5. It's Not A Black Site, It's Just Georgia (Patreon)

A/N: Hey everyone! Sorry for the delay, but I'm back! Thank you all for your patience! 

I'm dead. I'm going to be forced into the military for life and I'm dead. No, no, no, damn it. I just got out of a warzone, I don't want to be forced back into one! My terror screams through my body, rapid shifts to my physiological structure occurring all over me without any apparent input from my conscious mind. Not that I have much of a conscious mind, because what am I supposed to think about other than the fact that I'm doomed as hell?

Okay, okay, shove it all in the box, Julietta. Think. This isn't the end of the world, maybe. (We just walked away from that pretty recently, after all.) My skin might be having a rave party because it just figured out that melanin variations exist, and I might not know how to stop that, but this isn't the end, right? Calm down. Plan. You just got through a way worse situation than this! This can't be where it all goes up in flames!

Think, think, think, think, Julietta! What can you do? I mean, all my fucking power lets me do is turn into people. I could kill her, become her, and take over her life, I'd just have to… er. Wait. What the fuck? That's an insane train of thought. Besides, it wouldn't work anyway; I don't know enough about her life to convincingly be her, and taking over her life would result in me being part of the military, which is the current thing I'm trying to avoid in the first place. Stupid idea.

And that's the problem, isn't it? Shit. I'm good at damage control, but Emily's the one who plans. I glance at her, see her face gaping at me in abject surprise, and wait for a cue. I need her to take point here. Even now, I always need other people, and despite it all I still trust that damn liar.

"Oh my god, Lia, what's happening!?" Emily gapes, her tone a very convincing facade of panic. Okay, so my name is still Lia, and we haven't seen this happen before. I can work with that.

"I don't know!" I freak out in return, letting my body's natural desire to hyperventilate in a blind panic help sell the words. "I don't know, holy shit, holy shit!"

"Ladies, I need you to calm down," the officer insists. Pfft, amateur. Like saying that has ever actually calmed anyone down.

"What did you do to her!?" Emily demands.

"I didn't do anything!" the officer snaps, hitting a couple buttons on her cell phone. Not enough for a full number, though. Emergency line? "Sit down, take deep breaths, and do not move. You are going to be fine."

Her tone isn't exactly what I'd use to talk to two people having a panic attack, but I suppose 'cow them into compliance' is an option. I find myself genuinely flinching at the words, since my terror is only maybe twenty percent exaggerated. I'm so boned, aren't I? Just, utterly screwed. An officer saw my power, used right in front of her. I can't possibly get out of this with any result other than working for the military or being a supervillain, and I'm not good enough to survive as a supervillain.

…So why the continued deception about my name, then? I suppose I don't want to admit that I attempted to lie about my powers; that seems like an easy way to start my new career already on the shit list. But is that honestly worth it for me? Pretending to be Lia in order to stay out of military service was a good trade. Pretending to be Lia so I don't get slapped on the wrist for lying, however? Less good.

I glance towards Emily again. She continues pretending to panic, but I can tell from her intense stare she's trying to figure something out, too. After a short moment, she gives me a slow, subtle shake of her head. Don't do it. Stay the course. Keep lying.

Ugh. Fine. But why? Why would Emily want to… oh. Right. She still needs a Lia alive in order to get out of service. Of course. No matter what happens to me, no matter how fucked I become, her plan is the same, and she needs me for it.

The realization boils in my guts, bile churning in my stomach the way my skin churns on the surface. I gain nothing from this, now. The deception is all for her sake. Yet she knows, and I sure as fuck know, that I'll keep going along with it. That I'll be Lia for her. That I could never blame her for wanting the very thing I worked so hard to try and secure: safety. Especially since Emily—who let's face it, definitely has powers—would be way more screwed than I ever was if she gets found out. She's probably counted as a rogue for a while now, just one they don't know about.

I almost laugh. Emily, the supervillain. Incredible. Well, nothing for it. I shoot her a brief scowl to let her know I'm pissed and then take the officer's advice, taking deep breaths to get my panicked tears under control. In and out, in and out. Push it all away. When I'm confident that all the remaining terror in my features is under my conscious control, I speak again.

"I… I have a combat exemption," I blubber.

The officer, who has finished her brief phone call and started rapidly tapping away at her computer instead, looks up at me, then back at the computer to check my claim. She sighs when she finds I'm not lying, (which is funny, since I technically am) and gives me a sympathetic nod.

