I didn't know what to do as they hauled Whitney away. It wasn't like I was about to attack the police, but even if I did, the aghast look on her face said clearly enough what she thought of me now. Killing a dozen cops in front of her would just confirm her darkest thoughts now.

There were even a couple XPCA who came and inspected the scene it looked like, but finally, after another hour or so, everyone was gone and Tem and I were left alone with Whitney's store closed up, a piece of paper taped to the inside proclaiming it closed for ongoing police investigation.

I let myself in and looked around at the looming piles of parts and crap, all seemingly untouched. Somehow, over the last couple of days they had begun to develop a bit of personality, but with Whitney gone, they were once again just little stalagmites of junk.

I didn't know why I was even in here. The wrongness of the shop was becoming unbearable, feeling empty and strange without Whitney's pervasive singing or the sounds of her banging away in the back, and I felt guilty at being the cause of that void. I walked up to the back door and paused there, having no reason to go in, but not sure what else I was doing.

And I realized...it was a good thing I paused there. It'd been only faintly noticeable, but there was a faint electrical source at about ankle level in the doorway in front of me, in the right extreme-low voltage range to light up my EM-senses like one of AEGIS' drones.

I laid on the floor behind the counter and peered at it...not much to see. A couple of small, unobtrusive glossy bulges drilled to the wall, and the ends of some tubes, barely visible, at about chest-height. All definitely new since the police and XPCA had been inside, all humming with low levels of power, waiting.

An alarm or camera system maybe? I was still invisible, but if it saw in infrared or anything, they'd pick me up. But the fact they were on opposite ends of the doorway, and pointed at each other made me think maybe a tripwire instead of a monitor.

I had Tem and I back up to behind the counter, barely peeking over it, and apologized to a board from a pile on Whitney's behalf as I picked it up and chucked it between the two glossy bulges.

There was a hiss and a bang, and the entire doorway vanished, replaced with a wall of adhesive gel, which exploded out of the tubes with enough force that some stray flecks had reached the front windows of the shop. It shuddered violently, the whole blob of it vibrating like a cube of jello from the force of its own deployment.

Yeah I'll take the hint. Time for us to leave.

It wasn't too long after we'd gone, when we were maybe two or three blocks away that I heard sirens and saw police and an XPCA van flash past us heading back towards the shop. I was just a little horrified at how, had I not lingered there for a second, I'd been literal inches away from getting caught.

What a fun, sobering reminder. The XPCA were in town, and they wanted me. I needed to act faster.

We took shelter in a study room back at the community college, where I had Tem reveal me so I could use my mobile, planning to call the contact at the Defiant back and insist on a meeting, when I saw and remembered that I had a missed call from before. Karu's dad, I saw with disgust.

Whatever. I'd call him first and see what he wanted, if he could keep it brief.

"M'boy! Apologies to disturb you on this fine Valentine's day," he proclaimed.

I didn't have time for his games. "Can it, Idris. What do you want?"

"So short with me today. Tsk, tsk. Haven't gotten any chocolate from the women in your life?"

"It's been a shit day, sir. I'm about five seconds away from hanging up."

"Fine, I know the sound of a man in a hurry. I wanted to ask you about Karen again, and must apologize at my insistence."

"What about her?"

"Have you had the opportunity to speak with her as you said you would?"

"Yeah. We talked. She said she'd be gone a few days to go talk to you, in fact. That was a couple days back, she never met with you?"

"She never even called."

"Well, I guess she changed her mind. Tough luck, Senator."

"Ashton, son, please. You must have heard something. I'm just an old fool trying to talk to my own daughter."

"Then call her? She hasn't told me anything but what I mentioned. She said she'd go meet with you, and then I didn't see her after she left."

"Wait, I'm confused, son. She was never here...did she wind up leaving or not?"

"I don't know," I said, shaking my head at this waste of time. I shouldn't have even called him back. "She told me she left and then we didn't see each other because she was supposed to be gone, maybe?"

"Far be it for me to assume a level of closeness, but wouldn't she have told you if she was staying? I presume you spent plenty of time together."

"Look, I don't know. I told you what I did know. I can't pull new information out of my ass."

