“We grew jaded with the notion that ‘supernatural abilities are now common occurrences’ in the same way that we grew bored of the greatness of motion picture.”

I stood still in the unfamiliar bathroom, with my hands on the sink and my back slightly slumped. I was staring down the face of a murderer. The visage I saw was that of a scrawny teen, tiny specs of blood and dirt marred the light brown skin, and grime made the curly black hair look like dried algae more than anything. A slightly hooked nose, hollow cheeks, and half-closed eyelids coupled with deep dark circles under the eyes gave the face airs of an addict taking a mugshot

I had always been very critical of my looks, as I knew full well that I was not attractive. I knew I was not ugly either, but I knew for a fact that I had been ranked a ‘solid 5 out of 10’ in high school, and I had to agree with them. One of the most often given comments on my appearance was that I looked ‘too serious’ or ‘naturally sullen’, which came as a surprise. I always thought that my stressed and anxious demeanor was evident to everyone. I don’t really know how somebody’s face could be any of those things, but I had overheard similar stuff out of other people’s mouths too often to dismiss.

I splashed some water on my face and shook my head as I took a deep breath. I had to address the events from last night.

The only thing that kept me from collapsing was the still present rage over what I had found in the stack of papers at the warehouse.

These men had crossed a line. Somehow, underneath all that emotion, underneath all the self-loathing and anger directed at what I had done, I hated De Sevin more. For what he had done. For what he made me do.

But that didn’t justify my acts. I had acted on impulse. Poor impulse at that, and now I would have to live with that decision for the rest of my life.

In my weird twisted view of morality and guilt, having killed someone was still not the worst part, somehow. The worst part was that I had done precisely what I had told Alison not to do, and it felt like I had betrayed the only thing I swore to myself I would never betray: my own moral code. Not that it was perfect, mind you. I knew full well that I was not a good person, but I thought that one of my tenets was that I would never kill somebody unless my life was in danger.

What a load of bullshit. I could pretend all I want, but in the end, I was just a slightly less worse person than Alison now. With the information I now had, though, I could see why Alison was so adamant about her ‘expeditive actions’ when dealing with the people we had fought. Even if I did have some trust in our judicial system, I knew full well that De Sevin would have done more harm than good if we hadn’t killed him.

What we did was self-preservation, in a way. But it wouldn’t change the fact that I had killed someone. Someone who was unarmed at the time. That was not the kind of thing you could rationalize, let alone justify. I was still a piece of shit for that.

I breathed deep, staring into the eyes of a murderer, and he stared back with a glint of defiance. I had to live with this. And if I had survived an entire life of self-loathing. A few more stones on the burden were nothing.

It was too late now, anyway. Spilled wine can’t be poured again. As my mom liked to say.

I wasn’t just a regular young adult with anxiety issues. I was a criminal now. I needed to face that if I was to survive in this new world. In a way, I guess that starting a new life—albeit a sinister one—was also an opportunity for me to build myself a thicker skin—excuse the pun—and that began with accepting my new reality.

Fuck. I silently cursed again. This wasn’t going to be a picnic in the park.

I warily pulled back from the mirror and took off my tattered sweatshirt. My hands reflexively clutched as I took in the state of my new scars. My body was simply riddled with them. They all looked gross and malformed, but none of them seemed to be bleeding. I carefully brushed against one of the scars on my pectoral to find a hard and dry texture. The skin hadn’t scabbed, but the affected area was just really hard. Also, it was really numb to the touch. Not unlike foot skin. I noted.

Most of the skin on my former wounds was light compared to the rest of my body, and they had an abnormally high amount of veins coursing through them. I wasn’t an expert on biology, but I’d wager those blood vessels helped with the regeneration.

I carefully went over each of my wounds, my eyes drawing to the most recent scar on my forearm. I tensed up as I noticed something off about it. The skin was similar to that of the other scar tissue on my body, but this one had a small porcelain white patch on it. I tentatively scratched on it to find it was smooth and tough, and I didn’t feel my finger over it when I touched it.

Panic seized me as I understood what it was. It was a tooth. An incisor tooth, to be precise. It was embedded in my arm the same way a mole or a pimple would be.

