E L I

---

A prison break?

Something like this had never happened before on The Promise. Not in the past four years, at least. It was something unheard of- unthought of. It was supposed to be impossible. There was the safe, relatively normal side of The Promise, and then there was that dark, dangerous side of The Promise. The two were never meant to collide. The Promise's high-security, high-level parahuman threat prison was supposed to be the best in the solar system.

But really, did they never think that this would ever happen? Especially when the place is practically run by parahumans with troubled pasts. Anyone could falsify their way onto the ship under "good intentions". All it would take was one skilled technopath and viola, you'd have a prison break on your hands. Then again, maybe this is what the government wanted from the beginning? If the parahuman prison was located on the parahuman space boat, the only ones that would be harmed or who would have the best chance at surviving would be the parahumans themselves. This would benefit the government; although they weren't likely to be behind this prison break, it would benefit them if the two parahuman sides aboard finished each other off. There would be less parahumans to deal with, and therefore they would spend less of their budget on The Promise.

These were thoughts that ran through Eli's mind as she quickly put on her running shoes. Whether it was by coincidence or sheer luck, it was Eli's first day off in five days. She'd slept in, had a quiet breakfast with coffee as she watched what little news was broadcasted on The Promise, and had just put on her running clothes to jog towards her parahuman parole officer meeting (technically it was called training) when the alarms began blaring.

Eli wasn't exactly panicked yet. Surely there would be enough security officers loaded with nullifiers and guns to quell the prison break. She hoped that The Promise hadn't been ignorant, and that they had made a plan for emergency situations like this. They had to have at least enough backup nearby to stop a prison break, right?

These thoughts were enough to give Eli the courage to step out of her apartment and head down the single flight of stairs it took to get to the bottom floor. She would head towards the public shelter as fast as she could. Her apartment door wouldn't hold for long if there were prisoners lurking around. It was her best bet for safety. As she was just about to exit her apartment building, her fears were finally realized as she heard a shriek outside. She stood frozen at the door, the milky glass making it impossible to see what was outside.

As Eli squinted in an attempt to see if there were any figures, a dark shadow loomed in front of the glass, and outside of the door she could hear sniffing. Without a second of hesitation, Eli slowly backed away from the glass while trying not to make a sound or release a breath. The moment she felt she was at a safe distance from the door, she turned and bolted for the stairs. If getting to the public shelter wasn't possible on the ground, Eli knew a few ways to get there on her own.

Eli had just rounded the corner of the second level staircase, she heard the sound of glass breaking from down below. Her heart beat and pace quickened instantly, and she didn't stop until she made it to the roof of the building. She'd snuck away from her building plenty of times this way, either from ex-boyfriends who were waiting outside of her building to see her or from officers here to question her about an incident that had the markings of an illusionist. Apparently being a trickster had its advantages: Advantage #1 being a quick getaway from a potentially life-threatening prisoner, or an awkward breakup.

Eli's building was only three stories high, and fortunately it was connected to a whole line of apartment buildings. She really only had to climb or jump over a few ledges in order to reach the next building, and so on and so forth. She tossed the bat aside. Unfortunately she would need both of her hands to scale the ledges, so her physical protection item could not come with her. It was all up to her abilities if she ran into trouble now. With a huff, Eli turned towards the direction of the shelter and began her familiar trek across the rooftops but at a much faster pace.

It was when she reached the fourth rooftop over that her untrained parkour speed got the best of her. Her foot slipped as it made its landing on a ledge and she tumbled over it, landing with a thud on the other side. She winced, remembering a few drunken nights when something similar happened to her. This fall was nothing but a nuisance until she heard the sound of a door bursting open a few rooftops behind her. She remained still, listening in case the pursuer would find her trail and follow after her. She would be fucked if they did.

A loud grunt was heard from that direction, followed by the clattering of her bat as it was kicked across the roof. Then, in what seemed like one achingly long passage of time, the thing turned and headed back into the building.

Eli released the breath she had been holding in and slowly rose to her feet. Down below her she could hear the sounds of released inmates creating chaos, the shrieks of helpless parahumans whose power meant nothing against the power of a threatening criminal. She grimaced. The government had to have some kind of plan when something like this happened, right?

Right?

---

By the time Eli reached the closest building to the public shelter, her hope of any security taskforce rushing in to save the day had been squashed like a bug. It had taken ten minutes for Eli to make it there, and she still had to climb down a fire escape and make a run for the building. From the direction that she came, she was facing the back of the building. She would still need to make her way to the front.

The street below was quiet, and she could have sworn that she saw a hovercraft land near the public shelter a few minutes ago. A flicker of hope passed through her. Maybe some reinforcements had arrived? Maybe some ammunition had shown up? ... Maybe it was just someone trying to save their own skin.

Eli closed her eyes and took a deep breath. It was just a few hundred feet. She could easily make that within forty seconds.

Forty seconds... Okay. She could do this.

A quickly as she could, Eli climbed her way down the fire escape and in one slick move slid down the ladder to land firmly on the ground. She turned and bolted across the eerily silent street and around the side of the building that held the public shelter. Slowing down as she neared the corner to the front, Eli stopped to peek around the corner before she would make her move into the open square in front of the building.

The sight of security officer Radvi filled Eli with a wave of temporary relief, but before she could make her presence known she saw Radvi raise his gun. Out of nowhere, the gun was knocked from his hand and lodged into the wall by a literal spike. Eli pressed her back firmly against the wall, trying to think of what to do. She was of no help standing there, and it seemed that Radvi and his partner were the only officers in sight. So much for getting to safety.

After a quick peek around the corner once more, Eli caught a good look at the three inmates as they moved to practically surround the shelter. Their menacing exteriors made the hairs rise on the back of Eli's neck. They were grotesque. They could have come straight out of a horror movie. Why did this have to be the first time Eli had to use her abilities to fight?

She was frozen in her spot, trying to convince herself that she could handle them. That with Radvi there, everything would be okay. It was then that she heard Radvi's usual strong, friendly voice sound small and fearful, _{“Stay… calm…”}

Suddenly, Eli could feel the blood under her skin boil. There was no way that Eli was going to let anything happen to Radvi. He was the only security officer that she'd grown fond of over the years. The only officer that didn't report every moment she spent rebelling against The Promise's rules. He was the one that continued to fuel her hope that The Promise wasn't all that bad. If he was gone, she would surely give up on The Promise's good intentions.

Eli's face hardened, her lips pressed into a thin line. Let's kick some prisoner ass.

Stepping out from behind the corner she walked to stand a few feet to the side of Radvi. She focused her attention on the three disgusting figures in front of her, tapping into their mind's perception of their senses. There were only a few illusions that Eli could use at this moment. She could make an optical illusion, but she would have to think of something that would deter all three of them in a second's amount of time and hope they would be fooled. Or there were the options of messing with their perception of balance or negating one of their senses. If she chose the latter, she would have to quickly decide which of the three she could manipulate at her current strength. Sound, sight, or feeling? Eli had to chose within a matter of seconds, and she decided to go with the one that would have the strongest effect.

As soon as Eli had a strong connection with the three, the inmates would begin to feel the world beneath them ebb and flow like a wave. Up would feel like down, and it would seem as if they were spinning off into space. They would begin to feel dizzy. Extremely dizzy. The few subjects that have had to undergo this effect reported feeling extremely nauseous, and a few of them threw up because of the feeling. That was simply an experiment; Eli had held back because she was afraid of hurting the volunteered subject. She wondered what would happen now that she wasn't being cautious...

T H E P R O M I S E

---

Salamandra was left reeling and coughing from the massive object that had come out of seemingly nowhere and floored her. Her head spinning, she couldn’t move her arm so her defenses were crippled, and most of all she felt tired.

Throughout her life, Salamandra had lost track of how many times she'd been struck, cut, maimed, or shot. But this was different. She had never felt this type of tired before, and was starting to lose consciousness when the voices of several people distantly reached his ears. She felt like she was just on the edge of dark oblivion.

She could feel herself bleeding from numerous gashes left by broken glass. Her battered body screamed in protest as she rolled onto her side to see Lynn approaching. Salamandra’s body flared, heating up further. Normally that felt good to release energy like that, but it almost felt like it drained her more. She groaned, pushing herself up by her good arm. Working through the pain, she expended more of the heat she had, desperately trying to bring herself back from the edge.

Salamandra wasn’t going to take this win in her state and she knew it. She was out of shape from prison, crippled, and any more energy and she didn’t know what would happen. She looked to her left, and the restaurant was destroyed. She looked across the floor and the boy she had taken a liking to had disappeared. She looked back up to Lynn and raised her hand, open and flat, towards her advancing adversary. “Stop!”

Sally breathed, a labored breath in and another labored breath out. “Jus’, jus’ leave me be. The man’ll come get me soon enough.” She sagged against the wall of the building, searing through the wall with her heat until she met a steel beam, which seemed to hold her for the time being. She was beaten, and she didn’t want to die.

---

Archie

---

Deep down, the beast wasn’t actually sure why it was doing what it was doing. Just that it should be doing it. It wasn’t often that it came out, but it never had some prime directive in mind before. Usually it chose to stretch its legs or protect itself.

As an entity it was separate from Archie. A fragmented part of the man’s psyche that had manifested itself in the world, that hd repressed itself so wholly that it could not be found under normal circumstances. It was why Archie was so positive despite his mistreatment and adolescence. It was why the scars were not seen, and why he was not jaded. The beast existed as a survival mechanism made real. It existed to protect the boy from the world, to act as an outlet for rage and frustration that he did not have the tools or knowledge necessary to process.

So why did it seek to protect something new? It was only distantly aware of Archie, but knew that it existed for him. The girl that smelt of chemical and adrenaline was some external factor that it didn’t need to care about. Yet, it did. Perhaps it identified with that rage. The soul shattering, unyielding will to resist and desire to satisfy the fear and sorrow. They were both savage roars of unimaginable ferocity shaking the heavens themselves. Maybe they weren't so different, and that was why it cared. Archie knew what it was like to be unmade. He knew what it was like to have a monster inside, lurking in the shadows, waiting for a chance to escape and destroy everything you held dear. To be a thing of pure emotion, a caged animal striking out at his handlers, not understanding that they didn't want to hurt him, unable to distinguish friend from foe.

It followed the screams. All bodily fluids and blood had their own individual scents, and hers was no different. The giant followed its nose and tongue, which led it quickly to the body Death Head. Just the body. The great lizard lowered its head, taking in the metallic smell that emanated from it, and the person he was here for wasn’t far away. It could see her. It could smell her. It didn’t know how it knew that this small, blood covered woman was the one.

It just knew.

It was like the gears clicked into place. The reptile's abruptly dizzy and it world tilts dangerously, the sound of screaming and running and indiscriminate destruction blurring into a whirling ambience and it's like tunnel vision, it can't see anything but her, can't feel anything but when her hands wrapped around his own when he apologized to her, the memory anchoring it and uprooting it all at once, and suddenly everything is comets and supernovas again, breathtaking and terrible, it's you, it's you, it's—

It pulled itself together, trembling and shaken in its own mind. She was covered in blood, her blood. She was scared and hurt and it had failed her. It understood in that moment why it cared. It slammed the ground with two titanic fists, roaring like a pained yet determined animal. It would make this right. It would stop her before she got hurt again. Or hurt herself again.

In the end, its not sure who exactly it is making that promise to, but given everything: him, her, them— it's well worth a shot to find out.

Natalie Ellis

---

---

As Natalie advanced, all but one of the prisoners backed away. This crazy bitch just ripped off Death Head's head! But one of them, whose hands ended in six inch claws, began to advance. He was clearly unafraid. As soon as he was close enough, he swung to slash at her. But she caught his wrist, and with one more movement of her free hand, the prisoner fell to the ground in two pieces. That was the cue the rest of them needed to turn and run. Natalie continues to go after them, but that's when she heard the roar.

She remembered that roar from her first day. And sure enough, she saw the giant reptilian form of Archie. Right now she couldn't remember him, or the promise she made. She just remembered getting attacked by the lizard. The pain of getting tail-whipped through a door. The fear re-surged in her, and with it, the desire to kill what she was afraid of. She turned round and began to stalk towards the lizard. There was no recognition in her eyes. Though her eyes were scared and her body was bleeding and painful, she only seemed to be more focused. There was no hatred. No malice. Just the will to kill. It wasn't personal. She was just scared. Beyond terrified.

---

Eli Wessex.

There were very few parahumans that Radvi had come to hold in some positive regard. Eli was one of those few. She was far from a model student, with a history of using her powers of illusionary conjuration for the light sort of mischief, but she wasn’t so brazen as to land herself within the confines of the Promise’s penal facility. Likewise, Radvi had the feeling that he - being one of the few officers who wasn’t a complete hardass towards her - was held in, at the very least, a similar regard. Whatever the case may be, he was relieved that she’d shown up, not hesitating to put her abilities to work.

The two encroaching prisoners stumbled and spun, their sense of balance being racked into high hell. The third who had been clinging to the upper level promptly lost his grip and fell a short distance onto the floor below, onto his back. Noelle watched them all without lowering her guard, but Radvi wasn’t hesitating. He turned his head back towards the column his gun had been pinned to, by that prisoner’s tail-spike. He made a dash for it, grabbing it firmly and ripping it from the wall, with a few twists of his hand. Its general size and shape meant it could be used almost as effectively as your average knife. And the situation at hand left no room to be picky. Radvi turned back around and headed for the prisoner the spike had originated from, while Noelle had turned her focus towards the one with the bladed whip-arms.

Radvi slid into a kneeling position and raised the spike a bit above his head, attempting to bring it down onto the prisoner’s chest. He had, however, held onto just enough awareness to swipe at Radvi, giving him a nasty scratch across his cheek. As he reeled from that, the prisoner turned his body and whipped his tail around, wrapping it around Radvi’s neck. He attempted to drag him away, but stumbled once again, keeling over.

