I ran.
I ran and ran and ran.
I ran and leapt over a tree root breaking through the concrete ground of the warehouse district, catching myself just in time.
I ran through smoke and past buildings and around wrecked boats and over torn up pavement.
I ran from Firefly. I ran from Glory Girl.
I ran, and with each pump of my legs I pushed my anger, my rage, and my helplessness into the movements, into the suit, and into the ground.
I ran to run. I ran to escape. I ran to release.
They called Glory Girl a hero, but what I'd seen had been nothing short of insanity.
This was far beyond the time I'd sat on Madison's backpack and her pen had poked me in the thigh. This was a worse harm than even Sophia's petty shoves when I walked into her in the hallway. This was almost murder!
My vision blurred with betrayal.
Eventually, I stopped running. Not because I was tired—the suit took care of that—and not because I'd calmed down—my blood still simmered—but because I was so far away, had taken so many twists and turns, that I could hear nothing around me. No pursuers.
I was alone again, just like always.
The wind whistled between warehouses, the murmurings of an unhelpful ghost come to haunt me. In front of me, a phone handset dangled from a payphone box and clinked quietly against its metal casing.
I sagged, letting myself rest against the moist inner surface of the suit, a freefall into a liquid embrace, the closest thing I had to being hugged.
Changes creeped into the suit, measures I took to disguise myself and go home without being recognized: the blonde hair turned brown, heels grew an inch, facial structure and musculature changed until it was unrecognizable.
I walked up the payphone, first looking around to confirm that nobody else was around or watching. It was time to put things right. I didn't have any coins, but with my power, I would make do.
Grabbing the headset in my left hand and putting it up to my ear, I focused on the fingertips of my right hand. The outer flesh merged into a mitten. Waves of tissue made their way up my forearm and flowed into the mitten, elongating it into a tentacle that grew until it snaked into the coin slot.
The tendril of flesh went down a wide, thin passage, sliding over metal disks, squeezing past a coin gate, and infiltrating the coin box. I felt out the inner workings of the machine, mentally reinterpreting structural changes and limits to my power as a map of the inside.
I couldn't quite tell how the mechanism worked, but I didn't expect that to matter too much. I began to shape coins out of cartilage at various places in the machine, push at the mechanism with smaller branching tendrils, to pull at the flap that closed off the coin box. No dial tone, no effect on the sound coming from the headset.
Whatever it did to validate purchases was beyond my capabilities to detect, and I didn't know how to synthesize the materials necessary for coins.
I formed bone struts in the slight gap leading to the coin box. The flap began to open slowly.
Lower down, I reshaped the inside of the tentacle into a tube. It reached for coins and pulled at them with tiny cilia, larger functional tails, moving pads of keratin that tried to grab at coins with Van der Waals forces. I created small, lung-like structures in my outer right upper arm and used the suction they provided to create negative pressure to try to pull a few coins up past the flap.
The opening snapped closed, and no coins came through.
I could have painstakingly dissolved a coin or two, transported them molecule by molecule up to the sensor, and rebuilt them, but I didn't have the time for that, having already wasted many minutes here already. My mind played scenarios of Glory Girl flying in from above and pounding me into a paste, finally succeeding in killing me. With her sister's surveillance power and ability to find spots nobody else would even think of, it would be trivial for them to ensure that nobody ever found my body.
Ever smaller tendrils snaked out, permeating the machine and creating a web of connections, letting me trace out where individual wires went. Perhaps I could apply an electrical current somewhere.
Electrocytes formed at the ends of tentacles, specialized organs usually found in electric eels now literally at my fingertips. Applying currents to various parts of the machine did nothing more than generate a slight buzzing in the headset.
All this time, I was searching and mapping. Eventually I found what I needed: two separated terminals in the coin shoot.
Shards of bone grew around them, pushing them together and creating a bridge. It wasn't stable enough, so I recombined my electrical apparatus and upped the voltage, directing current at the join and pulsing it.
The metal welded together, and I heard a soft click in the payphone.
I extricated my suit from the machine. Osteoclasts broke down bone tissue, and minerals were reabsorbed. Tendrils of malleable, muscular flesh disentangled from wires and mechanisms. Fluid was reabsorbed, and the inside of the machine cleaned out, leaving no trace of my visit beyond the welded terminals.
