Chapter Text
Juice all starts to smell the same when you wring it out of your clothes enough. I was soaked through but I couldn't tell what with, only that it was cloying and sugary and already starting to go sticky. The hood was the only part I bothered to stick under the anaemic hand dryer in the bathroom; too old and worn out for anyone to even bother breaking. It would be heavy on my neck if I didn't. The rest of it would dry on the bus back home. Maybe.
I picked up one of the discarded bottles. Cheap knockoff Gatorade. This one was still about a quarter full. I blinked, and my brain was full of information.
Concentrated form of liquid would serve as base for—Long chain hydrocarbons provide potent organic—Potassium solute useful carrier molecule for—Acidity would aid dissolution of further material—Triarylmethane compound stimulates nervous system functionality and therefore biological—
I hit myself in the chest, the pain enough to jolt me out of the spiral. It would leave a bruise, most likely, but that was why I hit myself where only I would ever see. Somewhere nobody would ever even want to look.
I wouldn’t want to look at myself either.
The Gatorade bottle disappeared into my hoodie's front pocket. It was a giant, baggy thing that had huge pockets on the front so you could keep your hands warm, or, if you were me, fill them up with random garbage to shut up the voices in your head. It was black, because black hid stains, and the soaked-in juice just meant it smelled vaguely of cheap fruit punch. The chemical sweetness and fake fruit only kind of masked the staleness and the smell of fermented goo. I didn't care. Why clean it if they were just going to cover it in filth again? Why bother? It was just more work for no reward.
I had only been soaked twice today. There hadn't been juice on my chair for any classes after homeroom, just glue. My hand found the empty glue bottle in my pocket. Not quite empty — depolymerisation and reoxidation to vinyl alcohol applies to metal ligand — but enough that it wouldn't set the voices off on the bus. I hadn't been tripped. I had only been shoved a few times. All in all, a quiet day by their standards. That meant they were up to something. It almost made me laugh. They kept going. Beating a horse that wasn't just dead but rotted away to bones. And I just… stopped trying to fight it. Why waste my energy? If I stopped something today, it meant something else would happen tomorrow, usually something worse than the plot I'd foiled. If nothing could stop them, if nobody would bother to stop them, then it didn't matter.
The fake Gatorade was drying in my hair. I didn't care. I just pulled up my hood and let the steps down the hallway kinda-sorta towel me off. The clumps and knots and matting was like a helmet, in a weird way. It didn't stop me from getting hurt. Nothing ever stopped them hurting me. The clumps and grease and smell just kept people away. If you looked put together while you were crying, people came over, made the soothing noises they thought were helpful, fussed over you and tried to help. All it did was make things worse. If you let the grease set in, on the other hand, if you let the dirt and the gum and the mats pile up until your hair was a shoulder-length bob of heavy, scratchy shit that looked like the stuff they made old-timey potato sacks out of? Those concerned citizens became a whole lot less concerned. It was almost like they'd never cared in the first place. Even if you were crying behind broken glasses.
I remembered what crying was like, and I thought about how to do it. I couldn't figure it out. It didn't matter.
I walked down the hall at a brisk pace. It was the end of the day, but there were a lot less people than that implied. Part of the reason why was that people left early whenever they could. The rest was that I wanted to leave late, to avoid getting kicked over and trodden on during the rush. This was a school where, if you wanted, you could just bring in a knife and stab another kid. You’d get caught, and something might happen, but you could do it. So really, old soda in my hair and spitballs in my face and my glasses “accidentally” getting broken and getting shoved down the stairs? Compared to getting killed, I was getting off pretty lightly.
At least school was over for another day. I could go back to my house and my father. The words clunked in my heart and in my head. They were deliberate. The house didn't feel like a home, and my father wasn't much of a dad. We never discussed our feelings or our problems. We barely spoke at all. He was working a lot more at the Dockworkers Association, trying to drum up support for the ferry to come back, all kinds of projects. They made him busy, and tired, and quiet. I knew he cared about me, but it was worn down over the years like an old stone building all pitted and blackened from acid rain. We only ever cooked with a microwave or ordered out. Most of what we ate was leftovers. Well, he ate leftovers. I didn't really have much of an appetite any more. Besides, if my food went bad, it got thrown out. That meant I could retrieve it from the trash, and that meant a little less screaming from the voices in my head.
