I finished tapping out the text message and hit send. I was letting Taylor know that I was taking a little time for myself and that I’d be home a bit later than expected. I checked the time once again. Nearly seven.

  I don’t know why I was feeling as nervous as I was.

  I didn’t know why I felt most of the things I felt, come to think of it.

  I glanced up from my phone and across the street, where a small parking lot was partially filled with cars in front of a classic Americana-style diner. It was styled in a very retro fashion, although I knew that the building couldn’t have been all that old, considering that most of the city was practically new construction.

  I thumbed the crosswalk button and waited for the light to shift. My backpack, filled with a mix of odds and ends of clothing, a few books, cosmetics, and what could best be described as tourist shit, weighed heavily on my shoulders. It wasn’t that the pack was all that heavy in reality; rather, it was a reflection of my deplorable present state. So I tugged on the padded straps with a grunt, and stubbornly ignored the growing discomfort.

  The traffic lights changed colors, and a chime sounded from the crosswalks indicating it was safe to cross.

  I all but stomped my way over the pavement, through the parking lot, and into the diner. The sun was starting to set on the horizon, but the temperatures were still quite pleasant, in the seventies. I’d have to try to be mindful of the time if this meeting actually took place. I had a long-sleeve shirt I’d found at a thrift store earlier that fit me passably, but I wasn’t well dressed if the temperatures started dropping much lower than they were currently.

  I’d quickly figured out that, being built the way that I was, I didn’t retain body heat particularly well, and that I got cold easily.

  The interior of the diner was well-lit with overhead lights, and there were a number of rather enticing smells coming from the large flat-top grill located behind the long counter that filled the middle of the space. Molly’s diner was shaped like a wide and shallow rectangle, with booths running along big picture windows on the front of the building, and a second row of booths on the back wall of the diner. A bar with fixed stools boxed in the open kitchen and separated the working space from the customer spaces.

  A dry-erase sign with daily specials listed on it stood just inside the entryway, and there was a slightly wrinkled sheet of printer paper inside a laminate sleeve stuck to the board with a magnet.

  Meeting Tonight 7-10P

  An arrow was drawn facing to the right with a black marker.

  Glancing in the indicated direction, I saw that some tables had been pulled to sit in proximity to one another, flanked by booths on three sides. There were a few people already seated at the tables, but most of the booths looked empty.

  I had the strangest sense of deja vu, looking around the diner, and at the seating arrangements, but I didn’t have the first idea why. I made my way over to one of the booths that was unoccupied. Part of me expected the tile floor of the diner to be sticky and clutch at my sneakers. Another part was sure that the floor would be greasy, and that I would have to watch my footing.

  Neither was true; the floor, as with the rest of the restaurant, was quite clean. I took off my backpack and set it on the booth seat, then slid in, pushing it toward the wall. My shoulders throbbed in relief at having the bag off.

  A middle-aged guy with salt and pepper hair came over and gave me a laminated menu to look over.

  He smiled at me and flipped open a small pad, waiting for my order. The air conditioning was on and circulating cool, dry air around. I rubbed my arms and glanced over the menu while the guy waited for my order.

  “Do you have any suggestions on hot drinks?” I asked.

  I got the impression that the grin on his face was there as a reflexive behavior, that, or he was humoring the weird girl that’d wandered in.

  “Coffee’s fresh as of about ten minutes ago. First time here?”

  I nodded absently and dropped my eyes back to the menu. One side was all breakfast foods, and the other was all grilled stuff that you’d expect. Burgers, steaks, and plenty of things that came out of a deep fryer.

  I hope that my stomach is going to be able to handle any of this. I’d probably best try and take it easy.

  “Well, most people love the breakfast items, we’re open around the clock, and serve breakfast any hour of the day. We won a Brockton’s Best Eats award for our house burgers in twenty-fifteen, so you know those are always good, too.” He recited the daily specials, but nothing from that list was particularly appealing to me.

  “Uhm. I’ll take a coffee, and breakfast special number… four,” I offered, not sounding terribly convincing to my own ears.

  “Sure thing! Bacon, sausage, or turkey sausage?”

  “Oh, the turkey sausage, please.” I handed the menu back to him.

  He scribbled something on his pad, then looked back up at me with that grin again. “Don’t tell me, you’re watching your figure too?”

  What?

  He waved a hand, saying, “Sorry, thought you were one of the people in on that joke, ignore me!”

  I was more confused than anything, and it must have shown, because he quickly took the menu I was holding.

  I glanced over at another of the waitstaff clearing a table and pocketing a tip that’d been left tucked under a coffee cup. “Oh, uh, do you all take… phone payments? I should have asked first before ordering, sorry.”

  “Hm? Oh, yeah, of course. Have to take them at the register, though, our last tablet died the other night, and we don’t have our new ones in yet.”

  I nodded, and he flipped his notepad closed. I glanced at his nametag. Mike.

  “Just checking since you seem new, but are you here for the meeting?”

  I looked up to make eye contact, then dipped my head. He smiled easily. “Okay, great. They usually ask that people who don’t plan on attending the meetings not sit over here unless the house is fairly busy and the space is needed,” he gestured at the nearby area where the tables were put together. “People tend to drift in a bit late on Thursdays, but I’m sure they’ll get started here fairly soon. It’s been relatively quiet of late, so you picked a good time to visit for your first time. Anyways, be back with your order!”

