I woke up the next day disoriented, with my head feeling heavy. The small window informed me it was still dark out, though the sun was beginning to creep in. The time I probably should be waking up, if my schedule were intact, and get out on my run.

But the dark confines of this back room were like a cocoon, and they made me feel sleepy and lazy. I yawned and stretched, realizing my mobile was lit up, and on checking it, saw I had a message a few seconds ago, which must have woken me up.

> hey athan! sorry I can't be with you today, I had big plans

> but happy valentines day anyway

And a picture of AEGIS with a <3 on her pixels and her fingers tracing the same shape in the air.

I put the mobile down, feeling even crummier and more heavy. I wasn't excited or happy to see the message at all, maybe because I was having doubts about us...and the fact I wasn't gave me even more doubts. Shouldn't I be happy and excited to be messaging with my girlfriend on Valentine's Day?

I hopped out of bed and saw the glow of the workbench light where Whitney was already up and doing something. I ignored her for the moment and ducked into the shower, where I had stashed some groceries out of the way. My clothes were also in there, clean from a laundromat trip I'd made while getting those groceries last night. I managed to pull enough clothes out from under the invisible Tem to assemble an outfit, changed, and put a dinner roll in my mouth and pressed one into Tem's hands before heading back to Whitney.

"Not tripping over as much junk," she said as I approached.

"I'm getting better at stepping over it."

"I think you're actually just succeeding in making the piles smaller. Soon, I won't have a use for you, and you'll be stuck standing behind a counter all day like every other wage slave."

"Yippee," I said, and fell into a stool next to her, slumping on the workbench with the roll hanging out of my mouth.

She gave me a glance and then went back to focusing on the tiny plate she was unscrewing from some device. "What's wrong, friendo?"

"Nothing."

"If nothing's wrong, you should work on your resting face. Talk to me." She shrugged. "Or don't."

I thought it over as I chewed my roll slowly. I really hadn't wanted anything more in the world than to talk it over with somebody, and as an outsider, Whitney might have a more impartial opinion which could be useful. While Tem was great and everything...and by 'and everything' I mean not great...I really could use an opinion.

Even if Whitney was weird. Normal, by my standards, but still weird.

"You ever date anyone, Whitney?"

She put her driver down and spun on the stool. "A few times. Couple guys. A girl. Found out they weren't for me. Is this a relationship thing?"

"Yeah."

"Uh oh. Shouldn't have opened my mouth," she said with a smirk. "People are complicated. Machines are simple."

"Machines are complicated, people are simple," I said, shaking my head. "People don't need to be taught how to function or be given a direction before they have any use at all...they handle themselves and figure things out."

"Yeah, and in the figuring things out, they make a lot of mistakes. Machines don't make mistakes, the just do exactly what you tell them. If something wrong, it comes back to the people behind them in the end."

"Maybe, but like, anyone can talk to another person and get some shit done if they need to. If you gave me a thousand years with what you're working on right now, I'd never get it."

"Only because I've had years of experience and training and you haven't."

"See? So dealing with machines must be more complicated because it needs special training."

"And just what do you call the first years of life?" she asked with her trademark smirk. "And all the years after that...learning to fit in, talk to people, express yourself, figure out your own identity...that stuff only exists in the context of dealing with other people.

She held up the part she was working on. "This fine lady doesn't care what clique or strata or appearance you have. If you walked in here looking and smelling like garbage and did all the right steps, you'd fix her, same as if I did those things. But if you pulled the same moves as me on a cutie at the bar, I think you'd find that we'd get very different results."

I frowned at her. I saw her point, but that wasn't how the world was, in my experience. She'd had years and years working on machines, and maybe once you got up there, she just made the impossible look easy. I wasn't exactly technologically illiterate, but I'd never really gotten much past playing with my mobile and tapping my way around a computer.

It was kind of weird, I realized, that two people could have such opposing worldviews on something so simple. Maybe, as she hinted, it was because she was like that, that she'd seen fit to take me in. I'd certainly been rejected by plenty of other people...what was it about her that let her see past that?

