I wandered around aimlessly for a long time. I tried to push away the anger and disappointment, but it came on in waves. By the time I found a part of the house I was familiar with, I’d settled on just being embarrassed. Maybe a little pissed too, but mostly embarrassed. I wanted to get to my room with no more interactions. When I emerged from a door behind the bar, I was happy to see it was empty. I could see Colin still hunkered over his papers in the library, and I could hear someone else talking to him. I crossed my fingers that Colin was engrossed in his work and made my way to the staircase as quickly and quietly as I could. I had one foot on the bottom step when he called out.

“Oh, Jemma! Good, I was hoping to talk to you. Do you have a minute?”

My heart sank, but I put on a smile and turned away from the stairs. As I walked over, I saw Ben in the shadows, and my heart sank a little more. He looked ready to speak, but I tried to convey murdered with a look. It must have worked because he sat back grinning but silent.

Dozens of documents, articles, and folders covered the table in front of Colin. Colin himself looked no better rested than he ever did. He waved a hand over the papers.

“So, I’ve been doing some research and I think I’ve found where they are holding the changers.” I had picked up a graph that looked like an overview of spending for food or supplies of some kind. It took a minute for his words to sink in.

“What? What do you mean, found them? I thought the government was holding them?”

“Well, yes, they are, but we didn’t know where. At first we did. They were asking people to come in so they had a place all set up, but after they decided to hold people, they moved. They gave some story about public safety and proper containment, but really, they just wanted to make sure nobody staged a rescue attempt. Anyway, after the law went into place, they moved again, this time in secret. But I’ve been doing some roundabout tracking and I think I’ve hit on the place some of them are being kept now.”

“Some of them?”

“Yeah, they must have rounded up hundreds of people just around here. I don’t think they are keeping all of them in one place.”

“Ok, so where are they?”

“It’s taken a lot of time to pin it down, but I think they’re here,” he pointed to an area outside the city on an enlarged map. “It’s state-owned property, but all it has on it is a bunch of old warehouses and some abandoned factory buildings. But look,” he handed me a stack of papers. “For the last two months, they’ve been moving big shipments of supplies; medical equipment, office stuff, food, AV stuff, which isn’t unusual until you dig a little deeper.”

“Colin, where did you get all this?” I asked.

“Internet, some money in the right places, and the most important pieces I got from Stacy, the woman we met with the other group? She’d been doing some digging herself but had hit a wall, so she gave me everything she had, hoping I could figure it out.”

“But why? Why try to figure it out?” I was afraid I already knew the answer.

“So we can get them.”

“Colin…”

“Who else is going to help them, Jemma? If you were stuck in there, god knows what happening to you, and remember you almost were, wouldn’t you want help?”

“Yes, Colin, of course. But don’t you think we have enough to deal with here? I know it sounds terrible, but we just stopped the FBI from storming the house and we have no clue if they will come back. I told them we wanted to talk about dealing peacefully. How will it look if we go storming one of their places? How can you possibly think we could do that without people getting hurt, on both sides?”

“I don’t care.” I hadn’t heard Cooper come into the library. “They say we are terrorists. We are the dangerous ones. But what they are doing is heinous. Someone has to help those people and we can’t sit here hoping someone else steps in to do it.”

“Even if we went, what would we do?” I shook my head. “We have a couple of people here that have useful abilities, but not enough to do something like this. I mean, a place like this is bound to have massive amounts of security. We probably wouldn’t make it to the front door.”

Colin began shuffling through papers on the table and pulled out one from the mess. “I actually have a plan for that. The shipments are all pretty top secret, but I’ve tracked enough of them to know they’re on a schedule, a very specific schedule, and I know the route they take.” He pulled out a stack of grainy pictures and handed them to me. “See? I got these from a gas station surveillance camera. Same trucks pass by this same station on the same days at the same time.”

“Ok, how does that help?”

“We stop one of these trucks and drive in with it.”

I sighed and rubbed my eyes. “And then what? You do not know where you’re going, and have no idea what you will find when you get in there.”

“No, but I don’t think we ever will.” He rearranged some papers. “I’ve been planning this for months. Stacy’s information just gave me the last piece. I’ve done a lot of research on the grounds, and this truck will hopefully get us in and back out without notice. I don’t think there’s any way I could come up with a better plan. If we are going to do it, this is our best option. At least the best were likely to have.” He looked at me and grinned. “Our last plan worked out, right?”

“Or we could just not go,” I said.

“Actually, you won’t be going.”

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“What? So you want to break into a heavily guarded government secret base without the one person in this group who is bullet proof?”

“I don’t see how that’s a problem, considering you don’t actually want to go,” Cooper said conversationally.

“I don’t want anyone to go. But if you do this craziness, it would be stupid to leave behind one of the few people that could be useful.”

Colin laid a hand on my shoulder. “I laid out this plan before you got here and besides, we need you here. You are the one Agent Knoll expects to be here. You are the one she’ll want to talk to if she comes back.”

“I’m sure anyone can talk to her…”

“Really? Are you ok with leaving the negotiating to Ben? Or Stephen? Or Sean?” Colin asked.

“You will not leave me here. What if something happens to you? How would we know? We’re just supposed to sit here and, what, cross our fingers and hope really hard you don’t get killed? No, no way. It’s crazy.”

“I’ve already set up a secure channel for us. Seemed prudent after everything that’s happened. We’ll be able to tell you what’s going on, and give you updates as we go.”

