A screen door slammed open, squeaking against its rusted hinges and revealed a lush, opulent countryside just beyond the threshold of the doorway. A smaller girl, familiar in much more than just appearance, ran past into the greenery ahead. She looked back, her hand outstretched towards me wearing a heartfelt grin. I knew her. I —

“Gabrielle!” Hands were grasping my shoulders, shaking my body wildly. That name — no! Prim! My eyes shot open in fright. It wasn’t Prim’s cold piercing gaze I found staring down at me, but Mom’s. “Gabby, come on! Say something, baby,” she shouted down at me.

“Mom?” a groggy groan escaped my lips. My legs were cold and resting on top of something hard… my fingers brushed over the top of the floor. Hardwood. Was I home?

Mom’s eyes widened. She pulled me into a suffocating embrace.

“Oh thank god. You’re okay. My baby is okay.”

“How… how did I get here?” I replied, my speech slurring as I struggled to fully awaken.

Mom sniffled back mucus. “You burst through the door out of the blue — I was carrying some laundry and you — you scared the absolute bejeezus out of me, Gabby. As soon as you slowed to a stop, you collapsed right here. I’ve been trying to wake you up for five minutes.”

She wasn’t lying; a tipped over laundry basket lay in the middle of the walk-way with clothes spilling out of it.

Pulling myself up into a sitting position, my head began to ache something fierce. What were those images I was seeing? When had I lost consciousness? “Where are Parker and Jules?”

“At school,” Mom replied with more than a hint of concern. “It’s only a little past eleven in the morning. Why aren’t you in school, young lady?” She picked a spare few pieces of tile plaster off my jacket. “And why are you covered in this stuff?”

Now I was puzzled. “You mean you don’t know?”

“Know what? I’ve been on the phone with clients all morning. What’s going on?”

I let my head rest against the wall and pointed towards the television. “Just — turn the news on. I need to see if word’s gotten out.”

She glanced between the TV and me in confusion.

“It’s the school, Mom. Just turn it on,” I pleaded. Nodding solemnly, she turned it on and flicked through the channels before settling on the news. Expecting to see police swarming the school building, I was extremely confused to find the news focusing instead on the latest gaff a prominent politician had made and whether it did or didn’t affect his re-election prospects.

On my hands and knees, I crawled over to the couch to get a better view. “Wha— why isn’t it on the news? Don’t they know what she’s done?”

Mom’s worried expression turned sour. “Gabrielle, you tell me this instant what you’re so wound up about. What’s wrong with the school? Who’s ‘she’?”

I stared up at mom gravely. “It’s Prim. N-nurse Prim; she’s Hexecute. She tricked me — I didn’t,” I broke eye contact with her as tears began to well up. Somehow, her eyes only made the guilt worse. “She played me. This entire time, she was just trying to get my powers. And I let her guide me from square one. Trusted her the most. Let her push me towards stupid decision after stupid decision. She led me into her office and strapped me to this… this table.” My voice cracked and broke into sobs. “She was going to steal my powers, Mom. She was going to take me away. She was so close. She almost had me.”

Mom was at my side in an instant, her comforting hands running up and down my back.

“What happened? Did the teachers find out? Did they stop her?” she asked, her tone fearful and unintentionally harsh.

“I… I broke free. And I — I ran. I ran and ran and when I couldn’t, my friends helped. They stopped her from getting to me. They're the only reason I got out.”

She leaned back. “Got… out?”

“Cass made a hole for me. She helped me escape before Prim cut it off.” My ribs were racked with shudder after shudder, tears openly cascading onto the carpet. “They’re still in there, Mom. She’s got them all with her clelium-equipped robots. There aren’t any capes to stop her. None who can, anyways. She’s.. she’s unstoppable. So I ran. I ran without looking back.”

“Gabby…” she hesitated. Letting myself fall back against the couch, my eyes fixated on the television. “I’ll call Mrs. Bekker. I’ll — I’ll get some help. We’ll get people who can help them. I mean, can you believe it? We’re really on TV!”

...What?

