Standing in front of the mirror, I ran the brush through my hair yet again. It was the third time in five minutes I’d gotten up to futz with my appearance. My nerves were driving me crazy, and my hands were trembling as I worked through non-existent snarls.

  The girl who looked back at me in the mirror was supposedly me, except for one or two minor details. Based on the photo of myself I’d seen, I couldn’t even claim to really look like Morgan Rivera.

  I didn’t look like her. Maybe some relative of hers, with leukemia, or something. But not her.

  Morgan Rivera had golden blonde hair with a very relaxed wave. It was long, very full-bodied and thick, and she usually wore it pulled back behind her shoulders.

  I had platinum blonde hair—almost entirely silver, with cool tones that contrasted with her warm undertones. My hair was long, longer than hers, actually. It was waist-length, even after Tessa had helped cut it for me. What it had in length, it lacked in everything else. Limp, straight as a rail, and fine, so prone to breaking and split ends. I was going to braid it at some point, but I didn’t have the time to do it now.

  Morgan Rivera had sky-blue eyes. Mine were light gray, almost silvery, or a bare metal color.

  Morgan had warm skin tones and looked like she usually had some light level of tanning. An active lifestyle, I’d read. I had pale skin, and not in the fair way that was popular, but in the slightly-creepy, looks-sick, you-can-see-her-veins-in-places way. I didn’t have an active lifestyle. I’d lived my entire life so far in some kind of underground bunker and had never so much as seen the sun.

  Morgan had a figure I envied. Maybe not quite the covergirl sort of look, she was too muscular for that. But she had curves to go with the muscle. There wasn’t a doubt about her femininity; she had a chest, hips, and a butt. She was smiling in every photo I’d ever seen of her, which had been quite a number of them at this point. She seemed like a happy, positive person, the kind of person someone would want to be around.

  Then there was the me in the mirror. Reedy and frail-looking, unhealthily thin with little in the way of curves or figure, unless you counted knobby joints or visible ribs as curves. I was like some sort of creepy goblin creature. I was even shorter than she was by a couple of inches!

  We had a similar fullness of our lips and an expressive mouth, but my lips lacked in color, just like the rest of me, a sort of translucent, faint pink only a few shades brighter than my snowy skin tone. There was not enough color there to attract someone’s eyes or attention; what color was there was more like circulation than it was pigmentation.

  It was as if someone had taken her and stuck her in a photocopier and run off a duplicate, but they’d forgotten that the color cartridge was out of ink.

  In short? I hated the way I looked. I didn’t look in the mirror and get any kind of connection to the person looking back at me. And I’d tried faking it, sticking a photo of her up on the mirror in place of my face, to see if that felt any better. It didn’t.

  Warm, olive-toned hands placed themselves on my shoulders, and Tessa’s eyes looked into mine from behind and above through the reflection of the mirror.

  “You’re doing it again. I can tell when you’re running in a feedback loop of negativity because you always lock up and stare at yourself nearly motionlessly. You look perfectly fine, Morgan. They are going to be overjoyed to see you.”

  Anger rose in my chest, and when I was angry, it was one of the few times I didn’t look like a ghost. Maybe like a ghost that had fallen face-first into some rouge.

  “How am I supposed to be honest about my feelings? You literally made me, so if I say I don’t like the way I look, that amounts to saying that I either think you did a bad job, or that I wish you hadn’t brought me back. And I don’t feel either of those two things, but I can’t… I just can’t get over how I look, Tessa.”

  I put the hairbrush down on the countertop in front of the bathroom wall mirror a bit too hard, the plastic clacking loudly against the surface. I pointed a twiggy fingertip at my reflection and said, “That isn’t… That isn’t me. I don’t know why it makes me so upset, only that it does, and even when I did try swapping things with a photograph, the result was the same.”

  Tessa squeezed my shoulders, and I let my head hang. “I just can’t see anything positive in my reflection. I see someone who looks like they belong in a cancer ward. Who’s going to want to be seen with me, much less ask me out?”

  “You might be surprised to find out how many, Morgan. But as I’ve been saying, I know it’s hard, but try to be patient with yourself. You’ll gain weight, and you enjoyed going to the gym, so that’s something that you can also do to work on making your figure more pleasing to your eye, if that’s what you want. I will say that I’m personally getting a bit of deja vu, because your previous self was also very focused on her appearance. It was only through experience that she was able to realize that it isn’t as much of a consideration as she originally thought.”

  “But what if I’m never happy with how I look? What if there’s something wrong with me, Tessa? Not… not like, my skin, but my head, I mean. What if my head is broken, and that’s why I feel this way? What if, after suffering through it, I wind up realizing that I don’t want to be like this at all? What do I do then?”

  Her hands were firm on my shoulders. Stable, like something to ground myself against, and comforting. Her face in the mirror told a slightly different story, though. She was nibbling on her lower lip with her brow furrowed.

  “This is something that I’ve struggled with quite a bit myself, Morgan. It wasn’t easy for me, so I won’t tell you that it will be an easy thing for you, either. I think more than anything, it’s a process. We talked about my situation, a bit over a week ago, if you remember.”

