--ovw--

The arena was mostly empty space. I never thought about how that worked in my favor before that SRA.

I picked up speed, into a roundoff to a back with a half, and remained in flight.

I saw Shafer, standing in the center of the line that ended our Ground of Territory and started theirs, and the other way around.

Wyatt Shafer.

Tentacles. He had ten of them. Ridiculously long, horrendously dark purple, slimy things that would come out of his back- somewhere between his shoulder blades- that could grab you and slam you or choke you, or choke you and then slam you and then steal your locker keys. He did that to me, once. And then he apologized.

There was good in him, and of course I always saw it; there is good in everything, and in everyone- but I could not feel it at that moment. I knew there was good and that good things existed; I could not feel any of the good.

I flipped, twisted, and spun- the more I did these things, the faster I cut through the air. My current target was a Mr. Wyatt Shafer, and I did not want to make this match last.

I wasn't going to give anyone a show. I didn't care that Scott and Kaylee were in the audience- Henry was too hungover to come to the Webwork, and Caleb knew I didn't want him anywhere near me at the time- or even that the rest of the Union of Stars' Overwoods division was watching. I had only one objective.

The Coliseum was one of the many floors of the Webwork, and as usual kept secret from the rest of The Overwoods. It looked exactly like what a place called the Coliseum would look like: pillars, stone, flat ground. But that was only because James didn't activate any of the hundreds of simulated training environments. He had the option to do this, and the arena was huge.

I remember walking into the Webwork that day. Using my card to access the elevators to the 47th floor, walking out the elevator doors, walking up the stairs that led to the arena. Not without first breaking down in a restroom and crying. I put on my own black jacket that fit me much more accurately than Caleb's, and walked into the enormous space- the space now full of workmates and acquaintances; full of people watching every move. I remember Scott put his hand on my back as a sign of reassurance, and Kaylee hugged me. They wished me luck and I said nothing.

--ovw--

No visibility on Belinda Klein, at least not yet.

"Do you see her?" I said to Elsie, telepathically.

"No, I'm holding point where our Fasci Littori are and I see no movement."

"Keep your ears peeled, Elsie."

"I know. She might be behi-"

The telepathic connection broke for a split second.

"All right, she's got me," said Elsie.

"Do you need-"

"No, I can handle her." I felt the grit, the fight in her telepathic energy. "Don't look back, Midnight."

Elyza Cobb.

In addition to an extraordinary IQ and being a telepath, she had other abilities: she manipulated water and ice, and could sense nearby bodies of water, and could also sense nearby sources of lower temperatures- without having to see them; without any tools. I called her Liquid Nitrogen.

Belinda Klein, on the other hand, had an ability even I had never seen, despite all of my messed up experiences back at the Lowdown and other scary places, and Experiment Nightingale: her tattoos came to life. Anything she had a tattoo of, beware of it.

I focused on Wyatt.

"Don't wanna fight you, Midnight!"

I skidded to a stop after letting my flight and distance go, tumbling forward until finally stepping out of a front handspring and walking. "What?" I said telepathically. "Wyatt? You're a telepath?"

"You haven't been paying attention."

"You do interrogations. It's not my business."

"You think they'd give interrogations to a non-telepath?"

"I don't know!" I replied. "I mean, they kill children! Does anything make any sense to you?"

His eyes met mine, the tentacles on his back like a mutated animal's dark wings, wings that he constantly kept moving as long as they were out in the open.

I continued. "Don't wanna fight, you say but the tentacles are out. Is it predictable monster hour?"

Then he grabbed me with one of his tentacles- it was that quick. He was making a mistake. The tentacle was around my left arm and he dragged me across the ground, past fallen pillars and blocks of stone, towards him. It was almost pulling my arm from its socket, but somehow I knew he'd do this.

I was still ten feet away when he yelled, "I'm trying to be nice to you! I always ha-"

I was in front of him and this was the mistake. One of my abilities: if I struck someone, and I chose to do it, there would be two results from the hit. One was the impact from the actual strike. The second was a severe burning sensation- not an actual burn, not a mark left externally on anyone's skin that anyone could see, but a lingering agony, a discomfort that caused people to be impaired and incapacitated. As far as I knew, I only had this ability after Experiment Nightingale. So, in some way, Nightingale gave me an ability that protected me- something I needed badly, especially at eleven years old, and especially if I was somewhere at "home" at the Lowdown, with the man that prostituted me. It didn't take long to finally get out of there.

Nightingale damaged me, yet it seemingly gave me a gift... assuming the superpower was really a result of it. My brain could never figure it out.

A strike of the palm, hard, between his eyes so I wouldn't break his nose, and he let me go, and then a switch step forward to an even harder kick to his forehead, so I wouldn't break his jaw or his chin.

I could almost hear the burning feeling inside him. I felt no guilt.

"Fuck!" He groaned and moaned and grunted and winced on the ground in front of me. He was in pain and I could see it, anyone could. The deafening roar of the crowd was almost as abstruse to me as the fact that someone was willing to kill animals and people to get what they thought they wanted. Almost, but not quite. "Chris!" he was whimpering now, something I had never ever heard from him before. "Fuck!" he repeated. He made guttural pain noises from somewhere in the back of his throat. "I was... I was going to let you win!"

I turned to walk away.

"I mean it!" he said.

The anger I felt gave full resonance to my voice, like it came back to me in that one instant. "Explain the tentacles."

He groaned, his face in his hands, trying to soothe a pain that was located nowhere on his skin, one he wanted so badly to tear out, but couldn't. "I needed... Belinda to believe I was on her side and fighting. So she wouldn't be suspicious." He groaned in pain again, and this time it sounded like some kind of animal sound. "So... so she wouldn't tell James. Call the fight off."

From a distance I saw Elyza and Belinda in what to me looked like an enthralling, almost spellbinding brawl.

I looked back at Wyatt. "I'm supposed to believe you?"

"I'm telling you the truth."

"You stole my locker keys. You're sick. Don't pretend you don't remember it."

"I said I was sorry. You knew I was. We've... gotten better."

The tremor in his voice broke whatever defense I had on me. "I need to be on this case," I said. "I need to be on this case, without losing my job."

"I know," he said, barely able to speak evenly. He forced his eyes open to look at me. They were bloodshot already. "Chris," he pleaded. "Can you...?" he trailed off and gritted his teeth.

Did I really inflict that much pain?

"I will," I said. "After I win."

I had one objective.

"Chris," he said. "Just... a little."

"No!"

"Please."

I took his hand and locked my fingers between his. His dark tentacles slipped back into wherever they went, in his back. He was big, fairly muscular. As far as I could tell, he wasn't afraid to hurt people. Those were people I felt I understood in some capacity, yet also didn't understand.

Just when the color was starting to finally return to my vision, I let my eyes turn gray and counted to sixty. A snake was wrapped around Elsie's throat; she was on the ground and defending herself from further harm by surrounding herself with spikes of ice that protruded long and sharp off the ground, diagonally and pointed in Klein's direction. I looked from the screens above us, the ones that captured all that took place, to James in his glass box, to the roaring crowds around us, to where Scott was. He was easy to make out. He was holding Kaylee's hand, his eyes fixed on mine. Kaylee was on her feet beside him, cheering loudly for both me and Elyza. In her free hand she held up a cardboard sign. "WIN AND WE GET ICE CREAM," it read.

"Take slow, deep breaths. Kinda like waves on the ocean," I told Wyatt. I guess I felt some kind of guilt- not too much. I remembered other SRAs Wyatt was in. He won almost all of them, the tentacles combined with his brute force a threat as large as he was. I sighed. "You're a strong man and you know it," I said. "You got this."

Or he acted like one, anyway. Around me at least. I omitted saying the part where I thought he was a total asshole almost all the time, if not all the time, period.

He slowed his breathing.

"No stronger a man than you are," he said, with the hint of a smile and a wink.

I almost puked.

"Shut the fuck up."

I let go, took a moment to position my feet, and pushed off. It took a little more energy and power, than it did without a run or roundoff or handspring or all three. I wanted this to be done- any moment I spent without information was a moment I spent unable to stop this murderer. A child could die. There were enough unprotected innocent people; there was enough evil in the Overwoods. In the world even, perhaps. I wouldn't know.

"It's nice seeing you, Belinda!" I said as I hovered and spun in the air above her. I landed quickly and without any dissent from the dust on the ground, about twelve feet beside both her and the spikes of ice, intentionally. "If you make me do it I'll push you straight into that. Surrender, now."

Belinda Klein glared at me. "Why don't you try it?"

"Why don't you come here and make me?"

From the corner of my eyes I saw Elyza stab the snake with one of her ice spears, again and again without finesse, until it loosened its grip on her neck.

She walked toward me. Vines, with a few roses and thousands of deadly thorns materialized behind her as she did, following her, a dozen times the size of the actual tattoos.

And then a tiger launched from her right leg and bounded straight at me. For just a moment, I wore a small and subtle smile on my face; probably just enough for the crowds to make out the dimples on my cheeks.

Most tigers sprinted at approximately fifty to sixty-five miles per hour, if they were hunting fast prey. This was going to be easy.

"Cobb, now!" I yelled, just as the snake around Elyza's neck died and turned to dust, and just as I moved my right shoulder and head and neck back and toward my left side. I stepped back with my right foot. Principles of twisting: wrap, pull, stay tight for maximum spin. This was going to be both a twist and a thrust with the arms.

The adorable fluffy tiger gave me a hug and tried to bite me to show its affection, but I grabbed both its left legs and spun- the tiger flew towards Belinda, who instinctively stepped backward. But one step behind her was a curtain rod of ice, horizontal, parallel to her hips. She inadvertently flipped backward and onto her hands as her fluffy adorable pet tiger landed on top of her, squishing her and her vines and roses and thorns, making the animal cry out in some kind of roar of discomfort.

Elyza hastily contained both the tiger and Belinda in a cage of ice, tiny droplets and vapor coming off of the bars. Elyza smiled at me, her blond hair and blue eyes shining in the daylight from the large glass windows and the glass ceiling above us, above James's platform. For a few seconds as I looked at her I wondered if I really was even gay anymore.

"We make a pretty good team," she said to me, raising her hand for a high-five.

"That," I said. "I will agree with, Liquid Nitrogen." I met her hand with mine, and then held it for a while, just because I wanted to. I was smiling; it was my cheery smile, letting the cameras and the people in on my biggest insecurity- my imperfect teeth, and of course the dimples that came with any smile of mine.

--ovw--

Inside the ice cage, Belinda tumbled down from on her hands and head and onto her stomach.

"Congratulations, Belinda!" I said, clasping my hands and jumping up and down. "Elyza and I kinda just taught you a back handspring! We can do them together now on weekends for exercise if you want."

She looked up and gave us both the evil eye.

"This match isn't over yet!" she screamed at us. There were boos from the audience.

"Can you surrender?" I said. "I sucked a dick for you, just like you told me to."

Elyza burst out laughing.

"Or," Elyza said, before bursting out in laughter again and then composing herself, "Chris can just kick you in your sad and probably tattooed buttocks."

I laughed because the word "buttocks" was funny to me.

Belinda glared at us.

"I'll go get Shafer. You make your decision here." I turned to hop back over to where Wyatt was.

Just as I positioned to start a vault run, I heard the click and the beep that indicated someone had turned off one of the trackers we had on each of our arms- the combination of sounds that incidated someone had thrown in a surrender.

"I hope you have fun at that hotel, Midnight," said Belinda in what by far was the most threatening voice she ever used on me. She sometimes used it with James.

"If you're concerned about my safety," I said, "I won't stop you from coming along with. We can use a smart person."

"Let me out of the cage," Belind muttered, barely audible. "Icicle Bitch."

I looked at Elyza and raised my eyebrows.

She smiled back. I remember thinking I might marry her if I wasn't gay.

"Yes, Queen Belinda," she replied, an edge of contempt to her voice; a tone of disgust and antipathy. "Unintelligent asshat of the fugly, cheap pink hair dye, and dollar store makeup, bomb sniffer and limping swamp donkey."

An orange rose, its stem cut clean of any thorns, hit me in the face- a gift from an admirer in the audience, from somewhere in the crowd.

Surely it wasn't for me...?

I flinched, surprised, and then I caught it with my torso and both my hands. I gave it to Elyza.

I personally didn't agree too much with the "unintelligent" part of her scornful and very snide comments, but I supposed... I somewhat agreed with the rest of it.

Elsie gave the rose a sniff and waved to the crowd- which was still cheering madly. She gave Belinda Klein some kind of look; a vicious leer, eyes almost malicious behind her aquamarine glasses which she had strapped on for the SRA fight.

I looked up, and immediately noticed that James Tobler, head of the Union of Stars' Overwoods division, had his eyes locked on me. As our eyes met, he gave me a smile that felt... almost genuine; maybe sweet- but there was something about it that bothered me. I remembered Skittles and Crayon and didn't smile back, and then turned my attention instead to the ice cage which my partner still hadn't unfrozen.

Elyza remained there glowering at Klein a moment longer before turning to walk away. Wyatt Shafer's eyes were watery and red, he limped his way slowly toward us from the other half of the arena- steering himself toward us with the support of two of his inordinately strong, dark, creepy purple tentacles.

Cobb glanced back at Belinda, as she took the light blue strap off from her glasses.

"By the way, Belinda!" she hollered, over her shoulder from where she stood. She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose with her finger. "One more thing. Fuck an unmarried man next time."

--ovw--

Kaylee ran over to me as I held Wyatt's hand with both of mine.

Wyatt was sitting on the floor of the arena. I still didn't believe I inflicted that much pain. I didn't feel much... even as I used my pain steal on him. Did he?

"That was amazing!" Kaylee screeched.

"It had to be done," I replied.

"Just let me surrender next time," Wyatt said.

Kaylee sat next to me on the floor, tucking her skirt and then brushing the dust off her black Civil War Era Ladies' button boots. She scowled at Wyatt.

"I don't even know why he's painstealing you," she said. "Apart from he's nice. You know you don't deserve it."

"It's fine," I said.

And telepathically to Kayles I said, "You're right. No, he doesn't."

I remembered when he stole my locker keys, or my lunch money. And he was twenty! Can you imagine being so miserable you have to do that to people? Can you imagine picking on someone you barely know and younger than you- being an asshole at all?

Well, he SAID he was twenty.

Guess what: he really wasn't.

To me it was extra strange- because if Wyatt wasn't being totally horrible to me, he was extra nice. No, not like Kaylee or Caleb were nice to me; he was extra sweet and companionable. To me it made no sense. That was part of the reason why I rejected most offers to be an interrogator- sure, maybe people thought I read criminals or threats or psychos well, because of my experience. But that would have meant hours alone in a room, with Shafer and a sociopath.

...so basically with two sociopaths.