My suit shucked back into itself and reformed to look human again.
As I dialed 911, I realized that payphones didn't charge for emergency calls.
"Hello?" I said into the phone.
It buzzed for a moment before a bored voice crackled to life. "911, where is your emergency?"
"I'm Ta—Membrane."
"Where is your emergency?" the voice repeated.
"Oh, I was just attacked, but, uh—"
"Where?"
"No, see, I'm a cape."
"Ma'am, we can't help you unless you—"
"Can you connect me to the Protectorate?"
"Are you under 18?"
"Why does it—Yes, yes, I am. Can I talk to the Protectorate?"
"The Protectorate? We can patch you through to the PRT hotline."
"Oh, uh, sure."
The line went dead for a moment. A click. A few beats of hold music.
"You've reached the PRT emergency hotline. Where is your emergency?"
"I'm Membrane, new independent hero?"
"Ma'am, is this an emergency?"
"I was just attacked by Glory Girl," I blurted out, fed up with this farce of a hotline.
There was a pause on the other end. "Could you repeat that?"
"I. Was. Just. Attacked. By. Glory. Girl," I said again, enunciating each word carefully.
"Where are you, ma'am?"
"I'm a cape."
"Are you under the age of 18?"
"Yes!"
"Are you presently in danger?"
"Probably not. But I was! I almost died!"
"I'll transfer you to a recruiter. They'll be able to help with your situation."
The line beeped twice and then swelled with pleasant hold music. Just as I started to get into it and bob my head, it cut out.
"Armsmaster here."
"Hello?" I said.
"Hello. This is Armsmaster."
"Uh."
"You've reached Armsmaster. Who is calling?"
I gathered my wits about me, pulling them into formation and hoping they wouldn't wander off again. I'd need every last one if I wanted to do this right. "I'm Membrane. New independent hero. I'm calling to report a parahuman assault."
The line was silent for a moment. "I'm very sorry to hear you had to go through that. Are you under 18?"
"Yes. I'm under 18," I snapped impatiently.
"The Wards program—"
"Look, I'm not—just can we talk about that later? I'd like to report this assault, and I have no idea if they're still chasing me."
"Are you in danger right now?"
"No, probably not, but who knows if this phone call drags on another four hours."
"Of course. Could you describe your attacker? Did you catch any identifying costume or facial features?"
"It was Glory Girl."
"...of New Wave?" I could just imagine the cynicism worming its way across his face, its instinct honed by long years in the field until it was a knife that sliced any and every hint of smile off his face.
"Yes. She attacked me in public at the Bredsea's by Arcadia."
"I'm very sorry to hear you had to go through that." His voice was monotone, a seeming formality, but if I could have seen his face, I think perhaps I would have understood: only a tone that gravelly could be the whetstone which had so sharpened his cynicism. His emotions had been sliced in twain, and in doubling had lost their essence. He was naught more than a servant of duty now.
"Yes, thank you. She tore through a lot of property too and might have hurt some bystanders, but most of all she tried to kill me. Multiple times."
"She attempted to murder you? Was it premeditated?"
"Yes, she did, and probably? It was a rush of her trying to beat my head into concrete and flying me through buildings. I don't have a directly defensive power. If I hadn't taken measures that she couldn't have known about then I'd be dead right now."
"I'm very sorry to hear—"
"Yes, you said. Look, do I need to do anything else to get her arrested? Like, this is insane. She shouldn't be on the streets, let alone a hero!" My voice was getting hysterical by the end, my face having morphed into a rictus of exasperation.
A quiet electrical hum took over the line, cutting off just as Armsmaster began speaking again. "You did survive."
"Barely! That doesn't even mean that much. This is a clear abuse of power and a violation of the social contract!"
"We talked to Glory Girl."
"Oh? Did she say she attacked me?"
"No. She didn't mention you at all. Claimed it was an altercation between her and the ABB. That Lung had gotten involved."
"Lies! Did you not even question any suspects or look for cell phone footage?"
"Glory Girl, despite her string of minor incidents and disciplinary history is well regarded in the community. The officers on site must have decided there was no point in looking further."
"Ask the waitress."
"The waitress?"
"At Bredsea's."
"We'll look into it. If what you say is true, Glory Girl will be off the streets and in our care by the end of the day. I'm very sorry to—"
"Thank you, thank you, thank you."
