Chapter Text
Anya blinked and exhaled slowly. She heard the people beyond the door talking; their voices were hushed and frightened. She floated to the wall and flipped the light switch off. The room wasn't dark - the blue glow from the computer screens still illuminated a good deal - but the dimmer light helped to make her feel more comfortable.
She contemplated what happened. Her first reaction was anger at whatever stunt Zainab tried pulling, but now that she was in the solitude of the empty room, she had a chance to analyze it further. Zainab hadn't been secretive about anything that whole morning. The opposite, really; she talked so much that Anya sometimes felt lost in the weeds among all the new Earth vocabulary words. Nevertheless, Zainab didn't seem like someone who would do something to bother her on purpose.
It was probably buried in what she had been saying, Anya realized. In all that chatter while she laid back in the exam chair, Zainab had probably been explaining what she was going to do, but she hadn't listened. She had been too focused on stealing a nap.
She sighed. Of course the one time she actually needed to pay attention to the doctor's words was when she hadn't. Her newfound comprehension of Zainab's innocent intentions didn't make her heart stop pounding fiercely in her chest or keep her muscles tensing into knots, though.
She saw a shadow interrupting the light filtering in from beneath the doorway. A timid knock came. Anya drifted over and opened the door.
"Oh- hi," Zainab uttered sheepishly. "I'm sorry for scaring you back there." She looked away nervously.
"It's not your fault," Anya replied quietly, a touch of embarassment in her tone.
"I brought your clothes if you want to change."
Zainab held out the bundle in her arms and Anya took it. She stripped down and changed in front of her again, just as uninhibited and shameless as she had at the beginning of the day. When finished, she folded the paper gown neatly and handed it back.
She doesn't realize these are disposable, Zainab thought. It was a sliver of humor in an otherwise uncomfortable situation. It still puzzled her why Anya had reacted so negatively. She thought she had been clear enough on what she intended to do. The room, exam table, and equipment themselves were obvious, not to mention she pointedly mentioned it was an ultrasound more than once. Anya had behaved perfectly for everything else. In fact, during their conversations, Zainab was surprised to learn that there weren't very many differences in medical technology between Viltrum and Earth. They did a lot of the same tests that humans would do when pregnant - urine analyses, fundal height measurements, fetal heart tone monitoring. She decided to bring it up.
"Can I ask what bothered you? It was probably like any other ultrasound you've had before. I can't imagine the technology being too different."
"I don't know what that is."
"You don't...? Uh, imaging of your fetus to check for abnormalities?"
Anya shrugged.
"What did they do on your home planet instead?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing? Never? At any time?"
"We're all perfect, so, nothing really to look at."
"Ectopic pregnancy never happens?"
Anya stared at her uncomprehendingly.
Zainab cocked an eyebrow. "What about to find out the sex of the baby?" She knew it could be determined by blood test as well, but blood wasn't easy to draw from Viltrumites.
"I can see that with my eyes," Anya explained simply. "But for everyone else, we wait until birth to find out."
Zainab bit her lip. She terribly misjudged things.
"I understand that you're upset now and want somewhere quiet to decompress. Perhaps you could stay in a different spot? How about that room across the hallway?"
Anya shook her head. "I am going to stay here." She was still feeling flighty, still felt her heart thudding in her chest. She wasn't ready to shuffle to a new place yet; she wanted to wait for her muscles to calm down.
"But over there it's even darker, and quieter, and you can still be by yourself. I can bring you over a big stack of pillows and all the blankets we have."
"No," Anya said automatically.
Zainab lowered her head and rubbed her brow in frustration.
"The problem is that whoever it was that designed this wing made it so the only entrance to the labs is through that door." She pointed to a door behind Anya. "My team has time-sensitive experiments happening right now and those reactions will need quenched soon or else they're ruined."
"I'm not stopping you."
"But you actually kind of are, because everyone is too afraid to come in while you're here." Although Zainab didn't think Anya was scary at all, Omni-Man's rampage was too fresh on everyone else's minds. She knew her staff wouldn't return to the office with an upset Viltrumite in there even if she waved a gun at them.
