Chương 31: Angelface

I'll give the drill sergeants this: having people constantly scream in our ears did a lot to get us used to how headachingly loud guns are. I seem to be affected a little worse than everyone else, but I'm doing my best to hide it so maybe they are too. Still, my powers don't let me accumulate hearing damage (even when I artificially give myself some I tend to unconsciously fix it shortly afterwards) so the bark of the weapon remains painful no matter how many times I hear it.

The helmets help out a lot, of course, but it still rings through me every time someone pulls a trigger. I line up my shot at the target as best I can and fire a single round. The bullet smacks into the vaguely Raptor-shaped image printed overtop, far enough off-center to make me grit my teeth in irritation. Lia's brain is not very good at shooting guns.

This isn't necessarily a problem, given that I have access to quite a few brains that are good at shooting guns, but switching brains to fit the situation still doesn't sit right with me. I did my best to justify it, but at the end of the day I think I just hate the idea of stealing other people's skills rather than developing my own. It pisses me off to get something like that without having to work for it. I guess that's superpowers in a nutshell though, huh?

I got randomly chosen by some eldritch dork and now I get all kinds of shit I don't deserve. It's like being born rich. … Not that I can complain about that while wearing Lia's body. I'm not even really sure what I'm doing wrong when I use her brain for this. I swap back over to one of the many brains I have from people who already cleared boot and my body just… works better, especially if I make subtle changes to Lia's frame to better match it with the new brain's body.

It's frustrating to know that my knowledge of what I'm supposed to do is fine, but my experience is lacking, because what even is experience? What changes in the mind define it? Does using an already-experienced form help me learn, or does it rob me of potential learning? I don't know, and there's no one I can ask. So I've been alternating between Lia's brain and other brains, trying to get a bit of every strategy in hopes of feeling out what works best for me.

It's been going well so far; I even got to be platoon guide for a while there, though I of course made some tiny random mistake and so the position was passed on to someone else, then someone else, then someone else, because I guess that's just how being platoon guide works. It's been over a month of boot camp now, and I'm thoroughly lost in the routine. It's almost nice not having much time to worry about the implications of my power (though I obviously find some time) and just chugging through order after order.

After we familiarized ourselves with our new rifles—which we will quite possibly be carrying from now until we die—we started getting trained with all kinds of other stuff too, with light machine guns being given the most emphasis. Here's my main takeaway: this shit is heavy, and that's mostly on purpose. The M4s the Army mainly used before the aliens showed up are perfectly functional, but alien skin is thick and tough, acting like full-cover body armor that only gets harder to penetrate on larger monsters.

Thankfully, the military had already contracted and begun testing higher-caliber standardized weaponry shortly before everything went to shit, and though the new guns weigh more (especially per bullet) they're a lot more reliable at punching deep enough into Behemoth flesh to break something important. Physics-defying superpowers are pretty dangerous, but physics itself is still a merciless, cold-hearted bitch. Supersonic hunks of metal kill shit dead.

Speaking of, I fire off another shot and wince as it misses the target entirely. Please don't have… damn it, nope, they saw.

"You call that shooting, Recruit Angelface!? Get your damn head in the game and aim!" Day in, day out. Shooting, screaming, running, marching. The sun goes up, the sun goes down, days pass one after another as I get blasted by the drill sergeants for going too fast, going too slow, missing, hitting, talking, looking at the moon, not being loud enough, anything and everything over and over.

At night I dream of a god's soft embrace or an endless cavern of flesh, and I wake up yearning to run northeast, dive into the ocean, and meet my Queen. But then the yelling starts, and I can't worry about that any longer. Once our equipment training is more or less up to snuff, they take us out to an abandoned town near the base and start field training us.

Packed down with guns, blank ammunition, sandbags, shovels, and every other heavy piece of equipment they can think up an excuse to give us, we're sorted into squads and drilled through combat patrols.

"Aliens are stupid bastards!" our drill sergeant shouts.

"But they're clever bastards, too. They might not shoot at you, but they coordinate like trained soldiers, which means those dumb animals are better at this than you! They're not going to run directly into your line of fire! They're going to set ambushes, they're going to try to get behind you, they're going to come from multiple sides at once, they're going to distract you with a big scary Behemoth so you don't notice the Wasps crawling over the buildings beside you!