  Her situation, as she put it, was the fact that she was a sentient artificial intelligence inhabiting a state-of-the-art tinkertech android body, a secret she held extremely closely, with me and her partner being the only people who knew. The old me had apparently known, or figured it out somehow, and she told me she was confiding in me to keep her secret under the assumption that I’d regain my memory eventually. She didn’t want to foster any kind of resentment between us later on, should I remember.

  I nodded to her reflection.

  She took a breath. Having just been thinking about it, I was still in the mindset where the illusion was shattered, so the thought of it being purely an affectation put on for my benefit struck me from the side. I couldn’t get distracted, letting my mind wander down rabbit holes at the moment.

  “When my father created me, I was just an experiment. A prototype for research and development, a step along the path to making whatever it was he ultimately wanted.”

  I studied her face, going through several micro-expressions as she thought about what she was going to say before saying it.

  “He didn’t make Tessa Richter; he didn’t make a daughter, he made a program. The me you see and feel? The name behind the face? Those were all things that I had to figure out for myself through trial and error, and a lot of unwelcome emotions, Morgan. I had to figure out that I was female. I was made genderless, so in a sense, I am a transgender individual. I felt female, so I made myself female, do you understand? In the same way, I felt like a person, even though I very clearly am not, so I had to go about making an entire persona and fictional person to become.”

  I thought about that in silence for several long moments. “So you’re saying that if I’m not happy with how I look, or how I am, to change myself like you did?”

  She pursed her lips. “Not precisely. I’m saying to consider and keep in mind that it’s a possibility, and an option for you. I would never tell you not to pursue who you want to be, Morgan, but I do worry that some part of what you’re feeling is system shock from being revived, and the trying experiences you’ve had for the past month.”

  “So it comes back to giving myself time to try and figure things out,” I mused.

  Tessa nodded. “I want to see you healthy and happy as much as your other friends and family do, but as far as I’m aware, we’ve never brought someone back from being dead for years, so it might be the prudent thing to try and take things a little bit at a time. Everything about this is unprecedented. We just don’t know. But I’m excited to find out. You completely changed who you were previously, so I wouldn’t put it past you to do it again.”

  “You’re talking about Apex.”

  A giant, blue, and totally alien-looking creature that I had a hard time believing existed.

  However, looking at photographs and images of Apex did cause me to feel something. I wasn’t sure what; I couldn’t easily put a label on the feeling as being happy or sad, or anything else, for that matter. Looking at it made my chest feel tight. That’s all I knew.

  “More than just Apex. You fundamentally changed as a person over the course of six months. Part of it was growing pains, adjusting to being an independent adult, but there was much more going on than just that, or your physical appearance, Morgan. You went from someone that very few people took seriously to being one of the most important people that existed in the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. Maybe millions, I could be understating things.”

  Tessa chuckled at that and let go of my shoulders. I was struck with the urge to continue to feel some level of human contact, which was ironic, considering it was up for debate if there was a single human even present here. You had Tessa, a sentient non-corporeal cloud intelligence inhabiting a physical body, and then me, the living dead girl who looked the part as much as she felt it in her bones.

  “Will you braid my hair for me? Is there enough time?” I cut myself off, then apologized. “Sorry, I don’t know why I’m feeling awkward asking. I was going to do it myself, but I didn’t think I’d have the time.”

  My request brought a full-faced smile out of her. She reached over and grabbed a hairband from the little assortment of toiletries and self-care items she’d assembled for me, and started in right away. “I’d love to braid your hair for you, and I think it’s a good call, too. It’ll be easier to keep it from getting all wind-blown.”

  I dropped my gaze to what I was wearing, and I fidgeted with my fingertips while she worked. The two of us had worked to put together an outfit for today. I had on a sapphire blue sundress with fairly thin straps and a square neckline. It was well-fitted to my bony figure, and the skirt extended down to just below mid-thigh. Floral motifs with winding vines added depth to the dress. It was paired with short ankle socks and white sneakers. I didn’t have any kind of accessories to go with it. A necklace or something might work well with it; it would at least help make up for the lack of anything going on with the neckline.

  I’d already been slathered from head to toe in SPF-nine million sunscreen. Which was good, I’m pretty sure I’d get a sunburn from a lightbulb, otherwise.

  I was lost in my head again, and was speaking without even really thinking about what I was doing, just standing there, getting my hair braided while my stream of consciousness dribbled out.

  “I’m really nervous about all of this. My stomach is in knots, and not even for the usual reasons.”

  Usual reasons being the fact that I’d been on a diet of probiotics and bland foods with a slowly-diversifying selection of ingredients, and that every meal–usually in liquid form–had been torment on my GI system. It wasn’t so much an issue of keeping food down as it was keeping it inside.

  “Is it because of the asymmetry present in the relationships now? Or maybe because you’re worried about expectations?” Dragon asked softly behind me, working down my back at a rapid clip.

  “Yes? Well, that, plus other stuff. I worry that maybe I won’t like them this time around, or that maybe I’ll mess up their dynamic, somehow,” I muttered.

  “They have been told, and I’m sure that there might be mistakes, but they’re doing their best. I think you’ll do just fine once you get past your initial nerves.”

  Tessa tied my hair off with an elastic band. The weight of the braid, lightly tugging at my scalp, felt like it was helping keep me grounded in the moment. A physical sensation that I could always feel and rely on, something tangible and ever-present.

