7. I Hope You Can Be A Stabilizing Influence (Patreon)

Once everyone is gathered, we're loaded up into various transport vehicles and ordered to sit down and stay buckled. We seem to be mostly sorted by proximity, so I end up in the same car with explode-the-house girl, the old man, and the literal fucking child who absolutely should not be here.

And who best to round out our little squad than Commander herself, opting to take our vehicle rather than any of the others. Which… kind of makes sense. A look at the kid's blank eyes and vacant obedience makes it obvious that Commander's power is still settled into the poor child's head like soup poured on a biscuit, leaving her seemingly insensate just to avoid some very justified crying. And explode-the-house girl… well, she's been the only attempted runner, at least that I know about. It makes sense that Commander would want to keep an eye on her. But where do the old guy and I fit into this? There's no way it's just proximity; he wasn't directly next to us in the lineup.

The truck we're in is the kind with two rows of seats on the outer walls that face inside; there are no side doors, so the only way in and out of the passenger area is through the back. The kid, Commander, and I are all on one side of the vehicle, while the old man and explode-the-house girl are on the opposite side. I let my eyes pass over them, quickly drinking in as many details about them as I can.

Explode-the-house girl—y'know what, I'm just gonna start calling her ETH for short—honestly looks like a mess. Her brown hair is frizzy and fraying, with so many split ends I doubt she's had a haircut in at least a year. She's constantly fidgeting with her hands, a sign of extreme nervousness, ADHD, or, given the circumstances, probably both. All in all, she's jittery and panicking enough that I can't blame Commander one whit for deciding to sit in the same truck as her, just in case she decided to become explode-the-truck girl while we're going seventy-plus down the highway. Given how the last time she used her insane power it separated all the components of a building and held them firmly immobile in the air, I have no idea how it would react to something moving at high speeds and I don't think anyone wants to be part of the experiment to find out.

So. That's bad. I wonder what kind of time bomb the old man is? Well, besides just being old enough to keel over any second. The poor bastard can't be any less than seventy, one of the few people left that lived the majority of his life before the incursion. He looks like he's of Central or maybe South American descent, with plenty of dark liver spots accentuating his already tan skin. A cane not unlike the kind I used just yesterday rests in his lap, which I've already noted he needs to walk, and while thin white hair still covers the top of his head, he has no beard. He seems to notice me looking at him and flashes me a polite smile, a full set of beautifully pearly-white teeth still in his mouth. Interesting. He was financially stable enough to get dental work growing up then, and almost certainly still has good money today. I nod back and then put my attention elsewhere for a bit so he's looking elsewhere when I return to analyzing him.

He has turned his attention to ETH when I look at him again, which is understandable since her constant twitching has escalated to nervously shaking the leg closest to him. He reaches into the pocket of his coat (a pretty nice one; this guy probably isn't rich rich, but he's up there) and pulls out an honest-to-god fidget spinner, something I have never seen in real life before and I'm pretty sure was kind of a joke way back when they actually made those. Then he taps her lightly on the back of the hand, gives her a small smile, spins it, and hands it to her.

She looks understandably rather confused at all this interaction, but with his silent encouragement she starts messing with the fidget spinner, the quiet spin of its apparently well-lubricated ball bearings several times less annoying than the constant thump of her foot against the floor, and much better at calming her down as well.

Hmm. Interesting. I glance at Commander, who seems vaguely pleased by this interaction, and I understand what's going on. ETH and the child are the problem candidates, while the old man and I were considered probable stabilizing elements. So if he's handling ETH, my job is to handle the kid.

Well. 'Job,' I guess, air quotes heavily emphasized. Army recruits who haven't even gone through basic training, let alone actually gotten any orders, do not officially have any jobs. But if I'm going to survive in the military, having someone high up in the ranks who likes you is a good way to do it. Commander certainly can mind control a child all the way to our destination, but unless she's seriously fucked up in the head she probably doesn't want to. I expect that, if I do nothing, she'll eventually announce her intention to cut her control and ask all of us to help reassure the kid. She's probably just waiting until ETH seems more stable so we don't have to deal with more than one problem at a time. I can probably earn some brownie points by offering to help before then.

