Day 182. 22:00 hours.
Forbes Park.
The Peacock Mansion.
Room 7.
The celebration had started with tears.
Paolo had cried the moment the four women standing in a row in his room told him — the particular tears of a man who was twenty years old and who had just been told he was going to be a father four times.
The tears came before the laughter, before the picking up, before the Sailor Moon doll.
They came from the place where Paolo kept his sister Mara, who had died of leukemia three years before the freeze, and whose life-size Sailor Moon doll Paolo had carried through five months of apocalypse because the doll was the last piece of her.
And now life was coming back — four lives, four children, four particular children that were his and were Carmen's and were Esperanza's and were Sofia's and were Lina's — and the tears were the particular tears of a man who had not dared to hope for this and was now holding it in his hands.
He had cried.
Then he had laughed.
Then he had picked up Lina — the smallest, the one who did not speak, the one whose selective mutism had made her the quietest of the five — and had held her against his chest and had whispered into her hair.
"We are having a baby." Paolo breathed, his arms tightening around Lina's small frame, his cracked eyeglasses fogging from the warmth between them.
Lina had not spoken.
Lina had nodded — the particular nod of a woman who did not speak and whose not-speaking was, in Paolo's arms, the loudest yes.
Then Carmen.
He had put Lina down and picked up Carmen, and Carmen had laughed — the particular laugh of a woman who had started this, who had asked for a child on Day 161, who had been the first, who was always the one who went first.
"We are having a baby," Paolo whispered, his voice cracking on the word baby as though the word itself was something fragile that might break if he said it too loudly.
"We are having four babies — because I am not the only one, and you are not getting out of the other three." Carmen corrected, her dark eyes glinting as she cupped his face in both hands, her laugh warm and fierce and particular to a woman who had asked for this and had gotten it and was now claiming all of it.
Then Esperanza.
The nursing student whose clinical hands were not clinical at all.
Paolo had picked her up, and Esperanza had cried.
"We are having a baby," Paolo murmured against her hair.
"I know — I have known for three days, I was just afraid to say it because saying it made it real and I was not ready for real." Esperanza stammered, her whole body trembling against his chest, her fingers gripping his shirt.
"You are ready," Paolo reassured her, pulling back to look at her face.
"I am ready," Esperanza confirmed, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.
Then Sofia.
The one with the clipboard.
Paolo had picked her up, and Sofia had held up the clipboard — in Sofia's precise handwriting, a list.
'Morning sickness day one, morning sickness day two, morning sickness day three, positive pregnancy test day three, four positives, four pregnancies, logged.'
"You logged it." Paolo marvelled, reading the list with wet eyes and a disbelieving laugh.
"I logged it — I log everything," Sofia confirmed, her voice flat and clinical and controlled in the particular way a voice gets when the person behind it is using control as a shield against the enormity of what is happening.
Then the Sailor Moon doll.
Paolo had put Sofia down and picked up the doll — the life-size doll that was Mara, that was the last piece of his sister — and he had hugged it.
The particular hug of a man holding his dead sister's doll and crying because the doll was Mara and Mara was gone, and Mara would never meet the children, but the children were coming.
"She would have liked you," Paolo whispered to the doll, his voice barely audible, his tears falling on the plastic hair. "She would have liked all of you."
"Mara — you would have been an aunt, you would have been the best aunt, you would have held them and named them and read them Sailor Moon until they fell asleep, and you are not here, and I am sorry, I am so sorry, but they are coming and I am going to tell them about you, I am going to tell them everything." Paolo grieved, holding the doll against his chest, his eyes closed, the tears running down his face and onto the plastic and the particular everything of a brother who missed his sister and was about to be a father four times.
Carmen had watched.
Esperanza had watched.
Sofia had watched.
Lina had watched.
Four women watching the man hold the doll and cry and talk to his dead sister, and the particular watching of four women who loved a man who loved a doll who was a sister who was gone.
Then the crying had stopped, and the laughter had stopped, and the doll had been propped against the lamp and the clipboard had been set down, and the cracked eyeglasses had been removed, and the ice spear had been leaned against the wall and the particular everything-that-came-after had started.
Carmen started it.
Carmen always started it.
— • • • —
The celebration was not a celebration of words — it was a celebration of bodies, the particular bodies of five people who had been told that life was coming and whose response to life-coming was to make more life.