I turned to face Mom but found she was no longer standing to the side of me. Turning back, the television looked markedly… different? Thicker, less sleek. Both smaller and not at the same time; it was almost like one of those fat sets you’d see in old movies.

“I agree, though” the voice continued. Its pitch was different now. Assuredly not Mom’s voice. “We need to fix the inseam on the legs of your suit. Looks waaay Halloween store.” I scanned my surroundings for the source of the voice, a woman judging by the higher pitch. Much to my surprise, it now appeared that I was in an entirely different room. I was seated on a queen-sized bed, two lamps flanking its head and a TV sat on a worn-looking dresser in front of me. Judging by the looks of it, it almost looked like I was in some hotel room.

My lips began to move on their own, speaking as if reading lines on a script. “I can work on them tonight and tomorrow after my shift at the lab. God! Can you believe we’re really doing this?”

A slender hand appeared from the void and took hold of my own, gleefully pulling me to my feet. The hand materialized a connected arm, then shoulder until an entire other person entered the void with me, a young brunette woman. The source of the voice.

The woman snickered and sipped from a soda can nearby. “Hardly! But then again, I wouldn’t have gone with ‘Mending Maestra’ and ‘Wunderkind’ as supernyms, either. Still can’t believe I lost the coin flip.”

“You lost fair and square, pip-squeak,” I teasingly replied. How hadn’t I recognized her? She was my sister, my lifeline. The most important person in my existence, bar none.

She gave me a condescending look. “Then hold still for a moment. ‘Pip-squeak’ still needs to finish up with that shoulder.” She placed both of her arms on my shoulder, alerting me to an ache I’d otherwise ignored until now. A flash filled the room briefly. Her now-pink hands lit up with a deep red glow of energy and turned warm on my bare skin. Slowly, the ache receded until it was but a memory.

“If only Mom and Dad could see us now,” I sighed. “Might show those assholes that we aren’t all bad. I mean, did you see me? I disarmed that idiot’s bomb like it was a speak-n-spell. It was remarkable! I was able to work it out in this — this explosion of color and sound and light in my head. I’ve never felt my mind race like that before!”

“Right. All that before falling off a three-story building. But yeah, you’re a whiz-kid mind master genius, Liz.” The other woman pulled her hands from me and wrapped them around me in a light hug. “You know as well as I do what they’d think. And that’s why we don’t need ‘em. They always find a flaw. A reason to label you a defect. Even if you solved world hunger, which you could totally do with that big, beautiful brain, by the way.”

I looked down at my hands and remained silent for a moment.

“It’s just… sometimes I wish I only had my mind. No mimicry. Just brains.”

The woman fell onto the bed in a lazy flopping motion and reverted from her pinkened state back to her default form. “Yeah, but then you wouldn’t be the sister I grew up with in that crappy farmhouse anymore, dummy.” She moved to turn out the lamp on her side of the bed and pulled the blankets up to her chin. “You pulling another late night?”

“Yup. Inseams, remember?” I smiled.

“Right,” she chuckled. “I’m headed to bed then. Don’t stay up too late, okay? You get cranky when you’re tired.”

I patted her feet beneath the comforter. “I’ll try to be quick with the needle, then. Night, Casey.”

She snuggled into her pillow. “Mmm… g’night, Eliza.”

I jolted forwards, my chest tight and pulse racing. I was back in the living room; the light had dimmed somewhat and allowed the television to cast more of a glow over the room.

No longer was the news focusing on politics. No, my earlier wishes had apparently come true. Now a video feed of the academy was cast across the television screen with urgent updates scrawled across the ticker at the bottom of the screen. Police vehicles were parked all around the building though news vans and other cars were already arriving on-site. The camera angle abruptly shifted from a bird’s eye view to a reporter standing before the camera on the ground.

“Thanks, Tad.  We’re standing outside the Crescent City chapter of ‘Alter Academy’, where an unidentified individual has taken over the campus for an as of yet unknown reason. While we know the children and faculty who attended the school are still alive, that is all we know at this time. All attempts at approach by law enforcement and hero alike have been met with swift resistance by a swarm of airborne robots seemingly equipped with pellets of a substance known as clelium. While clelium temporarily negates the powers of alters, these pellets are large enough to inflict significant injury on approaching officers.”