…More importantly, though, is the fact that seeing this child blank-faced next to me while a literal mind control super sits next to her with a heartless smile doesn't sit with me well at all. I discretely touch the child's hand with my pinky, though to my surprise I don't feel her vengeance-like domain at all, but instead the much more powerful, sickly-sweet aura that Commander's power gives off. I suppose that makes sense, but I was hoping to be able to feel out exactly what was going on in the kid's brain while Commander's power was up. It'd be a bad idea to try to force it now, though.

"...Do you think it would be wise to let her process things on her own for a bit?" I ask Commander, phrasing the thing I know to be true as a question to make the suggestion seem more deferential. "I think I can calm her down."

Honestly, I don't generally like kids, but I'm pretty decent with them. They're a chore I got saddled with a lot at some of my old foster homes, and it's pretty easy for me to get all but the most problematic kids to like me. It's mostly about being patient and selecting the exact right balance of 'talk to them like they're a kid' versus 'talk to them like they're an adult.' Because kids aren't adults, and when they're in certain modes or certain moods they simply aren't going to be interested in listening to anything more than vacant praise and basic back-and-forth. But if you do that too much, or at the wrong times, the kid is going to (probably correctly) believe you don't respect them. It's a balance, and one you have to constantly update and change as the kid grows up.

When I'm dealing with kids, I usually like to try to make it very clear what I'm expecting from them at any given time and give immediate positive feedback when they accomplish it. "Wow, good job cleaning up! Now it's time for everyone to brush their teeth!" That kind of shit. The goal is to establish enough of a rapport with the children that my own happiness or disappointment is the only reward or punishment they actually need to do things, though of course some more tangible rewards are good where appropriate. It's basic stuff that I'm sure any actual parent or childcare professional knows way more about than I do, but it's a handy basic MO.

Unfortunately, I doubt a basic MO is going to cut it with a traumatized, mutant, probably-orphaned superchild. This kid has been through some shit, and it's going to stick with her in a bad way no matter what I do. I have no way of knowing how she's going to react to any of it, so I need to be ready to deploy all sorts of different strategies by ear. She's also got a superpower that could potentially be super dangerous, but I was used to being the only person in the room that could get her ass kicked by a five-year-old for my whole life. I'm not too worried about it.

It might help to know what her power is, though. Her body isn't entirely human, as evidenced by the claws, but it's at least mostly human. Back when I scanned her in the lineup, my power honestly didn't detect many changes from what I would expect a human child to be like, though I guess I don't have any templates of any children other than this one. Still, the main differences my power noted were her claws, her greatly increased metabolism, and the way her body seems to rapidly accelerate the production of already fast-growing cells in her body, almost like some kind of reverse-chemotherapy.

Her hair probably wasn't all the way down to her knees yesterday; it now grows at an incredibly rapid pace. Same with her new claws, and while they're a completely different structure from any fingernails or claws I know about, they'll probably have to be trimmed regularly in order for her to function. Her skin is pale because her melanin production can't keep up with the rate her body is making and replacing her skin cells, and her skeleton is a little messed up and fragile because her bone marrow has bloated in size and is producing way more blood than a normal person should. Her blood in general is kind of weird; not quite human but not really exceptional beyond that, other than how quickly it seems to get replaced.

Honestly, powers that physically change your body like this girl's (and I guess technically mine) are pretty uncommon; most supers, to my understanding, remain just as human as they were before getting powers. I don't have a ton of evidence one way or another yet, but Emily certainly wasn't notably different from Lia or that officer I touched back in Illinois. I imagine a lot of more physically inclined supers might get body enhancements of some sort, but I've only heard of one or two that actually looked any different on the surface because of it.

The general composition of this girl's body indicates to me that she would probably heal from injury a lot faster than the average person, though. Given the sheer quantity of scars I felt both in and on her body, I wonder if, during whatever event gave her powers, she'd have died without the changes. A theory for later, perhaps.

"...If you think you're up to it, I agree that would be best," Commander says, giving me a nod and a thin smile after pretending to think about it for a while. "I've never been very good with children, myself, so I'll be relying on you and your fellow trainees to help keep her on her feet."

So you're offloading all the work onto us instead of getting any sort of basic accommodations for raising a child? Do supers not even count as people anymore? …Shit, maybe we don't. It's not like we have anything close to the same rights as anyone else.

"I won't let you down, Commander," I assure her, not letting any of the vitriol in my gut reach my voice. No point in letting that out. There never is.

"That'll be First Lieutenant Locke, for the foreseeable future," she says, stiffly but without irritation. "You're not in boot camp yet, but you may as well get in the habit."