Carmen kissed him first, her mouth on his, her hands on his shirt, the shirt coming off.
Esperanza joined second, her hands on Paolo's chest, her mouth on his neck, the nursing student whose clinical was gone.
Sofia joined third, her clipboard on the nightstand, forgotten — the particular forgotten of a woman whose clipboard was her everything and whose everything was, in Room 7, not the clipboard.
Lina joined last, her small body against Paolo's, her dark hair against his chest, the one who did not speak and whose not-speaking was expressed as body.
The bed.
Five people.
One bed that was not large enough, and the not-large-enough was part of it. Bodies on bodies, the particular puzzle that the Orgy Five made when they were together.
Carmen was on him first — the particular first of Carmen who always went first.
Her legs around his waist, her dark eyes on his, her body naked and brown and riding him with the practiced rhythm of a woman who had been riding Paolo since Day 161 and whose riding was the thing she had asked for.
"Your cold is — God, your cold —" Carmen gasped, her back arching as Paolo's ice power hummed and the room temperature dropped and her nipples hardened against his chest.
"It is cold." Esperanza moaned from Paolo's face, her warmth on his mouth, her body trembling — the particular trembling of a woman whose core was on a cold tongue and whose cold tongue was the thing she had not known she wanted.
"I logged it — cold, nipples, logged," Sofia announced from beside them, her hands on Paolo's chest, on Carmen's back, on everything.
"Shut up, Sofia." Carmen panted without breaking rhythm.
"Logged," Sofia confirmed, and went back to touching.
Lina did not speak.
Lina's mouth was on Paolo's ribs.
Lina's small body was curled against him, fitting in the spaces the others left — the particular curl of the smallest who was, in the pile, the one who fit where no one else fit.
The ice power hummed, and the room cooled to fifteen, and then ten, and the particular cold that made nipples hard and skin prickle was Paolo's contribution, the Enhanced ice that was not ice and snow in Room 7 but was the cold that was Paolo's and that the four Baseline women felt when Paolo was aroused and that made the particular harden-and-prickle that was his.
Four rounds.
Four women.
Four celebrations — Carmen first, then Sofia with her metronome hips, then Esperanza whose clinical was gone, then Lina who climbed on last and whose not-speaking was, in the riding, expressed as a gasp.
"He is inside me, and I can feel him, and I am not speaking because I do not speak, but I can gasp, I can gasp, and the gasp is my voice and my voice is the gasp, and he can hear me, he can hear me even though I am not speaking." Lina cried out silently, her small body arching, her dark hair flying, her mouth open — the particular open of a woman who did not speak but who could gasp and whose gasp was, in Room 7, Lina's voice.
Paolo came inside each of them — four times, four women, four celebrations.
The particular four of an Enhanced whose libido was Enhanced and whose Enhanced was not Del Rosario but was Enhanced and was, after four rounds, still not done.
The Sailor Moon doll watched from the nightstand.
The clipboard lay forgotten.
The ice spear leaned against the wall.
Room 7 was busy, and Room 7 was going to be busy for a long time.
— • • • —
Day 183. 07:00 hours.
The infirmary. L2.
Alessia was at her station.
She had slept — four hours, the particular four hours that a healer who was also a doctor allowed herself when the data was waiting, and the body was demanding.
Jae-min had made her sleep, and the making-her-sleep had worked, and the working had given her four hours of rest that was not data and was not interpretation and was just — rest.
But the data was still there.
The four groups.
The cross-match results.
The pattern she could see and could not name.
She opened the tablet and looked at the groups again with fresh eyes, with four-hours-of-sleep eyes, with the particular eyes of a doctor who had rested and was now going to look at the data again and see — what?
Group one: Jae-min, Ji-yoo, Yue.
Group two: Mark Jordan, Elena Vasquez, Aiko, Gabriel, Elena Cortez.
Group three: Rico, Alessia, Jennifer, the woman in white.
Group four: Tessa, Kiko, Father Emil, Jomar, Sarah.
She looked at the names in each group and at the powers, and the question that she had not asked yesterday — because yesterday she had been overwhelmed by the four groups and the pattern and the everything — came to her now with the clarity that only four hours of sleep could provide.
The question was: what puts a person in a group?