My stomach started complaining at me the moment I thought about food, but I didn't pay it any attention. I had always been a tea girl, but I'd read online that coffee was an appetite suppressant so I drank it a lot more. I took it black, no milk, no sugar. What was the point of adding anything like that? It was just more expensive in the end. I wasn't drinking it to like it. Besides, having so much coffee gave me energy and wakefulness. Even if it didn't make me less tired, at least it meant less time asleep.
I got to the stop I needed, away from the school one, and waited. The bus was late. The buses were always late. Plus it was starting to rain. I could feel it in my shoes, leaking in through the breaks in the soles. I wore the cheapest shoes I could get, and I wore them until they were unusable. The rain holes weren't turning the insole to mush yet, so they had about another week or two in them. More if I put some cardboard underneath the sole. My socks were kind of wet now, but then, my socks were kind of wet when I got juice or milk or whatever poured all over me. It was something I just ignored.
I was waiting for the bus when a pretty blonde girl walked past, umbrella in one hand and overpriced Starbucks order in the other. She had a soft kind of figure, slim but curvaceous in stark contrast to my own scrawny, gangly build, with its distended belly that made me look and feel like a frog ready for dissection. I couldn't help but look into her eyes as she walked towards me. They were so green. So intelligent. So alive. Green like a growing forest. Mine were a sludge brown and hidden behind old, broken glass, like an empty vodka bottle collecting mud at the bottom of a storm drain. I think her eyes widened at the same time mine did, but for different reasons. She probably thought I was going to ask her for any spare change.
The truth was, I was pretty sure she was another parahuman. Like me.
The voices in my head had gone quiet for a moment. Dead quiet, just like they had with Sophia. Like a hunter stalking a stag. The information in my brain was about to expl—
Glycol compound able to bind — Complex organic dye useful for — Polluted water contains soluble exhaust gases — Sodium extraction possible through — Solvent fumes replicating — Brominereactant — Plasticfume — Inorganic — Enol — OilMordantBreakdown shut up shut up SHUT UP!
I tasted some kind of burning iron and it brought me out of the spiral. My teeth weren't great but they were strong enough to bite the inside of my cheek. I shook my head and blinked a couple of times to get the spots out of my vision, and there she was, right next to me, holding an umbrella over my head. Her nose was wrinkling slightly, which was my fault, and her expression was — oh for fuck's sake. Concern? I was going to have to deal with a Concerned Citizen with some kind of power as well? Fuck today. Did they put her up to this? How many parahumans can be in one social circle anyway? Was she going to—
"Are you okay?"
The rain came down harder. I could feel it welling up through my shoes. It was cold, almost to the point it was hurting. I was wearing a giant plain black sweatshirt from a thrift store that smelled of expired soda and it had literal trash in the pockets. They always asked that question. They always asked that same stupid fucking question.
"I'm fine," I said. "Just a bad day, that's all." It was a rote line. It got most people to back off.
The blonde's eyes flickered up and down. "Sure," she said. "Just a bad day. Just one bad day." She didn't sound like one of their patsies, but sometimes that was the point. She just sounded… sad. Like Dad did, after Mom. Like I did, after January. "One among, well, too many. But one's too many anyway. How long has it been since the last good day?"
Nature camp. Trail day. The day before my world ended. We'd got to walk through an old quarry upstate that had been turned into a nature reserve. A butterfly had landed on my hair, and the camp counsellor had taken a photo to show my parents. I didn't have it any more. They'd stolen it and covered it in insults in permanent marker. I'd thrown it away before Dad saw and told him I’d just put it somewhere safe. He’d never brought it up since.
"Tuesday," I said. "Happy now?"
"Today's Monday. That's a bad week, not a bad day." She smiled, but her eyes were still sad. I'd seen enough fake smiles to know. "Sorry for the Spanish Inquisition. I'm Lisa."
"Taylor."
Lisa smiled a little wider at that, and it got to her eyes this time. It wasn't an unkind smile, not a bitchy grin worn by them or their usual hangers-on, but that was just it. She was pretty and blonde and obviously one of the popular girls, and I was wearing unbranded sneakers from Goodwill and my hair was starting to smell like wet dog. This wasn't how things worked. This wasn't how people talked to me, the secret parahuman with the garbage power whose civilian identity was a weird gross freak. Why was she wasting time on trash when she could have the attention of anyone she wanted?
