Miguel said, continuing to set it up anyway.
Magnus exhaled and walked out toward the open stretch of sand past the house, the others trailing behind him with the particular energy of people who had, over the past several days, developed genuine enthusiasm for watching him attempt increasingly unwise things in the name of science.
Even before last week, when they had tried short-distance floating, Magnus had technically had experience with floating himself and another while doing… other things, though it absolutely wasn't a moment he would bring up in front of this specific audience. It had happened during his first night with Alex, in a moment of adrenaline, wonder, instinct, and him overachieving to try and impress her.
So he focused again now, using Telekinesis to lift himself up like he had last week. He rose six feet above the ground and held himself steady, hovering with the faint full-body tension of someone standing on a surface that wasn't quite solid, arms out slightly for a balance he didn't actually need but instinctively wanted.
"Try moving," Aaron called up. "Small increments. Don't go for speed yet."
Magnus tried. The forward motion came slow and jerky at first — less flying, more like being dragged unevenly through the air by something that hadn't quite decided on a consistent speed — but after a minute of concentrated effort, it smoothed out into something almost resembling controlled movement. He drifted maybe twenty feet laterally, arms starting to relax slightly as his body adjusted to trusting the power instead of fighting it.
"Bro," Ethan breathed, phone already out and recording. "Bro, you're doing it."
Magnus allowed himself a small, unwise moment of confidence.
Which was, predictably, exactly when he lost concentration and dropped down directly into the trampoline, bounced once, and rolled off the side into the sand.
"Still counts," Miguel called out, unbothered.
Magnus lay in the sand for a moment, staring at the sky, breathing hard.
"That was," he said, "genuinely terrifying."
"That was incredible," Ethan corrected, still filming. "Do it again!"
"Give him a minute," Aaron said, though he was already writing something down, visibly pleased with the data regardless of Magnus's opinion on the matter.
Magnus closed his eyes and, despite everything, found himself smiling faintly at the sand. It had worked. Badly, briefly, and with an ending that would bruise tomorrow — but it had worked.
***
Miles away, in a town neither Magnus nor anyone at the beach house had ever had reason to visit, Lucy Chane pushed open the door of a small diner that had not changed, as far as she could tell, in nearly thirty years.
The bell above the door gave that same familiar tired chime. The linoleum was the same pattern, worn thin in the same places — by the counter stools, by the door, by the booth nearest the window where the late afternoon light always came in strongest. Even the smell was the same: old coffee, griddle grease, something sweet baking in the back.
"Lucia!"
The voice came from behind the counter, warm and immediate, and Lucy felt something in her chest loosen, the way it always did when she heard it.
"Sal." She crossed to the counter and let him pull her into a brief, firm hug over it, the kind two people did when they'd stopped needing to perform affection for each other a long time ago. "You're the only person in the world who calls me Lucia, you know that? No one else, not even my parents, ever does that. Also, did you change the coffee machine?"
"I did not change the coffee machine." Sal looked genuinely offended. "That machine is the same machine your father installed in nineteen ninety-something. I would never disrespect this establishment like that."
"It looks newer."
"It's polished. There's a difference." He was already pouring her a cup without asking, sliding it across the counter the way he'd done a thousand times. "Sit. You want pie? I got pie."
"I always want pie, Sal."
"Good answer."
She settled onto her usual stool — the third one from the end, the one with the slight wobble that nobody had ever fixed because fixing it felt, somehow, like erasing something — and looked around the diner properly for the first time since walking in. Same booths. Same faded photographs on the wall, most of them older than she was. Same handwritten specials board, even though she suspected the specials themselves rotated more than the board's handwriting style did.
"You really haven't changed a thing," she said.
"Why would I?" Sal shrugged, setting a slice of pie in front of her. "Your mother built this place with your father's hands and her recipes. I may have bought the place from them, but just to keep the lights on." He paused. "Speaking of. You been to see them lately?"
Lucy winced slightly. "It's been a few weeks."
"Lucia."
"Okay! A few months."
"They miss you. Your mother asks about you every single time I go out there." He gave her a look. "You should visit more."
"Oh, you sound like you've been visiting them often," Lucy said, arching an eyebrow. "Getting sentimental in your old age, Sal?"
"Among the people who knew about my other life, only you would dare speak to me like that," Sal said, entirely fond. "But to answer your question — yes. I'm enjoying my retirement immensely."
Lucy laughed — a real one, easy, the kind that only came out around people who'd known her long enough to remember exactly who she used to be. "Good. You earned it."
