Everyone was staring at them.
Virgil and Richie had walked into Dakota Union, only to be greeted by the wide eyes of their peers.
Ever since McGill and the other teachers had made that stupid announcement, everyone was behaving so strangely around them. It seemed like all of the students, even some of the teachers, were afraid to talk to them.
When Virgil had tried to say hi to his friend Omar, the guy had barely even acknowledged him. Omar had given him a nervous smile and had vanished, without a word.
And when Ms. Albert, his cranky calculus teacher, passed by boys in the hallway, he noticed the distance she kept from them. Even though it was clear she had purposely stayed on the other side of the hall, she had been keeping an eye on them. Her wary gaze had already made Virgil uncomfortable, but now it was ten times worse knowing why she was watching him.
It was official—the whole school was avoiding them.
Instead of everyone eagerly asking them questions, invading their privacy and being intrusive in general, as they had originally predicted, it was the exact opposite.
No one wanted to be associated with the two people on Hotstreak's most wanted list.
In addition to all the weirdness, there was something else bothering Virgil.
Since the start of school that morning, he had a funny feeling he was being watched. At first he thought of course he was feeling that way, the entire student body couldn't take their eyes off the two bang-baby victims.
But it was something else. It was an intuitive feeling, like how you get when you know someone's watching you, even though your back is turned.
It started in McGill's classroom first hour. Like any other day, Mr. McGill was giving a boring lecture, ranting on about forces in a dull, monotone fashion. However, despite the other things on his mind, Virgil was trying to concentrate and was dutifully taking notes.
Then suddenly, out the corner of his eye, he saw something move. He glanced out the window, and that was when he saw a shadowy figure dart from from one side of the window to the other. The silhouette of the figure didn't look human.
"Richie! Richie!" he hissed.
As usual, the genius was busy scribbling in his notebook, not paying attention to anything going on around him. His face was twisted in deep concentration, lost in his blueprints and diagrams. Virgil had to get his attention somehow.
Out of desperation, he quietly ripped a blank page out of his own notebook, crumpled up the paper into a ball, and, when he was certain McGill wasn't watching, he chucked the piece of paper at Richie, hitting the blond on the side of his head.
Richie abruptly looked up from his notebook, startled. He had been in the zone, and whenever he was pulled out of it by an external force, it always took him a second to become reacquainted with his surroundings.
He made eye contact with Virgil, who was frantically gesturing towards the window.
"Richie, did you see that?" he whispered excitedly.
After processing what his friend was saying, Richie slowly turned his head to the window.
"See what?"
"There was a shadow outside the window. Right there."
Richie adjusted his glasses and continued to look outside the window. He squinted, struggling to see the "shadow" Virgil was talking about.
"I don't see anything."
Virgil frowned, then glanced out the window again. Nothing was there, like Richie had said.
"I swear I saw something," he muttered, more to himself than to his friend. It must've gone when he had been trying to get Richie's attention.
Yet the genius wasn't convinced.
"It was probably just your imagination, V. You've been stressing out a lot, and you haven't been getting a decent night's rest. The result: your mind's playing tricks on you." He shrugged, letting the discussion evaporate.
Virgil might have agreed with Richie if it had been any other time. But he could not believe that what he had saw was merely a hallucination due to his lack of sleep. First of all, he never got enough sleep, and he'd never had these strange illusions before. Second of all, the crime rate had been abnormally low. No big battles, no late-night patrols, nothing. He couldn't possibly have exhausted himself that much.
Nonetheless, he decided to drop the subject. Trying to convince the king of logic that something was outside the window without him seeing it was like telling him Burger Fool didn't sell burgers when he could clearly smell them. The genius needed proof, which Virgil didn't have.
Regardless, Virgil trusted his instincts. While he didn't have the formulaic thinking Richie had, his intuition was usually right. He wasn't sure exactly who it was, but there was a good chance it was the pyromaniac himself, which made Virgil's stomach twist into knots. Because if it was, there was no way he would be able to defend himself as Virgil without revealing his identity. Richie's too, if he had to step in. Their powers were the only fighting ability they had (well, Richie's was technically gadgets, but that wasn't the point). Other than that, they had no other way to defend themselves from the merciless bang-baby.
By lunch, he had convinced himself it was indeed Hotstreak who was seeking his revenge a second time, for whatever reason he was out to get them he didn't know.
So he was really surprised when he and Richie were walking home from school.
On the rooftop of the high school sat a bird-like creature, her gaze resting upon two teenage boys, her targets. Virgil had just so happened to see her when Richie had relayed Backpack ' latest weather report and Virgil had looked up at the sky, claiming that there was no way it was supposed to rain when "the sun was out" and there was not "a single dang cloud in the sky" (yet the downpour they had 15 minutes later proved Backpack had been right).
Virgil had spotted Talon above the entrance of the school. As soon as he had spotted her, he quickly turned back around, pretending that he hadn't seen her, although his mind was racing.
It was a strange kind of relief but it also brought on a sense of panic as well. Why was Talon here? Thinking about it led him to the realization that she actually had been the shadow he had seen outside the window in McGill's classroom. She had been circling above the school like a hawk ready to seize its prey.
Ever so subtly, Virgil leaned in closer to Richie as they walked home. He still couldn't shake off the feeling they were being watched, which could've meant one thing.
"Rich, I think maybe we're being followed."