I made it through the next few hours in a haze, trying to focus on my work and put aside all the complicated thoughts I had of parents and girlfriends and sisters and myself.

Like Moon, maybe. Just bottle up everything even resembling an emotion, and lock it away forever where I never had to deal with it. Seemed like a much easier plan than the alternative.

Except for the part where I sucked at that, but whatever. Whitney was way more understanding than I deserved, and pretended not to notice whenever I took a minute to stop and breathe and clear my head.

I'd just finished packing another box and was feeling a sense of minor accomplishment, which cut through my emotions more effectively than I'd thought possible, when my mobile rang. I checked the caller and found Jack of all people was dialing me.

He didn't know where I was. As long as I didn't let anything slip, I should be fine. Plus I really wanted to hear a friendly voice. Jack wasn't my top pick, but I'd take anything.

I put myself in a back corner where I could see Whitney if she came in and answered.

"Hello Chariot, happy Valentine's day," Jack said.

"Hi Jack, same to you. How can I help you?"

"I wanted to...hmm...how best to put this. I wanted to insist you cease this madness. Your path leads only to ruin."

"Gee, thanks, don't smother me in small talk or anything," I said, about ready to hang up. "Are you just another mouthpiece for Colonel Micaiah now?"

"You misunderstand. While your decision to run is troublesome, I sympathize, probably more than most. Unlike the others, I did not go quietly into Blackett's service," he said, with a hint of bemusement. "But no, I speak of your involvement in the case of the Defiant. Your sister and body-modder friend have been covertly reaching out to your allies, and I was informed of your situation."

"Those two are irrepressible," I sighed. It did feel good to be loved though.

"Indeed. However, if what they say is true, you are on a collision course with Dragon, and I must warn you off of this path. Dragon is not an entity you can defeat, Chariot. Stay far away from him if you wish to continue living."

"That's why you're calling? Jack, Dragon is the entire reason…" I stopped. Almost said too much there. "...I'm in this mess. I'd welcome a chance to put him down and fix all of this."

"And instead, he will put you down. I repeat myself to leave no ambiguity -- Dragon is your superior in strength. You will not best him, and doing so will lead to death."

"How do you know that? He's never fought me before."

"The arrogance of that aside, I have fought both of you. I can say with certainty."

"You fought him?"

"I tried to ambush him. Even with my powers and the element of surprise, I stood no chance. Do not engage Dragon, Chariot."

"Wait, how's that even possible? You can just...jump on someone. How the fuck could he live through that?"

"I've long speculated, but never been satisfied. I suspect nobody could tell me but the man himself, and I doubt very much he would waste his time telling."

"And you fought him? When? Why?"

Jack went silent for a few seconds. "I do not care to divulge. It is a dark time in my past."

"That's it? You had a dark time and you went toe-to-toe with a Sino assassin?"

He sighed. "If I tell you, will you abandon this pursuit?"

"I can't. He's gonna end the freaking world by harrying the Defiant, Jack. Even if he kills me, if I do nothing, we're probably all gonna get caught up in it anyway. So it's one assassin now, or twenty Exhumans later."

Again, he chewed on his thoughts. "Chariot, I know you may not believe me in this, but I think you may have better odds against the twenty."

"You're serious?"

"I am. Especially if Dragon is already softening them up for you. But there is the troubling possibility that, should they begin an Exhuman event, he would operate to facilitate it and maximize its damage...pitting you against twenty-one, and the most unwinnable scenario by far."

"Then I have to try to stop him."

"Then you are a dead man walking, Chariot. I don't know how else to emphasize this to you. Please reconsider."

"I don't know what I'm supposed to do with this," I said, my voice rising. "I can't just do nothing, or we'll die that way. All I have from your intel is that I'm screwed, pretty much."

"Yes, I understand the problem. I don't have a clear solution for you, unfortunately. But perhaps if we ride out the event for a time, we will earn our opportunity to strike back. The few of us can win a war of attrition against the many of them. But not if we throw ourselves away before the battle begins. All I know is that to face him is to face death, and pointlessly."

"Well, thanks, Jack. Just great to hear. We'll just let the country burn until we build up the stones to do something about it."

