Rito apologetically informed me that Saga's plan involved me not knowing where I was, unfortunately. She directed me towards a building, made sure I had her number, and that nobody was destroying her phone this time.

"And something about looking for someone named Suwagani?" she said. "Sorry, I'm a dummy and don't remember what that was about. She just said that would work."

"It's cool," I said. Between Saga's cryptic bullshittery and Rito's airheadedness, I didn't think there would be much I'd get out of her. Once we were all clear, she gave me a final nod, walked out of my field of view, and, I knew, out of the city. Or state.

Leaving me alone.

It wasn't a bad place to be left, by any stretch, but this still wasn't exactly what I'd planned on spending my day doing. I took a deep breath and reminded myself that this was important, it wasn't just some bullshit quest by Saga, I was here for a reason...whatever that reason was.

It was hot as Vegas at least, and equally dry, and yet in defiance of the climate, the street I was on was lined with oaks and sycamores, towering twice as tall as the continuum of buildings stretching under them. It wasn't a very populous area. Seemingly at the edge of a commercial zone, the last of the wooden shops bleeding into the concrete of offices and warehouses of light industrial in front of me.

The building I was left facing looked like a stack of optical disks, as I'd only ever seen in Whitney's shop. It was round, relentlessly shiny under the noon sun, and stood somewhat alone in a concrete park of its own. A stone basin of a fountain, drained, stained, and turned off stood out front. Some palm trees and scrubby plants in a planter that reminded me of LA where I grew up.

In fact, a lot of it reminded me of LA, from the distant mountains visible through the trees to the color of the dirt and the style of the buildings. A couple years ago, if you'd shown me a dozen random houses I might have just said they looked like houses to me, but now that I'd travelled some, I was beginning to realize that places had their own identities, from the tall rowhouses and mini-mansions of DC to the squat, sprawling adobe of Santa Fe.

Taking another breath and another reminder, I headed for the building, keeping in mind my nebulous goal of meeting this mysterious Zuwaigani of Saga's. Maybe he was a martial arts master who could help me beat Dragon. Or some retired military crackshot, hiding out in plain sight for the rest of his days. Or maybe he was another Exhuman, lurking but unable to conceal himself from Saga. That would be incredible.

I realized that was all impossible as I approached the glass doors and pulled them open by the twisted brass handles. Saga wanted me to obsess about Dragon less, not more. I wondered if Zuwaigani had actually talked to Saga. Sort of a funny thought that she might have made a friend on a trip.

Functionally, inside was like the outside, a mix of offices and small stores like a miniature mall had started selling office space, or some shops buoyed up in an office building. A very bizarre mix of open stores with bright signs and colors interspersed between drab cubicles, visible to the main walkway through tall glass windows.

A quick check of a map informed me that there wasn't any Zuwaigani Law Offices or anything that simple. A big circular path looped through the building, with the businesses inside and out of it radially. Kind of a cute layout for an indoor mall, and I wondered if it had opened as such and just didn't get the foot traffic to stay that way, or what.

Some guy yelling at me broke my train of thought and pulled my attention from the map. For a moment, I thought I was in trouble, but realized he was just a barker, carrying a deep tray of ice with pieces of fish on it, wearing a heavy rubber apron and a headband. It was around lunchtime, and a few of the office drones were working their way past him into…

...into...I'm wasn't sure what I was looking at here. It was a big shop, but not one like I'd ever seen. Keeping my distance from him so he wouldn't try to reel me in, I advanced on the tall glass windows.

It was like an aquarium, almost. Half of the floorspace was dedicated to ponds, glass open-top enclosures about waist-high, each about as wide as a mattress, though nearly twice that for some of the larger species. And within each, fish swam in a forest of green and pebbles and bubbles.

The other half was a more normal restaurant, sushi, it looked like, which might explain the fish. It would be incredibly fresh if they kept their catch live here...maybe just the last holding stocks of farmed fish. The salty smell and thought of the fresh catch made my mouth water, despite myself.

"Freshest fish you can find," the barker said from right next to me. "Try a sample and see for yourself."

Well, I wasn't going to say no to that. He offered the tray of ice towards me, and I picked up a reddish sliver about the size of my little finger. Cold, and squishy.

And holy shit, good. The barker wasn't lying. Even when I'd been eating my own catch, those were some weird, bony river fish. This was fatty and salty and savory like I wasn't sure I'd had before. It seemed to melt on my tongue without any need to chew at all.

