Cherry Blossom Girls Box Set
Author: Harmon Cooper; Gideon Caldwell
Date: 2019-06-28 04:00:00+00:00
Description: I was just a normal guy until the night the cherry blossoms bloomed, the night that Grace appeared on my doorstep. A failed sci-fi writer, a gamer, but a normal guy nonetheless. Grace was everything I was not, a psychic shifter, beautiful beyond my wildest imagination, a government conspiracy waiting to be unraveled. And that was before the second superpowered woman showed up to kill us both. Warning: The Cherry Blossom Girls Box Set (books 1-3) contains a harem; GameLit/LitRPG humor/stats, graphic imagery, and other acts of fictionalized violence; a large dose of ridiculousness and meta-ficti
Publisher: Boycott Books, LLC

Cherry

Blossom

Girls
(BOX SET)

Books 1-3

By Harmon Cooper

Box Set Copyright © 2019 by Harmon Cooper, Boycott Books, LLC

Edited by Dalton Lynne

Audiobook by Justin Thomas James, Annie Ellicott, Laurie Catherine Winkel, and Jeff Hays at Soundbooth Theater

www.harmoncooper.com
writer.harmoncooper@gmail.com

Email signup: https://geni.us/HCReaders

Facebook Group: https://geni.us/ProximaGalaxy

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HarmonCooperWriter

All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. You guessed it—I make this $#!T up!

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Chapter One: Dark and Stormy

Chapter Two: You’re a Psychic Shifter, and I’m a Terrible Writer

Chapter Three: No Naked Moms in the Morning

Chapter Four: Shifting in Public

Chapter Five: Adjusting Grace’s Stats

Chapter Six: Stolen Pizza and the Idea of a Lifetime

Chapter Seven: Data Breach

Chapter Eight: The Second Cherry Blossom Girl

Chapter Nine: Getting Rid of Dead Bodies Ain’t Easy

Chapter Ten: Snuff Videos

Chapter Eleven: Hooking up in Stamford

Chapter Twelve: Two Days to Write a Book (or Death)

Chapter Thirteen: Creative Nonfiction Gamer Sci-Fi?

Chapter Fourteen: Steak and Shrimp with Veronique

Chapter Fifteen: A Hand in the Shower

Chapter Sixteen: We Will Destroy Them All

Chapter Seventeen: Memories Revisited

Chapter Eighteen: Heavy Metal Orchestra

Chapter Nineteen: Angel

Chapter Twenty: Stitched Up

Chapter Twenty-One: Ready to Die?

Chapter Twenty-Two: Coming Clean to Luke

Chapter Twenty-Three: Cherry Blossoms Revisited

Chapter Twenty-Four: Easy Access

Chapter Twenty-Five: The Plastic Room

Chapter Twenty-Six: Calling Angel Out

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Goodbye, Cruel World

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Cherry Blossom Girls, Inc.

Cherry Blossom Girls Book Two

Chapter One: Biker Feast

Chapter Two: Stranger Danger

Chapter Three: I Want an Ice Cream Truck in My Back Yard

Chapter Four: Dorian Gray and the T-Rex Made of Energy

Chapter Five: Mother is Watching

Chapter Six: Writing, Crawfish, and a Visit to the Local Strip Club

Chapter Seven: Surprise Visit

Chapter Eight: Put Her in the Trunk and Drive to Texas

Chapter Nine: Playing with Stats

Chapter Ten: Pornographic Insight

Chapter Eleven: Veronique’s Stats

Chapter Twelve: A Day in the Life of a Fugitive

Chapter Thirteen: Endgame Dreams

Chapter Fourteen: Dorian Wakes

Chapter Fifteen: Snack Attack

Chapter Sixteen: Botched Interrogation

Chapter Seventeen: She’s with Us

Chapter Eighteen: Pizza and Gruesome Jokes

Chapter Nineteen: Broken Bird’s Nest

Chapter Twenty: The First Grenade

Chapter Twenty-One: Mother

Chapter Twenty-Two: Incest is Best?

Chapter Twenty-Three: Back and Forth

Chapter Twenty-Four: YOLO

Chapter Twenty-Five: Up and Away

Chapter Twenty-Six: A Much-Needed Shower Scene

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Ken Kim Calls Again

Chapter Twenty-Eight: A Texas Gun Show

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Grand Theft Auto ATX

Chapter Thirty: Taking Down Helicopters is Fun

Chapter Thirty-One: Kidnap or Kill. The Story of My Life.

Chapter Thirty-Two: A Golden Shower in Santa Fe

Chapter Thirty-Three: Everyone Needs a Little Head

Chapter Thirty-Four: Cherry Blossoms

Cherry Blossom Girls Book Three

Chapter One: Wolf Shirts

Chapter Two: Talking Head

Chapter Three: An Impromptu Date with Dorian Gray

Chapter Four: An Explosive Tattoo

Chapter Five: What Happens in Santa Fe, Stays in Santa Fe

Chapter Six: Wichita, I Hardly Knew Thee

Chapter Seven: A Little Pressure

Chapter Eight: Luke, I Am Your Writer

Chapter Nine: Mind Games

Chapter Ten: Teenage Mutant Super Prisoners

Chapter Eleven: The Great Escape

Chapter Twelve: Damage Control

Chapter Thirteen: Out of Body Sex

Chapter Fourteen: Angel in the Backpack

Chapter Fifteen: Breakfast of Champions

Chapter Sixteen: Super Teens

Chapter Seventeen: Shopping Spree!

Chapter Eighteen: A Mansion in the Rockies

Chapter Nineteen: Running through Walls

Chapter Twenty: Stat Check

Chapter Twenty-One: Know Thy Enemy

Chapter Twenty-Two: Not Vegas

Chapter Twenty-Three: Possessed

Chapter Twenty-Four: Sex Scenes with Luke

Chapter Twenty-Five: Two Sheets to the Wind

Chapter Twenty-Six: Capture the Hero

Chapter Twenty-Seven: P.F. Panda’s Out the Wazoo

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Goodbye Future Super Babies

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Here We Go Again

Chapter Thirty: Thank You to the Stoners in Room 126

Chapter Thirty-One: Back and Forth

Chapter Thirty-Two: Coming Clean over Waffles

Chapter Thirty-Three: To WalMacy’s and Beyond!

Chapter Thirty-Four: Fast Attack

Chapter Thirty-Five: You Say Nevada, I Say Destruction

Chapter Thirty-Six: Banished

Chapter Thirty-Seven: The Trailer

Back of the Book Content

Chapter One: Dark and Stormy

It was a dark and stormy night when a nude woman showed up on my doorstep.

Really, it was, and sure, calling it a dark and stormy night is a literary no-no, but I was a writer – still am, even after all this – and I’m granted at least one hackneyed phrase.

Besides, I wasn’t kidding when I said it was dark and stormy. Nor was I kidding about the mysterious nude woman.

The electricity had cut off an hour ago, and a candle that smelled like pipe tobacco was the only thing lighting my tiny basement apartment.

It was cold, and even though I was tucked under a New England Patriots blanket my aunt and uncle had given me for Christmas last year, I could barely feel my toes.

Rain lashed at the tiny slit windows near my ceiling, and the entire apartment building creaked and moaned as thunder boomed in the sky.

Lightning cracked, and just as it subsided, I heard a terrible screech from the street outside.

My attention shifted to the front door as a car horn rang out. The person honked their horn again, and the peeling sound of tires slipped into my apartment.

What’s going on out there? I thought as I put my e-reader down.

There was no way for me to look out the window because it was too high up – a basement hopper window – and besides, the window was so grimy on the outside that I wouldn’t have been able to see anything anyway.

I had to do something, but …

Like I said before, I was a writer – still am – so I’m clearly not the I-heard-a-sound-outside-better-go-investigate-type.

I didn’t have a gun, didn’t have any type of survival or Boy Scout training, didn’t have any hand-to-hand combat skills, and didn’t venture out past dark very often.

Sure, I guess some writers were more daring – your Hemingways and your nature survivalist types … hell, even your gonzo guys – but not a science fantasy writer like me, and especially not a sci-fi writer who wrote gamer fiction.

What’s going on out there? I thought again as I ran my hand through my beard. More importantly, Why am I instinctively getting out of bed? Why am I putting my glasses on and smoothing my hands over my sweater?

A scream outside sent a shiver down my spine.

It was April in New Haven, Connecticut, and it was a lot more frigid than it should have been. I was reminded of this as my bare feet touched the concrete floor and a spark of cold cut into my bones.

I silenced the voice at the back of my head telling me to go back to my bed, get under the covers, finish my digital copy of The Art of War, and not venture into the unknown.

I slipped into my sandals and took the steps up to the exit.

The curiosity had gotten to me.

Here goes nothing, I thought as I unlocked the top bolt. I had to see what was going on out there.

A bitter wind fringed with droplets of water nearly tossed me off the steps.

But the weather was of no interest to me as my eyes fell on a naked woman lying on the curb, her skin pale and her long blonde hair a mess over her face.

She looked up at me and her eyes flashed white.

Help.

A feminine voice appeared inside my skull, and my first instinct was to glance around to see where it had come from.

Please …

The ghastly woman’s face began to morph, starting with her bleach blonde hair, which turned dark, and moving down to her chin, which elongated as her skin started to bubble and change color.

Her skin snapped back into place, and she collapsed after one last glance at me with her piercing white eyes.

By this point I was stooped in front of the wet woman, lifting her into my arms.

It was the start of a story that I could have never written, a story that many would later deem impossible, a story that would make my writing famous, and expose a terrible government secret.

She was the first Cherry Blossom Girl.

Chapter Two: You’re a Psychic Shifter, and I’m a Terrible Writer

Wooster Square, a small neighborhood near Yale University, was famous for two things.

The first was its pizza, which was remarkable for its taste and the thinness of its crust. The next was the Yoshino Japanese cherry blossom trees, which were planted in 1973 and had thrived ever since, resulting in a yearly festival.

I didn’t know the moment I brought the woman into my basement apartment that her arrival would signal the blooming of the cherry blossoms that next morning, but I’d find out soon enough, especially because my apartment was just a few blocks away from the square.

The only thing on my mind as I brought her in and wrapped her in my New England Patriots blanket, was getting her help.

This thought quickly changed when I set her on my bed, and her face began to change into mine.

The sheer horror of seeing someone’s face change into yours is something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemies. There I was, messy beard, dark bags under my eyes, glasses, hair parted at the side, pointy nose.

It was enough to throw anyone off balance.

I fell backward, cracking my ass on the hard concrete of my floor – dammit, I needed to get to Ikea to get a carpet, but I was broke! – and as I got to my feet, the nude female who had been lying on the curb outside my basement apartment had officially turned into me, down to my threadbare sweater.

She stared at me a moment longer and as she touched her face – the spitting image of my face – her eyes changed to the same color as mine. Hell, she even had the light beard stubble on the chin and the nonexistent stubble near the corners of my mouth down.

“What the hell are you?” I asked as I backed into my writing desk. My notepad fell, followed by my computer speakers and an old coffee cup filled with pens.

“What the hell are you?” she asked in my body but with her soft voice.

There was something melodic about the way she spoke, that soothed me even though she was speaking to me from my own body.

“Can you please … um … change back?” I asked.

Change to what?

This time her voice was in my head.

I could have sworn that just moments ago she spoke to me in person … but maybe that was in my head too. My features began to melt away, starting with the crown of her head, and soon she was back to her old self.

Pale skin, bleach blonde hair, blue eyes, voluptuous, clean-shaven – a Scandinavian dream if there ever was one. She didn’t seem to mind that she was sopping wet and in a stranger’s home. She also didn’t seem to mind that the blanket had fallen from her chest, revealing her large breasts.

The candlelight cast her silhouette to the wall on the right, which reminded me that she was indeed a real person. Because for a second there, I thought I’d eaten something bad for lunch, or that the one time I took shrooms in college was coming back to haunt me.

A Joseph Campbell quote came to me: “A blunder – apparently the merest chance – reveals an unsuspected world, and the individual is drawn into a relationship with forces that are not rightly understood.”

Ha! I wanted to scream at myself, if that’s not the understatement of the year …

The electricity flickered on and she looked up to the single bulb hanging from my ceiling.

“Yeah, it’s a crappy place,” I said.

“Who …?” She pointed at me.

“Who am I?”

She nodded, and her voice appeared in my head: Who are you? Gideon Caldwell? You are Gideon Caldwell.

“That’s right,” I told her as I touched my chest. “I’m Gideon.”

I hadn’t met many people named Gideon, and I doubted that anyone living in Wooster Square was named after someone from the Hebrew Bible. I wasn’t raised religious or anything; I think my parents just liked the name because of some song by a band named My Morning Jacket.

“I’m Gideon,” I said again, with more confidence. “Gideon Caldwell.”

Gideon? I like that name.

“How are you doing that, lady?”

She tilted her head at me. “My name isn’t lady.”

“I have no idea what your name is or what happened, but I’m calling the cops.”

I moved to my phone, which rested on its charging pad near my computer.

My legs suddenly stopped functioning.

They didn’t turn to jelly or anything, they just froze, as if they’d suddenly been crafted from concrete and left to dry for a week.

My legs frozen, I tried to reach my arms out, but I was too far away from my desk. I looked at the woman as fear spread across my face. I wanted to move, but at the same time, I had the urge to stay exactly where I was.

“You can … freeze people?”

My knees buckled, and I tumbled sideways, nearly colliding with my lamp.

No call. Her voice whispered inside my head.

“Let me get this straight,” I said as I got to my feet. “You can freeze things, talk in my head and … change forms.”

I pinched my arm. Nope, not dreaming.

“So,” I felt stupid as the next words tumbled out of my mouth. “You’re a psychic shapeshifter.”

The woman took a deep breath and fell, her head smacking against the edge of my bed and her exposed breasts bouncing up and down.

It must have been something I said.

I tried a few more times to get to my phone with the intent of calling an ambulance.

Every time I moved away from the bed, it became harder and harder to move, as if I were stepping through quicksand, or participating in a mud run. I had a friend who liked to do those mud runs, and I had no idea what the appeal was – nor did I like getting dirty, even though I lived in a kind of grimy basement apartment.

I glanced around. Well, it wasn’t too grimy, but it wasn’t that nice either.

My computer desk was against the wall next to the door – or I should say, the steps leading up to the door. Next to that were a futon and a small coffee table that I picked up from Goodwill. There was a kitchen, but it was the size of a closet, not even large enough for a microwave. On the opposite side of the kitchen was my bed, and on the opposite side of that was the bathroom.

I liked my bathroom, actually. It had a walk-in shower and an old medicine cabinet. I don’t know why I liked that cabinet, but I did.

In less than a week’s time, this place would be a distant memory, and my return to New Haven would be tainted by the loss of a friend and an attack from an incredibly powerful super being.

But the Gideon Caldwell a day before the cherry blossoms bloomed had no way of knowing this.

“Remember,” I told myself as I paced before the bed, “you’re the adult here, um, yeah, you’re the adult.”

I needed to cool down, and a single aspirin always helped calm my nerves for some reason. I went to the medicine cabinet, took a pill, closed it and looked at my own reflection in the mirror.

“You have to do this.”

It was like goddamn Tony Robbins had stepped into the room.

Confidence swelled in me, and sure, I sounded ridiculous, but somehow saying this gave me just enough confidence to go back into my bedroom / living room / kitchen / open area concept space and try to wake the mysterious woman.

Or tend to her.

I didn’t have the slightest clue how to ‘tend’ to someone, but I figured it would involve helping her sit up, or propping her up against a pillow, or putting her feet up – no, no, that was stupid.

I had no idea what I was doing.

Goodbye, Tony! I was nervous, shocked, my palms were sweaty, and I still felt the adrenaline rushing through me. Or at least, the after results of the adrenaline rushing through me.

I had written tons of fight scenes for my LitRPG, cyberpunk, and science fantasy books that I’d self-published to little or no accolades.

One time, I’d received a message from a reader telling me my fight scenes weren’t believable, and that adrenaline didn’t really make you feel thirsty, or make you feel somehow incapacitated, or make your heart beat so quickly that it felt like it had somehow lodged itself in your throat.

But I just experienced all that, and I knew that what I had written – while maybe a little bit exaggerated – was more or less close to the truth.

I was living proof that the aftershock of adrenaline sucked.

“Why are you arguing with this bad reviewer in your head?” I asked as I returned to the passed-out woman.

The concrete floor was still cold, but I was much more focused on her, and what to do with her, and how she was sleeping yet still preventing me from using my cell phone.

“Superheroes aren’t real, magic powers aren’t real, shifters aren’t real,” I told myself.

I tried writing superhero fiction before, but it wasn’t that great. I had been too poisoned by Marvel and DC Comics to ever create something on my own, so I scrapped that manuscript. Yet here I was with a possible superhero … or villain?

I glanced at the woman, my heart in my throat again.

Was it really in your throat? a voice inside my head asked, but I ignored that voice because it was really in my throat. I mean, I couldn’t feel it, but I could definitely taste blood – wait, no.

No, I couldn’t taste blood, but I was definitely shocked, and I definitely didn’t know how to react.

“Just breathe, Gideon, just breathe,” I told myself. Speaking in third person was a sure sign of insanity. “You can do this, Gideon.”

“Please, be quiet,” the woman finally said to me. “Your brain is so wild, so … untamed.”

“Welcome to being a writer,” I said. “Okay, I’m not a great writer or anything, I just wanted to say something clever to you … um, yeah, I’ll just be quiet for a moment.”

She sat up suddenly, tears streaming down her face.

I dropped to the floor as my thoughts tore out of my head.

It took every ounce of courage not to shriek in agony as my brain pulsed, my eyes bulged, my temples grew to the size of turnips. Something moved through me, razed my inner organs, toasted my medulla oblongata.

“Please, stop,” I whispered, pain tearing at my insides. “Please …”

“Sleep,” she said, and with those words, I felt my eyes grow tired.

I stood and stumbled forward, propelled by an unknown force.

Quiet, Writer Gideon.

I sat down on the bed next to her and yawned. I could feel her presence next to me even with my drowsiness. My head slouched forward. And I slowly began to lie back onto the bed.

I felt her join me moments later, her wet hair against my chest and neck.

Chapter Three: No Naked Moms in the Morning

“Mom?”

Morning came and with it an absolutely terrifying visual. My fifty-seven-year-old mother stood before me completely naked – breasts hanging off to the side, stretch marks on her belly, an untamed bush, and a gnarly scar from her recent knee surgery.

“What in the fuck?” I shouted, pulling away from her.

It wasn’t that I’d forgotten what happened last night, nor the mysterious woman who had shown up at my doorstep; it was more the fact that I’d just woken up and saw my mom standing naked in front of me.

It was an unsettling experience, to say the least.

I was so confused upon waking up to such a sight that I didn’t put two and two together and realize it was the shifter, or psychic – or as I quickly recalled, both.

“Please … anything but that,” I told the mysterious woman, my eyes clenched shut. “Any image but that.”

“Does this image disturb you?” she asked in a soft voice.

I nodded. “Just be yourself.”

Who knew what ‘herself’ really was, or what that loaded phrase actually entailed. For all I knew, her Scandinavian features were also just a form she’d taken … that she was actually someone else entirely. Hell, she could even be a man.

That got me thinking about shapeshifters in general and where their exterior features go when they change form.

I never thought about those things when I watched Mystique on the big screen or read comic books about shapeshifters. Hell, even while playing some type of shifter in an RPG, the thought never came to me.

I guess that was the writer in me – the clueless writer, really … because if I had been a better writer or a better observer, I would have probably thought of these things before.

At any rate, I had no idea where exterior body parts like muscle mass and boobage went when a shifter changed forms, and that was probably because shifters weren’t supposed to be real in the first place.

“I’m living in a fantasy world,” I said, my eyes still shut.

“I changed back.”

I slowly peeked my eyes open to see that the woman had changed back to her original form: pale skin, long blonde hair, deep blue eyes.

Of course I took a peek at her other parts – what man wouldn’t? – but I tried to keep my gaze at shoulder level and professional.

If you’d asked me the day before, my plan for this morning was to just wake up and write a thousand words or so in my newest book, which I was calling Breakpoint Online.

Looking back, the premise wasn’t very clever. Basically, a guy trapped in a VR world was forced to team up with his arch nemesis, a mysterious female, in order to free himself – but the story was fresh on my mind, and I had an urge to finish it, just get it done.

What would you like to do to me?

“What would I like to do to you?” I couldn’t help but smile at her. “That’s a weird question to ask someone when you first meet them. Also, you’re speaking in my head again. I’d prefer if you just spoke to me out loud. Is that okay with you? As long as you can speak with your real voice, please just do that. I have enough things zipping around in my mind and stressing me the hell out … like the fact that you’ve shown up.”

“I can go,” she said turning to the door.

If you’re thinking that I should have let her go to prevent all that was about to happen from happening, you would be correct. If I’d let her go just then, my life wouldn’t have changed, I wouldn’t have ‘broken bad,’ and I would have gone on to live a normal-ish New Englander life.

But put yourself in my shoes for just a moment.

I was a twenty-five-year-old guy who worked in what was basically a Yale gift shop (although we sold other things including tchotchkes and for some reason, lamps – lots of fucking lamps), who lived alone, hadn’t had a girlfriend in two years, had a hipster beard, and who wrote science fiction for gamers as a hobby.

Now I’m not going to sit here and tell you that I was a loser, because I’ve met way bigger losers than myself, but I definitely wasn’t a winner – which didn’t necessarily make me a loser, but it put me pretty close to being one.

“Wait,” I called after her. “You can stay but … maybe put some clothes on for a second so I can figure all this out.”

Also an amateur move, but having a beautiful nude woman standing before me was distracting, and I needed to get to the bottom of what was going on here.

She agreed and turned to my closet, where she found a button up shirt that was a few sizes too large for her and put it on. She tried on a few of my pants only to realize that they wouldn’t fit her very well, which I could have told her if she was paying attention to me.

The thing was, she wasn’t paying attention to me in the least bit.

Even as I spoke to her, she just focused on her task of getting dressed, ignoring me entirely.

Eventually, she settled on a pair of sweatpants I’d been meaning to get rid of.

“You should put on some of my underwear too,” I told her. I don’t know why I told her this, I just figured that everyone should be wearing underwear.

She didn’t feel the same way. With my button up shirt over her chest and my sweatpants on, she turned to me and did a little twirl.

“Nice clothes.”

I shrugged. “Sorry I don’t have any, um, women’s clothing, but my uncle’s the one into that stuff.”

I was trying to be funny, but my humor – however terrible it may be – had little or no effect on her.

She approached me, the movement of her shoulders reminding me of the way a tiger stalks its prey.

I was suddenly nervous seeing her so close to me, and no, I wasn’t the type of guy who had never been with a woman before or anything like that, it was just … well, it was all of it.

All of it.

From her sudden appearance in my life to the way she looked at me. I was on pins and needles (another cliché, but fuck it, it worked).

“Let’s start with the basics,” I told her. “How did you end up on the street last night?”

I couldn’t get a sense of the weather outside, but I knew the sun was out, and I knew that the thunderstorm had gone somewhere else, possibly over to Long Island. Good riddance.

“I …” she bit her lip. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

Something about the way she looked at me betrayed what she’d just said. I sensed it at the time but figured I shouldn’t press it.

“Okay then, so what about your abilities? I mean you can change your appearance, and I guess you can change your clothes too, right?”

This made me question if I should have given her any of my clothes or if it would have even mattered.

“Yes.” A white kimono with blue flowers cascaded down her body.

I had no idea where she’d seen something like that until I remembered that I had an old painting of a Japanese woman hanging near my bed.

I glanced over my shoulder at the painting to see the geisha in her white kimono with blue flowers to confirm this.

I swallowed hard. “That is something,” I said as the white makeup on the woman’s face intensified and her deep red lips bloomed with color. “So, you can change into anyone or anything. What about your voice, does your voice change?”

“I don’t know.” It was the same voice as before. She stood there in her geisha form, her hand on her throat.

“Okay, change back into me, and speak to me.” I looked at her curiously for a moment. “You know what I mean.”

The woman morphed into my spitting image, even down to my cowlick. She wore the same gray house sweater I currently wore, and the same beard hung from her chin.

“Hi,” she said, “my name is Gideon, and I live in a dirty place.”

I laughed. While she spoke to me from my body, it was still her soft voice.

It’s not that bad, I thought as I cursed myself for leaving a pile of clothes near my writing desk.

“This is a very dirty place.” She turned, and for the first time, I saw something on her neck that troubled me.

It was some type of port covered by a small flap of flesh. If she hadn’t been in my form, I wouldn’t have seen it. The port was just behind her right ear, and as she turned back to me, she noticed that I’d seen it.

“What is that?” I asked.

“I …” Tears began to well in her eyes – in my eyes, because she was still in my form. “I don’t know.”

“Can I touch it?” I asked.

She approached me and sat down on the bed.

Before touching her neck, I touched her sweater. It was hard not to gasp when I found that the texture was spot on.

“That’s amazing,” I whispered. “It’s like you can grow clothes.”

“Grow clothes,” she said. “I can grow clothes.” A dress started to appear on her body, yet she still hadn’t changed from my body, which only makes it harder to describe. I’d never worn a dress before, even for Halloween.

“Change back to your original form,” I told her.

My face melted away, replaced by her long blonde hair and strikingly beautiful eyes. Her clothes morphed back into the ones she’d taken from my closet earlier, and she moved her hair to the side, craning her neck toward me.

“Is that …” I used my fingernail to push open the small covering on the port.

I’d never seen this type of technology; it was like they’d fused flesh and plastic to make the covering.

“Do you mind?” I asked as I hovered my hand over her heart. She shook her head and I placed my hand on her chest, feeling her heartbeat. I then checked her pulse. “You’re definitely human,” I concluded as I returned to the port on her neck and its covering.

“Yes, I’m human.”

“It’s like the consistency of a callus or something.” I popped the cover open.

“What is it?” she asked, her eyes focused forward.

I laughed. “It’s a mini USB port. That’s … incredibly odd.”

It was 2030, and some things still charged using these ports, although most electronics charged wirelessly.

“I can plug you in,” I whispered. And my immediate thought – and seriously, blame the gamer and gamelit writer in me for this one – was that I could customize her and adjust her stats.

I quickly replaced this thought with a better, more logical one: Maybe I can find out more about her if I plugged her in.

“What are you thinking, Writer Gideon?”

“Writer Gideon, huh? Okay, that name works. I’m thinking we need to plug you in to my laptop. At the very least, maybe we can adjust your shifter voice settings, to make it more believable. Just a hunch.”

“And then what?”

“I don’t know just yet,” I admitted.

“And we can get out of this dirty place?”

“My place isn’t that bad, but sure. You’re right. We can get out of here. At least I think so. Let me order the cable I need from EBAYmazon. It’ll be here in an hour or so; then we can get started.”

She looked at the arc of light coming from the windows. “Can we go outside?”

“You mean while we’re waiting for the shipment to arrive?” I considered this for a moment. “Sure, but change your form to a different woman, and, um, just don’t do anything crazy. No shifting in public.”

She changed first to my mother, and I laughed.

“No, not her. Please, stop doing that.”

Her form morphed to the geisha on my wall.

“Better, but you’ll draw attention with all the makeup and the hairstyle.”

The geisha’s bun disappeared, and the makeup melted away.

“Yeah, that’ll work, but seriously – no changing forms in public. At least not yet.”

Chapter Four: Shifting in Public

It was a little cold outside, but not too bad. Even if it had been cold, it would have been hard to focus on the weather. As soon as I opened the door to my apartment I was greeted by a sea of cherry blossom trees, truly a sight to behold.

They had bloomed overnight, and the sidewalk was covered in some of the blossoms that had already fallen from the trees. Farther into Wooster Square, people took pictures of the blossoms, posing in front of them. My end of the street was relatively quiet, though. Which would turn out to be a blessing in disguise.

“I really need a name for you,” I told the mysterious woman as I continued to take in the scene.

She stood next to me in my clothing but still with her geisha looks. Meaning she looked Japanese or some type of Asian. I wasn’t good at identifying Asians, but I had a friend in high school who’s from Taiwan who could tell me where any Asian she saw originated from based on their fashion sense and facial features.

But that was beside the point.

I needed something to call her besides ‘mysterious woman,’ or ‘naked shifter who showed up at my door.’

My phone buzzed, and I quickly took it out of my pocket. It was a message from another author I knew, a Canadian fantasy sci-fi author named Luke Lyrian. He mainly wrote paranormal space operas, but he also dabbled in gamelit.

Luke: Hey.

I’d never met Luke in person, but we’d been talking on GoogleFace for like two years now. Funny, that.

“Beautiful looking,” the woman whispered as cherry blossoms began to stitch across her sweater.

“Remember, no shifting in public,” I reminded her. “And regarding the cherry blossoms, you showed up at the right time. They don’t bloom for very long, and if you had shown up a month later, they’d be gone. But like I was saying, what do you want me to call you?”

My phone buzzed again, and I glanced down at it.

Luke: So, I got this cover concept back from my artist. It’s just a concept, but I’m loving it. What do you think?

Me: That’s fucking sick.

Luke: You like it?

Me: It’s ill. Looks good as a thumbnail too. I’d add a bit more texture, maybe something to the title to make it pop. Not that yellow doesn’t already pop, but to ground it a little. So, I guess not pop, but give it some character. I like the subtle color change on the author name. I wish I could think of a cool ‘Star’ title, but I don’t want to steal your thunder.

Luke: Plenty of Star titles to go around. It’s all about writing to market.

Me: Star Toucher. Star Battler. Star Justice. Star Delvers. Star Online. Star Hammer Online. Paranormal Star Hammerz Online. Star Bastards – that last one was a crazy book, btw. Who would have thought that a dwarf, a goblin, and a gnome would make a killer space trio?

Luke: For sure. That book sold thousands and thousands of copies.

Me: And it spawned so many knockoffs. Star Bitties, Star Kidz, Star Dirt Boys, Star Bistro. Did you read Star Bistro?

Luke: I did not.

Me: It was about a bistro in some galaxy far far away that was taken over by a group of Muslim terrorists. That book got some flack, but the fight scenes were choice.

Luke: I made it through the first two chapters. Yeah, no. Not for me.

“Name …” the woman said as she touched her face. “I need a name.”

“No changing forms,” I reminded her. “Just let me message my friend real quick and then we’ll go check out the cherry blossoms.”

I replied to Luke’s last comment.

Me: Hey, do you have a second to video chat?

We’d never video chatted before, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to ask.

Luke: Driving at the moment. What’s up?

Me: I’m going to tell you something that may freak you out just a little bit, FYI.

Luke: Freak me out? Is it a new book? Did you finish Breakpoint Online?

Me: Let’s just talk later. Video chat. You’re going to want to see this, because when I tell you what I got into last night, you won’t believe me.

Luke: Did you have a crazy night or something? Eat too many wings and nachos?

Me: If you only knew …

“Can we go see the cherry blossoms now?” The woman took a few steps closer to the square.

“That’s the plan.” I joined her, pocketing my phone. “Also, I need a name from you.”

She shrugged.

“Okay, so if you won’t tell me a name, how about we come up with an alias for you?”

The woman turned and looked at me, something flashing behind her dark, Asian eyes. A sudden gust of wind whipped strands of her black hair across her face. “What about the name Cherry?” she asked.

I started to laugh.

“What is wrong with this name?”

“It’s just kind of a …”

I was going to say stripper name but didn’t know if that would offend her. Also, I didn’t know if Cherry was a stripper name; it just seemed like it might be.

“Never mind, let’s just call you Grace.”

“Why Grace?” She whispered the name a few more times, touched her chest, considered the name.

“It’s the working name for a female character I’ve been writing for a new series I’m working on.”

“Series?”

We stopped in front of one of the cherry blossom trees and I pressed my hand against its trunk. The trunk was cold, still a little wet from last night, and the beautiful bright pink and white flowers above betrayed the coldness of its core.

“I write books,” I reminded her. “And I’m working on a series.”

“Writer Gideon.”

“That’s me. And for now, at least until I can figure out who you really are, I’m going to call you Grace.”

She nodded. “I like it.”

Her face drained of color when two black SUVs appeared on the opposite block. “We need to go back to your place,” she said suddenly.

“Why’s that?”

Grace pulled at my arm, fear in her eyes as she whispered, “We have to go.”

A couple across the street was watching us. “We’re drawing attention to ourselves,” I said.

Here’s the thing: I had no idea what I was doing, nor was I fully aware at the time as to why she’d shown up at my place.

While it is easy in retrospect to put the pieces together and realize that something was terribly wrong – beautiful women don’t normally show up at sci-fi writers’ doorsteps – I was naive and clueless.

That was, until I saw the utter fear in her eyes.

The two vehicles skidded to a halt, and men who clearly weren’t law enforcement officers kicked open the door, weapons drawn. They didn’t wear typical police uniforms but black outfits with armor up to their necks and visors over their eyes. Tactical suits, with some type of advanced recognition system.

My oh-shit meter went through the roof.

My knees buckled, my heart backflipped in my chest, my mouth went dry, and I began to clam up.

Grace turned to the men, her image wavering as it changed from dressed-down Asian lady back to her true form.

The five men came for her, and as they did, she lifted one hand, curling her fingers in the air as anger spread across her face.

The first two stopped, touched their neck, exchanged glances, and began to choke.

The first man to pass them stopped dead in his tracks, his face contorting under the transparent visor as he began to scream.

He kept screaming and began firing his weapon, which was some type of stunning device, into the cherry blossoms.

The last two men dropped to their knees, took off their visors, and raised their weapons to their heads.

“No!” I shouted as they triggered the weapon, and bolts of electricity took them both down.

I glanced at the couple across the street as the two men fell. Looking left, I saw Grace with one hand aimed at our assailants, and the other hand aimed at the couple.

Her eyes were completely white, her hair starting to rise off her shoulders.

Even though I’d barely moved a muscle, I was out of breath. My hands twitched, and I was surprised to see my legs moving beneath me.

Other people will see us, I thought, remembering that we lived in a dense area with brownstones and apartments that faced the street. Someone was likely watching.

Even with this thought at the back of my skull, and knowing that it wouldn’t be very difficult to locate me, I returned with her to my basement apartment.

In retrospect, we should have got the hell out of there – out of Connecticut, even out of America – but I was still new at this, and panic had clouded my thinking capabilities.

“Who’s after you?” I asked as we reached my apartment. I fiddled with the key, opened the door, and together, we ran down the steps into my dingy apartment.

Grace stood near the door with her hands at the ready, watching the opening intently, waiting for someone to come through.

If you listed all the things a noob would do in this situation, I would pass with flying colors. If it were a test, I would fail miserably.

But I eventually got my bearings, and as I did so, I started to put the pieces of this puzzle together.

Mysterious woman shows up on doorstep? Check. Some type of law enforcement agency after her, likely federal? Check. A little bit of amnesia? Definitely. A possible government conspiracy? Get out your tin hats. Danger for Yours Truly? You bet. But as Gabriel Garcia Marquez said in Love in the Time of Cholera, “Wisdom comes to us when it can no longer do any good.”

Somehow, I had found myself in either a) an urban fantasy or b) the start of a superhero story.

Except I wasn’t a superhero, and the shifter psychic with me didn’t seem like a superhero. She’d just attacked the feds, or at least people I assumed were federal agents.

But is she a villain?

And this begged the question:

Does the opposite of superhero always have to be villain?

“Quiet, Writer Gideon, your mind is on fire,” she said, her eyes trained on the door.

“Who are those people?” I asked. I could feel the color return to my face.

I was frightened – hell, I was scared shitless and witless – but I was also intrigued, and part of me knew that with what she’d already shown me, it would take quite a bit of manpower to take her down.

“They’re after me.”

The next question was stupid, but I had to ask it anyway. “Are you a mutant?”

She turned to me as a smile crept up her face. “Not like the mutants in your head.”

The mutants in my head? Yep, she’d read my thoughts again, and likely stumbled upon a preteen fascination with X-Men.

“Sorry, dumb question,” I told her. My phone buzzed. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said as I looked at a prompt from EBAYmazon telling me that my package had been dropped off. Damn them and their fast delivery!

“Looks like we have a package.”

She only nodded.

“The package may help us.”

If I could plug her in, I’d likely be able to figure out a little more about what was going on here. But that might give our location away. Unless …

I moved over to my computer and unhooked the Wi-Fi. Again, an amateurish move that I should have made last night. But I was trying, and that’s all that counts.

A few thoughts came to me rapid-fire.

First, my basement apartment would not do, at least not for much longer.

We only had one exit, and that exit let out onto the street, which meant that we were trapped and could easily be taken out with, say, a smoke bomb. Or whatever else a government agency trying to capture someone who’s not a mutant, yet has mutant powers, would use.

I’m not a mutant, her voice said in my head.

“Yeah, I know, I’m just thinking things through, and no talking in my head.”

Your second idea is better. Plan B.

I hadn’t even gotten to my second idea, and the fact that she knew what it was only made me more nervous to be around her.

Could she read my future thoughts? Could she immediately understand and interpret my sudden desires?

She didn’t answer that one, thank Jeebus.

So, I started prepping for Plan B by packing a duffle bag.

I grabbed my laptop and its charger, some clothes, my passport, any documents that I thought were necessary including my birth certificate and my social security card. Yep, I still didn’t quite realize the seriousness of my situation – that these documents would prove useless to me after what I’d do later – but like I said, I was still getting used to this breaking bad thing.

Once I had my shit packed, I ordered a self-driving UberLyft to pick us up. I knew we’d be trackable, but at least we could make it a little harder to find us, which was part two of Plan B: using Grace’s abilities to our advantage.

If people were after us, and if we were going to fight for our lives, we might as well go out in style.

I actually thought this at the time, which was odd for a semi-reclusive bearded writer guy like me. But a little voice at the back of my head told me it was the right thing to think, and as I’d later find out, that voice belonged to Grace.

Chapter Five: Adjusting Grace’s Stats

If you imagine me peeking out into the streets holding a broom with the hope of braining one of the Agent Smiths – I still, at this point had no idea what to call them – then you wouldn’t be far off.

I didn’t have a broom, but I did have a duffle bag and a hunting knife my uncle gave me – yes, the cross-dressing one. I also had a broom, but this was mostly so I could try to scoot the EBAYmazon package away from the stoop to a more reachable location.

Damn USPS never delivered my packages correctly, preferring to leave them on the stoop. A stoop accessible by anyone passing.

But I’d gotten lucky, and the package was relatively easy to reach. The mini USB cable was in a yellow envelope, wrapped in plastic bubble wrap. Knowing I didn’t have time to really play around with it, I stuffed it in my duffle bag.

Behind me, Grace placed a hand on my shoulder, and my nerves tingled.

It took us all of five minutes to rip my apartment apart. It was her idea, to make the grimy place dirtier, and I obliged.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” I said for probably the tenth time.

“You’ll get used to it.”

I’ve never been the type that would just set everything down and go off on an adventure, but I was twenty-five now, and I worked at a fucking Yale gift shop. I had a BA in Comparative Literature from the University of Southern Connecticut, and I hadn’t had a girlfriend in years.

If ever there was a time to abandon it all, now was that time.

All this to say: I fucking destroyed my computer with a hammer.

My work was saved in the cloud anyway, and having seen Grace use superpowers, I knew that whatever happened from this point forward would not involve my shitty basement apartment.

“Here goes nothing,” I whispered as the self-driving UberLyft pulled up to the curb.

As we climbed into the car, I glanced around to see that all signs of the ‘security’ team from earlier were gone – poof – as if they’d never existed in the first place.

The thought came to me: Am I being too extreme about this? Should I just lay low for a while?

But, as Henry Miller once famously wrote in Tropic of Cancer, “There are people who cannot resist the desire to get into a cage with wild beasts and be mangled.”

If there was a quote to define my life going forward, it was this one.

As a drop off point, I’d chosen a three-star hotel in East Haven near the Long Island Sound. We were definitely going to get out of Connecticut, but I wanted to spend some time trying to figure out what Grace was and why she was on the run before we hit the open road for good.

The UberLyft curved to the on-ramp as Grace scooted closer to me, and her arm immediately wrapped around mine.

We knew not to speak in the UberLyft, just in case we were being recorded, and I hoped our disguises would at least help us find cover for long enough to get our bearings.

She’d chosen to become a cute redhead with glasses and a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. A tight pantsuit and high heels completed her outfit.

I didn’t have a great disguise, but I did have a Yale baseball cap and a pair of fake Wayfarers on for good measure. I also wore a scarf around my neck that I’d tugged up to the bottom of my beard.

Grace laid her head on my shoulder and looked up at me.

I wanted to hug her in that moment, to share my apprehension of the choices we’d just made, but I kept my composure, focusing on the cars around us instead.

Keep your cool, Gideon, I reminded myself, like it somehow mattered.

By stepping into this UberLyft, I’d made my decision. There was no turning back.

We arrived at the hotel and the vehicle dropped us off in the back, as per my instructions. We waited for the UberLyft to leave before speaking.

“I’m counting on you,” I told her, “and your abilities.”

She nodded. “What do I say again?”

“I want you to tell the person at the front desk that we have a reservation. Make them think it has been paid for and that our names are … Edward and Jill King.”

“Edward and Jill King.”

I could tell by the glint in her eyes that she knew what to do but that she too needed some reassurance. I would later learn this about her and the other one like her: even with their great powers, they still needed reassurance; they still needed to be reminded sometimes of just how strong they were.

We entered the lobby, Grace still a redhead. There were a couple of fake plants, a television broadcasting some shitty local newscast, a coffee bar with a Keurig machine, and a lime green sofa. Tasteful.

After smoothing her hands over her dress, Grace stopped in front of the receptionist’s desk and told the lady what we’d gone over.

“Edward and Jill King …” The receptionist took a moment to scroll through a list of scheduled guests. “I don’t see you here. Did you make the reservation online?”

“We sure did,” I told her.

“Yes, we made it, um, online,” said Grace.

A look of confusion followed by sudden understanding smoothed over the receptionist’s face. She nodded, prepared the room key, and told us about checkout and free continental breakfast in the morning.

“Enjoy your stay,” she called after us.

“That was awesome,” I told Grace as soon as we’d gone up the elevator and found room 224.

“Really?” she asked, turning to me. It was like she’d never been complimented before; she wasn’t quite confused, but she didn’t smile nor offer any indication that she appreciated admiration.

“Really.”

I scanned the keycard and the door popped open. Whoever had cleaned the place went overboard on the air freshener, which made me wonder what the hell had gone on in here the previous night.

I set my duffle bag on the floor and got my laptop out.

Once I plugged in the cable, I moved over to the bed.

“Lay down,” I told Grace as I booted up my machine.

“Okay.”

The receptionist had given us a single room with a king-size bed. Grace’s decision or the receptionist’s? Who knew.

My phone buzzed, and I saw that it was a message from Luke. I ignored it for the moment, so focused I was on plugging into Grace’s neck and seeing what I could discover.

I wasn’t disappointed.

Grace rested with her hands on her chest, the mini USB cable plugged into her neck.

“Okay, here goes nothing,” I said as I plugged the other end into my laptop.

A shadow box appeared.

[Initiating user]

[Anonymous User Y/N?]

I thought about that for a moment. If I selected ‘yes,’ then it may trigger some alarm that gives off her location. If I selected ‘no,’ then I’d likely have to log in somehow, and I for sure didn’t have any login ID.

“It’s asking me if I’m an anonymous user,” I told her. “Do you know anything about this?”

“No.”

“Okay.” I thought some more. “If I say I’m not an anonymous user, do you think you could help me find a password? Surely some part of you knows who installed this or was around when someone plugged into the port in your neck.”

She tilted her chin and looked down at me, an indecipherable expression on her face.

“Well?”

“Username: 1351885. Password: 1QAZ2WSX3EFV4321QWEASD.”

“Um, shit. That was awesome, Grace.”

“Thank you, Writer Gideon.”

I bolted to the room’s desk and found a pen and a hotel notepad. I asked her to repeat the details, and as I wrote them down, I got to wondering if it was caps or lower-case letters. I asked, but she didn’t quite understand what I meant.

[Anonymous User Y/N?]

Here goes nothing, I thought as I selected ‘N.’ The username and password screen popped up. I typed the username and tried the password in all caps.

It worked.

An hourglass appeared on my desktop. It began doing the AppleSoft spin, the sand moving from one side of the hourglass to the other as it processed. My laptop whirred, the fans kicking into gear.

It was risky; I wasn’t foolish enough to believe that what I was doing wouldn’t end up triggering some type of built-in locator and getting us caught.

But curiosity killed the cat, and many times it also killed your favorite writer.

Or something like that.

My curiosity paid off when a program opened after a few more seconds of loading. There were file folders – old school style with a plus sign that opened the drop-down menus. A ton of folders, actually, and even more subfolders.

“How is it?” she asked.

“Just getting in. This may take me a couple minutes.”

“I’m hungry.”

“Me too, actually,” I said as I continued to click through folders and subfolders.

I’d been so shocked to wake up and see my naked mother before me that I forgot to eat breakfast. Just thinking about food made me feel like my blood sugar dropped.

“Okay, we’ll order a pizza, and when they get here I need you to work your mojo.”

“My mojo?” she asked, tilting her head toward me again.

“Don’t turn your head too much, and by your mojo, I meant your special abilities.”

“Should I change my form?”

“No, I mean your mind abilities.” I stopped scrolling through folders and looked over at her. “We don’t have any cash, and I don’t want to use my cards at the moment. Just in case we’re being tracked.”

“Okay,” she said, confusion still evident in her voice.

“Trust me.”

“I’m hungry.”

“I’ll order the pizza now and get back to checking the files. Just hang for a moment; close your eyes, relax.”

“Okay, Writer Gideon.”

I was about to order a pizza with my phone, when I figured that would be traced back to me. So I decided to do something Gen Z rarely did. I moved to the phone near the bed, read the Wendy’s Hut pizza sticker on the phone, called the number, and placed an order to be paid upon delivery.

They asked me for a credit card, but I was able to weasel my way out of it by saying that I didn’t have one, that I was kind of an off-the-grid guy, but that I did have a hotel room. I gave him the hotel information from the notepad, just in case they wanted to have the hotel charge me.

I assured them I had cash a couple more times and they obliged.

“When they get here, I’ll tell you what to say before we open the door, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Now, let’s see what I can figure out here,” I said as I returned to my laptop.

I scrolled down the list of available folders and quickly found a folder with the same code she’d told me earlier: 1QAZ2WSX3EFV4321QWEASD. I checked the number I’d written on the piece of paper and clicked it.

A new shadow box appeared.

Build: 008

Base height: 181 Centimeters

Base weight: 54 kilos

I scrolled through this information, not too keen on figuring out her bust size and the other details it listed.

I found a section about abilities and clicked to a submenu.

Main: Psychic

* Omnikinesis, Level 1

* Second Sight, Level 1

* Psychometry, Level 5

* Telepathy, Level 8

* Clairsentience, Level 7

* Psychokinesis, Level 1

* Hypnosis, Level 6

“Shit …” I said as I finished reading through her main abilities.

Each of them allowed me to click and explore further, but the next screens were grayed out and slightly blurred. From what I could tell in the grayed-out section, there were toggles, meaning …

“You’re customizable,” I gasped.

“Okay,” she said, still staring up at the ceiling.

“And I’ll hurry, Grace; we have all day to play around with this.”

“It’s fine. I’m hungry.”

“Pizza is coming. Ever had pizza?”

“No.”

“You’ll love it.”

I scrolled back to the main folder under abilities and clicked on it.

There wasn’t much information, but I was able to modify the options, unlike her psychic abilities. They were also presented differently, with little dials next to them that I could adjust. All aside from ‘Voice Match,’ which was already at its highest level.

Main Second: Shifter

Speed of Change: 10

Texture Consistency: 10

Opacity: 10

Voice Match: 2

“Ah, that’s where it is …” I clicked the ‘Voice Match’ dial and turned it up to ten.

“Did you find something?” she asked.

“I want you to change into my form, and speak to me in my voice.”

Her face began to melt away, and from the center of the melting point, my face began to take shape. My auburn hair, my beard, my glasses, my slight Adam’s apple, and the rest of my body.

The only thing that made it odd – aside from every part of what was going on at the moment – was the fact that she was still wearing women’s clothing.

“Okay, say something.”

“Something,” she said in my voice.

At least I assumed it was my voice. As Chuck Klosterman once famously asked, “How do we tell the difference between an instrument and its sound?”

“That is crazy, seriously crazy. And I just realized that I don’t really know what my own voice sounds like,” I finally said. “So, can you change into another shape – something different from your base form?”

“Sure.” She began to change into the receptionist we met downstairs. The receptionist was a black woman, maybe in her early thirties, with curly hair and a birthmark on the side of her neck.

“How’s this look?” she asked in the woman’s voice.

“That is so awesome, I can’t even begin to describe how awesome that is.”

An idea came to me. I moved to the flat screen television and turned it on manually. It was a newscast, with a stern-looking man in a suit and tie reporting on the financial markets.

She tilted her head down just a little bit, and the light from the television flashed across her eyes.

“Can you change into him?”

It only took her a moment to completely transform her body into the man on the television, even down to the pin on his lapel.

“Say something.”

“Something.”

“Okay, funny joke. Say something else; tell me about your day.”

“I woke up today in the house of a strange man named Writer Gideon,” she said in the newscaster’s voice. “Except it wasn’t a house, it was a dirty apartment. I looked in his mind for a minute and changed into his mother, which he doesn’t like. We went outside and saw the beautiful cherry blossoms. Then we were attacked. We came to this hotel, ordered pizza – I’m very hungry – and Writer Gideon played around with my settings.”

“That’s so weird,” I started to say. Instead, I said, “Okay, next test. Can you change into an object?”

“An object?” she asked, her manly brows furrowing.

“Like a table.”

“No.”

“An animal?”

“No.”

“Can you change on command?”

“What do you mean?”

“Change into an Asian woman.”

She turned back into the Geisha form that she’d taken in my bedroom / living room / kitchen / home.

So, she has to see it, or have seen it, to change into its form. But what about my mom?

“I saw your mom in your head,” she told me.

“Reading my thoughts. That’s right, you’re good at that.”

“I didn’t speak inside your head this time.”

“You’re right, you didn’t, and thanks for that.” I returned my focus to the laptop and looked at the other options. One thing I wanted to play around with was the opacity, which seemed kind of strange to me.

“You can change back into your base form now,” I told her.

Boom.

The Scandinavian beauty was back, her hair long and flowing, her eyes blue, her skin crystal clear, and her large chest visible under my loose clothing. I don’t know what part of me liked the fact that she was still wearing my shitty clothing, but there was something kind of sexy about it.

It reminded me of my ex, when she’d stay over and sleep in my stuff.

“Don’t do it,” I told her as her face started to split and morph into my ex’s.

A tight smile took shape on her face.

“Yeah, you know how to push someone’s buttons, I’ll give you that.”

“You’re pushing my buttons,” she said, using her eyes to point at the laptop.

“We’re going to try something,” I said. “So relax and let’s see what happens here.”

I adjusted the opacity down, and to my other horror, she began to fade away until she was completely invisible.

“That’s not fucking possible,” I whispered as I reached out for her. I could still touch her, but if I set the opacity at one, I couldn’t see her. “I can turn you into a ghost?”

“A ghost?”

I returned the opacity to its normal level and she reappeared.

“Yeah, let’s just, um, not get too crazy with that one yet.”

There were a ton of things I wanted to test, including using my cell phone to adjust her stats. I knew I’d need a mini USB to mini USB to do that, but it was something I could get later. Further, there were all those other folders.

“Can I rest for a moment?” she asked, just as I was about to perform some new tests. “I’m hungry.”

“Sure, let’s eat, and then go from there.” I unplugged the cable from her neck and put my laptop up.

On the TV, the newscaster was still rambling about the stock market.

“Come up here,” Grace told me as she sat up and leaned back against the headboard.

“Don’t mind if I do.”

Chapter Six: Stolen Pizza and the Idea of a Lifetime

“Remember what I told you,” I said to Grace as she approached the door. She held a piece of paper in her hand, and as she adjusted her blouse, her hair slicked back and darkened.

“Hello,” she said as she opened the door.

I could tell by the guy’s scratchy voice that he was in his teenage years, but I didn’t feel too bad ripping him off. I was already beyond that, already knew that I’d crossed the threshold between outstanding citizen and future grifter.

Well, I guess I was never ever an outstanding citizen, but at least I’ve never stolen anything or tried to rip anyone off. Scratch that – I did steal my Yale hat from the gift shop I worked at. But that was beside the point.

“Chicken and spinach, correct?” the teen asked.

“Yes, and here is your money,” she said in a sweet voice; stilted, but sweet. “I also left a little for a tip.”

“Um …”

I felt my tension grow, but I ignored it. I knew she could do it, and I had the feeling if she couldn’t do it, she could simply fry his mind.

“Enjoy the pizza,” he said as the door shut.

“You didn’t tell him to pay for the actual pizza with his own money?” I asked her. “Remember, the paper was just a decoy.”

She opened the door and called after him. “Where is your money?”

I cringed. If she didn’t have control over his mind, that would have been one hell of a question to ask.

“In my wallet.”

“Okay. Go to your car. Use money from your wallet to pay for the pizza. Thanks!”

“No problem, enjoy,” he said.

Grace turned to me, a huge smile on her face.

The incredibly delicious scent of pizza had already drifted over to me, and my mouth was watering by the time she brought it to the bed.

“Be careful with the pizza,” I reminded her. “It’s pretty greasy.” I opened the box and went for my first slice.

“I don’t mind.” She stuffed a slice in her mouth. Cheese dripped from her chin and she lifted her hand to wipe it off.

I laughed.

“What?” she asked with her mouth full.

“It was cute, that’s all,” I said around my own mouthful of pizza.

“I’m eating, and it is cute?”

“Never mind.” I took another bite.

We returned our focus to the television. There was a movie on now, an action flick with a famous Hollywood star named Natalie Johansson. I looked from Natalie Johansson on the screen, wearing a torn tank top and a submachine gun tucked under her arm, to Grace.

“Can you …?”

She swallowed her pizza and her face morphed into a spitting image of Natalie Johansson. From there, and as she took another bite, her body began to change until she wore the exact same clothing that Natalie wore in the movie.

“I just don’t know what to say about stuff like that, to be honest with you.”

It was strange, it was amazing, it was utterly fantastic, cool, unique, powerful, and I wasn’t going to say I was in love, but I was definitely moved.

We finished our pizza. Once we were done and I started cleaning up, I realized that we were both thirsty.

I wasn’t paying attention earlier when I ordered the pizza; I should have gotten the pizza and drink combo, or whatever the hell they had at the time. Unfortunately, we were stuck with what was in the hotel bar …

Which just happened to be alcohol.

“I think I’m going to have a drink of something,” I told her.

“I would like a drink of something as well,” she said. While her voice was sweet and soft, the way she spoke was very robotic. Which made sense; she was clearly some type of lab experiment – someone who had been sheltered from the masses, hidden away and possibly kept in isolation. They would have had to be careful with her, especially with the powers she possessed.

“Have you ever drunk alcohol?” I asked her.

“Nope, what’s that?”

“Let’s just stick to cola for now.” I approached the bar and took one of the sodas out. I found a glass, poured it up and gave it to her.

She took her first sip and threw the glass to the floor, anger spreading across her face.

“Hey!”

“What was that?” she asked with fear in her eyes, her hands on her throat.

“Whoa, whoa. Don’t throw drinks in the room, please. Seriously. It was just soda.”

“Soda? You said it was cola.”

“You’ve never had …” I considered this. Never having cola and then having some would be pretty weird. “Did you at least like the taste?”

“No. Water.”

I returned to the mini fridge. “There’s a bottle of water in here too. Have that.”

“And alcohol? Can I have alcohol?”

“How old are you?” I asked, which sounded stupid less than a millisecond after leaving my lips. Maybe I should have paid more attention to her bio when I looked through her file. She had to be somewhere between eighteen and twenty-two. She didn’t look much older than that, and I hoped she wasn’t younger. I quickly changed my line of questioning. “I mean, do you know what alcohol is?”

She shook her head.

“Then, maybe you shouldn’t have alcohol, just yet.”

“Okay,” she said, the robotic cheer returning to her voice. “And I’m twenty-one, by the way.”

The urge to write is strong with this one, and that ‘one’ was me. I was dying to sit at my keyboard for a little bit and just pour my thoughts out. Breakpoint Online, however cliché a title, wasn’t going to write itself, and I could tell by the way Grace was yawning, that she was feeling a nap coming on.

While I would have liked to hook her up to the laptop and probe a little longer – a strange sounding sentence, but you know what I mean – I also wanted to let her rest. After all, whatever she’d been through the previous night had been pretty traumatic. Traumatic for me as well.

My phone vibrated again, and I glanced at it. It was another message from Luke, and in looking at my phone, I suddenly realized that I’d had my GPS on this entire time.

You are such a fucking noob! I thought as I toggled the GPS off and read Luke’s message.

Luke: Hey, I’m available now. What did you want to show me?

A couple of hours ago, I would have happily live-streamed everything that was happening and blown Luke’s mind. I would have freaked him out by asking Grace to turn into him – which would have made him want to fly down here from Canada – and I would have also blown my cover.

And I didn’t have a lot of cover to blow, especially since I’d had the GPS on this entire goddamn time.

So, I decided to play it cool this time.

Me: Hey what’s up?

Luke: You tell me.

Me: Nothing much, just about to sit down and write some Breakpoint Online. I showed you the cover, right?

Luke: Not bad. Only thing I’d change is the tint and the blur between the lightning and the bottom half. Also, make her have a hood. You definitely want a hood. All the best-selling covers have someone in a hood. I don’t know why wearing a hood suddenly makes a book better than a hoodless covered book, but c’est la vie. We must feed the beast, and the beast is the reader!

Me: Sweet, thanks for the feedback. I’ll work with it.

Luke: How far in are you again?

Me: I am not too far in, TBH. Maybe about 11k, something like that.

Luke: How’s the pacing going? Did you introduce the antagonist yet? Are things starting to heat up, or are you still working on the build-up? First or third person?

Me: I think I’m still working on the build-up. First person, pacing seems fine. Maybe going a little too fast, in my opinion, but readers dig that.

I glanced over at Grace, who had laid her head down and was breathing lightly, her eyes closed.

Luke: Sounds interesting, buddy. I can’t wait to read it. I mean, if it’s as cool as your last one …

Me: How Heavy This Axe continues to be my best seller. This new one is definitely cool, and it …

As Grace yawned, an idea came to me; a way I could talk about what was happening without revealing the truth to Luke.

Me: The book’s premise centers around a psychic shifter who shows up in the main character’s life, seemingly out of nowhere.

Luke: Shifter? I didn’t expect it to involve something like that, you usually write sci-fi, not paranormal romance shit.

Me: Lol. It is not exactly paranormal romance, but there definitely is a psychic shifter involved.

Luke: And is she a ghost?

I thought of Grace’s ability to turn completely transparent.

Me: In a way, but it’s not paranormal. Maybe it’s more superhero-ish.

Luke: Okay, I’m hooked, tell me more.

Me: That quick, huh?

Luke: Lol. As long as it isn’t paranormal romance.

Me: I’m not selling out, dammit! Okay, so the book starts on a dark and stormy night, when this guy is just chilling in his apartment and this random woman shows up.

Luke: And is she naked?

Me: Yeah, she’s naked.

Luke: Sexy?

Me: Incredibly.

Luke: Okay, that’ll be a way to start a story, at least you’ll get people to the second chapter.

Me: Well, that was the plan.

Luke: And then what happens next?

Me: She shows him that she’s a shifter by turning into him, and after some confusion, they eventually go to sleep.

Luke: I see a hole in the plot.

Me: Hit me.

Luke: Wouldn’t he just call the cops if a naked woman showed up at his doorstep? Especially if she was a shifter. She doesn’t threaten him or anything, does she?

Me: Nope, not a plot hole, but she won’t let him call the cops. Or call anyone. She will let him call for pizza, but that’s later. She uses her psychic abilities to prevent him.

Luke: Ooo… she has a secret!

Me: Definitely.

Luke: Okay, what happens next? Do you have an action scene or something that gets things going after that initial kind of shock intro?

Me: Yeah, I do. They go outside the next day and run into some government security guard type guys with advanced weaponry. Black armor, mil-spec shit. You know the drill.

Luke: I love advanced weaponry!

Me: Hell yeah, you do. That gun crafting system you used in Star Defacer was legit AF. Anyway, she uses her powers to stop them, which really kick-starts everything.

Luke: Oh man, that sounds fun. I don’t know what I would do in that situation.

Me: Well, I had the protagonist decide to throw it all away and just join her and whatever escapades she was about to get them both into. Break bad.

Luke: Break bad!

Me: So they go to a hotel, and she uses her psychic abilities to trick the receptionist into thinking they booked a room. Then they order pizza.

Luke: That’s it?

Me: Then he realizes he can plug into her neck and modify her stats.

Luke: Ah, the LitRPG element. Better put that in. People love that shit. Crunchy or light?

Me: Light, so maybe more gamelit.

Luke: Give the people what they want! Does he have sex with her?

Me: Not yet.

Luke: Might as well make that happen sooner or later. I mean, some of my fans prefer if I hold back, but it sounds like you got a chance for sex going there, and you’d better introduce some of that soon. Besides, who wouldn’t want to have sex with a shifter? That’d be crazy.

Me: Working on it.

Luke: So, what did you want to show me? You wanted to video chat earlier …

All the blood rushed to my head.

It was a cool idea. It was my best idea. And it was actually happening to me at that very moment.

Plus, there was something else going on, some bigger government conspiracy – definitely a government conspiracy – and this story needed to get out there. If other people were going through the same thing, they could hear about the story, and maybe we could connect in some way.

I would publish all this. My next manuscript would be about what was currently happening to me. And I’d continue to talk to Luke about it, under the guise that I was working on Breakpoint Online.

Me: Luke, you’re brilliant.

Luke: Me? Thanks, buddy. But what did you want to talk about?

Me: My new idea, which we’ve just discussed. Looks like Breakpoint Online is going to be a sweet book. I’ll need to change the title at some point, but that’s fine.

Luke: I’m totally excited to hear where it goes.

Me: As am I.

Luke: Cool, well I have some editing to do. We’ll talk soon! Remember: action, action, action. That’s what this crowd is after, lol.

Me: I’m sure action is coming in the next chapter or so. Thanks for the advice, and happy editing!

Chapter Seven: Data Breach

Three thousand words wasn’t bad, and it had only taken me about an hour and a half to write them. I could have written more, but as I started the next portion, Grace began to stir.

She yawned and turned to me with a smile on her face. Not as tight as it had been before, as if she had really started to relax some and come to grips with our new life together. Weird saying it like that, but we really were in it together by this point.

“Are you ready to do some more sleuthing?” I asked.

“Sleuthing?” She scooped her hair out of her face. In an instant, her features were perfect; she no longer looked like she’d just woken up from a nap. I guess that was one advantage of being a shifter.

“Did you use your abilities to make it look like you’d just woken up from a nap?”

She shrugged.

“That is an entirely inventive way to use shifter abilities. Anyway, do what you have to do, and we’ll get started.”

She took this to mean use the restroom. The question was: Did she intuit this, or did she read my mind? There was no way of telling, nor would there ever be a way for me to know if she was reading my mind or not. As we later grew closer, this would continue to be an issue for us.

Grace returned and lay on the bed, angling her neck toward me again.

Once I plugged her in, I went through the same login procedure and soon, I was in.

“There’s so much here,” I said as I perused the files. Many of them only linked to one or two subfolders, most of which contained binary data and other info that I couldn’t parse. I found some quotes from books, some past weather information, and a bunch of other random shit.

Where’s the good stuff? I thought as I continued to click through folders.

It was nothing like the movies, where some guy just hacks in and finds exactly what he was looking for. Nor was I typing like a madman as information splashed across the screen, my face lighting up a la Edward Snowden as I perused government data.

But I continued to dig, just like an archeologist, and eventually, I stumbled upon a folder that had some of the contract info between …

Yale and the FCG?

Jackpot.

There wasn’t a lot of detail there, but I could tell that whatever program Grace had taken part in, and the program that had given her the powers she possessed, was most definitely funded by the FCG in conjunction with Yale’s newly remodeled Rose-Lyle facility.

The FCG, or Federal Corporate Government, was part of a government rebranding effort in the 2020s, especially after the fake news era had passed and the government took this to mean that people wanted unrestricted transparency.

So, they called it what it had become: the Federal Corporate Government. And while I was old enough to remember when it was just the American Government, I found myself using the acronym from time to time as well. It also coincided with lower corporate tax rates, to the sweet tune of ten percent, and another tax hike on the middle class.

I imagined my writer buddy, Luke, telling me to cool it with the backstory at this point, but really, if he could have seen what I was looking through – dozens of contracts with both the FCG, vendors, a private security company called MercSecure, as well as some of the reports – he’d feel the urge to mansplain as well.

Again, this wasn’t some complex Dan Brown all-the-way-up-to-the-Vatican type of conspiracy novel. I mean, it was pretty much textbook at this point: a superpowered woman who was part of a secret government and university funded experiment escaped from captivity and showed up at my doorstep.

This got me thinking about the difference between superhero powers and magic powers.

Didn’t the X-Men and all the DC Comics people and Marvel heroes and heroines simply have magic powers? I mean, not Batman, of course, and a few of the other ones like Tony Stark, but what was the real difference between a magic power and a superhero power? Why did we feel the urge to differentiate?

At any rate, it didn’t matter now, and I could parse through all this later and debate with the voice in the back of my head until I got tired of listening to my own shit.

What mattered was that I uncovered something big.

And I mean really big.

The first discovery came to me in a subfolder of a subfolder, so a sub-subfolder.

There are others.

I found pictures of a dozen or so test subjects, and two, in particular, stood out to me. One resembled Grace, yet she had shorter hair and a much fiercer face. The other was a man with long black hair and an incredible physique.

After a little more digging, I found pictures of Grace as a young girl and wondered if she had a mother. The reason I wondered this was because of some of the scientific papers I’d found in this collection, which talked about growing a fetus in a lab and creating a superhuman or super soldier type of person.

I know, I write science fiction, and I should be better at describing these things, but in my defense, all my science fiction was bullshit. This stuff was real, and I didn’t have a photographic memory – aside from when it came to book quotes – nor was I quickly able to interpret scientific papers that broke things down to the molecular level.

But I got the gist.

And that could have been the end of the story if I hadn’t stumbled upon a photo of myself.

I gasped as I saw a picture of me taken when I was about five years old.

It was me. I knew it was me. I could tell by the cowlick and by the eyes. I mean, who doesn’t recognize themselves as a child?

“What the fuck am I doing in here?” I mumbled.

I wasn’t paying attention at the time, but had I been looking at Grace, I might have seen her smile a bit.

No, I was too focused on clicking my photo, clicking through to whatever I could find about the test subjects, and parsing through more data – data that was way out of my league. Talk about your scientific jargon; the research quickly moved from something I could easily interpret to something that was practically a foreign language to me.

There wasn’t any info attached to my photo, aside from code and science jargon. Even if I had looked up each word, I doubt I would have understood it.

The burning thought that remained at the back of my head was the fact that this research project had a photo of me.

“Relax, Writer Gideon.”

“This, I …”

“It is a lot of information, but relax for now. Your thoughts are too fast.”

“You can read my thoughts, that’s right. Grace.”

She looked down at me, her eyes slowly morphing from white to blue.

“Yes?”

“Why is my picture in here? I know why you’re here; I mean, I know why your picture would be in here, but why is my picture in here?”

She sniffed, and a tear began to fall down her cheek.

“Writer Gideon.”

“Please, Grace, tell me something. Just put these pieces together for me, and then we can figure out what the next step is.”

Was I a test subject?

God, that sounded stupid to think.

I’d lived just about as normal a life as an American could live. I’d never been abroad, never been in trouble with the law, never had a speeding ticket. I had a degree from a state university and paid my taxes on time every year. Surely that shit counted for something.

“Please shut down the computer,” she said. “I want to go outside.”

“Outside?” I considered it for a moment. No one seemed to be after us just yet. That didn’t mean there wouldn’t be someone after us in the near future, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to get some fresh air. Especially because we were going to be spending at least a night or two in this hotel, considering all the data I had to comb through.

“Sure, let’s go outside for a little bit. I think we can walk to the beach from here. It’s not much to look at, but it’s not too bad.”

“And for dinner?”

“Are you hungry again?”

“No.”

I smiled at the strange woman. I had no idea what to make of her – still don’t. I looked away once she started to change her form into mine.

“Remember, no shifting in public.”

Chapter Eight: The Second Cherry Blossom Girl

I’m not going to bore you with the story about how we went to the beach, and how we sat there for a while watching the waves lash against the shore, or how some seagulls flew by squawking and fighting over a bit of garbage, or how the sun started to set and it was gorgeous.

As Luke would say, action, action, action, and boy, would this turn out to be the basis of my evening once we got back to the hotel.

Grace and I had both just gotten into bed when I heard something crash down the hall. I didn’t really think much of it … until the door handle shot across the room as if it had been loaded into a gun and fired.

The door flew off its hinges and crashed into the window on the far wall, shattering the glass and letting in a cold gush of air.

That was when I found out there was another cherry blossom girl, and she wasn’t happy.

I recognized her immediately; she’d been in one of the pictures I’d discovered on what I was now calling Grace’s drive.

The woman resembled Grace. She could have even been a sister.

She was tall, with short blonde hair, a light complexion, and a predatory face. She wore a tight black bodysuit that accentuated her curves as she stalked toward us. But before she could get any closer, she suddenly fell sideways and cracked her head against the wall.

My blood was pulsing, the ability to move obsolete, and my heart thundered in my chest as Grace turned to me, her eyes blaring white.

“Who is she?” I asked, barely able to get the words out.

Grace was breathing hard as well. She sat now in her original form, still wearing the clothes I’d given her back in my basement apartment.

“She’s like me.”

I had already determined that, but the confirmation helped me come to grips with what had just happened. I had just seen the door handle spear across the room and the door itself fly off its hinges. Of course she was just like Grace, but I had no idea what type of power she possessed or who else was after us.

This was on my mind as I finally scrambled to my feet and started packing. It was instinctive at this point: run, run, run.

If anything, I needed to bring my laptop and its charger; I needed to be able to plug back into Grace and figure out what was going on and why I was somehow a part of it.

I hadn’t forgotten about my picture, but I’d been too distracted by the beautiful woman and the beach over the last few hours to investigate further.

“We’re out,” I told Grace. “Now.”

“She killed three people.”

If my life were a movie, this would be the scene in which they play some ironic 1970s psychedelic tune while they panned the camera over my confused, befuddled, half-afraid, and utterly colorless face, as I realized just what I’d gotten myself into and tried to come to grips with what I was about to do.

“Writer Gideon, did you hear me? She killed two of the security guards and the receptionist.” She changed into the black woman at the front desk. “This one,” she said before she shifted back.

“The hotel had security guards?”

I didn’t remember seeing any muscle in the lobby. I didn’t remember seeing anyone, really, aside from a trucker, and a couple with an SUV. And the only reason I’d seen their SUV was because they pulled up in it while we are walking back from the beach.

“No, the same men from the cherry blossoms,” she said. “The same type of men.”

Her hands trembled, and I wanted to throw mine out and grab hers and tell her it was going to be okay.

Only I didn’t know if it was going to be okay.

I was in way over my head, and it was only one day later, just about twenty-four hours since she arrived naked on my doorstep. I had no idea what was in store for me, but if it resembled what had just happened, we were fucked.

“Your mind is wild again, Writer Gideon.”

I clapped my hands together. “Sorry, just getting a lid on this. So, we taking her or not?”

Grace bit her lip.

“She’s like Magneto or something,” I said aloud, pacing before the bed. Needing to do something with my hands, I checked my duffle bag again and slung it over my shoulder.

“Magneto?” Grace’s eyes flashed as my thoughts became hers.

“Well?”

“Not exactly, but there are some similarities.”

“Okay that’s fine, but I really need to know if we’re bringing her with us, or if we’re just trying to get the hell out of here. I probably shouldn’t even order a vehicle – I probably should just …” I glanced at Grace. “We need to steal a car.”

“Okay,” she said, her eyes still white. “We can steal the SUV that belongs to the couple we saw earlier.”

“I may have to put a moratorium on reading my mind …”

She smiled at me. “Sorry, bad habit.”

“Let’s just get out of here.” I stopped in front of the other woman. She didn’t look very heavy, so I decided to try to lift her over my shoulder. Once I did so, I felt my energy dissipate from my body.

My knees started to buckle, but before I could fall completely, Grace placed her hand on the woman’s head and the feeling subsided.

“What was that?” I asked, my energy returning as I hoisted the other woman over my shoulder.

“It was her. She is like …” Grace paused for a moment as we entered the hallway, her eyes narrowing as she thought of a way to describe it. “She drains your life.”

“A vampire?”

She gave me a funny look. “Those aren’t real.”

“Sorry, I just figured … well, I have a psychic shifter with me, why not add a vampire? Also, I just finished reading a vampire novel by George R.R. Martin called Fevre Dream. A lot of people don’t know that he wrote a vampire novel. Sorry, thinking out loud.”

I recalled the book and one of its protagonists, a vampire named Joshua York, the Pale King, the bloodmaster.

“This isn’t a book, and we should probably go.”

“Right,” I said as we exited the room.

We stopped in front of the elevator, the woman still flung over my shoulder and Grace next to me, now holding my duffle bag.

It was when we got to the lobby that I realized how fucked we truly were.

The receptionist had been impaled by a lamp, still in her chair. To my left, one of the paramilitary soldiers – still had no idea what to call them at that point – was in a fetal position, completely shriveled up and as red as a strawberry. The other was in two pieces, his body demarcated by a steel slab that had been ripped from the wall.

This was the one that caused me to vomit. To my credit, I vomited while still holding the woman over my shoulder, which must count for something. But vomit I did, my throat stinging of acid and oily pizza.

“Sorry,” I gasped as I took in the scene for a second time. I had the notion of leaving the vampiric Magneto woman behind, but something told me she’d be worth more with us rather than against us.

Of course, Grace sensed this. “She’s a bit more trouble than me.”

“I didn’t think that was possible,” I said, staggering a bit.

A dozen thoughts hit me at once, all centering around what to do with the bodies.

“We can’t just leave them here,” I said as I set the woman down on a sofa. Later, of course, I would have just left them. But at the time I still thought cleaning up the bodies would be the right thing to do.

“They’re not our bodies,” Grace said coldly.

“Yeah, I can see that, Grace, but if we leave them here and more people see this, we’re doubly screwed, because local law enforcement will get involved.”

“So, what should we do with them?” she asked, placing her hands on her hips. She looked cute in the moment – a thought that made me feel guilty, especially with the carnage all around.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this …” I shook my head and just let it out. “We need to go to that couple’s room, get the keys to their SUV, load the bodies in the back, and figure out how to get rid of them. We need to do it quickly, as quickly as humanly possible.”

Grace shrugged. “Okay.”

“Seriously? That’s your reply to what I just said?”

She nodded. “They’re in room 106. Should we go now?”

“Yeah, will she be okay?” I tilted my head toward the other superpowered woman.

“She’s going to be like that a while.”

I swear Chinua Achebe whispered in my ear at that exact moment. “If we put ourselves between God and his victim, we may receive blows intended for the offender,” he wrote in Things Fall Apart.

If ever there was a book title that described where my life had come …

I sighed. “Let’s get the bodies.”

Chapter Nine: Getting Rid of Dead Bodies Ain’t Easy

It was relatively easy to get the keys to the SUV.

Basically, Grace just knocked on the door and asked for it. Of course, she’d morphed into their daughter or something to make it more convincing, not that she needed to do that because of her psychic abilities.

The doting father came running back with the keys, and we had transportation.

Had I been given the chance to do it again, I would have instructed Grace to tell the couple to load the bodies for us. But these kinds of ideas would come later, after I’d grown used to being with a psychic.

We needed to hurry.

It wouldn’t be long before someone came and called the police. To run interference just in case, Grace stayed in the lobby while I went outside, got the SUV, and drove it up to the check-in lane.

I popped open the back of the SUV and ran back inside.

It’s hard to believe I’m telling someone this, but the first thing I did was take the bottom half of the severed body. It was surprisingly heavy, and as I carried it, I started to dry heave.

I was able to keep it down this time and steeled myself as I went back to get the rest of the body. His torso was much heavier, and I was glad he wore a black helmet with green lights on it that prevented me from seeing his face. His entrails though … there are some memories I’d like to forget, and that is definitely one of them.

I made a bloody mess of getting him to the vehicle, which I realized only made this crime scene more damning. Too late to do anything now, and I wasn’t about to leave any bodies behind. At least the fact that there were no bodies along with the bloodstains and signs of violence threw a loop in whatever police procedure would follow.

I would have hated to be the detective tasked with figuring out what went on here. Which reminded me. Before I got the second body, I went into the office and saw a small box with cables feeding into it. The box was hooked to a television that showed four video images from the front desk area and the check-in lane.

I unplugged everything.

Realizing that wouldn’t do shit, I opened the box and pulled out the hard drive. I dropped the hard drive on the ground and stomped it.

What are you doing? I thought as I picked up the now-dented hard drive and held onto it. I’d seen enough TV to know the cops could CSI the shit out of even a broken one.

Panic had taken over by this point. I quickly ran back out to the SUV, threw the drive inside – I could deal with it later – then returned to the lobby.

I dragged the second body to the vehicle. This one was a little lighter due to the fact that the guy’s skin had shriveled up. I didn’t know what vampiric Magneto did to him, but it was absolutely terrifying, and I hoped I would never be on the receiving end of her special abilities.

Finally, I took the receptionist, who I placed on top of the others. This one was the hardest – I had actually interacted with her and she didn’t deserve to die – and just seeing her hair spill over when I set her on top made me hate myself.

“You are an accomplice to murder,” I whispered as I went back inside to grab Grace and the other superpowered woman.

By this point, my back was screaming at me, and my calves hurt. I wasn’t used to carrying anything, let alone actual people. So, I was glad to finally place the other woman in the back and cover the bodies with a tarp. I set my duffle bag on top of them and got in the SUV. Grace climbed in on the other side.

Even though it was chilly out, I’d worked up a sweat. I knew I was an idiot for leaving blood stains in the lobby, but I didn’t have time to mop. This gave me an idea, a fucking brilliant idea.

“Follow me,” I told Grace.

We got out of the SUV and returned to the receptionist area. Sure enough, there was number on the phone for the maid staff; they apparently had a room in some other part of the complex. We called them, and an older white lady appeared a few excruciatingly long minutes later.

She immediately went into a trance when she locked eyes with Grace.

“Sure, I’ll clean all this up,” she said, “and I won’t remember any of it.”

“Easy enough,” I said as we returned to the SUV. Grace got in the front beside me, and I started the vehicle up.

I held my breath for a moment, afraid I’d smell the bodies. Once I couldn’t hold it any longer, I inhaled deeply through my nose and realized I couldn’t smell anything. At all. Damn sinuses.

After navigating the neighborhood for a moment, we did the loop around and I pulled into the parking lot of a Home Depot. I got my phone out as Grace read my thoughts and relaxed.

“Just texting a friend,” I told her. “And please, make sure the other one doesn’t wake up. Does she have a name, by the way?”

“Yes. It’s Veronique.”

I looked at her curiously for a moment. “So you know her name, but you don’t know your own?”

She turned and looked out the window at a man rolling some wooden slabs to his truck.

“Okay, we’ll deal with that later.”

I pulled up GoogleFace messenger and click on Luke’s icon.

Me: Hey, got a minute?

Luke: What’s up?

Me: So, I’ve run into a little issue in my story and I wanted to pick your brain.

Luke: Lay it on me.

Me: My main character and the shifter were at a hotel, when this other superpowered woman kicks the door down.

Luke: Did you just introduce a harem?

Me: I hadn’t even thought of that, but let’s work through my issue first: there are three dead bodies in the hotel, and my MC wants to get rid of them.

Luke: Why does he want to get rid of them? I mean, why does he care if they are there or not?

Me: Well, he already knows the government is probably after him, but he doesn’t want to get local law enforcement involved. Because then it would create like a lot of things he doesn’t want to have to deal with, and that I don’t want to have to deal with as a writer, you know, police procedural things, etc. He’d rather skip all that and get back to the story.

Luke: Aah, I see. That stuff is tedious, and if you get it wrong, someone will inevitably leave a review about it. Okay, so he has three bodies.

Me: One of the bodies is cut in half, but yeah, he has three. And he has an SUV that he stole, or that the psychic shifter stole from a couple in the hotel. Right now, I have him with the three bodies in the back of the SUV and he’s parked in front of a home improvement store.

Luke: I see. Okay, how about this: he takes them to the nearest dumpster and drops them in.

Me: That could work.

Luke: Wait, what happened to the other woman, the one who kicked down the door? She has superpowers, right?

Me: She’s in the SUV too, passed out in the back seat. She has vampiric Magneto abilities. The psychic woman, who I’m calling Grace, put her ass to sleep.

Luke: Okay, I really like where this is going. So you have …

Me: I don’t have, my main character has.

Luke: Lol. Okay, your MC has an SUV full of dead bodies, and you need to get rid of said bodies.

Me: Yep.

Luke: And where is the setting for the story, are you like in a big city, or you near the ocean?

Me: The story is set near the ocean, or at least a big body of water, and I’m talking really big here, like the Great Lakes.

Luke: Is there any cement around?

I glanced up at the Home Depot. The last letter on their bright orange sign flickered. Above and to the left of the building, a half moon hung in the sky, its bottom portion covered by a single black cloud.

Me: There could be some cement around. Like I said, they are in the parking lot of a home improvement store.

Luke: You could cement their feet and toss them in the ocean.

Me: The only problem with that is that he doesn’t have a lot of time. And he also doesn’t want to be traveling around with the bodies in the car.

Luke: That’s understandable, it’d be a pain in the ass to deal with some dead bodies in the car; I hope you didn’t write yourself into a box.

Me: A box? No. There must be some way.

Luke: I got an idea! You said you could get another car, right? I mean you can have the psychic do just about anything, so you should be able to get another car. Just get another car and leave the bodies in the SUV. Let law enforcement sort it out off scene.

Me: Yeah, I didn’t think of that, maybe I could leave the SUV and trade it out for another car.

Luke: That could definitely work, especially if you leave the SUV somewhere where the cops won’t find it for a bit. Maybe have the MC drive it to a secluded location. At least long enough for your readers to forget about that and move on to the next bit of action. Remember: action, action, action.

Me: You’ve saved my life yet again, buddy – thanks.

Luke: No problem, let me know if you run into any other plot holes. This is a pretty crazy story you got going here.

Me: It is definitely shaping up to be something unique.

I turned to Grace and smiled. “Ready to steal another car?”

It was cold out, a frigid wind whipping against our faces. A few seagulls had taken refuge in the parking lot, gathering under a lamppost.

“Hello,” Grace told the couple with the convertible BMW with halogen lights. They had just pulled into the Home Depot parking lot and were in the process of getting out of their vehicle when we approached.

She had taken on the appearance of a Hispanic woman, her hair long, dark, and flowing, her skin caramel, and her clothing tight.

She’d borrowed the body from a woman who sold fiber tablets and other weight loss products. I’d seen the actress on a dozen infomercials, that smile of hers utterly contagious.

“Can we help you?” the owner of the BMW asked.

He was a fifty-something-year-old white man with a splattering of gray hair, a soul patch, and a light green sweater vest. His wife was similarly dressed.

I stood next to her, my hat low so the brim partially concealed my face. “Remember what I told you,” I said to Grace under my breath.

Her eyes flashed white. “We need your car.”

“My car?”

I glanced between the two, tension rising in my chest.

“Sure, sounds like a good idea to me. We’ll give you the car.” The man reached into his pocket for his keys. He looked at his wife and she nodded, a blank look on her face.

“You will take this SUV to …” Grace hesitated.

“California,” I said.

“You will take this SUV to California. Once you’re in California, you will leave the SUV at a …”

“WalMacy’s.”

“You will leave the SUV at a WalMacy’s in California,” she said softly. “Then, you will come back to Connecticut, where you will forget about all of this.”

I cleared my throat. “The bodies in the back …”

“Yes,” she said as she focused on the couple. “You will not look at the bodies in the back of the vehicle. You won’t even think about the bodies or anything else in the back.”

“Not a problem. We’ll just hurry and drive to California.” The guy told his wife as he handed Grace the keys.

“The hard drive …” I whispered to her.

“And there is a hard drive in the SUV. Please get rid of this on your way.” She looked at me. “How should they get rid of it?”

“Throw it off a mountain, drown it, smash it to pieces, doesn’t matter.”

“Sure, you got it, doesn’t matter. We’ll handle it,” the man said.

And with that, we had a new ride.

I kept waiting for her abilities to falter, to not take effect. This only made me think of what we could possibly do once we figured out what was going on, and once I got better at working with her to manipulate people.

The sky was the limit at that point.

I checked over my shoulder to make sure there were no other cars in the parking lot, and once I saw that the coast was clear, I walked to the SUV and lifted Veronique out of the back.

She was still out cold, and as I set her into the back seat of the convertible BMW, I made sure to buckle her up. Safety first! I waved to the couple as they got in the SUV and the man in the sweater vest waved back.

“Where are we going now?” Grace asked as she got into the BMW beside me. Her face melted away and she was back to blonde hair and Norwegian features.

“We need to get out of New Haven, so …” I thought for a moment. “Let’s go to Stamford for the night. There are a ton of nice hotels downtown, and it should be an easy place to hide.”

“Can we see the cherry blossoms again before we go?” she asked suddenly, a softness creeping into her Arctic blue eyes.

“As long as you don’t mind seeing them at night,” I said as I started the beamer.

“No, that’s okay.”

My phone buzzed as I pulled onto the highway. After a quick glance, I saw it was one of my co-workers, a guy named Dave. He was wondering if I could come in early tomorrow to cover his shift.

Nope.

I deleted the message.

It was still hard for me to imagine that so much about my life had changed in such little time.

If Grace hadn’t shown up, I would have gone in to work for Dave and just continued my humble, yet quite frankly, boring existence in New Haven.

I would have continued to work at the Yale gift shop that also sold lamps. And I would have been working tirelessly on Breakpoint Online, a book that had already been written so many times in similar ways that no one would have given a shit about it.

“Focus on the road, Writer Gideon,” Grace said.

“Will do.” I gripped the steering wheel, smiling at its sleek leather texture and the way it felt in my hands. The BMW’s dashboard was lit up like a cyberpunk carnival, yet it was still minimal, avant-garde even.

“Roof down?” I asked Grace.

She glanced up at the roof and nodded. “We can see the stars if the roof is down.”

“For sure. We’ll bring it down once the coast is clear.”

It only took us about five minutes to get to Wooster Square. Once we slowed, I pulled the beamer in front of an Italian bakery and checked the center console for the convertible button. I assumed it was the button with the arrows surrounding the roof and pointing downwards.

Bingo.

“This is going to be cool,” I told her. “Trust me.” The mechanized roof whirred as it settled into the back. “Also, you should probably change forms real quick.”

“To what?”

If you’re thinking that I hadn’t really thought this through, you’re right.

Here I was, riding around in a convertible BMW with the top down and a dangerous woman passed out in the backseat, not to mention the woman who had escaped some secret lab in the passenger seat, her blonde hair and features a beacon if there ever was one.

“Let’s make this quick,” I told Grace as I turned my blinker on. “And change into anything you want, aside from me or my mom.”

Grace changed into the male newscaster from earlier, a crisp blue suit, pocket square, and tie clip forming as her shoulders lengthened and her chest pulled taut.

“How about a female version of that?”

Her body shrank as she turned into the geisha wearing the newscaster’s suit.

“Happy?”

“Better, but lose the geisha hair and ease up on the makeup. Remember, we don’t want to draw attention to ourselves.”

Her hair relaxed, and the white makeup disappeared. Now she looked like an Asian woman in her significant other’s suit.

“Cool,” I said as I pulled the beamer back onto the street.

Damn, it feels good to be a gangster, I thought as I moved slowly around the square so Grace could see the cherry blossoms. I wasn’t quite a badass yet, Walter White’s son to Walter White proper, but I could at least say that I’d seen some shit.

And no, I still wasn’t worthy of getting a tear tattoo on my face, but hell, it had only been a day and I had already handled dead bodies – something that would be hard to stomach if I actually sat around and thought about it.

Still, not quite time for a tear tattoo.

I saw the entrance to my basement apartment a couple blocks away and felt the urge to stop in and check the place.

That, of course, would be the noobest of noob moves, so I just continued along.

I circled the block twice, enough times to get a whiff of the cherry blossoms.

Damn if they weren’t pretty, even at night.

Like floating cotton balls on the surface of a dark body of water, the blossoms were as intriguing as they were fleeting, gone in a short amount of time only to reappear again.

Passages like the last one were the reason I never attempted to write romance or literary fiction.

Feeling the chill in the air, and worried that someone would see us, I pressed the button on the center console that brought the top back over our heads.

Grace turned to me and I watched as her Asian features vanished. She was herself again, Lady of Lorien cosplayed by a buxom porn star.

She locked eyes with me and her clothing started to morph. She was now in a tight red dress, something Jessica Rabbit would barely fit into.

“Too skimpy for Stamford, Connecticut,” I told her with a laugh.

She playfully snapped her fingers and she was in black latex, the zipper over her chest unzipped all the way to her belly button.

It was then that I realized she was reading my mind, going through the images in my head …

Her form changed again, and she wore a fishnet body stocking, latex boots, and cat ears.

I gulped as I realized she’d found my personal spank bank.

“Ha! Not that one, just, um, regular clothes while I’m driving,” I said, distracted as hell. Luckily, Highway 95 wasn’t too crazy. There were a few eighteen-wheelers, and the occasional granny driver, but traffic was moving along at a good clip.

“You sure?” she asked, still in the fishnet getup and cat ears.

“Yes, and please, don’t read my mind, especially not there.”

“Don’t turn into your mom and don’t read your mind,” she said. Her clothing faded into the clothing I’d given her back at my apartment. “Better?”

I nodded as a car with bright lights pulled behind me.

The car eventually swerved around, and I had the notion to tell Grace to zap the driver with some bad nightmare juju, but I behaved myself, remembering that I was now a fugitive and had committed some type of felony by moving the bodies.

Better to keep a low profile and not cause a highway accident to appease my road rage.

An idea came to me as the BMW purred along the highway. I connected my phone’s Bluetooth to the radio, scrolled to my podcast app, and played the first one my finger landed on.

“Can you make your voice sound like his?” I asked, as Ira Glass gave his This American Life intro.

Grace cocked her head to the right as she listened to the voice. Finally, she nodded, and as I turned the radio down, she began speaking in his famous voice.

“Hi, Writer Gideon, I am talking to you as the man on the radio. Each week I talk to you as the man on the radio. What else do you want me to say?”

I snickered. “Say anything.”

“Anything.”

“You know what I mean. Okay, fine, let me ask you some questions. Who is the woman in the back seat?”

“That’s Veronique,” she said in Ira Glass’s distinct voice. “She’s like me, but different.”

“I remember you telling me something like that. And what are her powers?” I slowed my speed to get behind a white SUV. I should have put the vehicle on auto drive, but I felt like being in control at the moment.

“Like I told you, she can do things with metal, and she’s like a vampire.”

“And she has the plug on her neck too? I was meaning to check but … well, the last hour has been pretty crazy.”

“She has the same port,” Grace said in Ira Glass’s voice.

“Good. We can look around once we get to our hotel. Let’s stay at a nice place tonight – high up, expensive, exclusive. What do you think?”

I glanced at her. The lights of the highway lamps cast diagonal arcs across her face.

“Sounds good to me,” she said in her own voice.

Chapter Ten: Snuff Videos

Stamford had a pretty sick downtown for a less-than-large city. There were skyscrapers and a ton of expensive condos, mostly owned by people who took the train into Manhattan. WWE had their headquarters there, and as we took the exit to the city center, I saw their flag flying on the right side of the highway.

I wondered if Vince McMahon was there now, plotting his next attempt to make the XFL viable.

Once we arrived in the city, I located the Marriott downtown. We were going to stay in style this time.

“Same plan as before,” I told Grace. “Except this time, we need to bring a body in with us.”

“Veronique.”

“Yep.” I nodded my head over my shoulder. “I need you to make sure everyone we see just thinks she’s sleeping and that I’m carrying her. No – better, she’s drunk. Make anyone that looks at us think she’s drunk.”

“Drunk?” she tilted her head slightly.

“It’s what happens when you drink too much alcohol.”

“I see.”

I thought about Veronique’s current getup. She wore a tight black mil-spec suit with molded armor on almost every part of the suit. It was the closest to an actual supervillain outfit I’d seen.

“What are you getting yourself into?” I whispered as the concierge approached my car. I handed him the keys as we got out of the vehicle.

“She’s drunk,” I lifted Veronique into my arms. “Who knew the, um, wells were so strong here in Stamford?”

The concierge, a young, Indian guy, glanced from Grace, who also wore a tight black outfit, back to Veronique. He nodded at me as he put two and two together and got threesome.

“It’s not what it looks like,” I said. “Grace, wipe his mind after this.”

He started to say something but suddenly, his face went blank.

I turned to Grace and caught her eyes going from white to blue. Without asking, she got my duffle bag out of the trunk and we entered the lobby.

The place was posh; the ceilings were high, the seating ample, and to the left, a fifteen-foot-long glass panel had been erected before a flickering fire. The hotel clerk greeted us, and after a few formalities, she said our executive suite on the top floor was ready.

She handed us our room keycard, smiled thinly, and told us to enjoy our stay.

“How did you know I wanted the penthouse?” I asked Grace as we approached the elevator.

Mind reader, I reminded myself.

You are right, she said in my head.

“You know what? Fine, you can read my mind sometimes, but no talking in my head.”

“Too many voices there already?”

“Exactly.”

The elevator took us to the top floor and after a quick trip down a long hallway, we entered our room.

Of course I gasped.

About the best hotel I’d stayed at up to this point was a Holiday Inn. This was something else entirely.

The executive suite had two rooms, a kitchen, a balcony with a view of the city, and enough glitz and glam to give Gatsby a hard-on. There were paintings on the wall, slick wood accents, an abundance of space, a seventy-inch wall-mounted television, and cashmere throws on the two sofa chairs.

“Holy shit,” I mumbled as I took in the room, nearly dropping Veronique. “Where should I set her?”

“In the second room. The big bed is for us.”

Don’t have to ask me twice, I thought as I moved her to the second room. Running lights on the floor lit up as I entered. This room was decorated in a similar way to the first, with a small table in the corner.

I placed Veronique on the bed, black combat boots and all, and asked if there was anything else I should do for her.

Grace shrugged. She stood in the doorway watching, an indecipherable look on her face.

“How much longer until she wakes up?” I asked. “And do you think I can plug in while she’s asleep?”

“Sure. If she wakes up while you’re checking her, I’ll shut her down.”

A cold chill moved through me as I considered the way she’d said this.

Shut her down?

“You two aren’t androids, are you?” I asked, still not convinced that they were entirely human.

She smirked. “You already asked me that, and no.”

“If she wakes up, will she try to kill us?”

Grace considered this for a moment as I set my laptop up on Veronique’s bed. “Maybe,” she finally said.

After the long day I’d had, I was definitely interested in crawling up into that king-sized bed next to Grace. I tried not to think this, though, all too aware that she’d know any thoughts I had.

I booted up my laptop, found the port on Veronique’s neck, removed the fleshy covering and plugged in.

In the process, I finally got a chance to get a better look at Veronique.

Her hair was much shorter than Grace’s, cut in a bob, and her features more pronounced, sharper and harder around the edges. She was lean and muscular, her torso long, and even though she was lying down, she still seemed poised to strike. Seriously, whatever mad scientist designed these two gene-therapy wonder women was one horny bastard.

I plugged in and the login screen popped up.

“Password?”

“Same as mine,” Grace said. “Username: 1351885. Password: 1QAZ2WSX3EFV4321QWEASD.”

“Please write that down for me.”

She returned a moment later with the information written on the hotel pad. I keyed in the username and password and a new shadow box appeared, similar to Grace’s, with a series of dropdown folders.

Veronique’s drive was much easier to navigate. I checked her deets and quickly moved on.

Veronique, Subject V.

Build: 2.7341

Base height: 171 Centimeters

Base weight: 50 kilos

“Hello, nurse,” I said as I discovered that she had actual stats.

The gamer fiction writer in me rejoiced.

The six base stats had an adjustable dial next to them. Clicking and turning it to the right caused the other dials to adjust accordingly.

A digital number over each base stat made it easy to adjust. Again, if I adjusted one, it adjusted them all, and they could only be adjusted up to the number ten, making min-maxing easy as hell to do.

I settled on some numbers I was comfortable with:

Strength: 4

Intelligence: 6

Constitution: 7

Wisdom: 5

Dexterity: 6

Charisma: 2

She wasn’t very strong, and she had the charisma of a pet rock, but she would be smart. And besides, most of her abilities lied about her superpowers.

Or magic. I still wasn’t sure what I should call this shit.

“Superpowers sounds cooler,” Grace said, her eyes slightly white, her pupils little black dots.

“Works for me.”

I drilled down further in the abilities menu to figure out exactly what Veronique could do. Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything I could modify in here, at least not yet.

Aside from base information, everything else was grayed out. Still, there was enough for me to get a handle on her powers and what she was capable of.

Frightening stuff, too – especially her ‘vampire-like’ ability to drain a person’s life. I recalled the shriveled security goon back at the hotel and the fact that she’d started to do the same to me until Grace knocked her out.

I gasped as I saw a series of test videos.

“Do I really want to click this?” I asked aloud.

Grace nodded, and I figured it couldn’t hurt.

If we were going for the Pandora’s Box analogy, I would have already ripped the lid off, thrown it across the room, and pissed in the box.

In the last twenty-four hours I’d seen dead bodies, had my mind read by a shifter, stolen two vehicles, become a fugitive, and watched another superpowered woman blow the handle off a door (still hadn’t explored that power yet).

So if it was a snuff video, I was ready.

“Fuck yes, I want to see this.” I clicked on the first video.

Sure enough, it was a snuff video.

In the clip, a blindfolded inmate handcuffed to a handicap chair was rolled into a room. His shirt was removed, and the only reason I assumed he was an inmate was his jumpsuit and the number written across his chest in permanent marker.

A younger Veronique wearing a blue hospital gown approached him with her hand raised.

With an indecipherable look on her face, she touched his arm and it began to shrivel.

As it did, her own skin tone and luster started to change. I stopped the video there and started it again from the beginning, realizing this time that she looked slightly emaciated at the start. Toward the end, she looked absolutely vibrant.

She feeds off people’s energy?

I played the clip back.

As she pressed her hand into his arm, his skin turned the color of beef jerky. A red aura appeared above her tiny fingers as the plague quickly covered his entire body. He died, his face purple, his eyes rolled into the back of his head, his muscles mangled.

Veronique turned to the camera and smiled faintly.

“Well, that was fucked up.” Naturally, I clicked another video. I mean, who wouldn’t by that point?

The next video was of her doing the same thing to an animal. They had a lamb chained up in a room – how sacrificial! – and as soon as she touched it, someone’s future dinner and/or wool coat shriveled up and fell to the side.

She started crying after killing this one.

“So, she can suck the life force out of an animal …”

Grace nodded, her eyes still white. This was the longest I’d seen them remain this color.

“Well, at least she likes animals.”

Nope, not even that fact made what she was doing okay. I also found it odd that she’d cry after the animal and not the human.

But she isn’t the one doing this stuff, I reminded myself. I mean, she is, but she’s being told to do it. They are telling her to do it.

Cue the Stranger Things theme.

I clicked another video. She was older in this one, her curves starting to take shape beneath her hospital gown. There were two inmates chained to chairs, back to back, with their shirts off.

Numbers were written on their chests, and one was clearly a skinhead with his swastika, Pepe the Frog, iron cross, and straight up Hitler tattoo.

As if she knew who the former German dictator was – which she very well could have – Veronique lightly drummed her fingers against the inmate’s shoulder Hitler tattoo. He cried out, and the man tied behind him soon suffered the same fate. The skinhead died first, the other guy not long after.

Tendrils of red energy left Veronique’s hand as she pulled it away from the inmate’s shoulder.

“What about her other abilities?” I mumbled after watching yet another snuff video.

This one had featured two men in suits next to her, their faces covered by surgical masks. When I observed the two secret agent men nonchalantly watching someone die, I was reminded of a quote from Confederacy of Dunces: “You can always tell employees of the government by the total vacancy which occupies the space where most other people have faces.”

Ha!

I clicked back and arrived at another folder. The second option was labeled with the word ‘METAL.’

“So, she’s not like Magneto,” I whispered as I read through a brief description of her powers. “Or, not entirely like him.”

Enhanced control over metal: Subject V has the ability to manipulate the property of any metal she can see or sense. At her current level, there are size limitations as to what she can manipulate, ranging from up to fifteen times her body weight. For items larger than her and out of the range of her abilities, she can focus on smaller portions of the object.

“Subject V, huh?” I asked.

Grace nodded as I moved to video evidence.

This stuff was badass.

Veronique could basically rearrange, move, and mold the metal in almost any object.

I watched as she waved her hands in the air and created a metallic statue of pots and pans. In one video, she pulled the radiator off the wall and turned it into a spiny snake. In another, she stopped a bullet, and in yet another, she used her ability to levitate a metal table.

Of course, there was another snuff video too.

These fuckers sure liked their snuff videos, and in this one, she stripped the nails from the wall and killed an inmate chained to a chair.

“So, she’s like Magneto,” I said.

“Sure,” said Grace, her eyes still beaming white. “I’m tired now. Shall we rest?”

Chapter Eleven: Hooking up in Stamford

I’m an idiot, but you already knew that.

My smartphone had been on this entire time, and it was once I brushed my teeth and got into bed with Grace that I realized my folly.

I wanted to be able to talk to Luke – my god, did I need some advice – but I also wanted to limit the ability to track me.

So, I did what they do in movies and television dramas: I removed the battery from my phone, walked out onto the balcony, and hurled it to the empty streets below.

Grace laughed. She was, of course, reading my mind again and knew that I was simply replicating something I’d seen that I had no idea was viable or not. But who could blame me?

I was a product of the twenty-first century. Everything was available at my fingertips and much of my ‘knowledge’ came from movies and long TV series.

“Let’s hope that works,” she said.

I grinned at her as I got into bed. “Tomorrow, we’ll get a prepaid smartphone at Okay Buy and a mini USB to mini USB. Hopefully, I can mod your abilities using my phone.”

“Mod my abilities?”

“I was able to with Veronique; I just don’t think I found the right subfolder in your files yet.”

“Okay.” Grace went into the bathroom and returned a few moments later, wearing a robe that I hadn’t seen before.

This got me thinking about another thing that was never resolved with Mystique. If she wore a robe and tore it off, what actually happened?

Grace’s robe formed into a black, shiny spandex suit with a zipper on the front, similar to what she wore back in the BMW. It was open all the way to her belly button.

“That’s an interesting thing to sleep in,” I gulped.

Don’t fuck this up, I reminded myself.

I’d watched plenty of anime before and I didn’t want to be the semi-loser MC who got all nervous around the girls. I’d read some of the harem gamelit stuff too. Unfortunately, I wasn’t a badass tiger-faced dude with stacked muscles and rock-hard abs, nor was I a loser that hadn’t been laid in a while who didn’t know how to handle the women around him.

I was an anomaly.

Scratch that – I actually was that last one, which made me a trope.

You’re a goddamn trope! the voice in my head screamed.

“Writer Gideon is thinking about sex,” Grace said in a coy voice as her clothing morphed.

If you guessed she was back to her birthday suit, you guessed wrong (although that would have been nice).

She wasn’t far off though: topless now, wearing a pair of boy shorts.

Without a word, the shifter got into the bed, mumbled about it being cold, and pressed her feet into my body.

If I were writing this book as a fiction, I’d have the bad guys burst in right now to foil the MC’s potential for scoring just to be an ass. Luke would have said something about action, and I would have gone for it. Readers would have felt the tension and my disappointment, and I would have propelled them along, no matter how harrowing my tale.

But true life is stranger than fiction, especially when you associate yourself with psychic shifters.

So, what happened next was a lot more innocent than I thought it was about to be.

She fell asleep.

Goddamn me to hell in a handbasket full of sticky cum socks.

Never have blue balls struck a man so hard, but that’s what happened as I heard her start snoring softly, her feet still pressed into me.

Focus on your writing, I thought, in an effort to cool down. You didn’t know her intentions anyway.

Rather than go rub one out – I was trying to be above that animalistic instinct – I started plotting my creative nonfiction account of what had happened to me so far.

When you can’t get laid, write! I reminded myself as I kicked the blanket off.

Said every loser writer ever?

Maybe.

As if she were reading my mind, and there was a God who was gracious and good and wanted a writer trying to break bad like Yours Truly to get him some, Grace sat up like a damn vampire, her arms crossed over her chest.

I nearly hopped out of bed when I saw her white eyes, but they softened, and seconds later, she was bringing me in for a kiss.

And damn, it was a nice kiss too.

“You were good today, Writer Gideon.”

Shit, she could have told me I was a member of the Flat Earth Society and I would have agreed.

Saying that I was putty in her hands was the understatement of the century.

She could be anyone – and I’m not saying she could be anyone in terms of she could be any person, I’m saying that in terms of we could have sex and she could be any person while we have sex.

Talk about the ultimate fantasy. I could have sex with Natalie Johansson, Oprah, the Queen of England …

Okay, maybe not that last one, but that’s what was on my mind as she looked at me – and not those women in particular, just the fact that any fantasy I had was possible. Hell, fantasies I never knew I had were possible.

And of course she understood this. She read my thoughts like they were a book with the font set for seniors.

So, I tried a little experiment.

Instead of asking her, I asked her through thought to her to show me her true form. Not the high elf with white blonde hair and straight up Aryan features; no, I wanted to see her real form, who she truly was under all the personas.

I wanted to get down to basics, and tension between us was so high that I figured it was now or never.

Are you sure?

Do it, I thought back.

Layers of skin began to peel back from Grace’s face, her hair morphing into various shades, her skin tightening and loosening, her eyes fluttering as they changed colors, her nose and chin elongating as she cycled through dozens of forms she’d taken.

What was left was a thin, emaciated woman, not unlike Veronique in her snuff videos.

Grace’s face was covered in zits and acne scars, her hair dark, her eyes black, her nose small, and her voluptuous features nonexistent.

I gasped, and as I did, she immediately reverted to the form that I’d first met: Scandinavian, white blonde hair, blue eyes, and soft features.

“I didn’t mean …” I cleared my throat. “I wasn’t offended. You can be that form with me.”

Grace laughed softly. “It was a joke, Writer Gideon, I wanted to see how you would respond. This is my true form.” She yawned and lay back down. “You should go back to thinking about your writing while I sleep. Tomorrow, you should write all day. I think what you’re planning to do is a great idea, and I think there are more like us.”

“More like you and me?”

“No, not like me in particular, more like Veronique and me. Superpowereds. I’m sure there are more, but I’m not able to sense them right now. Maybe they’re dead. Maybe they’re too far away.”

“Yeah, I’ll get to writing.” I swallowed awkwardly. “Um, it’s been nice getting to know you.”

Yes, I should have kicked myself in the ass for that line, but I felt like an idiot for how I’d acted over the last few minutes, and I had to say something to save face.

“If you want to do this now and get it out of the way, we can,” she said in the way that a doctor would relay a diagnosis.

“Do what?”

She raised an eyebrow at me. “Do you want to put your cock in me?”

I gulped, my face turning red. “It’s never been presented to me in that way.”

Where did she learn these terms? I wondered, still floored by what she’d said.

In your thoughts. The videos you watched, she said inside my head.

“Please don’t read my thoughts!” I smoothed my hand over my face. What twenty-five-year-old American male in 2030 hadn’t seen his fair share of fucked up porn? I mean, there may have been some Amish guys, or some Mormons out in Utah, but even those dudes had multiple wives and by my age, shit, they would have had multiple kids too.

Grace shrugged. “Okay, then we will make it more romantic. Tomorrow night. I will only read your thoughts if you ask me to.”

“Promise?”

“I can’t promise that,” she said with a soft laugh. “But I can try. You’ve seen a lot of videos of sex.”

“Ahem, I’m aware.”

“A lot. Must be thousands in your head. They are quite educational.”

“And what about Veronique?” I asked, changing the subject.

“She will be asleep until I tell her to wake up.” Grace turned away and pressed her ass into me. “Goodnight, Writer Gideon.”

But both of us knew that it wasn’t going to end there, and that rather than wait till tomorrow night – especially considering who knew what could happen tomorrow – we both came to the silent decision that we’d better finish it now.

So that’s what we did.

It only took a second of her ass being pressed into me for our parts to connect. It was natural, there was nothing unnatural about it. I was in my boxers, she wasn’t in anything, and things just happened.

She grabbed me by the waist and pushed my member closer to her and …

The penis took on a mind of its own and searched for the warmest place it could find.

My thoughts were immediately silenced.

As soon as I was in, and she was gyrating her hips, my thoughts were but a battered wind chime beating in the distance. I took her from behind, and she stretched her neck back to kiss me.

Sure, I should have been wearing a condom, but what was the worst that could happen? Superhero babies? Who wouldn’t want a superhero baby? And what if she had a disease? Well, I had already signed my death warrant by taking her in to begin with.

So, I wasn’t worried about protection.

In retrospect, there were a ton of things I would have liked to try, especially with a shifter, but that was not on my mind the first time we went at it.

Don’t cum too soon, don’t cum too soon.

That was more of my thought process, because Grace was by far the hottest woman I’d ever been with.

Shit, I had to close my eyes so I wouldn’t see her because I knew if I could see her,  if I could see the flesh of her breasts moving up and down as I pumped from behind, her neck turned to me and her eyes locked on my face, her throat as she breathed, her teeth as she bit her lip … if I saw those things, then that would be it for me.

That would be all she wrote, and I’d make it just about one minute before blowing my load and calling it quits.

So, my goal then became to make it for two minutes.

Best night of my life? Well, take out the dead bodies, and the fact that we were almost killed in Wooster Square, and I’ll give you that one.

It was a damn good end of a damn weird day.

Chapter Twelve: Two Days to Write a Book (or Death)

I woke up at the crack of dawn, ready and able to write my magnum opus. I kissed Grace on the cheek, hopped out of bed, secretly gave myself a pat on the back for being such a badass, grabbed my glasses and my laptop, and went down to the lobby so I could tap out some words.

I wouldn’t do things that risky in the future, but I was still new at this whole running from the law and hanging out with badass superpowered women thing, so I still made rookie mistakes.

At least I’d thrown my cell phone away.

I made it to the lobby, grabbed some coffee, and sat down at a big wooden table, not at all focused on the breakfast buffet.

I had the urge to talk to Luke, but I knew it was just as early in Canada and that I could tell him of my escapades later – I mean, the escapades of my MC.

I pulled up my manuscript and checked the word count.

Yep, it was still at three thousand words, which meant Charles Dickens’ ghost hadn’t logged into my computer last night and typed out a few thousand just to help a brother out.

Damn you, Charles Dickens’ ghost!

I needed to set a motto for the manuscript I was writing; something I could get behind, something that would inspire me forward.

Kurt Vonnegut would do the trick, as he often did.

I checked a file I kept on quotes I’d saved from books I had read and found a great quote from Cat’s Cradle: “Anyone unable to understand how a useful religion can be founded on lies will not understand this book either.”

The goal was not to alienate readers. The goal was to expose this terrible government experiment that created women like subject V and subject G – although Grace was the name that I had given her and there was no telling what her actual name was.

There was also no telling what she actually looked like. Or what she sounded like. Or what she really thought because she could just be mirroring your own thoughts.

All this was beside the point – I needed a better quote. I found one from good ol’ Barbara Taylor Bradford that I’d read in a writers’ self-help book: “A novel is a monumental lie that has to have the absolute ring of truth if it’s going to succeed.”

Fueled by coffee and the rage to succeed at something that I should not be trying to succeed at – I meant creative nonfiction here – my fingers were all action, little pistons pumping the keys as the words flowed freely.

By God, I was a genius. I was a great writer – a much-praised literary enigma!

I was writing a motivational self-help book alongside the founders of The Secret; I was in the Chicago meatpacking plants with Upton Sinclair; I was getting nitty gritty in Tokyo with William Gibson; I was inventing elaborate magic systems with Brandon Sanderson while chain-smoking cigarettes on a balcony overlooking a strip club with Charles Bukowski.

I was James Patterson dictating his 853rd airport thriller to his co-writer; I was in France with Fitzgerald getting FUBAR and arguing with Zelda; I was snorting coke from Stephen King’s trash can; I was at the airport with J.K. Rowling, as she finally dreamed the Harry Potter series alive.

Quiet, Writer Gideon.

Even though Grace hadn’t said this, hadn’t thought-beamed this down to me from our top floor penthouse, it was much-needed.

In actuality, I was sitting in a hotel alone, typing about my encounter with a psychic shifter while trying to cook up a self-published, creative nonfiction book that I hoped would be a bestseller.

Delusional, right?

I was also researching what would happen once they caught me; they’d bring either the cops or federal law enforcement officials and a list of how many federal crimes I had committed.

Hell, I was even worried about not showing up for my shift at the Yale gift shop later that day.

So, a lot was going on in my brain, some of those thoughts completely delusional, others borderline pathetic.

But after the coffee settled, and after I told myself to chill the fuck out and stop being unrealistic, the words came rapid-fire. It took me about three hours, but I was up to eight thousand words by the time I decided to take my happy writer’s ass back up to the hotel room.

My finished manuscript would be about fifty thousand words or so, and then I had to have it edited, but I had a quick editor fond of Adderall who could turn out a manuscript in forty-eight hours.

I didn’t yet know how I would pay her without the payment being tracked, but I figured that was what PayPal was for. I also figured I could probably run money some way through some sub-company in Singapore, and then transfer it anonymously to her account.

Or I could just have Grace hypnotize someone and tell them to transfer the money.

Boom, that would work.

“Lucy, I’m home,” I said as I opened the door. I found Grace sitting on the bed, the blanket up to her chest as she watched a morning talk show.

“That’s not a bad start, Writer Gideon. Maybe you can write another five thousand words today, or more. If you can write more, maybe I can reward you.”

I was living the writer’s dream – or nightmare, depending on who you asked.

And to keep the narrative going, I needed to get to Okay Buy to pick up a few more weapons for my arsenal.

I never pictured myself as the type of guy who could afford a convertible BMW, let alone drive one.

I must have looked like someone I would have been jealous of just a week ago – top down, beautiful woman in the front – as we zipped over to Okay Buy. I’m sure we turned at least a few heads.

On the agenda: a mini USB to mini USB, and a prepaid smartphone. Grace had gone for her Asian disguise, and I was in my bearded Yale bulldog disguise. Low profile as ever.

We found the cable and went to check out in the smartphone area. Grace worked her magic, and we left the store with both items. Fastest trip to Okay Buy I ever took.

Of course, we triggered the security alarm at the front door, but we were simply waved through; another advantage of having a psychic with you.

As we drove back to the hotel, we listened to some pop radio station Grace had chosen. It was bad music, manufactured to the point that it just seemed stale, but she seemed to enjoy it, so I didn’t start up a diatribe of how bad pop music had become in the 2020s.

I couldn’t look over at her without thinking about what happened between us last night, so I kept my focus on the road, and the vehicles, both human-driven and AI driven, that pulled in front of me.

Back to the concierge and Grace pulled her typical stunts. Then we told the front desk that we’d be staying an extra night, and to bill our company.

I had come up with that one actually, “Bill our company.”

It made things sound so official. I was the CEO, she was the CFO.

Up to the top floor we went, and as soon as we keyed ourselves into our room, we checked on Veronique.

She was gone.

Panic exploded in my chest. I hadn’t even had a chance to set down the Okay Buy bag when a hanger came flying out of the closet.

The metal wrapped around Grace’s legs, causing her to spill over just as another one flew out, this one tightening around her neck until her face started to turn blue.

“Stop!” I shouted, so petrified I was unable to move.

Grace cycled through forms as the life was choked out of her.

As Grace gasped, Veronique stepped out from behind the bathroom door, quickly moving over to the shifter and crouching down to touch her.

Her hand glowed red for a moment, and Grace’s eyes rolled into the back of her head.

I was panicked, grief-stricken, close to vomiting, happy that I hadn’t eaten lunch, barely able to move a muscle aside from twitching my knees.

I stabilized myself with a hand on the dresser, the Okay Buy bag dropping to the floor.

“I didn’t kill her,” Veronique said as she stood. She was still in her tight black combat outfit. Her short blonde hair was in her face, partially covering one of her eyes, and as she stared at me, I found myself no longer able to breathe.

It was definitely a panic attack, and as I tried to catch my breath – which seemed impossible – she slowly moved over to me.

“I … I …”

“You do not have long before I kill you,” she said, not breaking eye contact with me. “That is, unless you have something to offer me.”

“I have a BMW in the garage downstairs, my laptop too – you can have that.” I was babbling at this point, my words falling out of my mouth before I could actually think through what I was saying.

She placed her hand on my shoulder, and my knees grew weak, my stomach lurching. Seeing the red energy radiate from her hand caused my lungs to decompress.

I’d seen what she could do in those videos, and I slowly found myself growing drowsy, delirious, which loosened me a little bit.

I felt drunk now, helpless, slushed.

She removed her hand and helped me over to the bed so that I could sit.

“I’ll give you whatever you want,” I told her, out of breath. “Just tell me what you want.”

“Why did you take her?”

I glanced up at her. She stood in front of me, her hands on her hips as she took me in. “Are you serious?” I asked.

No answer; the look on her face told me she was indeed serious – deadly serious.

“Look, Veronique, she showed up at my doorstep, and now I’m here. Fuck.” One quick glance over at Grace’s fallen body, and I felt a lump in my throat.

“She came to you?”

“That’s right, and she showed me what was on her drive. Does that make sense? I don’t know how to explain it, but I plugged into her, just like how I plugged into you.” I touched the side of my neck. “The port.”

“And?”

“My pictures were on there too.” My mouth was dry, and I could hardly focus on anything as fear boiled through me.

I felt empty, hollow even. What could it mean? Why were my pictures there? And here I was, stealing, fucking, and going shopping for electronics, when there could be something terrible happening, something deadly – and something that apparently involved me.

Veronique’s dark eyes softened. “Suppose I believed you. Why should I let you live?”

I cleared my throat. “Look, I don’t have any powers, aside from …” I tried to think of a joke and then realized it was not the time to be joking. “Never mind, I don’t have any powers, like I said. But I can do one thing …”

“Oh?” She tilted her head as she looked at me, her eyes still dark and soulless.

“I don’t know what was going on back in that laboratory …” I finally made eye contact with her, showing her I meant business. “But whatever it was, it’s wrong, and I intend to expose it.”

She took a step closer to me, my head now at the height of her waist. I didn’t feel like it was an intimate moment though, I felt like she was seconds away from killing me.

“Expose it?” she started to chuckle a little.

“Yeah, I know it sounds crazy, but I just have this feeling that there are more like you out there. I know there are. I mean, I don’t have a hundred percent evidence yet, but I feel it in my gut, and I did find a few things searching around on both of your … hard drives? Can we call them hard drives? You two are human, correct? I mean, Grace said you were.”

I recalled having sex with Grace – they were definitely human. Well, at least Grace was.

“Grace? How would you expose what they have done to us?” she asked, the look on her face still harsh and cold.

“I’m glad you asked,” I said, a little too enthusiastically. “Sorry, I’m just excited about my solution to all this. But I do have a plan: I’m going to write a book.”

“A book?” she asked, her eyebrow rising.

“Let me rephrase. I’ve already started writing a book, and I’m almost ten thousand words in. The book is about this experience and what you two have gone through.”

“A book, huh?”

“I know it sounds crazy, but I’m a self-published author. I want to publish a book about all this, and put details out there on the internet where people can contact me anonymously about what’s going on. Hopefully, we can expose and uncover more of these experimental laboratories, or whatever – you get my point. What I’m trying to say is this: whatever they did to you, is not right.”

She bit her lip.

“Look, Veronique,” I said, reaching my hand out to her.

I grabbed her wrist, which was possibly one of the stupidest things I could have done in that situation considering her ability. Much to my surprise, it worked, and the look on her face softened. “What they did to you, and what I am assuming they have done to others, is wrong.”

“How do you know what they did to me?”

“I only got a taste by searching through your drive. They had you killing people at, like, the age of thirteen. That’s just the start. What I saw is wrong, and I’m guessing that’s only the tip of the iceberg. It’s wrong, and we should …”

“Destroy them, and destroy the Rose-Lyle facility.”

“I was going to say expose them, but …” I nodded. “You called it the Rose-Lyle facility?”

“Yes, that’s its name.”

“And that’s where all this happened? Grace too?”

“Who is Grace?”

“The other one like you, her.” I nodded my chin toward Grace’s fallen body. “Look, maybe you’re right, maybe we should destroy them. Maybe we should destroy all of them, but to do so, we need to know about the existence of the other locations. Just imagine this: I put the book out, some people contact us – and sure, there will be some kooks – but we get some actual information on more of these places. First, we destroy yours, then we destroy the next one.”

As Veronique looked me over, a quote from Ambrose Bierce’s Cobwebs from an Empty Skull came to me: “People who wish to throw stones should not live in glass houses; but there ought to be a few in their vicinity.”

“How long will it take you to write this book?” she asked, as she turned her wrist around and grabbed my hand.

Fear ballooned inside my chest.

“At least a couple of weeks,” I said, my teeth chattering. “I mean, I’m a fifth of the way there now, so I should finish next week or so. Maybe a little sooner, but I still have to get the cover designed, get the book edited, get it ready to be published …”

Veronique shrugged. “Okay, I’ll give you two days.”

“You’re serious?”

