Chapter 35

Cali agreed with the plan within a week, but there were a lot of security concerns that needed to be addressed. Cali was an official superhero and although I didn't want to be paranoid, considering the bugs I found in my clothes when I re-birthed Celeste, I worried that Cali would be closely monitored to try and track Josie.

The plan was for Cali to meet Angel on a Miami beach and be taken underwater to Josie or at least, that was how we explained it. She was instructed to have no electronics on her person so that Angel could kill any bugs with her known telekinetic powers. The plan was then to go to a safe house that was stocked with food and drink. Ruth was going to be Cali's re-birth twin because I didn't know if I was going to be able to transfer any power other than telepathy to her, but telepathy was all she needed to prevent another telepath from hearing her thoughts.

The other security concern was how safe would the safe house be. If the government or Superhero League really wanted to find Josie, they could interrogate Steven or anyone we relied on to hide us. Instead, we arranged a massive pallet of frozen meals. We didn't need a refrigerator or freezer since I could keep everything frozen and even could function as a re-heater. I was going to go underwater and stay there for six weeks. I didn't need to create a house, but I thought it might be nice to melt some sand kick out the impurities and create a glass dome. By examining the behaviour of rapidly cooling glass drops (Prince Rupert's Drop), I could use my micro telekinesis to examine and reproduce the structure to create a type of toughened glass. I remembered about the glass drops from way back when I was in school studying physics. Using this material I could make beds, tables, chairs and fill the beds with a dry fine sand. The only thing it would lack was entertainment.

Ruth was not enamoured of the idea because although I didn't need help, it would be, well, helpful, especially during the childbirth. However, the number of people who could help me was limited. Ruth only wanted potential Shadow Angels aware of both the process and my secrets. That way it wouldn't be long before they were telepathic and able to hide our secrets. Thus far there were only two people who had passed her tests to become Shadow Angels and one of them, Brook, wasn't old enough yet. Regardless, I was going to have two helpers, Brook and Emily. Both were very loyal and had every intention of becoming Shadow Angels. The process of finding more appropriate people would be easier once Ruth was telepathic.

Nor was Ruth happy with a spartan type existence. I was tasked with setting up my underwater home and filling it with comfortable lounges, a bookcase filled with books and magazines, a proper wooden dining table, normal chairs, beds with memory foam mattresses in them, bathroom with sinks, bath, shower and toilets, electric generator with fuel enough to last two months, powering a huge fridge and freezer as well as an entertainment system of TV, films and music all downloaded and ready to play. They would still rely on me to keep the air fresh, the temperature right and to enter or exit. I could have left the floor as sand, but according to Ruth, that is a bad idea as sand gets everywhere. No sand particle could escape my domain sense but it wasn't worth arguing, so I created a floor of glass and had to take lots of rugs with me. I needed to seal the whole space anyway.

There was still the possibility that a random diver would find my oasis, but I placed it inside a natural valley and the sea is unfathomably large so it was extremely unlikely. I made sure I did not exceed my domain in size so if that did happen, I could lift it all up and travel to another location.

When I said that to Ruth, she slapped her own forehead, swore and asked how difficult it would be to bring the dome I had created to a random field a few miles off the coast and the answer was not difficult at all. So Ruth organised a location for me to bring it to shore so that we could outfit it properly. The electric generator was changed to a molten salt version that I powered by heating up the salt occasionally. A smaller fuel-driven electric generator was stored as a backup with enough fuel for a couple of days. Carbon dioxide scrubbers were emplaced, just in case and a proper sealable entrance door was purchased and used. Actually two of them with a short hallway between them and a way of letting water into the space or air to displace the water. Again, just in case.

I decided to add a layer of diamond to make it extra sturdy. The glass was already a metre thick because I wanted it to be heavy so it would still sink when I wasn't there to hold it in place. Another emergency addition of inflatable rafts attached as external boxes at the floor level that would provide enough lift to raise the dome to the surface as well as provide a floating platform to escape to with an emergency transmitter to call for help.

Ruth's explanation for all the work was that I could use it repeatedly, changing location whenever I felt a human presence getting close. Whenever I had finished a six-week stint I would bring it in for maintenance and for it to be ready for the next time it was needed.

