Like the rest of the things both in and out of the station, the operations center I’d first envisioned had grown and evolved. Dramatically. We’d expanded the security system network past just watching the surrounding streets. We had a handful of wireless battery-powered remote cameras set up in strategic locations relaying off-network data back to the security system. There were charts, maps, blueprints, and plans pinned and layered in half a dozen locations, and many more sitting in rolled waterproof tubes and stowed.

  Radio sets constantly chirped, beeped, and hissed with updates from all over the city. That information was pinned to charts, written on boards, and available at a glance for the people making decisions in the room. We had constant communication lines open nearly around the clock with our two key operations in the city: the dockyards and the ferry. We were in regular contact with the PRT, city services, and EMS, checking in multiple times a day. We directly coordinated with official relief efforts and relief stations. We weren’t top dog in most of these places. We weren’t the government, or looking to usurp them.

  Where we were the top dog was in logistics, and our tentacles were spreading out to nearly the borders of the city at this point. Logistics and manpower. With a lowercase m, confusing, as we had both. There were some others competing with us, but it wasn’t like it was our goal to monopolize these things. One local corporation, Fortress Construction, had been a bit… persnickety. Getting rather riled up and heated with us about some of our transportation services and where we were breaking ground on… breaking ground, literally. Reconstruction.

  I mostly left that stuff to the people we had who were much better at it. Time was not something I had a surplus of, and I’d gotten more than a little adept at delegation. Danny, the DWU management, and my mom handled that almost entirely. If something came up that might involve capes, either because of security concerns or because they needed a handful of people to stand up a steel building frame in a few hours? That’s when I got involved.

  Turns out having people with super strength, flight, magnetism, and laser powers made for some damn fast ad-hoc work. Would New Wave transition into a private construction corporation? I doubted it, but I could feel the stress levels of Carol and Sarah dropping when they were given the opportunity to bankroll their entire team with side projects like that.

  I honestly only wanted the best for them. I’d known that finances had been a long-running issue with New Wave through osmosis. The Dallon and Pelham families were comfortably middle class, as far as I could tell, but it wasn’t like I saw their credit card balances or credit reports. The thing was, like Faultline and Gregor had nailed into my thick skull, running independent cape operations was expensive. I assumed they kept their personal and team finances separate. Prayed.

  I suppose I actually could snoop now, given the resources I have access to.

  Things were going well. More people were coming in and on board daily, both by headcount and by rate. Incident rates were low. Well. That’s not entirely true. There were a lot of incidents, but not incident incidents. Petty stuff? Friction? Things easily solved? Really not my concern. As much as I wanted to dig in up to my numerous eyeballs, I couldn’t. I had people for that. And they were doing well. I was still making trips to Boston and back, but it was down. I mostly did runs for goodies and specialist stuff. As the immediate need for bulky, heavy, and dense objects, tools, and goods waned, my need to be a big bug chopper went down. Vicky had the strength and the flight to haul materials, and Crystal usually ran security as her wingmate.

  If it could be palletized? Vicky. If it was an entire shipping container? Me.

  I was wrapping up the “management” meeting regarding preparations for tonight. All our capes were in attendance. I was apprehensive and a bit on edge about the attack. I was placing a lot of trust in Tattletale regarding this tip. She’d stated possible motives she had for telling us, and it tracked. I knew she was a manipulative bitch and prone to lying to get her ends to meet. But I also knew that people she might consider rivals or even enemies, exhausting themselves against one another, was nearly a best-case scenario. I was clear with everyone. There was a possibility this was bullshit. It was unanimous that we take every precaution we could, regardless.

  We weren’t really expending resources to do so, more placing an undue burden on the community by doing it. Making people shelter in place and limit movement while keeping alert. It wasn’t long after these people had been crammed into concrete and steel bunkers like rats on a sinking ship. I wasn’t keen on them having to revisit things like the ABB attacks, the Empire attacks, and Leviathan.

  I wasn’t concerned with the Empire, assuming the other intel that some of their power-hitters had split off. Namely, Purity, Fog, and Night. If they weren’t in the picture, I think we had a pretty solid advantage on our hands. The key was knowing beforehand. Most days, we’d be lucky if we had a quarter of our capes around the station during work hours. People were helping all over the city and responding to all kinds of disasters as they cropped up.

  The plan we made was basic. Simple. I liked simplicity when it came to things like this. Complex, convoluted plans worked great with smaller groups and teams. Too many points of failure here.

  We were just going to have all hands on deck, but very quietly, in the event there were eyes and ears in our ranks. It was rare for us to have everyone capable of defending the place in one place outside the dead of night. We’d be here, most of us lying low and not interacting with people, bunkered up and ready from before sunset to sunrise the next day. It would set us back a bit on several projects, but that was a secondary concern.

  No, what I was anxious and nervous about was that we had a lot of people who could be leveraged, or worse, be collateral damage. Our civilians, all the people who weren’t here for security? Those people didn’t sign up for that. We had to keep them safe, and hopefully, not terrorized out of their minds.

  All the most vulnerable would be in the station’s basement. It was hot and noisy and wasn’t made for comfort, but we’d do what we could to help with that. The second rung down would be in the station itself, mostly in the bays. The rest we’d try to cram inside the walls in a way that wasn’t going to put them at undue risk.

  From there, it fell on the rest of us. Chess team, our capes, and the handful of able-bodied people who were veterans or otherwise had experience, who had been working on security tasks.

  Our goals were simple and clear:

  Keep the fighting from entering the outer wall perimeter.

  Repel the attacking forces until they are defeated or flee.

  There had been a few voices of dissent. Manpower and Laserdream were both a bit more aggressive in wanting to not just defeat them, but apprehend them and get them off the streets. I made it clear, I had no sympathy for Empire thugs. I wanted to avoid any potential issues of us getting separated, being baited out, or pursuing them and then getting hit by a third party. A big cape brawl with lasers, explosions, and gunfire would draw the worst sorts like flies to a dumpster. I wouldn’t put it past the Merchants to try and slink up and make off with our stuff while we were distracted.

  We reached a consensus and agreed on a partial compromise. We’d fight them outside the perimeter, and then at least make sure they weren’t just running a block away to regroup. Those of us without mobility abilities would stick to the immediate area; those of us who could get around and reroute quickly would have a bit more leeway to make sure they weren’t just circling back around.

  We broke, and most everyone filed out of the meeting room. Two people stayed behind: Vanessa and Amy. There had been concerns and a few grumbles about including her with the circumstances, but I was sticking to my guns. I’d let her hang herself if that’s what she wanted. Otherwise, I’d treat her as if she were one of the rest of us. She’d been surprised to be included and stayed quiet throughout.

