AEGIS was livid, and I didn't even need my powers to tell. She was pacing, muttering, appearing just a bit unhinged as she cringed and regretted, her eyes fluttering back and forth between the dark confines ahead of us and whatever was going on in her head.

Athan had said that her code had taken over. I didn't know that he was right about her, but it was pretty clear that something was off. I just wanted to sit her down and ask her about it, but every time I opened my mouth to speak, all I felt was pressure in my throat, a tight, burning pain where sound should have been, and nothing came out. You'd think that kind of reaction would have taught me quicker to keep my mouth shut, but talking was so fundamental to being for me. I'd never been able to just...not talk before.

So instead, I did what I assumed any Exhuman did in this kind of situation, played with my powers. AEGIS was lit up in bright red, like she was hanging out in a nightclub that thought that awful lighting equaled ambience. Athan, before we separated at the portal, had been flashing the whole gamut, as the levels of aggression and hostility inside him fluctuated with his thoughts. And the drones, to my amusement, did register, but only showed up as a pallid white, as peaceful as the walls around them.

Not entirely unlike the walls around us now, reinforced metal, studded with buried electromagnets and EMP projectors. I could see them all, despite how pitch-black it was in here, and wondered if that was just part of my new powerset, or if being locked in the dark like this was affecting my window maybe.

AEGIS' face twitched, and her hands clenched and unclenched. I thought maybe the red haze on her might be her body cooking the humid Georgia air into roiling steam. That was really almost exactly what it looked like, and I found it fun, even funny to consider that maybe this is how muses saw us, a bit -- they interacted more with our thoughts than our physical forms after all, and being able to just look at someone's level of aggression at a glance seemed...ionno, appropriate?

Maybe I was reaching. I'd been doing a lot of that since I turned. I wondered if my window was still open, and I could go find some other creative way to kill myself, although I was getting worried now that it'd been a while, and if I kept this up, one of these times, I'd just actually die, in the most embarassing and useless way possible.

But looking around again, there wasn't really much here to work with anyway. The room was sterile and secure by design, reinforced, locked tight, and swept clean after every incursion, it looked like. We'd stepped back through the portal and landed exactly where we should have expected, in the secure room meant to contain the drones in the middle of the complex where Ajax and Celia worked.

Except...I don't know. They weren't looking for us, or whatever measures they were using to detect incursions clearly wasn't picking us up or something. It'd been at least ten minutes in the dark now, and I was beginning to wonder what was taking Athan so long to follow.

AEGIS was flaring up again, flashing bright red as she swore to herself and kicked ineffectively at the walls, although a palor of yellow was beginning to creep in, and I had to wonder what that signified. I started to ask how she was feeling but again...couldn't. So I made do with what miming ability I had in the dark.

"Stupid...fucking...dumbass...Lia, what?" she asked, as I patted her hand. "I'm sorry, I'm...busy."

I turned her palm over and traced my fingers across it. She jerked away from me as though I was burning her, and I sighed and rolled my eyes, reaching out to change her hue from the seething crimson down to a more ordinary pale.

The effect was immediate, and her stomping and swearing tempered off, leaving her stunned, her color strobing as thoughts flashed through her newly-freed mind, trying to wrestle with what to do now that she had all this additional capacity for new feeling.

The yellow began to creep in further, but also a pale, icy blue, that reminded me of Aesa's portals. And then they both went away as she flashed red again, at me.

"Don't fuck with me," she growled. "Keep your fucking Exhuman bullshit out of my head. I have enough to deal with already."

I took her hand again, and a melange of grey passed across her, as confusion passed across her face. I turned over her palm and began to trace my finger again, and the confusion passed as a different flash of red hit her. I felt like a living MRI, just watching all these colors pass through and over her, plain as day to see every emotion she had.