Some of the ideas that we were using for the dome came from the spaceship design that was still in progress. The spaceship was going to have to be completely reliant on my abilities. They would build in what failsafes they could, but without relying on me, the whole idea became unfeasible. No engines, no fuel, no large oxygen tanks. The molten salt idea had come from the need to generate electricity without having to unfurl large solar panels or carry large quantities of fuel. I had practised on one of their generators and checked that it didn't strain me before it was chosen.

My life was busy and with what I considered to be a worthy goal I was relatively content. I say relatively because I had unfinished business with Hannah. Could we become a couple or would it just be good friends? There was risk involved, but after Hannah's confession that risk had already been taken. Hannah had been surprised by my long term planning. When I decided that something needed to be done, Hannah had thought I would just start attacking the problem, going out at night and rescuing as many as I could and when I finished with one town move on to the next. Of course, I was tempted by that idea, but I was old enough to see the problems inherent in that solution. I already felt guilty for not rescuing Holly, Simone, Terese and Brook earlier, let alone all the others that I helped that night. Logically that doesn't make sense, but emotionally I would be a wreck in a short amount of time. How could I enjoy life if every moment I wasn't helping meant another child being hurt?

By stepping back and looking at the bigger picture, I knew I would be able to help more children and by not being constantly confronted with it, I would be more emotionally stable. Likewise, I discussed with Ruth the idea of Shadow Angels having periods where they were not active. Month on, month off or whatever worked so that they didn't lose their minds. I had already saved a lady who was an excellent psychologist, Samantha, and she was going to help Ruth with assessing and helping our Shadow Angels. At some point, I would have to re-birth her so that she was immune to a telepath's power but she was in her fifties and it would affect her whole family so we were keeping her involvement secret while she decided how far she wanted to be involved.

The fact that Hannah was going out each night and working with the New York superheroes was helping with my peace of mind. Between us, we decided that when I had created two Shadow Angels, Hannah would not need to go out every night. She could then decide whether I re-birthed her to give her flight and an offensive power so that she could become a proper Shadow Angel or help in another way, maybe using her telepathy to help Ruth. At that point, we would create space in our schedules and start dating. Taking it very slow and seeing how it went.

First things first, I needed to be able to create Shadow Angels and to do that I needed to be able to give them Telepathy, Mind partitioning, Flight and an offensive power. And I didn't have the right DNA for that, hence taking a risk with Cali.

Chapter 36

I moved the completed Dome to a few miles off the Miami beach. We had Terese and Joy waiting for Cali to arrive on the beach and when she did, I started the planned procedure. First, I picked up Ruth, Emily and Brook before transporting them into the Dome. I left them there and swam to the beach in my Angel form. I met Cali and told her I was there to take her to Josie. When I was underwater, about halfway to the Dome, I readied my egg as Cali's clone and pulled her soul to join it. Her body immediately died. I knew that was going to happen and used my micro telekinesis to break her body into tiny, tiny pieces. It was then that I found a small tracking device that had been implanted under her skin in her arm.

Anything within my domain I can see, but it is too much information so I have to use my mind partitions to notify me, and they are guided by my wishes. I had not even thought about an implanted devise, so hadn't thought to use my partitioned mind to check for them. I now added that to my list of things to be informed about.

I moved to the Dome quickly and sped off through the water until I felt far enough that my anxiety from the tracking device was assuaged. Nipped in to clone Ruth, took her dead body out and reduced it to mere cells with powdered bone and then continued travelling with my Dome to my sea valley location. I was nicely hidden so I set my telepathic mind to keep a listen out for anybody approaching and finally relaxed.

Brook and Emily were looking a bit shocked because it looked like I had rushed in, killed Ruth without touching her and then got rid of the body. Not completely untrue either.

“Don't worry, Ruth and Cali are nicely safe in my tummy and they didn't feel a thing. You can ask them later,” I reassured them.

I guess they won't be properly reassured until they had been reborn and grown to maturity.

“I'm going to have a little lie-down, call me if you need anything,” I told them.

I lay down to think and examine the new live DNA available to me. I decided that Cali was probably fooled into having that tracking device because otherwise, my telepathic mind division would have likely picked up her worry about being found out when I was clearly security conscious and asked her to not bring anything that might be tracked.