"Acting with intelligence is not cowardice--"

I hung up on him. Just fucking great. Just fucking useless. Like I didn't already know the whole situation was utterly fucked, now I get the unsurprising news that a professional killer is probably better at it than I am.

And I'd probably said way too much. If the XPCA were listening, they were pretty fucking sure I was wherever the Defiant were, or wherever Dragon was, and I was confident they had tabs on both of them. I had half a mind to leave right now, find Rito, and get the fuck out of here.

That's what Jack would have wanted me to do. Bail and find another time. Maybe that was even the smart thing to do.

But fuck it, I'd spent all this time positioning myself here. I couldn't just go without trying.

I went to the front of the store where Whitney was sitting on the floor seemingly unpacking one of my boxes, or at least taking out and playing with everything in it.

"I was going to put it back," she said guiltily as she saw me.

"Do you have a burner mobile I can use?" I asked her.

"I do. But why?" she asked, her impartial gaze boring into me.

"Trying to avert the end of the world. Seriously."

"I see that you're serious. But that doesn't mean you can't be wrong. Sometimes the end of the world just feels that way. Sometimes you run into your problems by trying to avert them."

"Great advice, but not really applicable here. Can I please borrow one?"

She rose and made her way to the back, her eyes lingering on mine as she passed me. A minute later, she came back with some kind of amalgamated mess of parts that in no way resembled a mobile. More like a pancake of boards, all mounted on a cubic lattice of wire.

"She's the best I have on short notice Her name's Enforcer, she's even more untraceable than your Seraphim, probably." She didn't hand it over. "I'm an open person, Athan. So I have no problem telling you I'm torn."

"About what?"

"It's obvious you have a lot going on in your life, and I try not to pry. You ran away from home, you hate your parents, you have issues with your girlfriend whom you left behind...I pick up hints here and there and I start to see a picture. And I think, in general, you're a decent guy who's smart and trustworthy enough to run amok in my shop, obviously."

She hefted the metal machine pancake and gestured it at me.

"But this is too much. Your Seraphim wouldn't be out of place as military hardware, or in the hands of an assassin or arms dealer or black market something. You talk about saving the world or dooming it, and I know it's just a high schooler whose entire world feels like it's on the edge...but watching you tells me something else. It's unnerving. I don't even know what it is, but you don't act like a kid, and so it's hard for me to attribute your actions as one."

She tapped her frames thoughtfully. "And if that's so, then you're serious about all of this, and then I have to wonder, just who the hell are you?"

She finished talking and the two of us fell into silence. Why'd she have to be so fucking observant? Of all the people I could be hiding behind, I had to wind up with one who saw right through me.

I could try to downplay it, tell her I am just a kid. Or I could tell her the truth.

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Or I could just take her monster of a mobile and do what had to be done, and avoid this entire conversation. Even if she was a couple inches taller than me, I still had a lot of weight on her. But I didn't want that, obviously.

I sighed. Sometimes, I thought, life would be so much easier if I were just one of those Exhumans.

"If it's personal," she said, seemingly unable to take the silence any more "just tell me and I'll back off. But if it's something more...I think I should know what I'm getting caught up in. Doesn't that seem fair?"

"Life isn't fair," I scoffed.

"Oh, I am well aware of that. But here between friends or...associates...or whatever we are, it can be."

"All right," I said, and let out a deep breath. "I'm former XPCA."

"At your age?"

"Yes. But let me finish. I was doing my job, stopping bad guys, XPCA stuff. And then one day, there's an Exhuman we don't want dead, because he's part of a group called the Defiant Unchained, and if any of them wind up dead, they threatened to destroy us."

"And he wound up dead, didn't he?"

"Yeah. And the blame wound up on me somehow, even though there's this assassin creeping around who obviously did it. Or...suspicion of blame. Whatever it was, I ran. Couldn't use my mobile for anything, couldn't spend any of my credits, and wound up here."

"And now you need to call who, and why?"

"I need to call the Defiant to tell them about the assassin, and hopefully keep them from going apeshit if or when he strikes again."

