Time to see what we can do together.

  “So, err– can you explain a little what you’re asking me to explain to you?” Taylor asked, then added, “Like how it relates to the issues you’re having, or whatever?”

  I released a big exhale and started idly toying with my tail in the grass again. “So, I can change my body. You know that, from Morgan to Apex. But I’ve been experimenting more and finding out things, and I don’t really know where my limits are.”

  “Experimenting, such as…?” Lisa asked.

  “Some of it is glorified party tricks,” I said, perfectly mimicking Lisa’s voice. “Some of it is more, I don’t know… practical applications?” I added, now speaking in Taylor’s voice.

  Lisa’s eyes went wide mid-sentence. “Wait. Stop. Stop. How far does that go?”

  I looked over and shrugged. “How far do you want it to go? Supposedly, unless you have a microscope and a fluid sample, you’re not going to know the difference. At least according to Amy.”

  Taylor frowned slightly at the mention of Amy.

  Lisa held up a hand. “Apex. Morgan. That’s not a party trick. Are you playing dense right now?”

  I’d squint at her if I could. “Rude. And no.”

  She sighed, exasperated. “You just described a high-level Stranger ability like it’s a birthday gag, so I’m trying to figure out if you’re actually clueless… or just screwing with me.”

  She stared at me. “I’m leaning clueless.”

  “Thanks, Lisa. Very constructive and helpful feedback,” I said, voice as dry as the Sahara.

  She threw her hands up. “You really don’t get it! You’re saying you could casually stroll into a secure facility and do whatever you want. You could impersonate and character-assassinate people, making fake public statements. You could dupe other heroes, infiltrate their teams, then disappear!”

  “Yes, thank you, Lisa,” I snapped. “As I said at the start, I am trying to learn from Taylor how to think creatively like she does. Because my problem isn’t doing the thing, it’s conceiving of it in the first place.” Frustration was seeping into my voice now, uninvited.

  Taylor’s brows were furrowed in concentration. She raised a hand, cutting through the static between us. “No, I get it now. I really do. I see where she’s coming from.”

  I looked over at Taylor, grateful. “I’m big. I’m strong. I can punch boulders into gravel,” I said. “But that’s useless ninety-five percent of the time when I’m actually trying to do something.”

  “No issues with imagery,” Lisa muttered.

  Not looking at her, I raised a lower arm and pointed to the left with a claw-tipped index finger. Over to where I’d previously reduced a boulder into rubble.

  Lisa groaned.

  Being sincere this time, I addressed Lisa next. “Thank you, though, Lisa. That is what I’m trying to figure out. Granted, the examples you gave are things I probably wouldn’t want to do. I’m not looking to rob banks, but yes.”

  She took the compliment in stride. Small victories.

  “I sort of do the same thing with my bugs,” Taylor said. “Thinking of ways to use them beyond just stinging or biting. Because that doesn’t work against everyone, like Lung.”

  I tilted my head.

  “When he’s got his fire up, they all die before I can do anything with them. I had to get creative.”

  “Ah, yeah. I can see that,” I said. “Kind of in the same boat. Raw power isn’t always so useful.”

  “Well… what other things have you come up with so far?” Taylor asked.

  I cleared my throat. “It’s kind of a mixed bag. I stumbled into one thing that’s super good. One thing that might be great, but I need to test it more. I’m paranoid about unintended side effects.”

  “Can you show me?” Taylor asked, and I saw Lisa was tuned in and attentive.

  I ran through a few demonstrations. I arced electricity between my nails with crackling snaps. Snapped my whip around a bit on the grass. Blew up a recently felled tree with a spectacular boom by hitting it with a tail electrical discharge.

  Vivian, I only explained. No demo. That alone led to a short discussion on how terrifying my power could really be if I were focused on effect and not image.

  I finished with my quills. I plucked one free by the tip and passed it over so they could examine it up close.

  “Just be careful,” I warned. “Don’t handle it directly. I don’t know if the active ingredient or whatever can be absorbed through skin contact. I doubt it, it injects instead of leeches, but better safe than sorry.”

  “What happens when someone gets hit by one?” Lisa asked, holding it carefully in her shirt sleeves.

  “A neurotoxin? Fast acting. Like, seconds. I think it’s full-body paralysis, maybe with a sedative component. Good range, virtually silent. Penetrates clothing and stuff just fine.”

  Taylor was nodding.

