Chương 7: Fish

It had been a few minutes since that hug the counselor gave me. The sensation still sat on my arms, like she left a ghost with me. But I couldn't just stand there and accept it; I did nothing to deserve it. I gave an awkward thanks and made my way out of there like I was being chased, and then I was just stuck sitting on the stair steps, watching the doors leading to the cafeteria. The temporary refuge in my thoughts was interrupted by the same voice that always interrupts them.

"Psych eval dig a little too deep in you?" Tancred. I saw his slacks next to me, before they bent and my vision was met with the agent's face.

"Happens. SHERPA only hires the ones who can actually get those responses out of people, that way it's easier to ascertain what would happen in a more high pressure environment. I cried on my first eval." Eval? Was he-"So you do have powers?" I asked like it wasn't obvious. He cocked his head.

"Kid, are you really asking that because you didn't know or is it because you have no idea how to make the topic about me?" Frankly I couldn't answer that. He shrugged." Yeah, I got powers. Not all Auditors do, we're in the minority given superhumans in general are in the minority. I thought you really figured it out ASAP given your hands went up real quick when I said I could use the exercise." I couldn't help myself.

"So what do you do?" He watched me for a few seconds, just staring. The glasses made his eyes hard to see; I couldn't infer what he was reading on my face. He stood up before he actually spoke.

"Nothing interesting, only good for catching dopes like you. You're caught so there's no point in it now. And before you ask: I wouldn't tell you if I used it on you anyways because I can already see the kind of analyst you are. You'd try to figure out what it was by going over that exchange over and over again. You don't need to know, we're not enemies." Bold words.

"That put enough of a fire under your ass to get up? Come on, we got Albexican burritos on the menu in the cafeteria, get yourself one." I cocked my head. I need to stop doing that.

"Albexican?" He raised an eyebrow as he looked back at me, going down the steps.

"Yeah, Albexico's take on the burrito. Take a burrito. Put a cooked seabream in it. Not like cut up. It's just scaled and deboned then cooked and they cover it in a bunch of burrito fillings and wrap it up. It looks haunting but it's actually pretty good. Just eat from the side where it can't look you in the eye." Fascinating, and completely not in my field of interest.

"I think I'll do fine without that," I answered. Admittedly, I did end up standing up afterwards and making my way to the cafeteria in hopes of something less haunting. Upon entering, I saw there was some measure of non-staff activity in there. Tancred was at the counter ordering what was probably the Albexican burrito I never wanted to look in the eye, and one of the tables had two of the teammates I saw before. The blue-eyed girl practically lost in her baggy clothes named May.

And the strange-looking Jairo with his neon blond mohawk, reptilian eyes, and patches of colors across his skin. Jairo spotted me and waved to me. At the moment, I should've just ignored him, but some impulse and the fact Tancred would probably drag me over to them anyway convinced me to simply go over and sit with them at their table. Jairo was the first to speak.

"What's good, man?" Christian told me he was seventeen. He sounded like a fifty-year-old who'd been smoking six packs an hour since he was seventeen. I unconsciously looked for a stoma.

"I... not much, I guess," I admitted. May followed up, her voice thankfully much softer.

"We saw you and didn't really get a chance to talk because Agent Tank just pulled you away. He introduced us but, like, it's better for us to introduce ourselves. I'm May Hart, and-""I'm Jairo!" The mohawked teenager took her spot in speaking. It was almost like a croaking sound when he spoke. Fascinating.

"Hi. I'm, uh, I'm Leo Holt," I answered with little conviction behind it. May put on the kind of smile you usually see on billboards.

"Jairo's just a little overhyped since he technically was the newest one on the team before you joined." I glanced back at Jairo.

"When... did you join?" I was worried just talking to him would infect me with whatever he had. He didn't seem to mind, and when he gave me this toothy grin I noticed every single tooth in his mouth was not only longer than normal, but razor-sharp. Jesus.

"Five months ago, right after Dr. Way. I was given the offer right after I woke up." My face curled again like I caught a scent akin to how Jairo looked.

"Woke up from what?" Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there. He followed up immediately.

"Oh so like eight months ago when uh... did you hear about the kaiju attack in Maryland? Caoránach, the big snake with like twenty legs and a bunch of butterfly wings on it. I actually was up there at the time. When Guapo Galera showed up and knocked it out, these like... bug things came out. Most of them died. One of them popped right out into the room I was holed up in. When I went over to check it out, it like jumped up and climbed down my throat.

I was in a coma for a few months after that, I only made it out because a rescue team found me. When I woke up I looked like this." My head tilted again. Stop that, damn it.

"Wait, so they brought you on when all you are is just... sick? What's the point?" Jairo didn't seem bothered by the notion, and held one of his hands up.

"Oh no, I have powers, bro. Check this." May rolled her eyes. When he wiggled his fingers, it drew my vision to his hand at the worst possible time. I saw his skin rapidly dry out before forming thick... scales? His fingers fused together into two large digits and one thumb, all tipped with claws. The closer I looked at the hand, I realized scales might not be the right term. It looked almost like a bug's shell, just segmented like scales.

"My whole body can change like that. It's epic, I don't even feel it or anything. The only reason I'm not transformed the whole way all the time is it makes seeing hard. I can't see like... things. I just see uh... um... May what was it?" May followed up, lackadaisical.