"Apologies, boy. I'm just trying to piece together the story. I'll let you get back to that important XPCA business," he said with a chuckle which even I could peg instantly as fake. "But...if you do hear from her--"

"If it's about you, I'll let you know. But if she didn't visit when she told me she was going to, I don't think your odds are good, Senator."

He sighed heavily. "Thank you anyway, Ashton. Godspeed."

I hung up, shook my head, and dialed the Defiant.

It was refreshing, to have someone both apparently surprised to hear from me, and enthusiastic about it. He told me he'd contacted the others, and they were all together now, just sort of waiting. Annoyance and dissent in the group was apparent, by the voices in the background arguing with each other, and he informed me that there was definite momentum to have me meet them and explain exactly what was going on in-person, as nobody was exactly happy with the current situation and lack of information.

Which was a dream for me. Who knew that cooping up all the Defiant and pissing them off was exactly what I needed to get them to see eye-to-eye with me. He spoke with the others in the background of the call.

He wanted to set a time and place on the call, but I couldn't without the XPCA knowing. We needed to keep this vague enough that we couldn't be understood by an outsider...but that'd require us to have some personal information between us we could use to exchange knowledge in plain view.

As I laid it out, his enthusiasm faded. It sounded like quite a hurdle, and an obnoxious one, given that we were already talking...it's not like they knew enough about me or I about them to have any meaningful connection...and the only stuff we did know, I'd told to Micaiah.

Who was...now dead. Maybe there was hope after all?

"The dark place we met the second time?" I proposed.

"It's only late afternoon. There will be people everywhere, too many to sneak in," he said. "How about...four blocks north of there. Look for the largest building on the block."

"Okay. I think we can do that. Thanks for understanding."

"Thanks for coming in and risking the wrath of a dozen annoyed Exhumans," he said with amusement.

We'd set the meeting up for ASAP, to reduce the chances that someone else in the XPCA would figure us out in time, and I headed off at once, invisible again with Tem in tow.

I hadn't spent this long invisible before, and aside from the strangeness of not being able to see my hands and feet, and therefore stumbling over things or bumping into stuff I really shouldn't have been, it was...well it was weird. Dehumanizing, really.

Avoiding people was obviously a priority, and I remembered once or twice when people around me had tripped over seemingly nothing...a waiter who'd smacked into nothing and dropped a platter of silverware the first time I'd met Idris came to mind. But otherwise, it was just a bit surreal, having people not even recognize my existence.

There were so many micro-interactions which just weren't anymore. The whole game of walking, eyes-forward with someone coming towards you...both of you avoiding each other's gaze and keeping eyes on where you intend to walk so there's no potential for collision, or the awkward little nod and dismissive smile you have to make if you do meet another's eyes...all these social cues I never really even considered consciously...I saw people's eyes, and found myself making these gestures by habit, as they utterly ignored me.

It was both a little scary and a little liberating. Here, literally, I was a complete non-person. I was literally nothing, in the same way that an Exhuman was figuratively nothing. I was just dust and wind to these people.

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And it made me think. Maybe more than it should have, given the situation we were in, but I had a mile and a half to walk so some thinking was inevitable. It made me wonder, was this power what shaped Tem into who she was? Or was she like this before?

Like, even in the brief bit I was doing it, I felt strange and ignored and unimportant...the most interaction I had with these people was constantly trying to get out of their way. Had Tem lived her whole life like this? Constantly being nothing to everyone around her but an obstacle?

It was an assumption, but it made a lot of sense, and made my heart go out to her in a way I'd never before considered.

"Hey, Tem?" I whispered to her.

"Y-yes? Have I messed s-something up?"

"No...everything's fine. I just wanted to thank you for always being there for me. I wouldn't have made it this far without your help."

She stuttered and stammered and tripped over herself, and I had to catch her to keep her from falling. She was so light, I thought with a frown.

"I DON'T--" she yelled, and then froze in panic as some people nearby looked around. "I don't deserve your praise," she whispered.

"But it's true."

"I don't care if it is true. Please don't waste your words on me. You have s-s-so many more s-special and wonderful people in your life to spend your time thinking about. Please just forget about me."

She seemed, from what I could tell of her invisible state, more agitated than perhaps I'd ever seen her before, more than when I'd almost killed her, twice, even. She was literally shaking in my arms, flushing hot and cold all at once, and sweaty. From just a few words.

