Amelia

---

Amelia tensed a bit as Keaton asked about how many people she could teleport. She flashed back to a time her and her old crew were tagging a billboard of some corrupt asshole police chief. Amelia couldn't be bothered to remember his name, just the clown hairdo, donuts, and gun she'd given his picture. What she did remember, however, was how their escape had gone to shit very fast. She'd been up there with 2 friends of hers, and they had to move quickly to dodge the spotlight the cops were aiming at them. Unfortunately, the difficulty with teleporting more people fucked with her concentration, and one of them had wound up crashing down the fire escape when they landed. He survived, but it was a hard sell to tell his parents what they had been up to. Amelia shook her head, returning to the reality of the current situation. "I've never tried more then two other people. But the more people there are the more effort it takes."

Amelia rapidly shifted her gaze between the panicking, emotional, distraught Eli and the far more composed, though absolutely livid Lynn. Amelia caught on quick, spotting where Lynn was applying pressure to his head. Taking a deep breath, she rolled up her sleeves and stuck her hands down to help put pressure on the head wound. "Oh fuck....that's so gross...." Amelia bit her lip hard. She had no intention of taking Lynn anywhere she didn't want to go. Though that was partly because she really couldn't. All Lynn needed to do was keep her eyes on her and they'd go nowhere. So, in an effort to appease the definitely about to faint Eli, Amelia gave her a well meaning smile and nod.

Amelia had a look of concern at first when Eli fell back into Archie's arms. But as Archie ran off to take her to the hospital himself, she couldn't help but give a sigh of relief. And Amelia thought that she was flakey in a crisis. Amelia looked up at Lynn. "You don't have to come, but I'm going now. If you don't want to get dragged along, I'd let go." Amelia turned her head back to the rest of the onlookers. "Same goes for the rest of you. Time to shit or get off the pot. If you're coming, hold on and close your eyes. Otherwise turn around and look away." Amelia waited a few seconds for people to grab on or let go if they wanted, before focusing on the hospital. Amelia spread her awareness down to everyone connected to her, their bodies starting to shimmer like they were unstable. Channeling her frustration into keeping pressure on Radvi's head wound, she forced her molecules to shift, and the group vanished with a crack in space and a sudden breeze as air rushed into the now vacant space.

At that exact moment, a crack in space tore open in the Promise hospital, with Amelia, Radvi, and anyone else attached appearing in its wake. Amelia shouted out, a bit more panicked then she intended, "We need a doctor right now! This guy's in really bad shape, I think he's been shot!"

Lynn had seen and done a lot in her sixteen (potentially - Lynn's birth records were neither the most accurate nor the most accessible) years, both those spent on the earth and above it. She had many what she may call "four a.m." experiences - those being times or instances when something was so strange and twisted and warped, it could not have happened at any other time. It was the sort of thing you could only experience with someone else because it was so singular - just a brief, fleeting minute. Seeing a crackhead in a Gravity Falls t-shirt trying to break open a soda machine for money and getting baptised in Fanta. Seeing someone attempt to start a riot, slip, and instead create a strange, prison-wide moment of unity in laughing. Seeing a boy turn into an eleven foot tall lizard after a metallic robot dropped down, music blaring, and kicked him in the head.

"We should - "

Lynn was in the hospital. It was four a.m. in her head.

Lynn would've felt bad for Radvi if he was awake, because she instinctively seized as tight as she could onto whatever she was holding, which happened to be an exposed part of his jawbone. Lynn had taken some nasty punches that left her head spinning but nothing like this. The air was all of a sudden different, clean and sanitized and bleached, and there was fluorescent light stabbing into her eyes, and they were surrounded by people. It was like going from being asleep to all of a roller coaster in under a second, and when the rollercoaster ended she was back asleep in a bad dream.

Lynn stumbled up from the body. Had she entered the doors normally, she would already have been restrained by doctors and checked for injuries. As it was, the sheer element of surprise had stunned the nurses nearby and Lynn was able to make it to the closest trash can where she hurled what little material was still left in her stomach. Lab coats had swarmed Radvi already and taken him away, and Lynn washed her hands of it. He was a dead man, but the others were welcome to try their best. She planned on walking home, showering, and sleeping.

"Go straight to hell, Amelia, what, what the fu-" Lynn's chest clenched. Her chest and belly were sore from the vomiting and she heaved again, her heart rate finally starting to slow down from the complete panic.

Lynn turned and looked up, thin wisps of smoke curling off her lips. A doctor had turned the corner due to all the clamor. Wait, she recognized him. The motherfucker with the puppets!

"Lynn," he said, a look of concern on his face - one slightly more paternal than any given person may have at seeing a person covered in blood. He fumbled in his pocket for a brochure, one she'd read out of boredom and burned out of greater boredom - Healthy Weight Goals and Dangerous Weight Loss. "You don't need to vomit, you -"

"I hate this motherfucking station," Lynn whispered to herself, fingers bending the metal of the trash can.

Archie

---

The rest of the trip went out without much of a hitch. Archie didn't hit anyone else, his transformation was under control, and Eli wasn't making any complaints. Although a quick glance gave away that she wasn't exactly the most coherent. Certainly not enough to be dealing well with the constant jostling she was being subject to- but at the end of the day who was really keeping count? Not Eli, that's for sure.

Archie only slowed his unyielding pace when he came upon the doors. And only then just enough to not blow them off their hinges. For all of his self described control Archie was unprepared for how quickly he came to stop just short of the automatic sliding hospital doors. He felt his weight shift and he knew that normally with he and Eli's combined weight it was very possible they could topple over. He braced and he was... fine. He had to remind himself that all things considered he wasn't normal right now, and with the power and speed he had possessed in simply getting here it was no surprise that he could easily overcome his normal limits.

"We need a doctor right now! This guy's in really bad shape, I think he's been shot!"

He heard Amelia yell, her words bouncing around in his head uncomfortably. She was never this loud before. He could hear conversations with perfect clarity down the halls, and the fluorescent lights of the building were almost blinding. He groaned in discomfort, blinking several times in an attempt to adjust his eyes to the sudden change of light.

Several doctors recognized Radvi's clothing and status as a security officer, and there was a sudden surge of activity in the hospital's entrance. Radvi was quickly taken from his current caretakers, with a multitude of healers. They had unapologetically shoved the group of students out of the way, desperately trying to impede or redirect the blood flow from the wound without starving the tissue and killing it. Three factors determine the extent of injury from a gunshot wound. One is velocity, or the speed at which the bullet travels as it leaves the muzzle. Another is frontal area, meaning the surface area of the bullet that strikes the target. The third is the distance the bullet travels before it is stopped—for example, by entering and exiting the skull of a middle-aged security officer.

The firearm was a medium-velocity weapon with a relatively short barrel. Its cartridges are small, carry little gunpowder, and travel less than 1500 feet per second. Nevertheless, they can create a hole three to six times the size of the bullet's frontal surface area, because the frontal area flattens and spreads as it hits the target. The nose of the cartridge decelerates rapidly at this point, but its center of gravity is located near the base, so momentum carries the bullet forward, tumbling end-over-end and leaving further tissue damage in its wake. Distance is a factor because air resistance slows the bullet. Increasing the distance between gun and target decreases the bullet's velocity, reducing its kinetic energy. Unfortunately, most victims are shot from close range—such as half the width of a standard conference room. Radvi had been shot from less than five feet away.

The ER staff move forward, expressions grim in their short assessment of the damage. Radvi was quickly heaved onto a gurney, healers working as he was moved, not stopping for even a moment as he was shifted. It was more and more apparent by their vigor that Radvi was hanging on by a thread. An older, portly gentleman that some might remember as Fry Owens, the head of healthcare, barked out orders for Radvi to be taken to surgery.

The bullet gets all the credit in a gunshot wound, but it doesn't work alone, especially when delivered at close range. Hot gases from exploding gunpowder and metal fragments from the bullet and the gun barrel are blasted into the body at the same time. The gases char the tissues, and the gun powder and metal fragments are deposited along the wound track. The edges of the entrance wound are abraded and haloed with a dirt ring caused by the bullet "cleaning" itself on the skin and surrounding tissue as it passed through. The wound may also be infiltrated with fibers from clothing or other refuse that were dragged into the body along with the bullet. He would need to be stabilized, and the wound would need to be cleaned and cauterized and shaved away to salvage what was left of who Radvi was. He was wheeled off, the whole ordeal being agonizingly slow, but having lasted only thirty seconds.

During the buzz of activity, two older women had taken Eli out of Archie's arms, one of which gives her a once over and nodding to her counterpart and disappearing in a different direction than Radvi had gone with Eli. The other lady held up a flashlight, quickly going over Archie's eyes with it much to his chagrin. He lazily swatted at the offending light, but realized quite quickly how spent he felt. She was asking him questions, but he wasn't really listening. His eyes traveled to Amelia, Lynn, Keaton, and the rest of the group.

He felt the nurse grab his chin and force him to look at her. He didn't hear what she had to say, but he thought he heard the word hungry.

He could go for something to eat, for sure.

---

“This way!”

A team of five agents went down into the woodland. Cara pinged the approximate location they were heading for. They all had their guard up, halfway expecting someone to jump out at them from the surrounding trees. But no such danger happened upon them.

“Up ahead, got three... scratch that, four people.”

They reached the spot where it all went down. The only people who were left were Natalie, Nicholas, Keaton, and Freaky-D. All just situated quietly, not quite doing anything so urgently. Upon seeing the faint glow of D’s somewhat broken helmet, the team felt a mixed sense of both apprehension and satisfaction. They didn’t know to what level D was involved with whatever had taken place during all those gunshots, but hey - a wanted criminal is a wanted criminal.

“Don’t move!” One of them called out as the team approached, four of them surrounding the still kneeling and hunched over Freaky-D. He showed no signs of intent to resist whatsoever, not even shifting his gaze towards any of the agents. With no fanfare, they stood him upright and cuffed him.

“Got him.”

“Where’s the officer down who was reported?”

“You take him somewhere and find out what he knows.” The agent giving the orders said to the ones apprehending D. He then turned back towards Natalie, Nicholas, and Keaton. “And you three need to follow me off the premises and back to your dorms. Tell me what you saw along the way.”

---

---

December fifth began just like any other day, all things considered.

The Promise had cooled further in the winter phase of its annual four season cycle. The trees had lost their leaves and frost adjourned the leaves of the surviving bushes and other flora. It was brisk, that morning. The snow and ice melting into slush and wetting the greenery and dirt- but never disappearing completely as it crunched softly with the leaf litter beneath his feet.

Perhaps the strangest thing about The Promise was its lack of weather. Archie was used to weekly rain that, when it came down, came down in buckets that flooded the streets some and made puddles and muddied the dirt so that he had to be careful coming home lest he track dirt into the living quarters of the hulk he had occupied for most of his childhood life. North Carolina as a state was warm most of the year, but was far from immune to cold snaps that made the water far more biting and difficult to deal with than the rest of the year. Archie liked to imagine what the weather would be like today if there was any. Sure, it was chilly and all but would it be that clear kind of chilly? Or would it be a soggy, cloudy day that would make him want to huddle up and not leave his cot?

He wasn’t exactly sure what today would be, of course but he normally imagined that The Promise would have that clearer weather that shone like the bare sun overhead. He supposed that today, it would be a bit cloudy. No drizzle, but threatening with rain that would never come like an adult waving their finger at a small child.

He had tossed on a brown leather jacket and red flannel, some blue jeans and boots. A casual working man’s outfit. Functional by design, and it warded off the cold. It was nothing showy, as was his typical style. He had heard that he was supposed to look on the nicer side today, but he couldn't find it in himself to care THAT much. Today new parahumans would be boarding The Promise for the first time, with older parahumans returning home for the first time in years to see real weather and do real things with their lives that didn’t have to do with school or power training. A part of him was excited, because that meant there would be new people that he had never seen before at all. The Promise had a fairly small student population and with how often he went on walks or went out for the evenings to get out of his tiny dorm, the more often he felt like he was seeing the same faces. That being said, he was almost certain his little incident on the first day would be brought up in some capacity. He sighed. Oh well, at least this year’s freshmen couldn't make any worse of a first impression than he did.

School had finished a few days ago for the semester, but the notifications that Cara had prodded him with at least once per day with had made sure that he did not forget about his last and only responsibility of the semester- to make sure that those coming received as warm a welcome as he did. He always found himself filled with easy mirth at that. He almost killed several people and was welcomed by a super criminal on day one. It wasn’t exactly the warm welcome that he would have hoped to receive, but at the end of the day he would give The Promise credit where credit was due- Hyde didn’t come out unless he let him out, and it was never boring.

The Cianwood coffee shop wasn’t too far away now, nestled right at the edge of a small shopping plaza facing a few courts that were often used for basketball and modified for tennis. A few younger people, kids around the age of 12 seemed to be drawing on the sleepy sidewalk with chalk. It had become a bit of a daily ritual for him to stop by and get breakfast there before heading to work at the ring’s elder home. It was a Saturday so he didn’t have work, but he DID still need to eat. This little area reminded him of home. In the good way, back when he was a kid and could take his brother’s bike to the local outdoor shopping mall and just enjoy the weather, He had found out about the coffee shop’s existence from the waitress he had spoken to the night he visited Lynn and discovered the body. "I don't know… I still think the coffee at the Cianwood Shop is better. Nothing is imported or stuck full of preservatives there; they grow their own coffee beans and make it all from scratch..."

He felt his phone go off in his pocket and unconsciously checked it. It was a message from Cara.

”New arrivals scheduled to board at 1PM! Be at the Loading Bay or be square!

He checked his watch. It was 11:30AM.

---

One hour and thirty minutes left.

R&D.

Gennedy stepped in through the door.

“Alright Trevor, what did-”

His words came to a halt the moment he noticed there, in Trevor’s workspace, was a seated Freaky-D by the back wall. All lights off.

“What the hell?”

“Relax.” Trevor said, swinging around in his chair, “He’s in sleep mode.”

“What?”

“Wake up.” Trevor said to the seated D, who promptly arose as directed, all lights coming to life. His helmet was still cracked and damaged, the image of his default face broken in several spots. “Jacket.” Trevor added, to which D proceeded to raise his hands up towards his collar. Gennedy watched with some mix of caution and confusion as D opened up his jacket to reveal…

“You’re joking.”

Metal. Wires. Components. A mechanical endoskeleton, all wrapped in a body-shaped mould of translucent, near-black gel. Visible damage was present in several areas, the gel having been distorted and somewhat cleaved away to get to the center.

“He’s a fucking robot?” Gennedy said.

“It actually makes a lot of sense, after everything he’s been involved in.” Trevor said, “His physical abilities, the impacts he’s gotten right back up from, how certain parahuman abilities didn’t work on him. And it explains how he seemed just fine after security spaced him.”

“This is a different entity from the first one altogether.” Gennedy said, putting two and two together, “A backup.”

