"Aha! He's dead! I was right!" Ember proclaimed, waving a hand at the corpse on the ground.

"Aight, quit screwing around, I know you are not dead." Alexa growled at the ghost. "You're spooking and misleading my minions and not being a very polite house host."

The ghost flickered, its features changing. Now that Martin managed to relax himself by receiving some calm visuals from Cottie's steady mind he saw that the face of the ghost seemed to be a fluid, indeterminate thing, patterns of constantly moving hexagons shifting around. One minute the doctor was a 90 year old grandfather, the next a 19 year old woman, then a 30 year old man, then suddenly a chair with wings. This was a very freaky ghost, or more specifically a very odd holographic projection.

"Welcome to the Saint Mary installation, Subject 13. Welcome to Captania, Charles Snippy. Go away, there is nothing here but piles of divorced buses. Hello kitten." The holographic person spoke, voice shifting along with the facial features.

Ember, not seeing anything like a defense system or a trap slowly made her way towards the skeleton on the floor.

"Don't mind the floor intern. Burning up on the job is part of the job." Alexa commented on the state of the dead body.

Martin glanced at Alexa. He started to understand why she was so random. Being raised by this… thing would drive anyone a little crazy.

"Look at my adorable minions, daddy!" Alexa yelled. "Aren't they extra adorkable? How do you rate them?"

"Congratulations on making it this far. Impressive. You took too long. You failed. Happy birthday." The indeterminate hologram said in an array of voices and accents.

[Is this a recording?] Cottie asked. [He doesn't seem to be acknowledging us. Why are the answers so... random?]

"Daddums isn't a recording. He just has social anxiety!" Alexa smiled. She pretended to hug the shifting hologram.

[He definitely seems like a broken recording.] Martin replied. He had already felt bad about Alexa's situation and this was only making it worse.

"You guys are being kinda mean." Alexa turned around and looked at her friends.

[Why is he so indeterminate…] Ember pondered. She recollected the prognosticator reports her copies read about the doctor. Most of them were titled - no determinate information on current and future activities. "Holy shit! This whole setup is how he's been avoiding the Superstate future seers!" She finally concluded.

"I have many enemies." The holographic spoke. "If I am not here that means the giant snails have come for me. Everyone loves me, as I have no enemies. I am a pretty wildflower. Do not pick me."

"You clever, indeterminate bastard." Ember looked at the holographic. "Are you dead?"

"I am neither dead nor alive. I am the corpse on the floor. I am a drunk sailor on the Titanic. I am a pancake. I am Doctor Terranova. I am a beehive in a suit shaped like a man." The ever-changing holographic replied. For a second it shifted into a cat in a suit, then the Eiffel tower that was wearing a beard.

"Daddums is a smooth schrodinger's cat." Alexa purred. She found herself a very dusty, swiveling office chair and was now twirling on it. "Make yourselves at home, guys! House party camp in the cathedral!"

"Sneaky bugger." Ember muttered. "Who's that on the floor?"

"A super idiot who asked too many questions. Subject 12. Nobody important. A waste of space. She worked very hard. He failed to meet my expectations. Ninety four chicken wings in a bucket."

"Let me guess, subjects 1-11 also failed to meet these expectations?" The ex-hero inquired.

"Mostly butter. Most subjects have. Everything is important. I am hungry for Campbell's chicken soup." The holographic thing replied.

"How do the subjects relate to you?" She pressed on.

"My cactus needs to be watered today. They don’t. They are my test subjects. Nothing of value."

"The brain jars all over?"

"Wholesome, best friends. A shield. Test subjects. Useless junk. Zip me up and mail me to the moon."

[Shit. This is some dark stuff.] Martin came over to Alexa and sat next on the floor next to her. Cottie followed.

Ember pointed at herself. “Me?”

The hologram flickered, shifting. “You’re a useless waste of space. You’re a device of great power. You’re a space whale inside of a shoe on planet Mercury.”

“That's my minion number 3! Dimmy! She’s my greatest arch-nemesis! I made her my minion to teach her a lesson in humility.” Alexa announced.

[Not a recording.] Ember thought. [Artificial Intelligence, maybe? Or the actual doctor communicating from somewhere else? Damn clever, indeterminite fuck. Most supervillains had a very specific identity, a costume, minions, a theme and this made them all easy to track by the SCA probability calculators. There was only one reason why someone would hide from the prognosticators like this - they wanted to attack the Superstate!]

