I was in the room with the reinforced windows overlooking the medical room, deep in the bottom of the mine. The metal door in front of me stood as impenetrable as ever, and obviously, Saga had no means to open it, so I presumed our ‘face-to-face’ was going to be through the windows.

A lot of things made a lot more sense, given the context of Saga being an Exhuman. Certainly, building enormous safe rooms in abandoned mineshafts wouldn’t be standard procedure, but if they had a difficult-to-dispose of Exhuman and a mineshaft laying around, why not? Putting her down here also reduced the range of her ability to communicate with telepathy, and, operating on the assumption we were in an Exclusion zone, the odds of anyone walking in were further reduced.

Still, as I examined the huge intricate locking mechanisms on the enormous door, she had to be an Exhuman of enormous power to warrant this kind of treatment and isolation. Exhumans who could touch the mind were generally regarded as the most dangerous, and the fact she was alive instead of executed probably meant her powers prevented them from being able to do so.

I thought of the attempts that had been made on my life during my arrest, and grimaced. I’d only been in custody for less than a day…she’d spent a lifetime in here, presumably after any number of failed executions. No wonder she always spoke of her distaste for humans.

[Great, you made it. We’re going to try something here I haven’t done in a while.]

I thought of how hard it had been for me to speak after only living out here a week, and wondered if that was what she meant.

[Ha, ha,] she said, [nothing that mundane, I’m afraid. Maybe closing your eyes might help you with the transition.]

I had no idea what was coming, but given what I knew of Saga’s powers and my dislike for her invading my mind, I was pretty sure I was going to hate it. But I’d come this far, so I closed my eyes.

I felt enveloped by her power, like I was walking through a weightless velvet curtain. I stood stiff and still for a few moments, waiting for more, but nothing else happened. Cautiously, I opened an eye.

There was swirling blackness around me. Indistinctly moving, but impossible to see. I opened my other eye and found more of the same, but now in stereo.

“Saga, where am I?” I asked the void. My voice seemed distant like I was hearing it from far away.

[Technically, you’re right where you were before. All I’ve done is hijack your senses. Sort of the opposite of how I usually ride your consciousness and see what you see. Now you’re seeing — and hearing, feeling, smelling — what I want you to see.]

“Saga, this is super creepy. Please make it stop.”

[Hang on. I’m still working on this.]

“Not sure you know how creepy this is, just floating in black space.” I looked down and saw nothing, not even my body. I put a hand in front of my eyes. Nothing. Wait. Some of the imperceptible shifting blackness moving where my hand should be. I focused on it, and was barely able to make out the outline of my hand.

[Yeah, some of your own sensory input is still bleeding through. Can’t quite cut you out of your own body altogether, but it’s pretty close.]

“Well that is just great to hear. So, about letting me out–“

[This should do it,] she said, and a floor appeared under me. Smooth and featureless, like white glass. My body reappeared as well, hand still in front of my face. [Trying to give you something to orient on so you’ll stop bitching.]

“I am a fan of having a body.”

The glass floor began to fill in with details, strewn with dirt and small chunks of rock, and then walls emerged from the darkness, solid rock, carved out with deep straight gouges. The walls of the mine. Details began to appear, spiderwebs of reinforcing wire mesh skittered across the windows, the lighting became moody and dark, and finally the great metal door appeared. But this time, it was open like the first door to the room, instead of an impassible barrier.

“You…opened the door?”

[No,] she said and I got the sensation of a frustrated sigh. [We’re still in my mind. This is just a recreation that you’re experiencing.]

“It looks…really real.”

[I’ve spent a lot of time in here memorizing it.]

Her words made my stomach drop a little, but she seemed either resigned or accepting of her situation.

[Come on in,] she invited, the door looming enticingly. I found it both easier and harder to move in this world than the real one. My body reacted more to the intention of me moving than to actual movement, but underneath the illusion, I could feel my real body trying to move but paralyzed by Saga’s power.

“Saga, if this has any side-effects on my body…” I warned. It was a stupid empty threat. I was entirely in her world here, and I was just grasping at anything. In response, she laughed in a way that was only completely evil-sounding. I willed myself to walk through the door.

Inside was a small room which looked like it was used for surgery. There were large lamps on tripods stationed around the room, stainless wheeled surgical carts, covered in ages of dust, cables running across the floor.

But in the middle of the room, instead of an operating table was a large metal case which looked like a coffin. There was a line down the middle, lengthwise, which looked like it would allow the two halves of the top to swing open, though only if the large manual locks on top were disengaged first. Inset at the top of the coffin was a small window. I was hesitant to approach, but saw nothing else I could do.

The locks on the coffin turned on their own and the lid split and opened, dumping the accumulated layer of dust into the air. Once it had cleared, I peered in, and a girl waved back at me.

“Hullo,” she said, the same voice as I’d heard in my head so many times before. “Third sorta-introduction now, so you’re probably getting tired of this, but I’m Saga. Nice to meet you.”

“Hi…Saga. Is this what you actually look like?” I asked.

“Yeah pretty sure. Don’t exactly have a mirror or anything but I did the best I could.

She had straight black hair that pooled around her in repose and went down to below her shoulders, slanted eyes that looked black in the light, and a narrow face. Everything about her was narrow. Her hands and feet looked bony and large, and her arms and legs, long and spindly. She didn’t look malnourished, just thin and pale.