The aliens will always try to surprise you, and that means you sorry sacks of shit need to be impossible to surprise! You will move with full three-hundred and sixty degree coverage at all times! You will only move when you are fully covered by your fellow men, and you will only stand still when you are providing coverage! All squads, emplace!" Our LMG gunners all set up their weapons, each with an assigned buddy to carry the bipods and ammo.

I'm carrying the accessories for the heavy machine gun, tripod, barrels, ammo, and all. I help my assigned gunner set the whole thing up, securing the base with sandbags and getting the ammunition prepared. It's an arguably excessive amount of firepower, but after running away from a veritable tidal wave of Angel clones I can't really complain about having it.

"Reposition, three o'clock!" one of the drill sergeants orders, and we all rapidly remove those sandbags and rotate our emplacements ninety degrees to the right.

"Reposition, six o'clock!" comes the order as soon as we finish, because of course it does. After spinning us around a few more times for shits and giggles, we get the next set of orders.

"Alpha squads, move up!" the drill sergeants shout, and so my squad immediately starts completely undoing everything we just accomplished, packing the machine guns back up for transport, readying our rifles, and advancing down the street. Most of the other squads stay put, covering our backs as we rush to find another spot to emplace that won't be in allied firing lines. Throughout it all, I stay near the center of my group, my domain covering each and every member of my squad.

We find a spot I'm confident won't get us screamed at, set up, and then the process repeats.

"Bravo squads, move up!" Leapfrogging one after another, we advance into false enemy territory. We travel the entire length of the ghost town this way, spending all day packing up heavy gear, lugging it on our backs, deploying it, and then packing it all back up again. The rest of my squad is completely exhausted by the time we finally reach our destination, but of course we still don't get any rest, securing the location and setting up a rotating guard schedule in case of 'enemy ambush.'

The whole time we have nothing to eat or drink but water and MREs, which one member of my squad insists stands for 'Military Rations (Evil).' Personally, I don't really mind them, but like I have for most of boot camp I keep my opinions to myself. Nothing good ever seems to happen to people who share opinions during boot camp. Staying overnight in someone else's abandoned house is disturbingly nostalgic, as are rotating watches.

I make sure to warn my team in advance that I'll probably shapeshift in my sleep, though I suspect they already know given how I've been waking up in the squad bay every day up until now. They shrug me off, mostly seeming grumpy with me because I have powers and I'm not tired, so I take my assigned rest. In the morning, one of the already awake members of our squad gets everyone up without intervention from the drill sergeant.

The lack of someone confidently screaming in my ears first thing in the morning is so unusual that it takes me a few seconds to remember where I am and what I'm doing. The instincts kick in fast, though, and soon enough I'm going through the morning routine the same as always. Once everyone is ready, the drill sergeants group us all together again and announce that they're mixing up the squads for the way back.

We all go wherever they point us to, but I'm a little concerned when one of the drill sergeants pulls me aside away from the other squads entirely.

"How many different alien forms do you have access to, recruit?" she asks me when we're alone, actually using a normal speaking voice instead of screaming.

"Sir, Raptor, Wasp, Behemoth, and two kinds of Angel, all from the Chicago incursion sir!" I report, matching her volume.

"You've fought and killed the damn Martians already, have you?" she asks.

"You think you can put on a good enough show to scare these pussies?"

"Sir! Absolutely, sir!" I confirm. That sounds like a hell of a lot of fun.

"Good. Everyone has blanks, so the rules are if someone points their gun in your direction and fires, you 'die' or run off. If they don't fire, you keep charging them. If you reach a squad, we'll call them dead."

"Sir!" I acknowledge. While the other squads are setting up I go through the arduous process of removing all of my gear and handing it to the drill sergeant for safekeeping before shapeshifting fully and completely back into a Raptor. God, it's like listening to an old song for the first time in months. A lot of memories rush back to me at once. My Raptor brain, which has been struggling to handle a human body ever since I left the incursion zone, is finally back where it belongs, where it feels right.

It's lonely here, of course; my fellow Raptors are too far away for me to be able to detect, but even despite that it is an unexpectedly large relief. I feel the pressure of my hydraulic muscles clenching and shifting as my tail flicks behind me. I bob up and down, testing my weight with my legs, making slight adjustments with my forearms to help me balance. I missed this, didn't I? I really did miss this.

