“Stand up straight, please. Keep your arms extended and palms parallel to the ground. Further– in a ‘T’ position. Yes, good.”
Blake grimaced as the interdiction officer stood him against the wall. His groceries sat on the ground next to his feet, not spilled but set to one side. Assigned to protect Kelton city’s eastern shopping district from power-related crimes, the thinly armored woman had pulled him aside as he’d exited the store, a hand-held device lighting up on her waist before he could pass her by. She wasn’t powered herself, but in a fight her gear would close the gap.
“Look, it’s just a physical body enhancement,” he said. “Completely passive, I promise.”
The officer nodded but didn’t make to leave. Rather, she brought the scanner closer, waving it over his arms and chest before pausing to fiddle with a knob. “Your power is full-body, not projective, correct?” She asked.
Blake sighed. “Yes, ma'am. Low-grade healing as well.”
The officer eyed him. “Interesting. You don’t see many of those around anymore.” She straightened, clipping the scanner back onto her belt. “Do you have your ID on you?”
He did, and he handed it to her-- a thick, plastic card that identified him as one, Tim Abernacky. Twenty-three years old, black hair, green eyes, five-foot-eleven, in good standing with the city of Kelton, and a large ‘NA’ where his power should’ve been written. Blake tensed as the officer frowned. For a moment, he thought she might try to follow up on the missing information.
But then she shook her head. “Get yourself registered before the next Power Census. I know most of you dayworker types don’t bother, but you’re leaking power byproduct like a sieve; no reason to get ticketed for something that’ll only take an hour of your time,” she said, and handed him back his ID.
“Of course, officer.” Blake jerked his head. He waited an extra second, making sure that there was nothing else that the woman wanted to say, then picked up his bags and left, turning down the first street corner he could find. As he walked, he let out a breath he hardly knew he’d been holding. She wouldn’t have been able to keep him. Not really. But that didn’t stop his stomach from squirming at the thought of the extra attention.
The trip home was less exciting, and Blake’s increased pace tapered off after the first couple of blocks. Foot traffic decreased as he neared The Slud – Kelton city’s river, and a physical dividing line between the upper and lower districts – and the half-jog he’d been doing just began to feel silly. There were still people, of course, many carrying their own bags of food and goods for the evening, but not nearly the crowd. Overhead, a pair of powered individuals flew just low enough to still see the people on the streets, while still being high enough to avoid causing a disturbance. Federal supes loaned to the local police force, in all likelihood. Part of a licensed hero team, if not.
Regarding them, at least, Blake wasn’t concerned. Hell, with the fliers keeping their eyes out for actual issues? He was grateful for their presence. Kelton City wasn’t quite the hotpot of power conflicts that people portrayed it as, but it damned near thing. Where a patroller might step in to take down a flame-spitter or two, these groups stopped threats, from true strongmen throwing cars to hydrokinetics slicing the same in half. So long as heroes kept the criminal violence contained, he’d cheer them on from the sidelines, the same as anyone else.
Blake turned the corner to his apartment building. It was an old thing, just on the river’s edge. A faded green paint job covered the street-facing wall while the rest had been left to weather. Surrounded as it was by storage buildings and an ever-encroaching skyline, the apartment was one of the few truly affordable housing options left in the boundaries of upper Kelton. Even then, the rent left him scraping the bottom of his bank account.
“Hey, kid!” The man at the front desk waved as Blake walked inside. An undeviating presence behind the counter, Alfie was five-foot-nine with greying hair, a stiff set of sideburns, and an unflappable grin. One could almost swear he was having the time of his life greeting the people who came and went-- so long as they weren’t causing trouble.
“Mister Alfie,” Blake greeted back. He adjusted course, setting his bags at the foot of the counter, and shook the other man’s hand.
“How’d your shopping go?” Alfie asked. “Don’t often see you getting back so late; I was starting to worry!”
“A small scare.” Blake waved him off. “One of the Patrol stopped me on my way out; she was running power scans and wanted me to register. Gave the spiel, then let me go. Nothing crazy.”
Alfie snorted. “Power registration. Lords know how that law got passed. Listen, if you ever need that card filled in?” He spread his pinkie and thumb, miming a phone call. “I’ll hook you up. Friends discount.”
Blake merely nodded. Alfie’s less-than-legal contacts were not unknown around the building. He’d never had reason to use them himself – there being too many ways a small infraction might have him spending the night in jail, then a lot longer after his scans came back – but he knew a few residents who had. ID forgeries were the most common, followed closely by the buying of low-grade power suppressants, intended to ease the symptoms of an inconvenient or debilitating power.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said. “Thank you.”
“Ha! Sure thing. Be seeing you ‘round, Tim!”
Blake picked up his bags, feeling a small twinge as the older man smiled at him, before wandering his way up the stairs and into his apartment.
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“Leaking like a sieve. Yeah, well, that’s one way to put it.” Blake grimaced as he looked into the bathroom mirror. His body’s decay had worsened over the last couple of weeks. It was a non-physical process – not actual rot, but an increasing degradation in his ability to hold Tim’s form. Reliable though his power was, constant use had built up too much strain on its memory of the man – too late to stop once he’d caught on.
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
He was going to need to replace Tim’s body. The realization was frustrating, and the more he thought about it, disappointing as well. He liked being Tim. He liked the mindset the body had brought with it, and the crowd he’d fallen into while getting settled.
And yet, the action was necessary. Inevitable, because Tim would continue to decay. Blake closed his eyes, focusing on the small, active flicker of power in his chest, and let it drop away. His body followed suit, condensing as it twisted inward and another man emerged. This one's hair was blond – scruffy, almost – with pale brown eyes, a thicker body and face, and a few additional years. The clothes he wore were rougher too, and bulky enough that he could spend a night outdoors without suffering in the chill.