"I have been looking at the blood and the cross-match and the essence genome, but I have not been looking at the powers — I have not been looking at the one thing that every Enhanced person has, and that is the most obvious variable, the thing that determines everything else, and I have been staring at it for weeks without seeing it." Alessia realized, her blue eyes widening as the question formed, her hands going still on the tablet.
She needed more data.
Not just cross-matches — other tests.
The particular tests that a doctor with a jury-rigged lab, a sequencer, and a centrifuge could run.
She started with the essence genome — the second genome, the genome of the power.
She had mapped it, sequenced it, and run the compatibility numbers.
But she had not compared the essence genomes across the four groups.
She had compared individuals.
She had not compared groups.
She pulled up the essence genome data for all twenty Enhanced and looked at Group one first — Jae-min, Ji-yoo, Yue.
She compared their essence genomes, looking for similarities, differences, and patterns.
She found it.
The essence genomes of Jae-min, Ji-yoo, and Yue shared something — a structure, a signature, a particular something in the essence genome that was the same in all three.
Not identical, but similar in the way that three keys cut from the same blank are similar — different teeth, different cuts, but the same blank, the same underlying shape.
She pulled up Group Two — Mark Jordan, Elena Vasquez, Aiko, Gabriel, Elena Cortez. The same thing: a structure, a signature, the same within the group. But different from Group One.
A different signature.
A different blank.
Group three — Rico, Alessia, Jennifer, the woman in white. The same thing. A signature. Different from Group one, different from Group two.
Group four — Tessa, Kiko, Father Emil, Jomar, Sarah. The same thing. A signature. Different from the other three.
Four groups.
Four signatures.
Four particular patterns in the essence genome were the same within a group and different across groups.
The groups were not random — they were based on something in the essence genome, and that something was the signature.
"Four signatures — the groups are based on the essence genome, not on the blood; the blood is a downstream effect, the essence genome is the upstream cause; and the signature in the essence genome is the thing that determines which blood group a person belongs to, and I have been looking at the blood when I should have been looking at the essence." Alessia deduced, her fingers moving across the tablet, pulling up the signature data for each group and laying them side by side on the screen.
She named them the way a scientist names things — by letter. Signature A through Signature D.
Group one: Signature A. Jae-min, Ji-yoo, Yue.
Group two: Signature B. Mark Jordan, Elena Vasquez, Aiko, Gabriel, Elena Cortez.
Group three: Signature C. Rico, Alessia, Jennifer, the woman in white.
Group four: Signature D. Tessa, Kiko, Father Emil, Jomar, Sarah.
The pattern was clearer now. But the question remained: what determined the signature? What puts a person in Signature A versus Signature B versus Signature C versus Signature D?
She looked at the names in each group. At the powers.
Group one: Jae-min had Space and Time. Ji-yoo had Gravity and Force. Yue had Space. The powers were — fundamental. The forces that held the universe together. Space and time, gravity and force. The fundamental forces.
Group two: Mark Jordan had Black Hell Flame. Elena Vasquez had Earth. Aiko had Metal. Gabriel had Wind. Elena Cortez had Thermal Manipulation. The powers were — elemental. The classical elements. Fire and earth and metal and wind and heat.
Group three: Rico had Superhuman Strength. Alessia had Life. Jennifer had Telepathy. The woman in white had Regeneration. The powers were — body. The body enhanced. Strength of the body, life of the body, mind of the body, healing of the body. Body enhancement.
Group four: Tessa had Warmth Aura. Kiko had Plant Manipulation. Father Emil had Light Projection. Jomar had Stone Shaping. Sarah had Bio-Detection. The powers were — support. Not combat. Not fundamental. Not elemental. Not body. Support. The powers that helped.
"The powers — the powers determine the group, the group determines the blood, the blood determines the compatibility, and the Enhanced are divided into four categories based on their powers, and I have been looking at blood types and cross-matches and essence genomes for weeks when the answer was right there in the power itself, in the thing that every Enhanced person has and that is the most visible and obvious characteristic and I missed it, I missed it because I was looking at the blood when I should have been looking at the power." Alessia breathed, the realization hitting her with the force of a door opening, the particular force of a doctor who has been staring at a locked door and has just realized the key was in her hand the whole time.