"And they'd be listening to your calls even if your position is encrypted. I see." She mused for a second. "Your story has more holes in it than a breadboard. And you still haven't told me why you're some super agent at, what are you, seventeen?"

"Nineteen," I said, feeling vaguely offended. "And you're right. I left out a lot of...details. But you wanted to know, and that's the story."

"Well...if what you say is true, I lose nothing by letting you make a call," she said, and put her headphones on. She spent a minute fiddling with the pancake mobile before she put the headphones on me, working uncomfortably close to my face with eyes that didn't seem to blink enough as she cinched them into the right position.

"Use this holo here," she said, muted through the headphones. "I don't really believe you, but in the off chance I'm wrong, good luck with the world, I guess?"

And then she went back to her box of parts, staying within earshot because why not.

I looked up the number on my mobile and put it into the pancake. After a couple of rings, I heard someone pick up but nobody spoke. Heavy mouth breathing, though, which felt uncomfortably trapped in these headphones.

"Hello?" I asked.

"Hhhhhhhi," it said breathily.

"Uh. Who is this?"

"Glenn."

Glenn. Glenn. I knew a Glenn. Then the number I dialed and the name clicked. Their younger kid. He was like, four? Or two? Something like that. Old enough to answer the phone I guess.

"Hey there buddy, is your sister around?"

"Okay," he said. Silence followed.

"...uh. Glenn, buddy?" No response.

I just had to assume the kid was doing what I'd asked. A minute later I heard muted words of the kid carrying the mobile, and the high-pitched irritated responses of a girl.

"Well, who is it?" she asked.

"'Unno."

"So ask him? God, Glenn, you're such a pain in the ass."

"Gonna tell Mom you said a swear."

"If you so much as open your mouth to Trish, I will punt your stupid toy bear into the moon."

"Mom said you're not suppos't a threaten Bernie."

"Just give me the mobile and go away." There was rustling as the exchange was inexpertly handled. "Hello?" she asked, her voice suddenly sickly-sweet. "Might I inquire who is calling?"

"Hi. It's Athan. We met once or twice?"

"Oh," she said, the sugar all gone from her voice instantly. "What do you want? If you're calling to apologize, I'd rather eat a rusty nail than forgive you, so just hang up now."

Pleasant kid. Trish and Gil really hit the jackpot in this one.

"Listen...girl," I said, realizing I still didn't remember her name. "I need the number for someone in the Defiant. It's a matter of national security."

She scoffed. "Oh, like I'm supposed to do you favors now? You like, murdered my rep. Why would I do anything for you?"

"Because you'll fucking die if you don't. You, your brother, your parents--"

"They're not my parents."

"Whatever the fuck they are or aren't to you, they'll be dead."

I hadn't really gone into this call with much of a strategy, but...uh...whatever her name was, her arrogant selfish attitude and uncooperation pushed us right into making threats. I sucked at lying, and I sure wasn't going to try to appeal to her sense of decency or principles, it sounded like she was born without those.

So she was gonna hear how badly she was going to suffer and die if she didn't give me some numbers. Maybe this wasn't actually a strategy so much as a reaction.

"I don't even care. Trish and Gil are little bitches anyway," she said, with more haught than anyone ought to have. "Always telling me what to do and stopping me from having fun. It's straight BS."

"Wow, you're a shitty person," I said. "I thought you were conceited and stupid, but as it turns out, you've nailed the trifecta, and you're just a crap person on top of it all. Do you have any friends?"

"Uh, yeah?"

I waited for more details. None were forthcoming. "Um, lots of them, duh."

"Nice. Very convincing."

"It's not my fault, okay? I've got little whores like you and Glenn running around making me look bad, like you're trying to ruin my life. I've also got this condition, called being an Exhuman if you didn't notice. Straight BS, so unfair."

"Yeah, I've got a similar affliction," I said, glancing at Whitney. I've got quite a few friends. Came from not being a total shit all the time to everyone I met."

"Could you hurry up and die already? Jesus."

