Marie-Anne wasn’t always like this. Brave, I mean. When mom and dad died, we chose to fight instead of giving up. But I have to admit that, even without her power, she’s the one who pulled us through this.

Running was not only exhausting, Yvan thought. It was stressful. Every new place he and Marie-Anne visited was a potential source of anxiety. Twice already, they had stumbled upon vermin-infested nests of filth, and they ended up having to force themselves to inhabit them. Yvan knew deep down that none of this would be happening in ordinary circumstances. But so many different events conspired in forcing them to go from one hideout to another that they was simply no choice but to settle for sub-human living conditions.

The main issue, sadly, was the presence of Marie-Anne’s little followers. The two disconcertingly scary beasts followed her like duckling their mom, and even though Yvan had managed to come to terms with the fact that Marie-Anne considered them to be a shard of their parent’s life, he refused to accept it for himself. Plus, even if those two monsters were somehow the remains of their mom and dad, they wouldn’t want to put them in more danger than was necessary. But alas, the two malformed golems seemed to barely understand more than a young puppy, and so they simply followed Marie-Anne’s most straightforward commands and otherwise just stood around doing nothing. Too bad they weren’t as inconspicuous as Marie-Anne’s former pet. Then they could have kept it hidden. Or at least, Yvan could have… disposed of them.

The first of Marie-Anne’s pet, ‘Puppy’, had been raised from what had remained of their old dog Taxi, an old black Labrador that had died of prostate cancer a few years ago. The resulting creature borne of the old dog corpse had been accidentally raised by Marie-Anne when they had buried it.

Yvan shivered at the memory of that alien creature emerging from the freshly dug grave. It was pitch black and had four long legs that, instead of hanging down from its body, stuck out from its sides like a spindly iguana. A long series of sharp spikes protruded from its long tail to its eyeless face, and its toothy maw had been a vision from a nightmare. Still, with time, the family had ended up accepting it, and Marie-Anne’s power was being things of life.

“God works in the most mysterious ways,” his dad had said. “Marie-Anne asked for her puppy back, and he answered in turn. So what if it looks different now? It acts and obeys just like old Taxi did. And, more than anything, it makes her happy.”

Dealing with the authorities and, subsequently, the IHI had been somewhat of a hassle for their parents, Yvan remembered. But after they had concluded that Marie-Anne’s ability would be harmless so long as she didn’t get in contact with dead bodies, they had let her go back to school as if nothing had happened.

They had, of course, kept Puppy in their center afterward, as it simply couldn’t be left out roaming about, lest it spooked a neighbor or attacked one of their pets. Marie-Anne had been allowed monthly visits to see her pet, and everybody seemed to be happy with that.

That all changed on the day when Puppy had bit one of the researchers that took care of him. The woman had just accidentally stepped on its tail, and the beast had reacted like any animal would by reflexively biting it. Although the bite had been nasty, the woman’s life wasn’t in danger. But the other researchers hadn’t known that, so they had followed the most logical course of action. They had killed the creature.

Upon learning of the news, Marie-Anne had wept for days, and nothing seemed to console her. Yvan had tried his best to cheer her up and had even convinced their parents to get a new dog, but at this point, Marie-Anne seemed to have lost some of her joie de vivre forever.

Even though the IHI had a history of secrecy, the story somehow got out that Marie-Anne had the powers to raise monstrous creatures from corpses.

Soon after, the real trouble started. At first, it was a break-in during a family vacation. The door lock had been blown, and the house ransacked. Their parents doubted that it could be anything else than ordinary thieves, but Yvan had been on edge from that point on.

The police had been absolutely no help in reassuring them, and the IHI simply said that it was none of their business. So Yvan’s dad had bought an expensive security lock for the two doors of their house and had installed locks on every window.

As their cruel fate would have it, this wasn’t enough. One fateful night, a mob of armed people managed to force the front door with explosive force and had immediately rushed to Marie-Anne’s room to kidnap her. Thankfully, she had fallen asleep in the basement where she had been watching a movie that night along with Yvan, so they didn’t immediately found her. Their parents had heard of the commotion, and their dad had tried defending his house while their mom called the cops. The men had simply shot them and fled from the building when the sirens could be heard in the distance.

Yvan & Marie-Anne had stayed hidden under the stairs in the basement as soon as they had heard the sounds of gunshots coming from upstairs. And it wasn’t until the police reached them that they learned of their parent’s deaths.

