Chapter 7

CLASS R

Annie’s driving, Alexander decided, was not good for the soul. Or his stomach. Or his ankle. And his shoulder had already filed multiple complaints, too.

He was sure the experience had shaved a few years off his life expectancy, assuming it hadn’t already been shortened by train collisions, chemical injections, repeated beatings, and just the worst luck in the world. In the galaxy? Whatever.

Hovercars were a marvel of modern engineering. Graceful, nearly silent, capable of traversing impossible terrain with the ease of a drifting feather.

In the right hands. Annie’s metal hands were not the right hands.

He’d offered to drive, but she’d insisted loudly and with wounded pride that he was in no shape to operate such heavy machinery. He’d given up halfway through her second lecture about ‘taking time to heal’.

Instead, he lay on the backseat, staring at the ceiling as it whisked along the highway, swaying every time Annie overcorrected. She’d found a couple packs of salted mixed nuts in a compartment once they were underway. He’d accepted one, and his stomach had since declared war.

His fault for mixing food with Annie’s driving. Or resting with Annie’s driving. Or simply existing with Annie’s driving.

Still, he had to admit it was preferable to being back in the cell.

Barely.

He took a slow breath and selected his next victim from the pack. Compared to the watery slop he’d been dealing with the past couple of months, they tasted heavenly.

“Do you want to join me up front?” Annie called over her shoulder, her voice bright with the optimism of someone who hadn’t almost flipped a stolen hovercar off an overpass twenty minutes ago.

“No,” he said flatly.

“Suit yourself.”

Another small lurch. He closed his eyes, forcing his stomach into a ceasefire. Time to think about something useful instead of tallying near-death experiences. Though Annie’s driving definitely counted for at least three of them.

“Which city are we heading to?” he asked, keeping his tone casual.

“Argentum,” she replied. “Used to be called San Josebefore the rebrand.”

A spark of familiarity tugged at him. San Jose. He’d known it by that name too. He wondered what had prompted the change.

“It’s huge,” she added. “One of the biggest on this side of the good ol’ United American Directorate.”

Alexander choked on the nut.

“The good old what?!”

Annie twisted around in her seat to look at him.

“Eyes on the road!” he barked.

She snapped back around, cheeks flushing red, and jerked the wheel to correct.

“How do you not know about America?” she asked, glancing at him in the mirror. Her face had taken on the appearance of a freckled tomato. “Were you born under a rock?”

“What? That’s not how it—” Alexander sighed, rubbing his forehead. He was definitely getting a headache. “No, I know about America. My memories are just… a little messed up.”

“Oh! I knew you were a mental patient. I just didn’t say anything to be polite.”

Alexander closed his eyes and counted to five. “I’m not a mental patient,” he said flatly.

“Oh,” Annie said, unconvinced. “Okay.”

He ignored her tone and explained as much of the truth as he dared: the serum, the catastrophic reaction, and the brief moment when, by every measure that mattered, he’d died. Waking in a cremation chamber, drugged and strapped to a conveyor belt. Technicians panicking when he woke.

Annie’s eyes flickered away from the mirror when he mentioned the technicians.

He didn’t mention that he was pretty sure he’d come from an alternate reality where things were actually sane, and people couldn’t fly around breathing fire. Maybe later.

Instead, he told her about the cell. The isolation. The hourly feedings he suspected were meant to wear him down. The collar. The earthquake that had let him escape. The minutes that felt like hours spent climbing, crawling, and fighting his way to the surface.

Saying it out loud left him feeling oddly lighter.

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Annie listened with fascinated sympathy. Enough to make him wonder if maybe he was a mental patient.

Would I even know if I was hallucinating a reality-hopping fugitive life with a cute-but-crazy sidekick with stabby spoon-hands?Probably not.

She surprised him then by sharing her own time in the cells. Same size, but her feeding tubes only activated three times a day. She’d had a tablet and charging bay to read, listen to music, or watch pre-approved old films. Fresh clothes arrived through a slot once a month.

The differences were stark.

Then she veered off-topic. “Oh! And it’s not so weird that you died. Happens pretty often, actually.”

Alexander frowned. “Dying happens often?”

“Yeah. The body can’t always handle the power trying to awaken all at once. Your heart stops, or your brain shuts down—”

“That’s reassuring,” he muttered.

“—but it’s fine. Only about twenty to twenty-five percent actually succeed in awakening a power. Some of those that fail die, and nobody knows why. It’s why not everyone gets the injection.”

She swerved into the wrong lane to pass a slow driver.

“And nearly everyone that awakens a power dies during the process at least once. Ninety-nine-point-nine-nine-nine percent don’t stay dead. It’s a temporary thing.”