"Of course, First Lieutenant," I nod. She nods back, and I feel the infection of her domain recede from the child's body. The poor kid's muscles visibly untense, eyes blinking as they move back into focus, a calm, satisfied breath leaving her lungs like she just woke up from the world's most wonderful dream. I wait, not rushing her or interrupting her moment if she's going to be calm anyway, but terror very rapidly blooms back onto her face as the cold backhand of reality slaps her across the jaw.

She doesn't cry, but she does start to have a panic attack, which is decidedly not better.

Okay, shit. What sort of persona do I need for this girl? Something firm, reliable, and trustworthy. Confident and capable. But at the same time, I need to be able to put her at ease. Talk on her level. I can't be the strange adult her parents warned her not to speak to if she didn't know. So I take a deep breath to steady myself, letting the words she needs to hear and the person she needs me to be push aside all my fear, my disgust, and my desire to be anywhere but here.

"Hey," I say, a soft smile on my face, as easy to wear as Lia's skin. "Can you tell me your name?"

No platitudes. No "it's going to be okay." She probably just had her parents die in front of her, and I damn well know I didn't want anyone to tell me that would be okay when it happened. I just need to get her to listen to me, trust me, and most importantly, focus on me. I can't let her fall into a tailspin.

"H-huh?" she says vacantly, her body shaking. "Who are you?"

"My name is Lia Morgan," I lie with a smile. God, it sounds weird twisting Lia's bitchy voice into something that would reassure a child. "What's your name?"

"A-Anastasia," she answers quietly. "Why do you have two names?"

I let my smile get a bit wider, to show I'm happy she's talking and encourage her to keep doing so. Subtle positive feedback is some of the strongest; kids aren't always smart, but they are nearly always perceptive. Everyone is more perceptive than people think, really, since most of social interaction is unconscious and unspoken. Our social instincts evolved before our language developed, after all. You just need to learn how to use it. I adjust the collar of my shirt as it starts bothering my shoulder and keep my attention laser-focused on the kid.

"Hello, Anastasia," I greet her, adjusting my seatbelt while keeping my focus on her. It's digging into my jaw a little all of a sudden, riding up as I lean over to speak more on her level. "Morgan is my last name, and Lia is my first name. Some people have Morgan as a first name, but I don't. There are a bunch of names like that!"

"Oh, okay," she says, squirming slightly, but not panicking or crying. That's a good sign! "Did your parents die too?"

Woah okay, maybe not a good sign!? Jesus kid, toss a fastball right at my face, why don't you?

"N-no," I lie again, since Lia's parents are fine. I make sure to set myself as a little shaken but still strong, so I can believably continue with the follow-up. "A lot of people I'm really close to didn't make it, though. They're in a better place now."

That's the most bald-faced lie yet; I'm not religious in the slightest (barring that god I talked to an hour ago) and I'm pretty sure my parents are nothing but inert chemical slurry, physically and metaphysically. That'd be a stupid thing to tell a grieving kid, though.

"Yeah," Anastasia agrees, tears falling from her face. She's not sobbing, though, just… crying. Grieving. There's no reason to stop that, so I just give her a firm, reassuring smile, staying quiet until she speaks again and firmly ignoring the odd chill on my toes. It doesn't take long.

"They're taking us away now, right?" she asks. "To fight the aliens?"

"Yes," I tell her honestly. "But I'm going with you. I'll help you, okay?"

"Okay," she sniffs. "I… I'll help you too!"

Aww. I doubt it, but the sentiment is adorable and worth encouraging so I give her an even wider smile.

"Thank you, Anastasia. We'd better stick together, then. Would you like to be my friend?"

"Y-yes!" she agrees immediately, sniffing snot up her nose. "Yes, please! I was so worried I'd never be able to make any friends again. I thought everybody was going to be way older than me!"

"Well, I—"

Wait.

What?

I cut myself off as something she said sticks oddly in my brain. She thinks I'm not older than her? But I'm… no. No no no.

I quickly glance around the car, where everyone is staring at me with a surprised, if not outright concerned expression. Then I look down at myself, seeing tiny, dark-skinned arms poking out of an army recruit shirt big enough to be an evening gown. My feet dangle from the seat free of shoes and socks, and I realize I'm not at eye level with Anastasia because I'm leaning over. Holy fucking shit, I'm some kind of kid-Lia! When did I… no, it would have had to be while she was still waking up from Commander's power, otherwise she would have noticed. But why didn't I notice?

