I sat in my wheelchair in the silence in the dark in the concrete room, the square of yellow and the light it shone on my hands, the only things visible. I let out a sigh and tapped the mobile again.

The device filled the dark room with the sounds of hell. Someone breathing heavily, gunshots, audio flickering sporadically with what I knew were Jack's movements.

"Steffie," he panted, too close to his mic and blowing it out as he exhaled. "I don't know...what's transpired. I don't know why the XPCA...ambushed me, why the sudden, unprovoked hostility…"

He paused for a moment and I heard crunching of meat and flesh, and Jack gasping as he tore his knife free from one of his pursuers with a squelch. "I don't...understand the why of any of this. They've been hounding me for hours, and I can do nothing but run, but wherever I go...they are ready and waiting."

The sounds of gunfire, close gunfire interrupted him and the audio distorted strangely as he moved around in relation to it. Finally it faded into the background as he made an escape, still panting, still ragged.

"But as I realize I may never know the why or how, the other questions I've never been able to answer seem so much more obvious. I apologize for any...long-windedness or blathering. This is all quite improvisational and I am suffering blood loss. But please, do not let that take away from my fully realized confession--"

Again, I could hear him moving and shifting. Somebody died, and the first time I'd heard the recording, I had been terrified that it was him. But a minute later he spoke again, breathing deep and fast.

"I love you, Steffie. If this be the last words I ever have the chance to utter to you, know that I love you, and that is more important than anything else I could ever say, or think, or feel. I'm sorry it's taken me so long--" he grunted again, and more sounds of wet, cutting flesh. "--and I'm sorry I couldn't tell you in person. But I cannot leave it unsaid any--"

There was a heavy grunt, and then silence until the call disconnected. In the past week since he had sent me that voice message, I had listened to it a thousand times, and every time, my heart stopped at the end.

The sounds of gunfire and murder took a few more seconds to finish echoing in my mind, and then I was back in my wheelchair in the silence in the dark in the concrete room. My own breathing sounded ragged, like his had been, though I was choked with emotion, not injury. How many times would I listen to it and break my heart again and again? How many hours would I worship this last shred of Jack?

At least once more, I thought, tapping my mobile again.

I had reached out to everyone, but nobody was there. Tower, Athan, Moon, Lia, even Tem, all vanished the same day Jack had called me, just gone. Taken like he had been, I had to assume. I'd called the hunter's association to try to talk to Karu and been completely walled-out. I'd called the XPCA to inquire if they were holding any of them. Hell, I'd even dialed up Senator Irenside and shouted at one of his aides for a useless hour, being told repeatedly and in no uncertain terms that he did not associate with XPCA or Exhumans or hunters beyond what is required by his responsibilities.

I felt so frustrated and powerless. Everyone I'd met in the Resistance was also either missing or still in hiding and knew nothing. I was desperate. I tried everyone. Eventually I called up a girl that apparently had connections to Athan when they were in New Eden.

What I got wasn't helpful, just an inconsolable woman screaming her heart out to me about her dead husband, son, and daughter. Her voice was frantic and shrill, like I could hear her heart breaking inside of her words. Gil, Glenn, Haley. I didn't know them, but they would all have been at New Eden with me, would have escaped the same time we had. She just wanted a family, just wanted the love and happiness that everyone else on this damn world seemed entitled to but us.

I cried with her, she broke my heart all over again, hearing myself in her pain, and Jack in her family. When I'd hung up on her, I felt empty, devastated and pointless. I felt like this was the end, I'd given up and the world had once again proven, beyond all doubt, that Exhumans could never be happy there.

I'd gone as far as staring down a handful of pills, counting how many dozens of doses of sleep-aid that would be. My body would react explosively if I tried any more visceral methods, I had to slip out of life quietly. But it seemed so stupid, my whole life and everything in it equal to a handful of pills in the end.

I had to find out what happened to Jack, I decided. If I had nothing to lose anyway, I may as well. And as it turned out, it was easy to get back into New Eden if you were an Exhuman, they actively encouraged it, in fact. And though navigating underground was difficult on wheels, I knew the tunnels well enough from my time in the resistance to wend my way down into the old headquarters.

Where I sat now. No lights on, no members in red, no Soran saying nothing but knowing all. Nobody here to tell me if Jack was here or not, or where, or how he could be rescued. Just me and darkness and another shattered hope.

The voice message ended again and I had to pause to not just play it again. I had to remember, I had a mission here. If I were just going to do nothing, I may as well be nothing. I would find Jack.

I worked into the surveillance room and turned on some lights, wincing at the stabbing brightness. Squinting against them, I found the equipment still here, and still operational, I hoped. I flipped on a few cores and held my eyes while they booted.

I'd run shifts on surveillance, I knew the software. There were tapped camera feeds from all across the facility. I tried going back in time and…

And nothing. There was no cache. I'd only just turned the computers on myself. They wouldn't have been recording the whole time they were off, now would they? So just another, useless, dead end.

