CHAPTER SIXTEEN: REFLECTION

The motel room smelled like rust and sweat.

Taylor sat on the edge of the bed, her spine hunched, clothes soaked in blood. Her hands trembled as she pressed a wad of torn fabric against the gash in her side. The adrenaline was fading fast, and with it came pain—sharp, nauseating pain that made her head swim and her stomach lurch with every minute movement.

She didn’t know how deep the cut was—only that it hadn’t stopped bleeding.

She needed a hospital.

But the moment the thought even crossed her mind, another followed: she couldn’t risk it. Limping into an ER, giving her name, lying her way through forms and questions she couldn’t answer—Where are your parents? Why didn’t you report this to the police?—froze her just as surely as the pain. She’d be immediately flagged as a minor with no guardian in sight.

She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to think, to stay conscious, as her vision darkened at the edges.

And then, something strange occurred.

The pain was fading, becoming duller now. Numbed. As something else was blooming beneath it—a warmth that appeared out of nowhere. Not exactly comforting. Just… different.

Taylor blinked, her pulse thudding in her ears.

At first, she thought it was a hallucination. Shock, maybe. Blood loss.

But when she looked down, the blood had slowed. And beneath the torn fabric, she felt the wound—a long, ugly slash across her side—knitting itself shut. Muscles reformed and skin smoothed out.

The pain was gone. Not even a throb remaining. 

She stared.

Her mouth went dry.

No. No. That wasn’t right. That wasn’t normal.

She leaned back, heart pounding for entirely new reasons. This wasn’t her forcefield. This wasn’t adrenaline or shock. This was something else. Something she hadn’t known she could do.

By now, she was aware her power was more than what it first appeared to be. She hadn’t understood it fully, not even now. But she knew there were gaps in her knowledge. Things that didn’t fit the neat boxes powers were supposed to.

It had always felt like more was waiting beneath the surface, coiled tight and just out of reach. And ever since she started fighting—not running, not hiding, but fighting—that dormant potential had begun to awake. 

And now?

Now she was self-healing. 

Was her power just one thing: the energy she could feel deep within her bones, all these were simply expressions of said energy? Or was there something more at play? 

Her fingers trembled as she peeled off her jacket, then her shirt, grimacing at the pull of fabric against half-dried blood. She walked into the bathroom, flicked the light on, and stood before the mirror.

A tiny scar.

Fresh. Pale. Still pink and tender. But the flesh beneath it had sealed. Healed.

She reached out, touched it lightly, as if it might still hurt. It didn’t.

Taylor stared at herself in the mirror, at the faint steam rising from her skin. Her eyes locked on her own reflection—too bright, too unnatural. The way her vision reached past the foggy glass, past the flickering motel bulb, past the visible.

And then she remembered the threads. Those strange glowing filaments she had seen—hovering above Sophia’s head, above every cape she had encountered.

At first, she’d dismissed them. Afterimages. Light tricks. Paranoia. Maybe even trauma from the locker. After all, there had been too much going on to linger on just one thing, no matter how insane it seemed in hindsight.

But now, alone in this silent, dim bathroom, she couldn’t dismiss it anymore.

Those threads meant something.

If they marked parahumans—if that was what she was seeing; an expression of their power or something—then Sophia wasn’t just a girl with a mean streak. She was something else. Something dangerous. 

Part of the same ecosystem Taylor had found herself in. 

“Who the hell do you work for?” Taylor muttered, staring into the mirror like it held answers. She thought of Sophia—her speed, her skill, the way she moved with confidence bordering on arrogance. She was definitely too volatile to be a Ward. Too cruel. Too reckless.

No. She wasn’t on the side of the angels.

Maybe Sophia worked for one of the smaller gangs. A group like the Undersiders—Brian had mentioned he was part of them, almost casually. It had sounded like nothing at the time.

But now?

It might have been his way of telling her he knew who she really was. That he knew Sophia. 

She looked away from the mirror. 

Speaking of things that couldn’t be controlled…

Taylor let her gaze drop to her hands—then deeper, further. And at that moment, the world clarified. 

Through the lens of her Six Eyes, she didn’t just see her hands. She saw the space around them for what it truly was. Not empty. Not static. But infinite.

Her breath caught, her fingers curling slightly as she lifted one hand, watching as the air shimmered faintly—particles drifting toward her only to slow, and slow further, until they stopped entirely, suspended in space like dust trapped in amber. The effect was seamless. Perfect. Anything that moved toward her would be caught in that endlessly halved distance, forever approaching, never touching.

It was like watching the laws of physics bend around her—like space itself had started taking cues from a different master. One that answered only to her.

This wasn’t just a forcefield. Not really. Now that she was paying attention, she could feel it—pressing at the edges of her awareness, not passive, but waiting. Malleable. Like it wanted to move. Shift. Do more.

Could she shape it? Redirect it? Turn defense into offense?

She didn’t know. But she had to try.

Her fights were escalating too fast, enemies too brutal, the stakes too high. If she didn’t adapt—if she didn’t take control—then sooner or later, she wouldn’t walk away.

No more guesswork. No more surviving by instinct and luck.

It was time to learn. Time to own whatever this was becoming.