“Yep. One of - I’m not sure how many total.” Trevor continued, “After he was arrested last night, some of your boys decided to take him somewhere private and rough him up a bit - real professional, by the way - and that led to trying to get his helmet off. Stuck on there pretty tight. They wouldn’t tell me what exactly they did, but eventually they made their way here with the helmet in one hand, and the headless body in the other.”

“What then?” Gennedy asked.

“Dug my fingers into him.” Trevor said, passing by how wrong that sounded, “Overwrote his systems and made him only able to act on direct orders. After that, I spent all the time figuring out how he worked. The riot gel coating his limbs and torso protects the endoskeleton against severe impacts. Batteries are connected throughout his head and gut on a separable cord. Figured he must have been sapping power directly from the station, he has adapter systems in both of his hands. And his feet - built-in skates and boost modules.”

“This is ridiculous.” Gennedy replied.

“Agreed.” Trevor said, “He’s ridiculously sophisticated compared to most publicly known robotics companies’ projects.”

“Where did he-… where did it come from? Who the hell sent robots to this station?”

“That, I’m still trying to figure out. He has files in his head, but a lot of it’s either encrypted or corrupted. What wasn’t though, was footage from last night. He got another solid look at-”

“Arianna. I know.”

“Look, you saw it, you have to understand by now. What happened to Radvi happened because of her. The bodies, the breakout, you have nothing short of a direct confession to pin it all on her.”

“Yes, Trevor, I understand that.”

“And all it took was Radvi nearly getting killed to sway you?”

“Quiet. I will be putting more effort towards finding and apprehending her, and I expect you to maintain directing your attention towards null tech development. Wrath is pleased with your taser’s success, so he’s likely to give you more resources and manpower to work with.”

“Great. Awesome. ‘Bout damn time. I’ve still got plenty of ideas I can get rolling.”

“Good. Speaking of, where is the taser?”

“It got lost out in the field, but I’ve got a tracking chip in it. I’m gonna send D to fetch it, make sure he’s working right. To that end, from here on out, I’d appreciate you telling security what the deal is and to not try arresting him anymore?”

“Fine. As long as you can guarantee he’s under control.”

“Well, this one is. I don’t know how many other backups are hiding out there, but if I can get my hands on them and they’re relatively not fucked up, I can bring them all in line too. Once you get inside his head, it’s pretty simple, long as you know what you’re doing.”

“I’ll take your word for it. When you find out more about where it came from and why it came up to this station in the first place, I want to know. But don’t let that take priority over the null tech.”

“You got it.”

“Good. That’ll be all.”

Gennedy took his leave. Trevor watched as he did, out the door and out of sight. After a couple minutes passed and he felt certain the Chief wasn’t gonna come running back for any reason, he slowly took to saying, “And… he… fell for it.”

D slumped his shoulders, letting out a few broken sounds that might have been some random sound effect, were it not for his busted head.

“I didn’t have very high hopes, but it looks like you’re in the clear.” Trevor said, turning around to face D, “If the Chief’s true to his word, security shouldn’t be on your ass anymore.”

Still slumped, D responded with a thumbs up. Seemed sound clips were out for the time being.

“Now do keep in mind I very much could have cracked whatever system you’ve got in that big red head of yours, put you under my command...” Trevor added, “But I didn’t. ‘Cause Rad, against better judgement, trusted you. And I trust him. So, vicariously, I trust you. For now.”

D didn’t respond any, just listened.

“Rad… Jacob’s out of the game, for the time being. But you and I are still in, so we gotta do right by him and get this murdering bitch. I don’t know who the fuck’s behind your controls, or if you’re just some crazy AI up here for no good reason, but whatever you came up to the Promise for at the start, you’ve done enough to prove you wanna help stop Arianna more.”

A nod from D.

“So that’s what we’re gonna do, and with Rad on the bench, you’re gonna be my new guinea pig for testing any null tech me and the other eggheads cook up. And you’re a robot, so that gives me room to take some normally implausible liberties. Gonna be fun.”

A short, distorted laugh from D.

“First thing’s first, though. This you is pretty fucked up, and I don’t really know how to repair you, so maybe consider bringing another one of your duplicates up to bat.”

A thumbs up from D.

“And after that… you’re gonna go get my taser back.”

---

Back at the scene of the crime.

D - a different D, third iteration, the previous and more damaged one still residing within Trevor’s workspace - dug his hands through some dirt by a tree, as the tracking chip’s signal dictated the approximate location of the taser to him. Trevor was beaming the signal to him through his somatic predecessor.

He held the broken components in his hands. Looked at them for just a moment before pocketing them both and standing up. Before heading back to Trevor’s office within R&D however, he turned in the direction of the forest deadfall, wandering towards it.

He stood on the edge, looking down at the exact location where last night’s events had all gone to hell. Where he watched helplessly as Radvi nearly bled to death, but thankfully, others were there to save him. Some of his blood was still on that damn rock, as a dried up stain.

He just… took in the scene, for a moment, and thought. He’d originally come up this station to have an all around good time, the tensions between humans and parahumans be damned. To just enjoy himself, screw with people, run around and be a fool.

Funny how intentions can change, just like that.

---

Radvi was asleep.

He lay on his bed, all manners of medical equipment surrounding him. Monitor keeping track of his vitals, tubes feeding him nutrients intravenously. A nice, cozy blanket covering him. Head turned onto its left. His right - all patched up in white, the damage inflicted days ago obscured from view. He was still.

His necklace rested on the bedside stand. Still connected to his wife’s ring and his daughter’s bracelet.

Trevor was at his side, seated in a chair he’d pulled up. He watched Radvi for a while after entering the room, taking his time to think - about whether or not he should just leave, or… say something. His words might fall on deaf ears, but…

It felt right.

“So… hey, buddy.” Trevor began, “Lookin’ good.”

No response from Radvi.

“Last night, the uh… the taser worked. That’s good. Got lost somewhere, but it’s fine, D took care of it. He and I have teamed up, he’s gonna be my new field tester.”

No response.

“I, uh… saw it all. Last night. D managed to get me the footage. Little messed up but still got everything. You should work on your trigger discipline some time, man.”

Trevor chuckled for just a brief second. No response.

“Anyway, some good did come of this. Gennedy’s all in now, force has started taking Arianna seriously. All it took was you getting your face split open. Bitchin’, right?”

No response.

“And Wrath was impressed with the taser’s success. He’s, uh… putting more resources my way, giving me more folks to order around. Get projects done faster. Not gonna lie, makes me pretty giddy. Might just let all the power go to my big bald head, right? Heh?”

No response.

Trevor paused. Sniffled a bit. Took a moment to find his words.

“You’re, uh… you’re out for now, but I’m still in. D is too. And your, uh… your various parahuman friends, I guess. Arianna, she’s still hiding and… planning who fucking knows what. But it seems like you sold pretty much everyone on her being top priority. So… good job, man.”

No response.

Moment of silence.

“You’re just about the only person on this shit heap of a station that I’ve been willing to call a friend, so I promise you… we’ll find her.” Trevor said sternly. “We will find her and we will annihilate her.”

He raised his finger to Radvi.

“I. Fucking. Swear it.”

No response.

Trevor gently placed his hand on Radvi’s arm. “Wake up soon, buddy.” He said quietly. Moments more passed, and then it was time for him to leave.

And Radvi was… almost, alone.

…

…

…

“Might this provoke… intervention?”

“Maybe. Time will tell.”

Natalie Ellis

---

---

Natalie was in the park, sitting on a bench, staring vacantly at the pond. This had become a habit. Ever since Homecoming. Things were going so well. She felt normal. She'd kissed Archie and it was like the floodgates opened. She felt happy and excited and trult content. Then it was immediately taken away. Airanna was there. Upon seeing Radvi....Natalie had shut down. There was chaos around her, but she'd frozen. Sounds became just noise. Archie had picked Eli up, said something and walked away. People came and took her to her room. She must have been walking with them but she didn't remember moving her feet.

There was no point. There was no point even trying to be a person while Arianna was out there. The toll Homecoming had taken on Natalie's mental health was very noticeable to her therapist, who was helping. Natalie's nightmares were worse. Her temper had gotten worse, and she would cry a lot. With little warning. Sometimes in public. She had seen Archie exactly once since Homecoming, just over a week after, but she told him she needed to get well before they had a second date.

Natalie wasn't sure if she was better now. If the pain has lessened or if she'd just grown numb to it. Either way, she would be seeing her friends today, and she now considered them all friends, even Archie. It was December the 5th. There would be new recruits to The Promise. Maybe some new blood might help things...somehow.

There was a new text from Cara.

"New arrivals scheduled to board at 1PM! Be at the Loading Bay or be square!"

As her phone was already out, Natalie started writing a text to Archie. She ideally wanted to see him private first, and not in a big noisy group, in public. She deleted and rewrote her message several times, before just deleting the whole thing in frustration. She'd gotten rusty, and wanted this first text in a while to be good. Then she got an idea. She wasn't sure if it was a good one. But she was going to do it.

"Cara?" She asked into her phone. "Could you tell me the current location of Archie Anderson?"

Cordelia Lynn Holmes

Pork stuffed dumplings. They sat in the center of the table, sizzling hot. Lynn couldn't have any.

Archie had ordered them. Lynn sat next to Keaton, who picked at her meal dutifully, and Natalie rattled on about how she’d only told the truth. The truth, Lynn wanted to scoff, but knew not to start shit here, not when they’d just gotten in the clear for a few more precious hours. When Lynn moved her shoulder, pain rocketed down the joint, flaring up her entire shoulder blade. Lynn gasped with surprise.

“Aw, fuck,” she muttered, wincing and reaching with her good arm to massage it. How had she hurt it? She looked down at her arm, hanging limp and loose. The door, Lynn thought. Archie threw me into the door, I caught Spoons in the air. Lynn looked up, blinking. That wasn’t right. She still hadn’t been served yet, and the growling in her stomach grew louder and louder, like a prisoner rattling her ribcage like the bars of her cell. “Hey, how come - “

Archie was across from her. “"Shit, that sounds a lot like how dad used to be. Sorry you had to deal with that. At least the power was coolish, right?" Lynn zoned out for a moment, the gears in her head whirring as best they could with the pain of her arm, wretched and worthless, at her side. She’d heard all this before. She turned to Keaton, some kind of sinking feeling dragging down her starving stomach. “Keat,” she murmured, “I need you - I can’t figure out why - “

Archie had kept talking. “ - hope my incident on the first day isn't too much of a red mark. Worst I've had up until now on any kind of record was a detention in 10th grade." Lynn turned back and stared at him, ignoring Spoons and Denim alike. She could feel her hair, mousy auburn and not glowing at all, falling over her face in messy strands, disorganized as the thoughts in the head of the girl who had them. Why can’t anyone see my fucking arm? one half of her mind thought. The other focused on Archie. I don’t know if a deadbeat father is better than a revolving door of replacement ones. Or...Christ, nothing on your record until tenth grade? I didn't make it to tenth grade. Lynn could only think of her own record, a mountain of detention slips and elementary school write-ups before they’d transitioned to court orders and penitentiary forms. She bet Archie had good grades. Not as good as Denim, but okay, and okay was better than Lynn’s, and he probably never got in fights, he brought people flowers, and he never - the glass bottle hot as a sun for a moment before it burst, a shard firmly lodged in the bridge of her nose, clothes burning // a house, burning, burning more than a bottle of kerosone and dish soap should’ve // the gun barrel red as her hair, someone shouting “ìMátenlos, mátenlos!” and - //

Lynn remembered. This wasn’t right, there was going to be something bad, the breakout, or at least something like that. Arianna. The blue woman. She was small and scared but that wasn't right, the shovel, the flash, the burn. “Archie shut the fuck up, there’s - there’s a guy outside, some skull motherfucker, he - “

Keaton kept eating, and Spoons kept talking about some Spoons shit, the silver collar on her necklace beeping every few moments. Archie looked over at her with that look, bored and utterly fascinated all at once.

“Archie she’s - she wants to - “ Lynn couldn’t bring herself to say it. Her mind went to Gary, and the brutal shock he’d been in for when he’d gotten creative ideas, but Archie wasn’t like that. This was her. It had been the grace of God or the luck of the devil, whichever had felt more inclined to help Lynn that day, that had let her take out the lizard the first time. She could do it with a hand tied behind her back. Feverishly, Lynn tried to massage feeling back into her arm but it wouldn’t move. “Archie, please! Both of you, two, we have to fucking go!”

Archie turned to Lynn and gave her his characteristic, goofy grin. “Why?” he said, lighthearted as always. “You wouldn’t stop if we were here or not.” He looked down at the dumplings and shook his head. “You hate me. You burnt me.”

Archie’s chair was pulled backwards suddenly, and the legs of his seat were broken by a well-practiced axe kick, splintering the wood and causing the young man to fall onto his back as the seat fell apart. A hand, dark and glowing as magma fell against the table, and Lynn could- for the first time in her life- feel the heat behind her. She felt breath against her left ear. The drinks at the table were hissing as the liquids boiled. “You can’t burn me, though.”

Lynn turned to grab Keaton, to tell her to go, but it wasn’t her anymore, it was Lucy in an oversized denim jacket, threadbare and worn, a stained shirt pulling at the seams across her protruded stomach. Spoons was gone too, a Hispanic girl about eleven years old in her place, pulling at the cold silver around her neck. Lynn had the dropping feeling, the right at the top of the roller coaster drop feeling, of knowing that the worst is not about to come, that it’s there, waiting. She let her eyes pass over Archie - who should have been Archie - but it was Che, sitting as casually as he always did, his dark eyes boring back into her own and making hers look away, making them cold and small. The hand on her shoulder burned, and she understood why Archie hated her, why they all looked at her how they did. Lynn shrieked, trying to shove back but her arm wouldn’t work. It did nothing. Even if it would have the woman was too strong. Lynn struggled to push herself up out of the booth but a thunderclap of pain burst open in her knee and she crumpled back down, her right leg suddenly as worthless as her arm. “No, no, that’s not right, it - “ she looked down at her leg. All that remained of her kneecap was a bloody ruin of cloth and bone and bullet. Lynn wanted to look up at Salamandra, to stare her down as she did it, but her head wouldn’t turn. She couldn't look at Salamandra and none of them would look at Lynn as she looked to each of them, begging for help.

“You want so badly to be like them.” the voice said, still hot against her ear. “You want your perverted sense of normal. But you’re not. You wanted my help.” A hand, hot as burning coals against Lynn’s skin, grabbed her by the hair and twisted her head until she was staring down eyes as angry and yellow as the sun. There was a crunch of wood below her and the chair collapsed, but she was held up by whatever had its ironclad grasp of her head. She lurched, and was thrown away from the table like a dog discarding its chew toy. Lynn his the ground in a mess of limbs, but she had full view of Salamandra- the woman made of fire, with her foot against Archie’s chest and a predatory look on her inhuman features. The twin suns shifted from the boy to her once again, and she grinned. “You wanted to be just like me.”