I frantically tried scratching at it to dislodge it, but the effort only made me wince in pain. It felt as if I had an actual tooth being pulled out but from my arm.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” I swore. That’s not okay! Until now, this was just a regrowth thing. If it starts growing teeth and gross stuff all over my body, I’m going to end up looking like a freak!

I gritted my teeth and jammed a nail under my new dental implement, and pulled hard.

I yelped out in pain as the piece of enamel dislodged itself from its fleshy socket.

“Are you alright?” came a voice from the living room.

“Yeah,” I called back. “I’m fine.”

I winced as I pulled the rest of the tooth from my arm.

The tooth clattered in the sink as I opened the tap and ran some water over my bleeding arm. The wound quickly healed, and to my immense relief, I saw normal, veiny, and tough skin rapidly growing to replace the excised incisor tooth.

I heaved out a quivering sigh. The experience had been very stressful, and trying to keep it together felt like a superhuman effort. I felt like an alien in my own skin. The only constant that had followed me throughout my life, my own person, was now changing in strange and disgusting ways.

I’ll shower when I’m ready to deal with this.

I cast a glance around the small room I stood in. All in all, Alison’s bathroom was very spacious, if somewhat spartan. All I could see was a mirror, a wet rug, a towel rack, a washbasin cabinet, and an expensive-looking shower cabin. It was almost as if this room was only there because it came with the apartment and not because someone was actually using it.

The same could be said about her entire apartment, I thought. Most of it was rather clean and well maintained, but I couldn’t help but think that Alison didn’t spend much time in it. Most of the furniture looked pristine and chic, but their disposition looked more like something you’d find in a cheap furnishing catalog rather than in an actual apartment.

I guess this was to be expected from someone with Alison’s… habits.

I wiped away the few errant water droplets on my face and forearm and made my way back to the living room, more precisely to the couch Alison currently occupied. The living room was something that looked straight up out of a furniture catalog, with literally no object of personal significance decorating anything. I was reasonably sure that the only painting that adorned the walls was just a stock image in a cheap frame.

When we had come since last from our intervention earlier, Alison had ‘tactfully’ invited me to her flat to talk, and I had accepted. I needed some closure and some more information regarding what I had been involved with. If I was being honest, I should have had the conversation we were about to have long before now.

I soberly sat down on the far end of the large couch, a full meter and a half from Alison, who was currently reading De Sevin’s files.

Speaking of Alison, she currently wore black thick-rimmed reading glasses and had her hair tied in a messy bun. The sight of her in a more casual attire was still eerie. It felt like meeting your teacher outside of school as a kid. I didn’t like it. It humanized her too much.

She quirked a brow at me as I silently stared at her.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I helpfully provided in a sulking voice.

“Found some weird lump on your junk?” she asked wryly.

“No,” I replied somberly. “Not on my junk. There was a tooth growing in my arm. I kinda freaked out and pulled it out.”

“Ew, gross. Don’t do that in my house,” she replied with a disgusted wince.

“This is serious, Alison. Teeth are not supposed to grow in people’s arms,” I said in exasperation.

“And people aren’t supposed to create power tools from thin air, but look at me,” she said as she summoned a small nail gun for emphasis.

“That’s not the same!” I replied in indignation.

“No, but it’s not that bad. You said you pulled it out, so there’s nothing to worry about now,” Alison said dismissively.

“But—” I started.

Alison loudly clicked her tongue in annoyance.

“Alex, you’re alive. You can regrow missing limbs. And you killed a man last night. Stop worrying about the state of your skin.”

I snapped my mouth shut. She was right. I dipped my head forward and rested my chin on my arms as I once again dwelled on my earlier actions. I had to admit that my tooth problem seemed a tad insignificant next to how severe my other predicament was.

“Thank you for the reminder,” I said sourly.

“You’ll get over it… Eventually,” she said in a strangely sad voice. She sighed and took the stack of papers currently on her thighs to the Ikea-style coffee table. She took her glasses off and cleared her throat. “Now, we need to talk.”

I nodded in agreement. We needed to talk indeed.

