"Who's this?" AEGIS asked, her voice equal parts concern and curiosity.

Karu was not so diplomatic, simply glaring at my companion with open hostility. The kind that included pointing guns.

"This is Saga," I said, interceding. "Or...it's something like her. I don't quite know."

"Oh," Karu said. "Another code-X. I understand now why you have been behaving aberrantly."

And then she tried to shoot around me, making my shield flash as I held fast and impacted the shots. The girl screamed, and I realized I needed to figure out a name for her other than Saga, since I knew for damn sure Saga wasn't screaming like that.

"Please, I don't want to be here, please just let me go," she pleaded.

"Then go," I said, and she did no such thing, staying rooted on the spot. The fake person wouldn't do anything Saga wouldn't do, and Saga had no reason to leave. I'd figured that much out.

"If I go, she'll shoot me," she said, her voice choked with emotions and tears enough that my own throat was closing up in sympathy just hearing her. "Please. Please, just take me back. I don't want to die."

I closed my eyes and drank in Saga's senses, her vision of standing in this room, full of strange people, foremost, the man who was not me. There was no Karu here threatening her, just the indecipherable babble of too many voices too far away, all yelling at her to leave.

"We have a situation," I told the others. "And I'm not fully sure how to explain it because I'm not fully sure what's going on. But what I do know is that this person behind me is Saga. And you," I said, turning to the pale girl in the corner. "Are not."

"Bullshit," Saga said. "I'm the most Sagaest goddamn Saga there's ever been. There's nobody more me than me." She hopped to her feet and stared me down, a look of sheer irritation piercing her normally calm exterior, until she was mere inches from me. And then she grinned, and I felt something rubbing the front of my pants. "How about we settle this the traditional way? You test us both exhaustively, and then you know for sure who's the real one."

The not-Saga looked at me in horror like I'd already agreed to rape, and I just sighed and shook my head. "Please no," she whispered.

"Yeah we probably don't have time for that," Saga grinned. "Exhaustively means like, four or five times for Athan before he's exhausted. And while I could keep up--"

"Sit down, Saga," I said, and of course she didn't, so at the very least, I took her hand off my junk. "I'm not kidding."

"Yeah," Lia chirped. "No time for screwing around," she giggled.

"Feels like your punchline delivery is hindered by not wanting to swear," AEGIS commented.

"It's a sacrifice," Lia shrugged.

"Guys, I'm not kidding here," I warned. "Somehow, all I know is that inside this girl, Saga's somehow like, trapped in there, and she's seeing things I'm not."

"So you say you are seeing things," Karu clarified. "In a situation where you are dealing with a code-X? And you cannot think of any possible explanation for your confusion?"

"Sweetie, that's just a girl," AEGIS said, her voice soothing. "I'm sure she's very nice...and if you wanted to replace Saga, it sounds like an upgrade to me--"

"Hey!"

"--but it's just an ordinary girl. Where did you find her?"

"Under a tree, near the outer wall. Just like Saga--"

"So if she's from the outer ring, she's not even Exhuman."

"She...I don't even know. She's just like...a vessel, that Saga's somehow trapped inside."

"That's rude," she said from behind. "We've been talking all morning, haven't we?"

"Y'know, if Saga's really trapped in there," Saga said, cracking her knuckles "I think we ought to open things up, let the poor girl out. It's what I'd want, I know."

I think Saga was having too much fun terrorizing the girl and establishing her dominance as the one true Saga. From her perspective, as a war of heart and mind, I could understand her desire to prove herself and pick apart a perceived intruder.

And she was doing a great job. I was legit worried for my companion, which I knew I shouldn't be if it was Saga. But...maybe it wasn't, and Saga was like...trapped...in there? Mentally? Or something...I didn't know the limits of what a code-X could do to her, or if there even were limits. But the very real Saga in front of me seemed very realistically willing to test those boundaries.

All my friends had a point. Maybe Lia and Tem hadn't really spoken up on it, but Saga, AEGIS, and Karu had all brought up arguments I couldn't defeat about this Saga's authenticity. If it was a mindfuck of some kind, who was I to assume it was somehow Saga being affected and not me? If I could assume her powers were behaving strangely, why couldn't I equally accept that it was probably only my awareness of them which was off?

