I guess this is what I'd wanted? Not quite the expected form of it, but here we all were anyway.

A big heap of bodies atop me, all the girls I'd just sought to go charging in to rescue, all apparently rescued. As they'd clamored and untangled, the surprise of it and bizarreness of the scene made me start laughing, and the relief of the messy people pile had only intensified that.

"What the heck is he laughing about?" AEGIS voice seemed to come from far above me.

"I imagine he saw your panties or the like, and it broke his fragile mind," Moon replied.

They shifted away leaving only Saga lying comatose on me, and I pinched at her cheeks playfully.

She didn't stir, and after a long moment, I had one of those 'oh shit' moments of realization when she didn't react. Something had to be wrong here. And also, where was Karu?

"I saw her just a second ago," AEGIS fretted. The color vanished from Saga's cheeks instantly as she reset. "She's the one who pushed us in."

"What?" someone else shouted, and then the sound of a bang and some swearing. Aesa emerged from a literal hole in the floor, rubbing her red head just above the ponytail with obvious frustration. "What?"

AEGIS blinked at the fellow redhead in confusion. "And who's this?"

"This is Aesa, she built and runs this whole...thing."

Moon politely looked around, realizing that this 'thing' was utterly bizarre, and then began peering in interest, her mouth just the tiniest bit agape, which was like, basically wide-eyed and slack-jawed by normal Moon standards. AEGIS, however, didn't take her eyes off the other girl.

"Who the heck are you to be asking questions?" Aesa spat as she finished crawling out of the duct. "I wanna know, why the hell you didn't go back to where you came from, 'cuz now there's more of you instead of fewer."

I tried to explain but didn't exactly know myself. "I was going to but...one of my other friends here...she pushed all four of us through, so now we're back. Which is super weird," I said, turning to AEGIS. "Because how'd she know it was a portal anyway? I just thought it was a weird cloudy egg the first time I saw it. And she acted so fast, it's like she knew it'd close in a moment."

AEGIS shrugged. "Maybe her optics could see through it or something."

Aesa scoffed, and AEGIS resumed giving her a scathing glare.

"Well anyway, can you open it back up a second so she can join us?" I asked. "Um, sorry of course to inconvenience you."

"If I could open it up, it'd be to boot all of you outta my house, not pick up more strays."

I blinked at her. "If? If you could open it up?"

"Uh, yeah. Don't you remember waiting the last couple hours for probabilistic convergence? What you think we just kept you here for fun?"

"Hours?" Moon asked, politely confused as all hell.

"Time doesn't work quite the same way here," I said dismissively. "We're like, adrift between dimensions or something. But...you just opened it. Can't you open it again?"

Aesa snorted at us. "I suppose you think the void is just full of quantum tunnels linking the probability realms you happen to want."

"...yes?"

"I'll give you one more guess and there's only one other answer, idiot," she said, disappearing back down the hatch.

"Wait, seriously?"

Her voice echoed from down there. "You are dense."

"No, seriously, seriously." I bounded over and peered down her hole, spotting her copper-red ponytail in the relative dark. "You're not just messing with me because you hate me, right?"

She glanced up at me, her eyes frosty. "You think I'd pass a chance by to get rid of you?"

I fell back and chewed on the new fact. We'd lost Karu. That, by itself, wasn't too horrible, I thought. In another several hours...um...of this time, probably just another couple to her, we'd find some other alignment convergence thingy, and be able to pop out and join her, and all would be well.

I turned to the others and found evidence written across their faces to the contrary. Even Moon looked anxious. Tem seemed gloomy and guilty through her invisibility. The only one who didn't was Saga...

"What?" I asked AEGIS, who was tugging away at her hair.

"Um. Don't freak out. But...things might be...not...as good as...they might be."

I shook my head at her. "Just spit it out."

She let out a deep breath, but before she could start, Moon spoke up.

"Saga is dysfunctional in condition," she explained. "She did not well bear the presence of Liev."

I took a few steps forward, crouching to brush the hair from Saga's brow and held my hand to her forehead. She seemed normal, as normal as she ever was, just sleeping.

Which, of course, was anything but normal for her. The only other time I'd ever seen her sleep, she'd lost conscious control of her powers and immersed me in hallucinated recollections of our pasts.