  “Are you ready? They’re nearly here.”

  I resisted the urge to nibble on my lower lip. I had a bit of gloss on which was tinted to bring out a bit more color to my ghostly complexion. Even though it was subtle, it stood out simply because of the blank canvas effect I had going on. Any cosmetics I used were going to have to be very subtle and lightly applied, otherwise I’d wind up looking like a mime or a clown, or something of the sort.

  So instead, I flexed my jaw and gave a quick dip of my head. Sooner or later, I was going to have to confront the fact that I was a person who was stepping into a life that already existed at some point, and I’d have to ride the roller coaster that was bound to be the experiences associated with trying to reintegrate many years after the fact.

  I turned around, and Tessa gave me a quick hug. I looped my arms around her waist, and my breath caught in my throat.

  “Try to relax and let yourself have a good time, Morgan. You’ll be in good hands, I promise.” Her voice was soft and reassuring in ways I didn’t know I needed until I heard it.

  We separated, she smiled at me, and we left the restroom and approached the airlock. I held my breath as it cycled and the inner door opened. I’d been cleared for this. I’d suffered for weeks for this. I’d slept through most of it, thankfully, but part of what had kept me restricted to being in here was getting continually dosed and immunized with various cocktails of dead bacteria and viruses to build my immune system up sufficiently that I wasn’t going to literally die from a common cold.

  Just because they were dead didn’t mean that I got to skip all the unpleasant side effects of the immune response. It was like having the never-ending flu, and it was miserable.

  Keeping that in mind, I stepped in behind Tessa with only a moment’s hesitation. The door closed behind us, clanked shut, and the airlock cycled with the brush of cool air flowing over the two of us. Not much of a pressure differential, just enough to keep a positive pressure airflow inside to keep airborne crud out.

  Stepping out of the outer door of the airlock and walking through the building was an experience. It wasn’t at all what I expected. It was like a hospital environment inside my little corner, but it was night and day different elsewhere. Industrial lighting, wide-open spaces that were packed with machinery of all sorts. I could spot server racks inside insulated glass enclosures, what looked like assembly lines of advanced robotics working on things, and tall, deep racks of storage bins precisely labeled with barcodes.

  “Is this…your tinker laboratory, or something?” I asked, still looking around as she led me through the busy place.

  “One of them! I have several, although this is the only one located in Brockton Bay.” Tessa had to speak up a little over the background noise. It wasn’t too loud, but there was machinery at work in here in addition to quite a bit of ventilation.

  I was a bit shocked at how well-insulated my space was. It was whisper quiet in there; you couldn’t hear much of anything other than the ventilation. “I’m surprised, I had thought I was in a clinic or something, but you just built that in some free space in one of your labs? You don’t have any more secret cloning projects running in parallel, do you?” I asked jokingly.

  She looked over her shoulder back at me, held a finger to her lips, and winked.

  I couldn’t help it; I laughed out loud, which got another wide smile out of her.

  “I wanted to make sure you were in a secure location, and a place that I could respond quickly, if needed. You never know as a tinker, people are always after your tech, so most of us learn to fortify our workshops and labs. This way, I wouldn’t be far if something like a break-in did happen. This went from a place I was experimenting with to basically my main operating space in the past few years.”

  Elevator doors opened for us as we approached, and it whisked us to another floor as soon as we stepped inside. I had no doubts that she was wirelessly plugged into most things here, but I was surprised by just how integrated she was to everything.

  “Is it… strange for you, being connected to everything, and then having people moving around inside these spaces you’re occupying? I know if I had people moving around inside my perception, I’d probably find it strange. Is the building like another body for you?” My thoughts took an unexpected twist, and my lips betrayed my thought process into the small space we shared. “Were you like… plugged in to the cloning tank, too? That sort of raises some questions in my mind.”

  Tessa looked over at me as we waited, a smile teasing at her lips. “No, it’s not strange, rather, it’s the opposite, it took me time to get used to having a physical body. Time, and a lot of practice. And we don’t have the time to get into it now, but you have also done similar things in the past, you just don’t remember them. I won’t spoil that story for you early, though.” She chuckled and twisted to look a bit more directly at me. “And yes, I was plugged in, as you put it, to the cloning tank. And I’d be lying if I said that it didn’t inspire certain feelings in me as a result, which is what I think you were asking about. But now’s not a good time to get into that.”

  I felt myself grow light momentarily as the lift came to a stop, and the doors opened. Sunlight flooded in; it took my eyes a moment to adjust to the new, natural lighting. We stepped out into what looked like a small lobby for an office building, very nondescript, and it wouldn’t look out of place for anyone walking past. Some comfortable-looking lounge-style seating was arranged around a pair of coffee tables, and there was a front desk that was currently empty.

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  A well-dressed man wearing a suit stood in the middle of the lobby, and he was talking with a trio of women in conversational tones. He had a very neatly maintained, close-cropped beard and mustache, which, combined with the suit, made for a rather dashing figure. The trio faced away from us, and I followed behind Tessa as she approached. I stopped short, behind the three women who were presumably here for me. Tessa walked around to stand next to the man and wrapped one arm around his waist, leaning over to plant a kiss on his cheek.

