I woke up with my mind buzzing and found myself disoriented. I was in my room, at the girls' place in Vegas, but why was I on the floor? And why was it so loud in my head?

Over the buzzing, I recalled the day before. Whitney had set fire to the garage on accident, gotten in a one-sided yelling match with AEGIS, and was sleeping in my room because AEGIS had determined the garage currently unsafe for entry until professionally inspected...and I was worried that if Whitney had the chance to run off to a hotel or something, she'd just keep running and we'd never see her again. Over a stupid mistake.

So she was in my bed, laying stock still and staring at me awkwardly as I pulled myself slowly awake. I scratched my head but it did nothing to the buzzing.

"Good morning," she said hesitantly.

"Hi. Sleep well?"

"Not particularly. My mind decided to replay my embarrassment over and over again on a loop while I cringed myself further and further into your pillow." She reached over and patted my copy of Practical Electrodynamics. "Read this until I got it into my head instead. Much better sleeping material. Though I had the weirdest dreams."

"Yeah, me too," I realized. I tried to remember them, but that was like trying to grab fog, given all the other thinking I'd already displaced them with. And the buzzing. "Is it buzzing in here or is it just me?" I asked.

She shook her head and opened the book on her lap, sitting up and crossing her legs to face me while she read. "What kind of buzzing?"

"I don't know. Just like...feels like...too much caffeine or sugar or something. Feels like my brain's going in circles."

"Nope." We sat in silence for a minute before she closed the book with a frown and raised eyebrows. "Do you think AEGIS is still mad at me?"

"Maybe. She's pretty protective of Prime, and you almost burned those servers up. But she also doesn't sleep and has had all night to work on things, and that always calms her down. So, firm maybe." I smiled at her but she still sat there with the same half-annoyed, half-bewildered look. "When you talk to her I'll come with you, okay? It'll be fine."

"Sure," she said distractedly. "Do we have to do it now?"

"If you don't, you'll just hide as long as you can."

That changed her expression, to a small u-shaped frown. "Since when are you an expert on me?"

"I might be slow to pick things up, but it's only because I do a really rigorous job of learning it," I grinned at her.

"Is that your excuse?" she smirked at me. "Here I thought you were just slow. You have any plans for the day?"

"I have my martial arts to practice every day," I said, holding my head as it buzzed more. "But I'm kinda not feeling it. Actually, could you pass me the electrodynamics book? That sounds a lot more my speed right now."

"How can you not be up for waving your arms around but reading a textbook sounds fun?"

I was going to reply, but it got lost with the rest of my thoughts as I delved into the book. She could say what she wanted, this shit was interesting. Practical applications like circuits and voltages and how to modulate amperage through resistance, it was cool. It made sense in a way that swinging my arms around didn't.

Like yeah, I could throw out a block and imagine someone running into it, and I was building that muscle memory, but it felt dumb. The merits of knowing this stuff on the other hand was obvious anytime I picked up my mobile. Or, more optimistically, used my powers.

"Hey, friendo?" There was a hand waving in front of my face.

"What?"

"I've been talking at you for like a minute, and you've just been staring at that book for ten. I was getting bored and then you weren't responding."

"What?"

"Hello? Earth to Athan?"

"Sorry, what?" I hesitated, and then closed the book. "What? Ten minutes?"

"Yeah. At least."

"There's no way it was that long. I only just--" I looked down at the book and flipped pages backwards. And then more pages. And then more.

She looked at me with concern. "Are you okay friendo? You seem super out of it."

"Yeah, just...engrossing stuff I guess."

"I thought so last night, but flipping through this morning, I'm not sure what I was thinking. Seemed really boring. Probably too basic for my level of experience, I guess."

"Yeah, guess so," I said, inching the book open again.

"I'm not gonna talk to AEGIS today, am I?" she sighed.

"What? Why not?"

"Because I'm not going to do it unless I have to, and you're just interested in reading your book." She paused for a second. "Are we going to get in more trouble with her in a, uh, girlfriend capacity, if the two of us spend all day locked in here together?"

"We'll leave to eat."

She gave me a little smirk. "I've gone all day without eating plenty of times."

"Or we'll get bored."

"Maybe. But all my stuff is in the garage anyway which is off-limits so I'd be bored anywhere. Here I can at least avoid an argument."

"Okay...uh...bathroom?"

She gave me a sly little smirk and reached over to shake an empty bottle in my direction.

"That's gross. It's just down the hall, come on."

"I'm only kidding. Well, mostly kidding. I won't pretend I've never done that before."

