It was warm, for a change. But I guess that's what you got by being out in the middle of New Mexico. Only around fifty degrees, but after the below-freezing temperatures in D.C., fifty seemed almost tropical.

And we kind of needed the nice weather. New Eden was a lot of things, but finished certainly wasn't one of them. More emphasis had been placed on the walls and gates surrounding the city than the buildings inside of it, and functioning heating was in short supply, which made the cold desert nights almost unbearable. Fortunately blankets and warm clothes were around, but I had my reservations about how we'd make it through the summer if they had the same issues getting ACs installed.

The hardest part was that, in general, existence was exactly that...just existing. We didn't have jobs or roles or duties...plenty of laws and rules, but food was given out, an allowance allotted for buying anything non-essential, and we were allowed to keep our old possessions and money, of course...part of the XPCA's promise that this wasn't just an internment camp.

But we were here, we weren't allowed to leave, and there wasn't anything for us to do. I had more insider insight than most, being good personal friends with some of the P-Force, and I knew what a rushed mess putting this place together was, but for them to overlook such an essential thing as boredom, it was asking for trouble.

But not from me, or from most. A little boredom, I could endure, if it meant giving up the fear I'd lived with every day before. Fear of an XPCA kill squad showing up on my porch, of angry strangers who knew me only as Exhuman, and only as something horrible to destroy. But worst of all, fear of myself, of what I could do, of how many hundreds might die and how many city blocks would be destroyed if I got, heaven forbid, hit by a car or something.

So I, like many, agreed with New Eden. Keep us quarantined. Keep people safe from us. We'd find ways to conquer boredom.

I was still new here, one of the last arrivals, and was still adjusting. Strong communities were already being forged, everyone was in the same kind of boat, everyone had the same background, felt the same fear and relief of being here, and everyone generally had their best foot forward to try to make this all work. I told Jack as much one night when he video called me to see how I was doing.

"Nobody's abusing their powers or anything?"

"I think you'd hear about that before I told you," I laughed.

"As though the XPCA would tell me anything," he smiled. I saw his eyes glitter at me in the light of the holo. I knew with his eyes closed, he could see things better around him, but something like a holo wouldn't be visible unless they were open. For this reason, I actually kind of liked being remote with him...I saw a lot more of his eyes this way.

"Well, I see people using their powers more openly here than ever...well...I guess that's a lie. I've never seen other Exhumans before, except you guys, and you all certainly weren't shy about using your powers."

"It is our job."

"Oh, it wasn't an insult or anything."

Jack smiled reassuringly. "I understand. Please continue."

"It's just the first place in the world where everyone can be an Exhuman. Like, either you are wearing an XPCA uniform, or you're an Exhuman, or what are you doing here, y'know? Visiting someone, I guess."

"Yes," Jack said, and scratched his chin thoughtfully. I realized that while he was still smiling, this was the equivalent of a frown on him. "I apologize for not coming out to see you still. We had...well, there was an event."

"Is everyone okay?"

"Things got tense, but not dangerous. I'll tell you more later, don't let me keep interrupting you."

I laughed. "Jack, this is a conversation. Those have two people in them. If you have something to say, you should say it."

He smiled again. "But I'd much rather hear about you." Ever the sweetheart. He'd told me he was married before with kids, and lost them all when he became Exhuman. Such an unfair way to lose a life. But as sad as that was, in a way...deep down, as much as I hurt for him and the life he never had, I had to admit, if something so horrible had never happened to him, I would never have met him, so I couldn't be entirely disappointed.

So basically, I was a terrible person. Terrible Exhuman, anyway.

"Well since people don't have to hide their powers, you see them get used sometimes. I imagine for everyday life, some powers just aren't useful, but some...like yours, I suppose, the Exhuman with them just finds life a lot easier with it than without."

I leaned back in my wheelchair and stretched my back. "The other day, I saw a group playing a game of basketball in the street, and the ball got stuck on a roof. One of them just sorta leaned to one side, and the ball fell sideways off the roof. They were talking about starting to play with using their powers, but I don't think every power would apply or help..."

"And some are just stronger or weaker than others," Jack nodded.