  Strange combination that it’s these two.

  Vanessa addressed me first. She was wearing a bold tank top, yoga pants, and a pair of steep wedge sandals. I was leaning back against the desk at the front of the office with my arms crossed and proudly on display with a tank of my own. I had my typical overly-casual comfort-first clothing on for the meeting. Mel, Mom & I were on the taller side of things at five eight. Vanessa was comfortably six feet. Maybe even six one. And she wore things with generous heels exclusively, from what I could tell.

  So it was no surprise to me when she strolled up, right into my personal space, to the point our shoes were nearly touching, and smirked down at me from a full head’s height difference. I was getting to know her better than I might have liked, because she was forever up my ass about one thing or another. Usually complaining, or leaving ‘suggestions’ as to how things should be run. If I were here for more than half an hour? She’d find reasons to bump into me and be a giant bitch. The looking down her nose at me thing she is doing right now? Another game.

  I did my very best to annoy her back by not giving a single hint that she was annoying me. I’m pretty good at that, and I can cheat.

  “Hello, Vanessa. What is it?” I even smiled.

  “I have a problem.” I nodded slowly.

  I have a good idea what it might be.

  “Please, go ahead and tell me.”

  She had been holding eye contact up until now, and then she snorted. Her eyes wandered lower as she spoke. “I think it’s unfair that I be asked to fight against people I know for your cause.”

  “I agree with you.” Her eyes came back up, locking on mine once again. I continued. “Which is why I’m not going to ask you to do that. If you don’t want to fight them, I won’t fight you on it, but there is an exception I require in return.”

  She feigned disinterest, glancing around the room, checking her nails, and conspicuously adjusting her top.

  Girl, if you think you’re going to sway me or get special treatment with sex appeal, you have another thing coming.

  “Oh?” She asked at last. “What did you have in mind?”

  I’d predicted this conversation was going to happen before this meeting was ever held. It was an obvious conflict of interest on her part, but also a conflict on our part, because she’d be dodging the cape rules we had drafted up.

  “You’re not required to join us in going outside the walls to fight your former team, or other people they might have along with them for support.”

  She rolled her eyes at the notion they’d bring hired help.

  “Since we’re respecting your conflict of interest, I want a compromise with the rules and expectations you agreed to follow. If you don’t want to fight, then you stay inside the walls and you defend the people here, should anything happen. If anyone gets in here and tries to harm the people, you stop them, regardless of who they are. If it’s a third party? No sweat for you. If it’s one of them, you prevent them from harming people and either remove them or restrain them.”

  She wrinkled her nose at that. “So you don’t want me to fight them, except when you do want me to fight them. Seems like a poor compromise from my perspective.”

  I shook my head. “No, Vanessa, it’s doing the absolute bare minimum to meet our expectations of capes who live here. Listen. I get that you don't want to brawl with people you know. I understand that. All I’m asking you to do is to ensure that if we fall outside the walls or fail to keep them out, you don’t allow them to hurt, kidnap, or kill people. That’s it. They kick our ass and storm the place? You can let them take everything, including the paint on the walls. But if we do a headcount after, and people are missing, wounded, or dead? You and I are going to have issues.”

  She narrowed her brows at me and did her best to glare at the implied threat. “And what if I just decide to take off with them afterwards, along with all the goodies?”

  I shrugged very slowly for effect and held my arms out. “Well, I guess you’ll get away and go back to wherever it is with loot and goodies then, won’t you?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Of course, you’ll also have to live with knowing that you’re personally responsible for the innocent and helpless people here, whose faces you know, going without food, medicine, or the other things they need for however long it takes for us to get more.”

  “You could just drop a container of supplies from the docks the next morning, and it will have not made an impact at all.”

  I looked at her flatly. I wasn’t sure if she was playing more games or if she was actually just being stupid as hell right now.

  “You do realize that only moves the goalpost, right? So if I did that, then it’d be the same number of people, elsewhere in the city, now having to deal with that situation.”

  “You can get more. More ships are coming. I fail to see a major issue.”

  I recrossed my arms and drummed my black nails on my bicep. Her eyes were drawn to my fingertips. “Sure. Or your friends, current or former, could get an intermediary to ferry them relief supplies. Or they could come here and get the things they needed, doing precisely the same thing you’re doing. But that would require actual effort and work, which is what really seems like the core issue at hand here. Namely, that it’s just a might makes right, take what you want, when you want argument. Fuck everyone else when you got yours.”

  I’d hit a nerve somewhere along there, and she locked eyes with me once again, her lips tightening and her nostrils flaring ever-so-slightly.

  “Yes, that’s exactly how villain life works,” she said, her tone clipped and irritated.

  I went the opposite route. I softened my voice, relaxed my upper body. “Yes, Vanessa. So long as you’re in the in-group. You all get to profit all you like when you have the big stick. But what happens when you’re not in that group, because you weren’t invited, or you’re no longer welcome? What then? Isn’t it the case that your friends suddenly aren’t so friendly anymore?”

  I took my hand off my arm and pointed at the door. “One of the things I’m hoping you’ll realize and learn out there is what it means, and what it feels like to have friends who aren’t fairweather, and who aren’t in it exclusively for mutual self-interest. If you were in a situation where you couldn’t defend yourself and were in trouble, do you really think Ms. Landry wouldn’t grab a two-by-four and try and fend off some ABB member for you? That she’d just sit there, shrug, and let them drag you off, or worse?”

  Vanessa clenched a fist at her side so hard her hand was trembling. I stared her right back. I’d let her sock me in the face if that’s what she was going to do.

  “The only thing I’m asking you to do right now is to have some integrity and be honest with yourself. ”

  Ms. Landry was our community kitchen boss, and she ran it with a cast-iron grip. Everything was done precisely the way she wanted it done. Her food was nutritional, easy to mass-produce, and ungodly tasty. Made with love. Love and a lot of damn sweat. Vanessa was working in the kitchen more shifts than not, and knew exactly who and what I was talking about.

  Ms. Landry was probably pushing eighty, was black, and wheelchair bound. She had principles, and she didn’t bend at all on them. She also had a will more bulletproof than I was as Apex. Nobody here pushed her around, not an inch.

  Well. Metaphorically speaking. Several people literally pushed her around every day.

  Point being, Vanessa knew damn well that Ms. Landry wouldn’t let a literal flood stop her from doing what she wanted, and most of the time, that was trying to do right by people.

  I loved that woman. I think most of the community did, even if they had to get there by proxy of her food. She wasn’t the most approachable person. I suspected Vanessa liked her too, or she wouldn’t keep going back.