I narrowed my eyes at her. "What is wrong with you?"

"Sometimes you're just in the zone too hard and by the time you realize, it's too late. You saw the state of the facilities at my shop. You think I'd spend hours moving junk around just so I could pee? Not a chance. I believe in technology, and funnels are technology."

I laughed. "Wow you're gross."

"I'm pragmatic. And social norms don't mean much if you never interact with people. Why are we even talking about this again?"

"Because you won't let me read," I laughed.

She smiled at me and then eyed the book with a frown. "Give it here," she said, holding out her hands. "I don't know why it seemed so interesting last night and then so awful this morning and it's bugging me. I must have just read a really bad couple paragraphs."

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

I closed the book and lobbed it underhand towards her, where just before it reached her outstretched hands, lightning arced from the air around her and struck the incoming book, obliterating it into a blinding flurry of smoking paper.

Both of us sat completely frozen, not comprehending. In the distant corner of my mind, I could feel Saga bewildered through me. AEGIS had certainly seen over cam-drones. But nobody moved, nobody spoke. The two of us just sat and stared at the paper falling all around us.

"Must have hit my shield," I said after long minutes. I had very nearly convinced myself that she had thrown a book at me by now. "Hey um...throw...that bottle. At me."

"Yeah," she agreed. And then she hit me in the face with a bottle.

The silence fell on us again. "Ow," I said, just to have something to say, a minute too late.

"This isn't possible," she concluded.

"It...seems...so?"

"There has to be an explanation."

"This is a dream. Or...VR." She scrunched up her face. "The neural uplink isn't responding."

"You think someone programmed this? And it's running without you launching it?"

"Well do you have a better explanation?" she said, her voice suddenly getting higher.

"It's...it's...a vivid shared hallucination. Those happen. I saw a holovid on it once."

"Good. Choice. Yes," she said, shrill and robotic at once. She was breathing faster and her eyes seemed stuck on the door. "I'm gonna go," she blurted, and hopped off the bed.

As though blocking her path, a single lightning blade manifest in front of her, different than any I'd ever made before. It shimmered strangely, it was larger and unlike the pure white of mine, seemed tinged with flickers of other colors, impossible to see but impossible to miss.

She stopped and stared and I tried to move it out of her path, but couldn't seem to focus on it as I'd done before. I couldn't for the life of me figure out how I'd done it up until now. It was like I was missing an arm and trying to move it. I knew what it felt like, what it was supposed to do…

The sword floated up and away as Whitney deliberately pushed it aside with a gesture, dawning comprehension and terror growing on her face as it obeyed her.

It just seemed impossible. There was no way she had my powers. The only way that made any sense at all was if...if she were like Soran, an Exhuman with the power to take others' powers somehow. But that made no sense. The odds of it were impossible. It didn't fit in with the Ramanathan Window theory, since nobody with powers was exactly trying to harm her, and that's what I imagined would cause such a specific counter-power to develop.

And the more I thought about it the more the buzzing in my brain screamed at me. And then I realized maybe the buzzing in my mind must be where my powers used to be. A whole section of my subconscious now adrift.

A whole different brain sensation of pain kicked in as evidence began to pile up that the impossible was somehow true. An intense, blinding headache slammed into me as my thoughts conflicted with each other and two realities warred in my mind.

Whitney stared at the sword for another moment and then with a gesture, it fizzled out, leaving only a fading shower of sparks. Without another word, she walked briskly to the door, and then through it. I heard AEGIS shout something at her as they passed in the living room but Whitney didn't reply. Instead, the garage door slammed as, fire damage be damned, she buried herself in the comfort of her family.

As AEGIS had said, as Saga said, as I'd said, when you face something that challenges your reality, you can either accept it or run from it. Whitney ran. I wasn't sure, myself.

AEGIS appeared in the room as though summoned by magic, appearing silently and nervous, afraid of disrupting the spell of the chamber.

"Hi," she whispered.

"Hi."

It was a good conversation. About at my level.

"Athan...do you understand what this means?"

"No." I shook my head slowly. "I don't understand a single thing right now."

She approached me with the same gentle hesitation and sat on the floor next to my makeshift bed. Gingerly, she reached for my hand and took it, and while I felt like the whole world was removed from me right now, her hands were as soft and warm as ever.

"Athan...you're free," she whispered.

"Free?"

"Your powers are gone. They're gone Athan. You're free. You're human again."

"Human?"

She smiled sympathetically at me. Or maybe down at me. "Try to zap me. Any way you can think of."

