It had been a rough couple of years for Emma Barnes. Six years since Taylor Hebert had snitched on her, Madison Clements, and Sophia Hess to the authorities. Six years since she’d been expelled from Winslow and was forced to go through her final two years in school while attending regular probation meetings.

  Six years since the person she trusted and depended on more than anyone else in the whole world–Sophia–abandoned her to the wolves, while at the same time, she was put in the spotlight in the wrong way. Thrown out of her school stomping grounds, where she had been queen bee, and served with restraining orders forbidding contact with her two closest friends.

  She’d lost all her other friends and followers. She’d lost the social status she’d fought so hard for. Her budding career as a fashion model.

  Her parents had tried to make things right for her. They always did. At the same time she’d been hit with the lawsuits and charges, her dad, Alan, had been removed from his partnership at his law firm. He’d retained his ability to practice law, at least. Her family had relocated to Boston after Brockton Bay had been all but destroyed in the Leviathan attacks. They’d spent the remainder of her high school years there.

  Things hadn’t gone well for her in Boston. She’d just started making inroads to the social scene in her Junior year when somehow her past followed her to her new school, and word had gotten out that she wasn’t only the well-to-do daughter of an upper-middle-class family and aspiring model. That she was, in fact, a juvenile offender from a nearby city who’d gotten caught hazing other students in despicable ways.

  Emma clenched her hands into fists and paced back and forth in the dusty and decrepit old gas station where she was waiting.

  School had been a struggle. She’d been black-balled as an outcast. Moping and joining the loser’s club at school was out of the question. She’d never been a solid-A student, often relying on study groups with Madison and Sophia and relying on her social status and good looks to carry her the remaining distance. She hadn’t been above fluttering eyelashes and playing innocent to try and get a grade bumped up if it came down to it. Boston was a more prosperous city than Brockton Bay was, but it was also larger, and the schools were more densely packed than even the Bay. The teachers largely didn’t care and only went through the motions of teaching from the prescribed lesson plans.

  She’d graduated with a B-, and it had taken both work and summer school sessions to get her to that B.

  Pulling out her phone, she checked the time—five minutes to eight PM. The sun had been setting for the past half hour, and it was getting progressively dimmer outside.

  Her mind wandered as she thought about the darker parts of her past. Before Boston, and even before the good times with her friends. To the time when she thought she was going to die–or worse.

  In the summer after freshman year of high school, Emma and her dad had been waylaid by a group of gangers from the ABB. They’d been stopped at a traffic light with a car in front of them when they’d been rammed from the rear by a big truck. With both of them dazed and confused, they hadn’t realised what was going on when each of them had been pulled, literally kicking and screaming, from their wrecked car. Her dad was severely beaten and robbed, and she’d been dragged into an alleyway by a group of tattoo-covered, sweaty men.

  They’d been grabbing and manhandling her, tearing and pulling at her clothing, when Shadow Stalker had come down from the rooftops and attacked the thugs. Emma’s life had changed at that moment, watching the dark-clad figure of Shadow Stalker flitting between a half dozen men, going in and out of tangibility and stabbing them with arrows from her crossbow quiver, using them like a pair of stilettos. Emma was hysterical, her voice raw from screaming and sobbing when Shadow Stalker dispatched the last of the thugs into a pile of groaning, bleeding bodies and held out a gloved hand to help her up.

  It wasn’t long after that happened that she learned that Shadow Stalker was none other than one of her classmates: Sophia Hess. Emma had practically latched onto the other girl, incorporating her into nearly every aspect of her life. In many ways, it was a relationship that mostly benefited Sophia. Sophia was poor, and Emma was well-off. Emma was popular, and Sophia had been a no-name track runner. Sophia got a huge social status boost by being her friend and quickly became one of the more popular girls in the school, all thanks to Emma.

  It wasn’t entirely one-sided. Emma often plied Sophia for stories of her escapades as Shadow Stalker. She’d been ‘caught’ and forced to join the Wards not long after Emma had met her. That’d been a rough couple of weeks for Emma while Sophia was shipped off to a training boot camp to try and whip her into shape.