"Not anymore, hon," she says. "Supers are a national asset. You know that."

"B-but I can't go back there," I insist. "I can't… I wasn't… it's not…! Those monsters, they…!"

I cry for a bit. It's interesting having two eyes with working tear ducts, but I do my best to ignore it. It's also way easier to fake cry all of a sudden. Something with my powers, or maybe something with Lia's body? I wouldn't be surprised if she knew how to fake cry.

"Depending on what you can do, you might never see combat," the officer assures me. Ha! What a joke. I can regenerate. I'm going to the front lines. "But either way, you are definitely not seeing combat until you are good and ready for it. It'll be years before you see another monster, kid, and when you do you'll be prepped to get your revenge. You can count on that."

Huh. That's actually almost reassuring. Which is fine, I need to continue to be 'calmed down' to segue into my next topic. I sniffle and sob for a bit more, pulling myself together again to finally ask a question.

"I-I bought my exemption," I say. "If it doesn't apply to me anymore, can I give it to someone else?"

Emily gasps, looking at me in probably-fake surprise. Yeah, yeah, you're welcome. You got me out of the fucking incursion scar, I can go to bat for letting you live the good life. It'll just require me to pretend to be someone I hate, forever. No biggie.

A life for a life. That's fair, right?

"...We can probably swing that," the officer says, after poking away at her computer a bit more. "But your parents are the ones that donated enough for three exemptions, Ms. Morgan. They'd need to be involved in any transfer process."

Fuck! Okay, well, maybe that's fine? I look over at Emily, who grimaces. Not fine, then. Joy.

"A-am I even going to get to see them again?" I stammer. "Are you going to take me away, o-or…"

"It's not a black site, it's just Georgia," the officer tells me with a snort. "You'll have a temporary post in Atlanta, and we can make sure your family and friends are first in line for shelters or property near wherever you end up, if they want to be. We'll have to relocate them anyway."

"Oh, okay," I say quietly. "That's good."

Maybe good? Maybe not good? I have never actually met Lia's parents and I feel like it might be a little difficult attempting to be her without having any idea what their relationship is. But it feels like the right thing to say to keep the act up, so I say it. Layers and layers and layers of lies, this will be so fun to deal with later.

"In the immediate sense, however, you will be put under watch," the officer continues. "We'll bring your parents to meet you sometime tomorrow, but not vice-versa. A new transport is coming to pick you up, should be here shortly."

They're moving that fast in the middle of all this? Gosh, I knew this superpower stuff was serious but this is still kind of terrifying.

"P-please don't separate us!" Emily begs. "I don't have anyone else. Peter and I never really…"

She trails off, letting the officer come to her own conclusions about whatever rocky relationship she had with her brother-with-a-different-last-name. Good move. It's weird; I feel like I'm almost talking to a completely different person from the Emily I'm used to, but it's not entirely in a bad way? Like yeah, there's a lot to be concerned about, but my standards are really low so just having someone willing to not leave me to fucking die counts for a lot.

She tried. That's more than I can say for most people. I'll get my answers later.

"Yes, please, can she come with me?" I back her up. The officer just waves us off, though.

"Not my call," she grunts, giving me the side-eye. "Please just do what you can to focus on controlling yourself, miss."

Huh? Oh. I look down at myself and sure enough, my body is still excitedly shifting around. Well, I'm past the panic stage and officially into the acceptance stage (as a general rule, I tend to get over my life being ruined pretty fast) so it's no longer too much to lasso my flesh into submission. I take a deep breath and return myself to just Lia's body, unmodified. The sensation of my form bending and shrinking back into place is… certainly weird, but it honestly isn't any worse than the general background aggravation from my body always touching things constantly all the time.

A knock on the door blissfully jolts my focus away from my senses, and I turn just in time to see another soldier walk into the room. He's got a very different set of gear than David did, with an odd mix of light armor and professional dress that's unlike any other military uniform I've seen before. With the tactical vest and helmet, it feels like he should have the entire ensemble on, but his pants are more like slacks, his shoes definitely aren't combat boots, and he's not wearing any gloves at all.

He walks into the room without saluting the officer behind the desk, instead simply inclining his head and asking an immediate question.

"Which one?"

His words are clipped and almost emotionlessly professional. It's the sort of voice you expect from a character right before they push their square-rimmed glasses up the bridge of their nose. …But of course, if this guy needs corrective lenses, he's using contacts.

"That one," the officer answers, pointing at me. "Lia Morgan, seventeen years old."