  Mike made himself scarce, and I was left alone with my thoughts. I glanced over the assortment of people here so far.

  Mostly individuals, as far as I could tell. No real consistency, it was a bit like a random selection of people of different backgrounds and classes had been gathered. There was an older gentleman in clothing that looked expensive, but also like he was purposefully dressing down, reading a tablet in one booth. Three women were seated next to one another on one side of a table and quietly talking. A younger woman who looked like she was high school age had her face underlit by a portable video game while she toyed with a toothpick between her lips.

  My coffee was delivered, and I gave it an experimental sip. Typical coffeshop blend, a smooth medium roast with low acidity. It was good enough to not need anything added to it, which was a big plus in my book. More importantly, it was piping hot, and I had my fingers wrapped around the mug like it was a life raft.

  I dropped my eyes to my mug and watched the steam rise while I waited for my food order and whatever this meeting was supposed to be about to get started.

  I think I zoned out, or maybe lost track of time at some point, because I was snapped out of my daze by someone loudly clearing their throat to my left side. I started a bit, and looked over and up to see a girl glaring at me.

  I was blinking my eyes rapidly as I looked at her.

  She looks like… me?

  Light gray eyes with silvery eyebrows drawn together in a scowl glared down at me. Her irises were pale enough to be hard to see, which made her look like she wore cosmetic contacts. She also had silvery hair, and of a similar length as mine, although where I wore mine in a fairly tight braid, she had hers hanging loose. My hair was a limp, sorry affair, while hers had some body and a very subtle wave to it. We had different facial structures; she had a thin nose that curved downward, whereas mine was straighter and angular.

  Her lips were drawn tightly, but the dark, essentially gothic aesthetic she had meant that they were still highly visible. She was wearing a dark purple lipstick, dark enough to mistake it for black, were it not for the rather bright lighting in the diner.

  She had on a pretty black dress that went down to her knees, with an overlapping, interwoven strap design around the neck and upper chest that left small diamonds and squares of her upper chest visible. It was a halter-top design, so it left her shoulders and arms entirely exposed. Under the dress, she was wearing black leggings, the kind with lots of rips and tears in them that gave them a sort of netting look. Beat up black high-top sneakers with purple laces completed her ensemble.

  Like me, she had what I’d describe as a rather unhealthily thin-looking figure. Not quite to the same extent that I did, though. I thought I looked sickly, whereas she had some wiry tone to her otherwise gaunt frame. Her skin was extremely fair, nearly porcelain white, but it lacked the slight translucency that mine had, which made my veins visible in places. Both of us would probably look much better with at least an additional twenty pounds of weight on our frames. Any kind of weight, fat, muscle, whatever.

  I wonder if her ribs stick out, too?

  She snapped close-cropped, black-painted fingernails in front of my face.

  I blinked slowly, my brain slowly catching up with the fact that she’d been talking to me in a fairly unfriendly-sounding tone throughout most of that.

  “Sorry, what?” I asked her.

  “I said, is this some kind of joke? Did someone put you up to this?”

  “I um.” I stared up at her, making eye contact. She held it, still glaring down at me. She crossed her arms over her chest and tapped her foot on the tile floor.

  “Um, uh, uh, um, what?” She parroted back at me mockingly. “Are you slow? On drugs? Both? I asked you what you think you’re doing here.”

  “No?” I half-said, half-asked, more confused than ever. “I– I was given a card, and…”

  I trailed off as a grey-haired, older gentleman wearing a sweatervest walked up behind the girl and tapped her on the shoulder. Her head jerked, and she went still when she saw who it was. He leaned forward and whispered something to her. She pursed her lips and screwed up her face, then sighed dramatically and said, “Fine!”

  The older man bobbed his balding head and shuffled over to return to a seat at one of the tables nearby.

  The girl turned back and glared at me with a marginally less-hostile look on her face.

  Marginally.

  “You’re in my booth. Leave.” She all but demanded, arms still crossed over her chest.

  The older gentleman in the sweater vest cleared his throat, and for a moment, I thought the look-alike was about to turn around and flip a table over, or something. Instead, she once again sighed, louder than before, then took a seat across from me in the booth in a downright petulant manner.

  The guy who had taken my order drifted over from the bar area with his pad at the ready. He smiled at the other girl.

  “Yes, now go away,” she said without taking her eyes off me.

  The server chuckled and returned a moment later with another cup of coffee and a bowl of mixed sweeteners and creamers.

  The other girl didn’t take her eyes off me for a moment. It was like she was trying to glare holes through my head.

  I dropped my gaze back down to my coffee and shifted my grip on the mug. The heat of the cup and my reluctance to go digging in my backpack for that shirt were the only things keeping me from feeling like I was half-freezing to death in the air conditioning. The hot coffee was barely keeping away the shivers, but my arms were seemingly locked in a state of gooseflesh.

  Dropping her voice low enough that it wouldn’t carry outside the booth, the other girl demanded, “Who are you, and what are you doing here, in my booth, looking like that?”

