Chương 18: Who's Lia?

I think I'm finally starting to get the hang of this. I wake up, I eat breakfast, I go to our daily lecture, take notes on everything we have to memorize for super school. Lunch. Power training. I've managed to get a template of everything that frequents our little training zone, outside of the occasional new bug or bird that flies into my domain.

Dealing with those surprises is never particularly fun, given I still have that near-irrepressible urge to 'test' every new form I gain access to, but I can handle it and my domain radius has gotten past fifteen feet, which is apparently pretty good. Nowhere near the top of the class, though, and that's where I need to be. I'll keep working. I'll keep training. After training I have my useless, performative therapy sessions, and then I grab dinner and head back to my room to hang out with Christine and Anastasia.

We usually study—Anastasia being a child and Christine being Christine, they're having a bit of difficulty catching up with the material—but neither of them are stupid, just distractible and not terribly interested in what we're learning. I've helped much less capable children complete their homework every day and I can certainly manage it with these two. It's only when I fall asleep every night that I still find myself consistently unmoored.

I'll often have that dream where I'm floating through the air, with chaotic, ever-shifting lights dancing around me, falling slowly towards something. Sometimes it's a very, uh, dreamy sort of dream, where nothing really feels real, but sometimes it's very lucid. And when I speak in the dream, something tries to speak back. I try not to, because its words crash through my mind and leave me with a headache in the morning, but I never get the impression that it's trying to hurt me.

I do think, however, that whatever's talking back is also what I'm falling towards. Sometimes I don't have that dream, though, and that means I have the other dream instead. The dark room, where I'm blind no matter how many eyes I shift. The walls and floor are squishy and warm against my hands and feet, except for when they're hard and sharp. Every night, it feels like the room has changed—shifted, reconfigured, rearranged like a moving labyrinth trying to keep the minotaur lost inside.

But it's not a labyrinth, not really. It's just a room, and for all I know the changes are just in my imagination; me forgetting where I am in the dark and blaming it on the world around me. I'm not sure what the room is, I can't be sure. But I think it keeps getting bigger. The dream was scary at first. Confusing. But I've had my powers for nearly three weeks now, and now I just find it boring. How long until my body wakes up? I can feel myself sleeping, though the sensations are vague and distant.

I can feel my head on the pillow, the weight of the blankets, the rise and fall of my chest as I breathe. Yet I'm still here, trapped inside this dream, staggering through the darkness alone. I always start the dream formless; nothing but a floating consciousness that has to create its own eyes to check the darkness, its own legs to walk, its own arms to grope blindly around the inside of my prison. But of course, I don't have to make myself eyes, legs, arms, or anything else. I can be nothing. I can be human.

I can be an Angel. I can be some horrific mess in between. No one can see me. No one can judge me. Because there's absolutely nothing here but me and the room. I can't be my old body, of course, but that doesn't feel like it's as much of a problem in my dreams. Still, I wish I could wake up.

One more time, I try to open my eyes, and finally I am met not with the blackness of the dream but the light of my room in the military complex, with my dresser and my bed and the alarm clock reading 5: 56 am, which is about to scream bloody murder at me in four minutes. As a person who has always preferred to be standing up and doing something instead of lying down somewhere comfortable, I get up that much earlier, shutting the alarm off and making a mental note to turn it back on after I get Christine up.

Christine, of course, would much prefer to sleep until the last second, and far be it from me to make her any more irritated in the morning than absolutely necessary. I spend the next four minutes getting dressed and playing with my face in the bathroom a little until Christine's alarm goes off next to her and I head over to encourage her to actually obey it. Abruptly, however, the alarm suddenly stops, without any of the usual fumbling that comes from Christine groggily attacking the snooze button.

I step out of the bathroom and find the alarm clock hovering above the nightstand in pieces, disassembled in the air as Christine turns over in her bed and tries to fall back asleep. I mentally add 'barely conscious' to the list of situations Christine can use her power in despite her disability and shove away the instinctive annoyance that comes with it.

It's pretty common for people to make up bullshit justifications for why they can't do something, and the way I normally figure out what justifications are bullshit or not is by checking for contradictions like this. Christine, however, is not Peter deciding he doesn't want to do the dishes right now. Christine has a medical condition that I've seen her taking pills for. No matter how random or contradictory her problems appear to be, I should actually trust that those problems exist. Old habits die hard, I guess.

"Hey, wake up and put the alarm clock back together," I tell her, poking her shoulder.

"Mmmnnngh," she eloquently responds.

"Christine, come on. You know how this works by now."

"No thanks, too cozy," she mumbles.

"Christine. Please get up. I'm not doing this every day for fun, you know."

"Then quit doing it." I suppress a twitch of my eyebrow at the implication that 'it is not fun' counts as a good reason to not do what needs doing, and take a deep breath instead. She basically asked for this. She deserves what I'm about to do to her.

"It's really warm and humid here, isn't it?" I comment.

"We were having a toasty summer, but the Chicago area is normally nice and chilly. I like that." I pause. Christine doesn't respond, forfeiting her last opportunity for mercy.