"Recruit!" My drill sergeant barks. I immediately stand up as straight as I can, twisting my tail up around the top of my body in my best facsimile of a salute.

"Hot damn, look at that," the drill sergant mutters under her breath.

"I don't want a single injury, you understand? You hurt anyone with that power and there will be hell to pay." I briefly relax and then snap a salute again to confirm I understand.

"That thing mute?" my drill sergeant asks. I mean, I guess I could make it less mute. I do my best to form a human vocal structure in the space I have available and let out a raspy, awkward reply.

"Sssir. All the aliens are naturally mute, but this recruit can adjust them if necessssary." The drill sergeant's eyebrows raise and she nods.

"Silent assassin is just fine, recruit. Put the fear of the enemy in them so we can beat it out."

"Sir!" The exercise begins, and I wait for the first few groups to move up before picking where I'm going to engage first, staying out of sight and tracking the humans by scent. If I'm going to scare them, timing is everything. A Behemoth could probably make them crap their pants no matter when I do it, but I kind of want to work up to that. There's an artistry to this sort of thing, I feel like.

Crawling over the rooftops, staying low, and camouflaging my skin, I watch the various squads and try to single out slackers that leave some of their cover area open. I spot one before too long, using the fact that its team has their back to a wall as an excuse to not look behind it. Or, for that matter, up. I crawl silently into the proper flanking position, ascend the building behind them, and drop down from the roof.

Partly because I need to avoid hurting anyone and partly for shock and awe, I land dead in the center of their squad formation, right in front of the human who should have been watching above them. It screams, and I leap forward… to tap it lightly on the chest and quickly do the same to the rest of its squad. Immediately, the drill sergeants start screaming furiously at their entire team while I leap back up the wall, looking to get out of sight before any of the other squads realize what's going on.

For the next hour, I continue making ambush attempts on the other squads. I catch a couple other humans out at first, but soon enough they start winning. Common logic dictates that a good position to set up a defensive emplacement is behind a lot of cover, but that logic only applies when you're fighting people who also have ranged weapons. When the squads start camping out in open areas, covering every direction and not leaving any blind spots, rushing them down starts becoming impossible.

I do get to have a bit of fun pretending to be killed when someone shoots a blank in my direction, though. I've been shot enough times that I'm very familiar with what the wounds are like. An hour after, I pick up the frequency of my attacks, always moving to attack somebody from some direction even if it's not particularly effective. I want to keep them on their toes and also get them a little complacent while I work out other strategies.

The next time I catch someone off guard, it's because I rushed ahead of them, set up an ambush spot, and managed to leap at someone from a bad angle that puts another squad in the crossfire. I still 'die,' but they got an absolute ass-blasting from the drill sergeant for shooting in the direction of their own allies. After a bit more of that, I decide it's time. Compared to the sleek and nimble Raptor, I find the Behemoth's body a lot less enjoyable.

It's probably because fighting a Behemoth is what ended up getting Lia killed, and no matter how much I didn't like her I still wish I had saved her. There are bad memories in this body, bad associations. But at the very least, unlike when I was in the incursion zone, becoming a Behemoth no longer drains the majority of my biomass reserves. There is an odd satisfaction in being able to assume a form this large without it being a risk to my safety.

And speaking of risks to safety, it's time to charge a machine gun nest. Let's set the stage a little first, shall we? I make the change about a block over, behind some buildings so no one sees me. But when I start to walk, I know they can feel me. Each impact of my blades into the ground sends an audible tremor, one that only becomes more and more obvious the closer I get. As large and unwieldy as Behemoths are, they certainly aren't slow, so I pick up more and more speed as I make my way towards the humans.

What a rush! I definitely prefer being a Raptor, but I guess this isn't so bad either. I burst into view and find the squad prepared, trembling but ready. Their guns open fire, blanks flashing, but that wouldn't fell a Behemoth, not immediately. I keep running as they send another volley at me, and another, until they finally go full auto and I make a show of tripping and collapsing into a heap. My body smashes into the ground, shaking the squad that shot me.

I wouldn't have known it back when I first got these powers, but after so much experience with so many animals, I can now recognize the smell of their fear. I wish I could give them a proper taste of what this would actually be like. A single Raptor ambushing a squad of soldiers is nothing. A single Behemoth is nothing. What makes us truly dangerous is our formations, our ability to act together with singular certainty.