  Lisa was tapping her lower lip and pacing around. “When you mimic people, you can change your colors and shape, right?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. Colors are super easy. I don’t even have to use my power for that.”

  “Show me,” she said.

  With barely a thought, I shifted my skin to stark white with sky-blue accents from head to toe.

  She stopped and turned to face me. “Wait. You’re not using your power at all to do that?”

  I shook my head.

  She narrowed her eyes. “Have you ever tried camouflage?”

  “I can make a pretty awesome smokescreen?”

  “Like Grue’s smoke?” Taylor asked.

  “Uh, sorta? It’s totally pitch black like his is, but it doesn’t have the other stuff. No weird texture or sound dampening. And I can see through it, though.”

  “That’s obscuring, not camouflage,” Lisa said. “Totally different thing.”

  I drummed my claws on the ground. “Okay, fair. I’ve never tried that.”

  “You’ve got nothing to lose by trying,” Lisa said, giving me a look.

  Taylor nodded in agreement.

  Here goes nothing.

  I tried to do like I did when using my power, but without dipping into the water in my head.

  My body recolored instantly.

  Blades of grass and specks of dirt along the lower edges, a stone look around the middle, and sky and clouds around my head and shoulders.

  Holy crap.

  “Nice,” Lisa said, not sounding terribly surprised. Like I’d solved a basic math problem. “Get up and move around. See what happens.”

  I got up on all fours and moved around. My skin changed in real time to mirror what it was that I was standing around. Trees, when I walked past the edge of the forest, grass, stones, dirt, sky.

  I came back around and sat in front of them.

  “So when you’re moving around, we can see you,” Taylor said. “It’s hard to make out your details at any kind of distance, but you can see something is moving.”

  Lisa nodded. “If someone wasn’t already looking for you, they wouldn’t notice a thing. Not unless they were super observant.”

  “Hmm,” I mused out loud, “certainly useful for hiding. Or scoping people out.” I glanced up at the sky. “Would probably be killer while flying, too. Not much variation up there. Just sky and clouds..”

  “And you’re still not using your power?” Lisa asked.

  I returned to my normal coloration with a thought and shook my head. “Nope. That’s just me.”

  “What happens if you do try the same thing with your power?” She prodded.

  I took a breath and hummed a moment, thinking.

  Stealth. Sneaking. Hiding. That’s basically what I’m doing already. What about something more than that? Disappearing? Ghosting entirely?

  I presented the concept to my power.

  It responded immediately. Not just with interest, but eagerness.

  I allowed the pressure of the change through–

  “Guh–!”

  The change hit like a sucker punch to the chest. My whole body jerked as a jolt ripped through me, like my energy was getting siphoned out in a violent tug.

  Grunts escaped through the slot under my beak–short, sharp pants and whines as my limbs spasmed. Heat bloomed from deep in my chest and radiated outward in branching, vein-like paths throughout my body. Each tendril reached the surface of my skin, where it popped, like a firework going off beneath my scales.

  Bursts of iridescence flared across my body in random patches, trailed by oily, rainbow-hued distortions, like chromatic mirages in water. They shimmered for a breath, then faded away.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  It wasn’t just unpleasant, it was overwhelming.

  I collapsed forward onto the grass, landing flat on my front, gasping for air.

  My skin flickered once, then defaulted back to my deep blue. Tingling and burning radiated across every inch of me like sunburns.

  Taylor was at my side instantly. She dropped to one knee beside my head, reaching out halfway, then hesitating. “Morgan, are you okay? What just happened?”

  I coughed and rolled my head to the side. “Need… a minute. Winded.”

  I lay there, slowly getting my breathing under control while my energy levels recovered.

  Finally, I braced my big hands beneath me and pushed up to a seated position.

  The seawater in my head was choppy. Rolling in gentle three-foot swells. Not stormy or surging. Energetic, but not violent.

  Maybe a little warning next time…

  “Did your power just… backfire?” Taylor asked.

  “I don’t think so. I don’t think it ever really has, not in the traditional sense.” I rubbed my chest absently. “But it can get pretty unpleasant. That was definitely one of the worse ones.”

  “I don’t think it backfired at all,” said Lisa, matter-of-fact.

  I groaned softly. “Whatever it was, it sucked.”

  Lisa, in perfect contrast, sounded downright chipper. “Sure looked like it,” she said, like we were talking about the weather. “But I bet you’ll be happy with the results.

  I gave her a sideways look. She was grinning. Like, grinning.

  She made a shooing motion with both hands. “Go on, try it. Try it.”

