"I'm a shapeshifter, popped when I was really young. Shifting's pretty much instinctive for me, or at least it was back then. I didn't really think about it, just did it, y'know?"
The healer nodded.
"Well, that led to some bad habits. For one thing, I tended to start looking like anyone I liked. Not like-like, just anyone I thought was cool or whatever. That... didn't always go over so well."
"They thought... what? You were pretending to be them?" he asked.
"Yeah, or their friends or their favorite celebrity or... you get the idea. Between that and the fact that I didn't really get the idea of genders... Like I said, it didn't go so well. A lot of people gave me a hard time. My cousin was pretty much my only friend. He stuck up for me and we played in his backyard, that sort of thing. Eventually, I realized I could do more than just human forms and then I started looking into the Citadel. I wanted to do something important, make all that crap I went through mean something."
"More than human forms is right." Rick said. "Don't, uh, don't take this the wrong way? But, like I said, your body is really weird."
This time, Kelly decided to take it as a compliment. "Oh, well, that all started when my friend Hector gave me a really cool idea. See, I got a little too enthusiastic and, through a totally understandable mistake, my head... kinda... exploded."
Kelly spent quite some time talking to the young healer after that. It was nice. Not romantic in any way since she still hadn't started puberty, but it was enough to make her think the process might be worth all the nasty side effects. She was just wondering whether she'd end up liking girls or boys, or maybe both, when they were interrupted by a flash of red light.
* * *
"What the heck was that?" asked Gerard Healer, staring at the red glow that was clinging to everyone on the roof.
"I'm pretty sure it was the signal that things are about to get started for real." Drew said.
"Huh?"
Kerry sighed, not bothering to hide the irritation. "Retcon. That was Retcon's power. It means that whatever they're about to throw at us, the instructors won't be holding back."
"Retcon? But... but isn't she attached to Prime? Why would she be part of a graduation exercise?"
Drew carried on the conversation with Gerard but Kerry was too distracted to pay any attention. There was movement down on the street. Actually, it was on all of the streets.
"I'm going to go see what's happening down there." Kerry told the other two.
Keridwyn closed her eyes. When she opened them, she wasn't a twenty year old woman that looked like a little girl anymore. She was something else, something great, something strong.
She leapt off the tower's roof, careful not to damage it with her claws. Wings spread wide, flapping every now and then to adjust her course, Kerry stretched her serpentine neck so she could get a good look at the ground below. Apparently, their fake city was now filled with fake citizens.
At first, Kerry thought they were all being produced by a single Empowered. She changed her mind when she got a closer look. There were people sitting in cars and at the tables of cafes. They looked real, except for being slightly transparent. Even more were- not walking, maybe sort of gliding?- down the sidewalks. Those were just an inch thick, stone silhouettes of men and women. They reminded Kerry of those signs on a restroom door, only life-sized.
The ones that were most important right now were a bunch of wire frame mannequin style ones, sort of like overly elaborate metal stick figures. They were gathered around what she thought was supposed to be a two story apartment building. She was also pretty sure it was on fire, based on all the smoke and flames coming out of its windows.
Kerry made sure to land a few blocks away and approach on foot. As fast as she'd been moving and as much wind as she made landing, the fire would've gotten a lot worse if she'd come down too close to it. Careful not to step on any of the 'civilians' as she got closer, Kerry took a moment to consider the problem.
The fire itself was no threat to her, not in this form. But she was too big, way too big, to enter the building and search for trapped victims. If she made a hole in the wall to reach through, that'd just let in more air and, again, that would just make the fire worse. She couldn't call for someone better suited to this. Her power seemed to literally make a new, and different, body every time she used it. There was no way to get a custom headset or communicator for it.
Kerry was considering the possibility of just dismissing her dragon body. That would put her back at the tower, maybe next to Drew, and he could spread the word or come help himself. That idea was cut off by the arrival of the super hero. He had a bright red cape, boots and facemask, with a tight fitting yellow body suit. The guy was hovering just above and between Kerry and the burning building.
She didn't know why she hadn't seen him arrive, teleportation, speed or just angle of approach. Kerry didn't know why someone would put a big blue 'T' on their own chest or pose with their hands on their hips in mid-air like something out of a cartoon or a kid's comic either.
Then she heard him announce, "Never fear, the incredible Todd is here!" and saw him dart forward through the air. He started ripping out chunks of the wall, presumably to help any trapped residents escape.
"STOP THAT YOU IDIOT!" Kerry yelled, lunging forward at the same time that the extra oxygen caused flame to billow out of the new opening.
* * *
There wasn't any real sunlight in what some of the trainees had begun to call Fake City. Even so, the class and their attached Healers gave a sigh of relief when the sourceless light started to dim. Kerry's fire had turned into a fiasco and it was far from unique. No real combat, it was just one stupid incident after another and each one of them had involved at least one flesh and blood person who was obviously Empowered.
Now that it was night time, everyone was hoping to get some rest. Still, a little over three months at the Citadel was enough to give them a good idea of how it worked. No one was really surprised when they didn't get that rest.