“As you know, I’m currently working to dismount the human trafficking that’s going on in town. But this is just the first step of a very long plan. This plan is my literal reason to live. I know you probably still think of me as some kind of a lunatic, but you have to understand that I’m doing everything I’m doing for a reason. And that reason is way bigger than you can fathom at the moment,” Alison spoke in a solemn voice, and her brow grew more furrowed as she kept talking. “You have to understand that I’m currently fighting against people infinitely more powerful than the pathetic scum we faced up until now. When we first met, I told you the goons we encountered were small fry. I meant that they were small fry compared to Martel and De Sevin. But in the grand scheme of things, they were insignificant, and so were Martel and De Sevin. The people I work with and the people I work against are involved in shit that’s so much worse than what you’ve seen.”

“I struggle to see how it could be worse than human trafficking and child abuse,” I said skeptically.

“Think bigger. Not just a city. The world,” Alison said in a dark tone.

“The world?” I asked in disbelief. “You’re talking about some kind of global conspiracy or something?”

“I guess to someone who doesn’t know how it all works, it can look like that,” Alison said with a tired sigh. “Look, I’m not some kind of nutcase or a conspiracy theorist. The information I have I didn’t snatch off some far-right echo-chamber forum from the deep-web. I witnessed it myself. Hell, you’ve seen what it can do first hand a few hours ago!”

“Yes, but… That’s kind of a stretch to imply that this is a globalized issue,” I carefully said.

“That’s not exactly what it’s like. You’re thinking men in the shadow toppling governments and controlling the people. Think stupider. The whole world is clenching its asshole in fear because of the Impacted. This is the first time that the world as a whole has had one common enemy. One of the things this allowed for was the creation of the IHI. You probably think of them as the ‘Impacted UN divsion’, but trust me, it couldn’t be further away from the truth. The IHI is a global-scaled trap to capture the Impacted.”

“It doesn’t look like it’s working too well,” I said idly. “Plus, their rehab programs for degenerative powers seem to serve a decent purpose.”

“Well, trust me, it’s much worse than that. It’s so much fucking worse than that.” Alison let out a tired chuckle. “Their ‘programs’ aren’t anything more than crappy smoke and mirrors. By some of my allies’ estimates, they have already captured more than seventy percent of the Impacted population for their own purposes.”

“Seventy percent?” I choked at the words. “How would that even be possible? You’d have to hide everything with some kind of… Oh. Right…”

“Yeah, the Scanner,” she replied. “Taking it down is one of the big first steps in my plan. But I doubt it’s the only reason the truth isn’t out.”

“That’s crazy! You told me that it could operate across the whole world. Hell, you don’t even seem to know what it is!”

“True, but I know where it is,” Alison said with a savage grin. “And I’m going to break it.”

That would imply that information could flow freely from then on. If what Alison had told me was true, it would mean that the whole world would face the consequences of its removal.

“And how would you do that?” I asked.

“I need the help of a few specific powers to take the Scanner down. All of them are currently held in the IMROSE Containment Center near Geneva. Once I get the resources I need from this town, I’m going to break into it,” she spoke with conviction. She meant every single one of her words, and her faith in her own capacity to tackle a worldwide conspiracy was honestly a bit inspiring. Even though her methods were… questionable.

“Geneva? Why not there directly? We’re more than an hour away from the Swiss border,” I asked with a confused frown.

“Since the IHI started operating, they’ve taken control of the already weak mob presence there. They are functionally an extension of the IHI in the underworld now. There is simply nothing for me to gain from operating there directly. Plus, I knew that Corman-sur-Rhône had a reputation for being in turmoil—though I didn’t know it would be this bad.”

“Okay, I guess that makes some sense, but… What’s my role in this? I don’t suppose you made me go through these last ‘jobs’ just for the sake of it, yet, I can’t help but feel that you’d have done fine on your own in most situations. Why am I here?” I asked. I still had not understood that part. Alison didn’t seem like the type of people that’d pick up free deadweight, and I certainly wasn’t on par with her level of fighting prowesses.

“Your place, young Steak, is to provide the muscle for my future crime syndicate,” she said with a devious smile.

“Young what—wait, your future what?” I asked in disbelief.

“My crime syndicate. I’d need an army to storm the Containment Center, and the only way I can get it is by seizing control of already established gangs and mobs.”