For a while the three of us sat there- me letting my eyes turn gray as the superpower use took color off my vision- all of us watching the crowds wave at us, at me, and then smile as I waved back, as they left the arena.

I remembered Skittles and Crayon again. Crayon would lick my face if he were here and Kaylee would give Skittles something totally random, like a lima bean or a cauliflower.

"Your dad went home to check on Henry?" I said.

"No," Kaylee said. "He went to the office."

"There's a million offices."

Kaylee laughed. "His."

"So where do we go for ice cream?" I said.

"Pacifico?" said Kaylee.

"Ice cream sounds so good right now," Wyatt said. Even then he sounded like he was still in pain. "You have no idea."

I let a few seconds pass, watching the faraway T-shirts of the audience members disperse and move toward the exits.

Color was slowly coming back to me.

"Join us," I said. "And..." I smiled. "I've made a decision; you guys get to be in on it."

Kaylee grinned as she and Wyatt glanced in my direction. Wyatt tried to smile at me but it looked like a grimace.

"I'm not waiting for 'Monday,'" I said.

Even thinking about any hotels caused me flashbacks- anything with a bedroom and where one might be alone with someone else.

...Or multiple someone else-s.

"I'm not waiting for tomorrow. I'm investigating the hotel tonight-" I took Crayon's old collar from where it was in my pocket and ran my thumb over the shiny, golden bone-shaped tag that still had his name on it. "And you guys..." I looked up again to the booth, the glass platform of the microphone, desks, screens and the chair where James sat- to make sure he wasn't there anymore. "...are going to come with me."

--ovw--

--ovw--XVIII--ovw--

...is there a difference, between "wouldn't" or "couldn't?"

He was in a black coat, a tuxedo, I think they called it. The man was across from me as I sat on the bed reading my only copy of the Bible. I wanted more books, but couldn't afford them. The only cloth on my body was half the bed sheet.

The man took his watch from the drawer and looked back at me. It was maybe the prettiest, shiniest thing I had ever seen then, his watch. Gold and silver, and shining things, I thought it was made of. He smiled at me.

"You don't want me to go," he said. "Do you?"

I looked at the man- he was somewhere in his thirties, maybe early forties? His hair was a mix of blond and some gray.

"You're the one that... doesn't make things hurt too badly," I said. I surveyed his eyes, any nuances in their movement or any movement of his body that was out of his ordinary behavior. It was something I knew to do, from early. How early, I don't remember. "So I guess not."

I was always honest with these people. Even the ones that hurt me the most. I was eleven.

"Do you have kids?" I asked.

He looked at me.

"Why do you ask?" he said.

I shook my head. "I don't know. Curious, I guess."

The man put a stack of paper bills on top of a table beside the bed.

"I'm not supposed to take gifts," I said.

"You don't have to tell anyone," he replied, discreetly. Hushed. "Get yourself something nice. Something new to read. A pair of shoes, something."

"I can't take it," I said. I tried hard to disguise the disappointment I felt but couldn't. "There's a camera."

The man pulled on his pants, buckled on his belt. From his wallet he took what looked like a card. He placed it on the bed, in front of me. I took one look at it.

"I know what the Overwoods looks like," I said.

"Look closer."

It was a map I thought I'd seen before, marking where the mines were, riddled with the lines that divided the Vicinities. But there were strange symbols on it, symbols that I didn't understand.

"What is it?" I asked. "What are these... markers? What do they mean?"

I took my stuffed husky, which was on the pillows, and hugged it. It was the other valuable thing that I had.

"Take the money," the man said. "And get out of here." I think maybe I gave him some sort of confused look, because then he said: "You can. Now."

"I..." I said. "I don't get it. I'm not sure I believe this."

"I know you don't," he replied. "The man who found you at Century-"

"How do you know about that?" I said.

"Questions later," he said. I remember feeling more than just confused. There was consternation, concern in his voice; it was on his face. And even to me, it seemed genuine. I was ready to run, from whatever this was. "You'll find that man at The Port, and you'll be safe there. You'll be old enough soon that you won't be something of special interest here. I know someone that can help you."

"If you cared about me at all then why do you even keep coming here?" I said.

"I would have stopped," he told me. I thought there were tears in his eyes, for just a flash of a second. "I couldn't."

--ovw--XIX--ovw--

"They just love killing each other."

Caleb looked at me, the steam from the coffee cup he held obscuring Wyatt's face.

"What?" Kaylee's voice barely penetrated the film of disgust in my head; the revulsion at the lunacy of those that find entertainment, in the suffering of others- and think only of themselves. "Who?"

I didn't even look up from the paper.

"I don't need to answer that," I said. "You read my mind all the time." Slowly, one page at a time, I tore the newspaper- each paragraph a fatality of paper just like the words printed on them. The sound of the ripping was almost enough to satisfy me. "Did you get that from one of the dads or from your brother?"

"What's with the attitude?" said Caleb.

"I thought you didn't mind." Kaylee pushed a paper cup of strawberry ice cream toward me. "And your mind is a nice place."

"Ha-ha," I said. "So funny."

"She means it," said Caleb.

"I'm confused." It was about an hour after the SRA and I was really feeling the ligaments in my left forearm and wrist complaining; it felt like my left hand was on fire. It wasn't a new feeling, though. "We have a killer to catch and all you can think of is making fun of me."

"They're not."

We all turned to Wyatt. It was the first thing he said since we got here.

He shrugged. "Your mind is a nice place."

Excuse me?

I was ready to jump away.

"He wouldn't know that!" interjected Kaylee. She wore a self-created necklace, one that was made of one of my favorite things: sunflowers. She twirled her fingers around them, and they almost glowed in the dark. "He won't believe us."

I checked to see if my left hand was bleeding and if there were fractured bone pieces sticking out of the skin.

Nope not right now

"So he really never reads people's minds?" said Wyatt. I glanced over at him. His eyes shifted from Kaylee and back to me. "Sheesh." He locked his black-hole eyes on mine. "Why did they ever consider you for working the interrogatio-"

ORBI

PLOSIONSSSS

Yes, yes. Orbiplosions. Whatever that was supposed to mean.

Why they ever considered me for the what?

Nope

Let's not even talk about that.

Or I don't know. I had no idea. I didn't ask for any specific department to work in. I never did. Unless of course you count my vehement refusal to have anything to do with further experiments.

I HATE THAT WORD

"What happened to me isn't a secret to you guys," I interrupted. "Let's move on. And it's not like I'm the only one with seriously messed up memories."

"It's such a miserable WASTE OF TELEPATHY!" Wyatt said. "You never use it!"

"EFF YOU POLITELY GO JUMP ON A JELLYFISH," I said exclusively to Wyatt via telepathy.

He smiled at me. I didn't know why.

Also, miserable my butt, coming from the most miserable person alive second only to James Tobler.

And me.

And Kaylee.

The three of us shared that top spot.

I dropped my gaze to the torn pieces of paper on the tablecloth. Stories of planes dropping bombs, a tank crushing cars with families of innocent people in them, images of dead bodies. Shootings. Stories of more people killed, raped, manipulated.

All completely pointless.

"Memories aren't the only thing you are, Chris." Caleb put the coffee cup down, beside the ice cream. Deliberately on top of the torn sheets, so I couldn't see all the words anymore.

I looked up at him.

"I was reading that," I said.

Because I bothered to read things that were torn apart.

"You're a lot more than that," he said. "Anyone can see that."

I stared at an ornate streetlight across the street, one that I used to draw cartoon cows on, using chalk that I stole from my primary abuser's unlocked closet. I learned how to draw cartoon cows from the soggy cereal boxes I'd found, on the floor of the same abandoned building where I first started teaching myself gymnastics. I used the same chalk to maintain friction on my palms and fingers, too. And I remembered how, sometimes, it felt almost like that chalk was magical; almost like the fine white powder on my hands helped me jump higher; rebound harder; calculate my distance faster.

At least, I think it was chalk...

I turned my attention back to Caleb.

Anyone can see?

His eyes and his voice: the only two things on a person that were powerful enough to somehow captivate me.

Anyone can see what?

Anyone could see that a child was murdered.

Anyone could see that I didn't care about myself.

Maybe that was a problem.

I watched as a white hedgehog the size of a teacup scampered toward me from the sidewalk. It placed a peanut on my shoe.

Yay, peanut, happy

I wondered where it got one. The nearest Baker Joe's was a half-mile away, to my knowledge.

ORBI

PLOSIONSSSS

I picked up the peanut. And also the hedgehog.

I named it Peanut.

"I'm sorry," I said to nobody in particular. "I didn't mean to be rude."

I put the hedgehog down.

Caleb laughed. It was the familiar sound I didn't know I craved, one that always took me back to the present. Suddenly, I wasn't surrounded by monsters. Kaylee was here and she was alive and she was with me.

So was Wyatt, but eff that politely.

And... Caleb was here.

Somehow, even for a moment, I could believe there were a few good people again.

I smiled. "What's so funny?"

No one had to answer me: I was stupid, and it was funny that I was stupid. That was the only possibility. I took the ice cream cup.

"We'll need someone fast on the team," I said. "This might be as dangerous as last time."

"Faster than you?" Connor's voice. CONNOR'S VOICE. I didn't bother to look around.

"Meadows," I said.

"Midnight," he replied.

"What are you doing here?" said Caleb.

"Y'all are planning a thing and I want in," said Connor. He sat down next to me.

Where did he even come from?

"It's Sunday," I said. "Go..."

I fumbled.

Go somewhere. Anywhere.

ORBIPLOSIONS

"Go be at home," I said. "You know. With the wife."

Assuming she was there.

"As I'm sure you've gathered," said Connor, "We don't exactly have a functional relationship."

Why was that not a suprise?

"I don't read minds," I said.

"Well, he doesn't have kids so you have nothing to feel too awful about, Chris!" said Kaylee. As with ninety-percent of the time she knew what I was thinking, of course; it saved us time. "He could be a good teammate here."

"Can we get Sam to come with us?" I said.

"Chaquille's sister?"

"Get her to come with us, Kayles."

"I..." she said. "I'll try."

"Thanks," I said. I got up.

Caleb laid a hand on my shoulder.

"I'll meet you guys outside the Lowdown. Don't worry about me."

"And where are you going?" said Caleb.

I looked at everyone.

"You already know," I whispered.

"We still wanna hear it," said Connor. His blue-and-auburn hair moved with the wind, pointing southwest. Almost the same exact direction in which I was about to start flying. "You know. Talk."

I shook my head, gave them a small smile, and turned away.

I had to go bury the dogs.

--ovw--XX--ovw--

"You wanted me to pretend, right?"

The shovels leaned against a tree trunk; the afternoon was beautiful- beautiful beyond any description I could have possibly provided; more beautiful than anything I could have ever written on paper. Shafts of sunlight, a strange combination of pink and orange, penetrated through in between the leaves, branches, and twigs above us.

Malcolm's Vystir poisoning wasn't affecting or disabling any of his abilities that day. The fire he started was a few feet to my left. Whether there was any warmth from it, I'll never know.

He stood beside me to my right. The large red mantle he always wore glowed, its red a deeper shade in the firelight. He pressed the earth flat, even, with his boot. It was the color of dark chocolate and the dirt beneath it only a shade lighter. He turned to me.

"Pretend what?" he said.

"I'm sorry," I said. "Flashback. Don't mind me."

"Pretend what?" he insisted, his voice the deep and gruff growl I had grown accustomed to in the years I had spent living together with him.

"Pretend that I was fine," I muttered, softer than softly. "Pretend that I liked it. It wasn't directed at you."

It was silent in the glade, save for some crickets and cicadas in the distance.

"And I don't know," I continued. "Maybe I did like it. I don't even know."

"You're not there anymore, Chris."

"Easy to say."

He and I stood in a spot in the forest between The Port and the Everglades; behind Vicinity Two. I had been there before.

Before I knew anything near me had shifted, I was in his arms, the one place I felt as close to validated, as close to wanted, as close to loved as I felt I could possibly ever feel.

Images flashed in my head and I burned them; I burned them like Malcolm could burn anything on a good day when his Vystir poisoning wasn't eviscerating him.

Eviscerating him like my memories do.

Every day.

I was a torn pile of shreds of a broken thing. How I walked around anywhere, I'll never know.

"Can you tell me how you put up with me?" I said.

"What do you mean?" said Malcolm.

Maybe it was my fault. Maybe, if I had gotten the flash drive sooner, gotten to James sooner, delivered things faster, maybe it wouldn't be as bad. He could be better. Maybe if he never rescued me from being used like a toy for money, he would be fine. Maybe I was just... a bag. That people had to carry.

The one thing I had spent my entire life trying not to be.

"I mean," I replied, "How do you believe that there's anything about me that is worth loving? What about me was worth saving?"

Why was I so lucky? Why did people like me, why did anyone care; why were people helping me? It was the Overwoods. Abuse was everywhere, crime, evil, awful ugly detestable things were everywhere.

I was just one of them. It made no sense.

Malcolm pulled back to look at me. His eyes almost set me on fire, or maybe he just knew how much I was hurting and decided to kill me right then and there using fire, to end it for me. To save me from being hurt and lied to and possessed by scum again.

"Everything," he said.

Would Marie have agreed with him? What would Marie say? Maybe I could have saved Marie. Maybe I just didn't try hard enough; maybe I just wasn't good enough or smart enough or fast enough.

Why was I the one still alive?

Maybe I could have saved her.

Maybe I could have saved her, and the other girl, too, the one murdered- had I found whoever the killer was.

Or saved Crayon or Skittles.

It was the one thing- the one thing that kept me from pulling the trigger when my hands were on the gun, the gun I was going to use three days before my twelfth birthday.

I'm gonna kill me before you do.

The words in my mind; the words I wrote on paper.

It didn't end then, because, I thought I could help- I thought I could help and make a difference; I wasn't the only one who suffered and I thought, maybe, I could help someone else. Maybe.

And that couldn't happen- wouldn't happen, if I pulled that trigger.

Somebody else did but they missed.

"Hey." Malcolm was almost forgotten, though he was directly in front of me. "Did you hear me?"

I said nothing.

The sunlight turned into shadows in my mind, shadows that couldn't conceal the ropes, the smoke, the brittle skeleton between innocence and hate, between hunger and submission, between forced-to-survive and drugged-to-near-death, the skeleton that was shattered in front of me.

Too many times.

"Everything about you," he insisted, "is so much more than beyond worth saving."

I took a step back. My heart was beating so hard that I swore Crayon and Skittles could hear it pounding from six feet under the ground- where they were now buried- or even from heaven; from wherever they now were.

They were gone and I didn't save them, I stayed alive to do one thing and I couldn't do even that.

Malcolm almost gnarled at me.

"Don't you even think about going anywhere-"

"I love you," I interrupted rudely. "Just know... that I thank you, for everything."

He spoke but I couldn't hear him.

