Chương 47: The Evolution

John sat on a bench at the edge of a parking lot, injecting himself with more of himself. He hid the long syringe of ability enhancer under his overly puffy coat. The weather was cold and snowy, thankfully, which let him wear the drug-hiding jacket without suspicion, and once all of the substance flooded his veins he slipped the emptied syringe into an inner pocket.

"I know it's kind of random how long the drug lasts," John said quietly, "but what's the worst case for how long I get to talk to her?" Beside him on the bench, Meili thought for a moment.

"At least half an hour, we think," she replied.

"Assuming that Jane will actually be able to read your aura." The bench and parking lot belonged to NxGen. His mom's prison was thirty feet below where they were sitting, covered by a dozen layers of density-enhanced titanium. Four months earlier, when John wrote to his mom with his aura, he had attempted (and failed) to write from right here in the parking lot before finally resorting to sneaking inside the NxGen headquarters.

From this far away, John's aura wasn't quite potent enough for his mom's aura vision to pick up on. Or this was typically true, but Meili theorized that after he injected an ability enhancer it would be potent enough. They had decided to take advantage of their New Boston trip to test out the theory, and now he was getting anxious about talking to his mom. He still hadn't responded to Meili, instead staring out into space as he felt the extra aura crawl through his body, saturating his channels.

"Is the drug's sensation bothering you?" she asked.

"It's not that," John answered.

"I mean, yeah, I don't think I'll ever be able to get used to this weird sensation I'm getting, but it's more like…" He started rubbing his temple. His experience with the drug was an internal warping, like he was becoming a stranger in his own body, totally different from the shot of pure euphoria Meili and Alicia somehow got from injecting. But it wasn't the most immediate issue.

"It's more like this," he said.

"My mom will sense the emotions in my aura. And now that we're here again, I can't be as calm about what they're doing to her, and from one perspective we basically killed someone a few days ago. She'll see how I'm feeling when she reads me, and she'll get worried. I don't want her to think I'm feeling like this because I'm talking to her." The warping sensation was nearing the end, crawling from his thigh area down to his knees. Meili looked at him with a soft, sad smile.

"I don't think that last part's going to happen. What you said to her last time was really touching, John."

"... I guess," he said.

"I think I could really use whatever trick it is you use. I know you controlled your emotions to beat the lie detector test."

"Well, it's not like I can conjure internal happiness out of nowhere," Meili replied.

"I don't know if I would be doing this if I could."

"Then how do you…?"

"By focusing on something that already exists," she answered.

"Basically, I try to increase the impact of something I already feel positively about, or the reverse." John nodded, taking the advice. There were things to feel positive about, namely that he could finally talk to his mom again, and he concentrated on them as the extra aura finished spreading through him. He was thankful. He had all kinds of things he'd been aching to ask her about, and now he'd at least get thirty minutes' worth of answers.

It had taken the remainder of their extracted aura to make an enhancer this strong, and he was thankful that Meili also thought it was worth the resources. Once he was ready, he morphed his modified aura into various letters of the alphabet, finding that his writing control felt fine despite the enhancement. Then he focused his eyes on the bright orange star beneath their feet. Last time, looking from up close, his mother's aura had seemed like a great blazing sun, but from afar it had a different feel.

Still, the ferocity and beauty he felt in her was hundreds of times greater than in anyone else – and when he thought about the tiny cell they'd locked her in, it felt enragingly ridiculous, like he was watching the world's most beautiful jewel trapped under a heavy pile of human shit. Not a good thought. John unclenched his fists, trying to make his mind adjust once more. He was glad to be speaking to his mom. He wrote out his initial message before he could think thoughts beyond that. Hi mom.

I've been looking forward to talking to you again. … He'd forgotten to speak the words out loud, like he'd promised Meili, so he repeated himself quietly. A minute passed without any shift in the orange star. As John stared at it, he realized with a slow horror that he'd been mentally discounting the possibility that this would fail, which would make it even more painful if it really- Hello, John. The star wrote. Sorry if the wait scared you. It took a long time for me to hide my smile....

Beyond trusting his mom to keep her face blank, they were using additional safety measures. He and Meili were wearing hoods and winter masks, and there was the obvious safety bonus of being outside NxGen's headquarters. There were no cameras, and if it really came down to it they could simply run away. Still, as John exchanged aura writing with his mom, he was afraid that he would somehow get them caught. He was being way too conspicuous.