  I frowned down at my coffee. Maybe she wasn’t entirely wrong. I did sort of feel like I was running in slow motion, like my brain was firing on half the number of cylinders as normal. My thoughts were muddy, plodding things, and would inexplicably come and go, seemingly without rhyme or reason. I couldn’t even remember some of them after the fact, just that I had an idea, but not what it was.

  “Morgan. Someone gave me a card, and I didn’t have anything else to do, so I came. And I’ve looked like this my entire life.”

  My entire, extremely short life. But maybe it’s best not to mention that. Vicky’s right. People might get ideas or jump to conclusions.

  “Right, so you just show up here, you sit here, and you look like that, and I’m expected to believe this is all just a big coincidence?!” Her voice strained as she fought to keep her volume down.

  “Yes?” I asked my coffee, then gave a half-shrug. “I don’t know who you are, it’s weird that we seem to have a lot of… visual similarities, but life here is weird in general.”

  “Bullshit,” she practically spat.

  I heard her shift in the booth and looked up to see her leaning over the table and squinting at me. I held her gaze, her eyes looking like nothing more than too-small black dots in a sea of white.

  Her voice had an edge to it as she near-whispered across the space between us. “I think you’re someone getting paid to fuck around and piss me off. Maybe you got some work done, or maybe that’s some kind of prosthetic–”

  Like someone accidentally dropping a stick of old, unstable dynamite, heat and anger exploded in my chest. I felt my heart pounding in my eardrums and my cheeks burning red-hot. I leaned forward, never taking my eyes off hers. I hissed between teeth and a jaw I kept clenching.

  “Listen, you egocentric, self-entitled bitch! My life doesn’t revolve around you. I don’t know who the fuck you are, but if you think I want to look like THIS just so I can play some kind of complex prank on you, then you’re the one who’s fucking slow or on drugs. You can fuck right back off to wherever you walked in from after this meeting, for all I care! But until then, get off my case, or I’ll beat your ass so bad you’ll think twice about flapping your lips in my direction ever again.”

  My teeth clicked shut, and I sat there with the hairs on the back of my neck sticking up and my pulse thumping away. I saw her eyes shifting slightly as she took in my facial expression, but she didn’t back down. The scowl she’d had affixed to her face the entire time she’d been talking to me was frozen in place.

  I didn’t feel like I was moving a muscle, but I could feel my hands trembling. It felt like a moment stretched out into an eternity.

  The other girl shifted back in her seat so she was sitting more upright and turned to reach over to the side of the booth. When she turned back towards me, she had what I read as an arrogant smirk on her lips. She held out a wad of paper napkins and waggled them at me.

  I blinked slowly. Like a soap bubble popping, I was left slightly bewildered as to why I’d gotten so angry and confrontational. And curious as to why I felt wet. I slumped backwards and looked down, cursing under my breath. In my ranting, I’d both tipped my cup forward and had slopped coffee all over the table, some of which had run off the side… and into my lap.

  I swallowed hard and lowered the coffee mug back to the saucer it’d been delivered on. It rattled a little against the dish where my hand was still shaking a little, and the fingers of my right hand were stubbornly locked into a deathgrip. It was probably fortunate for my sake that I had the strength of a damp sponge, otherwise I might be on my way to get ceramic shards dug out of my hand.

  I mumbled a curse under my breath and had to pry my fingers loose, my right forearm having cramped up and all but locked them into position. I took the offered napkins and mopped up the spill on the table, then got up from my seat to excuse myself to the restrooms.

  After a moment’s consideration, I hauled my backpack up over the back of the booth seat and shouldered it. I didn’t know anyone here, and I certainly didn’t trust whoever this crazy lady was around my stuff.

  I swore I could feel a dozen or more eyes on my back as I retreated to the safety of the restroom. I didn’t lift my eyes off the floor to confirm that suspicion. Once inside the women’s room, I walked straight into a stall, closed the door, put the lid of the toilet seat down, and sat heavily on it with my face buried in my palms.

  The tears flowed freely, hot and wet on my cheeks, and I squeezed my lips together to avoid making any sounds.

  What the fuck is wrong with me?! Why am I losing my shit and flipping out at some shitheel, weird lady at an emotional support meeting? I don’t… threaten randomly annoying and antagonistic people. I don’t let strangers get under my skin. I don’t… I don’t…

  An idea floated up to the surface, and while I wanted just to ignore it, to shove it off to one side and pretend I’d never thought of it in the first place, I couldn’t.

  These things I remembered, the memories that I thought were my own, weren’t. Morgan Rivera had a fiery temper at times, but she was, for the most part, almost excessively level-headed in most circumstances.

  That begged the question: Was I really her?

  The thoughts and memories I had told me that the person I thought I was didn’t react like I did, just minutes ago. She didn’t lose her cool; she didn’t snap in someone’s face, even if they were being antagonistic.

  But I did.

  Was the Morgan I remembered a different person, one who lived and died years ago? Was I just a low-fidelity photocopy of the original?

  Would the Morgan in my memories have acted like I did if she’d been transplanted into my place and put under the same conditions and stresses?

  Am I just losing my fucking mind?

  I sniffed and wiped my cheeks with the palms of my hands. Bitter and shaken by the weird girl as much as I was by myself.