* * *
"I... um, I think they're dead." Anna Insight announced.
"Who?" Kelly asked.
The two were currently the only uninjured operative trainees in the tower. It was the middle of the night and everyone else was either out dealing with the ‘Battlegrounds invasion' or recovering from injuries taken doing the same thing.
"A couple of civilians on the east side. They're... um, the cutout style ones."
"Wait, east?" Kelly asked. "I thought all the fighting was on the north side?"
"It is. That's why I thought this was weird. They don't look like they were taken out in a fight or anything, just murdered."
Kelly thought about it for a moment. Her head had been frozen by some guy in black leather and a bunch of chains. The last thing she'd seen was the same guy trying to set Isaac on fire. Her friend had been really angry. She felt fine now though. Healers always seemed to freak out when she 'died' for a little bit. They'd insisted she stay here to recover for a while.
"Okay, I'm going crazy in here. Let's go take a look." Kelly said.
"Um, I think maybe you should go by yourself." Anna replied. "Most of Fake City is in range from here, but if we both go, I'll lose sight of something like half the training area."
Kelly shrugged. "Okay, I guess it's not like you'll see anything up close that you can’t from here." She started to leave and realized the remaining problem. "How do I find them?" she asked.
Anna just smiled, then tapped the communicator in her ear. Kelly blushed as she turned and headed for the door.
* * *
Kelly laughed as she ran. Flying would have been faster, true, but she hadn't refined her running form since Coach Achala stopped making them do those marathons. Besides, the mock civilians were already dead, sort of, and she'd really wanted to stretch her legs.
Anna's ongoing directions led Kelly to a two story high rise. Man, that really sounded funny but she didn't know what else to call the bu
ilding. It was like someone had taken one of those too-expensive-to-be-apartments buildings and cut out everything between the overly elaborate first floor and the heavily sculpted top floor. She kind of liked the eagle-gargoyle things around the roof though.
She went up to the unit Anna described and found... something weird. Kelly didn't know how else to describe it. Just inside the door there was a male civilian. Like Anna had said, it was one of the stone silhouette types. This one was lying on the ground and had a hole in its face, more or less where one of its eyes would have been.
Kelly bent over and examined the wound, shifting back to her reinforced social form as she went. After a moment, she added the changes that were meant to increase her senses of smell and hearing. Once she had them perfected, she'd be more or less on par with a bloodhound and a bat. Interpreting all that extra info was the real stumbling block, so for now, she was just a little above a normal human's maximum.
Narrow and just a little longer than two finger widths, it was probably a stab wound. Kelly thought it might have been a hunting knife or maybe one of those ones the military used, the ones that could double as a bayonet blade. Kelly took a deep breath through her nose and tried to figure out what she was smelling as she went further into the apartment. Or condo. Whatever.
Blood was easy. Everyone knew what that smelled like. Kelly had no idea why she was smelling it, but she was. There was a female silhouette, lying face down in the living room. Kelly knew they didn't have faces, much less a recognizable front or back, but still... There was a ragged cut along her stomach and, on the opposite side, two more low down on the legs. It was... it was like someone had eviscerated her and then cut her hamstrings.
This was sick. She knew it wasn't real, these were just dummies, but Kelly had to suppress nausea anyway. She sniffed the air, picked up a new scent, and followed it into the kitchen. Tomatoes, vinegar, congealing fat and- oh.
There was a can of baked beans, with barbecue sauce, on the kitchen table. From the ragged look of the can and the mess on the table around it, someone had used a knife to force it open then eaten the beans with their hands.
Kelly had no idea what the last smell was. Bitter, sharp, kind of familiar... but... no, it wasn't coming to her. She couldn't help contrasting the precise, almost surgical murders with the sloppy remains of the food, as if the... intruder, was more familiar with killing than eating. She heard something move in the corner of the room. Kelly left the table behind and took a closer look.
It was... a dog? She was pretty sure that was what the little stone silhouette was supposed to be anyway, one of those tiny ones with the short curly hair and a poufy tail. The... the dog's body was covered by hairline cracks, centered around a... a footprint. Whoever did this, they hadn't just kicked the dog. They'd stomped on it.
As she knelt there, absently stroking the damaged simulacrum that she was pretty sure couldn't feel pain, Kelly realized what that last scent was. Kelly was smelling her own fear. Someone who would do this... what did you call someone like that?
* * *
The morning of the second day was awful. The trainees were physically exhausted, had pushed their powers to the limit, were hungry, lacking in sleep and it just didn't stop. Not every incident was on the same scale as the Battlegrounds invasion, most were fairly petty, but there were enough of them and they came frequently enough that no one could really rest. In short, they were tired, exhausted, and they were starting to make mistakes.
* * *
Drew Stasis had all the time in the world. Somewhere in the last few years, or the last twenty four hours, he'd learned to hate that phrase. It was true enough but it was also damned slippery. He had all the time in the world, but that was all he had: the time in the world.