As if on cue, a figure cloaked in colorful spandex swooped down from the sky in a mad dash at the building. Their attempt at making an inroad towards the school ended almost as soon as it began; several metallic shapes flew at them and fired clelium at the figure. The figure tried several evasive maneuvers but only attracted the attention of more andrAI into the swarm chasing them. Before long, the figure was falling from a smoke cloud a couple dozen feet mid-air and slammed into the green campus grass with a sickening thud.

The newscaster returned to the camera, features grief-stricken and morose. “Authorities are attempting to contact heroes from other localities and townships up and down the coast, but we have not received an official update on the progress of this endeavor. Miracle Maiden’s last known sighting had her working in the vicinity of the Mariana trench, so it’s unclear if she has been made aware of the situation. Reports suggest other premier heroes are proving equally as difficult to contact as well for unknown reasons. We will update you as the situation develops.”

I clutched at the arm of the couch to keep myself steady. She was holding them hostage. For what? What was her endgame? I slipped through her fingers, was she going to absorb all of their powers until I couldn’t possibly escape her again? Nausea crawled it’s way up my throat demanding — ugh — immediate relief. I raced to the bathroom and dropped to my hands and knees in front of the toilet., slamming the door closed behind me with my foot. My throat was on fire as the contents of my stomach violently expelled themselves into the toilet. What was she doing to them? Was Cass okay? Sammy? Angus? It was just as well that my eyes were already watering, at least I could pretend the tears were just vomit tears.

Once my stomach was sufficiently empty, I pulled myself free from my porcelain companion. Leaning back against the bathroom wall, I scrambled to make sense of what I’d just seen — or, I guess, what she’d seen? Was it another dream, like the others? Snapping out of it didn’t feel like waking up. It was almost like I'd been lost in my thoughts before coming to my senses. I was Prim… except, at the same time, I wasn’t. I still looked like me, nothing about my appearance had changed. Absentmindedly I began to scratch at my wrist; the dimness of the room was starting to get to me. Needed to get my mind off of the subject.

I stepped out of the bathroom and gazed around the dimly-lit room. Cloudy days tended to make it feel like dusk no matter what time it was. “Mom, you there?” I quietly called. No response. “Mom?” I took a few steps into the kitchen and found her office door closed with light peeking out from under it. Whispered mumbles could be made out through the wood paneling of the door, but were otherwise indecipherable. After a tentative handle test, the door proved to be unlocked. I carefully drew it open.

Mom was reclined as far back as her office chair would go, rubbing furiously at her temples.  “Listen, I know you guys are extremely busy right now. Can’t this wait just a week? This… really isn’t a good time.”

A soft voice blared from her phone’s speaker. “Ms. McArthur, I know how this sounds, but we can only wait so long for an answer on how you wanted to proceed with the body.”

The body. Kayden. A silent tingle ran up my spine.

Mom leaned forward. “My daughter is in no condition for me to approach her with this. Surely your boss can pull some strings to buy us just a few more days?”

“That’s not how it works in these situations, ma’am. We can’t just postpone indefinitely…” 

I propped my shoulder against the door frame. Balance was becoming… complicated.

“Right, but even so—”

“I’m sorry, Delilah,” the voice interrupted her. “The best I can do is stall until tomorrow. After that, the county is going to make the decision for you and it’ll be out of my hands what happens. Again, I’m sorry, Eliza.”

I nursed at the imitation ginseng tea from the mug nestled between my hands. The clelium they’d wrapped around my wrist was starting to piss me off. My thoughts were distant. The bursts of color in my brain I’d become so accustomed to were altogether absent. It was almost like a grainy film filter had been applied to the world. Doctor Nelson promised this wretched band would help control the lingering pressure from the stitches. As if I’d take seriously the medical advice of a Central Michigan graduate.

