13. Pad Thai Does Not Taste Like Peanut Butter (Patreon)

A/N: I'M BACK, BABY! Thank you all so much for being patient while I take a break! Please enjoy the next chapter of AYEH, and for those of you with access to what was previously Bioshifter's tier, you can look forward to the first chapter of Magical Girl Mechanical Heart on Friday! I'm so excited! Note that this chapter does reuse some of the text from pre-rewrite, but most of the chapter is new material so I recommend reading it all. If a chapter is ever mostly pre-rewrite stuff, I'll do my best to release it alongside another chapter. Enjoy!

"You will be assigned a room with Christine," Commander informs me as the truck starts to slow. I turn to her in surprise. 

"...We get rooms?" I ask. I always imagined a single big bunk room where everyone would sleep on rows of cots. That's how people sleep in the military movies. 

"You aren't starting boot camp yet," Commander says. "You and the others here will be going through power training first. You need to be able to understand and control your abilities before we can allow you to train with unpowered recruits. At that point, sleeping accommodations will change, but until then a degree of privacy and comfort will be allowed." 

"Oh, alright," I nod at her. That makes sense. They can't exactly put people through training designed to mentally break someone in half and obliterate their individuality if those people might cause everyone's balls to explode with their mind or whatever. Or, well, I guess they can, they just have to teach us enough that they can claim it's our fault instead of theirs when it happens. "Who is rooming with Anastasia?" 

"No one," Commander answers. "For legal reasons, we don't room minors with adults, and minors under the age of thirteen do not room with anyone over that age. We have someone on-call to take care of her, if needed."

I am both relieved and immensely disgusted that they have a fully developed policy about this. I refrain from commenting, however, since I doubt it would do anything but annoy her if I complained about it. I'd prefer to look after Anastasia myself, but I never really expected the military to allow it. I end up spending the rest of the drive in silence, but it doesn't take long; before I know it, the truck parks and we're finally getting directed to step outside. 

There's a pretty simple building in front of us: boxy, two stories tall. Surrounding it on all sides is a thick, deciduous forest, a kaleidoscope of different trees intermingling to block off our view in every direction. They grow so close to the building that it would probably even be difficult to see from the air… but that goes both ways, of course. I don't have any way to tell where the hell we are. Though I suppose I was outright told we would be going to Fort Moore, and the muggy heat here at least seems like it could be Georgia. I don't know why they'd lie to us about that, but it's always nice to see supporting evidence anyway.

Commander leads us inside, walks us through a few bland hallways, and finally drops Christine and me off at our room, instructing us that she'll pick us up when the mess hall opens for dinner. I have to admit, I'm somewhat impressed by our living accommodations. I was expecting my new room to be a lot smaller and less comfortable-looking, but I guess the military likes to ease the superhumans into things at least a little. The quarters are pretty sizable for a dorm, with two beds on opposite ends of a room that has more than enough space to give us each our own desk and drawers. There's even an attached bathroom and shower. I guess it makes sense; we're a bunch of valuable assets that happen to also be equivalent to a bunch of walking armed warheads. Even if they want to get us up to speed as fast as possible, they at least need to treat us with kid gloves until they're certain we won't explode. 

"Well… at least it's not too cramped?" Christine says hesitantly, her head swiveling around like a nervous chicken as she looks at the room. 

"Yeah, it's not too bad," I agree, motioning towards the two beds on either side of the room. "Do you have a preference for which end?"

"Oh, um… I'll take that side, I guess," Christine says, pointing to the bed further from the door and closer to the bathroom. I nod, not really caring, and head over to flop down on the other one. 

"Hey, Lia?" she asks.

Staring at the ceiling, I sigh a little at the name. I can't help it, which is kind of pathetic. I get that I'm allowed to be upset over signing my whole life away to that name, but I should have more self-control than this. 

"Yeah?" I ask, trying to at least keep the discomfort out of my voice. 

"I think they have cameras in here," she says.

I frown, glancing around. I don't see anything, but that didn't sound like a baselessly paranoid 'I think.' It sounded more like a 'this is definitely true but I don't know how to express myself confidently' sort of 'I think.' Hmm. Her power takes things apart and separates them into pieces…

"Can you sense that kind of thing?" I ask her directly, sitting up. 