His body was vibrating, he kept gesticulating with his hands, and beneath his mask his face kept twisting into all sorts of unrestrained happy expressions. He told her that life was better than it had been four months ago. He hardly had a single enemy at Wellston High, compared to the whole school of them in New Boston… he was kind of a pseudocelebrity, really, because all his classmates wanted to watch him copy their abilities. He'd already grown to level 6.

3, and he made sure to spend multiple hours each day on the training exercises she described to him. He was always looking forward to her aura-writing messages on Sunday. John communicated these things with a childlike anticipation, like an elementary-schooler hoping for his mother's praise. He hadn't been able to hope for it, when he'd actually been in elementary school, so maybe this counted as compensation. His mom responded positively.

Writing him letters, she told him, was far and away the highlight of her week. She spent hours wondering what information would be most useful to him, what exercises would help with his development - it helped her distract herself from the physical reality around her. She was happy that his new school was being kind to him. She wanted to know if the red-haired girl from before was with him, if he was finding friends among his classmates.

Now, are you joking about being a celebrity at school, or is that your genuine feeling, John? she asked. I'd say it's mostly serious, John wrote back with his aura. I wrote it in a jokey way, but that really is how things feel most of the time. It's kind of a problem. In what sense? Part of it is great. I really like that I can be on friendly terms with most people at Wellston, John responded. But it's also just surface-level.

I can talk to classmates about turf wars and gladiator fights, movies and shows, popular stuff. They want to know what god-tier John thinks about these things. But it's never anything deeper than that. When you use the word deeper, Jane wrote, I'm making an assumption as to what you mean. But you should tell me. Deeper as in more difficult topics, like hierarchy and The Authorities. Political and emotional things. That makes sense, then, she responded.

I also always struggled to make the lower-level people in my life feel comfortable sharing their thoughts more fully. But you and Dad were able to do it, John wrote back immediately. I've been trying to understand how you managed it for years. Now I can finally ask what it was like for you. Well- Meili interrupted by clearing her throat. He'd been whispering all the words in the conversation for Meil to hear.

When John turned to look at her, she was giving him a look, one he understood perfectly despite the mask covering most of her face. The look said, Hey, John. I know you love your mom, want to know more about her, and you've been deprived of being with her for 99. 9 percent of your life. But Jane Doe also happens to be a level 9. 1 demigod and the world's greatest expert on ability theory, so there are more valuable ways to use our limited conversation time.

John felt himself frown reflexively, and Meili's look changed into something like, Please, I really don't want to have to say all this to you, but you know how important it is that we use this time effectively. In the universal, world-changing sense. He let out a disappointed breath but nodded. He could understand a look from Meili because he was starting to understand her better as a person.

Things like her disdain for fighting, her ability to conceal and manage the way she felt, the way her desperation seemed not to stem from a particular problem but more broadly from the general state of things. These observations came together into something solid enough to grasp. She wanted to destroy The Authorities as badly as he did, without an imprisoned parent to motivate her. This was probably something they needed to talk about, but she was right that it wasn't the time to get sidetracked.

Actually, Mom, he wrote and whispered so Meili could hear. I kind of forgot that we're low on time. I think you might have guessed, but my aura is only showing up in your vision right now thanks to an enhancer drug. I have to ask you something before it fades. … I see, she wrote back after a pause. So you're already far enough along to make those. You should be wary of using enhancers, John, but go ahead. He considered asking if she was just talking about the post-use aftereffects, but decided to carry on.

First of all, I didn't answer your question, he wrote. But yes, Meili is here. The red-haired researcher girl who helped last time. She recently thought of this theory that ability evolution is caused by specific emotions or feelings, but I'm kind of on the fence about it. Do you think it's possible she might be right?

John stopped writing for a while, but there was no response, so he continued: s ince your Channel Master ability is the evolved form of Aura Manipulation, and it can see the emotions in someone's aura, we thought you might have ideas about what causes ability evolution. But it's totally fine if you haven't researched this before, Mom. The 'silence' went on long enough that John started worrying his enhancer drug had worn off early. Then his mom wrote back. What emotion does Meili think it is? John swallowed.

He was still vocally relaying the conversation to Meili, and suddenly she was staring at him hungrily. She thinks the required feeling might be different for each person, he answered. But when she evolved her ability, she says the feeling was, 'I can't be me, if my ability can't do this.' …

So, just to rephrase, his mom wrote back, Meili had the feeling that her self-identity would be fundamentally damaged, if her ability remained unable to do some action, which caused it to be able to do that action, and this sudden transformation was ability evolution. Is that correct? Somewhere in the middle of the description, Meili's eyes widened, and she started shaking his shoulders in excitement.