"There are so many more bugs here," I continue cheerfully.

"Can you feel them with your power? I can sure feel them with mine. They're everywhere. Just all over the room." Christine shifts in bed, her face peeking out from the pillow to stare at me with mounting horror.

"I think there are some in your mattress," I tell her innocently. She jolts out of bed, throwing the blankets away from her in a mindless panic. Now free from the covers, her breathing slowly slowing back down, she remembers that her power can, in fact, inform her if there are any bugs in her mattress. Which there are not.

"... That was evil," she says, staring at me in horror.

"That was some fucked-up torture shit. You're going to hell for that."

"What do you mean?" I ask innocently.

"I'm basically one of god's little Angels. Now put the alarm clock back together and let's get going." She stares at me in horror for a little longer before turning her gaze back to the still-floating alarm clock and sighing.

"Do I have to?" she whines. This girl just doesn't learn, does she?

"Christine, I am going to be getting your ass up at six in the morning one way or another," I tell her.

"The only question here is how creative I'm going to need to be in order to accomplish that. Should I be getting more creative?" I grow a collection of various insect wings on the back of my hand and buzz them all for emphasis.

"Uh. N-no. I'm good," Christine decides, and reassembles the clock with a twist of will. It returns to exactly how it was before, power cord in the wall and all, though the face starts flashing twelve o'clock instead of the actual time.

"I'll set it," I tell her.

"You get dressed and stuff, yeah?"

"Yeah," Christine agrees with a sigh. Soon enough we're both dressed and ready, so we head out and knock on Anastasia's door. After the usual brush with her domain to let her know it's us she opens up and allows us inside. She's still in her pajamas, though, and her hair is a mess. Considering that she knows how to braid it herself already, she must have slept in at least a little. Or… wait. Shit. It looks like she's been crying.

"Hey Ana," I greet her gently.

"You doing okay?"

"I'm fine," she insists bravely.

"I'm fine, I just… I was thinking." Ah, yeah. That's always dangerous in the military.

"What about?" I ask anyway.

"The Army are the bad guys, aren't they?" Uhh. Oh boy. Well, there are probably recording devices in this room, so I don't really wanna say yes, but…

"The Army is trying to protect everyone from the aliens," I point out carefully.

"I know that," she says.

"I'm not stupid. They want to do good but they're doing it in a bad way, so they're bad." Welp, I can't argue with that.

"You're not stupid," I agree.

"You're the smartest girl I know. How are they doing it in a bad way?"

"I want to kill the aliens, but Christine and Maria don't. They don't want to fight, but the Army is making both of them fight anyway. That's bad." She says it so matter-of-factly, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Never mind the fact that, consenting or not, drafting a child is far worse than drafting an adult. Maria doesn't want to fight, though? That's good to know. She chats with us a lot and sits at our table sometimes, but I usually try to avoid talking to her much.

Lia's dumbass hormonal brain keeps making me say stupid things around her.

"They're pretty desperate," I agree.

"Desperation can lead people to do bad things."

"That's not all of it, though," Anastasia insists.

"I was thinking about how my family is dead—" Sure, as you do.

"—but then I remembered all of my friends. They might be dead. But they might not be. I don't know if they're alive or not. And… nobody will tell me. Why are they desperate about that? That's just… mean." It's an indoctrination tactic, in fact. Cutting someone off from whatever former support groups they might have. Forcing them to abandon their old life, so that the new life you present them is all they have to grasp onto. But of course, I don't say any of that out loud.

I'll teach her later, when our handlers aren't listening.

"I bet you miss hanging out with kids your age, huh?" I commiserate instead.

"Nobody around is your size. That must suck."

"Yeah, I… hmm. Hmm."

"Let's get you dressed, alright?" I prod her.

"We can't bring you to breakfast in your pajamas!"

"... Okay," she says a little weirdly, heading over to her drawers to grab some clothes. On her way to the bathroom, though, she grabs my hand and drags me along with her.

"Uh, I can braid your hair after you change," I insist, not particularly wanting to risk getting yelled at for being in the same room as a naked nine-year-old. I imagine the Army has pretty strict rules about that by necessity, because people are horrible. Though I guess on that note I'm kind of screwed already, considering how much I've been naked around her, so whatever.

She keeps tugging on me despite my objections, and I definitely don't want to disappoint her by pulling away, so I let her drag me inside and close the door behind us.

"You get changed, too," Anastasia orders me.

"Uh, I've already…" I begin, but then she raises up one of her child-sized outfits at me, a smug expression on her face. She brought in two identical pairs.

"Oh. No, Ana, that's… a little too small for me."

"It won't be too small if you stop being so big!" Anastasia says proudly, triumphing over me with indisputable facts and logic.

"... We have to go to class today, Ana," I remind her. We have to go to class every day. There are no breaks.