My mind winced from the strain. It was especially difficult this time around to keep my thoughts straight. Too much of whatever these were, were focused on her thoughts — blurring them together.

“Apologies are wasted words,” I spat back at her. She didn’t care. If anyone did, they wouldn’t have stuffed me in this suffocating coffin of a room with its linoleum tile and crusty yellow-white walls. Not now. How sickeningly ironic.

“Sure,” she replied, clearly thrown off by my attitude. “Now, normally I’d apologize for making you run through the events again, but, well —” She shuffled her papers nervously. “Why don’t we just get it over with, yeah?”

“Fine,” I sighed. The sooner I played along, the sooner I could get back to her and the sooner I could clear my head.

The girl cleared her throat. “To recap, last night, you and Mending Maestra were patrolling near Quincilary Labs when you were alerted to a break-in, yes?”

I nodded with as much sarcasm as could silently be mustered.

“While investigating the scene, you two came into direct conflict with the Mechanic.” The hand I’d let rest on the arm of the chair stiffened. “Why was she there?”

“Trespassing. Breaking and entering. Thievery. Murder, eventually. Take your pick.” This girl’s pedantic retelling of events was beginning to annoy me. Wasn’t it enough this damned clelium was making me feel as if my mind were categorically failing?

“Could you be more specific?” she prodded further.

With a groan, I obliged her. “We followed the Mechanic into one of the laboratories where secretive tech was being worked on. She didn’t notice us enter, and when she did, she lashed out at us. Violently.”

She looked at her clipboard. “Was that when —”

“Yes,” I growled, standing up. That’s when the Mechanic killed her.” My fingers began to probe at the clelium, searching for the latch to pull it off.

“Miss Prim, I can’t advise that you take that off,” the girl piped up, her voice small and afraid. “The doctor told me your head trauma was quite severe; returning to your alter form now could only exacerbate your condition.”

“Shut up!” I screamed. “I’ve already lost one of the most important things in my life today. You will not prevent me from finding solace in the other.” The band fell to the floor with a limp slap on the linoleum. I reached out for the light to expand toward me once more. To bring my mind back to me. I focused — but nothing responded. My mind still felt… empty. I focused again, but my thoughts remained tepid. Tasteless. Grey. Where were the colors? The passion? “What’s going on? Where are my powers?” I locked eyes with the girl in a fiery staredown. “What did you do to me? Where are my powers?”

Brushing past the table that separated us, I wrapped my hands around her arms and began to shake her. “What the fuck did you do to me?!”

Reality rushed back in a single clap, returning me to my place inside the kitchen. Mom stepped out of her office, jumping in surprise to find me slumped against the kitchen wall, on the ground once again. Had I fallen?

“Gabby! Did —  did you hear all of that?”

Right. Kayden’s body.

I averted my eyes. My mind felt splintered in a million different ways already; I couldn’t deal with this conversation on top of it all.

Without a word I jumped back to my feet and retreated towards the stairs. “N-no. I didn’t hear anything.” Mom followed suit, trailing me to just before the stairs before reaching out to me.

“Gabby, honey, I don’t—”

The dull droning of the ongoing newscast erupted into piercing static before being replaced by a white placard stating “technical difficulties”.

“What in the world…” Mom cautiously approached the television, remote in hand. She changed the channel — only to find the same screen staring back at us. A few more channels only yielded the same result. It cut out suddenly, replaced by a blurry purple screen.

A garbled voice came over the speakers. “Is this thing on? I can never tell these days. Streaming, am I right?”

Was I dreaming again? No, I surmised. Mom was right next to me. But that voice — undeniably Prim.

The camera zoomed out, showcasing one Eliza Prim standing before some kind of camera set up in her Hexecute armor. “Hello, Crescent City! Sorry for interrupting your regularly scheduled reality TV and sports. I understand, I understand, the merits of mindless television in this day and age cannot be overspoken. I should only be taking up a moment of your time.”

My legs brought me up to the television despite the state of utter confusion and terror my mind was locked in.

