I loved Athan. And I loved that he thought I could do anything. Whenever I was facing down my own failings and shortcomings, it was always reassuring that he would believe in me no matter what.

Sometimes, yeah, it felt a bit hollow that his faith was so unconditional. It felt like when I was doing nothing but screwing up, he'd wave it away and tell me that was just a fluke, and I'd be so mad at him. I remembered after one game, when I'd gracelessly faceplanted while trying to dig out a spike, and not even getting it, he just told me it happens, that there's always going to be a bad play, that doesn't make me a bad player.

I remembered yelling at him that what was a bad player, but one who did bad plays? And he just laughed at me, which made me all the more upset.

Looking back on it, he was right. Everyone messed up sometimes. I wasn't sure why it was so easy for me to accept that in other people but not my own mistakes...maybe because my mistakes, I knew I could do better.

But that point was, as Athan had moved up in the world, so too had the stakes and associations. And here I was, livid, useless, legs dangling over the arm of an office chair in one of the many rooms within the walls of New Eden. Black uniform crumpled with my posture, boots next to the door, bare feet hanging in the air where anyone walking past could see them through the smoked glass of the door.

I frowned, and tapped a stud on the desk, turning the door's window opaque. I was having a bad enough time without someone else deciding I was a child who didn't belong.

"Yeah, that's what I'm telling you," I barked at my mobile. "He wouldn't even listen to me. Just took one look and asked who the hell is this?, like I wasn't even a person."

Whitney's tone was placating. She didn't have any actual advice for me, and wasn't first on my list of people to bitch to, but given the current crises, she was about the only one free.

"I'm sorry. A lot of people just equate age with competence," she said. "You know, to be president, you have to be at least thirty-five. That's the culture he operates in, I'm sure it's nothing personal."

"Nothing personal?" I writhed in my seat, resisting the urge to pace. I'd probably already put in more miles than the guards on patrol today. "He took one look at me and just decided he was done with me, then and there. It was nothing but personal."

I heard her take a few breaths. For someone who loved tech, she sure was bad at talking on the phone. "Okay. Well. Even as bad as that is, let's focus on what we can do, right? That's what I always do. Something's busted, fix something else."

"Yeah, that's why I'm here in New Eden."

"What's wrong with New Eden?" she asked.

"Same thing wrong everywhere, right now. Exhumans losing their freaking minds. There's a rumor that Justice is progressing west directly towards the city, and when he reaches here, he's gonna kill every Exhuman that sided with the XPCA. Stupid as that sounds, given how everyone in this place is already a few sparks away from bonfire, the place in an absolute uproar. And to make it worse, some shadowy leader has taken advantage of the chaos to step in and revive the resistance."

"Oh. Oh dear."

"Yeah. So the base administrator's doing his best, but I'm here to help where I can." I scratched my head. "I knew a few guys in here, and was hoping I could leverage them to get some intel on who's behind all this at least. But things are too crazy for that, and I've got my hands full just helping him keep order, where I can."

"That, and being threatened by the President."

"Yes, also that," I glared at my device.

She paused again. "If he does disband the future-direction board and installs new leadership, what do you think is going to happen?"

"Well, with Saga, hopefully we won't find out."

"But Saga's with Athan."

"Yes, well, they'll be back soon. I'll...or...someone will just have to stall the president until then."

"...I heard his approval rating is like, five percent. He'll blame someone for all this."

I found myself pacing again before I realized. "He's been doing nothing but blame. He just sends out everyone, and when they are insufficient, blames them instead of addressing the deficiency. It's insane."

I was interrupted by a knock on the door, and without thinking threw it open since I was pacing right there anyway. The kid on the other side looked surprised, and then suddenly remembered to salute.

"Ma'am! The Administrator wanted to see you."

"More bad news, I imagine," I told him, stooping to pick up my shoes.

"I wouldn't know, Ma'am."

I let him go, but apparently he was more delivery boy than messenger, and waited at attention while I pulled on boots and socks, and then slouched into the hall behind him.

The walls of New Eden were, like the rest of the city, made with concrete. And where that was insufficiently impersonal and cold, metal. Being inside them was sort of like being in a very rectangular cave, though I couldn't quite put my finger on why. There were windows, or at least, the appearance of windows created by camera feeds across the walls, and it was well-lit enough as any room. Things were understandably narrow, though very long to compensate, and probably mathed out to being the side of a standard room, just stretched.

