What am I doing here? Vivainne thought. She stared across the parking lot, shivering in the evening chill. The familiar building stood dark, no light shining from a window, no movement, no cars out front. This lab was never a secret, and Vivainne had spent quite a bit of time here over the years. Sitting in the waiting room playing with dolls, coloring in coloring books, waiting for her mother to get out of a meeting or be done in the labs.

  This was where Stardust had apprehended her mother. Apparently, Vora hadn’t put up a fight. Vivainne had finally asked and learned what happened that night, and her mother hadn’t put up a fight. Still trying to pretend she was a normal human being, not a super.

  She’d half expected for the building to be blasted apart, torn apart by heliokinetic energy, but the front door wasn’t even broken. Locked up, bolted down, but not broken.

  Good thing was, locks and walls meant nothing to Vivainne.

  She walked up the pavement, treading quietly in the dark. It took minimal effort to see, shadow senses expanding and allowing her to see in muted colors and shades of black and white. Monet Industries Lab loomed white and foreboding in front of her, eerie in the darkness and the quiet. Late nights, early mornings, the lab had always been full of people. Scientists were a strange bunch, working weird hours and obsessing over their work. Her mother had been one of those, working late, working all night, working in the early morning. Not always at this lab, she knew now.

  Vivainne stopped at the front door, putting a hand to the sealed tape over the door, warning people away and sealing the location off as evidence. A broken seal would alert the authorities that someone had broken in, and give them more people to look after.

  Perhaps Vivainne should have let Recompense know where she was going, but she had no idea where she was headed when she left his house for a walk. At least in shadow form, she couldn’t touch anything or disrupt evidence.

  She phased into shadow and stepped through the door. The faintest pressure against her shadow form, a bit like a strong wind, before she fully passed through the door. Why her feet didn’t pass through the floor like her body passed through the door, she wasn’t certain, but she counted it up to self preservation and instinct.

  With the lab so quiet, Vivainne was able to wander around without being disturbed, passing through doors she’d never touched before, inspecting inventions left unfinished, projects mid-experiment. Where did all the Monet Industries employees go when Vora got arrested?

  When she got home, Vivainne would check online. She’d been avoiding any news reports on what happened, not ready to engage with it and read what everyone thought happened. And she had no idea what the heroes or law enforcement had told the public as an explanation, if they’d said anything.

  Vivainne stepped back into the corridor, leaving the cold lab. A rustling came from the end of the hallway, noise in one of the back rooms. Vivainne froze, shrinking back and pressing her shadows against the wall. What could be here? There should have been no one here, not when the building was sealed up.

  Was it another hero, then? Someone permitted to be here?

  She opened her mouth to call out, then thought better of it, shutting her mouth and sliding along in silence. If it was a hero, maybe she would reveal herself, but she needed to be certain.

  Moving halfway into the wall, she crept toward the noise, fingers flexing as she moved. What would she do if it wasn’t a hero? If it was someone who’d snuck in to destroy evidence, one of Vora’s unknown cronies or allies? Someone who didn’t want to be dragged into the light whenever this went to trial.

  The noise happened again, this time louder. Metal slamming against metal, clattering loudly. Tearing, slamming. Not a hero then.

  Vivainne froze, staring sideways at the doorway, noise continuing to come from the room as whoever it was tore the lab apart. The final lab, the one Vora had shown her, with the prosthetic core work.

  They're destroying evidence. They were destroying the most important evidence and they needed to be stopped. She needed a hero.

  Electricity screamed and a blast shook the floor beneath her.

  She didn’t have time to wait for a hero.

  Vivainne charged down the hallway and into the room, whipping her head around as she looked for the source of the noise.

  The window between rooms had been busted, shattered inward to the white room where Vora tested the prosthetic cores. The wall had been torn out as well, allowing the figure to pass through to the room beyond. Their arm glowed in the dark. Their leg too. Veins of light and electricity wove up and down their limbs, open metals and gears and patches of Monet artificial skin at its base gray color. Pieces of real skin cut off abruptly, stitched roughly with bioconductive thread.

  A strangled gasp escaped Vivainne’s mouth before she could stop it, slapping a hand over her mouth too late.

  The figure turned. Light blazed from an eye, a shining prosthetic replacing it that was nothing like Vivainne had ever seen.

  And she recognized that face.