  Emma snorted.

  Not shape. Compliance. The PRT didn’t like that Shadow Stalker was an independent teen cape and had charged her with vigilantism for her attacks on the gangs in the city, forcing her to join the Wards and abide by a parole agreement to avoid being put in juvenile detention. It was stupid, both Emma and Sophia knew it, but she didn’t have any other options available to her. So she became a member of the Brockton Bay Wards program.

  When Sophia had returned, the two became like peas in a pod, with the addition of a cling-on third: Madison. Madison was tolerated as a member of their little group, so she could assist with school work and projects. Madison was the brains of the bunch, although Emma was always the mastermind of everything, and Sophia was the muscle and enforcer.

  The three of them had ruled Winslow at the top of the food chain. Taylor Hebert had been Emma’s best friend all the years they’d grown up together, but Taylor’s mom had died around the same time that Emma had been attacked, and with her sudden awakening to the harsh realities of the world, Emma couldn’t handle being around the broken, mourning, pathetic girl. Just seeing her around set her teeth on edge, because Taylor was a reminder of how weak Emma had been before she’d been attacked.

  She’d changed her life to make sure that she wasn’t weak any longer. She made new friends, stronger friends. Those who could keep her safe, if needed. Sophia, in turn, had taught her about the Law of the Jungle, and she’d taken the lessons to heart. Might really did make right in most situations.

  So it had been a rug-pull for her when her entire world got turned upside-down for the second time. Suddenly, she no longer had her best friend and personal enforcer to protect her. She no longer had the third leg of their stool to help with all the academic work.

  She was forced to move with her parents to a new city, with a new life, and no contacts.

  She’d fallen into old habits quickly, working the social circles and playing people against one another to curry favour and ingratiate herself. That had fallen flat when the news got out who she was, and her history of manipulating people.

  With no friends, no allies, and no prospects of getting any, Emma had been forced to rely on only herself, and it wasn’t easy. She still felt an intense need to feel secure and dictate the course of her own life. To not be dragged off by hostile outside forces to places she didn’t want to go. When talking with her court-ordered therapist, she’d suggested taking some self-defence classes to build that confidence and feeling of security.

  It was miserable.

  It wasn’t something she had any talent or skill at doing. She’d been a teen model–at the local level, at least–and not well suited to being thrown around and kicked. She’d done the bare minimum in gym class and had never gotten into that stuff, outside the swimming lessons she took.

  What she lacked in talent, she made up for in effort. If there was one thing about Emma, it was that she was like her father: stubborn as hell when she put her mind to something. She put her nose to the grindstone every single day. One day going to the school gym after hours. The next day going to sparring training. Alternating through activities to build cardio endurance through swimming and cycling her ass off. It was slow, it was agony, and she hated nearly every minute of it for months on end. Right up until she won her first spar against another rookie. She’d punched and kicked the crap out of them, and then put them in a leg lock that had them tapping the mat.

  That rush of adrenaline, and the realisation that she’d just beaten someone else who’d been doing their best to defeat her on the training mats? It was the best feeling Emma had ever felt in her life. Better than hazing Hebert until she’d dragged around like a sorry loser in school. Better than hearing lurid stories of Sophia leaving gang members bloody and unconscious in the alleyways. Better than all of that.

  She was hooked, much to the detriment of her studies and the concern of both her father and mother.

  Things had been good for a time. She’d climbed ladders and won competitions. First shedding pounds, then gaining them back–with interest. She threw away her goals of becoming a model after school. Becoming stronger and seizing control of her life was much more important. It felt right.

  She was still gorgeous, and she knew it. And as vain as ever. Following her graduation, she’d bounced around a bunch of various dead-end jobs. Working in retail outlets, food and service work, and even some office work. The issue was… She had issues keeping these jobs. Emma wasn’t good at swallowing her pride and following orders, or doing menial labor tasks, for that matter. She was better than the stupid housewife bitch yapping at her and demanding to see her manager at the restaurant. She kept losing jobs doing office work due to tardiness and her ‘prickly demeanour.’