Something flashed in her dark eyes. “If you are indeed a writer, you will finish this book in two days and publish it at that time, if it does not succeed …”

My hand tensed up as she activated her power, a red aura forming around her fingers.

“I got it,” I said hurriedly. I whipped my hand away from hers. “Two days.”

“I will give you as much information as I can. You can also get information from her.” She touched her foot against Grace’s shoulder.

“And you promise you won’t kill her?”

“No, I don’t promise. But I don’t think I’ll kill her. We need her, don’t we?”

I had taken a personal development course at a job I worked at a few years back, a course which focused on the usage of the pronoun ‘we.’ It came back to me all of a sudden, even though I’d dozed off toward the end.

“Yes, we need her. We really need her. We really, really need her. Please don’t suck her energy out anymore.”

“We will see how your book looks in two days.” She took a few steps away from me and crossed her arms over her chest. “Now, get started.”

Chapter Thirteen: Creative Nonfiction Gamer Sci-Fi?

It was time to write my ass off. I had heard of Nanowrimo, the competition in which an author challenges themselves to write a book in a month, but I never heard of being threatened by a superpowered woman to write a book in two days.

It was madness, unorthodox, and damn near impossible, to say the least!

So, outlines were out the window.

My hands trembled as I fired up my laptop. As I fretted, Veronique dragged Grace to the other bedroom.

Using a coat hanger, and her ability to warp metal, she created a pair of handcuffs for Grace and also used one of the bath towels – the one that I had no idea what you were supposed to do with – to cover her eyes.

If Grace did wake up, she would be blindfolded, and her hands would be bound together. I briefly recalled wondering how she would go to the restroom, but instead of asking, I pulled up my manuscript, took a deep breath, kissed each finger, and started pecking away at the keys.

I didn’t write more than two hundred words before curiosity killed the writer.

“Why did you blindfold her?” I asked as I went to the second bedroom to find Veronique finishing up. I wanted to make sure Grace was okay, so I asked this question as nonchalantly as possible.

“Her abilities only work if she can see someone. Once she imprints, that person belongs to her.”

“But she can tell someone to do something, right?” I asked. “And they will still carry it out if she can’t see them, correct?”

“Correct, but her ability to imprint relies on her ability to see someone. This is why she couldn’t stop me earlier.” She turned to me. “Shouldn’t you be writing?”

“Let’s go into the other room; I have a few questions I need to ask you to clarify a few things about what I’m writing.”

“Don’t you want to check her ‘hard drive,’ as you would say?” she asked, cocking an eyebrow at me.

“Oh,” I said, shaking my head. In my mind, ‘Check her hard drive’ came off as something completely opposite of what Veronique meant. “I checked her yesterday, and I wasn’t able to get much info, but I didn’t check as deeply as I should have.”

“That’s something you should do, but if you want to start with me, that’s fine.” She moved past me. When I didn’t follow her right away, she turned back. “Are you coming or not?”

“Tell me everything you know about the experiments that were done to you, where you came from, and who the men were at the hotel,” I said after I’d sat down at my laptop. I never thought of myself as an investigative journalist, but if the shoe fit …

A thought came to me.

“Wait, before we get into that, why did you kill the men you came to the hotel with? That’s something I can’t figure out.”

“Maybe I wanted what she wanted.” Veronique sat down in a purple armchair and crossed one leg over the other.

Again, ambiguity in the response. I decided to try a different line of questioning: “Okay, let’s start here. Who were they?”

With a small sigh, Veronique started up a story that seemed familiar, if it weren’t for the fact that it was entirely true. She explained how she had been born in the lab, or at least a lab like it, and the same thing was true for Grace.

She didn’t know all the terminology – and hell if I knew – but basically, they were the results of some type of powerful gene editing that allowed them to have their powers, and other people could also have these types of powers, if only their genes could be modified.

The lab where they’d spent a good amount of their life was called the Rose-Lyle Facility, and Veronique and Grace had only physically met once before. Because of Grace’s abilities, she was kept in isolation, but Veronique recalled playing with her once, when they were younger.

“How did you know it was her?”

“We have similar features,” was her answer.

“What is the ultimate goal of this experiment? Why was it started in the first place?”

She didn’t know the exact answer to this, but I didn’t need to harken back to a comic written during the Cold War to know that it likely had something to do with building a super soldier.

I remembered thinking at the time how this again felt like a trope, but then, most things in my life felt like a trope.

Veronique was a bit more social than Grace and had gone on the hunt for others before. This was why she was allowed out, whereas Grace had to escape.

With Veronique, they could simply keep her away from people to feed on and she would lose her power. After all, she fed, and was nourished, by touching people and depleting their energy, and her metal-wielding abilities became obsolete if she were placed in a plastic cell, of which they had two of different sizes for when she misbehaved.

“I was always good when we went out. Never out of line.”

“Until last night.”

She shrugged.

“And who had you gone after before?”

“Others.”

I probed more, but that was all I could get out of her.

The usual story of torture – future and past – became evident as Veronique relived some of her experiences. She’d gone through a hell of a lot to become the hardened young woman that sat before me. They’d put her through various psyop drills, from locking her in a small cellar for a week to one occurrence in which they abandoned her in an unknown location and she’d had to get back to civilization.

Which was pretty much a kill-fest.

The reason she’d lashed out became apparent: She was to be phased out, Grace too.

“We were told that they would retire each of us, that the next generation would become the soldiers they wanted.” Anger burnt inside her, evident in the way her nostrils flared. “They told us they’d make us fight.”

It was an incredible story, but a story that had been told before, played out in comics and movies. I really wished there were a way for me to spice it up a bit, to make it more interesting or a little more original.

But that wasn’t the point of creative nonfiction with a sci-fi twist and hints of gamer fiction. And I had a feeling that the more the reader identified with the story archetype, the better it would be received.

Besides all that, this stuff was true. This had really happened!

Fuck, I needed to unpack some of this.

“Do you mind if I talk to a friend of mine who’s also a writer? I’d like to pitch ideas off him and see what he says.”

“You have two days, and if anyone tries to come here, I will kill them and feed off them,” she said as if she were ordering a latte at McStarbucks. There was no emotion in her voice; she only wanted the end result.

“Well, he’s in Canada, so he won’t be able to get here anytime soon. And he’s like me.”

“Weak?”

“Sure.”

“Are all writers weak?”

“Physically, maybe. Mentally, no.”

“You are more like the one you call Grace than me. She never had training.”

“I’ve had training, but it’s mostly been corporate and related to customer service.”

God, I sound like an idiot.

“I went to college,” I told her.

“That doesn’t matter to me.”

“I figured as much.”

My thoughts returned to Luke.

He was in Canada, only a few hours away from Connecticut, but still, I wasn’t trying to do the ‘send two emojis if you’re in danger’ act by contacting him.

“It’ll be a quick conversation, trust me, and then I’ll start writing. I have a lot to write in the next two days, and I am not that prolific, nor am I that disciplined, nor am I that fast. You can see now that I’m not that disciplined; I should have started fifteen minutes ago. Point is, I’ll make the conversation quick. Sorry for rambling.”

To my surprise, she chuckled at this. “I can see why Grace likes you. You think out loud, so she doesn’t have to read your thoughts.”

“Oh, she reads my thoughts, even though I tell her not to.”

To show that she would stop distracting me, Veronique lay on the bed and turned on the television. “Do you mind if I watch?”

“That’s fine; I’ll just put on my headphones.”

Before I did that, I pulled out my unregistered smartphone – registered to some guy who worked at the cell phone area at Okay Buy, courtesy of Grace’s ability – and opened up the GoogleFace messenger app.

Me: Luke, I have a problem.

Luke: I wondered when you were going to message me. I was thinking more about your dilemma, and getting rid of the bodies. One thing you could do would be to have the psychic one convince someone that they were alive, kind of like that old movie Weekend at Bernie’s, and then they could just put the bodies in their car and drive off.

Me: Actually, I did something similar to that. But that’s not my problem now.

Luke: What’s up?

Me: So, I’m at a hotel – I mean, my Main Character is at a hotel with the two superpowered women.

Luke: What are their names again?

Me: The good one is Grace, should be easy to remember. She’s the psychic. The bad one is Veronique.

Luke: That last one is a French name, and it makes her sound mysterious, which leads the reader to think she shouldn’t be trusted.

Me: Very observant, but here’s my problem: she has tasked the MC with doing something impossible, otherwise, she’ll kill him.

Luke: What happened to Grace?

Me: She was attacked by Veronique and knocked out. Veronique is now asking him to do this impossible thing, or she’ll kill him.

Luke: What has she asked him to do?

Me: She wants him to do something that would normally take a couple weeks to a month. That’s all I can say about it for now.

Luke: Okay, that’s weird of you, but let’s roll with it. So, she’s asked him to do something that normally takes a bit of time, correct?

Me: Yep.

Luke: Could your MC potentially do it in the time she’s given him to do it? I mean, theoretically, like if she had a gun to his head.

Me: I suppose, but it wouldn’t be easy, and the final product may not be as good.

Luke: And I’m assuming Grace is still passed out?

Me: That’s right.

Luke: And could she potentially wake up within the next two days and do something about Veronique?

Me: Well, I guess, but that’s playing with uncertainty.

Luke: Well, you’re the writer, and as a writer, you should always play with uncertainty, otherwise it doesn’t feel original. Readers like that uncertainty. It keeps them up at night. Have him at least attempt whatever it is Veronique is asking him to do.

Me: Okay.

Luke: And if Grace wakes up, have her kick Veronique’s ass.

Me: That brings me to my next issue …

Luke: Oh boy.

Me: I’m thinking of labeling this as creative nonfiction gamer sci-fi. Does that sound too crazy?

Luke: Yes. How can it be nonfiction if it’s also LitRPG and sci-fi? For it to be creative nonfiction, it has to be true, or at least true enough. This stuff isn’t actually happening to you, is it?

Me: Of course it is.

Luke: That’s a typo, isn’t it?

Me: Of course not.

Luke: Lol! Well, I guess that would be a kind of interesting marketing ploy.

Me: Yeah, a marketing ploy, that’s what I’m going for. I’m thinking something that blends Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions, Maugham’s A Razor’s Edge, Kundera’s Immortality, and some stuff written by John Updike. With sci-fi. I realize all this stuff is more literary, but this idea is just so cool. Trust me.

Luke: I trust you. So … creative nonfiction gamer sci-fi with metafictional undertones? You had me at shifter.

Me: That’s for the mainstream audience, the shifter stuff. Who doesn’t like a shifter story? Everyone wants a shifter in their life, and who wouldn’t trade anything to be a shifter and be able to do whatever they wanted with them? That’s straight up deprived fanboy territory. And the superhero stuff, that’s cool too. People love superheroes. Besides, there are so many villains in this world.

Luke: True that. There are too many villains.

Chapter Fourteen: Steak and Shrimp with Veronique

I banged on my keyboard for the rest of the afternoon.

As Veronique watched reruns of Mad Men, and I felt like a goddamn madman, I tried to put as many words to digital page as humanly possible.

Whenever I came to a point that I didn’t know what to do, or how to describe Veronique’s backstory, I asked her and she told me what she could. I needed to plug in, but she refused to let me plug into her for the time being, which left Grace.

At about five, I was sixteen thousand words in.

I had written a shitton of words in the last four hours, a lot of them shit, but some of them good. A personal record in any event. My eyes were twitchy, my fingers ached, and my mouth was the Atacama.

I was hungry too, and I didn’t have any money to buy food unless I used one of my cards, which I didn’t want to do.

But food could wait; I needed more information, and to get it, I needed to access Grace. I used my throwaway smartphone to plug into her neck. Worked like a charm.

Veronique stood near me, curious as to what I would find. With the login details that Grace had given me earlier, I got in and was presented with a shadow box that contained a series of files.

I clicked on the same file I’d clicked on previously and noticed now that there were more options …

It was like reading code or something. I scrolled through thousands of numbers and codes, trying to figure out what they meant and how to interpret them.

I recalled Grace’s white eyes as I looked at Veronique’s stats.

She had made them more interpretable, which meant that she was even more powerful than I had originally thought she was.

I got to the bottom of the code and found a button that said ‘enter.’

When in doubt, press ‘enter,’ right?

All the Matrix-esque binary mumbo jumbo disappeared and I was left with something akin to Veronique’s stats.

Sabine, Subject S.

Build: 008

Strength: 1

Intelligence: 9

Constitution: 4

Wisdom: 8

Dexterity: 3

Charisma: 6

So, her name is Sabine, I thought, as I scanned her deets.

The cursor changed once I hovered over her name and I realized that I could modify it. One click later and I changed it to Grace, Subject G, which sounded like it would have made a great title for a book on finding God and becoming a better Christian.

Also, I wouldn’t be able to write that book, especially after the last two days.

Adjusting her stats didn’t do much to prevent min-maxing for her intelligence and wisdom, which I wasn’t able to adjust down past the number eight.

A few clicks deeper and I found that her psychic abilities also had the same easy to manage dial system.

Unlike before, they also weren’t listed as levels.

She played with my mind, I thought as I looked through the options.

Omnikinesis: 1

Second Sight: 1

Psychometry: 5

Telepathy: 8

Clairsentience: 7

Psychokinesis: 1

Hypnosis: 6

I decided not to adjust them for now; I wanted a clear understanding of what they did before I messed with them, and I figured that like her base stats, changing the dial on any of them would fudge up the pre-made build.

Another thing I found interesting when parsing through her stats was that I was able to modify in real time how she appeared.

There were drop-down options for gender, race, skin tone, height, weight, and further options for various body parts. For example, clicking on a face, allowed me to modify her facial features and facial structure in real time, which was really interesting because it created a 3-D map on my smartphone screen that I could adjust with my fingers.

I could pinch her cheeks and mod them, and as I did, a dial in the upper right-hand corner would turn, and her face would actually morph in real time.

There was also a toggle button to go back to the form that she started as. I adjusted her cheeks back to their original form and closed the window that allowed me to drill into her shifter abilities.

My stomach rumbled.

“Are you hungry?” Veronique still stood over my shoulder, her shadow looming over me.

“Yeah, some food would be nice, but I can’t use my cards to buy anything, and I don’t have any cash. Had I known you were going to attack Grace when we came back from the store, I would have tried to get some cash and some snacks …” I sighed. “Point is, this woman is our only ticket to getting things like food and lodging.”

“I wouldn’t say she’s our only ticket.”

“Got a better idea?” I removed the cable from Grace’s neck. “And before you suggest it, I’d like not to go to another room, kill the people, and steal whatever food they have. Just in case that’s what you were thinking: I am not down with murder.”

“But you are okay with hiding murdered bodies?” she asked with a crooked grin.

“I’m not going to say I’m a different man now, but I will say that decision was one that had to be made at that point in time.”

Not quite a Glomar response, I thought as I ran my hand through my beard, but not far off.

“Don’t worry, I won’t kill anyone without your permission.”

“Okay,” I said, not at all comfortable with the way she phrased that last sentence. “What are you proposing?”

Veronique turned to the door. “Don’t they have a restaurant in this hotel? It looks like a nice expensive hotel, and I’m assuming they have a restaurant.”

“Yes, I believe they do.”

“Let’s just go to the restaurant, order what we want, and I’ll take care of the rest. Once we get back to the hotel room, you can continue working on your book.”

“Let’s see how I feel when I get back. I can at least design a cover tonight. My hands are killing me from typing so much today.”

She shrugged. “You still have two days.”

“I was afraid you’d say something like that.”

I was a man in need of a margarita. So, I ordered one and the most expensive item I could find on the menu, which was some type of steak and shrimp combo. I was ravenous, and I didn’t know how we were going to get out of there, so I figured I should eat well.

Besides, Veronique said she was covering the tab. I wasn’t sure how, but fuck it, that’s where my life was at the moment.

“What do you want?” I asked her after I ordered. Veronique sat across from me, still in her black mil-spec outfit, perusing the menu in the way one would flip through a catalog they weren’t at all interested in.

What I wanted to ask was, Do you actually eat? I had a sick feeling she was fed inmates rather than real food.

The waiter, a young guy with beard stubble and a mole next to his nostril, looked at us with bloodshot eyes. “Is that it?” He looked like he’d been working too hard, and I totally knew that feeling, which was why I wanted her to hurry up and order.

“None of this food looks good.”

“Um, why don’t you just order something small then, like a salad?” I asked her.

“A salad? I am a carnivore.” She closed the menu and handed it back to the waiter, who looked at her funny, glanced away, and stumbled off toward the kitchen.

I figured now would be as good a time as any to ask her more questions about her life.

“What do you remember from your childhood?” I asked.

“I didn’t have a childhood. Mostly training.”

“Was there a particular doctor or scientist who led most of the experiments? Do you know anything like that?”

Her face turned white as she bit her lip. Finally, she sighed heavily. “I do know a few things about that, but not much. There was a woman who was there the entire time from the start, at least from what I can remember. But she rarely made contact with us personally, at least me, anyway. Sometimes she observed us from behind glass.”

“Was it a one-way glass?”

“When I was a child, no, it wasn’t. Then I destroyed it, and we were moved to a new room that had no glass, but the walls were shiny mirrors.”

“So, it was one-way. And you saw this woman later?”

“Yes, briefly, when I was going out on a mission. Grace is not the first one who has tried to escape, but most of them never made it past the courtyard, aside from one.”

She reached for her water and took a sip from it.

“What happened to that one?”

“We captured him and brought him back.”

“So, there are men, or there were men, involved in this experiment as well?”

“Only a few, and they were either killed or phased out, aside from the one I mentioned.”

“Does he have a name?”

She swallowed hard. “Angel. His name is Angel.”

The thought returned to me: Had I somehow been part of these experiments? Why else would my picture be on Grace’s hard drive? It was a selfish way to insert oneself into a narrative, and truth be told, about the only superpower I had was holding my breath underwater for thirty seconds. But still, something was screwy about all this.

“There must be more like you,” I told her. “And as I was saying up in our room, I think getting this book out will help us find them.”

“You like to use the word ‘us,’ don’t you?”

“I want to be part of this, and I want you and Grace both to be part of it,” I told her quickly. “This will be the most important thing I ever do in my life. If I can expose this, create some change, and stop weird research universities and FCG authorities from creating super soldiers, then I’ve actually done something with my life.”

“Huh.”

Veronique was a unique beauty, with a dash of coldness and seductive vampire qualities due to her ability to deplete a person’s life force.

I knew there was a better way to phrase and think about what she did rather than ‘deplete someone’s life force’ or ‘seductive vampire,’ but it was the easiest way for my mind to comprehend it, and I didn’t want to get into some mitochondria-depleting-oxygen-reverse-osmosis jargon, or whatever the hell it was she was actually doing when she drained someone’s life.

“And what were you doing with your life before?” she asked, bringing my inner monologue to a blinding halt.

“I was working at a Yale gift shop and writing science fiction.”

She laughed at this, producing a rare smile on her face just as my margarita came.

A few sips in and my lips and thoughts loosened up. “You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget,” Cormac McCarthy wrote in The Road.

If ever there was a theme for my rambling …

Veronique continued sipping her water as I told her about my life – inconsequential details, about who I was and what I’d been up to over the last twenty-five years. She seemed interested though, and I wondered if the blandness of my life had some appeal to the super soldier.

It wasn’t long before the steak and shrimp came and with them a side of asparagus and red potatoes that had been baked and fried. The shrimp were juicy and pink, and the steak produced a hint of red liquid around it as I sawed in.

Meat!

My god, was it a good meal, and for a fleeting moment, I wasn’t worried about how all this would end up. I was focused on feeding, drinking, feeding some more.

The check eventually came around, and I went from satiated to nervous as Veronique lightly placed her hand on the check. She looked up at the waiter, something flashing behind her dark eyes.

“I believe there is a discrepancy,” she told him.

He bent over to peer at the check, and as he did, Veronique touched his wrist. Her hand glowed red and the waiter fell.

He cracked his head on the table and took one of the plates with him as he slid to the side.

Just as this happened, all the screws and bolts in the restaurant tore from their sockets, followed by anything metal, from silverware to napkin holders.

People started to scream and scramble, the metal whipping around the room like angry bees, scraping the walls and shattering anything it came into contact with.

Oblivious to the chaos, Veronique took my hand and quietly led me out of the restaurant. We passed through the lobby, made it to the elevator, and took the ride up to our penthouse.

Her knees buckled once we reached the door of our room, and she fell into my arms.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, my thoughts blurred from the alcohol and pandemonium I’d just witnessed.

Her face was flushed, and I could suddenly smell the sweet sick scent of alcohol.

“Just relax,” I told her as I reached for my room key. “Let’s get you into bed.”

Chapter Fifteen: A Hand in the Shower

Kudos to the waiter for showing up drunk and transferring his drunkenness to Veronique. With both women out – Veronique on the king-sized bed in one room and Grace on the queen-sized bed in the other – I was finally able to focus a little more on my writing.

Of course, it took me all of twenty minutes to calm down and parse through what had happened in the restaurant.

That was some pretty crazy shit, and I couldn’t get the image out of my head of Veronique and me moving through the pandemonium as screws and bolts and nails and knives zipped all around us in the air.

There was something beautiful about it; something utterly frightening too. This was another side of the superhero story most people didn’t get to experience: what it felt like from a civilian perspective.

So, I was ready for some peace and quiet, and I’d just sat down to write when Veronique stirred.

“What’s wrong with me?” She asked as she sat up. Her stomach grumbled as she looked at me, her face bright red.

It wasn’t so easy to answer her, especially because there was a flattened coat hanger floating in the air before me.

“You poisoned me,” she said, and with the flick of her wrist, the coat hanger shiv began to rotate.

It was aimed at my face, and I knew exactly where it would go if I didn’t tell her what she wanted to hear.

The only problem was, I didn’t really know what she wanted to hear, nor did I know how to explain everything to her in a way she’d readily understand.

Deep breath in, and I started with the basics. “Do you know what drunk is?”

She didn’t nod, but the coat hanger flinched as if to replicate a nod.

“Okay, so you know what drunk is. Good. I mean, bad. Drunk is bad. I think the waiter was drunk,” I said, recalling that his eyes had been glazed over and that he’d stumbled a bit on the way to the kitchen.

“You tried to poison me,” she slurred.

“Veronique, please, please don’t fucking stab me with that goddamn hanger.”

I thought about swiping the hanger out of the air but quickly bottled that thought, knowing all too well that this would end poorly for me.

Instead, I tried reason.

“Where the hell was I supposed to get some poison over the last couple of hours?” I asked her as calmly as possible. “I have no idea how to poison you, nor anyone for that matter. I mean, aside from making you drink bleach or something, which I clearly don’t have the power to do, I’m pretty much clueless when it comes to killing people. Hiding the bodies too. Well, I didn’t do too poorly back at the Home Depot parking lot.”

“Enough talking,” she growled.

“Okay,” I said, clearing my throat. “But I just want to be clear: I don’t even know what’s poisonous, aside from certain snakes, some cleaners, spiders, and, um, mercury. I think mercury is poisonous.”

Another deep breath in and I found I wasn’t nearly as on edge as I should have been. Oddly enough, I had grown used to being around the superpowered women. I mean, I’m not saying I was all of a sudden some sort of expert, but a lot of weird shit had happened to me over the last few days and as it would turn out, this was just the start of the madness to come.

The clothes hanger lowered to the ground, and she stood. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe.”

“You should rest,” I said, moving to her.

“Sit,” she told me as she approached. “What are you going to do now?”

“Well, I was hoping to write a few thousand more words, but like I told you before dinner, my brain is a little fried for that. So I’m going to work on a cover for the book.”

“Okay.” She sat on her knees and leaned her elbow against my thigh. “Two days.”

“Um,” I swallowed hard as I realized she’d only have to drop her hand to drain me of my life force. And why was she sitting on the floor next to me?

What in the actual fuck is going on here?

“I want to watch you make a book cover.”

“Sure! Great, yes, no problem. You can watch me screw around with these covers.”

She yawned, and for the next few minutes, I tried to ignore the fact that she had her elbow on my thigh. I didn’t feel any of the energy leaving my body, so at least she hadn’t triggered that ability.

I also no longer felt the buzz from the margarita I’d had earlier.

As I’d continue to discover the better I got to know her, Veronique had a third super ability: She could put me on edge, take me off the edge, put me on edge again, and again guide me off in a matter of minutes.

Focus, Writer Gideon, I told myself, pretending it was Grace’s voice. Damn, did I miss having her around.

If I had to get this book out in less than two days, the cover wasn’t going to be great.

But I could try my best, and thinking of the cover got me thinking about book titles. My first thought for a book title was Cherry Blossom Girls, but that sounded stupid, and the cover would have to be really good to convey what it was about.

I then thought about calling the book Subject S and V, or maybe, Subject G and Subject S, but that also wouldn’t fit, and it sounded worse than my first idea.

“What do you think about the title Mutants in the Making?” I asked Veronique.

She removed her elbow and lay down on the floor, curling up at my feet. It was an awkward pose for her, and she quickly sat back up, placed her arms on my lap, eventually settling her head on her arms.

What the hell is she doing? I thought as I felt something stir in my groin.

Do not … do not … I started to tell my proof of manhood.

Focus, you horny bastard!

“I have to get this cover right,” I whispered to myself, as if vocalizing it would distract me from the fact that Veronique was now sleeping with her head in my lap.

Mutants in the Making? It wasn’t the best title, but it was kind of cool, and if I had a cool subtitle, it would be at least halfway legit.

That one would definitely not work, but ‘based on a true story’ was a keeper.

My first take at the cover took me too long, which meant that it wasn’t spontaneous, wasn’t authentic. Besides, it also looked like a damn college macroeconomics textbook. And what the hell were all the Dr. Mario-esque pink things?

I toiled around a little more in Photoshop, trying a different idea, a different, sexier approach.

Yep, a throwaway cover for sure. My mind was a blur when I crafted that version, but if this had been an erotic title, that’d be an award-winning cover right there.

Gideon, you are delusional.

I moved on to the next design idea. I wanted this one to be a bit more mainstream, so no thongs, and I wanted it to be a little more poppy.

This one didn’t work either. It looked way too amateurish, and I’d spelled my last name wrong too. Also, there wasn’t really room for the tagline, so it was a definite no.

So far, I’d had three duds, and one of those duds was just straight up out of left field. I don’t even know what I was thinking when I designed the sexy one.

Maybe the alcohol?

I wasn’t feeling drunk ten minutes ago, but since Veronique dozed off, a feeling of drunkenness had washed over me.

I was a lightweight, so one margarita would knock me on my ass for sure.

“Two days,” I reminded myself. “Actually, less than that now – a lot less. What do you want this book to say? How do you want the cover to come across?”

The things writers ask themselves, am I right?

I tinkered around for another ten minutes, unhappy with the final result:

The font color was atrocious, and I’d messed with the tint so much that I’d lost the feel of the original. Besides, what the hell was it supposed to mean anyway? What did the flower represent? Why did it look wilted?

I decided to get serious with this last one.

I needed a big concept, so I chose a galaxy. It was a good image, and people recognized it as something other, something bigger than themselves.

Next, I needed me, or at least someone that was male, who was supposed to represent me.

In actuality, I was your average bearded writer dude with glasses. That wouldn’t work. So, I found a Creative Commons image of a guy who looked better than me. Or at least his silhouette looked better than mine because it didn’t have a beard.

I slapped it on that cover, found a badass font, put in all the deets that I needed, and felt the urge to pat myself on the back. I finally had a winner.

With a few more saturation adjustments and some good font spacing, I had myself a cover that Random Penguin House would have been proud to pay fifteen thousand dollars to have designed.

It didn’t quite convey the whole ‘government super soldier experiment thing’ that I wanted to reveal, but I could put that in the product description, and besides, I had to get the book in people’s hands before I could blow their minds and uncover more of the truth.

Because that’s what all this was about, uncovering more of the truth.

“What now, what now?” I asked myself.

I hadn’t done badly for the day.

I’d written a crapton of words, found out a lot more about Grace and Veronique, and I’d designed a pretty damn good cover. With enough rest, I could very well finish the book tomorrow.

It would take a ton of coffee, but Veronique didn’t say anything about word count, so who cared if the book topped out at thirty thousand words or less? Who said it couldn’t be a novella? Who said it couldn’t be twenty thousand words?

Then the idea came to me: I would publish the book as a serial, each installment detailing how things had changed since the last go around!

It was an accomplishable goal, and it would hopefully have the effect of building an audience.

Of course, there were now thirty million or so self-published works out there, but the fact I’d have a wider net with more books would surely help.

“Veronique,” I said softly, “I’m going to move you to the bed. I want to take a shower.”

She groaned, looked up at me, and nodded.

“Come on,” I said, helping her up. “You can sleep in your clothes, that’s no big deal.”

I got her to bed, tucking her in like a baby, and stepped into the immaculate bathroom. Sure, I could have run out of the room, Grace over my shoulder, but where would I run? Besides, I felt like Veronique was starting to warm up to me.

I wasn’t good with architectural terms, but there was a pretty big counter in the bathroom made of marble and a tub large enough for two, as well as a walk-in shower that was looking real nice right about now.

The water came on with the press of a button on the wall and I stripped down.

I got in and let the warm water hit my body, washing away the day.

I thought back to the erotica-esque cover I had designed, and my hand naturally gravitated toward my member.

Don’t do it, I mentally ordered as I started ‘cleaning.’

But that never stopped me, and it hardly stopped any man aside from a monk, and even those guys got a little weird after a spell.

Do not masturbate, do not masturbate, I told myself as I began tugging.

I managed to stop, took a deep breath, and tried to just enjoy the hot water and quiet. The day hadn’t been as tense as the previous one – if you didn’t count Veronique’s surprise attack – but I did have this deadline looming over my head, even though I’d figured out a way around it.

I popped open the hotel shampoo, spread it through my hair, and made the split-second decision to give myself another pull.

Do not do it, just take a shower and go to bed.

That was when the shower curtain slipped aside.

Veronique stood before me, completely nude, her arms at her sides and a soft, yet awkward smile on her face.

I nearly slipped backward, hit my head on the wall, and died in a shower at the Marriott in Stamford, Connecticut.

“Do you mind if I join you?”

She was incredibly fit, almost sinewy, and as I took her in, I noted she was clean-shaven and that there was a small birthmark on her hip.

“You should have knocked,” I mumbled.

“What were you doing in here?” Her eyes darted to my swollen mini-writer.

“Just cleaning!” I said as I covered myself.

I was so shocked that I hadn’t even thought of covering my Johnson when she first opened the curtain.

“It’ll go faster if we clean each other,” she said, stepping into the shower.

She was petite, slightly bottom-heavy, her breasts much smaller than Grace’s, and her nipples large and erect.

But I was trying not to stare, trying my damndest not to stare.

This was one situation I hadn’t predicted, not that I predicted much of this, but I’d figured Grace and I would hook up because I felt some chemistry between us. Turns out I was right.

But Veronique and me?

“I’ll help you.” She ran the soap over my chest.

“I was just finishing up,” I grunted.

“Clearly,” Veronique said as her hand fell to my proof of manhood.

I closed my eyes; I had no idea how to react to this other than to let it happen, and just … Well, to think that I’d ended up in this situation … Damn it, Gideon, just enjoy it … Okay, okay that feels good … Yes, yes, focus on the writing, don’t focus on …

I felt the strange sensation in my stomach and my eyes popped open. I looked down. Her hand had started to turn red.

“What are you doing?”

“I never tried to take power this way before,” she said. “I’ll stop.”

Veronique removed her hand from my penis. She glanced at the shower head and it moved ever so slightly, spraying the hot water against her chest rather than her neck and chin.

“You don’t have to,” I said hella awkwardly. “I mean, you don’t have to stop. You do have to stop using your ability though, because that could kill me.”

“I don’t think you can handle it,” she said coyly.

“Not only do I think you’re right, I think you’re wrong. I’m much tougher than I, um, look.”

Nope, not even I was convinced by that last statement.

“How tough can you be? You’re a bearded writer who writes some type of fiction that is fake.”

“All fiction is fake. Besides that, did you see the new cover I designed? It’s a winner,” I said, barely able to swallow my own bullshit.

“I don’t think I saw it.”

I could tell by her movements that she was still drunk, which was maybe why she decided to join me in the shower. Even though I was entirely turned on by her, I was also very apprehensive, akin to the way a male black widow feels right as he’s about to score.

She grabbed me again and began moving her hand up and down.

“What does it feel like?”

“It feels, like, good? Great! I don’t really know how to explain how that feels to a female.”

“Dicks are interesting. They grow, and they shrink.” She flicked the top of my penis. “Yours looks like a long mushroom.”

I cleared my throat. “I was not expecting this, Veronique, to be honest with you …”

“What were you expecting?”

“To take a shower,” I said with a sigh. She was stroking fast now and staring at me intently as she did so.

How do you know so much about this? I wanted to ask, but all I could do was exhale deeply.

She kept going and moved just a few inches closer to me. I could now feel a sexual tension radiating off her skin.

It was too much, and I seriously doubt anyone besides a professionally-trained porn star could have lasted as long as I did. Okay, that’s a lie, but I gave it my college try and actually lasted another minute as she found a good, steady rhythm.

“I’m going to …”

She stopped and removed her hand. “You have one day to finish the book.” She pushed the shower curtain away and started to get out.

“I’m almost finished,” I told her quickly. “I have a better idea for releasing the book, and I’m ready to get the first one out by the end of the day tomorrow. Seriously!”

“A better idea?” She stepped back into the shower.

If I could have bit my fist without looking like a total idiot, I would have. I was on the verge of just about everything. The verge of orgasm; the verge of crying out in fear if she didn’t like my idea and I wasn’t able to finish the book; the verge of embarrassment as I realized the tone of that last thing I’d said sounded like I was begging.

“Yes, a better idea! Sorry, not trying to yell, I just have this release strategy that will allow me – I mean us, to put more books out and hopefully find out about other people who are experiencing this.”

“What makes you think people who know about people like me would read your books?” She returned her hand to my confused penis. Damn, it was getting steamy in that shower. It was as if a mist were growing between us.

“I have no idea about that part, but I do think putting it out there will get us some contact from … from maybe someone who has heard about something like this, something similar. You know what, I think it’ll give us a lead, and that’s what we need. We need to lead – er, a lead … we need a lead, dammit.”

She began moving her hand up and down again. “And what about the Rose-Lyle facility?”

“You decide what you want to do to it and how you want to do it,” I said quickly. “I’ll help in any way I can.”

“Well, you can drive. Neither of us can drive.”

“Then I will be the driver!”

“And you have other skills that you bring to the table. At least, I think you do.” She narrowed her eyes at me and stopped jerking her hand.

I gulped. “Um, yeah, I believe I bring other things to the table too.”

My god, was I a weakling.

It was amazing to me how much could be done by just grabbing a man’s penis and giving him a command.

Veronique could have told me to punch myself in the face at that moment, and I would have done so. She could have told me to deepthroat the hotel shampoo bottle, and I would have swallowed that thing right up.

“Do you want me to finish?” she asked, not seeming to feel the water as it bounced off her back.

I nodded, ashamed, but happy to finally get some closure to all this.

Chapter Sixteen: We Will Destroy Them All

I slept like a baby. That was, until a screaming voice woke me up. I’d been dreaming about my superpower, which kept changing as Grace, Veronique, and I fought off some of the MercSecure goons.

In one moment, I had sharp claws, the next I was flying through the air, my body set aflame. At some point in the fight sequence, I learned the ability to kinetically charge things, which I put to my advantage by charging a bus in the midst of our countless enemies.

But the scream inside my head ruined all of that. I practically jump-kicked out of bed, afraid of what I may find, afraid that the government had finally caught up to us.

Veronique was asleep next to me, my sudden movement doing nothing to stir her.

My vision blurred. I glanced around the room again trying to decipher where the sound came from. The morning sun peeked through the blinds, casting a thin crack of light on the door. I was warm; the room was much hotter than I would have liked.

Don’t say anything, don’t do anything. It’s me.

Grace? I thought.

Her voice returned to my head.

Yes, and I have just a little bit of energy now, so I need to use it wisely.

What’s with the screaming inside my head?

I thought it would wake you.

I considered this for a moment. Well, it definitely did. But I thought you had to see me to use your abilities?

I have imprinted on you, and as of one night ago, you imprinted on me.

That’s one way to put it. Look, I know this may sound strange, especially considering the fact that she tried to kill you – well, kill you-ish. But we need to work with Veronique. She seems to want some of the same things we want. Actually, we never really discussed what we wanted, but I’m pretty sure it’s the same thing that she wants.

I don’t know if that’s a good idea. She came after us to take us back to them.

Yeah, but she also killed the people she came with, I thought back.

I see that she has gotten in your mind somewhat, among other places. I would love a shower at the moment.

I gulped as I carefully removed the cover from my body. I plead the fifth? No, that won’t work against you. Look, we spent a lot of time together over the last day, and I’m starting to trust her more than before.

Is that all it takes for someone to gain your trust? A handjob?

I trusted her before that – you can scour my mind to see for yourself! Okay, so I didn’t trust her fully before that, but I trust her a little more now, and she’s giving me a day to get this book up and out. And I’m ready. Got the cover ready, and I have a release strategy; we’re going to get this story out.

I took a deep breath and turned to Veronique, making sure she was still asleep.

Can’t you just imprint on her mind or something? I thought to Grace. Imprint on her that we are kind of all in this together now and that I’m going to help you two destroy the Rose-Lyle facility and help discover where other superpowered individuals may be. Notice I didn’t call you mutants, although that is in the title of the book I’m writing.

We may be able to work together, but I need to be stronger before I attempt to come out of the coma-like state she’s put me in.

How much longer will that take?

Distract her for two more hours? I’m afraid she’s going to feed on me when she wakes up, just to get a little more of my energy.

Does she actually need to eat food?

Yes and no. Like any human, she does gain sustenance from eating food, but she gains a lot more by draining a person’s life force. She prefers that, I believe.

She really is like a vampire, even the way she acts and …

Seduces. I’m aware. Distract her for two hours, and do not let her feed. Then, I will have leverage, and maybe we can come to some agreement about how we should go forward.

Got it.

“Hey, Veronique.” I touched her lightly on the shoulder. Her eyes popped open and she glared at me for a moment before her scowl softened at the edges.

“Are you ready to start writing?” she said, instead of good morning.

“Yeah, I am, but first I want to do something amazing.”

“Amazing?”

I gave her the most sincere shit-eating grin I could muster. “This hotel has the grandest, most beautiful breakfast buffet you could possibly imagine. We call it a continental breakfast, and it truly is continental.”

“Is it now?”

“Oh, yeah, it is a great breakfast, Grace and I had it yesterday. You just have to try it. You’ll be so impressed. I know it’s not maybe what you would normally eat, but I think you’ll love it, and I would love to be able to make you something.”

She sat up, her interest piqued. “Make me something?” She wore a training bra and nothing else beneath the blanket. Her demeanor was totally the opposite of what it had been in the shower; I no longer had the sense that I could reach out and touch her if I wanted.

Which was possibly a good thing.

I nodded, the grin still on my face. “That’s right, I want to make you an amazingly delicious extra sweet waffle. And while you’re eating that, I’ll make you a plate of bacon and sausage and potatoes and eggs and … Hell, I’ll probably be able to get you some yogurt, and some orange juice, and some coffee, and maybe even some fruit.”

She licked her lips. “That doesn’t sound too bad …”

I smiled at her. “It’s going to be phenomenal; the best breakfast you’ve ever had. It’s a continental breakfast – I mean, when was the last time you had a continental breakfast?”

“Never.”

“Exactly! Let’s go down there and have ourselves a badass breakfast, and then I’ll get back up here and start writing. No, you know what? Let’s have some breakfast, then go for a quick walk to get motivated – because that’s important – and then we’ll come back and I’ll get started.”

“I think that will be fine, yes.”

Thank you, Gideon, Grace’s voice said in my skull as I got out of bed. Are you sure you’re not a psychic?

No, I’ve just learned how to bullshit well, I responded as I put my pants on.

After Veronique slipped back into her tight, black mil-spec outfit, we headed down to the breakfast buffet. I wore a turtleneck sweater and a pair of jeans with holes at the knees. We were definitely mismatched, an odd couple, but no one at the buffet seemed to care.

To prolong our time at the buffet, I told Veronique it was customary for people to take items one at a time.

Of course, the hungry Americans all around me proved me wrong, but she didn’t seem to notice this. She had lightened up since the day before, and while she wasn’t smiling at me per se, there was a mischievous, yet friendly, look to her eyes.

We didn’t discuss what happened in the bathroom last night, and I was glad for that.

Mostly, we ate and drank, and I continued to try to make time pass, checking the clock on my phone every now and then. I suggested a walk, a look in the hotel’s gift shop, a tour of the guest amenities. She agreed to everything.

About two hours later, we took the elevator back to our suite.

Get ready, Grace’s voice said inside my head.

I tensed up, took a deep breath, and opened the door to our room.

Everything about the room was the same as it was before. Veronique, however, noticed that I was apprehensive.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes! I was just thinking about what I was going to write. I get tense like this sometimes before I write.”

“Okay,” she said, brushing past me.

I swallowed hard and moved over to my laptop, trying to stay as nonchalant as possible.

“Just going to do some writing,” I said.

Veronique stopped in front of the bed. Her eyes flashed and she hit the mattress, lying there as if she’d gone into a trance.

My heart skipped a beat as Grace stepped into the room. She looked calm and poised, her eyes white, her pupils tiny black dots.

“I don’t want you to hurt her,” I told Grace. “I know more about you two now, and I need both of you – we need both of you.”

“She can kill us.” Grace moved toward me, her shoulders swaying as she walked.

She was incredibly beautiful … her long blonde hair, her blue eyes, her voluptuous figure.

She wore an outfit similar to Veronique’s, a tight mil-spec number with a zipper on the front. Of course, she’d only zipped it up to about the meeting point of her breasts, almost as if it were a dominatrix bodysuit.

It was a fantasy outfit, that was for sure, likely something she pulled from my mind and juxtaposed with Veronique’s getup.

It almost reminded me of something one of the X-Men would wear, which, as I moved further into my adult life, became more and more ridiculous. I mean, all superheroes, no matter which publisher, wore pretty ridiculous outfits. But then again, if they didn’t wear those crazy outfits, would we like them as much?

“Quiet, Writer Gideon,” Grace said as she glowered at Veronique. “Your internal banter is distracting me.”

“No, I’m serious here,” I said, standing my ground. “We’ve got enough problems, and I don’t want to add you two fighting each other to our list. For example, we need to check out by eleven a.m., or go downstairs and trick them again using your abilities. My point is: both of you are a key to this puzzle, and both of you have powers that we need to use together, to stop them.”

“He’s right,” Veronique gasped. Her eyes flashed back to their normal color and then turned white again.

“Grace, let her go. And Veronique, don’t do anything crazy when she does. Someone needs to take charge here, and, um, that person is going to have to be me.”

Surprisingly, the tone of my voice seemed to completely change Grace’s demeanor. There was still anger in her eyes but also a strange sense of obedience. Which there shouldn’t have been, because she could have fileted my mind if she had wanted.

Grace’s shoulders relaxed, and Veronique slipped off the bed and stood in one fluid motion, her stance that of a person ready to kill.

“Okay everyone,” I said, holding my hands out wide, palms facing the two women. “Let’s just bring this down a notch. I need to finish my book, first off. And you two need to give me as much information as you can without fighting or killing each other.”

“Nice to see you, Grace,” Veronique said. While her normally harsh tone wasn’t evident, there was still something there, something slightly aggressive in her voice.

Grace glared at her. “It wasn’t nice what you did to me.”

“You would have done the same to me.”

“But now we’re one big happy family, and I need you two to behave,” I said. “Now, Veronique, you need to get some new clothes. Grace, you have the ability to help her get new clothes.”

“I could find one of the hotel maids,” Grace said.

“Yes, you could. In fact …” Something occurred to me. “I know you were trying to make a suggestion that you would get Veronique some maid clothing, which is not what we need. But it does give me an idea. We can’t go around wearing private security uniforms. We’ve done that twice now,” I said to Veronique. “It’ll raise suspicion. I’ll call room service and send a maid up. Grace, have them buy clothing for Veronique.”

“Okay.”

“I need to get like eight thousand more words written,” I told them. “And to do that, I’m going to need some concentration time, so what I want to happen here is for you, Veronique, to stay in this room and just relax while the maid is out buying you new clothes. Grace, I need you to come in the other room with me so I can ask you some questions.”

“Fine.”

I shook my head at her. “And I know you’ve been either modifying the truth or lying to me some. So that ends now. The truth from now on. I checked your drive while you were out. Give me the truth, got it?”

Veronique grinned at her counterpart. “I let him access you.”

“And one more thing, Veronique, no more deadline. This book will be finished today, but that’s because I want to publish it as a serial. So can it with the threats. We’ll get the book out today, we’ll make some plans for tomorrow, and we’ll go from there.”

I was surprised that it was Grace who spoke up next, especially after what she said. “We will destroy the facility.”

It’d been less than a day without the psychic and I’d already forgotten just how powerful she was.

“Exactly, we’ll destroy the facility and we’ll uncover the truth, even if it kills us. Hopefully, we’ll find more of them,” I said, my voice increasing in volume. “And we’ll go for them too. We’ll destroy them all.”

“Yes,” Veronique said, “we will.”

“Your skills will come in handy for gathering info, Grace, but we also need to rely on the collective readership of America, because there are a lot of people in places that we have no access to. People may know more about these experiments and the people who are being experimented on. So let’s get started.”

Veronique moved back to the bed and sat, then turned on the TV.

“Good, that’s the spirit,” I said, my voice faltering.

After you’re done asking me questions, can I watch daytime television too? Grace’s voice echoed in my head.

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Definitely. But I want to experiment some more with adjusting your stats first. I think it may come in handy in the future. And I want to know why my picture was on your hard drive. How is that even possible?”

Grace shrugged. “We’ll just have to find out.”

Chapter Seventeen: Memories Revisited

Grace and I went downstairs to extend our stay another day, which was a piece of cake. The next thing to do was get some clothing. We found a maid stepping out of one of the rooms on the floor below us.

“Tell her to get some nice clothes, a lot of nice clothes.”

“She doesn’t have any money on her,” Grace explained as she read her mind. “She doesn’t have a lot in her bank either.”

“Crap, I didn’t consider that. You know what? Let’s just deal with clothing later. Veronique’s military black will work for now. Disregard what I said earlier about it making her stand out. I mean, it’s America, people wear crazy things all the time.”

“Is my outfit crazy?” she asked. The maid stood before us, still in a trance. Grace was now in a coat, my pants, and a sweater with a cherry blossom stitched on it.

This got me wondering just how Grace chose clothing. For people, she had to have seen them once before. Was it the same for clothing? Or could she think anything up and it worked?

I tried to get this answer out of her as we went back to our room, but she didn’t give me much detail about it.

“Sorry, no clothes for now, Veronique,” I told the deadly woman relaxing in front of the TV. She was glued to the screen, watching a rerun of some Big Bang Theory spinoff.

Once we got into the second bedroom, Grace lay on the bed and I used my phone to plug into the port on her neck. Her head was propped up by a single pillow, her blue eyes gazing steadily at me.

“You don’t have to watch me,” I told her, feeling just a hint of nervousness.

“I’ve had my eye on you for a few days now,” she said with a chuckle.

“I believe that.”

The first thing I did was bring up her psychic stats. They were presented to me the way they had been the second time, with dials that I could adjust.

Omnikinesis: 1

Second Sight: 1

Psychometry: 5

Telepathy: 8

Clairsentience: 7

Psychokinesis: 1

Hypnosis: 6

It was time for me to research a little more about what these things were. With my laptop open, I researched each skill individually, figuring it would fill out my manuscript.

A few of them, such as Second Sight, were self-explanatory. I knew what telepathy was and I was familiar with psychokinesis and hypnosis.

Psychometry was interesting; it allowed her to touch an object or a person and understand that person’s emotional state or the history behind the object. Like, she could touch Hunter S. Thompson’s typewriter, and learn more about his years of drug abuse.

Clairsentience was the ability to figure out past, present, and future emotional states of people. This would come in handy in the future – a future in which I hoped to use her powers to their utmost ability.

It became clear as I read more about omnikinesis that I had finally stumbled upon a min-max situation. Omnikinesis was all of the psychic abilities combined and increasing it increased the other powers as well.

This became evident as I turned all the other ones down and adjusted Omnikinesis up to ten.

The results brought a smile to my face.

As soon as omnikinesis hit ten, all the other skills jumped to either five or six, so that her dials looked like this:

Omnikinesis: 10

Second Sight: 5

Psychometry: 5

Telepathy: 6

Clairsentience: 5

Psychokinesis: 7

Hypnosis: 5

Psychokinesis, which had been at one before, had surprisingly jumped up to seven. So this wasn’t a min-max situation at all; it was a situation in which someone had turned down her best ability to prevent the other abilities from being higher.

There was a ton of other stuff I wanted to do while plugged into her, but I couldn’t resist testing her psychokinesis ability.

“Grace, I want you to use your mind to lift that TV.”

“Use my mind to lift the TV?” She looked from me to the flat screen television on the nightstand.

“Yes. I’ve been messing with your psychic abilities a bit, and I think this is something you may be able to do now. Focus on it, and, um, pick it up with your mind.”

Talk about becoming a Jedi master – I had just made the leap from Padawan to Yoda in a matter of seconds.

Grace’s brow furrowed, and her eyes flashed white as she looked at the television. The television wobbled, lifted, fell back to the nightstand, and lifted again, this time floating a good two feet into the air.

“That’s awesome!”

She gently set the television down. “Really?”

“Really.” A few thoughts raced through my mind and I settled on the most logical. “Okay, I want you to try a heavier object. Fuck, try me. That’s it – lift me! Lift me up with your abilities, but not too high because I’m afraid of heights. Kidding, but seriously, try.”

I stood with my hands at my side, ready to see how powerful she truly was.

I felt a tingling sensation in my stomach as my feet lifted off the ground. “Keep going,” I told her, a smile on my face. She continued lifting me until I was a few feet from the ceiling. I reached my hand up and touched it for stability.

“This is so sweet,” I breathed. “But as much as I’d like to float around the room like Peter Pan, I have more work to do. You can lower me now, we need to continue.”

Using the smartphone, I began going through some of the subfolders in search of data that could possibly help us. I also wanted to ask her questions that would help expand my manuscript and expose more of what was going on at the secret Rose-Lyle facility.

“You’re wasting your time,” she told me.

“By going through your data? What about the fact that I found my pictures in there? I just have so many questions about this.”

“Maybe it would be better if I showed you.”

“You mean transfer …” I made a gesture that meant mind to mind. “Sure, it would kick ass if you could show me something that helped me better understand what you experienced. But we need a safe word because if you show me too much and I feel like I’m trapped, it could be a traumatizing experience.”

“It was a traumatizing experience.”

I considered that for a moment. “Yeah, you’re right; you should just show me,” I said bravely.

“Come lay down next to me.”

Grace didn’t have to ask me twice. I unplugged my phone, wrapped the cable around it, and got on the bed next to her.

I swallowed hard as she placed her hand on mine. “Close your eyes.”

My lids shut tight and a myriad of moving images came to me.

It was not at all like watching a video, or a flashback.

It was like waking up in the middle of the night and thinking of everything at once – your past, your future, something that occurred recently, something that occurred months ago, and something that could potentially happen. A literal wall of memory slammed into me.

I understood Grace’s life now, at least the life that she wanted to share with me.

Because of her psychic ability, she was kept in solitary confinement from the age of three or four to her current age of twenty-one.

She’d been given things to watch and books to read, but she wasn’t allowed to actually interact with others, aside from two scientists, and only then if she was blindfolded.

They used robots and later androids, primitive ones, to communicate with her. Her best friend growing up was an Android from Japan that could do little more than answer simple questions and do funny dances. Because of this robot, I found out, she spoke Japanese.

While in solitary confinement, Grace had been observed by dozens of security cameras set up in clusters in the corners. There was also a room with one-way mirrors that she would be taken to every week.

This was what made her so different from Veronique, who seemed to have more interaction with people and was allowed to go out once she became older.

“It’s so terrible,” I said as I felt what it must have been like to be sheltered from the world for so long. She wasn’t starved or anything, and no one had ever done anything to harm her; she was simply kept in utter isolation.

It was a wonder this government lab didn’t raise a feral human being.

If it hadn’t been for her constant media consumption, she would have been fucked in the head. I mean she was already slightly fucked in the head, but she was sweet, and she generally seemed to mean well.

The media consumption also helped her with her shifter abilities. The scientists had made sure her voice remained the same no matter what form she took. This was so she couldn’t confuse them, and it was also why the setting was so low when I first examined her.

Everything was starting to make sense.

“How did you escape?” I whispered. “How did you end up at my doorstep?”

Those images came to me as well, swirling around my mind as if they were a flock of birds being stalked by an eagle.

Grace had planned her escape for over a year.

She didn’t have much contact with anyone, aside from a pair of scientists. These scientists would speak to her every couple of days, together, and they made sure she was blindfolded, wore a helmet with the visor blacked out, and that her hands were shackled. A robot did the shackling.

I intuited most of these things through the transfer of her memory. Because her eyes were shut, she couldn’t see what the two scientists looked like, but as our minds are prone to do when only given a portion of the details, hers quickly filled in the rest.

One of the scientists had a weaker will than the other, this she was sure of.

The cuffs they made her wear weren’t tight, and she could move around; they were mainly given to prevent her from touching someone and understanding their memories, which would have allowed her to manipulate them.

So this became her next mission: get them to remove the cuffs.

After several months of very soft complaining, she finally got the two scientists to meet her without the cuffs.

She was clever enough not to ever move in a way that seemed aggressive or confrontational, and she kept this act up for three months, uncuffed in a room with the two scientists.

The scientists continued to grow more casual around her, especially the one she’d sensed was weak, and it was on a dark and stormy night that she finally made her move.

As the first scientist took his seat, Grace dove toward him, still completely blindfolded. She missed his body entirely but was able to grab onto his ankle, and from there slid her hand up his pant leg and touched his skin.

The rest was history.

The scientist turned to his counterpart and beat the living hell out of him. After that, the possessed man helped Grace up and removed her visor and blindfold.

This was an especially powerful moment for her, when the dark turned to light and she could put a face to the man’s voice. What a strange feeling that must have been.

Why were you naked when you came to my door? I thought.

The answer came almost before I could get the question out.

Grace was usually naked at the facility because of the fact that she could form her own clothing. And, as she became aware that the planned escape was going in her favor, she quickly morphed into the scientist’s counterpart.

She told him to take her to his car.

She had no idea where to have him take her, and they were circling through Wooster Square to get to the highway when she momentarily lost her grip on his psyche.

In that instant, he verbally told his car to call work and tell them Grace had escaped. It only took her a second after that to regain control over him again. But rather than have him drive her any longer – knowing they’d be looking for her – she made him pull over.

Grace then wiped his thoughts and told him to drive to as far away as possible.

Being free, and in a place she didn’t recognize, was utterly terrifying. She lost it then and started screaming for help, which caused her to again lose focus and return to her base, naked form. This explained why she was nude when I met her, and it also explained why she wouldn’t let me phone the police.

“So, that’s your story,” I said as she finished showing me.

“Yes.”

“I don’t know why you came to me, but I’ll do my best to make it right.” I sat up and looked at her. She moved a bit closer to kiss me. The hair on my neck stood at attention as I thought about Veronique in the other room.

“Later, I need to work now.”

Chapter Eighteen: Heavy Metal Orchestra

Me: Luke, the story is just getting crazier and crazier.

Luke: Where you at wordcount-wise?

Me: I’ve been going at it since about eleven, and I’m passing the twenty-three thousand mark. I got a whole new release strategy involved, a serial of sorts.

Luke: Serials seem to be pretty hit or miss.

Me: True, but with the story I have, and its implications, I need to put it out there in concentrated doses. Having more of a reach through multiple releases may help with that, but it’s too early to be sure.

Luke: So, what’s happening in the story then? Did you get some action in?

Me: Action is coming, right now I’m working on the build-up to an action scene. My three protagonists are going to destroy the secret government facility that created the two superpowered women.

Luke: Do you have an antagonist yet?

Me: Not really, aside from an ambiguous government operation and a security company called MercSecure.

Luke: Well, you’ll need someone, maybe an evil professor or something, or a badass, superpowered hombre.

Me: Canadians use the word ‘hombre?’

Luke: Lol. They do now! Have you added more game elements yet? I’ll take a look at them if you’d like me to.

Me: Readers that like a lot of stats won’t be into it, but maybe they’ll like the story. There are stats though, and I’ve figured out a way to adjust them. Let me rephrase: my MC didn’t know how to adjust them before, and he still has Veronique, the dangerous one, to work on and modify a bit.

Luke: And is the harem in full effect?

Me: Well, in a way, but the MC isn’t … That’s not his MO, although it looks like it could move into a polyamorous situation. Hopefully. Who doesn’t want to get laid by powerful women?

Luke: Lol. Hopefully? What do you mean hopefully? You’re the writer!

Me: These characters have long since taken over, I’m just letting them write their own story now.

As if to prove my point, the front door to our room splintered opened and two smoke grenades tumbled inside.

“Get down!” Veronique screamed at us. The smoke grenades went off, followed by a flashbang.

I heard whooshing sounds as metal seared through the air toward the open door.

I couldn’t see it, but I could hear all the metal in the front room being torn from the walls, the television, the light fixtures, and the door. That noise was followed by the sound of screaming men.

Smoke billowed into the second room.

With my laptop now under my arm, I grabbed Grace’s hand and asked, “Do you think you can lower us to the ground? We’ll get out of this, dammit, just focus!”

Just seeing my determined face brought a sense of calm to her. Her eyebrows lowered.

“Get your things,” she said, “Veronique and I will handle this.”

Unable to see the security detail, Grace’s only option was to use her recently improved psychokinetic abilities. She lifted her hands, and as she did, the walls next to the door collapsed inward. I heard more crunching sounds as the walls in the hallway, and portions of the floor began to crack.

Veronique skidded into our room, her hand over her mouth.

“You can do that now?” she asked.

“Yep, we need to get out of here!” I answered for Grace.

With the smoke starting to billow all around us, there was only one way out. I pointed to the window. Grace nodded, and as she tightened her fist, the window blew out.

And that was when we saw the fucking helicopter approaching the hotel.

“We have to jump!” I told both of them, my nerves on fire, my lungs burning, the smoke from the grenades searing my eyes.

The helicopter, its blades beating loudly, got into position. I hit the deck as bullets ricocheted into the room.

That was it, we were dead. I knew it was over, and I felt ashamed at how poorly it had ended.

But only a few of the bullets managed to reach the far side of the room. The rest stopped mid-air, Veronique’s metal wielding power at full capacity.

I watched from my covered position on the floor as the bullets turned back to the helicopter.

“Oh shit!” I whisper-screamed.

A direct headshot into the pilot sent the helicopter crashing against the side of the hotel, its propellers whipping at the window a few doors down and causing a small explosion which rained debris down on the streets below.

“I need more energy!” Veronique was now on one knee, panting.

I put one hand on Grace’s shoulder and stared deeply into her ice blue eyes. “Grace, you’re our only hope of getting out of here,” I told her through clenched teeth. “Please, focus – you can do this!”

Her eyes flashed white, and as she stared at me defiantly, all three of us lifted into the air. I barely managed to grab my duffle bag before we floated over to the blown-out window.

As we reached the window, one of the security personnel shouldered into the room with his weapon drawn. As soon as he saw Grace he turned the weapon on himself, sticking it in his mouth and ending it right there.

“Feed, Veronique!” I called to her, and sensing what I meant, she used her metal ability to drag the soldier closer to her.

Her hand came over what was left of his face. It flashed red, and the man’s body began shriveling.

“Are you ready, Grace!?” I shouted.

“Let me get us halfway there,” Veronique said. The red power around her fingertips dissipated and color returned to her face.

The floor shook as metal peeled from the building’s exterior. The bars of metal twisted in the air outside, forming a primitive staircase.

Grace floated us out the window and set our bodies on the first metal ‘stair’ that Veronique had created.

The world spun around me as we started moving downward, gravity pulling at us, Yours Truly scared beyond shitless.

Looking back, I think the only thing that kept me from falling over was Grace’s ability. There was simply no way a guy like me could run down a makeshift staircase made from building materials as a goddamn Apache helicopter approached us from a distance.

“We’ve got to get to the BMW!” I yelled wildly, which sounded way cooler in retrospect than it did coming out of my mouth as a pansied shriek.

The Apache moved closer to us, its blades slicing through the air.

Veronique swiped one arm behind her and all the stair pieces we’d already stepped on flew like spears toward the helicopter.

The adrenaline surging through me by this point would have been hard to measure. I started feeling faint, and just before I could fall over the side, Grace lifted me in the air and we lowered the rest of the way to the ground.

We landed and started running. I heard sirens … far away but drawing closer. And another helicopter. It was like something out of a Jerry Bruckheimer film.

We weren’t far from the concierge lot when I suddenly remembered that the valet had the keys.

“Grace, keys!” I shouted.

Luckily, the valet was huddled behind his little booth, his hands over his head.

As soon as Grace saw him, he stood up, found our keys, and tossed them to me. No, I didn’t have the skill set at that point to catch the keys mid-air, especially with what was going on all around me.

But I had Veronique.

The keys flew into her hand and we dashed down into the winding concierge parking lot.

“Where’s our car, where’s our car, where’s our car?” I mumbled as we ran. I’d never run so fast in my life. It was amazing what a man could do when he had a covert government agency on his ass!

But I’d be winded soon, I could tell, and I was happy as shit when Grace reached out and touched my keys, instantly recalling where the car was parked.

One minute later, we found the beamer. I jumped into the driver’s seat, Veronique in the back and Grace at my side.

We tore out of the parking lot, and just as we got to street level, a black SUV with a siren in the window drove onto the scene. It was followed by three more black SUVs and a fucking black Humvee.

The high-speed chase had begun.

“Grace, distract the SUVs!”

I pressed the button on the center panel that brought the top down and looked in the rearview mirror at Veronique, who was already turned around, plotting her next move. “Veronique, take out anyone you can and don’t let any of those bullets get to us! Bullets, focus on the bullets!”

She simply nodded without looking back at me.

With my foot on the gas pedal, and my hair whipping in the wind, I swerved around the cars waiting to get onto the highway.

The BMW was fast, and I wasn’t the best driver, but I’d played a lot of the first person driving video games. Which really shouldn’t count for anything, but I reminded myself of my video game background just for the sake of courage.

Swerving around a red Toyota Corolla, we took the on-ramp to the highway.

As soon as Grace turned and saw the face of a shocked driver, she forced him to lurch right, cutting off one of the SUVs behind us and causing a collision. The other SUVs and the Humvee narrowly avoided this distraction, but they didn’t avoid Veronique’s next attack.

With her hand raised ever so slightly, she stripped two of the SUVs of their lug nuts. The tires flew off the vehicles, leaving nothing but their frames to scrape against the asphalt as they skidded along the highway.

Sparks flew behind me; it looked like the damn Fourth of July kicking off in my rearview mirror. A barrage of horns, vehicles screeching to a halt, and people shouting. Heavy metal orchestra.

We needed to escape.

But before I got on the phone to Walter White, I had to ditch the BMW. The fact that there were now two helicopters on our asses, and more black SUVs likely to follow, meant it would be easier said than done.

As we sped along I-95 north toward New Haven, reaching speed limits of up to a hundred miles per hour, our next move came to me in a flash.

I knew there was a gas station truck stop about a mile up. We’d take the off-ramp, hit the gas station – well not literally hit it, but get close to hitting it – ditch the beamer, get in an eighteen-wheeler and have Grace take over from there.

It would be very difficult, especially with the helicopters, but those …

I hated to think of it this way, but those could be dealt with.

“Veronique!” I called over the roar of the wind and the sounds of the other vehicles. “Try to take out one of those helicopters!”

I watched in the rearview mirror as Veronique looked for things she could fling at the helicopters. They were still pretty far away, and they would need to get closer for us to be able to do anything. What was more, our exit was looming in the distance.

A new idea came to me. “Grace, cause some type of pile up to prevent any more SUVs from following us. We can take out the helicopters at the gas station if we need to.”

“Will do.”

Grace unbuckled her seatbelt, turned around and got on her knees, her front body pressed against the seat back. She could now see the other drivers around us, and as she looked at each of them, they started slowing down and forming a long, horizontal line.

Any driver she saw came under her spell and got into the line, which would at least give the SUVs trouble.

Now for the helicopters.

We pulled into the gas station and I saw the eighteen-wheeler I wanted to hijack. The driver was just getting in, and the vehicle was aimed at the highway.

“That’s our new ride.” We got out of the car. I grabbed my duffle bag and gave it to the psychic. “Grace, go get that driver under your control. Veronique, let’s do something about those helicopters.”

The helicopters were now above the off-ramp, closing in on us. This was a bad move on their part, because the closer they got to us, the easier it was for Veronique to take them out.

With her hands at her side, palms up, Veronique lifted one of the medium-sized metal gas tank lids off the ground with her power.

As if it were a frisbee, she hurled the yellow lid at the first helicopter.

It shattered the window and decapitated the pilot, causing the helicopter to crash in a massive explosion. This was followed by more screams, cars screeching on the highway, and people all around us panicking.

“Hurry!” I told Veronique.

The other helicopter began to push away, only to receive the same treatment, this time with the metal lid taking off the rotor mast. Gravity dragged the second helicopter’s tail rotor under and the craft went belly up, smashing into a highway barrier.

By this point, we were in the cab of the eighteen-wheeler, and Grace had the driver under her control. Even as people flipped their shit all around us, we were able to get back on the highway with New Haven as our destination.

It’s time to put an end to all this, I thought as my nerves settled, and I was finally able to breathe. I figured the pileup we caused behind us would make the rest of our trip easier.

If only things were that simple.

Chapter Nineteen: Angel

I knew there would be other superpowered individuals, but I didn’t think they’d be coming after us so soon. I didn’t think they would be able to fly, or have superhuman strength, or the ability to heal.

I happened to be looking in the rear-view mirror when it happened.

Something that resembled a comet crashed down onto the trailer of the eighteen-wheeler, separating it from our cabin, and sending the top portion of the trailer up and over.

The cabin tipped and was dragged to the right, where it quickly flipped onto its side and slid along the highway, as the four of us fell against each other.

Worse yet, it had fallen over onto my side of the cab, and Grace, Veronique, and the driver were all pressed against me.

It settled. I barely had time to suck in a breath when a gloved hand punched through the window and grabbed the hypnotized driver by his neckbeard. The sudden punch also sent a thick piece of glass skittering across the cabin directly into my face.

“Fuck!” The shard connected just an inch or so away from my eye, the eye itself protected by the frame of my glasses.

“Gideon!” Veronique said, trying to squirm around to check on me. All three of us were pressed together, Veronique on top, Grace in the middle, and me on the bottom.

She actually cares? I would have been touched if not for the fact that the situation had taken a turn for the worse.

“I’ll be fine.” I wiped my face on my arm. “What hit us? A comet? Whose hand was that?”

The vehicle jittered as the gloved hand yanked the driver out of the shattered window, slicing his gut on the jagged glass as he was lugged through the opening.

“It’s Angel,” Grace gulped, and with that, her eyes flashed white and she blew off the driver’s side door.

It was like my writer buddy Luke had read ahead. Whatever was out there was our villain, and action was imminent. Hell, death was imminent too.

Veronique pulled herself toward the open doorway, followed by Grace, followed by me with a bloodied face and my duffle bag over my shoulder.

Looking back, I don’t know how I had the wherewithal to bring my bag.

I wasn’t dumb enough not to write in the cloud, but I still needed my laptop with me to handle all the other publishing aspects.

All of which was stupid to think about, especially as I took in the sight of a muscular man in a mil-spec body suit standing on top of a cratered car next to our overturned cab.

Angel had long dark hair, the majority of which was covering his face.

His features, from his beard stubble to his dark skin, gave him a Mediterranean male look. His black, armored bodysuit was similar to the one that Veronique still wore except his was more muscled and covered with flexible graphene plates.

“What are his powers?” I asked, in awe of the man standing before us.

Pieces of metal began to lift to the air and surround us as Veronique said, “His powers are strength, healing, and he can fly.”

With the swipe of her hand, Veronique used her power to hurl the bits of metal at him.

They hit Angel in the chest, sending him up and over the car. But I knew the victory was short-lived when he lifted into the air, his arms at his sides. He dipped his head toward us, a furious look on his face.

Veronique stepped in front of us. “You two go, I will hold him off.”

With everything that was happening all around me – from the chaos to the accident we’d just experienced – I hadn’t been able to connect an emotion to what was going on.

Now I could.

Veronique’s act of bravery snapped me out of my shock and stupor. I suddenly wanted nothing more than to help her, to be there for her.

“We can’t leave her behind!” I told Grace. The mysterious woman who’d first shown up at my doorstep looked at me, utter fear on her face as she grabbed my wrist.

“We have to,” she said, her voice quivering. “We can’t beat him here.”

Veronique moved forward, a vortex of metal swirling over her head. “Go!” she shouted to us.

“But we can’t!” I cried out, the slice on my cheek pulsing with my heartbeat. I wiped more blood from my face to my arm.

“We’ll go after her before they can terminate her or anything else,” Grace said quietly. She took a deep breath and continued, “My abilities don’t fully work on Angel, but I was able to see that his intentions are not to kill her; he’s here to take her back to the facility.”

“But –”

Grace tightened her grip on my wrist. “Listen to what I say.”

I would recognize later that this was just a formality; Grace didn’t have to say anything to take over my mind.

But it was nice of her to at least be polite about it.

If I’d had a bird’s-eye view of what followed, I would have seen my eyes flash white.

I would have seen Grace leading me away as Veronique went to meet Angel. I would have seen my hypnotized ass dragging one of the drivers affected by the overturned eighteen-wheeler out of their car. I would have seen Grace getting in the passenger seat, me starting up the vehicle, and stepping on the gas pedal.

I would have seen myself driving away, looking at Angel and Veronique clashing in the rearview mirror.

We got all the way to New Haven before Grace let me have my mind back.

Chapter Twenty: Stitched Up

Without Veronique, I didn’t know how we would do all this. I was glad Grace had me park before she returned my ability to make rational decisions. She was smart enough not to give me my mind back on the highway, which would have proved disastrous.

As soon as my mind was my own, I punched the steering wheel, not even caring that we’d made it to downtown New Haven. Oblivious to my surroundings, I cursed, shuddering when I thought about what we’d just been through, before finally turning to Grace.

“We shouldn’t have left her,” I said through gritted teeth.

“We can’t take on Angel that way,” she said calmly. “I’m not strong enough, not yet, even with the way you adjusted my abilities. I have learned so much being here in the real world with you.”

The way she said ‘real world’ really dug into my core. I was finally starting to understand just how odd this all must be for her, to go from solitary confinement to a high-speed chase in under a week.

At the same time, I still couldn’t forgive us for leaving Veronique behind.

“You two should have worked together,” I told her. “You could have taken him together.”

“I … I don’t know. It was so sudden.”

“I wish I had one of your powers,” I mumbled as I watched a homeless man approach our stolen vehicle.

She grimaced. “No, you don’t.”

“I could have done something …”

“It doesn’t matter.”

I thought of Angel again, his hair whipping in the wind, the sullen look on his face. A quote from East of Eden resonated at the back of my skull: “To a monster the norm must seem monstrous, since everyone is normal to himself.”

Boy if that didn’t fit …

The homeless guy knocked on the window, asking for change. He had on an oversized trench coat and a dirty beanie. Since we needed to ditch the car anyway, and since there was a nice hotel nearby, I figured now was as good a time as any.

“What happened to your face, man?” he asked as I stepped out of the car.

“Grace?” I said as she got out on her side. She had taken the form of the kimonoed Asian woman from my wall.

Her eyes flashed white and the homeless man took the keys from me. “Sure, man, I’ll drive this car to Hartford.”

“Drive it to Vermont,” I said.

“Great, Vermont,” was his reply.

He got in and drove off.

“That was easy enough,” I said. I took a shirt from my duffle bag and dabbed at the blood on my face.

“We need to do something about your face,” Grace said.

She wasn’t lying. This cut was deeper than I thought, and portions of my beard were already covered in dried blood.

“Let’s just get to the hotel, and hopefully no one really notices us.”

“Will they have medical help at the hotel?”

“That’s a good question.” I glanced around the area and realized we weren’t far from the Yale medical school. If there was a nurse or someone who could stitch up a wound, it’d be at Yale. I figured we could walk into the school and Grace could use her ability to find the right person to stitch me up.

She wasn’t so sure, and I couldn’t blame her, considering I had a face that was bleeding out. But she trusted me, and I quickly led us in that direction, trying to cover my face and keep its view from incoming traffic.

We approached the first building that looked most like a hospital and waltzed right in. The place smelled of antiseptics, and its color palate could have been described as ‘bland,’ but I’d never been happier in my life to see light turquoise, beige, and pistachio.

Grace went to work.

Like this was the latest primetime medical thriller, a team of nurses came at the call of the front desk woman. I’d never had a chance to adequately count how many people Grace could mind wash at once, but if the medical staff were any indication, it was at least ten.

They put me on a stretcher and rolled me into an operating room. No paperwork was taken – also thanks to Grace – and it wasn’t long before a female doctor, a Muslim woman with caramel skin, dark eyes, and a purple hijab, came into the room and started stitching me up.

Talk about cheap health care.

“It’s going to leave a scar,” was the only thing the woman said to me. “I’m sorry there isn’t more I can do.”

I shrugged her off. “Well, I shouldn’t have fallen down … those stairs. Nope, I shouldn’t have fallen down those stairs and landed on something sharp. I’ll be more careful next time.” Once she finished, she smiled at me and quickly left the room.

“Your abilities are amazing,” I told Grace for what must have been the thousandth time as we exited the room and turned back to the main lobby.

She only nodded at this.

I found a bathroom and excused myself, eager to get a look at my face.

Needless to report, Mrs. Caldwell’s little boy had finally grown up.

My hair was disheveled, there was a gnarly scar on my face, and my beard was as unkempt as ever. I was ready for my mug shot, ready to become an extreme wrestler, and possibly join a biker gang.

Keep dreaming, Writer Gideon.

“You aren’t supposed to be in my mind,” I said and thought at the same time.

Hurry.

I knew I needed to change the look up a little more just to keep them guessing, so as we quickly walked back toward downtown New Haven, I stopped in at a barbershop – a black one, I was feeling tough! – and had my head shaved.

I don’t know what they thought about the hipster looking dude with the gnarly scar on his face, but I did hear some guy mention I was the toughest looking white boy he’d seen all day.

“It’s not too bad,” Grace said when we left the barbershop. “Can I touch it?”

I stopped, and she rubbed my head for a moment.

“No shifting in public,” I reminded her.

I was hungry, and now that I looked like a badass, there was a lot to be done.

Our top priority was infiltrating the Rose-Lyle facility and rescuing Veronique before they put her out of commission. The next step was to burn that place to the ground, but rescuing her was most important.

Grace had assured me that this would take a little time, but I was ready to do it come tomorrow.

There was also the fact that I needed to get the book out. The longer it stayed on my computer, not accessible by e-readers across the globe, the longer the secret remained behind closed doors.

Part of me thought this feeling self-serving, selfish. The other part was hopeful it would do some good. To prove my intent, I would set the book at $0.99. The royalty I’d make from that would be a pittance, but the book would hopefully have more reach.

But first, as with every good plan, came food. And we could do that at the hotel.

We checked in at the Omni New Haven with ease. After placing an order that had ‘already been paid for,’ we took a top floor room overlooking Temple Street.

I’d seen this building before, but never thought I’d be staying on the top floor, looking down at the rest of the city. It amazes me to this day the perspectives we gain on our cities, and how quickly they can be turned on their heads by seeing them from a different angle.

As soon as we got in the room, which was a pretty large suite with a nice, comfy bed, I ran to the window to check out our view. I could see West Rock from here, as well as some of Yale’s Gothic spires.

“Great view,” Grace said as she approached me.

“It is.”

She placed her hand on my shoulder. “You want to write.”

“Are you telling me to write or reading my mind?”

“You decide.”

“I’ll write. I need to get this book out, so I can focus on getting Veronique.”

I set up my laptop and began editing Mutants in the Making. No, I shouldn’t have been self-editing my own book, but timing was of the essence, and I had a pretty good AI editor on my laptop that helped out quite a bit.

Luckily, a six-pack of beers came with our food.

To make things simple, we decided on pizza, or as they call it in New Haven, apizza. Actually, no one I knew called it that, but at least thinking they called it that made me feel more local even though I was from Rhode Island.

Needless to say, Grace loved the pizza, and I swear she ate six or seven slices.

“When I eat pizza, it reminds me of you,” she said as she wolfed down another slice.

Food coma commencing, Grace lay on the bed with a distended belly, and I got back to work.

It was about five o’clock, and I knew I was racing against time. I wanted to go after Veronique tomorrow – tomorrow night to be exact – and I needed this book to be out before we did.

Because I didn’t know if we’d be coming back or not.

I formatted the text, made sure the headers looked right, and then I began the long, and tedious, process of using Excel and Paint to create shadow boxes for Grace and Veronique’s stats. It was a primitive way to do this; writers now are formatting their characters’ stats in a variety of ways, from gifs to advanced Photoshop.

But I was going old school, and everyone who read this book would recognize that.

Street cred, I didn’t have much of, but I wanted to have some with this book. Besides, it was going to be harder than hell to find readers interested in a creative nonfiction shifter sci-fi story for gamers.

And all of the publishing and editing was a way for me to suppress just how fucked my day had been. I’d seen people die, I’d lost Veronique, and if I didn’t already have a target on my ass, I certainly did now.

“Just get the book out,” I mumbled to myself as I took a sip of my beer.

I brought up the EBAYmazon direct publishing page, uploaded the cover, uploaded the file, and began working on the product description. Damn did I hate writing product descriptions. That was one of the shitty things about being a self-published author; you had to do all that stuff yourself.

I decided to keep it simple:

A government conspiracy. Secret mutant soldiers. A true story.

What if you were just lying down for bed when a naked woman showed up at your doorstep? What if she was a powerful psychic shifter? What if she had a terrible secret?

Based on a true story, author Gideon Caldwell takes the reader on a journey they won’t soon forget. Part one of Mutants in the Making is a living testament to a cover-up that will go on to change the world.

Superheroes are real, and if we’re not careful, they’ll soon become our enemies.

“What do you think about this?” I asked Grace. I read her the description. “Well?”

“We aren’t going to become your enemies,” she said after I finished. The lights of the television flashed across her face.

I didn’t have to check on her to know that she’d been practicing faces of the people she was watching, mimicking their movements and body posture, then turning back to her base form.

“I know you’re not going to become our enemies, but you could. And if you and Veronique truly are super soldiers, then future versions of you could become someone else’s enemy. Could be North Korea, or maybe a Middle Eastern country, but still. And Angel? Tell me he’s not our enemy.”

She shrugged. “I guess that makes sense to me. Can I have a beer?”

Giving a shapeshifter a beer …?

“Sure, help yourself.” I returned to my document.

There was one thing I was forgetting to do.

I pulled the document back up and added a disclaimer to the front and the back. I knew I was going to get some messages from tin hat weirdos, but that came with the territory, and it was something I was willing to sift through.

If you, or anyone you know, has any information about these government experiments, whether it be in America, or another country, please contact Gideon Caldwell at writer_gideon_caldwell@gfacemail.com

With that, I added the disclaimer to the front and back of the book, reuploaded the file, set the price to $0.99 and pressed publish.

My next step was to research as much as I could about the Rose-Lyle Facility. I needed Grace’s help for this, so I pulled up a map of Yale campus and had her point out where she’d escaped from.

From there I checked some maps I found on GoogleFace.

Since I had no idea what I was doing, part of my work involved sipping a beer and thinking of the best way to use Grace’s abilities to their fullest extent.

One thing was for certain: We weren’t going to be able to take Angel head-on, not yet anyway. We needed to avoid him altogether, and try to get the hell out of New Haven before he got wind that Veronique was out.

So we definitely needed a getaway car and a plan of escape. Actually, we needed more than one getaway car.

When in doubt, make a list.

I reached for the hotel letterhead and began scratching down some ideas.

Chapter Twenty-One: Ready to Die?

My list of ideas was decent, but there were some factors on it that were going to make them difficult to pull off. For one thing, we needed two vehicles. We also needed a briefcase, a bulletproof vest, some lab coats, money, extra food, and water. I still had no idea how we’d destroy the place, but I’d leave that up to chance a bit. Chance and Veronique …

“Come to bed, Writer Gideon,” Grace said as she dropped an empty beer bottle on the ground.

I should have been paying better attention to her, but I was busy formulating my plot.

I could tell by the tone of her voice that she meant business, and besides, who was I to resist her? How could I even resist her? Beauty aside, she could control me. She could control my thoughts, control my actions.

Case in point: I stood up, took my glasses off, and rubbed my eyes. My hands unbuckled my pants on their own accord. I let them fall to the ground as I stepped out of them.

Suddenly, I was back in control.

“I need to take a shower,” I told her.

“Hurry,” she purred.

I took a beer to the bathroom with me, flicked the shower on, and chugged the beer as I washed my man parts. Nothing worse than stinky man parts. I scrubbed a dub dub, took the last few chugs of my beer, touched the stitches on my face, and carefully washed around the wound.

I’d never had stitches before, and one look in the mirror told me this scar was going to be something that changed people’s perceptions of me, like getting a face tattoo.

Also, the bruises on my body were something I didn’t expect to see. They lined the inside of my thigh, two were on my arm, and a big one was forming on my shin. The ugly part of having superpowered friends …

Once I finished, I came back into the room with a towel wrapped around my body. I had a feeling I may die the following day; I figured I might as well go out with a bang. And by bang, I mean go out by banging.

Grace sat on the bed in her kimono and geisha form. She looked up at me, her lips pursing into a sexy smile as her robe spilled open.

“Is that how we’re going to do it?”

A very small voice at the back of my head screamed that I should be concerned for tomorrow and that I should be shocked about what happened earlier that day, but I silenced that voice.

Or …

I looked at Grace suspiciously.

Yes, Writer Gideon, I’m easing your mind a bit.

I laughed. “Sounds good to me.”

She let her kimono spill open even further. I was hypnotized by her dark eyes, the light from the muted TV adding an electric sheen to them.

“Who do you want me to be?” she asked, as her form began to morph.

She was now the spitting image of Natalie Johansson, from the dimples to her thin torso at odds with her bust.

There were a good many men in America whose dream it was to have sex with Natalie Johansson. I never really fantasized about her, but if she showed up at my doorstep and begged me, I wouldn’t tell her no.

That got me thinking about who Grace could actually morph into, and I started to wonder if I could possibly have her change into one of my favorite superheroes if I found a good enough picture of them.

Fanboy shit, I know, but I was drunk.

“You mean like …” She morphed into Spider Gwen, blonde hair, skintight black and white outfit with a hood. She unzipped the front.

“It’s like a cosplay dream,” I said as I approached the bed.

From there she turned into Cat Woman, her skin pale, the stitches on her black leather costume barely able to contain her breasts.

“Or would you prefer …?” The top portion of her costume melted and reformed into a tight black military bodysuit. Her facial features elongated, her eyes darkened, and her hair turned blonde and short.

She beckoned me forward with her finger, a faint red energy glowing around her hand.

I gulped. “No, not her.”

I didn’t know if she turned into Veronique to mess with me, or because she thought it was what I genuinely wanted. Truth be told, I didn’t know what I genuinely wanted, but I did know that it pained me to leave Veronique behind.

Grace sensed my hesitation and her skin moved faster than I’d ever seen it move before, quickly reforming her base features.

“Let’s keep it simple.” She reached for my hand, pulling me in, and I could taste the beer on her breath as we kissed.

She moaned as I moved down her chest to just beneath her belly button. I looked up at her and went to work, my beard tickling against her inner thighs.

I was far from a cunnilingus expert; in fact, it had been a long time since I did something like that. But I gave it my college best – my Southern Connecticut University College best, to be exact – and I don’t know if she came or not, but it sure sounded like she did.

After I finished, Grace kicked into high gear, pulling me up, getting on top of me, and gyrating her hips as I slid inside her.

She looked down at me, a smile on her face as her form morphed back to Natalie Johansson, and from there into the newscaster that was on TV at the hotel the other day, then into the Japanese woman, before finally settling back on her base form.

I didn’t last long, but it wasn’t an endurance game, and I’d already done my fair share by going down on her.

If anything, I would die the following day.

Grace didn’t stop me from thinking this as she morphed forms again, this time to one of the maids we’d seen in Stamford and from that to Elektra, her brunette hair long, red corset holding her breasts up.

I threw in the hat at that point.

I had broken bad over the last few days and had finally driven that car off the cliff today, after all the havoc I partially created on the highway.

I was ready for the next day, ready for anything they threw at me, and above all … ready to die.

Of course, when the sun came up the next day I was ready to live. Sore as hell, but ready to seize the day.

I wasn’t too familiar with the semi-drunk guy who tried to think like a Bruce Willis archetype after a little sexual healing, but that wasn’t who I needed to be at that moment.

You can do it, Gideon! A crowd cheered in my head.

I glanced at Grace to see if she was up. She wasn’t, and that only made me feel dumber for cheering myself on.

The first thing I wanted to do was check if Mutants in the Making had been published. I stayed in the bed for this, my laptop on my lap as Grace rested next to me.

The book was live, available for the entire world to read.

I then checked the sales ranking. It was somewhere in the mid-millions of the EBAYmazon store, which was utter shit. That meant five million more books were ranked higher than mine.

The odds of my harrowing little tale getting noticed by someone were slim, and decreasing by the hour.

My heart sank.

“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about,” Oscar Wilde wrote in The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Damn, if he wasn’t right.

I’d experienced this disappointment several times before and had lifted myself up by the bootstraps once I realized that the book wasn’t going to take. It was disheartening, to say the least – akin to gambling, except you were gambling your creativity and losing big. Which was more painful than it seemed.

This book is different, I reminded myself as a sinking feeling in my chest caused my shoulders to droop.

You’ve created a new genre by publishing it.

After a deep breath in, I refreshed the page to see if there had been any sales or reads.

All EBAYmazon books paid out through either a purchase or by being borrowed and read, even if the reader only read a few pages. Those page reads could add up. Some authors had a hundred thousand page reads a day. I’d be lucky if I had five hundred.

Refreshing the data didn’t help any.

I saw that I had sold one of my earlier fantasy works, a book called How Heavy This Axe, which was about a transgendered dwarf forced out of his village because of his sexuality.

The Dwarf ends up forming a guild and saving her world but is still shunned when she comes back to her village. Sad story, and a bit experimental. People still seemed to enjoy it though, and by people, I meant that it sold like three to five copies a month. I was particularly proud of the cover.

Damn, if that cover didn’t take me hours to create.

I told myself that I needed to perk up, to give it time. I’d read about other authors who didn’t have success on their launch but came back swinging a few months later.

But you don’t have a few months.

For all I knew, I’d be dead by tomorrow.

I hesitated to do some promotions because those were often a crapshoot. I’d wasted thousands of dollars promo-ing books that hardly sold.

Every time I set a promo up, I had this foolish hope it would do something, that I’d get the book in front of the right people and I’d have instant success.

That never turned out to be the case.

As much as I hated to admit it, I probably needed to do some promotion. But I also needed to make preparations for the day.

I got out of bed, slipped my pants on, realized I’d forgotten to put my boxers on, pulled off my pants, put my boxers on, then slipped my pants on again, and looked at my checklist.

“It’s a good idea,” Grace said from behind me. She had the blanket pulled up to her chest, and her hair was a bit messy, but she looked as striking as ever.

“I didn’t think anything … yet.”

Then the idea came to me.

Weird.

“We should definitely find someone to help us, a kind of gopher. Go for this, go for that.”

“Like I said, it’s a good idea.”

Chapter Twenty-Two: Coming Clean to Luke

My phone buzzed, and I looked at it to see a message from Luke.

Luke: Drama in the author community.

Me: Oh?

Luke: One author posted a comment on social media about how this other author’s character reminded him of some other author’s character, and the author whose character was being referenced got pissed that someone was copying his schtick. So, he said some things in a private message to a friend of the first author, something like that, typical stuff.

Me: Damn, I guess when you get closer to the top there are more people trying to nip at you.

Luke: Speaking of the top, how’s your release going?

Me: Not so good.

Luke: Have you hit up your mailing list, or done any promotions yet?

Me: I wish. Actually, my life is taking some pretty strange turns over the last couple of days.

Luke: Does this have anything to do with why you wanted to video chat the other day?

Me: It has everything to do with that.

Luke: Well, do you want to chat now?

Me: I don’t know …

What’s there to lose? I had to ask myself. I’d already broken bad and was now being hunted by MercSecure, a quasi-federal agency. There’s nothing left to lose.

Me: What I’m about to show you is going to freak you out. So be sure you’re seated, and that there’s no one else around.

Luke: I’m excited!

I turned to Grace. “Hey, I’m going to introduce you to my friend, and I want you to show him your abilities.”

She sat up, her breasts now resting over the edge of the blanket.

“And, um, you’ll probably want to put some clothes on too.”

My sweater appeared on her body. I still did not understand how that worked, and I didn’t think I ever would. That’s the thing about shifters – at some point you just learn to accept them and not question how it is they are able to do what they do.

I pressed the video chat button and it quickly connected.

“You’ve got a beard too,” Luke said just as his image appeared on my screen. He also had a beard, but his was much lighter than mine. His eyes were dark, his cheeks were a little red, and his lips looked chapped.

“I’m about to tell you a lot of things,” I said. “Things you may not believe until I show you evidence of what’s happened to me.”

Concern grew on his face. “Is everything all right, buddy? And what happened to your face? Where did you get that cut? Didn’t know you shaved your head.”

I settled my thoughts and started from the top. I told him about Grace’s sudden appearance and her abilities; I told him about the men in black; I told him about plugging into Grace’s neck and when we were first attacked by Veronique; I told him about Veronique’s abilities, and how she kidnapped me and threatened to kill me; then I told him about the attack at the hotel back in Stamford and about Angel; I explained what I planned to do next and how my book relayed all this information, aside from the very last bit about Angel, because that would be in the second installment.

Luke laughed nervously, a hint of skepticism in his eyes. “That’s a pretty crazy story.”

“And it’s a true story. Now I present my evidence. Grace,” I turned my phone’s camera to her, “say hi to Luke.”

Grace crawled on the bed over to me and sat on its corner. She looked at the phone for a moment and then smiled at Luke.

“So, this is Grace?” Luke asked. I could no longer see his face, so I didn’t know how he was reacting to meeting her.

“Hi, Luke,” Grace said.

“Hi!”

I nodded at Grace, and her face began to morph into Luke’s, from his auburn hair down to his chapped lips.

“Holy shit!” came his voice from the phone’s little speaker. “Shit! Shit! Shit!”

“Change into something else,” I instructed her.

Her form began to change into the cute redhead with freckles, the same form she’d taken when we first checked into the hotel in East Haven.

“No way.”

Still keeping the front of the phone faced at Grace, I backed away a bit so he could see the full effect.

“Stand up,” I told her, “and change into the first thing that comes to your mind.”

She changed into a stunningly beautiful black woman, with an afro parted down the middle, waist-high shorts, and long, sleek legs.

“This cannot be real, this cannot be real.”

Her next form was that of a man, the trucker who died getting us to New Haven. She was now short, stout, her belly hanging over her waist, warts on her face, and stringy hair sticking out of a hat with a fishing hook on its brim.

Finally, she took her base form, my sweater and loose pants forming on her body.

“Gideon, let me see you now,” Luke said.

I turned the phone back to my face. I wasn’t smiling; this wasn’t me trying to show off. I was relieved to finally share my secret, but sharing it didn’t make me happy, it only made me realize yet again the crazy shit I’d gotten my ass into.

“Damn, man, so your book is true,” Luke finally said after a few seconds of silence. “You weren’t lying to me.”

“I hate to say it, man, but I don’t think I could make this shit up.”

“I cannot believe … No, I saw it with my own two eyes. It’s true. It’s just … You can’t go viral with this.”

“I wasn’t planning to. I wanted to put the writing out there, with the hopes of finding more information about people who have been experimented on and where they are. It’s not my intention to create some type of media circus about this.”

Luke looked at me incredulously. “But if the book reaches enough people, it will create a media circus.”

“Well, fuck, you’re right about that. I already have sort of a disguise going on with my shaved head, beard, and scar – or future scar, since it’s still healing. For Grace, it’ll be easy, but for Veronique …”

“And now you’re going after her, correct? You’re going after her tonight, you said.”

“I am. And I don’t care if I die in the process. I know that sounds crazy, but I think this is worth it and that I share the story with you, and the book is out there. What will be, will be.”

If I sounded confident saying that, I sure didn’t feel confident saying it. I swallowed hard, steadying my gaze on Luke.

He nodded. “I’ve got a few friends who have a pretty big reach on the web, and they owe me some favors. I’m going to do what I can to help you get your book in their spheres. I don’t know if I’ll ever see you again after tonight, and just for the record, I don’t think you should do what you’re planning to do. As cool as it sounds, this is real life. You are not a superhero, and just because you have somehow surrounded yourself with them, doesn’t mean you should go out kicking down the doors of government agencies. It’s lunacy.”

I took a deep and steady breath. He was right, completely right, and what I was planning to do was crazy. “I know, and I appreciate the sentiment. But it’s where my life is at, and it’s what needs to be done.”

“Understood, and please, contact me as soon as you are safe. If you don’t contact me, I’m going to assume the worst. I’ll do what I can to spread the information about what has happened to you. The book too. I’ll read it today. I want to catch up with what’s going on. I don’t know how much I can help you, but I’ll try.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Truly, thank you. And about tonight … let’s just see if our plan works.”

He gave me a toothy grin. “Gideon Caldwell, if this is the last time I meet you, it was nice knowing you, and you are one crazy motherfucker. I’m glad to call you my friend. And I wish there was more I could do, aside from trying to help you get your book out.”

“Thanks, man.”

“Tell Grace I said goodbye.”

“Bye, Writer Luke,” Grace called over to him.

“Let’s get to breakfast, and see what we can discover down there,” I told Grace after I hung up the phone. Confession had taken a terrible burden off my shoulders, and I could see how it was used as a way to relieve people.

It really helped to talk about these things, but without evidence, I don’t think he would have bought it.

Hell, I wouldn’t have believed me.

“I was going to suggest that.”

I gave her a funny look.

I had the sense that she was putting thoughts in my mind, but then again, maybe I was thinking my own thoughts. But this was only the start of the problem. It would always be hard for me to tell if I was the one thinking something, or if Grace was thinking something for me.

We would become increasingly symbiotic in that way.

Breakfast at the Omni was decent, and there was no waffle machine, so I had to suffice with potatoes, eggs, cinnamon rolls, cereal, and bagel, all of which were delicious. I sat in front of Grace, sipping coffee, when I saw just who I was looking for.

“That’s our guy,” I whispered as a businessman sat down across from us, with a pretty hefty briefcase in tow. I didn’t know why he had such a large briefcase, but it would come in handy for what needed to be done later that day.

Grace turned to look at him, and as soon as they locked eyes, he pushed his chair back, stood up, and came over to our table.

“Do you mind if I join you?” he asked.

“By all means,” I said with a grin.

“My name’s Chip Parker.” He smiled crookedly at me. He was in his forties, and the business card he gave me indicated he was a regional manager at a project management company. He was fit, bald, and had bushy black eyebrows.

“What would you like Chip to do first?” Grace asked me.

I was nervous about all this, but that nervousness was considerably less than the nervousness I’d felt a few days ago. I was hardening, toughening up, and as I pulled my list out of my back pocket, I tried to look as nonchalant and confident as possible.

You have this, Gideon, Grace’s voice whispered in my head.

“The first thing we need is your briefcase, Chip,” I told him.

He set his briefcase on the table, popped it open, and began taking his iPad and all the papers out.

“Do you have a car with you?”

“Just a rental,” he told me.

“Put your stuff back in the briefcase and take it to your rental car. Put all of your belongings in the trunk, and bring the briefcase back to us.”

“Sure thing.”

It felt strange to be able to tell someone to do something like that. For a split second, I thought that maybe I had psychic abilities, but the reality of our situation washed over me like the Cold Bucket Challenge. It was all Grace’s doing.

The thought that I may have a super ability reminded me of finding my picture on Grace’s drive.

“It’s not what you think it is,” she said as we waited for Chip.

I knew in my heart I wasn’t a superpowered individual. It was clear; I’d never remotely exhibited anything that would have made me think I had some type of power or sway over the natural environment.

I’d never accidentally lifted something with my mind; I’d never blasted someone with a fireball that appeared spontaneously in the palm of my hand; and I clearly did not have healing capabilities, as evidenced by the future scar on my face.

“Later,” she told me. “We’ll deal with that later.”

Chip returned with an empty briefcase. “How’s this, boss?” he asked me.

“Boss?” I looked at Grace.

“I thought you’d like that touch.”

“Chip, we’re going to need your help today. Please, sit.”

He coughed in his hand and took a seat before me.

“The first thing I want you to do is to go get a bunch of healthy snacks and bottles of water. I also want you to go to a military surplus store and get a bulletproof vest, and possibly one of those assault team helmets. There may not be one of those stores here in New Haven, so you might have to go to Bridgeport or possibly even Hartford. You know what I mean. I need two lab coats, and two sets of scrubs – one for a male and one for a female. Also, get me a backpack.”

“Great – so food, medical clothes, backpack, and a vest. Is there a particular way I should pay?”

“That part doesn’t matter to me. Just pay with whatever you have, put this stuff in your trunk, and bring it back here. You’re going to be our driver tonight. And tomorrow, you’re not going to remember any of this.”

“Okay, should I steal a car for you? Or would you like to borrow my car?”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “We’ll get the cars. I know how much of a pain it can be dealing with rental car insurance companies. Don’t worry about the vehicles.”

“Sounds good,” he said, his bushy brows pressing together as he nodded at me.

“Grace and I have a few errands we need to run, but we plan to meet you back here in a couple of hours. What room are you in?”

“Room 301.”

“Great, once you finish gathering the supplies, I want you to go back to your room and wait for us there. Do not take any calls, do not watch any TV, and do not use the internet. Just relax. Got it?”

Chip stood and offered us a curt little nod. “I’ll see you two later.”

Chapter Twenty-Three: Cherry Blossoms Revisited

It didn’t take us very long to find our first vehicle. As soon as we left the Omni New Haven, we saw a nature-y looking guy get out of his Toyota Tacoma to pay a parking meter. Grace approached him. He realized that the Tacoma ‘wasn’t his truck’ and readily handed me the keys.

“Tell him he sold his truck and that he decided to take up biking.”

“That’s a great idea,” the man said almost instantly. “I think I’ll take up biking.”

We needed to get to a place where there was money, which would likely be parts of Hamden or Orange, two smaller cities not far from New Haven. Hamden was closer, so I drove the Tacoma there first.

I took Whitney Avenue, went the back way so we’d come out near the Stop and Shop and found our target. I parked in the lot of a Bank of America, and we waited for people to pull up in their cars.

Grace was able to access someone’s memories just by seeing them, and doing so allowed her to quickly decipher if they were wealthy or not.

So, as a warm breeze blew up from the south, whipping at a discarded McStarbucks bag, we waited for our marks to arrive.

Anyone who was wealthy was called over to the truck, where I did the talking, and Grace did the rest.

“I need you to get the ten thousand dollars you owe me,” I told an older woman with a Louis Vuitton bag. “Get it in cash. Just bring it back here and we’ll call it even.”

It was surprisingly easy.

The people would go in the bank, come back with cash, give it to us and leave, their memories scrubbed by Grace.

Thirty minutes later, we’d accumulated about forty grand, no small feat.

For a disguise, Grace had morphed into a brunette in a hoodie with yoga pants and a pair of sunglasses. She looked hot, mysterious … like she could be the lead female in the next Transformers installment. I was in my Yale cap and sunglasses – a creeper if there ever was one, but definitely incognito.

With forty thousand in the glove compartment, we changed locations, taking the highway to Orange, Connecticut, where we found a Wells Fargo set in a building that must have been built in the seventies.

We only managed to get ten thousand out of this one before a security guy started poking around. Of course, Grace could have done something to him, but he may have had a body cam, and I didn’t want anything to be on a camera.

So we moved on.

We now had fifty thousand dollars cash, something I never even dreamed of holding before. But we needed more, and I wanted to make sure there was enough to cover us for a while just in case we had to barter.

Sure, Grace’s ability was on our side, but a little cash money never hurt anyone.

It only took us a moment driving down Boston Post Road to find another bank, this time of Chase, where we netted thirty thousand.

Eighty grand should definitely be enough to tide us over for a bit, I thought as I merged back onto the highway.

Even though I was feeling tough, and even though a very childish part of me wanted to fan myself with the money or make it rain like I was in a rap video, I was completely terrified.

I had to keep reminding myself that I’d broken bad. In a big way.

But it wasn’t as easy as it sounded, and it got me thinking about all those who had broken bad. How did they sleep at night?

This is your life until you’re either caught …

Or else.

“Quiet, Writer Gideon,” Grace said. “And take me back to the cherry blossoms.”

I thought about this for a moment. Wooster Square wasn’t far from our hotel, and we could simply circle the square if we thought something looked suspicious.

“Yeah, let’s go there.”

We took the exit on I-95 that passed by the dozen Latin American food trucks set up along the wharf. Then a left under the highway, and we drove in front of Ikea and that weird building that had been erected before it – some concrete monstrosity from a forgotten age.

We got to Wooster Square, and once I saw that the coast was clear and there weren’t any quasi-federal agent types poking around, I parked the truck.

“Let’s make it quick,” I told her. “And let’s try to stay near the truck, just in case.”

“You worry too much,” she said with a soft, yet comical smile. She bent forward, kissed me, and got out of the truck.

Feeling emboldened, I got out too, and I didn’t even pay the meter. I wasn’t planning to be there for very long anyway.

The cherry blossoms that line the street still had a few more days left before their petals would start falling. Grace was in heaven, moving toward the trees, her arms spread wide as she spun and looked up at the blossoms. She never seemed happier than when she saw those trees.

Maybe they represented something else to her … the first taste of freedom, perhaps.

After all, they were the first thing she saw of the real world (if you don’t count my street on a dark and stormy night or my less than comfy basement apartment). Just standing near the square brought back a series of memories. The pizza restaurants had already fired up their ovens, and there were a few people in the center of the square, walking their dogs and living the good life.

“Are there cherry blossoms where we’re going next?” she asked me.

I hadn’t decided yet where we were going next, but I knew it was somewhere other than Connecticut, and definitely not New Haven. “You know, I have no idea,” I told her. “But wherever we’re going, there will be pretty flowers.”

“I don’t know if there are prettier flowers than these.” Grace reached up to one of the trees and pulled down a cherry blossom. She sniffed it, laughed a little when she saw the look I was giving her, and threw it over her shoulder.

“You didn’t have to stop,” I told her. “I was admiring you.”

“Uh-huh.”

Not really an answer, but that was fine. It really nice just to see her happy, and to realize that this brief little interlude, our walk through the cherry blossoms, brought her so much joy.

We took a quick walk around the square, and I couldn’t help but feel nervous the entire time. Even after she spoke inside my head, I still felt that familiar tension in my chest, a tension telling me that we were being watched and that they may come for us at any time.

No matter how many deep breaths I took, the sensation always returned. It would be a feeling that would come to define my life for the next few weeks and months.

After we left Wooster Square, I gassed up the Tacoma, paying in cash, and we returned to the hotel’s underground parking lot.

Everything was going according to plan.

We called the cab with an actual driver – no AI this time – and he arrived about six minutes later.

Our cabbie was a Puerto Rican guy with a pair of thick black sunglasses on and a cross tattoo on the side of his neck. He seemed pretty laid back, but of course, I would never know his true personality due to the fact that Grace had already taken over his mind just about as quickly as it took someone to blink.

“Take us to Hamden,” I told him as I got in. “Drive us around one of those fancy neighborhoods.”

“You got it, amigo.”

We cut down Whitney Avenue, Yale on our left and right, as we took the back way to Hamden. Or maybe it was the front way.

At any rate, it felt kind of odd to be driving through Yale with the notion that we’d be assaulting one of their facilities later. Then again, if all the well-dressed students walking around only knew the kind of shit their university was getting into …

But all that could be exposed later.

I mentioned the fact that it was Yale University in Mutants in the Making, and if the book got popular enough, I was sure Yale would release some statement denying it. But like most denials released by governments, corporations, and universities, there was usually more than an ounce of truth to what they were discrediting.

To the richer neighborhoods we go! I thought, switching my inner musings over to the fact that our plan was coming to fruition.

“Only one more car to go,” I said excitedly.

“A convertible?” Grace asked.

“We’ll see.”

We took a left on Mathis Avenue and drove around aimlessly, looking for the right vehicle. After about five minutes, I spotted a brand new Dodge Charger parked in front of a large white house with a nice picket fence and a fancy veranda. The Charger was black, fierce, and the way it was shaped reminded me of a panther about to strike.

“That’s the one,” I told our driver. “Wait here until we get our vehicle; once we get it, you’re free to go, sir.”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out a wad of cash. I counted out a thousand bucks and stuffed it in the front pocket of his T-shirt, instructing him not to look at it until later.

“You got it,” he said with a smile.

Hopefully the owner is home, I thought as Grace and I walked to the front door.

“I have a feeling he or she may be,” Grace said. I knew she couldn’t tell the future per se, but I did get an uneasy feeling about the way she said that.

We knocked on the door, waited, knocked again, and on the final knock, a man opened the door, hastily covering his body with a robe. He was in his thirties and fit, with a lantern jaw and a full head of hair.

“Ah, he’s cheating on his wife right now,” Grace said, her eyes turning white.

“Good to know,” I mumbled under my breath.

“How can I help you?” he asked. “Would you like the keys to my car?”

“Yeah, that would be nice,” I told him. “Give me the keys to your car, and then go back to doing whatever it is you were doing in there. If anyone asks you about the car, I want you to say you let your friend borrow it. I also want you to delete any information you have on its VIN number or license plate number.”

“Got it,” he said, turning away from the door.

I had to remind myself that I wasn’t the one who was a psychic, but it sure as hell felt like it. The better Grace and I got at tag-teaming our marks, the more it felt like I too had a superpower. Later I’d have to constantly remind myself that I didn’t have any powers and that I was just a normal guy.

But it felt pretty cool in the moment. And the tiny voice at the back of my head told me we should go to Vegas if we got the chance.

The cheating man returned a few moments later with his wallet and a woman on his arm. She was also in her thirties, heavier than him, with nice features and light hazel eyes.

“What’s the meaning of this?” she asked, but by the time she got the last word out, Grace had taken over.

The woman just smiled at us as the man dropped the keys into my hand.

I started speaking again. “I want both of you to forget about this car. You’ve never seen this car, you never bought this car, and you’re going to spend weeks trying to figure out why people keep telling you that you have a car when you don’t.”

“Sounds like it’ll be challenging,” he said. “But I’m always up for a challenge.”

“That’s the spirit,” I told him, a bit surprised by his answer.

I thanked the man and the woman, wished them luck in their adultery, and as we turned to leave, I waved at the cab driver.

He took off, and Grace and I got into the Dodge Charger.

Boy, was it a beast.

As soon as my foot hit the gas pedal we were off, tires peeling out as we hit the hard streets of Hamden, Connecticut.

I sped up to a stop sign only to slam on the brakes.

“Wow!” Grace laughed.

“Just testing them,” I told her, feeling like an utter badass.

I fishtailed a bit as I got used to the feel of the vehicle. The dashboard was the exact opposite of the BMW we’d stolen a few days back. It was fierce, aggressive, and masculine, and I noticed that I could turn on auto drive with a simple flick of a switch.

Not bad.

We fueled up, returned to the hotel, and drove into the Omni garage, parking a few spots down from our Tacoma. I could now check ‘two cars’ off my list.

We found Chip Parker in his room on the third floor. He stood once we entered and greeted us. “The trunk is filled with food, as you requested. I’ve got the bulletproof vest, a ballistic full-face helmet, and the medical clothes.”

“Let me see the vest.”

The body armor was as I expected, the helmet something else entirely. It was black, with straps that went around my chin, and an attached piece that covered my face, still allowing me to see but adding just a little bit more protection from debris.

I wasn’t stupid enough to think it could take a shot, but if someone like Angel decided to punch through a wall next to me, it would help.

“The scrubs and lab coats are in the backpack,” he told me.

“Great,” I said as I tried the vest on. It fit perfectly. “You’ve done an excellent job,” I told him. “There’s only a few more things to do.”

“What’s that?” he asked, his bushy eyebrows lifting.

He listened intently as I explained the next step.

“Great, I’ll get right on that. Do you want me to return here after I finish?”

“Sure, come back here, or meet us at our room on the top floor.”

You need to give him your duffle bag and laptop to put in the Dodge.

I smiled at Grace; she was right.

“Actually, come up with us to our room so I can give you some stuff to take to the Dodge.”

“Got it.”

Chip packed up all of our stuff and followed us up to our room. I quickly tossed the clothes I’d left on the floor into the duffle bag, followed by my laptop and Yale hat. I needed to get rid of that damn hat, but it was what I had at the moment.

“This is it,” I told Chip. I handed him the bag, the keys, and off he went.

Grace yawned. “Want to rest before we begin?”

I smiled at her as she changed back into her base form, her hair growing long, her features lightening, her eyes turning a crisp blue.

“Definitely. I want to eat something too.”

“How about pizza?”

“You smelled it earlier too? In Wooster Square?”

“It’s so good,” she said, licking her lips.

“Sure, Grace, let’s get a pizza.”

What a fitting choice for what may be my last meal on Earth, I thought as I sat in a chair near the window.

Chapter Twenty-Four: Easy Access

I asked Grace to lie down on the bed so I could play with her stats for a moment. I had a feeling there was more I would be able to do with them, but I wasn’t quite as computer savvy as others, and there was a lot of information in her system that made no sense to me.

I logged in, the shadow box came up, and I began looking through files. I wasn’t able to locate the picture of myself, a conundrum that still burned at the back of my mind.

Had I been part of these experiments?

The answer to that would anger me, but it would still be some time before I learned the truth.

Not able to really sleuth anything out, I moved to her psychic abilities.

Main: Psychic

Omnikinesis: 10

Second Sight: 5

Psychometry: 5

Telepathy: 6

Clairsentience: 5

Psychokinesis: 7

Hypnosis: 5

I wished I could crank up Omnikinesis to eleven a la Spinal Tap, but ten was the best I could do; the dial wouldn’t go any higher. I moved to her second ability.

Main Second: Shifter

Speed of Change: 10

Texture Consistency: 10

Opacity: 10

Voice Match: 10

One good thing about her morphing ability was that changing any of the numbers didn’t alter the others.

I decided to play around with what was listed though and turned the texture consistency down to one.

As I did, the hooded sweatshirt and yoga pants she wore turned shiny, as if they’d been spray painted on. I reached out and touched her leg, noticing that it felt more or less like skin now, even though she technically had a pair of pants on. And no, that wasn’t a dig on yoga pants and how tight they’d become by 2030 – it legitimately felt like skin.

“Change to a sweater,” I told her.

My sweater took shape on her body – the same one I’d given her back at my place – only now it seemed like it had been painted it on somehow. There was no texture to it, and I could see in detail the contours of her body and her nipples beneath it.

So, texture consistency does exactly what I thought it did. Duh. I turned it back up to ten, the wool and fuzz on my sweater reappeared, and I moved on to opacity.

This was what we would use later tonight. I turned it down, and as I did, she began to fade away. I could sense if she moved – thank you, reptilian brain! – even though she was now completely see-through.

I turned the dial back to ten.

“This will work,” I told her. “But I’d really like to see some building schematics.”

“They’re in there,” she said, and suddenly, I felt as if Grace had possessed me.

She still lay in front of me, but fuzziness clouded my psyche, and my hand began to scroll through her drive on its own.

The folders opened, as did subfolders, and more subfolders. Eventually, she pulled up the Rose-Lyle building schematics and downloaded them onto my smartphone. I was a silent observer in all this, my actions far from my own.

I started to get the weird sense that Grace knew everything, that she was some type of goddess, and it was only when she chuckled that I realized she’d left my head.

“What?” I asked her.

“I’m no goddess,” she said.

“I don’t know how amplified your power can become,” I admitted, “but you could end up as a goddess at the rate you’re going. What you just did was phenomenal. Everything you do defies explanation.”

She frowned at this.

“What?”

“Sometimes I just want to be normal.”

I didn’t say anything, letting that comment just simmer for a bit.

I was about to pull up the map and figure out the best way forward when I noticed another file had downloaded onto my phone. I clicked on it, and the PDF quickly loaded. It was a schematic for the plug that was installed in Grace’s neck. Parts of it were too technical, but it did show basic design and installation instructions.

I saved this as well.

“You don’t happen to know where the cameras are, do you?” I asked after I opened the map on my phone.

“No.”

“We’ll have to be hyper-aware of cameras.”

I could tell by the schematics that there was an odd, square-shaped room only accessible after a long hallway, well past the basement. The room was listed as the ‘Plastic Room,’ a clear indication that it would be the right place to store someone with Veronique’s abilities.

There were restrooms outside the entrance to this room, which would be a great place for me to hole up while Grace did her thing. I knew I was of no help, aside from being able to turn her invisible, so my job would be to wait for her to come back with Veronique. Besides, we’d be able to communicate telepathically.

We got a call from the front desk that the pizza had arrived.

“You want me to get it?” Grace asked as I unplugged from her neck.

“No, I have cash.”

Chip Parker sat in the driver’s seat, Grace next to him in a lab coat and scrubs. I was next to her, also dressed like a doctor. I wore the bulletproof vest under my lab coat and had placed the ballistics helmet and the other pair of scrubs in the backpack, which was stuffed between my legs.

Grace’s scrubs, of course, had been made on her own volition. The set in my backpack was for Veronique.

It was night now, and a light fog had settled over the city of New Haven. The streets were relatively empty, lit by dim orange lights.

We pulled into a parking lot less than a block away from the entrance to the Rose-Lyle facility. It amazed me that they’d done all this experimental work so close to the campus center, with its old brick buildings reminiscent of Colonial America.

“We’ll be back,” I told Chip.

“I’ll be waiting,” he said, his eyes locked on the dashboard.

Weird.

Whatever happened to us, I wanted to make sure Chip got some money for his troubles, so I stuck a roll of hundred-dollar bills in his hand and told him to reimburse himself for his expenses.

“Will do,” he said, eyes still locked on the dashboard.

“You ready?” I asked Grace as I got out of the truck. This time she had gone for an Asian man with unkempt hair, rimless glasses, and a mad scientist look about him.

She nodded, and I asked her to lead the way.

We walked like colleagues, my backpack slung over one shoulder like I was a graduate student. With my glasses, shaggy beard, and doctorly outfit, I looked a little unorthodox, but definitely not out of place, which was exactly what I was going for.

I followed Grace through a checkpoint and an armed guard waved us in after verifying our credentials.

My ‘credentials’ were little more than a Krunkin’ Kronuts card my uncle had given me. Grace didn’t have a card at all, so the guard examined mine again, scanned it – it came back false – and let us through.

With that, we were in. We hung to the left as we entered a long corridor with hallways jutting off rhizomatically. I briefly glanced at my phone to make sure we were going in the right direction.

Once I confirmed this, we headed deeper into the facility until we got to an elevator. There were other scientists around, and a few places that didn’t seem as restricted as others, but the elevator was clearly marked for restricted access only.

This presented a problem, as we didn’t have a badge to scan us in. We waited for a few nervous minutes as I kept expecting whatever security apparatus patrolled the facility to come around the corner and hold us up.

Eventually, an Indian scientist stepped out of the elevator, and directly into Grace’s trap.

One glance at him and he turned back to the elevator, scanned us in, and went to the basement with us.

Who knew all this was down here? I thought as we entered a room that was almost like a subway platform. We got into a metal pod and the doors locked into place. The pod took off with the three of us inside, and as it did, I traced its trajectory on my phone’s map.

What I had thought was a long corridor, was actually some type of hyperloop tunnel.

It didn’t take us very long to get to the other end, and after the pod slowed to a halt, we stepped out onto a wide platform with a single door at its apex. We entered a much narrower hallway, turned a corner, and I froze.

There was a moving camera on the wall currently aimed directly at us. Grace and I pretended to talk to each other, and once the camera rotated in the other direction, we slipped into the restroom.

The Indian man now stood in front of the bathroom door, his hands on his hips as he awaited instruction.

“Do you have access to the Plastic Room?” I asked him point-blank.

“I do.”

After double-checking to make sure there weren’t any cameras in the bathroom – there weren’t – I plugged into Grace’s neck and found her opacity setting.

“Remember, let me know what’s going on by communicating here,” I said, touching my head.

I could no longer see her, but when she moved to the door, I caught a slight hint of her body. The Indian man followed her out.

I took my place in a stall and put the ballistic helmet on. And as stupid as it was, I took a picture of myself and sent it to Luke, figuring it may be the last picture I ever sent out.

Luke: Holy shit! Are you serious right now?

Me: Just in case I don’t make it out. We’ve arrived and are rescuing V as we speak.

Luke: Keep me up to date, buddy. Please, be safe! I’ve never had to tell someone ‘don’t get shot’ but …

Me: That’s what the vest and the helmet are for.

Luke: You look like Shredder, or Snake Eyes, or Snake Eyes meets Shredder. It’s a good look, but seriously, oh my god, Gideon! Good luck. Seriously, good fucking luck!

Chapter Twenty-Five: The Plastic Room

We are in and moving toward the Plastic Room.

Great, I thought back to her. I was still in the bathroom stall furthest from the door pretending to be going number two just in case someone came in.

Talk about on edge.

If I had any nails left to bite I would have bitten them clean off. I was panicked, my mouth was dry, and my breaths were shallow. This was it, if we got Veronique and made it out of here, we’d get out alive. Hopefully. A proverbial cleanup crew could also be on their way, and we’d be trapped far beneath the city of New Haven.

This begged the question: What if they find you in here?

I didn’t even want to think what would happen if they found me in the bathroom.

Relax, Writer Gideon.

I had to smile. Just hearing Grace’s sweet voice in my head cooled my nerves. That was, until someone came into the bathroom to take a piss. He was a heavy-footed fellow, a little gassy too. The guy grunted as his stream hit the porcelain, and after a long sigh, he was gone.

Someone may be coming your way, I thought to Grace.

No matter.

That last phrase from her left me feeling a bit uneasy. What was she going to do?

Omnikinesis, I reminded myself.

That’s right.

I cracked a grin. She really was something else. As I sat on the toilet waiting for destiny to take its toll, a quote from Dune came to me: “The mystery of life isn’t a problem to solve, but a reality to experience.”

I suppose Frank Herbert was right, but then again, he’d never broken bad like I had. I mean, having people battle over spice is one thing, but finding yourself in an underground facility …

Ha! You’re an idiot.

I needed another term aside from ‘break bad,’ but damn if it didn’t fit. From a shitty sci-fi writer who worked at a gift shop to the resistance.

Yeah, the resistance.

I tried to quiet my mind and failed. I began counting back from one hundred, hoping that would help some. It didn’t. I then tried to focus on the gunmetal gray of the bathroom stall, and from there to the halogen lamp above, and then to the stall door, noticing that it had recently been repaired, as evidenced by the newness of the screws.

“Quiet, Writer Gideon,” I mumbled to myself. Pranayama breaths, going over the map, trying to remember everything that had happened over the last days – I still couldn’t calm my mind.

My spirit nearly left my body when the bathroom door kicked open and Grace whispered my name.

I burst out of the stall to find the Indian scientist and another guy holding up Veronique, who was wearing a hospital gown. Her head was bent forward, she was breathing hard, her blonde hair was tangled, and the look in her eyes was one of utter madness.

As the two men stared at me, their eyes completely white, Veronique’s hands landed on their necks. They twitched as she began to consume their power.

“Gideon,” Grace said, startling me. I’d forgotten she was invisible. I fumbled to get my phone out to plug back into her port. Once I had the cable ready, she guided it into the port for me.

I started the system, pulled up the abilities menu, and adjusted her opacity.

She reverted back to her Asian scientist form just as the two men behind her fell. Veronique crouched over them, continuing to consume their life force. Her skin was glowing, the look on her face predatory, but something about the way she held herself told me she was still weak.

Even after feeding on two people?

The men’s bodies shriveled until they resembled prunes. Rather than feel disgusted at the gruesome sight, I ignored it and got the scrubs out. Together, Grace and I began dressing Veronique, who was still pretty loopy.

“What did they do to you?”

Sorrow appeared in the corners of her dark eyes.

“It doesn’t matter,” I told her. “We’re here now.”

She let us take her shirt off and place the scrub over her body. To get the pants on, I lifted her and placed her on the counter, careful to avoid a small puddle of water.

I pulled her pants on and her arms draped around my shoulders. She started to sob, stopped immediately and took a deep breath, then made sure her pants were on completely.

“We’re almost out of here,” I told her. “Stay with me now.”

I did not think about footwear, but then again, these disguises were only to make it a bit harder to spot us from a distance. Grace would be able to handle anyone who was in our immediate vicinity.

I cupped Veronique’s face in my hands. “Are you strong enough?”

“I need more,” she whispered, her throat parched. “More.”

I glanced at Grace and she nodded. “Do it, Writer Gideon.”

“Use me,” I told Veronique, my hands still on her face. “Just let me have enough energy to be able to walk.”

She swallowed hard as her hand lifted to my arm, red energy radiating from her fingertips.

I grew woozy.

My knees started to buckle and as they did, she let up.

Grace moved forward to catch me as I started to fall. Veronique quickly joined her in holding me up.

“Thank you.” She guided me to the sink so I could brace my hands on it for support. “I think they have just a little more.”

