First Song

Once I’d concluded my chat with Prometheus, I closed the door of our cabin. This immediately brought the light levels down and I hoped that it would let Casey sleep a little longer.

The now familiar cramping sensation in my abdomen was returning, making me groan in pain. Swearing blasphemy to the heavens, I grabbed some spare underwear and one of the towels from Casey’s supply, then darted for the toilet. I’d almost completely forgotten about all this menstruation stuff.

I felt much fresher once I’d changed, though I still found it embarrassing – I honestly had no idea what I was doing.

Once I’d finished with my hygiene related problems, my attention was drawn to Casey’s sleeping form. I had to resist the urge to wake her up, but the gnawing hunger was getting the better of me.

I knelt down next to her and peppered her face in kisses, while my fingers stroked her dark, messy hair in an attempt to bring her back to the land of the living.

She stirred again, waking fully this time. She gave an adorable groan as her eyes strained against the light of the room.

“Good morning, beautiful,” I whispered to her, doing my best not to sound too seductive.

She blinked slowly a couple of times then broke into a smile, “Good morning.”

Her lips sorely tempted me, but my hunger was overpowering my desire to taste them.

“Are you ready to find some breakfast?” I asked, my fingertips running through her hair again.

She lifted her hand in response, her fingers brushing lightly against my cheeks and chin.

“Emilia said she’d take us to breakfast at seven thirty,” she told me, her sleep-weary eyes roaming over my face.

Oh. I guess I’d missed all that helpful information when I’d fallen asleep last night. That also meant that she’d be here any moment.

“Then shall we get dressed?” I asked, pulling back and offering my hand to help her stand. “I didn’t see a shower here. Do you know if we have one?”

Casey rolled her eyes and sighed at me, but allowed herself to be pulled to her feet. I was reminded that she’d slept in just her underwear when she began smiling enticingly at me. My eyes were unable to resist their wandering.

“There’s some shower blocks set up for the unmarried folks,” she said, pulling me closer to her. “But those don’t sound nearly as fun.”

A knock came from the door, and she cursed under her breath. I giggled nervously, but she let me go with a single kiss, then went searching around for something to wear.

My breath caught in my chest at the touch of her lips, but I managed to recover enough to answer the door.

With the door open just a crack, I peered outside. Emilia was looking expectantly at me, and I flushed. Her long blonde hair was put up in a bun today, and it made her look quite pretty, despite the uniform she was forced to wear. Standing next to her on the compacted mud path was Sarah, her cheeks still a little red when she glanced in my direction.

“I am here to take you to breakfast,” The Austrian told me in her accented English. “Is Ms Kowalski with you?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Casey grumbled from behind me. “I’m getting dressed already.”

It was an awkward couple of minutes, but Casey was eventually ready and we all set off to find where we could get some freakin food.

 

So, it turns out that my expectation of a cafeteria is technically correct, except these military types liked to call it a ‘mess’ for some reason. Maybe it’s a critique on their cleanliness, I don’t know.

The current set up had a number of tents scattered around, but Emilia led us to one of the emptier ones. The others were filled with people wearing all different kinds of military uniforms, but this one only had civilian-dressed inhabitants. I recognised some of them from the plane, including Martin and Christine.

I waved to them as we queued for our breakfast, but within minutes all three of us were sitting down at the same table as them both.

“Good morning!” I called out to them as I took a seat. This particular tent was setup with wooden tables and plastic chairs. That was actually a little more luxurious than some of the others.

“Morning, ladies,” Martin replied, beaming us a smile. “I apologise for the conditions, but needs must, eh? We don’t have all the creature comforts right now, but they’re being worked on.”

From what I’d be able to work out so far, Martin was effectively the head of the civilian side of the operation. I was surprised that he wasn’t busier, but I suppose he likely had others to do all the heavy lifting for him – like Christine. All of the military activity was being conducted by someone else, or several someones else. It all looked like chaos to me, but there was probably order to it somewhere.

I did see a few different flags on shoulder patches around the camp, though at the moment they all looked like European ones. There was no sign of Americans here, other than Casey, which had me a little worried.

She was giving Christine chilly glares, which were readily reciprocated, while Sarah seemed to be enjoying the novel experience.

“So, what’s on for today?” I asked, digging into a piece of toast. Goddess, I was so hungry.

Martin was finishing off his mug of coffee, his plate already mostly empty, “I have a whole pile of meetings today, so you won’t see me much. But we should be shipping your friend over in the evening.”

That made me blink for a moment. I’d completely forgotten that I’d asked for Rish to come with us, too.

“That young man is paranoid to the extreme,” he continued, laughing.

“Yeah… he’s… something,” I answered awkwardly. I hope he hadn’t caused them too much trouble, or been too much of a pain.

There was a moment of silence before Casey spoke up.

“We’ve been put in separate cabins, but that’s not going to work for us,” she said, gesturing between the two of us. I nodded in agreement.

Christine sighed loudly. She had finished her breakfast some time ago but looked like she was waiting for Martin.

“I’ll see what I can do,” she droned, clearly unhappy to have been given more things to do.