  My hands smelled like coffee. I sighed and pulled a few pieces of toilet paper off the roll and dabbed at my eyes, then turned my attention to my leggings.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  They were dark enough that they didn’t show anything, and wouldn’t get stained by the coffee spill, but I couldn’t help but feel like I’d pissed myself with the dampness on my thighs. Standing up, I pulled the stall door open and turned to the sinks. Some paper hand towels would do a far better job of blotting up some of the spilled coffee than toilet paper would, and would be less likely to leave paper debris behind on my leggings.

  The girl was leaning backwards with her butt pressed against the front of the countertop. Wiry, thin arms crossed over her chest, and a smirk on her face. She watched me in silence as I walked over, washed and dried my hands, then went about trying to soak up the coffee remnants from my leggings.

  She broke the silence to needle me when the third party in the bathroom made a hurried exit.

  I would too, with the weird energy in here.

  “So is this what you do? Threaten random people, then go cry about it afterwards?”

  I felt her gaze on me as I cleaned myself up.

  “Maybe I was crying for the coffee I spilled.”

  She snorted.

  “Why do you care?” I asked her back, somewhat testily.

  “Oh, I don’t,” I caught her flipping her hand dismissively in the mirror.

  “So you’re a pervert, spying on people in the bathroom?”

  “Psh, you’d probably like that, creep.”

  I looked up at her directly. “Do you hassle all the random people with a passing resemblance to you like this?”

  “Me? Hassle you?” She raised one barely visible eyebrow. “I thought I was pretty clear. I simply don’t want you here. Go away. Go loiter in some other diner.”

  “I’m not loitering. Besides, do you orchestrate this event? I somehow can’t see that being the case,” I shot back.

  “Yeah? Why’s that?”

  “Because you seemed to shut up pretty quickly when that guy in the vest talked to you before. I bet he’s probably the organizer.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “You aren’t very convincing that you’re a nobody first-timer who doesn’t know anything.”

  I wadded up the paper towel and threw it in the trash can, then threw my hands up in exasperation. “Fine, you know what? You’re right. It’s some giant conspiracy, I’m here to kill you and take your place. I’ve got the crazy-bitch-blaster-9000 in my backpack, and I’m going to disintegrate you with it when you’re distracted, and nobody is there to witness it.”

  She sneered at me. Like, an actual sneer. “I’d like to see you try it,” she growled at me.

  I just stared at her blankly. I didn’t get her. Fundamentally. She made no sense. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. I was starting to get the impression that this look-alike was actually just an honest-to-god crazy person.

  Being nearly at my wits’ end with her, I just blurted it out in the form of a question.

  “Are you actually just insane, or something? Isn’t it supposed to be a thing where crazy people don’t know if they’re crazy or not?”

  She wrinkled up her nose at me, then broke into a sarcastic-sounding laugh.

  “Me? You’re clearly the crazy person here. You don’t see me having an emotional breakdown in a bathroom stall.”

  Oof.

  I dropped my eyes to the slate gray-colored floor tiles and swallowed. She sort of, no, she actually did just checkmate me, fair and square. The realization didn’t help with the tightness in my chest.

  “Maybe I am cracking up. Or already cracked up. I don’t know,” I muttered.

  “You’re not supposed to agree with me,” she said. There was something in her tone and in the way she said it. It wasn’t entirely antagonistic, or maybe, perhaps the antagonism wasn’t directed at me, for once.

  I wish I could remember my therapy. Why I had it, why I needed it. What it did for me.

  I didn’t make eye contact with her; I kept my eyes on the floor near my feet, but I did voice my fleeting feelings out loud, because I was partially worried that I’d forget them if I didn’t.

  “You need to work on that paranoia, stranger. I don’t know you or your situation, but that shit… It’s like acid. Or maybe termites? It eats away at the foundation of everything, and when that’s gone, well, then you don’t have any way of telling what’s supposed to be the floor or the ceiling, or when it’ll all come crashing down.”

  “It keeps you alive. It keeps you on edge, ready for when things go bad,” she countered.

  “Maybe it does. But it does what I said, too. I don’t know, I’m not good at metaphors, or whatever.”

  She didn’t respond immediately. I turned and left the restroom and took a seat back at my booth.

  Her booth.

  Whoever’s booth.

  A steaming, fresh cup of coffee awaited me on my side, along with a plate of French toast triangles and several pieces of turkey sausage. My stomach did a backflip at the sight, and I swallowed the sudden mouthful of saliva.

  I put my backpack back where it’d been resting previously, pulled out the cutlery, and began to tear into my breakfast dinner.

  I thought it was maybe the best thing I’d ever eaten, but that might have been the hunger talking.

  The other girl took a seat opposite me, picked through the bowl with packs of sweeteners crammed into it, and started to pull them out one at a time to lay them out in a row in front of her.

  I looked up to see the sixth pack of sugar get arranged at the end of the row.

  “Please tell me you’re not going to put that in your coffee.”

  She looked up from what she was doing and squinted at me. “Don’t tell me what to do, I’ll drink my coffee however I want to.”

  “Do you seriously put that much sugar in a cup of coffee?” I asked her, totally deadpan.

  “Who said I was done picking out what I wanted?”

  “Oh my god. You do. You actually do.”

  Her eyes narrowed at me.

