The decision doesn't feel dramatic.
It doesn't arrive with urgency or doubt. It's just there, clear enough that arguing with it would be dishonest. I've been sitting underground for too long, scrolling files I already know by heart, letting my hands move while my mind works elsewhere.
Cate Dunlap. Fourteen.
I notice I'm not reading anymore.
That's usually when I leave.
Night meets me at the factory exit cool air, quiet streets, no witnesses. The suit is already on: black, matte, built to disappear rather than announce itself. No symbols and shine. Nothing that would turn a glance into a second look.
Liftoff is still a switch in my chest.
Flying makes sense to my body in a way walking never quite did. I keep low, skimming the city where roofs replace roads and lines of light sketch the infrastructure beneath everything people pretend matters.
Control came before power.
That's why I trained where mistakes couldn't hurt anyone far below the surface in the ocean.
Breathing stopped being necessary years ago.
Now it's habit. Muscle memory. Solar energy stored and distributed keeps everything running. I still inhale sometimes without needing to, like a reflex left over from another body.
Another life.
The house appears sooner than expected.
Small. Ordinary. Almost aggressively normal. One light upstairs. Everything else asleep. No cameras. alarms. Nothing that suggests anyone expects trouble to arrive from the outside.
I circle once. Then again.
Nothing changes.
That bothers me more than defenses would have.
I land lightly, wait, then knock once on the glass.
The light snaps off.
Silence thickens.
I don't move. My hands stay visible. I don't lean in.
While I wait, my mind does what it always does.
Two heartbeats downstairs. One heavy sleeping on a couch or chair. One lighter, steady, in a bedroom. Pipes ticking. Refrigerator cycling. A clock somewhere off-beat by a fraction of a second.
Up here, Cate moves carefully.
She's learned how not to make floors complain.
The curtain shifts a centimeter.
I let my vision deepen not comic-book x-ray, not skeletons and spectacle. Layers instead: heat, conductivity, neural microbursts, muscle tension. Enough to see what Compound V changed without pretending it made her something else.
Her nervous system is dense. Overwired. Signals travel fast and not always where they should. Stress leaks outward.
A mutation.
Not a miracle.
The window opens a crack.
"Who's there?" Her voice is quiet, controlled. Too controlled for fourteen.
"I won't come in," I say immediately. "I won't touch the window."
"I don't know you."
She watches me like a problem that hasn't decided what kind it is yet.
"Why are you here?"
I don't have a polished answer.
"Because some things don't look the same from a distance."
She snorts softly. "That sounds like a movie."
"I didn't plan it," I admit. "That's probably worse."
She studies me. I feel the tension in her shoulders, the way her body holds itself ready. She believes control is survival.
"Are you one of them?" she asks.
"No."
"Vought?"
"No."
She doesn't relax. Rrcalculates.
Her signal spikes barely. Not an attack. Stress. Her power bleeds when she's overwhelmed, not when she chooses to use it.
"Don't," I say, before thinking too hard about it.
Her eyes sharpen. "Don't what?"
"Try to push," I answer calmly. "It won't work."
Silence.
Not fear confirmation.
"How would you know?" she asks.
"Because I can see it," I say.
She exhales through her nose. "No one sees."
"I do."
Footsteps downstairs shift. Someone turns over. Not awake yet.
Cate hears it too. Her posture tightens.
"Why me?" she asks quickly. "Why here?"
I hesitate just long enough to be honest.
"Because I've read too much about you."
Her breath catches. "Who has a record of me
She opens her mouth, closes it.
"My parents?" she says, and the word carries edges.
I don't answer right away.
Her gaze drifts, searching the room for something phone, exit, anything that would make this less strange.
"I don't hurt people," she says suddenly. Fast. Defensive. "I don't try to. Even when I think
She stops herself.
Her hands tremble, just barely.
I see everything: the micro-contractions, the overloaded pathways, the way her system tries to contain itself.
This isn't malice.
It's overload.
"I know," I say. "That's not what this is about."
"What is it about, then?"
"That no one should be locked away because someone else is afraid."
The sentence is simple.
It lands harder than anything clever would have.
"Easy for you to say," she snaps.
"Yes," I agree immediately. "It is."
That throws her.
People usually lie there.
Footsteps again. This time closer.
She stiffens. "You have to go. Now."
"I am."
I take a step back, hands still open.
Before I turn, I add one thing because leaving without it would make this worse, not better.
"You're not broken."
She freezes.
"I don't know you," she says.
"That's true."
