Ben wasn’t long getting the first aid kit, although he looked quite put out over being asked to move from his chair and he returned there as soon as he handed it off. I moved over to Stephen and Kennedy, who were still talking quietly together. The older man, Kennedy, was more obviously hurt. The cut above his eye had stopped bleeding, but a bruise was showing on one of his broad cheeks and his movements were unnaturally stiff. As I approached, their conversation cut off. Kennedy grinned at me, though. And it looked natural on him. He was short and round, with receding brown hair and small, dark, twinkling eyes. He looked like a man who had never met someone he didn’t like. Stephen looked exactly the opposite. He was also short but rail thin. Which I saw now made him look younger than he was. He was of an age with Kennedy, but where Kennedy looked always ready to laugh, Stephen looked ready to run. His light eyes were wide and darted around the room, his small mouth pinched into a permanent pout. Every inch of him looked tense.

“Hello. I don’t think we have met. Names Kennedy.” I shook his offered hand. His palm was rough and calloused.

“Jemma. Nice to meet you. Can I look at your head?” I laid the metal box on the table and opened the lid. It was stuffed full of the usual fair; cotton swabs, alcohol, bandages of various shapes and sizes, antibacterial creams. There was even a small suture kit. I really hoped I didn’t have to use that. I pulled out some sponges and alcohol and turned back to Kennedy.

I figured it best to start with the cut. “Sorry, this might sting.” Kennedy winced as I began cleaning, but didn’t pull away. With the caked blood out of the way, I saw the cut was clean and shallow. My hands shook as I covered the wound with a sticky gel.

“You look tired.” Kennedy looked in my eyes. “Did you go through the change recently?”

“I...uh, yes. Yesterday.” I mumbled.

“Ah, sorry, didn’t mean to pry, but I figured since you just got here and you look about to fall over...it really takes it out of you, I know.”

“I’ve heard. I’m fine. How does your head feel?”

Kennedy laughed, but cut off with another wince. “Of course, of course, I’m the patient, right? Much better now. I’ll be just fine.” He winced again as he raised his arm to check my handy work. I placed a hand on his side before he could lower it again. His thin cotton shirt was wet with sweat. “Where does it hurt?”

He tried to move my hand away, but moaned with the effort. “It’s nothing, really,” he tried to say, but was obviously having trouble catching his breath.

I continued pressing until I found the tender spot. “I think you have a broken rib, or at least a nasty bruise. I can’t know for sure without an x-ray but you’re going to need to be off your feet for a while either way.”

“Humph. Well, there’s an awful lot to do and…”

“Kennedy,” Colin was still standing by the table but obviously listening in. “She said rest, and that is what you will do.” His voice was kind but firm. “You’ll do no one any good if you hurt yourself more.” I thought that was a little hypocritical of him, but kept my mouth shut.

Kennedy looked like he would protest more, but instead just shook his head. “Fine, fine. But I at least need a bath and some dinner before I’m confined to my bed.”

“There is food in the kitchen. Help yourself,” Colin said. “I don’t think we’ll be sitting down to a meal together tonight, anyway. I wanted to talk to you more about what happened today, but it can wait until morning, I think. You both need rest more than I need answers.”

I moved toward Stephen. “Are you hurt?” He flinched away from me as I approached him.

“No...no. I’m ok.” His deep voice surprised me. I had half expected him to squeak.

Kennedy walked closer to him, protectively standing near the smaller man. “He’s ok. Really. He’s the only reason I’m here, and him too.” He motioned to the table. “It would have been a lot easier for Stephen to leave us both behind, but he insisted on getting us both home safe.” He looked at Stephen with pride.

Stephen lowered his head and mumbled, “I wouldn’t have left you.”

“I know, I know!” Kennedy patted him on the arm and to me. “Besides, I think I am going to need some help with things.” He stood up straighter and winced. “Like walking and breathing.”

Stephen moved quickly to Kennedy’s side and placed a hand under the man’s elbow. He didn’t appear to have any serious injuries, so I left them be.

“You two should get some food and get cleaned up. But I expect you to rest like you were told, Kennedy,” Colin said.

Kennedy laughed between panting breaths as he and Stephen started for the main hall, “Sure thing, boss, sure thing.”

