Decided to go because I hadn't been able to before.
That was the real reason.
In my previous life, there had never been time for things like this. No milestones, no meaningless rituals, no nights that existed just to be remembered later. There had only been work, obsession, and the quiet pressure of running out of time.
This time, I had time.
So when Annie asked casually, like it didn't matter I said yes.
Not for her.
For myself.
I picked her up from her house.
Her mother was waiting by the door when I rang the bell, already dressed, already smiling in that tight, evaluative way she had. She liked me. Not warmly, but decisively.
I was polite. Quiet. Clean-cut. Never drank, never partied, never caused problems.
In her mind, that made me safe.
"Thank you for driving her," she said, touching Annie's shoulder like she was adjusting an accessory. "I trust you."
"I'll bring her back," I replied.
She nodded, satisfied. To her, I probably looked like discipline given human form. If she knew how my body actually worked that alcohol simply didn't affect me the way it should she would have called it a blessing.
Annie rolled her eyes the moment we were outside.
"She likes you more than she likes me," she muttered.
"That's not an achievement," I said.
She smiled anyway.
She was quiet during the drive.
Not nervous. Just thinking.
When we stopped at a red light, she glanced at me. "You didn't have to come, you know."
"I know."
"Then why did you?"
I thought about lying.
"I wanted to," I said instead.
That surprised her.
"Really?"
"Yes."
She looked out the window after that, but she seemed lighter.
Inside, prom was exactly what I expected.
Loud music. Bad lighting. People pretending this night defined something important. I parked the car, we walked in together, and immediately attention shifted.
Annie noticed.
"I already regret this," she said.
"You can leave whenever you want," I replied.
She nodded. "I know. That helps."
She drank.
Not a lot. Enough.
Punch that tasted stronger than it should have. One drink, then another half of one. Her movements loosened. Laugh came easier. She didn't glow, but she stopped suppressing herself so hard.
I didn't drink.
Not because I didn't want to but because it wouldn't matter. My body processed it too efficiently. No buzz, blur, or escape. I watched people around us lose control in small ways I never could.
Annie leaned closer at one point, voice lower.
"I like that you're still you," she said.
"I don't know how to be anything else," I answered.
She smiled, soft and unguarded.
Looked different tonight.
Not unreal or transformed.
Just… free.
The dress wasn't flashy, but it fit her well. Her hair was down. Posture wasn't braced for judgment. For the first time since I'd known her, she wasn't managing how she was perceived every second.
That caught me off guard.
Not because of attraction but because it reminded me she was allowed to exist outside expectations.
I hadn't expected that feeling.
People interrupted us constantly.
Compliments. Comments. Questions. She handled them easily, then came back to stand near me each time, like gravity pulled her there without effort.
At one point she whispered, "If one more person tells me this is my moment, I'm stealing your car."
"You don't know how to drive it," I said.
She grinned. "Then you're coming with me."
We didn't dance.
Sat instead, shoes off, watching the room burn itself out. Her knee bumped mine occasionally. She didn't move away. Neither did I.
There was warmth there. Familiarity. Something steady.
Not romance.
Trust.
When it was time to leave, she was clear-headed again. Tired, but present.
I walked her back to the car. Her mother was waiting when we returned, watching closely.
Annie leaned in before getting out.
"Thanks for coming," she said quietly. "And for… being normal about it."
I nodded. "Anytime."
She hesitated, then hugged me quick, natural, no weight behind it.
Then she was gone.
Driving home alone, I felt something unfamiliar settle in my chest.
Not longing, regret.
Perspective.
I hadn't gone to prom for Annie.
I'd gone because, once, I hadn't been allowed to live at all.
Tonight, I had.
And that mattered more than I expected.
I'm eighteen now.
The factory is older than that.
I first stepped into this place when I was fourteen, when most people my age were still figuring out who they wanted to impress. I wasn't looking to impress anyone. I was looking for space
Four years later, I unlock the door the same way.
From the outside, nothing has changed.
That's deliberate.
The walls are still cracked. Signage still faded. Anyone passing by would see abandonment, not activity. Most people don't look twice at things that appear finished falling apart.
Inside, the building tells a different story.
The factory didn't grow upward.
It sank.
Each year, another layer went down.
The first underground level holds things that wouldn't raise alarms on their own. Power systems. Storage. Redundancy. The kind of infrastructure that looks boring unless you know what it supports and the mercenaries who protect the building when I'm gone
The second level is quieter.
That's where information lives when it's waiting to be understood.I have to go through a long verification of voiceprints and scans until the two-meter steel door opens
Screens, data flows, This is part of the complex responsible for monitoring the world's internet and for any information I want to find.
Below that are the levels no one sees.
Not because they're dramatic.
Because they shouldn't exist.
I've known about Compound V since my previous life
Not officially.
