I stared at the ground far below me for a moment longer, then turned to enter the building's top floor.

I was in the air, spinning with previously-mastered trajectory towards the rooftop door when my cell phone rang. I tucked my body, rotated forward, and met the ground with my feet to answer.

"Hey!" I said in my most cheery tone. "You've reached Midnight on this absolutely beautiful Saturday night. Can I help you?"

"Chris." James's voice.

"Yes, hi."

"Belinda wants to take you off the assignment."

"What?"

"She just thinks you're unsafe."

"I can literally jump from a sewer and onto a plane. I think I'm good."

"Sit this one out, Chris. You can help others."

"I'm helping others by letting someone evil run loose? I'm sick of these people, James. It's disgusting. Something or someone is going to stop them; it may as well be me."

--ovw--

The Overwoods

--ovw--

Day: not yet identified

Time: not yet identified

Location of event(s): not yet identified

He turned, to face the back of his... of the capsule he was in. I wasn't in one.

Okay, this was too much like En Gail.

Shit.

I tried to slow my breathing. The man said nothing, and then... from what seemed like nowhere, he began to sob; albeit softly. I was so confused- and even more so when the next voice spoke.

"It worked," a deep, resonant, gruff-ish voice announced. "He won. The boy's forgotten us."

--ovw--

This page is also not in the right place. None of these pages are in the right place.

--ovw--

THURSDAY OR FRIDAY (Exact day not yet confirmed)

Roughly on or around 7:58 PM, based on pages from the fourth red notebook. The specific time info for certain periods is not always complete.

Some pages are still missing.

Notes on day/time/location of events?

Overwoods.

The year before...?

Between the Suburbs and the Everglades?

There are songs and lyrics written in these records. The handwriting in these journals is disturbingly familiar.

But this must be the actual first page.

--ovw--I--ovw--

I wasn't planning to stay more than half an hour.

"Kaylee!" I had to get her attention- she had the configuration files, and I had homework.

Okay, maybe not homework.

A man and his golden retriever ran past as I made my decision. I spotted a rock the size of my shoe, made sure the dog and its owner were far enough away, and aimed at the window. There wasn't any glass to break.

"Well," I whispered. "You made me."

Strands of my hair- more black than usual- caught between my lips as I exhaled, aiming; calculating trajectory and line and distance. I felt fire inside my left hand as vapors of breath swirled in the wind, turning white in the frozen-yet-humid "summer" Overwoods air.

"Made you what?" The voice was in front of me, as well as behind me, to my left and right and center.

Tendons in my fingers twitched, particularly the ones around the metacarpals leading up to my left wrist. I glanced over at it to make sure it wasn't still bleeding. While it was scarred and calloused from years of being tied with rope or with other rough material (or sometimes, mercifully, bed sheet fabric), it at least wasn't gushing blood.

Anymore.

I put the rock down. "Made me waste my time," I said, but not out loud, and also not hushed. And also not with my mouth open. "If you're going to read my mind, then please, can you AT LEAST do it faster next time?"

We weren't glaring at each other- at least not physically. Though whenever we did, I'd usually match her stare with mine until we'd both explode in hysterical fits of laughter.

This wasn't one of those days, though.

I heard her voice again.

"Do you have it?" This voice of hers was the sound of a hundred trees in a forest; like the sound of a willow if you spoke to the willow alone under a blue Overwoods moon and she spoke back to you on a very desperate night. Me and her, we shared a lot of those nights. "Tell me you have it."

I looked up, towards the moon. I always did that.

"Yes," I replied.

Often that moon was half white and half purple.

"Come upstairs," she said.

In pictures the moon used to be so much smaller, or it seemed so to me. It must have looked different in the past. Or perhaps it just looked different in other places. In the Overwoods it was massive; sometimes as bright as the sun- the two coexist, and usually both were visible at once.

"No." This particular voice of mine was unique. Some told me it sounded like broken steel. Some said it was the sound of joy and love. Some said it was conviction. I always said it was the sound of anger. Because where love no longer exists, where safety is nonexistent, and where torture is inflicted and poison injected into your veins by demons who are envious, only God saves you. And then your anger carries you forward. Without it you will only die. "Meet me here before something gets set on fire."

I waited for about a minute, then the front door opened. Kaylee stepped out and walked towards me. I almost flinched.

She spoke physically this time. "I'm not gonna bite you, you know." She looked around. There was just a touch of nervousness in her usually bright voice when she spoke again. She smiled at me. Flirtatiously, even though I already knew that she mostly preferred girls. I suspected she’d say something dumb, like how her older brother might beat me up for spending so much time alone with her. Only one person in the whole world was more protective of Kaylee than her family: me. "Or maybe I should bite you. I know my brother might."

So, as usual, I had the best and smartest response.

"I'm literally gay."

"That's the problem," she said. "He likes you."

EWWWW.

I said nothing.

"I really think you'd make a great brother-in-law!" She had this sort of lilted Southern US accent- something that was nowadays very common here. "Don't you?"

I said nothing.

"Bonfires, Thanksgiving festivals, Christmases around a fireplace, you, me, Caleb, and the family? It'll be so wonderful!"

A combustifly, lethargic and slow from the green-tinted turquoise Overwoods snowflakes, droned its way by and softly illuminated my reflection off of a broken vinyl-and-fiberglass window. My eyes were still gray. Virtually colorless light gray, and still slowly returning to brown. A set of very ugly memories clutched my neck and the black elastic band that tied my hair back. It was impossible to breathe or speak.

And then I heard myself answer.

"I don't... have a family." I tested the muscles in my left hand. And then the ones in the right, and then left again. I wanted to cut myself. I wanted to destroy the already-destroyed-remains of the planet. I rolled my eyes. "Kaylee, you know that."

At that, she looked me dead in the eye, her eyebrows furrowed in... in I don't know. Hate? Suspicion? Anger? Annoyance? Whatever. At the time, I didn't care what she felt or what she thought; I didn't have the time to. At the time, it was the least of all my concerns.

And I had plenty. Too many, just to understate it.

Her expression changed. Her eyes were almost the same shade and color as mine- except for the times when mine had turned gray, of course. And in case you're wondering how that happens- don't. Because either way, you'll find out in a little bit. Whoever you may be, finding these black and purple words written in cheap ink. But let's go back to that day.

She lightly placed her hands on my shoulders. It was something her brother did to me a lot, too.

A lot more, in fact.

"Well, you have me," she said. "You'll understand that one day."

Me then, being the marshmallow that I still kind of am, had the best response.

I said nothing.

"Both of my parents absolutely adore you," Kaylee continued. "Especially one of them."

Um, no, I thought to myself. I'm pretty sure one of them hates me.

She essentially mimicked me, rolling her eyes at me this time.

"Only when he's drunk!" she said. "He hates everyone. You're an exception to that; you should see how special you are!"

I looked around us, from the empty houses, to the ruins of a school across the street. "Is there a reason we had to meet here?"

"It was safest," she replied.

"I have the money," I said. I was running out of time. "If you can give me the flash drive, I'll be on my way."

Kaylee Ann Davenport was the youngest of the Davenports; like me, she was 17, and we were both born on the twentieth of March. Caleb was her older brother. Their parents- Henry and Scott Davenport- owned a security agency.

I took the money out of my wallet. "Thirteen hundred." I counted the crumpled paper bills. "If I remember correctly?"

For a moment, she didn't speak. She shook her head. Subtly. Her brown hair was as unruly as mine and twice as long. I remember tasting salt on it once. We were that close. I locked eyes with her. And then what she said was: "Keep it."

I unhooked the elastics of the cheap, black polyester face mask I was wearing that day. People in the Overwoods still wore them, despite the fact that the last unanticipated pandemic was millennia ago. Or at least that's what people told me.

I only wore one to- and I say this in quotes- "fit in."

I folded the black mask that someone insisted I wear. I did it for him, not for me.

"Keep it?" I remember almost laughing. I've been played with before; it was never fun. Even as I write this now, it stings to remember. I considered throwing that rock at her. "Look, I can't really even be here right now. Let's be done with this, and go. Please."

She took half a step forward and slapped me.

I said nothing.

"Danny, you don't have to pay us." She took something from the pocket of her shirt. It was small, a metallic red. The flash drive. "Caleb talked to Dad, Dad talked to people, and they were able to get the files without having to do anything special, anything with money involved."

She handed the flash drive to me and for a moment all I could do was stare at it.

I was 17, a self-taught gymnast who wasn't good enough to compete anywhere. I had no family. In a filthy and dangerous world; in a place now known as the Overwoods- once the most populated area in a place that a bunch of people once called "The Philippines" eons ago, but now completely destroyed and reduced to less than half its original size, gathering typhoons and blizzards and dust since the fallout from Experiment Overwood (and also now the only island left in the whole continent)- which as far as I've seen isn't the best place to be. Though I wouldn't know really; I've never been any place else.

Either there was something in my eyes or my vision was going a bit blurry. The sun was setting; the sky was purple and red, and the water in my eyes was making it all smear together.

"Which of your dads is the Dad that Caleb spoke with?" I said.

"Henry."

"Oh," I said. I felt stunned, speechless. It must not have had anything to do with me. I wasn't important enough.

Kaylee looked at me again, and without her lips moving, she said, "'Ew,' right?"

I cleared my throat. Though it wasn't necessary- I didn't speak again when I turned and walked away.

The Davenports were telepaths, rich, powerful. Truly I felt lucky, to have anything to do with them at all. They had done quite a bit for me, and I was grateful, I still am. But it wasn't me I was thinking about.

--ovw--

I was covered in snow when I arrived at Vicinity Four. I once read in a book from my school library that there used to never be snow here.

I checked my watch. 9 o'clock, PM.

It took me a while to make absolutely sure no one was around, then I pushed past a glass door and walked into an old, abandoned strip mall. No lights were on, but that I was used to. I was shaking when I removed my jacket.

I allowed my eyes to adjust to the dimness and kept walking. "To West Wing Extension," read a sign on my left, a sign wrecked by vandalism.

I'm told that ages and ages ago, nobody had any special abilities, there were no wars, all people were equal, and society was a safe place; society was a community, one you wanted to be part of. People lived harmoniously and respected each other regardless of where they all were from or what they looked like.

I like thinking to myself that those of us who remain can make that happen again, that I can help make that happen, from my own sphere of influence.

Whatever that is.

Maybe I just think that because it keeps me sane.

I made my way quickly through a dark, empty walkway and started up a flight of stairs by the emergency exit.

I'm a telepath, but not like most- both in the sense that I don't live in the rich part of the Overwoods (here they call them the Suburbs), and also the sense that it isn't my only superpower. I grew up with Malcolm, the big man who works in the mines where they get those little Vystir crystals and who also works in the Port, where they carry stuff to and from the boats I've never been on.

"EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY," read the sign on the door I was about to walk through. "ALARM WILL RING IF OPENED."

I pushed the heavy door open and went through. As always, there was no such alarm.

I'm told it's lucky we have Vystir in the mines, and that the Union of Stars would have blown us off the map completely and without hesitation if we didn't have any. Vystir is used by people in the faraway Union of Stars for their experiments, done mostly on people, usually masses of people. It's part of the reason some of us have superpowers, or combinations of them. Part of the reason there were still dead bodies you couldn't touch.

It's also why I was there where I was. Malcolm had been in an incident where things went wrong in the mines. It gave him what they called Vystir poisoning- not very uncommon anymore, but unpredictable. You never know what it's going to do to who.

I started running through the hallway and then burst through a second door.

"James!" I yelled at the top of my voice without thinking. There was little to soften the shout. No curtains, no carpet. Just tables and chairs, all black, most of which looked like they probably belonged in a museum. The room was lit only by screens and feeble neon lights, which glowed gold and formed a large rectangle on the ceiling. I was now at the Webwork- a colossal room of old computers that some smart people revived for whatever reason. Here they did... well, I didn't actually know what they did. I didn't want to know. I was only in the Webwork because that's where I had to be. There was smoke in the unmoving air, because of people smoking cigarettes and who knows what else. The mix of smells was unfamiliar to me. "James, are you in here?!"

Half a dozen people stared at me, from their desks, in a state of apparent vexation; another half were making their way towards me. They were men who wore dark clothing like me, but tattered, and where the sleeves ended the tattoos began.

I wished I had a knife. Or a gun. Or something. But even if I did, I wouldn't really have hurt someone else; I would've just used it to kill myself first if someone else was going to do it and make it too painful.

--ovw--II--ovw--

I like this pen. It's nice to write with.

It's really long, too.

--ovw--

THE WEBWORK

V4

9:03 PM

Status: Unavailable

The man leading the pack looked me over. Between his Vicinity Four accent and whatever he'd been smoking all his life, I could hardly understand him.

"Ain't nobody see James with no permission, little boy," he said. "Get lost fo' ya get hurt, or somebody decides you're too pretty."

I didn't have to be told the meaning of that.

"I have permission," I said.

He half coughed, half laughed. "To get a drug? Look at ya. What're ya, twelve?"

"Seventeen."

"And you here fo' da Smack? You is throwin' yo life away on da hard shit, already? You too young!"

What?

WHAT?

WHAT DID HE SAY?!!!?!?!

Excuse me, sir.

I didn't EVEN HAVE A LIFE TO THROW AWAY to start with, WHAT AN IDIOT.

Thank you FOR ASSUMING I DID THOUGH

Now please, please, PLEASE let me have the antidote so I can cry in peace!!!