  My heart was somersaulting in my chest, and my fingertips trembled as my nerves flared up all of a sudden.

  This was it, the moment. They hadn’t seen me yet, I still had time to–

  It was like time was passing in slow motion as the tall blonde turned around, her eyes growing wide as she saw me. She was dressed casually in jeans and a tee, and I froze up, locked in place as she flashed dazzling teeth and quickly crossed the gap between us.

  Flowing blonde, voluminous hair, blue eyes, tall, with curves to die for. It’s her! But, she’s not supposed to be here today?

  I stood there like a deer caught in the headlights of a car, my arms limp at my sides as she all but crushed me in a tight hug. She was making a keening, excited hum in her throat as she squeezed me against her, and I picked up the scent of the ocean, summer, and sunlight from her.

  “You have no idea how happy I am to see you right now,” she whispered to me in a melodic voice. “It’s a good thing I decided not to wear any mascara or eyeliner today, hah!”

  My lips were moving and I was mumbling, but nothing coherent. My brain was fizzling out as she pulled me back long enough to plant a firm kiss on my cheek, and then I was being hugged again.

  I found my voice. “I, um. I thought you weren’t going to be here today.” I sounded as lame as I felt.

  She drew back and gave me a quizzical look. “I wouldn’t miss it for anything in the world! What makes you think that I wasn’t going to be here?”

  My cheeks burned as feelings of shame crept up out of nowhere.

  I must have messed up the schedule of things.

  “S-sorry,” I said, momentarily taken aback. “I thought we were doing friends one day, then family the next. I must have gotten things mixed up again. My memory, it’s not so–”

  She suddenly gave me a serious look and interrupted my mumbled excuses. “Do you know what my name is?”

  I brought my eyes up to hers, which were sparkling with moisture. “You’re my sister, I mean, Melody, right?”

  She looked at me for what felt like an eternity. It felt like she was stripping me bare and judging me. The me that was-not-quite-her-sister. Then she threw her head back and laughed loudly, the sound filling the space of the lobby. It was a bright and beautiful sound, a contrast to the desire I felt to want to curl up and die inside right now.

  The other two women approached from the periphery, but my eyes were locked onto the person holding me by my upper arms at the moment. She dropped her head back down, a huge grin plastered on her face, and my confusion grew.

  “No, I see how you could make that mistake, but no, I’m not Melody, and you weren’t mistaken. I’m Victoria, and as many times as we’ve been mistaken for one another, you’d think by now I’d be used to it!” She chuckled heartily.

  Glory Girl. Victoria Dallon. Of course.

  I felt so stupid. Victoria let me go as the other two stepped forward.

  Another blonde stood to Victoria’s left, and this time, the woman wasn’t built like a bombshell, but was still quite cute in her own way. She had sea green eyes, was more of a dirty blonde to Victoria’s golden blonde, and had a sort of cute girl-next-door vibe going on with a similarly casual getup of a short-sleeved v-neck shirt and a pair of blue jeans. She wore her hair loose, tucked behind her ears, and just long enough to tease at her shoulders. She had a trim, somewhat athletic figure, like a runner, perhaps.

  Rather than going in for a hug, she stuck her hand out, a coy smirk plastered on her face. “I’m Lisa, pleased to meet you, stranger.”

  More confusion on my part, but I tried to take it in stride, shaking her hand. My palms were sweaty, and I silently apologized for being that person. She picked up on what was going through my mind right away. “I’ll let Victoria explain, but yes, I wasn’t on the original invite list. We weren’t exactly friends previously, more like… working associates, or something. Still, we knew each other, and I got the last-minute phone-a-friend call to fill in, so I’m here, and you’re stuck with me.”

  The smirk never left her lips as she explained. The girl seemed very… self-assured, which gave her a kind of appeal I wasn’t quite prepared for. It was kind of strange to come across another girl my age who was so effortlessly and casually confident that it bordered on smug arrogance.

  I nodded to her, simply saying: “Nice to meet you, er, again, I guess.”

  She winked at me and stepped back.

  The last of the three stepped forward next, and I practically had to crane my neck to look up at her. She was staggeringly tall, very notably so, but that was only the most immediately noticeable thing she had going on.

  She was a drop-dead gorgeous raven-haired woman, with hazel eyes, bright green with golden flecks and darker brown striations. When I saw she was good-looking, I mean, like, to an almost painful extent. She had a refined facial structure and wide, full lips that drew my gaze in. She didn’t have a figure as pronounced as Victoria’s, but she didn’t lack for curves, either. With her long frame and narrow waist, it gave nearly as much of an hourglass figure as Victoria, with a more modest bust and hips.

  She was dressed in dark colors and had a strong alt look, with numerous ear piercings and facial piercings, and inked sleeve tattoos on both arms where her skin was exposed. She had a bold hairstyle I hadn’t seen before, with long, black hair flowing down her back and over her shoulders, turned over to one side, and exposing a side shaved to a short buzzcut length. Skinny jeans with an aggressive, punky belt, a grunge-styled band shirt, and wedge sneakers with both straps, buckles, and zippers.