  “Listen, I’m… not an expert, and I sort of have some…”

  She held her pose, not taking her eyes off me. “Some what?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Look, don’t make me spell it out. Some issues, you know,” I gestured at myself.

  “Uh-huh… And?”

  “I’m just saying, the coffee here is actually pretty good, as far as these types of coffees go. Have you tried just…” I gestured at the train of sugar packets. “You know, not?”

  “Coffee is gross, sugar and creamer make it at least drinkable,” she replied firmly.

  “Have you ever tried the coffee here without it?”

  Her squint narrowed.

  I put my fork and knife down. “Look, I get it, at least, I think I do. But look, I’m drinking it just… You know, black. No creamer, no sugar.” I picked up my cup and took a generous pull from it before setting it back down. “It’s good, really. Cross my heart and hope to die, or whatever.”

  “We’ve already established that you’re crazy, so your opinion on this isn’t valid,” she responded, then went about finding her seventh pack amongst the dwindling collection in the bowl.

  “Look, I’m not saying you’re right, but first? That’s just plain rude. And second? I’m not wrong about this. This is like, super mild, eminently drinkable coffee. And it’s fresh-fresh, which only makes it even better.”

  She glanced up at me and held her gaze for what felt like an overly long time.

  I don’t know why I bother sometimes.

  I sighed and reached over to my backpack, unzipped the top, and dug around inside it. She watched me like a hawk would watch a fat mouse foraging in the grass. I pulled out one of the books I’d grabbed earlier. It was a moderately sized paperback book titled Current Events, North America Edition.

  I took a deep breath and made my pitch. “Okay, look. If you try it as-is, just plain black, and you hate it, I’ll give you this book I bought earlier. It’s got good ratings online, I dug through a whole shelf of other books just like this and found one that actually was pretty well regarded.”

  She glanced at it. “What makes you think I want your stupid book? Looks boring.”

  “So? What if it is? Don’t read it,” I countered.

  “Then why would I want it in the first place!?” She asked, incredulous. She sat back in the booth and crossed her arms once again. “Do you realize how little sense you’re making right now?”

  I held up one index finger. “Because,” I bounced my other index finger on the cover with a rapid tap-tap. “I clearly spent time picking this out, so obviously I want to read it. So if I’m wrong, then you take it, and I either won’t have it, or I’ll have to go back and find another copy.”

  She glared at me in silence. I could almost feel her weighing the decision. “Fine,” she snapped at last. She took the cup of coffee, made a show of taking a big drink from it, and then screwing her face up in apparent disgust.

  “It’s still gross, I win, now give me what’s mine.”

  I held my hands out in surrender, shrugged, and handed her the book. My plate of food was calling my attention. I went back to eating it.

  The server from earlier came back over and placed a plate in front of the other girl. Two eggs, sunny side up, toast, a bowl of grits, and… turkey sausage.

  “Do you need anything else?” He asked me, and I shook my head and gave him a thumbs-up, as my mouth was currently jam-packed full of French toast.

  “No, begone,” the other girl said, and flicked her hand dismissively.

  The server bowed at the waist and actually said, “As you please, miss.”

  Maybe I’m not the crazy one. Maybe this entire place has lost its mind. Mass hysteria. Contaminated rye, and we’re all going to die.

  I snickered to myself and took another bite of my breakfast dinner.

  I finished up far before the other woman did, and I was already feeling better after having eaten something. I pulled out my phone and sent a text to Tessa asking her if I had any issues with my blood sugar. I checked back a couple of times over the following minutes, but it was left as ‘sent’ status, with no response. I figured that she was busy doing important things.

  The meeting got started not long after that, once people had a chance to finish eating, and accounting for the late arrivals.

  It was… about what I’d expected, really. A group meeting where people were able to talk about things that’d happened to them in recent years, although some referred to things that dated back to the Leviathan attack.

  The what and why of it were sort of all over the place. As I’d guessed, the older gentleman in the sweater vest seemed to be the organizer and helped guide the discussion. He had a sort of retired schoolteacher vibe about him. Soft-spoken and gentle, but firm when it called for it.

  There wasn’t much in the way of disruptions or people acting out, although there’d been mentions of things like that happening at times, and some awkward looks on various people’s faces when it was brought up. It was understandable that things might get heated, or argumentative, or perhaps more on the weepy side, depending.

  For my part, I was practically riveted in place listening to others talk and share their experiences. It was like a secret window into the things I’d missed in the previous years, and from perspectives that I wouldn’t have typically heard from.

  Or at least, I suspected that I wouldn’t have heard from. It had been explained to me, and also made fairly obvious that there was a sort of insular culture when it came to cape life. Villains tended to stick to their small circles, heroes had larger circles, but those also tended to be almost entirely parahuman. Both Tessa and Taylor had told me that life as a parahuman was different enough that people sometimes found it challenging to relate to those outside of their group.

  I found myself in a strange place. Formerly a parahuman. Ostensibly still a parahuman, or at least, someone made of all the constituent parts required to make a parahuman, but without the abilities.

  I dropped my eyes to the tabletop in front of me and tuned out the external conversation.