I wanted more than anything to just get rid of the not-Saga and be back with all of my friends and focus on the guns and Moon and this crazy city we'd found ourselves in. It seemed the most plausible, the most right.

But none of that changed the fact that when I closed my eyes, when I opened my mind to what I felt was Saga, I could still see something which wasn't here. An image which made no sense at all, so vivid, so real, without a doubt something that Saga -- the real Saga -- was seeing and feeling and experiencing right now. And so desperately shoved into my mind, a plea for help.

It was almost like just having my eyes open or closed could send me between worlds, and each was doing their best to convince me the other didn't exist. This one, by rational arguments, by consistency, by having all appearances of being. And the other by existing despite lacking all of those, a vision so nonsensical that the very nature of it being felt like defiance.

I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what I even could do. I spent so many minutes closing and opening my eyes, seeing the concerned looks of those around me, or the irritation of those around her, as they insisted in mumbled shouts that she leave.

I sat next to Lia and looked into her eyes. A ring of green on the outside, a ring of brown in the middle. And such complicated radiating patterns in between. They were eyes I'd seen a thousand times, eyes I could remember from the flat of my back waking up in the morning, or across a breakfast table, or that I could share snickering glances with when that one awkward scene came on during family movie night, and neither of us wanted to acknowledge our parents in the room.

They were like my eyes, I knew. And so I let out a deep breath as I sat on the bed with her and copied her pose, folding my legs under me, hands in lap.

"What do you think?" I asked her. "About...all of this. Me seeing things from the perspective of Saga, who's this person, but isn't?"

She had her serious thinking face on already. Whatever she said, I was prepared to believe.

"I think...that you're in a city full of unknowns," she said, pausing only to chew her lip for a moment. "There's hundreds of Exhumans here. You've just been promoted up some chain of command to some rank you don't know all the ins-and-outs of yet. There's something at play, and it's messing with your head, and that's honestly really scary."

She glanced around at the others as though looking for affirmation, and then swallowed hard.

"But...and I'm not dismissing your thoughts out of hand here. I believe you when you say you're having...sensations or whatever...and that this girl is involved, or at least, you believe she is. But none of the rest of us are, especially AEGIS, who isn't susceptible to a code-X like the rest of us might be. Now maybe that means they already got all of us, and there's something extra-special stubborn about you," she gave me a weak smile "but...it can also mean that just by measure of a prevailing perception...you're seeing things, bro. And in a city full of Exhumans, there's way, way too many reasons why that might be."

Her response was exactly what I thought from the moment I saw her thinking about this seriously. Measured, diplomatic, taking in all the data she had in front of her, and emphasizing what we didn't know over what we did.

I closed my eyes and saw two strangers sitting on the bed, cross-legged, facing each other, intimate. They looked like brother and sister to me, or...maybe husband and wife. Absolutely not a pair of strangers.

Which was vexing, because that's how Lia and I were, for sure, but it wasn't...at least, I didn't think it was...how those two had been in Saga's vision. The two people who had been Lia and myself hadn't seemed related or intimate in the slightest until I initiated that.. Again, both seemed to struggle for legitimacy, with this world making perfect sense, and that one existing despite making none.

I really wished I had another set of eyes I could close to block out both of them and just think. The real world...er...the world I saw with my eyes open, was thankfully silent as the others gave me time to think on Lia's words, but Saga's world was loud and vicious as ever, and I could not understand a word of it. Everything was slightly muted and fuzzy, as though I was nearsighted and deaf, although I had to guess that it was because our connection wasn't solid enough.

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Which was strange, because earlier, it had been. I'd been able to hear my not-me talking to her. I suddenly desperately wanted to hear what was going on in her world, to see if there were more clues there. Or, mostly, I was just grasping at anything I could reach.

But I couldn't talk to her. Even when I could hear, we couldn't communicate through it. But there had to be a workaround. I glanced around the room, looking for anything, and my eyes landed on the tablet Lia'd just been working on.

"I'm going to borrow this," I said.

She nodded. "There's no 'net yet, but I'm close. Rio was a big help, and I'm in the military--"

"Don't need 'net," I said, and opened up a blank message and began typing.

> Saga, can you read this?

I typed, feeling the studs of the keys and the haptic feedback, my eyes closed and focused on her response.

> If you can read this, nod your head.

