"You look like you need this," Khol said, waving a vial of luminescent teal crystals in front of me. They tinkled in the plastic tube, which I recognized as the ubiquitous packaging used to deliver medication to the prisoners. He waved it teasingly in front of me, trying to appeal to my desperation.

Of course, it didn't work. The sweat standing on my forehead and the general pallid look I was rocking had nothing to do with drug addiction, and the contents of his vial had little value to me beyond a pretense for this meeting. I let him know that by staring him down.

It took a few seconds of staring before he reacted. "Okay, who are you?" He asked, his dark brows narrowing as he took in my composure. "You're not my typical clientele." He was a little shaper than Argus, but that wasn't hard.

"Let's make a deal," I told him. "Then you'll understand."

"Got credit?" he asked.

I shook my head. "Something better. Argus sent me."

His eyes widened and the four men behind him tensed. I sat perfectly still so that nobody blew me up with their powers, and after several seconds passed, I permitted myself to breathe.

"I should have known," he said. "You look like one of his zombies. If you're not here to buy, and you're not here to kill me, what do you want? Don't tell me that meathead wants to talk?"

"He does, in fact. And I never lied, I meant what I said. I'm still a buyer. I'm just not selling something as meaningless as credit."

He scrutinized me with a lingering gaze, his eyes involuntarily darting to the bead of sweat I felt trickling off my eyebrow. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, finding the darkness behind them so alluring I just wanted to keep them shut and sleep.

But I opened them again, and found him still staring at me.

"Huh," he said, fingering the vial. "So you're one of his zombies, you come to me to get drugs...you say you want to talk. You say he wants to talk." I could see the gears turning in his head and wondered if he'd land on the conclusion I wanted him to, or perhaps even the truth. "So your angle is what, vengeance?"

I nodded as seriously as I could. He smiled. "That bastard thinks he can use me to kill you," I told him. "But nobody uses me. Things go my way, or they don't go at all."

"You're willing to die just to get revenge on the guy killing you? That's a little intense for a little girl."

"A little Exhuman. We don't really get a choice about how fast we grow up."

I gave him a sardonic smile and saw his facade waver for a moment at what a cruel truth I'd casually spouted. I reached for the vial, and he didn't resist my taking it.

"Besides, I'll have this to ease the transition," I told him. "You give me this, I'll do whatever you want to set up a meeting, you use that opportunity to wipe him out, and I'll slip out of this whole goddamn shitshow on crystal wings. As close as a win as people like us are ever going to get."

He liked me, which was good. He didn't object in any way to my casual mention of 'people like us.' A little bit of tribalism to win him over. He shook his head. "You're messed up, kid."

I shrugged and slouched, unsticking my hair from my cheek. "We got a deal then?"

Again, he spent long moments looking at me, with something working inside his head. All sorts of possibilities flashed by, all the millions of ways he could choose to react. Had I played up my innocent suffering too hard? If he really liked me, he might refuse to be a party in my death. But I needed him to believe me, and given our meeting and its context, I didn't have a ton to work with here. This was a frickin' drug deal, not a first date.

He made a gesture at one of the men behind him, and they lifted their shirt, revealing a small pouch strapped to their chest. He unzipped it and drew out another tube in each hand, though I saw many more before he stowed it.

"Argus' power shuts down your body's normal function," he said. "The crystal dream won't hit you nearly as hard if it doesn't metabolize. Take three tubes so you've got enough to last, and tell him I'll meet in two days, in the bar Nex is running over on Block Eleven. Should seem like a good, neutral place, but he doesn't know that I'm in good with Nex' supplier." He shook a vial at me with a grin. "Almost feels like I'm doing a good deed," he said, handing them over.

"Almost," I smiled back at him as I accepted them.

I walked back out into the cool night and found Tower right where I'd left him, arms crossed against a nearby wall, his massive size and the glower on his face keeping any of the other Exhumans from loitering near him.

Which was just adorable, considering what a teddy bear the man was.

"Drugs, Lia?" he asked. "Really?"