"Not like mine would help me at all. Unless we wanted to make the ball explode if it got passed to me," I said. I saw Jack's eyes glitter as he peeked to see if I was looking unhappy with my self-disparaging, and I gave him a cheeky smile. "I'm fine, Jack, really."

"You're getting around okay?"

"There's nowhere to get around to. I can just sit in my house all day if I wanted. I don't even need to go to the distribution center, as a disabled, I get home delivery."

"But you--"

"Yes, Jack, I am getting out every day. I can take care of myself. I still ran the florist's after losing my legs, I can certainly manage to live in a city where I don't have to do anything."

"My apologies again…"

He was sweet, but he also worried a lot. I suppose given how he'd already lost one family, and how we met, and how he blamed himself and his team for crippling me, he had some grounds for being overly concerned, but I had a couple problems with that.

One...if he couldn't see me as anything but a victim, we'd never go anywhere. And by we, I meant him and me, in a relationship. I knew he liked me, his guilt over what happened to me could only explain so much, but he'd still never made a move. Out of deference to his complicated family situation, I wasn't going to either, but jeez, guy! I was sending all the signs! It's hard to be seductive in a wheelchair, but come on!

And two...I wasn't some princess who'd get captured every weekend. I didn't have a history of kidnapping and injury, as far as I was concerned, it was just the one time. So it was nice of Jack to worry about my safety, but honestly, as an Exhuman, even one with kind of a crap power that blew up in my face more than it helped--literally--I was still probably one of the harder people in the world to kidnap.

Or...so I saw it. It was a few hours later when I finally hung up with Jack, making sure he was peeking at me before I blew him a kiss (sending all the signs still, guy!) and then shutting down my holo. I stretched again and saw it was dark already, but there were lights marching past my window. I was on the ground floor, of course.

New arrivals. Seemed they came in twos and threes every week or so, got paraded through the street by the XPCA administration on the way to their new homes, and the admins needed bodyguards because they were paranoid idiots, so there was a whole freaking parade of soldiers and Exosuits every time a few new people moved in.

Not that we really minded. It was pretty boring here, after all.

I rolled over to the window and pushed the blinds aside to watch. Line after line of XPCA marched past in formation, ready to fight off the nonexistent hostiles to protect the administrators, like that would ever happen...or like that would do anything if there were a few truly angry Exhumans.

There in the center, a little open-air cargo cart driving slowly in the midst of the procession, black of course, because the XPCA loved black. And sitting on it was a couple officials and a couple others, the new Exhumans. A girl with straw-colored hair with her back to me, and a young man in a button-up shirt sitting facing me. He looked familiar, but I could only catch glimpses of him through the parade.

I watched his face as they slowly progressed, and when he was even with my window, the line of soldiers and his car lined up perfectly so I could see him clearly, and in that moment, I was certain, he looked up right into my window, right into my eyes and saw me too, and my heart froze.

I pulled my head out of the window and dropped the blinds with a clatter. I felt tears building painfully behind my eyes.

It couldn't be. But I would never forget that face, and the small smile which was on his wasn't there a moment ago. It was impossible. Had he come for me? Had he gone so far as to get himself arrested, just to sneak into New Eden, just for me?

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

I lurched for the holo on the table, forgetting and almost falling out of my wheelchair. My hands shook as I grabbed the wheels, and my blue hair was sitting in my eyes, damp with sweat. I had to call Jack back. He'd alluded to an event but we never came back to it. Was this it? Was it him?

Jack's line didn't ring. He'd turned his holo off after our call...I hoped he was just going to the bathroom or eating or something after several hours on call with me. I left him a message, typing frantically one-handed while I made sure the door was locked and turned off the lights.

Jack never called me back that night, or the next. When he finally talked to me on the third day, I was almost convinced that somehow that Exhuman had gotten him instead. He was just on a routine op, flying out to fight some Exhuman on the Mexican border who could create and control ink, and it had taken two days to finally track him down.

He apologized, but confirmed that Soran, his name was, had been brought in. Special precautions were being taken, they put surveillance and some special precautions on him or something to keep him 'good', but...yeah. He was here.

He talked about the capture at length and everything he saw and suspected, and sent a message to my mobile.

"One of Chariot's friends made that while we were working on the squid," he said.