Veronique knelt by the first scientist, the Indian guy, and finished him off. She then moved to the second, her hand on the guy’s forehead as his skin turned the color of a plum.

“Are you good?” I asked, my voice cracking.

“Much better than before.”

Grace stepped out to make sure the camera was not facing us – not that it mattered at that point – and we left the bathroom. After traveling through a few hallways, we arrived in the room that reminded me of a subway platform and took the hyperloop pod to the main facility.

It was one of the longest rides of my life, even though it would finish in about a minute.

Whatever lay in the main body of the Rose-Lyle facility could be our undoing. We’d made it this far, but I had a feeling things were about to get a lot worse.

I stayed down, my ballistics helmet now on my head, front piece covering my face. I was braced, willing and ready for shit to hit the fan once the pod doors opened.

Grace was standing, poised to use her abilities, her eyes flaring white. Veronique stood as well, her fists at her sides as the pod slowed to a halt.

The two exchanged glances as the pod doors hissed opened.

I let out a sigh loud enough for all of us. It startled Veronique. Grace laughed a little and offered me a slight grin.

There was no one waiting for us.

“What?” I asked. “This is tense!”

After gathering our nerves, we exited the pod and used the scientist’s keycard to take the elevator up to the top.

Grace and Veronique went out at the same time, and both found themselves in an empty hallway. I came out next, looking like the ultra noob in my lab coat, backpack, bulletproof vest, and futuristic ballistic helmet.

Where the hell is everyone?

I knew my way to the exit – I was good with direction like that – and after we waited another moment to see if something would happen, we continued forward.

No one was around, and the cameras on the wall didn’t follow us as we passed, which was odd.

They are planning something, either Grace said in my head, or I thought.

“I know they are.”

Veronique looked at me curiously. “Know what?”

I don’t speak in her head.

“Grace and I think they’re planning something.”

Veronique looked at us like we were amateurs. “It took you this long to come to that conclusion? You guys just break in here and take me out, and you don’t think they’re going to be waiting? They are going to be waiting.”

My heart sank. “I know, you’re right.” I cleared my throat. “We have to push forward.”

We cleared the main hall and arrived at the front entrance. Everything was still, from the security cameras to the fake plants in the corner.

Veronique looked back at me. “Are you two ready?”

Grace nodded.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” I said, still feeling weak.

We pushed the door open and a giant spotlight flashed on.

We were surrounded by men in black paramilitary outfits pointing assault rifles at us. Before Veronique could turn their weapons on them, one of the men bolted up into the air and slammed down next to her, sending the three of us flying in his wake.

There was only one man I’d ever seen move that quickly. Before I could even get to my feet, Angel grabbed me by the throat and lifted me into the air.

Chapter Twenty-Six: Calling Angel Out

The world fell away as Angel carried me higher into the sky. I struggled to free myself, but I was weak, and the sound of bullets firing at Grace and Veronique was too much for me to handle.

New Haven and the rest of Yale looked so far away now, just lights below, no different than the lights above.

I was delirious, gravity was doing all sorts of shit to my body, and it was only when we began to fall back to the earth that I started to scream.

Angel curved up just in time and we landed on the rooftop.

His hand still around my neck, he pulled back and threw me into an air conditioning unit. The impact made me taste blood and it knocked the air out of me. My ballistics helmet was still on my head, strapped under my chin, and I could feel the warm metal pressed into the sweat of my face.

I tried to get back on my knees, but Angel approached me and picked me up again by the throat. With his other hand, he tore off the bottom portion of my helmet, removing the cover over my jaw.

“Anything you’d like to say before I do what I should have done yesterday?” he asked me. A few strands of his long black hair fell into his face.

It took all I had, but I forced the word out. “Why?”

He lifted me a bit higher.

If he had wanted to, he could have easily broken my back using the corner of the air conditioning unit. He could have thrown me off the roof or given me the Bane treatment, snapping me over his leg like cracking a stick.

Instead, he lowered me ever so slightly.

“What do you mean by why?”

“Why are you working for them?” I asked. “Didn’t they make you the same way they made Veronique and Grace, I mean Sabine? Aren’t you a super soldier they created? Won’t they retire you to create a better version?”

“I believe that is an option we all face. There isn’t a human on this Earth who isn’t a stone’s throw away from being replaced by something new.”

A gust of wind lashed at his long brown hair and his grip loosened. I fell to the ground.

“What’s your name?” he asked me, menacingly.

“Gideon.”

“Hmmm …” He glanced up at the stars, then back down at me. “You will die here tonight, Gideon, yet you wonder about me and my future. How very odd of you.”

“I just wanted to know why you would do this to someone who’s trying to help. I just want to be honest with you.”

“Trying to help me?” He laughed bitterly. “You are one of them.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

I was starting to get my breath back and was surprised to find I could actually speak. That’s not to say I wasn’t completely petrified by the man who stood before me, and his ability to stop me as easily as if I were a cockroach.

He could pull my arms off my body; he could strangle me with one hand; he could fly me out to the ocean and drop me in the middle of the Atlantic; and if he really wanted to, he could fly me above one of the church steeples in nearby East Rock and impale me.

Hell, even if I had a gun and I was able to shoot him, the motherfucker could heal.

“You’re one of them,” he finally said. “A normal. There is nothing special or unique about you. I am a different class of human, as are Veronique and Sabine. As are the others. Your life has little significance to us and the future we will bring.”

“Did you say there were others?”

“Surely you knew we weren’t the only ones,” he said, his voice filled with melancholy.

“I figured there would be more, but I really had no idea. I’m still new at all this; I’m still uncovering all the details. I have to be honest with you, Angel.”

“You know my name?”

“Grace told me – I mean, Sabine. But she wants to be called Grace now.”

“Sabine is mischievous, and it was better when she was kept away from others. Veronique’s actions have come as a surprise. She never indicated before that she was unhappy. What an incredibly stupid girl.”

“That’s your opinion,” I said, my voice growing with confidence. I quickly stomped that confidence out like it was a small fire. Now was the time to be modest, not to try to have a dick measuring contest with a superhuman. “But everyone has opinions.”

“You are right about that.” He nodded and walked back over to me. “You are the weakest man I’ve ever met, and I’ve met many pathetic scientists. It amazes me that Sabine and Veronique have joined forces with you. That just shows how truly warped their minds are.”

“They are allowed to make their own decisions,” I said through gritted teeth.

“You said you wanted to be honest with me. What is it exactly that you want to be honest about?” he asked, settling his black eyes on me. “The gunfire has stopped down there, so make this quick.”

“I know you’re not going to believe this, but I am trying to expose this facility, expose what these people have done.”

I was glad he couldn’t read my mind. Not only did I want to expose the facility, but I wanted to destroy it. This was one detail Grace and I hadn’t worked out; it was something we were going to play by ear if we had the opportunity. The most important thing was to save Veronique.

Below us, a man screamed.

Angel smirked. “You are feeling confident?”

“Honestly, I don’t know what I’m feeling. Just a few days ago I was a regular guy, and now look at me.”

He shook his head. “You shouldn’t have gotten involved. You could have lived your pathetic life until your natural death; now your death will come rapidly, tonight. It is rather funny, isn’t it?”

“But I did, and I needed something – some change … something to make my life have meaning. So, I don’t regret it. There, I said it. What’s happened here at this place is wrong; people shouldn’t experiment on other people. Didn’t we learn that in the 1940s and 50s? We shouldn’t do this. You shouldn’t …”

“I shouldn’t what?”

“You shouldn’t exist,” I said, fire burning deep within me. “You’re an amalgamation of a human, you are …”

“I agree with you, Gideon.” He crouched before me. “I am an amalgamation of a human. But you’re not being honest.”

“What do you mean?”

“How much of what you are doing is driven by desire?”

“Desire?”

I hadn’t really thought of it in that way, and as I sat there staring at him, I realized that he may be right. There were many desires at play. My desire for Grace, for Veronique, for power, my desire to matter, to make a difference, to become a famous writer.

“I see it in your eyes, Gideon, you have ulterior motives.”

He picked me up with one hand and body slammed me to the ground. I felt the concrete beneath me give way slightly, the wind rush out of me.

“This is for your own good, Gideon,” he said as he loomed over me.

“I’m trying to do something here,” I pleaded with him. “Everyone has an ulterior motive.”

“You’ve just now figured that out? This is a poor time to learn a new lesson.”

“Just a week ago I was nobody. And I’m still nobody!” I shouted, my breath barely holding on after being slammed on my back. “But at least I tried … At least I tried to do something different than the others. Yeah, I know what you mean by others. Everyone is an other. You and I are …”

“We?” he took a step back.

“Yeah, Angel, we have a similarity.”

He started to laugh, and as if he were some type of weather god, droplets of rain began to fall from the sky.

“Let me rephrase, Angel, we had a similarity.”

Something twisted inside my body. I rolled over and pushed myself up, eventually getting to my knees, and then my feet. More rain fell, quickly saturating my lab coat.

I had to keep my legs wide to stand up, but I did it, and as I stood I pointed at him.

A smirk formed on his face as the rain beat down upon us. “Say your piece, and then I will end it.”

“My piece? I was like you one week ago, Angel, playing a role, fitting into whatever they wanted me to do. Following their rules, obeying their laws, doing what they said was right, avoiding what they said was wrong. And then I became like me,” I growled.

“Are you suggesting that you are no longer a conformist?” he asked, moving his wet hair out of his face.

“I’m suggesting more than that. I’m no one’s bitch any longer. Do you see now? There is a difference between us now.”

Angel had me by the throat in a matter of seconds, only to be broadsided by a long metal pole.

He dropped me. I landed on my knees and scurried away, my heart pounding in my chest. I couldn’t believe what I’d just done.

Bullets, hundreds of them, tore into Angel’s skin.

They pierced his flesh, ripped through his black armor, and worse, as soon as they exploded out of him from behind they turned in the air and came back around again.

He staggered to the left, and to my horror, I saw that a few of the wounds on his face had already started to heal.

That was when he was thrown sideways, an invisible force stopping him just before he reached the edge of the building and smacking his head against the parapet.

Angel was out cold, oblivious to the rain slapping against his body.

“Holy shit …”

Grace and Veronique stood at the opposite end of the roof. Neither seemed hurt, but Veronique did have a slight lean to her, as if she were quickly running out of juice.

“We have to destroy the place,” I said, cursing myself for not getting a few gallons of gasoline earlier.

“But how?” Grace asked. “We need to leave before he wakes up.”

“No.” I shook my head. “We destroy the place with him on top of it.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Goodbye, Cruel World

Veronique came up with one hell of an idea. She moved slowly over to Angel and knelt before him as her hand flashed red.

His energy became hers and as she drained him, his skin started to dry and wither, blips of red light cascading up her arms. The energy formed a sphere over the crown of her head as the rain continued to fall from the sky, forming small puddles on the rooftop.

A look of realization spread across Grace’s face.

“It’s brilliant,” she said, and her eyes flashed white. Using her psychokinetic ability, Grace began to move the ball of light and energy away from Veronique’s head.

Once she was sure she could do it, she returned the pulsing red sphere to Veronique, who absorbed even more energy from Angel’s body.

Call it dormant kinetic energy, or simply a ball of combustible matter – whatever it was, the sphere she was forming continued to enlarge until it became the size of a beach ball. She continued to drain Angel, his skin shriveling and turning black and blue, his eyes sinking into his skull, his limbs becoming frail.

“We have to get out of here before you drop that thing,” I told Grace.

I could already hear a helicopter, and I knew reinforcements were on the way.

As Veronique finished up, I walked to the edge of the building and looked down.

I wasn’t prepared for what I saw.

The secret agent men were scattered, dead or dying, their bodies arranged in a way that resembled a black rainbow of carnage. There were severed limbs, pools of blood drummed upon by the rain, a few men wheezing as they tried to keep their intestines from spilling out, and one, toward the back, was sobbing, a shredded torso in his arms.

“Oh my god …”

The butterflies in my stomach shifted when my body rose into the air.

I glanced over my shoulder to see Grace controlling my body, lifting me up and over the edge of the rooftop.

She and Veronique were already airborne, hovering just a few feet above the ground. It was amazing how much her power had improved, especially since she was also in control of our bodies and a sphere of blistering red light, now the size of one of those large exercise balls.

The sphere hung like a disco ball above us, and as Grace lowered all of us to the ground, the sphere remained in place.

Like a floating lantern, it hovered, casting an eerie crimson glow on our surroundings as we turned and made our way toward our getaway vehicle.

I had a strange awareness that we were minutes away from encountering more hostile forces. The feeling of urgency was new to me, but something I would start to get going forward. I’d read about soldiers being able to sense an oncoming battle and now I knew what that felt like.

Crazy, but I knew they were coming.

The guy in black mil-spec armor who had waved us in earlier now hung out of the check-in station, a portion of his arm cut away by a slice of steel Veronique had peeled off of the building.

“Are we ready to do this?” I asked them.

Veronique nodded, a predatory grin stretching across her face. All Grace could muster was a tight smile.

“This is what we came here for,” I reminded her. “Remember what they did to you, remember what they put you through. Blow that fucking building to the ground.”

With a deep breath in, Grace cast her hands out before her. The large sphere of red energy whooshed toward the building, bursting through the front entrance like a cannonball.

“We need to run,” she said, grabbing my hand.

The three of us started to bolt as we saw the sphere of energy lift up through the building, briefly splashing the air with a dazzling array of lights before turning around and heading downward, toward the basement, the hyperloop pod, the subrooms that were used to keep people captive.

We reached the Tacoma when the explosion rocked the sky.

It shook the ground, causing car alarms to go off, electricity to flash, the power grid to shut down.

“Drive, Chip,” I said as soon as we got into the vehicle.

It was already running, the windshield wipers going a mile a minute. He took off before Veronique could even get the door shut, navigating over the slick streets toward our other getaway vehicle.

I reached over and pulled her door shut. Veronique’s tight body now pressed into mine, Grace between Chip and me.

I would later have nightmares when remembering the Rose-Lyle facility, and as many others had done before me, I would bottle those nightmares up and cast them into the sea of troubled memories.

PTSD? Sure, I would experience that too.

But I’d also experienced what it felt like to be a changed man, to have one’s reality completely turned on them, the rug pulled out from beneath them, a mallet of truth cracked against their skull.

I would come to like the new me.

It only took him a few minutes to get us to the Dodge. We transferred vehicles, I threw the peace sign at Chip, and revved the Charger’s engine.

Fire trucks raced in the other direction as we approached the on-ramp to the highway. We were going to head west, to see what else was out there, and hopefully, to shut down more of those laboratories.

Once we got on the wet highway and were about forty miles away from New Haven, I put the Charger on auto drive. I gasped, exhaled audibly, and relaxed in my seat.

Grace was next to me, a tight grin on her face. Veronique was asleep in the back, her hair and body still wet.

I knew I wasn’t superpowered, regardless of the pictures I’d discovered on Grace’s drive. I didn’t have any ability, and I wasn’t going to be able to help them in that way. I was sure of this, but that didn’t make me weak.

Angel was wrong about me being weak, and now, he was likely dead.

But there will be others, Grace said inside my head.

I know, I thought back.

My phone buzzed, and I checked the message as the Charger continued along the highway.

Luke: Are you all right?

Me: Yeah … We got out of there okay.

Luke: We can video chat about it.

Me: It’s only going to get more complicated from here.

Luke: I’ll say! Have you checked your sales ranking yet?

Me: Nope, I’ve been too busy getting accosted by a superpowered guy named Angel.

Luke: I don’t know what that means, but it sounds crazy.

Me: It’ll be in book two.

Luke: Do I have to send you a screenshot? Check your rankings!

I clicked on the EBAYmazon app on my phone and brought it up. I went to the search bar, pressed it once and said the name of the title, “Mutants in the Making.”

It took my phone a moment to show me the results, but I saw the orange tag next to my book title that said ‘Best Seller’ before the cover finished loading.

“No way,” I said as my phone refreshed, telling me I had several messages in my inbox.

Two of them concerned me the most.

One was from an anonymous sender, evident by the title of their email address: Throwaway_NewHaven@googleface.com.

Gideon Caldwell,

I know Subject S and Subject V are with you. I worked with S for several years at the Rose-Lyle facility. Please respond to my email with a number where I may reach you. I don’t want you to think I’m trying to track you. I’m not, so please get a fake number or use some type of phone number forwarding service. There are plenty available.

--KK

The other was from a man named David Butler.

Gideon,

I read your book and loved it. To cut right to the chase, I know about a similar experiment going on in Austin, Texas. Please let me know if this information interests you by replying to this email. We can discuss more when we meet in person. I’ll also send some pictures soon.

“Can we find a place to sleep?” Grace asked me.

“Sure. It’ll be another hour before we’re out of Connecticut, and we can find a place to stay in New York. Somewhere nice.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Cherry Blossom Girls, Inc.

We took a big left when we got to Port Chester, saying goodbye to I-95. Besides, we weren’t heading to New York City. As I let the car auto drive, I reread the message from the guy in Texas, David Butler. I sent him a reply, fishing for more info, wondering if I could possibly get a few more details before I headed down south.

But I knew in my heart that was where we were heading; we had to go south to eventually go west. If Texas didn’t pan out, we could hide out in Santa Fe for a few days as the emails came in, as I was able to verify things a little further.

I also needed to start the second installment of the Mutants in the Making series.

The second installment would cover what happened after Angel first showed up. So, in a way, it was a living document, because what “happened” was what was currently happening.

I decided not to reply to the scientist at the Rose-Lyle facility. I had a feeling about him, and opening up a dialogue didn’t seem to be in our best interest.

I was, however, happy to see that my book had already reached someone there. Even if they lobbied EBAYmazon to shut down the book, it would still be out there, and it would still reach an audience, either through illegal downloads on a torrent site or with people posting the book online in blog format.

I also had a feeling this wouldn’t be the last I heard from the scientist, and boy, would I turn out to be right.

Goodbye New York, hello New Jersey.

I would need gas at some point in the future, but we could get it after we passed New Jersey, sometime tomorrow. They still pumped the gas for you in New Jersey, something that’s always weirded me out. Not that the gas attendant would care if there was a woman passed out in the back.

Still, the lower profile we kept, the better.

Gideon ‘Low Profile’ Caldwell.

Grace laughed.

“I thought we had a thing about reading my thoughts.”

“They are just so loud.”

Damn, I thought as we pulled up to the Marriott in Hanover, New Jersey, we need to get some type of discount card for this chain.

Which made no sense, seeing as how we hadn’t spent a dime to stay in the place.

Thoughts like that would come to me every now and again. Even with the situation I was in, it was still hard for me not to think the way I used to about goods and services.

“And what shall we say this time?” Grace hadn’t spoken much during the ride, aside from an occasional comment on my thoughts. She focused instead on the lights along the highway, the vehicles, and something we were listening to on NPR.

Ira Glass again.

I should go on This American Life.

Was there anything more American than what I had just done over the last few days, risking it all for one big payday, an uncertain future?

I’m not saying I was some sort of Lewis and Clark, but I definitely wasn’t a loser sci-fi writer who worked at a Yale gift shop that sold lamps any longer.

I considered that for a moment. “Let’s go with she’s drunk again. We’re business people – no, look what I’m wearing … we’re scientists … No, we’re doctors – hell yes, we’re doctors. We work for a biomedical company called Cherry Blossom Girls, Inc. And she’s drunk. She’s a drunk nurse.”

“Girls?”

“Or boys. I don’t know. It’s the name that came to me. Nothing sexist or anything. We could be Cherry Blossom Non-Binaries, if you like that.”

“Girls is okay, as long as you don’t mind it.”

“We can go by the abbreviation too. CBG. It has a ring to it.”

I looked in my rearview mirror at Veronique, who lay sideways in the backseat, still in the scrubs and lab coat we’d put on her. She was dry now, but her hair was a bit matted.

“That sounds like a pretty good plan,” Grace said in Ira Glass’s voice. “You should probably take your military helmet off.”

“Shit, I forgot about that.” I removed the remains of my helmet. “But regarding our strategy, no one’s going to care anyway. Your powers are incredible. Just fry all their brains if they try to get in our way.”

She raised an eyebrow at me. “Fry all their brains?”

“I’m kidding, please don’t do that unless we really need to get rid of someone.”

The things I said now that I had broken bad …

“Okay, I’ll only fry brains if necessary,” Grace said as her body morphed from her base form to her geisha form.

We parked the Dodge Charger – no valet here – and I lifted Veronique into my arms. Grace took my duffle bag from the back seat, and without further ado, we entered the lobby of the Marriott Hanover.

I pity the fool who looked over at us and instantly had their mind wiped by Grace.

There were only a few people in the lobby anyway: the receptionist and a family that had just checked in and were waiting for the husband to park the car.

“We’d like your best room,” Grace said to the receptionist, offering him a curt smile. “Two beds, and we have a reservation. Should be under the name Edward King or possibly our company, Cherry Blossom Girls, Inc.”

“Let me just see here …” the mustached clerk said as he clickety-clicked on the mouse. “Found it. Edward and Jill King, CBG, INC. Great. Let me just prepare your room key and you should be good to go.”

As he went to work, I took one more look around the lobby.

This place wasn’t as tall as the Marriott we’d stayed at in Stamford, but what it lacked in height it made up for with space. It was expansive, with red carpets and orange accents, plenty of seating areas and plush leather couches, glass countertops near the continental breakfast area, and of course some generic, yet warm, art.

About a minute later, we took our elevator up to the suite on the top floor.

It was one of those mirrored elevators, and it was a little strange for me to see myself – head shaved, scar on face, bruised, and carrying Veronique in my arms – next to Grace in her Asian female doctor form with her bangs cut high and tight, cute glasses, and dimples.

We found our room and the lights came on automatically.

The suite was nice, and it had two queen-sized beds facing a large television that sat on a long wooden table. Near the floor-to-ceiling windows were two sofas and a reading nook. Next to the second queen-sized bed was a writing desk.

Damn, I needed a beer.

Luckily, the room had a mini fridge and refreshments on top. No beer, but I did down one of those small bottles of whiskey.

“We need to get her some new clothes,” I told Grace as she morphed back into her base form.

“We can get some tomorrow.” She sat on the edge of the bed and crossed one leg over the next. “Also, a new car.”

“I was just thinking that. We’ll need to switch out cars daily. It shouldn’t be hard.” I moved to the writing desk to set up my laptop. “We’ll just trade whatever car we have with the person whose car we’re taking. To throw anyone tracking us off, we’ll alternate that with simply giving the vehicle to whatever random person we see. We have a ton of cash. Maybe we’ll buy a used car too.”

I opened my laptop and clicked on the EBAYmazon direct publishing dashboard.

I gulped, the blood rushing to my head as I saw the incredible day I’d had.

I’d sold three hundred books over the last twelve hours and had over one hundred thousand page reads.

It’s not fucking possible.

Even though I’d seen the ‘Best Seller’ tag, my hand shook as I refreshed the data to make sure it wasn’t a dream.

Nope, that’s what you’ve done so far today, I thought.

Sure, the sales were at $0.99, but I had a feeling my bank accounts would be tracked anyway and besides, I had unlimited access to cash with Grace around. The book was getting out there, finding a wider audience, and that was all that mattered. Whatever magic Luke had worked had fundamentally changed the sales trajectory of my book.

I clicked the link to part one of Mutants in the Making to see that I was ranked in the top one thousand, no small feat considering the millions upon millions of ebooks that were published. EBAYmazon had made it so easy to publish an e-book, and self-publishing had become so widely accepted, that by 2030 everyone and their dog had a book out.

The highest I’d ever been before was the top two hundred fifty thousand.

“Great job,” Grace said, relaxing onto the bed and turning on the TV. She found a home improvement show and increased the volume. “I think your ranking will improve tomorrow.”

“Maybe,” I said, not wanting to jinx myself.

I checked my emails again and saw that I’d received another one from David Butler in Austin, Texas. This one had pictures of a facility near a body of water.

I clicked through the photos, not really finding anything that would cement the fact that it was a facility used for the experiments.

Then I looked through some PDFs he’d attached about the people guarding the facility. It was definitely MercSecure, the same group guarding the now-defunct Rose-Lyle facility. Thinking of that name reminded me of the ring of dead guards I’d seen when I looked over the rooftop.

Damn, I thought, trying to swallow that memory. Of course, attempting to suppress a memory only created another one.

I saw Angel in my mind’s eye, his skin shriveled, the look of death on his face. He was likely dead. There was no way he could have survived that blast.

I took a deep breath and clicked through more photos. Nope, there wasn’t concrete evidence that this was a similar facility to the one that we’d just destroyed.

That was, until I found a photo of a group of men and women entering the facility.

Almost all of the people were slightly blurred in the photo. The one person in focus was a slightly older scientist with thinning white hair. He wore a tie, glasses with white frames, and a shaved head.

He also had the requisite lab coat on.

I would have clicked through to the next photo if there hadn’t been directions on the photo to “Show it to one of the supers.”

“Hey, Grace,” I said, bringing my laptop over to her. “Does this person look familiar to you?”

She shook her head and returned her attention to the screen, where they were ripping out the foundation from an old Boston brownstone.

I was just about to move back to the desk when Grace gasped.

“What is it?” I asked.

She tore the laptop from my hands and touched the screen to zoom in on the image.

She wasn’t focused on the man; however, she was focused on the partially blurred woman who stood next to him.

“It’s her,” Grace said with a certainty I seldom heard from her.

“Her?”

“The founder …” She glanced over at Veronique. “Mother.”

Everything came to me at once, aided by some of Grace’s psychic powers. I saw this woman throughout her life – images only though, as Grace was never actually allowed to meet her.

I then heard the woman speaking to Grace, and realized that she had actually met her, but that Grace had been blindfolded, which meant she couldn’t link to the person.

“All of you are my sons and daughters,” Mother had whispered to her. “But you are my favorite.”

I took a step back.

I figured Grace would be distraught, but the act of transferring this experience to me seemed to have calmed her. She returned her attention to the television program while I clicked through more photos, saving the photo of Mother to my desktop.

“She was in Austin,” I told her after I snapped my laptop shut. “That’s where we’re going.”

Grace nodded, a determined look on her face. “That’s fine.”

Realizing that checking my sales numbers again wouldn’t really prove anything, I placed my laptop back in my duffle bag and took out my sleep clothes. One sniff at my armpit and I figured a shower was in order.

I entered the bathroom, turned on the hot water and waited to see just how hot it would get before I took off my clothes. Once I was satisfied with the temperature, I stepped in and let the water spray against my face.

My thoughts traced over the day, from the morning planning session to the assault on the Rose-Lyle facility. The important thing was that we had Veronique, and we had a plan. I’d never been to Texas – never been south of the Mason-Dixon line, actually – but it seemed like a viable next step.

We needed to get to Texas and we needed to find out more about Mother.

Changing locations and vehicles would make us harder to track. That said, there must have been some type of tracking device embedded in each woman; otherwise, they wouldn’t have eventually found us at the hotel in Stamford. We had to keep on the move and stick to public locations.

As the water turned my skin red, I thought about the message I’d received from the scientist who worked at the Rose-Lyle facility. There was more to this message, but I was still uncertain whether we should start up a dialogue. I needed to speak to Grace about him and figure out if he really was one of the scientists that would interview her.

Again, something to do later.

I nearly slipped and cracked my head on the tiled wall when the bathroom curtain was pulled aside.

I was greeted by a naked woman, story of my goddamn life.

“Veronique?” I asked, déjà vu slapping me in the face like a motherfucker.

“Any room for me in there? I’m feeling dirty.” She was completely nude, her nipples erect, and a perfectly straight line shaved in her pubes …

She was clean-shaven last time. And hadn’t there been a birthmark?

“Just kidding.” Veronique’s face folded, starting from the middle, and Grace’s unique, Scandinavian features formed. Her hair grew in length, her dark eyes turned blue, and the change cascaded down her body, her breasts increasing in size, her hips widening.

“That’s a terrible joke,” I said. “A terrible, terrible joke. Don’t do that again.”

“Too many rules,” she said playfully as she got into the shower with me. “No reading your mind, no changing into your mom, and no changing into Veronique.” She turned to me and wrapped her arms around my neck. “Anything else you’d like to add to that?”

“No, we’re good for now.”

I thought of the long day ahead, the fact that we were under threat, and the additional details emerging from Texas.

“Quiet, Writer Gideon, just enjoy it while it lasts,” Grace said as she moved in to kiss me.

The end.

Cherry Blossom Girls Book Two

Chapter One: Biker Feast

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the most fucked of times.

All this to say, a tiny bar in Chattanooga, Tennessee, wasn’t a place I would normally end up. Sure, there was Shakespeare’s Pub in Hamden and a few other small Irish joints back in New Haven, but a bar that came with the prerequisite that you would likely have to fight your way in and fight your way out?

My, how things had changed.

A thin man with a wiry mustache and a black leather vest pointed a grimy knife at Veronique.

It was almost comical how fucked he was, but I didn’t feel bad for what was going to happen to him. True, we came here looking for a fight, but we would have also left without one.

However, knife guy just happened to be stupid enough to grab Veronique’s ass, which led to her slapping his hand away, which led to him pulling a knife.

Knife man’s biker friends were already backing him up – four of them, all dressed in leather and denim and each with their own collection of prison tattoos and violent backstories.

Grace and I sat at the bar, Yours Truly nursing a margarita and Grace sipping a glass of water. I’d recently learned not to get a shifter drunk.

“Are you ready?” I asked her.

The bartender, who was just about to call the police, put the phone back down, his eyes flashing white. He grabbed a rag and began cleaning the back counter, completely oblivious to what was happening before him.

“This is your last warning,” I told the man with the knife. “Scratch that, this is your first and last warning. You made a mistake by assaulting her, and the mistake could cost you your life. Run now. That’s my suggestion.”

“The fuck it is,” Knife Man slurred, “coming here with two hot bitches thinking you own the goddamn place. This is our bar! Right, boys?”

The men that had gathered around grunted in agreement.

“Well, I warned you.” I looked at Veronique. “They’re all yours.”

The blade of the man’s knife began to bend backward until it was aimed at his wrist. The metal thinned, elongated, and lightly pricked his skin.

He dropped the blade. “What kind of goddamn witch are you?”

The answer to his question came when Veronique used her abilities to pull the fillings from his teeth.

Hunks of metal and enamel burst out of Knife Man’s mouth, carrying blood and saliva with them. The fillings hovered in the air before his face, and about the time he realized what had just happened, they cut him down like bullets.

His friends were quick to react.

A bald biker with several piercings swung his pool stick at Veronique. Grace stopped him mid-swing, and the towering brute turned to his compadres, his mind now hers.

“Gary? What the hell are you doing?” one of the men cried as his former friend swung his pool stick at the shortest guy in the group.

With three engaged or down, one of the last members of the biker gang pulled a gun. “I don’t know what the hell you two are, but this ends now!”

Except it didn’t.

The tiny screws holding the gun together unraveled, and his weapon fell apart in his hands. He started to back away, but Veronique pulled him over to her using the metal on his belt and the buckles on his boots.

The final biker still standing turned to the door, a fire lit under his ass.

“Grace.” I nodded at the man trying to escape and he stopped, turned toward a pool table, and lay down on it.

“Make sure he isn’t drunk,” I reminded Veronique as she stood before the gunless man, who was now on his knees.

I’d seen what happened if she took the life force of a drunk person.

Not that I wouldn’t mind another shower encounter, especially after two days of traveling with her and not quite getting the cold shoulder … yet not getting the warm shoulder either. But I wasn’t ready to handle her, nor Grace, in a drunken state.

“He isn’t drunk,” Grace said, her eyes blazing white. Damn, she looked beautiful. She was in her Asian form, her thick, bleached blonde hair pulled into a tight ponytail. But rather than go with the Asian’s body, she had her normal voluptuous shape, with more curves than a Fibonacci spiral.

The guy who’d had his fillings ripped out earlier grabbed my ankle.

Bad idea, I thought as I kicked him in the chest with my other foot, adrenaline surging through me.

I’d never actually attacked someone before.

Sure, I’d wrestled once or twice, but that was just horsing around with friends. I’d never punched anyone, and I’d definitely never kicked a person in the stomach.

But this was Gideon Caldwell reborn, Gideon stripped from his past. As Nic Pizzolatto wrote in one of his earlier books, before True Detective became an HBO hit, “The past isn’t real.”

And with each action I took that was foreign to the old Gideon Caldwell, I gave the new Gideon strength, separating him further from the past. Not that I wanted any of this to go to my head, and not that I truly agreed with Pizzolatto’s quote; I really just wanted to be hardened, ready for what lay ahead.

But as it would turn out, I’d never be quite ready for what was to come.

Veronique placed her hand on the now gunless biker’s throat and began the devil’s work, red energy swirling around her wrist as she fed, her skin turning radiant almost instantly.

That’s what this was about.

I knew we were out of place at the biker bar and that our appearance would stir up trouble, but Veronique needed to feed, and regular food just didn’t seem to do it for her.

It really was like being friends with a vampire, and I didn’t know if she suffered some type of hunger that would turn her against me if she didn’t feed regularly. That was also on my mind: Let the predator feed or be fed upon.

“Don’t do it all the way,” I said quickly. “No killing if it can be avoided.”

So maybe I wasn’t that hard yet. I still had a moral compass, even if it was cracked.

“How’s toothless?” I asked Grace.

“He’s drunk.”

“What about the guy you turned, the one with the pool stick?”

“He’s sober.”

I placed my hand on Veronique’s shoulder, which sent a spark of fear down my spine. After a moment of hesitation on both our parts, she let go of the gunless man and turned.

“Yes?” she asked, her dark eyes narrowing on me.

“Remember, feed on them, but don’t kill him. We don’t want to leave a trail. Grace is going to wipe everyone’s memories anyway.”

She sighed, blowing a bit of the hair out of her face. “As you wish.”

Veronique fed on the biggest biker with the pool stick first, then the one that had lain down on the table, and finally the bartender.

It was a big meal.

Chapter Two: Stranger Danger

It had been two days since we left the East Coast, two days of driving, swapping out vehicles, staying in posh hotels, and just trying our damndest to keep on the run.

I wasn’t the type that could drive all night, and even though Grace could technically take over my mind and have me drive for us, I wasn't keen on that idea either.

I also wasn’t stupid enough to think they weren’t somehow tracking us.

I didn’t know enough about Grace and Veronique’s drives to know if they could give off GPS signals – or even scarier, if they could be taken over somehow by an unseen force.

But they hadn’t yet, so I tried not to think about it.

I’d continued communicating with David Butler in Texas, and we were set to meet once we arrived.

I wasn’t nervous about this, considering I had Grace and Veronique with me, but maybe I should have been.

Because of the success of Mutants in the Making, I’d received tons of messages, and as I’d predicted, the tinfoil hat crowd had made their presence known.

I stopped replying to most emails unless I saw pictures or some type of photo evidence. Nothing compared yet to the pictures the man from Texas had given us, and the fact that Mother was in them only made me want to get down there even more.

Whoever the mysterious ‘Mother’ was, Veronique and Grace had her on their hit list.

I hadn’t been able to discover much more about her through their drives, and I’d definitely probed around, at least in Grace’s. Neither were very forthcoming about Mother either.

Veronique had let me plug in only once, for just a moment yesterday morning, but she was hesitant to let me play with her stats; I was still working on gaining her trust. While it would have been easier to have Grace simply take over her mind, I was opposed to that strategy.

Still, the sooner I could understand what she was capable of, the better.

I had seen a glimpse of their combined abilities back at the Rose-Lyle facility. Veronique had drained Angel and was able to externally transfer his life force energy into the air, where Grace used her telepathic abilities to keep it in a sphere, which she used to destroy the facility.

So, there were ways forward, and I was pretty sure one of these ways was through adjusting Veronique’s skills.

But that could wait. MercSecure and whatever federal authorities were after us could find us tomorrow or they could find us in a week; there was really no telling when they would attack.

But they would attack. Of that I was certain.

Then there was my personal life, and how much it had changed since Grace showed up on my doorstep.

The fact that my picture was on her drive was still a mystery. I hadn’t been able to find it again, which was odd, because it didn’t take me much clicking to find it the first time.

The first installment of Mutants in the Making had become a number one bestseller and had already garnered over two hundred reviews. Many were positive, but an increasingly high amount were not. Other authors had started to dig in, claiming my story was bullshit, and I knew that my writer buddy Luke had come to my defense several times.

The cover of the second installment was ready, but I still needed more time to flesh out the book and edit it. I guess calling it a ‘book’ was somewhat of a misnomer because it was shorter than that – barely a novella – but it made more sense in my mind to call it that.

“Grace, what do you think of the second cover?” I asked as I moved over to the bed with my laptop.

It was a couple hours after the bar incident, and we were at the Hyatt in downtown Chattanooga. Grace and Veronique were both on the bed, watching another home makeover show, as they had been since we arrived.

“I like it,” she said, her eyes flashing white.

“You didn’t even look at it …”

Grace had done this a couple times over the last two days, briefly taking over my psyche and then giving it back to me. It was at the point where oftentimes, I didn’t know if I was thinking my own thoughts or if it was Grace thinking them with me. Sometimes I thought I was thinking Grace’s thoughts, and sometimes I thought we were a collective mind, thinking together.

It was definitely eerie.

“Veronique?” I asked. “Do you like the cover?”

She simply nodded, still glued to the television.

The plan was to get to Shreveport, Louisiana, tomorrow and arrive in Austin the next day.

As we had done thus far, we would probably change vehicles at least twice on our way south tomorrow. This had proven easiest to do at a gas station, but it was also fairly simple at a WalMacy’s or a mall along the highway.

Anywhere there were people, we had vehicles.

“Well, I’m glad you both approve,” I said as I closed my laptop, ready to take in the views outside.

I went to the balcony and leaned over the edge, looking down at the city of Chattanooga. The sun was setting in the distance, casting orange stripes across the Tennessee River. There was something about the city that I liked; it was small like New Haven and filled with shadowy corners, which gave an air of intrigue to the location.

I wished we could have stayed longer in Tennessee, as I heard Nashville was pretty sweet, but our destiny was farther south, in the Lone Star State, and from there possibly west.

Of all the quacky emails I’d gotten, I still hadn’t received one from the West Coast.

I knew there was something out there, though; I’d seen some information about it on Grace’s drive. I had also received another message from the scientist who worked at the Rose-Lyle facility.

Still hadn’t replied to that one.

“Choices, choices, choices,” I mumbled as I stared out at the river. Cars moved in the streets below and I watched a particularly aggressive driver in a large car swerve around an SUV, narrowly missing a Kia hybrid as the big vehicle twisted onto the highway.

Damn, if there weren’t bad drivers everywhere.

“Enjoying the view?” Veronique asked, startling me.

Just hearing her voice caused the hairs on my neck to stand at attention.

She walked up next to me and placed her arms on the rail. She was dressed like a country singer now, with her pearl snap collar shirt and an extra tight pair of Wranglers. It had been her choice, and there weren’t many options at WalMacy’s that were her size.

“It’s nice, right?”

She nodded. “Grace is tired tonight; I think she’s going to bed.”

“Oh?”

I had a feeling she was hinting at us spending the night together, but I couldn’t be sure, and I didn’t want to project those thoughts onto her. So I just shrugged and tried to change the subject.

“I’d really like to plug into you soon and play with your stats and skills.”

“Plug into me? I’m sure you would,” she said as she moved closer to me and leaned on the balcony.

“You know what I mean.”

Grace didn’t mind if I plugged in and searched through the files and subfiles on her drive. I had played with her Opacity a number of times, and last night, she’d asked me to turn her clear while we banged.

Which was … like having sex with a ghost? I don’t know. It was cool, though. Still, I hadn’t been able to discover more as to why my photo was on her drive, and I was no longer able to find the photo.

Weird.

Yesterday morning, when Veronique had let me plug in, she’d quickly decided against it and told me we could do it later.

The thing was, I wanted to see what was actually modifiable with her skills.

Plus, there was information on her drive that wasn’t on Grace’s – like the snuff videos. And who doesn’t like a good superhero snuff video? The last time I checked Veronique’s skills, back at the hotel in Stamford when she was unconscious, portions of them had been grayed out.

I knew there was more to what she could do; I’d seen it firsthand back at the Rose-Lyle facility.

Just as Veronique moved a few inches closer to me, so that our bodies now touched, my phone buzzed.

“Are you going to answer that?”

But I was no longer focused on the flirty way she asked the question, I was legitimately freaked out.

No one had this number.

When Luke and I spoke, we did so over GoogleFace. And he never called me, so I was unaware of what the phone’s ringtone even sounded like.

“It’s an unknown number,” I told her as I looked at the anonymous face icon flashing on my phone’s screen.

“Answer it,” she said.

I took a deep breath and decided to go with Veronique’s advice.

“Hello?”

“Please, do not hang up the phone,” a man said on the other end. “My name is Ken Kim, and I’m the scientist at the Rose-Lyle facility who sent you the email. Two emails. And do not worry, I’m not tracking this call or anything. I need to talk to you. I need to tell you what’s to come. Your life and the lives of Subject S and Subject V are in danger. Please, do not hang up the phone!”

“You have fifteen seconds,” I told him as I turned my back to the balcony. My knees suddenly shaky, I sat down and crossed my legs. Veronique crouched next to me, her hand on my shin as I put Ken on speakerphone.

“Again, my name is Ken Kim, Dr. Ken Kim, and I’m not your enemy, Gideon.”

“Yeah? How the hell am I supposed to know that?”

“For starters, I’m guessing you found the ports on both of their necks, otherwise you couldn’t have done what you did back at the facility. Well, I’m the one who put all that information on their drives; I put it there with the hope that someone could possibly uncover and unravel a little bit of this mystery. Far-fetched at the time, but then Sabine got out.”

It didn’t add up. How could he have possibly known Grace would escape and that Veronique would come looking for us and later switch sides? It was too hard to believe, even for a fiction writer like myself. But there was something about the way he spoke that seemed genuine.

“You have thirty more seconds,” I finally said.

“Please believe me, I cared about … Sabine. Has she told you her backstory by now?”

“Yeah, being kept in isolation all her life and escaping after tricking two scientists.”

“I was one of the scientists that interviewed her every day. My colleague, Bobby, was the one she used to escape. Is Sabine there? I’d love to talk to her.”

“You’re never going to get to talk to her again,” I said with a growl. “But you can talk to me. You have one minute now.”

“If I only have one minute, then I’ll explain how I gained access to your phone number. I’m a bit of a hacker, which was why I was able to put all that information on their drives. The code Sabine gave you to access the drives? I gave her that code.”

“How? From what I recall, you were knocked out by the other scientist.”

“Before that.” He cleared his throat. “And yes, Bobby did knock me out. He’s since been fired and … disappeared. He’s disappeared. I can’t talk about that right now, though. And there’s nothing we can do about it anyway. Ask her about it when you speak to her again. She’ll tell you the truth.”

I looked at Veronique, who quietly stood and walked back to the room. She returned seconds later with Grace, who locked eyes with me and instantly transferred what she knew into my brain.

“So if you are the one who gave that code to her, what is that code?”

“1QAZ2WSX3EFV4321QWEASD,” he said. “That’s the access code.”

Grace nodded.

“And how did you gain access to my number?”

“They’re following your trail – ‘they’ being MercSecure and the federal government. Why aren’t you sending encrypted emails? Let’s start there. You know they can track that, right? I mean, you’ve been wise to do some things like change cars and change rooms, but you give them a crumb every time you send an email.”

I bit my lip. I had no idea if he was right, but it did seem possible. “How’d you get my number, then?”

“Remember when you bought a phone in Stamford?” Ken asked.

“Yes.”

“That’s how I gained access to your info. You see, the analysts they’ve got on your case have gone about this the wrong way: Rather than check the employees at the Okay Buy who had phones, they’ve gone after each and every phone number issued that day. But somehow, the way you and Sabine orchestrated it, the phone wasn’t purchased through normal means, nor was it registered in a normal way. So I checked the employees and their phone numbers and narrowed it down to yours, and that’s how I'm talking to you. Now.”

“Okay, makes sense. I’ll be getting rid of this phone then.”

“It’s not just the phone they’re going to get you with; it’s the emails you send from your laptop. That’s how they found you in Stamford. If you didn’t know, the FCG has a private corporation that pays for location-based data from GoogleFace. It’s expensive, and they have to pay each time they access it, but we’re talking about unlimited funds here – funds given to them by the American taxpayer.”

“Your minute is drawing to a close,” I said as I looked at Grace. She was crouched in front of me now, same as Veronique, both of them listening intently to what Dr. Ken Kim had to say.

Grace’s brow was furrowed, a look of concern in her blue eyes.

The phone cut out for a second and he continued. “What I’m trying to say is that every time you send an email, they’re able to track you. If you stop sending emails or send them through an encryption app, you’re fine. But as of right now, they know where you are and are coming. Shit. They’re coming now, Gideon – you need to go!”

I was panicked at that point. I’d just used my laptop not too long ago to email some readers. I was so screwed.

“We’ve got to go,” I whispered to Grace and Veronique. They quickly stood and went to our room to begin packing.

“I want to help you,” Ken said. “Please let me help you. I don’t know how much longer they’re going to let me live, but I want to help you. They’ll come after me, just like they came after Bobby. I … I fucking know they will. I’m surprised they haven’t already; I was there when Sabine escaped. One more thing. To prove my intent, I want to give you a code you can put into their systems that will improve their abilities.”

“A code?”

“That’s right, another code,” said Ken. “As you likely understand by now, you can modify their abilities to some degree. They don’t level up, per se, but there are ways to unlock abilities that were previously hidden. One of them is by entering codes into their drives. We didn’t give them all these abilities at once – not that they couldn’t have figured them out on their own.”

“So they are arranged codes?”

“Yeah, something like that. But I have one for you. Do you have a pen?”

Grace, I thought.

Yes?

I’m going to tell you a code in a second, can you write it down for me in there?

“Okay, I’m ready,” I told Ken.

He rattled off a string of letters and numbers. “XFLT16689L147DDFBERV.”

I repeated it back to him, thinking each number and letter as I said it aloud.

Got it, Grace said inside my head.

“Scroll to the bottom of the list of available options, and you’ll see an input section. Put this code there. And yes, the same code works for both of them. Like I said, they could figure these abilities out on their own – they may have already done so – but this will speed up the process. We’ll be in touch.”

“Thanks for the information.” I hung up the phone and turned it off. I disconnected the battery, removed the SIM card, and once again – just like I’d seen people do in movies – threw the phone over the balcony. I bent and twisted the SIM card and flicked it onto another balcony.

My laptop would be next.

Everything was saved in the cloud anyway, but it still pained the writer in me to smash it to pieces.

Luckily, by the time I got into the room, Veronique had already done that for me.

My laptop looked like it had been dissected by an alien, and all of its metal pieces lay in a circle around its square body.

“Keep the balcony door open,” Veronique said as the metal pieces lifted into the air. Just like with the man’s fillings back at the biker bar, she turned the pieces of my laptop into projectiles. The bits of metal flew out the window and down to the Tennessee River.

“Ready?” Grace asked me.

“Yeah, let’s get out of Chattanooga. And maybe something to eat along the way.”

A smile spread across her concerned face. “Pizza?”

“I was thinking barbecue.”

She thought about that for a moment. “Barbeque pizza?”

I chuckled as I looped my duffel bag over my shoulder. “Sure, barbeque pizza.”

Chapter Three: I Want an Ice Cream Truck in My Back Yard

We drove south toward Jackson, Mississippi, a barbeque chicken pizza on the seat between Grace and me. Veronique sat in the back of our big truck, and every now and then, I would catch a glimpse of her through the rearview mirror, her skin porcelain, her blonde hair sharply framing her face, her dark eyes fixated on me.

“Are you sure you don’t want a piece?” Grace asked Veronique. She took one last bite up to the crust and threw the rest out the window.

“I’m fine,” Veronique said.

“What’s with the crust?” I asked Grace. “I thought you like the crust.”

“We saw on TV that the crust has more carbs,” she replied. “So you could enjoy the pizza, but if you throw out the crust, you cut like twenty-five percent of the carbs.”

I laughed. “You can’t believe everything you see on TV. But I guess that makes some sense. Not diet-wise, but just in the sense that you’re throwing away a portion of the pizza, so you’re definitely going to cut some carbs.”

“I think barbeque pizza is very good,” Grace said. Lights from the cars flashed across her soft skin. She was in her normal form, Scandinavian on fleek, and she wore my sweater and pants.

I don’t know why she always reverted back to this form, but there was something kind of cute about it.

“It doesn’t smell so great,” Veronique said. “It reminds me of a bathroom.”

“I guess …” I glanced at her through the rearview mirror. “I guess a lot of meats kind of smell like a bathroom if you think about the smell in that way. I mean, there are similarities. Anyway, enough bathroom talk.”

“It’s too bad we had to leave the hotel,” Grace said. “We really like that show.”

“Which show is that?” I asked.

They were constantly watching some show about tearing down houses and rebuilding them. Or maybe it was remodeling crappy places, or possibly it was a real estate show.

I had no idea. I was usually busy on my laptop when they were watching TV.

As nice as it would have been to hop onto the bed and rest between them, a beautiful woman on either side – a harem in the making – writing a book took time. It took a lot of time, and that was why so many writers I admired were a little bit on the chubby side.

Writing is a sitting sport.

What better way to describe the act of sitting for hours and hours to bleed onto an empty page with the hope that someone will read what you have to say? It’s hell, but you’re in charge, and for a good many writers, their calculated words are the one thing they control in their hectic lives.

As my mind wandered, skipping over books I’d read and lessons I should have learned from them, Grace and Veronique told me their favorite program was about a pair of brothers who fixed houses and sold them for a profit. Their second favorite show was about a married gay couple who did the same thing, and their third favorite show was about a group of teenagers who did pretty much the same thing.

“We’re going to take this place down, make it right, and sell it at a good price!” Grace said, now in the form of one of the brothers.

Veronique laughed, a long and harsh laugh that seemed fake, the way I envisioned how rich people laughed while vacationing in the Hamptons.

“Do more,” she said as she clapped her hands together.

Grace’s form morphed into a young girl with orange hair in a side braid. “Sure, we’re just kids, but that doesn’t mean we can’t flip this house! So we’re going to start in the bedroom, knock the bedroom walls out, expand the bathroom so it’s a master bathroom, not the little bathroom that it was before. And it’s a kid’s house, so we’re going to put a jungle gym in there. Why not, right? And the backyard? Basketball court, a pond, and an ice cream truck. Because who doesn’t want an ice cream truck in their backyard?”

Veronique laughed again. “I want an ice cream truck in my backyard.”

They continued talking about the houses they had seen flipped, how they would flip them, and at some point, I returned my focus to the road and Dr. Ken Kim.

Who was he really trying to help? He had given us a code, but for all I knew, it would activate the GPS system in the two women.

There was no way of telling, and curiosity wasn’t going to get this cat, or writer, or the Cherry Blossom Girls (the name I had started to call them in my head).

Their abilities were fine; they were where they needed to be. At least until I could fool around with Veronique’s a bit more.

I looked in the rearview mirror and caught a glimpse of myself, bearded and now with a badass looking scar. I couldn’t believe I’d made such an amateur mistake of not encrypting my emails.

Seemed about right, though; even though I’d been at this for about a week now, I still had no idea what I was doing.

And if it was Ken who put all the information on their drives, I should have asked him about my photo and why it was there.

The mystery continued.

Chapter Four: Dorian Gray and the T-Rex Made of Energy

We stopped at a gas station at a quarter after midnight, and I figured now would be a good time to switch vehicles. We found a man in a station wagon, gave him the keys to our truck, and transferred our things to the back of his car.

“This one is not as nice,” Veronique said as she got in the back.

I waved her concerns away as I went inside the convenience store to get a cup of coffee. I nodded at the attendant behind the counter and glanced around in search of liquid crack.

A punk rock looking woman with jet-black hair and deep red lipstick stood nearby, staring at me. She wore a leather jacket, tight black jean shorts over a pair of fishnet stockings, and black military boots. Her midriff was exposed below the short tank top she wore under her jacket, and I could see the swell of her breasts above the top.

I nodded at her, looked away awkwardly as I normally did when I saw hot women, and made a beeline for the coffee station.

There weren’t many options, and the coffee looked like it had been brewed two days ago. But what could I do? I filled up a twenty-ounce cup, added a bit of hazelnut creamer just to give it some flavor, and took a sip of the lukewarm beverage.

I sighed. It tasted like yesterday’s McStarbucks warmed for fifteen seconds in the microwave.

I glanced back at the woman and noticed she was now holding a paintbrush. She was also staring at me in a strange way.

She lifted the paintbrush to her lips, placing it in her mouth and holding it there for a moment before taking it back out.

As if she were conducting an invisible orchestra, the punk rock super began tracing an image in the air. Purple magic took shape as she moved her brush.

The door swung open and Grace entered, surprise spreading across her face as she saw the woman.

Gideon, get down!

The woman lowered her paintbrush and a human-shaped form appeared, its body made of blistering purple energy. It charged at me with fists on fire. An invisible force moved me to safety just in time to miss its first strike, my coffee flying out of my hand in what felt like slow-motion.

As if they were on wheels, the aisle shelves thundered toward the woman with the paintbrush, the result of Grace’s omnikinesis.

Just before the shelves reached the woman, she disappeared in a flash.

The gas station attendant stood up from his hiding spot behind the register, a shotgun in his hand. “I want you both to get the fuck –”

The human made of purple energy slammed into the counter, exploding anything its body came into contact with. It continued forward, pressing through the counter, and even as the attendant fired his shotgun, it reached the man’s body and exploded that too, spraying gobs of red goo everywhere.

I nearly lost my barbeque pizza as a clump of human landed on my shoulder.

I stumbled backward, where I was met by Grace. By this point I was crouched down, my ears ringing from the weapon’s report, my fingers covered in the man’s blood, which I tried to wipe off on my shoulder.

Veronique stepped into the gas station, her hands lifting into the air as screws and bolts from the shelving became projectile weapons.

She was breathing heavily, hyper-aware as she scanned the area.

“What the hell is going on?” I whispered to Grace, who stood next to me, her hand on my shoulder.

“It’s Dorian Gray.”

I shook my head.

I’d read Oscar Wilde’s book of the same name, so that was the first thing that came to me. Then my thoughts jumped from that to the clump of body matter on my shoulder, the body matter scattered all around me, the fact that we were in a gas station in the middle of nowhere, and we’d been attacked by a human shape made entirely of flaming purple energy.

My brain was running wild again.

“We have to find her,” Veronique said. She looked like a southern badass in her cowgirl get-up, her hands red with energy, screws and bolts buzzing around her like wasps.

“What are her abilities exactly? How do you know about her?” I asked Grace, still catching my breath.

“Later,” she assured me as she looked around, ready for another attack.

“Come out, Dorian, and paint me a picture,” Veronique shouted, her hands clenching into fists.

“Can she paint anything into existence?” I asked, connecting the dots.

My answer came in the form of a T-Rex that chomped into the corner of the building, tearing a portion of the ceiling out, and exploding all the lights and electric outlets.

The charged T-Rex ripped more of the ceiling away, using a kick from its clawed leg to smash a wall.

I wish I could say this was your normal T-Rex with the little bitch arms, but no. This one had been customized to bring death to the three of us, and since that was the case, it had two huge weapons instead of arms, each with muzzles the size of beach volleyballs.

And they could shoot.

A searing blast tore over my head and went straight into the beer cooler nearby.

The explosion that followed sent shards of glass into the air, accompanied by the sweet sick stench of adult beverages.

I was running by this point toward the back exit, trying to get my ass out of there before the T-Rex fired off another shot.

“Grace, Veronique!” I cried.

I’m here, Writer Gideon! Grace wasn’t far from me, covering her head as she ran.

I turned just in time to see Veronique press her hands in front of her as if she were moving chi. Half the metal in the store scissored toward the T-Rex.

Since our attacker was made of energy, the only thing those random chunks of metal could do was cause mini-explosions all over its body as the projectiles attempted to pass through. But that was better than nothing, and the T-Rex expended more and more energy as hunks of metal struck its form.

Eventually, like the person made of energy, the Cretaceous abomination began to dissipate, no longer able to cause damage.

Veronique was still in a battle-ready pose, more metal fluttering around her just in case she needed to use it quickly.

“Where did she go?” I asked as I surveyed the damage.

The energy Dorian created had done some pretty strange things, either exploding or melting everything it came into contact with. Did she really conjure this stuff with a paintbrush? Was it activated by her saliva or was it just her schtick?

I moved through what was left of the convenience store, my nose twitching at the smell of burning plastic, food wrappers, flesh, and anything else flammable.

Veronique smiled grimly as I approached her, and a few bits of metal fell out of the air.

“Thank you,” I said in earnest. “Both of you.” I turned to Grace. “I was just getting my coffee. She would have blasted me if you hadn’t done something.”

“They’ve started sending others for us,” Veronique said, as more metal fell.

“Fuck, so they still know where we are. Shit.” I glanced at Grace, who was still looking through the damage, one hand poised at the ready just in case she needed to act. She could use her abilities with her mind alone, but similar to Veronique, it seemed that physical movement had some psychological effect that possibly strengthened the attack.

I mean, if I were superpowered, I’d be making poses too.

That’s a strange thing to be thinking about, I told myself. But then again, we’d just been attacked by a woman with a paintbrush who conjured up a goddamn dinosaur. And a guy’s body had exploded, leaving my shoulder a mess.

“We should move,” I told Veronique as I cautiously stepped over to a rack of clothing that had been partially burnt to a crisp. There were still a couple of shirts, so I took one that had the American flag on it just to have something change into.

“Nothing?” Veronique asked her counterpart.

“I don’t sense her at all,” Grace said. “It’s like she’s completely vanished.”

“You should have used your powers to take over her mind.”

“You know that doesn’t work as well on some of us,” Grace reminded her as she moved to the door. “Normals, yes, but not us.”

Normals. I recalled Angel using a similar term. I guess everyone needed a name for someone unlike them.

“You took over my mind,” Veronique reminded her.

“I did, and I’m surprised I was able to. But like I’ve promised, I won’t do it again. Believe me. I tried with Dorian, but she resisted, so I sent the shelves after her. I was only able to get a flash of who she was and the powers she had. The charging power. That’s all I could discover.”

“I already knew that about her. I don’t know how she got away so fast, though.”

I heard sirens in the distance.

The rest of the metal around Veronique fell. As we made our way over to what was left of the entrance, I glanced at the convenience store’s office.

The cameras.

“Destroy everything in that room.”

Veronique turned to the office. The walls rippled and the metal inside zipped around. Then the ceiling caved in. I juxtaposed this with the time I had tried to destroy the surveillance data at the hotel in East Haven.

Veronique’s method was much easier.

We were back on the highway just a minute or so later.

The station wagon we’d acquired before Dorian showed up smelled musty on the inside. The owner was a cigarette smoker, something I should have looked out for in the beginning. Ash was everywhere, scratch-off lottery tickets littered the floor, and there were burn marks on the plastic door handle.

As soon as we were far enough away for me to think we hadn’t been followed, I eased up a bit on the speed and started in on the questioning.

“Tell me everything,” I said, looking from Veronique through the rearview mirror over to where Grace sat beside me. She was still in her base form, but now she wore a tight black turtleneck sweater and black jean shorts over a pair of fishnet black leggings. It seemed she frequented three forms: the Asian one inspired by the geisha on the wall of my basement apartment; her Scandinavian supermodel shape that may or may not be what she actually looked like; and her ponytailed brunette in yoga pants.

All were equally hot.

“Did you get your current clothing idea from Dorian?” I asked, noticing the fishnet tights under her shorts.

I recalled the buxom woman with jet black hair and crimson lips. An image of her placing her paintbrush between her lips flashed in my mind’s eye, followed by an image of the gas station attendant exploding.

And all I had wanted was a fucking cup of coffee.

“I thought you’d like the outfit,” Grace said, her hair darkening and the color of her lips deepening.

Stop reading my thoughts.

Sorry, bad habit! She said in my skull.

“To answer your request,” Veronique said, “Dorian Gray was stationed at our facility from 2025 to 2028. I trained with her. You didn’t see it, and it no longer exists, but one of the stops of the hyperloop pod beneath the Rose-Lyle facility was an above-ground training space outside of Hamden.”

“Ah, you trained with her; that’s how you knew.”

Veronique nodded. “And I’ve taken down one of her energy dinosaurs before. The things she creates can be stopped – either by time, by reaching their target, or by tossing as many solid objects at them as you can.”

“And they could have killed you if they touched you?”

“That’s right.”

I shook my head. “I can’t believe they trained you like that. They probably spent millions of dollars to create you, then they trained you in a way that could have ended your life prematurely if you’d made just one mistake.”

“Is there a better way to train?” Veronique asked. “Knowing one’s life is on the line changes the way they fight.”

Two faster vehicles appeared behind me, and once I passed an eighteen-wheeler, I transitioned to the slow lane and let them go around, not interested in a dick-measuring contest, especially in a station wagon.

“You two know who Dorian Gray is, right?”

“Yes, that woman,” Veronique said.

“Oh, she’s named after a book,” Grace said before I could explain.

“That’s right, um, The Picture of Dorian Gray is about this guy who wishes a portrait of himself would age rather than his physical body. As time passes and Dorian becomes more and more evil, the picture becomes hideous. There’s a lot of philosophical undertones, or whatever.”

“Interesting,” Grace said. “I’d love to read one of your books. How Heavy This Axe? That looks intriguing.”

I grinned. She was patronizing me; in an instant, Grace would know the ending of How Heavy This Axe? and how it was about a transgender dwarf abandoned by his people and how, rather than run away, the dwarf killed them all and ended up alone, until a dragon showed up and they became friends with benefits who lived happily ever after.

Who doesn’t love a happy ending?

“I can’t figure out how Dorian found us,” I said, back to the subject at hand. “I mean, of all the gas stations. How did she know to go to that one? How is that even possible? And how did she get away so fast?”

Veronique thought for a moment, the lights of the highway cutting horizontal arcs across her face as I observed her through the rearview mirror. I yawned. Adrenaline and drowsiness were a strange combo; I was alert but tired, ready to sleep as much as I was ready to run.

“She never moved that fast before,” Veronique finally said. “I don’t know how she left. Maybe she thought I would kill her. It wouldn’t be hard to do so; I almost did before.”

“We shouldn’t kill her,” Grace said, clearly reading my thoughts. “Not if we can help it.”

Veronique sat back and pulled her knees to her chest. She wasn’t wearing her seatbelt. “You’re suggesting we make friends with her and ask her to join us?”

I took over from there. “We’ll figure that out later. First, we need to come to grips with how she found our location so quickly. If she can do that, so can the rest of the people who are after us.”

“So, we’re supposed to kidnap and ask her?” Veronique laughed. “You two share a delusion. An inspiring delusion but a delusion nonetheless.”

“We’ve already agreed that we are going across the country to destroy these facilities,” I replied. “What if there are more like you two who want to join us? What if more want to be part of our movement?”

“If we could weaken her,” Grace said, “I could wipe her mind. Then she’d be our slave.”

I gulped.

I’d never heard Grace refer to the people whose minds she took over as ‘slaves.’ I recalled Chip Parker, the guy who helped us back in New Haven. The taxi driver too. And a host of others who played a smaller role in our narrative. I hesitated to call them ‘slaves’ because of the negative connotation of the word, but that’s really what they were.

I decided to let the comment pass.

“And what's with the paintbrush? Did she use that when you two trained together?”

Veronique nodded. “It’s what she uses to activate her ability. It’s kind of like the … What do wizards use again?”

“Wands?” I asked.

“It’s like her wand; her power is activated by her spit.”

“I noticed that. It would definitely make it hard for her to kiss someone.”

Grace laughed. “You’re thinking of kissing her?”

“Is that what my mind says?”

Her eyes flashed white. “No, you’re just being geeky as always.”

“I believe the word is cheeky.”

“From what I remember, any of her bodily fluids carry this ability. Her blood too. So, doing other things with her would also be a bad idea,” Veronique said.

Other things with her? Time to change the subject.

“Charged spit or not, it looks like we need to always be on high alert. We can’t even get gas in the middle of nowhere without getting assaulted. And if she was able to find us …”

I kept expecting to see a helicopter appear in the rearview mirror, its spotlight trained on us. This triggered the memory of our escape from Stamford and the multiple helicopters that Veronique brought down.

Talk about a rough afternoon.

“Let’s trade cars soon,” Grace said suddenly. “This car has too many memories.”

“Yeah, and it’s stuffy back here,” Veronique added.

“We can roll down the windows,” I suggested.

“No,” Veronique said. “It’d be smarter to change vehicles, just in case Dorian saw what we drove away in.”

Chapter Five: Mother is Watching

One more gas station later, somewhere near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and we had a new ride. We’d planned to be quick at this one, simply pulling up to the nearest car, trading out, and hitting the highway.

“Much better, huh?” I said as I started up a fairly new Toyota Camry.

It had a lot of room inside, and a ton of bells and whistles. I turned it to auto drive almost immediately, not feeling like navigating the eighteen-wheelers on the road.

“Definitely,” Veronique said as she got comfortable in the back.

“Grace?”

“Memories still,” she said, touching the glove box. “But not as bad. Nice. Comfortable. It’s fine, Writer Gideon.”

We arrived in Jackson, Mississippi, a few hours later; I was surprised I’d made it through without coffee. Veronique was asleep in the back, and Grace was even dozing off.

“Not yet,” I told her, as I pulled into a hotel parking spot. “I need your help.”

We had a ton of cash on us, but I still needed her to stop the front desk clerk from taking our information.

She yawned and got out of the car, morphing into her brunette form, this time with her hair braided over to one side. The car door opening startled Veronique awake, and she jolted up, ready to fight.

“Relax,” I told her, “we’re just checking into a hotel.”

The clerk, a middle-aged woman with glasses and odd warts along her neck, was reading a book about the Bible when we entered. She had just managed to give us a dirty look when Grace took over her mind.

We were getting better at this now. I no longer even needed to speak to the hotel receptionists; we simply entered, and Grace did the rest.

With her eyes focused on the computer screen, the woman typed some information, probably something about Edward and Jill King and Cherry Blossom Girls, Inc., which Grace had instructed her to delete later.

We were given a room, and as if we’d never existed, the woman turned her attention back to her Bible book.

This wasn’t as nice as what we were used to staying in; it was a typical roadside motel, and we were lucky to get two double beds.

Veronique claimed one, Grace and I claimed the other.

There was an unspoken thing about Grace and me sleeping together, and I got the hint that she didn’t care where I slept. Something at the back of my mind told me this, but I didn’t act on it. Not yet anyway.

I would have time to act on my feelings for her in the future.

And as it would turn out, that future came even sooner than I expected.

As soon as Grace went to take a quick shower, Veronique called me over to her bed.

“Would you prefer to sleep here?” she asked in a robotic, yet playful way. She’d lightened up some, but there was always a harshness about her.

I was tired, but not tired enough to say no to a request like that.

“We really should have gotten a room with three beds,” I said half-jokingly.

She sat down on her bed. “Or just a room with one.”

Damn, if Veronique didn’t know how to shut me up with one simple statement. It could mean anything, but I was a man – a man who had grown up in the twenty-first century and had seen a lot of porn – so I got the feeling it meant something else.

But it could have been innocent.

Her statement could have also meant that she’d kill us both and get a room alone.

“You know what, sure, I’ll sleep over there tonight. I slept in Grace’s bed the last two nights.”

“Three nights, four nights, you always sleep in her bed.”

I changed into my American flag shirt and got into Veronique’s bed.

She was still in the country clothes we’d gotten from WalMacy’s, a pearl snap collar shirt and tight jeans. She unbuttoned her shirt and let it drop.

Just as she was about to unhook her bra, the shower flicked off in the other room, the pipes in the walls creaking as the water pressure let up.

I swallowed hard as her hand fell onto my stomach and then moved to the space just below my belly button. My insides were melting, and it wasn’t because she was using her power on me. No, it only took a light touch from her to turn me on, and as much as I wanted to resist, I felt like it was impossible.

But I didn’t want to piss off a telepath, at least not tonight, especially after what we’d been through.

“I think I’ll just sleep over there tonight.”

A glint of anger flashed in her eyes. I felt the energy suddenly leave my body. Her hand was still on me, and I knew she was draining my life force.

“Stop it,” I whispered. More energy left my body, and I pushed my ass out of her bed, hit the floor and nearly cracked my head on the nightstand. I scrambled into Grace’s bed.

Veronique laughed. “I’ll be here whenever you’re ready.”

Oddly enough, Veronique zapping a little of my energy made it easier for me to sleep.

I’d been having pretty terrible nightmares over the last few nights, anxiety-driven dreams in which I was being choked by Angel, or shot by the MercSecure men, or worse, watching Grace die and Veronique get split in half by some unseen force.

I didn’t want to lose them.

Hell, I still hardly knew them, but these two women had fundamentally changed my outlook on life and my perception of reality. I needed them, and I hoped to prove myself useful enough for them to feel the same about me one day.

But as I said, that night at the hotel in Jackson, Mississippi, was different.

I slept like a baby, or like a super baby, hardly remembering the moment between lying down and actually going to sleep. I knew Grace was next to me, and I sensed her whispering something in my head, but even then, I didn’t know what she was saying.

Six hours of sleep isn’t a lot, but six hours of solid sleep is worth its weight in tooth fairies.

“Anyone going to breakfast with me?” I asked the next morning.

The writing itch had come on strong, but I had nothing to write with aside from pen and paper, which meant we would need to visit an electronics store today.

Not surprisingly, Grace came with me to breakfast, and we shared two paper plates stacked with stale bread, plastic eggs, yesterday’s sausage, and coffee that tasted like goblin ass.

“We’ll get better food later too,” I said as we went back to our room, where I found Veronique sitting on the bed with her legs crossed.

Having no smartphone meant I had to do things the old-fashioned way, so I called up to the front desk and asked them where the nearest Okay Buy was located.

The lady at the front desk was pretty shocked I would ask such a dumb question, especially since everyone had a smartphone or access to the internet, but I explained my phone was broken, and I had no idea how to get there.

With the directions in hand, we left and got there at just about the time the store opened.

After I picked up several items – a laptop, three prepaid phones, and another smartphone – we were set.

Grace worked her magic, and while we got the phones activated (all of them registered to the sales guy), Veronique checked out the VR video game section. A company known as Proxima had come out of nowhere recently with some of the most innovative VR gaming ever created.

I’d tried it. It made me dizzy, but that didn’t stop me from wanting to get a piece of the VR pie.

GoogleFace maps fed me deets on my newly-activated smartphone, and I calculated that we could get to Austin today, but it would be late.

I preferred to get some rest and have a little more dialogue with this David Butler character before we arrived, and to do so, I’d need to get my emails encrypted.

I was so distracted by these thoughts that I didn’t see the words that had been burned into the front hood of our Camry.

“Gideon,” Grace said, grabbing my arm. My eyes dropped to the still smoldering phrase: Mother is watching.

I gasped.

Grace’s immediate reaction was to take over the minds of others who were leaving Okay Buy. She had them fan out, searching the parking lot for anyone who could have done this.

Veronique also scanned the perimeter, standing in front of me as we moved to the vehicle.

“Do you think they put a bomb on the car?” I asked. It was a stupid question, but the way the two were acting had me on pins and needles.

“Stay close, Gideon,” said Veronique as we reached the Camry. I took another look at the phrase, Mother is watching, and noticed it had started to blacken around the edges. “Get your bag, and we’ll find a new car.”

“Got it.” I popped the trunk and grabbed my duffle bag, our backpack, and what was left of our snacks.

A black Ford Explorer pulled up, and the driver’s eyes turned white almost immediately. He got out of the vehicle, helped me load the stuff in the back, then switched keys with me while Veronique and Grace stood guard.

Ten minutes later, and a dozen miles or so down the highway, my hands were still shaking.

I tried to focus on the road; found it impossible. I turned on the Explorer’s auto drive feature, finally taking a deep breath to calm my nerves.

“Shit, this is intense,” I whispered.

“It was clearly Dorian.” Grace was still in the form she’d taken before we went to Okay Buy: a redhead with freckles and a tight plaid shirt. As I glanced at her, she kept the clothing but morphed back into her base form, the front of her plaid shirt pressing forward as her breasts grew.

“Definitely, Dorian,” said Veronique from the back seat. “She likes to fuck with people.”

“But how is she tracking us?” I asked. “How is it even possible? Do you think Dr. Kim would know?”

Grace considered that for a moment. “He may know more.”

“I’ll send him an email on the smartphone after I’ve installed encryption software,” I told them. “He can call me on one of the prepaid lines, and we’ll get rid of it right after. I think that should cover all our bases. Can you get the phones out, Veronique?”

Veronique reached over the back seat and got the Okay Buy bag. She fished out the phones and handed them to Grace, who placed them neatly on her lap.

Thank god for auto drive.

I took me a few minutes to get the device set up with my email information and the encryption software installed. Once that was done, I fired off an email to Ken with one of the prepaid phone numbers.

My inbox had about fifteen other messages related to my book, but I ignored those for now. Mutants in the Making seemed so far away, so distant compared to my current dilemma. I would have to get back into it later … if we survived this.

After a few minutes, the phone rang.

“Glad to hear from you,” Ken said instead of hello.

“Let’s make this quick: who is Dorian Gray and how is she tracking us?”

A note of concern was evident in Ken’s voice as he asked, “They sent Dorian?” I heard the sound of rapid typing on the other line.

“She attacked us last night, right after I spoke to you. Well, not right after, but within a few hours.”

“I had nothing to do with that,” he said.

A Volkswagen blazed by on my left, the driver busy talking on the phone as she drove.

“I’m hanging up if you don’t tell me what you know,” I said.

“Hey! I’ll tell you all I know, just ask. Let me see if there’s anything in her file. Please, relax.”

Grace glanced over at me, apprehension on her face. I smiled briskly at her, letting her know I was in control.

“She just tagged our car as well,” I said.

“Tagged your car?” Dr. Kim asked.

“She used her power to burn ‘Mother is watching’ on the hood of our vehicle.”

“Damn. Okay, I’ll tell you what I know. First, what did Veronique already tell you?”

“That she trained with Dorian.”

“I see, and that was a few years back. So, Dorian has learned a couple of new powers since then. They’re remarkable, really.”

“Like? Time is of the essence here, Ken.”

And no, time wasn’t of the essence, but I wanted him to speak quickly so he didn’t have time to consider what he was telling me.

“She can teleport. That’s one thing Veronique probably didn’t know.”

I activated the Bluetooth and put Ken on speakerphone. “Say that again.”

“She can teleport.”

I watched in the rearview mirror as realization flared in Veronique’s eyes.

“Okay, that explains some things. How is she finding us?”

“It’s the craziest thing,” Ken said. “She developed this unique ability of premonition that’s tied to her art skills.”

“What are you saying?” I asked.

“She can draw primitive pictures of another location, focus on it, and teleport to that location. She only has to get a few of the details right for it to work. Look, you’d be stupid to think MercSecure and the FCG aren’t tracking your every move. They know,” Ken whispered. “And they know about your vehicle switching. But they can’t ever catch you in time. That’s clear. So, congrats there.”

“Thanks. But that still doesn’t explain how she was so precise.”

“I’ll get to that in a moment. Whoever you are, Gideon Caldwell, you’ve managed to avoid detection in an era when most data is readily available. I mean, like I said, you’ve made mistakes, but the fact that you’re constantly on the move has made it hard to track you. It’s remarkable, really, but they are following your trail, always about a day behind.”

“Cut to the chase,” I told him as the Ford slowed on its own to change lanes. “How did she find us?”

“Dorian has been tasked with finding you.”

“I fucking know that, Ken. Wait, who tasked her? Mother? Fuck, I need to understand the hierarchy of what’s going on here; the ladies haven’t been so forthcoming … Dammit, Ken, I’m hanging up,” I said, panicking again.

“Don’t hang up! To answer your question, I don’t have much to say about the person you call Mother. But if it helps you to understand, yes, she’s been tasked to get you by Mother. Dorian knows your general location, and she’s able to sketch where she thinks you might be.”

“So she could attack us anytime?”

“Yes.”

“Thanks, Ken,” I said. I rolled down the window and tossed the phone out. Then I asked Grace for my smartphone and immediately rerouted us a different way. “No hotels tonight,” I told them.

“Where are we going to stay?” Grace looked over her shoulder. “There’s room in this car, but maybe it isn’t large enough.”

“Let’s call it a makeshift Airbnb. Dorian is expecting us to stay in a hotel, and she’s tracking us somehow. Shit. I shouldn’t have tossed the phone out the window.”

Veronique laughed.

“Yeah, sorry, that was stupid. We’ll talk to Ken later. Anyway, sorry, thinking out loud here. Maybe she has a Cerebro type of thing.”

“A what?” Veronique asked.

Grace nodded as she quickly sifted through my thoughts.

“Never mind. And sorry for relating everything to X-Men. I’m just used to thinking of superheroes and mutants through that medium.”

“We aren’t mutants,” Veronique said.

“Technically, we are,” Grace said. “Our powers are from exploited mutations.”

“Either way, we have to do things that Dorian isn’t anticipating,” I said. “She expects us to stay at a hotel. Once these points line up, she’ll find us. So now we do things a little more unexpected, and we keep on high alert. Dorian could appear at any time.”

“We should change cars again,” Grace said, “just in case she saw us get into this vehicle.”

“Good call. We’ll get something at the next rest stop I see. We have to keep her guessing.”

Chapter Six: Writing, Crawfish, and a Visit to the Local Strip Club

We switched our cars somewhere near Vicksburg, Mississippi.

We now had a Nissan Altima with black leather seats and a sunroof. Or was it a moonroof? There was no telling, but it was a nice day outside, so I decided to open it. Grace had eased up some but Veronique seemed like she was still on high alert.

I put the car into auto drive and finally called Luke on GoogleFace.

“You there?”

“Hey!” He was sitting in front of his computer; I could tell because of the glare on his glasses. He stood, and a cat jumped off his lap. “Where have you been?” he asked, concern and kindness in his eyes. “Haven’t heard from you in a day or so.”

“It’s been a pretty crazy twenty-four hours.”

“Tell me about it,” he said as he moved to a chair by a window. I saw him lock eyes with Veronique in the back seat and wave.

“Hi,” was all she said before shifting to the other side so she wouldn’t be in the video.

What came out of my mouth next was word salad, but Luke was able to parse through it and get an understanding of what had happened.

“Are you serious? There’s another one, and she’s after you now too?”

“Everyone is after me.”

“I’m so glad I’m in Canada.”

I laughed. “What? You think they can’t get you in Canada?”

“If they ever asked, I’d say I was a fan who offers good advice. I’m not worried about them coming up here. If I were in a different country, yeah, maybe, but the American government plays nice with Canada.”

“You’re kind of like our cute little brother.”

“You’re kind of like our bully bigger brother.”

We both laughed.

“Okay, the gamer in me has to ask: Have you had a chance to play with their stats any?”

“Not as much as I’d like, although …”

I hesitated to tell Luke about Ken Kim but figured I should put all my cards on the table, especially since he had given me good advice before.

So I gave him another ‘long story short’ version of Ken Kim and David Butler in Austin.

Worry creased his brow as he frowned. “I don’t know if I’d trust anyone if I were you, aside from any writer friends you may have in Canada.”

“I probably should have just come up to Canada.”

“We’d love to have you! And it’d harder for them to get you.”

“To further answer your question about playing with their stats: Ken gave me a code that he says will upgrade their abilities. He didn’t say which abilities, and I’m afraid to put the code in. I don’t know if we’re being tracked, and to tell you the truth, just thinking about it gets me biting my nails and looking over my shoulder. It’s not healthy.”

“I can’t imagine what I would do if I felt my government and a private security company were after me. And this new one – Dorian Gray, huh? She paints energy into existence, and it solidifies and can attack you? What in the actual hell? And she can teleport and has a premonition ability too?”

“Stranger than fiction, right?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know what to make of it. I mean, I’d love to tell some of our mutual friends. But this story …”

“No, don’t tell anyone. They can read my book if they want to know the truth. I’m already paranoid as hell. I don’t want to be dealing with a bunch of people asking me questions, nor do I want to defend myself to other authors.”

“There are hungry wolves watching, always,” Luke said in a low voice. “I wouldn’t be surprised if someone published a book like Mutants in the next few weeks. People see the sales rankings, an open market, and they dive in. Considering that your book is the only one in the creative non-fiction gamer sci-fi genre and that combining sci-fi with creative nonfiction is a big seller, I’d bet good money someone will try to tap your market. Soon too.”

“Let them try,” I said, thinking of the second installment. “The second book will be out shortly, and it turns everything up a notch.”

“I’ll bet. Send me a copy ASAP and good luck!”

It took us about another hour and a half to get to Shreveport, Louisiana. The only thing I could recall from the drive was a shitton of billboards using retired sports celebrities to advertise casinos.

The roads here were terrible, crumbled, filled with potholes, and faded by the sun.

Because of the fact I was surrounded by superpowered females, it didn’t matter if we stayed in the good or bad part of town, but since we were living the high life, we drove around until we found a pretty nice neighborhood and a large, two-story home.

It had a modern touch, with a wall of windows that faced to the east, protected from the neighbors’ prying eyes by a willow tree. There was a touch of old in the house as well, from the swing set out front to the stones that were used to make the walkway.

It would be a nice place to stay, at least for a night.

As we got out of the car, and I went to the back to get our bags, Veronique touched me on the arm. I spun to her, a little too quickly, the fear at the back of my mind that she wanted to feed always present.

“What’s up?” I asked, regaining my composure.

“I need to feed tonight.”

I was about to say, ‘You just fed yesterday,’ but decided not to push those buttons. Besides, she was the only thing that may save us from Dorian if we were attacked by the killer artist anytime soon.

Veronique needed to be well-fed.

I rubbed my hands together. “Fine, but we’ll need to decide on a place.”

The idea of a strip club came to me, and I was just about to toss it aside when Grace told me it was a good idea.

I smirked at her. “Do you really know every single thought I have?”

“Who says you’re the one having the thoughts? I’ve never visited a strip club,” she said as she moved toward the house.

There were two cars parked in the driveway so we figured someone was home.

Now back in her brunette-in-athletic-gear look, Grace knocked on the door, and after about a minute, a middle-aged woman greeted us.

She wore a low-cut top, jeans with decorative sparkles, and her gray and brown hair was pulled into a loose ponytail. She may have been younger than she looked, but her skin had been severely violated by the southern sun, so it was hard to tell.

As Grace’s eyes flashed white, I instructed the woman to take her family, wherever they happened to be, and go to a casino in Lake Charles for the night.

I gave her three grand and told her to have a great time.

She let us in, packed a bag, and left the house to us. It was a nice place inside, too – spacious, with plenty of furniture, nicely carved wooden decorations, and several rooms upstairs.

Even if we figured out what to do with Dorian and stopped her from predicting where we would go, staying in nice homes was definitely the way of the future.

Grace and Veronique seemed to like it as well.

They walked around the place, commenting on what they would do if they owned it and ended up hanging out for the rest of the afternoon while I worked. At some point, Grace made lemonade, or possibly, the lemonade was already made, and the two chilled in the backyard by a pool, sipping from ice cold glasses.

Luckies.

It was strange to think this was probably the most they’d ever relaxed in their lives. I mean, sure, Grace could ‘relax’ in her solitary confinement back at the Rose-Lyle facility, but I wouldn’t exactly call that relaxing, even if she had picked up meditation or yoga, or some other spiritual practice.

I was glad to see them at ease, and I would have joined them if I didn’t have some work to do.

Alas, the work of a writer never ends, because no writer ever feels as if they’re done. Also, no writer should use the word ‘alas’ and take themselves seriously. Regardless of my verbiage, I could finish a million-word manuscript and be itching to start the next one, even though I had no idea what I was going to write about.

There’s something almost painful about an empty page, something that makes a writer want to fill it. And even a page full of words won’t appease all readers. As Stephen King once said, “You can’t please all the readers all the time; you can’t please even some of the readers all the time, but you really ought to please at least some of the readers some of the time. I think William Shakespeare said that.”

Or Bob Dylan.

Even now, looking back at all this, and having written everything that I could about the experiments, I still feel there’s more to say. I still feel that I can uncover the truth, however small the truth nugget may be. Digging a little deeper and filling an empty page hardly satiates, but it does scratch that itch.

Besides, any writer will tell you that what they do is a sickness. Writing is an incredible malaise that sweeps over you, a flaming carrot on a stick, a tree falling in a forest that no one hears but your demented ass. Hopefully, whatever your sickness is becomes contagious.

Of course, I didn’t write any of this while sitting in the study of our nice Airbnb; I was focused on trying to add as many words as I could to Mutants in the Making part two, beefing up the manuscript as best I could. There was a lot to cover, from what happened at the Rose-Lyle facility to Dorian’s appearance.

Since it was creative nonfiction with a sci-fi gamer twist, I didn’t need to have the buildups and foreshadowing that I would have put in a fictional title. As fun and harrowing as it was to relive all the shit I’d been through, a writer’s work can be boring, and it took me four hours to get down about seven thousand words.

There were a few bathroom breaks in between, an occasional jaunt over to the window to check on Grace and Veronique by the pool, a glass of lemonade, and a ten-minute stretch in which I questioned my writing ability. I also had to clean my glasses a few times. Damn things kept fogging up.

As one does when they are experiencing success, I checked my sales numbers frequently. They were looking good – damn good, actually – and the time to get the second installment out was hot. The reviews weren’t too shabby either. Most were four or five stars, an occasional three stars, and one percent were one star.

Again, not bad. And fuck the haters.

“Anyone hungry?” I asked as I opened the sliding glass door to the backyard.

Veronique, who was relaxed on a lounge chair, slowly raised her hand.

“We’ll feed you later. Sorry, that came out weird.”

She shrugged. “No, makes sense.”

“I’d eat something, Writer Gideon.”

Grace approached me in a tight, two-piece bathing suit. It was something straight out of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, with just a small amount of fabric stretched across her breasts and a nearly nonexistent bikini bottom.

“Too much?” she asked, her face turning red.

I laughed. “To eat Cajun food? Yes. To go to a strip club later so Veronique can feed? No.”

She morphed into a jean jacket, a low-cut blouse, and tight jeans. The final touch was a pair of cowboy boots embroidered with Día de Los Muertos skulls.

“Where did you hear about cowboy boots?”

“I didn’t hear; I saw. We looked in the owner’s closet. She has some very cool stuff. Very fashionable.”

Veronique nodded. “I will get a pair in the future.”

“What is it about cowboy boots that you like, exactly?” I asked, trying not to grin like an idiot at the two. They were adorable, and at least one of them knew it.

Grace shrugged as she tried out the pair, walking toward me, stopping just as she reached me, then turning away and looking at me over her shoulder. “They’re sexy, right?”

I ran my hand through my beard. “Sure.”

I took my smartphone out, GoogleFaced ‘good Cajun places’ and found one about three miles away. It was a quick drive, and as we pulled into the parking lot, I figured now would be as good a time as any to get another vehicle.

Goodbye Altima, hello Nissan Rogue.

It was the newest one too, the plate still a paper tag. The guy driving it, a man in a ball cap with a fishing hook on the bill, waved at us as he drove away in the Altima.

The people in the South were definitely friendly.

“Describe this Cajun food to me,” Grace said as we entered the restaurant. It was small and smoky inside, the tables made of wood, a stuffed alligator hanging on the wall. “It smells very spicy and fishy in here.”

“That is an accurate description. Let’s have an interesting dinner. Just trust me on this.”

“Welcome!” cried a red-faced woman with a waist like Santa. She sat on a stool, and rather than take us to our seat, she pointed a Vienna sausage finger at the booths in the back. “You and yo’ pretty friends can sit right back thure.”

“Thanks,” I said. We went in the direction she’d indicated and found a clean table with a roll of paper towels on it.

Veronique squeezed in next to me, and Grace sat across from us.

The menus came and our waiter, a light-skinned black man with hazel eyes and freckles, complimented Grace on her jean jacket before leaving to bring us water.

“Let’s see …” I found the po’boys on the menu and placed an order for two, as well as three pounds of crawfish.

Veronique lightly sipped from her water as I explained to Grace how the states in America were different, very different, and how Louisiana was pretty much nothing like Connecticut, yet we were all united under the guidelines set forth by the FCG, the Federal Corporate Government, which had a rotating cast of yearly sponsors that were allowed to showcase their logos on government documents.

A win for everyone.

“They talk different,” Grace said, starting to morph into our waiter. Her skin folded from the center point in her face, and I was just barely able to remind her of one of our cardinal rules: no shifting in public.

“Sorry,” she said as her form flickered back into place.

I glanced around; no one had seen her transform.

The food came, and the girls watched me curiously as I showed them how to eat a crawfish, which began with pulling its head off, squeezing the meat out, and working my ass off to get just a little sliver of protein.

Grace wasn’t buying it, so she stuck to the greasy po’boy and the simmering potatoes, sausage, and spice-covered corn that came with the crawfish.

“I didn’t know a human could fill themselves up on water bugs,” Grace said as I attempted to eat my weight in crawfish.

“It’s very unattractive,” Veronique added.

“It tastes better than it looks,” I said and bit into the corn.

Strip clubs. I’d only been about three times, all when I was in college at Southern Connecticut State. I had a roommate who was into making it rain – I didn’t know this was a thing, but apparently it was – and he loved cashing out a hundred-dollar bill into ones and tossing the money at the woman dancing on the pole.

I guess that’s what happens when rap videos raise our youth.

While I was definitely in a position to make it rain, our goal at the titty bar was to let Veronique feed.

We purposefully chose the shadiest looking one I could find with the lowest reviews on Yelp. I wanted something sketchy, dark, and a place where people wouldn’t go asking questions. Full Exposure fit that bill, especially with the review that read, “I was stabbed here 2x. The fact that I came back after the 1st stabbing tells you just how badass this place be. #threestrikesandyouout #Humble ”

I put on my bulletproof vest after reading that, just in case things got out of hand.

The doorman came under Grace’s spell as we approached. He was a big Mexican guy with two tear tattoos – I still needed to get me one of those … kidding! – and in a matter of seconds, his eyes flashed white.

Hell, he even let us in without taking the door tax, saving me thirty bucks. Not bad!

Like most strip clubs, Full Exposure was shadowy and cavernous, the poles and stages set up like little beacons of light to call in the creatures of the dark. A circular bar took up the center of the space, and the walls were lined with sofas for lap dances.

There were a few VIP sections, and I figured it would be best if we went there first, just to get our bearings and separate us from the masses.

The music was loud, the bass rattling my bones, and there were five or six dancers working.

The stripper on the center stage, a pale white woman with tattoos all over her thighs and ass, was bent in front of the shiny metal pole, her rear to the audience. Another, on a stage not far away, was twerking while a couple of black dudes made it rain, each of them with a stack of bills.

Twerking was awesome to watch; it stirred something primitive in me. I was distracted for a moment as the woman did her thing, dollar bills slapping against her back.

Veronique touched my arm and I glanced back at the two of them.

“Ahem, VIP,” I told Grace, which she relayed to the first waitress who approached us.

The waitress wore a New Orleans Saints T-shirt tied at the front and boy shorts. The dimples on her ass bounced as she led us to one of the VIP areas, which was demarcated by a red rope.

If you’re thinking I’ve never had VIP service before, you’re right.

I felt like a million bucks, like a Trump heir holding court over the masses below. As soon as we took our seats, a man in a black suit stepped in front of our VIP area and crossed his hands behind his back. Our protection. Shit, I almost wanted someone to try something just to see him in action.

Still, we needed to be in complete control.

“Take his mind just in case,” I whispered to Grace.

She nodded, approached the man, and placed her hand on his arm.

That was all it took.

We now had our very own beefy, shaved-head security guard.

Not two minutes later, the waitress returned with a bottle of vodka, courtesy of a man sitting alone in another VIP area.

“Is he drunk?” I asked Grace as she looked over at him. He wore a leather vest, a leather hat with silver buckles on it, and had an unlit cigar in his mouth.

“No, but there is something else wrong with him.”

“Something else?”

The flashing lights, darkness, and abundance of naked women only reminded me of just how odd a strip club was. What would it be like with the lights up? What would it be like without the music?

Grace nodded. “He is another kind of drunk.”

“Drugs.”

Veronique didn’t quite lick her lips, but she did look around with hunger in her eyes. “When can I begin?”

“We have to make sure the person isn’t drunk, which is a mistake on my part, because it’s a damn strip club and everyone’s drunk.” I thought for a moment as Grace opened the bottle of vodka.

“You’re not going to like that,” I told her.

“It’s for you,” she said with a smile as she poured a glass.

She handed it to me, and out of courtesy, I cheersed the man who’d bought us the bottle. Please don’t come over, please don’t come over, I thought as I returned my attention to Veronique.

She wasn’t at all fazed by the strip club. Grace, on the other hand, looked around with excitement and curiosity on her face.

Remember, no shifting, I thought to her.

I know, Writer Gideon, I’m getting ideas for later.

“Later?” I mouthed as she locked eyes with me.

Need I exaggerate?

If ever there was a time to take a shot, it was to that last statement. I finished the shot, wincing as it burned its way down my throat.

A strip club was a bad idea.

I knew it after Grace couldn’t locate anyone who wasn’t intoxicated in some way. I knew it when the cigar man who bought us the bottle invited himself over to our table.

“We’ll have better luck just walking around outside,” I told Veronique, who eyed the drugged out man with malicious intent. As he spoke, his words tumbling out of his mouth and quickly being consumed by the loud bass, Veronique moved closer to him.

“Grace,” I started to say, but the shifter was watching a pregnant lady dance on the center stage.

Did not expect to see that, I thought.

“We need to go,” I said, getting to my feet. The last thing I needed was Veronique on whatever that guy was on.

She had already placed her hand on his arm but quickly let go. “Fine,” she said and stood as well.

“You can feed soon,” I told her. “Let’s just look for something outside.”

Chapter Seven: Surprise Visit

“Have everyone return to their food and drinks,” I told Grace as we entered the McStarbucks near our borrowed abode. It was the first thought that came to mind, and yes, it was devious, but Veronique needed to feed, and what better place than America’s favorite restaurant coffee peddler to find people? “I don’t want anyone to know we were here.”

I glanced at the ceiling and found a few small, spherical cameras. “Veronique?”

She followed my gaze, and the metal inside each camera was stripped from its socket, disabling any chance for us to be on film.

Aside from when we entered …

The vodka definitely had me feeling a little more daring than normal.

I told Grace to find five people who weren’t intoxicated and tell them to sit against the wall. Five people stood, walked to the wall, and sat, the expressions on their faces completely blank.

“Thank you,” Veronique said as she approached.

She didn’t kill them, but similar to someone donating too much blood, the people didn’t look very good after she finished. Their skin had shriveled up and tightened, their eyes had sunk into their faces, and veins had appeared on their arms and legs.

The last person Veronique stepped in front of twitched, her throat tightening convulsively. For a brief second, I thought the woman knew, but the look of realization was gone in a flash.

Innocent bystanders, I told myself.

Veronique needs to feed, Grace reminded me. They’ll be okay.

I shook my head as the rest of the people in the restaurant sat or stood without moving a muscle, almost as if Grace had frozen time.

Focus on the good things, a voice said in my head. Grace’s thoughts or mine? Who knew?

So I did what anyone in a depraved situation should do. I waited until we were out of the McStarbucks and switched my thought pattern.

Manually.

Think of something else.

I was expecting to get a good night’s sleep, after a little one-on-one time with Grace. She’d already hinted at that. At least there was something to look forward to, something to wash the gruesome McStarbucks scene out of my head.

When in doubt, think about sex.

I settled into my seat, started up the car, and drove away, confident that I could get us home despite being a little drunk.

Something flashed in the rearview mirror.

Dorian Gray was sitting in the back seat next to Veronique.

“Shit!” I said as Dorian quickly drew a small sphere of purple energy and disappeared.

The sphere exploded. I swerved into a street lamp, the airbag deploying instantly.

My world became a series of red flashes and traumatic vignettes of my own death. My face was powdered by the airbag. I touched the back of my head; it was sticky with blood from the minor explosion.

What the …

The Nissan’s lights were flashing, the horn was blaring, an exclamation point on the dash was blinking and doing somersaults.

I sucked in a breath of air.

Grace’s hands were pressed around my face.

“Gideon!” She yelled, or better, she mouthed, as my ears were still ringing from the explosion. Once she saw I wasn’t responding, she kicked open her door and came around to my side to help me out.

“Where …?” I started to ask.

I saw the blood in Grace’s hair and choked up.

I’m fine, stay with me!

The door opened, and I stumbled to the ground, nearly cracking my head on the pavement. I pushed myself up to find Grace standing near me on high alert.

“Where’s Veronique?” I said, dizzy as I looked left and right.

I heard metal tear from the Nissan and knew Veronique wasn’t far away.

The metal surrounded us, forming a protective barrier comprised of bolts, lug nuts, and other assorted tidbits stripped from the vicinity, including the panels of a mailbox and a couple of aluminum cans.

Dorian stood on top of a nearby parked car, her paintbrush moving from her mouth to the open air as she drew an eight-foot-tall muscled man with gun arms. She was in similar clothing to what she had on yesterday, almost gothic attire with fishnet stockings and a pair of converse this time.

As soon as her creation was set, the man began firing spherical bolts of purple energy at Veronique, who dodged to avoid them and came back with a sea of metal to prevent the next blast. She then tore the roof off the car that Dorian stood on, but Dorian was long gone by that point.

“Come on,” Grace said, pulling me to the sidewalk. We were in a residential district, only a few blocks from our makeshift home. There must have been people watching, but I was too focused on where Dorian would appear next to notice them.

“Hide,” Grace hissed.

“But …”

“You’re injured.”

“So are you …” I said, moving my fingers through her matted hair.

We locked eyes, and I obeyed her immediately.

I won’t let pain come to you, she whispered in my head.

Dorian reappeared across the street.

Veronique hurled as much metal as she could, but Dorian was already gone again. The metal hit a car, broke its windows, blew out its tires, and set off its alarm, adding to the cacophony of noise already blaring around us.

We would draw attention soon if we weren’t already, but it was impossible for me to act; Grace had control over my mind and my body, and all I could do was watch as the psychic quietly approached the center of the conflict.

And by the center of the conflict, I meant the middle of the street, where Veronique stood. Grace was poised, ready to use her powers at a moment’s notice, her chest heaving as she sucked in air.

Veronique kept turning, looking for Dorian, red energy moving up and down her fingertips.

Suddenly, a ghost-like energy creation ballooned into existence and charged at Grace. Taking a play from Veronique’s book, Grace used her power to pull the doors off our broken car and fling them at the energy creature. Mini explosions erupted, and metal melted with fiery hisses. I was still trying to make sense of it all.

With the flick of her wrist, Veronique pulled more paneling from a vehicle on the side of the street and threw it in the direction of the creature. The mixture of iron, aluminum, copper, and steel hit the energy being in the side, pieces of the metal passing through it as they sparked, disintegrated, and exploded.

Grace let go of her hold over my psyche as she moved to toss something else at the being.

Dorian appeared right next to me, her form fizzling into existence.

My reaction was instant.

I pulled my fist back and punched her in the face, throwing her sideways as her paintbrush fell to the sidewalk.

I hit a girl.

Not my style, nothing I’d ever done before, and even though she was trying to kill us, I felt guilty as hell. I’d hit her good too, knocking her out with my fist, a fist that now pulsed with pain, a fist that had never struck another human being until now.

I shook my sore hand out as Veronique walked over to me, a sly grin on her face as if my balls had finally dropped and I could now join the hunt. She knelt and placed her hand on Dorian’s forehead, her fingers flashing red as she drained the woman’s energy.

“I can’t believe …”

“You saved us a lot of bullshit,” Veronique said, looking up at me. She seemed neither impressed nor disappointed.

“Are you okay?” Grace asked, moving to my side.

“I … It’s not like me to do something like that, I just reacted. I … I’m …” I rubbed my knuckles.

She smirked as she read my thoughts. “Stop panicking; you did what you had to do to help us.”

“Don’t kill her,” I told Veronique.

“Are you suggesting we take her with us?” She removed her hand from Dorian’s forehead. The punk rock diva’s skin had already started to dry, and even in the meager light of the streetlamps, I could tell that her eyes were beginning to sink into her skull.

“We have to try to do something for her. She was only following orders. Maybe we can even find out more if we don’t kill her.” I exchanged glances with Grace. “But we need to go, now.”

“As you wish,” Veronique said and stood up. “But I’m not going to make the same mistake I did with Grace. I will feed from Dorian every couple of hours until we’re ready to sort the situation out.”

I bent down, placing my fingers on Dorian’s neck to find a pulse. Her skin was hot to the touch, almost as if she was overheating. She’s still alive, I thought as my hand instinctively went to her neck port.

“Let’s find a vehicle,” I told them. “We’ll go back to the house, get our things, and get out of here – just in case there are others around as well.”

“Don’t forget her paintbrush,” Grace said as I lifted Dorian into my arms.

Not able to get a firm grip on the unconscious woman because her body kept slipping down, I eventually flung her over my shoulder and carried her that way. “Is it a good idea to give that to her?” I grunted.

“I wasn’t going to give it to her; I was going to see what we could discover about it.”

“Got it, do that. But let’s keep it away from her. I don’t know what her powers are without that thing, but I don’t want her to wake up and be able to use it.”

Chapter Eight: Put Her in the Trunk and Drive to Texas

We took the first car we could find, which was some type of Kia four-door sedan with a pretty large trunk. It was a weird off-purple color, maybe light plum, and the interior reeked of coconut lotion. But it would do.

I was still slightly delirious, the back of my head still wet with blood. Once we got back to our hideout, Grace checked it out and told me it was just an abrasion.

Fuck, was I glad to hear that.

As the ladies packed our bags and checked to make sure we hadn’t left anything behind, I got cleaned up in the bathroom and applied some rubbing alcohol to the wound.

It stung, but it was a good, healing sting that woke my ass up. I was still a little jumpy, but I was better than I had been just fifteen minutes ago.

Back outside, I found the two women moving Dorian to the trunk, her hands and feet bound tightly with coat hangers. We wouldn’t be able to keep her in there forever, but that was where she was going until we got to Texas.

I was just turning back to the house for a final check when I got a message from Luke.

Luke: Update me.

Me: Let’s talk about the Main Character in the story I’m writing.

Luke: LOL. Yeah, let’s.

Me: The MC went to a strip club so the vampiric one could feed. Then they were attacked by the teleporter who could conjure kinetic energy. Now the teleporter is in the trunk of their car.

Luke: The MC has someone in the trunk of their car? Hold up, let me do a quick search to see if that’s a great way to suffocate someone or not. Okay, I stand corrected. She won’t suffocate in there. But they’ve started installing glow-in-the-dark handles so a person in a trunk can open it from the inside, FYI. I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.

Me: I can’t either. But we’re getting out of here.

Luke: I’m not going to ask where you’re at or where you’re going, but don’t drive for too long – it’s getting late.

Me: We won’t. G2G.

Luke: All right, well it’s off to bed for me and the misses. Good luck!

“Your friend seems like a nice guy,” Grace said as she passed by me with the backpack we’d picked up in New Haven over her shoulder. She tossed it in the trunk with Dorian, then we climbed into the vehicle. I started it up and drove away.

I was suddenly tired, my body coming down from the adrenaline surge.

There was still a voice in the back of my head that was upset with me for punching a woman, but I told that voice to shut the fuck up.

There was a good chance Dorian would have killed me if I hadn’t reacted the way I did. Like Veronique, she had training, and she was probably used to having the upper hand.

Don’t beat yourself up, Writer Gideon, said Grace as I pulled onto the highway, immediately zooming up past the speed limit. You saved us. I’m proud of what you did; you acted quickly, and your action changed the course of that fight. It was amazing.

Hardly, I thought back to her.

We are now in control of Dorian. If you hadn’t done that, she may have hurt you or one of us.

You’re right. It just goes against my nature.

Everything you’ve done over the last week goes against your nature.

She had me there.

So I kept driving, yawning, blinking away the troubling memories, and once I felt like we were far enough away that I could put the vehicle into auto drive, I did so.

The Kia handled pretty well, and I had a brief thought that I had now test-driven more cars than most people would drive in their lifetime.

Well, not quite yet, but if we kept switching out cars …

Just relax, do what Grace said, a voice whispered in my head.

“You are ridiculous,” I told the shifter, smiling over at her.

“It’s Writer Gideon’s Life,” she said in Ira Glass’s voice. “Each week we take a look at Gideon Caldwell and the trouble he’s gotten himself into. This week, Dorian and Her Magic Paintbrush. Stay tuned; it’s going to be a hell of a story.”

“Do one of the property guys,” Veronique suddenly requested from the back seat.

Grace morphed into the property guy – a fucking tool if I’d ever seen one – and gave a quick spiel about the house’s foundation and how they were planning to gut it, much to Veronique’s delight.

As they continued to role-play, I found myself more and more interested in the type of humor they liked. I didn’t think they’d enjoy the typical comedy we had nowadays, which seemed to be mostly about dicks, balls, sex, getting drunk, wives, and kids.

The Cherry Blossom Girls enjoyed a simpler humor, and Grace’s ability only made this work even better. There was almost something childlike in the way Veronique would request for her to morph into and speak as someone else.

But that wasn’t the only thing on my mind as I drove – or, as the Kia drove itself. I was also thinking about the woman in the trunk. Can she be turned? And what would happen if she woke up in the trunk? Is this really a smart idea?

I was definitely interested to see what was on her drive.

That would be the first thing I did when we arrived at our next destination. I figured we could stay in a hotel now because we didn’t have to worry about her premonition ability affecting us, especially if we kept her passed out.

At some point in our journey, I began wondering more about her strategy, and if it had been part of her plan to be captured by us. It was a long shot, and there was no way she could have known I would have reacted the way I did, but Grace and Veronique may have been able to take her.

Grace was much stronger than she let on, and while she didn’t have as much sway over superpowered individuals, she could have used her ability to broadside Dorian with something while Veronique distracted her from the front.

I need to know more about Dorian’s abilities.

That much was clear. Everything else was speculation. But as soon as we got to our next destination, I was plugging in. I didn’t care if I had to brew coffee all night – I was going to discover something.

We would be in Texas within the hour. I searched on my smartphone and found several hotels in Longview.

I located the most expensive one and put a flag on it.

Might as well do this shit in style. After all, as John Milton said in Paradise Lost, “Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.”

Chapter Nine: Playing with Stats

If you guessed the Marriott again, you would be correct.

Everything is bigger in Texas, or so I’d heard, and even though I’d only been driving in the state for an hour, I could confirm that this was definitely a thing. Including the hotel. What they don’t tell you about Texas is that everything is horizontally – not always vertically – bigger, so everything is essentially fatter.

A grower, not a shower? Actually, that little line my ex used to describe my penis didn’t really apply, yet it was the first thing that came to my mind as I pulled our borrowed Kia into the Marriott’s parking lot shortly before midnight.

“What’s the plan?” Grace asked as we got out.

Of course, she knew the plan; the plan when checking into hotels hadn’t changed. We were Edward and Jill King, CBG, Inc., and we already had a reservation that was paid for by our company.

“Should we get two rooms?” Veronique asked as I popped the trunk.

“We’ll get whatever suite they have. Hopefully it’s got two separate rooms so we can keep Dorian somewhere else.”

Veronique stepped over to the trunk. “Let’s just see what they have. And don’t worry about Dorian; I’ll take care of her this time.”

Nope, don’t like the way she said that, I thought as we grabbed our bags and walked into the hotel.

Rather than have me carry her, Veronique used her metal-wielding ability to drag Dorian along behind us, using the metal on the teleporter’s jacket, belt, and jean shorts. She dragged her roughly too, Dorian’s heels scraping against the pavement as she pulled her over the curb.

I had forgotten I was wearing body armor, and after taking a few steps toward the hotel’s entrance, I definitely felt it. The armor was heavy, starting to chafe some, but I’d need to keep it on for a little longer.

The sliding glass door opened, and we were greeted by a large painting of a cowboy riding a bull, which was pinned to the wall above a stuffed deer. We moved around this grand display of southern power, still towing Dorian behind us.

Due to the late hour, the lobby was empty. The receptionist, an Indian man who reeked of cigarettes and looked like he hadn’t slept in weeks, was looking at his phone when we came in.

The moment Grace saw him, he belonged to her. He began typing away on his computer, his eyes suddenly white.

“Okay, room 206,” he said in accented English as he gave me the key card. “Check out time is at eleven.”

I hesitated for a moment.

It was already late, and I really needed to do some work on my manuscript, especially before we got into whatever we would get into in Austin.

David Butler could wait a day.

Sensing my thoughts, Grace immediately corrected the receptionist. “Actually, we’ll be here until the day after tomorrow, so two nights.”

“Ah, I see that here,” the man said as he wagged his head left and right. “Okay, enjoy your stay in Longview. Continental breakfast is from seven to ten.”

Still under Grace’s spell, the man merely looked at Dorian as she was dragged away.

“Thanks for adjusting the dates,” I told Grace when we took the elevator to our second-floor room. “I need time to finish up this manuscript. I’m sorry the hotel isn’t more interesting. I wish there was more to do around here.”

“That’s okay,” said Veronique. “We can watch our shows.”

I keyed everyone into the room, and Grace took over with Dorian’s body. Her eyes flashing white, she lifted the woman into the air and placed her body on the sofa chair near the window.

No balconies here.

This place was way too corporate to have a balcony with a view, and besides that, there really wasn’t a view anyway, as the hotel overlooked a four-way intersection.

The clothes hangers burst out of the closet, startling me.

They flew toward Dorian, and as the hangers that had already chained her wrists unwrapped, the new ones strapped her arms and legs tightly to the chair.

“Don’t kill her,” I reminded Veronique as I set my bag down.

“As you wish.”

It was a spacious suite, with two large rooms and a rectangular bathroom joining them. I opened my duffle bag and got the mini USB cable out. Grace took my bag to the second room, leaving Veronique and me in the first.

“I guess that’s where you’re sleeping,” Veronique said under her breath.

Rather than answer – and really, what was I supposed to say? – I ignored her.

I had no idea how this would play out when I plugged into Dorian’s neck, and as I approached her, Veronique skidded across the bed and stopped me. She pressed her palm against my chest, fingers glowing red.

“Hey …” I started to protest. But she turned away from me to Dorian and placed her hand on the teleporting artist’s head, draining even more of her energy.

“Not too much,” I whispered.

“We can’t have her waking up,” Veronique said as she topped off.

Her skin more radiant than it had been a couple of hours ago, Veronique lay down on the bed and found the home improvement channel on the TV. Grace returned from our room in my clothes – a statement if there ever was one – and sat on the bed next to Veronique.

Don’t worry, we’ll get along. And if you have tension, release it.

I gave Grace a funny look.

Your idea of a relationship is different than ours, Writer Gideon.

“Okay,” I said, just to clear Grace’s voice out of my head. I plugged into Dorian’s neck and a prompt asked me for the password.

1QAZ2WSX3EFV4321QWEASD.

Thanks, I thought to Grace.

The password worked. I logged in easily and was presented with a shadow box. Not a lot here, nothing like what was on Grace and Veronique’s systems, which gave more credibility to Dr. Ken Kim’s statement that he had put that stuff on them to be discovered.

Of course, this begged a whole series of other questions, like: How did he know someone would try to access them unless he was planning to free them?

After a little poking around, I found Dorian Gray’s base stats.

Build: 7.543

Base height: 170 Centimeters

Base weight: 49 kilos

Strength: 2

Intelligence: 6

Constitution: 7

Wisdom: 3

Dexterity: 6

Charisma: 8

Well, at least she had charisma and constitution going for her, which surely counted for something.

I cycled back to a different menu to find out more about her abilities. As it turned out, most of her energy abilities were set at low levels. I kept them that way for now.

Main: Ergokinesis

Overcharge: 2

Charge Capacity: 4

Charge Integrity: 3

I scrolled to the space below the dials to get an explanation of what these three things were, even though they were pretty self-explanatory. From what I could decipher, setting Overcharge as low as possible kept her creations from becoming volatile too early through the overuse of her abilities.

Charge Capacity referred to the size of the items she could create out of thin air. Increasing this would allow her to charge even larger things. Like Veronique had said, Dorian’s charge ability came from her saliva and other bodily fluids.

It was a weird ability, but then again, so were Toad’s abilities as well as an assortment of other mutants from my favorite reference. You’d think I’d have a Professor X quote in Mutants in the Making by now.

Not a bad idea, actually …

Charge Integrity dealt with how long the charged item she created actually lasted. By increasing this, it would take longer for her creations fizzle out.

I backed out of that folder and went to her Main Second folder, which spawned another shadowbox of dials.

Main Second: Teleportation

Tele-Sphere Radius: 2

Conscious Spatial Awareness: 10

Recharge Speed: 6

Restoration Speed: 6

There were a few other options, but akin to when I saw Veronique’s abilities, they were blurred out.

I briefly messed with the dials and found that adjusting the Tele-Sphere Radius up reduced the Recharge Speed and Restoration Speed. So, the larger the objects she teleports, the slower they were teleported and restored.

I wasn’t able to adjust the Conscious Spatial Awareness dial, and once I checked the description, I realized why. This prevented Dorian from teleporting directly into an object and killing herself.

Useful.

But how does the teleportation work?

I started checking folders on her drive for answers. I wasn’t going to be able to parse through an explanation on quantum teleportation, but at least I could get a sense of what was going on.

The only problem was, her drive was pretty much empty. No videos, no PDFs of various facilities, no extra notes about her abilities or the project, no nothing.

I had the notion of going back into her teleportation ability and adjusting the speed down, but I figured that even being able to teleport at a speed of one would allow her to move away faster than we could do anything about.

And what if she was teleporting when Veronique touched her and both of them disappeared? That would be monstrously shitty.

So I left things as they were.

It was late. I was no longer drunk, but I was a little loopy, and I really wanted to get some work done the following day. Ha. Even after all this, I was planning to write the next day.

You see what I mean when I say writing is a sickness?

Rather than debate the voice in my head, or scold myself for not hitting my word count, or get out my new laptop and check my book stats, I decided to wash my sins away.

I took a brief shower, washed my writer bits, and thankfully, no one joined me this time. Once I toweled off and was feeling fresh to death, I popped my head into the first room, announcing to the two women that I was going to sleep.

My phone buzzed, just as I got into the bed.

Where the fuck are you? I’m giving you some real data here and you still aren’t here? Ever heard of an airplane? Don’t be a dumbass. This is happening now, happening fast, and they may start moving people if you don’t hurry up and get here, so whatever you’re doing, stop doing it.

Get your ass to Texas.

-David Butler

Dumbass? Is this dude drunk?

I wasn’t about to call off the trip just yet, especially due to the fact that Grace had seen Mother in the picture taken in Austin, but I was glad to be visiting David with Veronique and Grace at my side. The guy may or may not be stable, and if he wasn’t stable, it’d be helpful to have some muscle around.

Speaking of muscle, I was just about to nod off when Grace entered the room and flicked off all but one of the lights.

Chapter Ten: Pornographic Insight

“Come to the edge of the bed,” Grace said as she changed her form. The change started from the center point of her body and worked its way out, a ripple of color and skin and clothing immediately settling into place.

She now wore a neon yellow fishnet halter top with matching bikini bottoms and a pair of high heels – also yellow – with six-inch stilettos.

The strip club, I thought as she approached the bed, hips swaying.

No noobs in the room this time.

I moved to the corner of the bed and sat up, erect in two ways.

Once she reached me, Grace swept her long hair over her shoulder and turned her back to me. She sat down on my lap, just as she had seen the strippers do in the club, and as she gyrated her hips, my mood changed from sleepy and concerned to happy-go-lucky – or better, happy to get lucky.

“How do you want me?” she asked as her skin began to darken.

Her hair thickened, braids formed, and her hip size increased. A black woman now, Grace twisted around and kissed me. As we kissed, her form began to morph again, this time changing into a light-skinned Asian woman with bleached blonde hair and a Monroe piercing.

She stood, bent before me so I could get a good peachy view, and touched the tops of her high heels, swaying her ass back and forth.

The color of her thong and Neon halter-top went from yellow to purple as her skin turned caramel, her hair long and flowing, her features that of someone from Latin America.

She turned to face me, her hands covering her nipples as she moved her shoulders up and down.

I licked my lips, thanked Jeebus, promised to curb my wicked ways, and finally, reached my hand out.

She slapped it away. “No touching,” she purred as she turned her back to me and lowered herself onto my lap again. She resumed gyrating her hips against me. “They’ll kick you out of the club.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

It was amazing how much the promise of sex shattered the millions of thoughts racing through my skull.

That’s one of the things I like most about getting lucky; it’s an ultimate form of escapism requiring physical effort that’s rewarded with a nearly indescribable, but amazing, full-body sensation.

And sure, better writers than I had put in their due diligence to describe exactly what an orgasm feels like, but if someone who had never experienced an orgasm read about it, could they really understand what it felt like?

Could you say having an orgasm was like having the rug swept out from beneath you and falling into a galaxy of vibrating dandelions?

“Quiet, Writer Gideon,” Grace said as she thrust against me even harder. “And you aren’t tipping me.”

I glanced at the duffel bag that contained all the cash and then back to her. “Are you serious?”

She raised an eyebrow at me, and as she did, her facial features began to morph, settling on a hot Latina with braided hair. She bent forward, kissed me, and bit at my lip as she pulled away.

I cleared my throat. “If you want to get tipped, you’re going to have to get off my lap so I can get the cash.”

“Stay where you are.”

She stood and went to retrieve the cash for me, making sure I was thoroughly focused on her movement as she left the bedside. She returned with the duffle and dropped it at my feet. I quickly reached down and got a stack of hundreds.

Grace morphed back into her base form, her long blonde hair, blue eyes, soft skin, incredible body. “What do you want me to wear?”

“Is ‘nothing’ an answer?”

“You can’t tip me if I don’t wear anything.”

She stuck with the outfit she’d been wearing the entire time: a fishnet halter top and a thong. She turned, looked at me over her shoulder, and as she did, I put my first hundred in the side string of her thong.

“Is this a good fantasy?” she asked as she raised her hands and placed them behind her head.

“I, yeah, sure, it’s … unexpected.”

Her form rippled slightly, her back still facing me, which I took to mean that she’d changed her appearance, but hadn’t adjusted her body size very much.

“Your mind is too busy,” she said, looking over her shoulder again before turning to face me once more.

I silently toasted HBO as she climbed back into my lap, her knees at my sides. She thrust her hips forward, grinding against my hard-on.

“You like it?” she asked.

Daenerys Targaryen, or better, the actress who played her, bent forward to kiss me. She pressed away just as her form morphed into a sexy cosplay version of Mystique.

“This is who I’m like, correct?” she asked, her skin blue and covered with ridges, her orange hair slicked back.

“No, I mean, yeah. But different.” Rather than fumble on any more words, I slipped another hundred-dollar bill into her panties. As she changed back to her base form, she started unzipping my pants.

“Ooo, I know who I can be,” she said, and her features morphed into Natalie Johansson’s. “Can I?” she asked as she got to her knees.

“Please do.”

A couple things need to be addressed: No, I never thought my writing career would involve penning a passage about a blowjob. I also was unaware – and quickly became hyper-aware – of just how much porn I had consumed and how it affected Grace’s understanding of sex.

She’d only seen sex in movies before meeting me, and then she was able to tap into my mind and its deep vault of porn. By 2030, watching porn had become as American as apple pie, if apple pie was something consumed in secret – more so by men than women, but still by a good majority of the population.

You could blame a change in morality over the last thirty years, or you could blame the real culprit: the internet. Either way, it was a common thing in many people’s lives.

If someone wanted to watch porn before the internet, they had to go to an adult store, rent or purchase a video, and either use one of those sticky-ass private rooms to watch it, or take it home and figure out a time to watch it when their spouse, roommates, and/or kids weren’t around.

Of course, some people were more progressive and watched it with their significant other, but my point remains: it was a little bit more difficult to get it at that time.

Then, the internet.

And I was Generation Z, the post-internet generation.

Porn has been around me in some shape or form for my entire life, whether it be a classmate at school showing me something on his smartphone, the presidential pee tapes, subscription movie services increasingly pushing the boundaries, or the Two Girls One Cup reboot of 2025.

All this to say, Grace started by giving me a pretty sloppy, hardcore BJ, all thanks to the porn I’d seen.

And my reaction wasn’t what I would have expected or fantasized. My first reaction was to push her away. I had created a monster. She took that to mean I wanted her to go harder, which was not the case!

“You can’t …”

“I can’t what?” she asked, looking up at me. “I thought you wanted this.” Confusion swept across her face as she tuned into my thoughts.

“Do you see what I’m thinking here?”

She nodded.

“I guess I’m trying to say … you shouldn’t look in my mind and believe the things I’ve seen are normal. Because they’re not normal. Then again, maybe nothing is normal. Well, maybe they’re normal to some people, but no, don’t look in my mind for those types of things.”

“So no blow job?”

I nearly slapped myself. “Of course, blow job, but just take it easy. No reason to get … um … too hardcore.”

She wiped her mouth and shrugged. “You seem to have watched a lot of that.”

“It’s become a norm in pornography.”

“Why’s that?”

Oh shit. I went with the first explanation that came to my lips. “My guess is that the more men lose control over the world, the more they look to entertainment that shows them a side of masculinity they assumed they once had. It’s all a false representation though. Shit, I’m not trying to ruin the moment here.”

“You aren’t,” she told me. “Your wild mind is interesting. It has seen so much but experienced so little. It’s hard to separate the differences sometimes because I don’t quite understand the memory.”

“That’s why you shouldn’t be reading my mind. Look, Grace, just be yourself, and forget what you see in here.” I tapped my temple. “Because I am a product of my generation.”

Shut up, Gideon! You’re ruining the moment. A voice inside my head hissed. This was definitely my voice – well, that or the voice of my penis.

“Just, yeah … sorry. Take it easy. Don’t read my mind. I thought that was a rule.”