“Don’t,” Lynn said, her voice croaking as she suffocated on the smoke. Salamandra stomped down on him - but she couldn’t tell if it was Che or Archie, or if there was any difference anymore. Keaton sat, pregnant and tired-looking, doing nothing as it went on. Behind her, the back of the restaurant was full of Christmas trees, and Salamandra had lit them all ablaze before walking in. Or did I? Lynn tried to remember. She burned a Christmas tree, one time. It had burned the house. It was Lucy's house. Her brain wasn’t working. Somewhere, deep down, she knew none of this was right - she should be healing, she shouldn’t be burned, she - Salamandra should be dead - but her brain was a small scrap of meat being pulled at by the mad dogs that were all the injuries on her body. Lynn struggled to pull herself up with one decent arm and leg and couldn’t, even with the wall behind her for support. She turned, grateful at least that it was her useless arm that had been scalded, and saw a dent in the restaurant’s wall, where someone had smashed something into it again, and again, and again. The linoleum floor below it was melted and hardened back over, an ugly scar of synthetic magma. Lynn looked back. “I didn’t…” she wasn’t sure what she wanted to say. She was going to be sick. “Che,” Lynn said, feeble even to herself. He was under Salamandra’s foot, looking at her, bored and fascinated at once, and pulling the petals off flowers. He held them against the woman's skin one by one and they caught fire, ash dusting down over him. He didn’t see to mind. “I need your help with something, Lynn.” He'd said that before, too, she knew.

“Che, Che I’m gonna die, she’s gonna - “

“The warehouse. I need you to come down with me and take care of something.” His voice was the way it always was. His tone was completely urgent and completely relaxed. She didn’t have a choice, because you never did with Che, but why would you want one, because he knew what the right thing was, and he had kept them all together so far. You just had to trust him. Even if it seemed wrong, it was right. For a bewildering moment, Lynn’s dizzy eyes noticed the hint of pudginess on his features, and the quality of the clothes he wore. That’s not right, though, Lynn thought. We had to steal just to get by, that’s why we all went hungry - he wouldn’t have...he didn’t have any more than we did. He rolled a quarter over his hand, because he was always doing something like that, fidgeting or playing with one thing or the other. Lynn felt like he was always bored with life, even though she had seen him angry, so furious he put holes in walls, or so furious he didn’t even raise his voice, he just spoke in a tone so cold and neutral they all wanted to curl up inside themselves. They had to do that sometimes. Lynn taught Clarita and Megan. When you saw things you weren't supposed to. You just went somewhere else. But that didn’t matter, because - well, his voice was never sweet, but there were times it was something like that, and that evened it out. But this Che was more like Archie, she thought, and she didn’t get it. Che would’ve helped fight Salamandra. Would he? Lynn thought, trying to remember. He didn’t at the end. Something at the end went wrong. None of them would help. Some sobering thought came. They wouldn't help, she remembered. They fucked me over. All of them fucked me over.

Lynn knew that had happened before too, they’d gone to a warehouse, it was the one the fight club was at, but she couldn’t remember what or why, or why Che wouldn’t help her. Salamandra was going to kill him, and she was going to do things to Archie, but he just kept pulling flowers, doing nothing. Amelia wasn’t even here. Eli was somewhere, and Lynn tried to figure out how she knew both that Eli existed and that she hadn’t met Eli yet. Lynn’s orange jumpsuit was singed and shredded, struggling to offer her any privacy, and she could see through the window a crowd was gathering, staring. Lynn turned back to Salamandra. “You were gonna kill me,” Lynn said, her voice wheezing. “You - when Gennedy put me away. You would’ve shivved me.” It sounded like a lie, even to her. She knew it was at least a little true. She knew because she would’ve done the same thing to her. “I…” Lynn’s voice trailed off, lost between the pain in her knee and her nose and her shoulder and all the burned skin on her neck and arm, the scarred marks where Salamandra had lain her fingers.

“I told you to leave.” Salamandra said to her. Archie, or Che, or whoever it had been was gone now. “But you didn’t. I didn’t kill you.”

There was an earth shattering roar from somewhere within the bowels of the restaurant, out of view. It was enough to make even the living flame before her uneasy. Salamandra shook her head and locked eyes with Lynn. “I didn’t kill you.”

She approached with purpose to every step until she was right on top of Lynn, six or seven feet over the girl on the floor. Lynn threw her good hand and the woman didn’t even attempt to block it, her hand hitting the woman’s calf and doing nothing. She had Lynn by her collar- somehow burning the skin against her knuckles but not the clothes she wore. With her off hand Salamandra forced her against the wall where the dent was. For a brief moment, Lynn was aware of how painfully tight the skin around the bridge of her nose was, of how opening her mouth to scream pulled the gash apart even further - but then the woman’s burning fingers were on her throat and smoke was in her mouth and she could not even scream. Salamandra had her by her hair, the slight sting of knotted tangles being ripped lost in the frenzy of everything else. Through Salamandra’s legs, she could see Archie on the floor, unharmed but for a hand that was completely burned off. Keaton and Natalie had just gone. The crowd outside lost interest, and the Christmas trees burned farther and farther away as Salamandra’s hands tightened. She saw shapes, but it was hard to make out where colors began and ended. Lynn couldn’t hear in the ear against the wall anymore, and was only vaguely aware of something running out of her ear and down her cheek before sizzling and scalding her skin.

“I didn’t kill you.”

Somewhere, Che was telling her she was a pussy, that she wasn’t even fighting any more, but Lynn’s fingers couldn’t find anywhere weak or exposed on the woman, everywhere she touched only burned.

She felt the pull of her hair again and a pain in her eyes as she realized they were boiling, and the world was dark and on fire before her skull dented the wall again, her throat tighter and tighter.

“I didn’t kill you.”

Again. Lynn didn’t feel the pain in her knee any longer, and she could remember the warehouse and the pistol blast for only a moment before it was gone too, and her weak arm wasn’t even her weak arm anymore, because the other one was burned useless from trying to pry the devil’s hands off her throat. She didn’t feel anything but her head, the way the skin on her lips peeled back and the blood thundered in the vessels around her skull.

“I didn’t kill you.”

Lynn felt her head go back against the wall one more time and blinked.

She was on the floor of her dorm room. Her clothes were burned off. She had not woken in a cold sweat, but her whole body was steaming, and there was the smell of burning synthetic fabric from where she’d scorched the mattress before falling over. The back of her head smarted from where she’d hit the floor, and Lynn pulled herself up against the base of the bed, knees to her chest, gasping. She’d disabled the fire alarm on her room on day one - one of the few security oversights the Promise had caught and fully decided to ignore - and Lynn was free to fumble at the pile of belongings next to her bed that had scattered when she fell. She grabbed a pack of cigarettes and got one into her mouth, the end lighting as soon as her fingers wrapped around it.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Lynn muttered, rocking back and forth. The Xan was right there. Right there. She just had to grab it and take one and she could go back to sleep.

Lynn grabbed the bottle and hurled it across the room. She’d probably ruined the fucking thing with the heat anyways. The cigarette was burned out about thirty seconds after Lynn put it to her lips, and she grabbed for another one, breathing deep. As she did, her skin and hair shimmered like coals, surging back to life with a blast of air and dying back down as it went away. Lynn idly ran her thumb, nail chewed to the cuticle, across the jagged scar on her kneecap.

Lynn sat still for a few minutes, breathing. She grabbed for her phone and flipped it open, eyes watering from the bright light. ”Hey I know this is really weird but can I just come over and sleep on the floor or something I won’t make any noise I just - Lynn stopped, watching the line flicker as she thought of the next letter. She deleted the message and shut it, putting the phone back down.

She climbed back into bed and stared up at the ceiling.

After an hour of that, she got her things and went to the gym.



---

The time in the hospital had been frustrating. The doctor patiently explained the concepts of healthy self-image and proper, balanced diets to Lynn, and marvelled at how quickly her appetite seemed to return. Lynn's stay was only two days, but she was able to have a bit of fun with it. Lynn, in a tearful display of thanks, palmed the doctor's wallet from his lab coat and ordered flowers to her own room. She left the wallet on the table next to some brochures ("I'm so forgetful!") and went down to the front desk.

"He's not supposed to have visitors," they told her.

"Please," Lynn said. "I helped save him and I just want to be sure he's okay. I promise I won't get him sick. My temperature's too high."

The woman relented - Radvi had stabilized, after all - and permitted Lynn a short visit.

"I think the docs here are as dumb as the cops," Lynn said, throwing the flowers down onto the bedside table and lounging in the chair next to Radvi. It seldom happened that Lynn was wrong - in her experience, she was right about nearly everything - but she had been wrong on this one. He had survived. His face was bandaged and gauzed so heavily you could barely see the eye that he had left, and he had all those Darth Vader machines hooked up to him. "You shitting in a bag and all, I guess?" Lynn asked, staring at him. No response.

"Well, I'm a woman of my word. Flowers. You can thank the pediatrician they have on staff. If I really wanted to do Arianna's job for her, I'd just get him assigned to take care of you." Lynn stared at the body and the machines that breathed it. "Jesus. You're fucked." Lynn leaned back in the chair, resting her feet on the hospital bed. "You know, I figure this is the safest place on the Promise right now. This room. Because I remember - " she almost said Keaton telling me, but Cara was always, always listening. Her gloating had almost gotten her. "I remember someone telling me that after that little event at the mall, the cops had come after that robot. And yet you come running through the woods with him. And Gennedy tells me that robot's dead when he did his illegal shakedown, which you seem to be fine with." Lynn rocked back and forth, sipping on the weight gain shake she was required to drink every four hours. Admittedly, they did taste good, but Lynn was sure that was only because that doctor had nothing to do with their preparation. She brushed a glowing white strand of hair out of her face and kept talking. "So I think maybe all you uniforms aren't on the same page. I think maybe you found out some shit, which is why only you came out in the woods, what with those trackers and whatnot. So if I was Arianna, and I'm not, for whoever's listening - I'd try and make you look as crazy and dumb as possible. Which is pretty easy, given, you know." Lynn shrugged. Lynn chewed on her lip. It wasn't fun when he was asleep. In fact, she felt like a bit of a bitch.

Not enough to stop, but still. Lynn crushed her guilt, the way you were supposed to do. He's a part of it, Lynn told herself. It doesn't matter Eli doesn't see it in him. He kills kids.

Then it felt sweet again.

"You know, I didn't get a good look at you in the station. Surprised I'm not already hauled back in. Probably guilty of keeping too much blood in your body or something. But you're older than I thought. I guess, you know - " Lynn shrugged. He would've gotten it if he was awake. "But still." Lynn leaned over and picked up his hand. Cold. "No ring. So - " she paused, looking. On the table was a necklace, which men shouldn't wear in Lynn's opinion unless they had giant clocks attached to them or were made of pure gold, on which a ring rested. A bracelet, too, not entirely unlike - Lynn shifted on her feet, letting Radvi's hand fall from hers. She hadn't pulled that bracelet out in...in a while. Lynn looked back at him, embarrassed for feeling embarrassed in front of a half-dead man. "...divorced, then?" Lynn asked. "Not surprising. Probably a revolving bedroom door back home when you're up here and she's down there. Shame about the kid though." Lynn stared down at him, feeling her blood literally boil. How do you be a part of this when you have a fucking kid, Radvi? Lynn stood up. The nurses would come soon. She looked down at him. He looked weak and broken and pathetic. It scared her. That taser, she thought. That taser is the only thing between you and him. Except they won't spend the money to keep you alive.

"I don't know your first name," Lynn said softly. "Don't really give a shit. But I'll level with you. If you hadn't come, there's a good chance Arianna kills me. I'm not saying I owe you one. Maybe so, maybe not. There's a lot more on that scoreboard to sort out. But when I see her, I'll get one in for you." Lynn put her hands in her pockets and turned to walk away.

"Because fuck knows you won't be able to shoot her."

---

The restaurant was busy, as always.

Lynn was scraping food off into the trash. How do people throw away this much? Shit doesn't grow on trees. Well, she supposed some of it did. Not the chickens and cows or whatever thou-

"Ignacio," Lynn asked, eyes widening. "Where do they keep all that shit?"

Ignacio looked at her tentatively, not willing to give an answer that may incriminate him in a court of law.

"I mean, like - food."

"The fridge."

"No, fucker, I mean, like - " she paused, mind racing. Of course. It's how D got on. "Where - where does all this come from? Do they grow it here? Like is there a farm section with cows and stuff?"

He looked at her like she was insane. "They just ship it all up. I've got a friend who helps move all that stuff. Para. Strong guy. It's easy for him."

Lynn turned back to the plate, grinning. "Huh. Interesting. Where do they unload it?"

"I guess same place the kids come on, I don't know. You going to do your job or you gonna ask about how they keep the lights on next?"

"No problem," Lynn said, smiling.

---

Lynn knelt in the forest, rolling over a tape measure in her hands. The taser had been gone when she'd gone back. She'd scoured the area, but someone else had gotten it. Arianna. She turned her mind to the question at hand.

"This is fucked up," she muttered to herself. "Alright, I guess a twelve year old's probably, like, I dunno. Four and a half feet?" Lynn looked at the tape measure. "Well, shit, I could've just laid down." She knelt, staring at the tiles, visualizing it. "And maybe, like, a foot deep?" she chewed on the back of her hand. "I'm not really a good frame of reference there. But would they...would it be in like a pod? Like some Matrix shit, or..." Lynn's mind wandered off. They'd need to move people in bulk. They got food in on the Promise once a month. Would they move in more people with the other students? That was probably too high-profile. Or was that exactly the point? To smuggle in the test subjects while everyone else was having fun?

Lynn drummed her fingers on her hands. Kids are gonna die because you're too dumb, a voice told her. It had a vague South African accent.

Lynn stared back at the dirt. "So...I guess this doesn't matter if I don't know, like, the ship size." she closed her eyes and tried to remember the shuttle up. They'd fit about fifty kids in there, she thought, but maybe more or less. Surely they could fit more if they were all unconscious. "No, they have to be strapped like that, or they'll just get killed by the recoil when they hit space." Space recoil. That wasn't right. She needed to bounce this off Keaton. "So...are there secret shipments? I'd hide them in the other stuff, personally. So they must be paying off these dock workers." Yeah, that seemed right. "Even if, like, there's just two really strong motherfuckers carrying all these bodies, they gotta - " Lynn stopped, thinking. No, that wasn't right. If it was hidden as something else, maybe they really wouldn't.

She hadn't established much, least of all the volume of a twelve year old, but it was a start. While Lynn's spatial reasoning needed fine-tuning, she was confident she was on, if not the right trail, at least a trail that might at one point intersect with the right one. She'd need Keaton for the rest of this.

---

"Be at the loading bay or be square!"

Lynn had looked at her phone. "Huh. So Cara was white."

