"Wait!" I yelped, suffocating in overheated darkness. "Maddie!"

My heart gunned, trapped inside Spandle’s dissolving bulk, unable to breathe. Until I realized that the smothering warmth was a blanket.

And the darkness wasn’t so dark after I opened my eyes.

I was lying on a bed in a hotel suite, with heavy curtains and reading chairs and a kitchen nook. I was splayed on top of hte blanket, my forehead damp with nightmare sweat. Memory murmured to me, just below the threshhold of consciousness, but I didn't listen.

Instead, I reached for the water glass on the bedside table ... and the sound that must've woken me. Someone was swiping a keycard at the door.

I touched the orbs to reassure myself--then realized that my chest was bare. I wasn't wearing anything except my boxer briefs.

The door opened before my brain fully woke, and the woman named Rachel stepped inside, talking low into her cell phone. "--should knock on Boone’s front door, that’s what." She paused, listening. "Well, get me an address. And deal with the hospital." She swiped the phone and glanced at me. "How’s the head?"

I didn't know what else to say, so I told the truth. "Not bad."

"You heal fast," she said.

That was true. I healed remarkably quickly. But not like Wolverine quickly. So when I touched my bruised cheek, the pain in my arm flared. "Not that fast."

"Watch that it doesn’t get infected." She nodded at the bandage wrapping my bicep. "I’m not much of a nurse."

"You bandaged me?"

"Yeah, we don’t want you in the system yet. Nobody even knows you’re here."

For a second, my confusion stopped me. What the hell was going on? So I pieced together the scraps of memory. That construction site. PJ, Spandle. Rachel trapped on that scaffolding. Then I seized on the last thing she'd said. "What about that tac team with the gas masks? They saw me. They know I'm here, right?"

"That wasn’t a tac team. Those were ordinary cops, they must've heard the gunfire."

"You said they had flamethrowers."

"I lied."

"But that guy--PJ. He said he’s monitoring 911."

"Someone called the cops, just not me."

I shook my head, barely following the conversation. "Okay. Okay. You said you work for Homeland Security?"

"Oddly enough, I kind of do." She leaned against the kitchen counter. "Your friend told me you can cook."

Hope flared in my chest. "Maddie?"

"I didn’t get her name. Long hair. Gray eyes. Acute undifferentiated schizophrenia."

"Oh. Shandra." The hope turned to anxiety. "Where is she?"

"In a psych ward."

"Oh, God, no. I need to--" I half-stood. "You're Rachel?"

"Rachel Kravitz."

"Okay. Rachel. Where are my clothes?"

She pointed to the dresser. "The hotel starched your socks."

I pulled the blanket around my waist. "Do you mind? I've got to get out of here."

She didn't look away. "Stick around for a few, we need to talk."

"I can’t leave Shandra in the hospital."

"By the time you get there, she’ll be gone. Umlaut’s cutting her loose."

"Cutting her loose? Like out on the street? What's Umlaut?"

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"A man with a gift for bureaucracy. My co-worker. My, uh, liaison. He's bringing her somewhere ... less horrible."

"She's needs somewhere private." I exhaled, and tried to shake a single worthwhile thought free from my brain. "Uh, tell him he needs to buy a hammock for her, and--"

"Wait, what?"

"A hammock."

"A hammock, like you swing in?"

"Yeah, brand new. She’s … she finds the motion comforting."

"Uh-huh. What else?"

"Hang the hammock somewhere private, without any human contact. Then just … stay out of her face."

Rachel’s dark eyes gleamed. "Because she likes the motion."

For some reason, I had a hard time lying to her. "Yeah?"

"That’s fine," she said. "There’s more to her than meets the eye, I already know that. Just like you. You’re what? Two hundred pounds heavier than you look?"

"Something like that."

"Because of those things on your chest?"

"Plus I eat a lot of carbs," I said, not knowing what else to say. I’d never talked about the orbs with an outsider.

"I saw them in action, you don't have to pretend. I’m not going to ship you to a zoo." She sent a text on her phone. "You saved my butt."

"You saved mine first."

"I saved yours twice," she said, quirking a grin.

For some reason, the grin sparked a memory. Her name clicked into place, and I recognized her.

I pulled my pants on. "Rachel Kravitz. You're the girl from Califorya?"

"Yep."