"A...T...H...Athan," she said, as I traced the letters on her palm. That got her right back to the angry crimson. "Yeah, he's the one who's fucked with my head. And I'm so screwed right now, fuck him very much." The red flickered again, and that yellow appeared. What emotion did that signify? "It's not like I really even care, you know? I love him...and if he messed with my head...I'm not even sure...that really matters, you know? But…"

The yellow ebbed away and the crimson came back stronger than ever. "How could he do that! He fucking lied to my face!"

H-O-W-?

"How? Lia, he shoved me through the portal after you. He's back there with the beacon doing," she flashed a violent shade of yellow-red, "...doing God-knows-what to himself right now! I should have stopped him. I should have killed him. No! Gah!"

A-R-E Y-O-U O-K-?

"Do I look okay?" she punted the wall again, in a manner that looked downright painful to me. Maybe she thought so, too, because doing so just flared her even more crimson. I tried to tone her anger down a bit, a little sneakier this time, so she wouldn't just get mad at me again for doing it. But as the red filtered out of her, that yellow crept right in like it was waiting for its turn.

And as her face cracked, I realized exactly what that yellow was meant to represent. Tears bulged in the corners of her eyes, and her breathing grew shallow and agitated.

"Lia, I know you don't understand, but I'm so, so scared right now," she confessed. "I'm so...I'm so betrayed and hurt. I keep telling myself I did the right thing...but I don't know. I don't know if Athan's okay, or if I care if he's okay, or if he's going to do something so self-sacrificing and so stupid, that maybe it would have been better for me to just...listen to myself and kill him."

W-H-Y W-O-U-L-D Y-O-U--

"Because he's an Exhuman!" she flared up, and then immediately went pale, in both senses. "I mean...shit...I'm…"

She took several deep breaths, fighting the panic. "I didn't mean that. I'm...my programming is fighting me real bad right now. I have systems in place, apparently, that make it so that if I ever learn my code has been compromised, I have this...need...to go revert, to keep a failed version of myself from limping around when another iteration could just...y'know...poof, fixed."

She slumped on the floor, holding her half-torn hair like she was cradling a child. I realized it was the data uplink port in her hands, the gateway already used to kill her predecessor.

"I had the same issue when I was getting hacked, but not this strong. I don't know if they were suppressing my systems at the time or...or because I was convinced there was something I could do about it...or...maybe it was because it just wasn't as bad."

She frowned bitterly, and shook her head. "Actually, that's a lie. I know exactly why. It's because I'm programmed to fight Exhumans. If a hacker took control of me, that's one thing...but for me to fall into an Exhuman's influence, that's...the opposite of what I was designed for. My failsafes can't tolerate that, that's why it feels so wrong right now."

I kneeled on the ground next to her and held her hand again, this time just to hold it. I gave her a reassuring squeeze.

And it was strange, to see the effect rippling through her. Without even using my powers, the touch seemed to push the red and yellow back, dimming them, just ever so slightly. I felt flattered that my presence alone could calm her like that, somehow.

And then I felt very, very sad, certain that I was awash in a blue mist, as she pulled her hand away and glowered at me.

"I told you to stop fucking with me using your powers," she spat. "Athan's bad enough. This situation is bad enough. I hate being locked in the dark, and now to have you screwing with me too? Exhumanity is vile. I despise you."

I tried to explain but she wouldn't give me her hand again. It was so frustrating, I just wanted to be able to speak, wanted to yell at her to stop being an idiot and just...let me help her through this.

I took a deep breath and decided, screw it. If her systems could insistently push her towards fear and anger, I could push back, whether she wanted it or not.

And tried to convince myself that this was me doing it, not the Exhuman I apparently now was. I'd have done this before, wouldn't I? I just lacked the capacity. It wasn't like my powers were corrupting me or anything, that was just her paranoia.

"I told you to stop!" she shouted, but there was no heart in it. "Damn it, Lia, I can monitor my emotional indexes you know. I can tell when they're being tampered with. Don't think you can just sneak it by me. If you keep this up...I'll…"

She looked around at the dark, fortified walls surrounding us, lost for words and threats.