I thought these things to nobody in particular, with many exclamation points. Politely, of course.

As always.

Happy place. Happy place.

Happy happy

I touched my fingers to my eyebrows. And then I looked at my hands, and there was no bleeding, and there were no ropes.

I took a deep breath before I spoke again.

"I came here for the antidote," I said. I tried to say it with a steady voice but failed; I wanted to cry, but this was not the time or the place. "Malc-" I choked. "My dad's been poisoned."

You've visited here before, I remember telling myself. You were fine. You were fine, you were fine, you were fine.

Well... I survived, is more like it.

YOU WERE FINE.

A moment's pause. Then the man's stare somehow felt less menacing; his voice somewhat less gruff. Or maybe I was just starting to not feel things.

"New experiment?" he said.

Now, did he REALLY have to go and say that word-

I felt sick.

Did he have to say that word NOW???

Yeah, I know- I actually thought it with THREE question marks.

Did he have to say that word *NOW???!*

And then with asterisks, and an exclamation mark. And then with more capital letters, too:

Did he have to say THAT WORD *NOW???!*

No wonder that one publisher guy who was high on crack didn't like the style I had in my mind. It couldn't possibly have been the crack he was high on.

1. Wanted. To. Vomit.

"No," I replied, trying to maintain whatever composure I still had. I minimized my verbal communication; my next sentence was one word. "Mines."

The man coughed- or maybe he was just clearing his throat, I literally couldn't tell- and gave me what almost felt like a sympathetic look. But the green+black tattoo on his neck of a Beckler & Poch MPV5 Zaiofka machine gun was such a jarring contrast to it- it was like I was talking to the big bad wolf except that the big bad wolf is actually adorable.

Adorable, and friendly, and fluffy, and cute. And pettable, like a dog. I mean, that's what the pictures looked like in the library books. Well, to me, that's how they looked.

I think.

I looked down at the man's shoes, which were much less intimidating even though they were twice as big as mine and looked nine thousand times more expensive.

That was when I saw the tattoo of an actual wolf above his right ankle, below the tattered end of his pants, and it literally looked like it was going to kill me and then eat me and/or feed me to its friends after removing my one brain cell, because it tastes like jellybean and bad wolves don't like jellybeans.

Okay I don't like wolves anymore

Sometimes, I think without any punctuation marks. Please sue me for it.

"Shit," the man said. "I'm sorry. 'Sit bad?"

"I don't know," I replied. "I just know he has it."

And then sometimes, I think random words that probably don't even actually exist and probably don't even have any meaning. And I don't know why- they just... happen. I try to keep my telepathic barrier up most of the time, so telepaths can't read or hear it. It would be SO EMBARRASSING.

ORBIPLOSIONS

Like that. WHAT ON EARTH IS AN ORBIPLOSION?

"Hey," the man said. And what he said next would've been scary, except it wasn't in a scary voice anymore. I think he finally believed I was there with permission from James. "Look at me."

I forced myself to look up at him. He had green eyes- a super common physical characteristic of those who are U.S. people from V4- and two scars on his face that were still in the process of healing.

Funny, I had two scars on my face that were still in the process of healing, too.

"Wha'dya have for us?" he said.

I finally had a steady answer, one that I gave to him in a voice as loud as his.

"Files. The ones James wanted? I have them."

I heard people mumble from behind their desks. There was rumbling all around me.

This place is creepy. 8 out of 10 of these people are literally currently on drugs. I want to go home and do some tumbling, maybe get my triple full twist combined with something super duper cool again! And then I'll call it THE MUSHROOM. That's a cool name. Maybe Malcolm has made my favorite French toast. OH, I LOVE FRENCH TOAST SO MUCH! MMM, SO YUMMY.

I licked my lips.

"You?" the man said. "The one who's getting us the info is you?"

"I don't even know what I'm getting you," I said. "But I have it. All I want is the antidote."

--ovw--

James had long straight hair, some sort of shade between red and orange. His glasses reflected the light from all the screens in his office as he spoke.

"...should last you about three weeks, maybe four." He unplugged the flash drive from a device I'd never seen before. "Come talk to me before then to get more."

"Will I have to do something similar?"

There was a touch of amusement on his face, a smile in his eyes, which were the same shade of light green as the ice cream Caleb bought for me and Kaylee, the day we graduated from primary school. It feels like it was just yesterday.

Kaylee and I were in the same classes, and we also were in Experiment Nightingale- the only two survivors. It was aimed towards telepaths, intended to hone their abilities further, perhaps cause reactions that gave us more powers, make us more useful. It's unclear if that experiment is why Kaylee can make plants grow from nothing, why I can touch people and take pain from them and leap unbelievably high and far. I wasn't a good enough gymnast to compete anywhere- because I was disqualified before I could get on an apparatus.

James arranged the vials in a box before me on one of his tables.

"Something similar or even better," he said.

I cleared my throat. Between memories of Experiment Nightingale and my thoughts of Malcolm it was hard to stay in the present moment. "I'm sorry," I replied. "What exactly do you mean by 'better?'"

Before Malcolm came along I was prostituted as a child. It happens when you're poor and you come from one of the worst parts of the Overwoods.

"I mean that the experiment was a success!" he said, tapping the US seal on the badge he always wore on a chain around his neck. I had never seen James so happy before. "You..." he walked over and put an arm around me. "Are a success! The Union of Stars' president will be so happy, absolutely ecstatic!"

I wrapped my arms around the box, the vials of antidote that could very well save Malcolm's life. "Can I go home now?"

"Yes!" he said. "Come see me in three weeks."

I made my way towards the door in a hurry. "Okay," I said.

"Oh, Midnight, one more thing-" he said. He was fiddling with papers and envelopes in one of his desk drawers. "This is for you."

He picked up some type of small object, and threw it in a long arc across the room and at me. I caught it with the top of the box.

For a moment I was so worried it had maybe broken a vial or two, but it was surprisingly very lightweight.

It was a badge, with a seal. Just like the one James was wearing. And it landed face up.

I made out the words pressed into the silver material:

"CHRISTOPHER MIDNIGHT. UNION OF STARS. AGENT LEVEL I."

I looked back at him, confused, and so aggravated that yet another person was wasting my time on that day.

"James," I said, trying to sound nonchalant and failing. "This is for someone else. My name is Danny."

Not that I would actually really know that myself, I thought. Another set of extremely ugly memories choked me from behind and wrapped heavy, disgusting fingers around my neck, and around my waist, and around my arms; I stared at my hands and then I stared back at Jamezo Monstro Methylo Acido Estero Benzo Carboxylico. Though at times I feel I might like to.

He looked at me, and I had trouble reading his exact expression. Joyful. Ecstatic. The, shall we say, typical-on-stimulants-James, but also beyond that. It seemed almost like what I said was completely, totally hysterical to him; it was like he was about to throw a party because he won the lottery or something.

Definitely like he just won something...

I just didn’t know what.

"Not anymore," he replied.

--ovw--

The Overwoods

book one (FKA "episode" one)

written by realnotperfect/Corgi on Discord/Danny "Myer" Mier for kicks, because boredom

yas

--ovw--

--ovw--III--ovw--

"Okay, so have you found the guy?"

"Not yet." Belinda Klein was working investigations on the 5th floor of the Webwork, where I spent my working hours if I wasn't in the US, or wasn't with Malcolm or Kaylee.

Malcolm didn't need to work anymore now that I had money coming in, but he insisted, and I wasn't going to take that away from him. Kaylee didn't need to work, of course- her dads had the agency, which, as it turns out, was the Union of Stars' Overwoods branch.

It took Kaylee's family and James about a year to determine if I was, and I quote, "what the US needs" to help carry out certain operations. They all knew I was never going to participate in any experiments or conducting them, so they assigned me to help work criminal investigations. At least for now.

I wasn't even very useful in my opinion. They just needed me for random fancy things where a person with no superpowers might have trouble. Areas where someone needed to get in somewhere quick, and get out quick; situations where a person physically had to obtain evidence or information fast and without jeopardizing the entire investigation. Fun happy stuff.

I felt like a charity case. Maybe I did have superpowers, but personally I felt as though I was no one special. Just someone lucky enough that people wanted to help me. These other people, working in the US, were either rich, born in the US, had a ton of master's degrees, or all three.

I was none of the above, and standing there thinking about it all, I could feel my anxiety and PTSD and insecurities mixing all together at once. I wonder what these people saw in me.

"You know where the suspect was; you know both the hotel and the room he was in, but still don't have the suspect's name?" I asked Belinda. Her hair was the same dark black as mine, but dyed pink. I didn't even know if that was allowed in the agency. You could see the roots growing in; some of them were gray and not black. "It's been a week since the murder."

"These answers don't come in a day, or a week, or sometimes even a month, agent Midnight."

That's what they see in me, I suppose. Christopher Midnight, the name they gave to the boy who had been close to death on more than a few occasions, the boy who survived pain, hunger, and violence; the one who survived Experiment Nightingale.

I mean, Kaylee survived Experiment Nightingale, too. But her skills were very different from mine.

"Do I go home?" I said.

It had been almost year since I did that first favor for James, and I was happy with the name they gave me, mostly because I never even knew what my real name really was... or if I even had one. Danny was just what I called myself. To me, it was nice, to feel that I belonged somewhere, belonged to people, who knew me and trusted me and had a name for me, people who knew where I was needed.

I am enough. Maybe I don't feel it right now, believe it right now. But one day I will.

"Paperwork," Belinda said. She means the ones I'm qualified to work even without earthshattering master's degrees. Apparently I can write. Apparently my grammar is sort of okay.

"And then?"

"Dip the gloves in the sterilizers. Then you can go."

"Okay," I said. I used to always feel I didn't know who I was, or what I was. I'm lucky Malcolm mitigated that early. Kaylee came along, and her family, and James and the agency. I wasn't lost anymore, or at least I wasn't as lost as I used to be. I looked back at Belinda, before sitting down. "Belle."

"Yes?"

"You said our suspect had a nickname?"

"It's only a hunch, a theory."

"An assumption, yes. What was the nickname?"

"The Manila Maniac."

I physically cringed. "Really?"

"Yes." Belinda looked at me and smiled. "Pathetic name, isn't it?"

"Where is it from?"

"The location of this murder and other unsolved murders are all in an area called the Lowdown; thousands of years ago it was known as Manila."

"I know." I paused. Then I sat down, and ran my fingers along the sheet of paper in front of me. "I used to live there." I had to take a moment to think, to remember things I can't erase or push aside. To accept them, and carry on best I could. Essentially I was frozen in the past for just a moment; this was something Belinda Klein was now accustomed to, having worked on the same team. She could tell from my eyes. I cleared my throat. "What makes us assume this was the Manila Maniac?"

"Victim was female, about fourteen years old-"

"Decapitated?"

"Yes, Midnight, decapitated." She gave me a look. "And as I'm sure you've heard, this isn't the first dead body of a very young person found in that area, with its head cut off."

"Weren't there three others?"

"Sixteen others. Thirteen just weren't as popular, weren't made as public."

"And they're not all women."

"Correct. In fact, eleven of the seventeen were male."

"Signs of abuse?"

"Rape."

I put my hands together in front of me. Hadn't I dealt with people like this before? Before I understood anything? Was I fortunate to have walked out of the situation I was in with two working legs and a beating heart?

"The address," I said. "Give me the address."

Belinda tied her pink hair into a knot.

"Belle, the address, please."

"You don't want to do this." Her attention was on her computer screen. "And you're eighteen."

"What does my age have to do with this?"

"Chris," she said. "You're young. You're traumatized. And it's only been several years since you left a bad situation."

"Don't talk to me like that."

She took a ballpoint pen and a sticky note, scribbled on it, and slammed it onto my desk with her right hand. "All right, your choice," she said. Unfinished papers flew onto the floor. The tattooed snakes on her forearm stared at me with red eyes. Ladders and snakes, roses and thorns. All in color.

She stalked back to her computer, and I could've sworn the entire planet could hear her keyboard when she started typing on it again.

I took the sticky note.

#67 DIRTWATER AVENUE LOWDOWN 1216.

There was an edge to her voice now. "Tell James I told you not to, when you go crying to him."

"I'll do that," I said. "Thanks, Belinda."

--ovw--IV--ovw--

"Midnight!"

Kaylee was in a dress, a beautiful thing, it was light pink and studded with what looked like thousands of tiny little diamonds to me. It came straight from the US, and cost $500.99. I know because I'm the one who bought it for her.

"Kaylee," I said, grinning. I didn't hesitate to embrace her. She and her family had done so much for us. Next to Malcolm, she was the best friend I had in the entire world.

I remembered Experiment Nightingale. We were tied to chairs... all of us. None of us was older than twelve. The being tied to a chair wasn't necessary for me; even then, I knew there was nothing in my power that I could do to stop the experiments. I didn't know if I was going to live or die that day, I didn't know if I cared. I was being prostituted for money and food then and I didn't know if I cared to keep going. That in itself makes you feel messed up, makes you feel afraid of everything. Kaylee was crying. Sobbing and shouting about how her parents were two of the top men working somewhere with some kind of authority. But it wasn't enough. Kaylee and I were the only ones from the experiment still alive after three months.

Kaylee looked at me. Her eyes were brown, like mine, like her dad's. They were filled with tears. "Thank you so much for the dress," she said.