“Updates. Great. And if your update is ‘oh god, oh god, we’re all going to die’? What are we supposed to do then?”

“Nothing.” I started to argue, but he held up a hand. “I mean it.” He didn’t raise his voice, but he made it clear he would not hear any argument. “If something happens to us, it was our choice to go there. Everyone going has already agreed to this. We know what we’re walking into and it won’t do anyone any good for you to go running in to avenge us. You can claim we went rogue, and you had no idea what we were planning. That should allow you to keep up negotiations if things go bad.”

“I will not…”

“You will. You will do what you have to do, and I will do what I have to do . We each have a job to do Jemma and yours is here.”

It pissed me off even more that he was probably right. “Ok, let’s say you do this. How do you know they aren’t watching the house? Which is pretty likely, you know. You wouldn’t make it to the highway.”

“I assume they are watching the house. I have that part covered, too.”

“But…”

He held up his hand again. “Jemma, this is something I am going to do. No, the plan is not perfect, but I’m not willing to wait any longer. We’re going in two days.”

“Two days!”

“Yes, that’s when the next shipment will go out. Me, David, Mel, and Nate…”

Cooper stepped up, “Colin…”

I know you want to come, Cooper, but I’ve already explained why you can’t. We need to make it a small group, otherwise we risk not getting in at all. We need the truck to get in and we need it to smuggle all those people back out. There’s only so much room in the cab. It will look suspicious if we drive up sitting on each other’s laps. I need to take people who can help with getting past the guards and whatever else we have to go against, and we’ll need Nate to tell us where to go. This place is big and the changers could be anywhere.”

“What about Sean?” I asked.

“I thought about it. His ability would be dead useful, but he’s a hothead and I want to do this with as little damage as possible.” Colin looked down at his hands. “I just don’t trust him yet.”

There was nothing else to say. I understood why they wanted to do it, but it was a stupid and reckless plan. I could tell short of physically trying to stop them, there was nothing I could do.

“Have you talked to the others about this?”

“The ones that I want to come, yes. It was their choice to go or not. I wouldn’t make anyone come that didn’t want to.”

“But you would make someone stay who wanted to come?”

Colin smiled, “we need you here Jemma.”

Just then, Kennedy and Sean emerged from the AV room, closely followed by Stephen. Kennedy was laughing hardily and patting Sean on the back.

“Oh, Jemma!” Kennedy exclaimed. “It’s good to see you. Tell Sean here to stop, would you? All this laughing hurts.” He held his side dramatically.

I felt bad for not checking on him sooner. I walked over and felt his side. “Does it still hurt? You seem to move better, but you should probably still be resting just in case.”

“Oh no, no. It’s fine, really. I feel much better. Thanks to you, of course. I was just giving Sean a hard time.”

Sean laughed. “Hey angel, I’m feeling a little lightheaded. Want to help me to bed?” I rolled my eyes, but otherwise ignored him.

Kennedy turned to address Colin. “Whose turn is it in there? I’ve stared at those dang screens all I can for one day.”

“No one. I think we can drop the watching for the night at least. I’ve turned on the alarms so no one will get in without us knowing and if they were going to sneak in, they would have tried by now, I think. Besides, we all need to get some rest.” I turned to him, but he forestalled me again. “It’s very late. We can talk tomorrow.” I sighed. Maybe I could change his mind tomorrow, when we were all better rested. That reminded me of something.

“Can I have a clock? In my room, I mean.”

“Of course. Sorry, some of those rooms haven’t been used in years. I’ll have Celia find one for you.”

“Thanks.” Everyone moved toward the stairs. Ben tried to approach me, but I took the stairs two at a time. I was in no mood to deal with him. Sean followed me up.

“Where are you going?”

“To bed.”

“Your room is on the other side of the house.”

“Nah, Colin only had me over there while I recovered. At least that’s what he said. Personally, I think he had me over there in case I went nuts and wanted to blow the place up. Anyway, I’m up here now. Nice room too. Want to see?”

“No.”

He laughed, “Oh, you do angel, you just don’t want to admit it yet.” He winked and walked away.

I still wasn’t tired enough for bed when I got to my room, so I took a shower, then found some soft pants and a tank top and sat on the couch. I was just wishing I had a TV when there was a knock at the door. Assuming it was Celia bringing my clock, I answered it. But when I opened the door, Nate was standing there.

“Colin said you might...that you were looking for...here.” He mumbled and held out a small digital clock.

All the feelings I had forgotten while talking with Colin came back. I reached out and took the clock. My fingers brushed his, but that just inflamed my embarrassment at what had happened.

“Thanks.” I moved to shut the door.

“Jemma…” He hesitated, but I just stood there staring at him. “Jemma I don’t…”

“I’m exhausted.” I had no desire to hear him explain how kissing me had been a mistake. Or to explain to him it was alright he didn’t want to. My ego could only take so much.

“Oh, yeah. Sorry.” He moved back, and I shut the door.

Later, I laid in bed and stared at the walls in silence. I was angry and felt stupid about being angry. I hardly knew Nate. We kissed once. Why did his rejection hurt so much? It certainly wasn’t my first.

Now Nate was leaving in two days on a rescue mission that could likely end up with him dead and I was being a child because he didn't want to make out? It wasn’t like me to be so emotional. I regretted my behavior and even got up to go talk to him, but stopped before I made it out of the bedroom. He was probably sleeping now, anyway. I spent another night plagued by strange dreams.