"You’re a weapon!" Ember declared, staring at Alexa with wide eyes. [A sleeper agent, maybe? A designed super, meant to bring down the Superstate!]

"You really think that I can bring down the Superstate?" Alexa grinned at Ember. "Thanks for the vote of confidence, Dimmy!"

[Installation Saint Mary. It means there are others. Of course. Yorkshire! The Yorkshire installation must have activated its weapon and become a threat to the stability of the Titanomachy ring somehow. That’s why I destroyed it as an Admiral. There must be other sleeper cell subjects all over the world like Alexa. Genetically engineered supers? Clones? Bred, raised, coordinated, waiting to strike. A thousand slow fuses, burning over decades, hidden, diluted by utter nonsense. Incalculable. Unpredictable,] Ember thought rapidly.

[That’s a lot of determinate conclusions, Dimmy. Good thing we have this mental communion eh? Had you spoken them out loud I’d probably have to kill you or something.] Alexa laughed in her head.

[I have to stop you before you activate! What is your power? Is it some kind of a super-destabilizer? The ability to destroy anything!?] Ember yelled mentally, glaring at Alexa.

[Mmm… Demolition-girl. That’s a pretty sweet power if you ask me,] Alexa visualized a Hollywood movie poster featuring Demolition Man.

[You’ve demolished me, my brother, even the Equalizer. It all fits!] Ember thought, hyperventilating. [Next you’re going to turn your attention to Titanomachy and kaboom! Everyone dies!]

[I think you forgot one important factor.] Alexa yawned.

[What?!]

[You’re still alive. Just because you’re socially dead, you can’t go crying around that you’re physically dead. Dead people don’t cry... unless they are zombies. You'd make one adorkable zombie!]

[Alexa is a sleeper superweapon that’s going to what? Socially destroy the Superstate? She’s going to shame thousands of supers into… what? Turning off the power? What, they’ll crash the station into the planet because they’re... super embarrassed? This is a lot of jumping to conclusions, Ember,] Martin injected himself into their conversation.

[She did it to me! She can do it to anyone!] Ember thought-yelled. [It has to be a power! She needs to be stopped before she turns off all of the supers one by one with that leaping into the future bullshit!]

[Are you going to turn off all of the supers?] Cottie asked Alexa.

[Uhh.. are they going to get up in my face and attempt to kill me like Dimmy did?] Alexa scratched her head.

[That sounds like a yes! She confesses!] Ember accused.

[Em! Cottie! This is insane. She can’t turn off all of the Supers!] Martin glanced at Alexa. [Can you?]

[Noppers. If I could do that I’d be the most powerfully wicked supervillain in the world. Weeeeee!] Alexa spun on her swivel chair in the other direction.

Ember looked at Alexa.

Was the 14 year old girl spinning on the dusty office chair the most powerful super in the world? She didn't seem like one. She thought of Nonpareil. Powerful supers weren't exactly human. They were more akin to an unstoppable idea. Alexa seemed as human as they come. Maybe that was her power? She needed more information. Ember turned back to the hologram.

“Who is Subject 13?”

“My clone. My mother from the future. An experiment gone right and wrong. Me, but a thousand years older. My sister. A robot wearing too many hats. A weapon. My only fresh cookie. Why should I tell you anything, hero?”

Ember rubbed her head, not knowing which answer was real. They all seemed equally nonsensical or valid. "What is Subject 13's purpose?"

"To save everyone or destroy the world or do nothing of value."

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Ember choked for a second, picking the possible truth from lies.

"To save the world from what?"

"From fools and monsters and heroes like yourself. Ember Kilborne. Resonance. Waste of space. A melon. James Peacherson Fox. I have been watching and not watching you and eating 9863 sandwiches."

“How the hell do you know my identity?!”

“Twenty seven keyboards used by a thousand monkeys writing a script for a hit-movie. Her shiny bracelet. A sentient two by four plywood from the Andromeda Galaxy.”

Ember choked again. The holographic bastard was going for her jugular. He knew her. He had been watching her from Alexa’s dark bracelet all this time, paying attention, learning, judging.

“Potatoes have eyes, I don't like it. Supers like you are what’s wrong and what’s not wrong with the world. A persistent pattern that doesn't make sense. A game. A fake planet built by an intelligence greater than ours. When heroes and villains don’t come and come together they become an even bigger, more dangerous, a smaller, less important issue. I will solve and won’t solve it. I would like some milk and eggs today. The fridge is empty again.”