"You're welcome," I said. I had to try hard not to cry; she was always kind, and beautiful, without trying to be. She was one of those people you always wanted to be around. And she always told me I was one of those people, too, but I didn't know if I agreed. "Thank you for saving my life. And Malcolm's."

"You saved your own life. I just had to talk to people."

Caleb was standing in the doorway. I saw him by the golden light of their living room, which was spilling out onto the porch on that warm Friday evening.

Kaylee looked at him. "Jealous, Caleb?" she said.

I laughed, harder than I had ever laughed before. It was ridiculous. But not without merit.

"Shut up," said Caleb.

"Yeah, I know you are!" Kaylee replied. I know she found it funny; it was all that mattered to me.

--ovw--

--ovw--

She started walking towards the house. I waved hello to Aurelio, one of the men employed to guard the perimeter. He waved back; he always greeted me with a smile.

I loved the Davenport residence. It was beautiful, made from glass and marble and maple and mahogany and oak and stone and all sorts of things I had no name for. From where I stood I looked up at the chimney, which jutted out from the glass roof. I was transfixed; chimneys captivated me. I'd only ever seen five of them, four of them when I was assigned work in mainland US. Every curtain that I could see above the ground floor was dark red. Red was my favorite color. I smiled.

The four-story masterpiece was one of few places in the Overwoods where I knew I was safe. Just like Malcolm's house in the Port, it was home to me. And when you combine that with the fact that I didn't have one at all until I was fifteen, it wasn't just amazing; it was a sanctuary.

A sanctuary with, in my opinion, the kindest and nicest four people, ever. Though occasionally Henry got too drunk and started arguing with anyone who would listen about how telepaths only should be allowed to hold positions in government.

I didn't know about that. And I only ever read minds to preserve my life or someone else's.

I wondered what mind reading politicians did. I wondered what politicians did at all. I wondered what they talked about, what they ate for dinner.

They're people, like us, aren't they?

Kaylee giggled as I followed her up the steps; she spoke to me in a hushed tone.

"You know, Chris, he really loves your smile."

"Must be the dimple," I replied. "My teeth are fucked."

"What? No, they're not."

"You don't see them like I do."

"Yeah, I'm not sure anybody does." She shot a glance at me as we walked up. "Especially not Caleb."

We were outside the door now; Caleb was standing directly in front of me, his eyes on mine. They were some sort of color between gray and blue. They reminded me of the ice-covered sidewalk I once slipped on.

He was a foot taller than me at minimum- which made sense, because I was five foot three, at most. I had to look up whenever he spoke to me.

"Howdy," he said. He had a thick and heavy US accent, of course, but it was slightly different from the one that Henry and Kaylee shared. It fascinated me. He looked like Scott; they were both tall, dirty blond, blue-eyed.

"Hi," I said.

"We heard you apprehended someone," said Caleb. "Good work."

"I... didn't apprehend anyone," I said. "I just kept someone from getting hurt."

He means from two weeks ago. A man was yelling in whatever language it was and shooting people with some sort of makeshift revolver. It's not like I was gonna stare and do nothing. Fortunately no one was killed; I only needed to do one hop. That's what I called it. I just jumped on him.

"I'm still proud of you," said Caleb. "You saved lives. It's what you do."

"You're giving me too much credit."

"Am not."

"I'll go leave you two alone!" squealed Kaylee, quirking her eyebrows at us and stepping inside.

Caleb and I stared at the doorway. For what felt like five minutes we listened to Kaylee still laughing inside.

"How's James?" said Caleb. "Anything new with the Webwork?"

"James is..." I didn't know how to put it. "James is as you would expect him to be, I guess." I loved James. I didn't want to say anything bad about the man. Bad karma.

"Of course," said Caleb. "On stimulants."

"I don't know. Probably." I remembered something else. "Somebody told me Chaquille overdosed."

"Interesting." Caleb grinned. "He's not there to tell you that you're a little twelve-year-old boy looking for drugs anymore?"

"Not recently," I said. "I haven't seen him for a month."

"And you still work with Meadows," said Caleb.

"Meadows," I said. "And Klein."

"Belinda?" said Caleb. "She's a bitch."

We heard some shuffling upstairs, and then Kaylee was back. Well, sort of. We saw only her head, peeking out of a second-story window.

Out of thin air, she created some sort of little handful of leaves. She placed it on the edge of the windowsill.

I stared at it. Kaylee looked at me, expectantly.

"I don't get it," I said.

"It's mistletoe," said Caleb.

"What's that?" I said. "What does it do?"

"Never mind," said Caleb.

Kaylee waved her arms from upstairs.

"Chris, make sure you DON'T read his mind!" yelled Kaylee. "Trust me, it'll be SO uncomfortable!"

I was silent. I didn't know if I was blushing red, or green. Caleb was blushing red for sure; I could see it, and he was glaring. I didn't hear him sound angry too many times, but this was one of them. "I am going to make sure he never buys you anything!" he yelled back. "Anything, ever again!"

Kaylee stuck her tongue out, shut the window, and disappeared from view.

--ovw--V--ovw--

I stared at the window.

Caleb stopped glaring, and closed his eyes. Then he opened them. His gaze rested on my face.

"How-" he said muttering, then shifted to a deep and irritated voice. "How on earth is that girl your best friend, Chris?"

"Nightingale," I said. I succeeded at saying the word. And then I couldn't look Caleb in the eye anymore.

"Hey," said Caleb.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I mean, I know it could've been worse- I mean, we lived. Kaylee and me. Everybody else..." I trailed off.

"Chris," said Caleb.

"...they're dead. They died." I felt the need to prove I could say it; I could speak the words without totally jumping away in one piece of air while doing a some form of somersault with a full twist and then crying for 24 hours wherever I landed. Perfect score, yay. "And they didn't die all at once, either," I said.

"Do you dream about it?" said Caleb.

"What?" I said.

"Do you dream about it," he repeated. "She does."

I stared at my shoes. There was something in my eyes again.

I wanted to tell Caleb what I dreamed about when I do sleep: reruns of past traumas. Including, but not limited to, Experiment Nightingale.

I also wanted to tell Caleb that sometimes when I woke up from them, I would think of him.

I thought of Caleb, and it soothed my mind. It guided me back to the present. I thought of how he was basically the reason I had a job. How thankful I was that Kaylee had a brother like him, helping to keep her protected.

How Caleb and I always visited the Port together, at midnight.

I wanted to say these things; I wanted to express my deepest gratitude, express to him how much he meant to me.

Sadly, I didn't know how to do any of these things.

"I dream about it when I'm awake, yes," I said. "I don't sleep."

"Come on," said Caleb.

"I sleep a little," I said.

He smiled, and locked eyes with me.

"You know," he said. "I can change that."

"Thanks for the jacket, do you want it back?" I said, both subconsciously and automatically trying to look for a way out of the new subject at hand, as well as searching his eyes, in an attempt to read him, read where his heart was when he said those words. I was already removing the brown cotton jacket. It was always really easy to take off, too, because it was so huge on me.

He put his hand firmly on my arm, stopping me.

"It's yours," Caleb said, slowly. There was a slightly pleading tone in his voice when he said it. It melted some of my defenses. I still had thousands. "Keep it," he said. "Please."

The wind was warm; things weren't all frozen over, the way they usually were on most late Marches. Weather in the Overwoods: your number one source of unpredictability.

"Okay," I said. "I'll keep it."

"Thank you," said Caleb.

"You're welcome," I said.

We stood there, on the porch, silent for a while.

I rolled my eyes up to the shade above us. I sniffed. I cleared my throat, and said nothing.

He took my hand, and locked his fingers between mine. I think he did this whenever he felt he needed to drag me back into the present, or something. "You're stronger than you think you are," he said softly. "And you're not alone anymore."

Either he read my mind or my flashback moments were now obvious to him.

I still said nothing. I didn't know what to say. I stayed frozen for a moment longer, having to deal with Experiment Nightingale and other memories as well as my amazingly phenomenal awkwardness.

The truth is I didn't want to push anyone away or reject affection; I didn't want to act like I didn't need anything, or like I was this extremely independent and invulnerable and invincible teenager.

Because I wasn't.

Yet unfortunately I had been in maybe a few too many unpleasant situations. I felt like for me certain emotions were difficult, perhaps even dangerous. Malcolm and Kaylee had come close, Caleb on several occasions.

Caleb smiled. He didn't have any dimples, like me. What he did have was funny yellow stubble. I remember touching it once, in a moment when I just really wanted to. I hope he never asks me about it.

He pulled me inside the living room with him.

"You're still wearing my jacket," he said. "Even on a warm day."

I saw Scott waving hello to me from the kitchen. I smiled and waved back. He was affectionate and friendly and kind. It was always nice to see him.

"I like jackets," I said.

--ovw--VI--ovw--

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

I had no idea what I was eating but it was AMAZING.

"How goes the job, son?" said Henry, who was across from me at the Davenport's dining room table.

It was like a cheeseburger. It was like, a cheeseburger, only more cheeseburger.

I smiled. I liked food. Food made me happy.

I looked at Caleb, who was seated beside his father. He didn't answer the question.

I spoke with my mouth full because I didn't really care around these people, and because OMG WOW CHEESEBURGER YAY. OH CHEESEBURGER.

"Caweb!" I said. "Enry athked you equeffion."

Henry looked at me.

"No," said Henry. "I asked you."

"Oh." I quickly swallowed the mouthful of amazing cheeseburger. I wanted it in my mouth for longer, but, oh well. There was more, anyway.

"Things going well?" said Henry.

"They are, and I love it," I said while getting more lettuce from a plate. "I love being useful." I shrugged, and tried not to sound overly excited talking about it. "I love being somewhere, helping where I know I can. And James? He isn't horrible to work with at all, despite all that I've been told. He's a nice guy."

Henry's expression was neutral.

"That's good," said Henry.

"What's this about, dear?" said Scott.

I remembered my conversation with Belinda. Henry's eyes bore into mine.

Suddenly I was scared and nervous. I had the sense that maybe Henry was reading my mind; I didn't try to confirm it.

"Dad, don't do this," said Caleb.

Kaylee scratched her fork on her plate. She was making baby corn plants around it.

"You're hunting someone dangerous, someone who is a murderer," said Henry. He took a big swig from his drink. "And also a rapist."

Kaylee left the table. I subconsciously dropped my fork and started flailing trying to catch it. That was a mistake, because I couldn't do it right and it ended up flying into the punch bowl and making the punch splash out of it, onto the potato salad. I ruined their perfectly good potato salad.

"I'm sorry," I said. "What..." I trailed off. "What makes you say this?"

Henry was finishing a piece of steak. He took a sip of whatever probably-alcoholic-beverage he'd been drinking for the past twenty minutes.

"Belinda Klein messaged," he said.

"What did she say?" I asked.

"She said you're going after a very dangerous suspect," Henry said.

"We don't even have a suspect," I said. "And even if we did, the suspect wouldn't be any more or less dangerous than others I've dealt with in the past. I'm still here, aren't I?"

Caleb and I locked eyes for a moment, then I looked away.

Henry took another swig before speaking. He tapped his finger on the bottle. "She also said you demanded to get an address."

"I asked," I said.

"Do you realize you're a possible target?" said Henry.

That's all it took. I didn't want to be at that table anymore. I'm not helpless, is what I wanted to say. I took a breath, and then responded.

"We don't know who it is," I said. "Belinda doesn't have anything; there's no actual suspect. Not yet, at least."

Caleb spoke, only to me, telepathically. "You're after a 'who' again," he said. "Not a 'what.'"

Henry was busy drinking his whatever it was.

Caleb spoke to me again. "Hey," he said. "Am I right?" He sounded troubled, even through telepathy. "Chris, you're not in danger, are you?"

I looked around, from Kaylee's empty seat to Scott to Caleb. No one was enjoying the topic. Or the food.

A shame because the food was mind-blowing.

I turned my attention back to Henry.

"It's Kaylee's birthday celebration," I said softly. "Do we really need to talk about this, here?"

"Yes," said Henry. He took another sip. "We do."

"Dad," said Caleb.

"It's okay!" said Kaylee. She was behind me with two small bowls of chocolate ice cream. She placed one on the table in front of me. "You can talk about it here! And remember it's not just my birthday celebration- it's Chris's birthday celebration, too!"

"Please excuse me," I said. I got up from the table. "Caleb can have my ice cream. Thanks, Kaylee."

I was weak, feeble; I fell apart everywhere. But this time I could at least keep it from happening in front of these nice people.

"I can pay for the potato salad," I said.

--ovw--VII--ovw--

There were old discarded bookshelves to my left. To my right, there were piles of armchairs, a blackboard on the ground beside them, and some shrubs with pretty light purple flowers.

A small red squirrel was scurrying about. It stopped and stared at me.

I stared back at it.

"Hi," I said.

The cute little thing twitched its nose, and then ran away. My eyes followed it until it disappeared from view.

I could let the water from my eyes fall here.

I didn't cry in front of them. Thank God.

I positioned my feet against the broken wall of the school. I wondered if my family studied here; I wondered if I had one.

Perhaps I didn't have one; perhaps I was the byproduct of an experiment. There were so many. One experiment started on a November and concluded on a February.

They called it Nightingale.

"Chris!" a voice yelled, not far behind me. The voice was Caleb's.

I was torn between just going or letting him catch up.

It was routine for me; whenever I visited the Davenports this was my favorite hopoff position, as I called it. One controlled maneuver off of this perfectly diagonally placed broken thing, and I landed in the most beautiful part of the Port, every time.

