I fished in the cooler by the couch and pulled out another lukewarm beer. The fridge had passed beyond my ability to give a fuck. Everything had, really, except this couch and the bathroom. And the bathroom was beginning to push it.

I'd lost track of the days since I was put on house arrest, and the fact I hadn't been charged and sentenced in court-marshal just pissed me off. I knew why they were doing it, of course, but seriously...how many goddamn death sentences did one woman need before they executed her?

The beer flowed fizzy and nasty, but it wasn't like I cared. I probably reeked. I definitely reeked. I'd been spending ninety-five percent of my day in the same underwear on the same couch, waiting and waiting. The beer was just there to make the time go faster, not to be enjoyed. I wasn't really capable of enjoying time, given the situation.

I glanced up at the soldier in my room. A fucking exosuit. They didn't even trust me with a standard guard, I was too dangerous to be left alone in a room with a man with a gun, apparently. More political bullshit, I hated all of it. I sneered at him, at the blank faceplate, and when he failed to react, I flipped him the bird. Even if he pretended not to see it, I knew he did. Knew the targeting computer would light up every graceful contour of my finger for him to enjoy. Fucker.

How bored did that guy have to be? At least he got to go home at the end of his shift, and his home wasn't surrounded by MPs and stuffed with guards. He probably spent all day staring at my panties or my unshaved armpits or something...could never tell anything with those damn faceplates. They always unnerved me. One of the reasons I liked working with the P-Force, it was always so face-to-face. It was like being with the Peregrines again. Every one of them had a personality, there was no such thing as a rank-and-file Peregrine.

And somehow, my time with the P-Force had ended up even worse than the Peregrines. Fuck me.

I turned up the holo because I could hear my own thoughts over it. I'd taken to reality shows because they were frequently the only thing on, and were the only lives more screwed up than mine. Even sitting here waiting for my execution papers, I could always look down on bitchy celebrities, thank God.

I flipped through the channels and stopped on the news. Another good source of depression. Though this story hit me a little harder than it should have. I frowned at missing the first half of it and dialed back to the start of the story.

"Tensions continue to rise in Japan as the Exhuman fugitives, the group mockingly dubbed the the 'Pulverizer-Force' by online communities continues their path of terror, causing untold amounts of damage and ruining countless lives."

The footage cut to an XPCA officer I didn't recognize, but his insignia indicated he was a permanent station in Japan. America had the worst of Exhuman problems by far, but they were still a global issue, and so the XPCA was a global agency, in about the same way the FBI was. Fifty percent diplomatic leveraging, fifty percent security, fifty percent an excuse for Uncle Sam to put his people wherever we wanted. And a hundred percent political bullshit. The guy speaking seemed no different.

"You can look at the numbers if you'd like, you'll see that, per-minute, this is one of the least destructive and lowest-casualty Exhuman events on record. So when I say that the XPCA is doing all it can, both the Japanese and American branches, you can see that we're serious about it. We have control of the situation, and the noose is being drawn ever tighter around these Exhumans' necks."

As he spoke the image changed to a shot taken of Athan and his friends retreating down the street amidst a hail of gunfire. I had to shake my head at how transparently they'd picked a clip that showed the 'bad guys on the run'. And even more so at this prick's pompous attitude.

"Can you believe this shit?" I asked the exosuit in the room. "Athan's a little shit who cries if he swats a mosquito, and they're claiming themselves to be the reason there's low casualties?"

The exosuit of course, didn't respond, the faceplate staying as blank as ever. I considered giving him a kick in the codpiece just to get a reaction, but I thought that reaction might be point-blank scattergun fire, and I wasn't nearly drunk enough for that yet. So I kept on my beer.

"Over the last four days, 'Pulverizer' has remained fairly consistent in their efforts, attempting to attack residences in the city of Okutama, a wealthy, secluded city west of Tokyo. It is believed they made contact with a local terrorist cell, named the Hibakusha, who are a radical organization with no stated goal, but who have launched several attacks against international technology conglomerate IkaCo, as well as the family of the CEO, Ichiro Ikeda."