Radvi fell forward and threw the weight of his body onto the prisoner, pinning him down on his front-side, yet still being strangled by the tail. The newly-grown spike waved around a bit, barely scratching his cheek once again. Radvi persisted, bringing the severed spike down on the back of the prisoner’s head. A shrill cry sounded from his mouth, but after two more stabs, he fell silent and still. The tail’s grip around Radvi’s neck loosened, and he then pried it off, freeing himself.

Noelle, meanwhile, was fighting her own fight. The prisoner with the whip-arms stumbled about, swinging her own personal killing instruments around rather haphazardly, her senses still quite lost to her. Noelle kept her mechanical arms up in vertical fashion, forming a defensive around her upper body and head. She searched for an opportunity to go in and… there.

She lunged forward and grabbed the prisoner’s left arm while her back was turned. One hand on the wrist, and the other where the elbow… should have been. Noelle pulled her away from her previous position, leading her towards a column and slamming her into it, and audible thud sounding from the impact of the prisoner’s jaw against the concrete.

Just then, the meaty red of the prisoner’s arms began to creep upwards, the pale skin on her torso quickly adopting the same crimson hue. More and more blade-like protrusions erupted from along her form, and she shrieked at the manifestation of each one. Noelle backed away, holding her arms up again as the prisoner swung madly at her. Sparks flew off of Noelle’s metal arms as the blades scraped against them, her continuing to back away as the prisoner approached, seemingly having regained her senses, yet her footsteps still looking somewhat erratic.

Noelle opted for decisive action and opened the palms of her hands, waiting for the whips to come again. When the blades connected with her palms, she closed them and held on as best she could, yanking the prisoner forward and raising her foot to deliver a stern kick to her gut. The prisoner fell onto her back, thrashing about madly. Noelle kept a grip on her arms, stepping forward and turning them around so that the blades were aimed right at the prisoner’s head - more specifically, her mouth.

Noelle brought the blades down, shoving them into the prisoner’s gullet, straight through to the back of her neck. She only flailed for a few seconds more before falling limp.

Noelle backed up, panting, looking down at her handiwork. It’d been a while since she had done anything close to guard work - and even longer since doing something quite so brutal. But she wasn’t the sort to dwell on it so much anymore, and for that matter, neither was Radvi. They were both finished with the prisoners they’d each elected to tackle, two out of three overall.

All that was left was the walking heap of shrapnel - and at the moment, Eli was seeing to him.

@Skai

E L I

---

Woah.

Eli had never seen her abilities in action like this. It filled her with a great sense of purpose and pride. It was rewarding to see a security officer look grateful for her presence. Even if it was Radvi, it still felt comforting that one human out there didn't think that all parahumans were like the three stumbling creatures before them.

The creatures were clearly stunned for the moment, which left Radvi and his metal-armed friend plenty of time to gather the resources they would need to finish them off. Radvi immediately took the spike from the wall and advanced towards the scorpion, and his badass friend rushed the woman with the whip-like arms as if she didn't have blades coming out of her skin.

This left the giant cheese grater for Eli to handle. She wasn't sure if she was supposed to feel relieved that this was the inmate she'd been left with, or if she felt extremely intimidated by this 6'6" body builder. It also made her wonder when she'd last gotten a tetanus shot.

Eli made one last glance towards her two human partners to make sure that they were getting along. They seemed to be holding up, although her heart jumped as she saw the scorpion's tail wrap around Radvi's neck. She shook her head and turned away from them, allowing the illusions to fade from all three inmates so that she could focus solely on her opponent.

He was big and covered in danger, which meant that Eli wanted to stay as far away as possible from him. Close combat wouldn't be an option unless she was going for the final blow. He didn't seem to have any visible features. Did he have ears to hear with, or eyes to see with? How did this guy get around? Were his buddies his guide dogs? This made it difficult for Eli to deprive him of these senses. If he couldn't see in the first place, what was the point of making him think the world went dark?

Either way, the inmate slowly began advancing towards her. He knew somehow where she was, which was all Eli needed to know. She tested his vision by moving around, and the two began slowly circling each other. Somehow this thing could see.

A rough, grating laugh seemed to emit from the muscled metal heap. "ꜱᴄᴀʀᴇᴅ, ʟɪᴛᴛʟᴇ ɢɪʀʟ?" It spoke, sending shiver's down Eli's spine. Her steps hesitated for a moment, but she kept moving. She couldn't be a still target. Her best chances were to keep moving and wait until the right moment to act.

"ʏᴏᴜ'ʀᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ʟɪᴛᴛʟᴇ ʙɪᴛᴄʜ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ɢᴀᴠᴇ ᴍᴇ ᴛʜɪꜱ ʜᴇᴀᴅᴀᴄʜᴇ," he continued, flexing what muscles could be seen beneath the metal shards. "ʟᴇᴛ ᴍᴇ ʀᴇᴛᴜʀɴ ᴛʜᴇ ꜰᴀᴠᴏʀ."

The metal man lunged forwards, raising his arms into the air as he prepared to tackle the young woman to the ground. Eli suddenly lost all courage at the sight of this thing running towards her. She was trapped between it and the metal door to the public shelter. She cried out in fear and immediately shrunk to the ground, covering her eyes so that she wouldn't have to see her own demise.

The creature was satisfied that his prey gave up so easily. He increased his speed and waited for the delicious squish her body would make as his body would engulf hers. A laugh erupted from the inmate's body, only to be cut immediately short as a second from impact with the girl, she disappeared right in front of him. His body made a loud ᴛʜᴜᴍᴘ as it flew straight into the door of the public shelter and he released a gargled "ᴀᴀᴄᴋ!"

Eli stood a safe ten feet away from the creature, unscathed. She'd managed to slip his eye as they circled, and had produced an illusion strong enough to make it seem like she'd stopped in front of the shelter. She watched as the metal protrusions sunk into the door. It was thick enough that the shards wouldn't reach the other side; the sheltered residents inside may have heard the impact, but they were still entirely safe. Perhaps just a little frightened, though.

The massive man jerked for a few moments, slowly wrenched his metal body from the door, and stumbled a few feet away. Eli tensed and took a step backwards. Just as she thought that she would have to face him head on, he fortunately fell to his knees and then faceplanted the ground. The impact with the door, along with the fading dizziness, had been just enough to render the inmate unconscious.

Eli immediately relaxed and released the breath she had been holding. She reached up to brush her hair from her face and realized that her hands were shaking. She hadn't felt this scared since the day she was boarded onto a shuttle and shot into space. This was obviously much, much worse than that day; she almost had to kill a man to survive. She might still have to kill him, if he didn't stay unconscious for long.

Without waiting to find out, she cautiously backed away and turned to search for Radvi. To her relief, he had emerged unscathed despite a few scratches to his face. His friend only had marks on her metal arms, and Eli didn't want to imagine what she would have looked like if she didn't have prosthetic limbs.

"_{Are you okay?}" Her voice came out a lot smaller than she intended, and she quickly cleared her throat to regain some dignity. "I didn't... I couldn't kill him. He's just unconscious for now." She paused, glancing back at the man to make sure he was still zonked. "What should we do?"

@SepticGentleman

Lynn

There were so few situations in Lynn's life in which she had no idea what to do.

The first thought that flashed through her mind was that this was a trap, an underhanded attempt to pull one over on Lynn. Lynn wasn't surprised - with one arm out of commission, she was going to need one hell of a trick to be able to wrestle Lynn back down to the floor. She kept coming closer, low red flames flickering up and down her arms and legs, dancing across her naked form. The steam and smoke in the restaurant afforded Lynn some degree of privacy - it was difficult to see outside of the restaurant, which probably boded well if the lizard came slithering back in. Lynn figured she could try to scramble out and get a better angle on him while he sifted through the sauna. But Salamandra lay here, breathing like she was trying to give birth, her arm hanging uselessly out of socket. Lynn stopped and stared at her for a moment, thinking.

This was Salamandra. Salamandra. The woman who burned cops and stayed on the run. Lynn felt furious and small, like everything pounding in her skull was towering over her. She was livid, angry enough at Archie to burn stars and melt fires. He had hit with the fridge and knocked her on her ass. I had her, Lynn seethed. She was mine and you fucking took it from me. They'll all say Salamandra had her on the ropes until Archie came in. Weak Little Lynn getting her ass beat all over again. In her mind, behind the squeals and groans of the restaurant's walls, bending and succumbing to the intense heat, she thought she could hear the laughter - Salamandra's and everyone else's - as she stood there, naked as a baby and feeling roughly as strong. She was furious at Salamandra, too, for more than she knew how to express. Megan and Clarita fucking needed you, Lynn wanted to say. She remembered the day they called her Salamandra, when she'd gotten her ass beat halfway to hell for them. They never had any chance of being Wonder Woman, but they could be Salamandra. Salamandra killed anyone who fucked with them, and with her ribs pressing against her skin and her stomach cramping on empty, Lynn could only give them sunburns. And Clarita and Megan couldn't do anything. She'd been shaking with fury and fear the night Salamandra had been arrested. If the Fire Worms can burn out, Lynn had thought, watching the shitty small television from behind two black eyes, the room full of anger and noise, We all will, too. If Lynn had been as strong as her she wouldn't have gotten fucked so badly in life, not from the cops, not from all the girls in juvy, not from -

In all the other pain Lynn felt, in her jaw and her throbbing, swollen nose, and down her sides and her stomach, Lynn felt a flash of phantom pain in her knee, worse than all the rest.

She stared down at Salamandra. This was no trap. The woman was beaten like a dog, shaking and whimpering. Lynn had never seen something so pathetic. Lynn's fists were still curled at her side, flickering with coronas of heat and light. She was going to rape him, Lynn thought, wanting to draw herself closer and crush her windpipe. Leaving her in prison is breaking her enough. Lynn heard noises from outside, the sound of it slamming the ground with all its strength. It could be out there killing someone, Lynn thought, wildly, in a voice she could've sworn was Lucy's, or a court-ordered psychologist, or maybe even Clarita's, once upon a time. Lynn looked back down. They sent her to kill me, she knew, she knew down in her bones. They knew she would set off the lizard. They wanted deniability. She's a fucking puppet for the same bastards who lock kids up without a trial. Lynn tried to process the broken woman's words. She wasn't going to fight? She was going to lay there and take it? Just go the fuck back to lockup? She didn't have anything to prove, or anything to accomplish? Lynn was shaking with anger at her. Get up, she wanted to scream. Get up and fucking fight me. In the flurry of thoughts in Lynn's mind she could not tell what was right or what was fake, which of her instincts she could follow. If she gets out again she will come back for you, and they will say you were too big a coward to finish her off. If you're ever locked up with her, she'll shove a shiv between your ribs the first chance she gets. one side urged. If you kill her and the lizard takes out someone else outside, their blood is on your hands.

Had someone been plotting to kill Lynn - in earnest, for once - and had that someone been behind her, they would've had as clean a shot as they would ever get. Lynn stood rooted to the spot for some full thirty seconds.

The longer she stood, the quieter the second voice got. Spoons is as broken a housedog as they come, she thought. Archie is too nice, and they'll put a bullet in his head the minute the lizard stops being useful. Amelia deserves whatever they're doing to her in Gennedy's excuse for a precinct. And Keaton won't help you when the time comes. It's only you. It's only you and when they put you in a cell with her she will beat you to death with your own collar.

She walked closer to Salamandra, drawing her power back to her, siphoning what oxygen remained in the room. There was a part of Lynn that loved this feeling, the rush and thrill that was running through her, the knowledge she had put Salamandra where she was now, that Cordelia Lynn Holmes could take the best hits the worst criminal in L.A. could give out, and when the smoke cleared, Lynn could spit out her teeth and keep on swinging. That part of her wanted this. It wanted to snap Salamandra's neck and drag her outside to show Gennedy, and Narc Natalie, and Che, and -

Lynn stopped again, her mind struck by a thought she had not expected to cross it again. Did that girl going to the station, with the officers - did she make it? Who else is out there?

"Enough of this shit!" Lynn screamed, kicking the floor and driving a foot deep gash into the melted linoleum. She panted, flames coursing higher up her naked skin. She turned back to Salamandra, heaving with exertion and trembling with anger. She'd wasted enough time pussy-footing with all her feelings. This woman was a killer, and not for any good reasons. She sicc'd that skull fucker outside on that woman. She was going to rape Archie (and for a moment, flowers in a hospital room flickered through Lynn's head, and burned away as quickly as they came), she was going to kill Lynn as soon as she got the chance. And the longer Lynn stood here the less time she had to put down the lizard or help that girl. Or help them all. All the ones on the station right now, all the ones found by the killers nastier than Salamandra. They burned away in Lynn's head, too.

There were no cameras left unmelted in the room, and in the smoke and heat, you could've mistaken it for the doorway to hell.

Lynn strode forward, grabbed Salamandra by the hair and pulled her up. The woman threw a punch, a blast of heat that tickled Lynn's side, and slammed her working hand into her kidney, her thigh, her groin, each blow a little weaker than the last. Lynn smashed her head against the wall trying to stun her, but Salamandra had melted most of the damned thing, and Lynn only succeeded in irritating her. Enough, Che said. Do it. Lynn remembered how scared she'd been holding the bottle in her hand, not wanting to, not wanting to be a - Fucking do it already. Are you a pussy? Are you going to let them die because you're a coward? the way the guns had gone off around her, louder and stronger, kicking like horses in their hands, melting the barrels as long as Lynn was nearby, but the tracer rounds lit like stars, and they seared holes in their cars, in the walls, in -

Lynn blinked. Salamandra was limp.