"Then it's great to meet you, Taylor."
It just slipped out. "You don't have to lie." Inside, I kicked myself. I knew better than to give voice to my real feelings.
Lisa looked surprised, but… not because she'd been caught, I didn't think. That looked different, especially where they were concerned.
"I'm not," she said. Her voice was so quiet, and so sad. I could barely hear it over the rain and the ringing in my ears. Either she was a fantastic actor or she was telling the truth.
Fantastic actor it was, then.
"Okay." I didn't bother sounding convincing.
"Yeah, I deserved that after the week you've had." There was something about how she said that. Something I couldn't place. "You don't, though. Deserve it, I mean. You don't deserve to feel like that, or be treated like that. Nobody does."
I felt something freeze over in my chest. My heart was suddenly beating way too loud. I looked at her and I couldn't see anything but the spiderweb crack in my glasses. It felt like I was swallowing Lego bricks every time I took a breath. The world began to spin. The rain was so loud, roaring in my ears, drummers in a parade hammering inside my head and I bit my cheek and the taste of rust came back but it still wouldn't stop it wouldn't ever stop—
"—lor? Taylor, can you hear me?"
Voice. Faint. Muffled by the rain. Why was it so loud?
"I just need you to breathe with me, okay? Breathe. Nice and slow."
The choking feeling wasn't as bad. It hurt, but in a more normal way. Like I'd been punched in the throat again. I kept breathing though, slowly, like she asked. Why was I doing what she wanted?
"You're going to be okay." Her voice was clearer now, or the rain was quieter, or something was happening, I just didn't know what. "You're having a panic attack. I didn't mean to set you off like that, I shouldn't have done it."
She thought what? I shook my head. Veterans had panic attacks. The refugees from S-Class events had panic attacks. I was just a teenage girl with teenage girl problems. I didn't have the right to have anything like that—
"You are and you do, okay? You are and you do. Focus on my voice, okay Taylor? Focus on me."
I tried, I did, but the rain was so damn loud and there were car horns bellowing like bulls in a field and there was just so much noise noise noise and then she was holding my hand. What? When did that happen?
I pushed my glasses back up my face. Lisa emerged from the broken blur, and I couldn't place the emotion on her face. Pity? Worry? Something like that.
"Lisa?" My voice was trembling. It sounded hoarse and ugly. I swallowed some of the metal taste.
"It’s alright. You're going to be fine. I'm sorry for grabbing you, but you were about to walk into the road."
I didn't remember doing that. But I looked around, and people at the stop were looking at me. And I wasn't where I'd been standing. My feet felt wetter too, and there was a puddle by the curb stretching into the road bed. Some rotten leaves were stuck to my jeans — Decompositional agents giving rise to gas expulsion — and there were trees nearby… had I done that? Was she telling the truth?
I noticed her coffee cup, still half-full, abandoned by the roadside. Even a glance was enough to — Caffeine derivatives capable of transmission—Trace nitrogen means fume profusion possible—Xylitol stabilisation agent useful for organo-photonic — start the voices off again. They were always so loud.
"I'm fine," I croaked out. "Thank you. Sorry."
Lisa blinked, a few times more than normal. "I really don't think you are. But," she continued, shutting off my protest before it started, "that's your call to make, not mine. Listen, is there anyone you can call for a ride?"
"I…" I thought for a moment. "I'm just gonna get the bus. Student pass." I showed her the lanyard. I didn't show her the card. It had DYKE scratched into it with a razor or something and it was too much money and effort to replace it every time that happened.
She smiled, and it was weak and scared. "Gotta be some benefit to being in high school, right?" She still hadn't let go of my hand. "I'll level with you, Taylor. I… don't think you should be alone right now. Can I come with you to your stop? I'm not gonna stalk you or anything, I promise. I just want to make sure you're safe. After your," and her face shifted to this weird smirk, knowing but so sad, "bad week an' all."
I knew there were parahumans who could make you do what they wanted. I knew there were ones who could manipulate you. Call it tiredness, call it an aftereffect of the panic, I didn't care. I just nodded, then leaned back against the signpost to wait for the bus to arrive.
She only let go of my hand when we got on board.
