“When the Impacted first started manifesting their abilities, I heard people calling Science a ‘failure’ since it couldn’t properly explain how this could have happened. This is baffling to me. Science is the explanation of natural things. Not divine truths. The appearance of these unprecedented events is not an ‘obstacle’ to a whole new field of study.”

Alison and I stood in front of a solid wood apartment door in an old yet well-maintained building. The air was chilly, and I was slowly feeling its bite against my exposed skin. Why the hell is it so cold inside the building?

I turned to look at Alison while trying my best to bring some warmth to my cold limbs.

“So… Does she know about what we do?” I asked.

Alison had informed me earlier that the woman we’d meet was called Galina Zhuk and that she sometimes worked for Mr. O, but nothing more. Although she assured me that I could trust her to keep her mouth shut about my… condition.

“Yes, she can be very professional. And I’m pretty sure she has no sense of morality,” Alison replied.

“So… Kind of like you, in a way,” I deadpanned.

Alison turned to me with a frown.

“No. She can be a bit of a sociopath, but she has her uses.”

“A sociopath? What would that make you?” I said with a touch of sarcasm.

“If you’re trying to make me feel bad, know that I am well aware of the fact that I’m a piece of shit,” Alison said with a joyless smile. “The major difference between her and I is that I don’t enjoy doing what I do. I do the things I do so that all the other pieces of shit like me don’t destroy humanity.”

“I guess it’s good to know that you’re somewhat self-aware, at least.

An unsettlingly high amount of padlock clicks and rattling later, the door opened swiftly. At the doorstep stood a tall and pale woman, with bright blond hair tied in a bun. She wore thick-rimmed glasses not too dissimilar to the ones I’d seen Alison wear earlier and a dirty lab coat. She was rather pretty, and the few wrinkles that broke her smooth skin elegantly emphasized her features. She also looked to be in her late forties or early fifties yet had an absolutely stunning figure. She was the hot blond cougar cliché in every aspect. Although she did look pleasing to the eye, there was something about her demeanor that put me on edge.

“You must be Mrs. B and her little protégé,” she said, not breaking eye contact with me the whole time.

Apparently, Alison was ‘A’, but also ‘Mrs. B’. What was this woman’s weird obsession with single-letter aliases?

“Yep, this is S, but you can call him Steak,” Alison said in a shockingly fake tone with a wide grin. She looked creepy. Of her, I only know of the megalomaniac and brooding personas. Not the outgoing and cheery one I was witnessing. This total shift in attitude made me shiver.

“Hi,” I said as I lifted my hand tensely. This situation felt very unpleasant, and I frankly didn’t like regular social interactions like this one was supposed to be.

“Well met,” the woman replied politely. “I’m Galina Zhuk. Please follow me.”

We made our way in what I had initially thought would be a regular apartment—or, at best, a private consulting office—, but what we stepped into was instead worthy of being called a proper laboratory. The small antechamber we had walked in lead into a bright room full of miscellaneous medical and chemistry equipment—the kind you’d see on documentaries about medical research. The room was apparently a repurposed living room as a large plastic mat covered the planks that otherwise covered apartments like these. I could see the shape of a stone fireplace that was currently blocked-off by a large metal cabinet. In the center of the room, right across from where we stood, sat a big light-grey medical chair covered by a long strip of paper.

“Please, sit here,” Dr. Zhuk said, indicating the medical chair next to her. I nodded and warily took my seat. I wasn’t afraid of being examined, but for some reason, I felt incredibly uncomfortable when interacting with the woman.

As she brought down a large surgical light towards me, she spoke again. “What do I call you, young man? Mr. S was it?”

“Uh… My name is—” I started.

“Steak. Just call him Steak,” Alison unhelpfully came to the rescue.

The doctor stared at Alison with a blank expression as if she were gauging her. Alison simply smirked back. The tense staredown was finally broken by the doctor when Dr. Zhuk took a deep breath and turned away from Alison. She then walked to a nearby cart and pulled out a pair of disposable latex gloves from a box.

“Alright, then,” the doctor said as she put the gloves on. “Mr. Steak. What is the nature of your extraordinary ability?”

Her words took me by surprise. Although she seemed rather no-nonsense, I had expected a little less bluntness from the woman.

“I… Uh… Regenerate,” I tried my best at explaining.

“Mmmh,” she hummed in contemplation while strapping the sleeve of a blood pressure monitor on my upper arm. “That’s too vague. I want to know how.”