I pulled my bag out of his arms and shoved the vials into a secret compartment at the bottom. "Yes, Tower. Drugs, really. I've bought and sold people's lives already, do you think drugs is really any worse?"

He turned to walk with me as I went past. "You're just a kid. You shouldn't be getting mixed up in things like this. It's not right."

"I'm a kid in an Exhuman prison who's going through magical creeping pancreatic, renal, and liver failure while I'm looking for my brother who vanished off the face of the earth where even the XPCA don't know where he wound up. Whether I like it or not, I'm caught up in some stupid gang warfare between some eternally pissed-off superhuman would-be warlords. Forgive me if I indulge in a few less-than-moral activities."

He didn't respond for a moment. "Well it still ain't right."

I turned on him and he raised his hands defensively. "I meant, that you're put in this shit to begin with. No kid should have to deal with what you're dealing with."

I glared at him and then turned back to walking. "For once, I agree."

"Wish you'd just have let me go in and pound him and let Argus fix you up. I don't like working for that bastard any more than you do, but it's the only way you're gonna live."

"There's more to life than living," I told him. "If living was the most important thing, everyone would just bend over backwards whenever a tyrant showed up. That's how you get Nazis, Tower. Jackasses like him that people like me don't stand up to."

"Yeah...but...if you're dead...what about the next tyrant?"

"Someone else's problem," I said, standing aside and letting Tower unlock his house. He had to stoop to get through the doors, New Eden wasn't about to adjust its construction just because some dudes had more dimensions than others.

"I'm super beat," I told him, falling on the couch and unhooking my bra in one move. "I'm going to crash early and talk to Argus tomorrow. Is it cool if I stay here?"

"Anything you want, I'll give you," he said. "But you can't be serious about your plan. You're not really going to go out over someone as garbage as Argus. You've been with us when we fought Exhumans a hundred times more powerful than him."

"Depends what you mean by 'with you'. I've been by Athan my whole life, and he's dealt with all sorts of shrimp. That doesn't mean I have, doesn't mean I can. Like I said before, I'm just a kid with organs shutting down. I'm not even an Exhuman for God's sake, Tower."

"So tell the guards! Get out of here, go...go be in a hospital where they can hook you up with machines which will keep you afloat. I don't understand why you're doing this the worst possible way."

I sat up and glared at him. "I already told the guards I am Exhuman. Not like they just let me out because I say otherwise. My priority right now is getting access to Athan and his whereabouts. I might have some idea where to look if I have 'net access, and I know that some people in New Eden have a functioning workaround. Those people--"

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

"If they have one, it's the same one that'd be in a hospital outside."

"And what about Steffie, huh? And what about Jack? And you?"

"What about us?" he bellowed. "We're not dying!"

I made sort of a mewling growl at him that had more to do with my body's disposition than any loss of words I might have had, but his voice dropped instantly.

"We're not," he repeated.

"You might be. Steffie was already on the edge. Who knows about Jack? Or if they decide Tem is worth keeping alive? Or what and how you'll feel after the sickness of New Eden creeps into you. It's not something I'm going to allow if I have any chance to stop it."

He sat down on the floor in front of me, the top of his short afro still taller than my slouching frame on the couch, and I saw his face was hard with emotion. "By throwing yourself away? It's not your job to fix everything. Tem and Jack and Steffie...and I, we're not helpless. Each of us is way stronger than you. We should be the ones willing to throw everything away to stage a rescue, not you."

"It's the Ashton blood," I smiled at him, closing my eyes and this time, letting myself drift off into the blackness behind them.

"That's what I'm afraid of," he said, before I faded away.

I slept uncomfortably, waking too many times to pee something which was too wrong a color. I kept finding new ways to ache, and at some point had to wonder if this was what it was like getting old. When I was seventy, eighty, or ninety, and I was frail and falling apart, would it be just like this, but without hope in sight?