  She recognized that face because it was her face. Her face, with that dark hair and those eyes, only one was missing, and this girl only had half a head of hair. A scar cut down from the prosthetic eye, splitting her face all the way to the top of her lip, curving into the edge, leaving her with a permanent, eerie smirk.

  Light charged in its depths, and Vivainne only had a moment to recognize was it was.

  She dove out of the way as electricity carved through the air, shooting from the girl’s eye. She disappeared entirely into shadow, folding her body out of sight and into the darkness around them.

  “Stop!” Her voice came from all around, stronger than she had ever imagined it. Her mind raced, faster than her heartbeat, trying to come up with the words. This girl was meant to be dead. She’d died, hadn’t she? Vora had killed her. Why was she here, now? With half the limbs torn from her body, replaced with prosthetics she was tearing the room apart for. “You’re Vanessa, aren’t you? You’re Vora’s daughter.”

  The voice that answered back was rough and hoarsely modulated, like the vocal cords had been fried years ago. “Don’t call me that.”

  “I’m Vivainne,” she said, forming once more from shadows. Her core shuddered as she held to her shadow form, on the cusp of transforming back into a vulnerable human. Vanessa had shot electricity at her though, somehow, and she wasn’t ready to trust her yet.

  “I know who you are,” she growled. She raised a hand, the prosthetic one, and Vivainne felt the floor shudder. Was that an earth manipulation power? How the hell did Vanessa have an earth manipulation power? “What are you doing here?”

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  “Will you believe me if I say I really don’t know?” Vivainne laughed, growing solemn as Vanessa’s face didn’t change. “What are you doing here?”

  “I needed something,” Vanessa said. The rasp in her voice sounded more like a growl the longer she spoke.

  “Don’t destroy evidence for our mother,” Vivainne said. “She doesn’t deserve it. Don’t bring yourself down too.”

  “I’m not,” Vanessa said, glancing away. Her eyes swept the room, peering back into the test room with the prosthetic arm still on the platform. “I just needed something.”

  “What did you need?” Vivainne asked. “Because I know people that can help.”

  “All I need is power,” Vanessa said. Eyeing Vivainne, she stepped into the white room, grabbing the prosthetic arm with her own metal hand and tearing it down. She shoved it under her arm, carrying it in the crook of her elbow.

  “What are you doing?” Vivainne asked. She took a step into the room, stopping in her tracks as that eye snapped back to her. “I can help you. Please, Vanessa.”

  “I said don’t call me that!” Her hand balled into a fist, servos whirring at the movement. Metal clicked inside her body, a painful sound as she moved. “I don’t need help. I have what I need.”

  “I thought you were dead, you know,” Vivainne said, searching her brain for any way to keep the girl here. She needed help, clearly. Vora must have torn her apart, stitched her back together again, patched her up with all these prosthetics and what must have been power cores. Good power cores, or broken ones, like her own?

  “You don’t know me,” Vanessa said. She stepped over a piece of rubble, moving closer to Vivainne. Holding her ground, Vivainne refused to move.

  “I know you’re my sister.”

  “No. You’re just another experiment. And now that she is gone, I don’t have to think about you or her or anyone ever again.”

  “But…”

  Vanessa moved toward the door, ignoring Vivainne’s presence. She would either have to step out of the way or get bowled into, and it didn’t look like Vanessa was going to stop. But Vivainne wasn’t done with her.

  She spread her arms out, shadows flaring from her form. A wall, rippling and dark, formed on either side, and Vanessa snarled.

  “Unwise…” she growled.

  “Please, just listen to me,” Vivainne said, meeting her sister’s eyes, one the same dark void as Vivainne’s, the other metallic and blue across the iris. “I know you’ve been through more than I could ever imagine, but I can help you. Our mother is gone. She can never hurt you again. And I know people who can help you, help undo the damage our mother caused.”

  “Who?” she leaned forward, their faces so close together Viv could hear the gears whirring inside her prosthetic eye. “The heroes? You think they’re any better? That they won’t tear me apart piece by piece and leave me broken? I don’t need anyone to fix me, I’m already whole. Certainly not your heroes. Have you ever stopped to think about why they want to help you?”

  Jaw so tight she could hardly move it, Vivainne spoke. “Because they’re heroes.”

  “They’re just using you to get to our mother,” Vanessa said. “Once they strip all the information from you as they can, they’ll drop you and never think twice.”

  Her hands balled into fists, shadows flickering around her body in agitation. Vanessa was wrong, and Vivainne would prove it.