I continued.

"I never had a family but you. I love everything you are."

I tried to quickly blink away all the shadows. It didn't work- they didn't go anywhere.

"I can't be here right now. I'm sorry."

My feet took off and I was en route to the Lowdown.

Spinning through the air, I thought I heard Malcolm call my name from far below, from where I took off. Or maybe it was one of the monsters, the evil people in the shadows. The ones that find entertainment in the suffering of a child.

I stayed alive, to do one thing. I've been only a failure- and only a failure- since I chose not to pull that trigger.

I was going to end this multi-murderer's streak, here, now, or I wasn't going to keep going.

--ovw--XXI--ovw--

The orange-pink sunlight glowed all around me as I closed my eyes.

Dictations only last for so long.

I remembered reading the sheet of paper, still spinning, still flying over toward the Lowdown.

"By the time you read this, you'll either have discovered your powers or this paper will be on top of your dead body. I'll guess you're alive because you get everything you want and my attempt to kill you probably didn't work.

I just want you to know you're worthless.

That you're pitiful, that everything you do is a mistake.

People will know you and remember you. And they will say good things about you.

I'll make sure you don't hear them. You'll hear only me. You will believe only what I said about you then, and what I think about you now.

Nothing you do is right.

Nothing.

I know this, because I controlled you then

And

I

Control

You

Now.

I AM THE POWERFUL ONE

NOT YOU"

I think I was about fifteen when I got that letter.

Having represented law enforcement and the US, and having been both in the Lowdown, and also then out of the Lowdown, threats were now pretty old.

I still gave them all equal weight.

I opened my eyes and looked around me. Not too far away I could see the Century Spire Tower; the other towers around it all fallen and crumbled in assorted heaps of silver and black. In a different direction, the Everglades. In another direction, and just barely, because of the distance, The Port.

I used to always wonder why there were the ones that like to destroy innocent people and destroy beautiful things. Why there were the ones that love to harm anyone around them so much.

I still wondered that at eighteen, but less. Because at that point I had seen and I had learned, at least a thousand different times, that what goes around comes back around.

A voice came through in my mind.

"You're really not slowing down."

"I never slow down for anyone, Kayles." I surveyed the roads and the old rivers of dirty water, now just trenches of soil and chopped-off branches and dead leaves- barely a habitat for even the squirrels. I planted some sunflowers there once; a typhoon killed all of them. "Ever. You got Sam to come with?"

"I'm here!" Another voice- Sam's.

I smiled.

"Thank God," I said.

"Well, you certainly sound thrilled," said Sam.

"He's just glad to have someone else who understands going fast," Kaylee babbled.

A flash of lightning- far to the east where I had come from. I glanced in that direction for a moment, and then after about twelve seconds, thunder. It shook even the air, hard, like an earthquake.

"Jesus!" Sam sneered. Her voice hardened as she spoke. "Is there a storm coming?"

Sam Shilberg and her brother were both adopted; they had virtually no similarities. Sam was a telepath and as fast as I was, minus all the flying.

"The plants say yes," replied Kaylee.

"They know these things?" I said.

"Chaquille said if I dye my hair black and braid it and take painkillers I'll be a drug addict," Sam rambled.

I didn't even think. "That's his opinion."

"He's projecting!" Kaylee laughed. "It's what some people do. You don't need to read minds to know that."

I deposited myself on an abandoned scrapyard north of the Lowdown, first tumbling forwards, and then sideways, and finally backwards to slow down. Caleb was already there waiting.

The air smelled like rusty metal and rainwater mixed with ocean salt after a hot day. It smelled like what a desert might smell like, if a desert was near the equator where there used to be jungles and if it was where monsoons blew. I could almost taste the seawater in the air, as I slowed my breathing and listened to the chirping of tropical insects. It was 6:45 PM, an hour and fifteen minutes before the time at which we all agreed to convene.

I glanced up at the sky above us; the orange glow had shifted subtly to red, and was now slowly turning a deep shade of violet. Clouds obscured some of the light from the star that burned far away, as it moved away even farther.

I was the heavy heart that flew. The one that still smiled at people.

I said a prayer in my mind and wished Crayon was here.

"And you still don't believe your mind is a beautiful place," he told me.

He had a voice that gasconaded. It was almost condescending. Almost dictatorial. All I knew was that I'd heard that enough- much more than enough- in eighteen years. Much more than enough already in my first ten.

The way he spoke this last statement was exactly that.

"You're about to turn away," Caleb emphasized. "Don't."

Caleb Samuel Davenport, a man much larger than I was, a telepath and a technopath and one of the only steady things I had known. To me he was like a fire that glowed in a living room fireplace. The kind of thing your pet dogs or cats would go sit beside. To me he was that place where you'd be if you wanted marshmallows on a stick, if you wanted to tell your elementary school friends stories around a campfire and laugh until you fell asleep in the morning at 5 AM.

I was shutting people out of my head- something I rarely ever did. If Kaylee or Sam wanted to continue the conversation with me, they'd have to do it another time.

He frowned.

"You've never done that before," probed Caleb. "Is it something I did?"

His eyes were like glittering silver gems. It was evening and he usually shaved in the early mornings; at this time the hair on his face was more than just light 5 o'clock shadow.

"JOHNSON JUNK YARD," read a broken-down sign above me and to my left. "WHERE TRASH AND JUNK BELONG, WHERE USELESS THINGS ARE APPRECIATED."

It made me smile; I belonged here and I was appreciated here.

Caleb took both my hands and pulled me to him.

Because of the physical size difference any embraces between me and him were mostly him with his arms around me and me with my arms folded rather awkwardly in front of me, my hands usually clasped fists on his chest; my face turned to one side, usually the left.

I closed my eyes.

"Remember when you said I was the only thing," insisted Caleb, "the only thing you believed would never hurt you?"

I did say that, once, five hundred years ago.

Probably under duress or something.

I held my breath.

His voice dropped to a whisper. "Have I ruined that?"

I inhaled. He smelled like soap and brand new jeans from the store and laundry detergent and like a big fluffy dog you would always take with you to the beach on sunny Saturday afternoons, like something that I wanted to hug all the time.

"No," I said, my eyes still closed and the right side of my face still pressed to his chest where his heart was, its beat as strong and steady as its owner. I furrowed my eyebrows, my face contorted for just a split second. "Of course not. Don't be ridiculous, you haven't done anything."

He was like a big thing, squishing me from above, with his face. He was pressing it into my hair and I liked it.

"Then why does it feel like I have?" he faltered. "Why does it seem like every time I want you near me, you run away?"

I had two choices.

One: I could be blunt and just tell him, "Hey. I'm like that with everyone. Don't feel too bad about it."

Two: I could be blunt and just tell him, "We have a killer to catch, literally. And if I don't help to stop them I am literally going to kill myself, probably by jumping in front of one of the bullet trains. You'll have to find some other boyfriend to wear your jacket."

I went with choice zero and pulled back, for a moment, just to look him in the eye- because to me his eyes were maybe the most captivating things I had ever been fortunate enough, to have the opportunity to see.

"You're breathtaking," he murmured.

I said nothing.

He swallowed. "Do you know that?"

Why did I love his accent so much?

I did what I always did when I felt like it- I closed my eyes, pushed up on my toes, positioned my chin above his left shoulder, and moved my cheek against his. Idly, gently, slowly; softly like the songs I wrote on supermarket receipts. I would imagine some sort of big cute animal, like Aslan from Narnia. He was so adorable! The cutest lion ever, as far as I could tell from the ancient poster in my school library. To me there was something about the prickly and rough surface of Caleb's face that I loved, something about the sensation that calmed me, each time I did it. It was different for him- as my breaths slowed, his would always turn fast, uneven, ragged breaths almost. I would both hear them and feel them; directly against my right ear, along with the rapid contracting and expanding of his chest against mine.

Still I said nothing; I let the calm take over me.

Caleb was just barely audible, when he spoke to me again.

"Do you know how much I love when you do that?" he whispered. Panting almost, like he was short of breath.

I pulled back again. "No," I said. "I don't read anyone's mind. You know that."

"Maybe you should," said Caleb.

"It doesn't feel right to me." I smiled. "You don't need to agree with me. It's just my opinion, how I feel. I'm completely respectful of all other telepaths."

"The only other telepath here is me," Caleb insisted.

"Can I ask you to kiss me?" I said.

"Aw, Chris..." he trailed off, still breathing like a wolf after a thousand-mile sprint to catch a magical flying loaf of bread. "You're about to get more than just a kiss."

Saying that you got a soul

Just because you know that you are going to hell

Said I don't want to be near you

Said I don't want to be near you

Do we believe when we say, "never really going to need?"

--ovw--XXII--ovw--

Lights the color of assorted ice cream flavors and cartoon comic book advertisements.

Underneath the droning, broken 7-11 sign that glowed its neon orange, white, and meteoric shamrock green, with black and dark brown brick as her background, I saw her.

Kaylee.

I smiled.

She gripped her arrowvines tightly in her left hand- the hand that was almost as damaged as mine. She wore jeans and a purple jacket tonight; quite a switch from her typical light orange double tank top, shorts and Converses.

I saw her from two miles away, several blocks from Hotel Il Male Nekantral.

#67 DIRTWATER AVENUE LOWDOWN 1216.

I was walking slow, too slow, and only because Caleb's gait was that of a sea turtle trying to carry four crates of McIntosh apples and pie.

TURTLES ARE CUTE YAY

My feet had positioned themselves already and I was already fifty percent in launch position, when I noticed Caleb's arms- which without my cognizance were wrapped around me from behind- and I realized I might hurt him if I fired myself toward Kaylee.

TURTLE = CUTE

DOG = CUTER

: DDDD

"Caleb," I said. "Kaylee's already there. I think the others probably are, too. Let's go."

I rolled my eyes, at both Caleb and at myself. I had to try to be more serious, in his presence. Otherwise, I'd have just melted all the time. Yes, more serious even while thinking about how cute dogs are.

"CALEB."

He only tightened his lock on me, in response. I felt the heavy, hard, and forceful beat of his heart, pressed directly to the back of my shoulder; an driving, intense beat- as fast as it was half an hour ago. It felt exactly the same, still.

ORBIPLOSIONS

I remember when I wanted a turtle for a pet

Dude Kaylee probably be waiting like wth bro

I shook my head for a moment. Was I really still thinking about turtles?

BUT THEY'RE CUTE!!!

We had only minutes until rendezvous. I stood still, feeling Caleb's breath on my hair and the contracting of his muscles and his chin on my head.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

"You need to..." he gasped. "You need to slow down."

ME = SLOW DOWN?? = PROBABLY NO

He knew me long enough to know that's just something I don't do.

"You're joking, right?" I said.

I heard the massive smile in his voice when he answered.

"No." He laughed. "No, I'm not."

I watched the flaming magenta and bronze combustiflies slowly buzz and hum all around us like hummingbirds- larger concentrations of them wherever the damaged, flickering streetlights were. These animals literally burned, like Malcolm's deep red mantle did, at times.

The thunder seemed to have stopped... although, for all I knew at the time, I had just experienced the most wonderful, hammering, heart-stopping, superhuman thunder there was out there.

"You know," said Caleb, his voice having dropped to some kind of uncharacteristic breathy whisper, which almost shook on its way out, "There's more where that hammering came from."

Shit.

I broke out of his arm prison. I turned to face him, and we locked eyes.

"Stop being attractive-" I squealed in what sounded like the squeak of a frightened mouse, yet somehow human still and definitely blended with half a cup of embarrassment and a sprinkling of diced fear. "I've gotten enough distraction, thanks."

This marshmallow was melting.

A raccoon- the same one I saw after infiltrating the drug house- trotted mellowly on the concrete in between us. It had a peanut in its hands, which it then left on top of one of my old, beat-up black sneakers.

I decided to name it Happy. Happy the raccoon scuttled away before I could pat him or hug him or get him another popsicle. Half-popsicle. I watched his gray-and-brown-and-white fur disappear beneath some toppled veneers outside a long-abandoned antique store.

White fur. I remembered Crayon- Crayon and Skittles. The best two white-fur family members anyone could have ever possibly asked for. These two big fluffies weren't just dogs, to me. To me, they were protectors and friends and bodyguards and training buddies that followed me whenever I'd roundoff to whip with a full to back handspring my way to the beach or to the library.

Combustiflies hovered in midair, their flames illuminating the look of abject, acheronian dismay on Caleb's face.

Guilt clutched at me; I wasn't yet sure why exactly.

"What?" I said.

"That's all it was to you?" he replied.

"What do you mean?" I said.

The stubble of yellow and silver hair on his cheeks was still glistening, and not with rain but with sweat; I watched him breathe- breathe almost desperately- for several moments that to me seemed almost endless, before he finally spoke to me again.

"Distraction," he said.

I rolled my eyes up to the sky. Still somewhat cloudy. Very dark purple. Wherever the moon was, she wasn't above us, tonight.

I didn't see what the point to this conversation was.

"No," I replied. "Of course not. You read my mind, too."

I buttoned up his jacket, which his father cleaned up for me. Scott.

I continued.

"So you know it," I said. "You already know."

"Well, it hurts," he demanded. His accented particularly displayed itself at the word well. His voice was slow, was heavy. Was deep. Almost the perfect exact opposite to mine. Not quite growling, not like Malcolm's, also not too lullaby, like his sister's. Lullaby's not an adjective. Is lullaby an adjective? His voice was molasses; mine was butter, and soft bread. "It still hurts, to hear you say it like that."

"Like what?" I said.

I saw something I hadn't seen before; hadn't seen in a lifetime. His eyes- which shone just like ice on what we called a freezeover day in the Overwoods- changed.

I was scared. I was worried that perhaps, and for all I've seen this was nowhere near impossible, he might turn into a giant waterproof earthbending omnivorous rabbit and eat me. I had no idea what it was, until I realized it was just water- a coat of tears, in front of the silver and gray and blue sea- the sea I was so completely, totally, absolutely lost in, in only the last hour. I had never been so drowned in any sea in my life, the way I was tonight. The sea that to me, was my only approximation of love, of safety.

"Hey." I put my hands in his jacket pockets, looked down at the little peanut Happy gave me as a gift, and inched toward him slowly; to let him put his arms around me because I think he liked doing that. I liked it, too. Most of the time, at least.

His arms were maybe twice the size of mine and in most situations a thought like that caused me only fear, and an intense, screaming urge to run away. That's not what I felt this time, as he once again put them around me.

"Say something to me," he said.

I looked up, to see the water was still in his eyes. But he was smiling again.

"You were in my mind again." I didn't like it. But it's not like there was some other way I would've turned this around so soon, either. "Weren't you?"

"Say something to me," he repeated, his voice slurring and mumbling, like Connor's or Belinda's or Henry's voices did- when they were too intoxicated- though neither of us consumed alcohol.