Kennedy had been right about my state of mind. Exhaustion overcame me again. I’d slept nearly an entire day, but I felt ready for it again. Mel returned through a door between the library and the bar.

“Celia says everything’s ready.” She walked over and joined Colin at the table. “Want me to take him up?”

Colin nodded. “Yes, please. David will stay with him for a while.”

David had been in Ben’s corner but joined Colin and Mel at the table at the mention of his name. My mind must have been working a little too slowly to hear what Colin said, because what happened next took me by complete surprise. Mel, pale, petite Mel, placed one arm under the injured man’s neck and another under his knees and picked him up. There was no effort on her part at all. She picked up a man that must have easily weighed a hundred pounds more than her, like picking up a baby. She moved toward the stairs, but as she passed, she glanced over at me. There was something in her dark eyes that made me step back. A challenge? A threat? She continued up the stairs without a word, closely followed by David.

“That girl likes her abilities a bit too much, if you ask me.” I hadn’t noticed that others had entered the room. Nate was there talking quietly with a blond woman. The man who had spoken stepped over to me and offered his hand.

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“Cooper. Cooper Ward. And you must be Jemma. Nate has been telling us about you.” He was formal, and not just in his manners. He spoke quickly and his movements had an almost military efficiency to them. His black hair was perfectly combed, not a hint of stubble showed on his face and his crisp white shirt and gray sport jacket looked like they were fresh from the cleaners.

“Uh, yes. Hello.” I felt underdressed.

“Well, good to meet you.” He turned to Colin and inclined his head. “Nate was just filling us in on what happened here tonight. Do you have any more details?”

“No, I will talk more with Stephen and Kennedy tomorrow, but I have a good enough idea from what little I heard already.”

The blond moved closer to Colin. “So you think they were using a Phoenix as bait? They were ambushed?” She was stunningly beautiful. Big blue eyes and a full mouth and rosy cheeks framed by thick blond hair with just a hint of red. There was a trace of baby fat in her face, but it just added to her appeal. She was of average height but perfectly formed in all the right places. I snapped my mouth shut and tried not to stare. I was suddenly very aware that I hadn’t brushed my hair.

“I think so, yes,” Colin moved to one of the high back armchairs and sat down with a sigh. “It was bound to happen, eventually. They know we are hunting and we’re beating them to the punch more times than not. They don’t know how we are doing that, and I imagine they very much want to find out.”

“You think they wanted one of us, not just the new guy?” Nate asked.

“Yes. More specifically, Nate, I think they want you. Even if they don’t know it themselves.”

Nate looked thoughtful, but not shocked by the news that these agents were trying to kidnap him. The blonde, however, looked terrified.

“But Nate would never work with them!”

“If they get a hold of him, I don’t think he will have much of a choice.” Colin looked quite serious, but I still found it hard to believe there was some shady group of agents, officially sanctioned agents no less, trying to kidnap people and force them to do their will. It sounded a bit too Hollywood, but I was new here and didn’t want to make waves. Despite the slightly radical ideas, Colin seemed to be a good man with good intentions.

“Do you think we should stop trying to track down new Phoenix?” Nate asked.

Colin sat silently with his hands steepled in front of him and his eyes far away. When he finally spoke, the words seemed to pain him. “No. We can’t give up. We will have to be more careful, though. But no matter how much we prepare, it’ll still be dangerous.”

It was surreal, standing there listening to the debate. I was still having a problem processing everything that they said was happening, that was still happening, was happening to me as well. We had laws. Sure, people could be crazy, I knew that. I wasn’t completely naïve. But I could not believe people would stand by and let other innocent people be unjustly held or worse, as Colin implied, turned into slaves. It was too much.

“I would love to know what Jemma thinks about all this.” Ben had not moved from his chair during the exchange. Startled, I looked at him. He was grinning again. But the rest of the group was staring at me now, too. All except Nate, who looked at Ben suspiciously. I didn’t like him very much at the moment either.

“I, um, I don’t really know enough about what is going on. I mean…” I felt like an idiot with them all staring at me, waiting. “I mean, what do we know about these men? The ones who attacked Kennedy and the others tonight? Are we sure they’re really working for the government? And do we know the people they are holding have been harmed? I just find it hard to fathom that people would let that happen. Regular people I mean. Those that are taken must have families.” Nate flinched a little. “What are they saying?”