We didn't really talk on the bus. They were old, and they were loud, and if you looked too much like you were talking to a date of the same gender then there could be Empire wannabes who'd follow you home and beat you bloody as a message, or worse if you were a girl. There was this old urban legend that gangs wouldn't target the buses, but it had never been true for the Empire and aside from the ABB they were the only big gang left. Maybe the Marche never had, but that was because they were protection racketeers and people who took the bus everywhere usually didn't have much worth stealing.
After about half an hour of traffic noise, drumming rain, and the crunch of bad gearshifts, we started to come up to my stop. I whacked the pole to loosen the 'Stop Here' button, then pressed it. These were old buses. You got used to their quirks and foibles. I turned to Lisa. "This is mine," I said, like an idiot.
"I figured. Want me to come with—"
"I'm good." Which was a lie. "But, uh. Thank you. For the offer."
"No problem. I'd…" She steeled herself, so obviously even I caught it. "I'd like to give you my number. I know you don't know me from a hole in the ground but I, well, I figure you could use a friend."
"I don't have a cellphone." That at least was true. Even if Dad allowed them in the house, it was just another vector of attack. My email got barraged with messages telling me to kill myself every day, and so would my text messages. Plus it was an expensive item they could steal, or just break. They were good at breaking things of mine.
"Then keep it safe and call me from your landline when you get home. Please?" Before I could answer, she pulled out her bus ticket, scribbled down a number on the white space, and slipped it into my hoodie pocket. "For my peace of mind, if nothing else."
I nodded. Then I noticed something. The ticket wasn't setting off the voices. Even though it was a single fare, and therefore useless the moment I got off. It wasn't trash.
I looked at Lisa, and I fought the urge to dive into the Salinas-river-green of her eyes, and just nodded again. "I'll do it," I forced out.
There was a ding as the bus graunched to a stop. Irving Avenue. Three minutes from home. I stood up and squeezed past her. My fingers brushed across her thigh, and I grabbed the handrail for support.
"Ta ta! Call me when you're home safe, Taylor!"
"Yeah. Bye."
I got off the bus, dodging the puddles and leaf drifts this time. The rain was starting to ease off, at least for now. It was still soaking through my hood though. I didn't like how wet jeans felt against my legs but it was better than sweatpants, especially since those were much easier to tear. The sidewalk was still wet enough that I could hear slurps and squelches with every step, and my feet were starting to feel weird. I just wanted to get home. At least it would be quiet. Dry. Safe. I needed that right now.
Three minutes of walking in a downpour with broken shoes and I was ready to lie down on the carpet and groan for an hour. I had no endurance. I'd thought about going running at night but that took energy I couldn't muster. Besides, going out alone just wasn't safe, even if I'd had powers that could defend me in a fight. I was an out-of-shape teenage girl with a disgusting pot belly I couldn't shift and the muscle tone of a stick insect. Sure, I was ugly and I smelled vaguely of rot, but rapists go for anyone who's there.
They once said if that happened I should leave them a twenty as a thank-you present. I remembered it hurting when I heard it, but right now I just felt… nothing.
Because that's all I was, even with superpowers. Nothing.
The loose step was starting to break, and it jabbed me in the foot as I walked up to the front door and let myself inside. It didn't leave any splinters in my foot — the voices would have told me if it had, if only because it could be used for something — but it still hurt a little, and when I took off my shoes and checked there was a little trail of blood behind me on the floor. I grabbed a sheet of paper towel from the kitchen and dabbed my foot against it, then wiped up the spots of blood. I stuffed it in my pocket, because it might set off the voices again now that it had been used, and I needed a break from that right now.
Dad wasn't home. The truck wasn't here, but I called out anyway, just in case. He was probably working late. I didn't really mind; I could tell him I'd already eaten when he got back, squirt some ketchup on a plate and leave it in the sink. If he wasn't fooled, he didn't say. He never said much at all. I didn't mind. What did I have to say to him? "Hi Dad, how was work? You had to fight like hell to get people any kind of paid employment, and some Nazis came by to fuck shit up, and now you're home in a cold empty house with your cold empty daughter staring at a microwave meal that's the only hot food you've had to eat all day? Sounds rough, buddy. Let me make that even better by trauma-dumping all over you about the adolescent bullshit I'm being put through by a girl you're still convinced is my best friend! That'll fix your day right up! Oh, and I'm a parahuman with a garbage power. No stress there either! Hey, after the dinner neither of us wants to even look at, wanna play Candyland?"
