wingedashley:

(Notes: This fic is 4K words long. Shoutout to @myrastuff for helping with editing, and for creating this superhero AU in the first place.)

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Alice Song woke to the soft beeping of her watch’s alarm.

She took a deep, shuddering breath and blinked the sleep out of her eyes. She’d fallen asleep resting her head against the window by her seat, and on any other day the view would’ve taken her breath away. Cruising 85 kilometers above the ground, the shuttle just barely skimming the edges of outer space. So close to the Kármán line, the upper half of the sky was black as night despite the harsh glare of the sun. She could see the curvature of the Earth dipping into every horizon.

But today wasn’t about sightseeing. She had a job to do.

She shifted in her seat, straightening her back as she stretched her arms and legs. The shuttle’s interior was dark and quiet, sparse but still surprisingly cosy. Her mid-flight nap hadn’t left her cramped and sore like on a regular airplane, where the upholstered seats weren’t designer-made for style and comfort. The soft hum of the shuttle’s engines reverberated through the small space, its automated lights still calibrated for broad daylight. She smiled. That’s what you got for flying without a human pilot, she supposed.

As she stretched, a holographic window opened up a few feet from her face, projected from the shuttle’s ceiling. The plane’s soft spoken AI chimed through the speakers.

“Incoming call from-”

“Put her through.”

It would take a few seconds for the call to connect, enough time to freshen up. After all, it wouldn’t help to give Juliet the wrong impression. With practiced ease, she detached her brain’s chronology from the rest of her body and compressed it, accelerating her mind’s eye in tandem to gloss over the span. She blinked, and blinked again.

By the time Juliet’s office sprang into view before her, she’d been awake for hours.

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