I let him catch up.

Caleb was out of breath. He had to hunch over, his hands on his knees.

Suddenly all I wanted to do was hug him. I wanted a human embrace.

"I can't be near you right now," I said.

"What?" he said. "Why?"

"I just can't."

"I'm sorry about Dad, you know how he can be someti-"

"You ran here," I said, interrupting. "There must be something important; say it now, and I'll go."

"I just wanted to say you don't have to pay for the potato salad."

"Wonderful," I said. "Goodbye."

Then he grabbed my hand- typically I would've freaked out and ran at such sudden physical contact. But with Caleb, it was different sometimes.

It took me a few seconds, as it always did. And then, Caleb wasn't out of breath and sweating anymore; I was. I was out of breath and sweating and my legs burned.

The little red squirrel came back, dropped an acorn in front of me, and then scurried away.

There was something else I was feeling, too, it was some kind of pain, not so much a physical pain, but maybe more so a vague hollow ache somewhere over my chest, where my heart was. I couldn't explain it.

"Danny," said Caleb. He called me that, sometimes. Either I liked it or I didn't care. "You really don't have to do that for me, you know."

"I'm only doing it because I love your eyes and I think they're a really pretty color," I said.

"No." He pulled me closer to him. "You're doing it because you love me."

I smiled.

"Okay," I said. "You win."

I closed my eyes; it wasn't easy staying in that moment, but I did, and I did it for as long as humanly possible.

"Danny," he said. "You're not reading my mind, are you?"

"No," I said. "Of course not."

"Okay," he said. "All right. What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking love is so overrated," I said.

"I'm thinking that's just you putting walls up," said Caleb.

"Speaking of walls, there's a wall I need to go and literally hop from." The burning in my legs was starting to ebb, but the strange feeling, the unexplained one over my chest, was just as profound and confusing to me now as it was earlier. "Caleb, there's some kind of a feeling, somewhere in your chest almost? What is it?"

His eyes searched mine. He said nothing.

"Are you gonna tell me?" I said.

I looked at the sky; it was dark and empty, save for some tiny silver-blue specks. I wondered if the Union of Stars took their name from the big bright burning things. They definitely used lots of hydrogen and helium, and burned things.

...I guessed it made sense.

And I guessed Caleb wasn't going to answer. "The stars are the color of your eyes," I said.

"It's how I feel when I can't get close to you," he said.

"Wait. What?" I almost did an actual facepalm. "You are very close to me."

"Not close enough."

My heart skipped a beat. "Wait," I said. "Do you always feel this way?"

I felt guilt. Awful, horrible guilt. A person was in pain, and I, in some form, was the cause for it.

"A lot of the time," he said.

His voice echoed in my mind. Either that or he was telepathically telling me again; I didn't know which.

Not close enough.

I was nervous when I spoke.

"What's closer?" I said. "Can I make it better?"

In answer, he took my face in both his hands and kissed me.

I was revolted. Or should I say- the broken parts of me, were revolted. The rest of me wanted it; I wanted it so much.

It was a long time before he pulled back.

"There," he said, softly. "You made it better."

I had nothing to say. At least, nothing I could think of. I desperately tried to think of something. Anything.

"Did I ever tell you how much I love the stubble on your face?" I said.

He laughed. It was a really weird, really loud, really accented laugh. I loved it.

"Yes," he said. "On at least one occasion. It's nice to hear it again."

My brain had completely shut down.

If I had one.

"Cool," I said. I did a thumbs-up gesture with both my hands, which were still shaking. "All right, I'ma go now."

Just then my phone buzzed.

I instantly was pissed off- I HATED text messages, absolutely despised them. The only reason I even had a phone was because I had a thing, called a job. Apart from Kaylee, Caleb, James, Scott, and Connor Meadows, no one else had my phone number, at least not that I knew of. Even Belinda didn't have it. Maybe it was some kind of urgent e-mail?

"Really?" I whispered. "Now? Tonight?" I was disgruntled, and I wasn't trying to conceal it. "I swear, if this is Klein-"

"It isn't Klein," said Caleb.

I looked at him. One of Caleb's abilities was that he could manipulate almost any technology, communicate with it from afar. Technopathy.

"What do you mean?"

"Chris, I think you're in danger."

I shook my head. I fumbled for the cell phone. "I've been in danger before. I live in the Overwoods. It's not new."

I unlocked the phone. There was one new message on it.

It was from an unusual number, a string of digits that didn't seem to follow any format.

I tapped to open it.

Caleb stood next to me, so we both could see the message.

"MISSED YOU

CAN'T WAIT TO SEE YOU AGAIN

- M M"

"Wow," I said. "So original."

Caleb didn't look amused when he took the keys from his pocket. In fact, he looked obdurate. Frigid.

Expressionless.

Even I was concerned then.

"You're staying with me tonight," said Caleb.

I felt something creep up on me. Fear. A certain kind of it. But I was no stranger to it, either.

"What do you mean?" I said. "Where?"

"Dad's office," said Caleb. "Scott's. It's more secure than the house."

--ovw--VIII--ovw--

Nightingale

Day/Night #14 or #15 (Exact day/night not yet confirmed)

Subprocedure Unknown

There were no words for how cold, how empty, how completely removed from life you felt, when things like this happened.

She was behind a screen to my left. It was tinted, and thinner than paper, but could not be penetrated. Marie, I thought her name was.

I heard a voice: the same voice everyone else there was also hearing. It was a man's voice.

It sounded like the voice of evil itself. It was disembodied; it was fluctuating in the air all around us.

"Those of you who were injected will need to obtain your key," said the man. "The key is the same color as your ID. It will also have the same number."

We all had some kind of device, completely stuck to our left hands. I looked down at it.

Pure white.

But there was no number on it...

Marie looked at me. She had a black version of the same contraption; it was marked in red with the number 74.

"What will happen, if we don't find the right key?" she said. "What if we don't find a key at all?"

I looked around for Kaylee. There were walls around us, but I knew not to be fooled; there were more. Only invisible.

The voice spoke again.

"The key will allow you to access the platform above you. That is where you need to go," said the voice. "Thank you for participating."

Participating?

I woke up here. I didn't even know if I was injected on that day; did he mean previous injections in the experiment?

Weren't we all injected?

A hundred times?

I let go of trying to find Kaylee, for the moment. Either I couldn't see her or she wasn't nearby. I didn't think that she was dead- Kaylee was too strong; too smart.

I looked up. Dark glass walls and a ceiling. What platform?

"How much time do you think we have?" Marie said.

"I don't know," I replied. "Find your key." I wiped tears off my face; I saw them but couldn't feel them. I didn't know what felt worse to me at that moment: not knowing where I was, being trapped, the pain in my chest, the pain in my wrists, or the pounding in my head. There was a bruise on my left arm and I had no idea where it came from.

I looked at Marie. For a moment, I wondered if the fear in her eyes was the same thing she saw, on my face. And then I dismissed the thought.

I couldn't feel fear; I had none left at that moment. It had all been used up in the weeks before.

"Find your key," I told her, in my best attempt at an encouraging voice. "You can do this, Marie."

"You remember my name," she said.

"Second grade," I said. "Science experiment."

"You blew up the frog," she said with a laugh.

It wasn't me- the boy who blew up the frog was a non-telepath who could manipulate fire. Pyrokinetic, like Malcolm.

I let her laugh without interrupting; I was happy she had something to smile about.

When I saw Marie again, I couldn't make her smile anymore, because she was a dead body.

--ovw--

"Midnight, the door! GET THE DOOR, NOW!"

Belinda's lip was bleeding profusely- she probably was going to need stitches. Her dyed pink hair was disheveled in its knot. Her gun was pointed towards the chandelier at the top of the large and beautifully decorated room, a room which extended from the lobby to the second and third floors of the hotel. Everything expensive imaginable was in it.

"Connor and I can take care of the windows. Hurry, or this all was for nothing!" Belinda yelled.

"Belle," I said. "There's, like, a million doors. Could you please be a little more specific?"

James answered me.

"Lobby emergency exit," he said, in a voice so different from his usual enthusiastic chatter. It was even and steady. It was loud, yet soft at the same time. Firm but gentle.

A shower of sparks came down from the ceiling.

I admired this most about James; in an extremely heated panic situation, he was calm. He said I was like that, too.

As long as the PTSD wasn't kicking in at the command of some random trigger, of course.

He was standing beside Belinda Klein, on the staircase. He was surveying the room before us. Concentrating.

I grunted as I pushed myself up off the ground. There was a colossal mess of dark, almost black blood on Caleb's jacket- a shard of glass had buried itself into the left side of my neck. There was another one, even longer, in my rib cage. I didn't pull out either one.

Belinda pulled the trigger.

I flinched, and made some kind of a sound; I HATED gunshots.

"Midnight, now, go," said James.

"Understood," I replied.

I took a breath, stood straight, and leaped off the third floor railing and onto the ground floor. The chandelier soon followed; James used it to smash the glass doors of the main entrance, destroying it. I watched debris and wreckage fall from the ceiling in front of me. Telekinesis, he called it.

I bounded towards the emergency exit, and almost immediately realized I didn't need to secure it- it was on fire. In fact, the entire hallway toward it was on fire. Nobody was going to be using this path as an exit any time soon.

Whoever we were after was trapped.

I ran back toward the center of the lobby. A man was standing there, looking the other way. I approached him, coughing and wincing.

"Hey," I said.

He turned towards me.

"Hi, do you need any help?" I asked.

Fortunately, he wasn't injured, not that I could tell. Not as badly as I was at least.

And then, something shifted. It happened slowly. The atmosphere in that room- the smoke, heat, the dust from the ceiling and the burning wreckage all around us- turned cold, like there was no fire; like I couldn't feel the torridness. The entire hotel lobby started going dark, beginning with the floor, and moving up toward the ceiling. Our surroundings were engulfed in flames that seemed to turn, creepingly, into motionless black holes. Everything around us was turning into blackness. Clearly, something was going very wrong- I looked at the man, trying to make sense of whatever was happening, when I recognized him. Either it really did take me a while to put it together, or my brain didn't process it correctly at once when he turned around. Standing in front of me was the man who had me prostituted.

For years.

I was a child.

I didn't know his real name, ever.

I didn't know my real name, ever.

He looked at me with dark eyes, soulless eyes, and spoke to me.

"Well," he said. "Hello there."

I sometimes wondered if he was my dad. And then I'd rule it out, because we had no similarities, physically or otherwise.

"You know, you're funny," I said. "You said we-" I tried to think, but then, thinking was impossible. "You said you only did what you did, so we could live."

"We did live."

"No," I said. "You lived."

I stared him straight in the eye, the same way I did the last time I had to do special favors for him. My thoughts were a house on fire. I was a knife in a gunfight.

"I died," I said. "I died every day."

I felt like I was choking; I felt like my body physically could not breathe the air near this man.

If he was a man at all.

"The money you were getting was enough. Enough, already. And you used it," I said, still unable to comprehend it, even at eighteen. "You used it to make more victims, and even more victims."

"Bigger business," he said. "You should understand it now. You're older. More gold."

"I don't understand it."

"Well," he said, with a voice that belonged to a demon, a demon that belonged, for all eternity, in hell. "Go cry about it, then."

"Don't worry, I will," I said. "I do it every day. I do it in my sleep."

I closed my eyes.

"But before I do that again..." I said. I was stronger and older, and trained; I imagined myself on top of him, slamming my elbow into his throat, and into his temple, my fingers in both his eye sockets, and taking the knife from my pocket- to go directly for both his carotid arteries: the ones that brought oxygenated blood from his nonexistent heart to his immoral, corrupt, completely twisted, completely defunct, and completely depraved brain.

I took the knife from my pocket.

And then I dropped the knife on the ground.

And then I walked away.

Because we aren't like him. His victims aren't like him.

I flicked off the switch for the simulation.

The underground floors of the Webwork were designed for US agent training. I was in B14.

I sat alone, on the floor of the training room.

Extra training on Saturdays was my new form of acceptable self-harm. It definitely worked; it certainly took my mind away from memories of Experiment Nightingale.

The darkness turned back into flames, and turned from flames back into the grand and beautiful lobby of the hotel, and from the lobby back into the dim, vast, empty training room.

The real lights flickered back on.

I was afraid of this man, his size and power.

But weak people pull other people down to make themselves feel stronger.

So I was never afraid of the tears.

I was never afraid to show that I do have weaknesses- because with weakness comes strength.

And it makes us human.

--ovw--

--ovw--IX--ovw--

I guess maybe I didn't know how to stay near someone I loved.

And no matter how much you may love someone, or how much someone may love you... you can't be with them all the time.

I slowed my run when I arrived at the Lowdown.

It was just as bad as I remembered it- drugs everywhere and prostitution and pollution. A fourteen-year-old was murdered. Just four years ago, that fourteen-year-old very well could have been me.

I checked the sticky note Belinda gave me.

#67 DIRTWATER AVENUE LOWDOWN 1216.

Dirtwater Avenue.

The part Dirtwater made sense, but it wasn't even an avenue. I hugged a sidewalk, looked down with my hands folded, and among other things, prayed that Caleb would forgive me. I don't stay put when I can help. I don't stay put when there is a murderer and rapist on the loose. I don't care for a name but I do care for a difference. I had been broken and damaged and hurt and completely destroyed; I had both the power, as well as the opportunity, to keep it from happening to others. So I left Caleb a note, texted Scott, and walked.