"Cooperative?" the man asks.

"Has been so far," the officer shrugs. "A little overwhelmed, though."

"Naturally," he says, though he doesn't sound like he's particularly sympathetic. He turns to me and holds out an arm. "Your hand, please."

I flinch back a little.

"Um… the last time I touched someone's hand my whole body started freaking out." And I gotta say, I really don't want my brain flooded with all the biological data about this dude's penis.

"Your hand," he simply repeats, and it's clearly an order, not an offer. So I take it, and I immediately feel a pressure that reminds me of the Queen's. I freak out, grabbing Emily's hand and blocking out the sensation as best I can. I won't let her survive those monsters just to fall to pieces now.

It's not exactly like the Queen's, though. This pressure has no sensation of separation, but rather a feeling of impossibility, an assault by a puzzle unsolvable, telling me, insisting to me, that one equals two. It scratches at my mind with its furious proclamation, and every instinct I have screams that it is wrong.

The man raises an eyebrow at me.

"Impressive, but I need you to stop doing that," he says.

"I just… I don't…" I babble, my heart racing a mile a minute. Damn it, I literally just managed to calm down! "It feels like the incursion!"

He snorts.

"You flatter me," he says flatly. "Now please, focus and calm yourself. Let me in."

"I… what are you going to do to me?" I ask. "To us? I'm sorry, I just…"

He blinks, then inclines his head.

"Apologies, I was under the impression you would have been informed," he says, glancing in irritation to the officer behind the desk. "I am Master Specialist Jeremiah Sainsbury, also known as Cross Country. I'm taking you to where you need to be, Recruit Morgan. Nothing more. Now please stop resisting, my time is very valuable."

"Can Emily come with me, please?" I whimper.

He sighs, glances over to her, and holds out his other hand. She reaches out to take it, and in that moment, I suddenly feel her. My power races through her immediately, soaking up every detail of her body, basking in yet another beautiful iteration of humanity, a new and exciting collection of soft skin, silky hair, well-used muscle, and carefully stored fat. There's something about Emily's body that I really like, a beauty to it that sparks mere jealousy instead of the hateful envy I feel for Lia. Every detail captivates me, like it all tells a story about who Emily was. Like how her body is primed for endurance in a similar way to Lia's, muscles having grown in similar ways as they took morning runs together. But it's far from identical; Emily's natural fat distribution focuses more on her hips and legs than Lia's does, leaving her with slightly more leg muscle as her body compensates for the increased weight of moving them. Emily is shorter and heavier in general; not chubby, but very much not toned in the way that Lia is, her strength present but hidden behind a persistent layer of softness in much the same way I've learned her true competence hides behind a more innocent shell.

This distraction is apparently enough for Cross Country to bypass whatever instinctive protections I've been using to block out his power, because the next thing I know I feel a foreign sensation push through my body and my vision doubles. My mind screams as it looks at both the inside of the women's center and the inside of a sturdy, windowless room that's halfway between a jail cell and a studio apartment, but a split-second later the women's center disappears and Emily, Cross Country, and I are all inside the new room.

"Do not attempt to leave, and…" Cross Country trails off, glancing in surprise between Emily and I. "...Try to avoid using your power, Recruit Morgan. If possible. I realize the situation may be jarring for you. Someone will come to collect you shortly and relocate your friend to proper housing. Until then, bathroom is there, television is there, and a few energy bars are over there if you're hungry. If anything urgent comes up, or if either of you feel like you’re in danger for any reason, pull the emergency handle on the wall over there. Any final questions?"

I'm still shivering from all the crazy superpower bullshit that just happened in quick succession, so I can't figure out anything to say. Why does my head feel so heavy? I'd just gotten used to walking around as Lia, but everything is suddenly balanced differently and my awful bra fits even worse than before and my pants are too tight and why does everything have so much sensation all of the time? Cross Country apparently takes my silence as a no, and vanishes after a curt nod, leaving Emily and I alone.

"Huh," Emily hums, her tearful act evaporating the second we're alone. "Weird. You'd think the Army wouldn't want to leave a fresh superhuman alone in a room with a normal person, right? But he didn't seem to care about what might happen to me. Door's locked, too. Do they want something to… no, wait, they've probably just found that forcibly separating supers from their loved ones and sticking them in a locked room alone tends to be more likely to end badly. But why not just not leave us with someone to watch us?"

