"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.

She stands and shakes his hand, and then pauses, fascinated.

"There's a portal in your brain," she says. Which is not what she was going to say, but it's fascinating. She can just feel through to the other side, where some kind of organic crystal is formed into a ... focusing array. Antenna? Something like that. She traces the flows of energy through the crystal, mesmerized.

He pulls his hand out of her grip. "Is there?" he responds, in the flatly cheerful tone of someone who has just been informed that platypi run the government. "How fascinating."

She flares her neck frills in embarrassment, and takes a step back.

"Oh, I'm so sorry. I am Alda," she attempts to recover. "It's good to meet you."

True, partially true, lie, his chosen thinker power of the morning tells him.

"Officer Blake tells me you don't remember anything about where you come from?" he asks. Dr. Jenkins gives him a puzzled look and starts to speak, but falls silent when Eidolon gives them a slight shake of the head.

"Yes, I don't recall anything," she tells him. "I just ... all of a sudden, I was in the alley."

She twists her fingers together, channeling real worry into fake distress.

"But the PRT has been very kind," she adds.

Lie. Lie. Ambiguously false, the power whispers to him.

He steps towards her, into her personal space. "Are you sure there's nothing else? What are your powers?"

"No! Nothing! Dr. Jenkins says I am very strong," she replies. "And I can know about things if I touch them, sometimes."

Lie. Technical truth, the power says.

"I didn't ask what Dr. Jenkins said. I asked what your powers are," he says, letting anger bleed into his voice.

"Sir! Really, she's just," they begin, before Eidolon cuts them off with a gesture.

"I am just strong! And purple!" she protests. She angles her hips so she can either slip past him or throw a punch, whichever seems called for.