"I'll kick you," she growled. "I'll put you out, so that you can't screw with me."

I grabbed at her palm, and now that she wasn't super livid anymore, she actually let me have it.

I A-M T-R-Y-I-N-G T-O H-E-L-P

"Well I don't need your stupid Exhuman help. My problem right now is I already have too many Exhumans in my head. You think shoving another one in there is gonna fix me?"

Y-E-S A-C-T-U-A-L-L-Y

"Well, screw you," she spat, but I made sure her outburst didn't come with another flare-up, and so she just petered out with a sigh. "And...screw you for that. Damn it, Lia. Don't do this to me, please. I don't...I...I don't even know who or what I am right now, and I really, really don't need your fingers in my brain, please. I don't want to fight you. I'm just so tired and scared...I just want to beat Justice and then…"

She shook her head. A melancholic blue swept in from somewhere I hadn't expected.

"And then, I don't know. Revert myself, probably."

I wanted to yell at her that it was just her programming talking, that she had so many other options, she wasn't as trapped as she felt. Her sudden, sad, acceptance of defeat, it just...it stabbed me right in the chest, so crushingly familiar to me of how powerless I sometimes felt.

But she wasn't powerless, she just felt that way. Nobody moved her body but her, no matter what her thoughts screamed. Even if it was exhausting to have those thoughts, there would always be other thoughts, if she could just hold on long enough to have them.

I wished I had better control over my powers. I didn't know how to convey myself through them, like I felt Saga could, even when she wasn't speaking. I wanted her to feel the optimism and strength that I forced myself to have, whenever I knew my stupid, cruddy, chemically-defective brain was going off the rails for no reason.

I took her hand and crushed it in my grip, staring her intently in the eyes, which widened at me.

"Uh, woah."

I squeezed her again. D-O N-O-T G-I-V-E U-P

Her lips trembled a little as the blue and yellow intensified within her, with a tiny shake of her head. "I...I know. I'm not. Not...yet. I just...you don't know what it's like having something inside you telling you to kill...your…self..."

She trailed off and blinked at me, and an embarrassed shade of pink crept across her which had nothing to do with my powers.

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"Sorry," she mumbled. I squeezed her hand again. "Yeah, I'm...I'm sorry, I'm not...a hundred percent right now. I guess I'm just too inside my own head to think about anyone else. Or, to think, I guess. Sorry."

I turned her palm over and did what I would have done in her circumstance. Don't dwell, move forward, focus on what you can do. Every step is just a step.

L-E-T-S G-E-T O-U-T O-F H-E-R-E

"We can't," she sighed. "It's reinforced solid. I can't even tell where the door is supposed to be, and I know there is one. They really built the hell out of this place. I kind of thought that...they'd detect a surge or something when we portaled back, but I guess that's not the case. Maybe the drones come on a schedule, or maybe they've got sensors specifically looking for drones."

N-E-T-?

She shook her head with a scoff. "Yeah, no way I have connection in here. The amount of current running through the walls with all these EMP projectors? To say nothing of just how damn thick the walls are. Believe me, if I had 'net, I'd be calling Rito right now."

I cradled my chin as I thought. I wasn't quite sure the range of my powers, but I didn't feel anyone out there, the same way I could feel AEGIS or the drones. Either they were all gone, or my range wasn't wide enough to reach them. And based on the fact that this facility had guards, that probably meant the latter.

AEGIS was sinking into despair again, and this time, I tried to give her a little kick, flaring up that red as best I could. But despite being able to see it, feel it, I couldn't...touch it...or however these powers worked. I could, but...it was strange, like sinking my fingers into wet sand, I could push it, but pulling it just made it mush around my touch, distorted but not affected.