“I um—” I trailed off. How would I know? I had wondered about that myself for quite some time, actually. But I have never been able to find a satisfying explanation. The limited amount of testing I had done in the previous days seemed to point towards some kind of emergency trigger that somehow only activated once a certain threshold of damage was reached—and I wasn’t even sure about that.

“Basically, whenever I get cut, or my bones snap—or when something gets cut off…” I winced at the bad memory as I absentmindedly rubbed my deformed pinkie. “I heal the damage in a few seconds.”

“Interesting, its tissue restorative as well as self-mending,” Dr. Zhuk said as she put on her stethoscope and listened to my heart.

“Anything else worthy of notice? This scarring looks peculiar. Is it from a recent wound?” she said after she removed the stethoscope from her ears.

“I think it also reduces pain,” I said but immediately paused. “Well, not exactly. I still feel pain very sharply, but it fades really fast… Oh, also, I think I eat more than before.”

“Oh yeah, he eats like a full regiment,” Alison said from the corner I had forgotten she still stood in.

“I see,” the doctor mumbled as she examined the other scars on my arms.

“These look suspiciously off,” she continued after a pause. “Actually, I think these might be…”

“Oh and,” I cut her off as I remembered one last detail. “The other day, I found… a tooth embedded in one of my scars.”

“A tooth?” she said in puzzlement. “A human tooth?”

“Yeah. It grew in the wound itself, like an ingrown hair or something,” I explained as I indicated the scar on my forearm.

“A tumor? Teratoma maybe…” she said with an expression of intense focus.

“That sounds bad. Isn’t that a kind of cancer?” I asked nervously.

“Only if it’s malignant. Also, as of yet, this is just a conjecture,” she replied in a stern voice. “What happened to the tooth, then? Because I don’t see it here.”

“Well,” I said awkwardly. “I kinda freaked out and pulled it out.”

“You did WHAT?” Alison exclaimed from the other side of the room. “That is so fucking gross.” She punctuated her sentence with a loud snort. “And kind of funny. Never thought I’d meet a self-practicing tumor-dentist.”

The doctor ignored her and spoke again. “That would explain the strangeness of the scar tissue and why your finger has such an odd appearance. Does any of the growth tissue hurt? Does it feel sensitive to the touch? What about Pain?”

“No,” I said with a slight frown. “I think it’s actually the opposite. It feels numb, and my sense of touch is dulled on the affected areas. Same goes for pain, I think.”

The woman nodded in thought. “Alright, I’ll need to do some tests. Are you alright with a little biopsy?”

“Is this going to hurt?” I asked with a wince.

“You tell me. You just said the pain would be dulled. I can apply a light local anesthetic if you want,” the doctor said with a disconcerting shrug. “But if what you told me is true, I don’t think you’re going to need it.”

I gulped. “I’d rather play it safe if you don’t mind.”

“Sure,” she replied nonchalantly.

She pulled out a syringe from a nearby drawer and a small vial of clear liquid and proceeded to draw a full shot of it.

Though I didn’t dread vaccines, the pinprick sensation of being injected with something was still an unpleasant experience. Soon, though, the senses around my right forearm slowly dulled to a point where I could barely move anything lower than my elbow.

Dr. Zhuk placed a scalpel on my arm, and I immediately looked the other way to stare right at Alison. Unsurprisingly she was taking great joy from seeing me uncomfortable, and she was merrily swinging her legs under the table she sat on.

After a few minutes of tense silence where I tried my hardest to keep my attention on anything other than what was being done to my arm, the doctor spoke. “This is quite something. I didn’t quite expect it to heal so fast.”

I warily turned my head back to find the wound already closed up by even uglier scar tissue, to my relief.

“And you say you regrew a finger?” the doctor asked as she began typing on her computer.

“Yes. And half of another. It also healed all of the bullet wounds I took. I ended up spitting some of them,” I replied.

“A rather peculiar if somewhat smart solution to the problem of having to get them out of your body.” She paused and stroked her chin in contemplation. “The lumps of tissue that form around your scars are still a mystery to me, but the fact that you managed to regrow functioning bones and muscles after getting them severed hints at something more advanced than casual regeneration. As I said previously, this is merely a conjecture, but I think your ability might be able to ‘think’ of the best and quickest way to heal you, in a way.”

“Does this mean I could lose a full hand?” I asked.

“Maybe. Though, I suggest you refrain from trying to find out. We’re in uncharted territory here. There are very few of your peers with regenerative abilities. But as far as standard humans go, regrowing a functional finger is unheard of.” She paused again. “There is also the matter that your ability seems to affect severed parts,” she said, pointing at the lump of flesh sitting in a metal tray between us.