Marie-Anne and Yvan had been crushed by the news. Their world had been shattered in mere seconds. Yvan had lost all that was meaningful in his life—except for Marie-Anne. They had cried and screamed upon seeing their parents’ dead bodies being rolled out of the crime scene. Marie-Anne had rushed to the closed bodybags, slipping through the concerned policemen’s arms. She hadn’t even touched them when a bright green light had flashed from the inside of the bags.

That was when her two new pets had… awakened. Yvan remembered the scene vividly. The closed bags sagging and collapsing on themselves as if their contents had evaporated, and their shapes suddenly deforming and inflating until the two monsters burst out of their fabric cocoon, to everyone else’s horror.

The policemen had, naturally, freaked out and had started firing at the beasts. The monsters—Yvan wouldn’t call them anything else at that time—did the only rational thing a cornered living being would do. They lashed out. The massive gorilla-like monster that had broken out of their mom’s bodybag had hurled the stretcher it had been born on onto the closest cop, and it barreled its way through the shellshocked officers to reach for Marie-Anne. The other one, the freaky tall one, had immediately vanished in a puff of white smoke during the chaos of the scene.

Yvan had been staring at the whole thing, horrified, as the cops around him started freaking out and running for cover, away from the gorilla monster. But instead of running away, he had had only one thing on his mind: saving his sister. So he had run after the beast after it had jumped out the window, a screaming Marie-Anne held firmly onto its shoulder, into the cold night.

For hours he had tried looking for the golem in the warm darkness of an August’s night. By sheer luck, he had even somehow managed to ditch all the cops that had tried following him, and he hadn’t even taken the time to take his phone with him, but he wasn’t going to give up.

Yvan couldn’t say how long he had spent looking for the creature after it had run out of his house, as most of it had been an extended adrenaline rush. The only event he remembered clearly had been the conclusion of the ordeal when the thin and spindly white creature that had first vanished at the crime scene suddenly appeared next to him and had immediately covered his mouth with a massive clawed hand.

“HeLlO,” the beast had said in a voice that felt straight out of a horror movie. Yvan had tried punching and struggling against his assailant, to little avail.

The creature simply stood there, a hand on Yvan’s mouth, its head cocked to the side as he flailed his limbs uselessly against the beast’s bone-hard hide.

After a full minute of useless exertion, Yvan slowly calmed down and silently stared at the creature. It slowly let go of him and backed away politely after a few seconds.

“What the fuck do you want? Where the hell is Marie?” Yvan had screamed at it.

It had simply pointed a finger to the distance and then started walking in that direction.

“You want me to follow you?” Yvan had asked incredulously. He didn’t think the being was fully sapient, but it seemed to possess a less primitive form of intelligence than Puppy. Against his better judgment, he found himself following the odd creature as it lead him deeper into the deserted park.

After a short walk, Yvan felt immense relief wash over him as he stumbled upon his sister hiding behind some bushes, hugging the massive creature that had carried her there.

“Thank you, mommy,” the girl wept quietly as the massive beast silently stroked Marie-Anne’s hair.

“Yvan!” the girl had burst out in tears upon seeing him. “I thought you’d never find me!”

“I’m here, Marie, it’s alright now,” he said, still in shock, as his sister jumped into his arms.

“What are we going to do now? They attacked the cops, and those people who killed mom and dad could come back for us!” Marie-Anne said as she was still crying in her brother’s arms.

“I don’t know yet, Marie, but I swear on my own head that we’ll manage,” he had said. And he had meant every word.

The situation was hard to process, Yvan felt. The apartment he and Marie-Anne found themselves sleeping in last night was relatively comfortable, all things considered. A bed for each one of them, free food, clean clothes, a massive TV, access to the internet, and, most importantly, a real sense of security. This was barely more than a liminal space, a place of transition, Yvan knew. Still, it was a somewhat pleasant one, like taking a first-class plane to an unknown destination.

In that metaphor, Yvan wasn’t quite sure what to think of the pilot and the copilot. At first, that madwoman and her sketchy acolyte had left a very mixed impression on Yvan’s mind. But after mulling over the matter, he concluded that trusting them, for now, was in his and his sister’s best interests. After all, it’s not like he could have refused, seeing how the woman had subdued Marie-Anne and her monsters without so much as breaking a sweat. But that was the thing. That Alison woman had demonstrated she could handily handle them, should the need arise, but she hadn’t directly used the implied threat to coerce them. She had instead asked them if they wanted to come along. That alone was enough to make her more trustworthy than most people he and Marie-Anne had met since they started being on the run.