Drew stood in the street, the only source of movement in the frozen world he'd become so used to, and he looked up at the boy hanging in mid-air. He looked like a fairly average twelve year old, give or take a year or so. Short blond hair, jeans and loose T-shirt with a band logo Drew had never heard of, he even had that bit of leftover baby fat on his cheeks that usually disappeared once the growth spurts kicked in.
He was also obviously Empowered, the third eye and greyish skin were a dead give-away, probably pretty recently. Drew was sure that was the reason the boy was a little short of three stories up and a few feet away from the building's roof. Drew wanted to believe that the kid was a flier but the look on his face said otherwise. It added up to a child that didn't like his new Empowerment and decided to jump. The question now was, with just 'all the time in the world', could Drew save him?
He couldn't call for help. The kid would hit the ground before Drew could explain the problem, much less before anyone else could get here. Catching him obviously wasn't an option. Maybe he could pull the jumper back onto the roof?
Drew circled the building, as well as several others in the area, looking for a way up onto the roof. All the ground floor windows and doors in the area were closed, so the easy way was out. Then again, he'd have to come out of stasis long enough to open at least a few doors if he tried to use a stairwell. He might not have enough time for that.
The adjacent building had a fire escape, though its ladder was up and he'd still have to figure out a way to get across the gap between the two buildings. Drew sat down to think about the problem. That was one thing he always had time for.
Eventually, Drew had an idea. Anything he was carrying in real time came with him when he went into stasis. Well, anything that was small enough and light enough that he could really carry it. He wasn't sure if it was the weight that stopped him from bringing another person over or if that was its own rule.
He'd never been curious enough to risk it with a baby, though it had worked with his neighbor's dog. When Canis Lupus Minimus- and yes, that was a terrible name for a Chihuahua- had squirmed out of Drew's arms, the little guy had frozen in mid-air. The same thing had happened when he fired a pistol. It worked fine when he pulled the trigger but the bullet and the shell froze as soon as they left the gun.
Drew spent a little while looking for some garbage cans. Eventually, he found a cluster of four with their lids either propped to the side or sitting loosely on top. If he was doing it deliberately, rather than as his reflex response to an injury, Drew could enter stasis in about the time it took to blink. So, in roughly the time it took to blink three times, he soon had four aluminum garbage can lids tucked under his arms.
He arrived back at the building, and the falling boy, to see that the situation had changed. His plan had been to use one of the lids to get up on the fire escape. One, maybe two, would have gotten him across the gap between buildings. After that he should've been able to use the other as a platform to reach the kid. He hadn't really thought out the next step yet, probably just tying his shirt around the teenager's ankle and using that to pull him back up or something, but it didn't matter now.
Three blinks had been enough time for the boy to fall a little further. Drew couldn't see it but he would've gained momentum and he was too far from the roof. If he tried the plan now he was pretty sure the kid would just yank him along for the ride. The fear might be enough to pop Drew into stasis before he hit but... he didn't know how that would work.
He'd never been injured in still time. This was where he came to recover from the real world. He didn't get hungry or tired or sleepy here. No matter how bad he was hurt, he always recovered, eventually. Drew didn't have a clue how old he was. He didn't age in stasis. The only changes he'd ever noticed had been healing, from a wound or simple exhaustion, and losing weight when he exercised. It was like his power had a set idea of his how his body should be and wouldn’t let him get worse than that while the world was frozen.
What if... what if injuries he got here didn't get better? He could actually die if he hit the ground while the world was frozen. He was so freaked out by that idea that he didn't notice the change quickly enough. Extreme emotion, especially fear or pain, was enough to send him fro
m real time to still time. He'd never been scared in frozen time before. It was just too... comforting. Apparently, being scared in stasis, or maybe being scared of stasis, was enough to send him back to the real world.
Drew had had all the time in the world to save the boy, two seconds or nineteen hours depending on how you looked at it. He'd have all the time in the world to think about the sound of a body hitting the pavement.
* * *
It was early in the afternoon of the second day when everything changed.
Isaac could barely keep his grip. He was riding on Kerry's back, along with Jenny and Jason. His forcefield was giving him problems. Without it, he was sure the wind would rip him right off. With it... well, his field was good at a lot of things but maintaining traction on the back of a dragon in flight wasn't one of them.
Moments later, it became irrelevant. He saw a blur of motion from the corner of his eye and Kerry gave a cry of pain that cut off abruptly. She vanished and now Isaac was falling through the air with Jenny and Jason instead of barely coping with the ride. He wasn't worried about himself. A few hundred miles might be enough of a fall to hurt him but they'd only been flying along at a few hundred feet. The other two passengers were much more fragile.
Luckily, Jenny was a quick thinker. She grabbed Jason by the arm and spun in mid-air, sending the boy towards Isaac and herself off at an angle. In an incredible display of acrobatics and timing, she caught the upper edge of one building and pushed off with her feet, rebounding across an alleyway to the side of another building where she did the same thing.
Even as he pulled Jason as close to himself as possible, burling around the boy to protect him, Isaac watched in awe as Jenny bounced back and forth between the two buildings, each impact reducing the speed of her fall. Isaac and Jason hit the ground first.
Citadel (Book 1): Training in Necessity Page 34