My phone started to vibrate inside my pocket. Despite my temptations to leave it be, I fished it out while keeping my eyes glued to the screen. Her voice doubled up in a strange feedback loop, confusing me for a moment before realizing that my phone, too, was playing her broadcast.

“P-Prim…” I uttered beneath my breath. Was she broadcasting herself to the whole city?

Mom shot me a withering glance. “Prim? That’s Prim?”

I nodded in disbelief.

Mom dropped onto the couch in a rush, a cold sweat breaking out on her forehead. “Oh my god. Oh my god. I’ve seen her before.”

Prim cut her off before she could elaborate. “Many of you may have heard that some maniac has taken over your local educational center for super-powered adolescents and freaks. I must confess, this is completely untrue. I rather fancy myself as a ‘shining brilliance amongst her peers’ sort of individual, definitely not a maniac. But that’s beside the point.” Her posture adopted a more rigid, confident stance. The room she stood in was dark but definitely familiar. What looked to be a pile of wood was just visible in the background. Was she in the gymnasium? 

“No, the point is that no matter how many cops and capes you throw at me, my drones will take them out. You’d need someone with a power classification of A or higher to stop me, but well, I don’t see that happening for at least about three hours. Communication technology, so unreliable these days.” She gazed mockingly down at her gloved nails, smirking all the while.

“Except… that’ll be too late, won’t it, Ricochet?”

My joints turned stiff. How did she…?

Whatever camera she had on her widened its shot, revealing that she wasn’t alone in the gym. Huddled all around her were figures small and large; student, teacher and faculty member alike. Each looking frightened and anxious, they were on their knees with their hands bound behind their backs. 

It terrified me how many of them I recognized. Sammy and Angus, Mrs. Bittinboulder and Ms. Catarelli, even Courtney, Markus, and many others. She had all of them. She strode off-camera for but a moment before a shuffling groan made its way to the camera microphone.

“Oh, come on, Garrison. It’s time for your big close up. Don’t wuss out on me now.” She returned on screen with the collar of a very beaten-looking Mr. Garrison clutched in her grip. His nose curved inwards grotesquely and dried blood had cascaded down over his lips and onto his dirtied sweater vest.

“P-please, Eliza —  don’t,” he whimpered pitifully.

“Speak when spoken to, dog.” She spat on his chest, a move that prompted but a whimper from him. “Now, Ricochet. Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to come save these poor innocents in my care, and you’re going to make it snappy. Because if you don’t…”

She brought her gauntlet up in clear view of the camera. Its familiar whir and hum wound up and interrupted the quiet hollow of sound in the cinder-block room. Her other hand now wrapped securely around Mr. Garrison’s throat, she laid the gauntlet upon his forehead. 

It set to work immediately. Lights along its length lit up leading to the palm and Garrison’s skin.

Mr. Garrison’s eyes widened. “No — no! Please, god, no! I-I’ll pay you! I’ll lick your boots! Please, don’t—”

But it was too late. Illuminescent light particles started to stream from his eyes and mouth, dancing into the receptors on the gauntlet in fluid animations much like they had for Markus. It took ten seconds. Ten agonizing seconds filled with Mr. Garrison’s muddled screams and pleas for mercy before she dropped him from her chokehold and let his body collapse onto the floor. Hushed gasps grew more audible behind them.

Prim began to fiddle with the gauntlet and turned back towards the camera. “Honestly, Ricochet, you’re lucky his power is so icky.” Several vents on her gauntlet opened up, allowing a burst of the same glittering light to escape into the air above them. “Like I’d let spikes ruin my armor.” Mr. Garrison weakly reached up from the floor towards the evaporating light in vain even as it danced out of his reach and off-screen.

“Anywho, that’s the deal. You have one hundred and nineteen minutes to come stop me. If you don’t…” Prim extended her finger towards Cass. “She’s next. See you soon!”

The television went dark. So that was it. Prim was challenging me — no, daring me to come back into her clutches. If I didn’t, she was going to… to Cass… My chest began to grow tighter and tighter, almost as if a vise were clamping into me.