"An incursion literally just happened," I point out, wrinkling my nose as the voice sounds even stranger than usual. "I'm sure they want to have a superhuman on hand to deal with me, but incursion scars give powers, right? I'm probably not the only new super they picked up in Chicago. I bet they're swamped."

"Oh, that's true," Emily agrees. "Yeah, I think you're right. Interesting."

"As for why they brought you with me, it could be that Cross Country just knows you're a super."

Emily flinches, then quickly flashes me a fake smile.

"But I'm not a super," she insists, "so that can't be right."

I sigh, holding my hands out in front of myself. Yep, white. I grab some of my hair and bring it in front of my face. Blonde and long as hell. And to top it all off, when I look at Emily, it's easy to see that my eyes are exactly at the same height as hers. Ugh.

"...I look exactly like you, don't I?" I say flatly. "Gee, now that I think about it, my power sure does tend to act up any time I touch anybody. Unless that person also has powers, anyway. I wonder why it never activated for the entire four-hour period where we were constantly holding hands?"

"I dunno, it worked fine just now," Emily counters immediately. "Maybe you're just not trying hard enough?"

Or maybe you just had to turn off whatever makes powers interfere with each other so Cross Country wouldn't notice it. But there's no point in saying that, is there? She's going to keep denying it no matter how logical I make my argument. I need a different tactic.

"Emily," I say flatly, "You owe me and you know it. Why are you still fucking with me?"

"Because you're my girlfriend, Lia," she says, clasping her hands behind her back and starting to pace around me. "Why wouldn't I be fucking you?"

"Emily," I hiss, a warm pressure building in my cheeks. Gah, is this what a blush feels like!? "Don't. Please."

She grins wider.

"Why? Don't want to play up that part of our relationship? I've never seen you as a sister, and I know you've never considered any of us a real family."

What? What what what? No, fuck this, I need the subject to go back to what it was before right now. This is surely a ploy!

"Why are you doing this?" I press.

"Because," she hisses, stepping forward to grab my chin, "seeing you transform into me was the hottest f-fucking thing I've ever experienced in my life, and if you don't get a hold of yourself and change back, I'll end up doing something we'll both regret."

She stares into my eyes and I freeze, every neuron in my mind screaming at the warm sensation of her fingers on my face. No one has ever… no. No, shut the hell up, brain! Focus! What the actual fuck is she… oh. Oh! Shit, if not for the stutter on the swear I'd have been too freaked out to notice, but this is fake too. She's blushing a little herself, embarrassed by the conversation as much as I am. It's an act. She doesn't want to say any of this. But why?

"...You're trying to fluster me into forgetting the conversation about your powers," I conclude. "Is that it? You picked a creepy fucking way to do it, Emily."

"Well it's not my fault all the best responses for you are so weird!" she suddenly shrieks at me, her hand dropping away.

I flinch away from her, but I'm also kind of relieved. That's it. That's the break in the mask I've been fishing for.

"Your power feeds you things to say?" I ask.

She freezes for just a second, but it's enough. I know I've got her.

"...I don't have a power." she insists. "But… but hypothetically, if I were to… imagine a power, I think that would be more of a side effect. It wouldn't really work like that, but powers can be flexible when you get a handle on them."

"Okay, well hypothetically, if you had a power, what might cause you to insist on lying about it even when it's really obvious?" I ask, playing along.

"Well, let's say someone has a power that allows them to detect lies," Emily sighs. "I'm screwed if that person talks to me, but if they talk to you, and you truthfully tell them that you've never seen me use any sort of power or claim to have a power, they probably wouldn't bother investigating much further. You're the person I'm closest to, after all."

"I guess that makes sense, but it also seems like an extremely specific and contrived scenario."

"Yeah it's super unlikely to ever happen," she admits. "Below five percent."

There's a pause.

"...Um, hypothetically."

Her blush grows redder as she realizes what she just let slip. Her desperate desire for me to ignore that is almost tangible. Which, well, too bad! Any slip-up you try to hide is just begging me to put up a neon sign and dance the Macarena on it!

"So you hypothetically have… what, some kind of probability power?" I press.

"No! I mean, sort of, but not exactly!" she insists. "Hypothetically, anyway! I don't have a power! Now can you please stop looking like me?"

"Oh?" I ask, feeling a sudden urge to get her back for taunting me. "Was that not just a bit?"

She opens her mouth, then closes it, then crosses her arms and looks away, a fake haughtiness suddenly taking over her features.

"...Of course it was nothing but a bit," she lies. "The whole point was just to distract you."

