Amy ran like she had never run before. She ran with single-minded focus, desperation of sorts driving her forward, propelling her through the streets. She had almost stopped and stumbled at the first few injured she had seen. Then she had steeled herself and moved forward. Tunnel-vision, only one goal in her mind. Get there.

A little part of herself felt like it was breaking. But the truth was Amy was already broken and if she stopped now, she'd fall apart.

Her path was direct, taking the least possible turns and the most straight runs. The streets' state didn't make it as clear cut as it seemed, but Amy didn't care. She waded through knee-high water barely slowing down, climbed chain-link fences and jumped over holes and obstructions with strength she shouldn't have in her limbs. She had to get there fast. She had to run quicker, jump higher, heal more.

She had basically no reserves to draw from though. Already her new skin was thin and almost translucent, threatening to break under too much stress. So she started cannibalizing. She left her reproductive system intact, even now hesitant to touch it. She had other places to draw from. It wasn't like she needed all of her digestive track. Actually, she didn't need it, period. And she wasn't using her kidneys and urinary system either. Or liver, or pancreas, the list went on. Any cell in her body could handle the functions of all those systems by itself. She took small pieces of all of them, fueling the mass to her skin, her muscles, her bones, her lungs, arteries and veins. She would replace the lost parts later. Right now, she had no choice.

She became faster, stronger, tougher.

The buildings became taller and cleaner as she moved south. She whized past increasing numbers of people getting out into the streets and ambulances as the pavement got better. But the amount of blood-stained glass grew too. So did the number of victims, injured stumbling into the streets looking for help. Screams, moans, wails, pleas. She didn't pay them attention, deliberately thinking only of the next step, the next place where she would put her foot, the next hurdle to overcome. She knew she would remember everything, down to every person who begged for her help, and that she would retain it forever. Something to assuage her guilty conscience.

No, she had to focus. She was almost there.

She could see the building now. She barely slowed down at all, only enough to not hit the inhabitants already down on the lobby. The noises of human pain increased with four walls to contain them. She galoped up the stairs, three steps at a time, twisting and turning to avoid collisions with the injured being dragged or dragging themselves downstairs. The landing she had hesitated in a couple of nights back was empty but for a middle-aged woman holding freely bleeding hands in a towel and standing on the doorstep of the other apartment.

Amy barely saw her. Her attention was on the familiar door, closed shut. "The Sabins? Are they okay?"

The woman, bleeding, scratched all over, turned doe-like large eyes towards her in shock. "I… I don't know..." She continued even as Amy turned her back to her. "The door is closed."

Amy did not hesitate in using her strength anymore. She smashed her shoulder against the door, but unlike the bookstore's this one was solid and sturdy. She hurt herself more than she managed anything. It didn't stop her. She punched and kicked the door near the doorknob, hitting the metal once or twice, but never stopping. She was strong and the door would give in.

A few people from the floors above and below gathered in the stairs, watching the girl throw herself at the door with a flurry of blows. There were dents in the wood already and cracks starting to appear. They were too scared to approach her and instead watched with disbelief and some horrid fascination. Amy didn't pay them attention. All of her focus was on the door and on her limbs, healing them before they made contact with the wood again. A man came from below with a fireman's axe, ready to take over her efforts.

Too late. With a yell she smashed her foot against the door and it broke through it, trapping her foot on the other side. Instead of pulling back, Amy pushed, using her legs and hands to clear a hole large enough for her to slip through. Splinters of wood raked her skin, but didn't draw blood, and ripped larger holes into her clothes. Behind her, someone was widening her entrance.

The carpet was soaked red.

There was a body in the hallway, where the father had collapsed on his way to the door. She ran up to him and touched him, for once wanting to use her sixth sense. He was still warm to the touch but in her mind she saw no hope. There were skin cells still alive beneath her fingers, but her awareness tapered off millimeters past the first layer. He was dead. A pile of organic matter, something she could use

No, no, no, no, no!

Amy backpedaled from the body, horrified. What had she been thinking?! Anybody else would feel sick, nauseated. She didn't feel any of those things. If anything, she felt hunger.