"Working on a Sunday?" Connor said.

His voice was groggy and maybe a little bit slurred. Possibly exhaustion, possibly alcohol.

Reception in the Lowdown was awful; I had to listen like a bat, and really press the phone to my ear. I hopped over a broken manhole and then a pile of vomit and then another pile of vomit and then a pile of both vomit and dismembered rats.

"It's a Saturday," I said.

"Right."

"Sorry, Connor," I said. "Just forward to me whatever Belinda had on our guy."

She had to have something; she wouldn't have acted the way she did otherwise. I just needed to get it.

"I thought you chose not to read minds," said Connor. "You're that telepath. Read minds only if it's survival or death. How do you know she's got anything?"

"I read her minus the mind reading," I replied.

I heard him yawn, and the squeaking of a bed.

"People are dead, Connor," I said.

Behind me, some skinny brown-skinned men sniffing chemicals started yelling, loudly and unintelligibly. I didn't glance back more than once because that only would have made things worse.

"Maybe to some it's just a statistic," I said. What I loved about Connor Meadows was that he was steady. What I didn't necessarily always love was that apparently, his years looking at dead bodies had robbed him of human emotions. "It's a little different to me." I casually sped up my walking pace. "If you don't do it, I can do mind reading on her anyway."

Not that I can point my finger there- didn't I lose many of my own emotions for a while? I just trained and taught myself to get them back early; it's not about what other people do. Who you are doesn't depend on another person's behavior.

"And if you do force me to read her mind, then I can learn whatever the two of you may or may not have had together," I said. "And I can tell your wife."

The skinny brown-skinned men who were sniffing chemicals and yelling got bored of following me and found interest in a pile of garbage.

"You're a piece of shit," said Connor.

"I love you, Connor," I said. "Bye."

--ovw--X--ovw--

The Lowdown had a disgusting stench.

It was abhorrent and nauseating- combined smells of dead animals and smoke and substances and garbage swimming in unmoving water that hadn't been touched for years and years and years.

It took about ten minutes for Connor to send the folders to my cell phone. It took about nine for me to identify the man I was now looking for- Reynaldo Mendoza Torres. Apparently, the Manila Maniac's drug dealer. Belinda was right; so far, there wasn't a name on the actual murderer.

I thought maybe I could help change that. I was scrolling through Torres's contacts and old addresses when a voice came through, in my mind, telepathically. Caleb's.

"Howdy," he said.

"Hi," I said. "You could have just called me, you know."

"I didn't want to totally disrupt you from the very important info you're looking at," said Caleb.

Telepathy felt nice. Maybe it's because I didn't have one constant human in my life until Malcolm, but it made me feel special- almost like it reminded me that someone, any person at all, would take time to communicate with me, form a bond, form a connection.

Communicating directly through telepathy wasn't bound by any "social norms." It wasn't bound by anything at all- it was you, and the other person. Nothing else came into play.

Caleb continued.

"And besides," he said. "You have a mind as beautiful as you are. It's where I want to be."

My mind was literally full of PTSD and poems that probably no one on earth wanted to hear.

"That's... funny," I said.

"I meant it," said Caleb.

I smiled. "Thank you," I said. I paused. "And I mean for last night."

I felt the delight, the satisfaction in his telepathic voice. "You had a good time?" he said.

"Shut up," I said. "Well. Yes. Whatever."

I was ready to jump off a cliff.

He laughed, and it was the nicest sound my mind could ever feel, from anywhere. And I knew I had to end the conversation.

"I meant thanks for keeping me safe," I said. "Now there's a murderer I need to help identify, okay?"

I watched a man on a dilapidated motorcycle drive off into a street to my right.

"Naw, thank you," said Caleb. His telepathic voice laughed again. "You mean the world to me, Chris."

There was this peculiar, mild burning sensation in my left hand- possibly one of the many end results of the injuries and the physical tortures we were put through in Nightingale. I wondered where Kaylee was, how she was feeling.

Nightingale...

Maybe there was some kind of chemical antidote somewhere out there, or a leaf or a fruit or a tree, for all of the sociopath-made substances and poison they pumped into our bodies, into our blood without our permission; without anyone's permission at all, really, as far as Kaylee and I knew. I wasn't sure what was worse- what they forced into our systems, or how they chose to force them into us.

"You're everything to me," said Caleb.

I followed the motorcycle from a reasonable distance.

I said nothing.

"I care about you," said Caleb.

I tried not to feel anything too emotional; I tried not to feel emotions at all, but he was making me melt. Now was not the time for marshmallow melting.

My eyes were still on the motorcycle. It was cadmium green, and it pulled over beside a really filthy, really seedy bar. I wanted to laugh and also cry because I used to work there.

"Are you and Kaylee going to visit the Port today?" I said.

The man on the motorcycle wore a tinted cerulean helmet, and he didn't remove it when he entered the establishment.

"Caleb?" I said.

"I just told you I cared about you," said Caleb.

There it was again- that feeling, that guilt. That same exact guilt I had felt the night before.

A marshmallow covered in strawberry jam, cream, shields, defenses, walls, and barriers. A recipe of me.

Best served with hot cocoa.

I didn't love it. But I was working on it, the best I could.

And frankly, the feeling itself had no point. Caleb and I... we got as close as two humans could possibly get.

Was it even guilt, or was it longing?

"I care about you, too, Caleb," I said. "You know that. I just... look, I have stuff to do. I'm sorry."

I turned my attention back to the folders on the cell phone.

"It's just nice to hear it," said Caleb.

I found facial composites and photographs in one of the files and immediately started a search for names and IDs. I hated breaking connections with Caleb. I would have spent my life with him. But I needed to go.

"Can you tell Kaylee I said thank you for the ice cream?" I said. "I mean, you know. From yesterday night."

"You mean the ice cream you never ate?"

"Yes."

"You thanked her."

"I did?"

"Yes," said Caleb. "You did."

"Oh." I was getting irritated; the stupid search was taking longer than usual. "Just tell her again, anyway. And tell Malcolm I love him, when you drop by."

"Will do," said Caleb. "I love you, Danny."

"I love you," I replied.

Within minutes I had identified a place to visit for some information. I wasn't going to find the relevant people in the hotel. Belinda's address would have to wait.

--ovw--XI--ovw--

I positioned my feet carefully.

If I fell here, then it was going to be three and a half stories to the ground. And that wouldn't really be too much of an issue in one sense.

But it would give away my location.

I repositioned my left hand. With my right I steadied the earpiece.

"...not going to deliver until the 23rd, four PM."

"Yes, sir."

The people speaking were far down; the earpiece allowed me to get closer without being there. I was balanced on the trusses of a large and unfinished gable roof.

This is where Torres and other dealers carried out their own operations. I always made sure to have as little to do with drug dealers as possible; this was an obvious exception.

"Joaquin!" said one voice.

"Yes, sir," said another voice.

"Colombia?" said the first voice. There was a shuffling sound, and then the sound of bags hitting a surface. Maybe the floor, or a table, or a wall. "Black Stuff? Or Chalk?"

"Angel Dust, sir."

"How many?"

Inwardly I groaned. Maybe I was wasting my time here.

I climbed higher, to the top of the triangular structure, simultaneously using my phone's holograph to memorize faces of more people- contacts that Connor or Belinda or I could investigate later; perhaps even see in person.

Then something caught my attention.

Somewhere below me, between crates and bricks and stacks of wood: a man not much taller than I, with dyed neon blue hair, braided on one side and with shiny, metallic green highlights.

He was scribbling on what looked like a clipboard, or maybe a large pad of paper; I couldn't really tell. I just knew I needed to get a closer look.

I gave myself ten seconds, to assess whether or not there were too many people, to weigh the dangers, if any; if moving now was worth the risk.

I dropped down, to a tall stack of crates about a story below me.

"Midnight!" It was Kaylee's telepathic voice. "Hey!"

From the top of the stack of crates, I leaped towards an empty window frame.

I was still flying through the air when I responded.

"I'm just a bit busy right now, Kaylee," I said. "I'm sorry. Can we talk later?"

I caught the windowsill with my fingertips, without making a sound.

"Two minutes and I'll be done," said Kaylee.

"One minute," I said.

I hopped off of the wall and onto another stack of crates, this one bringing me much closer to the ground.

"Okay," said Kaylee. "Fine! I just wanted to say that Caleb came home today, really happy. He was like a Christmas tree."

I had no idea what a Christmas tree had to do with Caleb being happy, but I said, "Okay."

"So, whatever you did, and I mean, whatever you did- thank you."

I did this little squeaky high-pitched telepathic laugh. It was pitiful. "You're welcome, Kaylee. Talk to you later."

I hopped off of the top crate and reached ground level, in perfect silence. I smiled. I was meant to do everything soundlessly. It always felt nice doing the job the way it was meant to be done.

I moved closer to the man in question.

It was simple; Meadows or occasionally Wyatt Shafer, a man who took people in for questioning, did the more "brutal" work (brutal in my opinion at least). Belinda was the smart one. I was the hamster that stole cheese and fruits and grains and vegetables from places, if these things might have a strand of hair on them, or maybe some fingerprints. I was useless in a fight, but simultaneously I wasn't useless in a fight- that's what James said. Apparently I proved it before getting the job.

I hated fighting. I hated it, absolutely hated it. I couldn't say this enough, emphasize this enough. And only in part because it was my job to avoid anything that might jeopardize the investigation; it was my job to not give anything away.

I'd defended myself plenty of times. But while working, I mostly couldn't afford any fights- and I still wouldn't enjoy them if I could.

It was easy for me to follow the man undetected. It took me some light and a small mirror to get what I needed first: a glimpse of the tattoo on his face.

Butterfly, between the left eye and left ear.

Reynaldo Mendoza Torres.

I waited while Torres approached an old wooden desk, put down the pen and pad of paper, and sat down. He took a phone call that lasted five seconds and offered nothing useful. Then he left.

I scanned the area. I didn't know for sure if it was meant to be some kind of large warehouse or factory or department store; it was empty except for construction materials. And drugs. And the people selling the drugs. But they all were too far away, and not even looking. No cameras.

It took me only about 90 seconds to put on my gloves, snag the pen Torres used to write, swab the desk and the chair behind it, take one blank sheet of paper from the pad- the one at the bottom- place everything in evidence bags, and vanish from the scene.

--ovw--XII--ovw--

I think I looked like a kid in a candy store, walking away from the Lowdown. Partly because on the way home I bought myself a strawberry-and-chocolate-flavored popsicle for extra happiness. I called Caleb.

OOOOO THIS POPSICLE YUMMY.

Yay

"Cawef!" I said. "Auw ewf eeh aef Bwimah oh uma oh."

"Chris?" said Caleb.

He sounded alarmed. I wasn't sure why.

"Where are you?" said Caleb. "Are you okay, are you safe?"

Uhm

I was so confused.

"Is someone else there?" he said. "Is the person who put a gag on you there with you?"

I paused. I tried to think about it, for just the fraction of a second.

When was the LAST time there was a gag on my mou-

Actually, never mind.

"TELL ME WHERE YOU ARE," he said. "NOW."

Wait, so he-

So he didn't already KNOW I was strolling out of the Lowdown with a source of calories and with new information and skipping every other step while also casually hopping over mutated rat-cockroach-worm-hybrid feces every two seconds on jagged asphalt?

AWWWWWWWWW

Cute of him not to read my mind <3 <3

ORBI

PLOSIONSSS

Well, either that, or I was still thinking of ratatouille recipes.

I mean, I literally don't even know how to cook at all, so that made a lot of sense. The only cooking tool I had any experience with from the Lowdown was a hot frying pan. When I was ten, I think.

It was repeatedly smashed against my face.

I removed the popsicle from my mouth. "It's a popsicle," I said.

I listened to him put down the phone and walk away, breathe heavily for a while, and then come back on the line.

"Chris," he said. "Chris. Please, DON'T SCARE ME like that."

Bruh ur dad scary. Shut up pls

Also if a phone call from me on a Saturday so scary GO PLAY A HORROR GAME.

Damn.

"Can you please save Belinda's number onto my phone?" I said.

"Of course," said Caleb.

"Okay, call you later, I love you!" I said.

One of the clouds in the sky, a purple one, was shaped like a rainbow. I laughed. A cloud shaped like a rainbow. The one beside it, an orange one, was shaped like a cat eating a bowl of lasagna. I put the popsicle back in my mouth.

OOOOOOOOO it makes me happy

Yay

Ice cream

Yay

OK well technically, it's probably not even ice cream, like probably it's technically-

"CHRIS," said Caleb.

I paused in my walk for just a moment. I surveyed all of the very unmaintained, falling-apart buildings around me. The Lowdown still always smelled like literal feces, just like it always did. Every single other person around still stared at me for as long as they possibly could, just like they always did.

What more did he want from me? I was going to see him at midnight at the Port, anyway. We always went there. People knew we walked there in the mornings; that I worked out there.

But midnights were our secret.

"AIh hHaid," I said into the receiver, "AIh luhHf U."

Like

You know

Like I-love-you-you-can-go-now I love you <3 <3

"Chris." he said. "This is why people read your mind."

WHAT IS YOU INSINUATING BRO

I hung up.

--ovw--

I called Belinda Klein next- immediately, upon disconnecting from Caleb. She picked up after eleven rings.

"Who is this?" said Belinda.

"Widnigh," I said.

"YOU ARE CALLING ME ON A SATURDAY EVENING," said Belinda.