I stare at her. She refuses to meet my gaze.

"What are the odds that was actually going to fool me?" I ask smugly.

"I don't have a power," she repeats. "And if I did it wouldn't work like that."

Well then how does it work, you smug bitch? Gah. I guess it's her right not to tell me, though. It's not my business just because I'm curious, right?

The power stuff, anyway. Embarrassing her is fair game.

"I just… y'know, as your girlfriend, I feel like we need to talk about the fact that you think I'm more attractive when I look like you than when I look like me," I say, putting as much emotion and hurt as I can into the words. "I work hard to look good for you, you know!"

"You literally don't—" Emily starts to snap, but then she clamps her mouth shut and takes a deep breath in and out her nose. When she continues, her voice is much more even. "You need to go back to being Lia so you can work on talking like Lia. People who know her are definitely going to notice something is strange if you don't practice."

Gah. That's a good point, regardless of whether she was guided by her power to say it or… whatever the heck her power does. Meeting Lia's family and potentially friends means that I'll have to get in her mindset and learn to stay there. I can probably get a little leeway while I'm practicing since I just survived a traumatic experience, but it won't be long before I need to be able to stuff Julietta in the corner on command. Shouldn't be too hard; everyone's patience for me tends to get worn out by just my physical needs, so I'm pretty good at ignoring my emotional ones. It'll be fine. I'm used to it.

I focus as best I can on Lia's form, feeling the full-body tingle as everything subtly moves and twists into slightly different positions. It's disturbing, it's distracting, it's creepy in a lot of ways I don't want to articulate, but it's also kind of… natural? As easy as putting on a new pair of socks, honestly.

And to be clear, I don't think that's a good thing! It is, frankly, absolutely terrifying how easy transforming into a different person is for me, all of a sudden. Because it's not a skill I learned, right? Sure, I mean, I've got a lot of that going lately. The entire concept of running still absolutely terrifies me (I mean, completely leaving the ground every step? How is that not just jumping repeatedly?) but I manage it because of some kind of terrifying infection of muscle memory into my brain. Spooky, but it makes a certain kind of sense.

Transforming my body entirely, though? No. That does not make sense. It doesn't make sense at all, and yet I can do it anyway. Whenever the analysis of what or how becomes too much for me, whenever it distracts from what I'm actually attempting to do with the power, I just… don't think about it, and the power happens on its own. I feel like a child learning to ride a bike for the first time, but with an adult running behind them, ready to grab the seat and act as training wheels the whole way if need be.

It feels like it's easy because something is teaching me. And I'm scared of what that implies.

A painful pressure in my lower abdomen reminds me that these sorts of thoughts could be just as easily had on the quiet comfort of a hopefully-clean toilet, so I put my existential crisis on pause for a moment as I head to the bathroom. I can now distract myself with exciting, new crises, such as "what is using the bathroom going to feel like now that I have working nerves" and "where does my poop go if I transform into something with a completely different digestive system?"

It can't stay in the body; Behemoths and Wasps don't even have an anus, as their bodies are hyper-specialized to intake very specific nutrient mixes. Accidental ingestion of indigestible material is usually small enough to remove from the body via sweat, which is something that the aliens do almost constantly because they are smelly and gross. Having an entire block of human fecal matter somewhere inside me while I'm a Behemoth would be extremely poisonous so obviously I can't put any in there. So I… don't? Somehow?

Ugh, this hurts my head, and I'm in the bathroom now so I should probably focus on that. In my real body, I can't just casually drop my drawers; it's a bit of an ordeal as I shimmy everything down to my ankles with one hand as I lean on my cane with the other. If the toilet isn't particularly nasty I prefer to sit down on it and then take my pants off, since that's a lot less precarious, but either way it's always more trouble than I'd like.

I'm pretty sure most people don't go through any of that ordeal. They just kinda… sit and take their shorts off in a single motion. But I do not know how to do that.

I scowl at the toilet as it silently mocks me. This is such a stupid problem to have. Like, what's wrong with just doing things my normal way? It doesn't even matter for keeping my cover unless someone watches me pee, and if that happens we have more pressing issues. I don't even like this body. I may have hated my old body, but it was mine, and I had my way of doing things. It worked. For all my problems, for every damn thing I needed to rely on others for, I at least never had to ask anyone for help taking a goddamn shit. I was fine.

I never needed this. Lia wasn't better than me.