  My voice caught in my throat as I was pulled into a tight hug by the statuesque woman. My face was squished directly into her boobs, which I was thankful that my cheeks were still heated from the shame I’d been feeling moments ago; otherwise, I’d be in trouble.

  She must have craned her neck down some to whisper to me: “I’ve been waiting a very long time to be able to say this to you finally, but welcome back, Morgan.”

  My chest tightened all of a sudden, and there was a stabbing pain in the back of my head, but the sensation was gone so fast, and so completely that I was sure I’d imagined it. I tried my best not to be as lame as I’d been so far, and I managed to make a small improvement by hugging her back. We separated after a long moment, and she stepped back and looked down at me. She had an intense look on her face, amplified by the heavy eyeliner or kohl she had applied. A smile teased her lips, and I got an impression from her that was similar to Lisa’s easy confidence moments ago.

  Victoria cleared her throat, and I broke eye contact with who I was nearly certain was Taylor.

  “Yes, so, some bad news…” Victoria said. “Unfortunately, Amy was called away on some business that she wasn’t able to get out of attending, so she isn’t able to be here right now. She is hoping to meet up with us later, when she’s able to get away.”

  I nodded slowly.

  Taylor spoke next: “Since Amy couldn’t make it, I invited Lisa. She’s promised to be on her best behavior today, and she’s a pretty valuable person to have around for some of the stops we have planned, so I thought I’d invite her.”

  “It doesn’t bother me at all. You’re… ahh.” I brought a hand up and rubbed the back of my head. “Sorry, this sounds ruder than what I mean, but you’re all sort of equally on the same footing to me.” My cheeks were blazing once again. “What I mean to say is that this is like meeting each of you for the first time, so I don’t feel bad for having missed what is basically like a stranger to me.” I mumbled under my breath. I was trying to get my point across, but every time I tried to clarify, it only sounded worse. I let out a frustrated sigh.

  Victoria smiled, and it was like the room lit up just a bit more for her having done it. It also looked like it was just a natural expression on her face. “Don’t sweat it at all! We know, and we’ve talked about it ourselves. No hurt feelings from us, okay? You always used to be pretty vocal about speaking your mind, so we’re sort of used to you being candid and honest with us. You just let us know if we’re being too much for you, or if you’re feeling uncomfortable, okay?”

  My eyes were locked on hers, and I nodded.

  Lisa clapped her hands together and twisted in place. “Well, Dee, and Dee, it’s been good, but it’s high time the four of us busted out of this stuffy joint and left to tear it up in the city!”

  Tessa’s eyebrows climbed a bit, but she was smiling. “Before you go!” She reached into the pocket of her slacks and held out a fancy-looking mobile phone to me. “Here, take this. I’ve already set it up for you, and it’s linked your financials to your biometrics. You should be able to use it anywhere that accepts any kind of digital payment, and it’s got some contacts preprogrammed for you if you need them."

  I took the phone; it was surprisingly heavy and solid in my hands, but I had to admit that I wasn’t terribly familiar with how to use it.

  “Phones have changed a ton while you were… away, Morgan. We can show you the ropes, though,” Victoria said from my side.

  I realized I didn’t have anywhere to put it, so I’d just have to hang onto it for now. I gave Tessa one last hug, and the four of us headed out.

  Taylor drove us around in a dark mid-sized SUV that seated all of us comfortably. I volunteered to take a seat in the back. Conversation was flowing, and they did their best to try and pull me in, but I was sort of absorbed in staring out the windows at the sights, and once it became apparent to everyone that I was rubbernecking like a tourist, they let me gawk in peace.

  Taylor’s vehicle was super nice, and I was making full use of the full-length tinted sunroof to make the most out of my staring.

  I didn’t recognize the city I’d been born and grown up in at all. What had been a city with a busy downtown area of high-rise buildings and towers, surrounded by some decent neighborhoods and a whole lot of bad neighborhoods, was gone. There were a handful of buildings I recognized, but most of them looked brand new as we rolled through the stop-and-go traffic of downtown Brockton Bay. The run-down and struggling city I knew was replaced with a much newer and far shinier one with its glass-clad towers, clean streets, and bustling foot traffic.

  It wasn’t just the buildings; it was everything. The people were different, too. The fashion had changed, as I expected, of course, but the way people carried themselves and went about their business was different, too. There was more visible smiling, people walking freely, and not like they were dragging an invisible anchor around behind them.

  Then there were the phones. Virtually everyone was walking around with phones or other digital devices in their hands, people were sitting at cafes with laptop computers, and there were hardly any cables to be seen anywhere.

  I held my own elbows and glanced down at the phone I’d set on the center console between Victoria and me. She looked over at me and picked up on my body language. “It’s a lot to take in, isn’t it? It’s not just you; we were right there with you. If you saw this place like three years ago, all you’d see were cranes and construction crews everywhere. Did anyone tell you about how the Bay’s grown?”

  I shook my head.

  “It’s more than doubled in size in six years. Can you believe that? We passed the mark right around January. Well, when I say size, I mean population, although the city certainly has also extended outwards, mostly to the north and south.”

  “I think it was between two and three hundred thousand people, at least, by my dated and faulty memory,” I mused.

  “That’s right. Two sixty or two seventy at the end of 2010. It broke six hundred thousand in the first quarter of 2017.”