  Emma had been passed a few questionable business cards with special talent agencies while working as a late-night waitress and had wound up calling one while half-drunk one night. That had been her first exposure to a new and lucrative industry. She took up modelling, but of an entirely different sort than the kind she’d originally set out to do. Her generous curves and high level of fitness suited that sort of thing quite well. She’d left the agencies behind because they kept trying to move the goalposts of what she wanted to do, and set out on her own with nothing more than an expensive camera and some fancy lighting setups.

  She’d found an audience and had done quite well for herself. She was her own boss now, and she set her own schedules as she pleased. Nobody in her personal life knew any better. She just lied to her parents, and she lived a fairly modest life, pinching her pennies. She had managed to amass a small fortune cashing out tips and subscriptions from desperate losers from all over the globe. Money that she saved up for a singular purpose.

  Before things had completely gone to shit in Brockton Bay, Sophia had told her about an investigation that had been going on with the PRT. An investigation trying to find details and information about an armored briefcase containing glass vials and paperwork.

  What was in the vials?

  Superpowers, supposedly.

  The thought that she might be able to gain the same kind of advantage that Sophia had as a parahuman had occupied Emma’s thoughts for years now. She’d searched high and low all over the internet. Between piles and piles of bullshit and spam, there were faint whispers and rumors on the wind, none of which could be substantiated with any evidence, but they persisted.

  The rumors went that there was a shadowy man who travelled all over the United States, seemingly popping up and disappearing at random, and who would sell a random assortment of abilities to the highest bidder.

  From what Emma could tell, the story was entirely fabricated, based on some urban legend figure that had first been spotted in Florida back in 2011. Parahumans Online kept a tight lid on rumormongering about things relating to how one gained powers in the first place, because it was considered ‘insensitive and inappropriate to parahuman users.’

  Most people knew the basics: that people got powers through having extreme–and usually negative–experiences in their lives. That it wasn’t possible to get powers if you were chasing after them, or trying to manufacture situations in which you’d be traumatised to try and gain them. That it was pretty random, even among parahumans, what constituted an ‘extreme event.’

  Imagine her surprise when, several months ago, an anonymous someone reached out to her directly. Offering to sell her powers, if she was willing to both pay for them and put up with an exhaustive list of terms and conditions.

  Emma had taken the bait and responded. It led to the first of several meetings in which she was introduced to the concept and had gone through the steps to try to purchase her own ability.

  They’d defined the terms, and she’d agreed to them.

  It was going to cost her nearly everything she owned to purchase it, and that was only the down payment–the debt afterwards was eyewatering.

  But what did the price matter when you could become a parahuman? The sky was truly the limit when you had abilities.

  Emma used to think that she was special, that she was better than other people. Then she’d learned not once, but twice, that there were haves and have-nots in the game of personal power, and parahumans sat at the top of that hill, and by a vast gulf. Even a parahuman with a relatively shit ability was someone who could be extremely dangerous to a heavily trained and armed PRT officer.

  She decided she would do anything to join that exclusive club.

  A bright light lit up the dirty hallway leading to the back room of the derelict gas station, and it cast long shadows out to where Emma was standing. She swallowed and turned around to see the figure she’d come to expect with these meetings.

  A middle-aged, dark-skinned woman with her hair up in a tight bun, wearing a lab coat and carrying a storage clipboard. She stood just inside a doorway that had been opened in space itself, that hadn’t been present only moments ago. Behind her was a harshly lit, featureless, pure-white tile hallway lined by widely spaced doors on each side.

  The woman in the lab coat cleared her throat and spoke, “Miss Barnes, it’s time for your final appointment. Are you ready?”

  Emma’s nerves flared up, but only for a moment. She’d waited for this for so, so long. She wouldn’t back out at the last moment. She nodded sharply and crossed the distance between them. The woman in the labcoat–a woman she only knew as The Doctor–stepped aside and let her cross over the doorway into the foreign space.