I frowned as I focused. "I can feel her, but she's...like...lost-feeling, almost. Kinda, not there. Almost like…"

I glanced around, trying to find words to describe something so complicated as a mind.

"Charred?" Moon suggested. I nodded. "I bonded with her, at AEGIS and Karu's insistence. I have seen her mind. It was…" she paused.

"It was what?"

She cocked her head. "If I had an adequate predicate for that clause, I would have delivered it. I was in contemplation."

I found myself pacing, feet clanging against the alien alloy that floated in nothing. I wanted to pull out my hair like AEGIS was doing with hers, at the fact that the one person who could apparently get through to Saga couldn't even put it into words.

Moon emitted a small sigh, rolled up her sleeve carefully and then extended an arm.

"What?" I asked.

"This is what is colloquially known as a 'handshake', I believe."

I rolled my eyes.

"It seems my lack of ability to adequately explain the situation to you is preventing progress. I aimed to share my experience directly." She thrust her arm slightly further forward, and this time I took it.

For a few moments, it was like nothing new happened. Bonding with Moon was always a bit more of a slow burn, compared to, say, diving into Saga's psyche. An old habit, maybe, that she always tried to keep her mind and mine carefully partitioned. But that was before she'd embraced her code-X nature, before she'd ripped Diallo's entire being to psychic shreds, before she came to terms with the fact that what she was doing wasn't being courteous -- it was holding back.

So after those few moments, she didn't hold back anymore, and I felt a vertigo-inducing rush as sensations flooded unbidden into my mind. She was a lot more blunt than Saga, there was no mistaking these memories as foreign. They didn't feel like memories of mine brought to mind unbidden, or reliving something, even if it wasn't my life to relive. Instead, the thoughts came in, heavy and hard, and in her handwriting.

It wasn't long ago, just a few minutes. I...or she...still felt the memories keenly, fresh. They had the cloudy nature of something that just happened, before the mind had made up it's mind about what all details were there. I was in a tall grassy field, and I recognized it as being in Louisiana, somewhere just before the portal pulled me -- her -- here.

The enemies were coming, I knew. Artillery had been pounding this position, and the circles of still-smoking craters dotted the path we'd taken. More VTOLs were inbound from the west, soldiers from the north-east, and shadow and recon ops moved around us like phantoms. We had mere minutes before this place became hell.

AEGIS was there, standing above the three of us like a prairie dog on vigil, and Tem was with her. Saga and I were on the ground next to my body, and I was in Saga's mind.

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And I was as still and dead as Saga was. Catatonic, overwhelmed by the same thing which had paralyzed her. It had passed through our mind that if these thoughts had been enough to break Saga, seeing them through her might do the same to us.

Fortunately they didn't. I could keep my distance, but it was still awful. It was like looking into the sun, while Saga had been thrown towards the surface of it.

And the description of 'charred' suddenly felt very vivid. It was like seeing the sun. It was so bright, or loud, or...whatever the descriptive word was for something thought with too much intensity. It had burned Saga right out, like blinded eyes or burst eardrums, but in her mind.

And the echoes of it were still rattling around in her head. She'd looked into Liev's mind to see what was there. There was too much there. The troubling flickering I'd seen in his eyes before, in his mind was completely manifest. It was a thousand voices screaming in dissonance. It was a fire that raged forever, devouring his soul without pause. It was thought, pure thought, of a thousand conflicting, impossible thoughts, all with immense, dominable, focused intensity, each shouting to be heard over the others. It was agony. It was Justice.

Saga had never met a mind so broken. She'd never met a mind that so little resembled a mind, even the toads, who had long ago lost their ability to act with conscious thought. Even the tree, 'our god' of Oasis, who ran thousands of lives in every moment. That had been closest, but those minds had been altered to fit within the tree, existed in unity like the roots that drew together to form the solid trunk.

This was just madness. This was roots that twisted apart from each other, but formed a trunk all the same. Impossible geometry, impossible thought, screaming contradictions that gnarled and knotted in painful burls of insanity.

The human mind was, in many ways, a delicate instrument. Saga knew this, and could precisely rewire its workings to subtly change its function. I -- that is, Moon -- could extract important parts and render the whole inoperable. Neither code-X much concerned themselves with what happened when sand was thrown in the gears of the mind. It would be broken, and the result was insanity, and that was it.