The remote dropped from Mom’s still-shaking hand onto the floor. “I’ve seen her before,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “Said she was one of the n-no capes. Right after Kayden pretended to be…” Her hands kneading at each other, she let out a quiet sob. “I told her about your dad — because she seemed nice. She said she just wanted to make sure we were okay, that we’d be okay. She was right there. She could have killed me and come straight for you.”

“I… I…” Mumbled utterances were all I could form as I tried to grasp the true gravity of my situation. Not only had Prim fooled me at school, not only had she tugged at my strings and pushed me to make mistakes which were about to end with Cass losing her powers, but she’d even infiltrated the watch of the no-capes without issue?

She’d been toying with me the entire time. To watch me squirm. To watch what would happen. I backed against the staircase banister, my chest seeming on the verge of collapsing in on itself. Each anxiety Prim brought on made every breath harder to draw.

“Gabrielle —” Mom rose from the couch on weary legs, her expression dire. “You’re hyperventilating, sweetie. You need to calm down.”

There wasn’t any way I could beat her. Not someone who was always ten steps ahead of me. If I showed up, she’d undoubtedly take my powers. If I didn’t, she’d take Cass’. It was lose/lose. How was I supposed to stop her? How in the world was I going to make this work?

Things shifted again. Gone was Mom’s restless anxiety over my state of being. I was somewhere cold. Dark. Water lapping nearby. At my fingertips lay a pile of scrap next to something vaguely resembling a prosthetic arm. The film grain effect from before wasn’t entirely gone, but the opacity slider had been turned down by a large margin. I could already feel it; my mind was colorful once more. Expanding. Boundless. Weirdly, though, there was a new feeling. An odd sense in the back of my mind; a whisper nibbling just out of earshot.

“It’s worth it,” I reassured myself. “Just a little bit more.” More whispers from the darkness of my mind. Of course, I’d already identified the symptoms of antisocial personality disorder. A perpetual hindrance for the weak man that served as my house guest for the moment. But I could beat it — it shouldn’t carry over. Not if my calculations are correct.” I brought my soldering tool back to the device and grounded a few more wire ends. Intrinsically, I knew that this device was everything.  My essence incorporator. My only chance.

Groans off in the distance. Good. I needed to re-up. The color was slipping away from me.

Seagulls. Wood and cement flooring. My grip loosened significantly and the illusion almost escaped me until footing returned and another person — a man — materialized in front of me. A bonded man, held prisoner by chains connecting cuffs on his arms to the wall. He looked beaten. Bloody. Tired beyond belief. But his features were obscured. Cloudy. Unimportant.

He gave me the weakest of eye contact before letting his head drop back down.

Good. I placed the pads of my fingers on his forehead and reached. Tendrils snaking into his mind, licking at the light within. Essence flowed up my fingers and arm into my own mind like a spreading warmth from a fireplace. I didn’t know what repeated exposure to my powers would do to him. Their minds could only seem to grasp contextless images from my hippocampus, but that was upon one or two mimicries. I’d never mimicked a single subject over and over before. I’d make sure to track some of these results in my notebook tonight.

“W-why…?” the man suddenly groaned.

Narrowing my eyes, I scowled down at him. “Because you knew her.” Sight became indistinct again for a time. Back again before my project, I continued to work at it with renewed frenzy. My mind had expanded intensely again; at the same time, the whisper was louder than ever. More nagging. I began to wonder if I should leave him alive. He’d only serve to be a loose end.

No, that wasn’t right. She wouldn’t have wanted me to — but she’s gone. Is it still worth holding myself to that ideal? Regardless, this was the goal, now. If I was alone, I needed my mind. If I had my mind, there was a chance I could fix this.

Correct fate’s mistake. I grabbed a pair of goggles off the workbench and slipped them over my eyes.

My perception warped inward; the table evaporated and revealed that same man kneeling at my feet. My hand was encased inside my creation. 

A silvered gauntlet with wires and lights running up its length.

He was unexpectedly quiet. Almost resigned. Too bad. Part of me wished it were the opposite.