  I thought about trying to sneak around. I leaned into it with real intent, like I would when trying to fly or manipulate things with my tentacles.

  I felt a ripple sensation sweep through me. Like goosebumps across my skin.

  Then I blinked out of existence.

  Literally.

  Taylor jumped. “What the hell?”

  She scrambled up to her feet, wide-eyed and scanning around. “Where did she go?”

  Lisa was already laughing.

  “Yep! Called it. Nailed it. Eat your heart out, tinkers!”

  Taylor spun around. “She was right here. How can someone that big just–”

  A cloud of flying insects rose up from the grass and swept around. Some bumped into me and started to land, outlining me in arthropods.

  “Stranger rating confirmed,” Lisa sing-songed, leaning forward with her hands on her thighs.

  “Okay,” I said, voice low and amused, “this is really cool.”

  “I never get tired of being right,” Lisa murmured.

  “Take the bugs off me?” I asked Taylor. They dispersed a moment later.

  I faced away from Lisa and asked, “Okay, Lisa, tell me what this looks like.”

  She nodded, and I swung back around. I was careful not to move my hands or feet at all to give away the game, and I brought my face closer and closer to hers, holding my breath and being as silent as I could.

  When I was only a foot away, I drew my tongue back and yawned my mouth wide in front of her face.

  She froze, still as a statue, eyes growing as wide as dinner plates.

  I closed my mouth.

  Lisa stumbled back half a step, clutching her chest. “Okay. Don’t ever do that again. Alec was joking about the nightmare fuel thing last time. I’m not joking now. That really is nightmare fuel.”

  She laughed nervously. “If your goal is to make someone piss their pants, that’s a great way of doing it. It’s just like a hole in space opens, and it’s just– teeth. Dripping teeth. Like a fleshy portal to hell decided to yawn at me.”

  So it’s just the surface of my body. Can I…?

  I tried to talk with my mouth closed, letting the air escape through the hidden slot in my face. It sounded like I was trying to talk into my hand.

  Hm. Maybe if…

  I tried thinking the words instead of saying them. My throat tensed, a little air escaped, and…

  “Testing?”

  My voice came out normal. Clear. Not even distorted.

  The trick was keeping my jaw and tongue still. Not easy, but doable with practice.

  Practice makes perfect. And I have a whole new tool to work on perfecting.

  “We can hear you just fine, sounds normal,” Taylor said.

  “I’m going to try moving around some. Tell me what it looks like from your end?”

  I got up and trotted around them, careful to keep silent. Grass still flattened underfoot, pawprints left behind in the dirt. Telltales of something there, but only if you were paying close attention.

  “You’re still– yeah, totally invisible. Just the grass swaying and parting. Looks like it’s moving on its own,” Taylor said.

  I tried laying on the speed, running around much faster at a bit more of a distance.

  “There’s a little shimmer, like a heat mirage when you’re really booking it, but yeah, it’s impossible to make anything out,” Lisa called out.

  I climbed up a big rock and took to the air. I could see the impact of my wing flaps buffeting the grass below me.

  “Still just a shimmer and a blur!” Lisa shouted up to me.

  I went for one of my usual dramatic entrances. Up into the sky, silent glide, then drop from about fifteen feet up. My paws crunched into the dirt, tossing up clumps of earth and grass.

  Both Lisa and Taylor jumped, and that was with them knowing I was there. Nice.

  “Hey, while you’re playing around, show me that smoke screen,” Lisa said.

  A few seconds later, I puffed six mid-sized balls of dust out of my back, which silently exploded into a wide-area blanket of pitch blackness.

  Lisa laughed. “Yep, I’d say that’s pretty effective. I can’t see my hand in front of my own face.”

  “Going to blow it away, hold on a second,” I called out to them.

  I was starting to realize something.

  This wasn’t just power discovery. This was a redefinition. Apex wasn’t just a brute. Apex was also a phantom.

  A couple of light wingbeats later, the air was clear. I dropped my invisibility, padded back over, and settled in where I’d been before.

  Taylor looked like she was lost in thought. After a moment of silence between the three of us, she asked: “Why haven’t you used that before when we were fighting? It seems very powerful. I blind people with swarms of bugs all the time for that reason.”

  I took a breath and rustled my wings. “It’s indiscriminate. I can see through it, but nobody else can. Not much use in a team fight if I’m blinding my own side.”