She sat back. Her blue eyes on the screen. Her hands still. She had found the first piece of the picture — the pattern was the power.
But she was a doctor, and a doctor did not stop at finding. Doctors verified.
Hypothesis: the essence genome signature, and therefore the blood group, is determined by the type of power the Enhanced individual possesses.
Fundamental powers equal Signature A.
Elemental powers equal Signature B.
Body enhancement powers equal Signature C.
Support powers equal Signature D.
Prediction: If the hypothesis is correct, then any Enhanced individual with a fundamental power should have Signature A blood and be in Group one, and so on for the other categories.
Test: She had twenty Enhanced individuals, including Chocho, who can transform herself into a ten-foot-tall nine-tailed fox with a lightning clad, with known powers and known blood groups. She could verify by checking that every individual's power matched their group.
She checked.
One by one.
Jae-min: Space and Time, fundamental — Group one. Match.
Ji-yoo: Gravity and Force, fundamental — Group one. Match.
Yue: Space, fundamental — Group one. Match.
Mark Jordan: Black Hell Flame, elemental — Group two. Match.
Elena Vasquez: Earth, elemental — Group two. Match.
Aiko: Metal, elemental — Group two. Match.
Gabriel: Wind, elemental — Group two. Match.
Rico: Superhuman Strength, body — Group three. Match.
Alessia: Life, body — Group three. Match.
Jennifer: Telepathy, body — Group three. Match.
Woman in white: Regeneration, body — Group three. Match.
Tessa: Warmth Aura, support — Group four. Match.
Kiko: Plant Manipulation, support — Group four. Match.
Father Emil: Light Projection, support — Group four. Match.
Jomar: Stone Shaping, support — Group four. Match.
Sarah: Bio-Detection, support — Group four. Match.
Sixteen matches.
Sixteen out of sixteen. She checked the remaining three — Elena Cortez, Paolo, Lena, Chocho — and they matched too. Elemental, elemental, body, body. Twenty out of twenty. Every individual's power matched their group.
The hypothesis held. The pattern was verified.
"Twenty out of twenty — the powers determine the group, the group determines the blood, the blood determines the compatibility, and the Enhanced are divided into four categories based on their powers, and every single person fits, the pattern is real, the pattern is verified and the first piece of the picture is in place," Alessia confirmed, her blue eyes scanning the screen one final time, her hands steady on the tablet, the satisfaction of verification settling through her like warm water.
She was about to close the tablet when she saw it.
The anomaly.
— • • • —
Day 183. 08:00 hours.
The infirmary. L2.
Alessia was staring at the screen. At the cross-match results that she had verified and that had all matched, and that had — one that did not match.
She went back through the list, one by one, re-verifying because something was wrong.
Jae-min: Space and Time, fundamental — Group one. Match.
Ji-yoo: Gravity and Force, fundamental — Group one. Match.
Yue: Space, fundamental — Group one. Match.
Mark Jordan: Black Hell Flame, elemental — Group two. Match.
Elena Vasquez: Earth, elemental — Group two. Match.
Aiko: Metal, elemental — Group two. Match.
Gabriel: Wind, elemental — Group two. Match.
Elena Cortez: Thermal Manipulation, elemental — Group —
Alessia stopped.
She looked at the screen. At Elena Cortez's cross-match results. At the particular results that she had filed yesterday and that she had just verified as a match and that were — not a match.
"That is not right — Elena Cortez is Thermal Manipulation, that is elemental, that is Group two, but her blood is Group one, her blood is fundamental, her cross-match with Jae-min is compatible and her cross-match with Mark Jordan is incompatible, that means she is in the wrong group, she is in the group that does not match her power, the pattern is broken, the pattern that I just verified twenty out of twenty is broken by one person, and that person is Elena Cortez." Alessia realized, her hands going cold on the tablet, the particular cold of a scientist who has just found the crack in the foundation.
Elena Cortez was elemental.
But her blood was Group One. Fundamental. The same group as Jae-min, Ji-yoo, and Yue — the Space and Time and Gravity and Force group.
The group that Elena Cortez should not be in because Elena Cortez's power was Thermal Manipulation, Thermal Manipulation was elemental, and elemental was Group Two.
Alessia pulled up the cross-match.
Elena Cortez against Jae-min: compatible.
Against Ji-yoo: compatible.