  “You’re coming with me to the heroes.”

  Vanessa laughed, and then she struck. Her fist tore through the wall of shadows, dissipating the shadows around Vivainne’s unformed body.

  Vivainne threw herself backward, exploding into the hallway in a whirlwind of darkness. The ground rumbled as she fought for footing, using tendrils of shadow to right herself.

  The floor undulated, tile cracking and breaking as earth boiled up through the ground. Soil flooded toward her, surging toward Vanessa as she drew it in, knocking the floor out from beneath Vivainne.

  She scrambled to the wall and through it, gasping for air as she wracked her mind for what to do. Vanessa couldn’t get away, she had to get her back to the heroes. What could she do to stop her?

  A metal hand slammed through the drywall, dust puffing out around her fist before it opened into a claw.

  She couldn’t fight this.

  She needed to fight this.

  Shadows snapped around the wrist.

  Vanessa tore her arm back through the wall. Vivainne let out a strangled gasp, only instinct keeping her body phased as her sister tore her straight through the wall.

  She threw Vivainne to the floor, earth swarming over her body.

  Her core shuddered as dirt piled into the space her body should have been, body quaking and fighting to turn back to a solid.

  I can’t turn back. She fought against the feeling, gritting her teeth against the quaking of her core. She had to stay intangible to protect her core.

  But not all of her needed to stay that way.

  Her foot transformed from the knee down, long enough to slam a foot into Vanessa’s leg. It impacted solid metal, not enough to make Vanessa so much as shift.

  Transforming back to shadow, Vivainne shoved herself out of the dirt, wrapping her shadows around the woman. She focused on the eyes, wrapping shadows around Vanessa’s head, trying to blind her. Nothing should be able to touch her while she was intangible, and if she could just hold Vanessa down…

  “I don’t need eyes to see.”

  Shadows whipped out around her, not her own. In the back of her mind, she could see them, feel them, swarming from Vanessa’s body.

  “Not you too,” Vivainne groaned.

  The shadows struck, driving into her loose shadow form as she scrambled across Vanessa’s body. It wasn’t pain, not exactly, but she gasped nonetheless as they tore through her body. She had to protect her core. She had to keep it safe.

  Vivainne threw herself off her sister, shadows racing along the ground to escape the oncoming blades of darkness. How could she do that with her own power? She needed to stop Vanessa. Needed to protect herself.

  Forming her body once more, Vivainne grabbed the arm Vanessa had dropped. She spun it around, opening up the palm toward her sister.

  “Stop!”

  She closed her eyes, focusing on the device in front of her. Power on. I just have to connect with the core. Power on!

  Footsteps slammed closer. Earth shifted, the tiles beneath her feet rumbling as they threatened to give way. Through it all, she kept her mind locked on the thing in front of her, searching for the power core. That was how these things were supposed to work, wasn’t it? Would it work without being connected to her body?

  She dug into the arm, fingers pressing against seams in artificial skin, feeling where the skin connected to fabricated muscle and bone beneath. And the power core, located deep inside.

  A familiarity opened in front of her, and she shoved herself into it, forcing every intent, every desire, every need into it as she pushed.

  Electricity exploded from the hand. Light burned itself across her vision. The arm vibrated wildly in her grip, turning her fingers numb as she fought to keep control, aiming desperately for her sister even as the light blinded her.

  A cry went up from around the corner, power flickering in the absence of light, revealing just how much damage the device had done. Torn up walls, floors that looked like they’d been through an earthquake. Burn marks across the ceiling.

  Where was Vanessa?

  Metal, cold as ice, wrapped around her wrist. Vivainne screamed, fighting to turn her body intangible again as Vanessa dragged her into the darkness. Her body wouldn’t transform, exhausted, core pulsing like it was going to explode. But she had to transform, get away from her sister.

  Shadows curled around them, the darkness all consuming. Not her own.

  Hands tore the prosthetic arm from her grasp, breaking her contact with the artificial core. “Don’t look for me. Don’t come after me. Don’t even think about me. Because if I ever see you again, it will be the last thing you ever see.”

  The darkness pulled away, dropping her there in the dirt. She fell back, legs shaking as she hit a wall, unable to hold herself up. Cold wrapped around her body, shivers wracking down her spine as she looked around frantically.

  Stillness held firm over the room. Vanessa was gone.

  Vivainne slumped to the floor, breathing hard. “How am I supposed to explain this?”