  “Fine. I’ll do it.” Vanessa huffed, relaxed her fist, and looked imperiously back down at her nails. “Try not to get your asses handed to you like a bunch of amateurs, that way I won’t have to worry about doing anything at all. I just did my nails, I’d hate to have to redo them.”

  I smiled at her, but I wasn’t sure if it quite reached my eyes or not. “Very good, I’m glad to hear that. And they’re very nice nails, I wouldn’t want you to have to redo them either if you didn’t need to.”

  She sniffed and looked back down at mine. “What are you putting on yours? I’ve never seen a polish or lacquer quite like that before.”

  My grin widened. “I’ll tell you, but you’ll have to earn it first. Make it worth my time.”

  “By doing what, exactly? I’m not going to be your servant and run errands.”

  I licked my lips as she studied my face. “Let’s call it a reward for good behavior. Get yourself a gold star on your kindergarten scorecard.”

  She was already rolling her eyes as she turned on her heel and strutted out of the room.

  God, she annoys the shit out of me.

  Amy came up and parted her hair using her thumbs, waiting until the door clicked shut and the clops of Vanessa’s heels sounded in the hall before speaking.

  “I don’t know how you put up with that rotten ass bitch.”

  I snickered. “I’m empathetic, and it’s not always such a great quality to have. I can relate to her, on some level, and I think she knows that. At least, that’s my working theory as to why she pesters me constantly. That or she’s just trying to see me snap.”

  “You’d kick her ass with or without powers, easily,” Amy replied a little too quickly.

  I grinned at her. “Why, Amy, you wouldn’t be plotting the misfortune of one of our people, would you?”

  She made a face and sighed. “I don’t like her, but I don’t know if I’d go that far.”

  “You don’t have to like anyone here, Amy. It’s great that you’ve been getting on with so many people, though. I figured you’d be more squirreled away than you have been the past few weeks.”

  She looked contemplative for a moment. I straightened up and pushed off the desk.

  “Wait, I- still need um to talk to you. And other stuff,” she said, momentarily reverting back to an Amy backup I recognized from high school.

  I couldn’t help but tease her about it. “Oh?” I stepped closer to her, doing my own rendition of the stunt Vanessa had failed to fluster me with minutes ago. “What sorts of stuff would that be?”

  Amy’s dense freckles couldn’t hide her cheeks coloring as she looked up at me, and I laughed warmly.

  “Stop! It’s embarrassing, okay? Can we go somewhere else to talk about it? And so I can show you…” she glanced at the door again. “You know, in private?”

  Oh? What’s this?

  She lowered her voice, and for the sake of me, I couldn’t figure out a legitimate reason why: “It’s about some of the stuff we talked about before. And I’m embarrassed about it, and you said you’d be there for me if I needed people to talk to about stuff.” Her voice picked up speed as she went until she was just about blurting the words out as fast as she could.

  I put my hands on her shoulders, and she took a breath.

  I waited for her to look back up and make eye contact. “Yes, I did say that. And if it’s something important to you, all you have to do is say that. I’ll make the time for you, Amy.”

  She went red and nodded quickly.

  “It’s uh, downstairs. Follow me?”

  I smiled and nodded to her, and followed her out of the meeting room and downstairs. When we got into the basement, we turned around, heading away from the bulk of the spaces. The generators and pumping equipment rooms were down here, and they were heavily insulated, but there was still the steady hum of machinery working, filling the corridors. Some of the access tunnels for conduits and piping down here got pretty maze-like, and I was a bit surprised to find Amy leading us down them.

  We came to a stout fireproof door with a deadbolt in addition to the normal locking handle. Amy had worn her costume to the meeting this morning and was pulling a necklace out from under her robes. She had two keys on it, and used them to unlock the door. She opened it, stepped inside, and the clack of a switch lit the room. I followed in after her, and she shut the door behind us and locked it.

  It was a fairly small room, and it looked like it was used as a tool room or small workshop at one point. There were wooden and metal benches along the walls, pegboards on the walls, and a few rolling stools. A number of opaque plastic bins and buckets were stacked along one wall. It smelled a little musty, but in a concrete basement sort of way. At least it was fairly cool. Areas around the mechanical rooms tended to get stuffy and uncomfortably warm.

  Amy looked a bit stiff as she cleared her throat and turned around to face me. “This is my workshop, or lab, or whatever you want to call it. Your mom gave me the keys for it after I explained what I was looking for right after we moved in.”

  I blinked my eyes and looked around. A pair of the large metal workbenches had sheets draped over the tops, with a random assortment of shapes distorting them from underneath the covers. “Oh. Oh!” I broke into another grin. “That’s super cool! So you’ve been down here, what, experimenting and trying new things with your ability?”

  Her shoulders relaxed some, and she nodded quickly.

  I rubbed my hands together excitedly. I knew Amy wasn’t a tinker, but this was still very tinkery sorts of stuff. And tinker stuff was cool as hell.

  Amy rolled a stool over and offered it to me, and she took one herself, sitting by the covered workbench.

  “Okay, so…” Amy said, trailing off as she fidgeted with her hands on her lap. I waited for her, and after a long pause, she sighed. “Sorry, I’m just… I get in my own head, and I get nervous and then anxious about showing this stuff to other people like this.”

  She was staring at her hands on her lap, but I smiled at her anyway. “Amy, please. I’m excited to see it. I don’t think you have to worry about me judging you or getting spooked. I am the lady who sometimes explodes with blood and guts spraying everywhere.”

  Amy’s head jerked up, and she stared at me. I blinked.

  “What, have I not told you about that? I thought I did.”

  “No!” She exclaimed. “I think I’d remember if you did. What are you talking about?”

  I explained to her about how if I tried to push a shift through very rapidly or aggressively, my body didn’t so much as warp and change as much as it just sort of…violently tore itself apart from the inside.

  She nodded along, listening closely. When I’d finished telling her about the couple of times it happened, she replied, saying, “I’m pretty sure I know why that happens, actually.”

  Now it was my turn to look surprised.

  “When you change, your… mass is going in and out of your core. So it makes sense if you were trying to push a whole bunch of mass, like the mass of Apex, through faster than your power can adapt your body to it things… yeah.”

  “Amy, I feel like you know more about and understand my ability better than I do, or maybe ever will.”

  She gave me an intense look, cheeks practically glowing.

  She didn’t say anything, so I continued. “I really enjoy these chats we have about our powers. I just wish it wasn’t a once in a blue moon sort of thing.”

  She stammered a moment. “Y-you’re always busy with oth–” She veered off course of whatever it was she was going to say. “You’re so busy. We all are, and when we do get time together, it’s usually in a group of some sort.”