She stepped back and the woman slumped down. The room was spinning, a touch from the fumes, a touch from the lack of air, a touch from Lynn's soul flickering like a candlefire. She kicked Salamandra again for good measure, almost falling over from the effort. Lynn wanted to say something, to tell her she was a bitch, that she should never have laughed at Lynn or done what she did, that she couldn't believe Salamandra went out like a coward, that Lynn would have run with her, that they could've burned their way to the docking bay and gotten caught but fuck, they could have tried, they at least could have tried, but none of the words came to her. They felt as empty as the room. Lynn shook her head and strode back to the far side of the restaurant, where the temperature was still several hundred degrees, but markedly cooler than that side. Lynn forced herself to simmer down and grabbed her sweatshirt, putting it on clumsily as she exited the back of the restaurant. As the hoodie passed over her broken nose, another flicker of pain whited out Lynn's vision for a moment and she stumbled into the doorframe, pausing to catch her breath. Lynn glanced around the kitchen and found a gym bag tucked into a corner. Lynn threw on a pair of shorts - oversized for her, but when were they not - and grabbed a kitchen knife off the chopping block. She considered grabbing a gallon of grease, but hesitated. The light on her hands was flickering, dancing wildly and violently, and Lynn did not trust herself to hold steady as she had in the cafeteria. I'll blow my hands off, and not be able to stitch them back to me.

Lynn had hoped ending it would qualm things down inside her head, but it had only made them more furious. The girl or the lizard? Keaton or any of them? Fuck this, fuck all of this. Lynn stepped outside, only half aware of how haggard she looked, of the sharp crook in her nose and the swelling left side of her jaw, the purple bruises already forming on her pale skin. Lynn drew in as much air as she could, feeling as though she'd only gotten a minute in the corner before having to start another fight. Whichever I find first, Lynn decided. If Keaton goes, I've got no chance of unraveling this, and Archie's the one most likely to kill her.

Lynn came around the side of the building she saw Archie and Natalie having a staredown. Lynn would not admit it to herself on the conscious level, but she did not have the strength to contend with either of them, and knew somewhere deep down, somewhere that scared her and stripped off her clothes and made her a little girl shaking on the curb outside a burning home, surrounded by sirens and screams, that she was not sure if she could have beaten Salamandra if Archie had not intervened.

Lynn had never been one to pick winning fights.

She stepped closer slowly, trying to assess the situation. Where's Keaton? And what the fuck happened to Spoons? "Oy," she muttered, knowing the lizard could probably hear her heartbeat back on Earth, but trying to catch Natalie. She looks gone, Lynn thought. Like her mind snapped in half. For a second, Lynn thought she could hear Che agreeing with her. "Nat, get up. Back away. Get over here." They didn't have time for this. She'd have to try and lure the lizard back in or -

She frowned, remembering Keaton's words through the weariness. Against every instinct Lynn had, she forced her heat back down, as low as she dared, and put her hands - only barely glowing now - behind her back. "Natalie get the fuck over here. Move." Lynn did not take her eyes off the beast, but kept her ears out for another escaped convict coming up behind her. I hate this fucking station, Lynn thought. Her mind whirled for a way to win against the lizard, or maybe even both of them, as rabid as Natalie looked, but it only showed her Megan and Clarita, and Lucy crying, and Che, and Salamandra's eyes bulging, and the feel of her nose right now, and her right knee splitting open, and the cold of a prison cell.

As she tightened her grip on the knife, she could feel Salamandra beating against her right side, each hit growing weaker than the last.

---

This did not turn out to be the fight that Freaky-D was envisioning it to be. More of a… beatdown.

And he was not looking like the victor.

Arianna grabbed D, and like a rubber band she pulled herself and him together. Using her momentum to drive her knee into his gut.

For a moment she was shocked by how inhumanly solid he was. He didn’t yield or crumple like normal people, and it felt like he only bent over because she forcefully pulled him over. She briefly considered eating through him, but fought that thought back. She needed him alive to find out what he had seen before she killed him. Any loose ends could compromise her end goal, and if he knew that she was here, then The Promise could stop her before she finished her mission.

She couldn’t let that happen. She looped her arm around his neck, and ran her feet along an adjacent wall, using Freaky-D’s body as a springboard to launch herself backwards and down, effectively RKOing Freaky-D and driving his helmeted head into the ground. She flowed around his body as he fell, her form shifting and using where her arm had been as an anchor point. As Freaky-D hit the ground, he was effectively stomped by the neck into the floor. Feeling confident that she pinned him down, her hands came down to the base of his helmet, and she began prying it off. Or at least, trying to. If she could expose the base of his skull, she could paralyze him.

She could keep him alive until he talked after that.

And it was in that moment, where D seemed most vulnerable, in a spur of what could have been brilliant cunning, sheer stupidity, or just plain dumb luck…

“REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-”

Maximum volume output. Bass-boosted to hell and back. An instrument of the devil himself, made real.

Arianna’s grip immediately slackened, and her whole body shimmered, her colors and shapes warping rapidly and without control. In a brief moment of clarity she stepped away, her arms flying around her torso in some misplaced attempt to regain control of herself. “What the hell are you doing to me!”

D raised his head in somehow-detectable mixture of both shock and excitement. The thoughts of that mediocre third Raimi Spider-Man movie came rushing back to him, as it all suddenly clicked. His trump card against this enemy was his most powerful weapon of all.

LOUD NOISES.

He raised his legs and jumped back up onto his feet, and without any hesitation, bombarded Arianna with even more sound.

“GET IT ON THE FLOOR, GET IT GET IT ON THE FLOOR
GET IT ON THE FLOOR, GET IT GET IT ON THE FLOOR-”

At this point, Arianna was beginning to find it difficult to simply stand or maintain her form. It felt like her whole body’s funny bone had been struck- she felt like what TV static felt like. D approached her in between swinging his arms around, dancing in his familiar, ridiculous manner. And his dancing quickly turned to a direct offense.

“YOU DON’T WANNA PARTY THEN YOUR ASS GOTTA GO,
YOU DON’T WANNA PARTY THEN YOUR ASS GOTTA GO-”

He was spinning, windmilling as the ancient scriptures put it, his fists colliding with the gelatinous material now poorly comprising Arianna’s form, sending bits and pieces of her flying away. He began mixing in his feet with the attacks as well.

“NOW YOU CAN RIDE TO THIS, MUTHAFUCKA,
BOUNCE TO THIS, MUTHAFUCKA,
FREAK TO THIS, MUTHAFUCKA,
LET’S GET IT OOOOOOON-”

Fist sized clumps of her body flew off as he struck her, hitting the floor like gelatin that was not quite solid. Her form rapidly strunk, eventually losing support entirely, her crippled body hitting the floor with a wet splat. She fought against the noise, pulling herself back together almost as quickly as she was falling apart. She wasn’t hurt, and she wasn’t dying. That was perhaps the strangest part of all of this. She felt fine, but she couldn’t hold herself together.

It was then that, once again, brilliance struck D. He took the second mason jar he’d been holding onto for handgun magazines, and popped it open. As he did, he played a record scratch, and in a matter of seconds, switched songs.

“I WAS GOOD, SHE WAS HOT,
STEALING EVERYTHING SHE GOT,
I WAS BOLD, SHE WAS OVER THE WORST OF IT”

He scooped up a lump of the blue-tinted goo into the jar and sealed it up.

“GAVE ME GEAR, THANK YA DEAR,
BRING YOUR SISTER OVER HERE,
LET ‘ER DANCE WITH ME JUST FOR THE HELL OF IT”

And with that, he was off. He bolted away from the discombobulated Arianna, out of the Panera Bread, with the smallest piece of his foe in hand to do… God knows what with.

Arianna pulled herself together again, cursing as she did so. She knew a part of her had been taken, and was well on the way to trying to escape. She considered chasing him, but her eyes flashed to the clock. It had been a while now, and the guards would be returning soon. She growled, a deep scowl on her face, and flowed into the adjacent wall. She would take care of him later, assuming she didn’t compromise her immediately as soon as he could.

He would get his. She swore it.

---

---

Radvi wiped a bit of the blood from the scratch on his cheek as he approached Eli. “We stay here and hold a defensive.” He said in reply, “We have someone out getting us weapons.”

And hopefully, he would be back with them soon.

“Who’s this?” Noelle asked, motioning towards Eli but keeping her attention on Radvi.

“This is Eli.” Radvi replied, “She’s a mentalist, and she’s good people. Didn’t really cross my mind to introduce you two before now. But, regardless, good to have you out here.” That last part, he said to Eli.

Noelle turned her attention towards the unconscious metal-covered prisoner. She took a moment to grab him by his side and, with a bit of struggling and taking care not to scratch her legs or torso, turn him over onto his back. She paused for a moment, and then grabbed a metal spike protruding from his shoulder and snapped it off with a few tugs. His eyes weren’t covered - straight paths to the brain. She raised the spike and…

Eli looked away. Radvi only winced a bit as the spike went in through the eye.

No prisoners. Gennedy’s orders.

That being said, Noelle wasn’t a guard. But she certainly carried herself like one at present. A side of her that Radvi had not seen in years.

At that moment, the comms came up.

“Radvi, this is Gennedy.”

“Yes, sir?” Radvi replied, touching his earpiece.

“Cara’s gotten through the lockdown. Rest of the force is en route to Sector B. How’s the shelter looking?”

Radvi looked at the scrapes and puncture marks the prisoner had left on the bunker door.

“Door’s a bit damaged, but everyone’s still safe inside.”

“Hold position, you’ll have backup soon.”

“Understood, sir.”

Comms dropped. Gennedy was telling Radvi to do what he’d already been doing, but he wasn’t about to start pointing out the obvious when the Chief was, more than likely, very pissed off. So he, Noelle, and Eli would stay right where they were. Hopefully soon with some guns delivered to them-

“YEAH-”

And as if by the order of some unseen script, D came racing around the corner on his skates. “Now he gets back!” Noelle called out. He had a rifle on his back, a handgun at his side, and two mason jars in hand. One full of handgun ammunition and the other…

Not?

D rode right up to Noelle and handed her the rifle, the handgun, and the ammo. And while he was standing near Eli, he turned and grabbed her hand, shaking it vigorously while she was still confused as to what the hell was going on. Afterwards, he turned again and rode up to Radvi, handing him the other mason jar. It was full of this… violent, blue organic material. Writhing about, as if attempting to break free. Radvi took the jar in his hands, while D tapped its lid with his finger. ‘HERE’S YOUR CULPRIT’ flashed across his helmet in bright yellow letters on a black screen. And with that, he began riding away once more, around a corner, and further down the street, away from the scene and off to wherever.

Radvi stared at the D as he made his exit, as did Eli, while Noelle had already taken to prepping the munitions. He stared down at the jar in his hands, examining the active contents within.

Culprit…

Radvi didn’t know what the hell D had done out there besides gather weapons, but he wasn’t about to cast aside any possible explanations as to who the hell was behind this mess.

So he kept the jar.

Archie

---

The reptile lashed out suddenly and with impossible speed as Natalie approached, a single preternaturally powerful and fast leap covered the distance between himself and Natalie between Lynn finishing her last word and her mouth closing. The monster swung with almost surgical precision, its enormous hard wrapping into a fist and colliding with Natalie’s entire upper body in a downward arch that cracked the concrete beneath their feet.

She crumpled instantly, the giants single powerful strike being enough to send her already heavily taxed body over the edge. Instantly the reptile’s body language shifted, its enormous body slinking around Natalie’s as if to put an impossibly large wall of muscle and scale between her and the outside world. The enormous lizard regards Lynn like a mother lion, with a snarl. Wild and impulsive.

Not exactly softly but not brutally either, Archie pulled Natalie’s comparatively tiny body into his arms, cradling her like a baby. It was amazing what control he suddenly had. The great beast roared, as though having determined that it was the medicine for all of Natalie’s pain. He does so a few times, but the behemoth seemed to know when to acknowledge a failure. A low, drawn out moan rumbled from its throat, not angry or rage addled as the noises it made normally were, but like a wounded animal in total agony. It’s head snapped upwards in the direction of the restaurant they had come from, which was emitting some sort of low hissing sound. It grew in volume, to the point where it sounded like a hot kettle, and then further into some sort of scream. It sounded like a person, but not at the same time. His thoughts were cut short when the restaurant exploded. An enormous wall of plasmatic fire blew the front half of the building away, almost instantly turning several people that were unfortunate enough to be within a few dozen feet of the storefront to ash. The wall of fire petered out as is reached the edge of the road, and stopped entirely after a second or so. Man versus nature type parahumans oftentimes exploded when they withered. The process had continued postmortem.

Archie shielded Natalie from the blast, although it was more on instinct than it was for any other reason. They were well clear of the blast. Archie rocked Natalie is his enormous arms, he rocked her until ribs cracked and his arms stopped responding. He rocked her until he couldn't see anymore, and it’s so uncomfortably hot that he cant bear to stay still. A seam on the great lizard’s spine cracks open, releasing him from the sarcophagus of muscle and bone that had been his previous body. He felt raw and pruned, as if he had spent the past several hours underwater or a sauna. He pushes against the body’s mass, muscles and tendons snapping away from his eyes and allowing him to see once again.

Archie gasped, breathing in the cool outside air and sliding out of the husk of his old body for the first time ever. He had never been conscious at the end of a transformation before, at least until now. He fell out of the giant’s torso, naked and surprisingly cold. He felt like he was in a haze, as if he was drunk but... not. Everything felt slower and faster than normal at the same time. He tumbled back until his back hit the wall, and he looked up to the broken window of a pillaged Dillards outlet. It had seemed that it had been mostly ransacked, with clothing strewn around everywhere and knocked over mannequins. His body seemed to register a pair of trousers before his mind did, reaching across the broken glass barrier and yanking them off of a plastic dummy before he even fully gathered what he was doing.

He didn’t normally steal, but he was willing to make an exception. He pulled them onto himself, his eyes flashing to Lynn and then very quickly looking away when he realized that she wasn’t wearing pants. He circled around the body of the beast, and slid Natalie out of the rapidly disintegrating body’s arms. “Nat?” He said, wiping a few strands of hair away from her now rather flushed and inflamed face. God, her neck looked bad. Purple and punctured like one giant bruise rather than her normally cream colored skin. “I gotcha. You’re okay.” He babbled on, unsure if she could even hear him but not entirely caring. “I won’t let them hurt you again.”