She was wearing what looked like a dark blue, one-piece prison jumpsuit with a zipper from the side of the collar which rose halfway up her slender neck, down the across one breast and ending above her thigh. On opposite leg and shoulder were a series of vertical numbers and characters, and a logo identifying her as XPCA property.

She smiled at me, but before I could come to any sort of sensible response, I spat out “You’re a Sino?”

Her shy smile became a frown and she arched an eyebrow. “A what?”

“A Sino. Chinese.” I took a hesitant step backwards.

“What does that have to do with anything?” she gave a frustrated sigh. “We’re two Exhumans meeting and working together for the first time…ever, that I know of. This should be exciting for us…?” She trailed off, maybe feeling my thoughts.

“I don’t work together with Sinos,” I said darkly.

“Because there are so many other people here willing to work with you?” She gestured to the empty room. “I don’t understand.”

“You don’t understand? What is there to understand? Your people attacked us and killed hundreds of millions, without warning, for no reason.” Her eyes darted across my face, and I saw a flicker of a smile for a moment.

“You’ve got to be joking. China would never do that. That’d be suicide for everyone.”

“It was suicide for everyone. Only some of our major cities survived, because Skyweb shot down so many of your missiles. Then America struck back and basically wiped China off the globe.”

“They weren’t my missiles, Athan. I’ve never even heard of this.”

“You’re LYING!” I shouted, slamming a fist into the coffin and sending a plume of dust flying. “The Sinos attacked fifty years ago, and afterwards, every single remaining Sino was rounded up and deported. Right back to the crater of China.” I let out a terse, mirthless laugh. “I don’t know a single person whose family wasn’t destroyed in that war. And you, a Sino, never even heard of it?”

“Athan…” she began. I held out a hand and took a steadying breath. I was feeling the blood pounding in my head. The vision of this world swirled around me. “Athan, I’m sorry. That sounds terrible. But it wasn’t you out there, and it wasn’t me either. You weren’t alive yet…and I’ve been locked in here for almost a hundred years now.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

“I don’t really care if you do or not. But it’s true. I have been in this room all my life. For almost a hundred years. I was buried under the earth through your Sino wars.” She sighed and frowned, and I felt the world spin momentarily, before it dissolved back into the darker, dustier real world, and I found myself in my real body back outside the closed door.

[I’m not going to pretend I’m not disappointed. I was hoping for…well, more.]

“I don’t know, Saga. Maybe you’re right. Maybe you’re not. I don’t know. I need some time to think about it.”

[I didn’t do anything,] she pled, making me think of myself uttering the very same words to Blackett. Back then, I felt so angry but helpless, so powerful but impotent, watching people slip away in front of me without being able to do a thing. How much of that was she feeling now, with me slipping away?

“I–” I hesitated. I was trying to put things back where they were. Somehow, everything had been so much better before I’d seen her face. Before I’d heard her lies, or words, or whatever they were. “I’m sorry Saga. I just…don’t know. We’ve heard stories about Sinos our whole lives, about the lives you took, how inhuman and senseless it all was. And the more I grew up, and more I learned, and the more I agreed. The Sinos were just evil and wrong.”

[Sounds kind of the same as what your opinion of Exhumans was.]

I agreed, of course. I hated Exhumans so much that when I discovered I was one, I gave myself up, even though it likely meant death.

[So…why is it you hate me for being a Sino, but not for being an Exhuman?]

I didn’t know how to reply. Was it just as simple as the fact that I was Exhuman myself? I tried to think about how I would have perceived Saga back when I was human, but everything about our meeting was so alien and bizarre there would be no way I could contextualize that.

I felt my head spinning in circles as my prejudice and hypocrisy chased away any sense of self-respect I had left. The fact that Saga was privy to all my thoughts through this just added to my frustration. I felt like I had to make a clear decision, and quickly, because every passing second just reinforced my own position as a terrible bigoted asshole.

[Athan, I think you should go home.]

“Telling me what to do now?”

[No. (Well, yes.) But you’re confused right now and need time to process this all. And more, you need to do it away from me. If you come to a conclusion here and now, you’ll always wonder if I mucked up your mind and tricked you, and that’s not what I want. (Sigh.) So go home, think over what you saw here today, and…come back when you’ve had some time to think?]

Part of me definitely wanted to not do that, just because it was what she suggested, but it also happened that getting out of here was exactly what I wanted to do most. I didn’t know what to do. I hated these head games, it reminded me of every time I’d lost to Lia because she’d completely outmaneuvered me.

“Saga…I…you’re right. I have a lot to think about.” I thought about adding that I’d be back, but I knew I couldn’t promise that. And I knew she knew that, and let me walk out anyway.

She didn’t say anything else, though I could feel she wanted to. When I got to the mine entrance, I found my dropped lamp on the floor, next to a big hunk of rock which wasn’t in the doorway when I’d entered. I turned it over experimentally and saw a crystalline glimmer. Quartz?

[(I hope that’s what he was looking for…)] Saga thought. I certainly didn’t know, but shoved the huge rock into my bag anyway. It was larger than my head, and incredibly heavy. We’d know if it was what I needed when the mass-fab dissimilated it.

But the weight on my shoulders as I trudged home was the last thing on my mind.