Yet here I am, feeling inadequate because I want to sit on the toilet a different way. Because I should be able to do that now, I probably can do that now, but would it even be me doing it? Or would it just be Lia's damn ghost in whatever fucked-up parts of my brain that are still hers going through her motions, using her habits, and replacing yet another thing that's mine? I walk like her now. I need to talk like her, soon. And now I even need to take a shit like her?

This is stupid. This is such a fucking stupid thing to get worked up about. Just having these thoughts proves I'm wrong, proves I'm insecure, proves I'm a fucking failure, because why would anyone ever have a crisis from something as moronic as taking their own pants off? Fuck this. Fuck everything. I twist around, take my shorts off, and sit on the toilet like a normal goddamn person, and it's way too goddamn easy. But fine. I'll get used to it.

Going to the bathroom feels weird as hell, but not in the way I thought it would. It's honestly kind of nice, since it ends the uncomfortable feeling of needing to go to the bathroom. It's not exciting or great or anything, but it's a sort of vaguely pleasant relief. Is it weird that I think that way? No one ever talks about using the restroom ever feeling good, because nobody talks about it at all. Other people probably don't like it and this is just another way I'm a fucked-up mess. I'll just keep the thoughts to myself.

When I finish washing my hands (another thing made far too easy by being able to balance easily on two feet) I emerge back into the main room, where Emily is flipping through news channels about the incursion. I very much want to tell her to turn them the hell off, but I don't and move to sit down next to her instead, just trying to keep my eyes away from the screen and my ears focused on anything but the reporters' words.

"Say something," Emily orders. She wants me to practice being Lia, which… yeah, still fair. God, how best to put on my Lia hat…

"Well, I do love to talk about myself," I drawl, injecting Lia's condescending mix of prim-and-proper and irreverence into every word. "Oh, I know, we can talk about my hair! That way I can brag about the feature you've obviously put more time and effort into maintaining without ever acknowledging you!"

Emily snorts.

"Okay, that's actually really good," she admits. "Try it without all your words dripping with sarcasm, though."

"I don't think I can talk without sarcasm," I say, still in my best Lia voice. "But I'll try for you, and act like that makes it okay when I fail."

"Oh my god, she really was that bad," Emily laughs. "I'm so sorry about the whole 'oooh look at the victim' routine. It was a shitty act to pull around you."

"But you did it anyway," I point out. "And as we've just established, apologies mean nothing without action."

"Disagree," Emily shrugs. "They don't mean a lot, but they communicate feelings. 'I feel like shit about this but I'm going to keep doing it because I have my reasons' is a valid thing to say to someone."

"I guess that's true, but it still doesn't… oh. You're doing it again."

"Doing what?" she asks, the question sounding more genuine than expected. Is she getting better?

"You're saying things that distract and misdirect the conversation away from the topics you don't want to talk about," I say. "Switching the focus from 'you acted like shit' to 'do apologies mean anything without action,' wherein you can misdirect the conversation again if I engage with it, and so on until we're talking about something completely different."

"Huh," Emily says. "I guess that makes sense, yeah. I can see it."

Oh holy shit.

"Do you not even know you're doing that?" I gape at her. "Emily, are you just… is anything you say really you?"

She stares at me for a bit, her body tense, before everything settles back into a casual smile.

"Well, you seem to know a lot more about manipulating people than I do," she says. "Is anything you say really you?"

Oh, fuck her. It's different. It's fucking different. I live my whole life with nothing but above-average social ability to hold me up. If I didn't make sure people liked me, I'd be on the street and fucking dead. So yeah, I have the actual skill that your power is just fucking feeding you for free, except you don't even know how and why to use them, you insufferable, inconsiderate, ungrateful bitch!

…But of course I don't say any of that.

"Of course it is," I say instead. "Other than the fact that I have to talk like I have ten silver spoons up my ass."

"...Fair enough," she mutters. "Shit, I messed that up, I'm sorry. Look, I just… I'll find as many ways to help you as I can, alright? I know you can throw me under the bus any time you want, so I'll… I'll be in your corner whenever you need me. Just… drop this, for now. I can't talk about it."

She 'messed that up,' huh? She didn't say what she needed to say, right? Made me angry instead of compliant? Is that why she's sorry?

"Emily," I press, "You are the only damn person on the planet I have left to care about. But I'm not going to let you use me. You are going to explain what's going on. Understand?"

She lets out a hollow laugh.

"There you go," she says. "That's a really good Lia impression."

