"Well, things are somehow worse than I thought imaginable," Cosette confirmed, slumping into the couch.

Which was, for how casually she did it, actually quite a feat. I was already crammed on the couch, with AEGIS and Lia sitting next to me. Tem occupied the uncomfortable space in the 'kitchen' area, if it could be said to be a kitchen...or contain any area whatsoever. Moon was hidden in equal parts behind her book and a towering pile of junk which threatened to topple and flood the room with microprocessors, and Karu was leaning against the front door. Whitney, who was the one paying for and living in the cramped space, was standing in the door to the bathroom, which was pretty much the only space left in the entire house.

It was a little ridiculous to think we wouldn't have physically fit in the room if she didn't have a fold-out bed. Sorta made me question why we were meeting and working in here, except that nobody had proposed we do otherwise.

"Worse how?" AEGIS asked Cosette, frowning at her own findings. As we'd all been for the last few hours while we sponged up as much data as we collectively could.

"Seems like some idiot killed Senator Irenside in his home," Cosette answered. "And what's worse, it seems like that actually matters. From what I'm seeing of internal reports, a lot of...let's say policy crossed that man's desk, and his absence is being keenly felt. Of course that's a huge scandal, but of course, of course, that's super hush-hush."

"So basically, there's a power vacuum?" Lia asked. She tried typing on her mobile but her elbow kept bumping into me. She gave me an annoyed glare like that was somehow my fault, and then scooted off to lay on the floor at our feet, her body carefully twisted between some of the heaps of junk.

"Well, somewhat that, but mostly a lack of direction," Cosette clarified. "It's not like anyone can really gun for his position, it seems he'd kinda molded it around himself over the last...god...who knows how many years. But now that he's not influencing decisions, it turns out, nobody else is."

"Nobody would do a better job than he," Karu huffed. "By which I mean, of course--"

"Yeah we got it," Lia said. "Is it stupid crowded in here or is it just me?"

"It's stupid crowded," Saga's voice echoed from the bathroom.

"I don't mind. The sooner we figure out a plan the better," said AEGIS.

"Um, if it helps, I have...coffee...ramen...and hot water. Which can be used in coffee or ramen," Whitney offered. "No cups though...wasn't really...expecting company."

"This is stupid," Lia said, standing, or mostly standing, and trying to find an inch of space to cram into somewhere. She made it halfway around the couch before tripping over Tem. "Tem, aaagh!" she yelped, pinwheeling for half a moment before crashing sideways into a pile of junk, and Moon.

"Are you serious, Lia?" Moon said, utterly deadpan, before going slack and emerging as a ghost from Lia's back. "This is a crass violation of my personal space. And I have lost my place in my book."

"Sorry! I just tripped over Tem. Why is she invisible anyway? We're just going to bump into her if we can't see her."

"I was...getting out of the way. I'm s-sorry."

"I would prefer you get out of my head now," Moon complained. "As well as Saga. I am not certain there is much left about me not currently being violated. I am not a fan."

"Not my fault everyone else here is just being boring and reading the 'net. Gotta entertain myself somehow."

"Okay, this is insane," I said. "Half of us should clear out, we'll be more productive if we're not literally tripping over each other."

"Works for me," Cosette said, tapping away on her tablet. "I'll take a coffee and a ramen, hon."

"I will go if Saga stays," Moon said, as Lia put her back in her body.

"And I'll go wherever Moon does," Saga's voice echoed back.

There were several minutes of bickering, made all the worse by Saga constantly changing which side she wanted to be on. Ultimately, Karu just put her in a headlock and dragged her out of the house, and with them, they took Lia and Moon, leaving myself, AEGIS, Whitney, and Cosette here, in a much more reasonable group where we could actually like, breathe and shit.

Oh, and Tem.

"Thank God for Karu," Whitney said, sipping coffee from an styrofoam cup, and for one horrifying moment, I thought she'd combined her two offerings. But as she gave one which Cosette accepted without complaint, I realized she must have just been recycling old empty ones. Which was still pretty vile, probably.

"Soooooo," Cosette began again. "You guys totally killed Senator Irenside, didn't you?"