  Each time they’d met, it had been in this white, plain place, and each time, she’d had to cross through these doorways that seemed to open and close upon the Doctor’s whim. The place was creepy and unsettling in how artificial it felt. It was too white. Too clean. Like something out of a lucid dream, or perhaps a nightmare.

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  The Doctor led her down the hall, past three sets of doors, stopping and turning to the fourth door on the left, which she gestured to with one open palm.

  “This will be the operating room for the procedure. Please enter.”

  Emma turned the handle and stepped inside. Expecting another pure white, blank, empty room, she was surprised to see the room had bare, unfinished concrete walls and ceiling. The floor was the same white tile as the hallway, at least. The room had a metal table with a chair sitting next to it, off to one side, and then a stout, bare metal chair in the middle of the room. The only other thing in the room, other than the fluorescent light fixture overhead, was a light switch. The door hissed and clicked shut behind them.

  “Please have a seat,” the Doctor instructed her, and she slid into the chair next to the table and opened her clipboard to pull out a stack of documents.

  Emma sat on the chair, and it was precisely as uncomfortable as she’d imagined it would be. It was one of those chairs you’d see in an institution or hospital, made from stamped and formed metal and joined together with some welds and bolts. There was a butt-shaped indent on the seat that helped with the comfort a little, but not much. It, like the room itself, felt icy cold to Emma, even though it was probably somewhere around the mid-sixties.

  It was a sudden and sharp temperature difference from the sweaty summer evening heat of New England.

  “So, since this is your final appointment before the procedure, it’s standard for us to go over your paperwork and choices before beginning, just so that we can be absolutely certain that everything is as we’ve discussed.”

  Emma tucked a strand of red hair behind one ear and nodded to the Doctor.

  “Emma Barnes. Age twenty-one. Self-employed. Currently residing in Boston, Massachusetts.” The Doctor looked up from her paperwork to gauge Emma’s reaction.

  She nodded again.

  “We’ve taken all your biometrics, family and personal medical history and psychological testing into account to meet your needs for this treatment. Have you followed the pre-appointment instructions exactly as they were given to you?”

  “Yes, I haven’t eaten anything since midnight last night, and I haven’t had anything to drink besides plain water, and I don’t have any drugs or medication in my system,” Emma reported.

  It had been a pain in the ass; she was absolutely starving at the moment, but the instructions had been iron-clad, and she’d been told that not following them could have severe consequences on the outcome of her procedure.

  “In a few words, please describe your mental state, and be as honest as you can be,” the Doctor prompted her.

  “I’m hungry, a little nervous, and excited–for the procedure, I mean,” Emma quickly clarified.

  The doctor simply scribbled a note on her paperwork and then flipped several pages.

  “Try to calm yourself as much as possible while we review, and remember: your mental state at the point of undergoing the treatment has a major impact on the effectiveness of the outcome. Maintaining a clear, level head is the single most important factor if you want to have good results.”

  Emma made a conscious effort to slow her breathing, saying, “Yes, Doctor.”

  “And to review the choices you’ve made, you’ve opted for a treatment with a low stability score, mid-level uniqueness score, and a high-level power score.”

  The choice in picking powers had come down to three primary variables, and then some potential choices for themes and power classifications within those variables.

  Stability had to do with how volatile the mixture was; the more volatile it was, the higher the likelihood that there could be a secondary mutation, but there was a key catch: having a high stability meant that the effect of the other variables would be more muted. It was less likely to get a powerful ability if you had a high stability rating.

  The second variable was uniqueness. It was pretty self-explanatory. The higher the uniqueness, the more likely it would be that you had a power that was different from some of the more run-of-the-mill abilities.

  The third variable affected how strong the ability would be overall, and had a strong correlation with what sort of number would be assigned with a PRT rating. More was better here, but it came with costs: both the stability of the treatment and the chances of undesired changes, as well as the actual cost–in dollars–of the treatment.

  Emma didn’t simply want to have powers; she wanted to have strong powers. She wanted to prove herself, and the things she had in mind required that she be able to fight other parahumans. So the stability was lowered to boost strength and cut costs, and she’d signed agreements for both a lot of debt and special favors in the future.