The very thing that these drill sergeants have been trying to instill in the humans for a month is what we have from the moment we are born. What would they have done if it had not been a single Behemoth charging them, but three Behemoths while a pack of Raptors flanks from all sides? What would they have done if a Wasp was overhead, vomiting death from above? They can kill us and kill us and kill us, but we do not fear death. When one dies, one is born. Our lives return eternally to the Queen. Oh. That…

feels like it might be important. Still, I shapeshift back into a Raptor and run off, preparing another ambush for another squad. These musings are not a priority. I have my task. I do my best to ramp things up, but at the end of the day these formations are designed to counter alien mobility and tactics, so as long as everyone is doing them right there isn't much that I can do by myself. I focus on mobility for a while, sneaking around just at the edge of everyone's sightlines and trying to make them paranoid.

The more they focus on trying to find me, the less they'll focus on keeping their formation in place, which will give me an opportunity to try and slip in. I even take a couple passes overhead in the body of a Wasp, trying to drop a pebble on someone's head to simulate barfing acid. Unfortunately, Wasps are particularly vulnerable to bullets because they aren't terribly great at flying super high.

From any distance I could reasonably aim an attack, even standard rifles could hit me and dedicated anti-air fire would annihilate me. That's the importance of having power support, I suppose. With the right Queen or Angel, the situation completely flips. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it. That's actually an interesting point, though.

The Chicago Queen could intercept bullets, which means that the range of any of these guns is based entirely on the range of whatever domain protects them. That's almost always going to be the limiting factor when pushing into enemy territory. This whole war is centered so heavily around powers; without them, the aliens wouldn't even remotely stand a chance. Even the Leviathans, large and powerful enough to destroy military ships without power support, likely wouldn't enjoy a full salvo of torpedoes in their hide.

But powers flip the scale, because for every Angel that's just as vulnerable to bullets as the rest of us, there are countless who have some absurd way to no-sell the projectiles, and that's downright common with Queens. Missile strikes, bombs, artillery, and all our other destructive abilities are only overwhelming in environments where they work at all. We can create those environments, but we need supers to do it.

My point being, this practice doesn't really work as an accurate representation of what it would be like to encroach on enemy territory. I certainly can't stretch my domain down an entire street, and my domain is apparently pretty strong. Maybe Christine could do it? Her domain could already cover an entire house when we met up with her, and it's been growing ever since. Maybe that's why the Angel wanted her so badly. What are domains, really? Well, whatever. Speaking of Angels, I think it's time to step things up.

The first Angel we encountered in the incursion zone was a freaky little fucker, and while its body isn't particularly useful to me—it's kind of weirdly unoptimized for a form that's clearly intelligently designed—it certainly scared the shit out of me when I saw it the first time and I'm happy to share that pain. Its bipedal form and ever-splitting fractal arms are at once disturbingly humanoid and not humanlike at all.

With its body, I shamble towards squads that have superhero support and ignore any blanks that are sent in my direction until I feel that super's domain, at which point I tear a deeper gouge in my already-split head and collapse shuddering to the floor, my body unraveling ever further in tribute to Division. It's honestly really funny that it freaks the humans out so much. Of course, the thought about Division catches me off guard a little. I suppose that's the name of this Angel's god.

Fitting, I suppose, for all the imagery and abilities the aliens of the Chicago incursion demonstrated. The god of turning one into two, and two into four. What an odd deity to have. I have to wonder if that's really all there is to it, but some part of me instinctively wants to answer 'why would there need to be more?' And I mean, I guess if the god of Division actually exists and gives people superpowers, I suppose there doesn't need to be more. It's just… weird, right?

When I think of religions I think of ways of life, ways of interpreting the reality of the world and our place within it. How do you construct an entire philosophy out of a single basic math operand? What does it mean to worship Division? Did the Queen slaughter every living thing in the incursion zone for no reason other than the fact that she happens to worship the god of cutting things? Why not cut the houses, or the streetlights, or the cars?

I don't understand it, and my stolen brain isn't supplying any helpful hints on the matter. So I swap to the other one. The second Angel, the one I killed. I think this is a good grand finale for the soldiers here, as while the first Angel had somewhat of a ceremonial body, this one is very much built for war.