  Tessa had told me that I’d previously struggled with my humanity after becoming Apex, and it was something I talked about with her somewhat regularly. The irony was almost too much, in hindsight. Old Morgan sitting there, talking on the phone to another parahuman, and asking for advice on her humanity, being stuck in the form of a giant monster. Talking to the one person who was about as far from human as it was possible to get.

  The thought sort of didn’t sit right with me, and I lightly picked at the scratches on the surface of the booth table with my fingernail as I mulled it over. Tessa–Dragon–was probably the most human person I knew. Sure, she might not be made of the same flesh and blood as every– well, most other humans, but she was without a doubt the most kind, patient, and compassionate person I’d ever met. Did it really matter that she wasn’t technically a human?

  For that matter, countless shitty people were very firmly in the human category.

  But what about me?

  I was… I don’t know, something else entirely. Unique, and maybe not in a good way. The jury was still hung on that one. A dead person brought back to life with science. Science and a sparkly rock that was supposedly priceless, but was somehow, at the same time, about as functional as a paperweight.

  I idly ran my thumb over my lower breastbone. The approximate location of where the core was located. The rock that may or may not be solely responsible for my continued existence.

  There were so many questions.

  Questions I had about my past. About my present self. About my future.

  Some of those things I was supposed to talk to my family about. Some of them were things I’d been rather studiously avoiding bringing up in any way when talking to my friends.

  I knew I was probably acting weird right now, sitting in a booth in a random diner, attending a meeting I really didn’t belong in, after spending entirely way too long arguing with some random stranger who seemed about as with it as I was. Which was to say: not at all.

  I was told that the old Morgan was strongly opinionated. Someone who was respected by her friends and feared by the people she fought against.

  But how much of that was really true? Did it even matter if it was or wasn’t true? Because there seemed to be very few ways of actually knowing what was truth, what was lightly massaged truth, and what was fiction that was told and upheld as fact now?

  Was the former Morgan as scared shitless as I was all the time, but better at hiding it? Did she successfully fake it until she made it?

  I didn’t have the first clue what I was doing. Not here and now, and certainly not in the future state. Would I go to university as some of my friends had? And study what? Would I get a job? I seemed to be decently well off from what I was told, so I don’t know if there was a requirement for me to work to provide for myself.

  One of the few things that I felt like I actually knew about myself was the simple fact that I was something that shouldn’t be. Parahumans came in all shapes and sizes, some of them were indistinguishable from the most mundane, everyday person imaginable. Some weren’t remotely human, or even organic, for that matter.

  But the general consensus of the parahuman experts out there was that parahumans, after gaining their abilities, didn’t lose them. Sure, they lost them when they died. Some lost them because of the effect of, or an interaction with, another parahuman’s ability. But those were temporary, and usually fairly conditional, specific things.

  I was told that old Morgan loved sports. I remembered loving sports. I remembered wanting to train and become a professional athlete. I looked down at my pencil-thin fingers, my bony wrists, the bruises on my arms that I’d given myself on accident. Even if I did go and train until my limbs fell off, I’d never be able to follow through on those dreams. I was sickly-looking and frail, and despite Dragon’s assurances that I’d fill out and stabilize into a healthier shape in time, there was just something inside of me that was certain of the fact that there was something fundamentally wrong with me.

  I swallowed and blinked back the moisture building in my eyes. I’d cried enough for now.

  I wish I knew why I feel some of the things I do. I feel embarrassed and ashamed of the fact that I’m powerless. Millions–billions of people are just like me. Unpowered. It was the default state of being throughout human history into the mid-eighties. It’s insulting to all the people out there who don’t have powers to think that I’m fucking… broken, or something, for not having them.

  But I can’t shake the feeling that there’s part of me missing, for not having them.

  I don’t know that having powers would make my life any better. If anything, they’d probably make it worse in a lot of ways. Especially if they were the same as the powers I had before, and I was forever stuck as a big, blue… creature.

  I had a lot of valuable contacts. It was something that Tessa kept trying to gently remind me of whenever I’d get into one of these black moods back in her workshop. Knowing people mattered more than nearly anything. And Morgan Rivera had a lot of allies. Maybe I’d never be a superhero ever again, but I could work alongside them. The fact that I didn’t have powers meant that I could work for the PRT.

  An annoying, but quite persistent thought kept cropping up in the back of my mind. I tried to swat it away, but the more I tried to ignore it, the more I wound up spending time dwelling on it.

  With a silent sigh, I addressed it.

  I didn’t need to have parahuman abilities to be a superhero, if that’s still what I really wanted to do. It’d be dangerous, but not really much more dangerous than just being a hero was. I had options. Several of them, in fact.

  Dragon was the greatest tinker in the world. Not just in title, but in actuality. She, along with a few other members of The Guild she worked with, had the ability to produce tinkertech that could allow anyone to be a swashbuckling superhero, powers or no powers. There were countless tinkers out there that had no ability to turn into unstoppable brutes, shoot lasers from their hands, or fly through the sky. But they had the technology to make all of those things attainable.

  I could simply ask Tessa if she’d help me do that. I knew what the answer would be.

  At the same time, Amy made her own take on tinkertech, with living, biological super-suits and creations that could be piloted around in a similar fashion to what a tinker might make. I could ask her, and like Tessa, I knew what the answer would be.