"I go to class small, why can't you?" she counters. And, well, obviously I can't because… well… Hmm. Because it would be creepy, I guess? I'm already creepy, though; you can't wake up in the morning with bug legs all over your body and avoid that title. I instinctively steal parts of people's faces whenever I shake their hand, what's a little running around as a kid going to do to hurt my reputation?

I've completely given up trying to not be the girl with the freaky power; I have to settle for the very competent girl with a freaky power if I want my instructors to like me. And yeah, sometimes those instructors will get on my case about transforming during lecture class, but I'm starting to get the impression that they just assume using my power means I'm not paying attention to them. For most people, power use is a conscious act of focus.

The rest of my intake can't use theirs and pay attention to the instructor at the same time, while I'm pretty much the opposite. The expected situation is that my body would remain Lia's by default, and I'd be able to shapeshift out of that form via conscious effort. But I don't have a default form; my original body is gone and I can't shapeshift into it even if I try. Once again, I am reminded: every form I take is equally fake.

A grown-ass woman walking around in a kid's body is creepy, sure, but who gives a shit? It's no more or less me than Lia's body, the Angel's body, or anything else. And besides, the question is never 'is this creepy?' The question is always 'is this the right thing to do?' And if the nine-year-old can survive this militaristic hellscape a little better if I let her dress me up like a doll and demean myself in public, then hell yeah I'll do it. It's all equally fake, and something about that makes me smile.

"... Alright, fine," I say, playfully exaggerating a long-suffering sigh.

"I'll be tiny for the day."

"I'm not tiny! You're big!" Anastasia insists.

"You'll be normal size for a day!"

"Uh-huh. You keep telling yourself that, Ms. Itty Bitty." Alrighty then! Time to definitely not think about the fact that I'm about to put on a nine-year-old's underwear. I mean, technically it's not her underwear. It is owned by the Army because they don't even have the decency of letting us pick our own clothes. … Though I guess to be fair, most of us don't own any clothes because our homes were destroyed by aliens, so like, what are they gonna do? Not buy us a dozen fresh pairs of panties?

That would be way worse. Wait, shit, I'm still thinking about it. … Whatever, let's get this over with. I shrink down into a sort of mini Lia form, mixing Anastasia's and Lia's bodies in more or less the opposite way that I mix them to look like her sister (which is yet another thing for the 'do not think about it' pile, incidentally). My old shorts fall right off when I do, but my old shirt acts more or less like a dress so I can get all of the gremlin-sized clothes on without exposing myself.

Much like my big girl outfit, everything from the shirt to the shorts is a bland, clean white, all of it decently comfortable, and it's freshly washed. Also much like my normal-sized outfit, it's not particularly sturdy or stretchy, so shifting back to normal size while I'm wearing this would not turn out well. I'm pretty much committing to being a mini-me until at least our morning class. I hope this isn't a terrible mistake.

Anastasia squeals in delight, rushing forward and squeezing me in an absolute deathgrip of a hug, lifting me bodily off the floor as she does so. I can't help but smile, feeling suddenly vindicated. Yeah, there's no way something that makes her this happy could be a bad call.

"Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!" she cheers.

"Aaah, this is great! We're gonna have so much fun today, Lia!"

"O-oh yeah?" I stammer, a bit shocked by being the one getting picked up instead of picking her up for a change. Gosh, it's so weird looking at her face-to-face!

"Well, I'm gonna step out. You get dressed, okay?"

"Wait!"

"Ana," I insist.

"I'll still be here." I carefully separate the two of us and walk out of the bathroom, closing the door behind me so Anastasia can change. She's so clingy! I'm kind of worried about it. Then I look up, and… woah. Christine is fuckin' tall. Everything is tall! How is Anastasia even supposed to use the top drawer of her dresser!?

"What the fuck? Is this seriously happening?" Christine asks, already seeming resigned.

"Yep," I confirm, popping the 'P.'

"I guess you'll have to chaperone this field trip for the day."

"Ah yes, responsibility," she deadpans.

"That thing I am definitely very good with." I shoot her two finger guns as if that comment was funny and relatable rather than extremely annoying (please become better at responsibility, Christine, you are going to be a soldier) and wait for Anastasia to come out of the bathroom. Of course, the moment she does, Anastasia just grabs me and drags me back into the bathroom again, and now that we're the same size it's very much not a matter of me letting her.

"We're not done!" she insists, dragging me back inside and closing the door again. But hey, she's in clean clothes now, so that's what's important. I guess I'll go along with whatever this is.

"What more are we doing then, kiddo?" I ask.

"You can't call me that when we're the same size!" she declares.

"And especially not today, because you're going to turn into me!"

"Huh?" I manage.

"You can turn into copies of people, right?" she asks.

"I've seen you turn into other people on accident before."

"I mean… yeah, I can," I confirm. It is my normal day-to-day, after all.

"I don't recall doing it by accident, though?"

"Oh, you do. You do all sorts of little shifty things whenever you're thinking about something hard, like sometimes you'll just turn into Maria or Emily for a little while before turning back? So you'll definitely have to not do that because we're going to prank everybody! Now come on, turn into me!" Oh my goodness is that why Maria keeps trying to talk to me? Because I keep turning into her? God fucking damnit I had no idea I was doing that, I'll have to apologize.