  “That’s right,” Emma fidgeted with her thumb and forefinger as she answered. She was really hoping that she wouldn’t wind up having lizard scales or fangs or something, the way some parahumans did. As much as she cared about her looks, the allure of power was more intoxicating for her, so she was willing to risk it.

  The Doctor went over several more pages of things they’d already discussed and that she’d agreed to, and then it was finally time. Emma’s heart did a backflip when the Doctor pulled out the tall, thin glass vial from the inner pocket of her lab coat. A metal screw-cap was securely fitted to the end, keeping it sealed.

  “Strip and place your clothing on top of the table,” The Doctor told her without rising from her seat.

  Emma frowned for a moment. It wasn’t that she was particularly bothered by nudity–it would have made her career all but impossible if she was–and the Doctor had already seen her nude when she was checked over from head to toe for her screening examinations. It was more that she wasn’t expecting to have to be naked for the procedure. The instructions for today had been clear: she was to wear comfortable clothing for the appointment.

  She stood up and stripped out of her jeggings and t-shirt, followed by her sneakers, socks and underwear, until all of them were stacked in a neat pile on the table.

  The Doctor was taking notes or writing something on her paperwork while Emma took off and folded her clothing. The air, which now felt frigid without her clothing on, had caused her to break out in gooseflesh from head to toe. Emma crossed her arms over her substantial bust, squishing her chest above and below her forearms. She looked fantastic, and she knew it. She had a narrow waist and tight midriff, and the outline of abs from all the cardio and picky eating she did. Her lower figure had filled out with the exercise and training in ways that she lacked before. She looked phenomenal in leggings, and she wasn’t afraid to show it.

  Normally, she’d be arrogantly smirking for a camera and flaunting herself in the buff like this, but instead she was freezing her ass off and waiting for the Doctor to finish up whatever it was she was reviewing.

  Patience. All good things in time. She swallowed the annoyed huff that had been building in her chest. This was the start of a new page in her life, and a little suffering now would surely pay dividends later. She thought about what she might do after she had superpowers. Assuming she still had her good looks, she might continue to produce content for online subscribers.

  There was something strangely alluring and a bit empowering about being the center of people’s attention and obsession. She treated many of her top-tier members like shit in private videos and chat sessions. She didn’t have to hide her feelings around them. She called them disgusting, pathetic losers. Demanded that they put their money to better use by giving it to her. Told them they didn’t deserve the things they had. Some didn’t like it, but those who did really enjoyed it. She supposed that she enjoyed it, too. Degrading and demeaning others came naturally to her, and she was good at it.

  She determined that she'd probably keep doing it on the side. The money was exceptionally good. Working a day job was for losers. Plus, it was something she could do basically anywhere. Lighting setups and green screens packed up easily in the back of her car, and she did a lot of shoots in expensive hotel suites.

  The Doctor spoke finally, breaking the silence.

  “Okay, thank you for your patience. I wanted to double-check a few things before we administered the treatment. Please, have a seat.”

  The chair had cooled off in the time she’d been changing and standing there. She kept her back off the backrest; the chill metal was bad enough on her ass. The Doctor walked over to stand in front of her, vial in hand. She was able to get a closer look at it.

  The liquid inside was a shade of orange normally reserved for children’s toys and warning signs, and it had a strange, metallic sheen or shine to it. Whatever it was, it looked like it should be extremely toxic. Emma eyed it warily as the Doctor explained the procedure.

  “I am going to give this to you and then leave the room. When I have left, screw the cap off and drink the solution as quickly as you can. I can’t stress this enough: you must drink the entire contents of the vial, all at once. Failure to consume the entire solution can have catastrophic side effects. Do you understand?”

  Emma looked up, meeting the eyes of the Doctor, and she nodded quickly. “Yes, drink all of it, don’t leave any. Quickly.”

  The Doctor returned her nod. “Any final questions before I step out?”

  Emma swallowed, the most obvious and concerning question at the forefront of her mind. “Does it… Is it going to hurt?”