“Sure…” I said with a heavy dose of skepticism. “How am I ‘muscle’, exactly?”

“You’re not the most competent of fighters, sure, but your power has an intimidation factor on its own, and that, coupled with a bit of practice and planning, little Steak, will be a very, very useful tool,” Alison replied with a serious look.

“Why are you calling me that?” I said with irritation.

“Why, because you need an Impacted identity, of course.”

“Superheroes and villains aren’t a thing, you know? I’m pretty sure most instances of Superpower assisted crimes were swiftly dealt with by the IHI.”

“That’s what the Scanner wants you to think, but trust me, the world has its lot of super-abled individuals lurking in the shadows. Some of them not so nice, as you can tell from earlier. And well… From me,” she said.

“Alright, sure, whatever. Why ‘Steak,’ though? Is it because of the flesh and muscle regeneration thing?”

“What?” she said in confusion. “No, it’s because of that steak you were eating at that crappy joint the other day. Although now that you mention it…”

Right. I sighed.

“So what’s your villain name, then?” I asked.

“Toolbox. Or ‘A’. And by the way, chose another short alias. I picked ‘A’ first.”

“What? You don’t get to pick the letter A all by yourself.”

“Yes, I do. From now on, you’re mister S, for Steak.”

“Sure, whatever,” I said with an eye roll. “Now, what else is there for me to know? Who do you work for? That guy you told me about the other day?”

“I don’t work for Mr. O. He’s an… investor, at best. He and I have similar goals, and instead of going against each other, we decided to work together. I help him in dealing with our targets quickly and efficiently, and he provides cover, money, and intel in exchange.”

“And who is he, exactly? Is he some kind of mob boss as well?” I asked.

“No, he’s what you’d call a ‘regular businessman’, but one with fingers in so many pies he might as well run a… pie factory. Anyway, he’s got a really solid network of informants and wants to fuck over the IHI almost as much as me. Plus, he already deals with other city mobs and gangs. He knows this world better than I do.”

I frowned in concentration as I took a few seconds to digest what Alison was telling me.

“So, he’s like the cool boss that pretends not to be your boss so long as you rub him the right way?” I asked. I knew of those kinds of people. My boss at my last summer job fit that exact description. Pretended to be your best friend and even gave you free drinks when you’re doing well, but would absolutely skin you alive if he found out you were doing poorly.

“Honestly… Yeah, he’s somewhat reliable, but I wouldn’t trust him to the same extent I can trust you. Our goals may align for the moment, but I know he will try to fuck me over the instant they don’t.”

“Okay, so potentially backstabbing financial partner. Got it. Anything else?” I asked with a mirthless chuckle.

“Mmmmh, aside from money and intel, he also gives me access to some useful resources. He’s got a couple of impacted specialists at hand. By the way, do you fancy a visit to a doctor any time soon?”

“Huh? Why?” I asked with a quirk of the brow.

“Because we could get more insights into how your power works, and they could give you some insights as to how you could protect yourself from potential superpower-related accidents.”

That could indeed help me immensely. “Alright,” I nodded. “But how do I know I can trust them? You told me that you didn’t fully trust this ‘Mr. O’. Are you sure he won’t use that information against us?”

“He’s tapped into the same information network as I am, what he knows, I know, and vice versa. So there’s not much we can do about it.”

“Okay, so, when do we schedule my… appointment?” I asked.

“I’ll text you. They operate outside of work hours, what with it being illegal and stuff. Also, the faster it’s done, the better, can you take a day off of—by the way, do you work? How old even are you?”

“I’m nineteen,” I said. “I study Graphic Arts and Branding Design at the Uni.”

“Holy shit, you’re nineteen?” Alison let out in disbelief. “I thought you were in your mid-twenties, what with all the brooding depressed vibe thing you got going on. Though I guess that explains your natural awkwardness.”

“Ouch,” I deadpanned.

“Get over it. I’m not your mom or your therapist. I don’t give a flying shit about your feelings so long as they don’t mess with my plans.”

“I noticed,” I deadpanned again. Thinking of which… I thought. The more involved I become in this, the less I can tell them.