Against Yue: compatible.
Against Mark Jordan: incompatible.
Elena's blood was Group One. Her power was elemental. The data contradicted itself.
She pulled up Elena's essence genome and looked at the signature. Signature A. Not Signature B. The fundamental signature. Not the elemental signature. Even though Elena's power was elemental.
The essence genome is fundamental. The power is said to be elemental. The pattern said elemental should be Group Two.
Elena was in Group One.
"One person out of twenty — one person whose essence genome does not match her power, one person whose blood is in the wrong group, and I need to know why, I need to know what makes Elena Cortez different, because the pattern is real, twenty out of twenty is not a coincidence, but one out of twenty is not a coincidence either, one out of twenty is an anomaly, and anomalies are the things that break patterns open and show you what is underneath." Alessia deliberated, her blue eyes narrowing at the screen, her mind running through the possibilities the way her hands ran through test results — systematically, methodically, looking for the variable she had not considered.
She pulled up Elena's file and read it again, all of it, looking for the variable that made Elena different.
Elena Cortez. Twenty-four. Computer Science. UP Diliman. Thermal Manipulation. Enhanced. Walked eleven days barefoot from Parañaque to Pasay. Found Jae-min because she felt his void from three kilometers away.
Felt his void from three kilometers away.
Alessia read that line again.
Felt his void.
Jae-min's void.
The void that was Space and Time. The void that was fundamental. Elena Cortez had felt the void from three kilometers away. Had walked eleven days to find it. Had found Jae-min because of the void.
"Why could she feel the void? — elemental powers do not feel voids, elemental powers manipulate elements, fire and earth and metal and wind and heat do not sense spatial distortions, only fundamental powers sense spatial distortions, only Space and Time, Gravity and Force sense the void, and Elena Cortez felt the void with an elemental power, and that is not possible, that is the anomaly, that is the thing that does not fit, and the not-fitting is not just the blood, it is the power itself — Elena Cortez's power is not what I think it is." Alessia concluded, her hands still on the tablet, her blue eyes fixed on the line about the void, the particular line that she had read before and had not thought about and was now, in the light of the anomaly, the most important line in the file.
What was Elena Cortez?
Alessia did not know.
She was not going to guess — she was a doctor and a scientist, and guessing was not medicine and guessing was not science.
She was going to test.
She was going to run more tests, get more data, find out what Elena Cortez was.
She filed the anomaly.
Eight pieces of the puzzle now — the seven from before and the eighth, the Elena Cortez anomaly.
Elemental power, Group one blood, can feel the void, does not fit.
The picture was clearer.
The pattern was the powers.
But the picture had a crack, and the crack was Elena Cortez.
— • • • —
Day 183. 10:00 hours.
The infirmary. L2.
Alessia was running experiments.
She had found the before-samples in the back of the refrigerator — blood drawn in the first weeks, before the Threshold, before the regression, before the Enhanced.
Before-samples from the original household: Jae-min, Ji-yoo, Rico, Alessia herself, Hua, Jennifer, Yue, Chocho, Aiko, Paolo, Mark Jordan, Elena Cortez.
She pulled Jae-min's before-sample first.
Day 5. Before the regression, before the void, before everything. She ran the typing kit — anti-A, anti-B, anti-D, the three circles.
Clumping in the first circle. A+. Clumping in the third. Positive. A positive. Jae-min's blood type was A positive before. Normal human blood.
She ran his after-blood. The impossible blood. Not A+, not B+, not AB+, not O+, not positive, not negative. The shifting.
The before was A positive. The after was impossible. The enhancement had changed it.
She ran Ji-yoo's before-sample. Day 5. A positive. Normal. The after: impossible. Changed.
She ran Rico's before-sample. Day 10. A positive. Normal. The after: impossible. Changed.
She ran her own before-sample. Day 12. A positive. Normal. The after: impossible. Changed. Her own blood had changed — from AB positive to impossible, from human to not-human, and she had not known, had not felt it, had not seen it, but it had changed.
"My blood changed and I did not know — I crossed the Threshold and my blood changed from AB positive to something that does not have a name, and I have been walking around for weeks with blood that is not human blood and I did not know, and that means every Enhanced person in this compound has been walking around with blood that is not human blood and none of us knew, and the implications of that are — I do not know what the implications are, but they are large, they are very large." Alessia reflected, staring at her own before-and-after results on the screen, the A positive and the impossible sitting side by side like a before-and-after photo of a transformation she had not consented to and could not reverse.
