"Can I have my phone back?" I ask Damien. He holds it far away from my face as possible, grinning a big not-Damien smile.

His face softens into a beam, then he hands my phone back, giving his ukulele (which I looked up a few nights ago just to check that it was the right instrument) one last triumphant strum. "You said I got ten views?" Damien's all hushed up, but it's a happy hush up. "Ten people saw it who don't even know us?"

"And a few comments. I don't know how you get it out there and get more but I think you're supposed to... cover songs?" I say. This isn't the part of YouTube I usually look at, but I also don't usually watch much YouTube. I'm all for bright lights and noise but it drains the battery, and when I start using electrokinesis too much, the others notice. Where am I supposed to hide myself while watching it, anyways?

"What's a cover?" asks Damien, grasping for my phone again.

I draw it away. "I think it's when you take someone else's song and sing it for them. It's very big. I don't know the names of any songs, tho-ough, so I guess we'll just have to learn a few. We'd have to practice in secret, though? Remember what I said about not telling Red or Dylan. Or Gillian. Or uh... maybe just don't tell anyone. I think everyone would probably snitch eventually."

Damien strums the ukulele hard. "Mary wouldn't." He looks so hopeful about it. No, brother, no. You already know that that's not true.
"Mary wouldn't deliberately snitch. You know that she'd say something on accident as loudly as she poss-i-bly could and then it would be the same thing, anyways, except she'd treat the whole thing like it was your fault. Put her hand on your head." I demonstrate, then say in Mary's ratchety high voice, "How could you, Damien?"

Damien drags my hand off his head. It takes effort even though I'm not pressing down very hard. Guy needs to get some muscles on his bones. Needs to shift some muscles in. It wouldn't even be that hard for him to do. "Stop, I get it. Thanks for doing this for me, anyways, Alex. It means the whole world to me."

"You're so sentimental," I tell him. "Calm down, buddy. I'm doing it because we're friends."

Damien nods real quick. "Yeah. Thanks for letting me use the phone, Alex."

Ah yes. I am still the phone guy. I hold the phone in my hand, where it stares back at me. My face is reflected back up through the screen so I can see myself from behind it.

When we wander back to the group, we sit in silence for a while. Mary is kicking rocks out from under her from where she leans against an old, dead tree, and Gillian's face twitches a bit at the corners every time she does it. Both of them look as mutinous as the dark sky overhead, although it hasn't rained at all. The bad weather has been over our heads for what seems like weeks now, but even I'm losing track of the time, and I'm the one who knows.

Because of the phone. I settle myself next to them, falling against the tree far enough away so that I don't accidentally hit Mary, and ask, "Am I useful?"

"Of course we need you, you dummy," Mary scoffs. "Without you, who would guide us into the next town?"

"The phone," I say.

"Well, there's... you know all these things about people that we don't, which are probably more right than the things Angel says... and more accessible..." mumbles Damien.

"I only know any of those things because of the phone," I say.

"You are capable of dispelling electricity from your body, which ensures the phone is charged. Forever." Gillian has her arms crossed across her body. "This is why we gave you the phone. You are the most effective with it."

"Is there anything I do that maybe isn't related to the phone?"

"You are a tool. You have expressed this to me." Gillian's eyes narrow.

"Finally, we can agree on something! Alex is such a tool," Mary says, gripping Gillian around the neck with her arm. I think Mary's trying to be affectionate, but she's about as affectionate as a large, deadly snake. You begin thinking that maybe you don't want to be friends at all the second it gets comfy with you.

I turn and head for the high, dead grass that currently surrounds our campsite.

"Hey! Where do you think you're going?" calls Mary. "Stop being such an attention hog!"

I leave our little indent between rows of grass, which seems to be some kind of median, and follow the grass out into the fields. The sun peeks from between two clouds, allowing a golden light to shine down on the land. I can feel it on my skin, but suddenly I don't want it to be my skin anymore. I imagine myself taking it off, feeling the thing underneath, and then I am shedding. Human flesh peels away with an electric crackle into a better skin, which feels the air. I feel my horns make their way from under the human covering, becoming bone as they touch the air, and two new legs touch the ground just as my arms adjust to grab it. I am the largest, most horrifying lizard, complete onto myself, bursting with pure lightning.