  “Mostly due to migration, if you’re wondering, although people have been popping out crotch goblins like it’s going out of style the past couple years, now that it’s not a complete hellhole to live in,” Lisa said from directly in front of me.

  “I take it you’re not fond of kids?” I asked her.

  She shook her head. “No, quite the opposite, I love kids, just not when they’re screeching babies.”

  Taylor took one hand off the steering wheel and pressed a button on the dashboard, and a series of red LED lights on the headboards around the outer perimeter of the car lit up.

  “Privacy filter, we can talk about whatever we like with it active without having to worry about anyone listening in,” Victoria told me.

  “Do you remember Tattletale at all?” Taylor asked me.

  “No, sorry. Should I?” I asked.

  Lisa snorted.

  “That was Lisa’s cape name when she was a villain; she’s since changed it with an official rebrand,” Taylor said, gesturing at the woman.

  It was like my heart skipped a beat, how casually they revealed that this person I didn’t know was a villain. Former villain, at least, from the sounds of things.

  “It’s Insight now, if you’re curious, and team good guys, representing the local ENE chapter,” Lisa supplied.

  “I don’t remember much about hero and villain things; it’s one of the big black holes in my memory, along with my own personal life. I remember like, old cape business, but old by my standard, so like, late two thousands. Boston Games, Empire, New Wave. But even that is sort of hit-or-miss.” I looked back down at my lap and frowned. “Which isn’t very helpful for me with the people present here.”

  “Well, New Wave is still around!” Victoria said brightly. “We’ve even grown the team, although for many people, New Wave is sort of synonymous with Brockton Strong, even though they’re not the same thing.”

  “I know a little about Brockton Strong, but not from my own memory, just things I’ve been told and have been able to read about,” I said.

  Taylor adjusted the rear-view mirror to look at me. She had a smirk on her lips once again. “So you don’t remember it, but surely you read that you founded it?”

  I held her gaze. “Cofounded it, at least, according to what I read,” I replied.

  “Technically true, however, only a few people know the full story, which is that it was just you, alone in a fire station you bought, and I just happened to come along around the same time. You told everyone that we started it, but you’d basically taken me in as your first refugee, only it happened before Leviathan attacked, not after, like the rest.”

  “Are you still involved in it?” I asked her.

  “Yes, but not as much as I used to be, and I prefer to keep myself more behind-the-scenes with things. I have a number of things that demand my attention, so a lot of what I do with the organization is delegation and attending important meetings. Your mom is the Executive Director and pretty much keeps everything on lockdown with her team.” Taylor readjusted her mirror and returned her eyes to the road as we resumed moving.

  “We’re nearly there, just a few more blocks,” she announced to all of us.

  “So… are all three of you active heroes?” I did my best to try and stave off the awkwardness in my voice.

  That got nods all around. “Lisa and I are Protectorate, Victoria is New Wave. Dragon and Defiant are both PRT and Guild. Melody is on the team with Lisa and me, too, if nobody has told you yet.”

  “That does bring us to a question that’s been pestering me so far this trip,” Lisa said. “Dragon explained that your appearance has changed because of the cloning process, but I’m curious, are you planning on changing it with your ability?”

  Her tone was conversational, a bit nonchalant, but the question felt like it physically struck me. I froze in place.

  “I…I…”

  What do I tell them? The truth? Do I lie? I don’t even know what to think, so how am I supposed to answer others?

  Victoria was giving me a sidelong glance, one brow quirked up at my response. The other two continued to stare out the front windshield while my lips moved.

  “...I don’t know if I can,” I said at last.

  The truth slipped out. I didn’t want to try and rebuild my relationships on a foundation of lies, as much as I wasn’t ready to admit it, or even talk about it, the moment had arrived when I wasn’t expecting it. I wasn’t going to lie to people who were supposed to trust me.

  I was clutching the fingers of one hand with my other hand tightly in my lap. My forearms tingled with the strain, more likely due to how physically frail I was than because of any excessive force.

  “It seems to be dormant, at least, as far as we could tell. The same with the… thing that’s inside me.” Disdain seeped into my voice at the thought of the lump of crystal rooted in my chest. It had been made abundantly clear to me that removing it wasn’t an option after I’d asked. It was intimately tied into numerous vital systems and organs, with bundles of fibers that ran alongside my spinal cord up my back and directly into my brain.

  Nobody spoke in the car, so I continued babbling out my thoughts. “I don’t remember anything about it, including how to use it, and what tests we’ve done haven’t yielded any results.”

  My head hung, and I stared down at my hands. It hurt to think about. While I liked the idea of being able to change my appearance to suit whatever whim I felt, the thought of being a giant, brutish lizard-bug-thing terrified me.

  Victoria’s hand entered my field of view, and she squeezed my thigh supportively. “I’m sorry, Morgan. That sounds painful,” she said.

  “It doesn’t matter, either way,” Taylor said from up front. “That was a lesson I learned from you, actually. It doesn’t matter if you have powers or if you don’t, if they’re good or bad, or whatever else people might think about them. You were always people-first, and I am, too. I’d still be here either way.” There was a startling amount of conviction in her voice; it came through strongly enough to feel.