"Exactly!" Her face was barely a foot from his.

"Tell Jane that's exactly it!" He did. There was again no answer for a while, and Meili shrank back a little, realizing that she'd lost control of herself. But he understood why. It obviously meant something, that his mother was immediately familiar with the feeling Meili thought was so important. Who were you? John wondered. Who were you, to know so much? Who were you before they did this to you?

His mother was just a research subject now, as she'd been for thirteen years, but before that she'd been among the rulers of the world. The air started to feel heavy, all of a sudden, thickened with all the things she might say. Then, despite being trapped under dirt and titanium and a mountain of metaphorical human shit, his mother's amber star twisted out an answer that was greater than all of it. Tell Meili that she's done a very impressive thing, Jane wrote.

I'm not aware of anyone else who's more than halfway there, and I'd say she's at two-thirds. Now, unless you want a globe-destroying war, be very careful with what I'm about to explain to you- Beautiful Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Knocks on Alicia's door broke her concentration, interrupting her viewing experience. She was using her ability on a few strands of John's hair.

She tried to refocus on his POV, on the (extremely critical) writing transmission from Jane Doe, but her dad's annoyingly loud voice pierced through the door and yanked her into reality.

"Alicia?" he called, knocking three more times.

"Could you come out here for a second? I need you to help with something." She'd been lying in her bed, at first only moderately curious about Jane's messages, but by the end she felt fully invested. She had been enraptured by what she was reading. Now her ability was deactivated - of course, at the absolute worst of times. She moaned into her pillow. It was like being interrupted in the middle of the best part of a book, except she couldn't just put down a bookmark and get back to it later.

Whatever John was seeing in New Boston, in the parking lot outside NxGen's headquarters, she was missing part of it forever. Alicia got up and opened the door anyway.

"I'm kind of busy studying," she lied.

"What is it?" Her dad had an ominously sheepish expression. He was touching the back of his head, right where silver hair met the top of his neck. Instinct set off an alarm that he needed her for something tedious.

"I found another leak," he said.

"A pipe probably froze again. Some boxes in the basement got wet, maybe even the items inside. I have to ask you to handle it for me." Alicia's immediate thought was, why can't you handle it? – followed by, exactly how long will 'handling it' take? Then her eyes gravitated toward his phone. It was showing a call screen, and by the timer in the center, the call was in its 95th minute.

"It's work," her father said as an explanation, except it wasn't one. He was supposed to be on holiday.

"I'll see if I can come help you in half an hour or so. For now, just see if anything valuable got waterlogged, and try to air it out. We don't want any mold."

"… I'll try," she replied, mostly just trying to figure out the quickest way to get back to watching Jane and John. In different circumstances, she might have said what she was thinking: that there was hardly a single valuable thing in the house, definitely not in the basement. It was a storage room for old junk. Instead, she snuck a few strands of John's hair into her pocket and went to the stairs, obediently descending down.

In the basement, she quickly felt each cardboard box, palming the bottoms to see which ones were mushy. For a few moments, her mind went to the 'domestic assistant' job fiasco. In the aftermath of the drama, her dad was starting to catch on to her dissatisfaction with where they were - and where she was currently heading, save for an extraordinary miracle. Whatever you called the place half a step below mediocrity.

It didn't work for her that saying, 'yes ma'am,' and 'right away' to a god-tier master was supposed to be her peak. Of course she had to lie and try not to show it. Being honest about this kind of thing would mean wasting days on arguing, because her dad was himself.

"Our family got a bad dice roll," he'd said to her as a child, as a way to explain that her lack of a future wasn't the fault of any quality of hers, just the bad lot she'd drawn at birth. As a way to express that any expectations too big for this tiny, shitty lot would only cause her pain. … Anyway, Alicia thought forcefully. At least only five boxes took in any water. Immediately after dragging these five onto a dry patch of floor, she grabbed the strands of John's hair from her pocket.

If there really is a consistent process for making your ability evolve, then… Didn't Jane basically say that Meili's theory is mostly right? The way to confirm this, of course, would be to watch more of the conversation. She could alternate between using John's perspective and sorting out any 'valuable' items from flooded boxes. Okay, Alicia thought. That's perfect. She was fast enough at reading that she didn't need to be watching the whole time to absorb what Jane and John wrote. She activated her ability. …

As I've already hinted at, Jane was explaining, an aura will often become saturated with its owner's feelings. These feelings can range from a simple emotion like anger to more complex and ill-defined senses, for example a sense of confession. When we spoke four months ago, John, it was the sense of confession I saw in your aura that made me realize I was writing to my son. I know it might seem illogical, she continued, that a physical substance would be contaminated by something immaterial like emotion.