"Yes." A pause. "You're welcome. Is there any way to contact you?"
I didn't want to give out my personal phone in case they tracked me.
"I'll swing by in a few days to PRT HQ and see if you need me? If the Wards can help me escape this sort of thing in the future, I'd be interested, but currently I'm unconvinced based on how you let Glory Girl do this for so long."
"Noted. I look forward to pitching you the Wards program then."
The receiver clicked. I hung up.
I felt a little better. The PRT's obvious system corruption grated on me, but that would have to wait. At least one villain masquerading as a hero would be off the streets, at least temporarily.
Time to go home.
In front of me lay a single leatherbound suitcase, gleaming in the early morning light.
These were the spoils of my first night out. Though that had been two nights ago, I'd only remembered them now. I'd woken up early and—not knowing what it contained and wary of being harmed—donned my suit for protection.
I'd hauled the suitcase out of my closet and set it on my bed. Now I stood before it and couldn't look away.
A tendril of my suit slithered forward. It latched onto the lock and slipped around it. Acid dissolved metal, and bone plating grew in the latch to pry it open.
The case opened with a pop.
Velvet padding covered the inside, absorbing collisions and cushioning its cargo: a single vial of glimmering liquid that shimmered and sang in the night. It was mesmerizing, a glittering cornucopia of tremulous light.
Before I could hold it back, the suit tendril shot forward and shattered the glass in its comfortable velvet pillow.
The incandescent liquid spilled, splashing all over the case.
I frantically tried to sweep it up, but the flesh of my suit seemed to be acting almost beyond my control, nudging itself towards the fluid and absorbing it, cleaning it up by taking it in.
New, unrecognizable materials pulsed through flesh and shot up the tentacle, jumping from cell to structure to everything there was. The liquid was all gone, and my suit was convulsing, undergoing some sort of metamorphosis.
Wary from my experience nearly drowning in my own creation the other day, I tore at the back with my powers and pushed back with my hands, falling out of the thing with a wet thump.
It stayed standing, even as I dragged myself backwards away from it.
It thrummed, vibrated, and suddenly bent over, empty hands flapping at its head. It shrunk in on itself and suddenly went limp. I poked it with a foot, but nothing happened.
I poked it with a finger, letting my power reach out and course through it, feeling out the changes. It had been transformed, shifted in ways I didn't quite understand.
The DNA had split and tangled, branching off from nucleotides into complicated self-folding chains of unrecognizable acids, the old trihelical structure unzipped into fractals and chaotic swirls. I could only catch glimpses of each bit as structures remade themselves too fast to follow. The suit's biological processing had gone into overdrive, phagocytes repurposed into larger scale processes that consumed and remade themselves constantly, an ouroboric cycle of self-expression.
The whole assemblage seemed to be pulling in every source of energy it could to fuel this orgy of recreation.
It was slowly moving from loose collection of cells held together by sheer force of will to a tightly controlled civilization of microorganisms, the change sweeping across like a billboard of individually rotating squares all flipping in a wave from one side to the other. As the new paradigm reached each cell, the cell stuttered for a moment, changed, and fell down a new post-evolutionary path.
I looked up to see my alarm clock spelling out the time in big red numerals. It was way too late.
The suit went in my backpack. It would have to undertake its journey alone. I threw on some clothes and ran downstairs to catch the bus. I didn't even have time to breakfast.
Dad should have called me downstair ages ago, but he hadn't. His car was long gone, leaving almost not trace of his morning, not even a cold breakfast left for me in his wake.
Perhaps he stood at the bottom of the stairs, thinking about helping his daughter get to school on time, and eventually realized he didn't have the courage to break through the very walls of non-interaction he'd built up over years of neglect.
I didn't think this was the whole story. As his failures piled up, multiplied, and became multi-disciplinary, it became harder and harder to explain it all away with mere incompetence.
He was self-absorbed to degree that had doomed our family and my relationship with him. He'd let himself get lost in his thoughts, wandering empty labyrinthine corridors in search of a woman long dead. He'd been lost of years, unable to live in the present, unable to open his eyes and see what was right in front of him, unable to notice that I needed him now more than ever.
He barely tried to tread water, and he never tried to push me towards land.