"Funny. Because I probably will. I'm gonna go face a fucking professional assassin and in all likelihood, throw away my life in a fucking worthless attempt and stopping him from killing any more people and priming the Defiant to go nuclear. That's my weekend plans. What are yours? Gonna get your nails did? Read some fucking fashion tips? Maybe scare a guy or two off women forever?"

"Fuck you, asshole."

"You hate me?"

"Only every fucking bit of you."

"Good. Then tell me some numbers so I can go die and try to save your stupid life."

She went silent for a second. "If I tell you, will you fuck off and die?"

"It'd be my pleasure. I'll tell Satan you sent me." I grinned. I liked that line. A little flattery, kinda. I thought it was something Lia might do.

And it seemed to work, because she began to read me numbers off her mobile, I assumed. As she did, I entered them into the pancake's holo.

"Now go die or whatever. Never call me again," she said.

"I didn't call you, I called Trish."

"Whatever. Fuck you."

"Fuck you, too," I said, and hung up.

"What the hell was that?" Whitney asked, both of her hands on her head. "What...no...just what the hell was that?"

"That," I said, dialing the Defiant "was a highly successful phone call."

"Is that how all of your calls go? Are you socially retarded? Even more than me?"

"No, but she's a bitch, so I thought, what the hell."

"You're either an idiot or a genius," she said.

"Idiot, definitely," I grinned at her as I put the headphones back on. "Yes, hi? This is sort of out of the blue I'm sure, but my name is Athan Ashton...if you're a member of the Defiant Unchained, we met briefly a couple times, under Primrose High School?"

My contact warily acknowledged they'd heard of me, and I felt relief flow through me that Haley...shit, that was her name! Well, that Haley hadn't just given me a fake number.

"Listen, you're all in huge danger. I've found out who's behind the killings. It's a professional assassin with ties to China. He wants to use the Defiant to overthrow the US. I'd like to meet and go over the details, but if you don't want to...I understand. But at the very least, please tell the others what I just said, and stay together at all times. Like, seriously."

He assured me he would, and thanked me even. I gave him the number for the pancake, reading it out of one of the holo's menus, and then, just like that, it was over.

I felt...something, I guess. I felt relief, to a degree? Whatever Jack's opinion, the Defiant had to be stronger than Dragon, or else he'd just do himself what he was using them for. If they stayed together at all times, he couldn't pick them off anymore, he'd be an assassin against a small army, and that's not how assassins operated.

I hoped.

Mostly I just felt spent. I'd been through so many emotional hurdles today, and this one just seemed like the final push. I felt the satisfaction of putting in a good day's work, the fatigue of adrenaline emptying out of me, the sort of agitated calm of coming down from an emotional high.

I just wanted to spend the next few hours in quiet, putting parts in boxes. Yeah, that sounded great. And then a hot shower, eat a banana I'd bought earlier, go to bed early...enjoy my few minutes of downtime while the Defiant coordinated and I waited to hear back from them.

Honestly, it felt anticlimactic. But that was the kind of climax I enjoyed, when shit was this fucked up.

"Are...you done?" Whitney asked. She was still sitting on the floor with her toys, having touched none of them the entire time I was on the mobile.

"For today, it looks like. I'm going to go take a walk around the block if that's cool."

"Sounds good to me. You'll have to tell me what the other end of that shouted 'fuck you' conversation was about."

"Sure thing," I said, passing her by as I made for the door. I opened it up and stretched, feeling a damp breeze hit me the moment I went outside, the smell of wet road welcome and grounding. It was early afternoon, but felt much later. I finished my stretch and looked out at the little strip mall parking lot. As usual, this end was pretty empty. Whitney didn't exactly draw a lot of customers and neither did the little art gallery-slash-antique store next door.

There was one car though. Parked front-and-center, only a few feet from me. A black sedan with tinted windows, the shape of which rang an alarm bell deep in the back of my mind. I tried to piece together where I'd seen this make of car...I'd seen fleets of them.

The driver's door opened and a polished black boot stepped out. The rest of the black uniform came into view, followed closely by the head of Lieutenant Colonel Micaiah Teryn, Intelligence Division, XPCA.

"Hello Athan," he said with a breezy smile. "Nice weather today."

Welp. So much for my fucking banana.