“Don’t read your mind, don’t turn into Veronique, don’t shift in public, don’t turn into your mom, and don’t give you sloppy hardcore blow jobs.” Grace laughed and climbed back onto my lap. She pressed the fabric covering her crotch aside so that my quickly hardening penis was now pressed against her wet mound. “Any more rules?”

I chuckled. “Let’s keep these rules to ourselves, how’s that? Especially that last one.”

“I like you, Writer Gideon,” Grace said as I slipped inside her.

“I like you too,” I told her. “A lot.”

Chapter Eleven: Veronique’s Stats

Get your head in the game, was my first thought when I awoke the next morning. There were a ton of things I needed to handle, and I had no idea how I would compartmentalize them.

So rather than relive the slightly awkward yet badass bit of lovemaking I’d been privy to the previous night, I decided to make a list of current issues that needed to be addressed.

I sat up in bed, grabbed the pen and paper on the nightstand, and started jotting things down.

1)  Find out why my picture was on Grace’s drive. To shorten this note I wrote: Picture Grace Drive.

I knew I didn’t have superpowers, even if I felt that way when Grace was next to me controlling someone, and I was simply giving commands. Regardless, there was more to this story, and I didn’t want it to become an unfinished plotline.

2)  Decide if you will use the code Ken Kim gave you to supposedly upgrade Grace and Veronique’s abilities, written as: Upgrade, yes/no?

It could be an attempt to track us.

I wasn’t certain where I stood on the Ken Kim front. After all, Dorian did show up within hours of our first conversation. For all I knew, his interest in our situation was a ruse meant to get close to me. I decided to forego using the code for now.

3)  Figure out what to do with Dorian, or as I wrote it: Dorian.

If we let her heal up, was there any possibility she would join us? Or would she be like Angel, dedicated to her role even if she’d eventually be decommissioned? Since her abilities allowed her to instantly move away from us if given the chance, freeing Dorian, even briefly, could be a terrible decision on our part.

4)  Come up with a plan to handle the Austin situation became simply: Austin.

We would definitely need to meet David Butler in a public place. I was starting to second guess meeting him at all, but getting to the bottom of the Mother situation would help me better tell the story of the secret program that created Grace and Veronique. Which lead me to my next point:

5)  Mother, aka: Mother

If she really was as powerful as Veronique claimed, then getting to her wouldn’t be easy. And this begged the question: What would we do after we got to her? What was our endgame?

Our endgame is stopping these experiments and uniting the subjects that care to be united, Grace said in my head.

Ah, so you’re up.

I am.

“I’m going to play devil’s advocate for a moment,” I said aloud. Grace still had the blanket up to her neck, and her eyes were closed, which made talking to her in this way even stranger. “What good will destroying the facilities do?”

It will prevent them from torturing people like me.

“I get that reasoning, but what happens if they just build more facilities?”

That’s why we have to go after Mother too and anyone who decides to work with her. Doing so will prevent them from creating more of us. You are over-analyzing this, Writer Gideon. We find, we destroy.

“You’re sounding more and more like Veronique.”

With her eyes still closed, Grace’s face began to morph into Veronique’s.

Maybe it is better to be a warrior than a thinker.

“Point taken.”

She reverted back in an instant, clearly toying with me.

Go get cleaned up. It’s time to write. Will you finish your next novella today?

“I don’t know. I’m inspired, but I still need to write at least ten thousand more words.”

Then do it and get inspired. Look at your sales. People are enjoying this book. You probably have more emails too. And the cover is also nice.

“Got it.” I slipped out of bed and went into the long bathroom connecting our two rooms to find Veronique sitting on the counter completely nude, her nipples erect and a devious look on her face. “Sorry,” I said as I started to turn back.

“I was waiting for you.” The door shut behind me and locked.

“This is not a great time …”

She got down and took two steps closer to me. “I need new clothes,” she said once she was about a foot away from me.

“Okay …”

“I don’t like the country clothes.”

“That’s fine; we can get you new clothes.”

“Why are you so nervous around me?” she asked, placing a hand on my chest.

“I think you know why.”

“When you’re ready.” With that, Veronique moved away, glanced at me one last time, and stepped out.

“Damn,” I muttered when I caught a glimpse of her ass as the door shut.

Veronique would be the death of me.

A quick shower, a visit to the breakfast buffet with Grace, and two cups of coffee later, I was ready to write. Books are all about pacing and keeping the reader reading. This is the exact opposite of what it would be like to describe writing.

So, I’m going to gloss over it a little.

Rather than tell you about how I got off to a late start because I couldn’t figure out how I wanted a certain passage, or how I confused what happened in chapter ten with what should have happened in chapter nine, or how it took me at least fifteen minutes to install updates on my new laptop, I’ll just report back that I was able to get about four thousand words written.

I had headphones on at that point, listening to a YouTube super intelligent brainwave frequency track for focus.

I’d hit a roadblock.

There was a section I needed to fill in regarding Veronique’s abilities, but since she hadn’t let me check her drive, I was still missing that section.

I could hear her and Grace in the other room, watching yet another home improvement show, and I figured she could spare a moment.

For the sake of literature?

That line might not work on her, but then again, it wasn’t very long ago that she was threatening to kill me if I didn’t write a book in two days.

So, I tried it.

“Hey, Veronique,” I said as I went into the other room.

I glanced from the two women on the bed to Dorian, who still sat in the chair with her eyes closed. It was a weird visual, and I tried not to look at her too much because it was like staring at a corpse.

“Can I help you?” she asked, without looking away from the TV.

“I know we’ve been putting it off, but I need to go through your stats and abilities again. It’s for the book. I should be finishing today, and I’d like this stuff to be in its own section. It’s important. It’s for the sake of literature.”

She shrugged. “Okay. Tell me what happens,” she said to Grace as she got up and joined me in the other room.

I had to laugh. “I’ve been asking you about doing this for days, and now you just say ‘okay’ and come in? We could have done this way earlier.”

“I don’t know how I feel about you plugging into me, but you said it was for the sake of literature, so we’ll see what happens.” She narrowed her eyes at me.

“I promise not to mess with anything, I just wanted to examine the grayed-out sections of your abilities menu.”

“Grayed out?” she asked as she lay down on the bed.

“Last I checked, portions of your abilities were grayed out and I couldn’t adjust them.”

She shrugged. “I don’t really want you adjusting them.”

“That’s fine, but I need to know what you’re capable of and I might be able to make you stronger by seeing them. I won’t change anything without your permission, how’s that?”

“Okay.”

The air conditioner clicked on and I glanced at it.

“Did it scare you?”

“No, just not used to always hearing that thing turn on and off by itself.”

Once I plugged in, I went straight to Veronique’s abilities.

“This will only take a minute,” I reminded her, “so relax.”

Interesting, I thought when I saw that the grayed-out options were now visible.

As it turned out, Veronique only had one overarching superpower, and to my surprise, her vampire-like ability was actually an extension of that power.

Main: Metal Absorption and Modification

Wielding Capacity: 5

Adaption Speed: 6

Alloy Integrity: 4

Blood Metal Conversion: 6

Blood Metal Conversion? I read the description again, impressed.

Veronique wasn’t draining a person’s life per se; she was absorbing any and all of the metals in their body, which eventually killed them because it increased the toxicity of these metals as they moved out of their bodies.

“And it’s also what you feed on,” I said, looking up at her. “You convert this metal into sustenance – or more specifically, your body does.”

“So now you know. Happy?”

“If you want me to play around with adjusting any of these abilities, let me know. For example, increasing your Alloy Integrity might make the structures you create stronger and better. Not that they aren’t already good. The thing is, your abilities are all around the mid-level, ranked from four to six. Wielding Capacity, Adaption Speed, Alloy Integrity, Blood Metal Conversion. They’re all mid-level.”

She thought about that for a moment, still staring up at the ceiling to avoid messing with the cord sticking out of her neck. “And Wielding Capacity would allow me to modify larger objects, right?”

“I believe so.”

“See what happens if you turn that one up.”

Turning the Wielding Capacity dial up increased Alloy Integrity, but doing so brought Adaptation Speed down.

I played around with the settings for a moment until I leveled them out somewhat. Now they looked like this:

Main: Metal Absorption and Modification

Wielding Capacity: 7

Adaption Speed: 5

Alloy Integrity: 5

Blood Metal Conversion: 6

“I think we’ve done enough for today,” Veronique said. She unplugged the cable herself and sat up.

“Yeah, no problem,” I said. “I mean, it’s up to you, but I hope we can do more later. I know you’re sensitive about your drive, but there’s a lot I’d love to play with.”

“I know you want to play with my drive,” she said, holding my gaze. “And maybe you’ll be able to soon.”

She got off the bed and left the room, leaving me to my laptop.

Chapter Twelve: A Day in the Life of a Fugitive

I reread the newest message from David Butler.

Where the hell are you? I thought you’d be in Austin by now. I have important details to show you and I’m waiting for you to get your ass here.

Update me -- DB.

“What’s with this guy?” I thought as I typed out a quick reply: We’ll be in Austin tomorrow. Let’s meet in a public place.

I hit send and received a reply back within seconds.

No, we will meet at my place.

He gave me the address and I quickly found it on GoogleFace maps.

It was in the western part of Austin, not far from Bee Caves Road. Judging by the size of the houses in the area, I could see that he lived in the rich part of the city.

About twenty minutes and a ton of GoogleFace inquiries later, I found that my initial assumption was most definitely true and that it only got richer the farther west you traveled.

Interesting. I’d heard Austin was an appealing place to live, its only drawbacks being the housing prices and its terribly hot summers.

Most Americans knew Texans and their pride. I’d already seen it coming into the state: the big flags in front of people’s houses, the sticker flags on the backs of their trucks, the ‘Don’t Mess with Texas’ road signs. It was the exact opposite of what I was used to in New England, which focused more on patriotism as a whole – something that was shared, rather than hoarded and shielded.

The thoroughfares were set up differently here too. Cities in the other states we’d driven through were set away from the traffic, usually hidden from view by trees. Everything in Texas was built right along the road; you could literally have the entrance to your home jutting off the highway.

From what I could tell, this was the way Longview had been built; a city sprouting around the highway, cushioning it like a hotdog bun.

“Barbeque or Mexican food?” I asked Grace as we prepared to leave the hotel.

She chose barbecue, and after Veronique drained just a little more energy from Dorian, we hit the streets.

Coleslaw, baked beans, cornbread, potato salad, ribs, pulled pork, grilled chicken, brisket – Grace and I ate like Southern royalty. Veronique ate a little, mostly the brisket, and once we finished, we took a quick trip to the mall to get her more clothing.

I would have preferred to stay at our hotel while they shopped, but I was worried about them going out alone. If they were captured, or if something happened to them, I would be completely screwed. Aside from the fact that I’d be stuck in a hotel room with Dorian, who would eventually wake up, I would be without a purpose and without the two women who were the reason for my crusade.

A crusade? A sci-fi writer going up against the FCG and MercSecure could be considered one of two things: a suicide or a crusade. I was banking on the latter.

The other reason I wished they could have gone alone is that I hate malls. There’s nothing scarier to me than a mall full of people. From shootings to terrorist attacks, malls had become hotbeds for public violence.

To the generation following mine, malls would be nostalgic. To my generation, they were slightly toxic.

But I couldn’t let the two go in alone.

“Let’s make this quick,” I said under my breath as we left our vehicle. We would get a new one when we came back; another chance to test-drive a different model.

Grace and Veronique were also not feeling the crowd at the mall, even if it was relatively small. There were just too many people around, so we tried to make it as quick as possible.

Aside from purchasing a Houston Texans jersey – mostly because it seemed a little lighter than my New England clothing – I stood outside the stores, taking notes on my smartphone about what I wanted to write later that day and keeping an eye on the crowd.

I was getting close to completing the second Mutants in the Making, and if I worked hard at it, I could have it done by tonight.

We were only four hours away from Austin. Rather than stay where we were another day, I figured we’d leave later that night so we could get a feel for our situation once we arrived.

For once, everything went smoothly while we were on our shopping excursion.

Veronique was disappointed that the mall didn’t have any mil-spec outfits, which was kind of funny. I suggested we go to an outdoor store, but I figured most of the stuff in Texas wouldn’t be what she was looking for. There would be plenty of camo and bright orange jumpsuits, but there wouldn’t be form-fitting black bodysuits.

So she got the next best thing.

With Grace as her shopping assistant and ‘funding’ all the purchases, they found a few outfits Veronique liked, as well as a jacket – although, it was already ninety-something degrees outside, so definitely not jacket weather.

She also bought a lot of undergarments from Victor and Victoria’s Secret, a store that used to be just for women but had changed by 2030 due to gender binarism debates.

We got back to the hotel, and Veronique drained more from Dorian. I started writing my ass off, and right around the time I’d gotten to the end point, I ordered a pizza.

Everything was going according to plan.

Sound the trumpets and bring out the booze! I had finished my manuscript, AI had edited the chapters, and I was ready to birth my creation onto the masses. Other writers be damned – make room for Gideon Caldwell at the top!

With a fresh manuscript in its appropriate folder on my computer, I pulled up the EBAYmazon dashboard, uploaded the cover, fleshed out the product description (damn, did I hate doing that), and uploaded the final file.

It’s missing something … I thought as I reopened the file. I went through the collection of book quotes I keep and picked one by Ralph Waldo Emerson: “We, as we read, must become Greeks, Romans, Turks, priest and king, martyr and executioner; must fasten these images to some reality in our secret experience, or we shall learn nothing rightly.”

I went for the $0.99 price point, only because I didn’t need money any longer, and I was going for that big Andy Weir launch part deux.

After checking everything for a final time, I put the book up for sale, which meant it would take ten to twelve hours to be approved.

I closed the laptop and exhaled audibly.

Grace and Veronique were back on their home improvement show, this one about fixer-upper homes in Britain, and there I was in the other room feeling like a million bucks.

Actually, finishing a book doesn’t quite feel like a million bucks. It feels more like a burden has been removed from your shoulders, only to have another one ready to drop – aka the next book. But it did feel good at the time, and even a brief interlude of not having the book on my shoulders was worth its weight in gold.

With nothing better to do, aside from pat myself on the back, I went into the other room to wait for the pizza.

“Room for me on that bed?” I asked, half joking.

“Yep,” Veronique said, moving aside so I could crawl between them.

How I kept living every fanboy’s dream, I had no idea, but I wasn’t complaining. With Grace on my left and Veronique on my right, I tried to keep my focus on the television. Once this failed, I turned to my phone and saw that Luke was active.

Me: Bruh. What’s going on?

Luke: I’m revamping the cover for the first Star Defacer book. What do you think?

Me: Definitely cool. I liked the first one too. It had a vibe.

Luke: I know, but now that the series is selling, I want to do a little rebranding and upgrading.

Me: Nothing wrong with that. I like the little skull in the middle, with the spiky head. Looks killer.

Luke: Hell yeah, people love skulls. I don’t know why.

Me: Me neither. Maybe it’s because humans have a weird fascination with their own mortality and the skull represents a watered-down version of this.

Luke: Publishing a philosophy book next?

Me: Hardly. Just trying to make it to Austin in one piece and get my ass some

Luke: I feel that. Damn, Gid, I got about three hundred questions for you. But I’ll start at the top. Did you hit pub on Mutants in the Making 2?

Me: It’s like you’re reading my mind or something. I just did, like ten minutes ago. So, it’ll be up by tomorrow for sure, but maybe even by tonight if the EBAYmazon gods process it quickly.

Luke: Last I checked, you’re holding your ranking, which means people are digging it. I hope the second book grabs even more readers.

Me: It should. The second book gets into details of the assault, and Angel, and Dorian Gray. But just the start of that story, because I don’t know how that’s going to play out.

Luke: LOL. Yeah, she’s there now.

Me: Did I already tell you that? Sorry, I’m in a bit of a daze. I somehow managed to write ten thousand words today – six thousand in a frenzied afternoon sprint. My hands are killing me. I’m just glad to be inside with the A/C and some pizza coming.

Luke: A/C. Oh that’s right, you’re down south.

Me: Hot as balls.

Luke: Did you go with the pink cover for MM2?

Me: Yeah, I think it’ll look good, especially on reading devices. You want to see some of my throwaway covers?

Luke: Hold on, let me go to the bathroom, take my pants off, and sit, just in case I feel the urge to shit myself.

Me: Ha! They’re not that bad. Okay, I made this one three days ago. I was a little delirious at the time. Terrible, I know. But speaking of skulls …

Luke: The two big skeletons had sex, and those are their children. Also, the adult skeletons are headless.

Me: I definitely wasn’t at my best when I made that. I also made this one. Warning: I don’t know what I was smoking when I thought this would be a good cover. Sometimes I have to make a bunch of crappy covers before I can really hit my stride and make one that looks good.

Luke: Brutal, and by brutal I mean brutally bad.

Me: Yeah, definitely not good.

Luke: Were you trying to cover her nipples with font? Because you failed. LOL. Also, are those supposed to be little explosions behind her?

Me: They’re flowers.

Luke: Well, I can say that I like the font.

Me: I also made this one:

Luke: What’s she supposed to be looking at? Looks like something from a Poltergeist remake.

Me: A light, a beacon of truth.

Luke: Okay. I see it now. How is it that you make such terrible covers and then make one that just hits?

Me: No idea, but luckily, fourth time was a charm.

Luke: Looks like a winner to me. Hey, got a question for you. You said you’re planning to meet this guy in Austin. You going prepared?

Me: I believe I’m going prepared. I have two human weapons with me, and I was able to modify Veronique a little bit.

Luke: Great, what were you able to do?

Me: Well, the readers that like stats and modifying abilities will love the fact that I was finally able to dig down a little deeper into Veronique’s situation and figure out more about her power. Turns out, she’s not a vampire.

Luke: LOL.

Me: She actually drains the metal from people’s bodies. Sounds weird, but you know there’s a lot of different metals floating around in our bodies and bloodstreams. I’m not claiming to be a scientist here, obviously, but that’s what she does. Hell, she’s done it to me, and it feels really strange.

Luke: Wait a minute. Her ability allows her to modify the atomic structure of the metal and pull it through someone’s skin? If I were reading this in a book, I would call BS.

Me: I wouldn’t call BS, only because I’m not so hot on the ‘science’ part of science fiction. I’ll leave that to Neal Stephenson and some of the military sci-fi guys who can roast me any way they want over this shit because the fact of the matter is, it’s true.

Luke: What you are experiencing and writing about isn’t fiction, so that’s why it’s kind of funny I’d call BS on it.

Me: What can I say? Even my own life has some plot holes. I’m sure there’s more to the science part, but I’ll let someone else explain that.

Someone knocked at the door. Pizza had arrived.

Me: Shit just got real.

Luke: What do you mean?

Me: Pizza’s here. Got to eat and run.

Luke: Enjoy, and good luck!

As Grace got up from the bed and moved to the door, she morphed into a Texan she’d seen earlier. Her hair was frizzy and big, and she wore a pinkish-red button-up shirt, a bolo tie, a pair of tight Wranglers hugging her ass, and some elaborate cowboy boots. No cowboy hat though, which made me wonder if she couldn’t morph a hat. But she did get the accent down.

“Howdy,” she said when she opened the door.

“Two Hawaiian pizzas, one with chicken instead of Canadian bacon?” the delivery driver asked.

“I do believe that’s what we ordered – ain’t that right, Kenny?”

I looked at Veronique. “Am I supposed to be Kenny?”

“That’s right, Grace,” Veronique said, trying for her best, deep-voiced country accent and failing miserably. Luckily, the delivery guy couldn’t see us.

“Great,” the guy said and handed Grace the pizza.

“Now, Gerald, you gonna get on over here and get these here pizzas or what? Can’t ya’ll get your butts off the bed?”

“I’m Gerald and you’re Kenny, right?” I asked Veronique.

She nodded, a genuine smile spreading across her face. I then tried to imagine what the delivery driver was thinking when he saw a hot country girl open the door and say there were two men in the room with her, both on the bed. Good thing we were going to wipe his mind.

“Can I feed too, Gideon?” Veronique asked me, her hand falling on my arm as I slipped off the bed.

“Later,” I said. She shrugged and turned back to the TV. I took a deep breath and approached the door. Grace gave me the pizzas. Damn if they didn’t smell good.

“Yep, that’s right,” Grace told the driver, “I already done paid ya’ll.”

“Oh,” the man said as he looked at the receipt he still held. “I see that now.”

“No, we can pay.” I put the pizzas down on a table near the door and grabbed my wallet, pulling out two twenties. I gave the driver forty bucks, told Grace to make sure he didn’t remember any of this, and we bid him farewell.

“I love pizza, I love, love pizza,” Grace said, morphing back into her base form.

I opened the box and frowned at the greasy mess dotted with pineapples. “Don’t get your hopes up.”

The pizza wasn’t so great, but at least it was cheesy. I guess that’s the thing about most pizza – it has cheese. But this pizza was definitely not the best I’d had; hell, it wasn’t even the best I’d had from Wendy’s Hut.

Still, it hit the spot.

After we finished eating, we packed up and headed to our car, Veronique using her powers again to drag Dorian behind us.

Chapter Thirteen: Endgame Dreams

We headed west on I-20 and eventually reached the outskirts of Dallas. The farther we got away from the eastern part of Texas, the drier it became. It was still hot outside – our Subaru’s temperature said it was eighty-eight degrees – and the cityscape quickly morphed from ‘gone country’ to ‘urban cowboy’ as we zipped by Dallas.

“It’s so big,” Grace said as she looked out the window.

We weren’t cutting through downtown Dallas as much as we were skirting around it. The highways all made circles around the city, reminding me of a spider web. We only touched the lower right-hand quadrant of Dallas as we transferred to I-35, but we did get to see the city, the lights at night, and the new buildings under construction.

As she normally did, Veronique sat in the back seat with Dorian next to her.

Every time I glanced in the rearview mirror, I either caught a glimpse of Veronique looking directly at me – which was kinda creepy – or Dorian sitting there with her eyes glued shut – also creepy.

We have to figure out what to do about her, I thought as I drove around a slow-moving Ford Escort.

We will.

I smirked. You aren’t supposed to be reading my thoughts.

There’s nothing else to read.

You can read my phone.

Reading while riding gives me a headache.

Then find something different to listen to, I told her. For the last twenty minutes, we’d been listening to a local Tejano station, which was kind of cool, but which was also starting to drive me mad with its up-tempo beats.

“Would you like to listen to NPR?” she asked in Ira Glass’s voice. “I’m Ira Glass, and each week, we take an adventure across America in search of secret government facilities.”

“Man, Ira would love to get his hands on this story,” I said. I took over the wheel from the auto drive function; I felt like being in control at the moment.

“Yes or no?” she asked, still using his voice.

“No, for now. Let’s get some music going, something dancy.”

Grace flipped through the stations until she found one playing disco hits from the 70s.

I tightened my grip on the steering wheel. “Disco works for me.”

So, after going through Waco, Round Rock, and a slew of other smaller cities, we drove into Austin jamming disco. I wouldn’t recommend three hours of straight disco to anyone; that said, it did make the drive faster.

“Who’s ready to stay in a mansion tonight?” I asked as we took the 183 exit, heading toward MoPac and Westlake Hills.

MoPac passed over Lady Bird Lake, and Veronique pointed at some of the mansions that lined the water.

“Stay at a mansion in Austin? Let’s do it.”

We took the Westlake Hills exit. To get to the lakeside mansions, we’d need to take the loop around and then hit one of the roads that cut through Zilker Park. I wanted to find one that wasn’t gated in. Not that we couldn’t get in a gate with Veronique and Grace’s abilities.

After driving around for a few minutes, we found a gateless home the size of a grocery store. The entrance sloped down to a five-car garage. To the right of the garage was a door that a giant could get through, and, I shit you not, a bridge from the parking area to the front door.

We’d need to get rid of our current vehicle, but that would be easy once we found a family member.

We left Dorian in the car as we approached the front door, where Veronique worked her magic to let us in.

The first person to greet us was a kid, a boy about ten years old, who was walking across the living room to get something from the kitchen. Grace immediately took over his mind and told him to introduce her to everyone in the house.

She followed him, and soon, Grace also had the husband, the wife, and a teenage daughter in the living room and under her spell.

“The first thing I want to happen is for you to get rid of our vehicle,” I told the husband, “and come back here with an UberLyft.”

The husband was a fit guy, someone who worked out regularly, with a sprinkling of white in his beard and large eyebrows. He simply nodded at me and left.

The other three stood before us, completely transfixed.

The wife had had a lot of work done on her face and body; Botox and a boob job – those were just things I noticed off the bat. There was nothing that really stood out about the boy, aside from the darkness of his hair. And the teenage daughter looked pretty much like the boy, only taller, with zits on her chin and wearing designer pajamas.

“Shall I get Dorian?” Veronique asked me. “Also, I’m a little hungry.”

“Yeah, bring her in the living room.”

I didn’t know if the place we were standing in was a living room or something else entirely. I would later find out that the house had two living rooms, and this room – which featured a piano and a floor-to-ceiling view of the lake outside the window – was simply the foyer.

Or something like that.

Like I said, I’m not great with architecture.

Veronique returned, dragging Dorian behind her. The family ignored Veronique as she placed Dorian on one of the sofa chairs and made sure she was properly drained of her energy.

Grace yawned. “I’m getting tired, Gideon,” she said and went to sit next to Dorian, which was a bit strange considering the circumstances and the fact the family still stood there, waiting for orders.

“We need to handle the family before you can go to bed. Have them all to go to one of the bedrooms upstairs – the son’s bedroom, that’s fine. Whatever. Does he have a bathroom in there?”

The boy nodded.

“Great, tell them to turn off their phones and stay there for the next twenty-four hours. Eventually, they’ll snap out of it and wonder what the hell’s going on, but we’ll be long gone by then.”

She yawned. “And can I go to bed after that?”

“Sure, just stay up long enough for the husband to get back.”

While Grace sat in the living room waiting for the husband’s return, the rest of the family went upstairs to the boy’s bedroom. That was the last I’d see of them. Meanwhile, Veronique and I took a tour of the place.

It had seven bedrooms, six bathrooms, two living rooms, an enormous workout room, two offices, and a very nice, but small backyard that overlooked Town Lake with access to the water via a dock.

“Let’s see what vehicles we’re working with,” I said.

We entered the garage through the kitchen to find a Cadillac Escalade and two Porsches – one an SUV and the other a sports car. The teenage daughter had a Volkswagen, and there was also a completely restored 1955 Thunderbird in the carport farthest from the kitchen.

I don’t know what they did to get all that money, but it didn’t involve publishing $0.99 ebooks.

I pressed the button to open the garage door just as lights flashed in the driveway – the husband returning in an UberLyft.

He hardly made eye contact with me as he went back into the house and, I assumed, straight up to his son’s bedroom.

Before going back inside, Veronique and I stood on the bridge that led from the garage to the front door. It was a warm night, and mosquitoes buzzed in the air. It was also humid, and I was glad I didn’t grow up with this type of climate. Sure, the cold and the snow could get old, but this heat …

Rather than think about how I was from New England and wasn’t used to the South, I went inside to find Dorian still sitting on the couch in the foyer.

“Let’s just make sure she sleeps for the night,” Veronique said as she approached the teleporting rocker. She placed her hand on Dorian’s head, and a red aura formed around her fingers.

I looked around for Grace and found her asleep in one of the living rooms. Figuring it’d be nice to get a good night’s sleep as well, I found one of the guest bedrooms and lay down on the bed.

Dammit. I should have bought something aside from this ironic Houston Texans jersey I got at the mall.

I took off the jersey and tossed my pants and socks to the floor. Most of my clothes were for colder weather, not this heat. I figured I would check the guy’s closet for things to wear tomorrow, but I had a feeling he and I didn’t share a style. Still, maybe he had some collared shirts.

As I lay there on the bed, I heard the door handle twist open.

Even though my glasses were off, I knew who it was just by the sound of the door. It didn’t sound like a door being opened normally; I’d heard Veronique use her power enough times to notice the subtle difference between something natural and her ability to command metal.

Or maybe I just intuited it was her.

“How are things?” she asked, almost deadpan.

It was then I remembered that her charisma was quite low; maybe she didn’t mean to be as stiff as she came across.

“Things are okay. I’m a little nervous about tomorrow.”

“Why?” she asked and sat on the bed beside me.

“I just have a feeling we’re going into something kind of strange. We need to be ready. I don’t want you two to kill anyone if you don’t have to, nor do I want to do something that’ll get us in even more trouble than we’re already in. This guy may actually have information that could help us.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

I placed my hands behind my head. I could feel that my hair was already starting to grow out, and if I was truly going for the shaved-head look, I’d need to get a haircut in the next week or so.

This got me thinking about when I’d decided to shave my head at the black barbershop in New Haven. It was right after I received the scar on my face – a scar I had since grown used to. It was still healing, actually, still a little pink. Once the skin hardened, I’d look like a fucking mercenary. So that was something to look forward to.

“Why are you smiling?”

“Just getting high on my own supply, sorry.”

She lay down next to me and I felt tension increase between us. We looked at each other for a moment. My mouth opened, and words spilled out. “So, like I was saying, I’m a little worried about tomorrow. Yep, definitely worried. Damn tomorrow. Today was nice though. But tomorrow, who knows what could happen?”

“I’m not worried.”

“Of course you aren’t. You can pretty much do anything with your abilities.”

Veronique moved just a little closer to me. She now lay on her side, strands of blonde hair in her face. “You place too much confidence in what we can do.”

I reached out and brushed the hair from her face.

“Damn right I do. All I can do is drive, write, and try to put the pieces together so maybe we can actually complete this puzzle. I mean, not that it’s a big puzzle. We’re talking about a government experiment, super soldiers … that sort of thing. Nothing deeper than that, I’m afraid. I get it. Sorry, I’m talking out loud. I just worry sometimes about the endgame.”

“Endgame?”

Her hand landed on my cheek and I swallowed hard.

“Yeah, endgame. Let’s say we do this – we destroy the facilities and take care of Mother, unite the people with superpowers and play that whole thing out. What next?” I asked, my voice softening.

It was strange to be this close to Veronique, especially knowing she could drain my energy in a heartbeat. Even as I stared into her dark eyes, I knew she could turn the tables very quickly.

But would she?

That was the thing about her; even though she’d shown me no sign she would double-cross us, or that she would turn on me, I still remembered the Veronique who burst into our room back in East Haven and later took me hostage.

It was still hard to separate the two; the trained soldier and the Veronique I had come to know.

“Why are you so worried about our endgame?” she finally asked. “This ends when it ends, and there’s little we can do to stop it from ending at that time. We don’t know the future, we only know what happened in the past. And for Grace and me, what we are doing now is far better than what was happening to us in our past. So, was that our endgame? What happens after an endgame?”

I smirked at her. “I don’t think you understand the term ‘endgame,’ at least in the same way I do.”

“Oh?” she moved her hand from my cheek to the side of my neck.

“And I’m not trying to mansplain here, but the whole idea of ‘endgame’ is that it is the end of the game – hence, ‘endgame.’”

“I see. In that case, we will win, and Grace and I will design a very nice home for all of us to live in. Somewhere secluded. But with access to a city.”

“And by ‘we,’ do you mean me too?” I asked, a slight hesitation in my voice.

“I suppose. I suppose you can live with us. I’m sure Grace would like that. Maybe I would like that too. But you’re going to have to write more books because that is your superpower. Your superpower is writing books. So, if you live with us in this beautiful house we’re going to customize and remodel, you have to write books. You can have a writing room and a nook, I believe it is called.”

I laughed. “That is a great fantasy right there.”

“Maybe we can get a dog and have some kids.”

I gulped. “Have kids?”

“We can start a family, I don’t know. Just dreams, endgame dreams.”

The door opened, and Grace walked in, wearing a robe. She yawned, saw that Veronique was on the bed, and stopped.

“We were just talking about our dream home,” Veronique said, getting up from the bed and leaving the room. “The one you and I discussed.”

Holy shit, does Grace have Veronique in check?

Yes, I do.

I froze as I heard Grace’s voice in my head.

But if you’d like her to stay in here for tonight, that’s fine by me.

Veronique was gone before I could respond.

Grace got into the bed, yawned, and turned to me as if nothing had just happened. “I’m very tired tonight,” she said, her eyes going from slightly white to iceberg blue. “Too much shopping, disco, pizza, and barbeque.”

“Goodnight, Grace.”

Try as I might to fall asleep, I lay awake for thirty more minutes, thinking about all that had happened.

I didn’t know where I stood on polyamory, having more than one love interest at a time. And I didn’t want to figure that out right now. I wanted to be prepared for tomorrow, but I had no idea what to prepare for. For all I knew, we would just meet this guy and he would give us some information and things would go fine.

But they could go the opposite way as well.

Chapter Fourteen: Dorian Wakes

I was up earlier than anyone else in the house. I knew that because it was just a little after five a.m., a time when no one in their right mind should be awake. My email inbox was full; my new book had been published.

I looked at my smartphone for a moment longer just to confirm this. I could check my sales and ranking later. It was actually the last thing on my mind as I moved out of the bedroom and into the hallway to get something to drink.

We were on the upper floor, and I was thirsty.

Rather than drink from the faucet, I headed downstairs and was greeted by a beautiful sunrise underscored by a zigzag of pink on the surface of the lake.

It was weird to see Dorian just sitting there in the sofa chair, perfectly still, her eyes closed. Eerie didn’t begin to describe it.

I got some expensive juice from the fridge and filled a glass.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do with you,” I said as I returned to Dorian and sat across from her. Her black hair, her punk rock accouterments, her petite body – she looked the exact opposite of Grace and Veronique.

But then again, who knew what Grace actually looked like? I hadn't forgotten the time she showed me a thin, dark-haired woman with acne when I asked her to show me her true form. She hadn’t shown me that form since, and for all I knew, she was just messing with me.

There was a lot I’d never understand about shapeshifters. And I always had this feeling she was hiding something from me. Whereas Veronique wore her personality on her sleeve; I understood who she was, and I usually understood her intent.

But Grace, not so much.

They’d make great fictional characters, though. One, almost a girl next door but with a secret. The second one, dangerous, but soft at the core. Maybe after all this was finished, I would get to writing fiction again, and I could let those characters play out in my mind.

My rambling, author-centric thoughts came to a sudden halt when Dorian’s eyes opened.

I gasped as her black eyes locked onto me. I could feel the blood draining from my face.

“Uh …” was the only sound my throat could make.

I felt as if I’d woken a sleeping lion, that I had come face-to-face with a carnivore.

“Thirsty …” she whispered, her throat quivering.

“You’re thirsty?”

We both glanced at my juice.

Oddly enough, I’d had this feeling of complete and utter apprehension before. And it was with Veronique, when she assaulted Grace in the hotel at Stamford and had come for me.

One thing I’d learned about these types of encounters was that you could either stare the beast down and figure out what it wanted – which could result in your death – or, you could run.

As I had before, I chose to make peace with the predator.

Not saying a word, I took my glass of juice to her. She tilted her head back slightly and I brought it to her parched lips. She quickly finished the juice.

“Do you want more?” I asked, my nerves tingling.

She nodded. I looked toward the kitchen, which now felt like it was miles away.

For all I knew, she could teleport away by the time I returned. Or she could create a person made of kinetic energy to kill me. It didn’t have to be a person … could be anything, really.

But my name is Gideon Caldwell, and I am an idiot.

So I went to the kitchen and got her some more juice, and she was halfway through the next glass when Grace and Veronique appeared.

Veronique practically launched herself at Dorian. Her hand fell on Dorian’s head, and as it glowed red, the teleporter’s eyes rolled back. Veronique narrowed her eyes at me. “You are an idiot, Gideon.”

“I was just thinking that.”

“I’m just glad I heard you leave the room,” Grace said.

“Wait, were you able to see what I was doing up here?” I touched my face. No way she’s that powerful.

Grace nodded. “But you already knew I was.”

It was true; I’d already sensed this. But it was early, and I was still a little bit delirious.

Veronique continued to drain Dorian.

“Lighten up a bit,” I told her. “She could have done something, but she didn’t. We’re going to have to deal with her at some point. What if we can turn her?”

Grace placed a hand on my shoulder. “You can’t trust everyone, Writer Gideon.”

“I trusted you,” I said to her. I looked at Veronique. “And I trust you, even though you once basically tried to kill her and imprisoned me.”

“People change,” was all she finally said.

“Exactly, which is why I think Dorian could change.” Confidence returned to my voice. “It’s just a hunch right now, but we’re going to have to work with her if we want her to join us and see our side. We can’t kill her – or at least we shouldn’t – and her abilities would be monstrously helpful to our cause.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Veronique said, “But for now, we keep her sedated.”

“I’m fine with that.”

“Who’s hungry?” Grace asked, trying to lighten the mood.

“It’s five in the morning,” I reminded her.

“Almost half past five now.”

“Actually, that’s a great idea.”

Once again, Grace had implanted a thought in my brain.

Magnolia Cafe on Lake Austin Boulevard was open twenty-four hours.

From the reviews I’d read, it looked like it had pretty damn good food. But there was also the Omelettry, another GoogleFace recommendation, and they had amazing pancakes, apparently.

It was a tough call, but I had to go with the pancakes.

We found the Omelettry and got there about twenty minutes after they’d opened. It was a well-lit place, with a drawing of anthropomorphized eggs on the walls.

Our waitress came, a tattooed and pierced Austin hipster with short hair on one side and long hair on the other. Cool.

The coffee was poured and even Veronique had a cup.

I ordered ‘The Economical’ with buttermilk pancakes, and Grace had a yogurt parfait with gingerbread pancakes. I got a couple looks from the guys who came in, especially when they saw me sitting with Veronique, a hot blonde with strikingly sharp features, and Grace, who had gone with her brunette in yoga pants yet again.

I had never been the envy of other guys, never been a bro’d out guy’s guy for that matter, and it was still strange to see people look between me and the two women with me, trying to figure out how I had pulled it off.

“No shifting in public,” I reminded Grace as her hair began to change to match our waitress’s. I finished my coffee. The waitress spotted it and went for a fresh pot.

“Okay,” she whined.

The food came, and we dug in.

I started with the pancakes, spreading out the big lump of butter on top and smothering it in syrup. From there, I moved to the sausage, the eggs, and another cup of coffee to boot.

Grace started with the pancakes as well and finished her parfait off relatively quickly. She shared one of the pancakes with Veronique, who ate it, but didn’t seem to enjoy it very much.

“It’s too sweet,” she said.

“It’s good for you,” I assured her.

“Why do I feel like you’re lying to me?”

“I’d never do that.”

“Grace?” she asked.

“He’s lying.”

My knife started to bend backward, and as I put it down, Veronique dropped her hand onto mine. “Careful,” she reminded me, to Grace’s laughter.

“Please bend my knife back.”

After we finished eating, we headed back to MoPac, and from there, I let GoogleFace Maps route us to Butler’s house.

The estates in West Austin rivaled some of the mansions I’d seen in Greenwich, Connecticut. No, they didn’t have an Oceanfront view, but they did have helipads, pools, hundreds of private acres, and amazing views of downtown Austin.

Even better, most of them didn’t have gates. You could seriously just drive up to these million-dollar homes and park.

We were in the Porsche SUV – the first time I’d driven in a Porsche, actually. I would have driven our host’s neon green Porsche 911 GT3, but it only fit two people. Still, the SUV handled like a beauty, and it could get going pretty quickly on the highway.

“Anybody want to check it out again?” I asked as we passed Butler’s house. It was tucked away, I’d give it that. And down the winding driveway looked to be another guest house, only adding to the spread of the estate.

The girls didn’t say anything. I glanced at Grace next to me and saw that she was the fullest I’d ever seen her. Her hands on her stomach, she had already switched to the waitress’s haircut, and her eyes were closed as she dealt with her food baby.

I started to laugh. “You doing all right over there?”

Grace yawned. “You woke us up pretty early.”

“My mistake,” I said.

We passed the place again. There weren’t any turrets, and I didn’t see anything in place to protect it from superpowered individuals, so we continued on.

We arrived back at our current mansion at half past seven. Dorian was just where we left her, and I even checked on the family upstairs.

I can’t emphasize enough how creepy Grace’s ability can be. I knocked on the door of the son’s bedroom and was told I could enter. Once I opened the door, I found all four of them sitting on the edge of the bed next to each other, staring at the wall, their eyes white.

It only took me about two seconds to have seen enough of that, so I shut the door and went back downstairs.

Since we had time to kill, I figured I would check on my book’s deets. While Grace and Veronique napped – this time in the same room as Dorian – I pulled out my laptop.

I logged on and saw I was moving books like crack in the 1980s.

Since the release of the second book, I was averaging close to a hundred thousand page reads a day, which for two novellas, was hella good. I almost baited myself into checking reviews, but like I had done in the past, I shied away from doing that.

Better that way.

I started the absolutely terrible task of going through my emails, trying to figure out which ones I should respond to, which ones were spam, and which ones were worse. A good two dozen readers had contacted me about my story, a few wanting photo evidence.

There was another message from David Butler, reminding me that our meeting was at noon. There was also a message from Ken Kim, asking me for an update.

I ignored them.

I still had two throwaway phones, so maybe I’d give Ken a call at some point. Or he would call me because that was what happened last time, and I was still highly suspicious about it.

With several hours to kill, I did what anyone with access to a computer and some free time did.

Nope, not porn.

Rather, I surfed the web aimlessly, watching cat videos, catching up on some of the subreddits I followed, and reading about new video games that were coming out.

Had I known what was going to happen next, I would have at least gotten halfway prepared. I was a fool, and the fact that I didn’t have a plan was about to come back and bite me in the ass.

Chapter Fifteen: Snack Attack

The only thing we needed to do before we left our borrowed mansion was make sure the owners didn’t come looking for their Porsche SUV.

Easy peasy: I had Grace convince the family they never owned the vehicle. We’d be way out of Austin with a new vehicle by the time they unraveled those pieces; it was easier that way.

With Dorian laid out sideways in the cargo area of the Porsche, we headed to Butler’s place.

It was already in the 80s outside, so we would need to park in the shade. I didn’t plan to be there very long, at least for this visit. And I planned to keep the SUV running while we were inside, which was easy to do because there was an option on the keyless entry to cool the vehicle.

We drove around Butler’s neighborhood first, looking for any suspicious vehicles. There weren’t any; everything was hunky-dory. The only person even around was an extra fit white lady jogging up a hill, her skin glistening in the sun.

I wore my bulletproof vest under my Houston Texans jersey, which was heavy and made me look like I’d gained a couple pounds, but I was playing it safe.

After one more check through the hood, we pulled into Butler’s driveway.

Veronique was the first to get out of the SUV.

She surveyed the area, and once she gave us the hand signal, Grace and I got out. The two formed a security perimeter around me as we made our way to the front door, Grace on my right, Veronique on my left.

I’d long since turned in any semblance of masculinity I hoped to gain as part of this trio. It wasn’t like I’d be worth a damn if someone started shooting at us or we were attacked by another super.

I was fine with that; I didn’t mind being the weakest link.

The intercom came on just as we reached the front door.

“Welcome, Gideon Caldwell. Please enter and enjoy the snacks in the kitchen. David Butler will arrive shortly. Estimated time of arrival is three minutes and fifteen seconds.”

It was a very AI voice – Alexis and Siri’s bastard. I exchanged glances with the two superpowereds, got confirmation, and we entered.

After Grace and Veronique checked the foyer, we walked on a nicely polished wooden floor to an open-concept space kitchen that included a dining and living room area separated from the front door by a single wall.

On the bar were some cookies and other, healthier snacks like carrots and ranch dressing. I received an email from David almost immediately, reminding me that he was running a bit late because of a prior meeting and that he’d be here in a couple of minutes.

Hell yes, I was suspicious.

I began looking around, lifting up any flower pot, trinket, or decoration I could get my hands on to see if we were being recorded. I checked behind the 120-inch flat screen TV and moved each book on the bookshelf, just in case it opened to a secret room. Speaking of books, my fuck was this guy into sci-fi harems. Every book he had featured two women and a man on the book cover.

What a played-out trope.

Butler was also definitely a fan of space opera movies, and there was really only one space opera movie big enough to have posters that could cover all his walls. So, I checked the posters too.

“There has to be something,” I said to Veronique.

At that moment, a few of the picture frames and silverware from the kitchen began to rattle.

My heart skipped a beat. I glanced over at Veronique to see that she just was preparing ammunition and exhaled audibly with relief. The pictures fell out as their metal frames lifted into the air and joined the silverware, all of which hovered around her.

“Good call, but don’t kill him until we know for certain he’s trying to kill us.”

Yeah, that sentence sounded strange, but as Jay-Z once said, “This isn’t the life I chose; rather, it’s the life that chose me.”

I always liked that quote.

I moved to the kitchen, still not able to discover anything. Damn, was I paranoid. I had a feeling this was a bad idea to come here. I tried to suppress the feeling, but it kept boiling to the surface.

As she had done before, Grace spoke to me in my head.

Relax, Writer Gideon, we are prepared if anything happens.

I know, I thought back to her, but this is just really freaky. Maybe we should have met the guy somewhere else. I don’t know why we agreed to his demand to meet him here. It’s his turf …

The lock on the back door clicked and we all turned to it, Veronique’s makeshift weapons facing the back door as well.

“Is he locking us in?” I asked.

Still in control of her weapons, Veronique used her powers to unlock the door. We stood there for a minute, all of us poised and ready for something to happen.

Grace was the first to fall.

She was standing near a vent, and as she surveyed the room, she simply … fell.

I glanced at her just as Veronique fell, followed by her projectile weapons, which plinked against the floor as they landed around her body. I then realized I was growing delirious, that everything was starting to blur, that I could taste something in the air.

The television flickered on as I too fell to the floor.

I saw the outline of a man on the screen, speaking to us in a syrupy voice as I lost consciousness.

Chapter Sixteen: Botched Interrogation

I didn’t know where I was. The walls were all black, and there was nowhere to sit but on the ground. My mouth was dry, there wasn’t a smell I could discern in the air, and I felt a migraine taking shape.

I was the only one awake; Grace and Veronique were both passed out next to me.

Taking a deep breath in, I glanced around, trying to get my bearings. My eyes were still slightly blurred. It was a large room, about the size of my garden apartment back in New Haven, but it was very spare.

Are we in some type of workshop? I thought as I looked up at the halogen lamps shining down on me.

My ankles and hands were cuffed together, and as I studied the cuffs I saw they were connected to a long metal chain that went behind my back.

The realization came to me like a knife in the gut: David Butler tricked us, poisoned us. Whoever this guy was, he definitely wasn’t on our side. And I should have seen it coming.

“Grace, wake up,” I said with a scratchy voice. “Please …” I looked down at her lifeless face. “Please, Grace … Please, one of you.”

They looked like they were asleep, both also chained to the wall but lying on their sides. I noticed that Veronique’s chains were made of plastic, but there was still metal in the vicinity. All she had to do was use my cuffs. Poor planning on Butler’s part.

“Let us out of here!” I screamed, going with the panicked victim act.

“Shut the fuck up,” came a voice from outside. The door opened and a large man with a long gray ponytail and a white beard entered.

He had the body of someone who kept relatively healthy, and his white beard almost reminded me of the Dos Equis guy. He was in a button-up shirt and a pair of striped black slacks. The only thing off-putting about his outfit was his black leather boots, big steel-toed numbers with enough grip on the soles to scale a wall.

“David? David Butler?”

“In the flesh,” he said. “Now relax, and don’t say anything until I’m done talking. By the way, it took you damn long enough to get here. No one likes waiting, but I’m glad you finally came.”

His accent wasn’t Texan, but it was definitely American. Maybe he was from the West Coast. I couldn’t tell, and it really didn’t matter, so I cast the random thought aside. My head was still spinning, and seeing the guy filled me with a toxic combo of fear and fury.

Even though I was scared shitless, something came over me; the same sudden boost of confidence that had filled me when I first went toe-to-toe with Angel.

“You’re fucking dead,” I growled. “Once these two are up … I can’t … man, I don’t know what they’re going to do to you. Fucking … dead.”

“Is that so?” He opened up a small, metal case and withdrew a syringe.

“What the hell is that?” I tried to pull my arms away.

“It’s to make sure they don’t wake up,” he said with a laugh. “You three are going to make me a lot of money.”

I had to stall him. I didn’t know how long Grace and Veronique would be out, but I had to try to keep Butler from knocking them out even longer.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked, changing my tone. “What purpose does it serve you to turn us in? That’s what you’re planning to do, right?”

“No, I’m planning to keep you for myself.” He moved to stand before me. “Joking. I know, I know, it’s not a great time to be teasing you. And no, I’m not the type of guy who would hold three people hostage. So, since I’m going to turn you over to them I might as well be honest: this really is for the money. Plain and simple. You see this house?”

House? I glanced at the four corners of the room and made the assumption that we were in his attached guest house.

“It’s not cheap to live here; the property taxes in Austin alone could buy a home in the Midwest. My last discovery is what bought this place. Maintaining it has taken its toll on my bank account.”

Delay him, Writer Gideon.

Grace? I thought.

Please …

But as it turned out, he was so eager to share his story that I didn’t have to encourage much rambling on his part.

“You see, I was one of the software engineers who helped design the systems in their necks. Surely you’ve plugged in?”

I nodded.

“Now,” he said as he waved the syringe, “there’s probably some things you don’t know about a government contract. One of those things is that everyone – and I mean everyone – works on a different piece, so no one knows what happens when all the pieces fit together. I was just working on the database stuff – we’ll call it that because my guess is you aren’t really up-to-date on different types of database software.”

“What makes you think that?”

“I’ve done my research on you, Gideon Caldwell. Self-published writer who worked at a Yale gift shop, huh? A degree from Southern Connecticut? From Rhode Island? All those things check out?”

I nodded. I was experiencing a weird mixture of anger and fear. If I were writing a novel about this, which I technically was, I would find it hard to describe what was going through my mind at that time.

I wanted to lash out at him, but I also realized we were trapped, and that if I wasn’t able to delay him from injecting Grace and Veronique …

“So, you’re selling us back to them?” I blurted out, hoping to keep him talking.

He smirked. “I’m selling them back to the researchers, not you. You’re going to be charged with … hmmm, I don’t know, how many federal crimes? But that’s not really my concern. In fact, I might just let you go. If you beg for it. Yeah, I’ve never seen someone beg, I think that would be kind of interesting. Then again, I might just keep you until they get here.”

I swallowed hard.

I knew there would be no justice for someone like me, and as I considered this – of all fucking times – a quote from Hunter S. Thompson came to me. “Justice is not cheap in this country, and people who insist on it are usually either desperate or possessed by some private determination bordering on monomania.”

Nope, there’d be no justice for my ass if the FCG got me.

“Have you told them yet?” I finally asked.

“Not yet. I have to make sure I have leverage first. I mean, clearly I do, but who’s to say they won’t send more superpowered individuals after me when I tell him I captured these two? I have to play this smart.”

“How did you find out about us? Did you really read my book?”

He laughed. “You’ve got to be more careful next time. Did you honestly think publishing a book about all this would make a fucking difference? I just stumbled upon it, honest to God, which is what makes this even better.”

“What do you know about Mother?”

“Mother?” He considered that for a moment. “Haven’t heard of her. Why?”

“Never mind.”

“Why are you asking me about Mother? Who is that? What am I missing here?”

I hadn’t written about Mother yet. I wanted more details before I did that, and since I had only seen a picture and pieced together very limited details about her from what Grace and Veronique had told me, I wasn’t ready to talk about her in my series.

“I said, never mind.”

“Never mind, my ass,” he said and grabbed Grace’s arm. “Do you know how long this is going to put her out? Could be days.”

“Don’t do it.”

“Yeah, I’m going to do it, and after I get to the other bitch, you’re next.”

A powerful sense of anger welled up inside me. “You’re going to regret this,” I snarled.

“Oh, I doubt that.”

And almost as if on cue, Dorian Gray stepped into the room.

Chapter Seventeen: She’s with Us

David Butler went from tough to about to shit his pants in a matter of seconds. He stumbled backward, the syringe in his hand his only weapon.

Dorian observed him for a moment, an indecipherable look on her face. Her hair was a mess, and she looked a little wobbly, but she also looked pissed as hell.

Damn, did she look pissed.

The punk rocker placed a finger in her mouth, took it out, and traced a long line in the air. Boiling purple energy formed at her fingertip as she continued the line.

Once it was complete, she brought her hand back and flung it at David Butler.

The line of energy sliced right through his neck, cutting his head clean off and cauterizing the wound at the same time. Her blast slammed into the back wall, fizzing and sparking, his head bouncing away somewhere to the left.

I was going to be sick.

I had seen dead bodies before … hell, I’d help to move a few, but seeing a head bounce, roll, and then stop so it was looking right at me, mouth agape, was too much to handle.

I gagged and was just barely able to stop from vomiting. The smell of singed flesh was terrible, nauseating.

“Holy shit …” With a deep breath in, I steeled myself, fully aware that I was next.

Dorian approached me, and as she did, she placed her finger in her mouth again.

I turned away from her so that the chain holding me to the wall was now visible. I wasn’t whimpering or begging for my life; I knew this was it, and there was nothing I could do.

Dorian Gray was going to kill me.

A small explosion beside me produced a wave of heat against my exposed hands. I felt my chain fall away and glanced around to see that she’d saved me instead.

“Stand up,” Dorian said, her voice hoarse.

I did as I was told. My legs and wrists were still bound, but I could at least move.

Fight back? The thought, my own, was one of the dumbest I’d had in a while. I didn’t need to look at the severed head across the room to be reminded of that.

“I want answers,” she said.

“Answers?” I tilted my head as I took her in. I was still shaky, and whatever noxious gas Butler had used against us had my head doing somersaults.

Grace, I thought, please, if you can hear me …

Just a little longer. Stall her.

“What answers do you want?”

Dorian took a step closer, sizing me up. The heels of her boots brought her to about the same height as me.

“Why did you take them?”

“Them?” I asked, looking at Grace and Veronique. “I didn’t take them, they … well, they took me. Kind of strange to say it like that, but it’s the truth. Grace showed up on my doorstep. Veronique tried to capture us and later joined us once she found out what we were doing.”

“What are you doing?”

“We’re putting an end to the experiments that created people like you and people like them,” I told her, my confidence wavering.

It was odd to tell someone that you were trying to stop their species from flourishing. I decided on a different approach.

“Let me rephrase. Creating superpowered individuals in a lab to serve the Federal Corporate Government is an abomination.”

Her brow furrowed. “How do you know we serve them?”

But I was so impassioned by what I was saying that I missed her question. “It’s against the agreed-upon social norms of humanity. Just think about it: Grace was kept in solitary confinement most of her life; Veronique and you were both trained to be killers, but they’ll retire you once they develop a better version. Can’t you see what is going on here and how it’s wrong?”

“My original question was: How do you know we serve the FCG?”

“I don’t, but they funded your creation and …” I looked at her unsteadily. “Who do you serve?”

“We serve Mother.”

There’s that name again, I thought, taking in her blank expression.

“And Mother must serve someone. I’m not saying you’re delusional, but there’s no way Mother is getting funding from the FCG and protection by one of America’s elite security companies without catering to a higher force.”

She didn’t say anything, and for a moment, we just stared at each other.

“You seem like a nice enough person,” I finally said, clearly talking out of my ass. “And I think you get what we’re trying to do here. We’re trying to expose these experiments and put an end to them. I’m a writer, and I’ve already written two books about these experiments – well, they’re novellas, but still.”

“How can you care about something you know nothing of?” she asked.

“I know plenty about it. Grace … you know what her ability is, right? She put everything into my mind. She gave me the ability to see and feel what she went through.”

“Grace?”

“You call her Sabine. Her new name is Grace.”

“Okay,” Dorian said. “I did not know new names were possible. How can you trust her?”

“I trust her because she trusts me. Same with Veronique. Not a week ago, she was trying to kill me. Now … now, I fucking love having her around. Bygones be bygones. What I’m saying here is …”

“Yes?”

I raised my chin slightly, trying to look as leaderlike as possible. “Join us. Let’s bring an end to this together. Or go off on your own, leave Mother.”

“Join you?” Dorian paced back and forth for a moment. She glanced from Veronique to Grace and back to me.

“What happened to your face?” she finally asked me.

“My face?” I touched the scar on my cheek. “That would be Angel. Know him?”

She raised an eyebrow. “You survived an encounter with Angel?”

“I survived two,” I said.

“How do I know they won’t kill me when they wake up?”

“Because they listen to me. I listen to them too. We listen to each other.”

She stared at me skeptically.

“Look, this isn’t some situation where I’m the alpha male and these two obey me. Fanboy fantasies aside, I’m kind of the driver of the group. I write the books and do the driving. If anyone is the alpha, it’s Veronique. Lateral leadership. That’s what I’m trying to say. We work together. We live together. We do everything together.”

“You’re like a family.”

“I … yeah … we are. Hell, I basically abandoned my real family when I took off with them.” My throat tightened. That was something I wasn’t proud of, something I’d never be able to rectify. I didn’t want the FCG going after them; the less they knew the better.

Still, I needed to call my mom at some point. But the longer I put it off, the easier it became.

“And why are we here at this house?” Dorian asked.

“The guy you decapitated claimed to have information for us. He may still have information, somewhere on his computers, but what he was really trying to do was sell us back to the FCG.”

“To Mother? Why would she spare this guy’s life?”

“I don’t know. Maybe she doesn’t know about him. He didn’t seem to know about her. Anyway, he said something about being out of money and needing more. He read my book. Yep. I fucked up by not coming into this situation the right way. I should have been much more careful.”

She smirked. “You talk a lot.”

“Sorry, you could seriously kill me in a matter of seconds, so I’m a little nervous. Also, I’m sorry I punched you back in Louisiana. My mistake.”

“I’m not going to kill you, and that’s fine. It was a natural reaction.”

“If you aren’t going to kill us, what are you going to do? Are you going to … turn us in?”

Dorian looked down at her hands, nodding slightly to herself as she considered her options. Finally, she locked eyes with me and offered a thin smile. “No, I’m going to join you.”

Chapter Eighteen: Pizza and Gruesome Jokes

I shit you not, that was exactly how our conversation went down. Dorian Gray promised she wouldn’t kill me and said she was going to join us.

Then she came over to me, licked her finger, and placed it on my handcuffs. The first one fizzled and snapped, followed by the second. She then went for the cuffs on my ankles.

“Damn, your ability really is activated by your saliva,” I said, still not believing she’d flipped so easily. I was naive, sure, but I wasn’t naive enough to think that someone who had tried to kill us just a few days ago could switch sides so easily.

Then again, that’s exactly what happened with Veronique. So I relaxed my guard some. Not that I could have done anything.

“If it’s tied to your saliva, how do you kiss someone?”

Dorian shook her head. “Are you serious?”

“It’s an honest question,” I said as she removed the final cuff. Damn, it felt good to be using my arms and legs again.

“I don’t normally kiss people, but I can tell you that I don’t explode the fork or melt the glass if I eat or drink, so it has to be intentional. Does that answer your question?”

“I … yeah, that does. Sorry. I’m an idiot.”

She cocked her head. “I thought you said you were a writer.”

“Same difference?”

Dorian didn’t laugh at my joke, but she should have.

Writers are a weird breed of human. If you give them any amount of power, it goes straight to their head, something I’ve seen in the indie writer community since I became part of it. Suddenly, they’re giving out writing advice, or lecturing people on what constitutes good writing, or writing books on writing, or trying to keep up with the famous drinkers of the past.

Shit, even I had let the little bit of fame I got from releasing How Heavy This Axe? go to my head, and that was just after fifty sales over a three-week period.

One of the drunker authors I know celebrated after just ten sells in a five-week stretch. The dude got so schwasted he ended up on some country road outside Kansas City riding an ATV with his shirt off screaming about how he was the new William Gibson, until local law enforcement caught up to him.

And don’t get me started on writing and drinking. That never ends well. While it has resulted in some of the best books ever written, the lives of those who write them usually pale in comparison to their books.

Me? I’ll stick to banging superheroes.

That’s one way to put it, Writer Gideon.

Grace? Are you ready to stop pretending to be dead?

I’m still passed out. This is the part of myself I’ve imprinted on you.

You’re kidding me.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Dorian asked.

“Sorry, voices in my head.”

Grace, we need to talk about that. How much longer until you wake up?

I can’t predict these types of things.

You did in Stamford …

Sooner than later. Also, regarding Dorian, I will take a solid look at her and see if her intentions are true. If not, Veronique will kill her.

Hey!

“Should we take a look around the place?” Dorian asked. “That is why you came here, right?”

“Right, but I don’t know how we’re going to get into Butler’s computer if it has a password. I literally know nothing about him.”

I took another gander at the headless body. Shouldn’t have done that. I started to dry heave and had to go outside to throw up what was left of breakfast.

Just as I had predicted, we’d been in Butler’s guest house. Most of it had been gutted and the bottom converted into a workshop, which was where he would have kept us if Dorian hadn’t saved our asses.

Dorian led me along the winding path that took us to the back door. We slid the door open, and after making sure there was no toxic gas in the living room and kitchen area – and by no means was this a scientific study; I simply sniffed the air and opened some windows – we headed to the fridge.

“I figured you were thirsty,” I told her as I pulled out two ginger ales.

She took a sip and her eyes went wide. “This is really good.”

“Definitely some good stuff.” I started searching the kitchen for food. I was hungry, and I eventually found some snack bars in a walk-in pantry. I wolfed down two of them, figuring it was good to eat something, especially after what I’d just been through.

We continued upstairs and found that Butler had an entire room dedicated to virtual gaming. He also had a pair of guestrooms, and his master bedroom had been recently cleaned, evident by how perfectly the sheets and blankets were pressed.

Did he have the place cleaned before we came?

Butler really was a weird guy, but he had crossed the wrong people.

I wished I could have learned more from him about this experiment, and how he came to figure it out. It would have been great for Mutants in the Making 3, but his sudden death put a damper on that idea. Dorian had killed him the way someone swats a fly; it was almost sad how quickly he died.

I guess it would be better to go that way, having your head cut off – better than getting tortured, shot a couple times, burned to death, or boiled in acid. Personally, if someone gave me a choice of how to die, I would choose to freeze to death.

“What are you thinking about?” Dorian asked.

“Weird ways to die and which I’d pick if given a choice. Sorry, my mind is still, um, spinning a little from what happened back there. Hope you understand. I’m not always this crazy. Scratch that. Yes, I’m usually this crazy, but it comes with the territory.”

“And what territory is that?”

“The territory of being a writer? I don’t know.”

She shrugged. “You sure blame a lot on being a writer.”

“It’s a sickness for which there is no cure but death.”

We checked out the bathroom, which was super nice, and another little study he had adjacent to one of the upstairs bedrooms.

Jackpot.

I couldn’t believe my luck. Like my cross-dressing uncle, David Butler liked to print everything out – from email correspondence to GoogleFace maps to just about anything he could find online.

And I meant anything. Dude had even printed out porn, as well as some tasteful hentai prints, most notably some Ladies vs. Butlers! and R-15 pics.

“All the info we need is in this room,” I told her with a grin.

“You think so?”

“We should just stay here tonight. I’ll go through all this and see what I can uncover. We can get on the road tomorrow. I don’t know how long we should stay here, but considering that there’s a dead body in the guesthouse, I’d like for it to not be very long. In fact, once Grace is well again, I’ll probably send her to the neighbors to mindwipe everybody.”

“Mindwipe?”

“I don’t know how much experience you have on the outside, but I’m guessing you’re kind of like Veronique. You live in the facility and if they need you, they send you out. Is that assumption accurate?”

She nodded.

“Well, as you’ll probably come to realize, you can’t just go around showing off your superpowers out in the real world. People take notice, and as much as I want to expose what’s happening, I’d like to not have it done in a twenty-first-century media frenzy kind of way.”

Dorian looked at me funny. She really was cute, her black hair framing her face and her ‘I’ll put a boot in your ass’ style. I didn’t have much experience with women who looked like her. There weren’t many punk rockers in Connecticut.

“What?” I asked after she didn’t say anything.

“You’re publishing books about this, but you don’t want there to be any media attention? How are you going to get more people to know about it? How are you going to get the right people to know about it?”

“Those are all valid points, and I’m probably going about this the wrong way,” I said.

We took the stairs to the bottom floor where we found Grace and Veronique in the living room, watching us suspiciously. The metal on the floor started to twitch as it lifted into the air.

“She’s with us,” I told Veronique.

“Grace already explained that to me.”

The tension in the room was palpable; I held up my palms. “Let’s just keep it cool here. I know you two have fought each other before –”

“Writer Gideon, I think we should order some pizza for Dorian. That would probably make her happy.”

All of us looked at Grace in time to see her morphing into David Butler and speaking in his voice. “I sure would like some pizza, but I can’t eat any because I can’t digest food any longer.”

I looked in horror from Grace to the other two superpowereds. Veronique and Dorian both started laughing as Grace did her spot-on impression again.

If all it took was pizza and gruesome jokes to make them happy, then we weren’t as bad off as I thought.

Chapter Nineteen: Broken Bird’s Nest

“Are there cherry blossoms in Texas?” Grace asked me as we set the pizza on the table. We’d ordered two pies actually, this time from a local place that specialized in Chicago style pizza. I wasn’t a big deep-dish man, but I wanted to give them a taste of Chicago.

“I think it’s too hot for cherry blossoms,” I told her, handing Dorian a plate.

Veronique had already eaten, which was creepy to say considering that her meal consisted of draining Butler’s decapitated body. But I suppose a meal is a meal. She’d also had a slice of the deep-dish pizza, which she didn’t seem to enjoy.

Grace and Dorian, on the other hand, pretty much finished one whole pie themselves.

There wasn’t a lot of banter between them yet, but I figured this would change after Grace and Veronique introduced Dorian to their favorite TV shows. Or vice versa. There was really no telling how Dorian’s personality would affect the other two.

One thing we did finally get around to talking about was her teleportation ability. When asked how far she could teleport, her only response had been, “Far.”

It was true, she could sketch something and teleport there, but it was difficult, and it had to be an exact replica. This was why she had a smartphone. She would look at pictures on GoogleFace and use them to make her sketches.

Speaking of sketches, Grace had given Dorian’s paintbrush back, much to her delight. She explained that using the paintbrush just felt better to her, even though she could technically perform her ability just by licking her finger.

Or licking anything for that matter.

While we’d been waiting for the pizza, she showed us how her saliva could ignite a piece of paper. It was one of the weirdest abilities I’d ever heard of.

Things cooled off the rest of the night. The three watched TV downstairs while I went through Butler’s papers. Remembering that Grace could touch objects and know something about their history, I called her up to the room after an hour of going through things, and she started helping me.

“How are you doing?” I asked her. She was in my clothing again, her hair braided over to one side.

“I’m good,” she said as she looked through a stack of papers. “We were watching a show about a home in Santa Fe. I really want to visit there.”

Pictures of Santa Fe appeared in my head and I immediately recognized them as being transplanted. They were just too fresh for me to have seen or generated them on my own.

“Cool, we’ll try to stop there then,” I told her.

“Thanks. Maybe there will be cherry blossoms.”

“Probably not, but there will be cacti.”

Grace approached me and placed a hand on my cheek. “Your beard is getting too crazy,” she said sweetly.

“I’ll see what I can do about that,” I told her with a chuckle. “But writers and beards go hand in hand.”

“It looks like a broken bird’s nest.”

“I guess that’s one way to describe it.”

She touched the computer table and her eyes flashed white. “I think we’ll find something if we keep looking. I have a very good feeling about that.”

I sighed as I took her in, admiring her Scandinavian model form, and the way my pants and low-cut top clung to her curves. “You are so interesting to me.”

“I think you’re interesting too,” she said and turned to me, wrapping her arms around my shoulders and leaning in to kiss me. “Want to do it right now?”

“Shit yes I do, but …” I took a deep breath. “We’ve got to keep searching.”

“Fine.” As if she’d never initiated the offer in the first place, she returned to her papers. “Have you checked your sales for today?”

“Not yet. Well, I mean this morning I did, but not since. I’ve been a little preoccupied. I’d also like to talk to Luke and catch him up on what’s happened.” I’d put my phone on silent and hadn’t looked at it in a while.

It took us at least another thirty minutes of going through piles of paper and flirting with each other whenever we got close, but we eventually found something beneath a removable floorboard in the closet: a suitcase sealed with a chain.

“That’s an archaic way to seal something, especially for someone who uses databases.”

But maybe he was on to something, I thought as I brought the case downstairs to Veronique.

“Think you can open this?”

The chains fell off and I thanked her. Veronique and Dorian were still watching something about rebuilding a home in Santa Fe. Dorian sat with her hand covering her mouth as she awaited the final reveal with rapt attention.

I couldn’t help but probe.

“You actually like this, Dorian?”

“What’s not to like?” she said without taking her eyes off the television. “I would love to build a house and have the room that I want and everything my way.”

“Yes,” Veronique said, nodding, “everything your way. Everything everyone’s way. That’s what all this is about. The only people who won’t get their way when we’re finished are them.”

Dorian nodded in agreement. “Gideon told me everything. I still need to think about some things, but I know what you guys are doing is … It’s the right thing to do. I remember the others.”

“I remember the others too,” Veronique said in a low voice.

“Great,” I said and headed back upstairs. I secretly wanted them to bond, especially for Veronique’s sake, so rather than butt in, I felt it best to leave them alone and go see what Butler was hiding.

Today was proof that things could change very fast if we got sloppy. And there might not be a Dorian in the car next time. Hell, if there hadn’t been a Dorian this time, our little narrative would have ended.

I couldn’t forget that; I really needed to keep my head down and not do any more stupid shit.

Famous last words.

As soon as I got back to the study, I set the suitcase on the table and opened it to find a single manila envelope that read, ‘Facilities.’ Inside the envelope were several folders, a treasure trove of information.

There were five main locations, each with their own folder, including the one we had destroyed in New Haven. There was another in New Mexico, two in California, and one in Washington state. Each folder had a series of schematics of the facility, known contractors and food vendors, documents with the acronym AEFL stamped on them, as well as other details such as estimated staff numbers.

“Can you look through all these and save their images to your memory?” I asked Grace.

“Definitely,” she said as I handed her the papers.

“We’ll go to New Mexico tomorrow – to Santa Fe – and plan our next assault from there. Now that there are three of you, this will be a lot easier.”

Boy, did I turn out to be wrong about that.

Of course, there were some sexcapades that night.

Grace and I had to celebrate the fact that we were still alive, and what started out as a cuddle session quickly morphed into both of us pleasuring each other and then going at it, Grace switching her forms as we changed positions.

At one point, we were doing it doggy style and black lines began to stretch across her skin.

“Zebra stripes?” I asked, breathless and losing steam fast.

“Is it okay?” she asked, looking over her shoulder at me. Her face now belonged to that of a famous pop musician.

“It’s … different,” I said as I slid in and out of her, watching the zebra pattern on her ass change color.

She got back on top and morphed into Halle Lawrence, considered one of the hottest actresses around. Even odder, she had been in some of the newest X-Men movies playing Jubilee.

I didn’t know if Grace had pulled this from my psyche, but I was definitely into it.

“You like that?” she asked, her voice now that of the famous actress. “You want it harder?”

“Sure?”

She started gyrating vigorously, like she was trying to screw in a giant bolt with her hips.

No pun intended.

My proof of writerdom was by no means giant – hell, it was average at best – but the way she was grinding into me made me feel like it was larger, like I was the Dirk Diggler instead of the John Hodgman of sci-fi writers.

Once I finished, I rolled to my side, breathing heavily.

She placed her hand on my chest and curled up next to me. It was a proper ending to a potentially horrendous day.

I was suddenly thirsty, so I put on my shorts and went to the kitchen to get some juice.

Veronique and Dorian were still watching television, the light from the screen casting blue arcs over their faces. They both stared at me as I entered the living room.

“He’s thinner than I thought,” Dorian finally said, as if I wasn’t there at all.

“His clothing is a little bulky. I think he used to be a bit heavier but lost some weight and still has the same clothing from before.” Veronique offered me a rare smirk. “You have time for more?”

“More what?” I asked, assuming she couldn’t possibly mean what I thought she meant.

Veronique returned her focus to the television, acting as if she hadn’t said anything. Dorian simply laughed as she waved me away.

Chapter Twenty: The First Grenade

I decided to cook breakfast the next morning. Butler had plenty of food, so I was able to make a pretty good spread of eggs, bacon, toast, English muffins, and grilled potatoes. I was no Chef Boyardee, but it didn’t take much to whip up a decent breakfast, and judging by Grace and Dorian’s response, they liked it too.

Veronique, as usual, didn’t eat anything. She did, however, enjoy her coffee.

We all sat around the kitchen table, and I showed them my sales for the previous day. Damn, did I like seeing that sales dashboard. I also discovered I’d been selling other books as well, most notably How Heavy This Axe? which gave me the impression it may experience a comeback.

By the mercy of the gods, fuck yeah!

Naturally, having an open laptop led to us watching some funny TwitchTubeRed videos that involved cats.

“It would be so nice to own a cat,” Grace said. “I would train it to speak.”

“Train it to speak?” Dorian considered that for a moment. “I mean, I suppose you could do something like that.”

“I never tried communicating with an animal,” the telepath said, “but I believe it is possible. Maybe we can walk around the neighborhood later and find an animal. I would love to try this.”

“Sounds like that would be a pretty funny trip to go on,” I said. “What about you, Veronique, you into it?”

Veronique reached for a single piece of bacon, examined it, and took a bite. Her eyebrows rose, and she nodded. “It would be nice to get out,” she said and reached for a second piece.

I went to the kitchen and brought back more grilled potatoes, dishing them out on their plates, listening as Grace played a video of a baby pug getting tickled.

The window shattered as a grenade sailed into the living room, spewing smoke as it bounced off the sofa.

A trained soldier, Veronique’s first response was to strip every bit of metal she could from any object in the room and fling it toward the back windows, blasting out a ton of glass and letting in more air from outside.

Then I heard the helicopter.

“Get Gideon!” Veronique shouted to Grace as she focused on the attack point, waiting for whoever had struck to make their next move.

The next move came in a wave of bullets, all of which were stopped in midair.

“Now!” she yelled.

I was just starting to duck when Grace grabbed my hand and pushed me toward the garage. One glance over my shoulder and I saw Dorian teleport away just as more bullets cut into the living room.

“We can’t leave Veronique,” I said stupidly to Grace, my voice partially muffled by the noise around us. Just as she had done at the hotel in Stamford, Veronique turned the floating bullets back toward the helicopter, but she didn’t release them yet.

More smoke grenades soared into the living room and were quickly tossed out by Veronique. She had the look of a mad conductor on her face, waiting for the helicopter to get into position so she could unleash her metal orchestra.

And release it she did. As the bird finally got into view, she hurled all the waiting bullets – hundreds of them – at its windows. They plinked ineffectively off the glass, doing nothing to stop the chopper.

A determined look on her face, Veronique pulled the railings off the windows and spun them toward the helicopter blades. Upon impact, the machine tilted sideways. The pilot tried to right it, which only tilted it in the other direction before it finally spun down.

Just as the helicopter crashed into the back yard, the front door of the home exploded open.

“Gideon, listen to me, you have to get down and get away!” Grace grabbed the sides of my head and looked me in the eye. “Do not make me take over your mind! Just take cover, and let us try to handle this,” she said, speaking fast. Her grip around my skull tightened, her thumbs digging into my temples. “I’ll be here, always.”

“Got it, got it, got it,” I said as she led me down the hallway and into the garage, where I found a place to hide. I could hear Veronique tearing metal off walls and ripping apart anything else that had metal in it in an effort to stop the onslaught. This was followed by the sound of more bullets.

The garage was large, and there were a couple motorcycles in the right carport. As Grace left me, two men in black body armor burst inside, their guns trained on her.

And then they became our men.

Their eyes flashed white, and they returned to the melee, now fighting on our side.

Flip as many as you can, I thought to Grace.

I felt like a coward for hiding in the garage; this seemed to be the perennial problem for me regarding our little association. I had no powers, aside from the fact I could write quickly, which was anything but a power.

Can you imagine a superhero whose power it was to write quickly? That one wouldn’t even have made it to the desk of Stan Lee’s assistant’s assistant.

So, like a coward, or possibly like anyone with no combat training and no weapon skills who was fully aware they were in the middle of an assault lead by people with real abilities, I hid behind the goddamn recycling container.

Whatever was going on outside sounded like an Iraq war movie. I was shocked that MercSecure and the FCG had brought this much firepower to a west Austin neighborhood.

Another helicopter announced itself and I heard more weapons being fired, the creak and crunch of metal, men yelling as their own team shot back at them.

The garage door caved in and I almost jumped out of my skin.

I tried to get as low as I could, and I even entertained the idea of putting the recycling container over my head, which was stupid in retrospect but seemed totally viable in the moment, but it worked in Metal Gear Solid!

As I peeked around the side of my hiding spot, I caught a glimpse of who had punched in the garage door.

Angel.

He looked nearly the same as before: well-built, brown hair tangled in his face, lantern jaw, and dark eyes. But there was something different about him too.

His skin looked bad, which I attributed to the explosion on the rooftop of the Rose-Lyle facility. He had survived it, he’d healed, but it had still left its mark.

Angel took a menacing step in my direction, his hands at his sides like he was going to wring my neck. And that was when one of the motorcycles lifted into the air and cracked him in the side of the head.

I looked back at the garage door to see Grace standing there, her eyes blazing white, almost as if they were on fire with white-hot energy. I’d never seen her look that way before, her power curling in wispy tendrils of energy off her face. It was eerie.

Angel pushed himself off the ground, turned to Grace, and flew at her like a torpedo.

“Grace!” I cried as they collided and tore through a wall.

Seconds later, Angel was tossed back into the room.

I’d had enough. As stupid as it was, I got to my feet, dusted my pants off, and turned to Angel, ready for anything. I wanted nothing more than to bash his face in for attacking Grace.

Of course, Angel was already standing by the time I reached him.

“So, we meet again, Gideon,” he said, his dark eyes locked on me.

“That’s right, motherfucker.” I realized cursing had no effect on him, but it did make me feel tougher. “Yeah, we meet again.”

My voice was shaky. I could barely feel my hands even though they were clenched into fists, and there was a weird sensation happening in my chest and stomach.

But I wasn’t going to let true fear stand in my way.

“Do I need to ask this?” Angel pushed his hair out of his face. “Do you really think a normal like you has any chance of stopping someone like me? Do you really think that? Because the way you’re standing, it seems like you’ve actually bought into that myth.”

Rather than answer, I ran toward him with my fist drawn, aiming for his chin.

A jolt of energy swept me to the side, and I turned just in time to see Grace standing behind the wall that had been blown away, her body framed by bits of pink insulation and wooden framework.

“No!” I shouted as Angel flew at her again. This time he didn’t tackle her; instead, he grabbed her and they both rocketed through the ceiling.

Oblivious to the action around me – and the fact that there were loads of security vehicles, two helicopters, men with guns, you name it – I ran out the garage door, my focus on Angel and Grace as they sailed higher into the sky.

Like an airplane petering out, Grace would use her power to toss Angel off his trajectory, but he’d regain it and continue upward until they were hardly a spark on the horizon … until they disappeared completely.

I fell to my knees, and just as I did, three armed men approached me with their weapons drawn.

“Get on the ground! On the ground! Hands behind your head! We will engage! Get on the ground, now!”

I put my hands behind my head like the men told me to. Any courage or confidence I had was up in the sky right now, going god only knew how high.

I watched with utter anguish as Grace and Angel spiraled back down. Angel made a crater as he hit the ground, Grace slung over his shoulder. I didn’t know what he’d done to her up there, but she was completely out.

Looking left, I saw Dorian standing with her paintbrush in her mouth, blood streaked across her forehead and cheeks, Veronique at her feet. Dorian lifted Veronique by the hair to show me her blood-smeared face, eyes rolled into the back of her head.

“You fucking bitch!” I scrambled back to my feet. “You double-crossing dirty …  fuck! Fuck!” I cried out as a black bag was placed over my head. My hands and legs were zip-tied and I was roughly pushed back down. Still in shock, I stumbled forward and tried to run.

Nope. A hand grabbed me and tossed me down again. I felt the muzzle of a gun press into the back of my neck.

“Stay still,” a man growled as the weapon dug into my flesh.

I was completely distraught. I felt like sobbing, I felt like raging, I felt like screaming and trying to wake from this terrible nightmare. I could barely stand when they pulled me up.

My knees buckled, but the men holding me made sure I could walk.

I had been so focused on my own shock and rage that I hadn’t even heard the helicopter land. Sure, I felt the wind beating against the black bag over my face, but I was hardly cognizant of the fact that the chopper was there until I was shoved inside it.

It would be my first helicopter ride, and it was taken completely blindfolded.

Chapter Twenty-One: Mother

Grace! I screamed inside my head as the helicopter lifted into the air. My chest constricted and I felt sobs welling up in my throat, but I suppressed them. Dorian had betrayed us; she’d led them straight to us and we had fallen into their trap, the second trap we’d fallen into over the last two days.

I should have known better … Please, Grace, say something to me, tell me you can hear me. Please.

Nothing, dammit. Nothing.

The helicopter landed about ten minutes later and I was led away from the beating chopper blades. From what I could tell – which was hard to process considering my delirium – I was scanned into one room, then scanned into a second, handed off to another person, and finally led down a long hallway.

“Welcome home,” a man said as he removed the black fabric covering my head.

He was a grizzly mercenary in chiseled body armor with gray lettering that read ‘MercSecure’ across the chest. Bald, with a neatly trimmed mustache, and sharp green eyes. A paid killer.

There was another man with him who wore a balaclava, not unlike a Mexican DEA agent. He held a cattle prod, just in case I got out of hand.

“Where am I?” I managed to ask, my eyes adjusting to the light.

“Move to the right so I can take off your zip cuffs.” I did as instructed, and he used a razor to cut through the plastic.

The two men left, and the door locked on its own.

I was in a space no larger than a closet, a white room with a metal bed and a single sheet on it.

Some type of military holding cell.

There was a toilet completely made of plastic, and just seeing it made something in my stomach turn. At first, I thought I was going to vomit, but it turned out to be number two.

So there I was, in some secret military prison, shitting and sobbing.

Some fucking life.

What was worse, the space was very small, so when I finished, it stank, and I had to wallow in my own filth, literally – no matter how many times I flushed the toilet, the smell lingered.

I hated myself and my weak digestive system.

I hated the bright lights glaring down on me, the camera in the corner …

I glanced around the room, and a sense of utter savageness came over me. Nothing to break the camera with.

All I could do was pace back and forth, aware they were watching me, reeling as pure hopelessness washed over me.

I don’t know how long I paced for – minutes, hours, no idea – but my feet hurt when I finally finished. Time had come to a standstill for me, and since there was no light coming in from outside, I had no idea if it was morning or night.

It has to be night, I thought. I pressed my ear to the door, hoping to get a sense of what was happening in the hallway outside.

Utter silence.

Grace! Grace! Grace! Grace!

“Wake up,” I whispered, sobs welling up in my chest.

Ashamed to have the camera watching me cry like a little bitch, I sat on the floor and turned my back to it, brought my knees up and wrapped my arms around them as I let it all out.

There were legal words for the trouble I was in, but I preferred the colloquial term: I was fucked, royally fucked. My life was as good as over.

I have to get word out, I thought, staring at the white wall. I have to let people know I’ve been captured.

Then again, who would really give a shit if MercSecure got me? Sure, I had some readers, but I’d be long gone, sent to a black site in Egypt or Timbuktu by the time they learned what had happened to me. My parents? They didn’t even know I’d left Connecticut. Luke? Definitely, but he was thousands of miles away.

Grace and Veronique. They’d care, but they were just as screwed as I was.

So I decided to rest. I still had that. I still had my dreams and my imagination. I don’t know how long I ended up sleeping for, but the dreams I had were worth it. Dreams of Grace, Veronique, all of us in Louisiana, driving along the highway, sharing a meal in Austin, the hotel room in Stamford, the cherry blossoms.

The good times.

Never mind the fact that unknown enemies waited on the periphery, ready to strike and stop us from being together. Ready to retire Grace and Veronique and bury me.

Never mind those enemies.

Gideon, wake up.

Grace’s voice was far away, a distant whisper, a gasp of fresh air.

Grace? I sat up, suddenly on high alert.

No response; it had likely been a figment of my imagination. I slapped my cheeks a few times. Get it together.

A slot on the door opened up and a pair of eyes peered in. “Get up, or we’ll get you up,” a man growled.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because she’s ready to meet you now. Get on the floor, on your knees, with your hands behind your back.”

She? I did as instructed. Once I was in place, two men came into the room. One immediately cuffed me and once they pulled me to my feet, still facing away from the door, the second one bagged my head.

“Is it really that big of a deal if I see things?” I asked them as they shoved me into the hallway. “I’m already fucked.”

“Looks like you’re finally starting to understand what’s going on here. Now keep your mouth shut,” the first man said. I recognized his voice. He was the one with the mustache and green eyes who’d put me in the holding cell to begin with.

They walked me through a few rooms and eventually we stopped. After a series of beeps that sounded like some type of scan, we were allowed into another room. Still blindfolded, I was shoved into a chair, and my cuffs were attached to a chain on the floor.

At least that was what it sounded like they were doing.

“She’ll be here in a moment.”

The fuckers left me in the room, my head still covered.

I sat there a good fifteen minutes, my thoughts lost in the black fabric covering my face, my shoulders hunched back slightly due to the way they’d cuffed me.

The door opened and I heard the click-clack of high heels.

“You may remove his head covering,” a woman said, “and leave us alone.”

The black bag was ripped off my head and my eyes twitched as they adjusted to the light. Like my cell, the room was completely white with no features, aside from the table and two chairs in the center.

But that was beside the point.

The woman sitting before me was tall and thin, with brown hair, high cheekbones, and hazel eyes.

A briefcase sat on the table between us.

“Mother?” I asked after the security guard exited the room. My throat was parched and clenched up as I spoke.

“I see you are aware what they call me.” She crossed one leg over the other and shook her head. “I still can’t believe you’re the one who did it.”

“Did it?”

“Turned ‘Grace,’ as you call her. And somehow Veronique too. I have to admit, I’m surprised someone like you would be able to do that.”

“Someone like me?”

She casually wiped her hands together. “You’re nothing; you have no influence, you’re a nobody, and you certainly don’t have any special abilities. We’ve already discovered that. You don’t have the propensity to be superpowered.”

I bit my lip. I honestly didn’t know what to say to her, and my only response at that moment was to yell for Grace in my head.

Grace! Grace! Please hear me!

Grace is not listening, Mother said in my head.

I gasped. “You have the same powers?”

Then I remembered Veronique saying something about this. I soon found out she’d also been right about Mother’s other powers.

Mother squeezed the edge of the table, and the metal began to morph under the pressure.

Snap!

She broke off a corner of the table. Blood oozed from her fingertips as she began crumpling the metal the way one would ball up a piece of paper. Blood smeared on the sharp metal ball she was constructing. Once she was finished, she threw it over her shoulder and showed me the palm of her hand.

Not only had the cut healed, but the blood had reabsorbed. Now there were just slight outlines of red in the lines on her palm.

I never thought much about how a healer would work in real life, and this would have been a great introduction … if it weren’t for the fact that I was being held in some type of black site and the woman sitting before me wanted to kill me, the urge evident in her dark eyes that reminded me of Veronique.

“I get it,” I finally told her.

“I don’t think you do. Your actions have severely taken our operation off track and caused a major distraction. I’m expecting. The new subjects will be born soon.”

Mother wore a tight black dress under a lab coat, and there was no indication that she was with child.

She smirked at the look of disbelief on my face. “You really are one of the stupidest men I have ever come across. Of course I am not physically pregnant. You must have known that Grace and Veronique were grown in a lab. How could you not know that?”

A feeling of animosity bubbled at the back of my throat. “You know what? Why don’t you lighten the fuck up?” I snapped.

“Excuse me?”

He’s back! I don’t know how long ‘Breaking Bad’ Gideon would be around, but I let him say his piece.

“You haul me on a helicopter to wherever the hell we are, put me in a cell for god knows how long, and suddenly you expect me to piece together small hints based on facts I can hardly comprehend? You’re a psychic, you know what’s going on in my mind.” I leaned forward like a badass. “So why don’t you fucking read it?”

If I could have given myself a high five and a slap on the ass at that point, I would have. But that’s in retrospect. What mother did next was one of the more unpleasant things I’d experienced up until that point.

A whispery scream rang out inside my head.

At first it was subtle, static even, but then it increased in volume, followed by something that sounded like a million people biting into a million apples all at once, and then the sound of metal scraping against metal, only amplified.

The cacophony continued, compounding exponentially until I cried out in pain.

“I guess you aren’t as tough as you think. Funny, you put on the tough guy act with Angel once or twice and you think you’re one of us.” She laughed. “You actually think you have power. Don’t you realize what’s going on here – what’s been happening since you kidnapped Grace and Veronique? It’s their power, not yours. You are nothing.” And then, to drive home the insult, she added, “You’re not even a good writer.”

She knows everything that’s going on in your head, she knows your weaknesses, she knows your darkest secrets, I reminded myself.

That’s right, Gideon and this ends now, Mother thought to me.

“Ends?”

She walked over to my side of the table, her heels again clicking on the hard floor.

“I’m most pissed about Grace,” she said, leaning over me. It felt like every hair on my body had stood up, grown two inches, and was trying to pry itself from my skin in an effort to escape her.

“My little Grace; she would have been the most powerful of them all, and you had to go and destroy her mind, take her virginity, show her the life of a pathetic normal like you. I might have let you live if it had only been Veronique. I never liked her much. Too cocky. But Grace … I loved Grace.”

“Loved her?” I looked up at her in astonishment. My lips quivered as I took a deep breath to calm myself. “You kept Grace in solitary confinement her entire life. You’re a piece of shit, you crazy fuck. You didn’t love her.” Anxiety made it hard to get the words out without sounding like slobbering coward. “You … you are the scum of the earth – you and all these fucking people here!”

Her hand wrapped around my neck.

“It’s funny, isn’t it?” she snarled. “Even if I weren’t superpowered, I could kill you right now. My abilities will only make your death that much quicker. And you know what, Gideon Caldwell? I think killing you would be one of the highlights of my year. Do you know how much bullshit I’ve had to go through because of what you did in New Haven?”

Fight back, Gideon.

Grace?

Mother tightened her grip around my neck as I called Grace’s name again inside my head. Grace! Please!

Fight back, Gideon!

Her voice was miles away, light years away, in a completely different galaxy. Yet I could hear her perfectly, I could feel her, I knew she was there.

As Mother squeezed my neck even harder, I jerked my feet back and somehow managed to fall sideways, even with my wrists still chained to the floor. She kicked me in the stomach, brought her foot back, and kicked me again.

I was wheezing now and tasted blood in my mouth.

“It seems your little cries for help have woken Grace up. She imprinted on you. I can’t believe she imprinted on you. You! She’s only able to imprint on one person and she chooses you!”

I still wasn’t sure what it meant that Grace had imprinted on me. The first time she’d used that word, I thought it meant that she could just speak inside my head, or that we had bonded over sex. It was shortly after we’d become intimate that she first mentioned the term.

But could it mean something more?

Mother grabbed me by the back of the neck and lifted me up, seat and all. “You really think this is going to work out in your favor somehow, don't you?”

“I don’t know what I think, lady, I’m just taking it one day at a time.”

I wish I could have been Clint Eastwood saying that last line, but I was Gideon Caldwell, and it didn’t sound nearly as tough as it should have.

Mother offered me a placid smile. “I guess I shouldn’t be so angry. We have you now. We have Veronique and Grace, and neither of them will be around much longer. Grace, we still need for a little while, at least until we can replicate her, but as for Veronique … goodbye.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Macho Gideon had quietly let himself out of the room; Writer Gideon was back and ready to piss his pants.

“How would you like to die? Have you ever thought about that?” she asked as she walked around the table and sat again. “I’ve been thinking of how we should get rid of you. We have complete jurisdiction over you, and there really is no point in trying you before a court of your peers. Or even a military court for that matter. It takes too much time. That’s one thing you’ll know about me – well, you won’t know me for very long, but you’ll recognize this about me for now: I don’t like to waste time.”

I swallowed hard.

“I suppose putting you in a room with Angel and letting him finish the job would be good. But first, we have to get those books unpublished. I’m not stupid enough to think that the people who have downloaded it already won’t still have them on their devices, but at least we can prevent future people from reading it. So, let’s do that.”

“What?” I mumbled.

She pulled a small laptop out of the briefcase on the table. “Do I need to say it again?  Books. Unpublished. I figured you could help me log in and do it.”

The laptop powered up and Mother turned it around to face me.

“Oh, that’s right, you can’t use your hands. Well, I’ll do it for you then.”

She moved to my side of the table again and placed a hand on my shoulder. Her eyes flashed white and …

Something came over me.

It felt like someone was playing tug-o-war with my brain matter. Mother’s power would advance, then another force would respond, pulling it back the other way.

The shriek of a thousand violins playing different notes all at once came with each pull of my psyche. The noise would dissipate and then reappear as it moved to the other side of my skull cavity.

By the time she took her hand off my shoulder, I was completely exhausted, my thoughts like hot knives as they began to repopulate. I gasped, looked up at her, and saw her white eyes fizzle out.

“In that case…” She closed the laptop and tucked it under her arm. The door popped open, and Angel stepped into the room.

Chapter Twenty-Two: Incest is Best?

“He’s being difficult,” she told Angel as he approached. She placed a hand on his cheek, and Angel moved in to kiss her. It was a long kiss, a fucking gross and sloppy movie kiss, and by the end of it, I was left wondering what the shit was going on.

And that was when bad boy Gideon decided to return. I didn’t know what it was about Angel that triggered the ballsy version of myself, but my mouth came unhinged pretty quickly. “So that’s what went wrong with you,” I told the scar-faced fucker.

“Come again?” he asked as Mother stepped aside.

“You’re her offspring – lab-grown, sure, but you’re related to her.”

“Yes?”

Mother shook her head. “You wouldn’t understand my relationship – nor my fascination – with Angel.”

I laughed. “Maybe, but I do know the definition of incest, and now I know the definition of motherfucker.”

Angel dropped his hand to Mother’s ass and patted it. “Should I handle him for a bit?”

She smiled. “Sure, but don’t kill him yet. I still need to deal with his little self-publishing empire. Keep his brain intact. And don’t beat up his face too much. That’s gruesome.”

She left the room, heels clacking against the floor as she walked away. Just the sound of that pissed me off.

Angel turned to me and cracked his knuckles.

I glared at him, still not sure where my sudden confidence was coming from but running with it.

“I have to admit, Gideon,” he said, walking over to the table. “You’ve made it much further than I thought you would.”

He placed a single hand under the table and flipped it up, smacking me in the face. My nose gushed blood, and before I could try to wipe it on my sleeve, he grabbed the chain linking me to the floor and broke it in half. Then he gripped the back of my chair and threw me into the wall. The impact knocked the wind out of me, and my chin hit the floor as the chair skidded out from under me.

Hang on, Gideon.

I didn’t know if the voice was Grace’s or mine. I was too shaken up, especially when Angel wrapped one arm under mine, and tossed me up to the ceiling. I didn’t break through or anything, but fuck, if cracking my head on the hard surface didn’t rattle my brain.

“More?” he asked, when I crashed back down.

Wheezing now, I still wasn’t able to get a full breath in. My body ached, and my nose continued gushing blood. I spit some of it out; a graffiti splatter of crimson.

“Are you ready to help Mother, or should I continue?”

“You still call her Mother even though you’re fucking her?” I considered that for a moment. America once had a vice president who did that. “Okay, that’s okay, I guess.” I wiped more blood on my sleeve.

“You don’t know when to shut up, do you?” He put his foot on my throat. “Last chance.”

“That’s enough, Angel,” Mother said, re-entering the room. “We’ll have to work on Grace before we work on him. She’s the one preventing me from going any further.”

“Are you sure I can’t do it?” he asked, his foot pressing harder into my neck.

“That’s a primitive way to kill him, darling.” She moved over to us and took his hand. Angel removed his foot and stepped beside her, wrapping an arm around her waist. “I promise you’ll be the one to kill him, but not before I get the information I need. Think of a better way though; something that will last longer and hurt more. Snapping his neck is too quick.”

“You two are some sick fucks,” I whispered through the blood dripping from my nose.

Mother turned to me. “He’s good with insults, but not much else.”

She walked over to the door and knocked on it twice.

“To be continued,” she told me as the mustached merc entered the room with a black bag. He moved over to me, sat me up, and shoved it over my face.

Another man joined him and together, they took me back to my cell.

Once I was there, they had me stand with my back to the door so they could uncuff me. They kept the black covering on my head and left the room, slamming the door behind them.

I took the covering off and found a tray of food on the bed – an apple with a bite taken out of it, and a piece of bread with a loogie on top.

There was also a glass of water that looked suspiciously yellow, so I poured it out, flushed the toilet twice, and waited for the toilet water to fill up.

Yep. I drank toilet water and used some of it to clean the blood off my lips and face.

It wasn’t too bad and since I was hungry, I devoured the apple and even ate around the glob of snot and spit on the bread.

I was probably going to die soon.

“You are probably going to die soon.”

There, I said it. And I was ninety percent certain at the time that it was going to happen. So the question then became: How did I want to go out?

Gideon from a few weeks ago – hell, Gideon from a few hours ago – would have curled up on the bed and cried until he had to drink more toilet water to replenish his tears.

“And what good would that do?”

So, I decided to accept my fate. If this was my last day on earth, and I was likely to die today or tomorrow at the hands of a superpowered motherfucker …

I laughed.

Angel really was a superpowered motherfucker, in every sense of the phrase.

That got my author brain rolling.

Would that make an interesting story? I thought as I lay back on the bed. A superpowered child who came from the seed of a kinda hot – not going to lie, not on my deathbed – woman who groomed him into becoming her sex object.

It would definitely rile some folks, that was for sure. If the sexes had been reversed, it would almost be a gymnast in a controversial Olympic coach biopic. But making it a woman as the older figure changed the dynamics.

Oedipus as a superpowered guy struggling with the fact that he’s tagging his mom?

Damn, I thought as I lay there, I really need to get this idea down.

I’d definitely add stats to the book and some type of game mechanics. That was my schtick. Maybe every mother he fucked gave him more power and he could level up.

“That’s one powerful motherfucker,” I whispered, cracking up at my own joke. What I wouldn’t give to share the idea with Luke, just so he could give me a WTF-are-you-talking-about face.

I could see it now.

The book begins from young Angel’s perspective. Let’s call him Angel Rex, in reference to Oedipus, of course. I’d put a Hamlet reference in there too, but shit, I would have probably lost half my audience on just the Oedipus reference.

Or maybe.

I didn’t know how many sci-fi fantasy readers are big into archetypes.

Anyway, it didn’t matter. This was my vision, and it would start with young Angel training.

I pictured him training, kicking ass, beating up MercSecure, then mommy dearest coming and patting him on the head, rubbing the muscles on his neck and chest, maybe putting some conditioner in his hair.

She waits until he’s older, of course, … well, old enough to get a decent-sized boner. So, let’s say fourteen. No, fifteen – don’t want to gross people out too much or turn them away.

“This is such a stupid story,” I whispered.

Go on …

Nope, not Grace’s voice, just my own dumb ass.

Plot the story, escape from here.

“Grace?” I opened my eyes and looked around the room. “Are you there?”

Are you there? I thought.

Please, just think something for me.

It was her!

Grace!

Please, just think something for me.

I got a sudden feeling that they were hurting her, somewhere near me, and that my crazy thoughts were soothing her in some way.

In that case …

I envisioned a scene in which Angel first learns to fly. He’s sitting with Mother in his room – no, her room, on her bed, and it’s the first time she touches him.

“You are one bad mother …” I whispered.

Well, fifteen-year-old Angel gets a raging boner and that’s just about the time his flight abilities take shape. The superpowered motherfucker comes with just one touch on his inner thigh and blasts off Mother’s bed, through the ceiling, and out into the stratosphere.

He hovers up there for a bit, looking at all the lights below and realizing he didn’t have pants on and that he’d made a sticky mess of his pubes.

Got to trim those, Angel thinks.

Yeah, I’d definitely put that line in, something a little funny and awkward.

This is such a funny story.

Grace again.

It’s dedicated to you, Grace.

So I thought some more about the story, hoping to entertain her as best I could.

Who was the bad guy? Child Protective Services? For sure. They have guys in black – because what police state doesn’t have guys in black? – trying to take him from Mother. Thing is, CPS is also planning to exploit him, turn him into a worker at the secret gloryhole they run in Malaysia.

Why Malaysia?

And why a gloryhole? No idea. Just seems like a good twist.

As for the location, it could be any Southeast Asian country, could be anywhere. Just want to keep it interesting, right?

So CPS is trying to take Angel away from Mother so they can turn him into a sex worker. That’s it! CPS, while they seem like the good guys, are actually the bad guys. The twist!

And where are the stats? I imagine Luke asking me.

Well, like I said, he gets a point for every mother he fucks, but since he only fucks his own mother, she has to change forms to trick the game into giving him stats.

Wait, the game doesn’t know?

Dammit, Luke, I’m making this up as I go along, don’t complicate things for me!

And she’s a shifter?

You bet your ass she’s a shifter, as shifter as American Pie, whatever that means. Just like Grace.

Just like you, Grace.

I yawned. I didn’t know how I could get so tired working out my own story, but I was definitely starting to drift off. I stretched on the hard bed, trying to get comfortable.

Damn, did my body hurt.

I was just about to imagine how Angel frees himself from CPS and is rewarded with a little ass play from Mother when I saw a flash in the room.

Dorian appeared, a look of abject fear on her face.

“It worked,” she said.

“Dorian?” I gulped, unsure if I was dreaming or not.

“We need to go, Gideon, now.”

“Why should I –”

But Dorian didn’t answer. She reached out, touched my hand, and we disappeared.

Chapter Twenty-Three: Back and Forth

Note to reader: teleportation is not for the faint of heart. It literally feels as if every fiber from your body is being stripped away, shot through some type of intergalactic portal, gargled by a guy who’s missing a couple of teeth, and reassembled on the other side.

All this to say, Dorian and I materialized in what looked like a hotel room.

My first reaction was to run to the nearest restroom and vomit up the apple and bread I ate earlier. But I kept it down, my urge to vomit replaced by sheer anger at Dorian.

“You betrayed us!” I shouted, my voice wavering. No, I hadn’t put two and two together yet, and I still wasn’t sure if this was real or not.

It could be a dream, I thought. It must be a dream. Kill her!

Dorian raised an eyebrow at me. “I just saved you.”

“I know what I saw,” I told her, raising my fists. Not that trying to strike her would do any good; still, the gesture felt right.

“Try it,” she said, lifting her paintbrush to her mouth. “But before you do, think about what I just did.”

“I … I …”

Maybe she was right. Why would she have teleported me out of there if …

“But I know what I saw,” I finally said, lowering my fists.

We were definitely in a hotel room; another look around confirmed that for me. But I didn’t know where the hotel was, and weakness from either the teleportation or the fact that Angel had pretty much handed me my ass had started to set in.

“Just hear me out,” Dorian said. She took a step closer to me. There was something behind her dark eyes that I instantly trusted, even though every instinct in my body was screaming for me not to believe her.

I saw what she’d done. End of story.

“I know what you’re thinking.”

“You don’t know anything.”

“You don’t play the best tough guy, did you know that?” She let her ponytail out and studied me a moment. Then she flexed her fingers, widening the elastic band and swiftly tied her hair into a new ponytail. She was still in her post-goth punk rock getup: a leather jacket, black shorts over fishnet tights, and black boots.

“I go back and forth between being convincingly aggressive and not at all,” I said with a sigh. “But that’s beside the point. What happened back at Butler’s house?”

“It was Veronique and Grace’s idea. We’d already discussed it.”

“Discussed what? No one told me shit!” I kicked the bed for emphasis, which only served to hurt my foot. Damn, I wish I had superhuman strength.

“If for some reason they came for us, I was to act like I was on their side, that you three had kidnapped me. And that’s what I did. When they start attacking us, I teleported to one of the upstairs rooms. I waited for a moment and then burst out through the window. Why did you think I was bloody?”

Was she bloody? I tried to remember if I’d seen blood on her but couldn’t recall. The only thing I could remember was Veronique’s bloody face as Dorian presented her to me.

“Why did you burst out of the window?”

“I thought it would look more convincing. As soon as I got to the ground, I started fighting on their side. There was nothing I could do.”

“Why didn’t you teleport us out of there?”

“Do you know how much energy it takes for me to teleport? I can only do it in spurts, and by spurts, I mean it’s usually one or two times before I get burned out.”

I thought of her stats. “I wonder if that’s something I can adjust …”

Then another thought came to me: All of my stuff – all of my life, pretty much – had been at Butler’s place, which meant they’d most likely taken it as evidence.

That meant they could get my laptop …

But if that was the case, they wouldn’t have needed me.

It must have been destroyed in the attack. It made sense; there’d been walls crumbling down and explosions inside the house.

My laptop had been on the table. I remembered that happy moment we were having when we were attacked. It was like we were a family or something, and then suddenly the world exploded, and the men came running in with their weapons, and the helicopters and the flying motherfucker appeared.

Damn, it felt good calling Angel a motherfucker.

I wasn’t normally that vulgar, but the nickname just fit so damn well.

I sat down on the bed as Dorian continued her story. “I promised them I would get you out first. That I would go for Veronique next, and then Grace.”

“Are you serious?”

The look of conviction on her face told me that she was indeed serious. The thing was, why would she go to all this effort just to double cross me again? It didn’t seem viable.

I relaxed a little. Boy, did I relax a little. I’d been on swords and razor blades for the last twenty-four hours at least.

“I think you could use some rest.”

“I need some food and a shower and … I need a phone.”

“I still have a phone,” she said.

I asked for her phone, and she pulled it out of one of her jacket pockets. I turned it off and took the battery out.

“Why did you do that?”

“If they haven’t already found out that I’m gone, they’ll find out soon. And they’ll know there’s only one person on this earth who could get me out of a room like that, and it’s you.”

She laughed a little. “There are more than one.”

“More than one who can teleport?”

“More people with superpowers who could probably get you out. That’s what this is all about, right? You’re going to expose them. Grace told me, you told me, and even Veronique believed it. Veronique never believed in anything when I knew her; she was a nihilist’s nihilist.”

“I don’t know if I’d call her a nihilist, but she was definitely pretty stiff when we first met. Okay, so let’s see where we are. I need to get my bearings straight.”

She sat on the bed next to me. “I’m guessing you have questions.”

“I have a ton of questions, but I’ll keep it simple. First of all, where are we?”

“Austin.”

“And where did we come from? I mean, where is the military base that we are at?”

“Camp Mabry, also in Austin.”

“And Grace and Veronique are there as well?”

Dorian nodded. “But I don’t know how long they’ll be there. We need to get Veronique first; that’s what they told me to do.”

“When were you all having this conversation? I don’t seem to remember it ever happening. And why Veronique first?”

“We had it while you were upstairs going through the guy’s stuff after I killed him. And Veronique is more helpful to us than Grace would be, that’s why.”

“I beg to differ, and I’m not saying I’m having déjà vu here, but I literally just went through this a couple days back.”

“Went through what?”

“A breakout. We rescued Veronique. Just Grace and me.”

“Did you rescue her from a military facility?”

“No, not exactly, but paramilitary forces showed up. And that’s another thing – I don’t want to have to rescue anyone again after this. I think it’s taken twenty years off my life trying to bust people out. We have to be smarter. We’re not supposed to be captured by these people.”

“If we had been smarter, we would have left Butler's place.”

It dawned on me at that very moment: It was Butler’s death that triggered the assault. It had to be.

If Dorian didn’t say anything …

“Before we continue, I just need to clarify something. Was it Butler who triggered that assault? Did it have something to do with his death?”

She nodded. “We should have thought about that. The men I left with were talking about it, and yes, he had a fingerprint scanner that he pressed every night near his bed. He didn’t press it, and that was supposed to trigger an alarm and a release of all the data he’d accumulated. But the lawyer who held the data for Butler was also working for them – for Mother. So the lawyer told them about it, and they made their assault.”

I exhaled slowly. I had no idea how this was going to play out, but our prospects looked worse with each passing minute.

“I have a little money in cash,” she told me. “Actually, I have a lot of money. One of the things I did when I went upstairs during the attack was take some of the cash you guys were hoarding. I think it’s about five thousand dollars, maybe more.” She reached into her pocket and took out a large roll of cash bound with a rubber band.

“Good, that should help some.”

“I need some time to rest before I teleport again, and you look like …” She smiled, showing her dimples as she did so. “You know what? You look bad, but I’m surprised you’re even alive. I wanted to come sooner. I even tried to teleport there and back, but I hit the wrong cell, and I had to recharge. It takes a lot more, if not all, of my energy to teleport. If I could just paint dinosaurs with gun arms out of kinetic energy and send them off, I would; I’d be able to do that all day. But teleportation is hard.”

“How will we get Veronique then?”

“She’ll be easier to get than you because you were in a long holding block. There were other cells, and as I said, I exhausted myself checking some of them. Back and forth. It was brutal. The hardest part of my teleportation was getting into the complex, and then I moved through some of the cells and got out before I lost energy. I got lucky this last time when I found you.”

“You aren’t the only one,” I said, cracking a grin at her. “Angel had just beat the living shit out of me, and Mother and Angel were planning to kill me not long after.”

I explained to her what had happened. (Don’t you just love it when books do that so you don’t have to reread everything?)

Dorian’s face scrunched up. “Damn, I didn’t know they were fucking.”

“You and me both. Anyway, they wanted to get into my publishing account and take down my books. But they weren’t able to because Grace intervened. I don’t know how she did it, and …” I took a deep breath. “Never mind. First, Veronique. That’s our first target.”

“She’ll be easy to find. In fact, I already know where she is on the base. They only have one holding cell made of plastic and it was recently constructed just for her.” She stuck her paintbrush in her mouth and quickly made a schematic of the base, drawing a big ‘X’ where they were holding Veronique. Her map fizzled as it moved to the wall and burnt into the wallpaper, filling the room with a sickly sweet stench. “We’ll get her out; just give me a couple hours of downtime.”

Chapter Twenty-Four: YOLO

The first thing I did was take a long, hot shower. It wasn’t the nicest hotel, and I hadn’t yet looked outside to see where we were exactly. Not quite a roach motel, but there was definitely something in the way the room looked overall (the walls, the furniture, the carpet) that told me it was pretty run down.

But it was better than my cell back at Camp Mabry. No doubt about that.

I made a mental list of things we needed: a mini USB cable, food, and clothing. I still wore the vomit-stained Houston Texans T-shirt I’d picked up back at the mall in Longview. I definitely had some swamp ass going on, and my jeans were stained with my own blood.

I looked like I was auditioning for a role in a HuluFlix dystopian movie.

So as soon as I got out of the shower and got dressed again in my dirty clothes, I asked Dorian if she was ready to go out.

“Yeah, for sure,” she said from her position on the bed. “I’d love to eat and get some new clothes.”

Dorian had more of a personality than Veronique, and she wasn’t as naive and innocent as Grace. My guess was that she’d been out a lot more, especially since it would be hard to keep a teleporter locked up.

“We could both use some new clothing,” I told her, looking down at my shitty jersey.

“Here.” Dorian tossed me the rubber-banded roll of money. Damn, it looked gangster.

“I’m the bank manager now?”

She raised an eyebrow at me. “That’s how it worked with Veronique and Sabine – I mean, Grace – right?”

“Something like that, but only because I had more experience on the outside.”

She stood, smoothed her hands over her black jacket, and said something about the temperature in the room.

“I thought it was hot too,” I told her. “But that jacket must make it worse for you.”

“Yes, but I’m wearing it as a disguise … sort of,” she said.

“A disguise?”

She took off her jacket to reveal full sleeve tattoos on both arms. You name it, she had it – skulls, dragons, dice, Japanese waves, Sailor Jerry’s iconography – and somehow, she’d managed to fit it all on both arms, but there was nothing past her wrists.

I’d never noticed it before, likely because she was always wearing that jacket.

“You don’t like them?” She pulled the jacket back on.

“They’re hot as hell. I’ve never been brave enough to get tattoos.”

“It’s not that painful.” said the super hot punk rock goth emo you-name-it sub-genre chick in the leather jacket, tank top, and fishnet stockings. “Only problem is, I’m a little more obvious when I’m showing them off,”

Sure, it’s the tats, I thought.

“What?” she asked as I gave her a funny look.

“You know what? Never mind. Keep the jacket for now. We’ll get a long sleeve shirt or something when we go shopping. Or maybe a lighter jacket. I know it’s hot as balls out there. I never thought I’d miss New England so much.”

“Hot as balls?”

“An expression about testicles and how spicy they can get in the heat. At least I think it’s about testicles. It could be about actual balls. Beach volleyballs are pretty hot.”

Rather than go down that rabbit hole, I busied myself making sure the door was locked behind us and we headed downstairs. It was a creaky old hallway, and we passed only two other rooms before we hit the stairs.

The receptionist, an older Mexican woman with gray streaks in her hair, greeted us with a grunt. She gave me a double glance, having not remembered seeing me go up to the room.

“You were in the restroom,” I told her. Satisfied with my answer, she shrugged and went back to her smartphone.

Which gave me an idea.

“Hey, so I’m going to be honest with you,” I said to the receptionist. “We’re kind of off the grid and we need a cable.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out forty dollars. I knew the mini USB to mini USB cable couldn’t cost more than five bucks, but I wanted to give her an incentive to cooperate.

“Okay,” she said, looking at me suspiciously.

“All I need is for you to order us a mini USB to mini USB cable,” I told her. She was a Millennial, which meant she was in her 50s or 60s, which meant she definitely knew how to quickly order something like that. “Do you have EBAYmazon?”

She snorted. “Who doesn’t?”

“Yeah, that’s a good question. Okay, just type in ‘mini USB to mini USB.’”

She pulled up the app and did as I instructed. When she tapped the purchase button, a notification popped up telling her it would be delivered within two hours.

“Perfect,” I said and slid the money over to her. “Also, do you know where we could go shopping and get some food?”

She eyed me skeptically for a moment, then finally said, “You’re on South Congress Avenue. We’re about a mile away from more expensive food and shopping. If you want something cheaper, you can go to South First Street.”

“Can you call a cab for us? Sorry for the inconvenience, we just don’t have phones.”

“Do you need a phone too?”

“Actually, that’s not a bad idea,” I said and plunked three hundred more dollars on the counter. “Anything that doesn’t require much registration. A smartphone and a couple of prepaids too would be best.”

She found what we needed online, verified that it would serve our purposes, and ordered it. “Now, about that cab …” She whistled and a heavyset Mexican guy with dark eyes came from the back room. “Listen, mijo, I want you to drive these people around and they will pay you.”

“Sí, Abuela,” he said.

“Make sure to take good care of them.”

“Sí, Abuela.”

“Does he speak English?” I asked.

He looked at me like I was an idiot. “Sí.”

I glanced at Dorian and back to the grandmother behind the counter.

So that was how we ended up with a chaperone that looked like a member in a drug cartel.

He led us out to his car, which I wish I could say was some type of badass lowrider, but it was actually a Honda Civic with aftermarket hubcaps, and like a gentleman, he even opened the door for Dorian. She got in the back seat and I scooted in next to her. I would have tried to sit in the front, but he had a garbage bag full of something up there. I couldn’t tell if it was closed, and it definitely wasn’t food, so the back seat would do.

“You want to go to South Congress?” he asked me.

Having no idea about Austin or what was available, I just nodded. “As long as some food’s there, that’s fine by us. Also, I’m Gideon.”

“I’m Diego,” he said with a grunt, not unlike his grandmother’s.

“My name is Dorian.”

He looked at her in the rearview mirror for a moment, “So, you want cheap food or expensive food?”

“Cheapish,” I told him. “What do you recommend?”

“Torchy’s Tacos, not too cheap, not too expensive, very good.”

I noticed he had a Longhorns ball cap sitting on the dashboard. “Hey, do you mind if I wear your ball cap?” I asked. “I’ll be honest with you; I’m trying to keep a low profile.”

He started the car and shrugged. “Fine by me, but don’t mess it up; don’t get it all sweaty.” He tossed the hat into the back seat.

His car smelled like burnt vanilla, mostly because of the Little Trees vehicle air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror. Abuela was right; it really wasn’t very far from the hotel. And looking over my shoulder at the place we were driving away from, I wondered how Dorian had found it anyway.

The hotel was completely run down on the outside, its parking lot filled with potholes. It was across from some private Catholic university called St. Edward’s University, and seemed incongruous to the manicured campus across the street.

If I’d had my smartphone, I may have looked some of the stuff up just to see more about where we were, but my little research binge would have to wait.

I put the Longhorn hat on, and we continued down the street to the sound of Tejano rap.

I was starting to like Tejano music, and a little rap in there really added something to the mix. It was upbeat, and even though I had no idea what they were talking about, it made me feel happy, a little positive. True, I’d disliked it on our drive to Austin, but my little stint in military prison had made everything on the outside radiate with positive energy.

And boy, did I need some positive energy at that moment.

We stopped in front of Torchy’s and got out of the car.

Diego pointed to a side street, told us he’d park there and wait for us. The shopping district was about a block away from Torchy’s, so I told him that would work.

With the baseball hat covering as much of my face as I could get it to cover, we entered the hip Mexican restaurant.

Their logo was a cute devil with a yellow pitchfork. All of their tacos were named, and I ordered two Trailer Parks, which were tacos with fried chicken, green chilies, and poblano sauce on a flour tortilla. Dorian went with a taco called Brushfire, which was Jamaican jerk chicken with grilled jalapeños, mangos, and sour cream. It looked yummy as hell.

“Order two,” I told her. “Actually, three. Fuck, I’m hungry. Chips and queso too. Two drinks,” I said to the bearded and tatted dude at the counter.

The food came, and by the time it reached our table, my mouth was watering. I practically inhaled the first taco. It was the taste of freedom. Just a few hours ago, I’d been served a half-eaten apple and a loogied-up slice of bread. Now I was eating like Pablo Escobar.

I hadn’t even been a prisoner for more than two days, and I suddenly had a hatred for the prison system, even though I understood its purpose. I guess experiencing anything will do that to you; it levels you, makes you realize how much you have in common with other people.

But the tacos. Goddamn, they were good.

Dorian ate one and a half of her tacos, and I finished the other half, apologizing for eating like such an animal.

“It’s fine, I’m sure you weren’t fed very well in there.”

“Let’s get some new threads,” I said.

I used a spoon to scoop what was left of the queso into my mouth, and we left Torchy’s Tacos, heading down the street.

I wasn’t one to shop at high-end boutiques, but right now I could use anything, including some new underwear.

We entered the first shop and started looking around. There were some douchy shirts here, so that wasn’t going to do, but they did have a pretty extensive collection of undergarments. Unfortunately, the only underwear I could find cost twenty bucks a pair.

“They’re made of Lenzing MicroModal,” the female sales associate told us. “It’s so soft!”

“I want some too,” Dorian said. I watched as she chose two thongs and a pair of boy shorts.

“Yep, get whatever you want,” I said as I grabbed three more pairs myself. So I spent nearly one hundred and fifty dollars on underwear. Sue me.

We went into the next boutique, which mostly had women’s clothing.

“Get whatever you’d like, and get a few extra shirts,” I told her. My fuck, did it feel good to say stuff like that. I’d never gone into a store before and just told someone to get whatever they wanted. Yet this had happened several times now since meeting Grace.

It really felt good to be rich, even if I was hood rich.

She picked out some T-shirts and asked me which ones I liked.

“RIP Willie Nelson is pretty sweet. The Leslie shirt too.”

Apparently, Leslie was a cross-dressing Austin homeless man who died just around the time I was born. The shirt just had a silhouette of him (her?) standing over the words ‘Local Hero.’

She showed me a shirt that said ‘Magnolia Cafe, Sorry We Are Open.’

“Get that one too.”

I had a feeling we’d need to get clothing for Veronique, so I wanted to have extra shirts around.

“My jacket is so hot,” she reminded me as she went to the jacket section.

The female sales associate had heard what I said earlier and started telling Veronique about a form-fitting, light ribbed sweater. “It was designed for summer weather in mind,” she said. “For people who like to cover up. And the buttons on the front allow for a little air, if you get my drift.”

Dorian got that one too, as well as a shirt that said, ‘Keep Austin Weird.’ Four shirts, a ribbed sweater designed for summer weather (whatever the hell that meant), and two pairs of black form-fitting jeans later, we were down about five hundred dollars.

Next stop was a men’s shop, and while I wasn’t going for the dapper-mustache-in-tweed-jacket look – of which they had plenty of options – I was able to find some T-shirts and some good Levi’s. I chose one T-shirt that paid homage to the short-lived hockey team Austin once had, the Austin Ice Bats.

I decided to get two pairs of jeans, knowing full well that I might not be able to get clothes for a while. I also got some fancy-schmancy socks – argyle, with the word YOLO written on the heel, for some reason.

If ever there was a word to define my life choices …

The clothing cost about two fifty, which was at least cheaper than Dorian’s purchase, but still pricey. We were burning right through that five thousand.

But, YOLO, right?

Dorian and I were just about to head back to our car when I saw the candy store. I had to partake, and I was glad I did because the candy was delicious. We got about fifty dollars’ worth of candy, which was a joke, and which no man or woman should ever purchase.

But I needed something. Yet as much as I tried to hide my anguish from earlier with shopping, I knew retail therapy wasn’t going to cure the after-effects of what I had just gone through.

Candy would help though.

Diego took us back to the hotel. I tipped him sixty dollars and gave him all the candy. We’d already eaten enough to get the shakes. As we passed his abuela at the counter, she told me that the USB cable and the phones had arrived. I took the package from her, and we hurried up to our room.

“Glad we’re back,” I said after I shut the door and locked all the bolts. “I know you need some rest, so why don’t you just lie down for a moment, and I’ll plug in and see what I can fiddle around with?”