He drowned. He drowned in his memories. He drowned in his abandoned responsibilities. He drowned in his tears. He drowned in the two dollar beers he brought home every day, sitting on the couch wallowing in misery and self-hate and failure, discarding bottle after bottle by the couch and not even bothering to take them out before the flies began to circle.
He was the only father I had.
And I had to make do, seize my own independence and take care of myself.
I was stuck with a man who barely seemed able to remember who I was, who parroted the same pet name like a sinking ship sending the same signal over and over. All I could do was work around him: hide my powers, sign my own school truancy forms, ignore his ignorance-driven pleadings about cell phones and obtain my own.
My greatest fear was that I was just another iteration of the same thing. I didn't want his broken brain, his failing morals, or his useless self-hate. I spent hours looking in the mirror, tracing my hair, my posture, my face, and trying to see my mother in each of them. She was the platonic ideal, marred only by her understandable decision to drive into traffic to finally escape my father's soul-sucking presence.
I jumped over the front step and ran off to the bus stop.
Winslow High. A bastion of institutionalized violence. A place where a bully could be a bully and face no consequences. Where grades mattered more to transfer paperwork than the demons one was fleeing from.
I could have been a refugee, but instead I was a victim, a prisoner, trapped by my own former best friend and a corrupt administration that not only allowed her behavior but seemed to encourage it.
Anger and hate boiled under my skin, but I kept it at bay. People walked around, and sometimes it was hard to resist reaching out and—
Brains are so fragile, and my power was a scalpel, that just one moment of heightened emotion could send slashing down. But I wouldn't. I knew it was wrong. Not even in a moment of panic would I let myself let loose. Not even then would I let my abilities lash out and twist and turn and multiply flesh over and over again, perverting it into some facsimile of humanity, a fractal monster growing ever larger until it had faces and feet and eyes everywhere, hundreds of arms reaching out to grab more victims and fuel its growth.
In the halls, people gave me a wide berth.
The bullied never said much directly to me, but I knew they spread rumors. It was obvious in the way people looked at me, in the way they turned away when I stared at them. I could have let myself be dragged into a whisper war, but I was above that.
I was an iconoclast, a singular island in a sea of mediocrity, forced to suffer in this school of shame and terrible awfulness. I didn't speak to any of the other students, and perhaps that was for the best. When they spoke, their mouths filled with trite expressions. Phrases spilled out, looped in on themselves, repeated over and over and over. Gossip. Celebrity. Nonsense. Bland, empty sentences. They lived and breathed them, spewing words as if they could keep their failures and mediocrity at bay.
In class, I kept a hand in my backpack, feeling that representative of my other life squishing and squirming around as I examined its structure and tweaked it. I tried to find the case that it'd absorbed, tried to map out the traces of changes that had occurred earlier.
"Taylor!" Mr. Gladly called on me. He asked some inane question about Australian politics.
Why would I care? Why would it matter?
History may repeat itself, but geography didn't. To let the tyranny of place choke us and not even discuss that very process would have been a betrayal of the mentor-student relationship—if Gladly had been anything approaching a mentor. He was a government drone, grasping at sunglasses he no longer wore, fingers twitching into in-group gestures but never quite making it there.
Yet, for these ninety minutes, he was my slave master. For this hour and a half, he had power over me, power that I gave him. A social contract that came with stipulations and small text. Non-violence in return for compliance and a million little pieces of busywork. A deal not with the devil but with an excitable bureaucrat.
Classes came and went.
I wasn't cool enough for Gladly, organized enough for Knott, on the same page as Quinlan. Where they wanted steps delineated in order, every little neural firing mapped into text.
My mind made leaps and twirls that they couldn't even imagine, and they still demanded I show my work. They wanted to cut me up, dissect me, slice my brain into micrometer thin slivers and watch as every electrical impulse slowed down to a crawl.
They didn't recognize my talent or notice my struggle, writing me off as a nuisance. Every complaint was brushed off as if it were the ravings of a lunatic. They rejected the fact that grades were a poor reflection of ability. They couldn't see that busywork drags us down like an anchor on a death barge, thrown over and sunk in the face of any opposition, any difference, any true power.
I was a threat, and they wanted to bring me down to the level of everyone else and pull me under, watch me drown in the mollasses of the masses.
The bell rang, and I reluctantly pulled my hand away from my creation and packed up. Leaving class, I ran into Emma.
