The lady on the television explained to her white upper-middle-class audience that glorifying the traumatic origin stories of those with powers was harmful to those thousands of people who had difficult lives but didn’t have superpowers. As I prepared the drugged food for the commander’s prisoners, I couldn’t help but agree. People wanted people with superpowers and were willing to pay to get them. And every person with superpowers had two things in common: a set of genetic markers that predisposed them and a traumatic inciting incident.

Years ago, I had been kidnapped by Commander Nightmare, a man who specialized in providing the latter.

I never developed useful powers — I’m only a G3, after all — but even though my modified clones disappear when anyone else is in the room, they still qualify as powers. I was neither sold to the commander’s buyers nor quietly disposed of. Instead, I became his minion. I still lived in the commander’s dungeon, but in the hallway outside the cells instead of an occupant.

Skinny tasted the soup to verify it was still edible, then promptly passed out. Like all my clones, he disappeared whenever he fell unconscious. The guy was a foot shorter than me and half my weight. It didn’t take much to knock him out.

I finished filling the bowls and carried the tray to the cells—one meal every evening, always soup, and no water. I heard sobbing when I opened a few of the flaps and pushed the bowl through. They all knew what came next.

Even though there are seven genetic markers, real people are rated G0 through G5. There are always stories, of course, but G6s and G7s don’t exist. Over the years, the quality of the commander’s prisoners improved until almost every single one of them was a G4. My last bowl was for our lone exception.

“Nightmare fuel, G5.” I sang as I removed yesterday’s still-full bowl and added a new one. “I’m told it’s pretty tasty.”

“You’ll never break me,” came a rasping reply. “And my name’s not G5, bro. It’s-”

“Not my job to break you, just feed you,” I interrupted. “And I don’t need your name to do that.”

“You could help us escape.”

I laughed and slapped the little access door shut.

For a brief moment, the entire hall was quiet as I shuffled back to my room at the end of the hall. I was already closing the soundproof door before the screams began. Commander Nightmare had begun his “treatments.”

“G5 got to you, didn’t he?” Alpha lounged on my bed, his broad, muscled back against the wall.

Commander Nightmare had been a blackmailer in the United States before starting his current career in my country. He’s 6’4”, blonde, and has that chiseled physique most G5s get after their powers activate. If two men could have a child, he would probably grow up to look like Alpha. Imagine my features, swarthy skin, and straight black hair on Commander Nightmare’s frame. Like me, he was barefoot, with a white short-sleeve shirt and loose tan puruntong shorts, but the buttons on his shirt strained every time his pectoral slabs flexed.