I had given it thought superficially for the past few weeks, but maintaining the relationship I had with my therapist—which was based on honesty—was becoming a Sisyphean task. So, since our last session, I hadn’t booked an appointment with Dr. Santos. What if I accidentally spilled the beans? Or worse, what if I were to endanger him? No, if I was to do this the right way, I would have to separate my ordinary life from the more… Nightly one.

All my internal turmoil must’ve been somewhat noticeable, as Alison took the opportunity to tie her bun while pretending not to notice. She set the glasses back on her nose and stared at me.

“Anyway, you’re a student, right? Don’t you have to go to school and shit? Aren’t your parents going to start asking questions if you go on missions with me?” she asked, a frown slowly creeping on her face.

“Yes, I’m still attending classes. Or I was planning to. Plus, my mom lives in Annecy. I call her about once a week, but she never pried too much into my life since I moved here. My dad and I don’t have the best of relationships. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t even know what I study. That doesn’t really matter right now, though; I’m on holiday until next Monday.”

“If you’re planning on quitting, you have to do it carefully. We don’t want to raise suspicion.”

“Err, I wasn’t planning on skipping at all. Wait, you think I should give up my studies for a criminal life?”

“I don’t know, as I said, I didn’t even know you were still a student. But this is going to be hard. This is not a comic book or a movie. Living two lives is a dangerous game. The more we go, the harder it is going to be to keep the two working together. Plus, if you want my honest opinion, people who usually enter this line of work rarely end up quitting.”

That was not a reassuring thought. Although I was committed to what it was that I was involved in, I had never taken the full measure of what it had meant for my future.

What had I meant for my future to be, though? I thought. It wasn’t as if I had had an exact plan in mind. The only thing I had ever enjoyed doing was drawing things. Seeing I couldn’t go to an art school and that I wasn’t exactly good at selling myself as an artist, a job as a graphics design artist was the closest thing to an achievable goal I had. Now though? Things would be different. I was making a lot of money from this. Perhaps I could help Alison reach her goal and then settle for retiring very prematurely and live in a faraway town? If there was one thing having no real friends allowed you, it was that you could go live pretty much anywhere without having to fear about what you’d leave behind.

“Let me worry about that, then,” I finally said with some resolve. I didn’t have many convictions in life, but no matter how dire the situation was, dreading it before it happened was feeling twice the pain, as Dr. Santos liked to say.

And honestly, that’s the least of my worries when compared to what happened earlier.

Alison stretched with a grunt and leaned back on the beige leather couch.

“So, what’s the next step in your big plan?” I asked to break the silence.

“Now that we created a power vacuum, we just have to wait until all the cockroaches that worked in tandem with Dingus and Dongus come looking for scraps. At some point, they’ll realize that their old bosses are dead and will start asking questions. That’s when WE provide the answers.”

Ominous. I thought derisively. She really does enjoy her dramatic tirades. Not that I would voice that opinion aloud.

“So, basically, we’re just chilling?” I asked with a tinge of hope.

“No, there’ll always be some stuff for us to do. For instance, I think I found our next job, ” Alison said while waving a single sheet of paper in front of my eyes.

“What is it?” I said as I tried reading the back of the document while Alison did the same on the other side. With the distance and our sitting position, I couldn’t quite make out most of the word. But the large blue and grey pictogram at the bottom right was unmistakable, a gloved hand reaching down to a row of raised arms—the Impacted Human Initiative logo.

“Apparently, De Sevin and Martel were onto a little more than what they let on,” Alison said as she read the paper. “This is an actual IHI report. Not the kind they’d give to some random crooked cops. It says something about investigating an urban legend about ghosts. The report is like, super vague, but it seems to be hinting at possible Impacted involvement.” She scanned a few more lines on the page. “It’s located in the… Abbaye district. Ring any bells?”

“Huh? Isn’t that like a wealthy neighborhood?” I asked in confusion. If my memory served me right, this particular district was known for having one of the highest average incomes in the area.

“I wouldn’t know. I don’t come from around here,” she said with a shrug. “Say, Alex, if you were to catch an unknown super-abled individual and you were in a company that specialized in that. What need would you have for a paper report holding vague yet enticing information —the kind human traffickers who specialize in Impacted people would be after?”