  She ran her hands over her curly hair, smoothing it down where it’d been blown around some by my wings. “I can. You should use it if we’re ever working together.”

  I leaned over to my duffel on the grass, pulled out a pair of leggings and a tank top.

  “I’m going to get changed so we can eat and relax for a bit.”

  The other two nodded, and I stepped behind an outcropping to change. Still within easy conversation distance.

  “You can?” I asked her.

  “I’m aware of where all my bugs are all the time. I use the more useful things like you’ve seen before, but the less useful stuff I use in other ways, or just leave them where they are. Bugs are everywhere. So it’s like having a three-dimensional map around me.”

  “Wait. You’re not just using one swarm you bring around. You connect with all bugs? Everywhere? All the time?” My voice cracked a little. I think I was just starting to grasp what that really meant.

  “Well, not everywhere. I have a range. A couple thousand feet, maybe. It varies sometimes,” she replied.

  “All the bugs. In a several thousand-foot radius?”

  “Yeah. Mostly bugs. Some other really simple stuff too, like worms. Or crabs,” Taylor said.

  I laughed. “Okay, the crabs are kind of random. Guess you get free seafood whenever you want. I might bug you for some sometime.”

  Taylor groaned. “Really? Bug me?”

  Lisa cackled as I was getting dressed, then I came back around barefoot and went over to where the other two were. I set up a picnic blanket where my big ass had already flattened the grass and dirt by sitting and laying earlier.

  We sat down and started having lunch. Taylor had sandwiches, chips, and a bottle of water. Lisa had what I thought was leftover veggie curry and rice. I had a cold cut sub and a 20-oz cola.

  “What sorts of feedback do you get from your bugs,” I asked Taylor as we ate.

  “Basic stuff. Light, shadow, darkness. Sounds, although bugs seem to perceive vibration more than sound, like we do. Textures and surfaces, they are really good at.”

  “And that’s all the bugs in your range? Like, no limit at all on the number?”

  “No. Or not that I’ve found, at least. And I’ve had some big swarms.”

  I was shaking my head, and she gave me a look.

  “What?” She asked a little defensively.

  “Dude! What do you mean what!?” I exclaimed.

  She narrowed her eyes at me.

  I made eye contact with her. “Dude. You are insanely powerful. Like, it’s not even funny.”

  Lisa nodded in agreement with me, and she looked taken aback.

  We chatted and relaxed a little. Lisa wasn’t awful when we weren’t in cape mode.

  The topics rotated casually. There was a mention of Taylor dealing with some household issues, which earned Lisa a glare. I told her if she ever needed a place to crash, I had a whole bedroom I didn’t use on account of not wanting to break the floor.

  Lisa talked about some hole-in-the-wall places in Lord Street Market, and a couple of good restaurants over near the Boardwalk.

  When the conversation circled around to me, I tongued the inside of my cheek, thinking.

  “Anyone dating or seeing anyone?” I asked.

  Lisa made a face. “Don’t do relationships.”

  I nodded a little. “I can sort of see the appeal of casual stuff without all the strings. Not sure it’s my thing.”

  She shook her head. “No, I mean I don’t do anything. Like, at all.”

  I blinked a few times as it sank in. “Oh. Oh! Sorry. I didn’t realize you were asexual.”

  She pressed her lips together for a moment, then said: “It’s less than and more… my power overshares. In those situations. It just ruins everything.”

  I took a drink of my soda and frowned. As I thought about it, the more I could guess what kinds of things she might mean. I asked gently, “You can’t turn your power off?”

  She shook her head again. I took a deep breath and sighed. “Guess that makes two of us in that boat.”

  “Three,” Taylor said softly. “I can sort of tune them out, but they’re always there.”

  “Sorry to be a buzzkill,” I said. “What about you, Taylor?”

  She dropped her eyes down the the cloth beneath us.

  Lisa flashed that wolfish grin of hers and teased, “Taylor’s got a crush.”

  I studied the exchange unfolded between them. They weren’t just teammates, I realized. They were friends. Maybe close ones.

  Lisa turned to me after reflecting a glare off her grin defense array. “She’s into tall, dark, and mysterious sorts.”

  I rocked my head from side to side, mulling it over. “I mean, she’s got that going on herself in spades, so I guess I can see it.”

  Taylor flushed a little and shot me a glare. I lifted my own grin defense.

  “What!” I said, hands raised. “You do! Your costume fucks, girl! Easily top tier! Maybe the best in the Bay!”

  Her blush deepened from a light flush to a full crimson.

