When I woke, every part of me ached.

The pain had woken me up. My chest felt like a plane had been dropped on it and it hurt just to wheeze. My legs felt like hundreds of tiny knives were being continually jabbed into them by someone with super strength.

I licked the space above my mouth and tasted coppery blood crusted there. I felt like a character in a videogame who had just been thoroughly beaten up by another player and left in horizontal humiliation.

When I forced open my sticky eyes, Ali’s face swam into my vision. Her mouth was small with concern. Her long dark hair was slightly dishevelled. She wore a simple black crop-top which showed her smooth tan arms.

“You’re not wearing your burka,” I observed.

She granted me a sheepish smile. “Well, there’s not much point in that any more, is there?” Her Arabic accent had disappeared completely. She was Ali. And yet, she was also been Djinn. I knew it.

I was lying on a comfy leather sofa; she was kneeling next to me on the floor. I tried to sit up but a muscle in my back twanged in protest. “Ow!”

“Don’t try and move,” said Ali. She called over her shoulder “Tom, he’s awake!”

Mute’s own concerned face joined Ali’s above me.

{How is he doing?} he said in my mind, presumably in Ali’s as well.

“I’m fine!” I said. “Don’t talk about me in the third person!”

“You’re not fine,” Ali chastised me. “We’ve just spent the last couple of hours trying to work out whether we should be getting you professional medical attention.”

{Here, drink this,} Tom said. He held a glass of clear liquid to my mouth and tilted it back for me.

“Ugh!” It tasted like chemicals. Nasty chemicals. I nearly spat it out, but managed to gulp the rest of it down. “Ahhh--what was that?”

{Just some soluble painkillers, Weakling,} said Mute as he withdrew the glass. {I know you need something to take the edge off the pain.}

“You’ve got that right…” I lay my head back down on the sofa and rubbed my chest, hoping that the painkillers would work quickly.

Ali still watched me with concern.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“A Miracle Force safe-house in the Brookvale district of Sydney,” said Ali. “A furnished apartment. It’s where we would have stayed the night before leaving to go back to the US with Aurora. It’s also...it’s also where I teleported Abram and Aurora to during the fight with Viper, before I brought them back to the airport.”

That statement triggered some memories. Not pleasant ones. I winced at them.

“Explain,” I said to Ali. I was surprised at my own directness, but an explanation was needed.

And then, at last, she explained everything, kneeling next to me there on the floor.

Mute sat on a chair nearby and listened as well--though from his lack of complete and total surprise I surmised that he had heard this explanation already while I had been unconscious, if not before.

“So...let me get this straight,” I said when she had finished. “You’re telling me that Commander Abram and Dr Black were in cahoots with each other, and that Abram was secretly in charge of both Miracle Force and Viper?”

Ali nodded.

“Ok, that makes sense of some things at least. That explains why Viper were always in the same place as us or one step ahead of us--in my apartment the night I got recruited, on the train in Iran, and in the airport after we picked up Aurora... But…...why? Why did they engineer things like that?”

I looked at Mute. He was staring at Ali, hanging on her every word just like I was. This part was news to him too, after all. So he hadn’t been secretly in on this the whole time, like she had been.

Ali chewed her lip. “Well, to be honest, it’s pretty simple really: They were trying to manipulate events so that the Miracle Force initiative would be given more and more authority and jurisdiction. The plan was that as the Viper incidents escalated and Miracle Force defeated them, more and more money and resources were going to be given to Miracle Force. Then, once they had recruited enough metahumans, they were going to…”

“What?”

Ali gulped. “Instead of using us to defend it, they were going to turn us on the world. Like weapons. They were going to make us into the enforcers of their new world order. They were going to take over everything.”

I took a moment to digest this new information. “And you knew this?” I said, heat rising in my aching chest. “And you were just happily going along with it?”

Ali looked at the floor. “I...I was...for a while. You don’t know where I came from, what’s happened to me in my life, Gonzalo. I hated the West. When I found out what Abram and Dr Black were planning, I wanted to take over the world with them.”

I couldn’t believe it. “So you were on their side.” Maybe she’s still on their side. “What changed, then?”

She looked at me funny then, her head tilting to one side, frowning at me like I wasn’t real. I had only seen that look once before--when I had put my hand out to stop her falling over on the subway on the way to Sam’s party, without taking advantage of her. “You came along, Gonzalo,” she said eventually. “I went undercover to get close to you and...instead I got close to you. I fell for you. Against my better judgment...”

