Lexine.
That was the name of the woman who drove a knife into Stanley's hand like it was just another day in the office.
Once the knife was removed and his injury had healed, Stanley's first instinct was to run out of that office and try to find someone who could help him. If it wasn't for his trembling legs, he might have made an attempt, but he had other reasons to stay seated.
His blood had turned into a mysterious black essence, and based on how calmly she was observing it, Lexine was likely expecting it to happen. If he wanted to find out why and how this was happening to him, it seemed that he would have to get his answers from her, so he remained seated.
Stanley stared at his unfamiliar hands again, still shaking from his recent trauma. He swallowed his nerves before he dared speaking up to her again. "What...was that?"
"Rapid sublimation and evaporation of the human body," she adjusted her glasses with a thumb and index finger, "That substance you saw is called 'Shade', it's what happens to you whenever you're injured. If any part of you is separated from your body, the parts will turn to Shade and converge on the majority to make you whole again."
Stanley blinked, keeping an eye on her as he struggled to understand what she had explained to him.
"Look, I'm sorry for tricking you with Simon Says of all things, but it was the quickest way to test if you had the ability or not."
Stanley blinked again, amazed that she could justify her actions with such a straight face. Then again, it's not like he would've gone along with intentionally hurting himself if she had asked. "M-Miss Lexine, I—"
"Just Lexine is fine," she corrected, waving a hand dismissively.
"Lexine," Stanley repeated, getting a feel for her name. He made sure she was looking him in the eyes when he asked in a trembling voice, "What the hell is happening to me?"
Lexine reached into one of her desk drawers. "Now that," after a bit of searching, she pulled out a fancy decanter half-filled with an amber liquid, "Is a tricky question to answer." She placed the crystalline vessel atop her desk before going back for a pair of matching cups. "Bourbon?"
"What?" Of all the things she could have offered to help ease his stress, hard liquor was one of the last things he was expecting. "N-No thanks. I'm not—"
"Not what? Old enough to drink?" she finished for him. "You're going to be twenty-one within a year, right? I'm not gonna get technical over a few months."
A mix of fear and confusion kept him anchored in his chair. Even if she hadn't just stabbed him through the hand, he wasn't about to voluntarily drink with the person who was keeping him captive and withholding crucial information. Besides, he could smell the contents from where he was sitting, and it reminded him of rubbing alcohol and nail-polish remover.
"Well, the offer stands if you change your mind." Lexine removed the rubber-lined stopper from the container and poured herself a drink, one that nearly reached the rim of the glass. She put the stopper back into place and took a few hearty gulps from her glass before speaking. "So," she brought the cup back down half-empty. "where should we start?"
"Can we start with why I look and feel different, or how I got weird shadow powers?" Revisiting the gray sweatsuit he was wearing, Stanley pouted at his outfit. "Or why I'm wearing these clothes?"
Lexine took another quick drink from her glass and set it down atop his file like a coaster. "Lucky for you, I have something that should answer all three."
She rose from her seat and sauntered around her desk. Stanley flinched thinking he was her target again, but instead she approached a metal cart in the corner of the room with a television sitting on top. It was one of the older TVs with the chunky back and bulbous screen, hooked up to a DVD player resting in the bottom tray. As Lexine wheeled it out of its corner, Stanley noticed she was wearing gray cargo pants and black combat boots. For someone with such a neat and formal office, she dressed more like some barfly punk.
Once the cart was close enough for Stanley to view, Lexine hit the power button on the TV and the DVD player, but the display showed nothing but a solid blue screen.
"Stupid thing," she grumbled with a smack to the broad side of the TV, but still no picture. "C'mon..."
"D—Do you need any help?" Stanley was hesitant to offer any help to the person who proved that she can and would hurt him if necessary, but there was a chance he could get on her good side by proving himself useful. Besides, it was painful to watch her struggle with a simple technical problem that he could probably fix.
"I actually don't, thanks." Lexine opened the disc compartment on the DVD player, took the disc out to blow on it, then returned it to try again. "I know how to work a television." When that didn't work, she paced around the entire setup to give it a once-over. "It's just...been a while."
"Are you sure it's on the right input?"
"Of course it's on the right inpu—" Checking along the bottom of the television, she hit one of the buttons a few times until an image eventually appeared on screen. "There we go."
The outdated display showed a paused video, one from the perspective of a security camera. Based on medical tools on the countertops and the occupied body bag on top of a stainless steel table, Stanley could only assume that this was some kind of morgue. The still image showed a woman in a lab coat and a mustached police officer, the former peering down at her clipboard while the latter was pointing at the nearby body bag.
"What is this?"
"Shhh..." Lexine hushed his question with an index finger to her lips, then brought it down to resume the DVD. "Just watch." She sat at her desk and topped off her glass with more liquor as Stanley watched the doctor and officer begin to move.