  Jealousy? Or her usual apprehension of discussing the issues she tends to bottle up?

  I rolled my stool closer, right in front of her, and held my arms out.

  The girl practically leaped into my arms, and I held her tightly. Her arms looped around my waist.

  I buried my nose into her hair, and she rested her face on my upper chest. The smell of her hair made my scalp tingle, and I took another deep inhale of it. Memories surfaced, and I couldn’t help but smile. Middle school sleepovers, high school weekends spent up until the single digits in the dark, gossiping or discussing nerdy Aleph things. Another shadowy memory, one both distant and recent, terrible and great? I couldn’t remember any level of detail, just feelings. Something slithered around in the back of my head, and another thing slithered around in my belly.

  “I’m sorry, Amy. I had a talk with Melody like this recently, too. Not being able to really spend time together. Things are a little better with her being in the Protectorate now, so we see each other every day. Maybe we can try and be better about this ourselves? Set aside time for just us to spend together that isn’t morning training, work, or team stuff?

  The girl pulled so tightly on my waist I thought she was going to yank my butt off the stool, and she nodded rapidly against my chest. We held the hug and then eventually separated. I felt reluctant to do it, but a nagging voice reminded me that we were on the clock here, and there were important things happening upstairs.

  Amy brought a hand up to her chest and coughed lightly, clearing her throat. Then she futzed with her hair, trying to keep it out of front of her face.

  “Okay. This is what I’ve been working on, and it’s not great, but I’m doing what I can. I’ve sort of… hit a brick wall in a few places, because I can’t seem to figure out a better way of doing something, or I don’t have inspiration, or ideas for what to do. I was um…” She fidgeted in place. “I was hoping you could take a look and maybe give me some ideas? Or… use your power to make some things, and let me take a close look at them, you know, with my power? For ideas, or to see what I might be able to copy?”

  She started to ramble, but I was following along just fine.

  “Sorry, sorry. It’s just that you come up with these things, and I don’t know how you do it, and it makes me jealous because I can’t think of things like that. You make these amazing things on so many different levels, it’s unreal.”

  Oh my god. Amy Dallon has power envy, and it’s of me!?

  “Amy.” She looked up at me, flushed, and maybe a bit more than lightly embarrassed. “I’d love to do that, but you have to do me a favor in return.”

  Her head was a blur, and her response was instantaneous. “Anything!”

  I smirked, just a tiny bit. “You have to stop psyching yourself out. You’re so wrapped up in… I don’t know, doubt, or whatever it is. Quit it.”

  She locked eyes with me, brow furrowing. “It’s easy to just say that.”

  My smile grew. “I know it is. So take it a step at a time, and I think you’ll find that what you’re stumbling around over mentally is unfounded. Maybe someone says something or gives you a look, but I’m nearly positive they would be a minority in that opinion. Ignore them, or better yet, prove them wrong. That’s what I like doing. Seeing people have to eat their own hat and reconsider things tickles my pickle.”

  She straightened, just a little, took a huge breath, and sighed. “Okay. I’ll try.”

  I stuck my tongue out at her and urged her on. “C’mon. Show me what A-Drizzle has been up to down here in the dungeon!”

  She snerked at me, rotated on her stool away from me, and pulled the sheet off the table.

  I sucked in an audible lungful of air.

  Holy Shi…

  “...it.” I hadn’t realized I’d just blurted out my mind.

  I saw Amy’s back and shoulders stiffen ever-so-slightly.

  “Amy, you made this!?”

  The back of her head waggled as she lightly nodded.

  “Amy, I don’t know what to say. Where to even start. This is legitimately one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. Is this thing real? I mean, does it work? Is it functional, or is this just like a design mockup?”

  The girl coughed and brought her hand up to her face. I hopped off my stool and walked over next to her. She looked up at me, her eyes damp. I looked down at her, and I expected that I’d see a look of excitement or engagement on my face, were I to glance in a mirror. I wasn’t playing this up for effect, and when she saw that in my face, she gulped.

  Her voice was thick in her throat. “It, it mostly works. It’s not fully assembled, but um, yeah. There are a bunch of things I still want to do, ideas I had, stuff like that. And… you know, it’s just a prototype, or a rough draft, or something. It’s rough, and it’s ugly, and I kind of hate it.”

  I gently took Amy’s shoulders in my hands and turned her ninety degrees to face me, and I kept them there. She was upset, clearly, intermittently sniffing, and her eyes looked like she had bad allergies.

  I stared into her soul and did everything I could to get to her, through all her layers of doubt, criticism, fear, and loathing. “Amy. Listen to me. Even if that was just an inert design sculpture, it would be very impressive. Not just to me, either. But you’re saying it works, and if it does what I think it does, that’s not impressive. That’s a marvel. Do you have any idea how much Armsmaster or Dragon would shit themselves and want to pull every single part of this apart?”

  Her lip was trembling.

  “I mean it. Has anyone else seen this?”

  She shook her head quickly.

  I ran my thumb across her cheeks to wipe away the tears that had started to roll down them. I smiled at her. “People are going to be amazed. I bet you Vicky is going to freak out. And your mom? You’re going to blow her mind. She’s going to stand there and malfunction when she sees what you made. Bitch Mom dot E-Ex-E has stopped working.”

  Amy coughed, then laughed loudly, and things were good.

  “I’ll do anything you want to try and help you with this. Tell me all the issues you think you have, and we’ll put our heads and our powers together to fix them, hm? We have asses to kick tonight, and I’m guessing with the timing of bringing me down here, you’ve been thinking about debuting this?”

  “Ha… yeah.” She rubbed the back of her head.

  “Good for you. Let’s get it polished up and have you out there with us. Show your mom how hard you’ve been working and training, and how serious you are about doing this. She might be a giant bitch sometimes, Amy, but Carol’s smart, and she does love you, even if she’s terrible at showing it. The way she talks about you and your sister when you’re not around? Pure pride. Sure, she’s putting it in terms of ‘our team,’ but it’s still there. I think she’ll come around to supporting you. I’ll help pry her eyes open, if I have to.”

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  Amy hugged me tightly again, and I laughed. “Okay, okay. We’re on a crunch, though, so we gotta get working if we’re going to have the time to do this.”

  Amy pulled away and grinned at me. We both turned back to the bench.

  Lying on top of the bench was a complete exosuit, head to toe. It looked like it would have come directly from Kid Win, Armsmaster, or Dragon’s workshop, with several key and notable differences. Where most exos were lines, edges, and angles? This was curves and slopes, nearly all convex, from what I could see. There wasn’t a flat plane to be found on the thing. Where a normal exo had ceramics, metals, and recessed fasteners? This had what appeared to be bone, chitin, ligament, and ridges.

