Text from Diane, her best friend since college:I can't believe you lied to us for so long.We told you everything.You came to my wedding.You held my baby.And the whole time you were hiding this.Please don't contact me again.
Voicemail from her mother, the transcription cold and clinical on the screen:I saw the news.I always knew there was something wrong with you after you came back from the Aethor Institute.How could you let them do that to you?Don't come home, Hannah.I can't have the neighbors seeing you here.
Hannah threw the phone across the room.It hit the wall next to the television and clattered to the floor, screen cracking on impact.She didn't care.What was one more broken thing?
Electricity crackled across her knuckles, unbidden, responding to the emotion she couldn't keep down.Blue-white sparks danced between her fingers and left the smell of ozone hanging in the stale air.Ten years of practice, ten years of control, and she still couldn't contain it when her world was falling apart.
She pressed her palms flat against the bedspread and breathed until the sparks faded.
Six months ago, her life had been unremarkable in all the ways that mattered.
She would wake up at 6:15 every morning, brew coffee in the tiny kitchen of her one-bedroom apartment, and watch the sunrise paint the buildings across the street in shades of orange and pink.The same route to work every day, past the coffee shop on Fifth where Maria knew her order before she reached the counter.Large vanilla latte, extra shot, no whip."Morning, Hannah.The usual?"
The bank would be quiet when she arrived, the marble floors still gleaming from the overnight cleaning crew.She'd wave to Tom at security, exchange pleasantries with Rachel at the next desk about whatever show they were both watching, spend her lunch hour with Diane debating whether the new superhero movie was worth seeing in theaters or if they should wait for streaming.
Evenings at the gym, always the same treadmill in the back corner where no one paid attention.She'd learned to keep her heart rate steady, her breathing even, because elevated stress made the electricity harder to control.Once, early on, she'd short-circuited three machines during a particularly intense spin class.She'd had to move to a different gym across town and never went back.
Dinner alone in her apartment wasn't lonely.It was safe.Television shows about ordinary people doing ordinary things.No one watching her, no one waiting for her to slip up, no one wondering why the lights flickered when she sneezed.
She'd built that life with the care of someone constructing a house of cards in a windstorm.Every detail designed to be forgettable.Every interaction calibrated to be pleasant but not memorable.She was Hannah Charge, bank manager, book club member, reliable friend who always remembered birthdays and never caused drama.
She was not a Mercury variant.Not one of the Aethor Institute's unwilling experiments.Not someone who could light up a city block if she lost her temper.
At least, that's what everyone believed.
It had worked for ten years.Ten years of hiding in plain sight, of being so aggressively normal that no one thought to look closer.She'd started to believe she could do it forever, that she could live out her entire life in that comfortable little box she'd built for herself.
Then a Zeller clone walked past her on the street, and his head turned like a compass finding north.
Protogenus made clones of a supe named David Zeller because his super power had been the ability to detect Pollux, Castor, and Mercury variants.He was a supernatural dowsing rod, tuned to the frequency of variant DNA.He had smiled at her, cold and knowing, and by the time she made it home that night, they were waiting for her.
Hannah didn't let herself think about the six months in Protogenus captivity.Not if she could help it.But in this motel room, with nothing to distract her and nowhere to go, the memories surfaced like bodies from a lake.
The Zeller clone had smiled as they strapped her to a table."You're a strong one.Good output levels.Perfect for the battery project."
Machines that drained her electrical charge until she couldn't see straight, until she couldn't remember her own name, until she was nothing but a power source for whatever nightmare experiments they were running in the labs below.The Brewster clones administered discipline when she resisted, which was often at first.Less often later.Pain was an excellent teacher.
Other supes in nearby cells, some barely alive, their powers drained to the dregs.A woman who could control plants, her skin gone gray and papery.A man who once moved objects with his mind, now too weak to lift his own head.Children.God, there had been children in those cells, born to variant parents and inherited their abilities along with their suffering.
And then, when she'd given up hope of ever seeing daylight again, she had been able to escape. But before she could do anything about it, the cavalry had arrived. Better late than never, she supposed.
The Gemini Institute had liberated the facility and brought them all back to their protective base. She met their leader.She tried not to think about Grayson Spark and the way her body had reacted to him like a live wire brushing an exposed nerve.She’d been half-dead, and still her heart had stuttered when he looked at her.
He'd looked at her with storm-gray eyes and electricity crackled around him like a living thing, and said, "You're safe now."
When their eyes met, when his lightning and her electricity had crackled in the same space for the first time, her whole body had responded.Heat flooding through her, an instant recognition that made no logical sense.Grayson just might be her perfect match, courtesy of the Aethor Institute’s final project for genetic manipulation. Create a pair of supes who could make super supe babies.Only the Aethor Institute had been destroyed before that breeding program was fully developed. Their created mates had never met each other, could go their entire lives without ever meeting the other half of their soul. And that was probably a good thing. Hannah hated to give those Aethor bastards the satisfaction.
At least the monsters who'd kept her there were dead now.Keeley Arnold had seen to that, tearing through every Brewster and Zeller clone in a coordinated rampage three weeks ago.Hannah had watched the footage on her cracked laptop screen, watched Keeley's blades flash silver in the fluorescent light, and hadn't felt a single shred of sympathy for the dying.
Hannah had thought she could go back to her normal life now that she had been rescued.
She'd been wrong.
Retrieving her cracked phone from the floor, she plugged it in to charge.Then she opened her laptop, balancing it on her knees, and searched her own name.
Seventeen thousand results.The number had been half that yesterday.
News articles dissected her work history, her education, her relationships.Social media posts analyzed every photo she'd ever been tagged in, looking for "signs" of her supernatural nature.Someone had started a Reddit thread called "r/HannahChargeConspiracy" with subsections dedicated to cataloging her "suspicious behavior" and compiling a list of other people who might be "hiding in plain sight."