Ember glanced at Alexa. The ex-hero’s brain was crammed full of superstate exams, papers and reports about how villains operated. She tried to analyse the situation using what she knew. [Subject 13. A typical supervillain move was to dehumanise their creations and victims. Give them numbers. Call them subjects. Use them as human tests, turn them into living weapons and defence systems.]

Alexa looked back at her and stopped spinning. “Hey! I’m important! Thirteen is a handsome, spooky, halloween number! Building managers fear it! Elevators ignore it! Nobody wants to live on the 13th floor or buy apartment number 13. See? Daddums loves me the most!”

[You’re a weapon. A sleeper agent, maybe? A designed super, meant to bring down the Superstate!] Ember stared at Alexa with wide eyes. [Installation Saint Mary. It means there are others. Of course. Yorkshire! The Yorkshire installation must have activated its weapon and become a threat to the stability of the ring somehow. That’s why I destroyed it as an Admiral. There must be other sleeper cell subjects all over the world like Alexa. Genetically engineered supers? Clones? Bred, raised, coordinated, waiting to strike. A thousand slow fuses, burning over decades, hidden, diluted by utter nonsense. Incalculable. Unpredictable.]

[That’s a lot of determinate conclusions, Dimmy. Good thing we have this mental communion eh? Had you spoken them out loud I’d probably have to kill you or something.] Alexa laughed in her head.

[I have to stop you before you activate! What is your power? Is it some kind of a super-destabilizer? The ability to destroy anything!?] Ember yelled in her head, glaring at Alexa.

[Mmm… Demolition-man. That’s a pretty sweet power if you ask me.] Alexa visualised a 90’s movie poster.

[You’ve demolished me, my brother, even the Equalizer. It all fits!] Ember thought, hyperventilating. [Next you’re going to turn your attention to Titanomachy and kaboom! Everyone dies!]

[I think you forgot one important factor.] Alexa yawned.

[What?!]

[You’re still alive. Just because you’re socially dead, you can’t go crying around that you’re physically dead. Dead people don’t cry.]

[Alexa is a sleeper superweapon that’s going to what? Socially destroy the Superstate? She’s going to shame thousands of supers into… what? Turning off the power? They’ll crash the station into the planet because they’re... super embarrassed? This is a lot of jumping to conclusions, Ember.] Martin injected himself into their conversation.

[She did it to me! She can do it to anyone!] Ember thought-yelled. [It has to be a power! She needs to be stopped before she turns off all of the supers!]

[Are you going to turn off all of the supers?] Cottie asked Alexa.

[Uhh.. are they going to get up in my face and attempt to kill me like Dimmy did?] Alexa scratched her head.

[That sounds like a yes! She confesses!] Ember accused.

[Em! Cottie! This is insane. She can’t turn off all of the Supers!] Martin glanced at Alexa. [Can you?]

[Noppers. If I could do that I’d be the most powerful supervillain in the world. Weeeeee!] Alexa spun on her chair in the other direction.

Ember looked at Alexa. Was the 14 year old girl spinning on the dusty office chair the most powerful super in the world? She didn't seem like one. She thought of Nonpareil. Powerful supers weren't exactly human. They were more akin to an unstoppable idea. Alexa seemed as human as they come. Maybe that was her power? She needed more information. Ember turned back to the hologram.

“Who is Subject 13?”

“My clone. My mother from the future. An experiment gone right and wrong. Me, but a thousand years older. My sister. A robot wearing too many hats. A weapon. My only fresh cookie. Why should I tell you anything?”

Ember rubbed her head, not knowing which answer was real. They all seemed equally nonsensical or valid. "What is Subject 13's purpose?"

"To save everyone or destroy the world or do nothing of value."

Ember choked for a second, picking the possible truth from lies.

"To save the world from what?"

"From fools and monsters and heroes like yourself. Ember Kilborne. Resonance. Waste of space. A melon. James Peacherson Fox. I have been watching and not watching you and eating 9863 sandwiches."

“How the hell do you know my identity?!”

“Twenty seven keyboards used by a thousand monkeys writing a script for a hit-movie. Her shiny bracelet. A sentient two by four plywood from the Andromeda Galaxy.”