It feels like my heart drops clean out of my chest. The sheer horror and hurt those words bring me steal almost any desire I have to continue speaking. But I catch myself again, and let the anger bring it back. Fuck her, fuck her, fuck her for comparing me to that wretch.

"No," I hiss. "You'll lose everything if you keep treating me like a fool, Emily."

I can't just explode at her. I want to, oh I want to, but that gets her what she's aiming for too. So instead, I'll keep playing this game with her until she understands that I'm fucking better at it.

Fine!" Emily snaps. "Fine. I'll tell you. But not here, and not now. You're far from the only super in this building, and I don't know anything about any of them. Just… drop it. Until we're actually somewhere safe. Please?"

"I will hold you to that," I nod, and then there's a knock on the door.

We both turn to look, but before we can even stand up the door unlocks and creaks open, revealing a dress-uniformed man with a clipboard and a woman in full combat gear behind him. The man is pretty plain-looking, with short, dirty-blonde hair and expensive-looking prescription glasses. He's also quite small, at least a couple inches below whatever the fuck Lia's height is and a full head and a half shorter than the woman behind him. She looks as stern as a hawk, with a sharply-angled nose, pale skin, and cherry-red lipstick. I have no idea what color her hair is under that helmet but the rest of her face makes my first guess 'ghost-white.' The woman looks like a goddamn vampire, though thankfully I don't see any hint of fangs.

"Hello there!" the man greets us. "Lia Morgan? And, ah… I'm sorry, I wasn't expecting a second person."

He adjusts his glasses, flipping through the pages on his clipboard as Emily clears her throat.

"I'm her girlfriend," she says. "Sorry, Cross Country brought me here when Lia wanted to have me along? Is that okay?"

"Oh, yes, that's fine, I just should have been informed," the man says, pursing his lips in irritation. "Well, not a huge deal. You're also from Chicago, I assume? We'll get you situated with temporary housing as soon as we can. Anyway, hello! Specialist Jered McLane. I'm just here to ask Ms. Morgan a few questions so we can be as efficient as possible."

"Oh, do you have superpowers?" Emily asks brightly. "Cross Country said he was a, uh, 'Master Specialist?' Does that mean he's stronger than you?"

Jared laughs.

"No, no! I don't have any powers. 'Specialist' just means I get paid as much as a Corporal but don't command any troops. I do purely technical work, for example. A lot of supers end up the higher Specialist ranks, because even if they don't fit into the traditional Army structure their skills are uniquely valuable and they should be paid accordingly. You probably won't have to worry about spending money, Ms. Morgan!"

"I don't have to worry about that anyway," I say in my best Lia voice. I've got to be able to fool her parents to make that true, after all. "I'm going to be forced into the Army, then?"

"Maybe!" he answers brightly. "It depends on where your abilities are best suited. If you're a better fit for the Air Force or Space Force, you might get transferred to their facilities instead. So to that end, I'm here to ask you to give me any preliminary information we can use to get you sorted!"

I can't help but note that he doesn't even bother to mention the Navy, but I don't really blame him. I imagine the Navy is in a bit of a weird position what with the aliens having undisputed control over the oceans. They still do stuff, since all the military branches overlap with each other a little, but they can't do the one thing they're literally named after.

"What do you need to know?" I ask.

"Nothing too fancy!" he assures me. "Just, well, what abilities have you demonstrated since learning you have powers?"

"I can turn into people I've touched," I say simply.

"Okay," he nods, writing that down. "While you were escaping the incursion zone, did you feel anything strange?"

"Strange?" I ask.

"Just any odd sensation you haven't felt before," he says.

I'm not really sure how to answer this, but… well, that lady behind him hasn't said anything. For all I know, she's the lie-detecting super Emily was worried about.

"I… yeah, I guess so," I admit. "It felt like something wanted me to be in more pieces. I assume it was the Queen."

"Hmm," he says, suddenly looking at Emily. "Did the two of you escape the incursion zone together?"

Oh, shit. Yeah. How did Emily survive without powers? The logical (and correct) answer is that she didn't, but I have to nip that in the bud. There's an easy way to do it.

"Yes, we… we escaped with Emily's sister and brothers," I tell him. "They all died, though. They… everyone who wasn't touching me got cut to shreds."

I don't have to fake the hollow edge to my voice, the haunting memories of my foster brother turning into a pile of red meat bringing bile into my throat. Ha. That's kind of reassuring, actually. I was worried I'd taken the whole thing a bit too well to be considered sane.