Faster and more agile than the Raptors, capable of scaling all kinds of surfaces to attack from any angle, relentless enough to flee when 'shot' but immediately attack from a different direction, I can force engagements any time the humans need to travel off the street and into more cramped areas. Scaring the crap out of people seems extra fun in this brain, for some reason. As if the Angel I killed had a preference for the dramatic that's now rubbing off on me. Oh Division, that's exactly what this is.

That bastard taunted us! I remember that! He—or maybe she or they or it, I don't really know—dramatically crawled up on top of a roof and showed off its powers to us! It ripped a Raptor in half, then tore its own arm off, and it watched as we watched the consequences of that, which… is really obviously tactically stupid? With a power like that, the Angel never should have been on the front lines. It should have just been generating infinite clones for free well away from anyone who could hurt it!

So either the Angel is just an idiot, or it took the risk on purpose because it wanted to. Or I guess both. Probably both? I barely even knew what I was doing when I killed it. I wonder if the Angel knew what it was doing. I wonder how long it had its powers. It's easy to imagine, suddenly, a young person charging into battle in search of glory, full of arrogance, and getting felled by a relative amateur. Some Angels are absolutely bloody terrifying, I know that.

Some of them are engines of war that put entire militaries to shame. But they're all unique. They're all… people. It's obvious in retrospect, but I guess I was going out of my way to avoid thinking about it. I need to stop doing that, but I'm not entirely sure where I'll get the time. Maybe after boot camp, I guess.

When we make it back, I meet up with the drill sergeant who took my clothes and retrieve them from her, quickly getting dressed and reintroduced to my platoon in a way intended to make everyone think I could have come from any other squad. Nobody falls for it, of course. Seriously, why would they? The drill sergeants literally scream 'Recruit Angelface' at me all day while crystal scales grow out of my skin.

"Jesus fucking Christ, Lia, what the hell was that!?" Jazz hisses at me during our free time. I glance up at her and then back down, continuing to reassemble my weapon.

"What was what?" I ask.

"Was that you out there? With the fucking Martians charging at us from every direction?"

"Nah, it was the other aliens the military has captured and trained to obey commands," I answer evenly.

"And don't call them Martians, they're not even from space."

"I thought we were actually under attack for a few minutes there," she complains.

"I thought we were getting an incursion dropped on our heads!"

"Trust me, you would definitely know if there was an incursion. And you would be facing a lot more than one alien. We stayed as far away from the fighting as possible and no less than twenty Raptors were still stalking us for four days."

"What!?" Jazz gapes.

"Wait, you got caught in an incursion zone?" I pause. Shoot. I actually forgot most people in boot camp don't know that. Well, I guess it's not really a secret.

"Yeah, Anastasia, Christine, and I were trapped behind enemy lines together. It made us a little late for power training."

"Oh my god, no wonder you're such a badass. Wait, who's Christine?"

"…Recruit Baker?" I try.

"Wait, that crybaby? How did she live?"

"Like I said, we worked together," I answer flatly. I think I'm pretty over complaining about how useless Christine was back in the incursion zone, and she definitely doesn't need any bad rumors spread about her in boot camp.

"Wow, I never would have guessed," Jazz admits.

"You were really stuck there with the kid? Actually, sorry, do you not wanna talk about it?" Ugh. I hate it when people ask me that. Like no, I obviously don't want to talk about it, but I don't want to shut down conversations about it either. It makes me seem unapproachable, impersonal. You can't establish a positive reputation if you never talk to anybody.

"The only thing I have to say is that someday you are going to be very happy you were taught how to lug an entire machine gun emplacement around for a day," I answer.

"You will definitely not be getting ambushed by only one alien at a time."

"I mean yeah, we know that," Jazz says.

"I guess it's just different actually seeing one in the flesh, you know? In pictures I just thought they were hideous. In person… I don't know. They're a lot bigger than I thought they would be, I guess." I shrug, ignoring the urge to argue the claim that the aliens are ugly. I can't see them that way. They're a lot more beautiful than I used to be.

"It's not that bad," Anastsia pipes up in my place.

"They're scary-looking, but stab them enough and they still die." I glance at her, noticing that she's a bit faster than me at reassembling her rifle. She finishes her work, performing all the final checks to ensure the weapon is functional.

"That's, uh, reassuring, kid," Jazz lies.