I closed my eyes, raising the gauntlet to his head. “Medice, cura te ipsum.”

“Gabby! Gabby!” Two pairs of hands lifted me off the ground. “Help me get her upstairs, Parker.”

The warm, forgiving and much-needed comfort of my mattress engulfed my back. Faculties and senses began to return piecemeal.

“What happened to her?”

“I don’t know. Just before you two got here she was starting to hyperventilate from that broadcast and then her eyes went all glassy. You saw her fall back against the stairs after that. Go get me a towel, Jules.”

While my senses were rebooting, my mind was awash in a strange sort of calm. It felt like the color yellow. I shook my mind. The hippocampus… I could swear that Cass had mentioned it before. Why would Prim reference her hippocampus and pictures when mimicking? It very nearly made no sense. Thankfully, the next sensation to pop back out of numbness was an intense growl from deep within my now-emptied stomach. Like a hammer on steel, realization slammed into focus in my brain.

A sharp intake of breath drew past my lips; I bolted upright coated in sweat, narrowly avoiding a collision with Mom’s head.

“Memories!” I gasped. “Her quirk is sharing memories!”

Mom recoiled backward. “Gab — honey, what are you on about? You nearly passed out downstairs!”

Ignoring her reply, I continued babbling to myself. “Is any skin-to-skin contact the catalyst? No, she’d touched me multiple times with her bare hands. It has to be manual.” I lifted my still-shaking hands to my face and hopped off the bed. It was odd — the intense fear and dread she’d inspired at my very core seemed to be dribbling away. Fading.

“Gabby.” Mom tried to get my attention again. I blocked it out.

Prim had a quirk, too. Just like me. Which meant she wasn’t perfect. Which meant she wasn’t unbeatable. She could be stopped. And she needed to be.

Mom rose from her seat on my bed. “Gabrielle!” she angrily snapped. I spun around; my reverie shattered by her sharp tone. “We need to leave. That psycho knows where we live. We’re not safe here.”

My eyes drifted over the others in the room: Mom, Jules, and Parker. All staring back at me with grief-stricken expressions.

Jules cleared her throat. “Gabby,” she whispered, “is it true? Is that lady after you?”

Unconsciously chewing my bottom lip, I nodded. “Yeah.”

Parker leaned against the doorway. “So what do we do?” His voice dripped with trepidation.

“We leave,” Mom stated. “There’s a motel on Elbertson Avenue. We’ll bunker down there for the night until the authorities get this under control.

“You want us to run?” I asked in disbelief.

“Yes.” She crossed her arms. “There’ll be no back and forth on this. I’m not letting her get to any of you.” 

I shook my head. Ironically, running away wasn’t an option.

“But my friends —”

She shushed me. “Leave that to the professionals, Gabby! The cops and capes have licenses for a reason. You’re just a kid, and it’s my job to keep you safe. Just this once, let me do that.”

A low growl crawled out from my throat. I wasn’t going to prove Prim right. I wasn’t going to run away again. “First off, it’s the no-capes jobs to keep me safe. Look at the bang-up job they did. Secondly, what if the cops can’t save them?” She looked caught off-guard and averted her eyes. 

“That’s not going to happen.” She hurriedly ushered the twins from the room off to their own. “Someone’s going to save them, be it Miracle Maiden or Stalaglight or someone else. That’s how it works, Gabby.”

“Every cape and mask in the city is either out of commission or injured or can’t get past her drones. Miracle Maiden and all of the other heavy hitters are MIA, too. Who else can save them?”

“I don’t — I don’t know, Gabby.” She sighed. “But someone will. I promise.” Mom turned tail and moved down the hallway to her bedroom to rifle through her closet — probably for her suitcase.

“So that’s it?” I whispered to myself in disbelief. I brought up the time on my phone. Great. One hundred and nine minutes left. So ten minutes closer to the end of the line. It took another two to get the live feed of the school back up on my phone. The hero who’d gone down had been recovered from the lawn but another had seemingly just landed not fifty yards from the same point. This one looked seriously injured.

None of them could get past those drones. They weren’t fast enough. Nobody was.