  My jaw dropped. “No way. You made that yourself!?”

  “Yeah. With my bugs,” she muttered.

  “Can I see it? That reminds me, I had an idea.”

  Taylor leaned over and pulled her Skitter outfit out of her bag. I dumped the scraps of lettuce from my lunch into the grass and folded up the paper. I wiped my hands on my leggings before she handed it over. I didn’t want to get any smudges on her costume.

  The moment I held it, a few things stood out. The fabric was incredibly light, but felt strong. The detailing was gorgeous– precise, purposeful. Storage compartments ran along the spine, and there were attachment points for armor, and padded soles built right in.

  “Taylor.” I looked up at her from where I’d been poring over it. “This is the best costume I’ve ever seen. Seriously. Nothing else I’ve handled even comes close, except maybe tinker tech, and that’s their whole thing.”

  She opened her mouth, then closed it again. “Thanks,” she said finally, but her expression was strange. Uncertain.

  “Hey,” I said softly, catching her attention as she glanced away. I reached over and laid a hand on her shoulder. She met my eyes.

  “I’m not trying to poke at you, but… You really should let yourself believe it a little. You always get this look, like compliments make your skin itch.”

  She looked away again. I considered pulling my hand back, but she didn’t flinch or move. So I just gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. I hoped it landed as supportive and not pushy.

  Taylor didn’t answer right away.

  She kept her eyes on the grass, picking at a loose thread on her sleeve. I let the silence sit. Didn’t push her. Eventually, she spoke. Low, almost like she wasn’t sure if the words were for me or just to get them out of her head.

  “I don’t get a lot of compliments. Not the kind that weren’t… backhanded, or from people who didn’t mean it.”

  She gave a breath, it might have been a laugh, but there wasn’t any humor in it.

  “So I guess when someone does mean it, it sort of short-circuits me.”

  She glanced up at me again, her mouth twitching just a little into something like a smile.

  “But… thank you. For meaning it.”

  I glanced over at Lisa. She was smiling per usual, but not in her usual smarmy grin.

  I leaned back and drank the last of my soda.

  “What about you?” Taylor asked, seemingly out of nowhere.

  I blinked. “What about me?”

  “With relationships, I mean,” she added.

  “Ugh. It’s complicated,” I said with a sigh.

  “Hey, no way. You don’t get to ask what we have going on and then brush it off like that,” she shot back.

  I looked up from the costume at her, my brows raising.

  “Look at you, peeking out!” I chuckled.

  Lisa snorted. “She doesn’t do that often. Outside of costume or the lair, I mean.”

  “Well, now I feel obligated to share, since this is such a momentous occasion.”

  Lisa snickered again.

  I looked down at the costume and ran my fingers over the panels that weren’t just fabric.

  Are those… beetle shells?

  “There’s someone I’ve crushed on for a bit now. Maybe a year or so. We’re friends, and I don’t want to mess up a good thing. I’m also not sure what her sexuality is. She dates guys,” I spoke quietly.

  Lisa stared at me, then said: “Oh my god, you can’t be serious.”

  I gave her a look, and she held her hands up.

  “Anyways. Things are complicated enough there. To make matters worse, I think there might be something developing between me and someone else. Not really sure about that, but it’s a little scary to think about.”

  I took a deep breath and let out a huge sigh. “And that’s not even touching the giant blue creature in the room. Namely, the fact that I’m just… not even human anymore.”

  I flexed my jaw, speaking to myself more than anyone else. “How the fuck do you even have that conversation with someone? ‘Hi, I’m actually a Lovecraftian sexless monster in disguise. Want to get coffee sometime?'"

  Taylor was quiet for a second. Then: “Well… for what it’s worth? I think you’re more human than most people I’ve met. You care. That matters.”

  I blinked rapidly. That one hit home.

  Lisa, sitting cross-legged and twirling a blade of grass between her fingers, grinned. “Hey, so you’ve got tall girl dating problems. They don’t want to look past that? Their loss.”

  She leaned back on the blanket and looked up at the sky. “Seriously, though, Morgan. You’re not a monster. We’ve got some real monsters in the city, and you’re not one of them.”

  She tilted her head to the side, squinting with the sun in her eyes.

  “Don’t get me wrong, you are fucking terrifying… but it’s mostly when you want to be.”

  She shivered. “Demon maw from hell appearing in space wasn’t exactly on my calendar for today.”

  I laughed loudly.