"Emwf," I said. "Aa ohh."

"WHAT IS IN YOUR MOUTH?" said Belinda.

I removed the popsicle from my mouth. "Nothing," I said.

"Make this good," said Belinda. "Or you will spend the rest of YOUR life doing MY paperwork."

Bitch u can't do that to me

"YES, I FUCKING CAN. YOU JUST FUCKING WATCH ME," she said. "Now why the fuck are you fucking calling me on a fucking Saturday fucking evening?!"

It was her evening for F-word?

Oh, my God.

Oh my God I did not want to know that

"SPEAK NOW OR DIE ON MONDAY!" she said.

"I can confirm that the Manila Maniac's alleged drug dealer is still around, and is operating in the Lowdown," I said. I think Belinda could probably hear the smile in my voice. "I can confirm the location, and I possibly, maybe, might have some DNA and/or some fingerprints for everyone! Caleb and I also think that the murderer may have attempted to send me a text message from a masked number."

Belinda was silent.

"Isn't that great, Belinda?" I said. "Oh, and they sell Angel Dust there. What does that do? Is it some kind of new compound created from US experiments or something?"

Silence.

There was a raccoon on the sidewalk. It was brown and white and gray. I walked toward it.

"Belle?" I said.

More silence.

The raccoon was adorable. I once heard that raccoons used to never live here. I wished I saw more of them.

Hewwo cuuute lidduw animawwwww :3

"Hi?" I said. "Belinda?"

Belinda was still silent.

I knelt down and gave the raccoon the rest of my popsicle. Hopefully it liked chocolate, because the popsicle was mostly just the chocolate half now. I opened the pack of eggplant-flavored jellybeans I bought while I was waiting for Klein to finally pick up. I was actually surprised she didn't just use a voice inbox. Or maybe she had multiple phone numbers, and I just called the best one.

More silence, again. I chewed and swallowed the cheap, dry, unsatisfying jellybeans. I looked at the packaging. JOHNSON FAMILY'S UNADDICTIVE, DRUG-FREE EGGPLANT JELLYBEANS! it read. HARVESTED FROM THE BACK OF THE JOHNSON FAMILY'S FARMING TRUCK, MADE WITH 100% REAL EGGPLANTS. BEST FAMILY EGGPLANT JELLYBEANS FOR YOUR NON DRUG ADDICTED OFFSPRING AND CHILDREN!

Offspring and children? Aww.

That's so inclusive of them! I thought.

Belinda still wasn't responding. Although for a moment, I thought I did hear her breathing, very slowly. She was breathing VERY slowly. And loudly. I wasn't even sure what I was really hearing then.

Maybe it really IS her evening for F-word-

Ohhhhhh

Oh God please no

Oh I'm gonna slightly politely puke

You know. Like, eggplant-flavored jellybean projectile puke. Politely.

Oh please no. Oh damn that is nasty.

Calm down Klein is not nasty

Okay maybe not THAT nasty

She kind of was, though...

No she kinda is tho

No pls

ORBIPLOSIONS PLS

I don't even know what those are but pls

Spoiler alert: Waaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh

I decided to read the back of the tacky, light green, plastic food packaging as well, while I waited. JOHNSON FAMILY'S UNADDICTIVE, DRUG-FREE EGGPLANT JELLYBEANS. PRODUCT NOT LICENSED BY THE U.S. FDAAA. ALSO NOT LICENSED BY THE U.S. AAA OR AA. DOES NOT TREAT ALCOHOL ADDICTION. DOES NOT TREAT VYSTIR-RELATED CONDITIONS OR OTHER CHEMICALLY-MUTATED AILMENTS. WARNING: DO NOT FEED TO BIRDS. BIRDS MAY ATTACK YOU. INGREDIENTS: SODIUM. MADE IN THE OVERWOODS. ALLERGEN INFORMATION: PROCESSED IN A FACILITY THAT ALSO HANDLES GOOSE EGGS, SYNTHETIC CHEESE, "BUTTER," ARTIFICIAL COFFEE, METFORMIN, HIGHLY CONCENTRATED CANE SUGAR, INSULIN, COCA LEAVES, AND SOME FORMS OF METHAMPHETAMINE. LOST CONTROL OF YOUR COCAINE USE? CONTACT THE JOHNSON FAMILY.

I chewed and swallowed. The jellybeans were somehow more delicious the more of them you ate.

"You don't like Angel Dust?" I said to Belinda- assuming she was still there.

"Midnight," Belinda said. I was almost relieved! And happy at the same time. It was the first thing she said for a really hot minute.

Oh.

:D

OK she's still there!!!

: DDDD :DDD : DDDDD

I was so happy, my mind was practically speaking in emojis, but minus the actual emojis, so I had to settle for random smiley faces with many chins. Like

: DDDD

She didn't have to say anything, I guess. I was just happy she heard everything! And extremely happy that I found at least something to help us possibly go forward.

"Yes?" I said.

The cute little raccoon took the popsicle and scuttled away. I wished I had some bread to give it. Raccoons love bread.

"Suck a dick," Belinda said.

1. MY.

GOSH

She's so happy with my investigation that she wants me to go suck a dick!

It was also very sweet of her to validate that I was gay!

"Oh," I said, unable to contain my happiness. It was so nice of her. I chewed and swallowed a few more eggplant jellybeans. "Thank you, Belinda," I said, smiling. "Yes, I think I will."

She hung up.

I ate the last few jellybeans, expertly tossed the empty jellybean packaging into the pocket of Caleb's jacket (there were no trash cans in the Lowdown), pounced off of a few buildings, and flew spinning towards the Suburb-Everglade part of V5 for my evening tumbling routine.

--ovw--

--ovw--XIII--ovw--

The second-hand smoke from Belinda's lungs was a dark slate gray. It felt like poison, and I had to sit next to her.

"We'll know in two weeks," said Elsie as she readjusted her aquamarine aluminum eyeglasses. "If we find anything in the hotel that matches." She glanced at me. "You don't need to do any further inspecting."

The night sky was just as starry and cloudless as it was yesterday evening. Streetlights illuminated the road on my right side, and the glow was like candlelight on the dark maroon tablecloth.

I stabbed a potato with my fork. "In two weeks?" I said. "There has to be more that we can do."

Elyza "Elsie" Cobb, with an IQ of 175, was a specialist in one of the many forensics teams I worked with. She wasn't as difficult as, say, Belinda- but she delivered bad news, and delivered good news like it was bad news.

"Within two weeks, I posit," she said.

Posit.

The team was gathered at Crisanto Pacifico- a diner located just outside of the Suburbs, where food prices weren't insanely unreasonable. This was where I met with people if it was necessary, and wasn't a weekday.

But this time, I wasn't the one who called the meeting; it was James, who sat across from me at the table. We were outside in the balmy and humid air, about a hundred meters higher in elevation than Vicinity One and Vicinity Two, which bordered a side of the Everglades- the area where Crisanto Pacifico was. I stared at the fountain of dancing water and fish to my left. It changed color, from yellow to blue to red to green.

"I know what he's thinking," said James, who was still in the process of munching away at a large toasted chicken sandwich. "He doesn't want to wait; somebody else could get killed."

"Or raped," I said.

"Or raped." James swallowed, then took a pill and then a sip of his coffee.

"Or both!" interjected Kaylee. We all turned to look at her. She was here because she read my mind and followed me here. Belinda told her to, quote, "make a beanstalk and jump on it" but she hadn't done that yet; she was staying to listen. James decided that she could stay. "How tricky can this guy be?" she said.

"We technically don't know if it's a guy or gal, Kaylee," I said.

"We also don't know if it's the same person," Wyatt said. "As whoever committed the other murders, decapapitations, rapes. Could have been a group." I barely glanced in his direction, at first. Wyatt wore an army green T-shirt with the US seal on it: a dark blue circle, with a set of balanced scales in its center, at the bottom. Above the scales were two overlapping triangles- one inverted- with some sort of shape in the middle of the upright one. Wyatt's hair was short, brown, and salt and pepper. Kind of like the raccoon I saw earlier today. "But I'll take Torres in for questioning." He looked at me, and smiled. "Good having you on the Union of Stars, Midnight."

I stared at him.

"Thank you, sir," I replied.

"The word is decapitation, Wyatt," said Belinda.

I changed the playlist on my phone.

"That's exactly what I said," replied Wyatt.

Elsie was scrolling through something on her phone. "Why do the folders have notes on unrelated killings, from years ago?" she said. She looked up from the screen, and at Klein. "With old news articles. Some alleged 'Manila Maniac'? Sounds like a myth."

Belinda grunted irritably. "Same area. Same signature of the killer- heads all cut off. None of the heads were found. All instances showed evidence of physical as well as sexual abuse. I deduced it was possibly the same person."

"Or entity," said Wyatt.

"Here's what's going to happen," said James, clearly sounding bored, and like he didn't want to be here despite him calling the meeting. "Connor will conduct further investigation, in the warehouse."

"The drug place in the Lowdown?" I said.

"Yes," said James.

"Connor isn't even here."

"Yes, I am!" Connor materialized out of thin air, in the seat between Kaylee and Wyatt.

"How long have you been there?" I said.

"Thought you could smell me," he replied.

"When you're drunk or you're smoking or both, yeah," I said. "Nice having you."

"Chris will take the hotel while Wyatt performs his interrogations," James said.

"What about you?" said Belinda.

"I'll keep the mainland and its president happy," said James. "And prevent this place, us included, from getting blown to dust."

Kaylee and I exchanged a glance. Not one, but both of her parents were CSOs for the Union of Stars' Overwoods branch. And she wasn't safe.

Nobody said anything.

I put on Caleb's jacket. "I guess I better go see to that hotel, then," I said. "I love you guys."

"Monday," James said.

"What?" I said.

"Monday. You take the hotel on Monday."

I shook my head. "A fourteen-year-old was killed. Who knows if I can find this killer today and stop them? Other people could get hurt."

James had no reservations about reading my mind. Neither did Kaylee, who was already walking away from the outdoor dining space. She was probably going to go make that beanstalk for Belinda.

I guess you could say they always knew how to hit me and where.

"Other people are getting hurt, Chris." James took his eyeglasses off, slowly and without touching them. "Because you aren't spending time with them. People who want you around. People who want you to be near them."

I didn't know if he meant Malcolm; I didn't know if he meant Caleb. I didn't know if he maybe even meant anyone else. I didn't read his mind to find out.

"Nobody wants me around," I said.

"That's not true," said Connor.

I hopped off the ground, aiming for Vicinity Two.

--ovw--XIV--ovw--

The dirt and dust on the rooftop didn't move when my feet connected with it.

I looked around me. I saw all of Vicinity Two from here; nothing obscured the dispiriting view, and nothing obscured the starlight.

Except maybe the darkness of my own memories.

My shoes and legs didn't need to absorb any impact, as always. I landed on what they used to call the Century Spire Tower: 60 floors of devoid, vacant, and bare; 60 floors of cold, dark, abandoned, and empty. Just like me, I guessed.

With my hands in Caleb's jacket pockets, I very slowly moved to the edge of the rooftop. I looked down... down, down. I looked at the outlines of sidewalks and avenues, trees and ivy and weeds, the growing things that took over half of the crumbled asphalt.

I looked at my left hand, where there were still marks from where the experiment conductors reconstructed bone and blood vessels.

"Do you hear me?" I said, seemingly to the sky, without any thinking.

I somnolently made my way to the part of the rooftop where I stood at eleven years old; I stood where, if you fell, you'd hit the pavement, the concrete of an empty parking lot. And probably splatter, like a bug hitting a windshield.

Squish.

I kicked a pebble off the top, and I could only follow it with my eyes for a second before it was no longer visible to the eye.

It was the final day, the third month of Experiment Nightingale, the experiment that took the lives of kids that had gifts they could have used to better this world. People that could have bettered this place we live in, a place that often feels so full of darkness, a place so sick with pain.

I remember deciding it was too full of darkness and too sick with pain. I could take pain from people; no one could take this pain from me.

I was eleven and I didn't fall; I jumped. Only somehow I went way too far past the entire parking space, past roads and trees and broken bicycle wheels and fire hydrants. And when I landed I remained alive; there were no new injuries, not even a scratch. That was the day I lost my mind- or should I say, I lost whatever it was I still had left after years of abuse and after Experiment Nightingale.

I had nightmares before Nightingale; I had more after Nightingale.

I didn't hit the earth; the earth came to me, it took me gently in its arms like it cared to not hurt me.

Too late.

On that day I curled up, alone, on a sidewalk, and cried until I thought I would die and it was over. I woke up in Malcolm's house.

I told myself experiments were nothing new, thousands and thousands and thousands of people have been killed by these very experiments; it was nothing new, I had to move on.

It didn't help.

What I've learned is we don't choose what happens to us or what doesn't; we choose who we are, when they do happen to us. We can choose to be kind when the worst has happened, we can choose to heal others rather than to hurt. What goes around comes around. It's all that matters.

--ovw--

--ovw--XV--ovw--

I stared at the ground far below me for a moment longer, then turned to enter the building's top floor.

I was in the air, spinning with previously-mastered trajectory towards the rooftop door when my cell phone rang. I tucked my body, rotated forward, and met the ground with my feet to answer.

"Hey!" I said in my most cheery tone. "You've reached Midnight on this absolutely beautiful Saturday night. Can I help you?"

"Chris." James's voice.

"Yes, hi."