  I ran my fingertips over it. It felt strange, familiar textures in some ways, but in a scale or configuration that wasn’t familiar at all. I had the strangest desire to lean over and lick it, and it could have been my mind playing tricks on me, but I felt like my power stirred from its nap and was lapping at the shores of my mind and paying attention.

  It looked to be a touch bigger than Amy was. I figured she was around five four, and this might be about five eight. I expected it to be bulkier than it was in places.

  It appeared mostly exoskeletal. There was a head that was vaguely bulbous, with the bottom half having a sort of jaw-like look to it, and the upper half sort of looking like smoky or frosted glass, or maybe polymer. It was transparent to some degree, but you couldn’t see anything inside of it but darkness at the moment. The helmet, or head, led down to a thick neck and very robust shoulders. They had heavy-looking, thick bony plates that connected to joints on the upper chestplate and around the armpits. What looked like thick, naked muscles seemed to be there as connective ligaments and maybe shock absorbers. The arms were decently robust from where they extended down from the shoulder plating through to the wrist. More armor plating covered the forearms and extended past the elbow in a very Apex-like way.

  The arms ended in armored gauntlets with some pretty nice claws on them. Softer skin on the inside of the hands, but still leathery. The backs of the fingers and fists are covered in segmented, overlapping plates.

  The chestplate consisted of several fairly monolithic slabs of armor layered over one another like an armadillo’s back, or scutes on a snake. There was a similarly heavy backplate section, and the front and back connected with more of those ligaments. Between and underneath them was a buglike carapace. The legs followed suit. Buglike carapace that more or less followed the overall shape of the human form, and then layered armor plating wrapped over, bonded, and interlinked with the inner layer. There were thick bony plates on the thighs, hips, and butt. The legs from the knee down were formed like solid knee-high boots with big, hard knee pads welded on top. The feet were mostly boot-shaped, but with the addition of some claws on the front that looked like they could articulate to dig in.

  Between the legs, and extending down past the bottom of the boots, was a scaled tail. Very lizard-like, if not for the fact that it also had bone and chitin bits all over it. At the end was a hard bulb or pod, about the size of a fist.

  “I’m fucking speechless.”

  So eloquent, Morgan.

  “I mean, I don’t even know where to start. How do you even get into this thing?”

  Amy couldn’t hide the excitement in her voice. “Want to see how? I can get in, and want your thoughts, too.”

  “Fuck yes I do!” I laughed. She motioned for me to step back, and I did, taking the stools with me. I didn’t even know how it was she moved the thing around, or if she ever had.

  She placed a hand on the neck of the suit, and a look of concentration passed over her face; then she pulled her hand away. The thing itself sat up, turned around, dropped its legs off the side of the table, and hopped down with a soft clack. Uncannily, exactly like a person would get off a table.

  “It’s, well, it’s obviously alive, but is it… you know… smart?”

  The suit just stood there like a statue, and Amy turned and looked at me.

  “Yes, it is alive, and the answer is that… it’s complicated. It’s not truly autonomous, but it does have a brain; it can take care of itself, feed itself, and repair and fix itself all on its own. And it can carry out some simple tasks by command. I’d say… It’s sort of around the level of a pretty smart and well-trained dog, maybe?”

  “Holy shit, Ames. That’s fucking wild. You did this all on your own? And like, it’s what, some kind of bespoke… organism, made just for this, and to fit you?”

  She looked at her feet and shifted around. “Um. Yeah.”

  “Wow. Just wow. Awesome, literally. I’m blown away. What does it eat?”

  She looked up at the praise, cheeks glowing. “Well, that’s one thing I’m still working on. Right now, it eats basically this gross slurry I have to make myself using my power. It doesn’t have much of a digestive system, and with some of the things it’s made from, it needs high concentrations of things you wouldn’t find outside like… a carnivorous diet. And I obviously didn’t want to go there. So I make this bland goop for it to drink.”

  I nodded along. “So it can drink it when it gets hungry, or whatever, but it can’t make it, so you have to spend time to what, make batches and bring them down here? And you’re wanting to get it to a point later where you don’t have to do as much prep and maintenance?”

  “Yeah, exactly! One moment.”

  She slipped her sandals off and started to pull her Panacea robes up and over her head. They were voluminous and probably on the heavy side. My eyes widened when I saw what she was wearing underneath it.

  Or maybe better to say what she wasn’t wearing underneath her costume. She had on an incredibly tight and thin charcoal gray lycra leotard. It did virtually nothing for her modesty, but the dark color at least helped in obscuring detail. I stepped closer to her as she turned around, and she jolted a little when she saw how close I was.

  I moved my hands towards her upper body, pausing halfway between the small space between us. She looked up at me, blushing furiously.

  “May I touch you?” I asked her softly, hoping it’d calm her nerves.

  Her jaw flexed, and she nodded.

  I placed my hands on her shoulders first and then let them roam her body. Poking, prodding, and squeezing in what I hoped was a fairly clinical way. Shoulders, upper arms, lower arms. Her neck, around her ribs, waist, and abdomen. Squatting, I kept my eyes on her face as much as I could to try and demonstrate I wasn’t ogling her, but I did have to drop my gaze down to look while I felt. A couple of pokes to her butt, squeezing her thighs in several places, then her calves.

  I stood back up and smiled at her when I’d finished. She stood, arms akimbo, awkwardly positioned and looking very embarrassed. “Dang, Amy! You’ve really been putting in a lot of hard work, haven’t you? You’ve dropped weight, toned up a bunch, and even seem to have put some muscle on!

  She turned her head, looking to the side. “Thanks… I have been, yeah. Taylor and I go running most mornings. I can actually keep up with her now, which is way better than when I started and felt like I was literally dying after a few blocks.”

  I snickered and flashed teeth, bringing a hand up gently on her chin to turn her face back around and upwards. “I told you it gets easier, once you get past the initial hurdle of climbing suck mountain. You should be proud of your work, Amy. You have nothing at all to hide under hoodies, baggy clothing, and robes.”

  She huffed. “Not everyone wants to dress up like a bimbo and strut around everywhere, you know.”

  Whoah, shots fired. Look out, Vanessa. This girl is gunning in your direction.

  “I know that.” I took my hand off her chin and moved it down to squeeze her shoulder. “You know I dress like a mega-lezzo she-jock most of the time, prioritizing comfort over appearances. But there’s merit to putting some makeup on and a slinky dress or some tight leggings and a short shirt.”