My vision swam as the head I was looking through bobbed up and down, and then she stood, looking around the room the same way I just had. There wasn't a tablet for her to use, there wasn't anything at all of interest, just a bunch of ordinary shit from a bunch of ordinary people, no guns or armor or machine parts.

I couldn't feel but assumed her annoyance at the spartan room, and she went instead to a wall, seamless, plain white stone. And then a strange lack of pain as she bit off the tip of her thumb and smeared blood, bright red against the white on it.

It took her a few goes because her thumb kept healing but eventually she got a simple message out.

'Sup.

I opened my eyes and saw the not-saga standing in the same corner, a corner of her dress in her hands as she scrubbed the wall with her thumb, fretting about some spot I hadn't noticed.

And then she yelped about a spider and began patting herself down, swatting at her body. It looked almost convincing, but given Saga being in there, it was unmistakable that she was slapping her backside at me in an effort to humiliate this girl I was watching. I could imagine her irritation at its failure, and closed my eyes and began writing again before she decided to escalate the situation.

> What is going on? Why am I seeing things differently from your view? Who is this girl?

Saga looked down at her thumb and the pitiful amount of blood it drew, and her body slumped with a sigh. Too many questions, too many words, when just the one had taken her most of a minute already to write.

I tried to simplify my prompt, but she wasn't paying attention anymore, she was back in her own world looking at what she saw, scouring the room. I watched her go, watched her analyze every object and person, looking for something.

She picked up a stone stool which was smattered with blood for some reason and slammed it against the ground a few times without effect. Looking around again, she set eyes on the desk. And the window behind it.

She tried to prop herself under the desk and push it out the window to the ground two floors below, but she wasn't strong enough. I moved to help her, and found a similar problem, feeling two roomfulls of people staring at me like I was crazy.

"Help me throw this out the window," I said.

"Why, dude?" Lia asked.

"Just do it, please. Please. I need this to test something."

She looked round at the others and nobody moved for a moment. And then Tem stood and climbed under the desk with me, straining her best to shove it.

And then came all the others, lifting and pushing, the desk rising up and teetering towards the window.

As it went, I closed my eyes to watch from Saga's view, expecting a sudden galanization of the others in the room as they all altruistically joined Saga in throwing the table out her window as well. More of the inexplicable confusion which was her world's nonsense versus my reason.

Except it didn't happen. The figures stood exactly where they had been. They continued berating and threatening her. The two worlds had disconnected, and I didn't know why.

Our table flipped over the low windowsill and crashed into the street below, cracking into stone splinters. Any one of which would have served as a suitable quill to keep Saga's blood-ink flowing, I realized. But hers stayed right where it was.

As did, I realized, not-Saga, who was still by the wall she was 'cleaning'. Whatever had caused these two worlds, it didn't like Saga doing what she was, it had chosen not to parrot her.

And it caused a fracture. I could reach over, blindly, and put my hand where I saw Saga as being. And although I could feel anything, my hand would stop.

I closed my eyes and felt through Saga. She saw and felt nothing, the not-me was not under the table with her, there was no hand on her...uh...I shifted my hand slightly...on her torso. Nothing. And yet my hand floated in the air, propped up by nothing I could feel.

I gave it a moment's thought and then went back to my tablet and wrote again.

> Sorry about this. I need to test something.

And then I took a running kick at the empty air.

I tripped and fell on my face, my chin cracking on the white stone as I stumbled on nothingness. Even preparing myself for what wasn't there, my mind couldn't wrap itself around what it couldn't perceive, and I fell way harder than I'd intended.

As I screwed up my face from the pain and blocked out the explosion of concern from the others, I saw Saga now lurched a few feet from where she had been, her nose inexplicably in pain and blood streaming down her front from it. But in her world now, I saw not-me had kicked her full in the face. We were synced again, at least on her end.

She shambled up to the wall and dipped her fingers in the stream of blood to smear on it again. Thanks, needed the blood.

> Wasn't my intention. What's going on?

You, me, everyone trapped in own versions of the world. See real others as fakes, see fakes as real.

I slumped, feeling AEGIS fussing over me with medical gel over my split lip and the cut on my chin. There was pain there, for sure. And she seemed as real as AEGIS ever had. But Saga's explanation went a long way in making sense of this situation.

> What about Lia? Karu? AEGIS? Where are they? What do they see?