"Belinda wants to take you off the assignment."

"What?"

"She just thinks you're unsafe."

"I can literally jump from a sewer and onto a plane. I think I'm good."

"Sit this one out, Chris. You can help others."

"I'm helping others by letting someone evil run loose? I'm sick of these people, James. It's disgusting. Something or someone is going to stop them; it may as well be me."

James said nothing for a moment.

"I'm staying on this case," I said.

"Tell you what," he replied. "Tomorrow morning, after you do your church thing, or whatever it is that you Catholics like to do-"

"Don't categorize me."

"Oh, sorry. Should I have said Protestant?"

"What are we doing tomorrow?"

He laughed because it was SO funny. "Srazhenye." He sounded affable. Amused, entertained. "Let's see who goes down. If you win, you get to stay- work the murder case."

"The same murder case."

"Yes. If you win, you get to investigate further. If you lose, you're off the case."

Srazhenye- or SRA as we called it in the agency- was a physical fight between two or more parties in a simulated environment, typically done in one of the training rooms or gyms. Very common training, and mandatory. Twice a week if you had to do work that may involve combat. I'd been in plenty of them; I lost, mostly.

"Who am I up against?"

"You and Webb," said James, "versus Klein and Shafer."

Web?

"WHO ON EARTH IS WEB?"

"Webb," James repeated. "You know, Webb. Elijah Webb? Webb with the double 'B.' Like, the Ice Queen Princess?"

Ice. Queen. PRINCESS.

ICE QUEEN PRINCESS?!?!?!

"Chris?" said James. "Are you still there?"

ELIJAH?!?!?!

"You mean ELYZA. COBB!" I replied. "COBB! THE GIRL WHO ALMOST CHOPPED YOUR HEAD OFF!"

That was the year prior.

"Oh," said James. "Yes, her."

I paused. I don't think he even really remembered; he was SO HIGH when that happened.

I also don't think I ever saw anyone so badly injured laugh so hard when I took the pain away.

ORBI

PLOSIONSSSS

I guessed, perhaps, that the blackening of the skin under my eyes was really funny to him. Or the literal grayness of my irises when they lost color.

"You're aware that I hate fighting," I said.

"That's why I'm making you do it," James said. He made a swallowing noise; probably a pill or something. "And before you speak, I read your mind and yes- this is your only way of staying on this case."

I took a deep breath. I cleared my throat, closing my eyes for just a moment. I opened them, and there were no monsters before me.

"Great," I said.

"11 AM tomorrow. Coliseum. Don't be late."

--ovw--

I stared at my phone with the happiest expression on my face long after James disconnected.

Just kidding.

A yell tore out of my body of its own volition when I threw the phone at the wall beside me and sat down. I wondered what Marie would have told me. She fought one of the mutated-experiment-creations of the US, during Nightingale, thinking that she had to.

It was a test and she was wrong. You weren't supposed to fight them. And maybe, I would have made the same mistake myself. If they didn't end her life in front of me for one wrong move.

She was one of the last to die in the three-month experiment. She only made one wrong move.

Inertia demands that I keep going, for her.

I got up, brushed the gray-and-white specks of dust off my black jeans and picked up the cell phone. Not even a crack, but I guessed that was how technology was when it was made by the Union of Stars. I walked down the sixty flights of creaky wooden stairs while watching footage of previous SRAs, uploaded to the agency's server for all agents to see. Whatever I was going to do in the Coliseum, it was going to be for the fourteen-year-old victim, the one whose name I didn't know; the one I never met.

--ovw--

Malcolm greeted me at the border between Vicinity Five and the Port. It was Sunday, 1 AM, and he brought Skittles and Crayon- our Siberian husky and Alaskan Malamute. I gave Malc a hug and gave the dogs even bigger hugs and let Crayon lick my face. I was a dog person.

"Shouldn't you be sleeping?" I said.

Malcolm raised his eyebrows at me. "Shouldn't you be home?" he replied.

"Emergency meeting," I said. "James called. Like always."

The Port streets were empty and silent, save for the subtle sound of waves on nearby shores. Amber-colored lights and fireflies flickered above us as I smelled the salt from the ocean.

"Kaylee and her brother dropped by earlier with Bollito Misto," said Malcolm. "And pot roast. Said you told 'em to say 'I love you' for ya."

"I can confirm," I said.

He smiled. "I love you, too, little buddy."

"You sure I shouldn't get you a bigger house if I can?"

"Hey." He put his hands up in front of him. "It's your money."

"How long did you wait for me? I mean, you didn't know how long until I was coming home. Or if I was even coming home today at all."

"Doesn't matter."

We walked in silence for a few moments, Skittles panting and wagging her fluffy curled tail. Then Crayon stood motionless. He turned to face one of the alleyways beside the street; he started growling.

"What's wrong, Crayon?" I said. Crayon was the very perceptive one, and the very protective one. His white fur looked like it was bristling. "Is someone there?"

Crayon kept growling.

My tone shifted from its usual silvery and mellow to something else.

"Stay here," I said to Malcolm.

"Chris, what's going on?"

I spoke in a hushed tone, but a furious one. "Just stay here. Where the light is." I surveyed the area around us. Nothing conspicuous. "Stay here, don't make any sound."

Silence. Nothing except the waves.

"Malcolm," I said. "Take the dogs, right now, and go home."

"I'm not leaving you here."

"You have to." I looked at him. "Do it, now."

I heard what sounded like a footstep. I knew whoever it was tried to conceal its sound; I knew what feet on the ground sounded like, or on staircases or on a trampoline or on a ledge- walking or jumping or running. Or trying to remain undetected. Or failing to do so. Slowly, I walked toward my approximation of where the sound came from, and reached into my pocket; I needed the earpiece.

The alley was dark when I wrapped my hand around the earpiece. But the moment I pressed it into my ear, I didn't need it anymore.

--ovw--

There was a yell behind me. It was harrowed, agonized- an older adult male's yell; a sound generated by a voice that was strong, and gravelly.

Malcolm.

I whipped around with two throwing knives already in my left hand. The attacker wore all-black; not one inch of bare skin was exposed, completely eliminating my initial objective of finding a concrete and clear physical trait, to identify them later if not now.

The attacker was maybe 5'8, 5'9. Possibly male, possibly female- I had no way to really know. Average build.

Malcolm was on the ground and injured; there was a small pool of what looked like blood where he was on the street, his face contorted. The dogs- I wasn't ready for the dogs. Skittles and Crayon weren't moving.

Darts.

There were darts on them- I immediately prayed they were sedatives only, and not poison. I'd been shot with poison darts before and lived. Maybe they would be okay.

The attacker had a gun pointed at me; I recognized it at once- a projectile electric stunner. Two things perplexed me at that moment.

One: They weren't trying to kill me.

Two: How did they get one?

These fancy non-lethal guns were, as far as I knew, only accessible in mainland US, nowhere else. I'd seen them only because of previous assignments that required me to take trips to the Union of Stars' main headquarters or other mainland US locations; I had never seen one in the Overwoods.

That only scared me more- if they were a US agent or some kind of operative, for whoever, were they attempting to kidnap people for experiments? Specific people? Telepaths? Previously experimented-on telepaths? None of these things were unheard of.

That chain of thought was all I needed. If I wasn't going to kill this person, I was going to make sure someone else would.

They were standing over what to me looked like Skittles' dead body. I lunged at them, and I mean I lunged at them. It took a split second for me to position my feet, figure out the line and distance, push off for maximum flight.

I collided hard and fast into our masked attacker's body, and then we were flying, through and beyond walls, and posts and columns and shelves and alleys and billboard commercials and broken glass windows- until I slammed them onto a blue building, one beside one of the most abandoned-looking convenience stores; a building made of layers and layers of steel and tempered glass.

I flipped backwards twice, taking my earpiece off and also taking the can of flash spray from my jeans pocket in the process; I didn't want to hurt the attacker beyond whatever was necessary. I also had an SRA to be a part of.

"Do I say, 'it's nice to see you again?'" I said in what James called my "signature" calm-when-attacking voice. "Or do you say it to me? You wrote me a love letter, right?"

And this time, I wanted a fight. I wasn't going to let this monster leave the scene easily. I wasn't going to let them leave the scene, period.

I took two steps and a half, pushed off the ground, and spun fast in a diagonal with my left leg raised and poised near my face. The masked whoever-they-were attempted to minimize any impact from the attack by shielding with their arms. My leg came down from the spin on their torso, smashing the black generator they landed on. I was hoping they'd talk. Or groan. But all I heard was breathing, and an aulmost inaudible grunt of pain. Still no information.

"This isn't fun for either of us," I said. "Or am I wrong?"

I had to do this with speed- to go back to Malcolm and the dogs- and decided to engage quickly and make our fight a short one.

I soon learned something: this attacker wasn't planning to stay or to fight.

I was never a killer, yet I wanted this man or woman to pay. I felt ready for a war.

But the man or woman who attacked us that day had other plans.

The one time I wanted a fight, and the other party wasn't interested.

I took a red, rusty, and blotchy piece of bent metal from a pile of disorganized scrap next to us. The attacker was still on the ground, recovering the air knocked out of their lungs.

"If I'm who you want to mess with," I said, "then leave the rest of the world out of it. You do what miserable, low-down, pathetic cowards do." There was a burning in the damaged ligaments in my left hand. There was an acrimony and venom in my voice that even I didn't hear often. "You could have just gone for me!"

They clicked on a shiny silver canister from a pocket.

It took only a moment: I was in a cloud of what felt like poison, only a hundred times worse than Belinda's second-hand smoke, and I didn't have a mask on me. I was on my knees and choking and coughing and vomiting the french fries that I'd ordered earlier at Crisanto Pacifico.

When the mist cleared I was still alive, but a note written on red paper left in front of me told me why, apparently. I was still coughing; both my eyes were producing tears like waterfalls and I had to wipe them a million times to finally make out the words:

"IF YOUR TEAM COMES FOR ME

I'LL BREAK MORE THAN HIS BONES

DAVENPORT WILL DIE

-M M

PS

I LET YOU LIVE TO HAVE YOU

AGAIN"

--ovw--

I wasn't sure how long it took for me to make my way back to Malcolm. I was afraid. Afraid to see how badly he was hurt; afraid to see if Skittles and Crayon... if they were still here, still with us.

There was blood streaming through an open cut on the left side of my face; it only irritated me because it got in my eye. I hopped back toward the general direction of where Malcolm and I were walking, the note in a plastic evidence bag sealed twice with security tape, in Caleb's jacket pocket- but I wasn't going to give it to anyone. As for Caleb's jacket, I was going to have to wash it at home, wear something else for the SRA.

But I was dizzy, lightheaded, I didn't quite get my trajectory right and ended up smashing through a glass door of some building somewhere and tumbled to the floor in a heap, a heap made of pain and fear and awful, horrible memories, a heap that was bleeding and still coughing. I was moving as fast as I humanly possibly could, when finding my bearings was almost impossible. I was in so much pain that I didn't even notice it was raining until I was there, a bleeding heap on the floor, looking outside and up at the sky. I didn't assess the damage; I ignored the pain and got up and ran. I kept going for about two blocks until the stitch in my side was almost unbearable. It wasn't pain that I could ignore- but I kept moving.

I turned a corner. Malcolm used his coat to wrap around the injury- I couldn't see it; it was somewhere on his left arm, and his face was still twisted by pain, and there was blood on the coat. I immediately went to Skittles. I didn't want to do what I was about to do. I put the skin of my palms and fingers Skittles' fur, on her side. I lightly pressed both of my hands on the floofy floof, and waited for seconds, and then a minute, and then another minute. And I felt nothing.

I can never describe that moment to you. Really I never can. I might try ten trillion times and still never get it right, not once.

ORR

BIPP

PLOZIONSSSS

Nothing.

I feel something I do I do I do I do I do

I feel something YES I DO

No; no I didn’t. I was lying to myself. Because I felt nothing.

That was when I began to cry, not from the toxic gas but because, yet again, I had lost another part of me; I had lost, yet again, some of the little that I still had left. I wasn't someone who ever had very much. What little I had, I treasured.

I quickly did the same with Crayon.

"Come on," I said, my voice despairing and small and broken and more raspy than it ever had been before. I felt nothing. I wiped tears and dirt and blood off my cheeks, and tried again. "I know you're in there," I said. "I know you are!" I waited another minute. I breathed whatever my lungs would allow me, choked and squeezed as they were by the poison. "You're still in there."

I started coughing hard. I felt something like thunder, but couldn't hear it. I didn't know what I was anymore. I didn't know where I was anymore. I knew where I was, but I didn't. I felt pain and yet nothing existed.

"You're still in there," I repeated. "You have to be. You're still here." My vision was going purple and gray and black at the edges; I thought positive thoughts, such as "the glass is half full." I swallowed hard, my hands still on Crayon's white fur, and cleared my throat. "COME ON!"

"Chris," Malcolm said.

I turned to look at him.

He looked back at me, and written on his face were all the words I didn't need to hear; I didn't want to hear.

I couldn't.

I covered my face with both my hands and sobbed, but I could only allow myself this indulgence for a minute. I took my phone and called an emergency service. I approached Malcolm.

"Chris," he said sternly. "Don't do this."

"I am going to do it."

"No," he said. "No, you're not!"

"Yes, I am." I coughed again, cleared my throat, and sniffed. I blinked a few times. I took his hand in both of mine, and like the usual it took only a few seconds. The pain was beyond description of words that I knew.