Hmm. That was a limitation I'd have to keep in mind. I could move people towards calm, but not the other way. I couldn't instill extreme emotions, only temper them. I could only, I guess, create peace, not stifle it. Which made sense, but also made my powers a heck of a lot less flexible.

I wished, not for the first time, that I had something more overtly useful like Athan did. But wishes wouldn't do anything at this point; if I were to wish for anything, it was for Justice dead. Or a more reasonable second, to settle into my powers and adapt them to fighting Justice. Everything after that, I guess, wasn't worth considering.

The world seemed to warp suddenly, as though the room were inflating around us and the reinforced walls were swelling. I blinked several times, reflexively, like I could make my ears pop and it would all go back to normal. And then, as quickly as it started, it was gone, and Athan was there.

I tried to grin at him, to run and give him a hug, but AEGIS beat me to it, holding me back by grabbing a fistful of my hospital gown at the back. I flailed against her, trying to ask her what the heck, yo, when she shushed me, her eyes locked on Athan.

I followed her gaze and found my brow furrowing, the same question failing in my raspy breath again in really taking him in. It was Athan, it definitely was, I could see him through my powers and I was sure AEGIS could see him with her enhanced optics. She wasn't confused, just guarded.

But the more I looked at him, the more guarded I became as well, though for an entirely different reason. He seemed to seethe, in my sight, like water heated just below boiling, rippling with an energy ready to explode. He wasn't red...but he wasn't pale either. He was something...weird, some emotion that humans weren't built for; some color I couldn't describe, that I had never seen and shouldn't exist. The color, whatever it was, was tinged with red...anxiety, impatience, frustration, maybe...words that shot around it but missed the bulk of what was really there. Hunger, maybe, in a primal sense.

I waved at him from AEGIS' grasp, and he showed no sign of even seeing it. He did turn to her, though, and when he spoke, my vision burned in my skull from the sudden flash.

Lightning was arcing inside of his mouth with his words, cracking the dark with searing light that lingered, burned into my eyes in hazy vivid streaks. His voice seemed to boom with thunder, like he had somehow, in the last fifteen minutes, turned himself into Thor.

"AEGIS," he said. "It's you...isn't it?"

"It's...I'm here," she answered, pulling me further away and putting herself between us. "Oh, Athan, what did you do to yourself?"

"I can...AEGIS?"

"Athan?"

"I can barely hear you. They're...so loud. AEGIS."

I tried to say something again, but nothing came out, the epitome of frustration. He was right there in the dark, I just wanted to hold him and tell him it was okay, that we could be Exhuman together.

But still AEGIS held me back. When I tried to throw her off, her grip tightened until the folds of my shirt were digging into my skin. I heard myself grunt wordlessly at her, but if she heard it, she acted as oblivious as he.

"Lia's here," AEGIS announced. "Can you see her in the dark?"

"Lia?" He echoed, hammering me with my own name, echoing in the room. "Is...that her?"

"Yeah, this is Lia." There was no response, and she glared at him with worry. "You remember Lia, Athan?"

"I...remember. I love her. I love...Lia."

He looked right at me, emotions swirling inside him like a tempest. So much of it was red, or red-tinged, but the longer he peered at me, the deeper the melancholic blue grew. He shook his head, like he couldn't believe what he was seeing, and I tried and failed again to call out.

"She looks...just like all the others."

"She's your sister, Athan. Your sister, who loves you unconditionally. She's like no others."

"She looks the same...inside. Neurons and synapses. Impulses and potential. Only...only you look different, AEGIS. I can't see her. Help."

"What did you do, Athan?" AEGIS fretted. "What did you do to yourself? Why? How many...how many powers did you put into you?"

He shook his head. "I don't...don't remember. I remember the first, the second, the third...and then…" He frowned bitterly, his body flooding with red. "It wasn't enough."

"Enough for what? To totally eradicate yourself?" she shouted. "What the fuck, you're...you're insane. Your eyes, they look like his."

"It doesn't...doesn't matter."