How many more of those did I have left before I was done? How many did I have left in me?

I stared at the various feeds, not really seeing them. Just a wash of misery, Exhumans thrashing against each other like fish in a net. Some I recognized from the resistance, I realized. They'd escaped, been dragged back in, and given up. Soran wasn't here to hold us together, or they just weren't willing to try anymore. They were defeated, just like me.

Someone cut easily through a crowd of hunched-over Exhumans on one feed, stepping lightly and unimpeded, and the easy movement caught my eye. I typed a few commands to put other feeds from the area up and caught sight of them again, ducking under an arch with an Exhuman draped over it, and getting nothing but a nod from them in exchange.

They were hooded, brown hair covering their face and flowing from the hood in a curly mess. A woman, probably, tall and thin, her hoodie creating the appearance of bulk which wasn't reflected in her lean legs.

I watched her for some minutes, adjusting camera feeds to keep watch, until at some point, she gave me what I needed. Just a glance up, habitual, looking both ways before she crossed a street.

I dialed the feed back and looked for the moment when her face met the camera. And there, under the hood and the hair, I saw her eyes for the first time.

And I swore, loudly. Jack would not have approved. I didn't understand, but that didn't mean I couldn't. Before I lost her, I went back to the other feeds and spent the next half hour tracking her through the city until she entered a building and didn't come back out.

It was a sweaty hour and a half later before I finished lugging my chair to the door on that feed, my arms burning with the tempo I'd forced them to. She might have slipped out at any second, and with how slippery this one could be, I wasn't sure I'd find her again. So I didn't hesitate to knock.

"What?" came a crass reply, an older man's voice.

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"I'm looking for a girl."

"So am I. So is every guy here. Fuck off."

"I'm looking for a girl I saw enter here an hour or two ago."

"There's nobody here. I said fuck off."

"Just open the door--"

"FUCK. OFF."

I let out a slow breath and reminded myself that this city changed people, made them bitter and short, and that I should hate the prison, not the person.

And then I cracked my knuckles and drove them into the soft wood, the explosion of the impact sending me reeling backwards and almost out of my chair. I'd barely tapped the dang thing.

"What in the fuck is wrong with you, lady?" the guy screamed, coming into view, while the spectacle of an Exhuman fight drew hundreds of eyes who only moments ago cared nothing for his yelling or my distress. He was a bald hunched-over guy, thick dark hair still on the sides and back of his head, and shaped ugly, like his body thought it did him a favor by putting all of his considerable fat into one paunch instead of spreading it around.

"My problem," I told him, wheeling towards him with all the menace my tired arms could provide "is that I am looking for a girl, and you are stopping me. Nobody stops me, not now, not anymore."

"Phillip? What's going--" I saw bare feet on the stairway through the wrecked door. "...Steffie?"

"Lia!" I shouted at her as she bolted through the crater and into my arms, her lanky body rocking my chair as she squealed her best at me. "Lia what the hell are you doing here?"

"What are you doing here? You were supposed to be safely hidden?"

"I was. I came in after they got Jack. Do you know where he is?"

She stepped back, her eyes wide and white. "...maybe. But let's talk inside. Lots of spectators out here, y'know?"

She had a point but I couldn't contain the barrage of questions even over the tiny distance to the destroyed threshold. "Do you know what happened? Is Athan okay? Do you know about Tower? Or Moon and Tem? Did this all happen to them as well, or just us?"

"Easy there, tiger," Lia said, before apologizing to the lumpy-shaped man and handing him a flattened metal disc.

"What's that?" I asked.

"It's a 'coin'."

"What's a 'coin'?"

"Type of currency before everything went digital. Like, pirates booty was all chests of coins."

"I thought they were pieces of eight? Or gold bars or something?"

"Well...yeah. That too. But coins, also. Or mosty. I dunno. Uh...can you get upstairs, or should we…" she turned towards the man. "Can we borrow your living room? I'm sorry."

"No problem," he said, flipping the coin and catching it, stepping lively to head upstairs.

"So what's with the coin?" I asked after he was gone.

"A currency, like I said. But this is one I invented. See, word around here is, I'm an infopath. I know things -- and information is the most valued commodity there is in this place. Everyone wants to know how the world's doing, how their families are, or their friends...or enemies. Some just want news. So a coin is something I'm handing out, redeemable for a piece of info. Fortunately, I don't charge friends," she said, raising her eyebrows at me with a grin.

I swallowed hard and looked at the open door just a few feet away, where anyone could be listening. But nobody was. Something about Lia had commanded these people's respect in a way I didn't know could be done by anyone but Soran.

But that was already too much worrying about inconsequential things. "So where's Jack?" I blurted out. Her smile withered at once.

"He's...here. Ish. I think."

"What does that mean? Can we get to him? Can we break him out?"