Blake – The real him this time, for all that such a description was misleading – smiled thinly into the mirror. He hadn’t been himself for... for a while, now. He looked tired. Harried. Unkempt and red-eyed. And he felt worse too; this body’s hormones were a thorough mess. All physical symptoms of the last time he’d been on the run.
He grimaced and shoved the feelings of self-pity down.
Blake’s body melted away again, bringing Tim’s back to the forefront. He would keep it around for a while longer. Say his goodbyes, hand in his work notice, and gather his cash before heading down to lower Kelton. Shot in an alleyway or dead in the hospital; if he waited long enough, there’d be another body he could use.
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As it turned out, he hardly needed to bother.
A week and a half later, there was a shootout on the city’s riverbanks. Blake woke to the sounds of gunfire and bright flashes of plasma shattering the black and blue sky above his side of the Slud. It was late, or perhaps very early, but bleary-eyed and suddenly alert, he slipped out the front of the apartment and towards the disturbance.
Capable of diverting flooding from around the city, the Slud had two levels to it. The top, taking the place of the river’s original bank and nearly doubling its width, was a concrete retaining wall fit with a walking path and intermittent railings. The second was the river’s current channel at the bottom of it all, sloped, grassy, and choked with reeds along the water’s edge. It was, ironically enough, the more common walking area and also the segment which Blake searched.
The site of the conflict took him twenty minutes to find. It was the segment below a set of industrial storage sheds - long, open buildings which held criminal enterprise less often than a person would think.
Blake couldn’t see what might’ve happened further above, but from what he could make out down here, the fight looked to have been as brief as it’d been violent. Plasma had scorched the higher level’s retaining wall, irregularly interspersed by swaths of chipped concrete from small-arms fire. Down at the water’s edge, he could see shell casings mixed into the mud. The grass was dug up in strips near the shore, and there were a half-dozen craters just below the waterline. And yet, the destruction was contained to a relatively small swath of land – about the size of a basketball field.
Blake looked around. He couldn’t see any obvious bodies, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any. Surely, in a conflict such as this, someone would’ve died. Making his way to the water’s edge, he combed the reeds for a bit and was rewarded with the sight of a foot, its booted toes peeping out from the stalks. He pushed them back, his fingers crossed, only to have his stomach sink.
The man he found was in costume, a crest or logo of some kind covering his left pectoral. Blake didn’t recognize him, but in a city as large as Kelton, that didn’t mean much; he was a hero, without a doubt. The rest of the man’s suit was dark blue with a gold accent, seemingly untouched but for the smell of plasma burns and a palm-sized hole in the center of the chest.
Blake frowned. He couldn’t take this one. There was too great a chance he’d be recognized, if not by the public at large then by other heroes in Kelton. And if there was anyone he didn’t want looking too hard at the body he took, it was a group of dedicated people with powers. “Damn,” Blake swore, placing his hands on his knees. “Sorry, guy. I’ll call in a tip when I’m done here, but let’s hope you took someone with you,” he said.
Luck, however, was not that kind.
Blake had just taken a step back when he heard the thump of a car door, followed by a beam of light shining over the top of the upper wall. It was a couple of hundred feet to his left, but as his head snapped in that direction, he ducked down again. And it was good that he did. A second beam joined the first not a second later and flickered wide. It missed him in favor of the higher grass, before moving into vertical sweeps.
Blake’s eyes took a moment to adjust, but when they did, he grimaced. Hard. Two officers were searching the riverbank, geared to the teeth with suppression gear. Glancing down at the dead hero at his feet, Blake felt confident he knew what for. In the span of a minute, he saw more lights popping up along the wall – two sets of beams further past this pair, and three scattered across the river's opposite side. Their timing could not have been worse.
He was fucked. Incredibly, royally, screwed.
It didn’t matter that Blake wasn’t involved. If he was found near a body – a dead hero, moreover – he’d be taken into custody and his power checked. There were no two ways about that, and no ways in which it went well.
Staying still was out of the picture; the two officers had stepped down to better follow the river’s edge and were moving towards him. He was hidden from sight by the reeds, but once they were above him that’d cease to matter. Running, too, simply wasn’t going to happen. He was on a riverbank – uniformly sloped ground, walled in by concrete and by water; the moment he started moving, he’d be spotted.
Both actions would call attention to the body.
So, what was he left with? Blake’s mind whirled as the two officers made their way closer, their beams glancing up and down the waterway. Slip into the river? He’d be fine to stand in it, but at that point, he’d be just as well-off crouching in the reeds.
He didn’t see a way out. He couldn’t stay. Couldn’t run. Had never learned to swim. And his power... his power was...
Blake’s stomach dropped. He looked at the dead hero’s body. Really looked at it, even as the officers' lights began to hit the nearby grass. He wouldn’t be able to ditch the man’s life like he usually did; heroes were watched, their actions dissected by close ties and fame. If he did this, he’d have to commit. Step into a dead man’s shoes for as long as it took to find another corpse.
Swallowing, Blake weighed the risk – whatever crimes they had on him now, to all they’d pin on him if he messed up. How long would he have to hold the charade? Another week? Two? It was the officers’ muttering that sealed his decision, their voices echoing off the retaining wall.
“Fuck it.”
Blake smothered the spark of his power that represented Tim and grabbed the hero’s corpse. His form flickered. For a brief moment, he felt a weight leave him—the strain of a degraded body’s upkeep dropping to nothing. Then Blake’s power flared, and the hero’s body, costume and all, disintegrated beneath his palm. He keeled over in pain as his new body twisted into being.
The hole in Blake’s chest – from whoever the dead man was– filled in and began to scab. And then the lights found him. Two, at first, followed quickly by a good many more.