As if the flood gates opened, security began pouring into The Promise’s ring. They were methodical with their work, instantly on students and warding off and capturing inmates. Two had come to assist Archie and Natalie, and another for Lynn. Keaton would no doubt be found and processed herself, soon. One of the security agents, a woman, had appeared with a big, warm woolen blanket at hand. She wrapped it around his shoulders and attempted to coax Natalie out of his arms to give her the chance to receive medical treatment. He didn’t budge, and the woman elected not to separate them for the time being, instead forcing them both up and onto the step of one of the security cruisers. The same that had been used to capture Freaky-D. The blanket served as a barrier, in Archie’s mind. From the danger that was the outside world.

The Promise hospitals were busy. The security force was busy. The whole administration was busy. The Promise was a beehive of activity. Their world had changed when they were brought aboard The Promise, and in the wake of the carnage and destruction their world was going to change again.

Lynn

Lynn stared at Archie, wondering how badly the fumes of the restaurant had addled her - the beast was tamer, somehow, not the wild feral thing that it was in the cafeteria, and it was - it was cradling Natalie, like a child. Lynn's hands fell to her sides as she stared, bewildered, the beast roaring at her. Is it going to hurt her? Lynn thought, her mind hazing in the pain. Lynn was as tough as they came, but Salamandra had put a beating upon her, and there are tremendously few people who can remain coherent in the circumstances Lynn found herself in. I have to kill it, She thought again, swaying back and forth slowly, a drunken boxer trying to stay upright in the twelfth. There was something she could not piece together, something that was twisting her already churning stomach. Why is it cradling her like that? Why -

Lynn felt it a moment before it happened. Perhaps it was intuition or her affinity for flame or her pain-addled mind piecing things together too late. There was the surge of heat, the pressure shifted and Lynn knew in that moment, screaming no, to run, to -

The restaurant burst apart, vaporizing four people in a second. The heat rushed to Lynn like a dog to its master, caressing her face, making her forget for a moment the way Salamandra's eyes had bulged with Lynn's fingers around her throat, Natalie unconscious in Archie's hulking scaled arms. Lynn stared, the knife slipping from her fingers, the metal glowing faintly as it clatttered against the sidewalk.

"No," Lynn said, her voice thick and coarse from the blood running down the back of her throat. "No, no I didn't..." Lynn stared at the fire, knowing, knowing it was her, just by her being there, that Salamandra may have withered regardless but it was Lynn standing there that made it burn brighter than the sun, that made it break bricks and split steel and turn glass to water. She stumbled backwards, her eyes wide and her whole body shaking, short and frail under the hoodie that engulfed. "No, Christ, I didn't, I..."

Lynn felt twelve years old again, her hands wrapped around the cold glass bottle, staring at the elongated face reflected back at her and the lighter fluid inside, the other hands, bigger and callused, split-knuckled and strong as iron clenching her fingers against it, shoving it back against her, telling her to throw, throw like her life depended upon it - , smaller than the lizard, smaller than the smoking building, smaller than the paramedic that draped a blanket over her and said words she did not hear. Archie looked at her and Lynn opened her mouth to say something but couldn't, she could only shake her head, her mouth full of smoke and salt and iron.

She had to get away. She had to get clear. She had to find somewhere that wasn't this. Lynn turned and stumbled, ignoring the reaction team. Someone else told a paramedic to fuck off through her mouth and with her voice, but Lynn didn't think it was her, because she couldn't have talked, because she was back inside the restaurant, and she was watching herself get thrown to the ground by Salamandra, and wondering why she didn't check the back rooms before she left, why she didn't think the woman was withering, why she poured all her strength into stopping her. I had to stop the lizard, Lynn wanted to shout, if anyone was listening, but the part of Lynn that had shared cigarettes with drug dealers and kept eating her lunch while someone got their teeth knocked out two tables over in juvy told her to shut the fuck up and get clear, to pray that the paramedics weren't paying attention to who was where and that even the Promise's kangaroo lawyers didn't have enough evidence to pin anything on her.

Lynn blinked. She was in the woods. Her feet bled from the rocks and glass she'd walked across but Lynn did not realize it. She did not want anyone to see her, least of all the fucking snake Gennedy and whatever stormtroopers he had waiting to kill a few more people - like you fucking did - in the chaos. She leaned back against a tree and fell to the ground, her left hand balled into a fist that she bit into with all her strength and screamed, shaking.

Lynn hadn't gotten a good look. How old were they? Were they kids? Why hadn't she remembered? Why hadn't she thought? Why wasn't anyone else there helping? She had...Salamandra would have killed her, would have raped Archie, would have killed someone else. Why did she have to laugh? Lynn thought. Why were they standing there? Why didn't they run Jesus Christ why didn't they run? Her head was still throbbing from the pain, with even her regeneration unable to slow her nose almost sealing shut from the swelling, her jaw puffing up. Her face was a patchwork of pale and purple, and where her hoodie sleeves fell down her bony arms there were deep red bruises from Salamandra's hands, the same that matched her thighs, the last things Salamandra had left her with. She could hear her laughter again, and Che's. I am no fucking better, Lynn thought, feeling as though she would have thrown up again if there was anything left inside her to purge. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ Gennedy just put the bullet in my head now. I'm here and there's no cameras just fucking do it.

Lynn's hair and eyes stopped glowing and died down to a dull mess of auburn, frayed with split ends and uncombed tangles. Her eyes were blue, light and pale and watering. Lynn wrapped herself in the banket and twisted it over and over in her hands and let herself be cold.

Natalie Ellis

---

---

Nat had her guard up, but her body was in no shape to fight, and even as she started to pull her fist back for a punch, the blow landed, and she crumpled. Her bones were strong enough to keep her straight as it was the ground that gave way and absorbed the impact, but it was still a powerful blow. Natalie went limp, as she was now putting all of her conscious effort into staying awake, and keeping her aching muscles tense. If they relaxed, she'd bleed out in minutes. She held on with her will to survive. She didn't have the strength to fight Archie anymore. The massive lizard had picked her up and even though her frantic brain was screaming at her to kill Archie before he killed her, she could barely move her arms. But as she was held there, she began to sense she was bring cradled. Rocked like she used to be by her parents. She hadn't seen them for over two years. She'd never see them again. Thoughts of them flooded her mind. She no longer felt in danger. Her mind was no longer in a dark time several months ago. It was in a warm time many years ago.

The lizard started to make strange noises and Natalie was put on edge again. The lizard started to twitch and convulse, and in a panic, Nat grabbed and pulled, which both helped Archie get free of his de-transformation and rip the lizard skin to pieces. She was now calm enough to think rationally. Two more people. She'd taken two more lives. She didn't even want to think about that properly yet. Right now it was nothing but a fact, because her own life was still in danger. Nobody was trying to kill her, but she was in such bad shape that all her focus needed to be on keeping herself alive.

Archie came around to her, and brushed bloodsoaked hair off her face. She'd killed. Tried to kill him. And he wasn't scared of her. Not even a hint of caution. She felt tears welling up after hearing his words, and she shook her head. "They already hurt me, Archie. And they'll always be hurting me," She answered weakly. "Nothing you can do." Even so, she started to cry. Although she wasn't quite hugging back, her face was buried in his shoulder as she sobbed and howled.

Security came, and Nat also didn't want to be taken out of Archie's arms, so let herself be carried onto the cruiser. She had to hold on just a little longer, until they got to the hospital, to a place where she could give her muscles some rest and let herself bleed freely from her entire body. And she didn't have that strength alone. Without Archie, would her will to keep living have been strong enough to compel her to endure the strain? She didn't even know.

Before the door closed, she got a brief glance at Lynn. Natalie knew that look. She understood it all too well. It wasn't pity or sympathy she felt for Lynn, but true understanding and appreciation for the horrors she was going through.

E L I

---

Radvi, composed as always, strode away from the dead scorpion-man as if nothing had happened. She watched him wipe the blood from his cheek and wondered how many times he'd killed before. In all of the four years she knew Radvi, she realized that she had never asked about his past. Usually she didn't care. She only cared about a person's present until thoughts like these crossed her mind. Most of the people she met on The Promise had similar backgrounds, which is why she never asked anymore. Officers were a different story.

His partner strode up to the two and without looking her way asked Radvi who she was. Eli's brows furrowed and she chose to ignore the rude woman. Instead she chose to keep a lookout. There was still a chance that more inmates were coming. She had enough energy left for at least one more fight. Radvi spoke directly towards her, which drew her attention back to him. She nodded to acknowledge the thanks and glanced at the woman as she headed towards the slumped metal man behind her.

With ruthless intent, the woman finished what Eli couldn't. Eli didn't watch, her right hand curling into a fist to relieve her of the stress. A quick glance at Radvi and it seemed as if he was just as surprised that Noelle had done that.

Just then, Radvi's communicator clicked to life. It was Gennedy, the Chief officer that Eli had met only once before. The reinforcements would be here soon. The chaos was almost over. She doubted that things would return to normal afterwards. The Promise had a lot of explaining to do, and the reason why this happened wouldn't be an easy answer. Did they even know how? The world would want to know.

As if someone, somewhere knew what she was thinking, the answer arrived wearing a pair of... skates? And a huge LED display for a helmet? Whatever it was (it looked like a boy but who could be sure), it was loud and fast. Noelle even knew it. It handed Noelle weapons, and as Eli was still trying to figure out what it was it turned to her. It's hands grabbed hers in a greeting. Eli stared into the bright lights of his helmet and scrutinized the "face" looking back at her. For a moment she felt like she'd run across an image of this guy somewhere on the internet.

He pulled away before she could mention it, nonetheless form a coherent thought about this erratic helmet-guy before her. The jar he handed to Radvi drew her attention immediately.

'HERE'S YOUR CULPRIT'

What?

Eli looked at Radvi's confused expression before watching the rollerskating helmet guy ride off into the streets. That was odd... She looked back at the deep blue jello inside of the mason jar. Could the mass of shit inside really lead them to whoever/whatever was behind the prison break?

"Is that guy serious?" She asked Radvi, watching him examine the contents himself. "Could that really be a lead?"

She wanted an answer, but before one could be given the reinforcements arrived. An officer immediately was upon Eli. "Eli Wessex?" Eli raised an eyebrow. "Yes?" The officer nodded and reached for her elbow in what seemed like a non-threatening way. "Come with me. All students are being processed before escorted to their rooms."

Eli frowned, pulling her arm away from his grasp. She didn't want to cause trouble, but she never liked being told what to do like this. It was one of the things that reminded her of what The Promise was really about. "I'm just fine here, but if you're going to make a scene about it I'll walk myself to the cruiser." She gave the officer a forced smile before turning to face Radvi.

"Can you believe these guys?" She aimed her thumb at her companion and shook her head. The man rolled his eyes and placed his hands on his hips. Eli sighed and waved as she began walking away. "Let me know what that stuff is, okay?" She glanced at Noelle. "It was nice meeting you."

After one more comment from her buddy, Eli turned and headed towards the cruiser with the backdoor open. She hadn't done anything wrong so she knew that they would just question her before sending her home. They'd probably just ask the questions on the ride to her apartment. She sighed for the second time that day as the door to the cruiser shut behind her. It was going to be a fun ride home. Maybe later she could let off some steam while the security team was occupied. She needed a drink. Or two. She hadn't even begun to worry about her friends. If they'd survived, she was sure that they would be yearning for the sweet release of booze later tonight.

---

Hannah’s boss- bosses, were unhappy. Particularly Josiah Stanton. The head of R&D, a thin man with far too much gel in his sparse hair— informed her that she needs to do something to satiate his patients and prevent some sort of riot. Elizabeth McCoy offers up helpless eyes while nodding along with her employer, and Hannah understands, really. After the sudden and unpredictable breakout a large volume of people and parahumans alike had died. Their main demographic were parahumans, and while they certainly looked and acted like regular people they decidedly weren’t. They had lost friends, family, people they had known for years. Security could be replaced easily enough, but beings who could burp fire and shit lightning took precedence. They stood to cause a much larger volume of damage in a much shorter period of time, after all.

“Something should be done that will allow them to channel that energy," Elizabeth suggests, smiling shortly. "Something simple. Humanizing. I know it worked on me when I was a student."

"Or," Markus Wrath drawls, leaning forward from his spot on the table. “we could take to using some of my pet project."

The room seems to drop a few degrees when the man spoke. He was large and looked like he ate nails for breakfast, so much so that he cowed even Gennedy when he wanted. Elizabeth blinks, her hands holding tight to the hem of her shirt. "I…"

"It’d be on the side," the man tells her, flicking his wrist. "Nothing flashy, but it would help the guards in such a case."

"I'm just not sure that's what I want," Josiah entreats, carefully. "From what I’ve read, it’s still in its infantile stages. I think McCoy is onto something here. Improving standing and all. It’ll buy you time to continue refinement, if anything."

"Student relations." Wrath snorts and rolls his eyes, like Elizabeth is the most naive person to enter his life. "You can do your outreach if you want, but people always remember the bad things that have happened more than the good."

"I think it’s a horrible idea," Susanna argues, shooting Markus a glare. “Arming people further is going to make them feel less safe. Not the other way around."

“It’s no longer about their safety. They aren’t people, Castillo.” He fires back.

They quarrel for a while, Elizabeth attempting to defend Josiah with meager and mild interjections, but Wrath continues to speak over her. She was a parahuman and should’ve seen that coming, but in this room they were supposed to be on equal footing.

"It's final," the man says finally, standing "You'll do whatever silly relations work you want, but the security and tech branches will continue to work towards nullification tech."

He and Gennedy, who had been silent throughout the debate, unwilling to voice his disagreement with Wrath, stood. It bothered Elizabeth to no end, how thoroughly he had been brainwashed to follow the other man’s words. He was certainly not a soft man himself, but he also never questioned the status quo of parahuman and human relations- viewing Wrath as a superior rather than an equal.

“I think I have an idea.” Hannah said once the two men had left. The remaining heads turned back to her, and while the woman was little more than a figurehead there was a reason why she was in the seat she currently occupied. Any one of the people in this room could have just about any person on the station spaced if they saw fit, but this woman wasn’t intimidated by any of them in the slightest. She almost reveled in their attention.

“It’s a distraction. But I think given that they’ve had time to mourn now, it’ll give them something positive to focus on.”