---

Lynn leaned back against the wall of the Loading Bay. She felt safest with her back to a wall. "They really cleaned this motherfucker up, huh?" she muttered, looking around. She was waiting for the new arrivals, a tray of food from the cafteria in one hand, the other shoveling it into her face. Lynn did not turn down any opportunities to eat, particularly if it was out in public. I just need to shut that doctor and his emails up. Lynn swallowed. She would rather have been around the more private areas of the loading bay, but they were tricky to get to, and security was too high since the breakout. Eyes were everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. This would have to do. She could pass something useful along to Keaton if nothing else. I'll count the number of kids, Lynn thought. Maybe try and get back towards the shuttle if I can. I bet I could get one of them to claim he dropped something in the hallway back. Lynn didn't like that. Too many things could go wrong. Still, Lynn was starting to bet against the Promise's security whenever she could.

She leaned back, chewing, the fork and knife on her plate unused and forgotten. There'd be something useful out of this.

If nothing else, she wanted to see the ones who came on in chains, in collars, who had as much hate across their faces at this pretty prison as she had.

---

---

“Testing, testing, one-two-three-”

“A-B-C, one-two-three, baby, you an-”

“Okay, yes, great, thank you, shut up.”

D was strolling along the ring as Trevor spoke to him on the other end of the line. In the weeks that had passed since Homecoming night, Promise security had been told D was no longer a threat, and to further extent, was on their side. They’d been told he was a robot, not a man. They’d been told to stop trying to apprehend him or beat him senseless or rip his head off. And, for the most part, they listened, barring a few hiccups and misunderstandings in the days immediately following the announcement. Few of them liked him, more still wanted to kick his metal ass, and others felt threatened that automatons taking their jobs were on the rise. Gennedy put all of that noise to rest and told them to just let D be, and that he was very much under control, on a computerized level - which, of course, was a lie.

But none of them needed to know that.

“New arrivals are coming in at 1.” Trevor said to him over the communications line, “I want you there to keep an eye on things, since fuck knows what’ll happen - maybe Jello Bitch will show up after another long break, maybe some parahuman shit-kid will start trouble themselves, I don’t know.”

Yup. Newcomers set to show up on this joke of a station, as if never told that the metaphorical train had flown off the tracks and into the spiraling winds of ‘Good God why are there so many bodies’. Oh, well - D couldn’t say anything, he had no standing to object upon. He just smiled and went with it.

“You’ve got your own taser now, you’ve got a PSI chip, you’re as good as you can get for the time being.”

D patted the taser hidden in his pocket, extra charges tucked into his coat. Trevor had whipped up a copy of the prototype for him, as it had worked well enough against Arianna to warrant keeping in play.

“We’re not far off from rolling out a better version to the force at large. I’m also still working on something for you personally - sound frequency tech to better stop Jello Bitch in her tracks, since you’ve shown me that works. Won’t be ready for a bit though, so make do. Just don’t blow anyone’s ears out.”

A low chuckle from D in response. Blasting memes and music to destabilize Arianna - good times. Kinda wished he could go back to them.

“Anyway, I’ll let you go. I’ll be watching when 1 rolls around, make sure you’re at the loading bay by then. T out.”

And he was gone. D continued his casual stroll, on his way to the loading bay and whatever stops in between.

Smile on his face.

Happy’s back.

Amelia

---

Amelia had always been the type to be suspicious of the motives of authority. She might as well drink that shit for breakfast. But Amelia now believed she knew what it was like to be a goddamn conspiracy theorist.

After the nightmare that had been Homecoming, Amelia felt like she had been weirdly overlooked by the police. Apparently if you wanted to dodge encounters with Gennedy, be the person to deliver the injured guy to the ER. Amelia had seen fit the throw in one quick jab at Lynn before plotting her escape, however. "Don't look at me! I said shit or get off the pot. You had plenty of time to let go." Still, Amelia had answered the questions that needed answering, made sure her friends were ok, and then promptly made herself scarce before big bad Gennedy could show his ugly mug.

A few days later, Amelia had gotten the full explanation of what was going on for Keaton. Well....as close to a full explanation as she could get. And from everything she had heard from that, cowardice or not, Amelia was now convinced going incognito for a month or two had absolutely been a good call. Apparently the band had been caught right in the center of some of the worst of it, tangling with two seriously fucked up parahuman criminals. Worse still, apparently the murderer had been involved in that two. And now Amelia finally had a name.

Arianna.

Now, Amelia could handle the loose psycho, to a point. She could handle the fucked up people in the prison. But what really threw her for a loop was the fucking black and white incorporeal freaks that saw fit to entangle ordinary students into the mix. Amelia didn't give a shit that said students could cause a raging inferno or turn into Godzilla or defy the concepts of distance and space. In the context of the situation, they were ordinary. And she didn't care if they had been calculated to be involved in the conflux of events, or if they had stumbled onto a weird program, or if the fucking tooth fairy told them so. The fact that they had to be prepared to possibly get involved to her translated as being made to clean up the Promise's own mess, and admitting to its incompetence.

Amelia had not expected the first part of the Promise she would deface was her own room, but reality seemed to be going sideways. Amelia had converted one of her walls into a makeshift conspiracy board, tacking several papers and pages to her wall. It wasn't very impressive per say, but it helped her keep everything in perspective. It also had helped her fight the urge to run off and deface literally anything she could find, as she was starting to go stir crazy. As Amelia paced in her room again, she couldn't help but mutter "I swear to god, I am tagging something fucking EVENTUALLY."

Amelia jumped a bit as she felt her phone go off. Checking it, she was surprised to see a message from Cara. ”New arrivals scheduled to board at 1PM! Be at the Loading Bay or be square!"

Amelia shook her head. "Cara. Cara. Of all people, you should know by now I have no interest in joining the kumbaya club, especially now."

Cara couldn't help but banter right back in a sarcastic tone. "True. But wouldn't you also want to help out....what was the phrase you called them? Fellow degenerates?"

Amelia paused, cocking her head and thinking it over. She twirled a can of spray paint in her hand, before setting it down on a table. "Shit, that's a compelling argument." Amelia looked at her watch. An hour and a half to go. Well fuck, perhaps the degenerates might be a little less panicked if they saw some mischief right out of the gate. "Hmmmm. If I rush it I got time." Amelia threw on her jacket, and suddenly vanished from her room.

Amelia suddenly appeared in the hallway outside the loading area. Over the last few months, she was starting to establish something of a.....teleporter's code of politeness. Less out of wanting to be polite, more out of not wanting to be slugged across the face. Don't teleport directly into a chair, don't teleport mid conversation, and teleport to the door of a room so you still open it were near the top of that list. Stepping into the loading area, she got a look across the room, before suddenly raising an eyebrow. Why, on the hellish fishbowl above god's green earth, was Lynn one of the first people here? Amelia had to know.

Amelia walked up to who she was strongly hoping was considering her a friend of sorts. "You know, you were the last person I expected showing up for the love bomb horse shit at all. And you are an hour and a half early. What's the occasion?"

Nicholas

---

Adolescence truly is a magical time. Most people, when around age thirteen or fourteen, start to see the shape of things to come creeping over the horizon. But trying to see into the future, for most people, is as unachievable as trying to smell the shape of a dancing flame. Surprisingly few ever really appreciate that peeking over the edge of tomorrow isn't as finite a task as peeking over a countertop.

The true magic of adolescence isn't the curse of a faulty foresight. Rather, it is the inner alchemy of an aging heart. As you learn that even gold can rust and that as long as you hold "forever" up as an immutable constant, its' end can only ever be at an arms-length, always within reach.

When the one girl, the bossy one, blood-spattered and beautiful shouted something sarcastic and desperate, he wanted to respond faster. By all accounts, he should've responded faster. He was trained to respond faster. But this felt too horrible to be true. Like all the remaining reason was being torn from his iron fists like taffy. The truth was stretching so thin that he could see through it, like a window into the unimaginable, or perhaps more like a television.

As Nic stared into the gunshot that had once been a face, he thought back to the last time he'd seen someone hurt like that. The first girl he ever loved. Or at least said that he loved. Anyhow, there were a few brief and perfect hours in which they really did have forever ahead of them.

---

Four Years Ago
Nebraska, The United States of America, Earth

Back when there was a sun above his head, back when there was an Earth beneath his feet, back when the world had another side, there was a time when he knew how to take a hit without ever being guarded. He was a young boy, exactly thirteen years old when he was luxuriating in the midwestern sunshine, feeling his skin glisten and bead with sweat. He was his father's right hand, his pride and joy. Though he was barely pubescent he could taste the freedom under his wings, feeling the entirety of the heavens upon his back without even a single devil on his shoulder.

It was his thirteenth birthday. Uncle Derek, very possibly his father's closest advisor and Nic's own personal hero, was manning his grill and unleashing a torrent of hellish fire upon slab after slab of beef. In it's penance it was all rendered perfect, delicious. There was probably literally no one in the entire nation who could cook a better burger, Nic figured, as he wiped an amalgam of ketchup, mayonaise and grease from his chin. Nic was taken aback, choking on a crouton-sized nugget as a molten whiteness swallowed his face. He almost screamed before realizing that his father had merely wiped his face with a kleenex.

"If this were the field, you'd be dead. And that'd be a shame. You'd be the most handsome little victim. So how does it feel, my boy? It's been a long while since I was a teenager."

"I dunno, dad. Nothing feels all that different. I guess that means I've been ready all along. So can I start driving yet?"

"No, son. I know you're not as reckless as the other boys but that really is dangerous. I promise that you'll be behind the wheel before you even know it. I want it as bad as you, really. Why do you think you get CAT scans every week? The instant that your brain has developed you'll be rolling down the road like thunder. But there is nothing in the world more important to me than protecting my family. And you know who the familiest family I have is?"

"Me."

"That's right, private. Don't you forget it. Now go enjoy your special day," he said with a punch on the shoulder before winking, "And that's an order."

The sun peeked over the fenceline, glittering against the electric fence, promising that it was going to be a good day. Uncle Derek and the other men of the militia had gone all out, giving him a day to remember, playing paintball-hide n' seek until the sun set. Exhausted and gleeful, he collapsed into his fresh bedsheets, soaking his linens with his pungent and glistening adolescent marinade. His ankles took root, as had his ass but as the base of his skull hammered into his pillow, he felt a gentle but noticeable resistance.

"Yes!" he screamed in a hush, producing a collapsed cardboard box from beneath the cool side of his pillow. Even in the almost nonexistent light of the deepest hours of night, the moonlight let him see the text scrawled under the red ribbon that hugged his present tighter than his ribs could hold his heart. It read 'A secret mission for my little man. You can do this. I believe in you. Love, Dad.'

Inside the box was a key, a plain and unremarkable household key that was laid atop a manilla envelope. Along the envelope's edge, there was a name written in sharpie: "Bridgette Munroe". It wasn't a name he was familiar with. But there were plenty of neatly organized documents to unload for him. It was like a puzzle box.

"When I was your age, I was crazy about girls. I know it's pretty tight around here. Always cramped and there aren't exactly a lot of kids your age. If life hadn't dragged me down this road, I wouldn't have chosen to raise you this way. There's not a lot I can do about that, now. After all, we're here. But don't let anyone say that I don't love you. We discovered reports of a rumored teenage para at the local high school. It took a long time to fish her out but thanks to the carelessness of the school faculty we were able to ID her: Brigette Munroe. We gather that her power has something to do with enhanced optics but specifics have been scarce.

I don't think it'd be good for morale if the rest of the guys knew that we were running surveillance on high schoolers using social media under the guise of our meme accounts, which is why you are going to keep this one on the down-low. Get eyes on Munroe. Keep a log of her activities. Keep me posted on the daily. And most importantly: Have fun, sport. I love you.

Sincerely,
Your Father, Sergeant Nathan Adair"

---

Archie offered: "Help them. Find someone with a badge and bring them here."

"Anything obvious? You could grab a tampon from any one of these pussies and come fucking staunch the bleeding!" Lynn garbled hatefully.

One of them said come here and the other one said go away. Between the talk of tampons and teleportation, Nic found himself woefully unprepared and out of his element. Dropping into a situation without knowing everything about everyone ahead of time was as far from his comfort zone as.... well, as far as The Promise itself was from his literal comfort zone back in Nebraska.

He'd have to make notes on these people and their abilities later: Archie. Lynn. Eli. Amelia. And Deadmau5? Not to hurt them, he told himself. He'd never let that happen again. But so that he'd always know his options.

Option B, I guess. Handle the problem. Help stop the bleeding. After all, finding someone with a badge to stare at a corpse wouldn't help anyone.

So he decided to hop behind a tree momentarily, ripping off his fatigues and shearing a portion of the leg away that he could stuff against the officer's face in an attempt to stop the bleeding. Probably wouldn't work but it seemed reasonable that, when in doubt, it was slightly more advantageous to make a brash and unconsidered move than none at all.

Their cacophonous arguing seemed to die all at once before he returned however. When he stepped out from behind the tree, he noticed that half of the crew was gone, seeming to have disappeared altogether. So there he was, with his jeans in hand, his legs covered by the yoga pants he happened to be wearing. The only ones still around were two of the girls, one of which had been with Anderson, and Deadmau5.

"I'm sorry. I've really been out of it tonight but what just happened?"

Shortly thereafter, there was the sound of more agents storming their way. Nic did not trust them as they barked for him and his newfound associates not to move. He still really had no idea what was going on. In fact, it seemed like these people would be highly suspect. But it seemed like behaving rashly would probably get him killed. If there was a sign of real trouble, he'd probably have to get his head out of his ass. Fortunately, the insidious hypothetical danger never got around to materializing. Nic told them next to nothing because he knew next to nothing. He wished he was lying about not understanding. Next time, he promised himself, he would know. No more of this bumbling naive bullshit. No more.

---

After the interview/debriefing/interrogation/questioning, a couple things had become extremely apparent. One: Nic was apparently incapable of responding well to a surprise. Two: The faculty was either not right of mind or unfit for duty. Three: He wasn't prepared for medical emergencies if his mother wasn't there to patch him up.

So the day after he made up his mind. He couldn't legally serve in a military. Probably for the best. He couldn't be a cop, but in all fairness that probably would've been squandering his potential anyway. So it occurred to him. He'd make up for all the people he'd hurt in the last eight years by bandaging people day in and day out.

There's a hole in the world bigger than the hole in Officer Radvi's face. And Nic had decided that he would fix it. So he immediately committed to action, spending an easy hour getting certified in First Aid through a program offered on the station's infranet. After investing in a high end first aid kit, which he had divided up through his various pockets, he felt freshly prepared for whatever lay ahead.

He wasn't entirely sure if he felt a newfound resilience within his bones or if the warm morning rain was washing away the fatigue that had snowballed within him over the years. He was turning eighteen in twenty-six days. Twenty-six short days that had once felt like an eternity away. He felt the dross burning away from his heart as a newfound positivity, an earnest one left him feeling golden.

He found himself in a plaza, strolling down the street, intent on swinging by one of The Promise's bookstores, so he could peruse the textbooks for a couple medical classes he was considering taking. I wonder if there are any scholarships for parahumans like there are for ethnic minorities.

---

^{Collaboration with @SepticGentleman and @He Who Walks Behind}

The morning after. . .

