Decisions

For the rest of class, Alice experiments with her newfound power: Adding and removing claws, spider spinners, changing her eyes to be more cat-like, and other things she figured she could easily get away with… and in the doing, her limits. First, it only works on flesh: She couldn't change her chair. Second, it requires her to directly touch the flesh of her target with the red from her hands: Other surfaces on her body won't do it, and even thin cloth stops the effect. Additionally, the time it takes varies based on how far away the tissues are from that contact point: Tissues within an inch or so of where she touches conform to her will almost instantly (and she doesn't actually need to move her hands much), it takes a few seconds for flesh within two or three inches, and about a minute for tissues a foot away. Whatever she's making doesn't need to actually exist in nature… but she needs to actually understand how it works. She also doesn't technically need to move her hands to reshape someone… but with the time and distance trade off, it makes things go much faster.

Lost in her own self-scanning and experimentation, Alice is startled by the professor cutting the class loose for the day. She gathers her things, and heads out, going to the art building to check in on her project… to find the entire art building closed, surrounded by yellow tape, and a bunch of people in radiation suits carefully shuffling boxes with radiation symbols into trucks.

Rather than checking the rumor mill (seriously, asking the folks standing around watching is just begging for trouble), Alice pulls up the college website and checks the news feed: “All art classes are suspended until further notice due to a tainted shipment of clay. Anyone who's had contact with clay from the art building in the last two days is encouraged to report to the campus medical facilities for free examination and treatment.”

‘Yeah… no thanks,’ Alice thinks to herself, ‘I'd rather not be quarantined… or cured.’ She turns and walks calmly away.

Unsure of what to do with her sudden free time, and feeling a little peckish, the woman shrugs and heads to the dining hall, gets in line, and holds her student ID up for the scanner…

…where the attendant stops her. “Sorry ma'am, but meal plans are non-transferable. You'll need to use your own ID.”

Keeping her face calm, Alice mentally curses as she flips her ID around and looks at it, “Oh, I guess I grabbed the wrong wallet after having some fun with my boyfriend last night… thank you for letting me know. I'll go sort it out…” a little red faced, she gets out of line, and starts heading for the dorm, mentally cursing as she goes.

‘Okay, think… I can be my true self, but I'm zeroed. All I have to do is temporarily change back, and…’ she pauses, ‘...I don't want to change back, even temporarily. This is ME. If I need to abandon much of my old life… so be it.’

Fortunately, nobody's watching at the dorm, so she presents her student ID to the card reader and gets into the dorm, and her specific room, without issues… where she warms up a noodle bowl to fill the void inside. While she does so, she thinks.

‘It's not just my student ID… it's all my ID,’ lid open a little, pour in some water from her canteen, close lid.

‘Driver's license, passport, high school ID,’ open microwave, set for five minutes, hit start.

‘The important assignments are all electronic, I can largely finish my major…’ she sighs, ‘but it'd all be under Adam. Soon as I graduate…’ the woman taps her foot, ‘if I live that long without at least some actual nutrition… I can't really go to the police for a new ID, I've never been fingerprinted… if they even still match.’

The woman considers carefully, ‘...maybe the right story at the medical clinic? It might not hurt to try. I can obviously recite my own life story to them. If they know I want to stay as I am… maybe?’

Eventually the microwave beeps, and she takes the bowl out, eating the mostly-tasteless noodles with a plastic spork. ‘Not many other options… well, unless I want to be a kept woman with no ID, dependent on her man for everything… no thanks.’

As she finishes, she doesn't have a better plan, so gets up, and heads to the campus medical facilities to see what she can find out…