I mean, I get not realizing my body was shrinking and my clothes were all starting to not fit. Saying physical touch and I are on bad terms is like saying you might have a shaky relationship with your ex if she sets your house on fire with gasoline. It's a constant nonsensical buzz in the back of my head, and my coping mechanism for it so far has been to completely ignore it as much as physically possible. Having absolutely no awareness of what my body is up to is pretty normal for me.

But why didn't I notice using my power? I admit, this power stuff is super new to me, but it's always been pretty insistent on getting my attention up to this point. So what activated it, and why was it so seamless from my perspective? What did I… wait. I literally tried to make myself into a person Anastasia would want to talk to. Sure, I never thought to myself "I should also be a small child," because that's a stupid thing for someone who looks like an adult to act like, but if you had asked me what body would be best for talking to her… yeah, I might have said a mini-me. Kids are more likely to quickly bond with other kids, and they wouldn't really think it's that weird if said kid happened to talk like an adult.

So. I guess my power can activate subconsciously. Fuck.

This is fine, though! It's fine! Not part of the plan, but I can work with that. When you make a gaff, make it a laugh! I lean a little closer to Anastasia, as if I was about to impart her with some great secret.

"I'm actually a lot older than I look," I stage-whisper, making sure everyone in the truck can hear me just fine. "I can shapeshift, but don't tell anybody."

ETH girl is the first to break, letting out a snort of a laugh as the old guy next to her cracks into a broad grin. Okay! Accidentally demonstrating the honestly super creepy capacity to turn myself into a nine-year-old girl has probably not tanked my social standing into the toilet. I mean, I don't know if it was going to do that in the first place, but I'm certainly creeped the fuck out by my power turning me into some mish-mash of Lia's body and the human parts of Anastasia's. God, everything is so big. I feel like a dumbass for not noticing this was happening.

"Oh… you're older than me?" Anastasia asks quietly. Right, yeah, more important things to worry about.

"Maybe a bit, but we can still be friends!" I insist. I have to get things back on track, and focusing on a new friend should help get her mind off of her dead family, or at least give me a chance to help her with the grieving process. "I just get really big sometimes."

"Oh. What do you normally look like?"

"Uhh…" I hesitate, taking a quick stock of how my transformation affected my outfit. The answer to which is 'it did not, and that is annoying.' Now that I'm a child wearing clothes sized for someone several feet taller than me, it's pretty all over the place. The fact that I'm sitting down has thankfully preserved my modesty, but if I stood up my pants would immediately fall off if I wasn't holding them in place. Depending on how my shapeshifting goes I'll probably need to adjust everything pretty substantially to get my underwear back on right, and I don't think I'm super comfortable, say, reaching into my shirt and shoving my boobs back into my bra while trapped in an enclosed space with a bunch of strangers.

"I'll show you later," I promise. "My power is a little weird and I'm not used to it yet. I, uh, don't actually look like this on purpose! I'll get a handle on it soon, though."

I'd fucking better get a handle on it, anyway. This is so fucking creepy. I shoot an apologetic smile at everyone else in the vehicle while Anastasia considers my words.

"...Okay," she agrees. "I think you have a nice power though. I'm just an evil witch."

I frown. An evil witch? That's probably bad for her self-esteem, especially since she's likely going to need to use her power a lot for… well, basically the entire rest of her life, if the Army gets its way. And it probably will, because war is hell and now we live in it!

"Why do you think you're an evil witch?" I ask.

"Well, I have claws," she says matter-of-factly. "Evil witches have claws."

Ah. Of course. Everyone knows evil witches have claws. How silly of me.

"Also," Anastasia continues, leaning in closer to whisper into my ear, "I'm a bloodbender."

"A blood… bender?" I ask, slightly confused. What does she mean by that?  Blood is a liquid, it doesn't really bend. Can she like, twist people's veins into knots or something?

"Ah, excuse me, miss," the old man asks, leaning forward with an excited smile on his face. "Are you talking about Avatar?"

"Oh! Yeah! Avatar!" the girl confirms, brightening up immediately. "Grandma and I watched it together! W-with Aang and his flying monkey! And a bison!"