"I love your accent," I said. "Like, so much. It's unimaginable." I felt like an animal in a trap- possibly a marshmallow cat. Or a cat marshmallow. The instinct to slink away and fly was overbearing. "It's insane. It drives me mad. Like, in a good way. Can you let me go now?"

"No," he said.

"I love you, Caleb," I said.

He looked down at me. A tiny drop of water fell from his left eye and into mine; I had to blink it away. His smile was forcing crow's feet next to his eyes. I had them, too, even at eighteen. I smiled a lot.

"Please don't laugh because I love your laugh so much," I squeaked. I was virtually choking in my own misery and embarrassment. "And really, just don't. We have a killer to catch and I owe your sister some kind of flower vase now that we're late."

And I had a train picked out already if we didn't catch this murderer. And/or rapist.

Caleb's voice dipped low, lower than it was already by default. He gripped my arm, hard, the right one- because he knew if he did the same to my left arm or wrist, it would hurt- and his smile was gone; in a flash, in that single moment.

"What was that?" he insisted.

"What?" I said. "What was what?"

His eyebrows furrowed. They were the same color as corn in a sunlit field of puppies and grass and foxgloves and columbine- yes puppies like the small dogs- on a happy, clear, sunny yellow afternoon. They were the color of sunflowers.

"Your last thought. The one just now." He was some combination of angry and afraid, and he was trying to keep the angry part under control so as not to scare me away. Doesn't matter. I wasn't going anywhere. "Something about a train."

He wasn't tuning in. Wasn't listening close enough. I shut him out of my mind and put on a smile.

"Trains are funny," I said.

I laughed- an insane, anarchic laugh that was way too pronounced and I can just about guarantee Kaylee and Sam and Wyatt (and Connor, wherever he was) all heard it too and perhaps assumed it was some random, unimportant, homeless, prostituted vagrant beggar- which, of course, I was- because of its sheer volume in decibels and its high pitch.

"You shut me out. You shut me out again, and you don't do that." He was demanding an answer. One I wasn't really sure I had for him. I could see him trying hard not to sound or look like he was yelling at me, which I appreciated. "Chris, what's going on?"

I said nothing with a smile on my face.

"Chris." He was pleading now. "Talk to me."

I'm not that important was on the tip of my tongue, but that would have been a giveaway. So instead I said:

"We need to catch this guy or gal, Caleb. We're fine. I just don't want my random train thoughts distracting anyone that might want to read this mind, tonight. Okay?"

Unconsciously, I ran my hands up his arms, slowly, and took his face in my hands, just because I wanted to. My body did it before I knew it happened. There was too much void inside of me, to feel embarrassment now.

He probably had a lot to say and we didn't have the time, so I spoke before he could.

I wasn't sure if he could tell how much my own words were cutting me into little pieces as I spoke them, still smiling. "Race you there."

--ovw--XXIII--ovw--

Speeding into me,

Like a bullet train,

It's the last thing I will see,

Speeding into me,

Like a bullet train,

It's the last thing I will see.

I wasn't looking for a lighthouse.

Even though it was a really dark bedroom.

from "Lighthouse"

--ovw--

Nightingale

Day #73

Subprocedure Fifteen

I vomited the foul mix of tranquilizers, Vystir, opiates and sedatives they forced into me- not by syringe this time, but by pulling me by the hair and neck, and then shoving my face into a basin of water, mixed with rubbing alcohol, phenacyl chloride, and cyclohexene, until I surrendered to consuming it.

The dead body of the boy in front of me seemed to speak to me; he seemed to say, "It's over for me, I'm at peace."

"There's ten of you left," said the man that wore a mask today and not a helmet- the same man that pushed me here through hallways and glass rooms that contained bodies. Bones and cadavers. The departed kids that seemed to mean absolutely nothing to these people. "I'm proud of you for making it so far."

I had no head, no heart, no more meaning or significance; whatever words came out of my mouth at that point, was whatever part of my soul still bided; whatever spirit still remained of me.

"Water," I wheezed.

I turned my body slightly and vomited again, this time not even feeling the contraction of my stomach or throat, and comprehending only the pounding of the ice and the shattering of mountain-sized glaciers in my head. Tears ran down my half-naked body and onto the carmine marble floor.

The man took a key card from his pants pocket and pressed it against a panel on the wall. The dark, red door next to it unlocked with a click, and he turned the handle.

"Follow me," the man said.

The cast polymer sink in front of me was full of my blood, and still-bubbling chemicals. I heard the man and yet I didn't, because there was a scream in my head- one that attempted to release itself, constantly, but only managed to form itself into little running whimpers that accompanied my every inbreath and outbreath.

"Water-" I wheezed again, in between floods of pain that choked me, that twisted my muscles, twisted my bones and lungs.

In a moment of extreme affliction, I longed for the defiled bed sheets, I longed for the scripted, staged manipulation- the abuse I was constantly subjected to; I longed for the familiar powerlessness as other depraved beings took what they believed they needed to get. It was nothing, nothing compared to this. I was begging for it in my mind; anything, anything at all, anything but this.

An entire life cycle of nonexistence, disarray and darkness seemed to pass before I uttered my next word.

"Please."

The man took me in his arms and carried me into the room, which was dark and seemed to be lit only by some candles, and a lava lamp which stood on top of a dresser. The dresser was a fascinating thing; it glowed, it was the color of a very dark night sky, and it was patterned with what looked like tiny little stars- stars that blinked and glimmered and twinkled, just like real stars did. Beside the lava lamp was a small stack of books. One of them was a Bible.

I remember thinking, "Oh, he reads the Bible, too," until I realized it was mine.

The man returned from wherever he went with a wineglass of water. My hands were shaking too badly for me to hold it, to hold anything at all. The man held the vessel to my lips; it was all I could do, to even swallow.

I opened my eyes and saw this man seated on the bed, upper body poised to mine.

"You know what happens now," he whispered to me. "Don't you?"

I shut my eyes again.

Of course I knew. Men and women both, but mostly men- I had been through this, so many times, before. I didn't ever have to do anything. Apart from whatever I was told to do.

In some ways, it was already so easy.

But there are certain things that can take a lot of you, and never give back; you never ever get it back. They don't take a part of you or a piece of you. There is a safety that is offered to everyone in this universe, and that safety is gone forever, and so are you.

--ovw--

[[bonus note from the author:

the recording for lighthouse is not found in nonfiction ii, it is found in nonfiction i (marshmallow songs). both albums are accessible on spotify as well as other platforms.]]

--ovw--XXIV--ovw--

The brass knuckles on Sam's right fist gleamed, reflecting the deep orange blaze from the cigarette in Connor's hand. A megacigarette- the same kind Belinda smoked; the same kind Chaquille sold.

"Did Chaquille really overdose?" I said. "I mean, I heard it from Klein, is all. I haven't seen him."

"Wouldn't know," Sam replied, almost scoffing. "Not like I see him."

There was an intense flash of lightning east of us, for a moment illuminating the dark, broken up asphalt in front of us.

Dirtwater Avenue. Street of Hotel Il Male Nekantral.

"Thing's abandoned," said Connor, blowing smoke in my face. "D'you even need us here?"

I coughed. The chemicals he breathed tasted like salt, but not salt that came from the ocean- like salt composed of substance and dependence and disease, biting at my nose and eyes as it hit my face; it smelled like addiction itself.

For a place in the Lowdown, the hotel wasn't actually that bad- cement, plastic, carbon fiber, and glass; something deserted, an almost forgotten building looming over us. It overshadowed the rusty garbage bins, the piles of broken lumber, discarded ceramic scraps, puddles of human urine and oil and rainwater and malaria and salmonella. Teal arabesque on mauve tapestry and gloom seemed to stare down at us from the windows of stories above us. Sam and I stared back up at them; Connor consumed his poison- just one of his favorites. The peeling olive paint revealed rough, cameo pink silicone. It was the same shade of pink as Sam's highlights- the ones braided in her otherwise blond hair. Like her brother, she sported a black leather vest. But on her bare arms, instead of tattoos, was a vast array of bangles, bracelets, and trinkets. One of them had a fish on it.

"I think I do." I stayed in the shadows surveying Sam's collection of little ornaments. One of them was like a rainbow, but in a rectangle, instead of an upside-down "U" or semicircle. Underneath it was what looked like a small brown fox, with the most adorable fluffy white mane ever. I instantly wanted one as a pet. I wondered if they existed and I could get one. "This is the Overwoods, Connor." Another was a cat with a yellow nose. It wore a pink ribbon on its left ear. "Do you remember last time?"

I heard Connor spit and then huff. Then puff and huff again. I dropped my gaze to his eyes. They were a similar brown to mine, but darker, with scleras and even parts of his eyelids turned red by the chemicals; his hair was auburn and blue. He seemed to almost have whiskers, wispy little neon blue strands of thinning, twiggy hair that were half invisible; there, but transparent- fully invisible only if he was. He was taller than me, of course, because almost all people were.

The hotel seemed to almost beckon us inside.

"Sure do," he said, before spitting, yet again. He flicked his cigarette with some sort of churlish, crabby look on his face. "Darned hard to forget, I reckon."

Enormous black sewer rats scurried from dumpster to dumpster, to gutter, to derelict bar and back. They made strange chattering noises behind us, on the sidewalk across from the 7-11 sign.

"Right." I stared at the concrete in front of my beat-up black running shoes. I took a breath. "A lot of things are hard to forget." I was hoping that maybe Happy the racoon would make an appearance because I was lonely. Well, maybe not lonely. But the memories were tearing me to pieces again. "Also, I didn't invite you."

A combustifly perched on my left shoulder, and before I could gently brush it away so it wouldn't burn Caleb's jacket, Connor took the little thing by its wings- with his rough, pale fingers- and used it to light himself yet another stick of harmine and toxins. As I stood there I remembered reading about morphine diacetate in a book, and about how some of these sticks contained the harmful compound- it was maybe his fiftieth stick that day.

I almost said something, when Connor threw the combustifly on the ground and stepped on it.

My eyes widened as it zapped and flickered- its last combustion- in a small, stellar fireworks display of bronze and shining magenta sparks; dazzling, brilliant confetti that burst from under Connor's dull cordovan boot.

My body reacted before my mind did and I realized it only when Connor was on the ground in front of me and I registered my own voice echoing on the street.

"KILL ONE MORE," it said, "AND I'LL DO THAT AGAIN WITH IGNITE ON."

My soul came back to me and I spoke again, in a less nasty tone. "Go disappear, Meadows. Now. And please, for me, cut down on the cigs if you can."

After muttering something unintelligible he vanished, and Sam and I stood there to wait. I glanced over at the 7-11 sign- the same one where Kaylee waited earlier.

She would be in position soon.

--ovw--XXV--ovw--

I looked away from the 7-11 sign and approached the entrance to the building. Sam followed.

"Midnight," she said.

"Yes," I responded.

"She's on the roof," said Sam.

It was always majorly awesome to me, to have Sam on any kind of team. Like, a MASSIVE asset, a huge plus. More so emotionally than anything else. Undoubtedly one of my favorite Union of Stars fighters; one of my best friends. A week ago we'd visited the Port with alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks from Pacifico (you can probably guess which ones were mine) and chocolate cake to mourn her loss of an SRA- she was beaten by an athletic female agent named Denice.

I couldn't blame Sam at all, though- Denice Lyca Zambaia had actual super strength combined with expensive formal training that neither Sam nor I ever really had. I lost to her myself, probably five thousand times more frequently than Sam did- I no longer kept count- and Zambaia was truly a powerful force in her own right. I worked with her, too, on occasion.

Like if they needed someone who could fly.

"She's such a hoe," Sam said as she sobbed on my shoulder at the beach with the sand beneath us. It shifted with the grayish Overwoods saltwater (it was grayish during the summer and tasted a lot like canned shrimp) and molded to our butts. Her alcohol breath didn't bother me as she cried some more and said, "She's such a hoe, I'll murder that hoe, I'll murder that hoe." She rapped one of her favorite verses unintelligibly even though it had N word in it. She drank more alcohol and sobbed some more. "I'll murder that hoe," she said again.

And again.

She didn't mean it literally of course (I think)- Lyca was actually very respectful and mostly nice. You just didn't want her accidentally sitting down on your unfinished paperwork or your freshly collected evidence or your facial composite sketches because if she did you would never get that stuff back, and you would probably cry.

Well, I did anyway because I learned that the hard way.

Belinda still POUNCES on me about it.

Which makes no sense- like, I AM NOT THE ONE THAT SAT ON IT.

Flash forward to the present day and no- Sam hadn't murdered Lyca (to my knowledge), so good on her. Wonderful human.

I tapped two fingers to my right temple, next to my eye, and flicked them forward. Time to move.

--ovw--

--ovw--

Nightingale

Exact night or day not yet confirmed

Subprocedure unidentified

Purpose unclear

I stared at the fractured bones of my left hand. The skin was punctured from the inside. Exposed, crushed blood vessels and soft bone marrow all grinding against each other stared back at me. The rest of my body was a red and yellow jam.

I looked up, at the seemingly endless vertical tunnel in which I had been tossed down. My right hand was bound tightly to my right ankle with rope that I couldn't break. My mouth was still bleeding; a tooth chipped and broken from trying desperately to chew it off and failing because there were too many layers of the rope, too tightly bound. My right hand was a sickly dark purple and black color combo- whatever blood inside of it had probably already rotted. I could try only to move my fingers. Awful, hair-raising weeping sounds that I heard all around me echoed off the walls of the horrible tiny pit, engulfed my body with all its insanity. It was an unearthly sound. As though a monster's spawn had been taught to cry through a hole in a broken prison stockade.

I realize, now, that all those weeping sounds were my own.

The dead body of a girl I once knew lay on the harsh rocky bottom of the pit. My body also lay there, unable to breathe, unmoving. My skin was broken in a million places; the palm of my left hand reduced to thin slices of human flesh hanging and flapping off of a bleeding human chopping board. I was cold, but burning with untreated fever at the same time. I felt like the only water I'd swallowed in the last twelve hours was my tears.

And the chemicals they forced into me.

I stared at the metal ladder to my right. It was finger-painted with hemoglobin and plasma, strands of my hair, broken bits of my fingernails. It was also covered in vomit.

A man's loud, domineering voice spoke from far, far above.

"If you'll keep quiet about us," it said, "I'll let you out of there. Just promise you won't tell anyone."

No response. The weeping noises continued unabated.

"If you just cooperate," the same man said, "I'll toss you a chicken sandwich. We just need to make sure you don't ever tell anyone what we do."

Even then, my stomach turned. What we do. They already failed to brainwash me. Twice.

Some things are better kept secret, a voice spoke in my head.

It wasn't mine.

I looked at the body that was decomposing on the barbed, spiky granite floor right beside me. I looked at the ladder again.