And what, I wondered, would she think if she ever learned I was Exhuman?

"Regardless," she said, raising an eyebrow. "I very much doubt your relationship issue is with a machine."

I had to laugh, and she watched with a politely confused smirk while I finished.

"Yeah, I don't know. I'm probably just overthinking it."

"If that's what you believe," she said, turning back to her work. It was almost like she was baiting me. Her words and actions said she didn't care about my drama. But how quickly she dropped it said she did. Somehow.

I was probably just crazy. This wasn't Moon or Saga, Whitney pretty much said and did exactly as she felt, I thought. But she did say to talk if I felt like it, and I did…

"So...my girlfriend. Uh. Wow. Where to start with this." She sat and waited patiently, a look of plain curiosity in place. Her green eyes were darker than Karu's, with what looked like a bit of brown in them, and from behind her thick plastic frames, they flickered back and forth between my own eyes rhymically, precisely.

"I'm having doubts we're good together," I said. "I keep hoping she'll become...someone else. Which isn't like, something I'm forcing on her, she wants to, and I want to support her in that it's just...it's like she doesn't understand why she's making these changes and doing these things. She's going through the motions of trying to be a new person but…"

"Isn't?"

"Yeah."

"And you're sure you're not trying to get her to change? Or she's changing for you? Or pretending to?"

"Pretending to?"

She gave a small shrug. "Changing yourself is hard. If it's like you say and she's just going through the motions, maybe her heart's not in it. Maybe she doesn't really want to change but you expect her to, or she promised she would, or whatever happened there."

"I mean...maybe. But some things...I'm sure you don't want to hear about it, but she goes at it with such...gusto."

"Sexually?"

"I meant...cooking. But yeah, that too. Last time, she woke me up and locked me in the room until she was satisfied with me. It was...awkward. Painful. Not really...fun."

"The cooking?"

I laughed. "This time I meant the sex, but yes, that too."

She gave me a small smirk that was the only indication she'd been joking but it faded fast. "Did you tell her no? Cooking or sex."

"Yeah. But it's fine!" I added. "She won't actually cross the line unless I say it's okay. Just...hand and mouth stuff."

"Cooking?"

"...that too?"

"I am just kidding you know."

"Yeah."

"Why do you think she doesn't stop if you say no? That just sounds wrong. Disrespectful at best."

"I'm a teenage guy. Come on," I laughed.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

She did not. "Was that supposed to be a joke? Does being a teenage male prohibit your opinion from having any weight? Or make your feelings any less valid?"

"No. Of course not. But like...sex, you know? It's what every guy my age wants, and it's on a silver platter. Of course I'm not going to say no."

"But you did."

"Well...yeah. But that doesn't count, right?"

She tapped the side of her frames like somehow that was going to help her think. I imagined it would just make her vision jump around, but she'd clearly practiced the maneuver, maybe for longer than I'd been alive. Her frown was deepening the whole time.

"If there were an out of control car heading for your girlfriend, and you could save her by pushing her aside, but you'd get hit, would you do it?" she asked.

"Of course."

"Not even going to stop to think?"

"What's there to think about? If I can help her, I would. Same for any of my friends. You too, probably. Maybe. Sorry. Is that too soon?"

She didn't smile. She frowned harder, her mouth curving into a very small downward-U.

Yeah maybe too soon.

"If there was a car headed for her, and you could stop it by having a chainsaw slowly pushed through your gut. Same question."

"Of course I would. That's the same thing."

"How about...if you spent the rest of your life in jail? Solitary confinement. Never see or hear anyone ever again."

"How's that worse than dying to the chainsaw?"

"What if every person you'd ever known forgot you existed, and you just vanished utterly."

"I'd still be dead...I don't get why you're asking all this."

"One more. Would you kill an innocent stranger to save her?"

"I…" I had to stop and think for the first time. "I don't know. Maybe? Probably not. I think...yes in...like...right now. In my mind and my heart. But if it came to pulling the trigger, I don't think I could."