  We made eye contact, held it. “Sure, people will look, and yeah, some will be assholes. But it’s not about them. It’s about you. You put in the work, you showed up, you dressed like you meant it. Maybe you painted your nails, did your hair. That doesn’t mean it’s vanity; that can just be pride. Letting yourself be seen can feel scary, but it’s also affirming. It’s proof that you matter. If you want to stay low-profile, that’s fine, but try stepping out every once in a while. Not to impress anyone, just to remind yourself that you’re allowed to shine. Hiding becomes a habit, you know? But showing up as yourself and turning heads? That’s powerful.”

  She looked like she was about to turn away again, then changed her mind. I saw a spark in her expression, a flash of heat, the flickering flames of a fight.

  “Vicky says stuff like that, too. But it’s easy to say when you look like her. The two of you could weather trash bags with your heads sticking out, and people would still stare. I know you mean well, but your take? It’s warped, skewed. Kinda condescending, if you don’t know better.”

  “Oh, Amy…”

  She slipped my hand off her shoulder, then poked me as she spoke. “Vicky’s a centerfold, and you, you look like… like… like a hot dump truck, or something!”

  I laughed abruptly at the mental image, and she continued, poking for emphasis.

  “You’ve got bigger muscles than like ninety percent of the guys around here!” She poked my shoulder and bicep. She waved a hand at my hair, face, and head. “Your hair always looks amazing, even if you just crawled out of bed, and your stupid power lets you run around with flawless eye shadow, eyeliner, and mascara!”

  She pinched a tuft of her frizz between two fingers and shook it for emphasis. “I can’t get this to behave unless I turn my head into a brick of product, or scorch it straight! I suck at doing makeup, and what’s the point of dressing up when you, your sister, or my sister is next to me? Everyone’s tongues are on the floor for you three, and I’m just… background noise.”

  I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and ran my hands through my hair. I did my best to empathize with her and see her perspective.

  Then something clicked in my head. A lightbulb moment.

  I exhaled in an equally big sigh, opened my eyes, and looked back down at Amy, who was still glaring up at me.

  “Amy?”

  “What?”

  “I need you to be honest with me about something. And no filter, no thinking about it. Just an answer.”

  “Sure, fine.”

  “Are you pretty?”

  I had laser focus on her eyes, and saw the corners of her mouth turn downwards.

  “No. I’m not.”

  I grabbed her by her shoulders, and she squirmed in my grip. “Amy, I swear to god, I’m a second away from shaking the life straight out of you, hugging you until you can’t breathe, or slapping the shit out of you. Or maybe all three.”

  Confusion overtook the anger that had set into her face.

  “I tried to put myself into your shoes, imagine myself as you in high school if the four of us were walking down the hallway. And I got so, so close to being able to do it, but there was this roadblock. But I figured it out, and it’s so stupid, and so frustrating, and so damn annoying it makes me want to scream.”

  She pulled her eyebrows in tight, lips still downturned. “Well, what is it?” She all but demanded.

  “Dude. When you were wearing your five-sizes-too-large clothing around school, you were like, super cute.”

  The anger flickered once again, and her tone was bitter. “Gee, thanks. Everyone wants to be cute when they’re walking with hot.”

  “I wasn’t finished, will you just can it for a moment?” She maintained her glare but didn’t say anything, so I continued.

  “That’s when you’re doing your best to look like a shambling thrift store, dummy. That rare time when you actually wear something nice at home?”

  “What’s nice, Morgan? What’s nice at home?” She interjected.

  “Leggings and a fitted tank? Pyjama bottoms and a shirt that isn’t a tent? Things that fit you?”

  She rolled her eyes. “...Anyways, as I was saying, when you’re wearing something nice, you’re not cute, Amy. You’re hot. And apparently, you can’t see that yourself or recognize that at all.

  Flashbacks of having this same damn conversation with Taylor. Did I just win the lottery and wind up being the only girl in my peer group with a heap of repressed body image issues?

  Amy dropped her eyes and mumbled something under her breath.

  “What?”

  A few tears rolled down her cheeks.

  Aw, hell.

  “Please, tell me. It was important enough to have to get off your chest, but if that’s the case, I want to actually be able to hear it.”

  She looked back up at me, eyes sopping and blinking rapidly.

  “I said, ‘If I’m hot, then why did you ghost me?’”

  I’d been infected, and now my eyelids were fluttering to a staccato beat.

  “Huh? What?”

  What on Earth is she talking about right now?

  “When did I ghost you? Amy, I wouldn’t do that to you, what the hell?”

  A high, sharp tone edged into her voice, which kicked up several notches on the volume dial. “This week! The past few days, obviously!”

  Wha…?

  I stared at her. She was really upset. Upset with me.

  “We had that time alone, in the dark? We fucked, and then the next day it’s like nothing ever happened? How do you think that made me feel? And then you’re down here, telling me you think I’m hot. But apparently not hot enough!” Her voice cracked, and she let out a huge sob.

  I let go of her heaving shoulders and took a half-step back.

  Does she mean– but that was all a dream! None of that happened; it happened years ago!

  I needed to sit down. Now.

  I reached around behind myself blindly, finding the stool and dropping on top of it.

  “You aren’t even going to say anything?”

  I put my elbows on my thighs and held my head. I felt dizzy.

  “I– I–” I stammered, trying to get my thoughts together. “You’re… telling me that was real? That actually happened?”

  Amy hiccuped and snerked mucus.

  But what parts were real, and what parts weren’t?

  “Amy, I…” I stared down at the gray, oil-stained floor. “I swear to you, I thought that was all a dream. I have these dreams, all the time lately. They’re so vivid and so lucid that I can’t tell them apart from reality.”

  A few droplets hit the floor between my feet. “I thought all of that was just some kind of fucked up nightmare, and I did my best to try and ignore it, because I don’t want to think about those things, those dreams and nightmares.” I coughed. “Not the– you know, not the good part of that, but the rest, I mean. I thought it was all just one big mushy pile of my brain doing the things it sometimes does.”

  Oh my god, I feel awful. I want to be sick. If we’d slept together, and then, what? I’d just walked around like it was another typical Monday. What must she think of me? How did she even keep her shit together? Does she think so little of herself that she thought that was okay, and that she’d just, what, walk it off?

  I let out a low groan. Amy sniffled, and I could hear her wiping her face with something, probably her robes or one of the sheets. Rustling fabric.

  I was just silently wallowing in my own misery. Amy coughed and cleared her throat. Her voice was fairly neutral when she spoke at long last. “So you do think I’m hot, then?”