"Well, I'm sure you'll get your chance to teach them a thing or two." I frown a little, thinking about that. Under normal conditions, a gun beats Anastasia's power in range, speed, and penetration. But inside a Queen's domain? Surrounded by aliens on all sides? A gun's range is only the range of Anastasia's power anyway, and it can only shoot in one direction at a time. The ability to independently direct multiple weapons of blood over a wide area is overwhelmingly superior under those conditions.

Especially considering that she can attack without having to worry about crossfire or accidentally hitting her allies, all of whom will also have guns anyway.

"Honestly?" I say.

"If you end up trying to retake ground, I don't think there's any super you want covering you more than her." And that's a bad thing, because it means that's what she will be doing. That or something comparably dangerous. I just have to hope I'll find some way to be there with her. And so boot camp continues. On and on, day by day, we train and we learn and we are made into weapons. Weeks pass in a blur, and awkward fumbling faux-missions slowly transform into effective teamwork.

Having a gun on hand starts to feel more natural than not. The people in the special training group, including Christine, catch up to us in physical prowess. The lanky girl I knew starts to pack on visible muscle as she heaves herself over obstacle courses and nearly vomits doing running drills. She only gets mad enough to completely disassemble the climbing wall once, which I think is admirable restraint. It probably went on her permanent record, though. Before I know it, the end starts approaching.

Things wind down a little in the final week, as our duties move away from constant workouts and towards deep cleaning the barracks, preparing all our loaned gear for the next group, and of course getting ready for the graduation ceremony. After all the constant screaming and sweating, it's surreal getting quietly fitted for a dress uniform. But then we have them, and the day arrives. We do our marches, we listen to a speech, and suddenly, we're privates of the United States Army.

It is exactly as unexciting as it sounds. And no, the uniforms are not comfortable.

"When I call your name, I will inform you of your assignment. Private Abbot, Engineer Corps. More training for you. Private Anderson…" On and on it goes, though my assignment is a little… weird.

"Private Morgan, personal AIT. Somebody'll be by to pick you up, Angelface." Advanced Individual Training. That's pretty normal; all kinds of specializations are important in the Army. But personal Advanced Individual Training is a bit more intimidating because what the hell does that even mean? Advanced training that they're going to give specifically and only to me? The other supers aren't assigned to something that weird, they're already being shoved into an infantry regiment.

Still, there's nothing I can do but stand where I'm told to stand. And sure enough, when the ceremony is complete and we're all working through the process of where to go now, I end up standing alone in an empty room until Cross Country suddenly appears out of nowhere and holds out a hand.

"Congratulations, Ms. Morgan. You have been promoted to Warrant Officer," he says. I blink.

"S-sir? I haven't even done anything," I manage.

"I am aware. Your promotion is premature for internal reasons. Please take my hand."

"Sir," I respond automatically, taking the hand. What the heck are 'internal reasons?' The nauseating sensation of existing in two places at once knocks me out of my thoughts and the next thing I know I'm in another small room, this one with dark concrete walls and the windowless chill of a basement.

"I do not outrank you, Ms. Morgan," Cross Country says.

"There is no need to address me that way. Do keep in mind that everything you see within this building is strictly confidential and need-to-know. Discussing the contents or existence of this complex without authorization will result in criminal charges." Oh lord, do I not even get a day before shit hits the fan? My uniform feels tight around my body as the stress encourages my power to bulk up my musculature.

"I understand," I say, and Cross Country gives me a nod before vanishing. I'm alone in the room now, and there's nothing here but a chair. I sit down in it and wait. Oh I'm in a government blacksite, doot do deet dodo do dee do! I am fucked in this government blacksite, whoop whoop deep dodo, do dee do! I mean, the promotion is probably a good sign, right? If I was just here to be a research subject they wouldn't go to the trouble of upping my salary first. Or, y'know, training me.

Or giving me the gun that I'm still carrying at this very moment, though I only have the blanks we used for the ceremony so it's kinda useless. This feels… rushed. I'm not prepared for this, and it didn't go through the usual protocols and channels. So the question is: what warrants all this urgency? What do they want from me?

My head snaps towards the door the moment it makes a sound, opening to reveal four men: three of them fully armed and armored soldiers, and one of them a stick-thin nerdy-looking guy in a lab coat and jeans. He has large glasses perched on his small nose, the rims large enough to eclipse his eyebrows and start encroaching on his forehead.