"I don't know," she says, nervously tugging on her frizzy hair. "It's weird." 

…That's not a very helpful answer. 

"Are there any cameras in the bathroom?" I ask her. 

She glances towards it, a thoughtful look on her face even though she's just sort of looking at a closed door and a wall. 

"...Yes," she answers, much more conclusively, looking understandably disturbed. Because like, yeah, what the hell? Even setting aside how gross that is, isn't it dangerous? 

"That's kind of odd," I frown. "Wasn't there some Angel that could attack people through pictures of itself?"

Have they already screened us for memetic powers at the last facility? If so, how? And what about all the other kids that presumably showed up here the literal day they got powers in the first place? They could have something that makes them dangerous to record and not even know about it.

"That's what you're concerned about?" Christine scowls. "They could be recording us naked."

"Well, I don't see any holes in the walls for the cameras to look through, so if there are cameras they're probably using like… millimeter wave scanning or something. Like the things they use to see through your clothes at airports."

"Those are for 3D imaging," Christine says. 

"Sure, it might not be exactly that, but the point is that if it's looking through the walls it probably doesn't care about our clothes anyway."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" she mutters.

"Not… really," I admit. "But if whatever recording device in here always treats us as equally naked, hopefully it'll help you not freak out in the shower. Which, by the way, we both desperately need. You wanna go first or should I?"

"Eugh. Go for it," she says, waving me towards the bathroom. "I'll definitely have to psyche myself up for that." 

Hmm. Yeah, that's oddly relatable. Come to think of it, I kind of have to ask myself a pretty weird question.

Whose body do I shower in?

I could hypothetically shower as an alien, but that… I just, I dunno, I wouldn't even know how to do that? I sort of have a whole routine with washing myself, and… hmm. I guess that routine wouldn't entirely apply now either way. But still, with the cameras I'm worried the bigwigs will get suspicious of me if I keep turning into an Angel in private. So that, of course, means I should shower in a human body. And the obvious choice is Lia's. 

I've walked around naked wearing her skin a dozen times now, so you'd think I would be less squeamish about this, but for some reason I feel like there's a world of difference between ending up naked because you're so pumped full of adrenaline you can't even remember that clothes exist, and purposefully stripping down with the intention of carefully rubbing soap all over my entire body. It's just. Y'know. Not necessarily weirder, but certainly a situation where I'm going to be forced to think about it a lot more. 

And… I don't want to think about it. 

I head into the bathroom anyway, resolving that if I'm going to be whiny and conflicted about this I should at least have the decency to do so privately. Especially since it isn't actually that difficult of a choice: Lia's body is not my body, but it's the logical body to use for a lot of reasons. It's the body that the real Lia would be the most inclined to use, for starters, and since there are apparently cameras watching me that could potentially matter a lot. But there's also the fact that showering in anybody's body other than my own is kind of creepy, and Lia is the only body I have that's too dead to actually be offended by it. My only other human options right now are showering as Emily (very weird, since she's my sister), Anastasia (extremely fucking weird, since she's a child), or some combination of the three of them (which somehow feels way less creepy and significantly more creepy at the same time). There just aren't any good options here.

At the end of the day, the only non-problematic body to shower in is my own. And… I physically can't do that anymore. Lia's body is the one I have to act like is mine. It's the body I've stolen and assigned to that purpose. I need to suck it up and commit. It would be a little suspicious if I couldn't act comfortable in what is supposedly my own skin. It becomes pretty clear that I've only made it as far as I have so far with some pretty severe compartmentalizing, because when I finally lock the door behind me and look in the mirror, the dysphoria hits me all at once. 

I've been in bathrooms before, obviously. The water pipes weren't working in the incursion zone, but that just made bathrooms more valuable, as we could still go to the bathroom in the toilets and just drop the lid instead of flushing. If not for the prevalence of bottled water, toilets might have been our only source of it at all. So I've already struggled through the learning process of figuring out how normal people use the damn things: in my original body, just the simple act of dropping my own pants was a bit of a process. I had to sit down first and shimmy everything off, or drag everything down with one hand while the other leaned on my cane. Undressing is so easy now by comparison, so… thoughtless. It's a process that can be done in a single motion, combined with sitting down at the same time. It feels like cheating. It bothers me. 

