I stood up and dusted myself off. My hands were filthy, and my hair was full of knots. The scruff of a face long overdue for a shave also bothered me, being so very itchy. I counted ten fingers and ten toes before it finally sunk into my stupid head, though.

I had a human body.

He was riddled with cancer, but I quickly set the cells to fix that up. There were great big patches of blue on my back, where blood had settled and started to go bad. Apparently, I had been dead in this ditch for a while.

This was not an adaptation of mine. No, this was a body that I had inherited from some homeless denizen of the Favela. The very thought made my skin crawl.

Had I killed this guy?

No. The cells spoke of his history. The cancer, the brain damage from random beatings, and finally they could give me a precise time of death. It had been hours ago, laying alone in the mud as he succumbed to disease. Meanwhile, the smoke from my exploded corpse was still rising from beyond the white wall.

Though the summer air had kept him warm, his heart was just now restarting. Where I looked down at his clothes, they were covered with an aggressive mold. This had burrowed into his dead skin and restarted the organs. It had completely resurrected me, after my own demise.

That was it. It was official. After every cell beyond the wall had been utterly ruined, my consciousness defaulted to the still-living cast-offs I had left in the city. Whatever blood or skin cells I shed, they could receive my consciousness through the invisible channel. I had traveled its labyrinth, and now I knew for certain that was possible.

I was immortal. The confirmation was enough to make me a little dizzy. The last tumors were subsiding as I spoke to myself, trying to calm down. "You knew you were separate from humanity. This is not so new..." Yet, I couldn't stop the implications from swirling in my head.

Would I live to see the sun grow cold? What would that even be like? What would that experience and scale of time do to a sentient being?

"Jesus Christ," I swore. I needed to keep moving, to stay grounded. I couldn't allow this to throw me into thinking I was outside the world. I was still very much in the world, and my hunger only grew every time that I tasted death. My hunger was for life. Power in all its... Glory.

Then I remembered. Hickory had been with me in the void. He had been alive somehow, inside of the channel which my consciousness traversed. He was in the space where my Power waited and worked, beyond the realm of mere matter and biology.

Both of us had existed there, without a physical body to house us. Perhaps it was just a fantasy of my own mind as it crawled its way out of the fungus? But there could be no mistaking it. Whatever the case for active thought, information itself existed in the channel. Math did. Outside of time and space. That was possible, now. I simply had to accept it.

Staggering down the Favela roads, nobody gave a second glance to the half-dead old man. The body had knowledge of its movement and reflexes stored in the extended nervous system. Even specters of memory lingered in the old man's brain before my own began to overwrite them. That realization was truly disturbing.

Even though he was dead, this was someone else's body I had possessed. My Power could have easily revived him. But instead, it deleted him like a junk folder on a computer and ported me in as replacement.

What's worse was that, despite the fact he had been dead for hours, there had still been residual brainwaves going strong. It was almost as if I could hear him, in the deeper subroutines of grey matter. Whispering. Crying.

Not yet, or ever, truly dead.

As I walked, I picked up whatever edible plants and insects I came across on the ground. It wasn't much, but after the short time it took to change my gastro system, it would be enough to get the ball rolling. This body needed some damn meat on its bones. I had to be prepared, and the human form was weak. Where I was headed, there would be trouble.

The sky was beginning to get lighter, and I knew the sunrise was only an hour away. It would not take me more than thirty minutes to get to my destination. That was only enough time for the cells to begin constructing the basest structures. The ones they counted as routine, now. Skin, muscle, bone and sensory improvements.

The old man's body was just barely looking strange as I arrived. Daniel's scent still lingered in the air, and I marveled at the fact that I wished my Power had been faster in turning me inhuman. I hated this form, where once I had desired it above all else.

So clunky and lacking. It made me feel vulnerable. Like I was naked, showing the bare skin I wanted desperately to hide.

But there was no more time for reflection. I was bold as I came up to the building. It was unsuspecting, nestled between an old furniture store and an apartment. Seemingly, it was abandoned. This was no more than a facade, however. Inside, I knew what I would find.

Just not every detail.

As soon as I opened the door, I could see the hole in the ground leading deep into the Crystal gang's tunnel. I could see a ladder above which gave access to the rooftop pathways here. But there was also a light on in the corner, and an antique chair half shrouded from its glow.

In that chair, a woman waited patiently, obviously for me. She had expected me to show up here, and she simply motioned to the door. "Try not to let the heat in. The tunnels keep this place nice and cool."

I closed it behind me came fully into the room. Brushing white hair out of my eyes, I stood up straight and braced myself for another fight. This was bound to go south. "Who are you?" I asked.

"You mean you don't recognize me?" She gestured to her black uniform and hair. "I'm offended."

With a frown, I put two and two together. If she knew who I was, I had an inkling of who she was. Though, I had expected a man. "You're not the one who controlled that big damn crow, are you? Because that would suck."