I asked if there was somewhere that Casey and I could train, preferably in private, and Christine promised to look into that for us. Both of us had to express to her just how important it would be that no one came near while we were practising – for their own safety.

She regarded us critically, but still gave a small nod of her head. I don’t think she was entirely convinced how dangerous we could be, despite having admitted to seeing the video of me exploding. But, at least she was willing to humour me.

 

After breakfast, Emilia returned and we asked her to lead us back to our cabin so we could get a change of clothes before showering.

On the way, my curiosity got the better of me.

“Emilia, do you know why you’ve been assigned to us?” I asked as casually as I could.

She looked at me, her eyes widening with worry. “I do not, I am just following my orders,” she eventually answered, stiffly.

Wow, she was worried about something. Did she think she was being punished?

I gave her as reassuring a smile as I could, “We’re glad that you’re the one that’s been assigned. You seem nice.”

“Of course. Thank you, Ms Reid.”

“Please, just call me Erin.”

I didn’t tell her who we were though. If she didn’t know then there was likely a reason.

Ever since last night I’d been feeling pretty dirty and needed to get clean, but Casey had been right. The only options were to flannel yourself down in a sink or to use the shower block. That is, if you weren’t given the luxury of married accommodation. I just really hoped it didn’t mean having to interact with too many people.

We headed for the women’s building, while Sarah stayed back at the cabins.

It was an unassuming thing – effectively a brick shed with wooden doors at each end for privacy. The universal symbol for ladies had been painted on their exterior, announcing that men would not be appreciated.

This women-only space initially left me feeling a tiny bit self-conscious and out-of-place, at least until I actually thought about it. I belonged here, this was my space too. I’d be fine.

Casey seemed to sense something was bothering me and she placed a reassuring hand on my shoulder as we approached. Luckily, it didn’t seem like many people were showering at this point in the day and we were able to get cleaned in peace. We did attract a few glances, including a few stares at Casey.

Did people recognise her? I know her father was pretty famous, but I don’t think I’d heard about her all that much on the news or anything.

We managed to resist the thought of each other wet and naked, thankfully, and were finished within fifteen minutes. Towels weren’t an issue since they were supplied clean, and then taken for laundering by some industrious soul after use.

The next order of business was training – we were almost certain to gain an audience this time.

---

Emilia reluctantly found us somewhere to train – though she was unhappy that we couldn’t just use the normal training grounds. She’d managed to find us an empty area far from the complex of structures and construction work, at least. From here it already looked like a few of the buildings had progressed markedly from yesterday evening.

It was a testament to the power of incredible amounts of money and a tight deadline, beyond which is the end of the world.

The weather was hot again, and I asked Emilia if she could bring us some water. I threw in a warning to be careful when coming back.

She simply nodded and turned to leave.

Casey and I stripped down to t-shirts and combat trousers, and I grabbed my phone from our small pile of belongings. One issue we’d have is not accidentally melting our things, but we’d do our best.

We began with small exercises first, like getting used to the feel of the energy flowing through us again. The currents here felt a little different than they had back home, maybe slightly weaker, although I wasn’t sure what would be causing that.

Next, I manifested a little lightning between my fingers. It was starting to feel good when I did this, my brain feeding itself endorphins at the release of all this energy through my fingertips. Perhaps it might even be possible to get addicted to it – that’d be something to watch out for.

I had started to grow a little tired of working with lightning all the time, so I made the decision to switch to directing some of that energy inwardly, instead. One problem I immediately noticed was the lack of anything to use to challenge myself physically. We would need to get an assault course built at some point.

So, there’s a different approach to augmenting one’s own physical ability compared with external manifestation. At its heart, I was changing the laws of physics around me, but if I tried to do it by myself I’d probably end up atomising my entire body. Instead, Muse acted like a translator for my intentions, and she did the physics part all by herself.

Amongst the things I could manipulate: the Higgs field. As in, the field that gives matter its mass. There must be other wizardry that she was doing at the same time to keep me coherent, but ultimately I could control how much inertia I had.

Muse was already enhancing my reaction times with her presence in my brain, so with those two things combined I could be extremely nimble when I needed to be.

Of course, my eventual dream would be flight of some kind, just like any self respecting superhero. She reassured me that it was possible, I’d just have to learn gravitational manipulation. I mean, how hard could that be?

‘That requires a much finer level of control, Erin. Especially when interacting within the planet’s field,’ Muse said.

Yeah, yeah.

I switched my playlist over to something a little faster paced, and asked Casey to try throwing some rocks at me. I want to see if I could dodge them.

She looked dubious at first, and highly reluctant to risk hurting me, but I pouted and she relented.

Before we’d even really begun in earnest I could see some curious bystanders about fifty meters away. I ignored them, focussing on Casey.

She visibly sighed, and launched a stone towards me.

I barely even needed to side step, the throw had been that weak and poorly aimed.

“What gives?” I asked, pulling out an earbud and gesturing towards the stone as it bounced behind me.

“Come on, Erin. I don’t wanna hurt you,” she pleaded.