"What makes you say that?" AEGIS asked.

"He's a corrupt dude with ties to the XPCA. He was killed under mysterious circumstances with lots of rumors there was Exhuman involvement. Also, I found a file that says you guys were suspected."

"Where are you finding these?" AEGIS asked, leaning over and half-crushing me into the couch. "I've been combing these systems for hours and haven't found any of this."

"Insider knowledge, sweetheart. Ever since our last major security breach, they instituted a lot of new security provisions. That last breach was you guys too, by the way. Sometimes feels like everything that goes wrong at the Raven's Nest can be traced back to you."

"Flattering, but I'm sure that's not true," I said, hoping it wasn't.

She laughed. "Yeah of course not. Believe me, we still were staring down Exhuman events every week without you, and those guys didn't do it for any reasons. Actually makes it pretty easy to figure out what had your fingerprints on it, precisely because there was a reason behind it."

"...yeah," I agreed. Because what else was there to say? How do you respond to the correct assertion that you are a serial killer, even if it was couched in reason like she said.

The room fell silent for a few minutes, just the sound of everyone on their own devices, doing what they could.

"Um, speaking of power vacuums," Cosette said "New Eden is looking pretty bad right now."

I saw Lia go a little rigid as I asked "Did Idris have his fingers up in there, too?"

"Not so much, but some obviously. But more the fact that place is always a hotbed, and a few weeks back, someone just dumpstered two of the gang leaders without any replacement leadership in place. The other gangs have been going ape in tearing apart the area, and it's spread to full-on warfare in the streets at times now."

"That's hardly the fault of...whoever took out those guys," Lia pouted. "If anything, the gangs should have had more formal hierarchies, to denote a clear next leader in the event of this kind of incident."

Cosette scoffed. "Hah. Like any ganger is going to tell another 'hey, you can have everything I've built, as soon as something kills me'. That reads like an invitation, not a chain of command."

"Well, some of them aren't that stupid," she frowned. "Like Khol."

"Whozzat?"

AEGIS interrupted. "Um, breaking news. Another Exhuman event."

She reached over and tapped a few times on Cosette's tablet, the biggest holo we had, since Whitney prefered VR to screens, and a feed from the news appeared. With another tap, it unmuted and we heard a reporter speaking over the images of the event unfolding.

"...marking the third event in as many days. The proximity to New Mexico may indicate that these are fugitives from the Eden Escape, but why they would choose to act out here and now is as inexplicable as any Exhuman event."

I couldn't believe what I was seeing. An Exhuman event, sure. I saw and even somewhat understood those. Even the grizzly, uncensored slaughter which was airing, with the Exhuman savagely eviscerating fleeing civilians, killing them ruthlessly, looking so beyond furious as to be completely unaffected as she ripped people apart. Even that, I could get.

But what I couldn't understand was why. Why her? Why them?

"We have confirmation that both Exhumans are working in concert, and as such, this has been confirmed to be a double event. Evacuation protocols are in effect, and we urge everyone in the area, if you are tuning in now and seeing this, please, please flee for your lives. These Exhumans have shown no remorse in, and in fact, seem to be explicitly hunting down civilians to murder. The XPCA is mobilizing but please…"

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

The words sounded staticy and tinny to my ears. I kept thinking I was just seeing wrong, but the powers...the powers didn't lie. There was nobody else who those two could be.

Trish and Gil. They looked more now like when I'd first met them in New Eden, when the 'sickness' there had full sway over them, and turned her into a sadistic killer, and him into an obtrusive leech. I'd thought that was over when I'd seen them last, model parents, raising their adopted wards. They were what I thought every Exhuman could be, should be.

And I'd lied to Cosette about them, covered for them. Only for this to happen. Why?

"Shit," Cosette said, summarizing my thoughts succinctly. "Those were the two you couldn't find, right Chariot? Not many umbrist-classes walking around."

I wanted to respond but my mind was just buzzing blank. I watched as Gil's arms exploded into a mass of tendrils and brought two people screaming and thrashing through the pane of glass of a storefront. His fleshy, distended arms snapped one without apparent effort, and Trish ran the other through with a javelin of pure darkness. Two corpses joined the others on the streets.