"Ah! Hello!" lab coat guy grins at me.

"You're the shapeshifter, yes? Welcome, welcome. Did Jeremiah give you the rundown?" Who? Oh, that's Cross Country's name, right.

"He mostly just said that everything here is top secret," I answer. This guy's not in a military uniform, so I can presumably talk to him like an actual human being.

"I'm Lia Morgan, and I am apparently a Warrant Officer as of ten minutes ago. Despite having no officer training."

"Eh, you'll get it later if you need it. I got tired of waiting for you to jump through all the hoops the Army wants and pulled some strings. Come on, let me show you around. Although, to start: is it true you can perfectly copy alien biology?" Oh boy. I guess that's why I'm here.

"Yes, it is," I nod.

"I can copy any biology my domain interacts with, and form custom alterations as needed."

"Neat!" he says brightly while the soldiers behind him continue looming silently.

"Do me."

"Pardon?" I ask.

"Go on, turn into me," he insists. Uh. Well, okay then. I reach my domain out and encounter one on the way there: a promise of retribution, thoroughly escalated and without mercy. I'm not sure if it's the scientist's, but I don't think so. I'm pretty sure it's one of the soldiers. I push into its space slowly and carefully, making sure not to seem aggressive. It's a strong domain, stronger than mine, but I don't need much penetration for my scan to work.

I grab the scientist's biological information and shift into it, at least in terms of what's visible with my clothes on. The lab coat guy whistles, looking quite excited.

"Alright, Ms. Morgan! May I call you Lia?"

"Uh. Sure."

"Fantastic! Well, come right this way, then. Oh, my name is Dr. Nicholas Bovary, but you can call me Nick. Fair's fair!"

"Sure, Nick," I agree easily, following him out of the cramped concrete room into a cramped concrete hallway.

"So, uh, what exactly is this place?"

"A research facility," he answers without answering anything.

"We're owned by the government. Obviously. I mean, what isn't these days, am I right?" He laughs to himself as I awkwardly follow along, being led through hallway after twisting underground hallway.

"The moment I heard about you, I knew I had to have you here, at least for a little while. I have high hopes for you, so please don't disappoint! My running theory is that the aliens communicate through a complex pheromone network. I mean obviously they have a pheromone network, but I mean really communicate, orders and orders of magnitude more complicated than the eusocial species of Earth. Care to comment?"

"Uh," I manage, taking a moment to think about it.

"Well, it's certainly possible."

"Possible? Bah! I know it's possible! You've lived it. Come on, work with me here. What's an alien sensorium like? Please, please don't be one of the stupid supers." I scowl. Stupid? This fucker… ugh. Calm down and answer the question, Julietta.

"I take the habits of forms I acquire when I take their bodies," I say.

"So I'm often not intellectually aware of the minute details of how a body works and why it does what it does. I'm sure I could figure out the answer to questions like that, but I haven't had much opportunity to investigate while training or fighting for my life. I think it's entirely reasonable that they communicate through pheromones; their sense of smell is much more nuanced and powerful than ours, with a lot of directionality to it. But I'm not confident in claiming it for certain." Dr.

Bovary bobs his head back and forth, as if weighing my answer.

"Well, I suppose that's fair," he says.

"We'll figure it out, one way or another. I already suspected you took alien habits based on the reports about your power, and language is certainly habitual. Can you speak foreign languages in other people's bodies if they know them and you don't?"

"I don't know," I admit.

"Well, you're going to learn," he says.

"After all, you can turn into an Angel, right? If you can figure out how to communicate with the invaders, it stands to reason that you'd be able to command them, wouldn't it?"

"I… don't know," I answer again. He looks back and grins at me, then pulls out a keycard and opens a security door at the end of the hall. We step through, and within I see a massive room of thick glass cages, scientists and military personnel scurrying between them. Most of them are empty, but a few hold something squirming, resting, or trying to escape. Aliens. Living aliens. Stocky Raptors, thicker than the ones I know from the Chicago incursion.

Smaller Wasps, streaks of their acid dripping uselessly down the glass walls. Heavier Behemoths, shorter and stronger, wrapped up so tightly that their legs can't even move.

"Well," Dr. Bovary says, "let's find out, shall we?"