  “Thank you,” I said softly.

  “I mean it,” she insisted. “You were a hero to people, Morgan. Nobody would doubt that for a fraction of a second. The fact of the matter is that you used your powers very sparingly relative to many capes, and many of the most impactful things you accomplished had nothing to do with being able to beat people up or breathe fire.”

  Lisa snickered in front of me. “You wouldn’t believe the number of urban legends there are about Apex; some of them are hilarious. I don’t know if this is any consolation to you or not, but if I had to guess, you’ll get your power back sooner or later. But that’s just my educated guess on the matter.”

  Victoria spoke up, asking Lisa: “Care to share your insight with us?” I didn’t notice the grin on her face, but Lisa’s pained groan told me that the pun had landed precisely on target.

  “Fine, but you’re making it up to me later for that,” she shot back at Victoria. The back-and-forth had brought a smile to my lips. It was helping lower the defenses I kept inadvertently raising around them. “It seems like basic common sense to me. Think about it: if her core wasn’t plugged in and functional, she wouldn’t be here, talking to us right now, right?”

  The three of us nodded along.

  “So, the core isn’t broken. We have a Morgan here with us that looks like she didn’t spend enough time in the photography lab. Do you have a Corona Pollentia? I have to assume that Dragon has probably scanned about every cell in your body by this point, since you went all Sleeping Beauty on her for so long.”

  I took the gentle ribbing for what it was, just a catty back-and-forth. I tried to think of something to poke her back with.

  “I have one, yes. And be nice, at least I’m not the one here wearing mom jeans.”

  Taylor glanced over at Lisa, her eyes flicking down, then up. “She’s got you there, Lisa.”

  Victoria was grinning.

  Lisa’s voice was lightly pained, saying: “They’re high-waisted jeans and very fashionable right now, Ms. Time Capsule.”

  “They can be both ‘high-waisted’ and mom jeans at the same time, you know,” Taylor said.

  “Lisa’s going for the MILF look early, we need to get her a loose-knit sweater to go with her jeans!” Victoria cracked up, laughing at her own joke.

  “Ahem! Back on topic. You have a Pollentia, you have your core, and it’s functional, if sleepy. You have all the parts. You might need some time to get settled in, or you might need a jolt to start the engine, something that shocks your system. Eating really spicy wings?” Lisa said the part about the wings in an almost incredulous-sounding voice, like she was asking herself as much as saying it.

  “Spicy wings?” Taylor asked in a deadpan voice.

  “Listen, my insights don’t always make sense, even to me. You should know this by now.”

  “I’ll have to hold off on the spicy food for now, I’m doing a little better with my diet restrictions, but I’m pretty sure that eating hot wings might actually kill me…” I glanced around. “...again.”

  Taylor shot me a look over her shoulder, one eyebrow raised. Lisa went “Pft!” and snickered. Victoria just smiled.

  My lame attempt at breaking the ice wasn’t entirely fruitless, it would seem.

  A few minutes later, we’d parked in an underground parking deck and were getting prepared to head out. Victoria rooted around in a handbag and pulled out a ball cap and a wig. She brought her hair up and wound it tightly, then pulled what looked like a stocking over the top of it. Her wig went on over that, dark chestnut hair that was feathered in a flirty fashion. A BBU ballcap completed the transformation. She flashed me a grin when she was done checking herself out with a compact.

  “I would not have guessed that would be as effective as it actually is,” I admitted.

  “Of the three of us, it’s Victoria that’s the most easily recognizable on the street. Normally, she doesn’t care so much, but we’re trying to avoid your photos being posted online or potentially getting into a tabloid blog,” Lisa explained.

  I would have thought that Taylor was the most recognizable, it’s not often you see women as tall as she is. Then again, she’s got this intimidation factor going on with her look.

  We stepped out of the nondescript SUV and prepared to head upstairs. It wasn’t overly busy from what I could tell, the parking was maybe about 25% occupied from what I could see, and we were close to the entrance. Taylor’s ride was very nice. Foreign, clearly expensive, but not loud and flashy. I hadn’t noticed when I was inside, but the windows had what looked like blackout tint from the outside. The vehicle chirped twice when she locked it up.

  That brought my gaze over to her, where she was taking point on this little party of ours. I’d never really spent much time around people who had a strong alternative style, but the mix of tall, dark, pierced, and inked was something that she owned.

  Victoria slid on a short-cropped open denim jacket and elbowed me with a grin. “Ready for a little retail therapy?”

  “I’ll admit I’m a little nervous. I haven’t really been in public spaces in a while.”

  Or ever, but let’s not say that part out loud.

  “Well, no time like the present! And it won’t be busy here until later. Do you remember the Lord Street Market?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, it was wiped out in the Leviathan attacks; most ground-level-only places were. This is the spiritual successor, the Lord Street Mall,” Victoria gestured towards the escalators heading up to the ground floor.

  “A little gentrified, not quite the same soul as the previous iteration, but it’s not entirely without heart or merit, I’ll grudgingly admit,” Lisa added.

  Taylor led us upstairs, and both Lisa and Victoria were equally influential in pulling the group into different stores and outlets, or checking out little island pop-up stands with accessories.