That is what is under my skin: tell me I am a tool to my face. I want to scream but this is a thing that doesn't need words. If I want them, the Veritas still has human teeth. I can feel them, boxy in my mouth, and the curve into a smile that extends all the way to the back of my face. I lash my tail, feeling electricity run down it, and the tail curls at the end, gently touching the phone.

I usually sit around and charge the phone right about now, instead of doing anything fun with my powers. All this energy and I discharge it into the little box so they can keep using me. That is the social contract we have going here, but at the moment, I am not too fond of it. Instead, I sprint down one of the rows of grass, swinging my tail around to shock the grass. Anything that doesn't bend out of the way burns to a crisp. I can taste the dryness in the air. Before-storm weather. Lightning.

I am lightning.

A storm crackle of joy sings from my throat, and I swing around again, mowing the other side of the field over. The sky sings in tandem, a fierce electric sensation running from the sky above us in all its cold down to me, and I am the thunder, also. I call the sky into storms even in the winter season, when there are no storms to be had. Winter thunderstorms have only happened once. I can see it opening now, imagine the sky beckoning with its many hands... the clouds are also a great dragon. I came from something and it wants this. I call back up to the sky, which thunders back, again.

I am about to loose electricity out of every single pore when the phone rings.

I tumble back into human form, the horns still sticking at an odd angle out of my neck, and my last trace of super-hearing and super-smell is footsteps and burning wheat. I dash for it, not that I'm fast, and roll out of the way into one of the safer layers, the ones I didn't knock over. Not really. I want to yell at whoever's there, maybe us, maybe not us: I did that! With my tail! Who's useless now? I could be a fighter, a real fighter...

Maybe the others don't do anything either. I don't know why I felt so bad, I'm definitely not the only one who's... completely useless. I swipe up on the phone, turning the sound off, and the footsteps pass by. "Alex! You should have told me you were going to go Veritas. I'm so bored. Can I join in?"

I want to punch Mary in the face but that's not going to prove much of a point right now. I kind of also want to punch Damien in the face, for using me, and Gillian, for not using me enough. I could punch anyone in the face, but when I'm not me, or not the best version of me, chances of that are... looking bad, generally. If I didn't embarrass myself immediately I would probably last half a fair fight with anyone else. Gillian usually throws me like a cow in a few heartbeats. I shift into a salamander and sit on the phone, which begins ringing again. I hear a swish in the grass and try to turn the phone off with my salamander pads. I end up crouching, human, in the wheat, and Mary grins, parting the wheat.

"I will punch you in the nose," I say to Mary.

Our fight lasts ten seconds. The phone is fine and not ringing. I am bleeding out of the nose and Mary is standing over me with two wings. She hasn't even shifted out of being human. Her face curls up and she says, "You know, you could start trying whenever you're ready."

Tears run down my face, hot and unsteady.

"Should I go grab Gillian for you?" she asks.

Electricity sparks through me and I dive at her again. She steps back, preparing a sword from the open air as she ascends into her Veritas, but as my skin shreds away, again, I don't give her the chance. I pin her down with my front four legs, spreading her arms apart with two, and she shifts into a bird, limbs shrinking, and slices my face up. I feel the pain rupture my eye, hissing, and she swings back around, landing on the ground with a satisfied sneer. Wings fold back into arms before erupting again on the back, and the next time I charge her, she takes a massive form and charges me right back. It's not her Veritas, but it can't be a real animal. It's like a lizard armored in its scales, and possesses huge, red wings against its dark body.

Mary extends her long neck and grabs me by mine, teeth sinking in, and I sense black blood crackle and erupt out of my side, smoking. Mary hisses, "I found this in a book," as she lets go. "Do you like it?"

