Your Superhero

Chapter 1

Christopher

What. The. Fuck.

What happened?

What did they do to me?

Is this some fucked up experiment?

"What happened?" I croak, throat still sore.

The boy stares at me.

I decide that really, I don't care. There's only one thing that matters right now.

"Give my body back," I demand, coming closer.

His expression turns a little worried. Am I in his body right now? Or should I say her body? Is her power that she can steal other people's bodies?

"Give it back!"

The person with my face swallows. "I can't," they say.

"Why?" I ask heatedly. "WHY?"

"Because she didn't choose this, either," a dark voice says from behind me.

I jump, stumble forward in an effort to evade a potential attack and turn.

The man is tall. His shoulders are broad, his expression is professional, his suit expensive. Even I can tell as much.

"Who are you?" I ask, positioning myself so that I can see both the person now inhabiting my body and the man.

He doesn't move.

"You can call me Mr Meyer. I'm with Atlas," he says evenly.

Right. Because why wouldn't he be with the company that all but rules this city.

They were the first ones to react when the powers came, thirty years ago. They swooped in and brought order to a city at the brink of a civil war. They gathered volunteers with powers, established a special police force. I suppose they're like the Avengers, except they have a lot more 'heroes' in their ranks because fighting crime rings with people whose powers you don't even know is a pretty fucking deadly endeavour.

They researched the powers until they found out that it was all connected to some new virus that had by that point already spread around the world. It has some really complicated name – a combination of letters and numbers nobody ever bothered remembering – but everybody just calls it the Atlas virus. It's dormant in most people, barely active, but in some it changes their bodies, gives them abilities; superpowers. They were the ones to find out that new powers mostly manifest in teenagers, mapped the early signs of building powers, and built a school to teach these teenagers to handle themselves, preferably without blowing the city to bits.

I don't know anybody who has powers, but I've been there when they came to my school to do the tests. They do that regularly, four times a year in every grade. Because, while the powers usually only build in teenagers between the ages of fifteen and nineteen, there have been children of only seven years chucking fireballs around the playground.

Yes. Life in a city with superheroes can get a little messy.

When they do the tests, they're taking in the amount of cells in our blood that have been affected by the virus. They call them atlas cells, because of course they do. Don't ask me about the details, I'm not a scientist. All I know is that four times a year, they'll prick your finger and put a drop of your blood into a small device and then they'll know whether you're gonna develop powers within the next few months.

There's no system to it. It's unpredictable who gets powers or even what kinds of powers. There's almost everything. Healing abilities are the most respected, I suppose, because they can't kill anybody with their powers. They usually get pretty well-paid jobs at hospitals, particularly the strong ones.