I looked at the piece of flesh that was formerly attached to me. It looked like a skin-colored kidney. The previously bloody part of it had grown a layer of pale skin around it. It felt creepy.

“Eww, it looks like a gross bean,” Alison said with a nauseated expression.

“See, this shouldn’t be possible,” the doctor said. “The part of your body that was severed shouldn’t have the resources to rebuild itself. There are simply not enough cells in it to heal that kind of damage—or rather, there wouldn’t be, in the case of normal tissues.”

What followed was just a standard medical checkup. I didn’t mind it. I was used to most of the tests the doctor made me go through, and the ones I didn’t know weren’t invasive in the least.

In the meantime, Alison was merrily messing around with some of the equipment, much to the doctor’s discrete irritation.

After a good hour of testing, the doctor seemed to be satisfied with her findings and politely smiled at me.

“Seems like we’re ready to go, Mr. Steak,” she said in a satisfied voice. “Do you want to schedule your next appointment right now?”

“I think I’m good, thanks,” I said. “When will you get the results of the biopsy? And what will it tell you?”

“Oh, pretty soon, I think. Couple of days, perhaps?” She answered while scribbling on a notepad. “It’ll tell me whether I’m right about my teratoma theory or not. Also, I might be able to get some clues about what exactly triggers your power.”

“Good, anything else I have to do?” I asked.

“Right now? Not really. Perhaps if your… associate were to take your place, though…”

“No, thank you. I know my power inside and out.” Alison replied offhandedly while fiddling with a curious inverted funnel-shaped device.

“Alright,” the doctor said with professionally hidden disappointment. She regained her composure immediately as her gaze shifted to me. “Although I would really like it if you could do an MRI when you have time. At Mr. O’s lab.”

“Uh, sure,” I replied numbly. I didn’t care much about that, and I just wanted to get out and grab something to eat. I don’t know if this is from my power or what, but even doing nothing makes me hungry now… I thought idly. Although it might be from the mild blood loss.

Alison and I bid the doctor goodbye as we stepped out into the cold young night. Time for a kebab.

It was up barely past 19:00, but the Stake Corner was already packed with other students that looked to be about my age, absorbing the calories they would need to be able to party all night.

Through all the commotion, it seemed a small miracle that Tim managed to see Alison and me. He waved at us and pointed towards the door to the backroom that had become our unofficial headquarters. I silently nodded in gratitude and made my way there with Alison in tow.

We ordered and then ate. In silence, surprisingly enough.

Alison must have had her mind elsewhere, as she didn’t even bother making fun of me as I absolutely destroyed the puny morsel of food Tim had dropped in front of me. I ended up ordering a second kebab that I then wolfed down just as quickly as the first.

“You truly are a teenager,” Alison said with a flat look. “Power or not, I don’t think I could eat that much in a week.”

“My metabolism is probably super high now, or something,” I replied between two bites. I swallowed and washed down the rest of my food with a sip of Coke. “Anyway, I’ve been meaning to ask. Have your powers caused any… changes in you?”

Alison stroked her chin a few times before replying. “Yeah. I’ve gotten much better at assembling Ikea furniture.”

I groaned in frustration. “Please be serious for a second. I’m new to this, and I need to figure out when stuff happens because of my power or when I’m simply having a mental breakdown.”

“‘Simply’ having a mental breakdown?” Alison repeated, cocking an eyebrow.

“Ignore that.” I waved my hand dismissively. “Have you or have you not experienced any mental or physical changes?”

This time, Alison slightly furrowed her brow and straightened her back. “No. Alex, have you been having… Weird dreams? Or hallucinations?”

The question took me aback. Was this bad? I swallowed nervously. “Is it bad if I did?”

“I don’t know. I just heard that…” her voice trailed off. “Never mind. ”

“What? You can’t do that!” I let out slightly louder than I meant. “You can’t drop a bomb like that and expect me to just forget about it!”

“It’s just that… I’ve heard some pretty dark stuff. But it’s just rumors.”

“Just tell me already!” I fumed.

Alison sighed. “Cases of Impacted that experience hallucinations or weird dreams sometimes start losing control of their powers. In your case, you might get globalized cancer that kills you slowly… Or it might do nothing.”

“That’s not very reassuring…” I said somberly.

Allison burst out laughing. “Oh my god, you believed me! I’m just fucking with you!”

An odd mix of relief and embarrassment washed over me. “You’re an asshole! I was freaking out! ”

“Oh, relax. You’re always freaking out,” Alison leaned back into a chair and caught her bearings. “To answer your question: no, I haven’t had any weird dreams or whatever. If you wanna do something about it, I suggest you go see a shrink.”