I changed my face to Josie's face in case Cali ended up with any memories from this experience. I don't think she will be conscious enough to notice that Josie has shrunk in height. Examining Cali's DNA was interesting. Her flight power was her mind manipulating the Earth's field and that would be transferable. Her heat powers came from two factors. Her mitochondria opened to a hot dimension and she could pull that heat out and use it, but the ability to pull it out and use it was a personal one that I wasn't going to be able to transfer. Similar to Celeste's ability to manipulate the pure energy that comes from her mitochondria and my micro telekinesis. A little bit of the fire energy did leak out of her cells and do damage but this was mitigated by a weak regenerator ability. The fire energy couldn't be used by the cells to create or generate ATP so she would still need oxygen.

I could now create Shadow Angels with Telepathy, Mind Partitioning, Flight, and a combination of Regeneration with Power Cells. The weak Regeneration that I could take from Cali worked well with Celeste's Power Cells to make the Regeneration surprisingly powerful. Not exactly an offensive ability, but would make my Shadow Angels quite durable and long-lived. All the offensive abilities I had come across had been mind powers that I couldn't transfer, but I thought I had enough to start creating proper Shadow Angels and hope that I would come across other abilities later on.

To Cali, I didn't make any other changes apart from adding telepathy and mind partitioning. When she started to become conscious, Brook and Emily needed to be gone, but that didn't usually happen until a day after I stopped providing breastmilk.

Ruth, on the other hand, had the full works. I had been able to have a frank discussion about what I could do and what she wanted me to do. She was the first to be re-birthed to become part of the Shadow Angel group and she wanted to set a precedent. Power-wise she would have telepathy, mind partitioning, flight and regeneration with Celeste's power cells. Physically, her eyes were changed to an ice blue, just like the ones I had as my Angel form. She went with the full female preference of hairlessness below eyebrows, mild permanent makeup of eyeliner, naturally long and full eyelashes, slight blush to cheeks, red slightly plumped lips, the pelvis and uterus configuration for easy(ish) birth, sensitive vagina, anus, clitoris and nipples, an Angel specific skin colouration change on her back to look like a tattoo of a pair of Angel wings. She also actually wanted a breast reduction to a C-cup, hair that was less curly and no freckles. Lastly, hidden in her right eyebrow would be a small angel tattoo.

Her idea was that either all of that or most of that would become the standard, almost like a uniform. I certainly wasn't going to demand it, but I would go with people's preferences. I suspected breast, hair and skin would be very individual.

The first three weeks were very boring, but I could and did take Brook and Emily out for swims in the ocean, looking at the amazing wildlife and preventing cabin fever. I'm not quite sure how it started but since I kept the temperature constant and being pregnant, I sometimes struggled with my clothes, or more accurately, how I looked in clothes, we all wore less and less until we just agreed to be naked. There was nothing sexual about it, it was a mix of convenience, being comfortable with each other, being the same sex and letting go. Pregnancy and childbirth don't leave much room for modesty and, probably in sympathy, Brook and Emily followed suit.

The birth of twins wasn't much different to the other births I had been through. Ruth came out first and Cali followed. It was helpful that Emily and Brook were there. For the first time, I could make full use of my powers with the babies so we didn't have to constantly change nappies, I could just set a mind partition to catch their messes with my telekinesis put it straight into the toilet and clean their bodies. Feeding both of them at the same time was an interesting experience and my boobs grew larger than normal since I had to produce twice as much milk. I also had to eat more, but, since I, myself, didn't require very much food at all, it was quite manageable. Having Brook and Emily to organise that side of things was wonderful and made my life so much easier. The fact that I didn't require much sleep anymore also made the process much less stressful, but it was still a busy three weeks that passed quickly.

Once they had both had their last breastfeed, when they were fully mature although with a DNA age between fifteen and sixteen, I moved out of sight of Cali and changed my face back to Angel and put on my Angel costume. I then moved the Dome through the water and eventually, up into the air and back to the land Ruth had bought. I then took Cali dressed her and flew to Seattle, holding her in my arms in the princess carry. I sat with her on a park bench that was the closest I could find to her parent's house and waited for her to come to awareness.

When I saw her mind alight I helped her gain control of her mind partitioning and telepathy. I explained how she could set her mind partition to search for people crying out for help. I also mentioned that she had previously had a tracking device lodged into her arm. She hadn't learned to think quietly yet, and I had set my telepathy mind division to listen to her thoughts, so I experienced her shock at that news. I had contemplated not giving her the telepathy because of that, but now, I was glad I did.

I flew up into the air, pointed out where her parent's house was and started my journey home.