I had already fallen. Nineteen times.

I looked at the body again.

I was so hungry...

--ovw--

But the only reason you sing

is for you to scream badly

and say, "Oh, I wish I was"

Until you push it all out to the end,

see what you'll never be

Not now

Not tomorrow

I'm setting fires

Sometimes, evil people put you into positions you think you can't climb out of. Sometimes, evil people put you into situations you literally can't climb out of.

Remember one thing.

Their evil will swallow them before it swallows you.

I'm setting fires, setting fires

I'm setting fires.

--ovw--

Sam locked her vibrant blue-and-green eyes on mine for just a moment. I knew she was reading my mind, and I didn't stop her.

ORBIPLOSIONS

"What we do"

"Just cooperate"

ORBIPLOSIONS

And then Sam spoke her own words into my head, loudly, overriding all the other ugly, traumatic, horrible things that I was starting to remember. It was a blast as hard and as loud as her famous knockout blow.

"I WILL SEND THEM TO HELL FOR YOU," she said. "Just promise me you'll stick around."

Only one tear fell when I responded, telepathically.

"I don't know the future, Sam," I said.

"If you don't stick around, you won't see me beat up Zambaia."

I tapped two fingers to my right temple, next to my eye, and flicked them forward. Time to move.

Sam didn't hesitate- within a millisecond I watched the colors of her accessories zoom up the exterior emergency stairs, broken at every fifth step or less, but she was more agile than even I was.

I threw my roundoff into the hotel's veranda and blocked off the railing for a vault, spinning fast upwards and toward the top floor. A window facing north was waiting for me, its strengthened glass already broken for me, by Wyatt. With my left hand I grabbed onto a vertical steel pipe, using it to swing myself in the right direction, while taking the earpiece from my jeans pocket with my right.

I wondered why Belinda never told me the hotel was now abandoned. It wasn't in her files.

Ropeweed, set up by Kaylee, draped over both sides of the opened entryway on the sixteenth floor- her proactive contingency effort- in the event of any form of miscalculation or bad weather or me aiming for the wrong window; in the event of any explosives or flashbangs. I landed on the carpeted floor without needing to roll or flip further.

I pressed two fingers to the earpiece and listened. If anyone else was here, they were awfully quiet.

"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"

It was just barely worth thinking about. With all of my experiences- from Nightingale to Lowdown to Union of Starts and Webwork, all assignments and back- there were too many potential suspects. Even then, it could be anyone we hadn't encountered before. Or had no files on. Not yet, anyway.

"MISSED YOU

CAN'T WAIT TO SEE YOU AGAIN

- M M"

How many people were there? How many had I worked for, or serviced, or apprehended?

I already knew, even as a prepubescent child, that there were psychos. Yes, I believed all people were a mixture of both bad and good- but I had seen both sides well.

Did the "M M" part even stand for Manila Maniac? This place was called that eons and centuries and ages ago. Whoever it was, maybe they had a knack for history.

It bugged me to think of the people I knew who did have some kind of this knack; for accounts, annals, or archives...

Again, I remembered Marie. I had saved Kaylee. Perhaps, I had saved Malcolm. Perhaps I saved James once.

But Marie...

Was it that I wasn't trying hard enough?

Soundlessly I took the electronically duplicated key- the one that Caleb created just for me via his technological manipulation- and held it in my right fist so hard I felt my blood might start dripping onto the floor, the way it so often did during Nightingale. And not just mine; Marie's, Kaylee's, and all those other kids. I still remember the names of the ones I had met.

Sixteenth floor, 1615.

"Arrowvine," I whispered into the piece. "Do you read me?"

"Copying clear," said Kaylee.

As far as I knew all our telepathic channels were off; if whoever our suspect was, was telepathic- we didn't want to give them anything.

"Sightings," I said.

"Negative, Marblefox," she responded. "Hide nor hair. Stringweeds haven't been tripped."

"Team- radio silence. Two minutes."

I approached the door slowly while maintaining my situational awareness at its highest.

Caleb, Connor, Sam, Kaylee, and Wyatt- in that order- responded in almost-unison. "Roger, Marblefox."

Across from me on the sixteenth floor lobby, which was totally void of any light source, was what to me looked like a barely moving shadow. Naturally there was fear. But more powerful than the fear, was determination. There wasn't going to be another Marie.

I stayed perfectly still and allowed my eyes to adjust further.

That's when something struck me from behind.

Or, it would have, only I sensed it first.

An arm and a fist flew over my head and my right shoulder as I sidestepped, fast, both left and backwards- simultaneously going into backwards bridge to immediate kickover, effectively kicking the weapon out of this attacker's hand.

Without needing to see where it was in the empty space, I spun in the air towards my right and caught it in my left hand.

Identifier #1: A dagger. Shaped almost like a kunai.

Whoever it was was capable of throwing.

Or they held this weapon for some other reason...

"Break radio silence," I said through gritted teeth and turning ignite on. "Convene at sixteenth- anteroom."

A raspy and very Vicinity-Four-influenced voice replied.

"Alacrity to Marblefox- already at eleventh; moving to sixteenth anteroom."

Alacrity was only one of Sam Shilberg's multiple call signs- just like how Marblefox wasn't the only code name I ever had.

My first official team assignment was how I met Sam. At the time, her hair was dyed light green; it was in multiple long braids that swayed down her shoulders with glowing pink highlights. That first co-op job was about a year before our night at Il Male Nekantral- only a few weeks into my "alignment" under James. That first time, I remember how Sam walked toward me like a supermodel on a runway as she popped pink bubble gum and shoved a massive rifle into my arms, and said, "I heard you're a human painkiller. Good, 'cuz I LOVE painkillers."

I replied immediately with, "Hi, I'm literally gay. You must be Edge. I'm so super happy to meet you!" And I tried to shoot magic rainbows through my hands because I was uncomfortable with the gun and because she herself looked like a rainbow and I wanted to be like all relatable and stuff.

But there was no need.

I remember noting how strong her accent was when she popped her gum again, chewed, and replied with, "Yeah, me too. You get to call me Sam." She pulled a folded piece of paper from a jacket pocket and snorted whatever was in it, then said, "Let's do this, Morphine."

I remember how her black-and-yellow striped pants made her look like a bumblebee; a bumblebee with the most breathtakingly colored eyes.

Subconsciously maybe I basked in that memory for a second, while in the fight, and then I really had to put my focus back on to aforementioned fight at hand because that one-second worth of throwback was the one-second moment when the unidentified attacker stuck a different knife- one that I didn't previously see- five inches deep into my right shoulder.

I felt it but I didn't even look at it- and I knew what I was going to do.

"This is going to burn," I said politely.

I pulled the sharp blade out immediately and responded with a heel to the attacker's neck; I followed with a sweep, to a leg lock, and then to the quadruple-twisting forward somersault dropkick that won me my first and second SRAs.

What did I do under duress?

I set things on fire. From the inside, if it so suited me.

I pocketed the second weapon as both my feet made contact- still in midair- and then pushed back into a reverse spin to my right side before piking and then tucking for the sideways landing. The height and power of the recoil- or the "block" as I sometimes called it just because gymnast terminology- gave me enough air time that Sam was on the same floor as us before I actually landed.

Then I looked at the wound; tiny, minor. So minor compared to other stuff I went through at the three-month experiment of pure torture.

Practically negligible to me because five inches deep was nothing compared to the horrors of those three months- that was the mindset I was in while in the fight.

I saw the accessory colors zoom directly toward us- toward the unidentified attacker and I- in pink and light green and yellow, all shining and reflecting the scarce luminescence from outside as Kaylee spoke to the team again via telepathic web.

"Marblefox!" She was panting. "Multiple stringweeds tripped-" she was gulping air fast. And I knew she wasn't the fastest. "Pursuing approximate location of unidentified potential suspect."

A very short and very one-sided exchange of hands, feet, fists, knees, and elbows ensued between Sam and the attacker while I responded to Kaylee and stitched the spurting wound on my shoulder myself- standing on two feet.

Because the cut was deep.

And, you know, because I didn't want too much blood on my GYMNAST with the capital G T-shirt.

Capital YMNAST, too.

"Approximate location, Arrowvine." I watched Sam, a grin on her face, an expression that reached her emerald-and-turquoise colored eyes- eyes just like the color of the snow here in the Overwoods sometimes- halt in a perfectly poised body position, ready to put this attacker into an arm or neck lock.

"Northeast, Marblefox." Kaylee responded, between audibly wheezing for air, out of breath, inhaling sharply. The color of her connection and binding- the colors visible only to stronger telepaths- was alternating between ice blue and pure black.

Sam threw her right fist into the attacker's rib cage twice in succession and then followed with the swing of her left arm; the swing into the uppercut that launched our man or woman (or other gender identity attacker) into the air.

I bent my knees, touched my fingers to the ground, calculated line and distance, and then let myself go like a coil spring- I pushed myself off the ground.

Kaylee continued.

"I'm... not sure I can..." Another wheeze. "Catch them, Marblefox."

She sounded almost a bit like me, during Nightingale...

In the air I spun a half-turn to my left, threw my head back and swung my right leg straight and full over the axis in which I was rotating, both backward and in a slight diagonal. Upon completion of the first backward rotation I performed another half-turn into my left but this time with my right fist extended for the punch.

The punch that hit probably harder than it should have, because I was still shaking out not just my left but also my right hand out after Sam finished the combo with her push kick to hard overhand right. I'd seen it before, because she'd used it in plenty of SRAs.

She once told me she was half-trained in Muay Thai, and half-trained in "DA STREETS." I said, "Oh, me too!" and then she knocked me out. It was during an SRA. You know- one of the many that I lost.

She and I had both been hungry and homeless at at least one time or other; it made us friends; we had a lot in common though on the surface level we seemed like two total opposites. It was nice to relate with someone about life on the streets before being politely knocked out by your friend.

I'd seen her use that maneuver on the streets, too. I saved her with spinning burn-on-impact flips; she saved me with nasty kicks and punches.

And sometimes drugs.

"Northeast, possibly toward drug warehouse," I said. Possibly. I had no way to know for sure at the time. I moved toward the unidentified moving shadow I saw earlier, knowing Sam was more than capable of handling a now unarmed- or at least less armed- attacker. I'd get more information or additional possible identifiers later. "Cognito- assist Arrowvine." I walkovered in combination forward toward my target. "Powergrip." I took a pen light from Caleb's jacket. "Remain with previous directive- I need you here."

"Roger that, Marblefox." I heard his heavy steps- Wyatt was on the way up. "It'll only take a moment."

UGH.

I DO NOT LIKE THAT GUY.

Like seriously I GET that we needed him to break the thingy but he was USELESS on this HE COULD HAVE GONE HOME-

But whatever.

POWERGRIP IS LITERALLY LIKE THE *DUMBEST* POSSIBLE CODE NAME THAT HAS JUST LIKE *EVER EVEN EXISTED* Uggggggggggggh

Ugh

UGH!!!!!!!!!!!!

But WHATEVER.

When you're so miserable you act like a high school bully at THIRTY.

#NoRelates

"Tango Mike, Powergrip." I flipped on the switch.

And then almost, just almost, wished I hadn't.

On the floor, in front of me, was a barely moving, barely breathing body. Tied up.

Her blond hair disheveled and her blood running from her scalp down into her mouth, and then down again onto her blue laboratory attire now mixed with her saliva and maybe even more blood from her mouth-

Elyza.

--ovw--XXVI--ovw--

I flicked backwards, legs over head and hands on the marble floor and back again, several times into a layout flip that spun directly into the restrained attacker's chest, slamming them onto the floor. Wyatt emerged from the end of the hallway, his arrival physically announced by the light of the torch he carried.

"Thanks for the light source," said Sam as she folded her hands together, outward, and in front of me. "Needed one for sure."

I threw a gainer off her hands with my left leg, the right side of my body pulling back for a simple half twist after the calculated arcs of both my legs, and then spun into a double forward rotation before both my shoes connected, hard, directly on top of the masked attacker's upper body.

For a fleeting moment Wyatt and Sam both shielded their faces; the force of the stuck landing radiated in visible shockwaves that pushed the air back, hard. It kept our suspect in place long after I stepped off.

Wyatt winced.

"Hope you didn't make it too bad," he commented.

"No," I said, after nodding my thank-you to Sam, who was looking at me as she pinned our suspect down with one knee. I continued after a sigh. "I barely did anything, really."

"No burning?" said Sam.

"Minimal." I turned the other way and sprinted.

I heard Wyatt laugh raucously.

"That's what you call what you did to me," he called out after me. "And that hurt."

"Feel bad for them after you see Elsie," I said mostly to myself, not caring if they heard me or not. "Elsie, can you hear me?"

Sam's voice resonated, wavering and shrill from behind me, from across the hall and antechamber.

"What?" she said. "Elyza?"

"Elyza Cobb?" Wyatt's voice.

"Stay there with the suspect," I said.

"Chris," said Wyatt. "What the heck is going on?"

I said nothing.

The pen light revealed, on the ground beside Elyza, a tiny orange cartridge with a miniature syringe built into it.

I thought I knew what it was, but I needed to be sure...

I reached over, put one finger against the tip of the hypodermic needle, and instantly pulled back.

Zapryekavil.

Compassion, not fearlessness or heroism, moved the muscles in my body.

I knelt down, and slowly placed a hand on Elyza's face.

Zapryekavil, or "bloodkill" as I called it, was a product of the Union of Stars. I had seen it only once before. In only one place, at only one time. Nightingale.

That's when I felt it- the same ghastly, abhorrent feeling that I still saw in nightmares and cried awake from.

It was, as I'd overheard from the torturers, intended to wipe memories or manipulate them. If you were a telepath or someone with abilities- not all abilities, just certain ones- or someone with any amount if Vystir in your system, this chemical would not only wipe your mind; it would shut you down, possibly disable your powers for an indefinite amount of time, and above all, hurt.

Within seconds of contact with her skin, she mumbled what sounded like a "thank you," and I felt a fire in my insides, a charring, a smoke that felt like my head and my veins were being filled with poisonous air that wanted to explode- to escape and release itself- but simply couldn't; simply wouldn't be allowed to.

Another thing I learned from Nightingale: If it hurt you a lot, it usually meant that it wasn't going to work on you, wasn't going to make your mind or memories vulnerable to manipulating. Couldn't make you susceptible. I know, because it didn't work on me or on Kaylee; the chemical and its pain killed others, but not us.

That didn't mean I felt no pain. The orange in the dim light- the orange color of the cartridge- was gone and replaced with gray before I knew what I was feeling.

I shut my eyes.

"Sam!" I called out, my voice shaking, its mellow "default" tone a much breathier and much higher pitched sound than it was already- "Stay there. Wyatt, get over here, now!"

