After two days of the T trial, Claire finally had enough proof to inform Alice of her strange glowing blue eyes. By that time, Alice had developed tinittus from T, and her shaking hands got a bit more severe.
"So, remember when I got that picture of you yesterday, Princess?" Claire held up her phone as Alice nodded.
"You scared the shit out of me when you did." Alice pouted.
"Well, you kinda have another thing from T." Claire turned her phone around to showcase the instant that she'd captured Alice's strange glowing blue eyes.
Alice stared at the unmodified image for several seconds, coming to terms with it. "That's... oddly sexy. Creepy as fuck, but very sexy."
"I've only really seen it a few times. Mostly when you're startled or pissed off about Dragon." Claire explained. "But yes, it is very creepy and sexy at the same time."
"You think it's permanent?" Alice raised an eyebrow, trying to figure out if it was able to be just a permanent thing, not just the fact of controlling it.
"I'm a mechanic, not a scientist." Claire shook her head slightly. "Should we report this to that scientist guy you report symptoms to?"
"Not yet..." Alice shook her head. "We need more instances. He likes his proof."
"So... I get to take more pictures of you?" Claire held up her phone hopefully, a glint in her eyes. Alice notoriously hated having her picture taken.
"NO!" Alice immediately snatched the phone out of her hands.
When Alice came home that evening, she found Calvin and her mother sitting intimately close together in the living room, clearly having just stopped kissing each other when they caught the sound of her walking in the door, which of course, pissed her mother off.
"Where were you?!" She demanded, livid at being interrupted.
"Three guesses." Alice replied smartly. There was literally only three places she ever went on her own; school, work or Chris and Claire's. The only other reason she left the house was errands for her mother.
"Don't you dare take that tone with me!" Her mother stood up and marched across the living room towards Alice, who was still in the process of taking her shoes off.
"Where else do I even go? Stop and think for a second, or are your damn hormones still fogging up your brain?" Alice sneered at her mother, very slightly baring her teeth.
Her mother swung her arm to strike Alice, but instead of an echoing slap, there was a thud as her arm was effortlessly restrained against the wall by Alice's suddenly raised forearm.
"Hormones it is." Alice replied quietly. "By the way, I was with my partners, enjoying a day off from class and work." She leaned in close and whispered quietly. "Next time, try not to make your swing so wide, makes it easier to block."
With that, she released her mother's arm and strode downstairs, a rare, triumphant smirk tugging at her lips.
"I may be wrong, but are her eyes... blue?" Calvin stood up to approach Alice's seething mother, his voice low and full of concern.
"No, that's absurd! She has my eyes, they're green!"
Alice rubbed her forehead, thinking hard. She'd misplaced the spare batteries for her wireless mouse and couldn't remember where the fuck she last saw them either.
Turning on her heel, she scanned her small bedroom with a careful eye, but found nothing. She checked the drawer of her desk, not there either.
She left her room and checked the few other places in her apartment that the pack of batteries could possibly be located, then let out a slightly frustrated sound. She was getting needlessly anxious, placing the heels of her hands just above her eyebrows as she spun around once again, only to nearly fall backwards onto her ass in panic.
She found the batteries.
"So, there they were, just... floating behind me. I-I-I... don't know what's going on, it scared me so much." Alice was pacing back and forth in a state of near-panic, holding her cell phone to her ear as she held the batteries in her other hand, staring at them in shock.
"No strings, no bullshit?" Claire hummed in thought. "Fuck, that's some sketchy shit. The brat didn't do it, for sure. This is far above her - almost literally, the little shit."
"It was so convenient too, like, one second I can't find them, next thing I know, they're floating behind me, just like 'Yo, you miss me?' I mean, fuck, it's like I'm psionic or Telekinetic or some shit."
"Tele-what now?" Claire was confused by the unfamiliar terms.
"Oh, um... able to move and use objects with the power of your mind. It's a fantasy magic kinda thing. Like a magic spell... sort of." Alice explained after a moment of centering herself from her erratic pacing. She was getting a bit dizzy, but couldn't bring herself to sit back down after the shock with the incident.
"Sounds like a superpower to me..." Claire commented, to which Alice smiled.
"Yeah, it can be." Alice replied before placing the heel of her hand against her forehead, an odd throbbing beginning to pound against her skull. "I'm gonna need to let you go, I suddenly have a massive headache. Gonna have a nap, see if that'll help."
"Alright, get yourself some water beforehand, okay?" Claire requested, so Alice did just that, downing it and saying goodbye before willing herself to fall face first onto her bed.
She was asleep in minutes. When she woke up later, her head wasn't throbbing as badly, so she had more water in the hopes that it would help.
"ALICE!"
"Oh fuck, here we go..." Alice grumbled as her mother called down the staircase. She marched up the stairs to find her mother standing at the top with Calvin look curiously over her shoulder. "What?"
"Watch Sherry while we're out." Her mother barked the order before turning on her heel to leave, but Alice wasn't having any part of this.
"No."
"Excuse... me?" Her mother turned around again, very slowly, her face utterly livid. "What did you just say to me?"
"Back to preschool, are we? I fucking said no." Alice stood her ground, scowling. "How many god damn years is it going to take you to realize that Sherry's not a baby and can take care of herself?"
"Don't you dare take that tone with..."
"I'll take whatever fucking tone I please, woman." Alice's entire presence changed in that split second. Instead of the quiet, timid body language they were used to, she was projecting confidence, dominance and authority, and she even seemed to psychologically tower over them. "So teach your bratty little child how to cook some Mac & Cheese, clean up after herself and park her ass in front of the TV with Netflix."
"Come now, love, there's no need for that..." Calvin seemed to be trying to put a stop to their arguments, since this was clearly something new for them to fight so much.
"Fuck off, Calvin. You're just her comfort blanket because my father - her husband - decided that incest is win-cest, so now he's serving eleven years behind bars. You'd best back off, Limey."
Calvin turned to her mother, aghast. "Is this true?" He asked quietly, to which Alice laughed.
"Of course it is, dumbass! Want the juicy details, or do you not have enough booze in your system to handle that right now?"
Now it was her mother's turn to get pissed off. "What did yo just say?"
"Let's just say I have connections you never knew existed." Alice smirked cockily at her mother before redirecting her gaze towards Calvin. "He's an alcoholic."