Dorian set her packages down. “Do you mind if I change?”

“No, definitely, do whatever you’d like.”

Little did I know that meant she would take off her pants and jacket right in front of me. I started to look away, but she only laughed. “It’s not like you haven’t seen a woman naked before, right?”

“I … sure, do whatever.”

“You already said that.” She peeled her underwear off and changed into one of her new thongs. Then her top came off and I gulped. I didn’t know when I’d become such a horny bastard, but what could I do?

She put on the RIP Willie Nelson shirt and lay down on the bed.

“Good, I’m glad you’re comfortable.”

“I thought you’d like that.”

“Yeah, sure, who wouldn’t? But let’s get down to business here.”

I plugged into her neck, and the password screen came up. “Shit,” I whispered as she turned on the TV. I was just about to panic when I saw that the password had autofilled.

Thank you, autofill.

Passwords were such a bitch.

Due to an increase in cybercrimes, everything these days required some intense password that involved at least ten digits, and companies had started rolling out a rule that you couldn’t use the same password for another login. There was even a group that had been put together that checked to make sure you weren’t doing this – of course, it was all part of the FCG’s six-billion-dollar war on cybercrimes.

Point is, I hate passwords.

I went straight to her abilities folder and opened up the teleportation subfolder, creating a shadow box with four dials.

I looked at the options for a moment, wondering if I could adjust the Recharge Speed down a little bit and increase the Restoration Speed. Hovering over the option told me that it decreased the amount of time she needed to recharge from teleporting. Also, we would possibly have to increase the radius of her teleportation ability, especially if we needed to move a larger object.

At first, the options looked like this:

Tele-Sphere Radius: 2

Conscious Spatial Awareness: 10

Recharge Speed: 6

Restoration Speed: 6

By the time I had finished, they looked like this:

Tele-Sphere Radius: 3

Conscious Spatial Awareness: 10

Recharge Speed: 5

Restoration Speed: 6

“I feel a lot warmer.” Dorian looked at me. “Touch my head and you’ll see what I mean.”

I did and noticed it was a little warmer than it should have been.

“My heart, too.” She moved my hand down to her chest, directly over her heart.

It was thumping rapidly now.

“Okay, just breathe for me and let me play around a little bit longer.”

I selected her energy ability and took a look at it.

Main: Ergokinesis

Overcharge: 6

Charge Capacity: 4

Charge Integrity: 3

I was about to close the shadow box when I remembered that her Overcharge was at two the last time I saw it. Now it was at six.

So, either adjusting the Restoration Speed or the Tele-Sphere Radius had increased her Overcharge, which was affecting her vitals.

Of course, I tried to turn down Overcharge just to see if it would work, and it did not. I then turned down Charge Capacity by one point and asked her how she felt.

Main: Ergokinesis

Overcharge: 5

Charge Capacity: 3

Charge Integrity: 3

Her eyes lit up. “That’s a lot better. What did you do?”

“I decreased the amount of time it takes you to recharge so you can teleport larger objects. Doing so caused your Overcharge dial to increase on its own, which is akin to heating you up, from what I can tell. To fix this, I decreased your Charge Capacity, which means you won’t be able to make objects as large as you had been.”

She considered that for a moment. “But making larger objects may be able to help us more,” she finally said.

“I agree, and adjusting either the Charge Integrity or the Charge Capacity up could also help us, but if we do that, we have to adjust all your teleportation abilities down. Right now, those are the abilities we need to get Veronique out. That’s why I wanted this cable, so I can adjust in real time.”

“So, can we rest now?”

“Sure, I’m bugged out as it is. Long day, right?” I looked awkwardly around the room.

Dorian rolled her eyes. “There’s room on the floor … or you could just rest on the bed with me.”

“Also a good call.”

Chapter Twenty-Five: Up and Away

Dorian woke me five or six hours later. It was around two in the morning, but I felt surprisingly rejuvenated after the rest. Even though the bed wasn’t great, it was a lot better than the one in my holding cell, and hearing the faint hum from the television had actually helped me sleep better.

Background noise, don’t leave home without it.

“I’m going to go soon.” She stood from the bed and put her jacket on. The room was cold; the window air conditioning unit was working pretty well now.

“Okay, let me get ready real quick.” I was in my new underwear as well, having changed into it after taking a quick shower. I liked to go to bed clean, so when I’d lain down earlier I figured I’d better scrub a dub a little bit before I actually dozed off.

She raised an eyebrow at me. “I wasn’t aware you were going.”

“Why wouldn’t I be going?”

“What exactly are you going to bring to the table here?” Dorian asked as she fixed her hair. She checked to make sure her paintbrush was with her and put it in her front pocket.

“You need a holster for that thing,” I told her.

“A paintbrush holster?” She considered it for a moment. “That could be handy. But stop changing the subject.”

“I can be more helpful than it seems,” I told her. “But, to be honest with you, I figured Veronique may need to feed. If anything, I am food to her.”

“What if we run into people?”

“I thought you were just going to appear in her room, grab her, and go.”

“That was the plan, yes.”

“Then I’ll go with you, and she’ll probably need to be fed, and she can drain me some. I’ve been useful in that way before, when we first rescued her.”

“You’re going as food?” she asked skeptically. Damn, if Dorian wasn’t hot in her ribbed sweater and tight black pants, which were low cut and revealed a sliver of her midriff when she moved her hips.

It was an incredibly stupid outfit to wear when trying to rescue someone from a military facility, says the guy who was currently wearing an Austin Ice Bats shirt.

“Yep, I’m the food.”

“Why do I get the feeling this is a bad idea?” She placed her hands on her hips and cocked her head at me.

“It probably is a bad idea, but I was under the impression I would be going with you, and … Well, it’s totally your call, but I think I could be useful. I don’t know how, exactly, but … well … Yeah, I already told you how I thought I could be useful. Especially if we run into any issues. Having Veronique with some power is always helpful because she’ll probably be exhausted.”

“Don’t make me regret this,” she said and reached out to touch my arm.

“Wait! I’m not ready yet – I still don’t have pants on.”

She started to laugh. “I was hoping we could surprise Veronique.”

“She wouldn’t be surprised to see me in my undies.”

“Why’s that? You two fuck or something?”

“Ha! Not exactly,” I said. I slipped into my shoes and new jeans. “But that’s a long story.”

I wasn’t apprehensive in the least to go back to the facility. And I totally should have been.

Maybe it was the rest.

Before I could talk any more shit, Dorian touched my arm and we flashed out of existence, reappearing in a long, dark hallway.

My heart jumped into my throat; this was not the holding cell.

“I thought you said …”

Dorian’s eyes went wide.

My stomach wasn’t as topsy-turvy as the last time we had teleported, but as we became more cognizant of the fact that we were standing in a dark hallway, it started to churn.

A red light flashed at the end of the hall and Dorian’s paintbrush went into her mouth. A blazing circle of energy appeared as she moved her hand in the air. She held the circle of energy at the tip of her paintbrush as we walked down the hallway.

“I swear this was it,” she whispered to me. “I even double-checked it.”

“We should go back to the hotel,” I said, overcome with nervousness. “They must have known we were coming … this was so stupid.”

The glass door at the end of the hallway lit up from the inside. A man moved by wearing all black armor, and before he could turn to us, Dorian put out her small beacon of blazing energy.

We would have left right then if we hadn’t seen a plastic pod open and the man look down at Veronique’s nude body.

“What are they keeping her in?” I asked.

“Just follow my lead,” Dorian said, steeling herself. “There can’t be that many men in there, and if there’s just one or two …”

She stuck her paintbrush in her mouth and pulled it out again, this time painting a man in the air. She also painted a gun, which the man took, its form three-dimensionalizing as his hand touched it.

We stayed where we were as Dorian sent her humanized energy creation forward. As he walked, he lifted his firearm at the glass and began shooting at it.

The glass was thick, but it didn’t take more than two shots to completely shatter, and for his next act, energy man shouldered through the glass and slammed into the security guard.

By this point, alarms were going off, and Dorian was making another man.

She created this one to stand guard behind us, wisps of energy licking off his body as he stood strong. As we moved toward the broken glass door, her free hand on my wrist, Dorian created a floating fireball of energy.

We entered the room and she instantly flung the fireball into another man, who’d been waiting in ambush. He cried out as it sizzled through his body armor and burned into his skin.

The smell of burning flesh made my stomach churn, so I returned my focus to Veronique. She was in a sarcophagus, the top part encased in glass. I could tell just by placing my hand on it that the rest of the sarcophagus was made of plastic, and I quickly searched around until I found a button that opened the top.

“Veronique,” I said as the top clamshelled back.

We heard activity in the hallway that we’d spawned in, and Dorian went to work with her paintbrush. The tailless energy wolf she’d just created tore off down the hall.

“Get her out of there,” Dorian said, worry spreading across her face.

“Working on it!”

“Veronique,” I said, lightly patting her face. “Veronique, can you hear me?”

There were some cables plugged into her neck, so I figured those needed to go. I pulled them out, and as soon as I did, she sat up violently, her eyes filling with hate.

She gasped when she saw me and lifted her arms around my neck.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“Drain me, now,” I told her. “We need you.”

She placed a shaky hand on my neck, and as red energy swirled around her fingertips, I began to feel weak in the knees. I stabilized myself against the sarcophagus as she continued draining my life force.

I started to get lightheaded and was glad when she finally stopped.

“Is everyone ready?” Dorian asked, and I heard more shouting down the hall.

“I think we are,” I said. She placed a hand on my shoulder and her other one on Veronique’s forehead. She closed her eyes, and …

Nothing happened.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Shit, it’s not working, it’s …”

Veronique looked toward the door we’d busted through. There was no metal around that she could use, but soon there would be men who had metal … in the form of bullets.

“I’ll hold them off,” she said, as she got out of the sarcophagus, nude as the day she was genetically created.

“Good,” I said. I pulled out my smartphone.

Dorian and I moved to the far side of the sarcophagus and I instructed her to sit. I smoothed my hand over her neck and found the port. Once I plugged in, I quickly located her teleportation stats.

Main Second: Teleportation

Tele-Sphere Radius: 3

Conscious Spatial Awareness: 10

Recharge Speed: 5

Restoration Speed: 6

“I’m going to crank up Restoration Speed as high as I can by turning down Recharge Speed and Tele-Sphere Radius,” I told her.

I heard a burst of gunfire, and then I heard a man cry out as the bullets were reversed and punched through his skull. At least I assumed it was his skull; all I could see was Veronique’s naked ass in the doorway – hunched over slightly, but still in control.

More gunfire. Dorian looked at me with true fear in her eyes and nodded.

“Just trust me,” I said, and no, she shouldn’t have trusted me because I had no idea what the fuck I was doing. But that never stopped someone from trusting an idiot.

I decided to crank it all the way up, and in doing so, noticed it wasn’t a one-for-one exchange as it had previously appeared to be.

Tele-Sphere Radius: 1

Conscious Spatial Awareness: 10

Recharge Speed: 1

Restoration Speed: 10

A pulsing vein appeared on her forehead.

“Gideon,” she said as her face turned red.

I had confused Restoration Speed and Recharge Speed.

Recharge Speed was the time it took her to recharge, duh. Restoration Speed was the time it took her to reform after teleporting.

Fuck!

In my haste, I’d gotten the two mixed around in my head. I started making quick adjustments and was able to bring Restoration Speed way down, and Recharge Speed up.

“Whoever made these labels did a bad job,” I muttered under my breath. Or whoever is messing with them isn’t the sharpest spork at McStarbucks, I thought and saw with relief that her face had lost its redness.

Tele-Sphere Radius: 2

Conscious Spatial Awareness: 10

Recharge Speed: 8

Restoration Speed: 2

If I was hoping for a sigh of relief from her, I wasn’t going to get it.

The pulsing vein remained on Dorian’s forehead, and I could tell by touching her skin that she was overheating.

I removed the cable and stuck it back in my pocket. “You think you’re ready?” I asked.

“I … I think so,” she said as I helped her up.

There was a short break in the gunfire and I called out to Veronique. She fell to the side, and like a hero I would never be, I actually caught her.

Dorian put one hand on my shoulder, the other on Veronique’s head.

We were gone in a flash.

Chapter Twenty-Six: A Much-Needed Shower Scene

We slowly reappeared back in the hotel room.

I don’t really know how else to describe it other than that; our bodies reformed in slow motion. It wasn’t exactly painful, but it was weird seeing our heads take shape, and then an arm or two, then a torso or three, followed by each leg. Some Harry Potter shit.

“Drain more,” I told Veronique, who was still in my arms.

“I need clothes,” she said.

“I already thought of that – and really, I had no idea you’d be kept naked, but we wanted to get some clothes anyway.”

Dorian exhaled audibly and sat on the floor next to the bed, her knees pulled to her chest. “That was …”

“The point is, we got out,” I said with a sigh.

“Clothes,” Veronique repeated.

“We’ll get you dressed in a moment, but first, you should probably drain more of my energy. You look like you’re on your last leg.” I glanced at Dorian. “And I’ll mess with your stats in a bit. Are you feeling overheated or anything?”

She nodded, the vein pulsing on her forehead. “But, it’s getting better. I think the change you made created less Overcharge. I can’t say for certain, but I don’t feel as warm as I did back there. Still hot though.”

Yes, you are, I thought and then felt guilty for such a stupid comeback.

“Adrenaline probably hit you too,” I told her. One glance down and I noticed that my hand was shaking. “You aren’t the only one.”

Veronique placed her hand on my arm. Instantly, I felt myself losing energy, to the point that I grew sleepy, the edges of my vision blurring. She was draining more than she had drained back at the military facility. I could tell in the time it took me to lay down in … Dorian’s lap?

“Relax, Gideon,” Dorian said, her fingers pressing my eyelids down.

My brain sparked and fizzled.

On one hand, this was incredibly sexy, and I was still male enough to realize that. On the other hand, I was scared. And then on the third hand – because who doesn’t have three hands? – I was so weary, barely able to keep from falling asleep.

Veronique suddenly stopped. I blinked my eyes open to see that she was sitting up and touching Dorian’s cheek.

“Drain me,” Dorian said softly. “It’s fine.”

Is this the start of a fucking orgy?

A quick email exchange happened between my two heads.

---------------------

Dear Gideon Caldwell’s Dick’s Brain,

I fucking hate you sometimes. She’s just trying to be helpful. No, this isn’t the start of a threesome. You are a horny idiot.

Love,

Gideon Caldwell’s Actual Brain

---------------------

Dear Gideon Caldwell’s Hypersensitive and Overly Concerned Snowflake Brain,

Why do you always let your moral pedantry get in the way of me and vaginas? This could totally turn into a vampiric orgy with teleportation highlights if you’d just calm the fuck down, stop overanalyzing, and let the heavy petting begin. Touch me again, Veronique! There’s energy left down here!

Kind Regards,

Gideon Caldwell’s Dick’s Brain

---------------------

“What’s going on?” Veronique said as she removed her hand from Dorian’s cheek. She glanced down at the tent I was pitching.

Dorian caught wind of it too. “Looks like there’s still some energy there.”

“Don’t … it’s nothing! Dicks have minds of their own, as do most world leaders. Sorry, that doesn’t make any sense, but really, just keep doing what you do. Please don’t kill me!”

Veronique placed her hand on my member and laughed. “I guess I haven’t drained you enough.”

“Apparently not!” I said. I tried to stand, but my knees buckled and I fell forward, which hurt like a bitch when I cracked my boner on the floor.

Shit!

“Don’t mind me,” I mumbled as Dorian helped me up.

“Just relax, Gideon,” she said. “You’ve done enough for tonight.”

“What about you? Are you overheating?”

She sighed. “I think I’ll be fine.”

“No, just … let me handle that first.”

Weak as I was, and partially guided by Veronique’s helping hand while ignoring my raging hard-on, I plugged into Dorian and adjusted her Teleportation Recharge Speed down so it looked like:

Tele-Sphere Radius: 3

Conscious Spatial Awareness: 10

Speed: 5

Restoration Speed: 6

I checked to make sure her Overcharge had also gone down, but I really didn’t need to; as soon as I dialed the Speed down her face lightened and she started to breathe more easily.

“Now relax,” she said as she helped me to the bed.

I’m pretty sure they ended up watching more fucking home and garden shows after that. Then again, there’s no telling. I was out.

Fade to black. Literally.

It only took another second of Veronique’s touch to completely put me out. I was trapped in utter blackness, swimming through an endless pool of dark crimson, my mind moving forward toward a bright light.

The light seemed so familiar, so warm, so real.

As I swam closer to it, I watched it begin to change into Grace, starting with her long blonde hair and quickly forming her face and voluptuous, soft features.

“Grace!” I called out to it.

But I was too late, it was now too far away. Something was pulling me backward, deeper into the cool water.

I awoke in a cold sweat.

It was morning now, and I was lying on the bed between Dorian and Veronique, both of whom were cuddling me in some way. Veronique had put on the Willie Nelson shirt and a pair of panties. Dorian was in her thong and black bra, tattoos covering her arms.

Rather than have another heated epistolary exchange with my little trouser snake, I slipped out of bed and lugged my ass to the bathroom to drain the lizard.

After I finished, I looked at myself in the mirror and saw I was a little worse for wear. My beard was unkempt, the scar on my face had started to darken, and my hair was thickening as it grew out.

Worse for wear? Shit, I looked hard as fuck, but it felt like I’d been hit by an eighteen-wheeler.

After a couple of poses, just to see if I’d grown any more muscle (I hadn’t), I decided to take a shower.

The water took a moment to warm, but it eventually got there, and I was able to ignore the lump of hair sitting where the soap should be. Shitty seedy motel.

Damn, did the water feel good on my sore muscles though. Once it got to the point where it was too hot and my skin had turned pink, I took a step away and just relaxed in the steam for a moment.

I actually heard the door open this time, and sure enough, it was Veronique.

“We meet again in the bathroom,” she said, taking off the shirt and panties.

“It seems to be the place for us to meet …”

She stepped into the shower and kissed me. She kissed me again and again, and I was definitely into it, but I could also tell that … well, I don’t think she’d ever kissed someone before. Grace hadn’t been the same, likely because she’d read my mind on how to kiss. Not that I was an expert or anything, but I’d had my fair share of make out sessions in high school.

So I let Veronique experiment on her kisses for a while, to get used to it.

Eventually, she turned around and bent over, beckoning me forward.

I shouldn’t have had enough energy for an erection, but there was a time and place for everything. And this was the time and place for me to swallow the fact that I’d been drained pretty hard last night, I was hungry, and to forcibly send all my energy toward my nether regions.

Not that I needed to do much begging. My member had already grown to full size. I approached her, my hands on the shower wall and water spraying off my back. It wasn’t too hard to slip in.

She was incredibly tight, but the water and the fact our juices were flowing soon made things a little easier. She looked at me over her shoulder, her hair partially covering her face as she got into her rhythm.

“Gideon,” she whispered, and even though the shower was beating down upon our bodies, my ears were completely tuned into her words. “Gideon,” she whispered again. “Gideon.”

I just kept going, trying my damndest not to come too soon. I got the sudden feeling – like I had with Grace in the past – that this would be the last time I had sex. This thought only inspired me to get more into the motion, grunting as I went at it as best I could, forgetting all the things that were out to get me.

She raised one leg and placed it on the side of the tub to stabilize herself. It was then that I noticed the door had cracked open, Dorian standing on the other side.

I blinked as she stepped into the bathroom, nude from the waist down. If Veronique cared, she didn’t show it.

In fact, she became more aggressive when Dorian entered.

Thank you, God, I thought as Veronique turned to me and wrapped her arms around my neck. She climbed up onto me, and I leaned against the bathtub wall for leverage, aware that one false step and I would crack my ass pretty hard. I don’t know where I got the strength for it, but I definitely wasn’t going to let her down now. Once we were in a steady position, she lowered herself onto the luckiest dick this side of Richard Branson and started going at it again.

Meanwhile, Dorian closed the toilet lid and sat on top, her legs spreading wide until one knee pressed against the sink and the other against the side wall. She made eye contact with me as she started fingering herself.

It wouldn’t be long now; I should be considered a superhero for how long I’d already lasted with all this going on. And to think there were some people out there who encountered these things in their normal life!

I’d never met a swinger. Well, no one had ever introduced themselves to me as a swinger, but I imagined this was what life as a swinger would be like, except the women wouldn’t be as hot.

As much as I kept trying to tell myself to shut down my inner monologue and enjoy the moment, my inner monologue was the only thing keeping me from blowing the top off my penis. The more I rambled in my head, the easier it was not to blast off into outer space.

With Dorian in front of me, touching herself and moaning, and my arms growing tired and sore from holding Veronique, something had to give.

So I set Veronique back down, turned her against the wall, and started up again. Keeping my eyes closed this time so I could concentrate.

But my eyes didn’t want to stay shut; they wanted to watch Dorian, so that’s what they did. Now three parts of my body had minds of their own – my brain, my eyes, and my dick – and all were screaming for me to come.

And as Dorian moaned and Veronique found the perfect groove, I couldn’t take it anymore.

Damn you, male orgasm! I was done in a matter of seconds, finished, ready to jump off a cliff if someone presented one to me, and just as I was about to pull out, Veronique’s pussy clenched around my penis, draining me even more.

My legs got weak, my arms started to shake. Veronique was orgasming and draining my life force, the metal of the towel holder bending in her direction, the sink’s faucet starting to rattle.

She came and released me. I fell backward and just barely stopped from cracking my ass open.

Dorian started to laugh, still lightly touching herself. I started laughing as well, and as Veronique turned back to me, I saw that she too had a crooked grin on her face.

Boy, were we all fucked in the head.

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Ken Kim Calls Again

The shower to end all showers? Maybe. I hadn’t expected Dorian to join in the fun, even if her fun only meant she was watching and touching herself, but that was what happened. And now that the three of us had that out of our system, it was time to get down to business.

Once we got Grace, I’d have a full-blown harem going and there was nothing society could do to stop me.

Society isn’t trying to stop you; besides, you could just move to Utah, my inner voice said. And what about Grace? Isn’t it an insult to her to do what you’ve just done?

I’m going to save her, possibly today, I told the bitchy, retrospective Gideon. Damn you and your societal norms! And don’t you dare tell me to move to Utah!

The voice didn’t reprimand me after that.

As I put my clothes on, a feeling of intense hunger came over me. I checked my smartphone to find the nearest place to grab a bite. Curiosity led me to my email inbox, and while Dorian and Veronique got dressed, I started reading through my messages.

A rep from EBAYmazon had contacted me, asking if they could speak to me more about my first two Mutants in the Making books. They wanted to feature the first book in a deal that would go out to their incredibly large mailing list of readers. They also wanted to republish everything once I got a third installment out.

Republish everything? I nearly did a backflip.

My first instinct, rather than run around the room high-fiving and slapping asses, was to message Luke, and I would have done just that if I hadn’t seen an email from Dr. Ken Kim.

Gideon,

Please email me your phone number. I know about what happened over the last two days. We need to talk. I can help.

Ken Kim

I considered the message for a moment.

“What’s up?” Veronique asked and moved to sit next to me. Her face was still a bit red and her eyes were still incredibly dark, even though there was something soft behind them that I hadn’t seen before.

“Ken Kim. He wants me to call him.”

Dorian and Veronique exchanged glances. “He’s still contacting you?”

“For the last several days,” I said. “He’s even given me a code to put in your systems – yours and Grace’s – if you remember correctly. But I just don’t know if I can trust him.”

“Well, you bought the prepaid phones …” Dorian said, referring to the phones Abuela had ordered for us.

“I did. Fine, let’s have breakfast, then call him. But let’s go somewhere like thirty minutes away or something, just in case we’re being tracked.”

“Teleportation?” Dorian asked.

I thought about it, then shook my head. “Nah, let’s use Diego’s services again. Keep things low profile for now. We’ll see what Ken has to say.”

I put the Longhorn cap on and stood. “Also, I need to give Diego his hat back.”

After I set up the prepaid phone and made sure it had a charge, the three of went downstairs. The abuela at the front desk didn’t say anything about the fact that Veronique had joined us, despite never seeing her come through the front door last night. “Mijo,” she called to her grandson, “I think they need a taxi.”

Diego came out of the back room, towering and intimidating as ever. He nodded when he saw Veronique. She returned his gaze with just about the coldest look possible and he glanced away.

“Where to?” he asked me.

“A breakfast restaurant, maybe a diner. Only stipulation is that it needs to be somewhere not here.”

“Not here?”

“I mean, somewhere else in the city. Not in the vicinity of the hotel.”

He looked at his abuela.

“Take him to the Jim’s in Oak Hill,” she said with pure grandmotherly finality. “Your tia used to work there.”

And so we went to the Jim’s in Oak Hill, wherever the hell that was.

It took about twenty minutes, going from South Congress to 71 to a suburban nook surrounded by rocky cliffs, oak trees, and a complex traffic grid. The Jim’s was smack dab in the middle of the shopping center, near a gym – yep, Jim’s near a gym – and across the road from a McStarbucks. Diego waited outside as we went in and got seated.

We ordered. Pancakes, sausage, and gravy for me, the same for Dorian, and each of us had a coffee.

My phone buzzed. It was Luke.

Luke: Are you alive?

Me: Barely. I’ll be frank. Our little MC was taken hostage by government forces, put in a military jail, rescued by a teleporting hottie, and nursed back to health with Mexican food.

Luke: Damn, I could use some Mexican food. Wait, did you say put in a military jail?

Me: FML. The MC then teamed up with the teleporter to rescue the vampire. The following morning, he hooked up in the shower with the vampire while the teleporter watched. Now he’s eating pancakes.

Luke: LOL. This. Is. The. Best. Message. I’ve. Read. All. Year.

Me: Please do not share this with anyone.

Luke: You got it. Just let me take a mental screenshot. Sometimes, I would hate to be you. Other times, I’d trade my left nut.

Me: You keep your damn left nut because you don’t want to be me, trust me there!

Luke: But back to the military jail. Tell me about that.

Me: They attacked us. We were captured, they put me in jail and attempted to interrogate me. It was terrible. I don’t want to relive it.

Luke: Okay then. Tell me about the almost threesome.

Me: It started when I took a shower. Vampire came in. Teleporter came in after. I don’t understand my life. It wasn’t a threesome, but two of us had sex while the third rubbed one out.

Luke: I thought ‘rubbed one out’ was just for guys, no?

Me: Yep, women can do it too. Apparently.

Luke: I’ve seen videos of that!

Me: Stop trying to cheer me up with your humor because it’s working.

Luke: LOL. Your life is the stuff of legends, man! So what’s next? Where’s the psychic?

Me: Still need to rescue the psychic. I’ll update you later. I don’t know how this is going to go down just yet.

Luke: Well, shit, stay safe.

Me: Also, EBAYmazon contacted me. They want me to write another novella so they can publish all three into a full book.

Luke: Wow! That’s great news!

Me: It is. Shit pancakes are here. I’ll hit you back when I know more.

Luke: Shit pancakes? Is that an American thing?

Me: Shit COMMA pancakes are here.

Luke: Hey man, whatever you’re into. No judgment. #grammarnazi

I cracked a grin at my phone. If I were British, I would call Luke a cheeky bastard.

Dorian didn’t finish her pancakes, so I finished them for her. We had another cup of coffee, the three of us discussing a number of things, mostly centered around what they knew about Ken Kim – which wasn’t much – and what Veronique had experienced once they took her.

I also told her what I’d gone through, and for once, I saw true concern in her eyes.

“But back to what happened to you. What was that vat that they had you in? Sarcophagus? Maybe that’s what I should call it.”

“I don’t know,” she said, finishing off her third cup of coffee.

“Well, we’ll just have to figure that one out. Or not. Who knows?” I paid the bill and we stepped outside. Dorian and Veronique formed a small perimeter around me. They were on edge, Veronique more than Dorian. I motioned to Diego – who was still waiting in his car – that we’d be a moment. “Time to call Ken,” I said.

I had already sent Ken Kim my phone number back in the restaurant, and I figured it wouldn’t take him long to respond.

I was right; my throwaway phone rang a few minutes later.

“Gideon.”

“Ken.”

“Okay,” he said cautiously, “I don’t know how you’ve managed to do it twice, but kudos. Really. And now the tough part begins.”

“Do it?”

“Escaped. I mean, you were in a high-security military prison that was set up at Camp Mabry just to house you and the other supers.”

I smirked at the ground. It was already hot in Austin, and the sun was glaring down on us. “I got lucky,” I finally told him.

“I can’t believe Dorian Gray flipped! I’ve been reading the inside report …”

“How do you have access to that, Ken?” I asked, sitting on the curb. “I need you to be honest with me because what you say next will decide if I ever speak to you again.”

“Look, I know you’re suspicious, I get that.”

“More than suspicious,” I said. I pulled the phone away from my ear and put him on speaker so Dorian and Veronique could hear.

“Okay, more than suspicious, fine, but I’m on your side. I want you to succeed. I want them to be defeated. The … the fuckers!”

Dorian and Veronique glanced at each other when he said this. I couldn’t tell if they bought it or not, but I certainly didn’t.

“Tell me every reason why you’re helping me. Get on your fucking soapbox and dance, Ken.”

I watched Veronique as a small smirk formed on her face, lifting her sharp features.

“Well?” I asked after Ken had been silent for a moment.

“I … look, I’m a coordinator of the program – senior coordinator in charge of subjects and their well-being. That’s why I met with Sabine so frequently. And yes, I know the person you have referred to as ‘Mother,’ and to be honest,” he paused, “I’m a dead man. Once she sees me in person again, she’ll know what I’ve done. I can hide in New Haven, but I can’t hide once we actually meet. So I’m trying to get out before she comes back. Point is, I want to help. What’s so bad about that?”

“There’s nothing bad about that. But how can I trust you?”

“I’ve seen shit that I can’t … the things they did to other subjects … the decommissioned ones. And there are more that will be coming for you soon. Mark my word.”

I stared at the phone for a minute. They hadn’t actually sent many after us, just Angel and Dorian, which was odd.

“Why are they holding back?”

“They haven’t been authorized to leave yet, but they’re coming,” Ken said, not quite answering my question. “I want you to know everything I know. Fuck, I’ll say it. I loved Sabine just as much as Bobby did. That’s the goddamn truth. I want her to succeed, to have some semblance of a life, dammit!”

So, it’s about Grace then, I thought.

“You’ve done something I don’t have the balls to do, Gideon. You’re my fucking hero.”

Dorian looked at me and raised an eyebrow. I shrugged, giving her the ‘I’m nobody’s hero’ look.

“You’ve risked it all for a few people you barely know,” Ken blurted out. “I wish I had your courage.”

“It’s not courage as much as it is utter stupidity,” I said. Mixed in with bouts of misguided horniness, I thought.

Might as well be real about it; Grace, Veronique, and now Dorian had changed me. They’d brought me incredible success, opened up realms of possibility I never thought possible, and given me a life aside from a failed sci-fi writer working at a gift shop. They had become my companions.

“Well you asked, and I’m answering. So that’s who I am, and it’s why I’m trying to help. Did you activate the code yet?”

I shook my head at the phone. “No, you never told me what it did, and I was afraid it would turn on GPS tracking or whatever. So I figured it was a bad idea. Plus, I forgot the code.”

“Grace would be with you now if you had activated it. And I’ll send the code in an email.”

“What do you mean she’d be with me now?”

“For Sabine, the code unlocks an ability to make people’s nightmares become reality. Let me rephrase: She can dip into someone’s mind, take the thing they fear the most, and make them see it. It’s an incredible power, and she could have … fuck … she could have even taken down Angel with that.”

“Did you know Angel has sex with Mother?” I said. “A real motherfucker.”

Dorian and Veronique snickered. I placed my hand over the receiver and told them I’d explain later.

“I had a suspicion they were having relations.”

“Sorry, it was irrelevant to our conversation, but I thought you should know.” I cleared my throat. “What does the code do for Veronique?”

“Have you noticed that Veronique can only use her body metal consumption ability if she can physically touch someone?”

I thought about last night and, well, parts of this morning. “Go on,” I finally said.

“Activating the code allows her to use her ability at a distance of up to twenty feet.”

“She can absorb long distance?”

“She can indeed,” Ken said, “and it’s a game changer. She used to be able to before they took the power away from her. It stopped her opponents before they even met her.”

I looked up at Veronique and saw her nod. Even though we’d had sex now and continued to grow closer, I still feared her. I don’t know what it was; maybe the fact that she could kill me at any time. Then again, so could Dorian.

But Dorian didn’t have that ‘vibe.’

Odd to think of it that way, but Dorian was just less threatening. Maybe it really was the fact that I equated Veronique with a vampire in my mind. Maybe what I really needed was to redefine her.

“What?” she asked, her eyes narrowing at me.

“This brings me to my other dilemma, Ken. What do you know about Dorian’s teleportation ability? It’s causing her to overheat. For someone who teleports, she can’t do it very efficiently without having issues. I played with the dials a little bit, but I think that made it even worse.”

“I know exactly what it is. It was a stop measure put in place to prevent her from constantly relying on teleportation.” I heard some clicking in the background as Dr. Kim typed on something. “Yep, that’s what it is; they had these functions from her main stat folders. Like I said, the point was to prevent her from relying too heavily on it, so she could enhance her energy-wielding ability. I guess they never switched it back. You can do it if you have a cable with you right now.”

I always carried the USB cable now; it was small enough to fit in my pocket and I never knew when I would need one.

“I’ll send screenshots of how you get to the file location. The thing is, these drives in their necks can be a little wonky. It’s a terrible interface – I mean, scrolling through folders to open shadow boxes with dials, really? – but the screenshots should help, especially since you’ll have to find the folder in the picture I’m sending you. Go to options, set all options as visible, and once you’ve done this, backtrack to a different folder to re-add her full teleportation abilities to her main system. This will also require a reboot.”

“Seriously?”

“The reboot will only take a matter of moments, but have her sit down when you do it. Did you get the email?”

I tapped my screen and saw that I had indeed received a message from Dr. Kim with screenshots. “I’ve got it.”

“Great, that should really change the game for her.”

“Thanks for your help, Ken,” I said and started to hang up.

“Wait! More info for you. They’re moving Sabine tomorrow morning to California, and they know you’ll be coming for her. So, if that is your plan, well, you need an actual plan. I mean, I’m all for you doing this, and I hope to God you get out of it alive and that you can get Sabine out of there. Poor Sabine. But you need a real plan because Angel and Mother will be there.”

“They’re moving her tomorrow? Shit.” I thought for a moment. “Do you happen to have any more info about how they’re holding her? You said it was a makeshift installation?”

Ken hesitated. “I believe I can get more information. If I can, I’ll forward it to you. Good luck, Gideon, and don’t be a stranger. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to aid you, but until they catch me, I’m here to help.”

“Thanks, Ken. I look forward to your email.”

As soon as he hung up, I popped the back off the phone and took the battery out. I threw the battery in the bushes in front of the restaurant and tossed the phone itself into a trash can.

Better safe than sorry.

“Ready to have your stats adjusted a little bit?” I asked Dorian.

“Here?”

I took a look around the parking lot. “Yeah, maybe you’re right, this isn’t the best place for that. Let’s get our supplies first, and then we’ll mess with it after. Also, there’s a video I need to show you.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight: A Texas Gun Show

Our next stop was the hardware store. We were lucky that the one in South Austin was near several retail outlets. As Diego waited for us in the parking lot – to the tune of twenty-five dollars an hour, mind you – we hit the retail store called Marshall’s TJ Ross Maxx, which was a terrible name that most people just called ‘M TJ Ross’em,’ after an advertising campaign in 2023.

Damn it, I did not want to be having déjà vu right now, but I couldn’t help but recall our situation with Chip Parker in New Haven; how he had gone around gathering supplies for us. (I hated narratives that did this repetitive stuff, but what was I supposed to do?) Grace needed rescuing, and I was the one that would rescue her, hook, line, and sinker. It wasn’t like this was a book … well, yet.

Or should I say, they were going to do the rescuing. Not that I wasn’t going to help. It wasn’t my intention this time to sit back and idly watch things play out. I wanted to get involved, even if it meant I may get hurt.

After checking out the clearance aisle for some goddamn reason, we bought two backpacks and three fanny packs. I chose a larger backpack, and Dorian chose a much smaller one, almost like a preschooler’s backpack but made specifically for women to look cute while wearing it.

I never really understood women’s fashion, and I probably never would, but she did look cute with it on, so let’s leave it at that.

We went to the men’s section next and got as many XXL black T-shirts as we could find – thirteen in total. Lucky us! A few of them were even on sale.

Once we made our purchases, we went to the home improvement store. Dorian lead the way as Veronique and I hung back a few steps. It was hot outside, and even though we only had to walk a few stores down, I’d already worked up a sweat by the time we reached the store.

We entered and were greeted by a friendly Texas woman with a southern drawl. “Welcome! Now, ya’ll let me know if you has any questions.”

“Thanks,” I told her as we passed by.

Damn, were these home improvement stores intimidating. The rows of tall aisles only made me feel like a very small man. But I wasn’t here to build a wall between Texas and Mexico; I was here for IED equipment.

I didn’t know much about building things, unless it came with instructions from Ikea, but I did have a fair idea about what we could use to make frag pouches.

So that’s what we went for.

We purchased several dozen packs of nails, all the circular saw blades under seven inches in diameter, countless nuts and bolts, three pairs of shears, and bundles of thumbtacks.

No, I didn’t take an IED 101 crash course from the latest extremist group out of Baghdad. I simply wanted to provide things Veronique could work with; I wanted to be part of what was going to happen.

I also wanted to test something we hadn’t tested before. I had asked Dorian if she could charge objects, and she said she couldn’t. But I wondered what would happen if she licked her paintbrush and charged them that way … or perhaps licked the object itself?

It was worth a shot.

Once we had our items, we asked Diego to drive us to an open field. We got out and took a walk, realizing that we weren’t actually in an open field, but more likely the outskirts of a golf course.

Didn’t matter, it would still work.

As gnats and mosquitoes buzzed around me, I took out some of the nails and handed them to Dorian. “Let’s try something.”

She understood what I meant almost instantly. “Should I lick them?”

“Do you mean you really never tried this before?”

“No, honestly, I’ve always just used my finger or a paintbrush.” She popped her finger in her mouth to demonstrate what she meant. “Sounds stupid, but … I didn’t really want to lick random objects.” She scrunched up her face in disgust.

I laughed. “Yeah, I didn’t think about that part. In that case, lick your finger, lift a nail, and see if you can charge it. I’m envisioning something like Gambit here.”

“Gambit?” Veronique asked.

She was on my other side, keeping an eye out to make sure someone wasn’t coming for us. I wanted to tell her to relax a little, but it was better that she was at least prepared. Because god knows I wasn’t.

“Sorry, disregard the reference. It’s not even a good reference, to be honest, because she’s neither from Louisiana nor a dashingly handsome superhero. Beautiful, of course you’re beautiful, Dorian, but Gambit was handsome. Sorry. Sidetracked. Let’s try this.”

I gestured to an old oak tree. “See if you can hit that.”

Dorian licked her finger and thumb and picked up one of the nails from my hand. As soon as she touched the nail, it began to turn pink and boil with energy.

She pulled her arm back and brought it forward, flinging the nail at the tree.

“Whoa!” I said, clapping my hands together after it slammed into the trunk like a bullet, spraying out chips of wood.

“Oh, shit yeah! Try this.” I took one of the circular saw blades out of its packaging.

The blade was about three inches in diameter, and as I handed it to Dorian, she licked her finger and took it from me.

The foliage in the top branches shifted when the saw passed straight through the oak tree. The top of the tree fell, crashing to the ground.

Even though there wasn’t anyone around, I glanced about, just to be sure no one was watching us take down trees in Austin. Based on what I knew about the city, I had a feeling the people here wouldn’t like it.

“Let me try,” Veronique said.

I gave her one of the small saw blades, and it began to fold once it was in her hand, almost as if I had handed her a pancake. It straightened immediately, and she pulled her arm back, then let it go, spreading her fingers wide as she did, forcing the saw blade farther.

Veronique’s saw cut through two trees. Now we had even more branches and foliage on the ground.

“This is a good idea,” she said.

“We needed something we could use against them, and since I don’t know how to use a gun, and don’t have time to learn how in order to go up against MercSecure, this is our next best option. Also, we need bulletproof vests. All of us.”

I got out my smartphone and did a little searching.

It was Texas; guns practically sprouted out of the ground here even if the state was in a perpetual drought. And sure enough, I found a gun show taking place this weekend.

“Only an hour away,” I told them.

Now that I had my phone out, I remembered the message Ken Kim had sent. I found a large rock and asked Dorian to sit so I could plug into her port. She did, and Veronique scooted in next to her – which seemed like kind of a strange place to sit considering the size of the rock, but I was beyond asking questions about these two, especially about after what happened this morning.

Best morning of my life? Without a doubt.

But that’s not what mattered at the moment. I needed to plug in and follow the directions Dr. Kim had given me.

This turned out to be a pain in the ass because I only had one smartphone, so I had to keep minimizing the screen and going back and forth between the different windows.

Damn you, technology, how I love you so.

It took me a bit longer, but I followed his instructions, and then rebooted Dorian’s system, reminding her to just relax while I did so.

“That was strange …” she said, taking a deep breath.

As we waited for the reboot, bees and hummingbirds zoomed in the air around us. There was a sprinkling of flowers in the grass, and I watched a particularly chubby bee collide with one of them, nearly knocking it to the ground.

Fucking fat-ass bee.

Once Dorian’s drive was back up and running, I went to her teleportation abilities folder and the shadow box with dials opened.

Main Second: Teleportation

Tele-Sphere Radius: 3

Conscious Spatial Awareness: 10

Recharge Speed: 5

Restoration Speed: 6

Teleportation Rapidity: 1

Teleportation Distance: 10

Empathetic Teleportation: 5

Banishment: 1

Overcharge: 8

“Hell yeah, everybody!” I said. I started reading what the additional abilities allowed for.

Teleportation Rapidity increased the speed in which she could teleport over short distances, usually covering a hundred yards or so.

Empathetic Teleportation allowed her to teleport to someone she has strong feelings for, which I assumed meant someone familiar to her.

That’s helpful.

I checked what Banishment did. By placing my finger over the listing, I saw that it allowed her to touch someone and teleport them away to a place she’d visited recently.

“That’s badass.” I quickly turned Overcharge down. The only reason I could figure they’d put that on her dials was as a type of governor and to handicap her if necessary. Still, I had to be careful not to trigger it.

With a few adjustments, I had her teleportation ability rearranged in a way I thought would work best.

Tele-Sphere Radius: 3

Conscious Spatial Awareness: 10

Recharge Speed: 5

Restoration Speed: 6

Teleportation Rapidity: 7

Teleportation Distance: 10

Empathetic Teleportation: 6

Banishment: 3

Overcharge: 1

The added options really allowed for customization.

I wasn’t able to bring Overcharge lower than one, nor was I able to modify Teleportation Distance. I could see, by touching its dial, that she could move upwards of two thousand kilometers at a time, or roughly thirteen hundred miles.

Not bad at all. If I kept Dorian around, I’d never have to get groped by TSA agents again.

“You feel alright?” I asked her.

She nodded. “I feel pretty good.”

“Now it’s time for you to see what you could be capable of.”

I unhooked the cable from her neck and went to TwitchTubeRed. I knew the exact scene I wanted to show her, and while the movie X2 had been released three years before I was born, it still held up. I remembered watching it as a kid and being pretty impressed.

I typed ‘Nightcrawler White House Scene’ in the search box and the scene came up.

Again, damn me for having no other reference point for people using superpowers, but sometimes you have to stick with what you know.

“This is what you can do now,” I told her as I started the three-minute clip. “And I don’t mean kill the president. Because that’s what he’s trying to do here. I mean … just watch.”

One of Dorian’s eyebrows raised, which caught Veronique’s attention, who moved closer to watch the clip as well.

“The blue creature should have stabbed him,” Veronique said after the Nightcrawler scene ended. “It seems useful to have a tail, though.”

“Do you see what I’m suggesting here?” I asked Dorian.

She disappeared in a flash, reappeared fifteen feet away, her paintbrush in her mouth, flashed again, reformed alongside a fireball made of energy that slammed into a tree as she zipped away and materialized next to a tree stump, touched it, freaking exploded it, and disappeared again, finally reforming behind me.

“That was so awesome,” she said between gulps of air. “It’s like running, almost. A little different. I don’t know how to explain it.”

“That’s going to be very helpful,” Veronique said.

“Do you feel like you’re overheating?” I asked.

“Not in the least bit.”

“Try again, go for longer this time, and see how it goes.”

Dorian jumped forward and – poof – she was at it again. She bounced back and forth, her form taking shape and disappearing, leaving a cascade of brief afterimages each time she flashed away.

It took her a moment to really find a groove, charging things, using trees and rocks as targets, and her paintbrush to paint objects into existence.

Thank you, Dr. Kim, I thought when she finished.

“Where to now?” Diego asked.

“Dripping Springs. We need to go to a gun show there.”

“Damn, you’re a crazy white boy, you know that?”

“I fucking know it.”

The drive to Dripping Springs was uneventful. As we’d done on our way to the breakfast restaurant, I sat in the front, the two superpowereds in the back. Mostly I just stared out at the open road, at the beautiful wasteland between hubs of civilization in Texas.

It was quite different from Connecticut. Most of the cities in my state were separated by trees and rocky cliffs where gray skies often hovered, signaling rain to come or rain that had recently passed.

Texas cities were separated by large swaths of parched land, land peppered with dying shrubs, the occasional tree, and a constant blue sky overhead that seemed as endless as it was foreboding.

Most of Connecticut had unrestricted access along highways, whereas Texas had barbwire that screamed of autonomy and anti-government sentiment, which got me thinking of my favorite quote from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia: “The government of today has no right to tell us how to live our lives, because the government from two hundred years ago already did!”

Ha! What a quote.

We arrived in Dripping Springs, drove past a couple churches and a Dairy Queen, waited at a traffic light behind a big dually truck with chrome exhaust, and found the gun show at the convention center.

“Keep an eye on everyone,” I told Veronique as we got out of the car. “There’s no telling who we’ll encounter … On second thought, just be cautious. Don’t use your powers in here. There will be tons of metal. Dorian, be ready to teleport us out just in case something happens.”

Dorian nodded. She wore her long sleeve ribbed sweater, which perfectly accented the contours of her body. I could see her paintbrush sticking out of her pocket, almost as if it were a wand.

I had an idea of what to expect once we got inside, and I was not disappointed.

The first booth we ran into was an NRA table with bikini-clad women taking signups. Their bikinis were, of course, made of fabric that looked like the American flag, and each of them had a pink AR-15 across their backs.

It was awesomely bizarre, sexy in a female Rambo way. Damn, those Lady Rambo movies of the early 2020s were the shit.

That was the first time I saw Natalie Johansson, back before she was a household name.

“Where are we going?” Dorian asked.

“Sorry, I was having a flashback.”

“Do you normally announce that to people?”

“He does,” Veronique said.

We continued our way through a diverse crowd of mostly men, many of whom took second glances at Dorian and Veronique. I couldn’t blame them there; aside from the bikini-clad gun hawkers at the front, there really weren’t many hot ladies here.

Focus, I had to remind myself as we waded through booth after booth of death instruments. Everything from a handgun to a grenade launcher was present, and one guy had every grenade that had ever been used by US forces cut in half and displayed, showing their inner workings.

“Anyone have good body armor?” I finally asked a man in a leather vest with skin the color of a maple leaf in late October. He squinted at me for a moment as he scratched the mole on the side of his nostril, glanced from Dorian to Veronique, and then used his chin to nod me toward the booth next to him.

“Nick got the best stuff,” he said in a gruff, Texas voice. “Custom shit too. Stuff for your ladies. Fits the curves of a woman. Not being no sexist here, just saying they have curves. Even them thin ones like you two.” He started cackling. “Boy, you don’t see many folks from Austin out here gun shoppin’, but I’m glad to see it!”

“Thanks,” I said as we turned to the next booth.

“Wait a dang minute now. You cain’t just stop at mah booth without takin’ a look. I got all sorts of exotic shit,” Maple Leaf man said. “After you,” he told Veronique, extending his hand to her.

I gulped as she took his hand.

Don’t do it, I thought to her, and as if she were as psychic as Grace, Veronique looked at me with a wolfish grin on her face.

I was pleasantly surprised when I entered his booth to find vintage guns and martial arts weapons. The centerpiece of the booth was a golden dragon above a wood statue of a naked woman holding a katana.

“See here, I got muhself a Japanese wife,” he said. “Two actually. Well, divorced the first. Ha! But the second misses is still with me. Imagine that. Old country guy like myself. Can’t help but love an Asian woman – no offense to you two, but they just get the job done for me.”

Veronique picked up a throwing star and showed it to me.

“How many throwing stars do you have?” I asked him.

“How many? Well, I got nicer ones than that. That’s just one for kiddos. Edges ain’t too sharp. Those are five bucks a piece, and I gots me about twenty.”

“We’ll take them,” I said, pulling out a Benjamin.

He chuckled as he filled a bag with the throwing stars and handed it to me. “Shit, if you want that, maybe I can interest one of you purty ladies in a katana.”

I exchanged glances with Dorian and Veronique. Dorian shrugged.

“I think we’re good,” I said, and we moved on to the next booth.

The body armor guy was pretty chill, and he let us look around without trying to sell anything. I found a ballistic helmet for myself – got to protect the money maker! – and a light bulletproof vest.

“That’s the best I have right there,” Armor Guy finally said as I took the gear over to him.

“I also need vests for them. Helmets too.”

The man had salt and pepper hair, wore a plaid shirt and an Iraqi war vet hat. As he moved over to a rack of body armor, I saw that one his legs had been replaced.

“These are some of the best vests available, used by Israeli forces and designed to give breathability – which is important if you’re moving frequently – range of motion, and provide the protection you need. It’s comfortable and lightweight. Form-fitting too.”

He handed Veronique the first vest and pointed out armor specs as she started to put it on. “Interior front and back padded zonal panels, oversized air channels, holds ten by twelve and eight by ten plate sizes, but I’ve got the ten by twelves in this model. Along the right side you’ll find a one hand quick release escape system, and let’s see … what else can I tell you? It’s the best on the market, plain and simple.”

How anyone could look sexy in body armor was beyond me, but Veronique pulled it off, and Dorian soon would as well when she tried on her own model, which was larger than Veronique’s due to her bust size.

“I also have it in desert camo, if that’s what you’re looking for.”

“Black will work,” I told him and got out my roll of cash. “And helmets for them.”

He raised an eyebrow at me.

“We’re shooting a movie in … San Antonio. Our prop guy didn’t get the right stuff, so the director sent me out to pick this stuff up. The actresses,” I said, nodding at Dorian and Veronique, “wanted to come along because they’d never been to a gun show.”

He laughed. “Yep, I thought there was something interesting about ya’ll. I bet Hollywood types don’t get out to too many Texas gun shows. What are your names? Been in any movies I’ve heard of?” he asked, pulling out his smartphone to use the calculator.

“Veronique Caldwell,” said Veronique.

I gulped.

“Dorian Gideon,” said Dorian with a flirty smile, “But people call me Grace.”

“Grace and Veronique,” Armor Man chuckled again. “Boy, if that doesn’t sound like trouble.”

I smiled. “If you only knew. What’s our total?”

He showed me his calculator and then added a ten percent off discount. We were down another twelve hundred dollars or so, but it was necessary. I counted out the cash and handed it over.

“You need anything else?” he asked.

“Not unless you have some EMP weapons.”

“Damn,” he snapped his fingers. “All sold out.”

“Could we wear this stuff out or would that be too much?” I asked.

“Hell no, it wouldn’t be too much,” he said. “You’re at a gun show; half the people in here have body armor and the other half are carrying heat. Not me. I only sell armor, not guns. Guns make me twitchy, but I like the culture, and a gun show is a damn good place to sell body armor.”

“Great, thanks again.” I waved to him and we left his booth, Dorian and Veronique in their armor with their helmets tucked under their arms.

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Grand Theft Auto ATX

We arrived back at the motel and I paid for another night. Diego hadn’t said anything about the girls wearing body armor, and aside from commenting that he was ready for a beer, he was quiet most of the ride back to the motel.

Once we were in our room, I laid out the supplies on the bed and got to work. After admiring themselves in the bathroom mirror, Dorian and Veronique took off their vests and joined me where I knelt at the foot of the bed as I worked.

If either of them sensed I was thinking about their proximity, they didn’t let on. Instead, they began cutting the black T-shirts into squares of fabric and placing thumbtacks, nuts, bolts, and nails inside before twisting the ends together and tying a knot.

I wanted to make weapons I could throw and Veronique could then wield, as well as weapons Dorian could quickly charge and toss.

Each pouch was about the size of a golf ball, and by the time we finished using all the fabric, we had at least a hundred of the little pouches. We stuffed them in our backpacks and fanny packs.

Veronique put the smaller circular saws in her fanny pack, and Dorian kept the larger ones in her backpack. They had other ways they could take someone down, but this gave them something extra to wield.

Which reminded me.

I checked my email to find that Dr. Ken Kim had sent me the code again as promised, with instructions on how to activate it.

“You ready to try?” I asked Veronique. I indicated what I meant by placing my finger on my neck.

“Sure,” she said as she lay down on the bed. I found the USB cable and got my smartphone ready. I needed to charge it, especially because of what was going down tonight, and I figured having an extra phone for communication purposes would help too.

“Dorian, will you plug in the other phone?” I asked. She plugged it in and walked over to the picture she’d been slowly burning into the wall. It was a stunning piece, a Tibetan mandala if I’d ever seen one. To get started again, she lightly touched the tip of her paintbrush against her tongue.

I could smell the paper sizzle of the wallpaper almost immediately.

Focus, I reminded myself. A shadow box appeared on my smartphone and I cycled to the bottom, following the directions Ken gave me. A few more folders later I arrived at a place where I could input a command.

I took a deep breath in. I trusted Dr. Kim more than I did a few days ago, but I’d also proved with David Butler that my instincts could be wrong.

I hesitated, and Veronique noticed I was stalling.

“If they come for us, we’ll be ready,” she told me.

After another deep breath, I keyed in the code and a pop-up box told me it had been accepted.

“Feel anything different?” I asked.

“No,” she said, but by this point, I was already scrolling back to her main abilities list. I found her Metal Absorption and Modification skill and saw that an option had been added.

Main: Metal Absorption and Modification

Wielding Capacity: 5

Adaption Speed: 6

Alloy Integrity: 4

Blood Metal Conversion: 6

Blood Metal Absorption Proximity: 10

It’s at ten now? I moved a few steps away. Her head turned to me, the muscles in her neck quivering slightly.

“Try from here,” I instructed her.

She lifted her hand and red energy swirled around it. Soon, I was feeling that increasingly familiar sensation of weakness in my knees.

“It works,” I said, gasping as she let go.

She unplugged the cable and sat up, a smug smile on her face.

“This is what Grace’s holding area looks like,” Dorian said. I glanced over to see that she’d made an entire schematic on the wall next to her mandala.

“How did you …?” I moved over to it and she reminded me not to touch the piece.

“It might still be hot,” she said. “But this is what I remember it looking like. I walked around it once, just to get a better picture in my mind. This is where we’ll spawn.” She touched the image with the tip of her paintbrush.

There was nothing unique about where they were holding Grace.

It wasn’t like the place back in New Haven, Connecticut, which was attached to the main facility by a hyperloop pod. There were three rooms, and Dorian had suggested we spawn inside Grace’s room, rather than risk any type of altercation in the others.

“It’s big enough for us to spawn there?”

“It is,” she said, “and we’ll spawn in a way that keeps you toward the back.”

Way to make me feel useless, I thought, but she was probably right.

“They’re going to try something, I just know they are. The faster we can get her and make it to the getaway car, the faster we can get going and switch vehicles somewhere along the way. And switch again. And switch again.”

“We still need a car,” Dorian said.

“That’s our next step, and we’re going to rely heavily on Veronique for that. Let’s take a walk.”

We put the laptop, money, and spare clothes in the empty shopping bags we had. Then we went downstairs to find his abuela on her smartphone, smacking gum. She barely acknowledged us as we left the motel and crossed the street to the university.

St. Edward’s University seemed like a pretty nice place, and as we walked up the curving road, we saw a large parking lot full of vehicles.

It was fucking hot outside, even with the fact it was past five. I don’t know how people down here did it, but I would take New England weather over this any day. Wiping sweat off my brow, I found the vehicle we wanted, a convertible Mercedes, and we started the waiting process.

We stayed under a nearby tree for a moment as I scanned the parking lot for a different convertible. I wanted the convertible just in case Veronique needed to do some fighting while I was driving.

I couldn’t believe that was one of the considerations I had to take in my life, but …

“What if we trigger the alarm?” Veronique asked after we’d waited for about twenty minutes.

“Actually, that’s not a bad idea. The driver probably has their alarm set to their smartphone. Everyone does that nowadays. Yeah, let’s trigger the alarm.”

As birds chirped overhead, I left the shade of the tree and walked down to the car. I placed my hand on it. That didn’t do anything, so I reached across the door and started fumbling with the rearview mirror.

The Mercedes beeped at me.

“Making progress …” I said as I started fiddling with the door handle.

The alarm finally went off.

I went back to the tree and picked up our shopping bags, which I’d set on the ground. We waited for the driver to come out. A female college student exited the art building, and by the way she was walking, I could tell it was her vehicle.

She was a light-skinned black woman with curly hair dressed in jeans and a black tank top with the words Stubb’s Barbeque on it and a silver necklace that hung over the upper edge of her top.

“That’s her,” I told Veronique.

Before the woman could pull out her keys and stop her car alarm from going off, Veronique began draining her. Dorian moved to catch the woman just as she fell and guided her back over to me. I asked her for the car keys.

“Who …?” The woman tried to scream, but as soon as the sound came out of her mouth, Veronique placed her hand on the woman’s head and drained more energy.

Damn, we really needed Grace in this operation. It was a lot cleaner.

You never know how much you need a psychic until the psychic is gone.

I glanced around nervously as Dorian opened the woman’s purse and took her keys. We helped her into the back of the Mercedes just as another student came out of the art building.

With the key in the ignition and our life and funds in a couple of shopping bags in the trunk, I started the vehicle up and peeled out of the parking lot.

Veronique was in the front, Dorian in the back with the student.

“She’s okay, right?” I asked as we got onto the highway.

“Seems fine to me,” Dorian said without checking.

I would have chuckled if it weren’t for the fact that this was a somewhat serious situation. We had kidnapped someone and stolen their car.

Shit had just gotten real.

After a little confusion, we ended up driving to the parking lot outside of Jim’s. It was a familiar place, and we could easily get on the road heading west from here. Once I parked, Dorian placed her hand on the woman. She instructed Veronique and me to hold hands, and when we locked fingers, she clasped her hand around ours.

We reappeared in the hotel room.

“How’s your charge going?” I asked her after the butterflies in my stomach settled.

“Better; it’s like you got some of the kinks out.”

We set the college student down and propped her against the wall. Veronique drained energy from the woman until her skin started to shrivel.

I didn’t know how long she would be out for, but we needed it to be until at least tomorrow. We’d be long gone by then.

So we relaxed.

Later that evening, we would order tacos and go over our plan again, but for now, we all needed to rest.

That was something they never covered in action movies or action-adventure books. The good guys had to rest sometime. Well, we weren’t quite the good guys, but we weren’t quite the bad guys either.

Truth of the matter was, and it applies even to this day, I still didn’t know what we were. But I do know, and I did know at the time, that part of our identity was held by Grace, and that she was a very important key to this puzzle.

Just as important, and maybe selfishly so, I missed the hell out of her.

Chapter Thirty: Taking Down Helicopters is Fun

We knew we were heading into an ambush. It was an unsettling feeling, but there was nothing we could do about it now.

Veronique wore the black bulletproof vest, her ballistic helmet, and the fanny pack filled with frag pouches.

Dorian wore the same thing, and also had a backpack full of saw blades and more frag pouches.

I too had on my vest, helmet, and carried frag pouches, both in a fanny pack and my backpack.

“Let’s do our best to get in and get out,” I said for the sixth time since we ate dinner. “Mother and Angel will be there, for sure, and I don’t think anyone can withstand Mother’s telepathic attacks. That’s why we need Grace. So, let’s get in, and get out. Sorry, I just said that. And sorry for the pep talk. This is fucking scary.”

Dorian nodded. “We will make this work, Gideon, just stay low. Ready?”

We got into position, Veronique at the front with her hand in her fanny pack, me in the middle, and Dorian behind us both.

We flashed away and appeared inside Grace’s holding cell, my stomach somersaulting twice as our forms took shape.

It was an unlit concrete space, easily forty by forty, with a low ceiling and a sarcophagus in the center, similar to what had been holding Veronique.

Only problem was, the sarcophagus was empty.

“Gideon!” Dorian grabbed my arm and teleported away, just as Veronique unleashed several of her frag pouches. Nuts, bolts, thumbtacks, and nails buzzed around the room, assault weapons firing as Dorian and I appeared on top of the building.

“Stay,” she told me, pulling out some of the frag pouches, and then she was gone.

An explosion threw me off balance and cut holes through the roof, letting out the frenzied noises from inside. The building creaked as metal was stripped from the wall, as more men died, as more shrapnel tore out of the roof.

I could now see into the chaos below, and what I could make out, mostly from muzzle flash, was that my team was winning.

Dorian was teleporting mayhem, Veronique orchestrating metal chaos.

From the north, another group of men were advancing on the compound, two black Humvees in their mix.

Shit!

Dorian reappeared and placed her hand on me, both of us teleporting away in a flash. We reappeared on the opposite roof.

“More are coming,” I told her before she could disappear again. “There!”

“Got it. There are just a few more left with Veronique.”

“Keep one alive,” I said quickly. “And …” I handed her my backpack, “charge this, teleport next to the group coming from the north, and toss it.”

Dorian licked a finger as she reached for my bag. It began to charge purple and pink and then she was gone in the blink of an eye, returning just a few seconds later.

Fuck, I thought as an explosion rocked our quadrant of the base. I was behind the parapet now, and as I moved to look over the side, an incredible force struck me in the chest.

I spun backward, Dorian’s hand landed on me, and we were gone before I could figure out what hit me.

We reappeared on a different rooftop and I toppled over, gripping my chest.

It felt like someone had smacked me with a baseball bat … like I’d been punched with an iron fist. I was still trying to catch my breath when Dorian took down two snipers, both of whom had turned toward us and pulled their handguns.

To take them out, she’d appeared between the two snipers and tossed one over the side of the roof, disappeared to the other one’s right, and tossed him as well. She then charged two frag pouches and threw them down onto the men’s bodies as they hit the ground below.

Most of that I pieced together after the fact.

My chest was pounding; I’d never been in such pain. But adrenaline took over and I was able to ignore it some.

A bullet, I told myself as I tried to catch my breath. If I hadn’t been wearing the vest, I would be dead by now.

Dorian popped back beside me. “Stay here,” she said and flashed away again, my backpack in her hand, charging with pink and purple energy.

Still trying to breathe normally, I peeked over the parapet just in time to see her reappear next to the incoming paramilitary forces, toss the backpack, and disappear before it could explode.

The explosion vibrated in my chest. I had to turn away once it struck, not prepared to see the bodies fall and the people scream in pain. My hands naturally went to where I’d been shot, feeling the indention in the vest, again realizing that my life had just been spared.

Before I could start doing some Hail Marys, Dorian reappeared, the vein on her forehead slightly visible.

“Let’s go,” she said, grabbing me.

“Keep one alive,” I reminded Dorian as we disappeared again.

Our bodies reformed next to Veronique and I lost my dinner.

“Sorry,” I whispered to them both. Vomit finished, I wiped my mouth and saw that Veronique had mopped the floor with the security detail that had been waiting to ambush us. The violence was almost something out of a Dark Horse comic with its stack of bodies accented by pools of blood.

Grim.

The room was lit by bodies that were smoldering – for some godawful reason – and the skylight that Veronique had opened up when she brought the ceiling down onto the rest of the men still standing.

“Tell me you kept one alive,” I asked as the strength returned to my legs.

“I did,” Veronique said, nodding to my right.

Fuck me …

A man was crucified to the wall with large metal shards, blood forming a straight line from his impaled hands and reaching all the way to the floor.

Veronique didn’t say anything as she walked over to him. A downed female soldier gasped in pain, still alive. Veronique stopped before the woman and drained her energy until she shriveled up and died.

“What are your questions, Gideon?” she asked, turning back to the man. Her hand flared red and he cried out in pain.

“Where is she?” I asked, or more appropriately, I growled. It’s amazing how leverage can change one’s demeanor.

“Don’t know … who you’re talking … about …”

“Yes, you do,” I told him. “It’s the reason you were in this room. Now where the fuck is she?”

“Honest, I don’t know!” the crucified man cried.

“You’ve got to know more than that,” I said. I huffed out a breath. “All right, this is the last time I ask. If you don’t tell me where she is, I’m going to have her,” I gestured at Dorian, “teleport you to a point in the sky above the freeway. She’ll teleport away before you hit the ground or are killed by an eighteen-wheeler. I’m not fucking around. Tell me what you know, and we’ll let you live; you’ll get some type of severance, extreme combat package. Dunno, I’m not a mercenary, but I’m sure there’s something in it for you. Oh, and your life. You’ll keep that. It’s that simple.”

I had to turn away for a moment. The person who’d just said that was not me, or better, was not the old me. This was the new me – the me that had decided to take everything into his own hands.

What have I become?

I gritted my teeth and turned back to the man. “Now, what do you know?”

“You’re not going to make it out of here alive,” was his answer.

“We’ll see about that.”

“They’re waiting for you,” he said through gritted teeth.

“Just like you were waiting for us. See how well that worked?”

“Near the track, in Barrack A,” he blurted out. “That’s where they moved her. The helicopter should be moving them … now. Really soon. They thought you’d attack later. May have already gone … I have no fucking idea.”

Veronique looked at me. “Leave him.” I turned my back to the man and approached Dorian. “You know where that is?”

“We can take a point on top of a rooftop and then go from there.”

Veronique stepped up beside me. “Good job,” I told her, taking one last look at the carnage. “Remember, we get Grace, and we go. And I drive until we see a gas station and then we get another car. In and out. I don’t want to take them on without Grace at full capacity.”

The crucified guy cried out to us as we flashed away.

We appeared on a rooftop, not far from where the snipers were. I was still surprised there were only two snipers, and I had a feeling we’d run into more.

I still couldn’t believe I’d been shot. If I hadn’t been wearing the vest … I touched my chest again and gulped. It would leave a bruise, but shit, that was the least of my concerns.

“Someone’s there,” Veronique said, pointing to someone at one of the cross streets.

The streets separating the barracks reminded me of the ones in New Haven, not a lot of wiggle room on the side. Sure enough, there was a person sitting in a wheelchair at the intersection of one of the streets.

“Are you two ready?”

Dorian pulled two frag pouches out of her fanny pack. I saw that Veronique was running low, so I handed her several from my own pack.

“You two are awesome,” I said as they both looked at me. “If I die tonight, I’m proud to have died by your sides.”

Dorian grinned. “You haven’t known me for that long.”

Veronique laughed. “You’ve known me for a bit longer but … yeah, I’ll miss you too. If you die. Don’t die. Who will I shower with?”

The two exchanged glances and started laughing.

“Yeah, about that …”

A pair of helicopters appeared in the distance.

“Shit. To be addressed later.”

Veronique grinned. “Taking down helicopters is fun.”

“I’ll bet. Keep an eye on them. Once they get too close, see if you can use them to our advantage.”

She snorted. “And I thought I was the one who had military training.”

“I think it was both of us,” Dorian said.

“Just trying to be helpful.”

Veronique placed a hand on my cheek “Stay alive. You are most helpful to us alive.”

After the two got in front, I touched their shoulders and we teleported to a spot just in front of the person sitting in the wheelchair.

I gasped when I saw it was Grace, her hair covering her face, her skin sagging off her chin. She was naked, her body in spasms, unable to do more than silently nod at me. I could see that her eyes were completely white, shining through the shadows cast by her long hair. And just as I was about to scream her name like an idiot, Angel zoomed down from the sky and landed behind her, Mother in his arms.

The standoff had begun.

Angel let Mother down, and she dusted off the front of her black bodysuit, similar to what Veronique wore when she first came after us.

One of the helicopters’ spotlights landed on Mother, giving her the stage.

“Gideon Caldwell, you have quite the reputation.” The choppers were high enough in the air that we could hear her speak, but I had to strain a little. “You actually got out of here, and then you came back, now for a third time. Had I known you’d be so resilient, we wouldn’t have kicked you out of the program all those years ago.”

I glanced at Veronique. Out of the program? Damn, I wished she could read my thoughts! Was this why my picture was on Grace’s drive? It had to be!

Mother continued. “You are now responsible for the death of … I don’t know how many American soldiers you killed back there.”

“They’re from a private security company,” I told her through clenched teeth. “Not quite soldiers, so don’t try to guilt me there.”

Dorian lightly touched my wrist. She was on edge, but if Veronique was as well, I couldn’t tell. She’d actually stepped forward, valiant as ever as she sized Angel and Mother up.

“They are whatever we say they are,” Mother finally said, her expression souring. “And you’ll be charged with their murders. Dorian Gray, I really thought you were one of our more unique creations. But you aren’t. The ones on the East Coast, they are. And the one in my womb she is.”

She’s pregnant? Mother had mentioned during our interrogation that she was planning to create others, but those were test tube babies, according to her. I didn’t think she was actually pregnant, especially because she’d specifically said she wasn’t. But now I could see it, especially because of how tight her outfit was. She had a slight motherly bump, just a hint, maybe four months pregnant or less.

“You got your mom pregnant?” I asked Angel. “Damn, man.”

I knew he could crush me in an instant. But for some reason, seeing his greasy long hair covering his perfectly chiseled yet slightly burnt face just got to me. If I’d had a chance to go back and make the joke better, I would have said something about how we were in Texas, not Arkansas, where inbreeding and child marriages were accepted, but I always had better jokes in retrospect.

Angel ignored me as Mother continued speaking.

“Dorian and Veronique, you both disappoint me, and you will both be retired after this, but not before we do some experiments on you. I would really like to watch you suffer. Especially you, Veronique. And I know it’ll be a little hard considering your power, but we could just let you starve. That may be the way to go; lock you in a plastic room and let you starve.”

Grace! I called to her in my head. Are you okay? Focus on my words!

I’d heard enough of the supervillain bullshit talk. I didn’t think what she was going on about would actually happen in real life, but it seemed like every time Mother came around – or Angel for that matter – they wanted to talk about their evil plans or how inferior I was.

If there ever were real supervillains, they would just kill everyone and not say anything about it. There would be none of this banter, and there wouldn’t be any movies about superheroes either because the villains would kill all the good guys.

Mother rambled on and on about how I was inferior and how Dorian and Veronique were doomed, and as she finished her diatribe, I began to think about my book, How Heavy This Axe.

Damn, that was a good cover, and damn, people really should have gotten into that one more. But I mean, transgendered dwarves were still a controversial topic, and no one liked to see the Hero’s Journey upended. Still, maybe I should republish it with a forward and an updated cover …

From there, I thought about a spin-off of Mutants in the Making that I’d call Hot Mutant Adventure.

Talk about keyword stuffing.

I would make it a harem because, let’s be honest, sex sells, and guys like to think that having control over multiple women somehow ups their masculinity.

And shit, I didn’t even like most of the harem books or anime I’d consumed. Too corny and unbelievable, and the covers on the books! How many times do I have to see a guy surrounded by two impossibly beautiful semi-nude babes to get past the sexual undertones and see the book for what it really was?

Then again, maybe it was better to lean into it, really get that shit going. Hot Mutant Adventure: A Superhero Harem Adventure.

‘Adventure’ twice? I thought as Mother kept yammering about the different ways she was going to torture us. Change it to thriller. Hot Mutant Adventure: A Superhero Harem Thriller. Circle jerkers, we have a winner! Wannabe alpha males rejoice!

“I’ll get Grace, and then I’ll come for you,” Dorian said suddenly, interrupting my train of thought. “Cover yourself.”

“What?” I asked.

Dorian was gone in a flash. She appeared in front of Grace, grabbed her, and disappeared again. Veronique tossed her frag pouches at Mother and Angel, just as I dropped to the ground to cover myself.

Veronique was full-on raging now, trying to cut one of them down before Angel could reach her or before Mother’s powers could take effect.

Predictably, Mother won.

Just as Veronique was about to throw one of her circular blades, her eyes flashed, and she staggered forward.

“Veronique!”

“Get down, Gideon!” she managed to get out before her eyes turned white.

Angel, who had just protected Mother from a barrage of shrapnel, shifted his weight to his heels and burst into the air, bits of metal and blood flying off his body as he tackled Veronique.

But Veronique wasn’t finished.

Even as Mother tried to control her, she lifted a hand to Angel’s throat, and the flying motherfucker suddenly started losing steam. Veronique’s hand flaring red, the energy moved up her arms as she overpowered him.

Damn, I wished I could do something. Damn it all to hell! But I had other problems, including the fact that Mother was approaching me, now ignoring the struggle happening between Angel and Veronique.

The thing was, when Angel hit her, they flew about forty feet to the right, but Mother had naturally focused her attention on me during this time.

A stupid move on her part, bad luck for me though.

The mangled symphony of screams began in my mind again, whirling waves of neuronal debris scraping across my brainscape. It felt like Mother had put my head in a microwave. My knees were curled to my chest, and I spasmed, trying to break free from her hold.

Then the twisted orchestra grinded to a halt.

Gideon.

Grace! I knew it was her, and even though I was on the ground twitching like a beached eel, just hearing her voice sparked courage in me. I pushed myself to my feet just as Mother stepped over me.

My god, had she taken every move out of the supervillain playbook. She actually lifted me by the throat, holding me in the air, a sinister smile on her face as she began to squeeze.

“You’ve have made it far, I’ll give you that.”

Dorian popped into view behind Mother and punched her in the back of the head with one of the circular saws. It was clear she hadn’t charged it, evident by the fact that Mother’s head didn't blow off. But the attack did take her off guard, and she dropped me.

By the time I hit the ground, Dorian was next to me, her hand on my wrist.

We reappeared beside Grace, who was sitting with her back against one of the buildings, her head hung low, hair in her face.

“I have to get Veronique, and then we need to get out.”

“Yes, yes,” I said quickly. “Be safe!”

She was gone just about the time Mother screamed out. We weren’t very far away, maybe a hundred yards, and it wouldn’t take Mother or Angel long to reach us.

I heard the sound of metal being pulled from the building and the whir of the helicopters being operated by clearly confused pilots, since they hadn’t started shooting – because who do you shoot at?

One of them lifted to try to find where Dorian had taken us.

I pulled Grace into my arms, aware that it wouldn’t do anything but needing to feel like I was helping and protecting her in some way.

Gently, I wiped her hair out of her fucked-up looking face, saw that her skin had sagged along her jowls, that the middle line of her face was now a different color than the rest, that one of her eyes was open, flickering white and black, and one of her hands was two times as large as the other.

“You’ll be fine,” I told her. “We’re here now, dammit, we’re here now. So just stay with us; we’ll be gone soon.” I kissed her forehead. “Just stay with us, Grace, I know you can do it.”

Her head sank forward, and I tried to speak with her telepathically.

Grace, please, respond.

Silence.

I was startled when Dorian reappeared with Veronique slung over her shoulder. Dorian was breathing heavily, her face red.

Veronique was completely passed out, her eyes rolled up under half-closed lids.

Before I could say anything, Dorian placed her hand on Grace and spread her fingers so that she was also touching my skin.

And we were gone.

Chapter Thirty-One: Kidnap or Kill. The Story of My Life.

Our bodies took shape outside of Jim’s in Oak Hill and fortunately, our Mercedes was still there. The moment our forms solidified, Dorian dropped to her knees, barely able to keep hold of Veronique.

I could tell she was overheating. I was sitting on the ground, in the same position I’d been in back at the military base. Once I adjusted to my surroundings, I unlocked the car and put Grace in the back.

Then I moved to Dorian. “I’ve got her,” I said as I took Veronique from her arms.

I removed Veronique’s helmet and body armor and set her in the front seat. As I did, she opened her eyes and looked at me. “It’s going to be all right,” I told her. She looked pretty bad off; her skin pale, a bruise already forming over one eye. “Just relax.”

“I need …” She nodded and lifted a hand to the side of my cheek.

“Just a little,” I warned.

Instantly, I felt a shift in the energy of my body. Her hand reddened for only a moment, and then she let go.

“Thanks,” she whispered, her skin lightening some.

I moved to Dorian and helped take off her bulletproof vest and helmet.

I looked back at the car and realized it would be better for Veronique to sit in the back so Dorian could sit in the front with the A/C blasting her. “I’ll be right back,” I said, and after I moved Veronique to the back, I helped Dorian to the front.

We hit Highway 71 heading west, our fast-paced drive all but a blur to me. Dorian to my right, Veronique in the back, next to Grace … I didn’t know what the fuck my life had become, but I couldn’t lose any of these women.

And damn, if we didn’t need to get Grace some clothes, but the few clothes we had were in shopping bags in the trunk.

I bit my nails as I drove, the lights from the road casting horizontal orange arcs across the inside of the vehicle. No music, stars overhead, my heart still beating fast even though we were moving far away from the violence.

I hadn’t become desensitized yet, but I was getting close.

In my mind, I could still see the men Veronique had killed. I could still feel the bullet as it struck me in the chest. Hell, I still wore my bulletproof vest, which I’d forgotten to take off back at the restaurant. My helmet too. I was seriously driving a convertible Mercedes in a ballistic helmet and bulletproof vest.

Fuck my life.

But I was alive; it was the most alive I’d ever been. Even though Veronique had drained some of my life force, I felt rejuvenated, powerful, safe. Thank you, adrenaline! And I shouldn’t have felt safe; if we had been attacked at that moment, we would have been done for. Dorian was down, Grace was in la-la land, and Veronique needed to feed.

Still, we were together, safe enough. Yeah, safe enough.

And I was the getaway driver. Some fucking superhero skill to have: I can drive a car! But it was useful. And sure, if we ever got out of this alive, later we could alternate between teleporting and driving, but that remained to be seen. So much had happened between us, and I felt it in that singular moment.

But like Italo Calvino said, “The past is like a tapeworm.”

I set the vehicle into auto drive and took out my smartphone. I sent an encrypted email to Ken to tell him all was well and that we needed to talk soon. I started to send a message to Luke, but I didn’t want to get into everything that just happened, so I kept it under wraps.

Sometimes it was better that way. And besides, once I had time to unpack everything that had happened, I could give him the lowdown in a series of quick texts.

Staring out at the endless highway, my Mutants in the Making naturally came to the forefront of my mind. I needed to write the third part, put them all together, and release it as a proper book.

But where to begin? And how could I continue writing without incriminating myself more than I’d already done? I should have published it under a damn pseudo; my vanity will be the death of me.

“Are you feeling better?” I asked Dorian after we’d driven for about thirty minutes with the cold air blasting against her face.

She nodded. “That was … I don’t know.”

“We need another car, and I’ll need you and possibly Veronique to help. Also, Grace needs clothes. Can’t have her just sitting naked in the car.”

“I can help,” Veronique said from the back seat. “Just get me close enough that I can feed. Regarding her clothes, once we stop, I can try to dress her. We still have the Leslie shirt and Dorian’s shorts. I believe.”

“Sounds about right,” I said. But listen, and seriously here – we can’t leave a body trail this time.” I thought of the college student we’d left back at the hotel; how frightened and confused she’d be when she finally recovered enough to wake up. “That’s why we need Grace … What are we supposed to do with the person after we drain them and steal their vehicle?”

“I could teleport them to the desert somewhere,” Dorian said.

“I’ll file that under ‘body trail.’ We should try to set that up as our MO: the less killing of innocent people, the better. I’d like that number to stay at zero going forward. The security personnel, private military soldiers, other supers – those are our targets.”

“I’m sure we’ll figure something out. If not, just let me feed.” I watched in the rearview mirror as Veronique closed her eyes and laid her head back.

“Remember, no body trail.”

I pulled into a gas station about an hour later. It was the largest gas station I’d seen in my life, easily the size of a WalMacy’s back east.

“Bucky’s,” Dorian said as she read the sign. “There are a lot of cars here.”

She wasn’t lying. The place was packed, and since it was open twenty-four hours, it didn’t show any signs of slowing down. There were at least fifty pumps and sitting outside the entrance was a large collection of towering roosters made of corrugated metal.

Only in Texas, right?

Our goal was Santa Fe, damn near ten hours away. Grace had mentioned she wanted to go there. It was near one of the secret facilities, and once we got her up and running again, we could continue our assault.

The question of our endgame came to me and I swallowed it down, as I’d done multiple times over the last few days. But what happens if you actually succeed? a voice at the back of my head asked.

A memoir? was my answer.

I hated to laugh at my own answer, but I did, and Dorian gave me a funny look.

“Sorry,” I told her, “my brain is a mess, scrambled like eggs, poached, boiled twice, burned around the edges.”

“So, it’s an egg? I’d love to eat.”

“Funny. Veronique, can you walk?” I took off my helmet and worked on removing my vest.

She nodded.

“Let’s get in, get some food, get back to the car, get our bags in the back, and then get another vehicle.” I found a spot away from the bright lights of the entrance.

“I think I’ll just stay here while you two feed.” Veronique got out and retrieved our bags from the trunk. “Conserve energy.”

“Good call,” I told her, and Dorian and I turned to the supersized convenient store.

I was going to be driving all night, and I needed to get lit as fuck on energy drinks. Bull Bean was my go-to choice; I found their twenty-hour energy cans and grabbed a six-pack. I also picked up a pulled pork BBQ sandwich, a bag of chips, and a freaking forty-eight-ounce cup of coffee. Dorian got a sausage wrap, a sixty-four-ounce Dr. Pepper, and a pint of Blue Bell ice cream, which came with its own spoon.

We headed outside and found Veronique still leaning against the Mercedes, a sly look on her face. She watched as a man got out of a sporty two-door Mustang.

“We need something a little larger,” I reminded her. “There’s four of us, and we’ll still have an extra body to deal with.”

Nope, I hadn’t come up with a solution as to how we were supposed to steal a car and not kill or kidnap the person. Since I’d already laid down the ‘no killing’ rule, we were going with the next best thing: kidnapping. I’d tried to come up with other options, but they all led back to these two choices. Kidnap or kill, the story of my life.

“Ah, there. That’s more what we’re looking for,” I said as a Toyota Four Runner pulled into a space a few spots away from us.

“On it,” Veronique said, and before I could really say or do anything, she approached the driver – a short woman in a pair of overalls – and drained her. She started by draining her long distance but moved in closer until the woman had all but shriveled up.

Veronique used her powers to transfer the woman’s keys over to me, and after making sure no one was watching, we quickly placed the woman in the back of the Four Runner. I checked her pulse. Whew, she was still alive.

We then moved the naked mess that was Grace into the newly acquired vehicle, and once we put her in the back as well, Veronique began dressing her.

A car pulled up, clearly wanting our spot, but we waited for a moment. Dorian leaned against the trunk of our Mercedes, giving the country guy driving the other car a pretty good view of her rear. He focused on this for a moment, licked his lips, and moved into another spot not too far down.

“Let’s go, Dorian,” I said before he could approach us.

Yes, he stood no chance against her, and I’m sure Veronique wouldn’t mind feeding again, but I didn’t want to cause a scene. She followed my lead, Blue Bell spoon in her mouth, drink in hand as she sashayed to the front passenger side of the Four Runner.

With a smile on my face (because who doesn’t like seeing someone walk like that?), I grabbed what was left of our bulletproof gear, and kept the Mercedes keys in my pocket.

“Good job, everyone,” I said. I adjusted the seat in the Four Runner and started it up. We got back on the highway, and when we were about thirty minutes away from the gas station, we pulled over and I buried the Mercedes keys.

By this point, Dorian was sleeping, her hands on her distended belly, and Veronique was awake in the back seat, sipping from the big ass cup of coffee I’d bought.

“What are we going to do with her in Santa Fe?” she asked.

“Which her?” I looked at Veronique through the rearview mirror. “The owner of the vehicle?”

“Grace.”

“We’re going to contact Ken. But first, we’re going to see what we can do on our own.”

“And the woman in the back?” she shifted her weight so she could look behind her at the unconscious owner of our new vehicle. “I could drain her some more,” she said, red energy radiating up her fingertips.

“Veronique, don’t kill her. We’re going to drop her off at a hospital. Take her ID first, make sure we aren’t on camera. Better yet, maybe we’ll just drop her off in front of a McStarbucks or something. No, that’s too visual. A hospital. We’ll figure it out. Maybe Dorian can teleport with her to the front and teleport away instantly. Yeah. Then they won’t see the vehicle.”

I was thinking out loud, two Bull Bean energy drinks down, my heart thumping in my chest.

More driving. Minutes became hours and every now and then Veronique would check on me to make sure I was still awake. But I’d never been more awake in my life. It wasn’t so much because of the energy drinks as it was a determination to save Grace. We’d made it this far. We would see this to the end.

At some point we stopped, refueled, used the restrooms, and got more coffee.

Kept moving.

Texas became a tumbleweed blur.

I set the SUV in auto drive and relaxed a little. Damn, was auto drive nice, and as the Toyota drove itself, I took a deep breath and finished another energy drink. I felt a hand fall on my lap and I took it, squeezing tightly. I looked over to see Dorian smiling at me.

“You’re doing well,” she whispered.

“You’ll get us there, Gideon,” Veronique said from the back.

“Why are you two still up?” I asked, half-jokingly.

“We’re keeping watch,” Dorian said, her hand still in mine. “Let me know if there’s anything else I can do.” She flicked a finger at my pocket.

“And I’m making sure she doesn’t wake up.” For the third time that night, Veronique drained the woman we’d taken hostage.

“Careful,” I reminded both of them.

We neared the Texas-New Mexico border.

I’d been driving for hours, and after we reached a small, semi-forgotten town, I saw a sign pointing to a hospital. We drove to the hospital, stopped a few parking lots away, and Dorian disappeared with the woman, returning seconds later empty-handed.

The mind-numbing journey continued.

I drank another Bull Bean and felt a surge of faux energy.

The sun was starting to come up, adding a touch of pink to the horizon.

I suddenly felt like crying. I suddenly felt like jumping into the air and clicking my heels together.

I suddenly felt like driving the SUV off a cliff.

Relax, Writer Gideon.

It wasn’t Grace. It was my own subconscious, but I was fine with that.

Long story short: We somehow made it to Santa Fe. And when we did, I pulled up to the first hotel I could find and got a room with double beds.

The sun was up, the air was cooler, the altitude higher, and I was exhausted.

Chapter Thirty-Two: A Golden Shower in Santa Fe

It wasn’t quite a golden shower, but as I carried Grace into the hotel bedroom in Santa Fe, she pissed in my arms and all over the front of my shirt.

I was too exhausted to care, but rather than lay her in the bed, I put her in the bathtub, figuring she may go again. I took off my shirt – so long, Austin Ice Bats – and realized then that I didn’t have any other clothing.

The gift shop.

It was about eight in the morning, and the gift shop would be open soon. Not at all concerned with the fact that I was a bearded shirtless man with a gnarly scar on his cheek, I walked back to the hotel’s reception area and told them I needed a shirt.

The clerk looked at my bloodshot eyes with alarm, and her manager came running. I told them I’d had a problem with my other shirt and that I’d like them to open the gift shop so I could buy one of those kitschy New Mexico shirts.

“In particular,” I told the manager, “I’d like the one with the wolf jumping in front of the moon.”

“The gift shop opens at ten,” he said.

“Please give me something, or …”

I glanced over my shoulder, assuming Veronique or Dorian had followed me.

They hadn’t, but I didn’t need to press any further. The manager saw the crazy look in my eyes, opened the gift shop, and handed me a medium.

“Make it a large,” I told him, “I need some room to breathe.”

If ever there was an understatement of the year …

He returned with a large wolf shirt and I meandered my way back to our room.

“I need to message Ken,” I mumbled when I stepped inside.

Dorian, who was resting on the bed, flashed away and appeared behind me.

“You need to rest, Gideon,” she said, placing her hands on my shoulders. Veronique was already out, cuddled up under the blankets on the bed farthest from the door.

“I need to shower too,” I said.

“Relax.”

“Grace,” I told her, and with that, I entered the bathroom.

Grace’s skin had melted away even more, but I wasn’t bothered by it in the least bit. I knelt by the tub and started smoothing her hair out of her face.

“Gideon,” Dorian said, stepping into the room behind me. “You drank too many energy drinks. You need some rest.”

“There’s no such thing, goddammit!”

But by this point, I was stripping down to my boxers and getting into the tub with Grace. I positioned myself behind her, wrapped her in my arms, and looked up at Dorian.

“I’ll rest here.”

And rest I did. For hours and hours, I slept with Grace in my arms. She was breathing, and I could feel her lungs expand with each breath in, but other than that, she was pretty much dead to the world.

Or so I thought.

I woke up hours later to Grace’s voice in my head.

Writer Gideon.

I tried to move out from under her, but my leg was asleep.

Grace? I thought and tried to shake my leg out. It wasn’t easy, especially because she was on top of me. As I woke up, I saw that Dorian was sitting with her back against the door, also asleep.

I’m here. I don’t know what Mother did but …

We’re in Santa Fe, I thought to her, where you wanted to visit.

Is it beautiful?

Don’t know.

You drove here last night after rescuing me and haven’t seen the city.

That’s right. I only saw some Pueblo-styled buildings. George R.R. Martin once lived here. That’d be a nice life, living in Santa Fe and writing fantasy.

It would be very nice. Dorian, Veronique, and I could live with you and we could redesign the home.

I would love that.

We would too.

I swallowed hard. I never pictured myself as the type to have a polyamorous commune with beautiful women, but then again, Mormons did it …

Why are you thinking about Utah again? Grace thought to me.

Sorry. My brain is an onion that shouldn’t be unraveled.

Your brain is more like a dog that chases its tail and sometimes catches it.

Hey!

I don’t know how long I’ll be like this, she thought, changing subjects. And I’m sorry for my appearance. It must be gruesome.

I don’t care about that. What I care about is getting you back to your full operating level.

It may not be possible. Are you prepared for that?

We will do it, Grace.

I wanted to ask your permission before I did something.

What do you mean? The blood had returned to my leg and I was able to shift myself to a more comfortable position, waking Dorian. She nodded as she wiped the sleep out of her eyes, smearing a bit of her eyeliner.

I want to transfer my power to you.

“You want to do what?” I asked aloud.

It would be temporary, but before I did it, I wanted to ask your permission.

“Why would you want to do that?”

Dorian looked at me this time, realizing almost immediately who I was talking to.

Please be prepared for what I’m about to tell you, Gideon.

What do you mean?

I know the picture you found on my drive has been on your mind.

Yes, you never told me what that was about.

A series of flashes came to me. I saw myself going to the Rose-Lyle facility, my parents dropping me off, being led down a hallway, staying overnight in a sterile room …

I gasped. Are you serious?

Yes, it’s really what happened.

More images, these containing my parents picking me up from the facility, a discharge letter handed to my mother, payment, looking over my shoulder at the place one last time.

They tested local children to see if Mother could give her power to anyone else, aside from me.

Aside from you?

It’s how Mother gave me my abilities.

You weren’t born with superpowers?

No, I was the only one in my batch who didn’t have a power. So, Mother gave me some of hers, as she was the only telepath at the time. Like Dorian’s teleportation, the shifting part of my abilities grew later.

I looked from Grace to Dorian, who had no idea of the drama playing out in my head.

You were one of the children they tested, around the time you and your family moved to Hamden. You made it to the second round; only a few others made it that far.

So, I’m a mutant?

No, but you aren’t far off. They actually stopped testing the children who made it to the second round; they were more susceptible to the procedure, and there’s no way of telling if it would have actually worked for them if they had continued. This is why I believe I can give my power to you. I’m almost certain, and I also believe it’s why I found you that first night. It wasn’t just fate; some part of me sensed you.

This is a lot to process …

There’s no time. They are coming. They activated tracking devices in our drives.

“Come again?” I asked aloud.

Grace repeated the thought in my head.

“Shit, shit, shit! Dorian, tell Veronique to expect company. They’re tracking us!”

“How soon?” she asked.

“No telling, but we should … Fuck, okay, I’ll handle what I can. Shit! We’ve wasted hours. My fault, totally my fault.”

Writer Gideon, I will give you my power.

“You can’t do that,” I told Grace, confusion setting in. Would my parents really do this to me?

It was a long time ago. We’re your family now, and Grace and Dorian will need you.

A thousand thoughts came to me and I compartmentalized them all. Panic rose in my chest and I forced that shit down.

Now was the time to act.

The first person I needed to talk to was Dr. Kim. He’d know how to disable the GPS tracking. I scrambled to get out of the bathtub so I could get my phone, which was in the pocket of my pants that I’d tossed haphazardly on the floor.

You haven’t given me permission about transferring my psychic powers.

“You have my permission, but I only want you to do it if we’re attacked.”

There may not be much time.

“Just let me get things in order first,” I said. I scrolled to my inbox and fired off a message to Ken Kim telling him to call me immediately.

There were also messages from Luke. While I waited for Kim to call, I read through them and started to reply.

Luke: Update me. I haven’t heard from you.

Me: I’m in the southwestern part of America. We have Grace. She’s comatose. I’m preparing for an attack. I may be a mutant.

Luke: WTF.

Me: WTF X 2.

Luke: You never get a chance to rest, do you? Well, I don’t know what to say. I’ll be honest, I haven’t known how to respond to any of this since I realized the truth. I hope that’s okay.

I put on my shirt, slipped into my jeans, and returned to our conversation. “Come on, Kim,” I whispered as I looked back at my phone.

Me: I’ll be able to talk about it more later. It’s just too much right now.

Luke: Let me know if there’s anything I can do. Sounds dumb to say, but you know what I mean.

Me: Thanks, man.

Luke: Update me once all this settles down. You really need to set up a file of info I can publish or get to the Canadian authorities if something happens.

Me: Seriously.

My phone rang, and I answered it immediately.

“Ken, they’re tracking us, and I need a way to stop them from doing that. Now. Actually, yesterday. I needed this yesterday. They’re probably on their way here now. Fuck! Sorry, it’s been a long thirty-six hours, and for at least …” I checked the time on my phone. “For at least seven of those hours, I was sleeping. I just found out I was tested on and almost became a mutant.”

“What? You’re talking too fast. Calm down and tell me what happened.”

I repeated pretty much the same thing but slower this time.

“Damn, okay, so they’ve activated their GPS locators. And you’re just now figuring that out.”

“Why weren’t they active all the time?”

“Because the girls weren’t supposed to escape; Dorian and Veronique were part of the team that existed for real-world extractions. I don’t think you realize how uncanny it is that you were able to convince them to join you.”

“It wasn’t as hard as it sounds. We can discuss that later.” I glanced over at Grace’s melted form. “I need to handle this now. And something is wrong with Grace, but I’ll get to that later too.”

I heard Ken typing on a keyboard. “Shit, just what I expected,” he finally said after a few bated breaths.

Veronique and Dorian came into the bathroom wearing their bulletproof vests, fanny packs, and helmets. Dorian handed me my gear, and I put Ken on speakerphone.

“Getting dressed,” I told him as I slipped into the vest. “What’s going on?”

“The GPS fix can only be done with a manual override.”

“How do I do that?”

“I’ll need to plug into one of their ports and do it. It requires a special key, and you don’t have the key.”

I looked at Dorian, who also wore the backpack we’d purchased back in Austin. “How long do you think it would take you to get to New Haven from here?”

“Alone?”

I nodded.

“How far is it?” she asked.

“Ken, how far is it from New Mexico to Connecticut?”

“Over two thousand miles. And she can move in increments of about twelve hundred miles a pop.”

Dorian crossed her arms. She looked concerned. “I’ll have to recharge,” she said after a moment. “And eat something. It’ll take me a moment to figure out a spawning location. Two thousand miles there and back. About an hour. I think it will take me about an hour.”

Ken’s voice piped out of the phone. “Have her go to Memphis or possibly Nashville. Teleport out from there. Come back the same way. I’ll give her photos of my apartment. We can make the exchange here. The problem is: if they come for you while she’s gone, you’re down a member.”

“We may have a solution for that,” I said, thinking about Grace’s request to transfer some of her power to me. “These keys, are they simply USB drives?”

“Something like that. I’ll set this key to override GPS signaling upon manual reboot.”

“Got it. Forward the photos to my email. I’m sending Dorian to you with my smartphone and then she’ll come right back to us. I have a burner phone just in case.”

Dorian nodded. “And I’ll be able to find you because of what you’ve done with my teleportation abilities.”

“That’s right, Empathetic Teleportation. Please don’t take long; I have a feeling we’re going to need you.”

I heard something land on the roof. Then another thump, followed by a much louder sound.

“We’ve got to go,” I told Ken. “They’re here.”

“How did you find this place?” I asked Dorian as soon as our bodies took shape, Grace in my arms, Veronique and Dorian triangled in front of me.

We were on a cliffside near an abandoned Pueblo-styled house that looked like it had been decades since it was someone’s home.

“I saw it when we drove into Santa Fe,” she told me.

“And why did you choose this place exactly?” Veronique asked.

Dorian indicated the road below us. “I believe we’re about twenty to thirty miles outside of town. There’s only one way to get here, and it’s on that road; the same road that we drove on yesterday – or was it today? It was today.”

I had to laugh. “Fuck, do I feel you there, I don’t know what day it is.”

“Anyway, you’ll be able to see them coming. And …” she looked around. “Yep, over there’s a pile of scrap metal. I saw that too.”

“How did you have time to see all this stuff?” I asked. “I don’t even remember driving on that road.”

“It was the first house I saw that was shaped in this style of architecture they have here. And there was that metal trash heap next to it. Use it to your advantage.” Dorian looked at Veronique. “I’ll return as fast as I can, you have my word.”

“We’ll hold them off, isn’t that right, Gideon?” Veronique asked me.

“Before you leave, there’s something you two should know,” I said suddenly. “Grace has asked if she could give me some of her power. Apparently, I was once tested for susceptibility to whatever superhero gene you three have. I believe it’s only the psychic powers, not her shifting abilities, but it could be handy. Especially her Omnikinesis. So I’m going to say yes.”

Dorian smirked. “Welcome to the club.”

“The club?”

“You always wanted to be a superhero, didn’t you?”

“I guess that’s right,” I said and handed her my smartphone.

Dorian disappeared, leaving me with Grace and Veronique. It was a cool evening, and as I carried Grace over to the shadows provided by the abandoned house, she spoke to me again inside my head.

Are you ready, Writer Gideon?

Will you lose any of your abilities by giving some to me? I thought back to her.

I don’t think so, and I don’t plan to give them to you permanently. Once I’m better, I will take them back.

I heard the clink of metal behind me as Veronique used her ability to move some of the metal around, so they faced in the direction of the road below.

Okay, if you say so, Grace; I trust you.

I trust you too.

As soon as she said that, a strange sensation moved up my body, stopping at the center of my skull. It felt like someone had constructed a pillar made of light inside me. My surroundings became clearer to me, the feeling in my hands lightened, my chest lost its heaviness … it was almost what floating might feel like.

I realized that my eyes were closed and that the luminous landscape I saw before me was my consciousness expanding.

I opened my eyes with a gasp and saw Veronique continuing to use her powers to move metal.

There was something different about me.

I looked at a piece of metal and thrust my hand out like I was auditioning for a role in Star Wars. To my surprise, the metal lifted, twisted once, and fell back to the ground.

Veronique stopped what she was doing and looked at me. I could see her aura in the form of a strange, shadowy darkness hovering over her. I could see in her eyes that … she really liked me.

She averted her gaze. “Do not use her abilities on me.”

“I don’t know how to turn them off,” I said as I approached the edge of the cliff. I guess calling it a cliff was overselling it a bit, as it was more of a ridge, but that did give us a vantage point.

Plus, I was a writer. Everything I thought or experienced was cast through the gaze of hyperbole.

“I’ll help you move metal,” I told Veronique. “I need to practice this.”

Veronique nodded, but she refused to look back in my direction.

The strange thing about the power Grace had transferred to me was that I could sense more than just humans. I sensed everything around me – blades of grass beating in the cool evening wind, a rabbit not far away burrowing into its hole, the life of the city miles away.

It was an entirely psychedelic experience.

I practiced swinging the metal bars, and as I got the hang of it, I heard Grace in my head again, only this time it was as if she’d descended from heaven and pressed her ethereal body into mine.

It was different than before, not just a voice … almost as if I were speaking it to myself, almost as if we suddenly had a hive mind.

Do you like it, Writer Gideon?

I think? It’s just so powerful. I feel like I’ve always existed and that everyone has always been here, that our stories are all intertwined and replicas of each other. I’m sorry, it’s just so strong.

You’ll get used to it. They’re coming soon, and you need to focus on getting ready.

Please come out of whatever coma you’re in, Grace. This power belongs to you. We need you here, I need you here.

I can’t yet. There’s something stopping me. I can hear you, I can sense you … I can almost feel you, and I can speak to you, but my body is not mine right now.

I continued to practice my abilities.

One of the first things I noticed was that I didn’t need to make any cool Bruce Lee hand gestures to move things and that some of the changes happened almost before I could complete their thought.

Case in point: a partially crumbled brick wall. I walked toward it, focusing on it, wanting it to collapse, but it was only when it fell that I realized my desire for it to fall had come after the action.

It was entirely bizarre.

There had been vehicles traveling on the highway below us the whole time we were here, but the way some of the latest ones moved told me that we were about to get some company. The odd part about this assumption was that I intuited it when the vehicles were just specks on the horizon.

And as I watched, I felt them approach, sensed their impending arrival. I turned toward Veronique and told her this was it.

“Good luck,” she said.

“Same to you,” was the only comeback I could muster.

Veronique launched her first attack the moment the SUVs and Humvees started turning onto the dirt road that led to the house. Bars of metal rocketed down the hillside, straight into the windows, killing the drivers of the first three vehicles.

By this point, the vehicles had stopped and people were piling out. I didn’t know the range of Grace’s ability, and rather than test it, I held back, waiting to handle those who actually breached the barrier.

I recalled one of Grace’s abilities that I hadn’t had a chance to practice yet, mostly because I didn’t have a target.

This was another reason to hold back, because if it worked …

The first two soldiers breached the front of the property, and as soon as I saw them, I took control of their minds.

Is this what it feels like?

Yes, Grace answered.

I smiled as the two men’s consciousness appeared in my pane of vision. It wasn’t like a video game with multiple perspectives, it was more like a dream in which I was someone else, yet also myself, our experiences playing out at the same time.

I imagined myself as the men, pointing their guns at each other and shooting.

Pop! Pop!

They fell.

“Holy shit …” I whispered.

I heard a swoosh behind me. Angel had landed on the roof of the house.

“Angel!” I shouted to Veronique, telling her of his location with a thought that she clearly received.

She struck him with another metal bar just as he reached the ground. He flew to the right, smashed into a fucking cactus, and tumbled in the dirt.

“Bullets!” I warned Veronique, foreshadowing their arrival.

Bullets came, and she quickly stopped them, turning them back on the men moving up the hill.

Dorian had chosen an incredibly good spot to leave us, as the men could only fight going up. Even Angel was now standing on a slope.

I kept listening for helicopters, and sure enough, I heard some.

No matter, as long as I could see the pilot …

That’s right, Writer Gideon, you can do this! Grace’s voice rang out in my head.

“I’ve got Angel,” I told Veronique.

His hair in his face, the superpowered mommy humper stomped over to me, ready to put an end to this. “Something has changed about you,” he growled, likely noticing the color of my eyes.

I could see Angel’s aura, and I could see there was no way I would be able to overpower him and take over his psyche. Forcing him to do something like shit his pants and perform the chicken dance wasn’t going to be an option.

I had to act fast.

I used my mind to swing one of the steel bars at Angel, bitch-slapping the hell out of him and dislocating his jaw.

Blood dripping from his chin, Angel wiped his face and prepared to fly into me. Just then a soldier came up around the bend. I took over his psyche and instructed him to fire his weapon at my adversary.

It was that fluid. Everything moved fast, but somehow, Grace’s ability slowed things down. It gave me time to think, to move, to orchestrate an attack from the soldier, who began firing quick blasts at Angel as the superpowered man charged him.

Brrrrrat! Brrrrrat! Brrrrrat!

Rather than slamming into me, Angel smacked into the guy, grabbed him by the neck and threw him over the side of the ridge. Meanwhile, Veronique busied herself gathering a wall of bullets with one hand – which she turned toward Angel – while collecting more with her other hand.

The helicopter appeared, a spotlight shining down on us. Veronique tossed some of the bullets at it, but to no avail.

I heard the whir of a weapon, and just as the chopper was about to fire on us, and Angel was about to mop up whatever mess was left, Dorian appeared, out of breath, with a small case in her hands.

Veronique ran to me, and I scooped Grace into my arms. Dorian grabbed hold of us, and we flashed away in an instant, reappearing on the roof of the house.

I swear it happened in slow motion.

The helicopter pilot looked at us and I caught his gaze. In an instant, I had taken over the man’s psyche and suddenly, I was mentally flying the helicopter while still in my own body, trying to come to grips with what was going on.

I tipped the fuselage toward Angel and crashed into him before he could zip away, causing an explosion that launched dirt, rocks, and hunks of steel into the air.

“Did you just fly the helicopter into Angel?” Dorian asked, the vein pulsing on her head. It had only been about forty minutes since she left; she’d hauled ass back here. “Gideon. Please. Gideon. Can you hear me?”

She touched my cheek and I snapped out of it.

“You’ve got to install this on Grace and Veronique,” she said, handing me the key and my smartphone. “Do it on Grace first; Veronique and I will continue the fight.”

“Are you okay to fight?” I looked over the edge of the rooftop. I didn’t know how I was going to get down, but that was answered a second later when she teleported me to the ground.

“I’m ready,” Dorian said, paintbrush in hand.

I took a deep breath, smoke, fire, and the taste of metal in my mouth.

Chapter Thirty-Three: Everyone Needs a Little Head

Dorian wasn’t lying. As I plugged the key she’d given me into Grace’s neck, the punk rock teleporter conjured up a man with a huge buster sword. She sent the sword-wielding energy creation running toward the next group of soldiers who were approaching with their weapons drawn.

They fired on it, and as they did, she conjured up a muscular, two-headed giant with an energy cannon on its shoulder. It was weird to see her construct something so tall; it was all in the way she used her forward momentum when making the creation. The more exaggerated she became, the larger it grew.

On the other side of the fight, Veronique was tossing anything metal she could get her hands on, figuratively and literally. She was also losing steam, and I saw her drop to one knee, pulling a downed soldier in her direction.

Dorian teleported in front of Veronique, covering her with more creations while she fed. When Veronique finished, she touched Dorian’s hand, and the two of them disappeared, only to reappear down the hill behind enemy lines.

I returned my focus to Grace.

The key in her neck was still loading. There was a liquid crystal display on it, light blue, and of all goddamn things, it was showing me the hourglass symbol. If there’s anything that has come to represent the shittiness of the twenty-first century and first world problems that many of us face, it was the hourglass symbol.

This would have bothered me less if it weren’t for the fact that Grace and I were sitting ducks, and the smoke around the helicopter hadn’t cleared, so I didn’t know how Angel was doing over there.

“Come on, come on, come on,” I whispered as the hourglass continued to load. A green light on the key flashed, and I took that to mean it was done. I plugged in my smartphone and did the reboot, just as Dr. Kim had instructed.

It was Veronique’s turn.

I stood, hyper-aware of what was going on around me. I could still feel Grace’s powers coursing through me, and I could still sense movement nearby. I turned just in time to see a female in MercSecure gear raise her assault weapon.

She shouted for me to raise my hands, and then her eyes flashed white. It had taken me a split second to completely take over her mind, and once I’d done so, I turned her back toward the fight, instructing her to take out anyone in MercSecure gear.

Dorian appeared beside me, her face red, chest heaving as she took deep breaths.

“Grace is finished. Now I need Veronique.”

She wiped her face. “Okay, I’ll bring her.”

Dorian flashed away, and they were back in a matter of moments. I told Veronique to be as still as possible while I loaded the information.

She crouched, and I plugged the key into her neck port. Her eyes were trained on the horizon, ready for anyone and anything to come in our direction.

There was another helicopter approaching, but they didn’t scare me as much as they used to.

It took a moment for the hourglass to appear, and I reminded Veronique to stay still while it did its thing.

As it loaded, I tried to focus as hard as I could on our surroundings, especially the smoke clearing near Angel’s downed body. I was able to catch one of the men crawling toward us and turned him on his colleagues. There was some gunfire, the sounds of a few people crying out as they either died or Dorian’s energy creations burnt through them, but the battle was winding down.

And we were winning.

“You did great out there,” I told Veronique as she continued scanning for anything that could be construed as metal death coming in our direction.

The helicopter drew closer, but she didn’t need to take it down. Dorian had already flashed inside the chopper and left a small energy bomb before bailing out, sending the bird crashing down into the cacti, debris, and bodies at the bottom of the hill.

She appeared next to me, completely out of breath, two veins now pulsing on her forehead. “That’s all of them,” she panted.

“Come the fuck on,” I said to the damned hourglass.

“We have to make sure he’s dead,” Veronique said.

“We will. Just let this finish loading.”

Once the program finished, I pocketed the key, ran the reboot, and we began searching the wreckage. We should have just teleported away, but if Angel was dying or dead, knowing that would aid us in the future.

This was something that usually isn’t covered in comic books and superhero action-adventure movies: the aftermath. Sure, they pan across it or show it for a brief moment before switching to the next scene, but actually seeing the carnage firsthand is something that still gets to me, even after everything I’ve been through with the Cherry Blossom Girls.

But that wasn’t on my mind as we searched the wreckage.

I knew that Angel may still be alive, and I was using every part of Grace’s power to make sure we weren’t blindsided by an attack.

There was a charred body not too far away, which I assumed was the helicopter pilot, mostly because of his helmet. I moved past him and saw another body under one of the helicopter blades, its legs still covered in flames from the burning wreckage.

Metal lifted off the body as Veronique finished moving debris to the side. She dropped to her haunches and began draining the rest of the life force from what I now saw was just another random private military operative.

I needed a new noun to call these guys, because they weren’t soldiers – well, not soldiers in the traditional sense – but calling them ‘private military operatives’ or ‘security detail’ or ‘security personnel’ or ‘paramilitary unit’ or ‘assholes with guns’ didn’t exactly roll off the tongue.

The search for Angel continued.

I found part of another body, which is gruesome to say and was gruesome to experience, and I found a clump of something that seemed like it used to be alive, but still no Angel.

His body shouldn’t have melted away; even if he was burned to a crisp, there would still be something left, I thought as I walked around the wreckage site.

Veronique was just turning around when she was tackled by a man wearing a pilot’s helmet.

The man was on his feet in a matter of seconds, ripping the helmet off and throwing it over his shoulder.

Angel.

His skin was blackened, and there was a large swath of his hair that had been torn away and was now scabbing up, but he was still formidable, and my fuck, was he pissed.

He brought his leg back to kick Veronique, but she rolled away just in time and struck him with one of the helicopter blades.

Dorian’s form flashed to Veronique’s left and she began drawing a lance in the air.

Angel recovered almost instantly. He brought both fists back, only to have his forward momentum thwarted by Dorian’s energy spear. It struck him in the shoulder, burnt a hole right through him, and came out the other side. He cried out in anguish and flung himself into the air in an effort to escape, only to be slammed back down to the ground by Veronique’s helicopter blade.

His muscles bulged as he lifted the blade off of him and threw it in her direction. She was able to stop it in midair, but by the time she did, Angel had reached her.

Dorian flashed behind him, one of the small frag pouches in her fist.

Boom!

She was gone before the pouch exploded, sending bits of shrapnel into Angel’s back and throwing a nail right past the side of my head.

Goddamn, was I glad I was wearing a ballistic helmet!

Realizing what Dorian had done, Veronique reached into her fanny pack and came out with one of the circular saws. Neither of them had used much of our makeshift weaponry this time, so they were fully stocked and prepared to take on the superpowered motherfucker.

Angel recovered from Dorian’s attack and pick up his speed, rocketing toward Veronique and grabbing her by the neck. He lifted her into the air and slammed her hard into the ground.

Dorian teleported behind him again and he swiveled around just in time to connect his fist with her chest as she zipped away.

She appeared on the other side of me, stumbled forward and fell to one knee, gasping for air.

“No!” I shouted.

Grace’s ability surging through me, I swept Angel off his feet with a wave of telekinetic energy.  My borrowed power pushed him back about ten feet, leaving a mark in the soil as he was dragged and scraped across scattered bits of debris.

Angel jumped to his feet and glared at me, his fists curling at his side.

And then his head flew off his body.

I watched in what seemed like slow motion as Veronique’s circular saw continued on over the side of the ridge, and Angel’s headless corpse tumbled to the ground.

Silence passed between the three of us. Well, four of us if you count Angel’s head. Or, five of us if you count Grace’s comatose body.

“What now?” I finally asked.

But Dorian had already staggered back to her feet and was moving toward Angel, unzipping her backpack as she went.

Chapter Thirty-Four: Cherry Blossoms

Our bodies took shape on the other side of Santa Fe. I mean, I guess it was the other side. It looked kind of like a neighborhood, so that meant it may have been near our last hotel. I really had no idea, but Dorian seemed to know where she was going.

She was exhausted, and her abilities were pretty much depleted. From what I could tell, we were in a cul-de-sac, which was a strange place to transport us, but I didn’t think we were in any condition to try to check into a hotel.

By ‘we,’ I meant Dorian, Veronique, Grace, Yours Truly, and Angel’s fucking head, which was in Dorian's backpack.

Look, there are a lot of situations I never thought I’d find myself taking part in, and carrying someone’s decapitated head with me probably topped that list. No, it definitely topped that list, but as I would find out on this continued adventure, expectations and my increasingly demented reality rarely coexisted.

And even though she was relatively light, Grace was starting to get heavy in my arms. This was likely due to exhaustion and hunger.

But if I was exhausted and hungry, I could only imagine what Veronique and Dorian were going through.

“So here’s the plan: We find a house, and I do Grace’s thing with the owners; Veronique, you drain one of them; we sleep and shower in their place and leave in the morning.”

“What about the people?” Dorian asked.

“We’ll send them somewhere. How about Texas?”

She nodded. While she still looked like she was overheating some, she’d recovered from having the wind knocked out of her by Angel. Veronique, on the other hand, was still limping a little.

Dorian helped Veronique walk while I carried Grace. We made our way to yet another Pueblo-style home with a big truck in the driveway and an SUV next to it.

I walked up to the front porch, and a light came on. I rang the doorbell and waited.

We were in the South, and the chance of someone opening the door with a shotgun was high. I wasn’t in the least bit surprised to hear a man call out on the other side of the door that he had a weapon, and he wanted to know what I needed.

“I was jogging in the area, and I found this woman’s body.”

I realized then that I was still wearing my ballistic helmet and a bulletproof vest. But maybe he couldn’t see clearly enough through the peephole to tell. So I changed my story.

“Sorry, not jogging … biking, and seriously, I just need a way to contact the authorities. Something’s wrong with her, and I don’t have my phone with me.”

“You just stay right there, and I’ll call the police.”

I looked over my shoulder at Dorian.

She flashed away and flashed back, the man now with her. Before he could raise his gun or figure out what the hell was going on, I had him under my spell.

Or, Grace’s spell.

This was odd, because he was actually looking at us – or at least, Veronique and me because Dorian was at his side. I saw myself in that moment, even though I was also viewing him through my own consciousness.

And what I saw frightened me.

This was what I look like in a bulletproof vest, a ballistic helmet, a melty-faced shifter in my arms, and scratches and dirt all over my body. Veronique was next to me, also looking like she’d just been put through the wringer, her short blonde bob tangled and messy, blood on her forehead, and clearly suffering from pain in her lower back, evident in the way she stood.

But the man no longer saw that.

He let us into his house, where we found his wife standing with another gun. He told her to relax, even though he didn’t need to because by that point I’d already taken over her mind as well, which added yet another perspective of us to my pane of vision.

I asked them if they had any kids and they said yes, in college. I told them to go ahead and pack their things, that they were going to visit one of their kids.

“Which one?” he asked me, a hint of white to his eyes now.

“Which one is closest?”

“Well, Michael is at the University of Colorado at Boulder. I guess he’s closest.”

I considered the distance. I was pretty sure Colorado wasn’t too far away from here, so I asked him which one was the farthest.

“Lucy is at the University of Arkansas.”

“Sounds like a great place to go,” I said. “Pack your things and meet me down here before you leave.”

“You got it,” the man said as he and his wife went upstairs to their bedroom.

We cased the house and found it to be pretty damn comfortable. There were several bedrooms, but what really interested me was a huge, fluffy sheepskin rug in the living room.

Lots of pillows too. A perfect place to sleep, even if it was on a hardwood floor.

“I need to shower,” Dorian said after we made our second sweep of the place. I’d already set Grace down in the living room on one of the leather couches. Angel’s head was still in Dorian’s backpack.

“By all means,” I said. “And put that backpack in a closet or something.”

The couple rejoined me in the front foyer.

Veronique drained one of them – the woman – until she was on the verge of passing out. I told her not to take the man’s energy because he was going to be the one driving.

Once the couple left, we retired to the living room and collapsed onto one of the other couches.

“What a fucking day,” I finally said.

“Yes, it has been a fucking day.”

“I believe that was yesterday,” I told her with a grin.

“Maybe your superpower is being clever.”

“I wish!” I yawned, and as I did, I got a whiff of my armpit. “I need a shower.”

“So do I.”

We locked eyes and stood at the same time.

Figuring it would be a good idea to save water, we decided to use the downstairs bathroom together. No sex this time – both of us were too exhausted – but we at least cleaned each other, which was always a good experience.

We were blessed by the fact that this couple happened to be good hosts; there were actually bathrobes in the guest bathroom. I slipped into one, and Veronique donned the other.

We went back to the living room and found Dorian sitting with her legs crossed on one of the couches, also in a bathrobe, watching a home improvement show.

I laughed.

I laughed long and hard, thinking of how odd it was that one could act so leisurely after all that had happened.

I plopped down beside Dorian, Veronique sat next to me, and as if nothing had happened that night, we watched a couple purchase a fixer-upper and rebuild it from the ground up.

Toward the end of the episode, I decided to bring some pillows over and get down onto the sheepskin rug. Veronique came with me, and after getting a blanket from one of the bedrooms, Dorian joined us.

It was the best sleep I’d had in years.

I woke the next morning surprisingly refreshed.

My initial thought was to get on my phone and tell Luke about what happened and also let Dr. Kim know we were safe. But my phone was out of battery, and it needed to be charged.

So no phone for now.

The windows at the back of the house let in a nice view of rocky hills peppered with cacti. I decided to take Grace out there, even though she couldn’t see it.

Another thought came to me. Grace hasn’t spoken in a while …

This was followed by the realization that I still had some of her abilities, evident by the aura I could see around Dorian and Veronique’s bodies.

I took a second glance at both of them and noticed that the belts around their robes had come loose. “If you’re reading my thoughts, sorry,” I told Grace as I opened the glass door that led to a backyard patio.

I laid her down on one of the long wooden lawn chairs. Rather than pull another chair over, I simply sat next to her, my knees to my chest, and basked in the morning sun.

Why aren’t you talking to me? I thought to her.

No response.

So, I just enjoyed her company for a while, even though there was no real company to enjoy.

The sun was on her face now, and she was still in the clothing we’d bought back in Texas.

As I stared at her, I was struck by an idea.

I don’t know if the idea had somehow been planted by Grace, or if it was my own, but I had the sudden notion to try to put her power back into her.

I even had a vision of a Pentecostal possession, a curing of someone’s illness.

Maybe I just need some coffee, I thought, but the image remained, and part of me felt like it could actually work.

As crazy as I knew it would look – and I was glad Dorian and Veronique were still asleep – I straddled the long chair, pressed both thumbs on her temples, and gazed intently at her deformed face.

Leave me, I thought.

And it was just about as effective as saying ‘leave me’ to a rock would be.

I began to think about the moment Grace appeared in my life and all that had followed. I remembered how much she liked the cherry blossom trees and how her appearance that day had signaled their blooming.

Thinking about them created more cherry blossoms in my mind, swirling red and white petals falling from the trees like I’d seen in Wooster Square.

“Cherry blossoms,” I whispered, and more came to me, whirling in my head, taking over my body as if they were a pillar of luminous life force.

I opened my eyes and I saw the cherry blossoms between us. I saw them piling up on Grace’s chest, melting into her skin, floating away with every exhale I made and drifting back when I breathed in.

They were everywhere, they were tangible, they were real, and as I realized this, I felt a sharp pain at the base of my spine. The pain spread upward, carrying with it blooming deep red cherry blossoms through my body. They began to leave my body, surging into Grace’s misshapen, mangled form and transforming it, reshaping it … repairing it.

Her features returned, her skin softened, her nose reformed, and color returned to her lips.

She gasped and opened her eyes – beaming white eyes that quickly regained their iceberg blue color.

“Grace!” I practically knocked the chair over as I gathered her into my arms.

“Gid … eon?”

“How are you feeling?” I asked as I pulled away from her and swept the hair from her face. By now we were both standing, straddling the chair, and I had no idea how it happened.

“I’m … weak,” she said as I helped her over to the banister that overlooked the yard.

“You’ll get stronger again,” I promised, a wave of emotion moving through me. “We’ll lay low for a few days and … damn, there’s just so much I have to tell you. Yes. Lay low. Let’s start by just laying low for a few days. I can finish my book, you and the others can rest, and we can put together a solid plan. They won’t find us. They can’t track us any longer.”

“A solid plan?” she started coughing, and I waited for her to finish.