“What are they saying?” Mel scoffed. “They are saying we are dangerous. Murders and thieves and unnatural freaks. The news has everyone convinced we need to be locked up. And the normal people believe it.” Her voice was even, but she was angry, either with me or the government or these normal people. Most likely all of the above. “They want the government to step in to keep us from murdering them all in their sleep. We know who these men hounding us are because they’re not trying to hide it. They’re working for the government, doing the will of the people. Why would they have to hide it?”

Colin stood up and walked to the shelf on the far wall, and pulled down a stack of papers. “Here.” He handed them to me, “These are just from last week but they’re getting worse every day.”

It was a stack of newspaper clippings and online articles. The first one looked like an overview of the new law Nate had talked about, declaring any changer that didn't turn themselves in as a fugitive. I scanned a newspaper article with the headline ‘Changers: Above the Law and Out of Control’. It detailed the government's efforts to ‘neutralize’ the threat to law-abiding citizens presented by a small group of genetic deviants. There were blog posts calling for the eradication of changers or calling for citizens to turn over people they suspected of being changers. Politicians were quoted in articles outlining their ideas for dealing with changers or offering comforting words to people in these ‘difficult and dangerous times’. I was understanding why Colin didn’t like the use of the name. They made it sound like a curse. There was even an interview with some FBI bigwig talking about a new task force created to find changers before they could harm anyone and how people could aid them in their task. It said they were currently conducting ‘investigations’ into how changers achieved their genetic mutations. What I read made my stomach turn. “How could this have happened?”

“Fear,” Colin said, “People fear what they don’t understand and the government fears losing power so they feed into the people’s fear and use it against us. It wasn’t this bad in the beginning. Some people even supported us. But once the people in power realized what was going on and what they stood to lose if the changers were left free, they fanned the flames and even started some new fires. Now just about everyone is convinced we are a terror that needs to be locked away for everyone’s good. I have my suspicions the government is hoping to gather us up for reasons of their own.”

“But they all but admitted to experimenting on human beings, ‘ongoing investigations on changers in custody’,” I read from one news piece. “What else could that mean? Surely people aren’t ok with this? And what do they mean ‘how we achieved genetic mutation’? Do they think we did this to ourselves, that we wanted this to happen?”

“Oh, people know what’s going on and they don’t care.” Mel spat. “As long as someone is saving them from the scary monsters, they’re willing to overlook pretty much any behavior.”

Colin shook his head. “It doesn’t help that the Phoenix are loaners. None of us have much in the way of family or close friends and I haven’t met one yet that had kids. It’s strange, like whatever caused this to happen has been at work our whole lives. I don’t know why, but it means there is no one who cares enough to stand up for us or humanize us. Just a lot of scared people who don’t understand and see us as something separate, unnatural. And yes, people are saying this is something we must have done to ourselves. Some kind of underground experiment. It was a rumor started by the papers but it’s caught on and plays into people’s fears. They are painting us as a terrorist group out to hurt the good people of the world.”

“But that’s ridiculous.” I said. “How could anyone think we would...I mean, why…” I couldn’t finish. For the first time in months, I felt connected to the outside world and, looking down at the stack of articles, I shuddered. That connection made me feel dirty. Was I really this ignorant of humanity, of the world around me? Not just that I hadn’t known what was happening these last few months, but that I was so stunned by what people, everyday normal people, were capable of. Would I be one of them if I hadn't changed? I felt small and alone and terrified. I looked around the room again. Everyone was watching me. I saw disgust, pity, and sadness. But all I felt was anger, for the people out there and all the ones in here, too. No matter how illogical I knew it was, I felt like all of it was their fault. I didn’t want the pity I saw in Colin's eyes or Nate’s concern, and I wanted to slap the stupid grin off Ben’s face. I was happy before all this, before them. No, that wasn’t true, but I had a life. One that didn’t involve fleeing from the law or hiding out with a bunch of strangers. “I’m tired. I think I need to go back to bed.” I had to get out of that room, away from them.

“Of course. It has been an eventful night…” I was heading for the stairs before Colin finished. Nate tried to catch my eye as I went past, but I kept my head down and walked faster.