"Damn, that's good," I informed him, and he smiled broadly.

"We grow them off-site and they spend their last few weeks here. Nothing served is more than a day old, ever."

"And we get to see them, that's so cool."

"We have a sister location with a tank big enough for some tuna. Now that is a sight, my friend." He turned to a pair in suits walking past. "Fresh sashimi! Try it, buy it, and cry at the the tastiest flavor you've been missing! Hand-feeding show at twelve-thirty! More action than a whole day at the ballpark!"

I looked at him sideways. What an odd, familiar turn of phrase. That was something we use to say to belittle our school's baseball team, like they used to ask after punting drills if we had a nice time kicking each others balls, or telling us they couldn't tell which side was winning, after pushing the blocking sled. It gave a strange, utterly unexpected sense of nostalgia that made me want to escape the conversation.

So I slipped away while his attention was diverted, which kinda sucked because I felt guilty for fleeing, and also because I liked watching the fish. They reminded me of my first date with AEGIS, in what felt like simpler times.

In fact, a lot of things here reminded me of a lot of things. Outside had already made me think of home, well, ex-home I guess. But there was a wide bookstore spilling warm light into the walkway with some foreign-looking book in one of the displays that reminded me of Moon. A bit further down, a little VR spot/net cafe, making me think of Whitney and Chiho.

Was this what Saga meant? She was just sending me to browse shops and make up my own associations? That kind of stupid play seemed more Rito-level than Saga, and didn't address the hint I'd been given.

I kept wandering into a block of offices and pressed forward, but paused and had to backtrack at a sight in one of the cubicles. The back of a head. A very familiar back-of-head. Unmistakable, really, given how many times I'd stared past it at a teacher.

Tyler Moore. Wide receiver for the Black Sharks, nailed the game-winning completion in the last game I ever played, and once, a good friend. As strange as it was seeing him after all this time, after everything that I'd done and that I'd been through, somehow, it was even stranger seeing him in business casual. Not that I was surprised. He was on the team, but he had even better grades than me, and broader ambitions.

Again, the familiar nostalgia hit me with an impulse to flee. I felt dirty being here, like I was disturbing the dead. I'd already given up a life to let these people live in peace, there was no need to disturb them ever again.

Tyler stood up at some conversation I couldn't hear through the window and I turned quickly before he could face me, taking a step towards escape.

The step brought me inches from the face of a woman who was standing right behind me. I recoiled from her in shock and banged into the glass I was just trying to get away from.

"Athan?" She asked. "Athan, it really is you."

"No, not Athan, sorry," I said, covering my face and scuttling like a crab. Soft hands reached out for mine and blue eyes lowered into my field of view.

"It is you," she said with a sigh. "Athan...I know...you're hiding or whatever, but…" She paused and a flurry of emotions crossed her face which I couldn't even begin to parse. "I'm sorry. I don't care. I have to know, though, and if I don't ask you now, I don't...I might never know."

"Kiera," I said, because that was her name, "I have no idea what you're talking about. I should go, though. Sorry. Please don't tell anyone--"

"No," she said and shook her head. She was standing up straight now, still a few inches shorter than me, but under her short blonde hair, her eyes looked determined, and the conflicting emotions seemed set.

Great. Another Exhuman whistleblower. Just what I needed, to be pinned down in a hallway by an old classmate in a pencil skirt and a blouse. My fingers crept towards my pocket for my mobile to call in an extraction.

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"You have to tell me," she said, advancing half a step on me. "She just...disappeared one day. Nobody seemed to care, so I had to pretend not to, but I did. And I'm so sorry."

"I should--"

"Athan, do you know where Lia is?"

My hand stopped inches from my mobile.

"Why?" I asked.

"I just…" Her nostrils flared as her breathing quickened. "I was her friend. We were in volleyball together in grade school, I don't know if you remember. When you...you did what you did, everyone turned their back on her."

My fist banged against the cold glass with an empty thunk. "Yeah you did. Everyone in the whole fucking school, from what I heard."

"I didn't want to! Everyone else did, and I just...I didn't know what to do. I got scared. I kept saying I was going to just man up and do it, like Lia would have done. But then she was gone."

Tears streaked down the corners of her cheeks. "I thought...thought she was dead. Thought I was too late. People said she killed herself, and I just...felt sick, all the time. Like maybe, if I'd just been there for her--"

"She's not dead, Kiera," I said. She stopped dead and clutched at her chest, lip trembling.