"I didn't let her go after that," I say quietly. It might not be a lie. "I couldn't risk losing her."

"I understand," Jered nods. "I'm sorry for bringing up bad memories, but I'm afraid I do have a few more questions."

He sits down in the seat across from the couch, facing Lia and I.

"Did you encounter any of the invaders during your escape?" he asks.

I glance at Emily. Do we lie?

"...We did, yeah," Emily answers for me. "Lia got stabbed by one, but she healed the wound and we got away."

Tell the truth but undersell my skill? Why? It'll reveal a minor lie, but I guess we only told that lie multiple states away and it would be revealed anyway if I ever shapeshift any alien bits again. For all I know that won't even happen willingly, so… sure, decent plan. I'll roll with it.

"Yeah," I say. "I think I can maybe turn into a Behemoth now? But… I don't want to."

"That's interesting," he says. "I won't ask you to demonstrate now, but that could potentially be a very useful ability. We rarely manage to captu—"

I am not in enough pieces. Panic fills my mind to bursting in an instant, and I grab Emily’s hand with one of mine and leap at Jered. I barely, barely manage to touch him in time and keep his body in one piece. How is the Queen here? What's happening!?

I have no time to think about it, however, because the moment I start the room cracks and peels apart. Everything, and I mean everything, launches up into the air, discrete parts separating from each other as if someone undid the building like a puzzle. Every brick has been pulled apart at the mortar, every pipe has been separated at the seams, and every window is carefully removed from its frame. All of it is now floating in the air, deconstructed and placed on display like someone took the instruction booklet of some IKEA furniture that shows where every piece goes relative to every other and turned it into reality.

The couch and the chair Specialist McLane was sitting on are still in one piece, but they have been shoved into the sky with us on top of them, and separated enough that I'm basically just hanging over four stories of thin air with Emily in one hand and the Specialist in the other, bridging their respective sitting arrangements with my body as they got pulled apart. We're no longer moving, at least; everything now hovers perfectly equidistant from every other discrete piece, in a big sphere of junk, house parts, and human beings (who, though floating, are mercifully in one piece).

"...Good reflexes," the woman that was standing behind Specialist McLane says to me, dangling from the back of his chair by one hand. She seems mostly nonplussed by this entire impossible situation.

"Thank you?" I manage. It comes from years of experience being in constant danger of falling on my face!

"Ah, F-First Lieutenant, could you…?" Jered stammers.

"I see her," the woman answers, and then she lets herself drop. I hold on to Emily and the Specialist as well as I can while I follow the woman's gaze to where a terrified-looking girl at the epicenter of this disturbingly organized half-explosion is panicking and trying to run away. The First Lieutenant almost casually leaps from object to suspended object, breaking into a full sprint the moment she touches the ground and catching up with the terrified girl in barely five seconds. She grabs the girl by the back of the neck and says something I can't quite catch, at which point the girl's eyes immediately roll back into her skull and she goes limp.

The First Lieutenant says something else, and with shaky, zombie-like steps, the girl returns to the epicenter of this chaotic bubble of floating objects and materials. Without any indication of her doing anything, we all start to descend, the impossible power reversing itself just as impossibly as everything returns to its proper place, even the cracked mortar resealed.

Throughout it all, the girl's blank white eyes stare at nothing as she re-locks herself into the prison she just walked out of.

Emily and Specialist McLane catch their breath while I reacquaint myself with solid ground for a few minutes, but the First Lieutenant eventually returns to the room and gives me a respectful nod.

"Marianne Locke," she introduces herself to me. "Though you may also know me by my codename, Commander."

Ha. Isn't that a Navy rank? Man, these guys really do like to piss on the Navy. But also: holy shit that's terrifying.

"...I'm really glad I chose to cooperate," I decide.

"Yes," Commander agrees, "you are."

Her presence prickles at my skin, but rather than with a power that's impossible or threatening, her pressure feels horrifyingly safe, like everything would be wonderful and pleasant and happy if I just let her in. I don't, of course. I'm not insane.

"You don't need to do that," I say quietly. "I mean it. I'll behave."

"Apologies," she says stiffly, and the feeling retracts. "That wasn't my intention. I'm just checking your domain, and determining if it's strong enough to confirm your story. It is. Against a Queen stretching herself as thin as she'll go, I believe you could protect quite a few people. That will be very useful, in the Army."

"That's great," I say with a smile.

I'm fucking dead, I think in despair.