“We’re not far from Albuquerque,” I told her, “and there’s another facility outside the city. That’s our next target.”

“We can’t stop now,” she finally said, her voice scratchy. “They tried to kill me. Veronique too.”

“Dorian and me too.” I looked down at my feet, at our feet as they touched, felt the anger coursing through me. “And they’re not going to stop trying to kill us. But we have a present for Mother next time we see her.”

Grace’s eyes flashed white as she read my mind, likely stopping on an image of Angel’s decapitated head in Dorian’s backpack. “She’s not going to like that.”

The end.

Cherry Blossom Girls Book Three

Chapter One: Wolf Shirts

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

Or three?

Actually, there had been no talk of marriage between Dorian, Grace, Veronique, and Yours Truly, nor had I finished Pride and Prejudice, but I thought this would be a good quote to start my story, rather than go with my other opening idea:

“Call me Gideon,” I mumbled, gazing at the first chapter of the third installment of Mutants in the Making.

Call. Me. Gideon.

Goddamn writer’s block was making it hard to really get this one going. Shit, I almost wished Veronique would give me the ‘write a book in two days or I’ll kill you’ ultimatum, just to light a fire under my ass.

But the words wouldn’t come, and the pressure to perform only made my muse more constipated.

Swoosh!

My inner word salad was cut short as I watched Veronique toss several frag pouches at one of Dorian’s towering energy creations. Dorian’s creation, a wolf-like creature with a huge gun on its back, took the brunt of the hit, the metal fizzling as it passed through its body.

Fury spreading across her face, Veronique hurtled a metal bar at Dorian, who teleported away, only to be swept back by a powerful wave of telekinetic energy from Grace.

As her hair fluttered behind her and her eyes flared white, Grace used her power to press Veronique to the ground.

Not one to be taken down so easily, Veronique curled her fingers and Grace fell to one knee, her energy stripped from her body. With her other hand, Veronique tossed as much metal as she could at the approaching energy wolf, finally disintegrating its form.

“Easy …” I said as Veronique let go of Grace.

Dorian reappeared, her paintbrush in her mouth. She took it out and cautiously kept it at her side as Grace got back to her feet.

We’d been in Santa Fe for two days now and had found another borrowed place to stay at, this time in the hills overlooking the city. It was a two-story pueblo-style home filled with Southwestern art.

It was peaceful, and the sunsets were to die for. There was also ample backyard space for them to train, and I wished we could actually just hang in a place like this for a while.

I sat at a table covered by a red awning, my laptop open and my manuscript in front of me. A lot had happened since we’d driven to the south from the East Coast – from David Butler to Dorian, my imprisonment to rescuing Grace. I’d tried to encapsulate as much of this as I could but was barely over the ten-thousand-word mark.

“Again?” Grace asked, dusting off her legs. She wore a black bodysuit, similar to the body armor Veronique and Dorian wore. It was something we’d picked up at a gun shop in town, and like the other two, it was very form-fitting.

She looked at me, her eyes glowing white again as she got into place.

Should I try it?

By all means, I thought back to her.

Dorian took her place near a cactus patch that was blackened from her last energy attack. Veronique found a spot across from her, palming a pair of frag pouches.

We’d made a ton of improvised weapons over the last two days – more frag pouches and circular saws, the latter of which I’d forbidden from training just in case one of them got a little too aggressive.

And yes, I should have been writing. Hell, my laptop was open, but watching superpowered hotties battle was way cooler.

Besides, I was still struggling with the fact that experiments had been performed on me and that I apparently had a propensity for superpowers.

I mean, how crazy was that?

And the writer’s block. Had that too.

Also, I really needed to talk to my parents about this. How could they turn me into a human guinea pig for cash?

So watching the girls train was definitely better than pacing back and forth, worrying over my past, rambling too much, biting my nails, drinking myself into a stupor, worrying about my sales rank, or anything else I was prone to do in times of writing distress.

“Ready?” Dorian asked.

Veronique nodded, and they started up, Dorian quickly creating a purple energy human and teleporting away, while Veronique swiftly saw to the energy creation’s demise.

Grace was the least of everyone’s concerns; it was clear in the way the other two fought. She was turning out to be more of a supportive Super, even if her powers could have technically made her stronger than the others.

This meant they paid less attention to her.

We’d set the rule up that Grace couldn’t take over their minds or knock them out; that would be too easy.

But she still hadn’t tried the power that Ken’s code had given her, and sure, it was a dirty move to try it now, but what better time than a training session?

Dorian zipped in and out of reality as she made her way over to Veronique. She stayed in place long enough for me to see that she was charging up something fierce (some kind of small vortex of purple energy), and once she reached Veronique, she let it loose and bailed to the left as a small explosion sent Veronique off her feet.

The metal-wielding Super was back up seconds later, her brow furrowed, dark eyes trained on Dorian as she drained her lifeforce.

Talk about OP. As soon as Veronique latched on, it was game over.

That was, until she started shrieking and released her hold on Dorian.

I glanced over to see Grace’s fists at her sides, head dipped slightly as she concentrated on her new attack.

Suddenly, Veronique was on the ground, balled up in a fetal position and Dorian was next to her, trying to fight Grace off by flinging a ball of purple energy at the psychic shifter.

The ball of energy hit Grace and sent her sailing backward.

I was just about to scream her name when I saw she’d already righted herself and was blasting Dorian with the same new skill.

Both Dorian and Veronique were flipping out in their own ways; Dorian teleporting back and forth trying to shake Grace’s new power, and Veronique still curled in a ball, twitching.

“Enough!” I told Grace, who immediately released her hold.

A screwdriver that had been left near a potted plant flew toward Grace and stopped at her jugular. “What did you do to me?” Veronique gasped. She caught her breath and relaxed her shoulders some, remembering she was there when I put in the code. “That’s it?”

Grace nodded. “That’s it.”

Dorian leaned against the deck, her back arched as she gulped air and shook her head to clear it. A crooked grin appeared on her face. “That was awesome,” she finally said, a funny look in her eyes.

“I’m glad you enjoyed it,” Grace replied, with no sarcasm in her voice.

I looked from the three to the data on my laptop screen. I had the manuscript and their stats up, which I had typed into my computer for quick reference. I scrolled to Grace’s as they dusted themselves off.

Main: Psychic

Omnikinesis: 10

Second Sight: 5

Psychometry: 5

Telepathy: 6

Clairsentience: 5

Psychokinesis: 7

Hypnosis: 5

Nightmare Sight: 6

Nightmare Sight, I thought as Grace turned to me.

“I think we’re done for the day,” she said. We want to go shopping and have lunch, she thought to me.

Shopping and lunch? Sounds expensive, I thought back.

Bank first?

Grace looked as beautiful as ever with her long blonde hair, hourglass curves, and bright blue eyes, an appearance that morphed into dark straight hair, Asian features, and a hoodie.

“Is that how we’re doing this?” I asked.

She took off her bulletproof vest as the other two went inside to get changed. “Definitely,” she said.

“You sure you don’t want to go as the guy from that property show you always watch?”

“You’d prefer I become a man?”

“Good call; hot Asian lady it is.”

“What were you working on?” she asked, sitting across from me.

“When I wasn’t watching you three, I was working on the intro to Mutants 3. I hate novel intros. They say you’re supposed to have some action or suspense – you know, explode off the pages. But sometimes I just want to ease into it. I want a moment to get into the characters; I don’t want to just jump into some crazy action scene.”

She shrugged. “Then don’t write it. Write whatever you want. It’s the third book. People are reading it now because they like the characters. If they didn’t like your storytelling style by now, they would have abandoned it.”

“How did you …? Are you reading my mind or something?”

“Yes?” she laughed.

“What were our rules again?”

“No mind reading, no shifting in public, no changing into your mother, no sloppy –”

“Ha! You remember all of them.”

“Of course I do.” Grace shut my laptop and kept her hands on the lid as she stared at me. “Let’s put your laptop away now, Writer Gideon. Dorian is washing her face. Veronique isn’t coming.”

“How do you know? Oh yeah, that’s right.” I tapped my temple.

We entered our borrowed home and headed to the study. There was a nice work desk here, and I already had my laptop cable and a notepad set up. I plugged in and glanced at the closet.

Ick.

“Don’t worry about him,” Grace said as she sat on my lap.

“It’s hard not to.”

Dorian entered the study a few minutes later wearing her ribbed sweater with the first few buttons open and her black hair in a side ponytail. Her face was shiny, her cheeks all but reflective. “Is that how we’re doing this?”

I was about to say, ‘I believe there’s room for you too,’ but I thought otherwise.

“It will work, won’t it?” Grace asked innocently.

Dorian grinned. “Sure,” she said and placed one hand on my shoulder, the other on Grace’s.

I was starting to like teleporting. At first I found it unsettling, nauseating even, but I’d gotten used to it, and it was a pretty effective way to travel, especially for short distances.

Our bodies reformed and I instantly felt the hot New Mexico sun on my neck.

There were plenty of banks in Santa Fe, but this one had a large parking lot, which I’d verified on GoogleFace. And that was what we needed, a large parking lot.

Our grift was the same as it had been in New Haven: Grace, in her Asian form, would walk up to someone and remind them of the money they owed her – only after vetting them telepathically to see if they actually had enough money to spare.

For our part, Dorian and I would just stand back, keeping an eye on her and making sure no one else was watching us.

It’s not like it would have made a difference if they were watching us; Grace would just scramble their brains.

What can I say? I learned from the last time we were Grace-less that having money as a backup supply was a good idea. Besides, I promised the two that we would go shopping downtown today and possibly eat an early dinner after a few margaritas.

So we needed fundage.

And luckily, it didn’t take us long to net some straight cashola. We cashed out at ten thousand and put it in a duffel bag we’d purchased the day before. There was another twenty thousand at our place, for a combined total of thirty grand.

Not too shabby.

We found a car pulling into the parking lot (a Volvo), and the driver let us borrow it.

Thanks, buddy!

I was trying to borrow fewer cars for the long term, so we asked him his address, but when I realized it might be a little difficult to figure out logistically speaking, we told him he could pick it up downtown near the McStarbucks after seven.

See? We weren’t the bad guys.

Besides, bad guys couldn’t be tourists, right?

And that was what we became that sunny afternoon in gorgeous Santa Fe, our cash converted into all sorts of knick-knacks, hand-woven scarves, Indian tapestries, and Georgia O’Keeffe keychains.

I picked out a few new wolf shirts, one of them with a wolf’s face over the moon, another one with an anthropomorphized mother wolf, her tits hanging out as she nursed two baby wolves. That one was cool.

“That shirt is terrible,” Dorian said as she browsed through some dreamcatchers.

“Dreamcatchers don’t work,” I reminded her.

She approached me. “Have you ever tried?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Have I ever tried to use a dreamcatcher? I can’t say that I have, but I don’t know how a circle with some string would catch a dream.”

“You should get cooler shirts.”

There were a lot of shirts in the shop, some cool and some atrocious. “Maybe you’re right,” I finally said. “But I’m keeping wolf over the moon, even if I can only wear it as a sleep shirt.”

“You won’t be sleeping with me in that shirt,” she said, turning so I could get a good look at her backside.

“Duly noted,” I said and turned back to the shirts. Dorian and Grace went next door while I continued to peruse the selection. I eventually settled on some Santa Fe shirts, and a few Roswell ones as well.

Hell, I had uncovered a government conspiracy, so I might as well support another one.

Another thirty minutes of shopping, and it was grub time. Dorian disappeared just as Grace moved in next to me, slipping her arm into mine.

“What do you think of the downtown?” I asked her.

“The town square is so cute, and I like the old church,” she said, looking north.

“Great shopping too, and we should check out some of the art galleries. If you like the colors …”

Her skin started to turn red and from there, to purple, then back to a pale white.

“What are our rules, again?” I asked, glancing around, glad to see nobody had caught her shifting.

She laughed. “Well, I remember some of them – bedroom rules and something about shifting in public?” She placed a hand on my chest and moved closer to kiss me.

Dorian and Veronique reappeared just as Grace finished the kiss.

“I’m glad you could join us,” I told Veronique, handing her a small bag. “I got you something.”

“What is it?” she asked.

“Take a look,” I said, and she reached inside the bag.

“You didn’t …” Dorian raised a fist.

Veronique pulled the mother wolf shirt out of the bag, holding it over her body. “Hmmm …”

“Well?” I asked.

“I like it.”

Dorian slugged me.

“Hey! It’s a work of art.” I stepped away from her to avoid another blow. “And if I can’t wear it, someone else should.”

Chapter Two: Talking Head

Dorian was on her third margarita and I was barely finishing my second. And she wasn’t drunk either, a phrase that definitely wouldn’t describe my current state of affairs.

“Another one?” she asked to Grace’s laughter.

I’d already gotten a few jealous glances from the guys in the restaurant, waitstaff and patrons alike. Man, guys really were a jelly bunch, even if we constantly accused women of being the more jealous gender.

Right, I drunkenly thought. Like half the wars, many of the regional conflicts, a good number of religious massacres, and a slew of other pressing social matters didn’t stem from male jealousy.

I’m a feminist, dammit!

No, you’re drunk.

I smiled across the table at Grace.

Maybe I am, I thought back to her.

I want a margarita.

Have the rest of mine first, just in case it’s too strong.

My margarita lifted off the table and floated over to Grace. I glanced from her to the approaching waiter – whew, he hadn’t seen it.

Sorry. she thought to me, it was just too far away.

“I’m hungry too,” Veronique said when the waiter set down a steaming platter of enchiladas before me. He placed a chalupa in front of Grace and a meal of fish tacos and slaw went to Dorian.

“I can have the kitchen make you something,” the waiter told Veronique.

“No, that’s fine, I’ll eat later,” she replied with a mischievous grin.

“But I will have a margarita,” Grace said as she finished the ‘rita I’d given her. “Strawberry.”

The waiter nodded and left. I gave Grace an uneasy look. Dorian could clearly hold her liquor, but I had no idea how Grace would react. Still, if she did something out of the ordinary, Dorian could simply teleport us out of there.

Talk about a failsafe plan.

I caught the waiter’s eye just as he was about to reach the bar, and he returned to our table. “Something else, sir?”

“A CoronaRita for myself.”

“Me too,” Dorian said, polishing off her margarita.

“I’ll have a coffee,” Veronique said.

The waiter nodded again and left again.

“Bon appétit,” I told them as we dug in, and boy, was it fantastic. Each enchilada was different, and I was prying apart one made from chicken and spinach when the waiter brought our drinks.

“Here goes nothing,” I said as I went for the CoronaRita.

Ten minutes later and I was full-on drunk.

Dorian was still holding strong, but she did look a little messed up, evident in the way she moved her head and relaxed her shoulders. Grace managed two sips before her cheeks turned red; she stopped drinking at that point.

The three started talking about a new home improvement show they were watching, this one hosted by a snarky British guy who gave everyone hell about their projects but always seemed to come around in the end.

I more or less tuned them out as I went for my refried beans, moping them up with a freshly baked flour tortilla.

The alcohol had made me want to write; I was suddenly itching to get back to the house, hoping I could just freestyle some words on the page.

I paid the bill in cash, and we exited the restaurant, teleporting back to our place. Dorian left us in the living room of our borrowed home and zipped away again, returning just a few moments later with a random guy we’d seen in the alley outside the restaurant.

“Where …?” he began to ask, but Veronique had already started draining him before he could finish his question.

His eyes glazed over as his skin purpled and shriveled. Yikes.

“Easy,” I told her, trying to keep my wits.

“I won’t kill him,” Veronique said. She licked her lips.

Grace, who was also a little drunk, leaned against me, pushing me off balance. I fell, and she fell on top of me, her form morphing as she hit me. “Sorry,” she mumbled.

I helped her up. “It’s fine.”

I watched Veronique drain more of the unsuspecting guy’s lifeforce. She was hunched over him, vampire-like, her hands glowing red as his body continued to shrivel and turn purple.

She stopped suddenly and looked back at me, offering a slightly sinister grin, as well as a pretty good shot of her rear; Veronique was wearing a pair of impossibly high-cut jean shorts she’d recently picked up. She gave a playful shrug. “All done.”

Dorian laughed, placing her hand on the guy’s shoulder and disappeared, then just as quickly reappeared, alone this time.

Rather than remind them we weren’t killers, I headed for the guest bedroom of the home, which I’d already designated as my writing room.

I’m going to sleep, Grace’s voice rang out in my head. Have fun tonight.

Have fun tonight? I fired back the mental question but didn’t get a response. I knew what it meant. It was funny she was so open about it, yet I was still very reluctant to give power to it or acknowledge it.

Damn my Puritan ways!

I burped, tasted the acidity from the margarita, and opened my laptop.

Once the doc was up, I cracked my knuckles and began. I found a NieR:Automata and Persona 7 playlist to set the mood. It was one I’d made when I was writing How Heavy This Axe, and it was especially good for writing stats.

Problem was, my laptop speakers were shit, and I didn’t have headphones. Which was how I heard the rumbling from the closet.

I turned to the closet door, wondering what the sound could have been.

For a moment there was nothing, but sure enough, the noise came again.

Maybe a raccoon is in there? was my first thought, followed by, Are there even raccoons in New Mexico?

Before I could GoogleFace that query, I heard some more rustling and decided to see what the hell was going on. But just in case it was a snake – or, hell, I don’t know, a raccoon-sized cockroach – I shouted for Veronique.

“Coming,” she called back, and I heard the light patter of her feet as she walked down the hallway and entered the room.

She came into my arms, and my hand went around her waist. After a long kiss – it wasn’t a great kiss, but she meant well, and why would I ever tell someone who could kill me that she’s a bad kisser? – I told Veronique I heard something in the closet.

She laughed. “You called me in here for that?”

“Well, yeah. You’re like my bodyguard, right?” I said, still a little tipsy. Scratch that, definitely a little tipsy.

“What am I supposed to do if it’s something scary?”

“I don’t know, what are you scared of?” I asked.

“Spiders.”

“Ick, I hate spiders.” We both turned to find a drunken Dorian standing behind us.

Damn teleporters. She’d done this a couple times over the last few days – just appeared out of nowhere.

It always took me off guard, especially when she’d teleported into the bathroom while I was taking a dump. She took it way better than I did; I couldn’t look her in the face for a good four hours after that.

“It’s not going to be a spider unless it’s a tarantula,” I told them. “Shit, let’s hope it’s not a tarantula.”

I moved to the closet door, took one more glance over my shoulder at Veronique and Dorian, and opened it. The backpack toppled out, and as it plopped to the floor, we heard a low groaning sound.

Veronique placed the backpack on the bed, and used her power to unzip it without touching it.

Angel’s head fell out of the bag, his neck attached to a very small body.

“Holy shit!” I jumped back, nearly colliding with Dorian.

Angel groaned again, and Veronique went over to him and started draining his energy.

“Wait,” I told her after she’d already started. “Let me talk to him for a second and see just how cognizant he is.”

“I’m fucking cognizant, you little piece of shit,” Angel said, his voice higher than before.

It was one of the weirdest things I’d ever seen.

Angel’s neck and head were their normal size, but a small body had started to grow beneath the bottom of his neck – arms, a torso, itty-bitty legs, and feet; it was almost like the body of a starfish.

The new growth was hyper-pink, fresh new flesh, and as Angel glowered at me, he actually wiggled his little legs like the fucking gingerbread man.

“When Mother finds out about this …”

“You know, Angel, for a talking head with a fucked up little doll body, you’re really in no position to make threats,” I said, emboldened by the alcohol.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my mini USB to mini USB cable as well as my smartphone.

“What are you doing?”

“We’re going to plug in,” I told him.

He laughed. “Good luck with that.”

It looked awkward as fuck, but somehow, Angel was able to use his little starfish body to move his neck to the side and show me that he didn’t have a port. A deep gash was in the place where his port should have been, a gash covered by a purple scar.

“What happened to yours?” I asked, stuffing my cable back into my pocket.

“Gideon, come here real quick,” Veronique said. She touched my elbow and I felt her power swell. She meant business.

I stepped outside the room with her, leaving Dorian to watch the angry head.

“What’s up?”

“Remember the first time we really had a conversation, and I told you Angel was one of the ones who escaped that we brought back?”

I recalled her conversation with me back in the hotel room in Stamford. We’d never talked about that again, and she didn’t have to say the next words for me to put the pieces together.

“One of the things Angel did was pry the plug out of his neck,” she said, demonstrating how she thought he did it.

“Whoa. And they never replaced it?”

“I guess not.”

“Well, it looks like we’re not plugging in, but we can at least ask him some questions.”

We went back into the room only to catch a sourpuss look from Angel.

“Hey, are you thirsty or something? You look parched.”

“Fuck you, Gideon.” He laughed bitterly. “You’re so dead.”

“You already told us that,” I said.

Sure, I felt like a tough guy with my two powerful security guards on either side of me, but also … he was a fucking head. If he really wanted to start some shit, I’d punt him out of the room.

“How do you know she isn’t tracking you right now?” he asked.

“Because she would have come here by now, considering we have her son/baby daddy/lover in a backpack. It’s you who should be asking why she hasn’t come. Maybe Mother has another flying, muscular guy with long hair waiting in the rafters; a future stepdad.”

Dorian snickered.

“See, she gets my jokes,” I told the bodiless man.

“You laugh now, Gideon, but there are others like me, and they’re all coming for you now. You, Veronique, Dorian, and wherever the hell Sabine is. You four are dead. You may kill me, or you may keep me as a fucking head, but I will laugh at the end of all this when you’ve all been killed. Even if I’m laughing from heaven.”

“Did you just say heaven?”

“That’s … Yeah.” He licked his lips, which were chapped and scabbed over.

I almost felt bad for him, not because of the fact that he believed he was going to heaven (he clearly wasn’t because he was an asshole), but mostly because he looked like a rutabaga covered in soiled taint hair. “You never struck me as a religious man, Angel.”

“You don’t know anything about me,” he said through gritted teeth.

“I know you tried to escape once and that you took the port out of your neck. I know you’ve let me live twice now when you could have killed me. Twice? Has it been twice? You know what I mean. And part of me wants to know – or, should I say, part of me thinks you may have ulterior motives here.”

“You know nothing about me!”

“I know you’re a head that’s going into a bag later because he’s misbehaving, and I know you have a relationship with your mother. See? I do know some things about you, and I’d like to know more. Tell me about the time you escaped. Tell me more about that.”

“I already told you, you don’t know anything about me.”

I sat down on the bed, far enough away that he couldn’t roll over and bite me. I was acting as casual as possible; in actuality, I was a bit on edge because even though he was a head, he was Angel. There was a good chance he could bite me hard enough to rip off my leg or some shit. I had no idea what he was capable of in his current form, but I did know he was already starting to grow a body again, which was disturbing.

Very disturbing.

“I’m going to ask you one more time, and I’d like an answer or we’re going to have to put you back in the bag. How’s that sound?”

“How many times do I have to tell you to go fuck yourself, Gideon? You and I have nothing to talk about. Now kill me, or shut up, and leave me the hell alone.”

“Go get me a knife and a cloth from the kitchen,” Veronique said suddenly.

Dorian shrugged, disappearing in a flash. Her body reformed seconds later, a large kitchen knife in one hand, a small towel in the other.

“You may want to leave the room for this,” Veronique said, lifting her lips to bare her teeth. “We don’t need Angel having a body.”

“Don’t kill him.” I went to the door, not at all interested in watching Veronique cut off the limbs Angel had grown.

I made my way through the living room, toward the back door, and stepped outside.

Man, it was a gorgeous night in Santa Fe. I could see some of the city lights and barely heard the highway in the distance. Just a low hum, the way I liked it.

The alcohol was still making me feel loopy. I got the urge to turn back to the house and go upstairs, cuddle up next to Grace. That would be nice. Then again, it was really nice out tonight, and I wasn’t tired.

My phone buzzed, and I saw Luke had sent me a message.

Luke: Bruh, are you sitting down?

I took a seat on one of the back patio chairs, a plastic one with a covered cushion. I kicked my legs up and propped them on a plant holder. Comfy.

Me: I am now.

Luke: Someone is trying to steal your mojo.

Me: Damn, that’s dirty. LOL! And Broner Hughes? What kind of name is that?

Luke: I know, right?

Me: I knew I should have trademarked Creative Nonfiction Gamer Sci-Fi! Or is it Non-fiction?

Luke: I believe both are acceptable. Shit, if you start now, you can call yourself the Father of Creative Nonfiction Gamer Sci-Fi, because you sort of are.

Me: Not a bad idea, but I don’t want to be a father. Shit. I’d be a terrible father. I’d drop the baby on the first day.

Luke: The Godfather?

Me: No … something cooler.

Luke: God Emperor?

Me: Damn, that one’s pretty cool. But something more referential to what I am and what I’ve become.

Luke: The Harem King?

Me: No, that’s somebody else.

Luke: The Tiger Guy?

Me: Also somebody else.

Luke: The Necromancer Attorney?

Me: No, but only because I am above the law. Also, why do I feel like that’s somebody else too?

Luke: The Big Chalupa? The Bacon Guy? The Bacon Guy with a Beard?

Me: Who the hell are these people?

Luke: The Slime Guy?

Me: I’m not opposed to slime.

Luke: The Canuck? Nope, that’s me.

Me: Do authors really need nicknames? And if so, can I choose my own?

Luke: Well, that kind of eliminates the point of a nickname.

Me: But I have a pretty good one.

Luke: Oh?

Me: How about Dude Who is in Way Over His Head and Has a Talking Superhero Head in a Backpack?

Luke: You’re kidding, right?

Me: About which part?

Luke: All of it?

Me: Yep, a talking head, WTF. Thank god I’m a little drunk. So, our Main Character hasn’t updated his writer friend recently.

Luke: Go on.

Me: After coming to Santa Fe, our amazing, stoic MC – who is constantly surrounded by beautiful women that could kill him – ended up becoming a superhero for a limited amount of time. He used his powers for good, of course, and to kill private military men and women – which is debatable if that’s good or bad, but we won’t go there. And eventually he got to another superpowered guy, who goes by the name of Precious Angel.

Luke: His superhero name is Precious Angel? LMAO!

Me: Yep, and the Magneto lady decapitated him. His head was supposed to be a trophy, or better, some collateral. If that means anything.

Luke: It doesn’t, LOL.

Me: Well, that was the plan anyway. Then it started talking. And luckily, our MC was drunk, or he would have shit his pants.

Luke: It sounds like this narrative has spun off from a traditional story and has now become something else entirely. Readers won’t like that. TBH, I feel like a talking head has been in so many books and anime. You know, if this wasn’t happening in real life, I’d think you regurgitated this from all the pop culture you’ve consumed.

Me: You would be correct. But yes. I talked to a head. And he was rude. So now he goes back in the backpack. I’m sorry, I had two CoronaRitas. Do you have CoronaRitas in Canada?

Dorian appeared next to me. She saw me pecking away at my phone and took a seat on the armrest, her warm body pressed against mine. I perched my elbow on her hip and got comfortable.

“Luke?” she asked.

“Yep.”

“You still haven’t introduced me.”

“All in good time, my dear,” I said with a stupid smile plastered across my face.

Luke: CoronaRita?

Me: More importantly, is there Mexican food in Canada? Are there even Mexicans there? I know it’s a stupid question, but, I mean, well, are there?

Luke: Of course we have Mexicans here. Why is it you always ask me stupid questions about Canada? And we have Mexican food, btw. Hey! Incoming news. I just put in for a new book cover for Star Defacer 3, and I’m supposed to get the mock-up soon.

Me: [Excitement intensifies]. Did someone say new cover? Because I’m balls-deep in writer’s block, and I could use a little cover session.

Luke: I don’t have it yet, but when I do, I’ll share it with you. Hopefully it’ll knock that writer’s block out of you.

Me: Hold on, I’m getting an email from a guy I need to talk to.

I opened the email from Ken to find a single picture attached.

Chapter Three: An Impromptu Date with Dorian Gray

I knew better than to download the attachment. I’d seen enough from the image preview to get an idea of what they had done.

“The fuckers,” I said, trying to calm myself with deep breaths. “Fuck!”

Who’d do that to someone?

I quickly told Luke I had to go.

Dorian squeezed my arm. “Show me.”

I turned the phone to her and she bit her lip. “That’s …”

“Let’s get inside,” I said, no longer giving a shit about how beautiful a night it was. Dorian dropped her hand into mine as I turned to the back door.

“What do you want to do about it?” she asked softly.

“Nothing we can do. I just wish we’d gotten him out of there. We even offered, you offered. We should have done it.”

We stopped in front of the door and she looked at me, a sad expression on her face. “But there’s nothing we can do now.”

“We don’t know that he’s really dead.”

“You saw the same picture as I did, right?”

“I did.”

“He’s really dead, Gideon.”

“He could still be alive.”

She grimaced. “Not after that.”

Just then, another email from Ken came in, this one containing a zip file of information.

“I need to go through this stuff,” I told her, realizing that he’d somehow arranged to have an email sent if he ever died.

Only problem was, it likely took a few hours before that service was triggered, which meant he may have been dead since this morning, or hell, yesterday.

“What can I do to help?”

I stuffed my phone into my pocket. “We have to keep to our mission,” I finally said, part answer part inner monologue spoken aloud. “Goddammit! Every time something like this happens I question what we’re doing, but we have to remember – I have to remember – there’s a reason for all this.”

“I’ll go through the stuff with you if you want,” said Dorian. “I have a lot of energy right now; I won’t be able to sleep.”

“No, you can watch your shows.”

“Those shows are entertaining, but I’d rather help you go through this stuff.”

Veronique appeared at the back door, staring at me intently, her blonde bob framing her sharp face. “What is it?” she asked.

“They killed Dr. Kim and mutilated his body.” I pulled my phone out and showed it to her.

“The screen is black.”

“Aware,” I said. “Do you really want to see it?”

Veronique shrugged, not coldly; more of a shrug that suggested she could have predicted this would happen. “We’ll get them back.”

“That we will,” I said.

Dorian and I went inside and headed for the back bedroom. Angel was in the closet now, back in the backpack, and there were no leftover signs that Veronique had cut off the bottom part of his body.

I opened my laptop and navigated to my email to download the zipped file. Just as I hovered my pointer over the file, the thought came to me that this could be a way for them to track me. Rather than open it, I went to GoogleFace and researched tracking someone’s location through a zip file, or any sent file, and found out that it was indeed a possibility.

“We shouldn’t open it,” I told Dorian, who was in the process of taking her ribbed sweater off. She wore a black tank top underneath, the tattoos running up her arms hyper-visible.

“Why?”

“They could use it to track us,” I said, leaning back in the chair.

“Then we should go to Dr. Kim.”

“In New Haven?”

Dorian came around and sat on my lap, wrapping an arm around my shoulder and neck as purple energy radiated all around her.

The two of us flashed away in a matter of seconds.

Instead of reappearing somewhere else, we blasted through a vortex of lights, sounds, and blurry colors. Dorian’s hair was slicked back, her mouth was open wide, and a huge smile was on her face as we traveled.

We popped up in an alley. My first response was to bend over and hurl. From seeing what they’d done to Dr. Kim, to traveling through the vortex … all of this was too much.

But I also didn’t want to look like a weakling in front of Dorian, so rather than throw up, I swallowed it down, the acid burning my throat. Damn, did that taste bad.

“That was … shit … where are we?”

“Nashville, Tennessee,” Dorian said. Same place I traveled to when I went to get the GPS key from Dr. Kim.” A vein pulsed on her forehead. She didn’t seem tired though, and while her face was a little red, she looked just fine.

“That’s what it’s like to travel long distance? Did you say Nashville? What the hell?”

She nodded, still catching her breath. “Amazing, right?”

The temperature had dropped, and there was something different about the air here. It held the weight of the city, the inhabitants, the pollutants. Nothing like the quaint cliffside home we’d come from.

“Want to explore for a second?” she asked, slipping her hand into mine. “I need a moment to recharge. Possibly eat.”

We weren’t far from the main street – clearly a busy street, with several music joints and a few barbeque places to boot.

While her tattoos were exposed, Dorian also wore a pair of long black gloves that went all the way to her elbows. Her hand was warm, even with the glove on, likely because of the teleportation.

“Um, sure?” I said still not quite processing it all. I’d flown across the country before, as far away as Canada and London when I was younger. I knew the feeling associated with travel.

This was nothing like that.

I still couldn’t believe we were now walking down the streets of Nashville as if we’d been there all along. There was something almost dreamlike about it … or nightmare-like, depending on your take.

I recalled a quote from Travels with Charley in Search of America: ‘We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.’

I don’t think Steinbeck was talking about teleporters, but he might as well have been.

Another deep breath in and I relaxed into my body. My stomach was still doing cartwheels, but a little willpower went a long way, and I was able to keep my dinner down.

“That’s the place I grabbed a sandwich at last time,” she said, pointing to a food truck across the street. “I’ll recharge and we can get to New Haven.”

“Wait,” I told her, pulling her hand back. A guy passing by with a guitar case in hand tipped his cowboy hat at us, snorted, and moved on.

“What?” she asked.

“I never agreed to go to New Haven. We can’t be impulsive like this. If something happens to us while we’re there, how will Grace and Veronique get to us?”

Dorian smirked. “Grace will take over the mind of a truck driver and have him drive her there with Veronique. They’ll stop and feed along the way. Maybe she’ll get an army going as they drive, storing them in the back. Relax.”

“We can’t treat people like slaves.”

“They won’t be slaves, and we won’t be treating them like that. We’ll be captured by Mother and company. Kidding.” She tightened her fingers around mine. “I’ve got your hand, remember? If anything happens, we’re gone, and there’s no one that can stop us. Remember that about me; as long as I can touch you in some way, I can get us out of any situation.”

“Got it.”

“Now, let me order a sandwich because they have white barbeque sauce here and it’s yummy.”

I waited in line, Dorian in front of me, her hand behind her back as she pressed her body into mine. Eventually, I untwined my fingers from hers and just placed my hand on her waist. It was much less awkward this way.

She ordered a sandwich. I pulled out a serious wad of cash to pay for it and tipped the guy ten bucks. We found a bench to sit on while we ate. She kept her leg hooked around mine just in case, and as she ate, we shared a big glass of sweetened iced tea.

I still hadn’t pegged Dorian, literally and figuratively.

Grace was sweet and soft, mysterious, the girl next door even if she was a powerful psychic shifter. Veronique was the opposite of Grace, sharp, a little robotic at times, all business at others, violent, and less mysterious.

But I still didn’t know what to make of Dorian half the time.

She was more worldly than the other two, sarcastic and funny, and the fact that she had the rocker look going on only made it harder for me to pin her down. She vibed with coolness and originality.

“Good, huh?” she said after offering me a bite.

It was a small bite. I didn’t know if I’d be able to keep it down, but I confirmed it was good with a thumbs up.

“Are you ready to go to New Haven?” I asked when she finished her sandwich. I wanted to get back to the other two. It felt safer that way.

Dorian looked at the tattoo parlor across the street. “Do we have time?”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I mean, let’s go to New Haven first, and on our way back we can get tattoos.”

“Me? Get a tattoo?”

It sounded like a terrible idea, but something about the way she was looking at me made me want to do it anyway. Maybe it was the alcohol from earlier. I still had a little liquid courage left, it seemed.

“I still don’t understand why we’re going to New Haven anyway, especially just the two of us. You do realize I’m the weakest member of the Cherry Blossom Girls.”

“Grace called us that too, but you’re not a girl.”

I shrugged. “Cherry Blossom Girls and Boy sounds stupid. So it’s easier for me to say that, or CBGs.”

“Cherry blossoms could be a pretty cool tattoo,” she said, showing me the back of her arm. “I have some space here I’ve been wanting to fill in, and cherry blossoms would be kind of interesting and sexy. It’d be sexy on you too.”

“Cherry blossoms?”

“Why not?” she purred. “Tattoos are fun to get.”

“I doubt it. Let’s just make it back from New Haven alive.”

Chapter Four: An Explosive Tattoo

Dorian and I rocketed through the vortex for the second time that evening. She kept one hand in mine as we went, her hair beating in the crazy wind, that same smile on her face. This was the exact opposite of the look on my face, which could be defined as fear with a hint of ‘about to shit himself.’

Teleporting a short distance was cool but long distance was like being shot out of a cannon into a Super Bowl fireworks display.

Our forms took shape in New Haven and not a second too soon.

I fell to my knees again, got up, kept the food down, and took in my new environment.

East Rock, I thought after I saw the sign for State Street.

East Rock was a rich neighborhood in New Haven that was mostly populated by grad students and adjunct Yale professors who lived in large, three-story homes with basements that sat directly next to Brownstones and bricked apartment complexes.

“I’m going to be sick …” I said as a swirl of cold, New England air whipped at me.

“It’s a good thing you didn’t eat back there,” Dorian laughed, patting me on the back.

I’d never been so happy to see concrete in my life, and had I not been a stronger man, I would have been on my knees kissing that concrete.

Once the world was no longer spinning, I shook my hands out and adjusted my glasses.

“You’ve been here before?” she asked.

“Yeah, I had a girlfriend a few years back who lived in Buckingham Apartments, which is on the corner of Cottage and Livingston. I spent a lot of time at her place, and we’d walk around the neighborhood a bunch.”

“Sounds romantic.”

“We walked around because we were poor and there was nothing else to do.”

Dorian chuckled. “It still sounds sweet.”

We turned toward State Street, home of one of New Haven’s most famous pizza restaurants called Modern Apizza.

“Does he live on State Street, or in the neighborhood?” I asked, but Dorian wasn’t really focused on what I was saying any longer.

Her paintbrush was out, and she held it almost as if it were a wand. Her other hand was dedicated to me – or better, to holding my hand – just in case we needed to get away in a jiffy.

My question was answered when we turned right on State Street and passed a rundown gas station. Dorian pointed at an apartment over yet another pizza restaurant.

We were in the hallway in a flash, her grip on my hand tightening.

The hallway was empty, and it stunk of Indian spices. One of the apartments across from Dr. Kim’s had a television on, or maybe it was a video game.

Damn, did I miss playing video games.

Focus, I reminded myself.

“I’m going to go in and out as quick as I can,” Dorian said. “Stay here.”

Before I could protest, she dropped my hand and disappeared.

It doesn’t take long for my mind to wander, and in that thirty-second span I thought of one of my favorite quotes from Ready Player One: ‘It’s you against the machine’ and how that didn’t exactly relate to my life but it was a cool quote; I recalled talking to Angel’s head and how fucked that was; and for some reason, I thought of the big Mexican named Diego who drove us around Austin.

Cool guy.

“Holy shit!” I said when Dorian popped out of the air behind me. “Sorry, you scared the hell out of me.”

“You knew I was coming back, right?”

“I sure as hell hoped you were. Anything?”

“Not a lot. It’s a pretty small place.” She grabbed my wrist. “Want to see?”

“By all means.”

We flashed into Dr. Kim’s apartment.

It was a sparse place with a small TV, a couch in the living room, tile floors but no rugs, and a dining room table with a single placemat on it. I moved toward the bedroom, where I found a perfectly made bed and a standing computer desk.

“I’ve got a weird feeling about this,” I told her as I pulled her with me over to the desk, still holding her hand. I jiggled the computer’s mouse and noticed the afterglow of a blinking red light in the closet. “Dorian!”

The next two seconds played out in slow motion.

A bloom of orange tore through the closet door, but we were already partially gone by that point, our bodies reforming on the street outside as the explosion blew through the entire apartment, blasting out windows, sending debris onto the street, and triggering more explosions in the apartments below.

No time to scream; Dorian squeezed my hand again and we were back in Nashville.

“There were people in there!” was the first thing I managed to say as I checked my body for injuries.

Dorian stood beside me, still holding one of my hands as she checked her own body. Her face was red, the vein on her head pulsing.

“There’s nothing we could have done by staying there; it was a trap,” she finally said, vocalizing what both of us already knew, and the first thing I thought of when she said those last words was Admiral Ackbar’s famous line.

This is what happens when you grow up on memes.

But I cast my silly thought away and got back to what had just happened. We could have been killed.

And I wanted nothing more at that moment but to get back to Grace and Veronique.

“How long till you can teleport again?”

“I thought we were getting tattoos,” she said, in a tone that barely told of what she’d just been through. “I’d like to get a tattoo tonight, even if we were just almost killed. A tattoo would be a great way to celebrate the fact that we’re alive.”

“Are you being serious right now?” I knew she was, but I figured I’d check anyway. Damn, these women were strange! No time to mentally unpack potential death by explosion? Only with the CBGs.

“Like I said, celebrate that we’re alive.”

We had nearly been killed mere seconds ago, or maybe it was about a minute now. While I did agree with her that we should celebrate that we hadn’t been killed, I didn’t know if getting inked up was the best way to go about doing it.

But I didn’t have time to say either of those things, because she’d already reached for my hand and started dragging me to the tattoo parlor.

“It won’t take long,” she said. “I just want to get something small. Besides, I need to recharge.”

When my grandchildren ask me how I got the tattoo on my shoulder, I’ll be able to tell them about the night I almost got myself blown up at a scientist’s apartment in New Haven and how that same night I ended up getting a tattoo in Nashville to celebrate being alive.

Or something like that.

Dorian wasn’t wrong; it didn’t take long to get the tattoos, especially because hers was basically a ‘fill in the blank’ situation on her left arm that she’d already decided on. She went with the obligatory cherry blossoms, and while she got hers, I perused through tattoo books and found a pretty cool typewriter.

There were a lot of ironies about the tattoo I chose, and I probably shouldn’t have gotten one that night because I still had alcohol in my system, but possibly the biggest irony was that I’d never even used a typewriter. If you put me in a room with a typewriter, I wouldn’t even know what to do with the damn thing.

The only writers I knew that used typewriters were a couple of wackjobs in Portland who wrote poetry and tried to look cool when they took public transportation.

Actually, I didn’t know if those guys really existed; for all I knew, it was just something people made fun of that never actually happened.

But I was up next for the tat, and rather than think about almost getting killed by an explosion, I pulled off my shirt and took a seat in front of the grizzled tattoo guy.

The tattoo gun started up, and I squeezed my eyes shut.

Okay, so it wasn’t as painful as I thought, but it did make me feel a strange intoxication that revolved around a weird desire for the pain to continue, yet stop at the same time.

The tattoo artist mumbled that the top of my arm was a pretty easy place to get a tattoo and how some of the softer skin – like on the back of my arm or my stomach – would hurt a lot more. Apparently bones hurt too, so if I wanted to get one across my collarbone, I’d better get something to bite down on while he did it.

He couldn’t remind me enough to stop squirming, telling me that my typewriter would look more like a lunchbox if I didn’t stop. “Only losers and hipsters have lunchbox tattoos,” he said in a gruff voice as he focused in on his design.

But, as I plan to tell my grandchildren, and as I’m telling you now, I did get that damn tattoo, and it looked pretty good at the end, even though it was bound up in Saran Wrap.

Cherry blossoms coming out of a typewriter? Hell yeah.

Chapter Five: What Happens in Santa Fe, Stays in Santa Fe

I went hands to knees right away, still not able to fully process teleporting long distances. The vortex, seeing Dorian rocketing next to me, feeling like my body was about to tear apart …

It wasn’t for everyone.

Not as much sickness this time, but I did feel a wave of relief as I touched down in the living room, back on solid ground.

Veronique turned the television off and come over to us.

“We got tattoos in Nashville,” I said like an idiot. Still, it was better than going with ‘Hey, we almost just died in an explosion.’

I carefully rolled up my sleeve to show her the tattoo, and her first response, almost predictably, was to place her hand on it and drain some of my power. Not a lot, but just enough to turn her hand red and make me feel nauseous.

“Hey!” I said, stumbling away.

Veronique pointed at Dorian. “Do not leave alone with him again.”

“We can go wherever we want,” Dorian said. “And besides, we’re back, aren’t we? Everything is okay. Did you miss us or something?”

“It’s stupid to do that,” Veronique said.

“You’re right,” I told her, “but we had to be certain about something.”

I explained that we’d gone to New Haven to check on Dr. Kim and that an explosion nearly killed us. I tried to keep this explanation as short and sweet as possible, but I could tell by her expression that she was not happy about it.

“This is what I mean when I say you shouldn’t travel alone. You two could have died. Don’t do it again,” Veronique said with a finality that demanded no challenge. “I’m serious, let’s stick together. Because if something happened to you two, I don’t know what Grace and I would do.”

That last part surprised me a little. I’d never heard her sound so vulnerable before, and I could even see it in her face, her sharp features softening, a spark of fear in her dark eyes.

So I tried to lighten the mood.

“Well, we’re not too far from Mexico, so if something happened to us, you guys could have gone there. Grace could take over a drug cartel, and you two could live like queens in a villa on a mesa for the rest of your lives, having your drug cartel going around doing things. You know what I’m talking about. Have your own personal army is what I’m trying to say.”

She didn’t know what I was talking about, but she did get that I was trying to cheer her up.

“You’re right, we could probably survive on our own, but we’d rather you be around.”

“Me or Dorian?” I asked, not sure who she was referring to.

“Who do you think?”

“Both? I’m kidding – we’re safe, that’s all that matters, Veronique.”

As she had done before, Dorian dropped her hand into mine and turned for the bedrooms. Veronique looked from Dorian to me then back to Dorian, and a small grin crept across her face. “But you had him all night,” she said almost playfully.

Veronique wasn’t normally very playful, so it came off sounding more stilted than sexy.

But I got the point; she didn’t care what happened between Dorian and me.

Thank god for superpowered women who haven’t been brought up in a society with Judeo-Christian norms!

Rather than lead me to my bedroom, Dorian teleported us there.

“Get naked,” she said.

I almost saluted her but figured I’d just do what she said instead. I stripped down to my underwear about as fast as a human could.

“What are you doing?” she asked with a flirty smile.

“Wait, did I mishear you?” I noticed she wasn’t undressing.

I couldn’t see my own face at that moment, but I’m pretty sure it was the color of Veronique’s hands when she drained someone’s energy.

Awkward.

I even crossed my hands over my chest, not real stoked about unveiling my nipples nor the bruise I had over my heart from getting shot by a bullet in Austin.

Damn, my life is crazy, and thank Jeebus for bulletproof vests.

“I was just getting ready for bed,” I told her bashfully.

“I’m just messing with you.” Dorian grinned and took off her boots.

Her tank top came off next, and she was now in her bra, shorts, and fishnet stockings. Then her breasts came out, bouncing just once as she tossed her bra to the side.

I wasn’t going to have a debate with my little writer as to why men were so attracted to breasts. It was clear; we all had mother issues, and we all wanted to get back up inside the womb and stay warm and away from this godawful world.

She took a step closer to me, unbuttoning the front of her jean shorts. She bent forward, wiggling out of them so that she was now just in her panties and fishnets. Then she straightened and came into my arms.

My hands fell to her lower back and from there onto her ass, which was poorly shielded by one of the thongs we’d bought in Austin. Poorly shielded, I should say, because thongs are ridiculous.

As I kneaded her ass, she stood on her tippy toes and kissed me once, her eyes softening. “We’re going to have to get creative about this,” she purred.

“I am down as fuck.”

Little did I know what that meant.

Here I was, thinking we were going to be doing some cosplay or that she was into some super kinky BDSM stuff, or maybe some foot worship or wax play.

Boy, was I in for a surprise.

She kissed me again and turned her back to me, lightly pressing her backside into my increasingly blood-filled nether regions. She reached around and grabbed my proof of manhood. “It’s not as small as I thought it would be.”

“I don’t know how I should take that,” I said as she moved her hand up and down.

“Like I said, we’re going to have to get creative,” she whispered.

“Give it your best shot.”

Dorian turned back around and kissed me a few more times.

With my hands resting on her waist, I moved my lips to her collarbone and down toward her breasts. I sucked her nipples, my neck bent forward like I was trying to look at something on the ground, and once the posture started hurting, I moved back up and continued kissing her.

We ended up on the bed, Dorian on top, rubbing her wet panties against the front of my boxers. I was seconds away from getting down there and doing what I was put on this earth to do when she stopped grinding and said, “I can’t.”

“Okay,” I said as she continued gyrating her hips.

“Let’s just do this …” She got off me and lay on her side. She stuck her hand in the front of her panties and went to town, stretching her neck back to kiss me.

Is she on her period? This thought was quickly replaced with, No, you are an idiot, Gideon!

Then what is it? I asked the condescending voice.

You’d know if it were that, the voice replied.

“You look confused,” she said, still moving her hand up and down.

“Sorry, having an argument with myself. Please, continue!”

She moaned, grabbed my hand, and placed it on my crotch, which I took to mean that I should probably pleasure myself too.

It’s always weird jerking off in front of someone. It only goes to remind me how closely related we are to monkeys. It’s just so primal, so physical, tug and tug until the top pops off!

But it didn’t feel as weird with Dorian touching herself right next to me, and eventually, she let me stick my hand in her panties as well. Of course, I had stopped jerking and tugging by that point, my load long since blown.

Normally, I would have wanted to get that sticky shit off me asap, but I had a moaning superpowered woman next to me, and ignoring my own mess seemed like the right thing to do.

With my hand in her panties, I lightly touched whatever the hell the top part of the vagina is called. Aside from labia, I’m pretty much out of the loop when it comes to female body parts.

But I gave it my best shot, and just having someone else’s hand there seemed to get her moaning even louder.

The surprise and heightened sensuality from my intrusive act quickly subsided. Dorian placed her hand on mine and guided me into the right position, instructing me to move my finger in a circular pattern.

“Like this, and don’t put them inside,” was the only thing she said before she started enjoying it again.

She kept going, and I kept going alongside her, and eventually she arched her back, gasped, then gasped again, and after about thirty more seconds, she let out an additional, pleasure-laced sigh.

“I’m done,” she announced. “Did you finish?” She sat up a little, so she could see that I indeed had finished.

“Yeah. I’m going to go clean up.”

“And you’ll come back after?”

“Definitely. Hang tight.”

Chapter Six: Wichita, I Hardly Knew Thee

I woke the next morning before Dorian.

She was breathing lightly, sleeping on her side, and with the bit of sun peeking through the window, I could see her new tattoo, which was still wrapped in plastic. She had cleaned it, of course, just like I had mine, but she’d bound it up again overnight, saying that was the best way to keep it.

And she would know. The woman was pretty tatted up.

As I took her in, I instantly felt sorry for the guy who’d tried to have sex with her; the one who ended up blowing his dick and legs off.

Fuck that, but I guess there are worse ways to go.

She’d told me the whole gruesome story as we lay in bed together and how she wasn’t able to control the charging aspect of her power once he was inside her. This had been the reason she’d never gone that far with anyone since and why she didn’t want me going there as well.

And I was totally cool with that because no one in their right mind wanted to have their dick blown off, let alone their legs.

I shuddered again at her description.

“I was on top,” she’d told me, her head resting on my chest. “Then he went inside and …” She swallowed hard. “All blood, the bed was charred too. And he was screaming. All that was left were his feet.”

Like I said, gruesome.

Rather than lie next to her and think about fucked-up explosions, I silently got out of bed and went to the study to check my sales.

Talk about through the roof. It was weird seeing so many books sold. I almost felt like it was a scam, like I was scamming myself, but nope, each sale increased the height of the bar graph in real time.

This was tangible proof that my books mattered and that people were picking them up.

Gotta love that.

Page reads were up too; I’d had over a hundred thousand page reads the previous night. It was sad, in a way, because the page reads were going to pay me some hella cash, money I wouldn’t be able to collect unless I wanted to use my cards.

And I didn’t even have my cards anymore. Forgot to mention that, but all my stuff was confiscated in Austin at the military prison. So I was cash only.

I opened the drop-down menu to check sales on How Heavy This Axe?

Damn! I’d sold six copies, which was three more than I’d sold the previous day. Were readers finally ready for a transgender dwarf story? Maybe they actually are, a voice at the back of my mind said.

I used to listen to that voice, but now that I’d had success, I’d listened to that voice a little less.

After a few more yawns, I decided it was time for coffee and made my way down to the kitchen, only to find that Veronique had already brewed a pot. She sat at the bar, sipping from her mug as she flipped through a golfing magazine.

“Fun night?” she asked without looking up at me.

“Yeah, it was interesting at least.”

“Poor Dorian.” Veronique snapped the magazine shut. “She can’t ever have a man because she thinks she’ll blow off his penis.”

“She told you?”

“We share everything, including you.”

“Um, yeah,” I said awkwardly as I poured my cup.

“Hey.” Grace entered the kitchen wearing a pink robe. She kissed me on the cheek and asked for a cup of coffee as well. “I hear you got a tattoo,” she said, drumming her fingers on my shoulder.

“You hear, huh?”

“And that you had a pretty interesting night.” Her face began morphing into Dorian. She had the punk rocker down in a heartbeat, from her bangs to her dark eyes and dimples.

Veronique laughed as Grace joined her at the bar. In an instant, Grace was back in her base form, wrapped in the pink robe.

“What can I say? I had a crazy night.” I poured a cup for Grace and added a bit of nonfat creamer. Rather than dive further into the conversation, I changed the topic to what happened in New Haven.

Veronique already knew about it, and technically, Grace already knew about it too, but I figured I should recap. The recap ended with me rolling up my sleeve and showing them the tattoo.

“Will it always be so pink?” Grace asked.

“For the next few days at least.”

As we sipped our coffee, our conversation shifted back to the contents of the zip file Dr. Kim sent me.

“Where should we go to check out the contents?” I asked. “I don’t want to do it here.”

“How about somewhere in the Midwest?” Dorian came into the kitchen wearing a tank top and boy shorts. She opened the fridge, got some milk, and drank straight from the jug. “Sorry,” she said, wiping her mouth as she realized everyone was looking at her.

“It’s not a bad idea,” I told them. “But it is kind of in the middle of nowhere. Just pick a city?”

Dorian shrugged.

I pulled out my smartphone and located the great state of Kansas. “Wichita will work. They’re an hour ahead of us, so that means it’s nine fifteen in the morning there, and I’m pretty sure Okay Buy opens at nine.”

I did a quick GoogleFace search to confirm this and found some pictures of one of the Okay Buys in Wichita. “How’s this?” I asked Dorian, showing her the phone.

It would have been an even better trip if we hadn’t had to go through Dorian’s whirling vortex again, which also made Grace a little sick to her stomach.

But what can you do?

Once we arrived in Wichita, Kansas, we took a few minutes to shake off the teleportation effects and get to work. It was a nice day out, just starting to get warm. Birds too. Lots of chirping birds in the electronic store’s parking lot.

Grace and I had gotten ripping off the Okay Buys down to a science. It took us under ten minutes, while Veronique and Dorian scouted the parking lot looking for a good car.

So this was how we ended up at 9:30 a.m. in Wichita, Kansas, driving a black cherry Cadillac with a brand new laptop and a lipstick-sized three-terabyte portable hard drive in the back.

I’d never driven a Cadillac before, and now that I had, it would be something I looked for the next time we borrowed a vehicle.

Predictably, Dorian and Veronique were in the back, Grace next to me. I had taught her a little about using a smartphone, so I asked her to find us a nice breakfast restaurant.

She took out my phone, did a GoogleFace search, and found a place called Beacon Restaurant.

“Do they have pancakes?” Dorian asked.

“They sure do, and coffee,” Grace said as she skimmed through the reviews.

“Works for me,” I said.

“Me too,” said Veronique.

Grace turned up the volume on the phone so it could route me to the diner.

We didn’t get to see much of Wichita, but from what I could tell, it kind of looked like Texas. The city was divided into an old industrial area, and an area specifically designed for neighborhoods. There was a highway that cut through it, and like most cities we’d encountered in the South, it was sandwiched around the interstate.

We passed a few billboards from a local Christian group claiming that everyone was going to die soon, that God was watching, and that a fetus was a person too, hung a sharp right after a donut place, continued over some railroad tracks, and arrived at the diner.

I opened the trunk and unpacked the new laptop and hard drive, leaving the packaging in the Okay Buy bag. The laptop would definitely have some juice; they usually came at least sixty percent charged, but I brought the cable with us just in case.

Before we sat down, I asked the age-old question that mostly didn’t need to be asked in 2030, yet we still asked it: “Do you have Wi-Fi?”

“Of course we do, honey,” a middle-aged woman in a smock said with a tired smile. “The password is password.”

“Thanks,” I told her as we were led to our booth.

I went with eggs Benedict; Grace got sausage and biscuits; Dorian ordered an omelet; and Veronique got a cup of coffee. We all had coffee, actually, and also shared a full stack of banana chocolate chip pancakes.

After munching down, and while the three CBGs chatted about a show they wanted to watch later in the day, I set up the new laptop.

I plugged in the lipstick hard drive, let the software load, and once it did, I opened the second email from Dr. Kim and unzipped the file. I put a copy of everything on the drive and placed the drive in my pocket, where I’d always try to keep it just in case.

With the headphones in – the laptop had come with a cheap pair – I started going through the folders to see what Dr. Kim had left us.

I opened a folder named ‘final transmission’ and clicked on a video.

In the video, Dr. Kim was standing at his computer desk when he heard a whistling sound behind him. A blast of pure light cut him down and I saw the black silhouette of a woman before the feed cut off.

They sent a Super after him, I thought, and Grace looked up at me.

The psychic shifter was in her base form, a T-shirt that showed a little midriff, and a pair of yoga tights. Her hair was in a bun, and as she studied me, her eyes shimmered white.

He was killed by Chloe, she thought to me.

Chloe? What are her powers? I just saw some light …

Grace glanced at Veronique and the metal-wielding badass stopped chatting. “They’ve sent Chloe?” she asked.

Dorian took a sip of her coffee and exchanged glances with the two. “And now they’ll send Victoria and Augustin as well.”

“They were all born at the same time, but they’re a bit younger than us,” Grace explained to me. “They’re nineteen.”

“That’s not that much younger,” I said.

“They were also raised in a different way and were kept together rather than separated.”

“Where?”

“California, but my information isn’t the newest available.” Maybe there’s more info in the files Dr. Kim sent, she thought.

“Good idea,” I said aloud and continued perusing the drive. I checked the folder labeled ‘videos’ and found well over a hundred in there, too many for me to watch now. ‘Facility location data’ told me more about the five facilities; it would come in handy as we tried to bring them all down. Not only did it give schematics, but it also gave a brief history of the superpowereds that had been held there, as well as features of the facility. It was in the ‘notes’ folder that I found a single document and a file type I’d never seen before.

The note read:

To whom it may concern,

This drive contains all the information I have on the Subject Gene Therapy experiment which began in 2005 at the Rose-Lyle Facility at Yale University in conjunction with the Agency of Enhancement and Future Logistics (AEFL) and other private sector funders including Lockheed Raytheon and BAE Northrop Dynamics Corporation.

There is a smartphone app in this folder that may prove of assistance. I’ve put all the information I have on these various superpowered humans into a database that can be utilized in real time based on certain keywords.

For example, if you searched ‘psychic,’ you would find a list of some of the psychics that have been created. My database isn’t complete, nor do I account for those who have been discontinued and decommissioned. I simply put as much information as I could in a searchable directory.

Do with it what you will,

Dr. Ken Kim

Did he do this for me? I closed the message and looked at the app.

I still didn’t know how the government could track me, or the extent of their tracking capabilities, but I figured if I put all the info on my lipstick hard drive and then loaded it onto my computer without the internet on, I would be able to put the app on my smartphone without any issue.

Maybe I was being too careful. Then again, I’d already gotten sloppy several times before.

We need to get some gasoline, Grace thought to me.

You’re right, maybe we can get some here and take it back with us.

It’s probably better to get it there and get a car at the same time.

I looked across the table at her. “Does anyone want anything else to eat?” I asked, closing my laptop.

Veronique raised a single finger in the air.

“I know, I know, you want to feed. We can work that out in Santa Fe.”

I paid the bill, and we headed outside to the black cherry Cadillac. I tossed the keys onto the driver’s seat and handed the laptop to Veronique. “Take care of it however you want.”

The laptop lifted into the air and began spinning counterclockwise. Rather than disassemble it there, she zipped it off to some rooftop and then on to several other places, the metal twisting and bursting out of the laptop as it flew.

Chapter Seven: A Little Pressure

Back to the Santa Fe. As soon as we arrived I doubled over. Would I ever adapt to traveling in the vortex that was Dorian’s long-distance teleportation power?

We were near the center of a beautiful square, not far from an old chapel built in the 1800s, in the same alley we’d been in last night.

The CBGs were going to do more training later, but we also need to get some gasoline. This would require no less than two of them – Grace and Dorian, to be exact. Veronique wanted to feed though, so she planned to come along as well.

Up until this point, we hadn’t had to deal with the ‘appearing out of nowhere and someone seeing us’ issue. But sure enough, a guy pushing a trolley filled with beer cases saw us appear out of thin air. He started to say something but dropped to his knees, hands at his sides as Veronique fed. As he shriveled, her skin softened, and her lips lifted, revealing her canines.

“We can use his truck,” Dorian suggested.

“No, we need something smaller than a beer truck.”

Once Veronique finished and we left the beer delivery man against the wall so he appeared to be sleeping, Grace morphed into him. We walked around for a bit, Dorian and Veronique following Grace and me like we were on an awkward date.

We watched a guy pull up in a convertible Mustang, a definite classic – smoke gray, fierce, with fat tires and red brake pads.

“Have we driven a convertible Mustang yet?” I asked Grace.

“I can’t remember,” she said in a deep, manly voice, that I hadn’t heard her use before.

“Yeah, well, let’s do it.”

Grace approached the man with the Mustang, and he simply gave her the keys.

Easy as that.

I stepped up beside her and ran my hand through my beard as I studied the car’s owner, trying to think of a worthy story. “So, you let your friend borrow your car for a couple of days – an old friend, and you don’t have his number. He’ll call you when he’s ready for you to pick it up,” I told the man, Grace relaying the message almost instantly on a different plane.

“Yeah buddy, no problem,” he said. “Which friend?”

I almost waved my hand at him Jedi style, but I stopped myself. “You’ll say he was your Indian friend and he works in the tech sector as a software engineer. Out of Albuquerque. And that he probably took your car to Lake Tahoe, because both of you like to visit there together.”

“Yeah, Lake Tahoe, nice place,” he said, combing a hand through his silver hair.

“I agree, I would love to go there,” I told him.

“Got it.” He turned away from us. “I’m going to go have a beer.”

“It’s a little early for that, but I approve! Everyone ready?” I called over my shoulder, but Grace was already sitting in the front passenger seat, and Veronique and Dorian were already in the back. I didn't see them slip in, but it was odd that she’d had me out here talking to this guy while she was inside the car brainwashing him.

Or whatever it was she did.

Damn, she’s powerful.

Yes, I am.

I smirked at her as I got in the convertible. Grace, now back in her base form, reached over and scratched the back of my head. My hair had started to grow out, a nice fuzz now, and I’d need a haircut soon.

I may have been a loser up until the last couple of weeks, but at least I had a full head of hair.

“You should do some type of Mohawk, or dye your hair an interesting color next time you get it cut,” Dorian said.

I started up the Mustang. The vehicle smelled like the man’s musk, and there were fingernail indentations on the steering wheel, likely from some type of nervous tick.

“Gideon really does need a haircut,” Veronique said from the back.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

The top was down, the breeze blowing through our hair as we left the city center. We cruised on the highway for a short while and eventually found a larger gas station. We bought two red gas containers and a case of water.

Once we filled up the gas – paying in good ol’ cashola, of course – we headed back to our place.

This was definitely a ‘garage with the door open’ kind of task. Fortunately, it wasn’t too warm outside, so as Dorian and Grace went into the back yard to train, Veronique and I began transferring the gas to the water bottles.

It was an unconventional weapon, but I figured it would do.

“Do you like the smell of gas?” I asked Veronique as she helped me fill the first bottle.

“No. You?”

“I think?”

“That’s weird.”

“It’s American!”

We still hadn’t experimented with gas-filled water bottles yet, but there was a big enough space in the back yard that we could give it a test run.

“Want to give it a shot?” I asked after we filled three of the bottles.

I knew shit-all about gasoline and explosives; well, aside from the fact that gasoline was explosive. But I remembered enough from high school chemistry that it needed air to ignite. And I guessed that by putting a few nails inside, Veronique could zip the nails back and forth in the bottle, possibly triggering an even quicker ignition.

Rather than take things slow and try to figure it out step by step, we were going to dive right in, doing our damnedest not to get our asses blown off.

“Everyone, ballistic helmets on!” I said as we came around to the back yard.

Once the CBGs were ready, Veronique threw a bottle and did her thing. It blew up way too close to us, the flames nearly lashing at my beard.

“Holy shit!” I yelled, jumping back.

“Be careful,” Grace said, in the harshest voice I’d ever heard from her.

Dorian shook her head at Veronique. “Didn’t you train with this kind of stuff?”

“No,” Veronique said, handing the punk rocker another gas bottle. “That was your group that trained with IEDs. They wanted me more for combat and extraction, not explosive ordnance detail.”

I looked at Dorian. “Well, how do you suppose we use it without blowing ourselves up?”

“I think the best way will be for me to teleport somewhere, charge the cap right before I get there, and disappear before it can blow up.”

“You think you’re that fast?”

Dorian raised an eyebrow at me. “What do you think?”

To prove her point, she disappeared, reappeared about fifty yards away, and dissipated right when an explosion blew some cacti into the air.

“How’s that?” she asked as her form took shape in front of us.

“That was freaking badass.” I raised my hand to give her a high five, but she didn’t reciprocate.

“Let me try again,” she said and took the final water bottle from Veronique.

This time she reappeared nearly thirty feet up, fell about five feet, and disappeared before the bottle went off, raining shrapnel onto the dirt below.

“That’s the coolest thing I’ve seen all day,” I told the three of them. “And remember, we’ve been to Wichita, Kansas, today.”

Veronique rolled her eyes.

“What? I enjoyed the city!”

“I would have liked to explore Wichita more,” Grace said. “I bet there are tons of houses to flip there.”

Veronique propped a hand on her hip as she thought about that. She wore a western shirt that was tied above her waist, revealing her taut midriff. “Probably. Cheaper houses too. Stay away from the coasts; that’s what the Fix Up Show said.”

“I didn’t think about that,” Dorian said.

“We can talk about flipping houses later, ladies. For now, Veronique and I have to fill up the rest of these bottles. We’ll need to get rid of them early on in combat; it’s too dangerous to be going around with this much explosive power in a backpack.”

“Maybe it would be a good opener for our plan,” Dorian suggested. A gust of wind whipped her black hair across her face, and she shoved it impatiently out of her eyes.

“That’s actually not a bad idea,” said Grace.

“I like it. Let’s finish making more and then you three get some more training done while I go through the stuff Ken gave us. We’ll solidify our plan after that.” I gave them a serious look. “We can’t get caught tonight. We have to be on our A-game.”

I was glad no one said anything about how I shouldn’t be going with them, because yeah, I probably shouldn’t have been going with them. I’m not going to say I was the weakest link, because I’ve already said that before, but I’m definitely not the strongest link.

Once Veronique and I finished putting the gasoline in the water bottles, we went to the back yard and I took a seat at the table, waiting for the CBGs to start training again.

“I need to feed after,” Veronique reminded Dorian.

“Will do,” she said with a wink.

I was hoping to go through some of the information Ken had left us, but I knew it would eventually be too distracting to watch them train. To scratch both itches, I decided to observe the training for a bit and then go inside to work.

Grace’s eyes blazed white as she used her power to lift Veronique into the air and let her hover there, then did the same to Dorian, keeping them both suspended.

Veronique pulled her frag patches out, but before she could zip one off, Grace dropped her to the ground. She landed on her feet but thought twice about throwing anything at the psychic.

Dorian teleported away, only to find herself still hovering when she reappeared.

She stuck her finger in her mouth and traced an arrow into the air, which she flung at Grace. The arrow landed just in front of Grace and sent her tumbling sideways. She was back on her feet in a matter of moments, Dorian still suspended midair.

“Let me down!” Dorian called out.

Seeing an opportunity, Veronique began draining Dorian, just a little, which only agitated the punk rock teleporter.

“That’s cheating!” she said as Grace and Veronique laughed.

Grace eventually sat her back down, and Dorian glared at the two of them.

She was gone in a flash, behind Veronique now, shouldering her to the ground. But she flashed away again before Grace could do anything.

A slight look of panic now in her eyes, Grace pivoted left and right, trying to spot the teleporter, who eventually appeared before her and punched her in the stomach.

Grace’s immediate response was to blow Dorian back about fifteen yards, where she hit the ground hard, tumbled, and nearly collided with a cluster of sharp rocks.

“Too tense,” I said, standing. “Play nice, please!”

Go inside. We won’t kill each other, we promise, Grace thought to me.

“We promise,” said Dorian.

“Yep,” Veronique added.

Dorian, I believed. Veronique with her predatory snarl? Not so much.

But there was something enchanting about her dark eyes, and rather than sit out there and watch them beat the hell out of each other – because really, that’s not my thing – I grabbed my laptop and the hard drive and went inside.

Once I was in the house, I found a soda in the fridge and went to the study.

Even though I heard the sounds of combat outside, as well as the occasional explosion (yikes!), I plugged the hard drive into my computer, stuck the phone’s cable in on the other side, and transferred the app over.

I was a little nervous about starting it, but I had trusted Ken up to this point, and I didn’t think he would install something that would lead us into jeopardy. He genuinely seemed like he wanted to help and had paid for that desire with his life.

Damn. I shook my head. I really wish we could have done something to save him.

I waited for the app to install, and once it was done doing its thing, I clicked it open.

“Interesting,” I whispered when a search bar appeared. I recalled Ken’s instructions and figured I’d give it a shot. I typed in ‘psychic,’ and a list of people started to appear. No Mother, but I found who I was looking for:

Sabine, Subject S

Build: 008

Base height: 181 Centimeters

Base weight: 54 Kilos

Strength: 1

Intelligence: 9

Constitution: 4

Wisdom: 8

Dexterity: 3

Charisma: 6

Main: Psychic

* Omnikinesis

* Second Sight

* Psychometry

* Telepathy

* Clairsentience

* Psychokinesis

* Hypnosis

Main Second: Shifter

* Speed of Change

* Texture Consistency

* Opacity

* Voice Match

Ken’s info didn’t list her new ability, nor did it list any actual levels, just the base abilities on her drive. Still, it was super fucking helpful.

I checked Veronique next, first typing in her name, which of course brought up her information and then typing in the word ‘metal,’ which also led to Veronique and a few others. I wondered how many on the list were still alive, but I had no way of knowing.

I selected Veronique’s name and her basic info was displayed:

Veronique, Subject V

Build: 2.7341

Base height: 171 Centimeters

Base weight: 50 Kilos

Strength: 4

Intelligence: 6

Constitution: 7

Wisdom: 5

Dexterity: 6

Charisma: 2

Main: Metal Absorption and Modification

* Wielding Capacity

* Adaption Speed

* Alloy Integrity

* Blood Metal Conversion

I went back to the main search bar and typed in ‘teleport.’ There were others with similar abilities, and again, I didn’t know if they were dead or alive. As I pulled up Dorian’s stats, I got to thinking that I’d never actually played around – at least extensively – with modifying the CBGs’ base strength or intelligence or anything like that.

I knew I was able to do it, but I didn’t see how it would help much. And how was that even possible anyway?

Dorian’s stats read:

Dorian Gray, Subject DG

Build: 7.543

Base height: 170 Centimeters

Base weight: 49 Kilos

Strength: 2

Intelligence: 6

Constitution: 7

Wisdom: 3

Dexterity: 6

Charisma: 8

Main: Ergokinesis

* Overcharge

* Charge Capacity

* Charge Integrity

Main Second: Teleportation

* Tele-Sphere Radius

* Conscious Spatial Awareness

* Recharge Speed

* Restoration Speed

* Teleportation Rapidity

* Teleportation Distance

* Empathetic Teleportation

* Banishment

* Overcharge

I thought I heard some movement in the closet. Rather than go and see if Angel was awake, because I hoped to hell he wasn’t, I searched for him on my new app.

“There you are,” I said, remembering our first standoff on the rooftop of the Rose-Lyle Facility. If I could say there was a point where I had officially broken bad – not counting all the other shit that had happened before that standoff – I would say it was when I challenged Angel.

And sure, if you’re thinking he would have killed me had I not been saved by Veronique and Grace, you are a hundred percent right. I was a writer with my back against an air conditioning unit; he would have snapped me in half in a heartbeat.

Angel, Subject A

Build: 1.2

Base height: 185 Centimeters

Base weight: 97 Kilos

Strength: 8

Intelligence: 7

Constitution: 8

Wisdom: 4

Dexterity: 6

Charisma: 3

“Just like I thought, you asshole,” I said. “You’ve got about as much charisma as someone who was homeschooled. Damn, I wish I could plug into your neck and turn that charisma up. Maybe you would be friendly. Hell, maybe you’d want to join us. I could totally use a guy like you.”

“Fuck you!” a muffled voice called from the closet.

Hearing Angel’s voice caused my heart to skip a beat, my breath catching in my throat.

He’s just a head, I thought to myself.

Don’t antagonize Angel, Grace thought to me.

Yes, ma’am. Also, someone needs to come drain him again. And that someone is Veronique.

I’ll send her now.

I returned to his deets, just so I could get a better understanding of them.

Main: Cell Regeneration

* Speed

* Disease Detection

* Limb Regrowth

* Power Recovery

Main Second: Flight

* Aerobatics

* Motion Defiance

* Self Exertion

* Atmospheric Adaptation

Main Third: Enhanced Strength

* Peak Human

* Enhanced Muscle Usage

* Disproportionate Force

* Gravity Immunity

* Power Balance

He is definitely a tank, I thought as I skimmed through the abilities again.

Veronique entered the room, startling me.

Rather than head straight for the closet, she came over to me and sat on my lap, her arm going around my shoulder. She was out of breath, and I could smell the sweat on her body. There was a little dirt in her hair, and a root sticking out of the space behind her ear.

I smiled and removed the root. “Does this belong to you?”

“Grace said you were having fun in here antagonizing Angel.”

I was keenly aware that her hand had started to charge red; she wasn’t actually absorbing any of my lifeforce yet, but I could tell she was hungry.

“You wouldn’t dare,” I said.

“Wouldn’t I?” she asked.

“You know what, Veronique, I’m glad you’re here. And I want to show you something.” I turned my phone to her, demonstrating how the new app worked. “This means we may be able to see the details of the person we’re fighting, in real time. It’ll really help with planning and strategizing.”

She gave me a wry look. “Are you fighting people now?”

“You know what I mean. It doesn’t show weaknesses, so that’ll take a little parsing. But at least knowing what we’re up against will help, especially if you three aren’t very familiar with the person.”

“That would be awesome if it showed weaknesses,” she said and took the phone from me.

“Careful,” I told her, afraid she would use her abilities by accident and strip the phone of its parts.

“If you haven’t figured out already, Gideon, I’m usually in control.” She gave the phone back to me.

“In control of what?”

“My power. What did you think I meant?” General confusion had spread across her face, and I realized that, despite her harsh nature, she’d totally missed what I was hinting at.

“Are you guys playing safe out there?” I asked.

“Safe enough.” Her hand came up and she moved her hair to the side, tucking a few locks behind her ear.

“Remember, the real fight is tonight,” I said.

“We’re playing it safe, trust me, Gideon.” Veronique placed her hand on my cheek, touching my scar with her thumb. She removed my glasses and put them on, staring at me, her eyes slightly larger than before. “I’m so glad I don’t have to wear glasses,” she finally said as she pulled them off and gave them back to me.

“Yeah, you should be glad.”

Veronique stood and moved to the closet.

As soon as her hand touched the closet door, the backpack flew out, knocking her in the stomach and sending her into the wall.

On my feet in a matter of seconds, I kicked the shit out of the bag, punting it into the hallway.

I heard Angel groan and the backpack didn’t do any more flying after that. It simply lay in the hallway, twitching, as Angel tried to recover from my Pelé-style kick.

My god, was Veronique pissed. She stomped over to the backpack, lifted it, and slammed it onto the hardwood floor.

She did that again and again.

“Please stop!” Angel said, his voice sounding nasal now, like his nose had been broken.

“Just drain his lifeforce,” I told her. “You don’t have to beat him up anymore.”

“Listen to Gideon,” Angel said as Veronique crouched in front of the backpack.

She glared at me.

I knew what the glare meant; it meant for me to shut my goddamn mouth, which I did as she slammed the backpack against the floor one final time. She unzipped the top portion of the backpack and hovered her hand over it, rather than reach inside.

Angel was unconscious again.

I didn’t know how long we’d have Angel in a backpack, but it seemed like it would be for a good amount of time. It was interesting to see that he could actually fly as a severed head – didn’t see that in his stats! – and for a split second, I pictured his ears fluttering, doubling as wings. The mental image almost made me laugh out loud.

Pretty sure that came from a Studio Ghibli movie, but I could be wrong.

Veronique tossed the bag back into the closet. “I’m going back out to train,” she said, but instead of heading for the door, she approached me, hips swaying with each step. She was in her bulletproof vest and impossibly short jean shorts, which just didn’t seem to go with the whole outfit.

“Where’s your helmet?” I asked, suddenly remembering she had it on when I’d seen them in the back yard earlier.

She sat back down on my lap. “Dorian blew it off.”

“I thought you guys were playing nice?”

“We were. Now, we’re going to be training harder for the next hour and a half or so. Dorian and I are quite sure of what to do, but Grace can only learn so much by reading our thoughts and understanding the training we’ve been through. I want you to write; you seem like you need some motivation.”

She lifted her hand to my cheek again.

“Yeah, I need some motivation. I’m kind of stuck at ten thousand words and –”

Veronique pulled her hand back and slapped the shit out of me.

“Hey!”

She hit me again before I could buck her off.

“I hope that’s enough motivation for you,” she said as she stood. “How many words can you write in an hour?”

“Two or three thousand,” I yelled, my face on fire from how hard she’d smacked me. “Damn, Veronique, you don’t have to …”

She narrowed her dark eyes at me. “If you don’t have four thousand words written in the next hour and a half … well, you won’t like what I do next.”

When she reached the doorway, she looked over her shoulder and gave a wolfish grin. “Grace said you could use a little pressure.”

“The slap was Grace’s idea?”

With that, she was gone.

Chapter Eight: Luke, I Am Your Writer

“What’s going on, Gideon?”

I smiled at Luke’s face on the screen. The Wi-Fi reception in the study was a little wonky, but I could still make out his blondish-brown hair and beard. His beard was still thicker than mine, but I was catching up.

“Bro, I just tore through four thousand words,” I told him, and to emphasize my point, I shook my hands out.

“Oh yeah? That’s good, I’m still having issues with an opener. I got the whole story figured out for Star Defacer 3, but I can’t figure out this intro chapter. Maybe I need a prologue.”

“Boo, no prologues. Whatever happened to action, action, action?”

“A prologue with action, maybe?” Luke mused. “Sounds like a plan. How are things with the ladies?”

“Things with the ladies …” I didn’t know what I should tell Luke, or better, I didn’t know where I should begin. “I got a tattoo last night,” I finally told him, going with the first thing that came to mind.

“A tattoo, eh?”

“Yeah, it’s a typewriter with some cherry blossoms around it.”

I pulled the smartphone back to show him the piece. I’d already put some of that medication on it that the tattoo artist gave us, so it was a little glossy, the skin still fresh. Running my finger over it, I could feel the ridges of the tattoo and the scab that was forming.

“That’s pretty awesome,” Luke said. “Where’d you get it done?”

Well, he asked, so I figured I’d give him the lowdown on what happened last night, sans the sex scene.

“You were almost killed in an explosion?” Luke laughed nervously. “I’m sorry, it’s just that every time I think I’ve heard it all from you, you have something else to tell me. So I’m not laughing at you, I’m laughing with you? That doesn’t make sense, you’re not even laughing, but I think you understand what I’m trying to say.”

“Yeah, and that’s just the stuff I’m telling you, man,” I said with a grin on my face.

“Oh? Are you leaving some details out?”

“I will save those details for the adult version of Mutants in the Making.”

“Let me guess, you and the teleporter?”

“Are you sure you don’t have a superpower?”

“Well, if you consider being pretty adept at playing MMOs, then yes, I do have a superpower. And you’ve already hooked up with the other two, so I figured it would happen at some point. Like I said: Harem. I called this a harem before it was a harem, when you only had two. Or … I shouldn’t say you had them, but you know what I mean.”

“Superheroes have different concepts of relationships.”

“As you are likely learning,” he said. We both laughed.

“Okay, okay, you got me. But I’m not one to kiss and tell.”

“You’re more of a guy who kisses and writes. Speaking of which, you said you cranked out four thousand words. How long did it take?”

“I did it in an hour. It was either write four thousand words or get my ass kicked. I chose the former.”

The phone cut out for a moment and Luke’s image reappeared. “Veronique? She seems to be the one who threatens, am I right?”

“You aren’t wrong.”

“Well, on the writer front, there are a bunch of people trying to copy what you’re doing. So expect a lot of knockoff books coming out, because everyone’s looking at your sales data and seeing that there’s an opportunity in creative nonfiction sci-fi – which is ludicrous because all the stuff is actually happening to you. I keep trying to tell everyone that, but they think I’m crazy. They think I’m part of the scheme.”

“I thought you were part of the scheme,” I said. It was true. Luke knew way more writers than I did, had been to cons, and was more social with them. I usually didn’t like communicating with other writers; it got too weird after a point.

“You know the one author, Dustin Cody, the one who always rips off everyone’s covers and ideas and regurgitates them and appears in their ‘also boughts’ and people have mistaken his work for their favorite authors and they buy them both?”

“Yeah, Dustin Cody; that dude made like half a million dollars last year.”

“Well, it’s a good thing you’re making a deal with EBAYmazon, and they can push your book to the digital storefront. Hold on, I’ll show you a cover he posted in one of the writer groups I’m in.”

“That’s not a bad cover,” I said with a hint of irony in my voice.

“It’s a direct rip off of Mutants 2.”

“I see that; even used the same image.”

“He sure did. The thing is, he’s going to take readers away from your stuff, and his is made up bullshit. Yours is actually true!”

“I know, but what can I do? It’s the game. All self-published authors have to play this game. As soon as you have some type of success, as soon as you see a market that others haven’t seen yet, or maybe hadn’t recognized it quite the way you did, the vultures swoop in. It seems like your safest bet is to just put your best work out there and hope it gets visible before the others come in to steal your thunder.”

Luke scratched his beard. “Yeah, you are right there.”

I heard some commotion outside and had an idea. “Want to see something interesting?”

“You bet your ass I do.”

I took the smartphone outside to find Grace with her eyes white, focused on a car-sized sphere of purple energy she’d encapsulated in a telekinetic bubble about ten feet above the ground.

“They’re training right now,” I said as I steadied the smartphone on the action.

“Holy hell, man!”

Protecting Veronique was a proverbial wall of metal bits that she’d stripped from anything she could find. She stood behind the wall, ready to pounce or protect herself from the blast.

Dorian disappeared, reappeared behind Grace, grabbed her, and zipped away again, popping about thirty feet up in the air and leaving the psychic shifter there to freefall.

Grace shifted her focus to catching herself, forgetting about the ball of energy she’d contained.

The explosion sent everyone flying, including me.

I was tossed backward onto the deck, my smartphone sailing off to the right; Veronique’s wall of metal did little to stop the explosion and she was thrown into a dirt patch; Grace just barely managed to stop herself from slamming into the house.

“Oh my god! Oh my god!” I heard Luke’s voice ring out from the phone.

I crawled over to it, my head spinning a bit. “We’re cool,” I told him with a lopsided grin.

I could only imagine what Luke saw at that moment: the camera sideways, me belly-down on the deck, Veronique behind me and staggering to her feet, and Grace approaching as if nothing had happened.

Dorian materialized next to me on the deck, propping her elbow against my lower back. It was almost a sexy pose, if not for the fact that she was wearing body armor and a ballistic helmet, and there were scratches on her face.

“We’re okay!” she told Luke, and me, for that matter.

“Hey,” I said, trying to squirm out from underneath her.

Luke laughed long and hard, shaking his head, and taking a few deep breaths to chill himself.

“Whew, that was insane! This is what you do every day?”

“Pretty much.” I adjusted my glasses. I was damn happy they hadn’t shattered. “But they don’t usually create energy explosions. That’s a new thing. Well, newish; we did do it back in New Haven, but that’s a long story, and it’s in the book.”

Luke shook his head. “Gideon Caldwell … again, I don’t know if I should be jealous of your life or happy to be about as far away from it as I can be.”

“Yeah, it’s a life, that’s for sure.”

Grace appeared in the video and waved at Luke. “Hi, Writer Luke.”

“Hi, Grace.”

“How is Canada?”

“It is … cold.”

“Can I talk to him?” Grace asked, stooping over to pick up the phone.

“Sure?”

She took the smartphone and walked over to where the blast had just taken place, telling Luke about a home improvement show in Canada that she liked.

“Are you going to let me up?” I asked Dorian, who still had me pinned.

“Maybe.”

Veronique stopped in front of me and reached a hand down. As I stood, she drained just a little lifeforce and then let up.

“Hey!” I said.

Her lips curled up in a predatory grin. “I need to feed,” she reminded me, heading for the house. “Soon.”

I’m not entirely heartless.

I always felt bad for the people Dorian brought to Veronique, but our current system was better than what we did at the McStarbucks in Louisiana, lining everyone up for her to feed on and then having Grace wipe their minds. Our current system was a lot easier to cover as well.

Still, it was twisted, I’ll admit that. But what could I do?

Veronique was hungry, and we needed her at full capacity. To satiate the vampiric Super, Dorian teleported downtown and returned with a woman in a cute pink halter top.

The woman screamed and then stopped just as Veronique took over, draining her lifeforce from a distance. Once she was finished, and the woman was a light shade of purple, Dorian returned her to wherever she’d been found.

I didn’t ask; better to not know those types of details.

If Veronique felt guilty for the things she did, the look on her face didn’t say it. And who could blame her? It was literally how she survived.

“Let’s wash the car,” Grace said as she came into the living room, cutting the tension in the air with her cuteness. “Bathing suit time!”

“We don’t have suits,” Dorian said.

Grace cocked her head at the teleporter. “Upstairs,” she said, her eyes white. “The lady who lived here has some, her daughter as well.”

“I’ll just wear my shorts,” Veronique said.

“You need a top too,” I reminded her. “It’s America, dammit, and boobs are taboo! Joking, but in all seriousness, we can’t wash the car out front. People will notice. And besides that, the car doesn’t need cleaning. Hell, it isn’t even our car.”

“It’ll be fun,” said Grace, a black one-piece suit taking shape on her body. It started from her shoulders, the fabric morphing and solidifying as it encompassed her curves. The final suit she settled on held her breasts nicely, pushing them up just a hair. It was sleek and tight enough that I could make out her nipples. She turned, giving me a look at the back of the suit and the way it barely covered her ass.

“You are ridiculous,” I said, but by the time the words were out of my mouth, Dorian and Veronique had gone upstairs to change. “Okay then,” I murmured, scratching the back of my head. “I can at least try to take some notes and be a lookout for you while you guys are washing the car. If someone comes, you know what to do.”

“I know what to do. Also, let’s be honest, you’re not going to do much looking out, are you?”

“I’ll definitely be looking at something!”

“And relax on the notes, Writer Gideon, your book is selling. People will continue to read it; you can ease up a bit.”

“That kind of eliminates the point of being an indie writer. Our money comes from constantly publishing.”

“But you aren’t going to use that money anyway. And didn’t you say both books were less than a dollar?”

“It’s a good price point!”

“If you were in it for the money, you wouldn’t need me,” she said and took a step closer to me, her eyes growing to anime proportions.

“Whoa.” I stepped back, not at all comfortable with the huge eyes now on her face. It was like one of those augmented reality photo filters or something. Creepy as fuck.

“You don’t like my eyes?” she asked, batting her eyelids.

“It’s interesting. I’ll give you that.”

“Okay, no anime eyes. Come on.” Grace lifted her chin and shook her hips a little before moving to the garage. I followed her out and found two buckets hidden behind a stack of boxes.

The garage door came up with the press of a button, and we went out to the car.

“I’ll find some soap,” I told her as I turned back to the garage. After looking around and not finding anything, I figured dish soap would do the trick. I had no idea. I hadn’t owned a car in a while.

I brought the hose around with the dish soap, and just about that time, Dorian and Veronique came out the front door.

Dorian wore a vintage looking swimsuit that she must have gotten from the daughter of the house, whom we didn’t meet because she was away in Europe or something.

Veronique wore a sports bra-styled swimsuit top and her shorts, midriff exposed, ribs just barely visible at the sides.

“What do you think, Gideon?” Dorian asked.

“I approve!”

They started up, and it was like something out of a NASCAR dude bro’s fantasy. The curves of the vehicle, the curves of the women cleaning it, their skin glistening as Grace sprayed the other two with water, Veronique using her power to lift the front of the car so she could clean under its grill a little bit; it was definitely a sight to see.

Too bad I couldn’t enjoy it fully. My phone buzzed; it was a GoogleFace call from a man named Jake Archibald.

Normally, I wouldn’t have taken the call, but the words ‘EBAYmazon Author Representative’ under his name made me think otherwise.

“Hello?” I asked, still with some suspicion in my voice.

“Is this Gideon Caldwell?”

“It is.”

“Jake Archibald here, EBAYmazon author representative. I’m the one that sent you the email earlier. I’m just following up because I still haven’t gotten the signed contract back from you.”

“Oh, I’m definitely going to sign it, I just haven’t had a chance to really go over it. I’ve been a little …”

Dorian was polishing the hood now, and as she locked eyes with me, she winked.

“Busy. I’ve been busy.”

“Not a problem at all; it can take time to get these things filled out and taken care of. That said, how’s the third installment coming along? We’re still going with the plan we discussed, right? You publish it, and then we publish the omnibus. I gotta tell you, Gideon, I love this stuff too. People actually think it’s real!”

“It is real.”

“Good, that’s good,” Jake the rep said. “You should definitely think it’s real too, just in case there are interviews and a bit of press; we can play that up a little. I like your thinking style, Gideon! I like what you’re doing with it! Anyway, I’m guessing you’re busy right now.”

Grace tossed a green bucket of water onto the side of the car, splashing suds on Veronique, who shot her a scowl.

“Yeah, you could say that.”

“Great. Okay, Gideon, we’ll talk later. Get me that contract at your earliest convenience.”

Chapter Nine: Mind Games

The evening came sooner than I would have liked. We got another car, a Honda CRV, which was now parked along the highway at a gas station.

Sure, we could do the whole ‘teleport wherever we want to’ thing, but we were operating under the assumption that Dorian would be weak after whatever battle ensued, so it was better to teleport to a vehicle that was already aimed in the right direction: California.

As I drove toward the Albuquerque facility in the recently polished Mustang, I mentally went over Dr. Kim’s notes regarding the facility.

The place’s actual name was Dulce Base, but even in the notes it was listed as ‘the Albuquerque Facility.’ It was an extension of the relocated Walker Air Force Base, which used to be in Roswell (aliens!) but was relocated to the outskirts of the Cibola National Forest in 2025. Much of the facility was underground, but it was by no means as vast as the Rose-Lyle Facility back in New Haven.

“How do I look?” Grace asked.

I’d been so focused on driving that I hadn’t seen her change forms.

I glanced at her to find that she was completely naked, her long hair parted around her neck and partially concealing her nipples.

I almost swerved into the opposite lane. “Dammit, Grace! Don’t mess with me like that – not now.”

“Sorry.”

By the time I looked back, she was in her scientist mode; an Asian scientist, because most scientists in America were Asian or Indian nowadays, as these were the guys and gals who actually got STEM degrees.

Which is the type of degree I should have gotten rather than a bachelor’s in comparative literature (otherwise known as: ‘the basic requirements to getting an assistant store manager job at McStarbucks’).

“It’s This American Life, and I’m Ira Glass,” Grace said in the radio personality’s voice. “Each week we interview Writer Gideon about his life, the Cherry Blossom Girls, and what he plans to do after all this is over. Hi, Gideon.”

“Hi, Ira.”

“Will you go ahead and elaborate on where you got your lab coat and why you are wearing it?”

“Good question. Basically, Veronique wanted to feed again, and I needed a lab coat so I could blend in, so we did the old ‘two birds with one stone’ technique that we’ve been continuing to master throughout our journey.”

“Interesting. Veronique sure sounds like a hungry lady.”

“That’s right, she’s ravenous.”

“That’s a fun word to say,” Grace said in her own voice. “Ravenous.” She switched back to Ira Glass’s voice. “Can you tell us what happened next?”

“We then zipped away to a medical supply store, where we dropped the guy off in the back alley and went inside to purchase this wonderful lab coat.”

“That’s some story,” she laughed.

“You could say that.”

Grace continued talking to me as if she were Ira Glass. Things were playing out differently in my head, however, where we sat in a movie theater watching the plan unfold together.

It was odd having a conversation and a fairly elaborate mental exchange at the same time. I felt like there were two versions of me; one driving the car while speaking to Grace, the other in an old movie theater watching our plan in action – or at least, the best version of it.

It helped, though.

It really helped a lot to get my mind off the intensity of what was to come. I already wore my bulletproof vest under my lab coat, and my ballistic helmet was in my backpack, as was Grace’s.

This was about to get serious, so keeping it light for the time being was key.

Once we got inside, the only laugh we’d have would be when we broke out, our mission accomplished.

Grace and I pulled up to the military checkpoint, and she did her thing.

She also did something new to the man at the checkpoint, evident in the way his eyes remained slightly glazed white as we passed by.

It was a new part of the plan, something we hadn’t attempted at the Rose-Lyle facility; mostly because we were too shocked once everything went down.

We drove into the parking lot and parked. I pressed the button to pop the trunk and grabbed my backpack.

It was the last time we’d see the Mustang.

Grace and I started up the sidewalk that led to the main entrance, past a few shrubs shaped like gumdrops, and around a minimal landscape arrangement. There were a handful of scientists about, but not many, and most were headed for their vehicles.

There were plenty of MercSecure goons around though, especially near the entrance, and they greeted us as we came up, offering curt little nods, their eyes flashing white.

The door slid open and we entered, hanging an immediate left as per the instructions on the map from Ken’s documents. It was like the map was right in front of me as if it had been tattooed on my pane of vision, which was definitely Grace’s doing.

After a sharp right, we took the stairwell to the lower level.

To communicate with Dorian, I had my smartphone ready to send a text. She had one of our burner phones back in Santa Fe, and if they somehow cut out, or we were attacked, they were scheduled to meet with us in the next five minutes anyway.

“Concentrate,” Grace reminded me.

“Yeah, got it,” I said and tried to steel myself, my nerves suddenly tingling as we continued through the nondescript hallway.

Grace took the mind of every security guard we came into contact with, and it was the MercSecure man she encountered last who caused the look on her face to change from calm to serious.

“What is it?” I asked.

“They’re planning something. Get Dorian and Veronique here right now.”

I took my phone from the pocket of my lab coat and fired off a message to Dorian: GET HERE NOW.

She appeared with Veronique twenty seconds later, both of them in their body armor and ballistic helmets.

“Okay,” Grace said, morphing back to her base form and taking her helmet from me. “The children are downstairs.” She had an indecipherable look on her face.

“Children?” Dorian asked, her eyes going wide.

“There aren’t supposed to be children here.” I strapped my ballistic helmet on. From the information I’d read about the facility, including some of the stuff I could recall from creepy David Butler’s hoard back in Austin, this place was just for training.

“Yes, there are four children supers downstairs, one adult,” said Grace. “There is also an ambush waiting for us. That’s why there aren’t many soldiers around.”

“Is the ambush downstairs?” I asked.

“That’s unclear.”

Veronique shrugged. “Then we’ll rescue the children, possibly spare the adult Super, and kill those who wish to ambush us.”

Chapter Ten: Teenage Mutant Super Prisoners

There’s nothing worse than knowing you’re going to be ambushed and going ahead with the plan anyway.

With this in mind, I kept to the back of the group as we took the elevator down to the next floor.

As soon as the doors opened, Grace made a telekinetic shield to protect Veronique and Dorian when they stepped out.

With her paintbrush in one hand and two frag pouches in the other, Dorian took a few steps into the new room, prepared for anything.

Veronique had two circular saws ready to be charged, her posture indicating she was poised and set to strike.

After a moment, she gave us the signal and we made our way through another featureless hallway until we came upon a boy behind a glass wall. He was sitting on a stool, staring vacantly at the wall.

“One-way glass,” I said, after noticing he didn’t look at us.

He’s one of us, Grace thought to me.

What do you mean one of us? I thought back.

She pressed a finger to her temple and I knew instantly what she meant.

“We have to rescue the children,” Dorian said.

“I was thinking the exact same thing,” was my reply.

“They’re going to get in the way of destroying the facility,” Veronique said with finality.

She was right, but another thought came to me as we watched the boy: Mother, and whoever else was leading this operation, clearly didn’t care that we were going to destroy the place.

They must have known we would be going after it, considering our last interaction was in Santa Fe, I thought to Grace.

Hello? What are you talking about?

The boy was looking at us now, his head slightly cocked to the right.

Grace’s eyes flickered and he stood, hesitated, and finally approached the one-way mirror, staring intently at it with hazel-colored eyes, as if trying to see through the glass.

I didn’t know what type of psychic battle was going on between the two of them, but the first reaction on his face wasn’t joy.

It was fury, his eyebrows arching above eyes that shimmered white, lips lifting as he showed us his gums.

But it only took about twenty more seconds for him to relax, for his eyes to settle back into their natural color.

By this time, I had pulled out my smartphone and opened up Ken’s app. I typed in ‘psychic’ and perused the list of psychics who were either dead or alive.

However, I could narrow it down between two male names, and from there, birth dates, which was where I found Adam, a psychic born in 2020.

Adam, Subject Ad

Build: 009

Base height: 118 Centimeters

Base weight: 35 Kilos

Strength: 2

Intelligence: 9

Constitution: 2

Wisdom: 8

Dexterity: 4

Charisma: 3

Main: Advanced Telepathy

* Psychic Inhibitor Creation

* Neurocognitive Deficit

* Mind Link

* Thought Manipulation

* Second Sight

* Psychokinesis

“What’s going on?” Veronique asked.

“He’s with us now,” Grace said matter-of-factly as she went to the door of his enclosure.

“Hold on a second,” I said, looking over his deets again. Adam’s skills were different than Grace’s, and I didn’t like the fact that thought manipulation was listed as one of his specialties.

Trust me, Writer Gideon.

Veronique broke my concentration on Grace’s voice when she stripped the handle from the door, tearing out the keycard entry system and the retina scan.

“You don’t have to join us, but we will be taking you away from this facility,” Grace told Adam when we stepped inside.

While a part of my brain – the analytical part – started pointing out flaws and how this would play out in the end and the fact that if we let this kid loose on the streets he may pose more danger to himself and others than if he were kept in our stewardship, I silenced those thoughts.

I understand, he thought to us all.

And the others as well.

“What are the others’ abilities?” I asked aloud.

One has super speed, one controls water, one morphs into a terrible monster, one manipulates vectors.

Manipulates vectors? I thought to both of them.

I used the app again, typing the word ‘vectors’ into the search bar. It came back with one option, a woman named Stella.

She was eighteen going on nineteen, and a quick recap of her abilities had me a bit giddy. I didn’t know if Professor X ever got this way when he discovered a new mutant that could possibly join his forces, but I definitely felt this way when I saw that she was pretty much able to manipulate anything.

Stella, Subject St

Build: 002

Base height: 172 Centimeters

Base weight: 48 Kilos

Strength: 5

Intelligence: 5

Constitution: 4

Wisdom: 4

Dexterity: 6

Charisma: 4

Main: Vector Manipulation

* Kinetic Energy Manipulation

* Quantum Manipulation

* Vibration Emission

* Inertia Negation

* Telekinetic Regeneration

* Tactile Telekinesis

* Deflection

* Velocity Manipulation

* Aversion Field Creation

* Overcharge

I’m not going to lie. I had to pull up a different window and search what a ‘vector’ was, but when I found that it was basically the matter around, between, and part of everything (or as Wikipedia summarized it, ‘an element of vector space’), I realized that the potential for Stella’s power was unheard of.

She would also be the hardest to fight … if she didn’t agree with our little operation.

“And the names of the other three?” I asked Adam.

As I was quickly realizing, Adam never spoke with his own voice; the answer to my question came in a Grace-like dialogue in my mind.

I believe Grace already knows the answer to that question.

Okay, if you’re listening, Grace, enlighten me. At least give me their names so I can look them up.

Michelle utilizes her speed; Ingrid is the shifter who can shift into only one thing; and Fiona manipulates water and can create psionic weapons, Grace thought to me.

What’s that?

A terrible beast.

“Let’s get going,” Veronique said, interrupting our dialogue.

As we moved down the hallway, I tried to use my phone to search the names, but it was a little difficult because we kept taking corners. I decided to do it later, once we got out of there.

We came to another hallway and found a single door at its end. This door was reinforced with steel, and the walls in this section also seemed thicker. There was a viewing glass on the front of the door, but looking through it didn’t reveal anything.

The room seemed completely bare.

Ingrid, Grace thought to me.

“Okay, who’s going in after the Beast Girl?”

Dorian gave me a funny look.

“What?”

“I just have a feeling that calling this one ‘Beast Girl’ may not go over so well.”

“You’re probably right, my mistake. How are we doing this?” I nodded at Adam. “How hostile is she?”

Very.

“He says that she’s very hostile,” I told everyone.

“I heard him,” said Grace.

“Me too,” said Veronique.

“Same,” Dorian chimed in.

“So he’s speaking in all of our heads?”

Yes, said Adam.

“Okay, what if we all go in?”

As before, Veronique stripped the keycard reader off the door and did the same to the eye recognition system.

The door decompressed as it opened, and we entered a large room, easily twice the size of my garden apartment back in New Haven, with high ceilings too.

“Ingrid?” I called.

A teenage girl stepped out of the bathroom and shrieked when she saw me.

This shriek caused her body to hunch forward, her thin arms ballooning in size as muscles formed beneath her skin, veins appearing, strips of hair forming, more muscle stacking along her shoulders, tearing through her clothing, revealing her chest, which had gone from developing teen to straight up bodybuilder.

Parts of her body were almost like one of the Titans in Attack on Titan, the muscle exposed or covered by hardened bone; other parts were like the Wolfman, thick skin covered in slick black hairs.

Her face was the worst of all, an utterly terrible visage with exposed muscles, bulging eyes, and more teeth than a crocodile.

I almost shit my pants, almost, but Adam subdued her, his voice ringing out in our minds.

Ingrid, turn back to your other form. They are here to help us.

“Help us?” she hissed. The beast shifter was panting, chest heaving as she tried to contain her anger, her animosity.

“I know it’s not what it seems like, but we’re actually here to help. To rescue you,” I said in a way that didn’t sound convincing even to me. “Trust me?”

“Trust you?” she growled, saliva dripping from her lips.

“Yes, it seems crazy, but that is why we’re here.” As I said these words, I thought to Grace, Help me, help me, please help!

“Ingrid, please, turn back to your other form and let’s talk about this,” Grace said in just about the sweetest, most gentle voice I had ever heard.

Ingrid’s red eyes softened; I could see her pupils starting to reform in the sunken eyeholes. The muscles that had just appeared began to decompress, sucking back in as if they had come from her bones, the skin reforming, the coarse arm hair disappearing, her posture straightening, and the teeth in her face melting away.

About ten seconds later, she was the same brown-haired girl who had come out of the bathroom, although now she was completely nude.

And she wasn’t ashamed of it.

Without saying a word, she walked over to a dresser against the wall and opened it, revealing several dozen sets of the same clothing, a getup at odds with Adam’s look. While the young telepath wore loose-fitting pants and a T-shirt, Ingrid’s clothing was mostly prison-style, with a matching top and bottom and that was it.

My guess was that she tore through enough clothing to warrant having a ton of cheap sets of backups for her.

I averted my eyes, always a gentleman.

“I’m sorry about that,” Ingrid said in possibly one of the most beautiful voices I’d heard in a while. It was melodic, sweet, and hardly matched the monstrosity she had so quickly become. “Let’s get the others.”

I glanced at Grace and thought, Well, she sure jumped on board real fast.

She trusts Adam.

It’s true, she trusts me.

Is there any way we can have a private channel that doesn’t have Adam on it? I thought to both of them. I don’t know how this whole psychic thing works, but you get why that would be important, right?

I’m sorry for interrupting, Adam thought back.

“Where’s the next one?” I asked aloud rather than deal with any more voices in my head. Damn, it was hard to think out loud with those two around.

Grace turned to the exit, and my eyes jumped from her blond hair, which was partially tucked under her ballistic helmet, down to her waist and then her hips. I tried not to look, but as she walked, I just had to watch for a second.

My private viewing was interrupted by a sharp elbow from Veronique. “Are you ready?”

“Ready for what?” I smiled meekly at her. “Yes, I’m ready for whatever happens next. Let’s just get the other two and get out of here.”

Dorian appeared in front of me, walking in a stilted way. She looked over her shoulder at me and laughed, “Enjoying the view?”

Dammit, all of you, I thought, realizing too late that Grace and Adam heard me.

But Grace didn’t say anything, and Veronique was not at all in the mood to kid around. She was all business, and once we reached the hallway, she took the lead.

The metal-wielding vampire swiftly found the next room, which had a much lighter door than Ingrid’s.

It’s Michelle, Adam thought as he waited for Veronique to disable the door handle and retina scan.

The door swung open and we stepped into a room that was half the size of Ingrid’s. There were a couple differences though: two treadmills were in the corner, and a slight breeze circulated around the room.

We’ve come for you, Michelle, Adam thought.

“That’s no breeze, is it?” I asked.

“Nope!” said a voice that I could only assume belonged to Michelle.

She skidded to a halt in the center of the room, and a quick glance at the floor told me this was something she normally did. But the floor didn’t seem as beaten up as it should have, which made me think that they replaced the flooring routinely.

Upon second glance, I saw that her room was designed for this. The bed was in the far corner, in practically another room, as was a chair to sit on and a tiny, flat screen television.

There was something cruel about it, to be honest – like watching a hamster run on its wheel.

But Michelle was cheery, and if she was depressed, she wasn’t showing it in the way she greeted us. Her black hair with a pink stripe cutting through it partially covered her face and she grinned from behind the dark strands.

“Is everyone ready to go?” she asked, all gung-ho. “I really like your outfits. He’s not a Super, right? You two clearly are – you too, punk rock lady. By the way, I’m Michelle.”

“Dorian.”

“Grace.”

“Veronique.”

“Call me Gideon, and no, I’m not a Super. What gave it away?”

I swear, everyone in the room raised an eyebrow at me. Rather than tell them I had a propensity for superpowers, I threw my thumb over my shoulder and said we should get to the next room.

We continued down the hall, Adam in the lead and Veronique at the back, ready for anything. There was some definite tension in the air, which was at odds with Michelle’s cheeriness.

“What are all your powers?” she asked as we turned onto another corridor. “Oh, I see,” she said when Grace relayed the information telepathically.

We came to another door, and Veronique opened it in a matter of seconds. She was on edge, and as the others entered, she placed a hand on my elbow and pulled me aside.

“Let’s wrap this up,” she said.

“Trying – whoa!”

I stepped aside as a wave of water brushed past us, splashing into the center of the hallway. It formed the outline of a young woman, no older than sixteen. She looked more or less like Michelle sans the pink hair stripe, and as her form stabilized, I saw she wore a bathing suit that reminded me of the consistency of tar.

The teen swept her black hair aside and tucked it behind her ears.

“That was awesome,” I said, no other words for the person who’d just formed out of water right in front of my eyes.

“Thanks! I’m Fiona.”

“Gideon. This is Dorian, Grace, and Veronique.”

“Cool. Hi everyone.”

“One more to go,” Veronique said, hurrying us along.

To recap, I thought as we walked, Ingrid is the beast girl; Adam the telepath; Michelle the fast one; Fiona the water user; and Stella is the last of the group, the vector user.

Correct, Adam thought back to me.

We stopped in front of the final hallway and saw that Stella’s room had no door.

There’s no point, Adam explained to us.

“Yep, she’s the strongest,” Ingrid added.

“Pretty cute, too!” said Michelle, who was in front of me, pivoting from foot to foot.

Her practical twin sister, Fiona, was on my right, an annoyed look on her face. “Calm down, Michelle,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Sorry, excited!”

“What are we waiting for?” Dorian asked as we gathered around the entrance to the room. Even though she stood in front of me, her rear touching the front of my pants, I could see over her shoulder and what I saw definitely had me curious.

The room was almost as large as Ingrid’s, completely sparse, with high ceilings. A woman floated in its center, laid out horizontally, and unlike the others, she wore black MercSecure clothing, similar to what Veronique had worn when she first attacked us.

Dorian stuck her arm out, not letting me pass. Veronique, who had been at the back of the group, stepped forward, her hands charging red.

“What’s she doing?” I asked as Grace stepped in front of me too.

“Relax,” said Michelle, “She’s just sleeping!”

The thin teen squeezed through our ranks and approached Stella.

“People are here to see you!” she said, startling the woman awake.

Stella righted herself in the way Frankenstein’s monster would be swiveled to an upright position on the laboratory table. Her hair was bleach blond, her locks arranged in a Dutch braid. Her face was a mixture of Grace and Veronique’s, almost an amalgamation of the two. And there was something otherworldly about her, something almost godlike in the way she held herself as she lowered to the ground.

I had to know more about her power, but whipping out my smartphone didn’t seem appropriate as she approached us, sizing the CBGs up.

“Why have you come?” she finally asked.

As if to answer her question, the ceiling in the corner of her room exploded, sending chunks of concrete, steel, and gravel in our direction.

Dorian was struck and immediately went down.

Then everything stopped as if it had hit an invisible barrier.

“Run,” Stella whispered, her hands pressed in front of her body as she held back more of the crumbling debris. “Now!”

Chapter Eleven: The Great Escape

“Come on!” Grace yelled, grabbing my arm.

I dropped down beside Dorian, oblivious to Grace’s cries and the chaos swelling around me. Through her matted black hair, I could see she’d been struck by a dislodged piece of concrete. She was still breathing, but with our teleporter out of commission …

“I’ll carry her,” I told Grace.

Veronique helped me lift Dorian and place her over my shoulder. Stella wouldn’t be able to use a vector shield to contain the explosion and debris much longer.

Similar to Dorian, she seemed to be heating up, stress evident on her red face.

I snapped back into it as we took off down the hallway. Grace and Veronique led the way, with the younger supers and me at the back.

When we were far enough away, Stella moved toward the exit after us and the ceiling collapsed. She barely made it out in time. I turned to her as she stumbled into the hallway, reaching out for her as if I didn’t already have Dorian thrown over my shoulder.

“I’ll be fine,” Stella said, swallowing hard. “Don’t worry about me.”

“Gideon.”

“Stella.”

“I know.”

“Who’s she?”

“Dorian was our ticket out of here,” I said as we headed after the others.

“She’s a teleporter?”

“Yep. The one with long hair is a psychic shapeshifter; the other one wields metal and can drain people of their lifeforce. Well, sort of. It’s a long story. But it works out like this: we’ve come together to rescue supers in captivity and destroy the facilities, to stop their experiments on humans. It’s a bit more complicated than that, but those are the deets.”

If she had any opinion about our poorly-worded mission statement, she didn’t air it. “And you have no abilities?”

“I’m a fast writer,” I told her as we took a sharp corner. We had nearly arrived at the elevator.

“That’s definitely a trap,” Veronique said, breathing hard now. “Where’s the other way up?” she asked Adam.

The young telepath glanced from Grace to Veronique, and then to his other superpowered peers.

“I’m serious, kid.” Veronique approached him with a dangerous look on her face. “If you’re holding out on us, now is the time to say something.”

We’re really doing this? Adam thought to the group.

Ingrid bit her lip; Michelle pivoted from one foot to the other, licking her lips as she nodded nervously; Fiona gave him the thumbs up.

Adam turned to Stella.

“We’ve made it this far,” she said.

Even though Adam was a telepath, he was still a ten-year-old, and part of the reason he’d helped us seemed to be that he’d gotten wrapped up in the moment, inspired by the fervor and intensity of it all.

But now he was having second thoughts, evident in the way he stood with his hands at his sides; not quite battle-ready, but definitely not a neutral position.

I would be very careful what I do next, Grace thought to him, or to all of us.

Shit, I had no idea, but I definitely heard it.

“Everyone chill out,” I said. “Let’s bring this down a notch!”

Adam lowered his head.

This way, he finally thought, turning to a different hallway. I’d seen the hallway when we came in, but it looked like it just looped around to the main corridor.

“It’s hidden in plain sight,” I said as we entered a room labeled ‘lab.’ But rather than a lab on the other side, it was a wide stairwell heading to the top. “Where does it come out at?”

“Only Adam knows,” said Stella. “This was the entrance they used exclusively for him.”

“Well, Adam?”

It comes out at the top.

“Good to know, but that doesn’t help us much.”

That’s all I know.

We reached the top with little issue, the only thing separating us from the outside being a thick, emergency exit door.

“Adam, no!” Grace called out, her eyes going white.

Adam stopped dead in his tracks as Veronique caught him in a net of her power. “What did he do?” she demanded.

The young psychic fell to his knees, his skin starting to shrivel.

“He alerted them to our position!” Veronique said, her hand blazing red.

“He did what?” Stella looked from me to her peers. “Why would he do something like that? Hey! Leave him alone!”

Stella and Veronique locked eyes and the floor began to rumble.

“Everyone get ready,” I said, tightening my grip on Dorian. She was still slung over my shoulder, my hands on her thighs. She wasn’t heavy – or if she was, I wasn’t focused on that; I was focused on the fact that this little fucker hadn’t alerted us to whatever was outside.

“Don’t kill him,” Stella said, stepping up to Veronique.

They were a little farther off, but Ingrid, Michelle, and Fiona, also moved toward Veronique. A wicked smile lifted her lips. “Is that how we want to do this?” she asked, arching an eyebrow. She clenched her fists tighter, and Adam whimpered, his skin shriveling even further.

Stella placed a hand on Veronique’s shoulder, and I swear, whatever was going to happen outside paled in comparison to the tension I felt between the two females.

“I’m warning you,” Stella growled, the floor rumbling again. “You will not like what I’m capable of.”

Fiona, who stood next to Michelle with a globe of water swirling around her fist, glared at Veronique.

It wasn’t easy to step between them, but I was so focused on having them not kill each other that I wasn’t paying attention to the load on my shoulder, nor the fact that we were seconds away from being attacked, nor the fact that both of them could crush me like an ant.

“Veronique, stop for now,” I said through gritted teeth.

Veronique glanced from Stella to me, a look of defiance on her face.

“Please, everyone,” Grace said, “I will deal with Adam later. For now, let’s just focus on getting out of here.”

Veronique let go, and Adam started coughing as he regained control of his body. “We’ll take care of this later,” she told the group of younger supers. Then she turned to the door, blowing it off its hinges and hurling it outward.

Bhoosh! Bhoosh!

Smoke grenades flew inside, but before anything could go off, or any bullet could hit us, we were all protected by a vector force field cast by Stella, who had both hands in the air as she controlled the fields of energy around us. “Stay close!” she said, her hair jetting up, an intensity in her eyes that I’d never seen in a person before.

While she protected us from projectiles and any type of explosives, Veronique gathered up every bullet that came into the small opening. She spread her fingers wide and the bullets reversed order, flying back at the people firing on us.

Ingrid was breathing heavily now, preparing to turn into her beast form. Michelle bounced from foot to foot, ready to take off, and Fiona had both fists completely covered with two globes of swirling water.

As we tried to move through the door, to the freedom and the fury outside, Stella’s vector shield began crumbling the wall, forcing a brick-laden collapse as we exited.

A few dozen MercSecure soldiers, each of them wearing an odd, exoskeleton suit, stood before us, firing their weapons. The mech suits only added about a foot to their height, but I could tell they were well protected in their new armor.

Problem was, their suits were made of metal.

Rather than return their bullets to them, Veronique stepped out of Stella’s protective bubble and begin orchestrating her version of metal chaos. Metal and wires pried free from the men’s exoskeletal suits, the pieces zipping in the air and piercing their armor. Blood sprayed into the air – or, I assumed it was blood; the spotlights trained on us made it hard to tell.

A spark of fire at the back of the group caught everyone’s attention.

I was so focused on what Veronique was doing, and staying in the protective bubble Stella had created, that I didn’t notice the flash of blue, nor did I notice the Hulk-sized woman with a body made of steel charging toward us.

It’s them, Grace thought to me. Chloe, Augustin, and Victoria!

Victoria was in black armor, similar to Stella’s. She tore through whatever mech was left standing and brought her fist back, seconds away from knocking Veronique’s head off.

But Veronique had the metal-bodied Super down in an instant, her body convulsing as Veronique started pulling slivers of metal flesh off the woman. Victoria shrieked and Veronique was thrown sideways by a blast of light.

And it was like no other light I had ever seen before. It didn’t even begin as light, it began as … sound.

Chloe! Grace thought to me.

Veronique struggled to get back to her feet.

Seeing her companion down, Grace launched into action, lifting into the air and pressing out of our protective bubble.

“Grace!” I shouted, looking up at her.

Grace’s eyes blazed white and the few mercs who were still alive turned on the enemy supers. They fired their weapons, and even though they were quickly cut down by blasts of fire and ice, they put up a pretty vicious fight.

Ready to do some ass-kicking themselves, Ingrid and Michelle also jumped out of the protective circle.

Ingrid’s body convulsed, transforming into the she-beast and not a second too soon.

Victoria was already back on her feet, the metal reforming over her muscled arms. The best way I could describe her is to suggest you imagine that Colossus and Juggernaut had a baby, and that baby grew up to be a powerful woman with a stumpy neck.

She charged at Ingrid, and the two collided, sending a shock wave that smashed into the vector shield protecting us.

What I would have traded for a bird’s eye view of the battle rather than being stuck behind a shield with Dorian slung over my shoulder. I could only make out some of the details from my vantage point, but the sound of fists connecting, cries of anger and agony, and craters being made in the earth told a tale of total mayhem.

A slash of fire formed around our protective shield and I saw a man in black body armor with a shaved head fling a fireball at Veronique, who was barely protected by Fiona.

Augustin.

Fiona moved just in time, shooting a column of water at the man’s fire and dousing it before it hit Veronique, who was still trying to recover from the strange blast of light.

Another blast of light slammed into the protective shield around us. It took all Stella had to stop it, and I could tell by the look on her face that things were going to get hairy real quick.

I dropped to the ground and brought Dorian down into my arms. “Come on, Dorian.” I lightly slapped her cheek. “Snap out of it!”

“Gideon?” she asked, slowly opening her eyes.

“It’s getting really bad, Dorian,” I told her.

Adam was next to me, still trying to recover from Veronique’s attack. He was slinking away to the outer edge of the sphere, an unmistakably upset look on his face. His eyebrows were raised, his face was red, and I knew that from that point forward he would be our enemy.

To prove this thought correct, he punched his hand forward, hitting Stella in the back with a psychic burst of energy.

She stumbled forward, lost her control over the shield and an arc of light cut through, burning a line in the asphalt.

Adam sailed backward as a burst of purple energy slammed into his chest. I found Dorian nearby with her finger back in her mouth, conjuring up another blast as soon as she took her finger out.

She hit the little bastard again, and not only did his shirt catch fire, but by then he was screaming, and when a psychic screams, everyone fucking hears it.

The sound ringing out in my head was only worsened by another blast of light that was cutting into the ground near us. Dorian and I managed to get out of the way, and once we did, I took a quick survey of what was going on.

Victoria was winning in her battle against Ingrid. They still traded punches, but Ingrid’s were noticeably weaker.

I didn’t know where the fuck Michelle was, and Fiona was busy dealing with Mr. Fire and Ice, who kept trying to get a hit in only to have her counter his attack with a blast of water.

Augustin had one arm charged with flames and the other one covered in white smoke that resembled dry ice. He alternated shots of fire, ice, fire, ice, and Fiona blocked as much as she could.

Veronique was back on her feet now, looking for an opening, and when she couldn’t find one she made her way over to us.

“We’ve got to get everyone out of here,” I said, my voice quivering with fear.

Another blast of light came in our direction and it suddenly stopped, disappearing as if it had dipped into a floating hole.

I looked right to see that Stella had created some type of vector hole with light pouring into it but not coming out the other end. She, out of everyone, seemed the worse off, her skin the color of a ripe tomato, cheeks gaunt, throat constricting as she tried to suck in air.

“I don’t think I can teleport everyone at once,” Dorian finally said now that she’d regained her breath.

“I was afraid you’d say that. Veronique, cover us!” Grace, start bringing everyone closer to us. We’re leaving that little fuckboy Adam behind.

Good – hurry, she thought back to me.

Damn, did it feel old school as I got the mini USB cable out, shakily plugged it into my phone, and then jammed the cable into Dorian’s neck. I went to her abilities and adjusted the dial of her Tele-Sphere Radius.

The vein popped up on her forehead, and I knew her overcharge had kicked up. But as long as she could get us away from here, that was all that mattered.

Ingrid, likely receiving a message from Grace to pull back, struck Victoria in the chin, sending her flying backward in a perfect arc. Then she ran over to us, followed by Fiona and Stella, who was limping.

“Michelle!” I shouted.

“I didn’t know what to do!” Michelle shouted as she appeared behind me. “So I kept running around in a circle. I’m sorry! I can be more helpful than that, but I was scared. I’m still scared!”

Grace landed, and Dorian held her arms out. “Everyone touch me,” the punk rock teleporter said, blowing a strand of wet hair out of her face.

“Hold on!” Michelle said, but no one listened to her.

We were all gone in a flash, barely avoiding another bolt of light energy.

Chapter Twelve: Damage Control

We appeared on the back patio of our borrowed home. It wasn’t quite a dogpile, but Ingrid, still in her beast form, did destroy some of the patio furniture before switching back to her now nude teen form, and Grace landed on top of me, her features spazzing out briefly before reverting to her base form.