  I looked up, vision blurred. She was standing in front of me, arms loose, eyes puffy and red. I nodded to her, fiercely.

  “Yes, Amy. You are hot. I’m sorry for having treat–”

  She interrupted, talking right over me. Her hands closed into fists.

  “Prove it.”

  I stood up, stepping close enough to her that we were nearly touching. I wiped at my cheeks. “Amy, I promise you, t–”

  “I don’t want words, Morgan. I want you to prove you feel that way to me.” Her eyes were fierce, looking up at me.

  I wasn’t sure what it was that would satisfy her, but I couldn’t let one of my closest friends in the world go another minute with that weight on her shoulders. So I acted, just doing what felt right to me.

  I put my arms around her, pulled her in tight, and kissed her. She was a little on the passive side at first, but got more into it. I kept upping the ante. I had to. I had something to prove, an obligation to prove it.

  I made my feelings known in a full-throated fashion. I wasn’t sure how much time passed, but when we pulled apart, our cheeks were dry, and my lips were throbbing and sore. At some point, she’d wrapped her arms around me as well, but I don’t recall when exactly.

  We pulled apart, and she looked up at me. “Thank you,” she whispered to me.

  I started to apologize to her again. She shook her head.

  “You can’t apologize for something you had no control over, and I forgive you. You made your point well enough just now.” A slow, creeping grin cracked her lips.

  I couldn’t keep a matching grin off my own either.

  “Amy?” I whispered back to her while we were still embracing.

  “Mmh?”

  I nibbled my lower lip before I spoke. “Why didn’t you say something sooner? Pull me aside, tell me I was acting crazy, or shit, just decked me for being a massive piece of shit?”

  Her grin faded, and she drew her lips into a tight line. I could see she was struggling with her response.

  “I thought… Maybe it was just a one-night stand. Or that you had regrets and didn’t want to talk about it. Or that I was… bad. Inadequate. And…” she sighed. “I was afraid this was some coping mechanism from you, and I didn’t want to lose you as a friend or damage our relationship further, so I thought that I’d just… do the same. Try and keep the nice parts in my memory, and move on.”

  I put my palm on her cheek and kissed her again. Tenderly, and mostly chaste. It was another apology from me. She seemed more than willing to simply accept it.

  I pulled back once more, then looked her in the eyes. “I don’t ever want this to happen again, but if it does, for some reason, please come and correct me immediately. My brain is a broken thing in some places, and I don’t want you to feel hurt because of it.”

  She nodded quickly. I looked over at the silent third party in the room and reluctantly pulled my arms back.

  “How about we get you and this up to speed, huh? We got a little sidetracked there, but I’m glad we did.”

  Amy smiled and replied: “I’m glad we did too. I feel… about a thousand percent better right now. I don’t know how you manage to do it, Morgan, but you always have a way of getting in my head and whacking the parts that are stuck and causing issues.”

  I snickered. “I’m just a hot dump truck that hits things. That’s my job, I try and be good at it.”

  She rolled her eyes, and the two of us got to work.

  Turns out that the entire back of the thing lifted up like there was a hinge on the shoulders. From there, Amy had to hop her butt up onto the table, insert her legs into the lower half, duck and wriggle her upper body into the upper half, and then it sealed itself shut around her.

  Looking at the face plate from outside, I could make out the shape of her head, with darker circles for her eyes and lips, but that was about it. When she spoke, she didn’t speak through the suit. She spoke inside the suit, which muffled the vast majority of what she said into the barely audible range. There were vertical slits in the ‘jaw’ or the bonelike lower half of the helmet, and from them, the suit spoke with a buzzy voice. You could tell she was female, but that was about it. It did a very good job of obfuscating her identity.

  She said she could see and hear perfectly fine from inside, which was wild. She demonstrated walking around the room, doing some basic exercises like squatting, sitting, lying down, getting up, pushups, and so on. The movement and range of motion were very good. It didn’t seem to impede her range of motion at all from what I could tell, and her movement appeared fairly responsive.

  But there were issues. A number of them. I spotted some, and Amy told me others. I had one that was a pressing concern. We squared up, me against her in her suit, and we tried to do some grapples that we’d practiced. Then I moved on, having her try and do some leg sweeps, and to throw some jabs and hooks my way. The suit was strong. Very strong. And I didn’t question the durability and strength. This was a vast improvement in her physical abilities, and there wasn’t any doubt in my mind about that.

  What I was picking up on was that it felt ever-so-slightly sluggish. Fractions of a second. And in most instances? That really wouldn’t matter. But there were some times where it would matter, and those times could be a real problem. We talked about it. Amy knew all about the issue. It was something she’d worked on extensively already to try and improve.

  There was a latency between the inputs she was providing to the suit from the inside and the suit replicating the movement or motion. A very, very small one, but Amy had hit one of her brick walls where she wasn’t able to improve it further.

  There were pressure-sensitive ‘gel’ pads pressed against Amy’s body all over the place. Most were sensory organs, some were for shock absorption, although all served that function to some extent. The suit would feel her move inside, then move itself to match until the pressure dropped below a threshold. Amy explained that she had to get it to recognize when she was actually moving, and not simply pushing against the sensors due to orientation, gravity, or an impact, and that had taken some time.

  I sat and thought on it. Sent a few texts to Colin about exo design and ways of dealing with those things. He responded with what he did. Direct neural interface. Implanted sensors in his body that picked up the signals his brain was putting out at the brain stem.

  How the hell would we do something like that?

  Amy and I were chatting about it when, out of the blue, my power started to stir in my head. I blinked rapidly mid-conversation.

  I tried feeding my power the ideas of what we were trying to do, piece by piece. Amy needed an interface that wasn’t going to harm her, wasn’t going to cause brain damage, and wouldn’t be rejected by her body. The suit needed some kind of matching or compatible thing to interface with her.

  My power entered an excited state, waves chopping and slapping me, sea mist spraying. My left arm itched fiercely.

  “Amy, I think I might have something. With my ability.”

  She straightened on her stool and ran a hand through her hair. The suit stood open behind her, once again still as a statue.

  “Oh? Do you know what it is?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. My power just lit up, and I threw some ideas at it based on what Colin had been saying, and now it’s all riled up. Do you want me to try and see what’s going on?”

  She nibbled her lower lip. “Do you think it could be dangerous for me?”

  I rocked my head from side to side. “Well, I was worried about that. I tried to envision and account for things like not harming you, and not doing anything that would cause an infection or rejection, and it still seems…bubbly.” She kneaded the back of her neck. “I won’t lie, there’s always the potential for something to go wrong, but the track record I’ve had for some of the medical sorts of things has been pretty good?”