"Fuck! No. No, no,no!" She swore, shaking. She had to step away, refocus on something else. She had come here because she was worried. She had come here to check on her friend. She had come here to help. She stepped past the corpse and deeper into the apartment, very carefully avoiding touching or even looking at it.

a spray of blood a small explosion

There were three more bodies in the rooms she checked. Everytime she touched them, she felt no more than a few living cells, diminishing by the minute. And always, the feeling, the macabre temptation. She didn't linger in the rooms. Though she had long since gotten desensitized to the sight and smell of blood and human meat, tonight it repulsed her.

No, she repulsed herself.

Monster!

She checked Daniella's room last. She wasn't sure of why. There were memories there. Maybe it was because she already knew what she would find. Three bodies. They had died faster. Because they were smaller, maybe? There was a severed finger on the floor. An alarm clock had sent glass shards into Daniella's face. It looked gruesome. And she couldn't even console herself with the fact that they had died quickly. Choking on their own blood, bleeding out, massive punctures… Their rictus of pain were obvious.

She didn't loiter. She pushed her way past the couple of men that had followed her inside, and the ones that had stayed behind on the landing. Few tried to stop her and she ignored them all. She didn't need to stay. Everything was already engraved in her memory. Nothing would erase them. She walked on, vaguely heading in the direction of the bookstore, where she had left her backpack. She pointedly ignored the sounds and sights of suffering and death.

They were all dead. They had been for a while. There was nothing she could have done. Even if she still had her old healing powers, and it would have meant taking more time to reach them. It wasn't her fault.

"There was nothing I could do. Nothing." She repeated it to herself under her breath, trying to convince herself. What did she feel, actually? Relief that it didn't fall on her shoulders? Or anger at her sheer helplessness in the situation?

Amy didn't know. She just wished she could forget.

Daniella had been one of the few whom she could absolutely call 'friend'. She had not been afraid to approach the New Wave kids. She hadn't tried to befriend them out of self-interest. Even though they could never be as close as normal friends, unable to truly comprehend what being a celebrity cape meant, she was still… There. She was just nice. So rare a quality. Even after months of growing apart, Amy growing more and more tired and withdrawn as the pressure mounted, she had just welcomed her into her home.

It boggled the mind. Amy couldn't stop thinking about her and realized more and more how she hadn't known her. Hadn't appreciated her, so wrapped up in her own misery as she had been.

She spent the twilight hours lost in memory. Whatever she could scrounge up from the recesses of her mind that featured her friend. The night and morning spent in the apartment, every little movement, every tired but genuine smile, the smells and tastes. She tried to recapture the atmosphere. There had been worry and acceptance and happiness. They had been happy she was there, with them, that she was well. And she had been happy to be with them too, hadn't she?

How long had it been since she had felt that way around someone who wasn't her sister? And after Leviathan, even around Victoria?

But whenever something outside the bookstore made more noise, inevitably a siren or a cry of some sort, the memories changed and she was back to the blood-stained carpet. And once there, the guilt hit her. It was almost enough to wish back her old powers. She had passed so many people while running. So many who needed a helping hand. So many that would die without medical attention. She could see every face, hear every supplication. But she hadn't stopped. She had run away.

And something rose within her. Something peculiar and oddly familiar amidst the guilt, despair and images of a bloody city reflected in a carpet of wicked glass.

"Ah."

So this was hatred.

Naturally, the next morning the relief crews were much reduced. Too many injured, too many dead. Triple the work. A third of the workforce. Less than that, probably.

If there was an upside to the situation at all, Amy thought, it was that there was now too much food for too little people. It meant she could ask for a second helping. And a third. She wolfed down the bland breakfast provided, uncaring of the stares she was attracting. It was unavoidable. All of her clothes were bloodstained to some degree, even the ones that had been in her backpack, but that wasn't why she stood out. Everybody was a little bloodstained today. No, the matter was that only her clothes were damaged. Amy herself, Claire, wasn't.

No scratches or scars marred her skin. No bandages peeked from underneath clothes. If anything, she cut an even more imposing figure than before. Not hard, considering she was not imposing at all usually. A shy little thing. But the modifications she had made on herself during the night changed that. All of her major muscle groups were now noticeable. Not big but well-defined. So her arms looked like pure lean muscle in her t-shirt. And she didn't have any extra mass to disguise it; in layman's terms, no fat. An athlete-like look she hadn't had twenty-four hours before.