Maybe that's stupid. It feels stupid, in a lot of ways. Why am I complaining about something being easier, taking less work? I hated my old body, but it was mine, and I had mastered it. I had my way of doing things, and those things worked. I didn't need help to go about my day, no matter what anyone thought. A lot of people in my position wouldn't have been able to say the same, but I made it work. I put in the work, and I was strong for it. 

I never needed this. Lia isn't better than me. 

Yet here I am, feeling inadequate because I can sit on a toilet a different way. It's easy, concerningly so. It's like Lia's damn ghost still lives in her stolen brain, and it goes through her motions, uses her habits, and replaces every part of me it can with her. I walk like her now, I talk like her, and I even take a shit like her. I have to, or whoever's watching those cameras is going to ask questions I don't want anyone to answer. 

So… I guess it's time to shower. After a moment's hesitation, I turn and lock the door behind me, something I don't normally do when showering or using the bathroom because, for all my self-important bluster, it could be really dangerous for me if I end up slipping and people are unable to help me. Lia feels like the sort of person who would always lock the door, though, always valuing her privacy and being paranoid about other people respecting it. It's also a reasonable thing to do for someone about to do weird shit in front of the mirror, and I'm certainly about to do that. 

I scowl at the mirror, and Lia scowls back. I have been going well out of my way to not pay attention to Lia's body, but I've had the excuse of having plenty of more pressing concerns up until this point. It's time to suck it up and get used to my new normal. I quickly strip off my clothes, piling them into a corner by the door, and take a good, long look at myself in the mirror. 

Jesus Christmas Christ, Lia is just… objectively hot as hell. Like, that's not really a thing I've ever cared much about, and of course I still don't, but staring at myself like this really puts it front and center. I don't know how a girl gets genetics this good, but I could easily see Lia on the front page of some sports website. Or a porn website, frankly, though I've only seen a couple of those back when I felt the need to confirm my lack of interest more conclusively. 

But that's not really important. I already knew, at least secondhand, that Lia was hot and she owned it. I'm not really sure why my brain is suddenly catching on it now. My goal here is to check for important things, aspects of her body that are unlikely to come up but could out me as not being her if I don't know about them. She has holes in both earlobes, her belly button, and exactly one nipple, all of which were presumably due to piercings. I obviously don't have any jewelry to put there (and the weird feeling an experimental poke at that nipple produces makes me decide that I definitely don't want any) but that's unlikely to be an issue. I'm a shapeshifter, of course I lost 'my' jewelry after four days of fighting. Not a big issue. 

The one major blemish I find on her skin is a fist-sized birthmark on the back of her thigh, though I find it oddly unsurprising when I discover it, like I had already known despite never seeing it before. Which… I guess I did. My power has pretty intricate knowledge of her entire body, after all, and birthmarks are no exception. Still, the intellectual awareness of a patch of skin that has different coloration isn't really the same as seeing it. My power doesn't store biological information as pictures in my memory, it stores it as… I don't really know. Oddly contextless knowledge, I guess. It feels weird to think about, like I read a scientific paper about some animal I've never actually seen. I could ace an exam about Lia's biological makeup if I really wanted to, but it takes a bit of mental energy to convert that raw knowledge into something that actually makes practical sense. 

It's weird, because when I shapeshift, I feel like I know what's happening to my body. I feel like every last detail of every last cell is positioned to my specifications. But if you zoomed out and asked me 'hey, does Lia have any birthmarks?' I would have had to take a minute to think it over before now. I know it, but I don't know it. I wonder what that implies. 

Then again, it's entirely possible that the only reason this birthmark feels familiar is because I'm looking at it with Lia's brain. And Lia, obviously, knew she had this. But I prefer to assume it's weird power stuff rather than weird brain stuff, no matter how much the two clearly overlap. 

My investigations into my sister's girlfriend's naked body completed, I open the sliding door of the shower, preparing to get in. Immediately, my face drops into a scowl. Our shower back home had a fold-down seat mounted in the wall so I could use it without assistance, but this shower has no such thing. I imagine most showers don't, since most people don't need one. I actually have to take a moment to remind myself that I don't need the seat anymore, because I can stand and walk safely without aid, but it still annoys me. Even ignoring the lack of basic fucking accessibility (that's a joke, I'm not ignoring it, I will never ignore it), every shower should have a seat! Showers are supposed to be relaxing, who wouldn't want to be able to sit down when they feel like it?