A likely story. I’ve fallen for this one before. “Ali…” I said. “I’m pretty pleased that I figured out that you were actually Djinn, but all the same, I’m finding this quite hard to believe…”

“I know it’s difficult,” she said, “but it’s the truth.”

“I--”

She lent down and kissed me.

“Hmm,” I said when she pulled away. “That helps. Let’s do that again.”

{Ahem.} That was Mute. It was odd, someone projecting the sound of themselves clearing their own throat into your mind.

“Sorry…” Ali said to him.

The lingering taste of her kiss, like perfumed dewdrops, was lovely on my lips. But those lips still had questions.

“Ok, I’ll accept that hanging out with me convinced you to stop hating the West. I guess I am pretty irresistible…” That had been a joke, but Ali and Tom still didn’t have to chuckle quite so loudly at it. “But I still don’t completely get it. Why did you have to go undercover with me, Ali?”

“Oh, that’s simple too,” she said right away. “The Commander--that’s what everyone calls him--the Commander has mind control powers, like you worked out. But, for some reason, they don’t work on you.”

“Huh?” I said.

{Huh?} Mute said.

“That’s right,” said Ali. “It must be part of your power, Gonzalo. Invulnerability, super strength and...resistance to mind control, apparently. He was furious when he found out.”

{When did he find out?} asked Mute.

“He had been having suspicions before, but he found out for sure on your mission to rescue me in Iran. Which of course was all a set-up as well. He told you to focus on retrieving me so that he could ensure that Miracle Force would look good, and you disobeyed him and managed to get Tom to shut him out of the mind link.”

“Woah. So that’s why he was so angry….” I remembered the sound of Abram shouting at me over the mindlink when I was on the train, the sense that he had been holding back a calm fury when he had debriefed me in his office after the mission.

{But why did he send you into Gonzalo’s school?} Mute asked. For a moment I had forgotten he was there again.

“He wanted to keep tabs on you,” said Ali. “He wanted to make sure that you hadn’t figured out what he was doing and didn’t suspect anything. And… And… I guess he wanted me to get close to you so that if you ever rebelled against him he would have some leverage to manipulate you with. But I didn’t think about that too much at the time. To be honest, it was useful enough him just having the insight into what was going through your head. He wanted to understand you and to try to figure out how it was that you were able to resist his powers. When you started sharing that document you were writing with me, it was like he had hit the jackpot…”

I shifted my weight awkwardly where I lay on the sofa. Now I felt naked. And betrayed, again. All that time not only had Ali been reading my document about Miracle Force, but Abram had as well...because of Ali. Ever since the first moment I had met her in school, she had been working undercover for Abram.

“But you joined the school before my powers manifested,” I thought out loud. “How did he know that I was going to develop powers?”

At that Ali went quiet.

I looked for her eyes, but they would not rise to meet me.

“What is it?” I said. “Come on Ali, tell us.”

{Oh my God,} said Mute.

“What? What is it?”

{I’ve just read her mind. I know how we got our powers.}

“Hey!” Ali turned to him in a flash of irritation. “Stay out of there! I didn’t give you permission to read my mind!”

Mute’s face dropped. {Sorry, I was just so curious and I...I couldn’t help myself…}

“What?” I pressed. “What is it? How did we get our powers?”

Tell him. Tell him, Ali.

“Tell me what?” I asked. “Why aren’t either of you listening to me?!”

At last Ali looked at me again. “Ok...I guess Tom will only tell you anyway… Gonzalo… It’s good that you’re lying down for this…”

“Stop stalling. Just tell me, Ali.”

“Gonzalo, our powers… None of us are accidents. The Commander and Dr Darkness--”

“Don’t call them by those stupid names,” I butted in. I wanted to know what she was going to say, but I couldn’t help myself. “Those are stupid comic book names. This is real. Call them by their real names.”

“I doubt they’re their real names at all,” said Ali. “But alright. Commander Abram and Dr Black, they… they… they genetically engineered us to have powers.

What?!

{It’s true,} said Tom, putting a hand over his mute mouth in shock. {I can see her memories of them telling her...It’s true, Gonzalo...}

Ali turned on him again. “I said get out of there!” she snapped.

{Sorry, sorry…}

She stood and shook a fist at him. “Don’t do that again or I’ll teleport you somewhere you don’t want to be!”