Time made no sense at all, as I heard his heavy footsteps. Each one felt like an eternity. An age.

"I'm here, Chris." The voice swirled amongst the images; the brutality and all its magnitude. No longer only an image now- a reality brought all the way back by whoever evil decided the way to live was this. Wyatt's voice, strangely, was the only distraction; it was welcome. But he had to repeat himself. "Chris. I'm here."

"Knock her out," I said, my eyes still shut.

He put a hand on my shoulder.

"Chris-" he started.

"Just knock her out, trust me." I resisted the urge to pull my hand from her skin, disconnect entirely. It was the pain; it also wasn't the pain.

It was the memories.

I didn't want to cry in front of Wyatt, who once gripped me by the arms and shoulders and took my lunch money, eons ago- but it was too late. "Do it, Mr. Shafer."

I heard the strange, sickening sound of one of his netherworldly tentacles emerging and surfacing from his back- one of the sounds I learned to hate- and then a wet, sticky impact that disrupted my painsteal connection.

I opened my eyes, and the very first detail I noticed in the light of Wyatt's torch was the rope wrapped around Elyza's body- the rope used to tie her up. And then I realized why my brain picked up and noticed this particular item.

"Hey. You okay?" Wyatt knelt down, next to me. I think maybe he put an arm around my shoulders, but I didn't notice. "You're all right now. Talk to me."

It wasn't rope-

It was vine. Vine. With thorns. And as far as I knew, there was only one individual who knew Elyza Cobb that had any kind of ability to tie someone up with thorns and make them bleed.

Klein.

It's such a shame

You never told me what you really wanted

Go put the blame on me

Smoke of a fire we'll never see

Saying that you got a soul

Just because you know that you are going to hell

Said I don't want to be near you

Said I don't want to be near you

Said I don't want to be near you

--ovw--XXVII--ovw--

Nightingale

Day #41

Subprocedure Nine

Can't give what you don't have.

Avyeena Paleros was someone everyone described as a faker. She had, quite possibly, the most square and simultaneously also rectangular face imaginable.

I stood two feet from her as we all focused our attention on the task in front of us.

All of us except her perhaps.

Technically a grade above me in school, I saw her in three of my classes- history, math, advanced reading. I didn't know why she was there.

"I swear, I'm losing my shit!" Avyeena screeched in my left ear.

I said nothing. My eyes fixed on the strange, alabaster shape that calmly floated on the display in front of me: a screen, not unlike the ones at school that I used whenever I borrowed a book for the weekend. Only this one didn't have catalogs or rows and columns of pieces written by rich people from millennia ago. This one gave you one-hundred and eighty seconds to watch whatever it wanted to show you and then decide whichever word or sentence or number or shape was the correct item after. Whichever "corresponded," as was said by the man who herded us into this room.

But I knew better.

There were five of us in the room. Well, five initially. I quickly glanced over at the murky pool of blood on the floor to my right before sliding my finger fast around the edges of the unique polygon shape on my screen; my other finger quickly tapping and moving inwards, to the center of the shape.

I saw, immediately, how it changed from an alabaster-like hue to a very mild almond color- almost an indistinguishable shift.

I lifted my finger from the screen, I froze, half-expecting anything from the walls crushing us to slow death to a knife blade previously buried in burning coal

To this day, that test still confuses me. Sometimes. This is not something I will be happy to remember. It was a test of identifying differences and deviations; it was a test of identifying those who are potentially dangerous; of knowing what to run away from. It was a test of knowing criminals.

And I knew those people.

I shut my eyes for just a split second.

The songs in my head are the only things that will help me...

A few days before this torture, the man in the crimson helmet took my pen and notebook- the pen and notebook that I stole from one of their offices. The two objects that were my only source of non-torture. Because I can swear to you that every single other thing in that place WAS nothing but torture. He looked at the notes, poems, and songs, and stories for only a few seconds before he tore every page in front of me.

Don't try to guess how he punished me after that.

Beams of light

Beams of light here are a curse

Beams of light here are a bad thing

The men and women running the show knew I'd help people; give answers. I think they noticed that I'd previously assisted others, thereby keeping them alive, when had it been just for the experiment and not me they'd have been eliminated and then disposed. Unless their bodies had cells or relevant DNA or genes or superpowers that they wanted to look at.

Unless their bodies were a useful tool.

And so, I was the only one in the room who was gagged.

They already zapped me twice for trying to give clues with the gag on. The tremors in my hand were manageable, but just barely.

Avyeena let out a horribly staged laugh, and then an even worse and even more unconvincing laugh, and then she spoke again.

"Just kidding, y'all!" she said with her pitifully stilted smile, one I had seen before.

Even Avyeena's "y'all" wasn't convincing. She never said "y'all."

She must have been in a lot of stress.

"Damn! This is so easy."

She sounded like she was at an audition for a school play and was simply forced to be there.

She sounded like this all the time. It was irritating to almost everyone- almost everyone because to me it was, perhaps, neither worth the irritation nor attention.

I glanced at her quickly and then down at her screen, in an attempt to at least communicate that she needed to have her cognitive functions on the more important task, and not scattered with her perfectly unsolicited and pointless comments.

No beams of light

Please please

No beams of light please

I remember a teacher once asking her and I to partner for an assignment in which we read verses of the Bible to the class, taking turns, and then entire chapters alternately. I had already done this assignment alone. Upon asking our teacher afterwards why I had to do it again AND WITH HER OF ALL PEOPLE, she replied, "Because the class wouldn't be able to stand her voice for five minutes." She smiled at me and put a hand on my shoulder. "Let alone ten. We needed yours."

I gave Avyeena another moment's glance. I thought about what the teacher said.

At this point, I think I finally had to agree.

I thought I heard a clicking noise but ignored it; another set of instructions flashed at me on the holographic projector and I needed to read and understand.

Quickly.

Honestly why does she sound like that-

It sounded like a microwave oven in a massive opera theater exploded.

INTO A MICROPHONE.

Both her, and the blast.

It was a blinding flash of white.

Glass above us- what used to be the ceiling of the room- shattered into thousands of tiny yellow-and-pink crystal shards and flying orange sparks. I shielded my eyes for an instant, before realizing THE BREAKING GLASS ITSELF WAS A TRICK.

You needed both your hands on the screen with your mind still counting, keeping records, NOTING PATTERN CHANGES, and remembering whatever followed them.

In spite of all this chaos.

In spite of the micro-razor crystal shards that buried themselves into my forehead, in spite of the red liquid that, consequently, began to run into my eyes.

But my vision wasn't the only thing that turned red.

--ovw--

Only the flashing red light from Avyeena Paleros's screen illuminated the look on her face- one of realizing the same thing I did, but only when it was too late.

I assume now she must have shielded her eyes from the tiny shards for one second too long. Her hands, which were a pale shade of blue, were still ON THEIR WAY BACK TO THE HOLOGRAPHIC PROJECTOR SCREEN when it blinked red, one more time.

The last time.

I am not going to look

I am not going to look

I am not going to l-

I looked. And I watched as her entire scalp started spraying blood from every single follicle- like hundreds of tiny, microscopic little water sprinklers in a garden of bottle blond, her hair and skin slowly burning itself like aviation gasoline into her skull. Imagine a thin layer of cheese melted or baked slowly into the top of a bread bun or dinner roll. Or a layer of caramel. That's what her entire head- including her face- looked like, deflating like a red, red, red balloon of human flesh.

I felt the one slice of bread they allowed me to have the day before push back upwards, threatening to enter my mouth from inside of me.

I can't even look at you right now

Nope can't look nope

I'm sorry Avyeena

Nope

Not looking at you

No beams of light. Please.

Please

I closed my eyes. Then I looked at her one more time.

WHY DID I LOOK AT HER

I didn't know her. Or I barely did, if at all. But I couldn't help her. I wanted to, but I needed to keep BOTH HANDS ON THE SCREEN.

Both hands on the screen

No beams of light

No please-

She seemed completely unable to move, frozen, save perhaps for a very, very mild twitching of her right leg and foot that only someone like me would notice, probably. An almost unnoticeable shaft of light surrounded her area of the room from ceiling to floor.

No

The beams of light here...

NO

She was done.

Apart from her scream, the only other sound I seem to remember is that of her retinas slowly breaking; coming apart; detaching- a sound that I wasn't sure how I was even hearing- one small tissue at a time, and then popping, from inside of her skull, behind her eyes; her eyes which then dropped onto the floor.

Then I realized it wasn't the sound of retinas detaching that I was hearing. Or at least, not just that. The circle of subtle yellow light that radiated floor-to-ceiling around her was pulling apart every cell on the surface of her body.

Slowly.

Only the songs in your head will help you right now...

Think of an already-broken egg toppling from the middle of a very large bookshelf. That was the first eye.

Only the songs in your head will help you right now

Happy place

I don't remember the second eye anymore. But I know nothing rolled when it hit the ground.

Happy place

I realize now that that was the only time I ever heard her scream, truly scream, despite all the noise that I and many others had already heard from her in school before.

I'm sorry Avyeena

That scream was the most real sound she ever made.

--ovw--

I stood there, in the circular room- or was it octagonal? And breathed, my eyes glued to the screen and waiting for a next instruction, another puzzle, another subtle string of lines to read upwards and sideways and forth and back.

I still heard Avyeena's insides bubbling on the floor to my left. Whatever was her brain was now identical to whatever mess was around her intact pelvis. Well, maybe not intact. The dent in it was probably not unlike the one in the metacarpal in my left hand...

Her scream lasted longer than any scream I had made in my nightmares. Or so it seemed to me. Her eyes, shortly before dropping, had slowly moved to look at me.

But there was nothing I could say or do.

Scalp to neck, hands to rib cage, feet up to her stomach, I watched her turn from one you saw at school that people all hated but couldn't avoid, to a human pork roast on a barbecue. Only I felt nothing still.

I wasn't thinking about how many new versions of bad dreams I was going to go home with; I was thinking of survival- because if I wasn't going to survive, then how would I help anybody, save anybody?

An almost familiar face lit up the blank screen. Almost familiar, because there was no face. Just the mask, red hair and stubble.

"As much gymnastics as your body does, it doesn't stop there, does it?" The man said. And then he uttered a slightly muffled laugh which lasted thirty seconds, which made absolutely no sense to me. He continued. "The mental side is no less impressive. See, when I choose someone, I choose only the smartest. Anything you're capable of physically is only just bonus territory."

That's when shapes moved above me. Shadows, I'd guessed, maybe more enormous holding chambers or moving platforms or racks of test tubes- but, like as not, something else.

"But let's test that bonus territory," he continued. "If you want to prove you're useful to us..." I saw him get up and then pick up a sheet of paper on a desk- "in addition to how profitable we already know you can be, then let's see you in a physically high-stress situation."

What?

I wasn't sure I was hearing him right.

Physically "high-stress" situation?

I couldn't be hearing him right.

In addition to all this?

I felt the gag on my mouth- so uncomfortably tight. I probed at it with my fingers but there was nothing to make it come loose. It wasn't fiber; wasn't cloth.

In addition to the glass tiles, the poisons, the injections?

I was done for the day. They'd give me my one hour of time to sleep. Before some other kind of forced injection.

And in addition to the bedroom?

Well, at least the continued abuse meant, for me, a little more time to sleep on a comfortable bed.

Sometimes, it was almost a refuge...

The shadows above me moved down, closer to where I stood.

Physically high-stress situation.

No, I heard him right.

One of these mutated creatures screeched at me- eerily a lot like Avyeena- as I had to dodge sideways and into a roll, fast. I untucked back onto my feet just as quickly and looked up. Projectile echoes and waves of sound you could actually see started coming at me from all sides.

"We created them five years ago, from wolverines and from bats." The man's voice was now booming at me from the main audio system that they used for larger gatherings, as well as still coming from the screen behind me. "Impressive, aren't they?"

"uAuffhuuh-" I stepped back and flipped backwards as one of these... these things came at me with its black talons pointed toward the side of my neck. "mmFhihuh, mmmuAuff!"

"Oh, sorry. I forgot they had you gagged."

The contraption that was holding my medial pterygoid and masseter and temporalis still finally came loose and hit the ground with a loud clack.

Pattern number one:

It targeted the side of my neck. I was already bleeding there.

I picked up what looked like one of my ex-co-test-subject's femurs and then Avyeena's right tibia and defended myself from the hordes of monsterbirds.

"How are you today?" the man said. "How is the experiment?"

"Are they attracted to blood?!" I said.

"Wow," the man said. "How'd you know that so fast?"

I said nothing.

I ran over to the four pedestals where the displays were- the ones of my now-dead experiment-mates, and started up the test programs, one at a time.

"What are you-"

On the first display there were two choices: 1956 and 1911.

"THEY TOOK HALF THE WORLD. NOT BY STORM. CHAMBERS AND GAS. THIS ANGEL WAS BORN."

I positioned my feet, calculated the distance and line, and intentionally tapped 1956.

I lunged and flew forward- into a flip with a full twist and then a half- and then looked up as the shift of light froze these mutated wolverines with wings. I didn't stop to watch them turn into blood and bones. I'd seen a lot of that, plenty. No thank you.

I walked, light-footed and swift, across to the next screen.

1911 was the right answer.

A man was born that year- a man known for torturing innocent people. Many called him the Angel of Death, something I had also read in a book, at eight years old. His name was Josef Mengele.

I didn't know if it was fiction; many parts of the book were faded and I couldn't read all of it. I remember trying to ask the librarian for a digital copy, but she said she didn't have one, and told me to read something she called "Twilight."

Let's not go there.

The next pedestal gave the following two choices:

LRNR and JCSL.

"YOU HAVE ONE SECOND. IF THE SHAPE YOU SEE BELOW IS NOT A PENTAGON, SELECT THE WOLF."

The program was pretty generous, because it showed me the old Overwoods flag- the one from eons and ages ago- which, of course, was rectangular and not a pentagon. It was the flag they used before the former country from millennia ago destroyed itself completely. The program also showed the flag on the screen for two whole seconds, which was much longer than I was bracing for or expecting- so that was nice of them.

I glanced over at the mutated creatures that were caught near the last screen. Frozen in air, slowly burning, strange little wisps of black smoke mixed with red emitting gradually from their giant, brawny, frightening bodies, like slowly evaporating molasses. Their razor-sharp claws detached; fell as a pile of searing, hot metal into the pools of human blood.

I intentionally tapped "LRNR" and flew in the opposite direction as more flying wolverines attempted to attack me, and subsequently burned.

Juan Carlos Sánchez Latorre, born September 13, 1980, was a man many called the "Big Bad Wolf." I also learned this from reading. Don't ask me why they called him that.

I remember reading on for maybe two more pages, and then crying and having to put the book down, because I had my own wolves. I went back the next day, after spending evening until morning with said wolves, to read the rest of it.