Whatever. It's not like I expect the ultimate organization of people-are-assets-to-be-spent to care about disabilities. Except, y'know, I don't actually need the accommodations anymore, so they probably do have a room with a handicap bathroom that they just never would have thought to give to me. It's fine. I'm fine. Everything is fucking fine. 

I finish my shower swiftly and efficiently, the shame of how easy it is like this bubbling inside me. I wrap my hair up in a towel—another thing that shouldn't feel natural to do, since I used to be bald—and wrap the rest of me in another towel so I can head out and raid the drawers for fresh clothes. 

Christine is sitting on her bed when I emerge, looking vaguely miserable as always, though she lets out an 'eep' noise and turns away blushing as I walk out of the shower. I fail to resist the urge to roll my eyes.

"Christine, you've seen me naked dozens of times now, why are you embarrassed over a towel?"

"I just… I don't want to be rude," she stammers. 

"Look as much as you want, Christine. It really doesn't bother me."

I'm used to being stared at. And it's not my body anyway. 

"...It's a little weird for me either way, Lia," she mutters, still not looking my way. "But that's not… sorry. What I mean to say is that I don't think I've thanked you for saving my life yet. And, um, y'know. Thank you." 

"You're welcome," I answer simply, rifling through the doors and finding a simple white T-shirt, shorts, and modest cotton underwear. Works for me. I drop the towel and start to put them on. 

"I get that I was just… dead weight," she says quietly. "I couldn't help you at all. But you saved me anyway, and… well, you didn't have to."

I sigh. I need to think of something to boost this mopey girl's self-esteem a little. Hmm. I have a few ideas I could try. 

"You weren't dead weight," I tell her. "In fact, I think you might have been the only reason any of us survived."

Christine snorts incredulously, not believing for a second that she was helpful. I suppose that, for all her flaws, she can at least maintain realistic self-assessment. It's kind of nice, in its own way. Most useless people I have to deal with think they're hot shit, so it's pretty refreshing. 

"I'm not saying you were some expert combatant, Christine," I smirk at her, pulling the last of my clothes on. "But I mean it. I think you're the reason we survived. I was wondering the entire time why the aliens didn't press us as hard as we know they could have, and I feel like I finally have the last puzzle piece now."

"You think I… what, kept them away, somehow?" she asks, curious despite herself. 

"I think they kept themselves away, but it was because of you," I tell her. "That Angel didn't try to kill you, Christine. It tried to capture you alive. If we assume that was their goal from the start, the way they spent most of their time penning us in and waiting for backup makes a lot more sense."

Her eyes go wide. 

"Wait, what? Why would they want to capture me?" 

"Well, that I don't know. The Angel…" 

I pause, trailing off for a moment as I briefly forget how to turn concepts into words. Words just… don't seem adequate, in regards to translating everything the Angel said to me. Too simple, too… limited. But fuck that, that's stupid. I'm great with words. I can get her to understand. 

…But I probably shouldn't. I definitely shouldn't say, out loud, that I could 'hear' the Angel rambling about how blessed and holy Christine was. Not in a room filled up to the tits in military surveillance tech. That'll get my butt tossed into a black site faster than I can say 'OpSec.' 

"...It yanked you away from us, but it never hurt you," I say instead. "It was almost… gentle. You didn't seem injured at all when I took you back, and for most of the fight after it seemed like it was just trying to retrieve you from me." 

"But… but why would they…"

"I don't know," I tell her, keeping my voice even to try to help her stay calm. "My guess is that it has something to do with your power. Remember how Anastasia said yours and the Queen's felt similar?" 

"But that's… that's terrifying!" she squeaks. "Why would they want me alive? Don't aliens just kill people? What were they going to do to me?"

"Eh," I shrug. "It doesn't matter, right? I got you out of there. Now get yourself clean."

She stares at me with a complicated expression, but eventually gives me a careful nod. 

"Alright, Lia," she says. "I guess you have a point. Really though, thanks for saving me."

"Of course," I tell her. "I'd do it again." 

