40 minutes later, she's sitting wrapped in a trauma blanket in a bland beige room that is either an interrogation room or a briefing room. Which one it is at any given time really depends on which way the information ends up flowing.

"Hello, I'm Officer Blake," the man who sits across from her says. "What's your name?"

"I don't recall," she says. "I ... my Enska is not much good."

She shifts in her chair, trying to wrap the blanket further around her.

He scrawls a note on his notepad.

"That's alright, miss. We sometimes get folks who turn up with powers and no memory of who they are. We'll sort it out," he reassures her.

"Are there any other things you can recall? Like how old you are, or what your native language is called?"

"It's íslensku I speak," she tells him. "I don't recall ... a girl? There is an important girl. Other things, I don't recall. Nothing else."

He nods, and takes another note.

"That's just fine. We'll figure out where they speak, uh, Islensku, and see if we can figure out where you came from, but it's a long shot. For now, you're in America. I work for the PRT -- the federal agency that's responsible for people with powers. It's my job to get you situated here. If it's alright with you, I'll get you set up with a temporary apartment, and then tomorrow we can take a look at figuring out your powers and going through the paperwork. Does that sound okay?"

"Yes, yes. It sounds okay. Ah ... federal agency? I don't recall the word," she says.

"The part of the government," he clarifies.

"Oh! Ríkisdeild," she says. "Yes, an apartment is okay. Thank you."

He sifts through his overnight notifications.

Ward mentoring request, notification for a PR event, new case 53 ...

He pauses.

"Door to Doctor Mother's office," he says, stepping through the glowing portal. "Sorry, Doctor. Are you busy?"

"Not just at the moment," she replies, turning away from her desk. "Why?"

"You would have let me know if you were going to release one of the failures near San Antonio, right?" he asks, leaning against her door.

"Yes, of course," she reassures. "What brought this up?"

"I just got a notice about a potential new case 53 this morning," he replies. "If it wasn't us, I'll have to look into it."

"No, it wasn't us. Thank you for letting me know," she responds, turning back to her desk.

"Anytime," he says, standing and stepping back into his Houston office.

"So I think next we've got power testing," he tells her, leading her down the hallway and into a larger room full of equipment. "Since we don't know what you can do, we're going to run you through everything. This is Dr. Jenkins -- they're going to walk you through everything."

"Hello! It's good to meet you. Officer Blake told me you wanted to be called Alda?" they ask, gesturing her over towards a rack of weights.

"Yes, thank you," she says. "The weights, you want me to lift them?"

"Yes, that's right. Start with the small ones and work your way up. Don't hurt yourself, we're just trying to get a good estimate of how much you can lift to start with," they instruct her.

According to the notes on Dr. Jenkins' clipboard, lifting a weight of 600 pounds qualifies her for a provisional Brute 4 strength rating. She lets herself go up to 550 before she starts showing signs of strain, and then renders herself unable to lift 600 pounds.

"Very good. Thank you, Alda," they say, making a note on their clipboard. "Next, we have durability testing. If you would step this way ..."

Doctor Jenkins walks her through the rest of the tests. She reveals her thinker abilities by pointing out a frayed wire inside of one of the testing machines when she touches it. The tinkertech they have her try to assemble in response is baffling. It flatly should not work. And yet, she is assured that it does.

Eventually, they have only a few tests remaining.

"Lastly, we want to let you meet Eidolon. He's the head of the Houston protectorate, but he decided to fly down to meet you, since case 53 parahumans are pretty rare. He's also a great choice for testing if you have any abilities that affect other powers, because he can manifest many different powers to test for interactions," Doctor Jenkins explains, leading her into the conference room across the hall from the testing chamber. "I'll text him and let him know we're ready."

She does her best not to react. It's fine -- there's no way he's going to spot a resemblance, since she was a shard of jagged crystal when they last met.

He enters the room a few minutes later, closing the door behind him with a click.

"Good morning," he says.