More alarmingly, did that mean Argus had the power to fix people? If he were less of a power-snatching bastard and dedicated himself to the common good, could he patch up the elderly and give them a new lease on life, bereft of creaks and cracks? It got me thinking, as I laid there on the dark couch, unable to fall asleep despite the tiredness deep in my bones, thinking of all the Exhumans I knew and had ever met, and what a world we could live in if only all their powers had been used for the public good.

That was kind of a step two for Athan's step one. He foresaw a world where Exhumans weren't treated like garbage, but once they'd been integrated into society, how would society have to change in order to adapt to the addition? Having powers like Argus' around seemed less like adapting to a new civil rights movement, and more to some kind of...transhumanist paradigm shift, where stuff like legitimate immortality was suddenly on the table.

I sighed heavily and rolled over. No wonder Exhumans had been oppressed successfully for hundreds of years. Too many cans of worms to integrate simply. My shoulder bearing my weight was aching and the other one was cold. My legs weren't though, and in investigating why, I found a blanket had been thrown over me at some point.

Tower was a nice guy, I thought, as I snuggled into it and drifted off again somehow.

Maybe a little too nice, I thought, as I left him loitering outside Argus' hideout on Block 17. He looked about ready to crash the place and demolish everyone inside, and I wasn't entirely sure he couldn't. But his powers offered no protection against Argus' withering, and if he got nailed with what I was going through for some misguided rampage of revenge over me, I'd never be able to forgive myself.

I didn't want him to ruin everything, so I didn't want him involved. But he was involving himself anyway, and the reasons for keeping him in the dark were growing thin. I went over my plans again in my head as I sat and waited for Argus to dramatically appear amongst his men and grace me with his presence.

Because sure, keep me waiting. Not like I was short on time or anything. Bastard.

"Oh, it's Black Shark," he said, as though surprised. "Here to beg for your life?"

"No," I told him. "I'm here to fulfill my end of the deal of you offered me."

"So Khol is dead? That was fast," he grinned at me, looking like a shark with an eyepatch.

"No," I said again. "I'm not a killer, and I don't have the capacity to be one. I have knowledge and I use it."

"Then we have no deal," he said, dusting off his hands and standing, the wooden chair squawking on the tile floor. "Good day."

I remained seated. "You don't strike me as a petty guy. You don't get hung up on emotion or let feelings get in the way of your work, do you?"

He eyed me with one dark eye. "No, I don't. Which is why if you're making some plea--"

"Then why get hung up on killing Khol?" I asked, leaning down and hefting my bag, which I tossed to the other end of the table for him. "What's so important about his death, anyway? You really just want him gone, and that's what I'm able to do. If you want him dead, you send a killer. If you want him removed, send an infopath. This is what I'm offering."

He frowned and opened the bag. In it were scrawled notes and photos, information I'd scrounged up in the last couple of days...enough to be both alluring and condemning, mixed in with the parts I'd just made up. He looked over it with growing interest, and I worked hard to keep my face neutral.

"Just blackmail him. He's got too many illegal ops for the guards to turn a blind eye with that evidence," I said. "Or -- more specifically, because it's my job to do so -- let me blackmail him. I've got a meeting arranged with him tomorrow, all I need from you is time to do my job, and your approval. You send me in acting as your liaison, and I'll negotiate his surrender of his turf to you. Or maybe even just working as your subordinate. Whatever you want."

He pawed through my files a bit longer, clearly impressed and clearly taken aback. Inwardly I was just shaking my head at the idiot. He called himself a schemer and a planner, and yet he never once had considered handling a rival in any way other than murder. If he was a shark, like his scraggly grin indicated, he was a hammerhead, and every problem was a nail.

But these were my waters. I was a black shark, and pulling others into the abyss was how I hunted. I watched him carefully as I added the next few words.

"I've got a meeting with him tomorrow. I won't...get there, if I'm dying, and Khol will be suspicious if he meets your appointed mediator and she looks like a ghost's sheet. I'll tell you exactly where and when we're meeting, you can follow me and hide right outside with a bunch of armed goons if you want to make sure I don't run off, and put this junk right back in me until you're satisfied with my work. Because this will work, that's a Black Shark guarantee."