Maybe it was the ceilings, or how it sounded when sounds echoed in there. Something about it felt subterranean. Which was silly, because parts of the walls were upwards of fifty feet high, veritably a skyscraper. Not where we were, but some of them.

We were in the thickest part of the walls, the section above the main gate, and closest to the annex buildings, just across the yard. This was New Eden Command, where the XPCA was literally and figuratively above and always watching the Exhumans.

The main floor was something you might expect to see at NASA. Rows of front-facing desks, each lit up with holos, each staffed by some kind of intelligence or logistics or security officer, talking on their comms, pulling up data, monitoring Exhuman activity within the city. All facing an array of screens, which I understood were usually blank, but they'd been nothing but highlighting trouble since I got here yesterday.

The base administrator gave our courier a half-assed salute, which was returned ass-and-a-half, and he double-time marched away like a nincompoop.

"So. You have anything for me?"

The administrator was relatively new. He'd replaced TARGA when she had...kinda gone insane and transmitted herself into a fortress armor, and then died. These things weren't really talked about, more the 'Exhumans killed her' angle...and to those with aspiration, her position was now open.

So I wasn't too sure about this guy. Malcom, his name was. Malcom Knox. He looked young, but obviously that didn't mean anything. He filled the role, but whether that was because of ambition, luck, or circumstance, I didn't know.

What I did know, is that like the President, he didn't know much, and leaned on everyone else to do his job. Which, I guess, sorta was what leaders were supposed to do. But I'd been hanging out with Athan, and I agreed that leading from the front was pretty frickin' rad. It tended to make these other rear-guard leaders look bad by comparison.

"No, I've been in meetings all day," I told him. "And not productive meetings. Most should have been a voice message. And one in particular…" I glowered and he gave me a sideways glance. "Well. Hail to the Chief," I spat.

He had no idea what I was talking about so he just nodded. "Alright, cool. I thought you were sent here by central to help with the situation here, though. And you haven't done anything except dig up that there's some new source of trouble for me."

I let it pass that central was already a term in XPCA jargon. "Well. It's been one day. I have people to report to on my own. And…" I cleared my throat significantly. "You know how to kill a weed, right? Before you go around clipping off anyone's head, it pays to dig up the root."

He shrugged. "Whatever. Dig up whatever you want. I just expected something by now, other than vague warnings of some resistance coming back. There's real problems in New Eden."

And so saying, he was done with me and went on to summon and grill the next dude in line. Drove me nuts. And I might have been lying a little when I said I wasn't sure what to think of him just yet. More like, I wished I didn't. I wanted to remind him, as I had before, that I outranked him, and that if I wanted, I had the operational authority to step in and take charge of the situation.

But I didn't. I didn't want to play that card yet, if I didn't have to. When I needed it, and not before.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Now that our little interview was over, I probably had another day before he called me in again, which gave me twenty-four hours to make some progress. To dig up some roots. I called in some operations guys, who seemed anxious to be talking with their boss's superior, but I could also tell, eager to do something which might fix the situation.

Their faces fell when I told them what I wanted, but they saluted all the same. A walking tour of the facility, to go in and meet some of these Exhumans.

I understood why when they were making preparations for me to enter. Scores of soldiers lining up as my guard, orders being blasted out through the city over the PA to be on their very best behavior, and grim reminders what kinds of fate awaited those who might act out. These guards wanted me to give them a solution, not another load of work to stir into a pressure-pot.

I had to admit, as we drove down the main avenue, the city looked different from here -- from inside an armored car, and over the backs of a hundred exosuits. When I'd been a prisoner here, I thought the expressions of others hostile; turns out I knew nothing of hostility before.

There were only two real occurrences, and given the nature of Exhuman powers, they weren't real events at all. Just jokers, or asshats, thinking themselves funny or big by hurling a blob of powers in my direction without any actual intent to kill. The real problem was after each, when the guards stormed and yelled, and the lined-up Exhumans jeered and closed ranks, allowing the perp to escape into the mass, rewarding their insolence and doing little but to unify the Exhumans against us.

Which was more than I could hope for, really. I wasn't like the guards believed, here to be ponied about through our works like some triumphing general. I wanted to see it all, wanted to gauge the feeling within the walls, their rage, their helplessness, their passions.

Two attacks, and ineffective ones at that, was nothing. The Exhumans really were on their best behavior, and that told me that despite their frothing, despite the pressure and fear of Justice being out there, most of them still held respect for the XPCA itself. Whether a vestige of whatever had motivated them to surrender to New Eden in the first place, or a wary esteem for those who kept this place running, there was some kind of unspoken bond still holding things together.