Also, she was hungry.

Not in the traditional sense. Amy didn't feel hunger anymore. But she felt, knew, the need for more nourishment, more nutrients, more building blocks. Her body had lost too much mass in Shatterbird's demented version of a concert and then Amy had deliberately cannibalized parts of it to improve others and burned massive amounts of energy to do both that and highly intensive physical activities. At this point, she was contemplating absorbing the airborne microbes touching her skin to get the biomass she needed to feel comfortable.

Daniella Sabin - carbohydrates proteins lipids nucleic acids
food
Monster

But she wasn't going to.

She wasn't going to consume things other than normal food. She wasn't going to eat living things. That would be one of her new rules. She needed new rules since her old ones didn't translate really well into her current powerset.

No killing with her powers.

No consuming anything but regular food.

New rules for new powers. Amy liked them. They were safe. They made people around her safer, they made Amy safer to be around.

"Claire!" A by now familiar voice interrupted her musings.

Danny Hebert had made it a point of eating his meals with her, or at least checking on her. It was nice of him, but not in an overbearing way. She turned in her seat to wave at him. Danny paused for a moment, looking at her. He'd noticed. Well, of course he had noticed! It was plain as day! Amy fervently prayed he wouldn't ask questions because she wouldn't be able to answer them.

He sat down next to her and eyed her critically. "You're not hurt."

Amy mumbled an affirmative. Danny himself clearly was. He moved cautiously and was probably in some pain. His arms and face had hospital staple adhesive coverings over a number of lacerations and what she presumed would be punctures. Most notably was the sutured cut that spanned the entirety of his ear.

He smiled, sensing her discomfort. "You took precautions?"

She felt herself relax. Danny wasn't accusing her of anything. It had been just worry. "Yeah. I got lucky tho." She explained. And without being able to help herself, she added. "Others not so much."

The older man glanced at the people around them with her. Like him, they were bandaged and treated, some more professionally than others. The most telling were the empty spaces. Only lightly injured were present because the worse cases couldn't come.

"Well…" He tried to continue, obviously searching for a topic that didn't relate to the attack but not finding much success. "I'm just glad you're not hurt." He sounded sincere, but there was a sad edge to his voice. He noticed her look. "I'm just thinking about Taylor." Oh yes, his daughter. The one 'Claire' reminded him of. "I saw her last night."

"That's good." Then she thought twice about it. "She's not hurt, right?"

He shook his head. "No. But she didn't stay either."

Amy wasn't quite sure what to say to that. If there was anything to say at all. She'd gathered he was single, so the loss had to be devastating. What could she say to a father who had his daughter taken away from him by the cruel winds of fate and his own actions? In hindsight, she didn't want to think too much about it. It resonated just a bit too much with her familial situation.

She settled for trying to distract the both of them with work. "So… What are we going to do today?"

It worked. He explained how they would have to clean the glass still stuck on windows and sweep the streets. They couldn't dump it in the beaches, so special dumping places were being organized. She should be careful while working in flooded streets, because the glass became nearly invisible while underwater but still cut as sharp as ever. They couldn't start draining the streets without removing most of it either, lest it end up in the sea. In short, there was much to do.

When the moment came for them to get to actual work, Danny left to organize said dumping sites and Amy gathered with everybody else. With the manpower constraints, they weren't going to split into large groups like before, focussing instead on one zone at the time. She listened attentively to the safety instructions, mostly repeats of what Danny had said, and the way they were going to go through each street, starting away from the beaches.

She was just getting the safety gloves and boots that Kurt was distributing when there was a shout behind her and the sounds of soft things hitting the ground. Like bodies. In the heightened awareness that came with adrenaline suddenly being dispensed, she clearly heard the soft rattling of chains and Kurt's hushed but poignant:

"Fuck."

A white figure, tall and ball-jointed, mocking the human form in its similarity. A blank face, devoid of lineaments, was turned towards her like it had eyes to stare with.

Mannequin.