"But if you had to shoot one of them?"

"Then the stranger, yeah. But...anyone would shoot a stranger over their friend."

"I'm just trying to establish if there's anything you wouldn't sacrifice of yourself. Your life, your suffering, your ego, your legacy. Your principles."

"And did I pass?"

She shook her head. "You failed tremendously."

"What? I'd do anything. I mean, I know I said--"

She was still shaking her head. "That's why you fail, friendo. You don't give a single care about yourself do you? I thought you came in here looking for a job, dog food on your breath because you were just really bad at being homeless and weren't taking care of yourself, but you never take care of yourself, do you?"

"I don't...I don't follow."

"Look, I don't know you that well. It's been, what, two days? I can't pretend to have figured you all out. And I'm no social butterfly. My family are machines, for God's sake. But it sure sounds to me like you have no idea how to say no to someone."

"That's not true. I say no to lots of people! When I came out here, she wanted to come with me, and I told her no."

"Because you didn't want to force her to be homeless too, but were willing to put that on yourself?"

I swallowed hard. To protect her, yeah. The only reason I bought Tem was because I thought she'd fare worse without me. I didn't want Tem here. I did want AEGIS here. But Whitney was wrong, this wasn't about my ability to refuse things, people did shit they didn't want to all the time, that was called being mature.

"No, having a backbone and standing up for yourself is being mature," she replied when I said that. "It's easy to do what everyone else tells you. It's hard to find your own direction, your own boundaries. Doing things just because that's how other people do it, that's how children learn. You don't know what's right or wrong, so you depend on your parents to decide for you. But at some point, you gotta grow up, figure out on your own what you'll stand for." She gave a little shrug. "Unless you think your parents were perfectly right about everything. But if you still think that, boy have I got a life lesson for you, friendo."

Well, my parents certainly weren't that. I tried to think back, it felt like so long ago when I'd lived under their roof. It wasn't even a year, but it seemed strangely distant, like all the bizarre things in my life and near-death experiences were so engrossing they'd forced out everything else which had come before.

I was a pretty good kid. I had my reputation to take care of, so that I wouldn't lose my scholarship. I was focused on athletics and study, and while the other guys were always going out to party, I hadn't. I couldn't.

I...could, though. If I'd wanted to. But I didn't want to. I wanted to protect my future.

I felt my face tense involuntarily. I'd heard that expression so many times from my dad. It's fine to have a little fun, but don't forget to protect your future. Maybe you shouldn't go snowboarding this winter, can't risk an injury, we need to protect your future. No you can't go to that party, we don't want you getting mixed up with drinking and drugs, you have to protect your future.

I realized the other half of my roll had fallen out of my hands onto the table in front of me. I went to pick it up and realized my hand was shaking.

I had wanted to go do things. I had wanted to have real friends, and party, and have a girlfriend. I wanted to try drinking, and maybe even try a hit or two of something benign, maybe. Normal kids got to make mistakes to figure out their lives, but Lia and I never did. We were told we were special, talented, different, that we didn't want those lives.

But I did! Of course we did. It sucked being at practice when all the other kids got to go home. It sucked spending the whole rest of my evening finishing homework and then going to bed early. Nobody wanted that...I loved football, and it was what was right for me, but I never even got to discover that for myself.

I threw my bread at the wall where it bounced off with an explosion of crumbs, Whitney watching with mild concern. I never stood up for myself to them, I never asked for anything. I already knew the answer before I ever asked, so I never let myself ask. That way I wouldn't have to hear them say no. That way I could hold onto that illusion that if I did ever ask, maybe they'd say yes.

Would they have? Doesn't matter. Because I'd never ask. Because I was just a fucking doormat, wasn't I?

"You okay over there, New Guy?" Whitney asked. "Since you just commited panicide."

I looked at her, feeling heat under my skin. And after all that, after all the trust I'd put in them, they'd just completely flipped on me when I was Exhuman. Even if I could accept that, what they'd done to Lia afterwards...my blood felt hot. I hated them so much right now.