I sighed as I stripped off the rest of my clothes and carried them upstairs to my room. The day's takings, minus the bus ticket, went in the wastebasket by my door. It was getting full again. I'd have to take it away soon. I got into my onesie and went back downstairs, the unicorn horn flopping behind me. I'd seen it in Goodwill when I was buying my sneakers and it was only another three dollars. The thing was gigantic, ugly, and didn't belong outside where people could see it. I could relate.
Ticket in hand, I went downstairs to grab the landline handset from the living room. I didn't want to call Lisa, not really, but she seemed like one of the pushy kinds of Concerned Citizen and I didn't need her coming back into my life to make things difficult. Plus, I kind of owed her that much if she'd stopped me walking into an oncoming car. The speed limit was 20 in a school zone anyway, so it wouldn't have killed me if she hadn't. If I really wanted to die, there was a whole entire Bay to jump into down by the docks.
I didn't go there much any more.
The number was slightly blurry between rain damage and the grime on my glasses, but I got it right in the end. A few rings later, a chirpy voice came through on the line.
"Hi Taylor!"
Like a snap, I was on edge. "... How did you know it was me?"
"You don't have a cellphone. Call from a landline number I don't recognise? Odds are good it's you."
Crap. I must have forgotten to turn caller ID off. "Yeah, that makes sense."
"Also I'm psychic!"
What? "What?"
"Relax, Taylor. I know you know I've got powers. And since I know that you know that, I'm pretty sure you do too."
What? "What?"
"Yup, you definitely do."
Shit, shit, shit. "I don't know what you're—"
"Hey, girl, relax. I know that's a really hard thing for you. But trust me, I have no intention of outing you to anyone. Not at your school, not to the PRT, and not to any gangs. I promise."
"I don't believe you." It was rude but I didn't care. "And I don't have powers."
"Sweetie, don't lead with the refutation and follow with the denial, it's basically a confession. You have powers, you just wish you don't. Wait. Wow, I only said that as a joke, you actually hate that you're a parahuman. That must be really hard."
"I'm going to hang up now—"
"Wait! Please, wait. I'm — look, I don't know how your power works, but mine kinda makes me run my mouth a little. Or a lot. Like, a lot a lot. I didn't mean to poke at you like that, and I'll do my best to make sure it doesn't happen again. Okay?"
She seemed sincere. Seemed. People like her were so very good at seeming. I just didn't have the energy to fight her.
"I… fine. Whatever. You win. I have powers and they suck. They don't do anything useful, they can't help anyone, they just scream at me in my head until I do stupid bullshit I don't really understand. I don't want them. I don't want to be a villain, I can't be a rogue, and nobody would be dumb enough to accept me as a hero. But you know all that, because you're a psychic, so you just wanted to hear me say it. I don't know why, but you did."
She was quiet for a while, and when she spoke again her voice was a lot softer. "I only know what my power tells me, Taylor. I wanted to hear what you thought, and." She trailed off for a while, then picked up, voice still a little shaky. "Look, it sounds like you're in a really bad place. I know a little bit of what that's like. A lot of us do. I'm not saying that to denigrate what you're going through, I'm saying it because you don't have to go through this alone."
"Why do you care?"
I was expecting a snort of laughter, or derision. Nothing came but a measured, gentle tone. "Because going through things like this alone is the worst way to cope, and I wanted to reach out because nobody else has even tried. Not really. Not in any way that counts."
That cold feeling in my chest was starting to come back. I took a breath. "Look, Leah—"
"Lisa, and that is my real name."
It was a basic trap, but she was avoiding them. For some reason the chill was ebbing away, and the pain in my chest along with it. "Lisa. I appreciate your concern. I just don't know why it's being offered to someone like me, or by someone like you."
She was quiet again. "Because you need someone on your side."
"Okay." I took another long, slow breath. "I can't talk for long. My, uh." How much information did I want to give a psychic? How much had I already? "I might not have a lot of privacy for long."
"I understand. One question, and I'll let you go."
"Will you?"
"Ouch. Okay. You don't like your power, I get that. You think it's a crock of shit. But I'm pretty smart with the whole powers thing, and I think… I think that I could help you figure out some stuff to make it more bearable."