The light hurt. It took a few tries before Eli could fully open her eyes to see a white ceiling above her. Bits and pieces from last night came flooding back all at once, and she squinted as she tried to understand what had happened. The party. Lynn's light show in the woods. Arianna. Two of her... D went down the ravine. So did Radvi. Radvi was covered in blood.

Eli felt panic course through her, but when she tried to get up it felt like her body was ten times it's weight. She grunted, her face twisting into a scowl as she attempted to sit up. Her body went slack against the bed again. She turned her head, finding that it was much easier to just look around than sit up. When her vision adjusted, she focused on the other occupant in the room.

Archie.

He'd been the one to take her here. How? All she remembered was that it felt like they were travelling as fast as a car, and she thought that she was much higher off of the ground than before. His bracelet was gone, too.

"Archie," she murmured to get his attention. "Is Radvi okay?"

He responded, and Eli felt relief fall over her like a warm blanket. She whispered a "Thank you." before her mind slipped away and she slept once more. When she awoke again, Archie was gone from the room and two female nurses were there to greet her. They helped her bathe, and put her in some sweats and a t-shirt. Her other clothes were too dirty to wear home.

They explained to her that there was nothing more they could offer. She just needed to rest, and in a day or so she'd feel much better. Eli took the doctor's note, seeing that'd she'd only have until the end of the week before she would have to go back to her usual routine. As Eli shuffled to the elevator at the end of the hall, she wondered if it was even possible. How could she go back to work, after what had happened?

She stepped into the elevator, fully intent on finding Archie downstairs, but when the doors opened next she found herself in the ICU. Radvi... I need to see him. Her feet took her towards the nurse's station. At first they tried to deny her, but something came across their faces as they looked the girl over. Was it pity? Or sympathy? Either way, they seemed to get it. Eli wasn't leaving the hospital until she saw him.

The nurse took her halfway there, but she was quickly pulled away to care for a patient. Eli slowly made her way towards his room. Her body felt heavier with each step. Was it her exhaustion, or was she scared to see what remained of her friend? Either way, she finally made it to the door.

Only to hear a voice inside. It was male, and deep. From what he was saying, it looked like Eli arrived a few moments after he did.

"“So… hey, buddy. Lookin’ good.”

Eli was about to turn away. To find a bench where she could rest her tired legs until he left. She spotted a place not far down the hall, but the next thing the man said to Radvi stopped her in her tracks. The taser? D? She rested her shoulder on the wall, resisting the urge to peek around the doorway to see who was speaking. He continued, mentioning Gennedy and a man named Wrath. Eli thought she recognized that name from somewhere. Maybe some staff member that worked in the Spire. She frowned as he mentioned new projects. More tasers? Or worse? The image of men carrying large nullifying technology popped back into Eli's head and she tensed.

Eli hesitated as she heard the man’s chair slide across the ground. He was finished speaking and coming her way, and he would find her standing outside of the door. He would know she’d overheard him. Did he know her? Had D shown him footage of that night, of her attempts to help Radvi? The panic made her mind fuzzy. It also didn’t help that her body wasn’t cooperating. So, in the few seconds that the man made his way to the door, Eli could only lean her back against the wall and hope that he would just think she was politely waiting for her turn.

When her eyes picked up on movement, she slowly pushed herself away from the wall. The man before her was short, shorter than he sounded, but he was massive. Eli wasn’t sure if she felt creeped out by him, or she wanted to tell him to fuck off. He was the one who was working with nullifiers. There had to be something wrong with this guy. She stared right into his eyes, although it didn’t look as intimidating as she was going for. She looked like she hadn’t slept in weeks. At least she was showered.

The man made his exit from Radvi’s room, closing the door behind him. The moment his eyes met Eli, he stopped. A little bit of a scowl etched itself across his brow, just barely noticeable. “Who are-...” He began, stopping himself mid-sentence. After a moment, he raised his finger towards Eli and said, “I recognize you, from the footage. You were with Rad last night.”

Eli noticed the subtle change in his expression, her body tensing again the moment she felt his hostility. She was in no state to handle a hostile, but something in her gut told her to fight back. Her eyes glanced between his finger and his face. She nodded her head, her own expression blank. "I’m surprised that the robot let you see that.”

“Okay, cool, I guess everyone knows he’s a robot.” The man said dismissively, mostly to himself. “Fuck it. Yeah, uh… Rad’s mentioned you before. Uh…” He took a moment to collect his memories. “Essex, right? Wessex?”

Another nod. Eli almost extended her hand to the guy, but the thought of touching the man that was working against her kind told her not to. "Wessex. I’ve known Radvi for four years now.” She wanted to let him know that she’d overheard the conversation, but she chose to stay ignorant in his eyes. Maybe she could find out more by acting dumb.

“I’m Trevor. I work in R&D.” Trevor replied, “Uh… listen, I’m not… I mean, Rad… look, just- thanks. For being there for him. I appreciate it.”

Eli blinked, in awe that the man would thank her at all. She looked between his eyes and she could see that he was being genuine. Her voice was much softer when she spoke again. “I’m glad that I could help him.” She glanced towards the door and felt a lump in her throat, but she refrained from becoming too emotional in front of a stranger. Her eyes returned to Trevor. “You’re the one who gave Radvi the taser? Did you get footage of that?”

“Yeah, I did.” Trevor replied, “Glad it worked as well as it did on Je-... Arianna. Just wish it didn’t go so fucking south just minutes later.”

Eli’s blood went cold, but her expression didn’t falter. Was he going to say a different name? He caught himself in time, but it was still a huge blunder. “It’s a shame she broke it,” she said, her tone matching his. Maybe if he thought she was on his side, which she sort of was, he would keep going. “The jello bitch got away, and now the best officer out there is down for the count.”

“Yeah.” Trevor replied, taking a moment of pause. “Hey, uh… you’re one of the folks he gave a PSI chip to, right? The ones coded to Arianna?”

Eli stared into his eyes, red flags waving all around him. “I was the one who found her.” She said flatly. “I want her gone as much as you do.” She was definitely not going to return the chip to him. He’d have to force it out of her hands.

“Well if Rad trusted you with one, then I will too.” Trevor said - rather unexpectedly. “D’s got his own and there’s… one more floating around out there, forget who with.”

A brief moment of silence passed between the two.

“Tell me… how well do you know him? Jacob, I mean.”

Eli was caught off guard once more. She felt like she was getting whiplash, without the violence. This guy was either manipulating her, or just too smart and all over the place. Her mind was too fuzzy. She continued on. “We’re close. He keeps in touch, and I do too. I helped him defend the public shelter, in the breakout.”

That was it. That was the fire that cleared her mind. The breakout. This guy was definitely one of the people that wanted to just forget it happened completely. “Arianna was behind that, too.”

“I sure as shit believe it.” Trevor said, “And just… I mean for that? We gotta bring the fucking hammer down, right? But the Chief and the rest of these chuckleshits have just FUCKIN-“

He stopped himself again, before his volume went any higher.

“Sorry… sorry, I’m just… really fuckin’ on edge, y’know?” Trevor said after taking a moment to collect himself, “She makes me… so angry. Especially after last night.”

Eli was silent as he spoke, mostly out of shock. Of course the staff would be furious. She knew that. What was shocking about the man’s reaction was that he felt so emotional about it. She found herself relating to him. Her head nodded in agreement. She was angry, too, but she still felt helpless. As helpless as she’d been last night. She pursed her lips before continuing.

“Are you going to make another taser? To stop her? If we’d known the one he hit was a doppelganger, we could take down the real one.” Her eyes were serious. “What is Gennedy doing about her? He understands the threat now, right?”

“He said so, guess we just have to wait and see what he actually ends up doing.” Trevor had his hands on his hips as he searched for his words. “Listen, I… look, I don’t have the best track record with paras, okay? Seen them do some awful, gut-wrenching shit - recently, especially. But Rad-... Jacob reminded me that you’re not all soulless rotten fucks - don’t take that the wrong way. Point is… I am determined to get this bitch. And D is too, I’m fairly certain. So… I would say we’re all on the same team here, right?”

Eli was silent for a few moments, still in awe that Trevor was acting this way. Slowly, she nodded. “I will do everything I can to help. I’ve never seen anyone that could do what she’s done, and there were some serious threats that came out of that prison.” She pressed her lips together and momentarily was hesitant to say more. She wanted to test his loyalty to Wrath, but she didn’t want to offend him after she just agreed that they were on the same side.

“It’s all about stopping people like her. That’s what this entire station is built for, right? We’re trained to control our abilities, and use them for good. No one would harm one of us unless they had a good reason, right?”

“Kid, c’mon, neither of us are that stupid. This station has a prison on it and a bunch of angry, overzealous, high school dropout fucktards wearing uniforms. And I can admit that because, honestly? I fucking hate this place. I just want Arianna dead.”

Eli nodded, although she looked discouraged by his statement. “We all do. Each side does.” She wasn’t trying to hide her emotions now. In some odd way, she felt like she could trust him. Radvi trusted him. “I’m just scared what this taser means. In the long run. Anyone trigger happy against us could do some serious harm.”

“Yeah…” Trevor replied, “Yeah, I getcha. I know it looks bad - and it’s probably gonna start looking a lot worse at some point - but… look, I’m not gonna condone security using our tech to live out their power fantasies, but it’s not something that’s gonna be stopped in its tracks. Bottom line is, it’ll help stop Arianna. After that…”

He took a moment.

“Well I guess, just… keep your head down.”

Another moment of silence.

“Alright, I gotta get back to R&D, and you wanna… talk to him, I guess.” Trevor said, motioning towards the door to Radvi’s room. “So, listen, you need anything from me, go find D. He’s basically my metal errand boy now. ‘Kay?”

Eli nodded for the last time in their conversation. She found herself thinking that he wasn’t as bad as she assumed he would be. She extended her hand to shake his, in what was the most gracious effort of trust she’d shown to any staff member other than Radvi. “Thank you, Trevor.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure.” He said, shaking Eli’s hand, rather quickly and half-heartedly, as he made his way past her and down the hall - like he was trying to shake off the more pleasant aspects of his personality that he’d just displayed. “Don’t go telling any security we’re all chums now, right? Don’t want the fucking peanut gallery giving me shit while I work.”

Eli let her hand drop to her side and watched him walk away. So, he admitted that they were working on more tech. At least it was nice to know that he wasn't inherently evil. She was still for a moment, but she soon turned to open Radvi's door.

Her heart fell into her stomach as she took in the sight of Radvi's limp body. Half of his face covered in bandages. How much of him was still left? Would he even look the same? Eli made her way over to the chair that Trevor left by the bed. She scooted it closer to Radvi before slumping into it.

"Hey," she murmured to Radvi. "You're still in there, right?" She bit her lip, her hands gripping the edge of the chair. "I met Trevor just now. You really know how to make friends. First D, and now him?" She scoffed softly. "Anyways... I'm glad you're okay." She felt the lump return, and tears began to well up in her eyes. "I... I want you to get better, but don't rush yourself. All of us can take care of the station while you're gone." She was biting back the urge to cry. "She won't get away with this. You'll see. I'm going to make sure of it."

She couldn't stand to say more, and she didn't want to cry in front of him. She pushed herself out of the chair and left the room. On her way to the elevator, she wiped what tears had escaped her off of her face. It felt like it was going to be hard not to cry, but by the time she greeted Archie in the foyer downstairs the tears were all gone.

---

One week later. . .

Present day. . .

'New arrivals scheduled to board at 1PM! Farewell party for graduates scheduled for 4PM.'

Eli stared at the notification before she turned off her phone and tucked it into her bag. She adjusted her position in the uncomfortable chair, leaning back in a dejected slump. Her eyes lifted towards the almost lifeless man before her. In the three weeks after homecoming night, Eli spent a lot of hours in this very spot. It wasn't because she wanted to be there when he woke up, or even if she could get any updates on his condition by being there when they checked in on him. It was because Eli only felt truly comfortable sitting next to the fallen officer.

"I can't believe they're bringing more of us up here."

She spoke softly, moreso thinking out loud than talking to Radvi. If he was listening, he gave no sign. There was a momentary silence before Eli spoke again. This time she was speaking directly to Radvi.

"I almost applied to go home, today. This is the only time I've ever really wanted to leave." She scoffed, a melancholy smile skewing her lips. "We both know its way worse down there, though."

Her hands came to her face, which was void of any makeup, and rubbed her eyes. Faint dark circles lingered under them still. A sign of her continuing lack of sleep. She liked to think that she'd gotten enough sleep in the few days that it took to recover from the incident to last her for years. The last two weeks, unfortunately, weren't as giving. Although the initial aftershock of overextending her abilities were gone, and she could fully function without instantly tiring, Eli still felt fatigued. This time, something was different about her recovery process.

After the breakout, Eli only took a week to get back to her usual groove. The shock of the massacre still haunted her, but it was easy to go on with the day as if nothing had happened. Ezekiel's death had also been devastating, but Eli shared the grief of his loss with her friends. This time, Eli felt alone in her grief. Her friends had never understood her affection towards the security officer. They'd reached out to make sure she was okay, but they were unable to understand exactly what Eli was going through this time. They knew nothing about Arianna-

Arianna.

Eli felt sick to her stomach with anger, but there still lingered the bitter taste of fear in the back of her throat. She couldn't sleep when she knew that Arianna was still on the loose. A combination of frustration, shame, anger, and anxiety had lingered with Eli since that night. It was a nasty combination. Something Eli had never faced before. Her entire core was shaken.

Amidst the sounds of beeping machinery, Eli released a heavy sigh. Her head lifted once more to look up and she took a deep breath to calm herself. She was trying to look at the bright side- she was desperate to see a silver lining. Radvi wasn't dead. That was the one thing she could hold onto. She hadn't lost a second friend to this terrorist. For a moment, Eli closed her eyes and listened to the sound of Radvi's heartbeat. She could still feel his pulse against her fingers. It beat in time with the EKG she heard now.

The heartbeat soothed Eli, and she found herself returning to a relaxed state. It was this type of emotional turmoil that Eli was having difficulty managing. She'd never felt this unstable before. It didn't help that she hadn't had a proper rest in a while. This would take a lot longer to heal from than Eli wanted. She had things to do, and she wasn't letting her mental exhaustion stop her. In fact, she'd already dragged herself out of her room quite a few times since she felt better physically.

She had to remind herself that she wasn't completely alone. Archie was there for her in the hospital. She wasn't sure how she would have gotten herself home without his literal and figurative support. The lunch with Lynn had also been oddly healing. Their dynamic had changed substantially since their awkward encounter at the mall. Even if Lynn didn't fully trust her yet, they still shared a mutual understanding. Keaton even came to visit Eli multiple times in the first few days after the incident. She brought her food and supplies when Eli could barely make it out of bed. Eli grew to appreciate her company, and even though they hadn't seen each other in two weeks Keaton still sent text messages to make sure Eli was doing alright. Lynn even surprised Eli one day after their lunch with a bootleg DVD compendium of WWE's greatest hits, with a lot of Mike Tyson in it, and two 40's for when Eli was feeling better.

