Amanda tried to force herself to sleep. Her parents had left the apartment early in the morning, on a mission to bring Paul back. She had wanted to go with them, and but they forbade it. Instead, while they were out using their powers, playing hero, she was expected to go to school.

Which she didn't. She rolled over and grabbed her phone. It was almost nine in the morning. Her first period was coming to a close. She wondered if anyone had noticed her absence. She wondered if anyone even cared.

Sighing, she got out of bed. Thinking about school wasn't helping her sleep, and sleep was all she wanted to do. Amanda went to the bathroom and splashed water on her face, her gaze deliberately avoiding her reflection. She couldn't bare to look at her creepy, pale eyes. Her long, black hair fell in tangles down her mid back. And despite all of the sleep, she knew she had dark circles under her unsettling eyes.

She went to the computer, logged into her mother's account, and deleted emails from her school alerting her of Amanda's lack of attendance. She would also need to grab her mother's phone. There was no way her mom took the call, she let everything go to voicemail now, and would check them a day or so later, giving Amanda the time to delete the message. Amanda grabbed a glass of water, a slice of bread, and returned to her room. She moved the night stand that flanked her closet door, exposing deep gashes in the wall.

She sat on the floor, and took a bite of the bread. And then she breathed deep, and focused on the space between her thoughts, letting her emotions bubble up in her mental periphery. She felt a strangling pressure rise up in her chest, and she let it build until it was hard to breath.

She shot her arms out and grunted, and she bent forward, her body pulled by the force of whatever was leaving it. Two parallel lines glinted through the air, and pierced the wall with a loud thunk!

One long glass-like blade stuck out halfway, the other half stabbed inside the wall. The other blade had gone through the wall entirely and was likely embedded in the back wall of her closet. But then she felt a moment of panic. What if it had gone through even that and landed in someone else's apartment? What if they were hurt? Her throat and chest felt tight with strangulating panic.

She reached her hand out and focused on feeling where the blades were. She mentally latched on to them and her body heaved with a relief so strong she almost lost her sense of where the glass blades were.

Amanda contracted her hand with an almost involuntary ya!, and the blades dislodged from their resting places and came hurtling in the air back towards her. For a second, she wondered if she could control their trajectory; if they would hit her before she could stop him.

The thought was unpleasant, but no longer terrifying. Besides, her end by her own accidental hand would be almost a fitting end, mirroring the circumstances of Paul's death in that it would be the fault of her carelessness. And besides, as she learned after watching her brother die, there were fates worse than death. And that made the prospect of her own more nerve-racking than terrifying.

But the blades zoomed towards her and came to a full stop inches before her outstretched hand and fell to the floor.

She bent forward to pick them up when the front door slammed open.

"Hang on Will," she heard her mother say. Her mom's voice was tight with fear. Amanda rushed out of her bedroom, and saw her parents: her dad's arm around her mom's shoulders, his face a swollen, bloodied mess. Her mom all but held him upright, and appeared to struggle under his weight. Amanda ran towards them, and looped her father's other arm around her own shoulder.

"Oh my God, what happened?" Amanda asked, as her father groaned.

"Get him to the bedroom," was all her mother said.

They stumbled into the room, and helped him into the bed. Her mother placed her hands over him, and raised her hands up, bringing with them the abysmal darkness of her father's shadow form. The face of the shadow was a spider web of red. He was hurt. Badly.

"What happened?" Amanda whimpered. Would he be okay? Her family couldn't bear any more loss.

"Spider-Man," her mother whispered face contorting in anguish.

Spider-Man? That didn't make sense, he was one of the good guys. He and his family were heroes.

Her mother laid gentle hands on the shadow's face. The red started to recede as the black stitched over the red. She looked to her dad's face, but it looked just as bruised and swollen as before.

"Will he be okay?" Amanda pleaded.

"He's already improved. I worked on him at the river. Got him to the point where he could walk. Had to leave before the cops came."

The cops? They had to leave before the cops? What the hell was going on?

Her dad moaned. "God, what the hell happened?" She wished she knew.

"Sh," her mother hushed. "Just relax, I'll fix you."

"Did you get the bag?" He asked, trying to sit up, but her mother just hushed him again as she continued to heal his shadow. His eyes looked so heavy, and he slumped back onto the pillow, eyes closed. She found comfort in the rise and fall of his chest.

"Bag? Mom, what is going on?"

Her mother continued to work. "The scientist's bag. Spider-Man got away with it. He nearly killed your father, and took away our one chance."

"Spider-Man did this to dad?" This didn't make sense. Spider-Man was a hero. And what was with the bag?

"He did this." Tears streamed down her mom's face. "And that bag. It had Dr. Mason's AI research. We would've been so close."

"So close to what?" She asked, her eyes never leaving her father's face. Now, she could see a difference. The swelling was subsiding, and the bones knitting back into place. She could hear them, clicking together and stitching up. Her skin crawled.

"Paul! Using the AI tech to bring him back!" Her mother openly wept.

Amanda took a step back. AI? "That won't bring him back mom."

"It's better than nothing."

Amanda couldn't recognize the woman standing before her, the stranger wearing her mother's skin. What have I done, was all she could think. Paul was dead because of her. And now her mother was hellbent on some master plan to erase her brother's loss. Erase it by replacing him.

Amanda stared at her parents; her father's supine figure, eyes closed, breath heavy; and her mother, her small frame tense, ready to ponce, as her hands rested on the shadow's face; making deals with a stranger in dead of night.

For a moment, she wanted to scream at them, beg them to give up these powers and their plot and go back to whatever normal they could. She indulged in the fantasy of talking sense into them, of them embracing her, telling her it was okay, telling her it wasn't her fault.

But it was. They had trusted her to watch him. They had expected her to be a responsible, loving big sister. But she had been anything but. That fateful day, that beautiful bright afternoon; Paul playing outside, climbing trees; Amanda, eyes glued to her phone, not paying any attention to the fearless little boy as he climbed higher and higher until…

Amanda had broken her family. Why not break with them?

After some time, the red on the shadow's face was gone. Her mom pushed the shadow back into her father's body, and he slept deeply.

"Mom," she said. "I need to show you something."

She led her mother into her room. Alex's eyes darted to the ruined wall. Amanda walked to her bed, and slide a large, flat container out. It was filled with sharp daggers of glass. And then she turned back to her ruined wall. She shot her hand forward, and with a whoosh! she shot out two more daggers, and they hit the wall with a thunk! Then she contracted her hand, the daggers came hurtling back, stopping just inches from her. She didn't even flinch.

With barely a flick of her wrists, the glass fell to the ground. Her mother stared at her intently, only her new black eyes betrayed her pride. Amanda locked eyes with the woman standing before her.

"Next time you go out there," Amanda began. "I'm coming too."