But Liev's mind was gears that should have ground to a halt, turning all the same. His was an impossible framework of madness which moved as though man. Within him, the gears were shorn toothless and the crankshafts had jammed, and yet it all kept turning. Something else within him had taken over, and it wasn't thought that drove his mind anymore, it was something much more base, yet more alien.

He really was Justice. It was all he was at this point. The human shell he wore was a mere vestige.

I fell backwards, blinking and confused as I found myself cradled by AEGIS. It took me too long to recognize her, and my shield exploded in her face, throwing her a short distance. I struggled to find the words to apologize, to even be me again, but I just flapped at her wordlessly, and she smiled and came back to hold me again.

But after minutes, I was more myself. Moon's influence on my mind was gone, and I found her blinking back at me from her own eyes, her body inches from mine from where AEGIS must have put her back.

Saga still didn't stir, but I knew now why.

"You understand?" Moon asked. I didn't, but nodded. That was what I was meant to understand.

"I don't...he…" I sputtered for a few more moments, before redoubling my focus on just trying to make sense. "What was that? He. Not like...he's not...any Exhuman, like any I've ever even heard of."

"You could have asked this before we met him," AEGIS fretted. "He's got a ton of different powers, like Soran. He's super dangerous."

"He's unhinged. He's not...human anymore. He's…" I cast my mind around for a word I wasn't sure existed.

"Exhuman?" she suggested.

I shook my head, and then after a moment, nodded. "Yeah, maybe...most Exhuman of anyone, ever."

I closed my eyes for a few minutes, just feeling my own body and the sensation of being back in it. I'd only really brushed Moon's mind, and she'd only carefully touched Saga's. Even with three degrees of separation from Liev, it'd shaken me. I felt nothing but sick pity for Saga, who'd touched him so directly, without an idea of how to help her.

But as I sat there, forcing my mind into order, I frowned at a different thought. "In Moon's memories, you guys were under attack?"

"Yes," AEGIS nodded, still pulling at her hair.

"And...Karu's still out there?"

She gave me a significant glance, like she didn't want to answer. "...yes."

"And…" I turned towards the hole "we can't go back yet, Aesa?"

"Are you still here?" she complained back at us.

Now I felt my head reeling at two different issues. Saga had never been out, out before. I had no idea how this kind of mental trauma might be affected by her powers. There were things we could try...I could attempt a deep-dive like we'd done not too long ago in Oasis and lend her whatever mental strength I had...but Moon had been very careful while bonding to only look indirectly at the problem, to not let it ravage her mind as it had Saga's. There was immense danger here of simply spreading the hazard if I dove in like an idiot.

Karu, on the other hand, faced much more immediate danger, but unlike Saga, one I could do nothing about. From Moon's recollection of it, there were all possible branches of the armed forces converging on her location: missiles, battleships, infantry and tanks, exosuits, shadow ops, and VTOLs...and that was what we knew were coming. She was a brilliant fighter, but she was still human, and stood exactly zero chance of turning back a force like that.

My stomach seemed to crawl and convulse as I relived Moon's thoughts again. I felt a simmering urge to explode, as rage at myself welled up within me. This was my stupid plan again, and everyone was in danger now because of it. And the worst of it was that I wasn't even there beside her. I'd gone and gotten myself spaced, and then Karu had done her best to save the others.

Well. Self-loathing was better than thinking about whatever was in Justice. I was back to myself again, at least. Hooray.

I took deep breaths as AEGIS held me tighter and I pushed back the anger. Being self-destructive wouldn't help right now. I had to do what I could, and ignore blame, ignore self-loathing, all that crap and focus on doing.

"Cosette?" I asked experimentally. The comms crackled in my ear. Yeah, didn't think I'd have reception out here, but had to try. "Okay, Aesa. Can you dump us off in other places than where you found us?"

Her head emerged and she stared at me. "You're talking suspiciously like you're in charge here."

"I just want to get back to Earth as soon as we can, even if it's somewhere else. Actually, where you picked us up is probably the worst place. So yeah, anywhere."

Her exaggerated sigh echoed from the hole, and I wished she'd at least talk to us directly.. "Yeah, well, I'm not really the one in charge here, either. You'll have to take it up with the frosty bitch. Feels like I only know a tenth of what she figures out. But sucks for you, because tonight's date night, so thanks for screwing that up already."