The only people Eli hadn't been in contact with were Amelia and Natalie. The latter probably wasn't as familiar with Eli as Lynn and Keaton. They had only met once before that night, and they didn't even get to speak at the party, which Eli regretted. The former, though, Eli felt obligated to thank for her actions. Amelia was even more of a stranger than Lynn, but her quick thinking saved Radvi's life, too. She could have been hurt by Arianna as well, and Eli wasn't happy about that either. She made a note to get Amelia's number from Keaton or Lynn next time she saw them. She'd treat her to a meal, like she'd done for Lynn.

For a brief moment, she wondered what everyone was up to today. Would they go to greet the new arrivals? She highly doubted it. None of them seemed to enjoy that type of thing. They were most likely avoiding it at all costs. Maybe Eli could meet up with them. Did she have the energy to do that? She wasn't sure if she wanted to sit with Radvi, or head back to her apartment, too. She brought a book along with her. She could sit here and read until the nurses kicked her out to change his dressings. She wasn't family, and whoever had brought him flowers never came again, so it was just Eli that visited. Trevor could have come by again, but Eli hadn't seen him since their encounter.

What was he up to, now? Was he in the Spire, preparing more tasers or developing new weapons? She'd thought about what technology they may have already produced in these past few weeks. What dangers worked below? How were they testing the weapons abilities? It seemed like Trevor was going to say a different name, but had Eli heard wrong? She bit her lip, glancing at Radvi. How much did Radvi know about this? Her head turned to look out of the window, into the snowy landscape of The Promise outside.

In the four years that Eli had been aboard The Promise, she'd learned a few facts about the Spire. The number one fact was that no student nor approved staff were allowed to enter. Anyone that tried never returned. The paths that led to the Spire were visible to all of the people aboard The Promise. The spire only blocked a small portion of their view to the other side of the Ring, but there was no seeing inside no matter how good your eyesight or binoculars were. It was widely known that it contained R&D, and housed parahumans that were too young to join the schools aboard the Ring but too "dangerous" to live on Earth. Eli also liked to think that the Spire is where Misters Black and White came from, but she wasn't sure where, and she still didn't know who commanded them.

Recently she'd done a little investigating. She'd discovered a few little details about the Spire, like ways to enter it, and how tight security was on-board. The threat of disappearing forever was enough to keep Eli from actually planning a heist, but the thought of discovering The Promise's secrets remained in the back of her mind. Like a small ball and chain she took with her everywhere. She even knew a few technopaths that could help her accomplish such a task, but they were flaky and unreliable at the moment. Bottom line, Eli would never step foot on the Spire any time soon. Perhaps even ever.

She'd even done a bit of research on Wrath. Markus Wrath. The guy had an extensive background. Born in Scotland, general researching career in eugenics and engineering (which made Eli wonder if he was using his eugenics degree aboard The Promise), no wife or children to hold him back. Hell, the guy even helped create The Promise. A little bit more digging into public government records and Eli even found a-

BEEP BEEP BEEP

A monitor from the room across the hallway was blaring. Eli jumped in her seat, her heart racing. All thoughts before now were gone in an instant, and Eli suddenly worried that Arianna was here to finish Radvi off... When no blue goop came seeping through the doorway, she realized how irrational her fear was. She moved to the door, quietly shutting it to the noise outside, and pressed her back against it. Maybe she wasn't ready to leave his room yet.

When her nerves finally calmed down, Eli grabbed her phone and book from her bag. She moved to the small couch by the window and made herself as comfortable as she could manage. It was going to be hard to focus on the words, but she thought that reading would keep herself sane. Briefly thinking of her new friends again, Eli turned her phone back on and laid it next to her. For now, she would sit with Radvi in peace, and if the nurses kicked her out or Lynn and Keaton or even Archie wanted to see her, she would then leave.

---

Keaton stared at the camera on her laptop incredulously. “Cara, I’m an architecture major, not an arts major.”

“Yes, Keaton, but I’m assigning you an art project anyway. Think of it as a destresser this finals season,” Cara said, sounding more amused than Keaton necessarily liked.

“Can I decline?”

“Nope.”

“... What if I don’t do it?”

“I’ll give you an ‘incomplete’ mark for your semester.”

“And if I submit a blank canvas?”

“Give it a chance. You just might like it.”

Keaton sighed, half tempted to point out that Cara didn’t answer her question, half encouraged to go through with the plan regardless of the results. Assigning her an art assignment to ‘destress’ her was hardly fair. Besides the fact that any assignment, well-meant or not, would only provide another source of stress, she was already plenty busy without the extra assignment. Plus, she couldn’t even remember the last time she’d tried drawing something. Freshman year? Maybe, but nothing worth mentioning. High school? Then, probably, but that felt so distant it may as well have been another person altogether.

“What’s the point, Cara? Why even bother with all of this? I know you decreased my workload this semester, and don’t even get me started on how you’ve excused me from studio,” she said, crossing her arms and sitting back in her chair. She sounded like some spoiled child, complaining about having an easier time, but it was true. What was the point of masquerading around, pretending that she had any desire to get a degree at this point? With her power, she had many options that were far more lucrative than working in an architecture firm. She could trade stocks, invest in real estate, or bet on sports. Sure she might not always be able to come up with a bet to place, but she’d never bet wrong, and being able to guarantee profit was more than enough. That is, if she was even allowed to walk away after leaving The Promise. More likely than not, she’d be locked into some job for the government. That’s what they did—were doing.

“Miss Plasse, The Promise is a rehabilitation center, but it is also an academy. It is founded on the belief that every parahuman deserves a second chance a—”

“You know what, never mind. Forget I asked,” Keaton said, uncrossing her arms. “Just send over the projects. Might as well get started now and get them out of the way.”

Her laptop pinged, and she opened up the rubric for the art project. “... ‘No architecture-related submissions will be accepted’? Cara, you do realize I’m going to submit a stick figure, right?”

“Have fun with it, Keaton,” Cara said, her tone again betraying her amusement.

---

Bananas or apples? Apples. Eli seemed like an apple person.

Placing some into her grocery basket, Keaton continued strolling, wondering whether she should pick up some takeout for good measure. Eli wasn’t bedridden anymore, had even started leaving the house, but she still didn’t have much of an appetite. Keaton’s fix for that was buying her food since seeing food around might force her to consider eating it. She’d done the same for a friend in college, who later got diagnosed with depression. While Eli’s case was nothing as serious, Keaton figured she’d still do what she could. A support system was key in times like these, and Eli seemed like she could use some more support.

Given that Keaton now had two jobs on top of school, she was pretty hard-pressed for time, but she managed to block out chunks some nights for some movies at Eli’s. Her being there and eating encouraged Eli to eat along with her, and it wasn’t as if she didn’t like watching movies late at night. If cliche romance movies had one thing in common with trashy horror movies, it was that both were great to watch over food, with friends, while groaning and critiquing every mistake the protagonists made. In fact, even though she and Eli spent most of their time bashing the movies instead of watching them, they went through enough movies to make Keaton doubt whether they actually hated them all that much. After all, they could choose to watch quality movies instead, but somehow that had never occurred to them.

As she exited the store, she wondered briefly whether Eli would like the book she’d picked out. ‘On Crimes and Punishments’ by Cesare Beccaria was a book she’d at first thought to be the famous ‘Crime and Punishment’. Only by flipping to the back cover did she realize that she’d gotten the titles mixed up, but somehow it still seemed like something Eli would enjoy. Based on how much Eli loved thrashing period romcoms for their historical mistakes, it was clear Eli enjoyed history, and she also seemed to like horror movies about serial killers more than those about paranormal happenings. That said, a self-labeled treatise dating back to the Italian Enlightenment didn’t exactly sound fun to Keaton, much less the part about ‘condemning the death penalty,’ but that was her. She knew Eli liked history and crime, so unless the bookstore she worked for came into possession of a copy of ‘Crime and Punishment’ soon, this was as good as it was getting.

---

Getting a job with The Promise staff was the easy part. There were lots of jobs to be done—custodial, managerial, and general labor, just to count a few. The tricky part was getting assigned to the right job. With the ship getting monthly supply drops from Earth, time was of the essence, but that resolved when Keaton got the job she wanted: identifying and tagging boxes and packages. It was an easy job, in many ways, but it required a decent amount of basic memorization and inference. That, however, was covered by Keaton’s power, as was the introductory period of the job, which Keaton breezed through. Being able to check her work made picking up new jobs a simple task, and soon enough Keaton was well-integrated into the system of getting packages where they needed to go. Since the mail system aboard The Promise was an automated one, packages needed only to be tagged and left out back for the machines to pick up. Package taggers factored in when there was a problem, or when a package was being delivered to a staff building. Security measures and such were present, one of which allowed Keaton to examine package contents, which was why she’d signed up for the job in the first place.

The job, though, was largely a dull one. Mostly it was just approving boxes of food and supplies going to one staff department to another. Given that the next big supply drop would come with the next ship of students, there wasn’t anything major being moved, which Keaton figured was about right. Letting student workers handle sensitive material was a careless move. Besides, it wasn’t as if she was allowed to handle paper files or such. Those boxes were transferred directly by the staff, to the staff, which was the only correct move.

Today, she was on x-ray duty, looking at scan after scan of box contents as she approved them for the system. Why this wasn’t automated like the rest of the process was beyond her, but she was thankful she got the up close and personal look, even if she’d yet to find anything. Boxes of fruits or vegetables passed through the scanner, Keaton hedging her bet on tomatoes, then oranges when more than two boxes passed by. After that it was boxes of clothes, blankets, then books.

Something near the top of the box of books caught her eye, and she frowned, staring at the object on the screen. Was that… a bag of pacifiers? It sure looked that way from the scan, and she kept her eyes on the box as it came out, noting the size and design, then the package number and address. ‘The Spire.’ That wasn’t surprising, but Keaton was trying not to jump to conclusions—had been trying for a while. A bib or stuffed animal here and there was a red flag for her, but she’d heard of staff members with families on board. A whole bag of pacifiers, though, was a lot more incriminating than a bear or two, even if no self-respecting teen would ever admit to bringing a stuffed animal on board with them. With one or two, Keaton couldn’t discount confiscations, but she could for a bag. There were at least ten—more than enough for a family, even a few.

As for the location, The Spire was known to all, visible through any window on the correct side of the ship. Though Keaton hadn’t been able to dig up many details about what went on there, it was pretty clear that it was where the staff resided and operated from. R&D went on there, but there were many types of R&D. Some were harmless, like the type that made Radvi his chips. Some, though, were not, and mixing the harmless with the not-so-harmless seemed like a hassle. But, then again, this was the staff, and Keaton had learned not to bet on things being unlikely.

“Hey Liz, you free? I think I saw something in one of the boxes. The one over there—red tag, for The Spire,” Keaton said, pausing the belt and pointing out the package.

“This one?” Liz asked, putting away her phone and pointing to the package. Keaton nodded, and Liz stuck her key card in, popping open the lid as Keaton walked over. Inside was the bag of pacifiers from seen earlier, all twelve of them, but there were also books. Picture books. Titles so thin and simple they could only have been for young children.

“What, pacifiers and books?” Liz asked.

“Oh, that’s what they were! My bad—I thought they were something else, bunched up like that in a bag. Sorry!” she said, flashing Liz an apologetic grin.

“Yeah, whatever. Get it yourself next time,” Liz said, shutting the lid and pulling out her phone again.

Keaton returned to her seat, mind whirling. That was more than enough for one kid, perhaps even a few. It was a supply drop. For children. In The Spire. Not incriminating in itself, but the clues were starting to add up, and Keaton listened when the evidence pointed the same way as her hunches.

---

Fidgeting with her hands in a conscious effort to avoid picking at her nails, Keaton waited, her eyes flicking between the steam rising from her coffee and the nurse in front of her. She’d already given her name, so it was a bit too late to bail, but maybe the nurse would say someone was already visiting and give her an excuse to leave before she committed. Well, more than she already did, because she still wasn’t sure what she was doing. What was she doing? Why was she even here? It felt right, but lots of things felt lots of ways, and—

“Room 302, Ms. Plasse. You have a good day,” the nurse said, looking up with a bright smile.

Keaton blinked, then nodded, grabbing her coffee. “You too,” she said, giving the nurse a tight smile before heading to the stairs. One floor, two floors, three floors of time to doubt later, she was in front of room 302 looking at Radvi through the window on the door, all bandaged up and plugged into a machine and looking like he was just asleep.

Knocking out of habit, she hesitated, then let herself into the room, the beeping machine the only sound beside the door as she closed it. She walked forwards, hovering at the foot of the bed feeling like an intruder. Against the wall beside her was a small table of flowers and cards, some of the petals more wilted than others. That seemed about right. Radvi had friends, colleagues. People like Eli who truly cared about his well-being. She, on the other hand, she was here because… it felt right.

She hesitated, then swapped her coffee for one of the vases of flowers, bringing it over to the bedside table. Setting it down beside the necklace there, she took a seat in the chair, staring at the necklace. A wedding ring and a bracelet. A wife and daughter.

Her eyes slid down, then up towards Radvi, whose face was so covered in bandages she could barely make out anything under them. The machine continued beeping, and the seconds ticked by until Keaton cleared her throat, feeling she should say something.

“Um, hey Radvi. I… I didn’t know you that well, but Eli likes you, and you seemed like you always meant well,” she said, her words coming out haltingly. She was talking to a comatose patient, and she was feeling awkward doing it. Way to go, Keaton. “I, um, I don’t really know why I’m here. I just figured… well, I was in the area, so I figured I’d drop by.”

She paused, letting the beeping fill the room again. What else could she say?

“Eli—Eli was pretty upset about… this all, and I’ve been checking up on her. Kind of. Well, I’ve been busier these few weeks since I picked up another job, but she seems to be back on her feet, so it’s mostly just texting now. Before, it was dropping by to make sure she was okay. Bringing her food and stuff, maybe watching a movie or two,” Keaton said. “I guess… I guess I should say, I hope you wake up. For Eli’s sake, if not yours.”

Silence sunk in again, the beeping steady in the background as Keaton stared blankly at Radvi. The gravity of his situation sucked away all her thoughts, only vaguely reminding her of her own mortality, but she could easily sit in the silence, even relax in it. She’d kept herself busy in the past few weeks, not giving herself a chance to sit and think, because every time she did, all she could think about was Homecoming—how helpless she’d felt, how useless she’d been. They were inane thoughts, she knew, but it wasn’t so much the thoughts as the feeling that stayed with her. Being out of control—Keaton hated it, hated not knowing, not being sure. She liked being sure that the ring and bracelet belonged to Radvi’s wife and daughter, that the flowers and cards were from coworkers and friends, that Radvi’s heartbeat was stable and strong. Being sure helped her relax, made her feel normal, like herself. And it was scary, not being herself. The one day she decided it’d be okay to let loose a little, Arianna showed up, and Radvi got put in a coma. None of it was her fault—she knew that. But she also knew that she didn’t do—hadn’t been able to do—anything to prevent any of it. Lynn could have died, she could have died, Radvi very nearly did die. It made her all wonder whether investigating The Promise was even worth it, with Arianna out there. Maybe working with the staff was a better option for now, even if they were experimenting on kids.