But I knew children were being altered long before they could consent. I knew power wasn't random. I knew the timing mattered.
What I didn't know what took years to confirm was how much the formula itself had changed.
Older supes don't age the way newer ones do.
That fact alone tells a story.
Some of the first generation barely show decay at all. Their bodies stabilized early, locked into a state that refuses to degrade normally. Others slow down so much that age becomes theoretical.
Meanwhile, newer supes age.
Slower than normal. Sometimes unevenly. But still forward.
That isn't evolution.
That's revision.
Compound V wasn't perfected.
It was adjusted.
Early versions were dangerous. Unstable. But they interfered deeply with biological aging. Newer versions are cleaner, safer, easier to predict and they let time resume its work.
That wasn't a flaw.
It was a decision.
Immortality creates problems. How can you control a living god who doesn't age?
My work over those four years didn't focus on power.
Power is loud. Obvious. Easy to spot.
I focused on what V did quietly how it rewrote priorities inside the body. Which systems it reinforced. Which ones it allowed to fail later.
Longevity wasn't removed accidentally.
It was negotiated away.
The deeper levels of the factory exist because of that realization.
Those are the spaces where I compare generations. Where samples don't glow or hiss or look special. Hair. Blood. Traces left behind when someone bleeds and doesn't think twice about it.
Nothing dramatic.
Just evidence.
I don't work alone.
I never pretended to.
The perimeter is watched constantly. Cameras don't blink. Sensors don't get bored. The people guarding the place aren't loyal to me they're loyal to routine, to paychecks, to silence.
That's better.
They don't know what's below them.
Sometimes, late at night, I stand at the lowest level and listen to the building breathe.
I think about how young supes are still being made. About how parents are told they're giving their children a gift. About how the gift keeps changing depending on who's holding the pen.
I think about Annie.
About how clean her adaptation is.
She's part of a newer generation.
But she also had luck.
On the second underground level I pull up Cate Dunlap's file.
Not because I need to read it.
I already know it.
Some people pace when they think. Others smoke. I scroll through information I've memorized so my hands have something to do while my mind works elsewhere.
Her name appears on the screen.
CATE DUNLAP.
Curent Age: 14.
The file unfolds exactly as I remember it.
Medical markers. Neurological anomalies. Notes written by people who confuse control with understanding. Her power is described in clinical terms that carefully avoid responsibility.
Telepathic influence. Behavioral override. Memory interference.
Compound V-induced mutation, localized primarily in neural pathways associated with emotional regulation and cognitive authority.
Nothing divine about it.
Just biology pushed to the extreme
I lean back slightly, eyes still on the screen.
People call powers miracles because they don't understand mechanisms. Once you strip away the language, V isn't holy or cursed. It's a mutagen. An invasive rewrite that doesn't ask whether the host is finished growing.
Children adapt better.
That's the excuse.
What they don't say is that children also don't resist.
Cate's isolation is documented, but not condemned.
Preventative containment, they call it.
A locked room framed as caution. Limited exposure framed as responsibility. Her parents didn't do it because they were cruel. They did it because fear was easier than uncertainty.
I don't judge that.
Judgment doesn't add information.
I switch to another file. Then another.
Other young supes. Similar ages. Similar injections. Different outcomes.
Some are aggressive. Some unstable. Some celebrated early because their powers are loud and visible. Cate's isn't loud.
It's inconvenient.
A power that doesn't break walls but people.
I glance back at her neurological scans.
Her brain doesn't just project influence it leaks it. Unintentional activation. Feedback loops. Emotional spikes that propagate outward whether she wants them to or not.
She isn't malicious but unfinished.
Compound V doesn't wait for maturity.
I know that if I stood near her, it wouldn't affect me.
Because my bioelectric field is dense enough to reject external modulation. Her signal wouldn't synchronize. It would slide off.
That doesn't make me feel heroic.
It makes me think about how arbitrary immunity really is.
I minimize the file and let it sit in the corner of the screen.
My real thoughts aren't about Cate.
Compound V didn't create gods.
It created variants one stable another not.
Some whose mutations slow aging, others whose bodies continue degrading once the enhancement plateaus.
That's not divinity.
It is selection pressure.
Older supes didn't age because early versions of V were less controlled. They broke things they didn't know how to repair. Newer versions fixed that problem by letting time work again.
Immortality was never removed by accident.
It was removed because it caused complications.
People don't want eternal variables.
They want assets with expiration dates.
I close Cate's file.
Not because it troubles me.
Because it's complete.
She's one more example of what happens when biology is treated like branding. One more data point in a system that optimizes outcomes and externalizes costs.
I don't feel sorry for her.
I simply recognize the pattern.
The factory hums around me.
Aboveground, people still argue about whether powers are blessings or curses.
Down here, the answer is simpler.
They're mutations.
And mutations don't care what stories you tell yourself to justify them.
They simplie exist