That's not something I should be doing without permission. Though for now I guess I have not just Anastasia's permission, but her explicit request. And honestly? The idea of looking like Anastasia for a day is way more appealing than the idea of looking like Lia.

Even outside the fact that I'd rather use the body of someone who isn't an abusive asshole, Anastasia's body is dramatically better optimized than the human norm, and I just generally find it easier to hold onto a body plan that feels better suited for my situation. Which… well, usually isn't a baseline human body at all. I make the shift, staring down at my newly-clawed hands. Is that actually true? It seems kind of stupid; a human body would be optimal for social interactions with humans, wouldn't it?

Maybe not Lia's body specifically, since she's an awful person, but… hmm. Hmm.

"Oooh my gosh oh my gosh you look perfect!" Anastasia squeals.

"Now let's do your hair like mine, and then nobody will be able to tell us apart!" I glance at her massive braid, realizing somewhat belatedly that my own hair is nearly brushing against the floor and also I have absolutely no idea how to braid my own hair. Someone else's hair? Yeah, I kick ass at that. But I didn't have hair until I had superpowers, so I don't actually have any idea how to do that whole thing behind my own head.

"... I think that might take a while," I hedge, running my fingers through my newly luscious locks. It's… a very weird sensation. Having a sense of touch is still something I'm getting used to, and while it isn't constantly on the verge of overwhelming me like it used to be, it's always there in the back of my head, nagging at me. Hey Julietta, it's me, the inside seam of your sock! I just thought you should be constantly aware of me at all times, no need to thank me.

Hey Julietta, how are you doing, did you know you're actually cold right now? Oh hey Julietta, I realize you're just minding your own business, but wouldn't it be awesome if I started screaming at you to scratch your skin for literally no reason!? Like seriously, how do people live with this shit? It's absurd. The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"I've got it, it's okay," Anastasia assures me, and then she clenches a fist hard enough to stab her own palm open with her fingers. I flinch as blood pours out of the wound, snaking through the air like fluid, prehensile tendrils. The crimson snakes pour themselves onto my scalp, scaring the shit out of me before I feel them flow around my hair, saturating everything so Anastasia can twist it all into a braid with her mind.

It all happens remarkably fast, the blood still pouring from her hand and feeding into the red medusa she's made my hair into via a thin trail through the air. Before I know it, my hair is braided, and the sticky blood extracts itself from me without leaving even the slightest droplet behind before touching up Anastasia's hair, too. It's amazingly impressive. Anastasia has made so much incredible progress learning to use her power, and I couldn't be more proud of her. I just… y'know.

I wish she didn't have to use it. Or at the very least, I wish she didn't have to hurt herself to do so. It's a sick joke of a power to give a child, horrid and heartless and brutally, criminally unfair. And yet, her whole purpose here is to get good at using it anyway. She's supposed to wield it as best she can. She's supposed to stop being a child altogether, and turn herself into a weapon. It makes me sick, but there's very little I can do about it. I can only try to keep her happy in the interim.

Ultimately, this war creates injustices like a cow creates cud, regurgitating it repeatedly before swallowing everything all over again. I have lived my whole life with this fact at the forefront of my mind. We are dying, we are losing, and that means people like Anastasia will keep being created and keep suffering, even if the Army wasn't the one forcing us into facing it. If we learn to fight, maybe we can keep as many people as possible away from hell, for as long as possible.

Even if we lose in the end, that's still worth it, isn't it? I really don't know if it is or not. I'm the type of shitty cynic to wonder if it might be better if we just get it all over with quickly. But at the same time, I'm the sort of person to push those feelings aside and do my best to solve whatever problems happen to be in front of me, no matter how ultimately meaningless. People are just contradictory that way, I guess.

"If you use your power like that while we're pranking people they'll be able to figure it out, you know," I tell her, just to get her to hurt herself that much less. It's ultimately meaningless. It's immeasurably important.

"Hmm, that's true," Anastasia agrees, her wrist already scabbed over but still obviously injured.

"Maybe we should wear matching bracelets to cover it up or something!"

"Nah," I say, gently pushing my domain through hers to pick up an updated template, which she easily allows.

"Here, I got it." I shapeshift her wound onto my arm, opening up my wrist and accelerating the scabbing process to copy everything. It's a bit tricky, since I can only influence how the dead parts develop indirectly, but I think I do a pretty good job. It's… weirdly satisfying, and strangely natural. With my domain covering her like this, I'm getting constant template updates to the point that I find myself unconsciously matching certain parts of her posture and expression. I just…

know where all of her body parts are relative to each other and making them match feels… I don't know, comfortable? Still, Anastasia seems startled as I shapeshift injuries onto my own body, which I find delightfully ironic.

"Doesn't that hurt?" the cute little hypocrite asks.

"I mean, it throbs the same way yours does, I imagine, so you'd better not make me hurt myself anymore to keep up this prank, okay? Because we are so going to prank the crap out of everyone."