She snorts at that, finally getting up and grabbing fresh clothes to take into the bathroom with her. 

"Okay, hero," she says sarcastically. I blink. 

"What?" 

"It's just… that was so sappy. 'I'd do it again.'" 

"I mean it," I insist. 

"Eh," she shrugs. "You'll get tired of me eventually." 

She steps into the bathroom and closes the door before I can respond, leaving me frowning at her. Damn, that girl has self-esteem issues. Joke's on her, though: I'm already tired of her, it just doesn't matter. I sigh, shifting my brain into a Raptor's to do a quick check on the aliens, and… oh, right. There aren't any other aliens around anymore. We made it out. Hmm.

…What am I going to do to pass the time now?

It's… a weird thought. It legitimately takes me a while to think of what I normally do when I'm alone, my mind oddly blank in the unexpected absence of immediate danger. I guess back home I'd probably listen to music or an audiobook or something. I obviously can't do that here, though, since I don't have any personal belongings. I guess the optimal use of my time would be… to practice? 

I flex my hand, growing a set of crystal scales over it before making them vanish back into my skin just as quickly. Where does it come from, where does it go? How do powers work? Nobody knows. It's like a little rhyme, and I feel like if my brain was currently human I might find that oddly funny. As-is, it's just frustrating. How am I supposed to improve at something I don't understand? 

I suppose it's ostensibly the reason we're here: to learn about powers. Though while I'm sure the military has important insights that I'm lacking, it's pretty obvious that they're as clueless to the true nature of powers as anybody. The aliens, though… I wonder if they've figured it out? My guess would be no, since they mostly seemed to treat powers as something with religious significance? At least, I think they did. There was certainly a significant feeling of… reverence, I suppose, to some higher power. Which is always a bad sign for this sort of thing. Historically, reverence and critical investigation tend to mix like oil and blood. 

…Is that why the aliens are invading us? Some kind of holy war against our kind? Do they think we're using powers in a way that offends their god? But humanity didn't start getting superpowers until after the aliens blew up the moon, so they're presumably the cause of our powers in the first place. Ugh, too many questions. I'll have to interrogate the next Angel I meet before I kill them. As long as I make sure they can't leave, they'll tell me anything I ask. 

I scrunch my eyebrows together a bit, catching that thought before it flits away. They'll tell me anything I ask? Why would I think that? 

I shift myself back to full human, pushing aside the sudden rush of existential terror the foreign thought brought. It felt so… natural, so obvious. Why would I think that? Why would a Raptor think that? Raptors never tried to talk to me. Or… maybe they did, and I just couldn't understand? But… Raptors can't be people, can they? They certainly don't act like people, not like that Angel did. That thing was emotional. 

I idly turn my arm into a tentacle and back a few times, letting crystals dance over my skin as I think. As far as I know, humanity doesn't have any evidence that aliens are sapient, let alone capable of holding a conversation, at least kinda. Some of this stuff could therefore be important intel for the military, and as much as I don't like or trust them I do want them to win the war so we don't go fucking extinct. But how much can I tell them without being considered crazy or dangerous? It doesn't feel worth the risk, so I'll table it for now. Maybe if I become more trusted by the brass it'll be safe. 

I continue playing with my power a little until Christine returns from the shower, dressed in clean clothes and generally not looking like a complete mess for once. Despite her reluctance to get in, she seems to be doing a lot better mood-wise now that she's clean. So that's good. All that's really left for us to do is to wait for someone to pick us up and take us to the dining hall, which I hope comes sooner rather than later. I'm famished. 

…Well. Kind of. My power isn't screaming at me that I'll die if I don't eat anything, but I always have a bit of background awareness of the fact that I could eat more. And why shouldn't I? The more reserves the better, right? 

"Uh, what are you doing?" Christine asks. 

"Huh?" I glance up at her. She flinches. 

"Your, uh. Your face." 

Hmm? Oh. I guess I've been using the Angel's eyes for a little while. I shift back. 

"Sorry, just kind of got lost in thought," I admit. "Have a nice shower?"

"...Better than I expected," she admits. "I forgot how nice warm water is."

Huh. Is it? I was mostly trying to ignore how it felt. I guess that makes sense; it would be a little weird for people to put so much effort into heating water in their homes if they didn't even like it that much. 