A bond that their new resistance was chipping away at. I bit my fingernails as the parade drew to a close, and ordered a stop.

"Stop, ma'am?" my aide asked, clearly dismayed.

"Yes. Find an Exhuman or two, anyone. I wish to speak with them and gauge how they feel."

"Now?" He eyed the lines of Exhumans loosely formed around our unit. "Would it not better serve ma'am to have one pulled for interrogation later?"

"Yes, now," I said, with as much a flippant air as I could. "In their own home, if possible."

He saluted, but I could see how much I was killing him with my order. To him, I was just an outsider, pulling apart their delicate peace so I could go in and pet the lions. He thought of me as a very important idiot, and that was a role I didn't mind wearing, if convenient.

After a few minutes he came back. "Err, yes ma'am, we have a meeting for you. If you would not mind to keep it brief--"

"I understand. The guard is waiting."

"Yes ma'am."

As soon as I opened the door to the vehicle, I was drowned out by booing and jeering. The Exhumans, passively lined up moments before, seemed to surge in my direction, and the guards raised their rifles nervously. I acted regal, giving them a vague smile and wave as I was shepherded past lines of shiny black exosuits and into a concrete house.

The walls did much to block out sound from outside, and again, I had the feeling of living underground here. Other than that, the living room was pleasant enough, crowded with guards surrounding an older man, who seemed kind, and bewildered.

Perfect, I thought. And certainly not picked at random -- the man was selected for being chill. Or at least, timid. Someone on the XPCA side of things.

"Wonderful place you have here," I told him. "May I sit?"

"Do whatever you want," he said, looking around at the dozen guards in the room. "Barge right into my house, order me to behave. I have rights, you know. You can't house these soldiers in my dwelling."

I smiled at him as I sat opposite him at the table. Wooden, cheap, but nicer than the concrete slabs in the XPCA halls. "Actually, you don't. The bill of rights does not extend to Exhumans."

He shook his head at me. "We're still human, you know. You keep treating us like we're not, that's why the resistance is back."

"Tell me about the resistance. Have you heard much about them?"

"Is that what this is about?" He looked at the guards again, his eyes wary. "I didn't do nothin', I tell you. I follow the orders I'm told. When there's trouble, I do what the PA says and stay in my house. I let you in now, didn't I?"

"Relax, sir. You're not in trouble." I gave him another genial smile. "I just wanted to know what you've heard of them. News which reaches my ears is always so distorted by ambition...and fear. Nobody wants to be the one to deliver bad news to an XPCA director. I'd like to hear it from your mouth."

He eyed me for a moment, still wary, but apparently decided that he liked me. Or, he'd like to take advantage of the situation and tell a real XPCA director what he really thought. One of the two, and enough to make him grin, though I didn't know the man well enough to read of it was a sadistic one.

"They'll beat you, you know. They overthrew the last base admin, and they'll overthrow this one. They killed the director, too, struck when he was visiting, and both wound up dead, they say. And he wasn't even traipsing around inside people's homes."

"I am well aware of what happened to my predecessor. That's why I'm taking more proactive steps to find out about the resistance. I do not underestimate them, as he did."

He laughed, and I concluded it was a sadistic grin after all. "Estimate them however you want. You XPCA are always calculating, conniving, thinking you know everything. But you know nothing. You don't know what it's like, having this much power bottled up, until pop," the splaying of his hands sent my entourage on-edge again. "It smacks you right in the face. Every Exhuman in here is a bomb waiting to go off, and the resistance is lining up the charges, facing 'em all the same way, making sure that we blow up our real enemies instead of wasting our strength on each other."

That sentiment was exactly what I'd come here to hear. Although I couldn't pretend his portent didn't make my heart do a backflip.

"And who are your real enemies?" I asked. "Does the resistance want to bring down the XPCA?"

He smacked his lips some, and then stood, drawing a bead from every exosuit in the room, but ignored them as he went to the kitchen and got himself a glass of water. He was kind enough to offer me one, wordlessly.

"No thank you," I told him.

"Suit yourself," he said, drinking his slowly. Making me wait. I crossed my hands in my lap. When he was done, he put the glass away deliberately, but remained standing. "No, I don't think so. Not yet."

"The XPCA isn't the resistance's enemy yet?"