I was tired of being stepped all over. I was tired of being bullied. I'd thought that turning to caping would give me a release, but out there, I'd just found more of the same. Glory Girl had been just another bully willing to abuse her power and use me as a chew toy, even as she exulted in the applause of the very same people she endangered.
Perhaps it was time for that to change.
Calling Armsmaster had led to a small success. Where I'd expected to be slapped down yet again, I'd instead been given assurances. Small ones, and ones I couldn't confirm for a while, but nevertheless more than I'd ever had before.
I was emboldened. I didn't have to take this lying down.
Before Emma had a chance to even notice me, I walked right up to her. "Hello, Emma," I said.
"Yes, Hebert?" She glanced up at me, and I used the distraction to slide right in front of her.
"I used to be your best friend."
"Yeah... I've got class," she said and tried to slip past me. I blocked her way.
"It's lunchtime, Emma. I know what you're doing."
She smiled, but it was more of a grimace. I could see it in the lines of her face, the disdain, the distaste. What happened to my old friend?
"Are you going to go spread more rumors about me?"
She sighed.
That was as much confirmation as anything.
I remembered the old days, when we'd play capes and robbers, dressing up our toys in elaborate outfits, acting out fantasies of power, of our wills crushing tiny worlds into their proper shapes.
She'd been the perfect follower, enamored by my charms and pulled into my orbit. She'd seen my cunning and my potential, and she'd latched onto it.
What had caused us to drift apart so much? What had caused her to unmoor from me, and float off, only to heap abuse back my way, whisper behind my back, turn people against me, make this school even more of a prison?
Perhaps I could save it. Perhaps we could go back to the way things were meant to be.
"Emma, we can still turn this around."
She didn't look up at me, staring off into the distance. I could feel the guilt radiate off her, the sheer waves of failure and distaste.
What was holding her there, so far from my friendship? I'd just opened up my arms to her, and she'd done nothing.
"I see," I said.
"Hebert, could you please get out—"
"No, Emma. I'm done with your shit."
"Just—"
"No."
I wouldn't stand for this sort of bullying, but I also wouldn't push back. The dark image rose in my mind again, a warning that I had to hold back. That I had to tiptoe around the bugs at school to avoid stepping on them. It would have been so easy to just go Prince of Darkness on the school and let loose an insidious creeping influence on the school, possessing students one by one, a chain of malice and revenge and gory explosions into cockroaches.
I was better than that. I was above that sort of abuse. I would take the bullying and put on a brave face.
But sometimes it was hard.
When Emma played these emotional games, digging into my sides with pointed words, empty stares, and strategic silences. She wanted to get a rise out of me, to hold back just long enough that I'd build up a full head of steam so that she could use that as some pretense to attack.
I couldn't allow it. I had to stay calm.
A friend of hers butted in. "Hey, Emma, you wanna come—"
I couldn't allow this. "Excuse me," I said. "I'm speaking to Emma here."
"Well, she wanted—"
"Yes, but right now we're in the middle of a discussion. There's no need to be so rude," I said sweetly.
She wilted. "I just—"
"No." I frowned at the friend as she sidled up next to me.
Emma spoke up again. "I do need to go." She slipped to the side, using her friend as a shield to stop me from keeping her here or even seeing where she was going.
Before I could get my bearings and follow her, she'd already gotten lost in the crowd.
"Leave her alone," her friend told me, and walked off in a different direction. As if I wasn't the victim here. It made my blood boil.
Streams of students moved like pheromone-driven ants, mindless drones just looking for that next stash of sugar. I put my head down and dove into them, letting them guide me to the lunchroom.
I passed by a security guard talking on his radio, making sure to look away so he wouldn't have any excuse to stop me. He paid me no heed.
There was a table in the corner that was always available, so I slunk over to it and sat down.
There'd been no lasagna left over, so I'd brought a pita wrap. It was crunchy, burnt, and yet somehow still soggy. Islands of blackened flatbread swam in a sea of flaky pita bread. Dad hadn't been grocery shopping, so there was no meat to distract from the scabrous dough. I'd doubled up on lettuce to compensate, using every part of the last romaine heart in the fridge, leaving me biting into a moist, bitter meal.
All was saved by perfect, juicy cubes of tomato.
I savored the meal even as I looked around my empty table and filled the six empty seats with imaginary companions.