"The squid?"

"My apologies. The girl with the ink powers in Mexico. She was...aggravating, and deserved a disparaging nickname."

"Sorry."

"It's my job. Anyway, the app I just sent you, it is...not entirely legal, so do not distribute it or inform others of its presence."

I pulled up the app, my interest now fully piqued. It showed...not much. A green dot and a bunch of blue dots. Nothing happened if I tapped them.

He continued. "The drones surveilling on Soran, this app tracks them, and they track him. You should be able to know where he is in a general sense by those drones. If they're blue, they have sight of him. If they are red...otherwise. I imagine it is little comfort to you, but if you worry about him, you may console yourself by pulling up the app, and if there are blue dots, you know both where he is, and that he is being monitored."

"No, that's a huge comfort, thank you."

"And...should they all be red...you have my number."

"Yeah, unless you're on an op." His smile fell. "I'm sorry, that was mean."

"No, there is no point in my promises to protect you if they are meaningless," he sighed.

"It's fine, I have this," I said and waved the mobile at him. "Thank you, really."

We talked for a while longer, but ultimately, as ever, we had to hang up and I fell further back into my chair, exhausted. It felt like it was finally over, after these three days of not knowing whether he'd break into my house at any second. At least, now I had something. I had confirmation, I had the app, and I had Jack telling me it would be okay.

After compulsively checking my mobile every few minutes for the next few days, I finally gave up and had the dots displayed on the desktop holo on my table. I figured, if someone asked what they were, I could say it was an abstract clock or art or something. But as more and more days slipped by, and the lights remained ever-blue, and ever-distant from the green dot which was me, I was able to calm down. I could sleep again, I could leave the house, though with my mobile sitting in my lap. Things returned to their original weird level of normalcy.

More and more days passed, until a whole month I'd lived in New Eden.

And in that month, things had changed. Exhuman power use became the norm, not a spectacle. It felt like everyone was flaunting their powers whenever able, even I felt a compulsion to go out and use them, though I had no idea how that would work or help anyone.

Soran's blue lights had never turned red, but that was the only good news about the place. I'd lost the easy nights of sleep I once had, and felt angry and restless almost constantly. And weirdest, and worst, it had nothing to do with Soran. It was just...an affliction. And it wasn't just me, everyone seemed on-edge. Every Exhuman anyway, the XPCA we saw all seemed fine, same jerkasses as ever.

The rumors were as baseless as they were constant. The XPCA only brought together Exhumans so they could kill those of us who had successfully hidden in society. They wanted us so they could do experiments to tell human from Exhuman. The irritability was a disease they'd created which could only spread to Exhumans. And so on.

There were rumors that there was an Exhuman resistance forming to overthrow the New Haven administrators, and depose the corrupt leader, one Captain Targa.

More rumors that Exhumans had gone missing, snatched by the XPCA, either for their experiments, or because those Exhumans had gotten a little too close to resisting.

I was sick of it. I was sick of feeling crappy and useless and powerless. Another phone call I had with Jack ended with me throwing the holo off the table. All he had was basic information and empty reassurances. He didn't know, and I knew I was being unreasonable in demanding information from him, but fuck it, if he couldn't tell me, what use was he to me?

I felt awful for thinking things like that, I felt awful as I looked over the broken mess of my home computer, I felt awful and out of control and angry all the time. I just wanted to live normally, I just wanted to feel normal, why couldn't Jack just give me that. Why couldn't the world? Was that so freaking much to ask?

I went for a 'walk', more angry than I should have been at the normal everyday annoyances of having to turn my chair around to lock my door, and the small bump at the edge of the curb. Why did we even have curbs? The only roads here were used by the XPCA. Couldn't they just drive better, and then I wouldn't have to struggle to get my chair up and down the stupid little lip?

As I struggled minutely over it, some jackass came up behind me and made a big deal about me being in the way.

"Well excuse me for not having legs, assclown!" I yelled at his back.

"Yeah, excuse you, ya dumb bitch!" he yelled back, turning to me only long enough to sneer and throw a gesture at me which I returned.