"Oh! Yeah! We are!" she agrees, her excitement returning instantly.

"Are you ready?"

"Hold on, let me get into character," I hum, placing two fingers against each of my temples.

"Let's see… I hate vegetables… yes… I think bison can fly… of course."

"Hey!" she giggles, playfully smacking me on the shoulder.

"Hold on, hold on, let me focus!" I fake-whine.

"Now I have to start over! Let's see… so basically, I am very small…" She shrieks and laughs and hits me some more, causing me to laugh right back. Then I actually get into character, taking a deep breath and letting my power take over for all my constantly churning thoughts, leaning into that unconscious posture-matching and the habits of my copied brain to mirror the girl beside me in not just body, but in presentation. Why not lean into it? It's all equally fake.

"Ready," I say with her voice, and she grins exactly the same way I already am. We head out at exactly the same time, holding hands and smiling innocently up at Christine. She gawks at us for a moment, eyes flicking back and forth as she tries to tell us apart, but she can't. How could she?

"Oh, no," the poor woman whines.

"No, no, no. Lia, you can not do this."

"Who's Lia?" we ask in stereo.

"Aaagh," Christine groans.

"Nope, fuck this The Shining shit, I give up already. I refuse to be responsible for this."

"What's wrong, Christine?" I ask innocently, tilting my head to the left.

"Yeah, what's wrong, Christine?" Anastasia parrots me, tilting her head to the right. Hahaha, yes! She's a natural at this! Christine responds by scowling and pushing her domain out, pressing it into us to feel out our powers rather than our faces. She still isn't sensitive enough with her domain to feel the weird qualia that Anastasia and I feel, but she has started to learn to tell different domains apart, at least.

Unfortunately, my domain is still comfortably nestled inside Anastasia's; to keep our acts in synch I need to keep my domain covering her, and her body is always inside her own domain by default. It's actually pretty interesting. Domains can overlap each other, of course, but as we were taught in class, doing so generally causes a conflict of power. In the overlapping space, both domains are weaker as they struggle with each other for dominance. Yet I don't feel any weaker with my domain inside Anastasia's.

I never have. I've felt it when my domain overlaps with other people's domains, but not hers. I don't feel stronger either, it's just… yeah. Our domains are both here. That's fine. We trust one another, after all. Is that all there is to it? I wonder whether we should ask an instructor about it or just keep it to ourselves. I guess we're going to be like this all day. Someone will probably notice, and then I guess we'll see.

Sure enough, with our domains melded together like this, Christine can't even tell us apart that way.

"What the hell," she mutters.

"You two are… ugh, whatever. Let's just go to breakfast." Anastasia and I giggle, heading for the door. Y'know what, yeah! I can think about all this when we actually know if it's going to be a problem or not. For now, it's time to unleash ourselves upon the world! None shall escape our twin gremlin shenanigans! Christine stops to apologize to a startled soldier as Anastasia and I emerge from the room, shrieking with laughter as we race to the cafeteria for breakfast. Heh, this is actually kind of fun.

People stare at us in confusion, realization, concern, and then yet more confusion, emotions flashing over their faces one after the other as we pass. I'd normally hate every second of it, the judgment, attention, and disgust, but Anastasia's plan is actually perfect for dealing with it all. If I was just shapeshifted into a child version of Lia, everyone would treat me like a complete weirdo. But as long as no one can tell Anastasia and me apart, they can't do that because they don't know which of us is me.

They're stuck in the social position of being nice to both of us, because otherwise maybe they're being a jerk to a kid! It's awesome.

"Food please!" Anastasia and I say together, causing us both to giggle as we lift our trays up to the serving lady. My chin barely peeks over the counter!

"Well well, I seem to be seeing double," she comments, plopping a heaping helping of extra food on both of our plates.

"Don't get into too much trouble now, you two."

"That would defeat the point!" I tell her.

"Double trouble!" Anastasia chirps. The lunch lady laughs, content in the knowledge that she will be immune to our mischief because we're not stupid enough to mess with the mess hall.

"Take good care of each other, you two," she says, and then we scurry away to our usual table, where Ed and Maria are already eating. Maria doesn't always sit with us, but she and Ed are still chatting with each other and smiling, seeming to enjoy each other's company. As Anastasia and I approach, however, the conversation abruptly ends as the two of them stare at us. Ed shifts in his wheelchair a little, a smirk twitching on his wrinkled face as he appears to hold back a laugh.

Maria, however, looks immediately concerned.

"Uh… Lia?" she asks carefully.

"Who's Lia?" Anastasia and I say together, and holy shit it feels good. Not me, that's for sure!

"Um, please tell me you haven't actually forgotten who Lia is," she says, and for some reason she seems genuinely concerned about that possibility. Huh. Well, Anastasia likes Maria and she's generally pretty perceptive, so I'll trust her to finish the prompt here.

"If, hypothetically, we knew who Lia was…" I start.