"So don't pretend."
"I'm not."
The window shuts. The curtain drops.
I lift off only after I'm several houses away, careful not to leave a sound where it would matter.
My heart's faster than usual.
Not fear.
Responsibility.
This was supposed to be a closer look at how v affects different people, I just had to scan her, I didn't have to talk to her, but i did
This wasn't research. Wasn't observation.
I fly back slower.
My mind keeps counting angles and probabilities, but something else sits underneath it quiet, unresolved.
Files never show that part.
Seeing her hate herself so much for something she doesn't understand that most people would give anything for and yet
tonight, for the first time in a while, I'm aware that knowing everything doesn't mean understanding it.
Not yet.
I stop thinking passing another intersection
That's the decision.
Not a plan or calculation just a clean mental cut. The city is still below me, the night still wrapped around buildings and streets and people who have no idea I'm here.
Fuck it.
I tilt upward and push.
The first acceleration slams through my body like a switch being thrown.
Force field automatically generated by my body enveloped me so I didn't have to worry about ruining my outfit, it would be average to come back naked after the first serius flight.
Air tears past me, resistance climbing fast, pressure stacking layer by layer. The sound builds immediately wind screaming, compressing, folding in on itself.
I start grin without realizing it.
Speed climbs violently.
The city blurs, then vanishes. Clouds rush up to meet me and explode apart as I punch through them. Moisture flashes cold across my skin, then it's gone, shredded by heat and velocity.
The sound peaks.
A sharp, brutal crack
The sonic boom detonates behind me as I rip past the speed of sound.
I laugh out loud.
Can feel it every cell reacting, vibrating, thriving. This isn't strain its release. Like my body's been waiting for permission to stop pretending it has limits.
The sky darkens fast.
Blue thins to deep navy, then to black so clean it feels artificial. Air stops behaving like air. Pressure drops. Heat spikes briefly, then disappears.
No drag or noise.
Just motion.
I keep accelerating.
Not because I need to but because I want to see how it feels and how fast can I really fly
The atmosphere peels away beneath me in layers. The curve of the Earth snaps into focus suddenly, shockingly close. Clouds flatten into texture. Oceans become color. Cities collapse into tiny constellations of light.
My heart is hammering.
Not panic.
Pure exhilaration.
Solar radiation hits me raw the moment I clear the last meaningful trace of atmosphere.
It's instant.
My body drinks it.
Energy floods systems I don't consciously control, lighting them up like circuitry coming online. Every cell reacts at once not pain, not heat something closer to pleasure. Confirmation.
I throw my arms out and let momentum carry me.
I'm not flying anymore.
But falling upward.
Space is silent in a way nothing on Earth ever is. Especially for me every day I hear hundreds of thousands of sounds if I hadn't learned to control it I would have gone crazy and now there was complete silence like never before.
No vibration. No background noise or friction. Just me, velocity, and the planet spinning beneath my feet.
I slow myself instinctively, bleeding speed without effort until I'm floating.
And then I see it.
Earth fills my vision.
Massive. Blue. Alive.
The atmosphere is barely there a fragile, glowing edge clinging to a spinning rock full of noise and chaos and meaning people fight over like it matters more than survival.
Up here?
It's just beautiful.
I feel high.
Not chemically. Biologically. Every system in my body humming, balanced, charged. My mind is razor-clear and completely overwhelmed at the same time.
I can't stop smiling.
I turn slowly, letting stars slide into view.
Not twinkling. Not romantic.
Just there.
Cold fusion furnaces burning without caring if anyone's watching. Massive, ancient and brutally honest.
For the first time since this life started, I don't feel watched.
I don't feel like a variable someone might someday want to control.
I float.
No breath.weight. effort.
Just existence.
Every cell in my body feels like it's celebrating like this is where the rules finally make sense. Like the universe stopped pushing back and decided to let me be real.
I don't belong to Earth the way I thought I did.
And realizing that?
That hits harder than breaking the sound barrier ever could.
Eventually, I know I'll go back.
Gravity always gets its turn.
But right now, suspended between a world that doesn't know me and a universe that doesn't care, I let myself enjoy the simplest truth I've felt in years:
I am free.
And nothing is trying to stop me in any way.
As soon as I regained a modicum of mental stability, I noticed I had stopped near a satellite. The only thought that entered my super-fast brain at that moment was, fuckkkk.
And as quickly as it appeared in my head, which was practically instantaneous because I had super reaction time, I burned it away with a laser. But deep down, I knew it was too late.