I had my doubts about all of that, but couldn't be assed to get up and get my mobile to check. Nobody was a terrorist for fun, and ones that had a specific target usually had a reason why, and were way more than happy to talk about it, typically. This was the real reason the news was depressing after serving so long in intel -- you began to see through all the bullshit.

"Recently, however, they moved west, their reign of terror moving across new territories. Their pattern is erratic, and it is believed they are currently on the run. They were last seen in the Nagasaki region on Japan's western coast, terrorizing the locals there in a desperate bid to continue their campaign of fear. We now bring you exclusive footage taken from earlier today, where you can see the bonds of loyalty between 'Pulverizer' dissolving as they rob an ordinary grocery store, threatening all within."

The first thing I noticed was the utterly unexplained VTOL parked in the middle of the street. It was a Sirius-class, a transport ship, deadly fast and deadly quiet. I heard they were popular in Japan where subtlety was much more of a national notion...here in the states we tended to lean into the intimidation factor of a fleet of noisy, chock-full-of-weapons gunships instead.

But this one wasn't XPCA...or not anymore, apparently. The footage had been cut to as though to deny this implication, but there was no way it'd be parked, or that close to the target without something being terribly wrong. My drunk mind punched me in the pain nerves for trying to make it work, but we had a working relationship of mutual misery, and it eventually did its job.

I paused the feed while I thought, and massaged my temples. Sudden erratic movement westward after four days of being stationary. Travelling from Tokyo to Nagasaki in less than a day. Again, the story between the lines told me more about that VTOL than any reporter's lips. So he'd hijacked it somehow. Karu was a pilot before a Peregrine and could certainly fly one of those things, and in checking the stills, she wasn't anywhere to be seen, so probably still inside it. I was beginning to feel something approximating happiness at pushing this puzzle together as I hit play again.

There wasn't any sound, the video seemed like a traffic cam maybe, but what it showed was clear enough. Hi-resolution image of...I blanked for a moment, his sister, what was her name? Mia or something like that. She was walking out of the store with a bag over her shoulder and what looked like a cinnamon bun hanging between her lips.

Chariot intercepted her on her way out and slapped her in the face, sending the bun flying. He silently berated her, that much was clear from the body language, spending several seconds talking, before turning to watch her go past.

I paused the feed again. For once I didn't have anything to go off of against the written story. Which didn't make it true, but even I had to admit, there weren't too many ways to read into bitch-slapping your sister in the face in the middle of the street when she's eating a sweet bun.

"Whaddya reckon?" I asked the guard, nodding towards the screen. "Why'd he do that?"

I could almost see the guy inside the suit shaking his head at me. Bet he wondered why he always got the crazy ones.

I had an idea, and this one was good enough to finally get me off the couch. First, I wheeled into the kitchen and snagged another case of beer, basically all I'd bought last time I was permitted to be escorted to the store. That'd be for after.

And then, I picked up my mobile and browsed through the app store. I knew I'd heard of...there it was. Download. I have indeed read the terms and conditions, accept. Install. Wait fifteen seconds.

And then I pointed my phone at the holo and replayed the clip.

It took a few seconds while the app ran, and then words began to appear. It was for an ad. But after that, words, the app's best-guess at lip reading. With that added to the video, here's what I now saw:

The sister exited the store with bags of stolen goods and a single stolen pastry. Athan intercepted her and shouted "What the hell do you think you're doing?" Actually probably could have read that on my own if I'd tried, he wasn't being subtle.

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

I watched him hit her again but realized...something wasn't right. It didn't look right. I slowed the feed down and zoomed in as far as I could. The app freaked out but it'd get its turn. I watched the stills as Athan's hand came in.

And then fell back onto the couch, which emitted an ominous crack, holding my head. It was fake. It was so obviously fake. Right before he hit her, his arm suddenly grew a hand-length longer to extend onto her cheek. The footage was doctored, which I should have expected, but holy cow was it an ameteur job. I know the video was shot today but come on. Apparently the XPCA needed me more than they knew.

Which meant, he never hit her. He slapped the pastry out of her mouth and her head turned with it. I reset the app, and that made the next lines make a lot more sense.