“You okay?” I asked her.

“I just was thrown off balance,” she said, blinking a few times as she steadied herself.

Michelle got to her feet. “We almost left Adam.”

“Almost?” I turned to see Adam lying on his side, still reeling from Veronique’s attack. Grace, take care of him, I thought in the harshest way I could.

Adam convulsed, his arms and legs slapping against the deck.

“Stop it!” Stella cried and the ground began to rumble.

“I suggest you learn your place in this operation,” Veronique told Stella, her hand charging red. She turned her attention to Adam as well, and it was only when a portion of the patio blew off that Grace and Veronique stopped assaulting the psychic boy.

“I’m warning you all,” Stella said, now floating in the air despite the fact that she was clearly overcharging. “This will not end well if you don’t stop.”

I glanced from the CBGs to the Super Teens. This was going to get much worse if someone didn’t take charge.

Luckily, that was my specialty.

“Enough. Stella, Grace, Veronique, stand down. And remember, Stella, Adam attacked you back there.”

“I remember,” she said, looking down at me over the bridge of her nose.

“Here’s how this is going to play out,” I told them. “Adam is a traitor and keeping him here will give us away. Blindfold him, and once Dorian is ready, we will teleport him as far away as we can. In fact … shit. Shit!”

“What do you mean shit?” Dorian asked, still breathing hard. The side of her head was wet with blood, but she seemed to be stabilizing.

“We need to run the key Dr. Kim gave us that turns off any GPS tracking on them. We’ve got to do it now. We should have done it before we came back here. Fuck, I didn’t think about that. I don’t know if they’re set for tracking, but better safe than sorry.”

Grace and Veronique looked at each other and nodded. I knew where the key was, and I ran inside the house to get it, quickly returning to the back patio.

“What are you trying to do?” Stella asked, moving in front of Fiona, Michelle, and Ingrid.

“Those drives in your neck have the capability to track you using GPS. Do you know what GPS is?”

She nodded.

“We’re going to teleport away from here and I’m going to disable those things. Then we’ll teleport back here. If they’re tracking us, it’ll seem like we teleported somewhere else and then just disappeared off the radar. I’m fine with that.”

Even though she was exhausted, Dorian knelt beside Adam, placing her hand on his head. “Everyone who’s coming, touch me,” she said.

Stella stepped up, and the others followed.

“I’ll stay here,” Veronique said, “just in case.”

I nodded and touched Dorian’s shoulder.

Once Grace had placed her hand on Dorian, we zipped away.

“That’s so cool!” Michelle said as we reformed somewhere in the fucking desert. I had no idea where we were, and that was kind of the point.

“Definitely,” Ingrid agreed. She was partially nude and had tried to cover parts of her body with the torn clothing. Fiona, who was next to her, helped Ingrid by tying one of the sleeves around her chest, covering her breasts.

“Okay, who’s first?” I asked, fishing in my pocket for the mini USB cable.

“Adam first,” Grace said, and her tone of voice indicated this wasn’t to be challenged.

As I had done to the CBGs in our last battle against Angel, I plugged into Adam’s neck, started up the key drive, and then rebooted the system.

From there, I ran the program on the others, Stella going last.

The three teens simply crouched while I did it. Stella refused to sit, opting to stare at me defiantly the entire time as I ran the update.

“See? It’s not as crazy as it seems,” I told them after I’d finished. “And I appreciate the three of you trusting me.”

“That had nothing to do with you.” Stella nodded at Grace. I realized then that Grace had mentally showed them what had happened before. I knew what it felt like to be provided answers in the form of moving pictures in your head, thoughts that don’t really belong to you, and I was glad they believed me.

But again, that was the power of a telepath, really; it’s hard not to believe what they show you.

“Let’s get back,” Dorian said, the vein pulsing on her head. “I need some rest.”

“Gideon, we need to kill the psychic before he joins Mother,” Veronique said.

We had just returned to the patio, and rather than greet us like a normal person would, she’d chosen a different opener.

“That’s not how we do things,” I reminded her. “We’re not killing him.”

“Have it your way,” she huffed, turning back to the house. The door opened on its own and slammed shut after she entered, rattling the back wall.

“I’ll deal with her later,” I told those who remained. “So this is our temporary location, and as you can tell, it isn’t big enough for all of us to call a permanent place in any sense of the word.”

Permanent place? Grace thought to me. It’s a brilliant idea, Gideon!

Just let me finish my speech, I thought back.

Sorry, reading ahead.

“Now, you four,” I indicated to Ingrid, Stella, Michelle, and Fiona, “aren’t required to stay with us. If there’s a place you’d rather be, we’ll take you there tomorrow, after Dorian has had a chance to rest and I’ve had a chance to adjust her abilities. But before you make that decision, I’d like to tell you a little more about who we are and what we do. While I’m doing that, Dorian, Grace, will you please take care of Adam? I want to make sure he doesn’t wake up until tomorrow.”

Stella opened her mouth to protest.

“Not now, Stella, we won’t hurt him. I promise.”

She bit her lip as she stared me down. At the time, I still didn’t know much about Stella’s abilities aside from what I’d seen back at the New Mexico facility; had I known more, I might have chosen the way I spoke to her more carefully. But this was Alpha Gideon, the Gidmeister who broke bad back in New England and who simply didn’t give a damn.

Or at least, it was the Gideon I was trying to project.

“As I was saying,” I told the Super Teens and the increasingly skeptical Stella. “Our operation has one goal: to bring down these experiments and stop them from creating more Supers. Or … let me rephrase that because it sounds like we’re trying to extinguish all supers which is totally not the case. The four of us are trying to stop the illegal operation. We have no problem with Supers; as you can tell, three of us are Supers.”

“You’re not a Super, right?” Michelle asked.

I cleared my throat. “We already went over that.”

“Did we? Okay. I think I remember.”

“And just so we’re all clear: I do have the propensity for powers. I’ve used some of Grace’s psychic abilities before.”

“How did you do that?” Stella asked.

“Well, it took a lot of hard work and concentration. A lot of studying too. I’m kidding. She basically forced it on me when she was in a coma, or something like a coma, and I used her powers while she was out of commission. I can be helpful, trust me.”

Michelle was the only one who wasn’t looking at me skeptically now.

“Did you really take her powers?” Ingrid asked.

“Hey, it’s a true story! Why would I lie about that with a psychic around? She would just know I was lying and come out here and tell you guys I wasn’t telling the truth. Hell, she would have already done it by now and just thought the truth to you. And besides, that’s not the point. The point is: I want the four of you to think about what you want to do tomorrow. Are you staying with us, or will you go? There’s no in between.”

“Where would we go?” Michelle asked. “I mean, I think I’ll probably stay because I don’t know where to go. But at least it would be nice to know if there was a place where we could potentially go. Makes sense, right?”

I smiled at the short, black-haired girl. “Like I said, we can take you anywhere.”

“We’ll have to think about it,” Fiona said, stepping up to the front of the group.

“There are other things you should know. For one, we would train you some.”

If you’re thinking at this point that I was talking out of my ass, you would be one hundred percent correct. I hadn’t spoken about this to the others, but I figured anyone who stayed would be part of our little clan and that there would be some training involved. We couldn’t just hang out all day.

Well, we could, or they could, and I could just write, but anyone who stayed would need to be part of our ever-expanding operation.

“Yeah, we’ll train you,” I said, affirming the statement I’d just made. “Also, one of you – I think it was you, Stella – asked me what my superpowers were. And I told you I was a writer.”

“It was me. And that’s not a power,” Stella said, no hint of sarcasm in her voice.

“We can debate the power of the written word later. You all should know that I’m publishing books about all this as it is happening. So there is another angle in which we are trying to expose these experiments. And the final thing, as I mentioned previously, and as you might have deduced: I am able to modify your abilities through your drives.”

“Modify our abilities?” Michelle asked, reaching up to touch her neck.

“Yep, through your drive. And if you’re having issues with your abilities, I may be able to help there,” I said, focusing in on Stella. “One thing we discovered so far is that there are sometimes handicaps on some of your abilities. Dorian, for example, had her Overcharge turned up pretty high, and modifying any of her other abilities turned it up even higher. We were able to dial it down, and maybe this is something I could do for you. But I’m not making promises there; I’m just letting you know what you can expect in this operation.”

I wasn’t quite pacing before them like a drill instructor at boot camp, but I was trying to assert some type of authority. You had to with kids these days. Otherwise they’d walk all over you. Or at least that’s what I’d heard. I really hadn’t had much experience with teenagers aside from the years when I was one.

“Okay,” Stella said and started to move past me.

“That’s it?” I asked, suddenly feeling deflated.

“You said to give us time to think about it.”

“I’m with Stella,” said Ingrid. “Also, I need some new clothes.”

“Yes, you do. Ask Grace or Dorian. Don’t ask Veronique. In fact, until things cool off a bit, everyone just leave Veronique the hell alone. She’s great, trust me, but she kind of has to grow on you.”

“We’ll see.” Stella turned to the house.

“Wait a minute, Stella,” I told her.

“What?”

“I could tell back at the fight, and I can tell now, that you’re having some issues with overheating. I’d like to see what I can do.”

Stella was a few inches taller than me, and as she glared me down, Fiona quietly sluiced past.

“Relax,” I said, returning her hostile gaze. Thing was, by now I’d locked eyes with Angel and Mother, so staring back at a tall, superpowered woman who wasn’t much younger than me was easier than I expected. Especially if she was as beautiful as Stella.

“Fine,” she said with an odd grin. “Plug into me, let me see if you really have the ability to do anything.”

“Now?” I gulped, my previous confidence waning.

“No, tomorrow. Tomorrow morning. If you can do something about my issue, I’ll stay. If you cannot, I will go. And the other three, they’ll do whatever I do. They’re like my younger sisters.”

“How long have you all been together?”

“Adam came last. Not too long ago, actually; within the last year. Of course, I have more training than them, because I’m a few years older.”

I felt my glasses fog up, and I took them off to wipe the lenses. “I’ve been able to do some things in the past, but I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to fix anything. I’ll give it my best shot, though.”

“Well, it’s really up to you. Either fix it, or we go.” She turned away.

“Please be careful,” I told her suddenly.

“Be careful?” she asked, looking at me over her shoulder.

“With Veronique.”

“I’m not too worried about her. That said, if she lays another finger on Adam …”

“We’ll take care of him tomorrow, and I promise I’ll even have Dorian take him back to one of the facilities if that makes you happy. We just can’t let him wake up. He’s a psychic, and he’ll be able to give away our position. Or … well I don’t know if he could exactly do that, but he could do something, and he could turn people against us.” I took a deep breath. “Trust me when I tell you we don’t want a psychic on the loose. And one final thing.”

“What's that?”

“We still didn’t destroy the Albuquerque facility, so we’ll want to do that.”

She shrugged. “Fix my overheating first.”

Chapter Thirteen: Out of Body Sex

Call me a fool, but for once, sex wasn’t on my mind that night when I retired to the master suite with Grace.

And she tried, too, taking a cosplay version of Rias Gremory from the anime High School DxD, sans the wings.

“Damn,” I said as her hair reddened and the tight corset formed over the front of her body. “But … I need some time to look through stuff.” I showed her my phone.

She sulked away, stopping in front of the bathroom, giving me one more chance to take her up on her offer.

“You drive a hard bargain, Grace,” I told her, taking in the view. Her hair was incredibly long now, a unique, carnation red, and her short skirt didn’t quite conceal the bottom of her ass.

“You played with someone else last night, now it’s my turn,” she said. “I’m going to take a quick shower, so you decide.”

She shut the door and my groin twitched in response.

Dammit, you. I glanced down at my boxers and saw that my little writer had started to grow. “Focus,” I whispered and looked back at my phone screen. “Quick searches.”

My manic brain had other plans, and I remembered that I hadn’t notched Dorian down from when I’d increased her Tele-Sphere Radius. With this in mind, I went to her bedroom to find her lying on her side with her back to the door, topless and wearing a pair of boy shorts.

“You asleep?” I asked.

She turned to me and smiled, her black bangs falling into her face. They were wet; she’d clearly washed her hair. For a moment, my eyes traced the contours of her breasts, arriving at the tattoos on her arms. I liked looking at them; the images she’d selected varied and were random as much as they made sense, but now wasn’t the time.

“I need to plug in real quick,” I told her.

Dorian rolled onto her back and extended her neck so I could get to the port. I sat on the bed next to her and plugged in. As I started adjusting her abilities, I noticed that her nipples had hardened.

“It’s cold in here,” she said, giggling.

“It is. Um, get under the blankets?”

She cocked an eyebrow at me.

“Later,” I said, unplugging the cord. “Just get some rest tonight. How’s your head, by the way?”

“It’s fine. Just a small cut, really. I washed the blood out too.”

“You should get under the blankets. I don’t want you getting sick.”

“Oh please, Gideon,” she said. “It takes a little more than wet hair to get me sick.”

“Sleep tight, okay?”

“If you insist,” she pouted.

Rather than stick around and flirt with Dorian, I returned to Grace’s borrowed bedroom. I wanted to start getting a feel for the three supers that had attacked us. Know thy enemy, right?

For the first one, I simply typed in ‘steel’ and got the results I was looking for.

Victoria, Subject V

Main: Metal Mimicry

* Thermal Resistance

* Bio Metal Weaponry

* Dermal Armor

* Amorphous Metal

* Enhanced Strength

* Contaminant Immunity

“That’s right, her name was Victoria,” I murmured.

There wasn’t anything hard to interpret about her abilities, and I knew as long as we had Veronique around, Victoria wouldn’t have much of an edge on us. Which was a good thing, because her considerable size and strength would have made her a pain in the ass without someone who could affect metal.

Next, I searched for the other one that would be pretty easy to identify, ‘fire and ice.’ I could have also searched by his name, but it was just as easy to search by abilities.

There were other fire users, or at least there had been, and there weren’t any ice users, which made narrowing down the one person who could utilize both fire and ice quite easy.

Augustin, Subject Au

Main: Fire Manipulation

* Fire Negation

* Heat Manipulation

* Pyrokinetic Flight

* Pyrokinetic Combat

* Overcharge

Main Second: Ice Manipulation

* Ice Negation

* Cold Generation

* Cryokinetic Constructs

* Ice Aura

* Cryostasis

Now I had the basics of these two, and there could be further exploration later. Next, I looked up Chloe.

Chloe, Subject C

Main: Acoustokinesis

* Sound Sculpting

* Acoustic Acceleration

* Sonoluminescence

* Rhythm Manipulation

* Sonokinetic Combat

* Sound Detection

* Sonic Stimulation

* Overcharge

Acoustokinesis? That has to be a made-up word.

I was just about to explore further when Grace stepped out of the bathroom, still representing the House of Gremory with her deep red hair, soft features, and oversized chest. But now she wore a black bikini top and black boy shorts. Her hair was braided down one side, and a collar fashioned into a leather bowtie was around her neck.

I took off my glasses. “I’m trying to research here.”

“You found out about two of them,” she said, approaching the bed. She stopped just at its end, bent over, and placed both elbows on the mattress, cupping her face with her hands.

“Yeah, but I don’t know much about the third one.”

“Her name is Chloe, like I told you.” She crawled onto the bed.

Faced with the dilemma of furthering my research on Chloe or dealing with arguably one of the hottest harem anime women ever devised, I chose the latter. Chloe could wait, my commitment to the mission be damned!

There was no foreplay this time, simply fucking for fucking’s sake. Still in her cosplay, she moved on top of me and pulled my boxers down, slipping me inside her. She pressed both hands against my chest and began moving her lower body back and forth.

“Faster, faster,” I panted, gripping her ass.

She picked up speed. “How’s this?”

With my back now against the headboard, she moved slightly over to one side and lifted my knee into position so she could grab it and press it against her chest.

She was fucking me sideways!

Her thong was still on, and I could feel it grinding against the side of my member as she thrust back and forth. She moaned and eventually turned all the way around so that I got a clear view of her backside as she rode me reverse cowgirl.

I closed my eyes, just trying to feel the sensation for once rather than watch the visual spectacle. But the visual spectacle is also one of the hottest parts of sex, something I immediately found out as I opened my eyes and I saw her bent forward, again leaning on her elbows, and looking over her shoulder at me with white eyes.

White? I thought.

It was then I realized Grace was fucking herself. She had taken over my body and was fucking herself how she wanted to be fucked. And I had no say over it! I was just being used, moving into different positions I’d never tried before, tapping it harder than I ever had. She had me under her spell completely.

Now I was standing, and she was standing before me, arms pressed against the bed as I slammed into her.

And my stamina … I could tell my heart was racing, but there was little I could do to slow my pace. We were now going at it doggy style on the floor, her red hair pulled tightly in my hand as I yanked her neck back. Her eyes were still white, my body fully possessed. I could hear her moaning, but it was a distant moan, like it came from a different room.

She bucked me off then, and I fell backward, pressed against the nightstand. She was on top of me in an instant, her knees at my side as she wrapped her arms around my neck, banging her tits against my face.

Come for me, a voice said inside my head.

And so I came. I had no control at all over my body, and as I orgasmed, she did as well, her neck arching back as her mouth opened, letting out a loud sigh of relief.

She stayed on top of me as she returned my own consciousness to my body.

“You possessed me,” I gasped, still out of breath.

“I thought it would be interesting,” she said with a mischievous look on her cosplay face.

“I feel violated?”

She laughed. “Do you?”

“Well, I guess not. No, that was interesting. I did not know you could force me to come on command. Please never do that in public or in any setting that isn’t the bedroom.” I was still inside her, and I felt myself start to shrink.

It was inevitable; no man could stay hard forever.

But I never actually pulled out of her, and we stayed like that for another few minutes as she recapped what had happened. And as she told me about some of the positions we tried, I realized that I didn’t even remember trying them, that she had blurred some of my memory when she took over my mind.

“Just one last thing,” I said when she finally moved to get off me.

“What’s that?” she asked, reverting back to her base form and making her way to the restroom, her cute ass shaking as she walked.

“You know what? Never mind.”

She stopped and turned to me. “Do you want me to clean you off?”

“Yeah, let’s do that.” I pushed myself off the floor and approached the bathroom door.

Grace grabbed my hand. “I want to try that with the others.”

“Others?”

She raised one eyebrow and I knew instantly what she meant.

“You’re … that should be interesting.”

Chapter Fourteen: Angel in the Backpack

Morning came, and I already felt like I was behind.

Time to get serious, was the first thought on my mind when I awoke.

Get. Serious. Gideon.

I kept telling myself that – possibly the curse of being a writer mixed with the fortune of trying to unravel a government conspiracy while surrounded by super hot and superpowered women – but it was good to crack the whip from time to time, especially when inspiration struck.

And damn, did it strike.

I was up at five in the morning, heading to the kitchen to make coffee, my brain swirling with ideas on how to craft the third installment of Mutants in the Making.

With the coffee started, I turned to find Michelle behind me, wide awake.

“You okay?” I asked, turning on the light.

“Yep,” she said, hopping from foot to foot. “I don’t sleep. Not often, anyway. Sometimes I take naps. I love naps. Too much energy to sleep. I’m awake at all times, it seems.”

“How do you feel?” The coffee pot started filling, and when it was ready I poured myself the first cup.

“I feel pretty good. Just energized.”

“I could take a look at that,” I suggested as I added some creamer to the brew. “They may have put a handicap in your stats to prevent you from becoming too powerful. I’ll be taking a look at Stella later as well.”

Michelle continued to pivot from foot to foot as her head swayed back and forth. “Maybe,” she finally said.

And then she was gone. Akin to the way Dorian teleported away, Michelle was able to move so fast that it seemed like she’d disappeared.

“Sorry,” she said, reappearing in the hallway and giggling. “Over here. I’m going to walk around the neighborhood again.”

“Walk?” I asked.

“Yep, I already walked around it fifteen times. I walked to town and back too. I know, that’s not safe. I need to be safer. Being safe is overrated but it feels comfortable.”

“You mean you ran to town.”

“Sure, ran too. Some walking, though. I was hungry, so I ate some food. I have to eat a lot. Okay, bye!”

I chuckled to myself as I returned to the writing desk with my cup of coffee.

Here’s where the magic happens, I thought, cracking my knuckles.

Hemingway once said, ‘What a writer in our time has to do is write what hasn’t been written before or beat dead men at what they have done.’

Not one for buying a shovel and digging up a bunch of corpses, I figured I’d just try to reinvent the wheel.

“Quiet, you,” I told the coffee, which had clearly started thrashing my adenosine receptors, opening a floodgate of crazy thoughts.

I powered up the laptop, and then, as usual, I got distracted.

Angel was in the closet, and I figured what I was writing should begin with the superpowered motherfucker. Besides, I’d left a blank chapter called ‘Mother and Angel,’ and was hoping to flesh it out.

I opened the closet and tossed the backpack onto the bed.

“Hey!” Angel grumbled from inside.

“Time to wake up,” I said. “Now, I’m not opening the backpack ‘cause I don’t want to get my finger bitten off, but if you’d be so kind, would you mind answering a few questions?”

“Fuck you, Gideon,” came his response, the backpack bouncing up and down.

“Come on, Angel.” I grabbed my cup of coffee and took a slurp. “I know we started as enemies, but maybe we could become frenemies instead. You scratch my back, I … I don’t let Veronique drain your ass anymore.”

He snorted. “She won’t listen to you.”

“We’re having a sexual relationship, FYI, and I believe I may be able to convince her through my power of seduction to be nicer to you.”

Angel actually laughed. “What in the hell are you talking about? You aren’t really that delusional, are you?”

I had to think about that for a minute.

Maybe I really am that delusional.

“Can you blame me?” I asked the backpack. “Similar to how you like to pork Mother, Veronique and I also have relations.”

The backpack lifted into the air some and I swallowed hard. I wasn’t expecting that; I was hoping my dry humor would inspire him to lighten up a bit. “Keep that shit up and I’ll have someone drown you.”

“Who was the girl in here earlier?” he asked, switching subjects. “She was practically running back and forth.”

“You heard?”

“How could I not hear? She’s been pacing for the last few hours and driving me insane. It’s not even pacing; it’s more like jogging in place. She was singing a song too. What the hell is going on? Let me out of here, dammit!” The backpack hopped up and down again, its time in the air more prolonged now.

I went back to the closet and found the metal bat I’d seen earlier, tucked behind the clothes; I figured it would help if things got out of hand.

“Long story, but that’s not what I want to talk about. I want to know more about you.”

“How many times does a man have to say ‘fuck you’ for you to get the picture?”

“I hate to break it to you, Angel, but you’re a head in a backpack, and I have a baseball bat.” I swung the bat onto the bed, slamming it down just inches away from the backpack.

“I should have killed you on the rooftop.”

“You should have. Hell, you even had a second chance to take me out – a third chance, too! But you fucked up, and I now I need some info. Let’s keep this brief, or else …”

“What?”

“I cave your skull in,” I said, hoping he didn’t hear the hesitation in my voice. “Now, back in New Haven, you apparently tried to escape. Tell me about that.”

He laughed long and hard. “You aren’t strong enough to cave my skull in.”

I smacked the bed again. I didn’t do it too hard, but it did jostle the backpack.

“Hey!”

“Answer the question.”

“It’s not like it matters anyway.”

“I’ll be the decider of that.”

“It was a few years back, before I found out just how … before she came to me.”

“Mother?” I asked. “What’s her real name, by the way?”

“If she wants you to know her real name, she’ll tell you herself.” He laughed again. “Or she may kill you first. Because next time you two meet, she isn’t going to ask any questions or keep you alive. There’s something I can tell you, but you should have already figured it out by now. She’ll have you ripping your eyes out and eating them.”

“That’s gruesome,” I said, sorely tempted to give the backpack a nudge with the bat. “I was wondering why she asked questions in the first place. Seems like it would be easier to just fillet me.”

“For once, you and I are on the same page.”

“See, I told you we’re more alike than you thought,” I reminded him. “But I’ve broken free from the restraints of society; you tried to break free and came back with your tail tucked beneath your legs.”

“I almost got away,” he said, his voice softening as he relived the memory. “I even managed to take it out.”

“It?”

“The port in my neck. It took Dorian, Veronique, and Victoria to eventually stop me.”

Dorian and Veronique know Victoria? I thought as I remembered the woman made of steel. This annoyed me in a way; it always felt like they didn’t quite give me the info I needed, that they were holding back.

But I let those feelings pass as I refocused on Angel. “What happened? How did they get you?”

“I can fly; it’s pretty easy to get away. So I got away.”

“This was from the Rose-Lyle Facility, correct?”

“It was. And I first went north, just moving along the coastline. Freedom. It was true freedom. I ended up in Provincetown.”

“The gay colony?”

“Is there another Provincetown?”

I shrugged. “Probably. For some reason, people aren’t too creative in America when it comes to naming cities. That’s why there are so many duplicates. Anyway, I know what you’re talking about. In Massachusetts, Cape Cod, that Provincetown.”

“It took them a day to come after me and …” He cleared his throat. “I won the first fight. Handed them their asses. By myself. Freedom will do that to you.”

“It’s the old cornered dog thing.”

“Whatever. I wouldn’t liken myself to an animal or a normal, like yourself.”

I tapped the bat on the bed, reminding him who was in charge here.

“Fuck you and your bat,” he said.

“Story or I hit a home run.”

“You couldn’t hit a home run to save your pathetic life. But anyway, I took out a couple of bars on Commercial Street but finally got away. That damn Veronique and her power had me feeling weak, and Dorian had a winged beast made of energy flying after me; I lost to them eventually. I figured out then that they were tracking me, and there was only one way for them to do it.”

“Your drive?”

“So I dropped down into Boston, found one of those hardware superstores, and took a knife. I forced the drive out and continued west.”

“How did they find you?”

“Someone spotted me flying. It was months later. I’d kept a pretty low profile, but someone saw me flying in Mansfield, Ohio, and called the FBI, who relayed the information to the agency overseeing our program.”

“What can you tell me about that agency? I’ll be honest, I thought it was just Mother and a bunch of private security goons, MercSecure.”

“Another thing we can agree on: they aren’t the best security company. But then again, they’re tasked with protecting people who have surpassed them, who have evolved, so what can you expect?”

“Does the agency have a name?”

“Subject One is the name of the project, as it is based on the super abilities of Mother and creating offspring from her. The project is overseen by a DoD agency known as the Agency of Enhancement and Future Logistics, or AEFL, which they pronounce as ‘ay-full.’”

“Sounds awful.”

“That’s not the first time I’ve heard that joke. You aren’t a funny man.”

“There are some people who would disagree, but I’m more interested in you at the moment,” I said, pretty sure I saw the AEFL stamp I’d seen on some of David Butler’s documents. At least it looked familiar. “How did they get you? You said you fought them off the first time.”

“I did, but they came at me when I wasn’t expecting it. And that damn Veronique. The other two I could deal with, but once she latches on, she’s like a goddamn leech. Victoria may be strong, and her punches hurt like hell, but she’s slow. At that time, Dorian couldn’t teleport. I don’t know where she picked that up, but her energy creations weren’t that big of a deal. More of a nuisance than anything, especially the bigger ones.”

“Another thing we have in common,” I told Angel. “I’ve been drained by her too.”

“And you said you were having relations with her? Has anyone told you that you’re an idiot?”

“Says the literal motherfucker in the backpack. Remember, I’m not against cracking you in the skull with this bat.”

“Do it then. I’ll just re-heal.”

“About that,” I said, hoping to keep him talking for a bit longer before I started writing. “How have you managed to stay alive.”

“I already told you I can heal, and you’ve already seen my body try to regrow.”

“But what about your internal organs? I’m no doctor.”

“Clearly. You’re just a writer – and a poor one from what Mother has told me.”

“Do you even read?”

“Yes.”

“What do you read?”

“Books you wouldn’t like.”

“What? Like military sci-fi? I’m not good with weapons, guns, and whatnot, so I’ve never really gotten into that stuff.”

“I don’t read sci-fi. Why would I want to read some made up science bullshit when there are actual science books out there? I read books on aviation.”

I started to laugh. “That’s awesome.”

“What’s so awesome about books on aviation?”

“You tell me; you’re the one that reads them.”

“I just like them, dammit! Is our interrogation over?”

“Sure, just tell me more about your healing. Is there any way to actually kill you?”

“Why would I tell anyone that?”

I shrugged. It was a good question, and his response was equally fitting. I thought about hitting him with the bat just because but decided against it. That said, I didn’t want him hanging out in the closet, possibly poisoning the young minds that may come in and out of the room.

And that was another thing. If the Super Teens joined us, how the hell would we explain Angel? I mean, Grace could do her whole ‘reveal the truth’ schtick, but even then, this was a delicate situation.

“Why are you being so quiet?”

“Sorry, I was thinking about what needs to happen next.”

Angel laughed. “If you were smart, you’d kill yourself before Mother fries your brain and kills all the superpowered bitches who have somehow fallen under your spell.”

I swung the bat at the backpack as hard as I could and Angel cried out in pain. He didn’t say anything after that, and rather than put up with his decapitated ass (which makes no sense, but you get me), I tossed the backpack into the closet and sat down at my laptop.

Ready to get started for real now, I cracked my knuckles again and settled in for work. First I checked my sales – hell, yeah! – and then started fleshing out Angel and Mother’s chapter, from the interrogation to what Angel had just told me.

By the time the CBGs and the Super Teens started to wake, I was already five thousand words in.

Of course, since it was creative nonfiction, I did add some embellishments, but the story was there, it was solid, and the narrative was building.

Build!

And now we had a target: the Agency of Enhancement and Future Logistics and their experiment, Subject One. It was weird I hadn’t noticed much about this yet, especially with David Butler’s notes back in Austin and Dr. Kim’s stuff. But whatever. I never prided myself on being able to cull through data; nope, I was as right-brained as they came, so my general approach involved creativity.

Still, I needed to at least see if I could piece any more deets together.

I opened the folder Ken had given me and found a few random documents, immediately spotting the AEFL tag. It hadn’t been redacted or anything; I just simply hadn’t noticed it before.

So the info was there, and I had a feeling there was a bunch more in Ken’s folders that would help. Even as the supers started moving in the hallway, I began watching some of the videos, trying to sort them.

The first ones I came to were of Veronique. I’d seen these, the snuff vids. I watched them again though, now that I knew Veronique and what she was capable of. At least she seemed happier now. She had a placid look on her face in most of the recordings, a psychotic visage if I’d ever seen one.

I would have continued going through the videos if Stella hadn’t come in. Her black armor hugged her body, and her blond hair was in its long braid. “Breakfast,” she said. “Veronique told us you would cook. And then after …”

“I remember,” I said, closing the laptop. “And sure, I’ll whip something up.”

Chapter Fifteen: Breakfast of Champions

Damn if Michelle didn’t eat us out of house and home last night. I’d figured she would have to consume more due to her heightened metabolism, but I wasn’t expecting to see the kitchen completely wiped out.

Luckily, Dorian had already taken care of getting more food, using some of the cash we’d stolen two days back. She appeared in the kitchen at about the same time I was going to go find her, carrying plastic bags in her arms.

“Did it mess up the food?” I asked, wondering if teleporting would somehow cook the eggs.

It hadn’t, and as she set the bags on the counter and began taking items out, I looked at her healing cherry blossoms tattoo.

Instinctively, I touched my own, which had completely scabbed over. I’d stopped cleaning it, but it would be fine.

“I’m starved,” Ingrid said, approaching the bar. She wore some borrowed clothes, which only made me realize that if we were to host the Super Teens, we’d have to get a lot more food and a lot more clothing.

“Breakfast will be ready shortly.”

My phone buzzed; a message from Luke.

Luke: Never heard back from you. All is well?

Me: We’ll talk in person in a bit. Let’s just say our numbers have grown by four.

Luke: All women?

Me: Yes, technically yes.

Luke: You do realize that you are experiencing a real-life harem now, right? Like when it first started, there were just two, so that wasn’t quite a harem but shit, it was close enough. Then the teleporter came, and the harem solidified, and now four more. This is some anime shit.

Me: All but one are underage.

Luke: Really? You have teens there?

Me: It was unexpected. I have to make breakfast and see to their abilities. They may be leaving, dunno. I’ll contact you in a few hours.

I started cracking eggs just as a breeze whipped by. Michelle came to a stop next to me holding a watering can.

“Eggs? Are you making eggs? That’s great? What else? Can I help? I know how to do stuff. I can cut things super-fast! Let me show you.”

“What are you watering?”

“I’m not,” she said.

Fiona’s water form reverse poured out of the can and took shape next to Michelle.

“Shit!” I would have dropped the eggs had it not been for Grace, who caught the carton midair and lifted them back onto the counter.

“Now, girls, don’t do things like that to Writer Gideon,” she said, smiling at me in an incredibly cute way. She was still dressed as Rias Gremory, and Michelle and Fiona lost interest in me when Grace morphed to her base form, this time in a pair of Totoro pajamas.

“That’s so cool!” Michelle said.

“Can you turn into me?” Fiona asked.

Moments later Grace was a practical clone of Fiona – auburn hair, slick skin that was always a bit wet, and a one-piece bathing suit. She also had Fiona’s dimples, her long nose, and hazel eyes.

“Me! Me!” Michelle said, bouncing up and down.

In a few seconds, Grace was rail thin and had Michelle’s black hair with the characteristic pink streak down the side.

“Do you have our powers too?” Fiona asked. “Can you do this?” Her hand turned to water but remained in the shape of a hand with fingers elongating and spiraling at the end.

“I can’t,” Grace said in Michelle’s voice. “I don’t have the ability to use your abilities. I could trick you, though.” She morphed back into Fiona, took another look at Fiona’s hand, and her own began to crystallize and turn clear. Still, she wasn’t able to do much more than make it appear as if she had Fiona’s power.

The water user touched Grace’s hand. “That’s … strange,” she finally said.

“Please, food,” Ingrid growled from the countertop. Not wanting her to take the she-beast form, I told Michelle to crack all the eggs in a bowl and mix them up. She was done seconds later, much to my surprise.

“How?”

She shrugged and asked me what else I wanted her to do.

Damn me for always referencing X-Men, but I couldn’t avoid recalling the scene in Days of Future Past in which Quicksilver zipped around the room while everyone else moved in slow motion. It must be like that, I thought as I added a dash of milk to the eggs.

“Who wants to help make the pancakes?”

“Fee and I can do it,” Michelle said, and within seconds, she had a bowl with the pancake mix inside. Fiona held her hand over the bowl, a spurt of water shooting from her palm.

“Sure, that’s one way to do it,” I told her. “You won’t feel weak or anything, will you?”

Fiona shook her head. “Nope. I absorb hydrogen and oxygen from the air constantly, which is why my skin is always a bit wet. See?” She showed me her arm. Droplets of water stretched across her forearm as if she’d been sweating.

“And you always have to wear a bathing suit?”

“I do,” she said. “Or I’d be naked.”

“We don’t want that!” Michelle laughed as she set the whipped pancake batter down on the countertop. I hadn’t seen her whip it, of course, and I also hadn’t seen her dash away toward the TV room and back, carrying a magazine that had some pancake recipes in it. “Can we make this?”

“Later, let’s just finish up here before Ingrid gets grumpy.”

Ingrid narrowed her eyes at me. “I won’t get grumpy!”

Stella came into the kitchen and sat at the bar. Veronique followed, wearing her country girl getup. She was cordial with the others, thank god, and as usual, she stuck with a cup of coffee. There was a hunger to her eyes though, and I could tell she wanted to feed.

Did you and Veronique take care of Adam this morning? I thought to Grace.

He is still out, but she hasn’t fed.

Okay, well tell her to go take a little off the top and to not kill him, I thought back to her as I started scrambling the eggs.

Veronique stood almost immediately and left the room. The only person to catch her leave was Dorian, who watched her walk away.

Michelle brought the pancake batter over to me. “I want to help.”

“You’ve already helped.”

“I want to help more!”

“You know how to make pancakes?”

She looked at Fiona and they both started laughing.

“What?”

“She doesn’t know how to make anything. We’ve never made food before,” Fiona said as if it was an inside joke.

“Do you want to learn?”

“Sure!”

Breakfast was served, devoured, hopefully enjoyed, and after, I told Stella to follow me to the couch. Dorian and Veronique had already started watching one of their home improvement shows and I noticed Veronique’s face was a little flush from feeding on Adam.

“Is it going to hurt?” Stella asked, a flicker of worry on her face. She lay with her feet facing the back door, giving me easy access to the port on her neck. Her throat quivered as I plugged in.

“Relax,” I told her, “it’s not going to hurt.”

Grace had taken Ingrid, Fiona, and Michelle out to ‘see the cactuses,’ which gave me a little breathing room to work. Had they been here right now, Michelle would have been peering over my shoulder looking at my phone as I scrolled through the options.

I wanted to avoid that. Not that I didn’t think she’d do it at some point in the future, I was just hoping that having the power to adjust abilities would give me some leverage with them, with a side of clout.

“Damn,” I whispered when a single folder appeared. There was no password prompt for Stella, and she hardly had any data aside from her base stats and abilities.

Stella, Subject St

Build: 002

Base height: 172 Centimeters

Base weight: 48 Kilos

Strength: 5

Intelligence: 5

Constitution: 4

Wisdom: 4

Dexterity: 6

Charisma: 4

Main: Vector Manipulation

Kinetic Energy Manipulation: 6

Quantum Manipulation: 2

Vibration Emission: 7

Inertia Negation: 2

Telekinetic Regeneration: 4

Tactile Telekinesis: 4

Deflection: 7

Velocity Manipulation: 3

Aversion Field Creation: 6

Overcharge: 7

“I see the culprit,” I said almost immediately. “Similar to the handicap they put in Dorian’s abilities adjuster, Overcharge is what’s causing you to overheat. Let me look through everything first and I’ll work on some adjustments.”

“Okay.”

Explanations appeared above the abilities as I passed over them.

Kinetic Energy Manipulation was self-explanatory, as was Quantum Manipulation. Ha! Only an asshole or a sci-fi writer would think they had a firm grasp on quantum mechanics.

I scrolled over it anyway, looking for a better explanation than just ‘quantum manipulation deals with quantum mechanics.’ I wasn’t disappointed, but I didn’t understand how her ability allowed her to manipulate quantum energy fields. What did it even mean? Could she make a wormhole?

Just for shits and giggles, I tried increasing it and found that the dial was locked at two.

Moving on. I then checked out Vibration Emission. This one was pretty sweet, allowing her to create shockwaves and cause small earthquakes. ‘Inertia Negation’ was simply a form of heightened agility.

“So you can sidestep anything if this is turned up,” I mumbled to myself.

“What?”

“After I make adjustments. You’ll be more agile.”

“We’ll see,” she finally said.

I explained what I’d discovered so far and that I was going to parse through the rest and begin the adjustments.

“That’s fine.”

“Your next ability is listed as ‘Telekinetic Regeneration,’ which means you can heal. Holy shit – you can heal!”

“I know. Why do you think I’ve recovered so quickly from yesterday?”

I hadn’t thought about that. Rather than talk anymore about that, I checked out ‘Tactile Telekinesis,’ which allowed her to manipulate her own vectors, to do things like create a protective telekinetic shield around her body or lift someone five times her size.

She’s the most powerful one, I thought to myself.

Is she? Grace asked, her voice as loud as if she were standing right there.

Download what I know in about three minutes. Her abilities are through the charts.

I hope she joins us.

Same.

Her next ability, Deflection, was self-explanatory as well. Velocity Manipulation allowed her to manipulate the speed and direction an object was moving.

“This will be sick for taking out helicopters,” I whispered. And it was at that point – even after I’d watched the CBGs train and all that had happened – when an idea came to me: The next stage of Gideon Caldwell’s …

I haven’t been showing them how to use their abilities correctly.

I’d never really gone over their ability listings with them; I simply adjusted them as need be. I had to make them more cognizant of their abilities and help them learn to use them together.

Our fights would go much smoother if we knew what we were doing, and there would certainly be less ‘oh-shit’ moments. For example, what if Michelle used her superspeed along with Stella’s Velocity Manipulation? I had seen Grace and Veronique work together back in New Haven and it resulted in a massive explosion.

I’ve been going about this all wrong.

I checked the final two abilities. Aversion Field Creation allowed Stella to make a force field, which she’d done yesterday, and Overcharge was the handicap.

“Here goes nothing,” I said as I began playing with her settings.

After some tinkering, I was able to bring her Overdrive down by reducing Quantum Manipulation to one, Deflection to six, and Vibration Emission to five. This brought her Overdrive to three, so clearly not a point-for-point deduction, especially since I was able to also bring her Velocity Manipulation up to four and her Inertia Negation – aka uncanny agility – up a point as well.

Her final ability stats read:

Main: Vector Manipulation

Kinetic Energy Manipulation: 6

Quantum Manipulation: 1

Vibration Emission: 5

Inertia Negation: 3

Telekinetic Regeneration: 4

Tactile Telekinesis: 4

Deflection: 6

Velocity Manipulation: 4

Aversion Field Creation: 6

Overcharge: 3

“I think I’m done,” I told her as I unplugged.

“Think?”

“Feeling anything immediately different?”

“I feel a bit lighter.” She sat up and rested with her elbows propped behind her on the couch’s low headrest, the position causing her chest to perk upwards.

“Is there anything you do that normally makes you feel like you’re overheating?” I asked.

She stared at me with her dark eyes. Stella was a bizarre combination of Grace and Veronique, as if they’d had a daughter. It was still hard to get used to seeing Grace’s soft features mixed with Veronique’s sharp ones.

“I know one thing,” she said as she pressed herself off the couch. “Can I try it outside?”

“Let’s do it.”

“I’ll need volunteers,” she said.

“I’m in,” said Veronique.

As I turned away from the living room, I felt a hand wrap around my elbow. I knew who it was without even looking over my shoulder. “You coming too, Dorian?”

“I am.” She dropped her hand into mine. “And I missed you last night,” she whispered.

“Did you?”

Veronique laughed, her eyes still fixated on the television.

“What’s funny?” I asked.

“Your face,” she said, an attempt at humor.

“Is it the scar? I thought the scar made me look better. Are you coming?”

“I guess,” she said.

Dorian’s hand was still wrapped in mine, but she let go as Veronique approached, offering it to the other woman instead.

My god, was my life awesome.

It was like I was the dude in a harem anime but instead of being a pathetic dumb-dumb and not getting with the girls, I was just doing what I had to do.

Enough patting yourself on the back, I chided myself as we stepped onto the back patio. It was a nice day outside, cloudless, the air crisp and peaceful …

My moment of peace was shattered when Stella asked Dorian and Veronique to attack her at the same time.

“Go light on her,” I said.

They moved away from me and approached Stella, predator-like. Dorian had her finger in her mouth, a gesture that would be salacious if not for the fact it meant she was about to charge up something fierce; Veronique had already made a wall in front of herself with bits of scrap metal from earlier battles.

Dorian teleported away and appeared behind Stella with a blast of purple energy. She was gone again, back at Veronique’s side when the energy bomb went off.

I had to blink twice at what happened next.

It was as if the energy had been sucked into a black hole, a wrinkle of time or some shit. It just completely … disappeared, reminding me of the way a calm body of water ripples when a stone is dropped into it and sinks out of sight.

Veronique tossed her metal scraps. The pieces bounced off Stella as if she were made of rubber, her Tactile Telekinesis forming a shield much closer to her body than I had anticipated. Her fingers spread wide and a crack appeared in the soil, zipping toward Veronique and cutting her off her feet.

Dorian spawned two humanoids of kinetic energy and flashed away, this time appearing in the air above Stella and dropping an energy ball on her head, which was engulfed by the black hole defense system Stella had enacted. As soon as the energy creations reached Dorian, they too disappeared.

Veronique lifted her hand to drain Stella, which I assumed would take.

Only it didn’t work this time.

Stella lifted her hand and Veronique’s red energy stopped at her palm, pooling into a large red blast that she fired back at Veronique.

Dorian appeared behind Stella, grabbed her hand and …

She was thrown backward, where she would have cracked her head on the ground had it not been for a last-second teleportation.

“Okay,” I said, steeling myself as I moved out onto what was becoming the battlefield. I had no idea what the owners of the place would think when they came back to the house, but there were definitely signs that some weird shit had gone down in their back yard.

Hopefully, they’d just think aliens landed.

I stepped over the crack Stella had left in the soil and approached her.

“How do you feel?” I asked nervously.

Dorian appeared next to me, her hand landing on my arm just in case we needed to teleport away.

Stella’s shoulders relaxed a bit as a grin cut across her face. “I feel great. It worked!”

Chapter Sixteen: Super Teens

“I’m in,” Stella said, her eyes still trained on me. A light breeze picked up, whipping around a few strands of hair that had come loose from her braid.

Nope, it wasn’t a breeze. It was Michelle, who now stood between both of us. “What happened out here?” she asked, looking from us to the smoke wafting off a few craters caused by Dorian’s energy creations.

“We were just testing some things,” I told her.

“Michelle, go get the others, it’s time to make a decision,” Stella said. “Do you all mind giving us a moment?”

“Sure,” I said.

Dorian and Veronique moved over to me and we took a few steps onto the patio. I smiled at both of them.

“Her power is incredible,” Veronique admitted once we were out of earshot. “But I don’t know about being a babysitter to the other three.”

“Yeah,” Dorian chimed in, “we really should have discussed this before they made their decision.”

“Are you two opposed to it?” I asked.

Dorian shrugged. “It just makes things a little bit more difficult. We’ll need a bigger vehicle to travel and a bigger house to stay in, that sort of thing.”

“I never thought of myself as a minivan type of guy, but a Suburban or Cadillac Escalade? Something like that would be choice.”

I could see myself now in a black Cadillac Escalade cruising down the highway, the vehicle full of supers, the moonroof open and bikini-clad Dorian halfway poking out of it, launching purple fireballs. I could even hear Matthew McConaughey say, ‘The open road is yours, latch on,’ or whatever the hell pseudosexual advertising campaign they had going these days.

A good image, but real talk: I knew nothing about taking care of teens; hell, I could hardly take care of myself.

And what about school? I didn’t know how much they learned at the facility. I could teach them about literature, but who the hell would want to learn about that stuff anyway aside from a sadist?

Grace, I need you.

Grace came outside, followed by Fiona and Ingrid, both of whom formed a football huddle with Stella and Michelle.

“Grace, I –”

“Don’t worry, it’s the right thing to do,” she said with a finality that silenced Dorian and Veronique.

“So you think they’ll say yes?” I asked her.

She nodded, “That’s what they’re talking about right now.”

“Damn.” I scratched the back of my head. “Well there’s going to be a few things I need to change around here then. First, we need to get a vehicle and a new location. We also need to get them some new clothes. Oh, and we need to get rid of Adam, the little fucker. Also, we never finished destroying the New Mexico facility, which is something I still think we should do. But regarding that, I’ve had an epiphany.” I used my hands to express just how big my epiphany was.

“Epiphany?” Dorian asked.

“I think I can contribute more to the CBGs by paying attention to everyone’s abilities. I never really explained to you three what your abilities actually are. I assumed you knew. But that was a stupid assumption to make, and maybe if you knew more about them, you’d be able to use them together more efficiently.”

“We could stop our enemies faster,” Veronique said.

“Exactly.”

“Gideon!” Michelle called over to me. She appeared by my side half a second later. “Did you hear me?”

“Yes, I heard you,” I said and followed her over to the other Super Teens.

“We’re going to join you,” Stella said from behind Michelle. “For now. We’ll need to know more about your mission, and we need to figure out a better living arrangement.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that last one; I’m already working on it.”

“And then there’s Adam,” she said.

“We’re getting rid of Adam ASAP,” I told her. “Okay, that was a weird way to say that, but you know what I mean. Adam is a risk to our mission; it’s better that he goes back to the facility, or wherever else they’ll take him. All this to say: where should we drop him off? Any thoughts?”

Ingrid stepped forward. “Well, we don’t want him working with them to find us.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” said Stella. “But that may be inevitable.”

If they didn’t look like superheroes before, they sure did now.

Dorian stood next to Veronique and Grace with her hands on her hips. Ingrid and Fiona were near the three women, resolute expressions on their faces, hair fluttering in the wind. Stella was behind them all and Michelle had positioned herself in front of me, bouncing from foot to foot.

I could see it as a comic book cover now, one with a cliffhanger ending: Will the Super Teens join the Cherry Blossom Girls?

Well, they already told us they would, but I’d leave that part for the next issue.

So no cliffhanger here; the Super Teens were with us, and now we had to work out the details.

And one of those details was Adam.

“Where do you think we should drop him?” I asked Grace and Veronique.

“I’m only going to say this one more time,” Veronique said. “If we do not kill Adam, they will use him against us later. It doesn’t matter where we drop him off. We will have to do something about him later.”

“Fine. We won’t join if you kill him,” Stella said firmly. Ingrid, Fiona, and Michelle all nodded. Michelle’s nod didn’t look serious though, mainly due to the fact that she was still bouncing from foot to foot, head bobbing up and down as if she was jamming some K-Pop.

“We’re not killing him,” I told Veronique. “And that’s final.”

Grace calmed everyone with her soft, all-knowing voice. “I can wipe his mind on the last twenty-four hours,” she offered. “That will make it a little harder for them to figure out anything.”

“Great, let’s do that,” I said. “Then we’ll get him to the New Mexico facility, get the hell out of there, and start Plan B.”

“Plan B?” Dorian asked.

“Actually, it’s more like Plan A, because it hasn’t failed yet. We need to get everyone new clothes, we need a new vehicle, and we need a new place to stay for a few days. Also, I’m going to need some concentration time tomorrow to finish this book I’m working on. So wherever we end up staying, it needs to be a little off the beaten path, if you get my drift.”

“Will it be here?” Michelle asked.

“I don’t know yet. It would be nice to be close to the facility, but we don’t want to be close enough where they may find us. For teleportation reasons, it’s better to be close, so Dorian doesn’t have to take us in two trips.”

“What about the Colorado mountains?” Grace asked. “We watched a show where they renovated a ski lodge up there. I’m sure there are some people that have big houses in that area.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” I said. Then I became unsure if Grace had encouraged me through her powers to go with her idea, or if I had actually thought it was a good idea.

Regardless, I went with it.

“Here’s what’s going to happen: Dorian, you’ll drop Adam off at the facility and get out of there as fast as you can. Then we’ll get a vehicle, bring it here, load everyone up, and take a road trip north to Colorado. Along the way, we’ll get some new clothes and a ton of food.”

“Road trip?” Dorian asked, a smile forming on her pale face.

“That’s right. Let’s find a mansion.”

“Can I help you find a mansion?” Michelle asked.

“I’ll help,” Fiona said.

“I can definitely help,” said Ingrid.

Don’t forget about Angel’s head.

Good call, I thought back to Grace.

Knowing it wouldn’t go over well, I told the Super Teens to simply focus on getting packed and ready for the big road trip.

“But we don’t have anything to pack,” Ingrid reminded me.

“Well, in that case, watch some TV for a little while. There’s got to be something interesting on. Hell, there’s always something interesting on; that’s why people own TVs. Which reminds me – Michelle, I promised you I would look at your abilities. And over the next day or so, I’ll look at and modify everyone’s abilities, including you two.” I motioned to Grace and Dorian. “But for now, let’s just focus on getting the hell out of Santa Fe.”

Chapter Seventeen: Shopping Spree!

Dorian took care of Adam while I did some research. It was quick, taking her only about a minute, but once she returned, Adam was now someone else’s problem.

One minute’s worth of research wasn’t a lot, so I told everyone to check the house to make sure we hadn’t left anything while I searched for rich neighborhoods in Colorado Springs.

It wasn’t hard to find rich neighborhoods; I simply did a search for ‘expensive homes for sale,’ found the neighborhood they were located in, and then used GoogleFace maps to look around the neighborhood until I could find a few good options.

I was going for a number of things: it needed to be semi-secluded; it needed to have a lot of bedrooms; and it needed to have enough property so the girls could train.

I found a few options and saved them, figuring I’d have a little more time to check around while they shopped.

Veronique and Dorian came into the study. Veronique went straight to the closet to drain more from Angel, and Dorian approached me, lightly placing her hand on my shoulder.

“Are you ready to get the vehicle?” she asked.

I snapped my laptop shut, happy with the shitty yet fruitful research I’d hastily performed. “Let’s do it.”

“See you, Veronique,” Dorian said, and we were gone.

“Holy shit, that was weird.”

We appeared along the highway, near a large convenience store parking lot. I saw the getaway car we’d planned for yet had never used.

I was surprised it was still there.

The steering wheel was a little hot, so after I started up the vehicle, I used my fingers to control the wheel rather than fully wrapping my hands around it. I cranked the AC up and we were off, headed toward the nearest residential area we could find.

It was never too hard to find suburbia in America; just follow the new shopping developments.

We were on a mission to get a vehicle big enough to fit everyone. There would be eight of us, and I didn’t want anyone sitting on anyone’s lap. (Well, I wanted a few of them sitting on my lap, most notably Dorian and Grace, but that wouldn’t be conducive to driving.)

Like a pair of Wet Bandits, Dorian and I rolled around the neighborhood, checking out houses and looking for the right type of vehicle.

“Come on, Cadillac Escalade,” I said, my brain still warped by the rap videos I’d seen as a child.

If you’re thinking I was envisioning us driving in a lowered Cadillac Escalade with chromed-out twenty-inch rims, you’d be correct. Of course, I wasn’t stupid enough to get a vehicle like that – you know, keeping a low profile and everything – but I wasn’t opposed to moving around like a hip-hop mogul.

Alas, and not for lack of trying, we could only find one vehicle big enough for all of us: a Honda minivan.

It was new, but still.

We pulled into the van’s driveway. “Shit – we need Grace and some dough.”

“I’ll be back in a second.”

By the time I got out of the vehicle, Dorian and Grace were standing there. Grace was in her brunette form, yoga pants practically molded onto her lower half. She had one of the duffle bags of cash flung over her shoulder and a cheery look on her face.

“Here goes nothing,” I said as we approached the home.

A bulky woman with heavy bags under her eyes and her hair in a short ponytail answered the door. She wore a shirt with a cactus on it and a pair of sweatpants pulled up past her belly button.

Hi,” I told her as Grace took over her mind. “The first thing I want you to do is take these keys and drive this car somewhere. How about somewhere an hour away from here? Do you have kids?”

The woman nodded.

“Are they home?”

She nodded again.

“Okay, take them with you. Then I want you to arrange a ride back here. Have you ever used UberLyft before?”

She gave me the double thumbs up.

“Good, that’ll work. Now, we need the keys to the minivan. And I want you to forget you’ve ever had the minivan. When your spouse comes home, I want you to not remember having it. I do, however, want you to explain that you have twenty grand.”

I gave her a stack of cash.

“That should cover the cost of getting another van, or at least close to it. Actually, I have no idea what they cost, but I’m assuming a used one can be purchased for less than that. Then again, it’s cold hard cash, so you may have to figure something out there. I just don’t want to steal it from you.”

As I looked her over, I realized just how crazy it was going to be when her spouse came home. I also realized how stupid my last statement was.

But that was neither here nor there.

We needed a vehicle large enough for us, and hell, I would have let her keep the car we’d driven here, but that would only complicate things. Better to abandon it and move on.

Keys were exchanged, we got the child’s car seat out of the minivan and gave it to her, and then we left.

Down twenty grand, I had Dorian locate a bank not too far from suburbia, and once we arrived, Grace started up on the same stunt we’d pulled the last time we needed some cold hard cash.

And the time before that.

Basically, with Grace around, we would forever be ‘in the money.’

And why does cash have to be cold and hard? I’ve definitely had some wet, soft cash before.

Semantics.

After netting around twelve thousand dollars, we returned to our borrowed home.

By the time we arrived, the garage door was open with several bags waiting to be loaded into the minivan.

There was the backpack with Angel’s head, the other duffel bag of money, some backpacks full of shrapnel, our body armor and helmets, as well as the water bottles of gas that we had yet to use.

I felt the urge to cry ‘Road Trip!’ out the window but suppressed this when I saw Veronique.

She stood guard wearing her wolf shirt, a pair of ultra-short jean shorts with the pockets hanging out, and an indecipherable look on her face. Stella came outside with the Super Teens in tow. Fiona was the first to comment on the minivan.

“It looks so cool,” the water wielder said. “So much cooler than the vans they had back at the facility.”

Michelle slid the back door open and zipped inside. “There’s a TV back here!”

“Really?”

Ingrid waited for Fiona to pass her and got inside too – delicately, I might add. The shape-shifting teen was at odds with the monster she turned into. From what I’d seen of her so far, she was light on her feet, polite, and not at all beastly.

But the thing she turned into …

Yikes, I thought as I helped load the bags into the back, careful not to disturb Angel’s head.

Once we were finished, and after I gave the home one final check, I strapped myself into the front seat, and like a responsible driver, told everyone else to buckle up.

“You too, Veronique.”

She narrowed her eyes at me, but I persisted until I heard the click of her seatbelt.

The three Super Teens sat in the far back, Veronique, Dorian, and Stella were in the middle row, and Grace rode shotgun as usual.

“Interstate 25, here we come!” I announced.

“Let’s go!” Michelle said. “Road trip!”

“You sure are excited,” Grace called back to her.

“Why wouldn’t I be? We’re going somewhere new!”

The minivan was at three-fourths a tank, and I figured it would be good for a while. The vehicle handled well, and its auto drive feature was exceptionally stable.

Twenty minutes later, the teens were watching the latest DisNike princess flick, whatever the hell it was called. The DisNike princess sang about her new running sneakers and how they would change her life. I was just about to comment that the entire movie was a glorified advertising campaign, but decided not to burst anyone’s bubble.

Disney and Nike had merged in the 2020s, one of the strangest unions at the time. In the end, it was all about licensing and making more money, because when you already have enough money, why not try to make even more? Shit, I was surprised DisNike hadn’t tried to purchase McStarbucks or WalMacy’s. That would have been a trifecta.

“Grace, can you turn into a princess?” Michelle asked over the high-pitched singing from the film.

Grace turned to the teens, and as she did, her form started to melt away. She now wore a tiara, which matched the long flowing gown that boosted her breasts up. Her skin had turned the color of light caramel – diversity and inclusion! – and her nails were covered in glitter.

I’m glad I wasn’t driving. Or, should I say: Thank god for auto drive. My eyes didn’t quite fall out of my head, but I did find myself staring at her bosom a lot longer than I meant to.

With a smile that would have put the British royal family to shame, Grace lifted a gloved hand and gave everyone in the back a cupped-hand-princess-wave.

Michelle waved back; Stella gave her a skeptical look; Dorian was resting; Fiona and Ingrid were still glued to the television; and Veronique was staring at me.

Damn those dark eyes, I thought as we continued along the highway.

I found the mall in Pueblo and routed us to it.

It was going to be quite the drive to get to Colorado Springs, but I was prepared for the long haul. We stopped at a gas station on the border between New Mexico and Colorado. While I filled the tank, I tasked Grace with getting snacks and sodas and gave her thirty bucks to do it.

“Don’t use your power,” I reminded her. “Let’s just keep a low profile for a while.”

“I’m going with Grace,” Stella said, and together they went inside the small convenience store, all men in the vicinity watching as they entered.

As I filled up, a guy in a Dodge truck looked over at me and gave a friendly nod.

It seems like men always do this when they happen to lock eyes. Perhaps it harkens back to a time when you never knew if someone was going to try to kill you or not, and the quick nod just lets them know you’re friendly, not looking for any trouble, and just going about your business.

That, or he just wanted to check out Dorian, who had kicked her feet out of the minivan and was stretching her arms over her head.

Probably the second reason, I thought as the pump clicked, letting me know the minivan had taken all it could take.

Grace and Stella returned with two liters of cola and a few bags of trail mix.

“I would like some meat too,” Ingrid said.

To appease the beast girl, I went in and bought her a hot dog.

“What’s that?” Michelle asked when I handed it to Ingrid.

But Ingrid wolfed the thing down before Michelle could get a proper look at it.

“A hot dog; meat,” I said.

“We want hot dogs too.”

“I want something with meat as well,” Stella said.

“I’d like a cup of coffee,” Veronique chimed in.

“Okay, okay, let’s all go in there and get what we want. But no powers. And don’t look at people. Shit, that makes me sound like a dick. I mean, don’t cause trouble. No powers, promise?”

They nodded and together, we all returned to the convenience store.

This raised a few eyebrows – me, a twenty-five year old soy boy with glasses and a scar on his face followed by a beautiful Asian woman, Grace; a punk rock badass, Dorian; a hot blond with sharp features and shorts that were way too short, Veronique; a woman in a too-tight black bodysuit who looked like a combination of Grace and Veronique with her hair braided, Stella; two teenage girls in oversized clothing we stole from the house we’d stayed at, Fiona and Ingrid; and a teen who wore scrubs and had black hair with a pink streak, Michelle.

“Shit,” I murmured as I saw more people starting to look at us. “Grace, will you wipe everyone’s minds of this as we leave?”

“Already on it,” she said, her eyes flashing white.

No one started singing ‘99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall’ as we continued deeper into Colorado, which was possibly a good thing. Although I would have preferred that to more DisNike tunes about the health benefits of wearing sneakers and why all young princes and princesses should choose DisNike sneakers.

But like a good parent (or older brother?), I tuned out the terrible music and enjoyed the scenery.

I’d never been to Colorado before, but I’d heard a bunch about it, and I wasn’t disappointed.

The snow-tipped mountains in the distance reminded me of Appalachia, the winding roads slightly harrowing but fun, especially for the Super Teens. While they mostly continued watching their movie, whenever we took a big curve they would laugh and chatter about the view.

Hell, even Veronique was getting into the spirit, a genuine smile on her face as she looked out the window, not staring at me for once.

So it was a great ride, and eventually, we arrived at the mall in Pueblo.

“Each of you gets a thousand to spend, and each of you,” I said, looking in the rearview mirror at the Super Teens, “will be shopping with a chaperone.”

“A chaperone?” Michelle asked. “I’m going to buy everything!”

“Grace, you’ll go with Fiona; Dorian with Michelle – please try to keep up with her, and I’m speaking to both of you when I say that; Stella with Ingrid; Veronique, you’re on your own. Unless you want to go with any of the other groups, then by all means. And remember, absolutely no powers.”

“Where are you going to be?” Michelle asked.

“I’m staying in the van,” I told her. “I have some writing to do – well, at least some editing – and I want to do a little more research on homes in Colorado Springs.”

“I’ll stay here with Gideon, to protect him,” Veronique said in a playful tone.

“Yeah, he definitely needs some protection,” came Dorian’s reply as she got out of the vehicle. Grace simply laughed and winked at me as her form changed to that of an Hispanic woman with curly dark hair and a mole on the left side of her nostril.

I got out as well, moving to the back to get the cash. Each Super got a thousand, as I had promised, and I gave Grace an extra five thousand just in case people needed more money. It was a shitton of money, actually, but I had no idea what they would buy, and I really didn’t care. It was up to them.

Besides, who doesn’t want to go on a shopping spree?

“Everyone – and by ‘everyone’ I mean Dorian and Grace – if you see something that ‘you know who’ would like,” I said, nodding toward Veronique, who still sat in the back, “then go ahead and buy it.”

The group left, and I got in the back seat with Veronique, the minivan still running so we could keep the A/C on.

I opened my laptop and began by searching the map, cross-referencing it with some of the mansions that were for sale. It was easy to tell the mansions’ sizes by the GoogleFace sky view imaging. I simply zoomed in, and if the home looked as big as a JC Targets or a WalMacy’s, I took note. I marked the address of three places, typing them into the notes app on my smartphone.

By this point, Veronique had lain down in the seat, her head on my lap.

You know,” I told her, “it’s kind of hard to type with you right there.”

“You’ll be okay,” she said and turned her head to the side even more. My brain began to fire: Her head is inches away from your penis! Her head is inches away from your penis!

Damn you, brain, I’m trying to work.

So even with the fact that Veronique was lying on my lap, dangerously close to my mini writer, I kept my focus up.

I would not be swayed so easily!

I began working on the opening chapter of Mutants in the Making 3.

It flowed relatively well from there; or at least, I thought it flowed that way.

It’s really hard to be objective with one’s own writing. But I kept skimming through it, trimming where I could and bettering the manuscript when I found an opening. Veronique shifted her head again, her face now dangerously close to the keyboard and my penis.

Focus, I reminded myself.

And I did; I focused for a good twenty minutes and pre-edited the entire first chapter. I was also able to get some ideas for how I wanted to reframe things later on in the book to keep it interesting and push the story along.

I’ve found that to be incredibly helpful, actually. If I’m ever stuck on a section, I just start rereading from the beginning until I get a new idea of where I should go with the text.

It worked with How Heavy This Axe? and it was working now.

But Veronique had other plans for me, and as I tried to edit and type over her, she reached her fingers up and unzipped my pants.

“What are you doing?”

In answer, she simply shut the laptop and pushed it down to the floor.

I felt my mushroom-tipped avatar level up, quickly doubling in size.

“Are you serious … right … now?” I asked, glancing left and right to see if anyone was coming. The windows were tinted, so I wasn’t as worried as I should have been about someone seeing us. There was a family not far off pushing a stroller toward a hybrid SUV, but they turned away before they got to the minivan.

“Why not?” she asked.

“Um …” I thought of all the losers and beta males in the anime I’d seen and the loser I myself had been a few weeks back.

The new Gideon wouldn’t blink twice about getting a little road head. Or, parking lot head? Whatever. I was down to get down.

Veronique pulled my penis out, and rather than do anything with it, she just stared at it.

“That’s what it looks like,” I said awkwardly.

“I remember what it looks like,” she said and placed her mouth around it. She didn’t do anything at that point, just kept it in her mouth for a good minute.

An excruciatingly long minute.

She has no idea how to give a blowjob, does she?

But shit, I didn’t know how to give one either! I’d never tried, and I mean, I figured it was just like sucking someone’s finger, but I didn’t know for sure.

How was I supposed to?

I didn’t want to start mansplaining this shit, especially not while my penis was in her mouth. So I just let her keep her mouth on it, my muscles spasming as she did so.

After a little more stationary blowjob action, Veronique started jerking it a little bit, her saliva lubricating it some.

This felt great; I kept finding my head falling back, my eyelids lowering, and my mouth opening as I sighed with pleasure, but I never let my eyes shut completely.

I had to stay vigilant!

And it was a good thing I did, too. About the time Veronique stopped jacking me off, and had placed her mouth on my penis again, just keeping it warm, I saw Stella and Ingrid coming toward the vehicle.

“Up, up, up!” I told her.

She sat up, and I stupidly tried to zip myself up without paying attention.

“Shit!” I yelled as the zipper struck my penis. I pulled it back out again to see if blood had been drawn – it hadn’t, thank all the gods – and this time, I carefully stuffed it back in my pants. “Okay, whew,” I said, clearing my throat.

“To be continued?” she asked.

“Please, yes, but not in public.”

Chapter Eighteen: A Mansion in the Rockies

Once my boner subsided, I awkwardly got out of the back and slipped into the front seat, my heart still thumping in my chest. It didn’t take long for everyone else to return to the minivan, each with at least a dozen bags. I was fine with the commotion they caused when they came; it gave me time to get my bearings, and try as I might, it was almost impossible to avoid making eye contact with Veronique, who still stared at me in her uniquely vampiric way.

I was just starting to relax when I saw the police officer.

He was driving one of those fiercely-painted police SUVs, dark lines accenting the white hood, lights on the top, and – since it was the wild wild west – a huge grill on the front for ramming things.

Dorian and Grace finished filling up the back when he first came by, and on the second run, he stopped briefly to look at the two women.

I watched all this through the rearview mirror, and I was surprised Grace didn’t catch him. Dorian did, however, and she offered him a nice little smile and a wave.

Dammit, Dorian, I thought as I started the vehicle.

I could tell he was following us the minute we pulled out of the parking lot. The theme music for Cops made its presence known; the chase was on.

Fiona was able to get some pretty good stuff, some wet-wicking clothes, Grace thought to me. But they’ll still fall off her body if she takes her water form. Still, she’ll have the membrane-based wetsuit she always wears, and besides, it’s nice to dress up and feel pretty. Wait, a cop is following us?

“Pretty sure,” I said aloud, my eyes still trained on the vehicle behind us.

“What’s going on?” Veronique asked from the back.

Wait, I thought to Grace, let’s not have everyone turn around and look at him as we get on the highway. He may have already called for backup. I don’t know. Tell the CBGs what’s going on and to keep a low profile.

Stella too?

Sure.

Everyone, Gideon and I think a police officer may be following us, Grace thought to all of us. I’ll try to see if I can catch his eyes in the rearview mirror, and once I do, I should be able to get him off our tail. We’d prefer not to let the teens know at this point, so please don’t turn and look all at the same time.

Rather than wait for Grace to try to use her telepathic abilities, Stella, who now sat behind me, looked over her shoulder and casually lifted a hand.

“No!” I yelled as the police officer’s SUV started moving backward at the same speed.

“Music,” Grace said, turning on the radio. “Let’s listen to music!”

The sound of pop radio – shudder – vomited from the minivan’s speakers as I watched the police vehicle crash into the car behind it.

It didn’t just slow; it was like the SUV had bounced off an invisible wall and went backward at the same velocity, causing a series of car wrecks.

The three Super Teens all turned at the same time.

“Whoa!” Michelle said, pulling a giant lollipop out of her mouth.

Apparently, she’d purchased a diabetes-inducing amount of candy, which all the teens had started in on as if it were Halloween.

My hands clenched tightly around the wheel, I slammed my foot on the gas pedal, giving that goddamn minivan all she had. With enough highway escapades under my belt to seriously want to avoid another, I kept my foot pressed down hard, expecting Angel to appear out of nowhere, or a helicopter, or something like that.

The farther away we got, the better.

It had happened so fast.

One second the cop was tailing us, then he was suddenly speeding backward, and the final second he was causing a pileup on the access ramp.

“You could jeopardize our mission doing things like that,” Veronique told Stella, once she’d put all the pieces together.

“I solved our problem, didn’t I?”

I glanced in the rearview mirror to see Veronique and Stella staring each other down. Up until twenty-four hours ago, Veronique had been our wild card, the one who acted rather than planned out what she was going to do next.

Talk about tasting one’s own medicine. Problem was, we all had to have a sip, a spoonful of sugar not helping that medicine go down, and moves like that were what led to calamity.

“Cool it,” I said. “We’ll deal with this when we get to our new place, but seriously – we’re going to have to work together better; otherwise, mistakes are going to happen.”

Another glance in the rearview mirror and I saw Fiona and Michelle exchanging glances, both sucking on lollipops; Ingrid looked indifferent as she chewed on a long Tootsie Roll; Dorian, who sat between Veronique and Stella, looked like she was ready to teleport the hell out of there; and glancing to the right I saw my co-pilot with her eyes shining white, ready to take on anything that may come.

Talk about a much-welcomed letdown.

Nothing happened; no helicopters, no other police vehicles, no supers. And at the speed we were moving, eighty-five miles per hour, we were pretty far away from the incident within ten minutes.

Only problem was, we still had about half an hour before we reached Colorado Springs.

What can we do to lighten the mood? I thought to Grace.

I don’t know, sing a song?

Were you reading my mind or something? I thought I told you about that.

The song that you were thinking of, Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall – it’s very catchy. Maybe we could sing that?

We’re not singing Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall, only because I think it encourages alcoholism. I never really thought about that until just this moment, and really, singing this on the school bus when I was twelve years old probably had some type of psychological effect on at least a few of the kids. I’ll handle it.

“Michelle, how much candy do you have?” I asked in my nicest voice.

“Um, how many pounds do you think we bought, Dorian?” Michelle asked.

“A lot, like five pounds. It was expensive.”

“Five pounds? Damn! Okay, I want everyone to eat some candy,” I called over my shoulder. “We’re about to arrive at our new home for the time being, and everyone needs to be positive and hyped up on sugar. I swear I’ll turn this car around if you kids don’t start eating some candy!”

Stella was the first to laugh at the weird dad face I was making. Hearing Stella laugh brightened the mood of the Super Teens, and it also relaxed Dorian and Veronique a bit, at least enough for them to accept some candy from the back. Hell, even Veronique was sucking on a lollipop by the time the bag was passed up to me. I wanted to tell her, that’s how you do it!, but I suppressed the thought.

Be a good boy, Gideon, I told myself as I focused on the road.

“That’s good advice,” Grace commented. “Sorry, wasn’t reading your thoughts. Here, have some more candy.”

It took us a little navigating, but we finally found Gold Camp Road, which saddled up to Bear Creek. It was a secluded area, a luxury neighborhood, and I found the place that was for sale. I also saw the home next to it (the place I’d scoped out) and was glad to see that the owners were home.

I could tell by the size that there were at least five or six bedrooms, several acres of land, and I already knew there was a pool in the back, thanks to the pictures on GoogleFace.

It would do just fine. There wasn’t a fence in the front, and looking around the neighborhood, I saw that there weren’t any fences at all. As long as we kept our activities to the back, people wouldn’t see us. Especially with the tree coverage that surrounded the property.

“Okay,” I told everyone, “stay in the car until Grace and I deal with the owners. Are we clear?”

“You got it, Gideon!” Michelle shouted from the back.

As we stepped out of the minivan, Grace took the form of a thin redhead wearing aviators. We approached the front door, and Grace rang the bell.

A fit-looking woman with blond-dyed brown hair answered the door. She had wide shoulders and tan lines visible under her blouse.

Before she could ask, ‘Can I help you?’ Grace had her under control.

“Who’s in the house with you?” I asked her.

“My husband is just waking up from a nap. I think he’s going golfing later this afternoon. Our son is also here, playing video games in the theater upstairs.”

Video games in the theater upstairs? I wanted to pump my fist, but I kept the gesture to myself.

“Good,” I said with my most sincere shit-eating grin. “Gather everyone; the family is going on vacation.”

“Certainly.” The woman turned away, leaving the door wide open.

“What should I tell them?” I asked Grace. “I think we may be here for up to a week.”

“Your first idea is better than your last,” she said, twirling a finger in her long crimson hair. “That would be a nice vacation to take.”

I nodded. “I never pictured myself as a travel agent.”

The woman returned with her husband and their son, and before the husband or son could say anything, they too were under Grace’s spell. The husband had a beard to be proud of and the son wore a Colorado Avalanche beanie.

“Great, it’s a family of three, right? Are there any more?”

“Nope,” said the husband.

“Just us,” the wife added.

“Good, that makes it even easier. Your family wants to go on a vacation to Asia. Specifically, to Thailand, and from there maybe to Cambodia, and then to Bali. It’s a surprise vacation! You’ll tell your work that you need to take a week off to visit Asia. You know what, make it two weeks. What’s your job again?”

“I’m the CEO of a biomedical company,” said the wife.

“I’m a writer,” said the husband.

“Now there’s a career I can get behind, and regardless, you’ve both been doing great work, which is why you need to go to Asia for two weeks. Hell, since you’re the CEO, who’s going to say anything about it?”

The woman considered that for a moment.

“And from one writer to another,” I told the husband, “I know Asia will fire up the muse. I’d love to go there, but I’m sort of stuck in America while I take care of some things. Besides all that, it’s not like you have to ask anyone’s permission to travel. A win-win, if you ask me.”

“I agree,” he said. “It’ll be inspirational.”

“So, I want one of you to buy the tickets. You’re leaving today, as in now. Even if you have to fly to another city and stay overnight. Today is the start of the trip. Got it? Pack all the things you need for three weeks, even though you’re only going for two. And don’t forget your passports!”

Chapter Nineteen: Running through Walls

The Super Teens brought all their packages into the expensive living room, and I swear it was like something out of a magical Christmas you always wished would happen when you were a kid. Packages upon packages, stuff for the CBGs and for the Super Teens.

The Colorado place made the Austin lake house look small in comparison, the ceilings as high as my apartment building back in New Haven, fancy art, tons of places to stretch out, an expansive kitchen – what a place to call mi casa!

While they distracted me – or maybe, while I let them distract me – Dorian unpacked our IEDs in the garage, discreetly finding a place for Angel’s head as well. That was still our leverage, but I hadn’t quite figured out how it was going to play into the equation.

No matter. The important thing now was feigning interest in their successful shopping spree.

“The problem is, I move really fast,” Michelle explained. “And because I move really fast – really, really fast – most clothing doesn’t work well on me because of friction. That’s why I wear special fabrics that were created for me.”

I nodded at the chatty, youngest Super.

“So I decided to stick to things that wouldn’t have a friction issue, like scarves and makeup. No friction there! Plus I got ten pairs of DisNike Princess Run shoes. I can wear out a pair of shoes in a day or less, so it’s good to have extra. They are very cool shoes too, pink. One has glitter. My size is too small for the cooler ones, though.”

“That’s great,” I said once she finished showing me every single pair she’d purchased.

Ingrid had gone for oversized clothing, hopefully to combat the fact that her clothes always ripped when she took her beast form. Her shirt was something a linebacker would wear, her pants big enough for a grizzly, but for some reason, it didn’t look too bad on her. It reminded me a bit of flashy Korean fashion during the Gangnam Style years, like she was wearing her older brother’s clothes or something.

As Grace had told me in the minivan, Fiona had issues with clothing due to her water abilities. To counteract this, she’d bought attire to go over her custom bathing suit, and as long as she didn’t partially – or completely – turn into water, she’d be fine. Ironically, most of Fiona’s clothing involved island or beach-themed pictures. I don’t know if she was trying to be tongue-in-cheek, or if she genuinely liked Abercrombie and Eagle Outfitters Americana clothing, but I didn’t say anything about it.

“And what did you two buy?” I asked when Dorian entered the living room, done with hiding the IEDs and other assorted goodies.

“Just some clothes,” Dorian said in a way that indicated she would rather not talk about it in front of the Super Teens. I picked up on the innuendo and moved on.

“All right then – Michelle, as I promised, I want to check your settings. After that, I’m going to use their PC to make some printouts for each of you. I want everyone here to know more about their power and how they can be used together. This is me trying to get my shit together.”

Stella, who hadn’t shown me what she’d bought, shot me a crooked smile. “You’re just now trying to get it together?” She was still in her black mil-spec suit, but she did have a few bags from WalMacy’s and Victor and Victoria’s Secret, which meant she’d at least upped her underwear game.

“I’m in a constant state of improvement, kind of like democracy.”

I surveyed the room to see if anyone got my joke. They didn’t, so I motioned Michelle over.

“I can’t wait,” Michelle said as she appeared in front of me and lay down on the floor.

Stella laughed. “Michelle, you can use the couch.”

“Really?”

In the time it would take to blink, she was now lying on the couch, her legs propped up on some of the shoeboxes.

“Everyone else, pick out a room,” I said. “There are six bedrooms here, so …”

“Dorian, Stella, Grace, and I each get a room,” Veronique pushed her blond hair out of her face. “That leaves two rooms, and you three can decide how you’d like to split those.”

“I’ll stay with Michelle,” Fiona said. “Wait, where is Gideon going to sleep?”

I cleared my throat. “Um, the study. I’ll sleep in the study, or, maybe the office. I’m sure there’s an office here. Or here on the couch; it’s a nice living room, right?”

Michelle nodded and craned her neck in my direction.

Good save, Writer Gideon, Grace thought to me as she followed in line behind the others.

“Okay,” I told Michelle, pressing open the port on her neck. “This isn’t going to hurt or anything, but try to be nice and still for me.”

“I’ll try my best, Gideon!”

Not a lot of login hassle for Michelle either; not even a password this time. Loading her drive simply pulled up her stats and abilities.

Michelle, Subject M

Build: 012

Base height: 123 Centimeters

Base weight: 35 Kilos

Strength: 1

Intelligence: 4

Constitution: 6

Wisdom: 4

Dexterity: 8

Charisma: 8

“You’re definitely charismatic,” I said when I found her abilities.

“I am?” she asked, wide-eyed. “Whoa.”

I opened the abilities folder. “Here’s the good stuff.” A shadow box with several dials appeared:

Main: Enhanced Speed

Focused Time Perception: 3

Manic Warping: 9

Acceleration Resistance: 7

Molecular Oscillation: 3

Deceleration: 6

Aim Dodging: 6

Hyper-Accelerated Metabolism: 9

“Damn,” I said as I hovered over the first one and got an explanation. “Daaaayyyum.”

“Damn,” Michelle repeated. “Daaaayyum.”

I smiled at the young Super.

Explanations appeared over the titles: Focused Time Perception allowed her to maintain focus at heightened speeds. Acceleration Resistance was self-explanatory, and it helped her to resist normal human issues associated with moving as rapidly as she did. Deceleration was also self-explanatory, and Aim Dodging let her avoid linear attacks. Hyper-Accelerated Metabolism was why she needed to eat so much.

Case in point: the lollipop currently in her mouth, her fourth since we’d all sat down in the living room.

As for the more complicated abilities, with Molecular Oscillation she could vibrate molecules at high frequencies, allowing her to pass through solid matter.

“We’ll play with this in a minute,” I whispered.

I moved to Manic Warping. Similar to Dorian’s Overcharge, Manic Warping wasn’t an ability at all. It was a handicap, and it was likely what was causing her to warm up and tense at times.

Like the other handicaps that had been put into the supers’ abilities system, trying to just dial it down didn’t seem to do much. As usual, I’d need to tinker with her other abilities to get that number down.

It was important that she be able to focus better at high speeds, so I wanted to increase the Focus Time Perception ability.

I brought Acceleration Resistance down by one notch, which decreased Manic Warping by two. I didn’t know what it would do in the end, but I brought her Accelerated Metabolism down by two notches as well, figuring it was also leading to her overly bouncy nature. This brought the Warping down by another two.

It was looking better, more balanced, but I still wanted to play around with the Molecular Oscillation, figuring that like Grace’s Opacity ability, it would prove useful in certain situations.

I increased Molecular Oscillation by three points to see what it would do to the other abilities. To my surprise, the only thing it increased was Focused Time Perception, which was a boon anyway.

I decided to leave it at that for now. Her final abilities read:

Main: Enhanced Speed

Focused Time Perception: 4

Manic Warping: 4

Acceleration Resistance: 6

Molecular Oscillation: 6

Deceleration: 6

Aim Dodging: 6

Hyper-Accelerated Metabolism: 7

I unplugged the mini USB cable and returned it to my pocket, where I now kept a number of things aside from my wallet, including the key that turned off GPS tracking and the lipstick-sized three terabyte hard drive. “Are you ready to try something cool?”

“We’re done?” she asked, turning to me.

“Almost. I just leveled you out a little bit; I think you’ll be feeling better after everything settles.”

“I don’t feel any different,” she said, looking upward as if she were trying to peer into her own brain. “Well, come to think of it, I do feel a little different.”

“Good, because what we’re about to do is going to be pretty freaking cool.” I cupped my hands around my mouth and called out, “Hey everyone, who wants to see Michelle’s new ability?”

I heard some movement upstairs, but only Veronique came down.

“I have a new ability?”

“Have you ever traveled through a wall before?” I asked Michelle. “Or a stationary object?”

Veronique gave me a funny look. She now wore a short black dress which scarcely covered her ass. I knew instantly it was something Dorian bought for her, evident in the fact that the shoulder straps were clasped together by a pair of skull and crossbones.

“Nice dress,” I told her.

She turned once, showing me what I’d already seen.

“Are you saying I can run through a wall?” Michelle asked, not at all picking up on the sexual tension between Veronique and me.

“That’s what I’m saying, but we’d better be careful when we test it.” I snapped my fingers as a solution occurred to me. “That’s it! We need a mattress.”

Grace, I’ve got a request.

Are you asking me to use my powers to bring a mattress downstairs?

Sure, unless you want to carry it! I hate to say I’m not strong enough to lug a queen-size mattress down the stairs by myself. I might be able to do it, but, it definitely wouldn’t be easy.

I’m joking with you, Writer Gideon. I’ll have one down momentarily, and we can all come and see Michelle’s new ability.

Grace moving a mattress with her mind definitely got the attention of the others upstairs. It wasn’t long before everyone was in the back yard, the mattress leaning against one of the house’s outside walls.

This is a terrible idea, I thought, imagining the small teenage girl smacking into the wall. I didn’t want her to kill herself. But there was no real way to test it, unless …

“That’s it!” I said, looking from Stella to Grace, who instantly read my thoughts.

“Sure,” Grace said and moved the mattress to the middle of the yard.

“What?” Stella asked, still not on our wavelength.

“I want you to use your abilities to create a cushioned, unsurpassable barrier behind the mattress.”

“How?” she asked.

“Try to make one using your Vibration Emissions ability or Kinetic Energy Manipulation. Basically, I don’t want Michelle to just sail through that thing; I want you to be able to stop her without hurting her. I repeat, I don’t want her slamming into an invisible wall.”

Stella thought for a moment.

“Here, let’s try it with me. Create a barrier in front of me that cushions me as I run into it. Does that make sense? Think of it like … have you ever chewed bubblegum?”

Stella looked at me like I was stupid. Ingrid and Fiona giggled behind her. For her part, Michelle was focused on her own hand, waving it around and seeing if she could pass it through her other hand.

“Are you ready to try it?” I asked Stella.

She bit her lip and finally nodded, motioning with her chin to indicate the new barrier.

I took a few steps forward and felt something start to engulf my body. It was almost as if I were pressing into a giant cushion, something made of foam. There was some resistance, but it didn’t hurt to touch it.

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about.” I moved backward and ran into it, again cushioned by the invisible barrier. “Exactly what I’m talking about.”

“Are we ready for me to try this?” Michelle asked excitedly.

Dorian, Fiona, Ingrid, Veronique, and I stood back as Grace got into position to the left of the mattress, holding it upright using telekinesis. Stella joined her, creating a cushioned barrier about fifteen feet behind the mattress.

“Okay,” I said once everyone was in place. “I’ve tweaked an ability in you that should allow you to pass through that mattress. I want you to think of …”

Nope, I had no idea what I was doing, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me from changing someone’s life. I swallowed hard and continued, smiling at Michelle as I said, “I want you to think of your body as a vibration and everything else as a vibration and pass right through that mattress. Do not smash into the mattress, pass through it, and once you do, immediately slow your speed. Ready?”

I stepped away from Michelle, letting her get into the right headspace. She turned toward the mattress, nodded, took a step back, and disappeared.

The young Super appeared on the other side of the mattress, not even jostling it as she passed through. She looked around, excitement on her face.

Stella was the first to cheer.

“Hell, yeah!” I clapped.

Michelle stuck both hands in the air like she was a champion and the rest of us responded with whoops of delight. Hell, even Veronique was clapping. But it was Grace I was focused on, who was giving me a look that told me just how proud she was that I’d taught Michelle something.

With this in mind, and trying to emulate a good coach, I turned to Michelle and gave her the thumbs up. “You did it. Now get over here and do it again.”

Chapter Twenty: Stat Check

After a bit more practice, my next step was to make printouts of all their abilities. I wanted each of them to know their stuff and where they stood, with the bigger goal of empowering them to make connections on how they could use their abilities together.

To better know thy enemy, you must know thyself.

Or however Sun Tzu phrased it.

It felt good, actually, compiling everything. I felt like I was contributing, like I was finally getting a grasp on the Cherry Blossom Girls and the Super Teens, which was a terrible name – you don’t have to tell me that – but I wanted there to be a distinction between the CBGs and the teens.

Michelle and I were in the office downstairs and I was sitting behind a mahogany desk, feeling like a goddamn CEO. There were two monitors in front of me, and the printer had just finished printing Michelle’s stuff. I’d already gone over Stella and Veronique’s stats and still had the rest of the CBGs and Super Teens left.

“Look at this tonight and memorize how your abilities are classified,” I told Michelle.

“Got it!”

“Tell Grace I want to see her next.”

“Okay,” she said and zipped out of the room.

I looked at Grace’s data on the screen and used the hotkeys to print what I’d typed out. I’d already modified her name, figuring she’d prefer that:

Subject Grace

Build: 008

Base height: 181 Centimeters

Base weight: 54 Kilos

Main: Psychic

Strength: 1

Intelligence: 9

Constitution: 4

Wisdom: 8

Dexterity: 3

Charisma: 6

Omnikinesis: 10

Second Sight: 5

Psychometry: 5

Telepathy: 6

Clairsentience: 5

Psychokinesis: 7

Hypnosis: 5

Nightmare Sight: 6

Main Second: Shifter

Speed of Change: 10

Texture Consistency: 10

Opacity: 10

Voice Match: 10

One thing that was different about Grace’s stats as compared to the others was that she was able to be completely maxed out on her second ability. There was literally no room for improvement, which was how she was able to use her ability so fluidly and why the forms she took were so accurate.

So we’ll work with her psychic ability, I thought as she came into the room. She instantly shifted to wear a green bathing suit and a red beret, her long blonde hair braided at the side.

“Like it?” she asked, turning to give me a look at the other side.

“Cammy from Street Fighter,” I said. “Where the hell did you uncover that from?”

“Fiona and Ingrid found a gaming system in the boy’s room. They’re playing it now, a fighting game.”

“Damn, I may have to get on that,” I said. “I’m all about Marvel versus Capcom. Shit is classic.”

“They used this form too.” She was now a cosplayed Chun-Li to a T, down to the silk brocades and ribbons in her hair.

I cleared my throat. “Please save these forms for later.”

Grace sat on my lap, the silk parts of her blue getup cool against my skin. “I have other plans for later.”

“Back to this,” I said, reaching for the paper from the printer and giving it to her. “This is a breakdown of the abilities granted to you. As you can see, your shifter ability is maxed out, so we’ll focus on seeing if we can tweak or improve your psychic stuff. Now, this may not be possible because your Omnikinesis is set to ten, which seems to be the best way to use it. I don’t know. I’m not an expert.”

A strand of Chun-Li’s dark hair fell into Grace’s face. “You’d like us to help you go over our abilities and ask any questions we may have. In doing so, we will hopefully gain a better understanding of what we’re capable of as a team. Right?”

“Yes,” I said with a grin. “So please look it over, and get creative.”

“Sure.” She stood and adjusted the tiny white waistband keeping her costume together before heading for the door. “I’ll send the next one in.”

Sometimes I thought my life was the most fucked a life could be with the caveat being I had yet to be arrested or partially dismembered in some way. Then I saw Grace and realized that, while my life was definitely bizarre and certainly sinful and iniquitous, I was living a dream.

The next Super to enter the room solidified this for me. And ‘enter’ is an understatement.

Dorian appeared next to me in a flash, her hand dropping to my shoulder as I copy/pasted her stats, put them in a separate doc, and printed them for her.

“Here you go,” I said.

She took the paper and studied it. “So, this is me …”

“According to what they have on your drive, yes.”

“I think I’m fifty kilos now. I’ve been eating out more lately.” She folded the paper and stuck it in her back pocket.

“You don’t look a kilo over forty-nine to me, but then again, I’m not keen on the metric system. Now, let’s take a look at this.” I glanced at the screen to go over her stats:

Dorian Gray, Subject DG

Build: 7.543

Base height: 170 Centimeters

Base weight: 49 Kilos

Strength: 2

Intelligence: 6

Constitution: 7

Wisdom: 3

Dexterity: 6

Charisma: 8

Main: Ergokinesis

Overcharge: 2

Charge Capacity: 4

Charge Integrity: 3

Main Second: Teleportation

Tele-Sphere Radius: 3

Conscious Spatial Awareness: 10

Recharge Speed: 5

Restoration Speed: 6

Teleportation Rapidity: 7

Teleportation Distance: 10

Empathetic Teleportation: 6

Banishment: 3

Overcharge: 1

“Ah, here it is. I believe there is some opportunity with banishment. It hasn’t been something you’ve really used, and it could get us out of a sticky situation. Maybe …” I thought of the others’ abilities. “How many people do you think you could banish? Would it be related to your Tele-Sphere Radius?”

“Makes sense.” Dorian had the look on her face of a college student who’d just had a quiz sprung on them.

“I mean, think about it. Grace could pool enemies together and you could banish them. A quick way to get rid of people; in groups at least.”

She was quiet for a moment, her head bobbing slightly side to side as she read through her abilities. It must be weird to have your skills condensed to a single sheet of paper. If mine were condensed it would look like this:

Main: Wordsmith

Writing: 4

Speed of Writing: 8

Trope usage: 5

Originality: 2

Grammar: 6

World Building: 4

So not too bad, but not that great either. And unlike the supers, I wasn’t able to simply tweak something for optimum performance.

“What if you brought everything that was at ten down by a point and moved Banishment up to five?” she finally asked.

“Yeah.” I returned my focus to the computer screen. “That could work well. Want to do it now?”

“Sure.” She got on her knees in front of me, placing her hands on my thighs as I fumbled for the mini USB cable.

“Relax,” she told me with a grin.

“Yeah, sorry,” I said as I bent over and plugged into her neck. “We could do this on the bed.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Kidding. Just make the adjustment.”

In the end, and even with the tension between us, I was able to bring things down and increase her Tele-Sphere Radius, Recharge Speed, and Banishment by a point, which upped her Overcharge to two. When I was finished, it looked like this:

Main Second: Teleportation

Tele-Sphere Radius: 4

Conscious Spatial Awareness: 9

Recharge Speed: 6

Restoration Speed: 6

Teleportation Rapidity: 7

Teleportation Distance: 9

Empathetic Teleportation: 6

Banishment: 4

Overcharge: 2

“Okay, we’re done for now,” I told her. “Let me know if the Overcharge makes you feel odd or anything. Give it a day.”

“Thanks, Doc.” Dorian stood, bent over, and kissed me on the cheek.

“Send the other one in – I mean the next one, Ingrid. Two more to go.”

It only took a moment to check the info on Ken’s app and transfer it to a Word doc. I then had Ingrid sit on the table while I plugged into her neck just to get the correct levels. Once this was done, I printed the document for her.

Ingrid, Subject I

Build: 3.2

Base height: 150 Centimeters

Base weight: 40 Kilos

Strength: 1

Intelligence: 3

Constitution: 5

Wisdom: 4

Dexterity: 7

Charisma: 5

Main: Beast Morphing

Beast Soul: 10

Morph Speed: 10

She looked over the paper. “Just two?”

“That’s all they have listed. I’m guessing that when you change to your beast form …”

“Tulip.”

“My guess is your physical attributes change when you morph into, um, Tulip. You’re maxed out for now. Do you think Tulip would let me check her stats?”

“Tulip is a him.”

“Okay, would he let me check his stats?”

Ingrid paused, then shook her head. “Nah, he’s not so friendly. It takes a lot of power to get him to behave around the others and not kill them.”

I gaped at her. The thin brunette was entirely at odds with the thing she transformed into; uncanny didn’t begin to describe it. She was petite, just a bit taller than Michelle, and of the three, she was the one who seemed the most emaciated. “How do you trigger your transformation? Do you have to get angry or something?”

She started laughing.

“What?”

“Is that what you think?”

“I’m just asking. There are loads of ways people trigger their inner beast monster.”

“Beast monster?”

“You know what I mean. Tulip. What I’m trying to say here is that historically there have been different ways for people to change into whatever it is they change into. The Hulk, or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, or … I don’t think you’ve read Superpowereds by Drew Hayes, but like Hershel and Roy Daniels …”

“Do you want me to change into it now, so you can see what triggers it?” she asked, her eyes narrowing on me.

“Ha! Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, um, I’m just trying to know more about your ability so I can coordinate better with the others. That’s … that’s what I’m trying to say here.”

“Well, to answer your question …” She hesitated a moment.

“Your secret is safe with me.”

She snorted. “That sounded so dumb. I pinch myself to trigger the transformation. And someone else can’t pinch me, it has to be me.”

“Cool, that’s all I’m asking. Send Fiona in, please.”

Fiona came in a few minutes later, which gave me time to type out her base stats and abilities. I had her sit on the desk, plugged in, and got the levels typed up. Interesting stuff, too; she would be most versatile in a fighting party.

Fiona, Subject F

Build: 9.464

Base height: 153 Centimeters

Base weight: 41 Kilos

Strength: 3

Intelligence: 5

Constitution: 6

Wisdom: 5

Dexterity: 4

Charisma: 4

Main: Aquakinesis

Hydrokinetic Flight: 1

Water Vortex Creation: 3

Viscosity Manipulation: 8

Tidal Wave Generation: 2

Aquatic Adaptation: 7

Water Pressure Generation: 6

Motor-Skill Manipulation: 3

Water Negation: 4

Morph Speed: 9

“I have no idea what any of this means,” Fiona said after looking over her abilities. “Okay, I’m lying a bit. I know a little about it, but what’s Viscosity Manipulation? And Hydrokinetic Flight?”

“Fiona, I think there’s a lot to your abilities that you may not know about.” I turned back to the computer and scrolled over it once again, wishing I’d taken some notes because I had to think twice about some of these words myself. “The first one you mentioned, Viscosity Manipulation, has to do with manipulating other bodies of water. The second one, at least from what I can tell, would give you the ability to fly using water. But I don’t know how that would play out.”

“I can fly?” She raised an eyebrow, and I could tell she wanted to give it a shot right then and there.

“Wait, don’t do it in the house. We’ll play with it tomorrow. Let me do a little more research before we really dive deep – no pun intended – into your water abilities. I know that’s kind of a letdown, but I have a ton of other work to do and it’s getting late. Plus, we need to get some food, right?”

“What kind of food?”

“The best kind of food there is: pizza.”

The only problem with getting pizza was that I didn’t think they would deliver seven or eight pies without wanting a credit card. This meant I needed to find a place close by, phone in an order, and pick it up there. Even then, I knew they’d want a credit card. Looked like we were going with cash.

Luckily, there was a place a few miles away, and after showing it to Dorian, she made a quick sketch of it in the air and we both teleported there.

“You don’t have to actually make the sketch though, right?” I asked.

“No, but it does help for some reason. It’s like reinforcing the idea,” she said as we walked into the pizza place.

I ordered seven pies of different varieties and paid with a Benjamin.

We waited outside, the cool Colorado evening reminding me of New Haven, making me wish I’d brought a sweater.

Nashville and New Haven aside, we didn’t normally travel alone, but Grace and Veronique were in the middle of some property show they’d also gotten Stella hooked on, and the Super Teens were playing video games.

So it was just Dorian and Yours Truly.

I told Dorian what I’d figured out so far about the Super Teens and especially Fiona's abilities. She listened, her attention on both what I was saying and our surroundings. I also told her about my plans for the rest of the night, that I was getting serious with my research, and that I wasn’t talking about research for writing; I was talking about research for destruction.

“There’s a facility in New Mexico, two in California, and one in Washington State. I don’t know if there are more than that, but I want to spend a few hours just going through everything with a fine-tooth comb.”

“Do you think you’ll find something else?” she asked.

“I’m hoping so, but I’m going to need to be able to focus to really look through all his stuff. Think you can distract everyone for me?”

She smirked. “This crowd doesn’t need a lot to distract them if you haven’t realized it. But to be honest with you, I wish we could go somewhere tonight, somewhere far away again. You have to admit, that was kind of fun when we went to Nashville.”

I instinctively placed my hand on my tattoo. It was still sore, but I’d been so busy over the last two days that I hadn’t thought much about it aside from keeping it clean. “Yeah, that was fun. Maybe when this stuff settles down, you and I can go somewhere really far for just a day or two. I’d love a little writer’s retreat. And …”

“What?”

“I’d like to see more of you, more of your tattoos, and more of your art.” I turned to her. “Like the stuff you did on the wall in the hotel room in Austin.”

Dorian was in the ribbed sweater she’d purchased in Austin, a pair of black denim shorts, and tights. She’d bought a new pair of shoes at the mall too; red combat boots, which looked pretty badass.

“Yeah, let’s do that,” she finally said as a cold breeze whipped past. “We’re all going to have to get out of here once we finish doing what we’re doing. And I don’t know what that means yet, but it may mean going to another continent, or country.”

“I haven’t thought much about that, to be honest with you.” I shrugged. “I don’t know how we’d get through the airport, but with Grace, it would be doable. She would just have to be at the front of every line and mind flash anyone we came into contact with. It’d be a little stressful.”

“But it might be something we have to do.”

“Definitely.”

The pizza was finally ready, and we stacked all seven boxes in my arms. Dorian placed her hand on me, and just as we were about to teleport away, Michelle appeared out of nowhere.

“I was so hungry I had to run here,” she said, not at all out of breath. The young woman pivoted from foot to foot, ready to take off again if need be.

“Here, have a slice,” I told her. I opened the box, letting the smell of melting cheese escape. “How did you know where we were?”

The excited girl grabbed a piece and started munching. “Sorry, Grace told me,” she said between bites, gulping the whole slice down in seconds. She stood on her tippy toes and tried to look into the top box. “Come on, give me another piece, Gideon. Or I’ll pass through you and the pizza boxes and steal one!”

“That’s not how it’s supposed to work,” I laughed. “You’ll get to eat more when we get back. And you don’t have to run this time; let’s just teleport there. How does that sound?”

“Fine,” she said and reached out, touching Dorian’s arm.

A second later we were standing in the dining room with seven pizzas, eight supers, and one writer ready to slam.

Chapter Twenty-One: Know Thy Enemy

I let the supers eat around the television while I continued my work in the office. I didn’t come pizza-less though; I had a stack of slices on a fancy schmancy plate, ready to satiate my craving for cheese, carbs, and meat.

Focus, focus, focus.

Now that I had the CBGs and Super Teens figured out, I needed to dig deeper into the abilities of the attackers back at the New Mexico facility.

I started with Chloe, the one who used light-based attacks.

What I found was even more unsettling than I’d previously imagined.

Chloe, Subject C

Build: 17.169

Base height: 185 Centimeters

Base weight: 56 Kilos

Strength: 4

Intelligence: 7

Constitution: 7

Wisdom: 5

Dexterity: 7

Charisma: 4

Main: Acoustokinesis

* Sound Sculpting

* Acoustic Acceleration

* Sonoluminescence

* Rhythm Manipulation

* Sonokinetic Combat

* Sound Detection

* Sonic Stimulation

* Overcharge

“Damn,” I said. I typed up the information, solidifying it in my mind.

Like all the other supers on Ken’s app, I wasn’t able to see her actual levels, only her abilities. But seriously, from what I could tell she could: a) turn sound into energy; b) use sound for combat; and c) use sound to stimulate something or someone, probably like a siren’s call.

I wasn’t presented definitions of what the other abilities did. Some were self-explanatory. Others, like Sound Sculpting, needed further investigation.

Rather than move on to the other two supers who had accosted us – the metal woman and the fire and ice guy – I went to the video section and started clicking randomly through the clips. There was no search option here, but I did figure out something as I began going through the videos, deciphering their labels.

The super’s build number is also in the file name! This meant I could parse through the thousand or so videos much more easily.

I checked Chloe’s build again – 17.169 – and did a basic document search for the number seventeen. There were others, but I finally found a video labeled: 11182029AEFL#17169.

Filmed on November 18, 2029, Agency of Enhancement and Future Logistics # 17.169.

Sure enough, it was a snuff video.

In this first video, Chloe, a shapely brunette with an oblong face, exploded an inmate’s head using her powers. Just to confirm that there had been no sound when she did it, I turned the volume up and watched the snuff vid again while chewing on a slice of pizza.

“That’s fucked up,” I whispered.

I red-X’d that video and moved on. In the next clip, marked May 5, 2029, or 05292029AEFL#17169, a dozen men and women in prison uniforms stood around Chloe. It was a short video, and as it played, I saw her throat quiver.

The inmates suddenly turned to each other and began fighting – not a regular fight with fists, but a brawl to the death.

One beat another with a crowbar while a stocky Mexican guy used a shiv to carve the face off a beefy skinhead. Another inmate broke a smaller guy’s jaw and tried to pry it off with his hands.

Brutal.

In the next video, she used sonoluminescence to cut down a series of concrete pillars like they were made of butter.

The clip after that showed her standing in a long room, blindfolded. Two cameras this time, giving a split-screen image. A man stood at the other end of the room, wielding a big knife and a gun as he stalked her. When he got within five feet of her, she responded, cutting his knife arm off with a blast of light. The man tried to respond by firing his weapon at her with his remaining arm.

I heard the report but saw no bullet.

A slow-motion playback started up automatically, showing the bullet exit the muzzle of the gun and a wave of force knocking it aside, almost in the way someone would flick away a marble.

“Shit …”

So Chloe was our force to be reckoned with. She was the most powerful member of three, the one we would have to take out first.

Having seen enough, I moved back to the app and typed in ‘steel’ to pull Victoria’s stats, which I then transferred to my computer file.

Victoria, Subject V

Build: 22.232

Base height: 187 Centimeters

Base weight: 66 Kilos

Strength: 9

Intelligence: 4

Constitution: 7

Wisdom: 4

Dexterity: 8

Charisma: 5

Main: Metal Mimicry

* Thermal Resistance

* Bio Metal Weaponry

* Dermal Armor

* Amorphous Metal

* Enhanced Strength

* Contaminant Immunity

I’d already checked her out once, but it was good to give her a second look. Victoria could resist heat attacks, make metal weapons, had a metal-based armor, and was immune to contaminants.

“Yeesh,” I muttered as I went for another slice.

Navigating to the video folder, I searched for her build number. Sure enough, I found the label 10062029AEFL#22232, from October of last year.

In the video, which again had multiple camera angles (including drone camera angles!), Victoria faced off against an actual tank.

They were in an open area, not one of the underground facilities, with a blue sky overhead. The tank was on one side, with its main gun aimed at Victoria as she changed forms. Turning to steel ripped Victoria’s clothes off, showcasing her perky metal nipples, something I’d failed to notice in all the chaos back at the New Mexico facility.

The first tank blast hit her and she skidded backward, leaving a trail in the gravel. Recovering quickly, she dropped back onto one foot and took off toward the tank.

The next blast was rearing up to go when she reached the war machine, but it wasn’t able to fire the round before she punched into its front armor, sending its main gun to the right.

She snapped that in half and began ripping at the top of the tank as if it were made of cardboard. In moments, she had it dismantled and was jumping up and down on it, most definitely killing the driver.

Yikes!

I clicked on another video of Victoria using a blade that had formed on the outer part of her arm to cut into a six-foot-thick concrete wall.

“Got it,” I said, taking the last bite of pizza. “Her abilities are self-explanatory.”

The final Super I needed to search for and note was the fire and ice user, Augustin. I found his details on the app and typed them out to get a better grip on them.

Augustin, Subject Au

Build: 35.998

Base height: 189 Centimeters

Base weight: 59 Kilos

Strength: 2

Intelligence: 8

Constitution: 5

Wisdom: 9

Dexterity: 3

Charisma: 3

Main: Fire Manipulation

* Fire Negation

* Heat Manipulation

* Pyrokinetic Flight

* Pyrokinetic Combat

* Overcharge

Main Second: Ice Manipulation

* Ice Negation

* Cold Generation

* Cryokinetic Constructs

* Ice Aura

* Cryostasis

“Video reel, here we come.”

The usage of fire or ice powers was pretty easy to imagine. They’ve been common magic abilities and powers used in video games, comics, fantasy novels, and other media since my childhood. Hell, my MC in Breakpoint Online – God rest the souls of books I shall not finish – was a pyro mage. His main love interest, cliché enough, was an ice mage.

A hot one too!

Still, seeing these powers in real life was crazytown. I watched Augustin light a man on fire, wield a fire weapon, freeze a second man to death, and torture a third with ice spikes.

Yes, torture someone.

These scenes were especially brutal. In one clip, Augustin approached a man tied to a chair, lighting one side of his body on fire and freezing the other, the two elemental forces meeting in the middle.

“So, that’s what we’re up against.” I leaned back in the chair and pulled up yet another Augustin snuff vid.

Finally, I was just about to call it quits for the night when something occurred to me.

Ken wouldn’t just leave me this stuff for no reason; there has to be more information here.

I went back to the folder where the facilities were listed, clicking through all the data until I came to the Sacramento facility. Figuring it couldn’t hurt to check out our next target, I started perusing the documents.

There was a bunch of contractor data here, and after skimming through it, I caught the receipt of an equipment transfer to Nevada.

But where in Nevada? I thought as I skimmed through another PDF.

It took me five minutes of skimming – some of the PDFs were pretty long – but I finally stumbled upon a memo typed out by one of the facility managers which had an address on it and a name.

“AEFL embryo storage area?” I murmured, running my hand through my beard.

“You didn’t bring me anything to eat.” Veronique stood in the doorway, a mischievous look on her face.

“Well, we could take a trip,” I said, looking at the embryo storage address again.

“A trip where?”

“Nevada.”

“Why?”

I tapped my finger on the computer screen. “I found something, and maybe there will be food along the way. First, though, I need to back all of this stuff up in the cloud. If something happens to my phone, etcetera, I want the information to be available. I’ll only share it with one other person, though.”

“Who’s that?”

“Luke.”

Chapter Twenty-Two: Not Vegas

“Well, it’s not Vegas, but it’s not bad.”

Dorian, Veronique, Grace, and I stood at a gas station about twenty miles away from the embryo storage facility I’d literally discovered thirty minutes ago. The place was dusty, a tumbleweed city if there ever was one, but the gas station itself wasn’t very busy, which was better for us anyway.

We’d just traveled through Dorian’s teleporter’s paradise, a vortex to make all other vortexes tremble, and my knees were a bit shaky. Real shaky, actually, but at least I didn’t feel the urge to vomit.

Our bellies full, well, aside from Veronique’s, the plan was just to gather a little bit of intel.

That was it.

No infiltration on the embryo storage facility tonight; we’d do that tomorrow after more training. With Grace around, we hoped to perform a little soft interrogation.

“Yep, that’s the facility; some government building or something,” the gas station attendant told us. He was a bald, portly fellow with unfortunate acne. A creeper mustache too, but he seemed nice enough, despite the skull tattoos peeking out from under the sleeves of his work smock.

But hey, I had ink now too, so tatted dudes were cool with me, and hopefully, I with them.

“What else can you tell us about it?” I asked. “Any shift changes?”

The attendant snorted, wiped whatever he’d snorted up on his sleeve, and continued. “Yeah, there’s a shift change about …” He glanced down at his watch. “Hell, it’s in about thirty or forty minutes, I guess. Some of those guys come by here to get gas and pick up beer on their way out.”

“Anything else you can tell us about them?” I asked.

“Well, they ain’t military men, but some of them look like military men. Private security, something like that. I try to stay out of it. I'm just here to give ‘em gas and sell ‘em beer.”

“You mind if we hang out for a minute and wait for some of them to come around?” I asked, only as a courtesy. It was exactly what we were going to do regardless if he wanted us to or not.

“Sure, take a load off. We got a booth over there. Feel free to have whatever you'd like.”

“Thanks, I’ll be taking over from here,” I told him and pointed to Veronique. “I want you to go meet her at the back, in the beer cooler.”

“Will do.” He gave me his smock and headed for the cooler. Veronique followed; I heard the thunk of his body hitting the ground a few moments later.

“All right, as planned,” I said to Grace and Dorian. “Also, we’ll need to do something about his body. Shit. We probably shouldn’t have left him alone with Veronique in the cooler. Grace, a little help?”

“I’m on it,” she said and turned to the walk-in cooler.

As she made her way there, she turned into a spitting image of the man. It was still odd to see her change into something that was completely opposite of her base form, like the fifty-something-year-old bald man with the bad skin, skull tattoos, and Chester the Molester mustache.

But before Grace could reach the cooler and do a little Super micromanagement, Veronique stepped out, dragging the man behind her using the metal on his belt. She placed him in the bathroom and put the ‘Wet Floor’ sign in front of the door.

Problem solved, Grace walked around to the back of the counter, where she joined me.

“You look way more convincing than me,” I told her. I touched the smock the man had given me, cringing at the fact that there were some pretty weird stains on its front. “Maybe I shouldn’t be playing dress-up.”

“Probably not,” Dorian said.

“Cool, I’ll just chill with you two in one of the booths.”

And that was how I ended up sitting in a booth at a gas station in the middle of Nowhere, Nevada, reading a magazine to kill time. Within twenty minutes I was caught up on Fall 2030 tech products, politics, which celebrities were fucking which celebrities, and the best cars to come in 2031.

Dorian, who sat across from me in the booth, also read a magazine; Glamour, or maybe it was Vogue. She had a couple. Maybe she read both of them. She kept sniffing the perfume inserts.

Some of them smelled pretty good.

For her part, Veronique simply stood near the door, arms crossed over her chest. She wasn’t exactly incognito, so at some point close to the time that people were getting off, I called her over to the booth and told her to join us, which she did, admiring whatever new perfume smell Dorian had at the time.

It wasn’t ten minutes later when the first man came into the gas station.

He doesn’t work at the facility, Grace thought to me.

That’s fine; someone who works there will eventually come in.

Are you enjoying your magazines?

Sure, I’m caught up and ready for whatever pop culture quiz NPR could throw at me.

The guy bought some lottery tickets, scratched them at the counter, and moved on.

A woman came in, her hair done up and her body spritzed with a strong floral scent.

Nope, Grace thought to me.

I didn’t think she did. What does she do though? I thought back to her.

She works in one of the casinos, and she just got off work. She’s tired.

The woman bought a pack of cigarettes, a Bull Bean six-hour energy blitz shot, a stick of gum, which Grace told her was free today only. After a muffled burp, the woman dragged herself back to her car.

The next guy to come in definitely fit the bill. He was lean, had a buzz cut, and was pretty chiseled. He wore a black outfit, the top button undone, and his shirt untucked.

That’s our guy, Grace thought to me.

“Yep,” I said, grinning at the man.

Chapter Twenty-Three: Possessed

“How did it go?” Stella asked when we returned to the mansion outside Colorado Springs.

The Super Teens were up in their rooms, hopefully asleep. Stella was sitting on the couch when we materialized into existence, arms crossed over her chest as she watched an action flick starring Natalie Johansson.

Grace winked at me, her form suddenly that of Natalie Johansson.

Stella laughed. “That’s just too entertaining.”

Veronique nodded, one of the first times I’d seen her be cordial with Stella. “It can be very, very entertaining.”

“I can attest to just how entertaining that can be,” I said sheepishly.

“So?” Stella asked me as I came around and sat on the couch next to her.

“We found out what we needed to know: how the facility was set up and what its security apparatus looks like.”

“And?”

“I’m going up to bed,” Dorian announced with a loud yawn.

“I’ll join you,” Grace called after.

Veronique sat down next to me, and I continued telling Stella what we had uncovered.

When I finished, Stella nodded and said, “It doesn’t sound like it’ll be too hard to destroy.”

“I don’t know,” I told her. “Strange things happen whenever we go after these facilities. This one is smaller, and I don’t think it’s as guarded as the others. But we should still be careful.”

“And the girls will stay here?” she asked.

“Yeah, I think it’s best if they stay here. Not that their powers aren’t useful, but … I don’t know, what do you two think? Should they be going into battle with us?”

Veronique thought for a moment. “I was training when I was their age, including real-world extractions. You?”

Stella nodded. “Training, yes, but I never did real-world extractions. We did do tests in the desert and what not.”

“Desert tests?” I asked.

I really wanted to interview Stella, but she seemed a little distrustful of me. She wasn’t completely confident in what we were trying to do, that much was obvious, but she was trying, and I think for the time being she was just giving us the benefit of the doubt.

I hoped to change that.

“There’s a lot of desert in New Mexico, and that’s where most of my outdoor training took place. They had other supers fight against us, probably similar to what you went through, Veronique.”

The metal-hungry vampire nodded. “That’s how Dorian and I met.”

“But I don’t have as much real scenario experience.”

“Then you should get some tomorrow night,” I told her, “because that’s when we’re going to do this.”

I stood, feeling a bit tired. To my surprise, Veronique grabbed my wrist and pulled me back down to the couch.

“What?” I asked her as Stella returned her focus to the television.

She leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Unfinished business.”

Don’t have to tell me twice.

But rather than drag my ragged ass upstairs, she watched another hour of programming with Stella. To be honest, I wanted to go work a little, but I was also exhausted, and ennui had a way of knifing any work ethic I could muster in the back.

It had been a long day though, and I’d gotten a lot done already. No sense in beating myself up.

So I stayed in my spot between Veronique and Stella, zoning out as we watched yet another house-flipping show. Eventually, I got the strength to tell Veronique I wanted to take a shower, and as I went upstairs, she joined me.

When we got to the top of the stairs, she looped her hand in mine and led me to the room she’d designated as hers. The door closed behind us, and Veronique’s clothing dropped. There was nothing really romantic about it; Veronique and sensuality would likely never go hand-in-hand. Off came her top, and she stepped out of her panties.

All before I could even get my shirt off.

“Shower first,” I told her, figuring I probably smelled like a fish market down south.

Her hand came out again and I hesitated before taking it.

“I won’t drain you, I promise.”

“Cool.”

As she helped me undress, I felt a tingling sensation at the back of my skull. It suddenly felt as if I was watching what was happening, but at the same time, taking part in it.

I knew exactly who the culprit was.

Ready for this? Grace thought to me.

Are you serious?

Veronique turned the shower on, looked at me over her shoulder, and gave me a sexy-ish grin. Damn, even if she was trying to be sexy, I still couldn’t help but see the predator in her.

When I didn’t immediately come forward, she grabbed my arm and pulled me into the shower.

Just sit back and enjoy, Grace thought to me.

Don’t make my eyes turn white; she’ll know.

Don’t let her look at you.

How?

Figure it out.

This is wrong on so many levels.

That’s why it’s so hot!

As per Grace's instructions, I turned Veronique around and pressed her hands against the shower wall. It was like Grace and I were working in tandem; some of the actions mine, some of them hers.

For example, I was now bent before Veronique, the water spraying against my back, licking her in all the right places. Veronique moaned, the sound slightly muffled by the shower.

That was me.

At least I’m pretty sure it was me.

A minute later I was standing up and jumping into action, wasting no time in slipping inside Veronique’s tight snatch.

That was Grace.

Paying little or no attention to the logistics of having sex in the shower, I was pumping as hard as I could without slipping, cracking my ass, and having to go to the hospital with a concussion.

To combat Grace’s white eyes, I simply closed mine.

We continued like this for a while, my heart thrumming in my chest as I went at Veronique with everything I had.

Once we separated, Veronique launched at me, kissing me about as passionately as someone could and lifting one leg around me as I slipped back inside. My back hit the shower wall, and I figured it was time to get out of the tub.

Or Grace did?

Still sopping wet, we moved to the bathroom floor, and I lifted her legs over my shoulders, settling in, just as I’d seen someone do in a porn flick. From there, I bent them all the way back, placed one hand behind her shoulders and used the other to get her ass in place so that she was almost in a plow pose position.

Wait a minute … Dammit, Grace, stop accessing my thoughts!

Don’t worry, we won’t get to some of that Japanese stuff you watched.

“Shit,” I whispered, embarrassment washing over me as I kept my eyes squeezed shut.

“What is it?” Veronique asked.

“Nothing, never mind.”

She clawed at my head and pulled me in deeper. It hurt, and I responded by going even harder, refusing to open my eyes and blow Grace’s cover.

This is so fun! Grace thought to me as I got into another position, this time doggy style.

We were animals, we were filthy animals, and I was a possessed filthy animal. Which makes me even filthier than a normal animal. I glanced down at Veronique’s body, seeing her puckered asshole, the curvature of her spine, the way her hair bobbed up and down as Grace (or I?) continued fucking her.

What else can we do? Grace thought to me.

This is too crazy.

This is crazy fun, and you like it. Slap her ass. Slap her ass!

She could have just made me do it, but I think she wanted me to be the one who initiated that.

So I did it.

And Veronique stopped, just long enough for me to open my eyes to catch her looking at me.

Shit, I thought as she shot me either a devilish look or one of utter fury.

It turned out to be the former because she started pushing back even harder, grinding to the point that it was starting to get painful.

What now? I thought, happy that Grace had presciently released control long enough for my eyes to go back to their normal color.

Bedroom. Bedroom!

I grabbed Veronique by the arm – roughly, in a way I would never grab her normally – and took her to the bedroom.

She responded by pushing me onto the bed and climbing on top of me, her hands around my throat as she positioned herself. Her nipples were erect, her hips moving up and down, and I couldn’t help but keep my eyes open to watch that.

But now, her eyes were closed, and she was starting to spasm.

Oh … I can’t wait for this!

I ignored Grace’s voice in my head this time as I just focused on getting the job done. Focus, focus!

Focus, Writer Gideon!

Veronique was quickly getting out of control, and it wasn’t long before I saw her raise her hands behind her head, a slight red glow to her palms.

She dropped her hands to my chest and bent forward, exhaling audibly as she came, simultaneously sapping my power.

I squirmed as Veronique both orgasmed and consumed my lifeforce.

I tried to push her off me, but I couldn’t; she was suddenly heavy, and I was losing steam fast.

“Veronique, stop, stop!” I cried.

“What are you two … Oh my God!”

I blinked my eyes open to see Michelle standing in the room. She was in a large sleep shirt, her black hair with its pink streak gathered around her shoulders, a look of shock on her face.

“Out of here, now!” Veronique roared. And Michelle was gone.

“Damn,” I mumbled, my vision suddenly blurred.

“Tell Grace to wipe her mind,” Veronique said, grabbing my chin with her hand. “Now. Tell her now. I know she can hear you.”

My heart leapt into my throat, and I looked at her curiously.

“What are you waiting for? Tell her?”

She doesn’t know, Grace thought to me.

I cleared my throat. “Okay, yeah, I’ll tell Grace.”

“But you should finish first.”

Veronique swiveled around on my member so that she was now riding reverse cowgirl, looking over her shoulder at me, blond hair framing one side of her face as she moved up and down. “Do it, Gideon,” she whispered harshly. “Faster, fucking finish and make sure you tell Grace.”

I’ve already taken care of it, Grace thought to me. Now do what Veronique says – finish. I want to know what it feels like!

This is ridiculous!

Chapter Twenty-Four: Sex Scenes with Luke

Last night was wrong on so many levels, I thought when I awoke the next morning. I was in Veronique’s bed, sandwiched between two warm bodies.

Two bodies?

Sure enough, Veronique was curled up on one side, nude, and Dorian on the other, in sleeveless shirt and panties. I was actually cuddling Dorian, which would have taken me by surprise if not for all that had gone down over the last twenty-four hours.

