2.2

“And these teeth; Christ, baby, what happened to you?”

My mom sticks her fingers in my mouth as I try to pull on my coat, and I have to bat her away. It’s the next day, and a USMC transport van waits inconspicuously outside. It’s not marked or anything, but dad said that’s expected — I think he was up all night emailing.

“Dunno,” I reply belatedly. “Car’s waiting.”

“Oh, I know, sweetie, just put these on,” she says, pushing a pair of sunglasses into my hands. “We’ll have to get your hair cut another time. At least white is easy to dye…”

“Going,” I say, zipping up my coat and stepping out.

“Bye, honey,” she mutters, seeming a little absentminded.

I walk out into the driveway, freezing air tasting my skin for just a moment before I slide into the back of the suspicious van.

Inside, the tech is more advanced than the vehicle’s deceptive exterior would imply. Nothing on the level of Rook or anything the USMC headquarters runs off of, but from the cushioned bench in the back I can see monitors, switches and dials littering the underside of the dashboard, especially in the passenger seat.

All of this I can see through a window past a divider placed just behind the front seats.

Occupying the seats are two guys in blue-collar-esque outfits, sorta like moving guys or plumbers. The only thing to clue me in to their true occupation being small radios attached to their ears, only visible from where I am up close.

One of my escorts has short black hair and a pale complexion, the other darker, with longer brown hair.

“You’re Jacob Miller?” The passenger, the guy with brown hair, asks.

“Uh — yeah,” I mutter, choking on my words.

“What’s that?”

“I said yes. Yes, I am.”

“Great,” he says unenthusiastically, messing with the monitor up front.

The driver turns the key, our van rumbles to life, and we set out into the city.

“Twenty minute drive, about. We’re taking the long way around,” copilot guy says, not looking up from the console. Then, he reaches up behind him and slides a curtain over the window.

The back of the van is pretty dark, save for a strip of yellow LEDs lining the roof. I pull out my phone to wait.

Eventually, the vehicle comes to a slow stop, and I hear the sound of doors and footsteps as my escorts come around to open up the back of the van.

Climbing out, I can see I’m in a small garage, with a couple other vehicles of varying size and shape. They all look like civilian cars.

Aside from me and my escort, a number of other people in typical work clothes and professional suits wander around the garage, milling through doors positioned at the garage’s corners.

The black haired guy heads towards the closest of these doors, and I move to follow, brown hair coming up close behind.

We walk through into a fairly long, white-tiled hallway, near the end of which is a set of double doors leading into a lobby area. Rook, the mechanical one, stands near a seating area talking to someone in a nice suit holding a clipboard. I think I recognize them, actually.

Rook cuts off her conversation as we approach, nodding at my escort. They both nod back and then leave, back towards the garage.

“Red, welcome. This is the handler for the USMC’s Junior division, Brian Crane,” she says, gesturing at the man beside her. He wears an obviously expensive suit with a metal-plated badge attached to his breast pocket. “You might recognize him from the news, he’s also our liaison with the media.”

He holds out his hand. “Nice to meet you, Jacob.”

Rook’s steel-plated visage turns to him. He seems unfazed.

I nod at him, and he seems vaguely dissatisfied for a moment before snapping back into business mode. “Welcome to the USMC! For now, at least,” he says, retracting his hand. “We still have to get you through evaluation, make sure you’re really a super, and that you’re not going to blow anything up accidentally. Then we can take you to the official facility, where you get to meet the rest of the gang!”

The man — Crane? — is energetic, but it seems only as an obligation. He’s good at it, but I can tell it’s a facade. Something he said strikes me, though.

“Official facility? Is this,” I ask, waving nonchalantly, “not, uh, official?”

“It’s an offsite compound. You’ll be taken to the main tower once you’ve been deemed safe by a metahuman technician,” Rook answers bluntly.

“Just a precaution, yeah? Can’t have the villains sneaking into the base, right?” Crane sings, flapping a hand around. “Let’s get you to the testing room. There’s no point in wasting time, and I’m sure you’re itching to throw your powers around, right?”

Rook isn’t actually here right now, but somehow her humanoid drone manages to look annoyed. “I will accompany you, but I may be called away at any moment.”

“Right! Okay, Jake, ready to see the scientists?”

I can feel a scowl sliding onto my face. “Sure,” I grunt.

Brian actually has the gall to smile wider. “Cool! Right this way, little man!” He says, ushering me as well as Rook past the lobby and into another hallway.

This one has glass windows on either side, revealing similar chambers with computer setups and wide open spaces with what look like test dummies set up on mechanical stands. In one of the chambers, a tall boy holding a glowing yellow sword made of solid light swings at them as they slide along the chamber via tracks running across the floor.

His name’s Shield Boy or something, I don’t know. The Junior division isn’t usually involved in any of the big-time scuffles I used to be into.

We reach a chamber near the end of the hall, and Crane taps the door with his badge, which he seems to unlatch from a hook on his jacket. The door slides open with a hiss, and we shuffle inside.