"And I thought Khol was bad," Lia said in a low voice.

"Why isn't the XPCA there?" Whitney asked, her voice shaky. "Why are there so many people dying?"

"It's a double event," AEGIS said, adjusting her glasses as she looked down at the image. "Special protocols are in effect. Exhumans tend to scale...exponentially."

"But people are dying," Whitney whimpered.

"They are," AEGIS agreed, looking unhappy about it. "And from what I can see on 'net traffic, they're mobilizing as best they can, but the event just broke, Trish and Gil are...from the looks of it...explicitly hunting civilians."

"They should be there," I seethed. "That's the XPCA's job, is to die so that regular people don't have to. That's the whole fucking charade."

AEGIS frowned bitterly. "Yeah. It's just really unfortunate timing. There's been a lot of events recently, and then a lot of their forces are currently in the south-east, trying to deal with the flying telekinetic guy. They're scrambling but there just…"

She stopped. It took me a moment to realize she had, and then I looked at her and found her staring at me.

"What?" I asked.

"I uh...it's nothing."

"What?"

She dragged her toes across the carpet, almost bashfully. Since I'd made eye contact with her, she'd been avoiding it. I reached over and gently pointed her chin towards my face. Her eyes still darted around, looking anywhere but me.

"AEGIS, just tell me," I ordered.

Her mouth wavered for a moment, and then finally, she met my gaze as though it was inevitable. She sighed. "Okay. But. You're not going to like it."

I waited for her to continue, and she sighed again before doing so. "XPCA is short on arms. They've been losing a lot recently...our friend over the Caribbean seems to like blowing up the weapons of the strike teams that come after him without killing them...some weird kind of mercy maybe, but it is contributing to a crisis. Add to the events of the last few days and...the sudden cut-off of their supply," she added cagily "and...of course, the logistics more than anything. Like there's probably enough, just not allocated right--"

"You don't have to spare my feelings, AEGIS."

She gave a small, bitter frown and glared, but said nothing.

"Weapons shortage, eh?" Cosette said, turning off the news and going back to her research. "Didn't hear the supply line broke. That's bad news."

"Are there any records in there about an 'Oasis'?" AEGIS asked.

"Oasis?" Cosette began tapping away, her eyes and fingers darting. "That some kind of codeword? Operation name? Profile?"

"It's a place."

"A place like...where you find water in a desert?"

"Sure."

Coette kept searching. "Y'know, being cagey and evasive is obnoxious."

"Is there anything or not?"

"Found something. Found a lot of somethings, but most of them are just references to legit, bona-fide oasiees. Oasises? Oasi. People who put flowery prose in their reports. 'An oasis of calm…' or...too many references to New Eden as some kind of tropical oasis." She frowned. "That word stop sounding like a real word to anyone else yet?"

"Me," Lia said.

"Anyway, did you find anything about a place called Oasis?"

"Yeah, actually. Recent report...seems...related to your arms shortage maybe. Some missive passed through IkaCo. It's strange."

I leaned over and read over her shoulder, ignoring her glare for doing so.

"What the fuck is this?" I asked.

"How the hell should I know? You assholes won't even tell me what Oasis is."

I ignored her and kept reading. "This is...this is a formal declaration of war. Against the world."

"What?" Whitney shouted from the kitchen, going upright and still. "Who?"

Lia rubbed her forehead with her knuckles. "Oasis is a city of Exhumans in the glasslands. We were...kinda there for reasons. Their leader's got this thing about weapons, and developing and testing them--"

"That's where the arms shortage is," Cosette said at once, slumping into the sofa.

"--and we sorta convinced her to...do her own testing instead of selling them to IkaCo."

"You did what?" Whitney snapped.

"You…" Cosette scrunched up her face and took a few breaths. "You told some pile of Exhumans, who were interested in, and armed with a huge fucking pile of guns, that they should use them? On us?"

"No!" AEGIS said. "We just told them not to sell them anymore."

"When you apparently knew they had a fetish for testing these things. Am I understanding that right?"

AEGIS and I shared a glance but there wasn't much else we could say.