  She fidgeted, and she looked nervous, but she relented. “Okay, let’s just try and take things slowly.”

  I nodded in agreement and triggered the change. My left hand and lower arm bulged and grew, warping and twisting before my eyes, and before I knew it, I had a very familiar shape emerging.

  Vivian.

  I wasn’t sure if Amy had a chance to actually see Vivian yet, so I explained to her how I’d made it and what sorts of things it did. Amy’s eyes grew as wide as saucers, and her lips parted.

  “You mean to tell me that you designed and made a like, autonomous surgical suite tool from your body, just so you didn’t have to carry around a medkit!?”

  I winced a little when she phrased it like that.

  “That’s awesome!”

  Vivian finished growing in, and the change came to an end. She looked odd on my arm. She was normally fairly bulky on, but that was when she was on my lower human-like arm, when I was full-size Apex. On me right now, she was big, blue, bulky, and quite heavy for me. She was my entire arm from the elbow down, and extended past where my hand normally would be. There was no hand extending from her like this.

  Vivian stirred and opened a few ports, long, thin red tendrils snaking out. I rolled my stool closer to Amy and the suit.

  “I’m kind of nervous, so I’m going to use my power on you, on it, if it touches me, and take a dive to see what’s going on under the hood. It’ll help to distract me.”

  I nodded to Amy and let Vivian do her thing. She was checking out the suit with six or eight tendrils, touching, rubbing against, and slipping inside it where it was open. One other tendril extended out and reached over to Amy. I could see her fighting the urge to squirm or shy away. It extended to her inner forearm and seemed to pierce her skin seamlessly, like an IV or something similar.

  “That’s… that’s a strange sensation. It’s like getting an IV, but it doesn’t hurt. But I can literally feel it in my veins. I’m going to use my power now, so I’ll probably be quiet.

  Vivian did a thing that felt like a shiver, but wasn’t. It was the closest I could relate it to. I got the distinct impression that it was drinking Amy’s blood. I tried not to think about that. Several more ports opened, and a few sturdier tentacles slithered out of the pod on my arm, wrapping around Amy’s midriff, turning her around on her stool, and pulling her in as close as she could get. One wrapped around her hair, bundling it up and pulling it upwards. A tendril reached up and pierced the side of Amy’s neck.

  She did shiver that time.

  It was at that point that Vivian hijacked my arm, lifting herself up and pointing at the back of Amy’s head. My stomach clenched, and my heart rate spiked. She opened up, mantis-like arms with those wicked claws and other implements at the ends, and they started to move forward, bringing half a dozen more tendrils along with them.

  “Amy, it’s about to do something, uhh… Maybe try and hold still.”

  “Okay,” She said, and I could tell she was scared. I was a little too. The potential for something bad to happen here was… higher than I would want to admit.

  Vivian proceeded to do what looked like cosmetic surgery on the back of Amy’s neck. High up, just under her hairline. I watched in silence as it seemingly gave Amy a tattoo on her neck. The tendrils were moving around, slipping into her skin and back out, never leaving any visible trace of having done so.

  Twice, Amy let out a groan. She was holding as still as she could, from what I could tell.

  “Painful?” I asked her, worried that she was suffering.

  “No, no, not at all, but it is very itchy. Holy crap, I want to scratch my neck so bad right now.”

  “Yeah, uh, let’s not do that. I don’t know how she’d respond.”

  Vivian worked quickly, and when a few minutes had passed, she’d wrapped up, retracted her claws and slurped up her tentacles and tendrils, and went back to being a mostly featureless blue pod on my arm. My power had settled back down to a sleeping or idle state a minute or two back, so I queued up and started a change in my arm to revert it back to a Rivera arm.

  “You’re all done. Congratulations, you uhhh…” I sighed. “You got a tattoo. Carol’s going to fucking kill me.”

  “What’s it look like?” She asked hesitantly.

  I’d been just thinking about the best way to describe it myself. “It’s… pretty much… it looks like a mandala? A touch less geometric, and a dab more fractal? But yeah, it’s a ring with very intricate patterns, and it’s a very, very familiar shade of blue.”

  “Wow. That’s cool, I can’t wait to see it!”

  “Well, sure. But let’s see what, if anything, it actually does first?”

  Amy hopped up and rubbed her arm, the side of her neck, and the back of her neck where the tattoo was. “Itchy. Okay, let’s take a look…"

  She pulled her phone out from her folded robes and toggled the flashlight on, leaning, weaving, and craning her way into the upper half of her suit without actually getting fully into it.

  “Oh, there’s a weird blue pattern in here around the neck, too! Doesn’t look like what you described, but I see what you mean about fractals. I guess that’s the other part. I’m going to get in properly now and try it out!”

  “Sure… Just be careful, please. Anything goes wrong, let me know. Oh, is there way I can get you out of that thing, if it malfunctions or if you’re knocked out, or something?”

  Amy showed me how there were a couple of nodules deeply tucked away on the inside of the heavy plating around the neck. “All the way on the right, press that.”

  I pressed it, and it squished under my finger. The back closed shut. I pushed it again, and it cycled.

  “It’s a very, very low-level function, so outside the entire suit being totally dead, that should work, no matter what.”

  I nodded quickly and put a vague note on my phone in case I forgot. Amy climbed in, and the suit sealed shut behind her.

  The suit’s voice gasped and then moaned rather loudly.

  “Uh… Amy?”

  I’m not sure if my power caused her to die or have an orgasm. Both make me want to curl up and die.

  “Morgan. This is insane!” She shriek-buzzed, and the suit did its best impression of flappy hands.

  “There’s no delay anymore, and–and!”

  She poked and prodded herself in several places between heavy armor sections. Another moan.

  I could feel my cheeks burning.

  “I can feel everything the suit can!” The suit’s tail started to lash around, and Amy made more sounds.

  “Amy, please come back out just for now, so we can test that everything is good.”

  The suit assumed a more rigid, upright pose, and the back popped open. Amy proceeded to worm her way out, ass-first.

  We’re going to have to be careful about that. People might get ideas. I know I just did.

  Amy finally got out, and she ran, jumped, and threw her arms around my neck. I had to catch her and hold her to avoid getting toppled over.

  The poor girl was laughing-hyperventilating while trying to babble about the experience.

  I’m dead. I’m so dead. Carol is going to make a beam sword and carve my guts out. First, she thinks I’m stealing her daughter from her team, then she’s going to find out that there’s hanky panky going on, and then on top of all of that… I tattooed her nape.

  Carol Dallon, Brandish. Slayer of Slayers of Endbringers.

  Gods tremble before her wrath.