"Tem...I'm sorry for bringing this up at a bad time when we can't have a real conversation about it, but I've told you time and again, you're a real person, and I'm going to treat you like one. If any of my other friends did what you did for me, I'd thank them too."

She shook her head, thrashing in my arms, but offered no rebuttal. She was utterly impossible, and by her actions, instead of praising, I was torturing her. How she could be so content, being ignored constantly, sleeping on hard floors and never being seen or heard, only to be reduced to this by a single acknowledgement of her contributions?

I didn't even know where to begin helping her. She needed years of therapy, but no professional shrink in the world would sit down with an Exhuman. Maybe that's why the world was such shit. All these super-powered people, mentally damaged by their lives like Tem, who couldn't even get help if they wanted.

"Okay, how's this then," I said, trying to put her back on her feet, but finding them unstable still. "You continue helping me like you have been, and I'll keep being happy I have your help."

She mulled it over as she slipped out of my hands and sat down in the gutter, out of the way, with the trash. I was loathe to waste time now, but I thought the Defiant could spare a few seconds for Tem to have a think about her life.

She didn't seem to be able to find any flaws with the proposal because she nodded, and with that I pulled her back to her feet. "Okay," she said. And that was enough.

I didn't know exactly where we were headed, so we cut through Rito's high school so I could follow the directions more properly. Four blocks north...but which way was north?

The sun was only starting to get low, early afternoon as it was, and I didn't know how true the adage was about it setting in the west, especially in the high latitudes up in Oregon. At best, it narrowed it down to two different directions, sort of hanging between the cardinal directions of the roads, and four blocks was kind of a ways to just be guessing here. I had the horrible realization that, if the roads weren't aligned to the compass, four blocks north might mean zig-zagging some...but surely he couldn't have meant that.

I dipped into the school, thinking they, like my old school, might have a map or heck, a person I could ask.

The school seemed quiet, but not deserted. There were some lights on in some classrooms, and it looked like the school had once just been the large single building we'd emerged from, but over the years had sprawled into several smaller ones, connected by covered walkways. My guess was they were mostly divided by subject -- one had language posters up in both Spanish and French, and another had a couple large classrooms with more window than wall, filled with ceramics and paintings. An art building, I realized, probably sitting on top of Rito's hiding space.

I'd wound my way around the main building, and there, with the building cradled around it was what I sought. Right in the middle of campus, a flagpole and open courtyard, and visible even from this distance, a large compass rose embedded into the concrete with faded reds and blues. I headed towards it, passing a larger, longer building on my right which thrummed with machine noises, and then stopped at hearing something...familiar.

Metal clanking, but at a very familiar rhythm. Like...metal fingers drumming against the ground with the pattern of a horse's gait, or something. I moved to dismiss it, but it stuck in my brain, and I found myself waffling, walking back and forth between my destination and the noise inside the building like an idiot. I was glad I was invisible so nobody could see me.

Oh what the hell, it's a few more seconds, I thought. I'd made good time walking here anyway, even slowing down for Tem.

I doubled back into the quad where I heard more clearly the sounds of machines running full-bore. Kind of a comforting, familiar sound for me by now, one I always associated with AEGIS and her workshops. This would be the shop class quad then, and I remembered hearing earlier that this high school did a special program where students had to take both trade skills and arts here to graduate, and it was something they were very proud of.

The shop classrooms seemed appropriately robust, considering the whole of the student body filtered through here at some point, and I guess not too surprising that some students would still be working on the machines after-hours.

Although, hmm. I checked my mobile. Saturday. More surprising, but whatever. And also February...not nearly close enough to the end of the quarter to be demanding overtime. Maybe just a club or something then.

There weren't any windows at eye level, the classroom was very tall and probably built with students sending pieces of debris flying in mind, but by climbing up on some lockers--thankful again for that invisibility--I could see inside.

And I saw what made the rhythmic tinking noise I recognized. It was exactly what the back of my brain thought it was, as impossible as I found the thought.

"DOG?" I asked through the window. "DOG, what the hell are you doing here?"

It wasn't exactly DOG, it had a neck with the camera mounted on it like the DOG-Es, as well as a few new manipulator arms, but the earmarks of the DOG units AEGIS had built up north were all there. It didn't seem to hear me over the machine noise of the whole place running, but...it was DOG. In this school. Some four-thousand miles away from where hundreds of his kind had been built and worked and died fighting the XPCA.