I frowned. “You think these guys were about to be set up by the IHI?” I asked with a subtle frown. Telling apart jokes from actual conspiracies could be hard with her sometimes.

“I don’t know, but it sure looks suspicious as hell,” she said. “I just want to know what this is all about.”

“You think there might be something there worth checking out?” I asked. I honestly didn’t see what was so interesting to her. At best, it was nothing more than the report stated, an urban legend, and at worst, it could be a dangerous Rampant hiding there.

“I hope so. The IHI wouldn’t have cared otherwise,” she said.

“And… When do you want to go there?” I asked with a wince. I wasn’t keen on the idea of doing something like last night so soon.

“We’ll take our time, but I want it done sooner than later,” Alison said.

In an effort to have conversations like an actual human being and out of a need for a way to not have to think about my demons, I spent the next hour exchanging information with Alison. I learned that she was 25 and didn’t have any living relatives that she knew of. She wouldn’t tell me anything more about her private life. Alison apparently had held her grudge against the IHI for a long, LONG time. She had alluded to her great plan many times but refused to go into too many details about the reasons, citing how long it would take and that she wasn’t in the mood to get into it.

As sunlight reached its Zenith, we decided that I should head home and Alison should get some rest since I hadn’t slept.

I warily stood up from Alison’s couch and headed out. This day had finally come to an end.

I stood in a room full of red. The ground was slippery, so were the walls and the ceiling. Actually, everything in the room was coated in a wide array of thick, dark-colored fluids. That was alright.

I sat on the chair in the middle of the room and stared at the painting in front of me. It was teeth, eyes, and flesh. Big lipless smiles, lidless eyes, and skinless meat decorated every single centimeter inside the golden frame that was currently nailed to the wall. The teeth in the canvas clacked silently, and the eyes stared at me.

My brain failed to link the gross and eldritch tones of my surroundings, but somehow, I knew that I wasn’t supposed to feel calm. Yet I did.

The teeth kept their unsettling quiet chattering as I unwittingly started humming. The tone I hummed wasn’t music. It wasn’t even comprehensible to human ears. And yet, it felt familiar, like listening to one’s own heartbeat through a stethoscope.

A massive tentacle-shaped tongue suddenly lashed out from between the rows of mismatched teeth and coiled around my arm. It didn’t hurt, but the sensation of wet flesh against my skin felt very real. I swatted at the fleshy appendage as I would a fly during the summer. It let go.

I woke up with a start. I could feel a bead of cold sweat running down the side of my face. What the HELL was that?

With a shake of the head, I stood up and headed to the shower to wash the torpor and sweat out of my system.

I stepped into the booth and turned on the pressure slowly as I knew the first few drops were going to be freezing cold. Since I had discovered my ability, my natural aversion to cold had been exacerbated somewhat, for whatever reason. I vigorously scrubbed at every inch of my body, scars included, with an old exfoliating glove I never used that lay in every house my mother had ever set foot in.

After washing myself thoroughly, I strode out of the bathroom and headed for my kitchen to get a mid-day breakfast. I felt ravenous. I rapidly made myself some pasta with some homemade Carbonara sauce and wolfed it down like it was little more than an appetizer.

I ended up repeating the process a couple more times until I was fully sated. The strain my ability took on my body, coupled with the intense exertion and a sleepless night, was truly something.

I spent the rest of the day playing Playstation 4 in my underwear, trying as hard as I could, not to think too much about what had happened last night, to little avail.

It wasn’t the kind of crippling anxiety that usually plagued my thoughts this time. But rather a more subtle and inconspicuous one. I still remembered the events vividly, the face of the man I had killed, Arnaud De Sevin, popping up into my mind every time I closed my eyes. Whenever I managed to take my mind off of it, my vicious intrusive thoughts managed to throw other disturbing images in front of me, like the report I had held or the house we’d set aflame a few days ago.

My somber thoughts were finally interrupted as I received the message I had been waiting for from Alison.

“Vet visit, puppy.” The text said.

It’s amazing how she can come off just as annoying even through text. I thought but still smiled faintly. Tomorrow I might finally get some much-needed insight into my abilities.