Rather than say anything or wake them, I stayed there, tracing Dorian’s new cherry blossom tattoo with my eyes.

It was early; the sun was hardly up and most of the house was still asleep. Which was good, because I wanted to write.

I always wanted to write, but lately, real life was a touch more interesting than anything I could conjure up.

Dorian turned to me and blinked her eyes open.

“I was cold,” she purred. “And you’re warm.”

“Fine by me,” I said, my hand on her waist.

She stared at me. “Are you happy?” she whispered.

“With what?”

“Life.”

“Yeah, I’m happy. I mean, I’d like a little stability, but this life is way better than my former one. It’s addicting, in a way.”

“Is it because you’re surrounded by beautiful women who could easily kill you, yet have taken a liking to you?”

I smiled at her. “That’s definitely a part of it.”

She grabbed one of my hands and brought it to her breast, cupping it. “Well, as long as you’re happy,” she said, a soft melody to her voice.

“What about you? Are you happy?”

“I’m glad I didn’t kill you, I’ll say that.”

“That’s almost a Veronique joke.”

“What?” Veronique mumbled.

I felt a wave of tension wash over me and quickly subside.

“You two are up early.” Veronique yawned, not at all concerned that Dorian was in bed with us.

“I’m going to make some coffee and try to work.” I unlatched myself from Dorian’s soft flesh. “What time is it in Calgary? I should give Luke a call and tell him I’m giving him access to the info on Ken’s files.”

“Bring me a cup when it’s ready,” Veronique said, turning away again.

“Coffee in bed, huh?” Dorian asked. “That’s not a bad idea. Bring me some too.”

“Anything else, ladies?” I asked as I got off the bed. “Perhaps a croissant?”

“No, that’s all,” Veronique said to Dorian’s laughter. “Unless you want to teleport to the nearest town for me and bring someone back for this one to feed on.” Now it was Veronique’s turn to laugh, a stilted, almost forced chuckle.

“I’ve heard enough.” I found my pants and slipped into them. My phone was in the pocket, and once I pulled it out, I discovered a couple of emails from my readers, one asking about the possibilities of an audiobook.

People wanted the third installment. I was feeling pressure to get it finished, but it’s been hard finishing the third book!

And an audiobook … it hadn’t even occurred to me. Many writers I knew, more successful guys like Luke, already had audiobooks. I wanted to do a royalty split with a narrator for an audiobook of How Heavy This Axe?, and I’d even received an audition from a nasally sounding guy, but he wanted an additional thousand plus a split, which even I knew was a bad deal.

I’ll have to ask the EBAYmazon guy about an audiobook, I thought as I headed downstairs. “And you need to mail the contract,” I reminded myself aloud.

“Yes, Gideon,” I responded. “You got your first contract and you’ve legitimately been too busy to sign it and mail it.”

“Oh, that’s what you call last night – busy?” came my reply.

Rather than continue a dialogue with my stupid self, I pulled up Luke’s image on my phone and pressed it, calling him instantly. “I hope it’s not too early,” I said when he picked up.

Luke had his headset on, the glow of his computer screen reflecting off his eyes.

“No, it’s fine. I got up early to play Starfall. Heard of this game? It’s fucking great, man.”

“Starfall?” I recalled some of the preview videos I’d watched on TwitchTubeRed. From what I could recall, it looked pretty badass.

“You always up this early to play games?”

“It helps me get in the mood to write. And besides, games are a tax write-off for me because I write game-based books.”

“I never thought of doing that,” I said, setting the phone down on the kitchen island. “I usually play after, as a reward. Damn, it’s been weeks since I played a video game. Well, not quite weeks but, definitely a week or more. The girls were playing Street Fighter upstairs. I’d be all about that. I’m pretty sure I could open up at least a few cans of whoop-ass, especially when I bust out a V-Trigger.”

“Is that so?” Luke laughed. “Your new thing is beating teenage girls at Street Fighter?”

“Hey, we all have our hobbies. What’s on the writing docket for this morning?”

Luke frowned. “I have a sex scene I need to write, and it’s on my mind.”

“Oh? Who does it involve?”

“It involves the Main Character from Star Defacer and these two alien women he encounters. Of course, they’re going to trick the MC later, and I think one may try to cut off his penis. At least, that’s an idea floating in my mind.”

“So you’re asking for threesome ideas? A threesome that ends in tragedy?”

“Yeah, I mean, I want it to be believable. And both of the alien women have powers.”

“Do they have tentacles? Because that’s totally a thing for some people.”

“No, nothing like that.”

“I hate writing sex scenes,” I told him as I poured water into the coffee machine.

It wasn’t a difficult coffee maker to figure out. Most weren’t, but there were a lot of buttons on the front as opposed to just a plain Mr. Coffee machine.

I guess rich people want more options.

For a second, I thought I noticed the coffee filter move when I focused on it but figured I was seeing things.

“Yeah, they’re not always easy to write,” Luke continued. “And sci-fi readers don’t really like them; well, I think some secretly do, but then they get picky as to if they’re written well or not. But this scene needs to happen. It comes back to haunt him later when one of the alien women releases a hormone that makes him her slave.”

Luke was still playing his game, evident in the way he spazzed for a second when something shot at him. “Dammit! I have to start over now. Okay, I’ll wait till we’re finished talking. I’ve been trying to beat this one part since yesterday evening.”

I watched the coffee maker start up, the dark liquid dripping into the empty glass pot. “Well if you’re asking for sex scene ideas, I can’t help you there. The ones that come to mind generally involve superpowered individuals, if you get my drift, and I think you do.”

“Oh? How’s that going?”

“I would write a book about it, but it’d get classified as erotica and then I’d get put in the erotica dungeon. And if I’m in the erotica dungeon on EBAYmazon, people can’t find my book on the webstore – you know, adult content and whatnot. You see my dilemma here? Plus I’m not one to kiss and tell; well I’m rarely one to kiss. But I don’t want to jinx myself in any way by writing a tell-all.”

“Fair enough, but you should still consider having them sign an NDA because that’s what an American would do.”

“Is it?”

He nodded. “I had a book misclassified once as a cozy mystery. The reviewers bombed the shit out of it. There are some very salty fuckers out there.”

I watched the coffee brew as Luke explained what was going into his sex scene. It seemed somewhat believable, although I didn’t understand the threat to the main character.

“Why do they want to cut his dick off again?” I asked. The coffee aroma met my nostrils; it smelled incredible, likely some super expensive stuff. I checked out the bag to find the words ‘Kopi Luwak’ coffee scrawled across the front. “Also, isn’t Kopi Luwak coffee the stuff that’s first digested by a raccoon or something?”

I heard Luke’s fingers peck at the keyboard as he did a quick search. “No, it’s digested by a civet.”

“A civet?”

“Yep, why?”

“That’s what I’m about to drink.”

“You’re drinking asshole coffee.”

“It’s still coffee, though,” I reminded him.

“True. But back to the castration question. I don’t know how it should happen, actually, but I want it to be something serious.”

Rather than think about the literal shit coffee I was brewing, I turned to Luke’s dilemma. “If you ask me, I’d just have them seduce him with the threat they’ll fillet him or something. Or feed him his dick. Wait, that sounds bad. There are other dangerous female tropes you could touch on. Just do a GoogleFace search for tropes. Maybe reading about what others have done will spark some response.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have a threat involved. Just a little sexy time.”

“God knows we all need that. Okay, I have to bring this coffee to the ladies in bed.”

“Say that again?”

“It’s a long story.”

“That’s it!” Luke pumped his fist in the air. “They seduce him using pheromones and if he doesn’t pleasure them, he becomes their slave. And I’m not just talking about coffee in bed. Something weird. Violent, maybe.”

“That’s what you got from me saying I was bringing them coffee in bed? Everyone loves violence, and most people love coffee, so readers will dig that for sure. Especially if the alien babes are drinking a hot liquid and use it as one of their torturing options.”

“Hmmm … Okay, I’ll get to plotting consequences later. Talk soon, Gideon.”

“Sure.”

“Also, is everything all right? You don’t seem to be in the middle of handling a crisis, as you normally are.”

“It could be the calm before the storm. Can’t tell just yet. I’ll let you know.”

Chapter Twenty-Five: Two Sheets to the Wind

Rather than bore you with the next three hours of painstaking manuscript surgery (a time in which I, a self-described ‘shitty writer,’ cracked out some serious pages, reorganized them, and regurgitated them into a product that will eventually go to market), I’ll move on to the breakfast scene, a scene which ended rather abruptly after I made enough pancakes to supply an IHOP.

Hot damn, did the supers love pancakes. I guess this was a common thing; the author of Super Sales on Superheroes was right all along!

The plans for the day were simple: train, and train some more. I had an idea of how we could do that, but before they got started, I wanted to mess around with Fiona’s abilities. So while the rest of the supers relaxed in the living room, and Dorian and Stella retired to their rooms upstairs, the aquatic teen lay on one of the couches, Yours Truly crouched next to her like a paramedic as I plugged into her neck.

She didn’t have an Overdrive, which made her different from the other two who used elemental powers. This gave me more tweaking options, but as before, turning up one ability generally turned down another.

“Yep, Hydrokinetic Flight will allow you to fly using water vapors. Are you interested?”

“Are you asking me if I’m interested in flying?” Fiona asked.

“I am.”

Michelle zipped into the room. “Everyone wants to fly!” She was gone before Fiona could agree with her.

“Great, I’ll adjust that one. As to your questions yesterday, some of these abilities will already be familiar to you. For example, Water Vortex Creation allows you to create things out of water. Like a tornado of water. Can you do that?”

She turned her palm around and a swirl of water took shape. “Like this?”

“Exactly that. It’s sort of like Tidal Wave Generation, another of your abilities, but I’ll bring that one down a bit because I think Vortex Creation is more important. You were asking about Viscosity Manipulation. That’s just a cool way to say you can affect other bodies of water. Like … Veronique, can you bring your cup of coffee in here?”

Veronique, who had been sitting at the bar in the kitchen, came in with her coffee.

“You can play around with it, right? Without making a mess?” I asked Fiona.

“Or burning me,” Veronique added.

Fiona nodded. The brownish liquid lifted from the cup and formed a ring. Another sliver of piping hot liquid leaped up through the ring and dropped back into the cup.

“Good work. Let me tinker a bit.”

By the time I was done tweaking her abilities, they looked like this:

Main: Aquakinesis

Hydrokinetic Flight: 4

Water Vortex Creation: 3

Viscosity Manipulation:7

Tidal Wave Generation: 1

Aquatic Adaptation: 5

Water Pressure Generation: 6

Motor-Skill Manipulation: 3

Water Negation: 4

Morph Speed: 9

Aquatic Adaptation allowed her to survive in underwater environments, so I didn’t want to mess with that, nor did I want to adjust her morph speed, which was what allowed her to change forms so easily. By far the most interesting, in my opinion, was the Motor-Skill Manipulation, which allowed her to adjust fluid levels in a person’s body.

“With your Motor-Skill Manipulation ability, you can basically make someone feel drunk,” I told her.

“Drunk?” she asked, cocking her head.

Grace, will you download all she needs to know about drunkenness into her head? I thought.

Her voice came back to me: Certainly, or you could do it. Part of my powers are still with you. You know, from last night.

Wait, what?

I looked down at my hands and then glanced around the room. Did I really have some of Grace’s power? I remembered thinking that the coffee filter had moved slightly while I was making coffee this morning.

You really gave me some power, didn’t you? I thought back to Grace.

I figured I’d store some with you for tonight.

Thanks?

Calling on the spirit of Mark Hamill, I curled my fingers at a magazine on the table. Sure enough, it lifted a few inches into the air, its pages fluttering.

“Whoa. You’re magic?” Fiona asked, turning her head toward the magazine.

“No, it’s Grace’s power.” I flexed my fingers, feeling determined. “Now close your eyes, and let me transfer some info to you.”

Fiona closed her eyes. Her brows lifted once I began thinking about being drunk and what it felt like. I don’t know how long we were quiet, but it was definitely a bonding moment between us.

“Do you understand?” I asked.

“I think …”

“Good. You can make someone feel this way using your Motor-Skill Manipulation ability. There are other fluid levels you can adjust, such as the chemicals that induce terror, but that’s probably too advanced for the time being. So … drunk time. Who wants to be the guinea pig?”

Michelle appeared. “Me!”

“Not you.”

“I’ll let her test it on me,” said Stella. “How long will I be drunk for?”

“I want to get drunk,” Veronique said, her eyes locked on the television. Another property show? Nope. This time, they were watching a cartoon.

“No, no,” I told Veronique. “I remember what happened last time you got drunk.”

“I don’t.”

“Exactly.”

“She can test it on me.” Dorian had appeared in the middle of the living room. “Sorry, Grace updated me on what was going on, so I figured I’d volunteer. Anyway, she can test it on me; I can hold my liquor.”

“Actually, that’s not a bad idea,” I said. “Okay then, make her feel drunk.”

I unplugged from Fiona’s neck and stepped aside. The thin teen sat up and turned to Dorian, an innocent smile forming on her face. Suddenly, a blast of water knocked Dorian backward. The teleporter flashed away before she could slam into the television.

“You destroyed the TV,” Veronique said in a monotone voice, looking from the idiot box to the young water wielder.

“Sorry!”

Dorian popped up to my right, sopping wet.

“We should have done that outside,” I said, not sure if I should laugh at what had just happened or keep my mouth shut.

I chose the latter.

“Everyone outside,” Dorian said, a dark look in her eyes.

“Sorry, Dorian! Please don’t hate me!”

“It’s not your fault, Fiona,” Dorian said, turning to the back door.

“Whose fault is it then?” Michelle asked, confused.

“No one’s fault. Well, maybe my fault.” I followed them out. “Sorry. There are plenty of TVs upstairs. I’ll bring one down and hook it up later.”

“Promise?” Veronique asked. Her hand flickered red and I knew instantly the threat she was making.

In response, I flared my eyes white at her. At least that’s what I tried to do.

“That’s a weird way to stare at me?”

“Sorry, Grace transferred some of her power to me – cool, huh? – and I’m trying to figure out my limitations.”

“Careful, Writer Gideon,” she said in a mocking tone as she stepped past me.

Once everyone was outside, including Grace, who had heard the commotion from upstairs, Fiona again turned her attention to Dorian. It was a nice day out but a bit chilly, not unlike a spring day in New England.

Dorian stared intently at Fiona, who raised a shaky hand toward the teleporter, her eyes clenched shut.

“Feel it,” Grace said suddenly. “Don’t force it.”

Fiona bit her lip, took a deep breath, and cast her hand in Dorian’s direction.

“Did something happen?” Michelle asked, looking wide-eyed from Grace to me.

Dorian staggered a bit, her eyes softening. “Damn,” she murmured.

I moved just in time and caught her as she started to lean sideways.

“It totally works!” she said, laughing loudly. “Holy crap! I’m so drunk!”

“How long do you think it will last?” I asked Grace. Hell, that question was really for anyone, but none of us really knew the answer to it.

“I’ll be fine, Gideon, don’t be such a pussy. I’m not even drunk. You’re drunk!” Dorian slugged me in the chest.

“Hey!”

“I want someone to carry me. I have to pee, I think.”

I hesitated but decided that if anyone deserved to be carried, it was someone who’d agreed to be a guinea pig. And besides, if she did piss on me, it wouldn’t be the first Cherry Blossom Girl who did so, considering that had been Grace’s opening move when we first arrived in Santa Fe.

“Okay, piggyback ride.” I got in front of her. “Easy, don’t jump too quickly.”

She climbed on, her arms around my neck.

“Carry me softly,” she whispered in my ear.

“I’ll try, just don’t …”

Dorian’s legs were tightly wrapped around my waist, her breasts pressed into my back, and she was breathing heavily into my ear as she bit my earlobe – hard.

“Shit!”

“Sorry, Gideon, I’ll behave.”

By this point, Michelle, Ingrid, and Fiona were all rolling on the grass, laughing. Grace and Veronique stood by, indecipherable expressions on their faces.

“To the restroom we go,” I said as I brought her into the house, past the living room, and to the nearest porcelain throne. Her hand started to charge as soon as I set her on the toilet.

“No, no,” I told her in a tone of voice one would tell a child not to put something in their mouth.

“My pants – I mean, shorts,” she said, trying to undo the button.

“Shit, let me help you with that.”

It isn’t easy undressing someone else. But I did my best, unbuttoning her shorts and pulling them over her taut hips. Next up was her fishnet pantyhose, followed by black panties adorned with a skull and crossbones. I slid everything down and out of the way, got a pretty good view of her bush, looked away, and was about to move when she started to topple forward.

“Oh man,” I said as I caught her.

Once I got her into position, Dorian pissed. I waited for her to finish, and realizing she wasn’t going to clean herself, decided to take matters into my own hands.

What in the hell has happened to my life? I thought, tearing off some toilet paper from the roll. I’d never cleaned up a woman after she went to the restroom before. I figured it wouldn’t be that hard, probably just like cleaning myself after dropping a deuce.

Nope, that’s not the right image.

I cut the inner monologue short as I pressed the paper against her lady parts.

Swipe up? Swipe down? Left? Right?

No clue, I just let it soak up for a moment, dropped it between her legs and flushed.

“Why do you have to wear so much clothing,” I muttered as I pulled her panties up, followed by her tights, then her shorts. I buttoned them, realized I was sweating a little, wiped my brow, and fireman-carried her into the living room.

She hiccupped and said, “I wear cool clothing because it’s cool.”

“Is that so? Well, let me be the first to say you are the coolest one of all of us. Tattoos too.”

“Really?”

“Believe me. I wouldn’t lie about something like coolness.”

“You didn’t wash your hands,” she said, giving me a comical icky face.

“I’ll wash them, dammit, just let me make sure you’re comfortable.”

I laid her on the couch and noticed Michelle standing nearby with a glass of water. I had no idea how long she’d been there.

“I hope this won’t make her pee more,” Michelle said, “because I like this couch. I don’t care if she pees, just not here.”

“Don’t worry about that.” I tilted Dorian’s head back and gave her some water. “Now let’s get back outside. We’re supposed to be training.”

Chapter Twenty-Six: Capture the Hero

The game was called Capture the Hero, and the rules were relatively simple: one of the CBGs stood in the middle and everyone attacked her.

Like Fight Club, there were rules. Unlike Fight Club, the first rule was, ‘Do not kill the Super or attempt to kill the Super.’ Like Fight Club, the second rule was a repeat of the first rule. The third rule was also not like Fight Club: ‘Yes, Gideon has some superpowers now, but he isn’t actively competing so please don’t challenge him.’

Stella was currently the ‘target at large.’

She stood poised, ready to use her abilities to augment the shit out of reality. Grace was the first to attack, trying to push Stella off her feet with a telekinetic wave.

But the killer vector queen was too strong for something like that. She barely moved an inch before she reverted the attack back to Grace, blowing the psychic shifter off her feet.

Another thing that was different this time was that no one was wearing body armor. This, predictably, was Veronique’s idea, who thought it was important for them to fight as if they really were defending their lives.

The Super Teens were instructed to attack as well, but at the start, none of them advanced on Stella.

Their apprehension didn’t last long. Eventually, after Stella stopped a wall of scrambled together bits of metal from hitting her, Fiona moved into action.

The water user lifted into the air, propelled forward by vapor. As she did this, a small tornado of water formed in her hand. She pulled back and pushed both hands forward, sending the spiraling cyclone of water at Stella.

The cyclone slapped into the translucent sphere protecting Stella and trickled down to the ground.

Michelle, who was bobbing on the sidelines and also looking for an opening, decided to go with a distraction technique. She zipped around Stella, fast enough that I could hardly see her unless I blinked quickly.

I didn’t know what she was trying to do, but her attack was halted by a blast of transparent force from Stella.

By now, strands of Stella’s dirty blond hair had twisted loose from her braid and fell into her face. She was breathing a little heavily but maintaining her cool. The way she moved reminded me of the way someone would use chi; she was light on her feet, and when something came in to attack her, she would simply float her hands forward to stop it.

Which was how Fiona’s next water offensive was dealt with. Stella simply stepped into it, hands forward as she spliced through the liquid assault.

“My turn!” Ingrid yelled. She began to tremble, her muscles bulging and pulsing as parts of her clothing was torn off her body. Her jaw elongated, teeth formed, her skin hardened, and spikes burst from the top of her back as Tulip made an appearance.

The beast came in for his first swipe, saliva flying out of his wicked maw.

Stella gently pressed her hand in front of her body and Tulip’s fist stopped inches from Stella’s open palm. The beast tried to swipe with his other hand, claws growing in size as they neared Stella’s head, but they also failed to connect.

As Tulip beat the hell out of the shield protecting Stella, Veronique tried a long-distance drain, and for a few seconds, it actually took, evident in the way Stella hunched forward, her protective shield wavering.

She regained her footing, though and swept Veronique to the ground.

It seemed there was only going to be one way to bring Stella down: telepathically.

I didn’t know if I thought this or Grace thought it through me, but the next thing I saw was Tulip being tossed sideways by Stella as she fell to the ground, slapping her temples. “Make it stop! Make it stop!” Stella shrieked, veins pulsing on the side of her head.

Grace lowered her hand and Stella stood, fists clenched at her sides.

“Everyone relax.” I stepped into the middle of the mayhem like a dumbass.

Even Tulip, who was growling at me, lowered his beastly head as I took my place next to Grace.

“This is why we’re doing this,” I told them. “We have to figure out each other’s flaws and how to work together. I think today’s exercises should be devoted to learning everyone’s flaws. Later, we can work on operating fluidly, working toward the same goal. Great job, Stella; it’s clear your only weakness is psychological in nature. That said, I believe you,” I nodded at Fiona “could have also brought her down.”

“You mean, by making her drunk?”

“That’s right. So who’s up next? Grace?”

Grace stepped into the center, and everyone else stepped away.

Tulip had already morphed back into Ingrid by the time I finished my spiel. Michelle and Fiona were near her, Veronique in front of the mansion, and Stella was to the right of Grace.

Grace, who wore a loose T-shirt and a pair of denim shorts, lifted into the air, her long, blond hair flowing behind her. Her eyes turned white, and everyone, including me, took a knee as our heads filled with a terrible static-like screech, almost exactly like the mental attack Mother was fond of using.

Veronique was the first to recover.

Her hands before her and charged red, Veronique yanked Grace to the ground using the metal in her jean shorts.

Grace cushioned her fall, but the action left her vulnerable to Stella, who created a visible wave of vibrating energy that hit Grace and sent her sprawling. But she quickly got her footing and brought Stella to her knees with the nightmare attack again.

Michelle appeared behind Grace in a flash and shoved her. Grace stumbled forward and was whipped off her feet by a gush of water from Fiona. The water kept slamming into her as she tried to get up, infuriating the psychic.

Within seconds, Fiona was now fighting against the other supers, attacking Veronique with a column of water. It slammed the metal vampire to the ground, lifted her up, and slammed her again. The liquid sluiced in and out of Veronique’s mouth, choking her as she tried to get to her feet.

Tulip was back now and came in for a physical attack that Grace blocked with her power. But the hunkering beast didn’t stop there. It pulled both arms back and tried to smash through Grace’s telekinetic shield like an angry ape.

I felt a tug on my heartstrings. If anything could break through Grace’s shield, it was Tulip’s overwhelming strength, and at that moment I almost told them to stop.

You have to trust. Grace maintained control over Fiona’s mind and was continuing her attack on Veronique while fighting off multiple jabs from Tulip, yet she still had enough power to communicate with me.

This was on top of the fact that I still had some of her power.

She was distracted, that was for sure, and I caught Stella lurking toward her, vibrations moving up her arm and swirling as she pulled her fist back.

Whoosh!

Grace hit the ground. Fiona stopped attacking Veronique. Michelle quit running around in a circle. And stumbling forward, Tulip morphed back into Ingrid.

“Good, good!” I made my way to the middle again.

Everyone was a little out of breath, including me, as all the action had me on edge.

“Everyone take five – no, take ten. And then let’s do the same thing with Veronique in the middle.”

“How about you go in the middle?” Michelle asked in an innocent voice.

Veronique and Stella chuckled.

“Laugh it up, laugh it up. I know I’d have my ass handed to me. I’m not stupid enough to think I’d last more than three seconds against any of you.”

“What about against me?” Dorian asked.

She stood behind me, her paintbrush charging.

“Are you okay?” I asked her.

“Yeah, I’m fine. I felt super drunk, and then I felt normal. What did I miss? I mean, I remember starting to fall and you carrying me. That’s about it.”

“You didn’t miss much,” I lied.

“In that case,” she said, “I want to go next. I have a few tricks I’d like to try on you guys.”

“Well, if you’re up for it,” I said just as Veronique stepped forward.

“How about we go together?” she asked.

“You two against everyone else?”

“Yeah,” Dorian said. “Give us your best shot.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven: P.F. Panda’s Out the Wazoo

Veronique and Dorian made one hell of a team. Dorian jumped in and out of reality, leaving explosive purple energy bombs or conjuring up crazy looking demons with guns, while Veronique did what she did best: orchestrate total destruction.

Since she wasn’t trying to kill any of them, Veronique mainly used her metal wielding to pull the others around or bring them to the ground. She also occasionally drained some of their energy, topping off before moving on to the next Super.

Tulip had taken it upon himself to punch any and all of Dorian’s creations. It was interesting watching the creature leap and snarl, hurling his body at the shapes, only to have them fizzle out when he reached them, sending a shock through the beast that only made it angrier.

“Let’s switch it up,” I called out.

I took one look at the scorched trees around us, the concussion blast in the ground, the muddy soil from Fiona’s attacks. Whenever the owners did return, they would think someone dropped a bomb in their back yard.

“Try to use physical attacks.”

“Like punch people?” Michelle asked, after sliding to a halt. “I’m good at shoving!”

“Don’t hurt anyone!”

Is this really a good idea? Grace thought to me.

You know what, you’re right, this is a terrible idea.

But my instruction had already caused some of them to move into action. Metal from some of the frag pouches Veronique had detonated earlier wrapped around her hands, forming metallic gloves.

Clink!

She punched them together once and charged at Stella, who brought both her fists back as well. In what would have made an excellent comic book cover, their fists connected, and they blew each other back, causing a small sonic boom that I could feel in my chest.

“Not too rough!” I reminded them.

Dorian teleported away and appeared behind Tulip. She brought a charged fist back and took the beast down.

Tulip kicked off the ground and twisted mid-air, nearly striking Dorian. Hell, even from my vantage point, it looked like he’d hit her, but the teleporter got away just in time, flashing out of existence.

This was definitely going to get out of hand, and I knew just the solution.

“Okay, everyone stop!” I yelled as I walked to the middle of the melee. Again.

They begrudgingly gathered around me, and once they’d all chilled just a bit (and Tulip had turned back into Ingrid), I sat on the ground with my legs crossed.

“I want everyone to sit down with me and just breathe. I’m no yoga guru or anything like that, but I took a yoga class in college to get my physical education credit.”

“Yoga?” Michelle asked. She was the only one who had already sat on the ground, knees pressed to her chest.

“If you guys don’t know what it is, that’s fine, but I know a few things about breathing techniques, and I believe it will help all of us.”

“Breathing is great!” Michelle added.

“You’re right, and I’m a little manic, so I should probably do breathing exercises more often myself. But, what can you do? You forget about these things until they’re necessary.”

As they started to sit around me, I showed them the finger gesture I wanted them to make. Surprisingly, Stella was the second to sit; not surprisingly, Veronique was the last.

“Here’s the gesture.” I touched my thumb to my middle and ring finger. “Close one nostril with your pointer finger, and breathe in through the other, then close the other with your pinky finger, and breathe out through the first nostril.”

“But that one is still closed,” Fiona said, pinching both her nostrils.

“Yeah, you have to open that one to breathe out. Good, like that.”

“This is ridiculous, Gideon,” Veronique said.

“If you play nice, I’ll treat everyone to Chinese food for lunch today. P.F. Panda’s. It’s great, just like the food they eat in Asia, at least that’s what I’m told, and we can get a private room there so people don’t stare at us.”

“She doesn’t eat food, she eats people,” Ingrid said, her now ripped clothing hanging off her body.

Fiona snickered. Michelle was focused on trying to do the breathing exercise.

“She can feed as well. We have a system for that, and I’ll explain it to you guys when you’re older, how’s that? I don’t hear everyone breathing, I should hear you breathing!”

Eventually, they started listening to me, or they started listening to Grace, who was able to persuade the weaker-minded individuals. I even found myself getting into the breathing technique, feeling that nice, cool Colorado air, a lightness to it due to the higher altitude.

I gave them instructions every minute or so, reminding the superpowereds to focus on their breathing. I had actually skipped most of my yoga classes at Southern Connecticut, and I might be the first guy in history to have gotten a C in yoga, but I did happen to make it to the breathing exercise class and it was something I should definitely do more often.

But all spiritual practices are like that.

When you do it, you suddenly realize that you should have been doing it up until the point you decided to do it. But then it takes you a week to do it again, and that’s if you can conjure up the motivation.

Breathe, Gideon, Grace said inside my head. In one nostril, out the other. In the other, out the first.

“That was nice,” Grace said once we’d finished. Everyone was inside now, getting cleaned up and ready to go to the restaurant.

I was stretched out on the couch, wearing a button-up I’d grabbed from the writer of the house’s closet. My guess was the family was nearly in Asia by now. What a trip that would be! And rather than go to P.F. Panda’s, he’d get to eat real Asian food.

His shirt wasn’t silk, but it did feel silky, and his initials were monogrammed on the cuff.

B.J.

If those were my initials, I’d have them monogrammed on the cuff too.

“I’m glad you enjoyed the breathing exercise,” I said as she cycled through some of her avatars. “I think it’s called pranayama, but it could also be savasana. One of those is corpse pose, but I can’t remember which one.”

“Who would you like me to go as?”

Grace morphed into Cammy again, and I felt something twitch in my pants.

“You really like these things, don’t you?” she ran her hands along the contours of her chiseled body. How Cammy fought in a green, one-piece bathing suit that ended in a thong was beyond me.

“What things?”

“Superheroes and Street Fighters and whatever else is in your mind. There’s a lot of weird anime stuff I haven’t even tapped into yet. We should watch some of this anime together.”

“Um, yeah, about that,” I said as she sat down on the couch. She morphed into her geisha form, this time in a light blue kimono with cherry blossom decals all over it. “You sure like that one, don’t you?”

“It’s this or your mom,” she joked. “Besides, this was one of the first forms I took when I met you. Remember?”

“The first one you took when you met me was me.”

Her face filled with excitement. “Do you want to go with twins?”

“Why don’t you surprise me, show me a form you haven’t taken in a while.”

Grace’s brows furrowed as she thought this over. “A form I haven’t taken in a while.”

“Don’t think so hard about it,” I laughed. “Fine. Just go with your brunette.”

She morphed into her brunette form and stood, turning to show me her derrière. “Are the jeans tight enough?” she asked, looking at me over her shoulder.

“I believe they are.” I patted her on the ass.

Streaks of blonde appeared in her hair and her complexion darkened by a few shades. For a top, she chose a loose T-shirt with a tree on the back. She tucked the front of the shirt inside her jeans, allowing the back of it to flow over her behind. On her feet were boots that reminded me of UGGs but a little bit higher up the leg, covering her shanks. “How’s this?”

“Great,” I said.

She turned to me. I placed my hands around her waist and looked up at her.

“What?”

“What do you really look like?” I asked suddenly, a question that had always bothered me.

“Like this,” she said.

“You know what I mean.”

Dorian teleported behind the couch and said, “Boo!”

“Are you still drunk?” Grace asked her.

“Not really.”

The punk rock teleporter had changed into a leather jacket and tight black jeans with holes on the thighs and knees. She also wore her red combat boots. “Is everyone ready?” she called upstairs.

Michelle burst past her, her hair now in a ponytail, the right side of her head defined by the pink streak in her dark locks. “I’m ready!”

Next up was Fiona and Ingrid, both of whom had actually put on a little makeup, which I assumed they’d found in the master bathroom.

“Ah, I see,” I said when Stella came down, also wearing makeup. Her hair was still braided, and she wore a one-piece getup that nicely accented her features.

Last but not least was Veronique, who wore yet another outfit that Dorian had picked out. It was a short black dress with a frilly white collar, completely at odds with her normal style, yet it worked somehow. She also had a choker on with a little heart as its centerpiece, which seemed really out of place on her.

Like she was leading the main prayer at a polygamist cult, Dorian dropped her head and lifted her arms wide. All of us gathered around – Praise be! Praise be! – so we could touch her in some way. I had already shown her the location, and I could tell she was concentrating on it. The thing was, we didn’t want to just appear in the middle of a shopping complex, so we had to choose a spot in the small meadow beside the parking lot.

If someone saw us, well, Grace would handle that.

As Dorian bowed her head, and I offered a final whispered, “Praise be,” just for fun, our forms disappeared.

We reformed seconds later in the same position we’d left in.

It was still a nice day outside. Damn, is Colorado beautiful in the spring.

My next action was to take charge, to become the leader I was destined to be!

Or something like that.

“Let’s go, that’s the P.F. Panda’s right there,” I said, waving the CBGs and Super Teens in the right direction.

“Food!” Michelle shouted.

I’d forgotten to make a reservation, which meant we had to sit for thirty minutes waiting for a private room. It’s no surprise that a guy surrounded by beautiful women and teenage girls will illicit funny looks and raise suspicion, and I was about to ask Grace to wipe the fuck out of everyone’s mind when the waiter came and brought us to our private room.

While this lunch was meant to be a reward and a great time just to relax a little, I needed to go over tonight’s plans with the CBGs.

To facilitate this, we sat at one side of the table, the Super Teens at the other. I ordered a couple of the party sets, and the waiter explained it would be a little bit longer to get them out because we hadn’t made a reservation.

“That’s fine,” I told the tall, gangly man. When he was gone, I dove right into the ‘adult’ talk. “The facility isn’t very large,” I reminded the Cherry Blossom Girls, “and none of it is underground.”

“The guy at the gas station told us that,” Grace said.

“I’d say it’s about three times the size of this restaurant.”

Our beverages came. The teens had gone for sugary sodas; Dorian, Grace, Stella, and the Writer at Large with virgin daiquiris; Veronique with two cups of coffee. Yes, two.

After a sip from my daiquiri, I said, “I thought it’d be hidden on GoogleFace or something, but it’s there, and cars were also parked in the picture. So I was able to, you know, get a little scale.”

“Why don’t we just appear outside and blow it up?” Stella asked around the straw in her mouth.

“That’s the thing about this facility, it’s heavily guarded outside; plus, it has blast barriers.” I turned my phone around to show her the pictures I’d copied from the internet. “The walls are pretty high too, from what I can tell. No, we’re going to have to get inside to blow it up. And we still have the bottles full of gasoline that we can use.”

“You said we should work together. What if Veronique and Dorian …” Grace’s eyes flared white and I suddenly understood what she was suggesting.

“That could totally work!” I said after her idea played through my mind. “Did everyone get that?”

It only took a second for everyone to nod.

“Good, let’s plan for that then.” I took several more sips of my drink, instantly regretting it when a brain freeze came on.

Once it had passed and I was done wincing, I continued. “Mother has already said there are more supers coming, as in new babies to be born; future supers, then. She told me that back in Austin. Plus, she’s pregnant, something we really can’t do anything about at the moment. But yeah, that’s definitely a Super. I mean, I’m no OB/GYN, but I’d put good, stolen money on her inbred-ass baby being a Super.”

I then realized that we’d never talked about the CBGs’ menstruation cycles. Not that we needed to (or did we?), but one of them should be having her period at some point.

Your mind is drifting, Writer Gideon.

Sorry. You four aren’t sterile, are you? Weird question to think to someone. No need to answer, but if you need any lady products, please, let me know or get them yourselves or whatever.

Grace smirked at me. Your mind is wild.

I cleared my throat, trying to hop back on my train of thought. “So even if we were able to destroy all the facilities, if we miss the embryo storage they’ll still be able to create more like her.”

“And we’ll have to kill Mother as well,” Veronique added.

“Yes, but you three already knew that,” I finally said.

As we continued to discuss our options, a few appetizers started coming out. The Super Teens loved them – especially Michelle, who practically shoveled food into her mouth. I could tell by the color of Veronique’s face that she was hungry. We would need her power tonight, but finding someone for her to drain …

Maybe it would be best to do what we’d done before: have Dorian teleport away, bring someone back and then return them where she’d picked them up.

I hated doing that, though.

I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to just be going about your business and suddenly a super-hot punk rock girl appears, touches you, and you reappear with her in someone’s freaking living room, where there’s a blond-haired hotbody coming at you with glowing red hands. You then feel energy leaving your body as you struggle, and about a minute later, you’re back to where you were originally standing, your skin purple, feeling as if you’d just run a marathon through a vacuum.

We really needed another system.

Would there ever be a moment of atonement for my manic, happy-go-lucky ass? That remained to be seen, and rather than feel guilty, I decided to focus on something else.

I heard chattering in the background, a soft whispering all around me.

Grace’s abilities were still with me; I was picking up on other people’s thoughts. I’d grown used to being in the – for lack of a better way to say it – bosom of her power.

But being in public … this was something else entirely.

Just ignore them, Grace thought to me. The voices are always there, but you have the power to ignore them if you’d like.

How long are you going to let me have some of your power? I thought back. I don’t want it to limit what you’re able to do.

I think it would be helpful for you to hold onto it for a little while. I’m not giving you very much, but you’re definitely able to do some things, as you’ve already seen.

Percentage-wise, how much are you giving me? I thought to her as Stella listened to Veronique and Dorian discuss one of the training exercises they’d taken part in at the Rose-Lyle facility.

Under twenty percent. Back in Santa Fe, when I was in that telekinetic coma, I was giving you thirty percent. So a little less, now.

But you may need these powers, Grace.

Gideon, my role in this group is more for support than for combat. I’m similar to Michelle in that regard, and I’m fine with that.

I looked over at the young Super, who was scooping a spicy peanut appetizer into her mouth, a genuine smile on her face.

You have three incredibly powerful combatants, but they will need support from both of us. If I want to take my power back, I simply will. We have bonded, and in a way, we are now part of each other. So don’t worry about it.

A dish with diced chicken, cashews, purple onions, and red peppers came and I dug in. It was delicious; crunchy and sour, sweet in all the right places, and spicy. Fried dumplings arrived soon after, and I taught them how to use chopsticks.

“Why would I use a chopstick when I could just use my hand or a fork?” Ingrid asked.

“That’s not a bad question,” I said as I demonstrated for Dorian how to hold the chopsticks. We locked eyes for a second, her bangs lifting as she grinned.

Dorian was great.

Maybe it was our shared tattoos or the experiences we had, or maybe it was our solo time back in Austin or our quick trip to the East Coast. No telling, but I felt a closeness to her, a closeness that was different from what I felt with the others.

“You know, chopsticks would make pretty good projectiles,” she suggested.

I laughed. “You would be thinking that, wouldn’t you?”

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Goodbye Future Super Babies

Our bodies took shape behind the gas station twenty miles or so from the embryo storage facility in Nevada. We were near the dumpsters, and it smelled like microwaved dirty diapers.

It was evening now, and the Super Teens were safe back in Colorado. After P.F. Panda’s, we’d trained some more, and then everyone spent the remainder of the afternoon resting. Dorian had also brought a few unsuspecting victims for Veronique to feed upon. Gruesome, but now we were charged up and ready to do this.

Our attack would be easier with a vehicle, so we made our way around the gas station to the pumps, waiting for someone to pull up.

Just to be safe, Grace went inside and took over the mind of the attendant, making sure he wouldn’t remember anything.

Eventually, a vehicle big enough for the five of us pulled up to the gas station. I’d never driven a Tesla before, so I was pumped to get behind the wheel of the electric bad boy.

The owner, a lady just stopping in to get a bottle of water, soon found herself seated in the rest area, reading a stack of magazines and forgetting she ever owned a Tesla. I glanced back at her one more time as I opened the driver’s side door, wondering how long she would be looking at those magazines.

Could be several hours.

The feel of the car was great, the dash something out of the future. Grace sat in front, as always, but with a purpose this time, and the other three were smushed together in the back.

One glance in the rearview mirror and I saw all of them in their body armor. Well, all but Stella. Stella was in the black mil-spec suit she’d been wearing when we first met her. It had some type of armoring; it would do.

And all of us, aside from Stella, wore ballistic helmets.

I got a glimpse of myself as I looked back at the three. Who would have thought this was what you’d become, I thought as I traced my eyes over the scar on my face.

“Remember, we have to get inside the facility first,” I said this mainly to boost my confidence, to assure myself we were supposed to be doing this. They knew the plan; they’d done a test run in the back yard just a few hours ago.

It would work.

“Don’t worry,” Grace said, sensing my apprehension.

“Yeah, we’ll be out of there as soon as we release the detonation,” said Stella.

“This is going to work, and we’re not going to run into any issues here,” Dorian added. “It won’t be like the other times; we’ve gone over the plan, in and out.”

“Never say never,” I reminded them. “You have to be ready for combat if that’s what it comes down to. I’ll do my best to provide support as well.”

“Combat is kind of our specialty,” Veronique said. One glance at her in the rearview mirror and I saw those dark eyes staring right back at me, lit by the lights of a passing vehicle. Even now, after all that had happened between us, she still made me feel uncomfortable at times.

Rather than continue my worrying aloud, I focused on the road as we drew closer to our destiny. Everything was fine until we came to a series of cameras that stretched over the highway, their lights flashing as we sped by.

“Shit,” I said, instantly increasing my speed.

“What is it?” Stella asked.

“Cameras are everywhere along the highway,” Grace said.

Talk about the understatement of the year. After we passed the first barrier of cameras it seemed that every half mile there were more scattered along the highway – 1984 on fleek, big brother police state shit.

“They may know we’re coming,” Grace said, voicing my thoughts.

“But we can’t change the plan,” I told them. “We have to destroy the facility. We didn’t destroy the facility in New Mexico, which we’re going to have to go back to do, so let’s at least get the embryo storage place out of the way.”

I tightened my grip on the steering wheel and stomped on the gas pedal.

The night blazed past, stars and flying comets, the lights around us blurs on the periphery. I was going a hundred and ten now, pretty damn fast, and the Tesla was responding relatively well.

The urge for speed was driven by a feeling I had: this would be a terrible fight if we didn’t hurry up and destroy the place.

The slower we drive, the more time they have to come after us.

So it was with utter apprehension that we saw the exit to the facility, took the access road, and sprang into action.

A helicopter spotlight beamed down onto the car as we sped toward the facility. My only response was to press on the gas pedal even harder.

“Faster!” Veronique shouted.

“I’m going as fast as I can!”

As we’d planned, Stella used her powers to create a vector shield around the vehicle.

Veronique’s window came down, her eyes trained on the chopper. It was directly over us now, and the moment it veered to the right or left, she’d be able to do something about it.

This was going to be hard, especially once we saw an automated wall start to close over the entrance.

“I can teleport up there and back,” Dorian said. She was squeezed between Stella and Veronique.

“Too risky,” Grace called over her shoulder. “We’re in a moving vehicle. The helicopter is also moving.”

“I can do it. I’ve done that type of thing before!”

I recalled the time when Dorian appeared in our vehicle. Then again, we needed Dorian to get us out of there, which meant we needed her with us at all times.

“Overruled, Dorian, we need you here!” I said, my eyes set on the impending doom ahead.

“Hold onto me,” Veronique told Dorian as she started pushing herself out of the window.

“There’s no time!” I shouted.

But they were fast, and Veronique was back in the vehicle fifteen seconds later, an explosion sending a burst of red and orange across all the mirrors visible from the driver’s seat.

With the helicopter down, time stood still as we neared the protective barrier, Stella’s abilities the only thing protecting us from instant death.

I shut my eyes, gunned it, and clenched my sphincter.

This was it, or it wasn’t.

There was no other option.

I don’t know how to describe the feeling of crashing into a solid steel wall yet being protected from the crash by an invisible barrier. There was some rumbling, like that of a plane landing on the tarmac, followed by the creak of metal and an exasperated sigh from Stella. There was also a feeling of weightlessness that reminded me of free-falling in a dream.

Veronique gasped, the sound of reality coming together around us as we skidded to a halt, the Tesla’s frame scraping against the gravel.

“Holy shit!” were the first words out of my mouth as I opened my eyes to see that we were all alive.

A trained combatant, Veronique kicked open her door and was out seconds later, protecting us from gunfire. This gave me about thirty seconds or so to get my bearings and orchestrate the next part of the plan.

“Everyone stay near Dorian!” I said, thrusting open my own door.

Paramilitary soldiers fired at us from all angles, but Veronique’s power kept the bullets from hitting us. This gave me the time I needed to group with Dorian, Stella, and Grace, who had all come around the front of the vehicle.

As Veronique continued protecting us from gunfire, Stella also cast a shield around us. She was starting to heat up a bit but not as bad as she had been back at the New Mexico facility.

Dorian took some deep breaths and focused on forming a ball of purple energy.

Still holding her shield, Stella began adding to Dorian’s energy ball, her power almost translucent yet still visible, like a heat wave. Grace stood in front of it now, her eyes blazing white as she stretched her hands in front of her.

The vector shield cut out a lot of the sound from outside the shield. That said, I was able to hear a few cries once Veronique released her bullets.

Still touching Dorian, I reached for Veronique and placed my hand on the small of her back, anchoring her to us.

“Don’t add to it if you don’t have enough power!” I shouted to her as the others continued to expand the ticking time bomb of energy.

She smirked, still holding back bullets with her left hand, her right aimed at the sphere of energy the CBGs had created.

A swirl of red appeared in the center of the sphere, and it continued to grow larger, now reaching the size of a beach ball. We were all on one side of it now, as close to Dorian as we could possibly get.

It was clear that the facility was straight ahead, but they’d have to drop the vector and bullet shield to push the energy bomb out.

Once the ball of energy was three times the size of a beach ball, Dorian nodded for me to crouch before her.

I gave the signal and Stella also dropped in front of us so that she was pressed against my knee, within arm’s reach of Dorian. Grace leaned into me, her ass resting on my right elbow, and Veronique took her place to my left, my hand still touching the small of her back.

It was an odd pose, sure, but shit was going to hit the fan when the shield came down and we needed to get out of there pronto.

Grace’s hair started to stand on end as she used her power to push the sphere of energy toward the northern edge of the vector shield.

“Ready?” I called out.

“Ready!” they all responded.

The shield filtered away, Grace cast the ball of energy forward, and we were gone in a flash.

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Here We Go Again

“Hell yes!” I pumped my fist in the air as our bodies took shape in the back yard of our borrowed home.

We’d done it! The embryo storage facility was kaput, and we’d made it back to Colorado safely without a scratch.

I find that the most interesting moments – and maybe the most harrowing – are when life changes at the drop of a hat. An example of this would be when Grace first showed up at my doorstep, or when Veronique burst into the hotel room in New Haven. Or any number of other occurrences that came as a surprise, such as the time Dorian rescued me from the private military facility, or when we barely escaped the bomb in Ken’s apartment.

All this to say: It took me a second to register the look of shock on Grace’s face, and my first response was to check my own body to see if any parts were missing.

I was so elated that I couldn’t process her concern, the way she turned to Veronique and Veronique instantly knew, the way Stella cried out and took off toward the house.

Dorian zipped away in a burst of purple energy.

“What’s going on?” I still couldn’t figure it out. Grace had knelt to one knee and was touching the soil. Veronique had taken off after Stella, yelling for her to stop.

A small explosion shot Stella backward, and it would have killed her had it not been for her ability to manipulate vectors. I hit the ground, my hands on top of my ballistic helmet (which, come to think of it, kind of negated the point of having the helmet).

Dorian reappeared next to me and grabbed my arm.

“They’re gone. They’re all gone,” she said as smoke filled the air. “Michelle, Ingrid, Fiona.”

I tried to piece together what was happening. “How? What about Angel? Check!” were the only words I could form.

Dorian disappeared again. The flames flickered off the house, and I knew we needed to leave soon.

Soon, as in the next three minutes or less.

Grace stood and finally said, “It was a helicopter. And there was some struggle. Also, do you see the craters over there? Something big touched down.”

“Did you pick up anything else?”

She shook her head.

Veronique moved over to us. She had her hands poised and ready to combat any explosions if need be. Stella sobbed, arms crossed over her chest as she waited for Dorian to return.

Dorian was back seconds later. “He’s gone. Our backpacks are gone too – at least the frag pouches and IEDs. We still have money though.” She showed me a duffel bag of cash.

I took it from her and threw the strap over my shoulder. “We need to get out of here now. I also need my laptop. No, the house could be booby-trapped. Too dangerous. Let’s just go. We can pick up the pieces later.”

“Where to?” Dorian asked.

“We need to go to a parking lot and get a vehicle; that will help. Then we can get to a hotel or something … regroup, figure this out.”

“We have to go after them. We have to go after them now!” Stella shouted, taking a step closer to me and pressing a finger in my chest.

“Stella, we have to figure this out before we start going anywhere. We don’t know where they are. They could be here in Colorado, or they could be getting transferred somewhere else.”

“You don’t know that, Gideon!”

“And you don’t … not know that, Stella!” I felt my powers – I mean, Grace’s powers – tingling. Apparently, getting angry ignited them.

“Everyone relax,” Grace said. “Let’s get to a parking lot, get a vehicle, and go from there.”

“P.F. Panda’s,” I said, the sound of sirens in the distance meeting my ears. “Let’s go to the same spot as earlier. We’ll get out of our armor, get a vehicle, and figure things out.”

“Wait.” Veronique turned back to the flames. “Are we sure no one is in there?”

“I don’t sense anyone,” Grace said.

“Then we should probably destroy the house. Gideon’s laptop is in there and there’s other evidence we were here. I say we bring the home to the ground.”

The four exchanged glances.

Dorian pulled her paintbrush out of her pocket, placing the tip in her mouth. Her hands in front of her body now, Veronique brought down anything metal she could latch onto. While Grace blew out all the windows, Stella used her vibration abilities to rumble the foundation, eventually causing a small crater to form under the living room that only added to the destruction.

It wasn’t long before the place looked like hell, and that was before Dorian’s energy creation got to it and set the rubble on fire.

Dorian reached her hands out and all of us touched her. We appeared in the clearing outside the shopping center near P.F. Panda’s and she staggered forward.

“You okay?” I asked.

“A little overtaxed,” she said, the vein appearing on her head. “Although, I think some of it is stress. I can’t believe …”

She gulped.

“We’ll figure out what to do about the teens,” I told her and the others. “You know me by now. We don’t leave someone behind, even if … um … we have to go back for them later. Sorry, that doesn’t sound as brave as I’d like it to sound. Point is, we’ll figure out our next move and execute it.”

Stella nodded at me, and for the first time, I could tell by the look in her eyes that she believed me.

I dropped the duffel bag full of cash to the ground and took off my helmet and body armor. The others followed suit, running their fingers through their damp and matted hair.

“We’ll be back in just a few minutes with a vehicle,” I told them. “Grab the stuff, and meet us at the curb.”

Grace changed into a redhead with glasses and a puffy jacket. She grabbed my hand, and we walked through the edge of the woods, toward the parking lot.

I tried to make myself more presentable this time. My hair had grown out some, but not enough that I could really fix it. I wore one of the T-shirts we’d bought in Austin, an Ice Bats shirt, but tucking that in wouldn’t make me look any more presentable.

Why are you worried about appearances, Writer Gideon? No one will remember you.

Sorry, I thought back to Grace, old habits die hard.

We would need to find someone either getting to their car, or someone in the restaurant. And since no one was getting into their vehicle at the moment, it was easier for us to just go inside and find a ride the old-fashioned way.

“Find someone who has an SUV,” I told her. I knew it was beyond my abilities to simply figure out what vehicle a person had based on their thoughts, regardless of the fact that I could ‘hear’ their mental chatter.

Grace took over, and within seconds she located a stocky guy who owned an SUV. He brought us his keys, I thanked him, and we got the hell out of there.

The guy’s vehicle was a newer model Toyota Land Cruiser, white with a Denver Rapids bumper sticker on the back.

I got inside, Grace hopped in next to me, morphing into her base form almost immediately, and I pushed the leather seat back a bit. I pressed the button that started the vehicle and threw the SUV in reverse.

We pulled up to the curb and I popped open the back door so Veronique and Stella could put the cash and body armor in back.

The CBGs got in, Dorian in the middle again, and we moved toward the highway.

I didn’t know where we were going, but we needed to get somewhere far away. I figured we’d take I-25 South toward New Mexico and find a place to stay in Pueblo. We needed to get our bearings, dammit.

“This is so fucked,” Stella said, her attitude worsening.

“We have to remain calm,” I said. “We’ve had something like this happen before; in fact, it seems to be like a freaking trope with my life. Grace, can you update her?”

Grace’s light blue eyes turned back to white.

“Damn,” Stella said, the look on her face softening a little.

“Yep, we’ve been through some real shit. Every time we get comfortable, something happens, and someone gets kidnapped, or I get kidnapped, or something equally shitty happens. We can handle this, but I need a little time to do some research and regroup.”

“But all of your stuff was on the computer, right?” Veronique asked.

“Yeah, but I can also look it up on my phone because it’s in the cloud. I do need to get another computer though. Maybe we can find a hotel in Pueblo and just take someone’s laptop. Everyone has a laptop. Hell, the receptionist probably has a laptop with him. That’s the least of my concerns. My biggest concern is getting the Teens back.”

“It could be a suicide mission,” Veronique finally said. “It would be smarter for us to continue our mission, destroy what’s left of the New Mexico facility, and move forward. They’re expecting us to come after them.”

“That never stopped us before,” I reminded her. “They were expecting Dorian and me to come after you, and once we got you, they were expecting all three of us to go after Grace.”

“It’s just …” Veronique considered how she should word her thoughts. “We have to keep them on their toes. They won’t kill them.”

“You don’t know that!” Stella yelled. I felt the vehicle tremble a little as she let off small bursts of her power.

Is there any way you can put Stella out? I thought to Grace.

Grace’s soft voice appeared in my head. Yes, but she’s not going to like it.

It may be better for now if we just bring her down a little bit. We’re going eighty on a highway; if she isn’t careful, our vehicle could flip over.

“Hey, Stella?” Grace asked, turning around.

“No –” Stella started to say when she saw Grace’s white eyes. To help Grace, Veronique touched Stella’s arm, a red glow radiating off her hand.

“She’s going to be so pissed,” Dorian said after Stella was out cold.

“We’ll deal with that later. We need to get this mission under control; we can’t have her getting emotional right now.” I clenched the steering wheel tighter.

I noticed that my knuckles were white. I also realized the vehicle had auto drive and I didn’t have to drive at the moment. I activated the auto drive and pulled my hands away. My palms were covered with a layer of sweat.

“Who’s down for some music?” I asked.

No one said anything, so we continued toward Pueblo in silence.

Chapter Thirty: Thank You to the Stoners in Room 126

Of course we found a Marriott in Pueblo, Colorado. Dammit, it’s our favorite place to stay for free!

No concierge at this one; we simply pulled into the parking lot and I fireman-carried Stella inside, the duffle bag full of money slung over my other shoulder.

The front desk clerk, a paunchy black guy with an asteroid field of moles on the side of his neck, waved us in and gave us a room key with little chatter.

Grace was getting even better at using her ability to move us through the process quickly. If Stella hadn’t been thrown over my shoulder, I would have actually tried to use a little of Grace’s power myself, but they were treating me as the caddy, and I was glad to be of assistance.

“Also, I need a laptop,” I told the clerk.

“I’m sorry, sir, I don’t have a laptop with me. Maybe one of my co-workers does; Justin always brings his laptop. I think he’s a writer or something. Who knows? He’s always typing on it whenever he gets a break. If you want, I can see if he’s around. He’s supposed to be here, but I haven’t heard from him yet.”

“You said he’s a writer?”

“Sure is. I mean, he won’t come out and tell you, but I’ve seen him designing covers and whatnot. Damn amateur if you ask me.”

“Absolutely not. We can’t take his laptop,” I told the CBGs and the receptionist. “Look, I don’t live by many codes. But I refuse to take, and for that matter, use another writer’s laptop. Do you remember seeing any hotel guests with laptops? You know, a laptop bag or something?”

He thought about my question, his eyes still glazed over. “Yeah, there is one couple. I saw one of them in the lobby earlier working on some kind of project, and he was asking about the damn Wi-Fi. Everyone always asks about the damn Wi-Fi.”

“Is our room near theirs?”

“I put you on the top floor, but there are only two floors, so yes. In fact, your room is directly over theirs.”

“That’s all I need to know.”

With Stella still on my shoulder, we found the elevator and took it to Room 226, a suite with two queen-size beds and a recliner with a built-in leg rest.

I laid Stella on the recliner, brought a blanket over, and tucked her in. She looked so peaceful and I cringed as I thought of how angry she’d be once she woke up.

“Who wants to be on laptop duty with me?” I asked them.

Grace sat on the edge of the bed. “Do you want to try yourself? I know you were interested in utilizing this power a little more.”

“Do it myself?” I glanced from Grace to Veronique. Dorian was already in the bathroom, and I heard the shower start up.

Veronique shrugged. “It would be good practice, and Grace can go with you just in case.”

Confidence swelled in my chest. “Sure, I’ll do it, and then I want to come back and get in bed because I’m tired and …” I sighed deeply. “It’s been a weird day. Started good, started great actually, and then this.” A feeling of guilt washed over me. “I knew we should have kept someone there with them. Dammit, they’re just kids; they don’t deserve this shit.”

“We needed everyone to destroy the embryo storage,” Grace reminded me. “And if you’d been there with them, they would have taken you too. So maybe it’s better this way.”

“I just don’t know.”

“We have to work with what we have, and you need a laptop to work better, so come on.”

She stood, and I followed her out the door and back to the elevator.

I didn’t know what the sleeping arrangement was going to be, and I really didn’t care. There were two beds, four of us, and I assumed I would be bedding with Grace because she was kind of the alpha female anyway.

And while that shouldn’t have been on my mind as we took the elevator back down to the first floor, it was, to the point that Grace said something about it as we approached Room 126.

“You can sleep wherever you’d like tonight, even on the floor.”

“Is that your attempt at humor?”

“Was it funny?”

“Actually, it wasn’t that bad.” I cleared my throat. “Okay, I’m going to attempt this, please be ready to back me up when it doesn’t work.”

“It’ll work. You’ve had confidence with my powers before; I don’t understand the sudden change.”

“I can’t be confident all the time. I’m not a machine!”

Is there a confidence machine? she thought to me. Then, You’ve got this, Writer Gideon.

After a few deep breaths, I knocked. The door opened, and the smell of marijuana wafted out. A guy with dreads coughed, smiled at me, and said, “What’s up? How can I help you, brother?”

“I need your laptop, and I want you to think you lost it and go get a new one. In fact … shit, nope, I left the money upstairs. I can’t pay you for it now, but I’ll send someone down with money later. Or I’ll have some money slipped under your door or something.”

“My laptop?” he asked, his eyes glazed over. He had a pockmarked face and a scraggly beard. A tie-dyed Bob Marley shirt and cargo shorts completed his getup.

“Yep, I need it.”

He took a step back, sized me up, and shrugged. “Sure, man, if that’s what you want.”

“Who is it?” a female voice asked from inside the room.

“This dude wants my laptop.”

“What!”

“Yeah, so I’m giving it to him.”

I heard the patter of feet as the woman came to the door. She looked pretty much like him, only a female version. Also, she had beads in her dreads.

“Sure.” She locked eyes with me. “He’ll give you his laptop.”

“And both of you will think he lost it. Because he was stoned, and none of that will make sense anyway in the morning, but he lost it because he was stoned, and he smokes too much weed.”

“I smoke too much weed too,” she admitted.

“Well, then you both do, but that’s okay. It’s legal in this state. Hell, it’s almost legal in all the states, but that’s beside the point. It does make you very forgetful, but personally, I’d prefer a stoner to a drunk anyway. Don’t worry about the laptop you lost. I’ll have some money sent down if I remember. If I don’t … well, sorry, it’s been a very stressful day.”

Concern swept across her face. “It’s been stressful for you? I’m sorry to hear that, do you want some weed?”

I glanced over my shoulder at Grace. “As interesting as that would be, I don’t know if weed is the answer tonight.”

“They got some dank bud here in Pueblo,” the guy said as he handed me his laptop. It was small and sleek, with a Grateful Dead bear over the AppleSoft icon.

It would do.

“Charging cable too,” I told him.

Stoner Joe returned a few seconds later with the charger. “You need anything else? We just smoked half a joint, so if you want to partake, it’s all yours, brother.”

“We’re good,” I said and turned back to Grace.

Chapter Thirty-One: Back and Forth

I had no idea what I was looking for as I clicked through Ken’s folders on the stoner’s laptop. I checked the facilities and all the info I could find about them, played more videos of supers doing all sorts of crazy things, cycled back through, checked things again, tried to see if there was a hidden folder.

All to no avail.

I just wanted to get this situation solved, to find out as much as I could about where they’d possibly taken them, but I knew there was nothing these folders would show me. That didn’t stop me from going through them anyway.

Grace was next to me, already asleep, Dorian and Veronique still awake, their eyes glued to the television screen. I also had the strange sense that we were missing something, and I couldn’t tell if it was just me being paranoid or that I had possibly intuited it through Grace’s ability.

Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling.

I had the notion to check the mansion we’d destroyed, and I wished we had stayed around longer.

I closed the laptop, even tried to sleep for a little bit, but I still kept coming back to it.

I needed to check.

“Grace,” I said, squeezing her shoulder.

“Sleep, Writer Gideon,” was her whispered response.

“No, I need to take care of this.”

I carefully got out of the bed and moved over to Veronique and Dorian.

“Come to join us?” Veronique said in her stilted way. She didn’t quite have the flirting thing down, but she definitely got an A for effort, especially after how she’d fucked me last night.

Or fucked Grace? I hadn’t even begun to unpack that experience.

“As fun as that would be,” I finally told her, “I actually came to ask for some of Dorian’s assistance.”

“There’s room right here,” Dorian said, scooting over and patting the place between them.

“Why are you two fucking with me? I’m being serious.”

“Okay, what do you need?” she asked.

“We need to go back to the mansion in Colorado Springs. I just feel like we might have missed something, and I’m hoping I can sort it out.”

“Missed something? What could you have missed?”

“It’s just a feeling I have,” I told Dorian. “We don’t have to go for long, but I’d like to scratch this itch.”

Veronique nodded toward Stella. “I need to stay here in case she wakes up.”

“That’s fine; I don’t think this will take many of us. Just two, and we won’t be gone long.”

Dorian stood and stretched her hands over her head, yawning. We didn’t have a change of clothes, unfortunately, so she still wore what she’d been wearing under her bulletproof vest earlier. Well, no pants this time, just panties, which she remedied by slipping into a pair of black jeans.

“Are you ready?” she asked as I finished lacing up my shoes.

“We’ll make this quick,” I told Veronique.

“I’m sure you will, and good luck.”

Dorian stuffed her paintbrush in her pocket, just in case we encountered anything, and we teleported to the mansion. We popped up a block or so away, mostly because she figured there would still be investigators on the scene. “How do you want to do this?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“There are people over there.”

“Yeah, of course. Let’s just keep a low profile and teleport away if anyone sees us.”

Dorian’s hand in mine, we crept along the shadows on the far side of the street. I didn’t know what we were looking for, but I figured if we got close enough, maybe something would present itself.

We crouched behind an SUV parked on the street, and I moved to its farthest edge, peeking around at the investigation taking place. They already had the police tape up, and there were three vehicles out front, one of them an unmarked black sedan.

“There’s no way we’re getting over there,” I said.

“I could have told you that.”

“We’re going to have to try something else.”

I knew that Grace could touch things and intuit what had happened through her Psychometry ability. I wondered then if she could focus on something and perhaps see a ghost outline of interactions. She’d never verbalized this to me before, but it seemed like something a psychic would be able to do if they concentrated hard enough.

So I gave it a shot.

Looking at the collapsed home, I closed my eyes and began to extend my psyche toward the scene.

After trying this for a good two or three minutes, I realized it wasn’t going to work. So I opened my eyes, figuring that maybe with my eyes open I would actually see something. And to my surprise …

It was just a glimpse, but I saw a flashback play out in real time over my pane of vision.

It was incredibly short-lived; hell, if I hadn’t been concentrating so hard, I would have thought it was a hallucination or a vivid memory.

I tried again, focusing all my willpower on reliving what had happened there. The glimpse never came back to me, but I was sure of what I had seen.

I turned to Dorian. “Take me to the pizza place from the other night.”

She dropped her hand on my shoulder and we disappeared, our forms reappearing at the pizza joint.

Nothing was out of the ordinary, and the parking lot was empty aside from a delivery vehicle. I focused my psyche, closed my eyes, and when I opened them, I again experienced an hallucinatory image.

“This way,” I said, motioning for her to follow me around to the back of the restaurant.

It only took us a moment to find Michelle, who sat with her back against the wall shivering, her arms wrapped around her knees. She was also completely nude, or rather, her clothing had been shredded and she was trying to use what swaths of it she could find to cover herself for warmth. She’d been in her sleep clothes when she took off; the friction from moving so fast had torn most of the material.

“Michelle!” Dorian said, running over to her.

I joined them, stripping off my shirt to give the young Super something to wear.

Michelle started sobbing. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I ran, I didn’t know what to do.”

“What happened?” I almost shouted at her, then forced myself to take a deep breath. “What happened? Tell us every detail.”

“Let’s get back to the hotel, and then we’ll ask her,” Dorian suggested. “We’ll need to order some food too.”

“I’m so hungry!”

“Just relax,” Dorian told the girl, pulling her in for a hug. She reached her hand out to me, and before I could notice just how cold it was outside now that I had my shirt off, we reappeared at the Marriot in Pueblo.

“Food,” Dorian reminded me.

“Crap, um, yeah. Sure.” I hurried to the hotel phone. I knew the food service grub would be shit, but it would have to do.

“Michelle?” Veronique asked, surprise on her face.

Grace woke and turned to the girl. “You’re okay!”

“Ohhh, it was terrible.” Michelle pulled at the bottom of my shirt so it would cover her naked legs better. She went from confused to even more distraught when she saw Stella passed out in the chair. “Is she okay?”

“Yeah, she’s just resting,” I said, dialing the front desk. “And she’s going to be pissed when she wakes up, but she’ll be happy to see you.”

The front desk phone continued to ring but eventually, the guy from earlier picked up. I told him we were hungry and to send whatever they had, which happened to be wrapped subs.

“That’s fine,” I said and hung up. “Food will be here in a moment. Now, what happened?”

“Ah, I see,” Grace said, her eyes indicating she’d just downloaded all the info she needed from Michelle.

“Tell us all,” I said. “I want to hear it in person.”

Michelle sat on the edge of the bed and sobbed. I wanted to reach out and comfort her, but Dorian beat me to it. The teleporter wrapped a bath towel around Michelle’s shoulders and made sure she was cozy. At least she’d stopped shivering.

“It was because of the backpack.”

“Backpack?” I asked.

The CBGs and I exchanged glances.

“The backpack was floating, and it told us to call a number.”

“And why did you?” asked Veronique.

“The backpack said so. Said it was Grace. Said to call Gideon, that you had some issues. A teleportation issue. We thought it was Grace using a man’s voice.”

“And you didn’t open the backpack?” I asked.

“No, it said not to. We were in the garage looking for things to play with and the backpack just floated up out of the blue.”

How could we be so stupid not to check on Angel before we left? Shit! I thought-screamed.

It’s okay, let Michelle finish.

“So we called the number the backpack told us using the house phone, and it wasn’t you.” Michelle wiped her nose with her forearm. “It wasn’t anyone.”

“And that’s how they located you,” I said, fury roiling through me.

We should have blown Angel up when we had the chance. He wouldn’t have been able to heal from that.

Maybe, Grace thought back to me.

“They came an hour later.”

“And the backpack?” I asked. “What happened to it?”

“Funny thing. As soon as we made the call, it slammed into the garage door. Fiona figured it wanted to go outside, so she opened the door and it flew away.”

Veronique was still half-listening to the television. I didn’t get a sense of cold-heartedness from her; rather, it was a sense of ‘knowing what happened isn’t going to change anything,’ and ‘we must act.’

I pretty much felt the same way, but the clarity helped, and what Michelle told us next only added a sense of urgency to our already tense situation.

“Then they came. The ones from the New Mexico facility. They appeared out of nowhere. I think it was like Dorian. Just appeared. A helicopter too.”

“So it was Augustin, Victoria, and Chloe,” I said under my breath. And another teleporter? I’ll need to look into that.

“Did they fight you?” Dorian asked.

“No fighting. Ingrid and Fiona were knocked out. Completely. It was like a screeching sound that turned into a wave of light. But the light didn’t do anything like knock down walls. It just took them both off their feet and then the guy, he froze them.”

“Froze them?” Dorian asked.

“Augustin,” I whispered.

“He made them cold, so they couldn’t use their powers. It was really bad for Fiona. I think she died. She wasn’t breathing.”

“You don’t know she died,” Grace assured her. “Let’s not assume that.”

I shook my head, my mind filled with anger, fear, and pity for the two supers. “And you watched all this take place?”

“I kept running back and forth, passing through the walls. They weren’t so focused on me. They just took the other two in the helicopter and left. The Augustin guy also left the bomb. So I just started running toward the pizza place. I don’t know why. I didn’t know where to go.”

A knock at the door signaled that room service had arrived.

I took the sandwiches and tipped the guy a fifty-dollar bill after I used Grace’s power to intuit he was the writer the receptionist had mentioned earlier.

Michelle tore into her sandwich. “So hungry,” she said.

Chapter Thirty-Two: Coming Clean over Waffles

The next day started normally. I awoke to find myself sleeping on the floor, a crick in my upper back. I’d forgotten I volunteered to sleep on the ground so Michelle could share the bed with Grace.

The perennial gentleman, am I right?

At least I wasn’t alone.

At some point in the night, Dorian had gotten down from the bed and joined me, and her rear now pressed into my side, warm as ever. I turned and spooned her for a moment, enjoying the position even if it stirred my loins a bit.

“I was cold,” she said, looking at me over her shoulder.

“Veronique isn’t warm enough?”

She laughed quietly. “I didn’t want her to have a crazy dream and drain me while she was sleeping.”

“Fair enough.”

“And what’s that?” she asked as she reached around and grabbed my semi-erect little writer.

“Hey!”

“You keep buzzing,” she said, letting go. She was referring to my phone, which rested on the floor near her pillow.

“Probably messages from Luke or other emails.” I yawned and rolled over to my back, propping my hands behind my head.

I stared up at the ceiling, the urge to write swelling within me. The urge was always there, but that didn’t mean I had to scratch it. I still needed to plow through the rest of Mutants 3, but now wasn’t the time, especially after the shit that went down last night.

“You want to come down to breakfast with me?” I asked.

“Breakfast?” Michelle sat up and crept over to the edge of the bed to peer down at us, a big smile on her face.

“Yep, get ready.”

She nearly exploded out of bed, still in my shirt.

“You’re going to need pants.”

“Can I just wear a robe?”

“Actually, that’s not a bad idea. There are two terry cloth robes in the bathroom if I’m not mistaken. Bring the other one for me.”

She did as instructed, back in the time it took me to blink twice.

Michelle got into the oversized robe, and I did the same, which I wore over my pair of jeans.

“How’s this?” I asked, not feeling a bit like Hugh Hefner, especially with my scraggly beard, facial scar, and nerdy glasses.

Veronique woke, and the first word out of her mouth was, “Coffee.”

“Yeah, downstairs, they have a buffet. And Grace? Are you coming with us?”

Grace got out of bed, and as she did, she morphed into the image of Natalie Johansson.

“No, let’s not draw attention to ourselves.”

“Fine,” she said and cycled through forms. She finally settled on what was pretty much the body of her brunette in yoga pants, but with her Asian face (just for a little diversity and inclusion), and her hair was pulled into a cute side ponytail. “Ready.”

“Where am I?” Stella sat up, and she would have tried to blow us all away with a vibration attack if she hadn’t seen the young teen standing before her. “Michelle?”

“They found me last night!”

Michelle practically jumped into Stella’s arms for a hug.

“You guys found her?” Stella asked, looking from Veronique to me. If she had focused on Veronique longer, she would have seen that her hand was charging red, but as it stood, Stella was more interested in Michelle’s story and how she came to be in the hotel room.

Once Michelle got through those details, Stella turned her attention to us. “I would suggest not doing that again,” she said curtly. “And you know what that is.”

“Relax, it was easier that way, trust me,” I told her. “We needed time to regroup.”

“At my expense, huh?” she asked, climbing out of her chair. She looked a bit haggard, but then again, everyone but Grace looked as if they’d seen better days.

“I promised you we’d recover the teens. We already have one. You really need to start trusting me.”

“Fine,” she said, “but we’re going to talk about this later because what you did wasn’t cool. We’re a team now, and we can’t just knock someone out if they don’t agree with us.”

“You have a point there,” I said. “But we were afraid that in your enraged state you’d do something to the vehicle, which could have killed all of us.”

Stella took a step closer to me. “I have control over my powers.”

At my side now, Dorian placed a finger in her mouth.

“Try it,” Stella said, her eyes flaring. “I dare you.”

“Stella, you may be incredibly strong, but you can’t take all three of us.” Grace reminded the girl in her calm, clear way. “I suggest you stand down and that you continue to stand down.”

Stella glared at me, but then her posture softened. “Fine, but just trust me when I say I have control over my powers.” She took a deep breath. “We don’t have any clothes, right?”

“Nope!” Michelle said. “That’s why I’m wearing this robe, same as Gideon. He gave me his shirt.”

My phone buzzed again and I waved them all toward the door. “Let’s just get some food and then get this sorted out. Including some new clothes.”

To the breakfast buffet we went, the original CBGs up front, Writer Gideon – aka the Manuscript Procrastinator – in the middle, Stella and Michelle following behind us.

I took over the waffle station once we arrived, hogging the waffle maker to the point that some guy cleared his throat and was about to say something to me when Grace took over, and he suddenly wasn’t hungry for waffles any longer.

I suppose I could have given it a shot myself, but I just went about my business, pouring in the batter, closing the lid, turning it so the waffle could cook, and prying that little fucker out of there.

I got fancy with it too, adding some whipped cream, sprinkles, and a swirl of chocolate. Michelle wolfed down … three? No, it was four, and the others each had one. While I played the role of pastry chef, Grace made sure everyone had fruit and meat. Cereal too, but we avoided the eggs because they looked like melted chalk that had been dyed yellow with truck stop piss.

My phone buzzed again, reminding me of the message. “Fine, fine.” I pulled it out of my pocket, checked the screen, and jerked in surprise, dropping the phone onto my waffle.

Grace looked at me, immediately concerned.

“What’s going on?” Stella asked.

I retrieved my phone from the mess of syrup and whipped cream on my waffle and began wiping it off. Not yet able to voice what I’d just read.

“What happened?” Michelle asked. “Did you ruin your waffle? I can make you a new one!”

“No, it’s not that,” I said, distracted by the message I’d seen.

“Read the message to all of us,” Grace said, her eyes white.

“Okay, here goes.” I swallowed hard, well aware that our day was milliseconds away from getting much more complicated. “Gideon, it’s me, Ken. They’re letting me write you this message with the hope that you will actually respond. I’m being held in a warehouse in Reno, Nevada, along with two others, Fiona and Ingrid. I’ve attached the address here. I know you likely won’t come, but if you do, know that you may be saving our lives. If you haven’t responded by making an appearance at sunset tonight, they will kill the three of us.”

“It has to be a trap,” I said under my breath. “Ken can’t be alive.”

“What’s the address?” Stella pushed away from the table and stood, her fists tightening and relaxing as she stared me down.

A few people in the dining area took notice.

“We can’t go,” Dorian said coolly. “It’s definitely a trap; we haven’t heard from Ken in days. They’re just using his email to set us up.”

“We already lost Adam,” Stella said, referring to the little psychic fucker who tried to double-cross us. “I’m not losing Fiona and Ingrid too.”

I continued to wipe the syrup off my phone. “We’re not going to lose them, Stella, but we have to go about this in a smarter way. If we just show up at this address, it’ll be a bloodbath.”

She sat down with a grunt.

The table vibrated a bit, and I looked over at her to see that strange, nearly transparent aura radiating off her form.

“So to clarify, this begins with a plan. A good plan – no, a goddamn good plan.”

“We should destroy the New Mexico facility and move on,” Veronique said, “call their bluff.”

“Don’t be heartless,” Stella told her.

“I’m not being heartless; I’m being pragmatic. Did they forget to go over pragmatism with you in your training? Fiona and Ingrid are still very young; Mother could easily flip their minds.”

“Veronique is right about destroying the New Mexico facility, but I don’t think we should leave our friends behind.”

“They’re your friends too?” Michelle asked, beaming at Dorian.

Dorian nodded. “We share a commonality, so yes, even though I don’t know them as well as you, I do consider them friends.”

“I’m not saying they aren’t friends, but what if we didn’t go after them and just kept to our mission?” Veronique asked. “We could save them later. I think everyone here is misunderstanding my intentions. They won’t retire them yet.”

“We’re going after them,” I said with finality. “And if they want to ambush us, we’re just going to have to be more prepared.”

Veronique took a sip of her coffee. “If that’s what everyone here wants, then let’s do it. But know that I’m against it.”

“Okay, so let’s go over what we know,” I said. “Judging by the way Michelle says they came to Colorado, it sounds like they have a teleporter too. One thing I can do is figure out who this teleporter is. There may be others, but at least I can try to narrow it down. They may have different powers than you, Dorian. Also, I probably should have asked this already, but have any of you trained with other teleporters?”

“When my power came to me, they had me train with a teleporter named Danielle,” Dorian said as she stabbed into a slice of honeydew melon. “I think she was based at one of the West Coast locations.”

“Anything you remember about her?”

“She was good. Just showed me the basics. She was better than me at the time, and she didn’t have another ability aside from heightened strength.”

“Okay, Danielle, a super strength teleporter,” I said, making a mental note of the name. “I’ll see what I can uncover after breakfast. There will definitely be the other three: Victoria, the steel woman; Augustin, the fire-and-ice guy; and Chloe, the sound-to-light lady. They attacked in Colorado; I’m guessing they’ll be there.”

“And Mother will probably be there,” Grace said. “Who knows how many others.”

“So who is best against who?” I asked. “That’s what we need to decide now. Regarding Victoria, Veronique can pretty much hand the metal woman her ass. So that part is easy.”

“But she doesn’t always have to be metal, right?” Michelle asked.

“You’re right,” I said, recalling the videos I’d watched. “And she’s pretty strong in her base form as well. Still, Veronique, that’s all you. And if they have more guys in exoskeletal suits, that’s you too. And bullets. You’re in charge of bullets and all projectiles. Sorry, it seems like a lot.”

Veronique offered everyone a smug smile. “I’ll need to feed.”

“For sure. Moving on … Stella, your abilities can help protect us and they can stop our adversaries from getting their footing. You can take a lot without actually sustaining any damage, but I don’t think you’d stand up well to Mother. That would be your only weakness, so with that in mind, you should focus on Chloe because she can easily affect all of us with her light and sound attacks.”

“Yeah, I can do that,” said Stella.

“And because you walk this interesting line between defense and offense, you have to be willing to change your tactics on a dime.”

“Got it.” She rubbed her hands together under the table.

“What about me?” asked Michelle.

“We think you should stay here,” Grace told her. “It would be safer.”

Michelle’s face hardened. “No, I’m going too. There’s no way I’m not going to help.”

“She should come,” Stella said.

Dorian raised an eyebrow and looked at me.

“Let her,” said Veronique. “Everyone needs to get their feet wet.”

“I have more powers than Gideon,” Michelle reminded all of us.

Dorian cracked a smile. The others, not so much.

“Gee, Michelle, thanks,” I said.

“She’s not wrong,” Stella added.

I took off my glasses and used my robe to clean them. “Okay, Michelle is coming. Moving right along …”

“That’s fine by me, Writer Gideon,” Grace said.

“I didn’t … yeah, okay, you know what to do,” I told her.

“What’s she going to do?” Michelle asked with a mouth full of waffle.

“She’s going to take down Augustin first using her nightmare ability. We don’t need someone shooting fire and ice all over the place. Then she’s going to concentrate on Danielle.”

“And I’m supposed to take on Mother?” Dorian asked.

“Temporarily. You’re supposed to distract her with your creations. Angel won’t be there; there’s no way that motherfucker – sorry, Michelle – has his body back yet. Damn, we really should have killed him. Sorry again, Michelle.”

“Who is Angel again?” she asked.

“I thought we told you about him last night,” I said.

“You did?”

“The backpack. Angel was in the backpack you saw floating in the garage.”

“The backpack’s name was Angel? I thought Grace was the backpack and the number she had us call was traced.”

I exchanged glances with the three original CBGs. “So, um, how do I say this?”

“There was a head in the backpack,” Veronique said. “That head belonged to a Super named Angel, who happens to be Mother’s lover. He also can fly.” She finished her coffee and left to get more, leaving me to sweep up the pieces and clarify what she’d just said.

“That’s right!” I told Michelle and Stella. “Angel can also heal, so we cut his head off and his head was still … alive.”

“Wait, in the backpack?” Michelle asked, her lips curling as a look of disgust came over her face.

“Yeah, and that’s what happened.”

Stella frowned. “So this was all your fault, then?”

“Angel was supposed to be collateral, and trust me when I say he would have given us a run for his money if we hadn’t held him for a while. My point is, he won’t be there. And that’s to our advantage. I know all this looks really bad and that we could hash it out for a while, but we have something else we need to discuss.”

“Yeah?” Stella asked.

“The New Mexico facility.”

Chapter Thirty-Three: To WalMacy’s and Beyond!

“I’m going with you,” I reminded Dorian.

“You’ve already said that,” she told me as she studied an image of a shopping complex in Pueblo. There was a clearing near it, a perfect place to teleport to.

“I mean to New Mexico.”

She pulled her hair into a ponytail and gave me a weary look. We were back in our room, which was pretty cramped for six people. I’d already gone over Danielle’s abilities, which I’d written down on the hotel stationery so Grace and the others would know what she was capable of.

There wasn’t much difference between her and Dorian, but she had teleportation as her main – and only – power, so she was clearly better at it.

It was going to be a tough fight, that was for sure, but knowing this didn’t fully prepare me for what was to come.

But the future wasn’t on my mind as I reached out to Dorian, and Grace took both our hands.

“Be careful,” Michelle said. The Super Teen was still in a robe, resting on the bed next to Stella while both of them watched an action movie. Veronique was in Stella’s chair, hunched over with her elbows on her knees, her face a visage of worry.

“We’ll be back,” I said, and then we were gone.

We appeared in a dry meadow, the grass yellow with a smattering of green. No butterflies, but there were a few bees floating around in search of wildflowers. Grace morphed into a bearded man in a flannel shirt and jeans.

“You look like a real Coloradoan now,” I told her.

“That’s what I was going for; I saw this guy yesterday,” she said in a gruff, alpha male voice.

We took the short walk to the shopping center and found the vehicle we were looking for, a Ford Expedition. Or a Tahoe, a Suburban, a Yukon, a Land Rover – something like that.

Grace touched the door handle and picked up data about the owner. “A woman,” she said, “here to buy something at the Michael Spades shop for her daughter.”

“Let’s check it out.”

Having spent time at the outlet malls in Manchester, Vermont, I knew that the best practice was to get in and out. A surgical strike, as it were. Otherwise, you’d get bombarded by people and their children, sudden discount specials you can’t say no to, and a lot less money than you went in with.

“Speaking of which … shit, we need clothing,” I said, immediately going against my original intent. “I mean, Michelle is still wearing a bathrobe.”

“Let’s get the woman’s car keys first,” Grace said.

“Good call.”

I led the two CBGs through the families with strollers, the service dogs, the cool-looking teens repping whatever latest tech gadget made you look part of the ‘in crowd,’ the boyfriends and husbands shopping with their significant others, and a few children who seemed lost.

Into the Michael Spades store we went, where we found the woman browsing through bags designed to resemble a peacock’s tail feathers.

Grace locked eyes with her and the woman quickly exited the store. We followed her out, got her keys, and bid her farewell as we continued to Old Banana Navy Gap Republic to get some clothes.

Summer was still a few months away, but the store already had the coming season’s wares on display, their walls plastered with beach scenes of sand pails, flip-flops, cute models, and good times.

“Let’s just get stuff for everyone,” I said, taking in the store and its variety of options. I had a couple thousand in my pocket – never leave home without a roll of money – and we were able to clean up and keep it way under a grand.

With loads of shopping bags in our hands, we continued to the parking lot and found our ride. “Time to get supplies,” I told the two as I started up the SUV. We hit the highway and found the WalMacy’s, about fifteen minutes away, and I went over what we needed.

WalMacy’s was the same as a WalMacy’s anywhere – slightly depressing and exceptionally gray – but they really were rolling back prices, and soon, we had three shopping carts filled with nail polish remover, rubbing alcohol, nails, circular saws, thumbtacks, backpacks, fanny packs, Hanes T-shirts, lighter fluid, red gas cans, and paint thinner.

Grace covered any suspicion the checkout lady or others may have with a wave of her hand, and we were back to the vehicle in no time flat.

“We just need to get gas now,” I told them when we got back on the highway.

I found a Chevron and filled up the tank. Then I gassed up all seven of the gas canisters and placed them in the back with all the other liquids.

When we returned to the hotel, we left all the flammables in the SUV and brought the clothes and supplies upstairs.

“The unicorn shirt is great!” Michelle said as she disrobed – I looked away, not a pedo! – and slipped it on.

“We got clothes for everyone so take your pick,” I said. “Now, time to get down to business.”

With all the supplies laid out on the bed, Dorian and Veronique started showing Michelle and Stella how to make the frag pouches.

“Yep, fill the backpacks to the brim, and leave a little room in the fanny packs,” I reminded them.

“I can totally run around and hand them to you guys if you need me too,” Michelle offered. She showed me what she meant by suddenly appearing beside me with a frag pouch in her hand. I’d heard her move, but it was remarkable that she was able to operate in such cramped quarters.

“Actually, it’s not a bad idea,” Veronique said, busily packing a bag full of circular saws.

As we had planned, Dorian relaxed on the chair in the corner, and I plugged into her neck, playing with her abilities a bit.

By the time I finished, they looked like this:

Main Second: Teleportation

Tele-Sphere Radius: 7

Conscious Spatial Awareness: 9

Recharge Speed: 8

Restoration Speed: 4

Teleportation Rapidity: 7

Teleportation Distance: 5

Empathetic Teleportation: 3

Banishment: 1

Overcharge: 4

“Do you feel okay?” I asked her.

“I think I’m fine, but we’re going to need to test it.”

“It’ll work.”

“You don’t know that,” she said, her eyes softening when she saw just how much I believed in her.

“She’s right,” said Grace as she packed another pouch.

“Okay, let’s do it then. Let’s just test the bed.”

“The bed?”

“Yep, let’s give it a shot.” I sat on the bed that wasn’t packed with supplies.

Dorian sat next to me, and we were just about to give it a shot when my phone rang. It was a call coming in over GoogleFace, from Jake Archibald.

“Gideon Caldwell? Hi, this is Jake Archibald from EBAYmazon, I’m the author representative that reached out to you. I wanted to see if you’ve sent the contract yet and ask how progress is coming along on that third manuscript. About the contract, if you would prefer to sign it online, I can arrange that as well. We normally just have people sign online, but we had some issues with authors saying they preferred paper ones.”

“Yeah, hey, Mr. Archibald,” I said half-heartedly. It sucks when your dreams have been realized just as your nightmares are about to play out. I really didn’t have the time to deal with this.

“Please, call me Jake.”

“Jake, I’m kind of in the middle of something. I’ll sign the electronic one if that’s an option.”

“Busy? Are you writing? Just think of me as a fan checking in!” he laughed.

“I’m in the middle of prepping to take out one of the secret facilities. With the CBGs right now.”

“Ha! Your narrative is so wild. Everyone knows it’s not true, but you’re really playing it out, aren’t you? You really believe it. This is why I reached out to you. I read the first installment. Loved it. Looooooooooovvvved it. Second installment? Well, to be honest, I’m only halfway through, but it’s great. Good action, fun narrative. It just feels so real.”

“But it is all true. I thought you understood that.”

“Sure it is, sure it is.”

“It really is,” I said and got to my feet. “But that’s fine; if you don’t believe me, there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“It’s like Carlos Castaneda or something – and the Yaqui Way of Knowledge. Everyone knows it was fiction, but it almost read like nonfiction.”

Dorian and the bed disappeared. They reappeared five seconds later, a surprised look on the teleporter’s face.

“Whoa!” Michelle shouted.

I gave Dorian the thumbs up. It would work. Now all we had to do was orchestrate our plan.

“What’s going on?” Jake asked.

“Look, Jake, it’s been real nice talking to you, but I have to get on the road. Things to do.”

“But how’s that third book coming along? Are you about ready to pop it out?”

Grace snickered as she packed another frag pouch.

“After today? Sure. But I need to get through today first.”

“Are you experiencing some stress?” Jake asked. “We can fly you out here and put together a nice relaxing massage and creative package for you. Maybe hire some other writers to help you pitch ideas. This would have no effect on the advance I already told you about. This is just so you can get in the groove.”

“Fly out to Seattle?”

“Sure! It’s not bad today; a little rainy, but that’s the Pacific Northwest for you.”

Veronique gave me a look that could split concrete.

“Okay, got to go,” I told him as I surveyed the room and the destruction in our near future. “I’ll send you an update soon, Jake.”

“And the contract, don’t forget that!”

“Will do, and thanks for reaching out.” I hung up and turned to Dorian. “Let’s do this.”

Chapter Thirty-Four: Fast Attack

Dorian and I sat in the parking lot in our recently borrowed SUV. The back was loaded with flammables, the gas tank full. She had her eyes closed, visualizing what would happen next. One of her hands was locked in mine, the other gripped the inside door handle.

Grace hadn’t wanted me to go, and I could tell by the look on Veronique’s face that she didn’t either.

And who could blame them? It was a literal suicide mission; possibly even worse than the fight we were gearing up for later that night.

But I wanted to be there for Dorian, to give her the courage to pull through by taking the journey with her.

If this plan went south, I would go up in flames with the vehicle.

I glanced up at our hotel window for the last time. The others were looking out at us, worry evident on their faces.

“Are you ready?” I asked, looking over at Dorian.

“I’m ready.” With her eyes still closed, Dorian took a deep breath, her full concentration on what we were about to do.

We disappeared in a flash, along with the vehicle, a spiral of galaxies and blips of light all around us.

The vehicle took shape in the bottom floor of the New Mexico facility, in Ingrid’s large room, the shocks causing us to bounce a few times before settling.

There had been nothing in the way to obstruct the vehicle.

It was a perfect landing.

“You fucking did it,” I gasped, elated. “You did it!”

But we didn’t have time to celebrate.

Dorian opened her door and got out. We met at the front of the vehicle, her paintbrush already in her mouth as she took my hand.

She started to create a perfect circle of energy with the brush, its tip swirling, the purple energy radiating around the circle with each pass. I could tell she was overheating, evident in the vein beating on her forehead, but she was focused, ready to get us out of there.

With a quick exhale, Dorian brought her paintbrush back, tightened her hold on me, and hurled the ball of energy at the SUV.

As planned, and to make sure the attack went through, we reappeared outside the facility. We were now on the edge of a cliff, razor-winged moths whirling in my stomach. We were supposed to be on the ground and if we had teleported just a few feet out, we would have appeared in midair.

No matter.

I heard the explosion, heard the sirens that followed, and heard more explosions.

Flames licked out of the facility, a mushroom-esque cloud of fire and smoke lifted into the air. The New Mexico facility was finished.

Dorian grabbed my wrist and we were gone again.

“Fuck yes,” I said when we appeared in the parking lot of our hotel.

Dorian fell forward onto one knee. I dropped down beside her, helped her back to her feet, and ignored how fast my heart was beating in my chest.

Talk about an adrenaline rush. My nerves were on fire, I could barely tell up from down, and everything in my periphery had a glaze to it.

Definitely adrenaline.

After a quick glance around to make sure no one had seen us, Dorian and I entered the lobby and took the elevator to the second floor.

“Thank God,” Grace said, coming to her feet when we entered our room.

She’d been sitting on the bed, her back pressed against the headboard. Stella and Michelle were on the other bed, and Veronique was still in the sofa chair.

“You guys pulled it off?” Stella asked, a mischievous look on her face.

“It was crazy,” I said, barely able to catch my breath.

I’d done nothing, but the pressure alone and the teleporting had taken its toll. A small part of me even felt guilty for what we’d just done. There were surely innocent lives that were lost in the attack, but this was war, and we wanted to let them know we were no longer fucking around.

But have we become the villains?

No. Part of me believed we were still the good guys in this battle.

But what if the good guys and the bad guys are interchangeable? What if they have the same motives, to win and to see the other side lose? What really separates us? Is it all dogma and self-aggrandizing concepts of liberty?

Don’t think too much about it, Writer Gideon, Grace thought to me as she took my hand and led me to the bed. She laid me down and brought my head to her bosom, aka my happy place.

“We’re going to have to get out of the country when all this is over,” I mumbled into her pillowy goodness.

“Where are we going to go?” Michelle asked.

I realized then that I was smothering myself in Grace’s tits while there were others in the room. I pushed away, adjusted my glasses, and cleared my throat. “We’ll figure that out later,” I said, getting my act together.

Now sitting on the corner of the bed, I looked over at Veronique, who had one leg crossed over the other, her dark eyes fixated on me.

“You need to feed, don’t you?” I asked.

She nodded.

Grace got out of bed and Dorian took her place. Naturally, and without turning around, I placed my hand on her thigh. She was really warm. I looked at her then. “And you need to relax. I also want to mess with your abilities again once you’ve cooled off.”

“I’m hungry too,” said Stella.

“Pizza?” Michelle asked.

“We have got to start eating something other than pizza. You know, some healthy food.”

“Salad?” Michelle’s face scrunched up with disgust.

“Okay, let’s settle in the middle. How about burritos? I think we can have those delivered by drones. Who wants a drone burrito? Hell, who wants two? Shit, I didn’t think about this though; I’ll need a credit card to order drone burritos. And we don’t have a car, although a car could be helpful for later.”

“Can’t we just do a healthy pizza?” Michelle asked. “One with peppers or spinach or something.”

“That is definitely an option. Veggie pizza it is!” I said hurriedly. Besides, we had things to prep and I wanted everyone resting.

The pizza came in about an hour; three veggie pizzas, all of which we paid for with our reserve cash. Nothing like having a ton of cash. And to be smart, I placed a roll of hundreds in my pocket, easily three grand, just in case.

After everyone had eaten, and they’d had time for their food to digest, I moved on to Grace’s stats. I’d already returned Dorian’s abilities to what they’d been before, and I swear I could see her face lighten as the change took effect.

For Grace, there was one thing in particular I wanted to play with, as we hadn’t tried it in a while.

As soon as I turned the Opacity dial down, her form began to disappear, much to Michelle and Stella’s surprise. Dorian took notice as well.

“You can turn invisible?” the teleporter asked, staring at the spot where Grace had just been. “How come I didn’t know that?”

“Not entirely.” Grace moved her hand so that we could see the light reflect slightly off her translucent form. I also noticed the imprint of her body on the bed.

“But close enough,” Dorian said. She moved over to the bed and placed her hand on Grace’s thigh. “That’s … uncanny.”

“It’s something else, and while Mother will be able to see her, the rest …”

I turned the dial up; Grace’s color instantly came back to her body.

“Now, what’s next?” I asked.

“Food,” Veronique said.

“Right, you need to feed. Dorian, are you up for grabbing someone?”

“In an hour.”

During the hour that passed, the CBGs and single Super Teen chilled as I researched the Nevada address on GoogleFace maps.

There wasn’t anything unique about the meeting location ‘Ken’ had given us, aside from the fact it was in the middle of nowhere, thirty miles or so outside Reno. A simple warehouse with a parking lot, that was all. There was nothing I could find in the vicinity that would give us an advantage. No tree coverage, a few smaller hills, but mostly desert.

It was clearly a trap, and knowing that, we could at least prepare accordingly.

Which brought me back to my earlier suggestion about getting another car.

I zoomed out and found the road that led to the warehouse in question. I couldn’t see any type of fence guarding the place. The road simply jutted off the access road.

“Dorian, we need to get a new car.”

“You know, transporting vehicles isn’t exactly easy,” she said from her place on the bed.

“I understand, but we’ll only have to transport this vehicle one time. And even if there is a fence that’s not on the map, we’ll get through that. We need leverage, a distraction.”

What if there are helicopters?” Michelle asked, fear in her eyes.

“Let me deal with them,” Veronique said. “Helicopters are my specialty.”

Chapter Thirty-Five: You Say Nevada, I Say Destruction

And that’s how I found my crazy nonfiction sci-fi writing ass driving down a dusty highway, the CBGs and Michelle in the middle, and Dorian up front, my USB cable plugged into her neck as I dialed back her abilities.

The stolen SUV belonged to Veronique’s latest victim, a guy we met at WalMacy’s again. It was spacious and smelled like pipe tobacco.

To sum up the rest of our afternoon: we got Michelle a vest and a ballistic helmet, the back of the vehicle was loaded with good ol’ WalMacy’s explosives, and Grace was now invisible.

The pony show was well underway, Nevada the host to however our future would play out. The horizon was nothing aside from a few scattered rock formations, shrubs, and a handful of sad palms. I could tell the place didn’t get a lot of water, yet there was something beautiful about it, mystic even.

The SUV now in auto drive, I dialed back Dorian’s Tele-Sphere Radius as planned. She gasped, the color returning to her face.

“That was so cool,” Michelle said, interrupting the silence that had permeated the SUV’s cabin for the last several minutes.

“Thanks,” Dorian said. “Everyone touch me.”

To make it easier, she shifted toward the middle of the vehicle, awkwardly placing herself between the front and back seats.

I disabled the auto drive, took the wheel, and stepped even harder on the gas pedal.

The meeting place appeared in the distance and I veered off the road, making a beeline for its outer wall. Rock and bits of sand drummed along the exterior of the SUV, adding a percussive ambiance to an increasingly stressful situation. We tore through a small cactus patch, going close to ninety miles an hour.

One glance in the rearview mirror and I saw that Stella’s eyes were closed, our backup plan. Veronique had a wild look on her face, mouth open as she stared wide-eyed at the fast-approaching warehouse.

“Now!”

And before the single word could leave my mouth, we flashed away.

We reappeared on the other side of the storage warehouse just as the SUV exploded into its southern side, the concussion rattling inside my chest.

Like ants pouring out of a toppled ant hill, MercSecure soldiers tore out of the structure, getting as far away from the flaming side as they could.

“I’ll see what’s inside!” Michelle said and tore off for the facility.

“Wait!” I yelled. “Be careful!”

“Let her go,” invisible Grace said from a position to my left. “She’ll be back.”

“There’s no one there!” Michelle said, reappearing. “No Fiona, and no Ingrid. Only soldiers and now fire.”

Veronique nodded and placed a hand on her fanny pack full of shrapnel. “Let’s handle this.”

As if on cue, the bullets tearing in our direction stopped in mid-air.

“Get down,” Stella told me, using her vibrational powers to push me onto my belly.

Rather than protest, I stayed low, watching as the superpowereds lined up their attacks.

Veronique held off the bullets; Dorian traced her patented T-Rex with guns for arms in the air; Stella formed what looked like some type of boomerang made of rippling, translucent energy; and Grace stayed behind them, ready to assist once Veronique dropped the barrier of stalled bullets.

As a few Humvees appeared in the distance, barreling toward us at breakneck speeds, Veronique let the bullets go, followed by Dorian’s Jurassic energy creation and Stella’s vibrational attack.

Their projectiles cut the approaching mercs down like they were cardboard cutouts. It was a bloodbath, and at some point during the melee, Michelle let out a little shriek and covered her eyes.

“Humvees, three o’clock,” Veronique said to Dorian, who lightly flicked her paintbrush against her tongue.

Heavy artillery followed, and Veronique kept the large bullets from hitting us. Rather than turning them back on the Humvees, she waited for the vehicles to get closer and pulled their axles out from beneath them, kicking up a ton of debris.

Dorian’s humanoid energy creations moved in next, cutting through the military trucks’ hoods and throwing energy fists at the men driving them. One of the mercs managed to escape. As he ran in our direction firing his weapon, I lifted my hand and …

… swept his feet out from beneath him using Grace’s power, now my power.

“Here,” Michelle said, returning in an instant with his gun. She crouched next to me now, an excited look on her face as she dangled the weapon in front of me.

“No idea how to use that thing,” I said. “I know, I’m ashamed too. Just never thought I’d be in a situation where I’d need one. Seems I was wrong!”

“Well, what am I supposed to do with it?”

Nope, now was definitely not the time to figure out how to use the gun. While I would have loved to tuck it into the back of my pants, rapper-style, I’d probably end up shooting my ass cheek off, which was the last thing I needed. “Just leave it here, and get down. I’ve got my own attack power.”

I focused once more on the merc I’d just knocked down. He was getting to his feet and I used my telekinetic power to slam him down again.

Whether I did it or invisible Grace did, it was anyone’s guess. But as it stood, their numbers were thinning, and the mercs smart enough to realize that shooting at us didn’t work were in the process of retreating.

Dorian teleported above another Humvee, dropped a couple of charged frag pouches, and bailed out of there. The explosion sent the vehicle off its trajectory, its weight causing it to tip, a fire instantly starting up on its underside as one of the paramilitary soldiers tried to scramble out.

The guy wrestled his gun from the Humvee, turned to us, and fell backward immediately as one of Veronique’s bullets struck him in the forehead.

“We’ve got this!” Michelle called out as she disappeared, punched someone in the dick, and reappeared next to me while Veronique finished bringing the guy down by feeding off him.

A sudden flash before us caught our attention.

Mother, in a mil-spec black bodysuit that definitely showed off her baby bump, stepped forward holding Ken’s severed head. She was joined by Augustin, Chloe, Stella, and the teleport named Danielle.

Chapter Thirty-Six: Banished

“You’re sick!” I screamed at Mother. I tried to run at her but was held back by an invisible force.

I knew the force holding me back was Grace when I felt a hand touch my cheek, as her voice rang out in my head, Relax, Writer Gideon.

Mother dropped Ken’s head onto the ground and kicked it over to us.

Ken’s eyes were closed, parts of his face had been caved in, his skin white and bloated, strips of his hair missing. He’d been tortured to death.

“No, Mr. Caldwell, you are the one who is sick. None of this would have happened had you not intervened. But now you have blood on your hands. And not just Ken’s blood, but the blood of countless other victims – other supers.”

“Other supers?”

Veronique and Dorian stood in front of me now, Stella to Dorian’s right and Michelle to my left. No glances were exchanged; all were gearing up for the moment Mother’s team attacked.

Augustin, Chloe, Danielle, and Victoria’s postures indicated they were ready to pounce at a moment’s notice.

“Yes, other supers,” said Mother. “Did you really think your attack in New Mexico today wouldn’t take innocent lives?”

I swallowed hard.

“I’m guessing you didn’t know that Ingrid and Fiona were being held at that facility.” Mother glared at me. “Both killed in the attack.”

Stella gasped. “Killed?” she looked at me, not sure how she should interpret what Mother had just said.

“That’s right, Stella, dear; due to poor planning, they killed your friends. Don’t believe me? Let’s ask Adam.”

Adam, the young psychic who’d betrayed us, appeared out of nowhere. Danielle was really that fast.

Unlike Dorian, who left a small spark of purple energy when she disappeared and reappeared, Danielle left no trace. She’d simply been standing there, then she was still standing there and yet something had changed; that thing was Adam.

Mother placed her hands on the young psychic’s shoulder. The little fucker was also wearing a black mil-spec outfit. His arms were crossed over his chest, and he stared at us with a hint of smugness on his face.

“Adam!” Michelle cried out.

His only response to her was a cocky nod.

“You see, Adam would have been there too,” Mother said. “But we had preparations to make for today’s little meeting. And really, Veronique, Dorian, and Grace, I would have expected better of you three. How could you not know this was a setup?”

I watched Veronique move her hand to the fanny pack on her waist. It was a slight gesture, and even if one was watching from up close, it would have seemed as she as if she was just placing her hand on her upper thigh.

“We killed –” Stella stopped and turned to me. “No, this was your idea. And Dorian’s. Maybe Grace’s too. Doesn’t matter. It was your idea – you guys killed them. You killed them!”

“Eek!” Michelle cried, seeing the vibrational energy move around Stella’s body.

“She’s lying,” Grace said. Still invisible, I assumed she was to my right, not far from Stella. “You can’t believe these lies, Stella.”

“They’re not lies!” Something flared behind Stella’s eyes, and having seen this before, I glanced from Mother back to Stella.

“Dorian, banish her now!” I shouted.

There was a burst of purple, and both Dorian and Stella disappeared. Dorian reappeared ten seconds later, a troubled look on her face.

Mother shook her head. Her brown hair was in a bun, and a light breeze whipped up wisps of loose hair around her face. “Well, I suppose it would make sense taking her away from here, rather than having to fight her as well,” she said with a cruel smile. “But you are down one member now, and at least one of your members is all but useless – sorry, Michelle.”

“Don’t listen to her,” I told Michelle quickly, who was huffing now, trying to handle the wave of emotion rolling through her. “Stella is safe, right Dorian?”

“Something like that,” Dorian said and lifted her paintbrush to her mouth.

“Do as planned,” I whispered, and before Mother could say anything else, Veronique loosed several of her circular saws.

Paintbrush in mouth, Dorian did the same with her charged frag pouches.

Danielle flew backward – Grace’s opening attack –  but reappeared in her original place within seconds.

Victoria charged forward but didn’t revert to her full metal form. Dorian’s hand landed on Veronique’s shoulder, teleporting them to Victoria’s left, where she left Veronique, disappeared again, and reappeared in front of me, casting a large ball of purple energy.

From her new vantage point, Veronique sucked back all the metal she’d already tossed out, as well as other pieces in her vicinity. The bits of metal cut through enemy lines, all of whom saved themselves by hitting the deck, blocking the onslaught, or teleporting away.

Augustin was the first on his feet, and just as he was about to throw a fireball at Veronique, he was dragged down to the ground and hurtled across the open space.

Michelle appeared back at my side. “I’m not weak,” she said, before zipping away again.

Michelle did that? I thought, as more possibilities of how she could use her power came to me.

The others kept to the plan, the only problem being that Stella was supposed to take on Chloe, who had already started to pummel our side with flashes of light.

I knew I wasn’t going to be able to dodge them, and I could feel Grace next to me, protecting both of us with a telekinetic shield that stopped Chloe’s attack.

“You need to take out Danielle!” I reminded her.

Done, she thought back to me.

Danielle started screaming, loud enough to stop all the fighting so everyone could turn to see what she was screaming about.

Even Mother seemed surprised.

The teleporter was striking the ground now, consumed by nightmares, and as she did so, she made the mistake of teleporting a portion of her hand into the hardened soil.

I hadn’t considered the possibility of this happening before, but seeing it play out before me – and seeing it happen so quickly – made me gasp when I saw her pull back with a severed limb.

Danielle looked at us and cried out. Mother dropped next to her, placed a hand on her head, and then she was gone, forced to teleport by the big bad witch.

One down, I thought to Grace.

Chloe continued to hit us with waves of energy until a spark of purple appeared behind her, and both were gone in an instant, only Dorian returning.

“Veronique!” Michelle stopped running for just a moment to toss her backpack filled with metal scraps into the air, which started to spin above the battlefield, metal spraying out as if it were light reflecting off a disco ball.

Adam, who’d been hanging out to Mother’s right, locked eyes with me. I could hear his voice trying to make its presence known in my mind.

You are mine, Gideon, his voice hissed. Mine!

You can go fuck yourself, Adam!

You will lose this fight.

And you will never lose your virginity. Fuck you!

Victoria, who had been blocking the shards of metal with her hardened skin, finally cast her arm to the side and started changing. She was taken over by rage now, not thinking through the problem with turning to steel near Veronique.

The moment her form solidified, Veronique used her powers to lift Victoria into the air and slammed her against the ground once, twice, three times, four …

The first few slams didn’t do much damage, but by the fifth or sixth, there was a crater in the ground, and Victoria looked like she had passed out.

Veronique flung her arms wide and sent Victoria barreling toward Chloe and Mother. The steel woman hit the ground, tumbling and kicking up dirt and debris as she rolled toward her companions, eventually smacking into an invisible barrier.

Two helicopters appeared on the horizon.

I gritted my teeth as a presence pried at the front of my psyche as if trying to rip through and press its razor-sharp form inside my skull.

You are mine! Adam’s voice rang out in my head.

I resisted, and by the time I’d fallen to one knee, Grace had taken over.

I will now show you true power, Adam.

Adam jammed his fingers into his eye sockets, blood streaming down his cheeks. He cried out in pain, and one of his eyes actually popped out of its socket and dangled there for a moment before he finally passed out.

“Grace!” I cried as I felt a screaming start up in my skull. I recognized Mother’s excruciating mental scream almost immediately.

Hold on, Gideon! Grace’s voice, a beacon of light if there ever was one, ricocheted across the inside of my skull.

Wings of white energy formed in the air.

I was down on both knees now, hands over my head as I tried to physically stop Mother’s brain scream. I knew something had changed when the sound subsided, when everyone with a dog left in the fight turned and saw an invisible force of charged white energy, almost as if an angel had appeared.

Grace’s form was still translucent, but almost in the way someone gets shocked in a cartoon, the energy radiating over her body allowed for all of us to see her skeleton, and a thin outline of her actual body.

And it wasn’t Grace’s Ultron form I saw; it was the form I’d seen only once, back in Connecticut – a thin, girlish body, not at all like the voluptuous form Grace normally took.

She’s protecting us.

A wall of ice formed around Victoria’s fallen body.

Augustin was back in the fight now, shooting a Volkswagen Beetle-sized fireball in my direction, which would have hit us if it hadn’t been for Dorian appearing next to me and teleporting me to safety.

“Banish Mother!” I said when she dropped me off beside Veronique.

Dorian nodded and was gone again.

“Are you okay?” Michelle asked. I turned to her, and she was gone again.

“I’m fine!” I called out anyway.

I could still hear Mother’s power at the back of my skull. Whatever Grace was doing had mostly nullified the psychic banshee attack, but I didn’t know how long she could hold out.

A determined look on her face, Veronique moved toward Mother, her hands charging red.

If Mother was feeling any type of pressure because we were winning, her face didn’t show it. She was smiling, almost proudly, like she was happy to see that her offspring were capable of such power.

A flick from Mother’s hand caused a wave of force to sweep Veronique off her feet. The metal-draining vampire was blown back thirty feet, tumbling into a heap of dry grass and parched earth.

My hopes were lifted when a flash of purple took shape behind Mother, but the elated feeling in my chest was instantly crushed when Dorian stopped dead in her tracks, her hand still locked on Mother’s shoulder.

Mother had Dorian now, her hand around the teleporter’s neck, lifting her a foot off the ground. There was no struggling; Dorian’s arms were limp at her sides, her hair partially covering her face now.

Dorian disappeared, leaving behind a purple poof of energy. For a brief moment, I had the false sense that she had somehow escaped, that she had freed herself from Mother’s grasp.

The hand that landed on my shoulder said otherwise.

I felt a shift in my stomach and suddenly, I found myself falling, cracking my left hip painfully against the hard ground.

“What the …”

I pushed myself up and glanced around, trying to figure out where I was.

There was nothing for miles on the horizon, just some hills overhead, and a lazy wind whipping up dust. I was in some type of crater; possibly a lake that had been drained or dried up years ago.

Dorian had banished me.

Chapter Thirty-Seven: The Trailer

The setting sun caused a circular corona of light to pass near my pane of vision. Because of the sun’s position, I couldn’t quite see where I was going; I could only cover my brow with my hand and get a basic idea of the layout of the land.

My phone was shattered, a casualty of falling onto my hip. Not that I would have gotten reception here anyway, but at least it would have given me something to use.

As it stood, all I had was the lipstick-sized hard drive, the GPS-killing key, body armor, a cool-looking helmet, and a roll of cash.

I wasn’t panicked yet, thanks to the adrenaline. I had the feeling Dorian would return for me, however baseless that feeling was.

I hadn’t walked very far from where I’d appeared; I didn’t want to leave the area just in case she returned. The problem was, she either banished me because she’d been taken over by Mother, or she banished me to save my crazy, half-superpowered ass.

And I didn’t know which one it was.

Some jostling to the left caught my attention. The area was covered by the shade of a deep red hill, but I noticed the outline of a fallen form: a woman, her hair in a large Dutch braid.

“Stella!”

I knelt in front of her to find that she was still breathing. As I sat her up, her chin fell forward, her shoulders slouched.

“Can you walk?” I asked, stupidly.

Did Dorian drop her on her head or something? But Stella should be able to block something like that.

I was elated to find someone else, despite the fact that we could be in any desert anywhere, and civilization could be hundreds of miles away.

I really had no idea.

I tried to look for landmarks on the horizon, but again, the sun was making it difficult, and I couldn’t tell any similarity between the soil here and the soil back at the warehouse.

“Stella, if you can hear me, just give me some sign.”

Holding her shoulders, I waited for her to make some type of movement to tell me she was cognizant.

Nothing came.

It was still warm out, and I realized my brow was covered in sweat. We would need water sooner than later, and there wasn’t any here, that was for fucking sure. I recalled that Dorian had the ability to teleport empathically, to someone she was associated with. Which meant I didn’t need to stay in this area; we could look for some sign of civilization.

Who knew? People live in all sorts of places. With that in mind, I lifted Stella over my shoulder.

I knew shit-all about surviving in the wilderness. Unfortunately, the Connecticut school system didn’t have ‘wilderness survival’ as a course you could take, nor was it an elective at Southern Connecticut University. (Although it should be!)

But I figured if I followed the sun, I’d at least be heading west, which would get me somewhere. It would be easy to follow the sun because it looked like it’d be setting for another two hours or so.

So with Stella over my shoulder, I started off.

I don’t know how long I walked, but rather than think about the burden of her weight, or the fact that I was growing increasingly dehydrated and hungry, I thought instead of how my life had come to this point.

Grace had shown up out of nowhere on my doorstep, then Veronique had come for us and joined us, with Dorian repeating the pattern shortly afterward.

And all that was before the Super Teens came along. There had been good times; the sex and the laughs and the sheer joy of the adventure. There had also been bad times, and we’d done some things I was far from proud of.

Getting to know each other, growing closer, existing outside of societal norms – these were the things that made it interesting.

“Keep going,” I told myself after walking close to an hour. I didn’t know where the stamina was coming from, but I wasn’t asking questions. “Just keep going,” I whispered, hearing the strain in my voice.

This philosophy was how I ended up imprisoned in Austin, how I ended up meeting the Super Teens, how two of them ended up dying.

Just. Keep. Going.

A wave of sadness rolled over me.

The sadness was like a sticker burr, connected to everything I touched, everything I’d been part of since meeting Grace. From the exploitation of people we’d encountered, to not being able to save those I cared about from imminent death – Dr. Ken Kim, Ingrid, Fiona – and for all I knew, one of the other CBGs could be gone by now.

I had no idea how the battle was going. If Stella and I were still in Nevada, we were far enough away that I couldn’t hear any of the commotion. No helicopters, no explosions, no cries for help.

Nothing. Stuck in the middle of BFE.

My knees were hurting, my thighs on fire, my shoulder aching.

I pressed on.

I was the weakest link, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me from getting Stella to safety. I didn’t care if my legs fell off or I died of starvation. The story was going to end with me saving someone, actually being helpful for once!

Fueled by my desire to be of some assistance, I pressed forward. Up a hill we went, the burn on my thighs like nothing I've ever felt before. Stella was light, I remembered that from her base stats, but carrying anyone over a long distance would make one's muscles sore.

Rather than think about that, I thought about the battle … the many battles I’d been privy to.

If you asked me weeks ago, I would have assumed that the first battle you take part in was like losing your virginity. No other fight would replace the strangeness of it all, the feeling of a new experience, the sheer spectacle.

If you asked me now, I’d slap the shit out of you. One never got used to fighting; the only thing that changed was how the fear was managed and understood, how it was comprehended in the moment.

You preachy asshole, I thought and felt a smirk form on my face.

But this was who I am, someone who overanalyzed things and tried to come up with pithy quotes to make myself sound smarter. I knew that, and maybe every now and then I actually succeeded, but most times, my inner monologues were pathetic at best, self-aggrandizing at worst.

Focus, Writer Gideon, I thought to myself.

I counted my steps.

One, two …

This proved to be mind-numbing, but at least it worked for a little bit. It was getting darker, but I refused to rest.

“Almost there,” I told Stella, no idea where ‘there’ was.

We moved up another hill, down the other side, and just as we were about to reach the apex of the next hill, I saw a light in the distance.

I looked again, hoping it wasn’t some type of evening mirage. I started moving toward it, stopped, debated whether to continue on the same path I was headed, and made the final decision to at least investigate it.

It was a good twenty-minute walk from where I currently stood, but once I got closer, I saw that it was indeed something – a trailer.

Goddamn, did it feel good to find some form of civilization.

Stella began coughing.

“Are you okay?” I set her on the ground, taking in the confusion on her face when she saw me.

The vibration that followed was enough to throw me to the ground, where I nearly smacked my head against a big rock. I did manage to scrape my shoulder against it though. I reached my hand out toward Stella and saw her head dip forward again.

She was out cold.

“Damn,” I mumbled, gingerly touching the abrasion on my shoulder.

The light from the trailer was bright orange, and as I looked at it, I saw the door open.

A man stepped out, his face covered by shadows.

“Help!” I called over to him. “We got lost in the desert, and …”

The man took a few steps closer to me, and as he did, I could make out his features a little more. He had a crew cut, dark little eyes, a square jaw, a beer belly. He wore shorts and a pair of combat boots, the laces undone.

You will help us, I thought to him, calling on Grace’s power for assistance.

The man started laughing. “Your powers won’t work on me, boy,” he said, reaching his hand toward me. “Now get inside. I’ve been waiting all day for you.”

“All day? Who … who are you?”

“Father,” he said, his eyes flaring yellow.

The End.

Book Four is out now!

Seriously, though, you’ve made it this far—you won’t believe where the series goes next!

https://geni.us/CherryBlossomGirls4

Back of the Book Content

Reader,

Thank you.

Thank you for reading this series and reviewing it.

Like Gideon, the Cherry Blossom Girls have changed my life, and I still can’t believe people enjoy this series as much as they do!

Please take a moment to review the box set. It really helps this series reach new readers.

Here’s the universal link: https://geni.us/CBGBoxSet

Your reviews are what drive this series to the top!

As of the writing of this back matter (June 2019), I’m currently working on Book Eight, which means you have a bit of catching up to do.

How long will the series go? That’s a damn good question, but right now I’m writing about Gideon and the CBGs in Asia and it shows no signs of slowing down. Stronger villains, more angles and without spoiling anything, the fourth installment of this series is where things take a turn in a direction that changes the dynamics between Gideon, the CBGs, and people trying to kill them.

So read on, please review, and check out some of my other series on the following pages.

I now have Cherry Blossom Girls posters and other swag available on my online store. I’ll continue updating merch going forward!

You can get a limited Cherry Blossom Girls button by joining my Patreon, where you’ll also get to preview books before other people are able to read it. There are also great tiers, each with exclusive benefits. For the cost of a cup of coffee, you can get all sorts of exclusive content on my Patreon.

Other cool places.

You can find out about more Harem Lit books (like this book) on the Facebook page.

What’s that? You have a page too, Mr. Author? YES. You can also join the Proxima Galaxy here to see how all my books are connected, see previews of upcoming releases, and get early copies of my new works as well as audiobooks.

Need some more LitRPG? Then check out the LitRPG Books page, or the GameLit Society page, run by some great dudes.

So join the group, enjoy the community, and thanks again for reading, for the support, for making this weird series a possibility!

Yours in sanity,

Harmon Cooper

(My new series is in the same vein as CBG–fun, wild, crazy superpowers, just… read the blurb.)

https://geni.us/WeCouldBeHeroes

Not everyone can say they met their new girlfriend while being detained for impersonating a superhero.

Hell, not everyone can say they have a superpower.

But Sam Meeko can, and this is the story about how he discovered his strange power (hint: through police brutality), the people he met immediately after (hint: three beautiful women), and the kick ass team they formed once they realized there was a vampire outbreak descending upon their city. When the cops don’t know what the hell is going on, and the real Centralian superhero teams can’t be bothered, saving the day falls to this ragtag bunch of half-powered superhero hopefuls.

Assuming, of course, that they can get their acts together.

Other Books by Harmon Cooper

Hate your job. Win the lottery. Get a superpower. House of Dolls.

https://geni.us/HouseofDolls

A fantasy harem adventure inspired by Pokemon Go!, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, and the Persona family of video games. Check out this Amazon best seller!

https://geni.us/MonsterHuntNYC

Tokyo, Japan meets online fantasy gaming and South Park-styled humor. Yakuza, goblins, action, intrigue - add this book to your inventory list!

https://geni.us/FICK

What if Ready Player One was a multi-part epic? Gritty LitRPG action, gamer humor, fantastic fantasy worlds, and a killer MC. Read now!

https://geni.us/TheLoop

And now… A book by LUKE!

If you didn’t know, “Luke” in this book is based on a real Canadian writer, Luke Chmilenko, who is a friend of mine, and whose book above is a beloved LitRPG series.

Please check it out if you haven’t already!

Get connected with other LitRPG readers

Yes, reader, there is a place to catch up on Harmon Cooper books, meet other readers and see exclusive previews (as well as being the FIRST to know about a new release). Join the Proxima Galaxy today, and the LitRPG Society below.