"We're not criminals because we can be. Only do what we have to. We're not stealing for fun here, Lia."

Cue her looking cowed and dejected and walking off. Brilliant. And incidentally, I finally remembered her name.

Honestly, it warmed my heart a little, as I stretched luxuriously and sprawled on the couch again, making sure my beer was in reach, by reaching for and emptying half of it into me. Athan was still a big ol' softy, even when he had a rap sheet a mile long, he still thought of his morals. Even stupid ones like making sure they weren't nicking pastries for pleasure.

He always had been very anti-fun when he felt guilty about something. It'd been annoying back when he worked for me, made him impossible to cheer up whenever anything had gone legitimately wrong. Always with the I deserve this misery mindset.

I took another drink and sent my thoughts to him through the still on the screen. Kid, as many times as you screw up and deserve it, the universe is gonna screw you and you won't have deserved a thing. You're gonna make yourself old and dead if you don't take happiness where you can find it.

'Course he didn't react either. Just like the statue of the guard I had in my living room. Something about XPCA guys maybe? They just never listened.

I was still celebrating having achieved something with my day when a suit walked in, a very slick and irritating one, which matched its owner.

"You're disgusting," he said. In response, I chugged the other half of my beer, both to irritate him and because I was going to need it. He made a retching face as the foam ran down my chin. "Put on your clothes and stand at attention. You're a disgrace."

"Can't seem to rightly find the motivation, sir. I believe my ability to wear clothes and have a shred of self-respect were taken away with my rank."

"For someone facing the prospect of execution, you've got quite the mouth on you."

"Well if I thought there was any way I wouldn't be put to it, maybe I'd reconsider. But since I'm a dead woman walking anyway," I stretched again, barely able to reach the clinking bottlecaps of the new case I'd laid out for myself. It took some calisthenics, but I got there without getting up. When I returned to my seat, he was staring with open revulsion.

"I suppose you know why I'm here?" he asked, ignoring the spectacle. Maybe he was worried that the more he dwelled on it, the worse it would get. I had half a mind to continue anyway, but honestly, was just plumb out of fucks to give.

"Same reason as always. Legal obligation. More charges served. Leave them on the stack."

He gave me a wry smile and threw another envelope on the growing pile in the corner of the room. Probably thirty of them in there now, just more bullshit printed on trees that never deserved that kind of pitiful epitaph.

"Another five counts of murder," he said, with more excitement than was healthy.

"I'm sure. The VTOL he stole was piloted, wasn't it? Had to dispose of them somehow."

His sneer disappeared as he openly wondered how I knew this, before taking in the scene on the holo. Wordlessly, he regained himself and then continued his pointless attack. "I'd be worried about myself if I were you."

"Yeah, that's because you're stupid," I said, cracking open the bottle on the leg of the couch and hardly spilling a quarter of it. "I'm not sure if you realize, but I can only die once. The XPCA can keep me around as long as they want to keep pinning all their failures on me, but none of that makes me any more dead once they decide to pull the trigger. Honestly, as long as that kid keeps making messes and they keep failing, he's actually prolonging my stay. So cheers to him," I said, raising my beer.

"That's an Exhuman you're raising a glass to," he hissed.

I shrugged. "Still more of a man than you'll ever be. Pencil-dick pencil-pushers; each one of them a sick sadist and a worthless human being."

I drank through most of his returning tirade, mostly because it bored me, but also because it annoyed him. When it looked like he was hitting the good part, I turned the holo back on and finished the news story, though I had to turn it up a few clicks to hear it over his belligerence.

Finally, I realized he had shut up, and was just stewing there, red in the face with tense shoulders. I really wished he'd hit me. Even drunk as I was, I was sure I could put him through the floor. And if that was another mark on my record, oh well. But even he wasn't that stupid.

"All done then? See you tomorrow when Athan does another bad thing?"

"Fuck you," he spat, and I gave him a mocking salute with my mostly-empty and then he turned to leave.

Lovely guy. Brightened all of my days. I could only imagine how many days he was going to spend jerking it to me when I finally died.