  The Doctor gave her a serious look and held it. “Yes, it will. It will be extremely painful, but only for a few minutes, and after that, the pain will pass entirely. Try to keep in mind what we’ve gone over. Try your best to remain seated and relaxed, and keep as calm and level-headed as possible, if you want the best results, and the least chance of side-effects.”

  Emma wanted to get every drop of power that existed out of the liquid. She needed to be stronger, better than the others. The people she had come to hate over the years. She’d do nearly anything in pursuit of that goal.

  “Stay seated. Relax, keep calm,” Emma repeated, and the Doctor extended the glass vial to her. She took it. It was unexpectedly warm on the pads of her fingers.

  “I’ll step out now, you can drink it when you are ready. You may experience vivid hallucinations, as we discussed before, but not everyone does. If you do, they will be very short in duration and will pass as soon as the treatment takes full effect.”

  “Right,” Emma murmured and tipped the vial slightly to the side, watching as the fluid moved inside.

  “Good luck, Ms. Barnes, and I’ll see you in a few minutes.” The Doctor stepped out, and the door clicked shut behind her. Emma waited a few moments, willing off the urge to shiver as she toyed with the tube. Taking a deep breath, she held the glass firmly in one hand and unscrewed the top. She took an experimental sniff of the contents.

  It smelled like a mix of blood, a dirty sock, and a mud puddle. No doubt it tasted even worse.

  Emma was no stranger to hard liquor, and she’d approach drinking the orange goop the same way she’d shoot high proof alcohol. Throw it back like a slug and gulp it down before her body had a chance to catch up with what she’d just drank.

  “Here goes nothing. Cheers, to having superpowers.”

  She brought the glass to her lips and tossed it back in one motion.

  It was the absolute worst-tasting way to lose two million dollars. So bitter it made her want to gag, as dingy and metallic as chewing on a handful of dirty loose change from a gutter, and instantly and extremely spicy. She pressed the back of her wrist to her lips and fought like hell to suppress the overwhelming urge to vomit.

  “Urgh, that’s horrible!” she exclaimed, and she collapsed back against the cold chair without meaning to. “I feel like I’m going to blow chunks–” she swallowed a mouthful of saliva and sucked in a deep breath through her nose.

  And why was the damn liquid body temperature? She couldn’t tell any temperature difference when it’d hit her tongue and throat. The burning was getting worse. Way worse.

  She could feel sweat breaking out, first on her forehead, then her armpits, cleavage, and lower back.

  “Ah- hot! It–it burns!”

  Two sensations were coursing through her at the same time. First, it felt like twisting vines of serrated knives and broken glass were spreading through her chest and gut, slicing and tearing everything along the way. Emma fought to take fast, sharp breaths between the pain.

  The second sensation was burning. She was burning up, from the inside out, and it just kept getting worse and worse. What started off as a hot curry had evolved and spread, burning like a candle, or something at first, and then doubling over and over. Into one of those backyard fire pit fires, then a raging housefire throughout her entire torso and head, and bleeding into her limbs.

  She threw her head back, hanging over the backrest of the chair, and she let her limbs go limp as she was cooked alive. The empty vial clattered to the floor, and her eyes were rolled into the back of her head as she quivered and tried to hang on to what the Doctor had told her.

  What had she told her?

  Something about… remembering to breathe, and remaining calm?

  Emma was totally convinced that she was dying at the moment, but despite that, she was, in fact, oddly calm. She was otherwise distracted, because the entirety of her attention was diverted to a scene playing out in her head.

  Flashes of light.

  Then, two sparkling icebergs rotated around one another, spinning on their axis as they spun in a twisting geometric pathway through a sea of tiny lights.

  A surge of energy, a pulse, a message. A song?

  A specific place in three-dimensional space, a specific time, a gently curving and wandering vector. It was… It was… directions? No, not quite. A destination, and a path to follow to arrive there at the planned time. Vastly complex mathematics to be able to hit a target the size of a grain of sand as it floated and bobbed on the tide, from the opposite side of the continent.