Alexander sat up, watching her in the mirror. “Do people ever… remember things that don’t fit? Afterwards?”

“Like what?”

“Memories that aren’t theirs.”

“Nope. Usually people don’t remember much of anything from right after, but they don’t get new memories.”

“Of course,” he sighed.

It’s only me that’s a reality-hopping superhuman criminal mental patient.

They drove in silence for several minutes. Alexander enjoyed the scenery as it passed by. Based on the swerving, Annie was probably doing the same thing.

“So…” Her drawn-out tone warned that a loaded question was coming. “How do your powers work?”

Alexander smiled. “I can tell technology what to do. I think it’s called Technopathy.”

“You think?” she asked, curious.

He explained that the readout had turned an angry red with “REDACTED” when he got the injection.

Annie gasped. “You’re a Class R! That’s so cool! I’ve never met an actual Redacted. They usually just…” She trailed off, realization creeping in. “Oh. Sorry.”

Alexander turned from the window. “What does Class R mean? Beside the obvious.”

She tapped the wheel absently, gathering her thoughts. “Every power has a class, right? Like, how dangerous it is or might be. That’s the letter. E to S. Sometimes R, but that’s more about hiding information.”

He nodded for her to go on.

“E is harmless stuff. Making plants grow faster. Or glow-in-the-dark-pee.” She wrinkled her nose. “S is the big stuff. Blowing up cities. Eating suns. And everyone has a Tier.”

“Right. And R?”

“R means your power is too dangerous to ignore. One guy was a literal vampire and turned others into crazed, lesser versions of himself,” she said, clearly enjoying herself. “Or maybe it’s just dangerous to the corporations and governments. They say it’s for people’s safety, but mostly it means someone disappears.”

It fit what fragments of memory he had. And his suspicions.

“And Tiers?”

“Oh, that’s how big of an impact you can make with your power right now. Like, Tier 1 means you can trash a house. Tier 2 takes you up to a neighbourhood. From there it gets messy.”

“Messy,” he echoed.

“Yeah,” she said with a shrug. “Tier 3 can wreck an entire city. You saw Skybreaker and Star Titan, right? People say they’re close to Tier 4. If they’d been going all out, we’d be dust. Anyway, it’s not important. Nobody seems to agree on how it's all measured. And there’s no scoreboard, just bragging rights and popularity.”

“It sounds important to—”

“It’s boring,” Annie declared. “Nobody cares. Except the graders. And the gamblers.”

“I care,” he muttered.

She ignored him. “Recruiters care, too, I guess. Space Force, the Guilds, governors… and the big corporations want heroes for ‘deterrence’.”

She made air quotes with both hands, which was quite alarming because she was still driving.

Her words picked up speed. “Hollywood and the ad brokers love it. Supes sell protein powder, hoverbikes, and, I dunno, hair gel. Then there are the super sports leagues and charity brawls and holo dramas. And the aliens, too. They call supes dangerous, but they go nuts over hiring them for merc work. There’s a whole agency for extraterrestrial combat contracts.”

Alexander opened his mouth to speak, but Annie pressed on, unstoppable.

“Oh, and the Dicks—” She glanced at him in the mirror, eyes filled with mischief. “Sorry, that’s what everyone calls the Directorate Interstellar Command. They run the military branches, like Space Force. They poach anyone with useful combat powers for ‘strategic system-scale defense’.”

She launched into an off-key singsong:

“Strategic system-scale defense, guarding planets near and far! From bug-eyed freaks and cosmic fleets, grab a blaster and be a star!”

She made little jazz hands at the windshield. Alexander winced as the vehicle drifted toward oncoming traffic.

“They play that every ad break. Guess it’s important, in case somebody starts lobbing asteroids at our colonies again.”

She finally inhaled. “...so, okay, fine, lots of people care. But it’s still boring to talk about.”

Alexander turned to the window, trying not to laugh, but failed. A short, strangled snort escaped.

Annie shot him a suspicious look in the mirror. “What?”

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

She squinted at him, then brightened as if recalling something far more exciting.

She leaned forward conspiratorially, lowering her voice. “...there are rumors that corporations have implants that gamify it. Track your Tiers and growth. Show when you get stronger. Like a progress bar in your head.”

“Gamify?”

“Yeah,” she said, excited. “The basic implants are just for comms and stuff. But the fancy ones track everything. Stats, powers, skill trees.”

She looked genuinely thrilled about it.

Alexander pinched the bridge of his nose. “You’re telling me we can get brain chips that work like a video game HUD?”

Annie nodded, completely serious.

“I’m going to be sick,” he said, closing his eyes and lying back.