Yvan looked at his little sister still asleep in the single bed next to his with a mix of fondness and regret. It was so unfair. Why did his brave little sister have to be the one to be cursed with such a dreadful ability? If he had been the one to get her powers, Yvan would have disappeared while making sure she was okay. Had this world been a little bit less of a cruel place, had whatever god or entity responsible for this chosen him instead of her, he would have been at peace. Because little Marie would have been safe, and that was all that mattered to him. As had become a necessity in the last few months, Yvan buried that sense of regret deep in his subconscious and forced himself to do something else.

He swung his leg to the side of the bed and strolled to the adjacent bathroom to splash some water on his face. This kind of mundane everyday ritual had become something of a luxury for Marie-Anne and himself. So he did his best to enjoy every single moment of it before going back to his room, a small grin tugging at his lips.

He quietly pulled the blinds open, revealing a nice view of the neighborhood, and put on a set of clean clothes Alison had generously given him. A simple black Adidas tracksuit that would be a couple of sizes too big for her but a perfect fit for him. He would have to get new clothes quickly, though, as he quite disliked the idea of having to wear a tracksuit all the time. Still, he was delighted at not having to wear his dirty rags or some of Alison’s clothes instead.

Yvan still nearly jumped when he saw Marie-Anne’s creatures shift slightly in the corner of the room. He hadn’t even noticed them behind his sister’s bed. Right now, they seemed to be asleep. He tried to simply ignore them, as he so often did, but found their presence in the same room as his sister and himself to be somewhat… reassuring.

“Hey, Marie,” he whispered as he sat next to her on her bed. “Are you awake?”

“Hey Yvan,” she said as she cracked an eyelid open and beamed at him. “I don’t think I’ve slept this well since we left home.”

“Me neither,” he said with a silly grin. “I don’t think I’ve slept this well in years, actually.”

“Any news from our captor?” the girl asked in a soft voice.

That was one of the reasons why Yvan was so proud of his little sister. She was barely thirteen, a kid by all accounts, yet she possessed the wits and reasoning capabilities of a fully grown adult. Even now, after being rescued from starvation—or worse—in that abandoned house, Marie-Anne hadn’t lost her edge and her ability to question her surroundings. This would keep her safe, Yvan knew, but he couldn’t help but feel sad that she had to experience that kind of cynicism that he had hoped to spare her from. He didn’t want her to turn bitter like himself, after all.

“Don’t call her that… At least not while we’re here,” he replied with a light chuckle. “Seriously, though. You know I’m not usually optimistic, but I think that woman might genuinely be our ticket out of this shit life.”

“What’s her deal, do you think? What does she have to gain from helping us?” Marie-Anne asked in a whisper.

“I honestly think that she’s been broken enough to genuinely want to help. You know I’m not bad at reading people. I just think she sees herself from a few years ago in you, and she wants to help,” he said in an earnest-sounding tone. Yvan knew that his sister would not be fooled by empty words, so he tried convincing himself that this woman really wanted to help.

“We could still try to escape…” Marie-Anne whispered hesitantly. “I know we can’t fight her, but I’m pretty sure we can bolt out and disappear before she can find us…”

“No. I want us to stop running, Marie. This is no way to live. We were about to die of starvation just yesterday. We can’t go back to this,” Yvan said with a lump in his throat. God knew he meant every single one of those words.

Marie-Anne quietly nodded, and Yvan stood up as he spoke again. “I’m going to go ask her directly what it is that she has planned for us. We’ll see about the rest later. Now, you just rest and laze around as much as you can, alright?”

“Alright,” Marie-Anne replied as he exited the room quietly.

Yvan strode through the massive empty apartment, searching for their host, but found himself unsure where to look. As he quietly tried to open the few closed doors on the premises, he stumbled upon one that seemed to be locked. As he let go of the handle, he noticed that he could hear the faint sounds of somebody speaking from the other side. Alison, presumably.

Yvan tentatively put an ear on the wooden door to eavesdrop on whatever conversation she was having, not expecting much out of the maneuver. To his surprise, though, he found that he could hear her speaking quite clearly through the wood.