What would Dr. Santos think about this? Never mind that. What would he think about me having powers?

I pushed away the thought. I’ll cross that bridge when I get there. I heaved out a long sigh and finished my drink.

Alison’s demeanor suddenly shifted from spastic to incredibly serious. “So, while we’re here. I wanna talk to you about our next job.”

Even though I was used to it now, the sudden personality change still took me by surprise.

Alison took a breath and continued. “But first, I have to admit something. A lot of the hardships we faced could have been avoided with more careful planning.”

I narrowed my eyes but stayed quiet, waiting for her to expand on the point.

Alison subtly glanced around to make sure we were alone. “Okay, so, this house we’re going to break into…”

“So we’re breaking into a house now?” I cut her off.

“Listen to the whole thing before interrupting.”

“Well, it wouldn’t be interrupting, then…” I muttered.

“Anyway…” she said, rolling her eyes. “This… place we have to get into. I’ve looked into it a little bit, and… I found some sketchy shit. Apparently, there was a massacre there. Some kind of blood-crazed crazy maniac with Impacted abilities slaughtered and ate a family of four.”

“Cannibals? This job keeps getting worse and worse,” I said, shaking my head in disbelief. This seemed to be a little bit worse than ‘urban legends’.

“Now, that’s the weird part. The guy, a Rampant, was arrested and was put in Block-A12.”

“Block-A12? What’s that, some kind of jail?”

Alison gave me a flat look. “You don’t know anything, do you?”

“I’m not an Impacted geek. I don’t like following these kinds of stories. It’s morbid,” I said defensively.

“Block-A12 is a big detainment center for Impacted near Lyon. He’s still in there, as far as I know. But the weird thing is ever since he’s been locked up, all sorts of things have been reported to the police regarding the house he killed those people in.”

“You learned all that since yesterday?” I said with genuine surprise.

“I have my sources. Anyway, most of the reports are about… ghost sightings,” she said solemnly.

“Ghosts? Wait, are you messing with me again?”

“No. Not this time. I don’t think it’s anything like that. But we cannot rule out the possibility that there’s some Impacted power at play here. In the eventuality that we face more like us, we have to have a plan. Bashing them on the head with pipes will only get us so far if they have a head to bash.”

“Wait, I’ll be supposed to be helping other Impacted?” I asked.

“We’ll only know that when we get there. We don’t know who or even what they are. For all we know, it could be one of those crazy monsters some of us can conjure. Right now, all we got to go on is a creepy back story and some spooked neighbors.”

That meant things could get really dangerous. Not that things hadn’t been until now. Yet, I felt so excited. At the possibility, at the mystery

“So, what’s the plan, then?” I asked.

“Well, I don’t have one. But, since we don’t know what we’re fighting exactly, we’re going to have to make some contingencies. If there are indeed ghosts or weird stuff going on in there, we’ll just belt them with everything we have and run out of there as fast as we can. If it’s some power we can handle, we’ll just try talking first, then fighting, should we have to.” Alison rubbed her jaw distractedly. “I think we can bank on your durability for some bluff as well.”

“Bluff? What do you mean?” I asked in confusion.

“Well, I’ve been mulling it over for a while. Since you’re shit at fighting right now, the only offensive ability you have is your creepy aura.”

“Hey! No need to be insulting,” I said with a scowl. Being aware of it was one thing, but having her saying it to my face was another. My self-confidence was low enough as it was.

“I don’t dabble in the business of tiptoeing around feelings,” Alison said dispassionately. “Anyhow, whether you like it or not, people will freak out if they see you shrug off bullet wounds. That’s an advantage for us. That, along with your creepily hesitant demeanor, could make you a rather convincing bogeyman.”

I didn’t know what to say. Apart from the damage Allison’s words had done to my self-esteem, I was quite puzzled. I didn’t see how I could appear threatening to anyone. Powers or not. I was just an awkward and scrawny kid. Then again, I’ve done stuff that would send shivers down people’s spines, I guess… But this had nothing to do with my appearance.

“Sorry, I just don’t see it,” I said as I shook my head.

“Sure, right now, you’re just pathetic…” Alison started, ignoring my scowl. “But with a creepy mask and better posture, you’d make a somewhat convincing mini-boss.”

“Mini-boss? Wait, nevermind that… What’s wrong with my posture?”

“Well, for starters, you slouch a little. Also, you clearly don’t know what to do with your hands when you’re standing up. Even now, I can see you fidgeting.”

