“Taking this out on patrol?  Is that stupidity or arrogance?  What if you lost it?”  He shook his head, then offered her a dramatic gasp, “What if it got into the wrong hands?”  Her voice was far better for the gasp than his own was.

He couldn’t help but chuckle after hearing it.

Hehe!

Or into her own hands under someone else’s control…

This Emma girl was listed in both of the phones.  Now he had a strong suspicion as to who it was.

How much did Taylor tell you about Sophia?

A quick read of the received texts gave away Shadow Stalker’s name, but he already knew that.  Taylor had let it slip, before.

Ah. That much, at least.

Her pulse was pounding now, and he could feel a growing sense of… what was that?  Outrage?  She was pissed at the invasion of privacy.

On top of everything else.

He tried a giggle on for size, to see if he could, and to see if it irritated her.  It worked on both counts.

Ahaha

“Contacts,” he murmured, pressing a button, “Weld, Clockblocker, Vista, Flechette, Kid Win… boring.  Nothing I can work with, here.”  Director Piggot?  No.  Some potential there, maybe, but she was probably on top of this body-snatching situation.  Fully informed.

Which leaves the one other contact we know of.

Emma Barnes.

He scrolled down.  Beyond the contacts that had been pinned to the top of the list, there was a short list of contacts that were sorted in order of who had been contacted most recently.  At the top of the list was an ‘Emma Barnes’.

Here we go. What the hell kind of trouble can Regent cause between these two now?

He checked the other, older phone.  No password.  A quick examination showed it was her civilian phone.

Ah, hang on, something else to do first. Although maybe he won’t make that call, since he doesn’t seem to know anything about Emma.

I mean, anything he knows that he knows.

“Almost forgot you were in there,” he murmured, barely loud enough for her to catch.  Not that it mattered.  She was as aware of the movements of her mouth as he was.

Yeeah, let’s not forget that Regent is essentially keeping Sophia prisoner in her own body.

He could mouth the words and she would probably understand.  He smirked for her benefit as much as his own.

“So.  Bet you’re wondering what’s up,” he commented.  “Funny thing about having this control over you, I can feel your emotions, your body’s reactions.

Of all the people to open up to.

Like a really, really good polygraph test.  I wasn’t even half done saying my piece back there when I caught on to the fact that you were too pissed and too angry to back down and walk away.

…of course she was.

There’s no way you’re going to leave town if I let you go, right?”

Yeah, no, probably not. She’d be terrified of being controlled again, probably, but her anger would override it and have her seeking out Regent to kill him.

Shadow Stalker wasn’t emotionally dulled.  Her emotions were rich, uninhibited.  She was  passionate in her emotions: angry, judgemental.

Oh, absolutely. If I were to define her personality in just a few words, “passionate” would probably be one of them.

Even the negative feelings were something he could savor in their own way.  He wasn’t really experiencing them – it was more of a very involved spectator role.  Her fear was thrilling in the same way a fantastic scary movie was, with the detail and the immersion cranked up to eleven.

Huh, interesting.

He leaped straight up into the air, then activated the shadow state.  When she was as high as she would get, he had her grip her cloak in her hands and use it to guide her descent so she could land atop the roof of the gas station.  He stopped, stretched her arms.

Heh. Stretching someone else’s arms isn’t something you come across often.

She was breathing hard, but not as much as his Alec-self would be after even half as much running.  He could feel the endorphins being pumped into her body from the hard exercise, and he was all the more aware of it because he had his other body to compare to.  She was an athlete.

I suppose being able to compare and contrast directly lets you be more aware of your own body, for better or worse.

He ran her hands down her chest, felt her breasts, the muscles of her stomach.

Sophia’s desire to kill Regent probably just skyrocketed way past the point it already was at.

Stretching once more, he clenched her hands, felt the muscles in her arms flex.  He felt her shudder in revulsion.

She’s being groped by her own body.

Almost.  He was surprised to realize how much he’d missed this.  It was like a high, a whole other set of emotions, of physical sensations.  Real life, just being Alec, only Alec?  It paled in comparison.  It was dull.

Ah, okay, it’s been a while since he’s done this. I suppose he hasn’t had a lot of opportunities to do it since he came to Brockton Bay, and the people he had control over while he was under Heartbreaker are too far away now, even if the sleeping thing was a lie (still uncertain).

I guess this might be part of why he seems bored so often.

He wondered sometimes if dealing with his father had messed up something inside him.

It’s certainly not the healthiest childhood.

Also, another thing that makes a bit more sense now: Tattle’s power describing Regent as a sociopath. He doesn’t exactly seem concerned about the morals of what he does, nor how Shadow Stalker feels about it.

He could remember being young, maybe eight or so, fighting with two of his sisters over the fact that he’d wanted to watch the music channel and they wanted to watch some craptastic stop motion cartoon.

I guess siblings will be siblings, even when they’re being “raised” by a fucking vile piece of shit and his emotionally manipulated harem.

That said, these are kids with the potential for powers. Had Alec already gotten his at this point? Did he end up controlling his sisters and forcing them to watch the music channel?

They’d outnumbered him two to one, and he’d known he would lose the argument.  So he’d thrown a tantrum, started screaming.

…fair enough.

The entire atmosphere in the house had changed in a second.  His sisters went from argumentative to conciliatory in an instant, changed the channel to the music, tried to give him the remote.

…wait.

Was this his trigger event?? Or was his screaming just that effective at changing people’s minds?

One of father’s ‘girls’ came in and tried to quiet him down.  When he hadn’t, she’d clamped a hand over his mouth.

Guess it’s the latter.