“…no, I don’t feel quite comfortable with leaving them alone right now.” She said.

A beat passed in silence as her interlocutor seemed to reply.

“I don’t know. I’m not saying I won’t do it. I’m saying that I have to do something about their situation first. I know you don’t give a shit about them, but know that I do. And if it’s not solved, it’s going to become your problem too,” Alison said in an impatient tone.

Yvan guessed from the context that ‘them’ referred to Marie-Anne and himself, but he still wasn’t sure who it was that she was talking to.

“You better….” She paused, waiting for a reply. “Yeah, he’s doing fine. Surprisingly fine, actually, considering how mentally fragile he is. I’m thinking of introducing him to the big boys after he gets over his broody depression phase. He’s sharp and crafty, and I think he could bring a lot to the negotiation. But first, I’m going to have to work on his self-confidence. And self-image. And posture. And by god, don’t get me started with the way he dresses.”

She paused again as another reply came. “How the hell would I know? I’ve barely known him for a few weeks!” Alison paused again for a few breaths. “Yeah, he’s honestly pretty effective when used adequately. I’ve told you last time that it’d have been a bit more of a hassle to deal with De Sevin without him.”

De Sevin? Yvan thought. Where had he heard of that name before?

“Yeah, sure. Anyway, you’ll have to excuse me. I have to check on my latest foster rescues,” Alison said.

Yvan quickly stepped away from the door and sprinted back to the room his sister was in as discreetly as he could.

He quietly closed the door and sat on the bed he had slept in, and pulled out the iPad Alison had lent him the night before so he could pretend he had been doing something other than spying on her.

After about two minutes spent in silence, the polite knock on the door still made him jump in surprise, even though he had expected it.

“Can I come in? You guys decent?” Alison asked from the hallway.

“Yeah, you can come in,” Yvan replied as Marie-Anne yawned and stretched.

The serious-looking blond woman politely entered the room as if it didn’t belong to her in the first place. She was wearing a pair of black-rimmed glasses, and her hair was tied in a loose bun. She wore a black pair of yoga pants and an open flannel shirt over a grey tank-top, and at her feet, Yvan saw the pink and fluffy hair of two cute bunny slippers.

Yvan did a double-take as he wondered for a second if that was indeed Alison or someone who just sounded like her. The woman’s now relaxed and casual demeanor was a stark contrast from what he and Marie-Anne had seen yesterday. The sudden change in appearance elicited an emotion Yvan couldn’t quite put a name on, but it unsettled him. It felt like witnessing a lion wearing a tutu; you really want to laugh, but your dead scared about losing an arm.

“Wow, Mrs. A, you look super different from yesterday,” Marie-Anne spoke as Yvan was too stunned to say anything.

Alison smirked at Marie-Anne’s remark and seemed to take it as a compliment.

“Well, can’t expect to walk around my own apartment in my work clothes the whole time, can you?” she said with a smirk.

That made sense, Yvan thought. They hadn’t actually seen the real Alison yesterday. They had seen her ‘work’ persona, the mask she put on to do those dark deeds she hadn’t expanded on before.

“So, what are you going to do with us?” Marie-Anne said before Yvan could even begin to think of what to say.

“I’m not going to do anything with you, young lady,” Alison replied calmly. “First and foremost, I want you two to be safe. There’s no way I’m letting you two go back to the kind of life you were leading before.”

“So, we just live here forever? Hidden from the world?” Yvan asked with an irritated voice.

“No, but you’re going to have to stay for at least a few days,” Alison replied. “While we figure out what the best course of action is. Do you guys have a relative living far away, in another country preferably, that wouldn’t ask any questions about you staying with them?”

“No, I don’t think so. Our only living relatives are some faraway cousins on our dad’s side, and they haven’t heard from us in a really long time. I doubt they would agree to take us in unprompted. Especially with those two around,” Yvan said, pointing towards the two silent beasts sleeping on the floor in the corner of the room.

Yvan had always found it odd that Marie-Anne’s creatures didn’t seem to need any kind of sustenance but somehow had to sleep as much as they did. Maybe it was just them adapting to their sleeping schedule, but Yvan could have sworn that the two monsters were crankier whenever they didn’t get enough sleep.