Your aura isn't your soul; it's something you can extract and store and touch. To this I would say that it also seems illogical for something to be solid, gaseous, and liquid at once. But extracted aura is all three, as I assume you've observed, so for it to have an immaterial aspect isn't much of a leap. John paused for a few seconds, then wrote back. So did the 'I can't be me anymore' feeling Meili's talking about saturate her aura? he asked. Is that what's going on?

I really do appreciate the aura theory, Mom, but we're limited on time. I need to lay the groundwork first, Jane wrote back. I'll get to evolution soon. First, let me point out that essentially every emotion is temporary, and therefore saturates your aura for only a temporary amount of time. I say 'essentially every' because there's an exception. There is one feeling that you permanently and constantly experience. If you had to guess, John, what do you think it is? …

While John thought of his answer, Alicia took a break to the real world, rifling through the waterlogged boxes. She had to strain a little to see in the dim basement. She came up with chipped plates, some paperbacks she'd already read, a carton of 'ability growth' pills her dad had bought when he was drunk. After maybe twenty-five seconds, she went back. … Maybe ambition? John had guessed. The sense of wanting to achieve something? Jane wrote, That's a good guess.

But I've seen that everyone will have moments where they're simply just existing, without pursuing anything in particular. I guess that makes sense, John wrote back. Meili says that she thinks it's the self-conception feeling. The self-conception feeling… That's a reasonable name, Jane wrote. In my mind, it's the feeling of: 'this is what it's like to be me.' The consciousness of being who you are, the sense that 'this is how I am.'

There are many ways to describe it, although they're all slightly imperfect – whatever term you use, this feeling is ever-present in every person, whether they're awake or asleep. The feeling of being and recognizing who you are. This sense, she continued, is actually the central mechanism that 'marks' your aura as being yours. It's the reason why, after aura is extracted, it needs to sit in an isolated environment for weeks before it can be molded into an ability-enhancer.

It takes a long time for the feeling of 'this is what it's like to be me' to fully dissipate, because the aura has been so consistently saturated in it. I think I get it, John wrote back after a while. And this constant feeling of being who you are is related to what made Meili evolve, isn't it? … Jane was writing out a long response, so Alicia made use of the time to return to the basement, where only a single flooded box remained.

Inside it was a collection of framed portrait pictures, organized by wispy separators within the box, far more neatly constructed than all the other storage. Alicia didn't recognize most of the people in the portraits. Still, she assumed that they were various family members… or that they had been, when they were alive. She picked one up by its sodden wood frame. For a moment, she met the eyes of the silver-haired man in the center, then flashed away. … That's right, Jane had written back.

Even outside evolution, influxes of emotion do interesting things to abilities. An extreme rush of violence or anger, for example, or a sudden fear of grievous injury – every remotely educated person knows that these accelerate growth. The mechanism behind it is a kind of 'shake up' effect, where the sudden introduction of powerful emotion introduces variability, making it easier for an ability user to discover better aura movements. Which is really just the same thing as level growth, John observed.

I'm getting it. So then - is evolution just the same thing on a larger scale? Not quite, she wrote. This is where even my understanding is limited. There's something oddly different about the self-conception feeling, compared to every other emotion… the few rare changes to it are intensely resisted. The aura does everything it possibly can, churning and moving in every potential way, ways it would never otherwise move, to resist a change in what you feel about your identity. Usually it fails.

Usually, it resists until the new self-identity feeling has settled. But in particular, in the extremely rare situation when a change in your feeling of self-identity can be prevented by new aura movements- -The new aura movements stick around, John finished. And that's ability evolution.

'I can't be me, anymore, if my ability can't do this.' … Back in the basement, Alicia fished out the remaining family portraits from the flooded box, feeling guilty about thinking of them as junk. A moment where my continued feeling of self-identity depends on my ability getting better features, she thought. Is there a way to make that happen? The answer was probably no; being weak was a pretty big part of her identity. But there were maybe a few things to try…

As she tried to come up with a plan, she toweled off the framed portraits on every side. When the towel got tinted black, she realized that there were marker-written notes on the backs of the wooden frames. Died in a fight, Alicia read on one of the portraits, then another, then a third. What does that mean? Fentanyl, she read on another. Oxy overdose, she read, in prison, suicide. Oh. … Oh.