"... We're sure she'd be having fun!" Anastasia says. Ha! My god she's adorable. And sure enough Maria seems to relax a bit. Hmm. That was a weird way to react. I should probably figure out more about her; I feel bad about avoiding her just because of how uncomfortable she makes me feel. Although… huh. I'm not feeling that way right now, actually. Which makes perfect sense, now that I think about it.

Anastasia's body is right on the cusp of puberty, but she hasn't hit it and doesn't really have any concept of that kind of attractiveness yet. Man, this day just keeps getting better.

"Is something wrong, Maria?" I ask innocently.

"Yeah, you looked kinda worried," Anastasia agrees.

"How the fuck do you even do that, Lia?" Christine asks, approaching from behind us with her own tray of food.

"You sound exactly like her."

"We're the same," Anastasia says, both of us turning around to look at her in sync.

"Why wouldn't we sound the same?"

"Because voices don't work that way?" Christine answers.

"What you sound like is maybe twenty percent biology and eighty percent habit. How you use your resonance and articulators and shit is way more important than their size. Lia should still sound the same as she always does, but like… squeakier."

"Yeah, uh, that actually ties into what I was going to say," Maria says, seeming hesitant to interrupt. She's pretty soft-spoken for such a huge woman.

"I'm pretty sure Lia is like me."

"Like you how?" I can't help but ask.

"Well she… I mean you… I mean, one of you? Um. I think her shapeshifting powers affect her mind." Oh. Shit. Is that why she keeps trying to talk to me? And wait, do her powers mess with how she thinks, too? All I really know about it is that she makes little fairies. I want to ask for more information, but Anastasia's a lot closer to Maria than I am and I don't want to give away the game by asking a question she would know the answer to.

"Yeah, we know," Christine says, sitting down and disassembling her food with her mind, sorting all the different parts into individual areas of the tray.

"Wh—you know?" Maria says, which… yeah, I mean, I don't exactly recall talking about it!

"She was always really meticulous about checking our food to make sure it hadn't gone bad in the incursion zone," Christine says.

"And then she would shapeshift into a Raptor and start eating aliens alive and raw. It was kinda fuckin' terrifying." Wh—all I did was check the expiration dates on the cans! Isn't that just common sense!?

"Don't say mean things about people that aren't here," Anastasia pouts.

"That's gossiping!"

"Yeah, no gossiping!" I parrot gratefully. Thank you!

"Fine, fine," Christine sighs.

"My point is that I'm pretty sure Lia knows, too. Dunno for sure, because she literally never talks about herself, but it's pretty obvious. I guarantee you she noticed." Maria's eyes flick between Anastasia and me.

"And you're just… okay with that?" she does her best to ask me directly, though she clearly can't tell Anastasia and me apart. How would she?

"It freaks me out every single time I use my powers. I feel like I'm going insane and I don't know what to do about it." Well, shoot. Now I definitely feel like garbage for not talking with Maria more. She's been trying to talk to me because she's been looking for help. Why was I too dumb to see… well, okay, I know why. Fucking hormones. Well, I don't wanna break kayfabe, but I still have to try and set this right.

"I bet if you asked her about it next time you see her, she'd be happy to talk to you about it," I tell her honestly. Today is an Anastasia day, because she deserves one. Next time I have a chance, though, yeah. I'll talk about it. I don't really want to, since it seems like kind of a dangerous thing to discuss in a military compound full of potentially paranoid soldiers, but this apparently isn't just a me problem.

Besides, the whole reason the military is suspicious of me in the first place is because I acted like an insane cannibalistic psychopath alien, like, right in front of them. Maria relaxes and nods at me, almost certainly having figured out which of us is which for now. Oh, well. I stand up and motion for Anastasia to come with me, and the two of us briefly step out of the mess hall to break line of sight. Then we walk back in and take each other's seats, smiling innocently.

"Aaand we're back to square one," Christine grumbles.

"Maria, do me a favor and poke them until one starts growing freckles. No way she keeps this up all day."

"No cheating!" I insist.

"Yeah, no cheating!" Anastasia emphatically agrees.

"They're right, you know, it's important to play by the rules!" Ed nods along happily, a twinkle in his eye.

"We'll have to find some other way to figure out the difference between the two of them, like say… Ana. Do you think Zuko and Azula would make a good match?" Who and who? I have absolutely no idea who those people—or more likely cartoon characters—even are. Fortunately, I don't really need to. If they want to try and be clever by asking questions only Anastasia would know, I can still answer them. I let my power guide my movements down to the finest muscle, and we once again respond in synch.

"Ew, no!" we say, recoiling in disgust.

"They're brother and sister!"

"Oh, heh heh! Sorry, I must have forgotten!" Ed smiles, perfectly happy to lose our game as long as he gets to see us play. Our entire breakfast is silly and fun from there on out, which is… weird. I actually feel myself relaxing for a second, but when I panic and check to make sure I'm still in the right body, I actually am. Soon enough, though, we have to get up and go to our general power knowledge class.

"Morgan, what are you doing?" the instructor snaps at me when Anastasia and I walk inside. Well, I guess she snaps at both of us, since she can't tell who's who.