"It will be if you keep barging into homes and going on parades. But the resistance, from what I've heard, they're reminding us of something more important than walls and guns, bigger than dignity and offenses taken."

I waited for him to spit it out, but he didn't. Content to waste more of my time. From somewhere behind me, my aide appeared, telling me in whispers that we needed to move on, that the Exhumans were growing impatient and unruly outside. I dismissed him with a wave.

"What is bigger than the XPCA's walls and guns, bigger than dignity and offence?" I asked. His grin grew, and I knew he was like me, and understood that this conversation was its own kind of battle. One he could win, even with guns in his living room.

"I told you already, miss," he said with mock respect.

"Ma'am, we really must go," the aide hissed.

"Fine. Have this man's rations doubled, and service his AC unit. It's sweltering in here." He gave me a surprised look as I rose and moved out with the guard. He hadn't won the verbal battle yet, and I'd killed him with kindness for words he'd not even uttered.

But the aide was right, it was time to go. If I drew out the visit any longer, I wouldn't just be playing at the irritating, visiting birdbrain.

The troops brought me back to sanctity double-time, doing their best to look like they were anything but retreating in the face of growing Exhuman numbers and hostility, and I spent the entire ride in thought.

The old man's hostility was understandable. We'd just raided his house and pointed guns up his nose, to say nothing of the curse of New Eden turning everyone into a grumpus. Even if I knew he'd been selected because of his prior status as a model citizen, some amount of difficulty could be expected. To me, that explained his glee in telling me off, in prophecizing my death, in playing his games in not telling me what I wanted to hear.

But behind that, probably removed from that position and that place, he was probably a very nice guy. He seemed ill-equipped for lying, and I believed every word of what he said to be truth. Or at least, his truth. He was also probably not a very good resource for information on the resistance, bearing a clean nose as he was...and so the fact that he'd heard as much as he had -- and the truth, no less, on what happened to TARGA and Blackett -- that spoke to a level of integration between the resistance and the New Edeners which surprised me.

But of course, most enticing was his words. The meaning he'd played around.

The metal gate slammed shut behind us, and I could almost feel the relief in the guards around me as they shuffled off to the racks to get out of their exosuits. Another mission without this place boiling over. Another day survived.

"Was your inspection satisfactory, ma'am?" the aide asked as I disembarked. "I hope you don't judge too harshly, given the circumstances."

"Everything seemed in order," I told him, and he seemed to stretch upright even further at my vague praise. "Thank you for putting together the visit with the Exhuman."

He saluted sharply. "Yes ma'am. A shame that the meeting had to be cut short. But--"

"No, I understand. To go longer would have disrupted the city. You did well, Lieutenant."

"Ma'am. If you wished to hear the rest of what he had to say, we could have him brought in for you."

I shook my head. "No, I wouldn't trouble him further."

He seemed almost crestfallen. Sad that he was missing another opportunity to brown-nose me?

"A shame we didn't hear the end of what he spoke of, ma'am. I, for one, was interested."

I laughed. Perhaps there was more to this aide than just sucking up. I allowed myself a twinge of guilt for thinking him so transparent, and reminded myself that those who wound up permanently stationed in New Eden were often of a different cut than the standard XPCA mold.

"I'd already gotten enough. I understood," I told him.

He cocked his head at me, trailing as I began back to my office. "Ma'am? Then what did he mean? What was he talking about, bigger than the XPCA?"

I grinned at him. "He already told us, remember?"

He shook his head. "I recall no other enemies he mentioned specifically, ma'am. I could pull some exosuit footage--"

"Humanity," I said. His eyebrows furrowed.

"Humanity is the resistance's enemy?"

"No. Humanity is the thing bigger than the XPCA's walls and guns. Humanity is bigger than dignity and offense. Humanity is what he was talking about, what these people believe they have, what the resistance is making them believe they have."

Again, he cocked his head. I could see this lieutenant was sharp, but he wasn't getting it. Maybe a part of that was trying to put humanity and Exhumanity in his head. Not a thought that worked in most people.

"Then the enemy he mentioned. What is that?"

I opened my office door and passed inside, leaving him at the threshold. "On that he was less clear. But we can hope."

"Hope for what? For it not to be us?"

"For it to be the enemies of humanity," I explained simply, giving him a curt nod, before closing the door.

I saw him standing there for long seconds outside the frosted glass before finally, whatever gears turning in his head reached his feet, and he turned sharply and ventured down the hall.