I almost fell off the lockers in my rush. You could bet your shit I was getting in that room now, even if I was going to break a few school rules. I jogged around, trying every door and finding them all locked.

I apologized to the memory of my old history teacher, who'd once given us all a day-long speech on how we were only hurting ourselves by causing property damage to the school.

My hands landed on the door and forced current through it, focusing on the little metal latch that stuck out between the door and the frame. I pumped current back and forth through that bit again and again, feeling it superheat as the electricity did its thing. While I did, I pulled on the handle with all my strength.

It took a minute but I felt the door beginning to pull towards me like I was dragging it out of molasses, and then bang, it flew open, sending me falling to my ass, and the metal bits I'd melted off flying through the air like burning shrapnel. Right into a bush where they'd never be found.

I stumbled to my feet and found DOG staring at me, a little red light beneath the camera blazing as it sized up the sudden intrusion.

"DOG!" I shouted at him. "What the heck are you doing here? Or…" I stopped. "Uh. Red light on. So...AEGIS...is driving?"

I got my answer when the thing pounced at me playfully, head wiggling back and forth on its mechanical neck, its whole body swaying in dance like a kitten who had just spotted a particularly enticing finger. Definitely not normal DOG behavior.

"AEGIS what are you doing here?" I laughed as I asked. "Do you know where we are? How'd this DOG get up here?"

My phone pinged and I checked it. New message from AEGIS, of course.

> you ruined my surprise!

"What surprise?" I asked DOG.

> I was trying to have it done by today

> so we could spend valentines day together but it ran a little late

> not on account of my planning I promise

"Yeah, your planning is usually pretty sublime. So what's the surprise?"

> cover your eyes

> Id have dog do it but hes kinda got stumpy feet

"AEGIS, this is stupid. Just tell me." My elation faded a little when I remembered what was up. "Um, I'm also in a hurry. I'm about to go meet...the Defiant, actually."

> then cover your eyes dummy!

I let out a tremendously exaggerated sigh to let her know just how much she was inconveniencing me, and then turned to face the wall.

I heard nothing but the sounds of machines going for the next couple of minutes, while I nagged at AEGIS over messenger.

> gonna hang up on you for a second maybe a minute

> DONT TURN AROUND YET

> I AM SERIOUS

"Fine, I'm waiting," I announced at the wall.

And then the machines all went silent. Compared to the noise in here before, it felt spooky, like they'd all just...died. I didn't hear DOG clanking around or anything, and I began to feel dread creeping up in me. Please tell me she wasn't about to startle me with some stupid jump scare or something? Just in case, I tried to keep myself calm and remind my shield that whatever was about to happen, it was friendly.

"Okay, turn around," I heard AEGIS say behind me.

I did, and somehow, she was there. The yellow eyes, the small, shy smile, the freckles below her oval glasses, the light dress, the red cables, streaming behind her, not yet tied up into her twintails, it was all there, just like I'd remembered her.

"You're...you're here! And you're you!" I said. "How are you here? How are you you? I'm so...I'm so excited and happy and confused."

"Love, Athan," she said, as she stepped towards me and wrapped me in her impossibly-warm arms. "Love makes all things possible."

She kissed me gently, filling my nose with her familiar, exotic scent of bubblegum and eraser shavings and her lips, as hot as the rest of her, but so soft, I could barely even be sure they'd touched me.

As we separated, she rested her forehead against mine, her brilliant yellow eyes inches from mine, sparkling and dancing as her smile grew ever broader.

"Well, love and the ability to direct materials and remotely hijack machinery to fabricate whatever I wanted, and a week of expert maneuvering under the eyes and noses of both the XPCA, and the students and faculty here." She grinned. "But mostly love."

"As much as I'd like to hear all about it, I need to meet the Defiant. Can you come with?"

"Are you kidding? I'm never leaving your side," she said. "Though you could stand to be visible again, it's a little unnerving for me to be seeing you only in IR."

"Right, sorry," I apologized, and had Tem decloak us. "Onward to the Defiant then.

"Onward to the Defiant!" she echoed, and the three of us set off.