I nod as well as I can with my ruptured neck. Gillian grows back by now. Gillian gets stronger every time she's pushed down. Mary hates Gillian, and Mary loves Gillian, because Mary could fight Gillian forever. The two of them are like a snake biting its own tail. One does not end and the other does not begin. I try to draw myself up from the dirty earth, hatred flaring through me, but I can't even get off the ground. I hiss dangerously, trying to draw myself up, and Mary looks down at me with dark eyes. She pins me to the ground with one claw. I can sense it sinking into my ribs. I loose lightning, but it trails back into the earth, and Mary's armored face holds her two unaffected eyes in their steady gaze, like red gems, like hatred itself.

"I surrender," I tell her, shifting back. My neck still trickles blood and my vision out of my left eye is weird. "I surrender. I surrender. Please please please stop."

"No need to be so pathetic about it," Mary says, a wisp of smoke curling from her mouth. With a grin, she lets me up, and I remain on the ground. "Just the surrender, and then I'll let you up whenever I'm ready to let you up. Sound fair?"

I nod. My whole body runs hot and cold. I can sense my blood boiling in my ears.

"Thanks for playing with me," says Mary. "We don't get you on board often, but really, you're such a treat."

My hands clench into fists. I let her leave me alone in the field, sense her footsteps receding, again, and when she is gone I smell the dirt and its iron pang, like my own blood. My heart pulses a few times in my chest and then goes back to being still as I recede the rest of the way out of my Veritas. The pain is human pain now, but it's still there, and I hate it. I get up, grab my phone, and my body, full of hate, opens the one thing I'm good at and presses the unbloody side to my head.

"Hello hello?" I ask the man on the other side. "This is, uh, this is me. You're you, I think, and that's all we know about each other."
"Thanks for the introduction," says the man. The phone makes his voice sound cold, but he might also just be cold, because, after all, he is the man. "How's your progress? We're awaiting you on the East Coast. As promised, I'm using the royal 'we' here, that is to say, only I'll be here. I'm doing this on the orders of a colleague. I imagine the only bonds you have are interpersonal, so I imagine that you'll respect that I do this, in her name, in good faith."

"What's interpersonal?" I ask. "What's a colleague?"

"Interpersonal... between people. Such as your group. A colleague is a coworker. Someone you do your job with." The man explains in a voice that sounds like phone static.

"A job is the thing you do, right?" I ask, carefully.

"Yes."

"I do my job alone. It's all I'm good at. As for interpersonal, my group is full of jerks who are the worst and I hate them." I say. "Don't tell them that."

The man laughs over the phone. "I won't. You're still coming, though?"

"Yeah we're still coming," I say. "Stop calling me. You're so needy."

"I'll double down on calling you only once a week, then. In fact, if you're so insistent, I can draw it back to once every two weeks."

"No no! I... like having someone else to talk to," I bite my tongue. Stupid. Stupid. Has to be another word for stupid. Idiot. Yes. Stupid idiot. How dare you. "You're an... adult? We don't have adults, and no one actually knows what they're doing, except Red. It's scary and I... kind of wish we had someone to take care of us."

The man is silent. I close my eyes. Stupid idiot dumb dumb dumb dumb. Can't believe I'm admitting this to a man. Probably not even a good man. Maybe he's one of the men who wants to take us back to where we were and do all the bad things that Red said Mimsy said people do to people like us, who aren't people.

"Does everyone know we exist?" I ask. My voice is hoarse.

"There are lots of unrelated sightings. Those who know what to look for are certain that something's up, but you've done an excellent job of covering your tracks. There's also the other unfortunate circumstance..."

"Circumstance?" I ask.

"You're all supposed to be dead."

"Oh." I say. "You're an adult, right? I'm just wondering. I don't know."

The man makes a long hissing noise that might be the phone and might be him. "The FBI must be shitting themselves over this call."

"Who are the FBI?"

"Get on track. Please keep moving. If you can do the rest of the trip in a few months, that would be best." He hangs up.

"Okay." The sound rings out empty over the land. I raise a hand to my eye, which still hurts. My face contorts in pain, and I keep moving forwards across the field. The rest of the group looks at me like I am dead, which is probably not the case, but I feel a little hollow right now. Are my Veritas horns still sticking out? I hate getting stuck in the middle. Red raises a hand and Kali lowers it, almost slapping him.

"Kali, what does 'shitting themselves' mean?" I ask.

Kali puts a hand up to her mouth and breathes very hard.