He picked at his teeth thoughtfully while he flipped through the pages and images. I could see him weighing options in his mind, and while I wasn't much one for prayer, per se, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't sitting there, every fiber of my shutting-down being willing his stupid mind to see past my words, to put one-and-one together and just friggin' figure it out.

And then I saw it. The glimmer, the 'aha' moment, and I couldn't help but to slide, satisfied back in my seat. He missed it, too enraptured with himself, and I breathed easily as the clamp in my chest loosened.

"Alright, Black Shark," he said, with imperious confidence. "You've done good work. Perhaps I was too hasty in overlooking the utility of your services. I will accept the modified deal."

He suddenly looked at me like he'd just seen me and frowned. Uh oh. "But there will be no trickery, no outsmarting your way into any further cleverness. I've accepted you twisting the rules thus far because...perhaps you are right, I should never have expected one as weak as you to be able to achieve something I couldn't. But that ends now. I know you're holding the end of a lot of ropes, and I'm not going to let you put any of them around my neck."

I shrugged at him, while he blithely continued on about his formidable planning.

"From today until the meeting, you will be watched by my men. We will escort you to the meeting, and you will not be permitted to ever leave our sight. If there is anything amiss, you will die. Do you understand?"

"Of course. But nothing will be amiss. The information is in your hands right now, and so is my life. Let me do my job and I'll be happy to get out of your way."

He stood again, but this time with an arm extended across the table. I took it and again, shook my head inwardly as he veritably crushed mine in his grip. Every problem was just a nail to this guy.

"The meeting is tomorrow morning at nine, at Nex' bar on Block Eleven. I have a guy waiting just outside now, I'll tell him that I'm staying with you until then, and then I'll sit and wait until we're ready."

"How very accommodating. I'll have men listening in on your conversation if you don't mind," he said with a dismissive wave, and four of his flunkies stepped forward to escort me out.

Tower's face was one of extreme consternation as he saw me approaching, flanked by the goons. I gave him a smile to reassure him, but it did little. I explained the situation to him, about the blackmail and negotiation, and how I'd be held to make sure there was no further scheming on my part.

"And...you're okay with that?" he asked. "You don't have like...ten more plans that need to get executed to make this all go smoothly?"

"I'm not AEGIS," I smiled at him. "I have a plan and it's going to do what I need. Tomorrow, I'll negotiate Khol's surrender, and Argus will fix me, and I'll be free to go back to what I need. A setback, but, well," I wiped a streak of greasy sweat off my brow "what choice do I have?"

He eyed the guards around me and I held up my hands to tell him to stop calculating whether he could beat them all. Maybe he could, but still, no.

"It's fine, Tower. Just have a little patience and a little faith. I'm an infopath. Trust me."

"You're also a damn liar and a schemer, Lia. Trusting you is a bad option."

I winked at him. "Sometimes. But not now. Just let me work, okay? I'll see you after."

"I'll be outside the bar," he said. "If they try to pull anything--"

"Don't, seriously. Have faith. Please."

He looked down at me, breathing heavily while my breaths were shallow and short. He was so damn big, I thought that every one of his breaths must have been a whole minute's worth of breathing for me. I saw his eyes flickering with thought behind them, but just as I'd done with Argus, I saw the situation diffusing just as I'd hoped as he relented and put his hands on my shoulders.

"Don't do anything heroic, you tiny idiot," he said. "You're just following your own plan now, right? You're going to blackmail Khol and Argus will be happy and treat you, yeah?"

I nodded.

"There's no reason to do more. And then we can look for your brother."

I nodded again.

"Okay." He took a deep breath. "Then I'll stay back and let you work. I hope you know what you're doing."

I smiled and tapped my forehead, the gesture a little lost for impact because of the hair matted to it, but the smile was genuine as hell.

"Don't worry," I reassured him. "I'm an infopath. I already know nothing will go wrong."