Something else had piqued my interest though, something inobvious in the news feed. I scratched my head and struggled upright as the image wobbled in front of me.

Why send his sister to the store? I wondered. If Karu was in the VTOL, that still left Athan himself and his body-modder girlfriend as able-bodied and capable, both of whom were much more prepared for a sudden situation than the high-schooler. It'd make more sense for them to go in and pick up what they needed...I knew how fast the two of them could move...so why her?

Lia had her arms loaded with stuff. A 'full load', I liked to call it when refusing to make more than one trip from the car myself. Bags heavy with goods I couldn't make out, probably enough that she couldn't lift her arms.

So how'd she stick a pastry in there? Bite it first and then grab a dozen bags of groceries? I didn't know how tough cinnamon buns were in Japan, but I doubted it would survive that long in her mouth. Which meant the bags were already prepped in there...that would explain where the body-modder was. And she'd probably carry her own load out with her nanofiber-magnified muscles, ten times the load Lia had.

Which was excessive. If these guys were doing hit-and-runs like it looked, there'd be no need to stock up on provisions. Everywhere in Japan had food if you were willing to fly around and steal it.

I skipped to the end of the vid and watched the last few stills carefully. At the end, right before it cut off, when Lia went back towards the ship...Athan barely began walking the other way. Towards the store. To get more food.

I felt like goddamn Sherlock Holmes as I fell backwards again, my couch cracking its protests. If I wasn't careful it'd die before I did. They weren't doing hit-and-runs, they were stocking up, which they hadn't done before. Just like they hadn't been flying across the country before, just like they hadn't stolen a VTOL before.

Damn, Cosette, I told myself. No wonder the XPCA promoted me up the Intel chain. I was a goddamn genius. Too bad I was the only one around to appreciate it. Well, me and my statue friend. I cheersed him and drank heavily.

West from Tokyo, eh? Straight to Nagasaki on the western edge? I guess it took a genius to figure it out, because I just had, and apparently none of the big brains in the XPCA. I kinda couldn't blame them because they were all about mitigating danger and anticipating Exhuman attacks based on the assumption that, y'know, Exhumans were dangerous. Kind of in our mission statement.

But I also kinda could blame them, and did so liberally. Dumbasses so concerned with treating Exhumans as alien, few of them ever considered what an ordinary human might be doing in that Exhuman's shoes. At the end of the day, most Exhumans behaved the same as very scared, suddenly-empowered people. Almost like they were the same thing, go figure.

So China it was. I had to wonder what Athan was going to find out there. Both in the sense of wondering what was out there to be found, and in what he was going out there for. I knew better than to think he was just running away -- Athan never ran away, as far as I could tell, and I doubted very much that'd change with his allies' lives riding with him. Surrender, maybe, but whether he was fighting, pursuing or surrendering, it was always motivated by his sense of honor.

And I had to laugh, and then realized I was doing so. Damn, genuinely enjoying myself in an utterly shit situation, why did that feel so familiar? Why did Athan always seem to have that effect on me, no matter how badly he fucked things up, I always had to give him credit for trying, because he was always that.

I didn't know what was was waiting for him in China, and strongly suspected that once there, once the XPCA fell off his back and he was no longer actively making waves for the XPCA to drown me under, I'd probably be put down before he could come back. There were always more patsies who could take the blame and take the fall...I hadn't heard or seen a hint of the rest of the P-Force for too long, and had to assume they were in a similar situation to mine.

Hey, maybe I'd even see them at the court-martial. That'd be nice.

But however things turned out for them or for me, what I did know was how things were going to turn out for whoever or whatever was in China. The poor bastards wouldn't know what hit them, if somehow they were standing in Athan's little crusade. The guy had an inherent talent for wanton destruction like I'd never seen in another Exhuman. It was pretty great.

"Don't you think so?" I asked my friend, and he absolutely responded this time, by doing nothing. I gave him a warming smile and finished my drink before picking up the remote again.

I was done sleuthing for the day. It was time to catch up on shitty reruns of pulpy sci-fi. Maybe I could finish out the season before they came for me. Or maybe not. That was a game in its own way.