  I’d protested when Tessa had told me that she was going to give me finances to spend, but she’d explained that she was helping to facilitate me spending my own money, as the work wasn’t entirely done with getting my proper identity and finances restored. When I asked about a spending limit, she’d just smiled at me and told me not to worry about it.

  Still, I wasn’t going to explode a phone credit card on someone I barely knew. So I tried to keep my purchases modest, despite the fact that I needed… basically everything.

  Hours flew by. The inside of the mall was beautiful; it was well-lit by expansive skylights in addition to the normal lighting you’d expect, and there was a small museum inside with information about this part of the city before the great disaster. There was a surprising amount of art, also. Both in the form of sweeping murals, as well as statues and kinetic sculptures.

  This morning, one of the intrusive thoughts that I couldn’t get out of my head was that I was going to get gawked at all day because of my unusual appearance. I couldn’t have been more wrong about that. Taylor was the person who drew everyone’s attention, and if they wound up looking at someone else, it was Victoria in her disguise.

  Even with her identity masked, she had it going on in a big way, and she drew nearly as many eyes as Taylor. The two of us were chatting through a changing room curtain while I tried on some clothing, and she had confided that she found hanging out with Taylor a serious relief, as it was one of the few times when she wasn’t the one getting all the looks.

  The jeans I was trying on didn’t fit. It was hard to find things that did, I had an unhealthily thin figure. I heard Lisa come over, and she told Vicky to get lost. She stepped in with a big armful of clothing and her trademark grin.

  Lisa had ideas on styles I wasn’t sure were things I could make work. They weren’t all terrible, admittedly.

  I was by myself, swapping between outfits, when I overheard snippets of a strained-sounding conversation being whispered. I couldn’t entirely make it out over the music playing on the speakers.

  “...should have been here for this.” Taylor’s voice was easier to pick out.

  “You think she didn’t want to be? You know we don’t always get to use our time how we like in this life,” Victoria responded.

  “I think what she’s trying to say is that it’s not a good look for her, on top of the other things recently,” Lisa cut in.

  “It’s not about money, or power, for that matter. You know that. It’s people’s lives we’re talking about…” Victoria’s voice was drowned out when a new song came on in the changing room, and I couldn’t make out any of the rest of it.

  I had frozen in place, the sensation of pins and needles creeping up my spine, and the leggings in my hand all but forgotten.

  I hadn’t even thought about the implications of having not one, but three heroes here, spending time with me. There were so many other things that they could be doing, beyond just the obvious things, like fighting crime or training. That life was a full-time job in the way that few jobs were, and there they were, picking out clothing for a zombie to try on.

  My stomach twisted in my chest. I had a couple of things that fit well that I could mix and match. That’d be more than enough. I didn’t need a wardrobe. I got redressed and stepped out of the changing room.

  Victoria looked over from a nearby clothing rack and smiled. “What’s next? I know you said you’re not into leggings, but finding ones that fit is going to be much easier!” Her head tilted when she saw that my expression wasn’t what she was expecting.

  “I was thinking about taking a break for now. Do you think they have any decent food options here?”

  Her face softened, and she nodded, as energetic as ever. “Yeah! Maybe some cosmetics or accessories, after? Only if you’re up for it, of course.”

  I nodded. I did need several things besides just the clothing.

  There was a Greek place in the mall, and it was delightful. I hadn’t realized how late it was getting; we’d been at it for hours, and having dinner with the three helped to both boost my energy levels and stabilize my mood a bit from where I’d been wallowing in negativity again.

  As we finished up eating, and I was nibbling on my second piece of baklava, the topic of wrapping things up after picking up the next lot of things came up.

  As safe as the place in the workshop was, and my comfort levels with it, I wasn’t happy with the idea of going back into a clinical setting by choice, so the original plan had been for me to get a hotel room for the next couple of days before my big meeting with my family.

  Taylor had been intermittently texting on her phone while we chatted and ate, and she looked up from her phone to make eye contact with me. “So, rather than going to a hotel, how would you feel about coming over to my place? I’ve been catching up with Amy, and she mentioned meeting up there. I have a spare room, and it’s a pretty nice place.”

  “Understatement of the century,” Lisa snarked from her seat next to Taylor in the booth we were seated in.

  “For real, it’s insane, you should totally check it out,” Victoria agreed from my right side.

  “I uh–” I hesitated.

  “No pressure, Morgan. I just figured I’d offer, and it’s better than a hotel room, for sure,” The corners of Taylor’s eyes turned upward in a coy smile.

  Isn’t that the whole point of being out today? Reconnecting with old friends and spending time together? Why am I hesitating? Why am I overthinking this?

  But I knew the reason why. I just didn’t want to admit it, not even to myself.

  I was crushing. Hard. I’d been trying to avoid stealing glances, but I’d stolen some, and I’d also been caught red-handed in the act on more than one occasion. An enigmatic smile was all I had received for having been caught.

  I swallowed the wad of honey and nuts in my mouth with a nervous gulp. “Sure, uh, okay.”

  In for a penny, in for a pound, right?

  "Great, let's grab the other things you needed and head out of here before the evening traffic becomes a total nightmare," Taylor replied, that smile still present on her lips.

  I just nodded along, and the conversation resumed.

  No need to panic. Probably.