"I'm Anastasia," I correct her innocently.

"Uh-huh," she says, glowering at the real Ana.

"And who's this, then?"

"Anastasia," she says smugly.

"Don't worry, we'll pay really good attention!" I promise.

"Yeah, yeah! We'll be good!" Anastasia confirms. The instructor sighs.

"Whatever, just go to your seats," she grumbles, shooing us away. Anastasia and I share a grin of victory and do just that, hopping up into chairs that are suddenly way too big for me. It's a constant marvel seeing things from a child's perspective, reaching up to grab door knobs and food trays and generally struggling to get around in an environment not built for me. There's a certain nostalgia to that; while it isn't anything quite like how my real body (or at least my original body, I guess?) forced me to interact with the world, it's definitely comparable. I never really thought about how almost nothing in day-to-day life is designed for use by a kid. They just have to constantly deal with environments that are explicitly inconvenient for them, and they don't really know anything else so why complain? Honestly, the fact that the world isn't going to accommodate you so you'd damn well better learn how to deal with shit by yourself is a pretty good lesson for kids to get used to.

It shouldn't be, of course, but it is. All that being said though, I can't deny that it's still dumb that I feel more comfortable now that things are less convenient. But even if that's part of why I'm enjoying this body so much, I know it's not the only reason. I like making Anastasia smile. It's one of the only objectively good things in this fucked-up place, and getting to supply it in spades is making my day.

It's weird and awkward that people stare at us, that people judge me even if they can't tell which one of us I actually am. But maybe, just this once, I can say fuck 'em and be done with it. Who cares how weird they think it is? I'm not doing anything wrong, and I'll never be able to stop being weird ever again. Even if I get these stupid powers under control, it's not like I'll be able to stomach staying Lia all the time. The thought hits me like a toothache, throbbing in my head and refusing to go away.

I'm pretty pissed at myself for not having the self-control to reliably stick to Lia's body, since self-control has always been one of the virtues I hold most highly. But at the end of the day… do I really need to be Lia all the time? It isn't failure to change to a more effective strategy, right? The results are what matters, in the end. I don't need to constantly be in her body to convince people I'm her.

I glance over at Christine, watching her hands fidget under her desk as she struggles to pay attention to even a fraction of what the instructor is talking about. That's sort of what my power does, isn't it? It fidgets, constantly shifting and changing and twitching in little ways because otherwise I can't focus. Christine might be struggling in class, sure, but she'd be doing worse if she tried to stay perfectly still. Maybe that's the trick. Maybe I should lean into these tendencies even more. …

Of course, I don't test this right away. Maintaining Anastasia's game is more important right now, and if I'm right, the way my mind is constantly updating her template and keeping track of her physical state so I can match it is a form of fidgeting anyway. When class ends we go right back to playing, and I let myself have fun with it, following Anastasia wherever she wants to go.

We do silly things like waiting for her to greet someone and turn a corner before I follow and do the same, or have Anastasia 'mess up' and act like me for a bit to make people sure of the wrong answer. But my favorite is still the times we copy each other exactly, and I let my power run wild with being Anastasia's perfect mirror in every action, which creeps people the hell out in ways I never expected to find myself enjoying. It's good. It's fun.

But of course, when we get to our practical power training class, Commander is having none of it.

"Recruit Morgan, what the fuck are you doing?" she snaps, her domain smothering both of us in an attempt to tell us apart.

"Do you think you're here to play kindergarten games?" Anastasia and I both instinctively hold her out of our domains, keeping the same matching flow we've had with our bodies all day. The space between us is evenly saturated with our areas of control, and I'm pretty sure even Commander can't use them to figure out who is who. Anastasia still snaps her a salute, though.

"No ma'am!" she says.

"We're training, ma'am!" I agree, matching the salute. Which is. Y'know. Not in accurate.

"Hmm," she frowns, her domain pressing in around us a little harder.

"Well look at that. You two really are naturals. We don't even bother teaching domain synchronicity unless you end up in an all-super strike team."

"Domain synchronicity, ma'am?" I ask.

"The thing you're doing right now," Commander explains.

"Overlapping your zones of control without weakening them. Negates resonance and dissonance effects, too. Of course, it also leaves you completely open to the full extent of the other domain's control, as if you were powerless, so it's only useful in small squads with more than one super that needs to operate in the same space."

"What are resonance and dissonance effects?" Anastasia asks.

"Glad you asked, because that's what we'll be learning today," Commander says.

"BLACKBURN! EDWARDS! UP FRONT! The rest of you, form a line!" A hawkish-looking older man in our group walks up to where Commander is indicating, with Peter of all people following him. Peter has honored my request and more or less entirely left me alone, a state of affairs I am happy to maintain for as long as possible. Today, though, he looks directly at Anastasia and me as he makes his way towards Commander, with a focused look in his eye that I don't particularly like.

"Some of you have likely already noticed the phenomena I am about to describe, and only need to know the terms," Commander says, "but for those of you who have, through either skill or ineptitude, kept your domains to yourselves, I will explain. These two recruits, in addition to their other abilities, have a valuable power known as a resonance effect.