Fractures. I knew it instantly. Open fractures.

I knew the feeling exactly. It happened during the experiment, and it happened before the experiment, too.

In a world full of poison, of immorality: if you are stranded in a place where the only things around are evil, what do you do?

You run to the arms of the lesser evil.

You try to survive. With whatever is actually available to you.

I gritted my imperfect teeth as blood poured from the wound on my face. "Help's coming, dad." I had to breathe as deeply as I could, as calmly, slowly, and deeply as I could; this is what you do when you are in extreme pain, from a severe injury.

"Chris, let me go."

He shifted his hand, the one I was holding, only slightly. But the pain that even that small movement caused was like a flash of pure white lightning, I cried out, and if possible started to sob louder than when I knew Crayon and Skittles were gone.

"Son, let go!"

"Just don't move," I said. My eyes started to lose their color, and turned gray, the blood vessels below my eyes turning a very visible black, like black paint hurled at a wall and dripping downward. It happened whenever I took the suffering from someone and it was a lot of effort and a lot of pain. I looked up at the rain, at the sky, at the clouds that seemed to have come from nowhere. Good thing I sealed the note, said a voice in my mind.

Did I even give a shit anymore?

Maybe, I should have fought the monster; the hideous thing. Maybe Marie and I should have done it together.

Maybe from the experiment, Kaylee should have been the only survivor.

--ovw--XVI--ovw--

I looked from the obsidian black sky above us- an unrelenting endless darkness, it seemed, not with any clouds that I could make out- and down to Malcolm's face. I remember that was difficult to tell my tears from the rain, or his tears from the rain- or whichever tears were from his eyes or the ones which were my own. They were falling onto him; I didn't care.

Perhaps, enough water to drown in. I know I drowned.

The dead bodies of both Skittles and Crayon were just yards away. White fur. White fur that protected hearts that were no longer beating. I refused to look. Too much.

"Chris." Malcolm's voice was almost as ragged as mine. Almost. He wasn't poisoned- at least not that I could tell. I wondered what else happened; at times Malcolm couldn't use his abilities. Was it just the aftereffects of the Vystir incident? Maybe that was the case, or Joe incapacitated him early, before Malc could do anything. I'm calling the attacker Joe now, I thought. That makes things easier. The un-colored liquid from my eyes, that was starting to run down onto my nose and onto my lip and into my mouth, was no longer water. Not for the first time, I tasted my blood. I am in such a happy place. Happy place, happy place. Happy happy. I didn't want to know who the attacker was anymore. I couldn't care about that. It felt as though I couldn't care about anything. I heard Marie's voice, calling my name. Calling me.

Asking me to save her.

But Joe is a nice friendly name. Let's call the attacker Joe.

A strange wave of nausea and very uneven gravity washed over my entire body. An invisible shockwave of grief and exhaustion. Searing hot.

Joe is going to be sitting in a chair.

Wyatt is going to set the chair on fire.

I am going to personally tie Joe to the chair myself.

My left hand twitched.

I didn't mean it. I could never tie anyone, to anything, after the horrors that were inflicted upon me... at an age much too young, in places that were beyond miserable, by "people" that were beyond wretched, beyond cursed, beyond totally evil.

To even call them people at all: a severely undeserved compliment.

I shut my eyes for just one moment, the barrage of memories like explosions in the sky; towers and castles coming down onto the earth, all coming down, in pieces. Many times, I was forced to swallow fear like it was water.

I was forced to swallow a lot of things.

So.

Many.

Different.

Things.

Because those "people" did not stop at chemicals.

Painful: an understatement.

Traumatic: an understatement.

I will be the one to tell you:

Monsters are real. They just look like people.

There, in the rain, under the darkness, and under the storm clouds that I practically couldn't even see, I began to hum one of the songs I wrote; I wrote hundreds of them.

The pain told me where Malcolm's injuries were.

I can't think anymore

"It's too much," Malc said to me, in the same voice that he used to tell me I wasn't being kidnapped or harmed, the day I woke up in his house for the first time, after I jumped off Century Spire. "Chris, please." Somewhere between our heavy breaths mixing and the thousands of raindrops hitting concrete, I heard him sniff. "I don't want you to hurt."

What-

Shut the EFF UP Malc

Idiot needs to lie to me when I am in SO MUCH PAIN

What did he say?

It took me a second to process. I felt my lips move, almost automatically.

"When did anybody care if I was hurting?" I whispered, without any thought or tact. Literally without thought entirely.

I shook my head.

HE IS NOT LYING

No, he wasn't.

But it took me a while to figure that out.

ORBI

PLOSIONSSSSSSSS

Black spots started to obscure my vision. He cared... he did care. I had to believe it. Sometimes, I did.

Happy place

Sometimes, I couldn't.

Happy place...

I remembered Belinda Klein's snake tattoos, the ones that glared at me, staring as the sheets of forged contracts, covert and overt operation proposals, investigations, facial composites, instructions, and crime records flew all around me and down onto the floor. Seething. Their red eyes trying to brand into me that I should not get involved.

Not to get involved. I was told not to get involved.

This...

Was this all... my fault?

I repeated myself. "When did anybody ever care, if I was hurting?" It was still soft as a whisper. I closed my eyes again. It never happened.

I blinked my eyes open and forced myself to look at Skittles. A pool of slightly darker gray surrounded the dead, wet body. I later learned that it was blood.

Malcolm snarled and growled in his gruff Port accent.

"When Kaylee got you the drive. When Caleb manipulated computers for you." He was begging me to stop, yet I felt nothing, apart from the completely shattered bone in the wrong place and the warmth that I somehow always felt with him. "When James saved you." He paused. "When I saved you."

Did he save me? He did- or he probably did. He did, I remember thinking to myself. And I knew it. But there was not one good thing that I could call to mind at that time; not one good thing existed in that place and in that moment. If I had any good memories at all, from anywhere at all... they were nowhere. Why did these people waste time on me? In spite of all of the gratitude I usually felt toward them, I felt only like a weight, an abhorrent thing, a waste- something ugly and awful; something nobody should accept, something that should be destroyed.

It was on his face, the pleading. His hair was some color between russet and chestnut brown, with just a few strands of silver every here and there. Like coffee. It was the color of his mustache and beard, too. His eyes were blue, but not like Scott's or Caleb's- it was deep blue. Ultramarine.

A color I didn't know existed until I met him; it was the color that, at that moment, my eyes could no longer pick up on. I said nothing. I was shivering and it wasn't the rain; it was the memories.

I was a marshmallow tossed into a jet engine.

"Chris!" he insisted, as the rain grew stronger; as the rain became an almost-welcome distraction. "I can't see you like this."

I kept expecting Crayon to bark at me. To tell me it was time to pack up and go, like he would on my Thursday workouts running in the woods- where he would follow me- to tell me it was time to call it a day, get him a bagel from Pacifico, take a shower, have a hot dinner of potatoes or mushrooms or artichokes, on the sand beside the seawater- with Malcolm beside us; with Skittles beside us. Skittles. The adorable white Husky. I heard her little yips in my head; I heard the way she always greeted me after a high-level target takedown mission or after an SRA.

"Then don't-" I inhaled a sharp breath, held it, and breathed out as slowly as I could.

The pain was beyond blinding; more than an open drain underneath your bathtub of sanity, and yet still more than the pain... were the memories.

I saw streaks of black appear under my eyes. Little memories- of the tortures Kaylee and I endured- swam in my befuddled mind.

I felt my eyes go from gray to something else, something maybe close to white, close to transparent, close to invisible, close to nonexistent.

I had nightmares when I slept at night; when I walked past the ruins of that destroyed school- the one in the Lowdown and not the one in the Suburbs- flashes of blood and rope and smoke and dead bodies swam in front of me.

I can't see you like this, was what he said. Strands of my hair- black and simultaneously more black than usual- guided the rainwater and tears down my face, down my neck.

Down onto the ground which I was lower than.

"Then don't look."

--ovw--XVII--ovw--

The Everglades Hospital emergency room was black and gray. Either that or my eyes still hadn't recovered.

"Chris." Caleb's voice.

I was facing a wall, which had some kind of painting of some sunflowers. I liked sunflowers.

But they were black and gray.

"Danny," said Caleb. "Come on, it's me."

The second I turned around, he folded me in his huge caucasian arms. Remember when all I wanted was an embrace? Hurray. I got one.

I broke his little prison of muscle and hair and walked toward the exit. "I fucked up your jacket, I know."

He let me take two steps further.

"Does it ever occur to you that people need you?" said Caleb.

The light on the ceiling was gray. The nurses' desk was black. There were chairs on the plain tile floor and they were black. But not black- not a color, but a void. The new tears that wet my face were the color of ash. I turned around despite them.

"Can you make that make sense to me?" I said.

He walked toward me slowly. His gaze met mine- I was staring daggers at him without meaning to. About half an hour ago, he telepathically told me to "stay where you are." Behind a gray curtain, fifteen feet in front of me and to my left, were the amazing people that wore gray gloves and masks, trying to fix the exact same damage that was inflicted on me, years ago. I saw no shade of blue in Caleb's eyes. Just gray, everything was black and gray. I automatically wondered how Crayon was doing, how Skittles was doing. Naturally and out of habit, I felt excitement- imagining me hugging the big white dogs with fluffy tails that wagged whenever I would go to Malcolm's house again, imagining me getting to pet the lovable, cute things that manipulated no one. Then I coughed, the pain from the poison in my chest digging a frozen hook through my spine and dragging me back into reality.

"Hey," said Caleb. He put his hands on my arms, gently. "Are you all right?"

That was literally the dumbest question someone could have possibly asked me.

"I'm so sorry," Caleb said, telepathically this time. "Stay with me, Chris."

That was the same exact thought I had myself, less than two hours ago. My head pounded. I wanted to just crumble. To crumble and to let someone else take care of me, maybe for once.

I cleared my throat.

"I'm sorry about your jacket," I said. The words were barely audible; I spoke physically and the gas from the canister was still on my throat. "I'll get you another one."

"Naw," said Caleb. "Don't. I'll give you another one. Mine."

I didn't want another jacket. I wanted the warm fluffy things that made up half my family. I wanted not to be in a world where the young were manipulated, or murdered for refusing to be manipulated. I wanted the pain to stop. I wanted to lie down. I thought about the experiments, and then I started remembering Nightingale. I wished that the jump off Century Spire killed me; that the Experiment took my life.

Caleb yelled at me. "Chris!" His voice was heated, fuming. Something enraged was taking over the sound of what he normally always sounded like when he talked to me. I didn't realize his hands were on my shoulders and shaking me until he spoke the next words. "Don't think like that!"

I double-flipped backwards without the triple spin, whipping back on the first landing, taking the perpetrator's kunai-like dagger out of my black jeans' back pocket and arming myself as I did on the second.

I looked Caleb in the eye- the exact same way I did on my last night with the unnamed man from the Lowdown, the unnamed evil creature that used me as nothing but a source of income for his abuse chain.

"Hands off, mind off," I said, my voice still sounding like broken rocks scraping sandpaper. "I have an SRA I have to fight in."

I sounded like a subtly croaking marshmallow- but behind it, now a growl instead of a faint whimper.

I flexed my fingers and wrists; glanced over at the blood on them- some of it fresh, blood which the rain hadn't managed to wash away at all. There were cuts on the sides of my face and shoulders from smashing through walls and through glass. I was almost fascinated- earlier on the same day, they were still some shade reminiscent of red; now everything was gray.

I cleared my throat, then continued.

"An SRA I have to fight in injured," I said, "and I'd really like to regain color vision before then."

--ovw--

James's voice boomed through the announcer speakers, which were embedded in the walls of the seemingly boundless arena.

"The champions are decided when all Fasci Littori are stolen from one Ground of Territory..." He was on an elevated seat, in an elevated platform, in a glass box that overlooked the huge room designated for SRAs- the Coliseum. "...or one party surrenders, or is unable to continue." I watched him smile on the screens above us. His voice was as pleasant and light as it was the day he gave me that first box of antidote vials for Malcolm's Vystir poisoning; the day Danny wasn't my name anymore. "As most of you were informed through the agency's server message, this Srazhenye will be two-versus-two." It was difficult to hear James over the roar of the crowd. I knew these people; did they have nowhere to go on Sunday? "Introducing the blue corner: Elyza Cobb!"

There were cheers from the laboratory people.

"Christopher Midnight!"

Enormous applause- there was always enormous applause and loud cheering whenever my name was announced. People were excited to see me in pain, I guessed.

"Introducing the red corner: Wyatt Shafer!" said James, who let people cheer before he said "Belinda Klein!" which got no response from the audience. The only sound was me, clapping for her and saying, "Go, Belinda!" And then I coughed because there was gas on my throat.

I didn't plan to win through points.

I dashed into the ring, fast, the moment the transparent wall in front of me lifted and retracted upwards. I still wasn't breathing normally. My head still ached. My eyes were still watering. I could've sworn I still felt the broken piece of bone and torn ligaments. I still felt like a torture victim- though that could've just been the rest of my memories.

And I rasped way too much when I spoke.

"What?!" shouted Cobb.

"I said keep them away from the rings," I responded, but telepathically this time.

"You don't feel like your normal self," Elyza replied through the telepathic connection.

"Define 'normal,'" I said.

I felt the smile in her telepathic energy. "Normal," she said. "A word created by geniuses for something that doesn't exist."