The first of them was fired, almost as a test. The giantess manipulated the rocket’s course in the air, aiming for the hole in the face of the thing that had been Hunter. She could see with senses that weren’t sight that something had been done to its chemical payload in that brief moment of handling.

It hit home.

⊙

Her thumbnail worked at a hangnail at her other thumb, trying to catch it between thumbnail and thumbnail as if she could cut it cleanly off.

“Hunter?” the voice came through a speaker.

She looked up. All around her, black threads stabbed from ceiling to floor, floor to bed, bed to wall. She couldn’t move more than a foot before bumping into one. They never cut her, but they did frustrate her.

“Hello?” she asked the empty room.

“I’m going to ask you to close your eyes and keep them closed, and to put your hands over your ears.”

People are always telling me what to do. It makes less and less sense as time goes on. “Why?” she asked.

“I’ll tell you in a minute,” the woman’s voice said. “Call it an experiment.”

Hunter closed her eyes. She pressed palm flat against ear.

She was aware of her power firing off again. Drawing out another thread. This time to the one-way mirror at the one wall. She heard glass break.

“Don’t open your eyes,” a man’s voice said.

She didn’t.

She waited. A minute, the promise had been.

“Is Sam there?” she asked, nervous. Even though she couldn’t hear the response.

Cold compared to room temperature, something touched her. She kept her eyes closed.

It was a hand, cool to the touch. With that touch, a shiver ran through her body. A tension she’d felt was now relaxed.

With a tug, the hand pulled on her wrist, moving hand away from ear.

“We’re okay now,” the woman said.

She looked. She saw a face that had looked in through a window earlier. Freckles from forehead to chin, densely packed to the point there was as much brown as pink. Hair in brown curls with less frizz than Hunter had in her own hair, which was blonde and straight. The woman had tattoos covering her hands, and red fingernail polish on short fingernails.

“There we go,” the woman said.

“My power…”

“It’s under control. A bit of a tweak,” the woman said. “But it won’t keep. It won’t stay like this. Powers are very big things, and as strong as I am, I’m a lightweight in this fight.”

Hunter bit her lip. She wasn’t sure how to feel, but the relief after weeks of struggling with a power she couldn’t control was the biggest thing. It overwhelmed her, really.

“My name is Amy Dallon, and I want to help you,” the woman said.

“I talked to you on the phone. Victoria’s sister.”