By this time I had activated all the murder-technology areas except for one- my own- and I had noticed something else.

Apart from that I was blacking out and that there were now only five of the monsters, another pattern had emerged in all the memories and plasma and bones.

I just needed to test it.

"...I've been speaking to you, Daniel."

"Danny."

"That is a nickname."

"I don't know what my real name is. Hate me."

Silence save for the screeching and my ragged breathing.

"I can't hate you. Would you like a real name?"

This distracted me enough that one of the wolverines had managed to clamp its teeth on my shoulder- very close to the wound in my neck- and I dropped the femur and yelled through gritted teeth and struck with Avyeena's tibia, again and again and again until it finally let go, and I was then able to damage both of its eyes with my fingers; I wasn't going to have to kill it. I was on the ground just regrasping the femur when a screech, earsplitting and shrill, came at me from behind.

I knew instantly there was no maneuver that would move me out of its way entirely. I used my arms and elbows to cover my head and crossed the bones in an X behind my neck and back.

Both bones broke, into pieces that flew like marrow-filled, blood-coated pieces of striated confetti on both my sides as they absorbed, thankfully, most of the frightening and eerie impact. Here I was unarmed with possibly a spine injury and fingers that I couldn't move.

I used what seemed like the last of my strength to push up into at least a crouch, using my elbows and arms mostly since my hands weren't cooperating. But I still needed to test the theory.

It was like when your leg fell asleep in a bad position for so long that you had to cry- that's what my hands were like. The parts of me that could ignore it did while the rest of me suffered. Suffered as I sidestepped a visible wave of shock and sound that blew up yet another part of the tile floor beneath me, but didn't bounce off.

Pattern #2:

These waves bounce off walls, but don't move upward.

I didn't need my hands this time.

"Do I go up from here? Or do I eliminate these targets?" My voice was my voice, yet it was so detached from me. Like an AI robot machine or whatever they called it had my voice installed on it. "Tell me what to do. Please. I'm so tired."

"You didn't like any of the names?"

"They were all great. I just didn't hear any of them." Four more of these monsters and this may have been it, may have been the match that was going to stab me in the throat, choke me; penetrate me through the heart, with its claws or fangs or talons. "You'll either tell me what to do here or I'll die. I'm not sure it matters."

I dodged another attack, another screech, another bite. It almost wasn't different; different from the time I was on the floor and crying from the pain, in the sense that I was there, but I wasn't there. I was a corpse that moved. All of the rest of me had already died. Whatever remained hoped only for safety; wanted almost nothing else.

"I just wanted some action."

I used my right hand, which was less damaged, to pick up a bone. I'd been victim to sick people like this; it wasn't new. But it always took a lot from you and gave little in return. "You like a lot of action, I get that." I glanced up at one of the cameras. "If I die here you won't get any. Do I kill these-" I quickly flipped backwards to dodge the wolverine that was swooping in toward me with its fangs bared; I rebounded into a double backwards tuck for extra distance- "or is there some platform up there that I can reach for safety?" I paused to catch my breath, which at that time felt like an almost impossible task- either the air was empty of any oxygen or the hard blow to the back of my head was playing tricks on me- "I know the screech-projectile-echoes don't move up."

A door panel hidden in the wall, one like many others here, unlocked itself with a subtle emission of cold air and vapor and smoke. Tranquilizer darts from above shot at the remaining mutation-creatures, and I watched them flop onto the ground, which was still slick with intestines, eyeballs, and hemoglobin. It looked almost graffitied in some places- the places where I was and struggled and flipped and my shoes drew lines in the blood. I smelled like I vomited liquor on myself- a smell I knew only from knowing other people who were alcohol-addicted, and having to be physically very close with them- in addition to smelling like I swam in a soup of dead, boiled human bodies. Which might or might not have been, actually, the accurate statement.

"I like how you always fold the sheets in the morning."

I turned around and there he was, the man in the mask.

"What do I do now?" I said.

"Nothing tonight." He scratched a stopwatch on his suit. "You've proven your survivability for the day."

For the day.

"What should I expect tomorrow?" I said it politely. I didn't like him when he was mad. His emotion in itself didn't bother me. But he knew how to hurt you. And if he was mad, he would hurt you. "Apart from the injections."

He didn't answer my question.

"You let tomorrow take care of itself," he said in a warm, obliging voice that severely contrasted to the violence all around us. I was in a slaughterhouse, of humans, of children, and here was a man who drank wine from expensive glasses on tables of diamond. "What would you like tonight?"

"I'd like my own blanket."

--ovw--XXVIII--ovw--

Was it because I was sleepless, or was it because I didn't catch whoever was responsible?

I remember trying not to think of Marie. I remember trying not to think about bloodkill.

Nightingale in general was always going to be there. What was in front of me was not a new story in the Overwoods. I didn't claim to be strong; only that I did what I could to protect the good, in any and all its forms.

I wondered, with Liquid Nitrogen's blood on the soles of my inexpensive sneakers, If Avyeena had lived, would she have just killed herself? It was my best attempt at introducing a new thought into my own mind. How would Kayles have felt, had she been the sole survivor?

I should have answered wrong.

"You're starving."

I looked up, from the green sheets with red notebooks on them where I wrote everything.

"Just one bite. It's still hot."

If I said that when people were kind to me or cared, I always believed it, that would be a lie. If I said I always thought that kindness, if directed toward me, was heartfelt and not a manipulation tool to eventually use me and completely contriturate my psyche because there is evil out there, that would be something else; "lie" could not be strong enough.

At that particular moment it was as though I wasn't hearing Malcolm's voice. I just heard some sort of deep, disembodied grumble as my thoughts again turned to Crayon and Skittles.

I had to be polite, kind, because karma.

I smiled.

"I'm not hungry," I said.

Malcolm crossed the room and replaced a fifth plate of whatever-it-was on my only clear surface: a small plastic table I won in third grade for something I wrote. I had to fly in and out of the Lowdown at 2AM to retrieve it and one of my stuffed animals, Penguinowo. Malcolm stood still after putting it down and taking the last plate.

I was older. But I still froze, still stayed hypervigilant, still breathed a little less whenever anyone even slightly larger than I was alone in the same room as me. Especially if there was a bed.

"I ain't a telepath from the Suburbs," Malcolm growled, "but even I know you're lying." I heard his significantly louder sigh of why-do-I-bother and even felt it on my face. "I haven't seen you go anywhere, eat anything. I thought I was worth more than 'I'm not hungry.'"

Part of me wanted to say something, but I didn't.

Right before the door shut, he said, "I guess not."

--ovw--

I flipped open the new keypad-type phone I was using temporarily, one Kaylee gave me when I wasn't sure I was cognitively able to handle anyone else.

"BELINDA IS GOING IN FOR INTERROGATION."

I was still wiping my eyes when I read her new message.

"6AM TOMORROW."

Interrogate Belinda Klein? Call me what you would. Wyatt had little to no chance of going that deep. Some telepaths were a bit easier to read- exempli gratia myself, most of the time anyway- and some were more like Belinda. Awkwardly, and with my left hand virtually convulsing, I typed in my reply.

"CAN WYATT EVEN CRACK HER CODE?" I said.

"I'M SURE HE'LL DO FINE."

"ARE YOU?"

"HOW MANY INTERROGATIONS WENT THE OTHER WAY FOR HIM BEFORE?"

I had to take a moment.

"FOUR."

To the best of my knowledge, at least.

I shifted from my half-curled-up position facing the wall to flat on my back to stare at the photographs I stuck on to the ceiling. On the left, suspects I'd apprehended and stopped. On the right, those we either needed to investigate further, or otherwise just arrest entirely.

Often the people I still had locate and arrest looked a certain way. They looked like murderers.

"Four," I repeated to Kayles, letting down my telepathic barrier for the moment. "That I know of. Only, really, because I was asked to speak to the suspects after he failed."

Kaylee's telepathic voice responded. I closed my eyes.

"He's interrogated lots of people, Chris."

"Yeah," I replied. "Me included."

"What?"

"Nothing," I said. "Let's move on."

Caleb was able to track Belinda Klein's location not by use of any fanciful electronics or gadgets she owned, but because, apparently, Caleb had already placed a tracking device on one of her pairs of glasses- one small enough to go unnoticed. She'd boarded a U.S. flight to the mainland before Sam intercepted. Now Sam's just as injured as Elyza.

My eyes flew open at the memory of seeing bloodkill; the memory of realizing exactly what pain Elyza Cobb was put through, when I saw her, when I understood what chemical was forced into her blood. For Elyza's sake, I hope she doesn't remember the pain; I hope all she remembers is how I took the horrible monster from her body. The one that makes you cry, and beg. This way, only Kaylee and I will know the nightmares.

Who gave Belinda the Zapryekavil?

"Do you have any idea why she did it?" I said.

"We don't know she did it," replied Kaylee.

"You think there's anyone else in the Overwoods with Belinda Klein's abilities?"

"Experimentations still happen, Chris. New powers could come up at any time." Kaylee paused. "Well, I guess a lot more dead bodies than actual new powers but, we don't know."

"Midnight," intruded Sam.

I quickly skimmed over the photographs, facial composites; settled on Torres. Did he know anything?

"Yes, Sam. Hi."

"Hi!" squealed Kaylee.

"Tell that bitch we need a rematch," Sam hissed. "And this time, I'm throwing her off the plane."

"Unless her prison's going to be on a moving airplane," I said, "that's not going to happen."

"Fine, tell her she's going to get private conjugal visits." Sam popped her telepathic bubble gum. "From me, up close."

"I'll tell her you wanna get high with her," I said. "How's that?"

"Deal."

Sam vamoosed from the connection. Even in telepathy, she dropped half her R's. The other half turned into Y's. To me her voice was almost always very entertaining.

"You're in trouble with James," said Kaylee.

"He can suck a jellyfish," I said. "The poisonous type."

"Naw," said Kaylee. "You don't mean that!"

"Man has no idea what he's doing." I focused on the butterfly on Torres's face. "Neither do I, frankly. But sometimes I don't know why I take orders from that dude."

Kaylee laughed.

"You called him 'dude.'"

"I don't want to be respectful right now."

"That's not disrespectful."

"If the Overwoods blows up, again, like it did thousands of years ago, it's his fault."

Kaylee paused.

"He cares about you," she said. "You know. In his own way."

"It's a twisted way."

"Would you rather he didn't care at all?"

The butterfly's right wing was slightly smaller than the left. It might have just been my mental state, but I felt like I had almost seen Reynaldo Torres somewhere before...

"No," I replied. "I appreciate it. I just... wish things were easier."

There was a knock on the door. I immediately dropped the connection.

"I'll eat, Malcolm!" I yelled. "We're good!"

I struggled to get up to some sort of sitting position, knocking two of my notebooks off the side of the bed. I was just happy to be seeing the color red on their covers again. The door swung open before I could pick them up.

"You have a visitor."

I folded the notebooks shut, after flipping through a few pages. I pressed my fingertips to my eyebrows for a minute.

"Are you gonna say anything?" Malcolm pressed.

I bit my tongue.

Am I permitted to not say anything?

I fumbled with the edges of the light cotton bandage I still kept wrapped around my left hand. Tested it, slowly moving one finger at a time, from the shortest one to the longest.

I inhaled, very slowly, and took twice as long for the exhale that followed it.

"I told Caleb not to visit me."

Malcolm put down an oatmeal bar- in blue wrapping- on the floor next to Penguinowo, who was sitting by the door.

Good. Penguinowo was hungry.

Pain clutched at my stomach. It was probably just the poison spray from the canister, and all of the injections from the senseless human experimentation and torture they forced onto us, from when-

"Eat something," said a familiar voice as it broke through my thoughts like a battering ram, "or I will tie you to a tree and make you smell mutant gardenia-citrus-corpse flower hybrids."

I pinched my lips together. Kaylee's telepathic voice, but a slightly softer version of it. It reminded me of me. My mouth remained shut as I looked at Malcolm. I spoke again, but this time via telepathy.

"The blue ones or the pink ones?" I said.

"The orange ones," said Kaylee.

"OH MY GOD," retorted Sam with very palpable, unmistakable revulsion in her only slightly less Four-accented telepathic voice. "Those are SO REVOLTING-"

I put my telepathic barrier back up.

I took another very slow breath, wiped off any water that might still be on my cheeks because sometimes I cry, and moved my fingers around just as Malcolm spoke again.

"It's not your boyfriend," he said. "It's your boss."

--ovw--XXIX--ovw--

James led the way to the nearby beaches where I sometimes still tumbled. I followed while eating the still-hot French toast Malcolm made for me, with his own heat and fire, prepared outside the small two-story house.

"Tell me, Midnight," said James, "what part of You take the hotel on Monday did you not understand?"

"I understood the sentence."

"So you intentionally went against my authority."

"Do you or do you not realize that had I not been there, Cobb would be dead right now?"

This made him hang back.

I kicked a broken shell off the road and back into the sand. I kicked off my sandals, too, and walked into two front handspring stepouts- one-handed because of the toast- sitting myself down on the sand as landing for the second one while still eating Malcolm's fancy and yummy and happy bread.

Still no response from James. I looked over my shoulder. He wasn't looking at me.

"Ih wath the righ choith," I said before swallowing the mouthful of toasted, buttery happiness. "It was the right choice and you know it." I paused. "It was the only thing to do. Anything else would've been disaster. And because of you, too."

He was my boss, but just for that one moment, I wasn't going to sugar coat. Someone could have been murdered- and to me, it wasn't just anyone, either.

My gaze went back to the 5PM horizon, the sky with all its smeared-around combinations of orange and red, mostly a translucent color that made me think of pink lemonade maybe mixed with strawberry juice. The sun was unobscured and glowed just as mellowly, just like it did, back when I kept hermit crabs from here as pets- before letting them free again, back here, after a day. I was younger and really wanted pets. I wasn't allowed any, was told I couldn't "afford" them; I didn't know what money moved in or out at that time. I returned the little things because I didn't want them around the air of drugs or prostitution. They deserved better.

I looked at my hands. I'd forgotten to wrap the left one, but any pain was unnoticeable because of the waves and the sky and the ocean air around us. It made the humidity- typical it being the Overwoods- not only bearable, but almost welcome.

James still didn't say anything. Red flag, very unusual. James didn't not talk. I considered flying away, perhaps off to some other, less beautiful or accommodating part of The Port where someone the likes of James would never set foot. Maybe to the Bay of Bodies; maybe to McKinley War Memorial. Or somewhere else. There was no end of hiding places, now; now that I was the survivor that was forcefully made of me.

But not the Lowdown.

Never the Lowdown...

I glanced at the strange, slow, orange-with-purple-clouds Overwoods summer sunset; I remembered Marie. Summers here that rained and snowed with typhoons or hurricanes or every other catastrophe you could possibly think of. The boys and girls- the children- that have never and will never recover from the tortures.

