Read Metawars: The Complete Series: Trance, Changeling, Tempest, Chimera for Free Online

low-budgetgossip rag, if the “Aliens Impregnated Me” story below it was any indication.
    After washing my hands, I took a moment to let my hair down. A few more purple streaks had sprouted along my part, working their way from root to tip. It might have been a nice look if my damned eyes hadn’t gone all amethyst on me. Unusually colored contact lenses had been banned decades ago, when civilians started going around pretending to be Metas, and several got themselves killed. Even after the War, the ban wasn’t lifted. No one wanted to be a Meta. Few wanted to remember we’d ever existed.
    I leaned closer and inspected my hairline. The lightest purple haze had settled over the skin at the top of my forehead, like the start of a bruise.
    “Now I’m really going to scare the locals.”
    Roughly half of the old Rangers had been able to blend into a crowd. I’d managed to pass, even with faint lavender streaks, and to use my Trance power without being caught. Now I looked like a reject from a last-century bubblegum band.
    A shadow flickered behind me, reflected in the mirror. I froze. How the hell had someone gotten in? A woman’s face watched me, out of focus. Underwater. Eyes that were there one instant, and hollow the next. A coalescing swirl of color and nothingness. Impossible.
    I spun around. A single toilet and handicap railing faced me. I was very much alone. Chalking it up to lack of sleep and fried nerves, I stuffed my hair back into the cap and left.
    Back outside in the cool night air, I started to relax. Hungerwas making me see things in the mirror. I probably should have splurged on overpriced snack cakes, just to stave off my admission to the funny farm.
    I navigated my way through the maze of the parking lot, past dozens of tractor trailers in long rows of angled spaces that stank of rubber and oil. Their drivers were either eating or sleeping. Furniture deliveries, grocery trucks, and unmarked trailers of all sorts, with license plates from across the country.
    Something shuffled behind me; I froze. I glanced over my shoulder—only shadows cast by the trucks and moonlight. Their presence was oppressive, ominous. The rumble of traffic seemed far away, the din of the fuel plaza even farther. I doubled back, determined to get out of the truck maze and into the open.
    As I passed a silver cab, something spun me around. The cloth knapsack fell off my shoulder, hit my ankle, and tripped me. I hit the grill with my left shoulder, cracked the back of my head, and saw stars. The sunglasses clattered to the ground. A meaty hand closed around my throat and squeezed, while a second grabbed my right wrist, twisted it, and pinned it against the cab by my head.
    Idiot!
    Panic hit me in the face like ice water. I raised my knee, hoping to find a soft target, and hit nothing. Hot air wafted over my face, reeking of stale smoke.
    “Guess I wanted my twenty bucks’ worth after all,” Cliff said, coating my sense of smell with his noxious breath.
    My stomach quailed. I tried to scream. His hand constrictedmy throat, and he pushed his gut against my stomach. He had at least six inches on me, plus seventy pounds of flab in all the wrong places. I put my left hand on his shoulder and tried to push—like shoving against a granite pillar. I needed a weapon, something to get him off before he contaminated me with his stink. And worse.
    A car rumbled past on the opposite side of the lot, its headlights briefly illuminating our row, giving me a glimpse of my fingertips. Their purplish tinge. The power orbs. I didn’t need a weapon. Hell, I
was
a weapon—untested, but had there ever been a better time?
    I grinned, channeling my fear into my hands. The skin warmed.
    “What’s so funny?” Cliff asked, squeezing my throat just a little harder.
    My new eyes met his soggy gaze. He blinked. His brow furrowed. Ignoring my seizing lungs, I raised my left hand and snapped my fingers. Instantly a lavender orb of energy appeared and