---

Archie

---

By the time Monday rolled around, Archie’s throat still hurts a little, but it's nothing a lozenge won't fix, and his head feels a little fuzzy from the few days spent either sleeping too much or too little, but he was alive and well. Saturday brought him a raw throat and a nasty cough, but since he was up here in space being observed half the day by scientists, he ended up taking enough medicine to knock it out before it could really develop. He decided to go to school and he's running even later than usual.

By the time he arrives, he’s forgotten half his schoolwork and nearly knocks a freshman to the ground in his rush to get to class, his teacher's words ringing in his ears. One more tardy, Mr. Anderson, and it'll be out of my hands and into the dean's. Archie personally doesn't care about tardies, since his first period never really gets rolling until it's ten minutes in, but he doesn't want any more trouble than he had already gotten himself into during the first week. He steps through the door’s threshold right as the bell rings, and Archie feels like he might faint with relief. Or maybe that's all the running. Christ, he really needs to get in shape again.

"Anderson, how nice of you to join us," his teacher drawls, obviously not amused. He ignores her tone and slips into his seat in the front row. A seat he abhors with every fiber of his being, but still the seat he was assigned. It was arguably a worse curse than the primal side of his conscious. The curse of having an ‘A’ in your last name. "Sorry."

The thing he had found about his teacher is that she'll let you get away with most anything, so long as you apologize. "It's fine, Mr. Anderson. Are you feeling any better? Ms. Ellis told me you weren't well."

Archie feels his face heat up at the extra attention from from the teacher and his classmates. "Yeah, I wasn't. Better now." He tries to glance over the subtle reminder that he and Natalie had taken quite a shine to one another.

"I'm glad to hear that," she replies, rifling through a folder on her tablet before sending it to his, papers having long since been replaced in the classroom. "Here's your essay and your last test. Let me know if you have any questions." She wanders past Archie, giving forwarding similar results to a few other students who were absent. "And today, we'll be getting some background on another important and influential writer: William Shakespeare."

There wasn't much of a response from the class, but Archie releases a groan within his mind. If they're going to study Shakespeare, he might as well start calling English a foreign language class. He was never any good at it. He spent the next half hour alternating between paying attention and working on a sketch that was as bad as he felt (he couldn’t even tell what it was, but it was shaping up to be a wonderful looking fish-cat), and the bell's only a few minutes from ringing and sending them all off to their next class when the teacher spoke up, "Okay, listen up, class, because this is important.”

Archie was successfully snapped out of his inattentive state, and automatically moves his hand to cover up his minuscule sketch. If anyone (Lynn) found out about his drawing thing, she’d probably tear him a new asshole.

“The Headmaster has an announcement for everyone, and requested that the education wing build it into their schedules for today," She continues, and the entire class groans, even Archie. Usually he's all up for a lengthy, time consuming segments that cut into class time. But the class was already almost over. Couldn’t she have just done it earlier? He's just glad he doesn't have much of a social life. Otherwise he’d be fairly pissed about this announcement cutting into the amount of social time that was normally afforded to get from one class to another. The teacher dimmed the room and put the projector screen down.

At first, it was simply school announcements and other school news. The two anchors were flat and had no huge amounts of charisma, very obviously reading lines about how the school was replacing the paper towel dispensers with air driers, and how the robotics club was hosting a robot battle royal in room 46. Be sure to bring your appetite for destruction. And pizza. Chaos today as a salamander escaped from its tank in the biology room. More fungus on the wrestling mats. Archie was always impressed by the creativity that came out of the daily news class in the digital arts wing. They always somehow made the total lack of production value fun to watch in their own way.

He was beginning to grow discontent though, with the school’s lack of statement after the breakout. Sure, they couldn’t undo what had happened, but they could at least say that they were working to ensure that the reason why the seat to his left was vacant wouldn’t happen again. Archie’s sentiment was shared across the the student body, and it seemed as though the faculty had been instructed to remain silent on the matter as well. Whenever prompted, they had been tight lipped and deflective.

“And now, a word from Headmaster Dunbar....”

The woman appeared on screen in a jerky cut that had obviously been simply pasted in by one of the students in the class. It had been filmed by someone who was actually being paid for their work, though. He could tell, because the lighting was nice, the headmaster held a professional demeanor, and the edges of her person weren’t hugged by a poorly done green screen.

"Students of The Promise," their she began, and the entire class perks up a little, as if they were each being addressed by name. “The administration is incredibly sorry for the incident that occurred some four weeks ago."

And there it is, Archie thinks. What the population had been waiting for. “We have been spending every day since the breakout. To ensure it doesn’t happen again. We are deeply, deeply sorry for the mistakes and failures on our end.”

Nothing of significance had changed in the weeks since. The brick and stone campus buildings, statues, the lawns and stately oaks, none of it looked any different. The overpasses and stairwells had been repaired, the grass trampled by people and torn up by shrapnel replaced, all the signs of the death and carnage had been neatly erased. It was nice to know that it hadn’t been forgotten, or worse. Ignored. The school had held sermons for those that had died, but little else had been done in the wake of the disaster aside from the repairs.

“As some of you know, The Promise’s annual Homecoming dance will occurring soon. We have elected to open the dance up to the entirety of the station, and thus The Promise will be hosting various themes and celebrations across the station. Be you at the school or on the streets, we hope to be seeing you.”

Now this really got his attention. Back home, Homecoming dances were held held by a few schools at a time and that was it. But what the school was suggesting now? That sounded like Mardi Gras, or the Festival of Lights in Prague. He had never been to a concert or massive party before, but he figured partying with a few thousand people could certainly make for an interesting night.

The rest of the day had gone pretty smoothly, all things considered. It was normal aside from all the chatter. People were making plans already, talking about who they were going with, where they’d be, what they’d do. It’s as honestly the first positive buzz of activity he’d seen the school undergo since the breakout. On his walk back to his dorm he sparked a wonderful idea. He did have people he could go with if he wanted. His pulled his phone from his pocket, almost losing his grip and throwing it in excitement as he did so. He was still unused to carrying the device.

His fingers were slow and undisciplined, but he managed to select Lynn, Keaton, and finally Natalie. His fingers hesitated over her name for a moment- not because he didn’t want to invite her or add her. He most certainly did. He couldn’t think of anything he’d rather be doing than spending time with her if he could. It wasn’t even that he was inexperienced with girls. He was just so incredibly nervous around her. Most of his previous ‘relationships’ had been the girl making the first move, but it seemed like he was catching feelings just like he had caught a cold over the weekend and he had no idea what to do with himself as a result. He had been somewhat avoiding her, seeing her irregularly at best and never one on one. Texting her even less so, although not for her lack of trying. He didn’t fully blame himself for that one, though. He regularly forgot to charge his phone every night. Let alone check it daily.

Meet at the mall, anyone?

The text was brief, didn’t even mention where at the mall, and was irrevocably Archie as a result. Archie didn’t waste time waiting for a response, instead he dropped his school bag off at his dorm, walked to the only mall on the station, and seated himself as close to the Panda Express as he could.

He was eating for two, after all.

Lynn

Lynn was instantly beloved in the back rooms of El Vaquero, one of the Promise's numerous Mexican restaurants.

For starters, she didn't care how hot the scalding water was as she scoured plate after plate (and, similarly, little did she seem to notice the water was more steam than water after a few minutes of her furious scrubbing). Secondly, when one of the older cooks - a two-time carjacker and one-time willing participant in an extraterrestrial work release program - commented on Lynn's rather diminutive stature in Spanish, Lynn informed him that, despite her small size, she was more sexually endowed than any of the other line cooks.

Lynn's knowledge of the Spanish language was, shall we saw, a few inches wide and thirty miles deep. For the purposes of winning over these crew, she may as well have been trained at the United Nations.

Regardless, for the first time on the Promise, she had found a group that took an instant liking to her. Lynn also dialed back her paranoia a bit. People like Archie or Natalie or the snake's pit Gennedy watched over made absolutely no sense to Lynn. Lynn could not understand wanting to come to this place.

These guys hadn't. Lynn had been a few years younger when she'd worked in a kitchen last, although she did a brief stint in one when she was...well, doing a brief stint. It was familiar. It was comfortable. They smoked out by the dumpsters during breaks and Lynn felt just comfortable enough to shit-talk the Promise in Spanish, in muttered tones with her coworkers as the clamor of the restaurant deafened them to any eavesdroppers.

"Vas a romperla." Antonio said, grabbing the cup out of her hand.

Lynn blinked. She'd put cracks in the glass.

"Disculpa," Lynn muttered, staring down at it. The water boiled around four hundred degrees as it rolled over hands - a fact the other dishwashers had objected to before Lynn told them to stop being pussies and did their work for them (admittedly, with a stool under her so she could reach the sink). She stared down at the water for a moment, taking a few deep breaths. The steel of the restaurant walls looked the same, sometime, and she'd tripped over a gym bag coming into work that afternoon. Once, Lynn had picked up one of the menus and thought it was in Chinese before she clinched her eyes open and shut and forced them to read it correctly. She looked around at the gallons of grease sealed on the other side of the room, of the smell of sizzling vegetables and cooking meat. Lynn turned back and scrubbed a plate, where her nose still looked broken in the reflection.

---

Class was bullshit.

Lynn was told she was below the standard aptitude level of a child her age, which pissed her off for a number of reasons, as did most things. Regardless, she gritted her teeth and suffered through class. Most days. Her attendance was not spectacular. On one or two days, she woke up and stared at the ceiling, sweat steaming off her. There were nights Salamandra and she were locked around each other, the woman a few inches taller each time she showed up again. Lynn struggled to get her footing when her right knee split open with pain, and then Salamandra was over her, looking down, her hands around her neck -

On those days, Lynn did not go to class. She walked the campus and smoked, or drank coffee in the most run-down diner she could find on the Promise. Her teachers strongly suggested Lynn get a tutor. When their suggestions turned to orders, Lynn just didn't show up for tutoring. Surprisingly, none of the tutors seemed particularly motivated to tell the teachers Lynn was not showing up. Lynn has a talent for asking for things nicely, I suppose.

Power training class was at least something. The instructor was a jackass, but Lynn could admit there was plenty to learn, and this guy had an inkling of respect for her - a respect Lynn attributed to any surviving cafeteria footage that was circulating the Promise.

"You need more control," he barked. "You'll burn down your dorm when you sneeze if you don't get a lid on it." Lynn bit back a few choice words, mostly bringing into question his preference in sexual partners, perhaps questioning his desire for broadening his romantic interests beyond the realm of the two-legged. That would only prove his point, after all, and anyone who thought they had Lynn figured out could go and fuck themselves. Whether it was getting three (to five) square meals a day or the training, Lynn did notice her flames came to her more quickly, her arms and legs felt stronger than before, her eyes danced with light more brightly. Lynn even glanced in the mirror one morning and could not count all of her ribs. She stood and stared for a while, grinning crookedly, letting herself feel like she and Lucy were dressing up again for a moment.

Day by day, Lynn found it harder and harder to keep her guard as high as it should be. It did not make her less jumpy, or keep her eyes off the entrances and exits as she sat down to eat. She never stopped trying to fit as much food in her mouth as quickly as she could, but she had to admit they had enough time to put another hit on her. The breakout was a sloppy job, Lynn thought. There's something at work here. Archie and me and Nat were just icing on the cake. There was something hidden on the Promise, something Lynn could not see, no matter where she looked.

The thing about Lynn, of course, is that everywhere she went, with her hair glimmering and her eyes burning, there were only more and more shadows, deeper and darker the harder Lynn tried to cast them away.

---

Lynn sat in the woods, some two miles off the path and with her back to a tree. Lynn had lost count of how many times she had come out here - after a shift, smelling of dish soap and Mexican food, or after class, where she would stare down at her notes and grow angrier and angrier, smoke curling off the edges of the pages. This is fucking bullshit, Lynn wanted to scream. Everyone else could finish the readings in minutes, but Lynn did not know what half the shit meant. Math, likewise, was an impossibility to her, and Lynn did not care about anything they taught her in history class, because it was all propaganda anyways. The only classes Lynn seemed to scrape by in with a modicum of academic prowess was chemistry, which seemed to come naturally to her (naturally enough - she hovered at a C+, near the edge of a B) and power training. Spanish, at least, wasn't too much of a struggle, but whoever thought their classroom Castilian was worth a damn was an idiot in Lynn's book.

She'd earned the attention of the Spanish teacher on the first day.

"How do you say what's up?" he asked, drawing a name and turning to Lynn.

"Comó andas," Lynn said.

The teacher blinked. "I...yeah, in Argentina, I suppose." He stared at her curiously then kept going, Lynn grinding her teeth as a few others glanced in her direction. One girl asked if Lynn had studied abroad.

Lynn shook her head. That thought and others came to her, sometimes, and she could not force them out. Lynn flipped through her notebook, running back over the observations she'd jotted down. It was another day or two before she and Keaton would meet again and exchange what they'd found out. Insomuch as Lynn could trust anyone on this place, she was beginning to feel she could trust Keaton.

No.

She couldn't. She was getting to know Keaton. That was something. But Keaton was like everyone else on this ship - looking for a reason to throw her under the bus. It was just now they were useful to one another. Lynn did not mistake that for anything more. The more Keaton knew about Lynn, the more Keaton could tell Gennedy the next time they were locked up on trumped up charges. She didn't know who had ratted on her in the interrogations, or why Gennedy hadn't come for her again already, but they had to be plotting something. Lynn stared down at her notebook, going back over everything. There was something she had missed. In her mind, this was no different than the harsh red ink at the top of her classwork. Another reminder. Another puzzle Lynn was too slow to solve. She leaned back against the tree and tucked away her notebook, sparing a few minutes to pass over some bars she'd written idly on a slow day at work, a brief sketch she'd made with the charcoal of her fingers. If anyone saw this shit they'd laugh until the day I die, Lynn thought.