"S-she's...she's okay?"

I nodded, but for the third time today someone unexpectedly jumped me in conversation.

"Hey, what the hell do you think you're doing to her?" I turned and saw Tyler jogging towards us from the office's main doors. He slowed as he saw my face. "Athan?"

"Hi, Tyler," I apologized.

"You bastard, what did you do to Kiera? I swear, I'll--"

"It's fine, Tyler," she cut in. "I'm happy. He helped me more than you could know."

He looked suspiciously between the two of us but as nobody moved and Kiera wiped away her tears, he seemed to relax.

"Uh. Well, sorry, then. Shit, Athan. What are you doing here? We all thought...you were dead."

"Didn't see me on the news?" I smirked at him.

"No. I don't really keep up. Did you blow up a building and escape?"

I had to laugh. "Sure, something like that. I should...get back to it. Lots more escaping to do, you know?"

I moved yet again to get away but found something holding my wrist.

"Let me...apologize to you, at least. Since I can't do it for Lia," Kiera said. "Please."

"It's fine, I promise."

"No, it's really not. I've been living with myself and what I did this whole time, Athan. It feels like I killed her...my own friend. Do you...do you know how that feels?"

"Kiera, our internships," Tyler complained. "Come on. Not that I'm not glad you're alive or anything bro, but…"

"I just want to hear about her. I want to know she's okay," Kiera whispered. "It's so selfish of me, but please."

I stared at the cup of tea in front of me and the two others seated at my table in the little coffee shop attached to the bookstore. After what Kiera said, I couldn't say no. I knew just how heavy a life could hang on your heart.

"Thanks," I said, raising my glass to her.

"You could have gotten something more expensive," she mumbled.

"But not much more. It is an unpaid internship," Tyler grinned.

"Did you two know each other before?" I asked.

Tyler shook his head. "Just met on the job here and realized we were both in the same work-study program. Jacob's on the program too, not with us here though."

"Kimmy, too," Kiera said. "From the varsity water polo team."

"No way," I said despite myself. "I thought she was a dunce? What are the requirements for this internship anyway?"

"High," Tyler said with pride. "Apparently Kimmy just never talked, but rocked all her classes."

"Did you think she was dumb because of that thing with the apples? That was all Megan's doing…"

Somehow, we weren't talking about Lia at all. Somehow the three of us were all just sitting in a coffee shop having a perfectly normal conversation about life. These two, who should have hated me, who weren't related to me, or kidnapping victims, or crazed hunters, or XPCA...they were sitting at a table with a known Exhuman, maybe a little stiffly, but mostly like it was just nothing. One had even bought me tea as an apology.

Given the context, it was just bizarre how well we all got along. Tyler and I went way back, and I recognized Kiera from our grade even if we weren't friends. Nobody seemed...freaked out at what I was, or panicking, or like they were just waiting for the cops. Just...tea. And conversation.

At a silence, Kiera jumped us to the uncomfortable topic. "Can you please tell Lia for me...if you're in contact, that I'm sorry? That I regret abandoning her like I did? That I'm the worst friend imaginable? I'm so...I'm so ashamed, and so--" she began making impotent rasping noises as tears began to flow again. I put my hand on her shoulder by reflex, and she didn't flinch.

"Here," I said, thumbing through and the passing her my mobile. "Tell her yourself."

"M-me? I...I ca-can't. What...what would...I e-even--"

"Hello? What up, dude?" Lia's voice came through. "Bored of Saga's game already?"

"I'd start with hello," I said, closing her hand around my mobile with the most reassuring smile I had. "She's got a lot of love. She'll understand."

Kiera nodded through tears as she stood up with my mobile pressed to her ear, bawling incoherently. Tyler watched her go with a thoughtful look on his face.

"So you're not a bad guy," he said, turning to me. "But you don't seem like the same Athan as before. You never used to talk to girls, much less be able to pull off a smooth move like that."

I sighed at him and he continued right on with a slightly larger grin.

"Always felt like you were trying to weasel out of the spotlight and Brick was trying to put you into it. Now it seems like you just don't care one way or the other, and...I dunno. You seem different and I can't place it. Confident, maybe. But you were confident before."

"Trust me, right now, confidence is the last thing I have going for me. Earlier today, one of my friends told me I was obsessed with some assassin trying to kill me, and that I was so sure he was going to do it that I was gonna fall into despair and break."