A lab technician snores in a chair by the standing desk someone rolled over to the chamber center.

“Excuse me? We have — wake up,” Crane starts, tapping the tech on his cheek as we walk over.

He snorts and lazily blinks open his eyes, jumping when he sees Crane. “Mmmgh… uh!”

The tech sits up and scrambles for a tablet resting on the desk. “Uh, Rook! And… Jacob?” He says, gaze skipping over Crane and landing on me.

I suppress a sigh. Word gets around fast, I guess?

Crane answers for us. “Yes, we’re here for a metahuman evaluation. Rook and I were just—”

“Excuse me, I will be absent for the next ten to twenty minutes. Please continue as normal in my absence,” Rook’s drone states.

“Er, right,” Crane stutters, collecting himself. “I’d better stay until she comes back. Wouldn’t want to miss seeing our upcoming talent in action.”

“Um. Sure,” the tech starts. “Questions first.” He scrolls through his tablet for a second before fixing his gaze on me. “How old are you?”

“Uh. Seventeen,” I reply.

“Alright. Do you or anyone in your family have a history of substance abuse?”

“No.”

“Are you a victim of any trauma or mental illness?”

I blink. “Not really.”

The tech gives me a look. “Yes or no.”

Does physical trauma count? “Uh. No.”

He squints his eyes but moves on. “Have you noticed anything strange in your life recently?”

“Yeah.” Crane lets out a plastic chuckle.

The tech looks unamused. “Please elaborate.”

I’m… hesitant to tell them everything. It feels dangerous. But I have to tell them something.

“I healed faster than I should have, in the hospital.” The tech looks confused. “After an accident, a while ago,” I clarify. He looks down and swipes through his tablet.

“Ah, I see it. Vehicle accident, and you were discharged a little early.”

“Yeah. Plus, I look different. Obviously.”

The tech looks up. “Obviously. Anything else?”

“I’m a bit stronger than I should be, I think.”

“Mhm. Seems like class A-1-ish. Unlikely it’ll stay that way.” The tech reaches under the desk and pulls out a dangerous-looking tool. “We’ve got a durability measure here, and then you can go whack the targets or whatever. Hold out your arm.”

I do as he says, eyeing the tool suspiciously. It’s a conspicuously gun-shaped mechanism with a clear glass barrel. He presses it to my arm and pulls the trigger.

It jerks slightly, and I hiss as I feel a sting on my arm as blood wells from a point in the center of the tube. I dip into my power for a second to seal it.

“How’s that,” the tech asks, removing the tool and wiping away the blood. “Hurt any?”

“Yes,” I bite out.

“Mmm. Third intensity, maybe?” He mutters to himself, adjusting a couple levers on the device. Then he grabs my arm again, pressing the tube to it and pulling the trigger.

This time, I can see the spike as it stabs out and pierces a good inch into my flesh.

“Fuck,” I shout, tearing my arm away. A large crevice of dark, murky red marks my forearm, dripping crimson down to the tips of my fingers as I grasp just above it with my other hand. If I look closely enough, I can see slivers of off-white through the tiny pool of gore.

My heart pounds in my ears, and heat radiates from the spot on my arm and the center of my vision. The red expands, reaching out to crawl along my peripherals, pumping with meat and viscera.

I start feeling a little sick.

Slowly, I’m able to sink into my power’s river of biological information. It tells me the skin is destroyed in an intermediate area about halfway down the inside of my forearm. It tells me the muscle in this area is also split. It notifies me of a chipped radius, but that the general integrity of the bone is largely intact.

I leave the bone for later, but I cannibalize some of the denser muscle in my arm in order to seal the meat of the wound. Then, I’m able to seal the skin with minimal expenditure.

I catch what I think might be an infection somewhere around the wounded site, but it becomes a part of the system when it enters my body, and it’s destroyed when I do a final check with my power’s autocorrect.

My final verdict is that the muscle mass in that arm is effectively destroyed, and the skin is a bit thinner than ideal near the injury site, but the wound is currently stable.

When I finally exit analysis mode after what feels like hours, I’m panting heavily and desperately clutching my bicep.

“Wh… what the fuck?” I choke out.

“Oh, impressive,” the tech hums, flicking a lever to drop the front section of the tool into a small receptacle attached to the side of the rolling desk. He attaches a new one with a series of clicks as he talks. “Looks like it consumes surrounding matter, but that was complete restoration in just seconds.”

Seconds. Faster than usual. Wonderful.

“Okay, we can do a quick strength test, and then I’ll hand out your initial classification,” the tech says definitively.

“W — wait, can’t we, like, take a break or something?” I ask, still heaving. Looking around, Crane stares with a vaguely intrigued look on his face. Rook remains motionless.

Crane’s expression shifts downward at my protest, though. “Let’s get this over with first. We’ve got a lot of paperwork to go through today.” He eyes me.

“I would like to make sure everything goes smoothly.” I can’t quite read his face, but just for a moment something seems to slip through. He’s warning me.

I take a deep breath, and reach out to grab the next contraption the tech is trying to hand me.