Someone to sit next to me. We'd trade foods, embarking on covert sallies into each other's territory to pick off stranded french fries. Grins and crooked elbows would serve as defense, hostilities ceasing as we signed ceasefire treaties with hugs and laughter.
When in a more serious mood, I'd talk to the girl across from me. We'd debate, sometimes about important issues facing the world—issues that I'd one day have to shoulder—sometimes about trivialities, inane calculations and weekend plans. Arguments would escalate, but they wouldn't ever feel hurtful or fill with subtle pokes and jabs meant only to tear me down.
The other three seats could round out the group. Orbiters to throw in an occasional thought, to fetch nice things, and gives us a laser tag team to die for. A family of my own, with none of the pain and negligence of the one I was born and trapped into.
I thought back to the excitement of the other night, to the brief moments of rapport I'd felt interacting with Firefly. She'd actually listened instead of running away at the first possible moment. We'd managed to talk for hours before the PRT arrived to take away the criminals I'd taken down.
I almost wanted to hope that there was still a chance. Maybe Glory Girl would be taken away, and I could get Firefly to see the light, peel her off and finally have a friend again.
My mind continued swirling down that lonely drain until I heard a familiar voice raised in protest at the entrance of the cafeteria. I looked over to see Firefly arguing with the security guard.
I plunged a hand into my bag, feeling the still somewhat convulsing material of my suit. It had calmed down a bit, the structure having settled a bit. I'd have to examine it later.
For now, I split a ball of moist flesh off and a bit split off and held it under the table, reforming it to mimic a bat's ear. I tried to position it to get a better read on what Firefly and the guard were saying. I snaked a rope of flesh up to my ear and created a tiny biological speaker.
"—to pick someone up," Firefly was saying to the security guard.
"What, another cape?" the guard asked. I ducked and kept my face hidden, pretending to be engrossed in my imaginary conversations and food.
"No, no, nothing like that. Just someone relevant to an ongoing investigation," she mumbled out, managing to not stumble too much over any of her words.
"Alright, sure. Whatever."
I looked up to see her rushing over to me, looking wild-eyed, hair somehow even more frazzled than before. It seemed to whip and billow and tangle around her shoulders. Corkscrews of frizz shot off in every direction, nauseatingly tangled and unkempt.
Her baggy clothes mirrored mine, and in the light of day I felt a sort of kinship that I hadn't felt in a long time.
She even had her hoodie strategically positioned so that she could easily pull it up and over her face. She gave off a vibe of dour disinterest, her whole ensemble rubbing the world's face in its failures regarding her, like a dog owner rubbing their pet's face in shit in a futile attempt to teach it a lesson.
She stopped in front of me, barely looking down at my food. Her half-lidded, asymmetric eyes searched for something that she clearly needed. I couldn't tell if this was the hungry look of an addict or that of a scientist who'd finally had their eureka moment. Was I about to become her supplier or her experiment? I didn't want either. I wanted nothing to do with her, dreams of kinship aside.
She reigned in her impulses for a moment and looked at me.
I stared back impassively. "Yes?" I spat out, jaw clenched.
"Is it—" she began.
"What?" I shot back.
"No, the—I mean, uh, my sister." Her lopsided mouth worked overtime to get the words out.
"The one who tried to kill me?" I snarled.
"Look, she's in trouble. The Protectorate—"
"I don't care. I don't want to hear it," I retorted.
"Please. We need someone to testify—"
"Why are you here, Firefly?" I hissed. The cafeteria seemed just a little quieter than it had before. "Why? Just to show that you know more than my face? That you know where I go to school? That you can track me down this easily?"
She teetered backwards, looking like she was having trouble balancing her acne-ridden face on her body. "It's the suit."
"You can detect it? I thought you had a limited range? Or did you come by Winslow just to look for it?" I parried.
"No! Well, yes. I needed to—to see it again.
I still had a hand in my bag, feeling the contortions pick up. As Firefly came closer, it began to convulse harder.
She was edging closer to the bag, all thoughts of her sister forgotten now that she was so close to my creation. She looked enthralled, utterly captivated, a mortal reaching for ambrosia. I swept my bag to the side, away from her greedy hands.
A massive explosion shook the school. Bits of plaster and dust rained down, polluting my pita wrap and messing up my hair.
Everyone panicked.