That wasn't a question, and I said so.
"Then let me ask: do you want me to do that? Help you quiet down your voices, make them work for you instead of against you? I don't know the specifics of your abilities, but I think I can help. And I think you could use it. Will you let me?"
I was tempted. God help me, I was tempted. If she could quiet them down, even a little, it would be… it would be a relief.
"I'm sorry, Lisa. I… I don't trust you yet. I only just met you." Dammit! Rookie error. I was really off my game.
"Then let's meet up sometime. Call it a trial run, see if you like what I have to offer. Tomorrow? After you get out of Winslow?"
"How do you — no, wait, psychic or whatever."
"That one was just a process of deduction. I had to walk past Winslow to get to the bus stop where we met. Immaculata and Clarendon have uniforms and Arcadia is on the other side of town. Plus, they have their own bus. So. You up for coffee tomorrow? My treat, if I'm dragging you out somewhere."
Saying no would be so easy. So, so easy. But if I did, she would double down. Pushy ones always did. You had to let them get bored on their own.
"I'll be there," I said.
"Great!" She sounded excited. Another point for the Fantastic Actor theory. "Meet me at the same bus stop? Cool. I'll wait for you there."
"Okay. Well, you know I got home safe."
"Yep." She popped the p, and I rolled my eyes inside. "If you need me for anything before tomorrow? Just call."
"Bye," I said, and hung up. I left the phone in its little charging port, grabbed a plate and a spoon from the kitchen, and went back upstairs to my room. Then I locked the door and fell down on my bed. The duvet cover smelled a little like sweat and old gum for whatever reason, but I could lie down on it in the divot my body had left and pretend to sleep. I didn't really sleep much any more anyway, thanks to my best friend caffeine, but if I lay down in my onesie with the hood up it was quieter inside my head.
I left my glasses by my alarm clock. The numbers were a red blur. I didn't need to know the time right now anyway. I still didn't know what time it was when Dad got back, but it was late enough that he didn't call out to me. Considerate of him to think of our neighbours. I listened in silence as he rattled around in the kitchen, heard the microwave beep, heard the scrape of a chair, heard the sink run, heard footsteps on the stairs, heard a soft voice that was old before its time wish me goodnight through the door I had made sure was locked, and heard my dad finally go to bed. The clock face was a red blur. I put my glasses on and looked at it. Then I looked away, out of an echo of shame.
I remembered a young girl with her long, curly hair in a thick French braid, a giant wide smile across her face when she saw her Dad coming home.
After a little while, once I was certain Dad was asleep, I changed out of my onesie into a cheap hoodie and some dark jeans. Then I grabbed my bag of trash, crept downstairs, slipped on my sneakers, and snuck out into the night. It still wasn't safe, but I was only going next door.
The old man who lived there had been taken to a palliative care centre some time ago, and the place was deserted and forgotten. Nobody bought houses in Brockton unless it was in the nice part of town, and we weren't. Nobody cared about this place now that nobody lived here; they'd barely cared about it when anyone had. It was ignored, almost shunned, as if the other houses were ashamed of it. Sad for the old man. Perfect for me.
I'd taken over the house's basement. It didn't have electricity, but I didn't need it. What I'd built here powered itself with the gases from the fermentation, though I'd probably have to top up the fuel supply bin soon. A raccoon had gotten in since I'd last checked on the equipment, lured by the smell, and it had licked the wrong thing and died. Poor little guy.
I picked the corpse up by the tail and, after a moment's deliberation, slung it in the fuel bin. The flies inside churned briefly in the air before they went back to doing whatever it was flies did. That corpse would keep the fuel reaction going for a good few weeks or so, which meant that if I found any more I could use them to shut up the voices.
The main fermenter gave the place light, a red glow kind of like the emergency lighting on a submarine or something. That was my source of substrate. If my power was like writing a book, this stuff was the paper; liquid, vile, reeking, utterly disgusting paper. I picked out a big old watering can from the rack and undid the spigot on the fermenter, letting the substrate drain out into it. The smell was pretty bad. I had to be careful not to get any on my clothes. I wondered if the stench had been what killed the raccoon. Probably not.