Ember choked again. The holographic bastard was going for her jugular. He knew her. He had been watching her from Alexa’s dark bracelet all this time, paying attention, learning, judging.

“Supers like you are what’s wrong and what’s not wrong with the world. When they don’t come and come together they become an even bigger, more dangerous, a smaller, less important issue. I will solve and won’t solve it. I would like some milk and eggs today. The fridge is empty again.”

Ember started to back away from the hologram, feeling that her deduction rollercoaster drawn from selected answers of the supervillain was reaching some sort of an apex. The doctor was creating subjects like Alexa to stop supers. All of the supers. It was impossible, insane, but this was the only conclusion that made sense in Embers’ mind. How many installations? How many test subjects? The ex-hero’s head spun as she imagined an army of Alexas beset upon the world, turning off supers one by one like some kind of a plague of locusts.

The silver-haired girl giggled from her chair at Ember’s frantic contemplations. [Do you really think there can be more of me? I have sisters, brothers, cousins somewhere? A big, happy family?] Alexa’s eyes lit up.

Ember froze. There were no reports about Alexa from the prognosticators, that Ember was allowed to access. How had she escaped the attention of the probability calculators? She was clearly affecting the world! Or was she? Was it Alexa’s fault that she lost her powers or… her own? Ember gulped. Alexa was dismantling people in an entirely new, unprecedented way. They were the ones making all the decisions. She had made the decision to go after Alexa. She wanted to protect her brother. She acted without thinking again and again, relying on her power rather than on her intelligence. Her power had controlled her, ruled her, guided her until it was extinguished. Fuck!

[Yep. Congrats. Everything you’ve done is your own fault. I’ve clearly warned you.]

[You’re just a test subject, a tool for this villain! He doesn’t care for you!] Ember shot back.

[Nah.] Alexa shrugged. [I know daddums loves me very much. The most in fact. I’m his real daughter, contrary to what you might think, Dimmy. He just can’t show it, can’t call me by name or the prognosticators will come down from their ivory tower and take me away.]

[How did you communicate with him, if you never went in here?] Martin asked.

[I learned to read binary code. He sent me messages through the flashes of lights in the windows. Mostly it’s requests to do one thing or another. Pick up some milk and eggs, make sure to eat dinner, water the grass. Basic stuff.]

[You don’t need to do whatever it is he wants! Why can’t you see that he’s just using you for evil?] Ember declared.

[Evil is a very stretchy thing, especially in the eyes of the agents and citizens of the Superstate.] Alexa shrugged. [You yourself were planning to kill me, to destroy my mind as Hero Resonance and in some far future as Miss Admiral along with a whole chunk of England and Europe. Have you already forgotten that? For shame! Honestly, I should leave you here alone for a bit as a lesson. Put you in time out. I doubt you’d be able to go anywhere or do anything fun, with all of these shield-generating jar-brains hidden deep in the walls.]

Ember realised that Alexa held all of the power over her. Without Cottie’s nullification gun she would not be able leave the cathedral and would probably end up dead on the floor next to the hologram and the corpse of some long dead scientist. She walked towards Alexa and sat down in front of her on the ground, looking up at her.

“Yeeees?” Alexa bent down, silver hair backlit, splashed with a variety of colored light streaming from the stained glass windows.

“I was a monster. Please forgive me.” Ember finally spoke, trembling. “Please don’t leave me in here with him.”

“Aww. You don’t want to cuddle the floor intern? I bet daddums has such fun, spooky stories to tell you in the dark. Tsk tsk tsk.”

Ember shook her head, eyes filling with tears.

“We’re all monsters. Let’s be the most adorable monsters of all, together, okay?” Alexa smiled offering her a hand.

Ember took Alexa’s hand and shook it. She stood up, shivering due to the cold and fright and the silver-haired villain hugged her. For the first time, Ember returned the hug. All of the things that made her Resonance had been burned away in the city of death. All of her hate and anger for Alexa had been washed away by the rain and her tears, drowned by fear of being human from now on and possibly forever.

“I’m sorry.” The ex-hero whispered, tears sparkling down her cheeks, reflecting the colorful stained glass and the silver, perpetually shifting hologram.

“It’s okay Dimms. Everything’s gonna be okay. I’ll find a way to light you up again, I promise.” Alexa whispered, winking at the silver hologram of her father.