In essence, though their domains still fight other domains for dominance, something about their abilities causes both their own domain and the domain they fight against to become denser and more powerful. This affects both domains equally, and so it does not affect the outcome of a fight for dominance with their domains, it can potentially swing a fight for dominance severely in the case of a third party. These powerful abilities can artificially inflate the strength of any superhuman or Angel.

As such, they are carefully managed military assets." Her domain rushes towards us and presses against our own, like it often has in the past. But then, Commander reaches out towards Peter, and all of a sudden her power swells in strength, a simmering, dangerous feeling adding an undertone to her usual promises of happiness in exchange for obedience. Anastasia and I continue to barely hold her out, but from the winces of many people around us I imagine most were not so fortunate.

"As you can see, by overlapping with Recruit Edwards' domain, mine becomes significantly more powerful through the conflict. Edwards and Blackburn here have what we call generalized resonance domains—they will empower the vast majority of domains that they come into contact with, the only exception being other generalized resonance domains. When fighting with each other, they will do the opposite and make themselves weaker. This, of course, is called a dissonance effect."

Commander's power recedes from around us, a few people shuddering around us as it does. I almost do the same; the power just feels so slimy, for all its promises of joy.

"While generalized resonance domains will empower almost anyone, it's still entirely possible that you will run into specific domains that cause a resonance effect with you, but no one else around you. The same goes for dissonance effects. This is always vital information, so today we will be getting you used to the feeling, so you can immediately alert an officer when you experience it." Hmm. Wait a second, this actually does sound familiar.

I look up at Christine, and judging by her face I think she's reached the same conclusion. The first time we fought an Angel and it tried to use its power on me, Christine tried to use hers, too. She failed, and her power didn't do anything, but both her domain and the Angel's got a lot weaker as a result, allowing us to escape. I distinctly remember that feeling, the invisible pressure all over me suddenly dropping away. … Is that part of why the Aliens wanted to kidnap her, or just a coincidence?

I'm jolted out of my thoughts as Commander starts directing people to approach Peter and the guy I don't know whose last name is apparently Blackburn. Darn, she's probably going to use the opportunity to separate me from Anastasia and figure out who's who, and it's not like we can just leave like we did in the mess hall to reestablish confusion. And sure enough, I'm called up alongside someone I don't know and directed to stand in front of Peter. Because of course I am.

Peter flashes me his usual sardonic grin as I look up at him with a frown. He's always been taller than me, but this is just ridiculous. I feel his domain try to pass inside mine so I fight against it, and sure enough the sudden rush of extra power is unmistakable. God, even his domain pisses me off. It feels like arrogance beyond mere arrogance; a supreme knowledge of one's superiority because the concept of anything superior is categorically impossible.

My strength rises with my own irritation, but Peter's just casually rises with it, as if to prove its own point. A perfect power for the perfect asshole.

"So, you're little Ana, huh?" Peter asks, though it's easy for me to tell from the way he looks at me that he knows I'm not.

"Sorry for the scene your new big sis and I had when you first showed up. I'm afraid I'm just cursed to love the sound of my own voice."

"... Um, okay," I answer like a confused and somewhat irritated child. That is, after all, basically what I am right now.

"It's not the only voice I love the sound of, though," he continues.

"I like to listen. And gosh, I couldn't help but overhear a bit of your conversation earlier, in the mess hall? The way Lia copies your mannerisms so accurately, it just… well, it's quite impressive. Hell, I bet she could fool me even if she was pretending to be someone I know." Oh, god damn it. He knows. Or… well, he can't know, and he knows he can't know, but he at least suspects. What is he thinking right now? I certainly haven't kept up a perfect Lia act at all times, and he would have definitely noticed that.

But when I do put on a Lia act, it's pretty damn accurate, and that's probably been throwing him off. The changes he has noticed could be explained away by the literal life-changing experience I went through, so the glimpses of Lia are that much more believable when they show up. But now he knows I can fake that. And, I realize with horror, it might even be possible that he saw me use my power after the crash. I…

I don't really remember the crash all that well, I was pretty damn out of it at the time, but I think I remember Emily trying to convince Lia to take me with them because I had powers. Was Peter still there at the time, or had he already run off? If so, he knows for a fact that I had powers. And he does not have any evidence that Lia did. And I just gave him everything he needs to know to understand why I keep seeming to be the genuine Lia anyway. God damnit.

"... I'm going to leave now," I tell him frankly, not really knowing what else Anastasia would say in this situation.

"You do that," he grins.

"Oh, and tell Lia I need to talk to her, yeah? I'll come find her later." I don't respond just walking away as I thank my power's manual control over my body. Without it, I'd be sweating bullets. This was probably inevitable, right? Peter is too smart and he knows both Lia and me too well. Maybe it's better that we're just getting it out of the way now. Still, I can't help but be anxious. Peter has blackmail material on me, and I have no idea how he's going to use it.