Once the watering can looked mostly full, I turned off the faucet. It was a heavy thing, although probably only for people as noodly of arm as me, and I needed to be careful of spillages. I hefted it over to a rack of secondary fermentation vessels in the corner. They were made out of paint cans, Mason jars, and garden hose, but they had to be. It was the same reason why the fermentation setup was made from a plastic rain barrel and bits of washer-dryer from the house. It was the same reason I'd brought all my hoarded trash with me. My power was garbage.
More specifically, my power forced me to use garbage to build things. I was a Tinker of some kind or other — the shitty kind — but I didn't make cool hoverboards like Kid Win or sleek, minimalist masterpieces like Armsmaster. I didn't have plans for a weapon anywhere in the word salad infesting my brain. No, my special Tinker power was the ability to make… garbage juice. Special garbage juice, sure, but nonetheless that was what it was. As if that wasn't bad enough, my power told me what to do with it once it was done.
I thought about it as I topped up the distillation network, screwing up my face at the smell of the substrate. From what little research I had done on library computers behind a hastily downloaded VPN, Tinkers described their powers in terms of super-science. My process was very different in tone, as well as worse. It felt more like alchemy, or a witch's brew. I had an image of myself standing over a cauldron and cackling. At least witches didn't have to look pretty, unlike capes. The upshot was that I didn't make gadgets or laser pistols or halberds that could do almost anything. I made potions, and potions were made to be drunk.
I would have hated my power for that alone, even if it wasn't a reminder of January. Of what they did to me, and of the nothing that was done to them, because of how little I truly mattered.
There was a distant rattling like rain on a tin roof, and that meant it was time. The substrate in the final bucket had been distilled down and refined into its most concentrated and receptive form, and now I had to create my potion. I grabbed my notebook, the cheap paper inside covered in diagrams and symbols. I needed things to add for this final step.
The meanings came easily from the voices. An old, corroded battery for the source and the light. A broken guitar string as a wire, tightly coiled. Some dirty old pennies for the copper and the ferryman. The knockoff Gatorade with energy and a hue electric. A handful of cigarette butts still whispering of smoke. There could have been more, there should have been more, but I had nothing else in my stash that would fit.
The things had to go in one at a time otherwise they wouldn't work. Every time I put a new item in the potion, the one I’d put in prior to that dissolved in a hiss of bubbles and stinking gases. To seal the potion, I added a piece of used gum to bind without binding and closed the lid, made from a piece of a broken door. The rattling stopped, but in its place came a hissing like a crockpot turned up too high, and as an old digital watch sounded its alarm, the potion flowed out into a plastic bottle. I'd thought the fake Gatorade had been brightly coloured, but this stuff was a neon blue that could probably be seen from space. It sparkled in the bottle, not in a nice way, but in the way a shark's eyes glitter when it spots an unwary seal, or the way frost does on the harvest it ruined.
I picked up the bottle and put the sports cap on it. Then I stopped to look at it. Inside it was a superpower. A real superpower, one that could stop crime or save lives or protect the innocent. I remembered a little girl wearing her mom's old cardigan like a cape, playing heroes and villains with her best friend in a summer that never seemed to end. I remembered how she wanted to be a hero even when the game was over. I remembered how she had hoped one day that she could be a hero like Alexandria, who helped people like her Daddy and knew everything like her Mommy. I wondered what she'd do with a potion like this, and then I knew.
I scrawled a note on the bottle in permanent marker and put it in an old milk crate with all the others. They were all blue. Some were brighter, some were more sparkly. All of them did the same thing. One sip, and for a while I could breathe out a storm cloud, a rolling mass of grey smoke that crackled with electricity. It wouldn't arc out like lightning, but would tell me if people were moving through it, and I could pick which one took the bolt. Why was this the power I got? I didn't know. I couldn't make myself care.
I walked out of the basement and back over to my house. The sky was dark. Nobody was around. I could hear my dad's snoring the moment I got in the house. I snuck up the stairs and into my room, then locked the door again. I sat down on the bed, listened to the mattress creak under my weight, then flopped backwards. I was still in my clothes. I pulled them off and tossed them onto the pile of laundry I never bothered to do. One more way I was worthless. One more way I was disgusting. One more way I was a waste of a parahuman power. People, real people, people like that little girl I used to be, they would see these potions as a call to adventure. They would feel like being a heroic defender of the innocent was both destiny and privilege.
I had held the chance to be a hero in the palm of my hand, and I felt nothing at all.