Alicia flipped her Dad's portrait onto its back, not expecting a 'cause of death' note for someone who was still living, but she found one anyway. Of old age! It read in a determined font, the exclamation mark large. … Now that we know how it works, John was writing, Meili has a question for you, Mom. About how some families have ability evolutions occur so frequently. She doesn't understand why, even when it's supposed to be one in a million, in her clan someone evolves their ability every few generations.

It doesn't seem like genetics would make it so much more likely to experience a specific feeling. But it doesn't have to be genetics, Jane wrote back. Remember what I said earlier, about other people being halfway to understanding? Halfway is still enough to make a large difference in a clan. But what does that actually look like? he asked. Meili wants details. For a while there was nothing, in what seemed like a pause for thought. Just think about it like this, she eventually wrote.

After a clan member evolves by chance, they'll usually become the undisputed leader. They'll have some idea about the circumstances that led them to evolve. Many of them will try to set up the culture, practices, and traditions of their clan to make it more likely that those circumstances repeat themselves. Depending on how well they understand what caused their ability evolution, and how effective they are at setting their clan's culture, they can enhance the future likelihood by thousands of times.

Jane continued: Meili's ability is Devil's Hands, right? I assume her last name is Strauss? I don't know how you know that, but yeah. I've studied the clan before, she wrote. They've done an astoundingly effective job. They place extremely high expectations on every child, to instill the idea of evolving their abilities into their dreams. They have a clan saying, 'stretch higher toward heaven', that valorizes the kind of claw extension that only becomes possible after evolving Demon Claws to Devil's Hands. …

Mom, that's pretty fucked up, John wrote. I'm aware. I'm only saying that, considering all this, it's no surprise that they often have children who feel their self-identity will be fundamentally damaged if they can't evolve. And now you understand why this information is so sensitive, don't you? Clans are already willing to take it this far. If the exact method were to land in any one of their hands- Meili says to trust her, Mom. We don't plan on telling anyone. …

Creaking noises on the stairs signaled to Alicia that it was time to stop. She closed her eyes temporarily to mask their purple glow, deactivated her ability, and turned around.

"Sorry I couldn't get down here sooner," her dad was saying. He held up his phone as a flashlight, aiming at the ground.

"Are these all the boxes right here?" Alicia nodded in confirmation.

"They were the only five that felt noticeably moist," she replied.

"Mostly broken and useless stuff."

"That's great," he breathed.

"Thank goodness."

"Yeah, um. But there was one…" She hesitated. Her father seemed to give her an expectant look as she trailed off, like he was prompting her to continue, though it was too dark to know for sure. Alicia crouched down and gestured at the portraits she'd been drying.

"These got a little wet," she pointed out.

"The wooden frames, I mean, since the pictures are fine. And um, the notes on the back didn't get washed out either." When he didn't see anything for a while, she added, "I guess you used waterproof ink." Eventually, after the sound of a few deep breaths, her father brushed a hand through his hair.

"You read all of them?"

"I did," she said.

"And I… I guess I just want to know what they are. On the back of each of them is how the person in the picture died, I get that. And these people are family, my grandmother and grandfather and great-uncle and so on?"

"On my side," Alicia's dad confirmed.

"My mother, my father, my uncles and aunts." To fentanyl, to a fight, to suicide.

"But why?" He stood there in the dark for a second, then finally crouched down to the floor and started stroking the picture frames, ostensibly to check them for moisture. But his touch seemed a little too tender for that, which he maybe seemed to realize. He picked up his own.

"When I was twenty-one," he said, tapping at the back of the picture frame, "I decided to add my portrait to the gallery early. Cause of death: old age. That was the promise I made, and so far it's been a success.

"... I know you don't think so, Alicia. You don't think I've succeeded, and you don't think you will, either. Not truly, not in the same way I think these things. I can tell.

"... But the truth is that we have. In the only realistic sense we ever can. You go to Agwin Private High School. My job and your mother's job pay for this house. It's because you go to Agwin High School, because you've met the people you have, that you're judging yourself wrong. Just look at where we came from, Alicia. We're already doing so well." His voice was odd; she couldn't tell if he was happy or sad.

She looked down at the portraits again, the faces of these people she'd never met, and realized that even though she knew the secret of evolution her ability would never evolve. Her father was weak. She was weak. The family's expectations were weak, and she had the mindset of the weak, that was the way she'd been raised. No part of her self-identity, the way she felt about herself, said she was anything greater than this.

She wanted to be stronger, yes, but that was just it - she didn't want to be strong to preserve who she was. She wanted to destroy herself to make way for someone better.

"We're not doing well," Alicia protested.

"We're not."

"We are," he said, and she hated herself for how convincing it was.