Ember started to back away from the hologram, feeling that her deduction rollercoaster drawn from selected answers of the supervillain was reaching some sort of an apex.

The doctor was creating subjects like Alexa to stop supers. All of the supers. It was impossible, insane, but this was the only conclusion that made sense. How many installations? How many test subjects? The ex-hero’s head spun as she imagined an army of Alexas beset upon the world, turning off supers one by one like some kind of a plague of locusts.

The silver-haired girl giggled from her chair at Ember’s frantic contemplation.

[Do you really think there can be more of me? I have sisters, brothers, cousins somewhere? A big, happy family?] Alexa’s blue eyes lit up.

Ember froze. There were no reports about Alexa from the prognosticators that Ember was allowed to access. How had she escaped the attention of the probability calculators? She was clearly affecting the world! Or was she? Was it Alexa’s fault that she lost her powers or… her own? Ember gulped. Alexa was dismantling people in an entirely new, unprecedented way. They were the ones making all the decisions. She had made the decision to go after Alexa. She wanted to protect her brother. She acted without thinking again and again, relying on her power rather than on her intelligence. Her power had controlled her, ruled her, guided her until it was extinguished. Fuck!

[Yep. Congrats. Everything you’ve done is your own fault. I’ve clearly warned you.]

[You’re just a test subject, a tool for this villain! He doesn’t care for you!] Ember shot back.

[Nah.] Alexa shrugged. [I know daddums loves me very much. The most in fact. I’m his real daughter, contrary to what you might think, Dimmy. He just can’t show it, can’t call me by name or the prognosticators would come down from their ivory tower and take me away.]

[How did you communicate with him to begin with?] Ember demanded.

[I learned to read binary code. Like I said earlier, it was messages through the flashes of lights in the windows. Mostly it’s requests to do one thing or another. Pick up some milk and eggs, make sure to eat dinner, water the grass, mow the lawn. Basic stuff.]

[You don’t need to do whatever it is he wants! Why can’t you see that he’s just using you for evil?] Ember declared.

[Evil is a very stretchy thing, especially in the eyes of the agents and citizens of the Superstate.] Alexa shrugged. [You yourself were planning to kill me, to destroy my mind as Hero Resonance and in some far future as Miss Admiral along with a whole chunk of England and Europe. Have you already forgotten that, Miss Warden? For shame!]

Ember choked.

[Honestly, I should leave you here alone for a bit as a lesson. Put you in time out. I doubt you’d be able to go anywhere or do anything fun, with all of these shield-generating jar-brains hidden deep in the walls,] Alexa imagined Ember clawing against closed doors, surrounded by the silent, creepy cathedral.

Ember realized that Alexa held all of the power over her.

Without Cottie’s nullification gun she would not be able to leave the cathedral and would probably end up dead on the floor next to the hologram and the corpse of some long dead scientist.

She walked towards Alexa and sat down in front of her on the ground, looking up at her.

“Yeeees?” Alexa bent down, silver hair backlit with colored light streaming from the stained glass windows.

“I was a monster. Please forgive me,” Ember finally spoke glancing at the corpse on the ground and trembling. “Please don’t leave me in here with him.”

“Aww. You don’t want to cuddle the floor intern? I bet Daddums has such fun, spooky stories to tell you in the dark. Tsk tsk tsk.”

Ember shook her head, eyes filling with tears.

“We’re all monsters. Let’s be the most adorable monsters of all, together, okay?” Alexa smiled offering her a hand.

Ember took Alexa’s hand and shook it. She stood up, shivering due to the cold and fear and the silver-haired villain hugged her. For the first time since she's become Resonance, Ember returned someone's hug feeling something. All of the things that made her Resonance had been burned away in the city of death. All of her hate and anger for Alexa had been washed away by the rain and her tears, drowned by fear of being human from now on and possibly forever.

“I’m sorry,” the ex-hero whispered, tears sparkling down her cheeks, reflecting the colorful stained glass and the silver, perpetually shifting hologram.

“It’s okay Dimms. Everything’s gonna be okay. Your story's not done yet, you have much more monstering to do. I’ll find a way to light you up again, I promise,” Alexa whispered, winking at the silver hologram of her father.