She rolled the potion bottle back and forth across the desk. The liquid inside glimmered with golden possibility.

To drink or not to drink, that was the question. Give up her family to do something, be A PART of something that she had always wanted, or keep her family, her friends, and give up her lifelong dream. It was a more difficult choice than she had anticipated, but she already knew what she was going to choose.

1 minute. 5 minutes. 10 minutes passed. Max cleared his throat- “not trying to rush here, but, have you decided?”

“I still don’t know I can trust you. You could be trying to poison me,” she retorted.

“Do you believe in fate?”

“Yes.”

“Then you already know your choice.”

It's been said that the beginning of dreams are impossible to pin-point, but this was no dream. This beginning- the beginning of the end of her life on earth- started during the middle of her calculus class, during the second that her high school went into lock down. Monthly drills were common, but there had been one just two days ago. The sight of the teacher’s face made it clear- this was not a drill. This was a real, actual, lock down. The school was in trouble. The students of period 6 calculus scuttled under the desks at the far ends of the classroom with sheer terror plastered on their faces. Nobody moved. Nobody breathed. Nobody made a sound. There was absolute silence. A good 5 minutes passed by, after which everybody relaxed ever so slightly. Whatever danger the school had been threatened with HAD to be gone by now. But their wishful thinking came a little too soon as the thunder of an explosion blasted the door clear off its hinges. A man strode over the rubble of the door and entered the classroom. The screams and shouts were suddenly replaced with a collective intake of breath as everybody began to recognize the man. This man- the man the entire school was on a lock down from- had been featured on the news for being a wanted criminal on the account of murder.

The teacher and students alike dared not move from their corner of security as horror graced their hearts. Nobody moved. Nobody except for one stupid wanna-be hero. With a quick lunge and adrenaline pumping through her veins, Skye hurled a desk straight at the murderer’s head. It was a damn near perfect aim, but the crash of the desk against the wall echoed throughout the room. She didn’t understand how she could’ve missed. He was RIGHT there. But really, he wasn’t. He had teleported himself across the room- a safe distance away from her.

“You’ve got balls kid, but it’s not me you should be trying to kill.” He voice and posture oozed confidence.

“How-how did you do that?!” She demanded. Teleportation. That CAN’T be real. She stood shock still in disbelief.

“I’m not here to hurt anyone that doesn’t need to be hurt. I’m here to catch the bad guy.” He tried to reason.

“You-you- can teleport? You teleported. That’s what you did. You teleported. I saw it-you.” She took a couple of shaky breaths, still unable to regain her composure.

“Yes I can teleport. But I’m here on a certain matter. There’s somebody in this room. Somebody that has been hiding out on this earth for a long time.” He walked towards the crowd of students in the corner of the classroom. “Clever, clever boy. But it’s time for me to go back now.” The murderer/teleporter/crazy man seemed to playing a game of duck, duck, goose with his eyes, inspecting each person as they cowered under his glare.

“Hey!” She had finally regained her audacity to throw him a good punch in the face.

“I told you! I’m not here to hurt anyone except for the one that I came for!” He teleported away from her incoming fist to stand face to face 3 meters away.

“I. Don’t. Believe. You” she spat.

“You’re wasting my time! I need to find him before he hurts anybody else!” His voice started getting higher in exasperation.

He glared at her as she glared back, as if daring the other to make a move. Nobody spoke a word. Not until she caught a swift movement out of the corner of her eye and turned, only to be yelled at to “duck!” by the teleporter as he pinned her to the floor while a knife zoomed past her head, missing it by barely an inch. Looking up, she saw Nate, a guy she had known all 3 years of high school, with another knife in his hand aiming it at them. As the knife whizzed towards them, Skye let out a gasp, but only to find herself behind a table ten feet away from the spot on the floor where she had been.

“Stay here,” the teleporter instructed. “He’s a very dangerous one.” Picking up the knife, the teleporter and Nate engaged in a vicious battle to end the other.

Not being able to stand out of the way, Skye picked up a piece of wood from the broken door and ran to the teleporter’s aid. Side-by-side and in an array of flashes of color, movement, and sounds, the two were able to pin Nate to the floor and render him unconscious (Skye being the one who used her wood to knock him out by bashing his head.) The teleporter whipped out a sort of necklace device, placed it around Nate’s neck, and pressed the middle button which caused Nate to disappear in a flash of white.

“Where’d you send him?” Skye questioned.

“Prison. He’ll never be able to hurt anyone again.” He looked down at the spot Nate had been with rage

Skye turned to her class and began to limp over to where they were hiding out, but found herself suddenly being grabbed from behind. Everything was fading out as shouts of “NO!” from her class echoed around her.

She woke up in a startle. The teleporter was watching her, leaning against a wall several feet away. Where were they? Like in some sort of underground bunker?

“Where did you bring me? Why did you bring me here?” Skye inquired.