The Enhanced body changed the blood. The before was normal — A positive, O negative, B positive, whatever. The after was impossible. The Threshold rewrote the blood. Every Enhanced. Every time.
Then she pulled Elena Cortez's before-sample. Day 14. Before the Threshold, before the Thermal Manipulation.
B positive. Normal. The before.
She ran Elena's after-blood. Impossible. The shifting. Group one. Fundamental.
A positive to impossible-Group-one. The Threshold had given Elena an elemental power but a fundamental blood. The power and the blood should match — elemental power means elemental blood, fundamental power means fundamental blood. That was the pattern. Nineteen out of twenty matched. Elena did not.
"What made Elena's blood Group one — what variable, what factor, what thing during the Threshold determined that Elena would get an elemental power but a fundamental blood type, and is it something about Elena herself, something about her DNA, something about her essence, something about the Threshold, or something about Jae-min — because Elena found Jae-min, Elena felt his void, and the void is fundamental, and what if the void is the variable, what if proximity to Jae-min's void during the Threshold is the thing that determined Elena's blood group, what if the fundamental signature in Elena's blood is not from Elena but from Jae-min." Alessia theorized, her mind running through the variables the way it ran through test results — fast, systematic, discarding the ones that did not fit and holding the ones that did.
She did not have enough data. She needed to test Elena directly — run more tests, ask more questions, find out what Elena could do and what Elena felt and what Elena was.
But not today. Today she had the data — the before-samples, the after-samples, the pattern, the anomaly. Eight pieces of the puzzle.
She closed the tablet and looked at the infirmary — at the two women on the cots, healing, one more day of bed rest. At the station. At the slides. At the data.
— • • • —
Day 183. 12:00 hours.
The infirmary. L2.
Ji-yoo was sitting up on her cot. Yue was sitting up on hers.
One more day.
Alessia checked them. Ji-yoo's kidneys — healed. The stitches — dissolving, the silk being absorbed by the body. Yue's gashes — closed, the sutures holding, the skin grown over the silk.
"One more day," Alessia announced, checking Ji-yoo's flank with practiced fingers.
"One more day and then I am hitting something." Ji-yoo pledged, her dark eyes sharp with the anticipation of a woman who had been counting ceiling tiles for three days.
"Light duty — no combat, no training, light duty for three more days, then full," Alessia instructed, pulling the bandage tighter.
"Light duty," Ji-yoo repeated, the words coming out with the particular tone of a woman who was accepting orders she did not like.
"Light duty," Yue confirmed, her marble eyes already calculating whether hitting a punching bag counted as light duty.
"Does hitting a punching bag count as light duty?" Ji-yoo asked the question directly at Alessia, but her eyes were directed at Yue.
"No," Alessia answered flatly.
"It depends on the bag," Yue observed, tilting her head.
"It does not depend on the bag — light duty means light duty, and light duty does not mean hitting things." Alessia clarified, pointing at both of them.
"Copy," Ji-yoo grumbled, exchanging a look with Yue that said they were going to have this argument again tomorrow.
Alessia left them to their argument and went back to her station. The tablet. The data. The eight pieces. The pattern. The anomaly.
"The pattern is the powers — fundamental, elemental, body, support, four categories, four signatures, four blood groups, verified twenty out of twenty. The anomaly is Elena Cortez — elemental power, fundamental blood, can feel the void, does not fit. The next step is Elena. I need to test her. I need to talk to her. I need to find out what she is, because the answer to Elena is the answer to the puzzle, and the answer to the puzzle is the answer to everything — the DNA, the blood, the compatibility, the conception, everything." Alessia planned, opening the tablet and starting to log the day's findings — the before-samples, the after-samples, the pattern, the anomaly, the next step.
The investigation continued.
Eight pieces.
The pattern: powers determine the group.
The anomaly: Elena Cortez.
The next step: investigate Elena.
Test her.
Find out what she was.
The picture was forming.
The particular forming of a puzzle that was, piece by piece, becoming something that Alessia could almost see.
Not yet.
But almost.
The investigation continued.