I shook my head. "I'm not gonna hurt you, AEGIS."

"I know, that's the point."

I blinked at her and even that made my head hurt. Powers. Gone.

Experimentally, I tried making my blades. Nothing happened.

"Gone?" I asked stupidly.

"Gone," she nodded enthusiastically. "You're free, Athan. You're free to do anything you want! You're human!"

"Gone."

"Now you don't have to fight and kill yourself! You don't have to put the world on your shoulders! You don't have to struggle with leadership and right and wrong and any of that. You're just a normal person!"

She beamed at me, looking like she was about to cry. "How, though?" I asked.

"I don't know. But who cares! We should be...celebrating! Thanking God or whatever! It's a gift that's literally never happened in the history of Exhumanity. And I would know, I pulled the records before coming over here. It's completely unheard of, and it happened to you!"

"It's just impossible. It's not possible. Something like that couldn't happen, and if it did, it certainly wouldn't happen to me. There has to be something else. There has to be...I don't know, another Exhuman around that swaps powers or...or something's in my mind or...or something."

[Hey, don't look at me. My powers are...same as ever.]

I was too out of it to even chastise her for broadcasting to the neighborhood. "Well...maybe...whoever did it...screwed with your head too, Saga. Maybe you just think--"

[Yeah, not likely. You can still hear my thoughts, dumbass.]

"Right." I took a deep breath and it did nothing for my buzzing, hurting brain.

"Athan, just...just be happy about it," AEGIS smiled at me. "We don't know why Exhumans are made to begin with, why is it so impossible that we don't know that the powers can vanish, either? You're a world first in a lot of ways already. First federally-accepted Exhuman. First Exhuman in the XPCA. First Exhuman strike lead. First guy to score with a true AI!"

Her words just bounced off me. More than anything, I always seemed to crave comprehension first. How many times had something shitty happened to me that I was able to accept because I understood why it was happening? And now...this, the second most unknowable thing in the world after the appearance of my powers in the first place. I just...couldn't cope.

And my head was killing me. I felt like I was having too many thoughts and too few all at once. Nothing made my mind happy.

Except…

I reached for another book, one of my martial arts manuals and opened it at random. My eyes glazed over the page almost instantly. Stumbling, I stood up and went for my mobile, doing some searches at random for snatches of familiar phrase. AC phase. Maxwell's Equations. Electromagnetic induction.

"You uh, okay there?" AEGIS asked.

"Yeah. No. I don't know. I spent some time reading this morning and...I don't know." I looked at her and felt a pathetic expression on my face. Noticed it, really, reflected in the utterly pitying look on hers.

"Oh sweetie," she said, walking up and wrapping her hands around me. I stiffened, focusing on the fact she was a friend and I wasn't being restrained.

And then...nothing. There was no shield to ward off. There was no threat, no danger, no huge risk of death hanging over all of us. Aside from Dragon, I guess, against whom I was now even more woefully underprepared. But as surely as I could feel my shield shifting around me sometimes, I could feel nothing now. It was gone.

I closed my eyes and reached out mentally, finding only the void behind my eyelids. I heard AEGIS move some and then she released me and placed something in my palm.

A cam-drone, I saw, when I looked. I closed my eyes again and focused right on it. To my senses it had once been as blinding as the sun, but now it was just a small weight in my hand. It was nothing. Invisible.

"It's gone." I whispered.

"You're free, Athan. Free to go wherever you want and do whatever you want and be whomever you want, with me by your side."

"What about...what about Whitney," I suddenly realized, and then felt horrible for not even considering her this whole time.

"She'll...survive. We'll help her adapt. She might even like it, in a way. She was really captivated by your powers, before. Maybe she'll keep that enthusiasm."

I really doubted it. She also thought that Exhumans were horrible, mindless, reckless, reasonless monsters. And now she was one, potentially. How could she reconcile those thoughts?

The same way I did, probably. Slowly, painfully, and with a lot of people trying to hurt me along the way.

"We have to help her. I don't want her to have to be alone." I said, and AEGIS nodded. "And maybe...maybe it'll go back, and she'll be fine after all."

"Always gotta be the sacrifice," she sighed. "Can't you just be happy once? You have your life back. You can do anything."

She was right. But she was also wrong, I thought. It couldn't be that easy, nothing ever was for an Exhuman.

But now that I wasn't Exhuman anymore...did that still apply? I didn't know. Didn't know the first thing, about what was true or false or who I was or anything anymore.

AEGIS looked forward to our future with unabashed hope. But was that something I could still do?