"Jack's not the kind of guy you just...break out, you know? If there were a way out already, he'd be on it. Something must be keeping him down. Has he, uh...ever told you about the...um..."

I shook my head. Jack never spoke of some parts of his past with me, and being an Exhuman, knowing that he had a family once, there were things I would never make him speak of.

Lia frowned, and dug her fingers into the bushels of hair on either side of her head. I could see she was weighing how much to tell me. "Well, it's like this," she said. "A long time ago, Jack turned, and eventually, the XPCA caught up with him. They couldn't hold him too well, his powers didn't seem to be slowed down by a neural dampener too much or anything, and if they put one on him, he could just move out of it, too. They didn't want him dead either, probably Blackett's machinations at play. So they got...creative. Ugly creative. As only the XPCA can."

She took a deep breath and I realized I was holding my own hands painfully tight in my lap. I released them and saw lines where my nails had dug in.

"They put...a bomb in him. Surgically. In his heart. If he disobeyed, they'd blow it up and kill him. If he blinked away and left it behind, he'd have a hole in his heart and die. That's how they finally got him under control, and how he was put under their heel."

I stared at her. "Is it...still there?"

She nodded. "Probably. I'd imagine he got it disabled or something but...it's also possible he's just never defied the XPCA since then, ever. So if they want him locked up again…"

"He might have been in a cell the whole time I've ever known him."

"Something like that, yeah."

"Is that why he went along with the whole P-Force thing? Is that the only reason he's not still out there, slipping around in shadows and dragging out his event and killing XPCA where he can?" I stopped to blink at her. "Is everything about him just a fabrication built around someone holding a gun to his head?"

"Easy there," Lia said, patting my arm. "Jack is Jack. Whatever his reasons and the changes in his life were, they're just things in his past, and he had to walk that past to get to who he is today. It doesn't change anything to ask yourself 'what if', and wonder who he'd be if none of that happened, because it did happen, right?"

"I guess," I mumbled. I found my heart racing and mostly was just horrified that, by twisted logic, it took a literal constant threat of death for Jack to ever decide to want to be with me. Which I guess was pretty selfish, all things considered.

Lia smiled easily at me, and I wondered how she kept her nerve so well all the time. Even now, separated from everyone she knew, mis-ID'd as an Exhuman, locked in a secure facility...for over a week now, the angry plague of New Eden had to be getting to her by this point. But no, she seemed as together as ever. I didn't know how she did it.

"How do you do it?" I found myself asking.

"Huh?"

"How do you keep it all together so easily. I lost Jack and everybody else overnight, and it took me...well, not to get too grim here, but...it took me holding a lethal dose of pills in my hand before I could come to terms with even trying to do anything. I guess...I guess like Jack, really, that I couldn't do or be this until I was...freed? Kinda. By the context of death as alternative. You lost everyone too, and here you are, making a niche for yourself, smiling, reassuring me, so effortlessly."

Her smile hung weirdly on her face and I realized at some point, I'd misspoken somehow. But it was only there for a second before she squeezed my arm again and the smile came back in full force.

"I've always thought that life isn't about doing what you want, or what you're capable of," she said, her voice a little somber for her expression. "If you only ever do those things, you're just stumbling through it, not really deciding anything for yourself, just being a slave to your impulses or what you happen to be good at. To fuzzy chemical signals in your brain," she nodded. "And I don't like that. I don't want to be a slave to anyone. I want to pick my own life, every day, all the time."

Her eyes were shining at me as though lit from deep within. I wasn't sure I'd ever heard her speak so seriously before. "I subscribe to the school of discipline. Whether you want to or not, whether you feel it or not, whether you'd rather be dead, or the world seems garbo, or everyone you know is gone, none of that matters. That's just baggage weighing off of you. No matter how much pressure there is, you're still the one who gets to decide how to move. No amount of moose is stopping you from standing up and walking around like nothing's wrong."

She nodded seriously at me. "So do it. Say 'screw you' to your doubts and your fears and your own frogging brain and be what you want. Every day."

I blinked at her, not sure where all this came from but feeling very surprisingly weightless anyway. I felt like my chest was swelling, like all my guts had been buoyed up by her words and somehow, breathing was just a little easier.

"Every day?" I asked.

"Every day. That's what discipline means to me."

I swallowed hard and, sure, that sounded good, but I wasn't about to shut out every fear and anxiety I had for the rest of my life. It was amazing that she could...if she really did. But looking at the fire in her eyes, I didn't see any way her words could possibly be hollow.

If I was going to be stuck in New Eden with anyone, Lia wasn't a bad pick at all.

"Then...let's find Jack," I told her, and she nodded and grinned, her smile changing from serene to warming in an instant.

"Yes, lets. In fact…" she stood and her smile took on a devious twinge. "I've got an appointment to keep here in a bit. Some XPCA to talk with who might be able to give me something."