For nearly a solid minute, the recording was nothing but the doctor and the officer talking with one another. Apparently a dead body had been found off the side of the road, and the officer was answering the doctor's many questions. Stanley was going to ask Lexine what this recording had to do with him, but something in the video grabbed his attention. The officer and the doctor had jumped at the sight of the body bag moving on the table, as if the person inside was squirming around.
Leaning forward in his seat, Stanley watched closely as the doctor rushed over and the officer clutched his chest in shock. The officer urged the doctor to stop as she opened the zipper, saying that he had been pronounced dead on the scene, but she ignored him. When she reached about halfway, a figure covered in mud began to sit itself upright, moaning as wet dirt spilled out of its mouth. The doctor and officer both jumped back.
"Hey, wait a minute..." Stanley thought aloud as he looked closer at what appeared to be a young man in the bag. His features were obscured by the mud caked onto his body and his silhouette was unrecognizable, clearly someone Stanley had never met before, but then why did he seem so familiar? When he moistened his lips, he swore he could feel a few grains of sand.
"Keep watching." She swirled the liquid in her glass.
The person in the bag weakly brushed off the compacted mud on his jacket as the doctor worked to unzip the rest of the bag. Eventually the zipper was pulled to the tips of his toes and the doctor assisted him in moving his legs off the edge of the table, allowing her to remove the bag completely. The officer had moved his hand from his chest to his forehead, rubbing it in disbelief the entire time.
"What is this?"
"Shhh!" she hushed, shooting him an upset face, "Don't they teach people not to talk during films anymore?" She huffed in disappointment, turning her attention back to her drink as Stanley turned his focus back to the monitor.
The doctor was now assisting the person in the bag to stand on his feet. She was doing her best to keep him steady, but he ultimately chose to lean against the table. As the doctor tried to remove some of the mud attached to his head and shoulders, the officer asked him his name. When the mud-covered stranger responded, his answer made Stanley grip the armrests of his chair.
'S-Stanley,' the man mumbled just loud enough for the recording to pick up, 'Stanley Miller.'
"I—" Stanley started then stopped, his eyes going wide while his heart came to a temporary stop. "Wait, I remember..." he put his hand to his mouth as his recent memories returned to him. "I was walking home from my friend's house, it started to rain, then I...I-I don't..."
"That's right," Lexine commented without looking at him, swirling the liquor in her glass before taking a generous swig, "piece it together."
The recording showed the officer refuting the man's claim, declaring that Stanley Miller had gone to elementary school with his daughter, so he knew he was lying. The man on the table became adamant, insisting that he was Stanley Miller to the officer. The doctor meanwhile had brushed off enough mud and had started slowly backing away from them. The two men kept arguing back and forth with each other, both claiming the one telling the truth, until one of them had enough.
The officer reached to his belt and unholstered a stun gun, aiming it level with the young man's chest, who threw his arms up in a panicked response. The officer warned that he would discharge his weapon unless he started telling the truth.
Stanley breathed faster as he watched the standoff play out on screen. "H-Hold on, this is—"
"Hush up," Lexine silenced him before he could get too hysterical, "I like this part."
The video showed the man claiming to be Stanley pleading for someone to believe him, but taking a single step forward gave enough reason for the officer to discharge his weapon. A loud pop was followed by twin probes embedding into the man's chest, followed by several thousand volts of electricity. Even though it was only a video, Stanley still rubbed his own chest in discomfort, massaging the spots on his chest where the probes had landed.
"Wait for it..." Lexine held a hand out, preemptively cutting off anything Stanley was about to say.
They both watched the mud-soaked man, whom Stanley now accepted to be himself, drop to the tile floor. His entire body went rigid like a statue, tensing up as electricity coursed through his nerves. Once the convulsions calmed, an involuntary twitch scared the officer into pulling the trigger again, sending a second wave through the victim's body as the recording came to an end.
Stanley winced, his muscles remembering the electro-trauma they had gone through.
"Hah!" Lexine slapped her knee, setting her drink down so she didn't spill any as she failed to stifle her cackling, ignoring the fact that Stanley was glaring daggers at her. "C'mon, be honest. If that happened to me, you'd be laughing your ass off too." Stanley's expression turned sour and scared. "Or maybe I'm just an asshole," she picked her glass back up to sip, "Who knows?"
"That..." Stanley paused to gather his thoughts, then shook his head to free himself of any doubts. "That was me in the recording, wasn't it?"
"You catch on quick."
"Thanks, but—"
"I was kidding, I can't believe it took you this long."
Stanley frowned at how casually she insulted his problem-solving skills. "So that's me in the recording, but...Wait, why was I covered in mud?" He looked to the monitor, then back at her. "That was mud, right?"
"Yeah, it was mud," she confirmed, setting her drink down to top it off again. "A concerned citizen called 911 when they saw someone face-down off the sidewalk in the middle of a rainstorm. After being pronounced dead on the scene, you were taken to the local hospital to be identified. What you just saw was security footage from that hospital's morgue, taken about eight hours ago."