"Electromagnetic frequencies and fields. Like the electricity our bodies just naturally have that you only really notice when you get like... zapped by static or something. Dr. Way's better at explaining it. But it means he can't easily tell people apart." Jairo cut in, "I can kinda see shapes and all that but it's really hard. So I only turn it on when I know I don't need to see too much. May's power can be used for helping with that, though." I glanced at May, raising an eyebrow.

"... And yours?" The blue-eyed girl shrugged.

"I call it 'Lensing.' I just started being able to do it about a year ago. Any reflective substance on me, that's naturally from me, like my fingernails, or my sweat, I can use to then focus light through and shape them or filter out certain parts." S he wiggled her fingers, producing a scatter of sparkles.

"I can also just make things glow, I can make the light hard but that takes a lot of focus. And if my hands get dirty or I'm wearing gloves then obviously I can't do anything with my nails, so I don't really rely on them. I try to just use it through my eyes since that's a part of us that's meant to be really reflective. The cool part is I can make the light stuff go both ways, so I can use it to get electromagnetic frequencies, I can see different light spectrums like x-rays, I can even see heat signatures."

Jairo cut in again.

"Yeah but tell him about how you do the thing so I can see!" I nodded to Jairo.

"Yeah, I'd like to know too." Rapport opportunity. She shook her head.

"It's not actually that crazy. Light is an electromagnetic field in motion. If I filter out the right things I can basically make this big pulse that bounces around and it lets Jairo see through his electromagnetic vision. Dr. Way pointed that out to me. The catch is there needs to be some amount of light, any kind. But I can't just make it from nothing. I keep flashlights and duct tape in my kit for if we have to do stuff in the dark." I didn't let my head tilt again. I was gonna use just my words for once.

"Duct tape?" May looked off in the distance, seemingly hunting for a word. She returned from that hunt in a few short seconds.

"There's this thing called like... triba? Tryba? T-something luminescence. I was a law student, not any science stuff. Basically physical actions that produce a really tiny bit of light. One way to do it is by sticking duct tape to itself and ripping it apart. It produces a super tiny little bit of blue light. But it gives me just a little bit I can use in a pinch." I gave a nod, a juvenile thought entering my head of how hard I would have to punch something to make light.

But when she mentioned science, it drew my attention to another thought I had.

"So this Doctor Way-"" Dr." interjected May.

"Huh? That's what I said." She shook her head.

"No no. You pronounced the whole thing. Doc-tor. She hates that for some reason. You gotta say it like the abbreviation, so more like dahkter real quick." Almost instinctively, my eyes squinted. As though too much seeing was the problem here.

"Why?" Jairo's shoulders shrugged.

"She just likes it that way." Another nod from me.

"I... see. So uh, Dr. Way. She seems to be pretty involved with both your guys' powers." The discolored boy was quick to answer.

"Yeah she's like... really obsessed with figuring out how things work. But she's been helping a lot and I really like it." At this point, I realized Jairo wasn't the best choice for answers, and May seemed to have picked up on that and followed in his stead.

"She's a mad scientist, to keep it real here, but she's honestly not like... mad. She's got some definitely weird ways of doing things but every time she's made any sort of insight or tried to research anything about us, the result was some kind of help. I heard you don't really understand your powers much, just kind of how they work. Maybe she could help you?" Last thing I needed.

"I'll keep it in mind," I lied.

"I'm gonna just... get something to eat. If I don't end up eating alone I'll be back." Jairo gave a thumbs up, biting into a sandwich. May nodded and spoke in his place.

"It's up to you, but we'd appreciate it." I slid out of the seat, approaching the corkboard to observe the menu. I saw that Albexican burrito option, which I considered with about as much enthusiasm as I had for a root canal, before just seeing something called a "Chicken cubano," which seemed reasonably less whole-fish-y. Approaching the counter, I was met with Tancred walking away with his burrito, the fish's head staring at me as he bit the other end.

"What, never seen a guy eat fish ass?" He asked this like that was, at any point, a reasonable kind of question. He was lucky my appetite was naturally stronger than that. Avoiding his bespectacled gaze, I stepped to the counter and ordered the food. I got it in less than a minute. Seemed they had some kind of miniature blast oven to get a premade sandwich hot. Fine by me. Tray in hand, I glanced at May and Jairo, and considered sitting with them. But I just wanted food. I didn't want to talk.

It was easier to just retreat out of the other door of the cafeteria and down the spiral stairs to that common area with the astroturf and the foam pit I was flipped into, placing my tray on the little kitchenette island and picking up the sandwich. I took the first bite of real food in half a year. At some point, I really should have considered that I didn't know what I expected. Maybe I wanted another heartfelt moment of it just being overwhelmingly delicious.

I wasn't starving that half-year, I was eating pre-packaged "nutrition" foods you can quickly grab boxes of from supermarkets. Granola bars. Plus whatever I was offered by people I helped, pathetic as it sounded. It was just okay. It was warm, had flavor, and it was nice to not have to wolf it down. Didn't stop me from getting through most of it in four bites, however.

"Fast eater, huh?" Looking over, I saw Christian, and I already knew some bullshit was coming.

"Just wanted to finish my food fast." The redhead nodded.

"Honestly I get it, I'm terrible about eating slow. Once you finish though, come with me. Dr. Way wants to introduce herself and she's incredibly adamant about getting to see your powers in action." I just wanted to eat my goddamn food.