Lynn liked the woods. They were quiet, and out from Gennedy's para-traitor eyes. She never had her phone on, as she did not want Cara listening in, so there was nothing to distract her other than the occasional chirp of a bird or gurgling of the river. At times, though, the quiet was too much. She would - she would remember things. Four people, there and gone again, in the blink of an eye and a flash of heat. A bottle in her hand, a flash of pain across her face. A scratching inside her knee, like the sinew was still trying to stitch itself together again. Lynn rubbed idly at her nose, fully healed, save for the scar at the top.

"Oy, Lynn."

"Don't use my name, you fucking moron," Lynn muttered, reaching into her pocket and drawing out two hundred credits. The boy - a few years older than Lynn, skinny as a junkie and shifty as a fox, reached out and tossed her a pill bottle. Lynn checked it and nodded, tucking it away. The man counted Lynn's restaurant money and nodded.

"Pleasure."

"Hey," Lynn said, glancing back up at him. She hadn't figured out what kind of powers he had to be here, but Lynn had a grudging respect for anyone who came here with a noose around their necks, parahuman or - "I dannae what the fuck you're on abou'." she said, catching her breath. "Aint no gettin' off this ship. One way ticket n' all. - or....or otherwise.

"...yeah?"

"Sorry," Lynn said, shaking her head straight. For a moment she'd been - she'd been somewhere else. "You ever looking to expand?"

The boy shrugged. "Maybe. You handle your shit?"

Lynn raised an eyebrow.

He snorted. "Alright. I'll keep you posted."

Lynn nodded and waited until he had left before she pulled out the ceramic mug from her bag, one of many quietly appropriated from the cafeteria. She placed it on the forest floor before her and sat cross-legged, filling it with water from her bottle. Lynn picked it up in her hands and held it gingerly, trying to take deep breaths. Slowly, the water came to a boil, the cheap porcelain heating in her hands as well. Lynn took another deep breath, a bead of sweat trickling down her face. She could get the whole forest blazing, easy, but this was different - this was like a one finger push up rather than a bench press.

"Just the water," Lynn told herself, softly, trying to keep her breathing steady. "Not the mug, just the water." The water boiled and steamed, but the mug was heating up faster. Lynn cursed, prompting her whole temperature to spike before she calmed herself down, staring at the rippling surface.

"Tienes frío?" Lynn asked, Clarita shivering beside her.

"Sí." Lynn grabbed her hot chocolate, gone cold some hours past, and warmed it back up to her, the beverage boiling again in a matter of minutes. "Cuídate." Lynn ran a hand through her hair as - the side of the wall exploded and Clarita was gone, three others too, vaporized and -

The mug exploded. It snapped and - four people - the water burst apart in a cloud of superheated steam. "Motherfuck," Lynn cursed, one of the porcelain shards slicing her forearm, the other missing her hoodie narrowly. Lynn fumed (literally and figuratively) for a moment, taking as many deep breaths as she could. Her heart was thundering against her skull, though why, she could not say. She fumbled for one of the Xanax, swallowing it dry and taking more deep breaths. She wasn't far from where she'd been when she - when the restaurant had burst open, Archie curled around Natalie, Salamandra dead, the...the everything.

Lynn put another mug on the ground and tried again. And again. When she'd run out of mugs, she gathered her things to leave, spotting it at the last moment. Lynn knelt down and picked it up, rolling the doll over in her hands, muddied and worse for the wear. It was a bunny rabbit - Lucy had one like it when they were younger, but Lynn couldn't remember the name of it. The hair was mostly worn away, one of the button eyes dangling loose. Around its ankle was a tag, one Lynn recognized without even needing to read it.

"Those fucking bastards," Lynn murmured to herself. Gennedy's face swam into her mind and her hair danced with fire. She tucked it in her backpack, zipping it tight. She and Keaton would have a lot to talk about.

---

Homecoming. Lynn didn't get the point. She'd never anticipated graduating high school - which, self-fulfilling or no, seemed to be a relatively safe assumption given recent weeks on the Promise - and never had much of a home to stay at anyway. Lynn sat in the park at the designated place, backpack next to her, notepad sprawled on the stone table. Lynn smoked a cigarette, one leg brought up to her chest and the other rocking back and forth on the ground below her. Her phone buzzed, prompting Lynn to flip it over. Work?

Archie. Meet up at the mall. Group text with Keaton and one other - Natalie. Something in Lynn twisted, bent around like drooping dead flowers, and she flipped the phone over. Lynn hadn't seen much of any of them, save Keaton for their weekly meet-ups. She had a class with the other two, but tried her best to keep a distance. In the park around her, a few kids played, which Lynn watched with a hint of a smile. They fucking suck at soccer, Lynn thought, although she doubted if she could do much better. Basketball, most assuredly, although Lynn suppose they were probably some of the few she could reasonably compete against in terms of height. Lynn considered the announcement from earlier. This will work on the sheep, she thought. The wolves invite them to dance, and they'll put on their dancing shoes. Not Lynn. She was going to have no part of whatever consolation prize for letting rapists out of custody that Dunbar had drummed up. Lynn would be working, either at El Vaquero or on the scrawled words on the page before her. Lynn had paced over the Promise's station a dozen times over, relishing in at least the length of the leash she had on her now. In juvy, she'd paced every inch of the yard. This was no different. Just a better view.

Lynn picked at a meal someone had ordered but not picked up, meals the manager very graciously always saw fit to pass along to Lynn. She munched on the chicken noisily as she waited for the rendezvous, her other hand idly scrawling lyrics into her notebook, on a page separate from the breadcrumbs and dead ends and red herrings.

Natalie Ellis

---

---

One week after the incident, Natalie began to attend classes again. She was still so weak that she needed a crutch to walk, and slept either sixteen or two hours a day with rarely an in-between. She looked like hell. Her entire body was covered with stitches, her shoulder was bandaged near her neck, her neck itself was still bruised, her skin was deathly pale and her eyes were red and puffy. The class were very silent on that day, as she was a fresh reminder of the horrors of that day. At least people weren't avoiding her out of fear anymore. No, now they were avoiding her out of pity.

Classes went well for her. Well, reasonably well. She was an 18 year old with the schooling of the average 16 year old, do she was two years behind on literally every subject. She had no strong or weak subjects. She worked hard at everything, glad of the distraction and chance to achieve something, but lacked the intelligence or talent to excel at any one area. She got Bs and Cs across the board in all the quizes and tests. She'd have to try harder to get As.

Well, there was one class she was struggling, but Natalie didn't think of it as a class. Power Training. It was hard to do well in power training when you were afraid to, and often outright refused, to use your power. Natalie's average power training class was spent sitting on a bench, and sometimes crying. She had come to resent that class. It was one of the things she had brought up with her therapist, who had suggested that she try to join in and not be afraid to use her powers, but that was largely overshadowed by larger areas of concern for her therapist.

Ever since the incident, Natalie had been racked with guilt over taking another two lives. It was affecting her sleeping, her diet, and many other aspects of her physical and mental health (during one health checkup she practically got yelled at for how little she was eating). But her therapy sessions were helping. Natalie had been told in her first week to find creative hobbies. Natalie loved to read, so had began writing. She wasn't a storyteller, or very creative, but she did have a lot of emotional turmoil in her head. Thus, poetry had become her solace. Though her poetry was often dark, it helped to get things out of her head and onto a computer.

Natalie hadn't talked to Keaton at all since the day after she got back, and that was mostly just them asking each other if they were okay. Natalie and Amelia talked a lot, as per usual. They weren't at the level of friends where they'd ever go out to lunch together, but they appreciated each other's company. Natalie wanted to talk to Lynn, to reassure her and support her, after seeing the look on her face that day, but could never bring herself to. She didn't think Lynn would be very comfortable with the situation brought up either. And Archie...She really liked spending time with Archie. They got each other. They could relate to each other. They'd made a pact to protect each other. They didn't see each other very much, though, and sometimes she avoided Archie. Sometimes she could also tell he was avoiding her. Natalie didn't think she had a crush on Archie, but then again, she didn't know what a crush would feel like, having never had one. And she hadn't have any close friends in her life either. She honestly didn't know whether this was a close friendship or a crush. It was one of them. She had been forcing herself not to think too deeply about the latter possibility. Her head was chaotic enough.

Today, in class, her stitches out, body healed, and fresh, ugly scars on top of her old ones, she sat. They had finally addressed the incident. No explanation. But at least they're not trying to pretend that it didn't happen. If that had stayed the case, Natalie might have started to think that Lynn and Keaton were onto something regarding the establishment being shady. Natalie didn't want that. She establishment was her one hope of becoming....well, sane again.

Natalie zoned out during the homecoming talk. She wouldn't be going. She would not wear a dress with her scars. The rest of the day, she just coasted. It was when she was on her way back to her room that her phone buzzed, and she checked it. It wasn't from Amelia, surprisingly. It wad from Archie, asking her, Lynn and Keaton if they wanted to meet at the mall. Natalie stopped in her tracks. She supposed this day would have had to come eventually, when the four of them met up as a group once again.

'Sure. Where about?' Natalie texted back.

---

...

The day after the breakout

Surprise performance assessment.

Radvi and Gennedy sat within the latter’s office at the security station. A screen was pulled up on a nearby wall, displaying some footage captured by a stray shop cam during the breakout. There on full display was Radvi almost getting forced to take a dancing leap off of a ledge, Freaky-D saving him with a dropkick to his assailant, and their resulting handshake leading into a temporary teamup. As Gennedy’s gaze shifted from the screen to Radvi, the latter simply sat in his chair and worked up an excuse for his actions.

“Sir, in all fairness,” Radvi said, “he saved my life. I know it sounds cliché but-”

Gennedy raised his hand to stop Radvi from continuing. “Just… tell me why you didn’t space him. Like I ordered you to.”

“We did! You can ask James and Carlton, you can check the fucking airlock footage, we did what you told us to!”

“Then how the FUCK is he still on this station!?”

Silence fell across the room for a moment after Gennedy raised his voice. Some moments passed, the both of them regaining their collective calm.

“I will accept the fact that he helped you,” Gennedy began, “but I still want to know how in the hell he’s still here. And beyond that, these… pieces of evidence you claim he gave you. What all was it?”

“A sample of… something, from a parahuman. In a jar. It was alive, like it wanted to get out.”

“Oh Jesus Christ, Jacob-”

“And video footage that he sent me! Not just his encounter with that woman during the breakout, but his encounter with the same woman when she was torturing Coleman last week! It is all on your computer Chief, I sent it to you!”

“And what the hell does that prove that she was behind the breakout?”

“You have any better ideas?!”

“Quiet! Just… what did you do with the jar?”

…


…

“Radvi, this picture looks like a fucking… frozen lump of toothpaste or something.”

“Sir, it's a parahuman. She was active before the breakout, she was the one who killed Coleman, so yes, she’s the one I think who caused the breakout!”

“Alright,” Gennedy replied, “alright, for fuck’s sake. I’ll admit, this at least puts her behind Coleman’s death, so that we have to get her for at the very least. We still have to assess the prison systems for damages and tampering, but we’ll keep her in mind for possible links. I just don’t see how one woman, made of blue jello or not, could pull this off.”

“When Norton sent me the test results and gave me the PSI chips, he said she’s some kind of… super-organism. Every cell of her body acts independently. So she can split herself into multiple separate entities, like this one.” Radvi pointed at the picture of the frozen sample on the screen. “We have her power signature on record, so we can search for her.”

“Before we do anything major, we need to get the station under control.” Gennedy stood up as he spoke, approaching Radvi. “This incident is not going to blow over so easily. I expect you to help with the cleanup before going about this woman any further. After that’s all done, I assure you Jacob, then we’ll get to work on finding her.”

Jacob sighed, half-relieved and half-defeated. “And what if she pulls some other stunt that gets even more people killed in the meantime,” he asked, “What then?”

“From now on, we’re keeping our guard up,” Gennedy replied, “Whether it’s her or whoever else.”

E L I

---

One month later.

....

Things had relatively gone back to normal on The Promise. The few days after the labeled "security breach incident" were chaotic. Classes were cancelled, memorials were held for the fallen, and the people aboard The Promise were given time off of work to grieve. The confident ones aboard the space boat spoke in outrage, questioning The Promise for allowing something like this to happen under their watch. The biggest question of all, the one that everyone was asking, was how this breach had even happened in the first place.

Still, just as Eli expected, the news of the breach never reached the Earth. The personnel on the boat stopped speaking about it after five days, the last memorial on The Promise was held a week and a half later, and the shrines for the lost lives were removed after three weeks. Apparently the pictures, flowers, and candles for the dead were "cluttering" the street. Even though every trace of the carnage had been erased, the people aboard The Promise hadn't forgotten.

Eli certainly hadn't. The moment she'd returned to her apartment she sat in front of her laptop and typed up a total recollection of the horrible day she had just been dealt. The next day she walked through the streets, quietly listening to the chatter of The Promise’s security officers to gather intel. She was hoping to bump into Radvi. He was always honest with her, and she wanted to know what he did with the blue goop. She never found him.

Her mother called the next day as part of her weekly check in, but Eli didn't say anything about the prison break. It was better that she didn't hear about her little confrontation with an inmate. She wasn't even sure what The Promise's people would do if she told someone on Earth about it.

She also heard the news that one of her good friends had died during the attack. That news was really the cherry on top. It was a rough few weeks after that. The pain was still fresh inside, but she had to carry on no matter how bad she felt. She went back to work, continued her training, and went on plenty of runs to relieve herself of the stress she felt.

So when the shrine for her murdered friend was taken down a week ago, Eli felt a wave of resentment pass through her parahuman bones. Even today, when the announcement was made to the entire space boat that there would be a boat-wide homecoming Eli felt the same spite towards The Promise. Why would anyone want to go to a dance when there was still so much to find out? She couldn't believe the directors of The Promise. They hadn't even notified the fucking planet below them. Many families probably had no idea that their family members were dead. She was surprised when so many people were eased by the news of a homecoming. The entire atmosphere of The Promise changed once people had a reason to care less. At least she knew that there would be parties that night. They hadn't thrown one in a while, and one of her friends had already sent her a save the date for the party.

When she finally was off of work, she decided to go to the mall for a new outfit. Even if she didn't find one, she just wanted a relaxing evening at the mall. She wanted to be out in public and not at home alone with her thoughts. Shopping would be a great distraction.