  A handshake. An agreement in the form of another pulse-song. A relatively tiny alteration in course, a shift in fabric around them, so they’d glide along in the new direction, falling downhill. The ice would arrive in time; it would only be a short nap between now and then. Several more songs were sung back and forth as the two danced like a slow, spinning waltz. The initial stages of a larger plan, negotiations about smaller details, and all the while, a certain feeling. Something more than just the spatial proximity, perhaps a kind of closeness. A shared history between the icebergs.

  Tears flowed down Emma’s face as she came back to conscious awareness. She felt joy, but also profound sadness, for only a fleeting instant before she was able to gather her bearings. She was…fine?

  No, not fine. Good. Great. Amazing! She felt like she was on top of the world.

  In some ways, she was, because she was floating upright in the air, her arms slightly spread to the sides and her toes dangling several inches above the plain tile floor. Totally weightless. Her fingertips and toes were tingling in a rather pleasant way, and her bright red hair was floating listlessly in the air, surrounding her head in a giant, frizzy mess.

  She laughed out loud and brought her hand up to brush some hair from in front of her face. She paused as her hand entered her field of view, and she felt a sense of wonder she hadn’t felt in a very, very long time.

  Her long, delicate fingers were loosely spread, and the reason for the tingling became obvious. There were dozens, or maybe hundreds, of little hairlike glowing blue-purple threads pointing straight out of the skin of her hand, making her look like a pincushion. They waggled and danced around, and flowed in swirls and waves, keeping a roughly similar distance from one another.

  Electricity, like one of those ball-lamp things you sometimes saw in novelty stores, except rather than flowing out of a metal ball in the middle of the glass, it was extending out of her hand in every which way possible. Emma brought her thumb and forefinger closer together like she was going to make a circle and observed as the lines curved towards one another before joining together into a fatter, brighter arc. One that crackled and hummed with a buzzing sound.

  “Ms. Barnes?”

  Emma snapped out of her distracted fascination and looked through the cloud of obscuring hair to the open doorway, where the Doctor stood with her clipboard pressed against her chest.

  Emma took a breath and felt a hint of weight return to her, and a moment later, her toes touched down on the cold tile.

  Emma closed her eyes and tried to relax and center herself. She couldn’t stop smiling, despite her attempts to level herself out as had been drilled into her over and over again by the Doctor in the appointments leading up to this.

  “Yes, Doctor, I’m here.”

  “Excellent. It would seem that your treatment was entirely successful. We’ll have to do a full examination and testing now. Before we get started, would you like to get redressed and have something to eat and drink?”

  Emma was listening to what the Doctor was saying, but she was also slightly distracted. Even with her eyes closed, she could see-feel things that she’d never been able to before. It was like gaining an entirely new sense and way of perceiving the world around her. She could feel the Doctor, the doorway and the door, the criss-crossing weave of metal bars in the walls, ceiling and floor. The chair and the table. The intricate, jumbled maze of branching pathways inside the circuitry of her phone, inside the pile of her clothing on the table.

  She could feel the back of the chair in her hands without feeling it with her hands at all, which was a strange sensation that was going to take some getting used to.

  There was someone in the hallway behind the Doctor, out of sight. A man, but one with a narrow frame. He was wearing glasses on his face, carrying a laptop computer, and he had a gun on his hip. The metal was partially opaque to her sight-sense-feel, but not entirely; she could see through it still, but it obscured some details. The people looked like an oblong blob of light floating in the air, supported by a person-shaped network of thin, branching vines.

  “Ms. Barnes?” The Doctor asked once again.

  Emma opened her eyes, which seemed to put this new sense of hers behind the five senses she was normally used to using. It was still there, but she could shift her attention to what she could see, hear, touch and taste.

  “Oh, sorry. I… have a new way of seeing things. Kinda. It’s a little distracting. I was listening. Yes, I’d like something to eat, please.”