She shifted in her seat, looking back at the flowers on the table. In the vase was a humble collection of yellow daisies, resembling dandelions with how obnoxiously yellow they were. They looked happy, though, if flowers could look happy.

Settling into her seat, she pulled out her notebook and a pencil, flipping to the page after her last design sketch. Then, turning towards the flowers, she attempted to sketch one, focusing on the way the light and shadows curved along the petals. As she drew, she glanced back at Radvi, and, in an impulsive stroke of inspiration, outlined his bandages under the daisy she’d drawn, then drew another daisy when the balance seemed off before going back to outlining the bandages. That continued for a while, her inventing flowers out of nothing now, poking some leaves out of the bandages for good measure. Even though Radvi was turned towards her, there was very little skin she could see, which was why she could fit so many daisies, she figured, and if she added another—

A knock sent her flinching back, clutching her notebook to her chest. It’d been from the neighboring room, as she quickly realized, and she relaxed with a sigh, looking down at what she’d drawn. Flowers and bandages on a face. How contrived, how cliche, but… she liked it. It was comforting, seeing the flowers with the bandages, and Radvi’s sleeping face was peaceful.

She tore the page from her notebook, looking around for somewhere to put it. She wasn’t keeping this—no way. It was nice, but it was Radvi, and it wasn’t really something she could turn into Cara for her pseudo-project anyway. Right?

Pulling out her phone, she turned it on, holding the camera over her drawing. “Cara, is this good enough of a final project for you?”

“I suppose it’ll have to do,” Cara said, her tone lilting, and Keaton clenched her teeth for a second as she told herself that no, she didn’t care that the AI was dripping with ‘told you so’ smugness. She’d gotten the assignment off her plate, and that was enough for her.

“Do you need a scan or physical copy?”

“Nope, the project was for fun. Feel free to keep the piece to yourself.”

Rolling her eyes, Keaton pocketed her phone, cleaning up her stuff. Then, walking over to the table with the flowers and cards, she slid the paper under a bouquet so that only an empty corner was peeking out.

“I’ll, um, be leaving now. Get better, Radvi,” she said, looking back at Radvi. The beeping machine answered her, and she managed a smile, picking up her coffee. A half-open card, though, caught her eye, and she paused, glancing back at Radvi. This… this was probably unethical. And dumb. And probably useless. But maybe it’d help. Maybe.

Pulling out her notebook again, Keaton wrote down the names on open cards, figuring that tearing envelopes was further than she was willing to go. Then, this time quietly, she left the room, sparing one last glance at Radvi as she closed the door.

---

“Pat, I’m heading out!” Keaton called, waving at her shift manager, who seemed to be on the phone. His brows were furrowed, and when she called, he looked up, waving her over.

“Dial this number for me, won’t you? I swear I’m getting it right,” he said, pointing to a handwritten phone number on a post-it.

“That’s a seven, not a one, right?” Keaton asked, pointing to what she knew was a seven.

“I tried both already,” Pat admitted. “The number with one doesn’t even pick up.”

“Right,” Keaton said, frowning as she entered the number. Putting the phone on speaker, she listened as the phone rang, rang, then clicked. Static blared out, and Keaton flinched, slamming the phone down.

“God, what is going on? First we’re missing a package, then I can’t even reach the distributor,” Pat said, groaning and rubbing his temples.

“Missing a shipment?” Keaton echoed.

“Yeah, I was told there’d be six shipments today, but only five arrived,” Pat said, sighing. “Guess I’ll have to go talk to the boss. See you tomorrow, Keaton.”

“Yeah, see you,” Keaton said, frowning as she left. Her phone buzzed—Cara reminding her about the new arrivals. As if anyone could forget that. Judging by the time—and the fact that she’d skipped breakfast—she was due for lunch, so lunch it was. On the way to the cafeteria, she composed a text to Eli, sending it.

Hey, when are you headed to the loading bay?

Then, figuring it wouldn’t hurt, she sent another one to Lynn.

You headed to the loading bay?

The girl had a penchant for keeping her phone turned off, given her distrust of Cara, so trying to reach her was always a bit of a struggle. Still, Keaton had done so over phone so far, and maybe she’d be able to get Lynn to get used to Cara sometime, if not trust her. After all, Caroline was a valuable ally, sarcasm, smugness, and all.

---

2024. Eighth of August. 11:04 pm.

Richmond, Virginia. Somewhere out in the woods.

Clark. Parchek. Stromeyer. Roman. Haines. Radvi.

Six men stood before the condemned. They were by a lake, in the dead of night. Three cars parked nearby. Welles hung from a lonesome tree, but not by his neck - they would not let him go so easily.

He was bound, and gagged. He’d killed fifteen people earlier tonight. He was crying.

Haines - the boss - stepped forward. He’d lost his wife just hours ago. He had a small canister of gasoline in his hand. Walked up to Welles - almost said something. Didn’t. Just stared him down before twisting the cap off of the canister. Doused Welles with most of it. Everyone heard him struggle.

“Clark. Matches.”

Clark stepped forward and handed a pack of matches to Haines. He was the only one out of the group whose family wasn’t dead. Welles was caught before that could happen. He felt guilty among his friends.

Haines lit a match. He sheltered the flame in his hands, as if reluctant to let it go just yet. Welles struggled still. Haines whispered to himself.

_{“You deserve this.”}

He was convinced. He was just. He was good.

He threw the match and backed away. Welles lit up instantly. A light in the dark, isolated in the woodland, no one to witness it but the six men.

“Let’s go.”

Five of them turned towards the parked cars. Seen all they had to see. Radvi stayed and watched Welles burn. Burn and scream. Flesh melting. Flickers of light falling down onto the dirt beneath him.

This wasn’t right.

He took out his gun. He kept his eyes on Welles. This wasn’t right. He slowly raised the gun, his breaths becoming louder. Aimed at Welles’ head. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t-

“Sir?”

Radvi’s eyes went wide. He turned around. There was… a child? A young boy. Short, narrowed eyes, unkempt brown hair. Collared shirt, tie, vest, dress pants and shoes.

“Wh-” Radvi stammered.

There was no child there. There was never a child there. This wasn’t how it happened. This was wrong. Radvi stood with his gun lowered, between the child and Welles’ burning body. His head began to hurt. He breathed, and he spoke.

“Who are you?”

“My name is Matthew. I’m a bit lost.”

Archie

---

The Cianwood cafe was a small place with a metal exterior, classic and welcoming to every passerby. There are fresh flowers out front, a neon open sign blinking, and a small blackboard displaying the statement "Amanda was here. Drake is a loser!" in chalk. A few bikes are locked up or simply stacked around the buildings exterior. It’s quaint, Archie thinks. Archie pops head through the glass door. A tiny bell rings. A number of customers are scattered around, some having coffee or just reading the newspaper. A voice screams, "Idiot, get back in here and take your shift!"

As soon as he walked in a dark-haired boy around his age dashes by grinning like a maniac, quickly apologizing on his way out after accidentally smacking Archie’s shoulder. He smiles brightly, his tan skin covered in tiny scars looking like rugged Indiana Jones-type with his large brown leather jacket. Before he knew it the tiny bell rings again and the kid salutes, bag on his back, and rode off in his bike parked in the front. Archie turned in confusion to face the owner of that shrill voice, but doesn’t allow himself to gaze for too long at the woman, wearing a yellow waitress uniform, a pencil behind her ear and an annoyed pout. The last thing he wanted was to be on the receiving end of any of her grievances.

"I'll drown him later," she says, to no one in particular, turning to pin a slip of orders in the kitchen window for the cook. Holding two strawberry milkshakes on her platter, she glides her way to a table where a younger boy and girl sat, placing both concoctions neatly with a sweet smile. A part of him is bemused by the woman’s antics, so he decides to slide into one of the seats at the counter and in typical Archie fashion almost slips and falls right off the other side when he does so. The waitress catches him as he almost eats shit, and he offers her a smile for her benefit. She whispers into the ear of a regular, an older gentleman, who chuckles and lifts his coffee mug an inch or so off the table.

His phone buzzes again, and he slides it out of his pocket. Not all the way, but just enough to see that there was an alert from Cara that Natalie had requested his location. He accepts without thinking, and Cara sends her his location. He freezes shortly after, realizing exactly what he had just done. Natalie wanted to see him, which was always great- but she had broken it off with him for lack of better terminology and that meant that if she was visiting there would be more talk about feelings and hnnnng. Archie hated talking about feelings. He had seen and read about moments like this in movies or books but now actually being in it he was realizing that seeing someone who made your chest feel funny would equal the intensity of having to shit your pants.

Archie realized he had been giving the counter top his full undivided attention. It's cherry red and clean as a whistle and oh look there is-

"Menu?"

The waitress offers him a wrinkled folder.

"Thank you," Archie say, "C-can I start with a milkshake- oreo, and fries?"

Her name tag says Madeline.

Maddie smiles knowingly, "And you didn't even have to look at the menu."

A few minutes pass, and she returns with his order. He’s feeling antsy now, and cant quite place why Natalie has this affect on him. One fry after another.

"So-"

Maddie says suddenly and leans in, towel in hand. She must’ve been cleaning something.

"I gave you cold fries," she said, breaking out a grin, "You didn't notice, though. Aha, I was waiting for you to cringe and spit it out. Let's be real, you and I, nothing is worse than cold fries."

It’s a welcome distraction, and the extrovert streak inside him flares up at the comment. Archie swallows the amount he had in his mouth, almost choking, "Uh, you know teenage boys? We're animals that'll eat plastic."

The waitress tilts her head back and laughs, genuine and full of mirth, and slides him a bucket of warm fries. “Sorry I messed with your order. Haven't seen you before, thought I’d test you out.” She said, giving him a wink and then moving onto the next customer. Archie shakes his head in amusement and thinks that he may just visit here more often.

He hears the door open and the little bell ring, and he turns to look without even thinking, and there she was. Natalie Ellis. From the way her baggy cardigan feel over her shoulders to the worn out converse were covered in scuffed sharpie drawings to the way her left leg bends slightly more than her right, she looked great. Just as good as she had looked on Homecoming night. He swallows, and pats the seat next to him. Encouraging her to join him at the counter.

“Hey Nat,” he says, feigning ease in his voice. “What’s up?”

---

There were two rules that the The Silent Court required its members to abide by. The first was to keep silent, and the second was to keep count.

To keep count of all the atrocities they had witnessed. Of all the people who had lost their lives and livelihoods to parahumans and had been intimidated by the CPC into silence.

Today they would scream without so much as raising their voices.

Today they would show the world that they could not be ignored.

One hour left.

Natalie Ellis

---

---

This is the place where Archie was, but the moment Nat walked in the door, it dawned on her that she had no idea what she'd say, and there were other people here, so it wasn't a place she could break down. She had to stay strong, and ironically that wasn't something she was good at. She started to walk over. Her body langue betrayed the fact that she was nervous. She kind of nervous an employee had knowing they were about to get yelled at by their boss. She decided she'd say something once she reached him, but the moment she started to say something, it all came out. Stuff she'd desperately wanted to share with someone all this time. Things she'd been wishing she could say to Archie. It all came out in a mess.

"Hay, Archie. I'm....I'm sorry. Taking a break was a mistake and I'm sorry if it hurt you. I don't think it even fixed anything or made anything better. I just didn't want to burden you. I didn't want you to see me as a total mess. A wreck of a person. I...I was scared. It's like every time I make a choice that makes me feel happy or normal, somebody gets hurt. It's like it was my fault. I know it's not, but just thinking about doing anything else after Homecoming just caused a wave of guilt and fear to wash over me....Can you accept my apology? And can we, like, I dunno. Carry on? Like, as boyfriend and girlfriend? I'd like that."

Lynn looked up from the half-eaten sandwich (it sat atop five chicken tenders, fries, some egg rolls, a cheeseburger, and chips and salsa, all piled monstrously onto a cafeteria tray that even the strength-augmented Lynn seemed to have to trade off hands every few moments to hold steadily) she was chewing on to examine Amelia. Truthfully, Lynn had forgotten her nickname for her. Amelia was a tricky one for Lynn to pin down, which irritated Lynn to some degree. Lynn that she had Amelia on lock from that day in the woods - she saw too much, got scared, and ran on home. Lynn was fine with that, because running on home meant she wasn't in Lynn's way for anything. Admittedly, Amelia kept trying to start up conversations with her, which Lynn didn't fully understand. Lynn eyed over her leather jacket and thought for a moment as she chewed. As equal parts hunger and power move, Lynn rarely responded to people as soon as they talked to her when she was eating. In her experience, it fucked with them a little bit when they had to wonder if cafeteria food was more immediately important than they were.

But then Amelia had gone and not been an absolute pussy the night with Arianna. Neither she nor Eli had. Eli she figured was a fifty-fifty chance. The sheltered ones always think they have to play the hero. But Lynn had Amelia pegged as the type who liked to play at scoundrel but ran home when things got a little too real. She'd stuck around for the real. Lynn wouldn't have faulted anyone for leaving the mutilated Radvi when they saw that. Even for Lynn, that was some rough shit to look at. It made you kind of a coward, but that was Lynn's baseline for anyone who hadn't been to prison. Amelia had even come out into the woods after her, which irritated Lynn, but she had to admit that was because she had been a little bitch that night, and the presence of others to serve as witnesses to her bitchery only cemented it. Had they left her alone, she would've kept Schrodinger's little bitch locked in the box and away from prying eyes. Lynn knew the minute any of them thought she needed a get off the streets program or an inspirational talk about how much she could be, they would never leave her alone.

So when Lynn looked up at Amelia, it was with a hint of curiosity. Was she growing some balls? Or did she just want to play a hero? And why did she keep talking to Lynn? Lynn couldn't figure that one out, either. She must've wanted her food. There's, like, literally infinite food over there, though.

"Love horse," Lynn muttered. "That's what I oughta call that hostess." she swallowed and rolled her neck, stretching idly. "Oh, you know. Just seeing the sights." Lynn baptized a fry in ketchup and chewed on it. "Maybe I figure when the next lizard rages out on day one they'll need me to kick his ass again." Lynn funneled more food into her mouth with no regard for table manners. "Or maybe," Lynn said, figuring she'd toy with Amelia - or, at least, get a feeling for what she was here for - "I want to see what kind of jewelry's all the rage on Earth now." she swallowed and slurped at the largest size cup the cafeteria offered, filling her stomach with Coke. "You know. Necklaces. Bracelets. That sort of thing. I hear the cops practically hand them out to paras these days."

Lynn picked up the burger, leaning comfortably against the wall. They had about an hour or so, Lynn figured. Waiting didn't bother her. She'd done a lot of nothing but waiting in juvy. Now, though, there seemed to be more...company...in her thoughts when she waited. She didn't like that. So if Amelia wanted to distract her for a minute, that was fine, but Lynn was still unsure of this girl's motives.