Except me. I’d dodged those drones multiple times in the school. I could — I shook my head. I wasn’t a hero. This wasn’t my fight. I was the one who got all of them into this mess. I couldn’t save them. 

Crunch

I looked down. I’d stepped onto one of my discarded sweatshirts. Picking it up between my hands, something plump and ragged stuck out from its center pocket. My hand fished it out; crumpled sketching paper. Slowly, I unfurled its edges.

Zig-zagging lines of a bolt of lightning greeted my watering eyes. Several of them, a few scribbled out or written over with little notes. A figure of me at the bottom of the page.

Kayden’s doodles of my insignia. What we’d planned it to be.

The note fell to my side, still gripped tightly between my fingers. Kayden thought I could be a hero. Even made me promise I would be. They… they wouldn’t have asked it of me if they didn’t believe in me. Even in the end.

I had a promise to keep.

The archway of my doorframe sped by, as did the rooms of Jules and Parker. The door to the attic was never locked, which was just as well. Less to clean up later.

Mom’s trunk wasn’t hidden away. She didn’t think she’d have to hide it with the lock she kept it closed with. In less than a second, the iron lock crumpled from my grip into pieces on the wood-board floor. The top of the trunk popped open, and I was greeted by a familiar red and black uniform.

My gear. That's the good thing about being a speedster; the wardrobe changes were as good as instantaneous. Well, as long as you had a good sports bra on hand. It felt just as wonderful and form-fitting as I remembered it did; almost lighter than air. I plucked one final piece out of the trunk with my now-gloved hands. My goggles.

Pressing them onto the area surrounding my eyes, a comforting whir of air and a click resounded through my ears. Suctioned on securely, the goggles began their retina scan. A faint yellow glow glossed over my eyes and dinged approvingly.

 

Focal shutters operational. Iris biometric scan complete. Microscopic accelerometer and motion sensors calibrated to superior and inferior tarsal plate movement. Synchronization... complete. Hello, Gabrielle.

 

A knowing smirk sliced across my lips. 

 

Would you like to install the latest patch?

 

With a blink, I confirmed the shutters still worked. “Uh… sure?” A loading bar blinked across the screen but for a moment before disappearing.

 

Update complete. Unit now capable of multi-channel interfacing. Technomancer interference vulnerabilities eliminated. Viewing patch notes.

 

“Ah, crap. How do I skip these?” I mumbled to myself. Graciously, the option wasn’t available.

 

Didn’t have time to test to my standards before deployment, but you have to make do when a bomb is exploding in your face. Only a few milliseconds left, so need to keep it short. Kick her ass, Gabrielle. Love, The Mechanic.

 

A tidal swell of emotion crashed against my heart, but I forced my eyes to stay dry for the sake of the goggles. “With pleasure, Mel.” I raced back down the stairs to find my family, frozen in portrait; each in a dash to pack their belongings. With a kiss on both of their heads, I promised the twins I’d see them both again. Mom appeared to be in mid-shout directed towards my doorway. Wrapping my arms around her for a hug, I made sure to apologize for what I was about to do. I hoped she’d hear it.

No more than a second later, I shot out from the front door down the street towards the city center.

My vision remained steady even as the air rushing past my ears was drowned out. A final thought stretched through my mind.

It was too much. The whispers — that asshole’s illness. It hopped onto the transfer mechanism of my essence incorporator. No matter what I did, I could find both no flaw in my work that had allowed such a catastrophic mistake, nor could I rid myself of this dark hindrance perpetually at the edges of my rearview. The computer finished its incessantly long search query, bringing up the file of my new favorite student.

Whoever would have thought that I’d become the nurse?

Markus Miller. Classification — Speedster. He was the key. With him, I could find her. I could find her and explain everything. Surely she’d listen. She’d be Casey, too. And I would find her. Get her to fix this. Even if I have to rip apart all of existence, I'm going to find her.

The rip-roaring of the air returned as the highway zoomed past. I gritted my teeth.

Even if I died trying, I was going to save my friends and stop her.