"I'm afraid I am," she said, voice like silk. "And I don't control it. That's me. I transform into the murder itself. No hard feelings, of course. But you were undoubtedly trying to steal or harm what was ours, so I had no choice."

I looked around, but there weren't any other chairs. In my petulance and confidence, I simply sat down in the dirt and leaned against the wall. "I'll cop to that," I laughed. It was a raspy, gritty sound, like my voice. "Daniel had a whole bag of Crystal, and I had my eye on it. It helps me control my Power, I guess." I weighed whether or not I wanted to disclose this information, but in the end, I just didn't care. Maybe she would pay me to go away, I thought. That would be great. "I wanted it so that I could fly across the border. I'm headed South to the jungle, where the Kizmet spawn."

"We wondered if you were with the Americans. But surely you wouldn't be scrounging like you were for a couple of rocks if you're a state assassin after the Conquistador. No, I'm quite sure you are a lost child, actually."

I resented the pretentiousness. "I've been beaten down a little, that's all. I could be ten stories tall if I wanted, lady. But the ocean is stale hunting. Not nearly as challenging as trying to go by land. And I needed to stay small and stealthy to avoid trouble. Against what everyone thinks, I view trouble as more of a petty misery than anything meaningful. Seriously."

She nodded. "Very noble of you. So, what shall we call you, troublesome man? If you are, in fact, a man."

It hadn't occurred to me that it was roughly a fifty-fifty chance that I grabbed a male body. I might have come back to life in an old woman's body. That would certainly have been a little distressing for me. "My name is Creep. Male, originally." I was too busy to go musing about that one. Despite my lost affinity for humanity, I had no intention to go deconstructing my gender.

"Lovely. I am Mary, then. A warrior of the great Crystal King. But you already know this."

I rolled my eyes. Enough with the formalities and chit chat. This was business, not pleasure. "Well then, Mary, what's the game?" I eyed her for weapons, but there were none. My keen ears sensed no one nearby, either. "You're lying here in wait for me, is the trap about to close or what? Are we here to strike a deal?"

With her face covered, I couldn't see her expression. But her eyes lit up. "Yes! We are indeed here to discuss a deal. You've made your presence known in the city, and you wouldn't be the first stray Super to do so. There are, how they say, protocols for this. I am here to discuss your options, by that note."

I tried to wave her off. "Look, I'm not here to join you. I passed that shit up with the Heroes, and it was a pain in the ass. I'm telling you that so you know I'm motivated and capable. As you've seen, I'm not really killable. I'm nobody's employee. All of that adds up to a big fuck-off to you and your pals, if I'm being frank. I just want a bag of Crystal and I'll be on my way." Those were my terms. She could chew on them.

"We cannot go around paying money to everyone who causes us trouble, Mr Creep! What a bad precedent that would set..." she clicked her tongue like an old schoolmarm. "What I am offering you is not employment. Think of it as... contractual work. You are free to leave any time you want. As you have said, it's not like we could stop you, anyway. We would simply like you to work for your bread."

I was skeptical. She knew that the moment I had my Crystal, I would hit the road. There had to be some scheme in place to keep people from defecting. But then again, maybe they just thought I'd fall in love with the aristocratic lifestyle. I'd heard about the perks of the King's stooges. It was a high life, that was damn sure.

"Still," I said. "I'm not taking any chances. I may be invulnerable to traditional attacks, but God knows what kind of utility Supers the king is harboring. I won't come within spitting distance of your army."

"I would propose no such thing. It is a challenging situation, but we have forms of work for these cases. You cannot be trusted to smuggle for us, but you may be given a more direct task. Say, an assassination? We like to keep the wall limber, and some of the new placements here by the Americans are-"

I quickly cut her off. "Hell no," I stopped this line of thinking. It all just more entrapment. "I'm not a murderer. I don't want trouble with the Americans, okay? They're scarier than you. And more importantly... let me make this crystal clear. I'm not an evil person, bitch. I'm not a good person either. I just want to be left alone to do my thing. Got that?"

She fell silent. It was clear that we were at an impasse. There was no more point in continuing to press the sale at this point, which demoted me from a potential tool of her master to an unmitigated liability. From the sudden coldness of her glare, I knew she would have me killed in a heartbeat. The only thing stopping her? That was a really hard trick to pull off, it seemed.

I simply read the room for her. "I think we're done here, don't you agree?"

"Indeed." She stood up and went promptly out the door. Neither of us wanted another fight. We knew how that ended between her and I. Stalemate.

But she would be back. There was no way they would leave me mucking about in their territory unchecked for much longer. A kill squad would be assembled with a custom set of Powers, designed to kill the unkillable. After tonight, with stealth completely blown, my time was officially limited in the Favela.

Less than a day remained before shit got serious. I couldn't keep fooling myself anymore, it was time to tie the knot or run for the sea. The grace period was up.

I would have to get my hands dirty.