That jacket. Lynn looked back at her, curious. "That jacket," Lynn said, curious. "You..." she examined it for a minute. "That from like a motorcycle or something?" Those things could take a little punishment, tough leather, lots of pockets -

There was a click in Lynn's head, and she grinned.

Knight takes fucking pawn, Gennedy. She had an idea. As always, Keaton could workshop it. The jacket wouldn't matter if she got captured trying to slip into the docking bay, but still - still. Something there to tuck away for later.

"Where'd you get it? Is there a store for it here?"

Amelia

---

Amelia returned Lynn's look of curiosity with one of her own. Lynn's surface level persona had been simple to pin down. Unlike Amelia, she wasn't a trouble maker out of a desire to rebel against an unjust society. She was a troublemaker by necessity and by how she was raised. However, it was the details where Amelia has really having trouble in pinning her down. Lynn apparently had a very strange set of scruples that she held to for what Amelia had expected. Amelia had expected Lynn to not give a shit about the cop she now know was named Radvi, and yet she was first to try and stabilize him of anyone. On top of that, Amelia wasn't quite sure where exactly she stood with Lynn. Clearly she held some curiosity to Lynn, or she would have told her to fuck off much sooner then now.

Amelia cocked her head at Lynn's jewelry comment. Jewelry? Why would Lynn give a shit about what people were. "....Oh. Ooooh." Amelia's eyes flickered with understanding. "Jewelry. Right. Guess I am too then. Though I'm more interested in the people the generous and caring people of the Promise would want to give welcome presents of nice bracelets." Amelia's tone was so dripping with sarcasm one could swear they could hear it fall like raindrops to the ground. Amelia scoffed at her own comment and rolled her eyes at nothing in particular. "This whole thing is a fucking joke."

Amelia looked up at Lynn with a raised eyebrow at her next question.

"That jacket, you... that from like a motorcycle or something?"

Amelia gave a genuine smile back. "Yep. The good shit. It's lucky. Because I'm lucky to even still have it at all." Amelia looked it over a bit admiringly. "My parents are the fucking worst. And when they finally figured out I had no intention of dressing like a lady, you know, as if they had any right to control what I wear to begin with, they insisted if I wore a leather jacket it'd be some department store fashionable crap. I had already gotten my powers at this point, so that shit wasn't happening. When they tried stalking me through the store so I'd get something they approved of, I went to the bathroom, teleported to a store more my style, and bought this." She closed her eyes and leaned against the wall, looking proud. "Spent the rest of my money on something my parents liked but I had no intention of wearing, and smuggled the real one out. My first major success smuggling shit around."

She looked back over at Lynn. "I haven't seen them selling anything like this myself, but I wouldn't be surprised. Especially if they insist on pretending there are still seasons up here. Just don't expect anything with real leather. That shit's pricey." Amelia suddenly looked a little disappointing. "Fuck me. I just remembered getting sent up here cheated me out of a motorcycle. Dammit."

Amelia considered asking Lynn something in return, looking her over with curiosity again. In the end though, she decided against it. Lynn would probably not be very forthcoming with answers without some actual rapport between them. And Amelia....couldn't actually say one way or the other if she had. Better not to risk it.

---

D had arrived at the loading bay ahead of schedule. Thus so, he resolved to just wander around some before things started happening. It was gonna be an eventful first day for a lot of newly-enrolled parahumans, but sadly for them, none of it was gonna involve any of their faces getting kicked or any Archies hulking out or what have you, the exciting stuff. A shame - but also a necessary acceptance. D, for the first time in a long time, was gonna be on his best beha-

“Hey!”

D turned his head. Two security agents - a man and a woman - had approached him from behind, the man-one calling him out. D immediately lifted himself from his lax stance and stood upright. An admittedly weak attempt to pass off as nothing but a cold, unfeeling automaton.

Couple days ago, Trevor had given D some recorded responses in his own voice to work with, in case of an event such as this. Time to put them to use.

“Pre-recorded response, addressing security.”

“Yeah. Robot. Right.” The first agent said, “What are you doing here? Eggheads trying to get you to do guard work now?”

“Pre-recorded response, indicating this unit is acting solely within Promise security-established permissions.”

“Course you are.” The agent said as he stepped further towards D, very close now, “Whatever asshole in R&D is controlling you, let’s make sure they listen - you stay out of our business. No goofy-looking robots are getting in our way, you got that?”

“Pre-recorded response, recommending you to go fuck yourself.”

“The HELL did you just-”

D got right back in the agent’s face. He dropped the soulless automaton act for just a brief moment.

“Pre-recorded response, reminding present security personnel that if you damage this unit, which is protected under official orders, then Chief Gennedy will have you strung up by your nuts until they turn black and pop off like raisins - so back the fuck off.”

Prepared for all situations.

The guard took a cautionary step backwards, his girl buddy watching all the while. “Just…” He said, raising his finger under D’s chinny-chin-chin (that didn’t exist), “Don’t go doing anything stupid. You stand there, and you watch.”

They both stared each other down a moment as the agents proceeded to pass by D, turning their backs to him. The moment he felt assured that neither of them were gonna look back, he proceeded to vigorously wave goodbye, do a little dance, and top it off with a raising of his two favorite fingers - and a squat.

He stood back upright as the agents both walked away, oblivious to D’s mockery. He put his hands on his sides and turned to observe the loading bay’s grandeur.

Which, admittedly, there wasn’t that much of.

---

When Eli usually stood in front of her bookshelf, she was there to pick out a novel that would make her think. She wanted something with depth. With layers, like an onion. One whose interpretation was decided by the reader. She didn't like being told what to think of a book. When she found herself in front of the bookshelf yesterday, she still had the same ideals in mind, but she just wasn't feeling some super philosophical, deep thought novel. She wanted something light. A feel good novel, but not as flowers and sunshine as a children's book. Her fingers traced over the edges of her books. They slowed to a stop over a novel that caught her eye. It had been years since she picked it up, but she remembered it well. Gently pulling it from the shelf, Eli gave the cover of the novel a small smile. It was an oldie, but a goody.

Eli had just started reading the book a day or two ago, but she was already close to the end due to it's meager length of 265 pages. She was right at the point where the great-great-great grandson and great-great grandson of different families had just broken a decades long curse by climbing a mountain. Before she could read about their journey back to their home-away-from-home, she felt her phone buzz against her leg.

Well, that was quick.

Hey, when are you headed to the loading bay?

The loading bay. The welcoming ceremony. Eli had almost forgotten. She wasn't surprised that Keaton, of all people, would be the one to go. Now it was up to Eli to decide whether or not it was a good idea to join her. The loading bay would be crawling with disgruntled security officers. Even more grumpy than usual because of Radvi's accident. Would she really want to be around them right now? On the other hand, it would be good of her to see Keaton after a week of doing her own thing.

I planned to read today, but I guess I should show my support for the newbies. I'll come along.

Well I’m headed over now, I’ll see you there?

Eli set her phone down on top of her novel. She glanced out of the window, anxiously tapping the fabric of the couch. "Were you at the last boarding day?" She asked Radvi, even though she knew there wouldn't be an answer.

---

The walk to the loading bay was a bit of a long one, but Eli didn't mind. The brisk air felt nice against the skin on her face. The rest of her body was covered, except for her hands, but she stuck them inside of her jacket pockets. She simply wore a pair of boots, leggings, a thick sweater, and her black bomber. Her hair was back to it's normal state of waves. At this point, she'd returned to her normal hair care routine. Especially since she had to do something with herself while she acted like a hermit. Laying in bed all day was tempting, to be truthful. Was it healthy? No.

I'm going to grab a quick snack from the cafeteria. See you in a minute!

Eli slipped into the building, going straight for the little snack bar while ignoring any staff member. Other students were grabbing food already. It was almost a tradition to take advantage of the free snacks at the welcoming ceremony. She grabbed two bags of chips and two water bottles. Keaton would certainly want something, so why not grab enough for the both of them? She was already tearing the first bag of chips apart when she stepped out onto the loading bay. As she chomped on a few chips, she opened up one of the bottles and swallowed them down with a gulp of water. It had been a few hours since breakfast, so Eli welcomed the chance to eat a bit and hydrate. Upon seeing Keaton on the loading dock, she waved the unopened bag of chips in the air as she walked towards her.

"Hey. Enjoying the cold?" She held out the bag of chips in Keaton's direction, her eyes glancing over the other students that gathered. "I grabbed you something while I was in there. The food they've made actually doesn't smell that bad, but if you don't want to stay for the lunch we can go somewhere else."

It was then that Eli's eyes landed on an odd sight. At first she noticed a leather jacket and black hair, which didn't exactly stand out at first, but when she saw hair that resembled fire and a small girl at the base of the flame, Eli knew exactly who she was looking at. "Oh, Lynn and Amelia are here too." She gave Keaton a quizzical look. "Why do you think they're here? I thought they'd skip out on something like this." She hadn't exactly thought about walking over to ask them, but she figured Keaton would be the one to lead them over there.

Lynn looked up at Amelia as she spoke, her eyes doing their usual routine of comparing the girl against herself. As per usual, Lynn came up short. Though Amelia was maybe four inches taller at most, she had a good twenty pounds on Lynn. Lynn tried to puzzle a birth year or something of significance from her as she spoke. She can't be much older than me, Lynn thought. Christ. As she glanced around, it was clear that passers-by thought similarly. They looked at Amelia differently, like she was a teenager, and the looks at Lynn were more mixed. Some looked at her height, or the skeleton arms that extended from the six-times-over rolled up sleeves of her hoodie, and some at her tattoos. I gotta start rolling with some blind motherfuckers or something.

Lynn smirked at Amelia's comment. Well, at least she got it. Getting it was a hard concept to explain. Lynn wasn't entirely sure that Amelia Got It, but she Got It more than Nat, or him, or most. For a moment, unbidden, the drunk-hazed over memory of Watch Boy blurred into her mind. He Got It, Lynn thought. She hadn't really tried to sift through the foggy recollections of that night very much, but as she did, she remembered distinctly thinking there was something about him. Yeah, he walked like he just got out of boot camp. Lynn filed it away for later. He might be something worth looking into. Or, if nothing else, that watch was worth a few days' work at Vaquero. Lynn listened to Amelia's words with great interest, though she continued to eat and rarely looked back up at her once she started talking. It's a joke. But I wanna know what you think the punch line is.

Lynn's attempt at getting a firmer grasp on just who the girl who could teleport anywhere and stayed on the Promise was snapped as soon as she started talking about the jacket. In her algebra class, Lynn felt firmly like someone had picked her up and dropped her into Russia. Lynn's academic career was, in a word, abysmal, and each class the Promise threw at her seemed like some kind of cruel joke. They were talking about all kinds of academic sanctions and other things, or even putting her back a few grades, just because she missed a few (read: all) of her assigned tutoring sessions. The only classes she eked out a respectable performance in were her power training classes and in Spanish, where the teacher at least acknowledged she had a very functional, if crude, grasp of the language. In power training, Lynn was reminded of some of the boxing gyms near where she lived. Those were one of the few ways to Get Out, to find something in your life that had some semblance of discipline and order and meaning. Lynn had always wanted to join. Che wouldn't allow it.

But none of her classes hit Lynn with that feeling of utter helplessness and complete, dizzying confusion as what Amelia was talking about.

There was not a single part of what she said that Lynn could grab onto to understand. Having parents that took you shopping. Their being the worst. Clothes fancier than department stores. Their watching closely enough to force your fashion. Someone shaping you into a lady, which was some ethereal idea Lynn had given up on attaining around the age of ten. Having the money to buy something like that casually - and younger than they already were.

Lynn had thought going up to the Promise was going to be something that was utterly unnerving, the sort of shattering change that upended everything. But it was just a nicer-looking detention center with a better view. The last thirty seconds jarred her more than the rocket trip, than the meetings spent handcuffed to a table talking about the Promise's rehabilitation rates, than all of it.

Lynn wondered what Amelia's parents looked like. Her mom was easy, just - her, but older, more wrinkled, maybe, probably saggy the way old people got. Her father was middling height, his face an unformed blur, the space beyond the edges of the map. Lynn could understand someone's parents being the worst - she'd seen a fair few like that, and to the extent Gary had been a parent, he'd certainly been a strong contender for the worst as well (Again, the thought of him catching justice in prison brought an unconscious smile to Lynn's lips, the mental image of him throwing up a worthless, burned hand to stop an ass-beating the only pleasant vision of violence Lynn's imagination liked to conjure up). But how could parents that took you shopping for clothes be the worst? Lynn had parents, for a bit, the way crutches give you a leg again when you've broken it through and through. Lucy - her family. That had been good. But then Lynn had burned their house down, and the fuzzy haze of what Amelia talked about, of what Amelia had, had burned with it. They'd never said that was why. They'd waited a few months. But the conversation had come with the coded words they always used. Financial limitations and better situation for everyone and you'll always be welcome here. Lynn was angry at Amelia's story, but not sure who to direct it at, which made her angrier.

Lynn stared back at Amelia. Does she have a reason? Is it just being a brat? Lynn's hunch that she hadn't ever seen anything in the way of real shit seemed backed up so far - although in fairness to the girl, Lynn thought that of most people. Maybe she had now. She'd seen a man get his head blown halfway to hell and not lost her shit. She'd stayed in the woods, when Lynn had bet fully on her running.

Lynn swallowed the chunk of her cheeseburger she'd been chewing on for a good minute. "Huh," she said, still trying to process all the nuances and implications of Amelia's story. The last, least important part of the story that baffled Lynn was why Amelia didn't just steal both jackets. That seemed like such a plain and obvious solution to her. She could teleport. The fuck? Had Lynn been given a private moment to jot down her thoughts in her notebook, she would carved out a column on the page littered with lyrics and idle charcoal sketches to label Amelia firmly under the "NO FUCKING IDEA" category of humans.

And last but not least, whatever Amelia thought was pricey was certainly going to be beyond the pale for Lynn. Looks like I'm stealing a jacket, she thought. I could probably turn out Fish and make a few bucks, though. "It's a cool jacket," Lynn said, her tone more or less neutral. When Lynn was busy thinking, she liked to throw out anything non-committal. If they knew what was going on, they had something over you, and she didn't want Amelia knowing how little she understood her. Lynn briefly considered saying something incredibly jarring, to try and see how the girl would take it, but she was too shaken herself to pull that off.

She looked up and saw Keaton and Eli across the way. A quick flash of not jealousy, because Lynn didn't care, but something - flashed through her gut. Well how come they're hanging out and didn't ask me? Lynn wondered. That would complicate things. She needed to tell Keaton about her suspicions about the docking bay. Lynn would not ever have admitted it to herself, but she was practically giddy to tell the girl something she'd puzzled out on her own. I'm not dumb, Lynn thought. No one gives a fuck about algebra or stupid British novels or biology anyway. "Do we get to haze the new fish at all? Maybe that break dancing bastard will come kick somebody again."