She immediately starts babbling to the old guy about what I assume is an ancient television show, thoroughly distracted as he happily chats along with her, the two of them discussing their favorite moments. Thank goodness; that's a pretty lucky break. The old guy seems super good with kids, so I mouth a silent 'thank you' at him as he leads the conversation from there.

They talk for a literal hour about this wacky-ass magical element show from fifty years ago that I've never heard of but honestly sounds pretty cool. It seems like it gets pretty intense for a kid's show, which is always neat to see. I make a mental note to see if I can download and watch it sometime, if only to be able to keep up with conversations like this. If we're going to be training together (and that's a horrific thought, isn't it?) it'll be important to have ways to keep up her morale.

Ugh. I feel dirty for even thinking that. But like, what am I going to do? Not try to help the kid cursed to be a literal child soldier? I guess the best thing to do would be to try to run away with her, but I have zero ability to actually accomplish that. I know what the military is capable of, in terms of bullying supers. And while I might be able to use my power to hide, Anastasia has no such defense. I doubt we'd even make it out of the base.

I hate this. I hate all of this. But I've never been some wide-eyed idealist with delusions of grandeur, and having literal superpowers isn't going to change that. I have to be practical about this, and for now that means playing along, looking good, and hoping they'll take it easy on us. In the future, if that presents an opportunity… we'll see. But I'm not getting my hopes up.

Eventually, the kid tuckers herself out rambling about some siblings having a duel with lightning or something (which, again, sounds pretty awesome) and she ends up falling asleep on my shoulder. It's kind of cute, but also kind of weird since I'm the same height as her now.

"Are you, uh, gonna stay like that?" ETH girl asks me quietly.

"Um… probably until we stop, yeah," I say awkwardly. "I don't think I can shapeshift back into my clothes very, uh… seamlessly? So I'd kind of prefer to wait until I can change in private. I did not do this on purpose, my powers are just kind of… weird."

"We can have everyone else unload first, but I'll still need to watch you," Commander says.

Of course you will. I try not to react.

"Shapeshifting seems like a cool power, though," ETH girl continues. "I don't really get mine. I can take things apart and put them back together, but I can't put things back together unless I was the one to take them apart?"

"It looks quite impressive, though," I reassure her. "And you took apart most of a building all at once. That's really strong!"

"...I don't really want it to be strong, though," the girl mutters. "A strong, close-range power means I'll be forced onto the front lines."

I keep a smile fixed on my face as I internally scream at her for being a dumbass. Like yeah, no shit you don't want to be here? You're the runner. You're the problem Commander is here to watch. And you're singling yourself out as more of a problem every time you say something stupid like that! Nobody sane wants to be here, you fucking moron! That doesn't mean you should say it!

…Though by the same token, I shouldn't voice any of those thoughts either.

"What's your name?" I ask her instead.

"Um… Christine," she answers.

"Christine! Okay. Do you prefer Kris?"

"Absolutely not."

"Okay, Christine it is! It's good to meet you. And I've gotta say, I get where you're coming from. But the only hand you can play is the one you're dealt, you know? We'll all help each other get through this. Sometimes that's gonna be me lending you a shoulder when you need one, and sometimes that's gonna be you tolerating how creepy it is to talk to an adult in a child's body because I can't really control my powers. Also, I'm worried Anastasia might not be totally okay if the only people she can talk to are two to ten times her age. Uh, no offense, sir."

"None taken," the old man chuckles. "You did a good job calming her down, young lady, even if not all of it was intentional. I just got lucky that she's into old Nickelodeon shows."

Yeah I have absolutely no idea what the fuck a 'Nickelodeon' is supposed to be but I guess that's not really important right now.

"Thanks," I nod to the old guy instead. He seems pretty darn cool, all things considered, and I'm happy to have his help. "What's your name, sir?"

"Call me Ed," he smiles. "It's good to meet you, Lia."

I successfully do not flinch as he greets me by her name. I'll be hearing it plenty of times; I damn well better not have that reflex for much longer.

"Likewise, Ed," I smile back. "Should I be going to you for all my cartoon recommendations, then?"

He laughs, shaking his head.

"Oh, no no. I'm no connoisseur, just an old man with the world's largest rose-tinted glasses. Half the stuff I'd tell you to watch is probably crap."

"The other half, though?" I press with a wry smile.

"Well, half might be generous," he chuckles. "You know what they say about stopped clocks: we're only right once a day, because now we have to start using military time."