Anya shrugged. That was fine by her. She preferred having the room to herself, anyway. Zainab's team could repeat their experiments if they needed.
"These tests have deadlines," Zainab added. "We need results, need to write reports. It's important for global security. We don't do any of this for our own entertainment."
Anya turned around while Zainab spoke and sat down on the floor against the back wall.
"You don't even care, do you?" Zainab asked, annoyed. Anya didn't reply but pulled one arm across her chest and stretched it, then switched to the other.
Zainab audibly exhaled in defeat. "We'll have to talk later." That left her no choice but to involve the director.
-
Zainab took a deep breath. Director Stedman had always intimidated her, and he didn't look happy as he approached.
"Okay, now what's going on?" he asked impatiently.
He was well aware Viltrumites had excellent hearing and Anya, cloistered in the office next door, would be able to hear everything they were discussing. Anya likely did not realize that he knew that. But, he wanted her to hear everything. He hoped it would convince her that they weren't scheming anything. They really weren't, at least not with the medical exams. He had only a few goals in mind: verify her claims to further confirm that she wasn't a spy, see if they could solve her vomiting issue, and find out more about what made Viltrumites tick and hopefully, somehow, find a weapon effective against them.
Zainab nervously wrung her hands as she spoke, briefly summarizing the situation.
"And you know," she concluded, "She was so unbothered by everything - the best patient I've ever had, handling everything like a champ. I mean, she didn't even wait for me to leave the room to change clothes. I would call her bored, even. It came as such a shock when she fled. And an internal ultrasound may be awkward but it's not painful or anything like that," she tried explaining to him, unsure how familiar he was with the technology. His mood didn't seem to be improving the more she talked.
Cecil thought Dr. Ghani's story was on par with what he had personally observed of Anya. He had noticed a reoccurring pattern - she would be seemingly perfectly all right until very suddenly, she wasn't. It made dealing with her more dangerous. The casualness about nudity in Viltrumite culture would have made everything more misleading, too, and have given a false impression of her being at ease.
"Then I told her, 'I am going to put this inside' and she didn't make a peep to the contrary, and when I started to do so, she freaked out."
Cecil exhaled and rubbed his palm on his forehead. "Is that verbatim, what you said?"
She nodded.
"She's an alien, she probably doesn't know what 'inside' means. You have to be extremely literal."
He thought back to her questioning with Mason, where Anya had used the correct anatomical terms for everything. He wasn't sure if she even knew any slang.
"She didn't understand what you were doing and was suprised and felt threatened when she figured it out. Also, isn't this supposed to be trauma-informed care? You were told about her history of sexual trauma? But you didn't ask her before proceeding if she understood what you were going to do?"
"Well, actually, no. I don't normally see patients," she rebutted. "I am a researcher, first and foremost. I wanted the medical degree just to learn what I needed for my research." Her tone was defensive, but she lowered her eyes to the floor, regretful.
"Anyway," Cecil continued, changing the subject. "Did you manage to learn anything?"
"Some things," she replied, noticeably brightening at the opportunity to talk about data.
"I haven't had the time to look in-depth at anything, of course, but her tissues match what we've observed in Omni-Man and Invincible; basically, very similar to humans, but a lot stronger. Her brain scan did show some differences. She has a larger occipital lobe and more gyri in that location. That is to say, the region of her brain that deals with vision and sensory processing is bigger and she has more folds than usual in that area."
Cecil nodded - that part made sense. "What about her food issue? Did you see anything related to that?"
"Her condition reminds me of an intractable case of GERD - acid reflux, if you will. Poor little thing. Not all the symptoms align but that seems to be the closest thing I can think of right away. That's the simultaneously good and bad thing with Viltrumites: they're immune to everything, including medicine. I'd like to do additional imaging so I could get more clues on what could help."
"The kind of imaging where she would have to drink that nasty barium contrast dye? No, I don't think she'd go for that."
Zainab shrugged, a little disappointed.