  The Doctor gave her a tight-lipped smile and nodded quickly. “Yes, I understand. It’s fairly typical for people with certain kinds of powers to develop what we’d call extra-sensory perceptions, or new senses entirely. Please try to avoid using your power until we have a chance to test things out in a safe area. Let’s go get you something to eat, and we’ll be asking you a number of questions about your experience as we conduct an examination.”

  Emma brought her hands up and smoothed the slight frizz left in her hair down, and stepped over to the table to get redressed.

  “Okay, of course. Am I going to meet that other man as well?”

  The Doctor gave a nod and moved to stand in the gap in the doorway to give Emma some privacy. “Yes, he’s going to be assisting you with getting your new identity and accounts set up, and with some of the testing as well.”

  As she pulled her thong up her legs, she asked: “Does he have a name?”

  The Doctor made an affirmation hum in her throat. “Yes, he prefers to go by Numbers Man. We’ll be providing you with his contact information as well, afterwards.”

  “The Doctor and Numbers Man, huh? You all have some interesting tastes in naming around here,” Emma said dryly.

  She heard a man’s voice from the hallway. He was soft-spoken and a bit bland in the way he spoke accentless English. “We don’t bother with marketing and branding in our line of business. We’re solely focused on the results.”

  Emma rolled up her shirt and went to pull it over her head. “I suppose that means I’ll have to come up with a name for myself, then?”

  “We can assist with that, if you’d like. It’s all part of our comprehensive package that you’ve purchased,” the Doctor answered. “We have specialists that we tap for their expertise in other areas for things like that. All absolutely confidential, of course.”

  Giving the shirt a few strategic tugs, Emma got it pulled into place, and most of the tension wrinkles out of the front of her shirt. She turned around to give the room a once-over before leaving. The empty vial and lid were intact on the floor next to the chair. The bare metal of the chair caught her attention as she glanced over it. Rainbow-hued, colourful gradients extended in scallop shapes around where the legs were welded onto the chair and upwards from where the feet were in contact with the tile floor. Several of the tiles the chair was sitting on were cracked.

  She hadn’t noticed at all; it must have happened when she was out of it from the treatment. Emma moved to pick up the vial and the cap, but the Doctor interrupted her in the middle of bending over, saying, “You don’t have to worry about that. We’ll clean up the room afterwards. It’s pretty typical for there to be some level of damage to the facility during these treatments.”

  Emma could only imagine what might happen in the case someone had super-strength or turned into a roaring fire-person. Straightening back up, she moved to the doorway to follow the Doctor and Numbers Man to wherever it was they were going to lead her. She gave the room one last glance before the door shut behind her.

  Her mind turned to the prospects of filling the hole her stomach was trying to dig in her chest at the moment, and then, testing her power out. A smirk teased her full lips.

  She was strong now. She could feel the power–her power–slithering and coiling in her head, like a viper preparing to strike. She hadn’t even begun to tap into everything it offered, she could tell.

  There was going to be hell to pay when she had her new identity and time to practice and train with this new ability of hers.

  She was going to totally destroy Taylor fucking Hebert’s life. She wouldn’t kill her, that’d be too fast, and too easy, and something she could have just paid someone else to do years ago. No, she was going to take one of the local heroes of Brocton Bay and drag her name and reputation through the mud. Skitter would be knocked off her high horse. People would come to realise the truth–that Hebert was a pathetic, weak loser. In the world of capes, it wasn’t just image that mattered, but also power.

  Emma was going to crush her. Demoralise her. Embarrass her, and her team, if it came down to it. The reject and failure club that Emma knew they actually were, under the costumes and disguises. She wanted to make Taylor as much of a laughing stock as possible, and she couldn’t wait to get started.

  But first, food. Then testing. Later on, training.

  She’d push herself to the absolute limits, but not at the city that’d become her home, or in Brockton Bay. Not initially. She’d take some time to gather her bearings and test her capabilities. Build up an arsenal and allies. Then she’d pack up and travel to Brockton Bay. The city was still rebuilding, but already the center of the cape world in 2016.

  Maybe she’d even get herself some minions. Real villainess shit.

  She grinned as her thoughts turned to the future, already thinking about how she was going to go about building her reputation.