She arrived at the mall, dressed in her favorite slip-ons, light jeans, a plain white t-shirt and her comfiest black bomber. She'd messily thrown her hair up into a hairclip after wearing it down all day. Her favorite way to dress, and also the most relaxing. She had just finished looking through the third store of the day when she saw the Panda Express. Her stomach rumbled. Looks like it was going to be sugar chicken and chow mein for dinner. She headed towards the restaurant and smiled at a ruggedly handsome man about her age sitting outside. He looked rather brooding for such a place. Maybe he would be interested in going to the party too.

---

Keaton looked up from her flashcards again. “And, Cara, no multiple choice?”

“No, Keaton. Now keep studying,” Cara’s voice said, light with amusement.

Pulling a face, Keaton turned back to her flashcards. Caissons, piles, properties of soil behavior—what did any of it matter? Even if she managed to get back to Earth, even if Cara’s bachelors and masters programs technically counted back in the states, and even if Cara could whip up an online version of the necessary examinations and simulate an internship for Keaton, no one would hire a parahuman as an architect. Best-case scenario, the government found a job for her helping people; worst-case scenario, she was shelved away to decode documents or interrogate people. Going along with Cara’s curriculum was a farce Keaton was forced to suffer through for the sake of seeming normal. To anyone who cared to look, she’d been attending all her classes, completing all her assignments and scoring well on her quizzes. That her tests were going to be short answer was a slight but mediated hindrance courtesy of Cara after the AI saw Keaton’s aptitude for multiple choice exams firsthand, but Keaton wasn’t gunning for high grades here. Graduate school was as useless to her now as the material before her. Even the most useful class, her power-focused class, was limited in its usefulness. Though the exercises the instructor came up with her every week were interesting and oftentimes revealing in terms of her power, highlighting its edges, limits, and strengths, every revelation came with a moment of dread as the instructor made note of them. Slowly, Keaton was exposing her power to the staff, sharing her weaknesses and answering questions the scientists back on Earth had been unable to answer. She’d considered failing a few exercises on purpose to throw the instructor off, but Keaton knew about as much about her powers as the staff did. Her attempts at deception could just as easily reveal something else about her and her powers, and the last thing she needed was for her to land doubt from the staff because she wasn’t practicing properly.

What she looked forward to, then, was chatting, and by ‘chatting’ Keaton meant ‘chatting up strangers to figure out what shady going-ons The Promise had been trying to cover up before she boarded.’ The whole debacle with Salamandra had shaken her up pretty good, and besides confirming that Keaton was probably going to die here on this ship, it confirmed that the ship was undoubtedly made for some purpose other than rehabilitating parahumans. What that other purpose was, Keaton was going to find out, having jumped at Lynn’s offer to collaborate and share information they uncovered. Talking to people had always been one of her strong points, and striking up conversations with random people at the grocery or bookstore was as easy as walking up to them and recycling some mundane conversation-starter. From there, a discussion on what movies were on at the moment would transition to how life usually was on The Promise, once Keaton mentioned that she was new and was having a little trouble settling in. She’d never been around so many parahumans, barely even known about her powers or wasn’t too confident about them like others. Then it was onto the whole prison escape, how scary it was, how Keaton was constantly afraid it would happen again. When they reassured her it wouldn’t, that it was a unique occurrence that had never happened before, Keaton would sigh in relief, noting how good that was to hear after she’d been told by an acquaintance that strange things had happened in the past too. Further reassurance would prompt her to ask whether strange things had actually happened, what they were and how they were resolved. And, after milking her naive front for all it was worth, she’d transition the conversation onto some other mundane topic before citing the need to run and meet a friend, waving and thanking them for their company as she left.

While the general sequence varied depending on the wariness of the person she was talking to, a little attentiveness and a few reassuring smiles went a long way when getting someone to open up, and she made sure to give each of her excursions a reason, be it something as simple as a caffeine drop or something as convoluted as getting lost on her way to a new restaurant she’d been ‘meaning to try.’ Her levels of wariness were approaching Lynn’s, she figured, but there were certainly worse places than The Promise to be paranoid. Aside from the cameras at every corner, there was Cara, an AI that had the potential to be near-omniscient on the ship. The staff could be watching her every movement, listening to her every word, and Keaton would never know. So, instead of knowing, she assumed: The staff was watching her, the ship had secrets to uncover, and she probably wasn’t getting out of here alive.

Assuming that she wasn’t getting out was for her own benefit. It took the burden off her shoulders in terms of self-preservation since self-preservation was telling her feigned ignorance was the key, and it made lying to her dad that much easier. If she wasn’t going to leave the ship, wasn’t ever going to see her father again, there was nothing wrong with letting him believe she was having a blast out in space. She put off calls, citing a busy class schedule and numerous social calls by new friends, inventing new roles for Archie the jock and Lynn the brainiac. Manning the bookstore desk took up the rest of her time, she said, because her powers could help connect people to exactly what they were looking for. She was a matchmaker for bookworms, and she loved it, she’d say, even if she spent most of her shifts filching information from the few people that stopped by. This way, her father was happy. Keaton knew that for a fact—just as she knew that he was still worried about her, knew that he still hadn’t moved anything in her room, knew that he was counting on her to return and inherit the ‘family business’ that was no more than a phone number, some connections, and some slick-talking.

An alarm went off on her phone, and she stood, stretching.

“Well, that’s enough studying for today. See you later, Cara,” she said, grabbing her bag and heading for the door.

“See you, Keaton,” the AI’s voice replied, echoing out from her phone, speakers, laptop, television, and everything else capable of producing sound. The worst part was that Keaton actually found her voice relaxing, if she didn’t think too hard about it, but that was only when Cara was talking.

---

With her papers in the canvas bag slung around her shoulder, Keaton walked towards the bench that was today’s meeting spot. As usual, Lynn was there already. It came with her jumpy nature, but Keaton was beginning to think she had it right. The Promise could do with a few more paranoid souls, and Keaton herself was well on her way to joining them.

“Lynn,” she said when she was close enough, waving as the girl looked up.

Lynn glanced up mid-bite, flipping the page of her notepad over with the other hand. Denim. Lynn, almost unconsciously, looked her over for a wire or something similar, but Lynn was less concerned than she may have been elsewhere. If they wanted information out of us, they would just bring us in, and they’d kill her all the same if they found out she had a part in it. Maybe. Lynn swallowed and let her gaze rest on the older girl for a moment. Lynn figured, of everyone, Keaton probably had the best shot of making things out okay. She was smart - smarter than Lynn, which rankled her to admit - and unassuming.

“Denim,” Lynn said back. She extended the tray of leftovers, a gesture that took even Lynn by surprise. It had been a while since she’d shared food with anyone.

The outstretched tray took Keaton aback, but she recovered quickly, taking a piece of chicken with a smile. “Thanks,” she said, taking a seat at the bench. With her other hand, she pulled her notes out of her bag. “Down to business then? Maybe we can join Archie and Natalie at the mall after.”

Lynn scowled, chewing on her lip for a moment. Something about the phrasing struck her. Archie AND Natalie. It reminded her, though, of something more important. “Shit,” Lynn muttered, pulling her brick of a phone out and turning it off. “You should do the same.” Lynn rubbed at her chin, waiting for Keaton to turn hers off. There was, of course, the added benefit of no more texts for another minute. “I doubt they’ll care about probable cause or any shit, but it’s better than nothing.” Lynn pulled her bag closer and drew her notes, messy and crudely scratched onto the page, a sharp contrast from Keaton’s ordered points “Find anything?”

Keaton nodded, turning off her phone as well. Cara had done enough listening for the day. “Not much about The Promise’s past, unfortunately,” she said as she slid her phone back into her bag. “The staff have been covering up though. I found another person who knew someone who’d committed suicide despite having made prior plans. Parahuman suicides are more common, but this ship isn’t doing a great job at preventing them.”

Lynn’s face flickered to a reaction of genuine sadness. She’d known a fair few who’d twitched at the end of their bedsheets. She thought her hatred for the snakes that ran this ship couldn’t keep growing, but it did. “Surprised that doesn’t hurt their precious numbers,” Lynn said. “Guess the cover-up. And now they throw us a damn prom.” Lynn looked over her notes, glancing around at their surroundings.

“The timing of the festival is definitely intentional, but it’s working. And, you know how social media is censored on the ship? Well, I was thinking—what if it’s to cover up for people that go missing? Well, not missing, but some people get sent back to Earth, right, but then no one ever hears from them again. No headlines, no news. Either it’s all censored, or they’re not getting sent back to Earth,” Keaton said, shrugging. “No confirmation on this, though. People like believing their friends got back safe. Just got a hunch.”

Lynn shook her head. “You and your damn hunches. You’re right. My - “ she paused, hesitating for a moment. Already told her this much. Not like she wouldn’t have figured out you were an orphan. “I contacted my case worker before we went to Gennedy for our friendly lock-up chat. Told them in code things weren’t right up here. She emailed back and hadn’t heard anything. So no cavalry from back on Earth. Surprise.” Lynn shook her head again, anger at more than just the Promise bleeding out into her expression. “Still, these fuckers are definitely, like, suppressing the news. How many people must have died - “ four people vaporized - “ and...and we don’t hear anything. And they don’t either. They’ve got communications on lock, for sure. I bet it’s Ca - “ Lynn stopped herself. “The machine woman.” She corrected, not wanting to say her name. Even dead cell phones might be listening, Lynn reckoned.

“The ‘machine woman’ is definitely listening and censoring. The other day I was looking up social media sites, but none of my searches were showed up in my browsing history when I checked it. Hunch says it’s Cara, but I don’t know why. Best guess is more censoring, so I won’t be doing that again,” Keaton said, nibbling at the chicken.

“Worth a shot,” Lynn said. “That checks, though. I was talking with Alberto - dude I work with - and he said something interesting. Said a while back one of his friends had a heart attack or something here, right? And that he was talking with his buddy’s family back on Earth. They put the buddy’s body in a casket here, but the family had a cremation or whatever back home. No body. No service.” Lynn flipped through her notes. “Then I get to thinking - there’s gotta be a lot of bodies from the breakout, right? Where the hell did they all go?” Lynn looked down at her notes, where she’d jotted down some ideas, but none of them seemed plausible to her now, sitting next to Keaton. “More cover-ups. Just keeps going on. Tired of this North Korea bullshit.”

“There’s something going on for sure. They wanted Salamandra up here, alive, for a reason,” Keaton said, shaking her head.

Lynn’s pen dug down into her notepad, her face paling for a moment, despite everything, despite all the blank expressions she’d kept locked on her face in juvy or after getting an ass-beating. “Yeah,” she muttered, as neutrally as possible. Hold your shit together, damn you, Lynn cursed herself.

Keaton blanched a little as she realized her mistake, and she rushed onto her next point. “I’m still calling parahuman studies, no hunches. Completely unethical and morally abhorrent on Earth, but in space, away from the public? No such problem.”

“You’re spot fucking on,” Lynn said, her voice a whisper. She was shaking a bit, her hair bound back in a ponytail flickering to a deep red. She reached into the bag and stopped, looking around one more time, before drawing out the doll and handing it to Keaton. “Look at the leg. The tag. It’s the same as...” she said, her voice trailing off. The same as juvy’s. she wanted to say. There was a tag around the leg, a tag that read CONFISCATED PROPERTY: INMATE A3065, ITEM #3. “I found this in the woods. The breakout. No kids under ten on the Promise? Bull - fucking - shit.” Lynn’s eyes started to glow and she turned away for a minute, taking a breath. Mugs. Warm the water. Not the mug. “I...c’mon. You gotta be like, five, six years old to play with that.” Lynn chewed on her hand for a moment, gathering her thoughts. “My money says they’ve got kids, somewhere. Kids without lawyers. Or parents. And they're ...” Lynn stopped talking. Keaton didn’t need her to finish.

Keaton stared at the doll for a moment. That was pretty definitive. Children, on The Promise—for what? Government gain? For money, science, or just the sake of holding bartering chips for the battlefield?

“The Promise has been around for roughly seven years, so that checks out.” Her eyes dropped to her notes. “Are the parahumans being sent here a cover-up for their real operations, then? Distract the public, distract us. Then get rid of us when we learn too much. Gennedy’s a bloodhound around these parts, if I even need to tell you. The older boarders never give me straight answers because of him. If he learned they even knew someone who knew something he’ll bring them in, apparently.”

A flash of panic took Lynn. She put the doll back in her bag, thinking. Lynn glanced back at Keaton, sizing her up again. She looks almost like Lucy, Lynn thought, for one brief, bizarre moment. It was entirely true, but it was a feeling Lynn could not shake. It’s not the way she looks, it’s...she carries herself, or whatever. Keaton was halfway to being an architect from what she’d told Lynn. She could build skyscrapers if she got back to Earth, Lynn thought. I...I could burn them down. “Keaton,” Lynn said. “You...you gotta be careful with that shit. Who are you asking? They’ll get you, man. They…” she paused. “Let me ask that kind of shit. They expect that from me. Not you. If…” Lynn stopped again. “I don’t know what’s taking so long, but Archie keeps fucking flipping when I’m around. First that skater dipshit drops from the sky and assaults him, and then - “ Salamandra’s name caught in her throat. “ - the restaurant. I...look, just, fuck, I’m kinda hard to miss.” she glanced up at her hair, now golden. “If one of us gets caught it’ll be me. That means it’s...it’s on you. If someone’s going to break this open. Help the kids.” Lynn turned back away. “Just...I don’t know. I don’t think there’s anyone here who won’t sell your ass out if Gennedy holds them to the fire. But that asshole can’t burn me.”

Keaton paused. The possibility had crossed her mind, but she’d been careful. Somewhat. It was, unfortunately, hard to be careful before you even knew what to be careful of, but after she’d caught word about Gennedy, she’d done her best. Could someone rat on her? Absolutely. But hopefully she’d come across innocuous enough not to prompt someone to turn her in.