  Thinking about it made my head hurt, though. There were so many possibilities, and the honest truth of the matter was that I simply didn’t know what I wanted. Some things sounded like they might be what I’d have wanted to do, but that was the former me, who had very different circumstances than I did.

  I needed time to try to figure out what it was I wanted. Time and space.

  I drew back from my musings and what probably seemed like a strange and obsessive study of the surface of the table in front of me.

  The other lady was staring at me. Hard. I blinked slowly. I was still feeling fairly miserable after the unguided wandering around inside my own head, and I sort of no longer felt the desire to remain in this meeting. There wasn’t anything wrong with it, and maybe I’d come back again, but I’d tuned out the talks some time ago, and had no plans on contributing anything myself.

  It was basically background noise for me at the moment. I couldn’t concentrate on the issues other people were working through. I more than had my own hands full juggling the bizarre experience of my life post-revival.

  I gulped down the tepid remainder of my coffee, leaned over and grabbed my bag, then slid out of the booth. The person who had been speaking in the meeting glanced at me as I got up. I mumbled an apology for interrupting and made my way to the counter where the register was located. A tap of my phone, a few taps on a screen to digitally sign and leave a gratuity for the poor guy who’d been forced to put up with the madness at my table, and I was out the door.

  Hooking my thumbs under the shoulder straps of my backpack, I glanced up at the sky. The sun had set maybe about an hour ago, and it had to be about time for the meeting to break for the night.

  I was trying to determine if I wanted to head back now, and if so, what route I’d take to get back into the downtown area. I could probably walk it if I needed to, but my legs were admittedly already a bit noodly-feeling from all the walking I’d done so far today.

  The door to the diner swung open behind me with the jingle of bells.

  “Hey! Where are you going!?” It was her again.

  I huffed out a sigh and stopped, but didn’t turn around to face her.

  “I’m probably going home. Well, sort of home,” I quickly corrected myself.

  “Just like that?” The edge was back in her voice again.

  I half-turned to look back at her. She was pretty, in her own way, and certainly very distinctive looking. Memorable. She was holding the book she’d won off me.

  It felt like my mental give-a-shit meter capped out and subsequently broke. “Look. I’ve been walking around most of the day. I’m physically tired and mentally exhausted. I really don’t know what your deal is, but I’d appreciate it if you just… dropped whatever this is.” I gestured at the space between us.

  She bared her teeth at me in something that looked like a cross between a snarl and a grin. She held the hand with the book in it up and pointed a black-tipped index finger at me. “I should drop it? I’m not the one who started it in the first place, you are!”

  I threw my hands up in the air and stomped my foot. “Well, excuse me for existing in the same time and place! I didn’t realize you had a monopoly on black-and-white aesthetic, my bad! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m leaving. Bye.”

  I turned and headed towards downtown. Seems like I’d be walking back after all, because I wasn’t willing to stick around and put up with whoever-it-was any longer to call a cab.

  I heard footsteps behind me, but I ignored them and tried to put the crazy person out of my mind. Hopefully, she wasn’t going to start stalking me, or something. I really didn’t want to have to try to put up with calling the cops. I didn’t like this person, but they seemed erratic, and police and erratic people didn’t tend to mix well. Dislike or not, I didn’t want to see her get manhandled for her eccentricities.

  One block turned into two, then three. I could practically sense her following me, but she wasn’t in my personal space and wasn’t saying anything further. Maybe she’d piss off when I left her territory, or whatever.

  I hugged my arms against my torso as I walked past some closed industrial properties. Some of the street lighting was on the fritz here, blinking on and off randomly, and between the cool night air coming in off the ocean and the honestly creepy environment, I was feeling the chill in more ways than one.

  Halfway down the block, the lights buzzed and blinked off again, leaving the street gloomy and only lit by the ambient light pollution being cast by the city surrounding me.

  What sounded like a pair of heavy boots crunched in the alleyway between two tall buildings. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end, and I shifted my hand to the waistband of my leggings, where my phone was located.

  My heart was beating hard in my chest. I didn’t want to look down the alleyway, and I also didn’t want to look behind me, where the creepy girl might have been.

  Fear was pushing adrenaline into my veins. I stopped in my tracks so I could hear better. Relative silence over the background noise of a populated city in the evening.

  I thought that someone was watching me from the shadows in the alleyway. I thought someone else was watching from behind me. This seemed like a decent part of town, without any obvious gang paint or tags. It was close enough to downtown that it should be fairly safe.

  I felt so, so very stupid in the moment.

  I knew people. There was a strange person who’d been shadowing me. I should have called them for help.

  I swallowed and slowly turned to face the alleyway. There was something there in the darkness, a silhouette of a large humanoid figure. Quite large, seven or eight feet tall, perhaps.

  Just… Keep cool. You don’t know what’s going on right now. Don’t jump to conclusions.

  My attempts at being rational with myself were half-hearted at best.

  A heavily digitized, distorted, and androgynous voice came from the silhouette. I didn’t recognize it, beyond the recognition that it was very stereotypically tinker-suit coded.

  “Step into the alleyway, and don’t cause a scene.”

  I tried to think tactically, to steady myself. I didn’t want to expose my mental state or reveal the fact that I was terrified at the moment. I thumbed the power button for my phone and was rapidly tapping it. It was supposed to silently contact emergency services if I did.