"Date night?" AEGIS mouthed at me. As though in answer, Al suddenly popped up, as people seemed to have a tendency to do in this space. In his hands was a plate of what might have passed for food for starving college students. Microwaved burrito pockets and pretzels, from the look of it.

"Food's ready!" he chimed. "And I have the movie--" He paused on seeing us. "Um, sweetie? Did you not send the kid back like you were supposed to?"

"I sent him! He came right back in with friends."

"Oh dear." The microwaved pockets seemed to wilt on the tray. Of course, it was so cold in here that the last wisps of steam were already disappearing off them. "I suppose we have to postpone date night, honey. We'll chill you out just a little bit so you can send them off, okay?"

Aesa swore and from her hole echoed the sound of something clanging violently, before a wrench flew out of it in our direction. After the wrench, she followed, stomping right up to where AEGIS was still comforting me on the floor, towering over us with all four-foot-something of fury.

"Now you listen here, buddy," she said, addressing me for some reason. "That frosty bitch runs everything here ninety-percent of the time already, and I am not giving up my one scheduled time to enjoy my fiance's company just because you're a grade-A fuckup." She cut me off as I tried to respond, "Nope, don't care about whatever your problems are. You show up in my house, ask for my help, screw up my schedule--"

"Honey--"

"Oh, don't you honey me," she span on Al. "I said we should leave them spaced, this is on you, too."

My shoulders suddenly felt cold where AEGIS' hands left me as she rose, but to my surprise, she walked past the girl accosting us and to where Al hovered with the tray uneasily in his hands.

"Is this...what you eat?" she asked.

"Shut up," Aesa spat. "Not exactly easy to get or keep food out here, you know? Most of the 'wildlife' doesn't even exist in a corporeal sense."

"But you do have food stores?" she asked Al, straight up ignoring the hotheaded jerk.

"We...do, yeah. But I'm afraid it's most all like this. We have plenty if you're hungry but…"

"No, that's not what I mean," AEGIS said, and when she turned back towards me, I saw a glint of a smile. "I understand you guys are really putting yourselves out there for us, and we haven't been very appreciative. If possible…" she cleared her throat a little "um, if you could help us get back ASAP, well...I know a little about cooking. I might be able to make you something hot and yummy and...a little better than that. Something fit for a date?"

Al beamed, and perked up instantly, and I knew just how he felt after all the months I'd eaten XPCA slop, only to get turned onto AEGIS' cooking. I wasn't aware of her picking up that particular skill in this latest iteration...but I also hadn't really been too close with her this time either. But as long as it could get us out of here…

"Fine," Aesa sighed, disgusted, as she eyeballed the excited look on Al's face. She shrugged off her coat and shivered. "Fine. I'll bring her out and you better cook me the best damn meal of my life. And when we dump you this time, stay dumped."

"I really appreciate it," I told her.

She rolled her eyes. "For the record, I'm going to tell her to put you in the worst place she can think of. Because fuck you."

AEGIS started to argue but I cut her off. "That's fine, as long as it's also the fastest way back. And as long as we're not stranded anywhere we can't get back to our friend."

She smirked at me. "I think you're going to regret those words. She operates quite literally. I'd be amused to see where you wind up...if I actually cared. But if you're all set, get your ass in the kitchen before I freeze."

AEGIS and I followed Al to their food stocks, and she took careful note of everything they had, in a part of the...space...that was somehow even colder. It wasn't more than a few moments before she had me at work, cutting and separating processed foods into raw materials, as she seemed to flip a switch inside herself and begin to bustle with turning them into food.

Inside, I was just screaming, as I numbly filetted microwavable crap, feeling like this was just idiocy, just a waste of time that I could spend fixing Saga or...somehow helping Karu.

But I knew that was just panic. This was the fastest, best route. I couldn't risk myself on Saga while Karu was still out there. And the way time in this place worked, we might have a chance. I had to focus, had to believe.

And somehow, watching AEGIS come alive as she moved through the little kitchen, more like a dancer than a chef, the intensity and contentment on her face as she worked...it spoke directly to that panic welling up inside me. It was like watching an angel go, hearing her whispers that everything was somehow going to be alright.

It wouldn't. But for the moment, for that one, uniquely bizarre moment, when gutting the pepperonis out of a frozen burrito was the best way forward, it would have to do.