{Ok, ok… Sheesh...}

“Keep explaining,” I said to Ali, pulling her back into the conversation with me. “What do you mean they ‘genetically engineered’ us to have powers?” It did not make sense. It was ridiculous.

Ali sighed, and the red that had flared in her cheeks as she snapped at Mute faded a little. “Dr Black is a genius geneticist and neurosurgeon. He experimented on himself and accidentally mutated certain parts of his brain, activating some of its hidden potential--that’s how he gave himself his powers, although his sanity suffered a little in the process. When Abram, who was his friend, heard about it, he asked Dr Black to experiment on him too, giving him powers of autosuggestion.”

“Commanding.”

“That’s right, commanding.”

{Hence ‘The Commander’,} said Mute.

“Yes, Tom,” said Ali, with a hint of condescension.

“Ok,” I said, “so that’s where they got their powers from. But how do we come into the picture?” There was no way this explanation was finished.

“Well,” Ali went on, “once they discovered they could mutate genes to activate these powers, the two of them hatched a plan. They decided to use their powers to infiltrate hospitals and edit the genes of babies in order to give them select powers. The idea was that the powers would lie dormant until adolescence. Then, when they manifested, they would ‘recruit’ the powered teenagers to a fake UN organisation which Abram had set up. That was just a front though. Like I said, their plan was to eventually use all of us to take over the world. This was all about fifteen years ago. Gonzalo--are you ok?”

I had sat up on the sofa and was staring into space.

So that’s it, I thought. That’s where my powers came from.

It wasn’t a miracle. It wasn’t a supernatural accident.

It was two creepy, twisted middle aged men messing around with genetics in order to further their own wealth and power.

“Those bastards!” I shouted, making Ali and Tom jump. “So they did this to me!”

“I know it’s upsetting…” said Ali. “I kno--”

“You knew about this all along?”

“I… yes.” Her eyes kept finding the floor.

“Is she telling the truth, Tom?”

Mute licked his upper lip. {As far as I can work out, yes.}

Ali shot him another disapproving look, but she didn’t teleport him away.

“Hang on,” I said. Another thought had come to me. “So Dr Black isn’t a general practitioner at Mt Sinai hospital in New York?”

“No, of course not,” said Ali. “He and the Commander used their powers to set him up at your hospital just for the day after your Mom rang in to make an appointment. Why do you think he started dating your Mom? No real doctor would ever be allowed to do that. That was another way to get potential leverage with you too.”

I was physically shaking with anger. “Dickheads,” I said. I thought about Mom. God, this was going to be difficult for her to hear. And to understand. Had Abram used mind control on her too?

“Why didn’t they ‘recruit’ me straight away?” I said.

“They were waiting for you to reveal yourself publicly. That’s how they liked to work--as it meant the governments of the countries they worked in were more aware of the metahuman presence. Then Miracle Force could step in and help them out with it, without revealing that they were involved with it in the first place.”

{That’s what happened with me too,} said Tom thoughtfully. {It was only when I got discovered in London that Abram showed up to ‘recruit’ me. But why all the different countries?} asked Tom. {Why not just start with us all in one place?}

I wondered if, like me, he was still finding all of this a little difficult to swallow.

“It was meant to look like the genetic mutations were occurring naturally,” said Ali. “That way they would be spread out in different parts of the world. Also, by spreading out, they could get more governments on board with their programme. It was a way of extending their reach and power.”

“And you knew all this how?” I demanded of her. “They you let you in on all this--why?”

“I...I was the first of their experiments whose powers manifested, in Syria.”

“Not Iran?” Images of blood splashed against train windows zipped across my mind.

“Not Iran. Syria.” She hadn’t lied to me about that then, at least. Maybe I really could trust Ali. “I was the first of us to manifest. But by the time Abram and Black got to me I was so angry with the world because… because of what had happened to me in my life up until that point. that I hated it. Like I say, I wanted to take over the world with them. So when they saw that, they realised it was better to let me in on what they were doing. I ended up being far more effective working for them consciously then I ever could have been unconsciously.

I shook my head. “What was the train in Iran all about then?”

“They decided that it was time for me to join the ‘official’ Miracle Force team. They also wanted to consolidate their strength in Iran.”

“So wh--”

{Woah!} Mute said. We each looked at him. His eyebrows had nearly leapt off his face. {Sorry to interrupt, but I’m overhearing some very panicked thoughts… I think that we might be on the news…}

“What?” I said. “Quick, turn it on!”