Fine, then I guess she needed an incentive.

“You get to kiss me every time you hit me,” I called back, putting the earbud back in. I mean, she could have kisses whenever she wanted, but hopefully this would give her some kind of-.

There was barely enough time for me to shift my weight and pull myself out of the way as a stone came streaking past me.

I laughed, focussing on Casey again.

Alright.

 

We carried on for about ten minutes, with her throwing small rocks and pebbles towards me while I tried to avoid them. I didn’t think she was putting anything extra into her throws, they were just standard Casey attempts.

Once it became apparent that the distance between us just gave me way too much time to react, she narrowed the gap. I smiled as the missiles became harder and harder to dodge, each consecutive throw being more demanding on my focus than the last.

I had no idea what this looked like to other people, but we had drawn a more sizable crowd now. They were keeping well back, at least. I didn’t want to accidentally injure someone.

The next stone had a lot more whizz to it and I barely scraped out of the way. Her eyes were glowing now, just like I assumed mine had been the entire time.

Far more quickly than she had any right to be able to, another pebble came my way while I was still recovering from the last. There was even a crack in the air as it broke the sound barrier. The only reason I even knew it was on its way was because my perception of time slowed to a crawl. I was too off-balance to do anything but watch it hurtle towards me.

A fraction of a second before it was going to strike me in the shoulder, something pushed it aside, causing it to miss.

Jeez, that would have hurt.

‘You’re welcome,’ Muse chimed in.

I held up a hand for Casey to stop, and pulled out my earbuds, “That one would have hit me, but Muse stopped it. I think it counts.”

The reward for hitting me was kisses, after all. I had to be fair about these things.

She broke into a seductive half-smile, and we stepped towards each other, providing a decidedly sapphic show of affection in front of our audience.

A middle-aged man that had been standing with the growing crowd eyed us stonily, then turned to leave. When he did, a small group of other soldiers were on his heel. That seemed to be some kind of signal as the crowd began to wither away. I had no idea whether that was a good or a bad sign.

Our game of supersonic dodgeball was over, but we still continued to do a little bit more training. I worked with Casey so she could figure out how to do some of the dodging and manoeuvring with Hunter, but I refused to throw stones at her. My poor heart couldn’t take that today.

Our audience was all but gone by the time we stopped for lunch, with Emilia the only person remaining. She held her position around the fifty meter mark. I signalled to Casey for us to stop, and we gathered our belongings to join the Austrian girl.

“Well, what did you think?” I asked as I reached for one of the bottles of water she had in her hands.

“You are gymnasts?” she asked, releasing the drink to me.

What? How had she even come to that conclusion?

“Uh, no. Was that really what you saw?” I asked, turning to look in the direction we’d been standing as I took a mouthful of water.

Casey was doing likewise and giving Emilia a narrow-eyed squint.

---

Everyone avoided us as we ate lunch, which suited us just fine. They couldn’t resist staring though, which made me uncomfortable. Emilia came and sat with us, but I was getting the impression that she was being excluded from other circles because she was being forced to tend to us.

Lunch wasn’t anything special, and I felt like it just served to get as many calories into us as possible. Given the nature of how our bonds with our symbiotes worked, extra energy was always welcome but it would always only be a drop in the ocean compared to Muse’s ability to draw it in on her own.

Emilia was behaving strangely in our presence, doing her best to stay as far as she could without being rude. I really thought that her forced association with us was starting to bother her. We agreed that she should take the afternoon off, and that we’d find our own way around. She didn’t take long to rush away, despite trying to look like she wasn’t in a hurry.

Casey and I shared a look of puzzlement, but headed back to our training spot with a bundle of bottles of water.

I felt completely exhausted by about halfway through the afternoon, and was sweating profusely in the glaring sunlight. I’d chosen to work on more channelling abilities, including the nascent sparks of some kind of telekinesis. Casey looked to be just about as tired as me while she worked more on her enhancing abilities.

We eventually collapsed into a heap beneath one of the trees that lined the field. We downed the bottles of water like we hadn’t had a drop in days.

Muse and Hunter were helping with our recovery, soothing weary muscles and rejuvenating our aching bones, but it still took another half an hour before we felt able to stand.

We staggered to our feet, laughing as the aching soreness made the task so much harder than it needed to be. I was hot and sweaty after all that exertion, and I wanted her to take me back to our cabin immediately, damnit.

Eyes were on us as we weaved our way hand-in-hand through the maze of temporary dwellings, but Casey seemed to know exactly where she was headed.

As we neared, I heard the distinctive sound of someone screaming. My blood turned cold and I broke into a run.

When I turned the last corner I saw a scene that made the fire inside me rage. Sarah was surrounded by three male soldiers, with Sabina cradled to her chest. They were jeering at her and laughing. One of the men was trying to touch Sabina but Sarah kept twisting to keep her out of reach. She’d been cornered, her whole path of escape cut off.

“What the fuck are you doing?!” I screamed at them, drawing in energy instinctively.

The men turned lazily to look at me, but it was when their eyes went wide that I knew my eyes were glowing.