Stanley's heart skipped a beat as his mind scrambled to connect the order of events. "I've been out for eight hours?"
"Mmhm," she mumbled through her drink before putting it down, "You got your beauty sleep and mud mask all in one day. Usually people have to pay for that kind of treatment." After waiting for a laugh that never came, Lexine took another sip. "Once they got you off the floor, they took your fingerprints and ran them through the system. Once they got a match, we got an alert, and I sent someone out to recover you." She topped her drink off again, this time only adding about half as much. "I had you cleaned up and put in some fresh clothes, then brought you to my office for a little chat."
"What do you mean, where is 'here'? Why did my fingerprints send you an alert? What happened to my clothes?" Stanley's questions came out one after another, unable to hold them back.
Lexine set her drink down and started rummaging around in one of her desk drawers. Stanley retracted into the backrest, fearing another knife-related experiment, but what she pulled out wasn't terrifying at all. "This might give you some context." She had taken out a cheap hand mirror, one that she put face-down on her desk and slid towards him.
Stanley didn't pick it up, still scared that this could still be some kind of test where she would reprimand him with violence again. Lexine rolled her eyes and used a foot to push off her desk, moving her seat back. It was enough for Stanley to feel comfortable to take the mirror from her desk and bring it into his lap.
At this point, no amount of deep breathing or mindful thinking could calm Stanley's nerves. Part of him didn't want to believe his reflection wouldn't be any different, that he was the same person he always had been. Unfortunately, his voice, his hands, and even video evidence all argued that he was not the same as he once was. Having Lexine watch over his every move only made him even more nervous. Swallowing his fear, he slowly held the mirror up until he could look at his own reflection.
His fair skin was free of blemishes, eyes as blue as the ocean. His platinum-blonde hair was short on the sides and a little longer on top, but also disheveled with a few tiny dots of mud still clumped within. Peering down along his neck and collarbone, he was lacking the fat and muscle he was used to, leaving him with a lean and slender build. Despite his terrified and perplexed expression, he had a charming appearance that would be considered desirable by most societal norms. However—
"This isn't my face..." Stanley whimpered, setting the mirror back down so he could look at his empty hands again, struggling to remember what his palms used to look like. "This isn't me..." His breathing was getting shallow and ragged as he gazed back up to Lexine, tears starting to well up in the corners of his eyes. "What is this!? Who the hell am I!?"
"Here," Lexine exhaled as she set her glass down and got out of her seat to approach her display cases. She slid one of the glass panels aside and took one of the face-down picture frames, taking a few moments to look at it for herself, her thumb gently grazing over the frame. When she was done, she handed it to Stanley.
Within the silver portrait frame was a photo of what appeared to be the two of them wearing beach clothes and oversized sunglasses, their arms thrown over each other's shoulders. Given their smiling faces and the colorful drinks in their free hands, it looked like a fun time. It was too bad Stanley had absolutely no memory of any of this.
"This is—"
"That's a photo of me and my late husband, Adam. Mardi Gras, 1988." She held her hand out and he returned the photo to her. "Was a fun couple of days..." she lamented as she put it back.
"Husb—!?" Stanley almost blurted aloud, but he stopped himself and tried again. "Why do I look like your husband?"
"That's the question of the hour, isn't it? You have his fingerprints, his face, his voice." She returned to her chair, counting with her fingers. "You even have his powers."
Stanley's face scrunched up in deep, perplexed thought, his brain scrambling to figure out why he has the body of a superpowered dead man. "I...I don't understand."
"Neither do I," she shrugged, "The whole reason we brought you here is to investigate how and why this happened to you."
Stanley squinted. "You keep saying 'here', but where are we exactly?"
She leaned back into her chair. "Washington, DC."
"Washington!?" His blue eyes widened. He remembered his field trip to the nation's capital back when he was in middle-school, but he had never revisited the area since. "Wait...Are you with the government?"
Lexine nodded, making Stanley break out in a cold sweat.
"A-And you're sure I'm not in trouble?"
Lexine shook her head, smiling like he had asked her a ridiculous question. "We only want to help you. If this is something we can reverse or remove, then we'll do everything in our power to get you back to normal. If this turns out to be permanent, then we can offer you a place to stay as you get settled into your new life."
Her words set off all the alarms in his head , his heartbeat starting pace rapidly. "What do you mean 'new life'? Who is 'we'?"
She blinked at him a couple times before putting a hand to her face. "Oh, right," she pushed her glasses up to rub the inner corners of her clenched eyelids, "Sorry, I'm probably not explaining this very well, am I? It's been a while since I've welcomed new recruits, so I'm a little rusty."
"New recruits?" He swallowed a lump in his throat, his heart feeling like it would burst out of his chest at any moment. "New recruits for what?"
"The agency I run." Clearing the empty expression from her face, Lexine did her best to force a smile as she opened her arms in an attempt to give him the warmest reception she could muster. "Welcome to Sweepers HQ, kiddo."