"And all this …" I gestured vaguely. "It's related? I mean, what ... whatever happened with you? You know PJ, and you're with Homeland Security now?"

She nodded. "Sort of under the radar."

"They didn’t mention any of that on TV." I buttoned my pants. "I mean, when you were in the news. Anything about people like PJ and Spandle."

"People like you," she said. "Make us breakfast and I’ll tell you all about it." She nodded toward a shopping bag on the counter. "How about an omelet? I stopped at the store."

"You want me to cook an omelet?"

"Two, if you’re hungry."

I shook my head. I needed to find Dewitt. "I've got to get out of here."

"Think it through." She tossed me my shirt. "You don’t even know where you’re going. Once you leave the hotel, which direction are you going turn?"

I said, "Um."

"Yeah," she said. "And my boss isn't comfortable with setting you loose in public until we know what you are. You help me, and I’ll help you."

So I pulled my shirt over my head. "You don’t know what I am?"

"You’ve got three …" She gestured at my chest. "Disks?"

"Orbs."

"Orbs. You seem like an okay guy, and I appreciate your saving my life and all, but you know what? I’ve been wrong before. Your fingerprints aren’t on file."

I squeezed into the kitchenette and peered into the grocery bag. "My life’s pretty quiet."

"I'm fairly sure that’s about to change. No prints, no ID, no cellphone--"

"No butter," I said.

"Damn!" She looked a little abashed. "I've never actually shopped before."

"What?"

"Well, I went with my mom sometimes. But I've been incarcerated since I was seventeen."

"Oh. Right. That must've sucked."

"Yeah, boo hoo."

I eyed her. "Not much on self-pity?"

"It doesn't seem to help."

"Huh. For me, it's a hobby, like stamp collecting."

She almost smiled. "Well, you can feel bad about the butter, then."

"Nah, that's okay." I rummaged around in the bag. "I specialize in improvisation."

She watched me rinse a pepper. "You work with your hands?"

"How do you figure?"

"The way you move reminds me of guys I knew. You’re a carpenter?"

"Handyman." I smiled at an onion. "Apprentice handyman."

"What’s your name?"

I cleaned the mushrooms with a damp paper towel. Did I want Rachel to know my name? She probably couldn’t trace me to the Rock even if I told her. ‘Larson’ was my sister’s married name--which I’d taken after I’d learned our folks hadn’t attended her funeral--not my legal name at all. Still, Rachel struck me as tenacious. So maybe I'd keep that to myself.

I set the mushrooms aside. "I thought we were going to talk about you."

"If you followed the news, you know all about me."

"I’m not much on current events," I said, grabbing a nonstick pan from the cabinet.

She waited until I stepped away from the sink, then took my place with the tea kettle. "Boone worked for the Department of Defense, on a contract basis."

"Who's Boone?"

"My father."

"You call him Boone?"

She gave me a look. "You're quick."

"Oh."

"His company mostly did research and intel. Then he started looking into the Seventeen Seconds, it became his obsession. Because it changed people. He said it weaponized them. At least a handful. Less than one percent of one percent changed a little, but a fraction of them changed a lot."

"People like PJ?" I asked.

"No," she said. "People like Boone. My father was an active. A longshot."

"An 'active'?" I said, remembering that Shandra said that's what PJ called people like us. "He was changed?"

"Yeah, my father's power was, he could take someone like me, someone without powers--someone inert--and make them active. At least sometimes. It was still a one-in-a-hundred shot. But he activated PJ."

"He created him? Like Frankenstein?"

"He never knows what power one of his … subjects will end up with. They usually just end up dead. The power of decomposition. He tried to activate me …"

"What can you do?"

"Nothing," she said. "Sometimes we stay normal. I'm one of his failures. But Boone, he--"

She stopped again. What I know now is that she didn't want to tell me that he'd changed her mother until nothing remained. She didn't want to tell me that he'd started messing with her sister--and that's why she'd shot him.

"He crossed a line," she said.

I looked at the cutting board. "And you killed him."

"I tried," she told me. "He's still alive."

"Oh," I said again.

"Yeah." For a second, she watched water flow into the kettle. "And now this senator pulled me from prison to clean up this mess. His mess. Because I know PJ, I know Boone. Because another active told her I'm the one she needs."

"Because you're his daughter?" I asked.

She didn't answer.

Silence fell, broken only by the sound of me chopping veggies.