“Right,” Alison said as she stared at the two creatures. “And I suppose that disposing of them is still out of the question.”

“You’re not killing mom and dad!” Marie-Anne spat in a flare of rage.

“Calm down. I didn’t say kill. I said ‘disposing of.’” Alison said. “I mean, there’s no way to, like, lock them in a cell while you two go about your day or whatever?”

“No, that wouldn’t work. Plus, you’ve seen that the tall one can teleport already,” Yvan pointed out.

“Shit. Totally forgot about that,” Alison said as she bit her lower lip. “What about ordering them to stay here for a while?”

“It could work for short periods of time, like a day or two, but if they don’t hear from me for a while, they’ll try to find me. And, believe me, they don’t give up easily,” Marie-Anne said.

“Plus, they’d probably wreck the place. I’ve seen them growing restless after being stuck in one place for too long. It’s like dogs, they need to move around, or they’ll get bored and do some damage.”

“Mmh, that could be an issue,” Alison wondered out loud. “If they get too rowdy, the neighbors might start asking some questions…”

“Isn’t there another place where we could stay? One a little further away from civilization? At least for a while,” Yvan asked.

“I’m afraid this is my only home,” Alison said apologetically.

“So you don’t you have, like, a lair? Or a hideout?” Marie-Anne asked sheepishly.

Alison burst out laughing. “Oh my… You really see me as some kind of great super-villain, don’t you?” she said, wiping at the corner of her eye with her finger. “No, kid. I’m afraid I’m the cheap and shitty kind you don’t get to see on TV. I don’t have a secluded cave or an abandoned… Wait a minute. I might have a temporary solution.”

Yvan and Marie-Anne both lit up at her words.

“I may have cleaned out a place that could serve as a temporary hideout, by the way. It’s where I met Alex, the guy from yesterday, by the way. There used to be a shitty gang occupying it, but they’ve been dealt with, and nobody else seems to know or care about the place,” she paused and seemed to think over the matter a bit more. “That could actually work. It’s in a deserted part of town, there’s literally nobody living within a few miles radius of it, and since it had a gang occupying it recently, I’d bet that hobos steer clear of the place. It’s actually huge inside, and I’m pretty sure that behind it is a huge former parking lot that’s not in sight of anyone. Your pets could roam around inside for days freely—so long as they don’t shit on the floor. I’d have to buy a bunch of locks, bar the doors and windows, clean up the place a little, but we could have you live in there.”

“You’d do that for us?” Marie-Anne asked, tears bubbling at the corner of her eyes. “Oh my god, I don’t know how to thank you!”

“Don’t thank me. We’re not there yet, and it ain’t going to be no luxury hotel,” Alison said. “It’s currently full of rubble and gunk, and I don’t think it has running water or electricity. I think the first thing I have to do is to check whether I can buy the place or not. I’ve been thinking of getting my own evil lair for a while now, and you’ve sold me on the idea.”

She smiled a toothy grin, and Yvan shuddered at the unsettling feeling that radiated from her expression.

“I don’t know how I feel about living in a villain lair, but I guess it beats haunted houses and sewers,” Yvan said.

“I need to take a shower and make a call. You guys go on and eat whatever you want from the kitchen. I have a bunch of pains au chocolat laying around. Marie-Anne, you can wear any of my clothes. I feel like they’ll be a little bit too big, but it’s better than going about in those tattered rags you were wearing. Plus, I see that Yvan has already put on the tracksuit I left. Feel free to go anywhere you want in the house, by the way. Except in the room with a locked door.” She paused and spoke again after seeing Yvan’s expression of mild concern. “Don’t worry, I don’t keep anyone sequestrated or anything of the sort in there, but it’s where all my documents are. I really don’t like people messing with my stuff.”

“Of course, we’d not fuck with our patron’s stuff. We’re not dumb,” Yvan replied.

“Don’t use that language. I’m the one who swears around here,” Alison said. “Anyway, see you in a bit.”

Yvan took a pensive glance at his sister and allowed himself to smile. Not for her, this time. But for both of them. Even if this didn’t turn out okay, it would at least give them a much-needed break.

“Yvan… Does this mean we’re going to become criminals?” Marie-Anne asked timidly after a few seconds spent in silence.

Yvan looked outside through the bedroom window and smiled again.

“I don’t know, Marie,” he replied in a soft voice. “And honestly, I don’t give a damn.”