"And what? Did you guys have any indication of who they should be testing them on? Did you set up...I don't know...target dummies while you were there?"

"They were battling IkaCo mercenaries when we left. And some combined arms in their pockets--"

"Oh. IkaCo," Cosette said, as though that explained everything. "You mean the arms company that no longer can sell arms, because you cut their supply. I'm sure they'll have TONS of money to throw away, repeatedly raising armies to get slaughtered by the guns they're no longer allowed to have. I'm sure they'll last a long, long time, keeping your fucking murder-city contained."

"Okay, it wasn't the best plan," I seethed. "But it was the only way."

"Was it, Athan? Was it really?" Cosette turned on me, her face a terrifying mixture of livid and calm. "Because I hear you blow things up pretty good. Couldn't you have just blown things up a teensy bit more while you were there? Maybe...I dunno...kill everyone? Destroy their guns? Something?"

"It was the only way without killing," I defended.

"Oh good." She shoved the tablet in my face with the declaration of war on it. "I'm sure there will be so much less killing now, what with this city-state basically stating that it will fight all and any comers, for fun. Because the world doesn't have enough crises in it right now."

I felt burned. Betrayed, even. As much sense as Cosette made, I still couldn't agree with her. Killing a few Exhumans...maybe even just Rio...would it have saved countless lives to come? But there was no way I could have predicted this, was there? I mean...except for all the reasons she'd so sarcastically beaten into my head now. But I was just trying to do my fucking best, I was trying to help. Things weren't shit yet, Oasis hadn't gone on the warpath, she had no right to skewer me like this.

And yet. This was exactly why I'd come to her, wasn't it? I knew I had a blind spot in situations like this. Cosette would have never hesitated to kill Rio in the interests of the greater good. Just like she'd ordered the execution of Ethan, the terragenesist who created the stone replica of Eryandria, when there was nothing to be gained from his death. Except peace of mind, stability, and what the country needed. Just like she'd stood by when I said Blackett needed to die.

"Hey, that's too much," Whitney said, hands on hips. "Cut him a break."

"Oh, because he didn't kindle a war against humanity?"

"Maybe he did," she said, hesitating just a moment "but it's not like he did it on purpose." Cosette started to reply with something sarcastic and biting but Whitney talked over her. "And besides, Athan can and will fix it."

"I can?" I asked.

"He will," Lia agreed.

"If there's one thing I know about him, it's that...well...you're right in that he creates a mess wherever he goes. But the second thing I know is that he tries...so hard. Really, stupidly hard, to fix those messes. And as much as the world likes to go to pieces, because...honestly, that's as much the world's fault for being in a bad place as it is his for knocking it around...he's got a record better than not of putting things back. Maybe not the way they were, exactly but...back."

Cosette gave her a severe look for a few moments. "Wow. Great, very impassioned speech there. Hang on, I think I have tissues here somewhere…"

"Oh shove it," Whitney sniped, with more venom than I think I'd ever heard out of her. "You were buttass-naked when you were dragged in here, and you're wearing my clothes in my home. Be less of a pill."

To that, Cosette gave a genuine, if still snarky smile, and went back to her work without arguing. Whitney fumed a bit, shooting me looks like 'can you believe this chick?'

Which, I could. Cosette was rough around the edges, but still as brilliant and far-seeing as any. But so was Whitney. I was just surprised that they'd wind up opposite each other like this.

But however at-fault I was or wasn't, Whitney had made an excellent point. I shouldn't be here feeling regret about Trish, or worrying about my decisions I'd made in Oasis. Those were past, unchangeable, already done whether right or wrong.

What I could do was what she'd said. Keep fighting, keep trying. Maybe nobody else in the world could go tell Oasis that they needed to do things differently. Maybe nobody else in the world had a personal rapport with Trish and Gil. I couldn't stop now, not even to question myself.

I had to move forward. I had to keep moving forward.

I leaned over the back of the couch and gave Tem's invisible hair a rough scratching, eliciting a noise almost like a purr.

"Just change the world. Act how you want it to be," I muttered to her.

"Just change the world," she agreed.