The place really had gone to shit. A couple times, people had attacked the guards and the P-Force had to show up and talk everyone down. All the stupid men lining up for a powers dick-measuring contest and posturing with a billion XPCA soldiers behind them. It was getting harder and harder to enforce the rules, and signs of it were showing up everywhere.

Thankfully, my neighborhood had been mostly spared, being right on one of the main streets, but other districts had become the de-facto red-light district, or run by one of the gangs springing up, or even an underground fighting ring.

The problem was, there wasn't any money worth anything. People had nothing to offer but themselves and their powers. This didn't stop idiots from starting shit like that, but once you made a gang of Exhumans in some back alley slum, now what? Nobody had anything to steal. The only motivation people had was to be dicks to others so they could feel better about themselves. Or fight others. Or fuck others. It was all the same thing, just frustrated people looking for any kind of release.

But this had its own share of problems, besides the obvious that gangs and fighting and prostitution were bad. Because some powers were just better or more usable than others. Some guys would just win all the fights, and then...I guess they were the best, and I hope they were happy with that. What's a fighter to do then? Well, go wander into the gang turf and hope they mistake you for someone weak so you can kick their asses too? Or pick a scrap with the XPCA?

Or worse, with me?

Chariot's sister had the great idea after all this started that in order to get people to leave me alone, she just had to spread a rumor around that I was some kind of...all-powerful Exhuman. The blue-haired wheelchair girl, don't fuck with her. And so far, it'd worked great. But lately, the cracks were starting to show. I saw the muscle-headed idiots watching me, wondering what I could do, thinking they could take me. It wouldn't be long before one of them tried, and then what?

I kept rolling, trying to keep thinking to myself to keep the edge off, when I ran into someone who stepped right in front of me.

"Watch it, dumbass," I said, rolling back to look up at him.

He was a wall of meat. Pecs on pecs on pecs. So broad he'd have to leave half his muscles behind if he wanted to sit in my chair. He sneered at me in a way which immediately confirmed my initial impression of how smart he wasn't.

"Watch it means move," I explained, and wheeled forward towards him again.

"So you're the one, huh?" he asked. His voice was as low as his IQ and as pleasant as a fresh bird shit.

"Yep, that's me. So fuck off," I said. I hit him with my chair again, but he didn't move. I began to wonder if he knew how to.

"You. Me. The ring."

"This is the worst way to propose I've ever heard of."

"No, stupid, the fighting ring. I challenge you."

I sighed looking at the sheer amount of his shirtless physique, which he seemed to be flexing at all times, probably to reduce the risk of any blood accidentally reaching his brain.

"Why would I do a stupid thing like that?" I asked.

"If you beat me, you'll be the best."

"I'm already the best. Fuck off."

He shook his head. "Not anymore. I'm the best."

I let out an enormously annoyed sigh and turned to go, but my chair was stuck. I looked down, and from the ground saw skeletal hands emerging from the pavement like it was water, holding me there, not even slightly budging as I jerked against them.

"Let me go," I said, refusing to face him, even as my heart began to race. In fear? Or in excitement? I...I...wasn't exactly sure.

"Make me."

I should hate this, but like so many other things in my brain recently, what I thought, what I wanted, what was reasonable didn't seem to matter. I was just angry and impotent and tired of it.

So I worked very hard to keep my voice and breathing even when I asked him, "What the hell do you want from me?"

"Fight me."

"Here?"

"No, in the ring below the city."

I closed my eyes and tried to remember Jack. Tried to remember just a few weeks ago, when I still felt like me. When I was scared because I didn't want to die, instead of just...I didn't even know. Jack had told me that people were probably angry because they'd been afraid so long and after a while, you just get tired of being afraid. You get used to it, It turns to anger.

I disagreed. I hadn't been afraid in a long time now, but I was the angriest I'd ever been. I just wanted to snap this stupid guy's fingers off and make him let go of my stupid chair, so I could finish my stupid crippled excuse for a walk, so I could calm down, so I could stop being so mad at the stupid guy I liked who still wouldn't ask me out.

Why did he have to be like this? Why the hell was he just here, just deciding to make my life a little shittier for no reason? It pissed me off all over again, and without thinking or reason or anything other than wanting to introduce my fist to his face, I turned over my shoulder and glared at him.

"Fuck you. When do we do this?" I asked.