"That's… a weird expression on your face," Christine frowns. Shoot! What? What expression? I quickly force my face to not be making any expression in particular, and Christine snorts. 

"Never mind," she says. "It wasn't bad or anything. You try really hard to not seem weird, but you are, aren't you? You're a complete dork that tries to eat entire jars of peanut butter."

I blink.

"I just… I'd never tasted it before," I say defensively. "I didn't know it was that good." 

"You've never had peanut butter?" Christine says incredulously. "Now I know you're weird." 

"Wh—! My mom wasn't exactly the type to pack me homemade PBJs, alright!?" I snap at her. "Where was I gonna taste it, huh? Pad Thai?"

I try to raise my voice to get her to back off, but she just raises an eyebrow. 

"...Pad Thai does not taste like peanut butter," she insists. "Not if it's any good, anyway."

"I know that!" I lie. Damn it, Christine, where was this spine when we were fighting for our lives!?

A knock on the door saves me from further beratement, letting me quickly call out to invite them in. Commander's smiling face greets us, as pale and sharp as always. 

"All freshened up?" she asks. "Wonderful."

"Are there cameras in our room?" Christine asks her bluntly, finally turning away from me. 

"Not any of the kind you'd need to worry about," Commander answers pleasantly. "We just want to make sure everyone's where they should be, and no one is somewhere they shouldn't be. For your safety, you understand." 

"If you think that's safety you may as well just toss me back in the incursion zone," Christine growls. 

"Don't worry, dear," Commander smiles. "All in good time." 

She turns away and looks back at us, silently impressing on us to follow. I get up to follow, but Christine stays where she is, her arms crossed. Carefully, I put a hand on her shoulder and jerk my head towards Commander when she glances my way. 

"Come on," I tell her. "Let's get some food that's actually cooked for once, huh?"

She sighs, and acquiesces, falling in step beside me. Commander gives me a slightly condescending smile, and we head out into the hall. 

"You realize that cooked food means it's probably not going to have peanut butter, right?" Christine jabs at me. 

"...I also like cheese," I hedge. "People cook cheese." 

She chuckles, and I smile a bit at her. Good. This is good. It's going to be hard keeping her mood up, but I feel like it'll be important for helping her manage… y'know, being drafted. 

Commander knocks on the door to the room next to us, causing a very groggy and very soggy Anastasia to answer. Her hair is so leaden with water that she seems to be struggling to move her head much, and it's completely soaking her oversized t-shirt. 

"Ana!" I greet her, not sure whether to be concerned or to laugh. "Hey, do you need some help drying off?"

"Lia!" Anastasia says, immediately brightening up. Oogh, that hurts my heart. Both how cute she is and how I have to lie to her. "I'm fine, I'll just… it'll just dry on its own eventually." 

"Ana, you have so much hair it might mold before it all dries," I warn her. "You've gotta take care of it. Come on, I'll help you towel it so it's at least not dripping." 

I'm walking into her room before I even realize that might be a no-no, but Commander doesn't stop me, just stepping in after me to keep me in her sight as I grab a towel from Anastasia's bathroom. 

"I don't even want all this hair," Anastasia grumbles. 

"I know hon, but you're stuck with it," I sigh, quickly squeezing it all dry—or at least dry enough—before helping her put it up into a simple bun. "Was the shower nice, at least?"

"Yeah!" she smiles. "I'm not all icky anymore!"

"Thank goodness for municipal pipe systems, huh?" I smile. "No more bottled water sponge baths!" 

"No more being covered in alien guts," Anastasia agrees, sticking out her tongue and making a grossed-out face. I laugh, though out of the corner of my eye I keep watch on Commander, who stoically stares at us without saying a word. I wonder what she's thinking. Maybe she just wants us to hurry the fuck up. 

"Well, let's get dinner, yeah?" I say, finishing the wet-hair bun. It's not great but it'll have to do for now. "Time to figure out what kind of food they have in this fancy little black site." 

"Eh, it's not five-star, but it could certainly be worse," Commander shrugs, leading us down the hallway again. 

"Quite the glowing review," Christine deadpans. 

