New Olympus Saga (Book 1): Armageddon Girl by C.J. Carella Page A

talking at a few miles a minute.
    “Also, thank you for taking me here,
Father Aleksander is the nicest guy even if he’s not Presbyterian, which is
okay. I still don’t understand what’s going on, but thank you anyway.” She let
go of me and stepped back, still talking. “But I’m sure we can figure it out
and holy crap where is your face.”
    I realized I had let go of Mr. Grover’s
features when Christine hugged me. That happens sometimes when I’m startled or
lose concentration, both of which had happened this time. No wonder Father Alex
had looked concerned. Christine fell silent for a whole second, and I braced myself
for the shrieking that was the usual reaction when people caught me being
myself. Instead, she stepped close to me. “That’s incredible! Is that why they
call you the Faceless Vigilante?”
    “Well, they mostly call me Face-Off, but
yeah,” I said.
    “Like that old movie with John Travolta
and Nick Cage?”
    “Uu, I don’t remember that movie. And I
know who Nicholas Cage is, but John Travolta? You mean Joseph Travolta?” This
was turning into the strangest conversation in my life.
    “No biggie. Wow, your voice sounds just
like before, but you have no mouth. No anything!” She stepped closer, her hands
reaching for my head. “May I?”
    Typically, people who reach for my face
end up with broken fingers, but I found myself saying “Sure.” Mind control, it
must be some form of mind control.
    Christine gently touched my un-face. Her
fingers ran down the smooth surface, pausing near the area where my eyes should
be. “Does that bother you?”
    “No. It’s as if I was wearing goggles. I
can see you touching the surface, but it doesn’t feel as if you were actually
touching my eyeballs,” I said.
    “That’s amazing. It feels like touching
the back of a skull, but on the front. Has someone done an X-ray of your head?
And you can change face shapes, which means you must change your bone
structure. We’d have to run an X-ray of your head before and after a shape
change. Or an MRI would be better. Holy mother of crap, this is the awesomest
thing I’ve seen!” She was smiling like a kid at a candy store, but all of a
sudden she sobered up. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to sound like you’re a lab rat
or something.”
    “Oh, ah, it’s okay,” I said lamely. I
wasn’t mad at her. I didn’t know what I was feeling, other than shell-shocked.
I was supposed to be interrogating her, and she was ready to conduct a full
parahuman power study on my no-face. Why wasn’t she scared of me?
    “How can you do that?” she asked me, and
there wasn’t a trace of fear or disgust in her voice, just open, almost
innocent curiosity. “How is it even possible?”
    “How can some people fly or pick up
tanks? I’m a Neo, of course.”
    “Neo? Like Keanu Reeves in The Matrix movies?
‘Take the red pill’ Neo?”
    More movies I’d never heard of. And I
loved going to the movies, usually on weekdays during the day, when I could sit
quietly in a mostly empty theater. Cassandra’s words came back to me. Christine
was some sort of alien, supposedly. Except I was beginning to realize she
wasn’t from another planet, not exactly.
    “I’m sorry, but I’ve never heard of that
movie, either. Neo is short for Neolympian.”
    “Okay, now it’s my turn to never have
heard of something,” Christine said.
    Definitely not from around here. This was
going to be interesting. “Neolympians? Parahumans? Superheroes?” 
    “Superheroes?”
    “And super-villains, but most people just
prefer to call us Neos.”
    “I’m going to sit down now,” Christine
said and went and did it. She was clearly upset, and seeing her like that was
upsetting me, which again wasn’t like me at all. Other people’s problems don’t
upset me, except for the urge to smack down the people responsible. Christine
was looking at the wrist-comm on the table as if it was going to jump up and
bite her. “Do you know what