I guess I'd never had a proper rebellious phase, but mine felt like it was about to begin explosively.

"See, that was actually a joke. Because pan- as a prefix usually means like, everything? But it's also the root word in latin for bread."

"Whitney, not now," I said, gritting my teeth.

"Why not now?"

"Because I'm fucking pissed!" I yelled at her. "Because you just shoved in my face that my parents shit all over my entire childhood, and especially my sister!"

She seemed to shrink a little bit as I yelled.

"Okay. That's fair," she said. "I'll go man the front of the store. You just finish up in here as long as you need."

She skirted around me and slipped out the door, padding quietly even with her big unlaced boots.

"God fucking damn it!" I screamed, and slammed my fists against the bench. "I fucking hate you!"

Tem popped out behind me, close enough that I should have sensed her, but I hadn't. "Do you want me to fry her?" she asked, looking at me darkly.

"No, I want you to fry my fucking parents," I growled at her. She just nodded, vanished and began to leave. "Tem, stop."

"If they hurt you, I will hurt them."

"Tem, fuck, I'm just...I'm just angry, okay? Nobody needs to fry. It's all in the past. It's all just scars and messed-up kids at this point." I slid off my stool and sat on the floor. I felt exactly like why I hated Tem. I had all this power at my fingertips, and all I could manage with it was being this shitty, angry, pointless person. I felt like wasted potential. I felt angry, without anything to dump my anger onto.

I felt like garbage.

I'd screamed at my boss, I'd ruined the conversation I forced on her, I threw the first food I'd earned and bought against a wall, and I'd almost sicced my homicidal doom-cannon on...on...California, charitably, and for the first time since my exile, I was seriously thinking about my parents, and not coping well.

At least I still had the presence of mind to make lists like that. A super-essential skill which would surely carry me through life.

I tried to sit and calm down, but it didn't work. I was just...heavy with rage. I wanted to pulverize something, to have control over one stupid fucking thing in my own damn life, and for it to be me, the real me, not this...this piece of shit that let his girlfriend molest him that my parents made.

I wanted to do something wrong for once. Something my parents would never have permitted. Something that would make them embarrassed to ever know me, so I could point at them and say those fuckers did this.

I wanted, I realized, to have an Exhuman event. And that was a bad idea. But that's where my mind was.

"Tem, can you do something for me?"

A minute later, I was standing in a clear, grassy field, tranquil and serene as anything. Trees grew in the distance, and the sun warmed my skin with its delicate touch. I could almost smell the grass, almost hear the birds.

And there in front of me, I was standing. Tall. Confident. As sure and strong and carefully molded as Tem and my parents thought I was.

I screamed with rage as I tore myself to pieces with my blades, punching them in and out of the body with uninhibited, feral bloodlust. Every fucking thing they'd ever made me do, ever made me make myself do, I erased.

At the end of my breath, he was gone, and I stood panting, sweating, shaking. After a few more uncertain seconds, the rest of Tem's illusion disappeared, revealing her standing at my side, trembling with uncertainty, having watched me just snap and kill myself in effigy.

I put a hand on her shoulder and she seemed to almost faint.

"Thanks," I said simply, and moved past her, disappearing my blades as I went.

I found Whitney at the counter where she was standing very still with her headphones on so loud I could hear her music even from behind her. She did not sing, did not stir, just stood and stared through the front window at the street outside.

I tapped her on the shoulder, and she turned to me slowly, switching her music off and lifting one cup of her headphones to rest above her ear.

"Feeling better?" she asked, her eyes rhythmically moving back and forth between mine again, though much faster this time.

"Yes. I'm sorry."

"It's okay. This was a good thing. Getting angry is an important part of being human."

"I hate being human," I said, fully aware of the hypocrisy.

"That's also an important part of being human," she said with a cautious smirk. "Now let's go do something nice and simple like work with machines, right?"

"Yeah," I said, shaking my head. "Simple machines."