“I won’t say that there aren’t a few people out there who could turn me in to Gennedy, but no fixing that. Most of the time I just slip my questions into conversation, and I mention that I’m new,” she said.

Damnit. Lynn had to admit that was clever. Smarter than she would’ve thought of. Maybe she should be asking the questions, Lynn thought. I’d just pick the one who looked like they’d snitch first and start hounding them. Works about everywhere else. “I…” Lynn frowned. Keaton didn’t get it. She remembered why she hadn’t trusted her to begin with, but there was no denying Keaton was willing to put her ass on the line to stop all this, and she wasn’t naive about what was going on, despite what she was. There was a family, and architect jobs, and a husband, and a white picket fence for her one ten minute shuttle ride away. “You’ve got folks and stuff back home,” Lynn said, fumbling for a cigarette. “I mean, like, if nobody ever comes home, even the dumbest motherfucker back on Earth has questions. They want the ones like you. You don’t turn into a t rex when it’s your time of the month or have ‘Nam flashbacks every time you punch through somebody’s chest. Just watch out. You’ve got a shot of going home.” Lynn snorted. “For the smartest motherfucker on this ship, I bet you can play dumb like a fox. I bet Gennedy didn’t suspect a thing.”

Keaton stared at Lynn for a moment. A shot at going home? She’d been avoiding that thought, avoiding getting her hopes up over something nigh unattainable. She’d come on the ship thinking she’d be home within a few years, max, but now, after seeing the body that’d washed up, after seeing Salamandra and the number of inmates that had escaped and vanished by the next day? If she was lucky, they’d have someone around to wipe her memory, if they even thought sending her back was worth the trouble.

“I don’t think they care about any of us that much. We’re all disposable, at this point. They could just tell my dad that I’m staying aboard the ship as a teacher. Or something—he’d believe it. He’d want to.” She rubbed the edge of her thumb, then sighed, looking up at Lynn again. “Thanks, though, but I don’t think I’d be clean enough at this point. You dig up anything else?”

Lynn said nothing for a moment. The idea that Keaton had a father, but...she believed it, she supposed, after all the piece of shit dads she’d known. Her own included, wherever he was. But still. Hadn’t expected it. “Nothing else right now. At least we know for sure something’s going on here.” Lynn closed her notepad and tucked it into her pocket. “And Gennedy will fucking pay for it before the end of all this.”

“For all we know, he’s just the face of the operation—the hound the higher-ups set on us to keep us afraid,” Keaton said, cleaning up her papers as well. “He’s definitely not the brains behind this all, that’s for sure.”

Lynn’s cigarette was already halfway burned through. “Hound fits. He’s a bitch. He - “ Lynn blinked, remembering. “He is dumb, you’re right. I forgot, fuck, I can’t believe I forgot. In the interrogation room - there...there was someone else, I think.” Lynn racked her brain, remembering. “Yeah, yeah, he said we had questions, but like, he corrected himself once or twice, like he was trying not to say it. Said they didn’t have cameras in the woods, either. I dunno. Doesn’t help, I guess, but...yeah.” Lynn knew it, now, though she didn’t have the words to prove it to Keaton. Something in Gennedy’s voice had tipped his hand. “Just one more mystery to figure the fuck out,” she said, standing up and slinging her duct-taped bag over her shoulder.

“A telepath?” Keaton asked, frowning. Nullifiers were a must, but they weren’t the only power that could be put to use for the staff. Believing that the staff wasn’t employing other powers was like believing the staff was going to keep their students safe: it was too good to be true.

“No, no,” Lynn muttered, clenching the cig in her teeth as she swung the other strap on. “It was just me and him in there. Someone invisible. I - “ she snorted. “Shit, I know it...I don’t have any proof or whatever, but I’ve been in a lot of shakedowns, you know? Either they say we the whole time, trying to make you think the whole precinct is watching through the glass, or they say I, like it’s just you and your new best friend across the table. Gennedy was flip-flopping. It was weird. And nobody with the brains to keep it straight would’ve let slip they’ve got no cameras in the woods.”

“Someone invisible,” Keaton repeated, staring at Lynn. That—that was a whole lot more useful than telepathy. “I—let’s meet in a cafe next time. Spill some sugar on the floor around us. Or bring flour.”

Lynn wanted to kick herself for not thinking of this before. She scanned around them, seeing nothing, of course. “Yeah. Damn. Should’ve….should’ve remembered. Stupid.” She crushed up what was rest of the cigarette in her hand and the ash fell into the breeze. “Invisible burns like everyone else. Woods work too. There’s stuff out there they’re not onto yet. They can’t have eyes everywhere. Not all the time.” A week at a time. Lynn didn’t think about the endgame for this - she never had, not in all her years. Just another week to take care of. “Let’s get out of here before invisible fuckers or human supremacist cops show up.”

“Agreed,” Keaton said, standing and reaching for her phone. “You still up for the mall? We shouldn’t be too late if we head over now, and that Thai place is having a buy-one-get-one deal today, so if you’re still up for food.”

Lynn shifted back and forth for a moment. She had no desire to really talk to anyone at the present moment, particularly given that she had not had much of a face-to-face with either Archie or Natalie, and was not looking forward to whatever therapy bullshit they wanted to put her through as a result. Still, Lynn didn’t like the idea of Keaton walking back on her own - especially if whatever invisible fucker was lurking around. It didn’t bother Lynn much, because, rightly or wrongly, Lynn doubted he could take her in one hit, but Keaton was a different story. Beneath that, Lynn was already hungry again. And that damn lizard has taken out half my clothes Lynn remembered, irritated. She’d mostly been wearing her work clothes, but she had to admit she needed more. Christ above I cannot believe I am about to go to a shopping mall with these people. . “Yeah. I’ll swing by. May bounce after the food though. Probably not smart for us to hang around too much.”

“Acting normal is part of the disguise, you know,” Keaton said, grinning. “Let’s go.”

Lynn smirked. “Yeah. Normal. That’s what I go for. Lead the way, Denim.”

Archie

---

Archie Anderson is a coward.

You wouldn't know it by looking at him, or by talking to him, or by getting to know him on a very close and intimate level, but it's true. Archie is a complete and utter wuss, when it comes right down to it, and it's not because he's not lacking in physical prowess or strength of will or even any sort of courageousness. He wished that he was lacking in those areas, he wished those were his problems, because then he could just have Lynn beat them right out of him like his brother had way back when. His life had always been about coping with loss with hard work and determination and then the pain would be over just like that. No harm done, life goes on, burgers on the way home?

But that's not the case, because Archie didn’t have those minuscule, mind-numbingly simple problems. He has emotional problems, which for the record are about a hundred thousand times worse. How do you fix emotional problems, anyway? His usual methods of repression and avoidance don't seem to be working. Perhaps years of professional therapy and trust exercises might help, but Archie had neither the time nor the patience to talk about his feelings at length to some quack who doesn't actually care and look at inkblots that all probably symbolize love or acceptance or daddy issues or something.

Archie sighed hard, fumbling with his phone and haphazardly tossing it onto the table. He can't help but think, as he looks up at the ceiling and curses god and himself and girls, that therein lies the problem. He doesn't want to talk about his feelings, because he doesn't like talking about his feelings, and so he would have trouble expressing himself and opening up to people on that intimate level until the day he dies. Which wouldn't be a problem, really, because that's kind of the way he prefers it, after his family had walked out or died and all but then…

Then there's Natalie. The girl whose name had been stuck in his head since that incident where Mr. Hyde had taken over. It was such an odd experience because he remembered it. He never recalled that had happened before, at least not in detail like he had. It was always curtails and wisps of colors or smells. Like a dream you couldn’t quite place. But he remembered that he had held her and she had let him.

She made him – and this is embarrassing, really, it is – she made him want to talk about his feelings, for once. She made him feel stupid to the point where it's actually sort of medically alarming how badly his words formed when she was around, and he wanted to tell her everything not only about what he feels but about who he is. He wants her to know about his family. About his mom and his dad and his brother. He wants to describe life on a washed up ship and what it was like living on an island. He finds himself craving her attention in random moments, like the previous evening when he'd been doing his homework and had just wished that he'd been next to her, not so she could help him or talk to her but to just be there.

Sure. Where about?

He had replied without even reading her name. Panda Express, then immediately panicked upon realizing that she could get there first and he had no fucking clue what he was going to say or how he was going to go about making... plans for homecoming. With Natalie. Homecoming with Natalie. His eyes flashed around the room, the primal side of his being pounding against his chest like a war hammer because the adrenaline in his body was putting him over the edge. He wasn’t in any danger of hulking out, he could feel it when he was, but the beast had stirred when Natalie had bore her wounds to him. The fact that even the giant was unnerved was probably the scariest thing of all. Aside from Natalie herself, that was.

There was a girl nearby. Around his age. She smiled at him and he was panicking. He abruptly stood up, just about running towards her. He just about crashed into her, dropping his phone on the ground as he did so and didn’t bother to pick it up. She was a girl, she’d know how to help him.

“Pleasehelpme.” He said, way too fast. He breathed, far more out of breath than he should have been. “I need to ask out this girl and I have no clue how.”

E L I

---

This tall, handsome guy, who looked like he should have been pretty confident for his age, came barreling towards Eli as if the world would explode if he didn't. She'd barely reached the beginning of the line, so when he almost crashed into her they were right in the middle of the walkway.

"Pleasehelpme."

Eli was looking towards his fallen phone, a worried look on her face for his tech. She looked back up at him to speak before he continued. He was this flustered because he wanted to ask a girl out? She groaned inwardly. If this was about the homecoming dance, she was going to barf. She wanted to ask if it was, but when she saw his pleading expression she decided to put her own feelings aside. She remembered how awkward she had been with her first crush. It would have been pretty beneficial to get advice from someone experienced. Plus, some people on The Promise needed little things like dances to get them through the day.

"Okay, okay. Take a big breath," she said while holding her hands up, a warm smile lighting up her features. It amused her that he was so desperate. This crush must be huge. She bent down to pick up his phone before someone stepped on it. "You're lucky there's no crack on this thing."

"So, how about we chat over some food? I'd wait until after but I'm starving. Is that okay? It should only take a minute." She would have normally waited for an answer, but the guy looked lost. After a small chuckle, Eli pointed towards the table he had just ran from. "Go sit, loverboy. I'll be there soon."

After placing the phone in his hand, she turned and got into the line. A few minutes later, she was setting her tray down across from this endearing stranger. She took her seat, taking her time to break her chopsticks in two before looking up at him.

"So, what's your name? How long have you been aboard The Promise?"

---

Nothing.

One whole goddamn month and Radvi had nothing on the woman he was after.

With the PSI chip slotted into his glasses, he would have been able to identify her wherever she had left any vestige of herself. The day after the breakout, in between cleanup shifts, Radvi had walked rings around the Promise in search of her, but never spotted anything. He’d gone back to Norton in R&D several times, asking him if he’d made a mistake in the scans or chip printing - and often met with rude retorts and affirmations that his work was immaculate. Even then, no sign of this super-organism, as Norton had put it, ever turned up. It came to the point where Radvi was developing a sense of paranoia, thinking she could be hiding in the deeper sections of the station, or had figured out a way to fool the detection system or, anything. But with every day that passed with no disasters taking place and more people getting senselessly killed, his thoughts retreated to the idea that she could just be in hiding. Plotting her next move.

With little in the way of proof save some POV footage from a grinning delinquent and a frozen lump of what others were thinking was just jello or, fuck’s sake, toothpaste, many other guards were beginning to peg Radvi for a fool. Someone who was ready to side with a known vandal - although, Freaky-D had once again subsided into doing little more than skating around and tagging random places, greatly lessening his priority level in the wake of everything else that was happening on this mess of a station. And even then, many claimed the footage was doctored, for no good reason other than D simply wanted to fuck with Radvi and put him on a false trail.

But, for all the beating down his door, he never faltered in his determination. Everyone else could spend their time lazing about or abusing their power against the students, but Radvi had been on this station for almost five goddamn years and he’d had enough. He was going to do something.

And at present, that something was patrolling the ring.

He had his glasses hanging from his suit collar. The proximity alert system was active in the frankly unlikely event that the woman he was after would suddenly approach him. Besides that, everything else was business as usual. Save, of course, for the occasional heckling from another passing guard.

“You find your long lost toothpaste wife yet, Rad?”

“No luck catching them killers, then?”

“Yo Jakey, they found the Jello Bitch! She’s being sold in packs of four at your local grocer!”

So on and so forth. He never entertained them with any responses. He never lost heart and he never looked back. He marched in one direction, and that direction was dead ahead.

Still, he wasn’t looking great. He’d started finding it difficult to get any good sleep, and it showed in his eyes. He ran his fingers along the scar on his left cheek that he’d received from that freakish tailed prisoner during the outbreak. Ran from a little past his nostril to a little past his eye. It had, for the most part, fully formed, thanks to available medicines to help with the process. But it was still somewhat tender to the touch. Regardless, it mattered little to him.

His patrol was taking him through the mall in Sector B. Any sign of what had taken place there a month ago had already been wiped away. But the memories were still very much lingering. People were grieving. And most of the station’s staff gave not the tiniest modicum of a shit. Radvi did his best to be respectful, but often he was just automatically thrown into the metaphorical pigpen with the rest of the guards. His will carried him forth, but Lord knew it still weighed on him some. Around three-hundred casualties. A colossal failure, just swept under the rug.

He passed by the food court, a Panda Express on his right. Seated outside were two figures he recognized. Eli Wessex was one. They hadn’t talked on more than a couple occasions since the breakout, as Radvi was far too focused on finding his targeted suspect to do anything in the way of socializing. The other was Archie Anderson, whom he had not spoken to since the rounds of questioning during the morning of the breakout. Never gotten formally acquainted. Did he want to, was the question. But at the moment, he figured Eli at least deserved a hello. He could spare a few minutes to talk during his patrol.

Radvi approached them where they were seated, his attention centered on Eli. He’d managed to catch them in between words about… dating advice, it seemed.

“Hey,” he said to Eli, in earnest fashion.

@Skai@JunkMail