Her dentist was on CNN, explaining how "normal" Hannah had seemed during her last cleaning."She never even flinched when I gave her the novocaine shot.Looking back, I should have known something was off."
Tom from bank security had given an interview to the local news."She always said good morning.Always smiled.But you know how it is with these people.They're trained to blend in.To seem harmless."
The narrative had solidified with terrifying speed.Hannah Charge wasn't a victim.She wasn't a woman who'd been kidnapped and tortured and then had her life destroyed by forces beyond her control.She was a deceiver.A threat hiding in plain sight.Living proof that supes couldn't be trusted, that any one of your neighbors or coworkers or friends might be harboring dangerous abilities behind a carefully constructed mask of normalcy.
Hannah closed the browser tab before she could read any more.
She hadn't been idle these three weeks.While the world outside debated whether she should be imprisoned or simply exiled, she'd been digging.Because the timing of her exposure bothered her, an itch at the back of her mind that wouldn't go away.
The rescue had been classified.The Gemini Initiative didn't release names of extracted prisoners; operational security demanded anonymity.So how had the media known exactly who she was within twelve hours of her return to the surface world?
She pulled up the folder she'd compiled over the past three weeks.Five files, each one another piece of a puzzle that made her skin crawl.
File one: The anonymous tip.Three major networks had received identical emails containing her name, address, workplace, and photo.All sent from the same IP address, all within a fifteen-minute window.
File two: The IP trace.It had taken her four days of digging through proxy servers and shell companies, but she'd followed the breadcrumbs back to a corporation called Genova Holdings.A little more research revealed that Genova Holdings was a subsidiary of a subsidiary of an investment firm with documented ties to Protogenus.
File three: The pattern.She wasn't the only one.At least seven other rescued supes had been outed in the past month, all in the same way, all with the same media blitz that followed.The timing was too consistent to be coincidence, each exposure calculated to land during a slow news cycle for maximum coverage.
File four: The funding trail.Protogenus money flowing into "norm safety" advocacy groups, into political action committees pushing for registration laws, into the pockets of talking heads who went on television to warn about the supe threat lurking in every neighborhood.
File five: The staged attacks.Three "supe incidents" in the past two months that had turned out to be false flags.A fire blamed on a pyrokinetic that was actually arson.A bridge collapse attributed to a telekinetic that was actually structural failure covered up by Protogenus-funded investigators.A string of robberies pinned on a speedster who, according to Gemini Initiative records, had been dead for six months.
They weren't just fighting a war.They were running a propaganda campaign, manufacturing fear one carefully orchestrated incident at a time, turning public opinion against variants with the same cold calculation they'd used to drain her powers in that basement lab.
And Hannah had been outed deliberately.A test case.Proof of concept for a narrative they wanted to push: that supes were hiding among ordinary people, deceiving their neighbors, lying to their friends.That no one could be trusted.That registration and surveillance and control were the only ways to stay safe.
The fury that rose in her chest was incandescent.Electricity ran through her veins, making the lamp on the nightstand flicker and the television screen go briefly to static.
She hadn't chosen any of this.Hadn't chosen the Aethor Institute serum that some nameless scientist had injected into her arm ten years ago.Hadn't chosen to be kidnapped by Protogenus and used as a human battery.Hadn't chosen to be rescued and exposed and turned into a symbol of everything the norms were supposed to fear.
But she could choose what happened next.
Three sharp knocks sounded at the door.
Hannah was on her feet before the sound finished echoing, electricity crackling around her hands, the lamp beside the bed throwing wild shadows as the bulb surged with power.Nobody knew she was here.She'd paid cash, used a fake name, picked a motel far enough from New Athens City that she wouldn't run into anyone she knew.
"It's Evie Danger."The voice on the other side of the door was female, calm, a little tired."Rick sent me.I'm alone."
Evie Danger.Mercury variant.Mind controller.One of the most powerful telepaths on the planet, bonded to Rick Charming of the Pollux Legion.If she wanted to hurt Hannah, she wouldn't need to knock first.
Hannah pulled the door open, keeping her hands charged and visible.Evie stood on the concrete walkway, backlit by the buzzing neon of the motel sign, looking like she hadn't slept in days.There were circles under her eyes, and her usually immaculate hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail.
"Can I come in?"
Hannah stepped aside.
Evie took in the room with a single glance: the sagging bed, the cracked phone on the charger, the laptop open on the covers with its damning files still visible on the screen.If she was surprised by what she saw, she didn't show it.
"Gray sent you," Hannah said.It wasn't a question.
"No."Evie turned to face her."Gray doesn't know I'm here.He'd probably be furious if he found out.Rick thought you should know what's happening, and I agreed."
"So tell me."
Evie sat on the edge of the bed, the same spot Hannah had occupied an hour ago."Gray is losing control.The Pollux nature that he's spent ten years suppressing is starting to break through.He nearly killed a Protogenus prisoner during an interrogation yesterday.Rick had to physically pull him off the man."
Hannah remembered Gray's face during the rescue, the way lightning had wreathed his body like a second skin, the barely contained violence in every line of him.She remembered thinking that he looked like a storm given human form.She remembered the way her body had reacted to him, immediate and overwhelming and completely unwanted."What does that have to do with me?"