"Damn right I did. Now I just go fishing with your father about once a month and drop by their farm every now and then."
"Uh huh."
"What? Your mother still cooks better than the chef I got working back there." He jabbed his thumb at the kitchen and shook his head mournfully. "God rest whatever training program failed that boy."
They sat in comfortable quiet for a moment while she ate the pie, which was, as always, exactly as good as she remembered.
"How's the kid?" Sal suddenly asked.
"He's in his third year of college, and apparently has finally gotten himself a girlfriend. Can you believe it? Feels like yesterday he was just a baby and I was learning to be a mother at nineteen."
"That kid." Sal's whole face softened. "I watched him grow up. He doesn't even know who I am. Never met me properly. But I feel like his uncle anyway." He shook his head. "Too damn brave for his own good sometimes though—fighting a goose at, what, nine years old?"
"Eight," Lucy corrected. "I nearly had a heart attack when you showed up at my house with him after that incident. You were still so scary back then."
"Please, you were never scared of me, Lucia. Not even back on the day we met. Wary, maybe. But never scared."
"I must have been a good actor then, because I was terrified of you back then."
Sal laughed. "You and your family have no reason to be afraid of me, Lucia. I owe your parents my life."
"Yeah, I know that now."
"I suppose you do." He pointed a finger at her. "You should bring the kid around sometime. I'll make him the good pasta. Not the diner pasta, the real stuff."
"I'll think about it."
Then Sal's expression shifted — subtle, but she caught it immediately, the same way she'd learned to catch it on people decades ago. The easy warmth stayed, but something more careful settled underneath it.
"Speaking of the kid, Lucia," he said. "I gotta talk to you about something."
She set her fork down. "Okay."
"One of your old friends is digging around again." He said it plainly, without drama, the way he said most serious things. "I don't got all the details yet. But it looks like Hale's people met your boy. And now he's running a background check on him."
Lucy went very still.
"I can stall it," Sal continued. "I still got enough people who owe me favors, enough weight I can throw around quiet-like. But if he keeps digging, and if you don't want him getting hurt in the process, it's gonna get complicated. I'm not in that life anymore, Lucia. Not the way I used to be. I still got ears everywhere, don't get me wrong. But muscle, real muscle? That's harder for me to promise you these days."
Lucy sat with that for a long moment. Her eyes drifted toward the window, toward the street outside that hadn't changed either, and something in her expression went distant and soft, the particular look of someone traveling a long way backward in her own memory.
"Jamie," she said finally, quietly. "God. It's been so long. I haven't seen him in over twenty years."
She was quiet for another moment.
"I'll see what I can do," she said. "But I need to talk to my son first. Get a clearer picture of what's actually happening before I decide anything." A pause. "Maybe it's time I stop hiding, Sal. It's been long enough, hasn't it?"
Sal considered her for a moment, then shrugged — the particular shrug of a man who had made peace, a long time ago, with not being able to make this decision for her.
"Considering who the kid's father is," he said, "neither you nor him is ever really safe. Not completely. That's just the truth of it." He topped off her coffee without being asked. "But nobody's actively looking for you two anymore, near as I can tell. And even retired like I am, I'll hear about trouble before it can reach either of you. That much I can still promise." He looked at her steadily. "So it's your call, Lucia. Always has been."
Lucy looked down at her coffee for a moment. Then back up at him.
"You know the full story behind his father," she said. "Don't you?"
Sal didn't answer, but his silence was answer enough.
"But you won't tell me." She studied him. "The man who told me about you, all those years ago—was he working for him? For Magnus's father?"
Sal was quiet for a long moment, the kind of quiet that meant he was deciding exactly how much truth the question deserved.
"Unless you're planning on introducing the kid to his father," he said finally, "the less you know, the safer you both stay." He held her gaze, steady, not unkind. "Don't ask questions you don't actually want the answers to, Lucia. Some things you're better off not knowing. That's not me protecting a secret." His voice softened slightly. "That's me protecting you."
Lucy looked at him for a long moment. Then, slowly, she nodded — not quite agreement, but acknowledgment, the particular kind that came from learning a long time ago which battles were worth fighting.
"Give me some time," she said. "I'll figure it out."
"Take all the time you need." Sal reached over and patted her hand once, briefly, the gesture of someone who'd said everything he needed to say and trusted her to handle the rest. "The pie's on the house today, by the way."
"It's always on the house, Sal."
"Today especially."