"All right, and the other question you wanted me to find out about. Let me preface this by saying, you'd be surprised to learn there's not many physiological differences between a nulliparous and parous woman, barring something like an obvious C-section scar - which of course a Viltrumite's healing factor means they'd never have one. We're playing a game of averages here but on average, in humans, the uterus of a parous woman - someone who has had a child - is statistically larger than that of someone who is nulliparous. That's what I wanted to use the internal ultrasound to find out and, well, we didn't get there. There's also changes in the appearance of the cervix but, again, we didn't make it that far. So I can't draw any conclusions. But she talks about everything very convincingly, so either it really happened or she's done a lot of research."
"That's that, then," he said slowly, thinking over what he had heard. "I'll go talk to her now."
"You'll have my full report on Monday," Zainab added quickly, trying to end their meeting on a positive note.
-
Cecil noticed darkness under the door; the lights were off. What, was she planning some kind of an ambush? He wasn't deterred. He knocked before entering to avoid startling her. No response. He took a single step inside and gently shut the door behind him. The room was very dark now. The computers had fallen asleep, their screens black, nothing perceptible in the room except Anya's reflective eyes staring back at him from her corner as he stood in the threshold.
"Hey, Anya," he greeted casually. No response from her.
"Mind if I switch on the lights? So I can see."
"You may," she answered. He flicked them on. Her eyes returned back to brown. She was fully dressed in her usual clothing and hovering high up near the ceiling, like she had done yesterday at the elevators when she was scared.
"What are the consequences now?" she inquired.
"What do you mean?" He took a few steps forward and sat on the edge of a desk, hands in his pockets, ankles crossed.
"The punishment for not complying to the exam."
"Nothing. You always have a choice. You don't have to do anything you don't want to do here." He was satisfied enough that she didn't hurt anyone or break anything.
She studied him with her density vision and he seemed to be telling the truth. He was very calm, which surprised her.
"Are you hungry? The weather's nice; we could go outside and eat lunch," he suggested. Past experience had taught him that beasts and people alike could be placated by food.
He also thought she'd appreciate being outside. In other instances where she'd been distressed, he noticed she always sought the outdoors. He wouldn't mind seeing the sun for a change, either.
"Mmm, okay," she hesitantly agreed. His offer surprised her, but he still seemed to be telling the truth. She lowered herself until her feet were back on the floor again. Her hands were still tensed.
Cecil turned and exited the room with Anya following him. Zainab covered her mouth in shock at seeing the two leave together.
"He was in there less than two minutes and got her to come out," Zainab huffed under her breath, watching them disappear down the hallway.
-
Anya followed Cecil calmly at first, but when they neared the cafeteria and the number of people around them increased - it was peak lunch time by then - he noticed that she was creeping too close to his side again, nearly touching him.
Not this again, he thought disdainfully.
When they entered the dining hall, he pointed to an empty table and chair.
"Sit here while I get food." It would force her to get off him. She did as he asked, looking around with big eyes at her surroundings.
In the cafeteria he grabbed the first thing he saw from the fridge for her, a cold grilled chicken wrap. He wasn't going to bother getting anything for himself until he remembered that it was Wednesday. The GDA cafeterias received fresh bread and pastries from a local bakery on Wednesdays. He grabbed a croissant from the basket on the counter and paid for the items.
Anya had obediently stayed where he left her. He locked eyes with her and bent a finger for her to get back up and follow him outside.
The Pentagon's courtyard was crowded with lunch-goers, but thankfully a group was leaving their table just as Cecil and Anya entered and he was able to grab it. He sat down first and set her wrap across the table; she understood the message and took the opposite seat facing him.
The brown paper cylinder was cold to the touch. She tore off the paper and examined the contents. On either end of the cylinder she could see little chunks of a white meat interspersed with green leaves and other kinds of colorful vegetables, all encased in a bread-like wrapping. She had never eaten this food before, but that was the case for most things she ate on Earth. She began delicately unwrapping the bread layer.
"You just hold it and eat it," Cecil explained quietly.
She nodded and did as he said. She thought it tasted fine. Cecil ate his food, too, another sort of bread product. It had a light sheen on the surface and crumbled apart easily with every bite. She wanted to try some, but didn't think it was a good time to ask.
She contemplated her situation. Cecil had been true to his word: he obtained food for her and brought her outside, just like he said he would. It was a nice gesture, she thought, and she felt obligated to explain what had happened earlier and justify her reaction.