“I’m well aware, believe me,” I said bitterly. “So what do you want to do about it? Send me to hotel school?”

“No. You got me wrong. I do want you to fidget less, but I want you to slouch more. Actually, the time I found you most scary was when we went back home that time we met. When you’re looking tired, you don’t appear as nervous as you do right now. So… Act more tired?” she frowned. “Maybe if you got a little bit high beforehand…”

“Nope. I don’t take drugs. ” I shook my head with conviction. If there was one thing I was convinced about, it was that drugs would do no good to my situation.

Alison looked amused. “Right, because you’d never do something illegal.”

My face flushed slightly. “That’s not what this is about. I don’t want to… lose control. Or become addicted.”

“Right,” Alison said with a snort. “Then you’ll have to work on your acting skills. Here, stand up and pretend you’re some zombie-like creature.”

“You can’t be serious,” I said in disbelief.

Alison and I spent the rest of the night working on my… acting. Even though it was cringeworthy at best, the situation’s incongruity managed to make it a somewhat fun experience. When we left, the store was closing, and Tim thanked us profusely after I insisted on paying full price for both our meals. Citing an ‘explosion in business’ after we’d disposed of his former ‘investors’.

I still paid. Settled accounts make good friends. And friendship is a currency I’m really short on right now. Plus, I definitely don’t have any reason to be stingy with the money from the last job.

When I got home, a familiar sense of dread slowly lulled me into the now-familiar nightmarish anxiety that had kept me in sleep-limbo for the past few nights. I disliked it. But, truth be told, I would take that over my usual panic attacks any day.

The events of the other night were still heavy on my mind, but the outside world was moving so fast that I couldn’t help but feel like they’d somehow be blown away by the next big event in my life.

Is this a coping mechanism? Or am I actually managing to come to terms with it? I thought idly. Better not look at a gift-horse in the mouth. I decided.

I tried relaxing by drawing. Oddly enough, the only thing I could seem to focus on was that weird dream I had earlier. So I tried sketching it as best as I could.

After an hour of random strokes and very liberal use of the red color, the result was rather disturbing to look at. I couldn’t seem to capture the sense of eerie tranquility I felt while I was dreaming, so the drawing just looked like some gross flesh-room full of exposed muscle and pulsing veins. The figure standing in front of the wall was distorted as well. It didn’t look like me. It looked like I had felt in my dream. I put my pencil down and headed to bed. Not too keen on indulging the customary mind battles I had each night where I told myself that I’d fall asleep eventually, I decided instead to do the same thing Alison did earlier and tried to do some research. I took out my laptop and tried looking for more stories relating to the house Alison and I would visit later.

Apparently, Alison hadn’t been lying when she told me that the house had a bad rep. The search results linked to the address were filled with news articles of a murder spree back in 2017 as well as stories about it being haunted ever since.

One of the items also mentioned that the police in the IHI hadn’t found any evidence supporting that but that they did find proof of human occupancy. They had tried dispelling the tales surrounding it, but to this day, conspiracy theories still floated around that something horrible lurked inside and that no one should approach it. Of course, people had tried broking in and had tried taking footage of the ‘ghosts’, but the ‘Abbaye district’ mainly had turned out to be a hoax.

The only semi-credible footage supporting the claim was that of a blurry pale shape in a video elegantly named ‘crazy ghost gorilla in Abbaye ghost house NOT CLICKBAIT!!!!!’ with a view count barely under a million. The video was of shoddy quality, and the person taking it seemed to have a severe case of early-onset Parkinson’s disease, which rendered it really suspicious in my eyes.

Instead of indulging in reading all the bizarre theories in the comments, I decided to open the browser instead and look for stuff on Impacted folks living in the area. Turns out, as is usually the case with this type of thing, the information was scarce and of little use to me. The only publicly recorded notable ability-users in the vicinity were either up in jail, enlisted in IHI rehabilitation programs, or dead. The only few that were still functioning members of society and known by the public possessed powers that seemed relatively benign.

Alison’s ‘sources’ were obviously more efficient than me at finding relevant information. So, instead of futilely continuing the research, I made a mental note of asking Alison what she knew the next time I saw her and started browsing the best source of information on Impacted I had managed to find, The Impacted Compendium.

I tried looking for information about Impacted in our geographical vicinity, but nothing seemed to concern Alison or myself, to my immense relief. At least the public doesn’t know about us… yet.

I closed my laptop and yawned. This whole process of checking the web for information on Alison and me seemed to be helping with my sleep issues somewhat.

This might be the first OCD-like ritual I actually find somewhat helpful.