  “Wireless signals are being scrambled; you’re wasting your time. Do as you’re told, and you won’t be harmed.”

  Fuck. Fuck!

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  “To talk,” came the reply, nearly instantly.

  “If that’s all you wanted, you could have done it in other ways,” I countered. “Seems a bit suspect for a casual chat.”

  There was a momentary pause before the response this time. “There are more things that you don’t know than you do. Do as you’ve been told if you want answers to the questions you have.”

  “I’m not taking advice from creeps in alleyways, sorry,” I said. “Don’t presume to know me, or that I’m going to fall for whatever you think this is!” The fear was still present in me, but the chill was being displaced by rising anger.

  Anger not just at these stupid games, but at everything that had happened in the past several hours.

  “Yeah, get lost! I was here first!” I turned to look to my right.

  The other girl was there, not even half a dozen feet away, but wearing a black domino mask over her upper face. The entire rest of her outfit was entirely unchanged, down to the book in her hands. Her almost painfully bright white teeth were shining in the gloom. She’d adopted a rather bold-looking pose, with her feet spread, shoulders pulled back, and narrow chin thrust outwards.

  Because, of course, she’s some kind of cape.

  “This doesn’t concern you, Damsel,” the mechanical voice said, and I could clearly hear annoyance, or maybe frustration, through the vocal filter.

  She stuck an index finger in the silhouette’s direction in a move I was becoming increasingly familiar with. “No, it doesn’t concern you!”

  There was a thud-thud-thud, and the shadowed silhouette approached several feet closer, enough that it was more visible, but still well outside of a lunging distance. I was correct in my assumption. It was a mechanical exosuit, fully sealed, without anyone visible. Solidly built, if a bit boxy-looking, it had stylings that reminded me of one of Dragon’s designs. Things that looked like a cross between power tools and high-power weapons were attached to the forearms, and the arms ended in robust, clawed robotic hands. The head was an open-mouthed dragon with fearsome-looking silvery metal teeth.

  “With all respect, I doubt you even have any idea who this is, and if you did, you wouldn’t be following her around like a lost puppy.” It was the suit's turn to point a finger directly at me.

  “So what!?” The girl, Damsel, cackled loudly. “It doesn’t matter who she is! I do what I want!”

  I glanced sideways at her, keeping my body facing the suited individual. It didn’t speak for a long moment, but it did drop the clawed hand back to a resting position at its side. Finally, it responded. “The PRT is going to be here in two minutes, forty-five seconds. If you leave now, you’ll avoid any interactions with them.”

  Damsel sniffed imperiously. “And why would I care about that? You think I can’t handle them?”

  “I’m sure you could. But do you really want to risk further antagonizing them? Keep doing it, and sooner or later, they’ll stick you in the Birdcage.”

  I stole another glance at Damsel. She still held her ridiculous-looking pose, but her eyes were flitting between the robotic suit and me.

  “I’m leaving!” She declared after her deliberation. She glared at me, saying, “I’m not retreating!”

  I shook my head slowly. “No, of course not. Things to do.”

  Her darkly-colored lips broke into another grin. “Precisely!” Throwing her head back to cackle once more, she flipped off the mech-suit and darted off back in the direction we’d come from.

  It is a pretty good cackle, I’ll grudgingly give her credit there.

  “We’re out of time. Your ignorance is not a shield that will protect you when it really matters. It’s more liable to get you killed than anything else. You shouldn’t be out on your own, wandering the streets in the first place.”

  I frowned at the mech. “You and your unsolicited advice can fuck off. I’m an adult, and I can make my own decisions on what to do.”

  The mech took several steps backwards, nearly silent save for the crunch of gravel under its feet. “You can, but shouldn’t. Because you don’t know enough about this place, the people here, and the dangers you face. You might as well be making choices at random.” The suit crouched down. “If you want to start finding things out for yourself, start by asking your friends why you are the way you are.”

  I could hear tires squawking down the block and see flashing lights reflecting off windows.

  “We’ll be in touch when the opportunity next presents itself.”

  With a hiss and whirr, the suit leapt backwards and up, and floated into the night sky with a whining buzz. I was able to track it for a few seconds, but it was out of sight within moments.

  PRT SUVs screeched to a halt in the middle of the street, lights flashing, but the sirens thankfully silent. The doors of the vehicles were thrown open, and suited PRT response teams leapt out into the street, weapons drawn and sweeping the rooftops and alleys with powerful lights.

  A powerfully built male figure in dark tactical gear with a mirror-faced helmet on walked up to me. “Are you injured, ma’am?”

  I shook my head slowly and worked a jaw that was crampy and sore from where I’d been flexing it for the past several minutes of the bizarre encounter. “No, I’m fine, just… More lost and confused than anything, really.”

  He gestured at the vehicle he’d come from. “If you’ll come with me, we’ll perform a quick search of the area, then take you back to HQ for some questions.”

  Is… Is that a request? Do I have a choice in the matter?

  He cleared his throat. “Your friend is waiting for you there, as well, ma’am.”

  I searched my distorted reflection on the surface of his faceless helmet. Then I nodded along and trudged around the vehicle to the front passenger seat.

  At the very least, it saves me from having to walk back, I guess.