"I thought she was just going to look at my vagina, but then she touched me-"
"It's fine." Cecil cut her off quickly, not desiring to hear the rest. "Are you okay?"
"I am very fast." She grinned. He supposed that meant she was fine, judging by how she continued to eat her food seemingly unperturbed and and casually swung her legs back and forth as she sat.
She chewed thoughtfully.
"I know Zainab didn't mean any harm," she continued. She had heard Cecil's conversation with the doctor and noticed the disapproval he had in his tone. But she wanted him to know that the lady hadn't done anything wrong.
"I...well, I wasn't really listening to what she was saying at the time." She felt too shy to confess the entire truth, that she had been trying to take a nap.
"Don't worry about it," he said with a tone of finality, wanting to put an end to the topic. They ate in silence after that.
Anya contemplated how eating with Cecil was surprisingly peaceful. They hadn't sat down and shared a meal before now, she realized. He didn't chat like Donald did, but he had a reassuring presence that made her feel like everything was going to be okay. She pondered where he must have gotten his self-assurance from. After some thought, she settled on the idea that it was because he was the leader and accustomed to having control over everything. If she had all of Earth's forces under her command, she reckoned she would probably feel the same.
Cecil noticed Anya had finished her food and was calmly watching the clouds overhead.
"Do you want to take a nap now?" he asked, ready to go because he had things to do. She seemingly slept on-and-off all day and he figured it was a good suggestion.
"No. I'm not tired anymore."
He wasn't sure what else to do with her. She had been pawned off to Donald enough times yesterday and today; Donald needed a chance to actually get work done.
He looked around. "You could go play outside at your exercise area. I'll have someone let you in when you're ready to come back."
"I would like to stay with you, actually," she suggested timidly. She was curious what the leader of Earth did at work. She had already spent extensive time at her arctic training grounds since arriving on the planet and was bored of that place, anyway.
He contemplated it. There was nothing particularly secret on his docket that afternoon. Moreover, it could be an opportunity to help him decide her long-term placement.
She had freaked out twice in the last twenty-four hours. Sure, her reactions had arguably been warranted, but at the same time, he needed her calm. He couldn't have her terrifying everyone all the time.
He briefly considered sticking her in his office again, but that would tell him nothing. Letting her follow him, though...that would give him a clearer picture of what he was dealing with. Was she always going to be this reactive, or was this just a rough start, a combination of circumstances and coincidences that were triggering and brought out the worst in her? Letting her accompany him would let him better judge which one it was and determine where to put her.
If things went well, he planned on eventually placing her in a household with two adults, an Earth host family for her. But if she continued being unpredictable, she would have to live at the GDA's facility for superpowered children. She was a little old to be there, but if she kept acting dangerously, it left him no choice.
"That should be fine," he said.
Anya’s face brightened. She fell in step behind him once again as they headed inside and returned to the GDA’s underground levels.
From her perspective, it seemed like his job was about walking around to different places and talking to people. Cecil didn't explain anything to her and without context, she didn't understand much of what was happening around her, either. But he seemed to know where he was going and what he had to do. He spoke with authority and other people respected and obeyed him.
She liked seeing the different places of the GDA. Just having anything different than her boring routine at the trailer was enough of a treat. She noticed everyone looking at her funny as she followed him around. She was dressed in a long-sleeved t-shirt and leggings, very different than the button-up shirts, skirts, and trousers they wore - but no one spoke to her directly nor acknowledged her presence.
Cecil was satisfied with Anya's behavior as she accompanied him. She didn't tag behind him overly closely so long as she wasn't in a crowded area. She stayed out of his way, quiet and unobtrusive, a fly on the wall as much as she could be. Literally like a fly, he thought, as he'd glance over to see her sneaking away to inconspicuously regurgitate chunks of her lunch into a nearby garbage can.
He thought this was going well.
But when he stopped by the men's restroom, she tried following him inside there, too.
"What? No. Stay there," he scolded. God - aliens, he groaned inside his head.