  Mood stabilized for the time being, I looked back down at the costume. “What’s this made from? I don’t recognize the fabric.”

  “Oh, you definitely don’t,” Lisa chimed in.

  Taylor spoke up. “Dragline silk. From black widows.”

  I studied her face. She was serious. “How?”

  She shrugged. “A lot of work. Breeding them, feeding them, getting them to weave the silk into cloth. It wouldn’t be so bad if black widows weren’t so territorial. I have to gather them and separate them every time I leave. Otherwise, they kill and eat each other.”

  “You should see how intense she gets when talking about some of her bugs,” Lisa added with a smirk.

  I carefully handed it back over to her.

  “Why’d you want to see it, anyway?” Taylor asked.

  I nibbled my lower lip. “Well. I wanted to pay you back for the training. I noticed you had armor panels in it.”

  Taylor rolled up her costume and put it back in her backpack.

  “I thought I might try and make you some armor panels to put in it,” I explained.

  “You have a line on body armor inserts?” Taylor asked, blinking.

  Lisa snickered.

  “I uh, yes, technically. But I wasn’t talking about those.”

  Taylor gave me a slightly bewildered look.

  I cleared my throat. “I meant, you know, from my body. My armor beats the brakes off anything else I’ve seen. Especially my hard armor plates.”

  “Oh,” was all she said.

  “They’re really heavy, don’t know the exact weight, since I don’t feel it the same way. But I was thinking I could work on a thinner version. Something lighter. Make sure it doesn’t melt.” I glanced between them. “You probably don’t need to be rocket-launcher-proof.”

  Lisa and Taylor spoke at the same time.

  “Melting?” Lisa asked.

  “You’ve been shot with rocket launchers?” Taylor asked, voice sharp with disbelief.

  I chuckled, nodding to both of them.

  “Yeah. The ABB had some, shot a couple at me. Dodged one, and the other hit me in the chest and blew up. Knocked me through a concrete wall and off a building.”

  “...And you survived?” Taylor asked, staring at me with a blank look on her face.

  “Huh? Oh, yeah. It didn’t even hurt me. Mostly just pissed me off.” I shrugged. “I jumped back in the building and laid them down for nap time.”

  I pushed for a change, just a single quill in my arm, with the added request of melting quickly.

  “Here, it’s easier to show you than explain,” I told Lisa.

  I carefully plucked the quill and handed it over to her. “Tried to make this one melt faster than usual. Anything knocked loose in a fight does the same thing. Just watch.”

  She held it in the palm of her hand and studied it. Within fifteen seconds or so, it started turning translucent, then melted into a sticky, stringy, clear slime. Ten more seconds and it was fully evaporated.

  She got a certain look on her face.

  “God, please don’t say it,” I begged her.

  “That’s… interesting.”

  I groaned and cupped my face in my palms. My voice muffled by my hands, I said: “At least it wasn’t fascinating this time. If I had a dollar for every time thinkers and tinkers said that, I’d be living large.”

  “Oh, boo hoo,” she teased. I was getting better at telling when she was teasing and when she was needling.

  She lifted her hand, rubbing her fingers together to test for residue.

  “So yes, it’s melting. But really? It’s more accurate to say it’s self-destructing. If you can speed that up, I’m guessing you can stop it entirely. I’m curious about the why, but it’s not critical.”

  I glanced at her. “You’d better be careful.”

  She quirked a brow at me.

  “I might start to think you’re not a totally rotten bitch after all,” I said, grinning.

  She shot me a wicked little grin in return.

  I had been hearing something, wasn’t sure what, at first. Then it hit me. I opened my duffel and pulled out my fancy phone. I had five missed calls, all from Faultline. I blinked rapidly.

  “What the hell?” I unlocked my phone and dialed her back.

  She picked up on the first ring. “Where are you? Are you okay?”

  Holy shit. She sounds concerned.

  “Yeah, I’m fine, I’m outside the city right now with some friends. I don’t think there’s any regular signal here.”

  She filled me in on what was going on. Rapid-fire, short, and to the point. My jaw hung open.

  “Shit! Okay. We’re coming back. Stay safe, alright?”

  I hung up.

  “What’s going on?” Lisa asked.

  I started pulling my clothing off as I let go of my human form.

  “Pack up and suits on,” I told them, and that snapped them out of gawking at my half-naked body.

  “Another war just broke out in the city while we were away. All Empire Eighty-Eight had their real identities dumped publicly. They’re laying siege to the north side.”