Commander only responds with a thin smile, and soon enough the four of us make it to the cafeteria, full of a few soldiers and close to twenty clearly out-of-place randoms who are probably our fellow powered folk. It's a bland little room, with thin, laminate tables and depressingly gray walls. It reminds me of the sort of room I've seen exploring abandoned public school buildings. Emily would always insist on dragging me along with Max's urban spelunking sessions to slow everyone down and make it harder for people to do anything too stupid. 

A wave of numbness ripples through my body at that thought, the cold reminder that Max is dead and it's my fault briefly shoving away every other emotion. I never even liked him all that much, but I still lived with him for three years and knew him very, very well. His death is a heavy thing to think about. Those stupid nighttime outings through abandoned pre-war buildings were always exhausting pains in the ass, but all of a sudden I find myself missing them, as little chunks of my life I'll never get to have again.

"Lia?" Anastasia asks, looking up at me, and I flinch. Shit, I just stopped walking all of a sudden. I shoot her a reassuring smile and head towards the short line. Most people already seem to be eating, and when we get served it looks like… potatoes and soup? Huh, okay. We had a lot of cold soup over the past four days, so I can't say I'm looking forward to it, but I liked the potatoes we found that were still fresh enough to eat. Gosh I'm hungry. 

"Is there a limit to how much you can give me?" I ask the lady plopping our food onto the trays. 

"Yes," she answers. "But you're the new powered kids, aren't you? They'll probably approve you if you request extra provisions."

"Approved," Commander says, shrugging. "I'll do the paperwork tomorrow. Do all three of you need it?" 

"Anastasia and I definitely do. Uh, I'm not sure if Christine…"

"I'm fine," she insists, looking at the food with obvious disgust as it is slapped onto her tray. 

Yeah, figures, but best I can tell Christine doesn't actually need more calories than a normal person so there's no real reason to try to fudge her some if she doesn't want it. I happily thank the food lady as she plops a double serving onto my and Anastasia's plates, and we head out to find somewhere to sit. Commander, notably, doesn't grab any food. She's just… around. Shadowing us. 

I guess that's fine. I take the opportunity to look at all the different powered people we'll be apparently training with. A lot of them are also looking at us, clearly figuring out that we're latecomers to the same train they're stuck on, but most are focusing on their food or their own conversations. There's already an interesting mix of little cliques, perhaps due to the fact that most of the powered people here seem to be around my age. Collections of teenage to early-twenties girls at one table, the same for boys at another, with only a few people who seem to be in their thirties or forties all hanging out at a third table together. 

There are a few interesting standouts, though. I can't really tell the age of one guy because he's seven feet tall and super jacked; with a body that fit he could be anywhere from eighteen to fifty and I won't have a guess until I get a closer look at his face. There's another guy in a wheelchair who looks to be at least seventy years old, way older than everyone else in the entire room. 

He doesn't have any obvious injuries, so he probably just can't walk on his own, and he's also one of the few people sitting alone, which… y'know, fuck that. Poor guy, we're totally sitting at his table. I really like old people; they have cool ass stories that they're always happy to tell and actually fucking get what it's like to be constantly treated as an ugly burden by everyone around you. 

The worst part is that you can't ever call anyone out on it, because unless they do something really egregious then ohhh nooo I'm just being overly sensitive, everyone gaslight Julietta into thinking she's the asshole! I fucking hate people that—wait. Is that… no. No fucking way. 

"Peter!?" I blurt before my brain catches up with my mouth. Holy shit. Holy shit, that's Peter, sitting at one of the superpower tables. My foster brother. He lived. He's actually alive. 

That's… that's really bad, actually. 

"Lia?" Peter gawks at me, his eyes bulging a little as he tries to figure out if I'm actually real. 

And that's the problem, isn't it? I'm not. And he's one of the few people that could actually figure that out. We lived together for years, and he and Lia would always talk shit with each other when she came over. Fuck, fuck, fuck, god damn it, Peter is really fucking smart and he's going to clock me immediately if I don't respond to this in a perfectly Lia-esque way. I can't fuck up this soon, I won't! But what do I say? What's something that Lia would say here that I never would!? This is ridiculous! How did that asshole even survive, he… 

Ah. I know what to say. I know exactly what to say.

"Peter, you fucking cunt, you LEFT US TO DIE!" 

Somebody screams, and I realize I'm not looking through human eyes anymore.