She waited outside and when he emerged, they continued their rounds. He popped inside one of the main control rooms. It was a large room with rows of desks with computers and people sitting at each one. At the front of the room was a wall almost completely covered with screens. She caught Cecil studying the screen and she looked at it, too. In the center, the monitor relayed video of a large crowd of humans and some kind of protest happening outside a large building. More examples of the mismanagement of Earth, Anya thought. Disruptive demonstrations were never permitted within the Viltrumite Empire. She noticed that the view looked different than the drone-captured footage of Nolan's last battle on Earth. This appeared like an overhead perspective with a far wider angle.
"Is there a drone capturing this footage?" Anya asked quietly, her voice barely audible over the patter of the fingers tapping on the keyboards of the workstations surrounding them. It was the first time she'd spoken since they started their rounds. She hoped he wouldn't mind her intrusion.
"No, it's satellite," he replied automatically, without looking at her.
A wave of comprehension washed over her. These images were coming from all those things she noticed out in space. The satellites must have been the flat metal winged things drifting in the outermost parts of the atmosphere. Viltrum had satellites, too, for communication and so forth - Anya didn't know much about the technological details, she considered them not much more than space debris she needed to avoid hitting. But she hadn't expected Earth satellites to be capable of such a crisp, detailed view of the surface.
It made sense to her now, why Cecil had said he could find her anywhere on the planet that first night she met him. As she studied the big screen longer, it started to make more sense what was happening. On the left and right sides of the central video feed were smaller screens. One showed faces of the protestors in the crowd. The other seemed to be scrolling through a database, trying to match the faces to any people known to have superpowers. The murmurs of the staff were making more sense; they were concerned about the situation escalating and wanted to be prepared for defensive action if needed.
They could certainly pick my face out in a crowd, too. I would need to hide it with a mask in that scenario, Anya thought. Cecil and the people at his agency had been good to her so far, but she would remember that fact if she ever needed to defy them.
Then Anya realized something else. Had they been using the satellites on her all this time, too? Every time she was outside? She was dangerous, after all. Much more dangerous than the humans they were currently evaluating, even the superpowered ones. They must have certainly been using the satellites, she concluded. She thought about that and what she had done outside so far. She landed on Earth and spent a short time with Brit; that had been uneventful. Then she got to the trailer and when she found out about Nolan, she became quite upset. She remembered crying on the porch that night quite clearly. And then yesterday, coming to the GDA for the first time...they definitely had the satellites trained on her that whole time, for how unstable she must have seemed in that moment. She certainly cried then, too. At the time she was okay with it because she thought it had happened in private; there had been no one physically around her on the roof top, or on the trailer's porch. How mortifying they actually saw all that, instead.
Cecil looked over and saw Anya's cheeks flushed. He wondered why, then glanced back at the central monitor from the corner of his eye. Ah, she figured out we've been watching her this whole time, he thought. The GDA was the closest thing to a real-life Santa Claus; an array of satellites and cameras around the world checking to see if the inhabitants were being naughty or nice. He was glad Anya was aware of it now. It should motivate her to stay in line.
Anya heard the sound of the door sliding open and looked over to see Donald entering the room. She was excited to see him again and wanted to ask what he had been doing since that morning. Donald made eye contact and seemed happy to see her, too, but didn't speak to her directly when he walked over to where she stood with Cecil.
"This could be a good opportunity for Anya, sir," Donald said. He meant the first chance she tried taking down an enemy and keeping them alive - a human, not a creature. He remembered her worries about it and wanted to give her the best shot he could. He nodded his head toward the front where a new video appeared alongside the others, this one displaying a live feed from a downtown security camera.
Anya watched carefully. Someone was in the middle of a traffic intersection, surrounded by big black vehicles. He looked like a normal human except that he had electrified whips emanating from his hands. He was lashing them in all directions to try penetrating the cars.
"The armored SUVs are transporting, uh -" Donald paused, unsure of what Cecil intended to keep secret from Anya - "government assets."
"Have right at it," Cecil said, his tone blasé. It was only one villain and not terribly much at stake at that, either. They would normally send GDA soldiers to deal with simple matters like these. He agreed that this was as good an opportunity as any to see if she could handle missions with people involved.
"Show her where the missile launch shafts are," he told Donald. "It's a straight shot to the outside - she can exit faster if she flies out from there."