I laugh politely because he's old enough to be desperate for any social interaction, no matter how performative. Honestly though, I kind of really like old people. They always got it, you know? The shame of dependence. How slow things always had to be for me. Death looms on their shoulders, and their bodies can't hold the weight for much longer, so they just live their lives as best they can, doing whatever they can to be as them as they can. How can I not respect that?

I hope I don't lose that connection, now that I can move freely. I hope I don't become just another shithead that's too busy to think of any burden as a person. That's one of the scariest parts of having to be Lia, instead of Julietta. Why I don't want or need a fully-functional body. How long is it until I find myself wishing this guy would hurry it up a little on his cane? When will that difference in perspective start infecting who I am as a person? I'd like to think that it never will, that my experiences being disabled won't just evaporate into the wind, but honestly? I had so little faith in others to treat me right, I don't see how I can have faith in myself now that the tables have turned.

I'll try, though. I like to think I'm better than most people, after all. It's a character flaw I'm aware of, but I can never get rid of it because at the same time it's an important goal to live up to. I want to be better than most people, morally and intellectually. That driving need for superiority just needs to be properly chained, roped into doing the right thing and supporting those who need it rather than just convincing me to take the easy route of pushing everyone else down. That's not being better, not in any way that matters, and a big part of being better is being able to see that difference.

I'd probably sound insane if I voiced any of this, or at least disgustingly arrogant. But hey, that's one of many reasons why I'm in the habit of carefully curating what comes out of my mouth.

"Hey, um…" Christine suddenly interjects, so I turn my attention back to her.

"What's up?" I ask.

"How are you all so calm?" she asks, her leg back to thumping on the floor. "You were in Chicago, right? They're going to send us back to places like that. How are you not terrified out of your mind?"

"Well Christine, as it happens I actually am scared," Ed answers first, his perpetual smile dropping a bit into something more serious. "But I'm more scared of what happens when people like us fail to step up and do our duty."

Hmm. Not a terrible way to put it. Christine looks predictably unconvinced, though.

"We're all scared," I tell her. "I mean, maybe a few wackos in the other cars aren't, but the smart people know we haven't won the lottery, we've drawn the short straw. Powers like yours, mine, and maybe even Anastasia's are going to end up right on the front lines, in the thick of battle, constantly at risk of death. It's going to be bad, Christine. It's okay to not want to be here."

That seems to relax her a bit. Which is good, because there's more.

"...But life is just fundamentally not about doing what you want," I tell her bluntly. "So I do my best to look brave anyway, for people like her."

I motion to Anastasia, trying to garner some emotional support for the point I'm really trying to get across, which is 'and for people like you.' Because while I'd normally be happy to placate this girl's very reasonable fears, the fact of the matter is that we're both going to be forced into the same boot camp whether I like it or not. And from what I've heard about boot camp, that means her failures are going to cause a lot of problems for everyone else. She needs to get over herself, and fast, or we're all going to suffer, especially since I'm also going to need to manage a goddamn nine-year-old on top of it all.

"...I don't really have that kind of strength," Christine mumbles, confirming my fears. Another person I'll need to manage, then. I'm frustrated, but I'm used to it.

"Well, I suppose part of the point of boot camp is to give us that strength," I reassure her, ignoring the many other, much less savory purposes of boot camps since it's not really helpful to bring them up in this situation. "You'll do fine, don't worry."

"Alright," Christine says quietly. "Sorry."

Well that's not a very reassuring answer, but I knew better than to expect one anyway. It's fine. I'll figure out how to handle her somehow, or if I'm lucky, someone else will help her out first. I'm not lucky, of course, but it's never good to discount the possibility entirely.

All things considered, I'm settling into my new reality depressingly well. It's just like adapting to a new foster home, except that all the rowdy, idiotic siblings I have to manage happen to be people I might one day be relying on for survival against suicidal odds. Incredible.

…Though I guess I'm probably catastrophizing this a little. Ed seems competent and kind, so I'll have him in my corner, at least. I'm just so used to not really having anyone that I keep expecting there to be something that'll ultimately make me unable to trust him. I get that I don't have a rational reason to believe that yet, but hey! I'm a fucked-up orphan girl shapeshifted into a creepy child version of the dead person I hate most. I think I'm allowed to be a little traumatized about a few things. Y'know, as a treat.