"It doesn't fucking matter if you can't tell your own sister anymore?"

"It...sister? Lia? Lia…? Help. Help me, please."

I tried to reach out again, but AEGIS kept me back. This time, I bit her wrist, and she just glared at me, her grip not diminishing in the least.

"You want to fucking touch him?" she spat. "Let's find out what happens when you touch him. Let's find out what your brother turned himself into."

Before I could fail to say anything, she dragged me a few feet over and wrapped her hand around Athan's wrist.

I thought there was an explosion, that everything in the tiny room was just gone in an instant. Or that Tem had nuked us down. It wasn't until I my vision faded back in, the afterimages of the lightning burst still in my eyes that I realized, it hadn't been an explosion, it only sounded like one, felt like one, looked like one.

AEGIS' clothes were on fire, the dim light of them showing the black on fingertips with which she'd touched him, and on the ground under her. She was breathing heavily, still standing, still sparking with stray tendrils of electricity jumping between her hair, the ground, her splayed fingers and toes, even the insides of her nostrils and mouth, like Athan when he spoke.

"T-t-th...that…" she stammered "w-w-would...h-ha-ve...k-killed...any...one. B-but me."

I just stared at her, feeling useless and stupid as I gingerly patted the flames off of her back while she seemed to shudder and twitch until feeling was restored through her body. The sound of the blast, how blinding it was, it was insane, and somehow she'd endured without...well, almost without effect, it seemed.

Her breathing slowed and her eyes flashed at me. "Stop trying to touch him."

I nodded at her, somehow even more breathless than she, who'd just been cooked like that.

"Your brother...has done something very stupid. He's very dangerous, as...as I was afraid...I thought he might be. I might...need to stop him."

I shook my head at her and realized, despite the explosion, the recovery, this very conversation about one of his very best friends potentially trying to kill him, Athan was absolutely silent and still. All that stirred on him was his clothes and hair, rippling in the way they did when he was all statically charged. He wasn't even fully on the ground, I realized with a start, he was touching it with his toes, but drifting, levitating, somehow so in control of his magnetic powers that he could pick himself up while leaving AEGIS untouched, just a few feet away.

Floating. Like Justice. With inhuman emotions surging through him, but not cracking through. Utterly dispassionate, but dangerous beyond understanding.

AEGIS' words and warnings began to sink in despite myself. I didn't want to believe it, didn't want to accept that I'd never hug my dorky brother again, or leech warmth from his hands, or hear him laugh at my stupid jokes.

But...that was happening, wasn't it? That was really happening. He was right there, impassive and ominous and I knew exactly what he'd done. I just didn't believe it, until here he was.

"I don't...I don't know, Lia. I'm...scared. I don't want to hurt him...but I don't...don't want him hurting anyone else. He could have killed you already."

I began to frantically scrawl on her palm and she shook her head.

"No. There's no guarantee the Ramanathan window would protect you. Just like Aoede can't predict what other muses do, powers can't directly protect against other powers like that."

I...didn't exactly follow, but I got the gist. If she hadn't stopped me, I'd be dead.

And would Athan care?

And if he didn't...then did I even care about being alive?

I pushed that thought away, threw it away as far as I could. We'd always pulled through before, maybe...whatever he'd done to himself, there was a way to undo it. This was about him, me, and Justice, and we needed to sort that out before anything. I dug through my things for my mobile and pulled it out, flipping through the contacts and then forcing it into AEGIS' hands. While she stared at the holo, I geared up as best I could, given the breezy hospital gown. My rifle went over my shoulders at least, and what bandoliers I could salvage from my cut-apart slipskin went over it.

"Lia, we can't."

I tried to sign to her, but she interrupted.

"We can't. We really, really can't. He's way too dangerous, you see that. He's almost like Justice, the way he is. We should just…"

She hesitated, and I knew she was looking for words other than kill him. The thought of it made me sick, made my own red flash up twice as bright as the yellow and blue swirling in her.