“I need you to think about something.” He couldn’t have possibly been any more vague.

“Yeah well how long have we been down here?”

“Just about an hour. That’s very good for first time teleporters. When I took Barry the first time he passed out for a day.”

“Where are we?”

“Denver.” He nodded slightly.

“Denver…?”

“Yup. At the international airport. Well… under.”

“WHAT?! That exists?! OH. MY. GOD.” Skye was well aware of the conspiracy theories that there was some sort of secret entrance to an underground military base through the airport. “Is this a military base?”

“It’s not a military base, but it’s the base for our operations.” The teleporter lent her a hand and pulled her up. “The name is Max. Max Hoult.”

“I’m Skye. Bennet. And I want to know how you can teleport.”

“Alright Skye, so here’s the whole deal. I’m a superhero.” Max started. “I was chosen for these powers. Single-handedly picked out by Eliza. Therefore, the mantel to pick the next person was passed to me. I believe in fate, Skye. I believe that we met today for a reason. It’s not every day somebody thinks I’m a murderer and tries to fight me. You showed some true audacity back there.”

Skye’s heart rate quickened. Superpowers? All her life she dreamed of being a hero. Of making a difference. Of saving the world. “You want me to have superpowers? How?”

Max disappeared and reappeared with a vial of glimmer golden liquid. “This is for you to take if you say yes, but there are some things that you need to know. Ready?”

Skye felt nauseous. She didn’t feel like the things she was about to hear would be good. “I guess.”

“If you chose this life, you will be a superhero. You will fight, with a team of other superheroes, against villains throughout the entire multiverse. There’s already a scientific theory on the mutiverse, that there are multiple universes that are all similar copies of each other, but it’s not just a theory, it’s real. That’s also where you will find your doppelganger.” Max explained.

“That’s friggin crazy.” Skye’s mouth dropped.

“Yeah it’s cool, but that’s also where the problem is. You see, there’s this sort of ‘island’ that’s at the center of the multiverse. It gives us easy access to any part of the multiverse when we need to get there. That’s where our team’s base is set up, and it’s also where we all live. This being said, joining the team means that you have to give up your life here. You won’t be able to see your family again for a while after you say your goodbyes. Everybody that’s chosen this life has given up everything. It was a hard call for many of us, but it was a choice that we all made. It doesn’t mean that you can’t visit home sometimes, but it won’t be often and it won’t be for long.”

Skye looked down in defeat. How was she supposed to tell her family that she wasn’t coming home again? “I’ll have to think about that then….”

“Take your time. If you take the vial, you’re going to change, obviously, because you’ll have powers, but some people have changed mentally too. Some people, not many, go rouge after the process. Before I found you, I thought I found somebody else to pass my mantel forward. He was given the vial and got his powers. But the thing was, he went power hungry and turned bad. The team- we had to hunt him down and kill him. He was just too powerful and wouldn’t stop killing so many people.” Skye looked at him with horror.

“I’m absolutely certain this won’t happen to you. I just wanted you to be aware of the past. In fact, I have a really good feeling about you. When I chose Tony, the other boy, something felt off, but I wanted to complete my responsibility of choosing a successor that I rushed into it. I shouldn’t have rushed. I should have listened to my gut. So I’m doing that now. I’m listening to my gut. I’m choosing you.” Max passed her the vial. “It’s your choice now. But I believe in fate. I believe that we met for a reason. I also believe that you stood up to me because you wanted to be a hero, so this is your call. Live a superhero and do what you’ve always wanted. Or return to your life and know that this was always a possibility that you passed up.”

Max sure was a perceptive little jerk- Skye thought.

Max put the vial in her hands, as if knowing her answer. “I still have to decide,” Skye reminded him.

“It’s okay, take your time.”

Skye sat down in the chair, deep in contemplation. She rolled the potion bottle back and forth across the desk. The liquid inside glimmered with golden possibility.

To drink or not to drink, that was the question. Give up her family to do something, be A PART of something that she had always wanted, or keep her family, her friends, and give up her lifelong dream. It was a more difficult choice than she had anticipated, but she already knew what she was going to choose.

1 minute. 5 minutes. 10 minutes passed. Max cleared his throat- “not trying to rush here, but, have you decided?”

“I still don’t know I can trust you. You could be trying to poison me,” she retorted.

“Do you believe in fate?”

“Yes.”

“Then you already know your choice.”

Skye took a deep breath, nodded, and downed the entire vial of golden liquid. This was the end, the end of her life as another unimportant ordinary human being on earth.

Beginnings of dreams are impossible to pin-point, but not the beginning of a new life, which started the second she crossed the barrier of the portal onto the multiverse island. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion- the walk through the portal, the blinding light, seeing the team of superheroes gathered on the other side to welcome home a new member of their family. Beginnings are sure scary, but who ever said that scary had to be a bad thing?