It's not too much longer before the vehicles we're loaded into start to slow down and take more turns, and soon enough they've parked at our destination. I wake up Anastasia and Ed helps her out of the truck, Christine following as Commander stays in the truck with me so I can change back in relative privacy. And it's a good thing I waited, because as I feared I pretty much had to unbuckle and readjust my entire outfit after regrowing back into Lia's normal body.

"You will be assigned a room with Christine," Commander informs me as I finish up. 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. "Why are you telling me about this now? And 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.

"As for you and Christine," Commander continues, "the two of you have personal situations that make rooming you with anyone else a unique challenge. Not an impossible one by any means, but one that is most cleanly resolved by pairing you together. On a more personal level, I hope you can be a stabilizing influence for her."

"I… will endeavor not to let you down, First Lieutenant Locke," I answer simply, feeling like I should probably salute her but not wanting to make a fool of myself since I haven't actually been taught to salute.

"I am glad," Commander smiles. "The best solutions are always those that solve multiple problems at once."

A personal request this early on is a good sign; it proves my suspicion that she has her eye on me as one of the more reliable recruits. It's always good to be reliable. People love it when they can rely on you to take their burdens.

I'm kind of curious what the 'personal situations' Commander is referring to are, but the thing about personal situations is that they are personal so I know better than to pry. …Overtly, anyway. I know better than to pry overtly. I absolutely do not know better than to pry later, in more subtle ways.

Anyway, now that I've properly readjusted all my clothing and put my shoes back on, I finally step out of the truck. We're in a relatively small parking lot, street lights flickering on around us as the last glow of the sunset settles down on the horizon. In the dark, as I walk out to line up with everyone else, I notice all of my fellow recruits looking up at the same point in the sky. Curious, I glance up in the same direction.

Oh. It's the moon.

The moon is always a beautiful and terrifying sight, but something about it enraptures me now even more than it ever did before. Looking at it, I almost feel lighter, like it's trying to pull me up into the sky. It's a bit of a terrifying thought considering the context, but I know, intellectually, that we don't have to worry.

After all, the Queen in the moon is dead.

Its corpse still hangs in the sky, enormous tentacles trailing behind the shattered, lifeless rock like a comet's trail. It was thirty years ago that this war started, and it was thirty years ago that, completely without warning, those massive tendrils burst out of the inside of the moon in a screaming flash of power and light. There are hundreds of recordings of it, from telescopes to phone cameras to satellites, and they all depict a horrific beast suddenly emerging from inside, thrashing violently enough to break the moon apart, and then dying barely an hour later. It still hangs up there, half-emerged from the shell of rock that our scientists are absolutely certain was not ever hollow, drifting along surrounded by all the floating fragments of what was once a pocketed sphere.

Those shards often break out of orbit and fall to Earth, most of them burning up in the atmosphere. It's a special kind of meteor shower we call a moonfall. They're always beautiful, but even more notable is how much likelier it is for people to get powers if they live underneath one.

It's like a bad movie. Superpowers come from the moon. Except for when they don't, of course. Sometimes people just get powers, completely out of nowhere. It's the rarest way for it to happen, but I'm pretty sure it happens. I'm sure there's other ways I don't know about, too. But the moonfall is reliable enough that the military always tries to launch a jet full of special forces operatives underneath where it falls, high up above where most aliens can get them, to maximize the chances of the people they most want to have powers getting powers. And oftentimes, this works. Exploiting moonfalls has been one of the big things humanity has started to do to slow down the rate we're losing ground.

…Or so they say, anyway. I've always privately wondered if it's propaganda or a bad rumor overblowing their importance. After all, astronauts had been to the moon plenty of times before it exploded and they certainly didn't get any powers. Staring up at the moon now, though, I can't help but believe it. I would be a fool not to. I can feel the moon now, and something tells me I'll always be able to point to exactly where it is, even if it's not visible in the sky at all. It almost feels like I should be falling towards it instead of Earth, calmly floating up into the sky like it was the most natural thing in the world.

It's mesmerizing.

"Get used to that feeling trainees!" Commander suddenly barks, causing all of us to flinch out of our collective fugue. "Because if we catch you staring slack-jawed into space again, we'll be giving you a taste of intensive training before you even get to boot camp! Now march!"

She leads us towards a large nearby building, nestled by the parking lot alone and surrounded by the forest, where I assume we'll be staying. It's actively difficult to not turn back and stare at the moon, but I know better than to let myself look again.