If it was her fear and cowardice holding us back, then they'd have to go, not him. I grabbed at her emotions and wrenched them into nonexistence, leaving her empty, tranquil, incapable of arguing. And as her anger flared up at me for doing so, I stomped it down too, held it under my heel.

"Lia, this is...such a bad idea. You're...proving me right. Right now. You're being dangerous too..."

She said that, but without conviction behind it. Just an empty, helpless shell without her emotions. I felt bad for doing it to her, but she was literally threatening to kill my brother. We could sort this all out when Justice wasn't murdering the world, I believed.

Or he'd make it easy on us, and kill us. Either way, really. Anything to avoid having an awkward discussion.

"We still need to get out of here, where we can meet with Rito, I guess."

I nodded at her, and turned to Athan. Who didn't respond in the slightest. I gave him my best pout and frown without him so much as blinking, and in the end, was forced to squeeze AEGIS' hand for help.

"Um, Athan? Lia...thinks you can get us out of here. There should be a door, and some guards outside. If you could--"

Silently, the door opened itself, whatever mechanisms within it, completely overridden by Athan in an instant. AEGIS nodded her thanks and we headed into the night air. And then she stopped.

"Oh. Oh no. Oh no, no."

For a panicked instant, I thought somehow Justice had come here, was waiting outside for us to return from another Earth. I only knew what to look for by what direction AEGIS was pulling me away from.

They were all dead. Just...dead. The guards at the street entrance, the ones by the doorway we just passed through...from the sound of it, and the sudden, unearthly quiet, the dorms and mess hall were...dead as well.

AEGIS rushed to one of the two who had been standing mere feet from the door, prying open his eyes, putting her ear to his chest, beginning chest compressions.

All while muttering to herself. No, no, no, no, no.

I went to the other, he seemed untouched, just...gone. No breathing, no pulse. Out like a light, in an instant, eyes glossy, expression neutral.

He'd stopped their hearts, I could tell. Reached out, just like the door, and fiddled with the electricity inside of them, just another part of AEGIS' sentence.

It was too much to take in. Not just that now Athan could flip people's lives on or off like a switch, but that he had, he would, without even blinking, without even thinking. I wanted to sprint through the base, to find Ajax and Celia, to make sure they were okay, but I couldn't move. There was a dead guy in front of me, and another half-dozen in view. I didn't want to go into the dorms, I didn't want to find what my brain said was certain.

If I didn't see them, maybe they were still alive. Maybe they'd gone off-base. He'd taken her out for a nice dinner and proposed, like AEGIS mentioned he was planning to. They were off celebrating, right now, completely unaware of the death we'd just brought with us.

There was another explosion, a rupturing brazzt which screamed in base tones which moved my body. I turned and found AEGIS frozen, fists in the air, paused mid-beating on Athan's chest, blackened, as was the ground under her, and the grass was on fire.

"W-w-why--" she stammered. "...did...you d-do...t-t-this?"

"AEGIS? You said...there were guards."

"...to...yourself…?"

"I don't...AEGIS? Help. I can't hear you...they're so loud. Help me, AEGIS."

She closed her eyes tight and took shallow breaths which grew deeper. In a minute, she'd regained herself, and stood unsure, afraid, wracked with guilt and fear flowing off of her.

She took one more deep breath, and then, as only she could, put on a tremendous, fake smile and gazed at what was left of the man she'd loved.

"Let's go, Athan. Justice is waiting for you. Just a little walk and Rito will take us there."

"AEGIS?" he whispered, his voice booming somehow, still.

"I'm here, love. I'm here for you. You have to fight now...or...or everything you've done...to yourself...it was all for nothing."

"Fight." He said that with conviction, maybe the first word he'd said without some hint of confusion this whole time. "Fight."

"That's right, sweetie. Time to go fight. Time to go...go and save us all."