But Kaylee and I are damaged forever.

While the ones who ran the experiment are probably out drunk and partying.

I am so hungry...

But at least his hunger was my choice. I was empowered; it was MY doing; MY self-inflicted pain- no one was doing that to me but me and thus it made me feel some small sense of autonomy; some small sense of control. Who cared if it hurt, right? At least I had a choice for once.

For freaking ONCE.

So I didn't care that it hurt; that I felt there were two slices of bread and a pool of toxic acid with poison-canister-spray in my esophagus and stomach.

But I'm still hungry...

I was already calculating line and distance and where exactly to place my feet when he spoke again.

"That's why I'm here."

"Because Elyza would be dead right now if not for what I decided, and the rest of the gang? My friends who you call drug addicts? Which, by the way, makes zero sense coming from you. Are you here to stare at the beach with me?" I moved, getting up from where I was and walked north, toward a rock. "Because bye."

A frayed, old piece of rope hanging from a boardwalk railing started flying towards me.

I flipped backward in layout and out of its way, no hands this time and no twisting as I was now a bit more cognizant of the pain in my hand. Sometimes, I wondered if the contraption from Nightingale was still on it. Just maybe invisible, or something.

James's voice was undeniably one of anger.

"You will stay here," he said, in a very uncharacteristic bark that only reprimanded me further, "Or you'll find some other federal agency to work for!"

I froze. But only for a moment before I responded with, "Maybe I should."

At that moment a squirrel with a red coat of fur- the same one I had seen in the school- materialized from under a toppled-over recycle bin. It scurried over and stood on its hind legs in front of me.

I gave it the rest of my French toast.

Marie's dead. Hundreds of other kids are dead; maybe even thousands.

I didn't deserve food anyway.

I saved Elyza's LIFE, and here I am- getting my butt CHEWED OUT for it.

Maybe that guy or gal (or otherwise other gender identity individual- I didn't know the pronoun) was right-

NOTHING I do is right...

"No matter who I protect or what I do for you, you're unhappy," I continued. "To me right now, you're practically mad Elyza's alive. Half the stuff you make me do doesn't even make sense."

Something tugged tightly around my right wrist and pulled me straight down into the sand. Without glancing over I knew James had kept me in place.

I pretended I wasn't scared.

"Lecture me now if you want to so badly," I said, "or fire me. I'm not sure it matters anyway."

I wiped water off my left cheek.

"I get it," I whispered. "I get it. Nothing I ever do is right."

Maybe Elyza will do something right. Maybe, maybe that will count as something, because I saved her.

I felt the rope loosen, but only so slightly. I was still stuck here.

James was smiling some sort of smile, which was more of the norm. The words he spoke next exhibited a tonality to his voice that I didn't hear very often- but it was one that made me believe him.

"I came here to say thank you."

The rope came off. I dusted off my pants and walked to where the torn brown sandals were laying in the sand. They were too huge for me but I liked them because they were Malcolm's. He let me use them on Sundays. There were a few acorns in one of them- the squirrel must have left them there- and I shook them off onto the sand.

Why on earth would the squirrel leave that there-

My fingers fumbled at the hem of the shirt I was wearing. It was a gift from Sam- a small black T-shirt with the picture of a cartoon Pembroke Welsh corgi puppy and the words "i'm a corgi" all in lowercase below the printed graphic; she heat pressed the shirt herself in her home in V4.

Squirrels were strange in the Overwoods- like almost all other things in the Overwoods, they made little to no sense to me. But at least they were cute; at least they were mostly harmless; at least they weren't broken human child traffickers- leaders of mass abuse, evil in walking form and seemingly human.

Yeah you know squirrels be cute like that

Nice train of thought, right?

But the squirrels deserve better than to live HERE...

That they did. So did 6 out of 10 people. Or at least that was my thought at the time.

ORBIPLOSIONS

"Did you hear what I just said to you?" said James.

I looked at him. Carrot hair; pistachio-ice-cream eyes; dark circles prominent under the glasses. My first instinct was to say thank you back- but something just felt wrong; I wasn't sure what. Maybe it was that he was thanking me for saving one life when I watched dozens of kids die in front of me at age eleven; maybe it was that the mess would not have happened at all if not for me. Consider that I'd already hopped off of Century Spire's roof to die and apparently I didn't even do THAT right.

I stared at the ground; at broken little shells on the sand. Most of them where dull gray. Some were bright orange. A hermit crab danced on top of a broken wine bottle.

Even small things like broken wine bottles reminded me of Nightingale.

Cute little hermit crab.

Focus on cute dancing hermit crab.

The cute dancing hermit crab climbed off of the broken wine bottle and crawled into a small hole in the sand.

I was the one who needed a hole in the sand to bury myself in- or at the very least a shell to go back into and hide in.

Dancing hermit crab is lucky.

"So, I don't deserve a reply, I guess." James put his glasses in his shirt pocket. You know- the fancy expensive shirt with the collar and the pocket. "I came out here just to thank you," he said, "and all that your eighteen-year-old mind is thinking about... is a crab."

That was oversimplification.

"It is an oversimplification," he said. "But you get my point."

Uhm like no I don't.

Nice of him to assume I understood the point, though.

"At least talk to me if you won't talk to Malcolm."

WHAT?

WHAT IS THE-

THERE WAS NO COMPARISON.

Just say something and maybe he'll finally leave you alone.

"I'm not sure if you're welcome," I said.

--ovw--XXX--ovw--

I was still occasionally coughing from the lingering effects of whatever spray was in that canister thingy.

I refused to show up at the interrogation. I wanted no part of it.

Tiana Ambervi waved at me, from across the road, her glasses gleaming back the gray silver of the Overwoods sun on an overcast Monday morning. It smelled like chopped wood and the mines- one of the many indicators that I was now walking even farther away from the Bay area, and towards Vicinity Four. Like rocks broken open and like the murders of lives that harmed no one. My phone buzzed for a fourth time and I ignored it.

Tiana had eyes seemingly gray, like the "wolf-in-winter" painting I made together with Caleb for his school project years ago. I was no painter. He was. But he needed my concepts.

I needed his company.

"What you doing here?" Tiana said, crossing the street and coming toward me. Her voice and accent both were relatively uncommon in the Overwoods- reminiscent of older Southeast Asian enunciation; tone patterns that were now all but nonexistent. "You need medicine?"

I probably did. But I didn't say that.

Up close her eyes were dark brown; very reflective- almost as shiny as the copper adornments and mineral beads she loved to put on her purple headdress.

She looked like she was getting married.

Like, every single day.

"No," I said. "I, uh. I buy bread here sometimes."

She frowned at me. Sometimes I just didn't know what to say. Or I didn't have anything amazing to say, at least.

"Yeah. I'm lying," I said.

Tiana and I ran into each other at school sometimes. Often at the library. Sometimes, we argued about who would take home which book for the night. Of course, if I knew I was "working" that night then I would just let her take whatever she wanted. She would thank me and I'd of course say nothing.

"White lie," she said. "No matter to me."

I smiled.

"Maybe," I said. "How are you, Tiana?"

I was able to "recruit" her into a technician-type job at the Webwork, she now rented a room away from her home in Vicinity Six for easy access to the building, given how unpredictable weather in the Overwoods was combined with the often precarious journey from V6 to V4. Her sister worked in the mines- like Malcolm- and ultimately was killed because of a fatal exposure to Vystir poisons. She died after a day, despite both their parents owning a small clinic for chemical contamination and drug poisoning in Vicinity Six. Her sister was seventeen.

"Oh, so happy." She hugged me and somehow I just wasn't there, so I wasn't able to really feel it. "So happy to be away from Six."

That's right. She told me about what happened one day, to her sister and how she couldn't stand treating all the drug addicts afterward anymore. So, of course, that night I broke into James's office top of the Webwork tower above the Coliseum and looked for secret job openings. I got her the spot the next day.

"Well," I said with some kind of twisted-by-trauma-and-sadness smile, "I helped one person."

She laughed.

"You always so humble," she said.

"Do you know where I can find Ember?" I said.

"Emberion?" said Tiana. "Myelantic? Why? What you need?"

"Some kind of painkiller. The nonaddictive kind," I replied. "It's not for me; it's for Sam."

We were somewhere between the center and south of V4. There was loud rustling as a train ran past us on its path in the center of McPhearson Avenue. It caught my attention but I wasn't sure why. I followed it with my eyes until it was out of sight.

"Why she need it?" said Tiana. "She not gonna sell that?"

"No," I said. "It's for her to take."

A combustifly landed on my hand to roast the mosquito- a mosquito I didn't even notice- that was just about to feast on my iron-deficit, low-sugar blood. It was a warm, tickling feeling. And then it flew away to go munch on its new toasted mosquito meal, or to bring it to its combustifly family.

"Thanks," I said to the combustifly.

"Why, who she is fight into this time? Her brother?"

"No, no. You don't want to know."

"I do, so I warn other people!"

"Doesn't matter," I said. Maybe a bit sharply.

"And how it not matter, Daniel?"

"Because Belinda Klein is in jail, and Wyatt and I are possibly, maybe, supposed to be interviewing her?" I said.

Yeah, except I wasn't there. Alone in a room with Shafer, and Klein, too? Bad enough, per se.

But combine that with all that's happened...

Another train sped past. Wasn't it a bit early for a train- now two, at that- to be running through V4 like this?

"So..." Tiana said, "On the airplane, that was...?"

"Yes, that was Sam and Belinda." I closed my eyes. "Look, Tiana, can you tell me where Ember is?"

"Sorry, yes. He in the Thornton building. Beside Douglas. 24th street."

I checked the time and hence also saw my number of unread notifications. Fourteen.

"So beside the-"

"Beside trap house, yes."

"I was going to say 'pharmacy,' but sure."

Tiana spoke her next words with either apparent humor, or apparent sarcasm, maybe both, I couldn't tell.

"They miss your business there."

I gave her a half smile. Mordantly.

"Right," I said.

--ovw--

The four walls were just like I remembered them. Baby blue. The single fixture hanging from the ceiling glowed a dim white which illuminated the small plastic drawers of pills and small bottles of different liquids.

I sniffed, partly because I was remembering how Crayon and I once ran down a mountainside, and down to a beach, to catch up with Skittles, who decided to make friends with a crab that ended up pinching her paw. I kicked the crab into the water where it probably drowned.

Do crabs swim?

...and partly because of the aftereffects of whatever gas poison it was, I was still feeling it.

"Do you have anything for..." I had to pause. "I don't know. Like, tear gas side effects?"

Emberion puffed his megacigarette smoke- thankfully- away from my face. There was little enough ventilation and what was there was a semi-working exhaust fan in a square hollow drilled through the wall.

"What'd ya do, fight Krasvya military?" he said.

"What?"

"Nothing," he replied. "Whatever the hoe used at ya it was probably made to make you forget, or unconscious. And we all know," he smirked at whatever face I was making, "Zapokavich don't even work on ya."

Zapokavich?

"You mean Zapryekavil?"

"Yeah that, whateva."

Bloodkill.

When you're one of two survivors from an experiment that took, quite possibly, hundreds of children from across the only island left in the entire continent, people talk about it.

"Okay, so," I said, still trying to keep my mind clear, "anything you have for it?"

"You'll be fine, Danny boy."

Sheesh. Why I spoke to these people, sometimes, I'll never know.

"I have people to arrest, Myelantic."

Emberion Myelantic: half human, half centaur. I think that made him one-fourth horse. The result of an experiment far different from what I and Kaylee lived through- though he was one of many more survivors.

I shook the bottle full of green pills in my left hand. Ember wagged his pure white tail, white like the suit he was wearing. He wore a tie that read, "Just For Today." On my left, posted on the wall, was a slogan with "Cocaine is better than megacigarettes!" written on it. This all made perfect sense.

I sighed.

"What's up with all the trains, Ember?"

He puffed his smoke away from my face.

"Mines," he said.

"They need more people?" I asked.

"Nah," Ember said. "People dead again. More..." he waved his free hand in the air- one of his nervous tells- "...more commotion."

His megacigarette was the Dark Plum flavor. It to me smelled like a Sharpie dipped in liquid sage, melted, and then puked on. By an alcoholic.

What wasn't he telling me?

"I'll get you miracle apples from Eight," I said, "If you tell me what exactly you've heard."

Overrated pink fruits that all the centaurs and half-centaurs, which were a small fraction of the population that lived, mostly, in the woods between Vicinity Four and The Port. But not Ember- he needed to do his... transactions.

His sky blue eyes lit up.

"Two of 'em?" he said.

"Five," I said.

He whinnied, albeit subtly, unable to contain his excitement. Horsefolk didn't go to Eight- Vicinity Eight was where their crow counterparts, the Talon, nested in their large and overly mutated evergreens, sugar pines, scots pines, red pines, sequoias, the occasional red maple.

"Just somethin' I heard."

"Now," I said. "Before I read your mind and you get no apples."

He made some kind of centaur-horse sound. Something between a nicker and a squeal.

"Juz'n drama 'tween the folk and someone being killed, okay?" He lit himself another Dark Plum. "A kidnapping."

Kidnapping?

"Elyza's?" I said, a familiar fear slowly making its way over me.

"Nah," Ember replid. "A new one."

A new one.

IF YOUR TEAM COMES FOR ME...

I think we did.

"What else did you hear?" I said.

"Some sort of struggle- a fire." Fiyah, it sounded like to me, his speech so heavily affected with that archetypal Four accent. "An inferno sumwyeh."

Sumwyeh was "somewhere" in Four accent.

...I'LL BREAK MORE THAN HIS BONES

I checked my phone.

Fourteen notifications...

"James wants to talk to you."

Gross.

"Awesome win at the SRA! Come have a drink with us, Midnight! Pacifico next weekend? Show us a signature cartwheel or whatever! How's that sound, buddy?"

Um, yeah, no.

"Do a front flip!"

With a full or without a full? Doesn't matter, no.

"Ur hot giv me sum brain"

What does that even mean?

"Blow me or I will hack your girlfriend's social media and all of your BirdCoin. And your social media."

No.

I wasn't even on any social media, this was pathetic. I was literally gay, still am. What's BirdCoin?

"U SUCK AT LEAGUE PLAY A SUPPORT NEXT TIME"

I did play a support, I only ever played supports, what an idiot-

I scrolled to the bottom. One message from Caleb.

"Danny, call me. Right now."

Twenty-five minutes ago.

...DAVENPORT WILL DIE

I was wrong, I was wrong, I was wrong.

I became aware of the water in my eyes. There was... no way, was there?

And the mines?

Malcolm wasn't supposed to be back there this soon, was he?

A new message buzzed in.

"Monday

7:34 AM

Sent via SecureWeb

I LET YOU LIVE TO HAVE YOU

AGAIN

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