He snapped his finger and pointed it at me. "Yeah, that's it. Bingo."

"What?"

"Just kidding, man. I ain't nearly girly enough to read that off your face. But it does sound like you have a lot of shit going on."

"Yeah."

"Sucks."

"Right?"

He turned towards Kiera, bawling in the corner at my mobile. "This assassin guy, is he XPCA or something?"

"No, just some Sino nutjob."

"Hmm," Tyler mused. "Well in that case, I hope you beat him. You seem pretty alright by me."

"Thanks, man."

"No prob."

We sat in silence for the next few minutes just watching Kiera while pretending not to, and let the sounds of the coffee shop fill in the conversation for us. The hissing of pressurized machines and bubbling of pouring pots, the quiet mumble of a dozen people conversing in their own worlds, all separate from us, but still part of where we were.

And again, I found it impossibly, inexplicably pleasant. It wasn't an awkward silence, but the quiet that could be shared between two friends who were comfortable with each other. I felt like we had no right to be those two friends, but here we were, so many worlds apart but still somehow able to fit into this one together.

I felt that nostalgia again, and for the first time, didn't want to run.

At long last, Kiera came back, wiping streaky makeup off of her face with a tissue.

"What are you guys talking about?" she asked, barely interrupted by a sniffle.

We shared a glance. "Nothing."

She looked between our faces and then bust out snickering.

"What? Seriously," Tyler said.

"I know," she beamed, the last of the dew in her eyes sparkling with her smile. "It's just...you guys...are such boys."

Kiera thanked me very thoroughly and tried very hard to buy me more food or drink, but I turned her down, explaining that just having the two of them willing to tolerate my presence was more than I could ever ask.

"Yeah," she said, suddenly downcast at my words. "I guess we shouldn't be, huh?"

"Be what? You're gonna keep getting yelled at in meetings if you keep being ambiguous all the time," Tyler said.

"Shouldn't be tolerant," she said, glaring her best at him. "Because of the Exhuman thing and all."

"Eh. I thought so at first, and then was like, screw it. It's Athan, right?"

"Yeah. My heart is still pounding, but I can't tell if it's from him, or Lia, or...or...too much caffeine. But I agree. I believed them when I first heard the news too, but the more I thought about Lia, and how unfair everyone was to her...the more I thought...maybe we were unfair to you, too." She lowered her head. "So I'm sorry. Even if...even if I'm wrong, and you're all bad like they say, I should have found out instead of judging you. If I were that kind of person, maybe I would have been strong enough to stand by Lia."

Tyler looked at her with vague disgust. "Yeah, that, I guess," he said. "But mostly, screw it, right?"

I laughed as I finished off my tea, and stood to go. "You have no idea how nice it was to run into you two. I don't think you could even imagine."

They stood as well, and suddenly warmth and a floral smell wrapped around me as Kiera pulled me into a tight hug. "I'm sorry, Athan. I'm sorry I couldn't do more."

"Well, I'm not sorry," Tyler said with a grin, shaking my hand over the hug. "But good luck with the assassin thing. Black Sharks don't let go, right? Bite 'em, brother."

"Bite 'em," I echoed back.

And then they were headed back to their jobs with little waves, leaving me alone again.

But I didn't feel alone. I felt the least alone I'd been in weeks. The floral scent on me was here, it was real, a mark left lingering on me as proof of their existence. The paper cup in my hand wasn't empty, it was filled with gratitude and hope of a real, living person.

I smiled at myself, at the world, feeling so stupid and easy to manipulate, but I didn't care. If one or two shitty people could sink my life, who was to say one or two good ones couldn't buoy it back up again?

I flipped my cup into the trash and was about to head out when something caught my eye. A dark green sign with white lettering floating above a shelf of books announcing their genre. Mildly intrigued, I picked it up and thumbed through to the first page where I began to read.

Electromagnetism as a branch of theoretical physics is an incredible field of study which has captivated geniuses throughout time, including such notable figures as Newton, Edison, Einstein, Hawking, and Renault. Though the subject may seem intimidating to a beginner, this book aims to serve as a guide to an aspiring scientist of any level who finds themselves captivated by these omnipresent systems. We hope to enrich your understanding of the world, both natural and mechanical, and illustrate the many applications of electromagnetism as seen throughout it.

We thank you for reading, laud your interest in this delightful field of study, and wish to welcome you to the exciting world of the electron!