They're around. Dunno AEGIS. Lia, Karu, in their own worlds.

She struggled getting the last couple of words out, until she cracked her face on the wall again to get another pool of ink flowing. I winced at seeing her do it from her perspective, helpless and flinching as the corner of the wall suddenly lurched into my...her face.

Something hijacking senses. I can still broadcast direct lower-level than that. If couldn't, we be screwed.

She was beginning to run out of wall and went around the corner for a new canvas.

> How do we fight it?

No idea.

> You can't like...reprogram or compel us to shut out the fake senses?

I can shut out your real senses. Wanna be deaf and blind?

> No, not really. So it's not...fake, our bodies legit believe that what we're seeing is what we're seeing? Like, this all is…

I struggled to delineate two things that should never be seperate. How could you differently define your senses and your senses in your brain? The only place your senses really existed to begin with was in your brain.

But she understood.

Yes. I screw with the mind. This is higher-level than that. Raw input. I can't touch it.

But she could plant visions and memories directly into our heads, and that was what I was seeing, I realized. Seeing what Saga was, that was actually just her streaming her memories directly into my short-term memory so I'd live it out nearly instantly. No wonder things seemed a little distorted and funny, but I had to hand it to her for coming up with a workaround.

> So...we just run then? Get out of range of the city and whatever this is and it goes away?

I said I don't know.

She paused, and then struck out the last sentence.

Won't work.

I waited while she fingerpainted the rest of her thought.

All the toads, they are from this. This is where toads come from. Found those in Japan and America -- those must still be in reach.

> Well, shit.

And worse news

She stopped to refresh her ink again, and I let her do it with my eyes open so I didn't have to see the wall coming this time. After a moment I rejoined her and found her on her knees, scribbling away at an essay that took up the rest of the wall.

We don't have much time. Feel it in the corners of your mind, starting to set in. Some sensory atrophy. Thing changing how your head works, slowly. You and everyone, becoming toads too.

When she was done, she sat down, staring at the wall to make sure I had time to take in every word, wiping the blood off her hands onto her pants. I sat down as well, breathing heavily as all this new information set in.

I knew what it meant, but at the same time, had no idea what it meant. I didn't know what it was like being a toad, or how thinking felt or who I'd be if my own thinking patterns were changed. I remembered back when Saga had mindfucked me into being her boyfriend for a day, and how terrifyingly easy it had been for me to be someone else. All I'd done was what felt normal for me, but...it hadn't been normal at all.

I suddenly realized what everyone else here was, what being a toad truly meant. Everyone else in this city, everyone else in this room, they were doing things that made perfect sense to them, and yet they were jerked along to act like how the city wanted. When I'd split open my chin, the person who wasn't AEGIS had doted on the person who wasn't me, just the same as she would have, because that's what she needed to do to keep up the facade. She had no say in the matter, her perceptions had probably been altered to make it so that acting as she had -- as AEGIS had -- was the only outcome.

She was a puppet, in other words. And slowly, all of us were being strung up, our minds smoothed out until we would do the exact same dance. And there was nowhere to run, and no way to fight back. Nothing even to fight against, except our own senses.

Except…

I looked at the empty spot where the table had been. I closed my eyes and looked at the chin of not-me. AEGIS had dressed me with medical gel, and even some quick stitchwork, because of course she had. But not-me was still bleeding slightly, his chin only wiped down and fussed over, the treatment of a random girl from Oasis, not a packed and prepared self-trained medical professional.

There were cracks. The illusion wasn't perfect. The realities had differences between them, though none of us could see it in a single glance. Only by peering between each others' senses could we see where the incongruities lined up, and maybe...just maybe...if we shoved our fingers in those gaps and pulled, we might unravel the world.

Maybe, I hoped. It seemed a stretch to pull apart an entire fake reality just by prodding at it, but that was all I had. It was all we had time for. If my mind kept slipping, soon, Saga wouldn't be able to connect with it, and then each of us would be locked away in our own world, helpless to claw at it.

I closed my eyes and felt the studs under my fingers as I typed Saga a final message.

> Help me find the others. Let's bring everyone together, and then let's try everything we can to take these worlds apart.

She saw, stood, and into our view, she raised her hand and gave the two of us a thumbs-up, as we each left the room with a stranger, the others complaining at our backs as we went.